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Saturday, February 11, 2023

02/11 Links: Jerusalem attack: 8-year-old dies day after brother killed, father in serious condition; IDF saves 19 from rubble, treats around 180 victims of Turkey earthquake

From Ian:

Jerusalem attack: 8-year-old dies day after brother killed, father in serious condition
Two children and a young man were killed and four others were injured in a terrorist ramming attack near the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem on Friday afternoon.

The terrorist, identified as Hossein Karaka, a 31-year-old resident of the Isawiya neighborhood of east Jerusalem, rammed into a bus stop at the entrance to the Ramot neighborhood.

An off-duty police officer and other officers who arrived at the scene quickly after the attack shot the terrorist.

A Facebook account reportedly belonging to the terrorist featured a series of posts in recent months glorifying Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorists, including a post calling the terrorist who conducted a shooting attack at the Shuafat checkpoint last year a "hero."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided shortly after the attack to seal and demolish Karaka's home, expressing his condolences to the families of the victims.

"I conducted a security situation assessment and ordered security forces reinforced, arrests made and to act immediately to seal the terrorist's house and demolish it. Our answer to terrorism is to strike it with all our might and deepen our grip on our country even more."
Caroline Glick: It’s not about democracy
What’s happening in Israel is not what it seems. The left, in all its component parts, is not fighting against an effort by the government and the Knesset to destroy Israel’s democracy.

We know this for three reasons.

First, the leaders of the fight against judicial reform, who claim that if Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s judicial reform package now making its way through the legislative process in the Knesset passes, Israeli democracy will die, know that this isn’t true.

In a past address to the Kohelet Forum, opposition leader Yair Lapid set out a position on judicial activism completely aligned with Levin’s package. Indeed, Lapid’s remarks laid the foundations of the current reform.

In that speech, Lapid said, “I have opposed, and I still oppose, judicial activism of the sort introduced by [former Supreme Court President and the father of Israel’s judicial revolution] Justice Aharon Barak. I don’t think it is right that everything is justiciable. I don’t think it is right for the Supreme Court to change fundamental things in accordance with what it refers to as the judgment of ‘the reasonable person.’ That’s an amorphous and completely subjective definition that the Knesset never introduced to the legal code. It’s not right in my mind that the separation of powers, the sacrosanct foundation of the democratic method, should be breached by one branch of government placing itself above the others.”

Lapid is not alone. Nearly every prominent member of the opposition has made similar statements over the past several years. One of the most incendiary leaders of the protests against judicial reform is former defense minister and IDF chief of General Staff Moshe Ya’alon. Having lost his bid for reelection to the Knesset, Ya’alon restyled himself as a vigilante protest leader. At a press conference this week Ya’alon said the legal reform package will transform Israel “from a democracy into a dictatorship.” He called the Netanyahu government “criminal and illegal.”

Ya’alon called for a general strike and declared that “the thought of the State of Israel as a fascist, racist, messianic and corrupt state” is keeping people up at night.

But in a speech in 2009, when he first entered politics, Ya’alon sang a different tune. Back then Ya’alon railed against the very forces he now claims to represent. “The media here is biased,” he began.


Death toll passes 24,000 as aid trickles in for quake survivors in Turkey, Syria
International aid was trickling into parts of Turkey and Syria on Saturday where rescuers toiled to pull children from rubble in areas devastated by a massive earthquake that has killed over 24,000 people.

A winter freeze in the affected areas has hurt rescue efforts and compounded the suffering of millions of people, many in desperate need of aid.

At least 870,000 people urgently needed food in the two countries after the quake, which has left up to 5.3 million people homeless in Syria alone, the UN warned.

Aftershocks following Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor have added to the death toll and further upended the lives of survivors.

“When I see the destroyed buildings, the bodies, it’s not that I can’t see where I will be in two or three years — I can’t imagine where I’ll be tomorrow,” said Fidan Turan, a pensioner in Turkey’s southern city of Antakya, her eyes filling with tears.

“We’ve lost 60 of our extended family members,” she said. “Sixty! What can I say? It’s God’s will.”

The United Nations World Food Programme appealed for $77 million to provide food rations to at least 590,000 newly displaced people in Turkey and 284,000 in Syria.

Of those, 545,000 were internally displaced people and 45,000 were refugees, it said.
IDF saves 19 from rubble, treats around 180 victims of Turkey earthquake
Nineteen victims of Monday’s earthquakes in central Turkey were rescued from the rubble by the Israel Defense Forces since its operation “Olive Branches” began on Wednesday, and around 180 injured were treated by Israeli military medical personnel from Friday morning to Saturday night.

A ten and a nine-year-old were the victims most recently rescued by the IDF, pulled from collapsed buildings on Friday.

CADENA General Secretary Benjamin Laniado, who is operating with his medical and rescue teams in Kahramanmaraş alongside IDF teams, told The Jerusalem Post on Friday that after 72 hours the chances of survivors being found decreases dramatically. However, Israeli and other foreign teams continued to make odds-defying rescues into the weekend.

Of its almost 400-person delegation, the IDF has over 150 soldiers working on rescue operations in Turkey, and around 240 in its medical team. Around 17 tons of medical equipment and aid have been brought to Turkey.

Following setting up its field hospital in the staging grounds just outside of Kahramanmaraş on Thursday, the IDF said on Friday that it had restored a local hospital in the city at the epicenter of the quakes. IDF medical personnel are now manning the hospital, using equipment found at the site to complement the 7 tons of gear brought with the delegation.

The 180 victims treated since Friday included 10 Syrian citizens, said the IDF, including a four-year-old who had been with his family in Turkey during the deadly tremors. Northern Syria had also been heavily impacted by the earthquakes. 25,000 people have died in both countries, with many more thousands injured. The death toll is expected to climb.


Israel’s Elbit Systems help rescue forces in Turkey with mobile app
The teams at the disaster zone can transmit voice messages, photos and live video from the field as well as send updates to the command and control centers

Israel’s defense electronics company Elbit Systems is helping the United Hatzalah rescue forces who are working in the disaster zone in Turkey to search for quake survivors with their innovative mobile application called SYNCH.

It was developed by Elbit Systems as part of the Digital Land Army Project but was later adapted for civilian applications. The system is designed to manage cooperation between all medical personnel in the disaster zone together with United Hatzalah's command center in Jerusalem.

"Especially in such events, the connection between the delegation and the international emergency center of United Hatzalah is extremely important - and there is no doubt that this cooperation helps to save lives," said Zohar Eli of United Hatzalah.

SYNCH centralizes the work with all individuals deployed in the field. It allows the team supervisors to manage all the United Hatzalah emergency and rescue teams on a map, and use various tools to guide and assist them in their mission. The teams at the disaster zone can transmit voice messages, photos and live video from the field as well as send updates to the command and control centers.

The application works on any cellular network and allows the teams to be quickly deployed in any environment that has network coverage, while maintaining contact with parties both in the field and in Israel. The application turns cell phones into a combination of a walkie-talkie, WhatsApp and navigation and mapping device with just one application.


Pro-Palestinian activists attack Israeli ambassador in Spain
Israeli Ambassador to Spain Rodica Radian-Gordon was attacked by several dozen pro-Palestinian activists during a lecture at a university in Madrid on Wednesday.

In a video that circulated on social media in Spain, the ambassador is seen being evacuated to a secure room by Israeli and local security guards while dozens of activists swarm around them. One of the security guards is seen to have pulled out his weapon and is pointing it in the direction of the protesters.

The lecture resumed shortly after
A source in the Foreign Ministry stressed that this was a very violent and serious incident. According to the source, after the local police sent forces to the scene and evacuated the protesters, the ambassador's lecture resumed.

The source further stated that the same evening, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen called the ambassador in Madrid to strengthen her stance against the extreme anti-Israel protesters and praised the fact that she returned and continued the lecture and the event, despite the attempt to prevent it with violence.

"We are appalled by the violence of the anti-Israel demonstrators, which was directed against the Israeli ambassador at the conference at Complutense University to mark 30 years of the Oslo peace process," said the Israeli Embassy in Madrid in a statement. "We thank the dean for her determined and courageous leadership of open and balanced academic discourse. We do not comment on issues related to the security of the embassy."


The Bull in Durham: Jewish Leadership Betrayal
It’s clear that a Jewish community is morally confused when its synagogue leadership invites a BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) activist to speak on a panel that will advise parents how to talk to their kids about antisemitism. Evidently, such leaders do not understand the full scope of antisemitism that Jews now encounter, or perhaps they are simply unwilling to face it. Whether it’s the result of ignorance or denial, this poses a threat to their congregation and future generations.

On January 8 of this year, Judea Reform (JR), a synagogue in Durham, NC convened just such a panel. The synagogue invited Steve Schewel, who is a JR member and also the former mayor of Durham, to be an honored member of the panel.

Yet when he was mayor of Durham, Schewel guided the city council into passing a BDS resolution against Israel, unleashing antisemitism in our town. Here’s a short version of a long story:

In 2018, the radical anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) circulated a petition demanding that Durham never send police officers to train in Israel, claiming that police exchanges with Israel drive officers here in America to “terrorize black and brown communities.” This is in fact not only untrue, but also it is a blood libel to charge Jews with helping police brutalize minorities. That Durham had no plans for training with Israel didn’t matter to the defamers, who thought they could get this passed in Durham and make it a model for other cities to adopt. They had good reason to think they’d be successful: Mayor Schewel has a history of supporting JVP.
Israel’s Iron Dome Shoots Down Gaza Rocket
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile shield shot down a rocket fired at Israel by Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

The interception caused no damage to property. It was preceded by air raid sirens blaring in Israeli border communities, sending Israelis running to bomb shelters.

The incident follows an escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that saw an uptick of terrorist attacks against Israelis, including Friday’s deadly car-ramming that killed three civilians in Jerusalem, including brothers aged six and eight.


More guns in Israeli hands, fewer vigils
In the United States where Jews had never experienced a massacre until recently, it required some prescience to see it coming. In Israel, one need not rely on intuition that this might happen. It has been a part of our earliest history and is still happening with shocking frequency. The current government is encouraging those that own guns to carry them and is moving towards making it easier to obtain new licenses. The debate is heating up. Some argue that more guns will result in more violence, especially against women.

An Israeli woman who was pregnant when her husband was murdered by a terrorist shortly before she gave birth offered an opposing view. She pointed out that the mass murder of the seven Jews near a synagogue on Neve Yaakov Street could have been followed by another massacre if not for the two passers-by carrying licensed weapons who neutralized the 13-year old shooter.

Several life-saving lessons can be learned from these events:
The lesson from the United States and beyond is that antisemitism is spreading virally and violently. This is not the same world that Jabotinsky and Begin inhabited, but their urgent pleas for Jewish self-defense are applicable today.

The second lesson is that Israel, unlike the United States with its constitutionally enshrined right to bear arms, is not considering adopting an unrestricted proliferation of armed citizens. The new, less restrictive guidelines will continue vetting the applicants and will maintain reasonable requirements for training.

Lastly, one could argue that murderers have killed more Americans than murderers have been neutralized or eliminated by licensed gun carriers. The reverse is true in Israel, where many lives have been saved by responsible gun carriers thwarting attacks or reducing the casualties.

I organized a vigil in Jerusalem for the shloshim of the Pittsburgh victims and 150 people attended. Prayers, songs, and memorializing these lost heroes are healing for the living.

But the revised laws that responsibly increase the number of guns in Israeli hands will reduce the need for more vigils.

Yoseph Haddad: Does everyone in Israel carry a weapon?
And how easy is it to get one? Let’s take a closer look and gun control in Israel:


The Israel Guys: BREAKING: Real GOLD Discovered in Jerusalem is Taking the World By Storm
A new archeological discovery is taking the world by storm. This discovery is important to affirming the real location of the Temple Mount.

Here is an update on Israel’s involvement in helping Turkey and Syria, and the IDF gives instructions should a major earthquake take place in Israel in the near future.


At Cairo parley, Abbas to seek Arab funding for Jerusalem’s Arab residents
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who arrived in Cairo on Saturday to attend a conference in support of Jerusalem, will call for the establishment of an Arab fund to provide financial aid to the Arab residents of the city, Palestinian officials said.

The conference, which will be held on Sunday at the headquarters of the Arab League, comes amid fears of violence in Jerusalem ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, which starts on March 22. It also comes in the aftermath of the two recent terror attacks in Neve Yaacov and Ramot, in which nine Israeli civilians were killed.

The Palestinian ambassador to Egypt, Diab al-Louh, said Abbas's proposal calls for the establishment of the fund to support various small and medium-sized projects in Jerusalem.

Louh did not provide details about the proposed projects. He also did not say whether the projects would be carried out in areas located within the boundaries of the Jerusalem Municipality, where the PA is not permitted to operate.

But he said Abbas’s participation in the conference aims to “confront the practices of the Israeli occupation authorities there.”

Louh accused Israel of targeting Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem by increasing its efforts to “Judaize” the city and change the status quo at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound (Temple Mount).

He also accused the new Israeli government of working towards destroying the two-state solution. “Our goal is to highlight the suffering of the [Arab] residents of Jerusalem, defend their right to live on their land and provide more support for projects in the fields of health, education and housing,” the Palestinian ambassador said.


Jerusalem Attacker Praised Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Social Media
A general view shows the scene where a suspected ramming attack took place in Jerusalem, February 10, 2023. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

The driver of the car used in a terrorist ramming attack in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot on Friday morning had a long record of praising terrorist organizations on social media, Israeli news outlets reported.

A six-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man were killed and at least five others were wounded when the terrorist, Hussein Qaraqa, plowed his Mazda vehicle into a crowd of people waiting at a bus stop. Qaraqa was shot dead by a police officer who was at the scene.

A senior Israeli official said that Qaraqa, who resided in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya, appeared to have been severely mentally ill, and was released from a psychiatric hospital in northern Israel only days ago.

A survey of Qaraqa’s social media activities found that the 30-year-old had regularly praised Islamist groups sworn to Israel’s destruction.

“Long live our brave resistance, led by the free national leader Abu Tarek (the nom de guerre of the Secretary General of Palestinian Islamic Jihad –PIJ , Ziad al-Nakhle) and the Jihad movement, Al-Quds Brigades,” he wrote in one Facebook post last August.

Last December, Qaraqa appeared to criticize Hamas while expressing fulsome support for PIJ and its armed wing, the Al Quds Brigades.


Iran's Military at the Panama Canal: Significant National Security Threat
Iran's military presence at the Panama Canal, the major maritime chokepoint in the Western Hemisphere -- which is controlled by America's main enemy, China -- is a serious national security threat to the United States in more ways than one.

"Iran has been aggressively strengthening its ties to the Western Hemisphere through like-minded socialist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. They are also looking for opportunities elsewhere, and it's no coincidence that Iranian ships are docking in Brazil just a month after a socialist retook power in the country. Instead of supporting the Iran-friendly socialist and left-wing regimes in Latin America, the Biden administration should be strengthening political forces committed to keeping our hemisphere free of antisemitic terror." — U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, Fox News, February 1, 2023.

[T]he Islamic Republic has been shipping considerable amounts of oil to Venezuela without either country fearing repercussions from the Biden administration.

Iranian ships will be allowed to sail through the Panama Canal "as long as they abide by international norms," Panamanian authorities said this week. However, according to Reuters: "Panama's vessel registry, the world's largest, has withdrawn its flag from 136 ships linked to Iran's state oil company in the last four years, the country's maritime authority said this week, pushing back against claims by an anti-nuclear group." So, you can tell which country is really in charge.
Blacklist Iran's Revolutionary Guard even if it sinks nuclear deal, Europe urged
European countries should list Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorists even though this might scupper negotiations on a nuclear arms deal, a senior German politician has said.

Norbert Roettgen is one of several prominent backers of such a move in Europe, including the institute run by Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair.

The UK and EU have not yet made decisions on the matter, with the EU debate in response to the clampdown on Iranian protests becoming mired in legal wrangling.

Mr Roettgen, a German opposition figure and former foreign affairs committee chair, accused the EU of “waiting to see how the revolution will play out” before it is willing to take a harder line on the Iranian regime.

“It’s not enough to offer condolences every other week after yet another execution,” he wrote in an article for the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“Putting the IRGC on the EU’s terror list is one of the main demands by the people in Iran and the diaspora towards the EU.

“The IRGC is the regime’s centre of power. It controls almost everything in Iran. Putting it on the EU’s terror list would therefore assign responsibility for the terror conducted in Iran and around the globe to the regime and would help block financial flows to a criminal organisation.”

Mr Roettgen said a terror listing would be seen by Tehran as crossing a red line and therefore make the nuclear talks “close to impossible”.

However, he said it was an illusion to think the 2015 deal had a future “while the current Iranian regime remains in place”.

Negotiations on reviving the deal, after the US pulled out in 2018, have been at an impasse for months and been put on the back burner by Washington since the protests broke out in Iran.

The US listed the IRGC as a terror group in 2019, and the violence against protesters in recent months has prompted calls for the UK and Europe to follow suit.

The German government says this is legally complex because European law requires the IRGC to have been the subject of criminal proceedings.

Mr Roettgen says this is wrong and that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government is making excuses.
Iran Marks 44th Anniversary of Revolution as Online Hackers Interrupt State TV Coverage
The Islamic Republic marked the 44th anniversary of the Iranian revolution on Saturday with state-organized rallies, as anti-government hackers briefly interrupted a televised speech by President Ebrahim Raisi.

Raisi, whose hardline government faces one of the boldest challenges from young protesters calling for its ouster, appealed to the “deceived youth” to repent so they can be pardoned by Iran’s supreme leader.

In that case, he told a crowd congregated at Tehran’s expansive Azadi Square: “the Iranian people will embrace them with open arms”.

His live televised speech was interrupted on the internet for about a minute, with a logo appearing on the screen of a group of anti-Iranian government hackers that goes by the name of “Edalat Ali (Justice of Ali). A voice shouted “Death to the Islamic Republic.”

Nationwide protests swept Iran following the death in September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the country’s morality police.

Security forces have responded with a deadly crackdown to the protests, among the strongest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution ousted 2,500 years of monarchy.


Rashid Khalidi’s fusillade of falsehoods against Israel
Khalidi made numerous other errors in his comments about land ownership and territory during Israel’s modern history. He noted that only about seven to eight percent of the British Palestine Mandate territory was in Jewish private ownership in 1948 when Britain withdrew from its League of Nations mandate and Israel declared independence. Yet Arab private land holdings were hardly greater, as state land inherited by the Israeli government, such as the waste areas of the Negev Desert, comprised most of the mandate territory.

Beyond issues of land ownership, Khalidi fixated on how Israel has supposedly committed “gross violations of international law” in Jerusalem, whose “status was to remain . . . international.” He noted how the 1947 Palestine Mandate partition plan in United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 181 “called for Jerusalem to be a separate International Zone, a corpus separatum,” distinct from the envisaged Jewish and Arab states. Shamas also falsely invoked an “international consensus” over this corpus separatum lasting for over 70 years until President Donald Trump in 2017 recognized Jerusalem as Israeli by moving the American embassy there. Thus, Khalidi condemned that the “U.S. government proposes to build its embassy in Jerusalem,” something “under international law it should not be doing.”

These spurious arguments ignore that the 1947 partition resolution foresaw a corpus separatum lasting only ten years in Jerusalem followed by a local referendum. Thereafter, Israeli leaders hoped that the city’s dominant Jewish population, which has existed since the mid-nineteenth century, would vote for joining Israel. Irrespective of the partition plan’s provisions, the UNGA can only make recommendations, and Resolution 181 became a dead letter after rejection by all Arab parties inside and outside of the former Palestine Mandate.

Jerusalem’s corpus separatum has therefore joined all other failed internationalizations of cities. For example, the Free Territory of Trieste, proclaimed by the United Nations Security Council in the same year as the partition plan, met its end in 1954 through Italian and Yugoslav annexation of its various parts. Meanwhile only under Israeli rule has Jerusalem ever experienced peace and security, as recognized by even its Arab residents, who overwhelmingly prefer continued Israeli rule.

Notwithstanding Khalidi’s talk about the 1993 Oslo Accords somehow reaffirming Jerusalem’s internationalization, massive Israeli majorities reject dividing Jerusalem again. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the accords, indicated as much in his Oct. 5, 1995, Knesset address a month before his assassination.

Despite these facts, Khalidi presented himself as a voice crying in the wilderness, suppressed by a nefarious Israel lobby. Only now “there are, for the first time in U.S. history, a number of people in Congress who don’t just kowtow every time AIPAC tells them what to do,” he said. Otherwise, an “absurd political discourse around Palestine and Israel in the United States” means “a number of issues that are buried or obscured in media coverage.”

In reality, the “political discourse around” Khalidi and groups like IMEU is “absurd.” People like him constantly demand implementation of unworkable territorial arrangements for Israel and recovery of wartime property losses that should have received compensation long ago. Khalidi will not make peace with Israel’s existence and abandon his perpetual smear campaigns against the Jewish state. Columbia University, and other supporters of the intellectually corrupt status quo in Middle East studies, should end support for his irredentism.
Hundreds of Academics Urge George Washington University To Suspend Anti-Semitic Professor
More than 500 academics are calling for George Washington University to suspend a professor who has called all Israelis "racist," arguing it would be "highly inappropriate" to force Jewish students to take her class.

The academics, not all of whom are Jewish or Zionist, say the university should not force "Jewish and Israeli students to take a course" with psychology professor Lara Sheehi. Her online remarks are "rife with profanity and hateful rhetoric against Zionism and Israelis," according to the group of mental health clinicians and university professors.

The letter comes after Sheehi's Jewish students alleged in a federal civil rights complaint that the professor discriminated against them in a mandatory diversity course and then retaliated when they confronted her about her anti-Semitic comments. In their letter, the academics said the Jewish students' allegations are "quite plausible" in light of Sheehi's public remarks.

"Imagine the scandal that would erupt if a group of students from another background—Black students, Muslim students, or LGBT students—alleged that their professor excluded and shamed them based on their religion, ethnicity, national origin, or sexual orientation in a required course on diversity," the academics wrote in an open letter to the university last week. "The calls for such a professor's resignation or removal would be swift and severe."

George Washington University tapped a "third party" to investigate the allegations against Sheehi shortly after the federal complaint was filed. A spokeswoman for the university did not respond to a request for comment.
CUNY offers hard-left definition of Jew-hatred as guidance to those reporting antisemitism
Plagued by charges some of its administrators embrace Jew- and Israel-haters, the City University of New York—the nation’s largest urban university—says it is fixing the problem. But critics say it is antisemitic business as usual at the public school.

Responding to demands for an easier way to report antisemitic assaults and intimidation across CUNY’s 25 campuses, Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, CUNY chancellor, unveiled an online portal. That portal turned out to be a way to report a wide range of discrimination and hate, whether based upon race, color, national origin or “childbirth,” among 24 categories. One of the categories is “religion,” and another is “creed.”

This approach, critics say, is an “all lives matter” response to Jew hatred, which is a specific and growing problem.

“These platitudes aren’t enough,” Avi D. Gordon, executive director of Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF), a national group originally founded at Vassar College, told JNS. He called the portal “wildly unimpressive.”

“That portal is very subpar, and unacceptable, and it’s something that we plan on sharing with the administration and talking with city council members about,” he said.


Fox News gives Orthodox Jews the voice that The New York Times denies them
One interpretation of a mishnah in Chapters of the Fathers is that Jews must prepare answers, with which to respond to those who hate Torah scholars. Hating those who cherish the Torah is one sense many readers may get from recent reporting in The New York Times on Orthodox schools.

A new, 6-and-a-half-minute Fox News documentary—which Kassy Dillon, a former JNS news editor, reported—turns the camera on Orthodox leaders and scholars.

“We resent that the Times are engaged in what appears to be a crusade,” Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, an Orthodox rabbi and executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, told Dillon. “A crusade to get people to consider chassidic Jews in a negative light.”

Zwiebel added that the Gray Lady’s reporting on Orthodox Jews is “not only troubling, but even dangerous to a certain extent.”

He has not seen any change in Times coverage after meeting with the newspaper, and he hopes those stuck in traffic near the Lincoln Tunnel, adjacent to the Times building, in Times Square or in other Manhattan locations see Agudah’s billboards, which state, “Dear New York Times, words do break bones. Please stop attacking our community.”

Moshe Krakowski, a Yeshiva University professor who is an expert on Chassidic education, told Dillon that Orthodox Jews “feel demonized, justifiably, and would like people to get another side of the story since nobody else is actually articulating the other side of the story.”

For those who want to know that story, Zwiebel has some advice, and it isn’t to just read about Orthodoxy in the paper of record. “Get to really know us,” he said.
‘South Park’ Season 26 Premiere Parodies Kanye West Antisemitism Controversy
South Park hopped back on the Ye train on Wednesday night (Feb. 8) in the season 26 opening episode, “Cupid Ye,” in which Kyle, Stan and the gang sent up Kanye West‘s recent string of antisemitic rants. The Valentine’s Day-themed episode found Cartman’s Cupid Me character twisted into Cupid Ye, a naughty cherub who shoots hearts filled with antisemitism instead of love at his targets.

The plot ostensibly focused on Stan’s jealously over the budding friendship between Kyle — who is Jewish — and Tolkien, prompting “good Christian” Cartman to do something about it. His plan, such as it was, includes confronting Tolkien in the band room during practice and praising the show’s only Black character for being “OK” with hanging out with “someone like [Kyle] … given all the new information lately.”

As Tolkien continues honking on his horn unconcerned, Cartman adds, “You know, the stuff that’s come out about how the Jews stole the Black race’s identity? That the lost tribes of Judah were actually all Africans? You didn’t hear about this? Black people are actually the Jews and people like Kyle have taken that from them?”

After Tolkien begs him to stop talking, Cartman doubles down and goes on a 100% historically dubious rant about how when Jews came to America to escape persecution during World War II, they arrived to find that Black people were already the “underclass” in the nation, “so they had to invent a story for themselves which they could make everyone believe because Kyle runs Hollywood!”

The bit was an obvious nod to the string of hateful, antisemitic comments Kanye (who now goes by Ye) made in late 2022, which included a series of talk-show and podcast appearances in which the former billionaire musician and clothing designer repeated conspiracy theories about the Jewish people. The hate speech spurred widespread condemnation and resulted in Ye being dropped by his record label, publicists, lawyers, fashion collaborators and brand partners in one of the swiftest, most thorough downfalls of a major pop culture figure in recent memory.


Second gentleman brings fight against Jew-hatred to the United Nations
In his first visit to the United Nations, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff called on U.N. leaders to globalize the fight against antisemitism. He told the body on Thursday that it cannot normalize spiking rates of Jew-hatred.

Emhoff, the Jewish husband of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, addressed ambassadors and members of civil society at a special, high-level side event. The U.N. missions of the U.S., Israel, Argentina, Canada, Morocco and the United Kingdom hosted the event.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. State Department Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt and American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutsch also offered remarks individually, and on a subsequent panel.

“Silence is not an option. We must build coalitions to tackle this epidemic of hate,” Emhoff said. “We must bring together people from all backgrounds, faiths and ethnicities, because hate is interconnected. It affects everyone.”

Emhoff also addressed Holocaust denial and distortion.

“Too often we see celebrities–comedians use antisemitism for cheap laughs, high-profile entertainers, politicians openly espousing tired antisemitic tropes,” he said. There ought to be “consequences” for those who commit acts of antisemitism, he said.

Following the Biden administration’s Monday announcement that it is actively putting together a “whole-of-government” collective to address antisemitism, and a December White House roundtable on the topic, which Emhoff hosted, the second gentleman implored attendees to form alliances and speak out when they see Jew hated.
Antisemitism up 41.9% in Australia in past two years
Down Under, antisemitism is doubling down.

A Jan. 27 report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) found that antisemitism was up 41.9 percent in Australia from 2020 to 2022. Anti-Jewish incidents were up 35% from 2020 to 2021, and 6.9% from 2021 to 2022, per the 282-page report.

Physical assaults saw a “significant” decrease (eight to five) and verbal abuse went down from 147 to 138 incidents, but there were “substantial” increases in antisemitic posters and stickers (up 70%) and graffiti (up 18%), according to the report.

The antisemitism reported is but “the tip of the iceberg,” said Julie Nathan, ECAJ research director Jand author of the report. Most occurrences go unreported, she said.

A recent incident that was reported involved 10 tombstones stenciled with swastikas or slashes of paint, prompting Darren Bark, CEO of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, to declare the hate crime “deeply distressing and concerning.”

“Vandalized Jewish gravestones were occurrences we witnessed in the Nazi era,” he told Australian broadcaster ABC. “There is no place in our society for this terrible symbol. It is our collective responsibility to speak up against and call out this hate, wherever it appears.”
ADL Expresses Concern Over Ticketmaster Selling Tickets for Nation of Islam Event
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) expressed concern on Friday after it learned that ticketing giant Ticketmaster was selling tickets to the annual “Saviors’ Day” event organized by the Nation of Islam (NoI).

In a letter to Ticketmaster CEO Michael Rapino, ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt included a list of the antisemitic outbursts of NoI’s veteran leader, Louis Farrakhan, in a succession of Saviors’ Day speeches.

In his 2019 address to the event, Farrakhan claimed that “pedophilia and sexual perversion institutionalized in Hollywood and the entertainment industries can be traced to Talmudic principles and Jewish influence.” In a 2017 address to the same event, he insisted that those who identify as Jews “are not really Jews, but are in fact Satan…You are coming face-to-face with Satan, the Arch Deceiver, the enemy of God and the enemy of the Righteous.”

Greenblatt underlined that the 89-year-old Farrakhan’s inflammatory attacks have a long pedigree, citing a 1996 Savior’s Day address in which Farrakhan called Jews “wicked deceivers of the American people.”

He continued: “You have sucked their blood…You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the US government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell.”

Greenblatt told Rapino that the ADL wass “not requesting any particular action from your company as it relates to your commercial activities.” But, he added, “we would like to make you aware of Farrakhan’s past behavior and statements in relation to multiple protected categories of individuals, including people of the Jewish faith and LGBTQ+ individuals.”
‘Chariots of Fire’ director Hugh Hudson dies aged 86
Hugh Hudson, British director of the 1981 hit film “Chariots of Fire”, died Friday at the age of 86, his family said.

“Hugh Hudson, 86, beloved husband and father, died at Charing Cross Hospital on February 10 2023 after a short illness,” his family said in a statement.

Born in August 1936 in London, Hudson had a meteoric rise to success with “Chariots of Fire”, which tells the story of two British athletes, including Harold Abrahams, a young Jewish man who was plagued by anti-Semitism in his quest for Olympic gold in 1924.

The film picked up four Oscars, including for best film. It is also remembered for the soundtrack by Greek composer Vangelis, who died last year.

“I am beyond devastated that my great friend Hugh Hudson, who I have known for more than 45 years, has died. ‘Chariots Of Fire’ was one of the greatest experiences of my professional life,” said British actor Nigel Havers, one of the stars of the iconic film.

The British Film Institute said “Chariots of Fire” became “one of the decade’s most controversial British films” due to its perception as a “radical indictment of establishment snobbery.”




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