Pages

▼

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

02/28 Links Pt2: The Two-State Solution Hoax; Ben & Jerry’s Boycotted Israel While Using Child Labor; Beyond the ‘Day of Hate’; The New York Times’ Jesus problem

From Ian:

The Two-State Solution Hoax
For Israel to survive as an independent Jewish state it is necessary to carry out an exchange of population — which the Palestinians will reject, and the reason is simple: they flow like tributaries into all areas of the State of Israel, which they reward by vandalizing it and assassinating its innocent civilians, whether within their country or in one of the Palestinian villages adjoining Israel. (There is a real tangle of roads which allows the Palestinians to commit such crimes with impunity. We have witnessed the lynching of travelers who had the misfortune of taking the wrong route.)

The danger Israelis encounter in their daily life is due to Palestinians’ infiltration into major Israeli cities. But it is also due to a viral collaboration of Israeli Arabs with their Palestinian brothers.

The cantor of a two-state solution, Yair Lapid would take us back into a trap, an ignominy resulting from a virulent lack of scruples, conscience, and integrity.

Israel is already mired up to its neck in a swamp of Arab-Palestinians holding Israeli identity cards, for which they have neither respect nor love, but which they use to enjoy the benefits of democracy while fighting in all ways to undermine Jewish state foundations.

The great danger in this dead end is that Israel ultimately risks becoming a bi-national state.

The only solution for Israel to survive as a Jewish state is to separate from the Palestinians, whether in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria, or within Israel. The burgeoning Palestinian demography is a challenge that no one can counter. The West suffers the consequences of its open borders and diversity, and Israel is no exception.

I leave you with a burning question: why create a so-called Jewish state if it is to be a state for everyone? Because this is what the Israeli Left seeks to impose on all those who believe they are Jews and have won a homeland of their own at the cost of their children’s blood, as opposed to those who are Jewish in name only.

Patriotism and nationality have gone astray. For Israel, there can only be the Jews or the Arabs.
Daniel Greenfield: Ben & Jerry’s Boycotted Israel While Using Child Labor
Ben & Jerry’s claimed that it supported open borders because of the company’s “social mission” and “values”. Those values were measured in the dollar and cents bottom line. The milk that went into the company’s ice cream depended on the cheap labor of those same migrants. Open borders wasn’t an abstraction, it was a steady source of labor to be churned into ice cream.

When the Biden administration rammed open the southern borders, flooding the country with millions of migrants, adult migrant workers were quickly supplemented by children.

A New York Times investigation found that Ben & Jerry’s was among the corporate brands benefiting from child labor. Of the various companies, Ben & Jerry’s was the most shameless about the use of child labor with Cheryl Pinto, its head of “values-led sourcing”, stating that “if migrant children needed to work full time, it was preferable for them to have jobs at a well-monitored workplace.” It’s an argument that sounds straight out of Oliver Twist.

Pinto, a former risk manager for its Unilever parent company, had been dubbed “Ben & Jerry’s sorceress” who focused on positive social impact. The sorcery turned out to be of the Hansel & Gretel variety with children being lured to the ovens of an ice cream gingerbread house.

Behind all the buzzwords about “equity” and “climate justice” are the children working so that Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield can get even richer while distracting us with virtue signaling.

Ben & Jerry’s has a lot of experience with “well-monitored workplaces” for child labor. The company, which has boasted of its support for Black Lives Matter, had been previously accused of benefiting from the slave labor of 8-year-olds on cocoa plantations in Africa, vanilla plantations in Madagascar, and palm oil on Indonesian plantations.

The open borders that Ben & Jerry’s had advocated for brought child labor to America.

In 2021, a Ben & Jerry’s franchise owner in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina was caught employing 12-year-olds, but the latest revelations about the company are a good deal worse.

The New York Times story describes a 14-year-old migrant boy who had his hand crushed in an industrial milking machine on a dairy farm. While the paper does not name the company, Ben & Jerry’s sources milk from farms in Middlebury VT where the accident took place.
Beyond the ‘Day of Hate’: The best strategy to keep American Jews safe over the long term
The tactics that the American Jewish community uses to fight back against antisemitism are often ineffective on their own and do not constitute a meaningful strategy in the composite. One is that American Jews join in a partisan chorus that erodes our politics and fixates on the antisemitism in the party they don’t vote for. This exacerbates the partisan divide, which weakens democratic culture, and turns the weaponizing of antisemitism into merely a partisan electoral tactic for both sides.

Another tactic comes from a wide set of organizations who have declared themselves the referees on the subject and take to Twitter to name and shame antisemites. This seems to amplify and popularize antisemitism more than it does to suppress it.

A third common tactic is to pour more and more dollars into protecting our institutions with robust security measures, which no one thinks will defeat antisemitism, but at least seeks to protect those inside those institutions from violence, though it does little to protect Jews down the street. Richer Jewish institutions will be safer than poorer ones, but Jews will continue to suffer either way.

A fourth tactic our communal organizations use to fight antisemitism is to try to exact apologies or even fines from antisemites to get them to retract their beliefs and get in line, as the Anti-Defamation League did with Kyrie Irving, an approach that Yair Rosenberg has wisely argued is a no-win proposition. Yet another tactic is the insistence by some that the best way to fight antisemitism is to be proud Jews, which has the perverse effect of making our commitment to Jewishness dependent on antisemitism as a motivator.

And finally, the most perverse tactic is that some on both the right and the left fight antisemitism by attacking the ADL itself. Since it is so hard to defeat our opponents, we have started beating up on those that are trying to protect us. What could go wrong?

Steadily, like a drumbeat, these tactics fail, demonstrating themselves to be not a strategy at all, and the statistics continue to show a rise in antisemitism.

Perhaps we are too fixated on the idea that antisemitism is continuous throughout Jewish history, proving only that there is no effective strategy for combating this most persistent of hatreds.


Prof. Richard Landes: Muhammad al Durah and Shireen Abu Akleh: The Anatomy of Media-Promoted Blood Libels
This essay was originally composed at the time of events. When Israel took responsibility for the death (but not the murder) of Abu Akleh, I tried to find out on what basis they made that concession, and got nowhere. I moved on to other things and forgot about it. In composing another post on post-objective journalism, I went back to it. Since it’s dated, I doubt any publication will be interested, but it’s here for the record.

Muhammad al Durah and Shireen Abu Akleh: The Anatomy of Media-Promoted Blood Libels

Few recent incidents illustrate so sharply and in depth just how morally and empirically disoriented we have become in our era of “fake news.” The dynamics that produced the world-wide phenomenon of shock and horror at the death of an al-Jazeera journalist during an Israeli anti-terror operation in the refugee camp of Jenin, the evidence that fed the (still-churning) news cycle, and the mobilization of protest, all attest to the continuing success of a cognitive war against the West that is as effective today as when it was launched in 2000.

On May 11, 2022, one Palestinian journalist, Shireen abu Akleh, was killed, and another, al Jazeera news channel producer, Ali al-Samoudi, was shot in the back. The Palestinian eye-witnesses, especially the survivor al-Samoudi, immediately accused Israeli snipers of deliberately targeting the journalists, a highly flammable accusation. The story hit the global community with the force of a tsunami. Within two days, there were over 14 million hits on Google: from the UN to the glitterati to the halls of Congress, concerned figures raised their voices in horror and indignation. Nothing even remotely like this level of global attention and anger has ever happened for any other journalist of any identity or gender killed in a war zone. As for the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians, as in the deliberate murder of 3 civilians at a café in Tel Aviv two weeks earlier, that managed only 53,000 hits all told, even as it was one of the reasons for the operation in Jenin.

Key to the outrage was a claim, made immediately by eyewitnesses and Arab reporters from the scene: that the IDF had targeted the journalists, deliberately, in cold blood. Grief and Anger: The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and the Israeli assault on Palestinian press freedoms, announced The New Arab. The key players in spreading the accusation of deliberate murder were the NGOs, Palestinian, Israeli, American, international. With a single voice they all quickly and actively accused Israel of cold-blooded murder, assassination, a pattern of war crimes. As a result, anyone in woke circles who circulate such material, read the more restrained journalistic accounts of her “killing,” as evidence of Israel’s guilt. Palestinian-American congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, one of the highest profile of such “readers” had no problem immediately accusing Israel of murder and calling on the US to reconsider aid:
When will the world and those who stand by Apartheid Israel that continues to murder, torture and commit war crimes finally say: “Enough.” Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered by a government that receives unconditional funding by our country with zero accountability.

Note Tlaib’s free use of murder. The libel takes across a web of activists some of whom now operate in Congress.

Even though there were no corroborating details, journalists and news outlets repeated the Palestinian claims as credible if not decisive. The typical headline blared the accusation. The very day of the incident, the London Times headline read: “Shireen Abu Akleh: reporter shot dead by sniper as Israel raids refugee camp.” Sniper, of course, implies deliberate targeting. Others reported the accusation, and then tacked on a source: “Israeli forces deliberately shot Shireen Abu Aqleh, Palestinian probe finds” (Guardian). And if Western news media kept at least that one level of distance from the murder narrative, their Arabic services had no problem pumping the Arab world with Western laundered propaganda.
Prof. Richard Landes: The Sad Tale of the new Antisemitism of the 21st Century (15/02/2023)

Dumisani Washington: Reconnecting Israel and black America
Recently, the relationship between the black and Jewish communities has become strained due to rising anti-Semitism and intersectional ideologies that see Jews as white oppressors.

In today’s episode of “Our Middle East”, Dan Diker and Khaled Abu Toameh talk with Pastor Dumisani Washington, founder of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, one of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs’ partner organizations.

Together they discuss
- the long and storied relationship between Israel, the American black community and Jews.
- what can be done to bring the Black American community closer to Israel?
- the diverse approach to politics that the Arab-Israeli minority takes toward Israel
- =the common inspiration that African and Arab communities see in Israel.

Last, but not least, Dan Diker reveals information about a history-making delegation coming to Israel.


After Black church destroyed, Oakland synagogue offers space
Things looked a little different at Temple Beth Abraham in Oakland on Sunday. On a morning when the Conservative synagogue would normally be empty, it was full of rousing song.

A week after a fire devastated the First African Methodist Episcopal Church on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, Beth Abraham opened its doors to what is often called its “sister church.”

As soon as he heard about the three-alarm fire that broke out late at night on Feb. 19, Rabbi Mark Bloom called Rodney D. Smith, the pastor at FAME.

“We’ve been friends for a long time,” Bloom said. “That’s what friends are for.”

Tracing its roots to 1858, FAME is the oldest Black church in the East Bay, according to the Online Archive of California, and was the only African American church in Oakland for more than three decades. The fire that nearly destroyed the church started only a few hours after Smith had finished “a wonderful worship” at Sunday services, he said.

“It was unreal,” he said of the fire, which destroyed the building’s roof and much of the interior. The Oakland Fire Department has yet to announce the cause.

Since Beth Abraham and FAME have engaged in pulpit exchanges for many years, Smith was quick to accept the offer to move services to TBA, about a mile away.

“It felt like a hug,” said Smith, who has been with FAME for two years. “It was one of the best hugs that I received [all] week.”

Sunday’s service was bittersweet, as the community dealt with the damage to its sanctuary and the need to pray at another location (not everyone was able to make it).

Virginia Tiger, who works in the office at Beth Abraham, called the service “uplifting” after she attended.
Arkansas governor adopts IHRA definition of antisemitism
As antisemitism continues to rise nationwide, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed into law a bill making the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism the state’s official definition of anti-Jewish bias and discrimination.

IHRA definition of antisemitism
The IHRA definition of antisemitism recognizes that while not all criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic, some criticisms can cross the line into antisemitism when delegitimizing, demonizing or applying double standards to Israel. The definition also addresses the antisemitic nature of attacks against Jewish individuals or institutions that attribute to all Jews collective guilt for real or perceived actions by Israel.

In addition to Arkansas, 27 state governments have adopted or endorsed the IHRA definition, the most widely accepted legal standard for antisemitism internationally.

More than 1,000 government entities and NGOs have endorsed the IHRA definition in recent years, including the US State Department, Education Department and Justice Department. It has also been endorsed by 51 of the 53 member organizations of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.

The Los Angeles-based Israeli-American Council (IAC) and its legislative and policy-making sister organization, the Israeli-American Coalition for Action (IAC for Action), praised the Arkansas bill.

“We applaud Arkansas for taking a bold stand against antisemitic and national origin discrimination,” IAC for Action chairman Shawn Evenhaim said. “By acting today, Arkansas is helping generate a nationwide movement of states protecting their citizens against anti-Jewish bias and hatred.”
Miss Universe Former Contestants From Iraq, Israel Open Up About Their Friendship Despite Facing Backlash, Death Threats After Taking Selfie
Two former beauty queens from Iraq and Israel spoke recently on a podcast about how their friendship blossomed and shed new light on the scandal surrounding a selfie they took on the sidelines of the 2017 Miss Universe pageant.

Sarah Idan, who competed in the 2017 Miss Universe pageant representing Iraq, and Adar Gandelsman, who represented Israel, both posted the photo on their respective Instagram pages. Shortly after, Idan and her family received death threats for taking the picture, including from Hamas, and her family was forced to leave their home country. Still, she refused to delete the photo, despite pressure to do so from her Iraqi sponsors and the director of the Miss Iraq Organization. Iraq does not recognize Israel and the two countries have no formal diplomatic relations.

Idan, who is Muslim and was the first Miss Iraq in 45 years, hosted Gandelsman on her podcast the Sarai Talk Show last week to discuss the incident. The former Miss Iraq revealed that she approached Gandelsman to take the picture as they were waiting to do a photo shoot for the Miss Universe competition. Idan added that while other Miss Universe contestants had previously come over to her and introduced themselves, Gandelsman was “the only one” who did not initiate a conversation with the Iraqi beauty queen.

Gandelsman explained the reason why, saying that before she came to the Miss Universe pageant, “the Miss Israel organization told me, ‘don’t go close to any Arab country. You don’t have a problem with them but they [might] have a problem with you. It’s better not to make the situation awkward.’ So I knew I’m not going to get close to anyone from an Arab country. If you want you can come to me, I have no problem with anyone, but I knew that I could not come close to you. That it would make problems for you … I knew that I didn’t want to make any trouble.”

Gandelsman said she knew about the incident at the 2015 Miss Universe competition where Miss Lebanon faced backlash for taking a picture with a contestant from Israel, and that also deterred her from speaking with Idan.
Julie Szego: Adelaide Writers’ Week controversy is about Jews, not just Israel
Some people argue these writers aren’t attacking Jews but rather the Jewish state for its oppression of the Palestinians. This is politics, they argue, not racism. And look, they say, Adler is herself Jewish, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, and even she reckons these writers are kosher.

No doubt these same people will see in the current backlash the nefarious influence of the “Zionist Lobby” yet again strangling debate about Israel-Palestine. Adler herself says the two writers are being lashed because Australian media outlets have “pre-emptively buckled” to The Lobby. Yes, such is its daunting power that it needn’t utter a word for journos to fall obediently into line.

Would these writers have scored an invite in the first place had their bile been directed at a group other than Jews? Would they have been platformed without any countervailing or moderating voices?

Adler says Israel’s new hard-right coalition government makes it incumbent on literary festivals to explore the Palestinian perspective on occupation and dispossession. But she also claims she wants to end the “impasse” on Israel-Palestine. Why then have seven authors hailing from Palestine and not one Israeli, not even from among the many writers fiercely opposed to the occupation?

El-Kurd, who lives in Jerusalem, tweets of Zionists’ “unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood,” and “kristallnachting us in real time.”

But who hasn’t lost their shit on Twitter, right? And like the US-based Abulhawa, slagged Israel as “demonic,” or “Zionists are demons on earth”?

“One cannot overstate what an abomination Israel truly is,” she tweeted on another occasion. “They’re worse than Nazis.”

Why link Israel with the regime that murdered six million Jews? I’m not speculating on Abulhawa’s personal motivation for these remarks; and she’s hardly alone in spewing Israelis-are-Nazis rhetoric. It is designed to hurt, certainly. Hard to imagine an insult more wounding for Holocaust survivors and their descendants in Israel and beyond.

It certainly undermines the Jewish story; the history of persecution that galvanised Jews to seize control of their fate and establish a state of their own. But it’s above all clever strategy. Because if Israelis are Nazis then nothing directed at Israel can constitute antisemitism.
PwC withdraws support for Adelaide Festival
Professional services company PwC Australia has followed the lead of MinterEllison and distanced itself from the Adelaide Festival because of its support of two Palestinian authors whose social media posts have drawn controversy and led to accusations of antisemitism.

The firm removed its logo from the Adelaide Festival website on the weekend and issued an all-staff memo on Tuesday explaining its actions in response to speakers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd.

Abulhawa, a Palestinian-American activist and novelist who has described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “a depraved Zionist”, and poet El-Kurd, who said Zionists had completely internalised the ways of the Nazis”, are slated to speak at Adelaide Writers’ Week, which starts this weekend.

“PwC Australia is the auditor of the Adelaide Festival Foundation, which provides financial support to the Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Writers’ Week. We conduct this audit on a pro bono basis as an acknowledgment of the contribution the Adelaide Festival Foundation makes to the South Australian economy and arts sector. We do not have any role in the Festival’s programs,” the memo said.

“We condemn in the strongest terms any antisemitic comments and any suggestion of support for Russia’s war against Ukraine. We stand with the Jewish and Ukrainian communities who have been understandably hurt by this issue. In this respect we have asked the chair of the Adelaide Foundation that any association of PwC with this aspect of the festival be removed.”

Schwartz Media owner calls for Louise Adler to resign from festival French multinational IT company Capgemini has also revoked its funding arrangement with the festival, and three Ukrainian writers due to participate have now boycotted it.




The New York Times’ Jesus problem
“When it comes to the religious future, you should follow the social trends, but also always expect the unexpected,” writes Ross Douthat in The New York Times opinion pages (“You Can’t Predict the Future of Religion,” Feb. 25).

That’s prudent advice. Predicting the future in any discipline is always a precarious exercise. In contrast, recounting the well-documented and basic biographical and geographical realities surrounding a historical figure central to a leading world religion should be a walk in the park, even for the Times’ opinions desk. All the more so when those historic facts have been carefully reviewed and laid out in two previous corrections published in the very same newspaper.

Nevertheless, the outlet once acclaimed as the “Paper of Record,” has wandered woefully astray from the historical record – and its own archives. The New York Times has twice previously and rightly clarified that Jesus was neither Palestinian nor lived in Palestine.

The April 27, 2019 correction stated: “Because of an editing error, an article last Saturday referred incorrectly to Jesus’s background. While he lived in an area that later came to be known as Palestine, Jesus was a Jew who was born in Bethlehem.”

Earlier, a June 20, 2008 correction made clear that the Romans named Judea and the Galilee, where Jesus was born and then lived, “Palestina” more than a century after he was crucified, stating:
The Malula Journal article on April 22, about efforts in the village of Malula, Syria, and two neighboring villages to preserve Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, referred incorrectly to the name of the region where Jesus spent most of his time. It was Galilee — not Palestine, which derives from the word Palestina, the name that Roman conquerors gave to the region more than 100 years after Jesus’s death.

In 132 (Common Era or AD), approximately 100 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, the Jews fought against Roman rule for a second time in what is known as the Bar Kochba Revolt. After the Romans defeated the rebellious Jews in 135, they renamed the land of the Jews Palestina to punish the Jews and to make an example of them to other populations considering rebellion. The Romans took away the Jewish name, Judea, and replaced it with the name of an ancient enemy the Jews despised. The Philistines were an extinct Aegean people whom the Jews had historically loathed as uncultured and barbaric.

But, for the powers that be at the Times’ Opinion pages, those 2008 and 2019 corrections — not to mention actual events of 2000 years ago — are totally irrelevant. Alternatively, perhaps it’s the very journalistic imperative requiring adherence to factual accuracy which they deem irrelevant.
Globe & Mail Paints Heart-Wrenching Portrait Of Gazans Dying Of Cancer, But Largely Ignores The Main Culprit: Hamas
On February 27, The Globe and Mail published a lengthy article on its front page entitled: “In Gaza’s cancer wards, political gridlock stymies the health system caring for Palestinians,” highlighting the suffering that Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and those who are battling cancer, endure.

Written by International Correspondent Nathan VanderKlippe, the article sheds light on the complications that cancer patients in the Gaza Strip face when trying to navigate their poor healthcare system and the complex relations between Hamas, the terrorist group which rules Gaza, and Israel, where those seeking treatment are often sent.

VanderKlippe’s piece began with the case of 51-year-old Eyyad Abu Jalalah, suffering from prostate cancer, who has attempted to seek treatment in Israel, but has been unsuccessful due to cited security concerns, and as VanderKlippe writes, “is among the hundreds of Palestinians caught between metastasizing cells and rigid politics.”

The solution, however, is not so simple. As VanderKlippe acknowledges, Gaza is run by Hamas, and Israel thus possesses legitimate security concerns regarding Gazans who claim to enter Israel for treatment, but who do so for nefarious purposes. As this article notes, last year, Ahmad Abu al-Nour was arrested by Israeli intelligence and was accused of entering Israel on a medical pass, but in reality journeyed to Israel to scout new recruits for Hamas.

For some critics, the culprit is obvious: Israel.
BBC website bases two reports on second-hand information
A couple of hours later a link to a report also headlined “Israeli diplomat escorted from AU summit” was published.

Neither of those reports contains any original BBC reporting or anything to suggest that the BBC had independently fact-checked claims before publishing them. Both promote a Tweet from the Israeli website Walla! and quote reports from the Times of Israel and AFP. The second item also quotes a report from Reuters.

The result is that in both items, readers find a ‘he said-she said’ account which does not provide a clear, factual picture. For example in the second item readers are told that:
“”Israel views seriously the incident in which… Ambassador Sharon Bar-li, was removed from the African Union hall despite her status as an accredited observer with access badges,” foreign ministry spokesperson Lior Hayat is quoted by the Times of Israel as saying.” However they are also told that:
“But an AU official has said Ms Bar-li was “asked to leave” as she had not been invited to be there and the only invitation, which was not transferable, was given to Israel’s AU ambassador Aleli Admasu, the AFP news agency reports.

“It is regrettable that the individual in question would abuse such a courtesy,” AFP quotes the unnamed official as saying.”

In addition, readers are told that:
“AU commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat granted Israel observer status in 2021, but this decision was queried, with Palestinians urging a rethink, and a committee was formed last year to look at the issue.

While rejecting the accusation that it had anything to do with the diplomat’s removal, a South African spokesperson said that Israel’s status had not yet been settled., the Reuters news agency reports.

“Until the AU takes a decision on whether to grant Israel observer status, you cannot have the country sitting and observing,” Clayson Monyela, head of public diplomacy in South Africa’s department of international relations, is quoted as saying.”

Unlike the BBC apparently, CAMERA UK approached a representative of Israel’s MFA and was informed that Israel’s observer status at the African Union was not suspended with the formation of the committee in 2022 and that Ms Bar-li had all the badges needed to access the event.

Nevertheless, the BBC’s confusing and unhelpful second hand ‘he said-she said’ account is what will remain online as ‘permanent public record’.
Financial Times, Israel and 'autocracy'
We do not take political positions, including on the extraordinarily contentious judicial overhaul plans of Israel’s government. However, as our mission is to promote accurate reporting about Israel, we will continue to push back against clear distortions and factual errors within British media reports about the legislation in question.

As such, whilst most of a recent Financial Times editorial (“Israel’s alarming plans to erode judicial powers”, Feb. 23) is consistent with the concerns of a large number of Israelis about the bills championed by justice minister Yair Levin, the word used by editors highlighted in the following paragraph demands scrutiny:
The potential damage is not just constitutional. The shekel slumped to a three-year low on the back of this week’s votes. Business leaders and bankers worry about a flight of key workers and capital from a country perceived to be marching towards autocracy…

The word “autocracy” refers to a system of government of a country in which one person has complete power.

The legislation in question – which, depending on the final text, would make it extremely difficult for Israel’s High Court to overturn Knesset legislation deemed to be at odds with the country’s Basic Laws – would arguably erode the checks and balances (separate branches of government empowered to prevent the accumulation of too much power by any one single branch) on political power.

By weakening Israel’s judiciary, more power would be vested in the Knesset, or, more precisely, the coalition leaders of the government. It would also, critics fear, weaken the country’s quasi-constitutionally guaranteed human rights, which are the hallmarks of liberal democracies.


Former Windsor Municipal Candidate Utters Antisemitic Tropes On Social Media
Helmi Charif, a former Windsor municipal candidate who lost Ward 3 during the most recent provincial election in October 2022, has been previously exposed by HonestReporting Canada for his hateful and venomous statements on his personal Facebook page, including a bizarre theory in Arabic that “Zionists” are somehow “orchestrating events taking place in Ukraine” and that “Western media is controlled by the Zionists.”

Charif is also known for his role as the Windsor representative of the antisemitic and pro-Iranian regime non-profit organization CD4HR, whose founder, Firas al-Najim, has a long history of harassment against the Jewish community of Toronto. Charif claims he’s no longer associated with CD4HR.

Most recently, on February 10, Charif wrote the following originally in Arabic regarding recent earthquakes in Syria and Turkey: “Humanity is supposed to bring us together but there are broken human monsters committing massacres against human rights in the name of humanity, these monsters are western governments controlled by Zionist lobbyists and headed by the American administration, they set themselves gods on earth claiming they have justice, human rights and freedom of speech, and chanting their civilizations that have destroyed communities…”

Not to be outdone, writing on his Facebook page on February 15 in a reply to a comment that said “Nearly a trillion a year for the Pentagon budget…. The military industrial complex and corporations are the true government of the US,” Helmi Charif stated “true and of course the AIPAC (ZIONIST LOBBY) behind them.” Once again, Charif has promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory of Jewish control of the world.
NY Governor Speaks About Fighting Hate After Seeing Broadway Play ‘Leopoldstadt’ About Holocaust, Austrian Jewish Family
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul tweeted on Saturday about the importance of remaining vigilant against antisemitism after seeing a Broadway play that traces a Jewish family in Austria over multiple generations and the life and loss they experienced before and after the Holocaust.

Hochul tweeted that Tom Stoppard’s Broadway show Leopoldstadt “speaks of the history of antisemitism and serves as an important, urgent reminder of the need to continue the fight against hate today. #ShabbatOfPeaceNotHate.” The included hashtag references the so-called “national day of hate” that neo-Nazis were pushing supporters to participate in this past weekend by carrying out antisemitic activity against the Jewish community.

Set in Vienna, Leopoldstadt, which is also the name of the Jewish quarter in the city, is a “passionate drama of love and endurance begins in the last days of 1899 and follows one extended family deep into the heart of the 20th century. Full of his customary wit and beauty, Stoppard’s late work spans 50 years of time over two hours.” The drama will be on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre in New York City for a limited time only, with performances going until July. West Wing Jewish actor Joshua Malina will join the cast of Leopoldstadt starting March 14 and will take on the role of family patriarch Hermann Merz.

Leopoldstadt is inspired by the ordeal Stoppard’s own Jewish family faced during the Holocaust. The playwright was born Tomas Straussler in 1937 in Czechoslovakia and his Jewish parents took him and his brother to Singapore when the Nazis invaded their country. After his father was killed by the Japanese, his mother took her sons to India, where she met and married a British army officer. When Stoppard was eight years old they moved to England. He only fully learned about his Jewish heritage when he was in his 50s, when a recently discovered Czech relative told him that all four of his grandparents and three of his mother’s sisters were murdered by the Nazis.


‘A Disgrace:’ Antisemitic Violence in Germany Increased in 2022, Government Statistics Show
The year on year increase in antisemitic outrages in Germany continued in 2022, with a rise of nearly 40 percent in the acts of violence registered, according to statistics released on Tuesday by the Federal Criminal Police Office.

Denouncing the findings as “a disgrace to our country,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called for tougher consequences for offenders.

The number of violent crimes targeting Jews rose from 63 in 2021 to 88 in 2022, the report showed.

Overall, a total of 2,639 antisemitic offenses were recorded throughout the year. While this marked a slight decrease on the 3,028 recorded in 2021, officials emphasized that the 2022 total was likely to increase, as some of the statistics gathered at the end of the year had still to be included in the final count.

Many officials additionally recognize that significant numbers of antisemitic crimes go unreported. “The dark field is much larger — those incidents that are not reported in the first place for various reasons,” Thomas Haldenwang — the president of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) — observed last year, asserting that those incidents which are reported to the authorities are merely the “tip of the iceberg.”

Germany’s Jewish community bemoaned the new data as a sign that “antisemitism is becoming more violent.”

“It doesn’t stop with words and damage to property — the violence is increasingly directed against Jews themselves,” Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of German Jews, told the Welt news outlet.
Firsthand Account: Antisemitism Comes to Classrooms in the Suburbs
As a high school student and parent within the Montgomery County public school (MCPS) system in Maryland — one of the most prominent in the country — we have come to see that despite its reputation of stellar academic performance and celebration of diversity, antisemitism is on the rise here.

In fact, because MCPS could no longer ignore the numerous and increasing antisemitic incidents, earlier this month, a county-wide email was sent to all parents in the MCPS system, with a warning about rising antisemitism in the county.

As a student in one of the better schools in MCPS, Shawn can see the hate spreading in his school and around the county. But this disease is not so easy to spot. It contaminates people without them even realizing it, slowly but surely draining their empathy towards Jews — making them walk by as vulgar and disgusting acts of antisemitism occur right in front of their eyes, until eventually they become desensitized to it and see it as something to accept.

Shawn personally witnessed Jewish students being insulted in school, a place that should be a haven. At least that is what the stickers say on so many classroom doors. He has also seen Jewish and Israeli students verbally attacked and ridiculed for being Jewish. In addition, at our local middle school, where he was previously a student, there was a swastika drawn on a desk during school hours. His sister, and my daughter, Chloe, is currently a student there, and we fear for her safety in a school where this could take place in broad daylight.

We can’t help but think that if this gross behavior was directed toward another religious or ethnic group, the collective “outrage” would be a bit more than a simple and somewhat generic mass email.
Prominent Peruvian-Jewish journalist hit with antisemitic harassment after investigating protester
Right-wing extremist protesters have targeted Gustavo Gorriti, a prominent Peruvian-Jewish journalist, harassing him with antisemitic chants and posters outside of his home over his website’s investigations into police violence stemming from the country’s ongoing unrest.

Jewish and non-Jewish organizations have defended Gorriti since around 30 people protested in front of his home in Lima last Tuesday, holding signs depicting him and one other non-Jewish journalist as rats holding bags of money. Videos posted to social media also show some of the protesters shouting antisemitic slogans, such as: “We will continue visiting this Jew, his days are numbered.” Others shouted “Gorriti isn’t Peruvian, he’s Jewish.”

Who were the protestors?
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the protesters were part of La Resistencia, “an extremist right-wing movement whose leaders had published Gorriti’s address on social media and encouraged followers to harass him.”

Peru has been embroiled in a political crisis since December, when the left-wing former president, Pedro Castillo, attempted to dissolve Congress and unconstitutionally rule by decree. He was promptly impeached, and his vice president, Dina Boluarte, was sworn in as his successor. Many Peruvians, especially low income citizens and those of Indigenous heritage, oppose the new government.

Widespread protests — ranging from rallies to attempts to take over airports — have continued unabated since December. While the majority of the protest activity has been peaceful, Peru’s military and police have also resorted to violence on multiple occasions. At least 49 protesters and one police officer have been killed as a direct result of the protests.
TikTok Israel removes some 700,000 videos due to 'hateful content'
Content moderators of the popular social media app TikTok had to remove 688,579 videos from the platform in the third quarter of 2022 alone, Spokespersons of the Knesset's Committee on Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora announced on Monday.

Of the videos that were removed - 80.1% were removed before even viewing the entire video, while 89.8% were removed within 24 hours.

According to TikTok, the company received 2,713 requests from various governments around the world to remove or limit content or accounts in the third quarter of 2022. TikTok removed 110,954,663 videos uploaded to the platform worldwide during this time – roughly 1% of all videos uploaded to Tiktok.

2% of the videos removed worldwide were deleted due to hateful content – while the amount of videos removed in Israel for falling under TikTok’s hateful content guidelines is unclear.

In Israel, 252 official requests were submitted on behalf of the Israeli government to remove content from the social network Tiktok - this figure represents 9.2% of the total number of requests to Tiktok worldwide. For comparison, in the USA the government submitted only 13 applications, in Canada 5 applications, France 27, the United Kingdom 71 and in Germany 167 applications were submitted on behalf of the government.

The Israeli government is one of the leading governments in the world in asking TikTok to remove content from its social network, TikTok explained.
What the opening of the Abrahamic Family House Synagogue in the UAE means for the Jewish community and the rest of the world
With great expectations, the Abrahamic Family House, a mosque, church, and synagogue all sharing a multi-faith campus in Abu Dhabi (the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)) is about to make its worldwide debut, opening its doors to the general public on March 1. This inspiring development, which was named after Abraham—the forefather of the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—is dedicated to the pursuit of peaceful coexistence for generations to come.

Part of that complex is the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue, inaugurated on February 16 in a series of intimate and public gatherings with government officials, highly-reputed rabbis, and enthusiastic supporters. Mezuzahs have been hung on the venerable doorposts and, for the first time, the growing Jewish community has prayed together in unison in the first purpose-built synagogue in the Middle East outside of Israel in a hundred years.

While the synagogue is integral for the future of Jewish life in the UAE—as well as peaceful coexistence between Jews in the Arab world—it is equally important to see it in the context of what has been occurring in the Gulf state over the past many years, well before the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020.

In 1971, Sheikh Zayed al Nahyan, a leader of great vision, convened the Arabian Peninsula’s ruling families and created the UAE. The country was built upon his strong fundamental values of charity, equality, generosity, coexistence, and tolerance, and the principles of the founding father have continued to drive the country’s progress.

In the past fifty-two years, the UAE has emerged from its humble desert beginnings into a modern, vibrant metropolis, recognized for its technology, innovation, and architecture. It has been so successful that it has attracted the world, with much of the UAE population compromising of expats representing over two hundred different languages, ethnicities, and religions. This dynamic value system and multicultural canvas create the backdrop for what has emerged more recently.

In 2018, the Dubai “secret synagogue” came to public light with an article published in Bloomberg, revealing a small, tight-knight group of about 150 expat Jews congregating in “The Villa” (the home of one of its former members). While given tacit approval to convene and pray, the Jewish community had no formal authority and kept a very low profile, with most members not revealing their religion, even to their closest colleagues.


Award-winning Holocaust film serves up story of ‘heroism and courage’
A film in pre-production about a Jewish ice-cream store owner in the Netherlands who inspired resistance fighters during the Holocaust has won first place in the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany’s Emerging Filmmaker Contest.

“The Ice Cream Man,” written and directed by Robert Moniot, tells the story of shop owner Ernst Cahn, who was targeted by Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon.” In the course of Cahn’s resistance, he is arrested and killed. As a result, more than 300,000 workers in Amsterdam went on strike from Feb. 25-26, 1941. It was one of the first substantial anti-Nazi protests in Western Europe during World War II.

“ ‘The Ice Cream Man’ is a story of heroism and courage during a period of persecution and death,” said Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference. “It’s vital to hear these stories and show them in a format that appeals to the public. Film is a vital medium in our global efforts to support Holocaust education.”

American actor Noah Emmerich, 58, who plays Cahn, said the role is personal for him, as he is of Dutch descent.

“My father’s family fled Nazi Germany for Amsterdam, and as a boy, my dad lived in the same neighborhood as Ernst Cahn’s ice-cream parlor,” he stated.
In new Holocaust video game, players walk in shoes of Jewish family ripped from home
Tackling one of the greatest human tragedies, a new video game has been released in which players adopt roles in a Jewish family torn from their home during the Holocaust and sent to an internment camp.

“The Light in the Darkness” claims to be the first video game to accurately portray the Holocaust, in which some six million Jews were murdered during World War II.

Numerous games have World War II themes — including the big-selling “Call of Duty” series — but the fact that the Holocaust is barely mentioned troubled 36-year-old Luc Bernard, creator of the new game.

“It’s a bit like denying that it ever existed,” the Los Angeles-based developer told AFP.

The game is available for play on computers, with versions for consoles to be released soon.

Players follow along with a Jewish family as they endure life under France’s wartime Vichy regime only to be arrested in 1942 during the massive Vel’ d’Hiv roundup in Paris and sent to the Pithiviers internment camp.

Thousands of Jews were transported from there to death camps like Auschwitz.

“Video games can tell profound, meaningful and universal stories of tragedy and triumph that are more realistic and gut-wrenchingly impactful,” reads a title description at the online Epic Games store.

“Our mission is to connect each new generation with the experiences of those who lived during one of the greatest atrocities in the history of the world.”


Film About Israeli Teens on Life-Changing Holocaust Education Trip to Poland Gets Sold to North American Distributor
A drama about Israeli high school friends who visit Holocaust sites in Poland before starting their military service will soon come to the United States, Variety reported.

A shy teen named Frisch, an aspiring artist named Nitzan and the class hunk Ido are the three friends at the center of Delegation, known in Hebrew as Ha’Mishlahat, from Israeli writer-director Asaf Saban. During their class trip to Poland — which is also their last time together before they enlist in the Israel Defense Forces — these three friends deal with issues related to love, friendship and politics that will change their life as they visit the site of former Nazi concentration camps and Holocaust memorials.

In Israel it is customary for high schools to take students on education trips to Poland to visit the site of former concentration camps and learn about the Holocaust before the teens graduate and prior to their military service.

“At the height of adolescence – with all the confusion, lack of perspective, hormonal chaos and emotional upheaval it entails – tens of thousands of young Israelis each year go abroad for the first time without their parents to experience an emotional intensity that is hard to process and understand for an adult, let alone a teenager,” Saban said. “The nature and structure of the trip is intended to create an emotional experience that in many ways resembles the religious experience of a pilgrimage to holy sites. The natural urge of young people to undergo shocking experiences adds another layer to their emotional expectations of this trip to Poland.”

The film made its world premiere at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival in the Generation 14plus section. It was produced by Agnieszka Dziedzic from Poland’s Koi Studio, Yoav Roeh and Aurit Zamir from Israel’s Gum Films, and Roshanak Behesht Nedjad from Germany’s In Good Company. The movie’s supporters include the Israel Film Fund and the Polish-German Film Fund, and it was co-financed by the Polish Film Institute.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

at