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Monday, March 20, 2023

03/20 Links Pt2: Toulouse and the birth of modern jihadism; Wikipedia Editors Deliberately Distorted Holocaust Articles; Israel ranked fourth happiest country in world

From Ian:

Toulouse and the birth of modern jihadism
When two young men embellish a Toulouse FC replica shirt with the name of the city’s most notorious mass murderer, is it just a sick and provocative gag, or evidence of sympathy for the killer’s worldview? Earlier this month, the French courts decided it was “terrorism apologia” and handed out three and four-month sentences to two men who, posted a photo on Snapchat wearing a football shirt with the name of the delinquent jihadist, Mohammed Merah, across it, with the number seven — for the number he killed.

Mohammed Merah began his rampage in Toulouse on March 11, 2012, first executing a French-Moroccan paratrooper who nobly refused an order to lie down. He struck again on March 15, firing on three soldiers in Montauban — two were killed and another left paralysed. The murdered soldiers were all of North African Muslim descent. Then, on March 19, Merah pulled up outside the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school. In the schoolyard, he gunned down a Rabbi before executing the man’s three and five-year-old sons as they tried to crawl to safety. He then entered the school and grabbed an eight-year-old girl, at which point his gun jammed. Unperturbed, he swapped weapons and shot her. He filmed it all. After a manhunt and lengthy standoff, Merah was shot dead by police at his apartment.

Even considering the usual moral squalor of jihadist violence, Merah’s spree stands out for its depravity. Yet, for some reason, he is still widely revered. Nicole Yardeni, a deputy mayor in the city, tells me that his name is sometimes viewed positively even outside of jihadist circles, as “a symbol of rebellion” against society. After all, Merah is the man “who brought France to its knees”, as one local youth reminded the mother of his first victim. Even at the time of the police manhunt and siege, Facebook posts and pages honouring the gunman attracted thousands of likes, while police prevented people from laying flowers at his apartment. (It goes without saying that the overwhelming majority, Muslim and non-Muslim, were horrified.)

Within Salafi-jihadist circles, Merah’s cold-blooded rampage made him an icon. At the time of his attack a petty criminal, 28-year-old Mehdi Nemmouche, was killing time in a prison cell. Ordinarily, he would have refused to watch infidel television, but this time he asked his guards for a TV set so he could jubilantly follow the Merah manhunt live. Nemmouche would later head for Syria where he became a jailer for Islamic State. Chillingly, he told a captive that, like Merah, he “dreamed of grabbing a Jewish girl by the hair and shooting her dead”. Nemmouche would go on to deliberately target and murder Jews, killing four at Brussels’ Jewish Museum in 2014. It was Europe’s first attack by an Isis returnee.
Wikipedia Editors Deliberately Distorted Holocaust Articles
For over a decade, a group of nefarious editors has been distorting Holocaust entries.

If you’ve used Wikipedia to research the Holocaust, you may be a victim of a group of self-appointed “editors” who have been deliberately warping Wikipedia’s Holocaust articles for years.

For the last ten years, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia whitewashing the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolstering stereotypes about Jews,” explains Shira Klein, an associate professor of history at Chapman University in California, who’s tracked this gang’s insidious activities.

Due to this group’s zealous handiwork,” explains University of Ottawa professor Jan Grabowski, who collaborated with Dr. Klein, “Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles, blame Jews for their own persecution, and inflate Jewish collaboration with the Nazis.”

Drs. Klein and Grabowski spent many months pouring over Wikipedia articles, checking facts, and scrutinizing editors’ work and the sources they used. They published their shocking conclusions in an article titled “Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust” in The Journal of Holocaust Research. Their article went viral, garnering tens of thousands of views in an academic field in which that sort of exposure is unheard of.

Wikipedia itself stepped in. In an unprecedented move, the website’s Arbitration Committee, known internally as ArbCom, has initiated an internal review; they’ve announced their intention to publish their findings within weeks.
Bassem Eid: GWU academic's antisemitism isn't helping Palestinians like me
With the Palestinian people, our whole identity is often assumed to be bound up with the anti-Western, violent ideology promulgated by Yasser Arafat and his proteges. George Washington University professor Lara Sheehi is just the latest example of this violent misrepresentation, which gives my people a bad name. On her now-deleted Twitter account, she frequently showed her hateful bias against Israelis and repeatedly condoned violence against them.

This past semester, she used her mandatory diversity course to spread such dangerous views and actively discriminated against Jewish students in her class. When the students complained to school authorities, Sheehi counterclaimed that the students were exhibiting "Islamophobia" against her.

Sheehi also verbally attacked a student for speaking about terrorist attacks in Israel, which have killed civilians, including American citizens. Her claim was that the student's use of the phrase "terrorist attack" invoked Islamophobia, even though the student never mentioned Palestinians, Arabs, or Muslims.

Sheehi and her fellow antisemitic haters do not speak for me or for the many Palestinians who desire peace and coexistence with our neighbor, Israel. Hatred and radicalism harm Palestinians and do nothing to advance our cause. Sheehi's actions do not and should not represent the Palestinian people, the good men and women I know who respect our neighbors and wish for an end to these endless cycles of violence.

We see how peace, economic opportunity, and cooperation benefit both Palestinians and Israelis, just as the normalization of political and economic cooperation with Israel has brought tremendous advantages to countries such as the United Arab Emirates. This is what most Palestinians want, too.

Violent, hateful rhetoric rejecting the aspirations and experiences of Israelis may get headlines, but it does not represent the majority of Palestinians, who know that peace is the path to a better life for ourselves and our children. When radical actors preach hate and violence, it inevitably leads to violent incidents that only worsen matters and trap us in an escalating cycle.


Anti-Semitism Has Been the Bane of the Arab World
In a wide-ranging conversation, Hussein Aboubakr discusses his own experiences growing up in Egypt, the political and religious currents running through the contemporary Middle East, and how a Western obsession with blaming the Jews took hold of the Arab mind in the 20th century—with baleful consequences for both Jews and Muslims. (Video, 62 minutes. Audio is available at the link below.)


US State Department report on human-rights practices devotes 24,000 words to Israel
JNS) The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor released the 2022 edition of its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices on Monday. The reports “cover internationally recognized individual, civil, political and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements,” stated Foggy Bottom.

“The report embodies the importance of human rights for American diplomacy and for our vision of an open, free, prosperous and secure world,” Antony Blinken, U.S. secretary of state, said in a press conference on Monday. “Human rights are universal. They aren’t defined by any one country, philosophy or region. They apply to everyone, everywhere.”

The report makes clear that there was a “backsliding in human rights conditions—the closing of civic space, disrespect for fundamental human dignity” in 2022, according to Blinken, who said the report does not aim to lecture nor shame.

“Rather, it is to provide a resource for those individuals working around the world to safeguard and uphold human dignity when it’s under threat in so many ways,” he said. “And while this report looks outward to countries around the world, we know the United States faces its own set of challenges on human rights.

In his remarks, Blinken singled out the “appalling and ongoing abuses” of the Iranian regime, the Taliban’s “relentless” discrimination against women and girls in Afghanistan, the erosion of human rights in Burma, “genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs” in China, as well as offenses in Cuba, Nicaragua and Ethiopia. He addressed “calculated and deliberate” offenses in Ethiopia at some length.
Jonathan Tobin: Doug Emhoff’s role in the woke war on free speech
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff had never shown any interest in his Jewish identity until his wife, Kamala Harris, was elected vice president of the United States. But though it would be an exaggeration to treat him as the Biden administration’s point person on anything, he has, almost by default, become one of its leading spokespersons on Jewish issues.

It was understandable that he emerged from Harris’s recent trip to Eastern Europe with some Jewish anecdotes along with his comments seeking to bolster the administration’s stand on the war in Ukraine. Speaking to Symone Sanders, a former staffer for Harris and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), on her MSNBC program, Emhoff recounted meeting a Holocaust survivor who had been forced to flee Ukraine because of the Russian invasion. Emhoff decided to use that women’s plight to denounce all sorts of hatred.

Emhoff is hardly alone when it comes to attempts to universalize the Holocaust. Russian aggression is terrible but as bad as it is, it’s in no way analogous to the Nazi campaign to exterminate the Jewish people.

Yet Emhoff didn’t stop there. Warming to his topic, he went on to claim that the hate that slaughtered Jews is somehow connected to just the Russian invasion but also to political debates in the United States.

“Hate is interconnected,” said Emhoff. “You see it in the discourse in the country right now. You see it in the divide that we have. Just going to school meetings, you see that hate that is out there.”

That was an obvious reference to the heated arguments that have been going on in school-board meetings around the country in the last couple of years as angry parents have been calling those responsible for local education to account for the way toxic ideas like critical race theory and gender ideology have been seeping into classrooms and curricula.

It was bad enough that Attorney General Merrick Garland responded to school-board critics by treating them as if they were domestic terrorists. Now Emhoff is piling on by claiming that having the temerity to talk back to woke bureaucrats is linked to the invasion of Ukraine and the Holocaust.
'Disgraceful' memes of Home Secretary condemned by politicians
A photoshopped image of Home Secretary Suella Braverman laughing in front of the Auschwitz death camp has been condemned as "utterly disgraceful" by MPs and Jewish activists.

The original image of Braverman laughing was taken over the weekend during a visit by the Conservative frontbencher to a refugee detention centre in Rwanda during a two-day visit to the Central Africa country.

Some Twitter users imagined the picture as encapsulating the current attitude towards migrants entering the UK.

LBC Radio host and political commentator James O'Brien said: "Exactly 200 years after William Wilberforce founded the Anti-Slavery Society, here’s Suella Braverman at a facility to which she hopes to deport trafficked victims of modern slavery."

Responding to O’Brien, the Home Secretary said: “I invite him to come to Rwanda before he cast aspersions on this beautiful, welcoming country.”

After the image of Braverman was superimposed to appear in front of the Nazi camp where more than a million people were murdered, it was taken down from Braverman’s Twitter feed.

Many notable figures and politicians expressed their outrage at the flippancy with which others compared Braverman’s policies to the atrocities of the Holocaust.


New York Times Publishes Creepily Compassionate Piece About Genocidal Iranian Regime
A recent New York Times article opens with what could almost be described as a lamentation inviting sympathy from readers:
For years, Iran’s standing as a Mideast power has been battered on a number of fronts.”

Detailing these power-diminishing forces, journalists Farnaz Fassihi and Vivian Yee refer to Israel’s fostering of new relationships with Arab neighbors and the closing down of financial channels by Gulf states that had allowed Iran to evade economically ruinous sanctions in response to its nuclear program.

If Fassihi and Lee had wanted to avoid the commiserative tone they have somehow struck, they might have made it clear that the Islamic Republic’s declining influence in the region is its own responsibility and not that of Israel or several Gulf states.

For example, they could have noted that Iran’s popularity has suffered as a result of its own genocidal goals, including its frequent threats to annihilate Israel, as well as its establishment and ongoing funding of numerous terrorist proxies in the Middle East.

Later in the piece, which is ostensibly an analysis of the impact of Iran’s recent normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, subtle criticism of Israel is weaved in:
The growing presence of Israel, which has engaged in a campaign of assassination and sabotage of sensitive sites in Iran, in such proximity to its borders has rattled the Iranian authorities, and Tehran has threatened retaliation if Israel uses the region as a launching pad for intelligence gathering or covert attacks on Iran. Israel, for its part, has long considered Iran and its nuclear program as an existential threat, viewing Saudi Arabia as a potential partner.”

Why Fassihi and Lee have chosen to present the Iranian regime as a victim of Israeli aggression is simply baffling.
‘Hateful’ Israel Critic Is Hired by New York Times to Moderate Antisemitism Focus Group
The New York Times convened a 13-member “focus group of Jewish Americans” for a conversation about antisemitism and Israel, and the newspaper doesn’t appear to have included a single Orthodox Jew in the conversation.

What’s more, the conversation was moderated by the new editorial director of the Times opinion section, Allison Benedikt.

Benedikt has a long paper trail. She tweeted in 2010, “How come all the NY slumlords are Orthodox Jews?” If that were merely a single decade-old tweet promoting an article by another writer who was a colleague at her publication, it’d be one thing. But it seems to be part of a pattern.

In 2011, she published an article describing herself marrying her “Jew-hating fiancé.” She went on, “We are now a united front against the organized Jewish community.” She wrote, “Most of my Jewish friends are disgusted with Israel.” Jay Ruderman, of the Ruderman Family Foundation, wrote then, “It’s startling to read Benedikt’s bitter, angry, indeed hateful comments about Israel.” Marc Tracy, who is now Benedikt’s colleague at the New York Times, called her article, “fundamentally irrational,” “offensive,” and “irresponsibly, narcissistically, and stupidly wrong.”

In 2014, she greeted the death of an Israel-American soldier, Max Steinberg, at the hands of Hamas terrorists with a column blaming Birthright Israel while speculating about whether “Maybe Max was especially lost, or especially susceptible.” A columnist for Ha’aretz found that “ridiculous,” asking, “How can one begin to grasp the utter bad taste involved in aiming snarky and condescending commentary about someone on the day of their funeral?”
Financial Times fails to fact-check Palestinian claim on building permits
Financial Times Jerusalem correspondent James Shotter could have prevented disinformation about Palestinian building permits in east Jerusalem in his report (“Demolitions of Palestinian homes gather pace under new Israeli government”, March 16) by merely fact-checking the Palestinian claims.

Instead, he failed to scrutinise the following:
Activists estimate that more than 20,000 Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967, have been built without a permit. Israeli law allows such buildings to be destroyed. But Palestinians say the process of obtaining a permit is almost impossible.

“They don’t want us here,” said Rateb Matar, whose house in the Jabal Mukaber neighbourhood, where he lived with his wife, Azhar, and nine relatives, was destroyed this year. “They’re trying to suffocate us. They try to make it very difficult, almost impossible [to get a permit].”

In fact, according to data reported by Associated Press (AP) in 2019, based on a report by the Israeli anti-settlement organisation Peace Now, between 1991 – 2018, Palestinians received 30% of all the total number of building permits issued in east Jerusalem.

So, its clearly inaccurate to claim that such permits are “almost impossible” for Palestinians to obtain.

Moreover, even the complaint, echoed by AP at the time of their report, that that Palestinians receiving 30% of the total number of permits issued demonstrates discrimination, as Palestinians make up 60% of east Jerusalem’s population, is extremely misleading.

As our colleague Gilead Ini noted, without the figures for the number of permit requests from Israelis and Palestinians, which haven’t been reported, numbers or percentages for granted Palestinian permits by themselves cannot shed light on the question of discrimination.
BBC ‘READ THE RIOT ACT’ TO JOURNALISTS FOLLOWING CAMERA ARABIC SCRUTINY
CAMERA Arabic’s intensive scrutiny of BBC’s Arabic coverage of Israel and the Middle East and the systematic documentation of its egregious shortcomings in reporting have resulted in significant behind-the-scenes reforms at the Arabic-language news platform.

According to the Jewish Chronicle, which has extensively published CAMERA Arabic’s findings about BBC’s deeply flawed Arabic service, Mohamed Yehia, BBC Arabic’s head of multimedia output, emailed staff reiterating the imperative to adhere to BBC guidelines.

His letter reportedly rebuked journalists for the precise issues that CAMERA Arabic documented over the last year in complaints submitted to the network: the derogatory mislabeling of communities within internationally-recognized Israeli territory as “settlements”; delegitimizing all Israelis as “settlers”; falsely reporting that Israelis on the Temple Mount have entered the Al-Aqsa mosque; citing Tel Aviv as shorthand for Israel, thereby misidentifying Israel’s capital; and inaccurately referring to the Western Wall as the “Wailing Wall.”

In addition, according to the Chronicle report, BBC has discontinued engaging pundit Abdel Bari Atwan given the extensive antisemitic and pro-terror sentiments that he has expressed over decades, many of which were first translated into English by CAMERA Arabic. For example, CAMERA Arabic exposed Bari Atwan’s April 2022 YouTube video in which he praised the murder of three Israeli civilians in a Tel Aviv terror attack as a “miracle.”

In September, the BBC maintained that Atwan’s ongoing appearance at the network was “in the public interest,” but The Chronicle reported Dec. 8 that an unnamed BBC source admits: “We used to have him on a lot, but we have been told not to.”
France24 Welcomes Bigoted Journalists Back Into Its Arabic Service Ranks
France24 has formally ruled that a woman whose social media activity is studded with extreme anti-Jewish bigotry, vitriolic anti-Israeli hostility and appalling ignorance is fit to serve as the Arabic service’s main on-site source covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.

That’s the main takeaway from France24’s audit confirming the findings of CAMERA Arabic’s investigation documenting gross antisemitism in social media posts of several Arabic-speaking journalists and the subsequent decision to nevertheless keep several of the offenders in their jobs, albeit with minor slaps on the wrist.

Regrettably, following a brief suspension during the several-day audit, the French public broadcaster welcomed three of the investigated journalists back into their respective positions, without even compelling them to retract — let alone apologize for — their hateful social media posts.

Laila Odeh, who holds the key post as France 24 Arabic’s Jerusalem correspondent, has in particular distinguished herself with fever pitch expressions of hatred, including support of Palestinian terrorism.

While stationed with France24 in Jerusalem, she has said that a terrorist who planted a bomb on a Tel Aviv bus, wounding dozens, “ascended to the highest heavens” and likewise repeatedly glorified as “martyrs” additional terrorists who targeted civilians, killing them.

In a Facebook post stealthily removed or hidden following the publication of CAMERA Arabic’s exposé, Odeh charged that Israel has become “a version of Hitler.” (See screenshot at left.) Holocaust inversion, or “[d]rawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” is straight from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, adopted by dozens of governments, including France’s.
Background lacking in BBC report on Route 65 bombing
The BBC’s report also purports to provide background to the story:
“Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, fought a month-long war in 2006. […]

More than 1,000 Lebanese and 159 Israelis were killed in the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which erupted after Hezbollah militants launched a cross-border attack in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two others kidnapped.”

Hizballah simultaneously launched rockets at civilian communities in the north of Israel but that information is absent from the BBC’s portrayal, as is the fact that at least half of the Lebanese dead were Hizballah operatives and over forty of the Israeli casualties were civilians. The BBC’s report goes on to place superfluous punctuation around the term “attack tunnels”:
“The two sides have not been involved in major combat since then, although there have been sporadic clashes and in 2018 Israel said it had discovered a network of “attack tunnels” dug under the border by Hezbollah.”

Those “sporadic clashes” have included cross border attacks, shootings and rocket fire.

As is the case in much of the BBC’s reporting concerning Lebanon, this report makes no mention whatsoever of UNSC resolution 1701 and the fact that according to that resolution, armed Hizballah operatives and Hizballah weapons are not supposed to be anywhere near the border with Israel. That avoidance of the topic of the UNSC resolution which brought the 2006 war to an end enables Bateman and Gritten to close their report with a tepid portrayal of UNIFIL, without mentioning its long-standing failure to meet its mission of enforcing the terms of that resolution.

“UN peacekeepers are deployed along the so-called Blue Line that demarcates the border between Lebanon and Israel, which remain formally at war with each other.”

Also notable is the BBC’s continued avoidance of the relevant topic of reports in recent months concerning Hizballah smuggling of weapons to the areas supposedly under Palestinian Authority control and its cooperation with Palestinian terrorist organisations that have a presence in Lebanon such as Hamas.
Guardian 'Don't mention the 1939 White Paper!'
Glaringly absent from Malik’s examples of of Britain’s “shameful response to Jewish refugees” was the “White Paper” of 1939. The White Paper, implemented as a reaction to the violence of the Arab Revolt led by the pro-Nazi Haj Amin al Husseini, rejected the idea of partition – previously endorsed by the League of Nations, the Peel Commission and in the Balfour Declaration – and severely limited Jewish immigration to Palestine.

The ‘White Paper’, our colleague David Litman recently observed, “came at the direst of times for Jews facing extermination by the Nazi regime, dooming to death untold numbers who could not reach Palestine”.

So, why did Malik omit the White Paper? We of course can’t know for sure.

However his elision of that policy certainly is consistent with the Guardian’s insistence on never highlighting historical examples which remind readers of Palestinian belligerence and hostility to Jews that occurred before June 10th, 1967 – the date the outlet would have you believe that the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began.

The Guardian is happy to express sympathy for historical Jewish suffering only insofar as such expressions don’t complicate, or in any way contradict, their reductive narrative which – to paraphrase Niamh Jiménez – casts Palestinians as a morally pristine class of saints and Zionists as an ignoble group of oppressor fiends.


The Fate of Romanian Jewry under Fascism and Communism
In her recent book Les Exportés (“The Exported”), the French writer Sonia Devillers tells the story of her Romanian Jewish grandparents’ experiences in the Holocaust, and what awaited them after survival. Danny Trom writes in his review:
Devillers’ story plunges us into the world of her maternal grandparents, that of the upwardly mobile Jewish bourgeoisie of pre-war Bucharest: cultivated, polyglot, music-loving, a family of artists, entrepreneurs, academics, Jews in spite of their efforts to be the least Jewish they could be—but nevertheless reluctant to change their name [lest they break with Jewishness completely]. The rise of Romanian fascism in the interwar period, which was profoundly anti-Semitic, followed by a pro-Nazi [regime during World War II], made the record of the Shoah in its Romanian form open to all sorts of manipulations after the war.

By the greatest of coincidences, because the Romanian government, an early ally of Nazi Germany, sensed that the Third Reich could fail and switched in extremis to the side of the Allies, the Jewish population of Bucharest, unlike that of the Romanian provinces, was in the end not deported, even though the “evacuation” plans, [a euphemism for mass slaughter], drawn up by the Romanian government were ready. Sonia Devillers’ family escaped.

A large portion of the country’s Jews survived as a result, despite the fact that the Romanian fascist regime participated in the extermination of the Jews to a greater extent than any other of Hitler’s allies. Thus, Trom observes, post-war, now-Communist Romania had more Jews than any other country in Eastern Europe save te Soviet Union. Despite being loyal Communists themselves, Devillers’ grandparents were deemed guilty of the crime of “cosmopolitanism.” But by 1962, the rulers of this impoverished dictatorship discovered they could hold its Jews ransom, and exchange them for such goods as pigs.
Fury in Poland Over ‘Antisemitic’ Defense of Pope John Paul II
Media personalities and Jewish organizations in Poland reacted with outrage over the weekend after one of the country’s most popular weeklies published an interview with an antisemitic publicist who accused a prominent newspaper of being controlled by a “Judenrat” — a reference to the administrative bodies created by the Nazis to control Jewish populations in occupied Europe as they awaited deportation.

The context for the comments of Stanisław Michalkiewicz was a report carried by Poland’s TVN broadcaster by the journalist Marcin Gutowski about the late Polish-born Pope John Paul II. Gutowski alleged that when John Paul served as Archbishop of Krakow during the 1960s and 1970s, he had mishandled complaints against three priests concerning child sexual abuse.

Responding to Gutowski’s claims in an extensive interview with the right-wing populist outlet Do Rzeczy, Michalkiewicz — an established fixture on Poland’s far right, antisemitic scene — charged that the late pontiff was the target of a media conspiracy “launched in Poland by two centers.”

Said Michalkiewicz: “The first is the Judenrat of Gazeta Wyborcza [one of Poland’s leading dailies], and the second center is TVN, i.e. Jewish television for Poles.”

Later versions of the article removed both the reference to the Judenrat and the depiction of TVN as a broadcaster supposedly serving Jewish interests.

He went on to argue that the “campaign of mudslinging against John Paul II is aimed at sawing off even this semblance of nobility from the Polish nation, in order to deprive it of defense before Jewish organizations start again fight for their claims.”
Thessaloniki marks 80th anniversary of Auschwitz train convoy
Greece's second-largest city, Thessaloniki, commemorated on Sunday the 80th anniversary of the departure of the first train convoy for the Auschwitz camp.

Officials, led by President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, marched from Eleftherias ("Freedom") Square, where members of the city's Jewish community were rounded up by the German occupying forces, to the city's Old Train Station, where they laid red carnations on the tracks. Some marchers held a banner reading "Thessaloniki Auschwitz 80 years: Never again" and white balloons carrying the same slogan were released.

The first train carrying Jewish people departed from the station, which is now a freight terminal, on March 15, 1943; the last one, on Aug. 7 that year. Most Jews, more than 48,000 of them, were sent to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau sub-camp, where almost all were immediately gassed. Another 4,000 were sent to Treblinka and a smaller number to Bergen Belsen. About 90% of a once-thriving community, most of them descendants of Sephardic Jews who fled Spain after 1492, perished in the Holocaust.

"Thessaloniki has acknowledged its part of the responsibility" in the fate of the Jewish community, Sakellaropoulou said. Thessaloniki, once part of the Ottoman Empire, was captured by Greece in 1912, and relations between the Greek and Jewish communities were often uneasy. The tension was exacerbated by the arrival, after 1922, of ethnic Greeks fleeing Asia Minor following Greece's defeat in a three-year war with Turkey. The new impoverished refugees saw Thessaloniki's Jews, many of them successful professionals, as remnants of the hated Ottoman Empire.

European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas said that just like the Nuremberg court administered justice after World War II, "The Hague (court) awaits those who think they will play history's executioners."

Schinas also made reference to preparations to set up a European network of locations associated with the Holocaust.


Leftist Politician Fined for Faking Neo-Nazi Hate Crimes Against Himself
A politician for Germany’s left-wing Green party has been fined $3,800 for faking neo-nazi hate crimes against himself.

Manoj Jansen, a former councillor for the German Greens, was handed a €3,600 (~$3,814) fine by a court in Germany on Wednesday after it was found that he had faked a number of neo-nazi hate crimes against himself.

Jansen had claimed that he was the victim of repeated far-right attacks and hate crimes, with the politician reportedly having his property vandalised and emblazoned with swastikas and SS runes by suspected neo-nazis.

However, authorities came to the conclusion that the immigration-heritage leftist politician had likely faked the alleged hate incidents last September, with some local publications have since reported that at least one of the swastikas said to have been painted onto Jansen’s car were the wrong way around.

Although the Green politician eventually did admit to faking at least some of the crimes, he and his legal council reportedly rejected attempts by authorities to fine him.

During a court hearing on Wednesday however, Bild reports that this fine has now been upheld, with Jansen reportedly dropping their objection to the punishment after a private conversation between his lawyer and the presiding judge.

Jansen is said to have made a “big show” during the hearing, however, breaking down crying during the hearing while shielding his face with printed-out newspaper articles.


Seth Frantzman: Israel’s Elbit inks four aircraft technology contracts with Romania
Elbit Systems has signed four contracts with the Romanian military to upgrade helicopters, provide electronic warfare technology, deliver systems to support search and rescue operations, and supply avionics suites for training aircraft.

Tuesday’s announcement comes after the Israeli firm inked two other deals with European costumers in early March, one of which was to supply Romania with unmanned turrets, remote weapon stations and mortar systems.

“These contracts extend Elbit Systems’ track record delivering successful projects to the Romanian Armed Forces, including follow-on contracts awarded after Elbit Systems first was contracted to upgrade helicopters and aircraft,” Ran Kril, executive vice president of international marketing and business development for Elbit, said in a statement.

The company declined to comment on the contract values, and the Romania’s Defence Ministry did not respond to an inquiry from Defense News.

The conflict in Ukraine has been a driving factor for Romania’s procurement efforts, according to recent reports.

NATO deployed airborne warning and control system aircraft to Romania in January, and in February a Russian missile fired at Ukraine crossed over into Moldova, Romania’s neighbor, and came within 22 miles of the border of Romania.
Adam Sandler to be awarded Mark Twain Prize for lifetime in comedy
Actor-comedian Adam Sandler will be honored by comedic and entertainment royalty when he receives the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Sunday night.

Sandler, 56, first came to national attention as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live.” After being fired from the cast following a five-year stint, Sandler launched a wildly successful movie career that has spanned more than 30 films, grossing over $3 billion worldwide.

“Adam Sandler has entertained audiences for over three decades with his films, music, and his tenure as a fan favorite cast member on ‘SNL,'” Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter said in a statement when Sandler’s prize was announced in December. “Adam has created characters that have made us laugh, cry, and cry from laughing.”

Sandler’s top hits include “Happy Gilmore,” “The Wedding Singer” and “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.” Although primarily known for slapstick comedy and overgrown man-child characters, Sandler has also excelled in multiple dramatic roles such as the films “Punch Drunk Love” and “Uncut Gems.”

Mark Twain recipients are honored with a night of testimonials and video tributes, often featuring previous award winners. Other comedians receiving the lifetime achievement award include Richard Pryor (the inaugural recipient in 1998), Whoopi Goldberg, Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett, and Dave Chapelle. Bill Cosby, the 2009 recipient, had his Mark Twain Prize rescinded in 2019 amid multiple allegations of sexual assault.
Water Scarcity in the Middle East Brings Israel and Arab Neighbors Together
The Atlantic Council's N-7 Initiative hosted a conference last week in the UAE aimed at promoting cooperation between Israel and the Arab world while finding solutions to water scarcity and food insecurity. Representatives from 10 Muslim majority countries, Israel and the U.S. were present.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel B. Shapiro, Director of the N7 Initiative, said, "What is notable about the N7 Conference is that despite...tensions, participants from Israel and some ten Arab states were not just willing, but eager to come to Abu Dhabi to meet." Shapiro said participants have shown interest in employing Israeli water technology across the Middle East at scale, which could address food insecurity.


Israel ranked fourth happiest country in world
Israel is the fourth happiest country in the world, according to a report produced by the U.N.-affiliated Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Based on Gallup World Poll data, the study leverages six key factors to help explain variation in self-reported levels of happiness across the world: social support, income, health, freedom, generosity and absence of corruption.

The report was released on Monday to mark the International Day of Happiness, which was established when the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/281 in June 2012.

The report named Finland the happiest country in the world for the sixth consecutive year, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Israel and the Netherlands.

This year’s Happiness Report found that despite several overlapping crises, most populations around the world continue to be remarkably resilient, with global life satisfaction averages in the COVID-19 years 2020-2022 just as high as pre-pandemic.

“The happiness movement shows that well-being is not a ‘soft’ and ‘vague’ idea but rather focuses on areas of life of critical importance: material conditions, mental and physical wealth, personal virtues and good citizenship,” said Prof. Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, who worked on the study.

“We need to turn this wisdom into practical results to achieve more peace, prosperity, trust, civility—and yes, happiness—in our societies,” he added.

Afghanistan and Lebanon were the two unhappiest countries in the survey, with average life evaluations more than five points lower (on a scale running from 0 to 10) than in the 10 happiest countries.
Israel soars to fourth place in Global Happines report





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