Monday, July 31, 2023

07/31 Links Pt2: The Illegal Palestinian Settlements You've Never Heard Of; PA religious Antisemitism reaches new heights; Shielding Certain Antisemites

From Ian:

Declassified protocols indicate Golda Meir considered Palestinian statehood
Former prime minister Golda Meir considered the possibility of the formation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel three years after the Six Day War, protocols published by Haaretz on Monday show, shedding new light on the premier who famously said, “There’s no such thing as Palestinians.”

Last month, the Israel State Archives declassified top secret transcriptions of a meeting Meir held in October 1970 with senior ministers, including defense minister Moshe Dayan and education minister Yigal Allon, in which the possibility of a Palestinian state was discussed.

“It will be necessary to leave the Arabs of Judea and Samaria an option to earn self-determination at a later stage, if and when it suits us,” Meir said at the start of the meeting. “In other words, there will be another country [alongside Israel].”

Meir did say she viewed such a possibility as drastic. She also noted that she did not care what the name of the country would be.

The protocol shows that Meir considered potential political arrangements for a Palestinian state: as a state that is member to a confederation with Israel, Jordan, or both, or as a completely independent country. However, the prime minister seemed troubled by these scenarios, saying that such arrangements would be created in order to destroy Israel.

Interestingly, the meeting took place just weeks following “Black September,” the month-long conflict between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Jordanian kingdom that saw the PLO banished to Lebanon and brought to one of its historical low points. Nevertheless, Meir said that “if [PLO chief Yasser Arafat] becomes prime minister of Jordan, we will negotiate with him. Arafat as the head of a terrorist organization — no. But if he becomes head of a government that he’ll represent as a Palestinian, then fine.”

Meir, who throughout her career refused to recognize the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, also said at the meeting that she had become “open-minded on the issue, even though [my mind] closed right after the Six Day War, but I’m ready to reopen my mind and listen if there’s a hint of a hint of a hint of hope of there being a small state in Judea and Samaria, and maybe Gaza.”
The Illegal Palestinian Settlements You've Never Heard Of
This is Part 1 of a 10-part series exposing the underreported joint European and Palestinian program to bypass international law and establish a de facto Palestinian state on Israeli land.

For decades, members of the media, activist groups, academics, international organizations, NGOs and countless politicians have insisted that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are the primary obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

These settlements allegedly represent an illegal and inhumane “occupation,” and until they are dismantled and the territory handed over to a Palestinian state, there will be no resolution to the conflict.

Beyond these power broker narratives exists another dimension to the story that is deliberately neglected worldwide.

It is a far more labyrinthine and sinister tale — one of stunning hypocrisy, moral bankruptcy, quasi-legal bureaucracy and colossal abuse of international law that exposes the ideological motivations and bad-faith actors at the core of an Israeli-European alliance supposedly based on “shared democratic values.”

It begins with a little-known 2009 document and ends with the illicit Palestinian takeover of hundreds of thousands of dunams of internationally recognized Israeli land, with direct subsidization and encouragement from the European Union.

In 1993, in Oslo, Norway, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian terrorist-cum-statesman Yasser Arafat signed the first and only agreement achieved between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Brokered by the U.S. under President Bill Clinton and witnessed by the EU, a critical component of the treaty called Oslo II, also known as the Taba Agreement or the 1995 Interim Agreement, separated the West Bank into three jurisdictions and outlined the specific responsibilities and obligations of its administrators.

Area A would be exclusively controlled, both for civil and security matters, by the Palestinian Authority. Area B would be administered in all civil matters by the PA while the Israeli government would maintain peripheral security jurisdiction, and Area C would be solely administered by Israel.

In other words, Israel’s complete jurisdiction over Area C, which legally includes building permits, zoning, construction, law enforcement and planning, has been recognized by the Palestinian leadership and the world at large for almost three decades.

As stipulated in the agreement, only when direct negotiations determine the permanent fate of the territories occupied by Jordan until 1967 can the Oslo Accords be replaced. Until then, it is the law.

Unlike United Nations General Assembly resolutions, which are non-binding, the Oslo Accords are legally obligatory. Yet on Aug. 23, 2009, 14 years after the signing of Oslo, Salim Fayyad, then the prime minister of the PA, published a blueprint titled, “Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State,” in which the Oslo framework was officially abandoned and direct negotiations rejected. Instead, Fayyad explicitly called for the creation of a de-facto Palestinian state in Area C.


Jonathan Tobin: Jew vs. Jew and the politics of contempt
In the days since the Knesset passed the first part of the judicial reform package put forward by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the bitterness of the debate over this issue has raised fears that Israel is on the verge of a societal crisis if not a civil war. In response to this dangerous situation, both supporters and critics of the measure have issued calls for unity.

Those who love Israel can only hope that such appeals will be heeded. For all of its military prowess and wealth, Israel is still a small country beset by foes, and its security is not something to take for granted. Perhaps Israel’s greatest strengths are to be found in the genius of its people and a communal spirit that gives its society enormous resilience in the face of great challenges.

The divisions that the debate about judicial reform has exposed are putting an enormous strain on that resilience. But the worst thing is that the spirit driving the mass protests seems not so much driven by convictions about constitutional principles or objections to the details of proposed changes to the system as by the anger of some groups of citizens against other Israelis.

The discord is partly based on the idea by some Jews that other Jews are not as good as they are; it is front and center in this political conflict. This is nothing new and is rooted in Jewish, Zionist and Israeli history – but that does not make it any easier to take. Among the worst elements of the commentary in the American media has been a willingness on the part of those who claim to care deeply about Israel to pour fuel upon the flames of this particularly unpleasant variety of communal strife.

Looking down on the non-elites

There is no better example of this willingness than a column by Bret Stephens published this week in The New York Times. The piece didn’t argue that judicial reform was wrong. Far from agreeing with the claims that the government’s proposals were aimed at destroying democracy, Stephens conceded that it was “all too democratic” and that the country’s “unusually powerful judiciary” needed to be “reined in.” His objection was, rather, that the effort was being pursued by the wrong sort of people and for bad motives. And Stephens considered the willingness of that wrong sort to attempt to govern Israel even after they won an election to be worse than the actions of antisemitic BDS supporters.
The Pinsker Centre: Ep. 37 – Is anti-Zionism antisemitism?
Our policy fellows Olivia Peterson, Ryan Wee and William Rome discuss whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism. They argue that anti-Zionism is often used as a cover for antisemitism, discuss whether the anti-Israel bias in international institutions amounts to antisemitism and note that anti-Zionism has become socially acceptable and even trendy, particularly on university campuses.
Israel Opposition Demands 18 Month Freeze in Judicial Overhaul
The leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition on Sunday demanded that the government freeze its judicial overhaul for 18 months if it wants to resume negotiations on a consensus formula for the changes.

Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition pushed through the first elements of an overhaul of Israel’s judiciary, seeking to restrict judges from challenging some government decisions. The moves have triggered months of demonstrations among Israeli opponents.

Netanyahu, who has been urged to seek consensus by Israel’s president, paused his overhaul earlier this year to hold talks with the opposition. But after those talks broke down, Netanyahu pressed ahead anyway, pushing last week’s bill through parliament in a narrow vote over an opposition boycott.

Speaking to parliament on Sunday, opposition leader Yair Lapid said that if the government wanted the consensus talks to resume, it should pass legislation jointly with the opposition to pause its overhaul for 18 months. Changes made during that period would require a two-thirds majority, he said.

“If the government wants to reach broad consensus, the burden of proof is on it,” Lapid said.

“As long as there is no freeze of the legislation, there is no point nor logic to discussing other laws or other agreements, because it is entirely clear that the government will again run away at the last moment.”

Netanyahu’s Likud Party, in response, said it was willing to negotiate but claimed that Lapid, who served briefly as prime minister last year, was demanding more conditions than he would insist on from the Palestinians.

Monday’s amendment limits the Supreme Court’s powers to void some government decisions if it deems them “unreasonable”.
Is Israel headed to constitutional crisis over judicial reform?

Netanyahu to Fox News: ‘Everyone has an opinion on Israel’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a shot at foreign interventions into Israeli democracy during an interview with Fox News that aired on Sunday.

“I’ve been elected six times democratically for a total of 16 years, and in all those years I never commented on internal debates in other democracies. I have chosen not to do that,” the premier said in response to a question from “Life, Liberty and Levin” host Mark Levin.

“Everyone has an opinion on Israel. They don’t have an opinion on the riots in France or the debates that happen inside other countries,” Netanyahu continued.

“You have a major debate between the Supreme Court and the executive right now in America, and I really don’t care to comment about it. People choose to comment about ours. It’s OK. We’ll make our own decisions. In sovereign states, sovereign democracies, the elected representatives of the people make the decisions, and that is how it is going to be in Israel.”

U.S. President Joe Biden has repeatedly called on Netanyahu to seek a broad consensus before forging ahead with the judicial reform effort.

In a statement to Axios published on July 23, the president said that “it looks like the current judicial reform proposal is becoming more divisive, not less.”

He added: “Given the range of threats and challenges confronting Israel right now, it doesn’t make sense for Israeli leaders to rush this—the focus should be on pulling people together and finding consensus.”
PM Benjamin Netanyahu warns Levin this could end democracy on Earth
Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu breaks down the Israeli Parliament's judicial reform bill to overhaul the Israeli Supreme Court's powers on 'Life, Liberty & Levin.'


Call Me Back PodCast: Is Israeli society collapsing, or just growing up?
One week ago, Israel’s parliament passed the first pillar of its judicial reform package. This, despite 30 weeks of massive protests against the reforms. Calling these mass protests understates it. Hundreds of thousands of people turning out each week, culminating last week in a historic protest march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

We have received a lot of questions and comments from listeners to this podcast about the current situation in Israel. Haviv Rettig Gur joins us for the first time, to help us make sense of events. Haviv is the political analyst at The Times of Israel. He was a long time reporter for the Times of Israel. He’s also working on a book.

Haviv was also a combat medic in the IDF where he served in the reserves until he was 40 years old.
PMW: PA religious Antisemitism reaches new heights
The PA’s religious Antisemitism has reached new heights. In Islam, it is Satan who disseminates evil and falsehood in the world, and one of Islam’s goals throughout history is to defeat Satan. Now the most important Palestinian Authority religious figure, Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor on Islam, has explained that Satan has taken the form of humans, specifically "People of the Book," i.e., Jews, who are dedicated to the evil of turning Muslims into apostates:
“A group from among the People of the Book (i.e., Jews) wants to deceive you… and turn you back from your religion… Satan does not have to be in the form of a demon, hidden, he can also be in your form, but he is Satan. And they (i.e., Satan-Jews) are still fighting us until they turn us back from our religion.”
[Official PA TV, July 7, 2023]

Apostasy is one of the worst crimes in Islam and can carry the death penalty.

According to Al-Habbash, Islam's conflict with Jews goes back to early history when the Jews chose to follow evil and Satan and left humanity:
"This goes back to the initial point of the conflict, the conflict between good and evil... They [Jews] have left the path of humanity and followed Satanity. Satanity is an exit from humanity."
[Official PA TV, July 7, 2023]

Previously, as reported by Palestinian Media Watch, Al-Habbash taught that the Jews are allied with Satan and are doing Satan’s work on earth by disseminating evil and falsehood:
"The conflict here in Palestine … [is] a further manifestation of the historic conflict between truth and falsehood, between good and evil… The evil is represented by the devils and their supporters, by the satans and their supporters. We are not inventing anything new here (i.e., Palestinian-Israeli). This is a conflict between two entities, good and evil, between two projects: Allah's project vs. Satan's project."
[Official PA TV, Oct. 23, 2015]


Shielding Certain Antisemites
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) recently called Israel a racist state. This is an antisemitic statement clearly covered under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s definition of antisemitism.

Many of Jayapal’s Democratic colleagues in Congress criticized her statement and the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan resolution stating that Israel is neither a racist nor an apartheid state. Only nine congresspeople voted against the resolution.

Yet Jayapal has faced no tangible consequences for her overt antisemitism. She was not the only one. Indeed, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) not only voted against the resolution but slurred Israel with the apartheid libel, again without consequence.

It appears that there is a protected class on the left that is exempt from responsibility when it embraces the mutating virus of antisemitism.

George Soros, one of the leading funders of left-wing organizations connected to the Democratic party, seeks to delegitimize Israel through his various foundations and organizations. He also appears to be a member of this protected group.

For example, Soros maxed out in his contributions to Jayapal’s reelection campaign. His foundations paid Tlaib $139,873 in 2016 and $85,307 in 2017. He delivered a staggering $100 million to the NGO Human Rights Watch, despite its efforts to brand Israel an apartheid state.

Soros has also been defended by those ostensibly dedicated to fighting antisemitism. Israeli Diaspora Minister Amichai Chilki recently said, “Criticism of Soros, who finances the most hostile organizations to the Jewish people and the State of Israel, is anything but antisemitism—quite the opposite.”

U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt jumped to Soros’s defense. She tweeted, “Irrespective of how one feels about George Soros’s politics or policies, it is entirely disingenuous to deny that many ad hominem attacks on him rely on classic antisemitic tropes and rhetoric.”

The ADL has claimed that criticism of Soros and his political influence is antisemitism because the Hungarian native survived the Nazi occupation and is of Jewish descent.


PreOccupiedTerritory: As Soon As We Figure Out Which Ancient Population To Unprovably Claim As Forebears, You Zionists Are FINISHED by Muhammed el-Kurd, Palestinian activist and commentator (satire)
Palestinians represent the uninterrupted genetic descendants of whichever people give us a more legitimate claim on indigenous status than the Jews have, be they Philistines, Canaanites, Samaritans, Natufians – the specific identity carries less importance than the goal: trying to be more native to the land than the Jews can. The moment we straighten out our argument as to which of those ancient or prehistoric groups are our ancestors, that will end the Zionist project.

It will be such a powerful moment! I, whose family name attests to my origins past the faraway Euphrates; the countless others with surnames such as ‘Masri’ whose proud lineage they can trace to Egypt; and who knows how many more, whose untainted Palestinian pedigree, as indicated by their clan names, places their forebears squarely in the Palestinian milieus of Syria, Jordan, Arabia, Turkey, and points beyond – all of us, united in the triumph of preempting Zionist claims to the land because we have landed the knockout punch of asserting our people were here as Jebusites! Perizites! Whoever those were. That part matters little, since no one can prove otherwise except by pointing to the massive non-Jewish migration to the land that the Zionist movement’s economic development prompted. Just don’t mention any influx of Balkan Muslims.

I know that using “lineage” or “genetics” as a litmus test for indigenous status can hit people the wrong way; it smacks of Nazi racial sensibilities. But the Nazis were allies of the Arab nationalist movement, and hosted the Mufti of Jerusalem, who promised to facilitate a Final Solution to the Jewish Problem in Palestine. Which we didn’t call it at the time, insisting that “Palestine” was the imperialist name for the place – it as “Southern Syria” or whatever. “Palestinians” meant Jews. Which could complicate the argument about indigeneity, but don’t expect our allies around the word to care about that. There are Jews to hate and oppress.


In Private Messages, DeSantis Ally Pedro Gonzalez Argues Nancy Pelosi Is Jewish and Faults Trump for Condemning White Supremacy
Pedro Gonzalez, the magazine editor and online influencer who has amassed a following on the far right over the past several years, made more extensive anti-Semitic remarks than previously reported.

The politics editor of the paleoconservative Chronicles magazine who gained prominence through appearances on Tucker Carlson's Fox News program, Gonzalez argued in online messages obtained by the Washington Free Beacon that former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) "can't be criticized" publicly because she is a Jew—Pelosi is a Roman Catholic—and that Jewish scholar Yoram Hazony is an unfit spokesman for American nationalism because he was born in Israel.

Gonzalez told the Free Beacon on Sunday that he now believes the comments "were wrong" and "don’t reflect who I am."

In the messages, Gonzalez expressed frustration that he couldn't vocalize publicly his opposition to letting "an Israeli scholar like Hazony define the rules of American nationalism."

The comments, relayed in online messages to a friend in 2019 and 2020, are of a piece with messages that Gonzalez wrote on a pro-Trump group chat in the same years and that were the subject last month of a Breitbart exposé.

In those messages, Gonzalez, who has made a name for himself as a vocal supporter of Florida governor and 2024 Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis, wrote that "not every Jew is problematic, but the sad fact is that most are," and that the "only tactical considertation [sic] of Jews is screening them for movements."

The DeSantis campaign declined to comment on whether it had or has any relationship, formal or informal, with Gonzalez, though sources close to the campaign said the campaign has no current relationship with Gonzalez. Gonzalez said he has no official connection to the DeSantis campaign.

Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting DeSantis, denounced Gonzalez and said it had no affiliation with him.
CAA produces video addressing television personality and YouTuber Pearl Davis
Campaign Against Antisemitism has produced a video addressing the television personality and YouTuber Pearl Davis, who recently posted and deleted a song to Twitter in which allusions to antisemitic conspiracy theories were expressed.

You can watch the video here.

Pearl Davis, a content creator with over one million YouTube subscribers who has been called the “female Andrew Tate” by TalkTV owing to her condemnatory views on feminism, posted a song in which she sang: “Why can’t we talk about them without getting kicked off of YouTube?”

She continued: “Now, I’m not saying Hitler was a good guy, but I kind of want to know why.

“Now, there’s all these conspiracy theories and the more they talk I think maybe they’re right. But I can’t even listen to the convo, I can’t even have the conversation, without getting cancelled by the left and the right.”

The YouTuber finishes the song by singing: “Now really, I’m not trying to be rude, but why can’t we talk about the J- I didn’t say it.”

The white supremacist and Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes, who has previously argued that Jews should not be allowed in politics, endorsed the song, claiming that Ms Davis “dropped a diss track on the Jews.”

Ms Davis then appeared on ‘Piers Morgan Uncensored’ where, after being given the opportunity to apologise, she refused and joked about the situation, claiming that she simply wanted to have a discussion about “cancel culture”.

Following this, she took to Twitter where she doubled down on her excuse, this time going on to defend the antisemitic rapper Ye, who has said that Adolf Hitler was “a cool guy” who “didn’t kill six million Jews.”


Another reminder of the BBC’s inconsistency on terrorism
Readers may recall that when those terror attacks took place in Brussels in March 2016, some of the BBC’s reports at the time had the word terror removed from later versions:

However, three months later the BBC did use the terms terrorism, terrorist and terror in reports on arrests made in the Belgian capital.

The BBC’s inconsistent use of those terms is therefore obviously not related to whether or not an incident has been proved to be terrorism in a court of law.

Indeed, as we documented in June 2016, when an Israeli court sentenced four members of Hamas to life imprisonment for the murders of an Israeli couple, the BBC reported that story without using the words terrorist, terrorism or terror, preferring to describe the perpetrators as “Palestinians” and “assailants”.

Similarly, while the Belgian police conduct “counter-terror raids”, as we have seen repeatedly in recent months similar activities by the Israeli security forces are portrayed mere as a ‘raid’, an ‘operation’ or even an ‘assault’.

As we have observed on all too many occasions in the past, until the BBC is capable of coming up with a uniform approach to reporting acts of terrorism wherever – and by whoever – they are perpetrated, its reputation for objectivity and accuracy will obviously remain compromised.
Survey: Americans Increasingly Aware of Discrimination Against Jews
The Survey Center on American Life, part of the American Enterprise Institute, reports a notable increase in awareness of the antisemitism faced by Jews in the U.S., with 54% of Americans agreeing that Jews suffer from a significant amount of discrimination today, up from 32% a decade ago.

82% of Jewish respondents report experiencing "a lot of discrimination" against their community.

The upswing in awareness can be attributed to a rise in public exposure to instances of antisemitism and the pervasive and harmful stereotypes that continue to persist nationwide.

The survey also highlighted the enduring positive attitude of Jews towards the U.S.

70% of Jewish respondents considered America the greatest nation in the world, compared to 58% of the general population.
Denmark seeks to legally prevent burnings of Quran or other religious scriptures
Denmark's foreign minister said Sunday the government will seek to make it illegal to desecrate the Quran or other religious holy books in front of foreign embassies in the Nordic country.

Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said in an interview with the Danish public broadcaster DR that the burning of holy scriptures "only serves the purpose of creating division in a world that actually needs unity."

"That is why we have decided in the government that we will look at how, in very special situations, we can put an end to mockery of other countries, which is in direct conflict with Danish interests and the safety of the Danes," he said.

A recent string of public Quran desecrations by a handful of anti-Islam activists in Denmark and neighboring Sweden have sparked angry demonstrations in Muslim countries. Løkke Rasmussen said the cabinet of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is determined to find "a legal tool" to prohibit such acts without compromising freedom of expression, but he acknowledged that would not be easy.

"There must be room for religious criticism, and we have no thoughts of reintroducing a blasphemy clause," he told DR. "But when you stand up in front of a foreign embassy and burn a Quran or burn the Torah scroll in front of the Israeli embassy, it serves no other purpose than to mock."

His comments followed a statement issued late Sunday by the Danish government saying freedom of expression is one of the most important values in Danish society. But, it added, the desecration of the Muslim holy book in Denmark has resulted in the nation being viewed in many places around the world "as a country that facilitates insult and denigration of the cultures, religions, and traditions of other countries."

The government repeated its condemnation of such desecrations, saying they are "deeply offensive and reckless acts committed by few individuals" and "do not represent the values the Danish society is built on."
Sweden says it’s seeking action on holy book desecrations as another Quran burned
Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer said his government was evaluating legal avenues to stop the burning of holy books as a form of protest in the country, in the wake of a series of protest acts in which Qurans were set alight, as well as repeated threats to burn Jewish and Christian bibles.

On Monday two men set a Quran alight outside parliament in Stockholm, in a protest similar to previous ones that have sparked tensions between Sweden and Middle Eastern countries, as well as with the country’s own Muslim and Jewish communities.

In a letter to Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association (EJA), Strömmer wrote that the Swedish government was “closely monitoring developments both nationally and internationally in response to recent events, and conducting “a process of analysis of the legal situation in light of this.”

The letter was posted on Monday to the EJA’s Twitter page. In it, Strömmer said the “desecration of holy books is an offensive and disrespectful act, and a clear provocation.

“The fact that an act is lawful does not mean that it is appropriate,” said the justice minister.

“I look forward to continuing the important dialogue with you and with the vibrant Jewish community in Sweden on the fight against antisemitism and all other forms of intolerance.”
Tree of Life gunman was dismayed not to have inspired more attacks on Jews, court hears
A truck driver facing the death penalty after being convicted of barging into the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue was dismayed not to have inspired more attacks on Jews, a court has heard.

Robert Bowers ran into the synagogue on October 27, 2018 and opened fire with an AR-15 rifle and other guns killing 11 congregants in an act of antisemitic terror.

The federal trial for Bowers approached its conclusion on Friday as the defence, trying to persuade a jury to spare his life, pressed its case that mental illness spurred the nation's deadliest antisemitic attack.

Dr George Corvin, a defence psychiatrist who met with Bowers 10 times for nearly 40 hours said Bowers saw himself as a soldier of God in a war in which Satan was trying to use Jewish people to bring about the end of the world.

Addressing a Pittsburgh court on Friday, Corvin said it was a delusion brought on by psychosis.
Brick used in attack on synagogue to be repurposed in renovation
A brick thrown through a window of a Chabad house in Florida is to be used to renovate the community centre.

A brick was thrown through a window into the Chabad house last Monday (Photo: Rabbi Mendel Danow)

Last Monday, an unknown man threw a brick emblazoned with swastikas and antisemitic slogans through the kitchen window of the Chabad of Pensacola, narrowly missing a Rabbi who had been cooking.

Rabbi Mendel Danow, the leader of the Chabad contingent attended the scene along with local police officers.

Initially, he planned to move on from the incident. But as news spread of the attack, he changed his mind. Danow told the JC: “We wanted to transform that response to one of positivity, of growth, and of inspiration”.

At an event last Friday, he announced that the brick, once returned by the police – and scrubbed clean of antisemitic slurs – would be used to build the new Chabad development. Against the white frontage of the building, the red brick would stand out, and that was the point.

“Let’s use the brick as a cornerstone of the new building,” Danow said. “It’s the ultimate transformation of using something that was intended for hate and division into something which will expand Jewish life in Pensacola”.


Patriot’s Jewish Owner, Grammy-Nominated Rapper Tell NAACP Blacks & Jews Must Unite Against Hate
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Grammy-nominated rapper Meek Mill on Sunday appeared before the NAACP’s 114th National Convention, which is taking place in Boston through Aug. 1, in an hour-long discussion of racism and anti-Semitism and how to stop them, titled, “Hate Has No Home Here.” NAACP President Derrick Johnson and Prof. Henry Louis Gates joined the forum.

“People are trying to put boulders between the Black community and the Jewish community. And we’ve always been uniquely tied together,” Kraft said. “And I want us to continue to build those ties.”

Mill described how he and Kraft visited Poland earlier this year and participated in the March of the Living at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex.

“We got a tour in Poland about what they did to Jewish people … They tattooed numbers on them and called them by numbers,” Mill recalled. “It was so humiliating to them that it made them not value themselves.”

It reminded Mill of his experience in prison: “They was calling us by numbers, you know, when they could have called us by our names,” he said.

Prof. Gates said that anti-Black racism was the “twin side” of antisemitism, asserting that someone who hates Black people will also hate Jews, both forms of hate being deeply rooted in Western culture. Predictably, Gates blamed the recent rise in hate in the US on former President Donald J. Trump.

As we all recall, there was no antisemitism in America before November 2016.

In March, Kraft launched a $25 million campaign under the slogan, “Stand Up to Jewish Hate,” through the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism that he established in 2019. Pointing to the violence against Jews in recent years, including the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018, Kraft said, “We need people not to be silent when they see hate against any minority, whether they be Jewish, Black, gay, Asian, Muslim — whatever it may be — we have to push back to keep the values of this country strong.”
Could this startup make water-based solar energy a reality?
When tech entrepreneur Ran Alcalay and his cousin, Avi, discovered a glaring flaw in photovoltaic (PV) solar energy technologies, they decided they must find a way to fix it.

The problem was quite simple to explain: Traditional PV tech cannot be fully utilized on bodies of water.

The cousins understood early on that water-based solar energy is the future, especially with developers running out of unused land for solar farms and setting their sights on maritime solutions.

The way of water
That is how the story of Xfloat began. Founded by Ran and Avi in 2018, Xfloat has managed to develop an innovative system that allows for navigation of solar panels on water to maximize their energy output.

“Using this [tracking] technology, we can generate up to 20 percent more energy per solar energy panel,” Ran tells ISRAEL21c, adding that this is what makes ground-based PV tech the most cost-efficient way to generate renewable energy today.

“You can slap a tracker on a panel, and it generates maximum energy via the same panel. This greatly lowers costs. On water, you couldn’t do that until now.”

Among the first investors in the company were the Israel Innovation Authority, Spanish water operator MIYA, tech giant Synergy and a group of private investors.

Xfloat employs 14 people, in addition to subcontractors. The employees include naval engineers — some of them Israeli navy veterans – as well as artificial intelligence and solar energy experts.

“The mechanism we’ve created is our intellectual property,” Alcalay says.

Nine months ago, Xfloat opened pilot water-based solar farms in northern Israel.
Israeli students come up with emergency sensor for Parkinson's patients
Oriya Demlich spent the past few years watching her beloved grandfather suffer from Parkinson's Disease and witnessed it slowly erode his independence. After his death, Demlich enrolled in the Tal Campus for Women at the Jerusalem College of Technology to earn a Bioinformatics degree.

Last month, her late grandfather served as a source of inspiration when she participated in the school's hackathon where she and her teammates decided to come up with a mechanism with life-saving implications for those with the disease.

The team participated in JCT's sixth annual "Hack.Her.It" event organized by the school's Schreiber LevTech Entrepreneurship Center. Some 150 students from the women's campuses participated in the event where they were tasked with coming up with solutions to complex technological challenges posed to them by hi-tech companies including Rafael, Intel, Elbit, Amazon, and more.

"The Schreiber LevTech Entrepreneurship Center offers a range of programs for students to gain valuable experience in the real world of entrepreneurship, innovation, and product creation on campus. "Students work under the guidance of professional business and tech mentors in hackathons, workshops, and pre-accelerator and accelerator programs", explains Orlee Guttman, co-founder of the center. "These tools and experience are crucial to their futures as entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs".

The center dovetails with the school's overall mission to provide a rigorous curriculum focusing on engineering, health sciences, and business degrees to some 5,000 students from Israel and 38 countries around the world. The school offers a dual curriculum, combining Jewish studies and academia, and consists of students from the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox sectors.

As for Demlich, her team, which was composed of other bioinformatics and engineering students, worked on the "WalkSafe Challenge" (named after the company of the same name) and developed an emergency sensor for walkers used by Parkinson's patients. Their solution garnered so much positive attention from the judges that they made it to the final stage of the competition.

More than 10 million people suffer from Parkinson's worldwide, with 35,000 of them living in Israel. The disease arises from a neurological dopamine deficiency which causes many motor problems such as uncontrollable tremors, stiff joints, a condition called "Freezing of Gait" where the knee is immobile which severely inhibits one's ability to walk properly.
Never-before-seen footage of Nazi death train liberation unearthed 78 years later
Seventy-eight years after the 30th Division of the U.S. Army saved 2,500 Jews from the so-called Nazi death train which was transporting them from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to Theresienstadt, moving never-before-seen footage taken by U.S. Army soldiers on the day of the train's liberation on April 13, 1945, was discovered.

The Germans on the train were ordered to blow up the train over the Elbe River if they could not deliver it to Theresienstadt concentration camp, killing all 2,500 Jewish passengers from Bergen-Belsen. After six days of travel starting on April 7, 1945, the train was halted on April 13, 1945, near the town of Farsleben, Germany, close to Magdeburg and was unable to move due to the bombing by the Allies in the area.

Around 4 pm, an American reconnaissance jeep accompanied by a U.S. Army tank arrived from the hill. They were American soldiers from the 30th Division of the U.S. Army. The American soldiers found the train guarded by Nazi sentinels. The train's engine was running and ready to move. Suddenly, the Nazi soldiers noticed the American tanks and fled, leaving behind 2,500 Jews, a third of whom were children who thought they were being taken to their deaths.

As the Nazis fled, several of the civilians, mostly women, girls and children, rose and rushed toward the American soldiers with cries of joy. Only then did the soldiers notice the passengers' horrific state.

George Gross, the commander of the American tank, recounted the encounter. "Everyone looked like a skeleton, so starved, their faces sick. And there was something else. When they saw us, they began to laugh with joy, if you can call it laughter. It was more like an outburst of pure, almost hysterical relief."

The survivors said that when they saw the Americans, they hugged them and cried happily. One of the American soldiers, Abraham Cohen, shouted to the bewildered prisoners, "Ich bin euech a Yidd" (Yiddish: "I am also a Jew") and showed them the Star of David hanging around his neck.
Jews liberated from the Nazi death train near Farsleben, in 1945




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