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Tuesday, August 01, 2023

08/01 Links Pt2: The colourful Twitter history of Palestine; Deir Yassin: The ‘Massacre’ That Never Was; UNESCO to rule on ancient Jericho as Palestinian World Heritage site

From Ian:

David Collier: The colourful Twitter history of Palestine
Social media sites such as Twitter portray a wonderful history of a state called Palestine – but first let us quickly remember the truth.

The historical facts:
For the Islamic world, the area of 19th century Southern Syria was a sparsely populated forgotten backwater with rival clans and nomadic tribes presenting a hazardous obstacle for every trip. The weakening of the occupying power (the Ottoman Empire) and growing global trade – resurrected European interest. It was Christian travellers recognising this area as their ‘Holy Land’ that put an anglicised version of the name given to it by occupying Roman forces – ‘Palestine’ – firmly back on the map.

European Christian and Zionist investment increased opportunity, and immigrants (mostly Muslims from the collapsing Ottoman Empire) began to flood into the forgotten backwater. This time period culminated in ‘Palestine’ being used as the name for the British Mandate, awarded to Britain by the League of Nations to resurrect the Jewish homeland.

‘Palestine’ was never anything but a name of European imperial colonial conquest (Greek, Roman, Crusader and then British). Even the root derives from the ‘Philistines’ – European Invaders from the Aegean. This is why when Arabs bringing Islam had invaded and colonised the area they didn’t adopt it, and even local usage soon fell out of favour. ‘Palestine’ was not native to the land and had no meaning at all to Muslims. It remained just Christian terminology for the Holy Land – the Jewish ‘Land of Israel’. The anti-Zionist problem

This may all sound cold and heartless on the notion of a ‘Palestinian identity’ but it remains the historical truth.

None of this helps the anti-Israel crowd that is desperate to argue that Jews came and took over a prosperous land full of indigenous Palestinian people who had lived there as a nation for millennia. As Zionism rose – Muslim interest in the area simply rose to oppose it. They had no interest until the Jews sought to reclaim the land. The Christian world divided – with supersessionists seeing the rebirth of Israel as a direct threat to their own theology – while most Christians saw natural support for Zionism in their bibles. What had been a forgotten backwater was suddenly the most important thing in everyone’s heart.

Even the precious Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa (‘Haram al-Sharif’) built on the Jewish Temple Mount had been left to waste away. Don’t take it from me. This is from the Jordanian Royal website which explains that it was the Zionist ‘threat’ that made them wake up – and led to the 1922 restoration of these holy sites that turned them from decaying relics into the iconic images we all know so well today:

But the anti-Jewish movement still needed a banner to gather around and in time, Arab – Soviet anti-Zionist mythology created the ‘Palestinian’ in order to do battle with Israel. They then set about rewriting history, both by belittling Jewish ties to the Land of Israel and embedding a narrative of the indigenous Palestinian hero/victim.

The Twitter history of the Palestinians
When your truth is rooted in historicity, the rest is easy. You have nothing to fear, and your role is to educate those around you. With the anti-Zionists- the opposite is true. Education is the enemy – and so they rely on distortions, outliers, misinformation, fake news, and ignorance to help spread their ‘word’. The result is that an army of anti-Israel activists base their ‘truth’ on a mountain of nothing but lies.

This is easily shown by turning to social media. Here are some examples of how ignorant anti-Zionist history is. As each of these examples have been used 1000s of times (with many of them receiving millions of views) I thought I would present them here – along with the truth behind the image:
Deir Yassin: The ‘Massacre’ That Never Was
The Lingering Problem
Even though Jewish soldiers encountered between 70-80 combatants in the village, questions remain as to why so many casualties were civilians.

Some have argued this was the result of the warning mechanism not working properly. On the way to the village, the loudspeaker truck got stuck in a ditch, mostly out of earshot from the village, so Arab civilians were not properly warned that a battle was about to break out.

Expecting to face only combatants in a residential area, the Jewish soldiers – lacking traditional combat experience – carried out their original battle plan, which was to throw grenades into the houses that combatants were firing from before entering and clearing the houses.

Not expecting to find civilians still sheltering in place, they did not allow for that possibility.

The fight over the Zahran household during the battle best demonstrates the consequences of these tactics. During this fight, Muhmand Zahran, two of his sons, and his grandson, defended the property. The Jewish soldiers blindly threw grenades and shot into the house, killing 24 people.

Ultimately, it was flawed tactics rather than intent to murder that were responsible for the civilian deaths.

The Real Terrorist Attack
The battle over Deir Yassin was neither a terrorist attack nor a massacre. Deir Yassin represented a legitimate military objective for the Jewish soldiers in achieving their broader military objective of securing the road to Jerusalem. While planning the attack, the Jewish soldiers planned to mitigate civilian casualties, even at the expense of their own tactical advantage.

The loss of every civilian life is a tragedy. In the case of Deir Yassin, it was an avoidable tragedy had the military operation gone to plan. But the decades-long lie that the village is the site of a planned and deliberate massacre is just that – a lie.

Sadly, it is a lie that has had deadly consequences. On April 13, 1948, Arab militants killed over 70 medical workers and civilians in a revenge attack for Deir Yassin. Their objective was to kill as many unarmed civilians as possible.

Conclusion
Deir Yassin was a failure. But most importantly, it was a military failure. The pervasive and insidious narrative that a Jewish militia targeted the village and its inhabitants with a plot to commit unspeakable savagery is simply not supported by evidence.
UNESCO to rule on ancient Jericho as Palestinian World Heritage site
UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee is expected to list the site of ancient Jericho, which is now an archaeological park located in the modern Palestinian city that still bears the biblical name, as being in the "state of Palestine."

The city is located in a section of the Jordan Valley, also known as Area A of the West Bank, which is under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority.

It is one of 53 natural and cultural sites the World Heritage Committee will be voting to include on its global list when it convenes this September in Saudi Arabia.

UNESCO has recognized Palestine as a state since 2011. It has since inscribed three other West Bank properties to it: the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2012; the ancient terraces of Battir in 2014; and Hebron’s Old Town, including the Tomb of the Patriarchs, in 2017.

The PA has filed requests for UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee to recognize 13 other sites during future meetings. They include Sebastia, the site of the former capital of ancient northern Israel; and the Qumran caves, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

The World Heritage Committee has inscribed nine sites to Israel, the last of which was Maresha Caves in Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park in 2014.

The inscription of additional Israeli sites into the World Heritage Program has been complicated by political considerations. Israel's relations with UNESCO

Israel and the United States both halted their annual dues to UNESCO in 2011 to protest the organization’s recognition of Palestine as a state. Both countries lost voting rights in the organization as a result in 2013. They withdrew at the end of 2018 to protest the organization’s anti-Israel bias, a move that went into effect in 2019.

The US rejoined UNESCO this summer, and first lady Jill Biden traveled to the organization’s headquarters in Paris in July to celebrate America’s renewed ties with the organization.

Israel has not made any public statements about its intent to rejoin UNESCO. Its absence from the organization complicates any work on the potential inscription of further World Heritage Sites.




With ‘Endphase,’ local filmmaker brings to light 1945 massacre in quiet Austrian town
After the massacre, Schwarz says, he recited the Mourner’s Kaddish and the El Malei Rachamim prayer for the dead. He walked with two fellow survivors, a 60-year-old and a young man, to Rosa Forsthofer’s home. Her family sheltered Schwarz but sent the others to another family, the Stadlers. Schwarz recounts a subsequent improbable train odyssey back to Hungary, where he reunited with his father and brother, as well as another survivor family, the Ungars.

Today both Schwarz and his friend Yona Ungar live in Israel — Schwarz in Bnei Brak, Ungar in Haifa. The filmmakers interviewed both men in Israel, with the footage including a Schwarz family celebration. One of his 18 grandchildren shares a moving tribute to her grandfather.

Who pulled the triggers?
Back in Austria, the filmmakers encounter difficulties when they try to identify the perpetrators of the massacre. Evidence is scarce; some of it comes from an October 28, 2000, video interview with the late survivor György Roth, who immigrated to Israel. In Romania after the war, Roth convinced authorities to give him custody of two SS captives who told him they were in Persenbeug. Noting that his family had been killed there, Roth said he executed the SS men. The film suggests that the SS men who committed the Hofamt Priel massacre might also have fled to Romania.

When the subject turns to locals in Austria who could have abetted the mass killing, they find few people willing to talk. Weber, Forsthofer and Wiehaim share what they remember — including one particular memory: a request to a man nicknamed “Fritzl” to turn on the light, possibly a reference to using motor vehicle headlights to illuminate those about to be killed. “Fritzl,” the director hypothesizes, could have been a prominent local doctor, an SS member whose Nazi ties predated the war.

Of any connection between this individual and the events of May 2-3, 1945, Hochstöger said, “We can’t prove it. Quite possibly, he was involved in the massacre.” Rosa Forsthofer, who was a child at the time of the massacre, recalls Hofamt Priel in 1945 for the film ‘Endphase.’ (Courtesy Sixpack Film)

After the war, the doctor became such a beloved community figure in nearby Petzenkirchen that one of its squares was named after him. Hochstöger has a seat-squirming conversation with the mayor about this recognition, which was ultimately stripped last year.

“They didn’t see any need to change the name of the square,” Hochstöger said. “They just changed the name after our film was shown on Austrian TV. We got a lot of bad emails.”

However, he noted, in the village and its environs, “a lot of people wanted to see the film and actually saw it… We managed to put the massacre information to the public.”

“Actually, the massacre is not really known to American historians,” Hochstöger said. “It’s a very unknown massacre. It was too late in the war. Possibly, the film changed that, is changing that. If nationally and in Germany and the US, a lot of people will see it, my hope is that one cannot say anymore that they have never heard of Hofamt Priel or the massacre of Hofamt Priel.”
How Vichy laws affected Jews in Morocco
The Moroccan Jewish community numbered some 260,000 people in 1940.

In Morocco Charles Noguès, resident general, represented the collaborationist regime with the enemy led from Vichy by Philippe Pétain. He worked tirelessly to extend to Moroccan Jews the lowly statut des juifs of France dating from October 3, 1940 and published in the official journal of the French State of October 18.

Despite his revulsion, the sultan of Morocco Mohamed V proceeded with the publication of the dahir of October 31, 1940 on the application in Morocco of the “status of the Jews” of France.

If the Jewish community institutions were maintained, the professional and political prohibitions were now applied to the Jews of Morocco.

People who fled anti-Semitic persecution in France and Europe to take refuge in Morocco were interned in a former military camp south of Casablanca.

Considered too lax, the anti-Semitic “legislation” in court was replaced by the dahir of August 8, 1941, a Moroccan extension of the French law of June 3 of the same year. This dahir aggravated the segregation and prohibitions applied to the Jews.

In order to see for himself the local application of anti-Semitic measures, the collaborator Xavier Valat, Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, went to Morocco on August 18, 1941. He visited the Sultan there and then went on to the mellah (Jewish quarter) of Fez.

Shortly after, the decree of August 22, 1941 forced the Jews to live in the mellahs.

The liberation of Sherifian territory by the United States Army at the end of 1942 saved the Jewish community from starvation.

Against all odds and due to strategic and political shenanigans, the 1942 American landing in North Africa did not put an end to the anti-Semitic “legislation” in force in Morocco. It was not until the laws of March 14, 1943 that the anti-Jewish measures were cancelled throughout Morocco.
Anti-Government Anarchists Vow to Dismantle Simcha Rothman’s Community
Anti-government anarchists are organizing on Facebook and elsewhere on social media this week to disrupt the lives of Religious Zionist Knesset Member Simcha Rothman, his family and his community in the hours before the start of the Sabbath.

The reason: Rothman, who chairs the Knesset Constitution Law and Justice Committee, is a major supporter of the government’s planned judicial reforms.

The anarchists say they are planning to gather outside Rothman’s home at 11 am Friday in the eastern Gush Etzion community of Pnei Kedem, on the outskirts of Metzad, according to their Facebook post recruiting bodies for the mission.

“This coming Friday, we will be there to make it clear to Rothman that his outpost will be dismantled long before he succeeds in dismantling our democracy!” wrote the organizers.

The event is being organized by Peace Now, Mothers Against Violence (paradoxically), and “three others” that were left unidentified in the post.

Tickets to the “event” are being sold at NIS 25, NIS 50 and NIS 100 (donor price) per head. After all, well-organized anarchy is expensive…


Im Tirtzu: "The Salon for Zionist Thought" Presents: Yishai Fleisher and the Centrality of Hevron
Yishai Fleisher, Director of International Affairs of the Jewish Community of Hebron, speaks at the "Salon for Zionist Thought" about the continuing importance of Hevron for all Jews and all those who cherish the Land of Israel. Interviewer: Douglas Altabef, Chairman of The Board at Im Tirtzu


How the German Government funds Online Hate and Antisemitism
The Israeli Ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor has urged the German government to ban PFLP front group Samidoun from fund-raising in Germany. Likud MK Ariel Kallner and NGO Im Tirtzu have criticized German government funding for anti-Israel NGOs and for defending terrorists in Israeli court. Now it seems the German government is funding an “anti-Hate Speech NGO” that defends anti-Semites in German courts. What's the story?

In 2016, German advertising manager Gerald Hensel began a boycott campaign against the conservative news site "Axis of Good", which was co-founded by prominent German-Jewish intellectual Henryk Broder, who was born 1946 in Polish Katowice to Holocaust survivors.

Hensel lost his job at the leading German advertising agency "Scholz & Friends" due to the controversy around his boycott campaign. So he went on to a lucrative career at taxpayer-funded “Non-Governmental” Organizations fighting “Hate Speech” online.

In May 2017 he founded “Hate Aid” with the support of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). "Twitter Files" journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger have identified ISD as one of the main players in the so-called "censorship industrial complex", which they say is endangering free speech world-wide, as governments outsource unconstitutional censorship to so called “Non-Governmental” Organizations, often with ties to the anti-Israel Open Society Foundations.

In 2018, Anna-Lena von Hodenberg from Soros-funded activist group Campact joined Hensel in running HateAid. Campact received €150,000 from Open Society Initiative for Europe in 2021 to “support HateAid to fight hate online and hold haters accountable.”

On its website, HateAid purports to fight anti-Semitism and “Doxxing” (revealing someone’s personal information online against their will, such as when using an alias). However, HateAid is itself closely tied to several persons themselves accused of anti-Semitism and Doxxing.
German minister defies Berlin on Israel’s terror listing of Palestinian NGOs
Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior believes Israel provided sufficient evidence to justify its listing of several Palestinian non-governmental organizations as terrorist entities, Der Spiegel reported.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser’s position reportedly has put her at odds with Berlin’s foreign office, which previously condemned Israel’s move.

On Oct. 22, 2021, Israel listed six Palestinian NGOs as terror groups over their ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP): Addameer, al-Haq, Defense for Children Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees.

“Those organizations were active under the cover of civil society organizations, but in practice belong and constitute an arm of the [PFLP] leadership, the main activity of which is the ‘liberation’ of Palestine and destruction of Israel,” said then-Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

The E.U., U.S., Canada and Israel have all designated the PFLP as a terrorist organization. However, on July 12, 2022, nine European governments, including Germany, formally rejected Israel’s decision.

“No substantial information was received from Israel that would justify reviewing our policy towards the six Palestinian NGOs on the basis of the Israeli decision to designate these NGOs as ‘terrorist organizations,'” the countries said in a joint statement at the time.

The German Foreign Ministry’s support for the statement has caused a “severe” rift within the government, Der Spiegel reported. “According to [Interior Minister] Faeser’s experts, the evidence against the six NGOs is so incriminating that it could be used in a German court,” added the report.

“The Israelis also provided concrete indications how European taxpayers’ money could be used for terror purposes,” said the report, which estimated that 50 to 70 percent of European aid to the six organizations ended up in the coffers of terrorists.


Toying with Evil on Twitter
Okay. I’m going to tell you about a guy who has over 200,000 people who are into his daily jokes online. It’s the kind of thing one thinks was planned. Instead this started as a joke.

Shawn Eni describes himself as the kind of person who finds humor in everything. He’s developed a knack for spotting the funnies in the darkest part of Jewish existence, but doing so with care. There’s plenty to mock about anti-Semites. The belief in silly conspiracies is its own self-parody. The sheer amount of time of this ongoing disaster is too almost it’s own joke.

It’s just that the magnitude of the atrocities can only ever be confronted with deadly seriousness. You can’t defeat paranoid lunacy with witticisms.

There’s no need to dehumanize an anti-Semite either.

Shawn is someone who reads the comments section in articles about Israel. I was kinda shocked when he told me this. My wife reads the comments section too. As though she’s seeking the reminder that, yes, the target of those hostile remarks is me. All those terrible things did happen. They can happen again.

There’s wisdom in subjecting yourself to that. To know that your fate could be to suffer miserably for years, with almost no hope, a slow torture bestowed on you by your fellow mammal, supposedly animated by the divine – but that there’s a way to avoid that. And dedicating yourself to the virtues you follow with wobbly aim is the best method forward. The beauty is, the core idea is universally applicable.

Several years ago, Shawn noticed that officials in Muslim countries were accusing the Mossad of odd plots, like stealing Iran’s rain clouds and sending sharks to eat tourists in Egypt. One Muslim anti-Israel activist in the UK claimed that Israeli spies broke into his house to rob one shoe.

Not documents. Not money. Not even the full pair of shoes. Just one shoe.

Shawn’s reaction? “Oh my god, this is sweet,” he told me on my podcast. “I need to be that Mossad. Not the real Mossad. I need to be THAT Mossad, where, whatever you want to blame on the Jews, whatever you want to blame on Israel, the craziest thing you can come up with, we’re that organization that comes up with that stuff.”
Youristics: 28. Shawn Eni
Shawn Eni is the man behind the parody Mossad account on Twitter.
You can follow him @TheMossadIL


Jonathan Tobin: A film about saving children isn’t an antisemitic conspiracy
“Sound of Freedom” is the film that the chattering classes are encouraging you not to see. NPR says its success is due to support from the shadowy QAnon extremist group. It’s been blasted by The Guardian as “QAnon adjacent” and was linked to blood libels and conspiracy theories by a JTA article. A CNN segment labeled it as a crude and fraudulent piece of agitprop that is the product of a “moral panic.” It’s the kind of movie that enlightened and educated people are supposed to avoid at all costs.

And yet, somehow in this season of Hollywood blockbusters, it is “Sound of Freedom”—a movie shot on a slim budget five years ago and distributed by a fledgling independent studio that is largely associated with marginal religious content—that is the surprise runaway hit of the summer. Describing the exploits of real-life former Homeland Security Department agent Tim Ballard in combating the sexual trafficking of children, it sold $148 million in tickets at theaters since its release on July 4. That put it in third place during the month in box-office receipts, trailing only the massively promoted “Barbie” ($351 million) and “Oppenheimer” ($174 million), and actually soundly beating two other major studio releases—the latest editions of the “Mission Impossible” and “Indiana Jones” franchises, despite being shown on fewer screens than all of those films.

This success of a movie that has been trashed by the corporate media and whose star, actor Jim Caviezel, has given evidence of being an extremist, is troubling to those who clearly view it as the product of right-wing nutcases. This is a film that the entertainment establishment sought to shelve and then treated with disdain. It has almost no promotional budget (especially when compared to the media blitz surrounding the “Barbenheimer” duo) and has relied almost solely on word of mouth, as well as a unique “pay it forward” system by which moviegoers are encouraged to help pay for the tickets of others to go see it.

So for “Sound of Freedom” to have not merely gained an audience but to have created a genuine groundswell of support from the public must say something terrible about America in 2023.

Or does it?

Stripped of the efforts to besmirch the filmmakers and even its audience, it’s clear that the anger about the movie’s success is mainly a function of the role that politics play in contemporary popular culture. It also speaks volumes about the hypocrisy of liberals. They denounce the treatment of children when it can be pinned on one of their principal political demons—former President Donald Trump. But they prefer to put down the concerns “Sound of Freedom” raises about child trafficking to the paranoia and extremism of a vast swath of the public that they still think of as “deplorables.”
Adidas and Golda: The double standard
Different rules apply when it comes to the Jews. Often. And just this week alone, this applies to a few circumstances.

Kanye West praised Hitler, made numerous Anti-Semitic offensive, dangerous comments, and in response to that, Adidas has confirmed they will be relaunching a second wave of popular Yeezy sneakers. While Adidas in 2022 claimed to have terminated their partnership with West, money matters more. It validates his thinking and rants, but it would never ever happen if a celebrity made such offensive comments about any other people besides Jews. Naturally, Kanye will be well paid on this sneaker drop.

Adidas is donating what they claim to be "a significant amount to charity,” as a result of this sale including to the Anti-Defamation League and the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change, run by George Floyd's brother, which aims to fight systemic racism in the United States. Why not all of the sales? Why is Kanye being paid? What does a charity run by George Floyd’s brother have to do with Anti-Semitism?

Laughingly, Adidas will show its support for the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism by including blue square pins with the footwear sold directly by Adidas in North America. Buy a sneaker created by someone with a history of praising Hitler, make him even richer, and Adidas will give you a pin “to combat antisemitism.” What a joke.
British Islamist charged with leading a terror group
The United Kingdom banned the Muslim group al-Muhajiroun as a terror group in 2010, though it soon re-emerged under new names, including the Islamic Thinkers Society.

Prosecutors allege that Anjem Choudary, 56, violated the Terrorism Act when he gave lectures for the group on such subjects as creating an Islamic state in Britain.

He was arrested on July 17 and charged on July 24. His co-defendant, Khaled Hussein, 28, was also arrested on July 17 after flying in from Canada. Hussein is accused of aiding Choudary in creating an online platform for the promotion of the group’s radical Islamist political ideology.

Neither man entered a plea. Both will be held at least until their next hearing, which is scheduled for Aug. 4.

In the last 15 years, through frequent media appearances, Choudary established himself as one of the most prominent voices advocating Islamic radicalism in the United Kingdom. He was previously convicted of supporting the Islamic State in September 2016 and released in October 2018, serving half of a five-year, six-month sentence.

The United States designated Choudary a terrorist in March 2017.


Upcoming CAMERA event on media bias
One of the major elements of anti-Israel media bias isn’t actually about Israel at all.

It concerns the media’s coverage of Palestinians – or, more precisely, its failure to devote real coverage to Palestinian affairs, including the irresponsible and often destructive decisions by Palestinians and their leadership that serve as impediments to peace.

The media’s narrow framing of Palestinians as merely victims denies news consumers vital insight into the “root cause” of the conflict.

Please join us for a discussion of this problematic topic with CAMERA UK co-editor Adam Levick.
BBC News fails to provide full background to Hizballah provocations
Neither does Bateman inform his readers of the UN’s decision in 2000 to draw the Blue Line right through the middle of the village of Ghajar, apparently with no concern for the Israeli citizens it thereby condemned to living in Lebanon, or the relevant topic of weapons and drug smuggling from Lebanon into Israel at that location.

Notably, Bateman is unable to tell his readers in his own words about the Iranian supply of weapons to Hizballah via Syria and instead resorts to using the ‘Israel says’ tactic:
“Israel regularly bombs proxy fighters of Iran operating in neighbouring Syria. It says this is to prevent further weapons stockpiling by Hezbollah, which it believes has amassed around 150,000 rockets, including long-range Iranian-made missiles capable of striking Israeli cities.”

Bateman tells readers that:
“Meanwhile, there have been increasing signs of “unity” arrangements between Gaza-based Palestinian militant groups and those in Lebanon, who rally around the defence of al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Several times in the last two years, including this April, Palestinian groups in southern Lebanon fired rockets into Israel during times of violence relating to al-Aqsa. Such rocket fire from Lebanon can only happen with Hezbollah’s say so.”

As was noted here in April when those rocket attacks took place, BBC audiences are already seriously underinformed on the topic of the long-known issue of Hamas’ infrastructure in Lebanon and its collaboration with another Iran-backed terrorist group, Hizballah.

While readers of Bateman’s long report may at long last be somewhat more aware of Hizballah’s continuing deliberate provocations along the Israel-Lebanon border, it is all too clear that the BBC continues to fail to provide its audiences with the full range of information necessary for proper understanding of this story.
Indy writer airbrushes Hamas from five Gaza articles
Tellingly, Dowling’s airbrushing of Hamas is not a one-off.
In an Independent article earlier in the year about Gaza’s electricity shortages, (Gaza: ‘24 hours of electricity a day? This is beyond a dream for us’, Jan. 24, 2023), Dowling similarly managed to avoid using the word Hamas throughout the piece.
An article by Dowling last year in the Independent on the plight of Gaza’s children (“Gaza: ’24 hours of electricity a day? This is but a dream for us'”, Jan. 22, 2022) also omitted Hamas.
In 2021, in an article at the Independent by Dowling focusing on Gaza’s amputees, (‘I went to work with two legs and left with one: Gaza’s forgotten amputees’, Sept. 14, 2021), he again completely erased Hamas from the story.
In 2019, in an article in the Independent by Dowling, also about women in Gaza, (“Women of Gaza: Empowered and Resilient”, Nov. 29, 2019), the word “Hamas” similarly did not appear.

That makes five articles by the journalist published at the Independent over the past four years, encompassing over 5,000 words, about the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza which avoided mentioning the extremist movement that rules the territory.

So, was the price he paid for entry and access into Gaza was a guarantee that he’d keep Hamas out of the story? If so, the fact that neither Dowling nor the Independent were transparent about such a quid pro quo would represent an serious ethical breech.

Either way, how these glaring omissions got past editors is anyone’s guess, and we complained to the outlet asking that the most recent article be corrected.


Israeli Ambassador to India Blasts Bollywood Film for ‘Trivialization’ of Holocaust
The Ambassador of Israel to India Naor Gilon and the Israeli Embassy in India have joined Jewish groups in criticizing a new Bollywood film called Bawaal released on Prime Video India that they claim minimizes the atrocities of the Holocaust by comparing it to the strains of a new marriage.

Bawaal was released on Amazon Prime Video India on July 21 and revolves around a high school history teacher named Ajay, played by Varun Dhawan, and the strained relationship he has with his newlywed wife Nisha, played by Janhvi Kapoor.

During one scene in the film, the protagonists visit the Auschwitz concentration camp and are reimagined as prisoners of the Nazi death camp. In the movie’s trailer, Nisha is seen inside a gas chamber used to kill Jewish inmates at Auschwitz as what appears to be victims of the Holocaust suffocate around her. The trailer also uses the tagline “Every love story has its own war.”

The film was shot in location around Europe, including at the site of the former Auschwitz concentration camp.

“I did not and will not watch the film Bawaal but from what I’ve read, there was a poor choice of terminology and symbolism,” Gilon wrote Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Trivialization of the Holocaust should disturb all. I urge those who don’t know enough about the horrors of the #Holocaust to educate themselves about it.”

The Israeli Embassy in India also issued a statement saying it is “disturbed by the“trivialization of the significance of the Holocaust in the movie,” directed and co-written by award-winning Indian filmmaker Nitesh Tiwari.
Suspect at Hebrew Academy shooting is former student
The alleged shooter at Margolin Hebrew Academy on Monday, July 31, is reportedly a former student at the Academy and is Jewish, per an updated statement from Congressman Steve Cohen.

The shooting led to a precautionary lockdown for Memphis-Shelby County Schools, even though Margolin is not part of MSCS.

“We have recently learned that the shooter at the Margolin Hebrew Academy was himself Jewish and a former student at the school,” Cohen’s updated statement read. “I am pleased the academy had effective security and that the police acted quickly to protect students.”

MPD kicks off real-time video camera monitoring with businesses

No injuries were reported as a result of the shooting at the East Memphis school.

An earlier statement from Cohen, who is Jewish, had decried the shooting as an act of antisemitism.

State senate minority leader Raumesh Akbari noted how the shooting was the second one on a school campus in the city in a less than week.

On July 25, a security guard at Freedom Prep Academy Westwood Elementary was shot in the face while standing outside of the school. He was transported to Regional One in critical condition. School was not in session at the time, according to the school’s charter operator.
Amazon to invest $7.2 bln in Israel, launches AWS cloud region
Amazon.com said on Tuesday it is planning to invest about $7.2 billion through 2037 in Israel, and launched its Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the country.

Amazon's cloud services in the region will allow the country's government to run applications and store data in data centers located in Israel.

"The establishment of the Region will enable us to migrate substantial governmental workloads to the cloud, and we are confident that it will help us accelerate digital transformation in the public sector," said Yali Rothenberg, accountant general of Israel.

What is AWS?
AWS is Amazon's cloud computing platform, used by companies such as Netflix, General Electric and Sony 6758.T, enabling storage, networking, and remote security.

With the expansion, AWS will be available in 32 geographic regions, the company said, adding that its investment in Israel will contribute about $13.9 billion to Israel's gross domestic product.
Welcome to Jewrassic Park — Spielberg’s first Nazi parable
Steven Spielberg said “that with Jurassic [Park] I was really just trying to make a good sequel to Jaws. On land”. I have argued how, on these pages, his earlier shark film can be read as Jewish. Like the shark lurking beneath the waters of his earlier film, Jewishness prowls the undergrowth of his dinosaur movie which celebrates its 30th anniversary this month.

Spielberg was editing Jurassic Park while filming Schindler’s List which also celebrates its 30th anniversary later this year. It was inevitable that the two films would bleed into one another. He shot brutal blood-soaked footage of the Holocaust during the day and edited brutal blood-soaked footage of dinosaurs by night. This produced uncanny plot similarities between the two films summed up by one critic: “A wealthy and eccentric businessman who decides to risk everything to save those who are utterly different from him trapped behind electrified barbed wire and threatened with complete annihilation, filmed with beautiful cinematography and a soaring emotional score by the composer John Williams”. You may think this plot description refers to Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List but it’s just as apt for Jurassic Park.

The dinosaur park, then, echoes the centuries of Jewish artistic and historical objects, which were preserved by Nazi Germany, to create a so-called ‘Museum of an Extinct Race’. The dinosaurs are ghettoised and the dominant colours of red and yellow used to brand the park are those that have historically been used to mark out Jews from the blood libel through to the yellow star. The idea of Jews as predators in pursuit of innocent Christians is not a new one. Jews are also seen to embody fossils of a bygone age.

Popular culture has also connected Jewishness with dinosaurs. Consider the lead singer of the British Glam rock band T-Rex — the Jewish Marc Bolan. The toy dinosaur Rex in the Toy Story franchise is voiced by the Jewish actor Wallace Shawn.

Underpinning the narrative of the film is an opposition between Jewish and non-Jewish values represented by two rival groups of characters. Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler and Ian Malcolm stand opposed to John Hammond, Donald Gennaro, and Dennis Nedry.
It’s Bad to Be a Sheep
While looking into the accusing eyes of a sheep in a remote Armenian village in 1961, the Russian novelist Vasily Grossman, literature’s most eloquent witness to the horrors of the Battle of Stalingrad, glimpsed the power and futility of the moral claims that the downtrodden make upon their victimizers. “There was something human about her, something Jewish, Armenian, mysterious,” he wrote in An Armenian Sketchbook, his final work. To Grossman, the sheep represented the cruelty hard-wired into a civilization that lies to itself about the actual contours of existence. “What meek and proud contempt that gaze contains,” he wrote of the sheep. “What godlike superiority—the superiority of an innocent herbivore before a murderer who writes books and creates computing machines! The translator”—that is to say, Grossman himself—“repented before the ewe, knowing he would be eating her meat the following day.”

Grossman’s lamb is something of a cliche. A celebrated mural in Yerevan’s Cascades art complex depicts a victorious battle for national survival against the Persians in the fourth century, around the time Armenia became the first country in the world to officially adopt Christianity. In the ninth century Armenians gained independence after 200 years of Arab rule. The Seljuk Turks first invaded in the 11th century, a humbling reminder of the arrogance of believing yours is the generation that will finally be the one brilliant and moral enough to end a conflict many times older than itself. Armenians repelled a Turkish invasion in 1918 in the midst of a genocide, a victory that allowed for the brief independence of the newly formed Republic of Armenia.

The lamb is a cliche in the Jews’ case as well: By 1961, Israel, another state founded in the wake of a genocide, had triumphed in its own war for survival, built close relations with several of the world’s leading powers, launched a clandestine nuclear weapons program, and briefly occupied the Suez Canal. In both Israel and Armenia, the question of how the atmosphere in a small country on the edge of disaster can remain so fundamentally upbeat is connected to the larger mystery of its peoples’ survival.

In contrast to Ireland and Iran, Armenia has legitimate reasons to be an anti-Israel country, however similar their histories might be. Azerbaijan’s defeat of Armenia in their 2020 war might not have been possible without Baku’s use of high-end, Israeli-supplied weapons, including offensive drones. The war resulted in Azerbaijan laying siege to the 120,000 ethnic Armenians remaining in the disputed and now mostly Azeri-held region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenian forces had controlled since the conclusion of a previous war over the territory in 1994. Azerbaijan’s victory also made it possible for Baku to seize uninhabited high ground inside the Republic of Armenia itself in a series of attacks in September 2022.

I visited Armenia this past June, as part of a delegation organized by the Philos Project, a U.S.-based group that promotes American engagement with endangered Christian communities across the greater Middle East. Every Armenian I met, including senior officials in the government, looked to Israel with regret instead of anger—they wish that the Israelis were on their side instead of their enemy’s, and they realize they need to think more creatively about how to change Jerusalem’s calculus. Armenians, wedged between the imperial spheres of Russia, Turkey, and Persia for the past 1,000 years, have a keen enough understanding of power dynamics to realize that oil-rich Azerbaijan has more to offer Israel than tiny, resource-poor Armenia currently does. In the interest of making up lost ground, Armenia opened an embassy in Tel Aviv in September of 2020, while Yerevan’s longstanding and close relationship with Iran is a “special item” in an ongoing strategic dialogue with the United States. Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, a former foreign minister of Armenia and the country’s top diplomat during the 2020 war, contrasted the achievement of Israel’s first three decades to the 30 years of stagnation that followed modern Armenia’s independence.

The kinship between the Armenian and Jewish experiences, and the lessons it still holds for both of these ancient Near Eastern peoples, can be seen in especially stark form in Jermuk, a resort town built around a sweet mountain hot spring in Armenia’s southeast. Until November 2020, Jermuk and the twin concrete monoliths of its Soviet-era sanitarium were close to the border with Nagorno-Karabakh but far from the line of contact with Azerbaijan. The 2020 war advanced the front to within 15 kilometers of the town, and Azeri incursions in September 2022 brought enemy forces even closer. Jermuk is one of the towns that Azerbaijan would have to seize if it ever wanted to carve a path to the Nakhchivan exclave, on the other side of the 30 kilometer-wide thumb of southern Armenia.
Hundreds of rabbis to join conference in Azerbaijan as Jewish ties flourish
Hundreds of European rabbis from across the continent will be gathering in Azerbaijan this fall to discuss Jewish affairs in the first such convention in a Muslim nation.

The planned event comes amid burgeoning relations between Israel and Azerbaijan that developed from a centuries-long affinity between the two nations into an unprecedented strategic partnership.

The biennial convention of the Conference of European Rabbis is scheduled to take place in Baku between Nov. 12-15 at the invitation of Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, who will serve as the honorary host, with about 500 rabbis expected to attend the event.

The primary Orthodox rabbinical alliance in Europe, the organization unites more than 700 religious leaders from communities across Europe. Founded in 1956, it works to defend the rights of Jews in Europe, with freedom of religion and matters related to the Jewish communities expected to be front and center at the conference.

“Azerbaijan is a place with a special memory for the Jewish people, and is home to one of the most unique Jewish communities in the world,” said Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis who met with Aliyev earlier this year.

“The developing ties between Israel and Azerbaijan are of great importance in today’s Middle East,” he added.
Father of Late Actor Best Known as Pee-Wee Herman Was Co-Founding Pilot of Israeli Air Force
Jewish American actor and comedian Paul Reubens – who was best known for playing the nerdy, eccentric and comedic character he created Pee-wee Herman — died on Sunday night at the age of 70 after battling cancer, the same illness that killed his father, who was a co-founding pilot of the Israeli Air Force (IAF).

The writer and producer was privately battling cancer for the past six years. In a statement shared by his family on Instagram, Reubens said before his passing: “please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years. I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”

Reubens’ father, Milton Rubenfeld, helped establish the IAF. The actor told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2004: “My father didn’t like to talk about his many accomplishments. In 1948, he and a small group of Americans helped establish the state of Israel and form the Israeli Air Force. Israel honored him for his heroism and leadership and his plane was preserved and displayed outside the airport in Tel Aviv with a plaque bearing his name.”

Rubenfeld taught aerial acrobatics before World War II. During the war he joined Britain’s Royal Air Force to fight against Nazi Germany and later was part of the US Air Force unit Air Transport Command, helping to transport planes, people and materiel to and from the United States.

In February 1948, Haganah, a Zionist paramilitary organization that wanted to create an air force for the Jewish state, was looking for Jewish WWII pilots with combat experience and approached Rubenfeld, according to Military.com. He began ferrying planes to Israel and was one of only five of the eight volunteer aviators recruited by the Haganah that could fly Israel’s four Avia fighter aircrafts in combat. Those five volunteers created Israel’s first Air Force. He first mission was on May 30, 1948, attacking an Iraqi armored column that was advancing against Israel. He flew alongside Ezer Weizman, who later became Israel’s seventh president.

Rubenfeld died from cancer at age 84 in Sarasota, Florida, in February 2004. Reubens took two years off from his career to relocate to Florida to care of his terminally ill father, the Today show reported.
Israeli archaeologists unearth building destroyed during Babylonian siege of Jerusalem
Israeli archaeologists have uncovered a building that was decimated by fire during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, according to a report published on July 22.

The findings were published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Archaeological Science.

The charred building’s remains, dubbed ‘Building 100’ by the researchers, underwent a variety of analyses to understand how the fire had started and how it had progressed through the structure. While researchers can only make an educated guess that the building was burned during the siege of Jerusalem, the intense damage caused to the massive structure supports their hypothesis.

Building 100 was once a large two-story home belonging to a member of Jerusalem’s elite, however, it was lost to time until it was discovered under a parking lot in the southeastern part of the ancient city.

The destruction of Jerusalem and Building 100
“Evidence in the debris of the building left no doubt regarding the presence of fire,” the archaeologists wrote.

“There was no visible indication as to whether it was intentional or accidental, and if intentional, where the fire started and how it spread.”

To try to decipher whether the fire had been deliberate, the researchers employed FITR spectrometry tests and archaeomagnetic analysis.

“The goal is to identify the intensity, direction, and origin of the fire that destroyed Building 100 in order to reconstruct the destruction process in detail, to determine whether the fire was intentional as part of the events of the Babylonian destruction, and to learn about the measures taken by the agents of this destruction in their treatment of this elite building,” the researchers explained.

The researchers searched the building for an ignition point, which would allow them to trace the spread of the fire through the building. They did this by measuring the magnetic signatures of pottery shards and broken floor panels. Through this line of study, the researchers uncovered that the fire had started on the top floor of the building, as the bottom floor had rooms that the fire had not reached. This meant the fire was likely intense but burnt out quickly.




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