Pages

▼

Friday, August 11, 2023

08/11 Links Pt2: White supremacist charged with threatening jurors, witnesses in Tree of Life trial; Banned jihadi group in push to ‘infiltrate’ UK campuses

From Ian:

White supremacist charged with threatening jurors, witnesses in Tree of Life trial
Federal agents arrested a West Virginia man on Thursday for allegedly threatening jurors and witnesses in the trial of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, which culminated last week in a death sentence.

The man who was arrested, Hardy Lloyd, 45, is “a self-proclaimed ‘reverend’ of a white supremacy movement,” according to a statement from the US Attorney’s office in the northern district of West Virginia. The statement said Lloyd “made threatening social media posts, website comments, and emails towards the jury and witnesses during the trial.” He is charged with obstruction of justice, witness tampering and transmitting threats in interstate and foreign commerce.

“Jury trials are a hallmark of the American justice system and attempts to intimidate witnesses or jurors will be met with a strong response,” US Attorney William Ihlenfeld said in the statement. “The use of hateful threats in an effort to undermine a trial is especially troubling.”

The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh welcomed the arrest. It said Lloyd had also targeted survivors of the 2018 attack, the victims’ families and employees of the federation and Secure Community Network, a nonprofit that coordinates security for Jewish institutions.

“The offender in this case targeted the Jewish community for years with hate, vitriol and calls for violence,” Michael Masters, the CEO of the Secure Community Network, said in a statement. “The offender sought to terrorize the community. We now seek justice and accountability.”

According to the federation and Masters’ group, Lloyd extolled Robert Bowers, the man who carried out the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue building, killing 11 worshipers.

Lloyd’s statements allegedly referred to Squirrel Hill, the neighborhood where the shooting took place, which has a reputation for being tight-knit and friendly. It was also the home neighborhood of the late Fred Rogers, the longtime children’s TV host.

“All jews must be murdered. The jew race MUST be wiped out…So, target jews as BOWERS did …” one of Lloyd’s threats allegedly read, according to the federation and Secure Community Network. They said another of his threats read, “make the myths of Hitler seem like Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood … start kidnapping jews and torturing them to death.”

Wheeling, West Virginia, Lloyd’s hometown, is within commuting distance from Pittsburgh. Lloyd allegedly left stickers in heavily Jewish areas of Pittsburgh directing people to his website.
Senior police officer responsible for ‘faith relations’ addressed IRGC linked group
A Police Officer whose role is to engage with faith groups has refused to say if he carried out checks before agreeing to appear as a guest speaker at a UK students group now linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

The group, the Islamic Students Association of Britain, has hosted a series of speeches by commanders of the IRGC who have been sanctioned by the UK government for human rights abuses. The speeches included calls to join an “apocalyptic war” on Jews.

Inspector Arfan Rahouf, North Yorkshire Police’s Operational Lead for Faith and Belief, this week failed to respond when asked if he had carried out any due diligence before giving a speech to the group shortly after it praised a top IRGC general, killed in an airstrike, as a martyr.

A JC investigation has revealed how the organisation, based in Hammersmith, west London, hosted speeches by officials from the IRGC urging the audience to “raise the flag of the Islamic revolution, Islam and martyrdom”. The addresses also urged students to see themselves as “holy warriors” and bring an end to the “era of the Jews”.

Rahouf gave an online talk to the group, which has branches on university campuses across Britain, on “Racism and Islamophobia” three years ago.

Later that same year, the student group also hosted one of the leaders of the IRGC’s notorious plainclothes division which is responsible for the arrest, torture and murder of dissidents. In that online talk, Hossein Yekta urged UK-based students to raise the flag of the Islamic revolution and to embrace martyrdom.

In the same period the Islamic Students Association of Britain also hosted Ezzatollah Zarghami, who talked about his role taking 52 Americans hostage in Iran in 1979. Zarghami, now a member of Iran’s hardline cabinet, was sanctioned by the UK for his role in broadcasting “forced confessions of detainees and a series of show trials” as head of the country’s state-run TV channel.
Banned jihadi group in push to ‘infiltrate’ UK campuses
UK activists affiliated to a notorious jihadi group that advocates the violent destruction of Israel have been covertly returning to speak on UK campuses despite being banned from universities, the JC can reveal.

Prominent members of the British branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose stated goal is to establish a global Muslim caliphate governed by sharia law, have been the keynote speakers at ten separate events at universities in the last 18 months.

Union-affiliated Islamic societies have run the events at universities including Bradford, Birmingham and the London School of Economics (LSE) without publicising the speakers’ links to Hizb ut-Tahrir and despite a longstanding ban on the Islamist group by the National Union of Students.

It is unclear whether any of the Islamic Societies involved were aware of the speakers’ afflilations to Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The speakers have included Luqman Muqeem, who has also posted videos online in which he says Muslims must fight Jews to the death and that the only Jewish “promised land” is hell.

Muqeem, who is featured prominently on Hizb ut-Tahrir’s website, has spoken on campus at least six times since November 2021, giving five talks at Birmingham University and another at the University of Bradford.

A mechanical engineering graduate who lives in Stoke on Trent, he has consistently expressed extremist views online, voicing support for the attack on The Satanic Verses author Sir Salman Rushdie.

Rushdie was left in life-threatening condition and lost an eye and the use of one hand when he was attacked on stage in New York by a knifeman last year.

In response, Muqeem said: “We should feel zero pity for anyone who spent a lifetime mocking and insulting the prophets of Allah.”

He also shared a video of Hizb ut-Tahrir activist Belal Mohammed calling for a jihad to “wipe out the Zionist entity”, commenting that this was a “powerful message from the UK”.

Publicity for his talks did not mention his role with Hizb ut-Tahrir, simply referring to him as Brother Luqman Muqeen and mentioning his previous position with the Aston University Islamic society.


Jewish Studies Scholars’ Recent Statement Targets the Wrong Elephant
In May 2021, at the height of the most recent Israeli-Gaza war, over 250 Jewish studies scholars signed a statement placing all blame on Israel for the ongoing ethno-national conflict, using language that presents Israel as little more than a racially supremacist project produced by European imperialism. The document not only ignored the threat that such inflammatory rhetoric could pose to diaspora Jewry, but also actually ignored the violence already occurring against diaspora Jewry—random Jews who were being attacked by Palestinian social justice activists in the United States and Europe because they might be Zionists and are thus responsible for Israel’s alleged war crimes.

At the time I spoke out against this statement because it was saturated with such dangerous rhetoric. I subsequently gave public lectures explaining why such language, coming from self-professed experts in Jewish studies, does little more than embolden genuine antisemites on the intersectionalist social justice left, people who pontificate in public that Zionism is a “global threat” needing to be quashed along with imperialism, capitalism and racism. Such a statement could not possibly end the conflict in the middle east. And two years later, its ultimate worthlessness is apparent to any observer of Israel.

Accordingly, Jewish studies scholars have struck again this week, issuing another such statement and attempting to call out the “elephant in the room,” which they see as the “direct link between Israel’s recent attack on the judiciary and its illegal occupation of millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” They have learned from their previous statements and have dropped much of the superfluous academic jargon, which does not serve their interests. It is far better to present Israel’s criminality in plain English should they wish to provoke anger among larger segments of the American public against diaspora Jewry. Thus far the statement has accrued over 500 signatures. Like all such documents, it contains grains of truth couched in outright lies and bigoted dog whistles because they know this is the best way to get their voices heard. I would like to highlight some of these falsehoods and dangerous claims below.

Before I proceed, I am going on record, publicly, yet again, that I support a two-state solution. I believe that the current Israeli government has zero interest in resolving the conflict because they have the upper hand and know they can continue to tighten their grip in the West Bank, irrespective of their desired outcome. Even Ariel Sharon sought a cold peace; the current government wants no such thing. I also believe that all settlement construction that proceeded after Oslo was not only counter-productive for peace, but also morally wrong, even if Israel’s future borders should include some territory beyond the Green Line. Accordingly, I am not going to challenge their condemnation of daily violence experienced by Palestinians in the West Bank even if it fails to take Palestinian terrorism into account; it is a problem that Israelis need to address. I will not even challenge their use of the term “Apartheid” to describe what transpires beyond the Green Line. That has been done to death and it is now a core component of the conflict’s vocabulary, rendering any debate over the term pointless. But it is a term baked in emotive moral condemnation rather than sound legal reasoning.
Prestigious UK medical journal writes against Israel's judicial reform
The Lancet, one of Britain’s most prestigious medical journals, is no less interested in Israeli physicians’ worries about the Netanyahu government’s judicial reform than our own doctors are.

It has just published an article by Israelis and an expert from Washington, DC that calls it a “threat to the Health in All Policies Approach” (HiAP) plus a news story entitled "Israeli doctors vow to continue protests."

The first article, which quoted numerous leading Israeli academics and physicians, said that “Israel's parliament sanctioned a substantial amendment to the Basic Law, prompting apprehensions regarding power equilibrium and its potential influence on public well-being. In response, a coalition of prominent Israeli and global public health experts has united to dissect the profound ramifications of this revision.”

The authors noted that the story “transcends national borders, as the authors highlight the potential global implications of this amendment. The risk of political interests superseding public health isn’t confined to Israel alone; it sets a precedent that may echo in countries with weaker legal systems. The erosion of HiAP could have far-reaching consequences, compromising health considerations in policymaking.”

The amendment, restricts court scrutiny of the reasonableness of ministerial decisions, aiming to curtail judicial supervision over political choices, which has sparked nationwide protests and concerns, they wrote.

“As public health advocates, the co-authors of the article express their apprehension about the significant threat this amendment poses to public health and HiAP)… which was adopted globally and shaped by various health declarations, advocates for the incorporation of health implications in decision-making across sectors.”

This approach, they continued, “recognizes that health determinants extend beyond the health sector and emphasizes collaboration for better health outcomes. The co-authors stress the pivotal role of health in governance and societal well-being. However, the amendment's potential to weaken the HiAP principle raises concerns about unchecked decisions that might neglect public health considerations.
2017: The Lancet: How an Anti-Israel Propaganda Platform was Turned Around
A prominent medical journal published pseudo-scientific attacks on Israel for years—until it took the demonization one step too far. What accounts for its unprecedented turnaround?
The British publication The Lancet is one of the most influential medical journals in the world, and for many years, was used as a major platform for anti-Israeli demonization campaigns under the façade of science and medicine. Between 2001 and 2014, 264 articles on Palestinian and Israeli issues were published, a majority consisting of political opinion or commentary with little medical content.[1] Many included distorted or unsupported claims that Israel was responsible for premature births, deaths of Palestinians at checkpoints, cancer deaths, psychological disorders, and more.[2] In addition, The Lancet’s editor Richard Horton repeatedly condemned Israel, repeating the false allegations, for example, that “Tens of documented deaths, including of children, have been attributed to checkpoint delays.”[3]

These statements and publications were, and continue to be, used as sources in anti-Israel campaigns, particularly in the health field. For example, a resolution introduced at the 2013 meeting of the American Public Health Association, referring to “apartheid-type policies in the occupied lands of Palestine,” included 16 references to The Lancet.[4]

However, in September 2014, these attacks abruptly ended. Horton accepted an invitation from doctors at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital to visit Israel, and in public appearances and media interviews, expressed regret. He announced a new project that would portray Israel in a positive light, and in 2017, The Lancet published a special volume on Israeli contributions to medicine. This remarkable reversal is unparalleled among major platforms used in anti-Israel demonization campaigns.
‘Never Feel Alone’: Israel on Campus Coalition Hosts Student Conference Amidst Changing Climate for Zionist Students
Over 400 Jewish and non-Jewish Zionist student leaders packed the Capitol Hilton in Washington DC this week to attend Israel on Campus Coalition’s (ICC) National Leadership Summit, a three day conference for reflecting on the triumphs of the pro-Israel movement on college campuses as well as the challenges it faces going forward.

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, such challenges are immense, ranging from the expulsion of Jewish students from school clubs to outright bans on Zionists speakers and more outward expressions of hatred, including the graffitiing of swastikas on or near Jewish institutions and adoption of the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement. Within this context, ICC last year began holding an annual summit to create a space for pro-Israel students to share strategies, experiences, and contacts, and in the process forge an association of common goals spanning across the country.

Founded in 2002, the Israel on Campus Coalition is a nonprofit organization that describes its mission as inspiring college students to defend and be proud of Israel. One of its major initiatives is the “microgrants” programs, which helps pro-Israel campus groups organize events about Israeli culture and society. Another, the ICC Community Impact Fellowship, awards college students a $1,000 stipend for completing a leadership seminar in which they are trained in civic engagement, coalition building, and rapidly responding to antisemitic and anti-Israel events on their campuses.

This year’s leadership summit was, ICC chief executive officer Jacob Baime told The Algemeiner during an interview on Monday, the largest its history.

“We went in three years from 50 students to 400.” Baime said. “Last summer, we had 200 attending, so it’s an escalation reflecting that challenges are growing and there’s a real thirst on the part of pro-Israel students across the country for community and camaraderie. While the conference does have some tangible goals, such as teaching students how to elect student government officials, how to build strong and diverse coalitions on campus, and respond to antisemitic and anti-Israel activity on campus— if you take a step back the larger purpose is ensuring that they never feel alone but part of a national network for the next generation.”
Creator of ‘Virtual’ Holocaust Museum Faces Torrent of Antisemitic Abuse From Neo-Nazis, Fans of Nick Fuentes
The creator of the first video game centered on the Holocaust has received death threats and a torrent of antisemitic abuse online from supporters of white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes for designing a virtual Holocaust museum that will be showcased inside the popular video game Fortnite, which boasts over 70 million players a month.

French-Jewish video game creator and designer Luc Bernard, 37, told The Algemeiner he hopes his designs will help “stop the rise of Nazism and antisemitism in the US and worldwide.”

“I will not let happen to the US what happened to Europe,” he added. “My work isn’t really based on who I am as a [Jewish] person. But really it’s stop the rise of Nazism and antisemitism now. We can no longer count on politicians and people in power to stop the rise of Nazism in the USA.”

In Fortnite‘s Voices of the Forgotten Museum, which Bernard co-created with a colleague, players can walk the halls of the building and read plaques describing the genocide of Jews in Nazi Germany, resistance fighters and Holocaust heroes, whose photos are also on display. One wall inside the museum focuses on Abdol Hossein Sardari, an Iranian diplomat who issued thousands of passports to Jews trying to escape France. Another highlights Marianne Cohn, a German-born Jewish French resistance fighter who smuggled Jewish children out of France starting in 1942. She was killed by the Gestapo two years later.

Fortnite users will not be able to play inside the museum and emotes — dance moves or other actions that characters can perform — will be automatically disabled.

“I focused on exhibits of things which I believe should be told: Sephardic Jews, members of the resistance who fought back, and LGBTQ Jews that have been erased from history for too long by conservative people in power,” Bernard, who is based in Los Angeles, explained about his designs for the museum. “I focus on the stories of the victims mostly, because everyone forgets about them and just reduces them to numbers and not who they were.”

Bernard’s virtual Holocaust museum will have a massive potential reach since Fortnite‘s publisher Epic Games revealed in March that the video game has 70 million monthly active users. His museum was approved by Epic, but Bernard declined to share details about the game’s release date and the name of the museum’s co-creator because of the abuse he has been subject to, fueled by Fuentes.

“I have to wait until the Nazis calm down a bit,” he said.

A Torrent of Abuse
Fuentes — who was first banned from X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2021 and again in January of this year after his account was reinstated — first sent a message to his 54,000 Telegram chat subscribers with a screenshot from an interview Bernard did with the British newspaper The Times in March, in which he talked about his depression and how Fuentes has negatively influenced gamers.

He then targeted Bernard on X under the account @heyapple008 and called the Voices of the Forgotten Museum “ridiculously stupid.” His supporters then rallied against Bernard and began sending him antisemitic messages promoting Jewish stereotypes and also death threats. One such tweet was a video clip that showed a Photoshopped image of Bernard aboard a train heading to the Auschwitz concentration camp, which Fuentes retweeted. Since Fuentes drew attention to Bernard’s account, his followers have been continuing to harass the video game designer on X.

Bernard eventually managed to get Fuentes’ account on X suspended earlier this week. Fuentes responded in a video message saying, “The Jews have taken another Twitter account from me … the apple account, the apple account is finished,” which is a reference to the name of the account. When Bernard posted the clip on Wednesday on X, antisemitic messages flooded the comments section.
City Surveilled Rabbi’s House For Hosting Religious Gatherings, Lawyers Say
The city of Beverly Hills in California sent a Notice of Violation to a rabbi in June, ordering him to cease holding religious meetings in his home after putting him under surveillance, according to a Wednesday press release from First Liberty.

Rabbi Levi Illulian has been hosting many worship meetings inside his home in order to support an “aging, home-ridden” Holocaust survivor, and after several complaints, the city allegedly responded by opening an investigation into the proceedings before sending the notice on June 12, according to the press release. In response, Illulian and First Liberty sent a letter to Beverly Hills Code Enforcement Attorney Steven Rosenblit and demanded the city withdraw the notice, arguing that it was a violation of his rights under constitutional law, according to the letter. (RELATED: State Bars Catholic Couple From Fostering Due To Traditional Beliefs About Marriage And Gender)

“It is chilling that Beverly Hills officials have resorted to surveilling a small group of Jewish residents who meet together for worship,” Elizabeth Kiernan of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, who is also representing Illulian, said in the press release. “The law and constitution protect his right to host gatherings of family and friends to meet their spiritual needs.”

Illulian has hosted the Jewish celebration of Passover, which lasts over several days, and Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, as well as an Orthodox ministry called One Lev, according to the letter. The number of attendees was limited to what the “home can comfortably and safely accommodate” and Illulian asked visitors to park farther away in order to make sure they were not bothering neighbors or violating city ordinances regarding parking.

In February, a private citizen complained about noise and trash from the gatherings, but a city investigation found that the allegations were unfounded, according to the letter. After another complaint, a second investigation was launched in March using “stakeouts,” photographing and tallying individuals who came and went from the house, and allegedly “upon information and belief” the city used drones to surveil the house.

Illulian was eventually given a notice that demanded an end to “all religious activity at the home with non-residents,” according to the letter. First Liberty said that the notice’s requirements violated the rabbi’s First Amendment rights by discriminating based on the religious nature of the gatherings, arguing that a neighbor’s similar, secular gathering would not be prohibited under these terms.


Second France24 journalist fired after antisemitic tweets revealed
France24 journalist Dina Abi-Saab was the second to be fired of four journalists who were revealed to have written antisemitic tweets, a French parliamentary session revealed on July 18th.

The tweets were revealed by The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), an organization that investigates and brings to light instances of anti-Israel bias in world media. The expose was originally published in March and revealed the names and social media profiles of the four journalists.

In March, France24 dismissed their Beirut correspondent Joelle Maroun, after the expose uncovered an extensive list of tweets by Maroun ranging from praising Hitler to calling on Palestinians to murder Jews in a now-deleted tweet.

Abi-Saab, who is of Lebanese descent and serves as France24’s Geneva correspondent, was revealed to have made a litany of controversial and antisemitic posts on Twitter. In 2017, she shared an article about a letter King Charles III allegedly wrote saying that “the influx of Western Jews to ‘Palestine’ is the cause of the conflicts in the Middle East”.

But articles claiming that Jews are the root of the Middle East's ills are not the only antisemitic content she spread on Twitter. In what CAMERA terms “France24’s hate-on-Israel club”, Abi-Saab used the platform in 2019 to refer to Omar Abu Laila, a terrorist killed in a shootout with soldiers after murdering two civilians, as a ‘martyr’.

In other tweets, Abi-Saab celebrated rockets being fired at Israel from Gaza and referred to Israel as "occupied Palestine."

Given all of the above, CAMERA was quick to note that, being a state-sponsored news site, France24 pays its employees' salaries with French taxpayer money. All of the statements exposed by CAMERA were made on the employees’ publicly available Twitter accounts and had been ongoing for several years.

Working with CAMERA, the French parliamentarian Meyer Habib brought the issue up in a session of the French assembly last week and asked the French government why it continues to pay the salaries of journalists who not only hold such views but openly express them. The news of Abi-Saab’s termination marks a significant victory for the organization.
The limitations of BBC interest in the safety of Palestinian journalists
BBC coverage of the death of the Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin in May 2022 included cross-platform promotion of an interview with one of her colleagues who was injured at the same time, Ali Samoudi, from his hospital bed.

A NARRATIVE AND A LIBEL ON BBC WS RADIO’S NEWSHOUR
BBC RADIO 4 AND THE AL JAZEERA NARRATIVE – PART TWO
BBC WS RADIO PROMOTION OF THE ‘ISRAEL TARGETS JOURNALISTS’ LIBEL


In that and additional content, the BBC repeatedly promoted the notion that Israel deliberately targets journalists, as claimed by Abu Akleh’s employer at the time.

On August 5th 2023, following the fatal terror attack in Tel Aviv which was barely reported by the BBC, members of terror groups in Jenin took to the streets for a celebratory procession which was reportedly dispersed by Palestinian Authority security forces using tear gas and live fire. During those events, two journalists were injured, one of whom was Ali Samoudi.
GUARDIAN CORRECTS ERROR ABOUT ARAB-ISRAELIS AND THE IDF
A Guardian review, by Matthew Reisz, of a book about Israel written by NY Times correspondent Isabel Kushner (“The Land of Hope and Fear by Isabel Kershner review – how Israel betrayed its high ideals”, Aug 6) included the following:
Since Arab-Israelis don’t serve in the IDF and the ultra-Orthodox have always enjoyed exemptions, demographics also spell the end of “the cherished, sacrosanct ideal of the People’s Army”.

We complained to editors, noting that Arab-Israelis – though not required to enlist – do in fact serve in the IDF, and have been doing so in greater numbers.

Our complaint was upheld, and the sentence revised accordingly:
Since Arab-Israelis are not required to serve in the IDF and the ultra-Orthodox have always enjoyed exemptions, demographics also spell the end of “the cherished, sacrosanct ideal of the People’s Army”.
Newfoundland Student Newspaper Columnist Calls Israel’s 1948 Independence An “Occupation Of Palestinian Land,” Denying The Jewish State’s Right To Exist
Alarmingly, an opinion column recently published in The Muse, the student newspaper of Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, described Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948 as an “occupation of Palestinian land,” which fundamentally denies the Jewish state’s right to exist.

The column entitled: “From Palestine to Newfoundland: A Journey of Cultural Resilience,” by Fayez Almadhoun, was ostensibly a first-person narrative of Almadhoun’s family and their journey from the Middle East to Canada, but in reality, it was a broadside attack on Israel’s legitimacy.

Early in his column, Almadhoun wrote that “The wide range of individuals that live outside of Palestine, termed ‘diaspora,’ is characterized by the displacement of the Palestinian people from their ancestral homeland in the wake of the 1948 occupation of Palestinian land, known as the Nakba.”

With a single sentence, Almadhoun not only turned history on its head, but has also attempted to gut Israel’s very legitimacy and its right to exist, even though he never mentions Israel’s name once in his column.

In 1948, Israel declared its independence from the United Kingdom, which had administered the land for more than 30 years at the behest of the international community, but the newly-formed State of Israel did not grow out of a vacuum, either legally or historically.

The year prior, the United Nations voted to recognize the partition of the British Mandate for Palestine, into two states: an Arab one, and a Jewish one. That partition was drawn up by a special United Nations committee, and was accepted by Jewish representatives, but rejected by Arab representatives, who refused to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish nation-state. Almost immediately after Israel was declared a state by its founders in May, 1948, neighbouring Arab countries declared war on it.

But that was not the genesis of Israel’s legal basis. In 1920, representatives from international powers gathered in San Remo, Italy, and formally recognized Israel’s right to be reconstituted over the entirety of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
New York City subway attacker pleads guilty to hate crime
A New Yorker who assaulted and berated a Chassidic Jew in 2021 on a New York subway has accepted responsibility for his antisemitic actions.

Bradley Werner pleaded guilty to a hate crime earlier this week, reported The Forward. The victim has asked not to be named, fearing future violence.

Video footage circulating on social media shows Werner blaming the visibly Jewish man for the Israeli-Palestine conflict in obscenity-laden rants, including telling him that he didn’t belong in the city.

The attacker, who has claimed that his grandfather is Jewish, also sought to justify antisemitic violence, saying that Jews brought upon themselves the violence leveled against them.

The judge gave Werner time served for the 11 months he has already spent in jail on a separate hate crime. He faced 364 days in prison.
Man pulls ‘massive, serrated knife’ on Jewish students in Australia
First, the passenger on the bus talked about “Jews, money and drugs.” Then, raising his voice, he yelled “Nazi” at about 10 Jewish students from Leibler Yavneh College aboard a public bus in Melbourne. Soon, he was calling himself a Nazi as well.

“Then out of his bag, he pulled out a massive, serrated knife approximately six inches in length,” one Jewish student, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told the Australian newspaper The Age last week.

One of the students yelled for the driver to open the door since the man had a knife. Even after the students exited, the man followed them for a bit, according to reports.

By the time police officers arrived, the assailant was nowhere to be found.

The Victorian Community Security Group has said the event was an “isolated incident,” the Australian Jewish News reported on Thursday. The Victoria police, which has proclaimed that there is “no place at all in our society” for antisemitic or other such hatred, is reportedly still investigating the case.

Earlier this year, research suggested that antisemitism is up 41% in Australia within the past two years. This year, the country has threatened the social network X (formerly Twitter) with fines if it doesn’t reduce hate speech, and it is trying to criminalize nationally public displays of Nazi symbols.


Tottenham Hotspur chairman faces antisemitic abuse over Harry Kane transfer
For football fans around Britain, the three-month transfer window brings an annual dose of tension, frustration and thwarted desire.

Now, a long running saga over England captain Harry Kane’s potential transfer to German champions Bayern Munich has sparked an outburst of antisemitism online.

The England striker is set to undertake a medical examination in Munich to complete a €100 million move that would bring an end to his 19-year Tottenham career.

As the deal hovers on the brink of completion, supporters and rival fans have begun abusing the club’s chairman, Daniel Levy, over his hardball negotiation tactics.

Levy, a lifelong Spurs supporter, was born in Essex to Jewish parents. He was appointed to the north London club's board in 2000 after ENIC, a company he part-owns alongside Jewish businessman Joe Lewis, bought a 27 per cent stake.


Quebec Announces Intention To Open Israel Office, First Of Its Kind In The Middle East: What It Means For Quebec-Israel Relations
In early August, the government of Quebec announced it was opening a special office dedicated to Israel, based out of Canada’s embassy in the Jewish State. Quebec’s office, the 35th of its kind in the world, would be the first in the Middle East.

The office, which will be based out of Canada’s embassy in the Jewish state, will focus on the fields of research and innovation (R & D), and strengthening the bilateral relationship between Canada’s largest French-speaking province and Israel.

While Quebec’s government announced that the new outreach effort would be primarily focused on the areas of research and development, it also acknowledged the large and growing Francophone population in Israel, and the possibility of deepening ties with that demographic in Israel. From culture to economics and history, Quebec-Israel ties are undoubtedly set to grow to new levels.

Sharing the news on Twitter, Quebec’s International Relations Minister Martine Biron wrote that “Israel’s dynamic economy offers business opportunities” for the province.

The benefits to Quebec, and indeed to all of Canada, are substantial.

With Quebec’s office in Israel, the province will be doing more than making a public vote of confidence in Israel; it will be making a positive investment in Quebec’s economy, and not for the first time.

In 2007, and again in 2017, Quebec signed cooperation agreements with Israel, and today, Israel represents Quebec’s third-largest trading partner in the Middle East, with annual trade roughly $525 billion dollars, but there is tremendous potential for even more.
Israel's pioneering use of water 'to the last drop'
In the scorching summer heat, an Israeli farmer tends to a dripline taking a mix of ground and recycled water to palm trees -- an approach honed for decades in the arid country and now drawing wide interest abroad.

At the plantation in a desert near Eilat, a coastal holiday resort on Israel's southern tip, the mineral-rich water passes through a plastic tube, nourishing the dates high above.

"All of Eilat's sewage is treated," said Arik Ashkenazi, chief engineer of Ein Netafim, Eilat's water and sewage utility, during a tour of the facility that sees wastewater cleared of solids and biological hazards.

"The treated wastewater is transferred, to the last drop, to farmers" who mix it with groundwater and use it on the trees, he said.

Eliat is hemmed in between the desert and Red Sea, isolated from the rest of Israel with no natural freshwater. Its drinking water is a combination of desalinated groundwater and seawater.

After domestic use turns it into sewage, it is treated and then allocated to farmers, enabling the parched region to support agriculture.

While Eilat used to be the exception in Israel's water management, it is now more of a prototype for the country and perhaps the world.

Globally, more than two billion people lack access to safe drinking water, the United Nations says, with floods and droughts triggered by climate change further exacerbating the situation.

Alarming data presented by the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs shows "80 percent of wastewater in the world flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused".
Israeli co. unveils clean heat system with 97-99% efficiency
Brenmiller Energy introduced the bGen ZERO on Thursday, representing the evolution of its Thermal Energy Storage system designed for heat electrification - power by electricity instead of fossil fuels like natural gas, coal, or oil.

Brenmiller offers scalable thermal energy storage solutions and services.

The bGen ZERO provides heat with zero carbon emissions, empowering various industries to harness electricity, biomass, and waste heat to create clean steam, hot water, and hot air for processes such as plastic molding, food and beverage processing, paper production, chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing, and driving steam turbines.

“We named our next-generation system ZERO because it charges from clean power sources such as solar and wind, produces clean heat, eliminates carbon in the production process, reduces costs, and, importantly, bGen ZERO itself is built from environmentally friendly, nonhazardous materials,” said Brenmiller President and CEO Avi Brenmiller.

“Based on our market experience, we believe that the greatest impact our technology can deliver for the environment and for our customers is in the electrification of heat to provide 100% clean energy to industry, replacing the outdated, polluting boilers of yesterday.”


Check Point scoops up Tel Aviv cyber startup in $490m deal to protect remote workers
Cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. announced on Thursday that it is acquiring Israeli-founded startup Perimeter 81 for about $490 million in a cash-free, debt-free deal, to bolster its security tools for remote and hybrid workers.

The deal value marks a large discount to Perimeter’s $1 billion valuation only 14 months ago when the Tel Aviv-based startup raised $100 million from a Series C funding round, bestowing upon its unicorn status. The end of the era of cheap money amid rising interest rates, surging inflation, and a slowdown in the global economy have roiled global markets over the past year triggering a tumbling in tech valuations.

Founded in 2018, Perimeter 81 develops network cybersecurity solutions for the hybrid workforce on its cloud-based platform. The company says its solutions support decentralized, hybrid workplaces without the “cyber complexity that hurts IT’s ability to defend corporate cloud and on-prem[ises] network.” The startup works with 3,000 customers globally, including Fortune 500 businesses and industry leaders in a range of sectors.

The network cybersecurity solution “allows remote users to benefit from fast, secure internet browsing everywhere they go, while addressing cloud privacy violations,” Check Point said.

Network security is a serious threat for businesses and organizations as hybrid work has become a standard since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the digital transformation is shifting data centers to the cloud opening up more channels for sophisticated ransomware, malware attacks and other breaches.

Nasdaq-traded Check Point, which has a market value of more than $15 billion, said the acquisition and the integration of the startup’s security tools will offer “secure access across remote users, sites, cloud, datacentres, and the internet.”
Agilite: Israel’s Top 5 Newest Military Innovations
As a small country surrounded by hostile enemies, Israel heavily relies on its technology and innovations to gain a significant edge on the battlefield. Here are Israel’s top 5 newest military Innovations. (h/t MtTB)

00:00 Intro
00:17 Become an Agilite gear tester!
00:40 Merkava MK. 5
02:05 K-Zero Plate Carrier
03:20 AI
05:23 Namer 1500
06:23 Sky Sonic


A kosher paradise: Traveling as an observant Jew in Dubai
Humans have a short memory and that is the reason that the Tel Aviv-Dubai line has become a matter of routine. This is a place that until three years ago – when the diplomatic agreement with the United Arab Emirates was signed – we could not visit, and certainly not fly over Saudi Arabia on the way there. Today, flying to Dubai feels, for a few moments, like a king who has reached his kingdom.

While sitting on the plane, between the heavens and the earth, on my way to Dubai, my eyes shifted between the plane window, through which I could see the desert soil, and the map on the plane screen, with names of cities and countries that are not accessible to Israelis, but which feel within touching distance: Shiraz or Kuwait, for example.

You can fly with Flydubai to the United Arab Emirates. The flight attendants are courteous, the company is punctual, and everything is very neat and clean – this is a recurring theme that characterizes Dubai throughout the trip. Even the public toilets located around the country are a model of cleanliness, and as soon as you leave the toilet, a cleaner comes and polishes the cubicle. You won't catch dysentery there.

Another recurring theme is wealth and innovation. You can already feel these at the airport, where you are greeted with shining marble floors and intimidating silver pillars, but the skyscrapers dotted around the city also seem to have been taken from New York, alongside innovative and first-of-a-kind museums.

The Emiratis have a high sense of customer service and think of everything. The airport has places to rent a "travel" stroller for a child who gets tired from the long walk around the enormous airport. In restaurants, the waiter refills your glass as soon as you start drinking from it, and everyone in the hotel smiles at you politely and wishes you "good morning" when you leave the room.

Good restaurants – and they are kosher
Good news for the Israeli public, many of whom keep kosher: throughout your stay in Dubai, you will find many options for delicious, varied, upscale – and kosher – food. My favorite restaurant in Dubai is Elli's Café – a gem of beauty and taste, with green plants hanging loosely from the wooden fences outside; a colorful wooden board that shows what is being served today, a stand to browse posters, as well as showcases with tempting pastries. The design is happy and chic, and so is the food.
Christina Aguilera puts on ‘Beautiful’ show at first-ever Israel concert
Pop star Christina Aguilera wowed thousands of Israeli fans at her first-ever concert in Israel on Thursday night.

“Shalom!” she cried out to the 14,000 people who turned out to the Rishon Lezion Live Park to hear the Grammy-award-winning singer. “It’s so beautiful to be here tonight… this is my very first time here and I’m so excited.”

Aguilera kicked off the show with her 2002 hit “Stripped,” before transitioning into the dance anthem “Dirrty.”

It was hard not to feel it personally when she sang about “sweat dripping over my body” in the sticky, humid August air, as thousands of people danced and sweated along.

The singer paid no heed to the weather when selecting her outfit for the evening, opening the show in a leather jacket, and later donning leather gloves that stretched past her elbows. Her hardworking crew of backup dancers did not let up through the night despite the heat, with their glistening sweat visible on every jumbotron.

Aguilera, who performed in Turkey earlier this week and in Denmark on Saturday, told the crowd that she injured her knee shortly before departing for the tour, but was determined to come even if “I might not be able to do all the things I normally do.”

With her signature powerhouse vocals, Aguilera made her way through her litany of hits, showing her millennial fanbase that she still has what it takes at the age of 42. Most of the crowd was singing along as she performed her first hit, “Genie in a Bottle,” which came out back in 1999, following it up with the contemporaneous “What A Girl Wants.”

The singer brought a special guest on stage for a duet of her power ballad “Hurt” — local pop star Eden Ben Zaken, who performed the song in her audition for the hit Israeli TV show “X Factor” a decade ago, launching her career.
World on Fire star Gregg Sulkin: 'I am very proud to be Jewish and love Israel'
Gregg Sulkin is a joy in every way. Not only is he a rather handsome Jewish man playing a rather handsome Jewish character in BBC drama World on Fire, he is also playing one fighting back against the Nazis. Too often we are only in war dramas as the victims who need to be saved, aren’t we?

And there is more good news: when I interview Jewish actors there’s usually a bit of umming and ahhing — a hesitancy, a shame, about their Jewishness and feelings about Israel — as if they are almost embarrassed by both.

Gregg Sulkin is the opposite: “I love being Jewish and I love Israel!’ exclaims London-born Sulkin. “I had my bar mitzvah in Jerusalem and I’d still count it as the most special day in my life.”

He loves talking to Jewish people too. “Wherever I am in the world, if I find out someone is Jewish, it is like we have an unspoken bond. It is very, very tough to describe to people who aren’t in the community. You feel like you’ve met a brother or a sister.”

Seeing a mezuzah on a door frame makes him “smile a bit” because, “it’s not just that’s an important thing to have in a Jewish person’s life, but the fact that we are able to do it at all. Not so long ago there was a very high possibility that the Jewish people wouldn’t even exist in Europe.”

And, obviously, he loves the JC. It was, after all, thanks to this newspaper that he got his big break when his mum was alerted to an advert looking for Jewish boys of bar mitzvah age.
In first, Jewish soccer team founded by Holocaust survivors to play in German Cup
Makkabi Berlin’s first game ever ended in a 15-1 loss in the city’s humblest soccer league. The result of that 1971 match was secondary, though, as merely playing was an achievement for the team founded by Holocaust survivors.

“We wanted to show that we’re still here — that we’re accepted, that we weren’t ended in 1933,” co-founder Marian Wajselfisz told The Associated Press. He still laughs about the result.

On Sunday, Makkabi will be the first Jewish club to play in the German Cup, a season-long tournament for 64 of the country’s best professional and amateur sides.

When the annual competition was started under the Nazis in 1935, Jews weren’t allowed to take part. So when fifth-tier Makkabi squares off against top-tier Wolfsburg, it will be carrying the weight of history onto the field.

“I’ve been there from the first day. I never imagined that we — as a Jewish team — would ever be playing a cup game against a Bundesliga team. So for us, and for me personally, it’s a huge joy,” said Wajselfisz, whose family survived the Nazis with the help of a Polish couple who hid them in their cellar for nearly two years.

Makkabi is the successor to Bar Kochba Berlin, a club founded in 1898 to promote Jewish participation in sports. It had more than 40,000 members at its peak. But when the Nazis came to power, they forced Jewish athletes to take part in separate competitions and then banned Jewish organizations outright in 1938.
Diver finds 2,500-year-old disc used by ancient mariners to ward off ‘the evil eye’
A rare, 2,500-year-old marble disc used by ancient mariners as a talisman has been discovered off Israel’s coast.

A lifeguard diving off Palmachim Beach discovered the artifact at the Yavne-Yam archaeological site and turned it over to researchers, the Israel Antiquities Authority said last month.

Researchers identified the object as an ancient “eye motif,” known in Greek as “ophtalmoi,” that ancient sailors affixed to their vessels in the belief it would ward off evil, the authority said in a statement.

Archaeologists are familiar with the objects from drawings on pottery, mosaics and ancient coins, and from other historical sources, said Yaakov Shitrit, the director of the authority’s Marine Archaeology Unit.

“This design was common on ships’ bows and served to protect against the evil eye and envy, aided navigation, and acted as a pair of eyes looking ahead and warning of danger,” Shitrit said in a statement. “This decoration is still common today on modern ships in Portugal, Malta, Greece, and the far east.”

The disc is flat on one side and curved on the other, has a diameter of 20 centimeters (7.8 inches), and bears traces of paint forming two circles around its center.

Sailors used lead or bronze nails to attach the discs to warships or merchant vessels, researchers said.

Only three other similar artifacts have been found in the Mediterranean Sea, even though the objects were once common. One was found off Israel’s Carmel Beach, and two were found in the wreck of an ancient merchant ship at the Tektaş Burnu archaeological site on Turkey’s coast.


300-year-old Sephardic Torah ornaments to be displayed at US museums for 1st time
In 1725, Abraham de Oliveyra was officially registered as a silversmith in London — the first Jew known to be given a license to practice the trade in the city.

Jews had been let back into England just 70 years beforehand following an expulsion centuries earlier, and Oliveyra’s registration established him as a prolific maker of silver Judaica for the city’s synagogues.

Now, nearly 300 years later, Oliveyra’s work will go on view in American museums for the first time. A pair of Torah ornaments made by the 18th-century craftsman have been bought jointly by Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and New York City’s Jewish Museum.

“The fact that Oliveyra is the earliest known Jewish silversmith active in England is quite monumental,” Abigail Rapoport, the Jewish Museum’s curator of Judaica, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The ornaments, she said, are a “masterpiece of historical Judaica.”

The pair of ornaments are known as finials, or “rimonim” in Hebrew, and sit on top of the two wooden staves of a Torah scroll when it is not being read. Made in 1729 of partially gilded silver, the finials feature tiers of bells surrounding three flattened spheres that showcase Oliveyra’s distinctive openwork, or design made by creating patterns of holes or piercings in the precious metal.

Oliveyra is also known for his use of the shell motif, a hallmark of the era’s nature-inspired Rococo style. While they were of their time, Oliveyra’s design of the gilded rimonim is a clear reminder of the finials’ Jewish context, in that it alludes to the royal status Jews traditionally confer on the Torah, Rapoport said. New York’s Shearith Israel, established in 1654, is the oldest congregation in North America. (Gryffindor/Wikimedia Commons)

The rimonim are one of only 11 known pairs by Oliveyra. The only other rimonim by the artist in the United States belong to Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in Manhattan.




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

at