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Thursday, August 17, 2023

08/17 Links Pt2: The lessons of Europe’s red-green antisemitic surge; Use the Law to Combat Campus Anti-Semitism; Gadi Taub: Israel’s Elites Revolt Against Democracy

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Can it happen here? The lessons of Europe’s red-green antisemitic surge
One shortcoming of the report is its tendency to downplay half of the problem on the European left. The power of left-wing antisemitism stems from the coming together of two disparate factions—left-wing intellectuals, artists and political activists and Muslim immigrants to Western Europe, who brought their antisemitism and intolerance for Jews and Israel to their new homes.

It isn’t surprising that the ADL wouldn’t want to make that community the face of antisemitism in Europe, and all such immigrants are not Jew haters. But the growth of the Muslim population in these countries parallels the recent antisemitism surge. The parties of the left that tend to accept a narrative about white racism and Muslim victimhood are natural allies of Islamists when it comes to Israel, even though they are diametrically opposed on social issues.

Woke politics and antisemitism
Even more problematic is the report’s final section, which seeks to alert Americans to what happened in Europe and to ensure that does not repeat in the United States.

Some of the ADL’s recommendations are merely anodyne expressions of concern. But its call to block antisemitism online is problematic given it is wedded to the Biden administration’s collusion with Big Tech and social media companies to censor conservatives and criticism of their policies. That makes it difficult to view any effort on the group’s part to impact online activity as anything but inherently partisan.

Equally problematic is the report’s emphasis on Holocaust education. It is important that people understand the truth about the Holocaust. But the growth of U.S. Holocaust education programs in the last generation hasn’t had the desired impact. Most of the programs seek to universalize the Holocaust or to claim that ordinary prejudice leads inevitably to death camps. This not only robs the Shoah of its uniqueness but also misunderstands the political nature of antisemitism. Moreover, the ubiquity of talk about the Holocaust is more responsible for the proliferation of inappropriate Holocaust analogies on both the left and the right than any amelioration of antisemitic attitudes.

It has become merely a metaphor for anything people don’t like.

But the main problem with the ADL’s recommendations is its failure to point out that the roots of left-wing antisemitism are to be found not just in Palestinian propaganda but in the fashionable ideologies of the left that groups like the ADL endorse routinely.

Just pointing out the antisemitic statements of the left-wing congressional Squad members like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) or the way that protests against Israel during its fighting with Hamas in May 2021 transitioned into violence against Jews isn’t enough. If you condemn that behavior but approve of intersectionality—which falsely analogizes the Palestinian war on the planet’s one Jewish state to the struggle for civil rights in the United States and the antisemitic Black Lives Matter movement from which it sprung—then you don’t understand what is driving the growth of Jew hatred on the left.

If you think critical race theory, which treats Jews as “white” oppressors and Israel as a manifestation of imperialism, you are aiding the antisemites.

And if you accept the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as necessary for all businesses and even the government to adopt, then you reject equality and embrace racial quotas that will inevitably hurt Jews.

Unfortunately, these are mistakes that the ADL has made and continues to make. Its recognition that antisemitism can come from the left as well as the right is a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough. American liberals and their institutions, like the ADL, will remain part of the problem and not the solution until and unless they understand that left-wing Jew hatred traces back to these toxic myths and ideas, as well as open attacks on Israel and Zionism.
Five reasons Jews should worry about Jack Lew as ambassador to Israel - ZOA
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), a right-wing Jewish organization, expressed reservations on Wednesday regarding the potential nomination of Jack Lew as the US Ambassador to Israel, highlighting several concerns.

Lew, a former US treasury secretary is the leading candidate to be the new US ambassador to Israel and could be nominated in the coming weeks, the Axios media organization reported on Sunday, citing three people familiar with the matter.

Axios said there was a sense of urgency about US President Joe Biden's choice for the post because the White House was pushing for a diplomatic mega-deal with Saudi Arabia that could include a normalization agreement between the Saudis and Israel.

Lew, 67, is one of the few Orthodox Jews to have served in the US cabinet. He speaks Hebrew, has relatives in Israel, and is an active member of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in the Bronx, in New York City.

1. Lew's track record on policies:
During his tenure as Chief of Staff, Lew drew criticism from the ZOA, which labeled the administration as “the most hostile-to-Israel US president ever.” They emphasized his support for the UN Security Council Resolution 2334, asserting it “labeled Judaism’s holiest places... as 'occupied Arab land'.”

2. Contention over UNSC resolution 2334:
While many viewed this resolution as echoing US policies, the ZOA interpreted it differently. Their stance was bolstered by the Congressional condemnation through H. Res. 11. They believed Lew, given his influential position, ought to have been more vocal in his opposition.
Gadi Taub: Israel’s Elites Revolt Against Democracy
In his New York Times opinion piece titled “The U.S. Reassessment of Netanyahu’s Government Has Begun,” Thomas Friedman wrote that he likes to say of his job that he is “a translator from English to English”: He takes complex things and renders them understandable. Israel, he explained, is turning its back on the shared values which have underpinned the friendship between the American superpower and the Jewish state. As Friedman explains it, the judicial reform proposed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition poses a grave threat to democracy because it would “change the long-established balance of power between the government and the Supreme Court, the only independent check on political power.”

It turns out that translating from English to English may not be the most useful skill when you need to understand something that is happening in Hebrew. Friedman is right that Israel’s democracy is in danger, but Netanyahu’s government is not the source of peril. The real danger comes from the court itself, which is now asserting a made-up “right” to remove a sitting prime minister—that is, to nullify the results of a legal election and eclipse Israel’s democratic politics and institutions through its own self-perpetuating fiat. The protest movement that arose to defend the court’s power (and its backers among the country’s economic and military elite) are together attempting to block the redemocratization of Israeli politics, as the reforms intended to do.

This is not some innovative hypothesis. If you read Hebrew, you can hear some protesters and their backers in the country’s establishments announcing their intentions more or less explicitly: Democracy is the very thing they are out to prevent. The movement’s ideologues are longtime staunch opponents of the democratic form of government who have devoted whole academic careers to opposing it; their political leaders in parliament and outside it use the term “democracy” in a deliberately deceptive way, as they sometimes admit; and their street-level ringleaders more or less openly confess disdain for the mass of enfranchised citizens. Most poignantly, when it comes to the rebelling IDF reservists—virtually all of them from elite unites, mostly in the air force—they don’t even bother with lip service to the idea of majoritarian decision-making. Rather, they express open contempt for the majority of Israel’s citizens, peppered with thinly veiled references to ethnicity, religiosity, and class.

At least some of this unabashed condescension must be fairly obvious, even to foreigners—especially those like Friedman who claim to be in touch with Israeli opinion. At around the time that Friedman wrote his piece, it seemed like a military coup against Israel’s democracy was in the making. News stories accumulated about more and more reservists declaring they wouldn’t report to duty unless the reform was shelved. Speculation about Israel’s battle readiness, or lack thereof, filled the news cycle. For the most part the media framed the issue as a story about heroic reservist martyrs determined to fight “the battle for democracy” rather than calling it what it was: a bunch of officers threatening to jeopardize Israel’s security if the parliamentary majority did not yield to their demands. As the title of one Haaretz piece read: “A Military Coup Is Underway in Israel—and It’s Completely Justified.”

Some writers were not content with cheering on the rebelling reservists. Sima Kadmon, a senior political pundit for the popular daily Yedioth Ahronoth, wrote a full-page piece on the paper’s prestigious page 3, calling on the brass to take command of the situation. The title said “Only They Can Make Him Stop” (July 19, 2023). The piece called on the IDF chief of staff, the head of Mossad, the chief of the National Police and the head of Shabak (Israel’s General Security Service) to walk into the prime minister’s office and tell him “Enough!” thereby forcing him to overturn his cabinet’s policy. In normal language, we don’t call that “democracy.” We call it a military coup.


Unpacked: Is the Progressive Left Antisemitic?
While right-wing antisemitism can be easy to spot, there is a growing phenomenon among some left-wing activists who are promoting antisemitic tropes and stereotypes in the name of social justice. Armed with the assumption that the historically persecuted Jewish minority constitutes a “privileged” group, some social justice movements have begun to institute litmus tests for Jews in left-wing spaces, demanding that they denounce Israel before they can join the fight for other progressive causes.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:08 The antisemitism paradox
02:09 Erasure of unique identity
03:52 Do Jews have white privilege?
05:36 Do Jews uphold white supremacy?
07:15 Ideological purity test for Jews
07:34 Antisemitism on the Progressive Left
08:29 Are Jews allowed to care about social justice?
08:57 Defining identity


PodCast: European Jews Often Hide Symbols Of Their Identity – Meet The Non-Jewish Schoolteacher Doing The Exact Opposite: A Fireside Chat With Tobias Reckeweg
It happens like clockwork: whenever tensions rise in the Middle East, as they did during the spring of 2021 between Israel and Hamas, the Gaza-based Islamist terrorist group, incidents of antisemitism spike around the world.

But that doesn’t mean antisemitism ceases to exist other times, or even that it remains dormant. Indeed, across the world, from North America, and particularly in Europe, though statistics vary, Jews are targeted disproportionately to their population. In some European cities, Jews are often encouraged to hide symbols of their Jewish identity.

In Germany, one person has decided that’s unacceptable. Tobias Reckeweg, a non-Jewish educator in Western Germany specializing in German history and mathematics, has become an unlikely ally to the Jewish community: in recent years, he has begun donning a Star of David, a widely-recognizable Jewish symbol, in an act of solidarity.

In this week’s podcast, we sit down with Tobias to discuss his small act of showing support for the Jewish community, the response from Jews and the wider public alike, and his take on what prompted him to take up the cause of advocating for Europe’s Jews.
Im Tirtzu: Israeli hasbara in chaotic times: Im Tirtzu chairman, Matan Peleg speaks at a conference of TP USA.
In the days when the facts are erased, the truth is Fluid, No wonder the whole world is obsessed with Israel while ignoring all the countries that have no democracy and no human rights at all! Watch Matan Peleg's full speech about the crazy times we're living in


Australian Jewish Association: Jewish Unity after tragedy with Rabbi Leo Dee - A message for Australia's Govt & Jewish orgs
A few months ago in April, his life changed dramatically when his wife Lucy, and daughters Maia and Rina were brutally murdered in a Palestinian Arab terrorist attack.

Rabbi Dee has emerged as an inspiration, making the courageous decisions to donate his wife's organs and to take on media conglomerate CNN, over its inaccurate coverage.

Rabbi Dee has become a sought-after speaker, spreading a message of unity and hope for the Jewish people.


Use the Law to Combat Campus Anti-Semitism
Last year, according to a recently published Antidefamation League report, there were 219 anti-Semitic incidents at U.S. universities—a 41-percent increase from the previous year. Such incidents are often directed at Jewish students who express any sympathy for, or connection with, the state of Israel, or at identifiable Jews in the name of Israel’s imagined crimes. Alyza Lewin argues that the law requires universities to intervene on behalf of the victims, and explains what can be done to see that it is enforced:

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires universities that receive federal funds to protect students from harassment and discrimination based on race, color, or national origin. Title VI does not mention religion, but according to sub-regulatory guidance, members of religious groups, including Jews, Sikhs, and Muslims, are protected by Title VI if they are harassed or discriminated against on the basis of their actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnicity. In addition, Executive Order 13899 on Combating Anti-Semitism, enacted in 2019, directs agencies, including the Department of Education, to refer to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Anti-Semitism when investigating Title VI complaints of anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination.

President Biden’s Department of Education recently demonstrated its understanding of the law when it announced its first campus anti-Semitism resolution in a case involving anti-Zionist harassment and discrimination at the University of Vermont (UVM). The complaint in that case . . . described how Jewish Zionists were being excluded from two UVM student groups, and how a university teaching assistant repeatedly harassed Jewish Zionists online. In one tweet, she wrote: “Is it unethical for me, a TA, to not give Zionists credit for participation??? [sic].”

The Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) treated the harassment as a form of national-origin discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry and required UVM, among other things, to revise its policies, procedures, and training to ensure they address it. Jewish students at UVM reported to me that they quickly saw a marked improvement in the way the university responded to their concerns.
This is how we can fight antisemitism on Ivy League campuses
Having spent a 50-year career teaching American government to some 15,000 mainly minority students at a CUNY community college, the following suggestion directed at the venerable eight-member Ivy League group of colleges might seem presumptuous: I propose the creation of a combined alumni federation from these individual campuses to fight the irrefutable signs of antisemitism that exist there.

In researching my book, Strangers and Natives, a Newspaper Narrative of Early Jewish America, 1734-1869, I realized that manifestations of antisemitism did not always exist at those elite colleges. I found that in this country’s formative years, the Hebrew language and Old Testament references were greatly admired.

For example, consider the career of Rev. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College from 1778-1795. Previously, as minister of Newport, Rhode Island’s Second Congregational Church, he attended many services at the Newport Hebrew Congregation in order to enhance his knowledge of Hebrew and Judaic matters. As Yale’s president, Stiles instituted a policy requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew. In 1781, he delivered his first commencement address in Hebrew. In 1785 and 1793, Hebrew was the language in which the valedictorians delivered their speeches. The university’s signature motto, from its founding, were the Hebrew words, “Urim Vetumim,” meaning light and truth and referring to some of the vestments used by high priests in the ancient Temple of Jerusalem..

Two hundred and fifty years later, the campus Yale Daily News has been accused of carrying antisemitic articles, rants attacking Israeli colonialism and apartheid have taken place in classrooms, pro-Israel signs have been torn down and Jewish student applicants are being admitted in far smaller numbers.

How to stop Ivy League antisemitism: A cross-campus pro-Israel advocacy group
My suggestion is the creation of a single cross-campus, pro-Israel advocacy group that would confront antisemitism in the eye. It would deal with mounting restrictions on Jewish student admission, limits on hiring new Jewish faculty, hateful classroom attacks on Israel, accusations against Israel for killing Palestinians and harvesting their organs for sale, antisemitic course-reading lists, racist campus guest speakers, and possible incidents of violence directed against Jewish students. The establishment Jewish “defense” organizations are not confronting this antisemitic growth, as the increase in occurrences testify. Progressive ideology on campus is growing, shown by the upswing of brazen attacks on Israel.
BBC R4 ignores editorial guidelines to promote BDS advocate
Listeners were however given no information whatsoever about the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, including its opaque funding, its support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, its anti-Israel activities or its record of antisemitism.

Neither were listeners informed that the “about sixty organisations” campaigning along with the PSC against the proposed legislation includes blatantly political groups with records of anti-Israel and pro-BDS activity such as the Amos Trust, Artists for Palestine UK, BRICUP, the British Palestinian Committee, ICHAD, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Jewish Voice for Labour, the Muslim Association of Britain, Na’amod, Friends of Al Aqsa, the Hamas-linked Palestinian Forum in Britain, the Scottish PSC, Sabeel–Kairos, the Stop the War Coalition and War on Want.

Coincidentally or not, the title of that campaign against the proposed bill is ‘Right to Boycott’ – the same phrase which appears in the edited version of a 2016 photograph on the programme’s homepage.

Clearly such information about the promoters of an obviously political campaign was precisely the type of “relevant context” which should have been provided to listeners before they heard the contribution from Ben Jamal.

Jamal: “What that means is that a public body – so let’s say the local government pension scheme that’s deciding how is it going to invest the pension funds of local authority employees – if they decide we are not going to invest funds in this particular company because it’s complicit in supporting violations of international law by a state, they cannot make that decision unless the government itself has said we are going to introduce sanctions against that state.”

Baker failed to ask Jamal on what basis it would be determined whether or not a state has violated international law, given the manner in which such often baseless accusations are regularly bandied about by precisely the type of political NGOs opposing this legislation.
Georgetown University's Bridge Initiative Opposes Free Speech
The Bridge Initiative is a quasi-academic, quasi-activist organization based at the Washington, D.C., campus of Georgetown University and sponsored by the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. It claims to provide "original and accessible research" and "engaging analysis," but in fact it promotes Islamism and demonizes its opponents by tarring them with the label "Islamophobe." Last week, it came out in opposition to free speech. The bridge is beginning to crumble.

Founded and directed by John Esposito (an apologist for Palestinian terrorism), the Bridge Initiative is one of the major American forces of the Islamophobia Industry. Bridge writers are quick to name hatred of Muslims and Islam as the motive behind any policy, opinion, or behavior they don't like, and much of the media is content to believe and perpetuate it.

While it excels in ad hominem attacks, strong scholarship has never been part of the Bridge brand. Name-calling, defensive posturing, and shallow arguments are common fare. Witness its latest feature article, "Burning the Quran Is Not Free Speech." Bridge has the audacity to promote this article as "research." To call it sophomoric is an offense to sophomores.

Written by the associate director of the Bridge Initiative, Mobashra Tazamal, the brief essay completely misunderstands the meaning of free speech. Protecting free speech means protecting offensive, vile, and insulting speech. But Tazamal argues that free speech is predicated upon the intention of the speaker. A speaker whose intentions are malign (i.e., "Islamophobic" in this case) may not exercise free speech.

Thus, she writes that those who "hold deeply Islamophobic views" and who "aim to harm Muslims around the globe" are not "practicing their rights to free speech, rather they seek to provoke, harass, and incite hatred against a community that is already facing increased levels of hate crimes and discrimination."

The author's list of the violators of free speech include, "far-right personalities and politicians like Geert Wilders," "Rasmus Paludan, a Danish far-right politician and founder of the far-right Stram Kurs party," and other unnamed "far-right politicians who are unapologetic in their hostile and racist views against Muslims." Only Salwan Momika, an Iraqi living in Sweden known for tearing pages out of the Koran in front of a mosque in Stockholm, is spared the "far-right" label. Tazamal argues that because these men "hold animosity towards Islam and Muslims," their demonstrations are "hateful acts" and not free speech. She fails to see the subjectivity of her premise.

Tazamal makes no effort to contextualize Koran "desecration" or compare it to speech that followers of other religions deem offensive or hateful.
Academic support for David Miller starts to wane after 'Jews are over-represented' claim
A dozen academics who backed controversial lecturer David Miller after he was sacked by the University of Bristol amid allegations of antisemitism have withdrawn their support, with some expressing their “regret” and “embarrassment”.

Miller was dismissed in 2021 after a long-running investigation into his conduct and remarks, including his claim that the university’s Jewish society was “being used as political pawns by a violent, racist foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing”.

At the time, more than 300 academics from across the UK and abroad signed an open letter objecting to his treatment by the university.

However, in the wake of a number of recent statements from Miller, including claims that Jews are over-represented in positions of power and do not face discrimination, the support seems to be waning.

Last week the JC contacted a number of the signatories to the letter, some of whom expressed “regret” for previously defending the sociology lecturer.

Former backer Dr Andrew Chitty, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Sussex, said it was now “impossible” to support Miller.

“In a context in which antisemitism is widespread and typically trades on stereotypes of Jews as rich and powerful, these assertions amount to antisemitic hate speech,” Chitty said.

“On the basis of everything I knew at the time, I supported Miller… in 2021. But in light of these assertions, it is impossible to support him now.”


5 Things We Absolutely Love About Princeton Professor Satyel Larson (satire)
What happened: Conservatives pounced on reports that an upcoming "trauma studies" course at Princeton will feature a controversial book accusing Israel's "settler colonial regime" of deliberately maiming Palestinians for profit, and suggesting black people be considered "disabled" due to systemic racism.

Why it matters: The course, "The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South," is taught by Satyel Larson, assistant professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton.

• The Ivy League university deserves credit for promoting inclusivity. Most of the Israel-haters Princeton hosts on campus—Zaid Chaudhary, Mohammed El-Kurd, and Hossein Mousavian, among others—are men of color. Professor Larson, a white female redhead, brings a valuable diverse perspective to the university's stable of anti-Semites, as will Robert Malley, the disgraced former Biden envoy to Iran who had his security clearance revoked.

• An expert on numerous subjects including colonialism, postcolonialism, resistance, social marginalization, gender, sexuality, and science, Larson is writing a book about "how European secular colonial ideas of calculability underlie the postcolonial governance of reproduction and reproductive female bodies in contemporary Morocco." Interesting!

• Conservative critics may scoff at Larson's résumé. They may snicker at the content of her courses. We believe this rush to judgment is regrettable, a symptom of the increasingly toxic discourse that pervades our polarized society.

Counterpoint: We reject this groupthink. Professor Larson has talent, and we at the Washington Free Beacon would be lying if we did not acknowledge it.


Guardian promotes petition evoking antisemitism
Their dogma – redolent of antisemitic conspiracy theorists through the centuries – demands that they impute the most malevolent designs to the Jewish state. Unburdened by the need to justify their accusations, knowing full well that sycophantic allies in the media and academia won’t bother pushing back against, or in any way critically scrutinising, their libels, nothing is off-limits.

Just as anti-Semites have historically imputed the worst motives and hurled the most incendiary, fantastical and conspiratorial charges to warn of the global danger posed by this miniscule minority, anti-Zionists employ a similar tactic towards the Jew writ large.

Finally, lest we think that the charges in the petition are narrowly aimed at the current Israeli government, it then proceeds with the following:
The problems did not start with the current radical government: Jewish supremacism has been growing for years and was enshrined in law by the 2018 Nation State Law.

As we’ve demonstrated previously, the term “Jewish supremacism” is a term of abuse popularized by history’s most hardcore anti-Semites. The idea of “Jewish supremacy”, as historian Gil Troy has explained, was once the antisemitic rhetoric only the extremist and white supremacist right (including the Nazis) used. Troy noted that Washington’s Holocaust Museum houses a photograph of a Hitler Youth proclamation that “Adolf Hitler which translates to “Hitler breaks Jewish supremacy with his movement.”

As the 2018 Nation State Law basically just codifies Israel as a Jewish state, hurling the accusation of Jewish supremacy in that context is simply another way of making the antisemitic argument that Zionism (that is, Israel’s right to continue existing as the world’s only Jewish state) is a racist endeavor. So, if Zionism is racism, Israel, where a plurality of the world’s Jews live, is ultimately irredeemable – its sin being original and immutable.

The fact that the Guardian has once again put its imprimatur on an antisemitic screed should surprise nobody. But, the mere ubiquity of their endorsement of anti-Jewish racism under the guise of mere ‘criticism of Israel’ doesn’t render it any less odious.
Western Media Ignore Explosive News on Primed Bombs
Agence France Presse photo captions in particular exemplified the Western media’s selective reporting, highlighting damage from the Israeli raid while completely omitting the reason for the raid: the presence of the deadly primed weapons with the dangerous potential to dramatically drive up the death toll of innocent civilians and escalate the conflict significantly.

AFP’s incomplete captions only note “damage following an Israeli military raid at the Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of Nablus,” ignoring the numerous primed explosives stored there. A sampling of the many inadequate AFP captions follows.


As confirmed by Sanad News Agency video, this site is the home of Abdullah Abu Shalal, who is reportedly a Fatah battalion commander. Likewise, Palestinian news agency WAFA reported: “Meanwhile, occupation forces blew up an apartment owned by Abdullah Abu Shalal’s family.”

Furthermore, the Wattan news agency reported (translation by CAMERA Arabic):
Journalist Sami Abu Khuwaira told Wattan that while they were storming Balata refugee camp for [several] hours, the occupation forces blew up explosive devices that the occupation claimed it found in the family residence of citizen Abdullah Abu Shalal, causing the residence’s destruction due to the power of the explosion, and the headquarters of the Fatah movement in the refugee camp [was also destroyed], inflicting severe damages in nearby residences.

Not only do the captions for the photographs of the destroyed weapons sites not mention the primed and ready-to-go bombs, but no AFP article mentioning this important could be found.


LinkedIn refuses to remove “Jews are pigs” post and other antisemitic content
LinkedIn has refused to remove a number of antisemitic posts following complaints from its users.

One of the posts that the social media platform reportedly failed to remove read: “Basically it’s all about money… the Jews have cemented themselves into USA politics and business.” Although the post was reported by one of the platform’s users, LinkedIn did not remove the content, saying that it did not breach its community policies.

Another user received a similar response after reporting a post that read: “Jews/Zionists are pigs say the Qur’an [sic].”

Another reported post read: “Zionazi criminals on $tolen Palestinian land [sic],” LinkedIn again said that the post did not breach its policies, but suggested that the user unfollow or mute the account which had posted it.

According to its Professional Community Policies, LinkedIn does not allow “content that attacks, denigrates, intimidates, dehumanises, incites or threatens hatred, violence, prejudicial or discriminatory action against individuals or groups because of their actual or perceived race, ethnicity, national origin”.

In response to the complaints, a spokesperson for LinkedIn said: “While we cannot comment on another member’s account for privacy reasons, antisemitism and other forms of hate speech do not belong on LinkedIn or in our communities.
Windows shattered at headquarters of Holocaust memorial site foundation in Germany
Police are seeking witnesses to a violent act of vandalism early Tuesday morning that destroyed windows at the headquarters of a foundation that manages multiple Holocaust memorial sites.

The Foundation for Memorial Sites in Lower Saxony, in the town of Celle, oversees the memorials at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and the Wolfenbüttel Prison, a major Nazi execution site, as places of commemoration and learning.

Police told German news media that an unknown number of perpetrators tore an information board from the building’s outside wall and used it to smash the windows. Elke Gryglewski, the foundation’s executive director, told the NDR broadcasting company that charges have been filed with the police.

Menachem Rosensaft, associate executive vice president of the World Jewish Congress, who was born in the displaced person’s camp in Bergen-Belsen, said he was “appalled” by the attack, which he called “the latest in a spate of such vandalizations of German memorial centers and institutions devoted to Holocaust remembrance.”

Last week, a free library of Holocaust-related books near a Holocaust memorial in Berlin was destroyed in a fire that is alleged to be an arson. State police are investigating the incident.

Police have told news media that they have no evidence of political or other motivations in Tuesday’s attack, but some observers have suggested that recent political activism by the foundation may have drawn the attention of right-wing extremists.
A Jewish security group says it tipped off FBI about a neo-Nazi who said he wanted to kill Jews
A Jewish security agency is taking credit for tipping off the FBI about a man associated with a white supremacist group who had a stockpile of weapons and Nazi propaganda in his Los Angeles-area home.

Ryan Scott Bradford was charged last month with conspiring to distribute methamphetamine and being a felon in possession of ammunition. But the FBI and Los Angeles police found far more than drugs and bullets when it searched his house on July 27, according to the criminal complaint filed in federal court: They also uncovered five switches for converting semi-automatic weapons into automatic weapons; two 3D printers, one decorated with swastikas; posters of Adolf Hitler, Nazi flags, and a calendar with a handwritten note saying, “New Year’s Resolution: Take over the world – save Aryan race *Bake every single Jew.*”

When officers spotted a homemade bomb, they temporarily shut down the streets surrounding Bradford’s residence.

“As alleged, this convicted felon affiliated with a violent white supremacist group who espouses horrific acts of violence against Jews appears to be manufacturing firearms and possessing an improvised explosive device,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement announcing Bradford’s arrest. “The potential danger to the community cannot be overstated.”

The charging documents do not make clear when the FBI began monitoring Bradford. But according to the Community Security Initiative, a watchdog group at the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles that monitors threats against the Jewish community and provides safety training to Jews and Jewish institutions, the agency knew to investigate him thanks to the Jewish group’s work.

A CSI analyst told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the group had identified Bradford as a possible threat because of his social media use. He used keywords that the organization monitors for and expressed “implicit threats toward the Jewish community,” said the analyst, who requested anonymity out of concerns about their safety.
Emily Schrader: How Latin America is being shaped by Israeli innovation
There’s no shortage of Jewish organizations working to bridge gaps between the diaspora and Israel, as well as educating the general public in their respective communities about Israel. But the Mexico-based Israel Latin American Network (ILAN), founded five years ago, is taking relations between Israel and Latin America to a new level. Based on the vision of founder and CEO Isaac Assa, a Syrian-Mexican Jew, ILAN focuses on strategic initiatives in high tech, aimed at solving some of Latin America’s largest challenges. One of their methods is identifying and fostering innovation in Latin American universities – creating a prestigious fellowship program to connect innovators with Israeli technology and innovation.

“Our foundation, our mission is to drive innovation linked with Israel, to improve people's lives. Why with Israel? Because today not only Israel is an innovative nation, you also have other countries that are very innovative, like America. But in America, innovation is 10 times more expensive than in Israel,' according to Assa.

Assa also explained that one of the things that makes Israel's start-up ecosystem unique when compared to anywhere else in the world, is that in Israel there is a combination of the academic side, the government side, and the private sector – making true success a reality.

Fostering Innovation in Latin America
“They are innovators in Latin America. The problem we have in Latin America is that we never recognize the innovators and we never promote them or inspire them to become the best they can be,” said Assa. Today, that’s changing thanks to the work of ILAN.

“What we did is…we decided that we are going to recognize those innovators in both the business world as well as in the universities. We created an award that is the ILAN Award of Innovation for Business and Universities, and we go and hold an event every year where we recognize the top projects in seven different categories that range from education to environment, technology, health and science, and communications as well.”
Israeli Scientists Develop Diagnostic Blood Test for Bipolar Disorder
Israeli scientists announced big news this week in the field of mental health.

A simple blood test can identify people coping with bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic depression) and can predict the efficacy of lithium, the drug given to patients with this disorder thanks to the findings of a new study conducted at the University of Haifa and published in the prestigious journal Molecular Psychiatry, part of the Nature group.

“For the first time, the findings of the study enable us to use a blood test to find out – within a short timeframe of a few days, and at a relatively low cost – whether a person is suffering from bipolar disorder. “We can also predict the efficacy of lithium, the drug given to people coping with bipolar disorder, and to adjust the medication individually,” explains Dr. Shani Stern of the University of Haifa, the corresponding author of the study.

Bipolar disorder, better known by its former name manic depression, is a chronic psychological disorder characterized by recurrent, sharp changes in mood, oscillating between extreme happiness and sadness, anger and/or depression.

The prevalence of the condition among the adult population around the world is between one and three percent and the average age of onset is 19 years.

At present, the evaluation of the level of bipolar disorder and determination of treatment is undertaken by a specialist physician in the field of psychiatry.

One of the most common treatments is lithium, but only around one third of patients respond to this drug.

Due to the strong similarity between manic depression and other disorders, such as schizophrenia, there is a risk of misdiagnosis, at least in the early stages. There is also currently no way to know in advance whether or not lithium will help an individual patient.

The current study undertaken by Stern and her research team was carried out in collaboration with Dalhousie University and the Salk Institute.


Israeli and Indian film industries forge culture partnership
Israeli Ambassador to India Naor Gilon brought together distinguished figures from the Israeli and Indian film industries to celebrate and enhance the cultural ties between the two countries.

The quests at the ambassador’s soiree in New Delhi on Wednesday included Israeli actor Tsahi Halevi and Nurit Tinari, who heads the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Cultural Relations Division. Halevi and Tinari are visiting India to explore new areas of collaboration.

Halevi, known for his performance in the hit Israeli television series “Fauda,” will be making his Bollywood debut alongside award-winning Indian actress Nushrratt Bharuccha in “Akelli” (“Alone”). The action movie debuts in India on Friday.

“Every such event is another building block of the people-to-people connection between Israel and India,” Gilon said. “Indian cinema enjoys popularity in Israel, while Israeli series like ‘Fauda’ have gained a dedicated fan following in India. The Bollywood debut of the ‘Fauda’ actor Tsahi Halevi marks a momentous milestone in the growing cultural ties between our two ancient civilizations.

As we celebrate this milestone, we look forward to more collaborations bridging our rich cultures and histories, further strengthening our friendship,” the ambassador said.
Gal Gadot sweats, cries through spicy wing ‘Hot Ones’ interview
Gal Gadot’s cinematic super powers couldn’t protect the Amazon warrior from an army of 10 fiery supervillains (spicy wings).

The Israeli actress was a guest on the show “Hot Ones,” during which host Sean Evans interviews guests while they eat 10 increasingly spicy chicken wings. The show is part of the YouTube channel First We Feast, which has nearly 13 millions subscribers.

“It comes in waves,” Gadot, known for playing Wonder Woman, says at one point, just a few spicy wings in. “So easy. Too easy,” she said. Evans said he would remember that. Later, Gadot jokes about Evans partner, who never has to eat the wings. She asked if the two split the money 50-50, adding that she has a good lawyer.

After the fifth wing, Gadot began to grow uncomfortable, removing her blazer. The sixth and seventh wings went down even harder. “My tongue is sweating,” Gadot says. “I’m so hot. Oh my God.”

“I’m killing all of my taste buds. All at once,” she adds.

“I feel like I’m eating death,” Gadot says, before eating number eight, Da Bomb sauce. After a tiny bite, she asks, “Is this enough?”

“I’m just interpreting this abstract dance,” Evans says, as Gadot is in obvious discomfort, tears in her eyes.

“It’s hard to talk,” Gadot says. “I know,” Evans says. “We’ve made an interview show and it’s hard to talk.”
Gal Gadot’s ‘Heart of Stone’ number one on Netflix in 6 Arab countries
Gal Gadot’s “Heart of Stone” is number one on Netflix in 93 countries, including in six Arab nations, Channel 12 reports.

The spy thriller released on August 11, takes the top spot in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman.

Several of those countries have in the past banned the Israeli star’s films.

In the film, Gadot plays Rachel Stone, a highly trained intelligence agent who is also a member of an even more secret international organization with no political or national allegiances, called The Charter, that works to preserve world peace. However, when villain Keya Dhawan (Bollywood A-lister Bhatt) steals the “heart” of the Charter, which is the source of its all its awesome technological power, Stone set off on a globe-trotting, heart-stopping, stunt-filled adventure to get it back.
Arabic subtitles for ‘Oppenheimer’ film omit references to Jews
The three-hour film “Oppenheimer,” which dramatizes the life of Jewish physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” has already earned more than $650 million worldwide. Depending on where one sees the film, it might be judenrein.

Arabic subtitles translate the word “Jew” as “stranger,” The National reported last week.

“Translated by a Lebanon-based company, the subtitles in the version released in the region omit mentions of Jews, using the term ‘ghurabaa’ instead, which is Arabic for ‘strangers’ or ‘foreigners,’” the Abu Dhabi-based daily reported. “In other instances, the word is avoided altogether. The commonly used word for ‘Jews’ in Arabic is ‘Yehudi.’”

A Universal Pictures representative told The National that it followed guidelines of Middle East censor boards. “There are topics we usually don’t tackle, and that is one of them. We cannot use the word ‘Jew,’ the direct translation in Arabic, otherwise it may be edited, or they ask us to remove it,” the representative said.

“In order to avoid that, so people can enjoy the movie without having so many cuts, we would just change the translation a little bit,” the spokesperson added.

“Jew” appears many times in the Koran.
How Yad Vashem protects the world's Holocaust memories
Senior officials at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the world’s best-known Holocaust museum, memorial and collection of archives, refer to the site as “the mountain”.

And it is indeed built, as ancient fortresses were, on a hilltop. A fortress is the right image. Because it is defending against a threat.

A visitor might even confuse it for the state-of-the-art headquarters of a Bond villain.

That thought crept up on me when I was shown around, hearing of plans to build a six-storey, maximum-security bunker — only one and a half storeys visible, the rest below ground — due to be opened in time for Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2024.

The thought returned as I was ushered into an operational centre where, around the clock, technicians watch a bank of screens showing attempted breaches of Yad Vashem’s digital defences.

Yad Vashem is second only to the nation’s government as the Israeli institution most frequently under cyber-attack. On a central screen the electronic bombardment was tabulated: Malware, Content Violation, Advanced Threats. Another display measured “named viruses”.

Those in charge were cagey about who was raining fire on them, but Yad Vashem is clearly the target of choice for a global army of anti-Jewish extremists and Holocaust deniers, determined to hit the memory bank of the Shoah.
Exhuming remains of 7,000 Sephardi Jews was ‘contravention of Jewish law’
Leading voices in the Sephardi Community have called for a memorial to be built for the 7,000 Jews whose bodies were reburied in unmarked mass graves in what has been described as a shocking contravention of Jewish law.

Historian Simon Schama called the 1974 exhumation of thousands of British Jews from an East End cemetery — including Benjamin Disraeli’s grandfather and the prize fighter Daniel Mendoza — a “sad history” and called for a “proper memorial”.

The remains, were moved to a site in Brentwood, Essex, after the community sold part of its Nuevo cemetery in Mile End, east London, to make way for new Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) buildings in 1973.

Sir Simon told The Guardian he hoped for a “proper memorial at Brentwood worthy of the thousands of 18th and 19th-century Sephardi Jews who were members of a great Jewish community in Britain”.

The original decision was the responisblity of S&P Community which has now acknowledged for the first time the reburial contravened Jewish law.

Rachel Fink, the community’s chief executive, told the newspaper rabbis had given approval for the move but because many of the graves were more than 200 years old, “bone disarticulation over time may have prevented effective reburial of some individuals, thus contravening Jewish law”.

Writing in 1974, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, a leading Jewish legal authority, described the decision to move the bodies a “great wrongdoing”.

The reburial of Jewish remains in this way was “forbidden according to Jewish law”, he said at the time.

Rabbi Mendy Korer, a Chabad chaplain at QMUL, acknowledged that the mass graves did not have stones marking the names of the deceased.

Describing the site the bodies were moved to, he said, the bones lie in “four large pits covered with rocks”, which are “surrounded by a metal railing” and set in land off a busy main road.
Archaeologists uncover 3,800-year-old vaulted passageway in Jezreel Valley
Archaeologists at the Tel Shimron excavations in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel have uncovered a rare and exquisitely preserved vaulted passageway from about 3,800 years ago. This remarkable find represents the first use of a corbelled mudbrick vault in a passageway in the southern Levant, providing a key missing link in the history of the arch in the region, according to excavation co-director Daniel Master.

Jewish history began about 4,000 years ago (the 17th century BCE) with the patriarchs – Abraham, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob.

Master added that the vault is “an ancestor to the mudbrick radial arch in the gate at Tel Dan and is an extraordinary example of Mesopotamian mudbrick technology.”

In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight like a bracket. It is a technique in which layered bricks are progressively stepped inward to create a gradually narrowing roof, and was commonly used at sites in Mesopotamia. But this is the first time such a mudbrick construction has been found in a passageway in the southern Levant, making it a rare and significant find showing connections across the fertile crescent.

On the southern side of the acropolis of the ancient city, archaeologists at Tel Shimron excavated a tower composed of over 9,000 well-preserved mudbricks and standing more than five meters high. The center of the structure contained a narrow corridor leading to the two-meter-long vaulted mudbrick passageway, which leads down into the city via mudbrick stairs and features a corbelled roof made of unfired brick adorned with white chalk stripes.

MARIO MARTIN, Master’s excavation co-director, added that corbelling is used on small tomb cysts at various sites in the Middle Bronze Age, both in Canaan and the Egyptian Delta. “Yet, a fully preserved mudbrick-built passageway with this type of corbelled vault is without parallel. Such structures, made of unfired mudbrick, almost never survive.”

At the entrance to the passageway, the archaeologists found an intact Middle Bronze Age vessel lying among ashy debris. The complete artifact, known as a “Nahariya Bowl,” is a seven-cupped offering vessel that gets its name from the site in northern Israel where it was first discovered in a cultic context. This find helps to date the tower complex to the Middle Bronze Age, roughly the same period when the kingdom of Tel Shimron (ancient Sham-anu) was powerful enough to reach the attention of the Egyptians, they said.
Marvel at ancient ruins, sea views atop a new national park
The ancient city of Hippos in northern Israel derives its name from the Greek word for “horse.” And yet, archeologists have yet to uncover racing grounds that might have once upon a time graced the place.

This glaring deficit aside, Hippos, or Sussita in Hebrew, is a stunning archeological site that recently became a national park in a bid to both make it more accessible and convenient for the public to visit and to safeguard the ruins and mosaics that adorn it.

“It’s a visually incredible and historically important archeological site,” Dror Ben-Yosef, northern district archeologist for the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, tells ISRAEL21c.

“The story of the city begins in the Hellenistic period in the third century BCE and grows and reaches its peak in the Roman period, when the city is planned and built according to what you could call the Roman standard, with everything that a city should have,” Ben-Yosef explains.

“Then, it becomes a distinctly Christian city during the Byzantine period. The city accordingly undergoes change, and seven churches – which we’ve uncovered – were built. The city began sliding back down with the Islamic conquest in the seventh century CE, and the last nail in its coffin was in 749, when a catastrophic earthquake shook the Land of Israel, and the city was destroyed and not settled again.”

What remains of Hippos, on the Golan Heights overlooking the Sea of Galilee, has been excavated for the past 30 years and has drawn growing numbers of visitors who’ve hiked up the mountain to marvel at the ruins.

This led the INPA to turn the site earlier this year into a proper national park with a visitors’ center, drinking water and shade.

“The INPA has around 10,000 sites all around Israel,” Ben-Yosef explains.

“Of these, around 70 of them are national parks open to the public. These are large sites with a critical mass of findings, such as Masada and Tzipori. We came to the conclusion that Sussita should join this group. There’s very high demand from the public, and we didn’t want them to visit and damage the ruins while also not enjoying a complete experience.”




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