Tuesday, August 22, 2023

08/22 Links Pt2: The Zionist Left’s 100-Year War Against the Zionist Right; New York City Mayor: Israel is my second home; Putin’s Aliyah Is in Danger

From Ian:

Yisrael Medad: The Zionist Left’s 100-Year War Against the Zionist Right
In according with the Basic Law: Government, the 37th Government of Israel was formed on December 29, 2022 having presented itself before the Knesset, announcing its guidelines of its policy, its make-up, and the distribution of functions among the Ministers, and merited an expression of confidence. Parliamentary democracy, following multiple elections and inter-party negotiations, won out. A coalition with a clear majority assumed power. But, then, something happened.

The government decided to proceed with its policy goals that were presented to the electorate during the election campaign.

Almost immediately, the arena for civic debate moved from the plenum hall and committee rooms to the streets. Ministers of the government, and most specifically, the Prime Minister, now serving for the third time in that position, were labeled “fascists”, “Hitler”, “traitor”, “dictatorship”, “destroying democracy”, “regime changers”, practicing a “coup” and so forth. The discourse became poisoned. Hi-tech company owners began moving their funds abroad as if they were pro-Palestinian BDS supporters. Highways and streets were, and continue to be, blockaded and closed down to traffic as demonstrators invaded. Strikes were initiated of various professions. Colleagues in industry, professional unions and academia found themselves bullied and threatened if they did not join in.

In the Constitution and Law Committee room, we were treated to Members of Knesset leaping over the table and approaching the chairman, MK Simcha Rothman, in a threatening manner, screaming and squawking a most raucous noise. Posters at rallies were decorated with S.S. lightning rods and even a few swastikas were observed. And the guillotines and hanging ropes returned from the Balfour Street protests.

Former and current politicians and senior army officers employed an extreme menacing vocabulary including using arms, breaking through barricades, war (“What is needed is to move to the next stage, the stage of war, and war is not waged with speeches. War is waged in a face-to-face battle, head-to-head and hand-to-hand, and that is what will happen here,” said Ehud Olmert) and the inevitable comparison since Yair Golan’s infamous 2016 “Processes” speech to Nazi Germany 1933 (“There were Dichters and Gallants and Barkats and Yuli Edelsteins there too. Good people. But there was one man – Hitler and next to him disturbed fanatics like Goebbels and Gering,” said former IDF Chief Education Officer Nechemia Dagan) and more.

For those a bit new to Zionist politics or to those for whom history is perhaps too boring, permit me a compact and concise review of the 100-year war the Zionist Left has been waging against the Zionist Right. That struggle is not as much over values, goals, beliefs and p[olicies but rather who will control the institutions of power. The issues prior to 1948 were who will supervise the defense policy, who will be allowed to immigrate, who will be employed, who will receive land for settlement and who will be represent the Yishuv in various international forums. These face-offs continued into the first two decades of the existence of the state.

The divide, I would suggest, began during World War One.
Legal Questions Raised About NGO Funding Judicial Reform Protests
Nonprofit organization Blue and White Future hauled in over 27 million NIS to fund protests against the Netanyahu government’s judicial reform legislation. This organization was established in 2009, many years before judicial reform was on the legislative agenda. The stated goals of this organization are to promote a two-state solution or a one-sided separation from the Palestinians. But as protests against the judicial reform continue, Blue and White Future is doing all it can to hide its original goals. Furthermore, its massive fundraising of protests against judicial reform legislation is raising questions about whether it has violated its legal status as a nonprofit organization.

The fundraising engine behind the judicial reform protests
Anyone interested in contributing to the protest against the judicial reform has been directed in recent months to donate through an organization called ‘Blue and White Future‘. This nonprofit organization provides the financial and organizational infrastructure for various protest groups such as ‘Brothers in Arms’. It is responsible for the “must resist” campaign that has been splashed on billboards across the country for the past few weeks. It is also behind the financing of a significant part of the protest’s field activities, transportation, and advertising, as well as supplying protest equipment and paraphernalia.

According to the crowdfunding campaign of ‘Free in our country‘, the organization’s conduit for raising funds, it is the “exclusive and official body that includes and finances about 150 different protest centers throughout the country” and supports “about 200 protest groups,” among others “doctors, architects, lawyers, economists, the high-tech industry, veterans of the defense establishment, students, military training schools and more.”

The budgets collected by the NGO is intended for “buses, stages, signs, flags, amplification equipment and screens, safety and authority approvals, branded clothing and more”, for “special projects – demonstrations in front of the houses of members of the Knesset, marches and the Democracy Outpost in Jerusalem, the shutdown of the economy”, and to “put banners balconies, bridges and billboards across the country”. For these purposes, the association has raised more than NIS 27 million in recent months.

Blue and White Future hides its real purpose
On various fundraising pages, Blue and White Future is described as an NGO “established with the aim of promoting democratic values ​​in Israel” and that the current battle is to stop Israel from becoming a dictatorship, as a result of the judicial reform. This portrayal of the organization is actually false..

Blue and White Future NGO was founded well before judicial reform became a prominent topic of discussion. Its establishment took place in November 2009, a few months subsequent to the Likud’s electoral triumph and Netanyahu’s return to power.

The goals of the NGO, as stated in the organization’s documents from its inception until today, were completely different: “To strengthen and highlight the public support for the two-state solution for two peoples, Israel as a national home for the Jewish people and Palestine as the state of the Palestinian nation in order to preserve the nature of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.” That is, the NGO was established in order to promote a political agenda, and specifically the idea of ​​two states for two peoples. A close look at the organization’s activities over the years, including on its website and now on its Facebook page, will see that this is indeed the central issue it has engaged in.


Noa Tishby: Modern antisemitism on the rise | GZERO World with Ian Bremmer
Antisemitism feels like an ugly trend is back in fashion. And the numbers back that up.

Antisemitism is nothing new. An ancient Greek historian in the second century BCE railed against the “ridiculous practices” of the Jews and the “absurdity of their law.”

But lately, it feels like an ugly trend is back in fashion. And the numbers back that up. The Anti-Defamation League found 3,700 instances of antisemitic harassment, vandalism, or assault around the country last year, the highest number in its 43 years of tracking. And then there was the horrific attack at Pittsburg’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, which killed 11 people and remains the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the United States.

At what point do extremist politics—whether on the Right OR Left—become hate? And where do you draw the line between criticizing Israeli policies and being antisemitic? To help me wade through these difficult questions is the Israeli actress, writer, and activist Noa Tishby. She served as Israel’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism before Prime Minister Netanyahu dismissed her for speaking out against his controversial judicial reform agenda.

And later, an early look at a new film about one of Israel’s most controversial leaders (present Prime Minister excluded). Golda Meir, Israel's first and still only female prime minister, was beloved until her handling of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Now a new film starring Helen Mirren tries to reframe her tarnished legacy.


Eric Adams: New York City Mayor: Israel is my second home
New York City and Israel share an unbreakable bond. Roughly one in eight New Yorkers is of Jewish heritage, and we are home to the largest number of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel. Like Jerusalem, where Jewish, Armenian, Christian, Muslim, and other communities live side by side, we are also a multi-ethnic, multi-national, and multi-religious city.

I always say, the “dash” in our names is our secret weapon – Jewish-American, Black-American, Muslim-American. Our diversity fuels New York City’s creativity, entrepreneurship, and resilience.

This diversity and the freedom for all communities to live together without fear is a treasure that must be protected at all costs; hatred and intolerance have no place in New York City, and should have no place elsewhere. Sadly, antisemitism is on the rise across the nation and around the globe, as are other hate crimes.

Our Asian-American brothers and sisters became targets during COVID; and our Black, Muslim, and LGBTQ+ neighbors are also under attack. It is vital for everyone on the global stage to work in tandem to combat hatred and violence.

This week, I am visiting Israel to strengthen our partnership and share best practices, both in terms of promoting goodwill among diverse people and keeping all our communities safe.

Just last month, members of our administration, including Police Commissioner Edward Caban and I, met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and had a productive discussion on how we can collaborate in areas like security, antisemitism, terrorism, and technology. We will continue to build on these discussions and deploy what we learn about security, precision screening, ground protection, and technology for the safety and benefit of all New Yorkers.

DURING OUR trip, we will also learn about and form new connections with Israel’s dynamic social services network, and discuss ways in which the country was able to absorb and integrate thousands of immigrants.


In 2022, AIPAC opposed Shri Thanedar. This month he went to Israel with the group.
Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) — then a state representative aiming to make the leap to Congress — was a top target for AIPAC’s super PAC in 2022, which spent millions opposing him in the Democratic primary. Earlier this month, as a first-term lawmaker, Thanedar traveled to Israel with the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation, and says that he’s worked to educate himself about Israel, putting any tensions with Michigan’s pro-Israel community in the past.

Last year’s opposition to Thanedar was driven in part by his co-sponsorship of a resolution in the Michigan House urging Congress to halt aid to Israel, referring to it as an “apartheid state” and accusing the country of violating human rights. By the time he launched his congressional bid, Thanedar had distanced himself from that resolution and touted a more pro-Israel line.

Thanedar told Jewish Insider in an interview last week following his trip to Israel that he has gone through a “big learning experience,” as a candidate and since coming to Congress, he said he’s spent more time studying the issues, researching legislation involving Israel, meeting with members of the Jewish and pro-Israel communities and now visiting the Jewish state.

“When I worked in the state house, we hardly focused on foreign policy,” he explained.

“[Israel] certainly is a vibrant, liberal democracy. No doubt about that,” Thanedar continued. “And they are an important ally of the United States. It’s a dangerous region. Israel is really the only democracy surrounded by some hostile elements.”

Thanedar said he was particularly struck by conversations during his recent trip to Israel with people who had been impacted by terrorist rocket attacks and by seeing the strategic threats to Israel firsthand, as well as gaining a new understanding of the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.

“It highlighted why protecting or helping Israel defend herself, by herself, is very essential and critical to our national security and our national interest,” the Michigan congressman said. “It’s a relationship that is mutually beneficial.”

Thanedar said he concluded from the trip that a two-state solution is not imminent, and questioned whether the Palestinian Authority “actually has the authority to deliver a peace, even if a peace agreement is reached.” But, he added, the U.S. is the only international power in the position to broker peace and has a “moral authority” to do so.

“We should continue to engage and stay involved and not give up on the possibility of a peaceful Middle East,” Thanedar continued. “There is no one else that can provide that leadership. The United States is in a unique position.”
Australian government playing politics and law games with Israel
Every cause has to have a catchphrase and OPT is the Coca-Cola of them all. Repeat nonsense enough times and it: (a) makes perfect sense; (b) disguises a plot as a policy; (c) turns fiction into fact. After five decades of repetition OPT has slipped into the skin of truth with barely a sigh. The hard reality, though difficult to stomach, is that there has never been Palestinian Arab territory for Israel to occupy for the simple reason that it captured, fair and square, Gaza from Egypt and the 'West Bank' from Jordan. Rattle Middle East wars and laws upside down and inside out but nothing remotely ‘Palestinian territory’ falls out.

There are historical events one may dare anyone to dispute. In the war of 1948 Egypt took the Gaza Strip, and Jordan took Judea and Samaria, the so-named “West Bank.” Egypt did not claim sovereignty in Gaza, but in 1950 Jordan annexed Judea and Samaria.

Penny Wong to kindly attend: Jordan’s annexation was not recognized by the international community, other than by Pakistan and Britain. Give her a chair please someone because Arab countries themselves objected to what Jordan did. The Arab League threatened to kick it out. Nineteen years later during the Six Day War of June 1967 Gaza and the “West Bank”, earmarked, Penny Wong, for the national home of the Jewish people by the binding Mandate Charter of San Remo of 1920, came under Israeli control.

Penny Wong, for nineteen illegal years Jordan ruled the 'West Bank'. From 1948 to 1967 it could have created a state of Palestine. It did not – a crying shame, because Penny Wong would have told the truth asserting that Israel occupies PalestinianArab territory. Instead she tells it all wrong. The King of Jordan, if you please, gave 'West Bank' dwellers Jordanian nationality!

Expelled from a completely exposed dugout your propagandist scampers to the next, firing a volley from landmark Security Council Resolution 242 of 1968. This required Israel to withdraw from some of the territory it had conquered. No! come shouts from the enemy camp. No, no no! Resolution 242 told Israel to withdraw from all territory not from just some of it. Some or all—quite how it connects to the OPT narrative is not explained. It could be a bridge too far to those wanting Palestine to prevail. It cannot. Resolution 242 of 1968 was adopted to end the state of belligerency between the warring parties. Who were none other than Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. No Palestinian Arab people in sight with Palestinian territories to be occupied.

So here’s the puzzle: when and how did the territories become ‘Palestinian’ and 'occupied' by Israel? But wait. That would be putting the cart before the horse. At what propitious point in time did the Palestinian Arabs emerge as a people? After all, there must be Palestinians to claim their Palestinian territory. Not to be pedantic, select an assortment of Ivy League law professors staking their comfortable careers on OPT, and ask them to do a simple thing: please refer to one international instrument of law that refers to the Palestinian Arab people. In short, to hold fast to OPT is to indulge a vivid daydream.

How can it possibly be that professors – of international law! – indulge in that pleasant pastime, and not just some but the vast majority? In fact they happen to be the biggest daydreamers of all. There’s even a sub-specie. It consists of law professors so transfixed by the article of faith that Israel occupies Palestinian Arab territory as to volunteer their very expensive time to pursue the occupying Jews. As a UN ‘Rapporteur’ they work stints at the Human Rights Council, and the reports they submit to Council members disclose that they act as cop and prosecutor in one.

These operatives with a fancy title are not your quintessential ivory tower academics. Consider Richard Falk the ex Princeton Law Professor. The board of Human Rights Watch removed Falk for toxic anti-Semitism. For one thing there was the cartoon he posted of a Jew in the guise of a slavering dog which even Nava Pillay the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, as anti-Semitic as they come, conceded was a Jew-hating cartoon. Falk also accused Israel of Nazi methods and maintained a cosy relationship with Hamas the terrorist group. He advocated for BDS and recommended an oddball book titled “The wandering Who?”

More wayward still were Falk’s conspiratorial beliefs. How many professors of law espouse that the “US was behind 9/11” or blame Israel for being the ultimate cause of the Boston bombing. (“UN’s Richard Falk endorses 9/11 ‘inside job’ theory.” UN Watch, March 21, 2011.) Yet Falk was not untypical of the Rapporteurs that succeeded him, each one more brazenly bigoted than the last.

The misnomer OPT is no storm in a teacup. To the contrary, it makes a life or death difference. On its back terror groups get leeway and money to sow murder and mayhem. Out of the contagious and lucrative lie sprang the “cycle of violence” between ‘dispossessed’ Palestinian Arabs and ‘usurper’ Israelis. The cycle means that the former have a legitimate reason to kill the latter who have a right (reluctantly given in bad faith) to self defense. And even that disgusting ‘latitude’ has been degraded. Today the mandate of the Human Rights Council Rapporteur to criminalize Israel has passed to the hands of Professor Francesca Albanese.

“Israel” she said, “has a right to defend itself, but can’t claim it when it comes to the people it oppresses or whose land it colonizes.” Her offering Jews the right to life with one hand and confiscating it with the other is cute. Supposedly Penny Wong representing Australia at the UN would call that even-handed justice.


Putin’s Aliyah Is in Danger
For the past decade, Israel’s relationship with Russia has rested on a series of fragile understandings rather than any deep friendship or shared vision of the world. This kind of equivocation toward Moscow became much riskier when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The U.S. pressured Israel to openly oppose Russia and send arms to Ukraine despite the Russian military’s control of the airspace over Syria, on Israel’s northern border. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict presented Israel with the unpleasant choice between angering its U.S. patron or antagonizing a country that could freeze its ability to strike covert Iranian bases or arms convoys to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

For Israel, the Ukraine invasion also brought up issues that went beyond the immediate geopolitical impact. Israel was founded to be the world’s final backstop of Jewish safety in a hostile world, which meant keeping an open immigration pathway for Jews in potential danger. The future of the estimated 500,000 Jews in Russia, some unknown number of whom might leave for Israel as the result of the crisis, became Jerusalem’s top priority with Moscow.

Shortly after the war began in early 2022, Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration created an expedited track for immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Under normal procedures, an aliyah applicant has to provide evidence they are eligible to immigrate under Israel’s Law of Return before they can leave their country of origin. The Soviet Union banned nearly all forms of Jewish communal life and organized religious practice, meaning that even before the war a would-be oleh from these three countries often didn’t have their parents’ ketubah or records of any relative’s Jewish burial on hand. An organization called Nativ, which was founded in the early 1950s as a spy network facilitating clandestine immigration from the Soviet Union to Israel, now resolves these issues by using other types of records, like family histories or evidence of participation in Jewish institutions, to confirm an aliyah applicant’s heritage. This process can sometimes take several months, and with the war endangering the life and liberty of perhaps as many as 750,000 Jews spread across the three belligerent states, Israel’s immigration authorities came up with a new alternative.

Applicants could now request to leave their home countries immediately and go through the rest of the aliyah process once they had safely reached Israeli territory. The process could start online, and the price of the plane ticket to Israel would be reimbursed once an applicant’s eligibility for aliyah was confirmed a few months later. Avichai Kahana, director general of Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, told Tablet that some 60%-65% of olim from Russia used this “one-stop shop” option between the invasion in late February 2022 and the end of that November. Use of the track declined to around 50% of applicants by the end of the year, as the Ukraine war and Russia’s internal oppression and mass mobilization went from being a fast-moving emergency to a seemingly long-term feature of the global landscape. In June only 200 out of 3,000 Russians who moved to Israel used the fast track, according to the Times of Israel.

That month, the ministry announced it was largely eliminating the expedited option. Natan Sharansky, the former head of the Jewish Agency and a dissident who became one of the icons of the Soviet aliyah movement, told Tablet he is concerned that the decision might make it more difficult for Russian Jews to flee Vladimir Putin’s wartime crackdown. “Those who I know who really had to leave because of the political situation, they all used this,” Sharansky said.
CAMERA UK co-editor interviewed on Israeli podcast
On August 15th our co-editor Adam Levick appeared on the podcast of Israeli commentator and public speaker Rolene Marks to discuss the CAMERA webinar he gave the previous week titled ‘More than Just Victims: How the media whitewash Palestinian responsibility for the conflict with Israel“.


Regulator criticised as charity registered after antisemitism complaint
The Charity Commission has been criticised by campaigners after an organisation accused of antisemitism registered with the regulator earlier this year.

Cricklewood Muslim Youth Trust (CMYT) registered as a charity in January despite the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) previously raising concerns with the Commission about the organisation’s social media activity.

CAA complained to the regulator about a social media post by CMYT in December 2021, screenshotted by the National Secular Society (NSS), which read “Keep away from the enemies of Allaah [sic] the Jews & Christians” and appears to have since been deleted.

In response to the complaint, the Commission reportedly informed CMYT, which was not registered at the time, of its “requirement to register as a charity and about compliance with the legal duties of trustees”.

CAA and the NSS both criticised the regulator’s response to the complaint, with the former saying it was “extraordinary that the Charity Commission should consider such an organisation fit for charitable status”.

The Commission told Civil Society that charity registration is a matter of law and that it had determined that CMYT met the legal test for charitable status and should therefore be registered.


YouTube Animation Channel Switches Out Israeli for Palestinian Flag
YouTube channel The Infographics Show has 13.3 million subscribers with a further 6 million on Facebook and 1.7 million on TikTok, where it publishes “animated motion infographic videos, made in a fun and entertaining way.” Clearly, this channel has an enormous reach.

According to The Infographics Show, “Facts are fun, but most are presented in boring and badly edited videos.” Unfortunately, the channel showed little regard for the facts — fun or otherwise — in an August 15 video about the remarkable 1976 Israeli operation to rescue Israeli and Jewish hostages from Entebbe, Uganda, which has been edited to take a deliberate jab at Israel.

Throughout the professionally produced animation, Israeli characters appear not against a backdrop of their national flag but that of the Palestinians.

Here (4:56), a released hostage is questioned by Israeli authorities. But what’s that flag doing in the background?

On the left is a representative of the terrorists. In the middle is Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. On the right is a representative of the Israeli government — again, against the background of a Palestinian flag (5:55).

Even more bizarrely, there is no consistency when it comes to erasing the Israeli flag in the video. Here, for example (6:27), the Israeli government is represented with the correct flag.

But only seconds later (7:13), the narrator discusses the possibility of a crisis between Uganda and Israel. Note the Palestinian flag.


Leftist Muslim Activist Who Attacked “Gay” Ideologies Blames GOP for Muslim Opposition to LGBTQ
What other possible explanation could there be for this reaction by Muslims other than the Koran, over a thousand years of Islamic belief and well… Islam.

So obviously it had to be the GOP.

“Finished my Friday prayer at my local mosque where the imam prayed we would be saved from “the LGBTQ in our homes.” Democrats are underestimating how pervasive GOP CRT & trans fear messaging/ propaganda has taken hold in religious communities & suburbs,” Wajahat Ali tweeted.

Wajahat Ali, a popular lefty columnist and media figure, not only seems to have forgotten the teachings of Islam, but his own words.

I wrote about Ali a decade ago when he was attacking the Freedom Center before he underwent a post-Islamist makeover.

During his college days, Wajahat Ali was on the board of the Muslim Students Association. The MSA is the original Brotherhood front group, which the NYPD called an “incubator for radicalism” and former FBI Special Agent John Guandolo described as “a recruitment tool to bring Muslims into the Brotherhood.”

After the inauguration, Ali warned that Obama; “must at the very least interact with democratically elected Muslim governments and representatives, such as Hamas and Mahmoud Ahmadinijad of Iran” and added that “a wholesale demonization and rejection of Islamic based governments and political groups is an affront to the Muslims who elected them.”

Wajahat Ali’s co-authorship of a report by a left-wing think tank is even more perverse as he also claims that “the hard ‘left’ hates you because you are part of an organized religion, have certain beliefs contradictory to radical feminist and gay ideologies.”

I asked Wajahat if he had been brainwashed by the GOP in 2011. Predictably, no reply.


‘Jew Thief:’ French Cops Release Man Detained for Antisemitic Vandalism of Kosher Restaurant
A man arrested by French police for the vandalism of a kosher restaurant in Paris on Saturday was released from custody on Monday morning, according to a statement from the public prosecutor’s office in the suburb of Nanterre.

The statement said the man had been released “without prosecution for lack of sufficient evidence to [incriminate the suspect] at this stage,” the AFP news agency reported.

The entrance to the restaurant — a popular sandwich shop called “Mr. Shnitz” in the Levallois-Peret district of the French capital, home to a large Jewish community — was plastered with antisemitic graffiti. The words “Jew” and “Thief” were daubed several times in large black letters on the restaurant’s storefront. Scaffolding was erected outside the restaurant to mask what the local municipality described as the “filthy slogans” on display.

Emphasizing that the incident was deserving of “particular attention,” the authorities pledged to pursue “all avenues” of investigation.

The vandalism drew strong condemnation from the Jewish community and French political leaders across the spectrum. Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, condemned what he described as “the unbearable antisemitic inscriptions,” praising the police for their initial arrest of the man on Saturday after he was spotted on CCTV footage.

Boris Vallaud — the president of the Socialist Party (PS) deputies in the French National Assembly — offered his support to the restaurant owners as he denounced the “disgusting, abject antisemitism.” In a tweet, he observed that “we are not in Germany in the 30s, but in 2023 in Levallois … our vigilance against antisemitism must never falter.”

Thomas Portès, a deputy from the main far left party La France Insoumise (LFI — “France Rising”), declared separately that “everywhere in the country the extreme right is pouring out its hatred … We will never allow antisemitic remarks to pass. NEVER [sic].”

However, neither the police nor the public prosecutor have so far identified a supporter of the far right as responsible for the vandalism.
Austria to convert Hitler’s birth home into police station
Austrian authorities will press forward with a plan to convert Adolf Hitler’s first home into a police station, replete with a human rights training center, AFP reported on Monday.

Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in the town of Braunau am Inn in modern-day Austria, and lived there until the age of three.

In 2016, Vienna took control of the building in a bid to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.

The expropriation came after years of legal wrangling with the building’s longtime owner, Gerlinde Pommer, who had been renting the property to the Interior Ministry since the 1970s and refused to sell or adequately maintain it.

Austrian director Guenter Schwaiger, who is due to release a documentary about the house later this month, told AFP that plans will “always be suspected” of being “in line with the dictator’s [Hitler] wishes.”

Schwaiger cited the discovery of a local newspaper article from May 10, 1939, saying Hitler’s wish was to have his birth home converted into offices for local authorities.

Schwaiger called on the Austrian government to rethink the move.
Bradley Cooper’s Prosthetic Nose for Leonard Bernstein Film Not Antisemitic, ADL Says
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has defended Bradley Cooper for wearing a prosthetic nose to play Leonard Bernstein in an upcoming Netflix biopic about the prolific Jewish composer and conductor after the actor was accused of perpetuating Jewish stereotypes.

“Throughout history, Jews were often portrayed in antisemitic films and propaganda as evil caricatures with large, hooked noses,” an ADL spokesperson told The Algemeiner. “This film, which is a biopic on the legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein, is not that.”

The American Jewish Committee similarly told TMZ on Monday about Cooper’s prosthetic nose in the film: “We do not believe that this depiction harms or denigrates the Jewish community.”

Bernstein was the son of Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants to the US and died in 1990. He was best known for writing the music for West Side Story and won 16 Grammy Awards, seven Emmys, and two Tonys throughout his career.

Las week, Netflix released the official trailer for Maestro — which Cooper, who is not Jewish, directed, co-wrote and starred in. He plays the lead role and actress Carey Mulligan plays his wife, Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein.

Since the trailer’s release, many users on social media have criticized Cooper’s use of a prosthetic nose to portray the late composer, saying it amplifies the antisemitic stereotype that Jews have noticeably large noses and noting the prosthetic is larger than the composer’s actual nose.
Israel and Jordan inch closer to water-for-energy deal
Last week, Israel and Jordan signed a letter of intent in Abu Dhabi for a so-called “water-for-energy” project, under which Jordan will build a massive solar farm in the desert that will generate clean energy to be sold to Israel in return for desalinated water.

“This is going to be the flagship example of bilateral relations and also of the Israeli integration into the region,” said Oded Eran, a senior research fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies and former Israeli ambassador to Jordan.

The idea was first announced in 2021 when Jordan planned to export 600 megawatts of solar power from its southern desert to Israel. In return, Israel would provide the water-scarce kingdom with 200 million cubic meters of desalinated water from the Mediterranean.

“This clearly makes use of the energy advantages of Jordan and Israel in the sense of the proximity of quantities of water that can be made available by desalination on the Israeli side, and the large areas that can be used in Jordan to produce solar energy,” Eran explained.

It is expected that the agreement will be signed during the COP28 climate conference, which will be held in Dubai at the end of the year. The project will be funded by the United Arab Emirates.

“I think it’s absolutely necessary in order to secure the financial source for such a project to have the UAE involved to ensure its success,” Eran said.

The project has been harshly criticized by water and energy experts in Jordan as well as political activists.

Water expert Dr. Duraid al-Mahasneh told The Media Line that Jordan is facing an “existential challenge, and this understanding or agreement will help alleviate the problem of a water crisis in Jordan, but it is not the solution.”
Israeli gamers win top prize at Saudi Arabia's Gamers8 festival
Israeli gamers on Team Vitality took home the top prize at Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament at the Gamers8: The Land of Heroes esports festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Monday, beating out ENCE.

The team, based out of France and which dubs itself as one of Europe's largest esports clubs, featured a number of players, two of which, Spinx (Lotan Giladi) and flameZ (Shahar Shushan) hail from the Jewish state.

Spinx himself was signed onto Vitality's roster in the summer of 2022, having previously been one of the star members of the ENCE roster, flameZ, however, joined far more recently, replacing the Danish player Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen on the roster.

Israeli CS:GO gamers emerge victorious at Gamers8
The two Israelis performed well throughout Gamers8, a massive eight-week gaming event that featured a 16-team CS:GO tournament, with the two having helped push ahead to the semifinals after dominating Natus Vincere.

In the finals against ENCE, flameZ and Spinx had to face off against fellow Israeli Guy "NertZ" Iluz, though in the end, Vitality, led by French player Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut, managed to win the day, with ZywOo even beating NertZ out to win the MVP spot.

Ultimately, this victory helps Vitality shoot right back to the top of the leaderboard and collect most of the tournament's $1 million prize pool.

But not everything was celebratory at the event as the Israeli players faced some of their own challenges.

Though efforts are now openly being made to try and normalize ties between Jerusalem and Riyadh, those ties are still only theoretical. As such, some extra security was needed.

According to Spinx, the three Israeli players had security with them 24/7 due to the relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia. However, there were ultimately no issues and Spinx said he felt safe and welcomed in the country.
In his latest novel, James McBride defuses the ‘dynamite’ of Black-Jewish relations
James McBride’s latest novel began as a book about a Jewish camp, and “ended up being a book about equality.”

Set in the small town of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” opens in 1972 when construction workers discover a body and a mezuzah at the bottom of a well. To unfold what happened, the narrative travels back to 1925 in the Chicken Hill neighborhood of Pottstown, where immigrant Jews and struggling Black families find common cause in a town sharply divided by racial, ethnic and religious differences.

“Anytime you start talking about Black-Jewish relations, you’re dealing with dynamite,” said McBride, who told the story of his mixed-race childhood and his white Jewish mother in the classic 1995 memoir “The Color of Water.” “You say one word and people are ready to throw you out the window. But there was and there remains a lot of love, a lot of getting along that happens. There’s a lot of cooperation, and there needs to be given the times we are living in.”

There’s a glancing reference to a Jewish summer camp near the end of the novel, but, as McBride explained last week at an event hosted by the New York Jewish Week and UJA-Federation of New York, the book was inspired by his experience working at The Variety Club Camp for Handicapped Children, a Jewish-owned summer camp for children with disabilities outside of Philadelphia, while on his summer breaks from Oberlin College. Indeed, its late Jewish director, Sy Friend, receives a grateful acknowledgement from McBride in an foreword.

“The camp was open to everyone,” he told interviewer Sandee Brawarsky at the event. “The camp was very, very integrated… racially and religiously. The way Sy ran things really changed my life. It was a camp for handicapped, so-called ‘disabled’ children. The way he did things was just extraordinary. The staff was like the United Nations; it was very diverse, long before that word became a part of American vocabulary. He loved the kids. He was gay and hid it. He was just a unique person and we all loved it.”

Although Friend does not appear in the book, his spirit infuses its pages. Its central characters, Moshe and Chona (which McBride said is pronounced “Sho-na”) are a Jewish couple who own a theater and a grocery store, which loses money because Chona extends easy credit to her Black neighbors. When they take in a 12-year-old deaf Black boy whom the state wants to put away in a notorious institution for people with intellectual disabilities, they bring together the community at large to protect him.

“I wanted to write a book about that for many years, and I tried unsuccessfully for a long time. Chapter after chapter wasn’t any good,” McBride told the virtual audience of more than 1,200 people. “When I put things together and looked at it, the only chapter that seemed to work was the chapter about this guy, Moshe, who in the book, and in real life, was a Romanian Jewish immigrant and theater owner who donated the land for the camp. So I scrapped all the other chapters and just went dove right in at Moshe. That’s how the book was born.”
The race to save Mosul’s last synagogue
The graceful pointed arches and brickwork in muted earth tones — azure blue, burnt sienna and yellow ochre — evoke a long-ago Jewish past in the now nearly ruined Sassoon Synagogue in the old Jewish quarter of this northern Iraqi city. It is the only surviving synagogue in Mosul, which, prior to Israel’s creation in 1948, was home to a thriving Jewish population of nearly 6,000. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the synagogue has been used to dump garbage, its mikveh transformed into a barn for horses.

A year after the city was liberated from ISIS in 2017 following the U.S.-led military offensive, remnants of historical religious places of worship, monuments and museums began to emerge from the rubble of war. One was the Sassoon Synagogue. According to UNESCO, 80% percent of the city’s cultural heritage, including the Jewish district, was destroyed.

Now, an effort led by several Iraqi Jews is underway to preserve the synagogue, and with it the Jewish heritage of Mosul that is in peril of being lost forever. The effort comes as numerous international cultural organizations dedicate funds and manpower to rebuilding the city’s important historic landmarks, such as the Great Mosque of al-Nuri and its distinctive “hunchback” leaning minaret, both of which ISIS blew up in 2017, and Our Lady of the Hour Church (Al-Sa’aa in Arabic).

“The Sassoon Synagogue is the only surviving one in Mosul and its preservation is important as a symbol and a reminder of the coexistence that existed in Iraq throughout history,” Edwin Shuker, an Iraqi-born Jew who visited the site in 2019 and continues to champion for its reconstruction, told Jewish Insider. “I continue to champion the protection and preservation of what is left of Jewish landmarks in Iraq, particularly the shrines of the prophets.”

But for those like Shuker trying to save the Sassoon Synagogue, a significant roadblock has recently emerged, one that puts the effort squarely in the crosshairs of the complicated politics of the Middle East.

Despite a desire by international organizations, notably the Swiss-based International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas ALIPH, to reconstruct the synagogue, the Iraqi parliament passed a law in May 2022 — “Criminalizing Normalization and Establishment of Relations with the Zionist Entity” — that has made it nearly impossible to move forward. The law forbids any Iraqi inside or outside the country from connecting with any Israeli, or any Zionist. Those who disobey face the prospect of life in prison or even death.

Shuker said ALIPH designated funds to reconstruct the synagogue, but that the project has now been frozen due to the new Iraqi law criminalizing any relations with Israel.

“Iraq is known as the cradle of civilizations and these sites, including the Sassoon Synagogue, are part of our shared heritage,” explained Shuker.

Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the vast majority of Iraqi Jews were displaced and deported to Israel, and by the early 1950s no more than 8,000 remained from a peak of 150,000.

The systematic destruction of their memory and heritage going back 2,600 years became part of Iraq’s state policy.

In the wake of the Jewish expulsions in the 1950s, shrines of the biblical prophets Ezra, Ezekiel and Jonah were turned into mosques and hundreds of synagogues disappeared, except for the Meir Toeg synagogue in Baghdad. Miraculously, the Sassoon Synagogue in Mosul survived, but was badly damaged.

Trying to resurrect the Jewish memory of the city and help rebuild the synagogue is also dangerous now, particularly following the kidnapping of Russian-Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov in Baghdad in June this year.

Still, some Iraqis are championing to preserve the Jewish memory in Mosul and greater Iraq.




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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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