Wednesday, August 23, 2023

08/23 Links Pt2: David Collier: A point or ten about the Palestinian flag; Exposing Tucker Carlson's dark side; BBC News reports an “attack on a car”

From Ian:

David Collier: A point or ten about the Palestinian flag
I recently spent a night in Belgium doing some research. As soon as I came out of the Brussels Midi Eurostar station I was confronted with a huge image of the Palestinian flag that had been graffitied onto one of the station walls. I took a photo of the flag – and posted it in a tweet – noting my discomfort.

That simple statement of fact – that the Palestinian flag can be viewed as a symbol of hate, went viral – receiving over 3.8 million views – and over 3,280 comments. For several days my notification feed was a tsunami of abuse. Some even suggested that my discomfort made me ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic’:

Most of the comments were just mocking. After all they said – ‘it is only a flag’. This is a ridiculous position, more so given that I can think of dozens of examples of ‘only a flag’ that most right-minded individuals (left and right) would find threatening or offensive. Like many emblems of hate – the problem lies in what the Palestinian flag represents – and what many of those waving it support. Only a fool would believe that the person who placed that graffiti on the walls of the Brussels Midi station has any good intentions vis-a-vis Jewish people in Israel.

Ignorance on this subject is everywhere, so here are ten points looking at what the Palestinian flag actually means – and why Jewish people have every right to view it as offensive:

1. The truth hidden in plain sight: 1964
Firstly, let me put the record straight. At the start of the 20th century there was no ‘Palestinian flag’ – just as there was no ‘Palestinian people’. Before the national Palestinian identity was created as a weapon with which to fight Zionism, Arabs under the mandate saw themselves as part of the greater Islamic or Arab nations. In August 1929, while Arabs massacred Jews throughout the British Mandate area, the Arabs in Nablus tried to revolt against the British. Briefly declaring independence, they raised the Turkish flag:

This next clarification was made during the Arab revolt in the late 1930s. That the ‘Arab nationalists fly a variety of flags, generally Islamic green’:

Only in May 1964 when the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was established, did they fully adopt what we now know as the Palestinian flag – as the flag of the Palestinian people (not the flag of ‘Palestine’, that came later). The PLO also created the ‘Palestinian Liberation Army’ to work towards the ‘ultimate goal of liberating the Arab homeland’. The flag was the banner under which they would unite to destroy Israel:

The flag is based on the flag of the Arab revolt (which is why the flags of so many Arab nations are similar). It was part of the pan-Arab cause, and the colours are in remembrance of Islamic conquests.

This point is reinforced by various Fatah spokespeople, such as this example from 1969. This Al-Fatah ‘commander’ did not care what flag he stood under – as long as it was an Arab one:

In 1964 the Arabs were in total control of the West Bank and Gaza, so the *ONLY* land they could ‘liberate’ was Israel behind the 1949 armistice lines. The very origin of the flag is one that sought the destruction of the Jewish state. This was the sole purpose of its adoption.

2. The age of terror
For six decades the PLO adopted ‘Palestinian flag’ has been associated with the slaughter of Jews and the desire to destroy Israel. Such as this threat from Arafat – as he pointed to the Palestinian flag – promising ‘the flag will fly on the road to Haifa‘ and they would keep their guns ‘raised‘ until they took Jerusalem:

And these were not idle threats. Wherever there was terror and the murder of Jews – the Palestinian flag was present:
Rachel Riley: 'I couldn't stay quiet during the Corbyn years'
Riley Riley has spoken about her role in confronting Labour Party antisemitism during the Corbyn years saying “I just saw something bad happening and just couldn’t stay quiet."

Riley, who was recently awarded an MBE in the 2023 New Year’s Honours list for her work raising awareness of the Holocaust and combating antisemitism, also discussed the abuse she received.

Speaking on the Spinning Plates podcast with Sophie Ellis-Bextor, she said: “When they [Labour] were rejected and lost 80 seats [in the 2019 general election], it was a sigh of relief but on the same day, I got a message wishing my daughter stillborn. It [the abuse] took its toll.”

Riley went on to say: "I know there are some brilliant people in Labour now really determined to get rid of these bad actors. So it kind of took the pressure off a lot.”

She also recalled a moment meeting Holocaust survivors and Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis at a charity honours event.
Watchdog launches campaign against alleged Morningstar anti-Israel ratings
A conservative, nonprofit watchdog is keeping up the pressure on Morningstar, despite a reduction in the number of Israel-linked companies on a blacklist maintained by the investment firm and its socially conscious investment ratings arm, Sustainalytics.

Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, told JNS that the nonprofit launched a new media campaign on Tuesday morning. It planned to send a mobile billboard to Morningstar’s Chicago headquarters and to run digital ads on the website of Crain’s Chicago for a week.

It is also starting what Hild referred to as “targeted digital campaign aimed at consumers and Morningstar employees.”

Morningstar reduced the number of businesses it tags with “controversy ratings” from 26 to 7, following pressure from a coalition of U.S. Jewish and pro-Israel organizations. The “controversy” tag, which can dissuade would-be investors, was applied to companies that operate beyond the 1949 armistice line, often referred to as the “Green Line.” Morningstar is also being investigated in at least 20 states for potential boycott, divestment and sanctions activity against the Jewish state.

Critics have called the “controversy” ratings a boycott due to the company’s use of anti-Israel sources for its ratings and the language it used originally, suggesting that businesses serving Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria should be flagged automatically. Morningstar has said consistently that it does not engage in BDS.

The investment firm agreed to implement changes in how it handles businesses inside what it calls the Israeli-Palestinian conflict area.

Hild told JNS that the reduction isn’t good enough.


House of the Rising Son
Alexander Soros takes control of his father’s $25 billion funding empire.

Soros’ Views on Israel, the Jewish People, & Anti-Semitism

In a July 2012 interview with Philanthropy News Digest, Soros articulated his thoughts regarding the American Jewish community’s perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

“When it comes to Israel and Palestine, I believe in consistency. If there’s one problem I have with the American Jewish community, it’s that it is at times rather inconsistent on the subject. I think that Jews have supported progressive causes because of the better part of their nature and that’s a great legacy; it’s really a part of Jewish exceptionalism. But I worry when Jews in America start to support policies in Israel which they wouldn’t support in America, which don’t allow for separation of church and state, which don’t give full rights to people who are technically living under occupation, and which don’t allow for immigration of people who aren’t Jews, or for non-Jews to become citizens. This is a problem because it gives credence to the old adage that Jews are liberal or left-wing only for their own self-interest; that they want a color-blind society with all these different ethnic groups because it makes them safer. So I think that whether you keep your values consistent is a true test. A lot of Americans Jews do support one thing here and another thing there, and that’s inconsistent.”

In 2012 as well, Soros:
donated at least $200,000 to the Jewish Council for Education and Research, a leftwing super PAC that strongly supported both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns
was one of the nation’s top donors to J Street, a Jewish organization highly critical of Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians and Hamas terrorists

In an April 2018 interview with the Israeli news outlet Ynetnews, Soros charged that conservative criticisms directed against his father were largely motivated by Jew-hatred:

“Since I was a child, I realized that—beyond all political reasons—the attacks against my father have an anti-Semitic tone. I read what they said about him in Hungary. They described him as the creator of an international Jewish plot. All the Elders of Zion and the Protocols in one man, in my father. They asked how dare this man come to central and Eastern European countries and dictate norms to them; who is this immigrant fighting against the discrimination of Muslims in America. They stepped up the attacks on him because they saw how influential he was.”

In the same interview:
Soros asserted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “ties with radical right-wing, anti-Semitic and corrupt elements contradicts Israel’s commitment as a Jewish state.”
When asked whether some of the money that he had donated to J Street might possibly have been used to support the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions movement, Soros answered: “In my opinion, the call for boycott and divestment of Israel is wrong. This movement is trying to follow in the footsteps of the South African precedent. Israel is a different story. I believe the occupation is bad, but we can’t hold every Israeli accountable for the occupation.”
Exposing Tucker Carlson's dark side

US professors using classrooms to spread antisemitic lies
While news of skyrocketing harassment of Jewish college students usually focuses on the antisemitic lies and uncivil behavior of anti-Israel demonstrators, less publicized are the slanders—even blood libels—against the Jewish state presented in formal classroom settings by professors.

Case in point: A professor at Princeton University, Satyel Larson, has announced a class in which students will be taught that Israel harvests Palestinian organs, starves Palestinian children to stunt their growth and maims Palestinians instead of killing them, to increase their suffering. This “information” is contained in a book written by the infamous antisemitic Rutgers professor Jasbir Puar and published by Duke University Press.

It’s one thing for students to engage in boisterous shouting matches with antisemites outside the student union. It’s quite another to tell the tenured professor of your history class that he and his materials are racist—especially if it’s true.

Perhaps the biggest question: How can any professor on any campus be permitted to spew racist lies to students as part of a course curriculum? Would anti-black or anti-Muslim slanders be tolerated in any college classroom in America? Why is there a double standard when hate speech is leveled at Jewish students and the Jewish state as part of their instruction?

Like the original blood libel—the claim that Jews use the blood of Christian children to make Passover matza bread—Puar’s blood libel has no basis in fact. There are no statistics gathered by UNICEF, the World Health Organization, or even the virulently antisemitic Palestinian Authority to substantiate her claims, nor is there any medical evidence.

Where is President Biden’ much-vaunted “strategic plan” to combat antisemitism when we need it? Where is his condemnation of professors Larson and Puar? Where is the outrage from Biden’s “antisemitism czar,” Deborah Lipstadt? Has Puar been punished or even chastised by her academic peers for her shoddy scholarship or blatant Jew hatred?

On the contrary, Puar has been rewarded. Her book, “The Right to Maim,” received an award from the National Women’s Studies Association. Puar also received a promotion at Rutgers—she was made head of her graduate program.

Lamentably, Puar’s antisemitic diatribe is just one of many examples of college-level faculty and administration espousing hate against Jewish students and the Jewish state. Take the famous case during the 2000s of professor Joseph Massad at Columbia University. Massad—who is Palestinian—was accused by students of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias. Indeed, he was quoted by the Columbia University Spectator saying Israel is “a Jewish supremacist and racist state” and that “every racist state should be threatened.” One of his lectures was titled, “Zionism and Jewish Supremacy.”

Massad was never punished. Rather, in 2009, Columbia University granted him tenure, a dramatic career advancement. The New York Times defended Massad as well, and actually insinuated that he was a victim of harassment by students who opposed his views.
Leading Jewish Civil Rights Group Applauds US Lawmakers Calling on Biden Admin to Resolve Campus Antisemitism Complaints
A leading Jewish civil rights group on Tuesday applauded a bipartisan group of 84 members of the US Congress for issuing a letter that urged the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to clear its backlog of complaints alleging antisemitism on US college campuses.

The missive, first reported by Jewish Insider, said the lawmakers are “deeply concerned” that efforts to resolve thousands of complaints alleging antisemitic discrimination in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act have not kept pace with a 41 percent increase in antisemitic incidents that targeted students, faculty, and staff.

“Jewish students, like all students, deserve equal rights to an education free from discrimination and harassment because of their identity,” the letter said. “We encourage the department to continue to swiftly investigate other pending cases and to continue to enforce federal civil rights law against antisemitism in all its forms.”

The letter also endorsed an executive order on combating antisemitism signed by former US President Donald Trump that affirmed civil rights protections for Jewish students.

On Tuesday, Kenneth Marcus, former Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights at OCR and founder of the Brandeis Center, told The Algemeiner that bipartisan congressional support for resolving antisemitism cases on campus is crucial for prompting OCR to act.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” he said. “Students have to wait months and often years for a resolution of their complaints. In many cases, they will graduate before OCR addresses them, which means that they won’t get any sort of appropriate remedy whatsoever. Even if they are still in college, it’s already back to school, and there are colleges and universities that should be fixing problems but aren’t doing so because OCR is still dithering about their complaints.”


CUNY antisemites really believe it
It is important to understand that this is not just a case of institutional retaliation, though it is certainly that. If this were the case, it would merely be another indication of CUNY’s debasement. An institution, after all, is only as good as the people in it, and it is clear that CUNY is, to a great extent, staffed, led and attended by horrible people.

But there is more to it than that: Those horrible people, by and large, harbor a specific and quite monstrous ideology.

This ideology was expressed rather well by Kiswani, who ranted about a “campaign of Zionist harassment by well-funded organizations with ties to the Israeli government and military” that was persecuting her “on the basis of my Palestinian identity and organizing.”

Put simply, the CUNY professors in question are being “investigated” because those “investigating” them are convinced that the professors are part—perhaps leaders—of a “campaign of Zionist harassment by well-funded organizations with ties to the Israeli government and military.”

This may not be easy for many Jews to grasp, even those deeply concerned about antisemitism at CUNY and in academia in general. Understanding antisemitism requires a leap of the imagination of which many people—including many Jews—are often incapable. They find it impossible to conceive of the possibility that antisemites really believe it.

But antisemites do really believe it. Whether they are the “Goyim Defense League,” the mullahs of Iran or the CUNY establishment, antisemites do not say the things they say in order to scapegoat Jews or achieve Machiavellian ends. They genuinely believe that the Jews—and by extension Zionism—are an all-powerful malevolent force for evil that must be combatted and destroyed.

It is clear what CUNY’s plan is: To purge all Jewish and Zionist members of the faculty and force Jewish students who do not tow the anti-Zionist line off campus. CUNY antisemites have not adopted this plan out of any ulterior motives. They have done so because they believe it is the right thing to do. They believe it is a moral imperative to speak truth to Jewish power and purify their campus of its evil. They are true believers.

No one should labor under any illusions. Many of us want CUNY to listen to reason and hold itself accountable. But CUNY sees this as nothing more than a Jewish/Zionist conspiracy against it.

We must acknowledge this and what it means: The CUNY antisemites will follow through on their plan. They will not stop unless they are stopped, and they will not be stopped unless we stop them. That, above all, must be the imperative of the moment.


Professor Marc Lamont Hill is leaving Temple for CUNY
Marc Lamont Hill, a prominent professor who held an endowed chair in Temple University’s college of media and communication and who had drawn criticism in the past over his comments about the Middle East, is leaving this week for a new post at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.

He’s been hired to be a presidential professor of Urban Education.

Hill said he could have stayed another 20 years at Temple if not for the opportunity at CUNY.

“It’s something I’ve always dreamed of,” Hill, 44, said Tuesday afternoon of the opportunity to teach graduate students and work more closely in his areas of interest, with other “public-facing” scholars. “It was much more a pull from CUNY than a push from Temple.”

He already appears on CUNY’s graduate center faculty website, and is described as “a cultural anthropologist, critical policy scholar, and radical educator whose work explores issues of race, education, citizenship, and state violence in the United States and Middle East.”


BBC News reports an “attack on a car”
On the afternoon of August 21st the BBC News website published a report by David Gritten about a fatal terror attack which had taken place on the morning of the same day near the Beit Hagai junction.

The headline, photo caption and opening paragraph of that report all tell readers of an “attack on a car” even though the targets of that terror attack were obviously people rather than the vehicle in which they were travelling.

Headline: ‘Israeli woman shot dead in attack on car in southern West Bank’

Photo caption: “The car was hit by gunfire from a passing vehicle was [sic] it drove along a highway”

Opening paragraph: “An Israeli woman has been killed and a man seriously wounded in a suspected Palestinian shooting attack on a car near Hebron in the occupied West Bank.”

Despite telling readers that “Two dozen bullets were reportedly fired from a passing vehicle” the BBC’s report predictably does not describe the incident as terrorism. The sole mention of the word terror comes in a quote added to the report some four and a half hours after its initial publication.

“Later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the scene and said Israel was “in the midst of a terror attack” that was “encouraged, guided, funded by Iran and its satellite states”.”

Readers were given no further information on the topic of Iran’s contributions to the current wave of terrorism: a topic repeatedly avoided by BBC journalists.
Reuters Improves Coverage on Refugee Camps in Lebanon, Israeli Victims of Palestinian Terror
In response to communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, Reuters editors commendably corrected yesterday, revising the text to accurately report: “Ain el-Hilweh is the largest of 12 Palestinian camps in Lebanon, hosting around 80,000 of up to 250,000 Palestinian refugees countrywide, according to the United Nations’ agency for refugees from Palestine.”

In addition, Reuters added the following notice to the top of the article alerting clients and readers to the change: “(This Aug. 18 story has been corrected to fix the number of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, in paragraph 6).”

Israel victim Batsheva Nigri fatally shot in a Palestinian terror attack Aug. 21, 2023 (Courtesy)

Separately, following communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, Reuters commendly updated an Aug. 21 headline and article which had failed to identify the victims of a Palestinian terror attack — kindergarden teacher Batsheva Nigri (42), murdered in front of her daughter, and Aryeh Leib Gottlieb, seriously injured — as Israelis.



The elliptical headline had only stated: “Woman killed, man seriously wounded in West Bank shooting -Israel’s military.” The article itself also failed to identify the victims as Israeli. Following communication from CAMERA staff that day, Reuters quickly updated the headline and article to include the fact that the victims are Israel. The headline now states: “Suspected Palestinian gunmen kill Israeli woman in West Bank.” In addition, editors added the victims’ Israeli identity in the article itself.
Success! CP24 Airs On-Air Clarification After Falsely Claiming Tel Aviv Is Israel’s Capital
On the evening of June 3, 2023, CP24 news broadcast a brief update on the ongoing protests in Israel against the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul plans.

But in its coverage of the protests, the host told viewers that “thousands protested on the streets of Israel’s capital for the twenty-second straight weekend over planned judicial overhauls.” At the same time, a marquee at the bottom of the screen read: “Tel Aviv, Israel,” clearly identifying Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem, as the capital city of Israel.

Following the broadcast, HonestReporting Canada protested the error on Twitter, writing the next day:

HonestReporting Canada also filed a complaint directly with CP24. When no correction was forthcoming, a complaint was then sent to The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC).

Following that filing, on July 26, CP24 issued an on-air clarification to its earlier broadcast, saying that: “Right now, we would like to make a clarification to a story we aired on June 3rd of this year. During a story on protests in Israel over planned judicial overhauls, we referred to Israel’s capital as Tel Aviv in the on-screen graphic. The Canadian government’s position is that, while Israel designates Jerusalem as its capital, Canada believes that the final status of the city needs to be negotiated between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Canada maintains its embassy in Tel Aviv. CP24 regrets any confusion caused.”
Success! Toronto Star & National Post Headlines Amended After Failing To Properly Label Dead Palestinian As Terrorist
On Tuesday, August 22, 2023, The Toronto Star and The National Post published an Associated Press (AP) article whose headline failed to properly label a Palestinian killed by IDF soldiers as a terrorist and merely referred to the deceased as being a teenager.

According to The Times of Israel, IDF troops were conducting overnight counter-terrorism operations in Jenin when soldiers clashed with Palestinian terrorists, who threw explosive devices at the troops. IDF forces returned fire, hitting one suspect. The Palestinian who was killed was a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization, a fact also acknowledged in the AP report itself and the group claimed he was a member and a “fighter” in the terror group’s local wing in the Jenin area.

Subsequent to our alerting both The National Post and The Toronto Star that the AP’s original article and its headline had been amended to acknowledge that the dead Palestinian was indeed a combatant and not a civilian, we are pleased to note that both news organizations updated and amended their own article’s headlines to reflect the truth on the ground.

We thank The National Post and The Toronto Star for the swift corrective action undertaken.
Antisemitic, homophobic, racist attacks on memorials linked
Several attacks on memorial sites within a timespan of only two weeks have shocked Germany: A suspected antisemitic attack on a mini library at the "Platform 17" memorial in Berlin on August 12. An attack on the tent at the Ohlsdorf Peace Festival held in a cemetery where the victims of Second World War bombings in Hamburg are remembered. An arson attempt on the monument in Berlin's Tiergarten park, which commemorates the homosexual persons who were persecuted during the Nazi regime. Smashed windows at the headquarters of the Foundation for Memorials in Lower Saxony. Vandalism of the offices of a lesbian women's group in the Berlin district of Neukölln.

"When I first learned of the attack on our BücherboXX (book box), I cried for a whole hour," Konrad Kutt told DW. "It felt as if it were a physical attack on me," he added, close to tears.

Kutt had the idea for the book boxes, which are located throughout Berlin, about 15 years ago. They are disused telephone boxes that have been transformed into mini streetside libraries. The BücherboXX closest to the "Platform 17" memorial is especially significant, in his view, because of its historical location and the box's contents. The books that were burned in the August attack – about 300 of them – focused on the deportations and systematic murders of Jews during the Nazi era.

About 50,000 Jews were deported to concentration and extermination camps from Platform 17 of the Grünewald train station as part of the Holocaust, the Nazis' campaign to exterminate Jewish people and many other minorities. The recent attack is particularly chilling as it carries echoes of the book burning at Berlin's Bebelplatz public square, where the Nazis set fire to more than 20,000 books that they considered "un-German" and "degenerate" on May 10, 1933 as they prepared to carry out the Holocaust. At that site now stands an underground memorial by sculptor Micha Ullmann and a nearby plaque with a quote from 18th-century German writer Heinrich Heine, reading: "That was just a prelude. Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people too."

'A problem for the whole of Germany'
There are no official nationwide statistics on the number of such attacks in Germany. However, according to historian Karsten Uhl, there is a feeling that they are increasing. It is no longer about isolated cases: "Now I would say that we have a new situation: The extent of the attacks which we have had is surprising and shocking," the researcher told DW. For several months, he has been working for the Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centers Commemorating the Victims of Nazi Crimes.

Until May, Uhl oversaw the memorial sites at the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps and had worked for years in the eastern German state of Thuringia. The fact that attacks are now being reported this frequently throughout western and eastern Germany demonstrates above all that "these attacks are a problem for the whole of Germany, not only an eastern German one."
Son of Romanian Soccer Coach Says Israel ‘Deserves’ to Be Killed in Gas Chamber
The son of Romanian soccer coach Laurentiu Reghecampf posted on social media that Israel “deserves” to be destroyed in a gas chamber in response to a story about two Israelis who were shot and killed by a suspected Palestinian gunman, according to a watchdog group that flagged the antisemitic comment referencing the Holocaust.

Luca Reghecampf, whose father is the coach of the Romanian professional men’s soccer club Universitatea Craiova, commented on a post uploaded by the London-based news website Middle East Eye about the deadly attack that took place on Saturday in the West Bank. Two men, a father and son, were shot at close range at a car wash in the Palestinian village of Huwara.

In response to an Instagram user who commented on the post, Luca wrote, “Only thing Israel deserves to be put into a chamber and Have the shower turned on.” He also included a smiley face emoji in his comment.

Luca has since deleted his Instagram account — but not before StopAntisemitism, a US-based watchdog group that fights and exposes antisemitism — took a screenshot of his remark and shared it on social media. The organization said it was “disgusted” by his comment, adding that such behavior should not be tolerated.
German AfD politician fined for comparing Covid vaccination to Kristallnacht
A far-right German politician has been fined after comparing Germany’s coronavirus restrictions and vaccination campaign with Nazi-era anti-Jewish pogroms.

Florian Jäger, who served as a member of Germany's Parliament, the Bundestag, posted a video on his Facebook page in 2021 claiming the German government's COVID measures were comparable with the Kristallnacht terror campaign against German Jews in 1938.

He is currently the chairman for the AfD in the district of Fürstenfeldbruck near Munich.

In Germany, the term Kristallnacht became a widespread designation for the Night of the Broken Glass which occurred between November 9 and 10, 1938.

During that time, Hitler’s Nazi regime shattered the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and more than 250 synagogues across the country.

30,000 Jewish men were also arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps. In addition, gangs of thugs from Hitler's SA abused and murdered numerous Jewish fellow citizens.

The video which was shared and marked with “Like”, was classified as hate speech because it equated the injustice of the Nazis against the Jews with the measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.
Anger as vandals smash headstones at Kent Jewish cemetery
A Kent synagogue is desperately seeking funds to improve security after its cemetery was desecrated, marking the eighth act of serious vandalism the shul has suffered in a decade.

Thugs knocked over and smashed several headstones in the burial ground that adjoins Chatham Memorial Synagogue in Rochester last Friday in the latest episode of desecration that has left some of the small population of Jews in the surrounding area fearful of physical attacks.

The fresh act of vandalism, which was discovered last Friday and is being treated by Kent Police as a potential hate crime, follows a string of similar incidents, which has seen faeces smeared on the synagogue, lewd graffiti sprayed on the building’s doors and repeated attacks on the gravestones in the historic Grade II listed cemetery.

Shul trustee Dr Dalia Halpern-Matthews said the cemetery alone had been attacked five times since 2013.

“We shouldn’t be having to put up with the mass destruction of something that should be sacred,” she said.

“The cemetery is very special obviously in terms of every individual grave, but when you consider that it is the only shul with a cemetery attached in the country, it is a very significant shul. It has been Grade II listed for many years.”

Despite the introduction of security at every service, one shul member remains too scared to worship in person as a result of the repeated attacks; last year, a CCTV camera installed to deter hooligans was ripped off the synagogue’s walls.


CAA to write to Walk This Way Surplus over sale of Hitler bust and other Nazi memorabilia
Campaign Against Antisemitism will be writing to a Berwickshire-based shop over the sale of Nazi memorabilia.

Walk This Way Surplus, a militaria shop in Coldstream, lists several Nazi-era items on its website, including Nazi party triangle pennants, listed for £100.

Also for sale are an assortment of Third Reich knives, including a bayonet and a utility knife, that range from £139 to £1,800.

In its on-site shop, it is understood that there is a bronze Hitler bust, listed for £150; a German merit cross with a swastika, listed for £250; an SS helmet, listed for £300; and a Totenkopf [death skull] SS pin, listed for £135.
SodaStream switches production sites to renewable energy
Sparkling water maker SodaStream has signed a 15-year deal with clean energy producer Enlight that will power all of its production facilities in Israel with 100 percent renewable energy by the start of 2024.

Kfar Saba-headquartered SodaStream also announced a goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040.

SodaStream is the world’s leading sparkling water brand. Its portable soda-making machines are sold in over 48 countries and it was acquired by PepsiCo for $3.2 billion in 2018.

Enlight is a Rosh HaAyin-based company that builds and operates solar and wind power facilities in Israel and abroad.

The agreement between the two Israeli companies was made possible following the introduction of new regulations allowing green energy producers to enter into direct purchase agreements to accelerate the renewable energy transition across the Israeli economy.

SodaStreamCEO Eyal Shohat said the move consolidates the company as a “pioneer” on environmental responsibility.

“For years, SodaStream has been at the forefront of the uncompromising efforts to reduce single-use plastic waste. In 2022 alone, we successfully eliminated approximately five billion single-use plastic bottles,” he said.

“The new strategic partnership with Enlight will allow SodaStream to take another step toward the goal we have set — a 100% renewable energy transition in all of our production sites around the world, as part of a global strategy to preserve the environment, reduce the carbon footprint, and work toward a sustainable world.”
Bayern Munich signs Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Daniel Peretz
FC Bayern Munich has agreed to sign Israeli goalkeeper Daniel Peretz from Maccabi Tel Aviv for five years, in a deal worth at least €5 million ($5.4 million) plus bonuses.

The 23-year-old goalie, who is in Slovenia with Maccabi for the UEFA Europa Conference League playoffs, will travel to the southern German city over the weekend for medical examinations, transfer expert Fabrizio Romano said on X/Twitter.

At Bayern Munich, Peretz is expected to join Sven Ulreich in the club’s pool of backup goalkeepers.

A German passport holder, Peretz will make history as the first Israeli-born player to represent Bayern, which has won 11 consecutive Bundesliga championships.

Peretz joined Maccabi Tel Aviv’s academy at the age of 6 and has 70 Israeli Premier League games’ worth of experience under his belt.

This summer, he was part of Israel’s Under-21 team during its historic advance to the UEFA European Championship semifinals. During the quarterfinal on July 1, Peretz was named man of the match for keeping the Georgian team off the scoresheet, including blocking one of the shootout attempts.

The team consists of Israeli players aged 21 or under at the start of each two-year UEFA European Under Football Championship campaign, so players can be up to 23 years old.
Ancient German synagogue may gain Unesco world heritage status
A German city could soon win the highly-coveted Unesco world heritage status for its ancient synagogue.

The Old Synagogue in Erfurt, eastern Germany, dates back to the 11th century.

The decision to approve it as a Unesco world heritage site will be taken in the unlikely setting of Saudi Arabia next month, when the organisation holds its next meeting.

Erfurt, state capital of Thuringia, is even sending a delegation to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in the hope of swaying the Unesco committee to vote in its favour.

Mayor Andreas Bausewein, 50, said it would mark a momentous achievement for the city. “The world heritage site would be a unique opportunity for Erfurt to move up into the top league of tourist destinations,” he said. “Our Jewish-medieval ensemble is unique, it deserves worldwide attention.”

The Erfurt synagogue has not been used as a place of worship for centuries.

Erfurt has a rich Jewish legacy going back some 900 years. In the 11th century, Jews were based in a designated quarter where they engaged in finance, trade and scholarship, notably with the renowned Erfurt yeshivah.

The outbreak of the Black Death in the mid-14th century led to scapegoating and blaming of Jewish communities throughout Europe. In 1349, the Jews of Erfurt were massacred, and their property was confiscated.

The synagogue was damaged and taken over by the city which sold it to a merchant. It was converted into a warehouse, and used for storage for 500 years.
Owner of former nightclub in Poland discovers mikveh in basement
Before the Holocaust, the population of the town of Chmielnik, Poland, was around 80% Jewish. Sephardic Jews, having been expelled from Spain during the Inquisition, settled in Chmielnik and eventually built a synagogue in 1638.

After the war, only four Jews remained. Today, the building houses a museum of the town’s Jewish life and history.

Now another Jewish heritage site has been discovered, in an unlikely place.

A few years ago, Marian Zwolski, a businessman from Chmielnik, purchased a former nightclub that has been closed for 15 years. When he opened the door to the basement of his new property, he discovered something unexpected: a mikveh, or Jewish ritual bath.

The bath’s blue and white floor tiles are still there, as are Stars of David on the wall. A smaller mikveh, likely used by women, is in a neighboring room.

“It’s astonishing,” said Meir Bulka, who advocates for the preservation of Jewish heritage in Poland, in an interview with Haaretz. “You enter the basement, and you’re in another world. It’s like a time capsule.”
Jews were in MENA before Muslims, Arabs
On August 3, Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim appeared on The Big Picture, a podcast series hosted by Middle East Eye. Born in Baghdad in 1945, Shlaim’s family fled as refugees to Israel in 1951 when conditions for Jews in Iraq became intolerable. Throughout the discussion, Shlaim referred numerous times to his status as an “Arab Jew”:
“It’s very easy to define an Arab Jew. It’s a Jew who lived in an Arab country. So I am an Arab Jew because I lived in Iraq up to the age of five […] we were Arab Jews. We spoke Arabic at home. Our culture was Arab culture. Our friends were Arab friends. There wasn’t a real problem with being Jewish in Iraq.”

Shlaim’s nostalgic recollections of his childhood and his personal identity merit respect and consideration. He is a witness to the traumatic and collective dispersal of nearly one million Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during the latter half of the 20th century. As a Sephardi Jew whose forebears fled Morocco as political refugees in the 1950s and 1960s, I have witnessed this same nostalgia when in conversation with my grandparents and extended family.

I do not seek to target Shlaim’s identity, nor do I wish to insult his experiences as a Jew in Iraq. However, it is important to deconstruct the problematic terminology and rationalizations he uses to frame his account of Jews in the MENA, and move past the romanticized memories upon which he draws to justify his view of Arabized Jews in the region as actually being Arab.

There are no "Arab Jews." Jews predate Muslims, Arabs in much of the Middle East
There is one fundamental problem in historicizing the “Arab Jew.” Jewish populations constitute a pre-Islamic demographic in the MENA. Their presence in the wider region predates the Arab-Islamic conquests of the Prophet Muhammad’s armies by at least a millennium. By the time the Muslim caliphates consolidated imperial power over the entire region, Jews had already developed their own local cultures in diasporic sites.

Jews have lived in the wider MENA since at least 586 BCE, when King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the neo-Babylonian Empire. This forced many Jews into exile, marking the effective dispossession of their ancestral homeland in Israel. Some Jews chose to remain in Israel despite the challenges of everyday life wrought by such an enormous blow to their national and religious identity.
Marcelle Shalom: ‘we knew we had to leave Egypt’
Elhanan Miller is an Arabic-speaking rabbi in Israel. He has been running a project called ‘People of the Book’, in which he records the oral history of Jews from Arab countries in their native Arabic. His videos have a huge following in the Arab world. For instance, this 2019 video interview with Marcelle Chalom of Cairo, Egypt, garnered 2.1 million views. (With thanks Ilan; Jews of Egypt Facebook page).

Marcelle Chalom recounts how she was growing up in Cairo under the shadow of the conflict with Israel. She grew up in a climate of fear knowing that there was no future of the Jews. In the 1950s the family would banish the servants out of the room while they listened to Radio Free Europe. Her relatives, who had French nationality, were given seven days to leave Egypt after the Suez crisis in 1956. Because her paternal grandfather, who was from Yemen, was granted Egyptian citizenship, her family was allowed to stay on but her father was only allowed to withdraw limited amounts of cash when his bank account was placed under the control of a trustee.

Eventually, Marcelle’s family was also stripped of their Egyptian nationality and their assets. They left for the US via France in 1961.

She recalls how the numbers of synagogues and batei midrash declined from 15 to two, until there was only one functioning synagogue in Cairo. Her father would pray at various synagogues to prevent them being shut down. Otherwise the authorities would lock them up.

Marcelle, who has written a memoir of her childhood, attended the Jewish school in Cairo, founded by the Rothschilds. The instruction was in Arabic and French and, until the language was banned, in Hebrew. The family spoke Arabic and French at home. Despite Nasser’s fulminations against Zionism and imperialism, she remembers that day-to-day relations with the people she came into contact with, like the baker and her nanny, was one of affection. Her family was spared the plight of Jews who lived in the Hara, or Jewish quarter: there the Muslim Brotherhood planted bombs in 1948, killing dozens.


Israeli documentary revisits horrific terror attack
Several fascinating documentaries will be broadcast on television this September, starting on Hot 8 on September 3 at 9:15 p.m. with A Haunted Home, which tells the story of a horrific terrorist attack in Kiryat Shmona.

Directed by Lisa Peretz, who lived in Kiryat Shmona as a child, and Robby Elmaliah, it looks at the attack, in which 18 people were killed, nearly half of them children, during the Passover holiday in 1974.

One morning in April, three Arab terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine managed to cross the border into Israel and they headed for Kiryat Shmona. They approached a school that turned out to be empty because of the holiday and entered two buildings on Yehuda Halevi Street, where they went from apartment to apartment, killing 15 residents and the gardener. Two Israeli soldiers were also killed as they fought the terrorists.

This attack is rarely mentioned today, and some of the survivors interviewed suggest that the apparent lack of interest in preserving the memory of this incident is because the victims were mostly poor Mizrahim (descendants of local Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa) who lived in an out-of-the-way location. Another explanation is that the survivors – who managed through resourcefulness and sheer luck to evade the killers – were simply too traumatized to speak publicly about the attack. Virtually all the survivors left the town, sparking an exodus in which about 40% of the residents moved elsewhere. Several of those interviewed for the film said they had never been back to their hometown.

A Haunted Home is a difficult movie to watch, because it’s just so sad to watch the survivors struggle with their grief, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile to spend an hour with them. It’s understandable that many are outraged that special forces did not enter the building earlier, although it is clear that the bulk of the killings were carried out with chilling speed.

The complex aftermath of the attack is also part of the story, and it may shock you to hear two of the child survivors recall that no one at their schools welcomed them back or tried to ease their pain, but that everyone acted as if nothing had happened.

I know these were different times, but it is strange to know that the government was aware enough to promise them psychological treatment, but not caring enough to follow up on the promise, and a psychologist did not arrive for four years.
Kosovo unveils statue to honor Albanians who rescued Jews during Holocaust
A statue honoring 23 Kosovo Albanians who rescued Jews during the Holocaust was inaugurated on Wednesday in Pristina, AP reported.

The “Wall of Honor” monument was unveiled in a park in the Kosovar capital in the presence of some of the rescuers’ descendants, political leaders and the U.S. and German ambassadors.

Some 500 Jews lived in Kosovo, then part of the former Yugoslavia, at the time of the Nazi genocide. Many were arrested and deported to nearby prisons or German-managed camps, and almost half of them were killed.

Local Albanians helped many Jews to escape, usually taking them to neighboring Albania, according to AP.

The statue shows that “the remembrance of those who risked their lives to save their fellow human beings is a tradition that commemorates a rare, bright light in one of the darkest periods of human history,” said Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti on Wednesday.

Today, some 50 Jews live in the western Kosovar town of Prizren.

Kosovo, a landlocked country of 1.95 million north of Greece, declared independence on Feb. 17, 2008.
Hundreds of IDF vets to become Holocaust educators abroad
Hundreds of former IDF soldiers will soon become Holocaust educators as part of a World Zionist Organization program meant to keep the memory alive and spread awareness of antisemitism.

The future educators, volunteers of the Heroes for Life non-profit, will travel in delegations to over a dozen destinations to share the stories of Holocaust survivors and Righteous Among the Nations.

They will be trained by the Zikaron BaSalon (literally, “memory in the living room”) initiative, which specializes in Holocaust commemoration and encourages survivors to share their stories with small groups.

Several delegations are expected to set off in the coming weeks, with more to come throughout the year, including to Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica, India, Vietnam and Nepal.

“I am thrilled to take part in such a special project,” said one of the volunteers, who will be traveling to Brazil. “These stories are shocking and timeless and it’s important for them to be heard around the world.”




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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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