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Monday, August 28, 2023

08/28 Links Pt2: We must make Israel a Jewish state; The NGO Campaign to Discredit the IHRA Definition; How antisemitism shifted from Nazi Germany to the Arab world

From Ian:

We must make Israel a Jewish state – we owe it to our ancestors
The very good news is that, well-financed and media-covered acts of “resistance” notwithstanding, the vast majority of Israeli Jews do “get it.” They understand that they are a unique people – not better, but possessed of the great gift of membership in the Jewish people – that, contrary to the rules of history, indeed the laws of nature, has managed to survive and to reconstitute itself in its ancestral homeland.

There are two trajectories that define the upcoming younger generation that should be a source of optimism. One is that surveys consistently show that Israelis are becoming increasingly religiously traditional. This denotes awareness and respect. It means an appreciation of what it means to be Jewish, and a desire to make sure that one’s children share that appreciation. In many respects, the rise of traditionalism mirrors the coming of age of Israel’s Mizrachi community – Jews from Muslim lands – who brought with them a profound immersion in Jewish tradition, as well as a remarkable ability to tolerate the variations of that expression by their fellows. While the Mizrachim have no interest in a theocracy, they do have a profound interest in making sure that Israel continues to reflect Jewish values, standing alone as a Jewish State.

The other trajectory that the majority of the country is embracing, is the desire for Jewish sovereignty and control. One of the great lessons of the November 2022 election was the recognition of how strong the desire of voters was for Israel to assert control over its territory and destiny. This is not the politics of fear nor of accommodation with hostile forces. It is not the politics of a Peace Now nor of Oslo, nor of Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert offering to give back the Temple Mount in a vain attempt to create some kind of calm and acceptance.

Younger Jews today, what Prof. Elisha Haas characterizes as the “third generation” of Israelis, see Zionism as a work in progress, but a successful work in progress. They want to go from strength to strength and that means building and securing Israel, both on the Mediterranean coast and in the hills of the Shomron, for Jewish sovereign life.

The worldview presented by a great many of the protesters, particularly the older ones, is a world of weakness, defeat, and abjectness. They have anointed the Supreme Court as their saviors, oblivious or uncaring of the reality that the Court has become a tainted institution, bloated with its own oligarchic omnipotence. All the Orwellian doublespeak in the world cannot change the fact that the protesters are clinging to the hope that true democratic decision-making can be thwarted, that the demographic clock can be stopped and that a world that has passed can somehow be recovered.

I feel sorry for these Jews because they are bereft of an awareness of themselves. They have no idea of who they really are, and the magnificence of their heritage.

We, young and old, who do have that awareness and cherish that heritage must make sure that we persevere, trying our best to explain and expose that heritage to those who know it not.

But we owe it to our ancestors and to ourselves to see the inescapable importance of the mission to build, secure, and cherish a Jewish State in the Land of Israel.


NGO Monitor: The NGO Campaign to Discredit the IHRA Definition
In response to the increase of antisemitism worldwide, many governments and international bodies have recognized the importance of a consensus definition of this phenomenon. The most widely accepted definition, adopted in May 2016, is that of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). As of July 2023, 40 governments, as well as thousands of intergovernmental and local institutions, have adopted and endorsed the IHRA framework as the cornerstone to guide their policies in combating antisemitism.

Nonetheless, the definition has been the target of various non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which have been attempting to prevent its widespread adoption. This concerted campaign has emerged precisely as antisemitism from NGOs has become an enduring feature of political discourse about Israel and Zionism. Many NGOs that claim to represent human rights and humanitarian values instead promulgate antisemitic rhetoric and tropes, tolerate antisemitism from executives and staff with little to no repercussions, and consistently dismiss consideration of antisemitism as a human rights issue.

A common form of NGO antisemitism is encapsulated in one of the examples provided alongside the IHRA definition: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” Many of the NGOs that contribute to growing antisemitism and simultaneously impede efforts to combat hatred of Jews continue to receive government funding. Despite the significant progress in European countries of acknowledging the evil of antisemitism and the need to allocate meaningful levels of government funding and resources to combat it, some countries have fallen short. These governments, as well as the European Union, have given hundreds of millions of dollars over the past 20 years to organizations that engage in and promote blatant antisemitism as defined by IHRA.

NGO Monitor has created a detailed database and visualization (below) that illustrate the scope and intensity of the NGO campaign to target the IHRA working definition and prevent its adoption.

The examples in the database are divided into three categories:
Governments and Intergovernmental Institutions
52% of the documented campaigns were directed toward attempts to prevent governments and intergovernmental institutions (i.e. the United Nations) from adopting resolutions, action plans, or internal regulations that would set IHRA as a benchmark for defining antisemitism.

Public and Professional Institutions
9% of the documented campaigns have been directed at professional bodies, calling for them not to incorporate the IHRA definition. Examples include the American Bar Association and Universities.

General Public
39% of the documented campaigns are part of broader NGO efforts to sway public opinion against the adoption of IHRA.
How antisemitism shifted from Nazi Germany to the Arab world
Matthias Küntzel, a German political scientist and historian, has written another extremely significant book, “Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East: The 1948 Arab War Against Israel and the Aftershocks of World War II,” which should be read together with his “Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11.”

In “Jihad and Jew-Hatred,” he contends that antisemitism is part of the ideological center of modern jihadism, and not simply an additional component. He argues that “during and after the World War II, the center of global antisemitism shifted from Nazi Germany to the Arab world, above all to the radical Islamist currents in and around the Moslem Brotherhood of Egypt.” This shift did not occur only because of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Quite the reverse. The “ideology of and policy of radical Islamists” actually made the clash worse.

In “Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East,” Küntzel focuses on the influence of Nazi antisemitism in the Middle East, which he notes “remains gravely under-researched.” He describes how since 1937, the Germans disseminated antisemitic propaganda throughout the Middle East in the Arabic language and how this antisemitism played a “decisive factor,” leading the Arab armies to attempt to destroy the nascent Jewish state. Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, explained why Israel’s 1948 War of Independence was, for the Muslims, a war against the Jews. “Our battle with world Jewry,” he said, “is a question of life and death, a battle between two conflicting faiths, each of which can exist only on the ruins of others.”

The Muslim Brotherhood claimed that partition of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states, which was recommended by the British Peel Commission in 1937 as a solution to the conflict, would deprive the Arabs of all of their rights. “No single Arab will ever consider, let alone accept it.” They did not regard the Jews “a party to the problem, they are mere thugs and usurpers who came under the shadow of spears and trickery to a land which does not belong to them. …” In this way, the Arabs transformed a political dispute into an “antisemitic war” to ensure that a Jewish state would not be created.

The war also precipitated the flight of Arab refugees, which has been a major source of contention ever since. The perception that the actual “catastrophe” of the war was the establishment of the state of Israel, conveniently ignores that it was the invasion by the Arab armies that resulted in the exodus of Arab refugees to Jordan and other Arab countries.

By introducing “genocidal antisemitism to the Arab world,” beginning in 1937, Küntzel asserts, we see there is “an ideological link between the Nazi war against the Jews and the Arab war against Israel three years later, [that] can be interpreted as a kind of aftershock of the great catastrophe of 1939-1945.”


Jonathan Tobin: The trouble with films that romanticize American Communists
As with some of the characters in “Oppenheimer,” the Halls’ blind devotion to Soviet communism even after the mass purges of the 1930s and Stalin’s 1939 pact with Hitler illustrates both the willingness of so many on the left to delude themselves about Russia as well as the depth of their fanaticism.

That a successful documentarian like James, who is best known for his acclaimed 1994 “Hoop Dreams,” would depict the Halls as heroes rather than as, at best, deluded extremists, ought to be shocking. But it is like so many of the pop-culture depictions of American communism in the last 40 years in which the Stalinists are victims and those who sought to protect American liberty are the bad guys.

Until the fall of the Soviet Union and the Venona revelations were published, the American left was committed to a false narrative about the innocence of people like the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss, an official in the Franklin Roosevelt administration who was another Communist spy. Once that was no longer tenable, they switched to defending those who worked for Stalin as idealists who deserve our praise rather than opprobrium.

“A Compassionate Spy” is hardly the first such effort not so much to exonerate American Communists as to honor them. It is part of the same genre as, for example, Tony Kushner’s 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Angels in America” and Ivy Meerpool’s 2004 “Heir to an Execution,” which celebrated her grandparents, the Rosenbergs.

An antisemitic regime’s Jewish backers
Such efforts are infuriating, but what makes them even worse is the assumption that the backgrounds of people like Hall and Oppenheimer, both of whom were utterly disconnected from their Jewish heritage, somehow made it natural for them to embrace communism. The same is true for attempts to argue that their seditious activity should be seen as an effort to counter antisemitism. They opposed the Nazis. But backing the other totalitarian European power put them behind the crimes of Stalin, who also singled out Jews for discrimination, oppression and, had he not died before his plans in the wake of the “Doctor’s Plot” were able to be realized, ultimately mass murder.

Nor is this merely a matter of distorting history. The same way in which utopian ideals were weaponized on behalf of an evil cause with Communists is now employed by a new generation of leftists who, also in the name of human rights, wage a war against the West. These cultural Marxists target America and now Israel for the same sort of opprobrium and delegitimization that was used against the foes of the Soviet Union. In this same way, such advocates of intersectionality and critical race theory who consider themselves idealists, including some who are Jewish, now wage an ideological war that, as was true so many decades ago, grants a permission slip to antisemitism rather than fighting it.

“Oppenheimer” is a good film that is, as Klehr and Haynes concede, “reasonably faithful” to history. But we should be wary of anything that soft-pedals the truth about those who embraced a murderous, antisemitic regime. American Stalinists weren’t victims; their legacy should be a reminder to realize that oppression and hate always lurk behind such utopian delusions.
Russian newspaper: Jewish Zelensky sending Ukrainians to die to avenge pogroms
Pravda, a Russian newspaper that was once the mouthpiece of the Communist Party in the former Soviet Union, published an opinion article alleging that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is causing Ukrainians to die in the war with Russia as payback for antisemitic pogroms by his non-Jewish compatriots.

The conspiracy theory, which is unusually far-fetched even for Pravda, appeared last week on the outlet’s website under the headline “Volodymyr Zelensky takes revenge on his people for Jewish pogroms.”

The writer, Sergei Frolov, a Pravda contributor and former editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Russkiy Kurier newspaper and the Gudok magazine, wondered in the op-ed (Russian link) why the “Jewish President Zelensky and his team, which is also full of his fellow tribesmen, suddenly became imbued with an unheard-of passion for everything Ukrainian.”

Zelensky is a former actor of Jewish descent who was elected president in 2019. He has used mild terms to express distaste for the glorification of Nazi collaborators in Ukraine, which has become widespread following Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

Under Zelensky, major Ukrainian cities have named streets for Ukrainian nationalists, including Stepan Bandera, who are revered in Ukraine for their alliance with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany against the Red Army.

Following the larger 2022 invasion, Zelensky appeared to adopt the image of a wartime leader, switching to fatigues even on state visits, including to Washington.

Frolov referenced what he described as an excessive death toll among Ukrainian troops and civilians as a result of the war with Russia.

According to a new study by the European Consortium for Political Research, the war has led to the deaths of at least 76,000 Russian troops, compared to 17,000 Ukrainian troops. Another 10,000 Ukrainian civilians have also been killed, leaving total Ukrainian fatalities at less than half of the Russian tally.
Ukrainians will need to learn to live with war like Israel - Zelensky
Ukrainians will need to learn to live with conflict "like Israel," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Nataliia Moseichuk on Sunday.

"We are reclaiming our state and it will be ours. It will happen, but we need to learn to live with it," said Zelensky. "Israel is fighting. It depends on the kind of war. We are ready to fight for a long time without losing people. It's possible. We can minimize casualties, as with the example of Israel. You can live like this."

Zelensky additionally called for an "Israeli model" for defense relations with the United States, in which the US provides weapons, technology, training, and funding in the the interview.

Bilateral treaties on security guarantees should contain issues of weapons, sanctions, and finances, but the list may be different with each country, added Zelensky.

"There should be sanctions, weapons, finances, air defense, aircraft - the menu is large, but the client is different. With the United States, it will be a more powerful bilateral treaty, with Britain the treaty will also be a strong one. However, there are states that simply do not have weapons but do have economies, who can impose serious sanctions in case of repeated aggression,” he noted.

Zelensky mentioned that the agreement with the United States could be similar to the Israeli model of security guarantees from the Americans.

"From the USA, we will probably have exactly such a model where there are weapons, technologies, training, finances, etc. It like with Israel, but we have a different state and a different enemy," the President explained.
Far-right MP admits Romania's role in Holocaust in meeting with Israelis
Senior Romanian right-wing politician George Simion, met on Monday with Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, and Israel's Ambassador to Romania Reuven Azar. Israel hasn't always been willing to communicate with extreme-right wing European politicians, yet there are those in the Likud Party who see this as a strategic opportunity.

Together, Simion, Dagan, and Azar publicly acknowledged Romania's role in the Holocaust and pledged to combat antisemitism. Furthermore, Simion expressed unequivocal support for the Jewish people's historical right to "inhabit and construct settlements in Judea and Samaria, regions with deep Jewish historical roots," according to a statement on behalf of Dagan. A landmark shift in Israeli approach to far-right European parties

This landmark announcement from the AUR Party (The National Liberal Party), which polls suggest may form the next Romanian government, signifies a major shift in European Union politics. Dagan's efforts in this transformative diplomacy were evident, starting with an informal meeting between him and Simion in January. Their discussions have now culminated in this official statement after more than six months of deliberation, all undertaken with the approval of Foreign Minister Eli Cohen.

In January 2022, Likud MKs were instructed to have nothing to do with the Romanian AUR Party on the grounds that it is antisemitic. Then-Likud foreign affairs director and spokesman Eli Hazan wrote to all of the party’s lawmakers, “AUR was elected to the parliament and is growing in popularity, in part because it is anti-establishment and opposes vaccines and restrictions. This party is antisemitic,” he warned.

According to a statement by the AUR, "the leader of the AUR Party acknowledged the responsibility of Romania for the Holocaust of the Romanian Jews, in the territories controlled by Romania during World War II, and expressed his deepest regret." He specified that "such horrors should never happen again to Jews, Romanians, Romani, or any other nations of the world."

Simion added that every country, including Romania, should adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism "and teach, within national history subject, this important page of the past, in order to make sure that all the future generations will know and understand the lack of humanity of those times and why it is vital to avoid such horrors."

The statement added that as Orthodox Christians, "Romanians have a powerful connection with the Holy Land and Jerusalem, the heart of Judaism and Christianity."
Michael Flynn’s Holocaust Delusions
Former U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn recently made some outrageous comments about the Holocaust. He said of the Jewish victims that there were “thousands of them and not many guards,” implying that the Jews could have fought barehanded against machine guns and survived.

The Auschwitz Memorial Museum was quick to point out, “The assertion that Jews could have easily resisted during deportations to extermination simply due to their numerical strength compared to the guards oversimplifies the dire circumstances they faced during the Holocaust. The sheer number of SS guards made resistance nearly impossible.”

I might add that the SS were the most barbaric, brutal and cunning of all of the Nazi forces. They shot first and asked questions later.

Gen. Flynn is entirely wrong, but he did enable a discussion of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising is the most famous. It began on April 19, 1943 and ended in a major assault by the SS on May 16, 1943. Seven hundred Jewish fighters who were barely armed put up the greatest resistance ever seen in the history of man against the most terrifying and bestial army ever assembled. Seven thousand Jews died fighting and 7,000 more were captured and sent to Treblinka, where they were murdered. After the uprising, 42,000 Polish Jews were rounded up and killed in a two-day shooting spree dubbed Operation Harvest Festival by the Nazis.

A lesser-known uprising took place at the Sobibor extermination camp, which was run by the SS and their Ukrainian supporters. On Oct. 14, 1943, prisoners in Sobibor killed 11 members of the SS including deputy commandant Johann Nieman. Three hundred prisoners escaped. Only 50 of them survived the war.

There were many other pockets of resistance. Jews resisted in over 100 ghettoes throughout Eastern Europe. Others joined underground forces that helped topple the Third Reich.
French Far Left Leader Defends ‘Antisemitic’ Rapper
The leader of France’s main far left party, La France Insoumise (“France Rising” — LFI) has offered a robust defense of a rapper accused of antisemitism who was invited to address LFI’s annual summer school last weekend.

In an interview with broadcaster TF1, party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon claimed that the rapper, Médine, was the victim of an “imposed agenda” designed to distract French voters from the key issues facing them.

“Sorry to tell you, but at the start of the school year, the issue is not Médine — it is social conditions,” Mélenchon declared.

The roots of the dispute lie in a tweet that Médine posted earlier this month in which he attacked Rachel Khan, a Franco-Gambian writer whose Jewish maternal grandparents perished during the Nazi Holocaust. Médine described Khan in the tweet as a “resKHANpée” — a French slang term intended by him to signify a person “who has been thrown out of hip-hop circles, drifting among social traitors and literally eating at the table of the extreme right” and a pun on the French word “rescapée,” which means “survivor.”

Given the fate of Khan’s grandparents at the hands of the Nazis, many observers deemed the post to be antisemitic.

Past controversies involving Médine include a 2015 track, “Don’t Talk,” in which he called for secularists to be “crucified,” leading some on the French right to call him an “Islamist.” He also released an album in 2005 titled “Jihad,” and in 2014, he was photographed alongside the antisemitic propagandist Dieudonné M’bala M’bala performing the “quenelle,” an inverted Nazi salute that became a viral phenomenon at the time.


PreOccupiedTerritory: Palestinian Genocide So Thorough That Even Records Of Victims, Mass Graves Eliminated (satire)
Archaeologists and historians voiced their bafflement this week once again at the completeness of the Jewish State’s extermination of Palestinians during and since 1948: so exhaustively have the Zionists prosecuted the removal of Arabs from what became Israel that every drop of physical evidence of that systematic campaign has also been expunged, with not a hint of killing squads, plague-infested camps, gas chambers, or any of the other telltale elements of such efforts remaining, a group of the researchers observed.

Scientists and scholars from Tel Aviv University and other institutions both inside and outside Israel communicated their confusion and frustration in an article yesterday in a weekly TAU bulletin announcing the cancelation of a seminar on the subject of mass-killings by the IDF and the militias that eventually merged to form it. The group stated that they cannot marshal enough material for an entire program, given how methodical and comprehensive those militias were in not only killing large numbers of Palestinians, but of destroying both the killing sites and any record that so many Palestinians had existed in the first place.

“We hope to hold the program at some yet-unknown time,” the announcement read. “Unfortunately, the Zionist coverup of Zionist crimes of genocide against Palestinians has been so thorough that we have yet to identify a single mass grave, let alone such phenomena as crematoria or extermination centers to which thousands of people were transported and killed, or even mobile gun teams that forced locals to dig their own graves, then mow them down with fire.”
Has Princeton Returned To Its Antisemitic Roots?
Princeton University is known for its pastoral beauty. “A Beautiful Mind” was filmed at Princeton, and the scene in “Oppenheimer” where the actors playing the scientist and Einstein meet by the pond is filmed at the nearby Institute for Advanced Study, an independent research center.

Throughout much of its history since its founding in 1746, the University has also been known for a “genteel” form of antisemitism. More recently, antisemitism has taken a more virulent form.

Princeton is perpetually named one of the finest undergraduate institutions in the U.S , with an acceptance rate of just 4%. This year, once again, Princeton rides atop the U.S. News college rankings.

Unfortunately, Princeton is rising on another list, that of U.S. colleges and universities known for antisemitism.

Princeton University remains a dream school for Jewish parents and their children. Princeton has two Jewish centers, Chabad of Princeton University and the Center for Jewish Life (CJL)––which is Princeton’s Hillel––but the percentage of Princeton students identified as Jews dropped from a high of 18% in the early 1980s, to today’s 9.6%.

These numbers still represent an improvement over the unwritten quota system Princeton used to keep the number of Jewish students under 4% in the first half of the 20th century. Such discrimination was typical of the Ivy League. My late father-in-law, who went to Columbia, joked that the Latin on the college crests stood for “2% only.”

While World War II brought changes to Princeton, discrimination against Jews did not vanish even with Einstein on campus.


ABC News Australia Issues Mea Culpa Over Appalling Tel Aviv Terror Attack Piece
As Israelis mourned another senseless terror attack in Tel Aviv earlier this month, ABC Australia’s coverage stood out among the number of media blunders that HonestReporting highlighted.

Just hours after city inspector Chen Amir was murdered, ABC News Australia published a piece headlined, “Tel Aviv shooting leaves one man critically injured and one dead” and also linked to the story on its world news page with a slightly altered headline that read, “Palestinian man killed in Tel Aviv shooting that leaves another critically injured.”

The Palestinian terrorist, who was shot dead when Amir’s colleague returned fire, was swiftly claimed by Islamic Jihad and had been wanted by Israeli security forces over his involvement in terror activity emanating from the Jenin refugee camp.

Even though it was only a short time before Chen’s death was confirmed, the first line of the story reported that a “Palestinian man [had] been shot dead” after “critically wounding” a Tel Aviv city inspector.

We immediately made a formal complaint to ABC News Australia, specifically pointing out that the headline did not identify that the dead person in the initial headline was the perpetrator, in addition to the fact that the story had not been updated to note that the “critically injured” victim had died of his injuries.

We further criticized the outlet for failing to make any distinction between the terrorist and his victim.

On August 18 — two weeks after the piece was published — the headline and introduction to the piece were updated to more accurately reflect the attack, including by stating the fact that it was a “Palestinian shooting attack” and that an “Israeli security guard” was the victim.

An editor’s note was also added, which stated that the main title and teaser title “did not adequately convey the circumstances conveyed in the text.”
CAMERA Letter in the Washington Times Palestinian Leaders Reject Peace
Clifford May is right to highlight Israel’s mounting security challenges, nearly all of which emanate from Iran (“Israel faces intensifying external threats and internal divisions,” web, Aug. 16).

Tehran’s terrorist proxies seek to wrap themselves, snakelike, around the Jewish state.

But two contributing factors must be noted: the “peace process cartel” in the West and a mainstream media plagued by amnesia.

The former, composed mostly of former diplomats, has spent decades arguing that Israel must first surrender land to achieve peace with its enemies.

This may have worked with the late Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat, but it has failed with the Palestinian and Iranian leaders who seek not an accord, but Israel’s destruction.

Israel has offered the Palestinians a state on numerous occasions, including in 2000 at Camp David, in 2001 at Taba and in 2008 after the Annapolis Conference. All were met with rejection.

And Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank in the 1990s and southern Lebanon in 2000 have only emboldened terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The results are in: These policies failed. But that hasn’t stopped the cartel from continuing to advocate a failed formula.

Nor has it stopped legacy press outlets from treating them as “experts” while often omitting this relevant history.
BBC News website corrects on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon
Previously we documented an inaccurate portrayal of the number of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon in a BBC News website report published on July 30th:
INACCURACY AND OMISSION IN BBC PORTRAYAL OF PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN LEBANON

CAMERA UK submitted a complaint to the BBC on that topic and on August 20th we were informed that it would take more time to address the issue, despite the BBC having already corrected the same inaccuracy in an Arabic language report on the same topic.

On August 24th we received the following communication:
“Thank you for taking the time to contact us about the BBC News article, ‘Lebanon clashes: Thousands flee violence at Palestinian refugee camp’ (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-66354364)

We appreciate the time you’ve taken to point out the accuracy of refugees residing in Lebanon.

We’ve updated the article to clarify the reported numbers vs. estimations as per the information on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency website. Thanks again for bringing this to our attention.

Your comments have been placed on our audience feedback report to be seen by senior management across the BBC and the BBC News website editors. Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact us.”

Before that amendment the report told readers that:
“More than 479,000 refugees are registered with UNRWA in Lebanon, the agency says. About half live in the country’s 12 refugee camps, which have “dire” living conditions, it adds.”

The relevant section of the report now states:
“More than 489,000 Palestinian refugees are registered with UNRWA in Lebanon, the agency says. but no more than 250,000 currently reside in the country.”
Economist accepts false Palestinian claim at face value
An Aug. 26 article in the print and online editions of the Economist (“The challenge of making Palestinian wine”) represents another example of how journalists often fail to fact check claims by Palestinians on the impact Israel’s occupation of the disputed territories.

The piece focuses on a small winery in Bethlehem called Philokalia that’s owned by Sari Khoury, a Palestinian who, in 2014, readers are told, gave up his job as a Paris architect “to return home to requite his passion for wine”. He now fills 10,000 bottles a year, made only from “indigenous grapes”.

The requisite anti-Israel hook begins in the fourth paragraph:
The business of wine-making is testing enough at the best of times. The headaches of production under military occupation are even more painful.

Mr Khoury is short of labourers because Palestinians can earn five times as much across the wall in Israel. And it is virtually impossible to get a permit from the Israeli authorities to expand his type of business physically. “I can’t even build a shed for my tools,” he explains. “I have to bring them with me in the car every time.”

However, Bethlehem is in Area A of the West Bank, which means that the Palestinian Authority has completely administrative and military control of the area where Khoury’s winery is located – a fact the Economist has acknowledged in previous reports. So, Israeli permits to expand his business in the city are not needed.
BBC News again avoids inconvenient facts about Hamas and the PIJ
The framing of the rise in violence that began over two years ago as being the outcome of “the absence of any political solution to the conflict” is of course by no means novel in BBC reporting. However, in order to promote that narrative BBC journalists have to avoid the inconvenient fact that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Islamic Jihad – two of the main proponents of the current violence in Judea & Samaria – are remotely interested in any “political solution” because their openly-stated aim is to wipe Israel off the map. Interestingly, those parties do not earn the description “ultranationalist” from Bateman.

Towards the end of the article readers are told that:
“In July, the army carried out its biggest military assault in years on Jenin refugee camp, in which 12 Palestinians, including militants and children, were killed.”

Bateman’s chosen phrasing fails to clarify that ten of the twelve Palestinians killed during that counter-terror operation were claimed by terror groups, including at least three “children”.

Bateman closes his report with the following statement:
“At least 219 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and 31 Israelis have been killed this year.”

Bateman refrains from clarifying to his readers that the majority of the Palestinians killed this year were affiliated with terrorist organisations, that a significant proportion were killed while carrying out terror attacks or shortly afterwards and that the majority of Israelis murdered in Palestinian terror attacks were civilians.


Jacksonville shooter carried a swastika-decorated gun, police say
The man who killed three Black shoppers at a Florida Dollar General on Saturday carried a gun that had a swastika on it, according to police in Jacksonville.

The shooter, who died by suicide inside the store, left behind multiple manifestos spelling out his hatred for Black people, officials said, adding to a string of racist attacks on minority groups in the United States. The manifestos have not been made public.

The US Justice Department is investigating the shooting as “a hate crime and an act of racially-motivated violent extremism,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on Sunday.

Jacksonville officials said they had not found any evidence thus far that the shooter, Ryan Christopher Palmeter, 21, was part of an organized hate group. But advocates say the presence of the Nazi insignia, coupled with the racist manifestos, offer yet another example of how hate ideologies threaten people of many backgrounds.

“From Charlottesville to Pittsburgh to Poway to El Paso to Buffalo, we’re witnessing a cycle of white supremacist violence – fueled by increasingly normalized conspiracy theories and hate promoted directly by politicians and pundits and enabled by social media,” Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said in a statement on Saturday, naming the locations of mass shootings by white supremacists.

Racist and antisemitic hate crimes on the rise
“And it’s sadly no surprise that this racist shooter marked his gun with swastikas: because antisemitism, anti-Black racism, and white supremacy are inextricably linked, animating and fueling each other in a constant feedback loop – with deadly consequences for our communities and our democracy,” Spitalnick added.

The Jacksonville area has emerged as a hub of extremism, with multiple white supremacist and other hate groups active in the area, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The leader of the antisemitic propaganda group Goyim Defense League said he was drawn to the Jacksonville area shortly before he moved from California to Florida last year.
'Miss Aryan Angel' of Oxford wins Miss Hitler beauty pageant
A 42-year-old mother from Oxfordshire, England has been exposed by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre (SWC) as the winner of an online "Miss Hitler" beauty pageant, according to a report by British news site and radio station LBC.

The woman, Sarah Mountford, entered the competition, run by the Russian social media site VKontakte, under the pseudonym “Miss Aryan Angel" and was a member of the far-right group Britain First. The site encourages its users to use pseudonyms in the competition.

The online competition aims to promote a "healthy Hitlerian competition," according to the site.

Entrants submit a personal statement as part of the competition. Mountford described herself as a "straight, white, pure-blood female with a longing to return to traditional ways. In accordance with nature. Blood and soil. Ancestors and honor. Our people matter."

Mountford had previously lived in Brighton, moving to the city of Oxford two years ago, the Mail on Sunday reported.
Antisemitic Vandals Spread Hate in Jackson, New Jersey
Police in Jackson, New Jersey have launched an investigation into the appearance of multiple swastikas on electricity poles in Johnson Park.

“I am deeply saddened to learn about this latest act of hate and stupidity,” Mayor Mike Reina told Lakewood Alerts in a statement.

“Police reports have been made, and they are being investigated. I’ve said it before, and sadly, I have to say it again, “hate had no home in Jackson”. We intend to prosecute all acts of hate and terror to the fullest extent of the law.”

Reina is currently serving his fourth term in office as mayor of the fourth-largest town in Ocean County.

One week ago, Ocean County Prosecutor Brad Billhimer ordered the deployment of an “anti-hate” trailer in the community.

Some residents objected to the move, claiming there is no antisemitism in Jackson, Lakewood Alerts reported.

But clearly, there is.

History of Hate?
This past June, antisemitic graffiti was found at the site of a soon-to-be-built facility for Chai Lifeline in Jackson. The Jewish-owned health support organization provides programs and services to children and families of all religions who are dealing with life-threatening children’s illnesses.

“Is this for Jews” and other hateful messages were spray-painted on the lumber at the site. Police are investigating.

Just a few days earlier on June 5, 2023, swastikas were painted on 14 homes and another home under construction was burned in nearby Manchester. Ron Carr was subsequently charged with the hate, believing the homes were owned by Jews, according to Billhimer.


Israeli firm gets FDA approval for rectum shield that blocks radiation
BioProtect Ltd., an Israeli medical devices manufacturer, has recently received FDA clearance for their innovative BioProtect Balloon Implant System, a biodegradable product that shields the rectum from unnecessary radiation during prostate cancer treatment.

When implanted and inflated, the device creates a consistent, reliable, and reproducible space between the prostate and rectum while also acting as a shield, reducing the amount of stray radiation absorbed by the latter during radiation therapy.

Prostate cancer ranks as the second most prevalent cancer among American men, with over a quarter of a million new cases diagnosed in 2023, as per the American Cancer Society. By providing reliable protection to the rectum, BioProtect offers a major paradigm shift in the way the condition can be treated.

"We believe that our balloon has the potential to revolutionize rectal protection from toxicity during prostate cancer radiation therapy," said Itay Barnea, CEO of BioProtect. "Not only does it provide better protection to healthy organs, it also supports dose escalation and hypofractionation, which are leading trends in prostate cancer radiation therapy."


Israeli gaming team hosted in Riyadh ‘like kings’
A team of Israelis who participated in a recent global video game competition in Saudi Arabia said Monday that they were treated like royalty and blended right in with the other international players meeting in the Gulf kingdom.

The FIFA-sponsored e-football event came as U.S.-brokered talks are underway in an effort to forge a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The team, which consisted of three gamers, their coach and their manager, entered Riyadh via a connecting flight in Dubai using their Israeli passports and were provided with security detail 24/7 during their week-and-a-half visit last month, team manager Zvika Kosman said.

“It was very interesting to be in a country which we have no official relations with but within a minute you get used to it and it seems like any other place in the world,” Kosman told JNS.

He said the team was given VIP treatment from the moment they landed at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport until their departure. Police whisked them to a side office to have their Israeli passports scanned on both arrival and departure, bypassing local airport officials, Kosman added.

“The truth is I felt like a king,” Naseem Eissat, 20, one of the players, said a telephone interview. “We were hosted in the best possible way. I felt completely comfortable and at ease.”


Imagine Dragons tours Israel ahead of Tuesday show
Fans of indie pop trio AJR may spot band members around Israel ahead of their Tuesday night show in Tel Aviv.

The three brothers in AJR, Adam, Jack, and Ryan Metzger, arrived in Israel Friday and were spotted eating ice cream at Anita Gelato in Tel Aviv’s Neve Tzedek neighborhood and walking around the city’s Carmel food market.

The entourage was planning to tour Israel by helicopter, from the Golan Heights down to Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.

The name AJR comes from the first initials of the three brothers, whose musical style combines elements of pop, electronic, and dubstep. The three will warm up the crowd on Tuesday night.

More than 60,000 tickets were sold for Imagine Dragon’s August 29 show in Tel Aviv’s outdoor venue of Yarkon Park.

The indie pop band, including lead singer Dan Reynolds, guitarist Wayne Sermon, bassist Ben McKee and drummer Daniel Platzman, began gaining exposure ten years ago with its award-winning debut album, and was termed a breakout band in 2013 by MTV and Billboard.

Lead singer Reynolds cites Nirvana, The Beatles, Coldplay and U2 as some of the band’s artistic influences, and the band has been praised for a genre-bending style.
Helen Mirren: Israel must exist ‘for eternity’ because of the Holocaust
British actress Dame Helen Mirren believes Israel must exist forever, saying it was a lesson learned from the Holocaust, though she opposes the direction the current government is taking the Jewish state.

In an interview aired by Channel 12 on Sunday, Mirren spoke about her leading role in “Golda” depicting Israel’s first and only female prime minister, Golda Meir, during the period of the fateful 1973 Yom Kippur War. The interview was recorded in July when Mirren was in Israel for the premiere of the movie at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

“I believe in Israel, in the existence of Israel, and I believe Israel has to go forward into the future, for the rest of eternity,” Mirren said. “I believe in Israel because of the Holocaust.”

She revealed there were those who had tried to talk her out of making the film due to Israel’s controversial position on the world stage, but, she said, “I’ve met such extraordinary people in Israel.”

“I know there is a base, a foundation of deep, intelligence, thoughtfulness, commitment, poetry even in Israel that is very, very special, I think,” said Mirren.

Regarding her position opposing a cultural boycott of Israel, she said, “It didn’t seem right” to “abandon artists in Israel” that she had met.

“It is the artistic community that I believe will carry Israel forward,” she said.

Mirren admitted that before making the film, “I didn’t know a lot about Golda” but said she clearly recalled “the feeling of triumph and satisfaction and of awe actually that a woman had been elected to lead a country. It was a very exciting moment for women in general.”

She described preparing for the role by reading Meir’s autobiography and watching footage of the Israeli leader. For Mirren, “understanding her physical suffering….as well as the mental suffering of dealing with this enormous burden of the war… that was a revelation for me.”


Jerusalem archaeologists uncover large Second Temple-era aqueduct
Archaeologists in Jerusalem have discovered a 300-meter (985-foot) portion of a Second Temple-era aqueduct, the longest such continuous stretch ever found in Israel’s capital, the Israeli Antiquities Authority announced on Monday.

The ancient waterway was discovered at a building site in the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Givat HaMatos.

“The aqueducts of Jerusalem tell the story of the city,” said Antiquities Authority director Eli Eskosido.

“Their construction required huge budgets, extensive engineering knowledge and daily operation,” Eskosido explained. “They bear witness to the glory days of the Temple, to the destruction of the city and its construction after the destruction of the Temple, and in the days of Aelia Capitolina as an idol city.”

Excavation managers Ofer Shion and Rotam Cohen said that the waterway was built to bring water from further away because Jerusalem’s primary water source, the Gihon Spring, couldn’t meet the needs of the growing number of residents and pilgrims.

The Hasmoneans’ King Herod built two elaborate aqueducts for Jerusalem, which were among the largest and most complex waterworks in the Land of Israel. The system concentrated spring water in the Bethlehem area and transferred it to Jerusalem by taking advantage of topography, the laws of gravity and large pools, said Shion and Cohen.

The aqueduct known as the “Upper Aqueduct” brought water to the Upper City—the area of the Old City’s current Jewish and Armenian Quarters. Meanwhile, the so-called “Lower Aqueduct” transferred water directly to the Temple.

According to Shion and Cohen, the Upper Aqueduct remained in use after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 C.E.




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