Wednesday, January 17, 2024

01/17 Links Pt2: The Genocide Charge Against Israel Is a Moral Obscenity; Avi Shlaim’s Revision Chic; Eli Lake: A Brief History of the AsAJews

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: The Global Samidoun Network: Mapping Branches in Europe and North America
Founded in 2012, and designated by Israel as a terror entity in 2021, Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network promotes the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization through an international network of activists. Samidoun branches, including in Western countries, publicly support and celebrate the PFLP, its actions and its leaders; campaign for the release of jailed PFLP members; and promote anti-Israel campaigns. Moreover, Samidoun advocates for Palestinians’ “natural right to armed resistance.”

Samidoun does not publish financial information, including funding sources and annual income. In the US, according to its website, “Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is a fiscally sponsored project of the Alliance for Global Justice, a 501(c)(3) Organization.” Samidoun is also a registered not-for-profit in Canada (since March 2021).

The February 2021 designation of Samidoun by the Israeli Ministry of Defense identifies the organization as an arm of the PFLP. A press statement accompanying the designation added that Samidoun was founded by “members of the PFLP in 2012,” and that it “plays a leading and significant role in the PFLP’s anti-Israel propaganda efforts, fundraising, and recruiting activists,” serving as a “front for the PFLP abroad.” In 2020, Germany expelled Samidoun head Khaled Barakat and imposed a four-year entry ban; his appeal was rejected, citing PFLP links and “support for a terrorist organization.” In 2022, Barakat was denied entry into the EU.

This report provides representative examples of the activities of major Samidoun chapters and key activists in Europe and North America. This includes supporting the PFLP and its members, justifying the use of violence, and incitement against the state of Israel.1

While the network operates on several continents, and has a notable presence in Iran, this document addresses Samidoun activities in Canada, France, the Netherlands, the US, Germany, and Belgium.2
‘The left has become Hamas’s useful idiots’
Ever since Hamas’s 7 October pogrom, Western cities have been overwhelmed by anti-Israel protests on a near-weekly basis. These demos have, without fail, descended into carnivals of anti-Semitism. Yet the self-styled anti-racists on the progressive left have remained silent about this Jew hatred. Many of them have marched side by side with Islamist anti-Semites. Many of them have made openly anti-Semitic comments themselves. How did we get here? Can the left ever recover from this staggering moral lapse?

Jake Wallis Simons – editor of the Jewish Chronicle – returned to The Brendan O’Neill Show to discuss the new anti-Semitism and much more. What follows is an edited extract from their conversation. Listen to the full episode here.

Brendan O’Neill: What do you think the so-called pro-Palestine marches tell us about people’s views after the 7 October pogrom?

Jake Wallis Simons: It tells us a lot about what we should be afraid of in Britain. The skeleton of the marches, in particular, was very interesting. In October, we published a story in the Jewish Chronicle where we exposed the fact that four out of the six groups heading the marches had leaders with strong and explicit connections to Hamas. These people had gone to Gaza and met with Hamas leadership. They were fairly open about it, too.

Up and down the country you have also had radical preachers in mosques openly arguing from the pulpit in support of Hamas. It is a crime in Britain to support Hamas, which is a proscribed terrorist organisation. Yet these preachers were openly flouting the law, filming their preachings and putting them up on X. And the police are still doing the square root of bugger all about it. In fact, Scotland Yard has instead been investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza. They’ve been putting up signs asking any witnesses to please come forward so that the police can investigate said crimes. This is the same police force that has for decades failed to enforce the law by arresting jihadists.

This has been particularly clear during the marches, where many of the protesters have been incredibly intimidating. Early on, there was an attack on a brave Iranian activist who was flying an Israeli flag at one of the marches. He was pursued and threatened with beheading. The police managed to protect him, but one of his aggressors was found to be carrying a knife. These are the kinds of people attending the marches.

And then there’s the outer-corona of useful idiots, almost exclusively from the political left. These are people who probably know very little about the particulars of the conflict. Various videos have exposed that. Students in the US, for example, were asked which sea was being referred to in the chant, ‘From the river to the sea’. Answers varied from the Caribbean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.
UK group ‘deeply sorry’ its journal scrapped Jewish trauma article
The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, which represents more than 60,000 mental-health professionals across England and Wales, stated earlier this month that it is “deeply sorry” that it didn’t publish an article titled “A community in traumatic stress,” as well as “for the hurt that decision has caused.”

The article, by the psychologist Sandi Mann, a senior lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, had been slated to appear in the association’s journal Workplace. The association subsequently posted the article online.

“It will also go in the next print version of the journal,” Mann wrote on LinkedIn. “This is a very important victory against the culture of threats and intimidation that Jews are facing in the UK today.”

“When Hamas committed its horrendous massacre of approximately 1,200 Israeli civilians and abduction of over 240 men, women and children on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023, the impact on the local Jewish communities in the UK was immediate,” Mann wrote in the journal article. “The impact of the terrorist atrocities was to send the local Jewish communities into a state of traumatic stress.”

Mental-health professionals at the Jewish Action for Mental Health, which Mann chairs, “quickly became burned out” by soaring demands following the attack, “not just to provide therapy but to speak at events, hold Zoom sessions and even to offer Zoom support to the traumatized in Israel,” she wrote. “When desperate people look to us to make them better and we can’t take away the pain, that is tough—when this happens at a mass level for so long, it can become unbearable.”

“I hope that no community in the UK ever needs to benefit from what we have learnt about mass trauma response—but if they do, we are ready to help,” Mann concluded.


It’s time for an American Jewish rethink
This is a tough time for American Jews. Antisemitism has erupted to an unprecedented extent. We thought we were at home in America, but no such luck.

A few months ago, following the Oct. 7 massacre, a friend who is a major donor to Jewish, Israeli and American organizations said to me that Jews might have to leave America, just as we have left—willingly or unwillingly—many countries in the past. Another friend told me that he and all of his liberal friends are being forced to rethink what it means to be a liberal Jew in America.

At the university where I have taught for 35 years, our president took two tries to muster up the correct response to a genocidal massacre. The dean of the college of fine arts dedicated the entire school to fighting “systemic racism” on the day after the death of George Floyd, but has said not a word about the rise of antisemitism on campus and its effect on Jewish students and faculty. Neither has his DEI officer. Not one of my colleagues has expressed sympathy or asked how my friends and family in Israel might be faring in the face of war.

We know that almost all American universities have been conquered and occupied by the left and that alternative voices have been silenced or simply expelled. This is appalling, but not a surprise. The Nazis, for example, easily took over Germany’s universities. Most professors simply want to be left alone to do their research and can’t be bothered to face down evil in their own backyards.

Before the Nazis, the Polish intelligentsia let down their Jewish brethren following a series of pogroms of 1919. In response, the poet Leib Jaffee wrote in his newspaper Die Yiddishe Zeitung:
What was Polish society doing, what was Polish society saying when the Jewry of Vilna was agonizing in its blood? Where was the Polish intelligentsia? Did the bleeding, humiliated Jews of Vilna hear a single voice of sympathy and protest from the side of the Poles? Some individual Poles did, it is true, come to the defense of certain individual Jews. There were cases too of Polish priests defending, at the risk of their lives, the Jews of little villages round Vilna. But where was the Polish social body as such? Where was an appeal to be seen or a newspaper standing up against these events? … Perhaps the hardest thing to bear these days has been the loneliness, the abandoned condition in which we found ourselves.

The number of deaths in each pogrom was less than one hundred. And unlike Hamas, the Polish people didn’t formally adopt the idea of exterminating all Jews. Yet the reaction of the American intelligentsia and its progressive foot soldiers has been even worse than that of their Polish predecessors. It appears that they cannot understand that they are making themselves collaborators with genocidal antisemites. Or can they?
Avi Shlaim’s Revision Chic
Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, one figure has been most ubiquitous and most determined in his assertions that Israel is actually to blame: British academic Avi Shlaim.

His op-eds or his comments have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, EL PAÍS (Spain), Al-Quds, the Wire, the Irish Times, the Islam Channel, the Africa News Network, Prospect, the Times Higher Education Magazine, NPR, and the Daily Mail. They have appeared in Apple podcasts. They have been featured in TikTok videos. Vogue is recommending his books. The message presented is always the same. Shlaim patiently explains to his many followers that Hamas is “not a terrorist organization.” In order to understand this, though, people need to understand the “hidden” history of Israel, one that Shlaim—perhaps alone—can supply.

All this prompts one to wonder: How does an academic come to be a fixture on chat shows and a frequent columnist in the world’s leading newspapers and magazines? To realize such celebrity, a college professor must first persuade others of vaunted expertise on some important matter. Yet presentation is more important than credibility. And more critical than either is what Gypsy Rose Lee offered audiences: a gimmick. The striptease must then be performed in a novel—or seemingly original—manner designed to titillate the appropriate crowd.

This is the context in which we should regard Shlaim, professor of international relations at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, and a member of the British Academy. A leading “New Historian” or “post-Zionist historian,” Shlaim writes regularly for such publications as the Guardian, the Nation and the Independent, and his speaking engagements attract large crowds. Purportedly he is one of the leading living masters of the subject of Israel’s founding. This reputation is based on a series of books he has written on the matter, starting with his supposed magnum opus, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine.

Running to 686 pages, this hefty tome is regarded by its many anti-Zionist admirers as a definitive analysis—proof—of a conspiracy theory that, if true, would lay upon Israel much of the responsibility for the present absence of a Palestinian state.

But there is a curious thing about this book. Now past the 35th anniversary of its publication, it has never been reprinted. Instead, its author arranged for it to be somewhat abridged, re-titled, and put out in paperback with a number of its major contentions rewritten. In the new version, the word “Collusion” is taken out of the title and one of the basic arguments of the first book has been sliced away.
The Re-Education with Eli Lake: A Brief History of the AsAJews
In this episode, Eli traces the history of Jews who use their words to side with the enemies of the Jewish people. His guest is the chief Rabbi of the Re-Education and the host of the Good Faith Effort podcast, Ari Lamm.
Time Stamps:
00:20 Monologue
29:29 Interview with Ari Lamm
Bret Stephens (NYTs): The Genocide Charge Against Israel Is a Moral Obscenity
The U.S. and Britain killed a staggering number of German and Japanese civilians on the path to defeating the regimes that had started World War II - often known as the Good War. Events such as the bombings of Dresden or Tokyo, to say nothing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were far more indiscriminate than anything Israel stands accused of doing. But no serious person holds Franklin Roosevelt to be on a moral par with Adolf Hitler. What the Allies did were acts of war in the service of a lasting peace, not genocide in the service of a fanatical aim.

Reasonable people can argue that Israel has been excessive in its use of force, or deficient in its concern for Palestinian civilians. I disagree. But how curious that the discussion has turned to genocide because it's the behavior of the Jewish state that's in question. And how telling that the accusation is the same one that rabid bigots have been making for years: that the Jews are the real Nazis - guilty of humanity's worst crimes and deserving of its worst punishments.

A verdict against Israel at the International Court of Justice would signal that another international institution has adopted the moral outlook of antisemites.
WaPo: South Africa's False Charges of Israeli "Genocide" -
Israelis struggle to understand how their country could be accused of carrying out genocide in a war they did not start. If any party to the conflict is guilty of attempted genocide, it is Hamas. This terrorist organization, which is explicitly dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, has carried out war crimes, including the murder of Israeli civilians, the kidnapping of more than 200 Israelis (including old people and young children), and the widespread use of rape and sexual violence against Israeli girls and women.

There is no denying that Israeli forces have inflicted large-scale death and destruction in Gaza. This is a great tragedy for the people of Gaza, but primary blame must lie with Hamas, because it launched an unprovoked attack on Israel and uses civilians as human shields, in violation of the laws of war.

But there is no evidence that Israelis have engaged in a deliberate campaign to "destroy, in whole or in part," the Palestinian people - which is what "genocide" means in international law. If Israel, with all the firepower at its disposal, had been trying to commit mass murder, the death toll would have been higher by orders of magnitude.

Far from trying to deliberately slaughter Palestinian civilians, Israeli forces have made extensive efforts to notify them in advance of military operations and urge them to move out of the line of fire. Israeli forces ordered "humanitarian pauses" to facilitate relief efforts and created a "humanitarian corridor" for evacuations from northern to southern Gaza.

Israel has also facilitated the entry of more than 8,000 trucks carrying more than 145,000 tons of food to Gaza since the start of the war, some of which Hamas has seized for itself. These are clearly not the actions of a nation bent on exterminating the Palestinian people.
South Africa’s Hypocrisy on Israel
Many are pointing out the perverse irony that South Africa is leading the charge in accusing Israel of genocide when her leaders preside over a regime in which white farmers are deliberately targeted with horrifying frequency and an average of 75 people a day were murdered in 2023 (27,494 murders were recorded for the 2022/2023 fiscal year). Murder is so common in South Africa that leaders have used the murder rate as an excuse for dismissing the farm attacks, claiming that the Boers are not being specifically targeted but are merely victims of a broader social breakdown. The standard presented by Ngcukaitobi in the Hague—that rhetoric uttered by leaders should be understood as state policy—apparently does not apply to “Kill the Boer!”

The farmers feel differently. In 2022, the Afrikaans NGO AfriForum verified 333 attacks on farms, including at least fifty murders. In the third quarter of 2023 alone, farm attacks spiked by 21% from the previous quarter, and AfriForum’s Community Safety Division confirmed 88 farm attacks—including 13 murders—between July and September of 2023. From April to June there were at least 73 attacks and 23 murders. Both AfriForum and the political party Freedom Front Plus have alleged that these attacks are racially motivated, highlighting both the use of “Kill the Boer!” by powerful political leaders as well as the slogan “One Settler, One Bullet.” The South African government claims that the motive for these attacks is limited to robbery, but many include gruesome incidents of rape and appalling torture. In 2007, the South African Police Service simply stopped reporting farm murders and merged them with general homicide statistics, making it difficult to determine the full scale of the killings.

There is no doubt that, if the pairing of genocidal rhetoric with widespread attacks on the targeted group were happening to an officially recognized “victim” group, then the Boers would be the recipients of elite sympathy. Being “white settlers,” however, they are not, and every effort is made to dismiss the crimes perpetrated against them. This has not gone unnoticed: last year, Elon Musk responded to footage of crowds chanting “Kill the Boer” by posting on X (formerly Twitter) to the president of South Africa: “They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa. @CyrilRamaphosa, why do you say nothing?” (Former president Jacob Zuma has also publicly sung “Kill the Boer!”)

Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, summed up the hypocrisy in a fiery speech defending Israel last week. “Who are they really fighting? It’s a group of cowards. They hide in tunnels. They hide behind civilians. They attack, kill, and mutilate children, women,” he said. “Stop talking about ‘proportion.’ Let’s also talk about that, now that we’re talking about ‘genocide,’ and now that South Africa is bringing that to trial. Maybe South Africa oughta sit this one out.”


Jordan to Join South Africa in ‘Genocide’ Lawsuit Against Israel at The Hague
The ludicrous lawsuit by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice at The Hague on the charge of genocide is rapidly shaping up to provide a clear snapshot of who in the world hopes to eliminate the State of Israel once and for all, and who stands by the right of the Jewish State to exist.

Among those apparently hoping to see Israel’s demise, oddly, is the Kingdom of Jordan, Israel’s neighbor to the east with whom the Jewish State has “enjoyed” icy but quiet relations under a peace treaty signed by both on October 26, 1994.

Despite that peace treaty, Mohannad Al-Mubaideen, a spokesperson for the Jordanian government, has told Arabi 21 that “Prime Minister Bisher Al-Khasawneh’s speech before the House of Representatives was clear, which is that Jordan will submit the necessary legal investigations and pleadings as soon as the International Court of Justice decides to consider the genocide case.”

Jordan, Turkey, Bolivia, Colombia, Brazil, Djibouti, the Muslim member states of the Organization of Islamic Countries, and the Arab League, all expressed their support for South Africa in its effort to rescue Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorist organization from contending with the consequences of its October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel and its massacre that day of more than 1,200 people in some 22 Israeli villages and several other military bases along the Israel-Gaza border.

Germany has announced its decision to intervene in the Court on Israel’s behalf, which will require Berlin to file a “declaration of intervention” with the Court in order to present its legal arguments. The European nation is adding its voice to those of the United States, Guatemala, Canada and the United Kingdom, all of whom have also publicly declared their support for the Jewish State.
Slovenia joins ICJ motion against Israeli practices in West Bank, Gaza, E. Jerusalem

South Africa’s Malema: We Will Arm Hamas When We Take Power

UK police to assess war crimes claim by pro-Palestinian legal group against Israel
UK police said Tuesday that specialist officers will assess whether to open a war crimes probe into Israel’s war with Hamas, following a referral from an advocacy group for Palestinians.

London’s Metropolitan Police said its small war crimes team, which is hosted within its counter-terrorism command, would determine if any further action or formal investigation will be launched.

The Met, the UK’s biggest and best-resourced police force, confirmed it had received a “referral” last Friday “relating to allegations linked to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.”

“The information within the referral will now be assessed by specialist officers as part of a scoping exercise to determine whether any further action or formal investigation will be carried out,” a police spokesman said.

“At this time, there is no UK-based investigation into this matter, or any other matters relating to this particular conflict.”

The spokesman noted the assessment would be done using guidelines for probing possible war crimes crafted with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which makes the final decisions on prosecuting cases in England and Wales.

However, the CPS must seek permission from the attorney general — a senior government minister and the state’s chief legal advisor — over war crimes prosecutions.


The Israel Guys: South Africa Drags Israel Into Court With PREPOSTEROUS Accusation
As you well know, some pompous, powdered wig-wearing lawyers representing South Africa have decided to bring charges of genocide against Israel in the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The charge is that Israel murdered Palestinians in Gaza by the tens of thousands, completely ignoring the fact that their facts and statistics all come from Hamas. They think that if they can simply get the UN to step in, they can stop Israel from bombing the poor people of Gaza, when in reality, they have no power at all.

The ICJ is a hoax, the powdered wig wearing lawyers with their English accents are a bunch of fools, and this entire thing is a monkey trial.


Diadora distances brand from boycott against Jewish South African cricketer
A businessman from South Africa who claimed to represent the Diadora sportswear maker in a boycott action against a Jewish cricket player has no ties to the company, Diadora said.

Juan Carlos Venti, the head of institutional and external relations at the Italy-based firm, distanced Diadora from the businessman, Azhar Saloojee on Wednesday.

Saloojee, a cricket enthusiast was quoted last month announcing a boycott by Diadora’s South Africa branch against cricketer David Teeger over Teeger’s remarks supporting Israel and its troops fighting in Gaza.

“Mr. Azhar Salojee [sic] has no role whatsoever in Diadora’s organization,” Venti said, adding that Saloojee’s remarks on Teeger do not represent Diadora’s position.

Teeger, in an October 22 public speech, praised Israeli soldiers fighting Hamas in Gaza, whereupon Cricket South Africa, the sport’s national governing body, stripped him of the captainship of the under-19 team for the 2024 Cricket World Cup. He was also subjected to an ethics probe, in which he was cleared of allegations that his speech violated the cricket body’s ethics code.
Lineker wants Israel ban, but was happy to take Qatar money & anchor Iran match as regime shot women
Tom Gross interviewed: Gary Lineker wants to ban “apartheid Israel” (even though Jews and Arabs happily play together on Israel’s national team), but Lineker was happy to take huge amounts of Qatari money & to anchor Iran’s match as the regime shot women dead.

Does Lineker know anything about the dozens of top Jewish soccer players who were first banned and then later murdered ?

Including :the scorer of the first ever goal for Poland’s national team in 1922 – murdered in the Warsaw Ghetto.

A German player who scored four goals in one game for the German national team – murdered in Auschwitz.

The greatest coach for Italian football (he managed Inter Milan and Bologna ) in 1930s – murdered in Auschwitz.
-- Tom Gross


Israel should abandon China over Hamas support
China is helping Hamas. The Middle Kingdom is providing both arms and political cover to the terrorist group as it fights Israel in the Gaza Strip. The move marks a significant departure in Beijing’s regional strategy. Israel and the U.S. should take note.

Israel Defense Forces have encountered “vast quantities of weapons manufactured by China being used in Gaza,” according to a report by Israel’s Channel 12 news. The number of weapons involved indicates that they have been brought to Gaza in an organized supply process, the report noted. The weapons include rifles, grenade launchers, ammunition, radios, and advanced communications platforms. An Israeli intelligence source told the Telegraph, a newspaper based in the United Kingdom: “This is top-grade weaponry and communications technology, stuff that Hamas didn’t have before, with very sophisticated explosives which have never been found before and especially on such a large scale.”

Beijing’s support for Hamas extends to other realms.

Chinese officials have largely failed to condemn Hamas. The terrorist group and other Iranian proxies perpetrated the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, the largest slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust, sparking the latest war. Hamas’s barbarity is noteworthy: They tortured parents in front of their children, shot the elderly at bus stops, and set people on fire. China, however, stands with Hamas.

In late October 2023, mere weeks after the massacre, China and Russia used their vetoes to block a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned Hamas, expressed Israel’s right to self-defense, and called for the immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas.

The Chinese Communist Party has also used state media to push Hamas propaganda. As the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin has noted, “an unprecedented surge in antisemitism online in China could be possible only with the blessing of the Chinese government.” The CCP is using platforms that it controls, such as Weibo, to traffic in antisemitic conspiracy theories and to toe the Hamas line.
Top Biden DOJ prosecutor represented Qatar and foreign banks accused of financing terrorism
The top-ranking Justice Department prosecutor in Washington, D.C., worked on behalf of Qatar and numerous foreign banks that have been accused of bankrolling terrorism, documents show.

As the U.S. attorney in the nation’s capital, Matthew Graves has come under the spotlight for supervising a sprawling investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and faced the wrath of GOP lawmakers for allegedly refusing to partner with federal prosecutor David Weiss on charging Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, in Washington with tax crimes. But before this, Graves was a partner at the global law firm DLA Piper, where he represented controversial Qatari-based entities, including its Hamas-linked government.

These prior foreign clients are listed in financial disclosures filed by Graves with the Office of Government Ethics, along with other then-DLA Piper clients, such as the Coca-Cola Company, Nike, General Electric, and even ex-Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. And though the disclosures were filed in 2021, the overseas clients are on the radar of GOP congressional investigators and pro-Israel lawyers, who hold that law enforcement in Washington is not doing enough to thwart violence, including in connection to recent pro-Palestinian protests after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel.

“Matthew Graves’s ties to the terrorist harboring state of Qatar are disqualifying,” Mike Davis, a conservative lawyer being floated in the inner circle of former President Donald Trump as a potential pick for attorney general, told the Washington Examiner. “This revelation might explain why there have yet to be any charges against the Hamas supporters who terrorized the White House.”

Meanwhile, to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “It is extremely concerning that a Biden DOJ official is closely connected with entities that have funded terrorism.”

“We need a full accounting of his foreign dealings, including any work he has done that has supported the barbaric Hamas terrorists,” Blackburn told the Washington Examiner. “This administration is full of Hamas sympathizers, and they must be rooted out of the federal government.”
Erdogan took advantage of Israel
This week's politically and antisemitically motivated arrest of Israeli soccer player Sagiv Yehezkel in Turkey has reignited a fundamental question concerning Israel's foreign relations with its neighbors: How many more diplomatic slaps in the face will Jerusalem have to endure until the message that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan does not see Israel as an ally?

Erdogan clearly views Israel as an illegitimate state and with various excuses he tramples over the already rocky relations between the countries. The attempt before the war to rehabilitate relations between Israel and Turkey stemmed from a clear Turkish interest. Erdogan wants to pave the way to American hearts under Democratic rule – especially since President Biden won the presidency – and is mainly interested in trade and military trade relations with the United States. The way there as Erdogan saw it: putting some warmth back into Turkey's relations with Israel.

Under Erdogan, Turkey has become an outcast for Western countries, the European Union, and the United States. Ankara had hoped to obtain forgiveness through Israel. It was these interests that were behind Erdogan's groveling to President Isaac Herzog and, later, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well. Erdogan saw Israel as a tool for rehabilitating Turkey's status, while Israel responded to the courtship for economic-commercial reasons. And then it happened again: Erdogan had his way with Israel and once satisfied cast her aside. He has done this countless times since coming to power in 2002. The climax was the violent Mavi Marmara flotilla off the coast of Israel in 2010 and the battle of the "peacemakers" against IDF fighters.

A year or so before the Marmara incident, Erdogan launched a tirade against Shimon Peres: "When it comes to killing, you know how to kill," he shouted at the Israeli president as he lambasted Israel's actions against Hamas in Gaza. On various occasions, he used the international arena to accuse Israel of killing innocents. Above all, he gave a warm welcome to senior Hamas figures who he hosted in Turkey, supported terrorism, and even allowed Turkey to become a central platform for fundraising for the murderous ISIS organization. Erdogan did not forgive Biden, who described his policies as contributing to the rise of ISIS in 2014. The then US vice president's predictions were accurate: ISIS and Hamas are the same.

Turning the other cheek
Western countries have denounced Erdogan's Islamist vision. But Israel? Time and time again, Jerusalem has turned the other cheek, adopting Christian morality. The time has come for Israel to show some self-respect, as is the way of the Middle East, and make it clear to the Jew-hating Turkish president: Enough is enough.
Israel Should Boycott Turkey
Insult is continuously added to injury. Since the October 7 terror attacks on Israel, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan has used every opportunity to shore up his support for Hamas, while vilifying Jerusalem. At this juncture, it is high time for Israel to realize that it has options. It does not have to entertain Ankara’s vitriol, antisemitism and its support for terrorism—all of which undermine Jerusalem’s security on a daily basis. Israel should do what Erdogan pretends to want to do: boycott Turkish goods.

Take the latest development. On January 15, Sagiv Jehezkel, an Israeli soccer player, who played for Turkish team Antalyaspor was detained by Turkish authorities, and subsequently deported to Israel. His crime? After scoring a goal for his team during a game “Jehezkel jogged to the corner of the field, where a group of photographers was positioned. He pointed to a handwritten message on a band of tape on his left wrist that included a six-pointed Star of David and “100 days, 7/10” — a reference to the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on Oct. 7.”

Turkish authorities took action against Jehezkel for spreading “propaganda” and was subsequently “was charged under Turkey’s penal code for ‘inciting people to hatred and hostility.” Let us forget for a moment that this is an ambiguous legal provision. Did Jehezkel have legal representation in a court of law? Were his actions even deliberated before a judge and considered as freedom of expression? At what point was he found guilty, and who decided that deportation was the right course of action? Was his statement ever taken? Has he been offered any chance to appeal? What is clear from all of this is that due process was not even a factor when deciding to oust Jehezkel. On the other hand, the overall aim was to smear Israel, denigrate those who support their country’s efforts to fight terrorism and make an international spectacle out of it.


Sunak Bans Terrorists, Starmer Invoices Them...
Rishi used PMQ’s to make a dig at Starmer’s “leftie lawyer” background. Referencing the ban on the terrorist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, he pointed to the fact that Starmer actually defended them in a European Court in 2008, saying: “When I see a group chanting ‘Jihad!’ on the street I ban them – he invoices them!”

The PM’s clearly been getting his daily dose of Guido…

UPDATE: Tories going in hard…


Maldives Kicks Indian Troops Out After Calling Modi a ‘Puppet of Israel’

Gadi Taub: Israel’s Thin-Skinned Supreme Court Messes Up Twice
Insult is continuously added to injury. Since the October 7 terror attacks on Israel, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan has used every opportunity to shore up his support for Hamas, while vilifying Jerusalem. At this juncture, it is high time for Israel to realize that it has options. It does not have to entertain Ankara’s vitriol, antisemitism and its support for terrorism—all of which undermine Jerusalem’s security on a daily basis. Israel should do what Erdogan pretends to want to do: boycott Turkish goods.

Take the latest development. On January 15, Sagiv Jehezkel, an Israeli soccer player, who played for Turkish team Antalyaspor was detained by Turkish authorities, and subsequently deported to Israel. His crime? After scoring a goal for his team during a game “Jehezkel jogged to the corner of the field, where a group of photographers was positioned. He pointed to a handwritten message on a band of tape on his left wrist that included a six-pointed Star of David and “100 days, 7/10” — a reference to the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on Oct. 7.”

Turkish authorities took action against Jehezkel for spreading “propaganda” and was subsequently “was charged under Turkey’s penal code for ‘inciting people to hatred and hostility.” Let us forget for a moment that this is an ambiguous legal provision. Did Jehezkel have legal representation in a court of law? Were his actions even deliberated before a judge and considered as freedom of expression? At what point was he found guilty, and who decided that deportation was the right course of action? Was his statement ever taken? Has he been offered any chance to appeal? What is clear from all of this is that due process was not even a factor when deciding to oust Jehezkel. On the other hand, the overall aim was to smear Israel, denigrate those who support their country’s efforts to fight terrorism and make an international spectacle out of it.


Dexter Van Zile: American Muslims Must Repudiate Pro-Hamas Charities
Something good happened this past week in south Florida. After being briefed and educated by activists affiliated with the Middle East Forum (MEF), a group of responsible public officials and business leaders prevailed upon a local hotel to refrain from hosting an Islamist-organized gathering of extremists slated to take place near Fort Lauderdale. The cancellation of the event, scheduled for the second weekend of January at the Marriot Hotel in Coral Springs, has prompted the all-too-predictable cries of bigotry and “Islamophobia” on the part of its organizer, the South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF), which is now scrambling for another venue to hold its gala.

Floridians have every reason to be concerned about a local hotel chain hosting SFMF’s event, which would, by design, allow pro-Hamas activists who applauded the October 7 massacre in Israel to rub shoulders with service-minded Muslims and the organizations they lead. If it were allowed to proceed, the event would have given Hamas-aligned Islamist organizations a chance to portray themselves as something they are not — friends of the American republic and its way of life. (READ MORE from Dexter Van Zile: Not Another Dime to Pro-Hamas Charities in US)

Founded in 2017, SFMF represents several of the state’s Islamist organizations which themselves promote the ideologies of movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, its South Asian counterpart Jamaat-e-Islami, and Shiite extremists of Iran. One thing that unites these organizations is hostility toward Israel, which has manifested itself in one of SFMF’s high-profile members, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), notorious for its involvement in a 2007 terror finance trial involving Hamas.

Late last year, the Biden Administration disavowed CAIR after a video emerged showing CAIR national director Nihad Awad celebrating the October 7 massacre and providing liberationist cover for the rape and murder of Israeli civilians, which he depicted as akin to Nazis by declaring, “The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on October 7.”
Meet the college president unafraid of speaking out against terrorism
While much of the attention around campus antisemitism has focused on elite private universities — and has centered on administrations’ inability to defend Jewish students — not all colleges have faced the same challenges.

The president of a small, lesser-known public university in Rochester, Mich., was among the first to strongly condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities, releasing a statement just hours after the attack and differentiating herself from counterparts who waffled over a response.

“We are shocked and horrified by the unprovoked acts of brutality by Hamas terrorists in Israel,” Dr. Ora Hirsch Pescovitz wrote on Oct. 7 to Oakland University, a school with a diverse student body where Arab-Americans make up a significant share of attendees.

“Whole families, including grandparents and infants, have been massacred or kidnapped from their homes. Our hearts go out to all the civilians who are victims of this senseless violence. The victims and their families are in our thoughts as we hope for a rapid and peaceful resolution of this crisis,” the statement continued.

Pescovitz was hired to lead the university in 2017, making her the school’s seventh president and second Jewish one. She attended Hebrew University and, as the daughter of a rabbi, one of her first goals in the position was to help create a warm environment for Jewish students at the school.

Pescovitz came to her current position after she practiced and taught pediatric endocrinology, ran a hospital in Indianapolis, headed the University of Michigan Health System and served as senior vice president at Eli Lilly and Company.

She recently sat down with Jewish Insider to discuss the challenges of leading a university amid unprecedented antisemitism on college campuses.
DEI Squelches Student Reporting at Yale, Penn
Putting DEI regimes that view the world in terms of an oppressor-oppressed dichotomy in charge of student journalism, in a system in which student DEI enforcers take their cues from adult bureaucrats, was bound to reach new lows in the wake of Oct. 7, an event that normalized open Jew-hatred on college campuses and in major cities across America. The Yale Daily News and Daily Pennsylvanian are not the exceptions. They are the rule, in a society in which institutions are expected to move in lockstep with the progressive consensus, which had plainly declared Jews to be “white people” and therefore “oppressors.”

Last year, for example, the editorial board of The Harvard Crimson published an article titled “In Support of Boycott, Divest, Sanctions and a Free Palestine,” identifying Palestinians as victims of Israeli “crimes against humanity” and Palestinian supporters as victims of professional blacklisting and accusations of antisemitism. “When oppression strikes anywhere in the world, resistance movements reverberate globally,” wrote the board, identifying “the overwhelming power imbalance that defines and constricts the overall debate.”

Think for a moment about how ridiculous this language is. It promotes a unified, global struggle against Israel by unrelated actors and frames Israel as the ultimate oppressor, while Palestians are the innocent, oppressed underdog. It is hard to imagine an official statement from Hamas or Hezbollah or al-Qaida sounding much different. That parents are paying $75,000 and up to send their children to revolutionary reeducation camps being run under the guise of the country’s most prestigious academic institutions would simply be bizarre, if those institutions were not also producing the country’s future leaders and journalists.

If you attempt to practice journalism while Jewish on one of these campuses, your situation is even more mind-bendingly strange and unpleasant. Here at Yale, my peers and I are disparagingly called “Zionist liars” with “proximity to whiteness” by classmates on social media who cannot see—or so I like to think—that their words are code for “powerful Jew.” We cannot avoid the genocidal calls of “from the river to the sea,” “globalize the intifada,” and “resistance is justified,” disrupting classes and walkways, or the young, would-be diversity commissars mobbing students and yelling “shame.”

Anti-Jewish student groups, in their occupation of spaces on campus, remind Jewish students that, unless we are willing to grovel before people who want us dead and say Kaddish for Palestinians (this has happened multiple times at Princeton) and deny our own right to exist by rejecting Israel’s self-defense, then the campus is simply not our turf. Jews are not part of the Ivy League’s splendid diversity. We are its enemy, simply by existing.

Jewish students are faced with an atmosphere of overwhelming rejection and hatred, which is not all that different from the extreme forms of antisemitism that Jewish students were subjected to in 20th-century Vienna or Warsaw or Cairo (so often accompanied by versions of the cry “go back to Israel”). To avoid the hostilities, they have receded exclusively into Jewish centers, except for when students threaten to shoot them up—which happened a few months ago at Cornell.

Hiding accomplishes nothing for us, though. If we succumb to the threats of the mob, they will only become stronger. We must first recognize that the threat exists, and that we are not included in the revolutionary promises of the diversity bureaucracy. Instead, we are its enemy. That recognition hurts. Yet without it, the mob will win. And then we will have nowhere left to hide.
Incredible letter written by a NON - Jewish Scottish professor to his students who voted to boycott Israel
Incredible letter written by a NON - Jewish Scottish professor to his students who voted to boycott Israel
​Dr Denis MacEoin, a non-Jewish professor, to the motion put forward by The Edinburgh Student's Association to boycott all things Israeli
TO: The Committee Edinburgh University Student Association.
May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic & Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt & Laurence Elwell Sutton,
2 of Britain 's great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge & to teach Arabic & Islamic Studies at Newcastle University . Naturally, I am the author of several books & 100s of articles in this field.
I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs & that, for that reason, I am shocked & disheartened by the EUSA motion & vote.
I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not & has never been a system of apartheid in Israel .
That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves. Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely
clueless in matters concerning Israel, & that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.
Advocacy group demands transparency and investigation into antisemitism at prominent university

Jewish students file complaint against American University over handling of campus antisemitism

Dept of Ed opens investigation into Temple University over anti-Semitic incidents

U of Illinois: Only Queer, Racial, Environmental Justice Will ‘Free Palestine’

University Of Manitoba Student Newspaper Says Hamas Attacks Due To “Colonial Occupation”

PreOccupiedTerritory: Crap. Left My Harvard Application In A Tunnel The IDF Blew Up. Have To Plagiarize It All Over Again. by Karem al-Ghay (satire)
Dammit. I can’t believe I was that forgetful. I had all the right papers filled out, ready to send, with maybe a tweak to one of the essays if I got around to it, but in the rush to evacuate our position before the Israelis took it over, taking all the Harvard application forms with me slipped my mind. Now I’m going to have to copy everything from someone else’s work all over again.

The stupid thing is I had gone over this exact scenario in my mind like eighty times. I had contingency plan after contingency plan. Herd the hostages; grab the supplies; set the booby traps; snag the Harvard application essays that I’d copied more or less verbatim from twelve different sources. But when the moment came, my brain turned to mush and I left the essays right there on a chair in that bunker. When the IDF blew up the little tunnel system we had going, it probably burned to crisp. I’m never getting it back. All that painstaking plagiarism down the drain. I have to reconstruct it now, and that’s going to take at least half an hour.

I hope the Admissions Committee at Harvard appreciates the extra effort I had to put into this application.

The main challenge, at this point, will involve getting the right mix of plagiarized sources. I thought I had a good product before. I just can’t guarantee that what I reproduce will be as close to the quality of my previous effort.
Toronto Star’s Shree Paradkar Accuses Israel Of Killing Palestinian “Journalists” In “Unprecedented Numbers” – Ignoring Their Role In Terrorism

UPDATE: CTV Quietly Deletes Antisemitic Blood Libel, Claiming Israel Is Committing “Mass Murder Of Palestinian Children”

St. John’s Newspaper Reporter Says Israel Committing “Genocide” And “Ethnic Cleansing” In Gaza

Guardian lies by omission in piece on axed Australian journo
The Guardian had a story to tell about anti-Palestinian bias in the Australian media, and the ‘undue influence’ of pro-Israel lobby groups, and facts clearly weren’t going to get in the way of that narrative.

The article (“ABC staff shelve plans for immediate industrial action over sacking of journalist Antoinette Lattouf”, Jan. 17) by Guardian Australia reporter Josh Taylor, claims that Antoinette Lattouf a journalist for ABC, the nation’s national broadcaster, was axed from her gig as a fill-in radio presenter due to her reposting, on Instagram, of a Human Rights Watch video about the war’s impact on Palestinians. The Guardian reporter also suggested that ABC’s decision was at least partly the result of her being “targeted” by pro-Israel lobbyists, while Lattouf herself, whose of Lebanese descent, claims that she was the victim of racism.

However, even leaving aside the toxic Guardian dog-whistle imputing the ‘undue influence’ of the ‘pro-Israel lobby’, it’s simply not true that the only social media post in question is the lone HRW video. A look at both her X and Instagram accounts shows a pattern of pro-Palestinian advocacy prior to her termination.

First, as Israelycool has documented, Lattouf drew intense criticism after she has repeatedly claimed that videos of pro-Palestinian protesters chanting “gas the Jews” at the Sydney Opera House in October were unverified – a narrative she continued to peddle even after new evidence emerged proving that the antisemitic chant could clearly be heard.

This was ignored by the Guardian reporter.


Le Devoir Commentator Whitewashes Houthi & Hamas Threat, Accuses Israel Of Genocide

UNINFORMATIVE BBC REPORTING ON LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE PLOT

PMW: PA daily: Talmud permits “cutting open pregnant women to kill the fetuses”

MEMRI: Palestinian Authority Daily Describes Terrorists Killed By Israeli Forces As 'Murdered Athletes'

MEMRI: Moroccan Journalist: Hamas Has Become Sacred In Morocco; The Silencing Of Its Critics In This Country Is Oppression Of Thought

MEMRI: In Article In Saudi Daily, Former Trump Advisor Criticizes Biden Administration's Hesitant Policy Towards Iran's Provocations

Australia 'Concerned' By Iranian Espionage Activities

Emhoff to address antisemitism at World Economic Forum in Davos
Continuing his advocacy for fighting antisemitism, second gentleman Doug Emhoff will bring his voice to contribute to discussions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which started on Tuesday and will run through Friday. He also plans to speak on women’s rights and female empowerment.

Emhoff, who is Jewish and the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, is scheduled to fly in on Thursday and connect with foreign leaders and top businesses. He will speak with such figures as Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, who is slated to lead a gathering of fellow CEOs; and Shelley Zalis, founder and CEO of the Female Quotient.

Emhoff previously announced an initiative to counter campus antisemitism following the Oct. 7 mass murder and kidnappings in Israel, perpetrated by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, coupled with the boom in pro-Palestinian university protests supporting a ceasefire with Israel–namely, a Hamas victory.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog is also going to the World Economic Forum, bringing families of victims still being held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Poles strip immunity from far-right lawmaker who extinguished Hanukkah candles
Poland’s parliament has voted to remove the immunity from prosecution of a lawmaker who used a fire extinguisher to put out Jewish Hanukkah candles in the country’s parliament in December, an incident that caused international outrage.

The vote opens the way for prosecutors to press charges against Grzegorz Braun from the far-right Confederation party for seven acts committed during 2022 and 2023, including the incident involving the candles.

“There is no reason to protect him using immunity… We know what he did and it was not acceptable,” said Agnieszka Pomaska, a lawmaker from the largest grouping in Poland’s coalition government, Civic Coalition (KO).

The largest opposition party, the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS), also voted in favor of removing Braun’s immunity.

Warsaw District Prosecutor Mariusz Dubowski had told a parliamentary committee that Braun would face charges including destruction of property, violation of bodily integrity, and insulting objects of religious worship, the state-run news agency PAP reported.

After extinguishing the candles in the parliament on December 12, Braun took to the podium, where he described Hanukkah as “satanic” and said he was restoring “normality.”
Staffer to far-right AfD leader in Germany fired after neo-Nazi meeting
The German investigative publication Corrective published a story exposing a meeting of neo-Nazis and other far-right individuals, leading to one party employee’s dismissal.

Roland Hartwig previously worked as an aide for Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD). He served as a member of the Bundestag between 2017 and 2021.

On Monday, the story revealed that Hartwig had attended a meeting of far-right activists that included neo-Nazis, where they discussed a “master plan” to deport millions from Germany, such as migrants and “unassimilated citizens.”

The group reportedly included 24 people meeting in a dining hall of a hotel close to Potsdam, which Corrective described as “a mix of AfD members, followers of the Identitarian movement and members of nationalist student fraternities (Burschenschaft).”
How I Went From Being A Neo-Nazi To a Faithful Jew
Frank Meeink grew up in a rough neighborhood in South Pensilvania. At the impressionable age of thirteen, he discovered the Neo-Nazi movement.

Frank's fascinating journey from the notorious skinhead gang leader into a faithful Jew is a powerful message to us today -- that hate ultimately destroys the one who is hating.

Frank is now a proud activist, teaching harmony and peace to young people in America today.

You can purchase his autobiography here.

This interview was recorded at the JLI National Jewish Retreat, an immersive and educational getaway bringing together some of the top Jewish leaders and thinkers of today.




The India-Israel Military Miracle
Israel and India have formed one of the greatest bilateral partnership in the Middle East.


Palantir convenes high-level gathering in Davos to support Israeli hostages
The software giant Palantir hosted a high-level gathering on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with family members of Israeli hostages held in Gaza as well as freed Israeli captives, who described their experiences in searing detail and urged attendees to show support for the remaining abductees.

In a series of emotional speeches to a packed room at Palantir’s pavilion on the promenade in Davos, the audience, which included a number of top tech and business leaders, heard a range of accounts from Israelis affected by the violence.

Participants at the event, hosted by Palantir CEO Alex Karp, were moved to tears when Rachel Goldberg-Polin showed footage of the moment her 23-year-old son was brutally abducted by Hamas terrorists from a music festival targeted during the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel. Goldberg-Polin challenged participants to take action in whatever way possible to bring the hostages home.

Noam Peri, an Israeli whose 79-year-old father was abducted by Hamas, read a quote from Elie Wiesel and implored attendees to speak up on behalf of the hostages.

Nili Margalit, an Israeli nurse who was held in Gaza for nearly 50 days, described feeling guilty for leaving the other hostages behind, some of whom she had been helping with medical treatment, she said. Her father, Eliyahu, was killed by Hamas but his body remains in Gaza. In her remarks, Margalit urged the room to do everything in their power to help the hostages.
Never Too Old to Fight
Three men in Israel Defense Forces uniforms patrolled on Jan. 8 in Hurfeish, a Druze town of 7,000 in the Galilee, just 1 1/2 miles from the Lebanese border. The trio drove that night not in a military jeep but a Chevy Blazer bearing civilian license plates. They weren’t in active-duty service (18–21 years old) or even in reserves (through age 45), but were far older—the youngest of them being 54.

These older Druze men are in another tier of Israeli military service: kitot konenut, first-response teams for security threats. Most Israeli communities have kitot konenut, which are locally run. Like those in Hurfeish, the ones in small communities—including kibbutzim, moshavim, and villages—operate under the aegis of the IDF, while those in cities report to the national police service. The Hurfeish team comprises former combat soldiers past the age of reserve duty, along with reservists from town assigned back to Hurfeish, the idea being that a resident’s familiarity with a place and its people far exceeds an outsider’s. The post-reservists operate as volunteers.

The men making the rounds on Jan. 8 and their colleagues on other shifts conduct round-the-clock patrols in town, train in the field, and hold security briefings. Hurfeish’s security heads also meet periodically with counterparts throughout the area.

Hurfeish’s team (known by the singular term kitat konenut) reactivated itself on Oct. 8, when Hezbollah, the terrorist organization that controls southern Lebanon, attacked Israel a day after Hamas’ massacre of Jewish communities near the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah’s strikes against Israeli military and civilian targets in the north, and the IDF’s counterattacks, have occurred almost daily ever since.

Almost all residents of communities within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the border with Lebanon were evacuated months ago by the Israeli government. Hurfeish, though, continues to function as before: its shops open, vibrant pedestrian and vehicular traffic, residents in place.

When I asked them why, everyone I interviewed in Hurfeish’s kitat konenut provided nearly the same answer.

“We didn’t want to be refugees, even temporarily,” said Falah Gadban, 60, the kitat konenut’s commander.
Cutting-Edge Israeli Med Tech Is Boosting Survival Rates of War Wounded
A 23-year-old woman was shot multiple times by Hamas terrorists from Gaza as they savagely attacked the outdoor Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7. One of the bullets penetrated the woman’s left eye and lodged in the right side of her brain.

By the end of that horrific day, the terrorists had butchered 1,200 people in southern Israel, mainly civilians. An additional 240 were taken hostage to Gaza. Thousands of others, like the woman from the festival, were injured and rushed to Israeli hospitals.

Fortunately, the young woman survived.

She and other wounded civilians and soldiers have not only doctors and other medical staff to thank for saving their lives, but also new Israeli-developed medical technologies.

The death rate among wounded soldiers in the current war is 6.7 percent, which is less than half the rate during the Second Lebanon War and 2.5% less than that during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014.

This can be attributed to faster evacuations from the battlefield to hospitals (an average of one hour and 6 minutes faster) and better protective equipment. However, medical advances based on new technologies developed since earlier conflicts also play a critical role in boosting the survival rate.
Rare 2,550-year-old silver coin from Persian era uncovered in Jerusalem area
An extremely rare silver coin that was minted outside the Land of Israel during the Persian Period – within a few centuries of the biblical story of Queen Esther and King Ahasuerus in the 6th–5th centuries BCE – has been discovered by an archaeologist during an Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) excavation in the Judean Hills.

But it was not minted in Persia, and it was certainly not used by the royal pair to buy something to drink from a vending machine. Minted in a period when the use of coins had just begun, it joins only half a dozen coins of its type that have been found in excavations in the country.

An indication of the gradual process of minting coins instead of weighing silver pieces to make payments for goods purchased is the fact that, although the coin was minted as such, it was found intentionally cut into two.

This indicates that in the 4th century BCE, it was used as a weighed piece of silver rather than as a coin, even though coins were current in this period.

The rare coin was discovered by Semyon Gendler, the IAA’s acting Judean District archaeologist. It was minted with a square stamp embedded into one face; later, more sophisticated techniques produced coins with protruding rather than sunken stamps.




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