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Monday, November 11, 2024

11/11 Links Pt2: BBC News promote yet another Hamas ‘doctor’; The modern intellectual diktat for Jewish authors; JNF Canada loses appeal to retain charitable status

From Ian:

David Collier: BBC News promote yet another Hamas ‘doctor’
Yesterday, the BBC ran another story about a ‘massacre’ in Gaza. We have now seen it countless times – Hamas propaganda make an empty claim – and the BBC rush to promote it.

The latest headline covered both Gaza and Lebanon.

‘Israeli strikes on north Lebanon and Gaza kill dozens, officials and rescuers say’.

The only named Gazan based source for the claims in the BBC article was a Dr Fadel Naim, director of the Al-Ahly hopsital:

The report from the good doctor is grim. Of the 17 bodies his facility received ‘nine’ were women – thus strongly implying this was a random attack that killed women – not terrorists.

But is there any reason the BBC should not have reproduced the claim of Fadel Naim? Did the BBC do the slightest bit of due diligence on this witness, before sharing his lies to the world?

The answer is no. They could not have checked at all.

The timeline of the doctor
Unusually for Gazan based witnesses these days, Fadel Naim does not hide his social media behind confusing variations of his name. Search for a ‘Fadel Naim’ in Gaza on Facebook and you quickly find his account.

When you search his account to see what he was posting on October 7 2023 – it quickly becomes apparent this is not the type of person any of us would recognise as a doctor. His timeline is full of open support for the October 7 atrocities:

It is not just about October 7. On 27 January 2023, Hamas terrorists slaughtered seven Jews outside a synagogue in Jerusalem. Fadel Naim took the opportunity to celebrate the attack:

If the BBC journalists had even bothered to look – they would have seen that this man openly supports terrorism and should not be trusted. In the end, it is left to people like me to do their job for them.

The Hamas doctor
From scanning the photos on his own public timeline, it soon becomes apparent that this doctor is no idle supporter of terrorism. This is an image from his daughter’s wedding. The top table at the event included not just Fadel Naim, the BBC ‘witness’ – but also Ismail Haniyeh – the (then) leader of Hamas in Gaza:

We can conclude that this doctor is closely aligned to the top Hamas leadership – and no western media organisation should be relying on him as a witness. It is kind of obvious anyway. A basic truth completely ignored by western media is that Hamas control Gaza – so if a person has ‘made it in Gaza’ – (for example becoming a director at a hospital) – it is a near certainty that his family is aligned with Hamas.

What makes this all worse – is that the Associated Press used him before – and was notified of the doctor’s terrorist associations.
The modern intellectual diktat for Jewish authors
Nearly a century ago, the Nazis burned the books of Jewish authors. Today, the publishing world is attempting to resurrect the exclusion of writers because of either their faith and nationality or their refusal to conform to a new intellectual diktat.

Books deemed “degenerate” by the Nazis for being “un-German” — especially those written by Jews — were purged from bookstores and libraries for reasons of racial as well as intellectual superiority. This self-righteous effort to purify German thinking targeted such Jewish luminaries as Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Lion Feuchtwanger and Vicky Baum, whose works were either banned outright or torched by Nazi Stormtroopers.

Nearly a century later, a new effort is afoot to compel Israeli authors into a contemporary variant of ideological submission. Last week, more than 1,000 writers, including acclaimed Irish author Sally Rooney and award-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy, signed a letter calling for a boycott of Israeli writers, publishers, book festival organizers and literary agents who have yet to publicly denounce the “genocide” in Gaza.

Boycotts like this are self-licking ice-cream cones, enabling the signatories to congratulate themselves for taking a stand on the “right side of history,” as Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last spring fittingly described the protestors in Western countries championing groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. That such literary boycotts are as blatantly antisemitic as they are hypocritical is of course ignored by their exponents.

The statement these writers have endorsed proudly declares that it is the “biggest cultural boycott against Israeli cultural institutions in history,” and encourages Israeli writers and literary institutions to “Denounce and distance themselves from Israel’s genocidal apartheid regime” and “Affirm the full protected rights of the Palestinian people under international law, including the right of return.”

In essence, the statement’s signatories want Israelis to publicly acknowledge that their state has no right to exist, thereby disavowing their religion, whose aspiration has for centuries been the return to Zion.

In the 1930s, German Jewish writers were just banned. Today, their Israeli counterparts are being told to denounce their own religious and national identity and cruelly distance themselves from their homeland or else risk ostracism and opprobrium.
Writers and Careless Use of Words
[T]he esteemed writers did at least four things that one does not expect from people of letters.

The first was casting anathema on publishers, book clubs, cultural associations, art festivals and, inevitably, hundreds or perhaps thousands of writers, poets, composers, cineastes, dramatists, painters and other artists associated with them, simply because they happen to be Israelis.

Annie Ernaux the French winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, also a signatory, explained her move as opposition to "institutions that have never recognized the undoubted rights of the Palestinian people" without saying what those rights were and why are they undoubted, or whether they include raids like the one on October 7, 2023.

The second move not expected from the literati... is to preach blanket censorship based on guilt by association.

This is all the more surprising because most signatories are from the "Western world," where refusing guilt by association is a fundamental principle of the law.

Thirdly, a writer always provides even the character he most dislikes the chance to make his case before he is stamped with a final judgment of banishment.

[W]all-building, now done by the United States, Turkey, Iran, Hungary, Poland and Estonia, doesn't amount to Apartheid. In any case, as Israelis built walls to keep Hamas away, Hamas built tunnels to go and pay them a visit.

The Palestinian cause may be a noble one. So, as a writer, show us what it is and why it is noble. A writer isn't a labelling machine or a virtue-signaling device.

However, neither Walker nor Corbyn wondered why so many Palestinians in Gaza were still in refugee camps, although Hamas had ruled Gaza for more than a decade after the Israeli withdrawal.

Virtue-signalers do no service to Palestinians by using and abusing their undoubted sufferings to vent historic, cultural and pseudo-religious hatred against Jews.

If they are sincere in supporting the Palestinians they should call for transforming a "cause", that in Hamas's version means the annihilation of Israel -- a cause that has produced nothing but grief for eight decades -- into a "project" to shape a better future for Palestinians beyond eternal refugee camps.


JNF Canada loses appeal to retain charitable status—days before expected deadline to disburse remaining assets
Jewish National Fund of Canada has lost its first major legal battle to stop the tax department’s revocation of its charitable status, which came into effect three months ago.

Late in the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 8, a Federal Court judge dismissed JNF Canada’s application for a judicial review—and the judge also dismissed a request for an injunction to force the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to remove the official revocation notice that was printed in the Canada Gazette on Aug. 10.

Printing that notice triggered a series of steps JNF Canada was ordered to take under the Income Tax Act rules regarding revoked charities.

Firstly, it could no longer issue tax receipts for charitable donations made by Canadian supporters to fund a portfolio of social service projects in Israel.

Secondly, the CRA notified the former charity it was also required to wind down operations that date back to 1967—during which time the charity fundraised in Canada to support tree planting and other work in Israel. The CRA gives revoked charities the option of trying to disperse its remaining assets (JNF Canada’s asserts were stated as about $31 million in 2023) by giving them to another approved charity.

JNF Canada was also instructed to file a special form and remit a cheque to the tax department to pay what is known as a revocation tax. This amount is 100 percent of its remaining holdings after calculating the fair market value of the assets and money the charity had left, once all debts are paid. (The amount could be further reduced should the assets be legally given to a qualified donee.)


Columbia University students plan anti-Veterans Day protest to honor ‘martyrs’ of US ‘war machine’
Columbia University activists are planning a protest of Veterans Day — which organizers want to “reclaim” from the “Israel-US war machine” in the name of Palestinians killed in Gaza.

The unsanctioned student group Columbia University Apartheid Divest is circulating flyers for the event — set for Monday on the Ivy League school’s main Morningside Heights campus.

“Veterans Day is an American holiday to honor the patriotism, love of country, and sacrifice of veterans. We reject this holiday and refuse to celebrate it,” a flyer for the agitator group’s event said.

“The American war machine should not be honored for the horrors unleashed on others,” the flyer added. “Instead, we will celebrate Martyrs Day in honor of those martyred by the Israel-US war machine. A day to honor the patriotism, love of country, and sacrifice of those martyrs.”

Campus veterans outraged by the plans are planning a celebration of veterans at the same time to counter the antagonists.

The protest was viewed as a slap in the face after the on-campus vitriol sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel — much of which wound up directed at student-veterans.

“That post really shook the hornet’s nest,” said Sam Nahins, a 31-year-old Air Force veteran and Columbia graduate student who completed his undergraduate degree at the school in the spring.

“They’ve never hid their disdain for veterans. But now it’s really out in the open,” he added. “Last year when students and faculty members were running around dressing up as jihadists and screaming ‘Death to America,’ ‘Death to Western civilization,’ death to everything but their cause, I had friends get called infidels, and murderers and baby-killers.”


Football's shame as Remembrance Sunday silence is scrapped after nine seconds when Celtic football fans chant pro-IRA songs through it
A Remembrance Sunday minute's silence was scrapped after nine seconds when Celtic football fans chanted pro-IRA songs through it.

Brendan Rodgers' Scottish Premiership leaders travelled to Rugby Park and both sets of players joined clubs across the country in falling silent ahead of kick-off.

Kilmarnock officials organised the moment of contemplation to pay respects and a reminder was issued to the crowd that the pre-match gesture would take place.

But while the players stood in the centre circle, booing and unrest was heard in the stands.

Booing was heard as the Kilmarnock captain brought a poppy wreath to the centre of the pitch.

Then the show of respect was cancelled when fans of the Scottish Premiership champions booed and sang pro-IRA songs.

Suspected Green Brigade members also waved Irish and Palestinian flags at the away end in an act of defiance against the minute's silence for the dead.

Match official Nick Walsh then decided to scrap the Remembrance Sunday silence.

'From Balfour to Starmer. The crimes of the empire live on. Britain is committing genocide in Gaza,' the banner read, referencing the conflict in the Middle East.

Kilmarnock manager Derek McInnes blasted the fans' behaviour but also criticised the move to cancel the minute's silence nine seconds in.

The booing and protests could be seen during the TV coverage of the match, leading Sky to apologise for the 'disturbance'.


Shocking moment man goosesteps and performs Nazi salute in front of pro-Israel demonstration - before police let him walk away
This is the shocking moment a man goosesteps and does the Nazi salute in front of a pro-Israel demonstration - before the police let him walk away.

The hateful yob, wearing grey jogging bottoms and a fur-lined coat, walked directly in front of a crowd of counter-protesters, who had been waving Israeli flags in response to a pro-Palestine protest which marched through Brighton on Saturday.

As he passes between a police officer and a police liaison officer he starts kicking his trainers out in front of him and raises his right hand in a Nazi salute in a horrific anti-Semitic gesture.

Horrified onlookers react in shock as they call out to the cops - asking why they have not taken action as they let him walk away up the street.

Sussex Police has since revealed it is hunting for the man as the incident is being investigated as a hate crime.

The force said: 'We are aware of a video circulating on social media of an incident in Brighton city centre yesterday.

'It is being investigated as a hate crime, and our enquiries to identify and locate the suspect are ongoing.'

Video of the event shows protesters peacefully gathering as they wave Israeli and US flags, while the sound of 'Free, free Palestine' chants can be heard in the background.

The man passes slowly between members of the group and gathered officers as he marches and gestures.

Accosting one of the liaison officers, the clearly distressed man behind the camera says: 'He's just done a Nazi salute in front of you, you saw that!

'He just did a Nazi salute, goosestepping, a Nazi salute and you did nothing! How dare you!'


Former Harvard prof.: I had to teach while bodies littered Israeli streets
Prof. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Vice President for Global Engagement at Ben-Gurion University, was asked to take on her position while working as a visiting professor at Yale University and right before moving to teach at Harvard University’s Law School.

Then, October 7 happened.

“I was at Harvard teaching, and what I experienced was shocking to me,” she told The Jerusalem Post at “Coming Home: Aliyah in Times of War,” a conference on the challenges of making aliyah while the region rages and antisemitism has spiked worldwide.

“I had to go teach on October 9 and go through hundreds of protesters yelling, ‘free Palestine,’ ‘From the river to the sea,’” she said. “There were still bodies in the streets in Israel. I had to get myself up from bed and go teach and pass such hatred of Israel, and the conversation turned to the right of Israel to exist.

“Anti-Israel sentiments were so prevalent,” she continued. “At the end of my semester, I came back to Israel with my family, but my students, my Jewish students that were on campus, I will never forget seeing them and talking to them while this was happening.”

When asked about academic boycotts, Bar-Asher Siegal said, “Honestly, even if you have criticism of Israel or Israel’s engagement in Gaza or Israel policy, boycotting academia is probably the stupidest thing or the worst thing you can do to fight Israeli policy in Gaza and Lebanon for the very simple reason that academia is the place for freedom of speech: of multi-vocality. We have Palestinian and Arab students sitting side by side Israeli students. The real conversation is taking place on academic campuses.”

Bar-Asher Siegal was disappointed to note that a majority of the hate was coming from the humanities: the discipline to which she belongs.

“There are my colleagues… and I was so sad and surprised by the simplistic approach for bad and good and evil… and how easily and how fast Hamas received support,” she said. “I have to say my biggest misconception is how they switched from criticism of the occupation, which is one thing, to talking about Israel’s right to exist… People don’t even know which river and sea.

“We, as academics, should know better,” she continued. “I am still a very firm believer in knowledge and education and teaching people what there is, and I have to tell you, we hear the loud voices, and I think they're still the minority within academia. The vast majority of people I know who know our research know that it’s good research, and want to continue working with us.”


Palestinian Filmmaker Who Accused Israel of ‘Genocide’ Wins Top Prize at Film Festival With Israel-Set Drama
A Palestinian filmmaker who has accused Israel of “genocide” during the ongoing war in Gaza took home the top prize on Sunday at the 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival for a family drama set in Israel that includes Jewish and Arab characters.

Director Scandar Copti won the Golden Alexander for best feature film and a 10,000-euro cash prize for his film “Happy Holidays,” an Arabic- and Hebrew-language film that follows four interconnected characters who “share their unique realities, highlighting the complexities between genders, generations, and cultures.” One character, named Rami, is a Palestinian from Haifa who must deal with his Jewish girlfriend’s sudden decision to change her mind about her planned abortion.

Copti directed and wrote the screenplay for “Happy Holidays.” He also directed the Oscar-nominated 2009 film “Ajami.”

“Happy Holidays” is Copti’s second film, and it premiered in early September in the 2024 Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section, where it won the award for best screenplay. During his virtual acceptance speech at the Venice Film Festival, Copti accused Israel of committing a “genocide” in Gaza, where the Israeli military has been waging a campaign against Hamas terrorists.

“Over the past 11 months, our shared humanity and moral compass has been tested as we witness the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” he said in comments which elicited applause from the audience. He talked about the “painful reality” in Gaza and said “Happy Holidays” examines “how moral narratives can bring us together as communities, but also blind us to the suffering of others. It explores how traditions and indoctrination can distort our values and make injustice seem acceptable.”

“True freedom is interconnected,” he added. “None of us are free until all of us are free, from all sorts of oppression.”


BBC’S WYRE DAVIES MISLEADS ON ISRAELI HISTORY
Over the years we have repeatedly documented distortions and inaccuracies in BBC content relating to the 1947 Partition Plan (UNGA resolution 181), including the claim that David Ben Gurion had “opposed the plan” and the bizarre insistence that the never implemented recommendation “has not been rescinded”, which the BBC uses as the basis for its refusal to call Jerusalem Israel’s capital.

However, at the end of an October 15th report titled “Israel’s row with UN over Lebanon peacekeepers driven by long distrust”, the BBC’s Wyre Davies managed to come up with an additional distortion of that UNGA resolution:
“While Israel might owe its very existence to the UN – the body that voted it into being in 1947 – its relationship with the organisation has never been so bad.”

Davies expanded on that claim in the October 17th edition of the BBC World Service “youth news podcast” called ‘What in the World’ when he told listeners (from 09:40 here) that:
Davies: “It was a vote in the United Nations in 1947 that paved the way for the establishment of Israel as a state for the first time. So in some ways you could argue that Israel owes its very existence, in part, to the UN but ever since then, relations have deteriorated really badly. In, you know, in the last 20 or 30 years, they’ve hit an all-time low.”

The UN General Assembly’s vote for the Partition Plan did not of course bring Israel “into being”, not least because it was a non-binding recommendation which was never implemented due to the refusal – including by means of force – of Arab countries to accept it.


Success! CBC News Revises Article Which Falsely Implied World Court Accused Israel Of Genocide
On September 13, CBC News published an article entitled: “The government’s stance on military exports to Israel is anything but clear-cut,” where Senior Reporter Janyce McGregor covered the topic of Canadian arms exports to Israel.

While CBC News is free to report on such topics if they so desire, the article was replete with problems. It quoted exclusively anti-Israel activists for their thoughts, entirely erasing any viewpoints of anyone who was not demonizing Israel in its self-defensive war against Iranian-backed terrorist proxy groups.

The article quoted a number of “civil society organizations” who complained about Canada allegedly exporting arms to Canada, an ally and fellow liberal democratic state.

As an HonestReporting Canada alert noted at the time, one of the so-called “civil society organizations” listed was Canadians for Justice & Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), a radical anti-Israel pressure group.

Furthermore, the CBC News article referred to “the International Court of Justice’s order to halt the IDF offensive because of a ‘plausible risk of genocide.’” Despite anti-Israel groups regularly attempting to claim as much, the world court never made any such statement, a point made clear by the International Court of Justice’s recently-retired president.

As a result, HonestReporting Canada filed an official complaint with CBC News, noting the fake quote. Subsequent to our complaint, a correction was noted at the bottom of the article which stated the following:
“This story has been updated to clarify that the International Court of Justice’s order was limited to the IDF’s offensive in Rafah.”

Additionally, the article was altered to remove mention of the fake quote, and it now refers to the “International Court of Justice’s order to halt the IDF offensive in Rafah because of a risk of genocide…”
Success! CBC News Corrects False Statement By Foreign Correspondent Claiming Israel Has “Repeatedly Refused International Calls” To Negotiate Palestinian State
One of the most common tropes repeated by news media organizations is that the lack of a Palestinian state is solely, or at least overwhelmingly, due to Israel’s intransigence, rather than the fanatical support for terrorism and Israel’ s destruction by Palestinian leaders.

In an August 29 news article entitled: “With Gaza population already displaced, some fear Israel has similar plans for West Bank,” CBC News Foreign Correspondent Chris Brown – who has been the subject of multiple HonestReporting Canada alerts for his one-sided reporting – wrote that “the Israeli government has repeatedly refused international calls to negotiate the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.”

Following outreach to CBC editorial leadership by an HonestReporting Canada subscriber, the public broadcaster later issued a correction, writing that:
“An earlier version of this story stated that “the Israeli government has repeatedly refused international calls to negotiate the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.” The story has been updated to more precisely reflect that in recent years, after several failed, internationally backed attempts to negotiate a peace plan, Israel has shown little appetite for the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

While the revised copy and correction is far from perfect, in that it still appears to lay blame largely at Israel’s feet, it refers to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in more broad terms.
AP REMOVES FALSE REPORTING THAT INTERNATIONAL LAW GIVES PALESTINIANS ‘RIGHT OF RETURN’
In response to action from CAMERA’s Israel office, the Associated Press has removed fallacious reporting wrongly claiming that “International law gives Palestinian refugees and their descendants the right to return to their homes.” As a result, several dozen secondary media outlets across North America have likewise corrected.

As reported by CAMERA’s Tamar Sternthal last week, the egregious invention about international law appeared in the Oct. 31 article, “Banning UNRWA will lead to a vacuum and more suffering for Palestinians, the agency’s chief says,” by AP’s Baraa Anwer and Sara El Deeb.

In fact, there is nothing in international law which gives Palestinian refugees and their descendants “the right to return to their homes.”
ONCE AGAIN, CNN HIDES THE FACTS ON WEST BANK VIOLENCE
When are material omissions in media coverage evidence of something more than just sloppy journalism? Persistence is one factor to consider. So too is whether the omissions consistently skew toward one side of a conflict or debate. Both of these factors characterize CNN’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Consider one of the network’s recent reports.

In their November 5 article, “Israeli attacks in West Bank killed at least eight people, officials and residents say,” Kareem Khadder and Sana Noor Haq manage to omit an impressive number of crucial details in a transparent effort to depict Israelis in the most cynical light possible.

The story is focused on Israeli operations in several areas of the West Bank on November 4-5, during which CNN says eight Palestinians were killed. The first major omission: the reason why the IDF was operating in the first place. The IDF arrested some 60 members of the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), seized weapons, and destroyed an explosives laboratory being used by terrorists.

But the worst omissions are when Khadder and Noor Haq get down into the details of the raids, or rather, into just some of the details.
GUARDIAN FILM REVIEW PROMOTES LIES ABOUT MASAFER YATTA
The Guardian published a film review today of a documentary about a disputed area in the southern Hebron hills called Masafer Yatta – eight hamlets, mostly collections of low-slung homes with makeshift roofs, within Israeli controlled Area C of the West Bank/J&S.

The piece, by Peter Bradshaw, (“No Other Land review – an Israeli and Palestinian’s remarkable relationship“, Nov. 7), includes the following background:
No Other Land is about Masafer Yatta, a collection of Palestinian villages in the West Bank whose thousand-plus occupants were, in 2022, ordered to leave because the Israeli military needed the area as a training zone – and so began the long, bitter process of bulldozers being sent in, accompanied by soldiers who were grimly unmoved by residents’ desperate protest

Presumably, the Guardian reviewer is repeating the framing of documentary about Masafer Yatta, which is completely untrue.

As our colleague Tamar Sternthal demonstrated in a post about a correction she prompted at Haaretz on the same issue, the land in question was declared a firing zone forty years ago, not, as Bradshaw suggests, in 2022. What did occur in 2022 is that Israel’s High Court rejected the legal claim that Palestinians had lived there permanently before it was declared a firing zone in the early 1980s. See page 17 of the (Hebrew) ruling.

The court found that Palestinians did not reside there as permanent residents (as opposed to seasonal) when the area was declared a firing zone in the 1980s, so had no legal right to reside there. This is the crux of the case because the law allows the military to designate land for military use if it is not permanently settled.

The residents’ legal wrangling dates back only to 1997.


Smotrich says Trump’s victory an opportunity to ‘apply sovereignty’ in the West Bank
Donald Trump’s election as the next president of the United States provides Israel with the opportunity to advance the annexation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared on Monday.

Addressing the press ahead of his Religious Zionism party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, Smotrich welcomed Trump’s victory over incumbent Joe Biden, whose administration he complained had “unfortunately chosen to intervene in Israeli democracy and personally not to cooperate with me.”

The Republican politician’s first term in 2017-2021 was positive for Israel, Smotrich stated, citing the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem, the recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, and the Trump White House’s decision to declare that Israel’s West Bank settlements were consistent with international law.

Trump’s new presidency presents an “important opportunity” to “apply Israeli sovereignty to the settlements in Judea and Samaria,” added Smotrich, who also serves as a minister in the Defense Ministry, referring to areas of the West Bank by their biblical names.

“We were a step away from applying sovereignty to the settlements in Judea and Samaria, and now is the time to do it,” he said, adding: “The year 2025 will, with God’s help, be the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.”

“The only way to remove the danger of a Palestinian terror state from the agenda is to apply Israeli sovereignty to Jewish settlement in the entire Judea and Samaria,” he said.
Knesset suspends far-left MK Ofer Cassif for six months over comments on Gaza war
The Knesset Ethics Committee voted unanimously on Monday afternoon to suspend MK Ofer Cassif from the Knesset for six months, over comments he made regarding the Israel Defense Forces and the war in Gaza.

Citing what it called a “systematic pattern of action” for which the only Jewish member of the Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al party has repeatedly failed to show remorse, the committee based its decision on a number of incidents for which the far-left lawmaker has drawn criticism in recent years — such as a tweet in which he described Palestinians fighting against the IDF in the West Bank city of Jenin as “freedom fighter[s].”

It also cited his public support for a South African motion accusing Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice.

Earlier this year, Cassif signed a petition of support for South Africa’s case and publicly accused Israeli leaders of advocating for crimes against humanity against the Palestinians.

The Ethics Committee rejected Cassif’s claim that his support for the petition only signaled support for examining South Africa’s evidence, and said it saw him as having agreed with the assertion that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

It added that while free speech must be protected in wartime, there is a difference between legitimate criticism and “encouraging bloodshed against IDF soldiers and the State of Israel, while undermining the state’s ability to deal” with legal challenges abroad.

According to the Ethics Committee, Cassif will not be allowed to enter the Knesset plenum or committee meetings except in order to vote. He will also not be allowed to take part in debates or address parliament.

In addition, Cassif will have his pay withheld for two weeks.


‘Iran could give Hamas, Hezbollah tactical chemical weapons’
The Iranian regime has developed chemical weapons based on opioids, including fentanyl, and could supply them to its regional terrorist proxies including Hamas and Hezbollah, a U.S. expert warns.

Pharmaceutical-based agents, or PBAs, are weaponized drugs with the ability to incapacitate or kill their victims, Hamas expert Matthew Levitt explained in October’s CTC Sentinel, a journal published by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.

Levitt serves as the director of the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and has testified for the U.S. government in numerous terrorism trials since the early 2000s.

The article, which was picked up by U.S. media on Sunday, warned that “groups such as Hezbollah already have the delivery systems necessary to deploy such chemicals, including grenade launchers and mortars.”

PBAs affect the central nervous system, and once inhaled, they “cause victims to lose full consciousness and enable the forces deploying them to advance quickly and quietly and/or take captive the unconscious victims,” Levitt wrote in his article titled “Tehran’s Tactical Knockout.”

An Israel Defense Forces official told the author that Hezbollah already possesses tear-gas dispersal systems such as grenades and mortars and could use these as delivery systems for weapons laced with PBAs.
Iranian Jewish community ‘totally shocked’ by Arvin Ghahramani’s execution
Jewish groups mourned the death of Arvin Ghahramani after the news emerged earlier this month that the Iranian regime executed the 20-year-old Jew, whom it accused of murder after he killed a man in self-defense.

Rosa Parto, a freelance Iranian Jewish reporter in Amsterdam who was among the first Persian-language journalists to break the Ghahramani story earlier this year, told JNS that the Jewish community in Iran is “totally shocked at this sudden execution of Arvin.”

Ghahramani was involved in a street brawl with a Muslim man, Amir Shokri two years ago, according to a May report from an Iran-based outlet run by human rights activists. Shokri was reportedly killed during the fight, and Ghahramani was arrested, quickly tried and sentenced, per the report.

The Iranian Jewish activist George Haroonian, who co-founded the Los Angeles group “No To Antisemitism,” told JNS that the Iranian regime’s current Sharia laws permit the family of a victim in Iran to ask the state-run court not to enforce a death sentence if it agrees to receive diya, or blood money.

The Jewish community in Iran was “hopeful that he would somehow be released after the blood money was raised by community members to pay Shokri’s family,” Parto, the Amsterdam journalist, told JNS, of Ghahramani.

But ultimately, Shokri’s family “refused to take what they called ‘impure Jewish money’ and demanded Arvin be executed since he was a Jew,” she said.

Many Jews in Iran are upset with their leaders, who they say didn’t do enough to secure Ghahramani’s release in the past two years.

“Jewish community members in Iran I’ve spoken to are honestly furious at their leadership for ignoring Arvin’s case while he was rotting in jail for two years, being abused in jail, and only decided to finally intervene at the last minute when his death sentence was announced,” Parto told JNS.


‘Had to have been premeditated,’ DC kosher restaurateur says of some $10,000 in damages
Michael Chelst received a call from the building in which his kosher restaurant Char Bar is located in downtown Washington, D.C., at about 11 a.m. on Saturday, informing him that someone had smashed the street-facing windows.

The Metropolitan Police Department subsequently told Chelst that someone reported the vandalism, whose damage Chelst estimates to be between $8,000 and $10,000, at about 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, the restaurant owner told JNS.

“Someone else saw it around 8 or 9 in the morning, and they called again,” he said, noting that the attack occurred “sometime between 10 p.m. and 3:30 in the morning.”

“People are so stupid. What a waste of people’s time and resources,” he told JNS. “That’s what went through my head first. I look at people like that—I more have pity for them. They don’t have a life. For what?”

Four years ago, someone broke windows at the restaurant, which Chelst bought 10 years ago, during riots in Washington that coincided with rallies for the Black Lives Matter movement. No other restaurants on the street were damaged, Chelst told JNS. (An online fundraiser for Char Bar from 2020, which has been revived following the recent attack, has raised $17,587—of a goal of $72,000—from 374 people.)

“These people—probably multiple people, but it could be one person—they brought kind-of cobblestone pavers, not typical rocks which you’re going to find around anywhere near this area,” Chelst told JNS. “They were carrying it. They brought them over and they tossed them.”

“These are rocks that were not local. It was not like someone got drunk and decided that they thought it was fun to smash a window. Picked up a rock from somewhere here and just grabbed one,” he added. “This had to have been premeditated. You had to decide to bring those with the intention of doing damage.”
Brooklyn DA charges three people with vandalism, hate crimes, making terrorist threats
Eric Gonzalez, the district attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., announced 25 counts against Taylor Pelton, Samuel Seligson and Gabriel Schubiner in connection with incidents of anti-Israel, antisemitic vandalism this summer at the homes of board members of the Brooklyn Museum.

The two men and one woman face charges of making a terroristic threat as a hate crime; making a terroristic threat; third- and fourth-degree criminal mischief as a hate crime; third- and fourth-degree criminal mischief; making graffiti; possession of graffiti instruments; and fifth-degree conspiracy.

“Acts of vandalism that target individuals in their own homes are a deeply disturbing violation meant to intimidate, terrorize and instill fear,” Gonzalez said on Monday. “These defendants allegedly targeted museum board members with threats and antisemitic graffiti based on their perceived heritage.”

Graffiti at the homes in mid-June included “Brooklyn Museum, blood on your hands,” an anarchist symbol and inverted red triangles used by Hamas to identify targets for terrorism.

Gonzalez stated that “these actions are not protests; they are hate crimes, and we are deeply committed to holding accountable anyone who uses such unlawful tactics in Brooklyn.”


Gal Gadot Shares Family Photo From Her Daughter’s Bat Mitzvah
Gal Gadot’s eldest daughter Alma recently celebrated her bat mitzvah, and the Israeli actress posted Sunday on Instagram a family photo from the milestone occasion.

The “Wonder Woman” star, 39, posted a photo of herself, her husband Jaron Varsano, and their four children — daughters Alma, Maya, 7, Daniella, 3, and Ori, 8 months. Alma, in a lavender dress, can be seen standing in the center of the photo, and in the caption, Gadot wrote a heartfelt message to the bat mitzvah girl.

“My baby is celebrating her bat mitzvah. I can’t believe the amazing person you’ve become,” Gadot wrote to Alma, who turned 13 on Nov. 5. “Your joy, humor, curiosity, and big heart of yours are absolutely magnetic. You teach me so much about motherhood, life, and myself. Thank you for choosing me to be your mother, for choosing us to be your parents. There is no mountain too high for you, and no ocean too wide and deep that you cannot conquer.”

Gadot concluded her message by saying, “Love you forever and always, Ima.” She also included in the post a selfie that Versano took of himself and Gadot with Alma when she was just born.

The comments section of the post was filled with “mazel tov” messages from Gadot’s fans but also some of her celebrity friends, including Selma Blair, Rachel Zoe, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Ginnifer Goodwin, Sarah Silverman, Jessica Seinfeld, Elizabeth Berkley, and cartoon voiceover actress Tara Strong.
Model Soldier: Miss Israel Noa Cochva on Pageants and Fighting for World Peace
Many beauty queens dream of world peace, but few literally go out and do it. Noa Cochva was crowned Miss Israel 2021 and represented Israel at Miss Universe 2021, yet just a couple of years later she found herself in uniform again fighting for Israel in the wake of the horrors of the October 7th massacre.

When it comes to fighting for Israel, Noa knows what it means to be on the front lines and now also serves as an activist for the country, taking to the streets of America, where she has been pummeled by protestors and threatened at knife point, just for the crime of standing up for Israel. Eylon sits down with Noa to discuss her work and to ask what a beauty queen can do to help Israel win the PR battle as this war rages on.




A Jewish Baseball Player Turned Undercover Operative While Frank Cohn enlisted as a young man and then dedicated most of his career to military service, Moe Berg had already distinguished himself—as a catcher for the Dodgers and the White Sox—before World War II began. Stuart Halpern writes:
Morris Berg was born to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in a tenement on East 121st Street in Manhattan on March 2, 1902. At seven, demonstrating a passion for both the game and secret identities, he played for a Methodist Church team under the pseudonym Runt Wolfe. After graduating from Barringer High School, Berg played shortstop for Princeton, where he majored in modern languages. He and another teammate would communicate on the field in Latin. . . . Continuing to balance his intellectual and athletic interests he [later] spent the winter studying philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Following his 1939 retirement as a player, Berg remained a committed patriot. He undertook an undercover assignment as a sports ambassador in Latin America under the auspices of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs—a U.S. government agency dedicated to countering German and Italian propaganda efforts in Latin America. He parlayed that opportunity into a job as an officer in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, in 1943.

At the OSS, his missions included posing as a businessman in Switzerland and being dropped behind enemy lines in Italy to make contact with an Italian atomic scientist. Also fluent in German, Berg was assigned to assassinate the leading German physicist and Nobel Prize-winner Werner Heisenberg in Zurich if Heisenberg indicated during a lecture there that Berlin was close to developing an atomic bomb. (Germany wasn’t, so Berg didn’t kill Heisenberg.) School of War Podcast: From German Jewish Refugee to Decorated Colonel in the U.S. Army
Frank Cohn joins the show to talk about his life: fleeing Hitler’s Germany, his return as a U.S. soldier tasked with hunting Nazi’s, his service in Vietnam, and more.

Times
• 01:55 Introduction
• 02:15 A Nazi in the classroom
• 05:47 Martin and Ruth
• 17:35 Leaving Germany
• 19:22 New York City
• 22:50 Pearl Harbor
• 30:47 Back to Europe
• 35:30 Nazi Hunter
• 39:48 POW for a moment
• 42:32 The Dutch lady
• 50:40 Liberating a Labor Camp
• 52:30 Crossing the Elbe
• 59:20 Initial interrogations
• 01:05:40 Paying back the country
• 01:08:51 Paula
• 01:14:50 Military Police and Vietnam
• 01:18:40 Angus
• 01:21:12 Lessons for the future




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