Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 10, 2019

10/10 Links Pt2: Why the US should change its approach toward the PA; A new house and huge terror salaries - the PA’s rewards to a family of murderers; Time for Europeans to pay for pay-to-slay

From Ian:

Why the US should change its approach toward the Palestinian Authority

Besides promoting a culture of violence within the Palestinian people, the boycott of the Kushner/Greenblatt plan to deliver $50 billion of assistance further calls into question whether the PA even governs in the interest of its people.

Considering President Abbas and the PA’s long record of denying Israel’s right to exist and glorification of terror, the PA is an obstacle to peace, not a partner, and the U.S. should approach its leadership with the understanding that it institutionally engages in the indoctrination of the Palestinian people to hate Israel.

However, while the U.S. must have a paradigm shift in its relations with the PA, it cannot afford to cut off all communication with the PA or wait for new leadership. Palestinian-Israeli relations need U.S. engagement to avoid the fragile situation from spiraling out of control, especially on matters of security coordination. Also, the U.S. cannot simply wait out the current generation of PA leadership, since is not clear that the next PA president will be any more moderate than the current leader or any more inclined towards peace.

Instead, the U.S. should model its approach on the Helsinki Accords that it signed with the Soviet Union in 1975, which allowed Soviet citizens to push for human rights and develop civil society organizations that fostered the dissolution of the Soviet Union 25 years after their creation. Promoting similar independent human rights watchdog organizations in Palestinian society should further reveal PA corruption and intransience that, over time, will promote and enable moderate Palestinians to demand the rights they deserve.

The acknowledgment by Congress in the Taylor Force Act that the Palestinian Authority has institutionalized its promotion and sponsorship of terrorism must translate into a shift in how the U.S. interacts with the PA and engages them in negotiations. Since the current PA leadership has shown it won’t end its incitement, there will be lasting peace between the PA and Israel only once a new group of moderate Palestinians have power.

PMW: A new house and huge terror salaries - the PA’s rewards to a family of murderers

Even while the Palestinian Authority was facing a self-inflicted financial crisis, the PA coffers were still full enough to fund the reconstruction of the houses of terrorists demolished by Israel as a means of deterrent.

Making good on promises made by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the PA has financed the rebuilding of the home of a terrorist, who also has five other terrorist brothers - all of whom murdered Jews. Four of them are serving multiple life sentences and a fifth was killed when he resisted arrest after murdering a member of Israel’s Security Agency. The mother of the terrorists - Um Nasser Abu Hmeid - is the focus of constant PA attention and even led the PA’s bid for membership in the UN in 2011, simply because she is the mother of multiple murderers. Now the PA is rebuilding her and her sons’ house:

“The rebuilding of the four story house is being conducted with full vigor, and the construction of the first floor is already finished. It is being funded by the [PA] Presidential Office and is being carried out by the popular committee to serve the refugees in the Al-Amari camp.
Um Nasser said to Raya that the construction of the house is expected to conclude at the end of this year [2019]. She thanked [PA] President [Mahmoud] Abbas for his support for her family...
It should be noted that the [PA] Ministry of Public Works began to remove the ruins of Um Nasser's demolished house at the beginning of January this year." [Raya, independent Palestinian news network, Sept. 2, 2019]

Despite the financial crisis that the PA was facing, Abbas committed the PA to rebuild the house immediately after its demolition.
Fatah Central Committee member and Head of Civil Affairs in the PA Hussein Al-Sheikh: "President Abbas has given direct orders this morning [Dec. 15, 2018] to quickly and immediately rebuild the home of the Abu Hmeid family. This is a fighting family. We bow to this family, its history of struggle, and their heroism (i.e., terrorists who murdered at least 10). Therefore, the minimum that can be provided to this family is to stand by it and immediately rebuild its demolished home." [Official PA TV News, Dec. 15, 2018]

At the time, Fatah’s Central Committee member, Fatah Commissioner of Mobilization and Organization in the West Bank, and PLO Central Council member Jamal Muhaisen also expressed his support for PA financing the rebuilding of terrorists’ houses:

Time for Europeans to pay for pay-to-slay

Every year the European Union and its member states pour over 400 million Euros into the coffers of the Palestinian Authority. As Israelis know all too well a substantial portion of this money is spent by Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies to reward the families of those who murder Jews. Just in 2016 these blood-stipends amounted to US$303 million.

As a European Gentile this pains me deeply. After all, as a European taxpayer I am as complicit in the murder of innocent Jews as was the average German citizen during the Third Reich. Since I cannot stop paying taxes, allow me to make atonement for the murders my government funds, by providing fellow Zionists, Jews and Israelis with a piece of advice.

Don’t rely on European goodwill or European good-faith. Whether the indifference of most European leaders to Jewish blood is due to atavistic antisemitism or pragmatic Realpolitik is irrelevant. What matters is the end result. This end result must be challenged with the same ruthlessness masked as benevolent humanism that European leaders have mastered.

Israel’s government or – alternatively – a Zionist philanthropist, should announce that in view of the unspeakable traumas that Africans, Asians and Latin Americans experience due to the legacy of European colonialism and imperialism, and in the light of the destitution faced by the families of people convicted for harming Europeans, grants and scholarships will be paid out to the families of future convicts.

This philanthropic grant should be announced with maximum media fanfare in order to galvanize European outrage and indignation. To make sure that this outrage and indignation are channeled constructively, the donors involved in this initiative should clarify that these grants will be suspended as soon as the European Union and its member states persuade the Palestinian Authority to cease its pay-to-slay policy.

AP Style Guide Update: All Jews Now 'Armed Settlers' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jerusalem, October 10 - A leading news organization whose decisions on terminology and phraseology exert an important influence in the framing of developments the world over has amended its guidelines to bring default references to Jews more in line with prevailing assumptions about the group, assumptions that the organization's coverage fostered in the first place, a spokesman for the outfit announced today (Thursday).

Associated Press Jerusalem Bureau Chief Peusen Dewell announced this morning that the wire service has updated its famous Style Guide to reflect the way most everyone now thinks about those of the Hebrew persuasion - in particular the ones inhabiting Israel, but not exclusively - now that decades of AP framing have helped cement in the popular consciousness the image of the greedy, violent, usurping Israeli Jew as the starting point for any news involving Israelis and Palestinians.

"The Associated Press is pleased to issue its latest modifications to the AP Style Guide, with input that this bureau had a significant hand in producing," proclaimed Dewell. "From now on our headlines, lede text, and initial mention of Israeli Jews will refer to them as 'armed settlers,' in keeping with how the world sees Jews with the unmitigated gall to live in their ancestral homeland. It is with no small measure of pride in our staff over the years, including those who preceded me in this bureau and position, that I note the role the AP itself has played in cultivating Israeli belligerence and guilt as the default assumption governing any news story, indeed, in determining whether a story is newsworthy in the first place."

Thus, explained Dewell, this past May's mention of the 45th anniversary of the Maalot Massacre, in which armed Palestinian terrorists killed dozens of Israeli schoolchildren and several other civilians, will be emended to refer to the children as "armed settlers" unless or until conclusive proof emerges that none of the dead had on their persons anything that can be used as a weapon, such as a penknife or shoelace.

"We will apply this style change retroactively twelve months," he informed other journalists. "Going forward, the AP will now replace its older terminology with the new phrase, and we expect other news organizations to follow suit before long. Some of our colleagues in the Palestinian and Middle East media anticipated this locution by several decades, but to date it has had only marginal currency in wider news usage. That changes today, and it pleases me to place the AP in the vanguard of that change."

Numerous armed settlers sent letters of protest to the bureau in response.

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The lesson for Israel from the NBA/China debacle

The recent NBA capitulation to agree to Chinese censorship of opinions not to that country's liking reminds me of something that happened early in my career.

I was working for a major US telecommunications company and was in one of those corporate meetings about company ethics. We were told that not only does the company adhere to its standards (including, of course, non-discrimination) but that they require their business partners to follow the same standards.

I raised my hand and asked if Saudi Arabia wanted to give the company a multi-billion dollar contract, with the proviso that no Jews can work on the project in their territory, would they turn down the contract?

The hemming and hawing in response was most amusing.

Money makes the world go 'round. Not ethics. The percentage of times that companies, and countries, turn down a deal when it can bring in serious money is quite low. It happens sometimes, sure, but usually economics wins, not moral standards. (And moral standards sometimes only win when it can be argued that they can pressure the parties economically themselves - boycotting companies and advertisers, voting politicians out of office.)

Sometimes of course the moral imperative clearly outweighs the economics, but those are the exceptions.

What does this have to do with Israel?

In the 1970s, it took only a couple of years between Yasir Arafat being feared as the new breed of terrorist to him speaking at the UN pretending to be peaceful and demanding to get his way or "the olive branch [will] fall from my hand." The reason was twofold: The West feared being the victim of terror and was willing to throw Israel under the bus so that the PLO would only attack the Jewish state, and the Arab oil embargo spooked the West into capitulating to the demands of the then-seemingly united Arab front.

Fear of violent terror and fear of an economic meltdown brought on by soaring oil prices brought Europe to its knees.

But Europe didn't want to think of itself as quite that craven. It justified its actions by saying that Israel was immoral, not the terrorists. It allowed the UN to declare Zionism is racism. It voted against Israel in numerous other one-sided UN resolutions. It pretended that its fear of Arab violence and economic blackmail was a moral decision, and the Jewish state was the entity that needed to be condemned, over and over and over again.

Binyamin Netanyahu was one of the few to grasp that Israel's security is as dependent on its economic might as much as its armed forces. He prioritized the free market replacing the socialist model and investing in R&D, and Israel became the "start-up nation." Israel's relations with the nations of the world is in no small part due to Israel's strong economy and what it can bring to the table as a result. After all, no one has seriously discussed boycotting China despite its horrendous, well documented human rights record. The reason is money.

Even though Israel has been falsely tarred as an immoral state, its economic might has turned that around more than anything else (except in the Arab world, where the Iranian threat has changed Arab opinions of Israel.)

This isn't a pretty view of the world. Everyone likes to think that they, and their nation, make decisions based on morality and the greater good. But this is usually a fantasy, with people, corporations and nations justifying their choice of hard cash over morality as moral itself. \\

It really is all about the Benjamins, baby. Don't pretend to be shocked. And the only way the NBA will change its direction is if it thinks it will lose more money (and its reputation translates into money) by allowing the Chinese to tell it what to do than by showing some backbone.

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10/10 Links Pt1: Germany's Jews are once again easy prey; JPost Editorial: Rely on no one; America's Good Intentions in Syria Have Led to This Dismal Outcome

From Ian:

Germany's Jews are once again easy prey

At least two people were killed in a carefully planned terrorist attack on a synagogue in the German city of Halle on Yom Kippur, an attack that followed an earlier attempt to attack a synagogue in Berlin ahead of Rosh Hashanah.

This is Germany in 2019. And this is no longer a phenomenon that can be diminished or treated as a passing wave. This is an epidemic.

Germany is once again a dangerous place for Jews. All efforts to deny this reality, whether from the authorities, local Jewish leadership, or recent Israeli immigrants, crumble in the face of the terrible day-to-day reality, which is the product of an industry of repudiation and denial. Barely a week passes without violent assaults on Jews in the country. In Berlin alone, over 400 anti-Semitic attacks were reported in the first half of 2019. We can assume the actual figure is higher since not every attack is reported to the authorities.

Jews, with kippot on their heads and Stars of David around their necks, speaking Hebrew, cannot feel safe outside of their homes and cannot convene in Jewish institutions without fearing that either on their way there or back, something bad will happen to them. And now, we can add another element of fear to this trepidation: Even if meticulous safeguards are in place, an attack can be carried out inside a Jewish institution, synagogue, or community center. Luckily, in these two most recent incidents, these safeguards proved relatively effective.

The attack in Halle is the result of the failure of German authorities; it is the result of the incomprehensible forgiveness that the country's law enforcement chooses to show the perpetrators of attacks against Jews, which in recent years have been largely carried out by either members of Arab and Muslim immigrant communities. Although the perpetrator of the Halle attack was a member of the radical Right, the day-to-day physical threat to Jewish security in Germany is sacrificed at the altar of Germany's policy of appeasement toward Arab-Muslim anti-Semitism. And when they are able to attack Jews as they please, other radicals get the sense the spilling of blood is permissible so long as the targets are Jews.

Antisemitism, the Western heart of darkness

"Neo-Nazis in Halle", where a gunman tried to break into the synagogue and commit a massacre of Jews during Yom Kippur. We are in Germany, after all! And in Germany Jews are in danger, again. Every week we have headlines about Jews being attacked in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, for wearing a kippah, speaking Hebrew, sporting a Star of David.

But we now have to go much deeper and try to figure out how and why antisemitism is not only an Islamic sport, but the Western heart of darkness.

Halle is in the former East Germany, where antisemitism is much stronger than in the Western party. Alternative für Deutschland is the largest party in the former East Germany, Pegida (the movement against Islamization) was born there, as the most important popular protests against immigration took place there.

Why? Because the society is collapsing. 50 years of Communism, materialism, dictatorship and atheism didn't help the population. “The 'social infrastructures' have collapsed: schools, hospitals, sports and recreational facilities and cultural institutions have had to close”. Die Zeit, the first German weekly, last June dedicated a special to the most disruptive phenomenon in the former East Germany: depopulation. “Migration to the West was not the only thing that altered East German demography. After 1990, the birth rate fell by almost half”.

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Israel’s Security Cabinet met on Sunday, according to reports, to discuss the Iranian threat and in particular the dangers exposed by the September 14 attack on a Saudi Arabian oil facility by Iranian cruise missiles and unmanned aircraft (UAVs or drones).

The Iranian attack was very successful in hitting key targets precisely, and in avoiding Saudi missile defense systems. It demonstrated advanced capabilities in coordinating the attack using multiple weapons systems. Although Israeli defensive capabilities are probably much better than those of the Saudis, the small number of critical power stations, industrial installations, communications facilities, airports, fuel depots, roads and more, means that a great deal of damage to Israel’s ability to fight, her economy, and daily life could be done even if a relatively small number of Iranian weapons were to find their targets. There are very important military targets, some of which I know about but won’t mention, as well as others that I don’t know about but the Iranians might. And then of course there is the Dimona nuclear reactor. Such an attack could be launched against Israel from Iranian bases in Iraq, which bring us within the range of the missiles used in the attack on Saudi Arabia.

PM Netanyahu reportedly asked that the defense budget be boosted by billions of shekels, in part to develop a better defense against cruise missiles. Although some might be tempted to attribute political motives to his statements, the comments by independent analysts Uzi Rubin and Uzi Even, as well as expressions of concern (albeit guarded) by defense officials, indicate that the danger of attacks by “low and slow” weapons like cruise missiles and drones should not be minimized.

If we needed to add billions to our budget, why wasn’t this known beforehand? I’m not reassured by those like Moshe Ya’alon, the shadow Defense Minister of the Blue and White party, who said that the attack on Saudi Arabia revealed “nothing surprising.” Let me remind readers of the way that warnings about the threat of tunnels under the Gaza border given by Naftali Bennett in 2014 were ignored by Ya’alon, who was Minister of Defense at the time.

Questions immediately arise: what would we do if a drone/cruise missile attack were aimed at our key infrastructure tomorrow? Do we know how many of Hezbollah’s missiles have already been modified to give them precision guidance capability? Do we have countermeasures in place?

It seems that there were significant things we didn’t know about Iranian capabilities before the attack on Saudi Arabia. How is it that the people who stole the nuclear archive out from under Iranian noses didn’t know about conventional weapons?

I understand that our strategic doctrine is not to preempt an attack unless it is truly imminent, because of expected international reactions. Is it possible that we will wait until precision-guided missiles are striking our airbases and critical infrastructure, or will we be able to realize the very great advantage of striking first?

Iran is preparing for the conflict by trying to improve the quantity and quality of Hezbollah’s rocket inventory, by positioning its proxy militias in Iraq and Syria, and by trying to set up missile launchers there. We are trying to stop them, but although we can slow them down, we can’t stop their progress entirely. The American withdrawal from Syria will probably result in gains for the Assad regime and Iran, in particular by allowing Iran to complete its “land bridge” through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

At this time of year, it’s impossible to forget the way Israel’s defense establishment was unprepared for the Yom Kippur war, the failures in intelligence gathering and – perhaps worse – the failure to translate intelligence into practical recommendations and to transmit it to the commanders in the field. For example, a new study by a former tank commander, Oded Meggido, explains how Israeli tank forces suffered great losses on the Egyptian front because they were not prepared to deal with infantry armed with effective anti-tank weapons. The IDF had already encountered “Sagger” shoulder-fired antitank missiles in the early 1970s, but “the information was not assimilated … practice drills were not carried out,” he said. “There was a shortage of machine guns,” necessary to protect tanks against infantry armed with antitank weapons. “Overconfidence,” “hubris,” “arrogance,” “negligence,” and “lack of professionalism,” are all expressions used by Meggido to describe the higher echelons of the tank corps in 1973.

I think these words could fairly be applied to our leadership today. The home front must be reinforced, as much against earthquakes as against enemy rockets, and it is barely being done. The security situation is often used as an excuse to put aside worries about social problems, the transportation infrastructure, and more. And yet, what percentage of their day do our politicians spend working on these questions as opposed to intriguing against their political opponents and defending themselves against such intrigues? How many buildings could be made more secure for the cost of one national election?

We would like to believe that today the lesson to learn lessons has finally been learned. We recall the war against Hezbollah in 2006, in which the IDF ground forces were seriously hurt by poor intelligence, logistical and communications failures, and incompetence at the highest levels, especially including the political echelon. As we draw nearer to the next war, which will be fought against an inventive and relatively sophisticated enemy, I wonder what, if anything, we have learned.

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The original news stories of a PLO representative denying Palestinian identity in 1977

I had heard this quote before but never looked at contemporaneous sources.

From the Sentinel, a Chicago Jewish newspaper, May 5, 1977:

He added slightly more in this account from the B'nai Brith Messenger the week after:

The full quote in Wikiquote includes, "Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem."

Here is a scan of the original article: (h/t iTi)

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In the Times of Israel account of the first person shooter video made by the neo-Nazi murderer Stephan Balliet, he is described as being discouraged by a heavily bolted front door of the synagogue, and then his repeated attempts to blow open a side door with explosives and gunfire are not successful.

Another TOI article elaborates:

Max Privorozki, head of the Jewish community in the city, which traces its roots to the 10th century, said the temple’s security system had stopped what could have been a bloodbath.

...Privorozki told news website Spiegel Online that the gunman fired several shots at the door and threw numerous “Molotov cocktails, fireworks or grenades to get inside.”

“But the door remained closed, God protected us. The whole thing took five to 10 minutes.”

Privorozki said they swung into action with astonishing bravery to protect themselves.

“We barricaded our doors from inside and waited for the police,” he told Stuttgarter Zeitung.

“And then we carried on with our service.”

If Balliet had managed to breach the door, it would have been a massacre. He killed the other two people out of frustration of not being able to hit his intended targets.

People are reacting that Europe needs to do more about antisemitism, but the "world's oldest hatred" isn't going to be eliminated any time soon. If anything, the media coverage of attacks like these make the next ones more likely.

Of course an attack on a synagogue is front page news, and it should be, even though the intended attack was foiled.

The Jews of Europe have known for decades that they are targets, from both Muslims and from the extreme Right. Their synagogues have been fortresses for a while.

That planning paid off on Wednesday.

US synagogues have been going in that direction as well especially since Pittsburgh. Homeland Security funds have been put into synagogue protection. It is sad but necessary. Because antisemitism is not going away - it changes form but never disappears.

For the people actually living as Jews outside Israel, all we can do is to take precautions commensurate with the threats. We can encourage local police to keep an eye on things and encourage the congregations to create an active shooter (and bombing) plan.

Halle was a tragedy, but it could have been far worse. Security precautions prevented a bloodbath, And for that we should all be thankful.

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10/09 Links: 2 shot dead, several injured as German synagogue targeted in Yom Kippur attack; Mossad's moment; Do Jews think differently?

From Ian:

2 killed, several injured in shooting at German synagogue on Yom Kippur

At least two people were shot dead on a street in the German city of Halle on Wednesday, police said, with witnesses saying that the gunmen tried to enter a synagogue as dozens of Jews marked Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.

A woman was said to have been killed near the synagogue, and a man was killed in a Turkish kebab shop, Halle police spokesperson told the BBC.

Several people were injured in the attack, with two people hospitalized in serious condition.

“We have two seriously injured people with gun wounds,” Jens Mueller, spokesman for the Halle university clinic, told AFP. “They are in surgery.”

Max Privorotzki, who heads the Jewish community in Halle, told Spiegel Online that the perpetrators had apparently sought to enter the synagogue in the Paulus district but security measures in place helped to “withstand the attack.”

He added that between 70 and 80 people were in the synagogue at the time.

One suspect was captured but with a manhunt ongoing for other perpetrators, security has been tightened in synagogues in other eastern German cities while Halle itself was in lockdown.

“Early indications show that two people were killed in Halle. Several shots were fired,” police said on Twitter, urging residents in the area to stay indoors.

Police said the “perpetrators fled in a car,” adding later that one suspect had been caught.

Policemen stand armed behind the monument commemorating the November 1938 pogrom night as they secure the area around the synagogue in Dresden on October 9, 2019

German synagogue shooter livestreamed deadly attack, including anti-Semitic rant

Livestreaming site Twitch said Wednesday that video of the deadly shooting attack in Germany targeting a synagogue on Yom Kippur was broadcast live on its platform by the suspected killer.

Twitch said in a statement it had “worked with urgency” to remove the content after the attack in which two people were killed in the eastern German town of Halle.

The company added that any account found to be posting or reposting “content of this abhorrent act” would be permanently suspended.

The SITE monitoring group said an attacker appeared to have posted a 35-minute long video showing his ammunition and saying in English that the “root of all problems are the Jews.”

In the video, the gunman is heard making far-right talking points and can be seen driving to the synagogue. He identified himself in the video as “Anon,” was alone, and driving a car loaded with weapons, a laptop and a camera, SITE’s director Rita Katz wrote on Twitter.

Silent streets, Jews on edge in German city after shooting

Silence gripped the abandoned streets of the eastern German city of Halle Wednesday as elite anti-terror forces carried out a manhunt after a deadly shooting at a synagogue and a Turkish restaurant.

Police ordered residents to stay inside and close all doors and windows after they apprehended one suspect and chased possible accomplices in the attack that killed two people and seriously wounded two others.

Officers in riot gear patrolled police lines near the scene of the crime where a woman was shot dead outside the Jewish house of worship and a man gunned down at a nearby kebab shop.

“We are carrying out an intensive search and ask the public to stay at home,” the Halle police force tweeted.

Normally busy city streets were closed to traffic, with the only vehicles circulating police cruisers and ambulances with flashing lights.

Dozens of German Jews had gathered in prayer at their synagogue in Halle on the high holiday of Yom Kippur when the gunfire outside began.

Max Privorozki, head of the Jewish community in the city, which traces its roots to the 10th century, said the temple’s security system had stopped what could have been a bloodbath.

“We saw through the camera of our synagogue that a heavily armed perpetrator wearing a steel helmet and rifle was trying to shoot open our door,” Privorozki told the daily Stuttgarter Zeitung.

“The man looked like he was from the special forces. But our doors held firm.”

PM: German synagogue attack is expression of rising anti-Semitism in Europe

Moments after the end of Yom Kippur, Israeli leaders expressed shock and outrage over the deadly attack Wednesday targeting a synagogue in the German city of Halle.

“The terror attack against the community in Halle, Germany, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day for our people, is another expression of the rising anti-Semitism in Europe,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, moments after the holy day ended in Israel (while it was still ongoing in Germany).

“In the name of the Israeli people I send condolences to the families of the victims and wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured,” he went on. “I call on the German authorities to continue to act determinedly against the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.”

President Reuven Rivlin said he was “stunned and pained by the terrible anti-Semitic murders in Germany” that were committed during the holiest and most important day of the year for all Jews around the world. He called on German leaders and the entire free world to bring the full force of law against anti-Semitism and its results.

“We will continue to campaign for education and remembrance in the fight against anti-Semitism which raises its head again and again in Europe and across the world, based on the clear understanding that it is not a problem of the Jews alone, but threatens to destroy us all,” the president said.

Leaders condemn Yom Kippur terrorist attack near German synagogue

Jewish groups and world leaders have reacted with shock following a shooting attack near a synagogue in Halle, Germany on Wednesday afternoon in which two people were reportedly killed.

The attack came as Jews were gathering in the city's synagogue to celebrate and commemorate Yom Kippur. Bild newspaper reported that a hand grenade was also thrown into a Jewish cemetery following the shooting.

Max Privorozki, Halle's Jewish community chairman, described how a gunman tried to shoot his way into the city's synagogue.
"We saw via the camera system at our synagogue that a heavily-armed perpetrator with a steel helmet and a gun tried to shoot open our doors," he told the Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper. "The man looked like he was from the special forces...But our doors held.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said his "thoughts are with the victims of the shooting in #Halle.

"Let’s stop the hate," he tweeted. "Let’s fight antisemitism. Let’s build an open and tolerant Europe."

Germany's ambassador to the US said the news of the attack was "shocking" and "heartbreaking.

"An attack on a synagogue," she tweeted. "On Yom Kippur. Germans mourn the victims of this infamous crime."

G'mar Chatima Tovah 5780 -- גמר חתימה טובה

This is an update my Yom Kippur message of previous years.

I unconditionally forgive anyone who may have wronged me during this year, and I ask forgiveness for anyone I may have wronged as well.

Specifically (as enumerated in previous years, based on the list from The Muqata a few years back):

-If you sent me email and I didn't reply, or didn't get back to you in a timely fashion -- I apologize.
-If you sent me a story and I decided not to publish it or worse, didn't give you a hat tip for the story -I'm sorry. I'm also sorry if I didn't acknowledge the tip. I sometimes get multiple tips for the same story and I usually credit the first one I saw, which is not always the earliest. And I cannot publish all the stories I am sent, although I try to place appropriate ones in the linkdumps, or tweet them.
-If you requested help from me and I wasn't able to provide it -- I'm sorry.
-I apologize if I posted without the proper attribution, with the wrong attribution, or without attribution at all.
-I'm sorry that I don't give hat tips on things I tweet.
-Subtweets are usually on purpose. Sorry.
-If I didn't thank you for a donation, I'm very, very sorry.
-I'm sorry if I didn't give the proper respect to my co-bloggers Ian, PoT, Vic, Varda, Daled Amos and Forest Rain. Also to people who send me tons of tips and help like Tomer, Irene, and Ibn Boutros.
-I'm sorry if any of my posts offended you personally.
-If I forgot to send you the perks for donating at Patreon - I'm sorry. If you really care, bug me!
- For all the initiatives I started and didn't complete - I'm sorry. I hope to do better next year.
- Please forgive me if I wrote disparaging things about you.
- I'm sorry for not always scrubbing spam from the comments as quickly as I would like.
- I'm sorry if things got published in the comments that violated my comments policy but that I missed.
- If I don't win the Nobel Peace Prize, sorry for getting your hopes up.

May this be a year of life, peace, prosperity, happiness and security.

I wish all of my readers who observe Yom Kippur an easy and meaningful fast.

I will not be posting until Wednesday night at least.

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10/08 Links Pt2: Incitement Against Jews Within BDS And Pro-Palestinian Facebook Groups; Schindler honored by children of those he saved — and a single survivor

From Ian:

MEMRI: Incitement Against Jews Within BDS And Pro-Palestinian Facebook Groups – Part II

The Facebook groups examined in this report are focused on promoting the Palestinian cause and Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. In this report we present posts that appeared in eight BDS groups between January 2016 and July 2019, with explicit and blatant antisemitic incitement against Jews and Judaism without any context linking them to Israel or its policies.

For the first part of this series, see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 1455, Incitement Against Jews By U.S.-Based Neo-Nazi And White Supremacist Members Of Pro-Palestinian And BDS Facebook Groups, May 16, 2019.

Groups Examined (see Appendix for details):
- Boycott Israel[1]: Public group with 10,000 members.
- BDS FIRST[2]: Public group with about 2,000 members.
- Stand with Palestine[3]: Public group with 60,000 members.
- ANTI ZIONIST – BOYCOTT ISRAEL[4]: Closed Facebook group with 4,000 members.
- A group for Palestine and its friends[5]: Closed group with 24,000 members.
- Boycott Israel.... Support the BDS[6]: Closed group with more than 35,000 members.
- Boycott Israel️. Free Palestine ANSWER ALL 3 QUESTIONS PLZ!![7]: Closed group with more than 11,000 members.
- BOYCOTT ISRAEL NEWS AND MEDIA.[8]: Closed group with 800 members.

This report focuses solely on posts[9] published in these groups (most of which are very active) that express explicit hatred and vilification of Jews and incite against them. Members of these groups represent a wide range of geographic locations, religious beliefs, and political ideologies.[10] Incitement against Jews is rampant in all these groups, demonstrating that antisemitism transcends geographic, political and religious divides. As of this writing, none of the posts mentioned in this report were deleted or criticized by group administrators or moderators. In fact, many of the posts were created by them. This report includes only a small sample of the anti-Jewish incitement spread in these groups. It nevertheless is an accurate reflection of attitudes towards Jews that are rampant in BDS groups.

An analysis of the personal Facebook pages of users quoted in this work shows that they are based in Western countries such as the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia, in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Pakistan, as well as in South Africa and India. They express diverse positions towards politically charged issues in the U.S., including abortion, immigration, and gun control. The religious identity of members is diverse as well, with many members indicating that they are practicing Muslims and Christians, while others are ardent atheists.

Conspiracy Theories, Jewish Warmongering, And Holocaust Denial
Members of BDS groups and pro-Palestinian Facebook groups often claim that Jews are nefariously behind various major global catastrophes throughout history. They claim that Jews regularly carry out "false-flag" attacks in order to implicate other groups (most recently Muslims) and to bring war and strife worldwide. They also claim that Jews falsify or stage attacks and persecution of their own people in order to gain sympathy and to further their plans for world domination. This can include accusing Jews of orchestrating their own persecution during World War II, and denying the veracity and/or extent of the Holocaust as well as of other modern antisemitic events.

Stand With Us: UCLA Student & StandWithUs Submit Title VI Complaint Against UCLA Alleging Inaction on Antisemitism

University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) student Shayna Lavi and the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Department have submitted a complaint against UCLA to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”). The complaint alleges that the university is in violation of its obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, due to the administration's inaction in response to antisemitism experienced by UCLA Jewish students.

Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs receiving federal financial assistance. According to OCR, Jewish students enjoy the protections of Title VI, including protection from antisemitic harassment that creates a hostile environment. Ms. Lavi’s experiences, as detailed in the complaint, fall squarely within OCR’s definition of antisemitism.

Ms. Lavi was subjected to ongoing antisemitic discrimination and harassment during the spring 2019 quarter. This began with a diatribe by a guest lecturer in one of her classes, "Anthropology M144P: Constructing Race." The lecturer, San Francisco State University Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, singled out Ms. Lavi and attacked a core component of her Jewish identity, such as by calling Zionists "white supremacists." After Ms. Lavi objected to this attack, Ms. Lavi’s professor, who had invited this guest lecturer, proceeded to target her with additional harassment in subsequent classes. When informed of this, UCLA failed to respond adequately or effectively.

In addition to Ms. Lavi’s experiences, the complaint describes a pattern of antisemitic incidents at UCLA dating to 2012, and the administration’s failure to address this hostile climate.

“StandWithUs is proud to support Ms. Lavi and commends her courageous willingness to confront antisemitism at UCLA. UCLA's Jewish community remains vibrant and resilient, with strong support from Hillel and other Jewish institutions on campus. At the same time, there is no excuse for the UCLA administration's disturbing indifference to years of well-documented abuse and harassment of Jewish students. It is time for OCR to hold UCLA's administration accountable and demand that it comply with its legal requirements under Title VI,” said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs.

Israel Advocacy Movement: SQUAD FAILS

The 'Squad' are complete hypocrites who:
🔸 Want to ban fossil fuels… take hundreds of flights
🔸 Claim the rich avoid taxes… don't pay their tax
🔸 Protest the 1%… are stinking rich

Share if you’re tired of AOC, Ilhan and Rashida's hypocrisy!

Anti-BDS group backed by Adelson heads to 6 countries outside US

A Jewish group founded and funded by the Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson to oppose the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on American campuses will be expanding its efforts to six countries outside the US in the next academic year.

From the start of the new academic year, the Maccabee Task Force will grow its presence to countries “in Europe and beyond,” where it plans to fund and assist pro-Israel campus groups facing boycott Israel campaigns, the organization’s executive director, David Brog, told The Times of Israel.

He would not reveal which countries the task force was heading to.

Established in 2015, the task force works with pro-Israel students on programs countering efforts to boycott or divest from Israel, sending representatives to campuses to solicit ideas from students and groups on campus, and then fund those it deems viable.

The idea, Brog said in an interview, was to be “a clearinghouse for good strategies that we could fund and then offer to our other campuses, and then we could enable the strategies by bringing the funding and the ideas.”

He explained the model of MTF as providing the financial resources to allow campus pro-Israel groups to counter BDS in whatever ways they deem most effective for their particular campus.

Some more on Palestinian identity

From The Sentinel, Thursday, May 05, 1977:

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

10/08 Links Pt1: On Yom Kippur War anniversary Fatah implicitly calls on Arab states to wage war against Israel; UNRWA must evolve or dissolve, says senior official at end of UNGA

From Ian:

PMW: On Yom Kippur War anniversary Fatah implicitly calls on Arab states to wage war against Israel

Fatah on its Facebook page justifies Arabs launching war on Israel, stating that the same "Israeli danger that the Arabs fought ...still exist"

- Israel "constitutes the central threat to the [Arab] nation, its interests, its future, and its holy sites"
- "The anniversary of [the Yom Kippur War] is a call to the Arab nation and its leaders to end this dark and bloody chapter that the nation is going through"

In 1973, Egypt and Syria simultaneously launched a surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement and the holiest day in Judaism. Over the next three weeks, Israel succeeded pushing the Arab forces back but suffered heavy losses with 2,688 fallen soldiers and thousands of wounded.

Now, on the anniversary of the war, Fatah is telling Arab states that the same need to attack still exists:

Posted text: "The anniversary of the October War (i.e., the 1973 Yom Kippur War) is a call to the Arab nation and its leaders to end this dark and bloody chapter that the nation is going through; it is a call to remind [us] that the Israeli danger that the Arabs fought that war in order to confront still exists, and constitutes the central threat to the [Arab] nation, its interests, its future, and its holy sites."
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Oct. 6, 2019]

This text was posted by Fatah on its official Facebook page and written by Secretary of Fatah's Branch in Poland Khalil Nazzal.

UNRWA must evolve or dissolve, says senior agency official at end of General Assembly

“Direct pressure” by donors is the most likely way to induce the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to change, former UNRWA general counsel James Lindsay told JNS as the 74th session of the U.N. General Assembly came to a close last week in New York.

Speaking from Geneva, Lindsay—the only former senior UNRWA official ever to have written a thorough critique of the agency, which is tasked with serving 5.6 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, eastern Jerusalem, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan—told JNS that while the renewal of the agency’s mandate in the coming months was “pretty much a foregone conclusion,” donor countries can still have a very significant impact. (The agency’s mandate must be renewed every three years.)

Donors countries should be encouraged to do “the right thing,” he said, by “pressure and embarrassment,” if necessary.

As Palestinian and Jordanian ministers met on the sidelines of the General Assembly meeting to try to ensure a renewal of the agency’s mandate, Lindsay exposed various structural problems with UNRWA that go beyond alleged abuses of authority by senior agency officials. (UNRWA is currently under investigation by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres following accusations of ethical misconduct and corruption.)

Speaking at a side event at the 42nd session of the U.N. Human Rights Council on Sept. 23, Lindsay critiqued the notoriously anti-Israel agency, suggesting that it must evolve or dissolve. Lindsay detailed UNRWA’s undermining of its own mission as a “humanitarian and welfare organization focused on the immediate relief of people in distress.”

For example, he said, only 10 percent of the organization’s current budget goes to basic, immediate needs, while the rest goes to education and medical care, which he called “governmental responsibilities.”

“There is no reason why the United Nations should be providing that,” he said.

U.N. Pleads for Money as Finances Poised to Run Dry by Month's End

The United Nations is running a deficit of $230 million, Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday, and may run out of money by the end of October unless world governments immediately meet their financial obligations.

U.S. taxpayers would most likely be hardest hit by any immediate cash injection into the global organization.

The United States is by far the U.N.’s biggest financial contributor, providing 22 percent of its operating budget and funding 28 percent of peacekeeping missions, which currently cost $8 billion annually.

The next two major contributors are Germany and the U.K.

In a letter intended for the 37,000 employees at the U.N. secretariat and obtained by AFP, Guterres said unspecified, “additional stop-gap measures” would have to be taken to ensure salaries and entitilements are met.

These might include holding less meetings and cutting back on travel and associated entitlements.

“Member States have paid only 70 per cent of the total amount needed for our regular budget operations in 2019. This translates into a cash shortage of $230 million at the end of September. We run the risk of depleting our backup liquidity reserves by the end of the month,” he wrote.

Donald Trump has long pushed for reform of the U.N. and just last week warned the “future does not belong to globalists” in a warning to the organization’s leaders:

In December 2017 Nikki Haley, the then United States Ambassador to the organization, announced the federal government had reduced its contribution to the U.N.’s annual budget by $285 million, as Breitbart News reported.

As Ambassador of Mexico to UNESCO, Andres Roemer took a principled stand—costing him his job—when he refused to cast a vote for a resolution denying the Jewish people’s historic connection to Jerusalem and its Temple Mount. Now Israel's Ramat Gan has named a street in his honor. pic.twitter.com/QKb3VvFd9H
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 8, 2019