In Jordan, a movie called "The Old Story" is being shot, with Amman standing in for Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where the film is set.
There has already been controversy in Jordan over this film, as cars and streets were changed to look Israeli for the filming, and seeing Israeli license plates is apparently a trigger for all sorts of terrible psychological issues for many Jordanians.
The film, produced by Netflix, is supposedly pro-Palestinian. Nearly all the people involved in production are Jordanian with a smattering of Americans.
The newest problem just came up as there was to be a scene where a Palestinian terrorist flees to a mosque after his attack. It was to be filmed at a mosque in Amman, and the Waqf approved the filming, but residents objected - because, they claimed, some Jews were part of the production (possibly actors) and would pollute the holy site with their presence.
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UNRWA is very proud of their microfinance program, giving small loans to people who need them:
The UNRWA microfinance department provides sustainable income-generation opportunities for Palestine refugees, as well as other poor or marginalised groups who live and work near them.
It extends credit and complementary financial services to households, entrepreneurs and small-business owners. These investments create and sustain jobs, reduce poverty and empower our clients, particularly women.
But if you look at their annual report you can see that Palestinians only take a small percentage of the microfinance loans that UNRWA offers. They gave out loans to 38,595 people in 2017, but only 13,756 went to Palestinians.
In Syria, practically none of the loans go to Palestinian "refugees." Out of 11,094 loans total in Syria, a mere 288 went to Palestinians.
Who gets the rest?
According to an investigative report in the Arabic Daraj site, some of the loans have been made to elements of the Syrian intelligence services and militias active in Syria.
The wife of the Syrian president, Asma al-Assad, seems to have worked with UNRWA on the loan program. Here's a photo of her with the then-head of UNRWA Karen Abu-Zaid.
The article has interviews with former UNRWA employees who testify that the agency's loans were taken over by Syrian officials, and loans were made to those that the regime wanted to get the loans.
The investigation uncovered hundreds of applications and documentation from UNRWA.
In addition the UNRWA program covers the Gaza Strip, Jordan and the West Bank. In all of these areas, loans are granted to elements of the Ministry of Interior (Jordan and PA) or armed militias (West Bank and Gaza.) For example, In Jordan, the General Intelligence is granted loans.
In the West Bank, elements of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are heavily hostile to UNRWA, will happily allow their terrorists to accept UNRWA loans, according to the report.
The West is giving hundreds of millions to an agency that loans money to terrorists and allies of despots.
(h/t Varda)
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Medical staff at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem were still battling on Tuesday to save the life of a baby delivered by cesarean section after his mother, Shira Ish-Ran, was shot in her upper body in a terrorist attack near the settlement of Ofra on Sunday.
Six other Israelis were wounded in the attack, including Ish-Ran's husband. She was 30 weeks pregnant.
As of Tuesday morning, the baby was still in very serious condition. Ish-Ran's father, Chaim Silberstein, told Israeli media on Tuesday morning that while his daughter's condition was improving, her hemoglobin levels had dropped. Silberstein said this could indicate that there was still some bleeding and hoped that it was not serious.
The hospital reported Tuesday that Ish-Ran was awake and communicating.
Silberstein said his daughter had not yet been informed of her newborn son's precarious condition.
Dr. Alon Schwartz, a senior trauma surgeon at the hospital, said Monday that the medical team was concerned that the baby had sustained neurological damage as a result of the shooting.
"The baby is in critical condition in the neonatal intensive care unit. He is on a ventilator and his blood pressure is being regulated by medication. We're still fighting for his life," Schwartz said.
Silberstein said his daughter teared up when she first saw her parents.
"We were so excited we had to leave [the room] because her heart rate spiked," he said.
A Culture Of Death Versus A Culture Of Life — In 7 Tweets
On Sunday, as Hanukkah wound to a close, Palestinian terrorists attacked Jews waiting for a bus, targeting them with a hail of bullets. A pregnant woman and the baby she was carrying were hit, among others. Here is how two cultures reacted to the murderous attack, in a story of death, life, and God's providence told in seven tweets.
Just think: The family of the pregnant woman who was shot yesterday by a terrorist are praying that the baby will survive. The family of the terrorist who shot the mother can look forward to a lifetime of monthly payments as a 'reward'.
Hamas has welcomed tonight's Palestinian shooting attack, in which a pregnant Israeli woman and six others were wounded, calling it a "blessed" demonstration of "the ability of the resistance to hurt the enemy in its most sensitive places." https://t.co/3FOFicjOgh
Today is International #HumanRightsDay, a day that reinforces the universal rights of people all over the globe. Yet, one group of people continue to face hatered and discrimination, everywhere around the world. The one place on earth that ensures the saftey of the Jewish people is Israel.
Of the topics that came up during the Jewish New Media Summit in Israel 2 weeks ago, one thing that was not discussed was what exactly we were doing there.
That of course was taken for granted, though not all of us necessarily had the same goals in mind.
Jewish New Media Summit 2018 logo
There were approximately 150 bloggers and journalists from about 30 different countries attending. The bloggers outnumbered the journalists.
there is a difference between journalists, whose mandate is to strive for facts and fairness, and bloggers, whose goal is opinionated engagement.
That is the standard answer, and generally still valid.
But there are qualifications.
Unlike in the world in general, when it comes to Israel the distinction between journalism and blogging is not necessarily iron-clad.
There is arguably no country in the world whose very existence, policies -- actually, almost every move -- are attacked as vociferously in both the old and new media as is Israel. Under the circumstances, it would be understandable for the Israeli government to see such a summit as an opportunity to strengthen its defense in the media. But as one of the attendees pointed out at the end of the summit, he bristles at the idea of being an "ambassador" for Israel -- and no wonder. An ambassador by definition defends the country he represents and is expected to never criticize it, at least not publicly. What blogger wants to be hemmed in like that?
it is hard to expect diaspora Jewish journalists to take Israel seriously, and vice-versa, if it insists on treating them as an extension of its public relations arm, a practice long derided by communities around the world.
Yet when discussing Israel, we seem to enter a Bizarro world where journalists are the ones who are opinionated (if not outright jaundiced), while it is the bloggers defending Israel who often respond with facts, and pointing out what often appears to be a lack of fairness and balance on the part of the journalists.
Glenn Greenwald was prescient, if not a cause, of the current state of journalism, sometimes referred to as "fake news". Back in 2013, Greenwald decried how
this suffocating constraint on how reporters are permitted to express themselves produces a self-neutering form of journalism that becomes as ineffectual as it is boring...all journalism is a form of activism. Every journalistic choice necessarily embraces highly subjective assumptions — cultural, political or nationalistic — and serves the interests of one faction or another.
This may have signaled the first manifestations of "blogger-envy" by journalists, abandoning objectivity for subjectivity, though you need to keep in mind that Greenwald's own roots are in blogging -- and old habits die hard.
This touches on comments that Matti Friedman made to the group, as described by Judean Rose in her post, Framing the Narrative: Matti Friedman on the Israel Story on what encourages this bias and how it exhibits itself in the media. Friedman explained that the goal in countering this bias is educating the journalists, which sounded encouraging when he said it. But rather than addressing how to do this, he later conceded that this was nearly impossible and that the bloggers in the audience should content themselves with working towards making Israel a better place.
For myself, I did not see a tension between being informed and being persuaded. The former made be better equipped to do the latter by being better armed with facts and background material.
The fact that other bloggers had different goals and a different threshold of subjectivity was simply a function of the wide spectrum of blogs they represented.
At the very least, being at the new media summit was a source of food for thought.
And resulted in this post.
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Bild.de looks at the study of antisemitism in Europe released yesterday and dives in deeper on the situation in Germany.
Frightening: In no country have so many Jews experienced anti-Semitic harassment as in Germany. 41 percent said they had had an anti-Semitic experience last year, 52 percent in the past five years - both well above the EU average (28 percent and 39 percent).
The Jews draw their lessons: 75 percent of German interviewees abstain - sometimes, often or always - from wearing Jewish symbols in public. 46 percent of Jews in Germany avoid entering certain areas. In plain English this means: There are no-go areas for Jews.
Felix Klein, anti-Semitism commissioner of the Federal Government, is shocked. "The fact that people identified as Jews do not want to enter certain areas for fear of hostility is something I find alarming," says Klein to BILD. He promises: "I will fight against this!"
Does this promise come too late? According to the survey, 38 percent of European Jews have thought about emigrating in the last five years because they no longer feel safe as Jews. Here, too, is Germany (next to France) with 44 percent is the sad leader.
But one question remains: where does anti-Semitism come from?
The results of the new EU survey contradict the police crime statistics (PKS). In 2017, the PKS recorded 1,504 anti-Semitic offenses and allocated 94 percent to the right-wing spectrum. Only five percent of the deeds were said have a Muslim motive.
The survey provides a completely different picture: 41 percent of the Jews surveyed in Germany stated that the perpetrators had a Muslim background. Other political offender groups were much less common - rightists with 20 percent and leftists with 16 percent.
"This data is a slap in the face," says historian and journalist Michael Wolffsohn to BILD. "They refute the political and media emphasis on anti-Semitism. The danger from the right exists, but it is not the greatest danger. "
Wolffsohn demands:" Those responsible must name the issue by name and finally act. The integration of Muslims is a human and political matter of course. But crimes committed by Muslims must be punished, not sugar coated for political correctness. "
For a long time there has been criticism of the assignment of anti-Semitic offenses to political motives. Anti-Semitism Commissioner Felix Klein also expressed doubts: "According to the police crime statistics only about 5 percent of the anti-Semitic offenses committed by Muslims. We must pursue this great deviation from the statements of Jews on anti-Semitic experiences! "
In this sad study, however, one number is remarkable. Despite Muslim anti-Semitism, Europe's and Germany's Jews worry about Muslims.
72 percent of European and 89 percent of German Jews said that intolerance towards Muslims has increased over the past five years. 57 percent of European and 54 percent of German Jews see this intolerance as a major social problem.
"Almost exemplary is the tolerance of the Jewish victim group, their compassion and concern for those from whom they experience the most intolerance, the Muslims," says Michael Wolffsohn to BILD. And says: "That is, in cliché, downright Christian charity."
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When she took ill the previous week, my wife and I were surprised that while the interfaith chapel in the large non-East Coast city hospital she was in included prayer mats and Korans and Christian Bibles - it provided nothing for Jews (besides an electric menorah.) The chapel did not include any Tehillim (Hebrew Psalms), Siddurim (Jewish prayer books,) or chumashim (Hebrew Pentateuchs).
New York area hospitals generally do provide all of these materials, either in the chapel or in special "Bikur Cholim" rooms and lockers.
In my mother in law's memory, we would like to buy these books and distribute them to any hospital that desires them throughout North America for the benefit of their Jewish patients. We are calling the project Tzivia's TiSCH.
My mother in law's Hebrew name was Tzivia. "Tisch" is an acronym for Tehillim, Siddurim and CHumashim. It is also Yiddish for "table" or "celebration."
In phase 1 of the project, I hope to use this platform to both fundraise and to find hospitals that want to participate. If things go well I can make it more formal.
I estimate that the cost is about $200 per hospital chapel for two sets of each three volumes, so phase 1 will be able to offer these volumes to about 25 hospitals.
I plan to work with major Jewish publication companies to find the best discounts on these books so we can distribute them to more hospitals.
If you are associated with a hospital that needs these materials, please contact me.
And if you for some reason have lots of Hebrew/English Tehillim, siddurim, or chumashim to give away for this project, please contact me as well.
Thanks!
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The detailed Palestinian Authority budget for 2018 that was published recently has new details about the allocations to arrested terrorists and the families of those who died or were wounded in the context of the “struggle against Zionism:”
The total PA budget is $5 billion. The amount that supports prisoners is $155 million, out of which $147 million are spent on transfers to the prisoners. These include salaries to 5,000 prisoners, paying Israeli fines for 1,200 prisoners, grants to 1,500 prisoners upon their discharge, grants for 1,200 unemployed released prisoners, delayed payments to 1,000 prisoners, salaries for 5,500 released prisoners, unspecified amounts to released prisoners who spent more than 10 years in jail, canteen expenditures for 6,000 prisoners, and clothing allocations for 5,000 prisoners.
The PA budget for supporting the families of “martyrs” and the wounded is $185 million. This sum is used to make sure that 24,000 families of “martyrs” and wounded who reside inside the “homeland” get a monthly allowance, 13,500 such families who reside outside the “homeland” get a monthly allowance, 375 families get special monetary assistance, 28,000 families get health insurance, and monthly allowances are paid to the victims of the 2014 conflict in Gaza. On top of all this, the budget is used to finance a variety of benefits to the family members (such as going on pilgrimages and exemptions from education tuition).
On November 28, 2018, Temple University professor and then-CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill advocated the elimination of the Jewish State of Israel in his prepared remarks before the United Nations. The pundit’s decision to use a chant employed by genocidal terrorist groups like Hamas received widespread media coverage and likely prompted CNN to sever ties. It also received widespread applause from Hill’s audience: the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP).
A Cold War relic, CEIRPP continues the Soviet Union’s war against Jewish self-determination. The committee remains at the forefront of international efforts to delegitimize and attack the Jewish state.
According to Gil Kapen, a special adviser to the American Jewish International Relations Institute (AJIRI), CEIRPP and its sister UN organization, the Division for Palestinian Rights, are used for “organizing conferences and disseminating information condemning Israel, and otherwise spreading one-sided propaganda consistent with the most extreme Palestinian positions.” Indeed, it was founded for that express purpose.
CEIRPP was established on November 10, 1975 after the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3376, which was backed by the Soviet Union and co-sponsored by its satellite state, East Germany. That same day, both communist powers successfully advocated for Resolution 3375, which gave Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) observer status at the UN a mere two years after Arafat approved the murder of the US ambassador to Sudan, Cleo A. Noel, Jr. in March 1973.
Most infamously, the UN also passed the Soviet-inspired Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism – Jewish self-determination – with “racism and racial discrimination.”
As historian Jeffrey Herf detailed in his 2016 book Undeclared Wars with Israel:
“The resolutions of November 10, 1975, made Israel a pariah state at the UN. They placed the language of “inalienable rights” and the search for a “just and lasting peace” in the service of the PLO’s ongoing terrorist campaign waged against Israel.”
The UN, historian Gil Troy noted, “was building an institutional infrastructure” for an “ideological assault” against the Jewish state’s very right to exist. That assault was being led by the Soviet Union.
A permanent resident of Israel, a Jew with American citizenship, has been held captive in Ramallah by the Palestinian Authority for two months.
Does that sound credible? Could it really happen? It doesn’t seem plausible. But that’s precisely the situation, except for one small detail that shouldn’t make any difference whatsoever: The man in question is an Arab. He is accused of a very serious crime – selling property to Jews. For our neighbors, this is a felony so heinous that it incurs the death penalty.
Imagine an Israeli law prohibiting the sale of property to Arabs. The whole world would be up in arms and we would be ostracized, and rightly so. Shouldn’t the same standards be applied? Now imagine a law forbidding Jews to purchase property in the US, or Britain, or France. How would we react? We’d do whatever it took to get the antisemitic legislation rescinded.
So why aren’t we doing anything about the current situation? The PA lives by the bayonets of the Israeli Army. Otherwise, they’d be reliving what happened to them in Gaza when their loyalists were thrown from rooftops and anyone who managed to get out ran straight for the arms of Israeli soldiers.
When they had to make the choice between their brothers and our troops they chose us, and they knew very well why. So how come we’re tolerating their anti-Jewish law? Mahmoud Abbas made the Palestinian vision very clear: a territory free of Jews.
The man behind bars is Issam Akel. Contrary to law and mutual agreements, this resident of Israel is incarcerated in a Palestinian prison, most likely undergoing torture, and no one is kicking up a fuss. Israel isn’t in an uproar. Instead of doing everything in our power to put an end to this outrage, we’re dragging our feet.
Today is Human Rights Day. And it is also a day that shows how hypocritical most human rights organizations are.
Issam Aqel holds American citizenship. He bought a share in a property in Jerusalem and later sold it to the Jewish organization Ateret Cohanim. As a result he was arrested by the Palestinian Authority and reportedly tortured.
Amnesty International advocates freeing political prisoners, and what else is someone whose crime was to sell land to Jews? But they have not said a word about his arrest.
Human Rights Watch had a large report on torture and arbitrary arrests by the Palestinian Authority published well after Aqel was arrested. But they do not mention anything negative about him, or about any Palestinian law that prohibits selling land to Jews.
Aqel is only representative of one type of person that human rights organizations do not consider truly human, based on their literature and tweets. Jews who live in Judea and Samaria have no human rights either, because when they are killed or attacked - as happened yesterday where a pregnant woman and others were shot for being Jewish - these supposed human rights NGOs are utterly silent (or in this case, an ex-HRW official seemed to blame the victims more than the terrorist.) They might utter a condemnation for a bus bomb within the Green Line, but they don't say a word when Jews are slaughtered or attacked in land that these hypocrites believe shoudld be Judenrein.
HRW and Amnesty and the others love showing how much they support the human rights of terrorists. But that is because they consider terrorists human - but anyone who is Jewish, or who supports Jews, in the "West Bank" or Jerusalem is not truly considered human, and therefore they have no rights.
That's the only explanation I can see for the complete silence that these major organizations have when Jews, or people who help Jews, are attacked.
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During a decade and a half of helping fight the BDS
“movement,” I’ve been asked many times if I have ever personally boycotted any
person, institution or product for political reasons. Looking back, I can’t think of a single
instance when I practiced or participated in any boycott of any kind.
Previous to my battles with anti-Israel boycotters, it actually
never occurred to me to make boycotting part of my political life. But once I saw how the boycott weapon was
being misused as a bludgeon to attack Israel, it definitely became a personal decision
to avoid using that weapon myself, despite many understandable requests to do
so in hope of taking the fight to Israel’s foes.
The choice not to fight fire with my own boycotts directed
at Israel’s enemies is definitely a personal one, and not the only reasonable option. For example, many years ago a commenter left
a story about his decision to boycott Arab shops in Jerusalem as a statement
against BDS targeting Israel. And while
he and I (or he and anyone else) are free to agree or disagree with that decision,
it must be pointed out that his decision was personal and thus profoundly
different than the choices BDS is asking others to make.
That’s because this person chose to deprive himself of the goods he might have
bought at the prices he might have received.
He also chose to announce clearly that he made the economic decision he
did for political reasons. Finally, he was
willing to accept the consequences of the choice he’s made. Those consequences might be good (word
getting out that boycotts go both ways) or bad (increased hostility between
Israeli Arabs and Jews). They can also
be internal (from feelings of satisfaction to discomfort regarding the targets
he chose for his boycott action). But
they are consequences that he was prepared to bear.
Contrast that with the BDS “movement” that is all about
getting other people to choose boycott
and divestment and (although rarely mentioned by BDS advocates) bear the
consequences.
Think about it. If a
college’s branch of Students for Justice in Palestine sent out a press release
saying that their members were divesting from Israel, that announcement would,
at best, lead to a blog entry asking what they were divestment beyond their
allowances. But if they can claim their
school has joined some perceived divestment bandwagon, well now that’s
news. Which is why they’ve worked so
hard to get the school to do so and, when failing to succeed, worked even
harder to get others to join them in pretending that it did.
In terms of consequences, BDS leaves that to others as
well. If their activity rubs ethnic and
religious tension raw or puts intuitions in legal jeopardy, what do they
care? All they want is the “brand” of a well-known
organizations associated with their squalid little political program. And if a community is turned into a war zone
or a company or other organization gets sued over the position the boycotters manipulated
or bullied them to take, it’s the institution (not the BDSers) who have to deal
with the wreckage.
Considering the pose the divestment cru routinely strikes
with regard to their supposed courage and boldness, just once I’d like to see
them put anything of their own on the line.
I recall a film where a father blasted some young people for playing at
Third World radicalism with the statement “poverty is fine if you’ve got a
return-trip ticket.” But if I were to
craft a similar message for BDS it would be “boycotting is easy, so long as
it’s others that pay the price.”
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A pregnant woman was left in critical condition and six others suffered moderate or light injures in a terror attack Sunday evening, when shots were fired from a passing car at a crowd of people waiting at a bus stop outside the Israeli West Bank settlement of Ofra.
The woman, 21, suffered wounds to her upper body and was rushed to Shaare Zedek Medical Center, in the capital, the Magen David Adom paramedic service said. The woman, who was said to be in the 30th-week of her pregnancy, was undergoing surgery at the hospital late Sunday.
A man, 21, with moderate wounds, was taken to the same hospital as were two others who had light injuries. Army Radio said the woman’s husband was among those lightly injured.
Another person, 22, with moderate injuries, and two 16-year-old girls with light injuries, were taken to Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in the north of the capital, MDA said.
In security camera video of the shooting, posted to social media, a white car is seen slowing down near the bus stop, after which bullets can be seen striking the crowd who scramble for cover. The car, which comes to a stop for a few moments while the shooting apparently continues, then speeds off down the road as IDF soldiers are seen running to bus stop.
The car from which the shots were fired was believed to have at least two occupants.
The IDF launched a manhunt for the terrorists.
Israeli soldiers escort thousands of Jewish worshippers to Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs holy site on December 10, 2018
The father of Shira Ish-Ran, who was critically wounded in the shooting attack in Ofra last night, staying at her bedside at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
In a conversation with reporters, he spoke about the condition of his daughter, who is still in serious condition, and of the baby who was delivered following the attack.
"We thank the Almighty that our son-in-law Amichai is recovering and is in relatively good condition. A miracle happened that he was shot with three bullets but is still in good condition," said the father, Chaim Silverstein.
"Our daughter Shira is still in intensive care. Her condition is steadily improving but is still serious. We got to go into the ICU for a few minutes. She kept an eye and a half on all the tubes that were going in and out.
"She was cried with excitement when she saw us. We had to leave because her pulse had risen too high.
"Our situation is improving, we pray and thank all of the people of Israel, people from all over the world turned to us and said they were praying for Shira and Amichai and the baby.
The condition of a baby delivered after his mother was critically wounded in a shooting attack outside the West Bank settlement of Ofra on Sunday night has deteriorated, the hospital said Monday.
A pregnant woman was seriously injured by gunfire from a passing car as she waited, among a crowd of people, at a bus stop outside the settlement of Ofra on Sunday evening. Six other people were injured in the attack and the manhunt for the terrorists, who fled the scene, was ongoing.
The baby boy was delivered on Sunday night by Cesarean section in the 30th week of pregnancy, and was immediately transferred to the ward for premature babies at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, the hospital said.
Initially said to be in “stable” condition, the hospital said Monday the baby’s condition worsened and he was now hooked up to a ventilator and undergoing treatment in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of 435 members of the incoming US House of Representatives, said on Monday that members of her family were Sephardim who were forced to flee to Puerto Rico during the Spanish Inquisition.
Ocasio-Cortez was speaking at an event marking the eighth and final night of Hanukkah, at a gathering held with the Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. She thanked the organization on a social media account for assembling the festivities.
“So many of our destinies are tied beyond our understanding,” Ocasio-Cortez said regarding her family lineage.
“A very long time ago, generations and generations ago, my family consisted of Sephardi... Jews.”
Ocasio-Cortez told the audience of her family’s struggles as Sephardim, and how they were forced to flee into the mountains of Puerto Rico during the Spanish Inquisition and practice Catholicism as a front to escape antisemitic oppression.
“During the Spanish Inquisition... so many people were forced to convert on the exterior to Catholicism, but on the interior continued to practice their faith,” the newly elected New York congresswoman told the crowd.
At Hanukkah event with @JFREJNYC in an moving speech, @Ocasio2018 shares that her family were Sephardic Jews who fled to Puerto Rico. “So many of our destinies are tied beyond our understanding” pic.twitter.com/68bjuCFnDD
If anything, the stories of our ancestry give us windows of opportunity to lean into others, to seek them out, and see ourselves, our histories, and our futures, tightly knit with other communities in a way we perhaps never before thought possible.
Essentially, she's saying that since she is Puerto Rican, she must have some Jewish blood. But that doesn't jive with her story she said yesterday, saying as fact that her family specifically " were forced to flee into the mountains of Puerto Rico during the Spanish Inquisition and practice Catholicism as a front to escape antisemitic oppression."
That is like someone who is 1/1024th black claiming to be oppressed as a slave.
It is all appearances. Facts don't matter to those who attempt to be the winners in the Oppression Olympics.
While it is possible that she does have some Jewish blood, it is nothing but politics for her to identify at this point in her life for the first time as partially Jewish. If she never identified as such, she doesn't get "oppression points" for her suppose ancestors to have fled to the mountains of Puerto Rico.
UPDATE: I am told by an expert that Hispanics in the New World can often find that their DNA is between 10-20% Sephardic Jewish and many can trace their family lineage back to 1492. I still don't believe that this revelation gives Ocasio-Cortez the sudden right to identify as Jewish when her family apparently did not know this for generations.
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A new report on European antisemitism shows that the problem is pervasive - and not in the least confined to being coming from the far right.
The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights surveyed 16,000 Jews throughout the continent and found:
The survey findings suggest that people face so much antisemitic abuse that some of the incidents they experience appear trivial to them. But any antisemitic incident is at its core an attack on a person’s dignity and cannot be brushed away as a mere inconvenience. Both the 2012 and 2018 surveys show that respondents report very few experienced incidents of antisemitism to the police or other institution. A comparison of the two surveys’ results shows that the categories of perpetrators of antisemitic harassment remain consistent, with certain categories of individuals consistently over-represented as perpetrators.
The most frequently mentioned categories of perpetrators of the most serious incident of antisemitic harassment experienced by the respondents include someone they did not know (31 %); someone with an extremist Muslim view (30 %); someone with a left-wing political view (21 %); a colleague from work or school/college (16 %); an acquaintance or friend (15 %); and someone with a right-wing political view (13 %).
That is only one of the troubling findings - European Jews are not feeling safe anywhere, because they can encounter antisemitism in all areas of their life - on the street, at work, at school, at social events, online.
It is impossible to put a number on how corrosive such everyday realities can be. But a shocking statistic sends a clear message: in the past five years, across twelve EU Member States where Jews have been living for centuries, more than one third say that they consider emigrating because they no longer feel safe as Jews.
The survey findings suggest that antisemitism pervades the public sphere, reproducing and engraining negative stereotypes about Jews. Simply being Jewish increases people’s likelihood of being faced with a sustained stream of abuse expressed in different forms, wherever they go, whatever they read and with whomever they engage. A comparison of the 2012 and 2018 surveys shows that the perception among respondents that antisemitism is a worsening problem in the country where they live is growing.
Overall, nine in 10 (89 %) respondents in the 2018 survey feel that antisemitism increased in their country in the five years before the survey; more than eight in 10 (85 %) consider it to be a serious problem. Respondents tend to rate antisemitism as the biggest social or political problem where they live. They assess antisemitism as being most problematic on the internet and on social media (89 %), followed by public spaces (73 %), media (71 %) and in political life (70 %). The most common antisemitic statements they come across – and on a regular basis – include that “Israelis behave like Nazis toward Palestinians” (51 %), that “Jews have too much power” (43 %) and that “Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own purposes” (35 %). Respondents most commonly come across such statements online (80 %), followed by media other than the internet (56 %) and at political events (48 %).
..Findings from the 2018 survey show that hundreds of respondents personally experienced an antisemitic physical attack in the 12 months preceding the survey. More than one in four (28 %) of all respondents experienced antisemitic harassment at least once during that period. Those who wear, carry or display items in public that could identify them as Jewish are subject to more antisemitic harassment (37 %) than those who do not (21 %).
One in five (20 %) respondents know family members or other people close to them who were verbally insulted, harassed or physically attacked. Nearly half of the respondents worried about being subjected to antisemitic verbal insults or harassment (47 %), and four in 10 worried about an antisemitic physical attack (40 %). One in three (34 %) respondents avoid visiting Jewish events or sites because they do not feel safe as Jews when there or on their way there. More than one third considered emigrating (38 %) in the five years preceding the survey because they did not feel safe as Jews in the country where they live.
More than half of the respondents (54 %) positively assess their national governments’ efforts to ensure the security needs of the Jewish communities. But seven in 10 (70 %) believe that the government in their country does not combat antisemitism effectively.
Sustained encounters with antisemitism severely limit people’s enjoyment of their fundamental rights, including the protection of their human dignity, the right to respect for their private and family life, or their freedom of thought, conscience and religion. It is encouraging that many Jews believe that their government does enough to meet the protection needs of their communities. However, the very fact that special security measures – for example, around synagogues, Jewish community centres and schools – are required on a more or less permanent basis to ensure the safety of Jewish communities points to a persisting and deeper societal malaise. Member States need to be steadfast in their commitment to meet the protection needs of Jewish communities.
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A Pink Floyd cover band has canceled scheduled appearances in Israel amid a storm of harassment and mounting pressure from boycott activists that followed a call from the original band’s co-founder Roger Waters for the musicians to refrain from performing in a “racist” country.
The UK Pink Floyd Experience had been slated to play in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba at the beginning of January. But in an announcement on their Facebook page Saturday the band said it was canceling the performances.
The shows’ organizers, EGOeast Productions, said in a statement that the band had pulled out after a wave of boycott Israel activism “which reached a high with the publication of the band members phone numbers, who began to be harassed until they were forced to cancel the service of their devices.”
My comment:
Many if not most of the artists who announce plans to play in Israel and then withdraw do so because of harassment of the type mentioned here, including death threats and "doxxing."
If BDS was so confident of the morality of its cause, it wouldn't need to use such tactics. But whether the threats are organized by the BDS movement or are done by overzealous supporters, the BDS Movement has to the best of my knowledge never discouraged people from sending death threats and harassment campaigns to artists who want to play in Israel.
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A Turkish TV series is raising eyebrows in the Muslim world because of the incidental placement of Jewish symbols in the series, unexplained.
A mezuzah and a depiction of a menorah are causing concern:
Judaism has nothing to do with the series, and the eagle eyed Muslims noted that no one kissed the mezuzah. It is possible, they believe, that the producers simply borrowed a Jewish owned house for the filming.
But the fact that the menorah was shown during Chanukah - coupled with the fact that Tayyip Erdogan wished Turkish Jews a happy Chanukah - is creating conspiracy theories.
"We attach absolute importance to the freedom of religion and belief and to the peaceful coexistence of our citizens in this country and the exercise of their culture, religious rituals and customs without discrimination on the basis of religion, race or religion," Erdogan said.
"As representatives of a culture that derives its richness from its diversity, we congratulate ourselves and all the Jews, especially the Jews of Turkey, on the occasion of the Hanukkah Festival, based on our desire to continue the climate of love and mutual respect in the future," Erdogan said on Twitter.
"We attach absolute importance to the freedom of religion and belief and to the peaceful coexistence of our citizens in this country and the exercise of their culture, religious rituals and customs without discrimination on the basis of race or religion. As representatives of a culture that derives its richness from its diversity, we congratulate all the Jews, especially the Jews of Turkey, on the occasion of the Hanukkah Festival, based on our desire to continue the climate of love and mutual respect in the future," Erdogan said on Twitter.
The article in Zaman admits that anti-Jewish sentiments are the usual fare in Turkish media, and between Erdogan's message and the incidental view of Jewish symbols in the series, people are wondering if Turkey really is starting to love Jews.
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.
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.
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