Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

03/17 Links Pt2: Mel Brooks and Son Max Post Humorous Viral Video With Coronavirus Tips; After Coronavirus, the Mask Is Off at the Quincy Institute

From Ian:

Mel Brooks, Son Post Humorous Viral Video With Coronavirus Tips

On Monday, comedy legend Mel Brooks and his author son Max Brooks teamed up for a helpful and humorous video outlining novel coronavirus-related tips, emphasizing that folks “#DontBeASpreader,” especially the elderly, who are more likely to have a fatal reaction to the virus.

“Hi, I’m Max Brooks. I’m 47 years old,” the younger Brooks started the video, before gesturing toward his father, who is standing behind a glass window. “This is my dad Mel Brooks,” he said. “Hi, dad! He’s 93.”

“If I get the coronavirus, I’ll probably be okay,” the “World War Z” author told viewers. “But if I give it to him, he could give it to Carl Reiner, who could give it to Dick Van Dyke, and before I know it, I’ve wiped out a whole generation of comedic legends!”

“When it comes to coronavirus, I have to think about who I can infect, and so should you,” Max said. “So practice social distancing, avoid crowds, wash your hands, keep six feet away from people, and if you’ve got the option to stay home, just stay home.”

“Do your part, don’t be a spreader. Right, dad?” Max asked his father.

A message from me and my dad, @Melbrooks. #coronavirus #DontBeASpreader pic.twitter.com/Hqhc4fFXbe
— Max Brooks (@maxbrooksauthor) March 16, 2020

‘This Is Nothing New’: Jewish Human Rights Icon Natan Sharansky Addresses Antisemitic Propaganda Around Coronavirus

Natan Sharansky — the former Soviet refusenik who spent nine years leading the Jewish Agency between 2009-18 — has spoken out against antisemitic conspiracy theories linking Jews to the COVID-19 pandemic, observing that these were “nothing new.”

Speaking to an online gathering on Sunday, Sharansky invoked the Black Death of the 14th century as a precedent for today’s woes.

“The idea that Jews are behind the virus, that Jews want to destroy markets, to make money or that Israel is behind it — there is nothing new in it,” Sharansky said. “We saw it during the Black Death in the Middle Ages. There was broad belief that Jews were behind it.”

Addressing the first digital awards ceremony of the US-based Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) — held online because of the continuing rapid spread of the virus — Sharansky emphasized that the “difference between then and now is that today the State of Israel is strong, we are fighting antisemitism and we will defeat it.”

State Department Special Envoy Elan Carr — who advises US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on antisemitism — also addressed the gathering, at which the 37 winners of a contest for creative proposals to fight antisemitism were announced.

“The current administration is determined by its words and action to fight antisemitism,” Carr stated. “The administration is committed to secure the physical security of Jews, to fight the spread of antisemitism on the internet, to end radicalization of students in the Middle East through textbooks, to educate about philo-semitism, and to take legal action against those who engage in antisemitism.”

Melanie Phillips: What will Jewish leaders say about Trevor Phillips

Instead, it seems that condemning Labour’s antisemitism produced what Phillips describes as the “political gangsterism” of the Islamophobia smear. It shows that the term is not about fighting real prejudice but is used as a weapon to silence inconvenient truths.

So where, one might wonder, does this leave these Jewish community leaders?

Phillips said he was the victim of the party’s adoption of a controversial new definition of Islamophobia. This definition, put forward by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims at the end of 2018, had been influenced by MEND, a Muslim advocacy group described by the former head of Counter-Terrorism Command, Sir Mark Rowley, as “seeking to undermine the state’s considerable efforts to tackle all hate crime”.

Signatories to a letter calling on the government to adopt this definition included the Friends of al Aqsa.

Yet, according to a JC report last year, the Board of Deputies was poised to endorse this definition and was stopped only because of a last-minute intervention by moderate British Muslims and the Community Security Trust. The Board said it merely concluded it “wasn’t the right time” to endorse any Islamophobia definition.

So has anybody yet heard community leaders springing to the defence of Trevor Phillips? Or are these leaders going to double down on condemning anyone who is denounced as an Islamophobe?

There is, of course, a juddering contrast between the Labour Party suspending Phillips for actions dredged up from years ago while refusing to expel demonstrable antisemites in the party who are spreading their poison unchecked right now.

At the time of writing, Labour’s leadership front-runner, Sir Keir Starmer, had remained silent over the suspension of Trevor Phillips.

Failure to condemn the weaponisation of Islamophobia against the truth augurs ill for any effective action against antisemitism. It also augurs ill for the moral health of the Jewish community leadership.

Douglas Murray on the death of Europe & identity - BQ #11

Douglas Murray talks immigration, Islam, identity politics and his life. The Sun's Steven Edginton interviews Murray for the series 'Burning Questions'. The pair discuss Murray's books 'The Strange Death of Europe' and 'The Madness of Crowds'. Murray updates his views since the publication of both books and debates issues such as Brexit and the trans rights movement.

Iran arrests people who made funny "raining eggplants" video

Someone made a video using special effects to make it appear that it was raining eggplants in Tehran.

It's pretty funny.

So, naturally, Iran arrested those responsible.

"The video showing an eggplant falling in the capital was published on social media on Sunday, and the police immediately identified the creators of the video, and arrested them," said police official Ali Zolgadir.

He continued, "The video's creators admitted that they were conducting research on special visual effects, but one of the videos was mistakenly posted on social media."

Zolgadir also stated that the video producers "confirmed that they did not belong to a secret group or movement".

Iran's IRNA news agency revealed that the video was created by Amin Taqibour, an Iranian who lives in Canada and works with Hollywood film producers on special effects. The young man was on a visit to Iran to attend his father's burial, but his return trip was canceled due to the outbreak of Coronavirus.

I don't know what the charges are.

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.

The number of explicitly antisemitic articles in Arabic media has skyrocketed with the coronavirus.

This latest example is an essay titled "Know Your Enemy" in the Lebanese news site Al Binaa.

Columnist Wajdi Al-Masry starts off with the hoax Benjamin Franklin speech that supposedly says that Jews should be expelled from America.

It goes downhill from there.

He talks about Neturei Karta, which he describes as having "tens of thousands of followers," but he decides that since they still believe that the Messiah will come one day and Jews will return to Israel, they are just as much an enemy as every other Jew. He continues:

If this proves anything, it proves that [Lebanese philosopher and socialist Antoun] Saadeh's theory is right, the theory that says that the Jews are our enemy and not only the Zionists. This differentiation between Judaism and Zionism is one of the Jewish deceptions meant to distract from the danger of the Jews to the entire world. If there are some voices that criticize Israel's policy and the lies of its leaders and their falsifying of facts and history, these voices are no more than a few dozen. Thus, (these voices) are an exception that does not influence the rule. Our view of this rule – not differentiating between Judaism and Zionism – will change only when Jews begin leaving their religion and all the racist, condescending and sidelining notions that stem from it, and when (the Jews) will distance themselves from it and from all its political results/effects, and when those (Jews who reject Judaism and Zionism) will become an active majority that can lead to change. (Only) then it will be possible to really (re)examine our stance (that Jews are the enemy, not only Zionists).

So guess what, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNot and +972 Magazine and Jewish Worker: Your anti-Zionism does not soften the opinions of antisemitic Arabs towards you. They hate you just as much as they hate Zionist Jews, and they think of you are a major deception in trying to pretend that you are different from most other Jews.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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.

03/17 Links Pt1: Until the Arab Parties Abandon Their Hatred of Israel, They Don’t Belong in the Government; Remembering the Terrorist Bombing of Israel's Embassy in Buenos Aires

From Ian:

Until the Arab Parties Abandon Their Hatred of Israel, They Don’t Belong in the Government

Thus we have Tibi telling President Reuven Rivlin during the September 2019 parliamentary consultations that “we are the owners of this land… we did not immigrate here, we were born here, we are a native population.” Six months later, after another round of national elections brought the Joint List’s Knesset representation to an unprecedented tally of 15 MKs, Tibi was far more brazen. “The Land of Israel is a colonialist phrase,” he stated in a radio interview. “I contemptuously reject the term ‘Judea and Samaria’. This is the Palestinian bank, the occupied Palestinian territories.”

Of course the Land of Israel was known as such millennia before the advent of European colonialism, or even before the Roman colonialists renamed it Syria Palaestina precisely to obliterate the millenarian Jewish entitlement to this land. The biblical areas of Judea and Samaria were known by this name since biblical times, thousands of years before they were renamed the West Bank (of the Hashemite Kingdom) in 1950 by King Abdullah ibn Hussein. The League of Nations’ mandate for Palestine delineated the country’s borders according to its interpretation of the biblical term “from Dan to Beersheba,” while Mandatory Palestine included a substantial Samarian district comprising much of the would-be “West Bank.”

It is hardly surprising that Tibi and his fellow members of the Joint List would remain impervious to the historical truth. Theirs is the agenda of rewriting the story of the “Nakba”—the Palestinian misnomer for their wholly unnecessary self-inflicted 1947-48 disaster when, rather than accept the UN’s partition resolution, they tried to destroy the state of Israel at birth—and nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of this (self-destructive) agenda. As the Joint Arab List’s leader Ayman Oudeh told President Rivlin on March 15: “We are not solely interested in full civil equality. We are a national group that deserves full national equality.” In other words: ending Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

But what about the three former IDF chiefs of staff heading the Blue and White party? Don’t they realize that they are but “useful idiots” for the Joint List’s ultimate goal (as candidly revealed by Oudeh, who described collaboration with this party as a steppingstone to “toppling the Netanyahu-led right-wing rule” en route to ending “the Zionist hegemony”)? Has their hatred of Benjamin Netanyahu blinded them to the point of forgetting the values and ideals for which they fought for decades and putting Israel’s future at risk?

David Singer: Gantz promises chaos and confusion in Israel for next six weeks

Gantz’s new partner was making it crystal clear to Israel’s President that Israel was not recognized by Tibi’s party as the Jewish National Home reconstituted after 3000 years by and with the unanimous resolution of all 51 member states that comprised the League of Nations and endorsed the Mandate for Palestine.

Balad – the second party included in the Joint List and now in partnership with Gantz - had a former MK Said Nafa among its ranks. Nafa was convicted of maintaining contact with a foreign intelligence operative and spent time in prison. Another former Balad Knesset member, Basel Ghattas, was convicted of smuggling cellphones to Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli jail, an offense for which he too was convicted and imprisoned.

Spokesperson for the Joint list is Ayman Odeh – the head of Hadash - the third party in Joint List.

Odeh stated on 5 March 2020:
“Right now, with Gantz’s attitude [in favor] of a Jewish majority and unilateral annexation, we have no one to recommend to the president. If there is a change after the elections in the direction of peace and equality, we will weigh our position again.”

Gantz has apparently capitulated to Odeh’s demands just 11 days later.

Vice President of the fourth party in the Joint List – Mansour Abbas - has declared:

“Of course, we are against the Zionist movement. However, from a pragmatic perspective, we are ready for a compromise between the Zionist movement and Palestinians”

Gantz has already caved to Balad's demands

In the past, Balad members described Gantz as someone who suffers from Zionist ideology, and is therefore unacceptable. On Tuesday, in another one of his speeches following his receipt of the mandate to form a government, he used the term "patriotic government." Some would interpret this as forgoing the term that has been accepted since Herzl – "Zionist."

Not everyone in the Arab street likes the support for Gantz. Balad's response: "Removing Netanyahu from power is the No. 1 priority." Balad also issued a statement pointing out what it had secured in negotiations with Gantz: "The first and most important [achievement] – recognition of the principle that no unilateral steps will be taken on annexation of areas of the West Bank; upholding the status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque; and a stop to the demolition of illegally built homes."

With these "achievements" in place, Gantz launching negotiations for a "unity" government with the Right is a recipe for time wasted on pointless talks that will ultimately result in a fourth election.

Right now, we have a prime minister who is handling the coronavirus outbreak, one of the worst crises in the history of Israel, excellently. Next to him, Gantz looks like a sideshow attraction. Still, Gantz is doing everything so that the work to establish a government winds up undermining the prime minister. The natural, right thing to do – what former Labor party voters wanted – is a unity government under Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has legitimacy that is based on broad popular support and the Right's electoral victory. Gantz, on the other hand, is supposed to form a unity government to which those who recommended him object.

https://t.co/SRDDAcim3G
— Yair Netanyahu 🇮🇱 (@YairNetanyahu) March 16, 2020

Assad al-Azzouni is an award-winning Arab novelist and writer.

He's also an antisemite.

His latest screed is about how Jews are behind the coronavirus, and much more.

The Corona virus can only be a product of the hatred of Jews throughout the world, and that its spread in America comes to confirm this, and it becomes an electoral weapon in the hands of Trump in the upcoming elections, to ensure his second term as a reward to him for what he presented to the Israeli Khazary Zionist Talmudic terrorists, the foremost among them is the deal of the century, Jerusalem, the Golan and the settlements.

When the Jews ignited the fire of the First World War, they reaped the Balfour Declaration, and when they set the fire of the Second War, they reaped behind them the establishment of the Khazars in Palestine, and they want to ignite the third war to announce the establishment of the Great Talmudic Kingdom of Israel, and here we live in the atmosphere of the third war, where the military and political horizons regarding regional and internal conflicts, and the recession that is deepening day by day due to the high price and political stalemate.

Not long ago, Jews tried to ignite the war between Iran and America by creating severe tension in the Gulf. In one of its forms, the Hajj Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, was killed. This was preceded by some skirmishes that almost ignited the third war, but the rationality of decision makers in Iran and America prevented it.

After this failure, the Israeli Mossad, in cooperation with the CIA, sent Coronavirus to China... Corona was the curtain that Jews used to achieve their goals and pressure the international community to turn a blind eye to their human crimes, implement the deal of the century as a whole and perhaps get some more because Shylock did not die, they urgently need media silence in order to exercise their duties in the manner that satisfies them, especially since the Israeli and American public announced their rejection of the deal of the century, and the fact that after that the coronavirus became the global "trend", in the media and social media, and I expect that they used the American secret runaway project who became partners in it after its completion, and it is used to control the weather and the general mood, and therefore I do not rule out that they used it on the subject of corona .........., and despite Corona we also expect to detonate the fuse of the Third World War.

This guy is interviewed regularly on TV.

Arabs take him seriously.

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.

The General Union of Palestinian Students branch in Hungary issued a statement that they are willing to help fight the coronavirus in that country.

The group is arranging that Palestinian students and graduates in the fields of medicine and public health register with Hungarian authorities to volunteer in any way they can. The coordination is happening through Dr. Ibrahim Al-Sharrouf, secretary of the Fatah movement in Hungary.

Very nice, right? Well, not really. Because this press release, whether it is true or not (it is not on the group's Facebook page,) is just another excuse to attack Israel.

The statement said, "We can be proud of this act and the human feeling of solidarity and this Palestinian act. As long as we are still Palestinians, our human feelings and morals are driven by the reality of the tragedy, oppression, looting and diminishing of our national and human rights due to the occupation and its daily criminal practices against our people for more than 70 years."

Can you imagine a Jewish group volunteering to help people - which happens all the time - and at the same time saying "We Jews are proud that we are really great and moral, especially since the gentiles have been attacking us for thousands of years"?

Suddenly, what could have been a nice gesture turns into a self-aggrandizing political attack. Both the pride at the idea of volunteering before anyone actually volunteers, and the attack on Israel, indicate that this is not a real attempt to help Hungarian authorities but an excuse to issue a press release saying "We Palestinians are moral human beings and Israelis are evil tormenters."

It will be interesting to see if any actual volunteering is ever documented.

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.

"Pro-Palestinian" activists don't care about Palestinian racism

Here is one of the postponed/canceled events for "Israel Apartheid Week" at Lancaster University:

Notice that the theme of the event was supposed to be "United Against Racism."

Which is funny, because the intended speaker has written about racism - Arab racism against black Palestinians.

On his Facebook page, in Arabic, he wrote last month:

About three years ago, I read an article in the Al Monitor newspaper titled "Black Palestinians Shrug Off Racism"… After I read the article, I was angered, thinking "What?! We don't have racism in Gaza!" So I decided to write an article that would refute the original article. Then I began to conduct interviews with some dark-skinned youth, and I was shocked to find that yes, indeed, we do have despicable racism in Gaza, and dark-skinned people suffer because of our racism.

After I published the article, I was surprised to see that it reached the (Ministry of) Interior, and the criticism began to pour down on me, as well as accusation of being a traitor, and (people said that) I am trying to distort Gaza's image… And no one thought or felt even once what the wronged people (i.e. the black Palestinians) feel because of our racism.

The Al Monitor article mentions "According to Gaza Through History, a book by Ibrahim Sakik, wealthy families in the Gaza Strip participated in the slave trade hundreds of years ago." But there is not a single book about the history of black Palestinians.

The Israel haters say they are against racism, yet they know quite well that Arabs are racists - but that fact cannot be publicized because anyone who is brave enough to say a word is threatened by the Hamas or PA governments!

In fact, Palestinians learn when they are young that they are not allowed to criticize their own people or government at the risk of imprisonment and social stigma. The only people who can be insulted are Israelis and whatever Arab nations that seem to be aligned with Israel.

A society that cannot handle criticism can never grow. The Israel haters are doing their Palestinian pets no service when they censor any criticism of them - censorship that in the past has extended so far as to hush up stories of Western female "peace activists" being raped by Palestinians.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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.

03/16 Links Pt2: The true nature of the BDS movement; Joe Biden: Israel's Fake 'Friend'; Fearing the end is nigh, man returns stolen 2,000-year-old artifact to park

From Ian:

Daphne Anson: Zara's Zionism

Here's are excerpts from an article entitled "My Journey Through Antisemitism to Supporting Israel" by Zara Shaen Albright, a Muslim-born British lady of Pakistani heritage who converted to her husband's Catholicism.

From a position fot antisemitism and hostility to the Jewish State she came to realise, thanks to an open-minded mother who encouraged her curiosity about the Shoah and matters Jewish, that her previous stance was unjustified.
'For as long as I can remember, I grew up hearing some form of antisemitism. From hearing the casual “let’s go shoot some Jews” to being advised not to be open about my support in Eurovision for Israel, to being told that the holocaust was “Allah’s way of showing the Jews what would happen if Israel was formed”, to being told that I “look like a Jew with a big nose” as an insult, it became so normal to hear such sentiments, that they essentially became background noise....'

A visit to Israel proved seminal.
'Luckily, I ... was able to visit both Israel and Palestinian territories.... I able to see many holy sites that hold a lot of significance for me as an ex-Muslim-turned-Catholic-convert ... I was also able to explore the beauty of Israel’s culture, to hearing from Israeli settlers ... to seeing the Kibbutz where cute Winnie-the-Poo murals were painted on and inside bomb shelters so the children would not be afraid, to seeing the celebration of martyrdom in the refugee camps, and the expectations that awaited the little boys when they grew up, I changed from being neutral to being a Zionist, which, as it turns out, is the mere belief that Jewish people should be able to have a homeland....'

Regarding Muslim hostility to Israel Zara writes:
'Remember that Islam once had its own empire, and the existence of Israel is a reminder of the felt pain and anguish over such a great empire now only being a memory.

The true nature of the BDS movement

BDS focuses on the “settlements.” By this term, BDS supporters refer to Judea and Samaria Jewish towns, which they blame for the lack of “peace.” However, there was no peace before these “settlements” existed.

Why are Jews not to be allowed to live in Judea and Samaria? Jewish settlements in this area were based on virgin lands where no previous Arab homesteading took place. The idea that as Jews multiply, Palestinian Arabs “lose” more land is absurd. The truth is that there should not be any problem with Jewish towns, irrespective of where the Palestinian Arab state could in theory exist, in the same way there is no problem with Arab towns in Israel proper.

“Settlements” are not the cause of the lack of peace. Instead, this is due to the rejection of any Jewish presence at all in the area. BDS supporters do not care that Palestinian Arabs are second-class citizens in many Arab countries. For example, Kuwait expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs after the First Gulf War. Many Palestinian Arabs are now living under the brutal Islamist dictatorship by the Hamas in Gaza, or under the tyranny of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, whose “democratic” term ended a decade ago. Why is BDS not protesting these injustices against Palestinians?

Do Jews have a right to live, build and create on un-homesteaded land? Yes, because they are human beings, and as such they are entitled to homestead any virgin resource. The fact that they chose Israel is due to the millennia-old connection between Jews and Judea.

According to UNESCO, the Temple Mount is actually Al-Haram Al-Sharif. Jerusalem is now Al-Quds, and the Western Wall is Al-Buraq Wall. This nomenclature constitutes a systematic attempt to erase the connection between Jewish history and the Jewish holy of holies. It would be offensive if it was not so transparently inane, even in terms of denying Christian history, and by extension that of the Muslim.

BDS supporters may very well stop buying Israeli products if they want to, and are free to persuade others to do so. However, they cannot legitimately lobby governments to use force against their own citizens who wish to trade with Israelis on a voluntary and mutually beneficial basis.

BDS is not primarily a pro-Palestinian movement, but an anti-Jewish one. Denying one group, and one group only, the right to homestead land is unjust.

‘Missing a Tablespoon of Blood’: Quincy Institute Scholar Laments Lack of Violence Amid Corona Outbreak in Israel

The managing director for research and policy of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft appeared to celebrate the draconian measures employed by the Israeli government to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Then she argued that whatever discomforts they impose on Israeli citizens, they are not enough to compensate for the suffering Israel has inflicted on its Palestinian neighbors.

"Such a tiny taste. Missing a tablespoon of blood," Sarah Leah Whitson wrote in a now-deleted tweet.

Whitson was responding to a tweet from the Israeli-American journalist Mairav Zonszein, who wrote, "6 million Jewish Israelis will now get a taste of what around the same number of Palestinians living under occupation have experienced for over half a century." Zonszein was referring to the tactics now being embraced by the Israeli government to reduce transmission of the coronavirus, including antiterrorism measures like cell phone tracking of infected individuals.

Neither Whitson nor the Quincy Institute replied to a request for comment. The Israeli government took drastic action over the weekend, including the closings of restaurants, bars, and gyms. Whitson appeared to be expressing frustration that the measures would not offset the violence perpetrated by the Israeli government on the Palestinians.

"It is stunningly revolting," said Deborah Lipstadt, a scholar of modern Judaism and anti-Semitism at Emory University and the author of a modern history of anti-Semitism.

After facing a flood of criticism on Twitter—as well as inquiries from the Washington Free Beacon—Whitson deleted her tweet and posted a follow up arguing that her previous tweet "didn't come out right" and that she had deleted it "to prevent misinterpretation." She made no reference to the possibility that she had hurt or offended Jews.

The BDS leader in South Africa lied on live Tv. His problem is that i was there to expose it. pic.twitter.com/gd3QJZYury
— יוסף חדאד - Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) March 16, 2020

I love Matti Friedman and decided I want to read all of his books. I had already read "Spies of No Country," although I didn't review it, and I recently ordered The Aleppo Codex and Pumpkinflowers.

The Aleppo Codex, circa 930 CE, is one of the most important books ever written. It was an attempt to codify the entire Hebrew Scripture, with all vowel marks and cantillation marks, as a single standard, since Torahs are written without vowels and they were only known by tradition.

Friedman's book runs through two parallel histories. One is the actual history of the codex, as it was written in the Galilee and then traveled to Jerusalem, where Crusaders held it for ransom which was paid by rich Egyptian Jews. It was then brought to Cairo, used as a reference by Maimonides, and then made its way to Aleppo, Syria, where the community zealously guarded it for centuries. Friedman brings the details to light, including the theory that the writer of the Codex was in fact a Karaite and not a Rabbinic scholar.

The other history is what happened to the codex in the days and years after the UN voted to partition Palestine. The official story is that crazed Arab antisemites destroyed the synagogue and burned its contents, including the Codex, and the surviving pages were smuggled to Israel where it was entrusted to the State.

The reality is much more complex, and much messier. Friedman spent a great deal of time trying to break the wall of silence by the Syrian Jewish community surrounding the codex. They regarded the book as a talisman that would protect them.

Friedman unravels much of the mystery, but not all of it.

The story is not complimentary to the State of Israel. The Syrian community did not want to part with the book and Israel managed to take it from their members with a combination of subterfuge and an unfair, secret trial. Anti-Mizrahi racism underlies a lot of the plot.

The remaining mystery is what happened to most of the missing pages. They were not burnt, as had been assumed, but nearly all of the Pentateuch is missing - yet the book appears to have been largely intact with perhaps only a few missing pages when it was retrieved after the pogroms. The Syrian community remains mum on that issue, with rumors of some people having individual pages that they still use as a mystic protection.

The one man who may have possessed the bulk of the missing pages, a haredi rare book dealer, was murdered in 1989. The trail goes cold after that.

Friedman is a gifted storyteller as well as a dogged reporter. He brings to life the Crusader siege of Jerusalem, with Muslims and Jews both defending the city, as much as he describes the events of 1947 and later. Although much of the mystery remains, he has brought to light a great deal about the Aleppo Codex that was hushed up by both Israel and the Syrian Jewish communities of Israel and abroad. As always with Friedman, The Aleppo Codex is a very worthwhile read.

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.

03/16 Links Pt1: Israeli Nobel Laureate: Coronavirus spread is slowing; Jerusalem mayor to the people of Italy: We are with you!; Blue and White's political hara-kiri

From Ian:

Israeli Nobel Laureate: Coronavirus spread is slowing

However, that doesn't mean Levitt is dismissive of the precautions being put in place by governments around the world.

“You don’t hug every person you meet on the street now, and you’ll avoid meeting face to face with someone that has a cold, like we did,” Levitt said. “The more you adhere, the more you can keep infection in check. So, under these circumstances, a carrier will only infect 1.5 people every three days and the rate will keep going down.”

Isolation and limiting social contact is not the only factor at play, however. In Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, the whole population theoretically was at risk of becoming infected, but only 3% were.

The Diamond Princess cruise ship represented the worst-case scenario in terms of disease spread, as the close confines of the ship offered optimal conditions for the virus to be passed among those aboard. The population density aboard the ship was the equivalent of trying to cram the whole Israeli population into an area 30 kilometers square. In addition, the ship had a central air conditioning and heating system, and communal dining rooms.

“Those are extremely comfortable conditions for the virus and still, only 20% were infected. It is a lot, but pretty similar to the infection rate of the common flu,” Levitt said. Based on those figures, his conclusion was that most people are simply naturally immune.

Looking at the picture globally, Levitt was reticent to make predictions country-by-country as to when the spread of the virus will slow. China is nearing the point at which the number of new infections will be zero, while South Korea had already moved past the median point, and was starting to see a slow down in new infection rates.

Italy's higher death rate, he said, was likely due to the fact that elderly people make up a greater percentage of the population than they do in other countries such as China or France. “Furthermore, Italian culture is very warm, and Italians have a very rich social life. For these reasons, it is important to keep people apart and prevent sick people from coming into contact with healthy people.”

Israel doesn't have enough cases to provide useful data from which to make predictions, Levitt said, although he praised the government for its preventative measures. "The more severe the defensive measures taken, the more they will buy time to prepare for needed treatment and develop a vaccine,” he said.

The IDF's Policies on Coronavirus

The IDF will continue conducting regular situational assessments and will limit the movement of military personnel as necessary.

The IDF’s Home Front Command is assisting the Ministry of Health and civilians as needed. On March 15, 2020, the IDF Home Front Command opened a joint information center with Magen David Adom—Israel’s national emergency medical service—in order to act as a source of information for civilians who may have questions about the virus and increase the response to those infected.

In order to limit the spread of coronavirus in neighboring countries and in the Palestinian territories the IDF has:

- Closed Allenby Bridge border crossing (with Jordan), Erez border crossing (with Gaza), and Bethlehem except for emergencies.
- Conducted joint medical training sessions with the Palestinian Authority.
- Transferred test kits and disinfectant materials to the Palestinian Authority.

The IDF remains committed to protecting the people of Israel and its soldiers from any and all threats, while ensuring continuous and full operational capabilities.

Jerusalem mayor to the people of Italy: We are with you!

Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion expressed solidarity with the people of Italy during the coronavirus pandemic on Sunday when he said “Italy! Jerusalem is with you!” a press release on behalf of his office reported.

The walls of the Old City of Jerusalem were lit with the colors of the Italian flag in a show of support to the hardest hit nation after China with COVID 19.

Lion wished a quick recovery and plenty of health to the people of Italy and everyone in Israel and the world.

Rome and Jerusalem have a long mutual history, one of the founding texts of modern Zionism is the 1862 work by Moses Hess Rome and Jerusalem in which he framed the Jewish question in the framework of modern European, including Italian, nationalism.

"Israel Apartheid Week 2020" is a victim of the coronavirus. Awww.

From Palestine Solidarity Committee:

Hold on - they want to see apartheid off campus? Like off-campus apartments?

Anyway, as far as I can tell, every campus event has been canceled because the schools have shut down. In fact, Facebook warns not to have large events - not that so many would have attended anyway. Here is the Facebook warning along with an event that has not officially been canceled yet but that had zero people interested in attending:

Thousands of person hours of preparation by rabid Israel haters have all gone to waste because their annual hatefests have been canceled by an obviously Zionist virus.

All together now - "Awwwwww."

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.

One of the more interesting aspects of the Old White Men Who Pretend To Be Woke Debate last night was the discussion of which opposed authoritarian regimes more.

They both claimed to be against authoritarianism and for human rights, but Bernie Sanders praised the progress made under Castro against illiteracy and in China's economy, while accusing Joe Biden of being soft on the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Biden made the point that Sanders consistently praises Communist authoritarian regimes as he did in the 1960s on the Soviet Union.

But neither of them had anything bad to say about authoritarianism in Iran or Turkey.

This part of the debate was most illuminating:

Joe Biden: Why did you vote not to sanction the Russians?

Bernie Sanders: You know why? Because I had every … you keep talking about Iran that was tied to Iran. Russia was in Iran. I think John Kerry indicated his support for what I did. That was undermining the Iranian agreement. That’s why.

Suddenly, the Iran agreement - to prop up a regime that is so authoritarian that it mandates how women must dress - was considered more important than human rights to Bernie Sanders. Biden also rushed to take credit for sending billions of dollars to Iran as part of a sham agreement, money that directly goes to Syria and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad who are hardly poster children for human rights.

Similarly, in response to Sanders' praise for China's progress in boosting its economy, Biden slammed him for ignoring the million Uyghurs in Chinese prisons.

Even the Cuban literacy program that Sanders praises came on the back of tens of thousands of citizens who were forced to become teachers against their will, teaching course materials that were all pro-government propaganda, with success proven by forcing the newly literate to write letters of praise to Castro.

An unintentionally ironic tweet during the debate from Jewish Voice for Peace highlights the hypocrisy of those on the Left who pretend that human rights is their major platform:

These are people who pretend to support Palestinians and yet they never say a word about the authoritarian Abbas and Hamas regimes, which shut down freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and are against LGBTQ and women's rights. Not to mention JVP's silence on human rights abuses in Iran, or the discrimination against Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon or Egypt.

They are all hypocrites.

The Right doesn't care about human rights any more than the Left does. They will use it as a tool to demonize the other side without really caring about the victims of human rights abuses in nations they are allied with. The difference is in who they choose as their allies - the Right in America will tend to support nations who support the US, while the Left seems to want to coddle America's enemies in an always vain attempt to get them to change.

Politics will beat human rights every single time - even, and especially, among those who claim that human rights is the center of their concerns. It is time to stop pretending otherwise.

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.

This was all over the news last week:

A prominent Iranian cleric has said it is permissible to use a future coronavirus vaccine developed by Israel if “there is no substitute.”

The Iranian regime views Israel as a mortal enemy. But Iran has also faced one of the most severe outbreaks of the COVID-19 coronavirus outside its origin and epicenter in China.

“It is not permissible to buy and sell from Zionists and Israel,” Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, 93, told the Iranian daily Hamdeli on Wednesday.

“Unless the treatment is unique and there is no substitute,” he added, “then this is not an obstacle.”

Shirazi, one of the highest authorities in Shiite Islam and a former member of the regime’s Assembly of Experts that appoints the supreme leader, is considered among the regime’s more hard-line ideologues.

Now, the same cleric denies ever saying those words, although he fell short of saying that he would refuse such a vaccine.

A top Shi'a cleric in Iran has denied approving the purchase of a possible anti-coronavirus vaccine from Israel, which Islamic Republic considers as its top enemy.

In a statement on March 14, the office of an officially-recognized "Grand Ayatollah", Nasser Makarem Shirazi, reiterated that he was never asked about an anti-coronavirus vaccine produced by Israel.

"The Q&A on the subject never took place, and it is absolutely fake news," the office asserted.

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.

Cleric close to Khamenei wants Iranians to widely infect the world with Covid-19 to help bring about the Mahdi messiah

A prominent hardline Iranian cleric, Ali Reza Banahyan, called on the Iranians to spread the coronavirus to speed up the emergence of the expected Mahdi, the messianic figure in Shiite Islam.

Banahyan said that the outbreak of the virus is a sign of the emergence of the Mahdi, which Shiites believe will emerge at the end of time.

Banahyan is close to the guide the Ayatollah Khamenei, according to the local Tasnim News Agency.

The cleric added that the world before the emergence of the Mahdi will suffer from widespread fears and many economic problems and deaths, and people will need a religious government led by the Imam Mahdi.

Is it really so outrageous to think that people who bankroll suicide bombings all the time against their enemies would not send people infected with the coronavirus to different parts of the world?

I always find it fascinating that the people who are scared as hell of, say, Mike Pence for his fundamentalist Christian beliefs never seem to show much worry about a wannabe nuclear superpower that believes that widespread deaths are a good thing to help bring about the end of the world.

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.

Arabic media has been reporting this story that's good enough make you forget all about other news:

A housewife in Alexandria, Egypt, took revenge on her husband by cutting off his penis and leaving him bleeding, after seeing messages on his private phone confirming his betrayal and his many female relationships.

The Egyptian security forces received a notification from a hospital that a government worker was suffering from severe bleeding due to the cutting of his penis.

Investigations revealed that his 23-year-old wife drugged him, and after making sure he lost consciousness, his penis was cut off with a kitchen knife.

The accused was arrested, and she confessed to the crime, and she did this to her husband in retaliation for his multiple episodes of adultery.

In her confession, she said that she was suspicious of his behavior for returning late every day, texting more than one conversation on his private phone. She confronted him and he and he promised his commitment to her.

After a while, she discovered that he was in a relationship with one of the women, so she decided to take revenge on him. To be 100% certain, she decided to drug him so that she could open his phone and confirm the text messages. She put narcotics in his tea, and after making sure he was asleep, she opened his phone and saw texts about his promise to marry the woman.

That's when she took out the kitchen knife and took things into her own hands.

Unlike John Bobbitt, it does not appear that the husband was reattached with his member.

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.