Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Elder live online

I started playing with live-streaming this week, since people need distractions nowadays. These are not the most polished videos, but you might find them entertaining, and hopefully they will get better.

Here is the Wednesday night edition, 8 PM EDT:

Tonight I hope to interview Dexter Van Zile, of CAMERA, at 9 PM EDT. You can watch live and comment live as well. I'll post the URL on Twitter before the show.

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.

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Is COVID-19 a blip or is it the apocalypse?

It seems to me that unless humans do something stupid, like start wars, it will be a blip (this post is based on statistical and other data on the pandemic from this site).

In many countries, it will be a vicious and tragic blip indeed, but the measures taken to reduce the damage have so far had far greater overall effects than the actual illnesses and deaths attributable to the virus. China, as of yesterday, had a total of about 3200 deaths, and the number of new cases dropped to only 13. 3200 is 0.00023% of China’s population. Obviously there will be more deaths, there may be additional waves of the disease, and other countries may not be able to or may not choose to take the draconian measures taken by China, including wide area lockdowns and millions of people in quarantine.

Italy, for example, already has 2500 deaths and almost 700 new cases as of yesterday. The number of deaths doubled in the past four days. It will get worse before it gets better. But still, it should be clear that this isn’t the Black Death, which killed 30% to 60% of Europe’s population in the 14^th century.

Within a couple of years – unless the virus mutates especially rapidly or there are other unforeseen circumstances – most of the world’s population will have immunity, either from having had the disease or by vaccination. But until then, some models predict hundreds of thousands of deaths in countries like the US and UK, unless policies of social distancing and quarantine are adopted, like the ones that have been effective in China, South Korea, and Japan – and that we hope will work in Israel.

Israel has implemented drastic measures, including closing schools and daycare, which essentially paralyzes the economy. The police have already arrested several people for violating quarantine, and they have announced that they will soon begin handing out heavy fines to anyone violating the social distancing rules, such as congregating in groups larger than 10 people. It’s possible that the next step will be a total lockdown, almost a general curfew.

When the rules were first announced, many people felt that PM Netanyahu and his advisors in the Health Ministry were overreacting, but as the number of cases grows, most Israelis have come around to the idea that tough measures are needed.

One step that is still controversial (at least among anti-Bibi politicians) is to have the Shabak (General Security Service) make use of its sophisticated cellphone data collection system, usually employed only for terror suspects, to track the whereabouts of everyone who has been diagnosed with the virus. This information will be given to the Health Ministry, which will be able to warn everyone who has been close to a carrier to enter self-quarantine. There is already an app available that will take the information provided by the Health Ministry about the location of known patients, and cross-check it with your own movements, so you can be informed if you have crossed the path of one of them.

As I write (Wednesday morning) we have 427 diagnosed cases, and the authorities are adopting new testing procedures that should make that number climb rapidly. I expect that we are in for a difficult few weeks as those currently incubating the disease develop symptoms, because our healthcare system is severely underfunded and understaffed, and is running over capacity even without global pandemics.

But from a political and economic point of view, here is the single most important fact about the pandemic:

Unlike the Black Death, which was especially fatal to children and young people, this virus is far more deadly to the old. Even if millions die, they will not be the most economically important millions. This is not pleasant to contemplate for those of us who are in the most threatened age groups (I am 77), but it is a fact.

It is also the case that ruling elites in many countries are made up of older individuals. Iran, which has been particularly hard-hit by the virus is a good example, with its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei 80 years old; it has lost several members of its parliament, an IRGC general, and other officials of various sorts. But Binyamin Netanyahu is 70, Donald Trump is 73, Joe Biden is 77, Bernie Sanders is 78, Narendra Modi is 69, and Angela Merkel is 65.

It’s interesting to speculate about how cultural attitudes influence the strategies being taken against the disease. We know that Israelis will go to any lengths to protect their children, including the ones who are already old enough to be in the army – what other country would release more than 1000 terrorists, many of them guilty of murder, in return for one young man? I often compare the way my grandchildren and their age-mates are being brought up to what I remember from my own youth in the USA: there is no comparison. Our parents loved us and did what they thought best for us, but they didn’t lavish the amount of attention, time, or other resources on us the way Israeli parents do today – both individually and as expressed by the cultural institutions they sustain. So does Israeli culture value its senior citizens as well? I think it does, although the children come first.

The strategy of social distancing and isolation is intended to prevent a collapse of the overstressed healthcare system, as occurred in northern Italy, where it has been reported that patients died because there weren’t enough ventilators available for those in respiratory failure. Since these patients are primarily (but not entirely) the older ones, adopting this strategy essentially protects the older population in return for accepting the economic losses that come from it.

Experts don’t want to predict how long it will be necessary to hunker down like this. Will it be only until the warm weather? Will it be until a vaccine is available, which may take a year or more? Will the relaxation of restrictions bring on new waves of illness? Nobody knows.

In some ways, Israel is in good shape to weather this pandemic. Israelis are resilient and creative, and are finding ways to work and study at home. Research is underway for vaccines and other forms of treatment or prevention. Israel has the ability to control its borders, so there is less worry about the introduction of infected individuals from abroad.

On the other hand, just as it is in our security situation, we don’t have a lot of room for mistakes: the healthcare system needed a big infusion of resources even before this happened. If there is a major source of concern about our ability to weather the crisis, this is it.

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.

03/18 Links Pt2: Exploiting the Coronavirus for Anti-Israel Campaigns; Heba Yazbak: 'We'll divest Israel of its Jewishness and Zionism'; Rashid Khalidi Undermines His Own Thesis

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Exploiting the Coronavirus for Anti-Israel Campaigns

The news cycle has been dominated by COVID-19, and a number of advocacy NGOs have made statements linking their agendas to this issue. In the Israeli context, this is consistent with previous attempts by NGOs to capitalize on prevailing public discourse, for instance manipulating narratives of climate change and LGBTQ rights as part of their anti-Israel campaigns.

The most notorious example today is a tweet from Sarah Leah Whitson, currently at the Quincy Institute and previously head of the MENA division at Human Rights Watch. Whitson used the classic antisemitic blood libel in responding to a cynical tweet about “6 million jewish israelis” understanding life under “occupation” due to the virus, stating “such a tiny taste. Missing a tablespoon on blood.” (March 14, 2020).

NGO statements relating to Israel and COVID-19 deal with a few common themes:

- “Occupation”: COVID-19 has been appended onto the standard anti-occupation rhetoric and existing campaigns that, for some NGOs and activists, are presented as the most pressing and real global concerns. Tellingly, complaints about Israeli policy in the West Bank do not seriously grapple with whether they will effectively curb the spread of disease, but rather presume that Israel must be acting in bad faith because “occupation.”
- Responsibility for Gaza: 15 years after the withdrawal, NGOs continue to blame Israel for a “humanitarian crisis” based on a unique standard of international law applied to Israel alone that denies Hamas and other actors agency for diverting resources to weapons, tunnels, and terror, instead of public infrastructure. In the current context, NGOs have been using COVID-19 as an excuse to criticize legitimate anti-terror policies and to preemptively blame Israel for an outbreak in Gaza.
- Human Rights Watch (HRW): On March 15, 2020, Executive Director Ken Roth tweeted, “The coronavirus will test the wisdom of Israel’s policies for crippling the economy and health systems of Gaza and the West Bank. As the occupying power (for Gaza, too, given Israel’s severe restrictions on movement), Israel is responsible for health care.” (March 15, 2020)
- Omar Shakir retweeted an article in +972 magazine titled “West Bank lockdowns didn’t start with the coronavirus pandemic.” The article argues that Israel’s quarantine regarding anyone who had been in Bethlehem is harmful to Palestinians working in Israel. This ignores the implementation of the same policies for the entire Israeli population, as well as tourists and anyone who had been in the vicinity of infected individuals – causing many to miss work. (March 11)
- Amnesty International: A local Amnesty UK group in Mid Gloucestershire published an article using coronavirus as a hook to further Amnesty’s antisemitic campaign that attacks international tourism companies (see NGO Monitor’s report). The article states, “This year many people’s holiday plans will be affected by coronavirus, and travellers will obviously want to get proper advice before they book. However, holidaymakers should also consider whether their vacations could negatively impact the people and places they visit. One example is holidays and activities in Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem…Please support our petition calling on TripAdvisor to ‘check out’ of the settlements – www.amnesty.org.uk/actions/checkout.” (March 14)

Daniel Pipes: Conspiracy Theories in a Time of Virus

Suddenly, influential voices blame the COVID-19 virus not on Communist China but on the United Kingdom, the United States and Israel. This shift fits a pernicious medieval pattern that needs to be taken seriously and refuted.

That pattern goes back to about 1100 A.D. and the Crusaders in Europe. Since then, confused folk hoping to make sense of unexpected and malign developments have the permanent option of conjuring up a world conspiracy. When they do, they overwhelmingly blame just two alleged conspirators: members of Western secret societies or Jews.

Secret societies include the Knights Templar, Freemasons, Jesuits, Illuminati, Jacobins, and the Trilateral Commission. Jews are supposedly ruled by a shadowy authority, the "Elders," that strictly keeps them in line through such front organizations as the Sanhedrin, the Alliance Israélite Universelle, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

In modern times, conspiracy theorists have added countries to the organizations: secret societies spawned the United Kingdom and the United States, Jewish Elders became Israel. Invariably, this trio of states is blamed for shocking surprises such as the JFK assassination, Princess Diana's death, 9/11, or the Great Recession.

And so it is with COVID-19. The virus demonstrably originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, perhaps at a "wet market" with live animals awaiting human consumption, perhaps at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or perhaps a mix of the two (infected animals from the institute sold for food at the market). That the Communist Party of China (CPC) went to extreme lengths to cover up the virus both facilitated its growth and then obscured its source.

But what happened next is known to nearly every sentient person alive today: the virus spread from Wuhan to other parts of China, thence to the world. Everyone reading this has lived through and experienced that recent history; no mystery surrounds the CPC's unique responsibility for the pandemic. Wuhan virus is not a racist slur but an accurate description.

Past Pandemics Spurred Violent Antisemitism. Prepare For More.

Recent days have seen an outbreak of antisemitism related to the coronavirus and Covid-19.

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organization that fights bigotry, reports, “Extremists hope the virus kills Jews, but they are also using its emergence to advance their antisemitic theories that Jews are responsible for creating the virus, are spreading it to increase their control over a decimated population, or they are profiting off it.”

The actress Rosanna Arquette claims, falsely, that Israel has been working on a coronavirus vaccine “for a year already,” indicating advance knowledge of the virus, and that a Jewish-run company is poised to profit from it. A speaker from the 2016 Republican National Convention, David Clarke, blames Jewish-born billionaire George Soros for the virus and associated panic.

The head of a Turkish political party, Faitih Erbakan, declared, “this virus serves Zionism’s goals,” according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.

If history is a guide — and there’s no reason to think it shouldn’t be — expect even more of this as the pandemic worsens.

In the 2017 book Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, Laura Spinney reports that in 1919, when “an international bureau opened in Vienna with the express mission of fighting epidemics,” one of the first things that happened was that “antisemitic elements started lobbying for Jewish refugees to be quarantined in eastern European concentration camps.”

Earlier pandemics yielded similar hatreds. The Jewish Encyclopedia entry on the Black Death that raged in Europe from 1348 to 1350, for instance, reports, “The Black Death not only resulted in the immediate destruction of hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives and the loss of Jewish homes and property in hundreds of communities, but had more far-reaching consequences. Popular imagination invested the already odious image of the Jew with even more horrible characteristics. It was this image that helped to shape the stereotype of the Jew represented by antisemitism and racism in modern times.”

Corona virus is shutting us down. This is common to all of us. Here in Israel, we are seeing the COVID-19 directives coming down in stages. Though not everyone sees a stage as I do.

Some take the directives one at a time, as they come. I, on the other hand, am a gamer. In a game, the levels get progressively harder. You have to see the next move coming, which move will put you ahead of the curve, if you plan to win.

For this reason I canceled out on a wedding last minute, before they were limiting gatherings to 200. It was why I told my book club that I would not attend the next meeting, though they were not yet limiting gatherings to ten, or instituting social distancing. It’s why even before they asked us to avoid libraries, I’d stayed away from the library, though I had just 19 pages left of Rebecca before I’d run out of reading material.

(And it was a Friday morning. And I read fast. And it’s hell for me to go without books.)

It is clear to me: I can see the stages of the corona lockdown directives coming before they come, so unless I have to, I will not be leaving my home for some time, maybe months.

But it was hard when my friend’s husband died and I couldn’t hug her. It was already weird and surreal (as nighttime funerals are, anyway) when an announcement was made, “Twenty people leave the room.”

I could have looked around the room and hoped that someone else would leave. But I didn’t. I left. Because if that is what we have to do, we have to do it now.

I believe in being smart and prudent, in staying ahead of the curve.

Not everyone agrees. Why come down harder than the current decrees and directives? Perhaps they are only changing the rules of the game as the danger increases. That it’s not dangerous to do something until they tell us not to do it.

But who really knows? The decisions and directives, for all we know, are subjective. Or maybe the experts are changing their minds as they learn more about the disease. Take the library, for instance: Maybe Israeli experts hadn’t yet thought of libraries as a source of contagion. Until they did.

But I thought of it as soon I read that the virus lives on surfaces for days. What is handled with the hands more than library books? I knew this without a directive or an expert. They just hadn’t thought of it yet, or perhaps they’re breaking us in slowly, in stages. Getting us mentally used to one stage of lockdown before the next.

Who really knows?

It doesn’t matter. I know how hygiene works, how contamination and contagion do their thing. And hopefully so do you.

It’s why I asked the technician, “Did you wash your hands?” before a recent medical procedure, though she was insulted.

Again: it doesn’t matter. Her feelings are irrelevant. In fact, they hamper her ability to deal with the public and I submitted a complaint to Israel’s Ministry of Health.

We all have to do the best we can do to stay ahead of the curve, to beat this thing, this corona virus. This is what I believe. So use your gut sense and institute good practices before the directives come down. Don’t wait for them and don’t be afraid to stick to your guns.

It’s how it has to be right now.

If we want to win.

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.

UNRWA-USA lies about Gaza to raise money

I received a fundraising email from UNRWA-USA which starts off:

While being in quarantine may be new to most of the world, this has been the devastating reality for Palestine refugees in the Gaza Strip living under a crippling land, sea, and air blockade for over a decade.

The feeling of isolation from family, friends, and the world, facing empty shelves or limited access to basic resources, and an overwhelming fear of what the future holds. This is our new reality, but just a fact of life for refugees.

Facing empty shelves? Here are photos from the Metro Market in Gaza City taken last week, including showing them cleaning it to allay fears of coronavirus:

Not an empty shelf to be seen.

Here's another lie:

This is especially the case in Gaza, where two million residents are crammed in one of the most densely populated places in the world and there is no option for social distancing.

By that logic, there is no option for social distancing in Brooklyn or Tel Aviv either, both of which are far more crowded than Gaza. (The five boroughs of New York are twice as crowded as the Gaza Strip.)

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.

03/18 Links Pt1: 'Total lockdown inevitable' as Israeli coronavirus patients reaches 433; Nobel laureate: surprised if Israel has more than ten coronavirus deaths

From Ian:

JCPA: Enforcing Compliance with COVID-19 Pandemic Restrictions: Psychological Aspects of a National Security Threat

As the world faces the threat of the coronavirus (COVID-19), many commentators and national leaders around the world are beginning to recognize it as a genuine national security threat.

In human behavior terms, however, the threat is not from an external enemy but from citizens who refuse to comply with guidelines and instructions and fail to change their behavior to adapt to the developing situation. With the coronavirus, the individual refusing to comply is an active and ongoing threat to others as well as or sometimes more than to themselves.

The obvious threats are the outright refusers. From a psychological perspective, these are people who are either oppositional in their attitude or in denial regarding the effects of their refusal. While the former understand that by intentionally violating guidelines they are creating risk for others, the latter deny it, at times adopting an "it won't happen to me" attitude.

Classifying the refusers' behavior as a risk and treating them as a genuine threat is a national priority. Since the cadre of those who intentionally or unintentionally put the public at risk cannot be eliminated solely through education and social pressure, law enforcement and government authorities may have to intervene.

While understandably not popular with those that value the protection of civil liberties, the suspension of these protections in times of national emergency may prove to be central in reducing mortality, as well as in limiting the economic consequences of a protracted battle with an unseen enemy hiding in a friendly population.

'Total lockdown inevitable' says Erdan as coronavirus patients reaches 433

As of Wednesday afternoon, 433 people in Israel have been confirmed positive to the coronavirus, the Health Ministry informed, with six new cases registered since the previous update.

Earlier in the day, the Ministry revealed that the number of patients had spiked in the country, with over 100 new people confirmed positive in the previous 24 hours.

Moreover, it was announced that over 2,200 tests were performed on Tuesday, more than double the amount of the previous days, highlighting a significant rise in the number of tests executed.

Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan said on Wednesday morning that a total lockdown in Israel is inevitable given the situation of the novel COVID-19.

Erdan instructed the police and other security forces in Israel to prepare for the decision of a total lockdown in a phone call with the heads of internal security bodies throughout the country on Tuesday evening.

Of the 427 people infected in Israel as of Wednesday morning, 236 are hospitalized, 26 are in the process of being hospitalized, 71 are isolated at home or in a designated hotel, and 83 tested positive but the decision on how to treat them is yet to be made, while 11 already recovered and were discharged.

Heartfelt message of solidarity from #Israel's @PresidentRuvi to Jewish communities in the Diaspora, in wake of #CoronaVirus pandemic:https://t.co/hwZICVZTU8
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) March 18, 2020

Israel has not lost anybody to COVID19, but that will not go on, warns Netanyahu

'I survived the Nazis, we'll get through this'

"I'm 85 and live in Tel Aviv. I was born in Galicia, which is now Ukraine," Shosh Trister tells Israel Hayom.

During the Holocaust, she says, she and her family were sent to a labor camp, from which they escaped and managed to make it back to the area where they had lived. They found various hiding places – including the forest, and with gentile families.

"For two years, we lived underground, nine people underneath a pigpen," Trister says.

In 1950, Trister made aliyah.

"At first, we lived in a ma'abra [immigrant camp] in Kfar Saba. Mom and Dad got typhus there and were hospitalized. I remember it as a very hard time, because I was far away. I thought it would be a day or two, but it was a few weeks. After the Holocaust, it was a major blow. I stayed in tent and cried."

Now, as the novel coronavirus outbreak is posing a new kind of threat to the Israeli population, Trister is confined to her home.

"It's very hard for me. Hard isn't the word – the distance makes me cry. When I'm alone, I remember the loneliness, my mother and father, and my husband, Shlomo, who died four and a half months ago," she says.

"I'm used to being an active person, going out, speaking to students, painting. Every day, I [usually] walk to our local community center and meet my friends. Now, I'm forced to stay home alone. Every morning I exercise on at home, water the plants, take care of the apartment, and then I sit down to write or paint my memories.

"I have a son who takes care of me. He comes and does my shopping. The rest of the kids also call, but it's terribly hard not seeing them."

Despite everything she has experienced in her life, Trister says she is "an optimist by nature."

"What we went through dwarfs everything. We might be stuck at home, but we have the freedom of being in Israel. We survived the Holocaust. In the end, we won. We'll beat corona, and get through it. We are strengthening everyone around us and taking strength from them. It will all be over – they'll find a cure and we'll go back to our daily routines. We overcame everything, and so will you – we owe it to future generations.

Palestinian leaders try to use the coronavirus to pressure Israel to release terrorists

On Saturday, Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called for Israel to release terrorist prisoners, using the coronavirus as a thin excuse.

"We will send a message to the ICRC to ask them to work to release the prisoners and ensure their safety, as well as ensure that Israel Prisoner Service maintains public safety measures to protect our prisoners," Shtayyeh said in a Facebook post.

Releasing terrorists has always been a major goal of the Palestinians.

Today, Saeb Erekat added to the demand, asking the Red Cross and WHO to intervene and ask Israel to release prisoners, with no evidence that they are in any less danger from the virus if they were free.

Erekat and the head of the prisoner authority of the PLO, Qadri Abu Bakr, met with Red Cross and WHO officials in a meeting set up by Mahmoud Abbas.

Abu Bakr gave a litany of lies about the conditions of the prisoners, claiming they are already suffering from extreme crowding in the prisons, saying that Israel deliberately neglects their medical needs.

A few years ago before Israel cracked down on prisoners having smartphones, some even had Facebook accounts where we could see the "overcrowding" and other terrible circumstances of their imprisonment:

I've also documented how prisoners are far less likely to die in Israeli prisons than they are free in Palestinian society.

The coronavirus is just another excuse for Palestinian leaders to bash Israel and try to make political gains. In fact, a prisoner release would result in more net deaths - both from the coonavirus and from the Israelis who would be victims of terror attacks from the released prisoners.

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.

Besides Syria denying any cases of the coronavirus, Egypt is threatening anyone who says that the virus is more prevalent than its own official numbers.

Egypt has withdrawn the licence of a correspondent for the Guardian newspaper after a report suggested that cases of coronavirus in the country are likely much higher than official statistics.

According to an official statement by the State Information Service (SIS), an agency linked to the Egyptian presidency, the government has also issued a warning to the New York Times's Cairo bureau chief Declan Walsh over tweets citing research by Canadian disease specialists estimating the actual number of COVID-19 cases in Egypt to be closer to 20,000.

The health ministry has so far reported 166 cases and four deaths from the novel virus, which has killed over 7,500 people globally.

But infectious disease specialists at the University of Toronto believe the number of infections in Egypt is likely to be much higher than the official figures.

On Tuesday, the SIS said it had cancelled the licence of the "Guardian correspondent", without naming her, over "repeated and deliberate offensive behaviour", and accused the NYT correspondent of "professional violations".
It also demanded that the Guardian newspaper publish an apology for the article, which it described as "full of professional mistakes".
If the newspaper does not issue an apology, the SIS said it will withdraw the newspaper's permit to operate in the country.

Egyptian state media is trying hard to put the genie back in the bottle:

SIS emphasized that the reporters’ hastily published wrong info with only one obscure source that is not recognized by any prestigious entity and without getting back to the concerned parties, especially the Egyptian Health Ministry and the WHO bureau in Cairo. The service considered these actions as proof of their “ill intentions” towards Egyptian interests and the perception of conditions in the country.

The paper extrapolates from the number of Egyptians who were found to have the virus after traveling from Egypt and estimates from there that things are far worse within Egypt than is being reported. One of the authors say that it is more likely that there are 6000 cases rather than 20,000.

The paper has been accepted to be published by the Lancet Infectious Diseases Journal.

There is a big difference between publishing false information that can mislead people into panic - which in times of emergency can arguably be prohibited - and publishing information that a government does not want the public to see, especially in autocratic regimes that want to control all information.

This study that Egypt wants censored is based on real statistics and is important for the world to know.

Both the Egyptian and Syrian stories show that for many Arabs, "honor" is still more important than human lives. They are afraid that if the truth comes out it will reflect badly on their nations, and innocent people are caught in the culture of honorable lies versus shameful truths.

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.

Human Rights Watch issued a report about the dangers of the novel coronavirus to Syria's damaged health care infrastructure, especially for the many prisoners in Syria.

At one point the report says:

The Syrian government maintains that there have been no confirmed cases of coronavirus in Syria thus far. But its neighbors have all reported cases and it is clear how catastrophic even one case in Syria’s overcrowded prisons would be.

The link goes to a Syrian news agency report from March 5 that is laughable by even their standards:

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Thursday that no Coronavirus (COVID) case has been registered in Syria so far.

WHO underlined, in a statement for WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, that no coronavirus infection has been registered in Syria, as the WHO categorically refutes false news posted on the social media regarding the coronavirus infection in Syria.

WHO reported what Syria told them. They didn't verify anything and their reporting Syria's claims do not refute anything.

And Syria is lying. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights last week reported on the coronavirus in Damascus, Tartous, Lattakia, and Homs, saying that there were some deaths. Most chillingly, they reported that doctors confirmed the reports, but that they had received strict orders from the authorities of the regime of the need to keep quiet and refrain from talking about the spread of the coronavirus there.

A Chicago doctor originally from Syria reported last week that unofficial sources said that there were 2470 cases of the coronavirus resulting in 427 deaths, which would make Syria among the hardest hit countries.

Syria has detained doctors who admit that there have been cases of the virus in Syria.

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 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.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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"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)

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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.

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