Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, July 29, 2022

100 years ago: New York Jews fined for working on Sundays

The newspapers in Brooklyn in 1922, when reporting on all of the court cases, listed quite a few violations of the "Sabbath Laws," where it was forbidden to keep businesses open on Sunday.

And a large percentage of the people fined were Jews.

This happened throughout the decade; here's an article from 1925.

Like some speed traps today, it looks like this was used as a revenue generator.

Jews at the time would close their shops on Saturday, and Sunday was the most lucrative day available for them, and their customers were mostly Jewish as well, so it seems that many of them took the chance and paid the fine if caught.

One Jew in 1922 tried to fight back by claiming that he indeed closed his shop on the Sabbath, but the judge ruled that the Sabbath of the Bible wasn't the Sabbath of America:

One Jewish newspaper responded to this story with a joke considered old at the time:

The Sabbath laws, later known as Blue Laws, remain in force even today in many states although most have been repealed. The US Supreme Court has ruled that they are not religious and merely enforce a day of rest for the social good. The fact that Jews (and Seventh Day Adventists) are economically hurt by this was not enough to say that storeowners should be allowed to decide which day of the week to close.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Yesterday, the relatives of Shireen Abu Akleh held a press conference along with several anti-Israel members of Congress.

The levels of hypocrisy and lies of these politicians is off the charts. Even if you discount all the evidence that Abu Akleh was killed by Palestinian terrorists, they have no compunction about lying and exhibiting hypocrisy.

The first politician to speak was Representative Andre Carson of Indiana.

He said, "I believe that this was an attack on the Fourth Estate, the Free Press, which is vitally important to our society. You know we need answers to hold the perpetrators fully accountable. From day one, the Israeli Government has denied Shireen's murder. There is no reason for them to be conducting an investigation. You may not like that. But that's the truth. It makes it more important for our government to conduct our own investigation."

So at the outset, without any evidence, he says that Israel murdered Abu Akleh. Without any evidence, he is accusing the Israelis of being liars. Without any evidence, he is accusing Israel of not being able to conduct an impartial investigation.

Just this one statement proves that Israel is more trustworthy than Andre Carson.

He goes on: "Shireen needs justice. Every American killed abroad is entitled to our protection. Every human killed American or not, deserves justice, Palestinians included. Black folks included. "

What about Americans like Malki Roth, killed by a Palestinian who is proud of that fact and who has escaped justice? Apparently, she isn't included. Apparently, no Jewish Americans are included when killed by Palestinians.

What a hypocrite.

The next liar to speak was Rashida Tlaib, who said, "When Americans are killed abroad, it is more or less standard procedure for our government to open an investigation. But when the murders wear Israeli uniforms, there's complete silence. "

Actually, when the murderers are Palestinian, that's when no one knows their names.

The list of Americans killed by Palestinians is long. Yet who has spoken on the steps of the Capitol about Pinchas Menachem Prezuazman, killed in 2019 by a Gaza rocket? Or 13-year old Hallel Yaffa Ariel who was stabbed to death in her bed in 2016? Or 18-year old Ezra Schwartz, from Massachusetts, who was killed when a Palestinian started spraying bullets at cars stuck in a traffic jam in 2015? Or 76 year old US citizen Richard Lakin, killed in a bus attack the same year? Or 3 month old US citizen Chaya Zissel Braun killed in a car ramming attack in 2014?

There are scores of others - none of whom Rashida Tlaib or any of the liars and hypocrites at this event give a damn about.

The lies any hypocrisy don't end there.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez claimed, "Multiple human rights groups, including the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem and a number of news organizations, including the Washington Post, CNN, and the New York Times have conducted investigations that echoed what eyewitnesses have said, that an Israeli sniper shot and killed Shireen....An American journalist was killed abroad by a foreign army by a sniper."

None of the investigations used the language "sniper." The IDF didn't have snipers on the ground in Jenin that day. No one claimed as a certainty that the IDF deliberately targeted Abu Akleh.

AOC is a liar.

Ilhan Omar, in one sense, was even more disgusting. She said, "Starting with the Nuremberg trials, Americans have supported accountability and justice for international crimes, especially crimes that take the life of American citizens." In this way, Omar tried to compare Israeli soldier to Nazi war criminals - pure antisemitism.

It wasn't long ago that members of Congress would try very hard to keep their statements just truthful enough so as not to be able to be called direct liars. Those days are gone. These representatives know very well that there is no political penalty for lying about Israel, and indeed for some of them these lies are a means to gain more publicity - and more votes.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization sponsored a day camp for children in Hebron, called "The Buds of Construction and Liberation camp.”

One of the first activities was for each camper - many appearing to be as young as 9 - to pose in front of a poster of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

With an AK-47.

This isn't a Hamas or Islamic Jihad camp. This is Fatah, Israel's supposed peace partners.

There are hundreds of photos of kids in this pose on the Fatah Hebron Facebook page.

In case you weren't certain that these are meant to recruit kids to be terrorists, here is a poster from the camp, showing the children with masked militants.

(h/t PMW)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

07/28 Links Pt2: Half of All Jews Now Live in Israel and That Is a Source of Strength; Condoleezza Rice: "Israel Is the 800-Pound Gorilla on Technology"

From Ian:

Half of All Jews Now Live in Israel and That Is a Source of Strength

A hundred years ago, in 1922, there were 14,400,000 Jews in the world. The centers of Judaism outside the U.S. were in central and eastern Europe - Berlin, Warsaw and Budapest. There seemed grounds for optimism. In 1922 the League of Nations awarded Britain the Palestine British mandate, which confirmed the legitimacy of Britain's promise in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 of a national home for the Jews. "The wandering Jews will at last have a home," the London Times declared in April 1920.

By 1939, the world Jewish population had increased to 17 million. But Jews on the Continent faced a precarious future with the spread of anti-Semitism and the rise of Hitler. Many sought to emigrate, but most countries closed their doors. And in 1939 the British government in its White Paper severely limited immigration into the national home, proposing to end it entirely.

In Chaim Weizmann's words, the world was now divided between countries in which Jews were not allowed to live and countries which they were not allowed to enter. By 1945, after the Holocaust the world's Jewish population had fallen to 11 million.

Today it is just over 15 million. Jews have not made up the losses of the Holocaust. Between 1939 and 2022, by contrast, the population of the world has increased by 250%. In the absence of the Holocaust, given a natural increase of population, there would perhaps have been a world Jewish population of 40 million.

Following the creation of Israel, the geographical balance of the world Jewish population has altered radically. In Palestine in 1939, there were only 450,000 Jews - 3% of the world's total. Today, nearly seven million Jews, almost 50% of the total, live in Israel. In 1948, Jews emerged from powerlessness to become authors of their own destiny.

Last night I met with Arieh Itamar a passenger of the Exodus ship sent back to Germany by the British. Arieh was 8. I was also honored to meet Hugh Kitson @joydmarshall @Colrichardkemp creators of documentary https://t.co/FZVvNXao3h which shares the facts and truth about Israel. pic.twitter.com/gIG7ALhiUu
— OshyEllman (@oshyellman1) July 28, 2022

Last night at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem we had the premier screening in Israel of the documentary we made a few years ago, Whose Land?, delayed until now by Covid. https://t.co/H1z78ixpal pic.twitter.com/UZ1mwIqw3a
— R?????? K??? ? (@COLRICHARDKEMP) July 28, 2022

Whose Land - Trailer

As the propaganda war against Israel's legitimacy as a modern nation state has increased in intensity and ferocity in recent years, so the need to challenge the misinformation and untruths has also intensified. Whose Land is a Two Part film, directed by Hugh Kitson, which considers the legal right of Israel to exist, under international law, as a reconstituted nation state, within the geographical boundaries of the ancient homeland of the Jewish People.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Candidates Struggling To Articulate Vision for Israel Other Than 'Not Bibi' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Netanyahu Jerusalem, July 28 - Party leaders, campaign consultants, and aspiring legislators continued this week to prepare for parliamentary elections later this year, with some of the largest parties settling on the one message they must convey to voters, but one that they fear might not resonate with the electorate in a way that generates inspiration, a shared sense of purpose, or a compelling reason to vote for them in particular: just don't vote Binyamin Netanyahu back into the premiership.

The Knesset voted to disperse last month, triggering new elections scheduled for November 1. That contest brings back to prominence many of the phenomena that characterized the other four contests in the last five years. Chief among those phenomena, political rivals of Netanyahu failing to develop positive platforms of their own, to the point that the essence of several different parties' campaign messages have focused in the main on bringing down the man who has dominated Israeli politics for thirteen years, and not on any vision for Israel's future that differentiates each party from any other.

Polls show a familiar deadlock between the "will sit in a government under Bibi" and "will not sit in a government under Bibi" factions, neither of which can muster a parliamentary majority of 61 seats that allows a coalition to form. That stalemate prevailed through several previous contests after the last coalition under Netanyahu collapsed, but until last year when anti-Netanyahu factions cobbled together a diverse coalition just big enough, none could form a government to displace him. Mixed results from the current Bennett-Lapid government and associated political machinations reasserted the fractured and fractious nature of the polity the government purported to represent, restoring the status quo ante of Bibi vs. anti-Bibi factions not broad enough to secure governance, and neither faction with enough coherent positive vision that voters rally to them in sufficient numbers.

"In a word, inertia," explained one analyst. "Netanyahu sat at the top for so long that he entrenched himself in enough minds as the status quo, and others must convince voters of any necessity to change. Enough elected officials convinced themselves last time around that they had done so, and formed a Bibi-less coalition. But the folly of that effort has now become evident, and the anti-Netanyahu faction has also readopted the status quo ante: making everything about Bibi Bibi Bibi and refusing to articulate a word about what their parties actually stand for."

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

07/28 Links Pt1: Jerusalem Slams UN Official Who Questioned Israel’s Membership, Railed at ‘Jewish Lobby’; U.N. rebukes Israel only for violating women’s rights

From Ian:

Jerusalem Slams UN Official Who Questioned Israel’s Membership, Railed at ‘Jewish Lobby’

The Israeli Mission to the United Nations (UN) in Geneva has expressed outrage following a UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) investigator’s comments about the undue influence of a so-called “Jewish lobby” on media, and whether Israel should be a member of the body at all.

“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by whether it’s the Jewish lobby or it’s the specific NGOs. A lot of money is being thrown in to trying to discredit us,” Miloon Kothari — a member of the UNHRC’s “International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel (COI)” — said on the latest episode of The Mondoweiss Podcast.

Formed by the UNHRC after the 2021 hostilities between Israel and Hamas, the COI was tasked with issuing annual reports on any human rights abuses committed during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has previously drawn scrutiny from Israeli and US officials for its unusually broad, open-ended focus.

“One of our mandates is to look at the role of both humanitarian law, human rights law, criminal law,” Kothari continued. “And on all three counts, Israel is in systematic violation of all the legislation. And in fact, I mean, I would go as far as to raise the question as why are they even a member of the United Nations, because they don’t respect — the Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a UN member state. They, in fact, consistently, either directly or through the United States, try to undermine UN mechanisms.”

On Wednesday, Israel’s Permanent Mission in Geneva called the interview “disturbing,” and said that the Jewish state — recognized as a UN member in 1949 — will continue to participate in the body and “work with truly independent mechanisms and on promoting and protecting human rights for all.”

“Israel already questioned [Kothari’s] suitability for the role, given previous comments regarding Israel, and given the fact he is subject to a formal complaint for violating UN regulations and ethical standards,” the Mission said in a statement.

Mark Regev: The evolution of Israel-Greece ties, from enemies to allies - opinion

The Ottoman shadow
Undoubtedly, Israeli-Hellenic ties have been affected by the behavior of Ankara’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose neo-Ottomanism and political Islam have exasperated Turkey’s neighbors and brought them closer together.

Of late, Turkey has been striving to improve its relations with regional players, the invitation to President Isaac Herzog to visit Ankara earlier this year is an indication of Erdogan’s desire for rapprochement with Israel.

The scope and pace of any improvement in Israeli-Turkish ties remains uncertain. What is clear is that the newly found partnerships between Israel, Greece, and Cyprus are here to stay.

Some believe that a threat to relations could come from an unexpected political victory for the radical Left in the coming Cypriot elections. Yet, in this context, Greece provides a reassuring example.

When, in the 2015 Greek election, Alexis Tsipras and his militantly socialist Syriza Party assumed power, there were initial fears that a Corbynist-Melenchonist type anti-Israelism could undermine ties. But not only did the Athens-Jerusalem relationship continue to flourish under Tsipras, it also expanded to include a strengthened trilateral framework with Cyprus. And Israel’s ties with Greece continued to prosper after the election in 2019 of the moderate-right New Democracy Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

All this demonstrates the remarkable resilience of the new Hellenic-Israel partnership. Perhaps next time the Hanukkah candles are lit, we should also celebrate that.

Israel and Morocco are rooted in justice - our relationship will only grow

With the founding of the State of Israel, cooperation between the two countries was natural. We maintained close security relations that continued and strengthened under the reign of His Majesty, King Mohammed VI (even without maintaining public relations, due to the general Arab-state boycott of Israel). Yet, even the boycott of Israel did not prevent Morocco from serving as a major contributor in brokering the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.

In 1977, King Hassan brought Israel’s defense minister Moshe Dayan to meet with Egyptian president Sadat’s emissary and personal advisor. This enabled a diplomatic breakthrough, ultimately leading to direct contact between Israel and Egypt, culminating in president Sadat’s historic visit to Israel.

The diplomatic relations between Israel and Morocco between the years 1994-2000, following the peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, were extremely warm. In 2022, we now see amongst our nation a strong desire to fill these relations with content and to give them shape and form.

These warm and deep relations are based on mutual respect, a common understanding of the world and shared interests. These relations and the warm welcome Israeli tourists receive have brought forth an abundance of Israeli tourism in Morocco.

These two countries share a core common goal: to partake in the international community and its core values. Together, they take a stand on the side of maintaining regional peace and stability, and the fight against extremism and terror.

Above all, the place that Judaism and the Jewish community have had in Morocco, over such a long period, facilitates good relations with Israel and warm ties between the peoples themselves, and not just between the leadership and governments.

Gideon Sa'ar speaks to i24NEWS from Morocco

From Times of Israel:

An alleged Israeli spy network made up of five individuals has been arrested in Iran, an Iranian media outlet claimed Thursday, the second such group detention announced within a week.

The semi-official Iranian Labour News Agency said the five suspects were the leader of the cell and four associates, all of whom were “affiliated with the Israeli regime” and had allegedly been in contact with the head of Israel’s Mossad.

The report said Iran claimed the alleged spies had told the chief of the Israeli spy agency that they would “collect information from important and vital areas.”

Maybe they caught some spies and maybe they didn't. But you can be certain that whoever Iran arrested was not in direct contact with the head of the Mossad!

That is not how any organization works, let alone an intelligence operation!

And if the absurd story was true, Iranian spy agencies are idiots, because they could use these spies to directly send misinformation to the head of Israel's Mossad! That is a lot more valuable than exposing them.

This alone is enough to make one think that the entire story is fabricated.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

I came across this 2021 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Kubin et al: "Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts."

People believe that facts are essential for earning the respect of political adversaries, but our research shows that this belief is wrong. We find that sharing personal experiences about a political issue—especially experiences involving harm—help to foster respect via increased perceptions of rationality. This research provides a straightforward pathway for increasing moral understanding and decreasing political intolerance. ....In moral and political disagreements, everyday people treat subjective experiences as truer than objective facts.

The paper makes the assumption of goodwill; if you want to convince someone of the truth of your position, enhance your facts with personal experience. The authors suggest that narratives can increase political tolerance.

But it doesn't consider how malicious people weaponize this knowledge in order to lead people away from the facts to begin with - and how propagandists can use this to increase intolerance.

A commentary on the paper in PNAS does touch on this:

The power that story has over facts to capture the imagination and create respect for an individual’s position is easily exploited. ...Narratives are easily weaponized by propagandists and other bad actors. From this perspective, Kubin et al. may not have uncovered a feature in human discourse that might bridge moral divides but rather a bug that could be easily exploited. While presenting facts garners more respect than claims with no backing at all, these studies still find that narratives beat out facts in creating a greater perception of rationality and even perceived truth. Yet, a position backed by one personal anecdote is no more objectively true than one backed by no anecdote or facts at all. More crucially, a position backed by a personal narrative is not more true than a position backed by facts.

While both narratives and facts can be cherry-picked to support a position, personal narratives, as the authors point out, are unimpugnable. A conclusion drawn from facts, on the other hand, can be disputed and disproven and, thus, science and society should prefer fact-based positions. Yet, when it comes to respect, feelings are prioritized over facts. As these studies show, what is true gains less respect than what one might feel to be true.

Are we to get into a battle of cherry-picked narratives of harm to promote our policy positions, amplified by social media and the ease with which these narratives can spread? How can such narratives be combated? The counter to a story of harm is, by definition, a story of lack of harm (e.g., a vaccine that reduces future infection). However, the larger problem is that the real counternarrative for any anecdotal evidence is found in the data (e.g., a peer-reviewed paper showing the benefits of vaccination for the treatment condition). As such, a troublesome implication of this work is that a false personal story will have more power to create respect than facts, including those facts that would serve to correct the narrative.

This is accurate - but it doesn't go far enough, either.

If narratives are more effective than facts, and personal narratives about being harmed are most effective of all (because no one wants to impugn a personal story about how someone was harmed,) then over time the cumulative narratives of alleged harm by a specific certain group will create hate for that group.

The original study hoped that using personal narratives would increase tolerance. It didn't anticipate that large groups were already weaponizing that as a propaganda method that increases intolerance - towards Jews. Because the Palestinian propaganda machine promotes antisemitism with a torrent of stories about humiliation at the hands of the Jews.

When a Palestinian goes through a Jordanian checkpoint, they are angry and upset. But when they go through an Israeli checkpoint, even though they are treated with more respect, they claim they are humiliated - because they resent Jews on what they consider their land to begin with. So the only stories the world hears are those of humiliation, whether true or not. And over time the followers of that topic start to believe that Jews are deliberately humiliating Palestinians, because that is what the Palestinian stories say.

NGOs also weaponize this propaganda tool against Israel. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch reports against Israel are far more detailed and longer than those on other countries. I once did a comparison between two Amnesty reports released around the same time:

Amnesty reports	Israel/WB	Syria/Yarmouk
Title of report	Trigger-happy	Squeezing the life out of Yarmouk
Number of pages in the report	87	39
Number of civilians killed according to Amnesty	22	194
Time period covered	12 months	8 months
Circumstances of their deaths	Mostly while participating in or near violent acts	Starvation, sniper fire, bombings
Number of extensive personal stories given for victims	At least 18, some three pages long	Zero
Number of photos of victims (dead and injured)	At least 14	Zero
Video produced to support report?	Yes, 4 minutes	No
Placement on Amnesty webpage	Linked from front page two weeks after report issued	On front page only the day it was released

Palestinians are humanized and their stories are told. Those stories are detailed and centered on showing how they were harmed and at creating empathy for them.

Meanwhile, to Amnesty, Syrian victims are just statistics.

Along with the empathy for the subjects of heart-rending stories comes anger at the victimizers. This is especially true when the storytellers themselves are angry at their supposed tormentors. Just as the audience wants to identify with the victim, they want to share in the anger the victim has towards those they blame for their pain.

So it is no surprise that the Western narrative about Israel, over time, has become more explicitly antisemitic. These same NGOs are now completely at ease in claiming that Israel has a policy of "Jewish supremacy," meant to evoke white supremacy, one of the most evil crimes possible. Singling out Israel as the only current state practicing (a made up definition of) apartheid is another example of normalizing antisemitism in the name of supporting the victims of Jewish greed. Gaza children are only victims of Israeli war crimes; their being cynically used as human shields by terrorists who were the target of the bomb is not mentioned.

The decades of favoring narrative over facts has created conditions ripe for increased Jew-hatred.

Also, in this world where narratives are favored over facts, there is little penalty for lying. After all, the victims are describing the facts as they claim that they experienced them, and arguing with that is considered to be adding to their victimhood.

One of Israel's reasons for existence is so that Jews will no longer be hapless victims of a world that doesn't care about them. Israel has helped achieve that goal - so now Jews are at a permanent disadvantage in the discourse about which side is in the right exactly because we can no longer claim the same degree of victimhood. And victimhood is the coin of the realm.

There is no defense. Ben Shapiro's famous quote "facts don't care about your feelings" may be true, but facts cannot argue with feelings, either. People want to empathize with and support the real or imagined victims.

Israel's success at protecting Jews is itself its unforgivable crime, and the Israel-haters are using that success as a reason to try to destroy it.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Anti-Jewish hate crimes dominate NYC statistics during second quarter

The New York Police Department Hate Crimes Dashboard has been updated through the second quarter of the year, and once again anti-Jewish hate crimes dominate them all.

Here is the word chart showing the relative number of hate crimes for April, May and June:

When it comes to only counting more serious felonies, not misdemeanors, the dominance of anti-Jewish hate crimes is even starker:

For the first half of the year (until June 28,) 150 of 338 hate crimes in New York City were against Jews - over 44%.But when it comes to felonies, about 57% of them were against Jews.

This must be what "Jewish privilege" means.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

07/27 Links Pt2: Israel as a Precious Gift to Shabby Regimes and Conditions; Hating With the Hadids; How the Largest Labor Union in the United States Is Pushing an Anti-Israel Agenda

From Ian:

Israel as a Precious Gift to Shabby Regimes and Conditions

The fact is that terms like traitor, spy, and collaborator have long been outdated. They now indicate nothing but the existence of a project for crude domination and that this project is in crisis and has no choice but to say things it should not in the hope that this extends its lifespan.

However, what Freud called sublimation is at play here. This concept, which was originally formulated by Fredrich Nietzsche, denotes a process through which socially unacceptable desires and instincts are redirected to ends that are not only socially acceptable, but also noble ends glorified by society. Creative works, for example, replace taboo cravings, and impeccable moral behavior that invokes veneration replace belligerent desires.

In our case, the crude instinct to hold on to power turns into a conflict with Israel or striving to liberate Palestine. The instinct is condemned, no one defends it, and not even those acting on it dare to speak about it openly; as for the conflict, a broad segment of society sees it as a glorious endeavor.

However, the major difference is that with the authoritarians, the desire merely hides, while the noble end is a pure lie that brings neither innovation nor moral excellence.

“Israel’s conspiracies” alone can justify “filling our squares with the corpses of traitors and spies,” as Salah Omar Al-Ali once put it. (h/t Zvi)

Both UK Conservative leadership candidates have pro-Israel records

With the Conservative Party leadership contest in the UK down to two candidates, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak, whoever wins will move into 10 Downing Street in September with a pro-Israel record.

As one British political insider said this week, from an Israeli perspective, the two finalists were probably the best candidates of all those who announced they were running earlier this month.

Lord Stuart Polak, honorary president of Conservative Friends of Israel, said: “I have worked for 30 years on the UK-Israel political relationship and I am very confident that the golden era that we have will continue under either leadership.”

“[Prime Minister] Boris Johnson is an outstanding friend of Israel and has been for a long period, but these two will continue that tradition,” he added.

Are social media algorithms to blame for rise in antisemitic hate speech?

What can be done about it?

To combat antisemitism on social media, strategies need to be evidence based. But neither social media companies nor researchers have devoted enough time and resources to this issue so far.

The study of antisemitism on social media poses unique challenges to researchers: They need access to the data and funding to be able to help develop effective counterstrategies. So far, scholars depend on the cooperation of the social media companies to access the data, which is mostly unregulated.

Social media companies have implemented guidelines on reporting antisemitism on social media, and civil society organizations have been demanding action against algorithmic antisemitism. However, the measures taken so far are woefully inadequate, if not dangerous. For example, counterspeech, which is often promoted as a possible strategy, tends to amplify hateful content.

To meaningfully address antisemitic hate speech, social media companies would need to change the algorithms that collect and curate user data for advertisement companies, which make up a large part of their revenue.

There is a global, borderless spread of antisemitic posts on social media happening on an unprecedented scale. We believe it will require the collective efforts of social media companies, researchers and civil society to combat this problem.

Yamit: The Forgotten Expulsion (Judean Rose)

Interview with Isser Coopersmith

Yamit was the first expulsion of Jews by Jews in the Jewish State. That is what a lot of people forget when they point to Gush Katif and say that at least now we have proof that the land for peace formula doesn’t work. Gush Katif, it is true, was a massive, outsized event, with 8,600 Jews expelled from their homes, while “only” 2,500 Jews had been forced from their homes in Yamit, 23 years earlier. Expulsion in either case proved traumatic, resulting in spiraling statistics for suicide, divorce, and bankruptcy.

Isser Coopersmith

Just as right wing Israelis flocked to Gush Katif to strengthen the people in the run-up to Disengagement, so too, they came to Yamit in 1982, ready to fight. One of those who rushed to join the 2,500 Israeli Jews of Yamit was Isser Coopersmith, an American immigrant to Israel who had settled in Shilo. He was ready to do anything to help prevent the evacuation.

Coopersmith was 25, and no stranger to showing his loyalty to the Jewish State. After making Aliyah in 1979, Isser helped to build a settlement and a kibbutz, then joined the IDF in 1980, serving in a combat unit. After the evacuation of Yamit, Coopersmith went on to serve in the reserves during the First Lebanon War.

Isser has worn many hats in his professional life: shepherd, goldsmith, chef, house painter. It’s the way of many of us expats. You do whatever is in your capacity to make things work and be part of the project that is Israel, the first Jewish state in the Holy Land. Today, forty years after Yamit, Coopersmith has a 33-year-old son, and is married and living in Maale Adumim.

Ruti and Isser Coopersmith

Here is the story of the evacuation of Yamit, as experienced by Isser Coopersmith:

Coopersmith as a young reservist based on Yamit, 6 months prior to the evacuation.

Varda Epstein: How did you come to live in Yamit? When did you settle there?

Isser Coopersmith: The year was 1982. I had just finished my army service and there was turmoil in the country because the government was going to return Sinai to the Egyptians and destroy the settlements. Most of the residents took compensation and left. A number of people from around the country organized fishing boats to try and break the naval blockade and reach Yamit. We left in the middle of the night from Michlelet Herzog near Massuot Yitzchak and drove to the Tel Aviv Marina where we set sail on a number of vessels. We were followed and hounded by the navy along the way but reached the shore and descended into Zodiacs and paddled to the beach where hundreds of residents and the army waited. It was like out of a scene from the movie Exodus. We mixed in with the people so the army couldn’t nab us.

"We rented a fishing boat and 6 or 7 pleasure boats and met at the Tel Aviv Marina, hoping to get into Yamit."

“We labeled one of the boats ‘Al tefanena,’ [“Don’t evacuate us,” V.E.] which of course is an allusion to the Altalena.”

Isser on one of the rented pleasure boats

Here you can see the navy, flanking us, trying to deter us from getting any closer. When I got off the boat, I realized I was going to be in Yamit for the long haul, and knew I needed to get back out of there to get more supplies. I managed to get out of Yamit, and on my way back, met with a convoy at Kfar Maimon. In the middle of the night we drove off-road and traveled through sand dunes to get back into Yamit.

Varda Epstein: What was it like, being part of Yamit during that time? Can you describe a typical day?

Isser Coopersmith: In one way it felt like we were on a holy mission to keep our land. In another way it felt tense because we knew the government was going to try and evict us any day. A typical day was eating sleeping, davening [praying, V.E.], setting up barricades, and going to the beach.

Bunker in Yamit

"Here you see, from right to left, Baruch Marzel, Rav Ariel, andAvi Farhan, standing outside the bunker. Avi Farhan was one of the original inhabitants of Yamit, and one of the ones who refused to leave."

"Here you have the chief rabbis, Ovadia Yosef and Shlomo Goren, trying to talk the Kachnikim [followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane, V.E.] out of the suicide bunker. I was guarding the doors of the bunker for a while, so Geula Cohen and my rav [rabbi, V.E.], Rav Elhanan Bin Nun from Shilo, tried to talk me out of there.

"At some point, a reporter from the NY Times asked me a question: Do I have anything to tell the world?

"I said, 'Tell Laura I love her,' and I heard people saying, 'Who’s Laura?'

"Like, nobody got it."

An evacuation soldier outside the bunker. Soldiers attempted to pry open the bunker door with a wooden board, at center

The "suicide bunker." The army tried to get in with an acetylene torch.

"From guarding the bunker I went to a rooftop of a villa, which we barricaded. We put all kinds of like, fencing and things down the staircase, so people couldn’t get to us. I was in the villa with Levi Hazan and Misha Mishkan who tried to self-immolate, which we prevented him from doing. Baruch Marzel was on the second floor, fighting off like ten or 12 soldiers by himself—he weighed like twice as much in those days."

Rooftop in "Schunat HaIksim," Yamit

"They tried getting us off the roof with ladders. We pushed the ladders off of the building. They finally got us off the roof by shoving us into cages--the foam is to put out the fires."

"When I was cuffed I kept my wrists facing up so it was wider. When I twisted my wrists together I was able to slip out of the cuffs, opened a window on the bus and escaped to another rooftop. I was arrested again. They sent us to Kela Ashkelon [Ashkelon Prison, V.E.]. I managed to escape from the bus the first time, but they caught me again. Other people, there were some famous people who went to Kela Ashkelon, but because they were famous, they got out early. Benny Katsover and Hanan Porat and Rav Kahane, but we were stuck in jail for a few days."

Varda Epstein: What was the demographic makeup of Yamit? What was the flavor of the neighborhood? Did you feel comfortable with the people you met there?

Isser Coopersmith: By the time I settled in, most of the people were Dati Leumi [National Religious, V.E.]. There were lots of settlers from other settlements and also yeshiva boys. We gave each other strength.

Varda Epstein: Can you tell us about some of the hardships you experienced while on Yamit during the evacuation?

Isser Coopersmith: Well, as a single guy I relied on the families for food. We slept in vacated apartments. All the municipal systems were turned off. Water wasn’t flowing to the local flora of the city.

Varda Epstein: What is your best memory of Yamit?

Isser Coopersmith: The camaraderie of the people, the natural beauty of the area.

Typical street scene, Yamit

Varda Epstein: Most of the Gush Katif settlers refused to believe the expulsion would happen. They didn’t pack or otherwise plan for the eventuality. They believed until the end that a miracle would happen and that they could stay. How was the purge of Yamit similar to and how did it differ from the banishment of the residents of Gush Katif?

Isser Coopersmith: Well, we didn’t believe it would happen. When it did, we thought it would be so painful that the government wouldn’t ever do it again. Of course, the people in power have no heart.

Varda Epstein: Did you do anything to fight against being evicted from Yamit?

Isser Coopersmith: We set up barricades, stocked up on food, and fought the soldiers who came to take us.

Varda Epstein: Where did you go after Yamit? What was your emotional state? How long did it take for you to get back to normal?

Isser Coopersmith: I returned to Shilo. I was emotionally depressed, but two months later I was called up for the war in Lebanon so I had to readjust to the new situation.

Varda Epstein: Looking back, is there anything anyone could have done to stop the evacuation of Yamit? What would you personally have done differently? Conversely, what are you most proud of in relation to your part in the Yamit story?

Isser Coopersmith: I doubt there is anything we could have done to prevent the destruction of Yamit. Maybe if tens of thousands of people had joined us, the army wouldn’t have had the manpower to make it happen. I was proud that I made a stand for my beliefs.

Varda Epstein: What can we learn from Yamit?

Isser Coopersmith: Never trust the government.

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