There are two measures we must examine in terms of any moral comparison between Antifa and neo-Nazis. First, there’s the ideological. Then, there’s behavior.
Let’s begin with the ideological. Antifa has no clear-cut ideology, but they seem to be a mashup of communists and anarchists. Neo-Nazis are white supremacists who believe in the innate inferiority of non-Caucasians, and therefore believe that they have the right to oppress other groups. It’s fair to say that Nazism is a uniquely evil philosophy, more evil than the communist philosophy, even though the communist philosophy of Antifa was responsible for tens of millions of deaths globally. So if we were to say that communism is as evil as Nazism, we’d be wrong. By the same token, if we were to whitewash communism, we’d be even more wrong.
Then there’s the question of violence. When conservatives condemn Antifa, they’re pointing out that use of violence in response to peaceful protest by evil people is more dangerous than peaceful protest by evil people. Those who initiate violence in a free society are a bigger problem than those who preach evil; the whole point of civilization, as Max Weber stated, was to give the state a monopoly on the legitimate use of force other than in self-defense. Breaking that compact and equating speech with violence is a serious threat to a civilized country. Condemning Antifa for their violent tactics in Boston, for example, should be required of all decent citizens in the same way that condemning Nazi ideology should be.
But this whole argument is a fraud anyway. Very few Americans stand in favor of Nazism, and the Left’s game of broadening out the label “Nazi sympathizer” is merely a political ploy. Antifa is evil. So is Nazism. Two things can be evil at the same time. Anyone who doesn’t believe that should do a little historical research on Stalin and Hitler.
But there are far more Americans condemning Nazism in the last two weeks than Americans who seem willing to condemn the breakdown of law and order. In fact, many mainstream Leftists are now defending Antifa. And that may make Antifa and its attendant violence a serious threat to the social fabric.

A State Department official confirmed the meeting took place, but would not specify who the American Muslim leaders met with and what exactly was discussed.
"The Department regularly hosts groups representing different constituencies in America to explain USG policy and hear their perspective," the official told the Free Beacon. "The group was interested in U.S. policy on Jerusalem given events on the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif last month, and met a cross-section of working
level officials from different offices in the Department."
Asked if administration officials were aware of the group's anti-Israel views and ties to Hamas, the official said that State Department views Hamas as a terror organization and opposes boycotts of the Jewish state.
Noah Pollak, a political consultant who works with a range of pro-Israel organizations, criticized the State Department for hosting what he described as extremists who reject Israel's right to exist and openly endorse terrorist groups.
"AMP is a front for jihadists, and doesn't try very hard to hide it. Some of its founders were involved with the Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas fundraising front that was the biggest terror finance case in U.S. history," Pollak said. "Its founder called for an ‘intifada' here in America. Maybe next time there's a flare-up of Palestinian violence the State Department can cut out the middle man and just meet directly with Hamas."
Other pro-Israel insiders expressed concern over the meeting, but cautioned against putting too much stock in efforts by these Muslim American groups to drive a wedge into the U.S.-Israel relationship.

When I accepted a job as Cairo bureau chief for the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera English television news channel in September 2013 I demanded and was assured that my team would remain independent from the network’s Arabic channels.
Those assurances went out the window as management breached its contract, dubbing our English material into Arabic reports behind our backs and rebroadcasting them on the network’s Arabic Mubasher – a channel that an Egyptian court had shut for its “national security threat and bias to the Muslim Brotherhood,” a group once banned as a terrorist organization.
Unknown to our team at the time, Qatar – the tiny Arab state backed by the world’s third-largest natural gas reserves and oil treasuries – also later breached the secret Riyadh Agreement, which required that Qatar stop supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
That accord was reached two months after our team started working out of the Al Jazeera English makeshift office at the Cairo Marriott Hotel.
According to the recent CNN exclusive release of the unpublished handwritten accords, Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim Al Thani joined the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain – the same nations that since June 5 have spearheaded a boycott of his country – in vowing not to support the Brotherhood terrorist franchise in the region and “antagonistic media.” The latter is a clear reference to Al Jazeera, which was accused during the negotiations on the Riyadh Agreement of becoming a voice for the Brotherhood and radicals such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian preacher convicted of terrorism while residing in Qatar – a man who encouraged suicide bombings and the slaying of Jews and Christians on his weekly show on Al Jazeera, once watched by 60 million people.

Dr. Andrés Roemer is a renowned author, humanitarian, and one of Mexico’s most internationally recognized public intellectuals.
The Harvard Club of San Francisco recognized Dr. Roemer for “having the courage to stand up for his beliefs.” As the former Ambassador of Mexico to the UNESCO, he took a principled stand—costing him his job—but ultimately succeeding in changing the position of his country.
At a UNESCO Session in Paris, Dr. Roemer refused to cast a vote in favor of a resolution on Jerusalem that denied the Jewish people’s historic connection to the Temple Mount and the ancient city.
The San Francisco Chronicle called him a “rare public figure who deserves to be called a Renaissance man.”
Dr. Roemer previously served as Consul General in San Francisco, where he has played a crucial role in enhancing the partnership in education, culture and innovation between Mexico and the United States.

Despite video, photo and social-media evidence of Palestinian children, some as young as 8, engaging in terrorist acts against Israeli citizens, the United Nations turns a blind eye to the bloodshed, according to a human rights group.
The secretary-general's 2017 annual report released earlier this year maintains there's “limited information … about the recruitment or use of children,” The Washington Free Beacon reports.
Yet in the aftermath of attacks in the fall of 2015 that left two Israelis dead and nine injured, the Palestinian U.N. representative declared at the U.N.'s headquarters, “We are so proud that in this popular uprising that has started almost two months ago, that the backbone of this uprising are the youth of Palestine,” according to the group Human Rights Voices.
This month the Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced legislation, the Taylor Force Act, which would cut U.S. funding to the Palestinian Authority unless it stops its “pay to slay” policy. Reportedly advanced by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the policy distributes millions of dollars in monthly payments to terrorists and their families. The legislation is named after an American killed by a Palestinian terrorist in Israel last year.

Among the eclectic throng of demonstrators in Boston on Saturday, a supporter of President Trump found himself surrounded by protesters who yelled profanities at him.
A man wearing an Israeli flag as a cape can be seen in a video shared by Univision's Jessica Weiss, walking through a crowd of protesters. One person rips off his "Make America Great Again" and throws it away.
Amid the obscenaties directed at him, one protester shouted, "Get the fuck out of our fucking town." Another person can be heard urging the other protesters not to be violent.
Weiss asked why he was in Boston to demonstrate, and the man replied, "I want to show that people shouldn't be afraid to voice their other views and voice their opinions."
"You shouldn't be afraid to go outside and say you're conservative," he added "And it's pretty sad that things like this happen."
Thousands of protesters descended on Boston on Saturday, including a "free speech" rally organized by some right-leaning groups. These groups were reportedly far outnumbered by groups of counter-protesters.

A petition formally asking the White House to classify violent leftist group Antifa as a terrorist organization has blown up online, reaching over 140,000 [197,719 now] signatures since its inception on August 17.
The petition explains that Antifa engages in terrorism — “the use of violence and intimidation in pursuit of political aims” — and thus should be declared a terrorist organization.
The left-wing anti-capitalist political movement styles itself a fighting force against "fascism" and "Nazism," justifying action — including violence — against anyone whom they claim fall into such categories; this has been proven to include essentially anyone on the Right, even if they are active participants in combating neo-Nazism on the so-called "alt-right."
Antifa has become increasingly active in the past two years, attempting to or succeeding in shutting down speeches from right-wing or liberal speakers by triggering a heckler's veto. Last weekend, Antifa appeared in Charlottesville to "punch Nazis" at a rally-turned-riot where a man with white supremacist ties murdered 32-year-old Heather Heyer by driving a vehicle into a crowd of counter-protesters.
The group also participated in violent acts against police officers and free speech rally participants in Boston on Saturday, attacking cops and tossing bottles filled with urine at groups of law enforcement.
"AntiFa has earned this title due to its violent actions in multiple cities and their influence in the killings of multiple police officers throughout the United States," reads the petition. "It is time for the pentagon to be consistent in its actions — and just as they rightfully declared ISIS a terror group, they must declare AntiFa a terror group — on the grounds of principle, integrity, morality, and safety."

I just did something fascinating. I just watched the President’s entire 14-minute impromptu news conference at Trump Tower on Monday that sparked all the latest barrage of anti-Trump screeds from the left media that will criticize him every day, no matter what he does, augmented by the “Never Trump” Republicans and neo-conservatives who will not rest until they can re-conquer the political party they lost because of three terms of two failed Bush presidencies, followed by the two failed Presidential candidacies of Sen. John McCain and of Gov. Mitt Romney.
Not the reportage about the conference, but the entire 14 minutes unedited, uninterrupted. I found myself agreeing with his every word. I did not find his tone or demeanor “unpresidential” in the least. He sharply and explicitly condemned the Nazis and White Supremacists unequivocally. He also condemned the extreme leftists who premeditatedly came armed with weapons to smash up a demonstration that, rightly or wrongly, had been granted a legal permit. (I personally wish that ACLU liberals were not so proactive in advancing the right of Nazis to get permits to rally at public venues, but the demonstration had a permit. Meanwhile, the Antifa Alt-Left thugs came with flame-throwers, bats, and shields, and they came to fight.) All the while, the police did nothing for much too long. Chaos and violence ensued.
The media get exercised when President Trump does not parrot their scripts, but they never minded that Barack Obama would not call out leftist rioters and violent leftist organizations by name. As inner cities would burn, with innocents watching their life savings go aflame as mobs would burn down their inner-city stores in cities from Baltimore to Ferguson, the Obama Administration avoided planting blame or naming hate groups. When a Jihadist murdered Americans serving our nation faithfully at Fort Hood, Obama attributed the murders to “workplace violence.” Obama never could articulate the term “Radical Islamist terrorist,” as though he were Lou Costello fearing what would happen to him if he said “Niagara Falls.” When Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot by her own former supporter, a mentally ill clinger who had backed the Democrat, the media blamed the violence on Republicans like Sarah Palin. When Rep. Steve Scalise was shot, and others were wounded, by a Bernie Sanders supporter who had set out to kill Republicans, the media avoided pinning blame on a left ideology and overheated rhetoric of leftist hate. But when the President of the United States rightly excoriated law-breakers and thugs on all sides of a street conflagration, he came in for a torrent of media abuse, forcing even level-headed bystanders to take cover.

Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke has released a plea for empathy to FOX News earlier today. “The KKK are not terrorists. We are freedom fighters lawfully resisting the illegal occupation of our Beloved South, and the genocide of the Indigenous Whites.
“The real terrorists are the Zionists, Black Lives Matter people, and Antifa, who are destroying our statues and monuments that sustain our cultural and historical heritage. To remind everybody, the Confederacy was unlawfully invaded by colonialist Northerners and has been unlawfully occupied for the past 150 years.”
Mr. Duke also defended Alex Fields, “allegedly” responsible for injuring 19 protesters and killing 1 after ramming his car into a group of counter-protesters at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” protest. “James Fields was a freedom fighter in a legitimate resistance movement, not a terrorist! He should be immediately released by the tyrannical Jew-appeasing regime. We will be paying his salary and compensating his family for the entire period of his illegal imprisonment.”
When asked by reporters if he was a racist, Mr. Duke added, “I’m not a racist. I just have a problem with Negroes, Kikes, Beaners, and A-rabs immigrating, living in our country, and building houses here. As long as they keep building settlements in Occupied Charleston, we can never live in peace!”
David Duke further explained, “White supremacy and national socialism are peaceful ideologies. You can’t judge us by the violent minority. We clearly teach our children peace.”

I have a court appointment in one week on Monday the 28th and my guess is that I should shut the fuck up for the moment.
But, in truth, I have never been very good at taking my own advice.
Previously
Possible Restraining Order (Updated)

Senior officials working for Islamic Relief, the largest Muslim charity in the US, have promoted antisemitism, according to new evidence uncovered by the Middle East Forum (MEF) think tank’s Islamist Watch project.
Khaled Lamada, chairman of Islamic Relief’s US branch (IR-USA), has posted antisemitic content and publicly expressed support for the Muslim Brotherhood — the parent group of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas — on his social media accounts since 2013.
In numerous social media posts written in Arabic, Lamada “appears to hate Jews and admire violence against Israel,” Islamist Watch said; he has also praised the “Mujahidin of Egypt” for “causing the Jews many defeats.”
Further, Lamada has peddled various antisemitic conspiracy theories, including videos that claim Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is a Jewish agent working to sow division and promote sexual promiscuity among Egyptian Muslims.
In July, Islamist Watch uncovered antisemitic social media posts by other IR-USA senior officials, including Yousef Abdallah, who posted content glorifying “martyrs” who provided weapons to “kill more than 20 Jews” and “fire rockets at Tel Aviv.”

The organizers of an annual Holocaust commemoration that culminates with a procession at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland have strongly criticized the forthcoming March for Racial Justice for selecting Yom Kippur — the holiest day in the Jewish calendar — as the date for a show of unity along the National Mall in Washington, DC.
“By choosing a day in the Jewish calendar that Jewish people cannot participate in, you have effectively turned your March for Justice into a monumental act of injustice against the Jewish people,” declared Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, the president of the March of the Living, an annual intensive program that takes participants to Poland and then to Israel to commemorate the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
The March for Racial Justice is scheduled to take place on September 30, when many American Jews will be fasting and attending all-day synagogue services in observance of Yom Kippur. The date was chosen in honor of the victims of a white supremacist riot in Elaine, Arkansas, on the same date in 1919. More than 200 black Americans were murdered during the violence, including former servicemen who had just returned from the battlefields of World War One in Europe.
Last week, a statement from march organizers noted that “the March for Racial Justice did not realize that September 30 was Yom Kippur when we were factoring in these and other considerations and applying for permits.”

When it comes to Israel and/or Jews, their opponents frequently do not even honor the idea of respecting their holidays. On the contrary, rather than let them observe in peace, anti-Semites and anti-Israel activists frequently target Jews on those days.
That includes targeting them with physical violence. The parade example is the Yom Kippur War, launched by an Egyptian and Syrian sneak attack deliberately scheduled to take advantage of Israel’s weakened defensive posture during the holiday observance.
Yom Kippur 1973 also fell during Ramadan. Eighteen years later, during the 1991 Gulf War, the Chicago Tribune reported that Egypt pressured the United States to conclude hostilities before Ramadan “citing a need to keep the holy month free of fighting.” The claim would be funny if it were not so tragic.
Israel has also been targeted for terror attacks disrupting holidays. On March 27, 2002, a suicide bomber massacred thirty people and injured another 140 enjoying a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel, their celebration turned into mourning.
Not only do opponents of Jews and the Jewish State exploit holidays to launch physical attacks. More recently, they have used such times as occasions for launching political, economic, and propaganda attacks designed to impose mental and emotional stress on Jews as they celebrate.

They seem to be everywhere, and no matter where they are, they reveal their true, ugly side – which has nothing to do with wanting or encouraging peace.
I am, of course, referring to BDS-holes.
In the latest act to hit the Interwebs, a bunch of them in Perth, Western Australia have held a demo – in front of a Jewish day school.
Think about this for a second. They decided of all places to chant “Free, free Palestine” in front a school for Jewish kids (and yes, the kids are there – it is Winter in Australia now, not Summer vacation).
Update: I have been told it took place on a Sunday but nevertheless, this was a Jewish day school. And there were some kids there, per the Rabbis’s account below. So the bullying of schoolchildren did happen.

Although uninformed listeners would not know it, what Bateman describes as a “temporary […] egalitarian prayer space” has in fact existed for seventeen years and – despite the impression given in this report – it continues to be open to anyone wanting to use it.
As was explained here last time the BBC reported on this subject, the aspects of the ‘Kotel deal’ of January 2016 which were affected when it “fell apart” as Bateman puts it are plans for a communal entrance to all the various prayer areas at the Western Wall and plans for a joint committee to run the mixed gender prayer area.
This report did not inform audiences that even before the ‘Kotel deal’ fell apart, the issue had been taken to the High Court.

A few years ago, an Egyptian lawyer and part-time conspiracy theorist sued his former president, Hosni Mubarak, for failing to "reclaim" the bustling Israeli city of Eilat for Egypt.
He is hardly the only Egyptian who wants to divvy up Israel. In a country raised on hatred for Jews and their state, and where a majority believes the mere existence of Israel violates Palestinian rights, it not surprising that many are drawn to the claim that Eilat is rightfully Egyptian. Some Egyptian leaders, more magnanimous in their immoderation, have rebutted these calls: The city is not Egyptian, they say. It is Palestinian.
The Middle East's rejectionists have always had a hard time agreeing on who gets to feast on which parts of Israel's carcass. But those promoting Egypt's ambitions to Eilat can now turn to none other than The New York Times for support. In a recent Op-Ed about Egypt's transfer to Saudi Arabia of two islands in the Gulf of Tiran, writer Ahdaf Soueif attached a peculiar history lesson to her geography lesson when telling readers that "at the top of the gulf is the Israeli port of Eilat, once the Egyptian port of Umm al-Rashrash."

There’s an important line separating legitimate opinion that enhances public discourse, from fatuous rhetoric that interferes with constructive dialogue.
In her latest commentary published on August 17 in the Canadian Jewish News entitled: “Israel is losing its way,” columnist Jean M. Gerber admonishes Israel for “50 years of occupation” of the “West Bank”. See the commentary in full appended below or read it only on the CJN’s website. The piece was headlined: “Palestinians are occupied, and we all suffer”.
Gerber’s claiming that the “West Bank” is “occupied” Palestinian land, fundamentally erases from the historical record a continuous 3,000+ year Jewish presence in what was called until a few decades ago “Judea and Samaria.” Jews have never ceded their rights and importantly, you can’t occupy your own home.

A planned performance art installation titled "Auschwitz on the Beach" has sparked the ire of the German Jewish community for comparing Europe's current immigration crisis to the Holocaust.
The installation will begin on August 24 in the German city of Kassel as part of the Documenta 14 exhibit, an international modern art exhibition considered one of the most important in the world.
The performance installation will be presented by Italian and Brazilian artists and is based in a poem written by the Italian Marxist philosopher Franco "Bifo" Berardi, a known radical leftist.
According to Berardi's explanation of the performance, which will be presented in English on Thursday and Saturday and in Italian on Friday, "Europeans are building concentration camps on their own territory, and are paying their Gauleiter [the ruler of a Nazi province] of Turkey, Libya, and Egypt to do the dirty work on the coast of the Mediterranean where saltwater has replaced Zyklon B."
"Extermination is the word accurately defining the sentiment and behavior of the majority of the European people and the political action of the European governments," Berardi claims.

A Michigan man who used Twitter to threaten to kill children and Jews in mass shooting attacks was sentenced to two years of probation.
A judge in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Thursday gave David Lenio, 29, the probation sentence after giving him credit for the four months he served in jail after his February arrest, which ended after his trial in June.
A jury in June acquitted Lenio of two felonies – aggravated stalking and using a computer to commit a crime, and convicted him on the lesser charge of malicious use of telecommunications. He was released from prison on his own recognizance following the June trial.
In addition to probation, Lenio was ordered to stay away from synagogues and schools and to not use computers, Fox17 in West Michigan reported.
Lenio’s father said his son suffers from mental illness, Fox reported.
He was arrested in 2015 in Montana for making similar threats, and released to his parents in Grand Rapids with the condition that he not use social media.

Three teens pleaded guilty to criminal damaging charges for twisting a large decorative menorah in the front yard of an Arizona family’s home into a swastika.
The teens, who were arrested in March and charged as juveniles for the December incident in a residential neighborhood in Chandler, Arizona, offered the guilty pleas on Thursday in Maricopa County Court.
They were sentenced to serve 30 hours of community service, along with writing an apology letter to the victims and paying restitution. They also must meet with a Holocaust survivor and write an essay on what they learn about the Holocaust and how their desecration of the menorah affected the community, the CBS affiliate in Phoenix reported.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has not yet decided how to charge the fourth vandal in the incident, Clive Jamar Wilson, 19, who posted an apology to the family on Facebook after he was arrested.

Signs with anti-Semitic messages were hung on highway overpasses in Oregon, which is welcoming visitors hoping to experience Monday’s rare solar eclipse.
The banners were hung on two northbound highways, which were heavily traveled by California tourists heading to the state to get a better view of the celestial event, according to local reports.
The banners read, “UNJEW HUMANITY,” “Eclipse Whitey,” and “Jewish Financing Available,” the Oregon Statesman Journal reported on Saturday. They were taken down later on Saturday.
Beth Dershowitz of Sacramento told the Oregonian in an email that the banners upset her, her husband Michael, and their children during their family road trip on Saturday. She said her husband took photos of the banners to show state transportation officials.
“I cannot believe that we still have to face this vicious anti-Semitism in such a public place in 2017,” she wrote. “We want to expose this hatred so people stop pretending like it isn’t happening in our own backyards.”

Horrified at the sight of swastikas scrawled on walls, children's playgrounds and building sites, a group of graffiti artists in Berlin is transforming the Nazi symbols into colorful artwork such as flowers, cars and animals.
The swastika, which was adopted by Adolf Hitler's Nazi party, is banned in Germany, where right-wing sentiment has risen due to an influx of more than a million migrants in the last two years.
Ibo Omari, who runs a graffiti shop and 'The Cultural Heirs' youth club, encourages young people to look out for swastikas in their local area and then creatively paint over them - after getting permission from whoever owns the defaced property.
"It was important to spur young people into action and to encourage them to take responsibility so they don't just ignorantly walk past such symbols of hatred," Omari told Reuters.
"It offends the whole neighborhood if someone in our midst paints swastikas in a children's playground and I take it personally," the 37-year-old said, adding that they also wanted to show graffiti had nothing to do with racism.
Omari and 'The Cultural Heirs' decided the best way to respond was "with humor and love" so they came up with designs such as rabbits, birds and a Rubik's Cube to cover swastikas.

An international group of 18 volunteers from Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic and Turkey with the help of seven volunteer Polish scouts from Poznan are cleaning a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.
The work on the Jewish cemetery at Okopowa Street in Warsaw began on August 16 and will continue through August 24. The organizer of the project, the Cultural Heritage Foundation, has been carrying out cleaning work in this cemetery for three years. This year, together with the One World Association, the foundation invited young people from abroad to participate.
Participants will take part in discussions, lectures and thematic walks connected to Jewish culture in Warsaw, as well as visit the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Warsaw synagogue.
“The cemetery is largely undiscovered, and access to many cemetery quarters is hampered by wild plants. Thanks to the help of over 100 volunteers, we managed to organize almost 3 hectares of the cemetery,” coordinator of the volunteer projects of the Jewish Heritage Foundation, Ola Waszak, told JTA.
Cleaning work consists mainly of cleaning of the oldest part of the cemetery and removing broken tree boughs and plants. Preliminary cleaning of the cemetery is essential to allow qualified conservationists and visitors to gain access to historic gravestones. All work is supervised by the director of the cemetery, the Jewish Community in Warsaw and the Jewish Historical Institute.

The Argentinean and Israeli national air carriers signed an agreement to begin flights between Buenos Aires and Tel Aviv.
Aerolineas Argentinas President Mario Dell’Acqua and an El Al vice president met on Friday at the Argentinean embassy in Tel Aviv to sign the final agreement between the two national airlines.
El Al and Aerolíneas Argentinas flights will begin next month. Currently a visit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Argentina in September as part of a visit to Latin American countries is in the planning stages and, if confirmed, Netanyahu will announce the first flight during the visit. The visit, tentatively scheduled for September 12 and 13, would be the first visit of a sitting Israeli prime minister to Argentina and Latin America.
The president of Argentina’s Jewish political umbrella DAIA, Ariel Cohen Sabban, and the group’s vice president, Alberto Indij, participated in the codeshare signing event. “We celebrate the historic event, which means that more Argentineans can travel to visit Israel and also we are happy to see the Argentinean flag in the Israeli sky soon,” Cohen Sabban told JTA from Israel.
To trigger the agreement, in March Argentine Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra and Israeli Ambassador to Argentina Ilán Sztulman signed in Buenos Aires a framework agreement. The Argentinean Foreign Ministry wrote then on its web page that the agreement “was made possible by the excellent relations that exist between aeronautical authorities, in addition to the historical bonds between both countries. It will be supplemented by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding which will enable the immediate operation of scheduled flights by the designated airlines.”

Jewish-American actor, comedian, director, inventor, philanthropist and one of the last links to vaudeville Jerry Lewis has died at the age of 91. The world just got a little less funny.
Lewis, born Joseph Levitch in Newark, New Jersey, grew up in a show business family. His father, Daniel Levitch, was a vaudeville entertainer and his mother, Rae, was a pianist who worked for the (still existent) WOR Radio. At the age of five, so the legend goes, he made his stage debut singing “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and accidentally kicked out one of the footlights. His surprised reaction got the audience to laugh, and this set him on his path toward comedy.
By age 15 he had dropped out of high school and was honing his stage act. His best known routine was a bit in which he’d put a phonograph on and give an exaggerated lip synch. Sounds simple, but if you’ve seen the way Jerry Lewis could contort his face, you can understand why this would become popular. He worked the Jewish “Borscht Belt” in the Catskills Mountains (Brown’s Hotel in Lake Sheldrake was a big break) and, in 1945, at the age of 19, he hooked up with Dean Martin.
The handsome Italian-American singer (born Dino Crocetti) was the perfect straight man to Lewis’ zany, anarchic man-child persona. Their stage show was built on improvisation in which Lewis would bring mayhem to an otherwise smooth Martin vocal performance. Martin and Lewis quickly became successful as a nightclub act, on radio, the early days of television and eventually in Hollywood in feature films. Their first movie appearances were as part of an ensemble (1949’s “My Friend Irma”) but very quickly they were the stars.

Jerry Lewis is considered a comic genius in France. It’s a punchline I remember hearing over and over again growing up, a statement both of pride and deprecation: the French? Those chain-smoking existentialist intellectual beret wearers who think they’re so fancy? Look who they think is funny! Jerry freaking Lewis, shouting “Hey laaaadeeee”! So maybe Americans aren’t so stupid after all!
But was Jerry Lewis, who died Sunday morning at his home in Las Vegas at the age of 91, actually a genius? He was certainly, if nothing else, something of a comedy of prodigy, dropping out of Union High School in Irvington, New Jersey at the age of 16 to pursue a professional comedy career. By the time he was 19, he was a married father (of his oldest son, Gary Lewis, who would later be the front man of the band Gary Lewis and the Playboys, of “This Diamond Ring (Doesn’t Shine For Me Anymore)” fame), and he was already tooling around on nightclub stages with the up-and-coming crooner Dean Martin, honing what would become the act that propelled them both to Hollywood stardom in an astonishing 13 films together. Their combination of “sex and slapstick,” Lewis’s term for their relationship, was, for those looking at it with the right kind of critical eye (or oeuil, as the case may be), a fascinating juxtaposition of the two prevailing images of comic-tinged American manhood in the post-war period: Martin (who Lewis idolized) the smooth, world-weary ladies’ man, always ready with a rueful quip and another glass of whiskey, and Lewis, a drooling (sometimes literally) idiot man-child, crashing around and creating chaos while somehow charming all those around him with the sheer absurdity of his inexplicable incompetence. (Should you doubt the influence of these comic personae, consider the fact that the two of them combined into a single character basically forms the basis of every hero of an American comedy of the past twenty years, in which an immature male with no conceivable prospects manages to nab a hot professional woman and bring her down to his level.)
When his partnership with Martin—who, chafing at Lewis’s increasing bid of artistic control behind the camera, not to mention his difficult personality, decamped for the more forgiving environs of the Rat Pack—ended in 1956, Lewis began his career as an auteur, an endeavor he called “Total Filmmaking,” writing, directing and starring in films, arguably comedy classics, like The Bellboy, The Ladies’ Man, and perhaps most famously, The Nutty Professor.

“I’ve been trying to get here [Israel] since I was born 55 years ago. As a matter of fact, I was booked on a flight out of London the night before the Six Day War.”
– the late and great Jerry Lewis, who just passed away, after stepping off the plane in Israel in 1981. He was here for a telethon to raise money for handicapped children.
May his memory be a blessing.

The game of football by the children of occupied Jerusalem inside the squares of the Al-Aqsa Mosque is one of the new Palestinian weapons in the face of the settlers' intrusions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque almost permanently.

After yearning for independence for generations, Kurds in Iraq are scheduled to take a major step in that direction with a nonbinding referendum set for Sept. 25. The vote, expected to endorse a separate state, would be a mistake,increasing turmoil in a part of the world roiled by the fight against the Islamic State and further threatening Iraq’s territorial integrity. Postponement makes better sense.

Two families, the Barzanis and the Talabanis, control politics; corruption is widespread. Because of political infighting, Kurdistan’s parliament has not met since October 2015; the region’s president, Masoud Barzani, remains in office four years after his term ended. Declining oil prices and disputes with Iraq’s central government have left the Kurdistan government in debt. Kurdish authorities are accused of discriminating against minorities. Could Kurdistan make it as an independent state if Iraq and neighboring states stayed hostile to the idea?

...The referendum would heighten tensions, make it harder to stabilize Iraq and divert attention as the United States, Iraq and their partners work to defeat ISIS and rebuild Iraqi communities.

...[L]eaders in Turkey and Iran see a greater Kurdistan as a territorial threat. Turkey’s deputy prime minister recently warned that the Iraq vote would “contribute to instability.” Iraq’s prime minister said the vote would be “illegal” because it conflicts with Kurdistan’s constitutional commitments as part of Iraq’s federal government.

...A Kurdish breakaway is risky; without sufficient preparation, it would further marginalize Iraq’s Sunni minority, already disenfranchised by the Shiite majority and prey to Sunni extremists like ISIS.

Self-determination is an understandable goal. But just voting for independence is no guarantee that whatever state emerges will govern fairly or well. It does the Kurdish people little good if their leaders do not make a strong effort to first ensure that Kurdistan’s democratic institutions are functioning, the economy is strong and they have support from Iraq and other countries before striking out alone.

My favorite part of 2017 has been all the woke children. pic.twitter.com/r75SgiNkvn

— Danielle Butcher (@DaniSButcher) August 18, 2017

Anti-Tom Delay T-Shirt, suggesting he kill himself. Credit: Mike's America

“Kill Bush” magnet depicting the president holding a gun to his head with the caption “End Terrorism Now” Credit: Michelle Malkin

Bright yellow “Kill Bush” t-shirt splattered with blood. Credit: Michelle Malkin

“Kill Bush” messenger bag with a macho pic of John Kerry. Credit: Michelle Malkin

Cartoon based on Hadith encouraging murder of Jews

On Saturday, columnist Charlie Brooker told the readers of the far-Left British newspaper Guardian:

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. - where are you now that we need you?

The final sentence of a column in The Guide on Saturday caused offence to some readers. The Guardian associates itself with the following statement from the writer.

"Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence caused by his comments relating to President Bush in his TV column, Screen Burn. The views expressed in this column are not those of the Guardian. Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action - an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand. He deplores violence of any kind."

The article has now been removed from the Guardian Unlimited website.

Violence, of course, should be intolerable no matter who is on the receiving end, and must be rejected by people of goodwill, whatever their political ideology. It is ironic that college campuses — which typically style themselves as bastions of free speech and tolerance — are increasingly the scene of intolerant, thuggish behavior. These days it is being directed at folks who don’t subscribe to the prevailing liberal orthodoxies.

Meanwhile, both Palumbo-Liu and Mullen have been leading figures in the academic campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. In 2014, Mullen issued a call on anti-Israel site Electronic Intifada to "de-Zionize our campuses." Palumbo-Liu, in a 2016 piece titled, "9 things you need to know about the Israeli occupation of Palestine," recommended readers look to alternative news sources for their information on the region, including several sites accused of publishing anti-Semitic content. He later updated the article to remove If Americans Knew from the list, after receiving backlash for recommending an outlet that has repeatedly published conspiracy theories about Jews. IAK has been marginalized even by virulently anti-Israel groups, such as the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation and Jewish Voice for Peace.

With Palestinian-Israeli tensions over Jerusalem's Old City and the Temple Mount still simmering, the Palestinian Authority has chosen to intensify Palestinian anger and hate by repeating one of its most dangerous libels - that "senior Jews of high position" planned the arson of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969. In a documentary broadcast on PA TV, it was presented as fact that not only did Jews plan the arson of the Mosque but also that after the fire started Israel shut off the water supply, preventing fire fighters from efficiently putting out the fire.
The following is some of the narration from the documentary:
"From investigations conducted by the Islamic Council it became clear that there was more than one perpetrator [of the Al-Aqsa Mosque arson in 1969] and that the fire was planned by senior Jews of high position, especially since the roof can only be reached from a wooden spiral staircase located outside the Al-Aqsa building. This proves that careful, premeditated measures were taken to completely destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The proof is that the occupation authorities were slow to extinguish [the fire] and that the water supply to the Sanctuary (i.e., the Temple Mount) had been cut off during those hours." [Official PA TV, Aug. 21, 2017]
The 1969 fire in the Mosque was started by a Christian Australian man, who was arrested immediately afterward and found to be mentally unstable.
PA TV's decision to broadcast this Al-Aqsa libel now, follows its ongoing attempts to keep Palestinian hatred of Israel simmering over the Temple Mount issue. Last month the Palestinian Authority Minister of Religious Affairs told Palestinian viewers on television that Israel was planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque:

US President Donald Trump’s administration is urging the United Nations not to publish what it calls a “blacklist” of international firms that do business in Israeli settlements on land claimed by the Palestinians for a future state, diplomats and others said, the Washington Post reported on Monday.
The UN Human Rights Council voted to approve the database of companies last year, over objections from the United States and Israel, which describe the list as a prelude to anti-Israel boycotts.
American companies on the list drawn up by the Geneva-based council include Caterpillar, TripAdvisor, Priceline.com, Airbnb and others, according to people familiar with it. It is not clear whether the list has been finalized.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has told US officials he plans to publish the list by the end of the year and has asked for comments by Sept. 1 from countries where affected firms are headquartered, diplomats said.
“The United States has been adamantly opposed to this … from the start” and has fought against it before several UN bodies, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. “These types of resolutions are counterproductive and do nothing to advance Israeli-Palestinian issues.”
The United States joined Israel in unsuccessfully opposing UN funding for work related to the database, Nauert said.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, reacted harshly to reports on the names of companies on a ‘blacklist’ of businesses being complied by the UN Human Rights Council. The full list of companies operating in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights is set to be published at the end of the year.
The UN General Assembly voted to fund the compilation of the blacklist in December, 2016.
“This shameful step is an expression of modern anti-Semitism and reminds us of dark periods in history. Instead of focusing on the terrible humanitarian problems plaguing the globe, the Human Rights Commissioner is seeking to harm Israel, and in doing so has become the world’s most senior BDS activist. I call on the UN, and the international community as a whole, to halt this dangerous policy and put an end to this anti-Israel initiative," Danon said.

I have given dozens of UN ambassadors tours of Israel's border with Lebanon, where IDF officers identified Hizbullah positions along the border. Our guests asked where the UN Interim Force in Lebanon was, and why nothing was being done to stop Hizbullah terrorists from blatantly violating numerous Security Council resolutions. Our answer was that the UNIFIL force is there, but they are not effectively fulfilling their mandate.
In 2006, UNIFIL was charged with ensuring that the territory south of the Litani River remained free of weapons and fighters other than the Lebanese army. When UNIFIL's mandate comes before the Security Council later this month, there are practical steps that can be taken to ensure that this important UN force succeeds and another conflict with Hizbullah is avoided.
UNIFIL must meticulously inspect the towns and villages of southern Lebanon. Hizbullah strongholds must be dismantled, and other villages must be kept free of rockets and weapons aimed at Israeli population centers.
UNIFIL forces also must insist on unlimited access to all suspicious installations under their mandate. As a report by the UN secretary-general recently noted, UNIFIL is regularly obstructed in southern Lebanon.
No one wants UNIFIL to succeed more than Israel does. With Hamas rearming in Gaza and Islamic State increasing its strength along our frontier with Syria, we seek calm and stability on our northern border.
To achieve this, the Security Council must step up its efforts to ensure that UNIFIL's renewed mandate fulfills the goals outlined above.

Israel's Communications Ministry pays out some 100,000 shekels a year to Israel Social TV, a nongovernmental organization that broadcasts programs through satellite and on the internet, and which has expressed support for the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, Israel Hayom recently discovered.
In 2015, for example, the Communications Ministry paid 99,050 shekels ($27,350) to the NGO, classified as a "public benefit company." In 2016, that amount increased to 121,000 shekels ($33,400).
Moreover, it was decided two years ago that the organization would not be included in the national service program, making it ineligible for national service volunteers (who volunteer in various capacities in lieu of mandatory military service). But Israel Hayom investigated this and discovered that Social TV is still allocated two volunteer slots each year.
According to NGO Monitor, the group's advisory public council includes Professor Noam Chomsky, who has been very vocal against Israel's policies and has called Israel an "apartheid state"; human rights attorney Dr. Michael Sfard, who represents several radical Israeli organizations; Naomi Chazan, a former Meretz MK and former president of the left-wing New Israel Fund; and Dalia Baum, the founder of Who Profits?, an organization that supports a boycott of "the occupation."

Responding to the recent terrorist attacks in Spain, Ed Husain—a former radical Islamist—assails the Western tendency toward self-flagellation and points to the true motives behind the violence.
Consider the facts on Spain: on March 11, 2004, al-Qaeda terrorists killed 192 and injured 2,000 on trains in Madrid. Spain had 1,300 troops in Iraq at the time (America had 135,000 and Britain 8,700). Three days after the bombing, Prime Minister José Maria Aznar lost the general election to a left-wing party committed to ending Spain’s involvement in Iraq. On April 18, 2004, the new prime minister ordered the withdrawal of Spain’s troops. Scarred by the Madrid bombing, fearful of reprisals after the terrorist attacks in France, in November 2015 the Spanish government refused to join a global coalition against Islamic State. So what did Spain do wrong?
We are asking the wrong questions. Spain’s foreign policy shows that we cannot stop terrorism by changing our behavior. In the mind of the Muslim extremists, Spain is not Spain, but al-Andalus, part of a Muslim empire that lasted in Spain for 700 years. Today’s Spain is considered to be “occupied land” that must be liberated. . . .
We have to be honest. Across the West we now have 30-million Muslims who are Westerners. There is no war against Islam. The freedom of Muslims to worship and live proves that the old, imperialist paradigms of Islamic State’s Dar al-Harb [the “abode of war” to be invaded by the caliphate] and Dar al-Islam [the “abode of Islam”] are outdated. Most Muslims are quietly thriving in business, politics, media, sports, and more. In Britain, Mishal Husain’s voice wakes us up on the Today program. Nadiya Hussain of The Great British Bake Off prepares cake for the queen. [The distance runner] Mo Farah reinstates British sporting pride. The list goes on. But there is a dark, sinister movement growing, too. . . .
Enough of blaming the West. . . . Muslims must reject the idea that we need a caliphate. Unless we discard the drive for a Muslim super-state, many more will be killed in pursuit of it.

TERROR experts today blasted Channel 4 for airing a drama about ISIS described as a “recruiting sergeant” for the extremist group.
Viewers told of their disgust at the content of The State, which tells the story of a group of British Muslims fleeing to Syria to fight for ISIS.
In the programme, characters describe life in ISIS as “super-cool” and dismiss Britain as a “dump”.
The first episode was broadcast last night, with three more going out this week – just days after the latest ISIS atrocity in Barcelona.
The former commander of British forces in Afghanistan warned that the series would encourage more young Brits to sign up to Islamic State.
Colonel Richard Kemp told The Sun that the programme was the jihadist equivalent of inspiring war epics such as Band of Brothers or Dunkirk.
The drama follows British Muslims who flee to Syria and fight for ISIS
He said: “It supports our enemies’ cause quite well.
“You have a moral responsiblity not to do anything that would encourage it.”
The respected ex-soldier said potential ISIS recruits would be attracted by scenes which show Brit fighters “learning their skills, bonding, having a good time in the pool and so on”.
And he also expressed concern that forthcoming episodes – which will feature brutal violence – will draw more young Muslims to the ISIS cause.
Col Kemp said: “It’s quite likely they will serve as a recruiting sergeant for Islamic State.”

Europe bleeds again as terrorists in Spain plowed their vehicles into crowds of pedestrians in tourist areas in Barcelona and Cambrils. The men killed 14 people and injured more than 100.
Spanish police are currently investigating a local imam for possibly having radicalized the terrorists. The imam had apparently been preaching at a mosque in the town of Ripoll for two years, but stopped just a few months ago. The question has arisen if the mosque administration may have found out something about the imam and fired him, but never bothered to report the information to the local police and to clear the mosque of blame.
The day after the attacks in Spain, two people in Finland were hacked to death in another Islamist terrorist attack, leaving some eight injured.
We hear yet again the promises to root out the terrorism, with a warning from security agencies that they cannot stop each and every terrorist attack -- words that translate into the admission that terror has gone beyond the control of European governments.
Yes, there were candlelight vigils for the victims; flags of Spain and Finland on social media profiles; there might even be a "Je Suis Barcelona" campaign -- and then the long silence as if we are all in a loop, waiting for another terrorist attack..
We have seen -- and these are just the recent ones -- Islamist-inspired attacks in London, Manchester, Paris, Brussels, Nice, Berlin and Stockholm, all of the violence leaving scores of women, children and men dead, and even more injured and possibly disabled for life.
It does not take much common sense to understand that individuals cannot commit mass murder without any training, support and most importantly, indoctrination.

Many of Catalonia's problems with radical Islam are self-inflicted. In an effort to promote Catalan nationalism and the Catalan language, Catalonian pro-independence parties have deliberately promoted immigration from Arabic-speaking Muslim countries for more than three decades, in the belief that these immigrants (unlike those from Latin America) would learn the Catalan language rather than speak Spanish.
Although some Catalans are having second thoughts about the wisdom of promoting Muslim mass immigration as a strategy to achieve Catalan independence, at least 10,000 Catalans with links to the separatist movement have actually converted to Islam in recent years.
It is believed that two out of every ten Catalan radicals who belong to the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), a far-left political party, are converts to Islam. The ERC, which now governs Catalonia, has vehemently refused to sign a cooperation agreement with the central government in Madrid to fight jihadist terrorism.

A dead Moroccan imam has become a key target of the probe into Spain’s twin terror attacks, suspected of having created the cell in a picturesque town near the Spanish Pyrenees that allegedly launched the deadly assaults last week.
Those who knew him described Abdelbaki Es Satty as a discreet and religious man, who had recently asked for a holiday from the mosque he was preaching in, apparently to return to Morocco for personal business.
But in fact, he was among those blown up in an accidental explosion Wednesday in the house where the suspected attackers were believed to be building bombs, police confirmed on Monday.
The blast likely changed the plans of the attackers, who instead used vehicles to smash into pedestrians on Barcelona’s busy Las Ramblas boulevard and in the seaside resort town of Cambrils.
“On Tuesday morning, he left saying he was going on vacation to Morocco,” said fruit-seller Nordeen El Haji, 45, who four months ago moved into the apartment that Satty occupied in Ripoll.

Harking back to 'al-Andalus' in the Middle Ages
Experts are still trying to understand why the IS group decided to target Spain. Although a staunch NATO member, Spain has not played a major role in the international coalition against the jihadist group in Syria and Iraq. Neither has the country been the source of many foreign fighters headed for the IS group battlefields in the Levant.
"We can assume that Madrid is paying the price for its involvement in the [anti-IS group] coalition, like France, Germany or Great Britain," said Conesa, although he conceded that "this country is much less involved than the main Western powers ". The Spanish government has deployed troops in Iraq to participate solely in a mission to train Iraqi troops.
But attacking Spain has symbolic weight for IS group sympathisers.“There’s a bunch of evidence in recent years, in the IS group and other radical Islamist propaganda, which castigated Spain by recalling that part of its territory was Muslim for several centuries,"explained Alexandre Vautravers of the University of Geneva’s Global Studies Institute.
Indeed, in its propaganda messages, the jihadist group often cites the Islamic past of Andalusia – or al-Andalus in Arabic -- during the Middle Ages, and its willingness to incorporate it into its self-proclaimed caliphate.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas surprised participants of an Aug. 20 meeting at his Ramallah headquarters with members of the left-wing Israeli Meretz Party when he launched a broadside attack on the Trump administration just days ahead of a planned visit to the region by Trump's top envoys, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt. Abbas said he had met with the American representatives 20 times since Trump took office in January, but he was no closer to understanding what Israeli-Palestinian peace plan they have in mind. “Each time they reiterate their commitment to a two-state solution and the stop to settlement building. I urge them to tell [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu that, but they refrain,” he said.
The Israelis were not the only ones taken aback by Abbas’ remarks. Senior Palestinian officials present at the meeting were, too. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has, after all, trod wearily with the Americans until recently in an effort to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the new administration. Abbas set up a top-level team, including experts on US politics, in a bid to decipher the nature of the new president and the best way to approach him. The group even scored some points: Trump rolled back his election campaign commitment to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and even hosted Abbas last May at the White House less than four months after moving in. But since then, the Palestinians are under the impression that the Trump administration is not interested in getting entangled in the complex task of restarting the moribund Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which have been the undoing of many previous administrations that were far more focused. “I don't understand their conduct toward us, as inside his country the administration is in chaos,” the Palestinian president was quoted as saying.
Al-Monitor has learned that Abbas’ remarks to the Meretz delegation were only the prelude to far harsher talking points he has prepared for his Aug. 24 meeting with the Trump envoys. A senior Palestinian source who spoke on condition of anonymity said a decision had been reached after lengthy negotiations at top PA levels, including consultations with its team of Trump experts, to present Kushner and Greenblatt with a clear ultimatum: Unless progress is made within 45 days on launching talks with the Israelis, the Palestinians will consider themselves no longer committed to the US channel and will turn to an alternative plan on which they have been working for the past two years.

Israeli government officials have expressed “grave concern” after a high-level defense delegation from the Jewish state met with US officials in Washington, DC, last week and failed to secure commitments regarding the situation in Syria and Lebanon.
The delegation, headed by Mossad intelligence agency Director Yossi Cohen, reportedly met with US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell, President Donald Trump’s international negotiations representative Jason Greenblatt and others.
Israeli intelligence officials said they presented the US officials with “sensitive, credible and highly disturbing intelligence information” detailing Iran’s expanding military presence in Syria, including documents and photographs, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
The US officials, however, purportedly did not commit to preventing the spread of Iranian influence in Syria. Delegation members noted “a kind of embarrassment and lack of a clear position” among Trump administration officials regarding America’s commitments in Syria and the Middle East.

There is "grave concern" in Israel after a delegation of high ranking Israeli defense officials sent to Washington was not able to secure a commitment from the Americans to ensure any agreement to end the war in Syria would include the evacuation of Iranian military forces from the country.
During its visit to the American capital, the Israeli delegation met with the heads of the US intelligence community, National Security Council officials and President Donald Trump's envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt.
Among the delegation's members were Mossad Director Yossi Cohen, Military Intelligence Directorate (MID) Chief Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi, head of the Political-Military Affairs Bureau in the Defense Ministry Zohar Palti (former chief of intelligence for the Mossad), Israel's Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer and Deputy National Security Advisor Eitan Ben-David.
Israeli intelligence officials said the delegation "presented sensitive, credible and highly disturbing intelligence information," backed by documents and photographs, which showed the ever-growing spread of Iranian influence in Syria.
The US and Russia are currently working to formulate an agreement to bring an end to fighting in Syria. Thanks to Russian and American understandings vis-à-vis military coordination between them, there has been a decline in the fighting in Syria since May. Israeli intelligence agencies documented a significant drop both in fighting and in the number of casualties, while jihadist groups such as ISIS and the Nusra Front appear to be weakening. This situation, Israeli intelligence officials explain, implies there is a strong chance that world powers may reach a final-status agreement.
The Israeli defense officials' talks with their American counterparts were described as detailed and professional, while the atmosphere was described as friendly (Greenblatt posted a photo of the participants, without ties or jackets, eating dinner at the home of US National Security Advisor Herbert Raymond McMaster.)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin this week for the first time since the Russia-US deal on a ceasefire in southwestern Syria was announced in July — but Jerusalem should not expect any concessions from Moscow over Iran’s growing military presence in Syria, a leading expert on Russian policy toward the Middle East said on Monday.
“Putin is not going to say anything that’s going to surprise Russia analysts,” Anna Borshchevskaya — the Ira Weiner Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank — told The Algemeiner.
Netanyahu arrives in the Russian resort city of Sochi on Wednesday with the issue of Iran’s footprint in Syria uppermost in his mind.
Announced on July 7 following the first encounter in person between Putin and US President Donald Trump, the exact details of the Syria ceasefire deal have remained sketchy. While both leaders said that concerns about the potential spillover of the Syrian war had been taken into account, Israel is known to be deeply concerned that the so-called “de-escalation zones” in Syria — created under a separate agreement between Russia, Turkey and Iran, without US involvement — will provide a major opportunity for Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah to continue establishing weapons factories, command posts, missile launch sites and other threats that directly endanger Israel. These worries led Netanyahu to publicly reject the deal, as other influential Israelis warned that Jerusalem would not hesitate to militarily destroy Iranian and Hezbollah assets in Syria should the imperative arise.

The good doctor's latest contribution concerns the campaign against ISIS. Kissinger warns that destroying ISIS could lead to an "Iranian radical empire".
In other words, we must leave ISIS, which is a clear and active threat to large chunks of the Middle East and Europe, intact, for fear of seeing it replaced by an arguably bigger threat represented by a "radical Iranian empire."
As usual, there are many problems with Kissinger's attempt at using medieval European concepts to analyze situations in other parts of the world.
To start with, he seems to think that the Khomeinist regime in Tehran and the so-called ISIS "caliphate" in Raqqa belong to two different categories. The truth, however, is that they are two versions of the same ugly reality, peddling the same ideology, using the same methods, and helping bestow legitimacy on one another.
What is the difference between Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claiming "supreme leadership of all Muslims throughout the world" as "Imam" and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's similar claim as "Caliph"? And aren't both regimes claiming to have the only true version of Islam with a mission to conquer the entire world in its name? One may even argue that without Khomeinism in Iran, there would not have been ISIS and ISIS-like groups, not to mention the Taliban, in our part of the world -- at least at this time.
That ISIS and the Khomeinist regime feed on each other is also illustrated by Tehran's current line of propaganda, which is telling the Iranians they must tolerate brutal oppression as the price for protection against ISIS.
Kissinger's second error is to think that it's not possible to fight against two versions of evil without favoring one.

Two North Korean shipments to a Syrian government agency responsible for the country's chemical weapons program were intercepted in the past six months, according to a confidential United Nations report on North Korea sanctions violations.
The report by a panel of independent UN experts, which was submitted to the UN Security Council earlier this month and seen by Reuters on Monday, gave no details on when or where the interdictions occurred or what the shipments contained.
"The panel is investigating reported prohibited chemical, ballistic missile and conventional arms cooperation between Syria and the DPRK (North Korea)," the experts wrote in the 37-page report.
"Two member states interdicted shipments destined for Syria. Another Member state informed the panel that it had reasons to believe that the goods were part of a KOMID contract with Syria," according to the report.
KOMID is the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation. It was blacklisted by the Security Council in 2009 and described as Pyongyang's key arms dealer and exporter of equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons. In March 2016 the council also blacklisted two KOMID representatives in Syria.
"The consignees were Syrian entities designated by the European Union and the United States as front companies for Syria's Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC), a Syrian entity identified by the Panel as cooperating with KOMID in previous prohibited item transfers," the UN experts wrote.
SSRC has overseen the country's chemical weapons program since the 1970s.

South Africa has recently been attempting to impede the development and strengthening of ties between Israel and other nations on the African continent.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has made strengthening Israel's ties with Africa a priority with the stated goal of breaking the automatic anti-Israel majority at the UN.
A senior South African diplomat said today that his country would boycott a planned summit in two months in Togo because it was "designed to normalize the relations between the African countries and a country whose sole concern is the occupation of another people."
He added that Israel "behaves in a shocking manner when it maintains a blockade of the Gaza Strip and causes great suffering to the Palestinian population."
The official said that South Africa would call on other countries to hold a dialogue on the need to boycott Israel and not strengthen relations with the Jewish State. "We can not turn a blind eye to the Israeli efforts to enlist support from Africa and elsewhere in order to undermine the Palestinian cause."

The organizers of the Africa- Israel summit scheduled for the end of October in Lomé, Togo, have not received official word from Pretoria that South Africa will be boycotting the summit, despite remarks to the contrary made last week by that country’s ambassador to Lebanon and Syria.
Nevertheless, there is no expectation at all that South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma would attend the conference, as South Africa has emerged as one of the leading forces in sub-Saharan Africa working against Israeli efforts to make inroads on the continent. For instance, it was South Africa, according to Israeli diplomatic officials, which has blocked for years Israel’s acceptance as an observer to the African Union.
The South African newspaper The Citizen last week quoted Sean Benfeldt, the country’s ambassador to Lebanon and Syria as telling a delegation of the Popular Conference of Palestinians Abroad that Pretoria will not take part in the event which he described as a step to normalize relations between Africa and an “occupation state.”
According to the report, “the South African ambassador highlighted what he believed was Israel’s inhumane blockade of the Gaza Strip, stressing the need for practical solutions to the humanitarian suffering of the population in the besieged territory. Benfeldt also adopted the delegation’s proposal to invite ambassadors of African countries in Lebanon to a special meeting soon to talk about the summit with Israel and the need to boycott it.”
Al Jazeera reported last week that in addition to South Africa, several other African countries – including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania – have decided to boycott the summit.

Israeli troops arrested a Hebron man in possession of an M-4 assault rifle as he was apparently trying to smuggle it into Israel from the southern West Bank on Monday night, officials said.
According to police, the suspect, a Jordanian national living in Hebron, drove through a barricade that had been set up in the southern Hebron Hills in light of intelligence gathered by detectives.
As he sped away, police officers gave chase in their car. The man, 30, abandoned his vehicle and took off on foot, with the detectives in pursuit.
He was arrested near the area of Tel Arad in the southern Hebron Hills, police said.
Inside the car, the detectives found the M-4 assault rifle with a fully loaded magazine. In his interrogation, the suspect said he was paid NIS 500 ($140) to drive the car into Israel. According to police, the man knew a gun was inside the vehicle.
Footage of the arrest was captured by a soldier from the Combat Intelligence Corps who was monitoring the scene through a surveillance camera, the army said.

Israeli secret intelligence officials enjoyed such success with the operation to distract Earth’s population from their nefarious doings by blocking the sun with the moon that more such events are planned.
A source within the Mossad told PreOccupied Territory today (Monday) that the extent to which the day’s solar eclipse diverted attention from the organization’s efforts to cement control over the world’s governments, economy, and media proved effective far beyond organizers had predicted, and the Mossad’s Deputy Director for Operations has ordered three such eclipses in 2018 and 2019, plus two each year afterwards until 2028.
Department heads congratulated one another on a task well done, with special recognition reserved for the Outer Space Operations Division, which has seen some the Mossad’s most daring successes in recent decades. Today’s coup comes on the heels of the lunar eclipse two weeks ago, which concealed a mass movement of alien vessels away from Earth following a mind-control-technology exchange.
“We’re chuffed to bits,” gushed a section chief in uncharacteristic exuberance. “We haven’t had a string of uninterrupted successes like this since at least the First Gulf War, perhaps even 1967. Of course nothing can compare to the sense of accomplishment had by those who contributed to the Seven Years’ War of the eighteenth century – the first world war, in a sense – but only a handful of operatives are still around who had a hand in that, since longevity pills were discontinued in 1917.”

Four years ago, when 29-year-old Alaa Sayej was setting up a brewery in his hometown of Birzeit, north of Ramallah, he encountered a problem he didn’t foresee: Palestinian authorities insisted his logo looked too much like Jesus.
Officials from the Palestinian Authority found the image of a staff-holding shepherd dressed in somewhat biblical garb, surrounded by olive branches, hops, and barley too troublesome for the market. Look a little more closely and you can see a single star above the shepherd — a not-so-subtle allusion to the stars that guided shepherds to baby Jesus’s birthplace in Bethlehem, according to the biblical account.
“If they knew anything about religion, they would have known that Jesus would have been a baby in this image. Do you see a baby,” said Sayej, who learned to love beer while working as a banker in London.
“He looks more like Moses with the staff,” Sayej laughed. After convincing the Palestinian authorities the figure was not Jesus, his biggest challenge actually came from the Israeli border control, that held up imports of machinery and supplies from Europe, he said.
The brewery began selling beer in 2015. The issues with the Palestinian Authority and Israel have been smoothed over, and Sayej’s beer is sold across the Palestinian territories, in Israel, Italy and Chile, the last being home to a large Palestinian diaspora.
Between Saturday and Sunday, some 7,000-8,000 Palestinians and tourists showed their love for the beer by traveling to the edge of a little village at the far eastern end of Bethlehem called Beit Sahour for the second annual Shepherds Beer Festival.

Hamas security forces arrested over 170 Islamic State-inspired jihadists last week, senior Gaza-based jihadist Abou Baker al-Maqdesi told Breitbart Jerusalem.
According to al-Maqdesi, who is aligned with IS ideology, the Salafi jihadists were arrested on Sunday morning in the wake of the explosion last week on the border between Egypt and Gaza in which a Hamas security officer was killed while detaining a jihadist who was trying to infiltrate the Sinai Peninsula.
The incident occurred early Thursday morning when a Salafi blew himself up next to Hamas security personnel after being stopped at a checkpoint along with another jihadist. The two planned to infiltrate Sinai but were caught by surprise by Hamas security personnel. During the ensuing security check, the Salafi triggered his explosives, killing one of the Hamas members.
Hamas immediately embarked on a wide-ranging wave of arrests, al-Maqdesi stated, resulting in the detention of over 170 individuals. He also said that Hamas raided the homes of dozens more. According to al-Maqdesi, Hamas members were among those arrested, suspected of supporting the Islamic State and the organization’s ideology.

The Hezbollah terrorist organization announced that it had attacked two positions belonging to rival terrorist organization ISIS Monday afternoon.
The Shiite terrorist organization coordinated its attack with the Lebanese army. The battle took place on ISIS-controlled territory along the Syrian-Lebanese border.
According to Hezbollah, the Lebanese army succeeded in taking two-thirds of the territory held held ISIS along the border. 15 ISIS terrorists and three Lebanese soldiers were reportedly killed in the fighting.
Hezbollah's military wing announced that it had used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) during Monday's operation and published video showing the drone strikes. This is not the first time Hezbollah drones have been seen in Syria.
Hezbollah is believed to possess hundreds of UAVs.

Much has been written about Syria’s civil war — but sadly the mounting death and destruction there has long since become mere statistics. The international community has grown comfortably numb to the horror, and the external players — especially Russia and Iran — have been nurturing their vested interests by prolonging the deadly conflict.
What happened to the sentiment of “never again” that was universally embraced in the wake of World War II to prevent calamities such as this from occurring? How low will the moral bar of the international community sink before we awake to the unfolding catastrophe in Syria?
How many more men, women and children must die, and how much ruin can the country further sustain before we act to stop this madness that seems to infect every party involved?
“Crimes against humanity” has become a mere slogan. The international community has assumed no responsibility, and discharged their moral culpability while the blood of innocent Syrian people continues to stream, marring what’s left of our collective conscience.

Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Ake Sellstrom, who is now chief scientist for the U.N.-OPCW mission, said it is critical that perpetrators of chemical attacks are put on trial to deter future use of weapons of mass destruction. His team should be reporting back to the U.N. by mid-October, he said.
A key unsolved question is what happened to the 2,000 aerial bombs that Syria said it had converted to conventional weapons, a process that would be costly and time-consuming.
"To my knowledge, the Syrian government never furnished any details of where, when and how they changed the bombs' payload," said an OPCW-U.N. source, who took part in investigations in 2015-2016. He said there clearly was "a real, high-level, command structure behind this."
Syrian officials did not respond to requests for comment about the bombs.
The team is also examining the deaths of almost 100 people on April 4 when a gas attack hit Khan Sheikhoun, a town in the rebel-held province of Idlib near the Turkish border. Samples taken from people exposed to the chemicals and tested by the OPCW confirmed sarin use. Meqdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, said in the interview that Syrian forces were not to blame, repeating earlier denials by Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem.
Sellstrom said the presence of sarin so long after Syria was supposed to have dismantled its chemical weapons program posed difficult questions. "Is there a hideout somewhere, or is there production somewhere and how much is available?" he said, adding that the reported use of aerial bombs in Khan Sheikhoun could point to the Syrian forces keeping some strategic weapons as well.
The attack means either "that someone can produce sarin today, or sarin has been hidden," Sellstrom said.

One of US President Donald Trump’s most longstanding conservative critics, Bret Stephens of The New York Times, recently challenged pro-Israel conservatives on why they still support the president.
“The president’s Jewish supporters are left to wonder why the Iran deal remains in force... Bashar al-Assad is stronger than ever, [and] the Israeli government is outraged by the deals the administration has cut with Russia at Israel’s strategic expense.”
While America, the media, and the world have completely focused on the presidential melodrama, America has taken its eye off potentially more consequential issues in the Middle East affecting national security interests for years to come. First among the essential decisions coming due is on Iran.
Will Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of Defense James Mattis convince President Trump, for the third time, to recertify Iranian compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in October, despite evidence of serious violations? Only UN Ambassador Nikki Haley seems inclined to oppose recertification, but she is not in the inner circle.
As Ambassador Eric Edelman and Gen. (ret.) Charles Wald, former deputy commander of US European Command, wrote in Politico, abiding by the JCPOA “will only enable a nuclear and hegemonic Iran. It provides Tehran significant financial, military and geopolitical benefits... in exchange for minimal, reversible and temporary concessions on its nuclear program... the JCPOA puts Iran on track to become as intractable a challenge as North Korea is today.”

In order to understand Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) needs full access to Iran’s Parchin military installation, two experts on nuclear weapons wrote in a report published Monday.
David Albright, a former weapons inspector and current president of the Institute for Science and International Security, Olli Heinonen, former IAEA Deputy Director, and three others wrote in a report that the IAEA has inadequate means to investigate possible Iranian violations of the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
According to the report, the problem is that the arrangement made for investigating Parchin, a military site where Iran is believed to have conducted nuclear weapons research, “established inadequate rules for on-the-ground investigation and environmental sampling about alleged nuclear weapons-related high explosive work at this Parchin site.”
The IAEA discovered two particles of uranium in its investigation of Parchin. The Obama administration later acknowledged this was likely an indication of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, which, according to the report “should have been a ‘red-flag’ necessitating further follow-up investigation.”

Iran’s atomic chief warned Tuesday the Islamic Republic needs only five days to ramp up its uranium enrichment to 20 percent, a level at which the material could be used for a nuclear weapon.
The comments by Ali Akbar Salehi to Iranian state television come as US President Donald Trump repeatedly has threatened to renegotiate or walk away from the 2015 nuclear deal.
Salehi’s warning, along with recent comments by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, show Iran is willing to push back against Trump while still acknowledging they want to keep the deal, which lifted crippling economic sanctions on the country.
“If there is a plan for a reaction and a challenge, we will definitely surprise them,” said Salehi, who also serves as one of Rouhani’s vice presidents. “If we make the determination, we are able to resume 20 percent-enrichment in at most five days.”

[T]he existence of the cypress logs dated to the 9th–2nd centuries BCE in the Al-Aqsa Mosque raises many questions concerning their origin in constructions built more than 1500 years earlier.

Palestinian teachers are returning to Kuwait, ending an absence that spanned over a quarter of a century, to join their counterparts from Kuwait and other nationalities to contribute to the development of education. The government of Kuwait agreed to re-hire Palestinian teachers, many of whom left the country during Iraq’s 1990-91 invasion and occupation of Kuwait, thus paving the way for the Ministry of Education to contact the Palestinian embassy to recruit the teachers.

MP Dr Mohammad Al-Huwailah, Chairman of the Education Committee at the National Assembly, said he was confident the Palestinian teachers would boost educational level in Kuwait. “We in the educational parliamentary committee are keen on recruiting excellent teachers from abroad, in addition to emphasizing on the special role of the Kuwaiti teachers,” he said in previous press remarks.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a statement earlier this month, rallied behind the teachers who are on their way to Kuwait, a nation that had heavily depended on Palestinian educators years ago.
“Kuwait fondly recollects Palestinian contributions to pedagogy and the passion with which Palestinian instructors have imparted their knowledge to the people of Kuwait,” Abbas told the contingent of teachers. He noted that the success of the educators will “open the door for the triumphant return of Palestinian instructors to the Gulf region. “We trust you to carry on the legacy of the Palestinian teacher,” Abbas said. Palestinian teachers accounted for 49 percent of overall teachers in Kuwait between 1965 and 1975.

Famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz said Sunday that liberals had a special obligation to condemn bigotry on the left side of the political spectrum, just as President Trump did for those on the right who claim to speak on his behalf.
"I don't want to make moral equivalence," Dershowitz told AM 970's John Catsimatidis, responding to a question about the Charlottesville violence and the ensuing national conversation around race relations and Confederate monuments. "But having said that, that doesn't give a pass to the people on the hard left, who are themselves engaged in violence and also some bigotry of their own."
He continued, saying Confederate statues needed to be put in context -- for example, in a museum -- rather than simply being destroyed.
Turning to the Russian probe, Dershowitz said that special counsel Robert Mueller was endangering democracy because the investigation could criminalize politics.
"The idea of trying to create crimes just because we disagree with (President Trump) politically and target him really endangers democracy," Dershowitz said. "We should only be using the criminal justice system against obvious crimes, crimes that are not stretched and manufactured to fit a particular person."

The Black Lives Matter movement blindsided its Jewish supporters with the recent unveiling of its social and political policy agenda, a far-left manifesto that strays well beyond police brutality and accuses Israel of “genocide” and “apartheid.”
“The U.S. justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people,” said the platform’s “Invest-Divest” policy brief.
Through foreign aid to Israel, which the platform describes as an “apartheid state,” Americans are made “complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government,” the brief says.
The strong anti-Israel language stunned liberal Jews, many of whom have expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement’s protests against shootings by police of unarmed black men.
“It is a real tragedy that Black Lives Matter — which has done so much good in raising awareness of police abuses — has now moved away from its central mission and has declared war against the nation state of the Jewish people,” said Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan M. Dershowitz in a Friday column in The Boston Globe.
He called on the Movement for Black Lives coalition to rescind the anti-Israel component of the platform, issued Aug. 1 and backed by 67 groups, including Color of Change, which is funded by top Democratic Party donors George Soros and the Center for American Progress.

After withering and justified criticism for calling some of the protesters at a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville “some very fine people,” US President Donald Trump has a unique opportunity to re-establish his moral credibility as a leader through an eloquent condemnation of racism, neo-Nazism and white supremacy. He should devote an entire address to a complete and utter condemnation of racism and bigotry and reaffirm the American and biblical proclamation of all people being created equally in the image of God. It is in this spirit that I suggest the following:
My fellow Americans.
Last weekend we witnessed one of the truly shameful episodes in modern American history. A group of white nationalists and racists tried to emulate Hitler’s torchlight parade of January 1933 upon becoming chancellor of Germany, right here in America. The torchlight parade of Hitler’s followers and SS marked the beginning of the darkest period in the history of humankind.
That any American group would seek to copy that procession to make a political statement demonstrates that hatred and bigotry continue to flourish not just far away in Europe but here in the United States. But events only cascaded from there, with the demonstrations turning violent and an innocent and courageous woman, Heather Heyer, who had a reputation for fighting injustice, losing her life when a hate-filled racist assailant rammed his car into a crowd of counter-demonstrators.
I am the first American president to have Jewish children. My daughter Ivanka was not born Jewish. Rather, she chose to become a Jew. This was a decision that I supported fully and although I am not Jewish myself I put on a kosher Jewish wedding for her and her husband who is now my senior adviser in the White House. Since then, I have watched my Jewish grandchildren celebrating Hanukka and Passover and I have personally witnessed the richness of Jewish life. Millions of parents were robbed of the opportunity to watch children grow up and millions of children were denied the opportunity to be hugged and loved by parents because of the white supremacist cancer known as Nazism that was allowed to grow unchecked in Europe.
Let me be clear: I will never allow bigotry of any kind to flourish in the United States.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the famed Nazi-hunter and Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, warned that a rising tide of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe is being largely ignored, even as white supremacist rallies in the West draw extensive coverage.
“The neo-Nazi demonstrations in the US definitely raise the level of fear among blacks and Jews, but practically speaking, they [American neo-Nazis] do not pose a threat, statistically speaking. Of course it is horrible to see swastika flags, but that’s a problem in the world’s biggest democracy, which has freedom of speech.”
“In smaller countries, however, like Lithuania or Latvia, the government’s ability to act against [neo-Nazis] is limited, and [in Eastern Europe] there is really a serious threat to the Jewish community.”
Even Israeli leaders, Zuroff said, seem to show disproportionate focus on demonstrations by white supremacists in the West, while all but ignoring the far more dangerous growth of neo-Nazism in Eastern Europe.
“It seems that these [Israeli] politicians who were quick to speak with the media in response to what happened in [Charlottesville] perhaps did so in order to get themselves a headline; but I would really expect them to respond to similar incidents that have already happened in Eastern European countries, yet in those cases there is Israeli silence.”

The person US President Donald Trump chose to lead federal family-planning programs once referred to a defender of Holocaust deniers as a “national treasure.”
Teresa Manning, Trump’s pick for deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services is known for her history as a fierce anti-abortion activist and former lobbyist with the National Right to Life Committee.
She also has a history defending and praising Joe Sobran, a former columnist and editor for the conservative magazine National Review until its then editor William Buckley fired him for writings he considered “contextually anti-Semitic.”
Mother Jones was first to report Manning’s history with Sobran, who died in 2010.
During a January 2003 event promoting her book “Back to The Drawing Board: The Future of the Pro-Life Movement,” Manning introduced Sobran, who was a speaker, and said of him: “He has been called ‘the finest columnist of his generation’ as well as a national treasure.’ I wholeheartedly agree with both statements.”
In fact, it was Pat Buchanan, who himself has doubted the death toll of the Holocaust and who the Anti-Defamation League has called “an unrepentant bigot,” who was responsible for the former quote.
Additionally, Sobran had in the past blamed US policies, particularly regarding its anti-terrorism measures after the September 11 attacks, as being “dictated by the Jewish-Zionist powers that be in the United States.”
“What began as a war on terror is morphing into a war to crush Israel’s enemies. And naturally so,” he said. “The 9/11 attacks would never have occurred except for the US Government’s Middle East policies, which are pretty much dictated by the Jewish-Zionist powers that be in the United Staes. The Zionists boast privately of their power, but they don’t want the gentiles talking about it. Readers of Orwell will recognize the principle of Doublethink.”
Manning did not respond to a request for comment.

The Argentine newspaper Clarín revealed Friday that investigators had found a bizarre drug cocktail of the tranquilizers clonazepam and ketamine in the blood of Alberto Nisman, a top prosecutor found shot dead the night before testifying to Iranian meddling in Argentina’s government.
Nisman was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head on January 18, 2015, in his apartment, the night before he was to testify to Congress that his research suggested that then-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner agreed to help the Iranian authors of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) evade justice in exchange for favorable oil prices from that country. The AMIA bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack in the Western Hemisphere before September 11, 2001, killing 85 people.
Kirchner’s legal team initially ruled the death a suicide. President Mauricio Macri launched a new investigation, using a new legal team, following his succession of Kirchner that has found evidence Nisman’s death was a homicide.
Clarín reported last week that the new toxicology findings suggest that Nisman had either tried to use a nearly unprecedented mix of drugs—clonazepam is a tranquilizer typically prescribed to help with anxiety, while ketamine is a veterinary anesthetic sometimes illicitly used by humans for recreation—recreationally and killed himself, or someone drugged Nisman in order to kill him without a struggle. While initial toxicology tests had found the clonazepam, commonly prescribed enough to not raise suspicions, the discovery of ketamine creates many new legal questions.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said that he “woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the internet” following his company’s decision to terminate service for neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer last week.
However, in 2015, Prince defended himself after facing pressure to rescind service to ISIS-affiliated sites.
“Individuals have decided that there is content they disagree with but the right way to deal with this is to follow the established law enforcement procedures,” Prince proclaimed after a hacking collective provided Cloudflare with a list of ISIS-related websites. “There is no society on Earth that tolerates mob rule because the mob is fickle.”
“We’re the plumbers of the internet… We make the pipes work but it’s not right for us to inspect what is or isn’t going through the pipes,” he continued. “If companies like ours or ISPs (internet service providers) start censoring there would be an uproar. It would lead us down a path of internet censors and controls akin to a country like China.”
According to the IB Times, Google and GoDaddy were also revealed to be providing service to pro-ISIS websites in 2015.

Based on Prof. Elman’s prior reporting, it appears that the allegations of harassment and threats from Lumish and the others holding vigil will be contested. It is significant that the Court already found that the allegations were insufficient for an ex parte TRO.
Faith Meltzer, one of the protestors, pushed back against the narrative that the bakery is being protested because Assil is Palestinian-American, or that the protesters have been violent. Meltzer wrote in Berkleyside, The vigils at Reem’s Bakery are not about Israelis vs Palestinians, but about a symbol offensive to many:
I’ve participated in several vigils at Reem’s Bakery in Oakland, and would like to take this opportunity to clear up some inaccuracies in Carol Sanders’ August 11 opinion piece.
The vigils at Reem’s Bakery in Oakland are not about Israelis vs. Palestinians. They are not about Jews vs. Muslims, or even about the left vs. the right….
Rolling vigils have been held at Reem’s for several weeks, protesting a mural that features a convicted terrorist, Rasmea Odeh…. Two young men, Leon Kanner and Edward Joffee, were killed and nine others injured in the attacks….
Participants in the vigils at Reem’s include animal justice advocates, a local labor leader, LGBTQ activists and a former Bernie Sanders delegate, hardly the “right wing” brigade described by Sanders in her op-ed.
At the July 8 vigil a wheelchair bound participant and a 78-year-old survivor of the Warsaw ghetto were viciously attacked by patrons and employees of Reem’s. They were not “blocking the entrances.” They were standing silently with signs that stated, “Honor the Victims. Not their Killer.” Police reports were filed. This incident was documented in the local Jewish paper, The J Weekly, and by photos and videos taken by bystanders at the scene. The attackers strutted around with the signs they ripped out of people’s hands.
Reem’s has repeatedly used the Oakland Police Department to silence the voices of those in peaceful protest. At the August 8 vigil, two squad cars and four police officers were dispatched to deal with seven protesters in an effort to deprive them not only of their right to free assembly, but their right to free expression….
The case also raises serious constitutional and free speech issues, as the bakery owner seeks to punish protest, to halt or move continued protest, and a prior restraint of speech.
We will continue to follow the case.

In an online op-ed for the Adelaide Advertiser on Friday 11 August, AIJAC guest Dr Eran Lerman congratulated the South Australian Legislative Council for rightly calling for a negotiated outcome between Israel and the Palestinian Authority prior to a Palestinian state being recognised.
Presumably in response to this, Australian Friends of Palestine Association executive officer Mike Khizam had his own piece published on the Advertiser's website on Monday 14 August.
While Dr Lerman used nuance and reason to make his point, Khizam relied on anti-Israel canards, missing context and blatant mistruths to press his own misinformed views.
There is much wrong with the piece, but I will focus on a few key issues:

Last Sunday afternoon, the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and the United Israel Appeal (UIA) held a public event at a local Jewish School hall
Rabbi Shalom White, from Perth's Chabad congregation, attended the AIJAC/UIA event, together with his children.
As they approached the venue and saw about ten protesters at a Boycott ("BDS") rally, chanting “free, free Palestine…” and holding placards reading “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea”. They stopped to take a selfie with the rally as background.
When the Rabbi and his children arrived at the entrance to the venue, with the BDS rally on the opposite side of the street, the BDS rallyists shouted “Shame on you: child murderers!”
The Rabbi responded: “My children go to this school. They must be protected by these same guards you see here, because of the possibility of a terrorist attack targeting Jewish children. Are their lives worth less than Arab children’s lives?”
BDS rally: “YES! You brought it on yourselves…”
Rabbi White: “Are you saying that my child's life is not worth anything?”
BDS: “Shame on you, child murderers!”

The Swiss foreign ministry announced that it suspended funds and support for the Ramallah-based Palestininian NGO Human Rights International Humanitarian Law Secretariat because the organization failed to slash ties to terrorism, according to a Sunday report from the paper SonntagsZeitung.
Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the president of the Jerusalem-based NGO-Monitor, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday, "This is an important first step in NGO funding accountability by the Swiss Foreign Ministry, and reflects the recent legislation on this issue. In halting payment to WATC [Women Affairs Technical Committee] , the Swiss follow similar moves by Denmark and Holland. The radical Palestinian NGO is one of many funded by these countries through the Ramallah-based Human Rights Secretariat, with an annual budget of $4 million."
He added, "A number of the recipients are affiliated with the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) terror organization. Having now frozen WATC funding, the question is whether the Swiss Federal Government will seriously re-examine participation in the very problematic Secretariat mechanism, and in other frameworks that misuse tax money under the facade of human rights and peace. "
The Human Rights International Humanitarian Law Secretariat provides funds to the WATC, which named a youth center after a Palestinian terrorist. Critics of the Human Rights International Humanitarian Law Secretariat say it glorifies Palestinian terrorism.

Last weekend, approximately 150 progressive activists attended the annual SlutWalk Chicago. Billed as a rally in support of women and to end “sexual violence and the social codes of shame, silence, and blame,” the event at times seemed more like an anti-Israel rally, with women’s rights serving as a mere opening act.
Controversy surrounding SlutWalk Chicago began long before the first speaker grabbed the megaphone.
In June, three Jewish women were ejected from the Chicago Dyke March for carrying LGBTQ Pride flags featuring a Star of David. Organizers declared the Dyke March to be an anti-Zionist event, and removed the Jewish activists even though they did not display anything advocating for Israel. In solidarity with the Dyke March decision, SlutWalk Chicago originally banned the Star of David from their event. They later reversed that decision, stating: “Bring symbols of your respective faiths, if that is what you choose to do. Bring symbols of resistance, but leave symbols of nationalism and oppression at home.”
According to attorney Amanda Berman, Jews and supporters of Israel have found themselves unwelcome in some elements of the progressive movement.
“In the progressive Jewish community, it’s been very difficult to participate in progressive activism as a proud Jew and proud Zionist. We’ve been unwelcome for quite some time,” Berman told the Haym Salomon Center. “This year has been especially challenging, considering the Women’s March, support for BDS and this notion that Zionists can’t be feminists and Zionists can’t be progressive. Meanwhile, we are excluded based on our innate characteristics.”

The Government Press Office held a hearing for Al Jazeera’s Israeli-Arab reporter Elias Karram.
The GPO revoked Karram’s press credentials last week after an interview surfaced in which the Al Jazeera Jerusalem bureau chief said that journalists like himself sided with the Palestinians as part of their “resistance” to Israel. The hearing was essentially about whether to reinstate his accreditation.
Karam said in an interview to the Muslim Brotherhood television channel Dar Al-Iman in May 2016 that “as a Palestinian journalist who is in an occupied area or a conflict area, journalistic work is an integral part of the resistance and of political and educational action.
“A journalist fulfills his role in the resistance through his pen, voice or camera, because he is part of this nation and is resisting in his unique way,” he added.
At Monday’s hearing, Karram told the GPO that “the resistance he spoke about was not a violent one, adding that he denounces the use of violence.”

There is no dispute over the hardships that Gazans are enduring as a result of chronic electricity outages. It is difficult not to feel sympathy with LA Times opinion piece writer Abier Almasri as she describes life in Gaza with only limited electricity.
However, Almasri states:
To Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, Gazans are pawns in a shameful quest for political domination. As the occupying power, Israel bears responsibility under international law to facilitate normal life for the people of Gaza. Hamas exercises internal control and is responsible for protecting our rights. The Palestinian Authority oversees millions in donor funds and should also protect our rights, including paying for vital services.
As Almasri well knows, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and is not “occupying” it. Moreover, Almasri fails to mention anywhere in her article the major reason for the lack of “normal life” in Gaza: Hamas terror.
Hamas has made every effort over the years to ensure that Israelis, and not only those living in border communities, cannot live normal lives free from the threat of terrorism, rockets, mortars, attack tunnels, and kidnappings.
This is the reason that Israel has to maintain security protocols that affect the lives of Gazans. Were Hamas to give up its Jew-killing desires, there would simply be no reason for Israel to secure its borders against terror.

Australia’s national news service defended its decision to broadcast a graphic showing a map of the Middle East that included Palestine but not Israel.
Shown during an Aug. 17 segment on ABC News Australia, the map illustrated a story about how laws in 11 Muslim-majority countries and the Palestinian territories treat rape victims.
“The story was about the repealing of a law in Lebanon that allowed rapists to escape punishment if they married their victims,” a senior executive for the Australian Broadcasting Corp. told JTA. “The map showed other countries where this law had already been repealed (in the blue) and countries where campaigners are actively trying to have it repealed (in the yellow).”
Israel, the executive explained, never had the law to begin with, so it was not included. Had it been included, the spokesman suggested, the criticism might have been even more intense.
“In context, I wonder if including Israel in the map might have attracted more warranted criticism … The story had nothing at all to do with it,” the spokesman said. “We have commented on the story to the Daily Mail and they’ve amended the story.”

Then, in the very next breath – and as though it were comparable to murders, terrorism, death threats and violence over cartoons deemed offensive by some Muslims – Rowson went straight on to the topic of entirely non-violent criticism from a particular group.
Rowson: “A few years ago I just stopped doing cartoons about Israel because I was fed up of every time I did a cartoon about Israel getting literally thousands of emails accusing me of being a worst anti-Semite than Hitler, which is just not true. But everybody will use this excuse of being offended to shut up the person they’re engaged in an argument with.”
While Martin Rowson is rightly protective of his own freedom to ‘speak truth to power’ (as long as it’s not Muslim power), he is obviously less keen on the idea of anyone else criticising the power that he holds as a widely published cartoonist influencing public opinion. In the past Rowson has accused “the Israel lobby” of using antisemitism (i.e. the Livingstone Formulation) to try to silence his “criticism of their brutally oppressive colonialism”.
This is a Martin Rowson cartoon from July 2006 relating to the second Lebanon war that began when Hizballah conducted a cross-border raid and fired missiles at Israeli civilian communities:

Max Pearson, however, had nothing to tell listeners about Rowson’s trite, monochrome, one-sided Israel-related cartoons or why some people might find them objectionable. Instead – immediately after Rowson’s remarks about “getting…emails” he said:
Pearson: “So almost by definition – going back to my original point – the political cartoon is dangerous.”
Rowson: “Yeah. It’s meant to be dangerous. It’s a sort of point of licence to anarchy.”
Pearson closed by thanking the “esteemed cartoonist” and BBC World Service audiences went away with the impression that indignant e-mails carry the same weight and importance as the terrorist murders of cartoonists who drew Mohammed.

An Austrian soccer fan has been given an 18-month prison sentence for a Hitler salute during a match, falling foul of the country’s tough laws against Nazi glorification.
The unemployed 39-year-old from top-flight Rapid Vienna’s “ultra” wing of hardline fans was spotted performing the banned gesture during a match in August 2016 and sentenced in Vienna on Monday.
“I didn’t really give it much thought. But it clearly wasn’t a good idea,” the skinhead told the court, saying he had had “a few beers and spritzers” before the game.
Similar convictions are relatively common but usually the sentences are suspended. In this case, however, than man had a previous conviction for wishing Hitler happy birthday on Facebook in 2013.
Rapid Vienna is Austria’s most successful club with 32 league titles but its hardcore “ultra” supporters have a reputation for hooliganism and anti-Semitism.

The Swiss Federal Assembly is to vote on whether to ban the import of kosher meat into the country, with the head of the country’s Jewish community describing such a move as a huge blow to religious freedom.
The bill, which was introduced to the Swiss parliament in June, would make it illegal to bring in any meat slaughtered in what the law would deem to be an inhumane fashion. This would include both kosher and halal meat, where the animal is still conscious at the point of slaughter. A date for the vote has not yet been scheduled.
According to the Tages Anzeiger newspaper, there has been strong opposition to the bill – not due to any perceived racist overtones, but rather because it would also ban foie gras, goose liver pâté, which is popular in Switzerland.
Herbert Winter, president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, said the bill would “be a massive limitation on the religious freedoms of Jews” in Switzerland. According to figures from the European Jewish Congress, the country’s Jewish community is around 18,000.

A monument put up by Jews in Bulgaria to thank the town of Vidin for preventing the deportation of its Jews during the Holocaust was vandalized over the weekend.
The Thanksgiving Monument, erected in 2003, was spray-painted with the words “Allah,” “Palestine,” “Hamas,” and the Islamic star and crescent moon symbol, the Shalom Organization of Jewish in Bulgaria said in a Facebook post on Monday.
The organization posted photos of the vandalism, which occurred on Saturday, on its Facebook page.
The mayor of the Vidin municipality, Ognyan Tsenkov, called the vandalism an “outrageous and unacceptable” act, the Shalom Organization said in its post. He reportedly ordered that the monument be cleaned immediately.

A collection of 18th century Jewish items was seized from archaeology smugglers by Egyptian authorities late last week in a joint operation between the Hurghada Ports Authority and the Egyptian Ports Antiquities Unit of the Ministry of Antiquities.
The smugglers attempted to move six Jewish artifacts via the Red Sea resort city of Hurghada. According to a report in AhramOnline, Ahmed Al-Rawi, head of the Central Administration of Seized Antiquities Unit at the antiquities ministry, said the seized loot was discovered in the possession of a Saudi citizen. Al-Rawi said the finds were authenticated in accordance with law 117/1983.
Included in the trove was a cane with a handle carved in stone which depicts a bearded man wearing a yarmulke.
Additionally, five stone reliefs engraved with texts written in Hebrew and other Jewish decorative elements were discovered, according to a Facebook post from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.
An additional find in the seized collection was a 29-page Hebrew book described by the Egyptians as “the commandments of Judas Iscariot,” one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. This item was not dated to the 18th century and its typeface points to a much more modern provenance.

Royal Dutch Shell is reportedly seeking to purchase natural gas from Israel and Cyprus, and to deliver the gas to Egypt.
Shell is currently in private discussions to purchase natural gas from Israel’s Leviathan offshore field, which will be combined with output from Cyprus’s Aphrodite field and pumped to a plant in Egypt, Bloomberg News reported on Monday.
Gas deliveries to Egypt would be channeled through a Shell plant pipeline located on the country’s Mediterranean coast.
The Israeli and Cypriot offshore gas fields, together with Egypt’s large Zohr field, could see the region become a hub for natural gas production in Europe’s backyard.
In April, government ministers from Israel, Cyprus, Greece, Italy and the European Union signed a joint statement agreeing to collaboratively develop the world’s longest gas pipeline, running undersea between Israel and Italy.
The agreement boosted Israel’s position as “a significant player in the international energy economy,” Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said at the time.

A letter from Albert Einstein to his best friend in which he criticises Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany is to be sold at auction.
One of a series of letters from the Nobel Prize winning physicist to Michele Besso in 1938, it outlines how Einstein thought Chamberlain – then British prime minister – was “naïve” to think Hitler would turn his attentions away from the UK.
Due to be sold by Los Angeles-based Nate D. Sanders Auctions, its covers Einstein’s reactions to world news in the days after Chamberlain returned from Germany with an undertaking from Hitler not to attack, declaring “peace in our time”.
To Besso, who together with Einstein was helping save European Jews, the genius wrote: “You have confidence in the British and even Chamberlain? O sancta simplicitas …!” The Latin phrase translates as ‘Oh holy innocence’ or ‘naiveté.
Of Churchill’s predecessor, who had just signed the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi Germany to annex Czechoslovakia, Einstein wrote: “Hoping that Hitler might let off steam by attacking Russia, he sacrifices Eastern Europe. But we will come to see once more that shrewdness does not win in the long term.”

In a café in Jerusalem’s Cinema City complex, over plates of Israeli breakfast, shakshuka and a communal bowl of fries, a group of seven young Taiwanese volunteers share their experiences during their time in Israel and recount with humor the similarities and differences between the two cultures.
“I still remember Independence Day, there was supposed to be a celebration party in Gilo Park, and originally they told me it started at 8 o’clock and I was there until 9, maybe a little later, and they finally started and I thought, ‘Okay, this kind of reminds me of home,’” recounts Cindy, with a lighthearted chuckle, a volunteer who has been spending the past five months at the Gilo branch of ILAN, the Israel foundation for handicapped children.
Cindy then adds: “Transportation is really different here; when you cross the street, the cars stop.”
She along with six other volunteers are taking time off from their studies or their current careers to explore Israel and to serve some of its most needy citizens, working with organizations like ILAN, the Israeli society for autistic children ALUT, and Elwyn, which is an organization dedicated to helping people with disabilities.
Both Israeli and Taiwanese cultures put a strong emphasis on the family and when asked about how their families took the news that their children would be spending an extended period of time in the Middle East, one volunteer explained: “Our parents tried to stop us from coming, but I take a lot of pictures and send them so they feel better about me being here.” This comment was met with emphatic head nods and hand-overmouth laughter from the rest of the group.

Legendary singer Billy Joel appeared onstage for an encore during his monthly concert at Madison Square Garden wearing a yellow Star of David on his jacket.
Photos of Joel wearing the yellow star began appearing on Facebook shortly after Monday night’s concert. At least one tweet bore the hashtag #Charlottesville. Other tweets called Joel “a true hero,” and his decision to wear the star “Epic and brave.” A tweet read: “So dope seeing Billy Joel live and seeing him take a stand to the hate in our country. Wearing the star of david is a huge statement.”
Another tweet took issue with Joel’s statement. “What is Billy Joel protesting? A president with part Jewish kids? The fact that Muslim immigrants in the US tend to be anti-semitic? WHAT!?” The tweet was in response to another which said “Ok, so Billy Joel has lost his mind.”
Joel’s parents are Jewish but he was not brought up religious. He has been described as a secular Jew and an atheist.

A Libyan Imam has received CHF600,000 ($620,000) in state welfare payments while preaching messages of hatred against other religions from a mosque in Biel, Swiss public television has discovered.

The Rundschau news programme obtained a recording of Abu Ramadan preaching:“Oh Allah, I beg you to destroy the enemies of our religion. Destroy the Jews, Christians, Hindus, Russians and the Shia.” The sermon was delivered at the Ar’Rahman mosque in canton Bern.

"He who befriends a disbeliever is cursed until the Day of Judgment,” the Imam preached. He also suggested that Muslims should not be subject to local laws. "If you tell me that a Muslim has stolen or raped…that does not matter to you, and you should not talk about it,” he has been recorded as saying.

Research by Rundschau and the Tages Anzeiger newspaper revealed that the Imam has been receiving regular unemployment and other benefits for the last 13 years from the local authorities at his home town of Nidau. 

According to the media reports, Abu Ramadan does not speak German or French and only rudimentary English, which virtually excludes him from the job market.

Journalists have discovered that the Imam preaches both in Biel and Neuchâtel, along with appearances on the Libyan Islamic propaganda channel Tanasuh TV.

Abu Ramadan also escorts clients of the Geneva-based Muslim travel agency Arabian Excellence AETS on tours to Mecca. Rundschau found Facebook entries showing Abu Ramadan in luxury hotels in the Middle East, but the Imam claims that he only gets his daily living expenses covered on such tours.

[Europeans] understand that Netanyahu’s government is peddling something far more insidious than mere precautions – even more than the weapons, surveillance and security systems and models of population control that is the bread-and-butter of Israeli exports. What Israel is urging onto the Europeans – and Americans, Canadians, Indians, Mexicans, Australians and anyone else who will listen – is nothing less than an entirely new concept of a state, the Security State.
What is a Security State? Essentially, it is a state that places security above all else, certainly above democracy, due process of law and human rights, all of which it considers “liberal luxuries” in a world awash in terrorism. Israel presents itself, no less, than the model for countries of the future. 

It would seem that the Security State can be reconciled with democracy – after all, Israel markets itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East.” But only the world’s privileged few will enjoy the democratic protections of the Security State, as do Israeli Jews. The masses, those who resist repression and exclusion from the capitalist system, those who struggle for genuine democracy, are doomed to be global Palestinians. The Israelization of governments, militaries and security forces means the Palestinianization of most of the rest of us. 

TEHRAN, Aug. 23 (MNA) – Iranian Presidential Office’s Committee of Support for the Islamic Revolution of Palestine issued a statement on Tuesday marking the 48th anniversary of arson attack on al-Aqsa Mosque.

“Forty-eight years ago, on August 21, al-Aqsa Mosque, the first Qibla of Muslims and the third holiest shrine in the Islamic world, was set on the fire of anger and historic humiliation of Zionists by an extremist Zionist and many valuable Islamic antiques of the place were destroyed,” reads the opening of a communique released on Tuesday by the Iranian Presidential Office’s Committee of Support for the Islamic Revolution of Palestine, “Since then on, the Zionists’ and extremist Jews’ aggressions and on and off attacks have targeted the first Qibla of Muslims, however, no cry of support for the place is heard.”

“Since 1969 till now, numerous military attacks have been staged against al-Aqsa Mosque by the Zionist regime,” asserted another line of the document, “setting on fire, blocking the entrance gates, hindering the prayers ceremonies of Muslims, holding Jewish rituals at the site, breaking the lock of the main door of the holy place, and so many aggressions are among the desecrating behaviors against the respect of the divine place.”

“The Zionists have used different excuses under the heading of digging operation, conducting destruction operations, and widening or deepening the buildings in the environs of the city, have always sought to impose a Judaized identity upon the holy shrine so far as they have managed so far to divide the Abrahamic venue and convert a big share of the place to synagogue,” underlines the communiqué.

“What is clear is that the Zionist regime has always been seeking to erase the image of al-Aqsa Mosque from the mind of the public and that is why whenever local or international media refer to al-Aqsa Mosque, photos of the Dome of the Rock are shown to obfuscate the recognition of the mosque from the dome and reach their goal,” asserts the document.

Palestinian journalists have once again fallen victim to the continuing power struggle between the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has jurisdiction over parts of the West Bank, and Hamas, the Islamist movement that is in control of the entire Gaza Strip.
Neither the PA nor Hamas is any champion of human rights, especially freedom of the media. The two parties regularly crack down on their critics, including journalists who do not toe the line or dare to report on issues that are deemed as reflecting negatively on the PA or Hamas.
The past few weeks have been particularly tough for Palestinian journalists. In this period, several journalists found themselves behind bars in PA and Hamas prisons, while others were summoned for interrogation and had to spend hours in interrogation rooms facing and detention centers.
To make matters even worse, a new Cyber Crime Law passed by the PA paves the way for legal measures against Facebook and Twitter users who post critical or unflattering comments about President Abbas and his senior officials. Critics say the law is a grave assault on freedom of expression and it will be used as a tool in the hands of Abbas and his henchmen to silence their critics or throw them into prison. In addition, the PA has blocked more than 20 news websites that are affiliated with Hamas and Mohammed Dahlan, an ousted Fatah leader who has long openly challenged Abbas.
The PA-Hamas war is hardly a secret. The two entities use every available method to bring each other down. Abbas's PA has not hesitated to take extreme measures against the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. These measures include depriving the Gaza Strip of medical supplies, electricity and fuel, as well as forcing thousands of PA civil servants into early retirement and cutting off salaries to thousands of others.
Hamas's retaliatory capacity towards the PA for these punitive steps is limited -- by Israel. Fortunately for Abbas and the PA, Israel is sitting in the middle between the West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

In the days since the white supremacists marched into Charlottesville, Va., my Twitter feed has lit up with advice from black pundits, activists and even friends:
“It’s time to stop talking about racism with white people.”
“Whiteness is always protected, even at its worst.”
“Non-racist white people simply don’t exist.”
Lines like these advise black Americans like me to respond to racism largely by avoiding white people. The assumption is that they are racist, even evil, unless they explicitly state and repeatedly prove otherwise.
I found myself thinking about this advice as I walked down Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn this past weekend. I noticed a white person walking her dog. Another listening to his music. And a third having dinner with her friends.
Do all of these people harbor a thinly veiled hatred for me, I wondered? Is there a secret white conspiracy scheming against me? How do I escape all this toxic whiteness I keep hearing about?
I didn’t grow up asking such questions. I was raised in a community in New Orleans where my parents taught me that the beauty of our people’s historical struggle for freedom and equality was that it ultimately spoke to the oneness of all human beings. Sounds of Blackness’s “Africa to America”; Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life”: These were the albums I was raised on. These are what taught me to develop an identity that was secure in itself and which did not require prejudging others.
Though I never heard the words “white privilege” until I got to college, I encountered racism. A college anthropology professor assumed I shouldn’t be held to the same standard as my white peers. I’ve been called a “house slave” for standing up against anti-Semitism. I’ve been called the N-word.
But by and large the violent hatred on display in Virginia couldn’t be further from my personal experiences with white people. Every school I attended in New Orleans was either predominately black or multicultural. So I grew up around black kids and white kids and Hispanic kids and Jewish kids and Muslim kids and Asian kids. I was and still am able to navigate diverse cultural spaces with ease as a black woman — not because I assume that these people aren’t prejudiced toward me, but because if they are, I was raised not to respond in kind.

At a sit-down in Sochi with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of a growing risk to international security posed by Iran.
“Iran is increasing its efforts to establish its military foothold in Syria,” Netanyahu said at the meeting, his sixth with the Russian leader in the past two years. “That is dangerous for Israel, the Middle East and, I believe, the whole world. Iran is already in advanced stages of taking over Iraq and Yemen, and in effect it also controls Lebanon.”
The Israeli prime minister continued, “We are all defeating ISIS in a concerted international effort, and that is welcome. What is not welcome is Iran moving in everywhere ISIS moves out. We do not forget for one minute that Iran continues to threaten Israel’s destruction every day; it is arming terrorist organizations and is itself instigating terrorism; and it is developing intercontinental missiles with the goal of arming them with nuclear warheads.”
“For all these reasons, Israel continues to oppose Iran’s entrenchment in Syria, Netanyahu concluded. “We will defend ourselves in any way against this threat and any threat.”

In the military and strategic sense of the word, an "enemy" is an entity that truly threatens our short- and long-term survival and vital interests -- not one that simply does not share our concept of democracy and human rights.
Another dangerous geopolitical mistake made by Western societies is viewing only Islamic terrorist groups as enemies and targeting them in a vacuum. Equally, if not more, important to combat are those Islamist movements that condemn terrorism but spread their ideology "peacefully" in our countries.
Before launching military campaigns on behalf of human rights, we in the West should first invest in strengthening our values at home, and encourage our Muslim minorities to adopt those values, rather than let them fall into the hands of radical Islamist organizations. The West must stop demonizing its own Judeo-Christian-European identity and rid itself of multiculturalist extremism.

The attempt in the West to impose a strict set of rules about what one is allowed to think and express in academia and in the media -- to the point that anyone who disobeys is discredited, demonized, intimidated and in danger of losing his or her livelihood -- is just as toxic and just as reminiscent of Orwell's diseased society.
The main facet of this PC tyranny, so perfectly predicted by George Orwell, is the inversion of good and evil -- of victim and victimizer. In such a universe, radical Muslims are victimized by the West, and not the other way around. This has led to a slanted teaching of the history of Islam and its conquests, both as a justification of the distortion and as a reflection of it.
Thought-control is necessary for the repression of populations ruled by despotic regimes. That it is proudly and openly being used by self-described liberals and human-rights advocates in free societies is not only hypocritical and shocking; it is a form of aiding and abetting regimes whose ultimate goal is to eradicate Western ideals.

At the conclusion of his four-year mission to Israel Tuesday, Ambassador Lars Faaborg-Andersen—the outgoing European Union delegate to Israel—believes Israel has "much to learn" from the European Union when it comes to fighting terror.
Speaking in a press conference held at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv, Faaborg-Andersen made it clear that while the European Union does indeed have a lot to learn from Israel in the war on terror, Israel would also do well to take a leaf out of Europe's how-to guide when it comes to fighting Islamic militants.
Also during the conference Faaborg-Andersen noted that the war on terror is an effort necessitating the use of every weapon in the continent's countries' arsenals. Moreover, he said that while Israel had performed with notable success when it came to operational counter-terror measures, it was also necessary to employ other tools at its disposal, such as education and de-radicalization methods.
"There's a significant security aspect to it, which you undoubtedly address," he said, "but there are also other aspects to work with including welfare and educational services and the like," he opined."Europe has adopted a more holistic approach to the war on terror—and Israel can definitely learn from European experience."
When asked whether he considered this "holistic approach" to be a success, Faaborg-Andersen admitted shortcomings, but praised the overall approach.
"If there's still terrorism it obviously hasn't been a complete success, because a one-hundred-percent hermetically sealed security against attacks is tough to achieve. But you can definitely reduce the number of attacks. I think our approach is successful, but not entirely so. It's certainly better than not doing anything," he said.
"It's also a lot better compared to the situation of just a few years ago," the EU rep added. "Generally speaking, European terror handling preparedness today is leaps and bounds better than what it was, but there is obviously more to achieve in that regard—much more bureaucracy and organizational cultural gaps to bridge so we're always one step ahead of the terrorists."

An extremist cell was preparing bombs for an imam who planned to blow himself up at a Barcelona monument, a key suspect in the attacks that killed 15 people in northeastern Spain told a judge Tuesday, according to a judicial official.
The suspect, Mohamed Houli Chemlal, was one of four men to appear before Spain's National Court in Madrid to testify about the Islamic cell that attacked pedestrians in Barcelona and the nearby seaside town of Cambrils last week. The Spanish daily El Mundo reported Tuesday that Chemlal confessed that the plan was for the main target of the Barcelona attack to be the Sagrada Familia church.
National Court Judge Fernando Andreu questioned the four about the vehicle attacks as well as the fatal explosion at a bomb-making workshop that police said scuttled the group's plot to carry out a more deadly attack at unspecified Barcelona monuments. After the session, the judge ordered two of the surviving suspects held without bail, another detained for 72 more hours and one freed with restrictions.
A Spanish judicial official said Houli Chemlal, 21, and suspect Driss Oukabir, 28, identified imam Abdelbaki Es Satty as the ideological leader of the 12-man cell.

In response to the August 17, 2017 vehicular attack in Barcelona, that was carried out by an Islamic State (ISIS) cell whose members are Muslims of Moroccan origin, several articles in the Arab media called on the Arab world to prioritize the fight against extremism, to stop justifying terror attacks, and to take steps to end the teaching of hatred in Arab societies. In a strongly worded column, Ghassan Charbel, editor of the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, argues that the framing of the attacks as a response to Western wrongs against Arab countries and Islam is aimed at concealing the desire to kill, and that the Arab world still clings to the past instead of embracing the future. Charbel calls for a rational examination of the factors that bring about a culture of hatred of the world that produces murderers.
Additionally, senior columnist for the Jordanian Al-Ghad daily Fahed Al-Khitan writes that the terrorist attacks fan the flames of hatred in the West toward the Arab world and Islam, and calls on the Arab world to strongly oppose terrorism and to reject the fatwas that the terrorists use to justify their actions.
The following are excerpts from the columns by Ghassan Charbel and Fahed Al-Khitan:
Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Editor Ghassan Charbel: Why Are We Tempted To Clash With The World, Instead Of Living With It And Within It?
"Every time an explosion is heard in any city in the world, the same scene plays itself out. I go into the newsroom, see the eyes glued to the breaking news appearing on the screens, and hear my colleagues mumbling, 'Just don't let the perpetrator be an Arab;''Just don't let the perpetrator be a Muslim;''We don't need any more [incidents].' I hear them and I share their sentiments. But very quickly the truth stares us in the face. It's no secret that attacking the world has become our exclusive, terrible specialty.
"I know full well that the man who ran over the tourists in one place or another does not represent his country of origin or the sect to which he belongs, that he did not receive official authorization to perpetrate the crime, that he was a wanted man in his country before he was added to the international lists of wanted criminals, and that he poses a greater threat to his country of birth than to the faraway arena where he committed the crime.
"I know that fanaticism is not the monopoly of a particular region, or sect, or country... but we must acknowledge unequivocally that we are the masters of aggression directed at the world and that we have attained a ranking that cannot be surpassed in the Guinness Book of World Records...

The satirical French magazine has stirred controversy once again after releasing a new issue with a cover showing a van running over pedestrians and the caption: “Islam is the religion of peace… eternal.”
The cover comes shortly after the terror attack in Barcelona which saw the death of 14 and over a hundred more injured after Islamists used a white rental van to plough into pedestrians. The magazine, which is set to hit French newsstands on Wednesday, is well-known in France and across the world for its pull-no-punches style.
The magazine has continued to push the limits of satire, but it has made several enemies due to its content, most notably in the radical Islamist scene. As a result, the headquarters of the publication was attacked by Islamist terrorists in January of 2015 in what became the first major Islamic State attack in the country.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 12 people including eight cartoonists. The police were later able to shoot the suspects who holed up in separate buildings and declared their allegiance to Islamic State and al Qaeda.

Needless to say, that according to the definition of anti-Semitism that was recently approved by the European Parliament, both Wise and Odeh are anti-Semites in every sense of the word.
David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and one of the most prominent members of white supremacist today, expresses opinions which perfectly align with those expressed by the anti-Zionist Left.
Duke was one of the first to come out in support of Mearsheimer's anti-Israel book, just as he was one of the more prominent Trump supporters. Not only do those two facts not contradict one another, but they reflect the very same ideology.
The very same language is being adopted by the Black Lives Matter activists, who have latched onto not only the BDS movement but also the horrific propaganda purporting Israel is committing war crimes.
Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are one and the same. Alt-left and Alt-right are one and the same. They are not two sides of the same coin. They are exactly the same side.
One would assume that were I an American, I'd stand with the protestors against the Alt-right. My only question would be: where were Trump's many detractors—who are right in everything they say against the man—when the Left produced so many anti-Semitic diatribes? Why were they silent? Precious few, such as journalist Jeffrey Goldberg and Professor Alan Dershowitz, published scathing criticism of it. But the rest of their friends in the academic elite were dead silent.
Racism, all racism, is reprehensible. But the display of racism by the neo-Nazis is Charlottesville was another thing entirely, not only because of its nature, but also because it received forgiveness from the president of the most important power in the world. That is a terrifying reality.

On Tuesday, renowned legal scholar Alan Dershowitz appeared on Fox & Friends, and condemned the actions and philosophies of Antifa:
Remember that president Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, put 110,000 Japanese Americans into detention centers; that President Lowell of Harvard imposed anti-Jewish quotas, that discrimination against women was rampant. Once you start rewriting history of African-Americans in this country, you have to start rewriting history of discrimination against many, many other groups.
Look, we’re both a nation of immigrants and a nation of discrimination against immigrants. That’s an important history for us to remember. And the other important thing is do not glorify the violent people who are now tearing down the statues.
Many of these people — not all of them — many of these people are trying to tear down America. Antifa is a radical anti-American, anti-free market, communist, socialist, hard, hard-left censorial organization that tries to stop speakers on campuses from speaking. They use violence, and just because they’re opposed to fascism and to some of these monuments shouldn’t make them heroes of the liberals.

All decent Americans have an obligation to condemn the violent bigotry of the Nazi and KKK demonstrators in Charlottesville or wherever else they spew their poisonous and threatening rhetoric. But President Donald Trump has a special obligation to single out for condemnation, and distance himself from, individuals and groups that claim – even if falsely – to speak in his name, as the racist provocateurs in Charlottesville did.
David Duke, the notorious bigot, told reporters that white nationalists were working to “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.” Richard Spencer, the founder of the Daily Stormer (a not so coded homage to the Nazi publication Der Sturmer,) attributed the growth of the ultra-nationalist alt-right to the Trump Presidency: “Obviously the alt-right has come very far in the past two years in terms of public exposure…is Donald Trump one of the major causes of that? Of course.”
Trump initially responded as follows: “We must ALL be united and condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America.” But then, following the car ramming that killed a peaceful protester, President Trump made the following statement: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides — on many sides.”
President Trump’s inclusion of the words “violence on many sides” – which seemed improvised – suggested to some a moral equivalence between the Nazis and the KKK, on the one hand, and those protesting and resisting them, on the other hand. Trump denied that he was suggesting any such equivalence and subsequently made the following statement:“Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and other hate groups, are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans. Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America.”

As a reaction to the recent expression of racist and anti-Semitic hatred at Charlottesville, last weekend’s demonstration in Boston was admirable. Some 40,000 people gathered to express their opposition to racial and religious bigotry, in welcome rebuke to a president who has difficulty calling out these maladies by name. Yet by directing part of their outrage at an unrelated free speech event held on the Boston Common, many of the protestors exemplified the creeping moral hysteria engulfing the American left.
The Boston Free Speech Coalition Rally was announced long before the tragedy that befell Charlottesville. It was planned not by white supremacists, as counter-protestors claim, but by a 23-year-old college libertarian activist named John Medlar. After Charlottesville erupted in violence, and activists in Boston began conflating his imminent rally with the assorted neo-Nazis and white supremacists who had gathered in Virginia, Medlar immediately distanced himself from it. “While we maintain that every individual is entitled to their freedom of speech and defend that basic human right, we will not be offering our platform to racism or bigotry,” he said. “We denounce the politics of supremacy and violence.”
Surveying the list of speakers Medlar had compiled, the Anti-Defamation League determined that, “Unlike Charlottesville, the Boston event, as currently planned, is not a white supremacist gathering.” One of the speakers was an Indian-American Republican challenger to Senator Elizabeth Warren. Certainly, controversial people were scheduled to appear, most notably Kyle Chapman, a multiple felon who has earned cult status on the far right for his photogenic beating of left-wing protestors at Berkeley earlier this year. The rest of the invited speakers, many of whom didn’t bother to show up, included a leading “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist and a self-described “Pro-Bernie [Sanders] 1 A[mendment] lawyer.” Ultimately, the event was more alt light than alt right. According to The New York Times, the only Nazi or fascist insignia to be found in Boston on Saturday were leaflets “which other counterprotestors appeared to have prepared,” to help people “learn to identify these symbols.”

One little detail (and this is how most of the media operate). The story in all the various outlets comes form one news wire: Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). They wrote the story up and, interestingly, only Jewish and Israeli outlets published it. Which is a strong clue to what I’m about to tell you.
I’d forgive you if you assumed they were disaffected, angry young white boys.
We don’t actually know the full details of the identity of these three youths because they’re juveniles and their full identity hasn’t been revealed. But we do know the identity of the fourth co-conspirator.
The Times of Israel did go a step further than other outlets: they linked back to the original story recounting when the four had been caught though even that didn’t have a picture. Remember this story was made international when the media was trying to pin any sign of anti-Jewish sentiment on Trump’s followers (and therefore Trump). But this particular story went stone cold dead for the mainstream media with this picture:

Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson … and Peter Stuyvesant?
One of these things is not like the others.
Amid the impassioned debate over whether, when and how to remove statues memorializing the Confederacy, an Israeli nonprofit is seeking a piece of the action. On Tuesday, Shurat HaDin, which represents terror victims in court, called on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to remove all memorials to Stuyvesant, the last Dutch director-general of New Amsterdam (now New York), who was an anti-Semite.
“Peter Stuyvesant was an extreme racist who targeted Jews and other minorities including Catholics and energetically tried to prohibit them from settling in then New Amsterdam,” read a statement by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, Shurat HaDin’s president. “New York, of all American cities, which boasts such important Jewish history and claims such a present day vibrant Jewish community, should take the lead in denouncing Stuyvesant’s bigotry.”
The group’s complaint affects a range of locations and institutions around the city — from the elite Stuyvesant High School to Bedford-Stuyvesant, a Brooklyn neighborhood. The Dutchman also has a statue in Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Square.
It’s true that Stuyvesant hated the Jews — to put it lightly. He didn’t want them to stay in his colony when they arrived in 1654 from the Netherlands via Brazil. When that didn’t work (because — awkward! — some of the colony’s owners were Jewish), Stuyvesant settled for prohibiting them from building a synagogue and serving in the militia. And he slapped them with a special tax.

The United States has decided to deny Egypt $95.7 million in aid and to delay a further $195 million because of its failure to make progress on respecting human rights and democratic norms, two sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
The decision reflects a U.S. desire to continue security cooperation as well as frustration with Cairo's stance on civil liberties, notably a new law that regulates non-governmental organizations that is widely seen as part a growing crackdown on dissent, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
U.S. officials were especially unhappy that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in May allowed the NGO law to go into effect. Human rights groups and activists have said that it effectively bans their work and makes it harder for charities to operate.
Egyptian officials had assured U.S. officials earlier this year that the law, which restricts NGO activity to developmental and social work and introduces jail terms of up to five years for non-compliance, would not go through, the sources said.

Egypt called off a scheduled meeting between its foreign minister and top US presidential adviser Jared Kushner on Wednesday after the United States decided to withhold millions of dollars in aid.
But President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi would meet the US delegation led by Kushner later in the day, Sisi's office said.
Two US sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday that Washington had decided to deny Egypt $95.7 million in aid and to delay a further $195 million because of its failure to make progress on respecting human rights and democratic norms.
"Egypt sees this measure as reflecting poor judgment of the strategic relationship that ties the two countries over long decades and as adopting a view that lacks an accurate understanding of the importance of supporting Egypt's stability," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The decision could have "negative implications" on achieving common goals and interests between the two countries, it added.
Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry had been scheduled to meet the US delegation led by Kushner, a son-in-law to US President Donald Trump and a close adviser, on Wednesday in Cairo to discuss the Middle East.
But the meeting was canceled immediately after the ministry released its statement, a copy of Shoukry's schedule sent out to journalists showed.
A foreign ministry official told Reuters the meeting had been canceled but did not give a reason. A US embassy official in Cairo said Kushner's meeting with Shoukry had never been set in stone because "the schedule was never fixed."

Disillusioned about US efforts to revive the peace process, the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is considering dissolving the PA and renewing a Palestinian bid for full United Nations membership, Arabic media reported on Wednesday.
Abbas’s deliberations come ahead of a visit by US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is set to arrive in Israel on Wednesday night with a US peace delegation after quietly meeting with leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
According to the report in the Lebanese daily Al Hayat, which cited unnamed “reliable” sources in the PA, Abbas is waiting for Kushner and Trump’s envoy to the region Jason Greenbelt to give him a written response to his conditions for returning to the negotiating table, namely “freezing settlement construction in the West Bank and working towards a two-state solution.”
The Palestinians are also reportedly renewing their bid to halt Israel’s settlement expansion through the International Criminal Court. The report said a PA delegation will travel Thursday to the ICC’s headquarters in the Hague in order to meet with the court’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has reportedly instructed senior PA officials to "keep a low profile" and dial down the pessimism in Ramallah about the United States' efforts to relaunch the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt and U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner are scheduled to arrive in Israel on Wednesday. The two are set to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Thursday, ahead of a series of meetings with various Middle Eastern leaders on restarting the peace talks, stalled since 2014.
Since Trump took office, Kushner and Greenblatt have made a number of trips to the region and held numerous meetings with Netanyahu, Abbas, King Abdullah of Jordan, and the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Persian Gulf states.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki on Tuesday said that over two decades of peace negotiations with Israelis have produced “nothing,” and called on the international community to unilaterally establish a state of Palestine.
“We convinced the international community that the best way to reach a state is through negotiations. But after 24 years of negotiations, we have not gotten anything,” said Maliki, in a meeting with British Secretary of State for the Middle East and North Africa Alistair Burt in Ramallah.
In the face of stalled peace talks, Maliki called for “active intervention” by the international community and the “imposition of peace” through the establishment of a Palestinian state, according to the official PA news site Wafa.
Alluding to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a document that helped pay the way for the revived Jewish state, Maliki called on British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson to promise the Palestinians a state through a “Johnson declaration.”
Signed on November 2, 1917 by the UK’s then foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, the declaration announced his government’s intention to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in the Land of Israel.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki has called on British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to recognize a Palestinian state in a declaration akin to that of the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
“Balfour became famous for his promise to the Jews to establish a state for them on the land of Palestine,” Maliki said on Tuesday in Ramallah, in a meeting with British Middle East and International Development Minister Alistair Burt. “I call for the current British foreign minister to be famous for giving the Palestinians a promise called the ‘Johnson declaration’ that recognizes a Palestinian state.”
Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat also called on the UK on Tuesday to recognize a Palestinian state.
Over the past year, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has called on Britain to apologize for the Balfour Declaration, and has floated the possibility of suing the country, if it does not apologize.
Abbas has also urged Britain to cancel plans to celebrate the Balfour Declaration’s centenary in November.
In April, the British Foreign Office said it had no plans to apologize for the Balfour Declaration.
“The Balfour Declaration is an historic statement for which Her Majesty’s Government does not intend to apologize,” the Foreign Office said.
“We are proud of our role in creating the State of Israel. The task now is to encourage moves toward peace.”

Spiritual leaders at a contested Jerusalem holy site are warning that the Jewish practice of sounding a ram’s horn each weekday morning this lunar month is meant to exhort Jews to demolish the mosque that stands there and replace it with a Jewish temple.
During Elul, the final month of the Jewish year, tradition calls for communities to sound the shofar at the end of the morning prayer service, a custom with ancient roots intended to rouse the individual from the figurative slumber of inertia and spark renewed vigor in pursuit of relationship with the Almighty and with fellow humans. However, Islamic authorities are claiming the ritual has a far more sinister purpose, to rally the faithful to flock to the site of the alleged ancient Jewish temples and begin their reconstruction by destroying the Islamic shrines atop the plateau.
As evidence, the Islamic authorities point to the fact that they never need real evidence. “We just make assertions and expect to be believed,” they explained. “That holds true in doctrinal matters as well as political and ethnic matters. We just have our ‘narrative,’ as you might call it, and it would be racist for anyone to challenge that narrative with facts. You wouldn’t want to be accused of racism, would you?”
The Jewish “cover story” of the ram’s horn representing divine mercy cannot be true, insisted the imams. “Mercy has no place in this world,” they argued. “Mercy means weakness – that one is unwilling to follow through with what must be done as justice demands. When someone shows you compassion, it is an admission of weakness to be exploited. Attributing such a characteristic to Allah would be blasphemous. Compassion is the devil’s tool, and has no place in this world. No wonder the Jews preach it!”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is holding firm against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and some 30,000 public sector and government workers in the Gaza Strip, whose salaries are paid by the PA, will be fired or forced into early retirement, a senior Palestinian official has confirmed to Israel Hayom.
According to the official, Abbas plans to keep the pressure on Hamas in Gaza for as long as the organization refuses to implement a reconciliation agreement with Fatah, dismantle its Gaza administrative committee -- the establishment of which effectively displaced Fatah as the governing body in the Gaza Strip -- and transfer power of governance to representatives of a Palestinian unity government.
Senior Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar recently led a delegation of top Hamas officials to Cairo. Egyptian intelligence officials informed the delegation about a proposal put forth by Abbas, under which members of the Hamas government in Gaza and some members of Hamas' military wing who are stationed at the border crossings would join the PA police and other Palestinian security services. In exchange, Hamas would transfer control over public affairs in Gaza and Gaza border crossings to the PA.
Hamas rejected the offer outright, and Abbas responded by ramping up pressure on Hamas, imposing economic sanctions and enacting measures meant to exploit the organization's financial distress and political isolation to reinstate the PA as the governing body in Gaza.

Two members of the Palestinian group Fatah were killed in worsening clashes with Islamist groups in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon on Wednesday, medical sources said, bringing the number of dead to six in nearly a week of fighting.
The clashes at the Ain el Hilweh camp began late last Thursday between Islamist fighters and a joint force comprising the main Palestinian factions, including Fatah, which are responsible for the camp's security.
Two other Fatah members and two Islamist fighters had already been killed and a total of 15 combatants and civilians have been wounded, a security source said.
The source said clashes had escalated on Wednesday, when gunfire wounded three people, including two Lebanese security personnel, outside the camp.
The fighting was triggered when a leader of an armed faction sympathetic to the Islamist Badr group fired at the headquarters of the joint security force last week.
In April, seven people were killed in clashes in the camp between the Badr group and the joint security force after it deployed there.

Two Israeli Jews have converted to Islam and joined the Islamic State in Syria, according to the Shin Bet security agency.
The two were named on a list of 20 Israeli citizens, one of whom is now deceased, who joined the ranks of the jihadist group, Israel’s Channel 2 news reported Tuesday.
The two Israelis were born Jewish in the Soviet Union, immigrated to Israel at a young age, grew up in Israel, then converted to Islam as adults and traveled to Syria to join the ranks of IS. It was not immediately clear when the two left the country.
One, a 28-year-old woman, grew up in Ashdod. The other, Alex, a 32-year-old man, grew up in Lod.
Alex’s sister, who was not identified, told the TV station the family was in “shock” and is not in touch with him.

The United States wants to know if the United Nations atomic watchdog plans to inspect Iranian military sites to verify Tehran's compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said on Tuesday.
Haley met International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials in Vienna on Wednesday for what she described as a fact-finding mission, which is part of President Donald Trump's review of the deal Iran made with world powers to curb its nuclear program in return for the lifting of most sanctions.
"If you look ... at past Iranian behavior, what you've seen is there have been covert actions at military sites, at universities, things like that," Haley, a member of Trump's cabinet, told Reuters in an interview.
"There were already issues in those locations, so are they including that in what they look at to make sure that those issues no longer remain?" she said. "They have the authority to look at military sites now. They have the authority to look at any suspicious sites now. It's just are they doing it?"
She said she was traveling to Vienna to ask questions, not to push the IAEA to do anything.

Hashomer Hatzair

Rabbis for Human Rights

Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish Arab Education

Givat Haviva

Before we delve further into Achvat Amim, it should be noted that Masa has withdrawn funding from Achvat Amim. Of course, you’d never know this from looking at the Achvat Amim website.

If you were a parent wanting to send your child on a trip to Israel, you might still think it a perfectly viable option, based on what appears to be Masa’s imprimatur.

 Statement from Hashomer Hatzair on the Solidarity of Nations - Achvat Amim program  Participants of the Solidarity of Nations - Achvat Amim program who took part in activities which have been portrayed in a misleading manner, did so independently, during time which was not part of the organized program. 

It is important to emphasize that none of them took part in any illegal activity, or any instance of civil disobedience or non-compliance with authorities.   Any attempt to assert otherwise is simply incorrect and defamatory. 

The safety and security of our participants is our top priority and we take that very seriously. 

In light of this situation, we are in active conversation and full cooperation with all of the relevant bodies. 

The Achvat Amim program makes a large contribution to Israeli society – the program includes five months of meaningful volunteer work and successfully connects diaspora Jews to Israel.

In the “Palestinians’” attempt to rewrite history and claim falsely that they and not the Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel, they have taken to claiming they have descended from the Canaanites. Since the Canaanites preceded the ancient Jews’ conquest of the land, that would make the Palestinians the rightful inheritors.
Problem with this claim is that it is utterly ridiculous from all points of view. First off, it means the Palestinians aren’t Arabs. Which they are, by their own lights. Arabs, though, came from Arabia and most certainly were not around in the Biblical land of Israel.
Second, there’s not a shred of evidence that the “Palestinians” were descended from the Canaanites. Nor is there any evidence they descended from any other unified people or tribe, for the simple reason they did not. The immediate forefathers of today’s “Palestinians” either considered themselves southern Syrians or just part of the Arab nation; many others immigrated to pre-Israel Palestine in the first half of the last century from a variety of non-Arab countries. And of course, since the invading Romans tried to erase the Jews’ claim to the land by giving Judea/Israel the meaningless name Palestina, there was never any such people as “the Palestinians”.
The whole Canaanite heritage claim is merely another lie being propagated in order to rewrite the Jews out of their own history and conceal the fact that the Jews are the ONLY people for whom the land of Israel was ever their national kingdom. As Pinchas Inbari says in his JCPA paper Who Are the Palestinians:
“When one looks into what the Palestinians say about themselves, how each family describes its lineage, there is no trace of a ‘Canaanite’ ancestry. Most of the families find their origins in Arab tribes, some of them with Kurdish or Egyptian background, and there are even – by word of mouth – widespread stories of Jewish or Samaritan ancestry. Although one might have expected some effort to adduce a Philistine ancestry, there is almost no such phenomenon.

In City on a Hilltop, Sara Yael Hirschhorn seeks to explain Israel’s settler movement, rejecting the common misconception that its members are fanatics uniformly motivated by religious zeal and ferocious nationalism. Nonetheless, writes Evelyn Gordon, Hirschhorn fails to look past her own political assumptions:
[R]eaders emerge from [the book] with no clear understanding of what drives the settlement movement. This isn’t surprising, since Hirschhorn admits in her conclusion that she herself has no such understanding: “After discussions with dozens of Jewish-American immigrants in the occupied territories, I still struggled to understand how they saw themselves and their role within the Israeli settlement enterprise.”
Consequently, she’s produced an entire book about settlers that virtually ignores the twin beliefs at the heart of their enterprise: Israel has a right to be in the territories, whether based on religious and historical ties, international law, or both, and Israel has a need to be there, whether for religious and historical reasons, security ones, or both.
This glaring omission seems to stem largely from her inability to take such beliefs seriously. In one noteworthy example, she writes, “While their religio-historical claims to the Gush Etzion area are highly contentious, many settler activists over the past 50 years have asserted Biblical ties to the region.” But what exactly is contentious about that assertion? No serious person would deny that many significant events in the Bible took place in what is now called the West Bank. . . . One could argue that this doesn’t justify Jews living there today, but if you can’t acknowledge that this area is Judaism’s religious and historical heartland, and that many Jews consequently believe that giving it up would tear the heart out of the Jewish state, you can’t understand a major driver of the settlement movement.

Chicago has long been home to one of America’s largest and most thriving Jewish communities, a vibrant and nurturing setting that gave the nation everyone from Saul Bellow to Julius Rosenwald, the founder of Sears.
For the city’s thriving progressive and LGBT Jewish community, Chicago has as much been that cherished home as it has a sheltered harbor offering the freedom to proudly express spirituality right alongside an individual’s political, sexual, or gender identity. Reform synagogues have seen a continual membership growth, which even includes a migration of Conservative Jews.
Yet, over the past 18 months, the city has made headlines for a series of ugly snubs targeting Jewish organizations and individuals, leading many—the city’s Jews first and foremost—to wonder just what’s going on.
The first sign of trouble came on January 22, 2016, at the National LGBTQ Taskforce’s Creating Change Conference. Held at the downtown Chicago Hilton, the event, bringing together gay rights activists of all stripes, included a Shabbat service and reception, held by the Jewish LGBT advocacy organization A Wider Bridge (AWB). To its participants’ shock, the quiet reception turned into a riot both in the corridor outside and in the meeting room when two anti-Zionist activists stormed the stage and chanted slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” denying Israel’s right to exist.

For 33 years, including the 11 years she spent as prime minister, Margaret Thatcher represented the north London suburban seat of Finchley, the constituency with the highest proportion of Jewish voters in Britain.
What officials in the Foreign Office derisively termed “the Finchley factor” was believed by many to explain her rock-solid support for Israel. Indeed, soon after she became leader of the Opposition in 1975, panicked diplomats secretly debated how the impending danger – that Arab capitals might view a potential future prime minister as “a prisoner of the Zionists” – might be averted. One urged that she be encouraged to sever her ties with pro-Israel groups such as the Finchley Anglo-Israel Friendship League – of which she was both a founding member and president – and the newly formed Conservative Friends of Israel. Another, more dramatically, suggested she swap Finchley, with its heavy concentration of Jews, for another constituency.
Like any highly astute politician, Thatcher was aware of, and sensitive to, the concerns of an electorally important group of voters in a constituency which, however big her majority, she always treated as if it were highly marginal.
But her affinity for Israel was both much deeper and more complex than these superficial and cynical interpretations. Charles Powell, her long-serving foreign policy adviser, suggested to me that Israel, alongside the United States and Singapore, was one of her three favorite countries in the world. There’s plenty of evidence to back that contention. She traveled to Israel three times before entering Downing Street and in 1986 became the first sitting prime minister to visit the Jewish state. She backed its actions unhesitatingly in 1967 and, as a member of the Cabinet in October 1973, fiercely argued against prime minister Ted Heath’s shameful decision to treat Israel and its aggressors alike by imposing an arms embargo upon both. And, once inside No.10, she frequently matched her rhetorical paeans to the “miracles” Israel had performed with concrete support.
Thatcher’s view of Israel was forged during her first visit to the country in 1965. Unsurprisingly given her deep Christian faith, she was deeply affected by, as she put it on her return to Britain, being able to “relive the Bible stories... seeing where Jesus was born, where he grew up and where he preached.” She spoke of the “indelible impression” this had left upon her and of telling her two young children about standing on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
But there was another “indelible impression” from that 1965 trip. Staying in the King David Hotel at a time when it overlooked the “no man’s land” that split Jerusalem between Israel and Jordan, she was struck by the young state’s vulnerability. It was, she told a meeting in Finchley, “like having another country on the other side of your own garden wall at home.” Thatcher also had no doubts about the rights and wrongs of the conflict. “Israel,” she declared, “holds out the hand of friendship to all who will accept.”

Obviously the Middle East “has seen tension and violence” for a lot longer than 70 years and Pearson’s claim that “tension in the Middle East” means solely the Arab-Israeli conflict is astoundingly ignorant. Clearly too, “mistrust between Jews and Arabs” did not ‘follow’ the creation of the State of Israel but was already evident many years beforehand.
But the most egregiously inaccurate part of that introduction is obviously Pearson’s claim that Israel was “carved […] out of land which had belonged to the Palestinians”. At no point in history before the creation of the State of Israel was that the case: the land was administered by the British Mandate prior to Israel’s establishment and before that had been ruled by the Ottoman Empire for 500 years.
That inaccurate and materially misleading information is all the more troubling coming, as it does, in what claims to be a history programme.
BBC Watch has submitted a complaint to the BBC World Service highlighting the need for a speedy on-air correction.

A Swedish-Lebanese beauty queen was stripped of her crown after pageant organizers discovered she visited Israel last year, the London-based Independent reported Wednesday.
Amanda Hanna won Miss Lebanon Emigrant 2017 earlier in August, but a 2016 school trip to Israel on her Swedish passport has cost her the title.
“After communicating our decision with Lebanon’s Minister of Tourism, he decided that Hanna should be stripped of her title because her visit to Israel violates our country’s laws,” said a statement from The Festival of Lebanese Emigrants in Dhour Al Choueir.
In Lebanon, any contact with Israelis is considered illegal and violators risk jail time.
Following her trip to Israel, Hanna wrote on Facebook, “it turned out that I was wrong,” referring to her previous assumptions about the Jewish state.
“I’ve gotten to know people who have come to stand close to me & I have developed in particular as a person. It has been a wonderful trip & I am incredibly happy that I participated,” she said.

San Francisco State University has asked a federal judge to dismiss a case accusing the school of fostering anti-Semitism.
However, The legal team representing Jewish San Francisco State University students who have accused the school remained steadfast in the face of administrators moving to get the case thrown out.
"We stand behind the claims in our lawsuit," said Brooke Goldstein, director of pro-Israel think tank, the Lawfare Project.
The suit was filed in June by six plaintiffs, including two current students and a recent graduate. It charged SFSU with having for decades displayed "an extremely disturbing and consistent pattern of anti-Jewish animus."
"Jews are at best ignored, but more often ostracized in every corner of the university community," the suit claimed. Among the incidents listed were the intense protest of an on-campus speech by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat in April 2016 and the exclusion of the school's Jewish center, Hillel, in a civil rights fair in February of this year.
On Monday, the school's lawyers asked a federal judge to dismiss the case, claiming administrators cannot control campus speech.

Reading Roger Waters’ new interview with Rolling Stone to discuss his latest album, one cannot help but feel that he has a real bee in his bonnet about allegations of antisemitism leveled against him.
As a songwriter – telling stories, drawing pictures – are you trying to confront people with the truth as you see it or draw them together?
I don’t know. Half of the song “Déjá Vu” is not on the [new] record. The last verse was cut. But I quote it a lot: “If I had been God/I would not have chosen anyone/I would have laid an even hand/On all my children everyone/Would have been content/To forego Ramadan and Lent/Time better spent/In the company of friends/Breaking bread and mending nets.” A lot of people would go, “Oh, there he goes, the old anti-Semite.”Well, no. If I talk about choosing people, I’m not talking about the Jewish faith. I’m talking about all faiths – all members of different faiths.
—
Are there particular musical or lyrical examples?
Yeah, tiny things. Other things that I let go were really important to me. Nigel was always very keen that we shouldn’t be specifically political about anything. I took the words “Lay down Jerusalem” out of “Déjá Vu.” The chorus used to go, “Maybe a woman at a stove/Baking bread, making rice or just boiling down some bones/Lay down Jerusalem/Lay your burden down.” There was a big thing, Nigel trying to persuade me to take any reference to Jerusalem out. “I said, ‘It’s really important.'” But he said, “People will go, ‘He’s being an anti-Semite again.’ I said, “There’s nothing anti-Semitic about it. Jerusalem is hugely important because of the Crusades, the Ottoman Empire, the British, whoever has been fighting over this place.”
To be clear, I do believe Waters has crossed the line from mere criticism of Israel to fully fledged Jew hater, based on a combination of things: the infamous inflatable pig with Star of David, singling out Israel for criticism an boycott (double standards) and then changing his story as to why this is the case, talk of the Jewish lobby and comparing us to Nazis, and insinuating Helen Thomas should not have been fired for her antisemitic comments.
It is no wonder the neo Nazis love him.

Who is Attorney Rose Mishaan and did she ever study Constitutional law?
According to Legal Insurrection, the silent vigils at Reem’s Bakery in Oakland are under a new form of attack. A local journalist, Mike Lumish, is being taken to court in an effort to silence his voice. His alleged transgression? He wrote about Reem’s Bakery egregious support of convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh in the Jewish Press, and in his blog Israel Thrives.
Among Reem Assils' demands are that Mike stop posting “defamatory” remarks about her, her business or her customers online and in the media.
From Legal Insurrection:
The case also raises serious constitutional and free speech issues, as the bakery owner seeks to punish protest, to halt or move continued protest, and a prior restraint of speech.
Reem Assil is represented by attorney Rose Mishaan.
What kind of attorney would support an action that flies in the face of our Constitutional protections of free speech and public assembly?
Apparently the answer is “An ideologue”

Dear Reem,
My name is Michael Lumish and I would like to speak with you.
I am the proprietor of Israel Thrives, a regular contributor to Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum and Campus Watch, as well as various other pro-Jewish / pro-Israel venues such as The Algemeiner, the Times of Israel, the Elder of Ziyon, and elsewhere.
As a Jewish Oaklander, I am intending to write an article concerning your mural of Rasmea Odeh and what it suggests about ethnic relations in the United States.
What I would like to do, if you are willing, is meet for a snack and a cup of coffee at Reem's for a discussion concerning this.
I know that you are a Palestinian woman standing up for the rights of the Palestinian people, just as I am a Jewish man standing up for the rights of the Jewish people.
Will you meet with me for 10 or 15 to discuss it?
Say, sometime in the morning this week or next?
I very much appreciate your consideration and you have my thanks.
Michael Lumish

In December 2016, the EU announced grants under the EU Peacebuilding Initiative (European Neighbourhood Policy) with a total budget of €4.9 million.
Among the recipients and projects, a number (receiving one-third of the total budget) demonstrate records of activities that are entirely inconsistent with the stated goals of promoting peace in the region:
1. Ma’an Television Network (€427,200 Grant ENI/2016/381-582, 2016-2019)
“Media for Change: Leveraging Media Initiatives to Promote Participatory Engagement in the Peace Process”
2. Oxford Research Group (ORG), I’LAM Arab Center for Media Freedom Development and Research (R.A.) and PalThink (co-grantees of €488,098 Grant 2016-2019)
“Building Strategic Capacity: Empowering Civil, Political and Emerging Constituencies in Palestine and Israel”
3. Applied Research Institute Jerusalem Association (ARIJ) co-grantee: Land Research Center (Grant of €474,732 for 36 months)
“Advocating for a Sustainable and Viable Resolution of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”

Outside Wembley Stadium in London on 20 August, Israel haters familiar and not so familiar appear in this by no means uninteresting footage by video-maker and staunch BDSer Alex Seymour/Seymour Alexander, according to whom (we don't see them, unfortunately) pro-Israel passers-by made their feelings known.
There's the loquacious Irishman who constantly campaigns to have Israel thrown out of Fifa (the campaign literature has now been translated into several languages, we hear him say.
There's the rather plummy-voiced grey-haired lady who's a ubiquitous sidekick to Sandra Watfa (the lady seen on many a Seymour video who inveighs against Israel at countless demos in London including, this year, the Al Quds Day excrescence). Here outside the stadium Sandra's sidekick is seen handing out leaflets to football fans arriving for the game.
Another familiar Israel-hater is the little lady of Jewish origin whose "Israel is an apartheid state" spiel in front of Seymour's lens includes a plaintive charge that "The media seem to focus on how wonderful Israel is". (Ever watched the BBC, darling?)*
A young woman in sun glasses tells Seymour that she has been "a life-long supporter of Palestine," that "Unfortunately they [those pesky Zionists] have a lot of support, a lot of power ... a lot of lobbying, a lot of power" and asserts that, to turn the tide, "We need to support Jeremy Corbyn — back him all the way ..."

The Israel Security Agency’s report on terror attacks (Hebrew) during July 2017 shows that throughout the month a total of 222 incidents took place: 129 in Judea & Samaria, eighty-seven in Jerusalem, four inside the ‘green line’ and two originating from the Gaza Strip.
In Judea & Samaria and Jerusalem the agency recorded 184 attacks with petrol bombs, 21 attacks using explosive devices, one stabbing attack, six shooting attacks, two vehicular attacks and two arson attacks. Within the ‘green line’ one stabbing attack (in Petah Tikva), one petrol bomb attack and two arson attacks took place. Also recorded were two missile attacks from the Gaza Strip.
Five people were murdered (3 civilians and 2 members of the security forces) and seven were wounded (2 civilians and five members of the security forces) in attacks during July.
The BBC News website covered the July 14th terror attack (without calling it terror) at Lions’ Gate/Temple Mount in which two policemen were murdered and one wounded. The attack in Halamish in which three members of the Salomon family were murders and one wounded was also reported – again without the BBC describing it as terrorism in its own words. An attempted stabbing at Gush Etzion junction on July 28th was briefly reported.

Mohamed Fahmy remembers when it dawned on him that something was not right. He was in an Egyptian prison. There was a group of Muslim Brotherhood students in the same jail. “They described how they were involved in organizing protests and filming them, and a lot of their footage was being aired on Al Jazeera and that doesn’t represent citizen journalism.”
He now says he realized his employers had been in contact with these students. “They were dealing fluidly with a group that was banned and later designated as terrorists, and the network kept us journalists in the dark about it. I discovered that in prison.”
Fahmy was born in Cairo in 1974. He reported on the 2003 Iraq War for the Los Angeles Times, spent years covering the Arab Spring and worked for CNN before being hired as Al Jazeera English Egypt bureau chief in September 2013.
He entered the job during momentous times in Egyptian history. Autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak had stepped down in February 2011 when the Arab Spring broke out in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. In June 2012 the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi was sworn in as president after winning elections. A year later, after millions took to the streets in protest, Morsi was overthrown by the military and Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

The popular online dictionary, dictionary.com, has become a valuable online resource since its inception more than 20 years ago -- which makes it all the more regrettable that the single example of "contemporary usage" for the word "venerate" is taken from a 4-year-old, politically biased opinion piece. The offending sentence is:
How else to explain what just happened: An Israeli government decided to venerate land over justice, and over life itself.
Without the context that this is simply one person's negative and controversial anti-Israeli government viewpoint, readers see only a defamatory statement that may be construed as a statement of fact, representing common contemporary usage. It is hardly the sort of neutral example one might expect from an academic resource like a dictionary, and leaves one to wonder whether this was just an unfortunate oversight or whether the editor responsible for the choice harbors some anti-Israel bias him or herself.

In the past BBC audiences have often been led to inaccurate conclusions concerning the reason for the chronic shortage of medical supplies in the Gaza Strip.
BBC gives one-dimensional view of shortages in Gaza hospitals
BBC’s Knell inaccurately attributes shortage of medical supplies in Gaza to Israel
BBC Radio 5 live broadcasts inaccurate claim on shortage of medicines in Gaza
BBC WS amplifies former ISM activist’s falsehoods about Gaza blockade
BBC News passes up the chance to set the record straight on Gaza shortages
BBC reporting on the ongoing dispute between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority that has resulted in reduced electricity supplies to Gaza residents has not informed audiences that the PA has also cut medical supplies to the Gaza Strip.

A prominent Shia Muslim imam in California is sticking defiantly with his allegation that Israel finances and arms ISIS — the Sunni Muslim terrorist group that has carried out genocidal campaigns against religious minorities in Iraq and Syria, among them Christians and Yazidis.
In a June 23 sermon, the founder and director of the Islamic Education Center of Orange County, Dr. Sayed Moustafa al-Qazwini, who has been widely acclaimed for his role in interfaith dialogue in southern California, insisted that Israel was the driving force behind ISIS, after first explaining to his congregation that the terrorist group was “anti-Islamic.”
“Most of you — all of you — know who established ISIS, Al Qaeda and all these terrorist organizations,” al-Qazwini declared. “You know very well. You know who paid for them, who financed them, who helped them, who purchased weapons for them, who even trained them, who protected them. You know that.”
Al-Qazwini continued: “This is not the production of Islam. Islam is not responsible for ISIS. There are certain agencies and governments, they put hand in hand to establish ISIS, to demolish Islam from within. This was the plan.”
The imam went on: “ISIS is the production of the Israeli intelligence. Most of their officers were trained in Israel, including Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.” Al Baghdadi was the founder of ISIS who is now believed to be in hiding in Syria.

Michael Travis, drummer for Colorado jamband The String Cheese Incident, has apologized for "extreme ignorance" after what some of his fans are calling anti-Semitic social media posts.
A post on his personal Facebook page on Wednesday erupted with hundreds of comments, with many of his followers outraged as he discussed what he described as "the Jewish banking agenda."
"The Jewish banking agenda is fairly irrefutable .. do you think I'm anti Semitic for saying so? I don't. I have many many dear friends that are Jewish. (Even if they never read the Torah but that's a whole different topic)," he wrote, and continued, "to not be allowed to notice trends in industry for fear of being called anti Semitic might be part of the way the Rothchilds and their cronies came to control the worlds monies. Of course their are other bankers that are doing evil money things. But the Zionist banking cartel is a thing... let me know if you can refute its existence."
Travis, of Boulder, who is also a member of the electronic band EOTO, apologized via social media, including in a Monday post, writing, "I feel compelled to put out another apology and recognition of my extreme ignorance and shame regarding my previous statements about Jewish banking. I truly had no idea the banking thing was a central tenant of the Nazi agenda."

A British attorney who called for the bombing of a plane carrying Jewish refugees has been suspended from practicing law for 12 months and ordered to pay £35,000 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. Majid Mahmood, a partner at the law firm City Law Chambers, posted on his personal Facebook page in October 2015: "Somebody needs to shoot all the Israeli Zionists dead then send their bodies to America as a present for Obama and his Zionist pals." In February 2016, Mahmood commented on a Facebook page called 'Israel is a war criminal' regarding an article about Jewish refugees being flown to Israel: "The ain't gods chosen people they're Satans love child's and it's a sham e the plane carrying them didn't blow up mid air." (All errors in the original).
After a complaint was filed at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, Mahmood argued that his posts were offensive, but not antisemitic. The Tribunal found that the October 2015 post "stepped over the line by advocating violence" and "demonstrated a clear lack of integrity" but was not antisemitic because it was directed against "Israeli Zionists" and not Jews as a whole. The Tribunal found that the February 2016 post was "wholly indefensible,""went far beyond exercising his right to freedom of speech," was "unforgiveable," and was "proved beyond reasonable doubt" to be antisemitic.
Although the tribunal suspended Mahmood from practicing law for 12 months, the suspension was itself suspended for 12 months.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Tuesday urged the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgeons to take action against prominent Japanese surgeon Dr. Katsuya Takasu, after Holocaust denial, Nanjing Massacre denial, praises of the Nazi regime surfaced on Twitter from two years ago.
As well as being a high-profile member of the academy, Takasu is also a well-known media personality in Japan.
Estonia-based Japanese blogger Kino Toshiko alerted the Simon Wiesenthal Center to the Tweets made by the doctor in 2015, and posted English translations of them to his webpage.
According to the translations from Twitter, Takasu talked of “how great Nazism was,” later explaining that he meant it with relation to the progress made in German medicine under the Nazi regime.
“There is no doubt that the Jews were persecuted. But we only know it from hearsay and all of it is based on information from the Allies. Aren’t we acting the same as the Chinese people who believe in the Nanjing Massacre? I only want to know the truth,” another Tweet reads.
“I think both the Nanjing and Auschwitz are fabrications,” he stated in another.

The Twitter account of a Jewish Republican candidate for the US Senate was discovered to have been hacked after it showed that she liked several posts by white supremacist leader David Duke.
Lena Epstein, who is running for the nomination in Michigan and was a co-chair of the Donald Trump presidential campaign there in 2016, disavowed any support of or connection to Duke, the one-time Ku Klux Klan head.
“As a Jewish woman with deep roots in the Jewish faith, a proud lineage of Jewish leaders, and relatives who were killed in the Holocaust because of blind hatred and prejudice, there is little that could be more offensive to me than the suggestion that I support, ‘like,’ or condone David Duke, neo-Nazis, or any group that promotes hatred and prejudice,” Epstein said in a statement issued Friday.
The tweets with her likes gained traction after the state’s Democratic Party chairman, Brandon Dillon, began sharing screenshots of them, the MLive news website reported.
Epstein shared a screenshot of a message from Twitter asking her to confirm her email address attached to her Twitter account, indicating that the account had been hacked. She also shared the link to a report by a private investigative agency which determined that an “illegal intrusion” of her Twitter account had occurred.

An Italian fashion design house removed a line of clothing from its collection that featured a yellow star reminiscent of what Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
The Miu Miu Italian fashion house, a subsidiary of Prada, said it would remove the clothing items immediately after being contacted Monday evening by the World Jewish Congress, the WJC said in a statement.
In a message to WJC, Preia Narendra, senior vice president of marketing & communications at Miu Miu, said: “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. It was not Miu Miu’s intent in any way to make any political or religious statement, and we apologize for any offense that may have been taken. Kindly note that effective immediately these items will be removed from the collection.”
The clothing items, including dresses, shirts and skirts, in a back-to school motif, included a name tag patch with the company’s logo, and a five-point yellow star name patch with a name, such as John, embroidered in it.
A dress with the name patch was being sold online for $2,170.

The Israeli infrastructure company Tahal, a subsidiary of Kardan, has been awarded a $176 million project by the government of Zambia for the development of a large-scale agriculture and water project.
The wide-ranging project will see Tahal, and its partner ZRB Consulting Finance & Development Limited, plan and construct a 14,000-acre agricultural settlement in the African nation.
The settlement will include hundreds of private and commercial farms with full power and water infrastructure. The Israeli company will develop roads, drainage and irrigation systems, greenhouses and poultry houses.
Further, the three-year project involves the construction of packing and storage structures, a marketing center, agricultural machinery, laboratories and facilities for “community, education, health and social and other services,” according to a statement released Monday by Kardan.
The announcement comes amid a broad Israeli government push to expand the Jewish state’s influence in Africa, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s historic trips to that continent in June and last year.

There were two types of people at the Sean Paul concert in Rishon Lezion Tuesday night: fans of the Jamaican rapper – and their parents.
No matter that many of Paul’s biggest hits came out before some of them were born – the crowd at the Live Park in the center of the country skewed decidedly young.
Some of that was undoubtedly due to the setup of the evening – not a standalone concert for Paul, but a hip-hop festival that ran for more than eight hours, from 6 p.m. to past 2 a.m. The other performers, all local musicians, came on one after the other, trying to get a crowd waiting patiently for Paul to hold on just a little longer. Full disclosure: I did not stay for all, or even most of, the full eight hours.
The lineup of other artists ranged from glorified YouTube stars to those with actual radio hits – like Katrix and Doron Biton’s fun and poppy “Chofshiya.”
And I experienced a real “only-in-Israel” moment when Biton recited a blessing out loud over his water – next to Katrix whose denim track suit read “f**k ur mom.” I mean, kids these days.

“Wonder Woman,” the now-iconic Warner Bros. superhero flick starring Israel’s own Gal Gadot, hit a domestic US earnings total of $404.1 million this week, and pushed past the $800 million mark worldwide.
That makes it the 23rd highest-grossing film of all time in the domestic US market, the seventh-highest earning comic book film in Hollywood history, and the number-one all-time earner when sequels are taken out of the running, according to a tally by the Forbes business journal.
It puts the rare woman-led superhero action film ahead of the 2002 origin film “Spider-Man,” starring Tobey Maguire, which raked in $403.7 million domestically.
“Wow! Just heard the news! Thank u to everyone who has shown their support to WW in theaters! What an amazing ride this has been! #grateful,” Gadot tweeted.
And the film is poised to hit even greater heights.
It only opens in Japan on August 25, positioning it to beat the $821 million worldwide tally “Spider-Man” pulled in.

Israeli non-governmental humanitarian aid organization IsraAID sent a first-response team of 16 volunteers to southern Nepal on August 17 to bring medical, psychosocial, and sanitation assistance in the wake of floods and landslides affecting six million people in 18 districts.
The surging waters have washed away thousands of houses and permanently damaged farmland, food stocks, and water infrastructure only two years after an earthquake wreaked devastation in the Asian country. More than 120 people have lost their lives, and many more are still missing.
Dangerous flooding in southern Nepal poses a high risk of waterborne disease, according to IsraAID, whose team was one of the first on the ground. More than 400 flood victims benefited from IsraAID’s services and activities on the first day alone.
“Our medical team saw a high number of cases of skin diseases, ear problems, and malnutrition. Fears of outbreaks of waterborne and mosquito-borne epidemics are growing. We are working in close coordination with local authorities and the Ministry of Health to monitor and respond as needed,” the organization reports.
Meanwhile, in Africa, IsraAID continues to provide emergency relief in Sierra Leone following disastrous flooding and mudslides there that began on August 14.

A 1,500-year-old mosaic floor with a Greek inscription has been uncovered during works to install communications cables in Jerusalem's Old City - a rare discovery of an ancient relic and an historic document in one.
The inscription cites 6th-century Roman emperor Justinian as well as Constantine, who served as abbot of a church founded by Justinian in Jerusalem. Archaeologists believe it will help them to understand Justinian's building projects in the city.
The full inscription reads: "The most pious Roman emperor Flavius Justinian and the most 6God-loving priest and abbot, Constantine, erected the building in which [this mosaic] sat during the 14th indiction."
Indiction is an ancient method of counting years that was used for taxation purposes. Archaeologists said the inscription suggests the mosaic dated to the year 550/551 AD.
Justinian was one of the most important rulers of the Byzantine era. In 543 AD he established the Nea Church in Jerusalem - one of the biggest Christian churches in the eastern Roman Empire and the largest in Jerusalem at the time.

Muslims are marking the 48th anniversary of the sad burning of the holy mosque of Al-Aqsa, the first Qibla (prayer direction) of Muslims and the third holiest site in Islam, amid mounting extremist settles’ violations and assault, condoned by the Israeli occupation forces, against the Al-Aqsa.

The policy of judaization and ethnic cleansing practiced by the Israeli occupying power in the city of Al-Quds, against its population and sanctities, is such that it constitutes a breach of the Muslim Ummah’s indelible religious rights and heritage. More than a source of provocation to the feelings of Muslims, an offense to the freedom of worship and a desecration of the sacred places of Islam, these policies and practices are a downright affront to the international law and the relevant international legitimacy resolutions.

On this sad occasion, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation reaffirms the central religious and spiritual character of Al-Quds and the place of importance the holy Mosque of Al-Aqsa holds amongst the Muslim community worldwide, stressing that the integrity and sanctity of this city’s holy places can only be maintained if peace and security are established throughout the entire region.

The OIC holds Israel, the occupying power, fully responsible for the safety of all the holy places falling under its unjust occupation, pointing out that the international covenants and agreements, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibit aggression by the occupying power on houses of worship and provide that free access to these places should be ensured. These international instruments also prevent the occupying power to take such measures as may alter the geographic and demographic status of historical and holy places.

... The OIC also calls for a cessation of the ongoing Israeli violations and judaization plans, especially Israel’s attempts to harm the Islamic and Christian holy places in Al-Quds, on top of which is the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri says the Israeli regime and terrorism are the two dangers currently threatening Lebanon and the entire Middle East.

“Two dangers, namely the Zionist regime of Israel and terrorism, are threatening Lebanon and the region,” Hariri said in a Tuesday meeting with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Jaberi Ansari in Beirut.
He also conveyed his greetings to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as well as First Vice-President Es’haq Jahangiri and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and expressed the hope that the two countries would further boost mutual ties.
Jaberi Ansari, for his part, echoed Hariri’s remarks concerning the two dangers (Israel and terrorism), and noted, “These two threats can serve as common ground for promotion of Iran-Lebanon ties as well as regional cooperation.”

The payments made by the Palestinian Authority to jailed terrorists and to terrorists' families are much higher than the welfare payments it provides to Palestinians in need, a new report by the Middle East Media Research Institute revealed Wednesday.
The Palestinian Authority spends millions of dollars annually on these stipends, which in 2016 amounted to 1.15 billion shekels ($319 million) -- 7% of the PA's total budget for salaries and about 20% of the foreign aid it received.
The Palestinian Authority's extensive support for prisoners and terrorists' families prompted the United States to halt the transfer of $221 million to Ramallah earlier this year. The Palestinians claimed that the so-called "martyr" payments -- monthly stipends paid to terrorists and terrorists' families -- were equal to the welfare benefits provided to needy families, arguing that in both cases, the family had lost its primary breadwinner.
But according to the MEMRI report, stipends to prisoners and terrorists' families, appearing in the PA 2017 budget book under a section titled "The Plan for Protection and Care for the Prisoners and Their Families and Support and Training for Released Prisoners," are defined as a "monthly salary" while the welfare payments are only made once every three months (quarterly). A review of the figures showed that the terrorist stipends are sometimes 20 times higher than the welfare benefits provided to needy families.

Unless the U.S. is willing to confront Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the latest peace mission headed by presidential adviser Jared Kushner and negotiator Jason ‎Greenblatt may well prove highly counterproductive, causing more harm than good.
As he approaches the end of his reign, Abbas is determined to shape his legacy into that of an embattled ‎‎"freedom fighter" whose objective was the restoration of Arab hegemony from the Jordan River ‎to the Mediterranean Sea. ‎
Until now, he has ignored U.S. President Donald Trump's requests and demands. Incitement reached a record ‎high as he whipped up religious hysteria on the false assertion that Jews were desecrating ‎Al-Aqsa mosque, triggering riots and encouraging terrorism. Meanwhile, Palestinian children are being brainwashed into ‎regarding Jews as subhuman in propaganda replicated from Nazi sources.‎
The PA and its leaders continue honoring mass murderers by dedicating mosques, city squares, and ‎schools in their names. ‎
Despite American demands, Abbas has vowed that he will never close the Palestine National ‎Fund, which provides massive financial awards to imprisoned terrorists and to families of deceased terrorists. Incarcerated murderers receive monthly payments of 11,000 shekels (more than ‎‎$3,000), with a grant of $25,000 upon release from jail. This year, the fund has ‎distributed $345 million -- a sum equivalent to half the foreign aid received by the PA. Thus, the U.S. ‎and Europe have indirectly been incentivizing Palestinians to murder Israelis. ‎

FIFA moves quickly and forcefully to punish all acts of discrimination and racism throughout world football, yet it ignores Palestinian football's institutionalized discrimination, glorification of terror and terror promotion.
This special report contrasts FIFA's inaction on PMW's complaint against the Palestinian Football Association's serious violations of fundamental FIFA statutes with FIFA's swift and forceful punishments, even for relatively minor violations, by other teams or their fans.
Click here to read as a PDF
In April 2017, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) submitted a complaint to both the Disciplinary Committee and the Ethics Committee of FIFA against the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) and its president Jibril Rajoub. The full complaint documents the repeated violations by the PFA and Rajoub, which include explicit encouragement of terror, glorifying terrorist murderers of civilians, sponsoring sporting events named after killers, referring to Jews as "satans" and "Zionist sons of bitches," and much more.
PMW's complaint documented that the PFA is in violation of at least Articles 3 and 4 of the FIFA Statutes and Articles 53 and 58 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, and the potential punishments include "suspension or expulsion," and a minimum fine of 30,000 Swiss Francs. Although PMW received notification that our complaint was received and was being reviewed, and despite a number of follow-up inquiries, until today, PMW has not been invited to give testimony and no disciplinary action has been taken against the PFA or Jibril Rajoub.

News that Iran's and Turkey's governments reached an accord on Idlib, a Syrian town now the focus of American interests, brings relations between two of the largest and most influential states in the Middle East momentarily out of the shadows.
Their rivalry goes back a half-millennium, included eleven wars, and now remains, in the words of the Washington Institute's Soner Cagaptay, the region's "oldest power game." What does the recent accord signify and how will their competition influence the region's future?
Iranian and Turkish parallels are noteworthy. Both countries have populations of 80 million. (Egypt, the region's third large country, has 96 million.) Both boast ancient civilizations, long imperial histories, tensions with Russia, and a successful avoidance of European colonialism. In modern times, each came under the rule of a ruthless modernizer after World War I, followed more recently by an even more repressive Islamist.
The current leaders, Iran's Ali Khamene'i and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, enjoy near-absolute power and both feverishly try to hide this reality under a large and noisy apparatus of elections, parliaments, cabinets, laws, and NGOs. Both aspire to lead the entire Muslim community, perhaps someday claiming to be caliph. In an era of muted anti-Zionism from Arab states, Tehran and Ankara now lead the charge, with the Islamic Republic of Iran loudly denying the Holocaust and the Republic of Turkey comparing Israelis to Nazis.
In several ways, Iranians lead Turks, but the latter are catching up. Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979 and Erdoğan in 2002. Iran has long enjoyed massive oil and gas reserves but Turkey recently built an impressive economic base. Tehran deploys forces abroad, dominating four Arab capitals, while Ankara still fights domestic opponents, especially Gülenists and Kurds. Both governments despise the West but Iran's is openly hostile while Turkey's formally remains in NATO and ostensibly seeks European Union membership.

News outlets in Argentina were abuzz on Wednesday with speculation that the country’s former president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, and her foreign minister, Hector Timerman, may now face charges of treason for secretly negotiating a pact with Iran that exonerated the Tehran regime for the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires.
A sensational courtroom appearance by a former Argentine ambassador to Syria on Wednesday morning confirmed that Timerman had visited Syria in January 2011 to finalize the pact, at a meeting hosted by the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, that included Iran’s then-foreign minister, Ali Akhbar Salehi — who now heads the Islamic Republic’s Atomic Energy Organization.
For more than six years, Timerman, supported by Kirchner, has brazenly denied the reports that such an encounter involving the AMIA bombing was held.
Timerman’s journey to Damascus was first exposed by the Argentine journalist Pepe Eliaschev in March 2011 — at the time, Timerman effectively accused him of producing fake news, denouncing him as a “pseudo-journalist.” Nevertheless, details of Timerman’s meeting in Syria were included in the complaint against the Kirchner government compiled by Alberto Nisman — the Argentine special prosecutor who was closing in on Iran and Hezbollah’s culpability for the AMIA atrocity, in which 85 people were murdered and hundreds more wounded.
Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment on January 18, 2015 — the night before he was scheduled to present his complaint to the Argentine Congress. In May 2017, a new official investigation into Nisman’s death proved conclusively that he was murdered.

In what can only be described as a complete about face, State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert would not make any statements endorsing or committing to the two-state solution for the Arab conflict with Israel.
Nauert said, “The President has made it clear that that is one of his top national security issues – one of his top priorities, I should say more correctly. We want to work toward a peace that both sides can agree to and that both sides find sustainable. Okay? We believe that both parties should be able to find a workable solution that works for both of them.”
This is particularly interesting in light of the recent statements by the Palestinian Authority ahead of the US delegation’s visit to the region, demanding the US clarify and confirm its endorsement of the two-state solution.
It very clear the Palestinian Authority received their clarification, just not the one they wanted to hear.
Nauert slaughtered another sacred cow when she pointed out the abject failure of the two-state solution to bring peace,
“It’s been many, many decades, as you well know, that the parties have not been able to come to any kind of good agreement and sustainable solution to this. So we leave it up to them to be able to work that through.”

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert was asked on Wednesday about committing the U.S. to a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Nauert responded: "We want to work toward a peace that both sides can agree to and that both sides find sustainable. Okay? We believe that both parties should be able to find a workable solution that works for both of them."
"We are not going to state what the outcome has to be. It has to be workable to both sides. And I think, really, that's the best view as to not really bias one side over the other, to make sure that they can work through it. It's been many, many decades, as you well know, that the parties have not been able to come to any kind of good agreement and sustainable solution to this. So we leave it up to them to be able to work that through."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Tuesday with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress, thanking the lawmakers for their “strong support” of the Jewish state, according to a statement from the Israeli leader’s office.
Netanyahu and the six-member American delegation discussed regional security challenges as well as opportunities for further US-Israel economic collaboration.
The prime minister’s meeting with the lawmakers came before President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and international negotiations representative Jason Greenblatt arrived in Israel on Wednesday night for discussions on renewed US-led peace efforts in the region.
More than 50 members of the US House of Representatives have visited Israel this month in visits facilitated by the American Israel Education Foundation. The delegations are primarily comprised of lawmakers serving their first term in office.
Eighteen Democratic members of Congress, led by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), met with Netanyahu on Aug. 7. Thirty-three Republican lawmakers, headed by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), met with the prime minister on Aug. 10.

The US-Israel relationship is “stronger than ever,” US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top advisor said Thursday in Tel Aviv at the top of a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump “is very committed to achieving a solution here that will be able to bring prosperity and peace to all people in the area, and we really appreciate the commitment of the prime minister in engaging very thoughtfully and respectfully in the way the president has asked,” Kushner said.
Kushner, along with Deputy National Security Advisor Dina Powell and Mideast negotiator Jason Greenblatt, arrived in Israel Wednesday evening after visiting Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt in an effort to re-ignite the diplomatic process. Following the delegation's meeting with Netanyahu, where it was joined by Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer and US Ambassador David Friedman, the delegation is scheduled to go to Ramallah for talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Netanyahu said that he has “a lot of things to talk about” with the delegation, including how to advance peace, stability, security and prosperity in the region.

The Palestinian Authority reportedly plans to give White House envoy Jared Kushner an ultimatum when he visits Ramallah on Thursday: deliver Israeli concessions in 45 days, or we blow up the peace process and go to the UN.
The ultimatum marks a stunning reversal in negotiating postures since Kushner officially took up the task of negotiating a deal between Israelis and Palestinians on behalf of his father-in-law, President Donald Trump.
At the start of the administration, the Palestinian leadership was so shocked by Trump’s election victory that they did not even know whom to call in the White House. They were fearful of the incoming administration, which was stacked with pro-Israel advisers and appointees, and which was determined to upset the Beltway consensus about everything, especially the Middle East. Trump, and Kushner, had virtually unprecedented negotiating leverage.
That leverage was enhanced when Trump set aside the two-state solution, accepted existing settlements in Judea and Samaria, and made a regional alliance with Arab states a higher priority than satisfying the Palestinians.

Meetings between the Palestinian Authority and American delegates led by President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner are “a waste of time,” Dr. Wasel Abu Yousef, director of the Palestinian Liberation Front and member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Executive Committee, told Breitbart Jerusalem.
“The meeting planned for Thursday with government delegates who are coming to advance the political process is just another meeting in an effort to buy time,” claimed Yousef. “It’s a waste of time and we aren’t seeing any declaration or clear statements from the American delegation regarding Palestinian demands.”
Kushner is currently leading a delegation to the Middle East that includes Jason Greenblatt, envoy for international negotiations, and deputy national security adviser Dina Powell. The three are in Cairo on Wednesday and are due in Israel on Thursday for meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
According to Yousef, the Palestinians intend to present the Americans once again with their position demanding the creation of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders “and the cessation of the settlements, which are an ongoing war crime against the Palestinians.”
Yousef glossed over the fact that the Palestinians turned down previous statehood offers by Israel and that PA President Mahmoud Abbas failed to respond to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s settlement freezes, which were enacted as gestures to jumpstart Israeli-Palestinian talks.

In an unusual move, a senior Sudanese government official has expressed support for establishing diplomatic relations between his country and Israel.
“There is no problem normalizing relations with Israel. The Palestinians normalized relations with Israel even Hamas is talking to Israel,” Mubarak al Fadil al Mahdi, Sudan’s minister of investment, said in an interview Sunday with Sudania 24, a Sudanese satellite station, Haaretz reported. “The Palestinians receive tax money from Israel and electricity from Israel. The Palestinians sit with Israel and talk to Israel. They have disputes but they sit with them.”
Like other countries in the Arab-Muslim world, Sudan has long viewed Israel as an enemy nation. The African country is famously known for hosting the 1967 Arab League summit in the wake of the Six Day War, where the Arab world issued what became known as the “Three nos: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.”
Currently Israel does not have relations with Sudan, but the Jewish state established full ties with South Sudan, which gained independence in 2011.
Israel is also the only country that Sudanese citizens are barred from entering, while the Sudan has had past ties with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Sudan is run by President Omar al-Bashir, who was indicted for war crimes in Darfur in 2009.

An indictment filed by the Israeli military prosecution Thursday against the terrorist who killed three members of the Salomon family said Omar al-Abed chose their home in the Halamish settlement after hearing laughter emerging from within.
The 19-year-old native of the neighboring Palestinian village of Kobar was charged with the murders of Yosef, Elad, and Chaya Salomon and the attempted murders of Yosef’s wife Tova and daughter-in-law Michal along with her five children.
Along with the indictment, military prosecution requested that Abed remain behind bars until the end of legal proceedings against him. The army also said that the Salomon family has been “constantly updated” on the proceedings against Abed.
After sneaking into Halamish late Friday night on July 21, the indictment said, Abed “noticed that the house to his right was dark and quiet, while the house to his left was lit up, with laughter emerging from within.”

It has been cleared for publication that Amjad Muhammad Ahmad Jabareen, a resident of Umm al-Fahm, was detained for questioning within the context of an investigation by Shin Bet security forces and Israel Police on suspicion of involvement in the attack on the Temple Mount in which two policemen were murdered.
Findings of the investigation revealed a local network of terrorists, which was formed in the “Al-Malsa” mosque in Umm al-Fahm, where Muhammad Ahmad Muhammad Jabarin was in charge of cleaning and the muezzin of the mosque.
The findings also indicated a clear link between the Al-Malsa mosque and the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, which was declared an illegal association in November 2015 and is now considered a terrorist organization.
In addition, connections were established between the terrorists and the Islamic Movement, both with respect to support for ideas disseminated by the movement and to membership in organizations that have a clear connection to the Islamic Movement.
Thus, for example, Muhammad Ahmad Muhammad Jabarin was a former member of the “Murabitun” organization, which was also declared an unlawful association in September 2015 due to its activity against the security of the state in the Temple Mount compound and its direct contact with the Islamic Movement and the Hamas terrorist organization.

Prosecutors on Thursday charged a controversial Islamic cleric with incitement to terror for praising the three Arab Israelis who shot dead two police officers last month just outside the Temple Mount complex in Jerusalem.
Sheikh Raed Salah, a leading member of Israel’s now-outlawed Northern Branch of the Islamist Movement, has been held in custody since his arrest last week.
Among the suspected calls for incitement to terror cited by the indictment filed at the Haifa Magistrate’s Court was a speech given by Salah at the funeral of the three men who carried out the July 14 attack at the Temple Mount, and who like Salah were from the Arab Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm.
In his speech, Salah praised the three attackers — all of them named Muhammad Jabarin — as “martyrs” and asked for “God to have mercy upon them.”

As Iran continues to entrench itself in war-torn Syria, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman warned that Israel will not remain a bystander as Iran creates a new reality in the Middle East.
"Iran, through the Revolutionary Guard, is trying to create a new reality around us with Iranian air and naval bases in Syria, with Shiite militias with thousands of mercenaries and precision weapons being produced in Lebanon,” he said. “The State of Israel does not intend to remain a bystander and accept these attempts.”
Liberman was speaking during a meeting with the Forum of the Directors-General and Chairmen of the Israel Institute of Energy and Environment on Thursday shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned from meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the resort town of Sochi.
Jerusalem has repeatedly said that it would not allow Iran to set up a permanent presence in Syria, and Liberman has warned in the past that while Israel has no interest in entering Syria’s seven year civil war, there are red lines that Jerusalem has set including the smuggling of sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah and an Iranian presence on its borders.
Russia, which views Iran as a key player in resolving the crisis in Syria, has repeatedly emphasized the importance of the role that Iran plays in the war-torn country, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov praising the cooperation between Russia, Iran and Turkey regarding de-escalation zones as successful and effective.

Israel Police has announced that Knesset members will be allowed to enter the Temple Mount for one day next week as part of a “trial” coordinated with the Prime Minister’s Office.
“The decision was made in light of the improvement in the security situation at the compound,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement Wednesday.
The announcement came hours after MKs Yehudah Glick (Likud) and Shuli Mualem-Refaeli were stopped by police while attempting to enter the Temple Mount compound through the Mughrabi Bridge entrance.
Last Monday, Glick held office hours outside an entrance to the Temple Mount in protest of the ongoing ban against MKs visiting the holy site.
“I’m here to protest the fact that the prime minister won’t enable police to allow us to enter the Temple Mount,” Glick told journalists at the site.

MK Yehuda Glick (Likud) blasted news of a one-day removal of the ban on MKs ascending the Temple Mount, to take place next Tuesday.
According to Channel 2 News, the Israel police are allowing members of the Israeli legislature to visit ascend the mount as a pilot program to see if the security situation would allow the visits to resume for good. The initial proposal was for the ban to be lifted for a full week. However, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered the plan plan be reduced to one day.
The ban on all MKs, Jewish and Arab, against ascending the Temple Mount has been in place since November 2015.
A few weeks ago, the Jerusalem district police chief, Yoram Halevi, recommended that the police commissioner attempt to renew the visits of the MKs to the holy site.
Channel 2 reported that MK Yehuda Glick, who is active in promoting Jewish rights on the Temple Mount, was critical of the one-day lift of the ban, seeing it as a political game in which MKs are the pawns.
“The Prime Minister needs to tell the Supreme Court by September 15 why he doesn’t allow MKs to ascend the Temple Mount,” Glick said. “”He’s trying to come to the Supreme Court with clean hands, to say ‘I tried, and it didn’t work.’”
“I told the Prime Minister’s Office that I have no intention of being the Prime Minister's guinea pig.”

Amnesty International on Wednesday slammed the PA and Hamas for what it called a clampdown on freedom of expression in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, respectively.
“The last few months have seen a sharp escalation in attacks by the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, on journalists and the media in a bid to silence dissent,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Amnesty International. “This is a chilling setback for freedom of expression in Palestine.”
In early August, the Palestinian Authority arrested five journalists, who work for Hamas-affiliated news outlets, for allegedly “leaking sensitive information to hostile authorities,” according to PA-run media in the West Bank.
The arrests came after the PA issued a new cyber crimes law, which permits authorities to imprison anyone “who aims to publish news that would endanger the integrity of the Palestinian state, the public order or the internal or external security of the state.”
Palestinian civil society groups, including the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, have called on the PA to rescind the cyber crimes law.
In June, the PA also blocked several websites critical of President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group, is threatening to harm Knesset members based on intelligence information it has obtained.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the group said that one of its units which deals with electronic security has managed to obtain a database of all MKs, including residential addresses, e-mail addresses and other personal information.
"Our message on memorial day (the day in which PFLP leader Abu Ali Mustapha was eliminated -ed.), which is directed at the leaders of the criminal occupation, is that our response is still continuing and did not end after the fall of our leader Abu Ali Mustapha, who planted in our hearts the love for the homeland, the sacrifice, the struggle and not the bargaining. There is no place immune to the beatings of the forces of the struggle. We are behind you everywhere and in every arena," the statement said.
The PFLP is responsible for the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi in 2001. The organization's leader, Ahmed Saadat, and two other senior members are serving sentences in Israel for their involvement in the murder.

Indeed, six years later, the Alawite regime is on life-support provided by Russia, Iran, Hizbullah, and Iranian satellite proxies. Still, the latest arrangements between Russia and the United States have convinced Bashar Assad that unless he is struck by lightning or he becomes victim of an act of terrorism, he is here to stay. As long as the political process has not ripened to create a new political reality in Syria, and as long as Russia and the United States have not reached an understanding on who is to succeed Assad in the transition period and beyond, Assad will remain in power.
Six years later, the impression is that all parties are exhausted from the war effort and need time to recover and reorganize. However, following the events on the ground, it looks like the different parties are still in a frenzy to consolidate the territories under their control. Such is the effort of Assad to take control of the Lebanese-Syrian border and to extend its grip towards Deir el-Zor and the Iraqi border; meanwhile, the U.S.-backed Kurds are progressing in their conquest of the Islamic State’s so-called capital, Raqqa. The same consolidation is true for Turkey in the north of Syria and also applies to the rebels in southern Syria.
No doubt, the events in Syria are showing a trend of stabilization and reinforcing positions. However, despite Assad’s efforts to claim he has won the war, it is crystal clear that the facts on the ground show that the regime has lost the original Syria that existed politically and geographically before 2011, and it is doubtful whether “that” Syria will be reborn from the ashes of the civil war. In any case, as long as the partitioning of Syria is not finished and the spoils of war distributed between the different actors involved, stability is not likely to return to Syria. Syria’s future will be determined not only by local developments, but also by the action/inaction of foreign powers present in the region. More important to the process of shaping the new Syria are events happening around Syria – the future of Kurdistan, the stabilization of Iraq, and the role to be played by regional actors such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
If Assad considers these developments to be a victory, then it can only be defined as a Pyrrhic one.

The head of the UN peacekeepers in Lebanon said his force has no evidence that weapons are being illegally transferred to the country’s south, pushing back against US and Israeli criticism of the mission.
The UN Security Council is expected to renew the mandate of the force, known as UNIFIL, which is due to expire August 31.
US and Israel officials have called for improvements in its efforts to prevent Hezbollah from expanding its arsenal following the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese terror group.
Maj. Gen. Michael Beary said the 10,500-strong force has successfully maintained the peace for more than a decade.
“We should not be looking to upset that,” he told The Associated Press Wednesday aboard the UNIAO, the Brazilian flagship for the UNIFIL maritime force.

While American politics in melt down mode over the Democrats almost yearlong obsession in trying to find a scintilla of evidence with which they can hang Trump on charges of colluding with the Russians, both North Korea and Iran have been busy getting on with developing their nuclear missile programs.
North Korean President Kim Jong-Un has blatantly carried out a series of missile tests that show their capability of launching a nuclear missile strike that will put the west coast of the United States within range.
When President Trump warned North Korea of the “fire and fury, never seen before” should they test America’s patience, some Democrats and Obama hang-overs, such as Ben Rhodes, the White House Deputy National Security Secretary under President Obama, accused Trump on MSNBC of “extreme and false statements about all manner of things. It’s more concerning,” he said, “when they are about nuclear weapons.”
So who gets it? Ben Rhodes, or President Trump? Rhodes introduced a security policy of “strategic patience.” Rhodes, it should be remembered, was an ardent promoter of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran which rewarded the Islamic Republic to the tune of $150 Billion while allowing them to continue their intercontinental ballistic missile development program.
Compare Rhodes criticism to Trump’s statement to Donald Trump’s comments about making nuclear deals with regimes like North Korea on an NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ TV interview in October 1999. That was a decade and a half before Donald Trump entered politics. Here is what he said about the Administration’s refusal, or inability, to adequately close down North Korea’s nuclear program, “Do you want to do it in five years when they have warheads all over the place, each one of them pointing at New York and Washington, is that when you want to do it, or do you want to do it now?”

New photographs obtained by congressional leaders show Iran shipping militant soldiers to Syria on commercial airline flights, a move that violates the landmark nuclear agreement and has sparked calls from U.S. lawmakers for a formal investigation by the Trump administration, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Photographs published by a Washington, D.C., think-tank and provided to Congress show Iran using its flagship commercial carrier, Iran Air, to ferry militants to Syria, where they have joined the fight against U.S. forces in the region.
The new photographic evidence has roiled congressional leaders, who accuse Iran of violating the nuclear deal, which prohibits it from using commercial air carriers for military purposes. These lawmakers are demanding the Trump administration investigate the matter and consider imposing new sanctions on Iran.
The release of these photographs allegedly showing Iran Air's illegal activity comes as top U.S. air carrier manufacturer Boeing moves forward with a multi-billion dollar deal to sell Iran Air a new modern fleet. Many in Congress have opposed the deal due to Iran's longstanding use of commercial aircraft for military purposes, such as transporting weapons and troops to regional hotspots such as Syria and elsewhere. It remains unclear the extent to which the former Obama administration was aware of this activity, which came in part while it was promoting Western airline sales to Tehran.
Iran Air's central role in the illicit transportation of militant forces to Syria could complicate Boeing's efforts to move forward with the sale, which still requires approval from the Trump administration's Treasury Department.
Congressional leaders are now calling for a suspension of all licenses permitting these sales in light of the new evidence, according to a letter obtained by the Free Beacon.

The United States still has doubts and concerns over the nuclear deal with Iran, the US ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday, after a meeting with atomic officials intended to allay American anxieties about the landmark accord.
Nikki Haley also said the US is determined to ensure the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency has the resources it needs for “robust verification of nuclear-related activities in Iran.”
Haley met behind closed doors in Vienna Wednesday with IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano to be briefed on Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement, which US President Donald Trump has called into question, drawing threats from Iran of restarting its high-enrichment program.
“We came to Vienna with lots of questions about the Iran Deal. We received many good answers but we still have many doubts and concerns,” Haley wrote on Twitter after the meeting.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley met with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria, to discuss U.S. concerns about the Iran nuclear deal.
To make matters worse, Iranian officials have warned the inspectors at the IAEA not to share any information with Haley.
Haley held a meeting with “IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano and was also to meet with the technical experts who monitor nuclear activities, including those in Iran governed by the nuclear pact signed by the U.S.” CBS News reported:
In a statement released after her meeting with Amano, the U.S. United Nations delegation said Haley had stressed U.S. “concerns about ensuring Iran strictly adheres to its obligations.” One of her primary missions — not just in Vienna but back at U.N. Headquarters — is to persuade the international community that Iran is not adhering to those obligations, and to ensure that it does.
Iran does not want Haley to receive any information, though. From The Washington Examiner:
But Iranian officials argued that the meeting undermined “the independence and credibility” of the inspectors and warned the IAEA not to share extra information about the regime’s nuclear program.
“Any contribution to the destructive approach of the US Administration to undermine ‘successful implementation’ of the [nuclear deal], or sharing any information on Iran and its nuclear activities, which is not included in regular updates that Director General provides to the IAEA Board of Governors, with any third party including the U.S. government’s envoy will not be in conformity with the above-mentioned provision,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote in a letter to the IAEA.
To no one’s surprise, Zarif believes that Haley has tried “to corrupt the IAEA’s inspections and effectively break the nuclear pact.” Zarif even wrote that the international community sees Haley’s visit “to put pressure on the Agency and adversely affect the professional and impartial nature of the work of the IAEA.”

Qatar restored full diplomatic relations with Iran early Thursday, disregarding the demands of Arab nations now locked in a regional dispute with the energy-rich country that it lessen its ties to Tehran.
In announcing its decision, Qatar did not mention the diplomatic crisis roiling Gulf Arab nations since June, when Qatar found its land, sea and air routes cut off by its neighbors over Doha’s policies across the Mideast.
However, the move comes just days after Saudi Arabia began promoting a Qatari royal family member whose branch of the family was ousted in a palace coup in 1972.
“Qatar has shown it is going to go in a different direction,” said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a research fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University who lives in Seattle. “It could very well be calculated toward reinforcing the point that Qatar will not bow to this regional pressure placed upon it.”