On Tuesday, in a most unusual place, a column appeared that heartily defended Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro, acknowledging him sympathetically as “that wildly exotic creature: a political conservative.” The column also mocked the idea of leftists calling Shapiro a “fascist,” and described him as “a 33-year-old who supports small government, religious liberty and free-market economics and opposes identity politics, abortion and Donald Trump.”

So just where did this paean to Shapiro appear?

The New York Times.

Penned by Times columnist Bari Weiss, the column, titled, "A political conservative goes to Berkeley," noted the impending brouhaha at the University of California, Berkeley due to Shapiro’s speech on September 14, including the hilariously misguided letter to students and faculty members written by Paul Alivisatos, the university’s executive vice chancellor and provost, who offered counseling services for the victims of Shapiro’s supposed rampage through campus.

Weiss notes:
… the activist group Refuse Fascism, which has hailed the left-wing extremist antifa movement as “courageous,” has taken the lead in condemning Mr. Shapiro’s speech, calling him a “fascist” on campus fliers and declaring in a Facebook post that his goal was to “spread ugly fascist views dressed up in slick-talking ‘intellectual’ garb.”

Weiss acknowledges Shapiro can occasionally provoke hostility, mentioning that he “once brought a diaper to a campus speech to offer to ‘self-indulgent pathetic children who can’t handle anyone with an opposing point of view.’” She also notes the viral exchange (which has nearly 50 million views) in which Shapiro confronted the transgender issue by asking the student promulgating the transgender agenda, “Why aren’t you 60?”, although she prefers to elide that exchange in favor of the moment he asked the student, “If I call you a moose are you suddenly a moose?”

But Weiss points out that Shapiro, whom the protesters at UC Berkeley have insanely called a “white supremacist,” was brutally targeted by those same white supremacists and anti-Semites in 2016:

First, Berkeley tried protesting. Then, they tried pricing the College Republicans out of holding Ben Shapiro's speech on campus. Then, Antifa got involved. Once they realized The Daily Wire's fearless leader was still showing up, the offered counseling.

Now, the protesters are just flat-out lying.

On Thursday, the Secretary of the Berkeley College Republicans caught Shapiro protesters on video (it's not clear whether the protesters are also students), shouting through a bullhorn, accusing Ben of being the "architect" and "founder" of "this fascist ideological regime" (presumably the Trump/Pence Administration).

If it wren't caught on tape, it would be too crazy to believe.

Refuse Fascism: "@benshapiro one of the architects of the foundations of this ideological fascist regime." Full blown insanity. pic.twitter.com/c3k7Qgk1DT

— Bradley Devlin (@bradleydevlin) September 12, 2017

The first part of the student's speech is inaudible, but you can clearly pick up "... on the same day as Ben Shapiro, one of the architects and founders and ideological foundations of this fascist regime is speaking. Ben Shapiro, who says things like 'Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage.'"

The student goes on to encourage fellow Berkeley denizens to protest Shapiro (or worse — it's not clear exactly what the call to action is): "We are calling on people of conscience, that in this moment, this is your opportunity to take a stand. We will look back on history, on people who stood by and did nothing, who said these things have nothing to do with me."

In the months leading up to the U.S. presidential election in November 2016, a former director of the World Jewish Congress decried the direction in which the new head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was taking the international human rights group. In a series of columns, Isi Leibler -- a prominent Australian Israeli -- blasted ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, for turning the 100-year-old organization, whose mission is to monitor and expose anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, into a platform that "represents an echo chamber of left-wing Democratic politics."

Leibler first took issue with Greenblatt's April 2016 address to the far-Left Jewish organization J Street, backed by anti-Israel billionaire George Soros.

Leibler wrote that Greenblatt "incorporated [in his speech] criticisms of Israel that were thoroughly inappropriate...[and] indirectly gave a seal of approval for the Obama administration to impose solutions on future borders that could dramatically compromise Israel's security."

Ironically, Greenblatt's rebuttal, in the form of a letter to the editor of The Jerusalem Post, illustrated Leibler's point. He not only defended J Street, referring to the people in the audience as "a group of deeply thoughtful college students whose commitment to Israel is genuine and whose passion on the issues is impressive;" he claimed that he had not been morally equating Israel and the Palestinians.

In a subsequent piece, Leibler called Greenblatt to task for having "lost the plot, behaving as though he remained employed by the Obama administration." Leibler cited the ADL's July 13, 2016 statement "welcoming the Republican Party platform on Israel," but expressing "disappoint[ment] that the platform draft departs from longstanding support of a two-state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict... the only viable way to secure Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state."

As part of its ongoing BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) campaign against Israel, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report and press release targeting Israel banks. This represents HRW’s third major BDS initiative in 2017 alone, notes NGO Monitor.

“Economic warfare against the Israeli financial system has long been a goal of anti-Israel activists, ,” said Anne Herzberg, Legal Advisor at NGO Monitor. “It is also clear that HRW has timed the release of this publication to coincide with the preparation of the discriminatory UN Human Rights Council blacklist, currently being prepared by UN functionaries in conjunction with BDS groups like HRW.”

Under the leadership of Ken Roth, HRW was a major participant at the launch of BDS at the infamous Durban Conference in 2001, and Sarah Leah Whitson (Director of HRW’s Middle East division) participated in the first BDS rally in the United States in 2004. In recent years, HRW has pursued BDS at the United Nations against FIFA, quarries and real estate brokers.

NGO Monitor notes that HRW’s increased BDS activity follows the hiring of BDS activist Omar Shakir to head its Israel desk. In addition, HRW’s Israel/Palestine program received a donation in June 2017 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, one of the main US funders of BDS.

“HRW’s pseudo-legal arguments and sophistry do not stand up to scrutiny and cannot create legal obligations where none exists,” added Ms. Herzberg. “BDS is not about human rights, and, this publication reflects HRW’s long-standing pattern of singling out Israel.”

In a blistering attack on those who promote a boycott of Israel, Mr Javid said: “I’ll be 100 per cent clear. I do not support calls for a boycott, my party does not support calls for a boycott. For all its bluster, the BDS campaign is most notable I think, for its lack of success.

“Trade is booming, tourism is soaring. The media campaign is full of sound and fury, but to the majority of Britain today it signifies nothing.

“As long as I’m in government, as long as I’m in politics, I will do everything in my power to fight back against those who seek to undermine Israel.”

Outlining measures taken by the government in recent years, he highlighted efforts to counter academic boycotts, and to stop local authorities “running their own mini foreign policies, dividing the communities that they seek to serve”.

The Westminster event, Balfour, Bias and Boycotts, was organised by the Board of Deputies, WJC and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Jews.

Mr Javid said rising antisemitism in Britain was “deeply disturbing” and he was personally committed to dealing with it.

“Let’s be honest, we are talking about antisemites, however many times they claim they are opposed to Zionism,” he said.

Nearly one in three Britons holds at least one anti-Semitic attitude and more than half endorse at least one hard-line anti-Israel statement, finds a major new study published today.

It also establishes an “unambiguous” link between anti-Semitism and hostility towards Israel – suggesting that the stronger the level of anti-Israel feeling, the more likely it is to be accompanied by anti-Semitic attitudes – and probes the attitudes of those who support the far-left and the far-right, as well as British Muslims.

But the report – the largest and most detailed survey of attitudes towards Jews and Israel ever conducted in Britain – also concludes that the proportion of what it terms “hardcore anti-Semites” in the population is small, while most Britons hold a favorable opinion of Jews and the vast majority do not harbor any anti-Semitic views. Moreover, it found that only 6% of Britons believe Israel has no right to exist, and less than 10% back the BDS movement.

“Levels of anti-Semitism in Great Britain are among the lowest in the world. British Jews constitute a religious and ethnic group that is seen overwhelmingly positively by the absolute majority of the British population,” writes the report’s author, Dr. Daniel Staetsky, senior research fellow at the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) which published the research.

Whilst there have been recent efforts to answer this question as it relates to the members of one specific anti-Israel group, CST and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) have produced a major study on antisemitism in Great Britain, including “the first robust empirical documentation” on the link between antisemitic and anti-Israel attitudes in the country as a whole.

The report demonstrates a dramatic disparity between the percentage of the general population who hold antisemitic views and the percentage of those with strong anti-Israel views who hold antisemitic views.

In short, we find that, in the population as a whole, there is a three in ten chance that an individual selected at random would hold some level of antisemitic sentiment. Among those who hold no antipathy towards Israel, that would drop to just over one in ten. However, among those holding the strongest level of anti-Israel views…that possibility climbs to over seven in ten.

To cite one example of this stark disparity, whilst only 8% of the general population in the UK agree with the statement “Jews have too much power in Britain”, the number jumps to 41% among those with strong anti-Israel attitudes. Additionally, whilst 4% of the general population believe the Holocaust has been “exaggerated”, the number rises to 23% among those who hold strongly anti-Israel views.

This graph illustrates the rest of the results.

When you hear the quite horrific stories of censorship and dangerous restrictions on expression at universities in the US, the UK and Europe, your first reaction might be to laugh at how infantile the nature of political discourse in the student world has become.

Cardiff Metropolitan University banned the use of the word "man" and related phrases, to encourage the adoption of "gender neutral" language. It is the equivalent of the "newspeak" about which Orwell warned: "Ambiguous euphemistic language used chiefly in political propaganda".

Currently, longstanding expressions carrying no prejudice are now used as the trappings of often fictitious "oppressions."
City University in London, renowned for its journalism school, is apparently banning newspapers that do not conform to the current student body's various political biases. If the Sun, Daily Mail and Express are such bad publications, why not allow students to read them and make up their own minds? Perhaps students do not trust their peers to make up their own minds? What if they make up their minds the "wrong" way? To suggest that the brightest and best at our universities cannot contend with a dissenting argument should probably be at least slightly concerning.

There seems to be a growing consensus among student populations that certain views should not be challenged, heard or -- if one does not hear them -- even known.

A culture has also emerged at universities of promoting "safe spaces". These ostensibly aim to be free of prejudices such as racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and other bile. But all too often, we have seen them filled with exactly these prejudices – anti-whiteness, anti-maleness and of course anti-Semitism, as even some of Britain's leading universities are "becoming no-go zones for Jews".

At the Roundhouse Theatre in the north-west London district of Camden from 8-11 September, Tel Aviv came to Britain in th shape of the TLV in LDN Festival. The aim, in the words of its director, Marc Worth, talking to the Jewish Chronicle, was to

"showcase and celebrate Tel Aviv’s cultural diversity – offering visitors a sense of the city’s tastes, smells, sounds, sights and cultural scene ..."

And in those of Israeli minister for public security, information and strategic affairs Gilad Erdan, talking to the Jerusalem Post,

“The festival is of great importance in its very existence in Britain as we mark one century of the Balfour Declaration. This festival is a cultural answer to the calls for a boycott against Israel.”

He and Britain's Secretary of State for International Trade Dr Liam Fox attended along with Tel Aviv's mayor Ron Huldai.

Israel-haters had failed to get the event cancelled, and many, including activists from the loathsome and pathetic International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network turned up to to do their best to spoil the atmosphere.

The largest-ever Israeli cultural event in Europe, TLV in LDN, attracted some 15,000 people to the five-day event to celebrate Israeli culture and diversity in London.

The Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy, the British Jewish community and the British Embassy in Israel hosted the event Sept. 7 – 11.

Some of Israel’s top female singers, including Ethiopian-Israeli Ester Rada, performed for hundreds of locals during Sunday’s celebration, under the theme “Woman in Power,” at the historic Roundhouse Music Hall in London.

“We came from Tel Aviv to bring you love,” said Rada, as she opened the evening before a soul music performance from Maximilian Blumin.

Israeli-Arab singer Mira Awad also performed and sang in English, Hebrew and Arabic, with Yemenite-Israeli trio A-WA concluding the three-hour show with their performance.

The festival saw some 15,000 Londoners revel in Israeli culture, fashion and cuisine. Locals enjoyed culinary workshops provided by Israeli master chefs, as well as performances from an eclectic group of 120 Israeli vocalists, and an LGBT party over the weekend.

The festival encountered some opposition, and saw some anti-Israel BDS protestors demonstrate at the event. An unusual scene unfolded when Israeli Chef Shaul Ben Aderet handed out sweets to the protestors, which had originally been prepared for festival attendees.

Economic BDS Fails

Foreign investment in Israel up 7%

Investments in Israel by foreign companies totaled $12.6 billion in 2016, 7% more than in 2015, according to the Ministry of Economy and Industry Industrial Cooperation and Foreign Investments Authority. The figures show that 320 multinational companies operate in Israel, and the pace at which such companies are starting to do business in Israel has tripled from 10 a decade ago to 30 in 2016.

Frutarom buys Israeli flavor extracts co Turpaz

Israeli flavors and natural specialty fine ingredients company Frutarom Industries Ltd. (TASE: FRUT; LSE:FRUT) has acquired a 51% stake of Israeli company Turpaz Perfume and Flavor Extracts Ltd. at an overall cash-free debt-free company value of NIS 53.7 million ($15.1 million). This is Frutarom’s seventh acquisition this year.

BDS Fails: Israeli Exports Up 6% in First Half of 2017

Despite high-profile and widely publicized campaigns to boycott Israel, the Jewish State continues to thrive.

Israeli exports rose 6 percent—to $50 billion—during the first half of 2017, according to the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute.

The jump in exports was driven by rapid growth in high-tech services and incoming tourism, the institute said. Exports of services totaled $21 billion in the first half of this year, boosted by the rising trend in exports of computer and software services, which grew 12 percent to $6.8 billion. Exports of tourist services were up 16 percent, to $3.2 billion, in the same period.

Exports in industrial sections—including drugs, chemicals, refined oil products and electronic components—grew 5 percent.

This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman speak to David Adler, the convenor of the Australian Jewish Association, after the successful event held in Melbourne last Sunday, and then hear from Smadar Pery who is involved in Israel advocacy in Germany.

We then hear from German author and commentator Matthias Kuntzel about his work, and then Hadar Sela who runs BBC Watch which monitors that organisation for bias against Israel.

And Isi Leibler joins the fellahs as usual from Jerusalem.
4 min Editorial: Australian Jewish Association continued
12 min Dr David Adler, Australian Jewish Association
28 min Smadar Pery, Israel advocate in Germany
51 min Matthias Kuntzel, Gernman author and commentator
1 hr 11 Hadar Sela, BBC Watch
1 hr 31 Isi Leibler, Jerusalem

Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former legal advisor for the Palestine Liberation Organization who has infamously and repeatedly insisted that Palestinian rockets fired from Gaza "do not carry explosive heads," and has repeatedly and falsely maintained that no Israelis died in suicide bombings from 1997 to 2000 inside Israel (in fact, 24 Israeli civilians were killed in six bombings during that time period), has now turned her fact-defying denials to fiction: the popular television series "Fauda."

In a New Yorker review of "Fauda," editor David Remnick writes ("How Do You Make a TV Show Set in the West Bank," Sept. 4):
Diana Buttu, a lawyer who has worked as a legal adviser to the P.L.O., watched the series recently and told me that she found the experience disturbing. She did not share Shamni’s ambivalence, and when we spoke she made a compelling critique of “Fauda.” “In ‘Fauda,’ we do not see the occupation,” she said. “It is invisible, just as it is in the minds of Israelis. In fact, we never even hear the word. We don’t see a single checkpoint, settlement, settlers, or home demolitions. We don’t see any homes being taken over, or land being expropriated or anything of the sort. We see a nice brick wall, not the ugly eight-metre-high one, as the only sign that we are in the West Bank.

While Buttu's critique may be "compelling," it's also false. Contrary to Buttu's claim, the word "occupation" is heard in "Fauda" and checkpoints do appear. For instance, in the very first episode, during the key wedding scene in which undercover Israeli forces carry out a failed attempt to kill arch-terrorist Taufiq Hamed and end up killing the groom, the groom's uncle gives a speech, stating before these dramatic events (23:06): "Despite all that the occupation has done to us, we still bear children. We're successful, we raise families, have children and prosper."

Bias By The Numbers’ previous edition revealed notable discrepancies between the British and American media markets. In raw terms, British outlets – led by The Independent – surveyed by HonestReporting in April and May published far more articles depicting Israel in a negative light than their American counterparts.

In reexamining these trends with new data collected over June and July, HonestReporting found that this pattern not only remained, but even worse, the total number of headlines critical of Israel in both American and British publications increased at similar rates. (Bias By The Numbers uses the terms “anti-Israel” and “negative” interchangeably for clarity.)

In every single publication examined, there was an increase in negative headlines towards Israel.

This was because of July’s Temple Mount-related unrest in Jerusalem which significantly boosted the amount of reporting from Israel in all the publications HonestReporting examined.

A reasonable increase in negative articles on Israel would naturally be expected to occur in a period like this. However, the negative reporting in two out of three publications (The Independent and Telegraph) surveyed in the British media market swelled to amounts out of proportion to previous figures. Conversely, negative reporting in The Guardian did increase only to a threshold within the April-May period’s distribution of anti-Israel articles in comparison to all Israel-related pieces published.

It bears mentioning why headlines matter: For an increasing number of people, what they know about the Mideast and many other topics comes from skimming headlines on their social media feeds. And for the few articles that do get clicked on, studies show that headlines impact the way people read and remember stories.

The Irish Times published a report yesterday by Ronan McGreevy focusing on Steven Salaita, the professor who sued the University of Illinois for denying him a promotion after a number of hateful tweets came to light. The article (‘Criticising Israel brings ‘lifetime punishment’, says US academic’, Sept. 11th) noted some of the controversial tweets in question by the anti-Zionist academic, including “If you’re defending #Israel right now, you’re an awful human being” and “if Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised?”.

However, the report omitted Salaita’s most damning tweets. These include a couple which defended Hamas, and one charging Israel with “incinerating children”. In one tweet, not mentioned by the Irish Times, Salaita argued that Zionist Jews, by supporting Israel, are partly responsible for the antisemitic remarks directed towards them. Tweets omitted by the Irish Times also include the accusation of genocide against Israel, and at least two evoking the Israel-Nazi analogy.

Another one of the worst tweets by Salaita during the war, that the Irish Times didn’t report, characterises antisemitism as something “honorable”:

Jews in the Swedish city of Gothenburg were bracing for a neo-Nazi march scheduled to pass near the city’s main synagogue on Yom Kippur.

Community leaders said they will appeal a police decision last week that would allow the Nordic Resistance Movement to march during the Gothenburg Book Fair, when some 100,000 people will gather in the city for the largest literary festival in Scandinavia.

The police had denied the far-right group’s initial request to march on the main streets of Gothenburg, which is the second largest city in Sweden and located on the country’s west coast. The alternate route offered by police would take the marchers only about 200 yards from the Gothenburg Synagogue on Judaism’s holiest day, which this year falls on Sept. 30.

Members of the Jewish community, which typically is under tight security, are worried about harassment and physical threats from the marchers, said Allan Stutzinsky, chairman of the Gothenburg Jewish community. People affiliated with the Nordic Resistance Movement were responsible for antisemitic threats that led to the shuttering in April of the Jewish community center in Umea, a city in northeastern Sweden, according to Stutzinsky. A community center is part of the synagogue complex in Gothenburg.

”The threat against us is always large, and it becomes even larger when they are marching,” Stutzinsky told JTA, adding that left-wing counter protesters may also be a threat to Jews.

With his Hitler-style toothbrush moustache, ex-fighter Marko Skejo leaves no doubt about his politics: the now-disbanded paramilitary unit he fought for displays open nostalgia for a pro-Nazi past that Croatia is struggling to tackle.

The unit, the Croatian Defense Forces (HOS), last week said it would continue to display a memorial plaque for its comrades killed in Croatia’s 1990s independence war which bears the pro-Nazi slogan “Za dom spremni” (“For the Homeland, ready”).

It was the official motto of the fighting group — which disbanded in the early stages of the war — and appears on their coat of arms.

The phrase was used by the country’s World War II Ustasha regime, which persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of Jews, Serbs, Roma and anti-fascist Croats.

Ex-paramilitaries had put up the plaque last November by the site of the former Jasenovac camp, known as “Croatia’s Auschwitz,” sparking outrage from the country’s ethnic minorities, rights groups and centre-left opposition.

Elta North America, an Israeli-owned defense manufacturer with US headquarters in Maryland, was one of four companies chosen to build a prototype for the border wall between the United States and Mexico.

The company is a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries. Some 200 companies vied for the tenders, which will provide a $300,000 to $500,000 grant to develop a model. The tender was announced late last week.

In total, eight companies are building prototypes for the nearly 2,000-mile-long wall. Four will be concrete and four will have see-through or “smart” walls. Elta was chosen to work on the see-through wall project.

The final project could cost up to $25 billion.

Elta manufactures radar systems and components for branches of the American military. It also provides radar components for the Israeli military, which purchases them using US military aid and must be spent in the United States. In its Israeli headquarters, Elta manufactures radar systems for Arrow missiles, the Iron Dome anti-missile system, espionage and fighter jets, according to Ynet.

US President Donald Trump has praised Israel for its southern border wall meant to stop African migrants from illegally entering the country.

In 2004, Giora Chamizer was an Israeli TV writer living in New York and doing not much at all. He’d lounge on the couch, he recalled in an interview last year, channel surf, catch three or four movies a week, and wait for inspiration to strike. It did, as it so rarely does these days, in an article in The New Yorker.

It was a piece about Hogan Sheffer, the head writer for As the World Turns at the time. The notion of making up wild and preposterous stories every single day strikes most people, Sheffer included, as torture, but Chamizer saw only promise. He returned to Israel, and pitched a brand new hybrid format: A daily action-adventure soap opera, for and starring tweens.

The result, Ha’Shminia, was so successful that Chamizer was soon called on to produce another and another. Before too long, he hit on the idea for Ha’Hamama, or the Greenhouse, which was eventually purchased by Netflix, reshot with Israeli and American actors, renamed Greenhouse Academy, and debuted last weekend.

Being what it is, the show’s plot is difficult to describe. Like Harry Potter crossed with Spy Kids with a dash of Fauda, it follows the adventure of a school for special kids, divided into two houses—one for the cool and one for the smart. Together, they handle everything from rogue astronauts to doomsday weapons to deadly viruses spread by dashing and mysterious villains, all while falling in love and having the sort of delightfully meaningless fights we all have in the throes of puberty.

"The Diary of Anne Frank," which has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide since first being published 70 years ago, is receiving a new, surprising adaptation as a graphic novel and animated feature film aimed at children.

The project, initiated by the Anne Frank Fund in Switzerland, is the brainchild of Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman and art director and illustrator David Polonsky, who also collaborated on the critically acclaimed animated film "Waltz with Bashir" and the science fiction film "The Congress."

Using animation and illustration, the book and film aim to bring to life the words of the Jewish girl who documented her experiences hiding from the Nazis before being sent to her death in a concentration camp.

Folman's book version of Anne Frank's story will be released on Sept. 18 and will be available in 50 countries. It will hit shelves in Israel in October.

"The Anne Frank Fund liked what David [Polonsky] and I did on 'Waltz with Bashir' and proposed we adapt her diary into a graphic novel and full-length animated film," Folman told Israel Hayom.

"They understood that the way to attract new audiences to the book is to speak to them in a visual language they know and understand," he said.

When Prime Minister Modi visited the Jewish State in July, Nasscom and Accenture issued a joint study assessing the potential of bilateral cooperation in start up sector. The report claimed that “a cumulative cross-border investment of USD 25 billion into Indian and Israeli start-ups by 2025 can create 25 world-class products across different sectors, unleashing a revenue potential of up to USD 25 billion from these products by 2025.”

During the Indian leader’s visit, both countries signed a series of bilateral agreements aimed at strengthening ties in various technological fields. A joint innovation fund was also set up with the seed money of $40 million, seeking to promote research in the field of technology and industry.

“We are of one view that together our scientists and researchers would develop, build and implement mutually beneficial solutions,” Prime Minister Modi said during his historic visit. India’s IT sector hopes to build on that promise.

With Rosh Hashanah approaching, Christian supporters of Israel have raised thousands of dollars to rebuild a West Bank-based honey farm that was destroyed by Palestinian vandals.

Several hundred Christian Zionists from around the world contributed over $15,000 towards the reconstruction of the Dvash Kedumim honey factory after Palestinian thieves apparently severely damaged the farm and stole the business’s entire stock of award-winning honey just weeks before the Jewish new year.

During Rosh Hashanah, Jews customarily dip apples in honey to symbolically welcome a sweet new year.

“The efforts by these Christians send a powerful message: The Bible, and its message about a land flowing with milk and honey, is stronger than terrorism and can beat BDS,” said Rabbi Tuly Weisz, founder of Israel365, an Israeli non-profit that promotes the Biblical significance and physical beauty of Israel.

The funds, raised through an email campaign coordinated by Israel365, will replace the farm’s beehives, bolster security equipment and help support the Farbstein family who founded and run the honey business in Israel’s biblical heartland.

“Honey is all about God’s bounty,” said Yael Farbstein. “It isn’t anything I can control. Sometimes it is sweet and plentiful, and sometimes it is less so. Despite the losses, we are doing our part by increasing our efforts. We need to show them that we are here to stay.”

The Palestinian security services arrested a Palestinian resident of Hebron on Sunday because he hosted Likud Knesset member Yehuda Glick at his home.

Glick visited Mohammed Saber Jabbar on September 3 in honor of the Muslim holiday of Id al-Adha and later published pictures of their meeting.

The Palestinian security services didn’t say why Jabbar was arrested or what, if any, crime he is suspected of. But sources close to the Hebron branch of the Palestinian police said they assumed he was arrested for meeting with Glick, whom Palestinians view as a radical right-wing activist because he visits the Temple Mount regularly and has long campaigned for Jews to be allowed to pray there.

Jabbar’s family said in a statement issued via mosques and social media that they had severed all contact with him over his meeting with Glick.

Glick said Jabbar’s arrest was senseless and once again proves that the Palestinian Authority doesn’t want peace.

“He’s a peace activist whom I met via the head of the Ahmadiyya community in Haifa,” Glick said, referring to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam. “I went to wish him a happy holiday on Id al-Adha, and I regret that this is what happened.”

Palestinian Media falsely presents Holocaust images as images from the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. My research has revealed dozens of cases in which Palestinian and Arab publications, including mainstream newspapers, are publishing images of World War 2 Nazi concentration camps falsely labeling them as events that occurred in the Middle East conflict.

200,000 Jewish Kurds headed for Iraqi Kurdistan, howls Turkish press

Several Turkish media outlets reported Sept. 13 that Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani had reached a secret agreement with the Israeli government. The alleged deal involves the settlement of Jewish Israelis of Kurdish origin — a community of some 200,000 people — from Israel to the KRG after the independence referendum on Sept. 25.

Pro-government newspapers Yeni Akit and Aksam ran stories on their websites attributed to a magazine called “Israel-Kurd,” allegedly based in the KRG, that Israel will repatriate Kurds living in Israel to northern Iraq should Kurdistan become independent. The news website Internet Haber ran the news under the headline, “Barzani’s game revealed! Insidious Kurdistan plan.”

Another important pro-government outlet, Yeni Safak, commented that it may be Barzani, not Israel, who hopes to attract the 200,000 Jewish Kurds to Iraqi Kurdistan. Yeni Safak reported, “It is said that Massoud Barzani, who received support only from Israel during the referendum process, plans to strengthen his hand … with help from Kurds of Jewish origin who have prominent positions in Israel.”

The sensational if hard-to-believe story came amid another Turkish media blitz directed at Israel.

Some on the Jewish left, along with the United Nations and the international news media, have been telling us for years that illegal settlers in the “occupied territories” are the main obstacle to Middle East peace. So these groups should have rejoiced at this week’s news that a small number of settlers were evicted from their home.

What happened? Israel’s Supreme Court forced a group of settlers who had taken over an apartment in eastern Jerusalem that Israel took control of in 1967 — a place that is deemed “occupied Arab territory” by advocates for the Palestinians — to vacate the premises.

The court actually issued the eviction order back in 2013. But those die-hard settlers, no doubt backed by pro-settler money from abroad, managed to exploit the Israeli legal system and drag the proceedings out for more than four years. Finally, this past week, the settlers were compelled to leave the property that they had been illegally occupying.

So you would think Peace Now and its allies would be celebrating, right?

Instead, Peace Now issued a press release calling the eviction of the settlers “a dangerous trend that could threaten a future compromise in Jerusalem.”

But aren’t settlers the obstacle to peace? Wouldn’t their expulsion increase the chances for compromise and reconciliation?

No — because it turns out that the “settlers” were Palestinian Arabs. The rightful owners of the property are Jews. There’s the problem.

In spite of recent polls indicating that ordinary Palestinians increasingly recognize that Israel is here to stay, the rejectionist Palestinian leadership remains the most formidable obstacle to a peace agreement with the Jewish state. But running a close second place is the US State Department, where unfounded faith in Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) remains unshaken.

The State Department’s Palestinian fantasies are on display in its congressionally-mandated annual report on international terrorism released in July. Abbas’s PA “continued its counterterrorism efforts in the West Bank where Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine remained present,” according to the report. Abbas is portrayed as a benign leader with an expressed “commitment to nonviolence, recognition of the State of Israel, and pursuit of an independent Palestinian state through peaceful means.”

The report applauds the PA for taking “significant steps during President Abbas’ tenure (2005 to date) to ensure that official institutions in the West Bank under its control do not create or disseminate content that incites violence.” And it asserts that “explicit calls for violence against Israelis, direct exhortations against Jews, and categorical denials by the PA of the possibility of peace with Israel are rare and the leadership does not generally tolerate it.”

So much is wrong with this incredible assessment of the PA’s 2016 activities that either the judgment or the competence of its authors must be questioned.

To begin, claiming that the PA doesn’t tolerate calls for violence requires overlooking the entire PA educational system, which exists to incite violence against Israelis. As then-Senator Hillary Clinton observed correctly in 2007, the PA’s textbooks “do not give Palestinian children an education; they give them an indoctrination...[which] profoundly poisons the[ir] minds.” When the school term ends, PA summer camps keep the children’s skills sharp.

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network about the still under-appreciated Iranian threat, how the US State Department under Rex Tillerson is getting just about everything wrong (as usual) and the significance of the assumed Israeli strike on Syria’s chemical weaponry arsenal.

One of the most troubling aspects about "peace and justice" activism in the current era is that the very same institutions that condemn Israel so vociferously have had a difficult, if not impossible time confronting the terrible misdeeds of the Assad regime in Syria, ISIS in Iraq and Boko Haram in Nigeria with the same force with which they assail the Jewish state.

Yes, they issue condemnations, but their statements are lamentations that really do not approach in ferocity of the ugly denunciations these institutions target at Israel. In the United States, the problem is most pronounced in liberal Protestant mainline churches such as the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Methodist Church, denominations that have to varying degrees of intensity support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that singles Israel out for condemnation -- in a transparent effort to eradicate the country by economic means -- while remaining shamefully silent about the genocide of Christians in the Middle East.

We also see a tendency in institutions such as the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches and to my dismay as a Catholic, the Vatican and other parts of the Roman Catholic Church, to assail Israel while remaining silent about the problem of jihad.

The Catholic Church, which has condemned anti-Semitism in a document called Nostra Aetate in 1965, also has a difficult time dealing with the problem of Muslim anti-Semitism and anti-Christian hostility in Muslim communities and the religious sources they hold dear.

One source of the problem is that it is simply a lot easier and safer to speak out about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians than it is to confront the violence against Christians in the rest of the Middle East.

If you fly to Israel, you can participate in a protest against the IDF at the security barrier in the morning and be eating in a nice restaurant in Tel Aviv that afternoon without having to worry about getting shot. Protesting against ISIS or the misdeeds of the Iranian government, which puts Westerners in jail, is another, rather more courageous, thing altogether.

On 28 July 2017, one of the longest judicial enquiries in the history of a French tribunal finally moved forward. Thirty-seven years after the crime, the investigating magistrates completed their enquiry into the 1980 bombing of the rue Copernic Synagogue in Paris.

The magistrates’ closure sets the calendar for a formal decision within 40 days regarding proceeding to trial. A period of 40 working days places the deadline for 23 September — one week from now.

This is the peg to engage the Justice Minister of France, Nicole Belloubet, from a personal perspective.

At 6.35pm on 3 October 1980, the bomb exploded killing 4 passers-by and wounding 40 worshippers inside the synagogue. Prime Minister Raymond Barre announced that “a bomb placed for Jews had killed four innocent Frenchmen.”

One of them, was Aliza, wife of the late Israeli filmmaker Micha Shagrir. She had come to Paris for a weekend with her girlfriend who lived in rue Lauriston abutting rue Copernic. She wished to buy some fruit at a shop facing the synagogue. I accompanied her to the corner, continuing straight ahead. Aliza turned into Copernic where, a few seconds later she met her death.

The authorities immediately blamed the extreme right, though the attack had all the features of Palestinian terrorism, backed by local extreme left support.

French authorities have thwarted a terrorist plot against gay nightclubs in Paris.

Interior Minister Gérard Collomb on Tuesday said during a hearing at the French National Assembly that authorities uncovered the plot on Aug. 22. BFM TV, a French television station, reported Collomb told lawmakers the plot targeted “Parisian nightclubs and gay establishments in particular.”

Collomb did not name the specific nightclubs that had been targeted. He told lawmakers that authorities have thwarted 12 terrorist plots in France since the beginning of the year.

“This is what Daesh wants: To divide the national community and ensure that in our country there are clashes among the French people,” said Collomb, referring to the so-called Islamic State as BFM TV reported. “This is a trap that we must not fall for.”

France has been under a state of emergency since a series of terrorist attacks at the Bataclan concert hall and other locations throughout Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, left more than 100 people dead.

Surveying some of the recent debates among Israeli intellectuals about the possibilities of a lasting peace agreement with the Palestinians, Peter Berkowitz criticizes those who, out of frustration with the political-diplomatic process, want to use the law—usually expressed in the dubious claim that international law renders any Israeli presence in the West Bank illegal—to force a resolution:

[This line of argumentation] illuminates the dangerous propensity of liberal democracies, against which Tocqueville warned 180 years ago, to transform political questions into legal ones.

The “juridification of politics”—to borrow a term from the French thinker Alexandre Kojève—erodes citizens’ civic habits by depriving them of the opportunity to resolve political controversies through democratic give-and-take. It also distorts those controversies, which are inextricably bound up with conflicting interests and perceptions, contingent events, and prudential judgments. To subject them to legal reasoning that purports to yield rational, objective, and necessary judgments is to pretend that one right answer is available for disputes that can only be managed through compromise and mutual accommodation. . . .

American efforts to ease the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should [instead] focus on making peace more valuable to Palestinians by promoting in the West Bank the protection of rights; popular rule; and industrialization, commerce, and trade. [But] the challenge is likely to remain vexing. That’s because the means available to the United States—as well as to Israel, surrounding Arab nations, Europe, and the world community—to transform Palestinian ethnic and social bonds, cultural judgments, and religious beliefs are quite limited.

The Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which convened in Ramallah on Wednesday for a meeting headed by Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas, repeated its position that categorically rejects any interim agreements with Israel - including the establishment of a Palestinian state with temporary borders or expanded autonomy.

A statement issued following the meeting and quoted by the PA’s official Wafa news agency said that the PLO adheres to "international law, international legitimacy, the right of the Palestinian people to establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and within the 1967 borders, and in resolving all final status issues based on the relevant decisions of the international institutions as a single source of legitimacy and within the framework of an international conference with full powers."

The PLO Executive Committee also called on the U.S. administration to immediately declare the adoption of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders and to declare that “Israeli settlements” are illegal and destroy the peace process.

The PA insists that any peace agreement with Israel be based on the establishment of a Palestinian state. While the PA intends to flood Israel with so-called “Palestinian refugees” as part of an agreement, Abbas has stated several times that a future Palestinian state will be free of Jews.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Latin America is welcome and long-overdue. Indeed, it is astonishing that no Israeli prime minister before him ever paid an official visit there. As Israel is trying to counter Iran’s global reach and to crack the “automatic majority” at the United Nations, investing diplomatic efforts in Latin America is the right thing to do.

Latin America played an important role in the birth of Israel. Three of the eleven countries that constituted the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) were Latin American (Guatemala, Peru, and Uruguay). The representative of Guatemala at UNSCOP was George Garcia Granados, a pro-Zionist who had met twice with Menachem Begin in secret when the British were trying to kill him. Granados pushed hard to get UNSCOP to adopt partition and to get it approved by the General Assembly.

The President of the General Assembly at the time of the vote on partition was Oswaldo Aranha from Brazil. Like Granados, Aranha also had strong Zionist sympathies. The vote on UNSCOP’s partition proposal had been scheduled to take place on the 27th of November 1947. As the vote was approaching, however, it became clear that there was no majority for the approval of partition. More time was needed to gather support, especially among Latin American countries. Aranha came up with an idea that saved the day: November 28 was Thanksgiving, he reminded delegates, and it would be unfair to keep American workers at the UN. He therefore suggested renewing the debates and votes over the UNSCOP proposal after Thanksgiving. His proposal was accepted, and the extra 48 hours enabled the Jewish Agency to gather more support among UN delegations. During the vote, the support of Latin American countries was critical. At the General Assembly, 33 countries voted “yes,” 13 voted “no,” and 10 abstained. Of the 33 “yes” votes, 13 were from Latin America (i.e. 40%).

Despite this diplomatic support, however, relations were overshadowed by the shelter offered by Latin American governments to senior Nazi criminals such as Adolph Eichmann, Klaus Barbie, and Joseph Mengele. After Israel captured Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, the Argentinian government complained that Israel had violated diplomatic étiquette, but it did not apologize for granting Eichmann a save heaven in the first place. Other Nazis lived a happy life in Argentina and died in old age, such as Erich Priebke who died in October 2013 at age 100. Like many other Nazis, he lived a comfortable life in the Argentinian ski resort of Bariloche, where Joseph Mengele took his driving test and where Erich Priebke ran a deli. It was said to be the best in town, and customers used to call it “the Nazi deli.”

As the Trump administration weighs its policy options vis-à-vis Iran, highlighting the global danger posed by the Tehran regime is “crucial,” the editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner said during an i24 News interview on Tuesday.

The Islamic Republic’s aggression is a top agenda item during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current trip to Latin America, Dovid Efune told “Crossroads” hosts David Shuster and Michelle Makori. And recent developments in the investigation into the 1994 AMIA attack — in which 85 people were killed in a bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that was perpetrated by Iran’s Shi’a terror proxy Hezbollah — are helping drive home the point.

“What we’ve seen over the last few weeks,” Efune said, “is a former Argentinean ambassador to Syria confirming a secret visit between the former foreign minister of Argentina, Hector Timerman, and President [Bashar] Assad in Syria, where they arranged to cover up Iranian involvement and Hezbollah’s involvement in this terrible bombing.”

This, Efune noted, was evidence of the “very, very stark way that Iran’s influence on the global scale…is all bad and the world has to stand up to it.”

Forty-four percent of American Jews do not want President Donald Trump to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the American Jewish Committee’s Survey of American Jewish Opinion published on Wednesday shows.

The survey, conducted annually, is based on telephone interviews carried out during August with a national sample of 1,000 Jews over age 18. Questions covered topics such as respondents’ political stances, their level of satisfaction with the US administration, antisemitism, US-Israel relations, Jewish identity and religious pluralism in Israel.

Respondents included 9% Orthodox Jews, 16% who identify with the Conservative movement, 31% Reform Jews, 2% Reconstructionists and a plurality of 39% who consider themselves “just Jewish.”

When asked about the embassy, a majority said they oppose moving it. Thirty-six percent responded that they would be in favor of this, but at a later date in conjunction with progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Only 16% believe the embassy should be moved immediately and 4% are not sure.

Among those who do not want the legation moved, 51% are Democrats and 26% are Republicans.

On the subject of American politics, the AJC survey indicated widespread dissatisfaction with Trump’s performance in office.

In March 2016, a Palestinian terrorist went on a stabbing rampage in Tel Aviv, killing Taylor and wounding 10 others. This act of barbarism spurred the creation of the Taylor Force Act, which would stop American economic aid to the Palestinian Authority until the PA ceases paying stipends to terrorists and their families. Because Taylor was killed by a Palestinian terrorist, the PA pays the murderer’s relatives a monthly pension equal to several times the average monthly Palestinian wage.

“I don’t intend to cease payment for families of prisoner martyrs; even if it costs me my seat, I will continue to pay them until my last day,” said PA President Mahmoud Abbas, defiantly vowing to continue funding the families of Palestinian terrorists.

Every year, the U.S gives nearly half a billion dollars to Abbas and the PA. Most of those funds, or their equivalent, are used to pay Palestinian terrorists who have murdered innocent Americans, Israelis and others.

“I think supporting this act is the least anyone can do to honor [Taylor’s] memory,” said Ronen. “It will stop incentives to terror and give Palestinians a reason to wake up in the morning and live rather than die. Taylor is the kind of person who would want to give people a reason to live.”This feeling was shared by David and by Taylor’s father.

“I am in favor of anything to stop bloodshed,” said Stuart. “I feel that rewarding people for terrorism is totally out of the realm of decency. Taylor would have been proud of the effort to pass this act and know we were behind it. That is what keeps us going.”

In Congress, there will certainly be plenty of arguments on healthcare, immigration reform and the national budget. But amidst all of the pettiness and squabbles, Congress must pass the Taylor Force Act above all else. It is our responsibility to make sure that murderers are not rewarded and that a good man who served his country, did not die in vain.

Faced with the loss of funds if the Taylor Force Act becomes law, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas must clearly outlaw terrorism as an important first step to show that the PA is seriously working to fight terror, two experts wrote in an op-ed published Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal.

Jonathan Schanzer and Grant Rumley, respectively the senior vice president and research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote that it would be correct for Congress to reject the PA’s excuses for continuing to pay stipends to families of terrorists and that United States lawmakers should continue to work towards the passage of the Taylor Force Act. Both authors say that to show how seriously the PA is taking Congress, Abbas and the PA should take the initiative to fight terror by making it illegal.

The PA has arrested terrorists and disrupted terror cells, but usually this is done under the authority of presidential decrees for “harming public security,” the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Revolutionary Penal Code of 1979, or Jordanian military codes.

The State Department, Schanzer and Rumley noted, determined that while the PA has outlawed acts of terror, it has no laws on the books “specifically tailored to counterterrorism.”

Hosting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Wednesday thanked Israel for promoting peace in his country, noting especially Jerusalem’s efforts to help defuse landmines.

“Israel has been a friend and ally of Colombia and lately it has been a great ally in the construction of peace in our country,” Santos said. “You have offered help to us in several areas, including, for example, something that is very humanitarian, which is the removal of anti-personnel mines.”

As a consequence of its 52-year civil war, Colombia has long been the country with the second highest number of landmines, after Afghanistan.

Santos acknowledged the dubious honor, and added, “We are in the process of correcting this shameful situation,” Santos said at the Casa de Nariño presidential palace. “We would like to strengthen the magnificent relations that we’ve enjoyed for so many years. As in every relationship, there is always room for growth. We want to cooperate much more with Israel. You have a lot of what we need, and we have a lot of what you need.”

Netanyahu’s whirlwind three-hour visit to Bogota was dominated by talk about Israel’s potential contribution to Colombia’s “post-conflict” efforts.

The decision to establish the lobby was made after Dr. Hugo Eric Flores Cervantes, a Mexican politician and founder of the Social Encounter Party, visited Samaria in July. "Trade between nations must and should be free," Flores Cervantes had said during his visit. “I am in favor of accelerating the trade agreement between Mexico and Israel as well as accelerating the marketing of products produced in Judea and Samaria to Mexico."

Flores Cervantes was accompanied on his trip to Judea and Samaria by Israel-Mexico Chamber of Commerce Vice President Yossi Eldar, and met with Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan. Following their meeting, it was decided to establish a lobby within the Mexican house of representatives to combat the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement by way of stronger commercial relations.

Furthermore, it was decided that the lobby, which will comprise members of the Social Encounter Party, would work to sway Mexico's U.N. votes in favor of Israel.

"This is another welcome announcement for the settlement enterprise and part of the Samaria Regional Council's global effort to combat delegitimization [of Israel] and the BDS movement," Dagan said. "Don't underestimate the importance of Latin America, which, today, is joining the enlightened nations that are fighting anti-Semitism."

The parents of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Lieutenant Hadar Goldin — brutally murdered by Hamas during a humanitarian cease fire brokered by the United Nations and United States — are seeking help from the U.S. and United Nations in getting the terrorist organization to return their son’s remains to Israel so that he can receive a proper burial.

Staff Sergeant Oron Shaul’s body is also held captive by Hamas in Gaza.

Hadar was 23 and Oron was 20 when they were murdered by Hamas; Hadar was killed on August 1, 2014, and Oron was confirmed to be killed by July 25 that same year.

“Hadar is a victim of a cease fire instead of a war and this cease fire was brokered by John Kerry and Ban Ki Moon. Since they brokered the ceasefire, we are looking to the United States and the U.N. to bring their bodies home,” Leah Goldin told Breitbart News.

Hadar was in charge of engineering to destroy underground tunnels built by Hamas — tunnels that are used to infiltrate and attack Israel.

“What happened with the violation of the cease fire was actually an act of the Obama administration,” Leah said. “We are hoping the new administration can erase this stain and show that they can be better than the previous administration. The U.S. and UN must live with the consequences of having cease fires with terrorists.”

Egypt has presented Hamas with a proposal that would allow prisoner exchange negotiations to begin between Israel and the Gaza-based terror group, a Palestinian newspaper reported Thursday.

For years, in order for negotiations to even begin, Hamas has demanded Israel release the Palestinians who were rearrested in the summer of 2014 after being set free in the swap for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. A Hamas official recently told The Times of Israel there are 58 such Hamas prisoners being held in Israel.

Hamas has been holding the bodies of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul since the two were killed in the Gaza Strip during the 2014 war there. The terror group is also believed to be holding three Israeli civilians — Avraham Abera Mengistu, Hisham al-Sayed and Juma Ibrahim Abu Ghanima — who are all believed to have entered the Gaza Strip of their own accord.

As part of the efforts to return the Israelis being held by the terror group, Israel has reportedly been having indirect contact with Hamas about possible prisoner deal talks — efforts that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted at.

According to Thursday’s report in the daily Al Quds, based on sources in Cairo, under Egypt’s formula Israel will first hand over the bodies of 39 Palestinians killed in the summer 2014 war, 19 of whom are Hamas members, in exchange for Hamas acknowledging the fate of Goldin and Shaul. Hamas has hinted that it is holding the two soldiers, whom the IDF ruled to have been killed in action, and has also implied that they could still be alive.

Former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon on Thursday maintained his opinion that Israeli authorities are partially to blame for a deadly 2015 Palestinian terror attack in the West Bank because they are not firm enough on preventing Jewish extremists.

Speaking to Army Radio in an interview Ya’alon said that while reports on his comments at the beginning of the week about the slaying of an Israeli couple in a drive-by shooting by a Hamas terror cell were taken out of context and manipulated, the underlying principle was valid.

The family of the victims had been outraged by his comments, saying they appeared to justify terror attacks against Israelis.

On Sunday Radio Galey Israel quoted Ya’alon speaking about the connection between the murder of three members of the Dawabshe family, who were killed in a firebomb attack by Jewish terrorists in July 2015 and the subsequent killing of Eitam and Naama Henkin in a drive-by shooting several weeks later.

“The blood of the Dawabshe family in Duma and the Henkin couple who were murdered as revenge for Duma are on our hands,” he was quoted as saying at an event in the city of Kfar Saba.

Ya’alon on Thursday explained to Army Radio that he was in fact describing his own reaction in 2015 just after the attack, when he was defense minister, but also reiterated that Israeli authorities and settler leaders are provoking violence by not reining in Jewish extremists in the West Bank.

Rami Fahouri, a 26-year-old east Jerusalem resident, was indicted by the Jerusalem District Prosecution on Thursday over his membership in the Shabab al-Aksa terrorist organization.

The organization was outlawed in August 2011, and in November 2016 it was declared by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman as a terrorist organization.

Shabab al-Aksa is a religious organization and is seen as Hamas’s long-arm in Temple Mount. According to the indictment document, the members of the organizations were active in violent clashes with the police and visitors in the Temple Mount compound in recent years.

Fahouri is suspected of being a member in the group’s WhatsApp messaging application group, in which he and his friends were updating the members on Jews entering the Temple Mount compound.

Recently the Jerusalem District Prosecution indicted 13 other members of the organization, of which some were involved in conspiring violent activities against security forces and Temple Mount visitors.

The prosecution requested keeping Fahouri in detention until the end of his trial.

The interior minister cannot, under existing law, negate the residency of four east Jerusalem men who were elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council on a Hamas-affiliated slate, the High Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday.

But if the state wants such authority, the court said in a 6-3 split decision, the Knesset must pass a law to authorize negating residency due to “a violation of faith” to the state, even without there being any concrete security dangers.

The court gave the Knesset six months before residency would be fully restored to the four Arabs who submitted the petition.

Arabs living in east Jerusalem have the right to permanent residency, even though virtually all of them have rejected voting in Israeli elections.

The four east Jerusalem men in question are: Palestinian Authority parliament members Muhammad Abu Tir, Ahmad Atwan and Muhammad Tutach, with the PA minister for Jerusalem affairs being Khaled Abu Arafa.

Then-interior minister Ronnie Bar-On disqualified their permanent residency status in 2006 following their election on a Hamas-affiliated slate.

Bar-On disqualified them for violating faith to the State of Israel by having a political affiliation with Hamas.

IDF forces in conjunction with Shabak (Israel Security Agency) on Wednesday night carried out an operation in the Hevron-area Arab city of Yatta, confiscating money intended for the family of the terrorist who murdered Dafna Meir in January 2016.

According to authorities, Hamas provided the family with NIS 48,000 to aid the construction of a new house.

The money was confiscated.

Dafna Meir, a 38-year old nurse who worked at Be'er Sheva's Soroka Hospital, was murdered at the entrance to her home when a terrorist stabbed her to death in front of her children. Dafna struggled with the terrorist, causing him to flee and thereby saving her children's lives.

The IDF also shut down a Hamas-run charity operating in Hevron, which works to raise money for terrorists' families.

"The IDF shuttered an illegal charity association belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization," an IDF spokesperson said. "These actions are part of many activities that we carry out in order to prevent the transfer of funds that encourage terrorism."

It sounds like the makings of a B-movie, but it is really happening: our navy is preparing for the most extreme scenarios in any future opening of an attack launched by Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah – and that includes a jet ski invasion!

The Navy is drilling fighting off Hezbollah naval commandos mounting a surprise attack on Israel as part of a large-scale amphibious training exercise taking place in the north this week.

Among other scenarios, the Israeli sailors faced a swarm of jet skis and small motorboats carrying Hezbollah fighters, divers and suicide bombers.

How the drill looked:

Israel has threatened the Palestinian Authority that it deduct money from taxes it collects on behalf of the PA, in order to cover the cost of supplying electricity to the Gaza Strip.

Already-limited power supplies in the coastal enclave have been further squeezed amid a spat between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority over who should pay for the power.

Israel made the threat in a July 17 letter seen by The Times of Israel. Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai told PA Minister of Civil Affairs Hussein al-Sheikh Minister that due to the serious humanitarian considerations supplies must be restored one way or another.

Hamas, a terror group that has ruled the Strip ever since it ousted the PA in a violent coup in 2007, had refused to pay for Israeli electricity, claiming the PA is responsible for funding it, even as Hamas has spent millions on its military capabilities. In May, Ramallah reduced the amount of electricity it was willing to pay for, and as a result power supplies in Gaza were reduced to four to six hours a day.

The PA, which is dominated by Hamas’s rival Fatah, has since been cutting back some NIS 15 million ($4.2 million) each month from the NIS 40 million ($11.4 million) it used to pay for Israel for electricity in Gaza, part of a series of steps meant to pressure Hamas. Israel began to reduce the supplies in mid-June to account for the shortfall.

Putting Iran to the choice of a new Trump-negotiated deal or tough sanctions to be reimposed in the immediate future would give the president and his team the opportunity to run a serious negotiation while simultaneously backing such an effort with the maximum leverage possible, leverage that was squandered during the last round of negotiations.

In addition, the president could work with Congress as it evaluates his decertification decision. One approach could be to let the president work to negotiate a new deal while providing policy guidance on the broad outlines of a good deal and while imposing strong new sanctions on Iran for its other illicit activities around the world, and providing the president with resources and the authority he needs to directly confront Iranian aggression.

This would demonstrate that Congress backs the president's efforts and would thus provide additional leverage for his negotiations. It would also allow him to take advantage of his key strengths: aggressively policing an existing (albeit bad) deal and negotiating from a position of strength to reach a more serious deal that satisfies our core national security needs. It would also put Iran on notice that its malign activities in the region will no longer go unnoticed.

And while some have argued that the United States won't be able to reimpose sanctions because our erstwhile allies in Europe simply won't go along, the practical reality is that Europeans have little choice. Despite their claims to the contrary, when put to the choice of banking with Iran or banking with the United States, there really is no option. As with the last time it faced a similar Hobson's choice, Europe will complain and complain, but ultimately will comply.

At the end of the day, the reality is this: Everyone knows the Iran deal was made when the last administration was desperately looking for a foreign policy success and so we got a deal far weaker and less enforceable than our leverage might otherwise have permitted. Given this, if the current president's team is looking for an alternate path to the preferred course of simply tossing the deal overboard, a skilled and capable businessman like Donald Trump ought take swift, decisive action to force Iran back to the table. And he ought to do it now.

The German Federal Court of Justice will rule on whether three businessmen can face criminal penalties for selling nuclear technology to Iran, allegedly to be used to develop weapons, prior to the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.

The Jerusalem Post obtained a 2016 copy of the indictment against the three German businessmen and information from a Berlin criminal court on the new legal developments.

The businessmen – Bernd Gehrad L., René L. and Ralf C. – delivered 51 highly specialized valves to Iran between 2010 and 2011. The value of the valves, including the delivery to a sanctioned Iranian company, amounted to €1 million.

According to the indictment, “Bernd and René recognized since at least 2009 that behind the buyer [of valves] Hossein T. was an organization that was banned from receiving nuclear-capable material.”

Hossein T. appears to be Hossein Tanideh, a key operative for Iran’s atomic program, who has served as the conduit for delivering highly desired German valves to Iran. The US Treasury Department sanctioned Tanideh in 2012 with a freeze of his assets because of his illicit nuclear procurement business.

The indictment said Hossein was the final recipient of the delivery of valves from a firm based in the Iranian city of Tabriz.

An imam at the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount attacked the Muslim world's silence regarding the atrocities committed by Myanma (Burmese) authorities against the country's Muslim minority.

"The Muslim world suffers from a lack of caliphates," the imam said, noting that this situation allows "heretics" such as Buddhists and those who serve the cow, pig, and donkey, to act 'arrogantly' and authoritatively towards Muslims.

According to the imam, Muslim children "are burning" because of the failure of the Muslim world to act.

At the end of his speech, the imam promised to take revenge on heretics and the "soldiers of Satan". This revenge, he said, will include the creation of Islamic caliphates which will follow the ways of Mohammed. It will also include the "redemption" of Jerusalem, Rome, and India, and will crush all those who came out against Islam.

The imam then prayed to Allah to expedite the reestablishment of the caliphates.

This is not the first time Al-Aqsa imams are preaching incitement.

The paper and its business section, The Marker, are widely read in the Israeli elite — including by people who loathe its politics — and sets the agenda in many policy debates. Outside Israel, stories that appear online in Ha’aretz in the morning regularly work their way on to the agenda later in the day as talking points in Washington and Brussels.

Jordan News Agency: Your Majesty, when it comes to the Palestinian issue, have there been genuine international efforts to bring the Palestinians and the Israelis back to the negotiating table?

King Abdullah: In my interactions with US President Trump and his administration, I have sensed a commitment to bolstering efforts aimed at reaching a solution that guarantees peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, which is positive and encouraging. I expect that we will see this commitment translated into action in the near future, based on the two-state solution, which is the only way to end the conflict.

Regional issues are interconnected. Reaching just and comprehensive peace that guarantees the emergence of an independent state for the Palestinians on their national soil with East Jerusalem as its capital will, in turn, achieve security and stability for the region and its peoples. In the same vein, failure to make progress in the peace process will fuel frustration and anger among the region’s peoples and serve the agenda of extremists, who exploit the injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians and the frequent violations against Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. We have witnessed this during the recent crisis in Jerusalem.

People who served in the Obama administration are raiding the repositories of Holocaust memory, seeking Syrian absolution.

Earlier this month came a Holocaust Museum computational “study” that purported to prove that it was “very difficult from the beginning for the U.S. government to take effective action to prevent atrocities in Syria, even compared with other challenging policy contexts.” The study concluded that a more forceful American intervention wouldn’t have improved the situation and might have made things worse.

The museum suspended the project and scrubbed the “findings” from its website following an exposé in Tablet. It wasn’t lost on anyone that this episode came after three Obama National Security Council alumni were appointed to the museum’s Memorial Council and two others joined its staff.

Now comes Samantha Power’s tribute to Elie Wiesel in the Forward. The essay is excerpted from the former U.N. envoy’s introduction to a new edition of Wiesel’s harrowing Holocaust memoir, Night. Hers is a far more sophisticated exercise in self-absolution than the Holocaust Museum’s algorithmic shenanigans. But it is self-absolution all the same. The giveaway is that Power makes no attempt at applying Wiesel’s lessons to recent events in Syria.

The theme of Power’s essay is moral witness. “It can be hard to imagine that there was a time when the prevailing wisdom was not to bear witness,” Power asserts. “But that is precisely what it was like when Elie was writing.” The word “witness” and the phrase “bearing witness” appear five times in Power’s brief piece. Wiesel spoke out, she writes, when others—publishers, journalists, even survivors—preferred to forget or remain silent.

This is an obvious, almost banal point. Of course Wiesel bore witness! But his witness to Nazi evil had a future-tense moral purpose: to help counter other mass murderers and totalitarians. Wiesel campaigned for refuseniks trapped behind the Iron Curtain. He implored Bill Clinton to act in Bosnia. And most recently, he compared the Syrian regime and its Iranian patrons with the Nazis, asking: “How is it that Assad is still in power?” Wiesel didn’t just remember historical crimes; he decried contemporary inaction.

Samantha Power, by contrast, legitimized inaction. Having built her journalistic reputation examining America’s failure to stop mass murder in the 20th century, Power ended up lending moral cover to the Obama administration’s bystander policy on Syria (“Bystanders to Genocide” was the title of Power’s career-making 2001 Atlantic magazine report on the Clinton administration’s response to Rwanda). At the U.N., Power denounced Bashar Assad and his backers in Moscow and Tehran. But she refused to do the one honorable thing that might have jolted the Obama administration out of its moral torpor: resign.

I vividly recall the famous "free speech" movement at Berkeley several decades ago. The hard left demanded the right to express radical, often obnoxious, views on campus. Some on the hard right sought to ban these hard left expressions. Free speech prevailed.

Now it is the hard right that is demanding the right to make provocative speeches on campus and it is elements of the hard left that are trying to censor them.

But there is no symmetry in the means used to silence opponents. Today's hard left, led by Antifa and other radical and anarchistic gangs, do not shrink from the threat or use of violence to silence speakers with whom they disagree. These unlawful tactics have prevailed and several right wing speakers were forced to cancel their scheduled appearances on the Berkeley campus. This time free speech is losing.

Now there is a test case: Ben Shapiro, a thoughtful conservative with whose views I often personally disagree, is not merely a provocateur, as some other extreme right speakers are. These provocateurs come to campuses not so much to educate as to provoke responses. Although deliberately provocative speech is as constitutionally protected as other kinds of offensive expression, it is easy to understand why some administrators, faculty and students object to being used as part of what they regard as staged political theater deliberately designed to create conflict.

Ben Shapiro is different. He has something substantively important to share with the Berkeley academic community. If I were on that campus, I would want to listen to what he has to say, despite my disagreement with many of his views.

Yet there are those on the hard left who would stop me and others from hearing him. They cannot be allowed to do that.

Professor Richard Landes speaks with World Jewish Congress about 'Pallywood,' fake news to paint Israel as a monster.

Please join me in this clip below as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the dismaying trajectory of the American Jewish community, the majority of which is now on the wrong side of the war for civilisation.

Still, none of this should be surprising. McMaster has purged all pro-Israel appointees from the NSC who supported Trump’s campaign agenda. Likewise, as Conservative Review’s Jordan Schachtel wrote last month, officials told Conservative Review that McMaster “constantly refers to the existence of a Palestinian state before 1947,” and that he describes Israel as “illegitimate” and an “occupying power.”

Schachtel also wrote that McMaster referred to the Israeli move to place security cameras on the Temple Mount in July as “just another excuse by the Israelis to repress the Arabs.” Back in May, McMaster also blatantly refused to state that the Western Wall is a part of Israel and didn’t even want Trump to visit the Western Wall on his trip to Israel.

But the anti-Israel voices come from other places too, such as the State Department, specifically Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Like McMaster, Tillerson also refused to state that the Western Wall is in Jerusalem, while telling reporters on Air Force One that they were heading to “Tel Aviv, home of Judaism.” He also has stated that settlements in Judea and Samaria were a “challenge” to the peace process.

It gets worse. In July, the State Department released its annual global terrorism report, which blamed Israel for Palestinian terrorism. It virtually looked like the report from the Obama administration’s State Department the year before, devoting more than 3,900 words to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As Truth Revolt first revealed last week, the incoming CEO of the Center for Jewish History in New York David N. Myers supports a boycott of Israel. And in response, Israeli Member of Knesset Bezalel Smotrich, who serves as Deputy Speaker, advocated that Myers be fired, with a statement which commended the institute for its great work, yet noted “those involved in leadership positions with organizations that are no friends of Israel should be precluded from positions with Jewish organizations.” He references Myers as an active leader of New Israel Fund, J Street, If Not Now When, and Jewish Voices For Peace.

In an expose today in The Jewish Press, the largest Jewish newspaper in America, it was revealed that “Myers serves as a leader of the Academic Advisory Council of Scholars for Israel and Palestine, an organization which defines itself as “Pro-Israel, Pro-Palestine, Pro-Peace.” Among the viewpoints it espouses is “A central obstacle to a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians is the continuing occupation of the West Bank,” and that UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted in the wake of Israel’s stunning victory in the Six-Day War, requires an end to all Israeli “occupation” (including the Western Wall).

Most shockingly, according to Haaretz, the organization which Mr. Myers is a leader of calls on “the U.S. government and European Union to impose personal sanctions on four prominent Israelis including Economy Minister and Habayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennett, Housing Minister Uri Ariel, and Likud MK Moshe Feiglin.”

If Mr. Myers’ organization has its way, then Israeli governmental leaders would not be able to obtain visas, would have their assets frozen, and would face personal international sanctions. Along these lines, Myers signed an online petition in which he called Prime Minister Ariel Sharon “a war criminal,” and for him to be brought to the Hague. Among Sharon’s "crimes," according to the petition Myers signed, is “his rejection of the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their original homes and lands.”(Myers has elsewhere suggested a necessity for the Palestinian right of return.)

So, at the Center for Jewish History, its leader advocates a boycott and sanctions against Israel. There’s a lot wrong with that narrative.

For years, BDS proponents on U.S. campuses have insisted that the academic boycott of Israel is only aimed at institutions of higher learning, and not at individual academics or students.

The claim was always disingenuous—it’s not possible to target a university for boycott without also negatively impacting the faculty, students and staff who study and work there.

But, as we noted in a prior post, the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)—a key component to BDS—has long endorsed boycotts of students and scholars, even providing a handy list of suggested strategies for doing so, like refusing to read Israeli graduate student research proposals or write letters of reference for Israeli professors going up for promotion.

Still, for a long time most BDS supporters adopted these boycott measures in secret. What emerged were stealth boycotts—a variety of discriminatory practices being employed against Israeli academics which, unlike noisy disruptions of speakers that can be captured on video and posted to YouTube, are much more difficult to uncover and prevent.

But there’s nothing at all secretive about JVP’s latest BDS campaign.

It openly and brazenly targets a popular college study abroad program. The goal of “Return the Birthright” is to stop American Jewish students from participating in a rewarding educational opportunity that enables them to engage with students and their peers overseas.

Two efforts to erode American support for Israel have been launched over the last six months by the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) with financial backing from the prominent Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), The Algemeiner has learned.

Through its new #ReturnTheBirthright campaign, JVP is urging Jewish young adults to forgo a free, 10-day educational tour of Israel with Taglit-Birthright, “because it is fundamentally unjust that we are given a free trip to Israel, while Palestinian refugees are barred from returning to their homes.” Since its inception in 1999, Birthright has sent some 500,000 Jewish youths to Israel, with support from the Israeli government, the Jewish Federations of North America, and individual donors.

JVP’s latest initiative — kicked off as college students started their fall semester and registration opened for Birthright’s winter tours — came not long after the group rolled out its controversial “Deadly Exchange” effort in April. That campaign partially blamed cooperation between American and Israeli law enforcement officials for “discriminatory and repressive policing” against people of color in both countries, and condemned “US-based Jewish organizations” for “making this deadly exchange possible.”

The charge was strongly denounced by the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish civil rights group that sends senior US security officials to Israel for counter-terrorism training. The ADL noted that JVP used “language to describe American Jewish organizations that veers uncomfortably close to age-old antisemitic canards about Jews using their influence to undermine the societies of the countries in which they live.”

Fifty-four organizations commended the chancellor of University of California-Irvine on Tuesday for placing his school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) on probation after it disrupted an event hosted by pro-Israel students earlier this year.

The May 10 panel — organized by a local chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) and featuring young Israeli veterans — was interrupted by some 40 protesters who shouted incendiary chants, including “Israel, Israel what do you say, how many kids have you killed today?” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

The protesters blocked the room’s main exit to the building and event participants eventually had to be escorted out with police protection.

After interviewing several witnesses and reviewing video evidence, the university concluded that the SJP members’ behavior violated the student code of conduct. The group has a history of using threatening tactics to derail events on campus, and was consequently placed on probation until June 16, 2019, though it is appealing the decision.

In a letter to UC-Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman, dozens of faith, education and civil rights groups — representing hundreds of thousands of supporters — praised the university for disciplining SJP, which they said “intentionally suppressed the freedom of speech, assembly and association of Jewish and pro-Israel students on your campus.”

A New York University student-made handbook purporting to "demystify the systems of power behind our University" devoted a large portion of its content to the school's connections with Israel.

In the 50-page "NYU Disorientation Guide"—which "focus[es] on the most destructive things NYU either perpetuates or is complicit with," according to the anonymous authors—Israel is mentioned 55 times. That's more than the number of references to "Trump,""alt-right,""racism,""fascism,""white supremacy," and "socialism" combined.

"Despite the diversity of its content, this guide had a few broad themes that unite many of the articles: NYU behaving like a multi-national corporation and 21st century colonial power, entrenching white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy with institutionalized violence, and enslaving its students with backbreaking debt," reads the introduction.

Of the "radical" campus groups highlighted, two—Students for Justice in Palestine and NYU Jewish Voice for Peace—are chapters of organizations dedicated to the elimination of Israel as a Jewish State. The International Socialist Organization notes its anti-Israel stance in its profile and the Democratic Socialists of America, also on the list, passed a pro-boycott, divestment, and sanctions resolution this summer.

NYU is accused of having "myriad racist, Zionist, and homophobic policies" and its satellite campus in Tel Aviv is called one of the university's "imperial projects" through which it is guilty of "complicity in [Israel's] violence."

The non-renewal of a longtime University of Maryland professor's contract is being investigated by the school's Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct as an incident of retaliation and "religious, political, or national origin discrimination," the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Melissa Landa, an assistant clinical professor at the College of Education for more than 10 years who also did her Phd at UM, was let go this summer by the Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership department chair and associate chair, Francine Hultgren and John O'Flahavan.

The contract non-renewal came after Landa filed a complaint in February with the grievance board challenging Hultgren and O'Flahavan's decision to remove her from the language arts instruction team in May 2016, according to a recent report by UM's the Diamondback.

According to Kenneth Waltzer, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network—an academic free speech group whose inaugural conference Landa spoke at in May and of which she is an active member—Landa was targeted for her pro-Israel activism.

"Long before she filed a grievance, she was aggrieved," he said. "I know that when they learned she was active outside the department on behalf of opposing wacko ideas about Israel, their attitude toward her changed."

The Israeli Embassy in Dublin denounced on Wednesday “the antisemitic nature” of a conference on academic boycotts of the Jewish state that was held at Trinity College in the Irish capital earlier this week.

The two-day event, titled “Freedom of Speech and Higher Education: The Case of the Academic Boycott of Israel,” featured speakers including Steven Salaita, a Palestinian-American academic who once tweeted that Zionists were “transforming ‘antisemitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.”

Salaita defended that tweet and others during his keynote speech on Monday, and further accused Israel of implementing a “systematic, deliberate program of ethnic cleansing” and going on a “killing spree” in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. He also emphasized that the ideal of academic freedom should not take precedence over pro-Palestinian activism.

Orli Weitzman — deputy ambassador at the Israeli Embassy in Dublin — told The Algemeiner in response to the event that she was “concerned that a universal value such as freedom of speech has been hijacked in order to promote hatred and discrimination. The keynote speaker and the agenda reveals the antisemitic nature of this conference.”

“We are confident that the nature of this conference does not reflect the views of the majority of students or staff at Trinity College nor that of the Irish government and the Irish people,” she added.

On September 11 itself, the 5th grade of Louis E. Stocklmeir Elementary School in Sunnyvale, California (Cupertino Union School District), had a lesson about 9/11 – probably like many other schools in the US (hat tip: Club Z).

Except this is what they learned (verified from a parent of one of the kids at the school):

Quite the simplistic narrative – and false.

While it is strictly true that Bin Laden did blame US support for Israel, stating that the land belonged to Muslims before Israel was Jewish is wrong and irresponsible. It ignores our indigenous status in the land dating back thousands of years – way before the Islamic conquest in the 7th century – and even the fact the land legally belonged to the British (not the Muslims) before it legally became Jewish in 1948.

This narrative also paints Bin Laden more as a justice seeker than evil terrorist. Especially in the young minds of 5th graders.

This is irresponsible and disturbing.

This is definitely BDS fail of the day. Probably the week. Maybe the year.

The Palestinian Students Scholarship Fund was formed by six Chicago-based Palestinian Americans interested in supporting students who would not otherwise have access to higher education due to financial hardships or significant restraints. The founding members of the fund came together with the apolitical mission of creating opportunities for bright young men and women seeking advanced degrees as a means to better themselves, their families, and their communities.

Realizing the need to partner with an institution not only dedicated to the highest caliber of academic excellence but also one providing an inclusive and accepting environment for its students, faculty and staff, the group focused on University of Haifa. The city of Haifa has a considerable Palestinian-Israeli population. Within the community there are a number of financially challenged students, many who have large families and minimal income or whose parents have medical challenges or limitations and are unable to work. The synergy between the funders, the university and the city of Haifa proved to be a natural fit.

So not only are they deliberately partnering with an Israeli university, but they are doing so because they recognize its inclusive and accepting environment, flying in the face of the bogus “apartheid” claims of BDS

A 15-foot inflatable Pinocchio doll will be set up Tuesday night outside of Brooklyn's Barclays Center to protest English rock musician Roger Waters' longtime support of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement.

The move is part of a campaign by two pro-Israel organizations, StandWithUs and Artists 4 Israel, to follow the Pink Floyd singer to venues around the United States as he continues his "US+Them" international tour. The groups, and their Pinnochio, set up outside Newark's Prudential Center when Waters played there on Sept. 7.

In addition to the Pinnochio, the organizations also deploy a van to roam the streets surrounding the concert venue that holds a billboard declaring, "Roger Waters, Don't Need Your Hate and Censorship Against Israel."

Volunteers from Artists4Israel, which brings graffiti artists to college campuses to paint pro-Israel murals, spray paint t-shirts with a similar line on the back, and messages such as "Be Free" and "Stay Humble" on the front.

At his New Jersey performance, the organizations brought and distributed some 300 shirts to Waters' audience members as they headed into the venue.

An article written by Independent Middle East correspondent Bethan McKernan focused on a fake news story coming out of Lebanon that Hezbollah had kidnapped top-ranking Mossad agents. The report (“How fake news in the Middle East is a powder keg waiting to blow”, Sept. 11th) was contextualised thusly in the opening paragraph:

Conspiracy theories are not a new phenomenon in the Middle East. Many governments and influential organisations in the region – if not all of them – have long thrived on the power of disinformation and propaganda, which not only confuses enemies but keeps citizens in a state of pliant uncertainty…..The impact the new fake news ecosystem could have when the Middle East’s appetite for half-truths meets increasingly sophisticated methods of spreading political disinformation, however, are not yet known – and could have devastating consequences.

Yes, Middle East conspiracy theories are indeed toxic, and those who promote such views should never be legitimised.

In fact, if you recall, back in March we posted about an Independent article by the same journalist on Donald Trump’s White House invitation to Mahmoud Abbas, a piece highlighting the ‘analysis’ of someone named Ralph Schoenman, who she characterised as a “leading academic” and author of a “highly influential” book on Zionism.

However, Schoenman, we revealed, is not so much a ‘leading academic’ as he is a fringe extremist, 9/11 conspiracy theorist and fraudulent scholar who erroneously claimed that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to murder millions of Jews.

Perhaps most unforgettable was the charge, by Vox senior reporter Zack Beauchamp, that Israel limits Palestinian traffic on the bridge connecting West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It was an imagined affront, as it must be when speaking about an imagined bridge. There is not, and never has been, such a span linking the territories.

Vox's fantastical Middle East — home of the region's longest bridge, of false fatality statistics, where Jews only recently discovered Hebron — continues to develop, with several new inventions relayed in an August 31 episode of Vox's Worldly podcast.

Foreign editor Yochi Dreazen, for example, told listeners that the Gaza Strip was once controlled by the Kingdom of Jordan. It never was. (He corrected this error in a subsequent episode of the podcast, though he insisted the error was "nuanced," because Jordan "in a technical sense" didn't control Gaza.)

Dreazen also told listeners that Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman is currently Israel's foreign minister. He is the defense minister.

Finally, the Vox editor erred twice when referring to "Israeli hospitals inside some of these settlements that are the top tier — you know, these are as good as American hospitals" and claiming about the hospitals that "Palestinians can't go into them."

While there are certainly clinics and other medical care facilities in the settlements, there are no real hospitals (let alone world-class hospitals). And Palestinians are not barred from these clinics.

The Vatican canceled a scheduled meeting between a delegation of Israeli academics and philanthropists with Pope Francis in Rome on Wednesday. The delegation was sent by the Institute for the Study of Global anti-Semitism and Policy to a conference on anti-Semitism and minority rights in the Middle East, held from Sept. 13 to 15.

Even though Vatican officials refused to allow the delegation to meet the pope, claiming the meeting was not approved by Vatican protocol, they permitted a meeting with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, who came to the conference as one of the speakers. During the meeting, the ISGAP delegates were forced to endure the snub outside.

Delegation members included academics such as Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Dr. Sergio Della Pergola and MK Dr. Anat Berko (Likud).

Berko said that "it feels odd that in a conference dealing with anti-Semitism, a planned meeting with the pope doesn't take place because of stories about protocol."

Billionaire investor Steve Schwarzman, who served on a business council for President Donald Trump, said he received hundreds of emails calling him a Nazi following the march by white supremacists in Charlottesville.

Schwarzman, co-founder and CEO of the Blackstone Group, said in a speech Tuesday in New York that Trump’s business councils, including the Strategic and Policy Forum he chaired, folded after members came under pressure in the wake of the Virginia demonstration in support of Confederate statues.

“People were under legitimate astonishing pressure,” he said Tuesday at the CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha conference. “It was pretty clear that the country itself felt like it was going out of control. We decided there was too much pressure for too many people all running public companies.”

Schwarzman said that shareholders and employees pressured the CEOs to cut their ties with Trump.

“You should’ve seen some of the mail I got,” Schwarzman said. “I was accused by people of being a Nazi. I mean I’m Jewish. It was absurd.”

A White Plains, New York, man was arrested for allegedly sending and anti-Semitic-laced email to the Greenburgh town supervisor.

Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner had been pushing to remove a monument to Confederate soldiers in a private cemetery on the town. At the beginning of the month he backed off his request to remove the obelisk-shaped monument in Mount Hope Cemetery, saying he had come to view it as a symbol of reconciliation rather than of the Confederacy or white supremacy, the Journal News reported.

Timothy Goetz sent the hate mail last month prior to Feiner’s walk-back.

Goetz was arrested on Wednesday charged with aggravated harassment as a hate crime, a felony.

“While we respect everyone’s right to free speech, this was clearly a case where that line was crossed,” Greenburgh Police Chief Chris McNerney said in a statement. “We want to send a message that such hate filled threats will be fully investigated and those responsible will be brought to justice.”

A ruling by a London court has the local Jewish community up in arms, after a couple involved in an anti-Semitic attack this summer was freed and forced to pay only a small fine, The Jewish Chronicle reported.

The couple – both natives of Poland now living in London – pleaded guilty to three counts of racially aggravated assault at the Thames Magistrates’ Court earlier this month.

The charges stemmed from an attack on guests at a wedding in London in July.

During the incident, which took place outside of the Kehal Yetev Lev Synagogue, the Winiarskis attacked two guests and a driver while hurling anti-Semitic epithets.

According to prosecutors, Kasimiersz Winiarski shoved David Tangy, a driver for several of the wedding guests.

“The complainants were waiting in the car park at the venue as they were doing the transfer for guests for a Jewish wedding ceremony,” said prosecutor Demi Ugurtay.

“The two defendants came along, it's stated that Mr. Winiarski slammed the door on one of the Jewish driver's car, and then pushed him.”

Ineta Winiarski, who was walking the couple’s dog, then approached Ben Herbst, one of the guests, and whipped him with the dog’s leash while screaming “F***ing Jew”.

Marking Australia Day is like celebrating the Holocaust, a Melbourne politician said as her council scrapped a holiday it deemed offensive to Aboriginal people, in a move the government on Thursday labelled “extreme and divisive”.

The council in the Melbourne suburb of Moreland became the third in Victoria state to decide not to recognise Australia Day.

The annual holiday, on January 26, commemorates the arrival of the country’s first British settlers in 1788 and is a time when citizenship ceremonies are held.

But it is termed “Invasion Day” by many indigenous Australians who say it marks the beginning of the decline of Aboriginal culture.

In debating the issue Wednesday, Moreland Socialist Alliance councillor Sue Bolton said commemorating Australia Day “would be like celebrating the Nazi Holocaust”, state broadcaster ABC reported.

Assistant Minister for Immigration Alex Hawke said in a statement the government rejected “the extreme and divisive nature of the discussion Greens and Socialist councillors are promoting”.

He said the government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull “strongly condemns comparisons of Australia Day with the Nazi Holocaust as deeply offensive to all Australians”.

New York City Council candidate Thomas Lopez-Pierre, who blamed “greedy Jewish landlords” for the “ethnic cleansing” of black and Latino residents from Harlem, has been soundly defeated in a Democratic primary vote.

The incumbent councilman, Mark Levine, won nearly 75 percent of the vote to about 25% for Lopez-Pierre in the balloting Tuesday. Levine, who is a chair of the City Council’s Jewish Caucus, received 8,839 votes to 3,001 for Lopez-Pierre in a Manhattan district that includes much of West Harlem, Morningside Heights, part of the Upper West Side and Washington Heights.

New Yorkers went to the polls for primary elections for mayor and other local offices.

British Prime Minister Theresa May hosted a reception Tuesday ahead of Rosh Hashanah, reiterating her government's pledge to combat anti-Semitism and touting the Jewish community's contribution to Britain.

"Through our new definition of anti-Semitism we will call out anyone guilty of any language or behaviour that displays hatred towards Jews because they are Jews," May said, vowing to "actively encourage the use of this definition by the police, the legal profession, universities and other public bodies." She said the best weapon against anti-Semitism is "to create an environment that prevents it happening in the first place" and noted that this was what led her government to create "a proper National Memorial to the Holocaust, together with an accompanying educational center to teach future generations to fight hatred and prejudice in all its form."

May told the dozens of Jewish leaders who arrived at the reception that she was looking forward to the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Balfour declaration, which said the U.K. was in favor of a Jewish national home in Palestine, despite the efforts by pro-Palestinian groups to have the U.K. apologize for it. "Born of that letter, the pen of Balfour, and of the efforts of so many people, is a remarkable country. Of course, there are great challenges in the region – and we will do everything we can to support efforts toward building a two-state solution – and the lasting peace that we all want to see."

The Giro d’Italia cycling race will open next year’s event in Israel, marking the first time any leg of the sport’s Grand Tours will take place outside of Europe.

Organizers said Thursday that details of the exact route of the three-day leg in Israel will be announced next week, with Italian and Israeli ministers making the announcement in Jerusalem along with Spanish cycling great Alberto Contador.

“We are proud to host in Israel any international competition and of course the Giro, which is an important competition with the world’s best riders,” a spokesman for Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev told AFP.

More than 175 of the world’s best cyclists will arrive in Israel for the race, one of cycling’s top three stage races along with the Tour de France and the Spanish Vuelta.

Hosting the race’s start will mark a major sporting coup for Israel.

The Giro has started 11 times outside of Italy in the past, but never outside of Europe. The Tour de France and Vuelta a Espana have also never begun outside of Europe.

Recordings from the return of the hostages in the dramatic 1976 rescue in Entebbe were made public on Thursday, to mark the first anniversary of the death of Shimon Peres.

Peres, who was defense minister at the time, was at the airport to greet the hostages, the Air France crew members who were held with them and the soldiers who freed them as they landed after the daring rescue operation in Uganda. Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister at the time, was with him on the tarmac.

Peres addressed the soldiers who carried out the operation, thanking them on behalf of the entire country.

“You left a very worried country but you returned to a very proud country. We owe you our thanks for this,” he said. “You take a risk, perhaps greater than you realized… this was carried out in an exceptional and perfect way.”

Cornell Tech officially dedicated its new campus on New York City’s Roosevelt Island on Wednesday, home of a major academic partnership between Cornell University and the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology.

The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute was founded after Cornell and the Technion won a year-long competition launched in 2010 by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who sought to transform New York City into a tech powerhouse that could compete with Silicon Valley.

With the aid of a $133 million gift from Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs and his wife, Joan Klein Jacobs, the institute welcomed its first class of students in the fall of 2014. It offers a two-year dual master’s degree in Information Systems, making the Technion — which helped fuel Israel’s reputation as a “start-up nation” — the first international university to offer accredited degrees in the United States.

Speaking at the dedication ceremony, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “Cornell has been dedicated to teaching advanced engineering sciences since its foundation in 1865. Technion has been an international leader, and is one of the reasons why Israel is the global leader in tech and innovation.”

“In March, I visited Israel and we made a partnership between Technion and the New York Genome Center,” he added. “So this is going to follow on that, and we’re very, very excited.”

The bespectacled man with two pens in his shirt pocket and a black skullcap atop grey hair points to his computer screen and explains an epic project spanning generations.

Gabriel Birnbaum, 66, is a senior researcher helping document and define every Hebrew word ever — from ancient texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls to the contemporary novels of Israeli literary figures like Amos Oz.

It is a mammoth task, under way since 1959, and even though a milestone has been reached on the digital project, there are still many years to go.

Called the Historical Dictionary Project at Israel’s Academy of the Hebrew Language, it will serve as an invaluable resource for scholars, writers and linguists.

But it will also act as an anchor for Hebrew, the ancient language revived in spoken form in the 19th century, after some 1,700 years.

Work completed so far is already available to the public online.

Two Hamas fighters died in separate tunnel collapses in the Gaza Strip overnight, the Palestinian terror organization, which controls the territory, said on Friday.

Khalil al-Dimyati, 32, and Yusef Abu Abed, 22, were killed after two “resistance tunnels” collapsed, Hamas said, referring to tunnels used for military purposes.

It did not give details of the locations or causes of the collapses, but confirmed the two men were members of Hamas’s armed wing.

A security source said one collapse was in Gaza City, while the other was near the city of Khan Yunis.

Their martyrdom came after the march of a great and honorable jihad, and after hard work and Jihad and sacrifice, we count them martyrs...
...The Mujahideen of the Qassam heroes  do not know how to rest, their silence is a jihad and they prepare for as long as the battle bears fruit, from training to manufacturing to digging tunnels of pride and dignity for the homeland. ... bound by the promise of the Hereafter, which is inevitably coming on the day of our Mujahideen expel the faces of the Zionists, God willing,from the land...The blood of our martyrs will remain a shining light in the path of liberating Palestine and burning the occupiers until they are defeated from our land.

TEHRAN, Sep. 15 (MNA) – Ayatollah Khatami said the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has never allowed foreigners to gain access to confidential information of Iran and military sites will therefore remain top secret. 

Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, who led the Friday Prayers today, referred to Myanmar disaster saying “nearly 400,000 people have been killed or become homeless; which marks a huge human catastrophe.”

“The Zionist regime undoubtedly plays a role in these movements as confirmed by the UN special envoy who said Israel was the main sponsor of Myanmar’s military,” underlined the official.

The interim leader of this week’s Tehran Friday prayers said the case of Myanmar was not merely a religious or tribal dispute since we are faced with a government who is slaughtering Muslims with all-out cruelty.

He recalled the leader of Myanmar was a Noble Peace Prize winner saying “as expected, head Noble Peace Foundation said the prize will not be taken back from Aung San Suu Kyi since the Foundation is Zionist in nature.”

The cleric stated that, once again, international communities and some Islamic countries were exercising silence in the face on these crimes adding “Muslims are being murdered in Yemen and, unfortunately, no appropriate action is being taken.”

He later added that ongoing crimes were signs of enemies fear from Islam which is advancing forward at a high pace.

Referring to the issue of referendum in the Iraqi Kurdistan, Ayatollah Khatami said global arrogance, for ages, has dreamed of forming an Israel in the region though the dream will never come true.

“The Israeli prime minister has publicly supported the referendum and leader of Iraqi Kurdistan needs to realize that his initiative merely works to favor of the Zionist regime and leads to destruction of Iraq.

Ayatollah Khatami, touching upon inspection of Iranian military centers, said IAEA Head Amano has stated that military and civilian sites are both included in inspections while neither in the Additional Protocol nor in the JCPOA are foreigners allowed to gain access to confidential information of the country.

“Military centers will remain as part of secrets and honors of a nation and neither the authorities nor the people will allow aliens to enter these sites,” he concluded.

Next week, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas will once again stand at the rostrum of the United Nations General Assembly. Once again, an American administration is begging Abbas to put on his “moderate” mask, and not to “exacerbate” the situation with an inflammatory speech or with extreme moves against Israel.

I say that this not a real test of presumed Palestinian moderation. The real question is: How far can Abbas go in opposing real negotiation and compromise, encouraging violence, venerating terrorists, and pushing the criminalization of Israel internationally – while still being considered a paragon of peace by the global community?

Consider: For almost two decades, Israelis have been told that Mahmoud Abbas was the most reasonable Palestinian leader they could hope for; that he was Israel’s best partner for peace; that he was the moderate with whom a grand compromise deal could be reached. Israelis wanted to believe this so very much.

But then came the Abbas who walked away from prime minister Ehud Olmert’s outrageously generous territorial offer in 2008; and the Abbas who refused peace talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even after Netanyahu froze settlement construction; and the Abbas who left US secretary of state John Kerry out in the cold in 2014.

Then there was the “PaliLeaks” opportunity to ready the Palestinian public for compromise with Israel. But Abbas ran away from that gateway, too, vigorously denying the hints of compromise with Israel (about refugees, Jerusalem, and borders) that were in the leaked documents.

Ever since then, Abbas has used every international forum to spew forth extremist vitriol against Israel and seek the criminalization of Israel. His record of speech-making at the UN General Assembly is particularly appalling.

A documentary broadcast on official Palestinian Authority TV called Tunisia in Palestinian Memories featured a song, which demonized Israel as "the snake's head":

Tunisian journalist Rashid Al-Buka'i:
"Oh Palestinians, [the Zionists] shot you with a rifle
The Zionists kill your doves at the holy sites."
Song writer Sheikh Imam:
"Oh Palestinians,
I want to go and be with you
With fire in my hands,
and together with you my hand
will strike the snake's head [Israel]."
[Official PA TV, "Tunisia in Palestinian Memories," Sept. 5, 2017]

The song was also performed at a Fatah event in 2011 in front of Mahmoud Abbas, and other senior PA and Fatah officials. It has been broadcast several times since by PA TV and PA TV Live, as documented by Palestinian Media Watch. Other versions of the song have been broadcast as well.

Portraying Israel as the enemy who is a "snake" is a repeating symbol in Palestinian imagery. In a terror promotion video during a Palestinian terror wave, a Fatah fighter demonstrated that he was able to eat a live snake, possibly symbolizing "the enemy":

Twenty-two people were hospitalized following an explosion on a London Underground train on Friday morning, in what local police later declared to be a terror attack.

The Metropolitan Police said on Twitter that counter-terrorism units were leading the investigation after the blast at the Parsons Green station “is declared a terrorist incident.”

Witnesses reported seeing passengers who had suffered facial burns and had hair coming off, with at least two women seen being treated by medics amid scenes of panic during rush hour.

London emergency services confirmed 22 people had been hospitalized after the attack. None of the injuries were serious or life-threatening, the ambulance service said.

“Explosion on Parsons Green District Line train. Fireball flew down carriage and we just jumped out open door,” said Twitter user @Rrigs, who posted pictures of a white bucket smoldering on the train.

The bucket looked like the type used by builders and there appeared to be cables coming out of it. According to Sky News, investigators suspect the device did not fully detonate.

The station was closed, as well as an entire section of the District Line where it is located and police urged people to stay away from the area.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday said that Israel stands with the people of Britain in the “common fight” against terror after a homemade bomb exploded on a London subway train, wounding 22.

“We stand with PM May and the people of Britain in our common fight against the forces of terror,” tweeted Netanyahu, who is on a trip visiting Latin America and the US.

Netanyahu’s message comes as hundreds of London police embarked on a massive manhunt Friday, racing to find out who placed a homemade bomb on a packed London subway train during the morning rush hour.

The explosion wounded 22 people and ignited a panicked stampede to safety.

A knife-wielding man attacked a soldier on patrol in central Paris on Friday but did not cause any injuries, police said.

The attacker lunged at the soldier at the central Chatelet metro station around 6:30 a.m. (0430 GMT), making reference to Allah, a police source said. The soldier quickly brought the man under control.

The attacker was not previously known to police, a source said.

The incident came with France still on high alert following a string of terror attacks which began in January 2015 when jihadist gunmen stormed the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, killing 12.

Following that attack, the government launched an operation known as Sentinelle, deploying some 7,000 troops across the country to guard high-risk areas such as tourist sites and religious buildings.

Since then, there has been a string of assaults by individual attackers targeting these soldiers, including at Paris’s Orly airport, sparking a debate over whether the troops should remain on the streets.

The Trump administration declared its firm support Thursday for a bill that would suspend US financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority until it ends what critics have described as a long-standing practice of rewarding Palestinians who kill Americans and Israelis.

The State Department announcement comes nearly six weeks after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee backed the measure. The legislation, which is named after an American who was stabbed to death in Israel by a Palestinian, reflects bipartisan outrage over what lawmakers have termed a “pay to slay” program endorsed by the Palestinian Authority.

“The Trump administration strongly supports the Taylor Force Act, which is a consequence of Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization’s policy of paying terrorists and their families,” the State Department said.

The department added that President Donald Trump “raised the need to end any part of this program that incentivizes violence against Israeli and American citizens with President Mahmoud Abbas last May in both Washington and Bethlehem.”

The Palestinian Authority has disputed the accusations and called the bill misinformed.

Dear Ambassador Emanuele Giaufret, Welcome to Israel. As the European Union has often given doubtful advice to Israel, I take the liberty of making some suggestions in order to make your assignment here more successful.

Please remember that you represent the greater part of a continent where antisemitism has been ingrained in the culture for over a thousand years. The leading academic scholar of antisemitism in our generation, the late Robert Wistrich, has shown that almost all Europe’s ideological currents during those centuries were antisemitic.

Please also be aware that in the past decades EU members have let in – without a selection process – millions of people from countries where most citizens are antisemitic. To make matters worse, in the past two years large numbers of such people have been given the opportunity to immigrate to the EU. The fact is that all Jews who have been killed in Western Europe for ideological reasons in the current century were murdered by Muslim immigrants or their descendants.

Your predecessor, Mr. Ambassador, repeatedly told Israel that “settlement construction was a hindrance to peace.” Sometimes he went so far as to threaten us. For instance in 2014, he stated, “if Israel’s settlement policies wrecked the current US-led peace efforts, then Israel would be held responsible for the failure of the negotiations.” He did not point out that the Palestinian Authority continuously pays high “salaries” to the families of murderers of Israeli civilians.

Not mentioning how big a hindrance to peace this is was one of many ways he undermined the EU’s credibility in Israel. He should also have admitted publicly that European countries who finance the PA indirectly reward the murderers of Israelis.

Following reports that Israel is campaigning for the dissolution of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and its integration in the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC), PLO and Palestinian Authority (PA) bodies and officials said that Israel is acting to thwart the Palestinian refugees' right to return to their homes. They stressed that there will be no concessions on this issue, and that the only possible solution to the refugee problem is implementing UN Resolution 194 on their right of return.

The following are excerpts from some of the statements.

The Refugee Problem Will Be Resolved By Implementing UN Resolution 194; There Will Be No Concessions On This
A statement released by the Palestinian Information Ministry on September 12, 2017 said: "The right of return is anchored in UN resolutions and in particular in Resolution 194. There will be no Palestinian concessions on the right of return. The persistent, toxic attempts by Israel and its leaders [to deny this right] are not new. The founder of Israel, David Ben Gurion, said about this: 'The old refugees will die and the young will forget'... The most appropriate response to the attempts to eliminate the issue of the refugees is to remind the world that it opposes the occupation and that, decades ago, it voted in favor of [the refugees'] return and compensation, and also to ask Israeli diplomats about the hundreds of Palestinian cities and villages that the Zionist gangs destroyed in 1948 and about the crimes, ethnic cleansing and expulsion that occurred there. The [PA] Information Ministry stresses that the dissolution of UNRWA, and the cessation of its services, will take place one day after the UN resolutions regarding the refugees' return and compensation are implemented to the letter. This is the time for the UN to seriously consider placing full responsibility for the Nakba on the occupying entity [i.e., Israel] and charging it with financing all of UNRWA's needs, on the force of international law and the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly resolutions."

Senior U.S. and Israeli officials deny the relationship between the two countries has been strained over differences in how to deal with the threat of Hezbollah, according to multiple senior government officials from both countries who told the Washington Free Beacon that recent reports of a yelling match between senior Trump administration and Israeli government officials are false.

Recent media reports allege the Trump administration and Israel have been in conflict over the best way to deal with the threat posed by Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terror organization that has played a major role in bolstering embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Tensions are said to have come to a head during a high-level August meeting between the countries in which White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is alleged to have yelled at his Israeli counterparts and dismissed concerns about Hezbollah being a terror organization—a charge that multiple senior U.S. and Israeli officials denied in conversations with the Free Beacon.

Further allegations that the Israeli delegation asked White House National Security Council staffer Mustafa Javed Ali to leave the room over concerns that he does not view Hezbollah as a terror organization also are being called untrue, according to both U.S. and Israeli officials who were present in the Aug. 17 meeting.

A copy of the official list of U.S. and Israeli officials participating in the high-level meeting shows that Ali was never scheduled to attend, according to a copy of that list viewed by the Free Beacon.

The situation is being portrayed in the U.S. and Israeli media as further proof of tension between McMaster's NSC and their Israeli counterparts.

A senior Israeli official on Thursday denied reports that Russia rebuffed Jerusalem’s demand to ensure that Iranian forces and Iran-backed Shiite militants not be allowed to operate within 60-80 kilometers of the Syrian frontier with Israel in the Golan Heights.

The demand was initially raised by Israel in July, when negotiations were underway for a ceasefire deal in southern Syria between President Bashar Assad and Syrian rebels, under the auspices of Washington and Moscow.

Last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to discuss the entrenchment of Iran and Iranian-backed forces in Syria, and to present Israel’s position.

“Israel is satisfied with the talks in Sochi,” the official said, insisting on anonymity.

According to reports Thursday on Israel’s Channel 2 television and the Haaretz newspaper, Russia rejected Netanyahu’s plea. Instead, the reports claimed, Moscow committed only to keeping Iranian forces five kilometers from the Golan Heights frontier.

Israel had wanted a buffer zone of between 60 and 80 kilometers from the border on the Golan Heights, and has been repeatedly warning against Iran’s military ambitions in the area, Tehran’s bid to establish a territorial “corridor” all the way to the Mediterranean, and an increased Iranian presence on Israel’s northern border, according to the reports.

In the past month or two, the defense establishment has identified unprecedented Iranian activity north of the border. In light of this, perhaps last week's reports by foreign media outlets that Israel attacked a weapons facility in Syria on Sept. 7 seem more understandable.

Aside from the aforementioned alleged airstrike, the IDF carries out hundreds of operations year-round within the framework of its so-called "war between the wars."Only a small portion of the IDF's activities come to light in the foreign media, but these operations include special intelligence gathering, land-based missions and a variety of other measures aimed at staving off the next war.

In recent weeks, we have also heard Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman issue harsh statements about Iran's encroachment into Syria, along with reports that the Islamic republic is trying to build precision-missile factories in Lebanon and Syria. According to foreign reports, the target of last week's airstrike was one of these factories.

Thus far, terrorist organizations have been unable to acquire precision strike capabilities. The IDF, meanwhile, views Hezbollah's aspirations in this regard as a "severe strategic threat," because such missiles can accurately hit strategic installations in Israel, such as air force bases, the chief of staff headquarters and other sensitive sites. It is important to note that despite Israel's air-defense systems – Iron Dome, David's Sling – it is impossible to intercept every enemy missile.

Russia, Iran and Turkey on Friday agreed a deal to jointly police a fourth safe zone around Syria’s Idlib province as part of a Moscow-led plan to ease the six-year conflict.

In a joint statement after two days of talks in Kazakhstan the three powers said they agreed “to allocate” their forces to patrol the zone covering rebel-held Idlib province and parts of the neighboring Latakia, Hama and Aleppo regions.

The talks in Astana are the sixth round of negotiations Moscow has spearheaded since the start of the year as it seeks to pacify Syria after its game-changing intervention on the side of leader Bashar al-Assad.

Like Russia, Iran supports the Assad regime Turkey has sided with the rebels.

Russia had previously deployed military police to patrol the boundaries of three zones agreed in the south of Syria, in Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, and in part of the central Homs province.

While Hizballah might now be too involved in Syria to desire conflict with Israel, writes Tony Badran, it is only a matter of time before the organization decides to turn its attention southward. And it will do so from a position of much greater strength, leading to disaster in Lebanon. The U.S. can, and should, try to prevent war:

[T]he war [in Syria] has significantly boosted Hizballah’s strategic position, because it has boosted Iran’s, and Hizballah is simply an extension of Iran. So despite its serious losses, Hizballah has managed to . . . establish territorial contiguity and strategic depth through western Syria. Hizballah and Iran have expanded their direct control over Syrian areas adjacent to the Lebanese border and the Damascus area with its airport. They [also] expanded their presence in southern Syria and are trying to move on eastern Syria to connect with Iran’s assets in Iraq. . . .

Iran and its proxies [now] need time to connect their Iraqi, Syrian, and Lebanese assets. Hizballah will then use that territory for, among other things, striking Israel, transforming its presence in Syria from a constraint to an enormous advantage. The clock is ticking for Israel. . . .

U.S. policy in the region needs an urgent adjustment to tackle the strategic mess of President Barack Obama’s policy of realignment with Iran. This means that priority should be given to undoing Iran’s position in Syria, and to preventing its deployment of strategic weapons and establishment of military infrastructure there.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed optimism on Thursday for a more peaceful Middle East, given recent developments in the region.

Speaking at the “From Balfour to Brexit” Conference held at Mishkenot Sha’ananim in Jerusalem, Blair said Arab leaders were beginning to rethink their decades-old opposition to the Jewish state.

“Changes in the region are creating new alliances and new opportunities,” Blair said. “There is an Arab leadership starting to formulate a view of their history which does not involve a demonization of Israel.”

“For any government in Israel to make a deal with the Palestinians is tough unless there are regional underpinnings. Many in the region can be partners to help solve the situation and not just point the finger.”

In addition to Blair, the conference also featured Lord Roderick Balfour, the 5th Earl of Balfour, and descendant of Lord Arthur Balfour, Leader of the Opposition MK Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) and former Israeli Foreign Minister MK Tzipi Livni (Zionist Union), among many other British and Israeli politicians, diplomats, journalists and other opinion-shapers.

Prime Minister Theresa May has told a Jewish audience attending a Rosh Hashanah reception at 10 Downing Street that she is a “proud supporter of Israel” ahead of the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.

She said: “Born of that letter, the pen of Balfour, and of the efforts of so many people, is a remarkable country….As Prime Minister, I am proud to say that I support Israel. And it is absolutely right that we should mark the vital role that Britain played a century ago in helping to create a homeland for the Jewish people.”

May used the annual address to reassure the community on security funding and counter-extremism efforts, saying that she was hoping to establish the Commission for Countering Extremism as a statutory body, with extra power to tackle hatred.

She also said she would “actively encourage” use of the newly-adopted working definition of anti-Semitism put forward by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance by the “police, legal profession, universities and other public bodies”.

The IHRA definition has caused controversy since it expands the remit of actions and comments that can be considered anti-Semitic to include criticism of Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday heaped effusive praise on Mexico, asking for a “pardon” for not visiting the country earlier.

His laudatory comments may have been an effort to fully repair bilateral ties, which underwent a serious crisis earlier this year after Netanyahu expressed support for US President Donald Trump’s plan to build a border wall between the US and Mexico.

“This is a milestone,” Netanyahu said at a joint appearance with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. He noted that, “as incredible as it sounds,” his visit to Argentina, Colombia and Mexico this week marked the first time an Israeli prime minister came to Latin America.

“I would say it’s an unpardonable lapse, but we want a pardon. We’re here,” Netanyahu went on. “We think we correct now a historic lapse, because Mexico is a great country. It’s one of the world’s great economies. It’s great nation, a great people, a great culture. We want to be close, even closer, to Mexico. And this is what this meeting signifies.”

The prime minister then congratulated Mexico on its Independence Day, on Saturday, and expressed condolences to those who lost their lives in last week’s devastating earthquake.“We have, as you said, offered any help that we can give to Oaxaca and Chiapas and anything that you deem appropriate, we stand ready, because we stand with you.”

The actions of countries in South and Central America has a huge impact on U.S. domestic policy. It is for that reason it is encouraging to see a number of countries, led by President Mauricio Macri of Argentina, seek to build better relationships with Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli prime minister is undertaking a 10-day tour of the region and the visit is far from ceremonial. It highlights a shift in policy from countries including Argentina, Columbia, Paraguay and Mexico paving the way for them there to form a greater allegiance with Israel.

Common interest between South America and both Israel and the U.S. on topics such as the rise of international terrorism and the danger posed by Iran and Hezbollah are a uniting force. It has been reported that South America has been used for the purpose of laundering money from Hezbollah and many are fearful that this could develop into larger criminal and perhaps even terrorist activity. Israel’s intelligence and expertise will be beneficial to countries across the Americas. We will all be in a better position to fight these evils if relationships are solidified and there is better collaboration.

Israel’s burgeoning technology sector also means that trade links can continue to grow. I have long advocated for Science Diplomacy and I have facilitated programs offering technology to countries in Africa, encouraging improved relations and dialog with the U.S. and Israel. This visit has the potential to have a similar impact. If Israel is able to improve health care or facilitate cleaner water to those who have limited access, it will have positive repercussions for political ties.

A team of investigators in Argentina has reportedly determined that Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor who investigated the Iran-ordered 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing in Buenos Aires, was murdered and did not commit suicide as claimed by the defense, according to a Spanish-language report Thursday.

Twenty-eight experts in different areas, from ballistics to psychology, determined that Nisman was murdered by a shot to the head, and that the murderer (or murderers) then attempted to cover their tracks at the scene of the crime, according to a report in the Argentine news site Infobae.

Argentinian officials have has not confirmed the report, which comes just days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the first-ever visit by an Israeli premier to Argentina.

Netanyahu brought the issue up in his talks with Argentinean President Mauricio Macri. Israeli officials were told Monday that the investigation was advancing, and that they can expect an official announcement soon. Officials in the prime minister’s delegation said that the timing of the Thursday report was coincidental.

Nisman was discovered shot dead in his apartment in January 2015, hours before he was scheduled to appear in Congress. Nisman had been about to present allegations that then-president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner orchestrated a secret deal to cover up Iranian officials’ role in the AMIA bombing. Kirchner denied the allegations and judges threw out the case.

Gomez emphasized the benefits of Netanyahu’s visit to commercial relations between Mexico and Israel. “Since our 2000 free trade agreement, we have tripled trade and have increased technology and education cooperation dramatically,” he said.

“There are any number of opportunities that our countries are working closely on, including not only technology in general, but aerospace in particular,” Gomez said. “We are creating new ties between our flag carrier, Aeromexico, and El Al, as well as a direct air cargo route.”

Hoyos said that Netanyahu’s visit to Colombia was similarly important in terms of economic ties. “We need stronger links with Israel especially on the transfer of knowledge and technology, and this might be achieved through the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and Israel,” Hoyos said. “I wish more Israeli investment would come to Colombia, to our rural areas and cities — Israel is very much welcome in our country.”

Both Hoyos and Gomez stressed the importance of local Jewish communities boosting ties with Israel. “Our Mexicans of Jewish descent have an enormous positive influence on our country: one of the aspects of this is in making sure that Mexico and Israel maintain strong relations,” Gomez said, going on to praise Mexico’s Jewish representative body for working with the American Jewish Committee (AJC) “to create regional, North America-wide cooperation with Israel.”

Jewish leaders in the U.S. have slammed Qatar’s attempts to woo the Jewish community by arranging meetings this week with high-level officials – including the emir and crown prince himself – on the basis that the Gulf state continues to be the chief backer of Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Qatar has reached out to several American Jewish leaders to ask if they would like to meet Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and other member of the ruling family on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next week.

However, some heads of Jewish groups have rebuffed the Gulf state’s overtures over its heavy ties with Hamas and have urged other leaders to do the same.

Judea Pearl, a Chancellor’s Professor at UCLA and the president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, told the Algemeiner on Wednesday that he urged “Jewish leaders to refrain from meeting the emir of Qatar, and thus bestow credibility onto a country that has served as the hub of terrorism-breeding ideology in the past two decades.”

Pearl went on to recount how his late son, Daniel, a senior Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and then murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan in 2002, had interviewed the Muslim Brotherhood’s top cleric, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian living in exile in Qatar, one month after 9/11 happened.

“That was when the sheikh first proclaimed the idea that Israeli citizens are legitimate targets of terrorism, because ‘Israeli society is generally armed,’” Pearl said. “Three months later, Daniel fell victim to Qaradawi’s ideas.”

Security forces in the capital apprehended a wanted terrorist Thursday evening, following warnings by intelligence sources that the suspect was preparing for an attack in Jerusalem, possibly as early as Thursday night.

Police and Border Police units were on high alert throughout much of the day, with fears of an imminent attack in the capital. Security forces closed off a number a number of entrances and crossing points into the city during the high alert, Channel 2 reported.

The suspect, a resident of the Isawiya neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, was located along with his vehicle on Mount Scopus. Police took the suspect into custody and transferred him to intelligence officials for questioning.

Forty-eight percent of parents whose children are enrolled in schools in east Jerusalem do not want them studying the curriculum provided by the Palestinian Authority, according to a recent poll conducted by the Jerusalem Municipality.

The city, which polled hundreds of parents of east Jerusalem students, found a sharp decline in parents' satisfaction with the Palestinian curriculum, which is used in Arab schools in the east of the city, as well as a notable rise in demand for the Israeli curriculum. For decades, as part of the status quo in the city, students in east Jerusalem studied the Jordanian curriculum. When the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, its leadership had pressured Jordan and the residents of east Jerusalem into using the PA's curriculum for students in east Jerusalem.

But now more and more residents of east Jerusalem are pointing out the failures of the Palestinian curriculum and expressing a desire to use the Israeli curriculum, which is used by Arab public schools elsewhere in Israel.

Just before the school year opened on Sept. 1, some east Jerusalem parents put up posters that read: "Our Arab Israeli brothers study the Israeli curriculum and they are no less loyal to their people than we are. ... We encourage students' and parents' right to choose. Whoever wants to study the Palestinian curriculum will, and whoever wants to study the Israeli curriculum is fully entitled to do so."

An Arab woman who attacked MK Shuli Moalem-Refaeli (Jewish Home) at the Temple Mount two years ago was sentenced to a half-month in prison Thursday.

The sentence handed out by the Jerusalem Magistrate Court is in addition to the prison sentence she is currently serving. The attacker was also given a four month suspended sentence and a fine of NIS 500 ($140).

Judge Ilan Sela wrote in his decision: that "on November 3, 2014, when the defendant was on the Temple Mount when MK Shuli Moalem arrived, the defendant began to shout at her in Arabic, 'Go away!' and 'Allahu Akbar!' She pushed her to prevent her from visiting her holy site."

In response to the court's decision, MK Moalem said: "There has recently been a clear change in the attitude of the authorities regarding the Temple Mount. In fact, the court ruled here that the Temple Mount is a sacred place for the Jewish people and anyone who prevents Jews from going around is committing a criminal offense."

Saeb Erekat, the Secretary-General of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Executive Committee, on Thursday urged the UN to publish its blacklist of companies that do business in Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights, and eastern Jerusalem.

Erekat stressed the importance of publishing the blacklist of companies, institutions and personalities that help the "colonialist settlement."

He demanded that the international community, especially the U.S. administration, declare that “settlements” are illegal and destroying the two-state option.

Erekat’s remarks came during a meeting with diplomatic representatives, including the Russian ambassador, the French consul-general and the American consul-general.

The UN Human Rights Council voted to approve the database of companies last year, despite objections from the United States and Israel. The Trump administration has been trying to persuade the UN not to publish the list.

A delegation representing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party is expected to visit Cairo soon amid talks of a unity Palestinian government being formed with Gaza-ruling terror group Hamas, i24News reported on Tuesday.

Fatah Central Committee member, Azzam al-Ahmad, welcomed the ongoing reconciliation initiative being mediated by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s government.

Reports of the Fatah party’s visit to Cairo to resolve its dispute with the Palestinian terror group follow Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s announcement on Monday that his organization was prepared to form a unity government with Abbas’s Fatah, without preconditions.

Hamas was ready “to hold a dialogue with Fatah in Cairo immediately, to come to an agreement and set the terms for its implementation,” said Haniyeh in a statement published on the terror group’s website.

North Korea fired a missile that flew over Japan's northern Hokkaido far out into the Pacific Ocean on Friday, South Korean and Japanese officials said, deepening tensions after Pyongyang's recent test of its most powerful nuclear bomb.

The missile flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific about 2,000 km (1,240 miles) east of Hokkaido, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

Warning announcements about the missile blared around 7 a.m. (2200 GMT Thursday) in parts of northern Japan, while many residents received alerts on their mobile phones or saw warnings on TV telling them to seek refuge.

US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said the launch "put millions of Japanese into duck and cover," although residents in northern Japan appeared calm and went about their business as normal after the second such launch in less than a month.

The missile reached an altitude of about 770 km (480 miles) and flew for about 19 minutes over a distance of about 3,700 km (2,300 miles), according to South Korea's military - far enough to reach the US Pacific territory of Guam.

The top commander of US nuclear forces said Thursday he assumes the September 3 nuclear test by North Korea was a hydrogen bomb, suggesting a heightened US concern that the North has advanced to a new level of nuclear firepower, even as it launched yet another ballistic missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean.

Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, commander of Strategic Command, told reporters that while he was not in a position to confirm it, he assumes from the size of the underground explosion and other factors that it was a hydrogen bomb — which is a leap beyond the fission, or atomic, bombs North Korea has previously tested.

Just moments after Hyten spoke at his headquarters near Omaha, word spread that North Korea had launched a mid-range ballistic missile over Japan. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who was with Hyten at Strategic Command headquarters at the time of the launch, said afterward that it was a reckless act.

“It was fired over Japan and put millions of Japanese in the duck-and-cover,” he told a small group of reporters. “Landed out in the Pacific.”

Asked about a possible American military response, Mattis said, “I don’t want to talk on that yet.”

The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it would once again waive sanctions against Iran’s banking and oil industries in line with the 2015 nuclear deal, but signaled that it would take a tougher stance towards enforcing the deal’s implementation.

The announcement of the waiver came hours after the United States Treasury Department imposed new non-nuclear sanctions against a number of businesses and individuals for helping Iran’s ballistic missile program and launching cyber-attacks against the U.S.

“The new sanctions on non-nuclear matters signal President Trump’s determination to confront Tehran over actions the United States considers destabilizing to the region and in defiance of the intent of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal,” The Washington Post reported.

“The administration seeks to bring a change in Iran’s behavior,” a senior administration official told the Post, identifying Iran’s continued ballistic missile development program, its support of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, its use of Shiite militias in neighboring countries, and its ongoing human rights abuses including its jailing of Americans and other foreigners, as examples of the behavior that the administration seeks to change.

The continued waivers on sanctions have been described by the administration as a “holding action” until October, when Trump will decide whether or not to decertify the nuclear deal according to the terms in the Corker-Cardin legislation that states how the U.S. government would handle the nuclear deal.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday slammed Iran for violating "the spirit" of the nuclear deal it signed with world powers in 2015.

"The Iran deal is one of the worst deals I've ever seen, certainly at a minimum the spirit of the deal is atrociously kept," Trump said aboard Air Force One, according to AFP.

"The Iran deal is not a fair deal to this country. It's a deal that should not have ever been made," he added.

Trump has long been a vocal critic of the Iran nuclear deal, which was signed during the term of the Obama administration, describing it as “the worst deal I’ve ever seen negotiated”.

The US Treasury Department announced new sanctions on Iran Thursday, AFP reported.

The sanctions target 11 companies and individuals accused of aiding Iran's Revolutionary Guards or cyber attacks on US banks.

The new sanctions were announced the same day the Trump Administration was expected to announce the extension of the sanctions relief from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

US President Donald Trump had criticized the deal reached by his predecessor, Barack Obama, but has not yet decided whether or not to dismantle it, NBC News reported.

According to NBC, the administration is also considering designating Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.

Two years after the nuclear deal was signed by Iran and world powers, the Islamic Republic is reported to have boosted its financial support to Hezbollah to $800 million a year, a dramatic increase from the $200m. it was said to be giving its proxy when sanctions were in place.

Hezbollah, one of the most prominent terrorist organizations in the world, has become bogged down fighting in Syria for Bashar Assad. Of its approximately 22,000 fighters, about 7,000 are fighting for the Assad regime, and some 2,000 have been killed in the four years the group has spent in Syria.

The US and European countries lifted sanctions against Iran in January 2016, releasing roughly $100 billion in assets after international inspectors found that Iran had dismantled large parts of its nuclear program. According to US media, officials say President Donald Trump is ready to extend those waivers that were issued under the Obama administration.

According to IDF assessments, while Hezbollah has increased its military capabilities due to its fighting in Syria, the group has spread its troops across the entire Middle East and is hurting financially.

The finances of the Lebanese Shi’ite group, designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by dozens of countries around the globe, also has been hit hard due to years of sanctions by the United States.

Hamza bin Laden, son and would-be heir of late Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has urged Muslims around the world to join the jihad in Syria against “crusaders” and Shiites.

“The cause of Syria is the cause of the entire worldwide Muslim community,” he said in an undated audio recording released on jihadist networks Thursday.

“In order for the people of Syria to resist the Crusader, Shiite and international aggression, Muslims — all Muslims — must stand with them, support them and give them victory,” he said.

“Wakefulness is essential, as is quick, serious and organised movement, to support the people of blessed Syria before it is too late.”

Hamza, who is in his mid-20s, has become active as an Al-Qaeda propagandist since his father’s death at the hands of US special forces in May 2011.

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising,” observed the American writer Mark Twain. Unfortunately, this principle applies to terror groups and tyrants every bit as much as it does businesses that use boutique public relations firms.

Terrorists of all types have long utilized the media for propaganda purposes—from the Irish Republican Army timing bombings to ensure they appeared on the nightly news to al-Qaeda's exploitation of the Al-Jazeera news network during the second Iraq War. Indeed, as long-ago as 1987, the analyst and psychiatrist Dr. Jerrold Post was pointing out that many terror groups had what he called the “vice president for media relations”; a person tasked with orchestrating press coverage.

Some are more skilled than others.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has attracted recruits via flashy videos that feature the beheading and immolation of their victims, among other heinous acts. The group also published a glossy magazine called Dabiq, which takes its name from a town in northern Syria where they believe the end-of-days battle will occur. The magazine—whose onetime editor was a University of Massachusetts-Boston grad named Abu Sulayman ash-Shami —featured editorials on topics as varied as the necessity of cutting off the limbs of the Sharia incompliant to the need for women to stay at home and support their terrorist husbands.

Al-Qaeda, the progenitor and rival of ISIS, was also a forerunner at media savvy. Videos of the group's founder, Osama bin Laden in caves, invoked tales of the Islamic prophet Mohammad, who, it is said, received his first revelation in a cave called Hira near Mecca.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula (AQAP) also published an English-language magazine calledInspire, which terror analyst Bruce Riedel noted was “clearly intended for the aspiring jihadist in the U.S. or U.K.” The publication was thought to be the work of a New Mexico-born cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who, prior to his death in a 2011 U.S. drone strike, was known for running a blog, a Facebook page and Youtube videos—all extolling the virtues of jihad (holy war) against the West and allies like Israel.

Interview with Israel Shrenzel, former chief analyst in the Arabic section of the research division of the Israel Security Agency
Q: In retrospect, 16 years after the 9/11 attacks, do you think that radical Muslims are more convinced that they are going to win eventually, or are they less convinced of that?
A: I believe that their expectations from the attack and the attacks that followed it were larger than what really evolved later. They, themselves, understand that they didn't achieve the goals that they saw in front of them 16 years ago.

Q: Do you think that radical Muslims are going to lose faith and are we going to see a decline in the extent of terrorist activities, or are they going to learn the lessons from their lack of success and try to do more?
A: On the one hand, there are those who understand that this is not the way, and their understanding of this is based also on the failure of ISIS losing its main strongholds on the ground. On the other hand, within the radical ideology there are apparatuses that help the believers to stick to their beliefs, to get over what we call the "cognitive dissonance" and to explain to themselves the failures of ISIS and al-Qaeda as only obstacles in the way, and if they stick to the way of terrorism, finally they are going to emerge victorious.
It depends also on the resilience of the Western regimes because, first and foremost, there is a need to fight against them, to arrest them, to judge them, and then to try to encourage pragmatic Muslims, non-violent Muslims, to raise their voices much louder and instill in the Muslim community a non-violent spirit.

Israel is under fire from human rights groups for the continued sale of weaponry to the Burmese junta after intensified violence against the country's Rohingya Muslim minority.
More than 100 tanks, as well as boats and light weapons, have been sold to the Burmese government by Israeli arms companies, investigations by several rights watchdogs have found.
One company, TAR Ideal Concepts, has also trained Burmese special forces in northern Rakhine state, where much of the violence is taking place, posting pictures on their website of its staff teaching combat tactics and how to handle weapons.
An army crackdown triggered by an attack on 25 August by Rohingya insurgents on Burma security forces has triggered a major humanitarian crisis. At least 400 people have been killed and nearly 125,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh.

In 2002, on the BBC TV show Question Time, I was accused of dual loyalty in front of a jeering studio audience. My crime had been to defend Israel against demonization and double standards by both the audience and other members of the panel.

At that time I had visited Israel only twice in my life, two years previously. No matter. A British Jew defending Israel was – and is – immediately accused in some quarters of incipient treachery toward Britain, just as throughout history antisemites have accused Diaspora Jews of dual loyalty or treachery merely because they are Jews.

I thought of my own experience, of course, when I read the report on antisemitism in the UK published this week by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

There is currently much disquiet over the Labour Party’s conspicuous failure to address significant antisemitism within its ranks. But there has long been far wider concern among many British Jews about the antisemitic discourse, harassment and physical attacks which have become sickeningly commonplace in Britain over the past few years.

The report’s author, Daniel Staetsky, describes a situation which is complex.

Only around 5% of the population are out-and-out antisemites holding multiple anti-Jewish attitudes. Nevertheless, about 30% subscribe to some kind of antisemitic views.

The key is Staetsky’s distinction between antisemites and antisemitism. For while the number of antisemites is very small, the amount of antisemitism diffused throughout British society is much greater.

So why is it important

It is important because it shouldn’t be happening anywhere. Just recently, Jonathan Arkush met with Baroness Amos. He described the meeting as ‘the worst of his life’. At the very top of SOAS, those in control have lost their way. Rather than bring the university in line, they have become protectors of the disintegrating environment. The Board of Deputies of British Jews is now considered a hostile element by a UK university and treated as such. A quick search will provide dozens of examples, of anti-Israel and Jewish rhetoric delivered at SOAS. Just one website, Richard Millett’s lists more than a dozen of his own personal experiences.

Yet SOAS is just an example of what can and will happen, wherever the perfect storm is created. Anti-Zionist activists, funding and the social and ethnic make-up of the students. Nobody has any interest in addressing the problem. At SOAS, Jews are not just a minority, they are a hunted minority. If you are Jewish with a soft spot for Israel you hide in the undergrowth or become prey. At a place like SOAS, which is so dependent on pacifying the mob, the Jews are left unprotected.

SOAS isn’t some regional town. It is a university. SOAS is like a local police station where the officers are all corrupt, were those arrested can have unfortunate accidents and local minorities live in fear of the authorities. SOAS is like a local council, where the Councillors prohibit Jews from certain professions unless they are willing to convert to the local church belief. This is an indication of a societal problem at an organised level. Not just a bad street, not just a bad town, but a bad Executive. A growing problem, developing at the very heart of our society. One that clearly threatens Jews.

Like a cancer it has to be rooted out. We need to identify what the problem is. Why Baroness Amos stands atop a rotten edifice, that betrays all of the core values it is meant to hold dear. We need to ask why is the lie unchallenged? Is it the demographics? Is there finance entering campus that is proving detrimental to Western society? What exactly is it that is developing in the academic undergrowth? Everyone who views SOAS with distaste should want to understand just which variables need to be in place to create an environment like this.

If you don’t want all universities to eventually look like SOAS looks today, you have to understand why this is happening. Why in London there is a university that threatens people who tell the truth. First there was one, now there are several of these pockets, spread across the country. A disease that is spreading. Which is why you cannot, must not, just shrug your shoulders.

Then Walker was joined for a Q&A by three other anti-Israel activists: film director Ken Loach, author and journalist Victoria Brittain, and academic Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead.

The Q&A session basically turned into a full attack on the Jewish Chronicle and those writing for it who Walker called “proto-fascists”, The Jewish Labour Movement (Walker thinks the JLM should not give training sessions on anti-Semitism), the Israel Advocacy Movement who Walker accused of digging into her Facebook, the Labour Party compliance unit who Walker thinks is leaking everything to the Jewish Chronicle, the Campaign Against Antisemitism and the Community Security Trust who Walker said “churn out biased surveys all the time”, the so-called “weaponisation of antisemitism” (see above), the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of AntiSemitism which is being increasingly adopted by governments and councils, and, of course Israel.

These hard-left activists want the IHRA defintion changed because they only recognise the neo-Nazi type anti-Semitism as seen at Charlottsville. That means they, in their opinion, can never be considered anti-Semitic.

They don’t like the IHRA classifying “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” as anti-Semitism. That’s because they want the end of the only Jewish majority state.

Yair Netanyahu, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 26-year-old son, has been getting some harsh press in recent weeks.

Yair walked (or toddled) onto the stage of public life when he was five years old as he and his then two-year-old little brother Avner accompanied their parents, Bibi and Sara, into the Prime Minister’s Residence for the first time in 1996.

For nearly 20 years, the Netanyahu boys were little more than a silent presence standing to the side of their parents on election nights. But while Avner remains on the sidelines while serving as a combat soldier, Yair is no longer a stage extra in his parents’ story.

In recent years the older Netanyahu boy has taken to Facebook. And it works out that he is quite an iconoclast.

Yair’s iconoclasm is unsurprising. The Israeli establishment has been bludgeoning his parents since Yair was learning to finger-paint. It would be bizarre if he sought its approval.

Not only does he not seek acceptance from the leftist elite, he clearly hold its members in contempt.

And he’s happy to tell everyone what he thinks about them. Indeed, over the past month, as the criminal probes against his parents have dominated the news cycle, the frequency of Netanyahu’s controversial postings has steeply intensified.

In the last month alone, Yair’s posts have caused media furors three times.

Even within the rogues’ gallery that is the U.N. human rights Council, today’s council panel attacking Western democracies for imposing sanctions on dictatorships was the mother of all rogues’ galleries.

The panelists:
1. Lead panelist was UN expert Idriss Jazairy, who described Putin’s Russia as a human rights victim. Coincidentally, as UN Watch revealed today, Jazairy received $50,000 from the Russian government. As Algerian ambassador to UN, he once said “antisemitism targets Arabs”; and, most famously, he led a major effort to muzzle UN human rights experts. And then he became a UN human rights expert himself.

2. Alena Douhan, a Belarus academic with a soft spot for Russia, whose doctorate was on the principle of “non-interference” in countries’ “internal affairs.”

3. Alfred de Zayas, the Cuban-appointed expert for a “democratic and equitable international order.” Zayas has defended Iran’s right to nuclear weapons, and writes books claiming Germany suffered a “genocide” in 1945. Zayas is a hero to Holocaust deniers.

4. Jean Ziegler, co-founder & 2002 recipient of the Qaddafi Human Rights Prize. In his presentation, Ziegler actually defended the murderous Maduro regime of Venezuela, which he said was being victimized by a U.S. “economic war.”

5. Panel Chair: the ambassador of Venezuela’s Maduro regime, Jorge Romero. He effusively thanked Ziegler for his kind words.

6. Peggy Hicks, a top official in the office of UN high commissioner Zeid, delivered the opening statement. A former Human Rights Watch official, we hoped she would provide a dissenting voice. Instead, she echoed the same line. And when Ziegler spouted pro-Maduro propaganda, Hicks was silent.

With all this in mind, it should be apparent that the goals and purposes established by the U.N.'s founders are beyond reach. But a less bad U.N. is conceivable. I'd suggest focusing, initially at least, on just three areas.

First: corruption and mismanagement. It would be useful if President Trump were to insist that the U.N.'s Office of Internal Oversight Services be augmented or replaced by an Inspector General. He or she would have access to all the organization's financial records and the authority to cut off funds to any U.N. entity unwilling to cooperate fully. Since the U.S. is the U.N.'s major funder this position should be filled by an American selected by the U.S. president and/or Congress.

Second, Trump should make clear that the United States will not surrender sovereignty to the U.N. or other globalist bureaucracies. Only a small minority of Americans – and virtually no one who voted for the current president – regards the organization as an incipient world government, a "parliament of nations" or the supreme arbiter of international law and legitimacy. Agreements that are tantamount to treaties – for instance, the Iran deal, the major nuclear arms limitation accord so far in this century – should have congressional approval. A U.N. endorsement should not be seen as an adequate substitute.

Third, it's high time to end the obsessive campaign to delegitimize Israel, the only nation in the Middle East that guarantees basic rights to all its citizens including its substantial Arab and Muslim minorities. In the 20th century, genocidal anti-Semites wiped Jewish communities off the map of Europe. In the 21st century, genocidal anti-Semites vow to wipe the Jewish state off the map of the Middle East. The U.N. has become their accomplice, a fact both President Trump and Ambassador Haley rightly regard as shameful. At the very least, money from American taxpayers should no longer go to U.N. agencies participating in this campaign.

Trump has described the U.N. as a "club for people to get together, talk and have a good time." Based on the experience of recent decades, it would constitute an enormous improvement were the U.N. simply to serve that purpose while doing no harm.

There are some U.N. agencies that perform useful functions. We can continue to support them (either within the U.N. system or outside it) if they're willing to provide transparency and achieve basic metrics. But Third World bureaucracies should not receive First World funding.

Perhaps, in parallel, the time has come to seriously explore a different approach to international community, one that distinguishes between despotisms and free nations, and endeavors to defend the latter from the machinations of the former.

Former American ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton says a U.S. -sponsored draft declaration on U.N. reform being chaired next week by President Trump “is just the usual rhetoric.”

Trump will be in New York next week for his first U.N. General Assembly, where his first act of business will be to chair the U.S.-sponsored event on U.N reform.

Fox News obtained a copy of the U.S.-sponsored draft declaration that supports Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ reform efforts.

"The draft declaration is just the usual rhetoric. It could have been issued five years ago, or 50 years ago,” John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the world body, told Fox News.

“It reads like it was drafted by the U.N. Secretariat,” he said, referring to the U.N.’s executive arm.

“I certainly hope it wasn’t drafted by the [U.S. government.]”

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro spoke at the University of California at Berkeley Thursday night amid threats of violence from the radical Antifa group.

Berkeley spent approximately $600,000 to protect Shapiro and students who wished to hear him speak. Leftist activists slammed Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, as a "neo-Nazi" and a "white supremacist."

The campus was placed on virtual lockdown as metal detectors, concrete barriers and police barricades were set up to keep the peace.

Shapiro slammed Antifa for making the expensive measures necessary. "Free speech isn't free. It costs over $600,000 thanks to Antifa."

“Conservatives here have done something amazing. They’ve achieved something incredible,” Shapiro said during his speech. “If you look outside, there’s K-bar everywhere. They’ve built basically these structures to keep Antifa from invading the premises.

"So that means Berkeley has achieved building a wall before Donald Trump did,” he added.

Local police were permitted to use pepper spray on individual protesters if the expected violence got out of hand. The extensive security measures scared off the majority of the protesters, and the event was held without the feared violence. Three protesters were arrested for possessing weapons prior to the event.

“No violence, no nothing. And now we are spending well into six figures so that I can say many of the same things. It's utterly absurd,” Shapiro said in his speech.

Supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement may face a dilemma over buying the new iPhone X, because some of its manufacturers are located in Israel.

Apple unveiled its iPhone X last week for a market price of $1,000, along with launching the iPhone 8, and the iPhone 8 Plus. Although the American tech giant is based in California and employs hundreds of sub-suppliers, many of the components found inside Apple’s iPhones and products are built and assembled in Israel.

Apple began Israeli operations in late 2011 and its Herzliya office employs some 800 people, making it the company’s second-largest research and development office, Apple CEO Tim Cook said during a previous visit to the country.

The Herzliya office was reported to be developing the hardware for the iPhone 8 last year, according to Business Insider.

Israeli technology has also contributed to the facial recognition technology behind the iPhone X. Nicknamed Face ID, the all-screen phone requires your face to unlock the new iPhone. With no physical home button, Apple has ditched Touch ID functionality.

Earlier this year, Apple acquired the Israeli-founded RealFace, a company that specializes in cybersecurity and which developed facial recognition software for users to log in.

Now it is the Left that tends to be that way with their "trigger warnings" and thumb sucking "safe spaces." Their gender neutral pronouns. Their deplatforming of speakers. Their loathing of alternative viewpoints and their disinclination to debate or discuss beyond narrow strictures of acceptability.

They're like a bunch of old biddies patrolling the words that we may use or even the hairstyles that we may sport.

The American Left has become some sort-of twenty-first-century version of Tom Sawyers' Aunt Polly, making sure that you've washed behind your ears.

I've read where the generation following the "millennials" are more open-minded than their older brothers and sisters. I certainly hope so because the current moment reminds me of nothing so much as the Red Scare of the 1950s.

We are going through a "moral panic" in the United States in which people are searching for Nazis and Klansmen and White Supremacists under their bed or lurking in the closet.

It is obnoxious, politically self-serving and intrusive into the lives of others.

Much of the Left should take a permanent retreat to the Safe Space of their choosing.

That way, at least, they will be less likely to annoy the rest of us.

A prominent Canadian Jewish group on Wednesday denounced a government-sponsored conference held at MacEwan University featuring a speaker who endorsed anti-Israel boycotts and promoted the work of a radical activist accused of antisemitism.

The Ignite Change 2017 conference — organized by the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights — took place from August 21-25 with the support of sponsors including the city of Edmonton, the province of Alberta, the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the University of Alberta International, according to the event’s organizers. The John Humphrey Centre receives funding from the Canadian government.

In an August 22nd workshop titled “Intersection of Advocacy,” John Humphrey board member Ranya El-Sharkawi “strongly endorsed” the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel, said B’nai Brith Canada, which obtained a recording of the event.

El-Sharkawi also argued that antisemitism was “a term that’s not really liked” in academia, “because when you go to the root of the term, ‘semite’ refers to Arabs and Jews, so the whole concept of antisemitism is problematic, since it just means that you’re against your own ethnicity.”

B’nai Brith noted that efforts to reject the term “antisemitism,” which was coined by German propagandist Wilhelm Marr in an effort to make Jew-hatred sound more scientific, were “often linked to attempts to excuse or promote hatred of Jews.”

Three leftist Jewish youth movements have refused to attend Brazil’s longest running Israeli dance festival in retaliation for a lecture given by a right-wing politician at a mainstream Jewish center five months ago.

Chazit Hanoar, Habonim Dror and Hashomer Hatzair say their unprecedented boycott of the 47th annual Hava Netze Bemachol festival is meant to protest Jair Bolsonaro’s speech at the Rio Hebraica center in April.

Bolsonaro, a prominent pro-Israel congressman, is known as a defender of the far right-wing military dictatorship that ran Brazil from 1964 to 1985. Sao Paulo’s Hebraica had previously disinvited him.

“Hebraica staged one of the most aggressive hate speeches ever expressed to the Jewish community in recent years, with words of appeal to xenophobia, racism, misogyny, homophobia, ethnocentrism, dictatorship and political impunity,” Hashomer Hatzair said in a statement.

“Such an expression of intolerance directly hurt us when they hamper the work carried out weekly by our activists in order to propagate ideals of tolerance to young people who participate in the movement.”

The Association of International Marathons and Distance Races is injecting politics into sports by excluding an Israeli race because it runs through Judea and Samaria, Israel said on Thursday.

The Israel Marathon Association said the world marathon body was displaying a "discriminatory nature" against the Bible Marathon that "will certainly result in great anger" among runners around the world.

Next month's Bible Marathon stretches from the central Israeli city of Rosh Haayin to the Samaria settlement of Shiloh, tracing a path described in the Book of Samuel. Organizers call the route the oldest recorded marathon in history.

The Greek-based AIMS said it had to exclude the Israeli marathon to comply with "international public law."

The Israeli association asked the world marathon body to reconsider, saying that its decision was "prompted by a campaign organized by political activists" and rested on false legal premises. It pointed out that the international organization has long recognized the Laayoune Marathon in the disputed Western Sahara region controlled by Morocco.

"There cannot be one international law for Israel and another for everywhere else. The discriminatory action taken by AIMS is unacceptable and must be rectified immediately," said Eugene Kontorovich, an international law expert representing the Israeli association.

I know you are sick of seeing and hearing him (so am I), but rock’n’roll BDS-hole Roger Waters has been interviewed yet again, this time on the far-Left Democracy Now. And, as usual, he is so full of lies and omissions, that I need to set the record straight and expose him for what he is.

Watch the interview below (if you can stomach it) and note in particular:

• Waters starts by again denying his antisemitism. It is getting old.
• His repeating of the lie of his recent NY Times op-ed, that the proposed Israel Anti-Boycott Act targets First Amendment rights. As I mentioned in my post rebutting this op-ed, this is patently false; it specifically targets commercial activity – not mere expression of opinion – and is based on current law that has been constitutionally upheld.
• His implication AIPAC is all powerful and always gets what they want
• Waters claiming Israeli newspapers called Radiohead’s concert “the best moment for Hasbara we have had in decades!” This is another outright lie.
• His dishonesty about the 1947 Partition Plan and why it did not happen (he deliberately does not mention that the Arabs rejected it!)
• The antisemitic tropes of the movie Occupation of the American Mind

I should probably apologize for this video but the pull of mocking these nincompoops proved too hard to resist.

I do at least provide a health warning with this video.

In an effort to keep Israeli educational practices on pace with standards elsewhere in the developed world, the Ministry of Education will direct schools to replace the current outdated system of assigning grades based on student academic achievement with a more relevant approach that assesses only the level of a student’s racism.

Ministry Deputy Director for Academic Standards Lee Berl announced today that beginning with the 2018-2019 academic year, teachers will be instructed to assess each student’s level of racism at several points during the academic term, and only those students whose racism remains lower than a certain threshold will advance to the next grade, or be permitted to graduate.

Berl informed school principals and teacher representatives today of the impending change, which will require her division to complete the formulation of a system to evaluate racism in 5-18-year-olds. Ministry staff voiced confidence they would meet the challenge.

“We’re a diverse group, and that’s what important,” insisted Ayam Woak, a district inspector. “The question is not whether we will meet the specific criteria of rolling out the grading reform by a target date, but how inclusive are we? The sooner we let go of divisive and, let’s face it, Eurocentrist, imperialist concepts such as ‘grades’ and ‘achievement,’ the happier we will be.”

“Academic scores might serve some purpose, but only insofar as no one’s feelings get hurt as a result,” added Tala Rint, a high school curriculum supervisor. “That’s why a subsequent phase of the grading reform calls for the elimination of certain problematic subjects from the classroom entirely. Western civilization, for example, will only be taught through the lens of populations that suffered at the hands of Europeans or Americans, and never on its own terms. Biology will be considered only from a gender-fluid perspective.”

Facebook on Friday said it had blocked a feature allowing advertisers to reach out to “Jew haters,” following investigative reports a day earlier that revealed the social media giant enabled campaigns for hate groups.

Facebook said it worked to fix the problem, which is based on an algorithm, after reports in ProPublica and Slate showing that advertisers were able to specifically target anti-Semitic or prejudiced users with their ads.

According to Slate, however, it was still possible to purchase ads targeting anti-Muslim and white nationalist users even after Facebook intervened.

ProPublica reported that “the world’s largest social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of ‘Jew hater,’ ‘How to burn jews,’ or, ‘History of why jews ruin the world.’”

Although the category was too small on its own, when adding other categories, such as the far-right, ultra-nationalist National Democratic Party of Germany, ProPublica was able to purchase ads targeting the 2,274 people who listed “Jew hater” in the “education” or “work” sections of their profiles. The ads were approved within 15 minutes.

The website also found that 3,194 listed their employer as “German Schutzstaffel” — the German SS — and another 2,449 who said they worked for “Nazi Party.”

Facebook removed the categories after ProPublica contacted the social media network and said it would work to fix the problem.

In fact, MK Guetta was only due to meet with the Deputy Knesset Speaker on the day after the BBC published its report.

The New York Times added:

“Mr. Guetta is now in negotiations with the Shas Party’s council of sages who are said to be less upset about his attendance at the wedding than his disclosure of that information in the radio interview.

A compromise appears to be emerging in which Mr. Guetta would apologize for giving the interview, though not for attending the wedding, and would retain his place in the party and his seat in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

To formally resign he would have to write to the Knesset chairman, a step he has not taken yet.”

Israel is of course far from the only country in which some religious figures take a conservative attitude towards gay marriage but in its apparent rush to publish yet another story promoting the ‘benighted’, ‘backward’ Israel theme, the BBC failed to check the accuracy of its claim that Mr Guetta had already ‘given up his seat’.

Vox: Don't Say "Radical Islamic Terrorism," But Definitely Say "Jewish Terrorism"

On our main site yesterday, we wrote about Vox's false claim that West Bank settlements are dotted with world-class hospitals that Palestinians can't go into.

While looking into that, we noticed something else. Across multiple articles, Vox reporter Zack Beauchamp has championed the argument that use of the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism" is problematic in that, even with the qualifier "radical," it broadbrushes all Muslims.

Okay. But if that's what Beauchamp and Vox believe, why do they use the phrase "Jewish terrorism" with such relish?

In one article, variants of the phrase appear 18 times: in the title, in headings, approvingly in quotes, and in the reporter's own words.

Does Beauchamp think attacks by extremist Jews speak for "the entirety of the Jewish religion"? Does he not care about "alienating Jewish allies"? Or "misidentifying the cause of the problem as one of Jewish theology"? Is it fine, in his view, to "insult mainstream Jews to boot"? That seems to be the conclusion from his language.

Jeopardy! -- the popular television quiz show that began in the 1960's -- is premised upon contestants formulating a question to a clue presented by the host in the form of a statement/answer. The clues are chosen from a variety of categories (within history, geography, literature, science) that tests contestants' general knowledge.

The term "Palestine" to ostensibly describe a modern-day entity has recently been the subject of Jeopardy! clues. For example, the September 13th show included the following clue and answer:

Clue: A land divided by Jordan, Egypt & Israel, or the seat of Anderson County, Texas.
Answer: "What is Palestine?"

The implication seems to be that "Palestine" is also the current name of a modern country in the Middle East (referring to disputed territories).

In the November 18, 2016 show, there was a similar clue:

Clue: It's a small New Hampshire town as well as an ancient name for Palestine.
Answer: What is Canaan?

The implication again seems to be that Palestine is the modern-day name of the country. But references to a current "Palestine" in the West Bank and Gaza are incorrect. Those areas should accurately be referred to as "Palestinian" or "disputed" territories, depending on which areas are being discussed, or as the West Bank and Gaza. If Jeopardy! clues are trying to suggest that Palestine is a modern-day state, the program should take a cue from the numerous media outlets that have corrected this error.

A Jewish woman and her mother were beaten up at a Queens subway station by a man who mistook them for Muslims, police said.

The women, 37 and 57, had just gotten off the M train and were walking toward the exit of the 67th Av. station in Forest Hills when they heard the man lob an insult at them around 2 p.m. Wednesday, according to a report on the incident by the New York Post Thursday.

When the younger woman told the man to repeat what he had just said, he spat in her face and “Get out of my country you dirty Muslim,” according to a police report on the incident based on the testimonies of the alleged victims.

He then began punching both women in the face and body. The report did not say what made the man target the women.

The man, identified as Dimitrios Zias, 40 was arrested at the scene and charged with multiple counts of assault as a hate crime, officials said.

Jewish groups are disappointed that the Crown will not bring charges against two imams who made anti-Semitic statements, including a call for the death of Jews, in a Montreal mosque, due to the amount of time that’s passed.

Wael al-Ghitawi and Sayed al-Ghitawi gave the contentious sermons at the Al-Andalous Islamic Centre in the St-Laurent borough of Montreal in 2014.

Both the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and B’nai Brith Canada filed complaints against the men with Montreal police, charging that they had incited hatred and violence against Jews.

The sermons came to the public’s attention in February of this year, when YouTube videos of the talks were brought to light by some Toronto-based investigative journalists who translated them.

B’nai Brith tweeted on Sept. 13 that it is “outraged that Quebec prosecutors have chosen not” to proceed, arguing that the excuse that too much time has elapsed “is blatantly false” and stating that B’nai Brith “won’t accept this.”

“While we appreciate the thorough investigation by the Montreal police and the thoughtful decision taken by the Quebec Crown attorney, we are extremely disappointed that the Crown did not feel he was able to proceed with laying formal charges,” CIJA CEO Shimon Koffler Fogel said in a statement.

“We share the belief that the comments of one imam in particular clearly constitute hate speech and incitement to violence towards Jews and that only technical constraints precluded the Crown from laying charges at this time.”

Notorious French comedian Dieudonné, convicted of hate speech and condoning terrorism, will need to make alternative arrangements for his upcoming War tour after the mayors of Marseille and Grenoble barred his performances.

The mayor of Marseille, Jean-Claude Gaudin, announced Wednesday that his city will no longer permit Dieudonné to perform at its largest municipality-affiliated venue, the Dome, in November on grounds of public safety.

The Marseille mayor reached the decision following pressure from Jewish groups and local media to withdraw permission for the performance.

Dieudonné, whose full name is Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, has a long list of convictions for antisemitism, inciting racial hatred, condoning terrorism and tax evasion in both French and Belgian courts. His shows often draw large, animated protests.

Dieudonné is also known for his trademark "quenelle" gesture, an inverted Nazi salute which he insists is solely antiestablishment, and his offensive Holocaust-themed jokes.

An Israeli company says it has developed a no-spray, environment-friendly solution that can protect Indian farmers from the deadly oriental fruit fly, which has destroyed 300 fruit species in India.

The Oriental Fruit Fly (Bactrocera dorsalis) is considered to be the most destructive, invasive and widespread of all fruit flies, and is also a menace in 65 other countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Developed by Biofeed
The agri-tech company Biofeed’s “lures” hung on trees, contain an organic customised mix of food and feeding stimulants, and control or therapeutic agents delivered by a patented gravity-controlled fluid release platform.

Attracted by the odour, the fruit fly takes a sip and soon dies, without any chemicals reaching the fruit, air or soil.

“We were hoping to bring a solution that will replace spraying and increase productivity by 50 per cent. I am excited by the results, demonstrating the future potential for some farmers to bring about 900 times more marketable produce to the market,” said the company’s CEO Nimrod Israely.

“We don’t have the Oriental Fruit Fly in Israel. However, until now there was no solution for this problem. So we took the challenge and chose to focus on India,” Israely told Israel21c, an online news magazine.

Biofeed was one of the six innovative Israeli companies invited to give a demonstration to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu during the former’s July visit.

Water purification technology developed by an Israeli firm has been chosen for use at the iconic Hoover Dam to prevent an invasive species of mussel from interfering with the dam’s electricity production.

The North Wind Group, a US company selected by the US government to work on piping at the Hoover Dam, chose Atlantium’s Hydro-Optic Ultraviolet technology to use for non-chemical biofouling control at the dam, Israel’s Atlantium said in a statement last month.

Biofouling is the buildup of plants and animals on wet surfaces such as the hulls of ships and piers.

Atlantium’s technology is designed to prevent fouling at Hoover Dam by the quagga mussel, which threatens to clog the turbine’s water cooling system and thus interfere with the dam’s electricity production.

Over the past decade, the mussel, which is believed to have arrived in the US from Asia, has made its way to Lake Mead, the large reservoir created by Hoover Dam.

During the week of August 15-23, 2017, volunteers with Israel’s Eye from Zion humanitarian organization held an “eye camp” in Chuka, Kenya. They received 723 patients in three locations, from infants to senior citizens, performing free treatments and surgeries—85 percent of the surgeries to remove cataracts and 10% to correct astigmatism.

Medical personnel volunteering for this mission came from Western Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, Bnai Zion Medical Center, Ma’ayan Clinic and Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, and Wolfson Medical Center in Holon.

Participants also layed the groundwork for an advanced eye clinic at Chuka Regional Hospital in memory of Hovav Nuttman, CEO of Israeli medical equipment supplier Alpha Net, who was a volunteer in charge of all the technical aspects for Eye from Zion missions to many countries. He passed away two months after returning from the organization’s first mission to Chuka in 2016.

Two Kenyan medical officers were trained to use the equipment, the hospital’s technical staff learned how to maintain the machinery and three nurses received training in surgical assistance. Additional equipment will be brought on a future visit.

“The local medical staff does not include an ophthalmologist or anyone with surgical skills,” said Eye from Zion founder Nati Marcus. “We met a young doctor, currently a resident in ophthalmology in Nairobi and due to arrive at Chuka hospital in 2019. We suggested that she come to Chuka next year to work with our future missions so when she will start her position she will have more experience in surgeries.”

Israel on Thursday paid tribute to Shimon Peres, one of its founding fathers and its ninth president, one year after he died at 93 after suffering a stroke.

The memorial ceremony on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem was led by President Reuven Rivlin and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Dozens of Israeli and foreign dignitaries attended the ceremony.

A convinced campaigner for Middle East peace who remained energetic until his final days, the center-left elder statesman was praised for his tireless engagement during seven decades in public life, including the development of Israel's powerful military and nuclear capabilities to seeking peace with the Palestinians and sharing the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

The first anniversary of Peres' death was also marked by the release of his memoir, "No Room for Small Dreams."

Speaking at the service, Peres' son, Chemi, said, "This book is a voice and a message for generations to come. He decided to write the book as a string of dreams that he had and realized, a string of great causes he served and a string of complicated situations and decisions that he had to take in life.

"One of the major topics my father wrote about in the book for the first time is the story of Dimona. The story of Israel's nuclear facilities. The story that my father was the master of its creation and it is the project that actually allowed Israel to survive and create the right deterrent in a hostile region, and allowed us as a nation to strengthen our economy and to strive for peace."

At 8:20 on 15 September 2017, a bomb detonated in a rear carriage of a tube train at Parsons Green station in London. The passengers on the packed, rush-hour train described a flash “fireball” that travelled down the train. Thirty people were injured, some horribly burned, but there were no fatalities and the main explosive clearly did not detonate.

The creation of a bomb is a more sophisticated operation than a stabbing or vehicle-ramming attack, but it is important to maintain perspective: the device used in this case was primitive. On examination, the crude device—a bucket containing the mixed chemicals and nails, left in a Lidl bag—proved to contain triacetone triperoxide (TATP) and to have been on a timer. For reasons unclear, it is likely that “only the initiator or a fraction of the main charge had exploded”, leaving the bucket intact.

TATP is sometimes said to be a “signature” of the Islamic State (IS), which is not quite right. TATP has shown up in a number of IS attacks in Europe and it is evidently a competency of theirs to handle this notoriously-volatile substance. Still, similar devices have been seen before.

The 21 July 2005 attempted follow-on attack to the 7 July massacre on the London transport system by al-Qaeda saw four TATP-based devices not unlike the Parsons Green one detonated on three tube trains and a bus with results akin to what happened yesterday. The wiring used to create the timer on the bomb appeared to include fairy lights, of the kind used on Christmas trees, and this was seen in the Boston bombing on 15 April 2013.

British counterterror specialists said the bomb detonated on the London Underground on Friday could have been more deadly than the explosives used in the 7/7 attack if it had detonated properly.

Despite the crude appearance of the bomb, which was placed in a bucket inside a shopping bag, a former counterterror investigator with the Metropolitan Police Service said the explosive device was in fact quite sophisticated.

“Whoever built this was not an amateur – it has many of the hallmarks of devices used by terror groups, but the use of the timer to set off the initial part of the device is something we have not seen before in the UK,” David Videcette said, adding, “Had it gone off successfully it would have caused a huge loss of life.”

In an opinion piece for The Independent, Videcette said the bomb’s failure to detonate was likely due to a lack of testing to ensure all the parts work and not a lack of expertise on the bomb maker’s part.

“This person has researched what they’re doing and possibly been taught by someone else. They have also been able to collect all the component parts of an explosive device, assemble it, and deliver it to its target without detection by police and Security services,” he said.

He also said the placement of the bomb in a shopping bag showed those behind the bomb had a clear understanding of how to handle explosives and that the use of the bag should not be viewed as primitive.

British police arrested an 18-year-old man in the southern port of Dover on Saturday in a "significant" development in the hunt for the people behind a London commuter train bombing that injured 30 people a day earlier.

Prime Minister Theresa May put Britain on the highest security level of "critical" late on Friday, meaning an attack may be imminent, and soldiers and armed police deployed to secure strategic sites and hunt down the perpetrators.

The home-made bomb shot flames through a packed commuter train during the Friday morning rush hour in west London but apparently failed to detonate fully.

"We have made a significant arrest in our investigation this morning," said Neil Basu, Senior National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing.

"Although we are pleased with the progress made, this investigation continues and the threat level remains at critical."

The arrest was made in the port area of Dover, where passenger ferries sail to France.

The blast on the London tube train at the Parsons Green underground station was the fifth major terrorism attack in Britain this year and was claimed by Islamic State.

Today is Battle of Britain day. With another terrorist attack in London today and the standard mainstream media and political response it is worth considering this ......

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to present US President Donald Trump in their meeting Monday on the sidelines of the 72nd annual session of the United Nations General Assembly with a proposal for rolling back the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran signed by the Obama administration and other P5+1 powers.

According to a Channel 2 report Saturday, Netanyahu is preparing a specific formula for either scrapping the historic deal or amending it. His proposal will detail how “to cancel or at the very least introduce significant changes” to the accord, the report said.

Earlier this week, Netanyahu said Israel wanted to see the two-year-old deal — which offered Iran relief from punishing sanctions in exchange for having it roll back its nuclear program — either amended or canceled altogether.

“Our position is straightforward. This is a bad deal. Either fix it — or cancel it. This is Israel’s position,” said Netanyahu in Buenos Aires on Tuesday during a trip to Latin America.

Netanyahu rejected recent reports claiming that Israel and Saudi Arabia were no longer interested in scrapping the landmark deal. Reuters reported Tuesday that US officials familiar with discussions about the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), said Israel and Saudi Arabia would rather the pact remain intact.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the main message of his upcoming speech at the United Nations for the annual gathering of world leaders at the 72nd session of the General Assembly would be that Israel would not tolerate an Iranian presence on its northern border with Syria, now in its seventh year of a brutal civil war.

Speaking to reporters from his hotel in New York on Friday, after wrapping up a historic trip to Latin America, Netanyahu said that the central message will be that “Israel will not tolerate an Iranian military presence on our northern borders. An [Iranian] military presence endangers not just us, but also our Arab neighbors.”

He added that Israel was “obligated to act against this.” These days, he added — in an apparent reference to previous Israeli military intervention in Syria and Lebanon — “Israel, and what it says, is taken seriously. That’s how it should be.”

Netanyahu hosted Shabbat dinner at the hotel.

He is due to address the UN on September 19 and meet with US President Donald Trump a day earlier.

The meeting will be the two leaders’ fourth together since Trump assumed office. The two met once in February when the Israeli premier visited the White House, and twice in May when the American president traveled to the region, which included a two-day stop in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Trump too is slated to address UNGA on September 19.

Netanyahu’s remarks on Iran came a day after a senior Israeli official denied reports that Russia rebuffed Jerusalem’s demand to ensure that Iranian forces and Iran-backed Shiite militants not be allowed to operate within 60-80 kilometers of the Syrian frontier with Israel in the Golan Heights.

The United States on Thursday agreed to continue for now to exempt Iran from nuclear-related sanctions but slapped new measures against targets accused of cyber attacks or fomenting militancy.

President Donald Trump’s decision will be seen as a victory for opponents of the Iran nuclear deal, who have called for tough action against Tehran’s alleged destabilizing role in its region.

On October 15, Trump is due to decide whether Iran has breached the 2015 nuclear agreement, and critics fear he may abandon an accord they think prevents Tehran from building a nuclear bomb.

But supporters hailed Thursday’s move, in which the US Treasury announced new sanctions on non-nuclear issues even as Trump’s administration grudgingly maintained sanctions relief.

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the waiver “a holding action,” warning that no decision had been reached on the long-term future of the deal.

“This is the action that the US is taking in the interim,” he said, “while the president and his cabinet come to final decision in consultation among themselves and in consultation with allies.”

A former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned this week that data released by the organization showing an increase in inspections at Iran’s nuclear facilities conveys a greater pattern of cooperation on the Tehran regime’s part than is actually the case.

“A closer examination of the new data suggests there may be aspects of the inspection program that have become less comprehensive and less intrusive since the implementation of the JCPOA (the technical name for the Iran nuclear deal of July 2015,” Dr. Olli Heinonen wrote in a briefing for Washington, DC-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank.

Heinonen — a Finnish national who served in variety of high-ranking positions during a three-decade career at the IAEA — based his criticisms on the agency’s claim that international inspections have doubled since the JCPOA was implemented in 2016.

The issue of nuclear site inspections is of key importance in terms of certifying that Iran is abiding by the terms of the JCPOA. Over the last month, US officials including UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, have expressed concern that the IAEA’s inspection regime was not intrusive enough, as the Trump administration weighs whether to certify Iranian compliance with the deal on October 15 — as it is legally required to do every 100 days.

Heinonen argued that a true picture of the IAEA’s insight into Iran’s nuclear activities could not be gleaned simply from the number of inspections. “We should look at the total number of work days on the ground that inspectors spent during visits to various sites and facilities,” he wrote.

“Here, the statistics reveal a different picture,” Heinonen observed. In 2015, IAEA inspectors spent 2,170 work days in Iran. In 2016, once the JCPOA was implemented, the number fell to 1,042.

The Israeli consulate in New York City was closed down for a short time on Friday afternoon (local time) after it received an envelope containing white powder and a threat to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli media reported.

Consular staff were ordered to remain in the building, and the suspicious material was examined. The all clear was given about an hour later.

Netanyahu, who visited Latin America this week, was scheduled to arrive in New York from Mexico on Friday, ahead of the UN General Assembly next week.

In addition to addressing the General Assembly, Netanyahu is also scheduled to meet President Donald Trump while in New York.

US President Donald Trump should heed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent warnings about the danger posed by Iran’s effort to establish a permanent military presence in Syria, the Washington Post said on Thursday.

The editorial called on the US to take “its own steps to block the Iranian ‘entrenchment’ in Syria that Mr. Netanyahu spoke of.”

“Diplomacy might achieve some of that, but military steps should not be ruled out,” it went on to say.

The paper also praised the Sept. 7 airstrike — reportedly carried out by the Israeli Air Force — that targeted an Assad regime chemical weapons facility in Syria’s Hama region.

“If it slows the production of those deadly weapons, Israel’s attack will have done a service for humanity as well as itself,” the Washington Post said. “It also should have served as a wake-up call for the Trump administration. Mr. Trump has been slow to recognize that the United States has vital interests in Syria beyond eliminating the Islamic State — and that those interests don’t coincide with those of Russia, which has been working in tandem with Iran.”

On Friday, US Ambassador to the UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said Iran was “not going to be in charge” of a post-ISIS Syria.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley gave a preview of President Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly next week, telling reporters Friday that in the address, Trump “slaps the right people [and] hugs the right people.”

Haley made the remarks at the White House press briefing, in which she and national security adviser H.R. McMaster briefed the press on the administration’s schedule and hopes for next week’s General Assembly. Trump will address the Assembly on Tuesday and is scheduled to host a U.N. reform meeting on Monday.

Haley said that the reform efforts will be on the back of a new shift at the U.N., led by the U.S.

“It is a new day at the U.N., the U.N. has shifted over past several months, it’s not just about talking it’s about action,” she said. “The members are starting to get used to acting, whether it’s Security Council resolutions, whether it’s with U.N. reform, whether it’s peacekeeping, we are seeing a lot of changes at the U.N.”

Haley noted that the U.S. has trimmed half a billion dollars from the U.N. peacekeeping budget by making the efforts smarter and focusing on political solutions rather than just “throwing troops” (many of them ill-equipped) at problems.

McMaster indicated the message of the U.S. at the U.N. will focus on the goals of promoting peace, sovereignty, accountability, and prosperity.

The United States Friday urged Iraqi Kurdistan to call off plans for an independence referendum later this month, warning the vote was distracting from the fight against the Islamic State group.

Iraqi Kurdish lawmakers voted earlier Friday to hold the referendum on September 25, in the face of bitter opposition from Baghdad and protests from neighboring Iran and Turkey, which fear it will fan separatism among their own Kurdish minorities.

“The United States has repeatedly emphasized to the leaders of the Kurdistan Regional Government that the referendum is distracting from efforts to defeat ISIS and stabilize the liberated areas,” the White House said a statement.

“Holding the referendum in disputed areas is particularly provocative and destabilizing,” it added.

“We therefore call on the Kurdistan Regional Government to call off the referendum and enter into serious and sustained dialogue with Baghdad, which the United States has repeatedly indicated it is prepared to facilitate.”

Business deals and trade ties are booming between Israel and Lithuania, Israel’s envoy to the country said, and few if any activists of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement are active in the country.

Ambassador Amir Maimon spoke on Thursday to a small delegation of Israeli journalists touring the country’s start-up and hi-tech scene as guests of the Lithuanian Economy Ministry.

“Trade between Israel and Lithuania has been positive and has shown consistent, if not very fast, growth between the two over the last decade,” Maimon said over lunch at a posh restaurant in the capital, Vilnius, adding that Israeli tourism to the Eastern European country had increased by nearly 25% since 2016.

Bilateral trade stood at around €270 million (NIS 1.1 billion) in 2016, with around two-thirds pertaining to military hardware and cybersecurity software.

With Lithuania facing the threat of Russian aggression on its border – the country was under Soviet occupation for nearly 50 years – and as a member of the European Union and the NATO military alliance, Lithuania is a major buyer of Israeli arms. Contracts with Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems were valued at €180m. (NIS 760m.) last year.

Many ordinary Lithuanians express affinity with Israel for being surrounded by enemies and forced to improvise and innovate, and the country just reconstituted mandatory military service for men in 2015.

An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced ousted President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood to 25 years in prison in a final ruling over a case accusing him of spying for Qatar, judicial sources said.

Morsi, democratically elected after Egypt's 2011 revolution, was overthrown in mid-2013 by then-general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, now the president, following mass protests against his rule. He was immediately arrested.

Egypt's Court of Cassation reduced Morsi's sentence in the Qatar case to 25 years in its final ruling, from an original 40 years.

Morsi is already serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted for the killing of protesters during demonstrations in 2012.

Since toppling Morsi, Sisi has clamped down on dissent. Mass trials have been held for thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, and hundreds have received death sentences or lengthy prison terms.

The notion that Turkey might conceivably fit inside the EU has always been a bit of a stretch, and it has been especially ludicrous since last summer when a botched coup attempt triggered a Stalinist spasm in Ankara. Within just a couple of weeks, Erdogan fired more than 20,000 private-school teachers and almost 10,000 police officers. He suspended nearly 3,000 judges and arrested more than 10,000 soldiers. He canned tens of thousands of officials from the Ministry of Education and ousted 1,500 university deans. He closed more than 100 media outlets and suspended more than 1,500 officials in the Ministry of Finance.

And from there, it only got worse. In April, Turkish voters narrowly decided to scrap their parliamentary system and replace it with one that gives vast new powers to the president. . . .

One Westerner after another [had nonetheless] convinced himself that Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) was a Western-style socially conservative capitalist party, an Islamic version of Germany’s Christian Democrats or the Republicans in the United States. (Many of the same people made the same mistake about Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its ill-fated president Mohammad Morsi.) . . .

Erdogan isn’t . . . in the same time zone as Islamic State. He is, however, in the same time zone as Venezuela’s late Hugo Chavez, minus the Bolivarian socialism, and as Vladimir Putin in Russia and Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. All are (or in Chavez’s case were) authoritarian demagogues with just a veneer of democratic legitimacy, the kind of rulers often produced by nations that are influenced in part by the West while at the same time standing outside it.

European officials almost certainly know, to a person, that Turkey can never join Europe after what happened last year. . . . Westerners kidded themselves about Erdogan and Turkey for years.

Over 200 University of California, Berkeley professors and faculty are calling for the shutdown of classes and activities during "free speech week," an event scheduled Sept. 24 to 27 that features some "alt-right" speakers.

In an open letter to Berkeley community and campus members, the group called for the boycott of classes and for the closing of all buildings, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"Therefore, as faculty committed to the safety of our students and our campus, we are calling for a complete boycott of all classes and campus activities while these Alt-Right events are taking place at the very center of UC Berkeley's campus," the letter said.

The faculty believes the university should not ask students and staff to choose between "risking their physical and mental safety," and coming to campus for class or work.

"As faculty we cannot ask students and staff to choose between risking their physical and mental safety in order to attend class or come to work in an environment of harassment, intimidation, violence, and militarized policing," the letter said.

The Berkeley Patriot, a conservative campus publication, is responsible for inviting a number of speakers connected to Milo Yiannopoulos to the four-day event. The student group has not filled out all appropriate paperwork for the event, but campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof did confirm the group has reserved the Sproul Plaza steps for the event. Speakers include Yiannopoulos, Anne Coulter, and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Rasmea Odeh, the convicted killer of two Israeli students in a 1969 bombing, was convicted in federal court in Detroit of immigration fraud. As part of her plea deal, Rasmea was to be deported and stripped of her U.S. citizenship.

Rasmea’s supporters portray Rasmea as the victim in this saga, but they are fools or liars, and in some cases both. Virtually every talking point in support of Rasmea has been thoroughly refuted, including the demonstrably false claim that Rasmea was convicted of the bombing only because she falsely confessed after 25 days of sexual torture.

I also gave a detailed explanation in my interview, The Lies of Rasmea Odeh and Her Supporters Exposed.

Rasmea never would have been allowed to enter this country had she not lied about her terrorist past on her visa application, and then again on her naturalization application. The law finally caught up with her. Better late than never.

An Israeli newspaper reported that Rasmea would be deported on September 19 to Jordan. But I was unable to confirm that, until now, because ICE refused, on security grounds, to confirm when and where Rasmea would be deported.

Rasmea’s supporters have confirmed that information. Rasmea will be deported September 19 from O’Hare airport.

This retraction was aired on the Pacifica Evening News this past Monday 9/11/17 at 6 pm.

"On September First the KPFA Evening News aired a report on an ongoing controversy over a mural at Reem's, an Arab bakery in Oakland's Fruitvale District. We reported the owner, Reem Assil, obtained a restraining order against a protestor, Michael Lumish. That was an error. The owner twice asked the Alameda County Superior Court for a Temporary Restraining Order against Lumish and was twice denied. We regret the error."

A teacher at a Catholic school in Ontario, Canada has once again defended two notorious terrorists, this time in an Arabic-language newspaper known for peddling Holocaust denial and describing Judaism as a violent faith.

Nadia Shoufani of the St. Catherine of Siena Separate School wrote in an article published in Meshwar on Sunday that she will “not stop quoting the words of Ghassan Kanafani,” and “will not stop demanding freedom for Georges Ibrahim Abdallah,” according to the advocacy group B’nai Brith Canada.

Kanafani served as the spokesman of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist group — blacklisted by the Canadian government — which organized the 1972 Lod Airport massacre that killed 26 people.

Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison by a French court in 1987 over his role in the murders of American and Israeli diplomats, as well as an assassination attempt against an American consul.

Meshwar, which is based in the greater Toronto area, has previously published articles claiming that “Jews are the real terrorists” and calling the Holocaust “the biggest lie in history,” according to the watchdog group Honest Reporting Canada.

This is why we can’t have nice things: Michael Hamill, who shot to Internet fame earlier this month as one of a trio of “hot cops” helping the victims of Hurricane Irma, went viral again for sharing—drumroll—a Holocaust joke, as well as some warm thoughts about Hitler.

Sworn in as a Gainesville Police Department officer last October, Hamill enjoyed his fifteen seconds of fame when his selfie with two fellow officers became a meme shared and liked by hundreds of thousands of Americans. But when some of these new fans checked out Hamill’s own Facebook page, what they found was less than wholesome.

“Who knew that reading jewish jokes before I go to bed would not only make me feel better about myself but also help me to sleep better as well,” mused Hamill in one post from 2013. “Here is one for everybody, ‘What’s the difference between boy scouts and jews?”’ Anybody know? Well it is because ‘Boy scouts come back from their camps.’”

A few years earlier, in 2011, Hamill displayed the same subtle sensibility when it came to the Jews. “So I find it funny that people will talk about how our government needs to do something about our economy and in reality it’s YOU who needs to stop taking advantage of our system and get a life and do something with your life,” he wrote. “Gotta love reality when it hits you in the face. Stupid people annoy me. Put them in an oven and deal with them the Hitler way. Haha.”

Weeks after two attacks on a synagogue in Germany, police in the city of Ulm say the motive may have been anti-Semitic.

State security officials are investigating incidents on Aug. 26 and Sept. 2 in which one or more perpetrators kicked at the facade of the New Synagogue and later rammed it with a metal post, breaking through the outer wall. According to reports, repairs will cost several thousand dollars.

On Tuesday, an Ulm police spokesman said that anti-Semitism was not out of the question, but added that investigators were looking into all possibilities. There are no suspects.

Rabbi Schneur Trebnik told the Juedische Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s Jewish weekly, that authorities routinely play down reports of anti-Semitic incidents, and that community members are fearful of being recognized as Jewish on the streets.

In this case, he said, local Jews are upset that no one who saw the attack in progress called police.

Antibiotics are one of the most effective ways to treat bacterial infections. However, they have been overprescribed and misprescribed for years, leading to the development of bacterial strains that are resistant to specific antibiotics.

The World Health Organization considers this one of the biggest threats to global health because antimicrobial resistant (AMR) infections kill more than 700,000 people worldwide every year.

Israeli researchers and entrepreneurs are approaching the problem from various different perspectives. Here are 10 promising advances.

The SNDA-AST diagnostic system, developed in the biomedical engineering lab of Prof. Shulamit Levenberg at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, enables rapid and accurate antibiotic customization for each patient.

The point-of-care system, not yet commercialized, quickly analyzes bacteria isolated from urine samples and assesses their level of resistance to specific antibiotics. This enables the doctor to choose the most effective antibiotic immediately, rather than starting treatment with broad-spectrum antibiotics – which can cause AMR and kill “good” bacteria — while awaiting lab results from traditional cultures.

Israel is fast becoming a powerhouse in the development of advanced automotive technology and international companies and governmental bodies are taking notice.

The latest partnership to be announced is between the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group, and KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology).

Dubbed the HTK Consortium, it will conduct joint R&D projects around future mobility technologies, including autonomous driving, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

The Technion will act as the bridge between Hyundai Motor and Israel’s growing number of emerging automotive-tech companies. The consortium will incubate these startups, helping them to bring their products to market – starting first (but not exclusively) with Hyundai’s automotive product line.

“By identifying, nurturing and boosting the work of the best startups, we plan to accelerate our global leadership in future mobility,” Tae-won Lim, head of the Technology Innovation Center at Hyundai Motor, said.

Hyundai laid the groundwork for the new collaboration with the opening of the Technology Innovation Center in February 2017. The center oversees all of the company’s research in future technology from AI, advanced materials, energy and robotics, to the next generation of information communication technologies.

“Israel is known around the world for the quality of its startups, so with Technion and KAIST’s combined expertise, Hyundai Motor will be well placed to lead the development of the next generation of automotive technology,” Lim added.

Chicago has abundant water, from the Chicago River to Lake Michigan. Israel is situated in the desert-like Middle East where water is a precious commodity. But it is water that has brought the city and the country together in several new ventures.

Chicago Mayer Rahm Emanuel visited Israel this week to sign agreements with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology focusing on water research.

The Technion agreement is with Chicago’s “Current,” a platform for positioning the Windy City as “a global leader in developing and deploying technology for the next-generation of water infrastructure.”

The Technion will collaborate with Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago and the Chicago Department of Water Management.

Emanuel said he wanted Chicago wanted to partner with Israeli institutions because of the country’s high level of expertise in water reclamation, recycling, desalination and purification.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the publication of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, the first prototype of Genius: 100 Visions of the Future — the world’s first entirely 3D-printed book printed and bound in one piece — was produced on the International Space Station in zero-gravity conditions 400 kilometers above Earth.

The project was conceived by Rami Kleinmann, head of Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University. Einstein was one of the founders of the university, which has two campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. When Einstein died in 1955, he left his estate and intellectual legacy to the university.

The limited-edition book (300 copies) was designed by Ron Arad, the Israeli-born preeminent industrial designer, architect and modern artist based in London.

The prototype was produced in coordination with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Association of Space Explorers president and astronaut Soichi Noguchi, and 3D Space Book project manager Yifat Sharon.

Genius: 100 Visions of the Future features laser-cut pages formed in the silhouette of Einstein. Each of its single-sided 100 pages is devoted to the vision of one distinguished contributor, among them Zubin Mehta, Shimon Peres, Barbra Streisand, Deepak Chopra, Wynton Marsalis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Francine Prose, Salman Rushdie, David Suzuki, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Frank Gehry and Nobel laureates including Professors Dan Shechtman, Aaron Ciechanover and Robert Aumann of Israel.

It looks like a high-tech treadmill, something you might see in the exercise room at your local gym. But step on and get ready for a walk that deliberately tries to knock you off balance. The treadmill jolts to the left, then to the right; it stops and starts.

That’s all on purpose. The treadmill – called BalanceTutor – is not some sort of mini-roller coaster ride but a serious rehabilitative technology developed in Israel that’s now been adopted by the Real Sociedad football (soccer) team in Spain.

BalanceTutor aims to help players improve their balance and dexterity, especially after an injury.

That’s a big deal for Real Sociedad: A player becomes injured every two matches, explains José Manuel Gonzales de Suso, a sports medicine specialist working with the team.

“The average for each of the club’s teams is between two to three players injured per day,” he says. That adds up to “around 900 days of sickness and leave per team and per season. Playing soccer places high demands on the cardiovascular and locomotor systems.”

Before he launched his decades long investigation into the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, but well after he’d flown over 100 US Navy combat missions during World War II, Ret. Cpt. Elgen M. Long was saving lives in the skies over Yemen.

Now 91, Long is the last surviving Alaska Airlines crewmember who participated in “On Eagle’s Wings,” part of Operation Magic Carpet, the airlift that brought 50,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel between 1948 and 1950.

Both he and Alaska Airlines were honored Tuesday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage for their work. Alaska Airlines was presented with the StandWithUs Savior of Israel Award. Additionally, the American Sephardic Federation presented Long with its Maimonides Friendship Award.

“Alaska Airlines flew over enemy territory, facing tremendous risks, just to do the right thing. It’s a display of human courage and dignity, which is worthy of our honor and profound respect and for which Israel, and the Yemenite Jewish community, shall forever be grateful for,” said Shahar Azani, executive director of StandWithUs New York.

The story of how Long came to be a navigator on board the historic humanitarian mission is a story of how one young man, at a very early age, had a desire to serve. And like so many veterans and first responders, this former navigator and pilot, who still moves with military bearing, will tell you he simply did what needed to be done.

“It was important for these people. Their lives depended on it. It was life or death and we were doing the best we could. They needed assistance,” Long said.

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (The Fellowship) and Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) said they will provide $1.5 million in annual Rosh Hashanah “Fellowship Gift Cards” to 12,000 IDF soldiers marking the upcoming Jewish New Year.

The initiative, coordinated in collaboration with the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers and the LIBI Fund, will provide more than 10,000 lone soldiers and soldiers $140 gift cards. Another 2,200 soldiers will receive gift cards worth $100.

The cards “will allow the soldiers to celebrate the New Year without the burden of financial stress,” the organizations said in a statement on Wednesday.

The vouchers can be used at some 90 major Israeli retail chains to purchase food, clothing, shoes, sporting goods and leisure products.

Significant media attention has focused on Israeli lone soldiers in recent years, particularly after two American-born soldiers, Max Steinberg of California and Sean Carmeli of Texas, were killed in the 2014 Gaza war.

A descendant of Lord Arthur Balfour said during a visit to Israel that his ancestor’s 1917 declaration about favoring a Jewish state was “humanitarian” in nature.

Roderick Balfour, the 5th Earl of Balfour, said Thursday at an event in Jerusalem celebrating British-Israeli ties and the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, in which the British government vowed to help establish a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel without jeopardizing the rights of other area inhabitants.

The declaration followed several drafts and extensive negotiations between Zionist leaders and British officials including Arthur Balfour, the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary at the time. But it did not say why the United Kingdom viewed favorably the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine.

This led to a still-ongoing debate on whether the declaration was a humanitarian gesture following pogroms in Eastern Europe, the result of a political calculus on Britain’s part during world War I or the expression of a scripture-based belief that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people.
Roderick Balfour (Courtesy)

Favoring the humanitarian view, Roderick Balfour said: “I see it very much as a humanitarian gesture against the background of what was happening at the time.” But, he added, “As a reader of the Bible, it is axiomatic that there is a connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.”

In late August 1897, some 200 Jews from 17 countries arrived in Basel, Switzerland.

Dressed in festive formal attire, the delegates entered the municipal casino concert hall, which was decorated with blue and white flags for the occasion. They heard three knocks of the gavel that launched the Congress and then watched Dr. Karpel Lippe, the oldest delegate, make his way up the stage. He covered his head, and to the tears of the delegates, recited the sheheheyanu blessing, thanking God for bringing the Jews to this time.

With this blessing, that Sunday morning, the first day of Elul, the Jewish state began its journey.

The journey that was embarked on in the First Zionist Congress was not merely a process that would lead to the establishment of the State of Israel. It was the beginning of a Jewish transformation.

Herzl famously stated: “At Basel, I founded the Jewish state.”

He immediately clarified that such state is not simply a geographical representation, nor a collection of citizens who happen to live in a given territory. He wrote: “The essence of a state lies in the will of the people for a state... A territory is merely the concrete basis. The state itself, when it possesses a territory, still remains something abstract.”

It is that abstraction, that ideology, that Herzl founded in Basel and which continues to serve as the bedrock of the Jewish state.

Herzl outlined such a vision in his opening speech. One of the delegates, Mordecai Ben-Ami, described the reaction: “For a few moments, the hall shook from the shouts of joy, the applause, the cheers and the feet-stomping. It felt as if the great dream of our nation, of 2,000 years, was now solved, and in front us stood Mashiach Ben-David.”

Israel on Thursday said the international marathon body was injecting politics into sports by excluding an Israeli race because it passes through West Bank territory, which the Palestinians and most of the world considers to be occupied.

The Israel Marathon Association said the Association of International Marathons and Distances Races had displayed a “discriminatory nature” against the Bible Marathon that “will certainly result in great anger” among runners around the world.

Next month’s Bible Marathon stretches from Rosh Ha’ayin in central Israel to the West Bank settlement of Shiloh, tracing a path described in the Book of Samuel. Organizers call the route the oldest recorded marathon in history.

The Greek-based organization said it had to exclude the Israeli marathon to comply with “international public law.”

The Israeli association asked it to reconsider, saying that its decision was “prompted by a campaign organized by political activists” and rested on false legal premises. It also noted that the organization has long recognized the Laayoune Marathon in the disputed Western Sahara region controlled by Morocco.

“Then a man of Benjamin ran from the battle line the same day, and came to Shiloh with his clothes torn…”

One of the first runs recorded in human history—long before the “marathon” told of in Greek mythology—is mentioned in the Bible, in the beginning of the book of Samuel. At the end of the war between the Israelites and the Philistines, the “man of Benjamin” runs from the battlefield at Eben Ezer (modern day Rosh Ha’ayin) to Shiloh, city of the Tabernacle.

Many centuries later, the founder of the Maccabiah games, Yosef Yekutieli, set out to measure the length of the course from Rosh Ha’ayin to Shiloh, in the Benjamin region. He was amazed to find that the length of this historic path precisely matched that of the modern marathon – 42 kilometers (the official length of the Olympic running contest, determined in 1908 at the London Olympics).

The name Marathon[n 1] comes from the legend of Philippides or Pheidippides, the Greek messenger. The legend states that he was sent from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon (in which he had just fought),[3] which took place in August or September, 490 BC.[4] It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping and burst into the assembly, exclaiming νενικήκαμεν (nenikēkamen, "we have won!"), before collapsing and dying.

JERUSALEM (17/9/2017) The Bible Marathon, which traces the oldest recorded marathon route in history from Rosh Ha'ayin to Shiloh, has had its membership revoked by the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races (AIMS) after BDS activists claimed that its route violates international law. The organizers of the annual running event received notice from the President of AIMS rescinding their membership claiming that the race went beyond the boundaries of the State of Israel and therefore was a violation of UNSC resolution 2334. The Israeli Marathon Association promptly instructed Professor Eugene Kontorovich of the Kohelet Policy Forum to act on their behalf to legally resolve this issue, since there is no legal precedent for such actions.

Professor Eugene Kontorovich responded to the discriminatory AIMS decision in a formal letter to the organization’s president in which he clearly showed that holding a cultural or sports event was not only a violation of any law but rather the common practice worldwide.

The Professor of International Law at Northwestern University and Director of International Law at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum explained: “There is no international law that prohibits running the route of the world’s oldest race because it finishes in Ancient Shiloh. You can’t have one international law for Israel and another for the rest of the world. By definition international law applies to everybody.”

Kontorovich cited multiple annual sporting events including marathons that are held in disputed or occupied territories:“Examples include the Internationale de l'Automobile, which sanctions Formula 1 races in Jerusalem; Fédération Western Sahara; the International Triathlon Union authorizes Moroccan events in Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) recognizes Moroccan teams in occupied occupied Western Sahara; and the International Trail Running Association approves races in Russian-occupied Crimea. In none of these cases have these actions been thought to be prohibited by international law.”

He went on to explain: “AIMS has for many years given full membership to the Laayoune Marathon, which takes place entirely in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. Indeed, on the AIMS website and catalog, the event is described as being in “Morocco” despite the rejection of this characterization by the international community, which regards it as occupied.”

The letter ended: “We respectfully request that the Bible Marathon promptly be given AIMS membership as required by the association’s rules, and by its longstanding practice. Such a decision will in no way involve an expression of opinion on AIMS part on the underlying political dispute. Failing this, we will resist AIMS’s unjust and politicized denial of membership to the world’s oldest running event in every forum available to us.”

Thousands of runners from Israel and abroad are expected to participate in the October 6th Bible Marathon, in spite of the AIMS decision, which the organizers hope will be rectified by then.Thousands of Bible believing Jews and Christians are also expected to lodge formal complaints with AIMS, for discriminating against the race because of its unique Biblical roots.  

In 2016, a few months after the nuclear agreement with Iran went into effect, a Western entity gave the International Atomic Energy Agency information regarding sites the Islamic republic did not report as part of its nuclear program and where, according to suspicions, forbidden nuclear military research and development activity was being conducted, Israeli officials involved in the issue told Haaretz.

The Western entity also shared the information with a number of the six world powers who were party to the nuclear agreement, officials said.

The officials noted that almost all the suspected sites have not been visited by IAEA inspectors – either because of Iran’s refusal to grant entry or UN officials’ reluctance to confront Iran on the issue.

“At one point we saw there was no one to talk to,” said one of the Israeli officials. “There is a whole list of suspicious sites where the Iranians do not allow inspectors to visit and no one enforces the supervision mechanisms established in the nuclear agreement. There is simply a demonstration of weakness in the IAEA when it comes to Iran. The sense is that Iran allows what it wants, and does not allow what it does not want.”
...[O]ne of the issues Israel and the West are concerned about regarding the Iranian nuclear program regards the sites Tehran did not reveal, where there is suspected research and development for a military nuclear program.

These sites were supposed to be addressed by the IAEA and Iran as part of an agreed track called the “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear program.

An official noted that the Western entity identified, among others, a civilian Iranian site of potential illegal nuclear activity. IAEA inspectors asked Iran to visit the site, but the Iranians did not allow them to visit the site immediately, attempted to raise objections and created bureaucratic obstacles that caused the visit to be substantially delayed.

The officials said the Iranians refused to allow inspectors to visit a series of other suspicious sites, claiming they were military bases and, therefore, were not covered by the nuclear accord and that they were not required to allow access to inspectors.

According to an Israeli official, “When it comes to visits to suspicious sites, the agreement is not implemented. There are almost no visits and visitors are not allowed to visit. In this context, the agreement is not being realized in spirit and word.”

 Ikhras was inspired by the Arab and Muslim “activists” and “representatives” that hijacked our identities and name for their own self-aggrandizement and in furtherance of personal ambitions unrelated to our communities’ agenda, interests, and well-being.  It was their collaboration that made this project necessary and now Ikhras is here to tell them they do not speak for us.  Ikhras adds its voice to those resisting US Imperialism and Zionism with a special focus on exposing, ridiculing and holding accountable House Arabs and House Muslims in the US, to borrow Malcolm X’s expression.

Sarsour does not speak for Palestinians in NY, across the diaspora or under occupation, and her views do not reflect the Palestinian consensus or their national aspirations. She also does not represent the views of the larger Arab-American community. The political exigencies of running for NY City Council require Sarsour to pursue her amateurish version of a political triangulation strategy, posing as a champion of Palestine while reaffirming Israel’s “right to exist.” However, there are 11 Million Palestinians and over 300 Million Arabs who are not running for NY City Council in 2017. Their position and the position of the Palestinian and Arab-American communities remains unchanged. The structures and institutions of the Zionist entity created in 1948 must be fully dismantled, and all Palestinian refugees and their descendants have an inalienable right to return to their homes and lands of origin with full restitution of all their confiscated property in a single, unified, and liberated Palestine.

Framing herself as a radical champion of the people while working with the Muslim Democratic Club of New York to advance her career, she decided to maintain close ties to the Democratic Mayor. Later that same year, July 2014, Israel launched its third onslaught on Gaza since dismantling its illegal, Jewish-only colonies and occupation coordination centers and repositioning its occupation army outside the narrow coastal strip of Palestine. The massacre, which happened to coincide with the month of Ramadan, resulted in the wholesale slaughter of over 2100 defenseless Palestinian civilians. The same week de Blasio came out in support of the massacre he also extended an invitation to Sarsour to attend an “Iftar” at Gracie Mansion as the ostensible representative of the NY Muslim community. Sarsour accepted the invitation and as she sat down to enjoy her breaking of the fast (Sarsour does not fast and is hardly religious although she does invoke religion when it serves her purpose) the bombs were still falling on the children of Gaza. Sarsour later tweeted a picture of herself with de Blasio adding the words “honored to dine with Mayor de Blasio at Gracie Mansion.” At the time ikhras still maintained a cordial relationship with Sarsour and expressed directly to her our disappointment. She responded by saying she had to ignore it because she was trying to “play politics and its dirty” and she had “two campaigns [Muslim school holidays and NYPD intelligence practices] she needed to see through.” When we pressed her she became very defensive, said something indecipherable about an “inside out strategy”, and attacked other Palestinian “activists” (she used the quotes) and organizations. She specifically mentioned Al-Awda and Adalah suggesting they were not doing anything and that she cannot be expected to do it all herself. 

Former friends of Sarsour tell us ....She has also cultivated a public persona that those who knew her tell us is dramatically unlike the Sarsour they had encountered and previously worked with. Even Palestinian-Americans who do not know Sarsour personally recognize a caricature type quality to her public behavior. In what is apparently an attempt to adhere to some stereotypical Brooklynite image, complete with an exaggerated and pretentious accent, she now comes across as an Arab parody of Rosie Perez. 

In September of 2014 Sarsour claimed she was the victim of a hate crime, but in the Brooklyn neighborhood where the alleged incident took place there is a consensus this was nothing but an attention-seeking hoax and media ploy. Sarsour claimed she was attacked by a man who hurled slurs and threatened to behead her. It turned out the alleged assailant was a well-known 45-year old mentally ill, local homeless man. ...We could not find a single person in the neighborhood who considered him a threat. Another interesting fact casts more doubt on Sarsour’s story. On the day of the alleged incident Sarsour had called the police before the alleged attack reporting the alleged assailant as a “suspicious person” as if he is unknown. This is rather strange given that the “suspicious person” was a regular fixture in the neighborhood well-known to Sarsour and the rest of the residents by name. In all likelihood, the homeless, neighborhood drunk was, as usual, making stupid comments and kicking around a trash can. Instead of providing him with a hot meal and helping him find shelter, Sarsour decided to exploit his presence near her office to fabricate a hate crime casting herself as the fearless defender of the community under attack for her work on our behalf.  Sarsour took to Twitter and Facebook assuring everyone she was doing fine, thanked them for their concern and condolences, and pledged to never be intimidated or back down. After all, she is tough and everybody knows you “don’t mess with Brooklyn.”...For Sarsour to exploit the current environment of Islamophobia and the very real dangers encountered by Muslim women wearing the hijab to engage in a publicity stunt is not only manipulative and unethical, but outright disgraceful. It also provides further insight into her motivations while revealing a complete lack of a moral compass.

When Trayvon Martin was murdered Sarsour penned an article titled “My hijab is my hoodie” and declared herself “among the millions mourning the killing of Trayvon”, but had this young black youth been living in Sarsour’s neighborhood he would not have been allowed into her home or anywhere near her own kids and family. ...In our visit to NY we encountered a strong backlash against this aspect of Sarsour’s activities among those who know her best. It turns out Sarsour is known to harbor an ugly racism towards African-Americans which makes her latching onto the BLM movement all the more galling. She rarely associated with or interacted with African-Americans (this explains why she views African-Americans through the prism of racist, media stereotypes) until the “activist” with political aspirations realized it can be to her benefit. Sarsour’s racism which she is now trying to hide is common knowledge among the Arab-American community in NY...

 In addition to a lack of conviction and principles, Sarsour has also demonstrated a very shallow understanding of her own favorite topics. Her knowledge of U.S. history, politics, and society does not extend beyond a Middle School curriculum and she approaches these subjects without any serious thought or critical analysis. Nevertheless, Sarsour has acquired important skills and abilities that have served her well. She has, for example, demonstrated an ability to memorize and regurgitate pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric and various slogans for specific causes. She has also been adept at exploiting her different identity markers such as Palestinian, Arab and Muslim, and depending on the topic or event, is capable of offering herself as a useful prop. She has also shown a great deal of skill in latching onto independent phenomena such as the BLM or a presidential campaign when she perceives it to serve her long-term interests.

The Canaanite-Palestinian claim has two parallels. The first is that Jesus was a Palestinian, even though the designation “Palestine” was not use in the region during his lifetime, and would not be until a century or so later when the Romans imposed it.

I've heard pro-Palestinian Christians, clergy and lay activists alike, dismiss Jesus’s Jewishness, saying that he was Palestinian and even the first martyr to the Palestinian cause — murdered, of course, by the Jews of his time.
This essay by a well-known Palestinian journalist and activist explains Palestinian reasoning on this.
The second parallel -- well, the second parallel is purely a matter of religious belief, with which I will not argue here. Though I will label it aspirational supercessionism.

Islam presents itself as the final revelation in the Abrahamic lineage, supplanting both Judaism and Christianity and correcting their faults. It also claims that the Jewish prophets, including Abraham, and Jesus, were in fact Muslims because of their fidelity to the God known in Arabic as Allah.

So what's the bottom line here?

From my perspective, arguments that rely on “facts” cherry-picked from antiquity and faith claims hold little water when debating seemingly intractable, contemporary geopolitical disputes. Where we’re at and how we move forward toward a solution is what matters.

So beware, scribes, when either side starts throwing about faith claims or unprovable “facts” from thousands of years ago to gain political advantage in the here and now. History matters, but unprovable claims should never be taken on face value in journalism.

Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa last week denounced the Arab boycott of Israel and said his subjects are free to visit the Jewish state. The head of the Persian Gulf country, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, made the statements to Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, at a multi-denominational event at the center to sign and support a declaration denouncing religious hatred and violence.

Cooper and his partner at the Wiesenthal Center, Marvin Hier, visited Manama, Bahrain’s capital, by invitation, in early 2017.

A walk through the city, Cooper said, was an eye-opener. There was a church, with a huge cross, next to a Hindu temple, and 90 meters on an impressive mosque. Even a small synagogue, the only one in the Persian Gulf region, still stands in an older part of the city.

Hier and Cooper met with King Hamad and discussed the ruler’s plan to establish a Museum of Religious Tolerance in the capital city by the end of this year.

At the Los Angeles event last week, delegations of Buddhists in saffron robes, Sikhs in turbans, and Muslims with keffiyehs and hijabs [Muslim head-covers for men and veils for women], mingled with Jews with kippot [skullcaps] and Christians in business suits.

A second suspect was arrested on Saturday in connection with the subway attack at London’s Parsons Green station that left 30 people injured, officials announced on Sunday as the city’s terror threat level is downgraded to “severe.”

A 21-year-old man was arrested late Saturday night in Hounslow in west London under the Terrorism Act, authorities said. Another 18-year-old man was arrested earlier in the day at the port of Dover, where ferries leave for France, and is also being held under the Terrorism Act. The suspects' names have not been released and no charges have been filed.

The arrests indicate police and security services believe Friday’s attack involved several people.

Little details are known about the suspects and whether they are suspected of planting or building the bomb. The 18-year-old, whom authorities tracked using facial recognition technology, was believed to be a foster child taken in by Ronald Jones, 88, and his wife, Penelope, 71, who were honored by Queen Elizabeth for taking care of 268 foster children, the Times of London reported.

Police searched the couple’s home on Saturday as they reportedly stayed with friends. Neighbors around the house was evacuated as a precaution on Saturday. Mojgan Jamali, who lives near the house being searched, said police gave her "one minute" to pack.

"I was in my house with my children and there was a knock at the door from the police. They told me to leave. They said, 'You have one minute to get out of the house and get away,'" she said. "I just got out. I got my three children and we left the house and the street."

A friend, Alison Griffiths, said the Jones are "great pillars of the community" who have taken in several hundred children in the last 40 years.

The Marseille prosecutor’s office sad four young female US tourists were attacked with acid in Marseille’s main train station by a woman who has been arrested.

A spokeswoman for the prosecutor office told The Associated Press that two of the tourists were injured in the face in the attack Sunday in the Saint Charles train station and one of them has a possible eye injury. She said all four of the tourists, who are in their 20s, have been hospitalized, two of them for shock.

She did not have any more details and spoke on condition of anonymity, per the French judicial system.

There was no immediate information on where the US tourists were from.

Marseille is a port city in southern France that is closer to Barcelona than Paris.

The debate has gone on for weeks among rabbis and Jewish leaders: If President Donald Trump does not formally renounce white supremacists, is it still worth engaging in a conversation with him?

This was on much of the Jewish community’s mind since Aug. 23, when the leaders of three religious streams — Reconstructionist, Reform and Conservative — said they would not organize the annual pre-Rosh Hashanah call with the president, which the rabbinical groups had instituted at the start of the Obama administration. That call, principally for clergy, was aimed at helping to shape High Holidays.

Following a weeklong trip to Latin America, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his entourage landed in New York on Friday ahead of the United Nations General Assembly later this week.

Netanyahu is expected to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the assembly.

Upon his arrival in New York, Netanyahu was quick to publicly issue a warning to Iran not to challenge Israel in the Syrian-Lebanese arena, thereby setting the tone for the diplomatic efforts of the coming week.

"Israel will not tolerate an Iranian military presence on our northern border," Netanyahu said, "because it would pose a threat not only to us, but also to our Arab neighbors, and we would be forced to take action to prevent it."

"I think that today, Israel's warnings are being taken seriously, as they should be," he added.

In his meeting with Trump, Netanyahu is expected to pressure the U.S. to amend or scrap the nuclear agreement with Iran that the former American administration spearheaded.

A White House official told Israel Hayom on Friday that the meeting between Netanyahu and Trump – one of the first meetings on Trump's agenda at the event – would "enhance the already strong and long-standing relationship between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu."

If the reactions out of Lebanon are any indication, the drill has already met one of its objectives. Hezbollah apparently received the message and rushed to uncharacteristically deliver calming messages, clearly indicating that it fears a future war with Israel. Hezbollah knows that a future war will exact a far heavier toll on them than on Israel.

Thus, for instance, deputy Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem took pains to assuage the terrorist organization's alarmed supporters, telling them that Israel was not interested in war. Furthermore, in a calming message directed at Israel, he added that despite the recent airstrike in Syria (attributed to Israel) – which, if true, is a direct blow to Hezbollah's exposed underbelly – the organization was not looking to retaliate or go to war either. This marks a significant shift in tone for Hezbollah, which has customarily opted for menacing intimidation against Israel, in the knowledge that its threats would fall on open and mainly concerned ears.

Over the years, Hezbollah has engaged in effective psychological warfare against Israel. It has managed to convince the country's leaders that in a conflict, the damage to Israel would greatly outweigh the damage to Hezbollah and its supporters, and that therefore it should be wary of taking steps toward all-out war. The organization's success also stemmed heavily from its willingness to take things to the brink and remain there, unlike Israel, which prefers to keep a safe distance. This was merely a form of psychological warfare with very little to back it up, and yet in the battle over minds and perception, Hezbollah consistently gave Israel a run for its money.

Now, however, the tables have turned. The IDF drill changed the discourse and the rules of the game. Hezbollah, formerly the agent of deterrence, is now the deterred; previously eager for battle, it is now pleading for Israel to stand down; the organization that used to regularly threaten Israelis is now preoccupied with allaying the fears of its supporters in Lebanon.

But in the end, wars never erupt in the Middle East because somebody really wants them to. They usually start because of lack of thought or an error in judgment. This, too, must be kept in mind in the wake of Or Hadagan, the code name given to the IDF's exercise in the north.

Dethroning King Abdullah to end Hashemite-rule in Jordan for the last 95 years will only exacerbate the 100-years-old conflict between Jews and Arabs.

The Plan also calls for the transfer of one million Arabs living in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) to Jordan:
“Zahran intends to build a new city in Jordan to accommodate a million new residents. This will create jobs and stimulate the economy. These homes will be purchased on behalf of any Arabs willing to emigrate and given to them on arrival.”

President Trump will certainly not be embracing this belligerent and catastrophic Plan.

Wiser counsel should remind Trump that one of his predecessors – Ronald Reagan – said in 1980:
“Israel and Jordan are the two Palestinian states envisioned and authorized by the United Nations. Jordan is now recognized in some 80 per cent of the old territory of Palestine. Israel and Jordan are the parties primarily authorized to settle the future of the unallocated territories in accordance with the principles of the mandate and the provisions of Resolutions 242 and 338.”

Ignoring this Reagan Declaration has prolonged a conflict that could have ended 37 years ago.

President Trump needs to convince King Abdullah to begin direct negotiations with Israel. Failure to do so ensures an even bleaker future for the Middle East than currently exists.

The Jordan Times, published in Amman and owned by a kingdom-controlled foundation, reported this morning the not-entirely-stunning news that

His Majesty King Abdullah, accompanied by Her Majesty Queen Rania, on Friday left the Kingdom, heading to New York, where he will be leading the Jordanian delegation to the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly... Deputising for the King, HRH Crown Prince Hussein is scheduled to deliver Jordan’s speech before the General Assembly... In 2015, the Crown Prince became the youngest person ever to chair a Security Council meeting, when he called for measures to prevent the world’s youth from being lured into the dark world of extremism... ["King to take part in UN meeting", September 16, 2017]

If you're a news reporter or editor, wouldn't you want to take the opportunity to get Jordan's ruler to clarify his view of terrorism in light of the free-pass and ongoing protection he has given to a mass-murdering Jordanian woman who was named to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list on March 14, 2017?

No mainstream media has tackled him on this. In view of his repeated public condemnations of terror, that's strange, disturbing and something that ought to be corrected.

If King Abdullah is out of reach, can we suggest putting a similar question to HRH Crown Prince Hussein who is going to deliver Jordan's speech to the UN General Assembly? There's much he could explain, but frankly it's the reference in the Jordan Times piece above that has us intrigued.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly rejected a proposed meeting with Sweden’s prime minister during the upcoming United Nations General Assembly, in part because of Sweden’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state in 2014.

The snub of Stefan Lofven marked the second year in a row the prime minister has turned down the Swedish prime minister’s invitation for a sit down, Channel 2 reported Saturday. The request for a meeting was rebuffed as “not possible,” the TV report said.

Israel has had tense relations with Sweden since Lofven’s election in 2014, shortly after which Stockholm recognized the State of Palestine, becoming the first major European Union member to do so.

The move was met with widespread anger in Israel and ties between the two countries have remained strained over comments made by Lofven concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including that a wave of stabbing attacks in Israel did not constitute terrorism.

In recent weeks Israel flags appeared frequently among the sea of Kurdish flags at pro-independence rallies across Europe and in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. In Cologne in late August and then Geneva and Oslo, Israel flags were waved proudly by attendees. On September 16 the blue and white appeared at rallies in Brussels, Hamburg and Stockholm. The unprecedented embrace of the Israeli flag comes amidst Israel’s support for Kurdish rights and historic connections between the two nations.

The rallies are in response to an independence referendum planned by the Kurdistan Regional Government for September 25. Announced in June, the Kurdistan parliament in the autonomous region in northern Iraq approved it on September 15. Since September 5 the Kurdistan region and diaspora communities have been holding increasingly large rallies in support of the nation’s hopes for independence. This has been more than 100 years in the making, say many Kurds. The Kurdish people live in Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq, divided by the colonial borders set down after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. In Iraq they have enjoyed autonomy since the 1990s. After three years of war against ISIS the local government thinks it is time to show the world that the people want independence.

The international community’s response has been tepid. On September 15 the White House released a statement saying the United States does not support the intention to hold a referendum. Other members of the international coalition fighting ISIS, who have been working with the Kurds and the Iraqi government, have also pressured the KRG to postpone. Israel is the only country to openly back Kurdish aspirations. “Israel supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to achieve their own state,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on September 13. Speaking at the ICT’s World Counter-Terrorism summit on September 11, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said, “Israel and countries in the West have a major interest in the establishment of the state of Kurdistan.”

An Iraqi vice president warns Sunday that Baghdad would not tolerate the creation of “a second Israel” after the Jewish state became the only country to support a planned Kurdish independence referendum in northern Iraq.

The leaders of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan must “call off the (September 25) referendum that is contrary to the constitution and does not serve the general interests of the Iraqi people, not even the particular interests of the Kurds,” said Vice President Nuri al-Maliki.

“We will not allow the creation of a second Israel in the north of Iraq,” Maliki, a Shiite former prime minister, says at a meeting with US ambassador Douglas Silliman, in a statement released by the vice president’s office.

A country set up on a religious or ethnic base, like the Jewish state established in 1948, would not be acceptable, Maliki says.

He warns that an independence vote would have “dangerous consequences for the security, sovereignty and unity of Iraq,” and calls for dialogue between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government in the northern city of Erbil.

As opposed to Muslim countries in the region as well as the United States and Western allies, Israel has come out in apparent support of the referendum.

The Israeli Embassy in Ankara was evacuated on Friday as supporters of an ultra-nationalist party demonstrated outside against what they called plans to create a “second Israel” in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Utku Reyhan, secretary-general of the Homeland Party, said in a press statement that a unilateral independence referendum called for September 25 by the Kurdistan Regional Government was a “declaration of war by US imperialism and Israeli Zionism against countries in the region.”

Attempts to establish a Kurdish state, “which our party has been calling ‘Second Israel’ for 30 years,” threatened the territorial integrity of Turkey and Iraq, he charged.

Bearing banners with the slogan “We won’t allow a Second Israel,” the Homeland Party took its protest to the Incirlik Air Base in Adana, southern Turkey, on Saturday and was planning a protest outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday.

In recent days, Turkish media has been abuzz with reports that Kurdish leader Masoud Barazani has reached a secret deal with Jerusalem to have the descendants of Kurdish Jews in Israel repatriated to Kurdistan after the referendum.

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli Arabs from the Galilee in northern Israel will join their Jewish neighbors in enjoying a new fast train link to Tel Aviv, where jobs are in greater in supply, after a campaign by a civic equality group sought to ensure equal access for all.

The 90-minute Karmiel-Tel Aviv line will open next week, along with two new stations, at Karmiel in the northern Galilee and Ahihud in the western Galilee.

The area around these towns is heavily populated by Israeli Arabs, among whom unemployment is relatively high.

Last year, state comptroller Yosef Shapira slammed the government for what he called a “grim and alarming picture of the employment situation among Israel’s Arab population,” saying recent government efforts to integrate Arabs into the workforce were “broken, ineffective and deficient” and that “the goals set by the government to promote employment equality and promote integration of the Arab sector are not being met.”

Furthermore, the report found, the Arab community “suffers from ongoing discrimination.”
Western Galilee view, with the town of Karmiel in the foreground (photo credit: Doron Horowitz/Flash90)
The Western Galilee (Doron Horowitz/Flash90)

Following intervention by Sikkuy – the Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality, together with lawmaker Dov Khenin, a member of the Joint (Arab) List party and chairman of the Knesset’s subcommittee on public transportation, the Transportation Ministry announced the addition of bus lines and changes in the routes of existing lines to enable Arab citizens to reach the two new stations easily.

The Hamas terrorist group on Sunday said it has accepted key conditions demanded by its rival, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction, including future elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Elections would clear the way for a unity government ending a 10-year rift that has left the Palestinians divided between two governments.

In a statement issued overnight, Hamas said it was "responding to the generous Egyptian efforts, which reflect the Egyptian desire to end the split and achieve reconciliation, and based on our desire to achieve national unity."

Hamas said it had dissolved a contentious administrative committee that runs Gaza, invited Abbas' government to return to Gaza and was ready to hold new elections.

The Palestinians have been divided between two rival governments since 2007, when Hamas violently drove Abbas' forces out of the Gaza Strip, leaving the Palestinian Authority in control only of autonomous areas of the West Bank. Repeated attempts at reconciliation have failed.

Hamas, however, has been greatly weakened by an Israeli and Egyptian blockade, three wars with Israel and international isolation. Gaza's economy is in tatters and residents of the territory have electricity for only a few hours a day.

Egypt recently invited top Hamas officials to Cairo for reconciliation discussions, and last week, Abbas sent a delegation of representatives to Egypt, as well.

In a overture to its rival Fatah, Hamas on Sunday agreed to dissolve its governing body in the Gaza Strip, also known as the administrative committee, allow the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority government to take over in its place and hold general elections.

For the past several months, Fatah and its chairman Mahmoud Abbas have called on Hamas to make and implement such an announcement.

Since Hamas ousted the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007, Hamas and Fatah have essentially established two separate governments, one Hamas-run government in Gaza and another PA-led government in the West Bank. While the two parties have signed a number of reconciliation agreements aimed at creating one shared government, they have failed to implement any of them.

Hamas’s announcement on Sunday followed separate talks in Cairo last week between Fatah officials and Egyptian officials and Hamas officials and Egyptian officials. The groups of Fatah and Hamas officials were still in the Egyptian capital Sunday evening.

Fatah Vice Chairman Mahmoud al-Aloul welcomed Hamas’s announcement, but said his party would first like to confirm its veracity.

Jihadist organizations affiliated with the Islamic State are refusing to give the Hamas terrorist group a rest in the Gaza Strip. An informed Hamas source in the enclave told Breitbart Jerusalem that Hamas security forces arrested six Gaza jihadists in the last two days.

The six were arrested in possession of explosive belts and all are supporters of the Islamic State. They were detained during Hamas raids on two homes on Tuesday, one in Khan Younis and the other in Rafah. The operation was led by members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ so-called military wing.

The source noted that some of those arrested were planning a large attack against Hamas members in the border area and others were planning to use the attack to cross into Sinai and join Wilyat Sinai, the Egyptian branch of IS. According to the source, some of those arrested admitted that they were planning on crossing into Sinai and coordinated their journey with one of the operators of the tunnels on the Gaza-Egyptian border. Three of those questioned said they were supposed to go through the same tunnel together.

Hamas police spokesman Iyad al-Bazam refused to confirm the report when asked by Breitbart Jerusalem. However, Abou Baker al-Maqdesi, a senior jihadist active in the Gaza Strip who fought with IS in Syria and Iraq before being wounded in battle in Iraq, confirmed the arrests to Breitbart Jerusalem.

Officials of President Basher Assad’s regime boasted today that prejudice-monitoring agencies in the country had recorded no verbal or physical assaults against Jews in the last 12 months, sparking hope that when the dwindling Jewish population of Syria disappears over the next several decades, local antisemitism will be a thing of the past.

Fewer than two dozen Jews remain in Syria, almost all of whom live in a small area of the capital, representing the remnant of a community that stretches back thousands of years. Brutal and discriminatory treatment by surrounding Arabs reached its peak during the decades immediately following the establishment of Israel, but in recent years the number of anti-Jewish incidents has dropped precipitously. Once the mostly elderly Jews of Syria die off, officials predict, the country will boast a more impressive set of statistics on antisemitic incidents than even the so-called liberal democracies of the West in perpetuity.

“We already look better than the ostensibly tolerant and open societies of Canada and Ireland,” bragged Minister of Minority Affairs Meqqem Safr. “We don’t have such things here. And by ‘such things’ I mean Jews. Official ‘encouragement’ of the Jews to leave has done wonders to reduce the incidence of antisemitism within our borders. This could serve as a useful model for other countries looking to put a serious dent in reports of antisemitic attacks.”

The statistics cover only incidents in which private citizens have been involved, and an internal ministry report specifically excluded official government actions from the data and analysis. “Tendentious misinterpretation of facts and terminology are a major concern,” explained Safr. “Actions by the government cannot be classified as antisemitic – that would be absurd. It would be like claiming some inherent connection between ‘honor killings’ and Islamic culture, or that anti-Zionism overlaps almost completely with antisemitism.”

Sheikh Suleiman Anwar Bengharsa, head of the Islamic Jurisprudence Center in Clarksburg, Maryland, gave a lecture in Toronto, Canada in 2010, in which he said that Muslims could only live in the land of the infidels under certain circumstances, one of which was to do da'wa. "When the caliphate is established, you need to pack your bags and go home," he said. In the lecture on the jurisprudence of interaction with non-Muslims, which was delivered at the Abu Huraira Center in Toronto and posted on YouTube in August 2010, Bengharsa stressed that historically, Islam had been spread by the sword and said that the purpose of Jihad is to establish the law of Allah and that while you can’t force a person to believe in Allah, "you can force him to live by the shari'a."

An educational non-fiction content provider has issued an apology for offering teachers across the country a fact sheet on the September 11 attacks that included commentary about Israel having a "shady history" and having previously "belonged to the Muslims."

Newsela prides itself in being a reliable source of current event pieces and historical articles, each edited by Newsela staff to meet multiple reading skill levels, for teachers to use in their elementary and middle school classrooms. On 9/11, fifth and sixth grade teachers found available an article, adapted by Newsela staff from a History.com piece, outlining the day's attacks and an overview of Osama Bin Laden's alleged reasons for attacking the United States.

One level of the sixth-grade article read, "They were angry that the U.S. gave money to the country of Israel, an area with a long and shady history in the Middle East."

"[Bin Laden] thought the United States was too involved in the Middle East. … The United States also gave money to Israel. It is a Jewish country in the Middle East. Many Muslims live there. Before Israel was Jewish, the land belonged to Muslims. Bin Laden believed that Jews should leave the land," read a version of the fifth-grade article.

Prior to the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel, the region was under Ottoman and then British rule.

Some 4,300 students nationwide might have had access to the article.

The fact that ‘Middle East Monitor’ (MEMO) is organising such an event comes as no surprise: it is after all the Hamas-linked outfit that invited Raed Salah to the UK in 2011 and it includes among its staff seasoned anti-Israel activists such as director Daud Abdullah (also connected to the PRC) and senior editor Ibrahim Hewitt of ‘Interpal‘.

Neither is the line-up of speakers at this latest MEMO event much of an eye-opener: no-one familiar with the Hamas-sympathetic anti-Israel scene in the UK would be shocked to find names such as David Cronin, Clare Short and Peter Oborne on the list.

Nevertheless, one name on that list should raise eyebrows – not because he has unsurprisingly agreed to speak at an event run by a group known to be linked to Hamas but because the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist activist academic Avi Shlaim is also a fairly regular (but inevitably inadequately introduced) BBC contributor on Middle East affairs and has even in the past been consulted as an ‘expert’ at the later stages of the BBC complaints procedure.

CAMERA’s new Arabic department has prompted an amendment to an article published last month on the BBC Arabic website.

Although the arrest of the leader of the banned northern Islamic Movement – Raed Salah – on August 15th did not receive any BBC coverage in English, the corporation’s Arabic language website published both a report on that story and a profile of Salah.

In that profile, readers were told that Israel often arrests members of the northern Islamic Movement for protesting against archaeological excavations in the vicinity of Temple Mount.

CAMERA’s Arabic department contacted BBC Arabic requesting a correction and pointing out that, contrary to the BBC’s claim, none of the legal action against the northern Islamic Movement or its leader has been related to protests against archaeological excavations: rather the group has been outlawed since late 2015 due to its links to Hamas, incitement and provocation of violence.

Finally, a photo caption accompanying the text had euphemistically referred to "Leila Khaled, a Palestinian activist credited as the first woman to hijack an airplane." Khaled, as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – a group designated as a terror organization by the European Union and the United States, as well as Israel and Canada – hijacked a civilian airplane, which makes her a terrorist, not an "activist."

Editors agreed that the characterization of Khaled as an "activist" was problematic, and commendably removed it. A screen capture of the amended caption follows:

In another instance of prejudicial language, however, National Geographic refused to budge. A separate photo caption accompanying the article (photo 9/14) refers to the West Bank barrier as "the towering wall of segregation." As the article notes, Palestinians consider the barrier "racial segregation and apartheid" (despite the fact that Israeli Arabs, of the same race as Palestinians, can cross back and forth as freely as Israeli Jews). Israelis, on the other hand, consider the barrier essential to preventing terrorism. Why then, does the photo caption adopt the partisan Palestinian terminology instead of using the neutral term "West Bank barrier"? (The reporter refers to the barrier as a "wall," or "massive concrete wall" throughout the article, but according to the United Nations, the vast majority of the barrier – over 85 percent – consists of "fences, ditches, razor wire, groomed sand paths, an electronic monitoring system, patrol roads, and a buffer zone," and not a concrete wall.)

Tensions between far-left and far-right groups playing out on the streets of Melbourne, Australia feature in The Age.

A central character in the story is one Avi Yemini, a former Israeli officer. According to The Age:

We wrote to the author of the story, Ebony Bowden, asking what exactly is a “pro-Zionist gym?” While Yemini may publicly state that he is pro-Israel (putting aside his other politics), that does not mean that his gyms can be politically labeled.

Perhaps he teaches Krav Maga, a form of Israeli self-defense in his gyms. Would a gym be labeled pro-Thai if kick boxing were taught there?

Zionism at its most basic is simply the belief in the right of the Jewish people to a sovereign state. People may be Zionists. Organizations may be Zionist. But a gym?

The aim of the article was to tie Israel to what McKernan characterises as Burma’s (Myanmar’s) “intensified violence against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority”, amidst reports of 400 Rohingya killed and over 100,000 displaced since August. To help buttress the ‘Jews contributing to violence against Muslims’ narrative, McKernan included a ludicrous quote by a fringe Israeli leftist arguing that “weapons used against the Palestinians are being sold as ‘field-tested’ to some of the worst regimes on the planet”, such as Myanmar.

However, beyond the hyperbole, the specific claims in the article don’t stand up to critical scrutiny.

The Indy claim that “More than 100 tanks, as well as boats and light weapons, have been sold to the Burmese government by Israeli arms companies” is extraordinarily misleading. As blogger Elder of Ziyon recently demonstrated, based on data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), there’s been no major* recorded arms sales between the two countries since 2011.

Also, Israel provides a minuscule proportion of Myanmar’s overall weapons imports, representing roughly 1% of all major arms to the country between 2010 and 2016.

Nechama Rivlin, the wife of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin hosted 30 lone soldiers from the Givati Brigade at a pre-Rosh Hashanah toast.

The gathering was also attended by Chana Eisenkot, the wife of IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, as well as the commander of the Givati ​​Brigade, Lt. Col. Ivri Elbaz.

The soldiers included immigrants from the US, France, Britain, and Switzerland, as well as soldiers without families.

The soldiers discussed their reasons for joining the IDF. Avraham, a lone soldier from the US, said: "When I heard about the kidnapping of the boys Gil-Ad, Eyal and Naftali, and the beginning of Operation Protective Edge, I could not just sit in America. So I decided to enlist."

Rafi, also from the US, said: "I always had the dream of serving in the IDF."

The lone soldiers spoke of the camaraderie of the IDF and of the culture of giving the army fosters. They also spoke of the bonds they formed with Israeli families who 'adopted' them during their service.

The soldiers also spoke about the difficulties and hardships they encountered in transitioning to a new country. Avraham explained that the language barrier was especially difficult for him. "People did not understand me, and it was hard to explain what they were thinking or feeling. It's hard to be in a situation where you don't know how to explain yourself."

Mitchell Flint, a former US Navy fighter pilot who helped form the Israeli Air Force has died in Los Angeles at the age of 94.

Flint, who also served in Israel’s first fighter squadron, died Saturday of natural causes, his son Michael Flint was quoted by US media as saying.

Flint, whose father was also a Navy combat flyer in World War I, volunteered at the age of 18 to serve as a US Navy pilot and earned three Air Medals and eight Navy Unit Commendations during his service in the Pacific during World War II.

He volunteered to fly for the fledgling State of Israel during the country’s War of Independence after seeing what had occurred to the Jews of Europe during the Second World War, and in 1948, under the guise of heading to the Olympic Games in London, he made his way to Czechoslovakia before flying to Israel.

Flint was one of the founding members of “Machal," a group of non-Israelis who fought in Israel’s War of Independence. They flew in German aircraft that had been captured during WWII, such as Messerschmitts with Stars of David painted over Nazi insignia, as well as Mustangs and Spitfires,

The Machal volunteers played a key role in the war and during his time flying for Israel’s 101 Squadron, Flint served alongside Ezer Weizman, who would later go on to become the head of the air force and Israel’s seventh president.