An active follower of Israeli society asked me why the Eastern Jews hated the Palestinians, and that the non-Easterners (Ashkenazim)  dislike us less, or so it appears!
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Why do Oriental Jews become the worst enemies of the Palestinians?

The reason is that they want to prove their allegiance to Israel more than their opponents and oppressors, Ashkenazim.
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This hatred is a kind of psychological illness. Sephardim are despised in Israel; therefore, a weaker group must be found to relieve themselves of the oppression they are suffering.

....Therefore, the Sephardim must adhere to this reality. They must exercise their masters over the Palestinians, so that the Palestinians remain oppressed as a guarantee for their survival as masters. Therefore, they are among the greatest opponents of the two-state solution or the end of the occupation !!

Rabbi Yitzhak Haberstein, representing the Simon Wiesenthal Center, spoke on Tuesday.  He said that tomorrow night in Los Angeles they are co-hosting a dinner for the first ruler of an Arab Country who will sign a major declaration on religious tolerance and against religious extremism.

“We’re no stranger to interfaith activity,” he said.   “This city is no stranger to social justice issues.  It has a well-deserved reputation for being at the forefront of good progressivism.  That said, there is something that happened here a number of weeks ago that’s important enough for us to want to come up here and make a statement.”

He said that any other religious leader in America who would get up in front of their congregation and “label another group fifth and call for their annihilation – all hell would break loose.   There would be no easy way out.”  He said, “There has been an unfortunate kind of double standard that has come from this community.  It shouldn’t be.

“When you consider the importance of the preachings of Jihadist movement in mosques across the world, the bloody trail that it’s left behind,” he said.  “These are not influences that can be poo-pooed or simply wished away.”

The Rabbi called it “an apology that was no apology.  It did not take back the basis for the statement.  The call through religious tradition, to call, three times repeated, we ask Allah that we should be part of this in word and in deed.”

Professor Emeritus Alex Groth, a retired Political Science Professor at UC Davis and a Holocaust survivor, spoke as well.  He is a 54-year resident of the city of Davis.  He said he is one of the few former inmates of the Warsaw Ghetto.

“I have seen words of hate translated into mass murder in World War II Europe,” he said.  He said he has spoken about this subject in numerous community forums and in academic publications.  “In all of my time here in Davis, I never thought even once that a time would come, when a religious leader in our city would publicly call for the destruction of the Jews with the apparent tacit consent and approval of most if not all of his congregation.

“To the best of my knowledge, the purveyor of the killing message delivered in July is still at the helm of the Davis Mosque and this is happening 72 years after the conclusion of the Second World War and 72 years after the conclusion of the Holocaust,” he said.

Jonathan Zachariou, Pastor at Davis Christian Assembly for the last 26 years, said he is not looking to suppress free speech.  And he noted that the freedom of religion is mentioned before even that of speech in the First Amendment.

“I am not looking to suppress anything with regards to the freedom of religio[n], but I am here to call on this city council to formally distance themselves or to categorically say that the message that was brought by this Imam has nothing to do with the Davis community at all,” he said.

Pastor Zachariou said, “I do not doubt the Imam’s credentials.”  He noted that he teaches at the university in Medina.  He also teaches at UC Davis.  “He knows the Quran.  He knows what he’s talking about.  So when he expresses the things he expressed, he’s talking about what the Quran is talking about.  He did not make a mistake in his message.  His message is true.

“Some Muslims will disagree with his interpretation,” he said.  “But he has credentials which he’s backing up his hate speech.”

Edward Rabin, a longtime resident of Davis, said, “I want to emphasize the enormity of what has happened in the last month or two.”  He made the point, “No anti-Semite in the history of this country has ever said anything remotely like what this Imam said twice to his congregation and then posted on the internet.”

He said not David Duke, not the KKK, not Father Caughlin or “any other of the reprehensible bigots that we’ve had to put up with.”  In fact, he made the point that even Hitler himself was not so brazen as to openly talk about such plans.

David Kadosh, Executive Director of the Zionist Organization of America in the Western Region, said it was founded by former Supreme Court Justice Luis Brandeis 120 years ago.  Much of his work has been to identify anti-Semitism in schools and university.

He said that we have seen time and again how hatred has fueled atrocities and “this evil is happening here, across the street from the university.”  He read from the sermon which called on the destruction of the Jews, one by one, and not sparing a single one.  “Notice how Imam Shahin prays for the death of Jews. We Jews have heard this both.  The same rhetoric calling for our extermination was used by the Nazis 70 years ago.”

“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it,” Gail Rubin said, quoting Albert Einstein.  She said she is a Jew and an 18-year resident of Davis.  “A mile away from my house, someone wants me and my family dead.

“Just 16 years after 9/11 we continue to hear the call and see the acts of Jihad,” she said.  “Words can kill,” she argued.  “Just imagine if ‘kill every Jew’ were replaced by kill every Muslim or kill every black.  Would we be so quiescent in talking only about hurt feelings?”

She said that, following the statement, “[t]he Imam said sorry for hurt feelings but he did not retract his radical ideology. Did any Mosque board member or congregant denounce Shahin or walk out?  No.”

She argued, “This is not just a local issue.  The incitement to Genocide is illegal under state law.”  She asked for law enforcement to all take action.

She concluded, “The sorry is simply not enough.  I no longer feel safe in Davis.  After 18 years here, I am moving away.”

Fatah and Hamas announced yesterday that they are moving ahead towards Palestinian reconciliation and possible national elections. While the international community is waiting to see the final terms of a Palestinian unity agreement, the fundamental messages of non-recognition of Israel and support for the use of terror against Israel are principles that Fatah and Hamas already agree upon.

Speaking last month on Fatah-run Awdah TV, Fatah spokesman Osama Al-Qawasmi forcefully told Hamas that it should not recognize Israel, since Fatah itself does not recognize and will never recognize Israel.

Fatah-run Awdah TV host: "Has the Fatah Movement recognized Israel in its political platform until now?
Fatah Spokesman Osama Al-Qawasmi: "Certainly not. This is not required, and we will not recognize Israel... I declare this clearly and in a satellite channel broadcast: ‘My friends, Hamas, you should not recognize Israel, you are not required to. The PLO, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, sent a letter of mutual recognition of the State of Israel, on Sept. 12, 1993. You are not required to.'"[Fatah-run Awdah TV, Aug. 23, 2017]

It should be noted, that Mahmoud Abbas the chairman of the Palestinian Authority is also the chairman of Fatah and the PLO. The Palestinian leadership employs double messages depending on who it is speaking to. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Fatah regularly reminds Palestinians that it does not recognize Israel's existence or right to exist. Fatah and the PA regularly teach Palestinian children to see all Israeli cities such as Jaffa and Haifa as "occupied" Palestinian cities that will eventually be under Palestinian sovereignty. When speaking to the international community, however, Abbas focuses not on Fatah's non-recognition of Israel but on the PLO's one letter of recognition of Israel, written in 1993.

Hajer Harb, a courageous Palestinian journalist, has been found guilty by Hamas of exposing corruption in the health system in the Gaza Strip. On September 13, a Hamas court sentenced her to six months in prison and a fine. It was the first sentence of its kind to be passed on a female journalist in the Gaza Strip.

Harb, however, is unlikely to serve her prison term in the near future; she recently left the Gaza Strip to Jordan, where she is receiving medical treatment after being diagnosed with cancer.

Her illness, however, did not stop Hamas from pursuing legal measures against her for her role in exposing corruption in the Palestinian health system. Instead of suspending the legal proceedings against her, the Hamas court chose to sentence her to prison in absentia.

If and when she recovers from her illness and returns to the Gaza Strip, Harb will be arrested and sent to prison for six months. She will also be required to pay the 1000 shekel ($250) fine that was imposed on her by the Hamas court.

Harb's ordeal began in June 2016, when she published an investigative report that disclosed how Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) were using medical care to blackmail Palestinian patients. Her report exposed how some physicians and Hamas and PA officials were demanding bribes in return for issuing permits to patients to leave the Gaza Strip for medical treatment in Israel, the West Bank and some Arab and Western countries. Those who cannot afford to pay the bribes are left to die in understaffed and under-equipped Palestinian hospitals, the report revealed.

The United Nations General Assembly is about to open, with the traditional lead-off speech by the president of Brazil followed by the president of the United States. The speeches and activities this year will, as usual, be a mix of the interesting and the dull, the consequential and the useless, the honest and the hypocritical.

Whatever the speeches say, why can’t the UN get more done to promote freedom? The Preamble to the UN Charter says the organization’s purpose is “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights” but the organization has at best a very mixed record on doing so.

The answer is clear: so many member states are themselves dictatorships that engage in horrible human rights violations—and they stick together. The latter point is key: the worst countries are far more united in protecting human rights abuses than the democracies are in protecting human rights.

One important mechanism for this protection of human rights abuses is the so-called “Like-Minded Group,” consisting usually of Algeria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bhutan, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. As a superb new Human Rights Watch report on China’s own abuses of the UN system, entitled The Costs of International Advocacy, states:

These countries have demonstrated political solidarity in the [Security] Council and have worked together to weaken the universality of human rights standards and resist the Council’s ability to adopt country-specific approaches. They have shielded repressive governments from scrutiny by filling speakers’ lists with promoters of these countries’ human rights records during Universal Periodic Reviews, and giving uncritical statements from friendly governments and Government-Organized NGOs (GONGOs).

The United States is stepping up moves within the United Nations to change the anti-Israel bias that characterizes many of the organization's member countries.

Arutz Sheva has learned that Vice President Mike Pence is expected to hold a special session on Tuesday, the day Prime Minister Netanyahu addresses the UN General Assembly, on what a senior American official defines as "the faulty behavior of the various organizational bodies."

The senior American official said that a main agenda item of the Vice President will be the UN Human Rights Council and its unfair treatment of Israel.

"The Vice President intends to call during the discussion to change the discourse toward Israel, and especially to warn that the US will have to take unpleasant steps if the intensive preoccupation with the State of Israel continues while human rights issues in other places are completely neglected."

At present, any Human Rights Council meeting must include a discussion on Israeli human rights violations. A precedent in this spirit was accepted in the past and implemented without question. Israeli diplomacy has been struggling with this for a long time, and now will gain a significant boost from the Vice President.

America’s ambassador to the United Nations said Sunday that US President Donald Trump has brought about change at the global body that is seeing Israel get a fairer treatment than in the past.

Reviewing what to expect from Trump’s upcoming speech at the UN General Assembly this coming week, Nikki Haley told CNN’s “State of the Union” that it is “a new day at the UN.”

In the past, she said, “I think we saw a United Nations where the United States was giving over 25 percent of the funding and being utterly disrespected, the United Nations was bashing Israel every chance they get.”

“A United Nations that talked a lot, didn’t have a lot of action. Now we can say it is a new day at the UN, what are you now seeing is the Israel bashing has become more balanced.”

She also raised the prospect of US military action against North Korea if the North continues its missile and nuclear tests.

North Korea will be “destroyed” if it continues with what she describes as “reckless” behavior, Haley said that the UN Security Council has basically exhausted its diplomatic options for dealing with North Korea.

If diplomacy fails, she said US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis “will take care of it.”

The provisions of legislation on Palestinian Authority funding of terrorism currently before the US Senate have not been watered down by a new amendment based on humanitarian concerns, supporters of the bill said on Sunday.

Following the passage of the Taylor Force Act by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in August, its sponsors accepted an amendment on September 8 which would enable continued funding for Palestinian humanitarian projects that are not connected to the PA. The amendment was demanded by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who voted against the Act in the Foreign Relations Committee, but now supports the legislation. Booker had met with sustained criticism over his original stance.

A prominent supporter of the legislation told The Algemeiner on Sunday that the amendment does not change the goal of stopping the PA from using international aid to “incentivize violence against Israeli and American citizens.” The main target of the legislation is the PA’s of paying salaries and benefits to convicted terrorists and their families at a cost of more than $300 million annually.

The act is named in memory of Taylor Force — a former US Army officer and veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars who was murdered in Tel Aviv in a Palestinian stabbing attack in March 2016. The 28-year-old Force, a Vanderbilt University graduate student, had been visiting Israel as part of a school-organized spring break trip.

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.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has expressed alarm over reports that United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, is writing to firms regarding the “blacklist” of companies doing business in or with Israeli companies in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank.

“It is damaging enough that the High Commissioner felt he was required to ‘produce’ this database of enterprises doing business in the settlements,” said Stephen M. Greenberg, Chairman and Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman/CEO of the Conference, in a statement released on Friday.

“There is no acceptable justification for the High Commissioner to go beyond what is called for in this biased measure,” they said. “Any further action exacerbates the damage already caused by the resolution.”

They said that Al Hussein, “by informing businesses that they are on the ‘blacklist’… will be complicit in furthering the unacceptable aims of the resolution and promoting the economic warfare waged against Israel by the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.” Hoenlein and Greenberg added that the “grossly discriminatory ‘blacklist’ was compiled through an undisclosed process overseen by the High Commissioner and his staff,” following the passage of “a blatantly anti-Israel resolution” by the Human Rights Council in March 2016.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lay out a comprehensive case against Iran in his speech Tuesday at the United Nations, “connecting the dots” between the nuclear deal and Tehran’s desire to establish itself militarily on Israel’s northern border, Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said Sunday.

Netanyahu will make plain that in Jerusalem’s view the Iran nuclear pact must not be left intact, Danon said.

“The issue of North Korea is concerning, but we care about the Middle East. Iran will be major part of the prime minister’s speech, regarding the nuclear agreement but also what they are doing today in the region,” Danon told The Times of Israel.

Preventing Iran’s entrenchment on the Golan Heights, via its proxy Hezbollah, as part of an agreement to end the Syrian civil war “is the most important issue for Israel today,” Danon, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said.

The Trump administration’s push for peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians will not feature prominently this week at the UN General Assembly, where the president, on his first trip there, will prioritize more pressing national security concerns, officials told The Jerusalem Post.

In his first address to the international body – often the subject of his administration’s criticism – President Donald Trump is expected to focus more on his showdown with North Korea, Iran’s nuclear program and the broad threat of violent religious extremism.

But to his Middle East peace team, the negotiations process continues on its long trajectory, next to which the UN assembly is merely a fixed week on the calendar.

“Achieving peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians remains one of the president’s highest priorities, but the United Nations meetings will primarily focus on other issues and serve as check-in opportunities,” one White House official told the Post.

“Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and Dina Powell just came off of a very productive trip to the region, and those peace conversations are continuing at a steady pace and will be mostly separate from the United Nations meetings.”

While the administration’s peace team is not expected to make tangible progress in New York, Trump himself will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas around his speech on Tuesday.

And Trump’s national security adviser, H. R. McMaster, says he will likely raise his hopes for peace with virtually every foreign leader he meets during the week.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the official spokesman of Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said on Sunday that Abbas will deliver an important speech to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, "which will define the characteristics of the next stage."

He added that Abbas’s visit to New York is intended mainly to convey a diplomatic message to the international community and to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in order to examine the administration’s future actions in the Middle East.

Abu Rudeineh added that Abbas would present the Palestinian Arab position which calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders, and would also discusses the PA’s greatest political achievement in 2012, when the UN General Assembly recognized "Palestine" as a non-member observer state.

He reiterated the PA’s opposition to a temporary state, a separate state in Gaza, a state with no borders and expanded autonomy.

Abbas has traditionally used his speeches at the UN General Assembly to lash out against Israel and make false accusations against the Jewish state.

Trump’s options vary from merely enforcing the deal’s provisions to ending the deal immediately to everything in-between.

OPTION 1: Enforce the deal’s provisions
Obama administration alumni and a group of disarmament experts who supported the deal emphasize that the deal is working. They say that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has consistently said Iran is complying with its obligations. Accordingly, they say no changes are needed, just continued careful enforcement of the deal’s provisions including the IAEA’s monitoring of Iran.

OPTION 2: End the deal immediately
The deal’s harshest critics, including many Republicans and many disarmament experts who opposed the deal, want the deal ended with no asterisks and the sooner the better. They believe the deal merely gave Iran sanctions relief and a free hand to promote more terror in the Middle East.

OPTION 3: Keep the deal and certify Iran as compliant for now, but try to renegotiate the deal’s terms
This is an in-between option closer to keeping the deal, but starts from a point of greater skepticism.

Experts backing this approach are usually critical of the deal, but feel that Iran has already received its main benefit from the deal with the removal of sanctions. They say that simply cancelling the deal, as opposed to improving it, would just give Iran a green-light to take its gains and go nuclear.

OPTION 4: Sort of end the deal but with a question mark to negotiate for change
This approach is closer to ending the deal, but more moderate. The idea would be for Trump in mid-October to initially decline to certify Iran’s compliance with the deal, but express an openness to continue the deal if Congress authorizes it within 60 days and as part of a renegotiated and improved deal.

OPTION 5: Extend the deal
A number of experts promoting the other options also support extending limits on Iran’s nuclear program beyond the deal’s eight to ten year deadlines. The difference is that experts supporting this as the primary issue say that all efforts at renegotiation are useless if Iran can comply with the deal and obtain a nuclear weapon in 10 years.

Seyyed Abdolrahim Mousavi, an Iranian military officer currently acting as the Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, issued a menacing statement against the Jewish state hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to bring up the ever-imminent threat posed on Israel by Tehran in his encounter with US President Donald Trump.

The two are slated to meet at the UN for the General Assembly's 72nd session held at the NY headquarters.

"We will destroy the Zionist entity at lightning speed, and thus shorten the 25 years it still has left," Iranian media quoted Mousavi as saying in reference to a recurring threat by Iran and its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to take down the State of Israel in the next quarter century.

"I warn the [Zionist] entity not to make any stupid move against the Islamic Republic of Iran," he threatened. "Every [such] stupid act will [make us] turn Tel Aviv and Haifa into dust."

Mousavi also said that "the world will not forget the crimes [committed] by this arrogant Zionist offical." According to Iranian news agency Tasnim, Mousavi was talking about an Israeli official who had allegedly made "irresponsible declarations" concerning Iran's presence in the conflict-addled Syria.

Hezbollah fighters stationed near the Israeli border with Lebanon told an American TV crew last week they were watching Israel and waiting for a signal to attack, newly bolstered by fighting experience gained from battles in Syria.

The armed men spoke to NBC from a position near the border, in a possible contravention of a 2006 UN Security Council resolution that was supposed to create a demilitarized buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon.

“Any Israeli movement, we will see it,” one fighter said according to the report, published Saturday.“This area is all Hezbollah members preparing only for [them] … Whether it’s Israelis or Daesh, we fear no one,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

Israeli officials have raised alarms and complained to the UN about members of the terrorist organization apparently taking up positions near the border, despite peacekeepers and the Lebanese army tasked with keeping the area clear of armed Hezbollah fighters.

France warned on Monday that sticking to the Iran nuclear deal was “essential” to prevent other countries from seeking nuclear weapons, as the US and Israel pushed for it to be changed or scrapped.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters ahead of the opening of the UN General Assembly in New York that applying pressure on North Korea with sanctions was the only path to address the crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests.

France was being “vigilant” in ensuring Iran’s compliance with the terms of the accord and that “all signs are that it’s respecting its commitments,” he said, according to Bloomberg.

He said his country was “trying to convince [US] President [Donald] Trump of the pertinence of this view.”

A vast majority of Israelis are satisfied with the lives they lead in the Jewish state, according to data revealed in the Central Bureau of Statistics annual report released Monday ahead of Rosh Hashana.

The report looked at population trends in Israel over the course of the year and includes information on education, social welfare, public attitude and employment trends. According to the report, Israel’s population is on a consistent incline. Israel’s population grew by 156,000. Similar to previous years, the population growth rate for 5777 was 1.8%

In terms of public attitude, 88% of Israeli citizens aged 20-years-and-older said they were "very satisfied" or "satisfied" with their lives. 21% or some 1.1 million people feel stressed on a constant basis. 6% of the population of 340,000 admit to feeling lonely on a regular basis and 34% say they find it difficult to cover their monthly expenses.

Today, Israel’s population is estimated at approximately 8.743 million. The Jewish population makes up approximately 6.523 million or 74.6% of the total population. The Arab population is about 1.824 million, 20.9% of the population and the rest make up about 396,000 or 4.5%. Each of these sectors experienced consistent growth since the previous report.

Adding to the population, immigration has remained consistent with 25,977 new immigrants: 57% from the former Soviet Union, 17% from France, and 11% from the United States.

As Rosh Hashana approaches, the Population and Immigration Authority issued its annual report on Sunday, revealing that over the past year, 166,450 babies were born in Israel.

The outgoing year also saw 23,770 new immigrants arrive in Israel, and 62,821 couples in Israel got married.

The most common name for baby boys born in Israel this year was Muhammad and Tamar for girls. Among Jews, Uri and Ariel were the most popular names for boys, and Tamar and Abigail were the most popular names for girls.

Interior Ministry figures show that the most frequently bestowed names for boys this past year were, in descending order: Muhammad, Yosef, Uri, Omer, Daniel, David and Ariel. For girls, Tamar was followed by Miriam, Sarah, Abigail, Yael, Adelle and Noa.

West Bank settlements ensure Israel’s security even in the era when Israel is under threat from missile and cyber attacks, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said on Sunday evening.

“From my perspective it's clear that the settlements in Judea and Samaria and those here in the area of Jericho and the Dead Sea are the State of Israel’s true defensive wall,” Liberman said.

This is true “even in the cyber age and the missile era,” Liberman said.

He spoke during a Jewish New Year toast with settler leaders in the Vered Yeriho settlement, which overlooks the Palestinian city of Jericho.

“At the end of the day, what is determinative is who is in the field. The settlements have always been the pioneers of the pioneers of [Israel’s] security,” Liberman said.

“In this way, nothing has changed since the time of the ‘tower and the stockade,'” Liberman said.

The Jerusalem Juvenile Court on Monday sentenced two of the three terrorists who carried out a stabbing attack on the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood in Jerusalem in May, 2016.

Two elderly women were wounded in the terrorist attack.

The terrorists were also sentenced to pay NIS 200,000 ($57,000) in compensation to the victims of the attack.

The third terrorist who participated in the attack will receive 25 months in prison.

The three terrorists, all residents of Jabel Mukaber, were convicted of stabbing, assisting the enemy during wartime, attempted murder, and carrying a knife.

The indictment revealed that the three had planned to carry out a terrorist stabbing attack for months prior to the attack, using Facebook to plan their attack. Even after the attack the three Arab minors planned to conduct another stabbing attack, although police got to them first.

During the month of February 2016, two of the terrorists reached the decision to launch a stabbing attack against Jewish civilians or security forces, with a goal of murdering them and becoming "martyrs."

Only six weeks have gone by since the day Niv Gil Nehemia, deputy manager of a Shufersal supermarket branch in Yavne, fought for his life against terrorist Ismail Abu Arab, who attacked and stabbed him.

Nehemia sustained 14 stab wounds to his head, chest, neck and hands, and his condition was classified as critical. He has lost over 14 pounds since the attack. His forehead bears a burn mark left by terrorist's pepper spray. His hair is still missing where the knife struck his head, and a tiny piece of the knife is still lodged deep in his brain. Doctors preferred to leave it there to avoid causing further damage by trying to remove it. His beard covers more scars.

Sitting on a large lounge chair in his home, Nehemia recounts the attack for the first time: "Half an hour before the terrorist pounced, he came up to me and asked where the bathroom was. I saw he was an Arab, but I didn't think anything of it. There are a lot of Arab customers at our branch. I pointed to the bathroom and went on about my business. When I saw him in the aisle in the toiletries section, he was already familiar to me.

"With the first stab, I realized it was a terrorist attack and that I needed to fight for my life. I tried to scream for help, but couldn't make a sound. The knife had cut my left vocal cord. I understood that this was a moment to live or die. The only thing I had in my mind was my kids and my wife. That moment, I knew I was fighting for them."

Not a single infiltration from the Sinai Peninsula into Israel was recorded over the past 12 months, the Population and Immigration Authority said on Sunday.

Officials credit this surprising statistic to the fence Israel built along its border with Egypt several years ago.

In 2016, only 18 people managed to cross into Israel from Egypt illegally while in 2015 the number of such infiltrators stood at 220.

Meanwhile, authorities said that over the past 12 months, Israel deported 2,431 people who crossed into its territory illegally, including 2,245 Eritreans and 186 of Sudanese individuals.

According to Population and Immigration Authority data, some 38,000 African migrants live in Israel illegally.

The Al-Majd website, which is affiliated with Hamas's intelligence apparatus, reported on Sunday about the arrest of an Israeli agent following an investigation into an Israeli airstrike against military positions in Gaza on August 9.

According to the report, an analysis of the target and timing of the attack motivated the intelligence apparatus to perform a thorough mapping of the scene of the operation, during which an agent who worked for Israel and who was involved in the attack was located.

During his interrogation, the website claimed, the suspect said that he began working for Israeli intelligence in 2014 and since then has provided a great deal of information about the “Palestinian resistance organizations”, their activities, their members and their homes.

He also allegedly transmitted sensitive information about the target that was attacked in August, and photographed the target before and after the attack at the request of an Israeli intelligence officer. According to him, the Israeli officer updated him about the date of the attack and asked him to view the site and collect information.

This is not the first time that Hamas has claimed to have arrested an Israeli intelligence agent. In recent years, the group been conducting a wide-ranging campaign to attempt to expose alleged Israeli intelligence agents and dissuade Palestinians from cooperating with Israel.

The timing of Hamas' announcement Sunday that it is ready to reconcile with rival Palestinian faction Fatah was not coincidental, a senior official in the Palestinian Authority's delegation to the United Nations General Assembly told Israel Hayom.

The Gaza Strip-based terrorist group Hamas issued a statement on Sunday saying that it had accepted key demands issued by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction that would clear the way for a Palestinian unity government, ending a 10-year political rift.

"Hamas is trying to pressure Abbas and make him look like he is not interested in internal Palestinian reconciliation," the official said. "The rais [chief] will not present his position on the matter and will not give any statement as long as he is in New York at the U.N. General Assembly. He will do so only when he returns," the official said.

Abbas is scheduled to address the General Assembly on Wednesday. His spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, described Abbas' planned speech as "extremely important."

According to the Fatah official, while Hamas agreed to disband its shadow government, it has stated that its security and police forces would continue to operate in Gaza even in the event of a Palestinian reconciliation – a sticking point in previous negotiations that has scuttled previous unity efforts.

The truth is that the conditions for a genuine reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, between Ramallah and Gaza, have yet to mature. Hamas believes Abbas is an illegitimate leader, who has failed to vie for re-election, and as pursuing an illegitimate policy of security collaboration with Israel. Fatah, for its part, understands that Hamas has no intention of ceding control over the Gaza Strip to Abbas. If anything, it wants to overrun the West Bank and replace Abbas with its own leader, Ismail Haniyeh.

This is why previous reconciliation efforts between Fatah and Hamas over the past decade have failed and why Abbas' immediate task is to find a way to reject Hamas' proposal without appearing as a rejectionist.

Israel's position regarding the Palestinian reconciliation attempts is conflicted. On the one hand, the disconnect between Ramallah and Gaza is convenient for Jerusalem and it supports the claim that Abbas does not represent the Palestinian people as a whole. On the other hand, how can Israel oppose a scenario where, as part of "Palestinian unity," Abbas' security forces take over Gaza and push Hamas into a corner?

As at this time this scenario seems less than realistic, there is no need to rush into a decision. Unfortunately, only the residents of Gaza, who believe the rumored reconciliation can benefit their dire situation, may soon be disappointed again.

It’s worth noting the key to all this: that at the same time as the reconciliation negotiations were ongoing, and with an eye firmly to the North where they saw the benefits brought to Hezbollah in cold hard cash, the Hamas leadership has been moving, under the radar to most except thankfully the Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency), on a significant rapprochement with Iran. Temporarily burying the hatchet with the PA gives them the space, not to say means, to carry on doing so.

Again, a bit of a recap: let’s go back to February and the election of Hamas’ new political bureau – the leadership body – when it received new leaders and new blood.

The meteoric rise of the militant Yahya Sinwar to the position of Hamas leader in Gaza, and the election of some of the members of the pro-Iranian axis, like Saleh al-Arouri, signaled the beginning of a thaw in Hamas’ relations with Iran. Sinwar is also one of the closest people to the Muhammad Deif, the head of Hamas’ military wing, whose stated interest lies in securing Iranian aid and aping Hezbollah in a perverse “grace and favor” relationship with Tehran.

How all of this plays out would simply be conjecture, but we can say that the Palestinian political and militant dynamic is most certainly in a state of evolving and potentially even more dangerous flux.

So, while the PA leadership may be collectively patting itself on the back, they should beware of hubris. Hamas are not only adept at playing the long game, unlike the PA they also appear to have a long-term strategy.

At the back of it all is Iran. The Tehran regime appears to be extending one of its many fetid tentacles and upping its ante in a dangerous, febrile Middle- East arena: the tinder box that is the Gaza Strip.

Food for thought for any EU foreign policy big-wigs who may be rushing to laud this latest move.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah is poised to visit Gaza for talks, a senior official said Monday, after the Hamas terror group agreed to steps toward resolving a decade-long split with its West Bank-based rival Fatah.

Hamas announced Sunday it had agreed to demands by PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party to dissolve what is seen as a rival administration in Gaza, while saying it was ready for elections and negotiations toward forming a unity government.

Hamdallah plans to travel to Gaza City to meet Hamas leaders and assert the PA government’s control over ministries, Nabil Shaath, a senior adviser to Abbas, told journalists in the West Bank city of Ramallah, as a first step toward implementing a larger agreement.

“We await the first steps on the ground. We want to see Mr. Hamdallah received by Hamas, the door to all the ministries open,” he said. “That really could happen in the next 24 hours.”

Security forces, as well as World News enthusiasts in general, have wondered why things are perhaps a bit too quiet on the Israeli-Palestinian front. “We’re used to seeing something about Israel and Palestine on the news,” said one CNN junkie. “But now it’s just bombs in Europe, racism in the US, and Anthony Weiner. Hell, not even Syria is on the news now. I’ve got to go to The Mideast Beast to get that sort of coverage.”

“I admit, the lack of activity between the two sides lately is eerie,” said one Israeli security analyst. “Perhaps it’s because the Jewish New Year is about to begin or Palestinians are still a bit tired after Ramadan. I honestly don’t know; but what I do know is that I’m bored as hell sitting at my desk with nothing to do. Thank god for PornHub!”

One Palestinian did note, “It is possible, and I’m just speculating here, that the lack of news is because not everything revolves around the f#cking Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Iraq’s supreme court on Monday ordered the suspension of a September 25 referendum on the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, to examine whether such a poll would be constitutional.

“The supreme court has issued the order to suspend organizing the referendum set for September 25… until it examines the complaints it has received over this plebiscite being unconstitutional,” it said in a statement.

The court made the decision after it “reviewed requests to stop the referendum,” the statement said.

Court spokesman Ayas al-Samouk told AFP: “We have received several complaints and this is why we decided to suspend the referendum.”

As the impending referendum on independence for the Kurdish region of Iraq draws closer, pro-government media outlets in Turkey – which remains bitterly opposed to Kurdish self-determination – are energetically promoting conspiracy theories centered on the alleged relations between Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani and the Israeli authorities.

The latest antisemitic salvo in the Turkish press claims that Barzani and the Israelis have agreed on the resettlement of 200,000 Jews in territory controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq following the referendum – currently scheduled for September 25. While Kurdish leaders are reported to be considering “alternatives” to the referendum given the international unease with the prospect of Kurdish independence, Barzani told a pro-independence rally on Saturday, “To this date, we still have not received the alternative that could take the place of the referendum, and therefore cast your votes on September 25, and take your decision.”

The Israel-related conspiracy theory appeared in a number of pro-government titles over the last week, including the magazine Yeni Safak – renowned for its fierce, unconditional support of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. All the articles cited the magazine Israel-Kurd, a journal published in the Kurdish city of Erbil that highlights the historically good relationship between the Kurdish and Jewish minorities in the Middle East. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, thousands of Iraqi Jews escaped persecution in Iraq by traveling through the mountainous Kurdish region accompanied by local guides affiliated with the Kurdish resistance in the country.

While new issues of Israel-Kurd do not appear to have been published since 2011, Yeni Safak described the magazine as “financed by the Mossad” after it was “opened by the Barzani family.”

Tuvia Tenenbom, that most acute and incendiary observer of what’s festering beneath the surface of polite society, has turned his attention to Germany’s “refugees”. To his surprise and no little dismay, what he has found out is not so much about these migrants but about Germany itself, and it isn’t pretty at all.

In his new book Hello Refugees, he adopts his now familiar but no less devastating tactic of trading on his blond hair, Falstaffian girth and indeterminate accent to conceal the fact that he was born and brought up in an ultra-orthodox family in Israel. He derives his unique insights from the fact that many of those to whom he addresses his faux-naïf but devastatingly direct questions assume he is an antisemite — just like them. And so they open up to him in a uniquely frank manner.

In Hello Refugees “Toby the German”, his previous persona, has become “Toby the Jordanian”. Posing as the son of Jordanian and European parentage, he uses his fluent Arabic to gain access to refugee camps in Germany where access is routinely denied to the media.

What he discovers shocks him deeply. He finds migrants effectively warehoused in wholly inadequate conditions, housed twelve to a “room” in what are no more than, and indeed described as, “containers”. Existing on disgusting food, jobless and with no apparent means of emerging from these holding pens, these migrants have in effect been abandoned by the German state.

Everywhere he goes, people tell him the same thing: that Chancellor Angela Merkel famously invited in more than one million migrants in order to erase the moral stain of Germany’s Nazi past. He concludes that this was not an act of conscience. How could it have been when these people have been left so abandoned? It was instead a move to show the world — and themselves — that this former Nazi state has become the world’s conscience. In other words, it was a cynical move that evacuates the word conscience of all meaning.

On August 11, 2017 the EU Heads of Missions (HoMs) in Jerusalem and Ramallah issued a statement condemning the “imminent threat of eviction” of Palestinian residents of an apartment in east Jerusalem. The occupants had lived in the apartment since the 1970s but had not paid rent to the Jewish owners who were driven out in the 1948 conflict.

Palestinian residents often refuse to pay rent on Jewish-owned homes for political purposes, and sometimes are encouraged to so by activists with little concern for the consequences to those who then go through lengthy legal proceeding and can be evicted.

The eviction order given to the Palestinian residents of the house is based on Israeli law and followed lengthy court sessions on the issue. The final verdict was delivered by the Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) in 2013. The HCJ also ruled that the family be given 18 months to leave prior to the eviction. Furthermore, the Jerusalem Municipality did not attempt to enforce the eviction for two and half further years. The eviction finally took place on September 5, 2017.

It appears that the condemnation by the EU HoMs is based at least in part on NGO allegations and publications. As shown in NGO Monitor reports, the EU has consistently relied on NGO reporting in accusations directed against Israel, and this appears to be another instance. European diplomats also made highly publicized visits to the site in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem.

The EU statement details a number of purported plans by Israeli authorities to evict Palestinians in “Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, the Old City and Beit Safafa.” This appears to be based on Terrestrial Jerusalem and Peace Now, both of which have recently released statements on these plans. Substantial funding for these political advocacy NGOs is provided by the EU and a number of individual governments.

Finally we come to Europe.

The same Europe that perennially “advises” Israel on how to achieve peace and security, while frequently condemning Israel for not adopting policies similar to Europe’s own disastrous strategies.
Deputy Head of Mission from the UK to Israel Tony Kay exemplified the standard European talking points:

We are doing quite a lot on… safeguarding people from becoming terrorists, or supporting terrorism… [using] a combination of soft power with hard power. We are…engaging communities [and producing] lots of successes that the UK has made on countering terrorism recently.

There is a dark irony in Kay’s statement, which came just three days before a devastating terror attack hit London’s Parsons Green, injuring 29 victims this past Friday. While Kay undoubtedly meant well, his statement served as just one more example of deadly European self-assurance, at a time when Europe desperately needs a measure of humility.

In fact, Europe’s recent track record has been bloody:
Just this past week Europe saw three separate attacks in London and Paris, in addition to recent attacks in Nice, Brussels, Stockholm, Berlin, Manchester, Barcelona and others. In just two years (2015-16) Islamic terror killed 288 Europeans and injured 739. Contrast with Israel, where 50 were killed during the same period.

We are delighted to announce that the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan have become Honorary Patrons of Campaign Against Antisemitism.

The Rt Rev. and Rt Hon. Dr The Lord Carey of Clifton PC RVC GBE FRSA served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002. Both during his tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury and since, Lord Carey has spoken out firmly against antisemitism and worked tirelessly to strengthen bonds between Christians and Jews. Lord Carey led efforts to deepen the Church of England’s involvement in Holocaust commemoration, and has devoted many addresses to discussion of the lessons of the Holocaust. He is Honorary President of the International Council of Christians and Jews and in 2016 he delivered the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s important Dorothy Gardner Adler State of Antisemitism Lecture.

Colonel Richard Kemp CBE served in the British Army from 1977 to 2006. He was commander of British forces in Afghanistan and completed fourteen operational tours of duty around the world, including in Iraq, the Balkans and Northern Ireland. His last years of service were spent in the Cabinet Office where he headed the international terrorism intelligence team and was chairman of the COBRA Intelligence Group. Having retired from the army, Colonel Kemp is now a writer whose expertise is frequently sought by national and international news media. He also consults companies on leadership, security, intelligence, counter-terrorism and defence and is a public speaker in each of these areas. Having taken a professional interest in extremism, Colonel Kemp recognised the links between extremism and antisemitism, and the threat that antisemitism therefore poses to society. He has been giving his time to campaigns to raise awareness about antisemitism since his retirement and is well known as a staunch friend of the Jewish people.

Last week, a bit of controversy erupted over an anti-Semitic cartoon posted by Benjamin Netanyahu’s adult son on Twitter; apparently, he had misread it as mocking George Soros’s person rather than using the financier as a stand-in for an international Jewish conspiracy. Jewish reactions to the incident, as Shmuel Rosner writes, bring into sharp contrast the divergent perceptions of anti-Semitism in Israel and the United States:
Because of Israel’s circumstances and assumptions, Israeli Jews haven’t developed the same sensitivity and ear for anti-Semitism that Jews elsewhere have. . . . The younger Netanyahu hasn’t yet explained himself, but I have no doubt that he’s not an anti-Semite. . . .

Since the only anti-Semitism Israelis understand is one of violence, blood, and brutal intimidation, it is hard for many of them to appreciate [many American Jews’] panic over, [for instance], a few hundred marchers [in Charlottesville] and the ineloquent condemnation of [them by] the president. Since the only remedy for anti-Semitism they know is a Jewish state (and its Jewish army), it is hard for many of them to appreciate fears about anti-Semitism that are not followed by immigration to Israel.

But most of all, what should Israel do? Just consider some of the options. Assist American Jews in some material way? They seem to be doing fine. In fact, they seem to feel confident enough to fight their own fight. Any attempt by Israel to intervene in this crisis would suggest that the Jews of America are not as integrated as they claim to be.

In May 2013, American forces in Baghdad discovered an archive of thousands of photos, documents and books pertaining to Iraqi Jewry in a basement of the Iraqi security services' building. The archive comprised dozens of boxes, most of which had become mildewed after getting wet in the waterlogged basement. The collection included many rare books and papers, including 500-year-old volumes of Torah commentary. To save the archive, the U.S. military secured the permission of the Iraqi government to send the boxes to the National Archives in Washington, where, bit by bit, workers managed to restore most of the documents.

Before removing the documents, the American government agreed to the Iraqis' stipulation that the documents be returned once they were restored.

As part of the restoration process, the National Archives digitized the collection. Congressional representatives and the American administration faced heavy pressure, mainly from Jewish groups, not to return the archive to Iraq, but last week, a final decision was taken to hand the collection back to Iraq about a year from now.

This decision is both absurd and pathetic, like giving a thief back what he stole. The question being asked in Jewish circles is whether the U.S. is trying to make up for invading Iraq and its failure to find chemical weapons there. Why should the U.S. return the collection to a place that is no longer home to Jews? Returning the archive to the Iraqis is like returning the belongings of European Jews to the Nazis; it's stolen Jewish property.

FRIDAY, when London was hit by the latest terrorist outrage, was also Battle of Britain Day.

This is a very different kind of war.

But if our political leaders showed just a fraction of the courage of the RAF in 1940, they could end this onslaught.

Here is what they must do:
● DENY re-entry to the UK by anyone who has fought with the Islamic State or any jihadist group. They represent the greatest danger.
● STOP unregulated movement from EU countries to the UK, even before Brexit. Under EU rules we cannot even prevent those known to be involved or previously convicted of terrorism from entering.
● VET all those entering the UK from countries where violence is rife, including refugees from countries like Syria. Our humanitarian obligations must not take priority over protecting our own people.
● DEPORT all non-British citizens involved in extremism or radicalisation. Today, we prioritise their human rights above those of their victims. This must stop.
● THROW OUT and ban from their mosques all preachers who contaminate young minds with their murderous messages of hate.

For many years, terrorists aspired to major operations—spectacular strikes that required know-how, discipline, and coordination. [Security officials] were able to say with confidence that if [they] focused on training—not just ideological fervor but whether a would-be militant had been to a jihadist camp—[they] would have a reasonably good handle on who posed a threat. This is why, for example, [the U.S.] amended immigration law after the 9/11 attacks to preclude from entry into the country any alien suspected of receiving jihadist training. . . . But . . . it doesn’t require any training to . . . plow a car into a crowd of people.

Terrorist organizations like Islamic State have encouraged [their supporters] to attack in-place—i.e., where they live in the West—rather than come to [fight in] Syria. We are thus seeing more of these ad-hoc strikes that require little or no expertise to pull off. In the 1990s, [American law-enforcement officials] used to be ironically relieved that the jihadists always wanted to go for the big bang; 9/11-type attacks are horrific, but they are extremely tough to pull off, and there are usually opportunities (as there were with 9/11) to disrupt them. That’s why they so rarely succeed. We worried that someday it would dawn on these monsters that there is a great deal of low-hanging fruit out there (virtually indefensible targets, like subways and crowded streets) that would be easy to attack, almost no preparation or coordination required.

Now, they’re going for the low-hanging fruit. In terms of what the wonks like to call the “threat mosaic,” we are now in straits more dangerous than ever. We have highly trained, competent jihadists who are capable of pulling off sophisticated strikes that could kill hundreds or thousands at once; and we have motivated would-be jihadists who have been encouraged to do the kind of crude attacks that are within their limited capabilities. The crude attacks, we are learning, are just as effective at stoking an atmosphere of intimidation as long as they happen with some regularity.

ARMED SAS troops are being deployed on the London Underground with orders to shoot to kill terrorists, according to reports.

The Daily Star says the Special Forces task force has been trained to target extremists on planes, buses and trains.

It is understood troops will travel in pairs, disguised as couples, to monitor suspicious passengers.

The undercover Special Forces teams are said to have spent months in training with the move planned prior to Friday’s attack.

A source told The Daily Star: “The unit is composed of some of both male and female personnel from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment who are trained killers and can pose as couples while travelling on public transport.”

Two men have been arrested in connection with the Parsons Green bucket bomb that injured 30.

An 18-year-old - the youngest to be arrested over a terror attack in the UK - is being quizzed by cops after he was seized in Dover on Saturday.

A second man was arrested late last night police confirmed today.

EVIL Islamic State terrorists are using charities in Ireland to raise cash for their fighters in Syria and Iraq, a shocking new report has revealed.

Compiled by Financial Action Task Force investigators and seen by the Irish Sun on Sunday, it also found there are “some areas of concern” that non-profit organisations here are transferring funds to war zones.

The ‘Anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing measures Ireland Mutual Evaluation Report 2017’ discovered sympathisers here use “legitimate and illegitimate” sources to raise funds for terror groups.

Based in Paris, the FATF’s role is to highlight the risks posed by money laundering scams run by terrorist and organised crime gangs in Europe’s 27 member states.

The report — also delivered to the Justice Department and the Gardai’s Financial Intelligence Unit — was produced after it emerged London Bridge attacker Rachid Redouane had lived here.

It reads: “Irish authorities acknowledge that such terrorist financing risks do exist and that only small amounts are needed to support terrorist financing.

“There are only a small number of returned foreign fighters and while there is little evidence to show any coordinated approach to fundraising in support of terrorism, there are some areas of concern in relation to the collection of charitable funds within the community.

“There are also concerns over the use and transfer of funds by charities and NPOs to conflict zones, which the authorities will continue to monitor.

Islamic Rules in Danish Schools
The Nord-Vest Private School in Copenhagen, came under investigation by Danish authorities during an unannounced visit after teaching materials were found extolling and encouraging young people to commit jihad. Luqman Pedersen, a Danish convert to Islam, admitted to the authorities that the school wishes to create a parallel Muslim society.

Two former teachers at the Nord-Vest school described how the children at the school spoke of Danes in terms of "them and us". In a school poetry contest, several of the children composed poems that detailed their wish to beat up and break the legs and hands of the "Danish pigs".

"I teach religion, but I was not allowed to teach Christianity. Instead, a visiting imam from Iraq taught Christianity... I could imagine that some of the boys I taught could have been radicalized," a teacher said. The teachers tried to alert both politicians and authorities to some of the problems they had witnessed, but no one would listen.

World renowned Israeli singer Noam Vazana was greeted with protests, riots, and charges that she is a 'child-killer' when she arrived in Morocco to participate in a jazz festival in the city of Tangier last week, Channel 2 reported.

Vazana, who spends part of the year in Israel and part of the year in the Netherlands, has released a number of successful albums in Italy, Morocco, the Netherlands, and Israel.

"I had already performed in Morocco several times and won the audience's approval. I enjoyed it very much," Vazana said. "But this time it was a very unpleasant experience."

News of Vazana's arrival in Tangier angered BDS activists, who demonstrated throughout the city, including in front of her hotel. The demonstrators chanted anti-Israel slogans, set fire to an Israel flag, and screamed that her service in the Israeli Air Force meant that she was involved in the murder of Arab children.

"I was in shock. I had already been in Morocco before, and I did not expect such a stormy reception," Vazana said. "It's true that I served in the air force, in the band. But I never killed anyone. It was really unpleasant. I was scared that they would try to hurt me."

Christians’ condemnation of Israel – and not jihad – have turned themselves into dhimmis, non-Muslims who have already submitted to Muslim rule, a Christian media analyst said.

Writing for the Gatestone Institue in an essay titled "Jihadism: The fear that dare not speak its name," Dexter Van Zile, the Christian media analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), said that although Christian groups occasionally blame the perpetrators of violence and terrorism, such as the Assad regime, Islamic State and Boko Haram in West Africa, it is never nearly close to the way they blame Israel.

“Yes, they issue condemnations, but their statements are lamentations that really do not approach in ferocity the ugly denunciations these institutions target at Israel,” he said.

Van Zile said the root of the issue is knowing that Israel and the Jewish people do not react the same way that the extreme, jihadi terrorists act.

“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,” he said.

Israel has been allowing the entry of boycott supporters and detractors of the state, and only during the summer did the government begin preventing these activists from entering the country. Never did Israel do what other Middle East countries – and much more so terrorist groups – did to their critics.

I’ve already shown why I think Roger Waters is an antisemite. Now time to expose some of his specific lies and omissions, in video.
Here is my first such video, addressing his dishonesty about the 1947 Partition Plan.

An image of the convicted murderer and terrorist Rasmea Odeh features at the entrance of Reem's Bakery in Oakland. A small group of protesters refuse to stand silently through this desecration of her victims' memories.

And now here comes author Mark Bray – a lecturer at Dartmouth College and an Occupy Wall Street organizer – attempting to give philosophical justification to a movement so certain of its righteousness that it’s not going to let a little thing like free speech get in the way.

Bray spends most of his time tracing the history of the movement, but finally gets to the heart of the matter, and the argument isn’t hard to follow. In essence: tolerance and reason don’t work, and you don’t wait for a small problem to get bigger, so let’s start beating heads.

There are obvious objections to this. And though Bray struggles mightily to overcome them, he’s simply not up to it. Of course, no one is.

But as a result of this close-minded thinking, we’ve got a violent movement convinced it has the right to be judge, jury and executioner because it has identified a deserving enemy.

Now even if this worked in theory, we already know it doesn’t work in practice. Because the guardians of goodness who fill Antifa’s ranks don’t just shout down neo-Nazis and other racists who deserve total condemnation (but not the loss of their constitutional rights). They also disrupt and commit violence at mainstream Republicans rallies, and attack anyone they’ve deemed unacceptable.

In other words, Antifa gets to decide who the fascists are, and don’t look now, but it’s you.

Mind you, Bray does attempt to explain what fascism looks like. Its hallmarks include a preoccupation with victimhood, a cult of purity, abandonment of liberty and redemptive violence.

I know, you’re ahead of me – that sounds like the Antifa movement. But they can’t be fascist because ... Bray says they can’t. Fascists can only be the people who don’t share the left’s views on race, gender and immigration (their views at present, that is – not necessarily what they believed a generation or two ago).

Now don’t get me wrong. Ideas have consequences. Indeed, the biggest irony in this unintentionally ironic book is that while Bray wants to save the world, the revolutionary socialism he calls for would actually impoverish and enslave everyone. And I don’t consider that conjecture – it’s the verdict of history.

A series of Palestinian ‘unity governments’ – or proposals for them – have repeatedly come to a swift end in the past but the BBC’s report includes just one opaque sentence on a factor of prime importance to audience understanding of the significance of this latest announcement from Hamas.

“It is not yet clear whether Hamas is ready to place its security forces under Mr Abbas’s control – a major sticking point in the past, Associated Press reports.”

Exactly three years ago a BBC report on the ‘unity government’ of the time included a very similar statement:

“However, a Hamas official told the Associated Press that there were still disagreements over who should be responsible for paying civil servants in Gaza, and whether the PA’s own security forces would be allowed a significant presence in the territory. He described the deal as “partial”.”

Now as then, the BBC makes no effort to clarify to its audiences that any ‘unity government’ which refrained from disarming Hamas’ terrorist militia in the Gaza Strip would fail to meet the Palestinian Authority’s commitments under existing agreements with Israel.

Neither does it inform readers that if Hamas and other terrorist groups are not disarmed by a PA ‘unity government’ and the territory not brought under the sole control of PA security forces, then the Gaza Strip – along with the rest of the PA-controlled areas – will find itself in a ‘Lebanon-style’ situation whereby the actions of a foreign-sponsored terrorist organisation can continue to spark conflict whenever that suits its own (or its sponsor’s) agenda.

From 08:38 in the video below the topic of conversation turned to antisemitism with Jacobson concluding:
“…it would be madness to suppose it’s [antisemitism] not there and it is here in this country in a particular guise.”

Host Stephen Sackur jumped in:
Sackur: “But maybe sometimes…well…maybe sometimes you see it in places where actually it is something else. And I’m thinking here about the conflation, some would say, the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment or anti-Zionist sentiment.”
Jacobson: “I don’t conflate it.”
Sackur: “Some do.”
Jacobson: “Well there may be some who do. I mean a lot of people are accused of conflating it when they don’t. They are two separate things but that doesn’t mean that they are bound to be separate things. It is quite true that an anti-Zionist need not be an antisemite but that doesn’t mean that an anti-Zionist is never going to be an antisemite.”
Sackur: “But they are two distinct and different things. One is political and ideological. One is essentially about the hate of a people and a religion.”

Reports around the time of the attack which are still available on the BBC News website describe it as follows:

“Alexander Levlovitz died in a car accident apparently caused by a rock-throwing attack in Jerusalem. […]

Mr Levlovitz died and two passengers were reportedly injured after their car was pelted with stones on Monday. Police are investigating the incident.” (BBC News website, September 16th, 2015)

“An Israeli motorist died earlier in the week in an accident apparently caused by a rock-throwing attack in Jerusalem.” (BBC News website, September 19th, 2015)

Although the circumstances of the attack have since been proven in court, the BBC has once again not shown any interest in providing its audiences with follow-up reporting which would clarify those ambiguous statements and bring its “historical record” up to date.

Dozens of flyers and stickers promoting neo-Nazi propaganda were found at the University of Houston (UH) this week, the latest incident associated with an increase in white supremacist activity on campuses nationwide.

The flyers, found on bulletin boards, walls, trash bins, and lamp posts at the university’s main campus on Tuesday, included phrases such as, “Beware the International Jew” and “Imagine a Muslim-Free America,” according to a statement shared online by UH’s chapter of the Young Communist League (YCL).

The phrases are associated with the extremist group Vanguard America, which “has engaged in unprecedented outreach efforts to attract students on American college campuses,” according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). During the 2016-17 school year, the civil rights group said it “counted at least 32 incidents where VA fliers were posted on campus in Arkansas, California, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington.”

Michael Leone, chair of the YCL at UH, said he took down about 30 of the posters before reporting the incident to campus security. In a statement posted to social media on Thursday, his group called on UH chancellor Renu Khator to “voice condemnation of fascism, white nationalism, and any attempts by adherents of these ideologies to intimidate and threaten students at the University of Houston.”

UH spokesperson Mike Rosen told The Algemeiner that the content of the flyers “is reprehensible, but we respect the constitutional right to freedom of expression.”

Witnesses have been urged to come forward after a “shocking unprovoked” attack on a young boy in Stamford Hill.

An eight-year-old has been left “traumatised” and required treatment in hospital after the incident, which has been reported to the police.

The Met Police told Jewish News they were called just after 7.30pm on Monday after an eight-year-old boy was assaulted in Stamford Hill..

They say the eight-year-old boy was approached from behind and punched in the chest, before being taken by his parents to hospital, where he was treated for minor injuries. No arrests, have been made, but they urge witnesses to contact them.

In a series of posts on Twitter, Orthodox neighbourhood watch group Shomrim reported that the unnamed boy “ran home & up all the stairs before collapsing. He was crying and couldn’t talk for the next 4.5 hours” following the attack.

Shomrim said that after being treated by volunteer ambulance service Hatzolah, the boy was “taken to hospital due to swelling and marks near his chest, neck, shoulder and face”
.

Relatives of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who rescued Jews in Hungary during World War II, filed a lawsuit against the Russian authorities in order to allow them access to the archives of the former Russian secret service KGB, in order to reveal what happened to Wallenberg.

Wallenberg was arrested immediately after the war by the Soviet authorities in Budapest, transferred to a prison in Russia, and has since disappeared. According to Soviet authorities, Wallenberg died of a heart attack in his cell in the Lubyanka prison in 1947, but various testimonies of people who were close to Wallenberg in prison claimed he was executed by prison guards there. In 1991, a Russian government researcher published a special report according to which Wallenberg was executed in 1947, but no official confirmation has been received.

For several decades, Wallenberg's family demanded KGB archives be opened to reveal the Swedish diplomat's fate who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, but Soviet and later Russian authorities refused their request.

Daria Suckich, a lawyer representing the Wallenberg family, told Swedish radio that "it is still not clear how the trial will take place in Moscow and how the court will deal with the case." The judges can reject the claim, but if they do accept the Wallenberg family's request, the case can help us uncover the truth," he said.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and his wife Nechama on Monday held a pre-Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) reception at the President's Residence in Jerusalem.

Attending the event were various foreign ambassadors and members of the diplomatic corps serving in Israel.

“On this special occasion, it is important for all of us to remember that a true universal order cannot survive without strong nation states,” Rivlin said. “History has shown us time and time again, that there is no better way for a nation to develop, to defend itself, or to cooperate with other nations than as a sovereign nation state.”

“As I told United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres a few weeks ago, international cooperation and national patriotism do not contradict one another. No one understands this better than us Israelis. The State of Israel – where the Jewish nation fulfills its right to self-determination – was established with the strength, of wide international recognition at the UN.

“As we approach 70 years of independence, Israel remains strongly committed to international cooperation. More than that, while being a young state and a small country, Israel has already proven itself to be an important exporter; in agriculture, education, security, and innovation. When we learn from one another, when we work together, we can build a better future for our children and our grandchildren.”

Rivlin also said Israel desires to strengthen its diplomatic and trade ties with countries around the world.

You know Oktoberfest. It’s the annual festival—starting Sept. 16 this year—in which 6 million people descend on the country synonymous with beer, dress up in lederhosen, and slur songs as they quaff from steins. And of course, it’s deeply Jewish in its heritage. OK, the last part is less widely known. But it’s true. The holiday associated with the look, feel, and taste of echt-German culture depended for centuries on the hard work of a group of German Jews, who were instrumental in building Germany’s beer empire before WWII.

But this history has been getting a wider audience lately.

“We were always coming across little glimpses of Jews and beer in our research,” said Bernhard Purin, director of Munich’s Jewish Museum. While the rest of the country celebrated the 500th anniversary of Germany’s beer-purity law in 2016, Purin said, “We thought it was a good occasion to showcase the Jewish history of beer in Germany.” Culling from national and private archives and collections, Purin curated a first of its kind, nine-month exhibition from April 2016 through January 2017. Beer Is the Wine of This Land: Jewish Brewery Tales told the Jewish history of German beer through artifacts and stories of the Jewish families who helped lead the beer industry until the Nazis came to power.

While Jews play little to no role in Germany’s beer industry today, that was far from the case prior to the Holocaust. For centuries, Jews had been forbidden to brew beer in Germany. That changed in 1868 with the introduction of freedom-of-trade and laws on the equal status of Jews. Once they were no longer excluded from the industry, they not only joined it but found ways to modernize it. “Jews in Germany were always very successful in times of modernization, and so they came into the brewing business when there was a need for modernization,” said Purin.

China has signed a $300 million deal to partner with Israeli high-tech companies working to create laboratory-grown meat as the Asian giant looks to embrace technologies that will help it cut down on harmful emissions and pollution.

Israeli companies SuperMeat, Future Meat Technologies, and Meat the Future are three of only eight companies in the world growing meat from animal cells in laboratories, Quartz magazine reported.

The move potentially opens up the massive Asian economy for the Israeli companies. The Chinese market is potentially huge: China imported meat worth more than $10 billion in 2016, according to the International Trade Centre.

As the country modernized and the standard of living rose for the average Chinese, meat consumption has rocketed.

Meet RAMBOW, Israel’s Meteor Aerospace's latest unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), unveiled Monday at the AUS&R Unmanned Systems 2017 Air Show held by iHLS.

Designed with a low silhouette for a range of defense and homeland security missions, RAMBOW can participate in a variety of missions such as ground warfare, intelligence gathering and logistical supply, as well as strategic facilities and border defense, with no risk to personnel.

According to a statement released by the company, “The RAMBOW is powered by a unique electrical drive system, integrating innovative power and autonomous driving technologies.”

The UGV has a rear bay which can carry up to 700kg and a forward mount which can carry a remote controlled weapon station (RWS) with a heavy machine gun, or other mission devices. It can carry a total payload weight of one ton and provides the operator with live video of its surroundings, using on-board cameras and a long range electro-optical payload mounted on a telescopic mast, which can be raised to 3.5 meters high.

“RAMBOW and its mounted systems are connected to and controlled by a remote control station via a wide band data link,” the statement continued.

Jerome Henri Cohen was born in Paris and he was also born a Jew. But despite his heritage, he was living a secular life, first as a journalist and then as a successful lawyer in the French capital.

Cohen did not feel any discrimination because of his heritage — until he decided to embrace Judaism. Things changed when he asked for time off from work to celebrate the Sabbath and other aspects of practicing his faith proved challenging.

That changed when the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) helped Cohen move to Israel in July where, under Israeli right of return law, he was granted citizenship and is getting help for his first six months in his new homeland, including with housing and employment.

“That’s my dream,” Cohen told Breitbart News of his repatriation to Israel. “That’s what my ancestors wanted.”

In fact, like the organization that helped him come to Israel, Cohen believes his return is fulfilling biblical prophecy that says all Jews will return to the land God promised them.

“We are making history,” Cohen said. “I changed the destiny of my family.”

“It’s huge,” Cohen said, adding that he believes the mission of IFCJ — which embraces the Zionist belief of Jews returning to their ancestral home, with the help of Christians around the world — is healing the rift between the two faiths that has existed since the birth of Jesus and the founding of the Christian church.

“It’s really wonderful to feel that,” Cohen said. “We are doing something that is important for us and for humanity.”

Boston University paid tribute to the late Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel on Sunday.

Students and scholars gathered to celebrate writings and teaching by Wiesel, who was a professor at the school for decades. He died last year at age 87.

The campus event included panel discussions on Wiesel’s writings and humanitarian work, along with guest speeches and tributes.

Among those speaking were Wiesel’s son, Elisha, and Cornell William Brooks, a former president of the NAACP, who studied with Wiesel at Boston University.

Wiesel was born in Romania in 1928 and survived imprisonment at the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. He devoted his life to keeping memories of the Nazi genocide of World War II from fading away.

He moved to New York in 1956, and gained fame with the publication of his landmark Holocaust book “Night,” which drew on his experiences and became a testament to Nazi crimes.

He became an American citizen, published dozens of books and later hobnobbed with presidents, who welcomed him to the White House and tasked him with planning an American Holocaust memorial museum. He received the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He taught at Boston University from 1976 to 2013.

What was it like in a Nazi concentration camp? How did you survive? How has it affected your life since?

Technology is allowing people to ask these questions and many more in virtual interviews with actual Holocaust survivors, preparing for a day when the estimated 100,000 Jews remaining from camps, ghettos or hiding under Nazi occupation are no longer alive to give the accounts themselves.

An exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City called “New Dimensions in Testimony” uses hours of recorded high-definition video and language-recognition technology to create just that kind of “interview” with Eva Schloss, Anne Frank’s stepsister, and fellow survivor Pinchas Gutter.
New York Councilman Rory Lancman listens to a virtual response to his question from Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter, featured in a testimonial interactive installation called ‘New Dimensions in Testimony,’ at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in New York, September 15, 2017. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

“What we’ve found is that it personalizes that history,” says concept designer Heather Smith. “You connect with that history in a different way than you would just seeing a movie or reading a textbook or hearing a lecture.”

The project is a collaboration between the Steven Spielberg-founded Shoah Foundation, which has recorded nearly 52,000 interviews with Holocaust survivors, and the Institute for Creative Technologies, both at the University of Southern California. First conceived in 2009, such exhibits have been put on in different forms at other museums, using technology to pull up relevant responses to questions about life before, during and after Adolf Hitler’s murderous Third Reich.

Like Anne Frank, Schloss and her family went into hiding in Amsterdam, but were betrayed and sent to Auschwitz. She was eventually liberated by the Russian Army in 1945. The 88-year-old Schloss, whose mother married Frank’s father, Otto Frank, in 1953, lives in London and has told her story in talks to schoolchildren and in books, including “Eva’s Story: A Survivor’s Tale by the Stepsister of Anne Frank.”

With violence breaking out between protesters and police in riot gear on the streets of a Missouri city, the Central Reform Congregation of St. Louis opened its doors on the Jewish Sabbath to provide sanctuary to those caught up in the confrontation.
As penned-in protesters piled in, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police reportedly surrounded the synagogue and prepared to fire tear gas at those who had taken refuge within. The night's goings-on being widely shared live on social media, a Twitter hashtag calling for the police to breach the Jewish house of worship began to trend: #GasTheSynagogue.

[T]he Torah reading that we hear on the first day of Rosh Hashana provides us with some important lessons -- lessons that ought to resonate with us as we continue to advocate for diplomacy and the pursuit of peace.

In the reading from the Book of Bereshit, we learn of a water dispute between the patriarch Abraham and Abimelech, a local chieftain based in the land of the Philistines. Abraham has dug a well to provide for the needs of his sheep and cattle, but Abimelech’s men have been stealing the water. Abimelech comes to confront Abraham, bringing along with him the head of his military forces. The text describes their negotiations in some detail. Faced with a difficult and hostile opponent and a situation that could easily erupt into violence, Abraham instead chooses a path instead designed to safeguard his community and avoid war.

Abraham offers Abimelech compensation in the form of animals from his flock, in return for an admission that the well belongs to him. Abimelech agrees. The two leaders conclude a treaty and loss of life is avoided.

What lessons does this story have for us? First, that wise leaders resort to diplomacy to resolve their disputes, and see the use of force only as a last resort. According to the text, Abraham is clearly in the right, but also understands that what is most important is securing the long term interests and safety of his family and community. He negotiates a prudent compromise to do so -- and avoids an unnecessary war in which both sides would likely have suffered.

... The biblical text teaches us the crucial lesson that simply winning the dispute is not the highest goal. For Abraham, achieving a durable peace and protecting his tribe is far more important than proving that he is right, or suppressing the arguments and goals of his opponent.

At that time Abimelech and Phicol, chief of his troops, said to Abraham, “God is with you in everything that you do. Therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my kith and kin, but will deal with me and with the land in which you have sojourned as loyally as I have dealt with you.”

And Abraham said, “I swear it.”

Then Abraham reproached Abimelech for the well of water which the servants of Abimelech had seized.

But Abimelech said, “I do not know who did this; you did not tell me, nor have I heard of it until today.”

Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a pact.

Abraham then set seven ewes of the flock by themselves, and Abimelech said to Abraham, “What mean these seven ewes which you have set apart?”

He replied, “You are to accept these seven ewes from me as proof that I dug this well.”

Hence that place was called Beer-sheba, for there the two of them swore an oath. When they had concluded the pact at Beer-sheba, Abimelech and Phicol, chief of his troops, departed and returned to the land of the Philistines.

[Abraham] planted a tamarisk at Beer-sheba, and invoked there the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God.

• Carter favored the Arabs, and even today shows a clear bias against Israel.
• George W. Bush tried to be more even-handed, and during his 8-year term never invited Arafat to the White House -- unlike his predecessor, Bill Clinton.
• Obama showed a clear bias towards the Arabs. His first trip was to address the Arab world from Cairo.

Praise be unto the only God. In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. O ye Moslems. O ye beloved sons of the Maghreb. May the blessing of God be upon you.

This is a great day for you and us, for all the sons of Adam who love freedom. Our numbers are as the leaves on the forest tress and as the grains of sand in the sea.

Behold. We the American Holy Warriors have arrived. We have come here to fight the great Jihad of Freedom.

We have come to set you free. We have sailed across the great sea in many ships, on many beaches we are landing, and our fighters swarm across the sands and into the city streets, and into the wide country sides, and along the highways.

Light fires on the hilltops; shout from your housetops, and from the high places, and say the sound of the drum be heard in the land, and the ululation of the women, and the voices even of small children.

Assemble along the highways to welcome your brothers.

We have come to set you free.

Speak with our fighting men and you will find them pleasing to the eye and gladdening to the heart. We are not as some other Christians whom ye have known, and who trample you under foot. Our soldiers consider you as their brothers, for we have been reared in the way of free men. Our soldiers have been told about your country and about their Moslem brothers and they will treat you with respect and with a friendly spirit in the eyes of God.

Look in their eyes and smiling faces, for they are Holy Warriors happy in their holy work. Greet us therefore as brothers as we will greet you, and help us.

If we are thirsty, show us the way to water. If we lose our way, lead us back to our camping places. Show us the paths over the mountains if need be, and if you see our enemies, the Germans or Italians, making trouble for us, kill them with knives or with stones or with any other weapon that you may have set your hands upon.

Help us as we have come to help you, and rich will be the reward unto us all who love justice and righteousness and freedom.

Pray for our success in battle, and help us, and God will help us both.

Lo, the day of freedom hath come.

May God grant his blessing upon you and upon us.

--Roosevelt [emphasis added]

• The text uses the phrase "Holy Warriors," likely translated as Mujahideen, a term for those engaged in Jihad.
• The term Jihad implies more than a war. It was a religious obligation, so calling it a Jihad of Freedom might have sounded a bit strange to the Arab ear. Apparently, unlike today, there was no doubt as to the meaning of the word.
• Referring to the enemy as "other Christians" seems odd and unnecessary. Later, FDR identifies them as "Germans or Italians." But why identify them by religion? What is to be gained by establishing them as kuffar when the Allied forces themselves were Christian?
• The phrase "kill them with knives or with stones or with any other weapon that you may have set your hands upon" is one that could easily have been written by Hamas, or ISIS, today. That was a simpler time, when it was acknowledged that a stone was a weapon. Basically, the US itself was encouraging terrorism -- even lone wolf terrorism -- against its enemies.

O Arabs, do you see that the time of the Dajjal has come? Do you recognize him, the fat, curly-haired Jew who deceives and rules the whole world and who steals the land of the Arabs?… O Arabs, do you know the servant of God? He [Hitler] has already appeared in the world and already turned his lance against the Dajjal and his allies…. He will kill the Dajjal, as it is written, destroy his places and cast his allies into hell.

...He reportedly described Islam as a more muscular belief system than Christianity and thus better suited for the Germany he wished to build.

According to Albert Speer, Hitler once offered a remarkable counterfactual history of Europe. He speculated about what might have been if the Muslim forces that invaded France during the eighth century had prevailed against their Frankish enemies at the Battle of Tours. “Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate” of Northern Europe. Therefore, “ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.

One hateful and dangerous Palestinian libel is that Israelis murder Palestinians in cold blood, and deliberately target Palestinian children.

This week, PA TV chose to rebroadcast a version of this lie that was first heard on PA TV as part of a religious lesson. PA TV's Islamic educator taught that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would celebrate his birthday by asking Israelis to murder 10 Palestinian children, before "the end of the day." Imad Hamato, the preacher who taught in his weekly PA TV lesson on religion that the dead children would bring "joy" to Sharon, is not an insignificant figure: Hamato was appointed last year by Mahmoud Abbas to be dean of the Al-Azhar institutes, a system of schools that prepare students for studies at the Al-Azhar University in Gaza.

Imad Hamato: "Read the memoirs of [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon who died. When he wanted to celebrate his birthday, he used to say: 'On my birthday I want 10 candles to be blown out, 10 Palestinian children. I want to hear that at the end of the day, so that I can feel joy.'"
[Official PA TV, Sept. 15, 2017, Aug. 7, 2015]

Palestinian children are brought up to hate Israelis who they are told are seeking to murder them. During the Palestinian terror wave in 2015-2016 when young Palestinians attacked Israelis with knives, guns, and in car rammings, the host on PA TV's children's program The Best Home, claimed Israelis are "barbarians" and murderers, warning Palestinian children under 18 and 15 not to go out alone because Israelis were looking for children to kill:

"The occupation [Israel] targets children everywhere. In their schools, near their homes... We must be very careful now. We are confronting the occupiers who act in a very barbaric terrorist way. They are trying to kill people everywhere. These are barbarians, my young friends. They try to kill people for no reason, who are just walking on their land. They make various accusations against them. This is called barbarity, my friends. Be very careful all the time. All children under 18, and children under 15, when you go out, your mom or dad, should accompany you, I mean that an adult should accompany you." [Official PA TV, Nov. 13, 2015]

If you can forfeit citizenship for serving in a foreign government, you can certainly forfeit permanent residency. After all, Hamas officials surely don’t deserve more rights than Israeli ones. Yet that’s exactly what the court gave them: Hamas officials can now retain dual nationality even though their other nationality is Israel’s bitter enemy, while Israeli officials cannot, even when their other nationality is Israel’s close ally.

Moreover, it’s eminently reasonable to expect people who choose to serve in a foreign government to move to that government’s jurisdiction, unless some unusual obstacle prevents them. In this case, no such obstacle existed, as evidenced by the fact that two of them did relocate to Ramallah after losing their Israeli residency (the other two were arrested by Israel on unrelated grounds).

Even the majority justices appeared to realize how irrelevant their argument actually was. In a truly stunning statement, Justice Uzi Vogelman, who wrote the main opinion, said, “Our interpretative decision didn’t focus on the petitioners’ case specifically, but on an interpretive question of general applicability to residents of East Jerusalem.” Quite how any court can decide a case without focusing on that case specifically is beyond me.

Ostensibly, the case at least has limited application. After all, how many East Jerusalem Palestinians are going to become Hamas legislators of cabinet members? But in reality, the implications are broad, because if even swearing allegiance to a foreign government on behalf of a terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction isn’t enough to make a Palestinian lose his Israeli residency and its attendant benefits, what on earth would be? Nothing I can think of. Thus, Hamas supporters in Jerusalem will now be emboldened to step up all kinds of activity on the organization’s behalf, secure in the knowledge that they need not fear expulsion from the country as a consequence.

The court’s judicial activism impedes the government’s ability to set policy in almost every walk of life, as I detailed in Mosaic last year, and several rulings over the past few months rightly outraged many members of Israel’s ruling parties. But last week’s ruling may have been a tipping point: In response, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and her Jewish Home party submitted legislation to curb the court’s excesses. Whether it will pass remains to be seen. But this outrageous ruling in defense of Hamas legislators amply shows why it should.

A frequent refrain among those who claim the need for an immediate peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians is that soon it will “too late” for compromise. According to this argument, the ongoing increase in the number of Jews living on the West Bank will soon lead to Palestinian and Israeli populations that are hopelessly entangled, rendering any division of territory impossible. But, writes Jackson Diehl, the facts tell a different story:
The annual UN General Assembly is under way this week in New York, so we can expect to hear, again, its most hackneyed rhetorical theme—the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” Speaker after speaker will declaim the urgency of settling the conflict once and for all; many will assert that the time for doing so has all but expired. . . . It consequently seems worthwhile to offer a couple of reality checks: no, this is not the time to fashion a Mideast peace deal; and, no, the time for one has not run out.
Of the some 600,000 [Jewish] settlers who live outside Israel’s internationally recognized borders, just 94,000 are outside the border-like barrier that Israel built through the West Bank a decade ago. Just 20,000 of those moved in since 2009, when Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office; in a sea of 2.9 million Palestinians, they are hardly overwhelming. Last year, 43 percent of the settler population growth was in just two towns that sit astride the Israeli border—and that Mahmoud Abbas himself has proposed for Israeli annexation.
If the Palestinians were today to accept the deal they were offered nine years ago by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a state on 94.2 percent of the West Bank, only 20 percent of current settlers would find themselves on the wrong side of the border. . . . It follows that a wise U.S. policy would aim at preserving that option until Israeli and Palestinian leaders emerge who can act on it.

With all eyes turned towards the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and President Donald Trump’s first appearance and address, now seems like a good time to remind you of one of the most deplorable moments in UNGA history.

On November 13th, 1974, arch terrorist Yasser Arafat was granted the honor to address the UNGA. He did so while wearing a gun holster. And although some, like the BBC, like to describe his speech as “advocating peace”, he was really threatening more violence if the establishment of a palestinian state would not take place.

Almost exactly a year later, on November 10th, 1975, the UNGA adopted the infamous “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination” resolution.

And they’ve continued to be a wretched hive of scum and villainy ever since.

In his first address to the UN General Assembly Tuesday, US President Donald Trump saved his most biting criticisms for Iran and North Korea, calling both "rogue states" posing threats to global stability. He suggested bold policy shifts toward both nations are forthcoming.

"The Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy," Trump said, characterizing the Islamic Republic as an "economically depleted" and "murderous" nation whose main exports are "violence, bloodshed and chaos."

The nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is "an embarrassment to the United States, and I don't think you've heard the last of it, believe me," Trump continued. "We cannot abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program​."

"It is time for the entire world to insist the Iranian government end its pursuit of death and destruction," he added.

In recent days, the president has repeatedly suggested he is prepared to alter US engagement in the nuclear accord– possibly by decertifying Iran's compliance to the deal under US law next month, a move which would allow the US to stay within the JCPOA whilst kicking off an internal congressional debate over its merits.

Trump met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday to discuss a path forward with Iran. Speaking with reporters after their meeting, Netanyahu said the Americans are looking for ways to fix the agreement, and that his government offered them concrete proposals to consider.

But other parties to the agreement are not playing along. The governments of France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia all believe the JCPOA was a good deal, and plan on preserving it, despite some having concerns with its "sunset years"– the latter part of the accord which allows Iran to grow its nuclear infrastructure to industrial scale.

U.S. President Donald Trump warned Monday that Washington will walk away from a nuclear deal it agreed to with Iran and five other nations if it deems that the International Atomic Energy Agency is not tough enough in monitoring it.

Iran, however, said the greatest threat to the nuclear agreement is U.S. hostility.

The warning from Trump came in a message to the U.N. agency’s annual meeting, being held in Vienna, that was read by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

The United States asserts that Iran is obligated to open its military sites to IAEA inspection on demand if the agency suspects unreported nuclear activities at any of them. That’s something Tehran stridently rejects, and Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi urged the agency and its head, Yukiya Amano, to “resist such unacceptable demands.”

Asserting that Iran is fully complying with terms of the accord, Salehi said the greatest threat to its survival is “the American administration’s hostile attitude.”

But Trump, as quoted by Perry, suggested the deal could stand or fail on IAEA access to Iranian military sites, declaring “we will not accept a weakly enforced or inadequately monitored deal.”

Amano also has said the IAEA’s policing authority extends to Iranian military sites, if necessary. But he said Monday that Iran “is fulfilling the commitments it entered into” under the deal, which took effect early last year and offers sanctions relief in exchange for limits on Iranian nuclear programs that could be turned toward making weapons.

The U.S. administration has faced two 90-day certification deadlines to state whether Iran was meeting the conditions needed to continue enjoying sanctions relief under the deal and has both times backed away from a showdown. But Trump more recently has said he does not expect to certify Iran’s compliance with an October deadline looming.

The leftist advocacy group J Street slammed Netanyahu and Trump's intention to redo the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with Trump Monday and discussed what Netanyahu called "the terrible nuclear deal with Iran".

In a statement, the group said that they are "deeply worried by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s stated intention to use his meeting today with President Trump to argue that the US should act to undermine or withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran."

J Street accused both leaders of "valuing aggressive sound bites over real security," and said that Trump and Obama "refuse to accept basic facts about its provisions, goals and successful implementation".

The leftist group has been a prominent supporter of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, spending $500,000 on the effort, which included taking out full-page ads in major newspapers and running television advertisements urging legislators to support its passage in Congress. J Street's website proudly states that "we aimed to demonstrate to Members of Congress that strong support for the agreement existed among the majority of pro-Israel, pro-peace American Jews along with American and Israeli security experts. "

A former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) raised questions about the credibility of that agency’s inspection and verification system for Iran’s nuclear program as required under the U.S.-brokered international nuclear accord with Tehran.

Speaking in a radio interview with this reporter, Dr. Olli Heinonen, former deputy director general of the IAEA and head of its Department of Safeguards, questioned how the IAEA can credibly inspect Iran’s nuclear program without gaining access to Iranian military bases.

Heinonen made the comments last night on his talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” broadcast on New York’s AM 970 The Answer and NewsTalk 990 AM in Philadelphia.

The IAEA, headquartered in Vienna, is an international body that reports to the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council. It is the agency charged with ensuring Iran is complying with the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Heinonen said he was “concerned” about the lack of IAEA access to Iran’s military bases.

Former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton called the U.N. budget “like a tax on the United States,” and said reforms are needed to level the playing field on Fox Business Monday.

“Right now we pay 22 percent of most U.N. agency budgets. 25 percent for peacekeeping. Automatic. Whatever the budget is, we pay 22 percent. It’s like a tax on the United States,” he told host Neil Cavuto.

Bolton claims the only way to fix the problem is to change the “funding mechanism” to take the burden off the United States.

“I think the only reform that will make any difference at the United Nations, and I speak from 25 years experience and failure at trying to fix it, the only reform that works is changing the funding mechanism,” he said. “That has to change. Instead of assessed or mandatory contributions we should contribute whatever we want, if we think the money is being well spent. Sometimes we may contribute zero percent.”

He called on America’s European allies who’ve praised the U.N. to pick up the slack and increase their share of the funding.

UN Secretary General António Guterres on Tuesday opened his first General Assembly speech with a call to renew steps toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“We must not let today’s stagnation in the peace process lead to tomorrow’s escalation,” he told the United Nations chamber in New York, in an address that kicked off several days of speeches from world leaders.

“The two-state solution remains the only way forward and must be pursued,” he added.

Guterres’ call for the renewal of the efforts toward a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict echoed remarks made by a number of world leaders ahead of the start of the General Assembly, including US President Donald Trump and Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi during meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.

While Trump has repeatedly emphasized his desire for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he has yet to express explicit backing for the two-state solution, which is endorsed by a large majority of world leaders.

US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday discussed efforts to counter “Iran’s malign influence” in the Middle East, as well as “optimism in the region” about Israeli-Palestinian peace, according to a White House readout of their New York meeting.

The two leaders talked about their “continuing efforts to achieve an enduring Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, the optimism in the region about peace, and expanding economic opportunities to improve conditions for peace,” the statement said.

The White House statement pledged to safeguard US and Israeli security interests with regard to Iran and Syria. Israel has repeatedly expressed concern that Iran, an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, was bolstering its military presence on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.

“The two sides discussed their continued cooperation across a range of issues and stressed their goals of countering Iran’s malign influence in the region and resolving the Syria crisis in a manner consistent with American and Israeli security interests.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented US President Donald Trump with a detailed plan on how to “fix” the nuclear agreement with Iran during a meeting Monday, he said.

“There is an American willingness to fix the deal, and I presented possible ways to do it,” he told reporters after his hour-long meeting with the president. “I presented a certain course of action how to do it,” he added, declining to provide more details.

The worst aspect of the 2015 nuclear pact that six world powers struck with Iran is the so-called sunset clause, which will allow Tehran to enrich unlimited amounts of uranium once the deal elapses in about a decade, he said. “But there are also other parts that need to be changed.”

In a photo op before their meeting, Netanyahu, speaking after Trump, attacked the Iran deal, which the president had said earlier in the day the US may back out of next month.

“I look forward to discussing with you how we can address together what you rightly call a terrible nuclear deal with Iran, and how to roll back Iran’s growing aggression in the region, especially in Syria,” Netanyahu said.

Surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara walked the streets of Manhattan Monday, shaking hands with passersby and greeting police officers.

Passerbys greeted Netanyahu and his wife with 'Shalom', and chanted 'Israel'. One woman can be seen hugging Sara Netanyahu, who also made a point of shaking a policewoman's hand.

Not all were happy to see Netanyahu -one could be heard telling his friend "I'm not shaking hands with him, I'm Muslim".

A pair of police officers warmly shook hands with the premier, and Netanyahu asked a Pakistani man where exactly he was from. "Where are you originally from?" he asked. "Karachi?"

Netanyahu also asked a SWAT officer if he was carrying an M4 assault rifle. "It's a good gun," Netanyahu told him.

Netanyahu is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. The Prime Minister met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and US President Trump Monday, and will address the United Nations on Tuesday.

The Israeli Consulate in New York received another suspicious envelope containing white powder Monday. The consulate building was closed as employees waited for police to examine the contents of the envelope.

The consulate had previously received an envelope containing white powder last Friday, when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu arrived in New York to address the UN General Assembly. The envelope also contained a threat to the prime minister.

Netanyahu met with US President Donald Trump at the Plaza Hotel in New York Monday and will deliver a speech to the UN General Assembly tomorrow.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have met for the first time in public in what Egypt said was part of an effort to revive the Middle East peace process.

Egyptian authorities said in a statement the two had met on Monday ahead of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Sisi separately met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at his residency, where they agreed to continue working toward a two-state solution.

The meeting came just days after Egypt helped broker an agreement with the Palestinian Hamas group to dissolve the administration that runs Gaza and hold talks with Abbas’ Fatah movement, its Palestinian rivals .

For much of the last decade, Egypt has joined Israel in enforcing a land, sea and air blockade of the Gaza Strip, a move to punish Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since a brief Palestinian civil war in 2007.

From “shameful” to a sign of “peace and tranquility,” the meeting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been greeted with applause, suspicion and some outrage in the Middle East. It was widely reported in Arabic media and commented upon online. However not all the region’s media has highlighted it and commentators see it very differently depending on where they stand in the region’s complex political makeup.

The meeting was no where to be found on Al-Jazeera as of 10am Jerusalem time, eight hours after it happened and six hours after photos from the sit-down were released. The general trend among pro-Qatar or pro-Iranian media was to bypass the issue. PressTV in Iran ignored the meeting but did highlight a new US military base in Israel.

Saudi Arabia’s Al-Arabiya English and Arabic didn’t mention the meeting directly on its home page but did have a piece devoted to Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s visit to New York and his condemnation of supporters of terrorism and criticism of Qatar. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE have been in a crises with Qatar since June. The general article on Sisi’s New York visit noted that Sisi met Netanyahu to discuss Middle East peace and met with Jewish organizations. In Arabic the site published a short article on the meeting, claiming it “revived” the peace process and that Sisi stressed the need for a “final and just settlement” of the conflict.

Al Arabiya's online coverage of the meeting between Israeli PM Netanyahu and Egyptian President al-Sisi (SCREENSHOT)Al Arabiya's online coverage of the meeting between Israeli PM Netanyahu and Egyptian President al-Sisi (SCREENSHOT)

Most Egyptian media highlighted aspects of Sisi’s trip and some focused on the Netanyahu handshake. Although Al-Ahram in Egypt did not mention the meeting on its homepage an article did highlight Egypt’s role in trying to aid Palestinian reconciliation. On the Arabic site, it noted that the Secretary General of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit, “commended Egypt’s efforts which paved the way for this important achievement.”

Saudi Arabia should lead a delegation to Israel as part of a triangular initiative that would help jump-start the frozen peace process, former US envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross told The Jerusalem Post.

“Israel is not going to make any concessions to the Palestinians unless they get something from the Saudis or the Arab states,” Ross said on Thursday.

The veteran diplomat was in Israel on Wednesday and Thursday to attend the second annual Track II environmental conference at the Arava Institute at Kibbutz Ketura, near Eilat, which brought together Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians.

Both to the Post and to the conference, Ross spoke of how the Trump administration could leverage behind-thescenes cooperation between Israel and the Sunni Arab states with regard to the Iranian threat.

“The Saudis could lead a delegation to Israel... to discuss common security threats in the region,” Ross said.

Israel does not have formal diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia.

A key ally of the US against Saddam Hussein in the 1990s and against the Iraqi insurgency and Islamic State, Kurds have been trying since June to convince Washington to apply this view to their region.

Hopes were dashed when the White House released a statement on Friday saying the US “does not support the Kurdistan Regional Government’s intention to hold a referendum.”

US Special Presidential Envoy to Counter ISIS Brett McGurk went further in a press conference in Erbil, asserting: “There is no international support for the referendum, really, from anybody.” He described the referendum as “ill-timed and ill-advised” and “risky.”

Why has the US taken this stand, when it could have remained silent on the issue, as it has done with the controversial referendum in Catalonia?

Kurds had high hopes for the administration of Donald Trump. One man even named his fish store after the president. In May, Kurdistan Region Security Council Chancellor Masrour Barzani met with Jared Kushner and H.R. McMaster.

KRG President Masoud Barzani authored a piece in The Washington Post in June arguing that Baghdad had not adhered to the post-2003 constitution.

An independent Kurdistan would be a great neighbor to Iraq, “cooperating against terrorism and sharing resources,” he wrote. “We ask that the United States and the international community respect the democratic decision of Kurdistan’s people.”

A person familiar with the administration’s view explained that Trump’s team had already set priorities for national security crises, and those involved Iran, North Korea and Russia. They preferred that Kurdish issues be put off until after the upcoming Iraqi elections. They feared that moves by Kurdistan could distract from efforts to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq and unite Sunni and Shi’a Arabs against Kurds. They didn’t reject the referendum but suggested postponing it.

France’s top diplomat on Monday urged Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region to cancel next week’s planned independence vote, warning that now is not the time to go it alone.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian, speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, echoed widespread international concern about the referendum.

The Kurdish region has been de facto self-governing since before the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi dictatorship, and has strained ties with the Baghdad government.
Iraqi Kurds fly Kurdish flags during an event to urge people to vote in the upcoming independence referendum in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on September 16, 2017. (AFP PHOTO/SAFIN HAMED)

Western capitals have been grateful for the Kurds’ support in the battle against jihadist extremism, and foreign investors are eyeing their oil and gas fields.

But diplomats fear a vote to break away from Iraq proper would undermine Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s central government and the fight against the Islamic State group.

CNBC reports: While officials in Seoul try to figure out how to deal with their erratic, missile-launching neighbor to the north, the key to the puzzle may be 5,000 miles away — in Jerusalem.

Officials in South Korea’s defense ministry are now debating how they’ll spend their budget, on the assumption that the country’s parliament will increase it by almost seven percent. But military officials around the world say that even if South Korea’s defense forces get the money, it won’t be enough to deal with the massive destructive force awaiting them just across the border in North Korea.

“The South Koreans have already established the requirement for low- and medium-tier interceptors,” said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He added, however, that “They have yet to move forward.”

An Argentinian prosecutor will assess the findings of a group of forensic analysts who discovered more evidence indicating that Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman was murdered, The Times of Israel reported.

The investigative team, composed of twenty-eight experts ranging from psychology to ballistics concluded that Nisman was drugged and that at least one person forcefully held him down. The new report also found bruises in Nisman’s left leg, head, nose, and abdomen the Argentine news site Infobae reported (Spanish link) on Thursday.

The report also highlighted that only two footprints belonging to Nisman were found in his Puerto Madero apartment. This finding is inconsistent with Nisman’s activities on previous days, suggesting that the suspect or suspects carefully cleaned Nisman’s apartment before they left to cover any tracks.

Lastly, experts explained that the position and angle of the gunshot are not compatible with that of a self-inflicted wound, making it physically impossible for Nisman to have committed suicide that way.

The report will be sent to the attorney leading the case, Eduardo Taino, this week who will assess how to present the new findings to the Justice Department.

A toxicology report released in late August found ketamine and clonazepam in Nisman’s blood at the time of his death. The report released on Thursday indicated that neither drug was found in the apartment.

Mahmoud Abbas, currently in the twelfth year of his first four-year terms as president of the Palestinian Authority, is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly this Wednesday, playing the part of a leader with clear moral principles, diplomatic skill, and long-term vision, an acting role he performs each time he addresses assemblages of international figures. However, at least one of the three institutions administering the Emmy awards, which recognize excellence in televised performances, has now stated that acting prowess aside, Mr. Abbas in not eligible for inclusion in this year’s batch of nominees. His performance will have to wait until the 2018 voting for consideration.

“I am sure, as are all the other Academy members, that Mr. Abbas will give as convincing a performance of a respectable person as ever once he ascends the podium in the assembly chamber,” pronounced Ariel Doosie, the spokeswoman. “However, the nominations and voting for this year’s awards have already closed. If previous UNGA performances provide any indication, Mr. Abbas will give other candidates a run for their money.”

In his upcoming address, the Palestinian president, who also serves as Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella organization of Palestinian terrorist groups, is expected to lay out a vision for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including a restatement of long-held Palestinian red lines that must be respected in any final agreement. To date, Abbas has offered a compelling performance in the role of peacemaker, all the more challenging because he has done so without bring peace any closer – and all while convincing most of the international community that it is Israel, which has made or accepted numerous peace offers since the 1940’s that the Palestinian leadership rejected, that has shown intransigence.

“The role requires a difficult transformation,” acknowledged Alec Baldwin, himself a gifted and respected TV actor. “To go from someone who financed the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes, who continues to glorify Palestinian terrorism and incite violence, who offers lip service to Israeli legitimacy but in practice claims all of Israel, to someone whom everyone regards as moderate, pragmatic, and peace-seeking, is an acting challenge I’m not sure I could pull off. He certainly deserves at least a nomination. Let’s wait till next ear and see.”

“Unless he gets assassinated before then,” added Baldwin. “Then we’d get to see him transform from corrupt dictator to martyr in a heartbeat, which requires no small acting skill.”

The Israeli Air Force shot down an Iranian-built drone launched by the Hezbollah terrorist organization with a Patriot missile after it attempted to cross into Israeli airspace on Tuesday, the army said.

The military also scrambled fighter jets to the area, but ultimately did not need to use them as the interceptor missile was able to destroy the target.

After the drone breached the “Bravo line” that marks the Syrian border and entered the demilitarized zone — but not Israeli airspace — the IDF “decided to intercept it,” army spokesperson Lt. Col. Yonatan Conricus said.

In a statement, the IDF said it “will not allow any infiltration or approach toward the Golan Heights area by terrorist figures from Iranian forces, Hezbollah, Shiite militias or Islamic Jihad.”

Speaking to reporters, Conricus added that Israel “will respond swiftly and forcefully against any such attempts.”

However, he said the IDF was “not looking to escalate” the situation by retaliating “at this time.”

“Without the Resistance, the [Lebanese] army is nothing, and it’s the same with the Resistance,” a member of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, using a euphemism for the group, told NBC News on Saturday.

This would be the latest indication of the total political and military control Hezbollah exerts over Israel’s northern neighbor.

Since Hezbollah and the Lebanese Armed Forces [LAF] carried out joint operations against ISIS in northeastern Lebanon this past summer, “the LAF’s cooperation with Hezbollah was no secret,” NBC reported.

In addition to its threat to Israel, “at the behest of Iran, Hezbollah has been quietly training thousands of Shiite militiamen in Iraq and even Yemen, spreading its military might across the region and leading to concern that Iran might be trying to remake the Middle East, with Hezbollah as Iran’s enforcer,” the report observed.

A Hezbollah commander confirmed this assessment by saying, as he pointed to a makeshift map of the Middle East, “This is Iraq, and next to it is Syria. Before, Saddam was in Iraq, and then the Americans came, so that path was closed. Now we’re with the Hashd al-Shaabi [Shiite militias in Iraq], and we practically control Syria. The Shia Crescent they were so afraid of — we stepped on their noses and created it. There is now an open road from Tehran to Dahieh.” Dahieh is a southern suburb of Beirut that is controlled by Hezbollah.

For the first time, the US Army has opened a permanent base on Israeli soil, flying the Stars and Stripes inside an IDF base.

“Due to the close cooperation between us and the American forces in the field of air defense, as well as the extensive experience accumulated by the Aerial Defense Division, it was decided that the first permanent base of the American army would be established at the School of Air Defense,” Brig.-Gen. Zvika Haimovich, head of the Aerial Defense Division, said on Monday.

“This is the first time that we have an American flag flying in an IDF base,” Haimovich said, following the “historic and exciting” inauguration of the base attended by the US defense attaché other senior military officials.

The base, Haimovich said, “represents the long-standing partnership, the strategic commitment between the armies and the militaries of our countries,” and “adds another layer to the security of the State of Israel in defending [against] the threats of rocket or missile fire.”

Several dozen American soldiers will be stationed at the base in Israel’s south, which America and Israel have been working on for two years, and will have all the facilities necessary for a permanent presence, Haimovich said. The American soldiers, Haimovich stressed, will operate US systems, not Israeli ones.

While he would not go into detail regarding whether or not the Americans would take part in any combat operations, Haimovich said “it’s much more significant than that. There’s an American presence here, a military force, not civilians.”

Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, the former grand mufti of Jerusalem, lambasted the Israeli education system during his sermon at Al-Aqsa mosque last Friday, even issuing a religious decree forbidding the study of Israeli curriculum in all east Jerusalem schools.

"Anyone who teaches, supports and holds lessons according to the [Israeli] curriculum and anyone who sends his or her son or daughter to these schools sins," he said. "I declare that we will never allow the illegal Israeli curriculum to be learned."

The cleric's sermon comes after Israel Hayom published a survey showing that 48% of Arab parents in east Jerusalem prefer that their children study in the framework of the Israeli curriculum over that of the academic program offered by the Palestinian Authority.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said in response that "the parents' demand is stronger than any preacher who does not have the best interests of the students at heart, but rather narrow personal and political interests."

Hamas has called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to cancel punitive measures the PA enacted against it over the past five months. The measures include budgets cuts for essential services in Gaza.

“Abu Mazen must undertake urgent action to abrogate all the punitive decisions and measures against the people of the Strip,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said on Monday in a statement on the Islamist group’s official website, using Abbas’s longtime nom de guerre.

The call came a day after Hamas announced the dissolution of its governing body in the Gaza Strip, also known as the administrative committee, and invited the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to take its place.

Over the past five months, Abbas has ordered a series of cuts to budgets allocated to Gaza for electricity, medical services, government employees’ salaries and other purposes to pressure Hamas to dissolve its administrative committee and permit the PA to operate in its place.

In a statement on Sunday, the PA president appeared to be in no hurry to cancel the measures. While Abbas told official PA media that he was satisfied with Hamas’s announcement that it was doing away with its administrative committee, he did not mention if he planned to rescind the measures.

Head of The Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), General Yoav Mordechai, referred on COGAT’s Facebook page in Arabic to the death this morning, Tuesday, of a 24-year-old Gazan electrocuted while working on a terror tunnel.

“Between the electricity stolen from their Gazan brothers and the tunnels that are killing those they contain - the youth of Gaza are dying,” Mordechai wrote.

“24-year-old Hani Faraj Shaluf died for nothing, electrocuted in one of the underground terror tunnels in Rafiah,” he added.

“While Gazans need electricity and concrete to rebuild their lives and the strip, the Hamas terror organization disparagingly wastes their money on absurd goals that don’t help anything.

“We emphasize another time that anyone who enters the terror tunnels will find nothing but death,” he concluded.

A new academic year has begun and, with it, we can expect new attempts to demonize Israel on our college campuses. As ever, the immoderation of those who support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement should help. The most recent visible move by prominent BDSers has been to try to align their colleagues—in however hedged a manner—with the politically toxic Antifa movement.

So yes, we are not dealing here with strategic masterminds. But, in academia, such people have an advantage, nonetheless. They are “scholar-activists,” distant cousins of the 1960s New Left, who view campuses, as their forebearers did, as grounds from which to assail the powers that be. That is to say, they are there primarily, not incidentally, to engage in political activism. They have an influence far out of proportion to their numbers because most academics are at colleges and universities to teach and engage in research. They don’t, as people say in the movies, want no trouble. So they are inclined to leave politics to the people who care about it, so long as they are allowed to do their work in peace.

It is in part for this reason that organizations like Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the newer Academic Engagement Network exist (full disclosure: I have worked with both organizations). On the one hand, they enable scholars drawn reluctantly into a fight against BDS to learn from and support each other’s efforts. On the other hand, they try to spread the news that BDS is not only unjust to Israel—a fact that may worry those with no dog in the fight only a little—but also damaging to the academic enterprise, for which BDS seeks to substitute propagandizing.

At the beginning of the academic year, it is worth pausing to notice how many professors have been willing to put their reputations on the line to turn back BDS efforts and how often they have been successful. These include figures like Cary Nelson, Russell Berman, Rachel Harris, Sharon Musher, and Jeffrey Herf, to name just a few. These academicians have well-deserved reputations for waging long and successful campaigns for the integrity of their disciplines in the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association. But they also include physicist Azriel Genacka and biochemist Fred Naider, who, along with many of their colleagues at the City University of New York, stood up and opposed a pro-BDS resolution passed by a graduate student union there, and supported by some CUNY faculty.

Perhaps most impressively, they include scholars like the anthropologist Gila Silverman, who, despite working in a field that includes many BDS supporters and without the protection of tenure, was willing to fight publicly against a BDS resolution that very narrowly failed to win the support of the American Anthropological Association. Credit is due to the Academic Engagement Network for pulling together, as part of a new guide for faculty, these and other examples of faculty efforts to counter BDS.

Most of the participants in these efforts are left-liberals; in a profession in which conservatives have neither numbers nor much influence, that can hardly be surprising. But BDS has inadvertently brought together people on the left and right who have in common, at the very least, an interest in the health and integrity of their universities and professional associations.

For more than seven decades, the United Nations has been a leading international authority on world affairs. However, its credibility has been damaged by allegations of corruption, and political stalemates among leading powers undermine the U.N.'s core values and often produce more talk than change, critics say.

This week, world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly in New York are set to deliver major speeches addressing some of the most pressing issues facing the international community. President Donald Trump, a frequent critic of the U.N., is widely expected to take on rivals Iran and North Korea in his first appearance at the forum. While the gathering is likely to host some fiery rhetoric from all sides, critics such as U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer are more concerned with what's going on behind closed doors, something he says could compromise the integrity of the organization as a whole.

"People don't realize this, but most of what happens at the U.N. is vote-trading," Neuer told Newsweek.

"Sadly, too often European democracies do deals in the darkness; they do secret deals that end up being sort of a deal with the devil," he added.

U.N. Watch is a Geneva-based monitoring group founded in 1993 by lawyer and civil rights activist Morris Berthold Abram. Its stated goal is to hold the U.N. accountable when it fails to live up to its mission. While Neuer cites U.N. inaction on humanitarian crises in Syria and Venezuela as examples of times when states needed to step up and effect real change, he expressed particular indignation toward a recent U.N. scandal that highlighted the practice of nations offering votes for individual political gains, as opposed to dealing on ethical and moral grounds.

It has been one year since the passing of Shimon Peres. Visionary, soldier, statesman, founder of the State of Israel, prime minister, president, Nobel laureate: no title, description or accolade can fully capture the immensity of his contribution — not only to Israel but to all who aspire to a better, more peaceful, more just world.

We now have President Peres’ story in his own words. Just weeks before his death at 93, he completed the memoir, No Room for Small Dreams, not only chronicling nearly seven decades of public service but exploring the principles and values that guided him in his life’s journey. His commitment to these principles was unwavering. As Peres’s children Tsvia, Yoni and Chemi recall in a moving introduction to the book, their mother would say to them, “Your father is like the wind. You will never be able to stop him or hold him back.”

Indeed, “No Room for Small Dreams” proves that Peres’ voice and vision are not only still with us, but as forceful and relevant as ever. Much has already been said and written of Peres, and this book will, rightly, launch a thousand new conversations. There will be dissections of his policies and their impact, debates about his legacy, and wide-ranging political analyses in the context of Israel’s past, present and future.

But what I want to share is a deeply meaningful personal encounter between Peres and my son Lev. Peres’s extraordinary career brought him into contact with the world’s most powerful people, but something special shone in him while conversing with a child. His message had an undeniable purity and simplicity, as well as a quality that mattered dearly to him — hope. As Tsvia, Yoni and Chemi explain, “his greatest tool of all, always, was hope.”

Lev was eight at the time of the meeting. I had taken him to Israel for his first of what I hoped would be many visits. Wanting his experience to be an indelible one, I brought him to meet Peres on August 31, 2016, the first day of our visit. For me, the president was the very personification of Israel’s hope, strength and spirit — its dreams, ideals and tensions. He was gracious enough to meet with my son and my wife and me at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation in Jaffa. We did not know then that it would be one of his last meetings.

At one point in the conversation, I asked Peres to share with Lev how, after 93 years of life, he stayed so young.

Working as an aide to the Democratic senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson in the 1970s, Elliott Abrams played a crucial role in formulating an approach to foreign policy that prioritized human rights in a way that could further American geopolitical interests. These efforts came to fruition in legislation that used economic pressure to alleviate the plight of Soviet Jewry and later became a basis of the outlook on international affairs now known as neoconservative. In an interview with Jonathan Silver, Abrams discusses his own Jewish upbringing, his political evolution, his career in public service, and his involvement in guiding Israel policy in the George W. Bush administration.

Unlike events some weeks ago at, say, Charlottesville (which is on another continent), blame for events in London on Friday will not be allowed to spill out anywhere. Probably not even onto the culprits themselves. They will be described as ‘boys’ or ‘young men’ or ‘kids’. We will hear about how they were ‘pushed’ to their actions in some way. If their country of origin was one we were militarily engaged in (Iraq) this will be deemed a contributing factor. If their country of origin is a country we have not been militarily engaged in (Syria) this will be deemed a contributing factor.

There are other ways in which we will wonder how our society failed our bombers. Politicians and the media will ponder whether they had a good enough foster family. Or whether they got their dream job at the first opportunity, like everyone else in our society does. And all the while people like O’Grady will try to patrol the boundaries, pointing out that any discussion of the facts is ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘pointless’.

Perhaps I might issue a note of warning to such people. Imagine the detonating device had worked on Friday. Think about what happens when it works next time. And the time after that. And imagine that instead of engaging in a reflex defence of all refugees you are instead staring at the photos of people of every age and background who just happened to have the misfortune to be commuting through Parsons Green last Friday. In other words, imagine what happens when being indeterminately ‘generous’ and ‘open-hearted’ stops looking cute and begins to look like you were just unforgivably lax with the security of your fellow-citizens for nothing more than short-term ideological reasons. In other words, imagine what happens when there is a political price to pay rather than just brownie-points to collect.

Because that day will come. It wasn’t Friday. But it will be another day, sooner or later. And wouldn’t it be a good thing to be ready for that day when it comes?

If you do not have control of your borders, with a meaningful set of immigration laws and the right to keep people out of your country, then you do not really have a country.

While the public wants their representatives to control their borders, politicians seem to see only political capital in running the other way. In part this is because there appears to be some kind of "bonus" to be achieved by looking welcoming and kindly, in contrast to the unwelcoming and mean things that borders now appear to represent.

By the end of August, it was estimated that almost 12,000 people had arrived in Canada through this route so far this year. It is a number that constitutes little more than an averagely busy week in Italy at any time over recent years. But even this comparatively tiny movement across an entire year has proven too much for Canada. At the end of last month, Prime Minister Trudeau told reporters: "For someone to successfully seek asylum it's not about economic migration. It's about vulnerability, exposure to torture or death, or being stateless people. If they are seeking asylum we'll evaluate them on the basis of what it is to be a refugee or asylum seeker."

A fine and honorable Rabbi I heard on the East Coast recently is very worried about Nazis in America. He and many other Jewish clergy and lay people, particularly in the Reform and Conservative movement see them as a clear and present danger in America and associate them with President Trump and Republicans in general. Putting aside calumny and falsehoods directed at our President and Republicans, I am as much worried about Nazi’s in America as I am the Army of the Dead from Game of Thrones.

I am, however, very worried about the statist/leftist/progressive, whatever label you wish, invading and terribly harming America. Nasty accusations hurled at a duly elected President accomplishing a lot of middle of the road American things under incredible attack, reminded me of the Civil War we are in, the intense cultural war in which we find ourselves between American and Leftist values. The war is threatening the pillars holding up American civilization.

There are three pillars of Judaism- God, Torah, and Israel. So too are there three pillars of Americanism- In God We Trust, Liberty, and E Pluribus Unum. The Left attacks all three of these precious American foundations. They are the main targets of their battle to undo America and Western culture. Our clerical elite, the normative Democratic party, its violent Antifa wing, going on to our college professors, public school teachers and mainstream media continue yanking down not only statues of our vital historical memory, but the core values undergirding our American civilization. It's been going on for a hundred years, starting with Karl Marx, on to John Dewy, Crowley, and the fathers of American progressivism - Woodrow Wilson, TR and FDR. It now is widespread and powerful, affecting the minds of millions of our citizens.

On the West Coast, Jewish clergy fasted because of the election of a Republican leader , the leader of a party whose normative member cherishes all three American pillars. For some reason these clergy never thought to fast when a radical Leftist President did one of the most despicable things in American and Jewish history, handing $150 billion dollars to hundreds of thousands of true Nazis in Iran . On the East Coast , from the tony Democrat enclave of Bethesda to the chiq leftist bubble of the Upper West Side, Jewish clergy mimic the Palestinian Authority, while America-trashing professors are widespread on our campuses and call what is good bad and bad good.

The number of campaigns supporting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement at American universities dropped by nearly 40 percent during the past academic year, even as professional anti-Israel organizations invested more resources to advance campus efforts, a new report by a pro-Israel advocacy group has found.

Twenty BDS campaigns took place on US campuses during the 2016-17 academic year, compared to 33 campaigns during the 2015-16 academic year, the Israel on Campus Coalition determined. The amount of anti-Israel activity also decreased by 19 percent last year, with pro-Israel events outnumbering those hostile to Israel by more than 2-1.

Despite these gains, “BDS campaigns were more sophisticated and aggressive, with professional organizations investing greater resources in campus divestment efforts,” the report said.

These groups, which “provided Israel’s detractors with financial, material, and programming support,” include American Muslims for Palestine, American Friends Service Committee, Palestine Legal, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights and Jewish Voice for Peace, according to the report.

“These national organizations played a significant role in supporting the intense battles waged by Israel detractors on campus,” ICC spokesperson Megan Nathan told The Algemeiner, including by drafting student BDS resolutions and pursuing legal action on behalf of activists.

The undergraduate student government at McGill University in Montreal, Canada on Sunday ratified a ruling against the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement for violating its policy against discrimination based on national origin.

The Judicial Board of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) initially issued the ruling on June 2016, after anti-Israel activists failed to pass a motion in support of BDS during an online referendum. That vote was the third unsuccessful effort organized by anti-Israel activists at McGill in 18 months.

In its ruling, the board explained that “picking a side” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by supporting BDS will inhibit “SSMU’s ability to create an open, inviting atmosphere for students of Israeli origins, and [undermine] SSMU’s ability to serve them without bias.”

The board further noted that such a decision would conflict with the SSMU’s mandate to represent all students equally, including those who hold Israeli citizenship. It also emphasized that endorsing BDS would violate the body’s own Equity Policy, which precludes discrimination based on national origin.

“When all of these considerations are read together, the inescapable conclusion is that motions similar to the BDS Motion, which target one specific nation, breach values inherent in our Constitution and the Equity Policy,” the board determined.

The State of New Jersey has come under fire for allegedly not punishing a giant Danish bank that engages in anti-Israel economic activity.

Danske Bank, the largest bank in the Scandinavian country, is blacklisted by New York State for violating its anti-BDS law shielding Israel from economic warfare. An intense row over whether Danske – a financial institution that seeks to aid its clients in Iran – is in violation of New Jersey’s 2016 anti-BDS law unfolded in August.

Marc Greendorfer, an attorney and founder of the Zachor Legal Institute, told The Jerusalem Post by email this week that New Jersey “has investments in Danske Bank, but the state refuses to divest from Danske even though under the New Jersey law, there is no question that Danske qualifies as a company that is boycotting Israel (and is thus subject to divestiture by the state).”

The Zachor Legal Institute is a legal think tank and advocacy organization that combats BDS.

Danske, with a customer base of over 3.5 million, blacklisted two Israeli defense companies – Aryt Industries and Elbit Systems – from its customers’ investments.

A nine-page, unpublished report from a private research organization on the bank’s investment policies and relations with Israel concluded that “Danske was never legally required to divest from any Israeli company... Dankse’s alignment with a specific political agenda concerning Israel reveals Danske’s intentions to penalize the State of Israel to create an environment of political duress to influence Israeli state policy.”

The evidence of Rasmea Odeh’s guilt is conclusive. Not only did she confess a day after her arrest, bomb-making materials were found in her room. Her co-conspirator, Ayesha Odeh, in a documentary interview willingly offered up how Odeh was directly involved in the bombings.

A few of us have been holding peaceful vigils at Reem’s to honor the memories of Kanner and Joffe. Assil is degrading their memories by grotesquely honoring their killer. We cannot let this stand.

We are also asking that Assil take down the mural. Though she said Reem’s is a place where people can “speak their mind and maybe have the hard conversations” she refuses to speak with any of us.

Instead, Assil wants to silence us. She repeatedly calls security and the Oakland Police Department to monitor our every move. Initially law enforcement even asked us to leave. But we know our rights.

Now Assil has gone much further. She has sued three of the protestors to obtain temporary restraining orders. The Alameda County Superior Court has twice denied Assil’s requests. Yet she perseveres with lawsuits aimed at quashing the voices of conscience about Odeh’s many crimes.

Why would Assil choose to lionize a convicted terrorist in a larger than life mural and not expect people to respond? And when they do, she quickly calls for cover from law enforcement and applies for restraining orders?

It is safe to say that Reem Assil only values free speech when it agrees with her own biased views.

A few days ago, we returned to Reem’s to again honor the memories of Leon Kanner and Edward Joffee.

Today's Rosh Hashanah show with Maurice Klein filling for Alan on holiday.

Special guest today, practicing orthodox Muslim Raheel Raza with a powerful message for our Jewish community, with Muslim Scholar Rev Dr Mark Durie explaining the connection between Islam and AntiSemitism. As always Isi Leibler from Jerusalem talking sense.

Raheel Raza 2.50

Rev Durie 22.45

Isi Leibler 41.00

She’s back.
Controversial Mississauga Catholic elementary teacher Nadia Shoufani, suspended with pay last summer for spewing anti-Israel rhetoric at the 2016 Al-Quds Day hatefest, has resurfaced in a Sept. 10 online issue of al-Meshwar, a Holocaust-denying Arabic-language newspaper, which tried to endorse Niki Ashton for NDP leader last month.

In the article (translated from Arabic by the B’nai Brith and entitled, “Here I have Won, and Woe to the Losers”), Shoufani contends that she has triumphed after a “fierce Zionist campaign” to intimidate and silence her and to “destroy” her life and career.

Shoufani, who teaches special education, science and ESL at St. Catherine of Siena separate school claims all she was doing in her 2016 Al-Quds day speech was “supporting Palestine and exposing the crimes and practices of the Zionist occupation.”

Attempts to reach Shoufani at her school Monday were unsuccessful.

During her 10-minute Al-Quds Day speech, posted on YouTube, Shoufani urges attendees to “support the resistance (against Israel) in any form imaginable.” She also expresses “glory to the martyrs” — including a member of a known terrorist organization who smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl on beach rocks.

Only a day after yesterday’s huge cycling news regarding Israel comes more: a star Turkish cyclist has joined the Israeli team!
Ahmet Örken, a 24-year-old cyclist who has dominated the Turkish cycling scene for the last four years, has joined pro-continental Israel Cycling Academy (ICA) to become the first Turkish athlete to join a cycling team at this level.
“I waited for a chance to ride for a successful Pro team that is on the move and I am sure that with ICA I can make my dreams come true,” Örken, who recently won the sprinter’s green jersey at the Tour of Qinghai Lake, told his new club’s website on Sept. 18.
“My biggest motivation joining this team was the chance to win races but I also strongly believe that it also a great chance to contribute to peace and brotherhood,” said Örken, adding that he had no concerns about joining an Israeli team considering the recent tensions in the ties between Turkey and Israel.

Engineers and physicists working on a joint project between Tel Aviv University and the research departments of several communications companies have created the most powerful virtue-signaling equipment to date, which they claim is capable of conveying a user’s ideological and political moral superiority at more than three times the distance and intensity of existing methods.

A representative of the team announced the achievement this morning (Tuesday), at a press conference enabled by the device. “Thanks to the Wokie-Talkie, as we’re calling it, we knew to hold this event at a makeshift community center for African migrants in South Tel Aviv,” boasted Dr. Piyelef Yoter-Progressivi. “Without the Wokie-Talkie, that never would have occurred to us. Thanks to our device, woke folks can demonstrate their more-progressive-than-thou social conscience with a force not possible before.”

Dr. Yoter-Progressivi contrasted the sorry state of sensitivity of only eighteen years ago with what the device no makes possible. “In 1999 it took a special kind of progressive attitude, ear, and eye to spot racism or other forms of oppression,” she recalled. “It took quite some effort to get the world to react negatively to when a staffer in the DC Mayor’s office used the word ‘niggardly,’ since the word bears no relation to the n-word. Remember that? Well, the Wokie-Talkie has sensors that detect such utterances or images from three hundred kilometers away, and immediately produces an outraged press release and tweet.”

The researchers hope to market the device as a standalone, and later as an app for smartphones. “Soon, the wokest hot take on any development won’t just be the province of Slate, Vox, or Jezebel,” she predicted. “Every college sophomore will be able to generate righteous outrage that conservatives are admitted to the institution at all, let alone form any clubs. The Wokie-Talkie will enable everyone, not just the coastal commentators, to explain how some beloved cultural phenomenon or critical everyday activity is actually racist or supports oppression.”

This paradigm seems an apt way to understand the Guardian’s failure to devote any coverage to the “largest and most detailed survey of attitudes towards Jews and Israel ever conducted” in the UK. The study, released last week by CST and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), which was covered by Times of London and The Telegraph, produces “the first robust empirical documentation” on what most British Jews have understood all along: that there’s a strong correlation between antisemitic and anti-Israel attitudes. The CST and JPR report demonstrates conclusively that those who hold strong anti-Israel views (such as calling Israel an apartheid state, accusing it of genocide and denying its right to exist, etc.) are dramatically more likely to hold antisemitic views than the general population.

This of course contradicts the dominant Guardian Left view that hatred of Jews qua Jews is distinct and separate from hatred of Israel. This erroneous belief has informed their coverage of anti-Israel movements for years, articles and op-eds which invariably frame pro-Palestinian groups as progressive and anti-racist – regardless of evidence to the contrary.

Though, over the years, we’ve been relentless in our criticism of the Guardian, we’ve also acknowledged that there are at least a few fair-minded journalists employed by the media group who understand and take seriously the problem of antisemitism. We can only hope that these voices will speak up, and start a desperately needed conversation with their colleagues – many of whom fancy themselves ‘free thinkers’, yet seem impervious to new information as it concerns relationship between Israel, Jews and antisemitism.

Readers learned that these three books “look at Jewish heritage, the Holocaust, and what has followed.” Indeed, two of the recommendations are novels deeply connected with the Holocaust and its legacy: Aharon Appelfeld’s 1998 The Iron Tracks (translated by Jeffrey M. Green) and Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2002 Everything Is Illuminated. Devotees of Appelfeld’s work might argue over which one of his many books merits such spotlighting. (My kind of argument!) And some readers may prefer other American writers’ explorations of Holocaust legacy to Foer’s. (For some of my own reading recommendations on writings by descendants of those who were either chased out of Nazi Europe “just in time” or somehow survived the Holocaust, see my essay in this book.)

But if you’re going to recommend a mini-list of titles that convey a sense of “Jewish heritage,” particularly insofar as “Jewish culture in Europe” may be concerned, these choices are eminently justifiable ones. What’s more problematic is the single selection that is presumably intended to inform would-be travelers about Israel: Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, an anthology edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman that was published earlier this year.

You can read more about Kingdom of Olives and Ash right here on Tablet. And you may well opt to devote further time to the Chabon/Waldman project. As Tablet’s Liel Leibovitz noted in June, it’s “a meaningful book that deserves to be read, if not always for the reasons its editors had imagined,” and perhaps less for what it may say about Jewish culture than for its portraits of the Palestinians whom “Chabon, Waldman, and their friends profile” throughout.

But if you’re truly interested in discovering Jewish culture in Israel—and how its history, richness, complexity, and challenges can be explored in fiction and in fact ahead of any actual voyage—please consider some other titles. As we embark on the Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, you might opt to place to these possibilities on your reading list for the new year 5778.

A look inside a South Korean public shelter September 13th 2017
“Public shelters have been set up across the country in the event of an attack from the North.”
“When you live here, in the closest village to the border – this is only about three miles away – you need a proper shelter.”

North Korea missile: People under threat react September 15th 2017
“People living in South Korea and Japan react to North Korea’s latest missile launch.”
“That’s a nice wake-up call. My phone translated as ‘a North Korea missile launch’. What do you do in a circumstance like that?”
“The strongest feeling I have is a feeling of fear. I don’t know when I might be killed. That is the scariest part.”

In contrast, the BBC has produced no English language reporting whatsoever on the dozen actual missile hits so far this year in a region just ninety minutes away from its Jerusalem office that has previously seen thousands of such attacks over the past sixteen years.

A juvenile court in northeastern France suspended the prison sentences of five teenagers who vandalized a Jewish cemetery and damaged a Holocaust memorial.

The defendants, who were 15 to 17 in February 2015 when the vandalism occurred, were sentenced last week to eight to 18 months in prison for toppling and breaking some 300 gravestones in the Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union, located in the Bas-Rhin region in Alsace. The cemetery is still in use.

A Holocaust memorial monument on the cemetery property was also vandalized.

The five are also each required to serve 140 hours of community service.

Each defendant had faced up to seven years in prison. They all reportedly expressed regret for their actions during court hearings on Thursday and Friday.

Several relatives of people buried in the vandalized graves attended the court hearings. Most of the gravestones have not yet been repaired due to the astronomical cost, the French news agency AFP reported.

Dozens of people belonging to a violent Swedish neo-Nazi group paraded through the streets of the country’s second-largest city on Sunday, ahead of a planned march that has raised alarms for its route near a synagogue on Yom Kippur.

According to reports in Swedish media, some 50 members of the Nordic Resistance Movement marched through downtown Gothenburg waving flags and banners.

A minor scuffle between a counter protester and a marcher was broken up by police. Swedish authorities said no arrests were made.

The NRM used Sunday’s march to advertise for their upcoming rally, which is scheduled to pass near Gothenburg’s main synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

The group initially sought to hold its September 30 march adjacent to the Gothenburg Book Fair, when some 100,000 people are expected to gather in the city for the largest literary festival in Scandinavia.

Police denied the request, offering the group an alternative, less central route. That route would take the marchers some 200 meters from the Gothenburg Synagogue.

Earlier this month, the kibbutz partnered with Cronos, a Canadian cannabis conglomerate, and will soon begin building a 45,000 square feet greenhouse that will produce up to five tons annually, a capacity both partners hope will expand to 24 tons a year before too long. An additional 11,000 laboratory will serve for research and development of effective new brands of weed.

“Israel has an ideal climate for growing cannabis with abundant light to support year-round greenhouse cultivation without the need for supplemental flower lighting,” read a statement from Cronos. “The Israeli climate, combined with Gan Shmuel’s existing manufacturing infrastructure and skilled labor force, will enable Cronos Israel to produce high quality medical cannabis at an expected cost of between $0.40 and $0.50 per gram.” Some of the supply will serve the local medical marijuana market, instantly making Gan Shmuel the largest player in the Israeli market. The rest will be exported.

“This isn’t just about becoming the lowest cost producer in the world,” said Mike Gorenstein, Cronos’s CEO. “Establishing a major operation in Israel gives us frontline exposure to leading medical cannabis research and innovation. Cronos Israel is a significant step in raising the standard of medical cannabis globally.” In start-up nation, the standards just keep getting higher.

It seems like prominent indie rock singer Morrissey might have been thinking a lot about the Jewish state when he recorded his latest album "Low in High School."

Two track names on the album, which is slated to be released November 17, appear to make references to Israel. Those are titled "The Girl from Tel Aviv Who Wouldn’t Kneel" and "Israel," according to the listing published by Pitchfork.com on Tuesday.

The same day, the singer released his first single from the album, his 11th, entitled "Spent the Day in Bed." Lyrics of that song include "And I recommend that you stop watching the news/ Because the news contrives to frighten you/ To make you feel small and alone/ To make you feel that your mind isn't your own."

Purported images of the album cover posted online feature a child holding an axe and a poster reading "Axe the monarchy."

When the album was first announced last month, BMG record company released a statement saying that “Morrissey’s talent for combining political statements and melodies is more prevalent than ever on Low in High-School, capturing the zeitgeist of an ever-changing world.”

Morrissey last performed in Israel in August 2016, when he played in Tel Aviv and then Caesarea. He previously played concerts in Israel in 2012 and 2008. In 2012 he ended his show wrapped in an Israeli flag.

On a house-to-house mission in the Florida Keys, search-and-rescue volunteers from Israel discovered an ailing American military veteran who spent four days without water, electricity or telephone reception in his home as Hurricane Irma wreaked havoc outside.

“You are the first people to come down here and offer aid,” the grateful man told Tamar Citron, a member of the team from the Israel Rescue Coalition and United Hatzalah.

“We provided him with water, food and a lot of positivity,” Citron reported. “We notified local authorities and EMS teams and made sure that they followed up. Unfortunately, there are many people stuck on the Keys right now without access to food, water, electricity or a method of communication. Our entire team is heading down to the Keys to help rescue more of these people.”

Citron and volunteers from other Israeli humanitarian aid groups, who dropped everything to fly over and assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida, are finding their expertise is needed and appreciated. Israel is the only country to send multiple groups of volunteers in addition to material aid.

“Our first night in Texas [September 8] we went to a restaurant and the waiter asked us if we were in Houston for business or pleasure,” says Smadar Harpak, a therapeutic clown with Israel’s Dream Doctors Project.

Israel Shipyards has unveiled an offshore patrol vessel designed and built for the Cypriot Navy. The project has been valued at tens of millions of Euros. The high-end vessel is slated to be delivered to the Cypriot Navy by the end of the year and integrated into the fleet patrolling Cyprus' exclusive maritime economic zone.

In a statement released on Sunday, Israel Shipyards said the OPV, ordered in December 2015, was launched at a ceremony held last week at Israel Shipyards' facility at Haifa Bay. Senior members of the Cypriot Defense Ministry, representatives of Israel's Defense Cooperation Authority, and company executives attended the ceremony.

"The project is of great importance for the company, and we invested our knowledge, experience and ingenuity in order to build and supply this unique, technologically advanced ship," said Israel Shipyards CEO Avi Shahaf.

"We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the Cypriot Defense Ministry for the trust they invested in Israel Shipyards to deliver this vessel."

British MP Daniel Kawczynski and his family were honored on Monday for saving hundreds of Polish Jews during the Holocaust at an award ceremony held by the NGO From the Depths at the Warsaw Zoo.

The venue is the site where Antonina and Jan Zabinski, after whom the From The Depths Zabinski Awards are named, rescued more than 300 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943-1945.

Kawczynski’s family was one of three to receive the award this year, which was handed out for the second year running. The MP’s great-uncle Jan Kawczynski and his wife and 10-year-old daughter were killed by German soldiers for helping to hide Jews in their home.

Kawczynski is the first Polish Brit to serve in the British Parliament. Ahead of his attendance at Monday’s ceremony, he received a letter from British Prime Minister Theresa May, who wrote: “I was interested to hear of your impending trip to Poland to attend the ‘From The Depths Zabinski Awards,’ and wanted to send my best wishes for what I am sure will be a very moving ceremony.

“You must be incredibly proud of your great-uncle, Jan Kawczynski, and his heroic efforts to save Jews during the Second World War. Such acts of bravery and defiance must never be forgotten – they remind us not only of the horrors of the past, but also of the continuing need to confront bigotry and antisemitism wherever we see it,” she continued.

Shortly after declaring independence, the Israeli government ran not one but two contests in its search for an official seal. The winning design, submitted by the Shamir brothers, featured a menorah with an olive branch on either side and the Hebrew word “Israel” beneath. The committee tasked with choosing an emblem asked the Shamirs to make one change: replace the stylized, modern-looking menorah with one modeled on the menorah depicted on the Arch of Titus in Rome. Saul Singer writes:

Many, including particularly then-Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog, vociferously objected to the use of this design because the menorah, which the Romans had proudly paraded as the ultimate symbol of Jewish defeat and degradation, represented the expulsion of the Jews from the land of Israel and the destruction of the Second Temple.

But the members of the committee and Israel’s provisional government, both of which unanimously adopted the design, believed the use of the Titus menorah would serve as an important metaphor for the rebirth of Israel: that after itself joining the Jews in exile, the menorah would now stand as testimony to the ultimate victory and eternal survival of the Jewish people. . . .

Because the ultimate design does not seem to reflect religious practice or belief—no verses from the Torah, no reference to the God of Israel—many argue that secularists prevailed [in choosing the seal]. In fact, however, the national emblem reflects one of the great . . . visions of the prophet Zechariah, [in which an angel shows him a menorah flanked by two olive trees].

British Prime Minister Theresa May reaffirmed her government’s determination to fight anti-Semitism as she saluted the resiliance of the State of Israel.

Speaking on the eve of the Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year celebration, Mrs. May told members of the Jewish community from business, the arts, politics, public services and charities about her plans to fight anti-Semitism as well as celebrate this year’s centenary of the signing of the Balfour Declaration.

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.

And we will actively encourage the use of this definition by the police, the legal profession, universities and other public bodies.

But the ultimate way of defeating anti-Semitism is to create an environment that prevents it happening in the first place.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday wished the Jewish people a Happy New Year, ahead of the holiday of Rosh Hashanah which will be celebrated on Wednesday at sundown.

“The High Holy Days are a time of both reflection on the past year and hope for renewal in the year to come. Jewish communities across the country and around the world enter into a time of prayer, repentance and rededication to the sacred values and traditions that guide the incredible character and spirit of the Jewish people,” he said.

“We reaffirm the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel, and we ask God to deliver justice, dignity and peace on earth.”

“Melania and I wish everyone a sweet, healthy and peaceful year which we hope will bring many blessings to all.”

Even the most cosmopolitan Tel Avivi can’t help but be charmed by Conan O’Brien, one of America’s most popular late-night hosts.

If you doubt it (and really, who can blame you?), simply look for proof to the comedian’s spontaneous romps around Rothschild Boulevard and the Jaffa port, among other notable landmarks, when he visited Israel in late August.

Heck, one starstruck Sabra even gave him the shirt off his back.

And what’s not to love? Though he describes himself as pale compared to his swarthier Levantine counterparts (“Does white float?” he asks buoyantly while drifting along the Dead Sea), O’Brien possesses a keen, self-deprecating sense of humor any Jewish comedy fan can be proud of.

The visit was part of the latest installment of “Conan Without Borders,” a series of shows which O’Brien films in various exotic (and not-so-exotic) locations throughout the world. Previous trips include Berlin, Mexico, and Armenia.

The 1,800-page court decision written by Justice Moshe Drori elaborates on the details of the torture. The gruesome stories, it found, were confirmed by eyewitnesses, the scars on their bodies, and testimony from psychologists.

The victims are being represented by the law office of Barak Kedem, Aryeh Arbus, Netanel Rom and David Zur. Kedem, in an interview with The Times of Israel, described some of the worst cases of torture he can remember from the trial.

For days on end, prisoners were hung upside down. After they lost consciousness, they would be put right side up until they regained consciousness. Then the process would be repeated, he said.

Another method of torture was transferring prisoners back and forth between hot and cold baths. Many had their teeth pulled out with pliers, while some had fingernails extracted. Many spent weeks at a time in a tiny metal closet in which they couldn’t move their bodies.

One man was placed inside a metal barrel and left for five hours in the hot August sun. When they took him out, his interrogators placed salt all over his blistering skin.

Walid himself said that the worst torture method was forcing prisoners to sit on the head of a broken bottle of glass, which tore up their insides.

Though the prisoners were placed in different jails throughout the West Bank, many described the same methods of torture.

Kedem said this showed that these methods “were ordered from up top and not at the discretion of individual interrogators.” In his decision, Justice Drori agreed with this assessment.

At no point while in PA custody were the prisoners brought before a judge.

A few alleged ex-Shin Bet agent prisoners were killed while in jail. (They were represented in the lawsuit by their parents.)

Walid said he witnessed more than one of the executions.