Child Arrest, Settler Colonialism, and the Israeli Juvenile System: A Case Study of Occupied East Jerusalem
Bella Kovner  Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

The British Journal of Criminology, azx059, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azx059

Published: 15 September 2017

Abstract

Based on three interrelated theoretical frameworks—institutional racism, settler colonialism and security reasoning—the study examines child arrests in Occupied East Jerusalem (OEJ), addressing how the Israeli justice and law enforcement systems treat Palestinian children. Through analyses of Knesset protocols, court watch participatory observations, review of court proceedings and verdicts, interviews with children, families and professionals in juvenile justice, and a round table discussion, we found that criminalization and punishment are embedded in a systematic, racialized violence that characterizes the Israeli criminal justice system when dealing with Palestinian children in OEJ. The Israeli justice and law enforcement systems categorize Palestinian children as security threats, born terrorists and ideological criminals, lacking all rights.

President Trump delivered his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, and it was a triumph.

The speech offered the clearest sign yet that the administration has parted with Steve Bannon and other Breitbart types who wanted to use Trump as a bulldozer against liberal order. At Turtle Bay, Trump recommitted Washington to the defense of a U.S.-led world order. He also called out forcefully the rogue states that seek “to collapse the values, the systems and alliances that prevented conflict and tilted the world toward freedom.”

Trump praised the founding of the U.N. and the Marshall Plan, based on the “noble idea that the whole world is safer when nations are strong, independent and free” and the “vision that diverse nations could cooperate to protect their sovereignty, preserve their security and promote their prosperity.” Robert Kagan couldn’t have said it better.

Turning to specific global security challenges, Trump similarly telegraphed a return to the GOP’s postwar foreign-policy traditions.

• On Iran: “We cannot let a murderous regime continue these destabilizing activities [in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen] while building dangerous missiles. And we cannot abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program . . . Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever. The day will come when the people will face a choice: Will they continue down the path of poverty, bloodshed, and terror? Or will the Iranian people return to the nation’s proud roots as a center of civilization, culture, and wealth, where their people can be happy and prosperous?”
• On socialism in Venezuela and beyond: “The problem in Venezuela isn’t that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba, to Venezuela; wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure. Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems.”
• On U.N. reform: “Too often, the focus of this organization has not been on results, but on bureaucracy and process. In some cases, states that seek to subvert this institution’s noble ends have hijacked the very systems that are supposed to advance them. For example, it is a massive source of embarrassment to the United Nations that some governments with egregious human rights records sit on the U.N. Human Rights Council.”
• On the threat from revanchist regimes in Moscow and Beijing: “We must reject threats to sovereignty, from the Ukraine to the South China Sea.”

In his speech before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, hailed what he called a “revolution” in Israel’s acceptance around the world and warned that despite Iranian threats “the light of Israel will never be extinguished.”

“This is happening because so many countries around the world have finally woken up to what Israel can do for them,” Netanyahu explained. “Those countries now recognize what brilliant investors like Warren Buffet and great companies like Google and Intel, what they’ve recognized and known for years: That Israel is the innovation nation – the place for cutting-edge technology in agriculture, in water, in cyber security, in medicine, in autonomous vehicles – you name it, we’ve got it.”

Netanyahu added that Israel doesn’t just give the world the technology to improve lives, but the information needed to save lives, “Israel has provided intelligence that has prevented dozens of major terrorist attacks around the world. We have saved countless lives. You may not know this, but your governments do, and they are working closely together with Israel to keep your countries safe and your citizens safe.”

After noting that hundreds of foreign dignitaries visited Israel in the past year, Netanyahu said, “After 70 years, the world is embracing Israel, and Israel is embracing the world.”

Despite the positive changes, the Prime Minister also noted that Israel still isn’t fully accepted, a problem that, he observed, was apparent at the UN.

Hamas-affiliated flotilla leader Zaher Birawi has admitted that the goal of flotillas sailing toward Gaza is not really humanitarian, but propaganda, the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center reported on Tuesday.

The British-Palestinian activist has also predicted that the next flotilla designed to break Israel’s naval blockade of Hamas in Gaza will take place in summer 2018.

He made the statements in a recent interview by Felesteen, Hamas’s daily newspaper, translated and analyzed by the intelligence center.

Birawi is the chairman of the International Committee for Breaking the Siege on Gaza, an umbrella organization established to send flotillas to Gaza.

According to the Center, the flotilla leader said the flotillas’ main goal is propaganda aimed at keeping the Palestinians, Gaza and the “siege” as “live” topics in global discourse.

He stated that the objectives of the flotillas are to defame Israel, and to increase the effect of the political and media campaigns accompanying the flotillas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu devoted much of his address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday afternoon to a blistering attack on the Iranian regime, pointedly citing similarly strong remarks made by US President Donald Trump from the same podium a few hours earlier.

“Iran vows to destroy my country every day,” Netanyahu told the gathered delegates, quickly turning to his criticism of the Iran nuclear deal of 2015.

“Two years ago, I stood here and explained why the Iranian nuclear deal not only doesn’t block Iran’s path to a bomb, but paves its way to a bomb,” Netanyahu said.

The Israeli leader argued that the deal’s fatal flaw is the “sunset clause” governing restrictions on Iran’s nuclear development — echoing his 2015 speech before the UN in which he stated, “what makes matters even worse is that we see a world celebrating this bad deal, rushing to embrace and do business with a regime openly committed to our destruction.”

“In a few years, those restrictions will be automatically removed, not by a change in Iran’s behavior or a lessening of its aggression, they will be removed by a mere change in the calendar,” Netanyahu asserted on Tuesday. “The sunset will cast a dark shadow over the Middle East and the world. Iran will be free to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, placing it on the threshold of a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday:

In recent years, Israel has provided intelligence that has prevented dozens of major terrorist attacks around the world. We have saved countless lives. You may not know this, but your governments do, and they are working closely together with Israel to keep your countries safe and your citizens safe.

Iran vows to destroy my country every day, including by its chief of staff the other day. Iran is conducting a campaign of conquest across the Middle East and Iran is developing ballistic missiles to threaten the entire world.

In the last few months, we've all seen how dangerous even a few nuclear weapons can be in the hands of a small rogue regime. Now imagine the danger of hundreds of nuclear weapons in the hands of a vast Iranian Islamist empire, with the missiles to deliver them anywhere on earth. I know there are those who still defend the dangerous deal with Iran, arguing that it will block Iran's path to the bomb. That's exactly what they said about the nuclear deal with North Korea, and we all know how that turned out.

Fixing the deal means getting rid of the sunset clause. And beyond fixing this bad deal, we must also stop Iran's development of ballistic missiles and roll back its growing aggression in the region. I warned that when the sanctions on Iran would be removed, Iran would behave like a hungry tiger unleashed, not joining the community of nations, but devouring nations, one after the other. And that's precisely what Iran is doing today.

We will act to prevent Iran from establishing permanent military bases in Syria for its air, sea and ground forces. We will act to prevent Iran from producing deadly weapons in Syria or in Lebanon for use against us. And we will act to prevent Iran from opening new terror fronts against Israel along our northern border.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu harshly condemned the Iran nuclear deal in a speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, warning that the accord will pave the way for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons if it is not scrapped or altered.

After praising Donald Trump’s address earlier in the day from the same podium, in which the US president called the Islamic Republic a “murderous” regime and the nuclear deal an “embarrassment,” Netanyahu said the 2015 accord strengthened Iran’s nuclear program and posed a grave threat to the entire world.

“Imagine the danger of hundreds of nuclear weapons in the hands of a vast Iranian Islamist empire, with the missiles to deliver them anywhere on earth,” he said.

Netanyahu singled out for criticism the deal’s so-called sunset clause, which will lift limitations on Iran’s nuclear program when the accord expires in over a decade.

“When that sunset comes, a dark shadow will be cast over the entire Middle East and the world, because Iran will then be free to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, placing it on the threshold of a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons,” he said, adding that the failure of past agreements meant to limit North Korea’s nuclear program showed that the Iran pact “will turn out exactly the same way.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an accomplished veteran of United Nations General Assemblies, a reliably eloquent orator, whose team devotes immense time and effort to formulating his annual appearances at the global podium. Unlike some of his Israeli prime ministerial predecessors, his English is flawless. He never stumbles over his words. He never mangles those carefully constructed sentences.

And so it was on Tuesday, at the Assembly’s 72nd session. The difference, this time, was in the prime minister’s air of assurance.

He has never been short of self-belief. But Netanyahu spoke not as the embittered outsider protesting the world body’s history of anti-Israel bias, not as the friendless target of our region’s aggressors, and not as the exasperated lone voice despairing at his peers’ refusal to interpret current affairs with his wisdom. Netanyahu spoke, rather, with the ultra-confident mien of a national leader who believes the tide of history is turning toward him and his country.

One key factor in that dramatically elevated level of confidence, of course, is the change of US presidency since the last such gathering. Where president Barack Obama championed the Iranian nuclear accord, pushed a reluctant Netanyahu relentlessly for compromise with the Palestinians, and voted an extremely discomfiting resolution through the United Nations Security Council, President Donald Trump shares his horror at the nuclear deal, has made no public demands of Netanyahu regarding the Palestinians, and is determined to reform the UN’s anti-Israel obsessions.

Another major cause of the prime minister’s undisguised sense of growing vindication, as he made plain in his speech, is the simple fact that he is finding a friendly welcome among numerous countries around the world that are gradually recognizing how much of a powerhouse Israel has become in areas central to their national well-being — innovation, technological advances, intel, counter-terrorism and more.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised US President Donald Trump’s speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, in which the American blasted Iran and North Korea, calling it the most “courageous speech” he had ever heard at the world body.

“In over 30 years in my experience with the UN, I never heard a bolder or more courageous speech,” Netanyahu said in a statement after the speech. “President Trump spoke the truth about the great dangers facing our world, and issued a powerful call to confront them in order to ensure the future of humanity.”

Netanyahu, who, in attendance at Trump’s speech along with his wife Sara, applauded enthusiastically at turns. He is set to speak at the UN later Tuesday in an address expected to include a scathing rebuke of the Iran nuclear deal and Tehran’s support for terror groups.

In a video filmed at the UN ahead of his speech and posted on social media, Netanyahu said his speech would not be one the Iranians will soon forget.

French President Emmanuel Macron stood firm Tuesday that the landmark agreements limiting Iran’s nuclear program and climate change would not change, as he gently nudged US President Donald Trump to drop his opposition to the accords.

Macron, like Trump appearing for the first time at the annual United Nations gathering of world leaders, met his US counterpart on Monday for their latest meeting — which appeared to be friendly, but did not bridge differences.

Trump devoted much of his own address at the General Assembly to denouncing Iran, calling the seven-nation agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program championed by his predecessor Barack Obama an “embarrassment to the United States.”

But Macron said that the 2015 deal — reached between Tehran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany — was a “solid, robust agreement that verifies that Iran will not build a nuclear weapon.”

“To reject it now without proposing anything else would be a grave error, and not respecting it would be irresponsible,” Macron told assembly.

Families and advocates for Americans imprisoned in Iran applauded President Trump for demanding the release of all U.S. prisoners and others unjustly detained in Tehran during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday.

Family members of Siamak and Baquer Namazi, a father and son who are being held in Iran's notorious Evin prison, also urged Trump to take urgent action to try to secure their release. They warned that 81-year-old Baquer Namazi's life is hanging in the balance after he underwent heart surgery to install a pacemaker just hours before Trump spoke.

During Trump's speech to the United Nations, he demanded that Iran free all Americans, as well as those from other countries, who the regime is holding captive on false charges.

"It is time for the regime to free all Americans and citizens of other nations they have unjustly detained," Trump said.

The president also condemned North Korea for its "deadly abuse" of Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old University of Virginia college student held in North Korea for more than a year and a half, much of it in a coma. Pyongyang released Warmbier in June while still in a coma to his parents in the United States, and he died just days later.

"My family is rapidly running out of time," Babak Namazi, the brother of Siamak and son of Baquer, said in a statement Tuesday after Trump's speech. "I hope and a pray that my father and brother won't suffer the same fate [as Otto Warmbier] at the hands of the Iranian government. I urge the president to spare no effort to bring my family home."

Speaking at a conference of donor nations to the PA on Monday, Jason Greenblatt, the U.S. special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, said, "The United States is deeply committed to achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement....After years of well-meaning attempts to negotiate an end to this conflict, we have all learned some valuable lessons. Instead of working to impose a solution from the outside, we are giving the parties space to make their own decisions about their future. Instead of laying blame for the conflict at the feet of one party or the other, we are focused on implementing existing agreements and unlocking new areas of cooperation which benefit both Palestinians and Israelis."

"The time has come to stop monitoring the situation in Gaza and start changing the situation in Gaza. For too long, Hamas has exploited the people of Gaza as hostages and shields, bullying them into submission. Hamas rules by the fist, instead of by improving the lives of the people it purports to govern. Hamas continues to divert money belonging to the Palestinians of Gaza - including funds provided by international donors - and uses these funds to build terror tunnels, missiles and for other nefarious uses....It's time for the Palestinian Authority to take control of Gaza - and for the international community to take steps to help this happen. Relief from the suffering in Gaza can only be found when all interested parties gather together to help the Palestinian people and isolate Hamas." 

On the eve of his speech at the UN General Assembly and his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, Palestinian President Mahmoud 'Abbas reiterated his refusal to meet the U.S. and Israeli demand to halt the payment of salaries and allowances to the prisoners and to the families of the martyrs, calling them Palestinian fighters and stressing his commitment to them.

In an interview with the London-based Qatari daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, 'Abbas referred to the Al-Aqsa events – which erupted following Israel's decision to install metal detectors at the Al-Aqsa compound gates in response to the deadly shooting perpetrated on July 14, 2017 by three Arabs – as "non-violent popular resistance"and stressed that such activity would continue. He also said that security coordination with Israel will not be renewed, explaining that the Al-Aqsa events had provided an opportunity to implement the decision taken two years ago by the PLO Central Committee to suspend the security coordination.

'Abbas criticized Arab countries that are acting to normalize their relations with Israel prior to the signing of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, stating that this contravenes the Arab peace initiative. He also said that he would take legal and diplomatic action to compel Britain to apologize for the 1917 Balfour Declaration, and criticized the U.S. for failing to pressure Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders.

Refueling the Palestinian economy must go hand-in-hand with a plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, UN Under-Secretary-General Jeffrey Feltman told a high level donor meeting in New York on Monday night.

“Economic development, critical as it is, is no substitute for sovereignty and statehood,” Feltman said.

“For more than 20 years, we have told Palestinians that they need to focus on institution building and socioeconomic development.

“We have encouraged and supported them in preparing for statehood. The time has come for us to deliver on that promise,” he told the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, which held its annual meeting in New York on the sidelines of the General Assembly.

The forum is held twice a year and is the only venue in which Israelis and Palestinians hold a regular dialogue with the donor and international community.

Egypt and Israel also share an interest in preventing Iranian influence in the region, whether it be via proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah or in areas of Syria that have remained under the control of Bashar Assad.

In short, there is much of common concern to Netanyahu and Sisi and it is only natural that they meet regularly and publicly.

The toxic atmosphere that surrounds any attempts at normalization between Israel and Egypt is largely the result of deep-seated perceptions in the Muslim world about Israel and Jews. Antisemitism and the vilification of Israel are rampant in Egypt. Wild conspiracy stories are widely believed. If Sisi wants to be able to meet with Netanyahu without being lambasted at home, he needs to take steps as the leader to change perceptions.

But Israel is not completely without blame. Netanyahu might be successful as a political survivor, but he also needs to provide vision and direction as a leader of the Jewish state. An honest attempt needs to be made to reengage with the Palestinians. Though Netanyahu had hoped during his meeting this week with US President Donald Trump that the Palestinian issue would not come up, Trump made it clear via Tweets and public statements that he still views the peace process as a prerequisite to improved relations between Israel and Muslim countries in the region. There are no short cuts. Improved relations with Egypt depend on the success of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

One day a public meeting between Israeli and Egyptian heads of state will be taken for granted. But before that happens both Netanyahu and Sisi have to fulfill their duties as leaders.

Monday’s public sit-down in New York City between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was a manifestation of increasingly close Jerusalem-Cairo ties, an expert on Egyptian politics told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.

“It appears as though this meeting was designed to signal a further warming of relations, and take what had been a behind-the-scenes strategic relationship public,” Eric Trager — the Esther K. Wagner Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank — said of the event, which took place on the sidelines of the 72nd UN General Assembly session.

“Sisi and Netanyahu met, ostensibly, to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, but, in all likelihood, it covered a range of shared interests, including the situation in Sinai, as well as their mutual concerns regarding Turkish and Qatari support for various Islamist movements,” Trager noted.

Furthermore, he said, the two leaders “likely also covered recent developments regarding Hamas, which is increasingly in Egypt’s orbit, rather than Qatar’s.”

“From Israel’s standpoint, that is likely preferable, given that it trusts Sisi more than it trusts Doha,” Trager explained.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi urged Palestinians to overcome their differences and be ready to co-exist with each other and with Israelis in safety and security.

"I tell the Palestinian people it's extremely important ... to overcome the differences and not to lose opportunities and to be ready to accept co-existence with the other, with Israelis in safety and security," Sisi told the annual U.N. General Assembly gathering of world leaders in New York.

Following Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Western-backed Fatah faction, Islamist Hamas said on Sunday it would dissolve its "administrative committee" to enable Abbas' administration to retake control in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas urged Abbas on Tuesday to respond by ending his sanctions on the impoverished enclave.

Addressing the Israelis, Sisi said: "We have an excellent experience in Egypt in peace with you for longer than 40 years."

"We can repeat this experience and this excellent step once again - the peace and security of the Israeli citizens together with the peace and security of the Palestinian citizens," Sisi told the 193-member General Assembly to a round of applause.

An Iranian television translator defended himself Wednesday after being widely criticised for soft-balling US President Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran in his maiden speech to the UN General Assembly.

Nima Chitsaz, a translator for state broadcaster IRIB, said he had decided in the heat of the moment to spare his Persian-speaking viewers from the verbal attacks by the US president.

“I don’t think it would be nice for me to speak on national TV against my own country,” he later told IRINN television.

As a result, when Trump accused Iran of being a “depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos”, Chitsaz’s Persian translation was simply: “Iran speaks of destroying Israel.”

Trump later told the UN assembly: “Other than the vast military power of the United States… Iran’s people are what their leaders fear the most.”

Which was translated for Iranian viewers as: “The US Army is a very strong army and the Iranian nation is a very strong nation.”

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah 2017, it seems there are three main regional and global factors that Israel must consider as it forges ahead: The first is an unstable world, which apparently no longer has agreed-upon tools with which to deal with issues that arise between states.

The second is an ambiguous system of world order, in which the United States has withdrawn from its role as the world's policeman; Russia uses its military power to promote its interests in the Middle East while breaking familiar rules; and China, which is gaining economic power, is flexing its muscles and all but ignoring the U.S.

The third is a dynamic Middle East that is undergoing one of the most violent transition processes in its history. In this Middle East, Iran plays an active role and is the main beneficiary of the events of the past seven years, mostly over its support – alongside Russia – of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

The combination of these conditions presents Israel with both an improved strategic situation and several real challenges. On the one hand, these changes have resulted in the fact that none of Israel's neighbors enjoy a true alliance with a superpower, as Israel has with the U.S. Russia may have spared no effort to save Assad, but it did so to demonstrate its power more than out of any sense of deep friendship, and Moscow's relations with Tehran are nothing more than a marriage of convenience.

These past few years have entailed a difficult and complex day-to-day reality in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria that requires the country's defense and security forces to be on the alert for every possible scenario.

On more than one occasion, these individuals' bravery has made them heroes as they thwarted attacks, saving people and avoiding a disaster.

Meitar Arbiv, 20, from Ahuzat Barak in the Jezreel Valley, serves in the IDF's 282nd Artillery Brigade. In her first years as an officer in the Etzion Brigade, while on a routine patrol near Tekoa, she spotted a suspicious figure and engaged him in conversation. Then he tried to stab her.

"He started to come at me and we physically grappled," Arbiv says.

"At one point, I managed to push him away so there would be room for the officer who was with me during the incident to shoot him and immobilize him."

Arbiv was wounded in the attack, but she says, "Even when it was happening, I was thinking about how to get back to my routine and my soldiers as quickly as possible."

An eight-man terrorist cell in Jerusalem nicknamed the “Ghosts of Silwan” was uncovered and dismantled by Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), police and the Border Police undercover unit in recent weeks, the security organization said on Tuesday.

Eight men, who are Israeli citizens, were arrested in connection with planning to carry out shooting attacks on Israeli vehicles and other targets in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.

According to the investigation the cell members were involved in several attacks in the Silwan area such as throwing Molotov cocktails, fireworks, and stones at security forces and security vehicles.

The investigation also found that the cell planned to purchase weapons in order to carry out a shooting attack against Jewish targets in Silwan, such as against Jewish vehicles or homes in the neighborhood.

According to the Shin Bet, the head of the cell identified as 19-year-old Silwan resident Muhammad Farouk was in contact with sources in Lebanon and Gaza who were financing the cell.

The agreement makes no reference to Hamas's security control over the Gaza Strip. This means that Hamas and its armed wing, Ezaddin Al-Qassam, will remain the main "law-enforcers" in the Gaza Strip. The idea that Hamas would allow Mahmoud Abbas's security forces to return to the Gaza Strip is pure illusion.

There is no mention in the agreement of Hamas's political and ideological agenda. The agreement does not require Hamas to abandon its charter, which calls for the elimination of Israel. Nor does it require Hamas to lay down its arms and accept Israel's right to exist.

The agreement absolves Hamas of its financial responsibilities towards its constituents in the Gaza Strip. The resumption of Palestinian Authority (PA) funds to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip will allow Hamas to redirect its resources and energies to building up its military capabilities in preparation for war with Israel. Hamas will no longer have to worry about salaries and electricity and medical supplies to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip because Abbas will be taking care of that.

The agreement facilitates Hamas's effort to project itself as a legitimate player in the Palestinian arena and win international recognition and sympathy. Hamas will now be able to market itself as a legitimate partner in Abbas's Western-funded PA governments.

So far the Gazan company hasn’t faced pressure from Hamas.
When Mellanox announced it was going to take on staff in Gaza, it was covered in both Israeli and Palestinian media.

Hamas, the Gazan CEO said, could reasonably guess the company but taking action would make dozens of people unemployed and their families poorer.

“Gaza is small and everyone saw the news. No one said anything,” he said.

Yet having lost a family member in the 2014 war, he said he could understand that most Gazans were not ready to work with Israelis.

Waldman said right-wing Israeli politicians had spoken out against the idea.

“We also have some employees that have extreme right political views. They definitely voiced their views,” he said.

None of the staff working in Gaza for Mellanox were willing to speak, even on condition of anonymity.
And while the 10 staff in Gaza are effectively employees of Mellanox, their salaries are paid through a Palestinian firm to avoid tensions.

“We felt it was too sensitive for them to have an Israeli company there,” Waldman said. “One missile can blow the whole thing up.”

So, for nearly two years now, Israeli military and intelligence officials have been warning every American official who comes through Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that the next war is coming. Israel has methodically prepared its allies—and most especially the Americans— for a very, very ugly war on the horizon. I don’t claim to know the precise spark that will ignite the next conflict, but Israel has been clear about the things it considers to be casus belli, and Hezbollah has consistently ignored them.

I shudder to think what the next conflict will look like. Since 1993, each clash between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon has been successively more violent. 1993’s Operation “Accountability” in southern Lebanon involved mostly air and artillery. 1996 brought Operation “Grapes of Wrath,” and the destruction of Lebanese civilian infrastructure beyond southern Lebanon. The war in 2006 leveled entire neighborhoods in Beirut, and led to the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of civilians in both Lebanon and Israel.

Now, especially since Hezbollah has dispersed its arsenal across Lebanon, the entire country will burn, and Israel will suffer mightily. Not one but two U.S. allies—for the United States has invested heavily in the Lebanese army, which Israel will almost certainly treat as hostile, and which will almost certainly attempt to defend Lebanese territory—will suffer.

And for what? What will Hezbollah have accomplished, other than the destruction of its villages and cities? It has duped its young fighters, who have been fighting the Israeli project of late in such hotbeds of Zionism as Aleppo and Deir az-Zour, into thinking Israel is weak.

Hezbollah has grossly underestimated Israel, a mistake that will prove costly. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of Israelis could die in another conflict, but Israel isn’t going anywhere. This is existential for them. It will be the Lebanese who suffer immeasurably more.

If only Hezbollah could realize that, rather than pursue its present course, so much pain could be avoided.

"Outgoing Syria war crimes investigator Carla Del Ponte said on Monday she had quit her post out of frustration over 'total impunity', in a fiery farewell speech.

Del Ponte, an accomplished war crimes prosecutor, announced last month that she was leaving the Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Syria, a UN-backed panel that has collected evidence of alleged atrocities committed in the country since the outbreak of civil war in 2011.

'I resign to put an end to my frustration,' Del Ponte told the Human Rights Council, after the COI presented its latest report.

'Seven years of crimes in Syria and total impunity. That is not acceptable'...

She said that when she joined the COI she did not anticipate that the international community would fail to set up a court capable of trying crimes committed in Syria. The commission has repeatedly urged the United Nations Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court, an effort that has been blocked by the Damascus regime's ally Russia...

The U.S. sent a veiled warning to Russia on Monday, saying that it will not hesitate to defend the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which Russia reportedly hit Saturday with airstrikes.

“@CJTFOIR will defend itself and #SDF against threats; continue to defeat #ISIS in Syria,” Army Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, tweeted out Monday.

Dillon’s tweet is clearly in reference to the Pentagon’s claim that Russian airstrikes targeted the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led SDF in Deir Ezzor east of the Euphrates River.

“Russian munitions impacted a location known to the Russians to contain Syrian Democratic Forces and coalition advisers,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “Several SDF fighters were wounded.”

No U.S. advisers embedded with SDF were hit, but a U.S. official told CNN that U.S. special operators were only a couple miles away from the location where the Russian airstrikes hit. The U.S. is still exploring the possibility that the strike was merely an error by the Russians, as opposed to a deliberate attack.

Islamic State propaganda disseminated online draws more clicks in the United States than in any country in Europe despite much-publicized counter efforts by Silicon Valley, according to a new report published Monday night.

Analysts from the Britain-based Policy Exchange think tank reported that over a six-month span beginning in February, the United States was the second most frequent location from which jihadist content was accessed online, preceded only by Turkey.

By a conservative estimate, ISIS produces about 100 items of new content each week, including execution videos and orders for suicide attacks, despite significant territorial losses in Iraq and Syria over the past year.

The analysts said ISIS penetrates western social media platforms through an online "ecosystem" in which content is first disseminated to its core followers through the encrypted Telegram app, and then dispersed by so-called "missionaries" across various mainstream domains such as Twitter and Facebook. The strategy enables the group to reach tens of thousands of users worldwide, many of whom are based in the United States.

The report arrives before British Prime Minister Theresa May is set to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron this week to deliberate possible measures to crackdown on online extremism. Penalties could include fines against tech companies such as Google and Facebook if they fail to ramp up efforts to remove jihadist content.

The summit comes after the attempted bombing of a subway in London on Friday using an explosive device that can be built from instructions found online.

Iran has drastically increased financial support for its Lebanese-based terrorist proxy Hezbollah since the Iran nuclear deal was signed two years ago, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Iran secured $100 billion in frozen assets and sanction relief in January 2016 as a result of the deal with the United States and European countries. Flush with cash, Iran immediately increased its support for terrorist proxies in the region — and nefarious activities worldwide. Hezbollah was receiving $200 million from Iran before the nuclear deal. Now, it’s reportedly $800 million.

Last month, Hamas terrorist leader Yahya Sinwar admitted that “relations with Iran are excellent and Iran is the largest supporter of the [Hamas military wing] Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades with money and arms.” Iran reportedly provides Hamas with about $60-$70 million a year.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas remain dedicated to Israel’s destruction, and continue to invest considerable resources to fight the Jewish state. Iran also spends hundreds of millions of dollars on Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, while increasing support for Houthi militants in Yemen.

Shortly after the July 2015 nuclear deal was signed, Iran expanded its presence in regional conflicts, and even increased its own intervention in Syria’s civil war, leading to mounting Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) casualties.

An al Qaeda-backed media group has issued a "wanted poster" for President Donald Trump that features a picture of the U.S. president with the words, "Wanted dead or alive for crimes against Islam," according to a copy of the poster and accompanying screed published by a Middle East media watchdog group.

Al-Hijrah Media, a pro al Qaeda group, released a statement earlier this week seeking the death of Trump for the United States' involvement in Afghanistan, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI.

In addition to the wanted poster, the group released a statement lashing out at America for its continued presence in Afghanistan.

The "message to Trump and the Americans" claims that the United States is "weaker today than ever" and that it continues to fail in its efforts to defeat jihadi groups in Afghanistan.

"The U.S. was unable to defeat the Mujahideen when it had more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan," the message states.

The Baha’i community on Tuesday welcomed the release of a member serving a 10-year prison term in Iran, but expressed concern for six co-religionists tried alongside her.

Mahvesh Sabet, 64, was released on Monday, Diane Ala’i of the Geneva-based Baha’i International Community told AFP.

Sabet, a former teacher and school principal, and six other leaders of the minority community were arrested in March 2008 and sentenced to 20 years in jail for heresy and espionage for Israel.

Their sentences were later reduced to 10 years.

Iran allows prisoners more than halfway through their sentences to win parole for good behavior.

Sabet “will naturally be awaiting the release of her six colleagues who continue to be unjustly imprisoned,” BIC said in a statement.

“Although the news of the release of Ms Sabet… is a welcome development, it does not signal the end of the persecution of the Baha’is in Iran,” it added.

We enter Rosh Hashanah 5778 with conflicting emotions.

Israel has never been stronger, but we live in a world of chaos.

North Korea threatens nuclear Armageddon and Europe is now suffering Islamist terrorist attacks the likes of which Israel has endured since its inception.

The Iranians and Hezbollah seek to move in on Israel’s northern frontiers, repeatedly proclaiming an imminent war that will destroy Israel. Prospects are nonexistent for peace with the Palestinians and Hamas has announced a renewal of its relationship with Iran.

We now realize that the apparent decline in anti-Semitism after the Shoah was illusory. Globally, anti-Semitism – frequently expressed as anti-Israelism – has escalated.

Domestically, Israel has been inundated with accusations of corruption implicating the prime minister and leading government officials, prominent businessmen, senior bureaucrats and even the IDF. Although these charges have yet to be proven, the accused have been proclaimed guilty by undisciplined police officers and the sensationalist media.

Despite these challenges, we must thank the Almighty; the Jewish people is stronger than it has ever been since the destruction of the Second Temple, and Israel is a regional superpower.

Whatever one's views about U.S. President Donald Trump and despite some unfulfilled campaign promises, he supports Israel. In addition, support for Israel in Congress and the overall American public stands at an all-time high.

As the New Year 5778 begins, 88% of Israeli Jews say that they are happy and satisfied with their lives. This makes sense. Israel’s relative security, its prosperity, freedom and spiritual blossoming make Israeli Jews the most successful Jewish community in 3,500 years of Jewish history.

The same cannot be said for the Jews of the Diaspora. In Western Europe, Jewish communities that just a generation ago were considered safe and prosperous are now besieged. Synagogues and Jewish schools look like army barracks. And the severe security cordons Jews need to pass through to pray and study are entirely justified. For where they are absent, as they were at the Hyper Cacher Jewish supermarket in Paris in 2015, assailants strike.

Western European Jewry’s crisis is exogenous to the Jewish communities. It isn’t the Jews who caused the crisis, which may in time cause the wholesale exodus of the Jews from Europe. The crisis is a function of growing levels of popular antisemitism spurred by mass immigration from the Islamic world and the resurgence of indigenous European Jew-hatred, particularly on the far Left.

The same cannot be said of the American Jewish community, which at the dawn of 5778 also finds itself steeped in an ever deepening crisis. And while antisemitism is a growing problem in America, particularly on university campuses, unlike their European counterparts, American Jews could mount and win a battle against the growing anti-Jewish forces. But in large part, they have chosen not to. And they have chosen not to fight the antisemites because they are in the midst of a self-induced identity crisis.

First, there is the problem of demographic collapse.

In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, British and Israeli senior officials convened in Jerusalem last week to discuss the past, present and future of British-Israeli relations.

The Balfour Declaration was a British government public statement, issued on November 2, 1917, that offered support for the establishment of a “national home” in Palestine for the Jewish people. The declaration is credited with galvanizing popular support for Zionism.

The recent UK-Israeli conference was dubbed “From Balfour to Brexit,” and held on September 13 and 14 to inaugurate the new Jerusalem-based Sir Naim Dangoor Centre for UK-Israel Relations. Speakers at the conference, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Israeli Ambassador to Britain Mark Regev, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, focused on the history and future of British-Israeli relations. They also discussed the possible political and historical implications of Britain’s upcoming exit from the European Union, as mandated by last year’s so-called “Brexit” vote.

At the conference, Lord Roderick Balfour, the 5th Earl of Balfour — and the great-great nephew of former Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour — reminisced fondly about “family folklore” of his ancestor’s “very important letter.”

Contemporary battles to defend Israel in the media are an “extension of the historic Jewish struggle for emancipation,” Algemeiner Editor-in-Chief Dovid Efune declared on Monday at the paper’s annual gala in New York City.

Speaking in front of an audience of over 600 supporters, Efune recalled, “Even the early pioneers knew that the fight for Jewish self-determination would not end with the founding of the Jewish state. Indeed, there is a long and hard road ahead. And the emergence of today’s Information Age has set forth new challenges that have hindered the Jewish campaign to secure our place in the community of nations.”

“In a world where media consumption is at an all-time high, where TV narratives and social media trends command the attention of policymakers, where editors and producers reign supreme, the Jewish people find themselves vulnerable yet again,” he went on to say.

The purpose of The Algemeiner, Efune stated, was to provide a “media home for the Jewish people and everything that the Jewish people stand for — for truth, for justice, for speaking out, for reaching out to those in need,” serving as a “lighthouse newspaper” to “shine a light of truth over the troubled waters of deception and falsehood, and also to highlight the good and the heroic in this world.”

Watch Efune’s remarks in their entirety below:

The Algemeiner unveiled its 4th annual “J100” list of top 100 people “positively influencing Jewish life” on Monday night, at a star-studded gala in New York City. Honorees in attendance included President of the Czech Republic Miloš Zeman, Israeli artist Yaacov Agam and activists Stuart and Robbi Force.

The event, held at Cipriani’s 25 Broadway location, was attended by over 600 people, who gathered in support of The Algemeiner.

Both Zeman and Agam received The Algemeiner‘s prestigious “Warrior for Truth” award.

Special guests Stuart and Robbi Force — the parents of the late Taylor Force, the US Army veteran murdered in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv last year for whom a proposed bill seeking to restrict American aid to the Palestinian Authority was named — also delivered moving remarks at the event.

Other notable attendees included: James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal; National Security Council member Victoria Coates; Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein; legal scholar Alan Dershowitz; World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder; Refet Kaplan of Fox News; artist Ron Agam; actor Paul Sorvino; former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro; Israeli Consul General in New York Dani Dayan; Czech Ambassador to the US Hynek Kmoníček; Czech Ambassador to the UN Marie Chatardova; and Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Executive Vice Chairman and CEO Malcolm Hoenlein, among a number of community and industry leaders.

The evening’s Master of Ceremonies was TV personality S.E. Cupp, and Event Chairs were Neil and Sharon Book. Bernard-Henri Lévy served as Honorary Chairman, and i24 News anchor Shayna Estulin hosted the red carpet.

Today was the day. Convicted terrorist murderer and immigration fraudster Rasmea Odeh’s last day on U.S. soil.

She’s been stripped of her citizenship and put on a plane out of O’Hare for Jordan, where she’ll join convicted terrorist murderer Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of the Sbarro Pizzeria Massacre.

For background on Rasmea and her pathetic lying supporters, see my post Convicted terrorist and immigration fraudster Rasmea Odeh to be deported September 19.

I also gave a detailed explanation in my interview, The Lies of Rasmea Odeh and Her Supporters Exposed.

Demonstrating the effectiveness of the propaganda campaign by Rasmea’s supporters, the Associated Press headline, widely shared, referred to her as an “activist” rather than the terrorist she is and uncritically quoted her claim of a coerced confession:

In searching for material for my Rasmea Odeh deportation post, I came across the following tweet of some of her supporters, clearly calling for the destruction of Israel (liberation of Palestine = all of British mandate Palestine, including modern Israel).

While I do not recognize most of these people, two stand out.

I do not know who the guy marked on the top left is, but he is part of Adalah NY and advocates for BDS. He is one of the “stars” of one the BDS flash mob fail videos I have featured on this blog.

The woman on the bottom left is Anna Baltzer, another BDS-hole I have featured on the blog a number of times, and who also features in one of the BDS flash mob fail videos I have posted.

So while we can laugh at their lame dance moves and terrible singing, what they stand for is terrifying.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) issued a rather outlandish and gross analogy on Wednesday in which he compared illegal immigrants in the United States to Jews living in Nazi Germany.

Ellison was speaking at a panel in Minneapolis focusing on immigration reform and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and began ranting about how American citizens are supposedly "deeply connected" to illegals.

"Three million DACA recipients live with someone who is a citizen of the United States," Ellison bloviated. "Add that to the people who work with a DACA recipient. Add that to people who are the parents of a DACA recipient. Add that to people who are parents of American citizens."


"You are literally talking over 100 million Americans who are in some way — way more than 100 million, maybe well over that — who are deeply connected to people who have immigrated to the United States, some with official papers some with not."

Ellison went on to claim that this means Americans have a moral obligation to provide sanctuary for illegals and then proceeded to make the disgusting comparison.

"If you ask yourself, 'What I would I do if I was a gentile in 1941 if my Jewish neighbors were under attack by the Nazis, would I give them sanctuary?'" Ellison said. "You might be about to find what you'd do. Will you pass that moral test, or will you fail it?"

To seriously compare illegals living in America today to Jews in Nazi Germany is gross and wrong in a myriad of ways. People who are here illegally — meaning they broke the law and are facing consequences for doing so — are far different than Jews who were gassed to death by the Nazis. To make that comparison trivializes the horrors of the Holocaust.

Ellison is also in no position to be making such a comparison given his extensive ties to Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam and record of anti-Semitism. And he's the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

This near erasure of terror attacks from the nation’s memory, or at least from the nation’s daily political interactions, is not an accident. All those PC-sounding platitudes – don’t let them get to you, stand together, love conquers hate, move on, etc – are precisely designed to discourage intellectual and political interrogation of the problem of 21st-century terror in favour of encouraging us to feel small, short-lived emotions instead. This post-terror culture, the cultivation of sadness over debate, ‘carrying on’ over confronting the problem, is an attempt by the cultural elite to decommission what it sees as ordinary people’s problematic anger and to ensure we have only a passive response to terror. Lay a flower and go home again, like good, obedient children.

This isn’t stoicism. Stoicism doesn’t mean being silent or refusing to think hard about the problems that face you and your society. Strictly speaking, stoicism is the opposite of that: it’s an Ancient Greek philosophy that encouraged the endurance of hardship and indifference to pain precisely as a means of heightening knowledge and reasoned discussion. What we have post-terror today runs counter to this. It’s the cultivation of national indifference to acts of mass murder as a means of repressing discussion, not facilitating it. When, in earlier periods, people were encouraged to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ – most notably during the Second World War – the aim wasn’t to shush awkward debate or dull the minds and questions of the masses. Debates about the problem of Nazism and other issues abounded even as people kept calm and carried on. People were encouraged not to fear the enemy; they were not encouraged to avoid talking about the enemy. What we have today is something different and pretty terrifying: a situation where ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ really means ‘Do not name the enemy; do not talk about it; it’s nothing to worry about; just go back to work’. Keep calm and the shut the hell up.

But there is much to talk about. And have strong feelings about. And get angry about. If it’s true a refugee planted the failed bomb at Parsons Green, then that raises very serious questions about the recent influx of refugees to Europe and about our societies’ failure to assimilate them; it raises questions about the the failure of multiculturalism. That this was the fourth seemingly Islamist attack in Britain this year raises huge questions about this ideology and what we might do to defeat it. That the powers-that-be do not trust us to have an open, frank debate about these mass murders of our fellow citizens raises big questions about democracy and freedom of speech. We should not fear terrorism but we should confront it, really, freely and honestly. Right now, one gets the impression that officialdom and the media elite fear us and our ideas and feelings more than they do terrorists.

London's Metropolitan Police is on higher alert in the Jewish communities ahead of the High Holy Days, a Jewish volunteer community group posted on Wednesday.

Shomrim UK, a Jewish volunteer community safety patrol organization based in England, tweeted a letter they received by Metropolitan Police saying that London police will be working closely with the Jewish community in the coming weeks "to provide an extra level of visibility and vigilance."

This comes after Metropolitan Police arrested two more suspects on Wednesday in the investigation of the September 15 terror attack at London's Parsons Green train station, that Islamic State claimed responsibility for.

A home-made bomb on a packed rush-hour commuter train in London engulfed a carriage in flames, but apparently failed to fully explode, injuring 22 people in the attack.

However, the letter to Shomrim UK stated that this raise in security is "not in response to a raised threat." The British police added that it is an opportunity to work closer with London's Jewish community and to ensure a "happy and safe holy day period."

The United States put twin brothers from South Africa who planned attacks on Jewish institutions in their native country and on the US embassy on its terror blacklist.

Brandon-Lee and Tony-Lee Thulsie, 24, were arrested in July 2016 in South Africa and charged with three counts related to terrorism. They had converted to Islam the year before.

The State Department said that because of the threat they pose to US security the pair had been named “Specially Designated Global Terrorists.”

“These designations seek to deny Tony-Lee Thulsie and Brandon-Lee Thulsie the resources they need to plan and carry out terrorist attacks,” the State Department said in a statement Tuesday.

“Today’s designations notify the U.S. public and the international community that Tony-Lee Thulsie and Brandon-Lee Thulsie have committed or pose a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism. Terrorism designations expose and isolate entities and individuals, and deny them access to the U.S. financial system. Moreover, designations can assist the law enforcement activities of U.S. agencies and other governments,” the statement said.

Last week, conservative Ben Shapiro gave a speech. At Berkeley. And all across America, people watched their screens to see what sort of violence would erupt.

Reality was anticlimactic. Law enforcement was out in force, at an estimated price tag of $600,000. Concrete barriers were erected to hold back the liberal “antifa,” and police obtained permission in advance to use pepper spray. Much of campus was locked down and cleared out. Nine people were arrested. And so, Shapiro arrived, gave his speech, and departed without the mayhem we’ve become accustomed to seeing at such appearances. And collective relief was sighed.

But how relieved should we be that this is what it takes to maintain order in the face of … a speech? On the one hand it shows that even in the heart of antifa territory, police and authorities that are actually determined to control them can do so. That’s good to know (and gives the lie to chicken authorities who would give antifa a heckler’s veto). And yet, those authorities could be forgiven for feeling daunted, even aggrieved, when they realize that every speaker antifa doesn’t like means vast sums, and considerable effort, expended on turning your public spaces into a demilitarized zone.

I don’t have an ironclad date for when antifa became a recognizable, and destructive, force in our politics. But I really began to notice them around the time of Trump’s election, when I saw people defending their actions on the grounds that they were trying to stop Trump from being “normalized.” It was argued that protesting-as-usual -- show up, mill around for a while, chant a bit, and then go home to see how much news coverage you got -- was inadequate to our uniquely dangerous historical moment. Stronger action was called for.

A program for Diaspora Jews began a crowdfunding campaign on Monday after Masa Israel pulled its support, citing participants’ involvement in certain disputed activity in the West Bank.

The program in question is Achvat Amim, meaning “Solidarity of Nations,” which for the past four years has operated under the wing of Masa Israel, a division of the Jewish Agency.

The decision comes a month after right-wing watchdog Ad Kan went to the media saying that Achvat Amim, a program organized by the Hashomer Hatza’ir youth group, was carrying out demonstrations in Palestinian villages and provoking IDF soldiers.

Video footage taken by participants in the program revealed members of Achvat Amim volunteering at the “Sumud Freedom Camp” – a Palestinian camp in the South Hebron Hills that was established in May and lasted some 40 days, Ad Kan said. Footage purported to show Achvat Amim participants involved with the reconstruction of this outpost and clashing with security personnel.

Achvat Amim slammed the Ad Kan report as “inaccurate and misleading,” saying that the activity in question referred to a six-week event “that brought together Israelis, Palestinians and Jews from around the world to take part in entirely legal activities – clearing, cleaning and making livable the area of the cave home of a local Palestinian family who were working to bring life back to the land they had left two decades ago.

The Democrats scored an important victory against hatred and intolerance earlier this month when State Senator Daniel Biss announced that he had dropped his running mate, Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Illinois governor.

A week earlier the Evanston Democrat had selected Ramirez-Rosa to run alongside him in the Democratic primary. But the relationship quickly soured over Ramirez-Rosa’s support of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, a fringe anti-Semitic group that calls for the ostracization of companies and institutions that do business with Israel.

Within hours of Ramirez-Rosa’s nomination, Illinois Democrats launched a campaign of protest, expressing a zero-tolerance stance against BDS and anti-Semitism in Democratic Party ranks. A few days later, influential Congressman Brad Schneider had withdrawn his support for Biss’ campaign, citing reservations over Ramirez-Rosa’s “past comments about the United States support of our ally Israel.”

The Democratic Congressman also voiced concern over the alderman’s affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America, an activist organization which, at its convention in Chicago in August, passed a resolution in support of BDS.

For the Democrats to respond to events quickly and decisively was crucial. It set a standard for the rest of the country that, when you need to move left to win a primary, there is a red line on Israel that makes supporting BDS — on its own — disqualifying for candidates for state-wide office.

We already know Michael Moore is on the wrong side of history, which includes hatred of Israel.

So it comes as no surprise that he would have rock-n-roll BDS-hole Roger Waters as his guest on his Broadway show.

In this clip, Waters brings up BDS and receives boos from some in the audience – obviously wise to what he and BDS are really all about. But in true Waters dishonest fashion, he suggests the boos are about something else entirely.

These two are turds of a feather.

The Cornell campus currently is in turmoil over two racial incidents.

In one, a student shouted “build a wall” near the Latino Living Center. At least two reports (Campus Reform and The New American) claim the student was Hispanic and said it to mock Trump. The Cornell administration has declined to confirm or deny those reports, referring me instead to prior general statements from university officials. I may have more on that in a subsequent post.

In a second incident, one or more students who got into a fight off campus with a black student called him the “N” word.

There have been multiple statements from the university administration promising action, and some student assembly members are considering trying to ban “hate speech” as part of a campus code revision.

The Cornell student assembly considered last night a statement on the incidents.

Some students, however, used the opportunity to hijack the student assembly statement to insert language against the completely unrelated Cornell’s partnership with The Technion, Israel’s high tech university.

The New York Times finally tackled the issue of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s report analyzing whether America could have prevented the genocide and refugee crisis in Syria — and, unbelievably, it gives the last word in the story to a notorious anti-Israel agitator.

The Times article, by Sopan Deb and Max Fisher, is error-riddled and tendentious from the very beginning. Its first sentence is: “The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is finding itself in an unfamiliar position: as a lightning rod for the fierce debate over the Obama administration’s role in the Syrian civil war.”

This is wrong on two counts.

First it’s not an “unfamiliar position” for the museum to be at the center of a controversy about the Middle East. In fact it’s been repeatedly in this position. There was the flap over Yasser Arafat’s visit to the museum. There was a flap in the late 1990s — I wrote about it for The Forward at the time — over the museum’s involvement with a book about war crimes that included a section about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian Arabs.

Second, the description of what happened in Syria as a “civil war” is the sort of term that takes the side of those who argued that America shouldn’t get involved. If it was a Syrian “civil war,” then why get in the middle of it? If it was a Syrian genocide, or refugee crisis, or humanitarian crisis, then the case for American intervention might be stronger.

The problems keep piling up for Facebook, and it’s unclear how long the internet giant will be able to brush them aside as it barrels toward acquiring its next billion users.

The world’s biggest social network has unwittingly allowed groups backed by the Russian government to target users with ads. That’s after it took months to acknowledge its outsized role in influencing the US election by allowing the spread of fake news — though before news emerged that it let advertisers target messages to “Jew-haters.”

Now Facebook is under siege, facing questions from lawmakers and others seeking to rein in its enormous power. The company has turned over information on the Russia-backed ads to federal authorities investigating Russian interference in the US presidential election. Critics say the company also needs to tell its users how they might have been influenced by outside meddlers.

Speculation is rife that Facebook executives, perhaps including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, could be called to testify before Congress. Hearings might lead to new regulations on the company.

“Facebook appears to have been used as an accomplice in a foreign government’s effort to undermine democratic self-governance in the United States,” writes Trevor Potter, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and now head of a nonpartisan election-law group, in a letter to Zuckerberg.

The 4’11” French Jewish woman was walking through a field of snow when the ground underneath her began to crack. She was a spy for the Allies, sent to infiltrate the German front, but her military guide had neglected to mention the frozen body of water along the way. When the ice broke and Marthe Cohn fell into the canal, she wondered if this was finally the end.

“I told myself, if you don’t get out from here as fast you can, you’re going to die of hypothermia,” recalled Cohn, now 97.

But perishing wasn’t an option. Dying would mean giving up on her top-secret mission and squandering the courage those closest to her had shown in the face of terror.

Her siblings worked to save fellow Jews from the horrors of the Nazi regime. Her fiancé, Jacques, was also involved with the resistance. He was later executed by the German army for his actions.

Cohn herself had been threatened and insulted for her religion. But she was a spy now — a spy with an important task, and she had no intention of returning to her superiors empty handed.

More than 600 guests at The Algemeiner‘s annual gala in New York City on Monday night sat enthralled by a speech from Czech President Miloš Zeman, in which he talked of his love for Israel and the Jewish people, and ridiculed what he called the “yes, but…” method of supporting Israel.

“I paraphrased the famous slogan of John F. Kennedy, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner,'” Zeman told the crowd, as he recalled a speech he’d made at a major international conference.

Said Zeman, “I told them, ‘I am a Jew.'” He then added in Hebrew – to warm applause from the crowd – “ani yehudi.”

Zeman, who was accepting The Algemeiner‘s “Warrior for Truth” award, declared that words by themselves were not enough. He highlighted the global risks facing Israel and the democratic world, especially “Islamic terrorism,” and the need for “concrete action.”

Zeman was scathing towards those who accept Israel as a fact, but do not respect its legitimacy. He noted that there are those who, when asked if they support Israel, answer, “yes, but…”

Zeman cited international refusal to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as an example of this attitude.

The IDF has officially expunged the term "Temple Mount," choosing instead to refer to Judaism's holiest site as "behind the Kotel," NRG reported.

In a pamphlet given to soldiers going on a tour of Jerusalem, the guidebook given to soldiers says that the famous Binding of Yitzhak (Isaac) occurred "behind the Kotel," using that term instead of the Temple Mount.

According to Makor Rishon, newer booklets produced by the IDF's Jewish Identity Branch do not discuss the Binding of Yitzhak at all.

The pamphlet, produced by the IDF Rabbinate titled, "The Selichot Tours Booklet," is currently serves as the Slichot excursion guidebook for soldiers. It contains explanations and sources for the selichot prayers, including one which describes the Binding of Yitzhak - an event mentioned both in Sephardic and Ashkenazic selichot prayers.

NRG reported that according to the booklet, the Binding of Yitzhak is "one of the most important events in the history of the Jewish nation. Our forefather Avraham, the founder of the Jewish nation, was willing to give up what meant most to him - his son Yitzhak, for the sake of his lofty ideals. And Yitzhak himself was willing to give up his life for these ideals."

Israel said it will dispatch aid to Mexico following a devastating earthquake that shook the center of the country, collapsing buildings and killing at least 149 people.

Dozens of buildings tumbled into mounds of rubble or were severely damaged in densely populated parts of Mexico City and nearby states. Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said buildings fell at 44 places in the capital alone as high-rises across the city swayed sickeningly.

Hours after the magnitude 7.1 quake, rescue workers were still clawing through the wreckage of a primary school that partly collapsed in the city’s south looking for any children who might be trapped. Some relatives said they had received Whatsapp message from two girls inside.

Luis Felipe Puente, head of the national Civil Defense agency, reported Tuesday night that the confirmed death toll had been raised to 149.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Mexico had asked Israel for aid after Netanyahu offered help.

“Netanyahu ordered that aid and a search and rescue operation be organized to leave to Mexico as soon as possible,” his office said late Tuesday.

A delegation of 50 soldiers from the IDF’s Home Front Command is expected to travel to Mexico City on Wednesday afternoon to assist local teams after a large earthquake devastated portions of the country, an army spokesperson said.

At least 248 people were killed when a powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Mexico on Tuesday, including 21 children crushed beneath an elementary school that was reduced to rubble.

Late Tuesday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Mexico had asked Israel for aid after Netanyahu offered help.

“Netanyahu ordered that aid and a search and rescue operation be organized to leave to Mexico as soon as possible,” his office said.

The 50-person delegation is made up mostly of engineers who will help assess the structural integrity of buildings in Mexico City and other affected areas. It will include only a small number of search and rescue personnel, and no field hospital. The IDF spokesperson said such delegations may be sent in the future, but that has yet to be decided as of Wednesday morning.

Sixteen United Nations ambassadors wished Jews around the world a happy new year in a video compilation posted to Facebook Wednesday by Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon.

“We have many friends in the world who are true allies that support Israel here in the United Nations. These countries wish us a happy new year,” said Danon at the opening of the one-minute clip.

While UN ambassadors from 15 countries earned short cameos wishing the Jewish people a happy and healthy new year, US Ambassador Nikki Haley received the most spotlight. “Happy new year to all of our friends. Whether its in the United States, Israel or around the globe. Shanah Tovah. We wish you all the best in health happiness and peace. God bless,” she said.

Along with the US and Israel, the other countries represented in the clip were Germany, Hungary, Albania, India, Argentina, Australia, Rwanda, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Estonia, Uruguay, Austria and Togo

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson tweeted out an anti-Semitic article that claimed Jews were the cause of America's wars.
"America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars," she tweeted.

America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars https://t.co/oUH7b0QPMt
— Valerie Plame Wilson (@ValeriePlame) September 21, 2017

The linked story from the media site, Unz Review, asked, "Shouldn't [American Jews] recuse themselves when dealing with the Middle East?"
The author argued Jews will soon cause a war with Iran as well. "What makes the war engine run is provided by American Jews who have taken upon themselves the onerous task of starting a war with a country that does not conceivably threaten the United States," he wrote.

"The issue that nearly all the Iran haters are Jewish has somehow fallen out of sight, as if it does not matter," he continued. "But it should matter."

"For those American Jews who lack any shred of integrity, the media should be required to label them at the bottom of the television screen whenever they pop up, e.g. Bill Kristol is ‘Jewish and an outspoken supporter of the state of Israel.'"

I actually read the Philip Giraldi article before I was aware of the Plame tweet. I read it on a neo-Nazi website, where Giraldi's articles are frequently featured. That's where Giraldi's articles belong – on overtly anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi websites. For Plame, a former CIA operative, to claim that she was unaware of the anti-Semitic content of Giraldi's article is to blink reality. Plame had to know what she was doing, since she was aware of Giraldi's bigotry. Her apologies ring hollow. Her true feelings were revealed in what she said before she realized that she would be widely condemned for her original re- Tweet. She must now do more than apologize. She must explain how she came upon the article? Who sent it to her? Does she regularly read bigoted website? Why is she reading and re-Tweeting a known anti-Semite? What are her own personal views regarding the content of the Giraldi's article.

The Plame incident reflects a broader problem about which I have written [A new tolerance for anti-Semitism, by Alan M. Dershowitz, published by Gatestone Institute, 2017].There is a growing tolerance for anti-Semitism. Even when some people themselves do not harbor these feelings, they are willing to support those who do, as long as the anti-Semites are on their side of the political spectrum. This is an unacceptable approach, especially in the post-Holocaust era. Unfortunately, Valerie Plame is the poster child for this growing tolerance. She must be called out on it, as must others who follow the same path of bigotry.

The problem exists both on the hard right and the hard left. Both extremist groups see the world in racial, ethnic and religious terms. Both engage in identity politics: the hard left gives more weight to the views of certain minorities; while the hard right gives less weight to the views of these same minorities. Both are equally guilty of reductionism and stereotyping. Neither group is prepared to judge individuals on their individual merits and demerits. Both insist on judging entire groups and of stereotyping.

American Jews—like other Americans -- are deeply divided on important issues, such as the Iran deal, the current prospects for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, and the Trump administration's foreign policies. To generalize about "Jews" is both factually and morally wrong.

What the hard right and hard left share in common is special bigotry toward Jews: the neo-Nazi right hates the Jewish people; and the hard left hates the nation state of the Jewish people and those Jews who support it. Both views are bigoted and must not become acceptable among centrist liberals and conservatives.

Israeli warplanes attacked a Hezbollah weapons depot outside of Damascus in the early hours of Friday morning, The Times of Israel reported.

According to reports in Arabic media outlets, the three separate strikes were carried out near Damascus International Airport, an area which is a stronghold of the Iranian-backed terrorist organization.

“Israeli warplanes targeted with rocket fire a weapons depot belonging to Hezbollah near the airport,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Images of the alleged Israeli strikes surfaced on social media, which show fire and smoke rising from the area around Damascus airport.

There have been no confirmations or denials from Israel, Syria or Hezbollah on any of the reports.

Israel has for years carried out airstrikes in Syrian territory to contain and destroy the military infrastructure of its enemies, including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles, as well as Hezbollah outposts.

Iran said on Saturday that it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile, in defiance of warnings from Washington that it is ready to ditch a landmark nuclear deal over the issue.

State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran on Friday. It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone.

The broadcaster gave no date for the test, although officials had said on Friday that it would be tested “soon.”

“As long as some speak in the language of threats, the strengthening of the country’s defense capabilities will continue and Iran will not seek permission from any country for producing various kinds of missile,” Defence Minister Amir Hatami said in a statement Saturday.

Revolutionary Guards aerospace chief General Amir Ali Hajizadeh was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying on Friday, when the missile was unveiled, that “the Khoramshahr missile has a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) and can carry multiple warheads.”

Iran says all of its missiles are designed to carry conventional warheads only and has limited their range to a maximum of 2,000 kilometers, although commanders say they have the technology to go further.

That makes them only medium-range but still sufficient to reach Israel or US bases in the Gulf.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday called an Iranian test of a missile that could reach Israel, test a provocation to the United States and a threat to the whole world.

Earlier in the day Iran said it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile, in defiance of warnings from Washington that it is ready to ditch a landmark nuclear deal over the issue.

“The ballistic missile that was fired by Iran is not only a a provocation and a slap in the face for the United States and its allies — and an attempt to test them — but also further proof of the Iranian ambitions to become a world power and threaten countries in the Middle East all the the countries of the free world,” Liberman said in a statement.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman leads a faction meeting of his Yisrael Beytenu party at the Knesset on July 10, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“Imagine what would happen if Iran would acquire nuclear weapons. That is what it is striving for. We cannot allow it to happen.,” Liberman said.

Iranian State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran on Friday. It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley defended the Trump administration’s opposition to the Iran nuclear deal Thursday and asked those keen to have it remain untouched: “Do you think that deal is working?”

Haley made the remarks during a press conference in New York City, in which she was asked about the deal and President Trump’s aggressive language on it. Trump used his address to the General Assembly to slam the Iran deal, calling it an “embarrassment.”

Haley was asked how the U.S. could keep its international credibility on dealing with increasing aggression from North Korea when it is looking to rip up the Obama-era deal.

It does not undermine U.S. credibility, what it shows is that the U.S. is always going to watch out for its people and that just because there was some agreement that was agreed to, the smartest thing any country can do is go back and look at it and say “is it working?” and not have too much pride to say “oh I signed it I have to continue to be a cheerleader.”


She then turned the question on the reporter asking the question and, in turn, those who support the deal: “I’ll ask you, do you think that deal is working when Iran continues to test ballistic missiles? Do you think that deal is working when they are supporting terrorists everywhere from Lebanon to Yemen to Syria to Iran, do you think it’s still working?”

Finally, Haley took an “America First” approach and criticized the idea that the deal was in the best interests of the U.S.

“I would question that because what you’re looking at is a country that says ‘death to America’ working with other countries that may also want the same thing, and the president has the responsibility to make sure nothing happens to Americans and that’s what he’s trying to do,” she said.

UN ambassador views Tillerson effort to preserve nuke deal as undermining Trump

In a sign of the ongoing internal dissent over ending the landmark nuclear agreement with Iran, multiple sources told the Washington Free Beacon that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley have been at odds over the deal, with Trump's U.N. ambassador privately expressing dismay with Tillerson over his continued efforts to preserve the nuclear agreement.

Tillerson and Haley held a private powwow Wednesday with international leaders regarding the future of the nuclear deal, a sign of Haley's vital role in the Trump administration's key foreign policy issue.

The meeting is likely to underscore mounting tensions between Haley and Tillerson on the issue, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation, who told the Free Beacon that Haley views Tillerson's efforts to preserve the deal as anathema to Trump's own policy agenda.

The division is one of several that Tillerson has sparked within the administration, particularly in the West Wing, where the secretary of state has been described as in "open war" with Trump on a series of major foreign policy issues, including Iran and the Israel-Palestinian impasse.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday blasted the United States and Israel in his speech to the UN General Assembly, warning that his country will respond “decisively” to any violation of the nuclear deal it signed with the West in 2015.

“Centuries ago, Iran gave shelter to the Jews suffering the crack-downs of Babylonians, and the same nation is today supporting the oppressed people of Palestine,” Rouhani charged.

He attacked Israel for criticizing the nuclear deal, saying “It is reprehensible that the rogue Zionist regime, that threatens regional and global security with its nuclear arsenal and is not committed to any international instrument or safeguard, has the audacity to preach peaceful nations.”

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will not be the first country to violate the agreement, but it will respond decisively and resolutely to its violation by any party,” warned Rouhani.

“It will be a great pity if this agreement were to be destroyed by ‘rogue’ newcomers to the world of politics: the world will have lost a great opportunity,” he continued, in a reference to President Donald Trump’s comments against the deal.

“By violating its international commitments, the new U.S. administration only destroys its own credibility and undermines international confidence in negotiating with it, or accepting its word or promise,” said Rouhani.

In reality, Trump policies had nothing to do with Rasmea’s deportation. Rasmea was arrested in 2013, convicted the first time in 2014, and the retrial was pursued through the end of and beyond the Obama administration by career prosecutors. Rasmea was prosecuted because she committed immigration fraud, not because of some change resulting from Trump.

But it gets worse. The Sun-Times also allowed Rasmea one last lie by repeating her claim that she was being sent to a place (Jordan) where she knew no one and had no family. This is classic Rasmea victimhood spin:

One of Rasmea’s main support groups, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, knew better. It tweeted out images of Rasmea’s family and friends waiting for her at the airport in Amman, Jordan:

USPCN even ran live video of her family and friends greeting her. At 2:35 of the live feed she’s told, “Greetings from the families.”

Fortunately, it’s Rasmea’s last lie on U.S. soil.

A group affiliated with the "Women's March" decided, Thursday, to honor now-deported Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh on Twitter, claiming Odeh's recent immigration troubles were the result of a "broken system," and not because Odeh murdered two people and lied about it to American immigration.
womensmarchro.jpg

The Tweet links back to an equally abysmal opinion piece in the Chicago Sun-Times, which calls Odeh an "activist" and praises her for her work "resisting" Donald Trump as part of the Women's March team of organizers (Odeh, it seems, was part of the group responsible for the failed "Day Without a Woman" campaign). That piece, also, glosses over Odeh's past, claiming that she was "extorted" into confessing that she'd taken part in a bombing campaign that left two young men dead.

The now-70 year old Odeh was convicted, in 1969, of being part of a plot to bomb an Israeli supermarket. Her group hid small bombs in boxes of candy, hoping to maximize their impact, specifically by targeting children. The group's bombs killed two Hebrew University students.

Odeh served ten years in prison before she was released in a prisoner exchange. She emigrated to the US but "forgot" to tell immigration officials that she'd served time for terrorism. In April, an immigration court marked Odeh for punishment: she could serve time in jail for lying to officials, or be deported. She chose deportation to Jordan.

The system isn't "broken;" it worked exactly as it's supposed to.

On Monday, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), compared DACA recipients to Jews escaping the Holocaust, and appeared to compare American law enforcement to Nazis.

Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro appeared on Fox News on Wednesday to respond to Ellison's insane ideas. Speaking with Martha MacCallum, Shapiro said:

Well, I mean there are about one bajillion things wrong with everything that he just said. First of all, Keith Ellison is the last person who should be making Holocaust references considering that he spent the last thirty years of his life opposing Jews. I mean, he was very close with the Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan in the 1990's; he gave a lead-off speech for a guy named Khalid Muhammad, who is so radical that he was thrown out of the Nation of Islam for anti-Semitism.

He's tried to back off of that in recent years, but Alan Dershowitz said that if Keith Ellison had been appointed head of the DNC, he would have left the Democratic Party wholesale.

Keith Ellison is not the guy to be making this particular reference. To begin, if Keith Ellison had been around in 1941, I have my doubts about what he would have done with Jews trying to hide from Nazis. But beyond that, the reference with regard to ICE, that ICE is somehow a Nazi force – enforcing the immigration laws – is just absurd. And the idea that people who are here illegally, who have been living in the country, largely in freedom – many of their kids are going to public schools, they're taking advantage of public benefits, of jobs here – the idea that this is the same thing as making legal citizens of your country illegal and then throwing them into concentration camps or gassing them is just beyond the pale. It's insane language from Ellison, but nothing shocking considering who Ellison is.

Israel will reportedly normalize diplomatic ties with the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain as the two countries draw closer over their shared hostility to Iran, with an announcement even possible in the coming months.

While there have been a number of recent signs that Bahrain is dropping its traditional hostility to the Jewish state, such as the visit in May of officials from the Israeli Football Association to a FIFA congress there, Western and Bahraini officials told the Middle East Eye that an official announcement of the establishment of relations could happen as soon as next year.

While the normalization of ties would likely not include the opening of diplomatic missions, officials said the two countries are working to setup exchange visits of businessman and religious figures, and even of government ministers.

“I do not think we will witness the opening of an Israeli embassy here, but probably we will have official visits from ministers of trade and economic affairs,” an unnamed Western official told Middle East Eye.
President of the Israeli Football Association Ofer Eini and ISA CEO Rotem Kamer (L) attend the 67th FIFA Congress in the Bahraini capital Manama on May 11, 2017. (AFP Photo/Jack Guez)

The official said that while there was likely to be grumbling from Bahrainis over the move, with previous steps such as the visit by Israeli soccer officials leading to criticism on social media, the country’s leaders would say it is necessary to counter Iran.

Please join me in this clip below as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the remarkable comments about Israel made by the King of Bahrain.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas called on the United Nations on Wednesday to pursue efforts to "bring an end to Israeli occupation of the state of Palestine within a set time frame."

Abbas, addressing the United Nations General Assembly, warned that if the two-state solution were to be destroyed, Palestinians would have no choice but to "continue the struggle and demand full rights for all inhabitants of historic Palestine."

Abbas emphasized during his speech that the PA is committed to the two state solution and all of the efforts it will undertake will be peaceful. He repeated that several times during his speech.

"We are standing against International terrorism, and we are fighting it," said Abbas before arguing that it is Israel, and not the Palestinian Authority, that is not interested in peace.

"Israel builds so many settlements," Abbas said, "there is no space for Palestine."

Naming the French peace initiative and the Arab peace initiative, among others, as peace efforts that Israel, in his view, rejected, Abbas was consistent in his message. The Palestinian Authority bears no responsibility for the conflict as "commitment from one side is not enough for peace". If Israel doesn't want peace or a two state solution "let them [the Israelis] bear the responsibility for it," Abbas said, "we will not."

Palestinian terrorist organizations have been praising Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for his speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, calling it a recognition by the Palestinian president of the failure of the approach of political negotiations.

Hamas released a special statement saying that it, “followed the speech of the Palestinian Authority president with great interest. This speech contained within it a recognition of the failure of the plan for a political solution with the occupation and contained a new approach regarding the paths before the Palestinian people to procure their rights by all means against the occupation.”

Hamas, like other Palestinian factions, refer to Israel as the “occupation.”

Hamas criticized Abbas’ reference to the issue of resistance and his stance that he opposes all forms of terror, but praised Abbas’ efforts to send a delegation of the national unity government to the Gaza Strip, “and we will do everything possible so it will succeed in its mission.”

The National Front for the Liberation of Palestine, whose members murdered the former Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi, also praised the Palestinian president for his speech. In a statement, the organization said that Abbas’ speech, “Clearly presented the steps of the Zionist entity against the Palestinian people and against their national rights and presented the position from the settlement enterprise and the imperialist occupation.”

US senator and former presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders called for Washington to adopt a friendlier approach to Iran, and said he would consider supporting slashing US aid to Israel over the Jewish state’s policies towards the Palestinians.

In an interview Thursday with The Intercept, the Jewish senator said the US was “complicit” in what he termed Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, but was not the only guilty party, and urged Washington to play a more fair role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Certainly the United States is complicit, but it’s not to say… that Israel is the only party at fault,” he said.

“In terms of Israeli-Palestinian relations, the United States has got to play a much more even-handed role. Clearly that is not the case right now,” he added.

US funding, said Sanders, “plays a very important role, and I would love to see people in the Middle East sit down with the United States government and figure out how US aid can bring people together, not just result in an arms war in that area.”

The senator said that there was “extraordinary potential for the United States to help the Palestinian people rebuild Gaza and other areas. At the same time, demand that Israel, in their own interests in a way, work with other countries on environmental issues.”

When asked if he would “consider voting to reduce US aid to Israel or US arms sales to the Israeli military, Sanders said “the answer is yes.”

On Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence addressed the United Nations Security Council, and called for a complete reformation, including changes to the Human Rights Council's membership recruitment policies, and and end to the anti-Semitism that infects their resolutions.

Pence began, “The United Nations is bound by its charter to foster ‘International cooperation in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all.’ That was the purpose under which the U.N. Human Rights Council was formed. But the truth is, the Human Rights Council doesn't deserve its name.”

The Vice President then called out the HRC for recruiting brutal regimes. “Today, the United Nations Human Rights Council actually attracts and welcomes many of the worst human rights violators in the world. A clear majority of the Human Rights Council’s members fail to meet even the most basic human rights standards.”

Pence continued, “Cuba sits on the Human Rights Council, an oppressive regime that has repressed its people and jailed political opponents for more than half a century. Venezuela sits on the Human Rights Council, a dictatorship that undermines democracy at every turn, imprisons political opponents, and as we speak is advancing policies that worsen deprivation and poverty that’s costing the lives of innocent men, women, and children.”

Pence said, “This body must reform the Human Rights Council’s membership and its operation. As to its operation, I think of what President John F. Kennedy warned more than 50 years ago, that the United Nations must not become in his words a ‘forum for invective.’”

Syria’s foreign minister accused Israel of supporting “terror gangs” fighting against the Syrian regime in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday, while also saying that the ongoing civil war has not diminished Damascus’ desire to retake the Golan Heights.

In his speech, Walid Muallem called Israel a “usurper entity” and said Israel intervened in Syria as an extension of its “horrific crimes against innocent civilians.”

“It has publicly interfered in the Syrian crisis since its early days. Israel has provided all forms of support to Takfirist terrorist gangs, including funds, weapons, material, and communication equipment,” said Muallem, according to the official SANA news agency.

“Israel has also bombed Syrian Army positions to serve terrorist agendas. Coordination between the two was at its best when terrorist groups decided to target Syrian air defense assets used to defend Syria against Israeli aggression,” he added. “The unlimited Israeli support to terrorists in Syria did not come as a surprise. After all, the two share the same interests and goals.”

Muallem did not provide any specifics to back his allegations of Israeli support for terror groups, a term often used by the Syrian to describe all of its opponents.

Gee, this looks familiar. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bodyguards beat up protesters in New York City right before Erdogan said a speech. From The New York Post:

As soon as Erdogan enters the stage a protester can be heard on a Periscope video shouting “You’re a terrorist! Get out of my country!”

The assembly soon turned into a battle royale, with protesters causing mayhem as security guards hurried them out of the room. The demonstrators can be seen being pummeled by punches as they attempt to leave.

From Midtown Manhattan Patch:

Marriott Hotels spokeswoman Kathleen Duffy said the “men in dark suits who were security officers in the ballroom” Thursday afternoon were Erdogan’s guys. They were “hired by the client, not the hotel,” she wrote in an email.

Duffy said she could not personally confirm, however, that the guards punched anyone.

“As President Erdogan was leaving the hotel” around 3 p.m., the police spokeswoman said, “an unknown number of anti-government protesters did clash with pro-government demonstrators in front of the location. As a result of this incident, approximately five demonstrators were briefly detained and released by security assigned to protect President Erdogan.” Everyone then “departed the location,” she said, and the NYPD made no arrests.

Why should American Jews care about and support the independence of Kurdistan?

Because Iraqi Kurdistan is one of the very rare areas of the Middle East where Jews and Judaism are viewed positively.

Because on the day that Kurdistan will be independent, the country will foster cordial relations with Israel, or in any case, normal ones.

Because, as shown in a scene of my film Peshmerga, I do not know another Muslim country where the memory and birthplace of a future Israeli Defense Minister are held in such high regard and with pride.

Because there we find a Ministry of Religious Affairs where there is a department especially dedicated to religious freedom for Jews – And when we ask, with wonder and amazement, “why a department just for the Jews when there are no Jews left in Kurdistan?”, the response is “because we await them, we await and will welcome all those Jewish compatriots who wish to return.”

Because I do not know another country with a Muslim majority where Yom HaShoah is celebrated with devotion and respect each year.

And finally, because the Kurdish fighters, at the price of many lives, have been our only real shield against ISIS.

The United Nations Security Council has announced its opposition to the upcoming Kurdish independence referendum, set to take place tomorrow.

During the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, the Security Council said that such a vote would be ''destabilizing'' to Iraq, which has disintegrated since the war against the Islamic State began there three years ago. While the Iraqi military has been successful in recent weeks in retaking cities captured by ISIS, the war is far from over, and the country will have to rebuild many of its cities and re-establish infrastructure in order to fully recover.

The vote by the Security Council was unanimous in ''expressing concern'' although they did not outright condemn the referendum or call for its cancellation or postponement. A press release on the subject indicated that the Security Council was concerned that the referendum would "detract from efforts to ensure the safe, voluntary return of over 3 million refugees and internationally displaced persons."

Another concern expressed was over Iraqi sovereignty, which has been threatened by the expansion of the Islamic State throughout the country over the last three years. The Iraqi cities of Mosul and Fallujah, among others, were completely taken over by ISIS and only liberated recently. The government of Iraq declared victory over ISIS in July of this year, although its army continues with offensives to push out ISIS militants.

In June, the UN announced that it would not "be engaged in any way or form'' with the referendum, although they stopped short of condemning the vote.

Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani again stressed on Friday that next week’s referendum on independence for the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq will proceed as planned.

“The referendum is no longer in my hands, nor is it in those of the (political) parties — it is in your hands,” he told a large crowd at a football stadium in the regional capital of Arbil.

“We say that we are ready for serious open-minded dialogue with Baghdad, but after September 25, because now it is too late,” Barzani said of Monday’s plebiscite.

On Saturday, Barzani is to hold a news conference at which he is expected to announce definitively whether the controversial vote will go ahead.

He has held a series of meetings over the past few days in Kirkuk, Sulaimaniyah, Zakho and Dohuk at which he has expressed the view that the vote will take place.

However, negotiations are still going on aimed at persuading Barzani to change his mind, according to officials close to the discussions.

Prosecutors investigating the April slaying of a Jewish woman by her neighbor said for the first time that her killing was an anti-Semitic hate crime.

The characterization by prosecutors Wednesday in the death of Sarah Halimi followed months of lobbying and protest by French Jews, who were outraged by the absence of aggravated circumstances in the indictment against Kobili Traore. The 27-year-old Muslim man confessed to the killing and was heard shouting about Allah and calling Halimi “Satan” shortly before throwing her out the window of her three-story apartment.

Francis Kalifat, the president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, said in a statement to the media that he and other French Jews were “satisfied and relieved by the inclusion finally of an admission of the anti-Semitic character of the murder.”

Traore in his defense has claimed temporary insanity. Earlier this week, Le Figaro daily reported that Traore was found to have been under the influence of strong cannaboid drugs at the time of the incident, according to a psychiatric evaluation by an independent mental health professional. The evaluation nonetheless showed that Traore may have been partially aware of his actions and therefore was legally accountable for them, Le Figaro reported.

For long weeks after the slaying of Halimi, a 66-year-old physician and kindergarten teacher, the mainstream media in France ignored claims by senior members of the French Jewish community that she was a victim of an anti-Semitic murder.

A neo-Nazi who then became a radical Islamist faces trial in Germany over alleged plans to bomb police and soldiers. Three other defendants stand accused of aiding and abetting the plans.

The trial of an alleged neo-Nazi turned so-called "Islamic State” (IS) supporter begins on Wednesday in the German state of Lower Saxony.

Prosecutors accuse Sasha L. of planning to bomb police and soldiers by luring them into a trap. Three other defendants – Afghan, Turkish and German nationals – also stand accused of aiding and abetting the 26-year-old German.

Sasha L. was arrested in February after police raided his apartment in Northeim, Lower Saxony, where they found materials for a self-made explosive device. Some of the materials to be used in the bomb were bought over the internet and intercepted by police.

Before swearing allegiance to the IS terror group in videos, Sasha L. had been active in the neo-Nazi scene in Berlin, according to the indictment. On a YouTube channel authorities attribute to him, Sasha L. posted videos against Muslims, migrants and anti-fascist groups, Der Spiegel reported in February.

The lawyer of a Frenchman accused of shooting dead four people at a Jewish Museum in Belgium says his client may have a brain tumor and is being denied medical treatment.

Mehdi Nemmouche is suspected of gunning down the four with an assault weapon in the Brussels museum in May 2014. He has been in solitary confinement without trial for three years.

Lawyer Sebastien Courtoy said Thursday that a medical expert believes Nemmouche should have medical tests and scans. Courtoy said his client is going blind and deaf but that the prison is refusing treatment.

Courtoy said Nemmouche is incapable of attending or following a trial. No trial is likely before September 2018.

He said: “There won’t be a Nemmouche trial. There’ll be a sham Nemmouche trial.”

On May 24, 2014, Nemmouche is believed to have opened fire in the entrance hall of the museum in the center of the Belgian capital, killing two Israeli tourists, a French volunteer and a Belgian museum receptionist.

The museum reopened four months later under heavy security.

Officials in Saudi Arabia suspended an Islamic cleric from preaching after he allegedly claimed that women’s brains shrink to “quarter the size” of a man’s brain when they go shopping.

Saad al-Hijri was suspended after he said women shouldn’t be allowed to drive because they only have “half” a brain and that when they go shopping, they lose the other half of their brain.

“Ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women from driving, despite ambitious government targets to increase their public role, especially in the workforce,” the Daily Mail added.

Hijri, who identifies himself as the head of “the religious edicts department” in the southern province, asks the traffic department what it would do if it discovered a man with only half a brain:

Would it give him a license or not? It would not. So how can it give it to a woman when she has only half?
If she goes to the market she loses another half. What is left? A quarter... We demand the traffic department check because she is not suitable to drive and she has only a quarter.

Saudi Arabia scrambled Friday to withdraw a school textbook that accidentally included a doctored photograph of a former ruler sitting next to a “Star Wars” character, prompting ridicule on social media.

The black-and-white image shows King Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s third monarch, signing the United Nations Charter in 1945, with the diminutive Jedi master Yoda perched next to him.

The image was created by 26-year-old Saudi artist Abdullah al-Shehri, renown for mixing pop culture icons into historic photographs.

“The Ministry of Education regrets the inadvertent error,” Saudi Education Minister Ahmed al-Eissa said on Twitter.

He said the ministry had begun recalling the textbook and printing a corrected version, adding that a legal committee would be formed to determine the source of the error.

Al-Sheri told The New York Times that he was surprised to see the photograph end up in the school textbook.

Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay wines from the Givon Winery in Israel are now available at everyone's favorite grocery store, Trader Joes's.

Can you say "BDS fail."? I know you can.

Not only has Trader Joe's added 2 new Israel products to their line, check out how they are promoted.

Yes, thats a tiny Israeli flag!

In honor of the high holy day of Rosh Hashanah animal rights activists say they will not attempt to detain Orthodox Jews for the ritual killings of animals.

The Animal Protection and Rescue League (APRL) is attempting to end the ancient Jewish practice of kaporos, in which Orthodox believers sacrifice chickens in preparation for Yom Kippur, the holy day of atonement.

The group filed suit in Los Angeles attempting to gain an injunction on behalf of the animals. In the brief, it appeared to threaten "private persons arrests" in the event that the city does not step in to prevent the slaughter, which they describe as "criminal acts."

"Plaintiffs desire to exercise their rights under Penal Code §837 to effectuate a private person arrest of agents of the entities killing and discarding animals illegally in their presence. However, every year, Defendants send large forces out to actively protect these criminal acts," the complaint in APRL v. City of Los Angeles says.

The First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm that defends religious freedom, is prepared to intervene in the case to protect its clients' First Amendment rights, arguing that such an action would restrain the performance of religious ceremonies. The institute said the kaporos is done in a humane fashion and has been practiced for centuries. First Liberty deputy general counsel Jeremy Dys called the threat of citizen's arrest "anarchy, not liberty," which would "demolish America's religious liberty and diversity.

The Israeli travel special Conan O'Brien aired for audiences around America Tuesday night showcased the fun, frivolous and routine side of life in Israel.

What most viewers were unaware of, however, was that after a preview screening on Monday night, the team behind the TBS show edited out portions filmed in Bethlehem and added a disclaimer to another segment.

The original version of the show - screened for 200 people in Los Angeles on Monday - included a scene filmed in a home in Bethlehem where a father discussed his son, who he said was killed by IDF soldiers during a riot. There was even footage of the funeral procession included.

But in the post-screening Q&A, some audience members expressed their discomfort with the footage. What was the context of the killing and who was at fault? And if you're going to show Palestinian sorrow and suffering - what of Israeli suffering? What of Israeli victims of terror, who have watched their families be slaughtered? Or those who live in range of rockets from Gaza?

Following the screening, those in attendance received an email from the show thanking them for their feedback, "and especially for your post-screening questions and comments, which were greatly appreciated and will be immensely helpful as we continue to edit this show into its final version for eventual broadcast."

And when it came to the show aired Tuesday night, the footage of the grieving father was nowhere to be found - not even in the online exclusives.

On Monday night Brent Council debated whether to adopt the IHRA Definition of antisemitism. It was a farcical debate which saw three Jewish residents articulate the ‘Livingstone Formulation’, claiming that the Definition would be used to stifle criticism of Israel (the truth is that it says that ‘criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic’ – besides which, I have never heard an Israel advocate describe genuine criticism as ‘antisemitic’.)

The Brent Councillors accepted an amendment to the part of the Definition that the hard Left loves to hate. They deleted ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour’, replacing it with ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour, alongside Palestinian right of self-determination.’ (This is taken from the video of the meeting. It can be seen from time stamp 1 hour 1 minute 24 seconds to 1.02.06). (I am assuming that there is a comma after the word ‘endeavour’ – rather than a fullstop – but it was not made clear; the minutes (not yet published) will clarify).

The amended sentence is a nonsense. One’s view on Palestinian statehood is a political matter. It has nothing to do with what is antisemitic. Or is the Council suggesting (pace CAA) that it’s antisemitic to deny Palestinian statehood, in the mistaken view that ‘Arabs are Semites too’ (a well-worn antisemitic trope implying that Arabs cannot be antisemitic)? Worse: It is spitting in the face of Jews, to introduce an irrelevance into the definition of antisemitism. It’s antisemitic to state that Israel is a racist State. Period. One’s view on the desirability or feasibility of a Palestinian State is as irrelevant to that as one’s view on the desirability of assisted suicide (for example).

Anti-Semitic graffiti, reading "F**k you Jewish Nazis" was found scrawled across Oakland's Temple Sinai on Rosh Hashonah.

Members of the Congregation covered up the message with white butcher paper, and encouraged the community to write messages of support and solidarity

Established in 1875, Temple Sinai is one of the oldest Jewish congregations in the Bay Area. This is the third Bay area synagogue vandalized in recent months.

The police are treating this as a hate crime, and are reviewing video surveillance footage from the neighborhood. If you have information on those responsible for this incident, contact the Oakland Police Department at (510) 238-3278.

Gal Gadot was named as one of the top 100 people influencing Jewish life, at Algemeiner’s J100 gala in Manhattan.

The Israeli actress and model was named alongside Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a human rights NGO in Geneva, Switzerland.

Celebrating his award, Mr Neuer tweeted he was surprised to be named in the same list as a model.

The event, which was held at Cipriani 25 Broadway, is the fourth of its kind and was hosted by television personality Sarah Elizabeth Cupp.

Elie Wiesel, Harvey Weinstein, Donald and Ivanka Trump, along with Rupert Murdoch, are some of the previous influencers and attendees of the event.

Czech President Milos Zeman and renowned Israeli artist Yaacov Agam were given Algemeiner’s prestigious “Warrior for Truth” award at this year’s celebration.

Gal Gadot will host an episode of Saturday Night Live during the show’s upcoming season, marking the first time the Israeli actress will host the long-running late night program.

The episode, which will air October 7, will feature English singer Sam Smith as the musical guest, according to Variety.

The episode will be the second of the show’s 43rd season, which starts on September 30.

The choice of Gadot to host an episode comes after “Wonder Woman,” in which the Israeli actress played the lead role, was a box office smash this summer, grossing over $800 million worldwide.

In light of the movie’s success, Gadot has signed up to star in a sequel.

She will also play the character of Wonder Woman in “Justice League,” which is slated to hit theaters in November.

Turkey will grant around 50,000 Syrians citizenship, a top Interior Ministry official said Friday.

Speaking in Turkey's southern province of Şanlıurfa, one of the cities hosting Syrian refugee camps, Interior Ministry General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs Manager Sinan Güner told Anadolu Agency (AA) the process of granting citizenship had already begun.

"The citizenship process of a total of 35,000 Syrians has finished now," Güner said. He said a further 15,000 applications were being reviewed, mostly children.

According to Interior Ministry figures, over 12,000 other Syrians have been given Turkish citizenship so far.

My country--a resource-poor nation in a conflict-rich region--is host to 1.3 million Syrian refugees. Add to that millions of Palestinian refugees and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as others from Libya and Yemen: Jordan, today, is one of the largest hosts of refugees in the world.

In 2016, for the first time, we captured and killed 40 ISIS terrorists in two major incidents. Ninety-six percent of them were of Palestinian origin.

Alongside Jonathan Hoffman, I spent part of the summer inside the National Archives at Kew, checking some of the sources that Thomas Suarez had used to build his argument for the book ‘State of Terror’. The findings were inexcusable. Suarez distorted the documents to such a degree that history was unrecognisable.

At times Suarez had simply inverted the meaning of a document. At others, I felt we were looking at entirely different files. From the perspective of someone who respects historicity and spends much time sewing together the complex tapestry of historical context, Thomas Suarez is an academic charlatan.

Recently, Thomas Suarez has been spreading his hate-filled mythical tale in the United States. He also found time to respond to the report. What an empty response it was.
The Thomas Suarez response

Given that what was found in our analysis was so overwhelming, his recent response is a clear attempt to create a deflective dialogue. To suggest that we are engaged in an argument over opinion.

It will not work. I will not be drawn down a rabbit-hole by anyone, least of all by Thomas Suarez. Our argument was that his work is deceptive. That he has misused, misquoted, misrepresented and even inverted the meaning of, what he found in the archives. Our underlying position was that this occurred too often to be just down to Suarez being an awfully bad historian.

Time after time, quote after quote, file after file. ON EVERY SINGLE OCCASION we uncovered an error, we found the error supported an anti-Zionist stance. Each one dehumanised Jews or created a devious intent surrounding their actions. None of the many, many mistakes we found, favoured the Zionists. Not one. How on earth can that be deemed anything but deliberate?

I am reminded of part of the judgement following the David Irving trial:
‘the correct and inevitable inference must be that for the most part the falsification of the historical record was deliberate and that Irving was motivated by a desire to present events in a manner consistent with his own ideological beliefs even if that involved distortion and manipulation of historical evidence.’

“Everything you say is well and good, but we have no boat!” IDF Lt. Col. Naval Intelligence Counter-terror chief Yaron* exclaimed in frustration to his deputy, IDF Maj. Gal*.

Gal* (full names kept secret to prevent identification) had just updated him on the first intelligence breakthrough in the Karine A Affair, which would eventually change history.

In the affair, the IDF navy and air force units captured a large Palestinian Authority owned freighter in the predawn hours of January 3, 2002. The freighter was loaded with 50 tons of weapons, including long range rockets, from Iran with assistance from Hezbollah.

Had the weapons gotten through to PA President Yasser Arafat, he could have targeted larger cities like Ashkelon and possibly even Ben Gurion Airport with rockets, changing the entire balance of war and peace in the region.

The full riveting intelligence backstory about uncovering the well-concealed plot and finding (just barely) the phantom boat, included work between Israeli intelligence and the CIA. The story is being told now for the first time after its declassification by Israeli intelligence for a Hebrew book, also sponsored by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, about to come out called Drama in the Red Sea by retired IDF Brig. Gen. Amos Gilboa.

The Jerusalem Post recently interviewed Gilboa and received a copy of the book prior to its full release next month.

Israeli naval intelligence officers Yaron and Gal were speaking sometime between October 3-8, 2001 after having worked since August 15, 2001 on trying to put together a puzzle of some sort of major PA-related arms smuggling development.

Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub exploited his entry to Israel around two weeks ago in order to visit the family of terrorist murderer Karim Younes.

Karim Younes is an Israeli Arab who, together with his cousin Maher Younes, kidnapped and murdered Israeli soldier Avraham Bromberg in 1980. He was sentenced to life in prison. (His sentence was commuted to 40 years by Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2012.)

In a post on his Facebook page, Rajoub took pride in having visited the murderer's family in the village of 'Ara, and he posted pictures of himself with the family members.

Palestinian Media Watch checked and found that the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories had not approved Rajoub's visit to the murderer's family.

In the 2015 terror wave, Rajoub explicitly incited for terror attacks and acts of murder, and he called the terrorist murderers "heroes... a crown on the head of every Palestinian."

This year the Fatah Movement appointed murderer Karim Younes to be a member of Fatah's central committee.

In a June 29 interview with the Arab-Christian channel Al-Hayat TV, Egyptian-Canadian journalist Said Shoaib called Al-Andalus a "colonialist occupation" and added that it is very sad that the Muslims "take pride in their colonialist crimes." Muslims, he said, have no choice but to reform their religion, rather than continuing to be "a burden on civilization." He pointed out that "our conflict with Israel is mostly religious, otherwise we would be treating Iran the same way we treat Israel," and added that "the reforms in the Jewish religion improved it." He also criticized Egyptian media and public for refusing to admit that the kidnapping and slaughter of Copts by jihadi terrorists is based on religion.

"Our Conflict With Israel Is Mostly Religious"
Said Shoaib: "The Islamists and the Muslims are held captive by history. Our conflict with Israel is mostly religious."

Interviewer: "Absolutely."
Said Shoaib: "Otherwise, we would be treating Iran the same way we treat Israel. Iran is occupying the Arab region of Ahwaz and oppressing the Sunnis, and it is occupying the UAE islands. Turkey is occupying the Alexandretta province. Is there one occupation that is halal and another that is haram?"

Interviewer: "In Morocco, we also have two cities that we consider to be occupied by Spain."
"We Consider Al-Andalus To Be A Source Of Pride For The Muslims"– But It Was "A Colonial Occupation"
Said Shoaib: "But nobody cares. They only care about Israel, because the Prophet Muhammad engaged in a political armed and unarmed conflict [with the Jews] 1,400 years ago, and we act as if it happened today. There is another upsetting paradox. We consider Al-Andalus to be a source of pride for the Muslims, although it was, in fact, a colonialist occupation."

An Iraqi cleric recently praised the Jewish people for having emerged from the Holocaust following World War II and managed to win the “respect of the world through science,” while Muslims are seen as having become “the world’s headache.”

In a sermon posted to YouTube last month titled “Don’t Be Mad. Strong Words. Imitate the Jews in This,” and translated this week by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Shiite cleric Salam Al-Askari said that after suffering in Europe during the Holocaust, where “Nazis killed and burned them” and they were “killed in droves,” the Jews, he said, “put their greatest minds into science” and “made the entire world kneel before them, and accept and respect the Jewish nation.”

In a departure from much of the content translated from Arabic by MEMRI, rife with statements from religious officials and others attacking Jews and Israel, and accusing them of being behind a host of disasters, the sermon shows the cleric listing what he describes as Jewish achievements, including the invention of acetone and nuclear power, and describing how the Jews “won over” Europe.

“The Jews suffered,” he said. “The Nazis killed and burned them. They were brought in groups to special places, where they were gassed and they suffocated and died. The Jews were killed in droves. They wanted to emigrate but some European countries banned the Jews from entering. ‘We will not accept them,’ they said. They were tormented in Germany… Today, when our countries suffer, the youth emigrate to Europe. But back then, Europe shut its doors to the Jews.”

During interviews in the early to mid 2000s, Buttu claimed (on several media outlets) that “between the period of 1997 until the year 2000 there wasn’t a single Israeli who died of a suicide bombing inside Israel”. However, as CAMERA revealed at the time, 24 Israeli civilians were killed in six separate Palestinian suicide attacks during that period.

During the 2009-09 Israeli war with Hamas, Buttu bizarrely alleged, during interviews on CNN and Fox News, that rockets fired from Gaza “do not have explosive heads.” In fact, Palestinian rockets carried between 9-18 kilograms of explosives.

At a Harvard conference in 2012, she repeated the lie about ‘rockets without explosive heads’ and added another one, claiming that “there weren’t any grad rockets fired in 2008 and 2009.” Actually, as CAMERA revealed, dozens were fired.

More recently, CAMERA caught Buttu in another lie, complaining to journalist David Remnick (in a Sept. New Yorker article) that the Israeli hit show Fauda never mentions the word “occupation”, and that the series doesn’t show “a single checkpoint”. However, contrary to Buttu’s claim, the word “occupation” is heard in “Fauda” and checkpoints do appear.

Her latest smear against Israel was published in the Guardian.

Her op-ed (Issa Amro is merely the latest casualty of Palestine’s war on free speech, Sept. 20th) primarily focuses on the arrest of a Palestinian named Issa Amro for the ‘crime’ of using Facebook to call for the release of a journalist detained by the PA for criticising Mahmoud Abbas. The arrest was based on a new law which allows for imprisonment of Palestinians who use social media to criticize Abbas or other PA officials. Buttu pivots to Israel by suggesting that Jerusalem has similarly enacted laws to “quash dissent”.

Here’s the sentence in question: As part of Israel’s tactics to quash dissent, it has arrested Palestinians, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, for writing poems, for criticising Israel on Facebook and for broadcasting stories critical of Israel, its occupation or leadership.
Once again, Buttu is being dishonest.

AMIA Jewish center bombing special prosecutor Alberto Nisman was assassinated by two individuals who drugged and beat him, then manipulated the crime scene to make it look like a suicide.

That is the conclusion of an official report submitted on Friday to Federal Judge Julián Ercolini and Prosecutor Eduardo Taiano, who are investigating the death of the Argentinean prosecutor. If Nisman’s death now is investigated as a murder, not a suicide, IT specialist Diego Lagomarsino would be the main suspect.

On January 2015, Lagomarsino said that he went to Nisman’s apartment to give him a gun to protect himself, which he called the loan of a “very old” .22 caliber pistol. Hours later Nisman was found dead by a bullet that struck him from point-blank range above the right ear from that very gun. So far, Lagomarsino has been charged just for lending the pistol to Nisman.

The report was made by the forensic investigators of the country’s border patrol guard, or Gendarmerie, which coordinated an interdisciplinary team of forensic investigators and also representatives of the Nisman family and of Lagomarsino.

The new toxicology analysis of Nisman’s body discovered the drug ketamine, an anesthetic mostly used on animals. The analysis also found that he had been beaten on his body and that another person tried to subdue and control him.

Supporters of Hassan Diab, a Canadian professor suspected in a deadly 1980 attack on a Paris synagogue, asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Thursday to encourage French authorities to release him.

“We urge you to intervene and bring Hassan home,” said a letter to Trudeau signed by more than 600 people and organizations.

A petition delivered to the Canadian parliament calling for his release was also signed by thousands more.

Diab, 63, has been in pre-trial detention in France since being extradited from Canada in November 2014 and charged with the attack.

The bombing outside the Copernic Street synagogue was the first major attack on a Jewish site in France since World War II.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was blamed for the blast that left four dead and some 40 injured.

The Palestinian march to gain admission as a full member-state in international organizations continues with the International Police Organization taking up the issue in Beijing at its annual meeting this week.

A Palestinian bid to join Interpol, which represents police forces from some 190 countries, failed last year at the annual meeting in Indonesia, along with bids by Kosovo and Solomon Islands. All three bids were considered on the same ballot, with 62 countries voting to suspend the bid until this year, 56 voting to deal with the issue and 37 abstaining.

At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the vote as a reflection of the change in Israel’s standing in the international community. Netanyahu has joined the Foreign Ministry in efforts this year, as well, to block the move.

A closer reading of last year’s vote, however, showed that Israel benefited from the fact that Kosovo also applied for membership – something actively opposed by Russia. Kosovo is on the ballot this time, as well.

Interpol’s board of directors is scheduled to meet on Sunday and decide what resolution to bring to the General Assembly meeting that begins on Tuesday. If the board decides to again suspend the admittance of new members, that, too, must go to a vote. If it decides to hold a vote on whether to accept the candidates, it will need two-thirds of the 190 members to pass.

Diplomatic sources said that, this time, it appears the Palestinians could muster the necessary support if the matter is brought to a vote.

Ahead of the UN General Assembly and the meeting between United States President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The Israel Project (TIP) organized a conference call with Elliott Abrams on September 14 discussed some of the issues that would dominate the agenda.

Abrams, who served as deputy national security advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush, told the audience that he did not expect any movement on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

“I do not see a basis for optimism in 2017,” he said. “They [the Trump administration] are now fully familiar with the details and with the reasons that previous efforts — by everyone from Bill Clinton on — have failed.”

Abrams felt people in the administration “were quite unhappy with the behavior of Mahmoud Abbas during the Temple Mount incident, where he could have spoken in ways that would have ended the crisis. Instead his rhetoric was hot,” he said. He also added that Abbas “made it worse rather than better” and his behavior “really changed their [the Trump administration’s] opinion of him.”

Abrams also noted, however, that there are things that could be done to revive the peace process, especially through “economic and security cooperation.” But he also said he cannot see “how to go beyond that to the fundamentals of the conflict” like the status of Jerusalem. He praised Prime Minister Netanyahu’s efforts over the years to make concessions for peace, for which Mr. Abrams said “he doesn’t get much credit for,” such as permits for Palestinians from the West Bank to work in Israel.

A group of 45 national security experts signed a letter released Tuesday that calls on President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

The letter, released by the Center for Security Policy, calls on Trump to withdraw the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, using a plan proposed by former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. It also asks Trump not to certify that Iran has been in compliance with the agreement.

Trump has in recent weeks renewed his criticism of the deal, which he attacked vehemently on the campaign trail. Amid speculation that he might refuse to certify compliance at the upcoming Oct. 15 deadline, Trump slammed the JCPOA in front of the United Nations on Tuesday.

"The Iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into," Trump said in his speech. "Frankly, that deal is an embarrassment to the United States and I don't think you've heard the last of it, believe me."

The letter's signatories criticized the JCPOA as allowing Iran to continue to pursue the development of nuclear weapons, having weak verification provisions to ensure Iran's compliance, and ignoring Iran's "increasingly destabilizing behavior."

France’s President Emmanuel Macron declared Wednesday that the Iran nuclear deal is no longer a sufficient safeguard against the growing power that Tehran wields in its region.

“We need the 2015 accord,” he said of the agreement. “Is this accord enough? It is not, given the growing pressure that Iran is applying in the region.”

Macron was speaking in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, while ministers from Iran the six world powers that signed the accord met to discuss it.

US President Donald Trump, who was elected after the deal was signed, has threatened to pull out if Iran does not face greater controls on its missile and nuclear programs.

The other deal signatories, including France, insist it remains the best way to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear bomb — but Macron has said it could be improved.

Abed al-Rahman Sudais, the president and chief imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, considered the holiest mosque in Islam, has stirred up controversy on social media after an interview in which he praised U.S. President Donald Trump, saying, “Trump and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz are leading the world to peace.”

Sudais added: “Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are two anchors of influence in the world and they, under the leadership of King Salman and President Trump, are leading the world to security, peace, stability and prosperity.”

Sudais’ comments were met with significant anger on Arabic-language social media, with criticism focusing on the praise for Trump.

The Twitter account “Issues” wrote, “Sudais says that America is leading the world to peace and on the same day their air force killed seven members of one family, most of them women and children, in a massacre in the Syrian city Al Bukamal.”

Author Ahmad Jaber wrote, “The government of the Saudi family and the U.S. government are really two anchors in the world of corruption and tyranny so why are we surprised by these comments from Sudais who supports them and has stood behind them for decades?

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu will visit the Jewish state in October and meet with his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman, Russian and Israeli media outlets reported on Sunday.

According to the reports, the two are expected to discuss Russian-Israeli military coordination vis-à-vis Syria, Iran’s effort to establish a permanent presence in that war-torn country and the Tehran regime’s attempts to transfer advanced weaponry to Hezbollah via Damascus.

This will be Shoigu’s first trip to Israel since becoming defense minister in 2012.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Sochi for a sit-down with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the meeting, Netanyahu stated, “Iran is increasing its efforts to establish its military foothold in Syria. That is dangerous for Israel, the Middle East and, I believe, the whole world. Iran is already in advanced stages of taking over Iraq and Yemen, and in effect it also controls Lebanon.”

“We are all defeating ISIS in a concerted international effort, and that is welcome,” the Israeli prime minister — who has met with Putin six times since Russia’s military intervention in Syria began two years ago — continued. “What is not welcome is Iran moving in everywhere ISIS moves out. We do not forget for one minute that Iran continues to threaten Israel’s destruction every day; it is arming terrorist organizations and is itself instigating terrorism; and it is developing intercontinental missiles with the goal of arming them with nuclear warheads.”

The German federal election on Sunday has tremendous significance for Israel, largely because the Federal Republic is one of Israel’s most important allies within the European Union.

A German government that shows solidarity with Israel can continue to supply it with advanced submarines and intelligence data, help blunt anti-Israel measures at the UN, and stymie misguided – and at times antisemitic – EU sanctions against the Jewish state. Add mushrooming trade and tourist relations, and an objective observer can fathom why German elections matter for Israel.

While Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union is slated to secure the most votes (34%, according to the most recent poll), the anti-immigrant and far-right Alternative for Germany is projected to win an eye-popping 13% of the vote. German election law requires a party to cross a 5% hurdle to enter the Bundestag.

The AfD has triggered anxiety among Germany’s relatively small Jewish community because of its alleged xenophobia and antisemitism, as well as its recent glorification of Germany’s soldiers during the Holocaust.

The AfD’s top candidate, Alexander Gauland, said earlier this month: “If the French are rightly proud of their emperor and the Britons of Nelson and Churchill, we have the right to be proud of the achievements of the German soldiers in two world wars.”

The AfD’s 76-page party program make no mention of fighting antisemitism or of support for Israel. All of this helps to explain why the AfD likely endangers Israel’s security.

Merkel’s CDU party program pledges a “special responsibility of Germany toward Israel.”

The chairman of the German-Israel parliament group on Thursday attacked Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government for meeting primarily with NGOs critical of Israel, Benjamin Weinthal reported in The Jerusalem Post.

Green Party MP Volker Beck said that “The balance of the discussion partners speaks not only for a special passion—the so-called Israel criticism attitude—but also for the false estimation and lack of knowledge of the situation on the ground.” He insisted that “A dialogue should also consist of talks with positions that one does not share. Otherwise it is a monologue rather than a duet.”

The MP secured information from the German Foreign Ministry about official government meetings in Israel, which show that, over a nearly three-and-a-half-year period, Merkel’s cabinet met almost exclusively with NGOs critical of Israel, with some even questioning the legitimacy of the Jewish state. The data revealed that from meetings with 27 NGOs, only one NGO was from the middle or center-right of the political spectrum.

The chairman cited a speech from German President Walter Steinmeier at the Hebrew University in May. “While we Germans know and admire the diversity of democracy in Israel, we also still want to speak with as many different groups in your country and learn as many different viewpoints,” Steinmeier said.

In a landmark referendum next Monday, Iraqi Kurdistan will vote on whether to declare independence. The outcome is not in question. Iraq’s Kurds have been largely self-governing for 25 years, but they yearn to be sovereign in a state of their own, just like the region’s other great ethnic and linguistic groups — Arabs, Turks, Persians, Jews.

The Kurdish campaign for statehood ought to have the robust backing of the United States. Iraqi Kurds are ardently pro-American, unabashed allies in a region where the US has few true friends. The Kurds make no secret of their deep gratitude to the United States for toppling Saddam Hussein, the tyrant who waged a war of genocide against Kurdistan in the 1980s, slaughtering at least 50,000 civilians with chemical weapons and aerial assaults.

Kurdistan isn’t just a grateful ally, it’s a capable and skillful one. Kurdish soldiers, known as Peshmerga, are widely acknowledged to be America’s most effective partners in the fight against the Islamic State. They played a central role in the recent liberation of Raqqa and of Mosul from ISIS. As waves of refugees have fled the violence unleashed by the Islamic State and the Syrian civil war, nearly 2 million have found a safe haven in Kurdistan. Among them are many thousands of Christians.

Yet instead of applauding the Kurds’ bid for independence, the United States keeps dousing it with cold water.

Analysts from a cadre of nations and entities monitoring the fluid, chaotic situation in the Middle East have concluded that establishing an independent, coherent state for Kurds where they already enjoy de facto autonomy and have demonstrated the capacity for proper self-governance and administration would introduce a destabilizing factor in the region, whereas a Palestinian state run by clannish, venal despots obsessed with suppressing dissent could only serve as a stabilizing factor.

The United States, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, the United Nations, Syria, and myriad others have registered their disfavor with the notion of sovereignty for the Kurds, a distinct ethnic group that has suffered under myriad outside regimes and seeks independence. At the same time, the same bodies and countries have worked for the founding of a sovereign state for Palestinians, a nation minted in the 1960’s who in more than two decades of self-rule have made little or no progress toward the establishment of good governance, democratic institutions, civil society, transparency, or other factors that would in some way demonstrate the wisdom of continuing down such a path. In explaining the divergent attitudes, experts note that the competent administration by the Kurds would undermine an emerging order in the region, whereas a corrupt, terrorism-promoting Palestinian state would reinforce it.

In explaining the difference, analysts point to several key factors. “First you have to understand that the Middle East isn’t used to competent administration,” insisted an academic who appeared to be trying hard not to resemble Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif with Groucho glasses, nose, and mustache. “It would be irresponsible to introduce such a thing. Just look at the havoc the Zionists have wrought by bringing in even a hint of real governance. The peoples of this region continue to resist such foreign colonial ideas.”

A boy and an adult were lightly injured in a terror attack on Route 443 near Modiin last night, when Arabs threw massive rocks at cars passing along the road, 0404 reported.

According to the report, 4 vehicles were also damaged from the rock attacks.

In another incident last night, terrorists hid an explosive device at the Amos Junction in eastern Gush Etzion.

0404 said, according to Hatzalah of Judea and Samaria, that the device exploded and, miraculously, no one was injured.

The explosive was comprised of a burning tire, in which a gas cannister was embedded.

The incident marks the third time in the past two weeks that terrorists have attempted to carry out an attack in that area by means of this type of explosive.

Israeli-Arab actor and film director Mohammad Bakri was featured on the cover of the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar on Saturday.

Bakri is known for his controversial 2002 film Jenin, Jenin, which dealt with the IDF's activity in the city during Operation Defensive Shield.

Bakri was featured on the cover of the Lebanese paper after of his arrival in the country to take part in the annual festival Palestinian Days, where some of his films on the Palestinian issues will be screened.

The paper's main headline boasted: "Mohammad Bakri, an optipessimistic in Beirut. The Dar El-Nimer Center for Arts and Culture, the Al Madina Theatre and Al Akhbar welcome the Palestinian actor."

Bakri held a press conference at the Dar El-Nimer Center on Friday, taking advantage of the event to lash out against Israel.

"The normalization with the Zionist enemy is treason. The discussion around this is shameful and unacceptable in any way," he said. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev on Sunday asked the attorney-general to investigate Arab Israeli film producer Mohammad Bakri for reportedly declaring, while on a visit to Lebanon, that it is treason for the Arab state to have ties with Israel.

Regev wrote to Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit asking him to probe Bakri for “visiting an enemy state and inciting against the state [of Israel].”

Bakri, a film actor and director, is in Lebanon to take part in the annual “Palestinian Days” film festival.

“Bakri, who is known for his confrontational position regarding Israel, dared to call Arab states that have ties with Israel ‘traitors’ — he claims that Israel is nothing more than a Zionist enemy [and] that any contact with it is considered treason,” Regev wrote.

In response, Bakri told Channel 2 that he was not in the least concerned by Regev.

“I don’t believe a single word that comes out of her mouth and I don’t take her seriously,” he said. “It is very simple. I fear only God — not Israelis, not the Israeli government, and certainly not Regev.”

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has traveled to Washington and is waiting for a lung transplant after his health deteriorated in recent months.

In an interview broadcast Thursday on Palestinian national television, Erekat, who is secretary general of the PLO Executive Committee, gave what was seen as a farewell message to the Palestinian public.

Erekat appeared weak and struggling to breathe with an oxygen tube in his nose as he spoke of the illness that he has struggled with for the past few years.

“I got pulmonary fibrosis five years ago… and five months ago my situation deteriorated. I need oxygen, walking is very difficult for me, and I’m waiting for a lung transplant any day now,” he said in the interview.

Erekat, 62, who has been a mainstay of the Palestinian leadership over the last two decades, spoke of his pride in his people. “God has blessed us by making us Palestinians. We are soldiers for Palestine,” he said.

“I want to tell everyone to be proud; I am proud of every year I spent as a soldier for Palestine. Know that Palestine’s independence is surely on its way. A Palestinian state in 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital; this is coming; it is a historical imperative,” Erekat said.

Pulmonary fibrosis causes scarring on the lungs that inhibits breathing and blocks the body’s ability to absorb oxygen.

True, Salaita and Finkelstein are now untouchable pariahs in academia but their rancid political opinions are not the cause of their ostracism. If that were the case, other academics harboring similar pernicious views (and there are many) would have been fired long ago. In fact, universities and colleges have gone to great lengths to protect the rights of professors who peddle in anti-Semitic venom.

At Oberlin College for example, college officials initially defended Joy Karega, an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition, after she posted blatantly anti-Semitic commentary on social media. She was ultimately fired but it took college officials eight months to terminate her despite the fact that the evidence was categorical.

It is more likely that Salaita and Finkelstein, who have garnered reputations as litigious troublemakers, are toxic because they are simply bad for business. Universities that hire them are cognizant of the fact that they run the demonstrable risk of potential lawsuits should employer-employee interests diverge at some point after hiring.

Nonetheless, the core problem existing within institutions of higher learning, chiefly the hijacking of the social science and humanities fields, persists and remains unaddressed. Universities should never engage in blacklisting simply because an academic maintains views that veer from the mainstream or are otherwise objectionable. Such a policy is an anathema to core principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech.

Nevertheless, under very narrow and limited circumstances, such a course of action is warranted in the interests of maintaining educational integrity.
Failed academics like Salaita and Finkelstein have a long and sordid history of abusive conduct and utilizing their teaching platforms to spread hate and propaganda. Both have exhibited Jew-hatred in the extreme and both have dabbled in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

They have shown no remorse for their misconduct. On the contrary, they continue to blame their misfortunes on Zio or Zionist conspirators. They are more suited to being editors for Der Sturmer and should be far removed from academia. Hopefully, we’ve seen the last of them.

The document portrays the struggle between Palestinians and Israelis as one between “good” (Christian, Palestinian) and “evil” (Jewish, Israeli), between those who lift up God’s name and those who profane it. Palestinians and Israelis are each assigned their roles in this carefully choreographed drama, which, regrettably, bears a striking resemblance to story lines used to demonize Jews in past eras.

The resulting narrative is far removed from the complex realities that actually shape the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. To pick one, Hamas, which rules Gaza, rejects peace with Israel on any terms. This is a political reality that Israelis cannot ignore. Yet polling data demonstrate that a majority of Jews in Israel support the establishment of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel. What they fear, with good reason, is that this state will come under the influence of extremists such as Hamas and become a safe haven for terrorists. The Kairos Palestine document ignores this and so much more.

Is it necessary to deny Israel’s narrative to show sympathy and support for the Palestinians? Protestant denominations that have embraced Kairos Palestine appear to answer “yes.” In doing so, they have chosen to be partisans rather than peacemakers.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is built around a series of hard realities. Israelis live in a difficult neighborhood surrounded by many who wish them harm. Palestinians feel that they have been dispossessed, and many find it difficult to recognize, much less embrace, a state that they believe is not legitimate. A compromise that will protect Israelis and satisfy Palestinians may be hard to achieve, but celebrating extreme documents like Kairos Palestine makes the challenge all the more daunting.

Resolution of this conflict will require a readiness on each side to listen to and understand the views of the other. It will not come from strident, one-dimensional proclamations that fuel hatred and mistrust.

As revealed in recent congressional testimony, Students for Justice in Palestine is a campus front for Hamas terrorists. SJP’s propaganda activities are orchestrated and funded by a Hamas front group, American Muslims for Palestine, whose chairman is Hatem Bazian and whose principals are former officers of the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic “charities” previously convicted of funneling money to Hamas. The report and posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop University Support for Terrorists. Images of the posters that appeared at UC-Berkeley may be viewed at www.stopuniversitysupportforterrorists.org.

University of California-Irvine
Over the past decade, the University of California Irvine has earned a well-deserved reputation as a base for supporters of anti-Israel terrorism and hostility towards Jews. At several events over the past few years, members of UCI SJP have entirely disrupted pro-Israel events, chanting slogans promoting terrorism such as “Intifada, Intifada/long live the Intifada” and “when people are occupied/resistance is justified,” forcing Jewish students to disperse under the watch of campus police. Irvine hosts an annual Israeli Apartheid Week which has been variously called “Anti-Zionism Week” and “Resisting Zionism Week.” A mock “apartheid wall” displayed during the week has glorified convicted hijacker Leila Khaled a member of the murderous terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and also depicted a map of Israel with the entire nation labeled as “occupied territory.” It has also contained incitements to terrorism such as the statement “When people are occupied, resistance is justified.”

Speakers invited to Irvine by the campus chapter of the Muslim Student Union include BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti and infamous terrorist-supporting anti-Semite, Amir Abdel Malik Ali, who has openly stated his allegiance to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad. Irvine’s student senate was one of the first in the nation to pass a resolution in support of the Hamas-backed and funded BDS campaign against Israel. Irvine students even met with a prominent Hamas leader during a secret trip to the Middle East in 2009.

Bulgaria’s Foreign Ministry condemned the vandalism of gravestones in a Jewish cemetery in the capital city of Sofia.

The vandalism occurred last week in the Jewish section of the Sofia Central Cemetery. It was first reported to the Shalom Organization of the Jews in Bulgaria, which posted photos of the damage on Facebook.

Photos show toppled gravestones, as well as one stone broken into three pieces.

Deputy Mayor Todor Chobanov, who is in charge of Sofia’s cemeteries, told Shalom Organization President Dr. Alek Oskar that all necessary measures will be taken to discover the perpetrators, as well as their motive, according to the group. Chobanov also expressed “sincere regret” over the vandalism, noting that it comes ahead of the Jewish High Holidays.

A Belgian ex-MP convicted for Holocaust denial was ordered by a Brussels court on Wednesday to visit former Nazi concentration camps and write about the experience as part of his sentence.

Controversial politician Laurent Louis was given a suspended six-month jail term and a $21,570 fine in 2015 for minimizing the slaughter of millions of Jews during World War II on his blog.

An appeals court upheld his conviction on Wednesday but suspended the sentence for five years on condition that Louis visits five Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz in Poland and Dachau in Germany.

After each visit he is required to “submit a text of at least 50 lines about what he saw in the camps and the feelings he experienced,” to judicial authorities monitoring his sentence, the Belga news agency said.

Louis, who served as a lawmaker from 2010 to 2014, also has to publish the texts on his Facebook page within a month of the visits.

His lawyer Sebastien Courtoy told AFP that Louis was “sincerely sorry” for what he had done and that they had come up with the idea of the visits.

You have probably heard of “Schindler’s List” — Steven Spielberg’s movie, which brought to life the story of a German member of the Nazi party who saved the lives of more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust, by employing them in his factories in occupied Poland.

You may have also heard of the heroic rescue of the Danish Jews: With the help of the Danish government, people and resistance movement, 7,220 out of the 7,800 Jews in that country escaped the Nazis, and found salvation in Sweden.

What’s lesser known is the story of the 50,00 Jews who were saved by Bulgaria.

In his book, Beyond Hitler’s Grasp, Michael Bar-Zohar states that, “For years, Bulgaria’s Communist regime had tried to suppress the real story about [this] rescue for a very simple reason. The Bulgarian rescue had been carried out mostly by Communism’s three worst enemies: the Church, the royal court, and the pro-Fascist politicians. The Communist regime couldn’t admit that, fact because it contradicted its basic beliefs.”

What’s even more astonishing is that these 50,000 Jews were saved while Bulgaria was actually an ally of Hitler.

SAP, the German multinational software corporation, has agreed to buy Israeli software startup Gigya for $350 million, The Marker financial website reported on Sunday, without saying where it got the information.

Gigya, founded in 2006 by Rooly Eliezerov, Eran Kutner and Eyal Magen, has created web identity software that businesses can use to identify customers, aggregate data and personalize campaigns. More than 700 of the world’s leading businesses, including Speedo, Bayer, Toyota, Forbes and Fox, use Gigya to build identity-driven relationships, according to Gigya’s website.

The Mountain View, California-based company, which has offices in Tel Aviv, London, New York, Paris and Hamburg, among others, has raised a total of $105.8 million in funds from 10 investors, including Intel Capital and Benchmark, according to data provider Crunchbase. The company leads the customer identity and access management market, according to reports by both Garner and KuppnegerCole.

The company employs some 320 workers, 100 of whom are in Israel, and has revenues of tens of millions of dollars a year, The Marker said.

Chrissie Hynde opened The Pretenders’ gig in Tel Aviv on Saturday night by marching out on stage waving a giant Israeli flag, and ended it by declaring the crowd to be “the best audience in the world.”

But Hynde, whose band played a terrific near-two-hour set at a well-filled Menora Mivtachim arena, had an even bigger compliment for Israel. A vegetarian and veteran animal rights activist, she pronounced the state to be one of the world’s leaders in animal rights.

Fully aware that not everything is perfect in Israel when it comes to animal rights, however, Hynde sported a T-shirt bearing a graphic with a cow’s face and Hebrew text declaring that it was time for “stopping the live shipments” — of animals brought from overseas for fattening and slaughter here.

The Akron, Ohio-born, Anglophile singer, songwriter and guitarist said she’d learned some Hebrew words in the last couple of days but forgotten them — she said she’d leave the Hebrew to Mick Jagger — and she’d also forgotten the name of “one of your holidays” that her friend Sandra Bernhard had told her she ought to dedicate a song to. But she did dedicate one song to the animal rights activists she said she’d met on this trip, and another to her cherished cows — possibly a first in Israel.

A team of ZAKA volunteers dispatched to Mexico following Tuesday’s devastating earthquake recovered the body of a Mexico City rabbi on the first night of Rosh Hashanah, and continue to work around the clock in the nation’s ongoing search and rescue mission amid aftershocks.

Working in coordination with the Mexican Jewish rescue and recovery organization Cadena, the volunteers located the corpse of Haim Ashkenazi Wednesday night from the rubble of the office building he was working in during the time of the powerful quake.

ZAKA International Rescue Unit chief officer Mati Goldstein, who announced the extrication on Sunday, said the team worked throughout Rosh Hashanah and Shabbat, and will remain at the scene until bodies are extricated from some 38 collapsed buildings.

“The ZAKA team, which was on the scene at the time the earthquake struck, will remain until we receive an update that there are no more missing people,” said Goldstein. “The team continued to work throughout Rosh Hashanah and Shabbat in accordance with a ruling by the Chief Rabbi of Mexico, Rabbi Shlomo Tawil.”

Ashkenazi, of the Kehillat Magen David community, was related by marriage Tawil, who approved the ongoing operation during the holiday and Shabbat.

ZAKA Mexico commander Marcus Cain said “it is impossible to describe the scope of the disaster.”

An Israeli rescue delegation was greeted with spontaneous applause in the streets of a Mexican town Friday, in a show of gratitude for the team’s efforts to aid in the search for survivors following a devastating earthquake Tuesday.

In a video published by Channel 2, dozens of individuals, some waving Mexican flags, can be seen cheering the Israeli rescue team as the delegation crosses their path in a town hit by the earthquake.

A 71-member Israeli delegation from the Home Front Command arrived in Mexico on Thursday, some 48 hours after the 7.1-magnitude quake hit. Two Israeli aid organizations — IsraAID and iAid — also sent delegations to help with the search and rescue efforts.

Anxiety was mounting on Friday as Mexico approached the crucial 72-hour mark after the powerful tremor, and exhausted rescuers raced to locate possible survivors trapped in the rubble.

Authorities put the death toll from Tuesday’s quake at 286 people, but it was expected to rise further with scores still missing in Mexico City.

The Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday that the 71-member delegation was made up of a small search and rescue team, with a majority being engineers who would help assess the structural integrity of buildings in Mexico City and other affected areas.

Locals rescuers said the Israeli teams came with equipment enabling them to detect cell phone signals in the rubble.

Israel did not set up a field hospital yet, but the army has said this could be added in the future.

The representative of Iran, speaking in exercise of the right of reply, said the representative of the Israeli regime had made unfounded allegations against his country.  The nature of that regime was founded on aggression, occupation, suppression, violence and terror, he said, adding that in the information age, “weapons of mass deception” (which the Iranian representative called "another type of WMD" that Israel has) were becoming more useless day by day.  That representative could have explained why his regime had invaded all its neighbours, and even countries outside its region, waging 15 wars in its short lifetime. Why did that regime continue to disrespect resolutions adopted by the Assembly, the Security Council and other United Nations bodies, he asked, and why was it a State sponsor of terrorism, including support for ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) with arms and other military assistance. It was the world’s last apartheid regime and the warden of its biggest prison, arresting and jailing Palestinians and imposing an inhumane blockade on the Gaza Strip.  He went on to ask why that regime, the only nuclear weapons possessor in the Middle East, lectured the world on non-proliferation and Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme. The representative of the Israeli regime had hypocritically tried to abuse the Assembly by accusing others and stirring anxiety about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, he said.  It was a regime that favoured conflict and war over diplomacy, he added.

The Iranian asylum seeker Leila Bayat, who was deported from Norway on 8 March 2017, has received 80 lashes in Tehran. During the investigation of her asylum case, the Norwegian authorities didn’t approve the documents regarding Leila Bayat’s flogging sentence and denied her asylum.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director and spokesperson of Iran Human Rights (IHR) said, “It is a shame that the authorities of a country like Norway, which has a reputation of respecting human rights and in particular women’s rights, didn’t provide a woman who had escaped flogging sentence with asylum and deported her back to Iran. In this case, Norwegian authorities didn’t fulfill their legal and human duty, and in the best case scenario, deported her to Iran despite having serious doubts about her flogging sentence. There were lots of evidence showing Leila’s flogging sentence was authentic but the Norwegian authorities ignored them. The Islamic Republic of Iran is to be blamed for the inhumane sentence of 80 lashes Leila received, but the Norwegian authorities have their share of responsibility in this case and must be held accountable for it.”

According to a close source, Leila Bayat received 80 lashes at branch 3 of the Section for Implementation of Sentence of Tehran’s Prosecution Office at 1 pm on Tuesday September 19.

Leila Bayat and three of her friends were arrested in 2007 and sentenced branch 3 of the 21th district Prosecution Office of Tehran to 80 lashes for drinking alcoholic beverages. They were released on bail of 7 million Tomans (about 1800 USD) and tried to change the sentence for two and a half years. Being disappointed, Leila together with her 5-year-old son sought asylum in Norway where they were denied asylum several times by the authorities of The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration.

Leila Bayat was finally deported to Iran on March 11, 2017 and tried to have her sentence suspended which was unsuccessful.

“I told them (Norwegian authorities) the exact details of my case, but it was refused seven times. They claimed that the verdict, the warrant, my lawyer’s testimony, and everything I presented to them were fake and my case was a lie. They said that their expert at Norway’s Embassy in Iran had examined the documents and said that such a sentence would never be carried out in Iran. And in the end, they separated me from my 13-year-old son and deported me back to Iran,” said Leila to IHR.

She added, “Before returning to Iran, I was so angry about why I had to escape from my own country. But now, I’m angrier at Norway. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, we were sentenced to flogging because we didn’t obey the law, but I sought asylum in Norway and I thought that I would be safe there, which was far from true.”

Once the Second Temple was demolished by the Romans in the year 70 C.E., prayer replaced sacrificial worship. Most scholars agree that Jews offered prayers on the Temple Mount even after the destruction of the Second Temple."During the first period after the destruction of the Temple of Herod, the Jews continued to go and weep at the ruins of it," read a report by the British Royal Commission, established in 1930 to determine the claims of Muslims and Jews at the Western Wall. The report also noted that "the Jews' wailing-place at that time seems to have been the stone on Mount Moriah where the Mosque of Omar [in the Christian Quarter] now stands."[3]

But before long, all this changed. Early in the second century the Roman emperor Hadrian prohibited Jews from worshipping on the Temple Mount. They were permitted to assemble for prayer only on the Mount of Olives from where they had an unobstructed view of the ruins of the Second Temple. The prohibition to ascend the Temple Mount was strictly enforced during Hadrian's lifetime, but the periodic need to re-issue the decree by subsequent emperors suggests that enforcement was often lax after his death. In fact, Jews did pray on the Temple Mount during the remainder of the second and most of the third centuries, but even when they were prohibited from doing so, there is no indication that they chose instead to pray at today's Western Wall.[4]

Once the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official state religion in the fourth century, the situation of Jerusalem's Jewish community became precarious. During most of the next three hundred years, Jews were not permitted to live or visit Jerusalem, but there were periods when this anti-Jewish policy was relaxed, and Jews were permitted to live in or visit the city. Yet there are no records of Jews praying at the Western Wall during those years. After the Persian and Arab conquests of the city in the seventh century, Jews were again allowed to reside in Jerusalem. They chose to live on Mount Zion where they had a number of synagogues. They even had a synagogue on the Temple Mount but no prayer services were conducted at the Western Wall.[5] 

An eleventh-century document, found in the Cairo Geniza describes how Jewish pilgrims frequently circled the Temple Mount (from the outside), stopping at each of the gates to recite specific prayers. Moshe ben Yitzhak, a mid-11th-century pilgrim, is reported to have prayed daily at one of the Temple Mount gates. At that time, Jews prayed at all of the retaining walls of the Temple Mount. The Western Wall was not accorded any preference. When they prayed at the Western Wall, they did not worship at the site that nowadays is known as the Western Wall Plaza but rather north of this area because, at that time, buildings prevented access to the area currently used. This same geniza manuscript from 1057 confirmed that the Jews paid special taxes for the privilege of praying at the Temple Mount gates and on the Mount of Olives.[6]

Until the thirteenth century, prayer on the Temple Mount was sporadically possible. Benjamin of Tudela (1130-73 C.E.), the famous Jewish traveler who visited Jerusalem during the Crusader years, wrote in his travelogue:

In front of the [Dome of the Rock] is the Western Wall. This is one of the [remaining] walls of what was once the Holy of Holies. ... All the Jews come there to pray before this wall.[7]

The wall that Benjamin described was not the present Western Wall (which, as previously noted, is part of the outer retaining walls of the Temple Mount) but the ruins of the western wall of the Second Temple, which were apparently still standing in his days. Maimonides, who arrived in Jerusalem in 1165, also prayed on the Temple Mount, but his letters make no mention of praying at the site where the Western Wall is now located.

Rabbi Shmuel ben Shimshon, who arrived in Jerusalem in 1211, describes in great detail his first days in the city. He ascended the Temple Mount soon after arriving and often prayed on "the Mount of Olives, the place where they used to burn the [Red] Heifer."[8] But on "Shabbat we prayed the afternoon prayer [on the Temple Mount], on the very place where the uncircumcised used to erect their idols."[9] Again, no mention is made of praying at the Western Wall of our days.

Early in the fourteenth century, Jews were barred from entering the Temple Mount by the Mamluks, who ruled Jerusalem from 1250 to 1516. Ishtori Haparchi (1280-1366), author of one of the earliest books of the geography of the Holy Land, Kaftor v'Ferah, wrote that in his day, Jews prayed at the eastern wall and outside the gates of the southern wall. He describes the geography of Jerusalem in great detail but makes no mention of a holy site at the western wall.[10]

Did the Jews build a synagogue on the Temple Mount in the century immediately following the Muslim invasion? All historians agree that the Jews played a prominent role in identifying the holy areas on the Temple Mount; these same Jews subsequently worked as servants and cleaners of the mosques that were erected there. The medieval Arab historian Mujir al-Din al-Ulaymi (1456-1522), born in Ramle but a lifelong resident of Jerusalem where he was buried, described the role that the Jews played on the Temple Mount in the early Muslim period in his comprehensive history of Jerusalem and Hebron, as follows:
The Jews who served as servants [in the mosques] were exempt from paying poll tax, they and their descendants forever. At first these numbered ten, but later their number rose to twenty. Their job was to clean the mosques. Other Jews were engaged to manufacture and attach the glass and the candelabras and other things. They also supplied wicks. Most interesting is Mujir al-Din’s suspicion that the Jews consented to engage in these jobs in order to gain a foothold on the Temple Mount so that they could offer prayers in the place where their Temple once stood.14 At this time Muslims did not consider a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount problematic because they had not yet designated the mount as a sacred site.
Several scholars wrote that Jews received permission to build a synagogue or prayer-and-study hall on the Temple Mount. Some have even suggested that the first wooden structure built on the site of the Temple was meant originally to be a synagogue, but that before it was completed the Muslims expropriated the building and gave the Jews another site on the Temple Mount as a substitute location for their synagogue.Sebeos, a 7th-century Armenian bishop and historian, wrote about the existence of a Jewish prayer hall on the Temple Mount as follows:
After the Jews enjoyed the aid and protection of the Arabs for a long time, they conceived the idea of rebuilding the Temple of Solomon. They identified the location of what they called the “The Holy of Holies” and there they built a prayer hall, using the foundations and the remnants of the original building. Once they had started to build, the Arabs became jealous and banished them from there. Instead, they gave the Jews another area on the Temple Mount for a synagogue.15
Solomon ben Jeroham, a Karaite exegete who lived in Jerusalem between 940 and 960, wrote in his commentary on the Book of Psalms that the Muslims had permitted the Jews to pray on the Temple Mount for many years.
When, with the mercy of the God of Israel, the Romans were thrown out [of Jerusalem] and the Islamic kingdom appeared, permission was given to Israel to enter [the city] and live there. Furthermore, the courtyards of the Temple were turned over to them and they prayed there [on the Temple Mount] for many years. Afterwards [slanderers] told the Muslim king that they did bad things there, that they drank intoxicating wine and desecrated the place. He therefore ordered them expelled to one of the many gates and there they prayed for many years. But they continued to do bad things and there came a new king and he expelled them from the Temple Mount completely.16
The 11th-century letter written by the Elder of the Jerusalem Jewish community that we cited earlier also stated unequivocally that from the time of the Arab conquest of Jerusalem until the present time (tenth or eleventh century) Jews were allowed to pray without interference on the Temple Mount or at its gates.17
Petachiah of Regensburg, a Bohemian rabbi who set out from Prague to Palestine in 1175 and arrived in Crusader Jerusalem no later than 1187, reported that in his days it was “common knowledge” that the Dome of the Rock (he called it the ‘Umar-mosque) was designed originally to serve as a synagogue.18
The midrash collection called “Nistarot de-Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai” [The Esoteric Teachings of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, believed to have been compiled at the time of the Crusaders] brings the following account:
… the second king who arose to Ishmael was friendly to Israel, and he mended their breaches and the breaches of the Heikhal, and dug up Mount Moriah... and he built there a place for prayer [lit., a place for bowing down] on the Foundation Stone [that is, on the site of the Temple].19
Many years ago Professor Dinur wrote a comprehensive article on “A Jewish synagogue and study hall on the Temple Mount during the Arab period” in which he summarized all the evidence available at that time concerning Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount during the Muslim period.20 He suggested that the building that eventually became known as the mosque of ‘Umar was originally built by Caliph ‘Umar as a synagogue or prayer hall for the Jews. He cited evidence of the existence of a synagogue on the Temple Mount from the 9th century on.This synagogue, known as the Mahkema, was located on the southwestern side of the Shalshelet Gate. After the Fatimid rulers conquered Jerusalem in 969, this synagogue was rebuilt and used until the Jews were banished by Caliph alChakim in 1015. Jews returned to this synagogue on the Temple Mount after a subsequent ruler cancelled al-Chakim’s ban. 21
While there is disagreement about where the synagogue was located on the Temple Mount, most scholars agree that there was a functioning synagogue on the Temple Mount during the first century after the Muslim conquest—and perhaps even later. Subsequently (the exact date is not known) the permission for Jews to have a synagogue on the Temple Mount was cancelled.  

Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub exploited his entry to Israel around two weeks ago in order to visit the family of terrorist murderer Karim Younes.

Karim Younes is an Israeli Arab who, together with his cousin Maher Younes, kidnapped and murdered Israeli soldier Avraham Bromberg in 1980. He was sentenced to life in prison. (His sentence was commuted to 40 years by Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2012.)

In a post on his Facebook page, Rajoub took pride in having visited the murderer's family in the village of 'Ara, and he posted pictures of himself with the family members.

Palestinian Media Watch checked and found that the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories had not approved Rajoub's visit to the murderer's family.

Fatah: "The Munich operation... will continue to be remembered and recorded in history"

45 years after the massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Abbas' Fatah Movement still sees the attack as "the excellent operation" and the attackers as "the heroes of the Munich operation"

45 years after the massacre at the Munich Olympics, Abbas' Fatah Movement is still honoring the planners of the murders of the 11 Israeli athletes and celebrating the terror attack.

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, the Palestinian terror organization Black September, a branch of Fatah, took the members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage and murdered 11 of them.

On the anniversary of the murders this month, two branches of the Fatah Movement posted photos of the terrorist murderers and comments glorifying the attack on Facebook.

Fatah's Bethlehem branch wrote a short post about "the excellent operation in Munich," posting photos of some of the terrorists:

Posted text: "Sept. 5, 1972 - Sept. 5, 2017 - the 45th anniversary of the excellent operation in Munich. On this date the Black September organization, one of the Fatah Movement's military bodies, kidnapped the Zionist Olympic delegation and took its members hostage in order to release Palestinian prisoners in the Zionist prisons."
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement - Bethlehem Branch, Sept. 5, 2017]

Israel is clearly committed to upholding its red lines in Syria, which includes prevention of the establishment of a permanent Iranian military presence in the Golan, which would allow Tehran and its proxies to open up another front against the Jewish state during future hostilities. Israel has repeatedly conducted missile strikes in Syria to prevent the transfer of “game-changing” weaponry to Hizbullah as it arrives by air and then travels overland to the Lebanon-based terrorists.

Speaking to The Media Line, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council, said he was unaware of any such coordination with Syrian rebel groups and stressed that “those operating in the Syrian Golan [which at intervals has included offshoots of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda] are not supportive of Israel.”

As such, he views Moualem’s comments foremost as a justification for Syrian and Iranian-backed military operations near the border.

By contrast, Eiland explained that Israeli military intervention in Syria is prompted by three intersecting circumstances; first, a response to errant fire that enters its territory by targeting Assad regime assets; second, when Hizbullah offensives are identified along the border; and third, if there is an attempt to transfer advanced weapons—precision missiles, in particular—to Iran’s Lebanese Shiite underling.

In this respect, the IDF last week reportedly for a second time this year attacked an arms depot next to Damascus International Airport; this, following a purported Israeli strike on the Scientific Studies and Researchers Center in the central Syrian city of Masyaf, where chemical arms were allegedly being manufactured in contravention to a previous U.S.-Russia-brokered deal to completely rid the Syrian regime of WMDs.

According to Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen, who commanded IDF troops along the Syrian border, while Israel’s direct involvement on the ground is restricted, its overriding goal is to ensure “stability and security along the frontier, [thereby avoiding] the creation of another area from which a war of attrition [can be initiated].

“Israel may not be able to stop this,” he acknowledged to The Media Line, “but can nevertheless influence the process. Jerusalem must emphasize that it is part of the game and that it is willing to take risks to achieve its objectives. Moreover, the Israelis need to make clear that any solution in Syria must take into account its considerations.”

A Hamas member turned humanitarian addressed the U.N. human rights council today and called the Palestinian Authority the “greatest enemy of the Palestinian people.” See full speech below.

“If Israel did not exist, you would have no one to blame; take responsibility for the outcome of your own actions,” said Mosab Hassan Yousef, whose father was a founding member of Hamas.

As recounted in the film The Green Prince, Yousef emerged as one of Israel’s prized informants, who disrupted lethal attacks and uncovered terror cells.

Yousef spoke today on behalf of UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights organization, taking the floor in a meeting on alleged Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights. By contrast, the council has no special agenda item on Syria, Sudan, Iran, North Korea, or any other region.

“For good reason, Western democracies once again boycotted today’s debate,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.

“In the dystopian universe of George Orwell’s 1984, everyone was forced to undergo a daily ‘Two Minute of Hate’. In the dystopian universe of the UN Human Rights Council—where Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Cuba and Venezuela are members—the built-in schedule of every session includes one day dedicated solely to spewing hate against the Jewish state.”

With a two-sentence statement supporting the Iraqi Kurds’ plan to hold a referendum on independence this Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put Israel at odds with nearly every other major player in the Middle East.

Mr. Netanyahu, who endorsed not only the referendum but also the establishment of a Kurdish state, had ample strategic reason: A breakaway Kurdistan could prove valuable to Israel against Iran, which has oppressed its own Kurdish population.

But given the interwoven history and shared emotion underlying his statement, present-day geopolitics can seem almost beside the point.

The Kurds and the Jews, it turns out, go way back.

Back past the Babylonian Captivity, in fact: The first Jews in Kurdistan, tradition holds, were among the last tribes of Israel, taken from their land in the eighth century B.C. They liked it there so much that when Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered the Babylonians and let the Jews go back home, many chose instead to stick around.

Sixteen centuries later, Saladin, a Kurd, treated the Jews humanely after he conquered Jerusalem, and notably hired a Jewish doctor, Maimonides, as his physician.

In the modern era, Kurdish Jews departed en masse for Israel when the Jewish state was created in 1948, leaving Kurdish civil society so bereft that some recall its leaders still lamenting the Jewish exodus decades later.

Ties between the two have only grown warmer and more vital since the 1960s, as Israel and the Kurds — both minorities in an inhospitable region and ever in need of international allies — have repeatedly come to each other’s aid. The Kurds have long patterned their lobbying efforts in Washington on those of Israel’s supporters.

And while Kurdish leaders have not publicly embraced Israel in the run-up to the referendum, for fear of antagonizing the Arab world, the Israeli flag can routinely be seen at Kurdish rallies in Erbil and across Europe.

Tibon’s book pays special attention to the crucial years of change with the Palestinian movement from 2005 to 2014.

Specifically, it asks three fundamental questions. How did Abbas lose control of half of his governing territory and the support of more than half of his people? Why was Abbas the most prominent leader in Fatah to denounce terrorism? And why did Abbas twice walk away from peace offers from Israel and the US in 2008 and 2014?

What may seem like a trivial point at first is, Tibon believes, crucial: A distinct lack of charisma from the Palestinian leader is one of the major issues that has always “haunted” his political career.

“Abbas is just not like Yasser Arafat,” says Tibon. “When Arafat spoke, people listened and cheered. But Abbas is not a very charismatic figure, and he tends to be pedantic, focusing on international legal issues. When you have to create support for hard political choices, it’s difficult when you lack the basic political ability to render hearts and minds.”

Tibon spends an entire chapter to analyzing the historical significance of Yasser Arafat’s death in 2004 — both in how it affected the Palestinian movement as well as Abbas’s political career.

Abbas may be the leader of the PA and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). However, he simply lacks the political and cultural standing that Arafat had, Tibon believes.

“Arafat’s death was an opportunity for Abbas to take Arafat’s place,” says the Israeli journalist.“But for the Palestinian national movement, Arafat’s death left a vacuum that I’m not sure has been filled yet. At least not by Abbas. Because Abbas is technically a president.”

On September 12, 2017, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released “UNCTAD Assistance to the Palestinian People: Developments in the Economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” This report, while published by a UN body that is supposed to focus on trade, investment, and development, instead is part of a Palestinian and UN-initiated propaganda campaign to demonize Israel. As with the other publications issued as part of this political war (see for example UN Women, ESCWA), UNCTAD spurns its mandate, relies on non-credible source material, and ignores material economic factors, resulting in a publication that fails to issue any conclusions that would actually lead to development and peace in the region.

UNCTAD’s singular conclusion regarding problems it finds in the Palestinian economy – is that the “fifty years” of Israel’s “occupation” is solely to blame for economic problems in the Palestinian Authority.

Unlike its other country and regional reports, this report does not undertake a rigorous economic analysis or examine the many factors, both cultural and political impacting the Palestinian economy. For instance, while UNCTAD blames the “occupation” for differences in real GDP per capita overtime, many other reasons exist. For example, when looking at the graph provided for real GDP per capita in 1995-2016, there has been steady growth in the Palestinian economy with the exception of dips during points of significant Palestinian-initiated violence – for instance the surge of terror attacks in the early 2000s, the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2006, and the 2014 Gaza war (see graph on page 1 of report).

The report also fails to include the myriad of Palestinian domestic factors influencing the economy–intra-Palestinian conflict, endemic corruption, mass diversion of resources to terror infrastructure, refusal to implement new technologies in the water sector, the promotion of boycotts against the Israeli economy, the largely agricultural nature of the Palestinian economy, minimal commitment to research and innovation, and traditional cultural norms limiting women in the workforce.

Unfortunately, Abbas has done nothing during his extended stint as president to prepare the Palestinians for compromises. What he has done is glorify terrorists responsible for the murder of Israelis; encourage official PA media and ministries to reject Jewish ties to the land; and incite against Israel.

Ahead of his speech before the UN General Assembly last week, Abbas told Al-Quds Al-Arabi, a Palestinian newspaper printed in London, that the Trump administration asked him for more time to formulate ideas how to jump start the peace process. During this period, Abbas promised to avoid unilateral moves in international forums pending a new American initiative.

But now Abbas is once again pursuing international recognition for a “Palestinian State” without taking the requisite steps of building the foundations. In doing so, he is not only undermining American trust and hurting the chances of success for the Trump administration’s attempts to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table, he is also diverting attention away from the real issues at hand.

A Palestinian state emerging from the present reality on the West Bank and in Gaza would be a corrupt regime that is hostile to democratic freedoms at home and unreconciled to Israel’s existence. That Palestinian leadership is split between the West Bank and Gaza further complicates matters.

Seeking membership in Interpol might give the impression that all the Palestinians lack is official recognition for a de facto Palestinian state. But this is only an impression that has little to do with reality.

Palestinians still lack the unity and good governance needed to ensure that Palestine does not become yet another failed Arab state. All the international declarations in the world won’t change this painful fact.

The Israel effort to prevent the Palestinian Authority (PA) from joining Interpol, the International Police Organization, has been unsuccessful so far.

This afternoon it became clear that the attempt to have the Interpol Executive Committee reject the PA's application had failed. Israel will therefore have to direct its efforts towards Interpol’s General Assembly, which will convene for its annual meeting in China tomorrow (Tuesday) and vote on new members.

The General Assembly is expected to approve the PA's bid to join the international law enforcement body.

Israel has waged a wide-spread diplomatic battle over the last several days to prevent the PA's imitative from succeeding. Israel seeks to strengthen the standards required to join Interpol.

The US has stood alongside Israel in seeking to convince the organization to deny the PA's request. The US believes that allowing the PA to join international bodies without negotiating with Israel gives the PA incentive to avoid peace negotiations altogether and undermines US efforts to broker a peace deal.

Unilaterally erasing the identity of Israel’s negotiating partner under the Oslo Accords and renaming it “the State of Palestine” is part of the semantic warfare engaged in by the PLO as it continues to create a false narrative of the Jewish-Arab conflict. The Palestinian Authority’s demise has enabled PLO Chief Negotiator – Saeb Erekat – to assert:

“Palestine is a country under occupation. What was Norway, Finland, Holland, France, Korea, Philippines between 1939 and 1945 – nation states under occupation. Today, the state of Palestine is officially a state under occupation. It has 192 member countries that recognise this and a nation state, Israel, which is the occupying power; these are the new realities."

The farce continues – as President Trump gives his apparent imprimatur to meeting with the phantom head of a phantom non-existent Palestinian Authority.

President Trump is sorely mistaken if he believes that maintaining this facade will advance his efforts to end the Arab-Jewish conflict.

Abbas needs to be called out by Trump for abandoning the Oslo Accords and pursuing a policy that will not lead to resolving the long-running conflict – but rather exacerbate it and make it more difficult to resolve.

Trump needs to replace the deceased Palestinian Authority with living Arab negotiating partners.

Last month, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2373, renewing the mandate of UNIFIL for another year. In a statement following the vote, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley rightly commented that “the status quo for UNIFIL was not acceptable, and we did not accept it.” However, nobody else at the Security Council is interested in altering this status quo. Unfortunately, the new resolution doesn’t change it either.

In the lead-up to the vote, the United States sharply criticized UNIFIL’s failure to prevent Hezbollah’s arms build-up and its nonchalance toward the Iranian-backed group’s other violations of UNSCR 1701. Ambassador Haley rightly said the force was “not doing its job effectively.” She didn’t mince words, describing UNIFIL’s head of mission, Maj. Gen. Michael Beary, as “blind” and lacking “understanding of what’s going on around him” for saying there were no Hezbollah weapons in south Lebanon.

Based on this assessment, Ambassador Haley had announced the US would seek “significant improvements” to UNIFIL’s mandate. “We share the secretary-general’s strong desire to enhance UNIFIL’s efforts to prevent the spread of illegal arms in southern Lebanon,” Haley said in a statement.

For Hezbollah, changing the current mandate was out of the question. Specifically, the group drew a red line around the requirement for UNIFIL to act solely “in support of a request from the Government of Lebanon,” and to “assist it to exercise its authority,” as stated in UNSCR 1701. Hezbollah rejected any move beyond this formula, which would allow UNIFIL to bypass the required prior coordination with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).

To drive its point home, Hezbollah put out a clear threat through one of its preferred conduits, Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of the Al-Akhbar daily, a mouthpiece for the group. In an editorial two days after Haley’s statement, al-Amin recalled the previous assaults on UNIFIL and issued an unmistakable warning:“As for the international forces themselves… it would be best for their countries to start conducting drills on how to counter ‘the wrath of the local residents.’”

The European Union’s Ambassador to Israel Emanuele Giaufret plans to boycott Israel’s formal national ceremony celebrating 50 years since "the Liberation of Judea [and] Samaria" that will be held this Wednesday in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank.

The event titled “the Jubilee Celebration of the Liberation of Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights” will feature Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ministers and Knesset members.

All Ambassadors stationed in Israel have also been invited, including Giaufret.

Mark Gallagher, who heads the EU’s political and press section said, “We declined the invitation in line with long-standing EU policy not to attend official events in occupied territory.”

Settler leaders immediately lashed out at the EU.

"We see ourselves as an integral and inseparable part of the State of Israel and are not interested in being part of the European Union. I welcome the EU to invest their energies in repairing their long-standing legacy of hatred and causing harm to others,” Gush Etzion Regional Council head Shlomo Neeman said.

Israel presumes that Gush Etzion would be part of its final borders in any final-status agreement with the Palestinians for a two-state solution.

Turkey's descent into Islamist despotism distorts the NATO alliance: how can Turkey combat a external threat from without, Daniel Pipes asked, when a member state poses the same threat from within?

No one tells us what we can say. We are a free people, and we will act in complete freedom. – Daniel Pipes, President, Middle East Forum (MEF)

The purging of 120,000 government employees following last year's failed coup means that "more police counter-terrorism experts are in prison than ISIS members."A democratic Turkey is a must for NATO, both for the alliance's success and for Turkey itself. – Emre Celik, Turkish dissident, at Middle East Forum-NATO conference in Philadelphia, September 2017

When Celik he began to speak, the Turks -- and the NATO bureaucrats who support them -- marched out in lockstep, thereby allowing a distant despot to control their actions in the birthplace of liberty. NATO's willingness to ignore the principles it was founded to defend reveals the moral corruption at its heart....

Human rights activists and Catholic groups are questioning why the State Department still appears reluctant to direct money Congress appropriated to assist Christians, Yazidis, and other persecuted religious minorities in Iraq but this week quickly dispatched $32 million to help a majority Muslim group fleeing violence in Burma.

The State Department on Thursday announced it would provide a humanitarian aid package worth nearly $32 million to the Rohingya, a persecuted minority group in Burma, most of whom are Muslim. More than 400,000 Rohingya have fled Burma, a majority Buddhist nation, for Bangladesh over the past month to escape wide-scale violence that the United Nations' top human rights official has labeled ethnic cleansing.

The aid package came the day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke with Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Burma, and urged the Burmese government and military to "address deeply troubling allegations of human rights abuses and violations."

Tillerson's quick efforts to help the Rohingya demonstrated the State Department's ability to quickly direct humanitarian aid to a threatened minority group. However, critics say the swift action stands in sharp contrast to State's foot-dragging when it comes to directing funds to Yazidis, Christians, and other religious minorities facing genocide in Iraq.

Earlier this year, Congress allocated more than $1.4 billion in funds for refugee assistance and included specific language to ensure that part of the money would be used to assist Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims—all groups the State Department deemed victims of genocide in 2016. Over the summer, Tillerson affirmed his belief that these religious minority groups in Iraq are the victims of Islamic-State genocide.

Sudan vowed Monday to step up efforts to normalize relations with the United States after Washington dropped the country from a list of countries facing a US travel ban.

US President Donald Trump decided to remove Sudan from the list just days ahead of an October 12 decision when he is to determine whether to permanently lift decades-old US sanctions on Khartoum.

The decision was “a positive development in the two countries’ bilateral relations,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

It was a result of a “clear and long dialogue” and growing cooperation between the two countries on regional and international issues, the ministry said.

“The government of Sudan will carry out more efforts to remove all obstacles to a full normalization of relations with the American administration,” it said.

If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was handed the public opinion polls that ran in the weekend newspapers when he arrived home from the United Nations General Assembly, he probably had a relatively relaxing holiday.

The polls were taken for Yediot Aharonot – which has a reputation of being against the prime minister – and Ma’ariv columnist Ben Caspit, who constantly writes against Netanyahu and his wife, Sara.

Both Yediot and Caspit regularly portray Netanyahu as corrupt.

The polls confirm that the public sees him that way, too.

But the public appears to be quite forgiving of that corruption.

The Panels Research poll was taken for Ma’ariv among 521 people, representing a statistical sample of the Israeli adult population. It found that 54% of respondents believe Netanyahu’s behavior is tainted by corruption, while 34% disagree and 12% do not know.

Leaders of Hamas maintain that under no circumstances will they agree to lay down their weapons. Hamas is, in fact, continuing full-speed-ahead digging tunnels under the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Hamas is planning to use the tunnels to smuggle armed terrorists into Israel.

The accord with Hamas requires Mahmoud Abbas to lift the sanctions he recently imposed on the Gaza Strip, such as refusing to pay Israel for the electricity it supplies to Gaza. It also requires Abbas to resume payment of salaries to thousands of Palestinians who served time in Israeli prison for terror-related offenses.

Above all, Hamas wants to use the agreement to be removed from the U.S. State Department List of Foreign Terror Organizations.

The Russians are closing their ears to what Hamas itself declares day after day: that its true goal is to eliminate Israel and that it has no intention of abandoning its murderous, genocidal agenda.

Today, amid Hamas’ ongoing distress, the changes in its leadership both within and outside of Gaza, and the decline in its funding and political support, the movement is seeking to warm its ties with Tehran.

The relations between Iran and Hamas, which had already known ups and downs in the past, turned frosty when Hamas refused to support the efforts of Tehran and Hizbullah to ensure the survival of Bashar Assad’s regime.

The election of Yahya al-Sinwar – a key figure in Hamas’ military wing – to head Hamas’ political bureau in Gaza marked a turning point in the movement’s relations with Tehran.

Tehran hastened to welcome the appointment, assuming that it would bolster the hawkish elements in Hamas who want to keep fighting Israel militarily. Thus, Iran’s influence and involvement in Gaza will grow, both in preparing for and conducting a further round of escalation with Israel.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah will travel to the Gaza Strip on October 2 as part of renewed reconciliation efforts with the Hamas terror group, which runs the enclave, the PA said Monday.

The visit follows concessions by Hamas after discussions with Egypt, which has urged it to take steps toward reconciliation with PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, which is based in the West Bank.

Fatah and Hamas have been at loggerheads since Hamas violently took control of the Strip in 2007, with the two groups operating separate administrations.

“Prime minister Rami Hamdallah has decided after consulting with President Mahmoud Abbas that the government will hold its weekly meeting in Gaza next week,” government spokesman Yusuf Al Mahmoud said.

“Hamdallah and members of the government will arrive in Gaza next Monday to start taking over government responsibilities after Hamas announced its agreement to dissolve the administrative committee and enable the government to assume its full responsibilities,” he said in a statement published on the official Palestinian news agency WAFA

Hamas on Sunday criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for not canceling punitive measures against the group including budget cuts for essential services in Gaza.

“PA President Mahmoud Abbas needs to make positive and responsible decisions to end all the measures,” Hamas Spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in a statement on the Islamist group’s official website.

“There are no longer any justifications for stalling or procrastination.”

The statement came a week 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 PA 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, salaries of government employees and other purposes to pressure Hamas to dissolve its administrative committee and permit the PA to operate in its place.

Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007 when it ousted the Fatah-dominated PA from the territory.

Former Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said Sunday he is awaiting a lung transplant in the United States, after several years of battling pulmonary fibrosis.

Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and a prominent Palestinian official for decades, issued a video message on his health via social media.

He is being treated in Virginia in the Washington area.

“After reading a few baseless rumours, I have completed my medical tests,” the 62-year-old said.

“Now I am on the priority waiting list to get a lung transplant any day, depending on finding a matching donor.”

Officials of the Palestinian Authority have launched an investment campaign to construct a nuclear overreactor, sources within President Mahmoud Abbas’s government announced today.

Minister of Energy Hai Wattadj and head of the President’s Research Council Awfwi Thizzehd told reporters today during a press conference at the Muqat’a, Presidential Palace, that an effort is now underway to secure international funding for the construction of a device that would allow Palestinian overreactions to take place at a much more advanced level, and in a more sustainable way than at present.

Speaking to journalists after a meeting with Abbas, the officials highlighted the importance of Palestinian independence in the realm of overreaction to perceived crimes or slights, and the crucial nature of bringing those overreactions into line with ecological and economic sensibilities.

“Current Palestinian overreaction – to Israeli policies, activities, and existence – has often been haphazard and wasteful,” stated Wattadj. “It is one thing to deprive millions of our brethren in Gaza of electricity by refusing to pay for it, as a measure to pressure Hamas there. That, at least, involves a lack of expenditure, and a possible loss of life, but not a waste of anything valuable. It is something else entirely to actively encourage and fund violence against Jews, which involves the use of real resources such as money, explosives and ammunition, in response to Jews being Jews and doing Jewy things we like to call ‘Talmudic rituals’ to make them sound sinister. We could be a lot more efficient about it, and a nuclear overreactor will allow us to mount a coherent, consistent, and much, much bigger overreaction than we can now when we feel our honor has been insulted.”

“I would like to thank President Abbas for approving this project,” added Thizzehd. “With the right international backing, we can make our customary bombast, Days of Rage, terrorism, and other out-of-proportion responses to so-called offenses by Israel a less wasteful, polluting process, while at the same time making it more powerful.”

In the recent weeks, there have been clear signs of further rapprochement between Egypt and the Syrian regime, headed by Bashar Al-Assad, although Egyptian officials repeatedly stress that Egypt is not taking sides in the Syrian crisis. Since Egyptian President 'Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sisi came to power in 2014, Egypt has adopted a policy supportive of the Syrian regime, as reflected in statements by Al-Sisi himself, in visits by senior Syrian defense officials to Egypt, and in articles in the government press. There have also been unconfirmed reports that Egypt is extending military aid to the Syrian army.

Today, Egypt is acting openly to tighten political, economic and cultural ties with the Syrian regime, as reflected in its sending a large delegation to the Damascus International Fair that took place on August 17-26, 2017. Egypt is also cooperating with Assad's ally Russia in efforts to establish de-escalation zones in Syria, and in efforts to expand the Syrian opposition delegation to the UN-sponsored talks in Geneva, so that it will include, in addition to figures close to Saudi Arabia, also oppositionists close to Cairo and Moscow. The latter espouse more "moderate" views on the solution to the Syrian crisis and on Assad's future role, compared to the oppositionists supported by Saudi Arabia.

The rapprochement between the Egyptian and Syrian regimes has been welcomed by Egyptian politicians who have called for normalization of the relations between the two countries and for restoring Egypt's membership in the Arab League. It was also supported in many articles in the Egyptian government press, which claimed that Egypt is ideal to serve as mediator in the Syrian crisis, since it is acceptable to all the regional and international parties involved. Some articles expressed direct and explicit support for the Syrian army and for Bashar Al-Assad himself.

This warming of the relations between the Egyptian and Syrian regimes has not taken place in a vacuum. In recent months a significant change has occurred in the West's position on the Assad regime, manifested mainly in receptiveness to the possibility of his remaining in power and in a focus on fighting the Islamic State (ISIS). Egypt's support lends an Arab seal of approval to the Syrian regime, which this regime crucially needs and which can pave the way to its return to the Arab fold, from which it was excluded in 2011.

Iraq’s foreign minister asked nuclear countries for help building a nuclear reactor Saturday, over 35 years after Israeli jets destroyed the country’s first attempt to build a nuclear program.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari made the request in his speech Saturday to the UN General Assembly’s annual meeting of presidents, prime ministers and monarchs. He called for assistance “to build a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes in Iraq, to acquire this nuclear technology.”

Former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein’s previous efforts to build a nuclear reactor were met with an Israeli airstrike on the Osirak nuclear facility in 1981 and years of suspicion about his nuclear intentions.

While the international community initially condemned Israel for the airstrike, US Vice President Dock Cheney later thanked Israel for the raid, according to David Ivry, who was the head of Israel’s air force at the time.

The US cited concerns that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction as the basis for invading Iraq in 2003, but none were ever found.

Al-Jaafari cited the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’s provisions allowing countries to pursue peaceful nuclear energy projects. Iraq ratified the treaty in 1969.

Non-nuclear nations that signed it agreed to not pursue atomic weapons. In exchange, the five original nuclear powers — the US, Russia, Britain, France and China — promised to move toward nuclear disarmament and to guarantee non-nuclear states access to peaceful nuclear technology for producing power.

Why does Iran need a heavy, one-stage, inaccurate missile, with a liquid fuel engine and a huge 1.5-meter warhead that can carry more than 1 ton to a range of 2,000 kilometers? The only logical answer is that the Khorramshahr missiles, which are being developed along with the Shahab missiles, are designed to carry a nuclear warhead. Provided that is the case, accuracy plays a marginal role.

The most advanced models of the Shahab-3 missile, on the other hand, can already reach a range of 1,950 kilometers, according to the Iranians, basically covering every spot in Israel. Their warhead, however, weighs half the Khorramshahr warhead, which explains why the Iranians are developing another family of missiles that would be able to carry nuclear warheads.

The Khorramshahr missile test, which was conducted in Iran in recent months and reported Saturday, is the rotten fruit of the nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers. To be more exact, it’s one of the prices Israel is paying for its failed conduct throughout the negotiations between the world powers and Iran, which led to its exclusion from talks and the loss of any ability it might've had to influence both the open agreement and its concealed and informal clauses.

In 2013, when Iran and the world powers signed the interim agreement, Israeli officials were already aware of the secret side agreement being devised between then-US President Barack Obama’s representatives and the Iranian representatives, and there were already reports the Iranians had received the Americans' permission to keep developing missiles up to a range of 2,000 kilometers. At the same time, the Iranians were already busy developing missiles with longer ranges of 2,500 to 5,000 kilometers, which could reach Europe and the United States. In the secret talks, the Americans restricted them to 2,000 kilometers—the exact effective range to Iran’s main enemy, Israel. And, if one insists, to Saudi Arabia as well.

Indeed, we’d do well to listen to what the Iranians themselves say about the nuclear deal. The Iranian government routinely celebrates its achievement at the negotiating table. And though the arcane details of the agreement are rarely discussed by Western leaders, President Hassan Rouhani has not shied away from delving into minute technical matters. The issue he often focuses on is Iran’s right to develop advance centrifuge models. In December 2016, Rouhani insisted in a speech cited by Islamic Republic News Agency: “Before, only IR-1 centrifuges were active, now we are operating IR-8 centrifuges, the most modern and advanced ones Iran has obtained.” Rouhani appreciates the hard bargaining of his diplomats and the tactics of his bomb maker, Salehi.

How did the U.S. allow this? The cascade of American concessions began in Obama’s second term. Free from seeking another election, Obama and Kerry, his new secretary of state, went abroad looking for a legacy project. During its first term, the administration had insisted that Iran was entitled to only a small nuclear program relying on primitive centrifuges. This was a face-saving gesture whereby Iranians would proclaim that they had mastered enrichment, but the international community would be confident that their small-scale program offered little proliferation threat. In its second term, however, the administration conceded many of its own red lines as Iran was granted the right to eventually industrialize its program using the most advanced technologies. The Obamians may have justified such concessions to themselves by assuring one another that after the expiration of the sunset clauses, a different Iran would emerge, a moderate regime valuing international acceptability more than nuclear arms. In their conception, Iran would become another Japan. The Islamic Republic’s conduct since the advent of the JCPOA demonstrates the fallacy of such conceptions, as the regime continues to reject international norms, abuse its citizens and menace its neighbors. Not for the first-time they misunderstood the theocracy and how the hard men of Iran were imbued by an ideological animus toward the West that necessitated not just isolation but nuclear weapons.

Despite the howls of the Democratic Party Resistance, Trump is right that the Iran deal is “an embarrassment to the United States.” In fact, it’s the most deficient accord in the history of American arms control diplomacy. Many aspects of it require reconsideration, and none more essential than its research and development provisions. To realistically obstruct Iran’s path to nuclear arms, Washington must first deny it the technology most essential for production of such weapons. No renegotiation will be complete without first undoing Salehi’s ingenious achievement.

Iran is working to restore a lost link in its network of alliances in the Middle East, trying to bring Hamas fully back into the fold after the Palestinian militant group had a bitter fall-out with Iranian ally Syria over that country’s civil war.

Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are quietly trying to mediate a reconciliation between Syria and Hamas. If they succeed, it would shore up a weak spot in the alliance at a time when Iran has strengthened ties with Syria and Iraq, building a bloc of support across the region to counter Israel and the United States’ Arab allies.

Hamas had long been based in Syria, receiving Damascus’ support in the militant group’s campaign against Israel. Hamas’ powerful leadership-in-exile remained in Syria even after the group took power in the Gaza Strip in 2007. Together with Iran and the Shiite guerrilla group Hezbollah, they touted themselves as the “Axis of Resistance” to oppose Israel.

But when Syria tipped into civil war, Hamas broke with President Bashar Assad and sided with the rebels fighting to oust him. The rebels are largely Sunni Muslims, like Hamas, and scenes of Sunni civilian deaths raised an outcry across the region against Assad, who belongs to the minority Alawite sect.

Iran, meanwhile, has been one of Assad’s strongest backers since the crisis in Syria began in 2011, pumping billions of dollars into the economy and sending advisers as well as Iranian-backed fighters to help him stay in power. Hezbollah sent thousands of fighters, helping tip the war in Assad’s favor against the rebels and now helping in the fight against the Islamic State group.

The reconciliation attempt comes after Hamas elected a new leadership and as its main backers, Qatar and Turkey — both strong supporters of the rebels in Syria — have sought to improve relations with Iran.

Is it today's version of apartheid South Africa? Olga Meshoe, herself a South African whose family experienced apartheid, settles the question once and for all.

At a time when smear campaigns against Israel often go unchallenged on college campuses and anti-Israel activists hijack protest movements across the U.S. to attack of the Jewish State, a newly published book tells the story of Israel’s 69-year silent journey to impact the world and serve those in most need. “United Nation: The Humanitarian Spirit of Israel” written by the Israeli entrepreneur David Kramer, is a collection of 40 stories, each illustrating the benevolent and altruistic side of Israel that the mainstream media and the 24-hour news cycle don’t care to show.

“Today, a great disconnect exists in the general perception of Israel throughout the world. Israel is the only country where a global boycott and sanctions movement against it continues unabated on most college and university campuses,” David writes. “However, the reality of life in Israel is totally different. In truth, Israelis embrace a deep appreciation and responsibility for life despite the many challenges they face on a daily basis and this is evident by the thousands of different charitable organizations currently working in Israel and all over the world.”

With 32,000 non-profit organizations based throughout the tiny country, Israel has the highest number of charities per-capita. IsraAID, country’s largest non-profit organization, with expertise in disaster relief and international development, has responded to crises in more than 39 countries, delivering 1000 tons of relief and medical suppliers and reaching over 1.5 million people in need. To date, Israel has sent over 140 official aid missions, to over 50 countries. When major earthquakes strike, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is the first to respond by setting up field hospitals — be it Gujarat (2001), Haiti ( 2010) or Nepal (2015).

“The stories presented in David Kramer’s United Nation embody Israel at its best,” commented Ambassador Danny Danon, Israel’s Permanent Representative to the UN. “From bringing clean water to the thirsty, to providing aid where it’s needed most, this is the real Israel — working every day to make the world a better place.”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman says, "We have to put the emotional issues aside" if we are to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict • His main goal as ambassador is to "manage a very robust, complicated relationship, like two family members."

Among the 233 new immigrants from the U.S. that landed in Israel last month, one stood out in particular. A young woman named Talia Friedman, whose father happens to be the American ambassador to Israel.

Her arrival may have appeared to be coordinated with her father's appointment, but the truth is that Talia, 24, has been planning this momentous move for years, long before anyone in her Orthodox Jewish family even imagined that her father, David Friedman, would be named ambassador.

"Talia's been planning to come here for years," says her mother, Tammy, 54, with a smile. "In fact, when she went on dates, she always said she was planning to move to Israel. She told her friends, don't set me up with anyone who is not Israel-minded. Because that was her plan."

"I remember thinking to myself, when we talked about this a few years ago, how hard it was going to be to have her so far away and how much I'm going to miss her. I never dreamed, in my wildest dreams, that I would be living near her and that my [four other] children [and seven grandchildren] would be living away from me," she says.

With an official apartheid policy, Lebanon is the worst country in the world for Palestinians, but the Israeli Arab filmmaker couldn’t care less about the facts. His incitement is directed at Israel, because propagandists nurture deception—especially self-deception.

The Israeli Arabs’ disaster is manifested in people like Knesset Member Hanin Zoabi, Sheikh Raed Salah and filmmaker Mohammad Bakri.

According to every single poll, most Israeli Arabs are loyal citizens—something that must be mentioned repeatedly. Most of them support the two-states-for-two-people solution, recognizing Israel—directly and unequivocally—as a Jewish and democratic state; volunteer rates for community and national service among young Israeli Arabs are growing, in spite of the political leadership’s defiance; furthermore, according to the Israel Democracy Institute, 55 percent of Israel’s Arabs are “proud to be Israelis.”

This situation bothers strife mongers like Bakri, who has made every effort to create the opposite impression. His film Jenin, Jenin has already been officially recognized as false propaganda. But a person like Bakri doesn’t stop. He has gone all the way to Lebanon to screen his films, which were made “under the occupation government.” It’s not that people there are in need of incitement against Israel, but Bakri went there to add more fuel to the fire of hatred.

Following further criticism, Plame Wilson tweeted: “OK folks, look, I messed up. I skimmed this piece, zeroed in on the neocon criticism, and shared it without seeing and considering the rest. … I’m not perfect and make mistakes. This was a doozy. All I can do is admit them, try to be better, and read more thoroughly next time. Ugh.”

On Sunday, Plame Wilson resigned from her position on the board of Ploughshares Fund, and apologized again for sharing the article.

However, as The Daily Wire previously reported, Plame Wilson shared another article from Unz Review in 2014. In the piece, titled “Why I Still Dislike Israel,” Philip Giraldi calls Israel “a racist apartheid style state,” and condemns the nation for “crying wolf” over the Iranian threat.

One has to wonder if Plame Wilson’s apology is genuine. If it is, she may just be functionally illiterate. If it's not, she's just an anti-Semitic piece of garbage.

When her tweet drew an immediate uproar, Plame doubled down, urging her critics to “put aside your biases” and read the entire “provocative, but thoughtful” article, adding: “Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish.”

But as the controversy grew, she finally backed down — now ironically claiming that she hadn’t read the entire article and so had missed its “gross undercurrents.”

Undercurrents? As actor Seth Rogen tweeted, “That was the whole current.” The headline itself summed up the article’s abhorrent content.

She also insisted she wasn’t familiar with the Web site, even though she’s retweeted nine other articles from it — some by the very same author — since 2014, with such titles as “Why I Still Dislike Israel” and “Dancing Israelis on 9/11.”

In other words, her credibility is as bad as it was back when she and husband Robert Wilson were claiming that President George W. Bush had lied us into war.

And if she really missed Giraldi’s blatant anti-Semitism, what does that say about her skills as an intelligence analyst?

But the plot thickens. It seems the Unz Foundation, which is behind the Unz Review from where the antisemitic article came, has a history of funding some notable “anti-Israel” people and websites (many of which I have dealt with on here) including:
Mondoweiss
Norman Finkelstein
Counterpunch

As the ADL reported back in 2014:
The Unz Foundation has also given grants to Mondoweiss, an anti-Israel blog run by Philip Weiss, which regularly reports on and promotes the initiatives of some of the more prominent leaders and groups associated with the domestic anti-Israel movement, including Ali Abunimah, co-founder of “Electronic Intifada”; Alison Weir, the executive director of If Americans Knew; and Norman Finkelstein, an anti-Israel speaker whom Unz also funds. The blog, which is quite popular in anti-Israel circles, is comprised of articles that feature a wide variety of anti-Israel themes, including claims of Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide, as well as accusations that the pro-Israel lobby retains excessive influence over U.S. foreign policy. Many of the articles written by Weiss on the site include opposition to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and comparisons between the atrocities of the Holocaust and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

In addition, Unz has funded Philip Giraldi, the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, an anti-Israel group based in Washington, D.C. that advocates for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. CNI is one of ADL’s “Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in the U.S.” Giraldi, who has been the director of CNI since 2010, has authored numerous articles condemning pro-Israel lobbying efforts. In a June 2012 blog post published on a blog called “The Passionate Attachment,” Giraldi agreed with New York City Councilman Charles Barron’s assessment that Gaza is a “death camp” and also called Israel “the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism.” Giraldi is the national security editor of The Unz Review.

Roger Waters’ hateful views have led to a dance academy deciding not to perform alongside him at his Cleveland concert.
And despite pretending to play it cool, it is obvious the rock’n’roll BDS-hole is bothered.

Roger Waters‘ outspoken politics are well known to anyone who’s spent any length of time listening to his music. But not everyone is familiar with the former Pink Floyd member’s points of view — not even some of the adults who signed off on the kids in the Shaker Dance Academy appearing alongside Waters at his concert in Cleveland last night.

This became an issue after the NBC affiliate WKYC aired a report — titled “Local Kids Perform Amid Not-So-Pretty Politics” — that confronted Academy owner Tracey Webb, as well as parents of the dancers, with the politically fueled slant of Waters’ current Us + Them tour. The adults interviewed professed ignorance, and members of the Academy who’d been scheduled to perform — ages ranging from 4 to 15 — later withdrew from the show. “I don’t want my young dancers being a part of the negative images being presented,” Webb told the station. “I had no idea this was going to be anti-anything other than hate.”

Specifically at issue was Waters’ decision to dedicate a portion of the Us + Them stage presentation to words and images expressing the artist’s deep disdain with the Trump administration’s policies, as well as the president’s personal conduct. Waters, who’s drawn press coverage throughout the tour for the anti-Trump element of the tour’s agenda, wasn’t pleased with the report, and let the audience know it.

This is delicious: The Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) has defied BDS, showing 5 films from Israel (hat tip: B’nai Brith Canada).

You can see the TPFF’s schedule below. I have marked the Israeli films:
Personal Affairs
In Between
Jerusalem, We Are Here
Looted and Hidden
Rubber Coated Steel

While most of them could be characterized as anti-Israel, not all of them are.

Such as In Between, which I have posted about before.

International cycling’s second biggest event, the Giro d’Italia is coming to Israel where three stages will take place next year. It’s a proud achievement for Israel. For some people, however, Israel can do no right and anything that presents Israel in a positive light has sinister undertones.
The Observer (sister paper of The Guardian) covers the story:

According to the journalist Richard Abraham, this is less of a cycle race and more about covering up and distracting attention from Israel’s “occupation” and “international condemnation” of its policies:

Israel is a country of builders. Almost 70 years after its foundation skycrapers jostle for space along the Mediterranean strand, planted in the fertile soil of a Tel Aviv property boom. Up in the Judean Hills, other kinds of structures – architectures of military control in the occupied Palestinian territories – spring up, too.

Israelis are now turning their attention to a new kind of construction: image. Despite the occupation and condemnation from the international community, Israel is ready to project its pride at what it has built and paint over the canvas of conflict.

For a while now, YouTube has been seemingly going after my channel, as well as that of other pro-Israel advocates, by removing videos as “hate speech,” even where they are actually exposing hate or somehow opposing it. In my case, I have been forced to appeal the removals to have the videos reinstated.

I have noticed something else going on for a while – when uploading a video, after I opt for it to be monetized, YouTube flags it for demonetization, and I have to take the extra step to submit it for review.

Sounds logical, but does not explain the latest assault by YouTube on my channel: I woke up to find that now all of my 182 videos are demonetized, despite the fact that most of them were monetized until now.
The grey “$” sign means the videos are not monetized.

I simply do not have the time, energy or inclination to now go through all of my videos and submit them for monetization review again. You win YouTube. I guess I will need to find another platform.

Al Jazeera has often criticized co-operation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel – pushing the line of extremist group Hamas, which Qatar backs.

On Israel, Al Jazeera has frequently made irresponsible claims:

• in 2015, accusing Israel of opening dams in the south of the country to flood parts of the Gaza Strip. In actual fact there were no such dams in southern Israel.
• In June, when three terrorists shot and killed two policemen near Jerusalem’s Temple Mount only to flee and eventually be shot and killed, Al Jazeera initially reported the incident as “at least three Palestinians killed in shooting in Jerusalem’s Old City.”
• It later helped stoke the subsequent two weeks of Palestinian-initiated violence over the Temple Mount by airing incendiary and false claims that Israeli security cameras would allow Israeli authorities to see the naked bodies of Muslim worshippers through their clothes.
• Al Jazeera recently referred to Haifa, a city in the pre-1967 borders of Israel ,as in “northern occupied Palestine".
• Most recently, Al Jazeera aired a “documentary” based largely on the claims of Elena Zakusilo, a Ukrainian Jewish woman who claimed on a local television game show that she served in a combat role in the IDF, including being forced by the IDF to murder innocent children. Elementary checking showed she had never had done anything more than voluntary administrative tasks in the IDF.
• An Al Jazeera reporter in Israel, Elias Karam, recently told a Muslim Brotherhood TV channel that he views his journalism as “resistance” to “occupation.”
• Most infamously, in 2008, the network hosted an on-air party for recently released Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar, treating him as a hero. Kuntar had infiltrated Israel in 1978, and killed four people, including smashing the head of a four year old girl and shooting dead her father.

Australia's taxpayer-funded television networks – with their statutory obligation of fairness and balance - simply have no business regurgitating Middle East coverage from this network. They appear to do so, in part, because they can re-use its stories cheaply or for free. But there is simply no excuse for outsourcing their obligations to Australian taxpayers to what is effectively the lavishly-funded communications arm of the authoritarian, extremist-supporting Qatar government.

Facebook has apologized after a recent report revealed that the social media giant enabled anti-Semitic terms to be used as advertising keywords.

"Hate has no place on Facebook — and as a Jew, as a mother, and as a human being, I know the damage that can come from hate,” Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg wrote on her page. "The fact that hateful terms were even offered as options was totally inappropriate and a fail on our part. We removed them and when that was not totally effective, we disabled that targeting section in our ad systems.”

A report two weeks ago on ProPublica revealed that the social media titan permitted advertisers to target their audience using anti-Semitic terms, such as "Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” and “history of why Jews ruin the world".

According to ProPublica, "we paid $30 to target those groups with three “promoted posts” — in which a ProPublica article or post was displayed in their news feeds. Facebook approved all three ads within 15 minutes."

Facebook immediate banned the terms after the expose and blamed a faulty algorithm for the anti-Semitic keywords.

Back in May 2014 the BBC News website reported a story from Belgium involving a politician and a banned rally that the corporation had difficulty describing accurately to its audience.

As was noted here at the time:
“The BBC report ‘balances’ its reporting of statements made by Belgian officials and an anti-racist organization on the subject of the convention by quoting a Facebook post from its organiser.

“Writing on his Facebook page, Laurent Louis said it was laughable that his movement “Debout Les Belges!” (Stand up, Belgians!) was seen as anti-Semitic, simply because its members had adopted Dieudonne’s trademark “quenelle” gesture.”

However, the BBC refrains from informing audiences that Louis’ repeated use of the quenelle is just the tip of the iceberg of his history of antisemtism and extremism, which includes making that gesture in the Belgian parliament, Holocaust denial and analogies and accusing Zionists of having “set up and financed” the Holocaust. Last year Louis was photographed at a pro-Assad rally trampling an Israeli flag and holding a portrait of Bashar al Assad and a Hizballah flag, telling Syrian TV that “Europe is being used in the conflict [against Syria] as a tool in the hands of Israel, the rogue state”.”

For almost two years the BBC News website has been using maps credited to UNOCHA and/or the political NGO B’tselem which purport to inform audiences about the geo-political status of Jerusalem and Judea & Samaria.

As has been noted here on numerous occasions in the past, those maps describe the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City along with many other locations of pre-1948 Jewish habitation as ‘Israeli settlements’ and – as regular readers are aware – the BBC consistently steers its audience towards the view that such neighbourhoods and communities “are considered illegal under international law”.

Among the inaccurate features on those maps is the portrayal of the Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus as “Israeli settlements”.

The Hebrew University (established in 1925) and Hadassah Hospital (established in 1938) were both built on land purchased by Jews in 1914 and the Mount Scopus enclave remained Israeli territory throughout the 19 year Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem. Interestingly, B’tselem’s own map does not mark Mount Scopus as a ‘settlement’.

German Jewish leader Charlotte Knobloch described the far-right Alternative for Germany Party’s success in the nation’s parliamentary election as a "true nightmare," in a statement released late Sunday night after preliminary results emerged showing that the controversial party had received more than 13% of the vote - causing widespread concern across the Jewish world.

This result will allow the party to enter the Bundestag for the first time, as Germany's third-biggest party, which Knobloch described as "a true nightmare and a historic turning point."

This is the first time the far-right will be represented in the German parliament in almost 60 years.

Knobloch, President of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria — and former president of the German Jewish Council — said she was deeply concerned about Germany's democracy in light of the exit polls.

"This changes the political debate and culture and affects the image of Germany in the world," Knobloch warned

Referring to the party program and candidates she said, "They are back again... those who stir up hatred and disdain," warning of antisemitism, racism, revisionism and historical reformation.

Nine headless toads discovered by archeologists inside a well-preserved jar placed in a 4,000-year-old tomb in Jerusalem shed new light on burial customs during the Canaanite period of the Middle Bronze Age, the Antiquities Authority said on Monday.

The excavation, which took place in 2014 prior to the expansion of the Manaḥat neighborhood, near Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo, also yielded evidence of the cultivation of date palms and myrtle bushes, possibly as part of funerary rituals.

According to the excavation’s directors on behalf of the Authority, Shua Kisilevitz and Zohar Turgeman-Yaffe, the section of the Nahal Rephaim basin, where the tomb was unearthed, was once fertile ground for settlements, particularly during the Canaanite period.

“In recent years, excavations in the area have uncovered two settlement sites, two temples and a number of cemeteries, which provide new insight into the life of the local population at that time,” the researchers said in a joint statement.

Kisilevitz and Turgeman-Yaffe added that after removing a large rock blocking the tomb’s opening, they discovered several bowls and jars still intact.

“In one of the jars, to our surprise, we found a heap of small bones,” they said.

“For an archaeologist, finding tombs that were intentionally sealed in antiquity is a priceless treasure because they are a time capsule that allows us to encounter objects almost just as they were originally left. At that time, it was customary to bury the dead with offerings that constituted a kind of ‘burial kit,’ which, it was believed, would serve the deceased in the afterworld.”

A subsequent study of the bones, by Dr. Lior Weisbrod of the University of Haifa, revealed the nine headless toads’ corpses.

Televangelist Joel Osteen opened his Lakewood Church in Houston to a Jewish congregation in need of a place to hold High Holidays services.

Congregation Beth Yeshurun was completely flooded during Hurricane Harvey and the building was in no condition to host services, according to reports.

Osteen, and his wife, Victoria, came under fire during Harvey for not immediately opening their large and dry megachurch building to shelter those displaced by the hurricane and its floods. It later opened its doors to refugees from the storms.

A post on the church’s website ahead of Rosh Hashanah read: During Hurricane Harvey, Houston’s largest synagogue, Congregation Beth Yeshurun experienced devastating flooding. This came at an especially bad time for Beth Yeshurun as the Jewish High Holy Days, (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), are this week. Beth Yeshurn’s leadership reached out to us and Pastors Joel & Victoria offered to help. We are honored to announce that we will be opening our doors to the Beth Yeshurun congregation so that they may celebrate their High Holy Days at our church.”

A group of American investors has agreed to buy a stake in Israel's largest bank, Bank Hapoalim. The group will buy 49% of the shares held by controlling shareholder Arison Investments Ltd., the business arm of the Arison Group, for approximately $570 million (2 billion NIS), according to a Sunday announcement by Arison Investments.

The identities of the buyers were not disclosed, but one of the investors is the pension fund of a California-based university, according to persons familiar with the matter who spoke on conditions of anonymity.

Israeli businesswoman Shari Arison is the owner of Arison Investments, which holds the controlling (20.7%) stake at Bank Hapoalim. Arison Investments' Bank Hapoalim shares are valued at over $1.8 billion (6.5 billion NIS).

Ms. Arison is selling 49% of her shares in the bank 17 years after she became its major shareholder. The Arison family gained control of the bank in 1997 and Ms. Arison inherited the holdings in 1999, following the death of her father, businessman Ted Arison.

The American software giant IBM has announced its acquisition of the Israeli data center company Cloudigo for an undisclosed sum.

“I am glad to share that IBM acquired Cloudigo. Thank you very much to the amazing Cloudigo Team. Looking forward for our journey in IBM,” Cloudigo co-founder and CEO Eran Gampel wrote on LinkedIn last week.

Cloudigo specializes in building data center infrastructure and is a leading provider of networking services.

Sources referred to the acquisition cost as “small,” the Israeli financial news outlet Globes reported.

“IBM acquired a high-performance team focused on advanced networking technology that moves the networking function from the server to the edge, increasing data center efficiency,” John Considine, general manager of cloud infrastructure services at IBM, wrote in a blog post.

Considine noted the Cloudigo team will work in IBM’s “Cloud Innovation Lab.”

Intel Corp. has unveiled a new family of desktop computer processors that are faster and stronger than its previous creations, the semiconductor giant said. The design of the new chips was led by its development team in Haifa, Israel.

The new family of 8th Gen Intel Core desktop processors is built for gamers and content creators and those who need high performing standards, Intel said. The new chips open “the door for a new level of faster, easier and more immersive experiences,” the US firm said in a statement released on Sunday. The chips include include the new Intel Core i7-8700K — which the firm touts as its “best gaming processor ever.”

Compared with 7th Gen Intel Core, gamers gain up to 25 percent more frames per second on popular and demanding games, Intel said, and its new processors are more accurate, faster, powerful and compatible than earlier versions, allowing for high quality of graphics creation and consumption. The chips also allow the editing of 4K 360-degree video “with ease” — and are up to 32 percent faster compared with previous generations. They can also edit content up to 65 percent faster compared with a 3-year old PC, the statement said.

An Israeli culinary group’s eatery, The Barbary, was named the best restaurant in London by TimeOut London for 2017.

The Barbary was opened by the Jerusalem-based Machneyuda restaurant franchise in 2016, following up on the success of its first London eatery, The Palomar.

Machneyuda is headed by Israeli chefs Assaf Granit, Uri Navon and Yossi Elad. Machneyuda is the name of their popular (non-kosher) restaurant in the Machane Yehuda market in Jerusalem.

“The Barbary menu reflects the countries from the Atlantic Coast through to the Mediterranean Sea leading to Israel,” according to the restaurant’s website.

TimeOut recommends getting there by 5pm “on a rainy Tuesday” to get a seat for dinner.

“It’s not possible to have a bad time at The Barbary,” TimeOut wrote in its review of the restaurant last year. “Sure, you’ll probably have to queue, but even that’s tolerable, because then you get to feast on moreish deep-fried snacks (like the Moroccan cigars) that don’t appear on the main menu. … The food is labelled as ‘modern Israeli’, though in truth, it’s anything but. What they’ve done is taken the ancient recipes from across North Africa (from the one-time Barbary Coast) and the Middle East that have gone on to influence food in today’s Israeli kitchen, then reimagined them for 2016.”

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), the University of Arizona (UA), and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) have formed a trilateral agreement to cooperate on research, innovation and entrepreneurship.

The agreement was signed during a visit earlier this month by delegations from the two universities to BGU. The accord includes knowledge-sharing and collaboration between BGU’s Advanced Technologies Park (ATP), UA Tech Parks Arizona in Tucson and UNAM’s high-tech initiatives, the Israeli university said in a statement on Sunday.

The framework is meant to encourage innovation in five main areas: developing joint projects, cooperation between the three technology transfer companies of the universities, joint development of applied research, ties to industry, and developing ties between the universities’ high-tech parks and high-tech initiatives.

The three institutions have similar research interests and climates that demand meeting similar challenges, the statement said. The UA Arizona Tech Park is similar to the Advanced Technologies Park in Beersheba, which BGU helped found in partnership with the city.

The Spanish space and satellite engineering firm IberEspacio announced this week that it delivered the skeleton of the spacecraft the Israeli SpaceIL team is producing in its race to win Google’s Lunar $20 million XPRIZE for the first group to land an unmanned spacecraft on the moon without governmental funding.

Israel’s SpaceIL was founded by three young engineers, Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari and Yonatan Winetraub. The chairman of the organization is entrepreneur and philanthropist, Morris Kahn, who is also a major donor.

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is building the actual spacecraft. Proceeds from the award – if SpaceIL wins it – will be used to advance science and technology education in Israel.

The other XPRIZE finalists are Moon Express (United States), TeamIndus (India), Hakuto (Japan) and Synergy Moon (an international consortium).

IberEspacio worked for a year to produce the upper and lower panels, which will contain the propulsion system and all the electronic equipment, as well as the docking ring with the rocket launcher. The carbon fiber struts to be used in the spacecraft are being supplied by a Danish company.

Exactly 67 years ago, Israel concluded its secret airlift operation to bring Yemenite Jews, faced with violence, to the Jewish state. Named "Operation Magic Carpet," 45,000 of the 46,000 Jews in Yemen were flown to Israel on 380 flights.

Despite dangers, the thousands of Jews made their way to the capital of Yemen, Aden, in order to reach the recently-founded State of Israel.

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This is The Jerusalem Post's report from the day that Operation Magic Carpet concluded:

Last Flight Of Magic Carpet - September 25, 1950

The little known story of Alaska Airlines and Captain Elgen M. Long's heroism in rescuing thousands of Yemenite Jews and bringing them home to Israel!

Over 50 Christian and Muslim sites have been vandalized in Israel and the West Bank since 2009, but only nine indictments have been filed and only seven convictions handed down, according to Public Security Ministry data. Moreover, only eight of the 53 cases are still under investigation, with the other 45 all closed.

Two security officers and a border policeman were murdered Tuesday morning in a suspected terror attack in the town of Har Adar outside Jerusalem. Another Israeli was badly wounded.
According to the Border Police, the Palestinian assailant approached the town's gate posing as a laborer. When the officers manning the gate grew suspicious of him because of his unusual clothing, he pulled out his weapon and opened fire.
After an exchange of gunfire, the assailant was shot dead, but not before fatally injuring three people and severely wounding one more.
Israeli media identified the attacker as 37-year-old Nimer Mahmoud Ahmad Jamal a father of four from the Palestinian village of Beit Surik. The man is said to have a valid work permit allowing him to enter Jewish settlements in the West Bank. 

It is true that the scene of rabbis dancing with Arab businessmen in the Bahraini capital Manama several months ago was shocking and calls for many questions and explanations, but today after the leaks that showed  the  King of Bahrain's intention to open the door of normalization with the Zionist entity it became understandable, We learned that relations between Bahrain and the Entity started since 1999.

We can not talk about "normalization" with the Zionist occupation without invoking the Camp David agreement in 1978 with Egypt and the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement in 1979. It is also impossible to isolate the great Jordanian normalization with the occupation in the Wadi Araba agreement in 1994 after the signing of the Oslo agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993, where the door was opened to a commercial representation office with the Zionist enemy in the Omani capital Muscat in 1995 and another in Doha  in 1996.

Normalization can not be limited to the Zionist enemy only in the political or economic form , but normalization, which means "restoring the relationship between the two parties so that the relationship between them is natural" goes beyond the normalization of media and cultural and even academic and religious. [Some claim] that normalization is a recognition of reality and an objective response to the existence of the State of Israel! Indeed, the Sudanese Minister of Investment in August said that "the Palestinian cause has delayed the Arab world," expressing a state of distortion of thought and superficial thinking.

What is strange is that while the Europeans are active in the boycott of the occupying power, we see Arabs chasing normalization in a scene that can not be described as less a crime against their history and the sanctities of their nation, as if they are unaware that they will not get beyond normalization.

Perhaps the statements of Israeli officials, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he has repeatedly stated that his country enjoys qualitative relations with many countries in the Arab region, are considered an application of his great project, which he calls "regional peace." Here, it is important to establish an explicit definition of normalization that gives us the clarity of vision and purpose. Normalization in our Palestinian, Arab and Islamic concept is "every relationship that arises with the Zionist occupation and its existence on the land of Palestine."

The pretext of the Arabs that normalization is in support of the Palestinian cause fall in the face of the vulnerability suffered by all the countries that made agreements with the Zionist entity, Egypt has lost its security authority on the Sinai Today and today is reaping the scourge of Israeli economic hegemony, and Jordan has lost its right to water in the Jordan Valley, but  does not dare to talk about it, while the weapons of repression of Israeli demonstrators failed to stop the" Arab Spring "in Tunisia! Which was carrying the words "Made in Israel"!

Yes, the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo agreement and made an agreement between the Arabs with the Zionist enemy...

Normalization with the Zionist occupation is a psychological reflection of the state of defeat before the enemy. We are strengthened when we weaken and disappear when we rise, but normalization is the beginning of the break and the end of national sense of self. It is known that normalization will necessarily negate our right to liberation and freedom.

[Opposition to normalization is] still an important bulwark in the face of all attempts to erase the Arab consciousness of the nature of the enemy based on denial of the other, and draw him to economic dependence and political slavery, under the pressure of the media and international institutions with him.