A former Syrian diplomat who accused Israeli officials of trafficking children’s organs is now working as a professor at state-funded Rutgers University in New Jersey, The Algemeiner has learned.

Mazen Adi, an adjunct professor in Rutgers’ Political Science Department, worked for Syria’s foreign ministry in various roles for 16 years starting in August 1998, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Most recently, between January 2007 and July 2014, Adi served as a diplomat and legal adviser at the Permanent Mission of Syria to the United Nations in New York. He represented the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as it met pro-democracy protesters with lethal force in 2011, sparking a conflict that has left an estimated 465,000 people dead or missing.

By the time Adi left Turtle Bay, the Assad regime had faced years of international opprobrium and sanctions, having been accused of perpetrating atrocities including mass killings, systematic torture, forced starvation and chemical weapons attacks.

Adi voiced Assad’s views — and occasionally those of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — at both the UN Security Council and Sixth Committee of the General Assembly. Among his comments, found in UN records from 2008 to 2011, were allegations that Israel systematically targeted civilians, destroyed the environment and buried alive enemy soldiers; that Syria was a “trailblazer” in the fight against terrorism; and that Assad was committed to seeking a peaceful resolution to the Syrian conflict and implemented “sweeping reforms” following popular protests.

An international human rights group today called on Rutgers University to fire Mazen Adi, a professor on war crimes law, on grounds that as a Syrian diplomat and legal advisor he justified the war crimes of the genocidal Assad regime.

UN Watch, an independent non-governmental monitoring group based in Geneva, also called on the U.S. to deport Mr. Adi, whose identity was first exposed by The Algemeiner newspaper yesterday.

“The U.S. government needs to investigate how a long-time agent of the Syrian regime, close ally of Iran, was granted a visa to work and teach in America,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

“It ought to be a matter of profound concern that an American university would allow an apologist for the Syrian regime’s genocide to be a teacher.”

“When the United Nations debated Syria’s culpability for bombing its own people, Mazen Adi said that the Syrian authorities ‘upheld all their legal and judicial responsibilities,’” Neuer went on to say. “He is a liar and an apologist for mass murder.”

While serving as a Syrian delegate and legal advisor at the UN, Mr. Adi systematically acted as an apologist for the mass murder committed by the Assad regime against his own people, helping Syria to win impunity at the UN to conduct continued war crimes.

Mr. Adi joined Rutgers in September 2015, where he teaches international criminal law, political science, and United Nations and global policy studies.

Prior to Rutgers, Adi had served for 16 years as a Syrian diplomat, including as a legal advisor and occasional chargé d’affaires at the Syrian mission to the UN in New York.

The extent of this unambiguous Jew-hatred in the Labour party is now so bad that the Jewish Labour Movement is holding training sessions for party members to try to stamp it out.

Well good luck with that one. For the Labour party is still in denial about the deep roots of this scourge within its own ideology. It still wrongly believes that the examples which have publicly surfaced over the past few months are some kind of aberration. John Cryer MP, the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party who described these tweets as “stomach-churning” and “awful”, demonstrated the problem when he said: “I have no idea why people who hold these views would want to be a member of the Labour Party”.

But they hold them precisely because they are members of the Labour party – because they are committed to the thinking that has become an article of faith on the left, which has turned the “Palestinians” into the signature cause for progressive people on the utterly false grounds that aggressive, brutal, colonialist Israel has deprived them of their historic right to a Palestine state.

This thinking uses precisely the same uniquely deranged and obsessional charges – diabolical cosmic power, covert conspiracy against the world, crimes of which the accused is not only innocent but is in fact the victim, expectations of standards of behaviour applied to no other people and overall demonisation based on systematic falsehoods – which have characterised hatred against the Jews as people and now identically characterise hatred against the collective Jew in Israel.

As antisemitic crime surges in Britain, there is much to criticise in the authorities’ approach to fighting it, the fight can only be won if our Government leads with the clarity of purpose exhibited by the Prime Minister.

Simultaneously, this week an opposite political struggle played out. MEND, a Muslim organisation supposedly established to fight for the British values of tolerance and pluralism was comprehensively outed by the media and the Henry Jackson Society think-tank over its connections to extremism and antisemitism. The media berated MPs who planned to address an event by MEND, and all but the Labour Party’s MPs withdrew. As MPs Wes Streeting and Stephen Kinnock faced the wrath of the media for insisting on speaking at the event, many wondered at their allegiance to MEND, whose founder decried “300 years of the Israel lobby” (since Israel has only existed for 69 years, the statement only makes sense as a reference to the period that British Jews have been permitted to live in Britain following the expulsion of 1290) and which circulates articles claiming antisemitism is sometimes wielded as “a political tool to silence legitimate criticism of Israel policies”.

MEND looked to be truly on the brink but for the support of the increasingly embattled Messrs Streeting and Kinnock, until their steadfastness became comprehensible when the cavalry arrived: for MEND, rescue came at the hands of Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition. MEND’s isolated event in the Houses of Parliament was thrust into the approving embrace of what polls say is the most popular political party in Britain, when Mr Corbyn himself arrived to address those gathered in support of MEND, and to invite the organisation to help the Labour Party to develop policies on “race and faith”. As Mr Corbyn mumbled platitudes about opposing racism and division, he sent the clearest possible signal that he had no fear of protecting those very vices. An organisation with demonstrable links to extremism and antisemitism was on the verge of being ousted from polite society, when Mr Corbyn pushed through and gripped MEND to his bosom.

This week could not have been a clearer demonstration of the precariousness faced by British Jews. As the Prime Minister looked the new antisemitism in the eye and named it, the electorate’s favourite to replace her grabbed it by the hand and defended it from reason and opprobrium.

Three prominent British Jewish authors said in an open letter that they are concerned that anti Zionism in the country’s Labour Party is now “closer to anti-Semitism.

Howard Jacobson, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Simon Schama said in the open letter in The Times on Monday that they are “troubled by the tone and direction of debate about Israel and Zionism within the Labour Party.”

The letter said “We are alarmed that during the past few years, constructive criticism of Israeli governments has morphed into something closer to anti-Semitism under the cloak of so-called anti-Zionism. We do not object to fair criticism of Israel governments, but this has grown to be indistinguishable from a demonization of Zionism itself.”

The authors noted that accusations of international Jewish conspiracy and Jewish control of the media have once again become ubiquitous, as have creating parallels between the Jewish state and Nazism.

“Such themes and language have become widespread in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. So far the Labour leadership’s reaction has been derisory. It is not enough to denounce all racisms in general when this specific strain rages unchecked,” the authors wrote.

Trouble ahead

There is little point in my simply posting hundreds of antisemitic shares by those present at the demonstration. Also the standard antisemitic concentration levels of 40%+ are almost certainly (slightly) diluted at an event like this. It has to be recognised that some good people do turn up at these demonstrations. Not everyone with a Palestinian flag is a bad guy. There are those led by ignorant belief, a reliance on the political views of tainted friends, or most importantly because today Palestine is seen as the ’cause of fashion’. I had conversations with several. If you are not talking to a blind ideological wall, then you are discussing a conflict with someone who knows nothing about it.

Take a look at Hadi Nasrallah’s posts above. On the same day as this march took place, the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri resigned because he is ‘living in fear for his life’. He has accused Iran of sowing ‘fear and destruction’ in several countries, including Lebanon. Many Middle East commentators have recognised, that Iran, with the cover of the chaos in Syria, is making a strategic play for regional control, and an attempt to gain access to the Mediterranean, which also includes using it’s proxy Hezbollah. Yet these people march against Israel!
The obsession of the unions

At the recent Labour Party conference, in discussions I had with both ‘free Syria’ and ‘free Iran’ groups, it became obvious that Labour party activism is being suffocated by the Palestinian cause. Groups supporting real democratic change in the Middle East are not having their voice heard. If you stand with the Palestinians, you will find yourself in opposition (or left to ignore) most of the real humanitarian causes in the region. Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah become ‘friends’.

So for a moment, we should forget the several hundred hard-core antisemites that walked the streets of London. We need to ask why it is that those people are being supported by British unions, including Unite the Union, UNISON, NUT, GMB, ASLEF, RMT, FBU, UCU & CWU.

‘Palestinianism’ is a cause of war (not to be confused with seeking to better the lives of Palestinians or working for real peace between the different sides of the conflict). Far too many people are stifling the conversation by taking genuine humanitarian concern, and aligning it with the cause of ‘Palestinianism’. As the Middle East burns – on the very day another fragile nation shows further signs of trouble, British unions support a march against Israel. Those unions who are meant to represent British workers, are overtly strengthening racism, antisemitism, rejectionisim and undemocratic forces within a conflict zone. That, more than a few antisemites on the streets of London, is the truly worrying aspect of the march.

No Zionist today would think to celebrate the partition vote by praising the wise foresight of Comrade Stalin. But it would be a missed opportunity (and bad history) to celebrate it only by hailing Truman, the would-be Cyrus. On that day, the world welcomed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. It happened because shrewd and persistent Zionist statesmen and diplomats persuaded the leaders of both increasingly antagonistic great powers that a Jewish state would serve the interests of each.

“In terms both of Soviet and of American policy,” wrote Paul Johnson in the 1998 essay I quoted at the outset, “Israel slipped into existence through a window that briefly opened, and just as suddenly closed.” It was Zionist statesmanship—critically coordinated with Zionist arms—that opened the window just wide enough, and kept it open long enough, for Israel to enter. Surely this achievement is the one that deserves to be remembered and celebrated in Flushing Meadows 70 years to the day. The saga of the partition vote, far from being a singularly American story, is a reminder that Israel must remain ever-nimble in maneuvering among the powers, and not rely exclusively on a single one. This was crucial at Israel’s birth, and might prove crucial again.

Finally, there is yet another cause for reflection as Israel approaches its 70th anniversary. In the early years of the 20th century, the Zionist and the Russian revolutions occurred in tandem. They arose from related discontents, in much of the same geographic space. Not surprisingly, they both competed for the allegiance and energies of Jews. The Soviet Union lasted almost 69 years to the day, from 1922 to 1991. As of this year, the state of Israel has lasted longer, and it continues to flourish. Israel won the war for the Jews, as surely as the United States won the cold war.

The Soviet legacy is damnable with regard to Israel, too. The Soviet Union later armed and incited the Arabs to wage wars on Israel that drew blood and inflicted suffering. But let Israel record two credits to the ledger of that calamitous 20th-century regime. First, as Israel’s founders attested and as this essay has shown, the Soviet Union gave vital support to Israel at its birth. Second, it saved millions of Jews from otherwise certain destruction by the Nazis—Jews who, with their descendants, would crucially augment the population of Israel upon the eventual Soviet collapse.

This does not mitigate the crimes perpetrated by Stalin, whose barbarity sometimes rivaled Hitler’s. It is a reminder that while Israel should always prefer the good company of the righteous, the others must not be neglected.

We have written about “Watching the Moon at Night” several times in the last two years.

It's a fine, made-for-TV documentary film the leading US Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum described as “an intellectually informative, visually compelling, emotionally moving and highly disturbing exploration of the phenomena of terrorism in our time”.

The film's co-director, the acclaimed Swedish film-maker Bo Persson, will be the special guest at two Israeli screenings during November.

The film was shown last year in the European Parliament and the Swedish parliament, at many international film festivals and in front of audiences in the United States and Europe. But it won't be shown to Swedish television viewers because of some outrageous politically-motivated manipulation.

As an American feminist, I support the incredibly brave Muslim and ex-Muslim women who have just accused Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and a revered Professor at Oxford, of having violently raped, battered, humiliated, confined, and death threatened them if they talked.

I also support Ramadan’s Swiss underage students who have just come forward with stories of his inappropriate behavior and of sexual abuse.

Ramadan has denied these accusations and threatened to sue for defamation. I do not believe his denials.

Young girls and women are hooked on fairy tales and trained in naïveté. Each thinks of herself as “Beauty” and believes she can tame the Beast by her vulnerability and trusting nature. Yes, the women are ambitious and hope to snare a Prince. While they are not innocent of such ambition, neither do they want to be sexually assaulted, humiliated, raped, and dumped.

Religious Muslim women, especially those whose lives have been lived face-veiled and in purdah, as was Ramadan’s first accuser, have sought him out as a spiritual counselor, a holy guide. No matter how mixed their motives may have been, he abused their trust in the most vulgar way.

Ramadan cuts a smooth and dashing figure and has been warmly embraced by Western intellectuals. His Chair at Oxford has been endowed by the government of Qatar.

If correctly reported, this response to allegations of rape levelled against Tariq Ramadan is both perverse and dangerous.
[Professor Eugene] Rogan reminded students: “It’s not just about sexual violence. For some students it’s just another way for Europeans to gang up against a prominent Muslim intellectual. We must protect Muslim students who believe and trust in him, and protect that trust.”

Muslims should most certainly be protected from discrimination or harassment; more subtle problems (like the Times’ apparent misreporting of a recent fostering case) should also be countered. However it’s outrageous to suggest that the reality of anti-Muslim bigotry should mean that Tariq Ramadan is treated differently from anyone else in his situation. That’s like saying antisemitism might reasonably be invoked to insulate Harvey Weinstein from scrutiny.

This tendency to be overprotective of Muslims, or set Muslims a lower bar with regard to their behaviour or beliefs, only makes things worse, fuelling the anger of the far right. Yet again and again we can find examples of people with prominent and responsible positions in public life being prepared to work alongside unsavoury groups and individuals. Recently Wes Streeting, Stephen Kinnock and, of course, Jeremy Corbyn have all shared a platform with MEND.

Students at the University of Ottawa, Canada's capital, have voted down a motion to endorse the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The motion was amended to remove all language related to BDS, and replace it with a statement of support for peace between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs.

StandWithUs Canada welcomed the move on Sunday.

The motion was first brought up on Friday, hours before many Jewish students stop working in order to observe Shabbat, said StandWithUs Canada in a statement.

The Student Federation (SFUO) at the university came forward with a motion to endorse a number of social justice causes, with item 47 being that the SFUO will support the BDS movement and take a "pro-Palestine stance". This came shortly after the SFUO tried to revoke the club status of Hillel Ottawa and the Israel Awareness Committee.

An Israeli man living and working in Aberdeen, Scotland, said he is being hounded by pro-Palestinian activists in what he described as a “game of chase the Jew.”

His story has gone viral after BBC Scotland reported on it last Thursday. Nissan Ayalon is the owner of Jericho Skin Care, which sells Dead Sea products and said he faces weekly protests at his stall.

“It’s like I don’t have the right to exist,” he told BBC Scotland. “I have to justify my existence. I have to ask for permission to live, to walk to work. We were accused of murdering, mass murdering, slaughter, criminals, we were called criminal enterprise. We were called baby killers. There is nowhere else for me to go. I love it here. Where is my equal opportunity?”

Ayalon’s business has been targeted in the past when he sold his products in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where a video was filmed showing anti-Israel activists throwing red paint and dolls at his stall. Incidents of this kind continued when he moved to Glasgow, and followed him again to Aberdeen.

The Jewish Human Rights Watch group accused the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) of targeting Ayalon and, in July, welcomed a Scottish court ruling which found Mick Napier of the campaign guilty of aggravated trespass and ignoring a police order.

With the ongoing slow death of a ridonkulous business model consolidation of online Jewish media, the venerable news site The Forward has hit upon a brilliant way to cut costs while still maintaining core brand identity: their web page now sends you directly to Linda Sarsour’s Twitter feed. Ms. Sarsour, noted feminist and Sharia advocate, has featured so prominently in the Forward as of late that it just made sense to cut out the middleman and bring Linda’s woke tweets directly to the Forward’s woke audience. The Daily Freier took a stroll around Park Slope, Brooklyn in order to get all of the facts from The Forward’s key demographic: Lefty Jews in a constant state of Checking their Privilege.

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t even notice the change for the first three days.” admitted Ethan, an earnest young person wearing a t-shirt that said “#Resistance“. “I mean, I kept seeing the usual sick burns on the Netanyahu regime, the Trump police state, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I guess I only figured it out when they kept posting shout-outs to Colin Kapaernik.”

“I honestly don’t know what the big deal is.” complained Miriam, as she canvassed for New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s re-election. “I mean, Linda just compared Zionism to White Supremacy and Neo-Nazis. So what? At the Forward that used to be called ‘Tuesdays’….So like whatever.” Miriam then attempted to cross a busy street before jumping back as a car sped past. “That idiot didn’t even stop for me! This intersection is so…so….Intersectional!”

It’s November in Morocco – time for the annual fixture of the cultural calendar – the Essaouira Music festival.

The Economist has been gushing about what it calls ‘Morocco’s little idyll of Jewish-Muslim coexistence’. Yet, the Nov. 2nd article admits that only three Jews still live in Essaouira – a city which used to have as many Jews as Muslims before the great exodus to Israel.

One of those Jews is Jacquy Sebag, who was attacked with an axe by Muslim extremists in 2002 during the Palestinian intifada. You would never guess that unpleasant things ever happened to Jews in Morocco, which the Economist portrays as a haven from European persecution.

It is true that many Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century fled to Morocco, but it is misleading to infer that Jews and Muslims had always coexisted peacefully. In 1492 the Jewish community of Touat was wiped out after incitement by the fundamentalist al-Maghili. The 15th century was also the century when thousands of beldiyeen, Jews who had been settled in Fez for centuries, converted to Islam. Moroccan Jews suffered more massacres than anywhere else in the Arab world, including the Oujda and Jerada riots in 1948.

As the Economist correctly reports, no Arab country has gone to the lengths of Morocco to revive its Jewish heritage. There are sound economic and strategic reasons for this: Tourism attracts 40,000 Jewish tourists, of which 3,000 are Israelis (and not as reported), and is a major Moroccan industry.

Coexistence projects such as the Essaouira festival are mainly for external consumption. The ethnographer Aomar Boum writes in Memories of Absence that the Jewish Museum in Casablanca is almost unknown amongst Moroccans themselves.

Neither did Bateman bother to explain to listeners that the failure to disarm Hamas will put the Palestinian Authority in breach of both its existing agreements with Israel and the Quartet Principles.

Since the story of Hamas-Fatah reconciliation first broke in mid-September, none of the BBC’s numerous reports concerning that topic have provided its audiences with a proper explanation of why Hamas must be disarmed if the PA is to meet its existing obligations. Neither have any of those reports on a variety of BBC platforms included coverage of statements by Hamas officials clarifying the terror group’s refusal to disarm its militias and its intention to continue attacks against Israel.

As this latest report by Bateman once again indicates, the BBC’s failure to provide its funding public with the full range of information needed to properly understand this story is obviously not a matter of chance omission but of deliberate framing.

Nigel Farage has attempted to end the controversy over remarks he made earlier in the week when he told LBC listeners that he believes that American Jews exert disproportionate political power and even appeared to agree with a claim that they have financial control over American politics.

After Campaign Against Antisemitism made a formal complaint to broadcasting regulator Ofcom, Mr Farage has now stated that a “Jewish lobby” did not wield influence over the outcome of last year’s Presidential election. He told a caller to LBC this morning that he rejected claims that his remarks were antisemitic but then said: “the Jewish lobby in America is organised and powerful, but not for one moment do I think that they tried to influence the election, I think it’s ridiculous”.

Whilst we welcome Mr Farage’s statement that he does not believe that Jews “used their influence” to determine the outcome of the election, we remain concerned that he is clearly convinced that there is a “Jewish lobby” which is “organised and powerful”, again conflating the political lobby for Israel with Jews in general.

It is common for countries to lobby their allies, and Israel is no different, but in Mr Farage’s call on Monday, it was not merely alleged that Israel conducts lobbying, but that it is carried out by the entire Jewish population of the United States and that in doing so American politics are subverted. Counting all American Jews as lobbyists with disproportionate, subversive power and both major political parties in their financial grips is the stuff of antisemitic conspiracy theories, and whilst Mr Farage has now said that he does not believe that American Jews influenced the last year’s Presidential election, he has only reiterated his belief that there is a powerful “Jewish lobby” at work.

Meeting with leaders of the Jewish community of Madrid on Sunday, President Reuven Rivlin pledged Israel’s support in the fight against anti-Semitism and celebrated 100 years of resurgent Jewish presence in the country.

Rivlin took part in an event at Madrid’s Ibn Gabirol School to mark 100 years since the reestablishment of the nation’s Jewish community after the expulsion of 1492.

“The community here today is a magnificent community, with tens of thousands of members of all ages,” he said. “Jewish life on the Iberian Peninsula, which was cut off more than 500 years ago, is now full of life, and this is a great joy. This is a great victory for history and the spirit of the Jewish people.”

He added that he was aware of the community’s concerns over growing incidents of anti-Semitism directed against local Jews.

“According to the Spanish interior minister’s report on anti-Semitism, in recent years there has been a rise of hundreds of percent in manifestations of anti-Semitism in Spain,” and said.

“We must not surrender to anti-Semitism, we must fight it. I am pleased that the Spanish government is taking steps in legislation and enforcement against this ugly phenomenon. We must not be ashamed of or hide our identity.

Retired FBI agent Vince Pankoke shed new light during an interview with Army Radio on Sunday onto his ongoing cold-case investigation into who betrayed Anne Frank and her family.

“We’ve received several hundred tips, [and] at least 10 of them have great substance,” said Pankoke.

“We’ve already found information that hasn’t been brought up before, we’ve already found stories that haven’t been brought up before,” Pankoke told Army Radio.

“We’re imagining that there’s a family member of somebody, somewhere, that has been keeping a family secret and maybe now they’re at the point where they can say its time that the truth be told.”

The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam is assisting Pankoke’s team in its efforts, and has granted access to its archives. Researchers will use modern investigative techniques and software to analyze data and develop new leads.

“There’s so much information out there. All of this information we are putting into this giant database [which] sorts through millions of bits of information and makes connections between people, dates, times, locations and events,” Pankoke explained.

Anti-Semitic posters portraying Jews as serial rapists and praising white supremacist mass-murderer Dylann Roof were pasted to a synagogue in suburban Sacramento, California over the weekend.

Members of congregation Or Rishon on Saturday morning discovered about 10 to 15 of the hate posters stuck to the building, The Sacramento Bee reported. They were placed on the building overnight between Friday and Saturday.

The posters included one seemingly justifying the June 2015 mass-shooting committed by white supremacist Dylann Roof at a predominantly black church in South Carolina, killing nine. Other posters featured anti-Semitic caricatures.

One poster portrayed Jews as rapists, showing an image of disgraced former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and a man with side-locks sexually assaulting a non-Jewish woman. The poster also appears to praise Adolf Hitler and other prominent anti-Semites, exhorting the public to heed their "warnings" against Jews. The poster also used an anti-Semitic epithet.

"Yikes! Kikes! Hitler, Rockwell, and Pierce warned you about sleazy Hollywood kikes," the poster said, referencing white supremacists William Luther Pierce and George Lincoln Rockwell.

The incident was reported to the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department and the FBI, according to the report.

A school district in Pennsylvania is investigating social media posts from students on a senior class trip that mocked exhibits at the US Holocaust Museum.

The senior class from the Forest Hills School District visited the museum in Washington DC last Wednesday as part of its senior class trip.

Senior class president Gabe Singer told the Associated Press that most students were respectful. But some other students reportedly made inappropriate posts to social media, including disrespectful statements next to a photo of a pile of shoes take from Holocaust victims at a Nazi concentration camp that was posted on Snapchat. Those students “made a mockery of what they saw,” Singer told AP.

In a public letter Singer apologized on behalf of his classmates and called their actions “unacceptable,” according to the AP. He said he hoped that students who come after his class will still be able to visit the museum.

The members of a Jewish family have their dog to thank for their escape from a fire police believe was intentionally set in their home in the Paris area, an anti-racism group said.

The family was awakened after midnight Friday night by the dog’s insistent barking to discover that their front door was on fire, with smoke rapidly filling up the interior of their apartment in the southeastern suburb of Creteil, the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, or BNVCA, reported Sunday.

Someone had doused the door in a highly flammable liquid at set it alight, police concluded, according to the case report of the BNVCA. The family told police they suspected an Arab neighbor, who BNVCA said has expressed extremist and anti-Semitic views online. Police detained the neighbor in connection with the incident, which BNVCA is calling anti-Semitic.

Last week, an unidentified person set the family’s car on fire. Witnesses saw a man wearing a hoodie set it alight, according to the BNVCA report.

“The incident confirms BNVCA’s observation that anti-Semitic acts that began as targeting property belonging to Jews (synagogues, schools, community centers) or as assaults on people on the street have evolved into attacks on Jews inside their own homes,” the group wrote.

Arnie Pritchard of New Haven and his two brothers knew in a general way growing up that their mother, Marion Pritchard, had sheltered Jews in the Netherlands during the Holocaust.

But it wasn’t until 1981, when they were well into adulthood, that they learned the details and scope of her heroism when their mother received the Righteous Among the Nations award from Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial.

It would turn out that, while in her early 20s in Holland, Marion Pritchard risked her life many times over by assisting in saving some 150 Jews, mostly children, killing a man with her pistol to protect a Jewish family and sheltering a Jewish family with an infant for three years. She was even imprisoned for her resistance work.

Arnie Pritchard said his mother wasn’t “gifted with nerves of steel” — she once was terrified when a bat was flying around the house — yet she endured so much risk during that dark time in history when over 6 million Jews were killed.

“It’s not that she didn’t feel the fear. She was able to overcome it,” said Arnie Pritchard, who came to New Haven in 1970 to attend graduate school at Yale University and settled here.

The Israeli Air Force appointed its first female deputy commander of a fighter jet squadron on Sunday, some 16 years after Roni Zuckerman became the first Israeli woman fighter pilot.

The newly tapped deputy commander, whose name cannot be published for security reasons, will serve in the air force’s Spearhead Squadron, which flies F-15 fighter jets out of the Tel Nof air base in central Israel, the army said on Monday.

The military also announced that IAF chief Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin had appointed two other women to deputy commander positions in the military’s drone squadrons. (Their names also cannot be published for similar security concerns.)

The head of the Na’amat women’s organization, Galia Wolloch, lauded the appointments, but said “the path to equality is a long one.”

As Australia overhauls its LAND 400 armored vehicles program, Israeli defense giant Rafael Advanced Defense Systems is in the running to provide its Trophy Active Protection System and SPIKE missiles to the land Down Under in deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

In order to meet the anticipated demand, Rafael will be opening a local company in Australia to jointly produce the SPIKE missiles with Australia’s Varley and will be purchasing metal for various system from Australia's Bisalloy Steel Group, the company announced on Monday.

The local company – which will be based in Melbourne and managed by an Israeli and a local Australian team – will expand Rafael’s role in helping arm the Australian Army, both on land and sea, in the LAND 400 Phase 2 Combat Reconnaissance Vehicles program.

According to Rafael, several of their systems have been used by the Australian Army for years, including remote-controlled weapon stations, naval systems, aerial attack guidance systems and more.

Giora Katz, executive VP of marketing and business development at Rafael, said the Australian venture is part of the company’s global strategy to create local partnerships with companies in various countries, in order to meet the growing demand to buy locally.

Boy George has landed in Israel, his signature harem pants in place, ahead of his Tuesday performance in Tel Aviv’s Menora Mivtachim Arena.

The pop singer flew in from Australia, where he is currently acting as a judge on reality show “The Voice Australia.”

It’s been 30 years since the eighties pop singer and his band, Culture Club, played in Israel. The Tel Aviv performance is part of a reunion tour that includes original band members Roy Hay, Mikey Craig and Jon Moss.

George recently signed a new record deal with BMG, his first major label signing in nearly 30 years, and his first project will be a solo cover album, according to his website.

But he’s been busy in recent years, serving as judge on “The Voice.” He’s represented by Paul Kemsley of Nixxi Entertainment, who works with his wife, Dorit Kemsley, in the family business.

On Tuesday, the 3 millionth tourist to land in Israel this year is scheduled to arrive, marking an all-time record high for incoming tourism. The lucky visitor will be given a special prize package to celebrate the event and promote tourism to Israel.

Photos of the tourist's upgraded vacation will be used to market Israeli tourism as part of a campaign to attract workers to Israel's tourism industry.

Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, who was planning to meet the tourist at Ben-Gurion International Airport, said on Sunday that he was "excited to welcome the tourist and break the 3 million barrier."

"We are about to end the year with a great achievement – a result of the enormous efforts we are investing into marketing Israel worldwide, in exceptional cooperation with airlines, and the ties we are working to strengthen with travel agents. All this has been bearing fruit and has so far brought in some 17 billion shekels [$4.8 billion] and thousands of jobs to the Israeli economy," Levin said.

2017 is on track to see a 20% increase in incoming tourism compared to 2016. The tourism sector is expected to keep expanding, and the Tourism Ministry is working on ways to improve tourists' experience in Israel.

Following is the text of an address by Elisha Wiesel at the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity gala on Wednesday night.

I would like to begin with a Chasidic story. It takes place in Eastern Europe in the mid-19th century, in a time when the great Rabbis could transport themselves through prayer in ways we can only dream of.

It came to pass that the great Reb Yitzhak Vurka passed away. His son, Mendel, waited patiently for his father to visit him in a dream, to send word from the after-world and to let him know he was okay. Days went by, then weeks, finally a month. There was no dream, no appearance. So Mendele paid a visit to Reb Yitzhak Vurka’s best friend, the Kotzker Rebbe. Now a word on their friendship – Reb Yitzhak Vurka and the Kotzker Rebbe were the best of friends, but they served God in different ways. The Kotzker Rebbe treasured truth above all else, but the late Reb Yitzhak Vurka was devoted to love.

“Rebbe,” Mendele asked, “have you heard from my father? I have heard nothing from him all this time.” “Ah yes Mendele,” responded the Kotzker Rebbe, “I too had not heard from him from beyond the grave, and was concerned.”

“And so,” the Rebbe continued, “I went up to Heaven and looked for him. I looked in the palaces of the greatest of our sages. I went to the palace of Rashi, of the Ramban, of Moshe Rabeinu, of Avraham – and in each place I looked, I was told ‘yes, he was here, but he has moved on.’ In desperation I went to the angels and said ‘where is he, where is my best friend?’ and was told to search for him in a dark forest at the farthest end of Heaven. And after much searching I found the forest, a terrible, dark forest. I gathered my strength, and entered it. Finally I came to the end of the forest and heard a great sound of crashing and of voices weeping. And at the end of the forest was a huge ocean. And there, leaning on a walking stick, staring out over the vast sea, was Reb Yitzhak.”

Montefiore

Britain's Labour Party is not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism masked as anti-Zionism, three prominent and influential British Jewish writers have claimed.

Historians Simon Shama, Simon Sebag Montefiore and novelist Howard Jacobson penned an open letter in the U.K.'s The Times criticizing Jeremy Corbyn's party for what they called its "derisory" response to anti-Zionism that they claim has become indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.

“We are alarmed that during the past few years, constructive criticism of Israeli governments has morphed into something closer to antisemitism under the cloak of so-called anti-Zionism," the joint letter read.

“We do not forget nor deny that the Palestinian people have an equally legitimate, ancient history and culture in Palestine nor that they have suffered wrongs that must be healed. We hope that a Palestinian state will exist peacefully alongside Israel...” 

Simon Schama

Graphic by Haaretz

The Guardian of 1917 supported, celebrated – and could even be said to have helped facilitate – the Balfour declaration. However, Israel today is not the country we foresaw or would have wanted. It is run by the most rightwing government in its history, dragged ever rightward by fanatical extremists. ...

 For Palestinians the situation is even more desperate. Almost 5 million live under a military occupation, which has lasted for five decades. ....

Hate crimes against New York City Muslims were on the rise even before Tuesday's car attack in lower Manhattan—but the region's Pakistanis, Arabs, Turks and other followers of Islam are preparing for more incidents as New York mourns its eight victims.  

Muslim New Yorkers are bracing themselves for hate crimes after terror attack 

New York activist Linda Sarsour was at John F. Kennedy International Airport waiting to board a flight to San Diego Tuesday afternoon when news broke that a truck driver had killed multiple people in Lower Manhattan.
As she watched subtitled cable news reports scroll across a terminal television, the co-organizer of January’s historic Women’s March on Washington said to herself what many Muslim Americans find themselves saying after a terror attack.
“I was thinking, ‘Please, God, don’t let it be a Muslim,’” Sarsour said in an interview Wednesday morning.

 Fears of Muslim New Yorkers have been reignited by Tuesday’s deadly truck attack in lower Manhattan.

SHAPIRO: And so at this point, are you almost expecting a backlash?
RASHID: I think we've seen this cycle repeatedly - that there is an attack. Whether it's committed by a Muslim or not, there's often a backlash against Muslim communities. And when it is committed by a Muslim, there's a real sense of collective guilt. And I really feel particularly for Muslim women who wear hijab who are very visibly Muslim to be in this environment right now.

The New York Police Department's hate crimes unit reports that half the known hate crimes in the first two quarters of 2017 were against Muslims. 

Fatah's Bethlehem Branch glorified the Palestinian Authority's terror campaign (2000-2005) - the second Intifada, posting on Facebook the photo above with the text:

"A souvenir picture from the Al-Aqsa Intifada The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - Bethlehem."
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement - Bethlehem Branch, Oct. 26, 2017]

Over 1,000 Israelis, of which the vast majority were civilians, were murdered during the PA terror campaign, mostly in suicide bombings by Hamas and Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades is considered a terror organization by the US and the EU. The image shows rows of masked men, apparently belonging to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, dressed in black clothes, wearing keffiyehs (Arab headdresses) and yellow Fatah headbands, and carrying various types of rifles.

Palestinian Media Watch has documented numerous times that Fatah continues to promote violence and refuses to lay down its weapons. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Mahmoud Abbas' Advisor Sultan Abu Al-Einein wrote: "The only way to freedom and liberation is resistance to the occupier... There is no honor for the weak
." [Facebook page of Mahmoud Abbas' Advisor to NGOs Sultan Abu Al-Einein, Nov. 2, 2017]

"Resistance" is in PA terminology often a euphemism for violence and terror.

Washington’s liberal foreign-policy establishment sees an ambitious would-be autocrat overreaching at home and abroad. But the Saudi leadership was never going to sit still in response to Tehran’s growing hegemony, a threat that was abetted by the Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy and failure to check Iranian aggression across the geopolitical board. Feeling abandoned by Washington, and with their own system’s weaknesses bearing down on them, the Saudis were due for a big shakeup.

MBS’s [Mohammed bin Salman] project makes sense against this backdrop. His reform vision is by no means democratic. But it is populist, nationalist, and shorn of illusions. Which is to say, it is deeply attuned to the needs of the Arabs today and the worldwide spirit of the age.

Start with populism. By targeting graft, MBS is vindicating average Saudis, who stewed as they watched the well-connected cash in on public money. By granting women the right to drive and loosening social restrictions that made the kingdom one of the worst places to be young, MBS is creating a constituency that is invested in his success. Saudis won’t shed tears for princes locked up in the Riyadh Ritz.

Then there is nationalism. By liberalizing the economy and seeking revenue beyond oil, MBS is shoring up the national foundations of Saudi power–crucial in the confrontation with Tehran. With oil prices depressed, Riyadh can no longer afford to run a colossal welfare state. Weaning Saudis off petro-entitlements is likely to foster a healthier, more accountable sense of belonging and citizenship than the kingdom has afforded citizens since its founding. More philosophically, MBS views the nation-state form as an enduring mechanism for confronting 21st-century challenges. MBS is thus one among a rising group of like-minded world leaders, including Narendra Modi, Benjamin Netanyahu, and, of course, Donald Trump.

Finally, MBS’s reform vision is realistic. As the likes of Bernard Lewis warned and subsequent events showed, Arab society isn’t configured to representative democracy as we in the West understand it. With the precious exception of Tunisia, Arab “democracy” has yielded Islamism, state failure, and civil war. Top-down change, driven by a popular figure like MBS, promises a less perilous path to reform and prosperity for the Saudis and their neighborhood. The U.S. should embrace this vision–and lend a hand.

There can be little doubt that there was coordination between the Saudi regime and the Trump administration regarding Saturday’s actions. The timing of the administration’s release last week of most of the files US special forces seized during their 2011 raid of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan was likely not a coincidence.

The files, which the Obama administration refused to release, make clear that Obama’s two chief pretensions – that al-Qaida was a spent force by the time US forces killed bin Laden, and that Iran was interested in moderating its behavior were both untrue. The documents showed that al-Qaida’s operations remained a significant worldwide threat to US interests.

And perhaps more significantly, they showed that Iran was al-Qaida’s chief state sponsor. Much of al-Qaida’s leadership, including bin Laden’s sons, operated from Iran. The notion – touted by Obama and his administration – that Shi’ite Iranians and Sunni terrorists from al-Qaida and other groups were incapable of cooperating was demonstrated to be an utter fiction by the documents.

Their publication now, as Saudi Arabia takes more determined steps to slash its support for radical Islamists, and separate itself from Wahhabist Islam, draws a clear distinction between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Given Saudi Arabia’s record, and the kingdom’s 70-year alliance with Wahhabist clerics, it is hard to know whether Mohammed’s move signals an irrevocable breach between the House of Saud and the Wahhabists.

But the direction is clear. With Hariri’s removal from Lebanon, the lines between the forces of jihad and terrorism led by Iran, and the forces that oppose them are clearer than ever before. And the necessity of acting against the former and helping the latter has similarly never been more obvious.

Is this centralization of power a good thing for the United States, or even for Saudi Arabia? That question will best be answered retrospectively, in about a decade. What’s clear now, though, is that Crown Prince Mohammed has announced ambitious economic and social changes, from allowing women to drive and mix with men in sports stadiums, to selling off a part of the kingdom’s key asset, the Aramco oil company, to challenging the ideology of the Wahhabi clerics. He appears to believe that such moves require sheer power, both to overcome resistance and to move the kingdom’s poorly educated and youthful population (roughly half are under the age of twenty-five) of 33 million into the 21st century.

Crown Prince Mohammed has spoken of a more modern Saudi Arabia, at least when it comes to the role of religion and the rights of women. Last month he called for “a moderate Islam open to the world and all religions.” But political liberalization is not in the cards. Indeed, a serious crackdown has been under way for the last two years, including lengthy prison terms for tweets that criticized the Saudi authorities. The message from the palace is clear: get on board or pay the price. That message applies not only to commoners, but to the entire royal family.

Few were in doubt about Crown Prince Mohammed’s ambition. Now there will be equal certainty about his determination.

Israel has not faced such a powerful threat since the 1973 war, and confronting the Iran-Hizballah-Assad coalition will tax the IDF heavily. . . . [Such a conflict’s] daunting tactical challenges also, as in the past, generate strategic and geopolitical problems. The perception of victory often counts more than the battlefield result, both in the region and in the larger international contest.

Nasrallah excels at spinning defeat into victory. [In 2006, notwithstanding Hizballah’s considerable losses], survival became triumph, a bit of propaganda that caught on in outlets such as the Economist, which declared, “Nasrallah wins the war.” By now even many Israelis, especially on the political left, concur. . . . The standard of victory for Israel remains almost impossibly high.

Despite the gloomy view of the past and the foreboding about the future, it is also the case that since 2006 Israel’s northern border has been remarkably quiet. That’s even more remarkable considering the chaos that’s ripped Iraq and Syria apart and catapulted Iran to the fore. This is a ceasefire worth preserving. It particularly behooves the United States to try to do so. . .

At the same time, the looming war presents an important opportunity. . . . Should deterrence fail and conflict resume, it will be important for the United States to back the Israelis clearly and forcefully. . . . A decisive Israeli victory against the Tehran-backed Hizballah forces would be an unparalleled opportunity to stem the regional Iranian tide, thereby serving a prime U.S. national-security interest. Such a victory would both reassure and relax America’s Arab allies, particularly in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Egypt—those most nervous about a flagging U.S. commitment in the Middle East. It would also remind the world that, despite Vladimir Putin’s meddling, the United States remains the most powerful external force in the region. . . . Just as Israelis have begun to prepare themselves for this [prospective conflict], so should [the U.S.].

Israel's government waged financial warfare on terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, which became a model for most states battling terrorism today, according to members of a once secret Israeli task force called Harpoon.

The operations ranged from financial operations that caused terrorist groups to lose tens of millions from bad investments, to commando raids on banks linked to the funding of suicide bombings, to targeted assassinations of terror group financiers.

"Harpoon showed the world that there must constantly be new angles to attack terrorist groups and infrastructure," said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, coauthor with Samuel M. Katz of a new book, Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism's Money Masters, to be published Tuesday.

"The Israeli task force realized ahead of everyone else that money was the oxygen for the terrorist networks and you could badly damage them by choking it off," she said.

Beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Israel, led by Gen. Meir Dagan, a commando veteran who later headed the Mossad intelligence service for nine years, combined old and new spy methods to squeeze the finances of terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and the regimes and paymasters behind them. The operations greatly reduced the deadly suicide and rocket attacks used by both groups against the Jewish state.

Dagan advocated targeting terrorist financing as a top priority. He died of cancer last year, and the book highlights the major role he played in leading Israel's covert war against terrorists and supporters like Iran.

After the recent Islamic terrorist vehicular attack in Lower Manhattan, people ask me as an Israeli: “what is Israel’s secret to living daily with Palestinian Arab terrorism and the country’s ability to prosper in spite of it?”

The answer is: Israel’s secret weapon is the Israeli civilians who feel responsible for each other and therefore are willing to sacrifice themselves fighting and defeating terror to save others. The Israeli public does not hide or run away from the terrorists to save themselves, but rather confronts the terrorists in an effort to save their fellow citizens. From airline hijackings, suicide bombings, stabbings, shootings, and vehicle attacks, Israel has seen them all and has adapted accordingly

While other countries in the West rely solely or mostly on the police and security services to stop terrorists, in Israel the public is a full, independent partner in the fight. Thirty percent of terrorist attacks have been thwarted by civilians in Israel, who fight back by striking the terrorists with everything they had such as a pizza tray, an umbrella, a selfie stick, a guitar, chairs, pepper spray, and guns. While in England the police want the schoolkids to be taught the message of “hide, run, tell,” a child growing up in Israel, is encouraged always to think what will he do proactively if he or she were facing a terrorist.

The most popular YouTube videos posted online are those that show the heroic actions of citizens fighting back or impeding a terrorist. Family, friends, and society applaud, admire, and approve of such actions to defeat terrorism in order to survive, and those people are treated as heroes.

The annual national conference of the Israeli American Council concluded on Monday. The speakers in the final plenary session included members of Congress from both parties, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, as well as philanthropist and businessman Sheldon Adelson, who spoke for the second night in a row.

The conference is believed to be the largest gathering of Israelis in the United States ever recorded. The speakers touted the special relationship between Israel and the United States.

California Congressman Brad Sherman, who chairs the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said that bipartisanship on Israel must be paramount. He also said that regime change in Iran must be a top priority.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a video message, telling the crowd – numbering almost 3,000 – that Israel has never been stronger.

Adelson, who is the chief financial backer of the IAC, said Sunday that he decided to start contributing heavily to the organization several years ago because of its potential in supporting Israel unconditionally.

"There are times when we cannot have equivocation, when we need a group of people to advocate for Israel unequivocally, and I felt if there was an organization called the Israeli American Council, that council and that organization would unequivocally always without question and irreversibly support Israel when it needed it," Adelson said

The UN turned to anti-Israel extremist Rashid Khalidi as guest of honor at an event intended to demonize and delegitimize the UN member state of Israel. His comments, and those of his audience, were rife with antisemitic overtones. The event, entitled "100 years of the Balfour Declaration and its impact on the Palestinian People", was sponsored by the UN's committee dedicated to promotion of the Palestinian narrative and held at the UN on November 2, 2017. The Balfour Declaration, signed in 1917, is when the British government expressed that it "view[s] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people..."

During the event, Khalidi described the Balfour Declaration as a "gun pointed directly at their heads" in reference to Palestinians, as well as a "declaration of war." This war, Khalidi alleged, was waged in part by the "Zionist movement with money, legal means, [and] propaganda..." Khalidi apparently had no problem entertaining questions and comments from audience members, such as: a representative of Oman inquiring about what "leverage" Jews had to make Britain forget about its interests in the Arab world, an Arab "TV presenter" accusing Israel of "rape of sanctity lands," and a Palestinian "attorney activist" accusing Israel of "coloniz[ing] for the purpose of ethnic cleansing."

In their words:
Khalidi: "For the Palestinians, this declaration, this statement was a gun pointed directly at their heads, particularly in view of the colonialist ambiance of the early 20th century. As I will try to show this afternoon, the Balfour Declaration, in effect, constituted a declaration of war by the British Empire on the indigenous population of the land it was promising to the Jewish people as a national home. This declaration launched what has become a century long assault on the Palestinian people aimed at implanting and fostering this national home at their expense... For the next few decades, this war was waged in several ways. It was waged by the Zionist movement with money, legal means, propaganda, and finally with mortars and car bombs."

Representative from Oman: "Can you please shed a light on the background of the Balfour Declaration. What has made the British government give such a promise to the Jewish people even though it has an interest in the Arab world from Suez to the Gulf? What leverage has the Jewish, or Zionist at that time to influence the British?"

In the ensuing [post-referendum] violence, voters were beaten with clubs, dragged by their hair, and shot with rubber bullets [by Spanish police]. Nearly 900 civilians were treated for injuries. . . . A senior cabinet minister warned [subsequently] that Spain will use force, if necessary, to compel Catalonia to submit. . . .

[Nonetheless], the Spanish government unhesitatingly proclaims support for Palestinian sovereignty. . . . How can Spain, so ready to endorse a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, aggressively oppose one for its conflict with Catalonia?

The phenomenon isn’t limited to Spain. Iraq also backs statehood and full UN membership for the Palestinians—but not for the Iraqi Kurds who decisively voted for independence last month. . . . As recently as July, the Chinese president Xi Jinping hosted Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing and endorsed a “settlement of the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution.” But under no circumstances will China contemplate a “two-state solution” for Tibetans, an ancient people with a unique linguistic, cultural, and religious identity. . . .

Only when it comes to Palestinians is the international community obsessed with a “two-state solution.” That isn’t because Palestinians are uniquely qualified for sovereignty. The dysfunctional, violent, and corrupt Palestinian Authority is about as ill-suited to statehood as any entity can be. Rather, the unending agitation to create a Palestinian state is a reflection of the world’s restless preoccupation with Jews—and, since 1948, with the Jewish state.

Have you ever suffered the embarrassment of dancing only to have the seam of your pants break when you were trying to impress with your dance moves. The moral of this story is that the seam is always the weakest link, and the most likely to fail when the pressure is on.

What does this have to do with US Middle East USCENTCOM combatant command structure? Everything! For the US Combatant Command’s Areas of Responsibilities has been structured in such a way as to put Israel on the seam of three different US Combatant commands. But Israel is now the weakest link of the US Combatant Command instead of the strongest link. And, if the arch-foe of CENTCOM is Iran, Israel should be the center of CENTCOM’s defense architecture.

What is the US Combatant Command? The world is broken up into various “Areas of Responsibility” under which the various US regional commands operate and that they are “responsible” for. For instance, US Central Command, or CENTCOM, is responsible for the Middle East. But, where logically Israel is part of the Middle East, Israel is attached to US European Command or EUCOM. For even more confusion, Egypt is part of CENTCOM even though it is to the west of Israel. Egypt is not part of Africa Command, and neither is Israel.

Israel is disconnected from both AFRICOM, and CENTCOM, and geographically separated from EUCOM. Israel sits astride a triple-witching seam between EUCOM, CENTCOM, and AFRICOM. Israel is, in effect, the black hole, or orphan-child, of the US Combatant Command when it really should be the core of the CENTCOM command structure, critically connecting to EUCOM.

Britain’s international development secretary apologized Monday for holding meetings with top Israeli officials, among them Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, without informing the Foreign Office beforehand.

Priti Patel met with Netanyahu, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid and other officials while on a family vacation in Israel in August. UK ministers are required to notify the Foreign Office when conducting official business overseas, but Patel admitted that she failed to do so.

On Friday Patel said that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was aware of the meetings, but on Monday she issued a full apology.

“In hindsight, I can see how my enthusiasm to engage in this way could be misread, and how meetings were set up and reported in a way which did not accord with the usual procedures,” she said. “I am sorry for this and I apologize for it.”

Opposition MPs called for her to resign if she breached the ministerial code of conduct, but a spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Theresa May said that May had accepted Patel’s apology and considered the matter closed.

So let’s put this in some proper perspective:

The IDF’s field hospital on the Golan Heights treats injured victims of the Syrian civil war in an amazing display of humanitarianism as shown in this recent AFP feature.

The British politician responsible for distributing the UK’s considerable foreign aid budget, whether correctly following protocol or not, went looking for an effective way of channeling some of that aid to injured Syrians.

That channel happened to be run by the military of a country that has strong bilateral ties with the UK.

This is certainly not the same as The Guardian’s headline implies.

The Guardian’s story concludes:

Just half an hour before Number 10 confirmed that Patel had considered giving money to the Israeli army, officials from her department declined to confirm or deny whether she had asked her officials to see if Britain could support humanitarian operations in the occupied Golan Heights area.

Instead, the department answered a question that had not been asked and released a statement which said: “Dfid [the Dept. for International Development] doesn’t provide any financial support for the Israeli army and the secretary of state agrees with our existing approach.”

So where’s the story?

The real story behind The Guardian’s latest coverage is an underhand effort to insinuate more wrongdoing on the part of Priti Patel by falsely implying Israeli military linkages.

What should the headline really say?

Despite growing tension between the United States, Israel and Qatar, a small group of Jewish leaders is currently visiting the Gulf state in what appears to be an attempt to open a dialogue aimed at advancing a possible prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The senior rabbinic figure on the delegation is Menachem Genack, an Orthodox rabbi and the head of the Orthodox Union’s (OU) Kashrut Division. The trip was organized by Nick Muzin, a prominent Jewish Republican operative who is on retainer by the Persian Gulf nation to establish ties with the American Jewish community. The group is scheduled to meet with the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Allen Fagin, the OU’s Executive Vice President, said that Genack’s visit was private and was not connected to his work with the Jewish organization.

“Rabbi Genack is traveling in his personal capacity as a private individual and this trip is not under the auspices of the OU,” Fagin told the Post.

Genack made news during the last election when he came out against Donald Trump and openly supported Hillary Clinton for president.

The Post has also learned that the delegation’s trip to Qatar this week comes on the heels of a visit Prince Mohammed, the Emir’s brother, made to New York last month during which he also tried to meet with influential Jews.

A major Jewish donor to Israel is believed to be among the shareholders in an anonymous company that last year purchased several acres of former Greek Patriarchate land in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Givat Oranim and Old Katamon.

The well-known hedge fund manager and property developer Michael Steinhardt is said to be one of the investors in Oranim Limited, registered last year by an Isle of Man company, Trident Nominees.

Another shareholder is reportedly David Sofer, an Israeli businessman and Middle Eastern art collector living in London.

Steinhardt and Sofer are also two of the three directors of Abu Tor Properties Limited, which bought a long-term lease — as opposed to land — from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate for a roughly one-hectare (2.5-acre) hilltop site in Abu Tor, just south of the Old City, on which they plan to build 61 luxury apartments.

That site is believed by Christians to be the original Hill of Evil Counsel, where, according to the New Testament, the Jewish High Priest Caiaphas and his advisers decided to betray Jesus to the Romans.

Oranim Ltd is one of several anonymous companies that has been buying land from the country’s cash-strapped Greek Orthodox Church over the last five or so years. Those companies are registered in overseas tax havens, and the names of their investors have been kept firmly under wraps.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday pledged 200 million shekels ($57 million) to build safe bypass roads for the residents of Judea and Samaria. He said he planned to budget another NIS 600 million ($170 million) for further infrastructural improvements in the area.

Residents of Judea and Samaria have been demanding the paving of new bypass roads and increased security infrastructure for some time, protesting outside the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem against what they called a cavalier approach to their safety.

Facing bereaved families of those killed in Palestinian terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria at a Likud faction meeting, Netanyahu assured them the government was committed to improving the roads, as well as the lighting and cellular coverage there to help prevent such attacks.

"We have a clear commitment to solve or help solve the problem of the bypass roads in Judea and Samaria. I just came from a meeting with the finance minister and we decided together to immediately allocate 200 million shekels to paving roads. We're not just talking, we're doing. Our actions are consistent, systematic and determined."

But the move met with scathing criticism from the bereaved families.

Interrupting the prime minister, some said they have "had enough of promises." They said they would go on a hunger strike until the funds are officially appropriated.

The military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an organization that orchestrated terrorist attacks that killed scores of Israelis over the years and has been classified by both the United States and the European Union as a terrorist entity, released on Tuesday a threatening video against the Jewish state and in particular its army.

The video depicts IDF vehicles moving along the security barrier between Israel and the Gaza Strip, and as one vehicle emerges a text appears in Arabic and in Hebrew on the screen saying: "In the line of fire."

The video also shows Palestinian snipers aiming their weapons at Israeli combat engineering units that operate in the area in order to ensure the safety of other military units as well as uncover terror tunnels being dug into Israeli territory with the intent of harming the country's population.

"We can reach the crimes and the aggression of Israel against the Palestinian people," the video says. "The way of resistance is armed resistance, as long as the occupation sits on the land of Palestine."

A trustee at one of London's best-known mosques is a senior member of 'terrorist organisation' Hamas's political wing, it was reported this morning.

Mohammed Sawalha holds the role of trustee at Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, which was formerly linked to extremism but which insists it has since undergone an 'complete overhaul'.

It emerged today that Mr Sawalha represented the militant Palestinian organisation Hamas at recent talks in Moscow.

Sawalha, who lives in London, was appointed a trustee of the mosque in 2010 and is legally responsible for overseeing the mosque's management, The Times reported today.

He was one of five senior figures from the Islamist organisation who were sent to Moscow in September, where they met Russia's deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov and other Kremlin officials.

One of the group told Middle East news website Al-Monitor that the meeting between Hamas and top Russian officials was 'an important milestone'

Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, on Monday launched a tirade on Twitter, in which he accused U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, of being responsible for the latest political crisis in Lebanon.

“Visits to the belligerent #KSA have proved hazardous to regional health. Trump visit led to Bahrain repression followed by Qatar debacle. Visits by Kushner & Lebanese PM led to Hariri's bizarre resignation while abroad. Of course, Iran is accused of interference,” tweeted Zarif.

“#KSA bombs #Yemen to smithereens, killing 1000’s of innocents including babies, spreads cholera and famine, but of course blames Iran. KSA is engaged in wars of aggression, regional bullying, destabilizing behavior & risky provocations. It blames Iran for the consequences,” he added.

Saudi Arabia's crown prince said Iran's supply of rockets to militias in Yemen is an act of "direct military aggression" that could be an act of war, state media reported on Tuesday, remarks reflecting sharply heightened strains between Riyadh and Tehran.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman's comments were published after Saudi air defense forces intercepted a ballistic missile they said was fired towards Riyadh on Saturday by the Iran-allied Houthi militia which controls large parts of neighboring Yemen.

Saudi-led forces, which back the internationally-recognized government, have been targeting the Houthis in a war which has killed more than 10,000 people and triggered a humanitarian disaster in one of the region's poorest countries.

The supply of rockets to the Iran-allied rebel Houthi movement could "constitute an act of war against the Kingdom," state news agency SPA on Tuesday quoted Prince as saying in a call with British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson.

Iran has denied it was behind the missile launch, rejecting the Saudi and US statements condemning Tehran as "destructive and provocative" and "slanders".

In reaction to the missile, the Saudi-led military coalition said on Monday it would close all air, land and sea ports to the Arabian Peninsula country.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Monday accused Hezbollah, with Iranian support, of launching a missile on Saturday that targeted its capital of Riyadh, declaring the move as a potential “act of war.”

In an interview with CNN, Jubeir said that “the missile launched from Yemen to Riyadh is an Iranian missile launched by Hezbollah, an area occupied by the Houthi rebels.”

“It could be considered as an act of war,” he added.

Afterwards, Jubeir tweeted that Iran is destabilizing the Middle East and vowed to protect his country’s national security.

“Iranian interventions in the region are detrimental to the security of neighboring countries and affect international peace and security. We will not allow any infringement on our national security,” he wrote, adding, “The kingdom reserves the right to respond in a timely manner to the hostile actions of the Iranian regime.”

In his August 28, 2017 column in the Egyptian Al-Watan daily, Mahmoud Khalil praised the Egyptian 30-part television drama series Horseman Without a Horse, which depicts the alleged implementation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the series was originally broadcast by Egyptian government TV and the privately-owned Dream TV channel during Ramadan (November-December) 2002. Khalil stresses how faithfully the series presents the truth, and calls for more reruns of it to be aired "in order to give the new generations an opportunity to know it and to the old generations a chance to refresh their memory [of it]."

According to series creator and star Muhammad Subhi, the Mubarak regime in Egypt complied with external pressure to remove some scenes from it, but the uncut original version was broadcast in 2012 after the Muslim Brotherhood took power in the country with the election of Mohammad Morsi as president. In September 2013, several months after President Abd Al-Fatah Al-Sisi was elected, the series was again aired, on Dream TV, to mark the 40th anniversary of the October 1973 war.

As early as October 2001, before the series even aired, it was much discussed in Egypt and across the entire Arab world. It was widely criticized in the West as well, including by the U.S. administration, Congress, and the American press.

2014 meeting

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas traveled to Saudi Arabia unexpectedly on Monday to meet with King Salman  and Crown Prince Muhammed Bin Salman, with the Gulf kingdom at the height of a major crackdown on members of the royal family.

Abbas had been in Egypt, where he was scheduled to meet with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, when he was summoned to Riyadh to meet with the Saudi rulers, according to the official PA news site Wafa.

Some social media users suggested that Abbas had been summoned to Saudi Arabia to hand in his resignation letter, in the same manner as Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who resigned from Riyadh on Saturday.

Others tried to guess which luxury hotel Abbas would be placed under house arrest in.

The tweets were in reference to the wave of arrests of tens of Saudi princes and businessmen and their detention at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, as well as Saad's resignation.

In an historic agreement signed today (7 November) between Russia and Israel, one of the most important private collections of Hebrew manuscripts and books in the world is being digitised and shared with the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.
The Gunzburg Collection, consisting of more than 14,000 books and 2,000 manuscripts, has been housed at the Russian State Library in Moscow since around 1920, but Israel has long contested Russia’s ownership.
“Even before the State of Israel, there were many attempts to persuade the Soviets to bring [the collection] to Ottoman Palestine. Albert Einstein spent a lot of time trying to persuade them,” says Aviad Stollman, the head of collections at the National Library of Israel.
The current deal, which will allow the public to access online biblical texts, prayer books, mystical works of Kabbalah and books of Jewish and Aristotelian philoso­phy, is the result of negotiations between the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Russian president Vladimir Putin. The project is supported by the Moscow-based Peri Foundation and the British investment banker Jacob Rothschild.
“Putin and Netanyahu have been speaking about this issue in the general bilateral talks over the past few years,” Stollman says. “Around five years ago, when Netanyahu went to Russia, he wrote to us saying that he had raised the issue and asked the Russians to digitise the collection as the first step.”
The collection was amassed by three generations of the Gunzburg fam­ily in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. Begun by Joseph Gunzburg (1812-1878), the family acquired manuscripts from various sources, including the estates of deceased scholars such as Seligmann Baer, Eliakim Carmoly and Nathan Coronel.
“Baron David Gunzburg [the grandson of Joseph Gunzburg] died in 1910 and at the time the Zionist movement expressed an interest in buying the collection,” Stollman says. “The library only had around 30,000 books then, but that was still significant. The Zionist movement was able to buy it between the two revolutions of 1917, but they were unable to transfer it to Ottoman Palestine because of the First World War. By the time they got their acts together the Soviets got hold of the collection, moving it from St Petersburg to Moscow.”
The addition of the digitised Gunzburg Collection marks a significant milestone in the renewal process of the National Library of Israel, which is moving in 2021 to a new Herzog & de Meuron-designed building located steps from the Knesset in the heart of Jerusalem.
Stollman says the question over ownership of the Gunzburg Collection still lingers, but that today’s deal is an important first step. “I hope eventually [the collection] will come to the National Library of Israel, but in the meanwhile the most important thing is to digitise it and make it accessible.”

What is significant is that at the dinner honoring Balfour, attended among others by Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn did was absent.

Corbyn himself is not regarded as anti-Semitic but he is the head of the Labour party that contains a significant section that can be described in this way. Allegations of these members are rife: the modern state of Israel was created by the Rothschilds not by God; Jews control Wall Street; Hollywood; the media; TV networks; law courts; international spying; sex trafficking; and the statement that every Jew who died in the Holocaust was a blessing.

It is disappointing that training sessions over the last 14 months about anti-Semitism for 1,200 Labour Party members have had little effect. Jewish Labour members have been held responsible for a Jewish conspiracy, and control of media.

This also brings up the matter of social media itself. The latest example is a Tweet that said, with uncomplimentary remarks, that Stamford Hill in northeast London was riddled with Jews. It is indeed the case that 20,000 Haredi jews, the largest orthodox community in the UK, live there. Twitter refused to remove the post.

The twin problems seem out of control. Twitter must be held accountable for what appears on its site. And the British Labour Party must root out anti-Semitism once and for all.

Labour is a party which claims the mantle of progress. It is a sad, but telling, state of affairs that a British Lord had a more enlightened attitude to the Jewish people a century ago than many in the Labour Party do today.

Once again, the fact that the armed forces of five Arab countries invaded Israel the day after independence was declared was airbrushed from the BBC’s account, as was the fact that a considerable number of the Palestinian Arabs who left their homes around that time did so at the advice of Arab leaders.

“The British Mandate terminated on 14 May 1948 and the Jewish leadership in Palestine declared an independent Israeli state. In the Arab-Israeli war that followed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs fled or were forced from their homes.”

The above-mentioned insert of analysis from Jonathan Marcus encouraged readers to believe that there are two “competing narratives” concerning the Balfour Declaration (while of course ‘impartially’ refraining from discussing their validity) but avoided the topic of the Palestinian Authority’s long-standing politicisation of that document.

“Much of the current focus on the Balfour Declaration is due to the fact that it supports the competing narratives of the Israeli government and the Palestinian leadership.

For the Israelis it highlights the legitimacy of the Jewish national enterprise, while for Palestinians, it underscores the role of the major powers in helping to create Israel, while – in their view – the legitimate Palestinian aspirations to statehood were ignored or side-lined.

Thus both sides have a very different interpretation of the declaration’s significance – one that serves today’s arguments about one of the region’s longest unresolved struggles.”

As we see from this report and others, BBC coverage of the Balfour Declaration centenary has conformed to a standard formula focusing on unquestioning amplification of PA/PLO messaging while completely erasing the part of the document relating to “the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country” and the topic of Jewish refugees from Arab lands.

Zionism, the movement for the establishment of a Jewish homeland, got new momentum during World War 1. Zionists, like Chaim Weizmann rallied for support in their respective home countries, others wanted to actively advance the zionist idea by taking part in the war and fought with the Jewish Legions. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was another step towards fulfilling the idea of a home for the Jewish people. (h/t MtTB)

On the Western Front this week, the Canadians under Sir Arthur Currie attempt to advance once more, whilst Haig remains optimistic about an imminent breakthrough. Following Caporetto, the Italian retreat continues, whilst the British Army enjoys success on the Palestine Front, with a little help from mounted ANZAC troops. With Lenin’s return, the revolution looms over the Russian capital, whilst the Balfour Declaration is issued in Britain. (h/t MtTB)

The Facebook page of Fatah – you know, the party to which our “peace partner” Mahmoud Abbas belongs – has marked the 100th year since the Balfour Declaration with this quaint little illustration.

The antisemitic caricature is a nice touch, don’t you think?

But seriously, if they truly saw this as purely a territorial dispute, why the disparaging of Jews?

Dear Mr. Corbyn:

I am in receipt of your communiqué from Wednesday last, in which you made the generous proposal to form a partnership with you in shepherding the UK Labour Party toward victory in future elections.

First of all, thank you for considering me and the movement I lead for such an honorable position. Hamas in general, and I personally, welcome every sign that our cause is not universally reviled in Europe. Our position both at home in Palestine and in the capitals of the Middle East, remains sensitive. With reluctance, then, I am forced to decline your offer, as Hamas needs me at this crucial time to dedicate myself to cultivating and maintaining allies in Tehran, Doha, Sana, Damascus, Beirut, and Ankara.

I look forward to a time when our position has stabilized and improved to the point that we can stand together before throngs of progressive supporters in London and around the UK to call for the destruction of Israel. It warms my heart, and the hearts of all who see the glory and freedom of an Islamic Palestine as values, to see we have such an ally in the fight against Zionist imperialism. It remains my fervent prayer that sooner, rather than later, we can join hands in a victory rally to celebrate both Labour’s assumption of leadership and our seizure of all the land between the River and the Sea that it may be cleansed of Jews.

An Oxford University professor and government adviser on tackling extremism is facing new allegations ​including sexual misconduct with minors.

Prof Tariq Ramadan was accused of rape last month by a French feminist author. He has denied the allegation and said he will sue for libel.

He is now facing new accusations from four Swiss women who say he made sexual advances to them when they were studying under him as teenagers in Geneva.

One of the women told Tribune de Geneve newspaper Prof Ramadan made unsuccessful sexual advances to her when she was 14 years old.

Another alleged he had sexual relations with her in the back of his car when she was 15 years old.

The other two women said they were 18 when they had sexual relations with him, but accused him of abusing his position of power as their teacher.

Prof Ramadan was accused of rape by the French author Henda Ayari last month.

Since then two more women have accused him of rape. He has denied the accusations and filed a case for libel in the French courts.

In the United States, people who have benefited from Ramadan's star power have had little to say.

Of course that's somewhat to be expected. Ramadan is vehemently anti-Israel, so it comes as no surprise that his fans and followers would be, too. Besides, the charges against him describe such heinous behavior – dragging a woman by her hair through a hotel room, repeated beatings and sexual assaults, sexual abuse of a disabled woman and more – that only the Zionists, the Jews, could have come up with them.

Which is why one fan posted on Ramadan's Facebook page (translated from Arabic) "One of the ways of the Zionists is to use women as a sexual commodity to pressure their enemies and threaten to expose them to become their servants." Another added, "The Muslim asses are waking up and can see clearly why these accusations are launched against Muslims and especially one who is a proponent of the Palestinian cause." And yet another wrote from Canada: "[the episode stands in the center] of the whole Emirati war on Qatar, and the war of the Zionist and secular lobby in France."

Even after the revelations of another rape came to light, Ramadan's minions remained unmoved. While one admitted that "I don't believe and I won't believe what they invent about you even if it happens in front of my eyes, I will lie and believe you," another posted: "The Zionist lobby realized that the first complaint was not enough to smear Mr. Ramadan's reputation and integrity, so they fomented another story with a more violent accusation in order to shock the public.... We know Mr. Ramadan and we know as well the Zionist lobby and its Zionist dogs (media and politics) who struggle since long ago to smear Tariq Ramadan's reputation and academic work... in vain. Mr. Ramadan, we will NEVER let you down, no matter how loud the Zionist dogs' barking is."

Others have pointed to the "immodesty" of his accusers: what were they doing going to his hotel room? (He invited them when they requested spiritual guidance.) And why did they not wear hijabs? After all, as Ramadan has taught, women should always remain covered, as protection against the unbridled lust and weakness of men. On Twitter, one follower posted: "France is the capital of vice and prostitution where hookers are cheaper than a cup of coffee. Its [sic] probably lies to sell her book." And in a diatribe defending Ramadan on Facebook, Mohamad H. Elmasry, an Egyptian-American activist and political analyst, criticized Ayari's opposition to the hijab, of which she has written, "It is not for women to hide because of sexual and perverted frustration that is unable to control themselves [sic] by the beauty of a woman!"

Laurent ‘Riss’ Sourisseau, Charlie Hebdo‘s editor, said the threats and hate mail had “never really stopped” after the 2015 jihadist attack in which 12 people were gunned down at its offices.

“Sometimes there are peaks when we receive explicit death threats on social media – this has been the case once again,” he told Europe 1 radio.

However, he suggested the climate had worsened. “Calls to murder have become commonplace,” he said.

“It’s always difficult to know if these are serious threats or not, but as a principle, we take them seriously and press charges.”

Jean Plantureux, one of France’s most famous satirical cartoonists, added: “It’s great this drawing. I don’t see what people have against it. He’s got a big d*ck and says I’m the sixth pillar of Islam. They’re just having a bit of fun.”

Princeton University's Hillel House was forced to cancel a planned speech from Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, after a progressive Jewish group on campus complained Hotovely was "pro-Israel," and accused the government official of "racism."

The event was moved to a Chabad, located on campus, but that only barely satiated the angry progressives who campaigned forcefully ahead of Hotovely's appearance, accusing the foreign minister of all manner of sins, stemming from the bare fact that Hotovely is a member of the Israeli government.

Princeton's Center for Jewish Life apologized for inviting Hotovely to speak on campus without "properly vetting" her credentials:
The Center for Jewish Life at Princeton decided to postpone the program with Member of Knesset Tzipi Hotovely until we can properly vet the program through our Israel Advisory Committee. We are fortunate that our colleagues at Chabad agreed to host the program today as originally scheduled and we are encouraging our students who are interested to attend. We regret the last-minute change and apologize to Ms. Hotovely for the inconvenience. We look forward to a continued robust and healthy debate around Israel in our community.

The "Alliance of Jewish Progressives" was reportedly responsible for Hotovely's last-minute move. In an open letter, published in the Daily Princetonian, the leftist Jewish organization, tore into the Center for Jewish Life for daring to bring Hotovely to campus, knowing that she supports the right of Israel to exist, and could have plied students with "pro-Israel literature."

Chapter 458 in the shameless hypocrisy of Jewish Voice for Peace.

NYU 's Jewish Voice for Peace branch is recruiting using a poster with the tagline "Wherever we live that's our homeland."

Its meant, of course to deny the Jewish people's deep cultural and spiritual ties with Israel, our ancient homeland.

Would Jewish Voice for Peace use the tagline "Wherever we live that's our homeland" for the Palestinians? JVP believes in the mythical "right of return", and certainly does not consider the generations of Palestinians living in Syria, in Jordan and in Lebanon at "home."

Why does JVP have a different set of standards for the Jewish people than it has for the Palestinians?

Thats the real Palestine exception.

Here at Harry’s Place we’d like to wish blogger and all around star David Collier a hearty Mazel Tov on being the subject of a smear article by the Asa “through the looking glass” Winstanley for whom no event is too innocuous to be a part of a Zionist conspiracy.

Winstanley seems to have realised what the rest of us have known for a long time, that Collier’s commendable work unmasking the sheer volume of antisemitism prevalent in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and also the Labour Party serves as a threat to antisemites everywhere. Naturally therefore Winstanly rushed in to attack him.

But he has nothing to attack him with so all we’re left to read is an article showing off just how impressive Collier’s work is.

Of course Collier saw this coming a mile away and predicted precisely what Winstanley’s article would look like.

Keep it up David!

If liberals today are really vexed by a lack of civility in public discourse, their failure to condemn the excesses of their compatriots is curious and troubling. President Trump has become a foil for them to deflect responsibility for their own incitement of hatred and social discord, which they euphemistically refer to as “the resistance.” They accuse Trump of fostering bigotry against Jews (despite his history of supporting Israel and Jewish causes), while simultaneously facilitating progressive anti-Semitism by defending it as political speech or artfully blaming Israeli policies for engendering backlash. In so doing, they ignore the role their identity politics has played in creating divisiveness over the last eight years – perhaps more than any policy of Trump in his first nine months in office.

Liberals and Democrats have every right to disagree with Trump, but they should hold themselves to objective standards of honesty. If they are genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism now, they should explain their silence about it during the Obama years – when synagogues were defaced, cemeteries were desecrated, Jewish college students were assaulted, and the administration was complicit, by act or omission, in some of the most vile, anti-Israel resolutions ever passed in the UN. Likewise, they should condemn BDS and acknowledge that a majority of their party has indeed abandoned Israel. And if they truly want to purge their souls, they should acknowledge their failure to chastise fellow progressives for promoting global Jewish conspiracy myths and seeking alignment with Islamists dedicated to destroying Israel and exterminating the Jews.

Most importantly, they need to be morally consistent. President Trump may be prone to gaffes and provocative statements, and he may not have the same oratory skills as some of his predecessors, but when he condemned anti-Semitism in the wake of cemetery desecrations a few months ago, he did not falsely equate it with Islamophobia as Obama’s minions were wont to do. Nor has he ever treated Israel as shabbily as Obama did so blatantly for eight years.

If mainstream liberals are honestly concerned about rising bigotry and threats to free speech, they shouldn’t reflexively lay all blame on Trump and the Alt-right. They should instead acknowledge the left’s complicity – from its long history of anti-Semitism to its current assault on dialogue and dissent – and their own role in enabling both. And they should pledge to do better.

The link embedded in the word “banned”, in the Guardian editorial, takes you to a BBC article from January 2009, which notes a decision by the Israel Central Elections Committee to bar two Israeli Arab parties (United Arab List-Ta’al and Balad) from running in the following month’s election. The ban was prompted by allegations that the parties supported terrorism.

However, as BBC (and other news outlets) reported two weeks later, the Israeli Supreme Court promptly overturned the ban before it could go into effect.

We followed up our tweet with an email to editors.

A couple of days later, we learned that our complaint was upheld.

A Jewish man has said that a police officer told him to “get lost” after he witnessed and reported an antisemitic incident targeting young Jewish girls.

The man witnessed an unprovoked incident on Sunday when children targeted young Jewish girls by shouting abuse at them, leaving them shocked and fearing for their safety. The witness believed this to be motivated by antisemitism and called the police to report the incident which occured in Warwick Grove in Hackney. As a police car arrived, the witness approached it and the window of the police car opened. A police officer allegedly asked the witness “Did you just call police for 10-year-old kids?” to which the witness replied “Yes.” The witness then says that the police officer aggressively replied “Get lost” and sped away from the scene.

There have been numerous incidents in which Jewish children have been attacked by other children, including one case in which a 16-year-old girl was left bloodied for hours after police failed to attend.

Stamford Hill Shomrim, a Jewish community neighbourhood watch patrol, is assisting the witness. They have made a formal complaint to the police and referred the case to Campaign Against Antisemitism for assistance.

Shadow Minister Chris Williamson has tweeted a blog article entitled “Revealed: The Labour Party activists behind the ‘antisemitism’ smears”, which he commended as “really interesting”. Despite its grand use of terms such as “raw data” and “the power of weak links”, the article does little more than to insinuate – on the flimsiest of evidence – that a small number of social media users constitute a “network of hate” and to accuse Councillor Warren Morgan – the leader of Brighton and Hove City Council whose brave stand against antisemitism we applauded in September – of lying, bringing the Labour Party into disrepute, and “regurgitating second-hand fabrications about alleged antisemitism”. It was written by internet millionaire and former Daily Mail journalist Greg Hadfield, whose membership of the Labour Party is currently suspended.

Although one might find it extraordinary that a member of the Shadow Cabinet should take to social media to promote a suspended party member’s attack on one of his own party’s elected representatives, it should be remembered that Mr Williamson has a track record when it comes to the dismissal of complaints of antisemitism as malicious smears (a track record that he shares with Scott Nelson, an expelled former Labour Party member whom he frequently retweets).

In the UK, it is accepted that an incident perceived as racist should be investigated as such. The idea that one particular ethnic group — and one particular ethnic group alone — cannot be trusted to recognise racism when directed against itself is incompatible with the Macpherson principle that underpins the British approach to racism. It would be regrettable indeed if the endorsement of Mr Hadfield’s article by such a senior politician as Mr Williamson were to have the effect of intimidating party members from coming forward with or responding to complaints about antisemitism. The Labour Party’s new rules on hate speech, adopted by near-unanimous vote after a highly controversial conference debate, cannot begin to have an impact on the Party’s undeniable antisemitism problem unless whistleblowers are able to speak out without fear of reprisals.

A French court on Tuesday ordered the return of a painting by impressionist master Camille Pissarro to the family of a Jewish art collector dispossessed during World War II.

The court ruled in favor of the relatives of Simon Bauer, a wealthy businessman whose assets were seized in 1943 by the anti-Semitic wartime French government which collaborated with the Nazis.

“La Cueillette des Pois” (Picking Peas) had been at the center of a dispute with its current owners, American couple Bruce and Robbi Toll, who said they bought it in good faith.

“My clients will be very disappointed not to be able to retrieve this painting, they were very attached to it. They will certainly appeal,” the couple’s lawyer Ron Soffer said.

“They do not consider that it is up to them for pay for the crimes of the Vichy regime.”

Bauer’s descendants spotted an opportunity to retrieve the painting earlier this year when they realized the Tolls, who bought it at Christie’s in New York in 1995 for $800,000 (690,000 euros), had lent it to the Marmottan museum in Paris.

A colossal “sea of plastic” was discovered last month in the Caribbean, with bunched-up bottles and bags stretching for miles.

It reminded one Israeli environmental entrepreneur of the polluted Haifa Bay and Kishon River — with all of its petrochemicals.

“All the plastics, they stay for hundreds of years inside the water. We are the only solution for the Caribbean that can process all the organic waste together, and you don’t have to separately sort it,” said Yuval Tamir.

As a former naval commando for twenty years, Tamir would dive regularly into the contaminated Kishon River for training. Shortly after being discharged, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Tamir doesn’t know whether prolonged exposure to debris caused his cancer, but he battles the disease by founding Infimer Technologies, which seeks to recycle plastic from your household waste.

Some 300 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide annually — from plastic forks and spoons to water bottles and ziplock bags — of which only nine percent is recycled, according to a recent paper in Science Magazine, with another 12% incinerated and 79% accumulating in landfills. Plastic is polluting the world — from commercial fishing and general health to the environment — and it costs around $40 billion annually, according to a conservative estimate from the United Nations Environment Programme.

Israel is sending aid to Madagascar as the Indian Ocean island nation copes with its worst “Black Death” plague outbreak in half a century.

At least 1,800 people in Madagascar have been infected with the disease and 127 have died.

According to the African Independent, the Israeli assistance shipment was organized by the Jewish state’s Foreign Ministry and the Magen David Adom emergency service.

“We expect all packages to be delivered to the International Red Cross in Madagascar in the next few days,” Ayelet Black — Israel’s deputy ambassador to South Africa — was quoted as telling the African News Agency. “The delivery of different medical equipment such as gloves to carry out medical procedures is being coordinated between Israel’s honorary consul in Madagascar, Benjamin Memmi, and Madagascar’s Bureau for Natural Disasters.”

“Israel has a long standing tradition of offering humanitarian assistance and coordinating relief to alleviate disease, hunger and poverty,” Black continued. “We have experience in helping countries going through natural and man-made disasters and will always provide assistance to help those in need.”

French Jewish author Olivier Guez won the Renaudot award, one of France's top literary prizes, for his book "The Disappearance of Josef Mengele".

The journalist who writes for various French and international publications spent years retracing the secret post-Holocaust life of the SS doctor, notorious as the "Angel of Death" at the Auschwitz concentration camp for his often lethal experiments on prisoners.

Mengele managed to escape to Argentina and even got a West German passport in his own name in the 1950s so he could return for a holiday in his hometown.

"I wanted to understand what is left of a person after they have done that kind of evil," Guez, 43, said after winning the prize.

"I wanted to know what Mengele's life was like afterwards, whether he had been punished or not. I think in Europe today (with the rise of the far-right) we need to understand the extraordinary mediocrity of evil," he added.

Natalie Portman, a celebrated actress, director and social activist, was named the winner of the 2018 Genesis Prize.

Portman’s award of the so-called “Jewish Nobel” was announced on Tuesday by the Genesis Prize Foundation.

She joins artist Anish Kapoor, violinist Itzhak Perlman, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and actor-director Michael Douglas as a recipient of the $1 million prize, which honors individuals who serve as an inspiration to the next generation of Jews through their outstanding professional achievement, commitment to Jewish values and to the Jewish people.

Portman’s prize money will go to programs that focus on advancing women’s equality. The funds will be used for grants to organizations involved in promoting women’s educational opportunities, economic advancement, health and safety, and full participation in policy formulation and political activity. A significant portion of the funds will go to programs advancing women’s equality in Israel, the foundation said in a statement.

Portman was born in Israel and, after moving to the United States as a child, retained a close connection to her Jewish and Israeli roots. She is a noted social activist in such areas as gender equality, combating poverty, microfinance, and animal rights.

To reduce the emissions fueling climate change and develop more efficient ways of generating energy, while focusing on the bottom line, governments and private institutions all over the world have been turning to renewable energy. And while solar and wind energy advance and become more widely accepted, scientists continue to explore the possibility of stabilizing nuclear fusion as a truly renewable energy source that far outperforms current options.

But what if there’s an even better source of energy that’s also potentially less volatile than nuclear fusion? This possibility is what researchers from Tel Aviv University and the University of Chicago proposed in a new study published in the journal Nature.

This new source of energy, according to researchers Marek Karliner and Jonathan Rosner, comes from the fusion of subatomic particles known as quarks. These particles are usually produced as a result of colliding atoms that move at high speeds within the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where these component parts split from their parent atoms. It doesn’t stop there, however, as these disassociated quarks also tend to collide with one another and fuse into particles called baryons.

It is this fusion of quarks that Karliner and Rosner focused on, as they found that this fusion is capable of producing energy even greater than what’s produced in hydrogen fusion. In particular, they studied how fused quarks configure into what’s called a doubly-charmed baryon. Fusing quarks require 130 MeV to become doubly-charmed baryons, which, in turn, releases energy that’s 12 MeV more energy. Turning their calculations to heavier bottom quarks, which need 230 MeV to fuse, they found that a resulting baryon could produce approximately 138 MeV of net energy—about eight times more than what hydrogen fusion releases. (h/t Zvi)

One of Germany's biggest automotive corporations, Continental, has announced plans to acquire Israeli startup Argus Cyber Security for some $450 million.

Argus, founded in 2013 by three veterans of the IDF's elite 8200 Intelligence Unit, develops systems that defend cars' computer systems against cyberattacks, a field considered vital in the dawning age of self-driving cars. The company has offices in Tel Aviv, Detroit, Silicon Valley, Stuttgart and Tokyo, and holds 38 granted and pending patents.

"Argus was founded with a vision to protect all vehicles on the road from cyber threats. We have developed the most comprehensive automotive cyber security offering in the industry," said Argus co-founder and CEO Ofer Ben-Noon.

Argus will become part of Continental's stand-alone software subsidiary Elektrobit.

Ben-Noon said that with "millions of connected cars on the road," Argus cannot think of a better time to become part of Elektrobit.

Continental is the fouth-largest tire manufacturer in the world and the second-largest manufacturer of spare automotive parts in Europe. It employs more than 140,000 workers in 46 countries worldwide.

John Hagee Ministries (JHM) announced a donation of more than $2.1 million to Israeli charities during the recently held 36th annual Night to Honor Israel at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio.

Started in 1981, Pastor John Hagee’s Night to Honor Israel is one of the country’s longest-running Christian Zionist events, and has amassed donations of more than $100 million to Israeli and Jewish charities. At this year’s event, Hagee focused a significant portion of his comments on the Iran nuclear deal.

“Every American…should be applauding the efforts of President Trump to change the Iran nuclear agreement or cancel the agreement,” said Hagee, who is also the founder of Christians United for Israel, which describes itself as “the largest pro-Israel grassroots organization in the United States.”

Hagee’s son, Pastor Matt Hagee, who serves as Cornerstone Church’s executive pastor, said that Christians “have a biblical mandate to stand with Israel.”

“As any parent will tell you, the best way to instill values in the next generation is to lead by example, and we hope that when young men and women see JHM’s efforts to support Israel and its people, they will take note and do likewise when they are able,” Matt Hagee said.

Prime Minister Netanyahu surprised Ioana Isac from Romania, who became the 3 millionth tourist to visit the Jewish state this year, by serving as her tour guide in Jerusalem.

Isac and her partner, Mihai Georgescu, set a new record for tourists who visited Israel in a single year by becoming tourist numbers 3,000,000 and 3,000,001 when they stepped off their plane at Ben Gurion Airport Tuesday.

Tourism Minister Yariv Levin welcomed the couple in the arrival hall in Ben Gurion Airport, and continued to accompany them until they reached the Tower of David museum in the Old City of Jerusalem, where they were surprised to find that their tour guide was none other than Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

During their vacation, they will enjoy an upgrade to a pampering hotel suite, a ride in a limousine, a helicopter tour in the skies of Israel, a unique Dead Sea experience, a sunset tour of the Tel Aviv promenade and a private dinner prepared by Israeli chef Nir Tzuk in his home.

In the period January – October 2017, 63,000 tourists arrived from Romania, compared to 40,100 in the same period in 2016 (increase of 57%) and 37,400 in 2015. The Romanian tourist stays an average of 7 nights in Israel. At the height of the season, there are 64 weekly flights between Romania and Israel, with most of them on the Bucharest- Tel Aviv route. There are also 15 weekly flights from Timisoara, Oradea, Craiova, Iasi and Cluj to Ben Gurion airport, with a new route from Bucharest to Ovdah airport in southern Israel beginning this month. The Tourism Ministry offers incentives to airlines opening new routes into Ben Gurion airport from destinations that have no direct flights to Israel. In addition, the ministry encourages tourism into Eilat by offering airlines a grant of 45 Euros per passenger landing in Ovdah during the winter.

Ghassan Weshah, head of the history and archaeology department at the Islamic University of Gaza, says the role of institutions supporting refugees should not be reduced to simply providing relief. UNRWA, he notes as an example, plays an important relief role, especially as the general economic situation has deteriorated in Palestine. But its function is more than economic.

“The responsibility of UNRWA is to help refugees, but it must also continue this work to remind the world of the refugee issue and the right of return. If UNRWA goes, the refugee issue is over.”

Such social stratification is not unusual in Palestinian society. It is mirrored across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip where refugees wound up with their UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) ration cards, poverty and homelessness.
As a sense of shared Palestinian kinship competed with, and often came out second to, traditional ties to village and town, refugees came to be seen as outsiders to be treated with “a mixture of pity and contempt,” according to George Bisharat, a lawyer and commentator on Palestinian affairs.
Every city in occupied territory has refugee camps attached to it, and these often organize themselves in parallel to the city.
Refugees have their own schools – run by UNRWA, which was originally set up as a stopgap measure until refugees could return – often their own soccer teams and it is common for people to speak of themselves as being from either the camp or the city.

Former US secretary of state John Kerry blamed the Israeli government’s resistance to the establishment of a Palestinian state for harming the prospects of a peace deal, while warning Israel could face a future violent Palestinian uprising if there was no progress in peace talks.

In recordings published Tuesday by Channel 10, America’s former top diplomat can be heard praising the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to nonviolence following a wave of terror attacks beginning in the fall of 2015, which he said has been ignored by Israelis due to right-wing configuration of the current government.

“The Palestinians have done an extraordinary job of remaining committed to nonviolence. And in fact when the [knife] intifada took place they delivered non-violence in the West Bank,” Kerry is heard saying in the recording.

“This is overlooked by the general [Israeli] population because it is not a topic of discussion. Why? Because the majority of the cabinet currently in the current Israeli government has publicly declared they are not ever for a Palestinian state,” he adds.

Channel 10 said the recording was made at a conference in Dubai in the past year attended by Middle East leaders and Israel’s Joint (Arab) List chief Ayman Odeh. The television channel also said opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) addressed the conference by video.

It was not clear if Kerry was aware he was being recorded or if the segments released were his full remarks.

Recordings just released by Israel’s Channel 10 reveal that Former US Secretary of State John Kerry really had no John “F*cking” Kerry of a clue about anything.
It is actually scary just out of touch with reality he was, and presumably still is.
For instance:

He praised the PA for their supposed commitment to nonviolence, despite the fact they continue to incite violence and pay the families of terrorists to this day

Compared palestinian ‘resistance’ to civil rights movements

• Kerry warned in the recording that frustrations among Palestinians could boil over into violence and that the current status quo cannot last.
• “If you see 40,000 kids marching up to the wall everyday with signs saying ‘give us are rights,’ I mean, I don’t think Palestine is going to be immune forever to the civil rights movements that have swept other nations in the world,” he says.

Criticized Israel’s leadership (not the palestinian leadership) as being ones not wanting peace

• Despite this, Kerry said Israel is ignoring the threat posed by the diplomatic stalemate. “That is not leadership,” says Kerry.
  
• “If you don’t have leaders who don’t want to make peace, if the equation doesn’t change, I’ll be amazed if within the next 10 years if we don’t see some young [Palestinian] leader come along who says we have tried non-violence for the last 30 years and look, it hasn’t gotten us anything,” he says.

For many, it is assumed that Israel is a racist state that considers its Arab minority second-class citizens. I wonder, then, how they explain what happened last Friday?

For the third time in the last two years, Israel threatened military action to stop an attack by extremist Syrian rebels on the Syrian Druze village of Khader. It did so despite the fact that Syrian Druze have sided with the Assad regime in that war, meaning they’re aligned with Israel’s arch-enemies, Iran and Hezbollah; despite the fact that Khader itself has been the source of several anti-Israel terror attacks; and despite the fact that such intervention risks entangling Israel in Syria’s civil war, something it has hitherto tried hard to avoid–and all just because it was asked to do so by its own Druze minority, which was worried about its coreligionists across the border.

To most Israelis, it seems both obvious and unremarkable that Israel should accede to this request. But in fact, though Israel has always considered itself obligated as a Jewish state to try to protect Jews anywhere, it’s not at all obvious that it would consider itself equally obligated to try to protect Druze beyond its borders. Threatening cross-border military action on behalf of foreign nationals aligned with your worst enemies, simply because they’re the coreligionists of one of your own ethnic minorities, isn’t an obvious step for any country. And it’s especially not obvious for a country accused of considering said minorities to be second-class citizens.

Thus, the fact that Israel has repeatedly taken action to protect the Syrian Druze says a lot about the true state of anti-Arab “racism” in the country. But to understand exactly what it says, it’s first necessary to understand the difference between Israeli Druze and other Arab Israelis.

A recent study by The Jewish People Policy Institute shows that Diaspora Jewish leaders and active community members are deeply connected to Jerusalem. They are also concerned about Jerusalem.

They worry that Israel doesn’t take into account the desires of Jewish communities around the world to determine the status of Jerusalem or run its holy sites.

They are also concerned about what goes on in the bedrooms of Jerusalem residents. The ultra-Orthodox community is having too many children, according to people in New York, Palm Beach, Paris and other places.

The recent study, called “Jerusalem and the Jewish People,” presents many unsurprising findings, such as that Jerusalem is “crucially important” to Jews worldwide.

The study was derived from dozens of discussion groups in cities around the world, including the US, Canada and Brazil. According to the report, many felt the city was moving in the “wrong direction.” Many of those who took part are in Jewish community leadership roles.

According to a report, participants were asked if “the growth of the non-Jewish and ultra-Orthodox population is a positive development because it contributes to urban diversity.” Almost 50% agreed when it comes to the “non-Jewish” population, whereas only 29% agreed with regard to the ultra-Orthodox. In short, they were worried about “demographic” trends in the city.

We’ve heard this before. For decades the Diaspora has been fed propaganda about the bogeyman of “demographics” in Israel and Jerusalem. Ari Shavit wrote in Haaretz in 2013 that the “battle for Jerusalem is almost lost. Haredi [ultra-Orthodox] students currently account for 39 percent of all the capital’s school children.

Arab students account for 37 percent.” Jerusalem will have “no secular Jewish hope,” he claimed.

The Jewish Press told readers in 2016 about “Arabs in Jerusalem, the fastest growing population.”

Abbas has multiple reasons to be worried about the Hamas-Hezbollah alliance. Here is another one: a recent meeting in Beirut between Hamas leader Saleh Arouri and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was yet another sign of Hamas's effort to pave the way for Iran and Hezbollah to infiltrate the Gaza Strip and meddle in the internal affairs of the Palestinians.

Hamas has already stated repeatedly that it has absolutely no intention of laying down its weapons as promised for the "reconciliation" agreement with the Palestinian Authority. Hamas is prepared to cede to PA President Mahmoud Abbas limited civilian control of the Gaza Strip, but has been clear that it will never dismantle its security apparatus or military wing. Hamas wants to bring the Iranians and Hezbollah into the Gaza Strip to counterbalance pressure from Abbas and Egypt and other countries to disarm and hand control over to Abbas. If Abbas ever returns to the Gaza Strip, he will find himself sitting not only with Hamas, but also with Iran and Hezbollah, who consider him a traitor and puppet in the hands of Israel and the US.

Alarmed by the rapprochement between Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, Saudi Arabia earlier this week summoned Abbas for urgent talks in Riyadh. The Saudis have been following with concern the visits by Hamas leaders to Iran and Hezbollah, and are worried that Abbas may face the same fate as Hariri.

Abbas may well wish to steer clear of the Gaza Strip: Iran and Hezbollah are working with Hamas to establish a "joint front" against Israel. Hamas's decision to tilt towards Iran and Hezbollah discloses the truth: it is not headed towards moderation and pragmatism, but the very opposite. This does not bode well for the current Trump Administration's efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East.

Without stopping Iran and Hezbollah from spreading their influence and control to the Gaza Strip and Arab countries, the prospects of peace seem rather dim. In fact, the prospects of war seem pretty close, as Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad meet in the middle to discuss their plans for war against Israel. Failing to stop Iran and Hezbollah would mean that Abbas may soon find themselves hiding with Hariri in Saudi Arabia.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Knesset plenum on Tuesday, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which recognized the Jewish people’s right to a "national home" in the Land of Israel. "When the leaders of the Palestinian leadership define the Balfour Declaration as a 'crime', when they call on the British government to apologize for it, they are not going forward—they are going back, a hundred years back," Netanyahu said. "And that is the root of the conflict—the 100-year refusal to recognize Zionism, to recognize the Jewish national home in the Land of Israel, to recognize the State of Israel within any borders."

"The tragedy of the Balfour Declaration is that it took 30 years to implement it," said Prime Minister Netanyahu. "It is now absolutely clear: the key to the future of the Jewish people is the Jewish state, and our basic obligation is to stand firm against those who seek to harm us and ensure the existence and future of the State of Israel.

"After it was granted, the Balfour Declaration was supported not just by the League of Nations but also gained the sympathy of some in the Arab world. Prince Feisal (of Syria—ed) was at the head of the Arab camp that had rebelled against the Ottoman Empire—he recognized the right of the Jews to establish their national home in Palestine, and Faisal favored cooperation between Jews and Arabs on the basis of mutual understanding and brotherhood.

"The Arab nationalistic movement, however, strongly attacked the Balfour Declaration, providing grounds for incitement and violence, not least with the encouragement of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

"In 1943, he found a loyal partner—Heinrich Himmler, commander of the SS in Germany. Himmler sent the Mufti a congratulatory letter in which he wrote, "Warm Wishes for the continuation of your struggle until the great/final victory."

Hamas seeks the annihilation of Israel, digs terror tunnels, launches rockets at Israeli civilians & blows up buses. Reconciling with mass-murderers is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The Foreign Ministry has instructed Israeli ambassadors around the world to begin in earnest a diplomatic campaign against Iran and Hezbollah that includes backing Saudi Arabian claims that the two Shiite allies were behind a missile attack on Riyadh International Airport over the weekend.

Channel 10 reported Wednesday that the ministry sent a classified memo to Israel’s envoys around the world urging them to contact government officials and plead the case for reining in Iran and its Lebanese proxy.

The missive, reportedly sent Sunday, came the day after Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri shocked Lebanon and the region by announcing his resignation while on a visit to Saudi Arabia, saying he feared an assassination plot against him. He used the opportunity to lash out at the influence of Hezbollah and Iran on his country.

“The events in Lebanon, and the ballistic missile launched by [Yemen’s rebel] Houthis toward the Riyadh international airport, should cause [the world] to increase the pressure on Iran and Hezbollah on a range of issues, from ballistic missile production to its efforts at regional subversion,” the Foreign Ministry memo read.

The Houthis, a Shiite militia backed by Iran, took credit for the missile, which was intercepted near the Saudi capital’s airport.

Number 10 instructed Development Secretary Priti Patel not to include her meeting with the Israel foreign ministry official Yuval Rotem in New York on 18 September in her list of undisclosed meetings with Israelis which was published on Monday, the JC has learned.

Ms Patel listed 12 meetings in the statement, and the emergence of two more last night is thought to have made her sacking imminent.

But the JC understands, from two different sources, that Ms Patel did disclose the meeting with Mr Rotem but was told by Number 10 not to include it as it would embarrass the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

In addition, the JC can reveal that although Ms Patel’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not authorised in advance, the British government was made aware of it within hours.

On 22 August - the same day as Ms Patel spoke to Mr Netanyahu - Middle East minister Alistair Burt and David Quarrey, the British Ambassador to Israel, met Michael Oren, Deputy Minister at the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. According to the notes of the meeting, Mr Oren referred to Ms Patel having had a successful meeting with Mr Netanyahu earlier.

It is understood that this information was then conveyed to Number 10.

President Reuven Rivlin criticized Spain's lackluster support for Israel in international forums in a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy at Madrid's Moncloa Palace on Tuesday,

Citing Spain's decision to abstain from a vote on a U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization resolution denying the Jewish people's ties to Jerusalem, Rivlin said, "I wish to remind you that the king of Spain is also called the king of Jerusalem, and to come to UNESCO and deny the connection between the Jewish nation and Jerusalem is not just ignorance, it is an affront to intellectual integrity."

Rivlin also asked Rajoy to take legislative action against the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which he said is "tainted with anti-Semitic elements."

Earlier in the day, Rivlin delivered a speech to the Spanish parliament in which he addressed Catalonia's bid for independence.

"Spain is one country for us, and the problems it faces are internal. Our relations with the citizens of Spain are dear to us, and we pray that the current challenge will be solved through understanding," he said, according to the European Jewish Press.

Rivlin also spoke about Iran and its threats to destroy Israel, which he said, "cannot be tolerated."

The Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) has performed numerous live drops of the Rafael Spice 2,000-pound guided glide bomb this year, suggesting that the weapon is fully certified on its F-16 fleet. The Israeli company does not discuss customers, but reports indicate that Seoul signed a deal with Rafael in late 2015, with deliveries due in the second half of 2016.

The weapon was seen in a quick-response exercise mounted by the ROKAF’s 19th Fighter Squadron in February this year. The unit employed both the Spice 2000 and the Boeing GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) on the Peace Bridge Upgrade (PBU) version of its Lockheed Martin F-16s. The PBUs are a group of 40 F-16C/D Block 32s that underwent an upgrade to employ JDAM, AIM-120 AMRAAM, plus installation of data modems and secure communications. This brought them up to the license-built KF-16 standards. The first F-16PBU was combat-ready in mid-2016.

“We have been doing our best to master the new armed capability with the F-16 PBU and Spice 2000,” a ROKAF pilot told Korean media. The Spice family deploys pop-out wings after launch and employs GPS/INS for midcourse navigation. When approaching the target, Spice employs a scene-matching algorithm that Rafael claims to be unique and compares the electro-optical image received in real time via the weapon seeker with mission reference intelligence data stored in the aircraft’s weapon computer memory. The Spice 2000 gives the Korean F-16s standoff and precision capabilities of approximately 60 km on Mk 84 2,000-pound bombs.(h/t Elder of Lobby)

A U.N. agency is pursuing a building project in southeast Jerusalem despite understandings to the contrary between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, an advocacy group trying to stop the project said.

Regavim, a nongovernmental organization that describes its mission as seeking to "ensure responsible, legal, accountable and environmentally friendly use of Israel's national lands," recently filed for a Supreme Court injunction against the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization's Jerusalem office, claiming it has issued a tender for the demolition of a British Mandate-era building in Armon Hanatziv neighborhood in Jerusalem, seeking to build on the historical site.

As the tender was issued without first obtaining the necessary permits from the Jerusalem Municipality, the project must be stopped, Regavim's motion said.

The group further claimed that UNTSO was pursuing the project despite statements by Netanyahu, who said he and Guterres agreed that current and future construction by the U.N. at Armon Hanatziv would follow Israeli zoning policies.

As the motion involves a U.N. agency, the State Attorney's Office was asked to file a response with the court.

A survey released yesterday by the Israel Democracy Institute found that a majority of the country’s Arab citizens rejected its right to call itself as a Jewish state. According to the study, entitled “A Limited Partnership,” 67 percent of Israeli Arab respondents said that “the State of Israel had no right to be defined as the national home of the Jewish people,” while 58 percent of Jews said that “those who are unwilling to declare that Israel is the national home of the Jewish people should lose the right to vote.” Similarly, 69 percent of Arabs believe their Jewish neighbors do not see them as an integral part of Israeli society, and 63 percent of Jews believe that Israeli Arabs do not perceive of themselves as part of Israeli society.

The picture gets even grimmer as the survey unfolds. Asked about their beliefs regarding the other group, 50.5 percent of Arab respondents said they were convinced Jews were violent people, while 51 percent of Jews thought the same thing of Arabs.

But anyone looking for a silver lining has only to look into Israeli offices for a bit of unbridled hope. Among Jews and Arabs who work together, 89.5 percent of Jews and 95 percent of Arabs described relations between both groups as good or very good.

The National Road Safety Authority's new head of Arabic-language public relations, Israeli Arab Makbula Nassar, is an active member of anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian organizations, Israel Hayom has learned.

Nasser's associations appear to have eluded NRSA Director Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Rom and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz during her vetting process.

Nasser, from the village of Araba in the western Galilee, takes part in events marking "Nakba Day"– when Israeli Arabs mark the "disaster" of Israel's establishment – and the Israeli-Arab "March of Return."

On her personal Facebook page, Nassar has testified to her membership in an organization that works to bring so-called Palestinian refugees back to Israel.

Earlier this year, in a post responding to plans by the Haifa Municipality to develop the city's Wadi Salib neighborhood, she called the project "plans by the Zionist Haifa Municipality to complete the theft of Palestinian homes in the city. Wadi Salib is being destroyed to build commercial projects."

The organization Breaking the Silence (BtS) goes around the world demonizing the IDF and Israel.

A couple of members of Students Supporting Israel recently confronted BtS ‘activist’ Avner Gvaryahu before a speech he gave to Columbia University Hillel.

It really was not a fair fight. As you will see, Gvaryahu could not keep track of his lies and contradictions, when confronted with facts in a calm and reasoned way.

In the meantime, did I mention that BtS’ main donors are European countries?

Morocco has refused entry visas to Israel's national judo team ahead of this Saturday's World Championships Open in Marrakech.

The team's scheduled 5 a.m. departure flight on Wednesday was canceled. However, there was still hope that the visa issue could be resolved and the team would be able to fly to the competition on Wednesday evening.

The visa ban comes on the heels of similar problems that arose prior to the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam judo tournament in October. Host nation the United Arab Emirates banned the Israeli flag and anthem at the competition.

Israeli judoka Tal Flicker, who won a gold medal at the tournament, sang the Israeli anthem, "Hatikvah," on the podium, with the International Judo Federation's flag and anthem in the background.

The International Judo Federation sent a letter to the president of the UAE Judo Federation last week, chastising the organization for its discriminatory treatment of Israeli athletes and demanding that "all delegations, including the Israeli delegation, be treated absolutely equally in all aspects, without any exception."

According to multiple Israeli and international reports over the past two years, the PA security forces have foiled hundreds of attacks in the West Bank, which were supposed to target Israelis.

The police chief also reiterated Abbas’s position that the PA would not accept a scenario, in which it takes responsibility for Gaza and Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzeldin Kassam Brigades, holds onto its weapons.

In mid-October, Egypt brokered an agreement between Fatah and Hamas to advance reconciliation efforts and restore the PA’s governing authority in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has controlled Gaza since ousting the Fatah-dominated PA from the territory in 2007.

“No way,” Atallah said when asked if he would accept the Kassam Brigades maintaining control of their weapons. “It is impossible. How can I do security when there are all these rockets and guns and whatever? Is this possible? It doesn’t work.”

Over the past several weeks, many Hamas officials have dismissed the possibility of disarming Kassam Brigades.

The head of the Palestinian Authority police said Wednesday that Hamas must disarm in order for a landmark reconciliation deal signed last month with rival Fatah to succeed.

Hazem Atallah’s comments came as cracks began to show in the Palestinian reconciliation deal mediated by Egypt over the issue of security control of the Gaza Strip.

The PA is due to retake control of the Strip, still run by the Hamas terror group, by December 1.

“We are talking about one authority, one law, one gun,” Atallah told journalists in Ramallah in the West Bank, echoing a line from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Asked whether he could allow Hamas’s armed wing to maintain its weapons while being in charge of police in Gaza, he said: “No way.”

Guards caught a 5-year-old boy smuggling cellphones and SIM cards to security prisoners at the Ketziot Prison in southern Israel on Wednesday, Hebrew media reported.

The boy was the child of one of the convicts, a resident of the Palestinian village of Yatta serving 12 years for conspiracy to commit manslaughter and for manufacturing explosives. He was placed in solitary confinement following the incident, the Ynet news site said.

Upon noticing the boy making abnormal movements, the guards conducted a search of the 5-year-old. They found 10 cellphones and three SIM cards hidden in his underwear, Channel 2 said.

The family members who had visited with the boy were detained, and police opened an investigation into the matter.

The prison services have been waging a long-running battle to prevent the phones — many of them very small — from being smuggled to the prisoners.

Border police Wednesday found a knife hidden in the sock of Palestinian teenager who tried to enter the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron without going through a metal detector.

The suspect, 17, was stopped and searched at the holy site in the West Bank city.

Security forces found the knife during the search.

The suspect was detained and taken away for questioning.

The flashpoint city of Hebron, where Palestinians live in close proximity to settlers who are guarded by Israeli troops, has been the scene of numerous stabbings and attempted stabbings since a wave of attacks carried out by Palestinians began in October 2015.

Saad Hariri resigned his post as Lebanon's prime minister, citing an assassination plot brewing against him, presumably from his former government coalition partner Hezbollah. "Wherever Iran settles," he said in a televised speech, "it sows discord, devastation and destruction, proven by its interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries." Iran's hands in the Middle East, he then said, "will be cut off." He delivered that speech and resignation not from Beirut but from Saudi Arabia.

In a sinister statement worthy of Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad himself, Lebanese President Michel Aoun, a long-time tool of Damascus, says he won't accept Hariri's resignation unless he returns to Beirut and hands it over in person.

Nobody really knows what's going on there right now. Lebanon is one of the hardest countries in the world to make sense of sometimes, even for experts, because there are easily ten different versions of every event, nearly everyone lies, and your average Lebanese media organ is a tribal sectarian fusion of Breitbart, Alex Jones and Pravda. For instance, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah saysthe Saudis forced Hariri to step down, and the hysterical pro-Hezbollah news rag al-Akhbar goes even further and says Hariri is under house arrest in Riyadh, a story proven instantly false by the fact that Hariri is now in Abu Dhabi.

The Lebanese Army says it isn't aware of any assassination plots inside the country. Hardly a credible statement. Hezbollah effectively controls Lebanon's army now, and in 2011, an independent United Nations tribunal fingered Hezbollah for the assassination of Hariri's father on February 14, 2005, with a gigantic bomb in the city center. Not even a damn fool would expect the army to say, yes, our masters are planning to retire yet another prime minister.

MP Samir Geagea says Hariri stepped down "because the government was not able to practice its authority as was expected of it...The developments of the past eight months left no room for someone to continue on respecting themselves."

Of course, Hariri knew all this when he made a deal to return to the premiership last year. Under Hariri’s tenure, Hezbollah only consolidated its existing domination of the country by tightening its grip on the edifice of the state, winning key appointments in the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the intelligence and security agencies, the judiciary and state administrative offices. Hariri’s function was simply to provide Hezbollah with cover. He often ran interference abroad, lobbying Washington for softer sanctions and for increased assistance to an LAF working hand-in-glove with Hezbollah and Iran.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Saudis never supported Hariri’s deal with the devil. Instead, the Saudis cut him loose. They withdrew their grant to the LAF, which they had come to view, rightly, as an auxiliary force to Hezbollah. And they did not return their ambassador to Beirut during Hariri’s tenure. Although they would have done better to block Hariri’s stunt from the start, the Saudis have finally pulled the plug on a disastrous arrangement before it got even worse.

Hariri’s acknowledgement that Lebanon is an Iranian satrapy run by Hezbollah obviously vindicates Israel’s view of the country. Last month, Israel’s defense minister Avigdor Lieberman explained that in a future conflict with Lebanon, “we’re no longer talking solely about Hezbollah. We’re talking about Hezbollah and about the Lebanese military.” The Lebanese army, Lieberman added, “has become an integral part of Hezbollah’s campaign under its command… [It] has become inextricably linked to Hezbollah.”

A top adviser to Syrian President Bashar Assad has accused Israel of "trying to profit from the war in Syria, which it caused together with its allies."

In an interview on Tuesday with the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese channel Al-Mayadeen, Bouthaina Shaaban, Assad's media adviser, said Israel "has proved it has a long reach when it comes to its war against Syria." She stressed Syria "would not hesitate to defend itself against Israel's greedy ambitions."

Commenting on Saudi Arabia's warnings against Hezbollah's involvement in Lebanon's politics, which it says destabilizes the region, Shaaban said, "The Saudi anxieties are similar to the Israeli anxieties. We will not allow Riyadh to undermine Lebanon's security. Lebanon's security is Syria's security.

"Israel understands the power the resistance axis wields and it will not risk a new act of aggression. The reality on the ground has proved that our cooperation with Iran and Hezbollah is very important to all sides. We will not allow Hezbollah to be attacked because our fates are linked."

She also criticized Saudi Arabia, saying, "Since 1945, Saudi leaders have agreed to the existence of an Israeli occupying state, and the rest of the Gulf states have made no effort to liberate Palestine."

Stressing its commitment to fighting climate change following its signing of the Paris Climate Accords, the Syrian government announced that it will begin using ecologically friendly explosives when cluster-bombing civilians.

“Dropping barrel bombs full of pollutants on schools, mosques and hospitals was not just irresponsible. It was flat-out wrong,” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad acknowledged. “As Paris Agreement signatories, our massive bombing campaigns will now be carbon neutral.”

Syria’s announcement angered US President Donald Trump, who said it has led him to question his support for the Russian-backed dictator. As the leader of the only country that has not signed the treaty, Trump vowed to only use coal-powered bombs when attacking Sunni neighborhoods.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said information released by Saudi Arabia showed the missile fired in July was an Iranian Qiam, which she described as “a type of weapon that had not been present in Yemen before the conflict.”

Saudi-led forces, which back the government in neighboring Yemen, have been targeting the Iran-allied Houthis in a more than two-year war. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince on Tuesday described Iran’s supply of rockets to the Houthis as “direct military aggression” that could be an act of war.

Haley said that by providing weapons to the Houthis, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp‎s had violated two U.N. resolutions on Yemen and Iran. She said a missile shot down over Saudi Arabia on Saturday “may also be of Iranian origin.”

“We encourage the United Nations and international partners to take necessary action to hold the Iranian regime accountable for these violations,” Haley said. It was not immediately clear what action the United States was calling for.

The Middle East was in turmoil after Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s dramatic resignation out of fear of assassination. But Lebanon is not the only country threatened by Iran’s plots. Kurdistan is also the target for Iran’s intrigues, which may be behind the resignation of the president of Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani.

According to our sources, Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force Commander, Qassem Soleimani, conducted his own business on the fringes of a condolence visit in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan, after the death of the Talabani Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani. The Talabani Kurds are fierce rivals to the Barazani Kurdish faction. The meeting went beyond the Talabani family’s coordination with Soleimani’s Shiite troops for the capture of Kirkuk, but concerned the mobilization of the Kurds for a sweeping process of establishing together a Shiite Crescent. According to our sources, the move necessitates the recruitment of the Kurdish PKK underground in Turkey. Indeed, in the battles against ISIS for control of Raqqa in Syria, many were surprised to see Turkish PKK flags being hoisted by the Kurdish fighters and PKK fighters were seen also in Sinjar in Iraq side-by-side with the Shiite militias.

But with typical Iranian intrigue, Soleimani, after the PKK recruitment to establish the Shiite Crescent, spoke of the opportunity to undermine the good relationship in Irbil between the Barzani family and Turkey and to incite Turkey against Irbil. The special connection between the Barzani family and Israel is supposed to be the propaganda tool to oust the prominent Barzani family in favor of the rival Talabani family.

In Irbil, they suspected that in Soleimani’s talks in Sulaymaniyah, a plan was devised to remove Masoud Barzani from power, and perhaps even to murder him using the “Lebanon formula” — the Iranian plot to assassinate Saad Hariri 12 years after his father, Rafik Hariri, who was killed in a massive bombing.

As Sunni-Shi’ite tensions in the Middle East mount, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said he wants Muslim states to come together and help each other instead of seeking friendships with the United States or Israel.

In a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Rouhani called for an end to hostile relations with Saudi Arabia, adding that the Sunni Kingdom is wrong to put its trust in Israel and the US.

“You are mistaken if you think Iran is not your friend, but the US and Israel are. This mentality is a strategic mistake and miscalculation,” Iran’s Press TV reported Rouhani as saying. “Our path in the region is to establish and promote stability; we want the geographic borders not to change, nations to decide for themselves, and bombardments and aggression against regional nations to be stopped.”

Rouhani also addressed criticisms of Iran’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War stating that the Islamic Republic was invited to assist in the war against ISIS and promote stability.

He blamed Israel and the US for the instability in the region and claimed both countries were doing so to benefit from the arms trade. “The hegemonic [states] plunder the oil and wealth of the region and, in return, they sell their different weapons to fan the flames,” he said.

Iraq’s highest-ranking Sunni leader said Tuesday the growing influence of Iranian-backed Shiite militias looms as the nation’s most pressing future security threat and called for bolstering US military aid to Sunni forces.

In Washington for talks this week with Trump administration officials and congressional leaders, Iraqi Vice President Osama al-Nujaifi is hoping the administration will deliver on pledges to counter Iran’s growing influence inside Iraq and across the Middle East.

Al-Nujaifi is one of Iraq’s three vice presidents, and his brother heads a prominent Iraqi defense faction. Both have been represented in Washington by the same lobbyist employed last year by Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser. In February, Trump fired Flynn, who is now under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.

In remarks Tuesday at the US Institute of Peace, al-Nujaifi described Shiite militias in Iraq operating as a “parallel army” that could divide the nation even as Iraq’s military is driving out IS fighters with the aid of American troops.

The Iranian-backed factions “have gained a lot of power and maybe they can pose more problems,” al-Nujaifi said.

Is this Michael Ross the same Michael Ross who addressed hundreds of people at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center last month? The same Ross who shared a stage with Temple Mount activist and Member of Knesset Yehudah Glick? Is he the Michael Ross who is executive director (and sole board member) of the International Jewish Muslim Dialogue Center?

Let's take a look.

Here is the Michael C. Ross who spoke at the Jordan is Palestine conference (guy on the left).

Here is his Facebook profile.

Here is a photo of Michael C. Ross from the California Lobbying Directory of 2011-2012 (when he last appears, it seems.)

The address listed in the above California lobbying directory mirrors the one listed in the "Jordanian Constitution," drafted by Ross in February 2016.

This same document has Ross down with the middle initial "C."  Michael C. Ross.

Here's his LinkedIn profile. Can't really tell if it's the same dude, because no beard. But he's Michael Ross from San Mateo, a lobbyist.

The LinkedIn profile URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssorleahcim/ uses the same backwards name as per his email address as listed in his draft of the Jordanian "constitution" (third screenshot above)

What do we know so far? We know that the Michael Ross who spoke at the Jordan is Palestine conference is a California lobbyist. We can't say with 100% certainty that there are two men in San Mateo named Michael C. Ross who were lobbyists from the 1990's through 2000 and on.

But we do know that a Michael C Ross from Sacramento (different home address) attempted to form a national PAC for topless clubs, the National Cabaret Association, in 1999.

A simple online background check confirms Michael C Ross from San Mateo once lived at the  Sacramento address in the above screenshot (blacked out), which Ross used in his capacity as a lobbyist for the National Cabaret Association.

We know that the very same Michael Ross invested in Tail Feathers, a Sacramento strip club believed to have been owned, in part, by a convicted rapist. Here's part of an articlefrom April, 1997:

Michael Ross, a Tail Feathers investor and a lobbyist for the adult entertainment industry, last week filed protests with Sacramento County for approving the name change. He wants the Board of Supervisors to rescind the change in Dove's business license.

He's making that request, he said, to protect both his ownership rights and the community.

If so, what is the connection between the adult entertainment industry and the Jordanian Option? And what is the connection between Michael C. Ross and Mudar Zahran? How did they stumble upon each other?

Because, if they're the same guy, you have to wonder why a lobbyist for the adult entertainment industry would take so keen an interest in an Israeli Arab journalist that he would up and write an article smearing the guy, just out of the blue. And then subsequently send it to Mudar Zahran. Who would subsequently send it to Rachel Avraham, to be printed under a pseudonym.

Screenshot from Rachel Avraham's Facebook page, since deleted.

How do we know Michael Ben Abraham is Michael Ross? Well, Rachel Avraham told us so. HERE, for instance. An excerpt from the linked article:

 I did NOT flee any loans in Jordan. I left because there was a substantial threat to my life by the Jordanian government and the UK government has granted me asylum after fully-verifying my claim for asylum and seeing it to be valid and beyond reasonable doubts.

This visit came just weeks after the publication of the infamous Goldstone Report – which alleged that Israel had committed war crimes by deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza.

The contrast was striking: within weeks of the European Parliament endorsing the report, the European Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee was visiting Israel, for the third time in four years, to study ethical methods for dealing with terrorist insurgencies without causing undue harm to civilians.

Why do European countries exploit Israel’s capabilities with one hand and stab her in the back with the other?
One word sums it up: appeasement.

Every European country has a large and growing Muslim population and an increasing fear of Islamic terrorism.
Political leaders believe that a harsh approach toward Israel will give electoral advantage in respect of their Muslim populations and also discourage Islamic terrorists from attacking at home.

A much longer-standing target of their appeasement is the Arab world itself and concern about the negative impact that their dealings with Israel will have on their relations with other countries in the Middle East.
But the balance has been shifting and European diplomacy has struggled to keep up.

For many years Israel has had close strategic relations with two of its main Arab neighbours.

And today in the face of a growing fear of Iran and the rise of radical jihadism, other Arab countries are increasingly, if cautiously and quietly, looking toward Israel for protection and assistance.

The Arab world will not suddenly fall in love with the Jewish State, but the sands are shifting and in their own security interests, Western states also now need to re-evaluate their relationships with Israel and appreciate what is the balance of cost and benefit to them.

Perhaps the time has come for a new Balfour Declaration.
President Trump has called for an overhaul of NATO which he rightly considers obsolete.

The key to making NATO relevant in the modern world is re-focusing its efforts primarily against the central strategic issue of our time, global jihad.

There has been increasing cooperation in recent years between NATO and Israel, and even today there is a NATO parliamentary delegation here in Jerusalem.
The Balfour Declaration symbolised the British government’s recognition of the strategic value of the Jews of Palestine in the global struggle that was then in progress.

A modern day Balfour Declaration could be recognition of the strategic value of the Jewish state in today’s global struggle in the form of full membership of a reformed NATO, which would benefit all of our strategic interests and serve also to undermine international efforts to isolate Israel.

On Nov. 3, the Daily Californian published an op-ed by Matthew Taylor, explicitly accusing me of having “blood on his [my] hands” and being “culpable for the perpetuation of … [Israeli] atrocities.” The article was worse than the cartoon itself. But when I tried to write a factual response to his false accusations, the Daily Californian categorically refused to publish it, thus demonstrating their obvious bias. I have attached my response here so it can be widely read.

Taylor crosses his own line into bigotry By Alan M. Dershowitz

A recent op-ed by Matthew Taylor in the Daily Californian condemns the cartoonist for caricaturing me as a predatory spider. He argues, however, that it was “fair criticism” to portray me with “blood on [my] hands” and “crushing a Palestinian with one foot and holding up an IDF soldier who assassinates a Palestinian civilian.” In support of this conclusion he proclaims, without citing any evidence, that Israel is “in fact an egregious human rights abuser,” murders unarmed and innocent civilians, including “underage Palestinians,” commits “intentional … atrocities” and engages in “pinkwashing.” He calls me a “privileged professor who is culpable for the perpetuation of Israel’s atrocities,” despite my long record of advocating a peaceful two-state outcome.

I would not usually reply to such ignorance and oversimplified ad hominems. But because these false accusations have become a staple of hard-left attacks singling out only the nation-state of the Jewish people for such defamation, I will disprove each of them in turn.

Former government sources have told The Jerusalem Post that Israel’s Operation Harpoon, carried out by a range of Mossad, Shin Bet and other operatives, was revolutionary in that it was “not just about following the money, but about destroying terrorists’ money networks.”

Sources who had close personal contact with Meir Dagan (1945-2016) indicate that the idea of elevating the thwarting of terrorism financing to a primary mission of intelligence agencies was an uphill battle for the legendary Mossad chief and Harpoon founder.

“When Dagan started Harpoon as part of his role at the National Security Council, no one was interested. Not the Mossad, Shin Bet, IDF intelligence..., and there was almost nothing in place to combat terrorism financing,” the sources told the Post.

With his close relationship with then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, his ingenuity and singular will power, Dagan, who later became Mossad chief, turned Harpoon into an operation that dealt Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah’s Yasser Arafat and other terrorist groups major blows.

The development and achievements of Harpoon against terrorism financing, including by groups of lawyers such as the Shurat Hadin NGO, is capturing the headlines now as a new book about the operations and the lawsuits has been released.

Though Harpoon has been previously revealed in its general outlines, Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism’s Money Masters, by Shurat Hadin director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Samuel Katz, breaks new ground on several fronts.

So much material, much of it never even translated, cannot be analyzed overnight. But Joscelyn, Roggio and other FDD researchers have begun the process and they've already drawn a few significant conclusions.

For one, it's clear that "when U.S. forces knocked down his door," bin Laden was not, as Obama had portrayed him, in retirement or a mere figurehead. Right up until the last moments of his life he "was communicating with subordinates around the globe."

As for al-Qaida, it was not, as Obama repeatedly claimed, "on the run" or "on the path to defeat." It was expanding and strategically reorganizing.

Perhaps most significant to current policy debates is a 19-page assessment by a senior al-Qaida operative attesting that the Islamic Republic of Iran supplied its "Saudi brothers" in al-Qaida with "everything needed" to battle the U.S. – visas, money, arms and even "training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon."

Iran also provided safe haven for al-Qaida fighters "in exchange for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf." In a separate memo, bin Laden himself makes clear that by 2007 Iran had become al-Qaida's "main artery for funds, personnel and communication."

This confirms what some of us have been arguing for years: that al-Qaida and the Islamic Republic of Iran are not so much enemies as rivals. They compete and quarrel. They have profound theological differences: Al-Qaida is Sunni, Iran's mullahs are Shia. For 1,400 years, no peace process has resolved the split between these two readings of Islam.

But al-Qaida and the theocrats in Tehran do manage to cooperate, collaborate and collude. Both believe they have a religious duty to wage a jihad against "arrogant"– meaning insufficiently submissive – infidels, with Americans and Israelis at the top of their lists.

The Argentine official probing the death of Alberto Nisman — the federal prosecutor in charge of investigating the July 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires — has formally requested that the case now be treated as a murder inquiry.

Nisman was found dead in his apartment in the Argentine capital on January 18, 2015, the day before he was due to unveil a complaint accusing the government of then-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of negotiating a secret pact with Iran to exonerate the Tehran regime for its role in the AMIA atrocity.

Until now, the cause of Nisman’s death has been officially classified as “unknown,” with officials loyal to Kirchner advancing the dubious notion that the prosecutor committed suicide. But on Wednesday, Eduardo Taiano, the prosecutor in charge of the Nisman file, said the death should now be treated as a homicide, following a new police report published in May of this year which determined that Nisman had in fact been murdered by two individuals who broke into his apartment.

The police report concluded that Nisman was beaten and drugged, and placed in front of his bathtub. While one of the attackers held him under the armpits “as in a hug,” the other shot him through the head.

Never mind that the holy books of Islam quite clearly spell out the doctrine of jihad and the heavenly rewards that await jihadist martyrs. No, according to MSNBC "terrorism expert" Malcolm Nance, Manhattan attacker Sayfullo Saipov's butchery was "anti-Islamic".

According to Nance's theory, every Islamic terrorist in our time somehow overlooked the real lessons of Islam and instead made exactly the same flub, mistaking Osama bin Laden's bloodthirsty lesson of murderous violence for the thoroughly peaceful tidings of the Koran.

To fail to see a continuity between, on the one hand, the Islam of the terrorists, and, on the other, the Islam of forced marriages, honor killings, female genital mutilation (FGM) and the niqab is to engage in denial and a total whitewash. But then, whitewashing Islam is the true area of expertise of so many of these so-called terrorism experts.

A left-wing Jewish organization at Princeton University succeeded in preventing Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely from speaking at the school’s Hillel House this week.

Under pressure from the Alliance of Jewish Progressives, Rabbi Julie Roth, executive director of the Center for Jewish Life at Princeton’s Hillel, decided to rescind an invitation to Hotovely.

At the last minute, the campus Chabad House provided Hotovely with a venue.

The incident illustrates how a toxic atmosphere inimical to free speech has taken hold on college campuses in the US and elsewhere.

Silencing speakers on campus reflects a broader tightening of academic freedom in general. Universities should be places where there is a free exchange of ideas in an honest pursuit of truth. But for this to happen there must be an intellectual atmosphere of exploration based on commonly held values. Unfortunately, today there are no common denominators, no shared notions of truth and falsehood, no sense of community.

Many departments are dominated by faculty who have abandoned classic liberal positions on intellectual freedom and adhere to an ideology influenced by neo-Marxist thought that holds that there are “right” and “wrong” opinions.

If in the past it was the Communist Party that posited the “correct” political positions, while the “wrong” ones served capitalist, colonialist interests, today it is one’s identity which determines meaning.

The extent of an opinion’s validity and legitimacy depends on who posits it and whose interests it serves.

Deputy Minister for diplomacy Michael Oren on Tuesday called on Israeli officials and politicians to boycott the Hillel at Princeton University after the Jewish campus organization cancelled a speech by Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely.

“I call on all MKs, past and present, left and right, not to accept any invitation to speak at that Hillel,” he told The Times of Israel.

Oren, who went to Princeton himself, urged fellow alumni not to donate any money to the university’s Hillel, known as the Center for Jewish Life. He also called for the group’s executive director, Rabbi Julie Roth, to be fired.

“A Hillel director, and a campus, can have political views. But Hillel has to be welcoming to representatives of Israel who are democratically elected. They represent a large, if not major share of Israeli public opinion,” the New Jersey-born Kulanu politician said.

The head of Hillel International on Tuesday apologized to Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, three days after the Princeton University branch of his Jewish campus organization canceled her speech there on short notice following pressure from a progressive Jewish group.

Eric Fingerhut personally expressed his regret over the incident when Hotovely delivered a talk at New York University, her office said in a statement.

“Deputy Minister Hotovely, who believes in cooperation with all Jewish organizations in America, explained to him what happened at Princeton was unacceptable, and there must not be an internal boycott against Israeli representatives,” the statement read, presumably referring to the fact that Hotovely was disinvited by a Jewish organization.

Meanwhile, Princeton’s Alliance of Jewish Progressives (AJP) — the group that pressured the Ivy League University’s Hillel to cancel Hotovely’s talk — defended itself against accusations it was seeking to stifle free speech on campus. Rather, the group said in a statement, it acted out frustration over the fact that many of the leftist speakers it would like Princeton Hillel, known as the Center for Jewish Life, to host are rejected for political reasons.

“We recognize that silencing of oppositional voices from both the left and the right is a real and frustrating issue on college campuses. However, we want to make clear that that is not—and has never been—our purpose.”

Pop icon Morrissey has accused those who "rain abuse" on Israel of doing so because they are "jealous" of the country.

In the lyrics of his new song entitled Israel the former Smiths frontman also accuses unnamed enemies of wanting to instil their own “dark sky” on the Jewish state.

The near six-minute long pro-Zionist ballad is the closing track on Morrissey's new album Low In High School.

In typically hard-hitting fashion, the singer, who has regularly performed concerts in Tel Aviv, sings: “In other climes they bitch and whine/Just because you are not like them - Israel, Israel".

Referencing Israel’s critics, he adds: “And they who rain abuse upon you – they are jealous of you as well”.

Elsewhere in the song Morrissey appears to take issue with non-Jewish religious-based criticism of Israel, referring to "virgin priests”, perhaps a nod to his own uncomfortable Catholic upbringing.

The singer then broke into some banter, saying, “We are here to take you on a nostalgic journey – but too much nostalgia is bad for your health,” before treating to the audience to a somewhat new song, called “Black Money,” a sweet and soulful duet with one of the backup vocalists, sung in front of a screen showing old b-roll of footage of the stock market.

The surprisingly funky and soulful show wove in and out of the ‘80s with a mix of old and new songs, peppered with lots of banter. At one point he spoke about “not listening to critics, because everyone’s a critic” and then mistakenly called out The Jerusalem Post for calling him “irrelevant” (it was The Times of Israel).

The band closed their pre-encore set with the classic “Do you really want to hurt me?” Moments after, Dana International popped on stage to warm up the crowd for a lively duet of “Karma Chameleon.” The crowd ate it up.

The rest of the encore consisted of tribute covers of deceased musicians: Prince’s “Purple Rain” and T-Rex’s “Bang a Gong.” Both were funky, soulful and fun George gave a special shoutout to Marc Bolan, “a Jew boy who was the king of glam rock.”

Before his Israel concert last night, pop star Boy George has been rather polite in expressing his opposition to BDS and those pressuring him not to perform in Israel.

But on stage last night – no more Mr Nice Guy.
“When I go to Israel people say you shouldn’t go, you shouldn’t go. F*ck off I go where I like!”

While wearing his Star of David outfit, of course.

He also told the audience he “loved it here” and that there was “such a mad vibe in this country” and he was here “to perform miracles.”

Rutgers University has defended its decision to employ a former spokesperson for the Syrian government, who represented the regime of President Bashar al-Assad as it was accused of massacring, starving, and torturing its own citizens.

Rutgers told The Algemeiner on Tuesday that Mazen Adi — who joined its Political Science Department as a part-time lecturer in 2015 — was hired due to “his expertise in international law and diplomacy, and other fields.”

Prior to working at New Jersey’s largest publicly-funded research university, Adi represented the Assad regime for 16 years starting in 1998, The Algemeiner first reported on Sunday. He served from 2007 to 2014 as a spokesperson and legal adviser for the Syrian delegation at the United Nations in New York City, where his government has been routinely condemned for gross violations of international law.

Since the onset of the Syrian conflict in 2011 — which has left an estimated 465,000 people dead or missing — the United States, European governments, and international observers have charged the Assad regime and its allies with perpetrating multiple war crimes, including industrial-scale torture, mass executions and chemical weapons attacks.

While in Turtle Bay, Adi also joined his delegation in taking aim against Israel — claiming it buried enemy soldiers alive and alleging, according to a translation by a UN interpreter, that “international gangs led by some Israeli officials are now trafficking children’s organs.” (Israeli officials have dismissed charges the country participates in the illicit organ trade, saying they amount to a modern-day blood libel.)

McGill’s BDS Action Network actively campaigned against Lew and two other board members because of their links to Jewish groups and anti-BDS stances. Democratize SSMU shamefully highlighted Lew’s ethnicity as a reason for his removal. An enlightened, progressive school was suddenly transformed into something harking back to the days of Nazi Germany and the Nuremberg Laws.

In October, SSMU’s General Assembly moved to ratify the 12-member Board of Directors. According to Lew, “historically, the Board of Directors had been ratified as a bloc, all 12 at a time.” But BDS activists who showed up for the General Assembly ratification forced the voting to occur on an individual basis rather than a block as was the accepted protocol. In this manner, BDS/ Democratize SSMU activists managed to pick off their opponents one at a time. It was repulsive display leftist-fascist bigotry at its worst. The bigoted BDS provocateurs applauded as Lew and the other two board members were removed from their posts.

But this time, they may have gone too far. Even by BDS standards, their manifestly anti-Semitic campaign antics were beyond the pale. BDS activists generally avoid reference to “Jews” by name because it is impolitic and commonly substitute “Zionists” for Jews even though most of us are cognizant of their true intentions. But in the instant case, McGill’s BDS campaigners dispensed with their traditional charade and overtly launched their attack against Jews.

The vitriolic BDS campaign immediately sparked outrage among watchdog groups and politicians prompting McGill principal, Suzanne Fortier, to announce that the school would be conducting an investigation into the matter. Even SSMU president, Muna Tojiboeva, voiced support for Lew and expressed the belief that antisemitism played a key role in the ousting the three board members.

One can only hope that Fortier takes the issue seriously and conducts a proper investigation, which leads to disciplinary action. Judging by past “investigations” conducted by other schools – SFSU, CUNY and UCI, to name a few – I am not optimistic.

Today, the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee will be holding a hearing titled “Examining Anti-Semitism on College Campuses.” The experts assembled to weigh in on this important subject include the ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt; Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Pamela Nadell, the president of the Association for Jewish Studies. They also include Barry Trachtenberg, the director of the Jewish Studies program at Wake Forest University.

So just how bad is it for Jews on campus these days? To hear Dr. Trachtenberg tell it, it’s just a tempest in a teapot.

“It is a factual distortion to characterize campuses in the United States as hotbeds of new antisemitism,” he wrote in his testimony, which was posted to the committee’s website ahead of time. “A recent study by researchers at Stanford University reported that while depictions of rampant antisemitism are reported widely in the press, they do not represent the actual experiences of Jewish students at the campus level. They discovered that campus life is neither threatening nor alarmist, and this corresponds to my own experiences with Jewish students… Much of the testimony you will hear today is likely to describe alleged incidents of antisemitism, and it may cite studies purporting to prove that antisemitism is at crisis levels. I urge you to be skeptical of such claims.”

Anyone who is seriously interested in a dispassionate answer to the question at hand, as academics ought to be, might’ve mentioned that the Stanford survey, by its director’s own admission, “was based on our limited sample that was not a representative sample of Jews on campus,” or cited that other recent study of campus anti-Semitism, conducted by researchers at Brandeis University last year, that had about one-third of respondents report being witness to “some form of anti-Semitic harassment.”

While much attention is devoted to the politicization of Middle East studies on college campuses, biased perspectives on Western values, Israel, Islam and terrorism are also infiltrating K-12 education.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) recently published a study about the introduction of factually inaccurate and partisan information related to Israel and Middle East politics in public school history curricula. The study focused on Newton, Massachusetts, where teachers used materials recommended by Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

But the problem isn’t limited to Massachusetts. All around the country, educators are being trained to teach politically motivated courses by US government-funded Middle East centers.

As I wrote in The Arab Lobby, Israel’s detractors have become increasingly aggressive at infiltrating K-12 curricula to shape the views of Americans from an early age. Their goals are to demonize Israel and present a sanitized education about Islam. Their willing accomplices are faculty at prestigious universities, many of whom are BDS advocates, who often receive funding from Middle East sources.

The unwitting partner is the American public, whose tax dollars fund Title VI of the Higher Education Act, through which the Federal government supports Middle East studies centers as they conduct the type of public outreach that CAMERA’s report found so deleterious in Newton.

Gilad Atzmon has published a new book and, like his last one, it is a profoundly antisemitic work; and it also carries heavy hints that Atzmon is more sympathetic to fascism than his fans on the radical left might appreciate.

Called Being In Time: A Post-Political Manifesto, Atzmon’s new book claims to be a “courageous” investigation of the “post-political universe”, shaped by Brexit and Trump, in which “Left and Right have become indistinguishable and meaningless.” In fact, it is just a jumble of amateur philosophy, conspiracy theory and prejudice.

It contains all the antisemitic soundbites you would expect from Atzmon: “Jewish power is the most effective and forceful power in America and beyond.” “Jews have become a dominant element in Western society.” “Jewish power prevents us from both assessing Jewish power and, more importantly, from discussing its impact.” The American social order has undergone “Jewification”. Identity politics and cultural Marxism “are largely Jewish political schools of thought” and cultural Marxism “is a Jewish problem.” Identity politics is used by Jews “to weaken national cohesiveness”, while Jews promote mass immigration because it “diverts attention from the Jews and also weakens the cohesiveness of ‘White’ working people.” “Cultural manipulation is the way forward as long as the Goyim don’t notice.” And so on.

Atzmon is shameless in his promotion of antisemitism, while claiming that he is not motivated by prejudice. In one astonishing section, Atzmon recommends The International Jew by Henry Ford as the best explanation of “the dark forces within the capitalist apparatus.” The International Jew is a notorious part of the antisemitic canon that was inspired by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It is a book that is only read by antisemites, neo-Nazis and conspiracy cranks. But why, Atzmon asks, “did America remain unaffected by this visionary capitalist and his writings?” Ford was a “shunned prophet” in the Old Testament tradition, apparently.

Atzmon fails to tell us what he thinks of the chapter in The International Jew titled “Jewish Jazz Becomes Our National Music”. “Jazz is a Jewish creation”, according to Henry Ford. “The mush, the slush, the sly suggestion” – Ford’s description of “Jewish Jazz” could just as easily apply to Atzmon’s politics.

Mohammed Sawalha, a trustee of the Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, one of Britain’s most prominent mosques, is reportedly a member of the political bureau of Hamas, the terrorist organisation that seeks the genocide of Jews worldwide, including in Britain.

Hamas is was listed as a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK in March 2001. It is also banned by the United States and the EU.

According to The Times, Mr Sawalha’s role with Hamas was revealed when it was announced that he was part of a Hamas delegation to Moscow in September which held a meeting with Mikhail Bogdanov, President Putin’s Middle East Envoy and a Deputy Foreign Minister. He was allegedly the former military commander of Hamas in the West Bank and was named in a 2004 indictment against another Hamas operative by the United States.

Last week, Boris Johnson, the UK Foreign Secretary, urged Hamas to cease its “violent antisemitic propaganda” and to “renounce terror”.

Mr Sawalha, aged 56, arrived in Britain from the West Bank as a refugee in the early 1990s. He was appointed a trustee of the Finsbury Park Mosque in 2010, making him legally responsible for overseeing its management.

The Sunday Times reported in 2008 that he had been named in US court documents as having previously been “in charge of Hamas terrorist operations in the West Bank.”

Brooklyn-based women’s and Muslims’ rights advocate Linda Sarsour accused Israel of racism today after an Israeli on the subway had the opportunity to feel her up but declined to do so, prompting the Palestinian-American activist to start a social media effort called #MeNeither to call attention to such racism.

The prominent feminist and Women’s March leader told her followers on Twitter this morning that during a subway trip into Manhattan, the man behind her, speaking Israeli–accented Hebrew, kept his hands to himself despite ample opportunity during that 20-minute portion of the ride as she stood in front of him. Since, as Ms. Sarsour has asserted, Zionism and feminism are incompatible, the man behind her could not perforce be a feminist, which meant only one possible explanation for not acting on his non-feminist, pro-groping sensibilities: he saw an Arab Muslim woman as so beneath sexuality as to remain unworthy of molestation.

“I hereby launch the #MeNeither hashtag so all women can share their dark experience as I have,” she wrote. “Add your story of not being groped, harassed, or assaulted because Israelis are too racist to consider you for such treatment.”

Within minutes, a dozen responses to the original post had come in, some citing a familiar case several years ago when an IDF reservist was called racist because of a lack of rapes of Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers.

Why does The Times ignore the official Emirati ban of all Israeli symbols, reducing it to the private affair of a lone athlete as opposed to the government's policy? The state policy to ban all Israeli symbols at the international sporting event provides critical information for readers to understand the stark realities that stand in the way of "[t]he Emerates' ultimate aim . . . to promote the capital as a tolerant global city," as Carvajal puts it.

This is not the first instance in which The New York Times has downplayed anti-Israel Arab hostility in international sporting events. In August 2016, when Egyptian judoka Islam El Shehaby refused to shake hands with Or Sasson, his Israeli opponent, The Times' Victor Mather reported: "There is a history of animosity between Israeli and other Middle Eastern athletes at the Olympics, including in judo," as if the two sides both engaged in animosity.

Mather helpfully went on to cite examples, all of which tellingly pointed to one directional hostility: Arab and Muslim athletes snubbing Israeli competitors. First, he cited the incident a week earlier in which a Lebanese team prevented an Israeli team for boarding a bus. Then, he noted that a Saudi judo player forfeited a match, reportedly to avoid competing against an Israeli. Finally, Mather cited a 2004 incident in which Iranian judoka Arash Miresmaeili apparently binged in order to be disqualified so as to not to face off against an Israeli.

As CAMERA's Snapshots blog wrote: "Israeli Olympians are consistently on the receiving end of Arab and Muslim animosity so why misleadingly characterize the hostility as 'animosity between Israeli and other Middle Eastern athletes'?"

The BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Yolande Knell produced two similar reports – audio and written – concerning the Balfour Declaration centenary, one of which was broadcast on the BBC World Service radio programme ‘Newshour‘ on November 1st (from 14:06 here) and the other published in the ‘features’ section of the BBC News website’s Middle East page on November 2nd under the title “Balfour Declaration: The divisive legacy of 67 words“.

As has been the case in all the BBC’s coverage of the centenary (including a previous report by Knell), her portrayal of the document itself erased from audience view the part safeguarding “the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country” and no mention was made of the 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim lands.

In the audio version, Knell’s paraphrasing failed to clarify to listeners that the document specifically referred to the “civil and religious rights” of non-Jewish communities.

In these two reports BBC audiences found some very rare references to the issue of British restrictions on Jewish immigration. However, while told that “Britain allowed” Jewish immigration, they were not informed that the terms of the Mandate it was charged with administering obliged it to “facilitate Jewish immigration” and “encourage […] close settlement by Jews on the land”.

Audio: “…Britain allowed waves of Jewish immigration during the early mandate times. But amid an Arab backlash and rising violence, it later forced back many Jews facing persecution, particularly during the Holocaust.”

Written: “During the first half of the Mandate period, Britain allowed waves of Jewish immigration. But amid an Arab backlash and rising violence, Israelis remember how it later blocked many fleeing persecution, particularly during the Holocaust.”

The Mandate for Palestine – with Britain as the administering mandatory – came into effect in September 1923 following ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne. Even before that, the White Paper of 1922 had already expressed the intention to ‘regulate’ immigration and the 1930 Passfield White Paper led to further restrictions being placed on Jewish immigration. Knell’s claim that “Britain allowed waves of Jewish immigration” before the establishment of the quota system severely limiting Jewish immigration by the 1939 MacDonald White Paper is therefore not an entirely accurate and objective portrayal.

In both her reports Knell concluded by suggesting linkage between the Balfour Declaration and the modern-day ‘peace process’.

The US House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday heard testimony about increased anti-Semitism on US college campuses, as lawmakers mulled advancing a 2016 bill that would require the Department of Education to adopt the State Department’s working definition of anti-Semitism.

The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (ASAA) would require federally funded education programs to employ the State Department’s standards in assessing whether civil rights laws have been violated when dealing with hate crimes.

The controversy over the legislation stems from its provisions regarding Israel. The ASAA would ban the Department of Education from “claiming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions” and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

Opponents of the legislation argue the clauses on Israel would infringe free speech on campus.

“It is undeniable that some anti-Israel sentiment is fueled by hostility toward Jews,” Suzanne Nossel, executive director of PEN America said in her testimony Tuesday. “But to declare, ipso facto, that any speech that blames Israel for regional tensions or subjects Israel to a higher standard of behavior constitutes anti-Semitism risks chilling a wide range of speech.”

While Nossel admitted that some who hold Israel to a “higher standard behavior by virtue of its character as a Jewish state that aims to embody religious values and moral standards to which other nations do not hold themselves,” bear “some anti-Semitic taint,” she argued that existing hate crimes laws were enough to protect against a

But other speakers at Tuesday’s hearing said Jewish students were being subjected to increased harassment and federal protections have failed them.

Channel 4’s flagship Dispatches investigative journalism programme has gone undercover with British Transport Police to showcase how they work to catch racist football fans on trains.

Using CCTV, the programme shows how football thugs on trains subject staff and passengers including children to a torrent of abuse as they travel to matches. For their victims, there is no way to escape as they are often blocked in their seats and even if they move carriage, they cannot leave a moving train.

Some of the most shocking footage shows an elderly Jewish man forced to move carriage as Chelsea fans shout that the “Yids” are “on their way to Auschwitz” and that “Hitler’s gonna gas ‘em again”. As the elderly man leaves, the thugs can be seen looking on “triumphantly”, according to a British Transport Police Inspector who is reviewing the footage following a complaint. Fortunately in this case, another passenger, journalist Tamanna Rahman, was sitting nearby and filmed the incident on her smartphone despite the danger to herself, then provided footage to the police. A plumber, Melvin Kerswell, was identified by police and sheepishly admitted his involvement in the repulsive thuggery, but to the frustration of the police, by the time they had identified him and tracked him down, the deadline for bringing a prosecution had passed.

The programme uses a number of cases to show the impressive lengths that British Transport Police are going to so that offenders can be identified. This tallies with Campaign Against Antisemitism’s experience of British Transport Police, whose record of investigating hate crimes tends to be stronger than that of many other police forces. For example, since passengers often fail to inform the police about hate crime on trains, police now send undercover officers posing as football fans on problematic routes. The programme shows how cases are transformed when police are provided with smartphone footage, as CCTV usually fails to capture the audio that is so crucial, especially in cases of hate crime. It also shows how far officers will go to track down individuals.

A prominent Tunisian-born French movie producer has issued a frank denunciation of antisemitism in the Arab world after being compelled to pull out of North Africa’s most prestigious film festival because of his work with Israelis.

Said Ben Said revealed in an op-ed for the French daily Le Monde on Tuesday that an invitation to preside over the jury of the 28th Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia had been rescinded because of his work with Israeli film director Nadav Lapid and his participation on the judges panel at the Jerusalem Film Festival earlier this year. The 51-year-old Ben Said is seen as one of the brightest talents in international cinema, having produced movies by such directors as David Cronenburg, Roman Polanski, Brian De Palma and Thierry Klifa.

Ben Said said he bore Carthage’s organizers no ill-will, writing that “the festival was probably right to spare both themselves and me a media lynching.” The real culprit, the producer argued, was the prevalence of antisemitism fueled by Islamist extremists across the Middle East.

“No one can deny the misery of the Palestinian people, but it must be admitted that the Arab world is, in its majority, antisemitic,” Ben Said wrote. “This hatred of Jews has redoubled in intensity and depth not because of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but with the rise of a certain vision of Islam.”

One of the leading business schools in India, Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Management (IIM), has set up an ‘Israel Center’ on its campus with the aim to “bridge academic collaboration” between India and Israel.

The center will carry out academic research, and promote faculty and student exchange programs between the two countries. “The Israel Centre at IIM Bangalore will lead to upgrading of academic collaboration between India and Israel, and will make our countries and economies stronger,” said Israel’s envoy to India Ambassador Daniel Carmon, at the inauguration ceremony on Sunday.

“India’s strong aspirational entrepreneurial spirit stands to gain from Israel’s vibrant technology-based innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem,” Director of the institute, Professor G. Raghuram said in a statement welcoming the launch of the center.

The news of the inauguration was covered by most of the major newspapers and TV networks in India.

The Israeli shekel is currently the world's second-strongest currency, according to a new report by German global banking and financial services company Deutsche Bank. The report ranked China's yuan as the world's strongest currency.

Deutsche Bank's strategic foreign currency analyst Dr. Gautam Kalani reported that over the past 12 months, the shekel has appreciated 6.1% against the basket of currencies of Israel's main trading partners, such as the U.S. dollar, the British pound, the euro and the yen.

The report recommended short positions for shekel investors – a technique used when investors predict the value of a stock or currency will decrease in the short term – saying the Israeli currency is nearing historically high levels.

The firm issued a similar recommendation in late June, inspiring a depreciation in shekel rates, mostly over foreign currency purchases by the Bank of Israel. This move is common whenever it appears the shekel may become so strong it could undermine exports.

When the dispatcher alerted them about a two-week-old baby who’d stopped breathing, 16-year-old Ori Cohen and his Magen David Adom crewmates were right nearby with their ambulance. Working quickly under the guidance of the crew’s senior emergency medical technician, Cohen and his fellow volunteers restored the infant’s breathing and whisked her off to the hospital. The doctors said she’ll be fine.

“We have the biggest youth corps by percentage in the world, as far as I know,” says Eli Yaffe, MDA deputy director for general training and culture. He adds that in some other countries, youth volunteers are only allowed to do tasks such as patient transport rather than responding to emergencies as youth volunteers do in Israel.

The 50-year-old national emergency response network always accepted teen volunteers but it started a formal youth program in 1993 for 15- to 18-year-olds as an option for fulfilling the Education Ministry’s mandatory 60 hours of volunteering for high-school students.

“We offer a 60-hour training course, so if they just pass the course they’ve completed the requirement. It’s optional to volunteer beyond that,” says Yaffe. About 3,000 teenagers each year do opt to interview for spots on ambulance crews – more, in fact, than there are spots available.

“MDA is an organization where you can really help people, and that’s very exciting,” Cohen tells ISRAEL21c.

Famed Jewish-American comedian and actor Jerry Seinfeld is slated to return to Israel in December to deliver two stand-up comedy performances.

Seinfeld will give back-to-back performances in Tel Aviv’s Menora Mivtachim Arena on Dec. 30. His return to the Jewish state comes two years after he made his comedic debut there in December 2015, performing four sold-out shows at the same Tel Aviv venue.

The comedian also visited Israel in 2007 to promote his film “Bee Movie.” As a teenager, Seinfeld worked as a volunteer on Kibbutz Sa’ar in northern Israel.

Tickets for Seinfeld’s upcoming performances in Israel will go on sale Nov. 15 and range in price from $85-$360.

Dozens of letters sent to German industrialist Oskar Schindler and his wife Emilie, expressing thanks and support for saving a thousand Jews from the gas chambers are to be auctioned next month.

About 70 letters and cards that were sent to the couple in Argentina are to be sold along with a few of Emilie’s personal effects.

The items are being auctioned by the UK firm of Lawrences Auctioneers on December 8. The letters are expected to fetch £600-700 (NIS 2,700-3.200).

“I was very moved by your courageous self-sacrifice. More importantly, however, I thank you Frau Schindler, for having restored my faith in mankind,” one letter reads.

Another person wrote, on September 23, 1987, “Although I never actually met you, it is an honor and a privilege, as a spiritual heir of those whom you saved, to wish you a very happy and healthy birthday.”

Joshua Gerstein in the library’s processes department was excited to be handling Valmadonna books not only in Hebrew, but also languages such as Latin, English, Dutch, Italian, Yiddish, Ladino — and even Urdu.

He was moved to come across items such as a 1561 Pentateuch from Trento, Italy, printed less than a century after the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and “An Apology for the Honorable Nation of the Jews, and All the Sons of Israel” by Edward Nicholas printed in 1648 which argued for the reinstatement of Jews to England.

“You learn so much about the life and histories of communities through the books they printed,” Gerstein said as he showed this reporter a small book of Lamentations for Tisha B’Av printed in Venice in 1599 with handwritten notes in tiny script throughout.
‘The most learned curator of Hebrew books’

Valmadonna expert Hill first met Lunzer in the early 1980s and visited him and his books many times over the next 35 years. Hill wrote the introduction to the Kestenbaum auction catalogue.

“If one didn’t know he was a diamond merchant it would be impossible to imagine he was anything other than the most learned curator of Hebrew books,” Hill wrote of his friend.

“Obsessive, single-minded and meticulous, he acquired books from every place of printing and every printer. Not only was the totality of Jewish book production represented in the collection, but in unique or nearly unique, flawless, deluxe, variant, excessively rare or altogether unrecorded copies, all elegantly bound or restored,” he wrote. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

At a time when groups like the Zionist Organization of America are inviting white nationalists like Steve Bannon to speak at their events and neo-Nazis like Richard Spencer are showing their admiration for Israel, it is becoming increasingly implausible to align what is pro-Israel with what is pro-Jewish.

Just as the kids of the 60s shocked their parents with promiscuity, long hair and rock’n’roll, so too do the alt-right’s young meme brigades shock older generations with outrageous caricatures, from the Jewish “Shlomo Shekelburg” to “Remove Kebab,” an internet in-joke about the Bosnian genocide. These caricatures are often spliced together with Millennial pop culture references, from old 4chan memes like pepe the frog, to anime and My Little Pony references.
Are they actually bigots? No more than death metal devotees in the 80s were actually Satanists. For them, it’s simply a means to fluster their grandparents. 

When I returned to the United States, there were few feminist stirrings. However, within five years, I became a leader of America's new feminist movement. In 1967, I became active in the National Organization for Women, as well as in various feminist consciousness-raising groups and campaigns. In 1969, I pioneered women's studies classes for credit, cofounded the Association for Women in Psychology, and began delivering feminist lectures. I also began work on my first book, Women and Madness,[3] which became an oft-cited feminist text.

Firsthand experience of life under Islam as a woman held captive in Kabul has shaped the kind of feminist I became and have remained—one who is not multiculturally "correct." By seeing how women interacted with men and then with each other, I learned how incredibly servile oppressed peoples could be and how deadly the oppressed could be toward each other. Beebee Jan was cruel to her female servants. She beat her elderly personal servant and verbally humiliated our young and pregnant housemaid. It was an observation that stayed with me.

While multiculturalism has become increasingly popular, I never could accept cultural relativism. Instead, what I experienced in Afghanistan as a woman taught me the necessity of applying a single standard of human rights, not one tailored to each culture. In 1971—less than a decade after my Kabul captivity—I spoke about rescuing women of Bangladesh raped en masse during that country's war for independence from Pakistan. The suffering of women in the developing world should be considered no less important than the issues feminists address in the West. Accordingly, I called for an invasion of Bosnia long before Washington did anything, and I called for similar military action in Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Sudan.

In recent years, I fear that the "peace and love" crowd in the West has refused to understand how Islamism endangers Western values and lives, beginning with our commitment to women's rights and human rights. The Islamists who are beheading civilians, stoning Muslim women to death, jailing Muslim dissidents, and bombing civilians on every continent are now moving among us both in the East and in the West. While some feminist leaders and groups have come to publicize the atrocities against women in the Islamic world, they have not tied it to any feminist foreign policy. Women's studies programs should have been the first to sound the alarm. They do not. More than four decades after I was a virtual prisoner in Afghanistan, I realize how far the Western feminist movement has to go.

Where were you when I began marching for civil rights of African-americans in the early 160s and tutoring black children in Harlem? .... Read all or any of my articles about what life is like for women in the Middle East and in central Asia, read my studies about honor killings and about the work I’ve been doing on behalf of girls and women who have applied for asylum in the United States and who are in flight from being honor murdered.

These girls and women are not white women. They are all women of color. Do you believe that men of color have the right to treat “their” women barbarically? And that we are obliged to collaborate in sexism in order to be on the right side of racism?

Marcotte: Your accusation of “racism” constitutes a new and terribly fashionable McCarthyism, one that plagues our world. (Yes, I know: McCarthy was also before your time.)

Today, when real racists (think of the ethnic Arab Muslims in Sudan who have committed genocide and gender cleansing against the African Muslims and Christians in Darfur), real fascists, real totalitarians, real barbarians, want to brand, shame, delegitimize, and silence anyone who dares to expose their racism and misogyny, they simply call her a “racist.” The accusation functions as a leper’s bell around one’s neck. It is meant to keep others away, meant to warn people that if, they, too, say similar things or associate with a known “racist,” that they will also be branded as “racists.”

The accusation of “racism” is the new, politically correct version of the old accusation of “communism.” Today, those who level this accusation tend to be leftists, socialists, “progressives,” faux feminists, and real communists.

For the Crown Prince’s supporters — vast swathes of the country’s young, eager for progressive social change — his way may be dictatorial but his motives are honourable. The purge represents the opening salvo in a fight against corruption that comes with an embrace of moderate Islam, a determination to relax the strict segregation of the sexes and introduce entertainment venues. Why should ordinary Saudis have sympathy for the arrested if they have, as alleged, been engaged in massive criminal schemes involving bribery and money laundering? When did any of those speak up on behalf of the oppressed masses?

Bin Salman’s power grab is in itself spectacular. But the wider significance of this can only be fully understood in conjunction with events in Israel. The Jewish state is hardly a natural ally for Saudi Arabia, but they have long shared a common enemy: Iran. Both fear the latter is exploiting the opening created by the fall of Isis, and the triumph of the Assad regime in Syria, to dominate the region. Iran and its proxies — whether the Houthi rebels in Yemen or Hezbollah in Lebanon — are in the ascendant, and neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia are going to sit on the sidelines.

So the two have been working together: close diplomatic cooperation, intelligence sharing and perhaps more. Israeli media recently reported that a senior Saudi prince, possibly Bin Salman himself, paid a secret visit to the Jewish state. The idea of a Saudi-Israeli alliance is still deeply controversial in both countries, but details are starting to leak out.

Amid the recent madness, for example, we saw the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a Saudi puppet. He was summoned to Riyadh, where he was forced to read a letter announcing his immediate departure, the official reason being that he feared an assassination attempt by Hezbollah. But why would a prime minister visit a foreign capital to resign? The odds are that he had no idea he was resigning until he landed in Riyadh to meet Saudis furious at him for holding talks with both Iranian and Hezbollah officials. His departure has shocked the region.

But it didn’t shock the Israelis. A leaked memo shows Israeli diplomats being instructed to back the Saudi version of events, and start to join Riyadh in denouncing the Houthi rebels. Such diplomatic coordination is dangerous, given that an alliance has the potential to create a massive backlash among ordinary Saudis. For generations, they have been taught that Jews are the descendants of apes and pigs and Israel is the eternal enemy.

This brings us back to the night of the long knives. An outpouring of anti-Israeli sentiment might, only a few months ago, have provided a rallying cry for those determined to oust the Crown Prince. They would have likely turned to Al-Waleed bin Talal, a fierce critic of Trump and the most vocal Saudi supporter of the Palestinians. But he is in prison, presumably as a warning to anyone who shows opposition to the young new broom.

For almost a decade, the Palestinian NGO Defence for Children International - Palestine (DCI-P) has unjustifiably been accusing Israel of breaching the rights of Palestinian minors who are arrested on suspicion of committing terror attacks. Most recently, DCI-P launched a campaign in the US and in Canada under the title "No Way to Treat a Child", whose goal is "to challenge and end Israel's prolonged military occupation of Palestinians by exposing widespread and systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system."

Among other baseless claims, DCI-P argues that the Palestinian minors are arrested, interrogated in breach of all of their rights, prosecuted and sentenced to prison terms.

A recent interview with DCI-P's Accountability Program Director Ayed Abu Qteish on official PA TV, shows that the claims made by his own organization are false. Abu Qteish explained that Palestinian minors do in fact commit terror attacks, and they do it, not necessarily because they want to attack Israelis, but in order to enhance or maintain their status in Palestinian society.
Ayed Abu Qteish: "There are children who, when they were in prison, told the lawyer: 'I want to be imprisoned.' The first time [the child] was imprisoned, he didn't confess, and they released him because there was no evidence to convict him in the Israeli military court. The second time, there was no evidence either. The third time, he wanted to be imprisoned so that his image won't be hurt in the eyes of his friends, even though he is actually innocent... In several cases [Palestinian children] carried out stabbing operations because of the way the public looks at them. They realized 'the best way to clear myself of this image [of helping Israel] is to participate in resistance operations.'"
[Official PA TV, Personal Encounter, Oct. 11, 2017]

Pressure sometimes gets good things out of people. A year after Donald Trump was elected US president, and in the middle of Benjamin Netanyahu's investigations and his family’s legal woes, the prime minister has started talking about his ideological aspirations.

Prime ministers discuss ideology in two cases: Either before they rise to power or when they step down. It’s one of the best reasons for limiting a prime minister’s term, to give him a limited amount of time to implement his beliefs or abandon them (in the event that he lied).

Last Friday, at the Chatham House independent policy institute in London, Netanyahu was asked about the option of a Palestinian state. He replied that we have seen many Muslim states in the Middle East fail and that the model of modern sovereignty with no boundaries should be reexamined (in other words, we should no longer rely on the 1967 borders).

To the people sitting in the room it may have seemed like another typical attempt to avoid making any progress towards a Palestinian state, but there was actually a refined moment of truth there.

Since the Bar-Ilan speech, which was basically forced on Netanyahu by former US President Barack Obama, Israel has been lying to itself and lying to the world. There is no prime minister who believes in a return to the 1967 lines, including minor border corrections.

A right-wing project working to shift the paradigm to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by declaring Israeli victory will make a new push next week to garner public support in the US.

Daniel Pipes, founder and president of the Philadelphia- based Middle East Forum, who formulated the Israel Victory Project, is set to address students and members of the public at Columbia University’s Chabad center on Monday night alongside two MKs who support the initiative.

The project seeks to change the narrative in Washington around the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, by promoting a policy that declares “Israeli victory” and “Palestinian defeat.”

“The proposed policy calls for an end to the continuously futile ‘peace process’ that has led countless world leaders to believe that peace could be achieved by compromise and mediations,” the project says.

“The Israel Victory Project introduces a new policy for a peaceful solution: The Palestinians ‘lose’ by giving up their century-long rejection of the Jewish state, and Israel ‘wins’ by truly succeeding in its 150- year quest for a sovereign homeland.”

The group believes that the only way to end a conflict is by declaring a winner and a loser.

In an English article published November 2, 2017 in The Cairo Review of Global Affairs,[1] Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud 'Abbas set out the PLO's credo and vision for peace, and called on Britain to apologize for the issuance of the Balfour Declaration. He said that this declaration, anchored in "white supremacist" views, "disregarded the wishes, aspirations, and the very rights of the indigenous population of Palestine" and ultimately led to the catastrophe and exodus of the Palestinian people in 1948. He also stated that, after supporting the Zionist movement in establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Britain and the international community failed to implement the UN Resolution 181 (the Partition Plan of 1947), and later also "failed to implement Resolution 194 (III) to restore Palestine refugees to their homes."Stressing that any final settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict must include the realization of Resolution 194 and the Arab Peace Initiative, namely "a just solution for the seven million Palestinian refugees based on the choice of every refugee,"he urged Britain and the international community to make amends for the Balfour declaration by "recognizing the State of Palestine on the 1967 border with East Jerusalem as its capital," and by taking steps to realize the political rights of the Palestinian people, the very rights that were denied by Balfour a century ago."

The following is the article:
"This year, our nation marks one hundred years of the Balfour Declaration. Lord Arthur Balfour was a British foreign secretary who decided to change the identity and fate of Palestine, a land that he did not own, by promising it to the Zionist movement, and dramatically altering the history of the Palestinian people. On this somber anniversary, it is important to recall some key historic facts, which remain relevant toward achieving a just, lasting, and peaceful resolution to a century of injustice.

“We have reached the ideal population size, we have filled the land, now we can start limiting the birthrate and think about the quality life and what kind of country we really want to be”

This is the topic of the book “The Land is Full,” written by Professor Alon Tal, who foresees a dark demographic future for Israel.

The “demographic problem” that Tal foresaw was not a Jewish minority, but actually the opposite – a high Israeli birthrate that in a relatively short amount of time could lead to a population explosion. Tal expects that by 2050, between 23 and 36 million people will live in Israel. The expected population explosion comes from the Jewish sector, the complete opposite of traditional leftwing dire predictions.

In doing so, Tal demolishes the “demographic demon” balloon and adopts an approach typical of the likes of Yoram Ettinger and Yaakov Feitelson. Since 2005, this team has been following the data independently, and its conclusion is that not only are the Arabs not going to be a majority, but Jewish demography is winning, big time.

With this he refutes the warnings that Jews will become a minority, and contradicts the attempts at fear-mongering warning of the “end of democracy” as a result of Jewish control over an Arab majority, or at least a large Arab minority.

Thanks to the disengagement of 2006, the Arabs of Gaza are not counted as being under Israeli rule. The Palestinian Authority has inflated the numbers of Arabs in Judea and Samaria at an embarrassing level. Jewish birthrates have been in a major upswing while that of Arabs on both sides of the green line have been falling.

Arabs are emigrating from Judea and Samaria to all parts of the world while many Jews are moving to Israel in light of increased anti-Semitism in the west. The basis for Tal’s prediction is these trends, which project a stable Jewish majority with a trend of growth. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

While heightened tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia over recent developments in Lebanon and Yemen have been the focus of the international community in the past few days, the Islamic Republic’s takeover of a wide swath of northern Iraq is being overlooked, the editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner said during an appearance on i24 News on Tuesday.

“Iran has very broad regional ambitions,” Dovid Efune told “Clearcut” program host Michelle Makori.“It wants to do what it takes to gain dominance and control over numerous states throughout the region.”

“Its preferred modus operandi is not to engage in all-out conflict with the larger powers in the region, that include Israel and…Saudi Arabia,” he explained.“It works through proxies, like the Houthis in Yemen, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, like the Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq, which has now made incredible movements in the north and taken large pieces of land in the Kurdish region.”

“Frankly,” Efune continued, “the headlines that we’ve seen this week, which have drawn a lot of attention, because Saudi Arabia is speaking about it, and obviously there was the resignation of the Lebanese prime minister, which was quite dramatic, they pale in comparison to actions that Iran is taking on the ground in Iraq to gain control of territory.”

“What we have here is a situation of an empowered Iran, a strengthened Iran, on the march, and the Saudis and their allies in the region, which actually, on this issue, include Israel, would like to do everything they can to push back that belligerence,” he concluded.

Iranian control of a strategically significant Kurdish area near the border between Iraq and Syria represents a grave security threat to Israel, a senior Kurdish security official told The Algemeiner on Wednesday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Iran had coveted the mountainous Sinjar region — which spans from northwestern Iraq into eastern Syria — for “at least ten years.” In 2014, Sinjar was conquered by ISIS terrorists who went on to commit genocide and other war crimes against the region’s ancient Yazidi minority. After ISIS was driven out of the area by Kurdish peshmerga this year, Iranian-backed paramilitaries, among them the Hashd al-Shaabi, the Badr Organization and the Khorasani Brigades, began attacking the Kurds for control of the newly-liberated lands.

The same paramilitaries played a central role in the Iranian-coordinated assault on Kurdistan last month, following a 93 percent vote in favor of independence in the September 25 Kurdish referendum.

The official added that he had received reports claiming the Khorasani Brigades, an Iraqi Shia group affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), were building a “military base” on Mount Sinjar – at 4,800 ft, the region’s highest point. Kurdish media outlets have also reported on a continued stream of Iraqi army officers and Hashd al-Shaabi fighters onto the mountain and in the town of Sinjar beneath it. Hashd al Shaabi’s commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis – designated for terrorism by the US State Department – has been sighted in the area on several occasions.

The area contains several Yazidi holy sites, including the Sharfadin shrine on Mount Sinjar itself. “This is an important place for all of us as Kurds,” the Kurdish official said. “The area is known for its Yazidi population, and there are Muslims and Christians there too. But it is also a place that presents a threat to Israel, and to other countries in the region.”

A House subcommittee held a hearing on Wednesday featuring four speakers in support of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and a fifth who expressed skepticism and urged caution.

The hearing – scheduled and run by Republican lawmakers that have long called for the embassy relocation – comes shortly before a December deadline for US President Donald Trump to decide whether to order the move or else delay it another six months.

A 1995 law requires that the president move the embassy to Jerusalem unless he deems it detrimental to US national security interests. Trump has said he is delaying the move as he explores a potential peace process between Israelis and Palestinians but insists the move is a matter of “when not if.”

One speaker who testified before the panel was Dore Gold, a former top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, who highlighted Israel’s protection of holy sites to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

He said that support for the move in Israel is at an “all-time high.”

"They want to put it back on the radar screen when it was taken off the radar screen," Gold told The Jerusalem Post after the hearing adjourned. "We have an administration that wants to do this. We're not pulling wisdom teeth— it's important to clarify this is in the Israeli interest."

Today, I am not going to address the question of moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem directly. It is my view that President Donald Trump has made a commitment in that regard and I believe he will stand by what he has said. The United States will evaluate the timing and circumstances for executing that decision in accordance with its interests.

The U.S. will of course have to consider many factors in making that decision. But what is often overlooked in the contentious debate about the location of the U.S. Embassy in Israel is why it matters. The embassy question is a subset of a much more important issue: the need for Western recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. That recognition is vital for several reasons.

On a political level, the denial of recognition helps fuel the dangerous fantasy, popular in the Middle East, that Israel is impermanent and illegitimate. On a religious and cultural level, the denial of recognition helps fuel the dangerous fantasy that Jews have no connection to Jerusalem and Israel – that their presence is an imposition because the land is not their homeland.

Those could be characterized as Israeli interests alone. But what I’d like to discuss today is what could be called the international interest, or the interest in Jerusalem of concerned states. That interest often concerns the protection of the holy sites and assuring complete freedom of access to them. Religious freedom and pluralism is a core value which both our countries share.

Protecting Jerusalem’s holy sites is a responsibility that the State of Israel assumed in law back in 1967, when Jerusalem was re-united after the Six-Day War. It is also a responsibility that the people of Israel, I believe, are prepared to assume in the future as well.

For etched into the collective consciousness of all of us is what happened to Jerusalem when we were absent and when we were barred from the city, and what has happened to the holy sites since 1967 – since Israel unified Jerusalem and protected access for all peoples and faiths. What is clear from a brief survey is that only a free and democratic Israel will protect the holy sites of all the great faiths in Jerusalem. Let me stress, to the extent that the U.S. reinforces Israel’s standing in Jerusalem, it is reinforcing core American and Western values of pluralism, peace, and mutual respect – and it is reinforcing the position of the only international actor that will protect Jerusalem’s holy sites.

Prof. Eugene Kontorovich spoke in the hearing in congress discussing the benefits and challenges of relocating the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem

The Trump administration is remaining quiet on when it will relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem amid growing calls from Congress for the administration to enact the policy President Donald Trump repeatedly promised during the 2016 campaign, according to multiple U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Officials from the White House National Security Council and State Department provided identical statements to the Free Beacon on Wednesday saying there is "no news to share" on when the administration will relocate the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Israel's capital city.

The standstill comes despite renewed congressional interest in the issue ahead of Dec. 1 deadline for Trump to either begin the process of moving the embassy or delay any action for another six months.

While Trump vowed multiple times on the campaign trail to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem—a key priority for the pro-Israel community—as one of his first acts in office, the president decided to formally delay the process as his administration pursues efforts to restart the Israel-Palestinian peace process.

Supporters of Israel in Congress appear to have become increasingly frustrated with the Trump administration's decision to delay the move. The House Oversight Committee's National Security Subcommittee held a hearing on the matter Wednesday in what insiders said is a bid to show the Trump administration that further delay will not be tolerated by many in Congress.

A congressional bill that would compel the Palestinian Authority to end its compensation program for the families of convicted terrorists in Israel with the threat of an aid cut will reach a critical vote in the House Foreign Affairs Committee next Wednesday.

A mark-up vote on the Taylor Force Act is expected to pass with broad bipartisan support, clearing the way for full vote on the House floor.

The Palestinian Authority passionately opposes the bill, claiming that its "martyr" compensation scheme benefits generations of families that include those of legitimate combatants in the Palestinian struggle for independence. Israel argues that the program is a perverse incentive for Palestinian violence against innocent civilians.

In principle, US President Donald Trump and his administration have condemned the program. However, they have stopped short of endorsing the Taylor Force Act, cognizant of PA opposition and the effects its passage might have on their effort to reboot the Middle East peace process.

The bill is named after an American Army veteran murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in Tel Aviv last year. If passed, the PA would have to end its compensation program, which provides monthly stipends to Palestinians convicted of murder or terrorism in Israel relative to the length of their prison sentences.

After negotiating some wiggle room into the bill, granting the PA time to phase out the program, Democrats have endorsed the GOP-drafted legislation wholeheartedly. It enjoys support from top Democrats in both the House and the Senate, and the backing of America's largest Israel advocacy organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Until recently, walls and gates were not a common feature in well-to-do American suburbs. Things may be changing in this respect, with the rise of gated community projects. Likewise, the gates of most residential buildings used to remain unlocked or even open during daytime in post WW2 Paris; Parisians had no qualms then about leaving their apartment keys under the doormat. From the 1970s on, new dispensations were introduced: "digicodes" or digital locks became ubiquitous. Paying a visit to friends or relatives in 21st century Paris frequently entails passing through one or several digitally operated gates.

It stands to reason that border barriers and home security are but two faces of the same coin. The true question is how much border barriers help alleviate the burden of security within borders.

In my opinion, the answer is very much.

European nations, and France in particular after the jihadist killing spree of 2015-2016, are learning a lot from Israel. There, comparatively high levels of home security have been achieved without infringing personal liberties or even creating a pervading climate of fear and suspicion.

One important reason for this Israeli success is the implementation of comprehensive networks of border barriers.

Palestinian propaganda accusing Israel of "ethnic cleansing" and "Judaizing" Jerusalem was distributed at a UN meeting on "Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people." The material was distributed during a meeting of the UN's "Special Political and Decolonization" Committee, composed of all 193 UN Member States, on November 7, 2017.

The material also calls for lawfare - the use of international legal institutions to hold Israel "accountable" for spurious claims of violations of human rights or international law. Some of the propaganda calls for divestment from Israel and threatens to "make use of the appropriate mechanisms in order to hold Israel accountable." Another document, entitled "Israeli Incitement Report," turns reality on its head and accuses Israel of incitement.

Included in the propaganda:
"Israel has imposed a number of policies and practices aimed at Judaizing the city and annexing it once and for all."
Israel has "a policy to ethnically cleanse Jerusalem of its Palestinian Christian and Muslim identity."
"...we have a duty to make use of the appropriate mechanisms in order to hold Israel accountable... We will continue to ask the international community to divest from Israel's occupation."

A diplomatic battle is under way to prevent Iran’s election to the post of UNESCO Executive Board chairman to replace Michael Worbs of Germany.

Israel has had a contentious relationship with the 58-member board, which in the past has approved resolutions that some say have ignored Jewish ties to Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount.

US and Israeli efforts to block Iran received a boost on Wednesday when the Philippines was one of 27 countries the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s General Assembly elected to a four-year term on the board, effective immediately. Some of those countries are serving their second four-year terms.

In advance of the November 16 election, the board has been split between choosing Iran or South Korea to head the board, but it is possible that the Asia Pacific group will push the Philippines ambassador as a compromise candidate, a diplomatic source speculated in a conversation with The Jerusalem Post.

But the overall make-up of the board with the new members is seen as more hostile to Israel than the previous one.

Close to 100 aircraft, including fighter jets from Germany, and hundreds of support crew from eight nations are taking part in the largest air force exercise ever held in Israel and the biggest in the world to be held this year.

“This exercise is an expression of the ever growing international cooperation we share with our foreign partners,” Israel Air Force Commander Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin said.

Crews from the US, Greece, Poland, France, Germany, India and Italy are taking part in the two-week Blue Flag drill, honing their skills in planning, targeting and coordinated command and control.

“The countries participating in the drill have understood the regional challenges and understand Israel’s role in the Middle East,” a senior IAF officer told media at Uvda Air Base on Wednesday, adding that this was especially true for countries like Germany, France and India, which are participating for the first time.

“There may not be a current coalition, but we now have the base for one,” he said.

Maj. Hachmeister, the German delegation representative, told The Jerusalem Post that he felt “honored” to be one of the first German pilots to fly in Israel.

He said it was exciting to fly in a multinational drill with non-NATO partners, which gives pilots an opportunity to perform missions they have never done before, adding with a smile that German and Israeli pilots drilled an hour-long dogfight together.

The Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria issued an amendment to the detailed plan of the town of Rehelim in Samaria, which will take effect within 15 days.

For the first time in the town's 26 year history, the community of Rehelim will be officially recognized by the Civil Administration, the Defense Ministry agency charged with managing Judea and Samaria. The approval for Rehelim and its building plan retroactively authorizes construction which has already been carried out in Rehelim, and allows the building of permanent structures to replace the caravans stationed in the town for more than two decades.

However, the plan does not permit the expansion of the number of housing units in the community, which was established in the year 1990/91 in memory of Rachela Druck, who was murdered in a shooting attack on the way to a demonstration held several months earlier at Malki Yisrael Square in Tel Aviv.

Construction in Rehelim was barred by a court order issued following a petition filed by the left-wing NGO Peace Now in 2009, which forbade all construction until the planning status of the town was settled.

A Palestinian man was detained Thursday morning at the entrance to the West Bank settlement of Kokhav Ya'akov, situated 15 km north of Jerusalem, after a routine search in the suspect's bag revealed that he had stashed away two knives and a Quran. The man was arrested and taken to an investigation, where he admitted that he had intended to pass the bag on to another man who planned to carry out a terror attack in the area.

The suspected terrorist was arrested after police received a report about a suspicious-looking individual roaming around the entrance to the settlement. Forces that were dispatched to the scene started chasing after him and managed to stop him before he could flee.

This incident comes after last week's thwarted terror attack in the settlement of Halamish, when a terrorist tried to run over IDF soldiers in the area and was shot and neutralized at the scene.

The detonation of a terror tunnel last week signaled the collapse of Hamas and Islamic Jihad's strategy of creating mass killing capabilities and taking Israeli communities or individuals hostage in order to free their terrorists and issue unprecedented political and security demands.

The collapse of a number of Hamas tunnels under mysterious circumstances has left many terror organizations in the Gaza Strip with unanswered questions and harmed their members' sense of personal and operational security. These were direct hits to the hiding places where senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials planned to hide while Gaza's residents served as their human shields.

The Israeli trifecta of intelligence agents, electronic capabilities and engineering genius spells disaster for Hamas. The terrorist organization's obstinate decision to dig itself to death, knowing full well the sophisticated obstacle Israel was placing in its path, served to speed up the process.

This was a mortal blow to the subterranean concept the organization adopted in an effort to replicate on a much grander scale the Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange. The detonation of the tunnel left the bodies of five senior terrorists as bargaining chips to be used by Israel for the return of the missing Israelis and the bodies of the Israelis soldiers being held by Hamas and put an end to its illusions Israel would free terrorists along the Schalit model.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met Wednesday with the powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in Riyadh, telling him that the Palestinian leadership supports Saudi Arabia after a recent missile attack.

“The Palestinian leadership, as well as the Palestinian people, stand alongside the Arab Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the face of attacks,” Abbas said, according to the official PA news site Wafa.

Abbas and the Crown Prince also discussed Palestinian reconciliation, American efforts to move the peace process forward and ways to improve bilateral ties.

The meeting comes a day after the PA president met with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, in which similar issues were discussed.

For the first time in eight months, the PA sent a major shipment of government- subsidized medications to the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

Many Gazans rely on such medicines.

“Twenty-two trucks of medications were dispatched to Gaza,” Palestinian Authority Health Ministry spokesman Osama al-Najjar told The Jerusalem Post. “This is our first major shipment of medications since February.”

The PA’s last major shipment of medicine to Gaza, which included 27 trucks, took place on February 28.

According to Najjar, since February, the PA has sent only two trucks of medicine on three separate occasions – in March, May and July.

A diplomatic source, familiar with the health sector in Gaza, told the Post that the small territory has been suffering from major shortages of medications.

“Gaza has been dealing with shortages in a number of medications,” he said. “This shipment is very important and will lessen the shortages.”

A bipartisan delegation of lawmakers is urging Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to take greater action to protect Kurds targeted by Iraqi government-backed security forces in recent weeks, a portion of whom are believed to be under Iranian control and using U.S. weaponry, according to a letter sent to al-Abadi and obtained by the Free Beacon.

The senators, led by Sens. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) and Tim Kaine (D., Va.), are pressuring al-Abadi to take greater action to protect Kurds, a reliable U.S. ally, who have been pushing controversial plans to pursue independence from Iraq.

The independence referendum has stirred anger among the Iraqi government and appears to have sparked violent clashes earlier this month between Iraqi Security Forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga.

The violence comes amid growing concern in Congress that Iranian-backed militias fighting for the Iraqi government are illegally benefiting from U.S. training and arms equipment programs. At least a portion of the attacks on Kurdish forces appears to have been carried out with Iranian coordination.

The violence has become a diplomatic sore point as U.S. officials in the Trump administration continue to maintain that U.S. training, money, and weaponry is not going to Iranian-backed militia fighters, a claim that appears to contradict with direct evidence from the ground.

The senators are urging al-Abadi to take greater steps to remove Iranian-backed forces from disputed territories in Iraq, where they have been working to solidify the Islamic Republic's foothold on the country.

Saudi Arabia urged its citizens to leave Lebanon “immediately,” and avoid traveling to the small Middle Eastern state on Thursday. “The Kingdom advised all citizens not to travel to Lebanon from any other international destinations,” said the statement reported by Al-Arabiya. Bahrain, an ally of Saudi in the Gulf also issued a warning.

Bahrain acting in concert with Saudi Arabia is a reminder that both countries, along with the UAE and Egypt, broke relations with Qatar and expelled Qatari citizens in June. The calls for citizens to leave comes amid a war of words between Saudi Arabia, Iran and Hezbollah, and in the wake of the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Saturday. Hariri has been mum since then, and only seen rarely, leading to rumors he was under house arrest in Saudi Arabia, where he was born and now appears to be staying after his sudden resignation. However, according to Hariri’s own Future Movement party in a tweet on November 9th, Hariri met with the French, US, EU and UK ambassadors to Saudi Arabia.

The recent brewing conflict between Riyadh and Beirut concerns the role of Hezbollah in Lebanese politics. In the last ten years Hezbollah has grown in strength in Lebanon to become the main powerbroker, holding the country hostage to its political whims. This was evident in the struggle for the presidency that left the post open for more than two years until the Hezbollah ally Michel Aoun was elected in October 2016. In a speech on November 5th, after Hariri resigned, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that there were rumors that Saudi Arabia wanted to launch some kind of military operation against Lebanon. According to translated tweets by David Daoud, a research analyst, Nasrallah said it’s not possible for Saudi Arabia to assemble “allied forces to launch an operation against Lebanon.” Lebanon is not Yemen, he pointed out, and Saudi Arabia has no borders with the country. “Saudi Arabia also has to figure out its own future before discussing plans about Lebanon,” he said. Nasrallah also claimed that Israel would not attack Lebanon because “Israel doesn’t work for Saudi” and Israel would launch a quick, decisive war if Hezbollah started a war.

The withdrawal of Saudi Arabia citizens is part of a large decline in the number of Saudi citizens visiting the country. According to a research by Blominvest Bank, the number of Saudis visiting had already dropped by 63% in 2016 to only around 40,000 people. It referenced the existing diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and Lebanon. For instance the National reported in 2016 that the UAE issued a travel ban to Lebanon in February of that year and Saudi Arabia had urged citizens to leave the same month, similar to this year’s events.

Egypt’s president said Wednesday that Iran must stop “meddling” in the Middle East and the security of Arab Gulf countries must not be threatened, but he underscored that he does not want war and believes dialogue can resolve the region’s crises.

With his comments, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi threw his support behind Egypt’s Gulf ally Saudi Arabia amid the kingdom’s mounting tensions with Iran.

But he avoided the increasingly aggressive rhetoric that has come from Riyadh in recent days.

Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia blamed Iran for a missile fired toward its capital by rebels in Yemen and warned that could be considered an act of war. At the same time, Saudi officials accused Iran’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah of “declaring war.”

The kingdom appears to have orchestrated the collapse of Lebanon’s government, which included Hezbollah, by pushing its prime minister to resign.

The Egyptian leader told reporters that he did not want more tensions in the region, but that doesn’t mean threats to Arab countries can be tolerated.

Former residents of Syria who fled the brutality either of the Assad regime or Islamist militias and now find themselves relegated to tents in the Jordanian wilderness have expressed resentment that the UN agency addressing their plight will try to resettle them elsewhere and afford them a chance to rebuild their lives, instead of keeping them in perpetual statelessness, dependency, and radicalization in the manner of Palestinian “refugees” from 1948.

Increasing numbers of the Syrian refugees have been voicing objection to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in recent months, as they contrast the agency’s treatment of them with that given by a different UN agency to the descendants of Arabs who fled or were expelled from Palestine in the context of Israel’s War of Independence nearly seventy years ago. Whereas most refugees are resettled in new host countries and permitted to start over, the mandate for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees requires that Palestinians on its rolls remain forever stateless.

While other refugees are therefore forced to gain citizenship, develop careers, and exercise autonomy, UNRWA refugees enjoy free health care, free education, and the freedom to nurse a destructive, seven-decade-old grudge against a country whose forces played only a minor role in causing the vast majority of the refugees’ ancestors to leave their homes. In addition, many of the UNRWA refugees, such as in Lebanon and Syria, are barred by local laws from entering most prestigious or lucrative professions, in contrast to other refugees under UN care who must pursue an education, support families, and cope with the myriad burdens of being productive, free, responsible citizens.

“Hey, that’s not fair,” objected Muhammad Chalabi, 45, a father of six originally from a Damascus suburb. “I don’t want to rebuild my life. I want to be like a Palestinian refugee and forever be stuck in a mythic, idyllic past that never existed but was abruptly and brutally rent asunder by usurping colonialists. I want to be able to blame Jews, rather than Arab regimes encouraging Palestinian Arabs to get out of the way of the massacres of Jews they planned, for my misery, and remain unable to move beyond that pathetic limbo for multiple generations.”