Freedom House is an independent watchdog organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom and democracy around the world.

Each year, Freedom House analyzes the world's nations and territories, examining the electoral process, political pluralism and participation, the functioning of the government, freedom of expression and of belief, the rule of law, and individual rights. Their results are published in their annual report, Freedom in the World.

Freedom House's 2017 rankings are out. Again, Israel is the only nation in the Middle east that is ranked as "free".

Israel scored 80 out of100 points, and is described in the report as "a multiparty democracy with strong and independent institutions that guarantee political rights and civil liberties for most of the population".

Why is the only nation in the region that is ranked as free subject to such vitriolic rhetoric across the media, in the UN and on college campuses?

Could it be because it is the only Jewish state, not only in the region, but in the world?

Arutz Sheva spoke to Ben Dror Yemini, journalist and author of Industry of Lies, at the Israeli American Conference (IAC) in Washington, DC about the distinction between legitimate debate and lies about Israel:

"Industry of lies is mainly about media and academia, and how they are lying - lying - about Israel. I'm not speaking about criticism. I'm not speaking about the debate that is taking place in Israel about many issues, which is a legitimate debate. I'm speaking about journalists, activists, scholars, that lie about Israel.

"They manipulate their students, they manipulate their leadership, and so many claims against Israel are actually a modern blood libel, not less than that."

We used to use the word "misconception".

"It's not a misconception, it's something that's much worse, unfortunately. Now I'm not dealing with opinions, I'm not dealing with somebody who is criticizing Israel. Fair enough, do it. Israel has no exemption from any kind of criticism. What I'm talking about is that people lie - blatant lies - about Israel. Sometimes they're not even aware that they are lying. There are blatant lies, like when somebody says that 'Israel is committing an extermination of the Palestinian people by increasing infant mortality among babies. Now.. what?! The infant mortality among Palestinians decreased dramatically - just the opposite.

"But there are some other lies that people are not even aware of. When Bernie Sanders, for example, is saying that Israel disproportionally killed innocent civilians, just like what Richard Goldstone said in his report, they have no idea what they're talking about. Because when you compare, when you check other battlefields - Fallujah, Afghanistan, whatever, you name it - even Kosovo - you find out that Israel is actually killing much less, much less, absolutely proportionally, but people don't know, and they keep on saying that Israel is retaliating in a very disproportional way."

Anne, Abdelghani’s former wife, entered the court—a small, frail woman in her 30s, of Catholic background, who met Abdelghani when she was 16, who a few months later, as he introduced her to his mother, was spat upon by Zoulika who called her “a kike and a French,” and who nonetheless stayed in the family and in the Merah house where they all lived—and where Abdelghani used to beat her on a regular basis; who took the trouble to explain to the court, in a tone that sounded like an apology, that she was “not even” Jewish, that it was her biological grandfather whom she had almost never met, only twice, when she was very little (the bit of information had been passed to Zoulika by Abdelghani himself). Her preference at the time, among the Merah siblings, went to Abdelkader, for he was the smartest, and “when I was seven months pregnant and Abdelghani hit me it was Kader who protected me.” She watched TV and fell asleep side by side with Kader on the living room sofa of the family apartment while her husband was out drinking.

Anne thought that Kader had turned violent only once he was of age and became strong enough to confront Abdelghani. He told him that, while he, Abdelghani, had taken over after their father left, his reign was now over—at which point he stabbed his brother seven times. It was to demonstrate that he was now in charge, she explained, that he began to beat up and torture Mohamed on a regular basis and to insult her, Anne, calling her dirty Jew and dirty French, though she felt rewarded when Zoulika, suddenly mellowing, would tell her, “you, for a French, you are still better than some Arabs.”

“Me, I loved everyone among the Merah,” she also said. “I saw them like my little brothers and sisters. I used to get along very well with Souad”—the first to join the radicals. It is surely difficult to imagine a more hellish family, like something out of a particularly grotesque Muslim version of Dickens. The only moments when everyone in the family agreed was when they talked about France and Palestine.

“The sole object of this trial is to determine whether the accused are guilty of the facts that are reproached to them,” presiding Judge Frank Zientara had stated the first day of the trial. But when the last Merah family member left the stand, it was clear that the courtroom had, for a moment, veered from the rational shores of legal issues toward the uncertain seas of terror itself. (h/t Elder of Lobby )

Calling Israeli children “Zionist terrorists in training” and “future child murderers and occupiers” does not constitute incitement to hate, Dutch prosecutors said.

The Public Prosecution Service decided Wednesday not to prosecute Abdoe Khoulani, a city councilman in The Hague, on the basis of a criminal complaint filed against him over statements he made in May about schoolchildren from Israel who visited his city, the Telegraaf daily reported.

The service cited how Zionists are “indistinguishable” from other people by race, complexion or origins. Khoulani would have been prosecuted had he spoken about Jews, the service also said. Furthermore, the decision said, schoolchildren did not complain themselves against Khoulani, making it procedurally difficult to prosecute him for intending to cause them offense.

The youth movement of the Reformed Political Party, which hosted the visiting Israeli Young Ambassadors program in The Hague, filed the complaint with police against Khoulani for hate speech. Facebook has removed the post with his remarks.

But the prosecution service said it would prosecute Khoulani, who represents the Islamist Party of Unity and is Muslim, for repeatedly insulting Anneke Brons, who has defended Israel on social media and criticized his comment about the children.

In one message, he called Brons a “blonde bitch.”

This week, only six months after I became a Dutch citizen, my wife congratulated me for being mentioned in parliament for my reporting on the Netherlands’ relations with Israel.

Flattered, I looked it up, expecting to find praise for my work. I was already kind of drafting, as journalists instinctively do, some grateful Facebook post on my integration success story.

There was just one tiny problem: The mention, which local Jewish leaders later condemned as anti-Semitic, was by a pro-immigrant, Muslim rights party that insinuated that I am a Zionist spy for Israeli intelligence.

The charges appear in a set of questions submitted to the chamber by Denk (“think” in Dutch), a party founded by two Dutch-Turkish politicians. Citing my reporting for JTA and prior service in the Israel Defense Forces, they suggested to Cabinet ministers that as a former member of the military, I am part of an effort by Israel to “spy on pro-Palestine activists in Europe.”

Seeing this elicited a rash of emotions, from disbelief and anger at my accusers to gratitude when strangers publicly leapt to my defense. (h/t Elder of Lobby )

The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest daily newspaper, recently published a disgraceful article defending a Toronto imam who called for the genocide of Jews.

Ayman Elkasrawy is a former teaching assistant at Ryerson University and junior employee at his mosque, Masjid Toronto.

“O Allah! Count their number; slay them one by one and spare not one of them. O Allah! Purify the Al-Aqsa mosque from the filth of the Jews!” invoked Elkasrawy in a sermon in 2016. After video of his prayer surfaced, Elkasrawy backtracked, claiming that he misspoke.

The Toronto Star contends that Elkasrawy’s words were twisted.

“As for ‘Purify the Al-Aqsa mosque from the filth of the Jews,’ a more accurate translation is ‘Cleanse Al-Aqsa mosque from the Jews’ desecration of it,’ wrote the Star, quoting a supposedly more palatable translation of the Arabic prayer.

Apparently it’s okay to be antisemitic, as long as you’re not anti-semantic.

According to the Star, Canadian Jews can rest easy knowing that this imam does not believe they should be murdered because they are filthy.

But rather, Elkasrawy believes Jews should be annihilated because they are a desecration! But the paper wasn’t quite finished yet. The Star recently published an op-ed by Elkasrawy, in which he now denies ever praying for the killing of Jews. Despite video evidence to the contrary, Elkasrawy blamed some sort of conspiracy by “malicious people” who seek to “divide Canadians.”

Jew-hatred in Canada has gotten so bad that now elements of the mainstream media are defending it.

It’s never fun when one of your favorite celebrities gets accused of wrong-doing. The home team quarterback faces a DUI, or a politician gets caught in a scandal. You can choose to face reality — that the hero may not warrant your devotion — or try to pretend that you never saw it.

When it comes to Tariq Ramadan, heir to modern Islamist thought and one of the world’s most recognizable Muslim scholars, many American Islamists seem intent on looking the other way.

At least four women have accused the Oxford University professor of sexual assault or harassment — making him one of the latest high-profile men to be accused of past misconduct after Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s fall last month. Oxford announced on Tuesday that Ramadan is taking a leave of absence “by mutual agreement.”

Compared to Weinstein and others, there are few voices taking up the cause for Ramadan’s accusers. Some of it may be cultural: Ramadan often has urged Muslims to treat controversial religious issues, such as stoning adulterers and female genital mutilation, as an “internal discussion.” But there’s also the fact that Ramadan has been quite helpful to American Islamists over the years.

He addressed the two largest gatherings of Muslim Americans last year, speaking to conventions organized by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and a joint Muslim American Society-Islamic Circle of North America (MAS-ICNA) gathering. That September, he spoke at California’s Zaytuna College, with its founder Hatem Bazian.

The subject? “Resistance: Combatting Oppression, Inspiring Action.”

Rape is a form of oppression.

I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of Cryer’s bewilderment. For anyone who hasn’t followed the peregrinations of the Western far left over the past two decades—catalogued no better than in Nick Cohen’s depressingly prescient 2007 book What’s Left?—it would indeed be difficult to understand why people who think the BBC is a “Zionist-propaganda puppet show,” that “Israel is evil,” or that “every f****** Jew that died in the Holocaust was a blessing” would want to join a social democratic party which stood “at the forefront of confronting Nazism” in the 1930s.

But that was the 1930s. Today, the undoubtedly proud anti-Nazi history of the British Labour party is utterly irrelevant to understanding why it has become the most influential anti-Semitic institution in the Western world. Defenders of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn respond to every suggestion that he tolerates or encourages anti-Semitism within his party’s ranks by invoking the “Battle of Cable Street,” a 1936 riot between Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists on one side, and an assortment of communists, socialists, Jews and other ethnic minorities on the other, which has assumed mythological status on the British left. Never mind how little this eight-decade-old street fight—against actual Nazism, not the cosplay of Richard Spencer and his sexually-repressed followers—has to do with contemporary political realities. One of the more perverse twists of recent British politics is that on today’s proverbial Cable Street, much of the Labour Party would be on the other side. Now, British anti-Semitism is almost the exclusive domain of the hard left, which is firmly in control of the country’s second major party.

Paradoxically, while anti-Jewish social prejudice, like saying the words “smelly kike,” for example, or refusing Jews admittance to your country club, has become a serious social crime—the sort of transgression that can destroy careers—actual anti-Semitism (“a cabal of rich Jews secretly manipulates and controls American foreign policy to benefit Israel,” “Israel is an illegitimate foreign colonial implant whose bloodthirsty leadership hates peace and delights in killing Palestinian children”) has become increasingly acceptable, even mainstream on some parts of the left. Standing up to Nazism, as the members of the Democratic Socialists of America valiantly did in Charlottesville, serves as a convenient fig leaf behind which they can hide their institutionalized organizational anti-Semitism, which they giddily expressed just a week prior at their annual convention in Chicago, chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” after passing a motion in support of the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment movement against Israel.

Anti-Jewish prejudice, which used to be socially respectable, indeed, even a marker of one’s elite status, has since become something with which respectable people under no circumstances want to be associated, “prejudice” of any kind being the ultimate vice. Today, not even the leaders of Hamas evince the sort of anti-Jewish prejudice upon which Evelyn Waugh once prided himself; Jews, they say, are welcome to live in their future state of Palestine, under Islamic law. Linda Sarsour doesn’t have any problem with Jews, either—just “Zionists.”

In addition to her unauthorized meetings with Israeli government officials over which she resigned yesterday, former British Secretary of State for International Development Priti Patel also visited the Golan Heights during her trip to Israel in August, Haaretz reported.

Patel, a member of the Conservative party’s “Thatcherite” wing, yesterday announced her resignation and offered an apology to British PM Theresa May over her undisclosed meetings with senior Israeli leaders while vacationing in the Jewish state this August.

"I offer a fulsome apology to you and to the government for what has happened and offer my resignation," she wrote in a letter to British Prime Minister Theresa May.

Patel also wrote in her letter that there had been a "number of reports about my actions and I am sorry that these have served as a distraction."

On Tuesday, Downing Street officials confirmed that Patel had discussed during her meetings in Israel the possibility of granting British aid to IDF-run field hospitals in the Golan Heights providing humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees.

“The Secretary of State did discuss potential ways to provide medical support for Syrian refugees who are wounded and who cross into the Golan for aid,” a government spokesperson said, going on to confirm that British policy has not changed.

“The Israeli army runs field hospitals there to care for Syrians wounded in the civil war. But there is no change in policy in the area. The UK does not provide any financial support to the Israeli army.”

According to a report in Haaretz, Patel also visited a Golan field hospital.

So, let me get this right. Priti Patel should resign because, while on a private holiday, she did some work – i.e. meeting foreign politicians. BBC PM’s Eddie Mair says she is in serious trouble. Only with arseholes like you, sunshine. The real reason for leftie anguish is that Patel suggested that Israel could possibly receive some of the UK’s foreign aid budget for its humanitarian work in the Golan Heights. Too right, Priti. If we are to have a foreign aid budget I think it should all go to Israel. Especially for its humanitarian work in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Support democracy, militate against our enemies. Frankly I’d be delighted if all of our overseas aid budget were to be hypothecated to the IDF. There aren’t many Conservative ministers I have much time for, but Patel is one.

Britain’s international development secretary resigned Wednesday evening following five days of revelations about unauthorized meetings she held during a holiday to Israel this summer.

Priti Patel quit after she was humiliatingly ordered to return to the UK from an official visit to Africa, less than 24 hours after she had departed from London.

Following a brief meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May at Downing Street, Patel released a letter saying she was leaving the government and conceding that “my actions fell below the high standards that are expected of a Secretary of State.”

It had been widely speculated that she would be sacked by May, but the prime minister appeared to have allowed Patel the dignity of resigning.

Staunchly pro-Israel, Patel was seen as rising star on the right wing of the Conservative party and was a charismatic and high-profile supporter of the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union during last year’s referendum.

The daughter of Indian immigrants to the UK, the 46-year-old former Cabinet minister had been tipped as a potential successor to May, whose personal authority was shattered following the general election in June which robbed the Tories of a parliamentary majority.

The UK has not officially recognized a Palestinian state. That is why there is a Palestinian Representative Office in London as opposed to an embassy. It’s website address is “palestinianmissionuk.com.” Manuel Hassassian may proclaim himself an ambassador on the Representative Office’s website but according to diplomatic protocol, his official title is “Representative” or “Head of Mission” rather than “Ambassador.”

The Palestinians do have embassies in numerous countries that have recognized Palestinian statehood, predominantly in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.

The UK is not one of those countries however.

These media outlets have effectively bestowed statehood on the Palestinians even though they do not enjoy that status in the UK. Aside from being prejudicial, it is simply factually incorrect.

Following complaints from HonestReporting, the Daily Telegraph amended its text to refer to “envoy.” The Times removed the entire paragraph from its story. Yet, in a follow-up story, The Times instead referred to the “Palestinian representative to the UK” having clearly amended its lexicon.

Thank you #PritiPatel for suspending UK funds to Palestinians who tried to murder me. @patel4witham Deeply sorry + outraged to see you go. pic.twitter.com/E8sZi1kl1z

— (((Kay Wilson))) (@kishkushkay) November 9, 2017

The current Israeli government “has lost its way,” UK Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry said Thursday, citing the ongoing “occupation” and the “misery” of the Palestinians.

In an exclusive interview with The Times of Israel, the woman who hopes to become Britain’s next top diplomat explained in great detail why she would unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state soon after coming into office, why she thinks Israel is not a model for other countries in the region to emulate, and why she won’t buy products from West Bank settlements.

Thornberry, currently on a four-day tour to Israel and the Palestinian territories, also discussed the scandal that led to the resignation Wednesday of a UK minister over undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials, her position on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), and anti-Semitism charges against her Labour Party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn.

“We’re critical of the Israeli government. We’re very critical of the Israeli government. Jeremy would be extremely critical of the Israeli government. But guess what? A lot of Israelis are pretty critical of the Israeli government, too,” Thornberry said. “This is part of being friends. We can tell each other the truth. We think the Israeli government has lost its way.”

While acknowledging that Israel is the Middle East’s only open-minded Western democracy, it is not model for its neighbors, she said firmly.

Meet Azad Ali, formerly a director of MEND and now the group’s Head of Community Engagement. Ali denied the Westminster Bridge attack was an act of terror, calling it a “lone wolf” event. He has written of his “love” of Al-Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki (a terrorist connected to a string of plots and attacks including 9/11, the Fort Hood shooting, the underwear bomb plot). He was suspended from his civil service job at the Treasury after he attempted to justify the murder of British troops. He has also admitted attending speeches by Al-Qaeda hate preacher Abu Qatada (spiritual guide to 9/11 hijack leader Mohamed Atta). Quite a CV, and the sort of person you’d think a party leader would run a mile from…

But check out this speech Ali gave in praise of Jeremy Corbyn just this summer. Ali hints that Corbyn’s own views are more extreme than the Labour leader owns up to in public:

“I actually applaud Jeremy Corbyn for giving a break to the Muslim community, you know he took a lot of the blame and flack. You know when he got called a ‘terrorist sympathiser’ and all of this kind of stuff I was thinking, you know, I’ve known Jeremy from before he became leader and I was thinking you know what, wait until they find other things about him.

“And they tried to smear him day in, day out… but not only that, recently after Manchester, what did he say? ‘We need to talk about foreign policy’. So the opening is there for us.”

It was an impressive event, and mostly different. Five Israeli Arabs a Christian, a Muslim, a Bedouin, a Druze and an east Jerusalem resident spoke at an Orthodox liberal synagogue in central Manhattan. We don’t live in an apartheid state, they explained, each in his own way, to the large crowd that attended the event.

It was an opinion-shaping experience since most of those who went there are used to hearing the opposite. Representatives of the pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel groups, from Israel too, are regular guests on campuses and at community centers.

The event, which was organized by Reservists on Duty (an Israeli NGO acting against the BDS campaign), went as planned. The last speaker was Bassam Eid, a former researcher for the left-wing organization B’Tselem. Suddenly, someone emerged from the back, screaming something unclear, and was removed from the room after a two-minute disturbance. It turned out he was a student from the territories studying in the United States. He came to sabotage the event.

Several minutes later, the question and answer session began. “You’re standing here and telling us that Israel is wonderful. So why did Israeli soldiers kill a 12-year-old boy?” someone asked. A group of five anti-Israel activists had apparently infiltrated the auditorium. They weren’t kicked out, and the host courteously promised them an answer.

One of the delegation members tried to reply. It didn’t work. The man who asked the question kept shouting and disrupting him, and the others joined in, cursing in Arabic. There were even swear words like “sharmuta” (a whore in Arabic), and one of the rioters added anti-Semitic chants.

They were not interested in a dialogue. They were not interested in answers. They wanted to sabotage the event. This time they failed. Several minutes into the commotion, they were removed from the auditorium with the help of the New York police.

Most recently, in 2017, Amnesty-USA hired Raed Jarrar as Middle East and North Africa Advocacy Director and Allie McCracken as North American Campaigner. These two individuals exemplify the organization’s troubling ideological approach to Israel and retreat from the universal principles of human rights.

Before joining Amnesty, Jarrar served as Government Relations Manager for American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), one of the main NGOs in the US promoting BDS campaigns against Israel. The group also encourages Israeli youth to dodge the draft. In July 2015, Jarrar participated in the AFSC conference titled “Acting in Faith with AFSC” where he spoke about supporting boycotts and divestment. On July 29, 2015, Jarrar spoke at a Congressional briefing “Gaza One Year Later: The Quest for Accountability,” to “examine Israel’s misuse of US-supplied weapons in Gaza and call on lawmakers to hold Israel accountable for its violations of US and international law.” The briefing featured speakers from US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (formerly known as US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation), Adalah, and Defense for Children International- Palestine (DCI-P).

On September 9, 2011, Jarrar tweeted a cartoon celebrating the attacks on the Israeli embassy in Egypt, a fundamental violation of international law.

In July 2014, Jarrar promoted a petition to “Charge Benjamin Netanyahu and the apartheid state of Israel for War Crimes against Humanity,” which referred to the 2014 Gaza war as a “genocide by Israel.”

In May of 1972, Pink Floyd filed in to Abbey Road studios to record what would eventually become their greatest masterpiece, “Dark Side of the Moon.” Still reeling from the loss of its visionary leader, Syd Barrett, and turning a profit for the first time since its founding seven years earlier, the band needed a hit. So did the producer assigned by the studio to oversee the recording: 24 years old at the time, Alan Parsons had served as an engineer on a number of big recordings, including some with the Beatles, but hadn’t yet done any work on his own.

“Dark Side of the Moon” was as much his big break as it was the band’s. Roger Waters, Pink Floyd’s vocalist, would reportedly interrupt the studio sessions regularly to go watch his beloved Arsenal play football, leaving Parsons to dream up much of the psychedelic soundscape millions of college kids have pondered while stoned. Parsons is the one who put in those nightmarish chiming clocks in the beginning of “Time,” as well as the one who found and recruited the singer Clare Torry, who made “The Great Gig in the Sky” the mind-melting track it is. Parsons and Waters remained friends after the album was released and the producer went on to become a rock star in his own right. But now they’re not speaking, and BDS is to blame.

Waters “did appeal to me to join his appeal for the cultural boycott, but I completely ignored it,” Parsons, who is touring Israel at the moment, told a local TV interviewer. “I have no reason I should not come to Israel. I wanted to come to Israel. I ignored his appeal. And now, he added, “we’re no longer in touch.”

Hundreds of Jewish students and campus leaders have voiced their objections to an upcoming event at University College London (UCL) with two controversial speakers — one with a history of making antisemitic remarks and another with ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Miko Peled, an Israeli-American activist who was disinvited from speaking at Princeton University in 2016 after tweeting that “Jews have reputation 4being sleazy thieves,” is scheduled to speak at UCL on Friday. He will be joined by Azzam Tamimi, a British-Palestinian academic who said at Queen Mary’s University in 2012, “I have a great honor to be close to Hamas.”

The planned event — organized by the school’s Friends of Palestine Society — drew strong objections from the Jewish community, with more than 200 students signing a letter sent to UCL’s provost and vice provost by current and former heads of the school’s Jewish Society and Friends of Israel Society on Monday.

“It is simply unacceptable that a man who has voiced antisemitic views — and an academic associated with terrorism directed against Jewish people — are allowed to speak, completely unchallenged by Jewish students,” the students noted.

They cautioned that the event may have been “purposefully arranged” to take place “on a Friday night — the Jewish Sabbath — in order to deprive the vast majority of Jewish students of the opportunity to challenge hatred likely directed against them.”

A federal judge said Wednesday he will dismiss a complaint alleging San Francisco State University (SFSU) has a longstanding, systemic culture of anti-Semitism, but attorneys for the plaintiffs have promised to amend and refile.

U.S. District Court Judge William H. Orrick said the scope of the lawsuit, brought by a group of SFSU students and members of the local Jewish community, was overly broad.

Amanda Berman, co-counsel for the plaintiffs and director of legal affairs at the Lawfare Project, a non-profit pro-Israel legal think tank, said Orrick directed the team to "pare down complaint and deliver something simple and concise."

Orrick said the complaint as it stands does not "allege specific intent to discriminate."

The plaintiffs have alleged that SFSU has violated the U.S. Civil Rights Act and the First Amendment right to free speech, citing incidents that have taken place since the 1990s.

A left-leaning Canadian campus group admitted to using anti-Semitic attacks to remove a Jewish student from his student government position.

Noah Lew, a Jewish student at McGill University in Montreal, was re-nominated for a position on the Students’ Society of McGill University, or SSMU. But the college’s General Assembly rejected him after he was the target of a nasty, anti-Semitic smear campaign. The controversial vote was carried out without discussion.

“(About) 160 people voted no to a director only because he was Jewish,” the GA president said, “and the discontent seems to be coming from one issue that is political and has nothing to do with work performance.”

McGill has been criticized for anti-Semitism after BDS, the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, formed on campus. An off-shoot of that movement, Democratize SSMU, has admitted highlighting Lew’s Jewish identity to urge students to oppose him. The group claimed he was “actively harming Palestinian students” by letting his politics interfere with his leadership duties.

Two University of Illinois students will be charged with a felony for vandalizing the menorah in front of the Urbana-Champaign school’s Chabad Center for Jewish Life.

Jacob Bassler and Nicholas Gustafson, both 18, turned themselves in to university police, the local Fox News affiliate reported.

Security cameras caught two people pushing a shopping cart walking by the Chabad center on the southern Illinois campus on October 28 trying to move the entire 9-foot menorah, then breaking off a branch and walking off with it. The broken branch was later returned but was not able to be repaired.

Campus police spokesman Patrick Wade told the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette that the students were cited on a felony criminal charge of damage to property because it took place at a house of worship. He said that alcohol played a role in the crime, and it did not appear to be motivated by anti-Semitism. The teens also were cited for allegedly stealing the shopping cart from a local grocery store.

The university’s Chabad director, Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel, said the center is working with an architect to design a steel menorah that hopefully will be up by Hanukkah in December.

Anti-Israel activists at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor recently launched a campaign to convince the school to divest from Israel — a proposal the student body has rejected 10 times since 2002.

Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) announced last week that it was beginning “the 2017 #UMDivest campaign,” which calls for the university’s Central Student Government (CSG) “to divest from companies that profit from Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights.”

The companies — according to a SAFE petition that accuses Israel of implementing an “apartheid system” — include “Boeing, HP, United Technologies, G4S, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Co, Exxon Mobil, BAE Systems, Dexia, and Toyota.”

The group quickly began promoting their campaign on campus, including erecting a “separation wall” last Wednesday that featured maps showing purported Palestinian land loss since 1946. The maps — widely shared by anti-Israel activists — have been frequently criticized for containing multiple inaccuracies.

Members of SAFE and a large crowd of their supporters also convened on Tuesday to rally in favor of divestment, where they were met with a number of counter-protesters.

This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman hear from Stan Goodenough, a Christian advocate living and working in Israel who attended the Beersheba commemorative festivities last week, and then hear from acclaimed author, playwright and film producer Tuvia Tenenbom who is visiting Australia shortly.

The guys have a fascinating interview with British political commentator Jamie Palmer on why the Left hates Israel and catch up with Isi Leibler in Jerusalem as usual.

2 min Editorial: Balfour Declaration
8 min Stan Goodenough at Beersheba festivities
26 min Tuvia Tenenbom, author, film producer and commentator
51 min Jamie Palmer, political commentator on why the Left hates Israel
1 hr 30 Isi Leibler in Jerusalem

German police have launched an investigation into the theft of at least 12 inscribed metal memorial stones embedded in the pavement in Berlin to commemorate Nazi victims.

The stones, called "Stolpersteine" ("Stumbling Blocks"), bear the names of the victims and are set in the ground in front of the last address where they lived before being murdered or detained by the wartime regime.

"It's upsetting and it hurts," Cologne artist Günter Demnig said on Tuesday, the day after the thefts were made public.

Demnig claimed some 600 stones had been stolen out of the total 63,000 laid across Europe since he launched the project in 1996.

Police said it was not clear who was behind the thefts, though a local politician blamed members of the far-right linking the action to the approaching anniversary of the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom of Jews in Germany and Austria.

A similar theft in the eastern city of Greifswald four years ago also took place on the eve of the anniversary of the attacks when government-backed mobs looted Jewish property, set fires and killed dozens of Jews.

Prominent Dutch Jews spoke out against what they called a new trend involving hosting activists against Israel at commemorations for the Kristallnacht pogroms of 1938.

The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, which is the Netherlands’ main watchdog on anti-Semitism, spoke out against the trend earlier this week ahead of the Nov. 9 anniversary of the pogroms in Germany and Austria, which many historians view as the opening shot of the Nazi campaign of violence against the Jews during the Holocaust.

CIDI, whose then-director in 2000 represented Dutch Jews in negotiations for Holocaust restitution, said it was “concerned over the trend in which anti-Israel individuals receive a podium at Holocaust-related commemorations,” according to the CIP website.

The statement followed the invitation to one commemoration of Dries van Agt, a pro-Palestinian Authority former prime minister of the Netherlands who recently said that the Jews “should have been given a piece of land” in Germany instead of in the historic Land of Israel, and the hosting at another of Anne Dekker, an activist who promotes the boycott of Israel and who said that neither Israel nor CIDI legitimately represent Jews.

Van Agt — who has been fighting accusations of anti-Semitism since he declared in 1972 that he “is only an Aryan” in connection to his efforts to free Nazi war criminals – will speak at the main event organized by the Committee for the Commemoration of Kristallnacht, an NGO, at a theater in Amsterdam.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has protested the naming of a school in Bosnia for a Muslim Nazi collaborator who incited anti-Semitic hatred during the Holocaust before he was executed.

The Mustafa Busuladzic Elementary School in Sarajevo dismissed the criticism over its August name change, saying that Israel “has no right to give moral lessons to others” because of the building of Jewish settlements, according to an article that appeared last month in the Klix news site.

Busuladzic, a philosopher and educator, wrote in favor of “fighting the Jews” and their “spirit” in 1943, when thousands of Balkan Jews in what is now Bosnia and beyond were being hunted down and murdered by the pro-Nazi Ustase forces, which comprised Muslim Bosnians, Catholic Croats and ethnic Germans, of the Croatian puppet state.

Whereas “Jews and their deception and speculation disappeared from the marketplace” thanks to “people fighting against the Jews,” Busuladzic wrote in 1943, “in the bazaar remained Jewish spirit of speculation, imposing, charging price and usury to the extent that the corruption of certain traders, regardless of religion, eclipses that of the missing Jews.”

An Orthodox Jewish high school on Long Island, New York, was evacuated after receiving a bomb threat.

The bomb threat was faxed on Wednesday afternoon to the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway, school leaders said in a letter to the school community posted on its Facebook page. The message said that a bomb had been planted on school property.

Following protocol, the school notified police and evacuated the building, taking the students to a nearby synagogue.

4th Police Precinct’s K-9 unit inspected the building and did not find any explosive device. The building was cleared and evening activities on the campus took place as usual, according to the letter.

Police are investigating to find out who sent the letter.

Last Thursday a US House of Representatives committee advanced a bill that would enhance penalties for threats on religious institutions, sparked by a wave of threats on Jewish community centers and other Jewish institutions earlier this year.

The Deutsche Bundesbank, Germany’s post-war central bank, has announced plans to research the history of the national banking system, including its predecessor institutions, from 1923 to 1969, with a special focus on the Nazi years.

Historians Albrecht Ritschi of the London School of Economics and Magnus Brechtken of the Munich-based Institute for Contemporary History will lead the project, which will include examining the history of the Nazi-era Reichsbank, the post-war Bank Deutscher Lander, and the early years of the Deutsche Bundesbank, which was established in 1957.

According to a statement from the Bundesbank, there will be a special focus on the Nazi years, bank leadership, and policies in occupied countries. Researchers plan to explore the bank’s possible impact on war strategy, as well as the influence of a succession of bank leaders on the political systems from the Weimar Republic to the post-war division of Germany.

Ritschi told the global edition of the Handelsblatt newspaper that “some unpleasant questions were not asked” in past historical analyses of the Bundesbank. As a recent case in point, he noted that a volume commemorating the bank’s 60th anniversary included only three pages about the Nazi era.

A non-Jewish German teenager from Dresden has been honored by the Jewish community for standing up to neo-Nazis at her school.

The 15-year-old, known as Emilia S., received the Prize for Civic Courage against Right-wing Radicalism, Anti-Semitism and Racism on Tuesday from the Jewish community of Berlin and the Association for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

She was recognized for her response to an apparent trend in her school in Dresden, a city in the former East Germany: Classmates had started giving each other points for repeating neo-Nazi slogans when their cellphones were charged up to 88 percent. In far-right circles, the number 88 stands for “Heil Hitler,” since “H” is the eighth letter in the alphabet.

According to the DPA news agency, the game started with code words such as saying “Heilung” (“to your health”) if someone sneezed. Participants would get more points for saying “Heil Hitler” or showing the Hitler greeting with raised arm and flattened palm. Both are illegal in Germany.

They then started including the word for Jew (“Jude”) as an insult to other students and making Holocaust jokes.

Emilia reported the activity to police and filed charges against one classmate for incitement to hate. The police have visited the school, and the boy in question is no longer in Emilia’s class, according to news reports.

We don’t know the name of the client, but it’s a big win anyway.

Gilat Satellite Networks of Petah Tikva has been awarded a contract to deliver and operate satellite-based LTE backhaul for a major telecommunications service provider in Latin America. The goal is to deliver broadband Internet connection to multiple locations across the country.

In telecom lingo, “backhaul” refers to the intermediate links between the core (or backbone) network, and the small subnetworks on the edges of the entire network. Backhaul often refers to the side of the network that communicates with the global Internet.

Satellite backhaul helps mobile network operators connect rural, mountainous and hard-to-serve areas where building a land-based network of towers and cables would cost too much.

The project includes Gilat’s technology and services as well as management via Gilat’s global Network Operation Center.

After staging a sassy performance in Tel Aviv for his Israeli fans on Tuesday night, Boy George on Wednesday pushed back against online criticism by Israel boycott activists, rejecting comparisons between the Jewish state and South Africa in the apartheid era.

“So George are you saying you would have played South Africa during apartheid??” a Twitter user with the handle Graham Booth asked the 80’s musical icon.

“I could have an[d] I didn’t. Could have earned well from such a gig. Israel is in my heart. Completely different equation,” replied the Culture Club frontman.

“I play for my fans, not politicians. I have never looked at any political figure and thought ‘yeah, you speak for me.’ The flow of positive energy is the key!” the singer wrote in response to another user addressing his Israel performance.

In a surprise visit, Hollywood star and rapper Will Smith on Thursday arrived in Jerusalem, where he toured the Old City and prayed at the Western Wall.

“I’m chilling at the Western Wall,” Smith said, adding that he was “honored to be here” and calling the holy site a “very spiritual, very powerful place.”

Smith, the star of the television series “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and films such as “Men in Black,” apparently popped over from neighboring Jordan where he is filming a remake of the Disney classic “Aladdin.”

He was accompanied by several of the cast members and also visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Will Smith is visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem: "I feel really honored to be here" pic.twitter.com/yR2aQAwRij

— Pplus פנאי פלוס (@PPlus_co_il) November 9, 2017

While we work to challenge ill-informed criticism of Israel and Zionism on our campuses, we believe that such criticisms can and must be treated as constitutionally-protected free speech – not banned and suppressed by an act of Congress.

Anti-Semitism is a real and serious problem on some of our college campuses and in communities across our country. Yet applying the label of “anti-Semite” to all those who oppose the existence of the State of Israel is unfair and unhelpful overreach that ignores the nuances and sensitivities of a complicated political debate.

By positioning supporters of Israel as enemies of free speech, it would in fact only strengthen and empower anti-Israel voices on our campuses.

Within the boundaries of the Holy Land, there are just over 6 million Jews and 6 million Palestinians. The Palestinian birth rate is almost three times that of Israeli Jews. If anything, the Jewish population is starting to fall as an increasing number of Jews decide that Israel has no future for them and emigrate.

Perhaps we are witnessing the death of Israel by a thousand cuts, the friction of conflict and the attrition of population.
Maybe, after all, the rabbis of Vienna who were sent in 1897 on a fact-finding mission to Palestine to investigate whether it was a suitable place for Jewish settlement were right. They reported back that the “bride was beautiful but married to another man”.

A few can see it coming, and among the few is the former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
In an interview he said: “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.”
For the Zionists this would be a terrible end. But need it be for rank and file Jews who just want to bring up their families and live in an atmosphere emptied of violence?
But, unmistakeably, this is the direction events and demographics are moving.
Probably the best thing that outsiders can now do for Israel is to stop trying to help organise the creation of two states and let the Israelis themselves look the Palestinians in the eyes as the demographics bite.If the white South Africans can do it, so can the Israelis.
If this became the solution, the Israelis would find that the only thing most Palestinians would now want is a prosperous, capitalist economy and to live in peace with their neighbours.

The Jews would not be driven into the sea. But those who want to return to Europe, America or even Russia would be more than welcome.
Both Germany and Russia, the great centres of anti-Semitism in the past, have seemed to have flushed that horror away and treat their Jews well.

Anyone not knowing the history of the Israeli/Arab conflict might conclude that the Arabs won all of the wars in which they fought, and could therefore dictate the terms of the peace.
Dr. Alex Grobman, Alice in Wonderland

...For a war to be won it is not enough for one side to claim victory, although that is essential. It is also necessary for one side to admit defeat. The problem in the case of the Arab-Israeli wars, however, was that the side that had won every time was not allowed to claim victory while the side that had lost was prevented from admitting defeat.

This was a novel situation in history, throughout which the victor and the vanquished had always acknowledged their respective positions and moved beyond it in accordance with a peace imposed by the victor.

In the Israeli-Arab case this had not been done because each time the UN had intervened to put the victor and the vanquished on an equal basis and lock them into a problematic situation in the name of a mythical quest for an impossible peace.

...In every case the winner wins the land and gives the loser peace. In every case the peace that is imposed is unjust to the loser and just to the winner.

the key concept of my approach, which is victory, or imposing one’s will on the enemy, compelling him through loss to give up his war ambitions. Wars end, the historical record shows, not through goodwill but through defeat. He who does not win loses. Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted the will to fight. Conversely, so long as both combatants still hope to achieve their war objectives, fighting either goes on or it potentially will resume.

• When Palestinian “martyrs” cause material damage, pay for repairs out of the roughly $300 million in tax obligations the government of Israel transfers to the Palestinian Authority (PA) each year.
• Respond to activities designed to isolate and weaken Israel internationally by limiting access to the West Bank.
• When a Palestinian attacker is killed, bury the body quietly and anonymously in a potter’s field.
• When the PA leadership incites violence, prevent officials from returning to the PA from abroad.
• Respond to the murder of Israelis by expanding Jewish towns on the West Bank.
• When official PA guns are turned against Israelis, seize these and prohibit new ones, and if this happens repeatedly, dismantle the PA’s security infrastructure.
• Should violence continue, reduce and then shut off the water and electricity that Israel supplies.
• In the case of gunfire, mortar shelling, and rockets, occupy and control the areas from which these originate.

Reps. Ron DeSantis and Bill Johnson. From the Press Release

Reps. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Bill Johnson (R-OH) will launch the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus (CIVC) on April 27 at 9 a.m. The caucus' goal: to introduce a new U.S. approach to Israel-Palestinian relations.

Cong. Johnson notes that "Israel is America's closest ally in the Middle East, and the community of nations must accept that Israel has a right to exist – period. This is not negotiable now, nor ever. The Congressional Israel Victory Caucus aims to focus on this precept, and to better inform our colleagues in Congress about daily life in Israel and the present-day conflict. I look forward to co-chairing this very important caucus with Cong. DeSantis."

That means supporting Israel’s taking the tough steps outlined above, from burying murderers’ bodies anonymously to shuttering the Palestinian Authority. It means diplomatic support for Israel, such as undoing the “Palestine refugee” farce and rejecting the claim of Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. It also entails ending benefits to the Palestinians unless they work toward the full and permanent acceptance of Israel: no diplomacy, no recognition as a state, no financial aid, and certainly no weapons, much less militia training.

this change won’t be easy or quick: Palestinians will have to pass through the bitter crucible of defeat, with all its deprivation, destruction, and despair as they repudiate the filthy legacy of Amin al-Husseini and acknowledge their century-long error. But there is no shortcut.

Pipes concisely sums up the principal point of disagreement between us: “Sherman and I directly disagree on only one point — Israel accepting the possibility of a Palestinian state.” He goes on to speculate that “the allure of a state after the conflict ends offers benefits to both sides. Israelis will be free of ruling unwanted subjects. Palestinians have a reason to behave.”

Take a quick look at this photograph. I have emphasised the medic in Magen David Adom (Israel’s Red Cross) uniform and the Israeli license and star of David on the Israeli ambulance to make my point.

Which headline do you think best illustrates what you see?

A. Israeli settler runs over a Palestinian child north of Salfit
–OR–
B. Israeli and Palestinian ambulance crews cooperate at traffic accident

In a reverse image search for a better resolution image I discovered this same image had appeared three different times in 2017. The first that I located, and presumably the original was published in January of this year. Then it was reused for different stories in July and then again in November.

In January, the Palestinian Information Center†, named the victim of what they called a hit-and-run attack as Emad Souf, 55, from Salfit. He was described as seriously injured and transferred to an Israeli hospital.

Also in January, Iranian PRESSTV (citing Palestine al-Yawm news agency) reported injuries to an unidentified 40-year-old Palestinian man south of the city of Hebron (al-Khalil), itself south of Jerusalem. In this case the receiving hospital was Rabin Medical Center in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva.

In July, an Internet publication named Ramallah Mix reported that a young man was killed near the town of Khader, south of Bethlehem. He was identified as Omar Ahmed Abu Ghalioun, 37. Eyewitnesses identified a settler car (not clear how a settler car differs from a car on the politically correct side of the Green Line) and identified the hospital as Shari Tzdiq (Shaare Zedek ed.) in Jerusalem. Somewhat ironically, the Internet being what it is, an ad for Magen David Adom in Israel featured above the automatically translated text.

Morocco has refused entry visas to Israel’s national judo team ahead of the Nov. 11 World Championships Open in Marrakech.

The visa ban comes on the heels of similar problems that arose prior to the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam judo tournament in October, when the host nation — the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — banned the Israeli flag and national anthem at the competition. Israeli judoka Tal Flicker, who won a gold medal at the tournament, sang the Israeli anthem, “Hatikvah,” to himself on the podium.

Additionally, UAE athlete Rashad Almashjari refused to shake hands with Israeli competitor Tohar Butbul’s after losing to him in the tournament’s first round.

The International Judo Federation sent a letter to the president of the UAE Judo Federation 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.”

On Wednesday, British International Development Secretary Priti Patel resigned after being targeted by an anti-Israel witch hunt.

Ms. Patel came under fire after it emerged that she held a number of meetings with Israeli officials in August and September, without informing other U.K. government officials. Still, there is no indication of any particularly serious error of judgement, such as Israel espionage involvement. I think the real reason Patel resigned is that she recognized the forces arrayed against her wouldn't rest until she fell.

The first culprit is Patel's own Department for International Development. Officials at DFID leaked Patel's query to them earlier this summer over whether the British government could sponsor an Israeli aid project in the Golan Heights. One official told the BBC that even Patel's query was in and of itself "inappropriate."

Of course, it didn't matter that the aid project in question is specifically designed to save Syrian refugees, only that DFID officials hate the idea of supporting Israel in any way. Because the U.K. regards the Golan Heights as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory, DFID officials were especially furious at Patel's conduct.

The second challenge came from the Labour Party opposition. Their fury here was inherently unsurprising but had nothing to do with Patel's breach of the ministerial code. Rather, led by avowed Israel hater, Jeremy "collective" Corbyn (who describes Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah as "my friends"), Labour embraces any opportunity to distance Britain from Israel. Lamenting the Balfour declaration's 100th anniversary, Labour smelled blood in the water.

Nevertheless, Patel should not have resigned.

What would you say if a senior member of your government — responsible for dispensing your country’s substantial international aid budget — went on a private vacation to a foreign country, and discussed the possibility of sending some of those funds to a foreign military?

You’d probably be quite concerned.

And what if that foreign military was one that was consistently portrayed in the media as a brutal occupier of someone else’s land, and responsible for the deaths of thousands of men, women and children?

Wouldn’t you be outraged?

That’s the reaction that too many British media outlets stoked when reporting on a developing political controversy involving Priti Patel, the UK’s Secretary of State for International Development.

This was The Guardian’s headline:
“UK international development secretary wanted to send aid money to Israeli army, No 10 confirms”

Writing in The Independent, columnist Matthew Norman summed up those feelings:
“…she suddenly advocated giving foreign aid to — wait for it, wait for it; it’s worth the wait — the Israeli army.

Nowhere did Norman bother to mention what the foreign aid to Israel was actually for; and it was only in the sixth paragraph that Guardian readers learned that any proposed aid money would have gone to the IDF’s incredible field hospital on the Golan Heights, which is treating thousands of injured Syrians.

Jerusalem is the only world capital whose status is denied recognition by the United States. The U.S. embassy's location outside of Jerusalem undermines U.S. foreign policy and helps isolate Israel. Moreover, delaying the embassy's move to Jerusalem rewards threats of violence and allows U.S. policy to be held hostage by terrorists and aspiring terrorists.

The U.S. embassy was never established in Jerusalem because the U.S., upon Israel's creation, refused to recognize any part of the city as under Israeli sovereignty. This was originally due to the UN General Assembly's 1947 proposal, in Resolution 181, to have the greater Jerusalem area become an internationalized city under no sovereignty. The General Assembly's proposal had no legal force and was unworkable, and was in any case completely rejected by the Arab states, who opposed a Jewish state within any borders.

The borders of the proposed international city included significant parts of Bethlehem, so as to incorporate Christian holy sites. Yet the U.S. treats Bethlehem as part of the territory administered by the Palestinian Authority, instead of treating it as a unique entity. The insistence on maintaining the policy legacy of a hypothetical international city when it comes to Israel but not the Palestinians locks in a deeply anti-Israel bias in America's regional diplomacy.

The central argument against moving the embassy is that it would lead to violence, and in particular to attacks against American targets. Invoking hypothetical threats as a reason for distorting U.S. foreign policy towards a key ally is deeply inconsistent with U.S. foreign policy. U.S. embassies in the Middle East routinely face concrete and specific threats. Indeed, in 1998, Islamic terrorists blew up the U.S. embassies in Dar El Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks were said to be a response to various aspects of U.S. foreign policy. But America did not respond by rethinking those policies, or by withdrawing its embassies from those cities.

In April of this year, Russia announced that it recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Experts would have predicted that such a unilateral recognition would provoke anger and violence from at least the Palestinians. Note what happened next: No explosions of anger in the Arab world. No end to Russia's diplomatic role in the Middle East. No terror attacks against Russian targets.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said now is the time to move the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Wednesday during a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill.

The hearing featured testimony from former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, former Israel Ambassador Dore Gold, President of the Zionist Organization of America Morton Klein, professor of international law at Northwestern University Eugene Kontorovich, and the Israel Policy Forum’s policy director Michael J. Koplow.

“This is the right time to do this thing,” Jordan told the panel. “And that’s why the president recognized the campaign on it and one of the reasons the American people elected him. So let’s just get it done. Let’s just get it done,” Jordan said to applause. “I’m entirely persuaded,” Bolton said in response.

“It is the right thing to do,” Jordan said.

Earlier in his commentary, Jordan noted that America was the first country to recognize Israel’s independence under President Harry Truman and blasted the fact that the United States has embassies in the capital, or seat in the government, of every country it recognizes in the world, except for Israel.

Bolton concurred and noted: “I looked this up but to be sure for many years our embassy in Belize was in Belize City, even though the capitol was in Belmopan, but I see 10 years ago we finally moved our embassy. So we may be down to Israel alone.”

Israel plans to ask the United Nations to strictly enforce the 2006 ceasefire agreement that ended the Second Lebanon war as part of its diplomatic offensive against Iran and its proxy group Hezbollah.

"In recent years, the organization [Hezbollah] has expanded its activity in Lebanese territory in a systematic violation of UN resolutions,” Intelligence Minister Israel Katz (Likud) said in an interview he gave to the Associated Press. His office then distributed those comments to the Israeli press on Friday morning.

Katz spoke in advance of a trip to the United States he plans to take in a few weeks, where he will meet with UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

He plans to discuss with him UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. It calls for the disarmament of armed groups in Lebanon such as Hezbollah and for the Lebanese government to control its country. It also demands that the UN Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) be the only armed force south of Lebanon’s Litani River.

But in the past 11 years, Hezbollah has strengthened its control over the country and, according to Israel, has placed weapons along its border.

A new war with Iran's proxy army, Hezbollah, now seems to be just a matter of time, and not much time at that.

How did we get here? The root of this now necessary conflict can be traced back to actions by former U.S. President Barack Obama. When Obama backed down from the red line he drew himself and failed to aggressively respond to Syrian President Bashar Assad's use of chemical weapons, he set things into motion.

Obama's blunder, for which the Republican Congress shares significant blame, was bad enough. But to make matters worse, the Obama administration then appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to fix the problem. This shifted the balance of power in Syria and Lebanon decisively in favor of the Shiite-Alawite axis, controlled by Iran and supported by Russia.

The signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – also known as the Iran nuclear deal – was the icing on the cake.

If the Israeli government does conclude that it now has no choice but to engage in war to keep Iran and its allies from reaching our borders, it can take comfort in the knowledge that none of Israel’s Arab neighbors pose an existential threat to its existence. In fact, most of Israel's Sunni Arab neighbors now see the Jewish state as an ally and are willing to work together to stop Iran. The Sunni Arab nations know that it is Israel that is stopping the Shiite fanatics in Iran from attacking, conquering and colonizing the heart of the Arab world.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Friday accused Saudi Arabia of asking his archenemy Israel to launch strikes on Lebanon amid ongoing tension between Riyadh and Tehran.

“The most dangerous thing is inciting Israel to strike Lebanon,” the head of Lebanese Shiite terror group said in a televised address. “I’m talking about information that Saudi Arabia has asked Israel to strike Lebanon.”

But Nasrallah said that war with Israel was unlikely. He said that Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy which seeks to destroy Israel, was watching carefully for any Israeli attempts to use the crisis, that began with the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri last week, to initiate hostilities against Lebanon.

Israel has stressed that it does not seek war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, but has acted repeatedly to prevent advanced weapons reaching the Iran-inspired group, which has become the most powerful military force in Lebanon.

Nasrallah’s comments were aimed at calming an apparently jittery population following Saudi Arabia’s escalation against Hezbollah’s patron Iran. The resignation of Hariri was seen as a move by Riyadh to engage in another proxy war with Iran, this time in Lebanon.

Hariri was in Saudi Arabia when he delivered his resignation address.

The "purge" by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) of numerous members of the royal family, as well as current and former ministers and prominent businessmen, on charges of corruption is not about removing political rivals who threatened his position, but rather about sending a message to political and economic elites that their entitlement to extreme wealth and privilege, and their impunity, is coming to an end. With the exception of Minister of the National Guard Prince Mutaib bin Abdallah, the detainee list is made up entirely of individuals who had no capacity to challenge MBS' succession. Nor did Prince Mutaib, despite leading the national guard, pose a political threat to the Crown Prince.

Given the relatively young age of the new Crown Prince, his appointment last June naturally alienated many of MBS' older cousins, and even some uncles, who suddenly found themselves politically marginalized. But alienation does not mean that these princes possess the power to threaten the throne or to determine the succession. No royal maintains an independent constituency among the population at large that they can galvanize against the monarchy.

King Salman and MBS have chosen to go the populist route by appealing to the Saudi public, and specifically to the youth, rather than seeking to placate the many "losers" by lavishing them with money (a tactic widely used in the past that was highly unpopular with the Saudi public and that has become increasingly unaffordable). Now there will be no paying-off of discontented princes in exchange for their loyalty and acquiescence.

The egregious violation of freedom of the press in Turkey has reached a mammoth proportion that places Turkey among the most oppressive nations for journalists. It is sadder that the US and the EU, who champion a free press as one of the main pillars of democracy, have largely left Turkey’s President Erdogan free to crush not only the press, but also freedom of speech and peaceful demonstrations.

The irony here is that Turkey, as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), has violated every provision of NATO’s founding treaty regarding human rights. Indeed, each member state is required to fully adhere to “…safeguard[ing] the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.” To be sure, Erdogan has given himself license to mock these principles without any noteworthy rebuke from other NATO members.

It is time to consider kicking Turkey out of NATO, regardless of how difficult and complicated this far-reaching measure may be.

Turkey has long since forsaken Western values while becoming an increasingly zealous Islamic state. Indeed, contrary to Erdogan’s manipulative narrative about Turkey’s presumed democracy, the country under his watch is governed by an authoritarian regime that has no place among Western democracies.

The violation of a free press and the systematic undermining of human rights demands that the West re-evaluate its relationship with Turkey and stop searching for excuses to justify its self-conceit about Erdogan’s outrageous behavior. Here is a dossier of Erdogan’s gross violations of freedom of the press and his suppression of democratic values:

Senior legal officials have revealed to Israel Hayom the names of some of the organizations Israel is likely to sue for damages once an anti-boycott law goes into effect.

The anti-boycott law, officially known as the Prevention of Damage to the State of Israel through Boycott Law, allows the finance minister to impose civil sanctions on entities that promote or take part in an economic, cultural or academic boycott against an institution or person under Israeli control because of their "affiliation with Israel." The minister may deny certain tax benefits from such an organization regardless of whether it takes an active role or simply pledges to take part in such activity.

Without proof of damages, a person or organization that encourages the boycott of Israel could be sued for 100,000 shekels (around $28,000) and if proven to have caused tangible damage, 500,000 shekels (around $142,000).

The law will only affect organizations that actively encourage the boycott of Israel or its institutions and will not be applied retroactively, so organizations that cease to act against Israel once the law has gone into effect will not be affected.

According to Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, the law allows Israel to "act more effectively against boycott organizations and activists. The BDS organizations will learn that the rules have changed, and there is a price to pay for harming Israel and its citizens. … We are already witness to a shift in global trends, with many leaders around the world rejecting the calls to boycott Israel and advancing legislation and resolutions in their countries against boycott activities or the delegitimization of Israel."

A small olive oil business based in northern Israel has become one of the latest targets of anti-Israel activists and has spent the past week battling efforts to discredit its produce.

The campaign against the Yavne’el-based Galilee Green began on November 2, the centenary of the Balfour Declaration that paved the way for the establishment of the State of Israel.

The timing of the launch of the campaign by supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement was no coincidence – several online posts mentioned the milestone as a launchpad for their efforts to demonize the business.

Dozens of Facebook users have bombarded the Galilee Green Facebook page urging people not to buy their products, based on their claims that the products come from “stolen land” and “stolen olives” as well as far more virulent accusations.

“Ironically, we work with Kibbutz Deganya Alef,” Galilee Green president and CEO Rabbi Shmuel Veffer told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

“The land the trees are on was purchased from the Ottoman Turks before WWI and the Balfour Declaration. Our offices are in Yavne’el on land purchased by Baron Rothschild from the Turks and Yavne’el was founded in 1901. The land here and at Deganya was rocky and barren of trees.”

UNESCO member states on Friday overwhelmingly approved the nomination of France’s former culture minister Audrey Azoulay to head the embattled cultural agency.

They confirmed the nomination by the agency’s board last month of Azoulay, 45, who becomes UNESCO’s second woman director-general.

“The unity you have shown in this vote is a good omen for the coming period, in which we need to stand shoulder to shoulder,” Azoulay told the members after garnering 131 votes with only 19 opposed.

The campaign was also overshadowed by Washington’s announcement that it planned to withdraw from the Paris-based body after years of tensions, citing its “continuing anti-Israel bias.”
Danny Danon, Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, addresses the Security Council meeting on October 18, 2017. (UN Photo/Rick Bajornas)

Following the US announcement, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said UNESCO had become a forum for Israel-bashing and had forgotten its original purpose. It was now “paying the price” for the “shameful” decisions it has adopted against Israel, he said, citing “a new era” dawning at the UN in which “anti-Israel discrimination” had consequences.

Israel is also considering pulling out.

The Knesset is in the process of setting up a special task force designed to ensure that money the European Union donates to the Palestinian Authority for welfare purposes will not be funneled to terrorist elements and used against Israel, or to the families of terrorists with blood on their hands.

The project is the brainchild of Zionist Union MK Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin, a member of the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet, who received the blessing of Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein. Nahmias-Verbin brought six other MKs from various factions on board: Likud MK Amir Ohana, Yesh Atid MK Haim Jelin, Kulanu MK Merav Ben-Ari; Habayit Hayehudi MK Shuli Mualem-Rafaeli, Shas MK Yaakov Margi; and Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer.

Nahmias-Verbin told Israel Hayom that "Figures we have collected show that every month, some 4.5 million euros in EU funds are divided among those who carried out terrorist attacks against Israel and the families of terrorists. It's hard to convince Israelis – on the Right or the Left – that the Palestinians want to promote the peace process as long as donations from countries throughout the world, especially Europe, is transferred to murderers rather than benefiting the Palestinian population."

The hunger strike protesting the government's lack of financial commitment to improving the security situation in the West Bank ended Friday when Coalition member David Bitan brought a signed agreement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guaranteeing a major security investment to the protest tent across from the Prime Minister's Residence.

The protest was started by Israelis living in the West bank who have lost family members to Palestinian violence and blame poor infrastructure and a lack of security around settlements. The protest escalated to a hunger strike on Sunday

Yossi Dagan, head of the Shomron Regional Council; Avi Naim, Mayor of Beit Aryeh; and Malachi Levinger, mayor of Kiryat Arba joined the hunger strike on Sunday as well.

The new agreement guarantees NIS 800 million for infrastructure improvement in the West Bank. According to the the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff Yoav Horowitz, NIS 200 million will be used specifically to assist the settlements of Beit Aryeh and Qalandiya with basic infrastructure for security. The remaining NIS 600 million will be used to generally improve roads and by-passes throughout the West Bank.

A press release from the hunger strike council leaders stated their satisfaction with the agreement.

Thousands of Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza turned out Thursday to mark the 13th anniversary of arch-terrorist and Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat.

Arafat, who for nearly half a century represented the face of anti-Israel terror, was lauded in mass events across the Gaza Strip, marking an end to 10-year standoff between the Hamas terror group and the Fatah movement Arafat founded and which now rules the Palestinian Authority.

This year’s anniversary of Arafat’s death is the first since last month’s much-publicized rapprochement between Hamas and Fatah, with the reconciliation between the PLO and Hamas a prominent theme at many of Thursday’s events.

"We really wanted to come this year because this is the year for reconciliation between here and Gaza," one participant, Sanaa Al-Rifai told AFP at a memorial rally.

"We hope this reconciliation will be a good start and the soul of the martyr (Arafat) will be more at peace when he sees the Palestinian people more united."

An Egyptian-born civil engineer who joined paramilitary units formed by the Muslim Brotherhood to destroy the nascent state of Israel in 1948, Arafat founded the Fatah movement in 1959, organizing terror attacks on Jewish civilians and Israeli security forces prior to the 1967 Six Day War.

The heightened security alert the military had called in the southern sector following the detection and destruction of an Islamic Jihad terror tunnel under the Israel-Gaza Strip border last Monday was somewhat relaxed this week. A week following the operation, the IDF resumed work on the protective wall being built near the border and on Tuesday, farmers in the border-adjacent communities were allowed to partially resumed their work, suspended as a precaution.

Still, the IDF's operational premise remains unchanged: The terrorist group will retaliate – it is only a matter of time. Islamic Jihad suffered a massive blow, both operationally and to its image, losing a tunnel that had been dug for months as well as nine operatives, including two senior commanders. As one senior defense official put it this week, the immediate blow, together with the fact that Israel refuses to return the bodies of five terrorists who were killed when the tunnel collapsed, is a "one-two punch between the eyes."

The Israeli government decided in advance to control the force of this punch. The IDF has detailed images of the tunnel and of the bodies of the operatives killed in it. This could have fueled multiple news cycles but the government decided against it. Habayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennett may disapprove, but the political echelon's directive to the IDF, from which the military yields its operational plans, is to prevent a security escalation vis-à-vis Gaza, and everyone understood that releasing those images to the media would be highly inflammatory.

Hamas on Thursday blasted the Palestinian Authority (PA) for resuming security coordination with Israel.

On Wednesday, the head of the PA police, Hazem Atallah, confirmed that security coordination had resumed with Israel, after being partially suspended in July.

"Everyone is coordinating now. That means things returned to what they were before July 14," Atallah said. "Things are normal now."

In response, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said that the group is “surprised by the PA in the West Bank’s resumption of security coordination and cooperation with the Zionist enemy, which is the equivalent of the greatest danger to the Palestinian people, its unity and its legitimate rights including the right to resist the occupation.”

PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas froze the security coordination with Israel in July, in protest over security measures at the Temple Mount.

Pineapples are being harvested in the Gaza Strip for the first time as part of efforts to help the impoverished territory work towards food self-sufficiency.

The fruit, for domestic sale, is grown in a 1,000 square meter greenhouse in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis as part of a project sponsored by the Dutch government.

Mussa al-Jadba, an agricultural engineer who supervised the project, told AFP they had cultivated pineapples "for the first time in the temperate Gaza Strip after we have created the environment and climate for their growth."

Two hundred and fifty plants have so far reached maturity with up to 4,000 expected to bear fruit throughout this harvest.

The goal is to develop new crops to help Gazan farmers achieve self sufficiency, Jadba added.

The US should destroy virtually all of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps infrastructure as well as Iran’s nuclear facilities to reduce its terrorist and nuclear threats, former CIA director James Woolsey told The Jerusalem Post in an interview.

“The next time the IRGC looks cross-eyed at us... we should turn loose six to 12 MOAB [GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast] bombs on their facilities,” said Woolsey, who was CIA director from 1993 to 1995 during the Clinton administration. He spoke to the Post in the famous Rotunda Room of the Pierre Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

MOAB bombs, with 18,000 pounds of TNT, are the second-largest conventional weapon in the US arsenal, and the largest ever used, after one was dropped on a suspected Islamic State target in Afghanistan in April.

“Given what a source of terrorism the IRGC is... instead of talking and proportionality – the hell with proportionality. We should destroy virtually everything we can that has to do with the IRGC,” he said.

A former high-ranking government official who is an intelligence expert regarding nuclear weapons told The Daily Wire in an exclusive interview that former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal is a complete failure as Iran most likely has had nuclear weapons for over a decade.

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is the executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, both Congressional advisory boards, and served as the chief of staff on the Congressional EMP Commission, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA.

Pry called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — aka the Iran nuclear deal — a complete “joke.”

“I think Iran has already got the bomb,” Pry told The Daily Wire. “I think Iran has already got nuclear weapons mounted on missiles and has the potential to do an EMP attack against the United States right now.”

Pry explained that the U.S. has no credible verification system setup with Iran, and hostile nations have fooled the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) multiple times.

In recent days, the tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran has escalated further, as expressed by significant developments in Lebanon and Yemen, which constitute local areas of friction in the conflict between the two countries.

On November 4, 2017, Lebanese Prime Minister Sa'd Al-Hariri announced his resignation from Riyadh. At a press conference he accused Iran of seeking to destroy the Arab world and assume control of the region, and also criticized Hezbollah for causing tension between Lebanon and the other Arab states and imposing its will in Lebanon by force of arms.[1]

Later the same day, the Houthis in Yemen launched a missile at a Riyadh airfield, an incident that Saudi Arabia – which is repeatedly targeted by missiles launched by the Houthis, Iran's allies in Yemen – described as the crossing of a red line. Saudi officials accused Iran of arming the Houthis with missiles, and Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman called the firing of the missile "an act of direct military aggression on the part of the Iranian regime, tantamount to a belligerent action against Saudi Arabia." Saudi Foreign Minister 'Adel Al-Jubeir said in an interview with CNN that "the missile [fired at Riyadh] was Iranian and was launched by Hizbullah from territory occupied by the Houthis in Yemen."[2] He warned that Saudi Arabia reserved "the right to respond in the appropriate manner and at the appropriate time."[3]

The Saudi statements against Iran and the Houthis in Yemen were accompanied by practical measures: On November 5, 2017, the Arab coalition operating in Yemen under Saudi leadership announced a temporary closure on all Yemeni land, sea and air crossings. The announcement described the missile launch on Riyadh as an act of aggression, adding that Saudi Arabia had the right to use force in self-defense, in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, and that Iran's supplying of missiles to the Houthis was an act of war. Signaling a possible escalation of the fighting in Yemen, on the following day the coalition warned diplomatic missions in Yemen to remove themselves from areas not controlled by the government of Yemeni president Hadi, and also called on humanitarian missions to exit the conflict zones.[4] On November 5, Saudi Arabia offered a prize of $440 million for information leading to the capture of 40 senior Houthi officials.[5]

The day after the November 5, 2017 firing of a long-range ballistic missile from Yemen at Riyadh, the Saudi capital, the Iranian daily Kayhan, the mouthpiece of the country's ideological camp, published a front-page article containing threats that more missiles would be aimed at Saudi Arabia and the UAE by the pro-Iran Houthi militias in Yemen.[1]

Additionally, Hossein Dalirian, military correspondent of the Iranian news agency Tasnim, which is affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), tweeted in jest about the possibility of dozens of missiles being fired from Yemen at Riyadh, and of Iranian missiles being fired directly at Saudi Arabia in the event of a war between the two countries – eradicating Riyadh.

Kayhan's November 6, 2017 front page. Headline reads: "Ansar Allah [Houthi] Missile Fired At Riyadh; Next Target: Dubai"

The following is the translation of Kayhan's November 6, 2017 front-page article, and of the tweets by Tasnim military correspondent Dalirian about massive missile attacks on Riyadh by Yemen and Iran:

Iran manufactured the ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Shiite rebels toward the Saudi capital and remnants of it bore “Iranian markings,” the top US Air Force official in the Mideast said Friday, backing the kingdom’s earlier allegations.

The comments by Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, who oversees the Air Force’s Central Command in Qatar, further internationalizes the yearslong conflict in Yemen — the Arab world’s poorest country.

Saudi Arabia long has accused Iran of supplying weapons to the Shiite rebels known as Houthis and their allies, though Tehran has just as long denied supplying them.

“There have been Iranian markings on those missiles,” Harrigian told journalists at a news conference in Dubai ahead of the Dubai Air Show. “To me, that connects the dots to Iran.”

There was no immediate reaction from Tehran.

Earlier this week, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely was almost prevented from speaking at Princeton University, after left-wing Jewish students claimed her work “causes irreparable damage to the prospects of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Meekly genuflecting to this preposterous claim, Princeton Hillel, no less, abruptly canceled her invitation. The day was saved by Chabad, which provided a venue in which Hotovely could speak.

Hillel officials subsequently apologized for this disgraceful episode, adding that this was “an isolated incident.”

Well no, it isn’t. I had an identical experience earlier this year when Berkeley Hillel, which had invited me to speak, disinvited me on the grounds that they couldn’t guarantee my safety. Similarly, it was Chabad which provided a “safe house” where I could speak to Berkeley’s Jewish students.

For years now there have been problems with “open Hillel,” a student-led movement which seeks to advance groups promoting anti-Israel agendas in mainstream Jewish campus life. It’s part of the twin phenomenon whereby pro-Israel students increasingly feel threatened and intimidated, while more and more Jewish students are frighteningly ignorant of both Judaism and the Middle East and are correspondingly hostile toward Israel.

Please join me in this video clip as I describe to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the way in which the British Foreign Office misrepresented the Balfour Declaration on its centenary, and the intellectual contortions of the Palestinian Authority in its eagerness to blame Britain both for making and not making in Balfour’s famous letter the same promise to the Arabs as to the Jews.

Please join me in this video clip as I point out to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the falsehood of the claim that there was ever an ancient Palestinian national identity, and emphasise that the Jews are the only surviving indigenous people of the land of Israel.

On November 11, 1938, a front-page story appeared in The New York Times. It read: “A wave of destruction, looting, and incendiarism unparalleled in Germany since the Thirty Years War and in Europe generally since the Bolshevist Revolution swept over Great Germany today as National Socialist cohorts took vengeance on Jewish shops, offices and synagogues for the murder by a young Polish Jew of Ernst vom Rath, third secretary of the German Embassy in Paris.”

Another Times story was headlined, “All Vienna’s Synagogues Attacked.”

These stories refer to Kristallnacht, the rampant violence on November 9-10, 1938, when Nazi storm troopers throughout Germany and Austria ransacked Jewish homes; broke the windows of Jewish-owned stores and looted their merchandise; set fire to synagogues; randomly attacked Jewish men, women and children; and arrested thousands of men.

When the violence ended, at least 96 Jews were dead, 1,300 synagogues and 7,500 businesses were destroyed, and countless Jewish cemeteries and schools were vandalized. A total of 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The broken glass strewn through the streets from the mayhem led the pogrom to be called “Crystal Night”– or Kristallnacht.

The initial reaction of the White House was to refer questions to the State Department. After five days of public outrage, Franklin Roosevelt recalled the US ambassador from Germany and held a press conference in which he proclaimed: “The news of the past few days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the U.S. Such news from any part of the world would inevitably produce a similar profound reaction among American people in every part of the nation. I myself could scarcely believe that such things could happen in a 20th century civilization.”

The real truth is that Obama, Kerry and the Democratic Party team of Israel haters that includes Hillary Clinton imply want to demonize the Jewish State–the way others used to demonize the Jews.

Jew haters worked with the ADL to prevent Jews from speaking out against the anti-Semitic President of the United States. Jewish politicians walk blindly behind their party’s Anti-Israel President and damn the Jewish people with their silence just to be able to move up the political ladder will not be able to silence us either.

Jews in Congress such as Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Sander Levin (D-MI), and Adam Schiff (D-CA), forgot all about what happened on Nov. 9, 1938 and supported the American President’s legacy deal which will allow Iran to create a nuclear bomb and attack the Jewish State (and the U.S.).

Today, is the 79th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the start of the Holocaust.

We owe it to the people who died during the Holocaust to speak out while they remain silent.

May the memory of the Holocaust started 79 years ago today be a reminder of what happens when the world is silent. May there always be people to speak out against the silence.

May the memories of the victims of the Shoah always be for a blessing.

And may Americans wake up and realize that one of its political parties has become the anti-Semite party.

The Media
Of particular interest to HonestReporting is the media. Jerusalem Post reporter Seth J. Frantzman describes a journalistic “obsession” with Israel: a disproportionate focus on this one topic beyond most other topics in the world. Certainly there are some journalists who truly hate Israelis, or in some cases even Jews altogether: for example, Frantzman discusses CNN’s Diana Magnay, who referred to the Israeli victims of Hamas rockets in Sderot as “scum.” Yet there is a more insidious and subtle problem we face in the media: prevailing literature, biased reports, agenda driven narratives and even prior journalism form a basis for future journalism. Even the most well meaning journalists must learn about a topic somehow: skewed basic understandings inform not only news articles, but the basic comprehension and opinions of the journalists themselves.

The HonestReporting challenge
At HonestReporting we sometimes face off against reporters with a hateful or angry agenda. Yet we also find ourselves up against well meaning journalists who simply understand the Middle East incorrectly, due to all the reasons Ryvchin explores. Biased, misleading and sometimes outright untrue information provides the factual basis for news reports and the emotional mindset of news reporters. Of course the final step in this chain of information is the newsreader: for most people, the news is their window to the world.

All is not lost
While a reading of Ryvchin’s book might leave a reader with a reasonable sense of urgency and frustration, it should also inspire a feeling of hope. The methods of the anti-Israel agenda are well understood, and organizations like HonestReporting use this knowledge every day to counter it. We see frequent corrections and improvements in the news, just as the various contributors to Ryvchin’s book see constant progress in their own respective fields.

The Anti-Israel Agenda by Alex Ryvchin is an excellent read: whether you work in the field of professional Israel advocacy or merely wish to know more about it, it is an insightful tool, a meaningful body of knowledge, and an enjoyable learning experience. I very much recommend it.

Swedish filmmaker Bo Persson is in a battle with Sweden’s national public TV broadcaster after it refused to screen his latest documentary, Watching the Moon at Night, about antisemitism and terrorism.

The documentary began as a co-production with regional Swedish film fund Kino Koszyk HB, Film i Väst and Swedish Television (SVT), but the latter pulled out of the agreement and has refused to purchase and broadcast the film. Persson, who made the documentary together with Joanna Helander, has no doubt that the decision was made because four Israeli citizens feature in the documentary.

These include Arnold Roth, whose daughter was murdered in the 2001 terrorist attack on the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, and Dan Alon, one of the surviving Israeli athletes from the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.

The hour-and-a-half-long documentary also incorporates personal experiences of terrorism victims from Algeria, Spain, France, Moscow, Israel, the US, Colombia, Germany, Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

Filmed in six countries, it juxtaposes contemporary terrorism, antisemitism and the experiences of their victims with the analysis and views of noted experts in these fields.

The primary funder of the film was the Swedish Film Institute, and film director and screenwriter Marianne Ahrne, who approved the funding, has spoken out against SVT’s decision not to screen it.

“I approved the funding of their film while working as a commissioner at the Swedish Film Institute,” she wrote last month in an op-ed for Israel National News. “Since then, I have followed its destiny, seeing it praised at festivals and by several of the foremost global experts in the fields that it tackles – terrorism and antisemitism. But [SVT], our country’s national public TV broadcaster, has, for some obscure reason and despite the fact it originally signed on to co-produce it, refused to screen it. And continues to refuse.

“With the passage of time and after having followed all the ups and downs, I have come to believe that SVT’s refusal to show the film is, sadly, connected to the fact that among the Spanish, British, Irish, Swedish and Algerian victims of terrorism sympathetically interviewed in the film, there are also a couple of Israelis,” Ahrne wrote.

The documentary was shown last year in the European Parliament and the Swedish legislature, where it premiered, as well as at many international film festivals and in front of audiences in the United States and Europe

Three years after the slaying of four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in what prosecutors say was a jihadist terrorist attack, the institution opened its first new exposition, whose theme is immigration.

The new exhibition, which opened last month and is titled “Belgium, Welcoming Land,” was inaugurated following renovations during which the museum was closed to the public for many months. Before closing for renovations, the museum had reopened briefly after the attack, for which a French national who fought in Syria, Mehdi Nemmouche, is currently standing trial.

The history of immigration to Belgium since its creation in 1830 is explored in the exhibition through photographs, testimonies and artifacts, the RTBF French-language broadcaster reported. The exhibition will remain open until March 19, which will be the 6th anniversary of the murder of four Jews in Toulouse by another Islamist.

Jewish community leaders, including Pinchas Goldschmidt, the president of the European Conference of rabbis, referred to the 2012 Toulouse attack, in which jihadist Mohammed Merah killed three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school, as the opening shot of a wave of shootings and other acts of violence by armed European Islamists that began with Jewish targets but has since broadened to include non-Jewish ones as well.

Both Merah and Nemmouche were born in Europe to families originating in the Middle East.

Once again, politics had come in the way. The restructuring of the DCRI was Sarkozy’s work and, at Central, the new director Bernard Squarcini was Sarkozy’s man. Back in 1993, Sarkozy, then mayor of the city of Neuilly, had gained popularity by directly negotiating with Eric Schmidt, a man who called himself “the Human Bomb” and had taken a whole primary school hostage. There was a political gain to be made at the prospect of defeating yet another terrorist himself. On the stand, Squarcini claimed he never saw the note sent by Toulouse. DCRI-Central was in no position to identify Merah on the video, either.

On March 21, two days after the Hozar Ha-Torah killing, the siege at Merah’s apartment was a joke, with the minister of interior giving instructions to the raid squad while playing PR for Sarkozy all night long on news channels. Meanwhile, Merah was free to leave his apartment to send the videos of his killings to Al-Jazeera and then return home, unwatched by anyone.

The next day in a full-page interview published by Le Monde, Squarcini came up with the lone-wolf theory. “He radicalized himself alone, in jail, by reading the Quran. There is no belonging to any network.”

On the stand, Squarcini, who supervised the surveillance of Islamists networks in the ’90s, admitted the existence of the Artigat network. He then tried to justify himself by explaining how one could be both “solitary and with accomplices.” Once again, in France, language, confronted with terror, lost its meaning.

The last day of the trial, Latifa Ibn Ziaten, mother of Mohamed Ibn-Ziaten, was hit in the chest right outside the courtroom by a young militant of the Jewish Defense League, an extreme-right wing organization populated by a handful of Jewish thugs and delinquents. That same day in the city of Bagneux, the commemorative plaque set in memory of Ilan Halimi, the young Jewish boy kidnapped, tortured for three weeks, and killed by the Gang of the Barbarians, was defaced one more time with anti-Semitic graffiti.

On 2 November 2017 we celebrated the Balfour Declaration centenary. On the 29th November, we celebrate seventy years since UN resolution 181 – the United Nations ‘partition plan’. Looking at much of the discussion over Balfour, there is still clearly misunderstanding over the process that led to the creation of Israel.

The Balfour Declaration was a stepping stone, an important point of recognition. Yet the United Nations went on to divide the land, something Balfour never proposed. So – what changed?

There are twenty-eight days from the start of one anniversary to the end of the other, so here I have listed twenty eight stepping stones, twenty eight events, that took Balfour through to partition, and into the civil war that was to bring about the creation of the State of Israel.

Day one – November 2nd 1917. The starting point of this story – the Balfour Declaration. A crucial stepping stone for the Jewish people as their right to self-determination, and a return to their homeland, was recognised in a letter written by the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild. A letter that is often misunderstood, as Balfour did not create the divide between the Jews and Arabs and did not create Israel. The paradigm of Balfour was a one-state solution (something those shamefully seeking an apology never seem to understand).

Day two – Saturday 18th January 1919. The Paris Peace Conference begins. The Versailles Peace Conference, was the meeting of the Allied victors, following World War One. The Conference was to decide on the creation of the League of Nations, and adopt a policy of awarding German and Ottoman overseas possessions as ‘mandates’. At the British National Archives in Kew is a large file on the conference, containing hundreds of documents discussing the future of Palestine. This is a petition from the ‘inhabitants of Nablus’:

While T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) raised an army of Arab irregulars in the Hejaz, no indigenous revolt occurred in Syria or Iraq, and indeed only the landing of a British army led to the driving out of Ottoman forces from Palestine after the victories of Gaza, Beersheba and Megiddo. There was thus no “twice-promised land” — and consequently no fraudulent British dealings — which both friends and foes of Israel have frequently alleged to lie at the root of the conflict.

It is one thing to see the Balfour Declaration as a vital link in a chain leading to Israel’s creation more than 30 years later, which it was. It is quite another to invest the declaration with responsibility for the tragic consequences of the war Arabs insisted upon launching to abort Israel’s creation.

The Palestinian tragedy is not the Balfour Declaration. It is the Arab and Muslim supremacism that has determined Palestinian Arab political decisions at virtually every turn in the past century, ensuring that the Palestinian leadership opposed and denied — and continue to deny — any Jewish claim or connection with the land, and refuse to countenance the idea that Jews are entitled to the self-determination they insist upon for themselves. The Palestinian Arab leadership’s demand of a British apology for the declaration leading up to its anniversary merely underscores this fact.

This ongoing tragedy is unlikely to end until Palestinian Arabs relinquish the dream of Israel’s dismemberment, recognize the right of the Jews to their sovereign existence, and undertake to work with Israel to bring about peace, not war.

Blame for all manner of decisions and acts across intervening decades can be leveled at all parties involved. But that is no reason for Israel or Britain not to celebrate Lord Balfour’s high-minded act of statesmanship one 100 years ago, which helped the Jewish people to rejoin the family of sovereign nations after two millennia of statelessness, persecution and massacre.

They are impressive scholars, these who have come to confront Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour Party where hating Jews is all they do practically round the clock.

Back here in America I’ve paid scant attention, until a friend told me that Corbyn might well become Britain’s next prime minister. Attention must be paid.

Corbyn would be no friend to President Trump or to any other patriot of the United States.

So I read all the articles and commentaries pertaining to that open letter, which appeared in The Times of London, and was penned by novelist Howard Jacobson and historians Simon Schama and Simon Sebag Montefiore…all stamped kosher as Zionists.

Doesn’t get much better than that so far as literary craftsmanship, nor worse when it comes to speaking up for Israel and Jews everywhere.

Finally I read the letter itself. I liked it. The first half. The second half took it all back and proved that not all Zionists are true…but are rather asterisk Zionists…people who are pro-Israel only by a half... never in with both feet…and always ready to compromise and be good sports for the world and Israel’s enemies.

Non-Jews with Progressive tendencies do the fawning routine just as well and they too need to be careful.

No sooner had President Trump nominated Kenneth Marcus, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law, to be Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, than extremist anti-Israel groups began to mount an aggressive campaign to derail the appointment.

This is a remarkable affront to a civil rights lawyer who has spent his career fighting for the rights of women, the disabled, and members of many minority groups: African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians, as well as Sikhs, Arabs, and Muslim Americans.

Marcus’s prior tenure at the federal Office for Civil Rights was widely lauded for effective leadership and support for the rights of all students. For this reason, most civil rights groups have thus far refrained from subjecting Marcus to the vituperation that other recent Trump nominees have faced.

Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now

Some extremist anti-Israel groups, however, have broken ranks, attacking the administration’s Jewish civil rights nominee with reckless and malicious falsehoods.

One of these groups, Palestine Legal, whose mission is to bolster the anti-Israel movement by challenging efforts to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism, immediately issued a letter smearing Mr. Marcus as an “Anti-Palestinian Crusader” and opposing his nomination in terms of the so-called Livingstone Formulation.

Universities and ‘free speech’ arguments are back in the news again. This time at Cambridge, with the Evening Standard running a story about the University of Cambridge being ‘slammed by senior academics over a ‘crackdown on free speech’ at a student Palestine event.

Social media is also full of a petition, aimed at criticising Cambridge for forcing a change in the chair for the event.

The entire argument is bogus. On both sides.

I should know – I was there.

The University of Cambridge motto reads – ‘from this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge’. What I witnessed on Wednesday was the opposite. The only thing the students gained was hate and ignorance.

There were three speakers:
Omar Barghouti, a founder of BDS
Malia Bouattia, ex-president of the NUS
Asad Rehman, the Executive Director of War on Want

I was clearly in the presence of hard-core anti-Israel royalty.

The talks begin and we get to hear Barghouti first. A polished performance he has probably delivered 1000 times before. I lost count of the number of times Barghouti mentioned ‘settler colonialism’ and ‘apartheid’. I also lost count of the number of lies and distortions that were delivered to the audience.

Rutgers University is embroiled in a campus controversy.

A United Nations watchdog group wants to know why the school hired a fierce critic of Israel who spent years working for a man most consider a war criminal.

As CBS2’s Tony Aiello reported, next semester Rutgers students will be able to sign up for a political science class called ‘International Criminal Law And Anti-Corruption.’

It’s taught by Dr. Mazen Adi who is listed as an adjunct professor.

On the Rutgers University website, the biography for Mazen Adi mentions his impressive credentials including 16 years as a career diplomat.

But the bio doesn’t mention who he worked for — the pariah nation of Syria, and dictator Bashar Al-Assad who has been widely considered a war criminal for using chemical weapons on his own people – an oversight first noticed by the The Algemeiner newspaper, a Jewish newspaper based in New York.

During his years at the U.N. Mazen Adi defended Assad and accused Israelis of an unimaginable crime; helping to traffic children’s organs.

A coalition of two dozen clubs at New York University (NYU) has boycotted a subsidized trip to Israel for student leaders, claiming it is a "propaganda" program that is "part of the right-wing strategy to combat the Palestinian movement for human rights and self-determination in the academy."

The coalition, led by the recently created NYU chapter of the far-left Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), made a "pledge to not participate in or apply" for the NYU Israel Experience, which will take approximately 25 students to the country in January to "promote intersectionality and inclusiveness" and introduce students to "Israel beyond the headlines," according to the application.

"Out of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for human rights and self-determination and their demand for Israeli adherence to international law, we refuse to go on a trip that includes a visit to illegally occupied land," the coalition’s boycott statement states.

The coalition includes the NYU College Democrats, NYU Against Fascism, NYU Freedom for North Korea, the Arab Student Union, Democratic Socialists of America at NYU, NYU Student for Justice in Palestine, and the Queer Union — NYU.

A student group at McGill University admitted that it used anti-Semitic propaganda to prevent a Jewish candidate from being reelected to the student government at the Montreal school.

At a meeting last month of the General Assembly of the McGill’s Student Society, or SSMU, seven students were voted onto the board. But three others — one of them Jewish and a previous board member, and all known for their pro-Israel stances — were denied seats.

“I was blocked from participating in student government because of my Jewish identity and my affiliation with Jewish organizations,” Noah Lew, a third-year arts student, posted on his Facebook page after the vote.

Lew and Jewish groups in Canada alleged that campus groups supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel were behind the bid to keep pro-Israel students off the undergraduate board. One group, called Democratize SSMU, includes Igor Sadikov, a student who earned notoriety last February for his “Punch a Zionist today” tweet.

Boy George shot down claims from BDS activists that his performance in Tel Aviv Tuesday night was tantamount to performing in South Africa during apartheid, saying the two weren’t comparable and that Israel was in his heart.

“So George are you saying you would have played South Africa during apartheid??” a Twitter user asked the Culture Club frontman.

“I could have an[d] I didn’t. Could have earned well from such a gig. Israel is in my heart. Completely different equation,” Boy George shot back.

“I play for my fans, not politicians. I have never looked at any political figure and thought ‘yeah, you speak for me.’ The flow of positive energy is the key!” the singer responded to a different post critiquing his decision to perform in Israel.

On Tuesday, Twitter user Magenta Purple wrote to the singer: “Disappointed that you have played Israel. I wish you would get involved with the @BDSmovement [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement].”

“I’m disappointed by your tweet. Also by the fact that you are actually doing zero to help anyone or anything? Your energy is negative!” Boy George fired back.

Culture Club last played in Israel three decades ago.

Anti-Israel boycott initiatives at multiple North American universities have prompted heated debates between students and faculty in recent weeks.

Nine faculty members at the University of Maryland (UMD) published an open letter Thursday asking the student representatives behind a pro-boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) resolution currently moving through the student government legislative process, "Do [you] want to help destroy the American alliance with Israel?"

"Rather than laud [U.S.-Israel] connections as part of a praiseworthy alliance among democracies, it casts aspersions on them in an effort to break that alliance and isolate Israel," write the faculty, who are associated with the history, kinesiology, computer sciences, classics, mathematics, women's studies, and engineering departments.

The faculty takes issue with the exclusion of the word "Israel" from the motion‘s title—"A Resolution to Promote Human Rights by Divesting from Companies that Profit from Investments in Palestine"—writing that such a move "illustrates that the purpose of the resolution is to eliminate the state of Israel."

The venerable women’s magazine Glamour boasts almost ten million print readers, and more than 11 million visitors monthly to its website. Mainly devoted to clothing, makeup and feminist topics, Glamour’s also won acclaim for its coverage of health issues.

This year, however, Glamour veered into unhealthy territory with its 2017 Women of the Year list. Alongside actress Nicole Kidman and NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Glamour will be honoring the organizers of last January’s Women’s March. Included among those organizers is virulent anti-Israel activist and terrorist sympathizer Linda Sarsour.

The awards will be presented at a ceremony on November 13, which will be live streamed on Glamour‘s website, as well as to Glamour’s 5.5 million followers on Facebook. The ceremony will be preceded by a “Summit,” at which the honorees will “discuss the issues we care about most right now.”

Sarsour openly supports the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel — a movement that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer terms, “a deeply biased campaign that I would say … is a ‘reinvented form of anti-Semitism’ because it seeks to impose boycotts on Israel and not on any other nation.”

Sarsour has also said that “nothing is creepier than Zionism,” and that Zionists can’t be feminists. As CAMERA has written, “although she tries to present herself as simply a critic of Israel, what Sarsour is really campaigning for is the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.”

How can one write an article to make any country seem awful? It is very simple. Take as many negative stories as possible and put them together. Report only a country’s flaws, not any of its redeeming features. Take the most damning interpretation of any given story, or policy. Find a racist/sexist sounding line from any elected Parliamentarian, and present it as an example of the views of the whole country. Throw in references to past crimes, and suggest the possibility of future ones. Subjected to this treatment, it is genuinely very simple to make any country look bad.

However, generally we would consider articles like this a mark of unsophistication, even bordering on propaganda. No self-respecting paper would publish an article like that on the UK, Germany or any other country. But everything described above is standard fare in writing about Israel. Is Israel a uniquely extreme country? Or is Israel journalism uniquely extreme writing?

There are lots of mitigating factors to the picture the Guardian painted about Israel. Israel is a burgeoning democracy, providing technological and humanitarian solutions to some of the world’s greatest problems. Minorities are better represented in the parliament of Israel than that of France. Arabs in Israel have more rights and opportunities than Arabs anywhere in the Middle East. In 2015, the Israeli government enacted the largest ever stimulus package for the Arab Israeli communities – hardly the sign of that “most right wing government” lead by “fanatical extremists.” The fever pitch of emotion about Israeli settlements cloud the fact that the last government-approved completed settlement was built 25 years ago.

Israel, and only Israel, is judged exclusively by a list of its (perceived and real) flaws. With remarkable confidence, journalists throw together opinions, a few stories, select quotes, and feelings of impending doom – and hey presto, Israel is demonised. Israel is not a uniquely bad country. Journalism about Israel is often uniquely bad journalism.

Cenk Uygur, co-founder of The Young Turks, appeared on a counter-extremism panel this week in Europe and promptly claimed Christianity was responsible for the Holocaust.

Uygur was responding to Muslim Reform Movement leader Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, who was harshly critical of “the conflation of extremism by fascist groups in the West, white supremacists, whatever they might be, with Islamist extremism, just because they use the same tactic,” calling such a conflation “ahistoric … to say Islamist extremism is all the same thing is absurd, because it, in a way, negates the harm of governments that are running hundreds of millions of people across the planet.” He named the governments of Iran, Pakistan, the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia, the AKP in Turkey, among others.

He added, “If you conflate that with the hyper-nationalists in the West, because they use the same tactic, you are going to avoid and actually anesthetize Muslims to the solution that we need globally, which is the overthrow of the regimes.”

As Jordan Schachtel of Conservative Review pointed out, “Uygur didn’t mention that Hitler came to despise Christianity in favor of his eugenicist worldview. Historians have documented that Hitler viewed both Catholics and Protestants with disdain and sought to replace Christianity with what some refer to as the ‘Reich Church.’”

A crowd of teens from an Orthodox Jewish school demonstrated Thursday outside the New York City home of a former Nazi concentration camp guard whose US citizenship was revoked but who hasn’t been deported.

About 100 students from Rambam Mesivta stood across the street from the Queens home of 94-year-old Jakiw Palij on the 79th anniversary of Kristallnacht. He did not come out as they shouted “Your neighbor is a Nazi.”

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories
Free Sign Up

Police stood in front of the three-story row house, marked by an overgrown garden and a rotting front door.

Palij was a guard at the Trawniki concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. He has said he was forced to be a guard.

The teenagers smile as they take selfies with a heroically posed Hitler, apparently unaware that the giant backdrop to their happy moment is the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp where more than a million people were exterminated by the Nazi dictator’s regime.

It’s a scene that plays out every day at a waxwork and visual effects museum in Yogyakarta, an Indonesian city better known for its universities, Javanese culture and as the seat of a historic sultanate. The infotainment-style museum, De Mata, is defending the display as “fun” for teenagers.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories
Free Sign Up

Human Rights Watch denounced the exhibit as “sickening” and the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which campaigns against Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, demanded its immediate removal.

“Everything about it is wrong. It’s hard to find words for how contemptible it is,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the center. “The background is disgusting. It mocks the victims who went in and never came out.”

A gang of between 30 to 50 children have reportedly caused police to issue a dispersal order over antisemitic behaviour during Halloween directed at the Jewish community on Canvey Island in Essex. A community of Orthodox charedi Jews from Stamford Hill in London have pioneered a move to establish a new community on the island.

According to the Echo News, on Tuesday evening last week, police invoked powers under the Anti-Social, Crime and Policing Act to issue a dispersal order after reports of a large gang of up to 50 children gathering near the Jewish Centre in Meppell Avenue, and other reports of children gathering in the town centre.

The children, believed to be aged between 11 and 15, all reportedly wore black hoodies and masks. One resident, Rebecca Vos, witnessed one member of the Jewish community trying to disperse the children, only to be met with a torrent of abuse. She told the Echo News: “It is a nightmare. I did go and apologise to the man because it was horrible. In all honesty, these children don’t even know what they are saying, they don’t understand, but they are creating a gang mentality where they feel safe to act this way.”

The Central Bureau of Statistics noted a rise of 60% in tourism, with nearly 464,000 visitors arriving in Israel over the course of October 2017, compared with 290,000 last year. The days just prior to the holiday of Sukkot saw the most visitors, with an average of 17.4 thousand per day, compared to the monthly average of 11.8 thousand per day.

The highest numbers of visitors came from the US, Russia, France, and Germany. However, the countries which saw the greatest rise in the number of citizens visiting Israel were China, Poland, and Romania. Poland saw a rise of 61% since last year in the number of visitors to Israel, while Romania saw a rise of 57% and China 55%.

During the months of August-October 2017, 3.3 million tourists arrived in Israel, for an average of 274,000 per month. This represents a rise of .2 million from the previous three months (May-July 2017), when an average of 254,000 tourists arrived each month.

When Asi Naim, a severely autistic Israeli boy, started smacking his head against the wall and hurting himself in other ways, his parents tried every kind of psychiatric drug to calm him. Nothing worked.

“He was so totally out of it,” said his mother, Ricky Naim Blumenfeld. “It was scary.”

Then Asi entered a cannabis-based research program at Jerusalem’s Shaarei Zedek hospital. After a period of trial and error, he started getting a dosage of cannabinoid drops that worked. Four years later, Asi loves music, being at parties, going to the movies and traveling abroad.

The same medication has helped many of the 60 autistic children enrolled in neuro-pediatrian Adi Aran’s program. Aran is now in the middle of a second, controlled study with 100 children. The end goal: approval by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration as an experimental treatment.

The agency hasn’t yet approved a botanically derived medical cannabis product. But classifying the formulation as an FDA-recognized drug would mean it’s no longer covered by the federal ban on U.S. imports of marijuana, a key step in solidifying Israel’s reputation as a global center for medical weed research, development and exports. Belgium, Netherlands, Romania, Portugal, Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland are major potential markets for medical marijuana, says Ameri Research Inc., a U.S. market-research and consulting company.

"The Margaret Lambert Story," a new short documentary premiering Nov. 9 on the Olympic Channel, recounts how German-born Lambert, then known as Gretel Bergmann, was cheated out of competing in the 1936 Berlin Olympics by the Nazis because she was Jewish. Lambert died earlier this year at age 103 in Queens, New York.

Successful at the national level in athletics, Lambert moved to England to train and compete after being banned from sports clubs in Germany after the Nazis' rise to power in 1933. In 1934, she won the British national championships. In 1935 the Nazi government wanted Lambert to return and try out for the German Olympic team, and threatened reprisals against her family if she did not acquiesce. But the Nazis were only interested in using her to convince the international community that Germany did not discriminate against Jews.

At 22, Lambert tied the German national record at the Olympic trials in June 1936 with a jump sufficient to win the Olympic gold medal. Then she received a letter that she was dismissed from the German Olympic team. Lambert arrived in New York in 1937 and won the U.S. women's high-jump in 1937 and 1938.

In late 1943, the Germans were desperate to cover all traces of their death camp in Sobibor, Poland. They demolished buildings, bulldozed the evidence, planted trees.

More than 70 years later, archaeologists led by Yoram Haimi of the Israel Antiquities Authority set about excavating the site, uncovering gas chambers, mass graves — and, late last year, a girl’s silver pendant. It is engraved with a date, the place name “Frankfurt” and the Hebrew words “mazal tov.”

A cry from the earth, the remnant from a killing ground has opened up a tragic past to a family that knew little about it.

Thanks largely to a grandson of Holocaust survivors who is an amateur genealogist, the living relatives of the girl whose pendant it was, have been identified.

On November 13, more than 30 relatives of the girl, Karoline Cohn, will gather in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to dedicate a “stumbling stone” memorial — a small brass plaque with the date of her birth and place of deportation at her last known address, Thomasiusstraße 10.

The memorial will be installed by artist Gunter Demnig, who created the project in 1996. Since then, more than 50,000 of the memorials have been installed throughout Europe.

Many of Karoline’s kin have never met before. They will be coming from the United States, Israel, Japan, Great Britain, Nicaragua and Hong Kong to honor the memory of someone they never knew.

As Texas continued to dry out from Hurricane Harvey, one city found itself embroiled in a bit of an imbroglio.

The city of Dickinson, a Houston suburb, announced it wouldn’t approve grants to repair hurricane damaged homes or businesses if the applicant supported boycotting Israel.

It was in the manual. The city’s flood assistance application included this clause: “By executing this Agreement below, the Applicant verifies that the Applicant: (1) does not boycott Israel; and (2) will not boycott Israel during the term of this Agreement.”

The clause was included because Texas law bars state agencies from contracting with or investing in companies that boycott Israel. The city council voted to remove the clause as it pertains to individuals. However, businesses must still pledge to not boycott Israel in keeping with the Texas law.

As controversial as the law may be, it enjoys broad bipartisan support in the Lone Star State. In fact, nearly half the states in the country — regardless of political majority — support anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) legislation, belying the popular narrative that Israel has become a polarizing issue.

“To those saying Israel is an increasingly partisan issue, that narrative is prescriptive rather than descriptive. In Congress, and across the country, Israel is, on a basic level, bipartisan and this legislation really shows that,” said Northwestern University law professor Eugene Kontorovich.

That there are now 24 states in the nation to have anti-BDS laws is a testament to that bipartisanship.

The Gaza experience—where in fact the AFSC excelled at providing relief and creating infrastructure, despite resistance from the refugees themselves—was enough to convince the leadership to get out of the relief business altogether. At the same time, a faction of the organization’s leadership advocated a radical pacifist, and anti-American, agenda, aimed at nuclear disarmament and elevating the status of the Soviet Union and Communist China. By the 1960s, the AFSC became a liberal pressure group, one that openly supported North Vietnam. Support for Saddam Hussein and North Korea quickly followed.

But the AFSC never lost entirely lost interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict. After 1967, the AFSC escalated its involvement, beginning with quasi-theological criticism of Israel, acting as PLO’s legal representatives in Jerusalem during the 1970s, and conducting ‘interfaith’ events in which American Jews were shamed for supporting Israel. The Quaker tradition of even-handedness and political neutrality was long gone; by the late 1970s the AFSC had effectively enshrined Palestinians as the “new Jews.” Support for Palestinian terror as “resistance” against Israel’s “structural violence” and against sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program is now standard.

These policies are reflected in the educational curriculum of Quaker schools across the country, but most of all in the AFSC’s leading role in the BDS movement. Today, the AFSC runs several offices dedicated to supporting the BDS movement, partners with the odious Jewish Voice for Peace and with the Muslim Brotherhood backed Students for Justice in Palestine to train BDS activists and run campus events at which Israel is vilified and its supporters are harassed, and endorses the Palestinian right of return, which would destroy Israel as a sovereign Jewish state.

Joyce Ajlouny’s appointment epitomizes the transformation of the AFSC. Quaker schools and education have long been hijacked by Palestinian advocacy, as was recently seen at Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood, PA, where BDS supporter Sa’ed Atshan was scheduled to speak to students. Ajlouny, who served for 13 years as the Director of the Ramallah Friends School, will undoubtedly increase that kind of education, given her stated desire to, “bring educational programming on Israeli-Palestinian issues into Quaker schools, where many of the students are Jewish.”

Many Jewish parents are attracted to Quaker schools, which seek to instill values mistakenly believed to be analogous to those of Judaism, especially since the Quakers and their schools have enshrined “social justice” as a guiding principle. This is misleading. The AFSC’s concept of “justice” is one-sided, and Jewish parents must decide whether Jewish values and Quaker values, as they exist today, are really the same. Ajlouny’s appointment makes this more pressing.

Israeli judoka Ori Sasson was booted from the Openweight World Championships in Marrakech, Morocco on Saturday after losing to Frenchman Cyrille Maret.

But Sasson, a 2016 Olympic bronze medalist, was at least allowed to wear Israeli insignia — in contrast to the ban imposed on Israeli national symbols at a tournament last month in Abu Dhabi.

Morocco had threatened not to grant visas to the Israeli team in the days leading up to the tournament. At one point last week team members arrived at Ben Gurion Airport only to be forced to head back home after receiving word they would not be allowed into the predominantly Muslim nation.

Eventually the matter was resolved after International Judo Federation President Marius Vizer personally intervened, and the Israeli athletes finally arrived in Marrakech, via Munich, on Thursday.

Seventy-nine years ago, Nazis across Germany and Austria razed synagogues, smashed windows and murdered almost 100 innocent Jews in a violent pogrom. Kristallnacht — or the “Night of Broken Glass” — is so named to describe the shattered glass that littered the streets the next morning. In the weeks that followed, approximately 30,000 Jews were transported to concentration camps — a sorrow foreshadowing of what would soon ensue.

On Kristallnacht’s 79th anniversary, I am compelled to address the rising tide of antisemitism sweeping Europe, reaching levels not seen since the end of the darkest chapter in Europe’s history.

In the first half of 2017, some 767 antisemitic attacks were recorded in the UK alone. This represents the highest figure since monitoring began in 1984 — and, staggeringly, was a 30 percent increase from 2016. In the meantime, violent assaults on Jews this year have risen 78 percent compared with the same period in 2016.

The above figures are broadly replicated in other major Jewish communities throughout Europe, including France and Germany. Even in the U.S., according to a recent survey by the ADL, there has been a significant spike in antisemitism across the country.

Kristallnacht is considered by many to represent the transition from the harassment of Jewish communities to outright violence against them.

Seventy-nine years later, many Jews across Europe are once again singled out because of their race — with Jewish property, institutions and even cemeteries, coming under assault.

Clearly, a new way to combat this tide of hatred is required.

As is commonly said, a picture is worth a thousand words. But a few photos I found while going through a box of pictures that had belonged to my late in-laws, Anne and Joe Osofsky, sparked a thousand questions.

The black and white snapshots were of a synagogue in Europe built in the International or Bauhaus style developed in the 1920s. A large group of American GIs was standing in front of it. One photo bore a legend on its reverse side indicating that the pictures were taken during the rededication of the synagogue apparently right after the end of World War II.

Where was this synagogue? If it was in Germany, how did it survive Kristallnacht – the “Night of Broken Glass” – when Jewish homes and stores were pillaged, Jewish men rounded up throughout Germany and sent to concentration camps, and most of the country’s synagogues set aflame in November 1938? And how did my in-laws, who were young people in America during World War II, receive these pictures?

I was unsuccessful in discovering the location of this synagogue until I turned to a friend in Germany for help. Andreas Lehnertz, a doctoral student at the Arye Maimon Institute of Jewish History at Trier University, was able to work some Web magic, and in less than a day I received the answer: The synagogue was indeed located in Germany – in the spa town of Bad Nauheim in the Hessen province, some 28 km. from Frankfurt am Main.

Some additional research on my part yielded some fascinating information about the synagogue and its rededication after the war.

It is only eight weeks since an 18-year old Iraqi-born man walked onto the London Underground and left a bomb on the District line. Fortunately for the rush-hour commuters and school children on that train, the detonating device went off without managing to set off the bomb itself. Had the device worked, the many passengers who suffered life-changing burns would instead have been among many other people taken away in body bags. Ahmed Hassan came to the UK illegally in 2015 and was subsequently provided with foster care by the British government. He has now been charged, and is awaiting trial, for causing an explosion and attempted murder.

As stories like that of Mr. Hassan emerge, there are varying reactions. Some people say that this act is not indicative of anything, and that we must accept that such things happen -- like the weather. Others suggest that anyone might leave a bomb on the District line in the morning, and that there is no more reason to alter your border policy because of it than there is to alter your meteorological policy because of it.

As poll after poll shows, however, the majority of the public in Britain -- as in every other European country -- think something else. They think that a country that has lost a grip on its immigration policy is very likely to lose control of its security policy, and that one may indeed follow the other.

So the British public were not at all reassured by the news this month that the country's Home Office has lost track of tens of thousands of foreign nationals who were due to be removed from the country. Nor that there is no evidence of any effort to find the people in question.

Figures revealed in two new reviews by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration showed that nearly 56,000 foreign nationals have disappeared from the radar of the British authorities after being told that they were required to leave the country. This figure includes over 700 foreign national offenders (FNOs) who went missing after being released into the community from prison. It also revealed that around 80,000 foreign nationals are required to check in on a regular basis at police stations and immigration centres while authorities prepare for them to leave the country. By the end of 2016, just under 56,000 of them had failed to keep appointments and had become persons "whose whereabouts are unknown and all mandatory procedures to re-establish contact with the migrant have failed."

Nevertheless, with a straight face, Brandon Lewis, the immigration minister for the present Conservative government, declared that "People who have no right to live in this country should be in no doubt of our determination to remove them." Yet he still admitted that "Elements of these reports make for difficult reading."

The U.N. General Assembly will condemn Israel nine times today, “part of its annual ritual of enacting 20 Arab-sponsored resolutions singling out the Jewish state, and making no mention of Hamas stabbings, shootings or vehicular attacks against Israelis,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based monitoring group UN Watch. Click here for list of 9 resolutions.

By contrast, in this year’s session there will be a total of 6 condemnatory resolutions for the rest of the world combined — with one each on Syria, North Korea, Iran, Crimea, Myanmar, as well as one on the U.S. for its Cuba embargo.

All 193 UN member states participate in the initial committee vote today, and then almost always vote the same way in a second and final vote at the GA plenary in December.

“The U.N.’s assault on Israel today with a torrent of one-sided resolutions is surreal,” said Neuer.

“Even after Syrian president Bashar Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people within the past year, the U.N. is about to adopt a resolution — drafted and co-sponsored by Syria — which falsely condemns Israel for ‘repressive measures’ against Syrian citizens on the Golan Heights. It’s obscene,” said Neuer.

“While there will be a total of 20 resolutions against Israel this session, not a single U.N. General Assembly resolution is planned today or this year for gross human rights abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela, China, Cuba, Pakistan or Zimbabwe.”

“At a time when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his state-controlled media incite to the continued stabbing and shooting of Israeli Jews, the U.N.’s response is to reflexively condemn Israel in nine separate resolutions, each of them one-sided, each of them utterly silent on Palestinian abuses.”

The resolution drafted annually by Syria condemns Israel for holding on to the Golan Heights, and demands Israel hand the land and its people to Syria.

Following the @UN's adoption of nine one-sided resolutions against Israel, Iran unleashed its antisemitism before the plenary by stating: "[The Israeli representative] had better go and sit in a synagogue and repent for her regime's various sins”

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) November 10, 2017

New UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay has rebuked the US for its decision to withdraw from the UN cultural body citing anti-Israel bias and says America is “affected by everything” the agency does.

Following her confirmation Friday as director-general’, Azoulay acknowledged difficulties in the Paris-based organization that has been rocked by US funding cuts since 2011 over the admission of Palestine as a member and a series of anti-Israel resolutions.

But the 45-year-old former French culture minister, who has already urged the US and Israel not to withdraw from UNESCO, told The Associated Press that the Trump administration’s announcement to pull out of the agency is not tenable in the long term.

“I obviously regret their departure … but this ’empty chair politics’ is not sustainable because the United States is also affected by everything that UNESCO does,” she said, speaking at the agency’s Paris headquarters.

The UN’s educational, scientific and cultural agency is best known for its World Heritage program to protect cultural sites and traditions, but it also works to fight violent extremism, improve education for girls, promote Holocaust understanding, defend media freedoms and encourage science on climate change.

The resignation of Priti Patel as Secretary of State for International Development has unleashed some disturbing comments, including from politicians and journalists who have carelessly or deliberately evoked sinister stereotypes of powerful Jews.

In one article in The Times, Policy Editor, Oliver Wright and Political Editor, Francis Elliott, cited an unnamed senior Conservative MP writing: “Another senior Conservative MP claimed that Ms Patel was planning to use her ministerial position in DfID to support Israel to curry favour with Jewish Tory donors. ‘The Israel lobby in the Party is hugely influential and this was about Priti cynically trying to win their support. She thought she could be the next leader.”

In another article in The Times, Oliver Wright wrote: “She didn’t relish the DfID job and saw it as a staging post rather than a mission. And in that regard the meetings she secretly held in Israel were less interesting than the person she held them with. Lord Polak, as the former longstanding head of Conservative Friends of Israel, has always been a key power-broker within the Tory party — with the numbers and contacts of dozens of key Tory financial backers.”

Meanwhile, Labour peer, barrister and former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, told the BBC’s Today Programme: “This has nothing to do with paranoia about any particular country or any particular group. You do not want a Prime Minister who is in hock to the United States of America. You do not want a Prime Minister who is in hock to any particular group.”

Under the International Definition of Antisemitism adopted by the British Government, “Making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions” is antisemitic.

The Israel Defense Forces’ Patriot missile defense system shot down a drone above the Golan Heights Saturday after the unmanned aircraft approached the Israeli border from Syria.

Israeli security officials said the drone’s operators had deliberately attempted to fly the aircraft across the Israeli border, Channel 10 reported.

The IDF later concluded that the aircraft belonged to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. It did not enter Israeli territory.

Last month, the IDF fired into Syria, hitting three rocket launchers, in response to earlier rocket fire, and warned that further fire would prompt a more intensive response.

Earlier that month, the Syrian army launched an interceptor missile at Israeli Air Force reconnaissance aircraft, which the IDF says were flying over Lebanon. In response, Israel sent out a second sortie of F-16 fighter jets to bomb an anti-aircraft battery that it believed launched the missile.

Germany’s federal prosecution charged a Palestinian man on Friday with murder and six counts of attempted murder.

Ahmad A., 26, wanted “to kill as many German nationals of the Christian faith as possible,” the prosecutor’s office said, according to the indictment. He wanted his actions “to be viewed in the context of an Islamic attack, and understood as a contribution to worldwide jihad.”

Ahmad allegedly murdered one man, aged 50, with a 20-cm. knife and wounded an additional six people, at a supermarket in Hamburg on July 28. German authorities said Ahmad was not a member of Islamic State.

He was animated to murder because of the “escalating conflict between Muslim believers and Israel security forces at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem,” the indictment states.

On July 14, three Palestinian terrorists shot to death two Israeli policemen near the Lions’ Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City, using weapons that had been smuggled onto the Temple Mount. The attack prompted Israeli authorities to install metal detectors at the main entrance to the Mount. The new security measures unleashed Palestinian protests and riots.

Ahmad, whose last name was not released to protect his privacy, “found the Israeli entry restrictions at the Aksa Mosque wrong and intolerable,” said the prosecutor’s office.

Ahmad, said the indictment, considers “Germany jointly responsible” for the situation at the holy site, where the Aksa Mosque is located. Ahmad said German Christians should therefore die.

Arab students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem protested Israel’s presence in the Golan Heights on Wednesday in a demonstration that also saw protesters call for the expulsion of “Zionists” from the country.

“Zionists, out. My land [must be] Arab and free. There is no solution, no solution, but to get rid of the occupier,” students said, according to footage obtained by Channel 2.

“Shahid [martyr], be calm, we will continue the struggle,” the demonstrators also chanted during the rally at the Mount Scopus campus, which was organized by the student branch of the communist Hadash party.

“From Jerusalem to the Golan, one nation will not be weakened,” they called, waving Palestinian flags. “Palestine is Arab, and the Golan is Syrian.”

A complaint about the slogans was later lodged with police on the grounds of incitement to violence, the TV report said.

If the two-state solution fails, Palestinians will back a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with full rights for all citizens, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday.

In a pre-recorded speech broadcast on large screens in Gaza City as tens of thousands gathered to mark the death of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, Abbas, who has not visited Gaza since his allies were thrown out by Hamas in 2007, hailed his predecessor’s legacy.

“Our Palestinian people, who have always loved you as a great leader, still have that love, respect and loyalty,” he said.
Palestinians wave yellow Fatah movement flags during a rally marking the 13th anniversary of the death of Fatah founder and Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, in Gaza City, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Abbas said the Palestinians were pushing ahead to seal reconciliation and to achieve Arafat’s “dream… for freedom, sovereignty and independence on our Palestinian national soil.”

“There is no state in Gaza and there is no state without Gaza,” he said, stressing that the Palestinian people were “united” and “refuse divisions.”

He added that “The accurate implementation of the [reconciliation] deal and the full empowering of the government will surely lead to easing the suffering and reviving hope of a better future for all of us.”

On November 5, 2017, the day after Lebanese prime minister Sa'd Al-Hariri announced, in Riyadh, that he was stepping down, and also the day after the Houthis in Yemen fired a ballistic missile at Riyadh's King Khaled International Airport – both of these events reflecting further escalation in Iran-Saudi tensions – Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud 'Abbas visited Saudi Arabia, meeting with King Salman and with Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman.

Before leaving the country, 'Abbas expressed "solidarity with Saudi Arabia against the attacks on it" as well as his "full support for it and for the steps it is taking to protect its security and stability."

According to a report on Raialyoum.com, and in the Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily, which is close to Hizbullah, 'Abbas had been "suddenly summoned" to Saudi Arabia while he was visiting Egypt, where he met with Egyptian President 'Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sisi, as part of Saudi efforts to form a coalition against Iran and Hizbullah as well as against Hamas, which has recently been strengthening its ties with Iran. According to the report, his summoning was in coordination with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

During 'Abbas's Saudi visit, the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida published two unusually harsh anti-Iran articles, criticizing this country's involvement in the region, particularly with the Palestinians. An editorial stated that Iran was trying to infiltrate the Palestinian arena by means of strengthening ties with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and clarified that Iran was not doing this to serve the Palestinian interests but to expand its own control in the region. It stressed that the PA would not allow Iran to interfere in its territory and to duplicate what it had done with Hizbullah. Additionally, columnist Anwar Rajab called on the Palestinians to reexamine their relations with Iran and to beware of becoming a tool for it, because this would harm Saudi support for them and damage the entire Palestinian cause.

The weapons of the “resistance” in the hands of various Palestinian jihadi organizations is an internal Palestinian issue, Fatah official Iyad Nasser told Breitbart Jerusalem in the wake of a recent escalation in the Gaza Strip.

“The weapons of the resistance are an internal Palestinian issue that will be dealt with in internal Palestinian discussions and the demands presented by the Israeli occupation are not binding on the Palestinians,” said Nasser, a member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council responsible for Fatah’s public relations efforts in the Gaza Strip.

“By refusing escalation, the Palestinian factions succeeded in preventing Israel from thwarting reconciliation efforts by dragging the factions in the direction of military escalation,” said Nasser. “The Palestinian resistance understands the challenges and the sensitivity of this special period of time.”

“Resistance” is usually used by Palestinian officials as a euphemism for terrorism targeting Israelis.

Nasser thanked Egypt for its role in calming tensions and preventing escalation, noting, “Egypt will contribute to stabilizing the security situation in the Gaza Strip.”

According to the Palestinian official, Egypt is also “overseeing the process of handing over authority and control at the border crossings, working with Hamas without any problems or disagreements.”

Iran is building a permanent military base in Syria just south of Damascus, the BBC reported Friday, citing a Western intelligence official. The British broadcaster commissioned a series of satellite pictures that indicate widespread construction at the site.

Israel has long warned that Iran is trying to establish a permanent presence in Syria as part of its efforts to control a land corridor from Iran through to the Mediterranean Sea as it attempts to expand its influence across the Middle East.

According to the BBC report, the base is situated at a site used by the Syrian army near El-Kiswah, 14 km (8 miles) south of Damascus, and 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Israeli border.

The BBC provided satellite images that show “a series of two dozen large low-rise buildings, likely for housing soldiers and vehicles.”

The photos, taken over several months, show additional buildings being constructed. However, the report said that “it is impossible to independently verify the purpose of the site and the presence of the Iranian military.”

An Iranian activist who advocated for the independence of the country’s Arab minority was shot to death in the Netherlands on Wednesday.

Ahmad Mola Nissi, 52, was a founder of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, or ASMLA, which advocates for an independent state in Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan Province.

Dutch police said an investigation had been opened into the shooting and a suspect had been detained at the crime scene in The Hague.

“His involvement in the incident is being investigated,” police said about the suspect, according to Reuters. “Emergency services were at the scene quickly and reanimated the victim, but he died shortly later.”

The Ahvazi, who are ethnically Arab, are one of a number of minorities in Iran that says it is persecuted by the country’s Persian majority. Members of the ethnic group say they face discrimination in employment and housing and are often denied political and civil rights, according to Amnesty International.

In July, Mola Nissi told Reuters the ASMLA wants to “liberate Ahwaz lands and people from the Iranian occupation.”

Anti-Israel activists implemented a “covert campaign” to gain leadership positions at the American Studies Association (ASA), which they subsequently manipulated into endorsing an academic boycott of Israel, a Jewish human rights group said on Thursday.

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — which is representing four plaintiffs suing the ASA over its 2013 adoption of the boycott — revealed that newly-uncovered emails showed how activists with the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) “took over” and used the ASA to advance their political agenda.

A proposed second amended complaint filed by the plaintiffs — all current and former American Studies professors — named five of the 10 individual defendants as USACBI leaders: Sunaina Maira, Neferti Tadiar, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Jasbir Puar, and Steven Salaita.

The defendants “misappropriated the American Studies Association’s funding, name, prestige, membership lists, and respected institutional voice” on behalf of USACBI, thereby subverting ASA’s “apolitical mission and scholarly purpose,” the plaintiffs said.

According to the complaint, the “defendants obtained control of the nominations process by which the American Studies Association chose its leaders,” then restricted nominations to individuals affiliated with USACBI and who would support the ASA’s proposed boycott of Israel.

BRADFORD’S Labour party has found itself embroiled in another anti-Semitism row, after shortlisting for political office a woman who faced criticism for a series of controversial posts about Jews.

Former Respect activist Nasreen Khan issued an apology after making a series of posts about Jews on Facebook five years ago.

Last night Ms Khan, who has since joined the Labour Party, said she had apologised for the comments she made about a video called 'The Palestine you need to know' and accepted they were “inappropriate and unacceptable”.

In 2012 using the name Naz Kahn she said: “It’s such a shame that the history teachers in our school never taught us this but they are the first to start brainwashing us and our children into thinking the bad guy was Hitler.

“What have the Jews done good in this world??”

When questioned about the comment, she had added: “No, I’m not a Nazi, I’m an ordinary British Muslim that had an opinion and put it across. We have worse people than Hitler in this world now.”

And, facing further criticism, she had said: “Stop beating a dead horse. The Jews have reaped the rewards of playing victims. Enough is enough!!”

Israeli virtuoso Itzhak Perlman — widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest living violinists — had some dismissive words for leading BDS advocate and former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters in a Billboard interview published this week.

Asked what he thought “of musicians like Roger Waters, who also lives part-time out here in the Hamptons, who boycott Israel?” Perlman responded, “What am I going to say? He’s entitled to his opinion.”

“There’s nothing I say that will convince people otherwise, so that’s it,” he continued. “What can you do? There are many, many people who are on the bandwagon of boycotting Israel.”

Pressed on the point that Waters is a “famous musician,” Perlman answered, “He’s no friend of mine, so…”

Meanwhile, on hearing the name of Pink Floyd’s bassist, who wrote or co-wrote most of the band’s songs, Perlman’s wife Toby asked merely, “Who’s Roger Waters?”

The Perlmans also discussed their personal feelings toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (“We didn’t know that we’d be having tea with Netanyahu…That was also problematic because [of his politics…”],) and US President Donald Trump (“But with Trump, you just don’t go [to a White House event]. You say, ‘No, I’m sorry, I’m busy.'”)

Speaking about the disability he developed after contracting polio at the age of four, Perlman, now 72, said that his maxim was, “Separate your abilities from your disabilities.”

Might not the source of Netanyahu's "less than graceful" comments (as Tarnopolsky deems them) regarding British backtracking have more to do with the obstacles that the British subsequently put in place towards the realization of the Jewish state, such as the White Paper severely restricting Jewish immigration and condemning untold numbers of Jews to death?

Finally, Tarnopolsky's repeated editorializing about the nature of Netanyahu's comments ("resentful remarks,""testy thanks for nothing,""less than graceful comments") stands in stark contrast to her matter of fact reporting of Rami Hamdallah's comments (she casts no pejorative description or judgment on his declaration about "disgust" and allegation of "apartheid." The remarks of Erekat and Thornberry likewise escape Tarnopolsky's negative judgment.

When challenged about the editorializing and omissions, the newspaper insisted the piece did not cross the line into opinion, arguing that if the creation of Israel was an important event, then it is not a stretch to call Balfour's document the "most important" diplomatic message ever. About Tarnopolsky's failure to inform readers of the government's outspoken support for, the Los Angeles Times acknowledged that it might have been appropriate to note Theresa May's support for the Balfour Declaration, but nonetheless declined to redress the egregious omission.

In the past we have documented on these pages numerous examples of the BBC’s promotion of the notion of an all-powerful “Israel lobby” and – even more frequently – the notion of a “Jewish lobby“. In November 2014, for example, listeners to BBC Radio 5 live heard the following:

“I mean if we’re not careful we’re going to turn into the east coast of America where, you know, where all of politics is in thrall…ehm…to the Jewish lobby and to the Irish lobby and as a result you get very, very distorted politics and good sense goes out of the window.” […]

“We can’t all observe dietary laws because it might offend the more powerful lobby – the Israeli lobby – which already has big brother America cow-towing to its every wish. I mean it really is unacceptable. It’s kind of un-British anyway…” [all emphasis added]

Over the past couple of years, however, the BBC has been noticeably more cautious about promotion of the ‘Jewish lobby’ trope.

The November 8th edition of the BBC Radio 4 news and current affairs programme ‘Today’ included several items relating to a story broken by the BBC several days earlier concerning a British cabinet minister and allegedly “undisclosed” meetings in Israel that actually took place several months ago and in some cases were posted on social media.

Hotovely then spoke about Palestinian incitement and “schools and squares” named after terrorists that glorify violence against Jews but was again interrupted.

Robinson: “Well as you know there are many children who don’t believe that and many schools that don’t teach it. Let’s talk about the future if we could, minister, because that’s what matters now.”

Hotovely’s response to that interruption included the observation “it doesn’t seem like you’re shocked from [by] the idea that young children are being raised on this legacy of terrorism” but Robinson continued with yet another ‘question’ to which he also provided the answer.

Robinson: “Has Israel now abandoned the goal set by so many of a so-called two-state solution? In other words; of Israel living alongside and in peace with a Palestinian state. From everything you say, you have.”

Hotovely’s attempts to reply were repeatedly interrupted.

Robinson: “What’s your policy though? What’s your policy?”

Robinson: “So there will be no Palestinian state?”

Robinson: “Let me ask what you think the future is rather than your view of the Palestinians. Is your view of the future then a larger Israel incorporating what you call Judea & Samaria – what other people call the occupied West Bank – with second class Palestinian citizens live [sic] there? Is that your vision?”

After Hotovely’s reply to that question (and without it being clarified to listeners that her personal political views on that topic are not the majority view in Israel) Robinson continued by asking whether her three year-old and one year-old daughters have “Palestinian friends”:

An Indonesian museum that allowed visitors to take selfies with a life-size wax sculpture of Hitler against a backdrop of Auschwitz concentration camp has removed the exhibit following international outrage, the manager said Saturday.

De ARCA Statue Art Museum in the Javanese city of Jogjakarta drew swift condemnation from rights groups after details of the controversial display were published in foreign media.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories
Free Sign Up

The exhibit features a sure-footed Hitler standing in front of a huge photo of the gates of Auschwitz — the largest Nazi concentration camp where more than 1.1 million people were killed.

The museum’s operations manager, Jamie Misbah, said the the wax sculpture had been removed after the building was alerted to criticism from prominent Jewish human rights organization the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

“We don’t want to attract outrage,” Misbah told AFP.

A 70-year-old Jewish woman was hospitalized with concussion after being attacked by an assailant who called her “Zyd,” Polish for “Jew.”

The male attacker smashed her head into a brick wall while shouting “Zyd” during the attack on Saturday afternoon in London’s Stamford Hill neighborhood, which has a large Orthodox Jewish population, the London-based Campaign Against Anti-Semitism reported on its website.

The incident was first reported by the London chapter of the Shomrim Jewish neighborhood-watch organization.

A new Hungarian film depicting the post-WWII attitude toward Jews in the country premiered last week in New York.

The movie, “1945,” is set one year after the Jewish population of a small Hungarian village was deported to concentration camps. When two Orthodox Jews arrive in town on a morning train, the villagers — some of whom had turned on their Jewish neighbors for personal gain — confront feelings of guilt and fear. “What the hell do they want?” the locals ask. Are the new arrivals seeking revenge? To reclaim ownership of their stolen property? “We have to give it all back,” some of them say. Others seek to hold on to their ill gotten gains.

At the height of the Nazi deportations, many locals witnessed the forced transportation of their Jewish neighbors to concentration camps and then looted their possessions. There were few who were not collaborators in the redistribution of the land, home furnishings and belongings forcibly abandoned by the Jews, but some later felt guilt and shame in doing so. In “1945,” the town is led by a clerk who had betrayed his closest friend, a Jewish pharmacist, and then took over his business. One woman confesses her remorse in revealing a young Jew’s hiding place; overcome with guilt over the theft of Jewish property, another villager commits suicide. The film explores the tension between those returning from the concentration camps and those who stayed behind in the local towns and villages.

“The human stories; the small stories; the local stories tell a lot about a society,” said “1945” co-screenwriter Gabor T. Szanto, in an interview with The Algemeiner, “and it was a real drama when the Jews came back and met with those who had seen when they were deported, who took their properties, who got their properties on behalf of the state at discounted auctions. [It] was a very dramatic element: how the state made the society of collaborators against the Jews.”

Should you be worried that your mobile phone is invading your privacy by listening in to your conversations without your knowledge? Not if the goal is to save your life.

Israeli startup Healthymize has developed an app that records all your calls but, rather than send that data to Facebook or Google to sell you products you didn’t even know you wanted, Healthymize listens for signals of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).

If Healthymize detects a negative breathing pattern, a particular kind of cough or deterioration in the caller’s rate of speech (compared with a baseline of previously recorded calls), the app alerts the patient and his or her medical team.

Such early intervention can significantly reduce hospitalization and even death. “We don’t want patients to get to the hospital. If they do, that’s already too late,” Healthymize CEO and cofounder Dr. Shady Hassan tells ISRAEL21c.

Most COPD patients don’t contact their physician when symptoms begin, but rather wait four or more days. Yet every 24-hour delay doubles the risk of hospitalization, Hassan stresses.

It is true that both Judaism and Christianity are Palestinian religions. It is also an established historical fact that the inhabitants of what came to be called “Europe” later, whether Christians or Jews, had converted to these Palestinian religions centuries after the Palestinians had.

It is also true that these new Christians of what would become Europe never thought of themselves as direct descendants of the ancient Palestinian Christians who spoke Aramaic, but saw themselves correctly as more recent converts to this Palestinian religion.

Yet these same Christian converts often insisted that converts to Judaism in what would become Europe were somehow descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews who also spoke Aramaic at the time of the so-called Roman expulsion of the first century.

This was important because these converts to Christianity accused the converts to Judaism of killing the Palestinian Christ.

In 2018, Wisconsin will again be the site of one of the most competitive races in the country. Senator Tammy Baldwin’s seat has been named one of the most likely to flip in 2018, based on last year’s presidential results. If we don’t fight hard for Tammy Baldwin -- if we take her reelection for granted -- we risk losing a key J Street ally in Congress.
 Chip in $9 now to support J Street champion Senator Tammy Baldwin.

From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race? And what a race! One of the
greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true. He called the Jew “the great master of lies.” Those who do not realize the truth of that statement, or do not wish to believe it, will never be able to lend a hand in helping truth to prevail.

In his book Mein Kampf Hitler touched on the subject of the reason for his hatred of the Jews extensively. Rabbi Aaron Kasparov [sic] commented on the reasons for the hatred, asserting that Hitler was right in his hatred of the Jews because, according to the rabbi, the Jews had planned the Communist revolution in Russia resulting in the liquidation of 33 million Russians. The first communist government after the revolution was composed of six Jewish members out of a total of thirteen members, not to mention that the Jews are the spiritual parents of Marxism, communism and Leninism. He added that the Jews owned seven German newspapers out of nine newspapers and were working to destroy literature, poetry and theater in Germany and to eradicate religion, faith and morality. They were the enemies of the Lord. They wanted to control Germany after Russia and to liquidate 20 million Germans.On this basis Hitler felt that he should immediately liquidate them before it was too late. One of the most important things that Rabbi Kasparov [sic] mentioned was that Hitler's book was not translated into Hebrew for long because those who forbade translation were the leftist Jews who feared the exposure of Hitler's true hatred of the Jews. He did not hate them for being Jews but for their heinous deeds and plans to control Germany. Rabbi Kasparov [sic] ended his speech by advising Jews to refrain from returning to such acts after they had gathered from the diaspora.

Even the idea of ​​the atomic bomb was inspired by the Jewish physicist Einstein. He warned  US President Roosevelt of the German possession of the atomic bomb, although their nuclear research was very modest. This drew the attention of Americans to the importance of obtaining the atomic bomb before the Nazis, and the Jewish physicist Oppenheimer, who led the Los Alamos Bomb Research Laboratory, where the Americans succeeded in producing in the so-called Manhattan Project, which cost huge sums and enormous effort. Japan was the first victim of the atomic bomb. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were killed and they suffered from nuclear radiation for a long time, although Japan was about to be defeated in World War II before being hit by atomic bombs.
Nuclear weapons are among the most powerful weapons that could destroy human civilization and destroy the human race if a nuclear war breaks out between the superpowers. Oppenheimer, the atomic bomb engineer, therefore expressed this by saying: "I am death, devastating to the worlds."
The truth of them is that Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): "They seek corruption in the land, and Allah does not love those who spoil it."

In a newly revealed letter from 1986 , the UK’s Prince Charles implied that the “influx of foreign, European Jews” to Israel was to blame for fueling the Israeli-Arab conflict, and lamented that US presidents were unwilling to take on the American “Jewish lobby.”

The November 24, 1986 letter was written to a friend, explorer Laurens van der Post, after a visit to the Gulf with Princess Diana. It was published by the Mail on Sunday. Charles wrote that he now had a greater insight to Arabs’ hostility towards Israel following the trip.

“Also begin to understand their point of view about Israel. Never realized they see it as a US colony,” he wrote. “I now appreciate that Arabs and Jews were all a Semitic people originally + it is the influx of foreign, European Jews (especially from Poland, they say) which has helped to cause great problems.”

Charles, who was 38 at the time, then suggested the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel was a root cause of terrorism that needed to be addressed.

“I know there are so many complex issues, but how can there ever be an end to terrorism unless the causes are eliminated?,” he wrote.

It was not clear from the letter whether he was referring to European Jews immigrating to Israel before or after the Holocaust and the country’s establishment in 1948.

This letter is disturbing. It appears that our future king believed in 1986 that the “influx” of Holocaust survivors to Israel were not “Semitic”, “cause great problems” including terrorism, and should be “eliminated”, presumably through their removal. The letter also appears to endorse the view that Israel is not simply the result of Jewish self-determination in the historic Jewish homeland, but the result of bullying by an all-powerful “Jewish lobby” which holds US presidents in its clutches. We view these comments as unmistakably antisemitic.

However, since the letter was written, the Prince of Wales appears to have warmed to the Jewish community and we note his friendship with the former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, as well as his attendance at the inauguration of the present Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis.

In order to reassure the worldwide Jewish community, including Jews living in Israel, that the heir to the throne has changed his views, these historic remarks must urgently be repudiated by Prince Charles.

An initially positive feature on the BBC Travel website focuses on the Israel city of Caesarea, specifically the discovery of 2,000 gold coins on the ocean floor, the largest stash ever found in the region.

The author of the piece covers Caesarea’s fascinating ancient history, referring to Phoenicians and Greeks and eventually the Romans:

By 6AD, Caesarea was the capital of the Roman province of Judea and was not known as “Roman Palestine” or “Palestine.” It was only later, following the suppression of the Bar-Kokhba Revolt in the year 135AD that the Romans changed the name of the province to Syria Palaestina.

And who were the “native people” who revolted against Roman rule between 66 and 70AD?

They are the one people who are not mentioned by name in the BBC Travel article – THE JEWS.

Please join me in this video clip as I observe to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network that Israel and the Jewish diaspora failed to take the opportunity of the Balfour Declaration centenary to make the points that need to be made.

Please join me in this video clip as I suggest to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network that the west is being hopelessly out-played by its Islamist enemies, because the west cannot grasp that my enemy’s enemy may be my friend but still simultaneously remain my enemy.

It’s not that today’s Middle East would be unrecognizable only to the soldiers of 1917, like those buried in my neighborhood. Today’s Middle East would be unrecognizable to the younger version of me who reported to a draft office 20 years ago.

The closest thing to a memorial for my little war exists in a field near Israel’s northern tip. It consists of 73 jagged pieces of limestone around a pool, on which 73 names are inscribed: Avi Ofner, Dotan Cohen, Shai Abukassis. These are soldiers who died when two helicopters crashed en route to my outpost and a neighboring army position in Lebanon one night in February 1997. The stones are roughly the size of human beings, and if you stand there, it feels as though those men are surrounding you, as though you’re one of them.

The bases they were flying to are gone. Few remember why they were going there at all. The political lines that shaped and ended their lives are already blurring in our memories. What will these stones say to a visitor who passes by and pauses a century later? Who will that visitor be?

When I pass the Indian cemetery, I try to think of two or three names and imagine their owners. I wish they weren’t here, that they’d made it home to tell stories of adventures in faraway places: They saw the Mediterranean and the Dome of the Rock, and heard strange languages. Instead they lie in my neighborhood where No. 26 should be. What their loss has meant in the world is suggested less by the stone markers than by the absence on this lot of an apartment building full of families.

They’re still telling a story, though, and after pausing here dozens of times I think I know what it is. It’s a soldier’s lesson, whether your war was in Afghanistan or Iraq or Lebanon or on the Western Front: that victory and defeat never mean what you think, that with all of your weapons and illusions of power, you’re simply borne this way and that by tides beyond your grasp, and that all anyone can safely say about the future is that it’s nothing we can picture from where we stand.

After months of preparation, U.S. President Donald Trump and his advisers have advanced to the "next phase" of Middle East peace efforts, promising "tangible steps" toward ending the long freeze on negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, the New York Times quoted White House officials as saying Saturday.

According to the report, Trump and his designated team of peace process advisers have begun drafting the outline for an ambitious plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, purported to "go beyond" the scope of previous American peace efforts.

Trump's Special Representative for International Affairs Jason Greenblatt, who visited the region recently, was quoted by the paper as saying, "We have spent a lot of time listening to and engaging with the Israelis, Palestinians and key regional leaders over the past few months to help reach an enduring peace deal."

The draft, expected to be unveiled early next year, will reportedly include concrete stipulations, but the paper did not specify what those will be.

According to the report, regional issues could massively affect the possibility of peace, including the growing tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran in light of the latter's increasing support of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In the 1990s, the U.S. helped establish the Palestinian Authority, a transitional quasi-state designed to become fully sovereign. It was supposed to be a step toward a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. Its first "president" was the arch terrorist Yasser Arafat, who led the Palestinian movement. With an indifference to genuine moral judgment, the Clinton administration brushed aside Arafat's heinous crimes and militant agenda, embraced him as a peacemaker, and white washed his vicious record.

Why? The Palestinian movement claimed it would recognize Israel and end the campaign to destroy that country, the region's only free society. Those promises were empty, yet Arafat became one of the most frequent foreign visitors to the White House and co-winner of a Nobel Peace Prize.

Instead, since its birth the Palestinian quasi-state has been yet another brutal, militant Mideast dictatorship, mocking the rule of law and methodically violating the individual rights of its own subjects. It has enabled and sponsored Palestinian attacks on Israel. In the first decade of its existence, more people were injured or died in Palestinian attacks than in the preceding quarter century. By a factor of two.

Despite these facts the United States and European patrons played down the regime's authoritarianism and militancy, and continued backing it. Washington has lately given it about $400 million a year.

George W. Bush's administration compounded the problem. President Bush, like President Clinton, endorsed the goal of a fully sovereign Palestinian state. While the U.S. had for years given de facto backing to that goal, Bush was the first formally to go on the record in support of it. And despite his reputation as a morally principled leader, we have Bush to thank for handing Palestinian jihadists greater power.

Ultimately Bush was embarrassed into admitting the obvious fact that Arafat was a "committed terrorist," when the Palestinian Authority, in the midst of waging a terror war on Israel, was caught smuggling in a fifty-ton arsenal of weapons and explosives aboard a freighter.

Israel signaled Sunday it will not be bound by a reported ceasefire deal in southern Syria reached by the United States, Russia and Jordan, with ministers indicating Israel will continue to operate across the border when it deems it necessary.

The agreement, announced in a US-Russian statement Saturday, affirms a call for “the reduction, and ultimate elimination” of foreign fighters from southern Syria.

According to reports, the deal includes Iranian proxies fighting on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, which would be required to leave the border area and eventually Syria.

Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz told The Associated Press the agreement is a positive development. But he stressed that Israel is not a party to the agreement and will defend its interests.

“We have proved that before and we will prove it again in the future,” Katz said.

While the agreement seeks to remove Iranian-backed militias from near the border, a key Israeli demand, Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said it did not go far enough.

The pact “does not meet Israel’s unequivocal demand that there will not be developments that bring the forces of Hezbollah or Iran to the Israel-Syria border in the north,” Hanegbi told reporters Sunday, according to a Reuters report.

“There’s reflection here of the understanding that Israel has set red lines, and will stand firm on this,” Hanegbi said.

This past Sunday, November 5th, 2017, the “Blue Flag” exercise took off. This is the largest international aviation exercise that the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has hosted to date. Throughout Blue Flag, air forces from the United States, Poland, Italy, Greece, India, France, and Germany will simulate intense combat scenarios in realistic settings with the IAF.

Blue Flag, which is a two-week-long exercise, is broken up into two stages. The first stage allows the air forces to acclimate themselves to the environment and each other. The second stage is where the complicated combat scenarios begin. Part of the exercise will include the IAF’s “Flying Dragon” Squadron. This squadron specializes in imitating enemy planes and will do so during the exercise.

The drills, including those with the “Flying Dragon” Squadron, are designed to sharpen the air forces’ skills and strengthen cooperation, making Blue Flag both a unifying experience and strategically beneficial.

A German Eurofighter Typhoon pilot next to the Blue Flag 2017 logo

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Sunday that the country would respond harshly to any attack against it no matter where it comes from.

Netanyahu’s comments appeared to be prompted by blustery statements from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in Gaza, which is threatening Israel with retaliation for the destruction of a terror tunnel it dug under the border into Israel, but they also came amid increasing tension on Israel’s northern borders.

“These days, there are still those who toy with trying renewed attacks on Israel,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. “We will take a very strong hand against anyone who tries to attack us or attacks us from any sector.”

“I say this to every entity, rogue faction, organization — every one. In any case, we see Hamas as responsible for every attack that emanates from, or is planned against us in, the Gaza Strip,” he said.

MBS no longer hides the war going on between the Sunni and Shiite factions in the Middle East. He has done more than a little to emphasize it and demonstrate it. It is no longer games and diplomatic statements in the name of “Muslim brotherhood.”

MBS understood this week the great danger that Iran has created on Saudi Arabia’s doorstep, after the missile was fired at the airport.

For bin Salman this was a provocation to war, a casus belli.

However, we are desperately looking for the lines that connect the steps against Iran and Hezbollah to his second move, against some 200 members of the royal family and most senior businessmen. And his third track, preserving the Israeli-Palestinian political process.

It is possible that these are three parallel paths which will not converge quickly. In other words, (and not specifically in this order,) bin Salman may be first working to reform the inner processes of Saudi Arabia, for example the status of women in the kingdom, by fighting corruption and purging pockets of resistance within the royal court. Second, he is working actively against Iran and Hezbollah, which we may soon witness more tangibly. And third, he is giving backing to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in order to show the Western world and the Arab nations that he still wants to help the Palestinians.

There are the strong connections between Israel and Saudi Arabia in various fields. Who provided the Saudis with the relevant information about Hezbollah’s involvement in firing the missile, for instance? Was it Saudi intelligence alone? So perhaps it is possible to understand why it is important to bin Salman to justify his connection with the Israelis.

Saudi Arabia is declaring war on Hezbollah, not for its love of Israel as much as for its hatred of Iran. Not a day has passed in the past few months without the Saudi press attacking the Lebanese organization and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

A red line was crossed last week, as far as the Saudis are concerned, when Houthi rebels in Yemen fired a missile at Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh. What does Hezbollah have to do with the Houthis? Lebanon and Saudi Arabia don’t share a border, and the Shiite organization is threatening Israel, not the Saudi kingdom. So why is Saudi Arabia so determined to destroy the Lebanese organization?

Hezbollah is everywhere in Syria
If we thought Hezbollah was deployed primarily in western Syria to defend Lebanon’s border, images released Thursday morning reveal the true story behind the war in Syria: The al-Mayadeen newspaper published “joyful” photos of Iraqi and Syrian fighters meeting on the border between the two countries after conquering the town of al-Bukamal in the Deir al-Zour Governorate. The article’s title, “Restoring the borders to their pre-ISIS condition” is misleading. That’s not the case at all.

The fighters in the picture are not soldiers in the Syrian and Iraqi armies. They are waving flags of Hezbollah and Shiite organization al-Hashd al-Shaabi (the Popular Mobilization Forces). In other words, the fighters meeting and celebrating the “victory” are actually two Iranian-controlled militias.

This is the reality the Arab Sunni world is dealing with right now. The Sunni battle against the Iranian takeover of the Middle East is being led by the Saudi kingdom, which is the strongest Arab country today both economically and militarily.

Iran rejected on Sunday a call by French President Emmanuel Macron for talks on Tehran's ballistic missiles, saying they were defensive and unrelated to a nuclear agreement with world powers.

On Thursday, Macron said during a visit to Dubai that he was "very concerned" by Iran's ballistic missile program, mentioning a missile fired from Yemen and intercepted by Saudi Arabia earlier this month. He raised the prospect of possible sanctions with regard to those activities.

"There are negotiations we need to start on Iran's ballistic missiles," Macron said.

But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi rejected that possibility. "France is fully aware of our country's firm position that Iran's defense affairs are not negotiable," he said.

"We have told French officials repeatedly that the nuclear deal is not negotiable and other issues will not be allowed to be added to it," Qassemi said, according to a statement on the ministry's website.

The United States accused Iran on Tuesday of supplying Yemen's Houthi rebels with a missile that was fired into Saudi Arabia in July and called for the United Nations to hold Tehran accountable for violating two UN Security Council resolutions .

Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse Iran of supplying missiles and other weapons to the Houthis, saying the arms were not present in Yemen before conflict broke out there in 2015. Iran denies the charges and blames the conflict on Riyadh.

Jeremy Corbyn says on the front page of the Observer that Boris is “shaming our nation” over Iran. Is this a wind up? Let’s take a look at Jezza’s record on Iran:

• Accepted £20,000 for appearing on the Iranian state TV channel Press TV, even after the channel had filmed and broadcast a torture victim’s confession
• Agreed with a Press TV caller that Britain’s national broadcaster were “Zionist liars”
• Attended a Press TV / Khomeinist event just 11 months ago, while he was leader of the opposition, posing for photos with an extremist author
• Attended the Iranian regime’s Al-Quds Day event calling for the destruction of Israel
• Attended event during which the Iranian regime’s British representatives called for a boycott of Marks and Spencer and others in attendance chanted about gassing Tel Aviv

Berlin Mayor Michael Müller issued a scathing condemnation of the anti-Israel boycott campaign because of its protest against the Jewish state on Friday, the memorial day for the Kristallnacht pogroms against Jews across Nazi Germany in 1938.

“It is intolerable that BDS carries out its Israeli-hostile antisemitic propaganda on the remembrance day of the November pogroms without consideration of the victims of the Shoah, their family members and the Jewish community,” he said.

Germans committed a wave of attacks on Jews, businesses owned by Jews, and synagogues starting on November 9, 1938. The destruction, murders and mass arrests were an early phase of the Holocaust.

The organization BDS Campaign in Berlin urged on its website people to participate in the boycott-Israel event at the city’s Potsdam Square under the slogan of “For A World Without Walls.”

The global protest action “For A World Without Walls” terms Israel’s West Bank security barrier an “Israeli Apartheid wall on Palestinian land.” Potsdam Square serves as a reminder of the East Germany’s wall that separated West Berlin from East Berlin during the Cold War. Chunks of the Berlin Wall are on display at the site.

Müller blasted BDS Campaign for a “reckless misrepresentation of history” for its likening of Israel’s anti-terrorism barrier to the Berlin Wall. It is unclear if Müller‘s strong words played a role in the low turnout at the rally.

Prominent Dutch Jews spoke out against what they called a new trend involving hosting activists against Israel at commemorations for the Kristallnacht pogroms of 1938.

The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, which is the Netherlands’ main watchdog on anti-Semitism, spoke out against the trend earlier this week ahead of the November 9 anniversary of the pogroms in Germany and Austria, which many historians view as the opening shot of the Nazi campaign of violence against the Jews during the Holocaust.

CIDI, whose then director in 2000 represented Dutch Jews in negotiations for Holocaust restitution, said it was “concerned over the trend in which anti-Israel individuals receive a podium at Holocaust-related commemorations,” according to the CIP website.

The statement followed the invitation to one commemoration of Dries van Agt, a pro-Palestinian former prime minister of the Netherlands who recently said that the Jews “should have been given a piece of land” in Germany instead of in the historic Land of Israel, and the hosting at another of Anne Dekker, an activist who promotes the boycott of Israel and who said that neither Israel nor CIDI legitimately represent Jews.

Van Agt — who has been fighting accusations of anti-Semitism since he declared in 1972 that he “is only an Aryan” in connection to his efforts to free Nazi war criminals – will speak at the main event organized by the Committee for the Commemoration of Kristallnacht, an NGO, at a theater in Amsterdam.

A protester has been sighted flying the flag of a Palestinian terrorist organisation outside the Royal Albert Hall during a concert celebrating the Balfour Declaration, which supported the establishment of the State of Israel.

While the concert took place on Tuesday evening, one protester brazenly flew the flag of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The group has committed numerous terrorist attacks, including the 2014 Jerusalem synagogue massacre in which four Jewish worshipers and a Druze Arab policeman were killed with axes, knives, and a gun, while seven were injured.

The protester was able to stand in full view of police, flying the flag and smiling, because the police officers did not have the powers to arrest him: a faction of the PFLP has been outlawed in Britain, but not the PFLP as a whole.

The fact that a protester can lawfully stand in central London in support of a terrorist organisation that seeks the slaughter of Jews makes an utter mockery of our counter-extremism and terrorism legislation. The PFLP as a whole should be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

The university sought to remove Professor Ruba Salih from her position as chair of the event. Salih, who is a lecturer in the School of African and Oriental Studies, is Palestinian; the university, in calling for her replacement, cited a need for ''open, robust and lawful debate,'' suggesting Salih would not be able to facilitate such a dialogue due to her background.

The student organizer of the event, Ed McNally, said that the university was ''bowing to external pressure from a pro-Israel lobby group.''

Student and academics from Cambridge and dozens of other British universities penned a letter to the university, disavowing what they call a ''threat to academic freedom.''

The petition, which has garnered hundreds of signatures in a matter of days, names StandWithUs as the 'pro-Israel lobby' that demanded the university cancel the event. The organization ''rests on a litany of potentially libelous and bigoted accusations of racism against Omar Barghouti'' and one of the panel speakers, National Union of Students President Malia Bouattia.

The petition defends Omar Barghouti and claims the Israeli government has waged a campaign of ''intimidation'' against him, including charges of ''civil assassination,'' detention and arrogation, which they term ''common practice for Israel in its treatment of human rights defenders.''

Barghouti, an Israeli resident and graduate of Tel Aviv University, is a founding member of a Palestinian organization that advocates a cultural and academic boycott of Israel. Often accused of antisemitism, Barghouti has equated Israel with an apartheid state. He was arrested in early 2017 on charges of tax evasion.

The Guardian profiled Priti Patel, the British politician forced to resign for undeclared meetings with Israeli officials. It included the following:

We contacted and tweeted The Guardian and the journalist responsible for the text:

The Star's October 17 Op-Ed, “Hanan Ashrawi is a Palestinian peacemaker,” contained numerous misleading and false claims, with the potential of inciting hatred against Jews and the Jewish state.

Melinda Henneberger, Star columnist and editorial board member, quotes Palestinian official Ashrawi, a notorious propagandist,“This is not a religious conflict” referring to the Palestinian-Israel conflict. Henneberger seems to endorse the claim. But it is contradicted by various realities. First, Muslims believe that Islam supersedes Judaism and Christianity. Among scholars understanding this is John L. Esposito, professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University, who is widely recognized as an expert on Islam. Accordingly, Palestinian leadership, including the Palestinian Authority (P.A.), has for many years repeatedly inflamed the passions of Palestinians and Muslims with battle cries like "Defend Muslim Holy Sites."

This is exemplified by P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas' 2015 declaration apparently triggered by a false rumor that Israeli officials planned to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque located on Israel's Temple Mount. The Wall Street Journal noted on Oct. 18, 2015: "Mr. Abbas, the PA president, said the following on Palestinian television on Sept. 16: ‘We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every martyr [murderer of Jews] will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.'"

Henneberger claims, “… it's true that the dominant media and political and religious narrative in this country is overwhelmingly Israel's view.” On the contrary, the dominant (or mainstream) media's widespread antipathy towards Israel has been documented. Examples are plentiful dealing with pillars of the news outlets such as Time magazine, New York Times and CNN.

Among numerous CAMERA online reports on the matter are these: “Time Magazine Ignores Facts to Denigrate Israel,” “New York Times Opinion Bias by the Numbers,” and “Amanpour Again Misleads CNN Viewers About Israel.”

As Americans give thanks to their military veterans, a unique Torah scroll aboard the US Navy’s newest aircraft carrier will honor one veteran in particular — and it’s the centerpiece in remembering 100 years of outreach efforts to Jewish servicemembers.

On November 29, in Norfolk, Virginia, the JCC Association of North America will dedicate a Torah in memory of World War II veteran Jacob Kamaras aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories
Free Sign Up

The ceremony will honor Kamaras, who served in the Army Air Corps, as well as recognize a century of the JCCA’s outreach to servicemembers — which began when it was founded in 1917 as the Jewish Welfare Board (JWB), days after the US entered World War I. To celebrate its second century, the JCCA, in a historic partnership with the Kamaras family, created a customized Torah for the Ford.

The ceremony will take place just over two weeks after Veterans Day.

“It’s certainly appropriate timing. … It’s a significant time for our country,” said Jacob Kamaras, the grandson and namesake of the WWII veteran.

“This Torah will be an opportunity for tremendous benefit for members of the military,” said Kamaras, who never knew his grandfather. “For the timing to work out, to happen at a time veterans are honored, is fitting.”

Music legend Alan Parsons and his band performed in Haifa a few nights ago and perform in Tel Aviv tonight.

The below video was taken from the Haifa concert. It is of the band performing their hit song Eye in the Sky. But notice just how much the crowd gets into it, singing along loudly.

You can tell Alan and the band really appreciate the audience and their enthusiasm. Probably not as much as we appreciate his outspoken support for us and opposition to BDS, though.

Israeli soccer star Eran Zahavi was named the most valuable player in the Chinese Super League on Saturday after finishing the season as the top goal scorer.

Zahavi, 30, won the award in only his second year in the Chinese league, which has attracted dozens of top international players in recent years with huge salaries.

He was also awarded the Golden Boot, given to the league’s leading goal scorer. His 27 goals for the season were one short of tying the league record of 28.

Despite his individual success, Zahavi’s Guangzhou R&F club only finished fifth in the league.

Zahavi, who has a $7 million a year contract with the club until 2020, was coy on his future with the team at the awards ceremony, saying he would have to consider whether he would remain with the squad next season.

Thanks to a more healthful lifestyle, better economic situation, improved education and a more advanced medical system, the Israeli life expectancy has increased by 10.3 years since 1970 – from 71.8 years to 82.1 years in 2015.

This has just been made public in “Health at a Glance 2017,” a comparative report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which Israel joined in 2010.

It pays to get a higher education in Israel: Men with bachelor’s degrees lived an average of 7.5 years longer than men with much less formal education, while the gap between better-educated and less-educated women was five years.

The average life expectancy increase in all 35 member countries was 10 years. The highest life expectancy was in Japan – 83.9, followed by Spain and Switzerland at 83 years. The lowest life expectancies among OECD countries were in Latvia (74.6 years) and Mexico (75).

According to the report, if the rates of smoking and drinking alcohol were 50% lower, life expectancy would have increased by 13 more months. In addition, a 10% increase in per capita health expenditure in real terms would have increased average life expectancy by 3.5 months. But not only total health expenditure has an impact on life expectancy; it is also according to the way resources are used. In the US, for example, health expenditure has risen more than in any other country since 1995, but the increase in life expectancy was relatively low.

Wonder Woman star Gal Godot has reportedly refused to sign on for a sequel unless accused sexual harasser Brett Ratner is removed from the franchise.

Ratner, who has been accused of sexual harassment by six women in recent days, helped finance the summer blockbuster, and took home a sizable stake of the $412million box office gross.

Ratner's production company Rat-Pac Dune co-financed the hit movie in an agreement with Warner Bros., and now Godot is insisting that the studio buy out his stake, Page Six reports.

'She's tough and stands by her principles. She also knows the best way to hit people like Brett Ratner is in the wallet,' a Warner Bros. insider told the outlet.

'She also knows that Warner Bros. has to side with her on this issue as it develops. They can't have a movie rooted in women's empowerment being part-financed by a man ­accused of sexual misconduct against women,' the insider continued.

'Brett made a lot of money from the success of 'Wonder Woman,' thanks to his company having helped finance the first movie,' the source said.

'Now Gadot is saying she won't sign for the sequel unless Warner Bros. buys Brett out [of his financing deal] and gets rid of him,' the insider said.

Is it really a coincidence that these two "regular" Nazi novels win two big prizes at a painful historic moment when the Palestinians celebrated their 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration? Do you not see that this British and European "promise" is the same as the Nazi project in its cruelty, violence and crime? Is it not worth representing a knot in the conscience of Britain, Europe and America? [Balfour] promised the Zionists of the world the opportunity to play the role of Hitler's executioner, but against the people of Palestine. This dubious promise was the "legitimate" international motive for fighting the people, persecuting them, expelling them from their land and displacing them. No Western novel has been written about the Balfour Declaration, nor about Palestine, and the massacres committed - and still - by the Israeli occupation army against the people of the land. No European or American novelist has written a story about one of the worst tragedies of the twentieth century, cruel, dark, and miserable. The Holocaust is overflowing with novels, movies and theatrical works all over the world. The tragedy of Palestine was seen only by the Arabs. The French writer dissident Jean Genet is the only Western who wrote the novel of Palestine and the Palestinians in his wonderful book "Prisoner of Love", which aroused the anger of Israelis and Zionists in the world. Is not it very unfortunate that the Palestinian tragedy does not lead to its inspiring works by Western novelists that suit it?

MORE THAN 35 THOUSAND JEWS BREAK INTO HEBRON
Thousands of Jews stormed the city of Hebron to perform religious rituals, where religious Jews from "Kiryat Arba" hosted more than 35,000 Jews, where the huge tents were erected near what they call the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

Israeli authorities have incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Palestinians since 1967, the majority after trials in military courts, which have a near-100 percent conviction rate. 

the US military's “conviction rate for all crimes is more than 90 percent.” This rate includes conviction for all crimes including sexual assaults; the sexual assault conviction rate was only 27%, bringing the total conviction rate down.
In US federal civilian criminal courts, the conviction rate is slightly higher. For fiscal year 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, 94.2 percent of criminal defendants in federal district courts either pleaded guilty or were convicted, and 91.8 percent of criminal defendants in federal magistrate courts either pleaded guilty or were convicted.

A Palestinian prisoner was exonerated by an Israeli court on Thursday from charges against him alleging that he carried out a bombing at an Israeli hotel in 2015.

According to Lawyer Yousif Nasasra of the Palestinian Committee of Prisoner’s Affairs, Jerusalemite Khalil al-Nimr, 23, was detained on November 30th, 2015 over accusations of carrying out an explosion that targeted the Rio Hotel in the southern Israeli city of Eilat.
According to a statement from Nasasra, al-Nimr was proved innocent on Thursday after several court sessions.

All developments in the region are in favour of Israel, and lead it to regional and civil wars, former Egyptian assistant to the foreign minister, Hussein Haridy, said.
He added that the US president’s speech in October, the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariry, and the recent developments in Saudi Arabia, all revealed a plan to eliminate Iran’s influence in the Arab region, as a prelude to a general confrontation, where all conflicting parties would stand to lose, except Israel. If the Israeli plan succeeds, they would end up with a declaration of the Greater Israel.
Why is Israel involved in this confrontation? One of the goals of this war is to stop the expansion of the Iranian belt from Tehran to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel and Saudi Arabia share that goal, whether by agreement or not.So Israel is the main player in the current scene? Israel is the catalyst of events and its interests coincide with American arms manufacturers’. The Israeli strategy does not only aim at the elimination of Iran but also exhausting the main Arab forces and draining their economic resources, in preparation for establishing Greater Israel.What do you mean by Greater Israel? For the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel, it will have borders, as it is considered the only United Nations member without internationally recognized borders so far. This is the undeclared goal.Is Sinai part of this scheme? The Israeli scheme had four phases: the first phase was the Balfour Declaration, the second phase was the establishment of the so-called State of Israel, the third phase was the 1967 aggression, and we are witnessing now the final phase. At one time, Sinai was part of the Zionist project since its launch.It is known that Al-Arish was an alternative to the establishment of the Israeli homeland before the Ottoman Empire rejected that. Regardless of this rejection, there was an agreement between the British and the World Zionist Movement to replace Al-Arish with Palestine. When the two state solution was suggested, the Israeli side thought of expanding the Gaza Strip westward to absorb the density of population. This proposal was met with approval under the rule of the [Muslim] Brotherhood in Egypt.So the 30 June revolution aborted this scheme? It destroyed this project, which put the Zionist and Turkish forces and those who were behind this project in an awkward position, and made the Arab world preoccupied with confronting Iran. Unfortunately, the engine and the beneficiary is Israel.

Despite the repeated assurances of Pakistan’s military and civil leadership that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are well-protected and are under tight security arrangements, having well-coordinated command and control system, a deliberate propaganda campaign against the safety of these weapons keeps on going by the US, India and some Western countries who are acting upon the Zionist agenda to ‘denuclearize’ Pakistan.
It is mentionable that being the only nuclear country in the Islamic World, Pakistan was already on the hit-list of the US, India and Israel, including some Western countries. Based in Afghanistan, American CIA, Indian RAW, Israeli Mossad and British MI6 which have well-established their covert networks there and are well-penetrated in the terrorist outfits like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and their affiliated Taliban groups are using their terrorists to destabilize Pakistan by arranging the subversive activities such as target killings, suicide attacks, hostage-takings, sectarian and ethnic violence in various cities of the country. Now, these foreign entities have also started backing the Islamic State group (Also known as Daesh, ISIS, ISIL) in order to weaken Pakistan through terrorist acts.

...These Zionist-controlled foreign elements have, again, started terror attacks in Pakistan to show that nuclear weapons of the country are insecure.
Overtly, American high officials remark that they seek stability in Pakistan, but covertly, they continue to destabilize it to obtain the illegitimate interests of Israel.

Iranian Parliament’s General Director for International Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian underlined the role of the United States and the Zionist regime in crisis in Middle East and said “the Zionists are after controlling the region.”
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks in a televised interview with Negah-e Yek on Saturday.
Referring to the resignation of Lebanon’s PM, Amir-Abdollahian said “during the last 6 years, simultaneous with the Islamic awakening, an unholy alliance was forged between the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia through which they resorted to various means, such as ISIS, in order to suit their fundamental purpose.”
“Defeating ISIS, with all the support it had received from terrorists and super-powers, was a major step that was taken in about three years. ISIS had set the destabilization of the region as its primary objective and wanted to effect demographic change through tribal conflicts,” added Amir-Abdollahian.
“When they realized ISIS had failed in the region, they forced the referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan. But Masoud Barzani was only used as a means to an end,” he went on.
“Americans gave Barzani the green light. Barzani had asked Israel to maintain peace, but he stood alone, so Israel finally had to take measures. Iran provided the greatest support for Kurds in this situation,” said Iranian Parliament’s General Director for International Affairs.
“The Zionists are after controlling the region, but their plots have failed. Their next plan is to disturb peace in the region. They will accept peace and security in the region only when Israel is in peace and other countries, even Saudi Arabia, are destroyed and separated,” he went on. 

In 1974, 2nd Lt. Hiroo Onoda of the Imperial Japanese Army was still fighting for his emperor, hiding in a Philippine jungle. He had rejected many attempts to inform him of Japan's surrender 29 years earlier. During those many years, he senselessly murdered about one Filipino and injured three others each year. Only a concerted effort by his former commander finally convinced Onoda that the emperor had accepted defeat in 1945 and therefore he too must lay down arms.

The Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are Onoda writ large. They formally acknowledged defeat by Israel 24 years ago, when Yasser Arafat stood on the White House lawn and recognized "the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security." Trouble was, Arafat himself did not sincerely offer this act of surrender and most Palestinians rejected it.

Accordingly, the war continues, with Palestinians emulating that grizzled, vicious Japanese soldier: They, too, battle on for a failed cause, murder senselessly, and ignore repeated calls to surrender. Just as Onoda insisted on believing in a divine emperor, Palestinians inhabit a fantasy world in which, for example, Jesus was a Palestinian, Jerusalem was always exclusively Islamic, and Israel is the new Crusader state on the verge of collapse. (In this spirit, Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei has helpfully provided the precise date of Sep. 9, 2040, when Israel will vaporize, and his acolytes built a large doomsday clock to count down the days.) Some imagine Israel already gone, with nearly every Arabic map of "Palestine" showing it replacing the Jewish state.

How do Palestinians ignore reality and persist in these illusions? Due to three main factors: Islamic doctrine, international succor, and the wariness of the Israeli security services. (The Israeli Left was once a major factor but it barely counts anymore.)

In 2013, the Palestinian Football Association (PFA), headed by Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee Jibril Rajoub, launched an unfounded attack against the Israeli Football Association (IFA) in FIFA. The PFA claimed that the IFA is in breach of FIFA's statutes since six of its registered clubs play in what the PFA refers to as "its territory."

On Oct. 27, 2017, FIFA's Council rejected Rajoub and PFA's claim, deciding
[To] "refrain from imposing any sanctions or other measures on either the Israel FA or the Palestinian FA, as well as from requesting any other FIFA body to do so. The matter is declared closed..." [FIFA Council statement, Oct. 27, 2017]

While not acting on Rajoub's complaint, FIFA's council also said it would not act against the PFA. The basis for acting against the PFA was Palestinian Media Watch's complaint to FIFA's Disciplinary Committee which provided evidence that the PFA and Rajoub were inciting terror, glorifying terrorists, and promoting racism and Antisemitism.

In response, Rajoub continues to use denigratory and discriminatory language, saying Israel has a "fascist governmental plan... that is typical of Nazism," in breach of section 58 of FIFA's Disciplinary Code. Two days after FIFA's decision, Rajoub said:

"This is a blatant violation when they [Israelis] organize an official [football] league on lands that are not Israeli lands. Even the Israel [Football] Association did not dare to claim: "These lands belong to us." The one [Israel] who brings in politics and makes sport political is the one who works according to a fascist governmental plan, a government that is typical of Nazism. We have rights, and we will continue to demand them at the FIFA court in accordance with all the laws and regulations, and also the laws of Switzerland where FIFA is located."
[Official PA TV News, Oct. 29, 2017]

PMW will be submitting another complaint to FIFA against Rajoub's new breach of FIFA's Disciplinary Code.

For years we’ve been covering incitement on the part of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its failure to prepare Palestinian society for a resolution of the conflict via non-violent means.

The PA is viewed by the West as the ‘moderate’ Palestinian body and Israel’s supposed ‘partner for peace’, but as we’ve repeatedly highlighted, its officials routinely demonize Israel and glorify terrorists as national heroes. Young people are exposed to this radicalization, as schools and educational programs justify and condone the use of violence.

The sad reality is that a whole generation of Palestinian children is learning in schools and playing in sports fields and arenas named after mass murders.

Now a new study by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) documents how kids in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas are being further indoctrinated to hate through their schoolbooks.

Like earlier textbooks that were used to teach “over one million impressionable children”, the IMPACT-se report finds that the new textbooks—recently released as part of the PA’s first full reform of the educational curriculum since 2000—are still promoting the demonization of Israel.

But the IMPACT-se assessment also finds that the radicalization is pervasive across this new curriculum—to an even greater extent than before.

Basically, Palestinian children are being groomed to commit to jihad war and to sacrifice themselves to martyrdom.

A conference to support the Palestinian cause was held last month in the Indian city of Hyderabad. Amongst those present was Mahmoud al Habbash, the Palestinian Authority’s chief shari’a justice and religious affairs advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

MEMRI has translated a report in the the Urdu daily Roznama Urdu Times in wihich al Habbash said: “Every Palestinian will continue the struggle till the complete freedom of Palestine. Those who started the movement for the freedom of Palestine took a pledge, while leaving this world, from the next generation that it will continue this struggle until the land of the first qibla [direction of prayer, i.e. Palestine] is purified of the impious existence of Jews.”

As is clear from the rest of his remarks, he was not talking merely about the “West Bank” and Gaza. He meant the whole of Israel would be “purified” of Jews. This man does not speak for Hamas. He is part of the Palestinian Authority, regarded by the west as “moderate”, and religious adviser to Abbas, regarded by the west as a statesman-in-waiting.

Western “progressives” support the Palestinian Authority and support the Palestinan cause. What do they imagine Mahmoud al Habbash means by the world “purified”? How do they think he intends to put that word into practice in Israel? I’ll give them a clue. It will involve, at the very least, a war of annihilation, racist ethnic cleansing and mass murder.

This is what establishing a state of Palestine means to the Palestinian Authority. This is the agenda that western “progressives” not only support but have made into their cause of causes: an agenda which involves the purge of every single Jew from Israel, their own national home.

Please join me in this video clip as I lay out for Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the terrifying scale of the threat to the west from Iran, and the alarming failure of the Trump administration to halt Iran’s progress; even worse, that the US has empowered the regime still further by treating it as an ally.

Please join me in this video clip as I talk to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network about the chronic Israeli failure to respond adequately when confronted with the boiler-plate prejudices hurled at them by the belligerent western media.

Moscow’s frank acknowledgement of Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s capital, and the near-total absence of reaction around the world — especially in the Middle East — evidences the reality into which a US decision to relocate its embassy would fall.

If Russia can accept that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital without receiving massive blowback, then surely so can the United States.

The second argument against relocation of the US embassy is that the broader Middle East peace process would be adversely impacted. Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat said last December, for example, that moving the embassy would cause the “destruction of the peace process as a whole.”

Surely, quite apart from being the kind of threat we should treat with disdain, this argument proves too much to swallow. Given the amount of economic and military assistance Washington has supplied to Israel over the years — not to mention huge amounts of private donations and humanitarian assistance from US citizens — American support for the permanence of modern Israel should not be surprising.

If the Middle East peace process is such a delicate snowflake that the US embassy’s location in Israel could melt it, one has to doubt how viable it truly is. This question calls for realism, not the overheated rhetoric we have heard too often.

Washington’s role as honest broker in the peace process will not be enhanced or reduced in the slightest by moving our embassy to Jerusalem. To say otherwise is to mistake pretext for actual cause.

Moving our embassy may produce new talking points for those who have never reconciled themselves to Israel’s existence in the first place, but it will not “cause” any change in the existing geopolitical state of play.

Finally, we hear constantly the argument that concedes an eventual decision to relocate the US embassy in Israel, but pleads that “right now” is not the correct time. This approach argues for a temporary deferral of the move, but curiously, “temporary” deferral has now lasted for nearly 70 years. We hear it still today.

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman lauded the Trump administration and its handling of the US-Israel relationship, while slamming President Obama over his administration’s tacit support for an anti-Israel resolution passed by the United Nations Security Council.

Ambassador Friedman spoke Sunday evening at the Zionist Organization of America’s annual gala in New York City, along with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, casino mogul and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson, Senator Tom Cotton (Arkansas-R), former Senator Joseph Lieberman, and ZOA chief Morton Klein.

"We came into office on the heels of perhaps the greatest betrayal of Israel by a sitting president in American history,” said Friedman, “the failure by the United States in the December of last year to veto United Nations Security Council resolution 2334.”

“Imagine, a resolution stating that the Western Wall is illegally occupied territory. And unthinkably, the United States abstained and permitted that resolution to pass. And a day later, the Secretary of State's attempts to justify this outrage only compounded the problem and revealed a stunning rejection of America's most important Middle Eastern ally."

Friedman blasted the Obama administration’s behavior in the lame-duck period from last November through till inauguration day on January 20th as the “dark days”.

Zionist Organization of America chief Morton Klein ridiculed claims that Israel has ‘occupied’ Judea and Samaria, telling supporters at the ZOA annual gala Sunday night in New York that no Palestinian Arab nation ever existed.

“This was never their sovereign land,” said Klein. “And if it was their sovereign land, how could it be that they would have named it 'Palestine' - a Roman name, not an Arab name? We [the ZOA] are the only significant organization making it clear to Congress and the media and in public speeches that there is no 'occupation'. This is holy Jewish land, it has never been sovereign Arab land."

In addition, Klein noted, Israel has withdrawn from nearly all Arab population centers in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, granting autonomy to the overwhelming majority, 98%, of Arabs in those areas.

"There are many falsehoods in the world being perpetrated against Israel. I'll only mention one - besides Apartheid and that Jerusalem is holy to Muslims, a total falsehood - this nonsense of 'occupation'. Is there really an 'occupation' now?"

Nevertheless, no American or European on the face of this Earth could force a Palestinian leader to sign a peace treaty with Israel that would be rejected by an overwhelming majority of his people.

Trump's "ultimate solution" may result in some Arab countries signing peace treaties with Israel. These countries anyway have no real conflict with Israel. Why should there not be peace between Israel and Kuwait? Why should there not be peace between Israel and Oman? Do any of the Arab countries have a territorial dispute with Israel? The only "problem" the Arab countries have with Israel is the one concerning the Palestinians.

For now, it appears that the vast majority of Arab regimes no longer care about the Palestinians and their leaders. The Palestinians despise the Arab leaders as much as they despise each other. It is a mutual feeling. The Palestinians particularly despise any Arab leader who is aligned with the US. They do not consider the US an honest broker in the Israeli-Arab conflict. The Palestinians, in fact, view the US as being "biased" in favor of Israel, regardless of whether the man sitting in the Oval Office is a Democrat or Republican.

The Saudi crown prince is viewed by Palestinians as a US ally. His close relations with Jared Kushner are seen with suspicion not only by Palestinians, but by many other Arabs as well. Palestinian political analysts such as Faisal Abu Khadra believe that the Palestinian leadership should prepare itself to face the "mysterious" Trump "peace plan." They are skeptical that the plan would meet the demands of the Palestinians.

The Palestinians appear to be united in rejecting the Trump Administration's effort to "impose" a solution on them. They are convinced that the Americans, with the help of Saudi Arabia and some Arab countries, are working towards "liquidating" the Palestinian cause. Abbas and his rivals in Hamas now find themselves dreading the US administration's "peace plan."

Like lemmings drawn to the sea, the Palestinians seem to be marching towards yet another scenario where they "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."The question remains: how will the Saudis and the rest of the international community respond to ongoing Palestinian rejectionism and intransigence?

Iranian-backed forces in Syria could be left as close as five kilometers to the Israeli border under the terms of a ceasefire agreement hammered out between the US, Russia, and Jordan, according to a report this week. Israel has indicated that it is unhappy with the terms of the agreement.

An Israeli official said that, under the deal, militias associated with Iran would be allowed to maintain positions as little as five to seven kilometers (3.1-4.3 miles) from the border in some areas, Reuters reported Monday.

In other areas, the Iranian-allied forces would be pulled back as far as 30 kilometers from the border, explained the official, who spoke with the news agency on condition of anonymity. The final arrangements will depend on the current positions held by rebel forces fighting against the Assad regime on the Syrian part of the Golan Heights.

According to media reports, the deal applies even to Iranian proxies fighting on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Israel will continue to carry out strikes in Syria despite a United States-Russia ceasefire, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday after reports that the deal would allow Iranian troops to remain 5 kilometers from Israel’s border.

Speaking during the weekly Likud partry faction meeting, Netanyahu described Israel’s security policy as “the right combination of firmness and responsibility” and said he has told Moscow and Washington that Israel will continue carrying out strikes in Syria despite the ceasefire agreement “in accordance with our understanding and in accordance with our security needs.”

Netanyahu has publicly criticized the US-Russian ceasefire deal in Syria, saying that it does not include any provisions to stop Iranian expansion near Israel's northern border. In recent months Israel has held talks with Moscow, Washington and Amman in an attempt to ensure that any agreement will define the buffer zone at least 40 kilometers from the border with the Jewish State.

The border with Syria has been tense since war erupted in 2011, and Israeli officials have repeatedly voiced concerns over the growing Iranian presence on its borders and the smuggling of sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah from Tehran. Due to these concerns Israel has admitted to carrying out some 100 airstrikes against Hezbollah targets and weapons convoys over the past five years. Dozens more have been attributed to the Jewish State.

Intelligence minister Yisrael Katz reiterated Israel’s red lines on Monday, stating that “Israel has already made it clear that it shall not accept Iran and its affiliates and proxies basing themselves in Syria, which will be a permanent threat and a constant source of tension, friction and instability.”

Saudi Arabia last week ordered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to either accept an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal being put together by the Trump administration, or resign, according to an Israeli report Sunday.

The Trump administration has begun drafting an Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal based on a two-state solution, officials and analysts quoted by The New York Times said on Saturday.

A senior White House adviser said the plan would attempt to tackle controversial issues such as the status of Jerusalem and West Bank settlements.

Abbas was called unexpectedly to Riyadh six days ago by the office of the powerful Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

There, in addition to being told to “accept Trump’s peace plan or quit,” he was ordered to keep away from any Iranian influence, according to the report on Israel’s Channel 10.

Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman affirmed their support for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ position that the Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip, should be ruled by “one authority, one law and one weapon,” Abbas confidante Ahmad Majdalani said on Monday.

Abbas met Salman And Muhammed bin Salman last week in Riyadh following a short visit to Egypt, where he held talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

“Saudi Arabia affirmed its support for Palestinian reconciliation and the president’s position that there should be one authority, one law and one weapon,” Majdalani told The Jerusalem Post in a phone call.

In mid-October, Egypt brokered a deal between Abbas’s party Fatah and Hamas to advance reconciliation efforts and restore the PA’s governing authority in Gaza. Hamas has ruled Gaza since ousting the Fatah-dominated PA in 2007 from the territory.

Since Fatah and Hamas signed the agreement, Abbas has said he would not accept any scenario other than the PA taking full control of Gaza including all the weapons there.

The question is how will the Hamas-Palestinian Authority differences affect the functioning of the crossing, which is Gaza’s main entrance gate and for the moment running smoothly. If the claims of the PA reversing its position are accurate, then the reconciliation measures not only are not improving the situation in Gaza, which is what was supposed to happen, but could be making it worse.

On November 11, 2017, Fatah supporters celebrated the anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death – or his “murder” as they see it. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, in a recorded speech that was blared through loudspeakers, threw cold water on the hope that the sanctions he imposed on Gaza will be lifted, saying it would happen only after the agreements were fully implemented. He was preceded by the commander of the Ramallah police, who said the crossing could not operate unless Palestinian security personnel were fully deployed in Gaza. Hamas flatly rejects that option.

At present, the organizations affiliated with the PLO are preparing for a meeting in Cairo to approve the reconciliation agreement. It is not clear, however, what constitutes the agreement. The document that was originally signed in Cairo is not an “agreement,” and there is now a dispute over whether earlier agreements signed in 2011 or 2005 qualify as the real agreement.

U.S. President Donald Trump recently penned a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thanking the Israeli leader for supporting his speech at the U.N. General Assembly in September, in which he warned against the threats posed by Iran and its nuclear program.

Channel 10 News reported that Netanyahu presented the letter at a meeting of senior Likud ministers on Sunday.

"I thank you for your support," Trump wrote to Netanyahu. "Together, we will confront Iran."

In the letter, Trump said Israel was "one of the few countries in the world" to support his speech, along with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Immediately following Trump's speech, Netanyahu said the new American strategy toward Iran creates an opportunity to amend the nuclear deal and stunt Iran's efforts to expand its sphere of influence in the Middle East.

"Any responsible government or any person who is concerned for the peace and security of the world would do the same thing," Netanyahu said after Trump's U.N. address. "President Trump spoke the truth about the great dangers facing our world." (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Mexico will stop voting in favor of the Palestinians at United Nations institutions, the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has reported.

According to the report, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray Caso has informed Israeli Ambassador to Mexico Yoni Peled of the change.

On all votes regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mexico will either abstain or back the Jewish state’s position, the report said.

The shift was manifested earlier this month by Mexico’s first-ever support for Israel in a UNESCO vote.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Mexico in mid-September. And later that month, the Israeli military sent an aid mission to Mexico to help in the search-and-rescue efforts following the deadly 7.1-magnitude earthquake that rocked the central part of the country.

Even if they aren’t voicing it clearly, Israel and Saudi Arabia are also concerned about Washington’s tendency to continue the gradual process of retreating from the Middle East. The lack of success in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the declining dependence—which was never critical—on regional oil sources, and the very small chance for diplomatic achievements as a result of US initiatives are discouraging American investments in the region.

Israel and Saudi Arabia are concerned about dormant American involvement in Syria compared to Russia and Iran’s active presence. Furthermore, they suspect that Iran is developing a land corridor beyond the Mediterranean Sea, with the help of its allies—mostly Shiites—who control part of this axis.

Lebanon is an integral part of the Iranian plan, and Hezbollah is an essential tool in its implementation. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri’s resignation should be interpreted against this background. Preventing the creation of an Iranian corridor is a heavy strategic mission, which will be hard to accomplish without American involvement. That can explain the slight warmup in Saudi Arabia’s relations with Russia and the stronger Russian-Israeli dialogue on the Syrian issue.

The Iranian danger alone likely won’t be enough to openly bring Saudi Arabia and Israel closer together. Mohammad bin Salman is working on fortifying his inheritance, and it’s unlikely that he wants to expose himself to Arab criticism, especially Iranian, over his “betrayal of the Palestinian people.” A positive Israeli response to the American initiative, once it is formed, might convince him to take the risk.

Listen up, people. We’ve got our work cut out for us if we’re going to increase our representation in the next Knesset. You can glory all you want in the manifest rightness of our politics, but we have to face one scandalous fact: the right-wing parties in this country intend to affect the outcome of elections by convincing people to vote for them.

Some of you may find this shocking, but the rest of us who have been in politics a little longer will feel no surprise at the deviousness of those scoundrels. By appealing to the desires and concerns of voters, the parties on the other end of the political spectrum aim to exploit the democratic system for their own gain. For that sake of all that is good and hopeful, we cannot allow that to happen.

Once upon a time, when the Left was in charge and peace reigned, we could afford to ignore the demagogy spewing forth from those… other people. But somehow, a loophole in the laws and regulations covering elections resulted in those parties attracting enough votes to take power and subvert democratic norms. What do such running dogs know of democracy? Who gave them any right to assert that their obviously corrupt worldview should be given any validity or sway? The electorate, unfortunately, does not know how to safeguard against such manipulations. Nor do the authorities. We must remain vigilant against any further attempts to get voters to vote for others.

Israeli military troops operating overnight in the Palestinian village of Arraba, 11 kilometers (7 miles) southwest of Jenin, arrested Tarek Kaadan, a senior Islamic Jihad field commander in connection to an alleged terrorist plot the Gaza Strip-based group is planning against Israel.

Kaadan was transferred to security forces for interrogation.

The arrest comes two weeks after the IDF destroyed an Islamic Jihad terror tunnel discovered under the Israel-Gaza border. Eleven Islamic Jihad operatives were killed in the operation, including several senior commanders.

Damascus-based Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shalah has reportedly ordered the al-Quds Brigades, the group's military wing, to "carry out a terrorist attack against Israel as immediately as possible."

On Saturday, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai warned Islamic Jihad against retaliating over the tunnel's destruction.

"We are aware that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad is plotting against Israel. It is playing with fire on the backs of the residents of the Gaza Strip and at the expense of the internal Palestinian reconciliation and the entire region," he said in a video message.

A magnitude 7.2 earthquake rattled northeast Iraq near the border with Iran on Sunday, killing at least 140 people, with tremors reported in parts of central Israel.

The US Geological Survey said the temblor was centered 30 kilometers (19 miles) southwest of Halabja, near the northeastern border with Iran.

Iranian state media initially reported seven people had died in the quake, but later raised the toll to at least 140.

State television had previously reported six dead in Qasr-e Shirin, close to the Iraqi border, around 40 kilometers southwest of Azgaleh.

Both agencies reported 25 people had been wounded. Those estimated have now beet put at more than 800.

Some Israelis, especially those living on high floors, from Haifa in north to Beersheba and Ofakim in the south and along the coast, including Tel Aviv, reported feeling the tremor.

Israel offered sympathy but no immediate assistance to Iran and Iraq to help the countries deal with the aftermath of a destructive earthquake Sunday.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon said Monday he was unaware of any aid offered to the two countries, neither of which have diplomatic ties with Israel. In fact, Israel considers both Iran, which avowedly seeks Israel’s demise, and Iraq to be “enemy states” and prohibits citizens from traveling there.

“The Home Front Command has not organized a delegation [for Iran and Iraq],” an army spokesperson said.

The Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment.

Israeli officials were hesitant to discuss the matter in any depth, refusing to say why no assistance was offered or if the Jewish state would consider sending aid if asked to do so.

In 2003, after an earthquake in the southeastern Iranian city of Bam killed more than 26,000 people, unofficial Israeli sources considered offering aid to the Islamic Republic.

But Tehran’s Interior Ministry said Iran would accept help from all countries except one: Israel. “The Islamic Republic of Iran accepts all kinds of humanitarian aid from all countries and international organizations with the exception of the Zionist regime,” a spokesman said at the time.

Israeli authorities said Monday they would bar entry to the country of a group of French politicians seeking to visit jailed terrorist leader Marwan Barghouti.

The decision was part of efforts by Israel's government to bar supporters of a boycott of the country.

Israel's interior and public security ministries in a joint statement suggested that the delegation "not fly at all".

Politicians from France's Communist party and from the hard-left France Unbowed party, including four parliament members, said they planned to visit Israel and the Palestinian Authorities from November 18-23.

The delegation hoped to meet Barghouti, a prominent Arab leader and prisoner who is serving five life sentences for murder over his role in the murder of 26 people in suicide bombing and shooting attacks during the Second Intifada.

An initial deal has been reached with the US, which will likely go into effect within a year or two, to drop visa requirements for Israelis, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked announced from her Twitter account on Monday.

"We are closing a deal to dispense with the visa requirement," she tweeted. "Since I entered office, we have worked with the Americans to join the select group of states whose citizens are exempt from having to obtain a visa for entry to the US."

Shaked explained some of the complex issues she has had to address in an interview with Army Radio.

Part of the agreement with the US includes setting up a process for the US to have access to Israel's internal database for Israelis suspected of serious crimes in order that they can deny such persons entry.

"The details are complex and the dialogue between the countries has continued for four years, so it will not happen so fast. We need to undertake some legislative amendments, so it could be drawn out over another year or two, by my estimate," she told Army Radio.

Explaining that the US wanted full access to Israel's fingerprints database, she said that Israel had declined that much access, but that in its place, Israel would quickly provide information about persons suspected of serious crimes.

Israeli forces arrested a top commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group in the West Bank early Monday morning, a day after Jerusalem warned the group amid rising tensions over Gaza.

The Shin Bet security service confirmed that Tariq Qa’adan was picked up by the Israel Defense Forces in Arrabeh, southwest of Jenin, in the northern West Bank.

Qa’adan serves as a senior officer in the Gaza-based terror group’s West Bank wing, the Shin Bet said.

A Shin Bet official said Qa’adan was arrested “for being a member of a terrorist group.”

IDF soldiers also arrested 13 other Palestinian suspects in overnight raids in the West Bank, the army said.

Qa’adan’s arrest came two days after Israel released a stern warning to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, saying that it was aware the terror group was planning to carry out an attack in retaliation to the IDF’s demolition of one of its attack tunnels that crossed from Gaza into Israeli territory last month.

Israeli security forces arrested a senior Palestinian Authority security official on Friday for sending his forces into east Jerusalem to carry out arrests, an Israeli security official said on Sunday.

The security official named the PA security official as Ali Qaimiri, who serves as head of the PA Police in the Jerusalem outskirts and holds the rank of colonel.

“[Qaimiri] sent his forces into east Jerusalem to carry out arrests of blue-ID card holders,” the security official said, referring to Palestinian residents who hold Israeli residency cards.

The official declined to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding Qaimiri’s case, stating that an “investigation is ongoing.”

A PA security official confirmed that Israel arrested Qaimiri near Gush Etzion on Friday evening and subsequently transferred him to a jail in downtown Jerusalem.

The official added that Qaimiri was scheduled to appear before an Israeli court on Monday.

A military court on Sunday sentenced two Hebron brothers to life in prison for a series of sniper attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians in the West Bank, the army said.

From November 2015 to January 2016, Nasser and Akram Badawi committed a number of shooting attacks in Hebron and the surrounding area, injuring two civilians and two IDF soldiers.

They were arrested by Israeli security forces in January 2016 and convicted of 12 counts of attempted murder, as well as other security violations. According to the Shin Bet security service, the younger brother, Nasser, is a member of Hamas,

In addition to their life sentences, the Badawi brothers were ordered to pay a total of NIS 60,000 ($17,000) to their victims, the army said.

On November 6, 2015, Nasser and Akram met on the third floor of a building owned by their father near the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. From that vantage point, Nasser, 23, and Akram, 33, fired into a group of Jewish Israelis who were praying near the holy site, injuring two of them, one seriously and the other lightly.

The City of Jerusalem, in conjunction with Israeli security forces, is planning a massive demolition operation against an illegal neighborhood on the northern edge of the city.

According to a report by Kan 11 Sunday night, the Jerusalem municipality is taking aim at six illegally-built high-rise apartment buildings in the village of Kafr Aqab, which sits inside the municipal boundaries of the capital.

Kafr Aqab, while under full Israeli sovereignty and nominally under the authority of the City of Jerusalem, is outside of the security fence around the city and remains largely beyond the reach of Israeli law enforcement officials. Building violations are common in Kafr Aqab, and city officials say the six-building neighborhood targeted for demolition was built with no authorization whatsoever.

The six apartment buildings slated for demolition are all six stories or taller, and include a mosque built housed in a unit of one of the buildings.

The demolition will be carried out in a joint operation between city officials, Israel Police, the IDF, and the Shin Bet internal security agency. The buildings are slated to be levelled in a series of controlled explosions so powerful, hundreds of residents of other buildings in the area will have be evacuated as a security precaution.

Sources told Kan 11 that the plan has been promoted by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

Mousa Abu Marzouk, a member of Hamas's political bureau who is one of the most senior members of the organization, said on Sunday that the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993 are long dead and that all existing arrangements have nothing to do with those accords.

In an interview with the Arab21 website, Abu Marzouk rejected the claims against Hamas that under the reconciliation initiative with Fatah, the movement relinquished its basic principles.

"The claim that we agreed to a Palestinian state as a step towards national consensus, the establishment of a Palestinian state in the (West Bank) and the (Gaza) Strip with eastern Jerusalem as its capital, the return of the Palestinian refugees and the removal of the settlements from the West Bank – we agreed to all these things as a gradual program with a national consensus," he said.

Abu Marzouk rejected the demand of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas that the armed militias in Gaza disarm, saying,"The resistance is the right of the Palestinian people and the right of all the resistance organizations, and on this basis we say that the weapon of the resistance will not be included in the issues (in the framework of the reconciliation talks with Fatah)."

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who announced on Nov. 4 from Saudi Arabia that he was quitting as Lebanon's prime minister, suggested on Sunday he could rescind his resignation.

Speaking from Riyadh in an interview with Future TV, a station affiliated with his political party, Hariri said he planned to return to Lebanon to confirm his resignation in accordance with the constitution. But he also said that if he rescinds his decision to quit, the Hezbollah movement must respect Lebanon's policy of staying out of regional conflicts.

Hariri further warned on Sunday Lebanon was at risk of Gulf Arab sanctions because of the Shiite group Hezbollah's regional meddling and said he would return to Lebanon within days to affirm he had resigned as the country's prime minister.

In a television interview, the Saudi-allied Hariri held out the possibility he could yet rescind his resignation if Hezbollah agreed to stay out of regional conflicts such as Yemen, his first public comments since he read out his resignation on television from Riyadh eight days ago.

He indicated the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese in the Gulf could be at risk, as well as trade, vital to the stability of the Lebanese economy.

Observers of Middle East arms movements have noticed an ongoing effort by the Shiite militia Hezbollah in Lebanon to augment its arsenal with thoughts and prayers, an article in Jane’s reports.

In addition to Iran-supplied missiles and munitions, the article claims, the movement that effectively controls Lebanon has spent the last several years pursuing an overhaul of its thoughts and prayers inventory to bring the stockpile up do date with the latest versions of thoughts and prayers. State-of-the-art thoughts and prayers have attracted increasing attention during that time as they are deployed again and again to counter shooting attacks and other massacres across the US, and Hezbollah seeks to avail itself of the relatively inexpensive technology.

“Thoughts and prayers are the most common countermeasures to bullets, explosives, or automotive impact,” the article quotes analyst Wil Wheaton as saying. “You can see American output of thoughts and prayers spike in the aftermath of various attacks, as efforts are made to mitigate the damage of an attack and to prevent further such violence. Hezbollah, evidently, has witnessed that development and seeks whatever small advantage it can get against Israel’s military might in any future war.”

Not every expert agrees Hezbollah would be able to wield thoughts and prayers to its advantage, the article notes. “Israel and its supporters have had a robust thoughts and prayers network in place for decades,” it reports. The article then cites multiple analysts who contend that moreover, the thoughts and prayers of hundreds of millions of Muslims, five times per day, have so far failed to affect Israel’s superiority.“In fact as the thoughts and prayers of Muslims have grown more numerous with the increase in Muslim populations since 1948, Israel has grown steadily more powerful, calling into question the capacity of Israel’s Muslim enemies to deploy thoughts and prayers with any effectiveness,” Jane’s writes.