Anti-BDS Laws and Pro-Israeli Parliament: Zionist Hasbara is Winning in Italy

By Romana Rubeo and Ramzy Baroud
A proposed law at the Italian Parliament is set to punish the boycott of Israel. In the past, such an initiative would have been unthinkable. Alas, Italy, a country that had historic sympathies with the Palestinian cause has shifted its politics in a dramatic way in recent years. Most surprisingly, though, the Left is as implicated as the Right in the rush to please Israel, at the expense of Palestinian rights.

The sad reality is this: Italy is moving to the Israeli camp. This is not only pertinent to political alignment, but in the reconfiguration of discourse as well. Israeli priorities, as articulated in Zionist hasbara (official propaganda) have now become part of our everyday lexicon of Italian media and politics. As a result, the Zionist agenda is now part and parcel of Italian political agenda as well.

Italy’s anti-Fascist, anti-military occupation and revolutionary past is being overlooked by self-serving politicians, growingly beholden to the pressures of a burgeoning pro-Israel lobby.

The pro-Israel trend has been in motion for years. In a famous interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot in 2008, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga declared: “Dear Italian Jews, we sold you out”.

Cossiga was referring to the so-called “Lodo Moro”, an unofficial agreement, which was allegedly signed in the 1970’s by Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro and the leaders of The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP). Its understanding supposedly allowed the Palestinian group to coordinate its actions throughout the Italian territory, in exchange for the PLFP keeping Italy out of its field of operation.

The “Lodo Moro” is often used in Israeli hasbara to highlight Italy’s supposed failures in the past, and to continue associating Palestinians with terrorism.

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In 1974, the Italian government advocated for Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat’s participation in the United Nations General Assembly; in 1980, it committed to the EEC Declaration of Venice, which recognized the Palestinian ‘right to self-determination’ and, expectedly strongly opposed by Israel and the US.

Throughout the 1980’s, the attitude of Italian government was openly pro-Palestinian, which often lead to foreign policy clashes with Israel and its American benefactors, especially during the so-called Crisis of Sigonella in 1985.

During a speech at the Italian Parliament, socialist Prime Minister, Bettino Craxi, went as far as defending the Palestinian right to armed struggle.

In 1982, the Italian President Sandro Pertini talked at length about the horror of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre in his traditional end of the year address to the Nation.

While center-left political forces supported Palestine to keep good relations with Arab countries, left-wing parties were mainly motivated by the anti-imperialist struggle, which then resonated within Italian intellectual circles.

But things have changed as Italy is now living in its ‘post-ideological age’, where morality and ideas are flexible, and can be reshaped as needed to confer with political interests.

Today, left-wing parties don’t feel the need to stand for oppressed nations. They are too beholden to the diktats of globalization, and are thus driven by selfish agendas, which, naturally brings them closer to the US and Israel.

While neo-liberal politics has ravaged much of Europe in recent years, Italy proved that it is not the exception.

In October 2016, Italy abstained from the vote on the UNESCO resolution, condemning the Israeli occupation of Palestinian East Jerusalem.

Even that half-hearted move angered Israel, promoting the Israeli ambassador to Italy to protest. The Italian prime minister moved quickly to reassure Israel.

Matteo Renzi spoke harshly of UNESCO’S proposal. “It is not possible to continue with these resolutions at the UN and UNESCO that aim to attack Israel”, he said.

One year earlier, Renzi had officially reaffirmed Italy’s commitment to Israel in the Israeli Knesset, declaring: “Supporters of ‘stupid’ boycotts betray their own future”.

During his inaugural speech, Italy’s current President Sergio Mattarella addressed the ‘menace of international terrorism’ by mentioning the attack in front of The Great Synagogue in Rome, in 1982. His words “deeply touched Italian Jews”, according to the right-wing Israeli newspaper the Jerusalem Post.

Zionist groups constantly try to sway Italian public opinion. Their strategy is predicated on two pillars: infusing Israel’s sense of victimhood (as in poor little Israel fighting for survival among a sea of Arabs and Muslims) and injecting the accusation of anti-Semitism against anyone who challenges the Israeli narrative.

The hasbara instruments are working, as Italian politics and even culture (through the media) are increasingly identifying with Israel. Worse still, the pro-Israel feeling is now completely accepted among left-wing political parties as well.

According to Ugo Giannangeli, a prominent criminal attorney who devoted many years to defending Palestinian’s rights, the Italian Parliament is working on several laws, with the sole purpose of winning Israel’s approval.

One of these initiatives is Draft law 2043 (Anti-discrimination act. It ought to be called the Anti-BDS act. The signatories compare boycott of Israel to “disguised anti-Semitism”. If approved, the legislation would provide exemplary punishment for BDS campaigners.

Among the signatories is Emma Fattorini, member of the Italian Democratic Party and also member of the “Committee for the protection and promotion of human rights”. Palestinian rights, are of course, of no concern to Fattorini at the moment since it appears nowhere in her ‘human rights’ agenda.

Another signatory is Paolo Corsini, who abandoned the Democratic Party and moved to left-wing party MDP – Articolo 1. Corsini was also the rapporteur of the “Agreement between Italy and Israel on public safety”, already ratified by the Italian Parliament. The agreement strengthens the relationship between the two countries at a more effective way, in exchange for Israeli sharing of information on public order and how to control mass protests.

The growing divide between Israeli and American Jews was a major topic of conversation at this week’s annual meeting of the Jewish Federations of North America. It was also the topic of a lengthy feature in Haaretz, which largely blamed the Israeli government. Inter alia, it quoted former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro as saying, in reference to that majority of American Jews who identify as non-Orthodox and politically liberal, “There is an idea that has some currency in certain circles around the Israeli government that says, ‘You know what, we can write off that segment of American Jewry because in a couple of generations their children or grandchildren will assimilate.’”

I agree that the idea of writing off this segment of American Jewry has some currency in Israel. But in most cases, it’s due less to fantasies about liberal Jews disappearing than to a belief that Israel will have to do without them whether it wants to or not, because liberal Jews can no longer be depended on for even the most minimal level of support. And by that, I don’t mean support for any specific Israeli policy, but for something far more basic: Israel’s right to be heard, by both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences.

Nothing better illustrates this than recent decisions by two campus Hillels to bar mainstream Israeli speakers from addressing Jewish students. At Princeton, it was Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, and at Stanford, it was a group of Israeli Arab veterans of the Israel Defense Forces. I can understand Hillel refusing to host speakers from the radical fringes. But how are Jewish students supposed to learn anything about Israel if campus Hillels won’t even let them hear from representatives of two of the country’s most mainstream institutions – its elected government and its army?

Both Hillels later termed their decisions a “mistake” – most likely under pressure from Hillel International, whose CEO, Eric Fingerhut, was the lead author on Princeton Hillel’s apology. But that doesn’t change the fact that at two leading universities on opposite sides of the country, the Hillel directors, both non-Orthodox rabbis, initially thought canceling the speeches in response to progressive students’ objections was a reasonable decision. Princeton’s Julie Roth thought it completely reasonable to deny her students the chance to hear an official Israeli government representative try to explain the government’s policies. And Stanford’s Jessica Kirschner – backed, incredibly, by the university’s “pro-Israel” association – thought it completely reasonable to deny her students the chance to hear from non-Jewish Israelis who don’t agree that Israel is an apartheid state.

There was no pushback from Carlson, usually known for his spunky, combative style. Nor did he bother to present a charitable version of the opposing argument. In the Washington Post, Brookings fellow and COMMENTARY contributor James Kirchick has written a strong brief for why the U.S. should make it harder for RT to access American airwaves. Yet I’m not quite persuaded of the wisdom of such restrictions. I worry about opening the door, even an inch, to government regulation of broadcast speech, even if that speech comes from an adversarial, autocratic regime. Perhaps such moves make sense in small, fragile, Kremlin-endangered states that lack a robust indigenous media. But in the U.S., with its large and diverse media market, the best antidote to Moscow’s lies is truthful reporting.

But never mind all that. What Blumenthal wanted to talk about were the real sources of malign foreign influence in Washington: the Jews. Or as Blumenthal put it to Carlson, “the Israel lobby and organizations like [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee], which have been promoting a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, war on Lebanon, war on Iran, which is [sic] not required for some reason to register as a foreign agent, and I don’t why that is.”

Carlson didn’t offer a single critical note in response to any of this. Instead, he went on to underscore Blumenthal’s points, raising a knowing eyebrow here and there as his guest cast the pro-Israel lobby–a domestic, small-“d” democratic movement reflecting a broad opinion consensus among U.S. voters–as equally if not more malign than Putin’s infowar operations. And Blumenthal said all this, unchallenged, not on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now–but on Fox News.

The Blumenthal interview followed an earlier segment, in which Carlson approvingly quoted Noam Chomsky to the effect that American democracy represents a form of “manufactured consent”–i.e., that it is merely a more subtle form of dictatorship than those found in obviously unfree societies. I wonder: Which icon of leftist crankery will Carlson elevate next? Naomi Klein? Slavoj Zizek? The ghost of Howard Zinn? Tune in to Fox to find out.

Among those invited is Linda Sarsour, the new face of intersectional feminism. Linda Sarsour is many things, including a charismatic leader and an adept social media presence. But an expert on anti-Semitism she is not.

It’s true that Sarsour has made a point of opposing anti-Semitism and standing in solidarity with Jews, after Charlottesville, for example. And I myself have defended her speaking at the CUNY School of public Health commencement.

But she also has a problematic history when it comes to minimizing anti-Semitism. In a video for Jewish Voice for Peace posted in April, Sarsour was clear on the subject. “I want to make the distinction that while anti-Semitism is something that impacts Jewish Americans, it’s different than anti-black racism or Islamophobia because it’s not systemic,” she said. “Of course, you may experience vandalism or an attack on a synagogue, or maybe on an individual level… but it’s not systemic, and we need to make that distinction.”

But Sarsour is hardly the most problematic presence on the panel. Also in attendance will be Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of the explicitly anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and Lina Morales, chair of JVP’s Jews of Color and Mizrahi/Sephardic Caucus.

As you might recall, Jewish Voice for Peace was one of the most vocal defenders of the Chicago Dyke March organizers when they expelled Jewish women for simply carrying Stars of David. People and publications throughout the globe denounced the organizers for the anti-Semitism involved in barring marchers for displaying signs of Jewishness, when signifiers of all other nationalities, ethnicities, and religions were allowed. But Jewish Voice for Peace decided to defend the organizers by justifying the hostility towards the Star of David display, on the grounds that “Palestinians can justifiably feel unsafe around a blue Star of David in the center of a flag.”

So can we get one thing straight? Screenshotting my old tweets is basically a hate crime. Worse than the NYPD. Worse than Netanyahu. I mean, it’s even worse than the NFL not giving Colin Kapaernik a job. Yes. It’s THAT BAD. Because when you screenshot a tweet like this one….

…. Well you are simply taking away my voice as a Woman of Color and a Muslim in Donald Trump’s Amerika. And why are you even screenshotting my old tweets anyway? Is it because I speak Truth to Power? Like the time I told the CIA to “Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself”?

Yeah, I called it. But still no props. Plus, why you gotta bring up old business anyway? Why you gotta go back in time and dredge up the past? I mean, that’s just straight up creepy. Creepier than Zionism….

On November 14, 2017, US Congresswoman Betty McCollum (D-MN) proposed legislation “to prevent United States tax dollars from supporting the Israeli military’s ongoing detention and mistreatment of Palestinian children.” Notably, McCollum’s press release highlighted the endorsement of several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – including American Friends Service Committee, Amnesty International USA, Center for Constitutional Rights, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), and Jewish Voice for Peace; all are leaders of BDS campaigns in the US and internationally. In addition, DCI-P has alleged links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization. DCI-P board members Shawan Jabarin, Nassar Ibrahim, and Dr. Majed Nassar all have alleged affiliations with PFLP, and Hashem Abu Maria, a DCI-P employee, was hailed by PFLP as a “commander” after his 2014 death. The PFLP is proscribed as a terror organization by the United States, Canada, Australia, the European Union, and Israel.

NGO Monitor research reveals that the NGO involvement in this legislation runs more deeply than endorsement from BDS NGOs. As the following analysis shows, the entirety of the proposed bill is premised on factually inaccurate claims from anti-Israel advocacy NGOs, including direct quotes from DCIP’s “No Way to Treat a Child” 2016 report and website. The sections that reference reports from the US State Department and UNICEF originate with these same NGOs (although McCollum’s office selectively quotes, hiding the origins).

What do Representatives Betty McCollum , Mark Pocan, Earl Blumenauer, André Carson, John Conyers, Jr., Danny K. Davis, Peter A. DeFazio, Raul Grijalva, Luis V. Gutiérrez, and Chellie Pingree all have in common?

They have all been endorsed by J Street, and they are all co-sponsors of
H.R.4391, an anti-Israel bill introduced by Betty McCollum this week that calls for
"the Secretary of State to certify that United States funds do not support military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children, and for other purposes."

The legislation is the result of a fierce lobbying campaign conducted by groups such as American Friends Service Committee, Amnesty International USA, Center for Constitutional Rights, Churches for Middle East Peace, Defense for Children International - Palestine, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ, Jewish Voice for Peace, Mennonite Central Committee, Presbyterian Church (USA), the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR), and United Methodist General Board of Church and Society.

The bill is most notable for its omissions. It does not concern itself with the use of Palestinian children as human shields or as child soldiers by their own government. It does not address the glorification of violence in Palestinian textbooks and media, or incitement in the mosques.

This excellent way of dealing with the issue of blaming Israel for all of the world’s ills is right on the nose.

Why is it that out of the blue – for almost any reason – Israel gets blamed for everything.

What really is the main issue in the Middle East? Maajid Nawaz argues that it is Iran and Saudi Arabia.

It is a pleasure to hear this perspective. Thank You Maajid.

In a show of bipartisanship, the College Republicans and College Democrats of Rutgers University came together to issue a joint statement on Monday condemning the university's decision to continue to employ a controversial adjunct professor.

The professor, Mazen Adi, is a former member of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, a regime that is known for its egregious human rights violations and bloody civil war.

In an appearance on "Fox & Friends," Rutgers student and Campus Reform correspondent Andrea Vacchiano said, "Because Rutgers is a public university, I think it has a duty to use taxpayer money effectively. And it shouldn't be going to fund the income of someone who literally defended the Assad regime in front of the UN, which is a regime that's been accused of committing the worst war crimes, including gassing its own people."

Adi has been a lecturer at the university since September 2015 and has taught courses in political science, United Nations and global policy studies, and, ironically, international criminal law.

Rutgers has also received opposition from UN Watch, "a non-governmental organization based in Geneva whose mandate is to monitor the performance of the United Nations."

Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, has called Adi a "liar" and an "apologist for mass murder.""It ought to be a matter of profound concern that an American university would allow an apologist for the Syrian regime’s genocide to be a teacher," he said.

The College Republicans and College Democrats made their concerns known:
We are calling on Rutgers University and President Robert Barchi to remove the same faculty member that has been flagged by UN Watch.

As a community that is "committed to the recruitment and retention of a diverse staff that reflects the students [they] serve," Rutgers fails its mission and responsibility towards its students by employing a former spokesperson who endorsed the murderous regime of a disgraceful dictator.

American-Israeli activist, Miko Peled, compared Zionists to Nazis in a controversial talk on Friday 10th November at University College London (UCL).

The talk was titled “Segregated and Unequal, Palestinian Life in Apartheid Israel”. Though it was organised by UCL Friends of Palestine Society, it had the backing of pro-Palestinian student societies at various London universities, namely City, Imperial, Kings College, Queen Mary and Westminster.

Following approaches from concerned Jewish students at UCL, Campaign Against Antisemitism wrote to the UCL administration prior to the event to raise our concerns about Mr Peled and to call for the event to be cancelled. We demonstrated that Mr Peled’s views have, in the past, engaged the International Definition of Antisemitism adopted by the British Government, and also engage the Prevent counter-extremism strategy.

In response, a university official assured us that: “In discussion with officers in the Union it has been agreed that the event will go ahead. Mr Peled has agreed to abide by the Union’s Code for speakers, and the event will be chaired by an independent student officer. I understand the concerns you express but we believe that the arrangements we have put in place strike the right balance between compliance with our legal obligations to secure freedom of speech, other legal obligations and our responsibilities towards our students.”

Sadly our concerns and those of the students were proven to be correct.

Volunteers from our Demonstration and Event Monitoring Unit went to the talk to gather evidence.

Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, has said that “We need a bit of movement on both sides”, while attempting to reach out to the Jewish community to counter antisemitism in the Labour Party.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Times of Israel during her visit to Israel last week, she said that: “There is clearly a lot of work to be done between the Labour Party and the British Jewish community. And I am prepared to do whatever it takes in order to be able to open channels again and to see if we can sort this out.” She added, however, that: “We need a bit of movement on both sides.”

Ms Thornberry also said that: “I don’t think that the antisemitism in the Labour Party is any worse than it is in our society generally. I want my Labour Party to be held to higher standards than the rest of British society.”

While we welcome her initiative to engage with the Jewish community and to confront antisemitism in the Labour Party, her request for “a bit of movement on both sides” is simply outrageous. It places responsibility on the Jewish community for the failure of the Labour Party to address its antisemitism problem, and implies that the Jewish community needs to change its ways.

Billy J Wells is an ex-Army musician from Swaffham, in Norfolk. On his Twitter profile he describes himself as a “Wedding and event clarinetist Democratic Socialist and writer Head of PR [at] Prolestar”. He has now expanded his repertoire further to add the role of Labour politician, having proudly announced on 2nd October that he had been selected to represent Bradwell South and Hopton in forthcoming borough elections. His Facebook profile announces that “Jeremy Corbyn got my vote”.

Mr Wells is convinced that there is no evidence for antisemitism in the Labour Party. He says: “This whole saga [antisemitism] has been staged in a bid to put people off voting labour” as well as telling the actress Frances Barber: “You are a bellend…there is no antisemitism it’s just right wing propaganda”. He even thinks that Labour MP John Mann should have been suspended from the Labour Party for remonstrating with Ken Livingstone, after he claimed that Hitler supported Zionism. To Mr Wells, the Labour Party is a pure and virtuous community, being attacked on all sides by enemies who disguise their true motives by accusing people of antisemitism.

Then, with no self-consciousness, he has claimed: “…it’s the super rich families of the Zionist lobby that control the world. Our world leaders sell their souls for greed and do the bidding of Israel. They see the evil but their love for wealth makes them turn a blind eye.” He also asked on Twitter: “How much money and how much power is too much? The greed of the Rothschild family knows no bounds”. He makes several claims that the media is controlled by the “Israeli lobby”, in one instance claiming: “The Zionist Lobby would not allow our puppet government and its media lapdogs to show the truth.”

For Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters, September’s Labour party conference was supposed to be a time of celebration.

Gathered at the coastal city of Brighton in the south of England, the four-day confab offered the opportunity to laud it over critics who had wrongly claimed that the summer’s general election would see a catastrophic defeat for Labour and the swift removal of the party’s far-left leader.

The “Corbynistas” seaside party was, however, thrown off course when the festering row over anti-Semitism in Labour’s ranks was dramatically reignited.

Labour had hoped that a tightening of its rules cracking down on hate speech would bring an end to the string of allegations which has dogged it since Corbyn’s election in the autumn of 2015.

Instead, a slew of new incidents erupted. Leaflets were distributed to conference delegates backing the claims of the controversial former London mayor, Ken Livingstone, that the Nazis had initially supported Zionism. They quoted from the architect of the Final Solution, Reinhard Heydrich.

Loud calls were made for Jewish and pro-Israel groups within the party to be expelled.

There was a time that student government resolutions divesting from Israel were all the rage, and the center of the anti-Israel movement on campuses. We covered many such battles, most of which were defeated, though some passed.

They always were purely symbolic acts, since student governments have zero power to divest university investments, and universities regularly reject such student resolutions.

But actual divestment never really was the purpose. The purpose was to usurp student government time and student newspaper coverage talking about how bad Israel supposedly is.

Over the years, however, such divestment resolutions have turned into something of a sideshow. A nasty, hateful sideshow for sure, but a sideshow.

At U. Michigan – Ann Arbor, though, it’s been more than a sideshow. It’s been an obsession, with 10 attempts to pass divestment failing.

But the 11th time was the charm early this morning. The resolution passed. But it wasn’t really a divestment resolution.

It was a request that the Regents appoint a committee to investigate whether to divest. Yes, seriously.

Yesterday The New York Times published an editor's note acknowledging that an article which euphemistically referred to "controversial Palestinian activist Rasmeah Odeh" should have noted that she was convicted of a deadly bombing in Israel. Today Haaretz amends an article to note that "convicted Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti" was found guilty of five counts of murder.

The Nov. 14 Haaretz article ("Israel Denies Entry to European Officials Over 'Support for Israel Boycott'") had originally stated:
According to Interior Minister Arye Dery and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, the purpose of the visit was to meet with the convicted Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti at Hadarim Prison, "as part of their support for Barghouti and Palestinian prisoners."

As Haaretz had reported elsewhere, Barghouti was "convicted on five counts of murder and sentenced to five cumulative life terms in prison plus 40 years for attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization." This key information did not appear in yesterday's article about the Israeli decision to deny entry to European officials who were planning to visit Barghouti in prison.

Following communication from CAMERA's Israel office, Haaretz editors quickly amended the article, adding the crucial information about Barghouti's multiple murder convictions. The amended online article now states:

The Irish Times publishes what should be a positive story about Israeli Arab singer Ruba Shamshoum’s making a success of her career having moved to Ireland.

Unfortunately, some errors have needlessly politicized the piece.

UPDATE
Following HonestReporting’s requests for a correction and the publication of this post, the Irish Times has amended the photo captions. The first caption now refers to a “singer from Nazareth,” while the second caption no longer references Shamshoum’s origins at all.

Leaving aside Marr’s attempt to promote the ridiculously contrived notion that part of the text of a statement produced by the British government a century ago is the litmus test for the policies and actions of modern-day Israel, as we see while presenting unquestioned allegations from two NGOs as ‘fact’, he completely failed to inform viewers of the political agenda that lies behind such tendentious claims from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Later on in the interview viewers saw additional examples of the failure to adhere to BBC’s professed editorial values of accuracy and impartiality when – referring to the district of Judea – Marr told his guest that “this is Palestinian territory”. When Netanyahu spoke of the extra-judicial execution of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by Hamas, Marr interrupted with the jibe “you’ve shot a lot of people there too”.

The BBC’s long-standing policy of uncritical amplification of politically motivated allegations against Israel from agenda-driven NGOs such as HRW and AI clearly does not serve its declared purpose of providing “impartial news and information” aimed at enhancing audience understanding of the complex topic of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The Israel Security Agency’s report on terror attacks (Hebrew) during October 2017 shows that throughout the month a total of 71 incidents took place: fifty in Judea & Samaria, 17 in Jerusalem, one within the ‘green line’ and three originating in the Gaza Strip/Sinai sector.

In Judea & Samaria and Jerusalem the agency recorded 58 attacks with petrol bombs, 8 attacks using explosive devices and one shooting attack. A fatal stabbing attack took place in Kfar Qasim (Kasseem) and in the Gaza Strip/Sinai sector there were two shooting attacks and one missile attack.

One civilian was murdered during October.

The BBC did not report the murder of Reuven Schmerling on October 4th and the missile attack from Sinai on October 15th likewise went unreported. None of the additional incidents that took place during the month of October received any BBC coverage either.

Throughout the first ten months of 2017 the BBC News website has reported 0.68% of the total terror attacks that took place and 88% of the resulting fatalities.

The newly appointed editor of Britain’s prominent Gay Times magazine was fired Thursday after a series of anti-Semitic, homophobic and racist tweets emerged.

Josh Rivers’s offending tweets exposed by BuzzFeed UK this week date back to 2010 and also disparage Africans, Asians, and overweight and homeless people.

“Jews are gross. It’s the only religion with ‘ew’ in it,” he tweeted to his followers in 2010.

“I wonder if they cast that guy as ‘The Jew’ because of that f***ing ridiculously larger honker of a nose. It must be prosthetic. Must be,” he posted several months later.

In December 2010, Rivers tweeted at women to stop being “whiney c***s,” telling them to “go change your f***ing tampon & stay the f*** out of my way.”

That year he also called Egyptian men “fat, smelly, hairy, c***-face, backwards rapists,” and tweeted about the “incested, down syndrome, retard” children of “some chav” he encountered on the train.

Rivers also hit out at lesbians and transgender people numerous times, calling out “trannies” for looking like “crackheads” and for their poor fashion choices.

Beleaguered Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore of Alabama braced for further political blows on Wednesday as news broke of a “robocall” on behalf of his campaign that utilized an antisemitic stereotype.

Alabama residents received a call on Tuesday purporting to be from “Bernie Bernstein,” a fictitious reporter with The Washington Post — the paper that first ran the allegations that Moore, now 70, had preyed on teenage girls while in his 30s, apparently warning one victim that “no one would believe” her if she reported his aggressive sexual advances to anyone.

If elected on December 17, Moore could well become the first senator since 1862 to be deemed unfit to serve in the chamber by his fellow legislators.

During the scripted call, “Bernstein” — whose name was possibly taken from famed Post reporter Carl Bernstein — offered generous sums of money to women willing to speak out against Moore.

“Hi, this is Bernie Bernstein, I’m a reporter for the Washington Post calling to find out if anyone at this address is a female between the ages of 54 to 57 years old willing to make damaging remarks about candidate Roy Moore for a reward of between $5,000 and $7,000 dollars,” the recorded voice said, adding a contact email address.

The Moore campaign said it was unaware of the call.

German prosecutors investigating Nazi-era crimes said on Wednesday they had charged two former SS officers in their 90s with complicity in hundreds of murders at the Stutthof concentration camp.

The state prosecutor's office in the western city of Dortmund said the two unnamed suspects, aged 92 and 93, had participated in the Nazi killing machine in then occupied Poland, according to a statement released by the regional court in nearby Muenster.

"With their actions during their time as guards at the Stutthof concentration camp, the accused are believed to have been accessories in numerous killings," the court said.

The 92-year-old suspect was stationed at Stutthof between June 1944 and May 1945, while the 93-year-old accused acted as a guard between June 1942 and September 1944.

Some 65,000 people died at the Stutthof former concentration camp, which Nazi Germany set up in 1939 outside what was is now the Polish city of Gdansk, before its liberation in 1945.

Among other crimes, the suspects are accused of involvement in the mass killing of more than 100 Polish prisoners in a gas chamber at the camp in June 1944, and of another 77 wounded Soviet prisoners of war the same summer.

The last I heard about antisemitic blogger (and object of way too many prison sex jokes on my part) Brendon O’Connell, he had fled Australia while on bail. At the time, I speculated he was fleeing to Iran – which he did! But it seems that relationship soured, and he fled to Malaysia. He couldn’t make it there either. It is not clear to me if he returned to Australia or not, but what is clear is he has now tried to get into New Zealand.

Not a good move.

A blogger previously jailed in Australia over a racial attack has tried to enter New Zealand and wound up in custody.

Brendon O’Connell, 46, is an outspoken critic of Israel and what he describes as “Zionist power.”

Now the Australian man is in New Zealand, where it’s understood he fled for political asylum but ended up under arrest.

Immigration NZ confirmed that O’Connell had been detained at the border.

O’Connell is a proponent of conspiracy theories related to a Jewish elite. In a recent video on his website, he blamed this month’s Las Vegas shooting on an “Israeli kill squad.”

The lower house of Argentina’s parliament last week overwhelmingly voted in favor of creating a national day to commemorate the deadly 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.

In a November 8 vote, 186 MPs supported the proposal, with one no vote and one abstention.

If confirmed by the Senate, March 17 will annually be marked as “Day of Memory and Solidarity with the victims of the terror attack on the Israeli embassy.” Schools nationwide would be instructed to mark the event and discuss the implications of international terrorism.

Included in these educational activities would be noting that Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah were responsible for it, Israeli diplomats in Buenos Aires said in a cable to Jerusalem headquarters.

Foreign Ministry director-general Yuval Rotem in Thursday tweeted that he was “encouraged” by the vote, saying it showed the Argentine government’s “true commitment to the fight against terrorism.

According to Israeli diplomats stationed in Argentina, the bill has a good chance of getting the required simple majority in the Senate, though a vote is likely to be held only in May 2018.

On March 17, 1992, an Iranian-sponsored suicide bomber blew himself up at the five-story embassy building, killing 29 people and wounding 242, in what remains the deadliest attack on an Israeli diplomatic mission.

A conference room at a Paris middle school has been named in honor of two Jewish boys who were shot to death by an Islamic extremist in southern France more than five years ago.

The dedication of the room in memory of Arie and Gabriel Sandler is part of an effort by the Georges Brassens school to fight racism and anti-Semitism in France, which is home to Europe’s biggest Muslim and Jewish populations.

The program seeks to make French values and the country’s various religions and cultures more familiar to the school’s students, many of whom are Muslim with roots in France’s former colonies. It includes visits to the Paris Museum of Jewish art and history and the Arab World Institute.

Samuel Sandler, whose grandsons were 3 and 5 years old when they were killed during an attack at a Jewish school in Toulouse, said the naming ceremony was a “very moving” moment.

“Because of the murderer’s weapon, they weren’t able to go to school anymore,” he said, yet “all schoolchildren will remember them.”

A Jewish teenager was seriously wounded in a stabbing at a London park.

The 16-year-old, a student at London’s Jewish Community Secondary School, was stabbed 12 times in the legs by a group of men. Police said the teen did not know his assailants.

The Community Security Trust, a nonprofit that helps secure British Jewish institutions, said the attack “is not believed to be antisemitic.”

The teenager was walking with a group of girlfriends in Regent’s Park on Primrose Hill when he was attacked just before 9:15 p.m. Police and paramedics rushed to the scene.

He was taken to the hospital, where he is in serious but stable condition and will likely need surgery. Scotland Yard said the suspects are four white males. No arrests have been made.

Regent’s Park overlooks the British capital and is surrounded by some of London’s most expensive properties, including some owned by celebrities.

On 1 November, ASPI and the Begin–Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies met in Tel Aviv, Israel, at the third Be’er Sheva Dialogue to build on the work initiated at the first round, held in Israel in 2015, and the second meeting, held in Sydney last year.

The ASPI–BESA dialogue brings together experienced voices from Australia and Israel to share perspectives and analyses on common security challenges, while reflecting more broadly on the outlook for the relationship between the two countries.

Having participated in all three dialogues, I think it’s fair to say that the Be’er Sheva Dialogue (named after the 1917 battle in which the Australian Light Horse fought) has grown in stature. That’s evidenced by the number of high-level Australian and Israeli participants across government, parliament (from both sides of Australian politics), academia, think tanks, industry, the military and the intelligence communities. A number of Australian and Israeli delegates commented that the increasing maturity of the dialogue means there’s now a greater candour and depth to the discussions.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull addressed this year’s dialogue. His audience also included many supporters of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, who’d made the journey to Beersheba to attend the commemoration of the centenary of the famous charge of the 4th Light Horse Brigade to capture the town on 31 October 1917.

Turnbull saluted the achievements that the dialogue had accomplished in a short time, identifying areas of collaboration in defence between Australia and Israel for their mutual benefit. The prime minister’s visit to Israel culminated in the signing of a memorandum of understanding on defence industry cooperation.

Australia and Israel also agreed during Turnbull’s visit that our respective defence officials will now hold annual discussions on strategic and security priorities. To date, there have been almost no high-level military exchanges between the two countries. There’ll also be a track 1.5 cyber dialogue held in Australia next year. These positive measures were suggested at the earlier Be’er Sheva dialogues and were set out in a joint paper produced last year by ASPI and BESA.

Following multiple allegations of sexual harassment, "Rush Hour" director Brett Ratner has officially been kicked off of the hit franchise "Wonder Woman," according to actress Gal Gadot.

In an interview on "Today," the famed actress confirmed that Ratner's involvement with "Wonder Woman" ended prior to reports suggesting she would not return in the starring role if he stayed on as a producer in association with his production company RatPac.

“The truth is, there’s so many people involved in making this movie — it’s not just me — and they all echoed the same sentiments,” Gadot told Savannah Guthrie. “You know what I mean? So everyone knew what was the right thing to do, but there was nothing for me to actually come and say because it was already done before this article came out.”

Ratner denies all of the accusations leveled against him which include having masturbated in front of actress Olivia Munn against her will (what is it with that?) and forcing actress Natasha Henstridge into performing oral sex on him.

“He strong-armed me in a real way. He physically forced himself on me,” Henstridge said. “At some point, I gave in and he did his thing.”

For patients suffering from such life-threatening illnesses as cancer, chronic lung diseases or HIV, medication regimens can be daunting, with multiple pills or inhalers scheduled throughout the course of the day. But Tel Aviv-based startup Vaica believes things may be about to get a lot simpler.

Vaica has launched Capsuled, a cloud-connected drug-distribution device that is designed to be provided as part of insurance-covered patient support programs. These programs are pharma company-devised plans to guarantee the implementation of complex regimens through at-home support, technology, and coordination with friends and family.

The box-shaped electronic device contains the patient’s pills and/or inhalers, gives audio and visual reminders to the patient when it is time to take medication, and has a screen for pharma company-provided instructional videos.

The product has also the ability to analyze data and to alert doctors, friends or family members if something is wrong — by text or email. The first major clinical tests of the product will be conducted in Italy and an undisclosed network of private hospitals, with patients suffering from Patients with Cardiac Heart Disease (CHD), Diabetes Mellitus (DM) and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

L&T Technology Services Limited, an engineering services subsidiary of Mumbai-based Larsen and Toubro, is setting up a design center in Jerusalem.

The new “Center of Excellence” — with an accompanying Tel Aviv sales office — will focus on developments in video, design and security solutions. The multinational company said that these solutions will serve its global customer base, in sectors spanning the spectrum of media, entertainment, telecom, automotive and Internet of Things (IoT).

The company said in a statement that the move aims to “deepen its involvement in Israel’s startup and innovation ecosystem.”

Larsen & Toubro is a technology, engineering, construction, manufacturing and financial services conglomerate, with global operations.

“L&T Technology Services’ use of Digital Engineering and smart technologies is driving customer core capabilities across the globe and addressing the need for digital transformation,” said Dr. Keshab Panda, LTTS CEO and managing director, in the statement.

“With Israel’s rich legacy in triggering tech innovations, we are confident in our ability to develop disruptive engineering services and create digital skill sets across embedded applications, machine learning and enhanced security, all of which are critical building blocks of the future,” he said.

I have not seen it reported yet on any news sites, but it is on promoter Shuki Weiss’s Facebook page: Ozzy Osbourne is to perform in Israel during the Summer of 2018, for what is billed The Farewell Tour.

While I am sure the concert is going to be entertaining, I suspect the press conference will also be, judging by his last one when he was here in 2010.

Either way, this news is enough to make Roger Waters batsh*t crazy.

The three social scientists on the panel — Nir Avieli, Ronald Ranta and Ronit Vered, all Israeli Jews — advanced the theme that there was an original sin to Israeli cuisine: the repression of its origins among Palestinians.

Some of their arguments were salient and recognizable to anyone who has lived in Israel. For instance, there’s the tendency for Israelis to refer to “Arab cuisine” — and not Palestinian — although there are dishes adopted by Israelis that are specifically indigenous to Palestinians, such as maqloubeh, a meat, rice and vegetable concoction. (Solomonov is an adamant exception and refers to an indigenous Palestinian cuisine that he has incorporated into his repertoire.)

Other arguments from the academics, however, seemed a tad overeager to make a point about Israel and colonialism. Ranta, a lecturer on international relations at Kingston University in London, decried the “denial of an Arab Palestinian contribution” among Israelis to their cuisine, saying that the argument that many Jews of Middle East origin were likely to already be acquainted with the dishes was a “glaring example” of this denial.

Avieli, the president of the Israeli Anthropological Association, said that pizza was the most popular food in Israel, suggesting it was because Israelis despise their neighbors and long to be European.
“They are in the Middle East, what can you do? Where they would like to be is southern Italy,” he said.

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

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

A recent interview with DCI-P's Accountability Program Director Ayed Abu Qteish on official PA TV, shows that the claims made by his own organization are false. Abu Qteish explained that Palestinian minors do in fact commit terror attacks, and they do it, not necessarily because they want to attack Israelis, but in order to enhance or maintain their status in Palestinian society.

Ayed Abu Qteish: "There are children who, when they were in prison, told the lawyer: 'I want to be imprisoned.' The first time [the child] was imprisoned, he didn't confess, and they released him because there was no evidence to convict him in the Israeli military court. The second time, there was no evidence either. The third time, he wanted to be imprisoned so that his image won't be hurt in the eyes of his friends, even though he is actually innocent... In several cases [Palestinian children] carried out stabbing operations because of the way the public looks at them. They realized 'the best way to clear myself of this image [of helping Israel] is to participate in resistance operations.'"

[Official PA TV, Personal Encounter, Oct. 11, 2017]

A Palestinian terrorist rammed his car into two people, seriously injuring one of them, before getting shot while trying to stab soldiers in the central West Bank on Friday morning, the army said.

The driver of the vehicle, a 17-year-old who was not immediately named, rammed his car into the first victim, a 70-year-old man, who sustained a light head wound, at the Efrat South junction, medics said.

He continued down the road to the nearby Gush Etzion Junction where he hit another Israeli man, 35, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.

The second victim was initially said to have been lightly-to-moderately wounded, but the hospital later said his condition was serious, with a brain injury.

The army said the driver then got out of his car with a knife and tried to stab soldiers.

“The soldiers responded by firing towards the attacker, resulting in his injury,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.

Two Israeli civilians were wounded — one seriously — in a vehicular-ramming attack carried out by a Palestinian terrorist in the West Bank on Friday morning.

The assailant — a 17-year-old male from the city of Halhul, north of Hebron — was shot and detained by IDF soldiers at the Gush Etzion Junction after he left the van he was driving and tried to stab them.

The seriously wounded Israeli — 35-year-old Evven Ezer Holhering, a married father of six from Kiryat Arba — was transported to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem with a head injury. His wife, Miriam, has asked the people of Israel to pray for her husband.

Holhering is a member of the Bnei Menashe community, a group of Indian Jews who believe they are descendants of one of the ancient ten lost tribes of Israel.

David Ramati — a 70-year-old Israeli man who was lightly wounded in the attack — told reporters the terrorist “had a big smile on his face” before running into to him on the side of Route 60, the main north-south thoroughfare in the West Bank.

The Israeli army on Friday set up checkpoints around the West Bank town of Halhul, the home of a Palestinian terrorist who earlier in the day rammed his car into two people, seriously injuring one of them, the military said.

The family of the terrorist was also detained for questioning, the army said.

Just after 6:30 a.m., the 17-year-old barreled his car into the first victim, a 70-year-old man, who sustained a light head wound, at the Efrat South Junction.

From his hospital bed, the first victim, David Ramati, described seeing the Palestinian terrorist, “with a big smile on his face,” driving toward him at some 100 kilometers (60 miles) an hour. Ramati said he had a pistol and tried to shoot the 17-year-old driver, but he was hit by the car before he could.

The terrorist continued down the road to the nearby Gush Etzion Junction where he hit and seriously injured another Israeli man, 35, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.

The seriously injured victim of Friday’s car-ramming terror attack was named as Even Ezer Holaring, 35, from the Bnei Menashe community, and his wife urged people to pray for the father of five.

Holaring was seriously wounded when he was hit by a car driven by a Palestinian terrorist early in the morning as he stood at the Gush Etzion Junction south of Jerusalem in the West Bank.

“I am the wife of Even Ezer who was wounded in the attack this morning,” his wife said in a short video from the hospital. “His condition is very serious and I am asking every one to pray for him, Even Ezer, the son of Malka,” she said.

Holaring was taken for surgery with a head wound, surgeons at the Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem said.

“He suffered a head wound. He has an intracranial hemorrhage and will require brain surgery,” his doctor said. “He’s in serious condition, but he is stable.

The only conclusion Israel must reach from this sad state of affairs is as clear as the sunshine in an arid desert: There is no one to rely on in the fragmented, splintered Sunni Arab world which is incapable of uniting against the Iranian threat. The Arabs betray one another and some are tied to Iran with every fibre of their beings. Are they really going to be loyal to whatever agreement they make with the Jews? They may ask the Israelis to save them from the clutches of the Iranian monster, but after Israel does that at a high cost in its own sons and daughters, citizens, infrastructure and cities, that "Moderate Sunni Axis" will act towards us, exactly – and I mean exactly – as they did to the Iraqi Kurds after they shed the blood of over a thousand male and female fighters in order to rescue t he Arabs from ISIS. Remember – they threw them and their aspirations for independence straight into the dustbin of petty politics, interests, cynicism and treachery.

Israel's fate will be exactly the same once the Iranian threat has been routed from what is left of the destroyed, bankrupt, lost and divided Arab world. Israel must not pay a plugged nickel in the quest for peace with a world as fragmented as the Arab world. Not one square centimeter of land for a worthless piece of paper containing the word peace. Israel must ask the Arabs one single question: What are you giving us for our agreeing to making peace with you?

The answer is clear: Apart from poverty, hatred, treachery, neglect, cynicism and hypocrisy, the Arab world has nothing to offer Israel, because these are the only commodities it has. Sad, but true. These are Israel's neighbors, and when we Israelis, from our prime minister down to the last of our citizens, begin to understand this, we will be capable of dealing with our neighbors the way we should.

Recent developments in the Middle East are once again leading us to reexamine the ostensible alliances the State of Israel has made with moderate Sunni Arab states in the region in an effort to advance common interests and to strengthen its military might in the face of threats posed by radical Islamist entities.

What are the main obstacles that must be overcome in order for Israel to achieve an alliance, and how stable can such a pact actually be? Many critics claim that it’s not actually possible to establish an alliance with Muslim countries for the purpose of fighting against other Muslim countries.

The first modern expression of the extreme hatred between the Shi’ite and Sunni communities in the Middle East was the Iran- Iraq war of the 1980s. This centuries- old hatred reared its ugly head again in recent years with the rise of ISIS and its conquest of large sections of Iraq and Syria.

A number of wars over territory have erupted over the years as a result of this conflict. Iraq, which is mainly made up of Shi’ite Muslims, has made numerous attempts to wrest control of Sunni Persian Gulf states. And Iran, which is also mainly Shi’ite, has also made efforts to expand into Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria.

Another ongoing regional power conflict is between Shi’ite Iran and Sunni Turkey, in which both nations are vying for control over leadership of the Muslim world in the Middle East and the ultimate desire to create a Muslim caliphate there.

Over the years, many unexpected political, military and economic connections have been formed between the various countries.

Speaking at the Zionist Organization of America’s annual dinner, Steven Bannon, US President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and current CEO of the Breitbart news website, said the US political establishment has “lowered the bar on what [pro-Israel] is supposed to be.”

Bannon invited the pro-Israel activists to join what he referred to as the “insurgency movement against the Republican establishment and against the permanent political class in Washington, DC.”

Bannon argued that it is because of the Republican establishment that then president Barack Obama was able to implement the nuclear deal with Iran.

Bannon is correct. Had a non-establishment senator such as Ted Cruz chaired the Senate Foreign Affairs committee in 2014 and 2015 instead of Senator Bob Corker, in accordance with the US constitution, Obama’s radical nuclear deal would have been treated like a treaty. It would have required the approval of two-thirds of the Senate and it would have gone down in flames.

Instead, Corker stood the Constitution on its head, co-sponsoring the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which required two-thirds of the Senate to reject the deal in order to block its implementation.

As for US financing of Palestinian terrorism, the blame lies mainly at the feet of the permanent political class – particularly the denizens of the State Department. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

It's doubtful whether the blow to the NGO Breaking the Silence yesterday will change its conduct. The members of the group have never pretended to speak to Israeli society, only as a way of convincing it of the justice of their ideas.

Breaking the Silence has become an industry that creates European money from lies and falsehoods about the IDF and Israel. Under the protective cover of talking about "human rights" (which in practice means rights for everyone except Jews), the organization has indirectly helped international boycott activity against Israel and provided those who hate us and want us dead with a "moral" weapon. Most of Breaking the Silence's activity appeals to a captive global audience that doesn't know very much about the complicated reality here. When they hear "testimony" from Israelis who served in the military, their hatred of Israel and the Jewish people grows.

Foreign governments have given the group over 10 million shekels in the past few years so it can keep providing more "testimonies" against our soldiers. The New Israel Fund has also donated millions to the organization, one of whose founders, Yehuda Shaul, said on one tour that "the settlers just poisoned the entire water system of the [Palestinian] village." His tongue "did not cling to the roof of his mouth." The lie was found to have no basis in reality. Now we discover that the group's spokesman, Dean Issacharoff, lied when he "testified" that when he was a soldier, he brutally beat a Palestinian man. "It never happened," that same Palestinian testified in court.

Representatives of the NGO Breaking the Silence, which advocates against the IDF's presence in Palestinian territories, will not be allowed to meet with students in Israel's public schools, regardless of parents' wishes, Education Minister Naftali Bennett announced Thursday.

"Anyone who slanders IDF soldiers will not set foot inside a school," Bennett said.

"This is the decision and it stands. Today, anyone who attacked me for banning Breaking the Silence from schools understands that they have no place in the education of the next generation."

Breaking the Silence collects testimonies from IDF soldiers of reported Israeli military misconduct directed at Palestinians in the territories.

The director of the Northern District in the Education Ministry, Dr. Orna Simchon, has sent the parents of students at the experimental high school on Kibbutz Harduf in the Jezreel Valley a letter notifying them of the ministry's decision to ban the organization from schools.

Last week, 12th graders at the school were not allowed to meet with Breaking the Silence representatives as part of a seminar probing the Jewish-Arab conflict, although they were permitted to meet with Jewish settlers from Hebron, Israel Police commanders, Knesset members, and left-wing activists from other groups.

The ban angered the parents, who sent a strongly worded response to the supervisor of the Northern District.

"To the best of our knowledge, the NGO Breaking the Silence has not been outlawed. We are astonished and outraged over this infuriating decision and also the way in which it was made. The role of the Education Ministry is to encourage study and learning, not to censor," the parents wrote.

MK Sharren Haskel (Likud) demanded that Education Minister Naftali Bennett to re-examine the subsidy given to young people before enlisting in the IDF to watch plays which often include anti-Israel propaganda.

An example of this phenomenon is the presentation by MK Haskel to Minister Bennett of the play "The Confession" by the Jaffa Theater. The play deals with the capture of the Arab village of Tantura during the 1948 War of Independence. The play addresses the controversy among several Israeli historians over the possibility that during the IDF soldiers may have massacred the residents of the village.

Minsiter Bennett instructed the director-general of the Education Ministry to to examine the complaint over the play earlier this week.

"There are other examples of plays and people invited to the theater and calling for a violent struggle against the State of Israel, praising martyrs and thus admiring them," MK Haskel said. "The Jaffa Theater is a controversial theater. Miri Regev dealt with the matter removed the Culture Minister's subsidy from this theater because of these claims. But we are still subsidizing through the Education Ministry tickets for young people before their army service, and thus this theater is receiving yet another subsidy."

Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Sunni moderate camp detest the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

These countries fear Iranian encroachment. Better relations with these countries will not be served by a campaign to help Gaza. In short, aid to Hamas only strengthens the position of radical Islam throughout the Middle East.

Mr. Prime Minister, the Marshall Plan concept is misguided and counterproductive. Israel should adhere to its longstanding approach of using sticks and carrots in the Palestinian arena; a policy that has scored impressive successes over the years, although the balance is always delicate and fraught with uncertainty. While Israel is not interested in a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, the suggestion to importune for a Marshall Plan clearly undercuts the advantageous equilibrium between punishment and incentive.

It’s a demand that has been made of the Palestinians by various Israeli leaders in the past, but an unprecedented Knesset-congressional joint declaration issued on Wednesday called on the US administration to demand that the Palestinians recognize the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people as a precondition to future talks.

The declaration, signed by members of the congressional Israel Victory Caucus and the Knesset Israel Victory Caucus, declares that “the primary obstacle to ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the near century of Palestinian rejectionism of the right of self-determination for the Jewish People”, and that, “only Palestinian acknowledgment of the Jewish People’s historic connection to the Land of Israel, and acceptance of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, will end the conflict.”

The Israel Victory Project is an initiative of the Philadelphia- based Middle East Forum, whose stated aim is to shift the paradigm to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by declaring Israeli victory.

The declaration was signed during a visit to Washington and New York by co-chairman of the Knesset Caucus Oded Forer (Yisrael Beytenu) and caucus member Avraham Neguise (Likud). The Israeli lawmakers met with their counterparts in the congressional caucus, from both sides of the aisle, as well as other senior US decision makers and opinion shapers, and Jewish and Christian leaders.

“Every attempt at negotiations with the Palestinians without demanding that they recognize Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people will fail,” Forer said. “Together with members of Congress from both parties, we call on the American administration to demand from the Palestinians to recognize the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people as a precondition to future talks.

At first glance, relations between Israel and Egypt seem quite solid forty years after President Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem.

It was on November 19, 1977 that Sadat stunned the world by visiting Jerusalem and breaking the psychological barrier produced by three decades that were marked by wars and belligerency. In his speech to the Knesset, the Egyptian leader declared: "Sincerely I tell you we welcome you among us with full security and safety."

But he also stressed that peace would require Israel to withdraw from all of the territories captured in 1967 and to accept Palestinian statehood. "Any talk about permanent peace based on justice and any move to ensure our coexistence in peace and security in this part of the world would become meaningless while you occupy Arab territories by force of arms."

Today, despite the continuation of Israeli military control in the West Bank, security and governmental ties are unprecedentedly close. Both countries are keen to see Islamic State's insurgency in Sinai routed and they are reportedly working together towards that end. Both view Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a threat. Both are keen to counter Iranian influence in the region.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has an open line to President Abdul-Fatah al-Sisi, while, according to Ben Gurion University Egypt specialist Yoram Meital, Israel lobbies in Washington on Sisi's behalf, urging US decision makers against decreasing aid to Egypt over its alleged human rights violations.

"During the past two years relations have been a kind of honeymoon,"Meital says.

South Korea’s ambassador to UNESCO — the cultural, scientific and educational agency of the United Nations — was elected on Thursday as chairman of the Executive Board, in a vote many observers believe would be won by an Iranian candidate.

Lee Byoung-hyun won the ballot of the 57-member Executive Board by 32 votes against 25 for Iranian Ambassador Ahmad Jalali. The Iranian defeat on Thursday followed October’s blow to Qatar’s hopes of winning the post of UNESCO director-general. In that race, French candidate Audrey Azoulay defeated Hamad Bin Abdulaziz Al-Kawari following a contest in which the Qatari was similarly regarded as the leading contender.

Israel welcomed the Iranian defeat. Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, paid tribute to “Western efforts, especially by the US and Israel, to create competition for the Iranians and to stop Tehran’s control of the Executive Committee.” These efforts “took place mainly behind the scenes and today had an impressive success,” the ambassador said.

Shimon Samuels — international affairs director for the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), a US-based Jewish organization with observer status at UNESCO — said that the vote “also mirrored the growing fear among Sunni Muslim countries of Shia Iran’s imperialist threats to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and beyond.”

Last month, the SWC protested Iran’s candidacy in a letter to outgoing UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, pointing out that the Tehran regime was lobbying for recognition of the ancient city of Dezful as a UNESCO heritage site. A prison in the same city is alleged to be the location of a massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988 directed by Mahmoud Alavi, who is now Iran’s minister of intelligence, the SWC said.

Congress appears to have bucked the Trump administration this week by passing hundreds of millions of dollars in missile defense aid for Israel likely using funds historically reserved for current US wartime operations.

The White House made clear over the summer that it was not opposed to the amount of aid proposed by Congress for Israel, but rather the vehicle for its delivery– an unprecedented use of dollars typically saved for US military readiness. On Thursday, Congress approved the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act to include $705 million for US-Israel missile defense cooperation, including $588 million over President Donald Trump's proposed budget.

The House has proposed for the first time tapping the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget for this aid increase– a fund that is effectively uncapped by the Budget Control Act and has become a loophole through which Congress and the Pentagon get around budget cuts ever since sequestration (a legal procedure in which automatic spending cuts are triggered if the federal budget exceeds a set limit) hit defense programs hard in 2013.

In July, a National Security Council spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post that "misuse" of OCO funds for any purpose but US wartime readiness was a "slippery slope" down which no party should slide for any reason.

Representatives from 12 NATO countries recently visited Israel to take part in a first-of-its-kind conference on the challenges of urban warfare and combat in populated areas.

The need to engage enemies embedded in urban combat zones, megacities (metropolitan areas with more than 10 million inhabitants) and other populated regions is a challenge that is set to become increasingly prevalent for security forces around the world. Israel has amassed significant experience in this area, experts say.

“From Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 (launched to extinguish a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings and shootings in Israeli cities), the IDF’s operations have been focused in built-up village and city areas,” Dr. Eitan Shamir, former head of the National Security Doctrine Department in Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry, told JNS.org.

“The IDF set up one of the most advanced facilities of its kind in the world at the Tzelim Ground Forces Training Center,” Shamir said, referring to a mock Palestinian village used for Israeli military training.“American units and others have asked to come and train in it. I personally have heard senior American officers say they do not have a facility like the Israeli one, which was built after many lessons and experience.”

Organizers of Israel’s urban warfare conference, which took place from Nov. 5-8, echo this sentiment.

“Israel is a lab, where many things happen, and where future trends start,” an IDF colonel who heads a department in the military’s Strategic Planning Branch told JNS.org.

The conference enabled Israel to transmit the complexities and dilemmas it faces when dealing with enemies that operate out of civilian areas, he added.

Recently, various media outlets published news and editorial pieces about the Civil Administration’s intention to enforce “delimitation orders” on two Palestinian Beduin encampments in the Jordan Valley. Under the blazing headline “Stop the Evictions,” an editorial in Haaretz unleashed a full-scale attack, notifying readers in Israel and around the world that the State of Israel is planning to evict hundreds of unfortunate Palestinian Beduin, victims of recurring “illegal, unjustified and dangerous” Israeli actions, from two villages in Israel’s Jordan Valley – Ein al Hilweh and Umm Jamal.

Zehava Gal-On, who tweeted about it yesterday, told her readers that these villages “have been there for decades” and that they “are situated on private, Arab-owned land.” Yesterday, The Jerusalem Post’s Tova Lazaroff addressed the issue, as well.

Although Lazaroff’s article correctly described the “Palestinian Beduin villages” of Umm Jamal and Ein al Hilweh as illegal, that’s more or less where the factuality ends. Quoting attorney Tawfiq Jabareen, who represents these illegal encampments, Lazaroff repeated his patently false statement that “some of the families came 30 years ago from the South Hebron Hills and others were here before 1967.”

In fact, aerial photos taken as recently as 2004 show that there was no village – Beduin, Palestinian, or any other kind – in this area; aerial photos going back to 1999 debunk Jabareen’s claims altogether. At most, in certain seasons there were tents in the area, constructed for temporary shelter by the nomadic shepherds who passed through with their flocks. This hardly constitutes ownership, settlement, or historic claims to land.

A Palestinian Authority (PA) official, Walid Assaf, who heads the “committee to fight the security fence and the settlements”, met on Tuesday with a delegation of students from Denmark and briefed them on the political situation and the reality on the ground.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that during the meeting, which took place in Ramallah, Assaf accused Israel of "Judaizing the territories."

He also accused Israel of “stealing” natural resources, cutting off Palestinian areas from one another, building the "racist" separation fence, isolating Al-Quds (Jerusalem -ed.) and imposing restrictions on freedom of religious worship.

Assaf described Israel's policy as colonialist and claimed that this policy is manifested in demolitions of homes and Bedouin communities, and the forced expulsion of Palestinian residents from Susiya and Umm al-Khir in the south to the Jordan Valley in the north.

He asked the foreign students to convey the message about the suffering of the Palestinian people and to support their positions.

The student delegation also watched films explaining the alleged Israeli "harassment" of the Palestinians and the policy of "executions" of young Palestinians during the Intifada, the demolition of homes and the expulsion of residents.

For Palestinians, Dalal Mughrabi is a legend — a heroine — celebrated for having killed 38 Israelis (including 13 children) in a 1978 massacre along Israel’s Coastal Highway.

But when Belgium funded a school for Palestinian children in 2013, it didn’t expect the institution to be named in Mughrabi’s honor. Thus, when officials learned last month that the former ‘Beit Awwa Basic Girls School’ in Hebron had been renamed to celebrate the Lebanese terrorist, the Belgians immediately froze all funding to the Palestinian Authority’s educational projects.

In response, the school, whose logo depicts a map eliminating Israel, wrote on its Facebook page: “The name of Dalal is engraved in our hearts and will remain engraved in our minds.”

Belgium planned to fund ten more schools in the coming three years, The Algemeiner reported. Those projects would have come in addition to the 20 schools that the country has already helped build in the Palestinian territories, through a €71.6 million, four-year support package set up in 2011.

Belgium’s national contribution to the Palestinian Authority (PA) government comes on top of the EU’s general support, which in 2016 came to €291.1 million. Most of those funds are distributed through PEGASE, an EU initiative established in 2008 to provide direct funding to the PA, enabling it to pay out pensions, civil servant salaries and basic public services.

Belgium is not alone: in 2017, the UK pledged £25 million to cover the salaries of PA employees in the West Bank. And, according to a Mail on Sunday report, several schools funded by the UK are also named for terrorists.

The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany announced on Thursday that the Deutsche Bank and the Postbank shut down all of the party's bank accounts in Germany.

The anti-Israel Marxist-Leninist Party has been engulfed in an election scandal alleging it campaigned during the federal election with The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)--an EU and US designated terrorist organization.

In a statement released on its German-language website, Gabi Fechtner, the Marxist-Leninist Party (MLPD) chairwoman, said the termination of the accounts "is a massive attack on the management of the MLPD." She added that that the closure of the accounts "means a new high point in the criminalization campaign against the MLPD and a politically motivated bank boycott."

The Marxist-Leninist Party lashed out at The Jerusalem Post for its investigative series on the party's connection with the PFLP prior to the September, 24 federal election.

The party, which adheres to the line of the late Soviet Union dictator Josef Stalin, wrote that negative press coverage is related to its support for the "Palestinian liberation struggle." The Marxist-Leninist Party campaigned on a joint list with the PFLP and its supporters, according to German media reports.

U.S. officials have become increasingly concerned that American military aid to the Lebanese army is arming the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah, which has been amassing a large cache of advanced arms on Israel's border, according to multiple current and former U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

Following the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who fled the country and disclosed that Hezbollah controls the entirety of Lebanon, the U.S. government has continued its support for the Lebanese military, which multiple sources say has long been under the thumb of Hezbollah militants.

The ongoing policy is said to be fueling diplomatic tensions between the United States and Israel, which has found itself allied with Saudi Arabia as the American government advances a host of policies that have contributed to Iran's regional dominance, including in Iraq and Syria.

The Trump administration's State Department is coming under increased pressure from lawmakers and other foreign policy insiders to halt all military aid to Lebanon in light of Hariri's resignation and new evidence that Hezbollah is benefiting from the American arms and aid.

Multiple U.S. officials and other national security insiders who spoke to the Free Beacon about the situation criticized the Trump administration for continuing a host of policies that they say have emboldened Iran's grip on the region, including in Syria and Iraq, where U.S. arms have recently been detected going to Iranian-backed militia groups.

Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Thursday called on the Hezbollah terrorist organization to disarm, warning the group that regional efforts were underway to oust them from the Lebanese government.

At a press conference in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, al-Jubeir denounced Hezbollah as “a tool of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards” and “a first-class terrorist organization used by Iran to destabilize Lebanon and the region.”

“Hezbollah has kidnapped the Lebanese system,” he said.

Al-Jubeir added that “consultations and coordination between peace-loving countries and Lebanon-loving countries are underway to try to find a way that would restore sovereignty to Lebanon and reduce the negative action which Hezbollah is conducting in Lebanon.”

The minister’s remarks came as the kingdom rejected accusations that Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri was being detained in Riyadh following his shock resignation earlier this month.

Iraqi forces captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town under Islamic State control, on Friday, signalling the complete defeat of the group's self-proclaimed caliphate.

The capture of the town marks the end of Islamic State's era of territorial rule over a so-called caliphate that it proclaimed in 2014 across vast swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Iraqi forces "liberated Rawa entirely, and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings," Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah said in a statement from the Joint Operations Command.

Rawa borders Syria, whose army declared victory over the militants on Nov. 9, after seizing the last substantial town on the border with Iraq.

"With the liberation of Rawa we can say all the areas in which Daesh is present have been liberated," a military spokesman said, referring to Islamic State by an Arabic acronym.

Israel’s embassy in Berlin on Wednesday issued a stinging condemnation of German Green Party politicians and federal agencies for jeopardizing Middle East and European security because of their roles in promoting trade with the Islamic Republic of Iran at a business forum in Frankfurt.

The embassy in Berlin told The Jerusalem Post by email: “Iran is the No.1 funder of terror in the world, including terror organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas, and is a destabilizing force in the region. Furthermore, Iran carries out missile tests that are not consistent with UN Security Council resolutions, and in doing so calls for the destruction of Israel. These missiles also have the capability of reaching Europe.”

The embassy added, “Iran should be the focus of severe nuclear monitoring given the international community’s lack of belief in its intentions. Iran is one of the primary abusers of human rights. The number of executions during the term of President [Hassan] Rouhani even surpassed previous leaders. Given this, it’s possible to understand our dissatisfaction from this forum and cooperation by European bodies.”

The 5th Banking and Business Forum Iran Europe, which runs from November 15-16 in Frankfurt, seeks to boost business with Iran and end financial restrictions against Tehran.

Tarek Al-Wazir, the Green Party economic minister for the state of Hesse where the forum is taking place, is slated to speak. The Green Party in the state of Hesse and the Economy Ministry declined to comment.

US President Donald Trump has called terrorism a “battle between good and evil,” a fight “between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it.” The president, along with fellow Republicans, frequently tries to paint Democrats as weak on terrorism.

Yet, when it comes to Qatar, a nation known to harbor terrorist leaders and to provide funding for terrorist activities, the Trump administration, which initially signaled a hard line toward the oil-rich nation, seems to have a soft spot.

While Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic ties with Qatar in June because of its support for terrorism, including for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Trump administration instead has been cozying up. That’s despite those four nations having published a list of a dozen entities and 59 individuals who finance terrorist groups and are connected to, and even in, Qatar.

In March 2014, a senior US Treasury Department official called Qatar a “permissive jurisdiction” for illicit financing of terrorist groups in Syria, including ISIS and the al-Nusra Front.

Meanwhile, Qatar is growing closer to Iran, beyond the positive media coverage it gives that nation through the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera network, and has been establishing energy, trade and security ties with a country whose officials frequently espouse the destruction of Israel.

Russia cast its 10th veto on Thursday of United Nations Security Council action on Syria since the war began in 2011, blocking a US-drafted resolution to renew an international inquiry into who is to blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

The mandate for the joint inquiry by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which found the Syrian government used the banned nerve agent sarin in an April 4 attack, expires at midnight Thursday.

A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Russia, Britain or China to be adopted. The US draft text received 11 votes in favor, while Russia and Bolivia voted against it and China and Egypt abstained.

The vote sparked a war of words between Russia and the United States in the council, just hours after White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said President Donald Trump believed he could work with Russian President Vladimir Putin on issues like Syria.

Meet Shulamit, she was born four years before the state of Israel declared independence. Her family lived in Kfar Shiloach, a village in East Jerusalem. Today most people only know Kfar Shiloach by it's Arabic name, Silwan, after an orchestrated campaign to remove any connection of the Jewish people to this area. Shulamit was born on a bus on the way to the Mount of Olives, once it became apparent that Shulamit's mother was going to give birth, the bus driver told the passengers to catch the next bus. Tragically the next bus was fire bombed by Arab terrorists and several people lost their lives. What Shulamit shares about the Arab neighbours she grew up with in Silwan will shock you.

A documentary about terror, especially if you have come perilously close to experiencing it in your own life or have lost people you love to it, as I have, can have you biting your lips, pressing your hand against your mouth or shutting your eyes to avoid horrific sights. None of those reactions are applicable to "Watching the Moon at Night: On terrorism and anti-Semitism," a film which instead, has you wiping unexpected tears of empathy from your eyes, feeling your heart break or taking deep breaths to overcome the despair brought on by thiinking too much about the state of the human race.

This unforgettable movie is not out to show you gory details of terror attacks, although, of course, it cannot avoid them completely. The film is meant to make you think, to stay with you after you leave the theater. And it does.

"Watching the Moon at Night" is filled with ordinary people, not terrorists, people whose world has alternated for years between shock and resignation at the senselessness, the uselessness, of what befell them on what should have been an ordinary day. Swedish filmmakers Bo Persson and Joanna Helander have, with great sensitivity, given those bereft by terror the opportunity to describe the indescribable, and the effect is much more powerful than scenes of actual terrorist attacks.

Unadorned narratives of loss and the geographic range in which it has been experienced, the cultural diversity the speakers display contrasted with the commonality of their sadness, make for a gripping way to expose the spreading scourge of terror permeating the period in which we live and the political attempts to justify it. For me, a neighbor of sunny Malki Roth whose Australian-born father Arnold speaks in the film, his words about the feeling of isolation since her murder in Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria at the age of 15, were particularly devastating.

On Monday, about 200 SJW protesters took to the campus of UCLA in an attempt to silence conservative writer and commentator Ben Shapiro. The protest was unsuccessful and Shapiro gave his speech, which was, ironically, about creeping fascism on campus.

The protesters engaging in the sort of behavior that Shapiro was warning against inside the lecture hall were confronted by right-wing journalist Austen Fletcher, known as Fleccas. They were about as incoherent and clueless as you might imagine.

Flooding the venue, protesters chanted loudly, "Nazis go home!"— (Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew) — "Right-wing bigots go away!" and "It isn't a debate when you're just spreading hate!"

"I don't think he should be able to speak. Ben Shapiro incites hate speech, he does not incite free speech," explained one clueless female protester.

"Donald Trump is worse than Hitler!" screamed another anti-free-speech college student. As noted by Fleccas, this chant, like the rest of them, seems misplaced (and insultingly inaccurate) considering Shapiro did not even vote for Trump.

"Just because somebody is wearing a suit, just because he looks like Richard Spencer, is wearing a haircut like the Hitler youth, doesn't mean they're right," said one male protester.

Yeah, apparently there's a strong stereotype that a person who has a "Hitler youth" haircut is always "right." Shapiro doesn't even have that haircut. The protester was also completely ignoring Shapiro's consistent condemnation of the alt-right, which has consistently targeted him.

"F*** Ben Shapiro and f*** Milo Yiannopoulos," screamed another protester, apparently totally ignorant of Shapiro's take on Yiannopoulos.

Other protesters trying to shut down Shapiro were confronted by pro-free-speech counter-protesters. When the protesters were asked what their beef was with Shapiro, they deflected to President Trump, gave no specific answer, and then fled the interaction.

A German court ruled on Thursday that Kuwait Airways had the right to refuse to carry an Israeli passenger due to his nationality, a verdict that Jewish groups said condones anti-Semitism.

An Israeli citizen identified in court papers as Adar M., a student living in Germany, had sued Kuwait Airways after it canceled his booking for a flight from Frankfurt to Bangkok that included a stopover in Kuwait City.

The cancellation came a few days before M.'s scheduled departure in August 2016, when he revealed he had an Israeli passport. The airline offered to book him on a nonstop flight to Bangkok with another carrier.

The man refused the offer and filed the lawsuit, seeking compensation for alleged discrimination. He also insisted the airline should have to accept him as a passenger.

In its decision, the Frankfurt state court noted that under Kuwaiti law, Kuwait Airways is not allowed to have contracts with Israelis because of the Middle Eastern country's boycott of Israel. The court said it did not evaluate whether "this law makes sense," but the airline risked repercussions that were "not reasonable" for violating it, such as fines or prison time for employees.

According to the court, Germany's anti-discrimination law applies only in cases of discrimination on the basis of race, ethnic background or religion, not citizenship.

Germany’s Central Council of Jews condemned the ruling, calling it “unbearable that a foreign company operating based on deeply anti-Semitic national laws is allowed to be active in Germany.”

Frankfurt Mayor Uwe Becker expressed a similar view.

“An airline that practices discrimination and anti-Semitism by refusing to fly Israeli passengers should not be allowed to takeoff or land in Frankfurt,” Becker said.

Courts in the United States and Switzerland previously have ruled in favor of plaintiffs in comparable cases, the German news agency dpa reported.

A lawyer for the Israeli passenger called the verdict “deeply shocking.”

“This is an embarrassing ruling for democracy and for Germany,” lawyer Nathan Gelbart said. “It cannot be allowed to stand like this.”

Germany’s foreign ministry said it will press Kuwait about a law that prevented its national airline from transporting an Israeli citizen on a flight originating in Frankfurt.

Deputy foreign minister Michael Roth told Die Welt newspaper Friday that Germany’s ambassador has been asked to raise the issue with Kuwaiti authorities.

The move follows a Frankfurt court ruling Thursday that Kuwait Airways didn’t have to transport the Israeli on a 2016 flight that included a stopover in Kuwait City because it would have faced legal repercussions at home.

The court noted the airline wasn’t allowed to have contracts with Israelis under Kuwait’s boycott of Israel.

Roth said: “It is incomprehensible to me that in today’s Germany a passenger cannot board a plane simply because of his nationality.”

In 1951, most of the Jews of Iraq were forced out of the country as part of the ethnic cleansing of some 850,000 Jews from Arab lands that took place after the State of Israel was born. Thus the Jewish community which had lived in Iraq for more than 2,600 years, which had figured in the Psalms and in which the Babylonian Talmud was written, was no more.

Edwin Shuker is an Iraqi Jew whose family stayed on during the fifties but was forced out in 1971 when he was 16. His main home is in London, although he has ties to Israel too. Now he has done what would once have been unthinkable: returned to the Baghdad he loved so much and bought a house there.

He and four other families tell their story in a new film called Remember Baghdad. Shuker tells the Jewish Chronicle:

“You see me on my journey to buy a house there so I can say the Jews have not all gone… there has been an earthquake change in the attitude to the displaced Jewish people. Iraqis now feel like they have lost a golden community. They recognise Jews played an important part in civilised society… I feel a responsibility to go there to maintain the Jewish connection to this land. We are not finished yet.”

This is more than just a defiant political statement. As he says, he can’t bear to abandon the country where his grandfather is buried and which he still thinks of as home.

Please join me in this video clip as I talk to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network about the political tumult in Britain, where the Priti Patel debacle brought out yet again some ripe anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudices.

Please join me in this video clip as I observe to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network that antisemitism in Britain is not confined to the left, and that it has a disreputable history within the Conservative party too.

Please join me in this video clip as I tell Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network that among the British cultural elites Israel is so toxic Priti Patel’s dealings there provoked a storm which would not have occurred had she visited any other country.

Economy and Industry Minister Eli Cohen met with U.S. Congressman Peter Roskam (R-Illinois) in Washington on Wednesday, and thanked him for introducing legislation in March that would combat the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

The Israel Anti-Boycott Act currently has the support of 268 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill would prohibit boycotting Israeli companies, specifically those active within Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights.

The bill states that it opposes a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution that "urges countries to pressure their own companies to divest from, or break contracts with, Israel, and calls for the creation of a 'blacklist' of companies that either operate, or have business relations with entities that operate beyond Israel's 1949 Armistice lines, including east Jerusalem."

Cohen thanked Roskam for U.S. support in preventing the anti-Semitic activities of boycott organizations. BDS movement supporters will find themselves facing a joint U.S.-Israel economic front, which will stop the anti-Semitic boycott attempts, Cohen said.

Maddison’s folly
Yet this isn’t even the gravest error Maddison makes. For an antisemitic attack, surely the Jewish person must be known to the attacker or visibly identifiable as Jewish. So the comparison of all blacks against all Jews becomes unworkable. A Jew, fearing antisemitism, removes either his ‘kippa’, or ‘Star of David’ from his person before going out in public. The black person has no such luxury. This submissive result of high levels of antisemitism is a classic sign of a persecuted minority, and yet the good ‘Dr’ Madison, ignores it. I call this ‘Maddison’s Folly’.

Because of the ‘identity’ issue, ‘Jews’ cannot count as a whole number, the way other minority groups can. The question becomes – how many Jews amongst all the Jews are visibly Jewish – only they can be counted as the representative number of the entire community.

I am absolutely convinced that if all Jews dressed without any religious markings or dress whatsoever, then antisemitism crime levels would plummet. Black racial attacks would remain constant. Does that mean antisemitism would be over? This is the Maddison formula. Insane.

Then there is ‘Maddison’s second folly’ – take the CST. The CST secures over 1,000 communal events each year. When Jews gather as Jews, there is always a protective barrier in place around them. At the state level, my child goes to school behind an additional layer of protection. Dr Alan Maddison is either absurdly implying the levels of antisemitism would remain constant if that layer of protection was removed or all his conclusions are bunkum.

Then there is ‘hostile surveillance’. Does Dr Maddison even know what it is? What the CST does? What of those strangers that monitor Jewish sites, take photographs, are spotted, and deterred by the able defence?

Take two banks. One completely unguarded, the other guarded. The protected one holds diamonds, the unprotected one, Gold. Maddison is suggesting because the people take the Gold more than the diamonds, it means the people want the gold more. A schoolboy could do better than this.

Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) is a tiny group of Corbyn-supporting Israel-demonising anti-semitism-downplaying Jewish (they claim) Labour members, plus their supporters. See JVL Watch on Twitter. They launched in a fringe meeting at the Party Conference, notable for the anti-Zionist Miko Peled telling Labour members that they should be free to discuss the Holocaust “yes or no”. Many of their members have moved on from other similar ‘astroturf’ far left Israel-traducing organisations such as ‘Free Speech on Israel’ and ‘Jews for Justice for Palestinians’.

On Tuesday evening JVL held a meeting in SOAS (appropriately…..).

It was entitled On Antisemitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice. Copies of a book with that title – compiled by Jewish Voice for Peace, a US anti-Israel organisation with zero connection to JVL – were on sale (published by Haymarket). The meeting wasn’t sponsored by a SOAS organisation so JVL must either have hired the room or found a supportive SOAS academic (not hard!) to book it for them.

On the chairs was a flyer from ‘Free Speech on Israel’ quoting the finding from the flawed Yachad survey that ‘more than 40 percent of British Jews do not identify as Zionist’. Of course it failed to quote the finding from the same survey that 93% see Israel as part of their identity as Jews. And it cites the Tomlinson critical opinion on the IHRA Definition without disclosing that his opinion was commissioned by four anti-Israel organisations: Free Speech on Israel, Independent Jewish Voices, Jews for Justice for Palestinians and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The British Labour Party punished an activist for making an anti-Semitic remark about Adolf Hitler after reinstating a member accused of Holocaust revisionism.

Labour activist Nasreen Khan was passed over this week from representing Labour at a municipal election over her 2012 Facebook post about Jews in which she said teachers are “brainwashing us and our children into thinking the bad guy was Hitler,” according to the Jewish News. Khan said she regretted the text, which also read, “What have the Jews done good in this world?”

Separately, philosopher Moshe Machover was readmitted after writing that Nazism and Zionism had a “basic agreement.”

The developments are the latest in a two-year saga involving anti-Semitism in Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, who was elected party leader in 2015 and this year led his opposition movement to a major electoral feat despite accusations by British Jewish groups that he is responsible for whitewashing and tolerating the hatred of Jews.

A former Israel Defense Forces commander told the Washington Free Beacon anti-Israel activists at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) laughed at him as he gave a talk describing coming out of the closet as gay.

Hen Mazzig, who has been on the pro-Israel campus speaking circuit for seven years, said Monday was the first time he has ever been mocked while revealing "my very personal story to a room of strangers."

"One student told me I'm ‘pinkwashing,'" said Mazzig, a term referring to Israelis hiding behind the country's equal rights for LGBTQ individuals to redirect attention from human rights violations. "They told me that I'm pushing propaganda, because I'm not talking about the conflict, but about my personal life. So, I can't talk about being gay because I'm Israeli."

The student activists were affiliated with the UIUC chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), said Mazzig.

SJP UIUC is currently holding "Trans Awareness Week," and on Wednesday hosted a talk with the far-left Jewish Voice for Peace purporting to explain the face of modern day anti-Semitism, and how Israel is divorced form that issue.

Mazzig often faces protesters, but he said he has rarely faced the level of "disrespect and hatred" that he found at UIUC.

"I talk about how my grandfather was killed in Iraq in 1951 after being accused of being a Zionist spy, just because he was Jewish. My grandmother found the body," said Mazzig. "While I was telling the story, SJP was laughing."

Members of the University of Maryland student government nixed a bill to boycott Israel before it could be brought to a vote.

After two hours of debate Wednesday, the student affairs committee put forward an unfavorable report on the bill by a vote of 21-1 with three abstentions, according to the university’s Diamondback newspaper. Student legislators then voted 23-13 against overturning the report, with one abstention.

Of the 61 students that spoke during the debates, 45 opposed the bill, according to student legislator David Rekhtman.

“BDS does nothing to facilitate that change [of status quo in Israel], nor does it help to promote dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians or students on campus,” said one speaker, Talya Gordon, a sophomore psychology major. “What BDS does is shut down the conversation before it can ever be had.”

The bill would have called on the University of Maryland to divest from companies that supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel say enable and profit from human rights violations in the Palestinian territories.

A swastika was found at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (U-M) on Wednesday afternoon, hours after the school’s student government called on university leaders to divest from companies that do business with Israel.

The swastika — found in a men’s bathroom stall — was discovered by Sammy Lawrence, a Jewish senior at U-M who reported the antisemitic mark to the Division of Public Safety and Security, The Michigan Daily reported. A follow Jewish senior, Ryan Scheidt, also saw the swastika.

The university was contacted about the incident shortly before 3 p.m. — some twelve hours after the Central Student Government (CSG) voted to endorse a divestment resolution that accused Israel of practicing “apartheid” against Palestinians.

A spokesperson for the school to The Algemeiner that they “do not have any suspects in the incident nor do we know an approximate time during which it occurred.”

Scheidt — one of the students who saw the swastika — spoke to the Daily about a possible connection between the appearance of the mark and the CSG vote.

“I think if it did happen after this morning’s vote, I think that’s possible,” Scheidt told the paper. “I was fearful last night of the passing of the vote.”

According to the Daily, “Scheidt said he had felt he had a safe space on campus as a Jewish student until now, and he worried the #UMDivest vote would cause more anti-Semitic acts on campus like in the past.”

The student group J Street U is co-hosting a screening at Macalester College on Thursday evening of a film that has been criticized for demonizing Israel and whitewashing Palestinian terrorism, and features leading proponents of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.

“The Occupation of the American Mind” — narrated by former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters — includes contributions from Amira Hass, Stephen Walt, Noam Chomsky, Max Blumenthal, Rashid Khalidi, Yousef Munayyer, Sut Jhally and Norman Finkelstein — a cast of characters well-known for their controversial criticisms of Israel and, in many cases, support for the hardline BDS movement.

J Street U — the campus arm of the lobbying group J Street, which describes itself as “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans” — organized the 8 p.m. showing for Macalester students in conjunction with Macalester Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights, a group that seeks “to educate on all Palestinian activism, non-violent and otherwise.”

The documentary purports to show how Israel manipulates public opinion in the United States to cover-up alleged human rights violations against Palestinians, as part of its “decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people.”

Israelis, Munayyer claims in the film, “have for a very long time been able to effectively defend the indefensible to the American public through miseducation and misinformation campaigns, through effective talking points.”

The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at George Washington University hosted terrorist-sympathizer Rabab Abdulhadi on Tuesday.

Abdulhadi, an ethnic studies professor at San Francisco State University — which was accused in a lawsuit earlier this year of being a hotbed of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiment (the case was dismissed last week) — is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

She began her lecture by stating she was on “indigenous-toiled people’s land” and asking if anyone is an “[agent] of the government or security agency,” or if there were any people representing the Lawfare Project, which filed the lawsuit against SFSU.

She continued, “AMCHA, Zionist Organization of America, Brandeis Center [for Human Rights Under Law], the David Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center … CampusWatch.” All organizations which Abdulhadi and her followers despise.

On the Facebook event for the speech, Students for Justice in Palestine chapter of George Washington University posted, “They seek to smear Dr. Abdulhadi’s reputation and damage her standing as a scholar, teacher, and public intellectual and destroy the AMED Studies program in the process.”

During her lecture, which was typically inconsistent — switching between the founding of what became Israel and today’s left-wing issues in the United States, such as police brutality — Abdulhadi compared Zionists to followers of McCarthyism, labeling them as “oppressors” and “settlers” in “Palestine.”

Four months later, in March 2013, a report issued by the UN HRC stated its investigation had found that Omar Masharawi’s tragic death had in fact been caused by “a Palestinian rocket that fell short”.

The corporation’s first response to that finding came five days after the UN report was issued when the BBC News website published a ‘damage control’ article by Jon Donnison which did nothing to address the real problem underlying the story: the fact that the BBC knowingly published and extensively promoted a story for which it had absolutely no proven evidence, purely because it fit in with its chosen political narrative.

Six days after the publication of the UN report, the BBC added footnotes to two of its original reports – both of which are still available online.

However, some of the media outlets that amplified the BBC’s original story blaming Israel for the infant’s death failed to subsequently add clarification and so some reports – for example from the Guardian, the Huffington Post and the Sun – still remain online in their original form.

Obviously no footnote can erase that inaccurate BBC story from the internet or from the memories of the countless people who read it or heard it at the time. Significantly, however, the BBC has never offered its funding public a satisfactory explanation as to why that unverified story was not only allowed to run but deliberately given exceptionally extensive coverage and how the editorial standards of accuracy and impartiality to which the BBC professes to adhere were so egregiously breached.

A firestorm of protest recently erupted over an article that ascribed sexual assaults on women by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein to the perpetrator's Jewishness, invoking the type of racial characterization that was a staple of Hitler's Jew‑demonizing propaganda. The piece, however, was not from The Daily Stormer, National Vanguard, or any other such neo‑Nazi publications. It was from Tablet Magazine, which describes itself as "a daily online magazine of Jewish news and ideas," and was penned by its Jewish editor‑at‑large, Mark Oppenheimer. The article, entitled “The Specifically Jewy Perviness of Harvey Weinstein,” was a boon to white supremacists who gleefully cited it in their own postings. Elsewhere, however, the article was harshly denounced, forcing Oppenheimer to append a published “apology” even as the article remained on Tablet's website.

Those who are shocked that a Jewish publication would engage in such appalling racial stereotyping and bigotry should not be. There is a disturbing trend within certain Jewish journalistic circles to conform to the extreme, supposedly “progressive” zeitgeist in which religious values, Jewish leaders, and most of all the Jewish state and its supporters are consistently condemned.

Nowhere is this trend as pronounced as at The Forward under the helm of editor‑in‑chief Jane Eisner. That publication touts itself as “the most influential nationwide Jewish media outlet today,” providing “incisive coverage of the issues, ideas and institutions that matter to American Jews.”

The question is what does The Forward consider to be of matter to American Jews?

It is “game over” for modern-day antisemitic hate preacher David Icke, as Manchester United has confirmed to Campaign Against Antisemitism that it has decided to cancel his event at Old Trafford this evening.

The venue of “An evening with David Icke” had been a closely guarded secret until two tickets with a face value of £85 each were spotted on eBay and reported to Campaign Against Antisemitism by actor Marlon Solomon and Sussex Friends of Israel.

We immediately wrote to the club alerting them to Mr Icke’s views, following which they cancelled the booking.

A reporter for the Jewish Telegraph learned that the event had been booked through an agency without mentioning that Mr Icke would be speaking, but as soon as management received the information that Mr Icke was the speaker, they stopped the event. This was then confirmed to us directly by a source at the football club, followed by an official statement that “The booking was made by a junior member of staff who was unaware of Icke and his objectionable views. The event has been cancelled.”

Mr Icke is a modern-day antisemitic hate preacher who uses social media, his books and his stage performances to incite hatred towards Jewish people. His preaching is so absurd that since the 1990s he has been dismissed as a crank, but because he is dismissed there has been no major opposition to him and he has built up a following of thousands upon thousands of disciples whom he has persuaded to adamantly believe that the world is in the grip of a conspiracy run by the “Rothschild Zionists”.

Central Saint Martins, a college of the University of the Arts London, has apologised after a red banner featuring swastikas was hung from its central hall. A student reportedly proposed the banner as a piece of “art” about prohibition, and was told not to go ahead on ethical grounds, but proceeded nonetheless.

Professor Jeremy Till, principal of the college, said: “As soon as we became aware of this, the work was removed. The installation of the banner was proposed by a student yesterday, and immediately and emphatically rejected.” He added that the university was “deeply sorry for the offence caused to our Jewish community and will be pursuing the matter…Central Saint Martins is committed to providing a supportive and inclusive environment for our diverse students, and we are aghast that the banner was installed against our specific instructions.”

According to one report, there was no explanation around the banner and students were simply laughing about it. However when the banner was removed, Alex Schady, Programme Director for the Arts, said that students cheered: “The student proposed the piece of work to me, which was to be part of an exhibition about prohibition. I immediately said no. But then the student arrived on the day with his work. He showed it to me and I said we are not comfortable with it. He then hung it without permission. As soon as I saw it I took it down and the students watching cheered as it came down. When putting any work in public spaces you have to consider the ethics. It is important that as a university we put on work that is ethically sound.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism commends Central Saint Martins for its swift action in removing this imitation Nazi banner and calls for strong disciplinary action to be taken.

Minister Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam, on Thursday called on US President Donald Trump to repent for America’s sins and chastised Americans who are upset with Trump’s image, saying “he’s your reflection.”

Farrakhan, in a wide-ranging, two-hour speech at the Watergate Hotel in the capital, touched on issues as varied as North Korea, race relations and relations between Muslims in the Middle East in what he billed as an address to Trump.

“Mr. President, you won’t make America great again, not in our time,” said Farrakhan, 84, referring to the president’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan. “She became great killing Native Americans. She became great enslaving us, bringing us from Africa into America to work the cotton fields. You’re not going to get that opportunity back anymore.”

The Nation of Islam, formed in Detroit in the 1930s, in part aims to free blacks from “servitude” to Western civilization — white society. It has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for positions against Jews, gays and others.

Farrakhan called on Trump to “repent for all of the evils that America has done to us, to the peoples of the world.”

The new guidelines are a result of criticism leveled at Twitter when Jason Kessler received verification after achieving over 15,000 followers. Twitter was falsely accused of endorsing him and his views.

The Twitter verification has been a source of criticism and confusion. Twitter invented the verification to protect against fraud accounts for notable users, not to endorse the contents of the account.

Of all the major social media companies (Facebook, Google+ and Twitter), Twitter gained fame for the least amount of censorship.

The company claimed to be a platform for free speech so the program gained popularity with people who normally would have been banned on other social media.

The company is in a process of changing the policy on censorship to avoid being associated with racist views.

If you're a Raptors fan, you may remember a 2005 exhibition game in which Toronto became the first NBA team in 27 years to lose to Israeli powerhouse Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Star guard Anthony Parker nailed the go-ahead jumper with less than a second remaining, and the two-time EuroLeague MVP later parlayed that performance into a multi-year contract with the Raptors.

Around this time, Toronto resident David Goldstein visited Israel, where his mother holds citizenship. The Goldstein family went to see David's grandparents at their seniors' living complex.

"My grandparents had some friends over who heard that I was from Toronto and they just started going bananas over Anthony Parker," says Goldstein. "I thought, it's really interesting how passionate they are, these 80-something-year-old women who I never would have guessed would be sports fans, and I was curious to know more."

A decade later, Goldstein has turned that curiosity into a book. Alley-Oop to Aliyah was published Nov. 7.

In the last 40 years, more than 800 African-Americans have relocated to Israel to play in the Israeli Basketball Premier League. The book focuses on those players, but rarely delves into strategy or statistics.

"It's really about identity, race, religion," says Goldstein, who's now the chief operating officer for USports, the governing body for university sports in Canada. "To me, basketball's an interesting way of learning about that because you might not want to read about it on its own, but in a basketball context you might be taken by it."

The foundation maintaining the Amsterdam house where Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazis during World War II said Thursday they had bought another property where her family lived in the 1930s.

But the Anne Frank Stichting said it had no plans to use the “other home” as a museum, like the one in Amsterdam’s famous canal belt which draws thousands of visitors every year.

“It’s important for the foundation that the home where Anne Frank lived in the 1930s remains intact and is looked after in a proper way,” spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker said.

“It has a very special character… the home situated at the Merwedeplein (square) is inextricably linked to Anne Frank,” Bekker added.

The home in southern Amsterdam formerly belonged to a housing corporation but it said it could no longer take responsibility for its upkeep.

The Frank family lived in the modest brick building from 1934 until they went into hiding in 1942.

Fossilized remnants from a 1,100-year-old refuse pit recently discovered near Jerusalem’s Old City provide a veritable smorgasbord of culinary delights. According to well-preserved seeds, bones and other refuse, ancient city dwellers feasted on beef, fish and fowl, with sides of veggies and lentils. And for dessert? How about cake, or a fruit salad of figs, grapes and black mulberries.

The fossilized refuse provides physical evidence of the urban diet of the Early Islamic period in Israel. Also on the menu, said Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists, were eggs, fish, different possibly medicinal grasses — and the first proof of locally grown eggplant.

“Just like we bake a cake and throw the egg shells into the garbage, that’s exactly the form in which we found the eggs. We have scales and jaws of fish and small rodents,” said archaeologist Oriya Amichay in a press release. (The rodents were presumably not served.)

The refuse pit was uncovered in an IAA excavation, in collaboration with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and funded by the City of David Foundation, on the terraced Second Temple Period Pilgrimage Road in the City of David.

A total of 162 members from the Bnei Menashe Jewish community of northeast India arrived in Israel this week, marking the latest wave of so-called “lost” Jews to immigrate to the Jewish state.

The new immigrants arrived at Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport in two groups and were greeted by jubilant family members and supporters, who danced, sang and waved Israeli flags.

The latest aliyah of Bnei Menashe members follows a group of 102 Indian Jews who arrived in Israel in February.

Members of the Bnei Menashe community claim to descend from Jews banished from ancient Israel to India in the 8th century B.C. Their immigration is organized by Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based nonprofit that calls itself “the only Jewish organization today that is actively reaching out to ‘lost Jews’ in an effort to facilitate their return [to Israel].”

In 2005, then-Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Shlomo Amar officially recognized the Bnei Menashe as a lost tribe, and about 1,700 Bnei Menashe members moved to Israel before the Israeli government stopped giving them visas. The government later reversed that policy, enabling Bnei Menashe immigration to resume.

We all know that each city we visit has its “must-see” sites and attractions. First-time visitors to Jerusalem usually go to the Western Wall, the Old City market and the Tower of David, to name a few of the city’s most famous landmarks.

But a city that dates back thousands of years, with rich history unlike any other on earth, has much more than meets the eye. So much so that even its own residents are sometimes not aware of what lies nearby, above their heads or beneath their feet.

I have spent many years photographing Jerusalem, and I have seen its many sides. Almost every time I went back to the city, there was something new I hadn’t seen before.

I recently teamed up with local tour guide Jacob Bildner, an expert in tours of the city, and together we set out on a special mission to uncover the hidden world of Jerusalem. Jacob was instrumental in helping me discover some of the city’s most fascinating secrets, from sites that are not accessible to the public to places that are literally hidden from sight. The rapport he has built with the communities connected to each site was invaluable in securing private access to many of those that we visited.

Exploring these sites was a mind-blowing and unforgettable trip to the past, unveiling even more layers of the holy city.

I have gathered eight of these hidden gems to show you a side of Jerusalem that you might not have seen:

Facing criticism at home, an Iraqi beauty queen on Wednesday defended her decision to pose for a photo with her Israeli counterpart and to post the joint selfie online, saying it was an expression of a desire for peace and not a show of support for the government of Israel.

“I want to stress that the purpose of the picture was only to express hope and desire for peace between the two countries,” wrote Miss Iraq Sarah Idan (in Arabic) in her latest Instagram post.

She added that the photo of the two Miss Universe contestants, which she did not remove from her Instagram account, “does not signal support for the government of Israel and does not mean I agree or accept its policies in the Arab homeland.”

Idan, whose website indicates she now lives in the US, went on to apologize “to all those who consider [the picture] harmful to the Palestinian cause.”

Idan explained that Miss Israel, Adar Gandelsman, initiated the photo, saying she hoped there would be peace between Jews and Muslims and that neither side would have to send their children to the military.

Christians have been subjected to widespread persecution in Palestine. In Jerusalem today the occupation threatens the Christian presence and the migrations do not stop because of the lack of opportunities for life.
We must support the elements of steadfastness for Christians in Palestine. They are an integral part of the Ummah. The Christian belongs to his Arabism before his church and he is facing the struggle of existence as is the situation of the Arab citizen. There is a systematic Israeli policy aimed at emptying the land of Palestine from all its components. The suffering of Christians in Palestine is no less than the suffering of Muslims and is the main reason behind their growing emigration.

• Palestine is the cradle of Christ, the place of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, and the origin of the Christian religion to the world. The Christian roots in Palestine are as old as history, our Lord Christ was born in Bethlehem Palestine, and this blessed land is the land of all religions, and Christianity also has its roots in Palestine and on Arab land and authentic as Islam is authentic.
Hence, the relationship between Arab Christian and Arab Muslim is very important to the importance of history, and it is united under one slogan, to be or not to be.
Christianity is a dogma as it is Islam. It is very important to distinguish between religious affiliation and national belonging. There is a common past, a present and a future that is also common to us. Arab Christianity has its own destination and concepts. There is a malicious plan that targets all the Arab nation and aims to destroy the one nation.

Earlier this week, Shiri Moshe of the Algemeiner reported that the president of the student group J Street U said that it is “unfair and unhelpful overreach” to describe those advocating for the destruction of Israel as anti-Semites as that would ignore “the nuances and sensitivities of a complicated political debate.” It isn’t clear what nuances there are when discussing the destruction of the world’s only Jewish nation.

Reporting on last month’s Grand Slam Judo Tournament hosted by the United Arab Emirates, The Washington Post reported that the UAE defied the International Judo Federation and refused to allow the Israeli athletes to identify their national team on their uniforms. Though the UAE asserted that it didn’t allow the display of Israeli symbols in order to protect the athletes, the Post noted that UAE maintains “no diplomatic ties with Israel.” Overall though, the Post characterized the banning of Israeli symbols to “international politics.” Really? Is any other nation in the world treated this way?

In August, The New York Times reported that two Iranian soccer players were banned for life from the national team, because the Greek team they played for had competed against an Israeli team. Critics of the move, according to the Times, “say the ban on competing against Israel has hurt the development of Iranian athletes.” And while the report acknowledges that Iran doesn’t recognize Israel, it failed to mention that its leaders regularly call for Israel’s destruction, a sign not of a diplomatic dispute but of deep-seated hatred.

The problem with the New School’s call for debate is that it obfuscates the issue. It allows individuals whose views are abhorrent to obtain a cover of respectability.

What we need is clarity, not debate.

When an individual, entity, or nation singles out Israel for criticism that it applies to no one else, or denies that Israel has a right to exist, they are anti-Semitic and are deserving of censure.

Holding anti-Semites accountable may not be nuanced, but there’s no reason that anti-Semitism should continue to be excused.

Whenever I ask a question at SOAS it’s usually accompanied by abuse coming my way. For example, after asking a perfectly reasonable question in 2012 SOAS lecturer Gilbert Achcar accused me of being a “professional disruptor” and then falsely accused me of leaving insulting messages on his phone.

On Tuesday night at SOAS it was completely different and uplifting.

The members of the panel were Tony Lerman and ex-teacher Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi. Chairing was academic Mike Cushman who has more than a touch of Larry David about him in both look and mannerism. The subject of the evening was a new book they had contributed to called On Antisemitism.

The room of 50 sat relatively quiet listening to Lerman explain how “non-violent activism” like boycott, divestment and sanctions againt Israel (BDS) are under attack in America. And he quoted Judith Butler who claims that accusations of antisemitism, like those against BDS and anti-Zionists, “are meant to cause pain.”

Lerman went on to claim that “supremacist Zionism” attacks Israel’s internal critics like B’tselem and Breaking The Silence and he attacked the “notorious definition of antisemitism” adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance which he felt was “an attack on pro-Palestinian activism”.

Wimborne-Idrissi read out her favourite parts of the book one of which was about how American Jews have now placed themselves within the “tent of whiteness” due to their identifying with a “white supremacist Israel dominated by white Ashkenazi Jews”.

Cushman allowed me to ask a question and so I put it to Lerman how it could be that BDS, which calls for the right of return of some five million so-called Palestinian refugees, can be considered anything other than violently antisemitic when such a return would result in the demographic demise of the only Jewish state.

We interview one of the UK's most prolific pro-Palestinian activists... the gaps in his knowledge will shock you. Meet Damian (@cockneyactivist), a left wing Englishman that has organised countless anti-Israel protests. After speaking to Damian at several demonstrations, we genuinely believe he means well and this comes across in the interview. However, we were shocked at the reasons he gave for his opposition to Israel and were alarmed at his lack of knowledge about the conflict. For someone that has spent years and years campaigning against Israel, he comes across as absolutely oblivious to much of the history of the Middle East, the suffering of the Jewish people, the arguments for Jewish statehood and the current reality in Israel. We can't help but think had he been exposed to less biased information, he could have become an ambassador for peace rather than fighting imaginary European colonisers.
To set the record straight:

- Very few Christians in the Middle East were originally Jewish.
- Very few Muslims were originally Jewish.
- Almost all Jews trace their roots back to Israel (according to most DNA studies)
- Jews are not white European colonisers.
- In contrast the Arabs were colonisers, they replaced the indigenous cultures and religions with Islam
- Israel is not a colony of Europe, it is an independent, multi-cultural democracy.
- The Jews that fled Europe were not white colonisers
- they were fleeing persecution.
- The majority (57%) of Jews in Israel are not Ashkenazi.

American and Israeli officials on Saturday night quickly dismissed an Israeli TV report that claimed the Trump administration is ready to recognize a Palestinian state as a central element of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, that the US will not insist on the evacuation of any settlements or settlers under a permanent accord, and that Washington backs most of Israel’s security demands regarding the West Bank.

The Hadashot News (formerly Channel 2) TV report cited these positions as being among the “key principles” of the emerging US peace plan. But a White House official contacted by The Times of Israel rejected the report as “not an accurate representation.”

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu similarly stated that “the report is not accurate.” It said Netanyahu’s response to the US proposal would depend on its content and specifically on whether it met “the security needs and national needs of the State of Israel.”

Quoting what it said were senior Israelis intimately involved in the ongoing discussions with Trump’s peace team, the TV report Saturday evening said the US peace plan would see President Donald Trump prepared to offer recognition of Palestinian statehood, with the parameters of that state to include land swaps. The borders, however, would “not necessarily” be based on the pre-1967 lines.

This event is a step forward in Israeli/Saudi relations, and the public discussion of intelligence sharing (which may be taking place in secret) is also an important step. The tone of Saudi official comments on Israel has certainly changed. Once upon a time Israel was the “Zionist entity” whose name was not even spoken. Now, the Saudi news station Al Arabiya handles Israel straightforwardly: for example, on November 15 it carried a Reuters story about Israel’s offer of help to earthquake victims in Iran.

But let’s not go too far in interpreting what all this means. The Trump administration’s efforts to “fast-forward” Israeli/Saudi relations have not succeeded. As part of its efforts to promote an Israeli/Palestinian peace plan, there are reports that the administration asked the Saudis to do things like permitting overflights of Saudi Arabia by El Al and having some public meetings with Israeli officials. Israel would make concessions to the Palestinian Authority and freeze some settlement activity in exchange.

The problem here is that the Saudis are right now getting the military and intelligence cooperation they appear to want from Israel—in secret. Public collaboration with Israel or concessions to it would be politically dangerous for the Saudi government, at a moment when to say the very least its plate is full. The last thing it would appear to need is more political controversy stirring up internal criticism and opposition.

So the cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia will likely continue, and deepen, and signs of it will emerge from time to time—signs like the Eizenkot interview in Elaph. A great leap forward such as the groundbreaking Sadat visit to Jerusalem is highly unlikely, as are most public displays of official contacts. Elaph, after all, is a private news site; no Israeli officials have been interviewed by Al Arabiya. And flights from Israel to Asia continue to take long routes that must skirt Saudi air space. The Trump administration was counting on Saudi and pan-Arab desire to help the Palestinians and help the “peace process” to overcome Arab desires to avoid political danger, but that was an over-estimation of the degree of Arab official concern about the Palestinians. Arab regimes do care about the Palestinians, but they care about themselves and their own political health far more.

In the near decade since, Hezbollah’s power has grown and so has its domination of Lebanon. During the war in Syria since 2012, Hezbollah has served as Iran’s foreign legion and sent thousands of Lebanese Shia across the border to fight. A story in the New York Times this August summed up the current situation:

[Hezbollah] has rapidly expanded its realm of operations. It has sent legions of fighters to Syria. It has sent trainers to Iraq. It has backed rebels in Yemen. And it has helped organize a battalion of militants from Afghanistan that can fight almost anywhere. As a result, Hezbollah is not just a power unto itself, but is one of the most important instruments in the drive for regional supremacy by its sponsor: Iran. Hezbollah is involved in nearly every fight that matters to Iran and, more significantly, has helped recruit, train and arm an array of new militant groups that are also advancing Iran’s agenda.

That story concluded that “few checks remain on Hezbollah’s domestic power” in Lebanon. And throughout 2017, Israeli officials have been warning that the distinction between Hezbollah and Lebanon can no longer be maintained. Hezbollah is quite simply running the country. While it leaves administrative matters like paying government salaries, paving roads, and collecting garbage to the state, no important decision can be taken without Hezbollah’s agreement.

Lebanon’s president must constitutionally be a Christian, but today that man is Michel Aoun, an ally of Hezbollah since 2006. That is why he got to be president in 2016. As an analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel put it, “Hezbollah has been very squarely backing Aoun for president, and this was always the deal between Aoun’s party and Hezbollah. Hezbollah has upheld its end of the deal. With this election .  .  . you can see Hezbollah being consolidated in terms of its political allies as well as its position in Lebanon.”

Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who specializes in Lebanon, concurred: “In terms of the actual balance of power, the actual power on the ground, regardless of the politics, regardless of the cabinets, regardless of the parliamentary majorities: It’s Hezbollah.”

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday urged moderate Arab nations to make peace with Israel in order to better confront the threat posed by Iran.

“After Daesh, Iran,” Liberman tweeted on Saturday, referring to the Islamic State by its Arabic name. “[Late Egyptian President] Anwar Sadat was a brave leader, who went against the stream and paved the way for other Arab leaders to recognize the importance of strategic ties with Israel.”

“40 years after his historic visit to Israel, I call on leaders in the region to follow the path of President Sadat, come to Jerusalem and open a new chapter, not just in terms of Israel’s relations with the Arab world, but for the whole region,” Liberman wrote.

Sadat famously flew to Jerusalem ahead of signing the Camp David peace deal with Israel, the first Arab nation to do so. Sadat was later assassinated for his actions.

“The Middle East today needs, more than anything else, a coalition of moderate states against Iran. The coalition against Deash has finished its work, after Daesh, Iran,” he wrote in remarks that appear directed at Saudi Arabia.

The spokesman for Breaking the Silence on Friday challenged the government to fully investigate his alleged assault of a Palestinian after the State Attorney’s Office closed its probe into the matter, stating that the soldier-turned activist had made it up.

Breaking the Silence, which publishes the testimonies of former Israeli soldiers who report on alleged human rights abuses by the IDF in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, has raised the ire of Israeli officials and drawn criticism from those who question the authenticity of its mostly anonymous claims.

In a video statement posted to social media on Friday, Dean Issacharoff repeated the claim that he first made at an April rally — that while serving as an IDF officer in Hebron, he repeatedly kneed a Palestinian in the head while apprehending him during a February 2014 protest.

Nine members of Congress have introduced a bill to prevent US aid to Israel from being used to arrest Palestinian terrorists who are under the age of 18.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), characterizes young terrorists merely as “Palestinian children,” and contends that their arrest by the Israeli army constitutes “abuse.”

Therefore, it’s worth recalling a few examples of the behavior for which Palestinian “children” have been detained by the Israeli military in recent years.

On January 17, 2016, a Palestinian child named Morad Abdullah Adais broke into the home of Dafna Meir, in the town of Otniel, armed with an 8-inch knife. Adais, who was 16, later described proudly what he did next:

“I plunged the knife into her so deeply that most of it was inside her body. She started screaming, the children saw me and also started screaming, then I stabbed her in her upper body another three or four times. She tried to fight me and tried to take the knife from me. The two children who were there were still screaming, but she continued to resist, so I pushed her, and overpowered her.”

Asked what he would have done if he was able to pull the knife from Meir’s body, the Palestinian teenager said, “I would have continued stabbing her, and if I saw another Jew I would stab and murder him.”

The Trump administration put the Palestinians on notice Friday that it will shutter their office in Washington unless they’ve entered serious peace talks with Israel, U.S. officials said, potentially giving President Donald Trump more leverage as he seeks an elusive Mideast peace deal.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has determined that the Palestinians ran afoul of an obscure provision in a U.S. law that says the Palestine Liberation Organization’s mission must close if the Palestinians try to get the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israelis for crimes against Palestinians. A State Department official said that in September, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas crossed that line by calling on the ICC to investigate and prosecute Israelis.

But the law leaves the president a way out, so Tillerson’s declaration doesn’t necessarily mean the office will close.

Trump now has 90 days to consider whether the Palestinians are in “direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel.” If Trump determines they are, the Palestinians can keep the office. The official said it was unclear whether the U.S. might close the office before the 90-day period expires, but said the mission remains open at least for now.

Even if the office closes, the U.S. said it wasn’t cutting off relations with the Palestinians and was still focused on “a comprehensive peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.” The State Department official said in an email that “this measure should in no way be seen as a signal that the U.S. is backing off those efforts.” The official wasn’t authorized to be identified by name and requested anonymity.

The PLO office and the Israeli Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Palestinians will not give in to “extortion” after a US threat to close their diplomatic mission in Washington, the Palestinian Authority foreign minister said Saturday.

In an interview on Palestine Radio, Riyad al-Malki said the Palestinians are waiting for further communication from the US government.

“The ball is now in the American court,” he said.

American officials, citing US law, said Friday that the Trump administration has put the Palestinians on notice that it will shutter their office in Washington unless they enter serious peace talks with Israel. President Donald Trump has 90 days to make a decision.

Malki said the US move may be aimed at putting pressure on the Palestinians. “The Palestinian leadership will not accept any extortion or pressure,” he said.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson refused to certify on Friday that the Palestinians are complying with a 2015 Congressional mandate, which induces penalties if the PA pursues the prosecution of Israelis at the International Criminal Court.

The Palestinian Authority plans to continue paying the salaries of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, which includes convicted terrorists, according to Dr. Nabil Shath, a senior adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

“The Palestinian leadership won’t give in to American threats to end aid to the Palestinians and we will continue to pay the salaries of the prisoners no matter what they threaten,” said Shath, Abbas’ adviser for international affairs.

According to Shath, as far as the Palestinian Authority is concerned, “The prisoners are heroes and we have a responsibility toward them and their families.”

Shath warned against the implications of the possible decision of the American government to end financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, saying that it would harm the U.S.’s ability for fulfill its role in the political process.

Shath’s comments were made regarding initiatives in Congress to end American financial aid to the Palestinian Authority if it continues to pay the salaries of the Palestinian terrorist prisoners.

In response to pressure from Israel and the American administration, the Palestinian Authority says it reduced the salaries being paid to the Palestinian prisoners a few months ago. Some payments were ended completely while others were recategorized as welfare and given in reduced payments from the Welfare Ministry.

An IDF tank fired warning shots at the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad near the Golan Heights cease-fire line between the two countries on Saturday, amid increased tensions along Israel’s northern borders.

The Israeli military said the warning shots came because Syrian forces were constructing a fortified position in the demilitarized zone that runs along the border, in violation of the 1974 truce agreement between Israel and Syria. The agreement “prohibits the entry of heavy construction tools or military vehicles into the demilitarized zone,” the army said.

There were no reports of casualties on the Syrian side.

The army also said it had filed a complaint with the United Nations peacekeeper force stationed on the Golan, which oversee the cease-fire.

The incident occurred near the Druze town of Hader on the Syrian side. The town was the site of a suicide bombing earlier in the month that killed nine Syrian Druze and then sparked clashes between Syrian government forces and rebels.

That incident led to an unusual move from Israel, which said it would defend the Druze population of the village.

PLO members and their organizations won’t accept the peace deal reportedly being drafted by Trump administration officials, including Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, several PLO members told Breitbart Jerusalem in a series of interviews.

Waleed Awad, a member of the Palestinian People’s Party (the former communist party) said, “The Palestinians warn against and reject the American deal beneficial to Israel, giving it much larger weight and position while allowing the Arab states to normalize their relations with Israel and enter the circle of friendly nations despite its identity as the first-most enemy of the Arabs and Palestinians.”

Arab and Palestinian media have reported recently that the deal being worked on by the Trump administration includes negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians as part of a regional conference that will act as the infrastructure for normalization between Israel and the Arab countries.

The deal is also said to aim for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement under the framework of the so-called two-state solution, according to a report in the New York Times.

Authors of the draft proposal, which is reportedly still being ironed out, include Greenblatt, Kushner, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategy Dina Powell and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

Arab media reports indicate that the deal would also see the Palestinian Authority assume full control over some area C territories while accepting broad economic benefits.

The Palestinian Public Relations Ministry told the radio station “Ahla FM” that it intends to shut down the broadcaster if it doesn’t fire one of the female reporters working for the station who has taken a critical line toward the Palestinian Authority.

According to Ahla FM, the station’s offices received an official declaration from the Palestinian Communications Ministry on October 22 demanding that their news manager, journalist Reem al-Omari, be removed from her position.

In the declaration, the ministry said that the demand must be fulfilled within two weeks and that the ministry opposes al-Omari holding a management position at the station.

Al-Omari said that employees at the station were shocked by the message from the Palestinian Communication Ministry: “We tried a number of times to call the director-general of the Communications Ministry and he ignored us.”

According to al-Omari, at the end of the two weeks the station was given to replace her, a delegation from the Communications Ministry came to the station’s studios to check why there had been no response to the ministry’s demand.

Disputes between Hamas and Fatah on issues that lie at the heart of Palestinian reconciliation may turn into a security nightmare for Israel and Egypt, an Arab security source told Breitbart Jerusalem.

According to the source, Hamas has officially handed the Palestinian Authority responsibility for security matters in Gaza but there hasn’t been any organized process to inform Palestinian Authority officials of potential dangers or gaps in border areas, especially along the border with Egypt.

“Hamas is angry at Abbas for not removing the sanctions he placed on the Gaza Strip, so they’re taking their time with a professional, organized relinquishing of the border crossings.

“As far as they’re concerned the Palestinian Authority can take full responsibility but PA officials still don’t have all the information required to understand the complicated nature of the situation at the border in addition to being technically unprepared to take responsibility for the border crossings.”

According to the source, this is the reason Egypt has delayed opening the Rafah border crossing.

Gaza’s sole border crossing with Egypt on Saturday was opened under the administration of the Palestinian Authority and Egypt for the first time in more than a decade.

The Rafah crossing is expected to remain open until Monday for the passage of students and ill persons in both directions, the official PA news site Wafa reported.

Hamas forcibly ousted the PA from Gaza in 2007 and took over the territory’s crossings. However, Hamas and Fatah struck a deal in mid-October to restore the PA’s governing authority over the Strip, including its crossings.

On November 1, Hamas handed over Gaza’s crossings with Egypt and Israel to the PA.

On Saturday, eye-witnesses said at least five buses loaded with passengers crossed over to the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing.

Pictures shared on social media showed PA officials and cadres working inside the Rafah crossing, while Hamas-appointed security forces protected it from the outside.

PA officials have said they eventually plan to deploy their security forces around the crossing.

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri confirmed he would return to Lebanon in time for Independence Day celebrations Wednesday, as political turmoil rocks his country following his resignation announcement in Saudi Arabia.

“I will return to Beirut in the coming days,” Hariri said after crisis talks in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday.

“I will participate in the celebrations for our independence and it is there that I will make known my position on all the issues after meeting with the president of our republic, general Michel Aoun.”

Aoun — who has refused to accept Hariri’s resignation while he remains abroad — had said earlier Saturday that the premier would return in time for Independence Day.

Hariri arrived in Paris on Saturday at the invitation of Macron, who is attempting to help broker a solution to a political crisis that has raised fears over Lebanon’s fragile democracy.

British lawmakers and student leaders convened on Wednesday to discuss the prevalence of antisemitism at universities and strategize on ways to protect Jewish students on campus.

Hosted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism and the Antisemitism Policy Trust, the session featured speakers including Labour MPs Angela Rayner and John Mann; Shakira Martin, president of the National Union of Students (NUS); and Liron Velleman, campaigns manager of the Union of Jewish Students.

Testimonies shared at the event pointed to a diverse litany of abuse — from student officers using the hashtag #Jew in Twitter discussions on wealth to “violent” protests directed at students attending a pro-Israel event.

“A number of campuses have Holocaust denial literature posted on university noticeboards,” Velleman said, according to a report in the Daily Mail. “We have swastikas drawn on cars — this is not something I expected in 2017.”

“We need a serious conversations about what the swastika is,” he added. “It’s either being seen as a casual symbol of fun which is pretty horrifying, or people are using it as a legitimate way to attack people.”

“Jeremy doesn’t do dinners”, says Emily Thornberry, defending the Labour leader’s snub of the Balfour centenary dinner, a decision praised by Hamas. When Lady Nugee was asked why Corbyn didn’t show, she explained:
“He doesn’t turn up for dinners. When there was a dinner for the king of Spain — I turned up. The president of Colombia, who is a longstanding friend — I turned up. He got ‘Politician of the Year’ from the Spectator magazine — he sent [Shadow Home Secretary] Diane [Abbott]. He doesn’t do dinners.”

Yeah, right. Let’s take a look at Jez’s dinner diary…
Pizza with pro-Assad Srebrenica genocide denier Marcus Papadopoulos;
Lamb kofte with terror-apologists at the Stop The War Coalition, where Corbyn was guest of honour;
Dined with Jackie Walker’s partner Graham Bash at the height of the anti-semitism scandal surrounding her;
Dinner with Sinn Fein, alongside Gerry Adams and IRA bomber Gerry Kelly

But he “doesn’t do dinners”…

According to George Washington University history professor Shira Robinson, Israel has “abandoned democracy,” and is rapidly descending into a fascist state.

Robinson recently delivered this dire verdict at New York University, during a lecture titled, “Past as Present: Reflections on the 70th Anniversary of 1948.”

In her introduction to the lecture, Helga Tawil-Souri — the director of NYU’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies — set the tone for the event, bemoaning the “Nakbatization” that has supposedly afflicted the Palestinians for the last 70 years. The term is a play on Nakba, the Arabic word for disaster — or how many Arabs refer to Israel’s founding in 1948.

This contrived passivity was at the core of Robinson’s depiction of the Palestinians as a people with little historical agency. The Israelis and “the Arab states that went to war” deprived the Palestinians of a state, she said. Omitting Palestinian intransigence and terrorism, she portrayed the Palestinians merely as Israel’s victims in the aftermath of a war that has “never ended.”

Robinson argued that Israel is experiencing not only “creeping fascistization,” but that the Jewish state has never been a democracy: “For Jews, the increasingly racist, far-right turn of the state is fueling … an existential debate of sorts over whether the current moment represents a tragic perversion of the Zionist dream or its ultimate realization.” She left no doubt that she believes the latter.

Robinson maintained that Israel’s “anti-democratic tendencies” were always present, even during what she skeptically referred to as the “golden age of Zionism.” But her evidence was unconvincing.

A show by one of the most outlandish antisemitic conspiracy theorists in Europe at the stadium of leading English soccer team Manchester United was abruptly canceled on Friday, after a Jewish group protested to club authorities.

David Icke — a former BBC sports presenter who now enjoys a cult following for his stories of “shapeshifting reptilian” Jews controlling the global economy — had been due to appear at a $200 per ticket event entitled “An Evening With David Icke” at United’s renowned Old Trafford ground. Icke booked a meeting room at the club through an associate who did not divulge the nature of the event.

A spokesperson for Manchester United confirmed on Friday that the booking had been made “by a junior member of staff who was unaware of Icke and his objectionable views.”

“The event has been cancelled,” the spokesperson said.

Icke’s planned presence at the stadium of the 20-times champions of English soccer was first revealed by the UK Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA). A posting on the group’s website described Icke as “a modern-day antisemitic hate preacher who uses social media, his books and his stage performances to incite hatred towards Jewish people.”

Amid vocal protests by leaders of French Jewry on the judiciary’s handling of anti-Semitic crimes, French courts made a series of tough rulings on inciters to hatred of Jews.

In three separate rulings last week, French judges rejected the appeal of the far-right Holocaust denier Alain Soral against his prison sentence, affirmed the eviction of his associate and career anti-Semite Dieudonne M’bala M’bala from his Paris headquarters and slapped a $1,700 fine on a teacher who inveighed against Israel and the Jews.

The rulings came amid unprecedented criticism by CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish communities, and other French Jewish groups on judicial actions and decision that it said were too soft on anti-Semites, encouraged terrorism or amounted to a cover-up of hate crimes against Jews.

The National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, which earlier this month heavily criticized the acquittal from murder charges of an accomplice of the killer of four Jews in Toulosue in 2012, applauded the Nov. 9 verdict against Soral, who in 2012 co-founded the Anti-Zionist Party with Dieudonne, a comedian with multiple convictions for inciting hatred against Jews whom former Prime Minister Manuel Valls called “a professional anti-Semite.”

In recent days, the Hindu community in Bangladesh has been suffering from massive atrocities. A mob of 20,000 Islamists burned down and looted 30 Hindu homes in a village in Rangapur’s Thakurbari while the Bangladeshi government stood by and watched. As Mendi Safadi, who heads the Safadi Center for International Relations and Public Diplomacy, proclaimed, “They are totally without shelter in their own land. The Bangladeshi government is unable to save the peaceful Hindu minority because they are busy crying for the Rohingya Muslims. A sad picture when the UN and the Human Rights Council have as of yet to respond to the crimes of the Sheikh Hasina government.”

This crime against humanity was blamed upon Titu Roy, a Hindu who was arrested for allegedly writing a Facebook post criticizing the Prophet Muhammed. However, sources inside Bangladesh confirmed that the post was actually written by someone who created a fake Facebook account using his name and Roy is innocent. This incident occurred around the same period of time that Bangladesh’s Hindu Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha was forced to resign for opposing Article 16 of the Bangladeshi Constitution due to its anti-democratic nature. It also happened as Bangladeshi opposition leader Aslam Chowdhury, who in the past was arrested for meeting Israeli diplomat Mendi Safadi, was interrogated.

Minority political leader Mithun Chowdhury and Hindu rights activists Kartik Krishno Roy were also reportedly arrested, although the Bangladeshi government denies these claims. 4 Chhatra League leaders who are tied to the student body of the ruling Awami League government stand accused of gang raping and murdering a minority girl, who was found dead in a pond. Meanwhile, Shipan Kumer Basu, the head of the Hindu Struggle Committee, added, “Another school teacher’s family in Bhola district is being attacked by government activists. The government has taken a move to oppress all of the minorities and opposition people.”

The question remains, what excuse has Bangladesh provided for all of these atrocities? According to the Diganta Barta 24 news website, who published an anti-Israel and anti-minorities article before the arson attack targeting 30 Hindu homes, “Israel is conspiring to destroy the independence of Bangladesh! They are dreaming to divide this country into a separate state with minorities. Meanwhile, Mossad agent Mendi Safadi has spread his conspiracy far and wide. Mendi started to work with extremist Hindus and tribes living in Bangladesh long ago. Already sitting in India, the Hindu leaders of the country Mithun Chowdhury and many others had a meeting with the Mossad agent Mendi Safadi. On October 12th, they announced that they will not give up on the freedom of minorities in Bangladesh.”

As many as 700 Tunisian Jews could have been murdered in the Nazi Holocaust, a researcher has claimed at a recent conference - according to HuffPost Maghreb, quoting a report in Arutz Sheva. (It is not clear if this figure includes Tunisian Jews who were living in Europe - some 2,000 Jews born in Arab or Muslim lands died in Nazi death camps.)

According to Victor Hayoun, nearly 700 Tunisian Jews died. The study was presented at a conference titled "From Tunis to Djerba", held at the Dahan Center at Bar Ilan University, Israel.

"When I realized that there was no scientific research on the Holocaust of the Jews of Tunisia, I decided to raise the issue and I have been working on it for about 12 years. We are talking about 700 members of the community, "said Hayoun. He added: "Until 2006, we knew only 400 victims of Tunisian origin and in 2012, we knew 488. Today, we know that the number is closer to 700."

Imagine an environmental taxi, reserved just for you, that you drive yourself, and for about half the price. This is the concept behind Car2Go, a cooperative and environmentally driven initiative that promises to make personal car ownership, and all the hassle that goes along with it, a thing of the past.

The innovative electric car-sharing project was launched in Haifa on November 7, and follows similar schemes in Amsterdam, Madrid and Stuttgart.

For the first two months, Haifa residents will be able to try the plan without membership fees, and pay just 1.20 Israeli shekels per minute – more than a bus, but less than a taxi in the city.

In the first phase, 40 cars will be deployed, 300 hundred parking spots converted, and 30 electric car charging stations installed, with the intention of making another 60 cars available for use through December and January.

More than NIS 20 million has been invested in the scheme, which is a joint venture with German rental company Car2Go, which will run the scheme; the Haifa Municipality; Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection; and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (KKL)-Jewish National Fund (JNF), as part of its “Easy to Breathe” project.

So far, more than 2,000 people have registered for the service.

In what amounts to a significant policy shift, Indian public sector companies are bidding for Israeli offshore oil and gas fields. A consortium led by India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is seeking drilling rights in 24 offshore blocks in Israel’s Mediterranean waters, Indian and Israeli newspapers reported on Wednesday.

Last month, India’s Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan indicated his country’s intention to bid for Israeli oil-and-gas blocks. According to Israeli media reports, a high-ranking Indian delegation visited Israel in September “to discuss taking part in the tender for blocks in the Mediterranean Sea and Israeli officials said they were pleased with the visit.”

Regardless of the outcome, the latest move by Indian state-owned companies marks a significant change, not just in Israel-India bilateral ties, but in India’s geopolitical positioning in the Middle East. Nearly 85 percent of the country’s crude oil demand is met by the oil-producing Arab Gulf states. This dependence, more than anything else, has dictated India’s adversarial foreign policy in the past, signified by its voting pattern at the UN. That pattern was broken only recently after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office three year ago.

As the Burning Bush crackles, God is heard.

“Mow-zes,” God says in the mysterious mid-Atlantic accent that Hollywood once trained its actors to use — the one Anne Baxter as Nefertiti used to summon Charlton Heston’s Moses in the 1956 blockbuster “The Ten Commandments.” “Mow-zes, Mow-zes.”

That epic, earnest and seemingly endless film has much in common with the Museum of the Bible, the $500 million extravaganza gifted to the National Mall by one of America’s leading evangelical families, the founders of the Hobby Lobby chain.

The museum celebrates Jews and Judaism as the noble, beloved and even feared antecedents to Christianity, and argues that its best modern expression is in the State of Israel. And it makes the case that the Bible is not merely to be studied but to be believed.

Speaking at the dedication Friday, Steven Green, the president of Hobby Lobby and the museum’s chairman of the board, said museum-goers should come away realizing that the Bible “has had a positive impact on their lives in so many different ways and when they leave they will be inspired to open it.”

It especially celebrates the Bible’s Jewish origins, notably those made manifest in modern Israel. The dedication included a rabbi, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, the Israeli minister of tourism and the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

At times, the event seemed like a pro-Israel gala. Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador, celebrated the museum as a signifier of the Jewish claim to Jerusalem. The Bible nurtured Jews through 2,000 years of exile until they were able to “rebuild the original DC — David’s Capital,” he said.

The star-studded New Orleans wedding of tennis superstar Serena Williams and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian featured more than one couture design by one of Israel’s leading fashion houses.

Williams’s sister Venus, along with her seven bridesmaids, all wore custom-made cream-colored gowns designed by Galia Lahav, and made in Tel Aviv, to the lavish ceremony over the weekend.

Williams herself wore a strapless ball gown designed by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, which she covered with a sheer sparkly cape.

Despite the media frenzy, the happy couple released few details of their ceremony. According to the Daily Mail, the 250 or so guests invited to the Williams-Ohanian wedding were asked not to bring their cell phones, because an exclusive photo deal had been signed with Vogue.

Music royalty Beyonce, legendary Vogue magazine editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, actress Eva Longoria and singer Ciara attended the ceremony.

Gal Gadot is very hands-on. As in: When you meet her, she will put her hands on you many times, in many different places. Israeli culture is so touch-oriented that guides for Americans traveling there warn they may feel their personal space is constantly being violated in formal settings. Gadot might wordlessly reach out to brush a crumb off your face while you are eating, or lightly rest her palm on your thigh for half a minute while she tells you a story. She might scrunch up her hands into little claws and tickle you with quick finger flexes, the way you would a baby's tummy, if something about your demeanor suggests to her that you need to be tickled in that moment. Even as Wonder Woman sequels and spin-offs propel Gadot to new heights of global stardom, she probably will not lose this habit of touching, because she is a charming, beautiful woman, and it will never occur to people to shrink away from her. In speech, too, Gadot has a compulsive tendency to create intimacy, like when, the morning after the beach, she smiles conspiratorially and tells me she is taking me to a little place near her house that she loves, and it turns out to be a small store where she buys laundry detergent.

At her neighborhood bakery, Gadot patiently translates literally the entire menu for me, without skipping or summarizing any items. "This is mushroom quiche, sweet-potato quiche, tomato-and-olives quiche, pretzel, cinnamon pretzel, pistachio-chocolate Danish, raspberry Danish, vanilla-and-raisins Danish, chocolate brioche, almond-chocolate brioche, just almond brioche, chocolate croissant, butter croissant, chocolate-and-almond croissant, which is wow..." It takes a few minutes. She knows every employee of the bakery, as well as many of the patrons, and just about everyone in Israel comes up to say hello. The employees talk to her about yeast. Her hot husband swings by and kisses her on the lips. She has a long conversation with the son of a neighbor, regarding a fish recipe.

"I'm sorry!" she groans in between catch-ups. We haven't had more than two minutes of uninterrupted talking time since entering the shop, and she's beginning to worry that coming to the most popular bakery in her neighborhood that all her friends and family love was a bad idea.

"It's like your Cheers," I tell her. Everybody here does know her name.

She bursts out laughing and corrects me: "It's L'Chaim!"

We found that one in five of the coalition strikes we identified resulted in civilian death, a rate more than 31 times that acknowledged by the coalition. It is at such a distance from official claims that, in terms of civilian deaths, this may be the least transparent war in recent American history. 

Drone strikes conducted by the United States during a 5-month-long campaign in Afghanistan caused the deaths of unintended targets nearly nine out of ten times, leaked intelligence documents suggest.

The documents show that the military designated people it killed in targeted strikes as EKIA—“enemy killed in action”—even if they were not the intended targets of the strike. Unless evidence posthumously emerged to prove the males killed were not terrorists or “unlawful enemy combatants,” EKIA remained their designation, according to the source. That process, he said, “is insane. But we’ve made ourselves comfortable with that. The intelligence community, JSOC, the CIA, and everybody that helps support and prop up these programs, they’re comfortable with that idea.”
The source described official U.S. government statements minimizing the number of civilian casualties inflicted by drone strikes as “exaggerating at best, if not outright lies.”

During his rule, [Ottoman sultan] Abdul Hamid refused Theodor Herzl's offers to pay down a substantial portion of the Ottoman debt (150 million pounds sterling in gold) in exchange for a charter allowing the Zionists to settle in Palestine. He is famously quoted as telling Herzl's Emissary"as long as I am alive, I will not have our body divided, only our corpse they can divide."

 A little peak [sic] in the history shows how honorable people lived and die for truth and justice. In 1901 the Jewish banker Mizray Qrasow and two other Jewish influential leaders came to visit Sultan Abdul Hamid II(Turkish Sultan), they offered to give him :
1) Paying ALL the debts of the Uthmani Khilafah.
2) Building the Navy of the Ottoman state.
3) 35 Million Golden Leeras without interest to support the prosperity of the Uthmani Khilafah.

In Exchange for
1) Allowing Jews to visit Palestine anytime they please, and to stay as long as they want “to visit the holy sites.”
2) Allowing the Jews to build settlements where they live, and they wanted them to be located near Jerusalem.

Sultan Abdul Hamid II refused to even meet them, he sent his answer to them through Tahsin Pasha, and the answer was

“Tell those impolite Jews that the debts of the Uthmani state are not a shame, France has debts and that doesn’t effect it.Jerusalem became a part of the Islamic land when Khalifah Omar Bin Alkhattab took the city and I am not going to carry the historical shame of selling the holy lands to the Jews and betraying the responsibility and trust of my people. May the Jews keep their money, the Uthamani’s will not hide in castles built with the money of the enemies of Islam.”

He also told them to leave and never come back to meet him again.

The Jews did not give up on Abdul Hameed, later in the same year, 1901, the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Hertzl, visited Istanbul and tried to meet the Sultan. Sultan Abdul Hamid II refused to meet him and he told his Head Of The Ministers Council “Advise Dr. Hertzl not to take any further steps in his project. I can not give away a handful of the soil of this land for it is not my own, it is for all the Islamic ummah. The Islamic ummah that fought Jihad for the sake of this land and they have watered it with their blood. The Jews may keep their money and millions. If the Islamic Khilafah State is one day destroyed then they will be able to take Palestine without a price! But while I am alive, I would rather push a sword into my body than see the land of Palestine cut and given away from the Islamic State. This is something that will not be, I will not start cutting our bodies while we are alive.”

We are seeing more and more artists come to Israel and speak out strongly against BDS. But I have to admit – Nick Cave’s rejection of BDS is particularly satisfying, and not just because he’s a fellow Aussie.

He has actually thanked BDS for making him more determined to come perform herel!

Nick Cave decided to perform in Israel this week as a direct result of the attempt by the BDS movement to silence artists, the performer said on Sunday.

“In a certain way, the BDS movement is responsible for my coming to Israel,” Cave said at a press conference Sunday in Tel Aviv ahead of his two sold-out shows Sunday and Monday nights at the Menorah Mivtachim Arena.

The acclaimed Australian singer/songwriter said that a few years ago, British musician Brian Eno approached him about signing a pro-Palestinian petition that called for boycotting performances in Israel.

“I didn’t want to sign that petition. I didn’t connect to it, I don’t like lists,” said Cave, adding that he’s had a bad feeling, because despite not signing the petition, he hadn’t appeared in Israel for some 20 years.

“That made me feel like a coward, so as soon as I planned this tour, it was important for me to come out against this silencing of artists.

I like Israel and Israelis and it was important for me to do something.” Cave’s current tour in support of his latest album Skeleton Tree, the first since the accidental death of his 15-year-old son, has been meet with superlatives around the world.

That Nick Cave, he’s no bad seed.

Needless to say, Roger is going to be pissed!

The New School, a Manhattan-based university, has aroused controversy over its choice of speakers to appear on a panel discussion about antisemitism given by a group that self-identifies as anti-Zionist and features BDS poster girl Linda Sarsour.

The event, titled “Antisemitism and the Struggle for Justice,” is scheduled for the end of this month and is sponsored in cooperation with the Jewish Voice for Peace and Jacobin Magazine, both of which promote the misguided causes of the alt-Left, one of which is its pretense that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.

Sarsour is a well-known Muslim and Palestinian activist who supports a Palestinian state but denies Jews the right to national self-determination. Moreover, she has appeared alongside a convicted Palestinian terrorist murderer whom she has lauded for her “resistance” to the Zionist occupation.

Sarsour told an audience recently that she was “honored to be on this stage with Rasmea Odeh,” a member of the PFLP convicted in 1969 for her involvement in the bombing of a Jerusalem supermarket that murdered two university students and maimed nine more.

Jonathan Greenblatt, national director and CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, slammed the New School for agreeing to host Sarsour. “Having Linda Sarsour & head of JVP leading a panel on #antisemitism is like Oscar Meyer leading a panel on vegetarianism,” he wrote on Twitter. “These panelists know the issue, but unfortunately, from the perspective of fomenting it rather than fighting it.”

The Sovereignty Movement founded by Women in Green is publishing a protest following the publication of the alleged principles of the Trump outline for a political settlement between Israel and the PA.

"Anyone who has forgotten: A Palestinian state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River endangers the State of Israel. We are shocked by the weak memory that characterizes the planners of the deathtrap of the State of Israel."

"For all those who have forgotten the fundamental principles of Zionism, we will recall that the Land of Israel is our land, and the only way to lead to true peace is to apply Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria," say the leaders of the Sovereignty movement.

“An Israeli concession to the Zionist-historical principle that this land belongs to the people of Israel alone, will lead to further concessions as has been proven in the past. Israel is once again asked to continue to pay in the currency of territory for insignificant signatures of the Arab side on pieces of paper" says the Sovereignty movement "and reminds “ that there is no country in the world that desires to live that gives up its achievements in a war that was forced on it."

"Israel will not be able to exist in a reality where an Arab terror state is established in its heart, a state that will lead to the Hamas takeover of the territory, the massive emigration of millions of Arab refugees to that country that will arise out of nowhere with the end result that the Jewish demographic majority is lost between the sea and the Jordan. In addition such a state would be a security threat to the entrance to Israel, to the Ben-Gurion Airport that will be shut down, Arab missiles will be launched towards the center of Israel and and Iron Domes will become an integral part of the entire of the landscape.

The western-left is befuddled and disgusted by pro-Israel diaspora Jewry despite the fact that pro-Israel diaspora Jewry supports the western-left.

These are nine of their fundamental misunderstandings:
Number Eight: the Jews have never prevented the Palestinian-Arabs from gaining a state of their own... even on our own land!

On the contrary, it was the Arabs who have turned down every single offer for statehood since the Peel Commission of 1937.

The progressive-left must stop blaming the Jewish people of the Middle East for Arab-Muslim intransigence in refusing to accept a state for themselves next to their Jewish neighbors.

This ongoing tendency from the EU and the UN and the US Department of State is indecent, unjust, and opposed to the facts of history.

Number Nine: The Day of the Dhimmi is Done.

The progressive-left loves dead Jews and despises Jews who stand up for the Movement for Jewish Liberation.

Well, ya know what?

Too bad.

Whatever anyone might think of the Jewish people we will stand up for ourselves whether anyone likes it or not.

Nice try. The Rouhani-as-reluctant-hard-liner theory is belied by the man’s long record in the Islamic Republic. Try as they might, Rouhani’s apologists can’t elide the fact that he served as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council from 1989 to 2005, years during which Iran conducted a campaign of assassinations and “chain murders” targeting dissidents at home and abroad. Nor can revisionism undo Rouhani’s leading role in the crackdown against the 1999 student uprising, when he called on the regime’s security forces to“crush mercilessly and monumentally any move of these opportunist elements wherever it may occur.” Nor, finally, can the apologists ignore Rouhani’s years-long refusal to speak out for the detained leaders of the Green Movement.

As Payam Fazlinejad, a leading ideologist with the regime’s hard-line faction and a researcher with the Kayhan newspaper (whose editor is the supreme leader’s representative to the Iranian media), told me: “Mr. Rouhani is a conservative personality and, indeed, is one of the founders of the conservatism in Iran. Therefore he is much closer to the right-wing and principlist currents in Iran” than he is to the reformers. Fazlinejad added: “Rouhani is part of the very reason that principlism enjoys such a hegemony in Iran.”

What does all this mean for the West? It means that the U.S. and its allies must finally come to terms with the Islamic Republic as it really is, rather than as they would wish it to be. Nearly four decades since its founding, the regime is much more ideologically cohesive and united than the appearance of factional wrangling among its elites would suggest. There are no liberal-minded, pro-Western friends on the inside. Too bad that in Washington and more so in Brussels, reformist hope springs eternal.

"Wherever there is a clash between peoples, cultures, states, religions or perceptions, the best way to understand the resulting conflict and to resolve it is to go back to the primary texts," says Yigal Carmon, the president and founder of MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, which translates media broadcasts and articles from Arabic, Turkish, Farsi and other languages into English with the aim of giving the West a real-time glimpse into the Arab and Muslim world's attitudes.

Contrary to what many may think, MEMRI is not in the business of clearing a path for any particular leader, nor does it take any ideological stance – though Carmon himself has very clear views on current affairs.

"MEMRI is a concept, an idea," he says. "We study the media to understand the present, and we study textbooks to understand the future. ... Hundreds of universities make use of our services, because without knowing the language, they lose out on a primary source material that is critical for academic work."

Carmon recalls how Bernard Lewis, considered one of the world's leading Middle East scholars, fruitlessly tried to warn the CIA that Iran's shah was about to be overthrown by the ayatollahs in 1979.

"He got his hands on a book written by the Ayatollah Khomeini shortly before the latter returned to Iran," Carmon says. "He [Lewis] realized that this was a prelude to the revolution and presented the contents of the book to them, but the intelligence agency just said, 'Who is this guy [Khomeini] in Paris? Total nonsense.' Not too long after that, there was a revolution."

Israeli satellite photos published Thursday appear to strengthen a BBC report a week ago that Iran is building a permanent military base in Syria, just 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Israel’s northern border.

The ImageSat International pictures, published by Hadashot (formerly Channel 2) news, show that renovations and alterations were recently undertaken at the site at al-Kiswah, some 13 kilometers (8 miles) south of the Syrian capital of Damascus.

They also suggest that one of the new buildings is a mosque. If it is, according to ISI’s intelligence unit, it likely points to the presence of Iranians or other foreign Muslims.

ISI stressed that the assumption the site was being used by Iranians was taken from foreign media reports, and that the images alone did not prove any Iranian presence.

On Friday, the BBC cited a Western intelligence official for its assessment that a series of satellite pictures it commissioned confirmed that Iran is building a permanent military base at El-Kiswah.

The images broadcast by the BBC showed “a series of two dozen large low-rise buildings, likely for housing soldiers and vehicles.”

Rival U.S. and Russian resolutions to extend the mandate of experts trying to determine who was responsible for chemical attacks in Syria were defeated Thursday at a heated U.N. Security Council meeting that reflected the deteriorating relations between Washington and Moscow.

The result of the two votes means that the Joint Investigative Mechanism will cease operations when its current mandate expires at midnight Thursday.

The U.S., its allies and human rights groups called it a serious blow to efforts to hold accountable those responsible for carrying out chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

At the outset of the three-hour drama, Russia vetoed the U.S. draft resolution which was supported by 11 of the 15 Security Council members. Bolivia joined Russia in voting "no" and China and Egypt abstained.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia withdrew the Russian resolution over Moscow's insistence that it be voted on second not first as required under council rules. But using another council rule, Bolivia then resubmitted and called for a vote on that resolution.

It failed to receive the minimum nine votes required for adoption. Only Russia, China, Bolivia and Kazakhstan voted in favor, while seven council members voted against and four abstained.

Senior Trump administration officials are working tirelessly on an airtight diplomatic structure that, once revealed, will demonstrate just how serious they are about negotiating a comprehensive peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. But if you ask them, they are not working against a clock.

Deadlines are not a part of President Donald Trump's peace effort, led by Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, and Jason Greenblatt, the US special representative for international negotiations. These two refuse to bind themselves in timetables as they prepare what they describe as an "architecture" for their upcoming initiative.

It is a notable break in strategy from those of past diplomats who have tried, and failed, to bring peace to the Middle East, along the way claiming time is not on the side of Israelis or Palestinians, and that facts on the ground are diminishing the feasibility of a settlement to this dynamic conflict.

When it is ready, the White House-based team will release what has been described to The Jerusalem Post as an intricately detailed plan– not a grand vision of peace from on high, but specific US proposals to specific disagreements, formed based on months of listening to the parties.

Greenblatt, in particular, is singularly devoted to its preparation, and is less concerned with time pressures than he is with getting all of his ducks in order before the administration's plan becomes official and public.

He knows that, once it does, the scrutiny will be immense – and that the privacy his team has enjoyed thus far in laying its groundwork will come to an end as politics and hard choices come into play.

You may recall when I first heard about this book at the beginning of the year, I created my own version of sorts.

And I was not that far off. Photos taken of the book by a pro-Israel activist Karen LichtBraun show there’s glorification of violence and terrorism

This is made all the more infuriating, given what the author, Golbarg Bashi, claims she aims with the book

Inspired by Palestinian people’s own rich history in the literary and visual arts, specifically by children’s authors and illustrators such as Naji al-Ali (1938 – 1987), Ghassan Kanafani (1936 – 1972), and Mohieddin El Labbad (1940 – 2010) among others, an academic and children’s author and a socially conscious illustrator have teamed up to create P is for Palestine—a book for children of all ages where the story of Palestine is told as simply as the English ABC…in an educational, colorful, empowering way, showcasing the beauty and strength of Palestinian culture.
—
The simple story of Palestine is today shrouded in convoluted misinformation and contested narratives. But at the heart of the matter stands a proud people with a compelling truth which sustain their historic struggles to tell their story of dispossession to the world. Our P is for Palestine is a modest step in that direction.

Furthermore, children the world over are increasingly exposed to a barrage of psychologically damaging disinformation that violates the sanctity of their young life and compromises their trust in the world. In this book we tell the story of Palestine in a manner that enriches their hope in our future. As a result, P is for Palestine follows in the footsteps of great many alphabet books about countries, customs and the beauty of the world around us in good ‘ol English and other European languages!

Shame on everyone involved with this book full of lies and support of terrorism, which is psychologically damaging to children. And that includes Book Culture.

For the eighth time, a French appeals court has overturned a judicial order to release on bail former Ottawa university professor Hassan Diab.

Since his extradition from Canada three years ago, four judges have ruled that the 63-year-old Canadian citizen should be released from the maximum-security Paris prison where he has been held on pre-trial detention.

Following a now familiar pattern, an appeals court quashed the latest release order Tuesday.

Lebanon-born Diab is the sole suspect in the October 1980 terrorist bombing of a Paris synagogue in which four passers-by were killed and more than 40 injured.

He denies being involved and says he was studying in Beirut at the time of the bombing.

The appeal judges are expected to release the reasons for Tuesday’s decision later this week but they have previously accepted the prosecution’s claim that Diab is a threat to public order and a flight risk.

Diab’s French lawyer William Bourdon says the prosecution appeals are “not judicial but political” and motivated by a reluctance not to appear soft on terrorism.

Investigating Judge Jean-Marc Herbaut, one of the judges who has repeatedly ordered Diab’s release, ended his investigation into the case in July after saying previously that there is “consistent evidence” that Diab is telling the truth.

Excerpts from an article yesterday on NRG on Dr. Ruchama Marton, the acting President of Physicians for Human Rights reveals the type of radical left organizations supported by the New Israel Fund. While Physicians for Human Rights claims to work towards "a more fair and inclusive society in which the right to health is applied equally for all," this telling interview provides the reality that the organization stands with Israel’s enemies.

According to NGO Monitor, The New Israel Fund (NIF) gave $1,470,400 to Physicians for Human Rights since 2008.

As the article quotes this organization's head as saying:
“I view BDS as a movement that will help me end the occupation”

The radical left, she said, must “launch a “revolt” against the Israeli government by joining the BDS movement, participating in boycotts of public figures and institutions and causing the Jewish state to “to end the occupation, the apartheid and the privileged regime.”

“As long as Jewish Israelis who do not support BDS think it is possible to change Israel from within, they are just like the rabbit who wanted to change the lion from within, and the lion ate him. Change from within today is an illusion. The radical left cannot think and act this way. A left that wants to change Israel, and which has repeatedly declared this, must ally itself with Israel’s Arabs, with the Palestinians and with the movement to delegitimize Israel around the world.

The Jerusalem District Court has held the Palestinian Authority and several Palestinian terrorists liable for NIS 62 million in civil wrongful death damages for murdering three Israelis in a shooting attack on Route 443 on August 25, 2001.

The court specifically said that the PA was equally responsible along with the terrorists both due to the connection between the terrorists and the PA and because the PA solicited and aided the cell in perpetrating the attack.

Though the decision was handed down Friday, the court spokesman's office only announced it Sunday.

In August 2001, the Second Intifada was already in full swing and portions of the PA security forces took part in attacks against Israelis.

There were three murdered Israelis in the attack: Sharon Ben-Shalom, Yavin Ben-Shalom and Doron Savri.

Two children of the Ben-Shalom's, Efrat and Shahar, survived as a result of their mother Sharon using her body to shield them from the bullets.

President Reuven Rivlin decided on Sunday to reject Hebron shooter Elor Azaria's request for a pardon.

Rivlin's office released a statement on the matter: "The president has taken into account the offenses you committed and their circumstances... and he has decided to reject the request."

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman sent a letter to the president two weeks ago asking him to pardon Azaria, a former IDF combat medic, who was jailed for killing an incapacitated terrorist near Hebron.

Azaria was found guilty of manslaughter by a military court in January for killing Palestinian attacker Abdel Fatah al-Sharif in Hebron on March 24, 2016. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, 12 months’ suspended sentence after serving that term and was demoted to the rank of private in February.

Videos of the incident show Azaria shooting the incapacitated terrorist lying on the ground. Azaria claimed his shots were in self-defense, fearing a possible knife attack or concealed explosive.

The case garnered a great deal of attention both in Israel and worldwide.

Yesterday, a 17-year-old palestinian tried to murder some Israelis, using his car as his primary weapon – followed by a knife.

Naturally, this terror attack has not made the mainstream media at all.

Nor a photo of the terrorist, who joins other members of the IntiPrada to dispel the notion that somehow only “the poor and desperate” perpetrate such attacks.

Judging by that expensive lens he has, I am guessing he lives in one of Halhul’s really nice houses.

Jihadists in the Gaza Strip affiliated with the Iran-backed Islamic State and other Salafist terrorist organizations won’t allow alcohol and nightclubs to return to Gaza along with the Palestinian Authority, one senior jihadist told Breitbart Jerusalem.

Abu Baker al-Maqdesi, a senior jihadist in the Gaza Strip associated with Islamic State ideology, says that as far as the jihadist organizations and Salafists are concerned, “Hamas’ replacement with the Palestinian Authority and Fatah means nothing. Both sides fought against Islam and against our brothers, arrested, killed and oppressed all those who wanted to wave the flag of Islam both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

“Just as we did in the era of Oslo, we won’t help the moral lawlessness that the Palestinian Authority will bring with it,” added al-Maqdesi. “The alcohol won’t return to the streets of Gaza; the nightclubs won’t return. The prostitution and lawless relations won’t return to hotels and tourist sites. All those who want to harm the values of our Islam will find us against them with all our force. As opposed to Hamas, we aren’t trying to replace a regime with a regime, we want to install Allah’s sharia.”

The Palestinian factions expect to wrap up Palestinian reconciliation talks at the end of November when delegations from all the factions, led by the Hamas terrorist group and Fatah, will travel to Cairo and conclude negotiations mediated by Egyptian intelligence to finally sign an agreement meant to bring the Palestinian Authority back to power in the Gaza Strip.

A commander in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards and a lower-ranking Iranian fighter have been killed fighting Islamic State in Syria in recent days, Iranian media reported on Sunday.

The Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s most powerful military force which also oversees an economic empire worth billions of dollars, have been fighting in support of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for several years.

An Iranian official told the Tasnim news agency last year that more than 1,000 Iranians have been killed in Syria. Senior members of the Guards have been among those killed.

Kheyrollah Samadi, a Guards commander in charge of a unit in Syria, died on Thursday in fighting in the Albu Kamal region, bordering Iraq, according to Fars News.

Samadi was killed in clashes with Islamic State, according to the Ghatreh news site. Iranian media have previously reported on fighting in that area between Iran's Shi'ite militia allies and Islamic State.

The Syrian army and its allies took complete control over Albu Kamal, Islamic State's last significant town in Syria, a military news service run by Hezbollah said on Sunday.

The Union of Jewish Students has teamed up with the National Union of Students and the Holocaust Educational Trust to launch a joint Holocaust commemoration campaign.

The Our Living Memory initiative will reflect on the persecution of Jews and other groups under the Nazis between 1933 to 1945. A video and social media campaign will highlight the targeting of specific groups by the Nazi regime.

UJS, NUS and HET representatives will also offer support to student leaders and societies over commemorative events surrounding Holocaust Memorial Day 2018.

The initiative is a sign of improved relations between UJS and the NUS since the departure of Malia Bouattia as NUS president earlier this year. Shakira Martin was elected as new NUS president in April.

Izzy Lenga, NUS vice-president for welfare, said of the new joint venture: “I am so pleased that NUS is teaming up with the Union of Jewish Students and the Holocaust Educational Trust. (h/t Zvi)

Swastikas have been scrawled on the walls of university buildings, drawn on dry eraser boards and taped to dorm room ceilings. Jewish students have reported being threatened with violence, while some professors have espoused conspiracy theories ranging from Jews controlling global money markets to carrying out ritualistic organ harvesting.

Jewish students and officials at Rutgers University in New Jersey say they have seen all this and more amid a disturbing rise of anti-Semitic sentiment on campus over the past few months.

“This is a disturbing trend what we’re seeing here at Rutgers, which has one of the largest Jewish student populations in the country,” Austin Altman, a sophomore at Rutgers and a member of the campus’ Hillel organization, told Fox News. “Coming here to Rutgers you feel like you’re at home because of the large Jewish presence here, and then having to face things like swastikas on buildings is definitely troubling.”

While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the school first started to see a spike in anti-Semitism, many members of the school’s Jewish community point to the controversial online postings of microbiology professor Michael Chikindas.
More on this...

Chikindas over the last year has posted numerous anti-Zionist tirades along with a number of derogatory caricatures of Jews on his Facebook page. Numerous Jewish students have also expressed concerns to officials at Rutgers Hillel about being graded fairly by Chikindas if they were to take one of his classes.

“What he posted on his Facebook page are some of the most vile anti-Semitic tropes there are,” Andrew Getraer, executive director of Rutgers Hillel, told Fox News. “He posted caricatures of hooked nose Jews that could be right out of Nazi propaganda.”

Getraer added: “I don’t think there is place for a professor like that at a university molding young minds.”

Lyn Julius wrote on her Facebook page:

"You would have thought it a fantastic achievement that the documentary film 'Remember Baghdad' received a review by Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian after it played to a packed house at JW3 yesterday. But I'm wondering if the film Bradshaw reviewed is the same one as I saw - or maybe he just fell asleep halfway through. 'Iraqi Jews were spared the horrors of the Holocaust', he writes. I would have thought the Nazi-inspired Farhud in 1941 was a pretty horrific Holocaust-related event myself, with its death toll of hundreds. Bradshaw skips over the hardships of the late 1940s, with open persecution of the Jews leading to the mass emigration of 90 percent of the community. He claims that antisemitism in Iraq had only become a problem after the Six Day War 'although Saddam cynically preserved Baghdad's synagogue building in the 80s out of deference to his US allies'. Huh? That is hardly the most salient feature of Saddam's policy, which included arrest, torture and execution of Jews, who once had over 50 synagogues in Baghdad alone. Altogether, a shoddy and ignorant job unworthy of the film, and probably rushed out in 15 mins before the Guardian went to press.

Gilead Ini of CAMERA reported: 'I reached out to the author on Twitter. He doesn't seem to care'.

UK Media Watch is filing a complaint to the Guardian.

Once again, the Guardian has erased a chapter within the well-documented ethnic cleansing of over 800,000 Jews from Arab countries in the mid 20th century. The latest example involves the history of Jews in Iraq, in the context of a short review by their film critic Peter Bradshaw of Fiona Murphy’s documentary ‘Remembering Baghdad’.

Here’s the entire Guardian review:
There is a potency and pungency to this brief, absorbing documentary about a part of Middle East history that is often passed over: the Jews of Iraq. It is a story that film-maker Fiona Murphy approaches by talking to those of the expatriate Iraqi Jewish community in London who yearn for their homeland.

After the first world war, British control of Iraq afforded its Jews relative protection. In the 30s and 40s, despite attempts by Hitler’s Nazis to gain a foothold in the country, Iraqi Jews were spared the horrors of the Holocaust, and postwar Iraq prided itself on an easygoing pluralist prosperity. But after the monarchy was brutally deposed, and the country joined the six-day war against Israel, antisemitism became part of Iraq’s righteous new nationalism – although Saddam cynically preserved Baghdad’s synagogue building in the 80s out of deference to his US allies. It is an intricate, gripping family history.

The suggestion that, until the Six Day War, Jews were spared antisemitic persecution in Iraq is simply a lie.

Describing Mladić as “the architect of ethnic cleansing”, Urban noted that “he is coming up for sentencing and it is very unusual” before going on to name Syria’s Bashar al Assad and Libya’s Gaddafi.

In the same breath, he then went on to tell viewers that:
“…some people would like to see the Israelis in front of the criminal court and all of these cases have been vetoed…”

Of course some (and indeed many of the same) people would also like to see Britain in front of the International Criminal Court – particularly in relation to its military action in Iraq – but Mark Urban did not mention that.

Instead, after Maitlis had set the scene with a reference to the Nuremberg Trials and just seconds after viewers had heard two references to ethnic cleansing, he casually put an entire nation – “the Israelis” – in the same category as named heads of regimes infamous for their extreme acts of cruelty towards their own people.

Haaretz reports: “The Trump administration has notified the Palestinian Authority that unless it enters serious peace negotiations with Israel, the U.S. could shut down the Palestinian diplomatic delegation in Washington, D.C. within the next few months.”

Also included in the story is a tweet from the Palestinians themselves:

So if neither the story text nor an official Palestinian tweet referred to a Palestinian “embassy,” why did Haaretz’s headline?

The US does not recognize Palestinian statehood and therefore, the Palestinian diplomatic representation in Washington D.C. does not have the status of an embassy.

The Bank of Israel is set to issue new bills featuring the portraits of two female Israeli poets this Thursday.

The new 20-shekel bill (worth $5.69) will be reddish in color and will feature a portrait of Rachel Bluwstein, commonly known as "Rachel the Poetess" or just "Rachel."

The new 100-shekel bill (worth $28.45) will be orange in color and will display a portrait of the poet, novelist and professor Leah Goldberg.

Series B banknotes, which were first issued in 1999, will remain in circulation for several years until they are phased out by the new notes, the Bank of Israel said.

The new bills are scheduled to be distributed to the public through banks, ATMs and post offices. Bank of Israel Governor Dr. Karnit Flug is slated to present the first new bills to President Reuven Rivlin at a festive ceremony to be held at the President's Residence in Jerusalem.

The two new bills join the two other bills in the series that were previously released. The green 50-shekel bill featuring a portrait of poet Shaul Tchernichovsky was released in December 2014, while the blue 200-shekel bill displaying a portrait of poet Nathan Alterman was released in December 2015.

From the roadside, this 800-acre dairy farm is indistinguishable from the dozens of others that dot this bucolic stretch of northern Israel.

But nestled among the 300 mooing cows and the hustling farmhands is the MiRobot startup, which in a stark, one-room laboratory is seeking to modernize this agricultural space by almost completely eliminating its humans, stools, and tin buckets from the cow milking process.

“As it is now, humans are basically slaves to the farm, requiring you and your children to get up at ungodly hours to arrange things and collect the milk,” David Rubin, MiRobot’s business development manager, said. “That people who work makes [them] have less energy and less patience is all sensed by the cows, who need stability and calmness in order to be productive.”

Robots, by contrast, have an endless reserve of patience, and their seeming mythical benefits have been probed for years as dairy farms have been increasingly consolidate into larger, more labor-intensive entities.

The MiRobot, designed for the large-scale robotic farms holding many hundreds, or even thousands, or cows, does not resemble the Jetsons-style Rosie the Maid, but is instead a spat of durable plastic arms fashioned for being stepped on by the 1,000-pounders, and ready for use at any time of day or night.

As a busy criminal defense attorney with a roster of high-profile clients, I am not known to shy away from a fight. It doesn’t hurt that I grew up in Brooklyn, the scrappy son of immigrants and Holocaust survivors.

But nothing could have prepared me for the fight of my life, when my wife, Lynda, was diagnosed with breast cancer early on in our marriage. We had two young kids at home, and Lynda had to undergo a radical mastectomy and a year of chemotherapy before she was declared cancer-free and cleared for reconstructive surgery.

I credit her oncologist, Dr. Yashar Hirshaut, with saving Lynda’s life.

What I did not realize at the time was that Lynda’s lifesaving treatment was made possible by the yeoman’s work of scientists working long hours in unglamorous labs trying to understand the biological forces that drive cancer – and how to stop them.

So when God blessed me with professional success, I resolved to join the fight against this scurrilous disease. I turned to Dr. Hirshaut for advice on where to direct my support. His answer surprised me: Israel.

Though a tiny state with a population of just over 8 million, Israel has made disproportionately large contributions to the fight against cancer. A breakthrough in the 1980s by an Israeli scientist, Eli Canaani, was critical to the development of Gleevec, a drug that has saved the lives of millions diagnosed with leukemia. Velcade, a drug used to treat bone marrow cancer, was based on the research of two Israeli professors, Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover, and their collaborator Irwin Rose, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2004.

More than three decades after his release from Soviet imprisonment, Natan Sharansky, the former refusenik and current Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, met former US Secretary of State, George P. Shultz, and awarded him with a life achievement award for his contribution to the struggle of Soviet Jewry for the right to liberty and freedom.

The event took place in the framework of the 2017 Limmud FSU West Coast conference, taking place in San Francisco, with more than 800 Russian-speaking Jewish participants. Julius Berman, President of the Claims Conference for Material Claims against Germany and Israel’s Minister of Science and Technology, Ofir Akunis (Likud), also took part in the ceremony.

Sharansky’s incarceration in the USSR became a major human rights cause for Shultz and President Ronald Reagan, who campaigned for his release. He was eventually released in 1986 after nine years in Soviet prisons. The plight of Soviet Jewry was one of the most prominent issues on Shultz’s agenda, who used his position and influence to obtain the release of specific prisoners, citing their names, from the Soviet Union.

“Shultz was the first to call me after my release, even before President Reagan,” Sharansky told the audience. Addressing Shultz he said, “You played a crucial role in bringing down the Iron Curtain and giving freedom to the [Russian] people. I can assure you that your name will remain with us forever as a liberator of millions of Soviet Jews.”

“I have a great sense of gratitude to the Soviet Jews because they showed us what courage is all about,” said Shultz in his speech of acceptance. “They showed us how important it is to stand up for what you believe in and to never give up.”

Two young boys huddled silently under a blanket in the back of a large black car as it crossed under the gaze of the French prison guards and out the wooden gates of Rivesaltes internment camp. It was September 25, 1942.

Escaping deportation to Auschwitz and certain death in the gas chambers, Rene and Mario Freund, aged two and six years old, were driven high up into the Pyrenees Mountains to a remote village.

The boys had already faced danger before, as their father had tried and failed to smuggle them across the border into Switzerland.

After arriving in the hills they were met by a priest and moved again to a small village further away from Rivesaltes. They were to be enrolled in a Catholic school and hidden by local families.

Decades later Rene and Mario — now named Ronald Friend and Michael Freund — fulfilled a lifelong ambition to identify their heroic liberator, the Irish aid worker Mary Elmes, and nominate her as Righteous Among the Nations.

The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement  Hamas commends one of its heroic Mujahideen of Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip, who died after a fatal illness.
The Qassam Brigades said in a statement that Mujahid al-Qasami, Rami Fuad al-Louh, 32, from the Suhaib al-Roumi mosque in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, died on Sunday 19/11/2017.
They stated: "To go to his Lord after a blessed life full of sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice and sacrifice for the sake of Allah, we will count him as the righteous and pure martyrs.
We ask Allah to accept him as a martyr, to paradise...

Saudi Arabia ramped up its campaign against Iran's growing influence in the Arab World Sunday by persuading most of the 22 member states of the Arab League to condemn Iran's Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, as a "terrorist organization."

Contrary to widespread belief, in 1917, and for over a decade after that, the Balfour Declaration was not seen by most Egyptian intellectuals as a sentence detrimental to the Palestinians. Interestingly enough, some Egyptian Muslim & Christian families held parties to celebrate the declaration. Telegrams of gratitude were sent to Lord Balfour such as the then-Governor of Alexandria Ahmad Ziour Pasha, a Muslim.

“The Governor of Alexandria Ahmad Ziour Pasha – later Prime Minister of Egypt – went to a party in the city celebrating the Balfour Declaration, that culminated in their sending a telegram to Lord Balfour to thank him,” according to Leila Ahmed in “A Border Passage”.

A delegation of leading Muslims and Christians traveled to congratulate the Jews of Palestine. Many Egyptian Zionist leaders were also Egyptian nationalists and fully committed to the cause of independence from Britain.

Egyptians support of the Balfour Declaration lasted beyond 1917. The Grand Sheikh of Al Azhar officially hosted Chaim Weizmann in 1918, co-author of the draft of the declaration submitted to Lord Balfour, when he visited Egypt on his way to Palestine. The Grand Sheikh have allegedly made a donation of 100 EGP to the Zionist cause. Weizmann’s cultivation of regional support for the Zionist movement extended to his efforts with the rulers of Hijaz where he executed an accord with Emir Faisal endorsing the Declaration.

The Hebrew University was one of the early dreams of the Zionist movement, in 1918 construction commenced. Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, the renowned Egyptian nationalist, political leader and first director of Cairo University joined the celebration for the grand opening of the Hebrew University in 1952. [sic - 1925]

Also, in 1944, Taha Hussien, one of Egypt’s most influential literary figures also visited the Hebrew University.

As the Jewish migration to Palestine continued, tensions between the Palestinians and the migrant population also increased. The hardline Zionists, referred to as Revisionist Zionists, a political movement which emerged from the struggle for the Jewish homeland, and early Islamists such as Mufti Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, played a large part in whipping up mutual resentment, fear and anger.

These tensions culminated in the 1929 Palestine Riots in late August with the massacres of Jews in Hebron, Safad among others.

The reaction in Egypt remained decidedly pro Zionism well into the first half of the 1930’s, the Government reportedly banned the word ‘Palestine’ from Friday prayers, according to the Leila Ahmed.

The Wafed Government shutdown the sole Palestinian publication with the charge of being pro Palestinian propaganda. Zionist newspapers and magazines continued to operate freely well into the late 1940’s, according to Awatef Abdel Rahman.

....Yad Vashem, other memorials and Holocaust history in general, offers no special recognition of the role that Egypt and Egyptians played in saving the lives of Jews. A disgusting byproduct of the recent rise of anti-Semitism in Egypt with the wide circulation of books by Holocaust deniers states that few Egyptians are even aware of this important history that Egypt and all Egyptians should be proud of.

A children’s book titled “P is for Palestine” is infuriating some New York Jewish mothers — who charge that it’s nothing but anti-Semitic propaganda disguised as a kids’ alphabet book.

“Omg. Crazy. I’m livid at this,’’ one woman wrote on Facebook. “I can’t believe it’s real and in NYC!”

Another post reads, “You have gall advertising your incredibly politically insensitive book on this site.

“You must have known you would be igniting a political firestorm by posting that in the hopes of drumming up sales for your ridiculous book . . .It’s disgraceful.’’

And still another Facebook user wrote, “A children’s book on Palestine that doesn’t recognized the state of Israel . . . is very sad.’’

But the author, Golbarg Bashi, a Pace history professor and former Rutgers Iranian-studies instructor, told an audience at a bookstore reading Saturday, that she “came up with the idea for this book after I couldn’t find a book about Palestine for children.’’

There are passenger as well as freight caravans; that is, persons traveling often go in bands. This is on account of the fear of robbers along the way. When we missionaries used to go about, the Turkish government always furnished us a soldier for protection. The government treats all foreigners thus. But as the natives have no such care, they go in groups for self-protection.
The robbers there are not so select in their choice as are our kind, ours want only money or jewelry, but those in Palestine take everything they can get, even stripping their victim of his clothes.

A poem in the Palestinian youth magazine Zayzafuna teaches children that throwing rocks at Jews is something mandated by Muhammad, Islam's prophet. The funders of the magazine include the Palestinian Authority.

The following lines were part of the poem printed in the magazine's October issue together with the image above of a kid throwing rocks:
"O children of my country, sing to the occupied homeland so it will be liberated...
Sing by the order of Prophet [Muhammad] that we carry a rock that we will throw at the people of the Gharqad [tree]" [Zayzafuna, October 2017]

That Jews are the intended target is clear from the reference to the Gharqad tree - "the tree of the Jews." According to Muslim tradition Jews will try to hide behind the Gharqad tree when the Muslims come to kill them on Judgment Day.

The story of a stone or tree beckoning a Muslim to kill a Jew appears in numerous Islamic texts. One example is the following Hadith from the Sahih Muslim book of Hadith:
"The last Hour will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them until the Jews hide behind a stone or a tree, and the stone or a tree will say: 'Muslim, or servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him'; but the Gharqad tree will not say [this], for it is the tree of the Jews."

Palestinian Media Watch has documented problematic content in the magazine before. One story, allegedly a dream by a young Palestinian girl, glorified Hitler and presented his killing of Jews as a positive accomplishment for the benefit of humanity. Another issue of Zayzafuna published sayings that it attributed to Hitler.

The former Secretary of State for Barack Obama, John Kerry, who has been infamously lying since his formative years as a politician, beginning with his lies about Vietnam, decided to trumpet one of his biggest whoppers: that Israel doesn’t want peace with the Palestinians.

Recorded last year in Dubai, Kerry lauded the Palestinians, gushing, “The Palestinians have done an extraordinary job of remaining committed to nonviolence. When the intifada took place [in 2015] they delivered non-violence in the West Bank.” He added, “This is overlooked by the general [Israeli] populations because it is not a topic of discussion. Why? Because the majority of the cabinet currently in the Israeli government has publicly declared they are not ever for a Palestinian state.”

Kerry continued, “If you see 40,000 kids marching up to the wall every day with signs saying, ‘Give us our rights,’ I mean I don’t think Palestine is going to be immune forever to the civil rights movements that have swept other nations in the world and somehow Israel’s ignoring this. That’s not leadership. … If you don’t have leaders who don’t want to make peace, if the equation doesn’t change, I’ll be amazed if within the next 10 years if we don’t see some young [Palestinian] leader come along who says, ‘We have tried non-violence for the last 30 years and look, it hasn’t gotten us anything.’”

The recordings were published earlier this week by Channel 10, an Israeli TV news station.

Kerry has hated Israel for years; in 2014, speaking to the Trilateral Commission a few days after PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas signed a unity deal with the murderous Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups, Kerry said that if Israel didn’t make a deal with the Palestinians, it would either cease to be a Jewish state or become “an apartheid state.” That ignored the facts on the ground showing the burgeoning Jewish birth rate obviated that possibility as well as the fact that if any areas should be labeled apartheid, they would be the Palestinian areas, which are Judenrein.

“Without ‘armed struggle,’” wrote two Palestinian journalists in an essay published in the New Yorker last summer, the Palestinian “national movement had no clear ideology.” Robert Nicholson responds to this observation, taking as an example the case of three men named Jabareen who killed two Israeli policemen in July and were then shot and killed by police:
How could the Jabareens have possibly thought killing Israeli police officers would advance their cause? Didn’t they realize these senseless murders would make Israelis even more vigilant? Didn’t they understand that Palestinian violence has never worked since the time of the British Mandate? Apparently not. But the Jabareens aren’t alone. . . . Palestinian culture gives mythical power to the word shahid (“martyr”), making it impossible to contemplate gritty compromises like the 1947 partition plan and other peace deals. Far better to die in purity.

If martyrdom is the greatest Palestinian virtue, tatbi’a, or normalization, is the greatest Palestinian sin. A normalizer is a Palestinian who accepts Israel, cooperates with Israel, or suggests that Palestinians should get used to a Jewish state living next door. . . . This basic inability to cope with the fact of Israel is a major obstacle that needs to be overcome. . . .

The starkest difference between Israeli and Palestinian political culture is self-criticism. Israelis never stop criticizing each other and their policies; Palestinians almost never do, at least in public. . . .

The current position of the Palestinian Authority is that the future state of Palestine will be free of Jews—Judenrein, as [the Nazis] used to say. This is a position that Christians like me cannot endorse. Jews are an ancient people who belong there as much as [Arabs] do. . . . The real Palestinian martyr will be the one who stands up and delivers this bold message to his people, even if he is killed immediately afterward.

The reason is that the essential element for peace is still missing. The Palestinians are still stuck in a mindset that rejects Israel’s legitimacy. The Palestinian Authority (PA) won’t accept a deal that ends the conflict for all time no matter where Kushner, Greenblatt and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman draw the borders between the two states, how much of Jerusalem the Palestinians receive, how many descendants of the 1948 refugees are allowed to “return” to Israel or even how much money is thrown at them. That’s because the Palestinians’ national identity as a people is still inextricably bound up in a futile century-old war on Zionism that its people have been taught to think they will eventually win.

At various times, the PA has declared a willingness to accept peace. Yet every such gesture has been undermined by its cradle-to-grave incitement that promotes a culture of hatred for Israel and Jews, and makes new rounds of bloodshed inevitable. The history of the last 24 years of negotiations since the Oslo Accords shows that peace is impossible so long as the Palestinians still hold onto hope of eventually winning this war. As with every other conflict, this one will only be settled when one side admits defeat and that is something no one, not even a Trump team that appears to be more realistic about Palestinian behavior and intentions than past administrations, seems willing to force them to do.

Critics of the #IsraelVictory idea mock its simplicity. But generations of would-be peacemakers have forgotten that it really is that simple. Once the Palestinians concede the war is lost rather than being paused and put aside their dreams of a world without a Jewish state, compromise would be possible. But if the compromises precede acknowledgement of an Israeli victory, then all the Jewish state will be doing is trading land for more terror, not peace.

The Trump team may not be listening to the #IsraelVictory caucus as it hatches its plans. But if the White House ignores the basic truths the caucus proclaims, it will be wasting its time and making the next round of violence more, rather than less likely.

The media are rife with speculations during the past few days about the possibility of normalizing relations between Israel and the nations of the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar). This makes it crucial for Israel's government to know how to approach such negotiations, if they do take place, in a way that prevents a repetition of the mistakes made in the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan.

The most basic rule in dealing with the Saudis and their friends is that Israel must not feel that it has to pay anything for peace, anything at all. Nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. If the Saudis want to live in peace with us, we will stretch out our hands to offer them peace in return. But that is all they will get. There is no other kind of peace agreement and if they do not want peace on those terms, then shalom ulehitraot (so long, it's been good to know you, Israeli-style).

The following are ten essential pointers to help Israel deal with the Middle Eastern culture of negotiation in an informed fashion, instead of the ignorance that led to its egregious errors in the accords with Egypt and Jordan.

(Note: From here on, when I write Saudis or Saudi Arabia, I refer to all the nations in the Arabian Peninsula, as listed above, as well as any other Arab or Islamist nation.)

1. It is of the utmost importance to realize that the Saudis do not really want peace with Israel. Had they wanted peace, they would have joined Anwar Sadat in 1979 or King Hussein in 1994. All they want is Israel's help in facing their formidable arch-enemy, Iran, now and in the future. If there were no Iranian threat, the thought of peace with Israel would not even enter their heads, and once that threat is gone (even if the price were an all-out Iran-Israel war that results in Israel paying a high price in casualties and destruction) there is no certainty that their relations with us would continue to be peaceful.

Demonstrative diplomatic gestures can lead to a paradigm shift in relations among nations. US President Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to Beijing ended more than two decades of estrangement between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

The 1985 Geneva Summit initiated by former president Ronald Reagan with then-general secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev ultimately helped forge a relationship between the two men that was pivotal in ending the Cold War.

And the 1977 visit of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem 40 years ago this week symbolizes the power of a single diplomatic act to end decades of enmity and warfare.

Each of these cases is an example of how a creative and courageous leader can rise above the status quo to cause a sea change to the trajectory of history. Of course, demonstrative gestures alone are not enough. Mao Zedong would never have agreed to sit down with Nixon if he had not been concerned with Soviet hegemony; Gorbachev would have rejected engagement with the US if the Soviet regime had not been destabilized by a failing economy and the demands of keeping up the arms race; and Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem came only after Egypt’s repeated failures to destroy Israel on the battlefield.

Today, also, we believe that circumstances in the Middle East have created an opportunity for a bold leader to take the initiative and use a demonstrative diplomatic gesture to change the geopolitical balance of the region.

Perhaps, as Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman suggested in a Facebook post on Saturday, it could be a Sadat-like visit to Jerusalem by an Arab leader. Such as visit by, say, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, would be a breakthrough in relations between Israel and the coalition of Sunni Arab states that have aligned against Iran.

With few exceptions, Sadat’s Arab counterparts denounce his historic visit. Attacks against Egyptian facilities erupted in Iraq, Libya, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Jordanian and Saudi Arabian officials initially voiced muted criticism of the visit. In Greece, Arabs attacked the Egyptian Embassy, and were repulsed by gunfire.

On the West Bank, Palestinian Arabs failed to heed the PLO order for a general strike. Many dignitaries participated in prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque with Sadat and met with him on Monday. Among Palestinian Arab activists, however, there was bitterness and a sense of betrayal. In an interview with this writer prior to the Sadat arrival, one Arab – who spent over a year in an Israeli prison – refused to believe that Sadat would indeed come. And if Sadat arrived, the radical continued, he would then base his estimate of Sadat’s allegiance to the Palestinian cause on Sadat’s actions and posture during the ceremonial playing of the Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem expressing the Zionist dream.

As the entire world witnessed, Sadat stood at attention.

In Egypt, Sadat’s visit was widely acclaimed. Some observers here noted that the resignation of Foreign Minister Fahmy and his temporary replacement indicated an undermining of Sadat’s position. Zaglul Nasser, press secretary to Sadat, however, told reporters here that Fahmy resigned because “he feared for the well-being of the President and didn’t want the responsibility of his safety on his shoulders.”

Sadat’s most important pillar of support, of course, in his army, and prior to leaving for Israel Sadat met with officers and troops to reinforce their essential support.

Following Sadat’s unprecedented visit, the feelings here are that the cause of peace has been advanced. And thus, there is cautious optimism in Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he has made clear to the U.S. that Israel's security concerns must come first as the White House tries to restart the peace process with the Palestinians.

His comments came after Israeli news reports claimed to detail the developing peace plan.

At the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that "we heard plenty of speculation this weekend" about President Donald Trump's peace efforts.

He then declined to comment further, saying only, "My position on this plan will be determined according to Israel's security and national interests."

Trump took office with hopes of forging what he calls the "ultimate deal" between Israelis and Palestinians.

The last round of peace talks collapsed in 2014.

President Trump has appeared to dampen expectations that his “ultimate deal” to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict will shortly emerge.

The only clue given so far is this statement from the White House:
“What we can say is we are engaged in a productive dialogue with all relevant parties and are taking a different approach than the past to create an enduring peace deal. We are not going to put an artificial deadline on anything and we have no imminent plans beyond continuing our conversations. As we have always said, our job is to facilitate a deal that works for both Israelis and Palestinians, not to impose anything on them."

Israel, Jordan and the PLO each have their own reasons to be apprehensive as to the different approach that Trump might be contemplating.

The approach for the last 24 years has concentrated on implementing:
1. The 1993 Oslo Accords (Oslo) signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and
2. The 2003 Bush-Quartet Roadmap endorsed by America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations (Roadmap) – agreed to by Israel – albeit with 14 reservations – and the PLO

These two internationally-sanctioned agreements sought to create a second independent Arab state – in addition to Jordan – in the territory comprised in the 1922 Mandate for Palestine.

Sovereignty in 95% of the Mandate territory had already been vested in:
1. Jordan since 1946 (78%) and
2. Israel since 1948 (17%).

Sovereignty remained unallocated in just 5% of the Mandate territory – Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza (“the unallocated territories”).

In a resolution long on criticism but short on concrete steps, Arab foreign ministers who convened in Cairo Sunday delivered a tirade of criticism against Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, warning that Tehran is destabilizing the region.

The emergency meeting was convened at the request of Saudi Arabia, with support from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, to discuss means of confronting Iran's regional interventions.

They said they were planning to "brief" the U.N. Security Council on Iran's destabilizing policies in the region, particularly its support for Shiite rebels in Yemen, and planning to submit an anti-Iran Arab resolution at a later stage.

In what is perhaps the only concrete measure to emerge from the emergency meeting, the ministers said Arab telecommunications satellites would ban Iranian-financed television stations. The reason for the ban, they said, was that the networks exacerbate sectarian and ethnic tensions and pose a threat to Arab security.

"We are not declaring war on Iran at this stage," Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul-Gheit said. "We have not taken a decision to ask the Security Council to meet, but we are just briefing the council and maybe the next stage will be for us to meet and call for a Security Council meeting and submit a draft Arab resolution [against Iran]."

Saudi Arabia ramped up its campaign against Iran's growing influence in the Arab World Sunday by persuading most of the 22 member states of the Arab League to condemn Iran's Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, as a "terrorist organization."
Arab foreign ministers gathered at the League's headquarters in Cairo Sunday for an emergency meeting called by Saudi Arabia. Lebanon's foreign minister, Gibran Bassil, did not attend, and the Lebanese representative at the meeting expressed reservations over the final communique.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari also did not attend the meeting. Iran, along with the US-led international coalition, has been a major supporter of Baghdad in its war against ISIS.

"We want to hold everyone responsible," Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa said during the deliberations. "We want to hold countries where Hezbollah is a partner in government responsible, specifically Lebanon."
Al-Khalifa claimed that Lebanon "is subject to full control by this terrorist group."

The cabinet, led by outgoing Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri, includes several ministers affiliated with Hezbollah.

Saudi Arabia warned Sunday that it would not stand idly by in the face of Iranian “aggression,” as Bahrain said the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah was “in total control” of Lebanon.

The foreign ministers of both Gulf states spoke at an extraordinary general meeting of the Arab League at its Cairo headquarters, called by Riyadh.

The Arab League meeting comes as tensions soar between regional arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, including over League member Lebanon.

Sunni Muslim powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Iran, the predominant Shiite power, have for decades stood on opposing sides of conflicts in the Middle East including in Syria and Yemen.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir warned Iran that Riyadh will not stand idle in the face of Iranian “aggression.”

Saudi Arabia “will not hesitate to defend its national security to keep its people safe,” Jubeir said in opening remarks at the meeting.

“I trust the League’s council will take on its responsibility and take a decision regarding Iranian violations of Arab security,” he said ahead of Sunday’s talks.

An Israeli cabinet minister said on Sunday that Israel has had covert contacts with Saudi Arabia amid common concerns over Iran, the first disclosure by a senior official from either country of long-rumored secret dealings.

The Saudi government had no immediate response to the remarks by Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, a member of Netanyahu's Diplomatic-Security Cabinet. A spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not immediately respond to a request to comment.

Both Saudi Arabia and Israel view Iran as a main threat to the Middle East, and increased tension between the Saudis and Iran has fueled speculation that shared interests may push Saudi Arabia and Israel to work together.

Saudi Arabia maintains that any relations with Israel hinge on Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines and progress on the Israel-Palestinian peace process.

U.S. President Donald Trump's peace envoys have visited Saudi Arabia several times since he took office, seeking an Israeli-Palestinian agreement with regional support.

In an interview on Army Radio, Steinitz did not characterize the contacts or give details when asked why Israel was "hiding its ties" with Saudi Arabia.

The Lebanese president appeared to defend Hezbollah as necessary to resist Israel on Monday, after an Arab League statement accused the group of terrorism and noted it is part of Lebanon's coalition government.

"Israeli targeting still continues and it is the right of the Lebanese to resist it and foil its plans by all available means," President Michel Aoun's office quoted him as saying in a Tweet.

The heavily armed Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah, formed by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, fought Israel's occupation of Lebanon in the early 1980s and says its weapons are still needed against Israel.

Saudi Arabia, a regional rival of Iran, opposes Hezbollah's role as a military force in Syria and has accused it of helping the Houthi group in Yemen and militants in Bahrain.

The Arab League met on Sunday to discuss what it called Iranian interference in Arab countries, and accused Tehran's ally Hezbollah of terrorism.

Aoun said that Lebanon could not accept suggestions that its government was a partner in acts of terrorism, another Tweet quoted him as saying after meeting Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit in Beirut.

Aboul Gheit said in Beirut that nobody was accusing Lebanon's government of terrorism or wanted to harm Lebanon.

Lebanon will emerge victorious in any future conflict with Israel, the Cedar Republic’s foreign minister, Gebran Bassil, claimed in an interview published on Friday.

Speaking with the Russian government-funded RT media outlet, Bassil — the 47-year-old Maronite Christian head of the Free Patriotic Movement — stated, “We should not be provoking Israel into a war simply because it is likely to lose it. We should restrain Israel from starting a war exactly because Lebanon is sure to win it.”

Bassil went on to warn there would be “consequences for the whole region…[and] for Europe” if Hezbollah — the Iran-backed Shia terrorist group that is headquartered in Beirut and is part of the Lebanese government — was attacked by outside parties.

According to Bassil, Lebanon is able to counter “any threat” it faces.

Lebanon is on a knife’s edge following the recent resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri and the launch of a missile from Yemen at Riyadh — an “act of war” that Saudi Arabia blamed on Hezbollah.

In an interview published on Thursday by the Saudi newspaper Elaph, the head of the Israeli military, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, said the IDF had no intention of initiating an offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and accused Iran of seeking to escalate tensions there.

Iran’s military presence in Syria is solely dedicated to the “war on terrorism,” Russia’s ambassador to Israel said Monday, seeking to defend a recent US-Russia agreement that would allow Iranian forces to remain in the war-torn country.

Jerusalem vehemently opposes any Iranian presence on its northern border, arguing that the Islamic Republic will use any foothold in Syria to attack Israel.

Writing on the embassy’s Facebook page, Alexander Shein said Moscow respects Israel’s security concerns, but reiterated Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s assertion that Iran’s presence in Syria is legitimate.

“The aim of this presence is confined to war on terrorism. To this end, Russia cooperates with Iran in Syria,” Shein wrote.

It is hard to imagine Netanyahu, who only once has acknowledged the dozens of Israeli air force strikes against Hezbollah’s weapon convoys in Syria, now deserting all caution and doing the Saudis’ bidding. If Hezbollah does not want war at this stage, why should Israel initiate one now? A war of choice is always an extremely delicate issue in the Israeli political arena — and with Netanyahu already facing enormous pressure because of his legal troubles, he would have to be uncharacteristically careless to choose such a path.

The fact that neither Israel nor Hezbollah are planning to launch a war, of course, is no guarantee that a conflict will not occur. Israel constantly seems two mistakes away from war in both Lebanon and Gaza. The prospect of an accidental war in Lebanon is the scenario the army is practicing for and what Israeli officials repeatedly brief their American counterparts about. But the Israelis are also aware of the consequences of another conflict in Lebanon: unprecedented devastation on the home front as a result of a massive rocket campaign by Hezbollah against both the civilian population and strategic infrastructure. In response, Israel would probably hit Lebanese state infrastructure, hoping to force Hezbollah to stop — and therefore risk criticism from the international community. Israeli officials have increasingly equated Lebanese state institutions with Hezbollah: Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently said that Lebanon’s army has become a wing of the militant group.

The greatest threat to stability on Israel’s borders right now isn’t Saudi Arabia’s plotting, but Iran’s attempts to solidify its military power in Syria. In the last few weeks, Netanyahu and Lieberman repeatedly warned that they will not allow the Iranians to build military bases in Syria or deploy Shiite militias close to Israel’s border on the Golan Heights. These are Israel’s new red lines in Syria — and here, more than in Lebanon, may be the place where a new serious military conflict may begin. (h/t Zvi)

Hezbollah is convinced that Israel will not enter as a party to a war against it or against Iran. It is betting on thwarting what it believes to be a US-Saudi bid for Israel to take advantage of the crisis to deal a fatal blow to its rocket arsenal and missile manufacturing facilities run by Iran in Lebanon, and against Iran’s emerging military base near Damascus.

The question here is this: Will Israel continue to observe the historical truce-like relationship with Iran on the basis that its existential enemies are the Sunni Arabs? Or will it decide that the time is opportune for a quantum leap in its relationship with the Sunni world, and seize the limited opportunity it now has to destroy rockets and military bases not far from its borders?

The US factor is decisive in Israel calculations, especially under an unusual president who has entrusted to his son-in-law Jared Kushner, a pro-Israeli Jew, the supervision of a Middle East peace deal. With Trump in the White House, everything is possible and it would be a mistake to discount any possibility.
For this reason, all Lebanese players have an obligation to responsibly, rationally, prudently, and pragmatically assess the situation and act accordingly.

The first place where de-escalation can begin is Yemen. The Lebanese president must safeguard Lebanese higher interests and persuade Hezbollah to withdraw from Yemen to avoid incurring a price on Lebanon.

Saudi Arabia is not compelled by Lebanese calculations but by those of Saudi national interests, and it has economic cards, both direct or through the Lebanese expatriate workforce in the Kingdom, to put pressure on Lebanon and trigger a collapse despite what economists and bankers there are saying to reassure the public.

However, Saudi Arabia also has a responsibility to de-escalate in Lebanon, because punishing all of Lebanon for Hezbollah’s actions in Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, and Iraq would add Lebanon to the list of failed states, rather than safeguarding Saudi influence there. (h/t Zvi)

It’s unlikely that many Palestinians share the degree of alarm that Israelis and Saudis feel about the growth of Iranian power in the Middle East, and particularly the emergence of an Iranian-controlled “land bridge” between Tehran and Lebanon and its Mediterranean coast. Yet this is a strategic game changer that, if consolidated, would greatly strengthen the regional clout of the most cynical exploiter of their issue in recent decades: Iran. Palestinians would be well advised to view the potential dialogue between Israel and Arab countries like Saudi Arabia as an opportunity to prevent their issues from being once again egregiously exploited or discarded.

In the longer term, a wider opening between Israel and the Gulf Arab countries that are now largely driving the broader Arab agenda, especially when they collaborate with Egypt and Jordan, is currently the only viable path toward the resurrection of a process that can bring about, eventually, an end to the occupation and the realization of Palestinian independence. In the meanwhile, if it flourishes, such a new regional reality is bound to involve some benefits to Palestinians, and to keep their cause central to the strategic thinking of Washington and its key Middle Eastern allies. Therefore, it would be wise for Palestinians to look for ways of maximizing how this dynamic can work for them rather than indulging in knee-jerk denunciations and recriminations that will gain them nothing. (h/t Zvi)

Indian media outlets reported on Monday that the country’s defense ministry had scrapped a $500 million deal to buy anti-tank missiles from the Israeli Rafael weapons manufacturer in favor of developing missiles domestically.

In response to the reports, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems said it had yet to be “officially informed of any changes” to the contract.

The initial deal for the Spike anti-tank guided missile was signed in 2014. Though some aspects were still being negotiated, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems had started preparations for delivering the missile, opening a production facility in India in August with its local partner, the Indian industrial giant Kalyani Group.

According to the Indian Express news outlet, the reversal was made this week in order to protect the government’s Defense Research and Development Organization, which is working on creating its own anti-tank guided missile.


Indian military sources told the website that DRDO had already produced a few varieties of anti-tank guided missiles and was “confident” that it could produce one on par with the Israeli Spike.

This week, Jerusalem municipal officials and workers swept overnight into A-Tur on the Mount of Olives to clean up the neighborhood.

Under police protection, they hauled away abandoned vehicles, piles of garbage, and rubble from ruined buildings. They took down dangerously placed signs and illegal sheds. They erased graffiti, fixed broken street lights, and painted road safety markings. They enforced business codes by confiscating merchandise placed in public areas without permits, checked for violations of safety rules, issued fines for illegally commandeered parking spaces, and more.

The police also combed through the neighborhood with lists in hand to confirm that people under house arrest were really at home. They found an illegally held M1 rifle, and arrested 20 Arab residents of east Jerusalem suspected of throwing rocks and firebombs at civilians and police.

A similar “sweep and clean” overnight campaign in Isawiyah, conducted last month by tax and building code officials, bailiffs and police, culminated in 51 arrests.

“The campaign is designed to firmly handle anybody involved in criminal offenses, [violations of] public order and terrorism, while at the same time improving the lives of the regular, law-abiding residents of the neighborhood by arresting people who violate public order and break the law,” the police said in a statement.

At a conference on the “Challenges of United Jerusalem” conducted by the new Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, Jerusalem District police commander Maj. Gen. Yoram Halevy said these operations are meant to create balance.

An IDF tank fired a “warning shot” across Israel’s northern border with Syria on Saturday in response to the Syrian military constructing an outpost in the demilitarized zone of the Golan Heights, in violation of the 1974 truce between the two countries.

The truce “prohibits the entry of heavy construction tools or military vehicles into the demilitarized zone,” the IDF stated.

The IDF also filed a complaint with the United Nations peacekeeping force stationed in the Golan Heights, which is responsible for supervising the demilitarized zone.

No casualties were reported as a result of the IDF warning shot. The Syrian construction occurred near the Druze village of Khader. Earlier this month, the Israeli military said it would defend that village against Syrian occupation.

Saturday’s incident comes amid increased tension in Israel’s north in recent weeks.

On Nov. 1, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) reportedly attacked a Syrian munitions factory, prompting Syria’s military to retaliate by firing a surface-to-air missile at the Israeli plane that allegedly carried out the strike.

An Israeli soldier was lightly injured when an army vehicle traveling along the border with Egypt came under fire early Monday morning, the army said.

The soldier was taken to the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba for treatment.

The IDF suspects that the gunfire was “spillover” from internal fighting between Egyptian forces and a Sinai-based Islamic State affiliate, but was investigating whether it may have been a deliberate attack, the army said.

Sinai borders Israel and also the Gaza Strip for a few kilometers at the northern end of the restive peninsula. Islamic State-affiliated gunmen attack Egyptian security forces, and vice versa, there on a regular basis.

In 2013, a 400-kilometer (245-mile) Israel-Egypt border fence was completed at an estimated cost of NIS 1.6 billion ($400 million), one of the largest construction projects in Israel’s history.

Israel wishes to use the legal concept of “market regulation” for the first time since 1967 in regard to Israeli settlers who purchased private Arab land in Judea and Samaria, Israel’s Channel 1 TV reported Sunday. The state’s unprecedented use of the regulation was raised in its response to the High Court of Justice on Sunday, over a petition dealing with the outline plan for the settlement of Ofra in Samaria.

The market regulation, which is a modern variant of Jewish law, allows the buyer, if he has fulfilled certain conditions, to acquire ownership of the property despite the defect in the transfer of the property. The regulation balances ownership rights with the stability of the marketplace.

The market regulation is close to the legal concept of Marché ouvert (legal French for “open market”), which originated in medieval times, governing subsequent ownership of stolen goods. In general, the fact that one purchased stolen goods does not entitle them to the goods, but under “marché ouvert,” if said goods were openly sold in designated markets between sunrise and sunset, provenance could not be questioned and effective title of ownership was obtained.

Regarding real estate, Israeli law’s market regulation requires that the land in question is registered in the Land Registry (Tabo, or Tapo in Turkish); that the buyer paid compensation for the transaction and the transfer of the property was completed; it is assumed that those who have not completed their registration apparently still have not paid the entire consideration – and therefore the original owner will lose more if we leave the situation intact; in most cases, the full amount has already been paid and the waiting is only procedural; the buyer purchased the property in good faith without knowing that they belong to another person.

Five Torah scrolls that were stolen from a synagogue in central Israel this week and taken to the West Bank have been found and returned, following a cooperative effort of Israeli and Palestinian law-enforcement authorities.

The holy texts — taken from the Beit David synagogue in Jaffa early Thursday morning — were tracked down in Hebron and handed over to Israeli officials on Sunday “thanks to coordination between the Hebron District Coordination Liaison, Israel’s Police and the PA Police,” the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Unit (COGAT) tweeted.

The Israel Police said the successful outcome was a result of its “positive relationship” with its Palestinian Authority counterpart force, which helps it deal with crimes carried out in Israel that originated in the West Bank, including cases of murder, drug offenses and property theft.

Israeli forces last week arrested a Palestinian man suspected of carrying out a stabbing attack in which an Israeli man was injured two years ago, the Shin Bet security service said Monday.

On November 6, 2015, the 29-year-old Israeli was stabbed outside a grocery store in the Sha’ar Binyamin industrial park in the West Bank, and his attacker fled the scene.

The victim, Shmuel Raisman, was stabbed in the back and taken to the hospital in serious condition, medics said at the time.

Raisman, who lives in the nearby Tel Zion settlement, said he scared off his attacker with a bottle of pepper spray.

According to the Shin Bet, the terrorist — identified as Bara’a Issa — turned himself in to Palestinian Authority security services shortly after the attack and was in their custody until his arrest last week.

Though he was detained by PA forces for some two years, Issa never stood trial for the stabbing, the Shin Bet said.

Just before I get absorbed in the busiest part of our annual operation, I think it important to clear up a common misconception: the categorization of people into worthy or unworthy of receiving their desired gifts for Christmas occurs not at my headquarters, but has for decades been outsourced to Israeli intelligence.

That has not always been the case. For a time we had the KGB and Stasi covering various aspects of the surveillance, but when the Communist regimes of Europe collapsed in the late eighties and early nineties, those organizations had their hands full with more pressing matters. We held a quick round of proposal solicitations, and the Mossad submitted the most attractive package.

So far we’ve seen nothing but excellence in their work. Even when they clearly faced competing considerations, we never felt we were getting short shrift. Engineering 9/11 had to have taken years of preparation, but even an operation of that size and intensity never compromised the level of service they provided to us. On that point, by the way, while the NSA boasts a much more robust budget and arsenal of equipment, they didn’t see 9/11 coming. Oops. It was a little embarrassing when we pointed that out at their sales presentation. This decision was a no-brainer.

Some difficulties do come up on occasion. Every now and then we differ on the definition of “naughty,” for example: we tend to emphasize interpersonal conduct and let ideology slide, whereas they place greater emphasis on expressions of harmful political attitudes. We always resolve such disputes without rancor, because I know what those bastards are capable of doing to me if I get on their naughty list. Most of the times I have been able to sway them involve copious evidence that the offending person is more idiotic than malicious. That would be most of them, come to think of it.

The Islamic Jihad organization and its so-called military wing, the Al Quds Brigades, have the right to respond to the detonation of a tunnel on the Israel-Gaza border that reportedly killed 12 of the terrorist organization’s jihadists along with several Hamas members, Ahmad al-Mudallal, a member of Islamic Jihad, told Breitbart Jerusalem.

“Israel’s threats won’t stop us from responding to the crime of the occupation army,” al-Mudallal said.

Palestinian terrorist groups largely consider the entire State of Israel to be “occupied” territory. Islamic Jihad, backed by Iran, is committed to Israel’s destruction.

The Israeli army detonated a terror tunnel that Israel says was dug by both Islamic Jihad and Hamas under the Gaza border with Israel. The IDF has since raised its readiness in fear of retaliation from Islamic Jihad.

Israel deployed an Iron Dome anti-missile battery to cover central Israel while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian organizations not to test Israel and that Israel’s response to any Palestinian attempt to take revenge for the tunnel detonation would be severe.

In unprecedented footage, the IDF allowed an Israeli TV crew to film it opening the border gates to Syria, and allowing in a group of mothers and their children, who were then transported to an Israeli hospital for medical treatment.

The footage, broadcast on Sunday night by Hadashot News (formerly Channel 2), also included interviews with several of the Syrian mothers, who expressed profound appreciation to Israel for the medical assistance.

Israel, which also maintains a field hospital on the border and has sent humanitarian aid to Syria, has treated 3,000 Syrians since it began offering medical assistance in the course of the civil war across the border, of whom almost 1,000 were children with chronic conditions. “The rationale” behind the outreach “is clear,” the report noted: “A humanitarian imperative alongside a security need. Someone whose family or friend is given medical treatment in Israel will presumably change his attitude to the enemy.”

“It has become unremarkable” for Syrian civilians to come to Israel for treatment,” one mother told the TV interviewer. “Everyone wants to come here. Adults too; not just the children.”

None of the faces of the Syrians were shown in the report, since the mothers and children will return to Syria when doing so is medically possible, and could face deadly repercussions if their treatment in Israel were to become known.