To say, as progressives sometimes do, that Jews are “colonizers” in Israel is anti-Semitic because it advances the lie that there is no ancestral or historic Jewish tie to the land. To claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, when manifestly it is not, is anti-Semitic because it’s an attempt to Nazify the Jewish state. To insist that the only state in the world that has forfeited the moral right to exist just happens to be the Jewish state is anti-Semitic, too: Are Israel’s purported crimes really worse than those of, say, Zimbabwe or China, whose rights to exist are never called into question?

But the most toxic assumption is that Jews, whether in Israel or the U.S., can never really be thought of as victims or even as a minority because they are white, wealthy, powerful and “privileged.” This relies on a simplistic concept of power that collapses on a moment’s inspection.

Jews in Germany were economically and even politically powerful in the 1920s. And then they were in Buchenwald. Israel appears powerful vis-à-vis the Palestinians, but considerably less so in the context of a broader Middle East saturated with genocidal anti-Semitism. American Jews are comparatively wealthy. But wealth without political power, as Hannah Arendt understood, is a recipe for hatred. The Jews of the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh are almost surely “privileged” according to various socio-economic measures. But privilege didn’t save the congregants of the Tree of Life synagogue last year.

Nor can the racial politics of the United States or any other country be projected onto the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as some have desperately sought to do. Nearly half of all Jewish Israelis have Middle Eastern roots; some, in fact, are black. Martin Luther King Jr. preached nonviolent resistance; Yasir Arafat practiced terrorism. The civil rights movement was about getting America to live up its founding ideals; anti-Zionism is about destroying Israel’s founding ideals.

As for the oft-cited apartheid analogy, black South Africans did not have a place in the old regime’s Parliament, as Israeli Arabs have in the Knesset; nor were they admitted to white universities, as Israeli Arabs are to Israeli universities. Israel can do more to advance the rights of its Arab citizens (just as the United States, France, Britain and other countries can for their own minorities). And Israel can also do more to ease the lives of Palestinians who are not citizens. But the comparison of Israel to apartheid South Africa is unfair to the former and an insult to the victims of the latter. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Osama Qawassmeh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah faction, also lashed out at Iran:

"Iran has not provided anything for the Palestinian people. It is shameful that some think that the economic crisis in Iran is because of its support for the Palestinians. We never heard that Iran helped build a school or hospital or university or any other developmental project."

Iran's support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, he explained, does not mean that it supports the Palestinian people. "This is a huge misconception and mistake," he said.

In addition, Abbas loyalists have accused Iran of supporting Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007. One official claimed that the Hamas terrorists who staged a coup against the Palestinian Authority back then had received military training in Iran and "some Arab countries."

Another sign that the Arab countries have turned their backs on the Palestinians was provided by the recent convening of Arab foreign ministers in Jordan to build a consensus among Arab states on regional security issues. The Palestinians were not invited.

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank city of Ramallah should ask itself why is everyone disparaging the Palestinian cause," said Palestinian political analyst Fayez Abu Shamaleh. "Why is the Palestinian cause no longer at the center of the attention of Arabs and Jews? Even the candidates running in the Israeli election have ignored the Palestinian issue."

The Palestinian fears do not seem unjustified. Several Arab countries appear completely fed up with the Palestinians, particularly the continued bickering between Fatah and Hamas. Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab countries have tried in the past decade to help the two rival parties resolve their differences, to no avail. Egyptian intelligence officials have devoted years trying to convince Hamas and Fatah to work together for the benefit of the Palestinians.

Instead of doing so, however, Palestinian leaders are preoccupied with blocking Arab participation in a conference that could see the creation of a coalition against Iran -- the same country that Abbas and his loyalists hold responsible for the ongoing divisions among the Palestinians. Might it be possible that the Arab countries are finally rousing themselves from their long slumber and beginning to seek better lives for themselves and their neighbors?

Note the use of "Palestinian" in quotes by the creator of the image below.

The reason for this is because he understands that the Arabs who live in the Land of Israel -- which is to say, the land of the Jewish people -- only came into recognizable existence around the time that Paul McCartney was writing "Yesterday."

The people who we call "Palestinians" come from throughout the entire Arab world and that world is a world of conquest by Arabs against non-Arabs. This is not a matter of debate. It is a matter of fact.

It is a matter of known historical knowledge.

Were Israel to be the twenty-third Arab-Muslim state, rather than the lone, sole Jewish state, it would be hailed as the most enlightened country throughout the Middle East. It is only hated by Arabs and their western-left allies because it is the single Jewish state.

Thus, many of us who favor the ongoing well-being of the Jewish people in an entirely hostile world often put the word "Palestinian" in quotes.

A master's degree in creative writing, followed by a stint writing reports and speeches for an ex-congressman heading a think tank, is generally considered inadequate experience to then serve as the president's deputy national security adviser. Yet that is the path that Ben Rhodes walked to become who writer David Samuels once described as "the single most influential voice shaping American foreign policy," aside from Barack Obama. Perhaps it is because of that unconventional route that Rhodes developed visceral contempt for the foreign-policy establishment, which he called "the Blob" and whose ideas he sought to buck—primarily because of the chaotic landscape in the Middle East and, relatedly, an obsessive disgust with the Iraq War.

As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who is expected to announce a 2020 presidential run, makes foreign policy one of his principal focuses, in part to counter critics who considered him ignorant of international issues during the 2016 campaign, he has acquired his own Ben Rhodes. Weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, Sanders hired Matt Duss as his foreign-policy adviser. It is no coincidence that, since then, Sanders has been more vocal about foreign affairs, articulating a progressive vision for America's role in the world.

Duss also shares Rhodes's deep contempt for the so-called Blob, as Klion's title suggests. Most notably, while working at the Center for American Progress, or CAP, from 2008 to 2014, Duss waged a campaign against the pro-Israel community in Washington. He called out the Washington Free Beacon among other media outlets and organizations that were critical of his misleading and outrageous claims about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

That brings us to the policy positions that Duss and Rhodes share: disgust with the Iraq War, support for the Iran nuclear deal and an American tilt toward the Islamic Republic, deep hostility toward Israel—in Duss's case bordering on anti-Semitism because of his fallacious demonization of the Jewish state—and Saudi Arabia, and a general aversion to deploying American soldiers abroad, among others.

"Rhodes … is the most obvious example of the kind of role that Duss might be expected to play in a Sanders administration," Klion writes.

But as far to the left as Rhodes is, Duss is further out there, a true believer who drank every drop of the progressive Kool Aid. Duss "does identify as a man of the left," Klion notes, "a strong social democrat perfectly at home with Sanders's political program."

The Republican leader in the US House of Representatives said he would take action against two Democrats who have sharply criticized Israel if the Democratic majority did not do so.

“If they do not take action I think you’ll see action from myself,” Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, said according to Capitol Hill reporters writing for a number of newspapers. “This cannot sustain itself. It’s unacceptable in this country.”

McCarthy noted that he had recently taken action to isolate Republican Representative Steve King of Iowa, who has long associated with white supremacists. The precipitating event for McCarthy was when King wondered in an interview why terms like “white supremacy” were stigmatized.

Statements by freshmen Democrats Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota were equal to King’s and “more so,” McCarthy said. He did not say what action he might initiate against them.

It’s not clear what statements McCarthy particularly found offensive, but both lawmakers embrace the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, and both have been accused of tweets that cross the line to anti-Semitism: Tlaib in January when she appeared to accuse senators of dual loyalty for advancing a bill that would protect states penalizing commercial Israel boycotts; and Omar in 2012 when she said Israel was “hypnotizing” the world. Omar has in recent days apologized multiple times for that tweet.

THE SPIN ROOM | What are the Israeli elections about? For years, they've been mostly about security and the Palestinian conflict. How can Israel solve it? Former Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick and Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy debate. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Palestinian officials have been invited to a US conference on the Middle East hosted by Poland next week, a senior American official said on Friday, but top Palestinian officials said they would not attend.

The senior administration official told reporters White House senior adviser Jared Kushner would discuss plans for peace between the Palestinians and Israelis at the event.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has called on the US to reverse its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel‘s capital and cuts in aid to the Palestinians, saying these had undermined efforts to reach a two-state solution to the longstanding conflict.

“As noted we have asked the Palestinian Authority to send representatives to this event,” the US official said.

Kushner, who is US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, “will discuss the administration’s efforts to advance peace between Israel and the Palestinians and also take questions from the audience,” the official noted.

“We would very much welcome the Palestinian Authority’s perspectives during the discussion, but I do want to emphasize this is not a negotiation but a discussion, and we look forward to fostering a constructive conversation in Warsaw,” he added.

Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat quickly rejected the invitation, writing on Twitter: “Regarding statements that we have been invited, we can say that only today there was some contact from the Polish side.

“Our position remains clear: We are not going to attend this conference and reiterate that we have not mandated anyone to talk on behalf of Palestine.”

PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat said in response to the US invitation that the Warsaw conference “is an attempt at bypassing the Arab Peace Initiative and destroying the Palestinian national project.” Erekat said the Palestinians will not attend the conference and have “not mandated anyone to talk on behalf of Palestine.”

Another PA official, Hussein al-Sheikh, also rejected the invitation, and said the PLO was the only party mandated to represent or talk on behalf of the Palestinians. Fatah spokesman Osama Qawassmeh warned that any Palestinian or Arab who accepts Trump’s “deal of the century” would be accused of betraying Jerusalem and Islamic and Christian holy sites. He too emphasized that the PLO was the only party which has the authority to speak on behalf of the Palestinians.

The PA, which has been boycotting the Trump administration since December 2017, has expressed fear that the Warsaw conference’s main goal would be to promote normalization between Israel and some Arab countries.

In the past two weeks, several PA officials have called on the Arab countries to boycott the upcoming conference and to remain committed to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which calls for normalizing ties between Israel and the Arab countries only after a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.

Qawassmeh warned on Saturday that any Arab leader who meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Warsaw conference would be “stabbing Jerusalem and our Palestinian people.” The Palestinians, he added, are opposed to any form of normalization “with the Israeli occupation entity because that would be a free gift to Tel Aviv.”

Saudi Arabia will not normalize ties with Israel or support the Trump administration’s peace plan without significant Israeli concessions to the Palestinians, according to a classified Foreign Ministry document reported by Israeli television Friday.

Israel in recent years has worked to improve ties with Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which, despite having no diplomatic relations with Jerusalem, share a common foe in Iran.

Though Saudi Arabia has stated it will not establish ties with Jerusalem in the absence of a Palestinian state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said improved relations with the Arab world could better the chances of reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Citing an unnamed Foreign Ministry official familiar with the document, Channel 13 news reported that the memo, drawn up in mid-December, contradicts Netanyahu’s position, arguing the chances of such an “inside-out” formula resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were remote.

A delegation representing the Palestinian Authority has appeared before UN leadership requesting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict to be renamed. As PA representative Mahmoud Said told the UN, “For too long, we’ve been told that we don’t deserve top billing in this conflict. For too long, our children have grown up in a world where they are billed second to the Zionists. Don’t they deserve to live in a world where their biggest problem is the ‘Palestinian-Israeli Conflict?’”

According to Said, the request has less to do with the Palestinian or Israeli contributions to the decades-old conflict, and more with the self esteem of the Palestinian people. “Our children are already told they are second-class citizens, why should they also be branded as coming second in the name of the struggle with Israel when we’re equal shareholders?”

Israel has also sent a delegation to the UN with the expressed goal of retaining top billing. “We’ve worked hard to establish ourselves as the leading name in this ongoing war. We won’t sit idly by and let the Palestinians use bureaucratic trickery to ruin all that we’ve worked for,” commented Israeli Government representative Avigdor Benrimon. “‘Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it, why should anyone care about a conflict without a snappy name? The Balochistan Conflict has been going on as long as ours, but no one’s ever heard of them. You know why? The name is terrible. They should fire whatever PR person thought of it.”

Russia’s ambassador in Beirut said US policies toward Iran could set off a fresh war between Israel and Lebanon, while championing the country’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group.

Though he said renewed fighting between the sides remained uncertain, Alexander Zasypkin accused the United States of inciting “new conflicts” that he said could draw in countries and actors throughout the Middle East.

“As for a conflict between Israel and Lebanon, nothing can be predicted with certainty because the region is at a crossroads. Peoples are demanding the settlement of existing crises, the return to a peaceful life, the development of cooperation,” Zasypkin told the state-owned Sputnik news agency in an interview published Saturday.

“A negative alternative to this is the incitement of new conflicts by the Americans, which could involve many countries as well as ethnic and religious forces,” he added.

Zaspykin also claimed the US stance toward Iran and Hezbollah was further destabilizing the region.

IDF and police forces have arrested a Palestinian suspected in committing the brutal murder of 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher, according to the police spokesperson's unit.

The suspect was been arrested near Ramallah, and was reported to be living in Hebron.

"The joint investigation of the Israel Police and the General Security Service led the Border Police unit of the Border Police, the Shin Bet security forces and the IDF to carry out operations in Ramallah, in the framework of which a suspect was arrested in the murder of Ori Ansbacher in Jerusalem," the Border Police spokesperson said in a released statement.

"From the moment that the body of Ori Ansbacher, 19, was found in the Ein Yael area of ​​Jerusalem, a joint investigation team of the Israel Police and the General Security Service to work together to locate every piece of information and evidence that could lead to the identity of the suspect."

"The suspect was arrested in Ramallah, and the suspect, a resident of Hebron, was interrogated by the GSS. There is a gag order on every detail of the investigation, except for what is written in this notice," the statement concluded. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Israeli police investigating the brutal murder of Israeli teen Ori Ansbacher in Jerusalem said on Saturday that forensic evidence unearthed at the scene of the crime led forces to the arrest of a Palestinian suspect Friday night.

Ansbacher, 19, was found dead in the woods at Ein Yael in south Jerusalem late Thursday, with what police said were “signs of violence,” after she was reported missing earlier in the day.

Israeli security forces arrested the Palestinian suspect in Ramallah late Friday for the murder of Ansbacher, who Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said was killed with “shocking brutality,” and police sources were quoted as saying had been stabbed multiple times in the upper torso.

Police said the forensic evidence at the scene tied the suspect to the murder “without question” and that there would be no need for a confession, according to a Channel 13 report Saturday. The arrest of the suspect was “very quiet,” the police added.

Ansbacher’s family was notified of the arrest over the course of Saturday.

The suspect, a Palestinian resident of Hebron, was taken for questioning by the Shin Bet security services after a raid in the West Bank’s Ramallah/el-Bireh area on Friday night.

According to PA news outlet Wafa, IDF troops searched two residential buildings and the Jamal Abdel-Nasser Mosque, where a 30-year-old employee was arrested. The report said the Israeli troops confiscated security camera footage from the neighborhood, as well as from the mosque.

The raid sparked clashes with some local residents, who hurled rocks at the troops. The Palestinian Red Crescent said two Palestinians were treated for light injuries at hospitals in Ramallah.

"Condemn the barbaric murder and act firmly against the PA's culture of terror" Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon demanded of the UN Security Council President on Friday.

Following the brutal murder of 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher, whose body was found in Ein Yael in Jerusalem on Thursday, Danon called for an urgent meeting with Anatolio Ndong Mba, the Equatorial Guinea ambassador to the United Nations, currently serving as the president of the Security Council, and demanded that the Council publicly condemn the terrorist attack in Jerusalem.

"The Security Council's silence will not help in this fight against terrorism, and will only allow the waves of hatred to grow unchecked," said Danon, adding that "while this silence continues, the PA maintains its policy of paying salaries for terrorists and educating its youth with incitement, and a 19-year-old girl was brutally murdered in Israel.

"The Security Council has the responsibility and moral duty to make a clear condemnation of this barbaric murder and to act firmly against the culture of terror in the Palestinian Authority, the very culture that undermines stability in the region and destroys innocent lives," Danon concluded.

Police on Friday urged the public to stop spreading “horrific” and baseless rumors on social media surrounding the murder of a teenager whose body was discovered on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Ori Ansbacher, a 19-year-old from the West Bank settlement of Tekoa, was found dead Thursday with what police said were “signs of violence” after she was reported missing earlier in the day. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Ansbacher had been killed with “shocking brutality,” and police sources were quoted saying she had been stabbed multiple times in the upper torso.

“Since the murder that took place yesterday, there have been different publications and reports, especially on social media, regarding the circumstances of the case, including horrific descriptions that are irresponsible,” police said in a rare statement.

“We are clarifying that these publications are baseless and hurt the honor of the victim and her family while misleading the public,” police added.

Police stressed they were doing everything in their power to track the perpetrator(s).

“We call on the public not to spread false rumors or disinformation from unauthorized sources,” police said.

IDF troops faced off against around 8,000 Palestinian rioters on the Israel-Gaza Strip border on Friday, as weekly Hamas-orchestrated unrest continued.

According to Palestinian health officials, two rioters died in the latest clashes.

The Israeli military said it had opened fire in response to explosives and rocks hurled at the border fence.

More than 220 Gazans have been killed in border violence since last March.

Last July, an IDF soldier was shot dead by a sniper on the frontier with the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.

An Israeli military spokesperson said soldiers on Friday used riot dispersal equipment and opened fired “in accordance with standard operating procedures.”

The IDF tweeted about Friday’s events, “What prevented 8,000 violent rioters in Gaza from infiltrating into Israel? Some barbed wire & brave IDF soldiers. As rioters threw grenades + explosives into Israel today, our troops stood guard, ensuring innocent Israelis living minutes away stayed safe.”

What prevented 8,000 violent rioters in Gaza from infiltrating into Israel? Some barbed wire & brave IDF soldiers. As rioters threw grenades + explosives into Israel today, our troops stood guard, ensuring innocent Israelis living minutes away stayed safe. RT to show your support pic.twitter.com/njcNRBTN3b

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) February 8, 2019

An Israeli recycling company has chosen an unlikely star for its environmental ad campaign, Hezbollah terror group chief Hassan Nasrallah.

The terror leader’s face appeared on a towering billboard on the Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv Wednesday and in a video put out by the ELA Recycling Corporation, encouraging Israelis to recycle plastic bottles.

In the ad, an animated Nasrallah says “I don’t recycle bottles,” with text stating that he has been stuck in a bunker for 12 years, and asking Israelis, “What’s your excuse?”

In the mock video, Nasrallah is speaking Arabic, accompanied by Hebrew subtitles. He introduces himself as a “Youtuber” and public figure.

“Let’s talk for a second about our shared future, Israel. I haven’t recycled in 12 years, but what about you? What am I investing in tunnels for?” he says.

“If only I could leave [my bunker] to recycle bottles,” he laments.

The ELA Recycling Corporation is a nonprofit promoting recycling in Israel.

The ugly face of the anti-Israel BDS movement just got uglier. Or, to put it another way, a study of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement removed its mask to reveal some very nasty characters.

According to an 80-page report published this week by the Strategic Affairs Ministry, there are more than 100 different connections linking terrorists groups to organizations that promote anti-Israel boycotts, including “the employment of 30 current and ‘retired’ terror operatives.”

The report sports the catchy title “Terrorists in Suits,” and, as I suspected, beyond BDS’s useful idiots – Roger Waters and his ilk – lies an even darker layer of BDS-ers who are terrorists all dressed up. Connecting the dots, you can trace a line from “terrorists in suits” to terrorists in suicide vests. The lines crisscross through organizations professing to deal in human rights, spreading across continents.

This goes way beyond attempts to shoot down Tel Aviv as the host of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. This is about shooting down Israel, period.

As Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan put it: “Terrorist groups and the anti-Israel boycott campaign have united in their goal of wiping Israel off the map. Terrorist groups view boycotts as a complementary tactic to terror attacks.”

The report shows how Hamas and the PFLP (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) have ties to at least 13 anti-Israel NGOs. This includes 20 members now occupying senior positions in NGOs who have previously sat in jail, some for murder. The report “shows how boycott organizations and terrorist designated organizations raise finances together, share the same personnel, and showcases that contrary to popular belief, these officials have not abandoned their support for terrorism, but instead, continue to maintain organizational, financial and active ties with terrorist groups.”

Follow the money trail and you’ll find the BDS organizations have received millions of euros in funding from European countries and philanthropic foundations, in addition to funds raised through crowdfunding, banks and other means.

Search for the femme fatale and you’ll find Leila Khaled, one of the stars of the study.

In contrast, here is an excerpt from an article by the BBC’s world affairs editor John Simpson which appeared in the ‘features’ section of BBC News website’s Middle East page on February 1st under the title “The plane journey that set Iran’s revolution in motion”.

“Today, Iran is a lot more easy-going than most outsiders imagine.

The rules about women’s dress are sometimes enforced harshly, but the Islamic Republic has never clamped down on women’s rights in the way you see routinely in Saudi Arabia.

Iranian women run businesses, own property, drive cars and play an important part in politics.

The present government is probably more liberal than any other since the revolution.”

The World Economic Forum publishes an annual ‘Global Gender Gap Report’ which ranks countries in terms of women’s economic participation, educational attainment, health, and political empowerment. The 2018 report put Iran in slot 142 out of 149, with Saudi Arabia one place higher. Despite Simpson’s claim that “Iranian women…play an important part in politics”, the WEF’s sub-index on political empowerment ranks Iran 141 out of 149. Saudi Arabia is ranked 127th.

BBC audiences have not seen any follow-up reporting on that story despite the fact that following a 2015 change in government policy, 1,300 Falash Mura immigrated to Israel in 2017. In October 2018 the Israeli cabinet authorised a plan to bring a further 1,000 members of the community to Israel and the first group arrived this week.

“The first 83 immigrants from Ethiopia, out of a total of some 1,000 approved last year for entry into Israel, arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport on Monday night after waiting in Gondar for an average of 15 years.

In October, the government approved for immigration 1,000 members of the Falash Mura community in Ethiopia who have children currently living in Israel. […]

The immigrants were welcomed by Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog and Aliyah and Integration Minister Yoav Galant, as well as by several well-wishers, including a delegation from the Jewish Federation of Chicago.”

The BBC has to date not found those developments in the story it reported in 2014 worth covering.

A Houston museum said Friday it “stands by its ownership” of a painting on loan to an exhibition in Germany which is being claimed as Nazi-looted art.

Henri Edmond Cross’ “Regatta in Venice” was loaned by Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts for a show on the French artist at the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, just outside Berlin. Heirs of Jewish French collector Gaston Levy say it was stolen from their family by the Nazis and have filed a legal request for its return.

The Texas museum said it made a legal filing in Potsdam on Thursday. It said in a statement that “based on the facts of the provenance research, the museum stands by its ownership of ‘Regatta in Venice.'”

It said in its filing that no proof has been presented that the plaintiffs are Levy’s rightful heirs, and that Levy didn’t claim compensation for the piece in 1956 when he filed claims for other pieces in his collection, among them other pieces by Cross.

A lawyer for the heirs, Christoph Partsch, said last week that the painting was confiscated by the Nazis in 1940. He said his clients had found out only now about the existence of the missing painting and were demanding its return. He said the family lives in Europe, but didn’t want to further identify them.

A melting pot of many different peoples, Israeli culture can be hard to grasp fully through anything but movies.

From classics films that paint a picture of what life was like for Jewish immigrants in the 1950s and ’60s, to portraits of communities often left out of the mainstream, movies let you immerse yourself in Israeli life, if only for a short while.

This list has it all: film series immortalized in Israeli pop culture; cult comedies; wartime movies; films about religious Jews, Soviet immigrants, and Bedouin tribes; and Israeli films that have received international acclaim.

Watch and enjoy as you learn a little bit more about the complicated society that is Israel. We’ve included websites where you can find the movie with English subtitles.

Graffiti artists are disgusted by the antisemitic and racist graffiti springing up across college and university campuses in the United States, and have formed a rapid response team to combat the problem through art.

Despite the recent surge in BDS efforts, Artists 4 Israel (A4I) has grown exponentially over the last 10 years showing that Israel’s support of the arts and free speech is recognized and having a significant impact. Artists 4 Israel now represents more than 8,000 artists from 26 different countries who are united to overcome bigotry against Israel, the Jews or any other persecuted group. The recent rash of scrawled hate speech and depictions of swastikas is particularly upsetting to urban artists.

“Hate has no place in graffiti and I refuse to let anyone disrespect my chosen art form for such terrible purposes” says Shayne Tuthill, an artist who joined A4I on a mission painting memorials to slain IDF soldiers in Israel. Shayne and others under the coordination of Artists 4 Israel have offered to reclaim the name of street art and defend against the bigots and vandals.

Swastikas and other hateful symbols have been found most recently on the American Federation of Teachers building. This follows incidents at Columbia University, Duke University, Goucher, Cornell, Pomona, UC Davis and far too many other colleges and universities.

Graffiti and street art can and should unite people and beautify communities. Since its inception, Artists 4 Israel has found that to be a core value of most graffiti artists. Originally focusing only on advocacy initiatives in New York City, it was the artists themselves who suggested traveling to Israel to paint over the bomb shelters in Sderot. There, artists from around the world gathered to heroically dodge rockets and defy a war to create murals across the city. When finished, bomb shelters, those distressing reminders of danger, were transformed into an outdoor art gallery that soothed the populace and has become a tourist site that lasts to this day. The artists received the Key to the City of Sderot for their efforts as well as thousands of hugs, kisses and heartfelt thanks from the local community.

There was only one Jewish member among the British Cabinet when it debated Chaim Weizmann’s request that it back the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine during the summer and autumn of 1917.

But Edwin Montagu, who was born 140 years ago this month, was not, as might have been expected, the strongest advocate of what soon became known as the Balfour Declaration. Actually, he was its most bitter adversary.

He railed against the “mischievous political creed” of Zionism, attacked the very notion that Jews were a nation, and ridiculed the idea that, in such a state, Jews “drawn from all quarters of the globe” would even be capable of communicating with one another.

In an angry memo to his fellow Cabinet members in August 1917 he went so far as to declare that the proposal before the government would be “anti-Semitic in result [and] will prove a rallying ground for anti-Semites in every country in the world.”

As the historian Jonathan Schneer wrote: “Ironically, a Jew represented the greatest remaining obstacle to Cabinet acceptance of the Balfour Declaration.”

Inadvertently, however, Montagu would play a possibly critical part in the realization of the Zionists’ dreams. That role had nothing to do with high politics or great principles. Rather, it resulted from the fallout of a bizarre love affair involving Montagu’s political mentor, prime minister Henry Herbert Asquith, and his future wife, Venetia Stanley.

 Egyptian security forces arrested Egyptian actresses Mona Farouk and Shaimaa al-Haj on charges of committing a flagrant act after featuring on porn videos.

Both actresses claimed that Egyptian director Khaled Youssef shot these videos for them in 2015 in an apartment owned by him in El Mohandessin district.

Farouk and El Haga said that Youssef married both of them customary and that they obeyed all his demands to help them in their artistic career and give them roles. 

Human Rights Watch has lost all legitimacy regarding Israel, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said Sunday after a senior HRW official supported a conspiratorial claim that Israeli manufactured the antisemitism crisis within Britain's Labor party.

Sarah Leah Winston, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, embeded a tweet on her Twitter account on Saturday from Asa Winstanley, a writer for the Electronic Intifada website that said, We're on the cusp of a major new wave of manufactured ‘Labour antisemitism crisis’ stories, much like spring/summer 2018. Buckle up”

Why is this #israel interference in domestic UK politics acceptable? Is it only a problem when Russia does this? https://t.co/frsAdFXpez

— Sarah Leah Whitson (@sarahleah1) February 9, 2019

Above the tweet, Winston wrote, “Why is this #israel interference in domestic UK politics acceptable? Is it only a problem when Russia does this?”

Nahshon tweeted in response that HRW “has lost all legitimacy when it comes to Isarel. Obsessive hatred and conspiracy theories worthy of the worst antisemites.”

Nahshon said that it has been a “long time” since the Foreign Ministry last cooperated with the organization.

Winstanley's article on the anti-Israel Chicago-based Electronic Intifada, headlined "Israel running campaign against Jeremy Corbyn," claimed that the Israeli government operates an application that urges its users to call out Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for antisemitism.

“This is the latest evidence of an Israeli campaign of psychological warfare against the UK’s main opposition party,” he wrote.

Wow! This conspiracy theory by HRW’s Mid East Director @sarahleah1, blaming Israel for manufacturing Antisemitism in UK Labour is sickening new low in Jew hatred & actual vile Antisemitism even by @hrw’s standards!

Mind you, this is same Sara Leah Witson: https://t.co/ymcdkM7LDvpic.twitter.com/aJhVbgxXff

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) February 9, 2019

Hey @KenRoth, yet ANOTHER case of antisemitism within your org @hrw. What do you plan on doing to address it? https://t.co/PemWBuYTYa

— Ozraeli Dave (@Israellycool) February 10, 2019

Maajid Nawaz on the state of Labour's anti-Semitism row: "All those old Nazi slurs are coming back in the disguise of criticising Israel when actually it's all an obsession with Jews"@MaajidNawaz | #AntiSemitismpic.twitter.com/0qeomuCKAx

— LBC (@LBC) February 10, 2019

Not only is providing direct assistance to the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese government and Armed Forces illegal under U.S. law, it is undercuts U.S. policy towards Iran. The U.S. sanctions regarding Iran and Hezbollah have diminished Iran’s ability to support Hezbollah financially. Until the sanctions were implemented, Iran’s annual support for Hezbollah totaled $700 million. That assistance has reportedly diminished as a result of the U.S. sanctions. So if continued, U.S. support for the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese government and armed forces will make up for part of the revenues Hezbollah is losing as a result of U.S. sanctions.

Continued support for Lebanon also harms America’s reputation. Quite simply, a policy that ignores Hezbollah’s control of Lebanon will diminish U.S. standing in the region, harming its ability to deter its adversaries and enemies – first and foremost Iran and Russia.

The concern that Russia will fill the void in Lebanon is real. Today, Russia’s presence in Syria not only ensures the survival of the Iranian-controlled Assad regime, but also empowers Hezbollah and Iran to exert effective control over Syria. That, in turn, massively increases the likelihood of regional war between Iran, Israel, and Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon, with the active participation of their junior partner, Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Be that as it may, it is hard to see how concern over Russian empowerment in Lebanon outweighs the obvious drawbacks of continuing the current U.S. policy of arming and training the Hezbollah-controlled LAF and financing the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese government. If the U.S ends its support, then while it is true that others may fill the void, at least American taxpayers won’t be paying salaries of their enemies.

Finally, Hezbollah’s open control over Lebanon shows that Iran already won the contest of wills relating to who will control Lebanon. The fact that it is unpleasant to acknowledge this state of affairs is no excuse for exacerbating the situation by directly financing Iran’s Lebanese proxy.

When the US Congress had no problem supporting Zionism, criticizing pro-Arab diplomacy and...comparing the Jordan River to the Mississippi River:-
Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives joined today in condemning on the floor of their respective Houses the granting of independence to Transjordan. One Congressman suggested that the matter to placed before the Security Council of the UNO by the U.S. delegation.

Senator Claude Pepper, Democrat of Florida, sharply attacked British policy in Transjordan and Palestine, in a general statement in the Senate on foreign policy with particular reference to the Iranian situation. The British Mandate over Palestine “should have been repealed a long time ago,” he said.

Rep. Gordon McDonough, California Republican, urged the State Department to consult with the British Foreign Office “to assure the British that the heroic and creative Hebrew people, who have already worked such marvels in transformation in the insert of Palestine, can, by their friendship and trust, be infinitely better guarantors of western principals of peace and freedom in the Near East than can illiterate, comedic Bedonine,” McDonough asked that the American delegates to the UNO be instructed to investigate this matter in the Security Council.

Rep. Angnatua Bennett, New York Republican, compared the separation of Palestine and Transjordan to a situation that might develop should the U.S. be divided at the Mississippi. He recalled the treaty of 1924, in which Great Britain promised not change the status of Transjordan under the Mandate without the approval of the U.S. Government. “To my knowledge,” he said, “that approval has not been granted.

Senator Owen Browster, Republican of Maine, told the Senate that the State Department should “investigate the sudden creation of this new independent state of Transjordan.”

JTA, April 4, 1946.

Thanks for the great video, @RashidaTlaib! https://t.co/pEAvnsNSP4

— Ozraeli Dave (@Israellycool) February 10, 2019

U.S. President Donald Trump's official recognition of Venezuelan National Assembly President and opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela's president, in place of Nicolas Maduro, evoked harsh criticism in Jordan and the Palestinian Authority (PA), from both officials and columnists. Jordan issued no official response to the events in Venezuela, but one of its MPs called on the parliament to issue a statement of support for Maduro, saying that he merits this because of his support for the Palestinian cause. A columnist in Jordan's Al-Dustour daily harshly attacked the U.S. for the "injustices" it has committed throughout history, and called it an enemy of the peoples who was and will be the embodiment of barbaric imperialism. A columnist for the government daily Al-Rai wrote that the U.S., the head of global imperialism, constantly plots coups and assassinations like the "coup" that is currently taking place in Venezuela.

As for the PA, whereas its Foreign Ministry expressed only veiled criticism of the U.S., Fatah Executive Committee member Ahmad Majdalani slammed the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, calling this part of Trump's policy that seeks to impose agendas on the world and denies the will of the peoples, usurps their resources and deprives them of freedom. A columnist in the PA mouthpiece wrote that the U.S. was behind the events in Venezuela and called to support Maduro.

The following are excerpts from statements by Jordanian and PA officials and columnists on this topic.

Al-Dustour Columnist: The U.S. Is The Enemy Of The Peoples, The Embodiment Of Barbaric Imperialism

In his January 27 column in the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour, Rashid Hassan, who frequently writes critically of the U.S. and Israel,[1] attacked the U.S., enumerating what he called the atrocities it has perpetrated throughout history. He also claimed that its hostility towards Venezuela is due to the latter's support of the Palestinian people and its opposition to the American hegemony and barbarity. He wrote: "The U.S. has clarified to all its short-sighted, corrupt, feeble and always cowardly [supporters] that it will never change. It will never change but rather stay as it is: an invader, a Pirate Morgan[2] and an enemy of the peoples. [It will remain the same] U.S. that exterminated more than 30 million Indians and killed three million Vietnamese, one million Iraqis and three million Afghans; the U.S. that was the first in history to use atomic bombs, to attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the U.S. which embraces the fascist Zionism, which the U.N. has condemned as a racist fascist movement; the U.S. which does not want the Palestinian people to realize its right to self-determination and an independent state, and insists on leaving [them] dispersed throughout the world or else as slaves in Netanyahu's empire; and the U.S. that recognizes occupied Arab Jerusalem as the capital of the Zionist entity, in flagrant violation of international law.

A Palestinian man suspected in the murder of an Israeli teenage girl reenacted the crime on Sunday at the location in a forest just outside Jerusalem where her body was found last week.

The Israel Police, Shin Bet security service and Israel Defense Forces investigating the brutal murder of Ori Ansbacher, 19, increasingly believe that Arafat Irfayia, who is said to have told investigators that he left home with a knife on the day of the killing, had a terror motive.

Irfayia, 29, has begun to cooperate with investigators, security officials said. Elements of the investigation remain under a gag order.

He was arrested in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday on suspicion of killing Ansbacher a day earlier, in a case that has sparked outrage across the country.

On Sunday Irfayia returned with police to the woods near the Ein Yael nature center on the outskirts of Jerusalem where Ansbacher was found.

Early indications are that the attack was a spontaneous act, after Irfayia ran into his victim, Channel 13 reported.

Ansbacher’s aunt Na’ama Cohen, speaking with media, said she felt sure Irfayia went looking for an Israeli to kill.

Security officials say that Arafat Irfaiya, 29, from Hebron has confessed to killing Ori Ansbacher, 19, and reconstructed the murder for police on Sunday ahead of his arraignment in court.

IDF troops meanwhile mapped the killer’s home ahead of its likely demolition. Troops entered Hebron before dawn on Sunday to measure the structure “to evaluate ways to demolish it,” the army said in a statement.

Irfaiya was arrested in a joint operation by the IDF, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the Border Police’s Yamam counter-terrorism unit in an abandoned building near the Jamal Abdel-Nasser Mosque in el-Bireh, which adjoins Ramallah, following intelligence received by security forces.

According to reports, authorities received information that he was hiding in the mosque and proceeded to raid it on Friday evening. When Irfaiya was not found, troops confiscated security camera footage from the neighborhood and returned later that night to conduct a second raid on a nearby abandoned building, where he was arrested without putting up a struggle.

The knife he is believed to have used in the murder was found during the arrest.

A senior Israeli minister told prosecutors on Saturday to pursue the death penalty for a Palestinian suspect in the grisly murder of an Israeli teen in Jerusalem last week.

Arafat Irfayia, 29, was arrested Friday on suspicion of killing Ori Ansbacher, 19, in a wooded area of southern Jerusalem on Thursday, in a case that has sparked outrage across the country.

Authorities suspect Irfayia may had a nationalistic motive, according to Hebrew-language press reports, but are also probing if the attack was sexual in nature.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked told Channel 13 news Saturday that “the military prosecution needs to ask for the death penalty.”

Shaked and other ministers have insisted that the murder was a terror attack, though most details of the incident have been kept under gag order.

“We should not hide the truth,” she told the news channel. “He killed Ori because she was a Jewish girl.”

Let there be no doubt that Israel will deduct money that the Palestinian Authority pays terrorists and their families from the tariffs and duties it collects monthly on behalf of the PA and transfers to Ramallah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

Speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that by the end of the week, the “necessary staff work will be completed to implement the law” to deduct the money from the amount transferred to the PA.

“Next Sunday I will convene the security cabinet and we will make the necessary decision to offset the funds. The money will be deducted, no one should have any doubt about it,” he said.

The PA has acknowledged that its annual budget for these payments in both 2017 and 2018 was NIS 1.2 billion.

It said last week that if Israel deducts the funds, the PA will not accept any of the money Israel transfers to it under terms of the Oslo Accords – more than $100 million a month.

On July 7, the Knesset passed legislation introduced by Avi Dichter (Likud) and Elazar Stern (Yesh Atid) requiring the Defense Ministry to inform the security cabinet of how much the PA pays in “welfare payments to terrorists and their families,” which will then be deducted from the amount Israel transfers to the PA each month.

This legislation followed passage of the Taylor Force Act in the US, which ended most US assistance to the Palestinians unless the PA stops payments to terrorist and their families, so called “pay-to-slay.”

The Israeli military on Sunday began preparing to demolish the home of a Palestinian man suspected of murdering a 19-year-old Israeli woman in Jerusalem last week, further indicating that security forces believe the gruesome killing was terrorist in nature.

Arafat Irfayia, 29, was arrested in Ramallah on Friday on suspicion of killing Ori Ansbacher in a wooded area of southern Jerusalem on Thursday, in a case that has sparked outrage across the country.

In the pre-dawn hours of Sunday morning, the Israel Defense Forces entered Irfayia’s home in the West Bank city of Hebron in order to measure the structure “to evaluate ways to demolish it,” the army said.

The Israel Police, Shin Bet security service and IDF are still investigating the grisly murder, but increasingly suspect that Irfayia had a nationalistic motive.

Three days ago, a 19-year-old Israeli woman, Ori Ansbacher, was stabbed several times and brutally murdered in Jerusalem. DNA from the scene led Israel to the Palestinian, 29-year-old Arafat Arfiah, who was captured after soldiers entered a mosque and seized footage from its security camera.

PA Minister of Religious Affairs Yusuf Ida'is completely ignored the fact that a young Israeli woman had been attacked, stabbed, and murdered by a Palestinian, but was quick to "condemn" Israel's entering the mosque to search for the terrorist as an "attack," according to the PA's official daily. Moreover, not only was there no reference to the murder in the minister's quote, this entire article in the official PA daily did not even mention the terror attack and murder as the context of Israel's search to the mosque.

Absurdly, the minister complained that the Israeli soldiers' entrance into the mosque lacked "any consideration for its sanctity and its religious and spiritual value." Concerned about "sanctity" and "spiritual values," he didn't even mention the innocent 19-year-old Israeli victim:
"[PA] Minister of Religious Affairs Yusuf Ida'is condemned the attack against the sanctity of the Jamal Abd Al-Nasser Mosque under baseless and unacceptable pretexts. Ida'is said in a press statement that this cowardly attack against a religious and sacred place of worship, without any consideration for its sanctity and its religious and spiritual value, constitutes part of a series of daily attacks against our Islamic and Christian holy sites, and particularly the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the pearl of Palestine, by the occupation forces and unbridled settlers and under political cover of the right-wing occupation government." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 9, 2019]

The headline did not mention the murder either, but focused solely on the "occupation's raid":
"The occupation raided the Jamal Abd Al-Nasser Mosque, the Sateh Marhaba neighborhood and Al-Quds Street in El-Bireh"

Media reports in Israel have stated that the Palestinian has confessed to the murder, but that it is not yet clear based on his statement if it was nationalistically motivated - meaning an act of terror -or criminally motivated.

Indeed the killer was located very quickly, the result of the forensic findings in the field and the Shin Bet's technological and operational abilities, which allowed them to get to the killer by Friday evening. He was found in an abandoned building in Ramallah, where he had escaped to after spending a few hours hiding out in a mosque next to his work.

The investigation into the killer, Arafat Irfaiya, stalled because he required medical treatment for injuries sustained during his arrest. From the initial details, it seems the entire incident unfolded at random. While the murderer did leave his home in Hebron with a knife – not an unusual detail in and of itself – he only decided to harm Ansbacher upon encountering her. As of Saturday night, the Shin Bet has been unable to determine whether Irfaiya intended to murder Ansbacher as soon as he saw her or if he was dragged into the act. The Shin Bet has also yet to ascertain whether Ansbacher's murder was the result of a criminal attack that went wrong or whether she was killed simply for being Jewish. Past incidents have shown that this likely a combination of factors; a criminal incident that is tied to a nationalistic motive.

At 29, the killer is relatively older, and he has a security past. He was detained in 2009 after exhibiting suspicious behavior in the vicinity of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. A search of his belongings uncovered a knife, and he was sentenced to a few months in prison. There is no information that points to Irfaiya having engaged in criminal or terrorist activity following his release. The Shin Bet will now try to ascertain whether or not he belongs to a terrorist organization, although the details of the case thus far indicate he acted alone.

Ansbacher is the first terrorist victim of 2019. In recent months, security forces have escalated their activity in Judea and Samaria and the Jerusalem periphery following an uptick in attacks. But along with the relative calm that has been achieved, this has also led to security forces being spread thin. Yet it is doubtful if more expansive activity could have prevented this fatal encounter.

Heartless https://t.co/0m1K0u3WkQ

— Ozraeli Dave (@Israellycool) February 9, 2019

Khomeini's regime also still scores highest in the world when it comes to executing people per capita. According to Amnesty International, Iran leads the entire world in the number of children it executes. Despite hopes that the violence and hatred would eventually diminish, instead, during the last 40 years, the regime's promotion of anti-Christian and anti-Semitic sentiments has continued to spread and grow.

Even more surprising than Iran's flourishing indifference to the rule of law is that some Western politicians and governments have attempted, and are still attempting, to appease this inhumane regime. Former President Obama led the charge to lift four rounds of established UN sanctions against the ruling mullahs, and famously -- with no quid pro quo -- reportedly gave the mullahs at least $150 billion; under Director of National Intelligence James Clapper removed Iran and Hezbollah from list of terror threats to U.S. interests, and sidestepped sanctions to give Iran secret access to the US financial system. The mullahs, not surprisingly, used it to promote terrorism, fund their Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and advance their aggression.

Currently, the European Union is trying to come up with new mechanisms to circumvent US sanctions and make it easier to continue trading with Iran's regime.

Forty years of the Iranian regime should be a sufficient lesson for the international community to make clear that appeasing the Iranian leaders will do exactly nothing either to protect the people of Iran or the global community. Concessions, for the ruling mullahs, only translate as weakness: they will seize any opening as an opportunity to increase their power. The only language to which the fundamentalist regime will respond is economic, political and, if necessary, military pressure.

As long as powerful governments continue to coddle the current regime, eruptions of violence and crimes against humanity will continue.

Will the global community just stand back and do nothing for another 40 years?

Mossad, British secret services and the CIA extracted an Iranian nuclear scientist out of Tehran and provided him with a safe haven in the US, the Daily Mail reported on Sunday.


The Iranian scientist is thought to have been smuggled into the UK on an inflatable boat alongside other Iranian migrants who crossed over to Lydd at the beginning of 2019.

The plan is said to have been drawn up in October when the Mossad helped the 47-year-old technician escape to Turkey, and from that location he joined the flux of Iranian immigrants attempting to reach the UK.

The BBC reported that the influx of Iranian migrants into the UK has increased recently due to a decision by the Serbian government to accept Iranian tourists without asking for a visa. This was meant to increase tourism and trade between the Islamic Republic and Serbia but also enabled some Iranians to escape into Europe.

"It was determined infiltrating him into a group of fellow migrants preparing to cross the Channel by boat offered one solution," a British secret service official told the Daily Mail.

Once in the UK, the man was questioned about the current status of the Iranian nuclear program and flown to the US. The scientist reportedly also helped with the 2012 assassination of another Iranian nuclear scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. The Mossad has long been suspected of standing behind the assassination.

Israel is said to have launched a secret operation to dissuade scientists from taking part in the Iranian nuclear program by eliminating those it deemed valuable. Israel has never confirmed or denied such claims.

Friday Sermon in Shiraz, Iran: Khamenei's Representative Ayatollah Lotfollah Dezhkham Leads "Death to America" Chants, Calls for Destruction of Israel pic.twitter.com/CVg7vTi2Ev

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) February 10, 2019

Iran's Leader Khamenei: “Death to America” Means Death to Trump, John Bolton, and Pompeo @SecPompeo@AmbJohnBolton@POTUS@realDonaldTrumppic.twitter.com/77KAx4jAXx

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) February 10, 2019

Almost fifteen years ago, the Israeli nonprofit Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) lambasted the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) for demonizing Israel. It happened after the PCUSA passed a divestment resolution at its General Assembly in 2004. In addition to calling on the church’s money managers to divest from the Jewish state, the resolution portrayed Israel as singularly responsible for the suffering caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In response to this outrage, RHR published a letter condemning the church for failing to offer “one word of criticism to the government of the Palestinian Authority despite its manifest multitude of profound sins against God and the Human Rights of Palestinians and Jews.” RHR also condemned the PCUSA for ignoring “the homicidal ideologies that have so sadly taken hold among some of our Palestinian neighbors.”

The letter closed with a call for the PCUSA to repent of its actions and to rethink its “relationship with the Jewish People and their State.” It was one of the most principled and unequivocal condemnations of Christian antisemitism to come down the pike since BDS became all the rage in mainline Protestant churches.

The folks at RHR must have lost this letter in their archives, because these days they are defending — not rebuking — another Christian institution that is facilitating in the same process of demonization that the PCUSA engaged in a decade and a half ago. To make matters worse, the group’s president, Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, engaged in the same type of one-sided discourse that RHR condemned in 2004.

A proposed multi-million dollar deal between Israel’s Central Bottling Company (CBC) and South Africa’s biggest dairy producer Clover could be in serious trouble due to heavy pressure from the anti-Israel lobby.

Newly-formed consortium Milco, in which Israel’s Central Bottling Company (CBC) holds a majority, is offering to buy 59.5% of the South African dairy producer.

The deal would buy out Clover for $354 million - an estimated NIS 1.2 million - and bring a much needed financial boost to South Africa’s struggling economy and Clover, which has run into financial difficulties.

The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement in South Africa (BDS SA) has vehemently opposed the possible deal, accusing CBC of being “complicit” in human rights abuses and violating international law. It also threatened a “militant but peaceful campaign” if the deal goes through.

CBC is Israel’s leading manufacturer and distributor of popular beverages including Coca-Cola, Fuze Tea and other well-known drinks.

Following the announcement of the proposed deal last week, CBC chief executive Aran Oelsner said in a statement that "Clover is one of South Africa's best-loved brands and we are excited at the opportunity to build on its heritage.

This is how the WaPo's @costareports defines BDS:
"... BDS, meant to apply economic pressure on Israel to change its policies toward the Palestinian population."
It's a complete whitewash of end goal of BDS which is the eradication of Israel. Why lie?
https://t.co/fMceE174Db

— Mark Jacobs (@mr_markjacobs) February 9, 2019

Eeeediots! -> @Dispropogandahttps://t.co/7dOfal8S5z

— Ozraeli Dave (@Israellycool) February 9, 2019

Finnish volunteer soldiers serving in the Nazi Waffen-SS units on the eastern front in World War II took part in the massacres of Jews, Russian prisoners of war, and civilians generally during the German march eastward through Ukraine and into the Caucasus from 1941 to 1943, a new report from the Finnish State Archives reveals.

“The sub-units and men of SS-Division Wiking engaged during the march into the Soviet Union and the drive through Ukraine and the Caucasus were involved in numerous atrocities,” the report, made public on Friday, relates.

“The diaries and recollections by the Finnish volunteers show that practically everyone among them must, from the very beginning, have been aware of the atrocities and massacres.”

A total of 1,408 Finns volunteered in the Waffen-SS from 1941 to 1943. They served in the well-armed 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, one of the 38 divisions of the Waffen-SS distinguished by its complement of volunteer recruits from an assortment of northern European nations stretching from Estonia to Belgium and including the Scandinavian countries.

The path of the Wiking division’s advance through western Ukraine and into the Caucasus during this period reads like a litany of Nazi killing fields of Jews and others.

A French Jewish woman has spoken in public for the first time about her family’s harrowing experiences with antisemitism in the Paris neighborhood where they lived for nearly a decade, in an interview with one of France’s most popular talk shows.

49-year-old “Stella,” who is married with children, spoke with Europe 1 host Olivier Delacroix on Thursday about two antisemitic episodes in 2017 that, she said, had driven the family out of their home. Now, Stella said, she and her husband continually debate whether their family should make aliyah to Israel.

For nine years, Stella and her family lived in a house in the suburb of Romainville, which lies about five miles to the east of central Paris. “We felt good, we never had the least concerns,” she said. “We loved the neighborhood, everything was always open on a Sunday, we knew all the store owners.”

Life for the family changed dramatically in March 2017, when they awoke one morning to find that their house had been ransacked while they slept. To her shock, Stella learned from the police forensics team dispatched to their home that the intruders had gained entry through their daughter’s bedroom window. Much as the family wanted to believe that they were the targets of a routine burglary — “one that could happen to any family,” as Stella put it — only a few items were actually stolen from the house. More suspicious was the spectacle of family photographs taken in Israel that had been ripped up and scattered on the floor.

Shaken by the invasion of their home, Stella and her family took a ten-day vacation in April. Shortly after their return in early May, Stella was preparing to drive her daughter to school when she saw to her horror that the word “Juifs” — ”Jews” — had been scrawled in large letters on the driver’s side of the family car.

The Philips Park Jewish cemetery in Manchester, England, was vandalized on Saturday, during which the tomb of Rabbi Yehuda Zev Segal, who died last year, was desecrated.

Local police in Manchester's Whitefield neighborhood declared the vandalism a criminal act rather than antisemitic, basing their conclusion on copper having been stolen from a bathroom on the cemetery grounds.

MP Ivan Lewis reacted to the desecration, calling it "an absolute disgrace."

More than 20 swastikas have been spray-painted on a mural and a shopping center near the iconic Bondi Beach in the Australian city of Sydney, with local officials and Jewish groups condemning the incident as an “expression of blatant racism.”

The Nazi symbol was daubed in gold paint in the early morning hours of Sunday, Australian media reported.

Police in the state of New South Wales (NSW) said in a statement that “officers from Eastern Suburbs Police Area Command attended and found a section of the mural wall had been defaced with approximately 20 symbols.”

A short time later three more were located at a shopping center at Bondi Junction.

Vic Alhadeff, head of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, released a statement condemning the graffiti.

“The swastika represents the ultimate in race hatred and the people of Bondi and indeed all Australians of goodwill will stand together in condemning this shocking display. The Jewish community is appalled at this expression of blatant racism,” he said.

They have lived in the country under the radar for many years, but the Jews of the United Arab Emirates are now officially recognized - and their existence has been revealed - by the government for the first time.

On the occasion of the historic arrival of Pope Francis in the United Arab Emirates - the first visit by a Catholic pope to the Arabian Peninsula – the country is also publishing the book "Celebrating Tolerance," which mentions all of the UAE's religions – Muslims, Armenians, Buddhists, Copts, Hindus and Jews.

The book's preface was penned by UAE Minister of Tolerance Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, effectively giving a government sanction to the recognition of local Judaism.

In Abu Dhabi, the Pope attended a conference promoting moderate Islam, to which 150 religious leaders from all over the world were invited.

Among the invitees was Rabbi Mark Schneier, head of the Jewish-Muslim Interfaith Foundation in the US. Schneier is a common sight in the palaces of the Persian Gulf, and serves as advisor to kings and princes of the region. He was also among the writers of the newly released book.

During the visit, Rabbi Schneier met for the first time with the Jewish community in Dubai, which has until now operated under the radar. "They meet every Shabbat in a synagogue that is located in a private house, with an ark and a Torah scroll, and they perform kiddush," said Schneier. "They have a chairman but not a rabbi. But now thanks to the official recognition, there are talks about establishing a proper synagogue, a kosher and even a mikveh (ritual bath)."

According to Schenier, there is a thriving Jewish community already in existence in the Persian Gulf.

Roi Schiffman is not your average IDF recruit. Despite the odds Schiffman - who was born with cerebral palsy, a condition that causes partial paralysis - was drafted into the IDF on Thursday.

"We decided to raise Roi like any a normal child and expose him to anything and everything that other children his age are exposed to," Schiffman's father said.

"Our dream was to see Roi become a soldier in the Israeli army just like everybody else," said Roi’s mother."Our dream was to see Roi become a soldier in the Israeli army just like everybody else," said Roi’s mother.

For the past two years Schiffman, who is wheelchair-bound, volunteered at the Palmahim Air Force Base. He was helped by Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund’s "Special in Uniform" program, which aids youths with disabilities integrate into the IDF.

"I am an officer on an air force base, and it's the greatest time in my life," Schiffman said regarding his volunteer work.

Schiffman excelled during his volunteer experience and caught the attention of former defense minister Avigdor Liberman, who later helped Schiffman obtain an official draft notice from the IDF.

"Our dream was to see Roi become a soldier in the Israeli Army just like everybody else," said Schiffman's mother. “Being a part of Special in Uniform was a privilege, and Roi wanted to be drafted into his service from a military induction center, just like everybody else."

Here is my @unherd Confessions with Melanie Phillips @MelanieLatest. I suspect many people will understand Melanie quite differently after listening to this. Really, do have a listen. On iTunes or Spotify. Free. https://t.co/lJtVnHk4z9

— Giles Fraser (@giles_fraser) 10 February 2019

And [then] he said, “Indeed, I will go to [where I am ordered by] my Lord; He will guide me. My Lord, grant me [a child] from among the righteous”. So We gave him good tidings of a forbearing boy. And when he reached with him [the age of] exertion, he said, “O my son, indeed I have seen in a dream that I [must] sacrifice you, so see what you think.” He said, “O my father, do as you are commanded. You will find me, if Allah wills, of the steadfast”. And when they had both submitted and he put him down upon his forehead, We called to him, “O Abraham, You have fulfilled the vision.” Indeed, We thus reward the doers of good. Indeed, this was the clear trial. And We ransomed him with a great sacrifice, And We left for him [favorable mention] among later generations: “Peace upon Abraham”. Indeed, We thus reward the doers of good. Indeed, he was of Our believing servants. And We gave him good tidings of Isaac, a prophet from among the righteous. And We blessed him and Isaac. But among their descendants is the doer of good and the clearly unjust to himself.

The “Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East,” held jointly by the United States and Poland, will take place in Warsaw, Poland on February 13-14. We have received very positive responses from our partners and allies around the world, with dozens of countries expressing their willingness and intention to participate in this constructive dialogue.

This Ministerial will be an opportunity for countries to share their perspectives both from within and outside the region. This includes a conversation on current regional crises as well as international efforts to address them. During the Ministerial, participants will also discuss the following topics:

• Regional crises and their effects on civilians in the Middle East;
• Missile development and proliferation;
• Cyber security and emerging threats to the energy sector; and
• Countering extremism and illicit finance.

Countries will come together to prioritize these regional challenges, share information, and discuss how we can cooperate more effectively to address them. There will be a press briefing held at the conclusion of the Ministerial to summarize the event’s discussions as well as present a joint statement by the Ministerial co-chairs – the United States and Poland.

Fatah spokesman Osama Qawassmeh warned that any Palestinian or Arab who accepts Trump’s “deal of the century” would be accused of betraying Jerusalem and Islamic and Christian holy sites. ...
In the past two weeks, several PA officials have called on the Arab countries to boycott the upcoming conference and to remain committed to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which calls for normalizing ties between Israel and the Arab countries only after a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.

Qawassmeh warned on Saturday that any Arab leader who meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Warsaw conference would be “stabbing Jerusalem and our Palestinian people.” The Palestinians, he added, are opposed to any form of normalization “with the Israeli occupation entity because that would be a free gift to Tel Aviv.”

The PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the US of “declaring war on the just Palestinian cause” and international resolutions.

It claimed that the US was convening the conference in Warsaw as part of its effort to impose a new world order. The ministry warned all countries against participating in the conference, saying it was also part of an American-Israeli “conspiracy” to eliminate the Palestinian issue.

Hopes that the 2015 nuclear deal would lead the Tehran regime to moderate its behavior have proved misplaced. The ayatollahs may have kept to the letter of the deal, but they have intensified their malign policies around the region. Where Israel is concerned, they implacably oppose not only government policy but also the country's very existence.

This hatred of Israel is not confined to the clerics. It is also the declared position of figures that the West has misidentified as "moderate." So it is misguided to see Iran as following the principles of realpolitik. It is ultimately defending and where possible extending ideological interests. The ideology is driven by a belief that religion should be converted into a political system of government. Such a worldview necessarily becomes totalitarian.

This politicization of religion is the bane of the Middle East. In a world where economies succeed by being open, and countries prosper by being open-minded, such a view of religion divides people, misdirects political energy and causes extremism.

Where Iran is exercising military interference, it should be strongly pushed back. Where it is seeking influence, it should be countered. Where its proxies operate, it should be held responsible. Where its networks exist, they should be disrupted. Where its leaders are saying what is unacceptable, they should be exposed. Where the Iranian people are protesting for freedom, they should be supported.

Forty years of disappointment should make us clear-eyed. The revolution has made Iran the single biggest destabilizing force in the Middle East. Ultimately the Iranian people will find a way to the future without this outdated theocracy.

A senior commander in Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps threatened on Monday to destroy two of Israeli’s largest cities if the country is attacked by the United States.

“The United States does not have the courage to shoot a single bullet at us despite all its defensive and military assets. But if they attack us, we will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground,” Brig. Gen. Yadollah Javani was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA, according to Reuters.

Top political and military leaders in Iran regularly call for Israel’s annihilation, with a senior general recently claiming it would defeat the Jewish state “within three days” in the case of a war.

Javani, the deputy for the IRGC political bureau, was speaking at a rally marking the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, when the US-backed monarchy was overthrown and replaced in power by Islamic fundamentalists.

Along with the chants “Death to America” and banners bearing slogans calling for “Death to Israel,” Monday’s marches were also a backdrop to the military’s display of Iranian-made missiles, which authorities showcase every year during anniversary celebrations.

Uri Akavia, a researcher at Kohelet Policy Forum, recently published a new paper titled “Is UNRWA’s hereditary refugee status for Palestinians unique?” In it, of course, he details the origins of the issue since 1948, the year Israel was established, and its ensuing state of affairs.

“People have finally realized that UNRWA [U.N. Relief and Works Agency], is a very large and important organization that is perpetuating a problem that should not have even existed after 70 years,” he told JNS.

When U.S. President Donald Trump announced last year that he would pull $300 million in funding for UNRWA, which is in charge of resolving the Palestinian refugee problem, Jerusalem’s Mayor Nir Barkat realized that he now had an opportunity to kick UNRWA out of Shuafat, a Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem the body considers to be a refugee camp.

“The U.S. decision has created a rare opportunity to replace UNRWA’s services with the services of the Jerusalem Municipality,” he said. “We are putting an end to the lie of the ‘Palestinian refugee problem’ and the attempts at creating a false sovereignty within a sovereignty.”

For Akavia, Barkat and those who have followed the situation closely, UNRWA, tasked with resolving the Palestinian refugee problem, has only perpetuated and not solved the refugee problem. They argue, and many Israelis agree, that it has utterly failed in its mission.

According to Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, “UNRWA has so many problems,” he told JNS. “The fact is that so many of the worst Hamas terrorists were educated in UNRWA schools, and UNRWA was used as a place where Hamas could store its weaponry in violation of all kinds of U.N. resolutions that prohibit conversion of refugee camps to military facilities.”

However, Gold pointed to what he thinks is UNRWA’s worst sin: The “conversion of the Palestinian refugee problem to a challenge locked into perpetuity.”

The US administration has finished the final draft of the "Middle East Peace Plan," and have briefed President Donald Trump on its contents, senior administration officials told Fox News.

According to the sources, the "Deal of the Century" is complete, and the President has been briefed by US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Senior Adviser Jared Kushner and Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt.

“The plan is done... [the president] is happy with the parameters of the deal,” the senior administration official claimed.

Greenblatt denied the reports on twitter, claiming the sources gave wrong information, and that the plan "[is] not there yet."

A top Fatah official said in an Arabic-language interview published Sunday that the US has asked international banks to squeeze the Palestinian Authority financially in a bid to pressure the Palestinian leaders to accept the Trump administration’s peace plan.

“Major international financial institutions and parties have begun to accede to an American request to impose a tight financial siege on the Authority,” Hussein al-Sheikh told AFP.

“Washington has asked for financial aid given to the authority to be stopped, and it has also issued a circular to banks not to receive transfers for the authority’s accounts.”

The claim came on the same day that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to begin deducting PA payments to convicted terrorists and their families from tax transfers Israel hands the PA each month, and after massive cuts in US aid to the Palestinian in recent months.

According to al-Sheikh, “the sanctions began with preventing the transfer of an Iraqi grant worth $10 million, which was handed over to the Arab League recently. The League has not been able to transfer it because all banks have refused to accept it for transfer to the Authority’s finance ministry or the national fund.”

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said Monday that the PA would take legal action to counter US moves to apply financial pressure on Ramallah.

Malki’s comments came a day after a senior Fatah official, Hussein al-Sheikh, said in an Arabic-language interview published Sunday that the US has asked international banks to squeeze the Palestinian Authority financially in a bid to pressure the Palestinian leaders to accept the Trump administration’s not-yet-announced peace plan.

“The leadership is following these new American attempts to impose a financial siege on our people, and is looking for legal steps to bring lawsuits against the United States over all these illegal steps on the one hand, while searching for suitable financial alternatives to respond to these punitive measures on the other,” Malki told the Voice of Palestine radio station.

Al-Sheikh told AFP on Sunday that major financial institutions had begun to cooperate with Washington’s bid to “impose a tight financial siege on the Authority.”

Qatar gave over $1.1 billion in aid to the Gaza Strip over the past six years, according to figures reportedly presented to Israeli ministers.

The money was given from 2012 to 2018, with last year’s sum totaling $200 million, the Haaretz daily reported.

Last month an “international entity” presented the figures to the security cabinet, the report said, noting that the numbers were confirmed by officials involved in the matter.

In 2018 Qatar gave Gaza $200 million for humanitarian aid, fuel, and wages for Hamas clerks. In addition it gave UNRWA, the UN agency that deals with Palestinian refugees and their descendants, $50 million, all with Israel’s approval. During the same period it gave just $39 million to other Arab states and almost nothing to the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, the report said.

The cabinet heard that 44 percent of the cash went to building infrastructure, 40% to education and medical projects, and the rest to Hamas and other groups in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas urged African states on Sunday to maintain their support for the Palestinians.

Abbas made the comments in a short speech at a meeting of the African Union in Addis Ababa, amid a recent expansion in relations between Israel and some African nations.

“The states of Africa and its venerable union were and still are supporters and partners,” he said. “We hope our partnership will continue to prosper. In our struggle for liberation and independence today, we are looking to you to continue to hold firm to your positions.”

The PA president made no explicit mention of the recent developments in ties between Israel and African states.

Over the past two years, Prime Minister Netanyahu has traveled to Africa a number of times, visiting Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, Liberia and Chad.

In January, Israel and Chad, a Muslim-majority country, renewed diplomatic relations — more than 45 years after they were severed.

Bahrain informed Israel more than two years ago that it was interested in normalizing relations, an Israeli TV station claimed Sunday, amid persistent reports that Israel has been close to establishing ties with an Arab state.

According to a report on Israel’s Channel 13 news, Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa held a clandestine meeting with former foreign minister Tzipi Livni on the sidelines of the 2017 Munich Security Conference.

During the meeting, Khalid reportedly told Livni that the king of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, had decided to move toward normalized relations with Israel and asked her to convey the message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which she did.

The report quoted unnamed senior Israeli officials. Livni refused to comment, Channel 13 said. The report did not specify why the breakthrough had not occurred.

The report comes as Israel pushes to expand its ties with Arab and Muslim nations. Last month Netanyahu traveled to the Muslim African nation of Chad to announce the restoration of relations.

In a bid to persuade the members of the United Nations Security Council to dub Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, senior officers from Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate are expected to brief the members of the international body on the Iran-backed group's activity in Lebanon. They will voice their concerns over its further strengthening in the country and the establishment of extensive terror infrastructures, and also raise the need to prevent further Iranian entrenchment in Syria.

Although Hezbollah is already considered a terrorist organization by multiple countries, including Israel, the US and members of the Arab League, its members serve in the Lebanese government. Over the past few months, the Israeli mission to the UN headed by Ambassador Danny Danon has been waging a campaign to get the UN Security Council to declare the Shiite organization as a terrorist group.

As a result, the Security Council held a meeting in December to discuss the Hezbollah attack tunnels dug from Lebanon into Israel, which were uncovered by the IDF during Operation Northern Shield in December. The tunnels, of which Israel uncovered six, are believed to have been dug by Hezbollah fighters in order to carry out attacks on civilians in the Galilee.

The meeting, called by the US at Israel's request, also dealt with Hezbollah’s alleged violations of UN Resolution 1701. The resolution, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War, calls for the disarmament of the Iranian-backed organization and its activities in southern Lebanon.

On March 18th, the UNHRC will breach its prime directive—to uphold equality & universality—by targeting Israelis in 7 prejudicial reports.

If you believe all human beings are entitled to human rights, and that all nations deserve equal treatment, join us in Geneva on March 18th. pic.twitter.com/Ygg9JkdB1r

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) February 10, 2019

Next Monday, Jerusalem will host the annual summit of the Visegrad group, consisting of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic; its decision to do so has brought criticism from those who feel that the Jewish state should not be associating itself with the right-wing leaders of Hungary and Poland, whose positions have sometimes put them at odds with local Jewish communities. Similar concerns are bound to recur as right-wing populist parties gain influence in Europe, even as these very parties are making efforts to rid their ranks of anti-Semites and show their support for Israel. To Gol Kalev, the Netanyahu government has acted wisely by responding in kind to offers of friendship from these groups and their leaders:

As anti-Israel activism becomes entrenched on Europe’s political left, the rise of European far-right parties could present an opportunity for Israel, since those parties are explicitly nationalistic themselves and unashamedly defend the idea of the nation-state. . . . Faced with this dichotomy—EU leaders expressing concern about Israel reaffirming itself as the nation-state of the Jewish people, while right-wing populist parties strongly embrace this model—there is a growing view that rather than lean against a splintered reed, Israel needs to recognize the shift in the European electorate and align itself with the emerging political movements that will defend rather than denigrate the country.

Even so, there remains a built-in tension between Israel’s rapprochement with the far-right and the interests of world Jewry. [For instance], French Jews feel imperiled by the expansion of the yellow-vest protests, which are reportedly being encouraged by Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, National Rally, [until recently, the National Front]. The protesters broadly refer to Emmanuel Macron as “President Rothschild,” and some banners have displayed overt anti-Semitic slurs. Indeed, the Chabad house in Paris temporarily closed due to the perceived danger from protesters.

This sort of tension between the interests of Israel and diaspora Jews is not new. In fact, it has existed since the inception of Zionism. But just as Theodor Herzl recognized that preventing the democratic election of [the anti-Semitic mayor of Vienna in 1896] would only further inflame the anger of far-right voters, it is clear today that Israel boycotting right-wing parties will not reduce the danger to Jews from right-wing populism, just as boycotting left-wing parties will not reduce the danger from European left-wing populism.

Last week, the anti-Israeli NGO B’Tselem issued a report accusing Israel’s High Court of Justice of supporting “deportation of Palestinian communities from their land,” attacking the decisions of the Supreme Court and the Israeli construction planning system in Judea and Samaria. On Monday, Israel Hayom exposed documents B’Tselem reportedly signed with the Dutch government, which commissioned and financed said report, while determining its goals.

According to the agreement, B’Tselem received about $200,000 directly from the Dutch government, to compose a report that would include criticism of Supreme Court decisions on the settlements.
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According to NGO Monitor, the agreement between the Dutch government and B’Tselem was signed in May and published at the end of October 2018, but according to the contract, it was already available as of January 1, 2018.

The agreement spelled out that (translated from Hebrew – DI) “As a test case, B’Tselem will publish a report on the role of the Supreme Court in the expulsion of the Palestinian communities, mainly in the Jordan Valley, the southern Hebron hills and the Ma’aleh Adumim area. B’Tselem will routinely refer to the High Court as one of the main mechanisms that enable the continued occupation and human rights violations by granting judicial legitimacy to Israeli policy.”

B’Tselem’s report, entitled “Justice Ostensibly – The High Court of Justice’s Responsibility for the Destruction of Palestinian Homes and their Expulsion,” notes that “in thousands of judgments and decisions handed down over the years in cases involving the demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, the judges referred to the Israeli planning policy as legal and proper, and almost always focused solely on the technical question – did the petitioners have building permits?”

An NGO has asked the High Court of Justice to strike down a law which grants immunity to IDF personnel if they negligently harm Gazans, on the grounds that the area is a war zone.

The non-governmental organization, Adalah, asked the High Court on Sunday to reverse a lower court ruling which said that because Attiya Nabheen, who was 15 years old when he was shot in November 2014, lived in Gaza, he could not seek damages from the IDF, even if there was negligence.

Even before the relevant 2012 immunity law was passed, Israel already applied a rule of international law called the “combat activities exception.”

According to the combat activities exception, armed forces cannot be sued for damages if they negligently harm a citizen of an enemy, provided that the harm occurred during military operations and was unintentional.

In February 2015, a three-justice panel of the High Court, including then-president Miriam Naor, Zvi Zilberthal and incoming president Esther Hayot, upheld the combat activities exception in the famous case involving US citizen Rachel Corrie. Corrie had been accidentally run over by a bulldozer.

But Adalah and the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights claimed that the High Court should still strike down the 2012 immunity law for going even beyond the combat activities exception, and therefore, breaking international law.

Some Poles “committed abominable crimes” against Jews, Poland’s ambassador to Israel acknowledged this week, saying he had no problem admitting that Polish nationals were involved in anti-Semitic atrocities before, during and after World War II.

But in a far-ranging interview dealing with the whole breadth of bilateral relations between Poland and Israel — historical and political — Marek Magierowski also said that in addition to the need to remember the painful past, there was a “moral obligation to tell the whole truth.” For instance, he strongly rejected the term “Polish complicity,” arguing that it implies the country deliberately aided the Nazi regime in carrying out the Holocaust.

“It insinuates that Poland was consciously and willingly collaborating with Germany in the extermination of the European Jewry. No, it was not,” he insisted.

During the war, six million Polish citizens died — half of them Jews, the ambassador noted — and the country’s cities and villages were destroyed. “Poland was devastated. This is the not-so-unimportant context that is too frequently missing from the spectacular headlines about the alleged ‘Polish complicity,’” Magierowski, 48, said.

“And yes, some of my fellow countrymen committed abominable crimes against their Jewish brethren — before, during and after the war. I have no reservations in saying that they were Poles. Not ‘bandits,’ not ‘criminals,’ not ‘non-Jewish neighbors.’ No need to conceal their nationality. They were Polish, they spoke Polish, they were born in Poland.”
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda speaks during commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of a massacre of Jews in Kielce, Poland, Monday, July 4, 2016. (AP Photo/ Czarek Sokolowski)

And they “excluded themselves from Polish society,” he added, citing a speech Polish President Andrzej Duda delivered two years ago at an event commemorating the 1946 Kielce pogrom, during which Poles killed 42 Jewish Holocaust survivors.

Historians estimate that between 1,000 and 2,000 Jews were killed by Poles in the aftermath of World War II.

While Australian Labor party head Bill Shorten is “very supportive of Israel,” there will be “challenges” if the Labor Party defeats the Liberals in the upcoming elections in May, Jeremy Leibler, the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, said this week.

The Labor party is leading the Liberal-led coalition in most of the major polls, though in recent surveys the numbers of Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison have risen. The Liberal-led coalition has been in power since 2013, and charted a strongly pro-Israel course.

Leibler said that the challenges facing Israel under a Labor government will center around three major issues.

The first, he said, is whether a Labor government would act on a non-binding resolution passed by the party’s conference in December – just three days after Morrison recognized west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – to recognize “Palestine.”

“If they would act on this resolution, it would be extremely counterproductive,” Leibler said. “While there is a productive role for Australia to play in the conflict, that is not going to be the way to do it.”

The motion, which passed on a voice vote, stated that the conference “supports the recognition and right of Israel and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognized borders,” and “calls on the next Labor Government to recognize Palestine as a state.”

The resolution added that it expects that “this issue will be an important priority for the next Labor government.”

The suspect in the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre pleaded not guilty Monday to a new indictment that added 19 additional counts, but his lawyer expressed hope the case will be resolved without a trial.

Robert Bowers, a truck driver who US authorities say gunned down 11 people at Tree of Life Synagogue, appeared in federal court with his new lawyer, prominent death penalty litigator Judy Clarke, who signaled that Bowers might be open to some sort of plea. Clarke’s past clients have included one of the Boston Marathon bombers, a 9/11 conspirator and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

Bowers, who was shackled, said little, giving yes or no answers.

A grand jury on January 29 added 19 counts to the 44 that Bowers was already facing. The additional charges include hate crimes violations, obstruction of religious belief and the use of a firearm during crimes of violence.

Bowers, 46, of Baldwin, Pennsylvania, is accused of targeting worshipers from three Jewish congregations when he attacked on Saturday, October 27, while Sabbath services were being held.

Seven people were wounded, including five police officers.

Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency confirmed on Sunday that the rape and murder of an Israeli teenager late last week is being officially treated as an act of terror.

According to Israel’s Channel 2, the brutal killing of Ori Ansbacher, 19, was committed for nationalistic reasons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Ansbacher family at their home in the West Bank village of Tekoa on Sunday and told them personally about the official findings.

“It isn’t surprising,” Netanyahu said, “but I wanted you to know.”

According to an official statement, Netanyahu and his wife also heard from Ori’s parents about her personality and said that “the entire public embraces them in their terrible grief.”

Ansbacher’s body was found on Thursday in a wooded area near Jerusalem. Signs of extreme violence were reportedly found on the body, though details have been withheld. It was not officially revealed until Sunday that she was also raped.

Forensic evidence quickly led authorities to a suspect. Arafat Irfayia, 29, a resident of Hebron, was arrested on Friday night in a joint operation between Israeli domestic intelligence and special forces personnel.

There are striking similarities between the murder of the 19-year-old Israeli woman Ori Ansbacher a few days ago and the murder of the 25-year-old Israeli woman Moran Amit in 2002. Both were attacked by Palestinian terrorists while walking peacefully in a Jerusalem forest. Both were stabbed to death.

In 2002, Moran was taking a walk with a friend in the Shalom Forest in Jerusalem when five teenage terrorists hunted them, attacked them, and stabbed Moran to death. Last week, Ori was walking through the Ein Yael forest in Jerusalem on the way from the youth center where she volunteered when a Palestinian terrorist brutally attacked her and then stabbed her to death.

And there are also similarities between the PA’s reaction to the two murders. In both cases, the PA did not condemn the terror. And more than that, in response to both terror attacks, the PA this week chose to present Palestinians as the victims.

When Israeli soldiers searched a mosque for 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher’s suspected murderer three days ago, the PA minister of religion complained it was an “attack” and lack of “consideration for its sanctity and its religious and spiritual value.” He completely ignored the brutal murder of the young Israeli woman, as Palestinian Media Watch reported.

Similarly, the official PA daily chose yesterday - less than a week after the murder of young Ori Ansbacher in a forest - to publish an article lamenting the fate of 4 of the Palestinian terrorists who murdered young Moran Amit in a forest 17 years ago. The PA daily turned those murderers into victims because they have been in prison since they were arrested in their teens and “the occupation stole their childhood from them.” The official PA daily did not mention the fact that Moran had her entire life stolen by these murderers:

Last Thursday, 19 year-old Ori Ansbacher was brutally murdered by a Palestinian terrorist. The terrorist will be awarded a monthly salary by the Palestinian Authority, which is thus encouraging more horrific attacks against Israelis. Palestinian funding of terror MUST STOP!

The Palestinian man suspected of murdering 19 year-old Ori Ansbacher in the Ein Yael forest in Jerusalem last week had his detention extended by 10 days on Monday.

Arafat Irfaiya,from Hebron, was brought to the Jerusalem Magistrate’s court on Monday and was remanded on the charges of the murder and rape of Ansbacher whose body was found with multiple stab wounds in the forest on Thursday.

According to reports in Israeli press, the judge decided to hold the hearing behind closed doors but in photos released from the courtroom Irfaiya was seen wearing a brown prison uniform and with bruises and scabs on his forehead, nose and below his right eye. He also seemed to smirk and roll his eyes before the cameras.

Israel’s Channel 2 News quoted a relative as saying that it is important to understand that there is a much bigger issue than just Ansbacher’s murder.

“It is important to leave our private story aside and understand that there is bigger business here than Ori and her criminal murderer,” Ansbacher’s uncle Boaz Bar Yuda said.

"It is important to understand that we are dealing with the war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness - we are good people, Ori was full of goodness, light and kindness. There are people here who are looking to do evil and the gap between her joy and her light compared to what this criminal murderer symbolizes that.

And the answer is clearly yes judging by the choice of paragraph immediately following the only mention of Ansbacher's murder. @AlJazeera believes Ori Ansbacher's murder was justified by virtue of where she lived. Disgusting. pic.twitter.com/sf4m8Eu1I6

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 11, 2019

Israel’s decision to deduct money from tax and tariff revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority will lead to anarchy in the West Bank, Palestinian officials in Ramallah warned on Sunday.

The warning came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the weekly cabinet meeting earlier in the day that Israel will deduct money from the taxes and tariffs it collects monthly on behalf of the PA, which it then uses to pay security prisoners and families of Palestinians who were killed while carrying out attacks against Israelis. Last week, PA President Mahmoud Abbas informed Israel that the Palestinians will reject any money transfer if Israel deducts “one penny” from it, the PA minister for civilian affairs, Hussein al-Sheikh, told the international French news agency AFP.

He said that international financial parties and institutions have begun complying with a US request to impose a strict financial embargo on the PA. As a result of the request, the Arab League was not able to transfer a $10 million grant from Iraq to the PA, al-Sheikh revealed.

Al-Sheikh later said that the PA will “not allow any act of piracy against our money under the pretext of implementing Israeli law. We affirm that if we have one dollar, we will spend it on the families of our martyrs and prisoners.”

“We are a people under occupation, which is the ugliest form of terrorism,” he later added. “We have the right to liberty and independence.”

A group of volunteer Palestinian civilian monitors have replaced the international observers who left Hebron last week.

On their first day on the Hebron streets the volunteers walked down Shuhada Street wearing blue vests with the word “observer” written on them in Hebrew, Arabic and English.

They paused by the Israeli apartment complex, Beit Hadassah, to guard Palestinian pupils whose walking route passes straight by Beit Hadassah, and gave the children pens and notebooks.

A number of Hebron Jewish residents immediately began to shout at the Palestinian observers, and one of them took out a video camera to monitor their movements.

“Get out of here! Go to hell,” yelled a Jewish man, whose movements were caught on camera and posted on Youtube.

A religious Jewish woman, with her head covered, physically lashed out at the observers.

Israeli police and IDF soldiers at the scene tried to separate the two groups.

The Israeli Navy arrested a Palestinian man who attempted to swim into Israel from the Gaza Strip on Sunday night, the military said.

The man was spotted as he approached the Strip’s northern maritime border and was captured shortly after he crossed into Israeli waters, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

He was unarmed and was handed over to the Shin Bet security service for further questioning.

The man will likely be returned to the Gaza Strip in the coming day, as are most Palestinians who attempt to flee the coastal enclave.

Meanwhile, Palestinians launched at least one mortar shell toward Israel from east of the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, according to local media. The projectiles apparently fell short and landed inside the Strip.

The Israeli military said no projectiles landed in Israel.

The Eshkol regional council said residents of Kibbutz Kissufim, across from Deir al-Balah, reported hearing explosions.

“We are in contact with the army, and the reports are being checked,” an Eshkol spokesperson said in a statement.

Two Palestinians died Monday and several others injured after Egyptian troops pumped toxic fumes into a smuggling tunnel stretching into the Sinai Peninsula from the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas-run Gaza Interior Ministry was quoted by Wafa news as identifying the two as 39-year-old Hamas officer Abdul Hamid al-Aker, who was killed during a “security mission to inspect the tunnel,” and 28-year-old Sobhi Abu Qarshin. Abu Qarshin was said to have died during a rescue attempt.

Several other security personnel were rescued by civil defense teams from inside the tunnel and were rushed to hospital, where they were described as being in moderate condition.

The ministry did not say what gas was used by the Egyptians.

Egypt has in the past flooded Hamas tunnels along the Gaza Strip with seawater or sewage, and has destroyed hundreds of homes on the Egyptian side of Rafah to remove the smuggling tunnels used by Gazans.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international body that identifies countries assisting terrorist groups, will convene in Paris next week; among the items on its agenda are Tehran’s previous noncompliance with its directives. Toby Dershowitz and Serena Frechter urge FATF to initiate countermeasures against the Islamic Republic over its support for al-Qaeda, which has gone on for decades:

Last week, a little-noticed map published in the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community identified Iran as a place where al-Qaeda “affiliates, elements, or networks” operate. . . . Iran’s relationship with al-Qaeda began in the early 1990s, when their [respective] leaders, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, met in Sudan and reached an “informal agreement to cooperate.” Iran then provided al-Qaeda with the training, material, and inspiration for attacks, including the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. Together, these attacks killed 224 people, including twelve Americans.

Senior al-Qaeda operatives have also coordinated attacks from inside Iran, where leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) . . . have provided them with travel documents and safe haven. In Iran, Osama bin Laden’s son, Sa’ad bin Laden, allegedly planned attacks in Tunisia and Saudi Arabia in 2002-2003 that together killed more than 50 people, including twenty Europeans.

Israel has sent troops to Afghanistan to collect intelligence on Iranian military movement, Iranian media has reported.

According to Iran’s Tasnim news agency, Israeli troops are operating out of a United States Air Force base in Shindand in the western Afghanistan province of Herat some 75 kilometers from the Iranian border and were collecting intelligence on Iranian movement around the Persian Gulf region.

Russia’s Sputnik News stated that the Israelis were operating “under the flags of the United States and the United Arab Emirates.”

Sputnik quoted an expert on Israel as saying that the Israeli troops were operating under the framework of American forces stationed there and that the activity was carried out with the knowledge and approval of the Afghan government.

“Of course the proximity to an enemy state is the principle reason for carrying out such an operation and also provides legitimacy,” Semyon Tsipis was quoted by the Sputnik’s Urdu language site. “But beyond that, another objective of the mission is to acquire experience in combat in the local ground conditions and activity against the local population.”

“The second objective of the military presence is to gain combat experience in rugged terrain. The military presence in these areas, where military operations are ongoing, is a great opportunity to gain new experience in a rugged environment,” Tsipis continued, adding that the troops deployed to Afghanistan were Israeli special forces.

Bugs says he just took a wrong turn at Albuquerque but don't be fooled next week the Atlantic Council is hosting a lunchtime talk on how his personal What's Up Doc Diplomacy could reinvigorate Track II talks if only the US would grant 3,000 more visas and civil aviation waivers. https://t.co/fSxqO883c7

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) February 11, 2019

It’s been 40 years since the Iranian Revolution in which the Iranian hardliners overthrew the Shah. Since then, what has the regime accomplished?

Colonialism is alive and well...but this time it's the Iranian regime's terrorism that's expanding.

Former Iranian Presidential Advisor Mohammad Sadeq Al-Hosseini: Zionist Entity Must Be Dismantled; Iran Is Sending Arms to Gaza, West Bank pic.twitter.com/cwUTjWtclT

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) February 11, 2019

Apple and Google are facing criticism for hosting a Saudi Arabian smartphone app on their platforms which allows men to track women’s movements and “stop them leaving the country.”

According to Insider, the app, named Absher — which is available on Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store — is “a government web service which allows men to specify when and how women can cross Saudi borders, and to get close to real-time SMS updates when they travel.”

The SMS feature reportedly notifies men “when a woman uses her passport at a border crossing or airport check-in.”

“Absher also has benign functions — like paying parking fines — but its travel features have been identified by activists and refugees as a major factor in the continued difficulty women have leaving Saudi Arabia,” Insider explained, adding that the app has been “downloaded on Android devices” alone “more than 1 million times.”

Insider further explained that Absher lets male users “decide how many journeys a woman can take,” “how long” a “woman can travel for,” and even provide a list of permissions for the women, which can be canceled at any time.

 According to a 2018 report, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has collected data on 700 incidents of organ trafficking, primarily from north Africa and the Middle East. Yet these figures are conservative, at best. The true scale of the industry is difficult to assess, as the majority of cases go unreported, with victims reluctant to come forward for fear of deportation, arrest or shame.

The trade appears to be flourishing in Egypt, bolstered by an EU-funded clampdown on refugees by security forces. There, the hostile environment created by the arbitrary detention of migrants, and the hike in smugglers’ fees, is creating a perfect opportunity for unscrupulous organ brokers who prey on those desperate to raise funds to cross the Mediterranean.

Newly elected Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar suggested on Sunday that Jewish money was behind American elected officials’ support for Israel, sparking widespread condemnation and fresh allegations of anti-Semitism.

Omar, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, was responding on Twitter to Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCathy’s vow to “take action” against her and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, both of whom support the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

“It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” Omar tweeted, reacting to another tweet from the prominent journalist Glenn Greenwald, who said it was “stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans,” referring to McCarthy’s pledge.

Benjamins are a slang term for $100 bills, which feature US founding father Benjamin Franklin.

When one journalist followed up by saying she wondered who Omar thought was paying American politicians to be pro-Israel, Omar responded: “AIPAC!,” referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

While the pro-Israel lobby wields considerable influence in Washington, it does not contribute to campaigns, nor does it make endorsements.

Omar, a Somali-born refugee from Ethiopia, was recently appointed to the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee. In recent weeks, Omar and others have been vociferous critics of two anti-BDS bills that are being pushed in Congress.

Anti-Semitic Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on Sunday and retweeted a tweet that said "[Omar] might as well call [Jews] hook-nosed."

Omar's vile remarks came in response to a Haaretz report that stated that Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was going to take action against anti-Semitic Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Omar.

"If [Democrats] do not take action I think you’ll see action from myself," McCarthy said. "This cannot sustain itself. It’s unacceptable in this country."

Omar, who has promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that were used by Nazi Germany, said that the GOP's support for Israel was "all about the Benjamins baby."

An hour later, Omar promoted another anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, falsely stating that The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is paying American politicians "to be pro-Israel."

Omar then retweeted the following tweet that stated she "might as well call [American Jews] hook-nosed."

"I’m one of those American Jews who opposes the occupation, laments Israel’s anti-democratic drift, and doesn’t regard the country as especially central to my Jewish identity," Politico magazine editor Joshua Zeitz tweeted. "And I know exactly what the congresswoman meant. She might as well call us hook-nosed."

Congresswoman @IlhanMN just retweeted a criticism of her anti-Semitic tweet which said that “she might as well call us hook-nosed.” pic.twitter.com/VLjEglThZf

— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) February 11, 2019

Embattled anti-Semitic Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is scheduled to speak alongside a senior charity official who has praised the killing of Jews on social media.

"Islamic Relief USA is hosting a fundraising dinner for aid to Yemen on February 23," the Middle East Forum reports. "Rep. Ilhan Omar is due to speak alongside senior Islamic Relief USA official Yousef Abdallah, who was widely criticized in 2017 after the Middle East Forum found he had expressed violently anti-Semitic ideas on his social media accounts."

The Middle East Forum's report provides screenshots and descriptions of numerous anti-Semitic social media posts from Abdallah:

• Abdallah, who serves as Islamic Relief USA's "operations manager," shared a "very beautiful" story about "martyrs" who provide guns to "kill more than 20 jews" and "fire rockets at Tel Aviv."
• Other posts referred to Jews as "stinking," and claim "the Jews put the outside wall of Al Aqsa [the mosque in Jerusalem] on fire." Abdallah also 'liked' a comment on his Facebook post that calls on God to wreak "revenge on the damned rapists Zionists. O God they are no challenge for you . Shake the Earth beneath their feet and destroy them as you destroyed the peoples of ʿĀd, Thamud and Lot."
• And in 2014, after Republican politician Chris Christie apologized for referring to the West Bank and Gaza as "occupied," Abdallah wrote: "Christie kneels down on his knees before the jewish lords and says 'I am sorry'. Only money makes stuff like this happen. Mr. Christie.. Muslims should remember this very well."

Another day, another anti-Semitic controversy for freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.).

This time, she found herself being called out by one of her own Democratic colleagues, Jewish organizations and even Chelsea Clinton for tweets claiming Republican support for Israel is bought and paid for by AIPAC.

Omar linked to a tweet by left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was criticizing House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) for threatening punishment against Omar and fellow anti-Israel Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.). She wrote, "It's all about the Benjamins baby" with musical notes, a reference to $100 bills with Benjamin Franklin's face on them.

Forward opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon criticized Omar for tweeting an "anti-Semitic trope" and said she'd love to know who is "paying American politicians to be pro-Israel." Omar responded, "AIPAC!", the name of the pro-Israel lobbying organization.

Omar's tweets were met with sharp criticism even from members of her own party, including Rep. Max Rose (D., N.Y.). Rose, who is Jewish, tweeted out a statement calling her words "hateful and offensive."

Clinton tweeted in agreement with Ungar-Sargon that the congresswoman had again crossed a line.

"We should expect all elected officials, regardless of party, and all public figures to not traffic in anti-Semitism," Clinton wrote.

On Sunday, after Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) displayed her blatant anti-Semitism by tweeting that GOP support for Israel was "all about the Benjamins," and followed by accusing AIPAC of paying American politicians to support Israel, bipartisan condemnation of her remarks erupted, although no leading Democrats said a word about their colleague’s vile rhetoric.

Omar’s initial anti-Semitic tweet was triggered by famed anti-Semite leftist Glenn Greenwald, who tweeted, "GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy threatens punishment for @IlhanMN and @RashidaTlaib over their criticisms of Israel. It's stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans."

Omar delightedly responded, "It’s all about the Benjamins, baby."

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, an incredibly staunch supporter of Israel who saw Israel get attacked incessantly at the U.N., fired back, "To see this at the UN was a fight every day. This CANNOT be tolerated in our own Congress by anyone of either party. In a time of increased anti semitism, we all must be held to account. No excuses."

McCarthy himself blasted, “Anti-Semitic tropes have no place in the halls of Congress. It is dangerous for Democrat leadership to stay silent on this reckless language.”

Former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who has been virtually the only Democrat willing to call out members of his own party for their anti-Semitism, snapped, "Defending Israel from antisemites is 'all about the Benjamins'? Really? It’s about money? Another antisemitic trope for @Ilhan Omar? She’s like an antisemitic pinball machine that spits out old canards as the ball bounces around her brain. She’s the gift that keeps on giving!"

The time has come to demand Dem leaders speak out against @ilhanmn for her vile antisemitism. This isn’t going away. Where is @nancypelosi @SenSchumer@RepJerryNadler@RepEliotEngel@RepAdamSchiff@DWStweets and DNC leadership? Have they lost their ears, eyes, or damned minds? pic.twitter.com/mRhtDMJSJC

— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) February 11, 2019

On Sunday night, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) took to Twitter to push classic anti-Semitic tropes that the GOP supported Israel because it’s “all about the Benjamins” and that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was paying politicians to support Israel. Now the Democratic House Leadership is condemning her, albeit not removing her from her committee assignment on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs to which she was appointed last month.

“Anti-Semitism must be called out, confronted and condemned wherever it is encountered, without exception,” the statement read. “We are and will always be strong supporters of Israel in Congress because we understand that our support is based on shared values and strategic interests. Legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies is protected by the values of free speech and democratic debate that the United States and Israel share.”

Then the statement went after Omar by name.

“But Congresswoman Omar’s use of anti-Semitic tropes and prejudicial accusations about Israel’s supporters is deeply offensive. We condemn these remarks and we call upon Congresswoman Omar to immediately apologize for these hurtful comments.”

“As Democrats and as Americans, the entire Congress must be fully engaged in denouncing and rejecting all forms of hatred, racism, prejudice and discrimination wherever they are encountered,” the statement concluded.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., apologized Monday for comments in which she implied that a prominent pro-Israel lobby compensated lawmakers for their support of the Jewish state, but insisted on what she called "the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics."

"Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes," Omar wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. "My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole. We have to always be willing to step back and think through criticism, just as I expect people to hear me when others attack me for my identity. This is why I unequivocally apologize."

"At the same time," she added, "I reaffirm the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee], the [National Rifle Association] or the fossil fuel industry. It's gone on too long and we must be willing to address it."

Omar drew condemnation from members of both parties after she tweeted Sunday evening that AIPAC has been paying members of Congress to support Israel. On Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called on Omar to apologize, saying that "her use of anti-Semitic tropes and prejudicial accusations about Israel's supporters is deeply offensive."

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said it was "shocking to hear a Member of Congress invoke the anti-Semitic trope of 'Jewish money.'" Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., called the comments "deeply disappointing and disturbing."

"Her words are deeply hurtful and offensive, particularly as they build on a previous comment she made [in 2012] about Jews 'hypnotizing' the world in support of Israel -- another old trope born of hate-filled texts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion," Nadler said. " ... In this fragile moment in our nation’s history, we must all redouble our efforts to engage in policy debates in ways that respect the dignity and humanity of all people."

Former Obama administration Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro called on all Democrats to condemn Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) for her "outrageous" claims that American politicians support Israel because they're paid off.

Omar, who frequently has to deny she's an anti-Semite, stepped into controversy again on Sunday when she suggested in a tweet that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) was being paid off to criticize her and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) for their anti-Israel stances.

When asked by a liberal magazine editor who exactly was paying politicians to support Israel, she wrote back "AIPAC," the pro-Israel lobbying group.

Even some progressives criticized Omar for the tweets, which they said smacked of anti-Semitic tropes against American Jews. Shapiro, who was appointed to the post by Obama in 2011 and served until 2017, sent a flurry of tweets Monday morning that called for Omar to be "condemned by all in our party."

He noted Democrats were largely quiet when Omar flip-flopped on her support for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, known as BDS.

"Her support for BDS is apparently her essence: blaming Israel alone for the conflict, absolving Palestinians of all responsibility, delegitimizing Israel's very existence, &accusing its supporters of shallow motives &manipulation by Jewish money," he wrote.

Rep. Deb Haaland (D., N.M.) struggled to defend her fellow Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar (Minn.) Monday from charges of anti-Semitism, ultimately pleading ignorance about her string of controversial tweets.

Haaland initially answered a question from CNN host Kate Bolduan by accusing Republicans of greedily taking money from all kinds of suspect sources. This seemed to be echoing Omar’s accusation that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) buys support in Congress, which many took as thinly-veiled anti-Semitism.

"Sure, it's common knowledge that Republicans will—I mean, they do take campaign contributions from everything, everyone and every corporate PAC money and gas and oil industry money and all of these things," Haaland said. "I think that my colleague [Omar], she has decided not to take campaign contributions from some folks. I mean, look, it's not up to us to police what people say on Twitter, you know, with respect to that. I have never witnessed any of my colleagues promote or speak or, you know, allude to anti-Semitism."

This contradicts several Democrats who criticized Omar for peddling the common line of anti-Semites that Jews pay off Congress members to support Israel.

Bolduan pointed out that AIPAC isn’t a political action committee (PAC) that supports politicians and returned to the question of whether some Democrats are right to criticize Omar.

"Right. I mean, I don't have—I don't have a comment on that currently," Haaland said.

"Because you don’t think the comment was anti-Semitic?" Bolduan asked.

Haaland then claimed she had not read the tweet and had only just now heard of it.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke on Monday defended Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D., Minn.) tweets decrying AIPAC and what she suggested was the pro-Israel organization's improper influence on Republican lawmakers.

"So, let us get this straight. It is ‘Anti-Semitism' to point out that the most powerful political moneybags in American politics are Zionists who put another nation's interest (israel's) over that of America ??????" Duke wrote in response to a tweet from Nikki Haley. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations had responded to Omar's tweets from Sunday with condemnation.

The current brouhaha over my rhetoric glosses over the most significant point of all: I declare myself to have only warm feelings for Jews, and insisting that I am something other than what I proclaim myself to be represents a denial of my autonomous selfhood and constitutes oppression. And you can guess what group stands to benefit from that.

You cannot simply take my words and their implications to characterize my intentions, character, or motives. That leaves out the most important element of all: if I do not identify as an antisemite, who are you to determine I am one? What holds true for gender – or any social construct – holds true for antisemitism. So stop distorting things: I can wallow in antisemitic tropes all I please and you may not call me antisemitic. That is for me to decide.

It goes further, however. If at some point I did identify as an antisemite but I do not right now, calling me antisemitic is deadnaming. I decide who and what I am at any given time; no one else may do so. Declaring me antisemitic because of an antisemitic statement I made yesterday or the day before, let alone years ago, violates my right to self-identify, no matter how many old tweets of mine anyone can dig up that indulge in age-old negative stereotypes of Jews. I mean, I even took care to replace “Jews” with “Israel” or “Zionists” to distance myself from such accusations, but my opponents are so focused on demonizing me they didn’t care! Who’s the bigot now?

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) wrote in 2006 an op-ed for the Final Call, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's publication known for espousing anti-Semitism.

Tlaib's piece focused on how legal immigrants should not be deported for minor criminal offenses, according to a report from journalist Jeryl Bier. At the end of her article, the now freshman congresswoman is identified as an "advocacy coordinator of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) in Detroit." Tlaib has not written in the Final Call since then.

Tlaib has come under fire since her election to Congress for ties to individuals and groups that have espoused anti-Semitic views. In January, she attended a private dinner after her swearing-in with Abbas Hamideh, a "Palestinian right of return" activist who has called Israel a "terrorist entity." Hamideh has also tweeted that Israel has a "delusional ISIS-like ideology" and that the creation of the country was a "crime."

In late January, Tlaib advocated against Sen. Marco Rubio's (Fla.) bill concerning Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel, which would allow state and local governments to boycott companies that boycott Israel. Tlaib called the bill an "anti-First Amendment, anti-speech bill," in an interview for the Intercept‘s "Deconstructed" podcast.

On her first visit to New Hampshire, Democratic hopeful Elizabeth Warren failed to dispute the characterization of Israel as an apartheid state.

A potential voter, 74-year-old Bill Monza, who turned up for a Warren event in Dover, New Hampshire, asked the candidate what she thought of Israel’s West Bank settlements and “basically an apartheid situation in Palestine now,” according to a report by journalist Ira Stoll, who attended the event.

Warren neither endorsed nor disputed the apartheid claim.

“Israel lives in a dangerous part of the world where there are not a lot of liberal democracies,” Warren said. “We need a strong Israel there.”

But she noted that “a good ally is an ally that promotes peace” and supports basic humanitarian efforts.

Last May, Warren was one of 13 senators who signed a letter calling on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to "do more to alleviate the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip." (h/t MtTB)

An upcoming Reform Jewish conference will host Al Sharpton, who built his career on anti-Semitism and corruption. Apparently, to the Reform movement, his hatred for Trump trumps his hatred for Jews.

Not everything falls at Sharpton's feet. But ideas have consequences. And these ideas have poisoned part of one generation and are now infecting the next.

As to his historical anti-Semitism, some say Sharpton has outgrown his past. We could perhaps entertain that conclusion if Sharpton addressed his misdeeds and asked his victims for forgiveness during his Obama-era makeover. But this so-called "reverend" is not repentant. The best we can say is that after cable television executives insisted upon – and bought and paid for – Sharpton's good manners, he has had the good sense to stay bought.

So how can Sharpton be among Reform Judaism's guests of honor? Good question. I called Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism. He declined to comment. So I will.

Rabbi Jacobs and his leadership team are political with a fervor that exceeds anything they seem to devote to Hebrew or Torah study. They see Sharpton as a key bedfellow in the anti-Trump alliance as well as a bridge to the African-American community. Jacobs' team thus chooses to see Sharpton Version 2.0, the recently minted civil rights leader, celebrity and power broker. Sharpton's sordid past is off limits.

By contrast, we see and will always remember Yankel Rosenbaum. May his memory be a blessing.

Steven Sackur of HardTalk thinks he’s tough on everyone. But when it comes to the Middle East he’s out of his depth dealing with the Palestinians and Israelis. He’s a wimp with one and a bully with the other. Guess which?

In the UK, a group of artists - Roger Waters, Peter Gabriel, Vivienne Westwood, Mike Leigh and others - appealed to the BBC to boycott the Eurovision 2019 because it is to be held in Tel Aviv.

And I mentioned only the cases which came out during the last week. These confirm the presence in the West of a new kind of virulent anti-Zionist: smiling, wealthy, humanitarian, thirdworldist and leftist entertainers.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Julie Burchill last week asked the right question: Why do liberal luvvies hate Israel so much? “Maybe because Israel is so small its opponents have some weird notion that it can be easily broken, which would also explain how they seem less inclined to go after the massive monoliths of China, Russia and the Muslim Middle East and their vast abuses of human rights, in typical coward-bully fashion”, Burchill wrote.

A new anti-Jewish poison circulates in the wealthy and chattering European classes. In Cannes, the famous Danish director Lars von Trier called Israel "a finger in the ...”.

Thus, in the heart of civilized Europe, with the complacency and collaboration of eminent cultural, artistic and intellectual personalities - Burchill’s “clapped-out Equity branch of the Israel-hating hordes” - the exclusion of the Jews is being openly praised.

As @UNICEF celebrity ambassadors & supporters, I am hoping u can speak out against this @Alyssa_Milano@Angie_Harmon@Pink@LucyLiu@TeaLeoni@Aly_Raismanhttps://t.co/EHVoWLK7Wx

— Ozraeli Dave (@Israellycool) February 10, 2019

Hey @IntJudoFed, when are you going to punish #SaeidMollaei of #Iran for his disgraceful lack of sportsmanship? https://t.co/EpKIE95juo#JudoParis2019

— Ozraeli Dave (@Israellycool) February 10, 2019

In a recent conversation about antisemitism in Britain, an Israeli journalist commented, “Of course you won’t see antisemitism in the British media.” That assumption – however logical it may seem – is, sadly, not correct.

While the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism has been adopted by the British government and many other countries, the world’s biggest and most influential media organization, the BBC, still does not work according to that – or any other – accepted definition.

Viewers of BBC coverage of events following the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher supermarker terrorist attacks in Paris in saw an interview with a French-Israeli woman who expressed concern about Jews being targeted in France.

The BBC journalist promptly retorted, “Many critics, though, of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.”

Accepted definitions of antisemitism include “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.” However, the BBC rejected the many complaints subsequently submitted, taking it upon itself to define what is and what is not antisemitism.

The BBC repeatedly fails to properly identify antisemitism in British politics, and has facilitated the amplification of antisemitic tropes such as “the Jewish lobby.” When the BBC has decided to explain antisemitism to its audiences it has more often than not promoted the Livingstone Formulation (the accusation that a person raising the issue of antisemitism is doing so in bad faith and dishonestly), stating, “Others say the Israeli government and its supporters are deliberately confusing anti-Zionism with antisemitism to avoid criticism.”

The Community Security Trust’s report on antisemitic incidents in the UK during the first half of 2018 includes a photograph showing antisemitic graffiti reading “Jews kill children,” found in the town of Leicester in May 2018. Why would such graffiti, with all of its medieval overtones, appear in 21st-century Britain? In late 2012, the BBC vigorously promoted a story claiming that the infant son of one of its own employees in the Gaza Strip had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. Four months later, a report issued by the UN stated its investigation found that the child’s death had, in fact, been caused by “a Palestinian rocket that fell short.” However, the damage caused by the BBC’s widespread promotion of an unverified story had already been done, and the following year, anti-Israel demonstrators were seen in London carrying placards bearing an image from that story with the slogan “65 years of murder.”

The word “Juden!” was spray painted in yellow across the window of a bagel shop in Paris.

The vandalism was discovered on Saturday morning on a Bagelstein shop in the 4th District of Paris.

Many Parisians took to Twitter to express their horror, the French-language Huffington Post reported.

French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner tweeted late Saturday night “An anti-Semitic tag in the middle of Paris. One too many. ‘Juden’ in yellow letters, as if the most tragic lessons of history no longer enlighten our consciences. Our answer: To do everything to condemn the author of this ignominy. Our honor: Do not let him get away with it.”

Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux called the graffiti “dirty anti-Semitism in the streets of the city of light.”

Fourth District Mayor Ariel Weil, who is Jewish, tried to treat the incident with humor, tweeting: “Not offended by some nostalgia of the Reich and Vichy. We enjoy humor, bagels and view. And you?

The managers of the restaurant filed a police report on Saturday, according to LeParisian. Police came immediately to the restaurant in the center of the capital, according to the report. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

A vandalism attack at a Jewish cemetery in Manchester, England is being treated by police as a hate crime.

Three separate chapels at Philips Park Jewish cemetery in Whitefield were damaged, two stained-glass windows were smashed, several sinks were damaged, and the cemetery surveillance system was stolen, the Manchester Evening News reported.

In addition, dozens of headstones reportedly were damaged and the grave of a prominent Manchester rabbi was smashed open, according to reports.

The attack happened sometime between Friday afternoon and the early hours of Saturday, police told the Manchester newspaper.

The damage will cost tens of thousands of dollars to repair. A crowdfunding page set up in the wake of the attack raised more than $9,000 in the first 17 hours.

On January 27, 2019, an antisemitic lecture by Michigan-based Shiite Imam Bassem Al-Sheraa was uploaded to the YouTube channel of the Al-Zahraa Islamic Center, which is in Detroit. Al-Sheraa said that the Jews have distorted sacred texts and sanctioned the killing of prophets such as Jesus and John the Baptist. He accused the Jews of employing tricks and fraud in matters of religion and morality, and of amassing gold and spreading usury. Explaining that usury is a “peculiar Jewish philosophy,” Imam Al-Sheraa said that the Jews have used it as a means of attaining power, even though it contradicts their religious teachings, and that even the modern banking system is based on the Jews’ “instructions and vision.” He further said that Jewish women have historically established and managed “dens of female iniquity” and headed the brothels of Europe, and that the Jews allow their faith to be passed down maternally so that their women could increase the Jewish population through prostitution. Al-Sheraa is a graduate of the Najaf Hawza in Iraq. He emigrated to the United States and serves as the imam of the Al-Zahraa Islamic Center of Michigan. He also founded the Scholarly Najaf Hawza in Northern America – Michigan.

Italy without tomatoes, Ireland without potatoes and the United States without filter coffee – these are all unimaginable culinary nightmares.
To these scenarios we can add a world devoid of basil, meaning no pesto, no Caprese salad and no yummy fresh leaves mixed into our salad or melted with butter onto steaming hot garlic bread. The horror!

And not an inconceivable horror, either. Recent years have seen severe damage to sweet basil crops all over the world following a downy mildew epidemic that causes deformed leaves and chlorotic lesions.
Luckily, a new Israeli invention is on hand to ensure we can all continue to stir the delicious fresh herb into our pasta.

The severity of the downy mildew epidemic, which first appeared in Israel in 2011, led researchers from Bar-Ilan University and seed specialists at Genesis Seeds to investigate how the leaf fungus is transmitted.
“Basil worldwide has been afflicted in recent years by a new disease that can’t be treated with chemical spraying because of regulation,” says Prof. Yigal Cohen, an Israel Prize-winning researcher at Bar-Ilan University.

“Therefore there was a need to find other ways to overcome the disease.”
“To this end we went down the genetic route – that is, we searched for genes that are resistant to the disease,” he explains.

Virgin Atlantic has announced the launch of a new daily flight route between London’s Heathrow and Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airports, starting on September 25.

The five-hour flight – the company’s shortest from the UK – will operate on Virgin Atlantic’s Airbus A330-300 aircraft and offer in excess of 180,000 seats per year across all classes between Tel Aviv and Heathrow, the world’s seventh busiest airport. Tickets will go on sale from February 25.

“Tel Aviv represents a fantastic opportunity for us – Israel’s economy is booming. And as one of the world’s leading tech hubs, we’re anticipating many business travelers and entrepreneurs flying between Tel Aviv and the UK,” said Virgin Atlantic CEO Shai Weiss.

“We also see a significant opportunity to increase competition in the US-Tel Aviv market, using the strength of our transatlantic joint venture with Delta, to offer customers from Tel Aviv a wide range of US destinations connecting through London Heathrow, including New York and San Francisco.”

In addition to carrying customers, the new route will enable Sir Richard Branson’s airline to offer an expedited cargo service from Tel Aviv to the US for goods such as fresh produce and electronic products.

Harem, the Reshet drama series based on a real-life Israeli cult, has been bought by the SBS Australian public broadcaster.

Reshet announced Monday that SBS had purchased the first season of the show, which includes eight episodes. The series, starring Alon Abutbul, is based on the real case of Goel Ratzon, a polygamist cult leader who was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2014. Ratzon, a native of Tel Aviv who had more than 30 “wives” and close to 50 children, was eventually convicted of rape, incest, sex with a minor, fraud, slavery and other charges.

The series Harem, which premiered on Reshet 13 last year, is based on the autobiographical work Women of the Harem, by Maayan Smadar, who was one of Ratzon’s victims. The show also stars Chen Amsalem Zaguri (Shadow Government), Asi Levi (BeTipul) and Shira Haas (Foxtrot, Shtisel). In the series, lead character Shabtai, who imagines himself a spiritual leader, lives on a commune with more than a dozen women he has lured with grand promises of healing and understanding.

The series won critical acclaim in Israel, and Abutbul was nominated for a best actor award by the Israeli Academy of Television. The series was created by Anat Barzilai, Hadar Galron and Gadi Taub and produced by Endemol Shine.

Last year, Reshet announced it was commissioning a second series of the show.

The shimmering musical “The Band’s Visit,” based on an Israeli film of the same name about an Egyptian band that accidentally winds up in a dusty Israeli backwater, won a Grammy Award on Sunday for best musical theater album.

The award was one of a series announced during the pre-telecast.

The show centers on members of an Egyptian police orchestra booked to play a concert at the Israeli city of Petah Tikva but accidentally ending up in the drowsy town of Bet Hatikva in the Negev Desert. Over the next few hours, the townspeople and the musicians learn about each other and themselves.

Last year it was the big winner at the Tony Awards, capturing the best musical award and nine other prizes, including leading actor, leading actress, orchestration, sound design, original score, best book of a musical, lighting and featured actor.

Neerja Bhanot's story is one of tragedy but also of exemplary bravery at the highest level.

Imagine yourself a flight attendant. You just landed at your destination, then all of the sudden you, your plane and all of those you are deemed responsible for are overrun by four armed terrorists. What do you do?

On September 5, 1986, Pan Am Flight 73 was hijacked on the ground at Karachi Airport in Pakistan by Palestinian terrorists led by the Abu Nidal Organization, a terrorist organization backed by Libya, in the hopes using the leverage to pick up and release a number of Palestinian prisoners held in both Cyprus and Israel.

As the plane reached the tarmac, the four hijackers, dressed in the clad of the Pakistan Airport Security Force, made their way to the boarding stairways of the flight and on board the plane armed with assault rifles, pistols, grenades, and plastic explosive belts.

The flight as scheduled was to depart from Bombay, India to later arrive in New York with scheduled stops in Pakistan and Germany. The plane was waiting for the new passengers scheduled to join the flight in Karachi as the plane was subsequently overrun by the hijackers.

Bhanot's defining moment came on September 5, 1986, which consequently led to the end of her life, but not without recognition.

As the hijacking commenced, Bhanot had the presence of mind to alert the pilots in the cockpit that the cabin was under distress - allowing the three-member crew to escape leaving the plane immobilized and unusable for the terrorists onboard.

What would Anne Frank’s life have looked like if she had survived the Holocaust? Would she still be alive today, at age 89?

An Italian production company is working with Anne Frank Fonds, the Dutch foundation established by her father in the 1960s, to create a new film exploring that idea. The film began shooting last month.

According to Variety, the documentary will focus on five women who survived the Holocaust but also experienced “deportation, suffering and being denied their childhood and adolescence.” The filmmakers said they want to “be able to render/reveal that desire for life and youth that was also Anne’s and that allowed her to fight fear and resist, even under the most inhumane conditions.”

The documentary, titled #Anne Frank Parallel Stories, is being created to mark what would have been her 90th birthday this summer.

The film’s two directors, Italian TV journalists Sabina Fedeli and Anna Migotto, told Variety that the documentary will be “retracing Anne’s ‘places’ and ‘locations,’ so that audiences will be able to get to know her through several significant passages from her diary, and enter her world; the real as well as the imaginary.”

The life of Anne Frank, a young Jewish woman from Frankfurt, Germany who lived with her family in hiding in Amsterdam for more than two years during the Holocaust, has been turned into countless films. In 1944, Frank and her family were discovered and sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she died of typhus in 1945 at age 15.

Elected officials should be particularly sensitive and careful on the question of the role played by campaign contributions in influencing US policies toward Israel and the Middle East. There is no doubt that money often plays a major role in our political system. 

In the 2018 midterm election, J Street successfully worked to shift the balance of power in Washington by electing a diplomacy-first Congress that will act as a check on President Trump’s dangerous agenda and ideology. JStreetPAC shattered its own records in the 2018 cycle, distributing nearly $5 million for 163 congressional candidates, including nearly $2.3 million for House challengers, 30 of whom were victorious. JStreetPAC reaffirmed its status as the nation’s largest pro-Israel PAC, raising over 53 percent of all pro-Israel PAC money distributed this cycle. The success of diplomacy-first candidates in some of the country’s most competitive districts confirmed a major shift in the politics of foreign policy.

Elected officials should also refrain from labeling all criticism of Israeli actions or policies as “anti-Semitic,” in a transparent effort to silence legitimate discussion and debate. Such attacks only undermine the vital effort to counter the actual scourge of anti-Semitism in the United States and around the world.

Left-wing anti-Semitism is a gift to the right.

Consciously or not, Omar invoked a poisonous anti-Semitic narrative about Jews using their money to manipulate global affairs. ...Her words were a gift to Republicans, who seek to divide the Democrats over Israel, even as their president traffics in anti-Semitic imagery and stereotypes.The knives were out for Omar and she ran right into them.

Omar herself has been subject to vicious Islamophobic smears, and has also come under attack for supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which seeks to use economic pressure to secure Palestinian rights. Perhaps such criticism is why she’s sometimes seemed unwilling or unable to distinguish between disingenuous political pile-ons and good-faith calls to respect Jewish sensitivities. But whether from carelessness or callousness, her weekend tweets damaged her political allies and squandered some of her own hard-won power.

I certainly have no problem with denunciations of Aipac, which plays a malign role in pushing American policy in the Middle East to the right. [AIPAC has been supportive of the two state solution for a long time now and plenty of moderate Democrats support AIPAC. - EoZ] 

In truth, while Aipac’s influence is extensive, no one needs to pay off conservatives to make them support Israel. Evangelicals, a far bigger constituency than American Jews, tend to be pro-Israel for religious reasons; some believe that the return of Jews to their biblical homeland is a precondition for the rapture and the Second Coming of Christ. Plenty of others on the right love Israel because it’s a nationalistic, pro-American power in the middle of the Middle East. You can’t blame Jewish money for Kevin McCarthy’s terrible politics.

Not long after Pelosi’s statement, Omar released one of her own, apologizing “unequivocally.” She wrote, “Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes.” Personally, I’m happy to accept her apology.

• Tactical apology—when a person accused of wrongdoing offers an apology that is rhetorical and strategic—and not necessarily heartfelt
• Explanation apology—when a person accused of wrongdoing offers an apology that is merely a gesture that is meant to counter an accusation of wrongdoing. In fact, it may be used to defend the actions of the accused
• Formalistic apology—when a person accused of wrongdoing offers an apology after being admonished to do so by an authority figure—who may also be the individual who suffered the wrongdoing

Deflection apology - when a person accused off wrongdoing offers an apology but tried to change the subject by saying that others do the same or are worse.

The ACLU has long argued that although private parties have the right to refuse to do business with people for ideological reasons, the government need not fund such conduct. “Taxpayer dollars must not fund discrimination” carried out by private parties, the ACLU states in its issue brief on government-funded discrimination. It has successfully pushed measures banning the federal government from contracting with companies that engage in certain boycotts. And it “strongly” supported legislation that would bar federal funds from being used by states in contracts with companies that engage in boycotts.

Identity politics is the key to understanding the ACLU’s apparent change of heart. The antiboycott laws the ACLU has defended are meant to protect gays and lesbians, an identity group they favor. The ACLU acknowledges that in many states it is “legal to fire or refuse to hire someone based on their sexual orientation,” but argues that companies that do so “must not be allowed to do so with taxpayer dollars.” It inexplicably ignores that the logic of those antiboycott laws applies equally to Israel.

The ACLU may think that refusing to do business with people because of their sexuality is immoral while refusing to do business with people connected with Israel is a blow for justice. That’s an intelligible political position, but it’s lousy First Amendment jurisprudence. First Amendment protections are the same regardless of what one thinks of the underlying conduct.

I played a role in developing the state anti-BDS laws, submitting testimony to legislatures and advising private groups that supported the measures. To avoid any constitutional doubts, I stuck to the model of antiboycott laws that the ACLU supports, comfortable in the knowledge that their constitutionality was unquestioned. I underestimated how much changes when sexual identity is replaced with Israeli identity.

There is more at stake here than hypocrisy. The ACLU’s enthusiasm for Israel boycotts has led it to take legal positions that threaten to undermine the antidiscrimination norms it has worked for decades to achieve. Now it is prepared to risk legal protections for sexual minorities for the sake of creating a constitutional right to boycott Jews. The ACLU probably hopes to have it both ways, arguing that boycotts of Israelis are “political” and boycotts of gays and lesbians are just mean. But courts won’t maintain one standard for boycotts of progressives’ favored targets and another standard for everyone else.

Read my new op-ed in @WSJ: "The ACLU opposes laws against boycotting Israel, even though the laws are patterned after those that protect gays and lesbians" https://t.co/PyOpRb4FJF via @WSJOpinion

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) February 12, 2019

It is rare for mention of Jews of Arab countries to penetrate the mainstream international media, let alone for a voice in the maligned Israeli government to make itself heard. This piece in Newsweek by the minister of social equality, Gila Gamliel, bucks both trends. Gamliel recently launched a new app for uploading the stories of Jews from Arab countries to an oral history website, Seeing the Voices.

Gila Gamliel: story with us for good
Like most things, this history has its good and its bad periods; peaceful neighborly relations were followed by economic discrimination and then deadly violence as thousands of Jews were murdered in violent rioting caused by blood libels and false accusations.

My father Yosef escaped Yemen at the age of 10, and came to Israel as an orphan, where he was adopted by a Polish Jewish family. My mother Aliza came from Libya to Israel at the age of 6, the oldest of 12 brothers and sisters.
Aliza and Yosef were just two people among the 850,000 other Jews from Arab countries who were forced to leave their homes.

For seven decades, the story of the Jews from the Arab countries—both the good and the bad—was left largely untold both in Israel and around the world.
Now as a Minister in the Government of Israel, I am working to preserve the rich cultural history of our parents and grandparents from the Arab world.

We’ve just launched an app allowing Israeli citizens to document the testimony of family members and friends; we’ve promoted research on this history by academics and historians, we have marked an annual commemoration of the Jewish communities from the Arab countries; and we’ve made sure this history is in our classroom schoolbooks.

I can say with satisfaction that this important part of history is now with us for good.

It is a critical part of the story of the Jewish people who over centuries of steadfast determination managed to maintain their identity and religion, along with the dream of one day returning to the Holy Land.

President Reuven Rivlin flew to Cyprus Tuesday to mark 70 years since the closure of British detention camps on the island for Jews trying to reach Palestine after World War II.

He was to visit a monument in Nicosia dedicated to the 2,200 children of Holocaust survivors who were born in British colonial camps there between 1946 and 1949.

Rivlin also held talks with Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades.

Cyprus and Israel aim to upgrade relations, “especially on energy, security, economy, tourism, research and innovation,” tweeted Anastasiades.

Rivlin said cooperation between Israel and Cyprus on intelligence, security and terror prevention has made the Mediterranean “much, much safer.”

After the talks Tuesday with Anastasiades, he said Israeli-Cypriot security ties “have never been better” with the two countries’ navies and commando units sharing “space, knowledge and experience.”

He added that the focus of the neighbors’ strategic partnership, which includes Greece, is developing the East Med gas pipeline that “could be one of the greatest underwater projects in the world.”

The envisioned pipeline would carry natural gas from deposits in the eastern Mediterranean to Europe via Greece and Italy.

On the Sabbath day, February 15 1919, horror came to the Jewish community of the Ukrainian town of Proskurov. The Proskurov pogrom would come to signify the tragedy that befell the Jews of Ukraine during the Ukrainian-Soviet war. (1918-1920)

Following the withdrawal of German troops after World War One from Ukraine, Communist Bolshevik troops sought control as did Ukrainian nationalists. Also involved were the White Russians who wanted to restore Czarist rule.

Proskurov had no historical record of ever experiencing a pogrom despite its location in a terror plagued region that had suffered many violent attacks for hundreds of years. No pogrom since that of Kishinev in 1904 had made such an impact upon Jewry. The Pruskoruv pogrom caused great fear and panic which spread throughout towns in Ukraine in early 1919 and alarmed world Jewry to the dire emergency Ukrainian Jewry was facing.

In early 1919, Ukrainian nationalists unleashed their fury against the Jews. Massacres were perpetrated in Yekaterinoslav, Zhitomir and other cities in the Ukraine. Proskurov Jewry, which numbered about 25,000, was soon in great danger.

The local Haidamak (Cossack) leader Ataman Semosenko, of the third regiment, who had assumed command just days earlier, targeted the Jews. At a dinner celebrating his new command, he delivered a speech in which he accused the Jews of being the enemy of Ukraine and the Cossacks. Semosenko called for the elimination of the Jews in order to “save the Ukraine.”

The event, which took place on a Sunday, was attended by around 70 people, including a number of "interfaith" leaders, a representative of the Israeli embassy in London and by Sara Khan, the "Extremism Commissioner" appointed by the Prime Minister in the wake of the string of terror attacks which struck Britain in 2017. Local press reported all of this as a signal of "defiance." Fiyaz Mughal, the representative of Faith Matters who had been partly responsible for the successful transplant of the event to Ilford, told the UK's Jewish Chronicle that he believed this was the first time such an exhibition had been shown at a mosque in Britain and that the event was "significant". "It sends a clear signal," he added, "to anti-Semites and extremists that education on the Holocaust will not be stopped, particularly when we want Muslims to engage with it."

Of course, it is a good thing that in the end, the exhibition was able to go ahead. Those who organised it and re-arranged it, especially at such short notice, should indeed be praised. Amid the small amount of jubilation that the event was able to take place at all, there was no rumination on the deeper and disturbing trend.

We are often told in Britain -- as elsewhere in Europe -- that there are specific "integration" problems that we may suffer, but that by and large everyone in our country wishes to get along and does get along. We hear much talk of "British values" and that officials from government and civil society should stand firm against those who would subvert these values. We have interfaith groups, government bodies and any number of people paid by government to address "integration" and "cohesion". By and large, the political and commentator class says that things are going pretty well in Britain -- that our minority communities are as British as anyone else and that anyone who says otherwise or even worries about the whole issue in any way is some variety of "phobe".

Yet, an event like this -- an awkward, embarrassing but ultimately remedied event -- is looked on as indicative of... really very little. National papers pay little attention and no one thinks of making anything like a fuss. A story such as this should provide the strongest possible alarm bells to government and civil society. If, in 2019, any Muslim organization wants to commemorate the bravery of some Muslims in the Holocaust, this has to be staged secretly, covertly, and in fear of some violent or non-violent backlash? What was proposed at Golders Green and then took place at Ilford was not a full overview of the Holocaust. It was not an overview of the suffering of the Jewish people in the middle of the last century. It was a focus on one tiny, relatively minor aspect of that catastrophe -- an aspect that should cause pride rather than fury and anger among any decent Muslim or non-Muslim.

In Britain, in 2019, government and non-government figures still feel they must flit around, letting no one know of their movements to commemorate an aspect of the Holocaust. They manage to have a commemoration of the Holocaust in secret. And they think this is a victory.

At an Oxford Union debate on 17 January on the motion "This House Believes The Arab World Has Failed The Palestinian People", that's how Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of Britain's forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, aptly characterised the plight of the so-called Palestinians, pawns in their fellow Arabs' rejectionist stance towards Israel.

Watch the colonel's speech here:


The introduction to the motion noted:
"Arab support for a Palestinian state has long been assumed. However, the denial of citizenship to 4.6 million exiled Palestinians, combined with greater Israeli-Arab collaboration, has led some to question their commitment. Are these incidents isolated, or symptomatic of an Arab world that has failed the people of Palestine?"

Apart from Colonel Kemp speakers "in proposition" were, in the Union's words:
'Mudar Zahran - Palestinian-Jordanian Secretary General of the Jordanian Opposition Coalition. He has advocated for Jordan to be the Palestinian state'
and
'Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad - President and co-founder of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, an Islamic libertarian organisation which counters distortions and misconceptions about Islamic beliefs and practice'

On the opposing side:
'Lowkey - British-Iraqi rapper and activist known for his politically charged music, including Long Live Palestine. He is a Patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Ghada Karmi - Palestinian doctor, journalist and academic at the University of Exeter, she fled Jerusalem with her family in 1948

Kito de Boer - Former Dutch diplomat, he served as Head of Mission of the Quartet from 2015 to 2017, an international organisation which mediates between Israelis and Palestinians'

The end of January brought with it the launching of a new Islamic propaganda campaign called "We are all Mary," its name referring to the mother of Jesus, and its content purporting to show the world the suffering of Arab women in Jerusalem as a result of the "Zionist occupation's" persecution aimed particularly at them. The public relations campaign began in Istanbul, probably the initiative of Hamas operatives, but spread quickly all over the Islamic world thanks to the widespread use of social media.

The "Palestine On-line" website posted a news item regarding the campaign, sent by its Jerusalem correspondent, Mustafa Zabar, in which he wrote:

Jerusalem activist Zena Amar praised the "We are all Mary" initiative, telling the "Falestin" newspaper: "…the goal of the campaign 'We are all Mary' is to show everyone the suffering of the Jerusalem woman who experiences pain - and hope - in Jerusalem, because she is uprooted from her family in order to be there when arrested or is denied entry to Jerusalem. The Jerusalem woman is either the mother of a prisoner or the mother of a son who is a shaheed or who has been wounded. The world remains silent despite the crimes of the occupation against Jerusalem's women. That is why the campaign bears the name of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who lived under difficult conditions, similar to those of today's Jerusalem woman."

Jerusalem activist Hajja Khawid commented: "Jesus' mother Mary gave birth to the best of all men and the Jerusalem woman gives birth to the men who are best at protecting Al Aksa, the city of Jerusalem and its holy places. Thanks to these women, men stand strong, while women are at the helm in all our battles - and that is why the occupation concentrates on punishing the Jerusalem woman. "

The U.S.-led summit in Warsaw that will start on Wednesday may very well be a strategic turning point in the Trump presidency.

After several unilateral moves – such as the withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran and the start of the pullout from Syria – the U.S. is now about to forge a wide coalition against the Iranian menace.

In other words, the White House is now asking all those who feel threatened by Iran – be it because of its nuclear ambitions or its ballistic missiles – to join hands and counter the threat, not just behind closed doors and in secret talks but through a public show of force.

The summit will focus on the various means to check Iran, not just sanctions.

For Israel, which is taking part in the summit, this will be a rare moment where it would able to talk with Arab leaders in an international forum that does not deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is important in and of itself.

The summit will allow Israel not only to coordinate moves with the power brokers of the Sunni Arab world but also to test the waters and see whether they are willing to upgrade the secret ties Gulf states reportedly have with Israel and make them public.

Lebanon said it will not take part in a conference that Poland is holding this week on the situation in the Middle East and Iran, citing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s scheduled attendance at the summit.

Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil made the announcement Monday during a joint press conference with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The two-day Warsaw conference begins Wednesday and will be co-hosted by the US. Some 80 countries have been invited, including Israel. The conference is widely seen as aimed at isolating Iran, which was not invited.

“We explained why we will not be present at the Warsaw conference,” Bassil was quoted saying by the Naharnet news site. “Israel will be present and because of the orientation the conference is expected to take.”

“Lebanon is committed to the dissociation policy,” he added, referring to Beirut’s attempts to staying out of regional conflicts.

Iran enjoys wide influence in the country through the Hezbollah terror group, which along with allied parties holds a majority in parliament.

Lebanon is technically at war with Israel, and Lebanese officials avoid conferences where Israelis are present.

Israel is set to sign a free-trade agreement with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union in the near future, according to officials in Moscow and Jerusalem.

Incidentally, Iran is also in advanced talks about creating a free trade zone with the union, known as EAEU. However, each country would sign its own free-trade agreement (FTA) with the union, which would mean that Jerusalem would not be able to trade freely with Tehran, or other states signing similar agreements.

“The negotiations with the EAEU were launched in Moscow in April 2018, following positive results of a comprehensive Joint Feasibility Study conducted by the parties,” a spokesperson for the Economy Ministry told The Times of Israel on Monday.

“The agreement will cover various aspects of trade in goods, such as rules of origin, customs cooperation, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, e-commerce, dispute settlement, and others.”

Tehran’s ambassador to Moscow Mehdi Sanaei said Friday that he expects the Iranian parliament to ratify the free-trade agreement with the EAEU “in the near future,” according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.

“The agreement is very important for Iran… because it opens the gates to a big market for our country, and also opens the Iranian market to Russia and northern countries,” he said.

Asked what significance, if any, Iran’s joining the EAEU free trade zone would have for Israel, the ministry spokesperson referred this reporter to the Prime Minister’s Office. The PMO did not respond to a query by the time of publication.

The United States has denied accusations it is pressuring banks to stop dealing with the Palestinian Authority, whose relations with Washington have been plummeting.

Several Palestinian officials have accused the US of trying to force banks not to deal with transactions linked to the Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-rule in the West Bank.

“The United States has not requested that foreign donors restrict assistance to the Palestinians, nor has it requested that financial institutions cease transfers to Palestinian Authority (PA) bank accounts,” a US official told AFP late Monday.

“We are aware of media reports suggesting this has occurred. Those reports are incorrect,” he said.

PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki has said on local radio that the US was using “all means to press Arab countries to stop financial support for our people.”

On Sunday, senior Palestinian official Hussein al-Sheikh charged that Washington was launching a “financial siege” on the PA. “Major international financial institutions and parties have begun to accede to an American request to impose a tight financial siege on the Palestinian Authority,” he told AFP.

Once bastions of support for President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela's shanty towns have in recent weeks grown increasingly fond of opposition leader Juan Guaidó. In fact, he is now so popular in Venezuela's slums that he asks me to meet him in one such barrio north of the country's capital of Caracas. When Guaidó learns that I am Israeli, his face lights up.

Some 50 foreign countries, including Israel, have recognized Guaidó as Venezuela's interim president.

I asked Guaidó whether he would act to re-establish diplomatic ties between Venezuela and Israel, which were cut off by the country's former leader Hugo Chávez following 2008's Operation Cast Lead.

"I am very happy to announce that the process of stabilizing relations with Israel is in full swing," Guaidó said, noting, "It is very important for us.""We will renew ties, later we will announce the appointment of an ambassador to Israel, and we really hope an ambassador from Israel will come to us."

In the past, the friendly relations between Venezuela and Israel were such that Caracas was one of the few capitals to establish its embassy in Israel in Jerusalem.

When asked whether Venezuela's new embassy would be situated in Jerusalem, Guaidó replies that "that is one of the subjects we are talking about. I will declare the resumption of ties and the site of the embassy at the proper time," he said.

Ever since the socialists have taken power in the country, many of Venezuela's Jews have fled the country as a result of increasing anti-Semitism, some of them have immigrated to Israel. Venezuelan Jews in Israel have been very active in efforts to enlist support for Guaidó, so I asked him whether he had a message for the Venezuelan Jews now residing in Israel.

"There are many Venezuelans in Israel and many Jews in Venezuela," he said. "This [Jewish] community is very active and prosperous, one which has contributed greatly to our society. I assume they are happy we are renewing ties with Israel."

Only one thing hasn’t been tried throughout this entire cursed period of time. Just one simple measure hasn’t been implemented, among other things because of objections from the defense establishment: putting an end to terrorist salaries doled out by the Palestinian Authority.

Due to the fact that our security agencies work with the PA to thwart terrorist attacks, and because the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet are concerned about the possible collapse of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’s security forces, our own agencies, incredibly, have balked at deducting the amount paid by the PA to terrorists from the taxes Israel collects on its behalf.

The same defense establishment — again, incredibly — has dragged its feet on compiling data about the phenomenon, as required by a law passed with great effort by Knesset members Avi Dichter and Elazar Stern.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it must be said, is torn between the position of the defense establishment and basic common sense, which demands punishing the Palestinians for this industry of murder. Although Netanyahu has routinely acknowledged the severity of the phenomenon of terrorist salaries, to this day he hasn’t claimed a single shekel from Abbas because of it.

Indeed, esteemed prime minister and security agency leaders — after three years and dozens of murdered Israelis, the time has come to try the only leverage we have yet to apply, and that is deducting the terrorist payments from the PA’s taxes.

This is the bare minimum requirement if we want to stop the lone-wolf attacks. As for the PA and its security forces: If they encourage lone-wolf attacks, why is it so important for us to protect them?

We have always been told that for as long as Israeli occupation continues, Palestinian terror will not end. Although the terrorists were not born murderers, the harsh reality of life made them this way, say the claimants. In order to uproot it, however, one has to give the Palestinians hope, and remove all cause for them to resort to terrorist activity. This thesis of "terrorism caused by occupation" is supported by many —too many, one might say. Not all of them are even anti-Semites or anti-Zionists; some are good people, who actually believe this nonsense.

Sometimes, there is indeed a connection between terror and a struggle for liberation. This is not the case when it comes to Palestinian terrorism, which in recent decades has practically evolved into jihadist terrorism. They indeed were not born murderers, but the brainwashing, the incitement and the overall environment turned them into them.

During the week in which Ori Ansbacher was murdered, some 186 people were killed by jihadists elsewhere in the world. Since the start of 2019, 712 people have been murdered, while 2018 saw some 11,769 jihadist killings.

The majority of these terror acts did not actually make international headlines, because they occurred in Asia and Africa, so who cares? In Congo, Chad, Somalia, Nigeria, Kenya, and many other places. That’s in addition to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria, where jihadist murders are carried out on a daily basis. The majority of the victims in these attacks are Muslims and their sins unclear.

Terror is also rampant in Sweden, Belgium, London, and New York. Is there an occupation in those places too? The main reason for terrorism is incitement and brainwashing in mosques and on social networks. Some brave, prominent imams, such as the Paris-based Hassen Chalghoumi or Mohammad Tawhidi from Australia, as well as many others, are fighting this cancerous ideology. Although they reveal the mechanisms of brainwashing, they usually are given a cold shoulder, because the progressive elites would rather hear the post-colonial and anti-Zionist attribution for this horrific phenomenon.

The Palestinian man suspected of brutally murdering 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher told interrogators from the Shin Bet security service that he entered Israel and looked for a Jewish victim because he wanted to be a martyr, Channel 13 news reported Monday.

“I entered Israel with a knife because I wanted to become a martyr and murder a Jew,” Arafat Irfaiya reportedly said. “I met the girl by chance.”

Irfaiya said that after he crossed the Green Line he sprinted to deliberately avoid detection by security cameras.

The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on Monday extended Irfaiya’s remand for an additional ten days.

It was the first time Irfaiya appeared before cameras since his Friday arrest in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He had open scabs on his forehead, nose and below his right eye. The suspect appeared to smirk from his seat as photographers flashed their cameras before being ushered out of the courtroom.

Palestinian terror groups and the Palestinian Authority appear to have quietly renounced the confessed murderer of Israeli teen Ori Ansbacher because he also allegedly raped her.

Citing his answers under questioning, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said that Arafat Irfaiya, 29, left his home in Hebron on Thursday armed with a knife and made his way toward Jerusalem, where he spotted Ori Ansbacher, 19, in a forested area on the city’s southern edge. He then raped and murdered her, according to the agency.

“If it turns out there was a sexual assault, we will not represent him,” the head of the PA-affiliated Palestinian Prisoners Club, Qadura Fares, told the Haaretz daily on Monday.

On Sunday, the Shin Bet announced that the murder was a nationalistically motivated terror attack. The intelligence agency, which has been running the investigation with assistance from police, had held off on announcing a terror motive in the first few days after the attack.

Irfaiya confessed his actions to investigators and accurately recreated the events at the scene, the agency said. He also claimed he had done it to become a “martyr” for the Palestinian cause.

The recent killing of Israeli teenager Ori Ansbacher in what officials have described as a Palestinian terrorist attack drew increased international condemnation on Monday.

Israeli security officials said 29-year-old Hebron resident Arafat Irfaiya had confessed to the murder, which took place in a forest southwest of Jerusalem on Thursday.

Ansbacher, a national service volunteer and daughter of a rabbi from the West Bank community of Tekoa, was found with multiple stab wounds to her chest.

Investigators are seeking to indict Irfaiya for nationalistically-motivated rape and murder. He appeared in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court court on Monday, where his remand was extended for ten days.

‎Nickolay Mladenov — the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process — said in a tweet on Monday that he was “appalled by the horrific murder of 19-year old #OriAnsbacher, by a Palestinian perpetrator in #Jerusalem.”

“My deepest condolences to Ori’s family,” he continued. “There is no justification for violence and terror. Such brutal acts must be condemned by all. #UN”

Emanuele Giaufret, the European Union’s ambassador to Israel, also tweeted his condolences to Ansbacher’s family on Monday. German Ambassador to Israel Susanne Wasum-Rainer likewise took to the social media network to say that she was “shocked and [appalled]” by the killing, while a fellow German official called for an end to Palestinian stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.

With tensions high along Israel’s northern border, soldiers from the IDF’s 401st Armored Brigade are completing a large-scale drill simulating war with Hezbollah.

“This drill simulated what will need to be done during a war with Hezbollah,” Maj. Tsur Goldman of the 401st Armored Brigade told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

While most drills take place in the Ramat HaGolan, hundreds of troops drilled for two weeks in the northern Jordan Valley in challenging mountainous terrain which is similar to the terrain found in southern Lebanon and on a variety of scenarios including urban combat.

According to Goldman, “there is a good feeling among the soldiers that we will complete our mission,” especially after they finished a 17 week long training “which allowed us to go from looking at the most basic thing to in depth to the smallest detail.”

The IDF has significantly stepped up the scope and frequency of its combat training in order to improve its readiness. As part of the IDF’s five-year Gideon plan, the military has returned to 17 weeks of consecutive training, an increase from the 13 weeks soldiers trained for the past 15 years.

Last week, the IDF’s Givati reconnaissance battalion completed a challenge drill simulating war with Hezbollah and a week earlier troops belonging to the 450th Battalion from the IDF’s school for Infantry Corps Professions & Squad Commanders (also known as Bislamach), completed a similar large scale drill in northern Israel.

Labor party chief Avi Gabbay on Tuesday offered unequivocal praise of the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, saying it was “the right thing to do,” and reiterating his party’s commitment to a two-state solution.

The comments drew immediate anger from Gabbay’s audience at a conference of the right-wing Besheva weekly newspaper in Jerusalem.

Speaking days after Israel Resilience head Benny Gantz drew ire from the right for appearing to applaud the Gaza pullout, Gabbay said that he supported the controversial move despite the territory having since fallen into the hands of the terror group Hamas.

“People forget that [before the disengagement] they fired rockets on Sderot from within Gaza,” Gabbay told participants, referring to an Israeli city near the Gaza border pummeled for years by crude Kassam rockets.

“Disengagement was the right thing to do. Our job is to separate from the Palestinians on the basis of a two-state solution with us responsible for security. This is our worldview,” he said.

Met with boos from some in the crowd, the Labor leader responded: “Get used to it, there are other opinions [than yours].”

More than 20,000 permits were granted to Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria to enter Israel and receive treatment or support a patient who was receiving treatment in the Jewish state, according to numbers released to The Jerusalem Post by the Unit for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).

That number is up by nearly 3,000 from the year before.

Medical coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has been ongoing since 1995 and continues to increase each year, despite ebbs and flows on the security and diplomatic fronts.

As one representative from the program who asked to remain anonymous explained, “treatment must go on” even in times of high tension, including during each of the two intifadas and the more recent uptick of violence in the West Bank.

The Israeli health coordinator trains Palestinian doctors in Israel, helping to improve their capacity to treat patients in the West Bank. Palestinian doctors are paired with professionals from Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem and they become colleagues and friends.

It is worth noting that the Hamas and Islamic Jihad members who were killed while participating in the violence near the Gaza-Israel border did not come there dressed in military uniforms or carrying their weapons. Instead, the Hamas and Islamic Jihad men participated in the weekly protests dressed in civilian clothes. They pretended they were ordinary and innocent civilians protesting against the economic crisis in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

While they are in Cairo, the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders continue to send thousands of women and children to engage in violent attacks on Israeli soldiers. These leaders do not care about the safety or welfare of their women and children. On the contrary; the more dead women and children, the better. That way, they can blame Israel for killing innocent civilians and incite more Palestinians to join the jihad against Jews.

Those who are encouraging women and children to take part in a violent confrontation with the Israeli army should be held accountable for war crimes. It is time for the international community to call on Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip to stop hiding behind women and children and to stop using them as human shields in their jihad to eliminate Israel.

During the summer in #Gaza, Hamas runs camps to teach children how to be soldiers. Today, on International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers, we call on Hamas to stop exploiting children and to start assuming actual responsibility for the people of the Gaza Strip. #RedHandDaypic.twitter.com/HOInupZNW9

— COGAT (@cogatonline) February 12, 2019

Smoking out the antisemites... https://t.co/6gUes1rfga

— Ozraeli Dave (@Israellycool) February 11, 2019

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed in a recent interview that Hizbullah maintains "active cells" in Venezuela and that "Iranians are impacting the people of Venezuela," because Hizbullah is trained, financed, and equipped by Tehran. Margarita Island, located off the coast of Venezuela, is a well-known criminal hotbed where Hizbullah members have established a safe haven. Yet there's reason to doubt that replacing the current Venezuelan regime with Washington's preferred alternative would change the country's relationship with Hizbullah.

Venezuela's border security and law enforcement officials, amid the country's general desperation, have been largely unwilling to resist bribes and kickback schemes offered by Hizbullah members and their cadres. A government led by opposition leader Juan Guaido would almost certainly be more active in opposing Hizbullah's presence on Venezuelan soil, but there is a major difference between will and capability.

Venezuela serves as Iran's entry point into Latin America, a foothold the Iranians are unlikely to cede without putting up a fight. Moreover, Hizbullah has deep roots in Venezuela, and completely expelling the group remains unlikely.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday threatened the Iranian regime with destruction after an Iranian military leader warned that the Islamic Republic would raze major Israeli cities if the US attacked it.

“I don’t ignore the threats from the Iranian regime, but I’m also not intimidated by them,” Netanyahu said in a Hebrew-language video uploaded to social media.

“If this regime makes the terrible mistake and tries to destroy Tel Aviv or Haifa, it won’t be successful, and it will be the last anniversary of their revolution they will ever celebrate.”

“They should take that into account,” he said.

The threat came as Iran marked the 40th anniversary of its revolution with rallies and marching that featured chants and banners calling for “Death to America,” and “Death to Israel.”

Monday’s celebrations in Tehran were also a backdrop to the military’s display of Iranian-made missiles, which authorities showcase every year during anniversary celebrations.

US National Security Adviser John Bolton blasted the Islamic Republic of Iran Monday on the 40th anniversary of the revolution that created the current government.

"For all your boasts, for all your threats to the life of the American President, you are responsible for terrorizing your own people," Bolton announced in a video message released on the White House Twitter feed. "I don't think you'll have many more anniversaries to enjoy," he said.

In Iran, hundreds of thousands joined a state-sponsored rally waving Iranian flags and chanting anti-American and anti-Israel slogans. President Hassan Rouhani addressed the crowd vowing to "raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground" in the event of a US attack on their soil.

Bolton accused Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other Islamic leaders in Iran of "tyrannizing its own people and terrorizing the world. Iran continues to seek nuclear weapons to intimidate peaceful people, all around the globe, and ballistic missiles to use as delivery systems." He noted Iran's support for Hamas and Hezbollah, proxy militias that threaten Israel, as well as it's military presence in Yemen and Syria.

More than six months ago, Donald Trump declared that the U.S. would no longer abide by the terms of the 2015 agreement in light of Tehran’s violations of it. As Fred Fleitz explains, events have vindicated the U.S. decision:

Trump’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), [as the deal is formally known], did not lead to war with Iran, as many critics predicted. Instead, Iran is far more isolated than it was when President Trump assumed office. The United States has worked to unite its Middle East allies, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia, against Iran and, in Warsaw this month, will co-chair an international conference with Poland on the threat from Iran. Iran’s economy is under unprecedented pressure thanks to re-imposed U.S. sanctions, especially oil sanctions, with negative 1.5-percent growth in 2018 and an expected negative 3.6-percent growth in 2019. Iran’s current year-on-year inflation rate through last month was 40 percent.

Some Trump critics predicted that any effort by the president to reimpose U.S. sanctions lifted by the JCPOA would have little effect, since other parties to the agreement—in particular the EU, Germany, France, and the UK—would not follow suit. But numerous European companies have resisted pressure from their governments to defy the re-imposed U.S. sanctions. On January 31, European leaders announced a special finance facility to help European firms skirt U.S. sanctions on Iran, but that initiative is months behind schedule, and few experts believe it will work. . . .

Before the U.S. withdrawal, JCPOA critics made strong arguments about the accord’s weaknesses, especially Iran’s refusal to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors access to military sites. The lone exception is the Parchin military base, [where] the IAEA obtained evidence of covert nuclear-weapons work. . . . JCPOA supporters rejected those criticisms, noting that the IAEA repeatedly declared Iran to be in compliance with the nuclear agreement. However, they refused to admit that the IAEA reached its compliance findings by claiming that Iranian violations were not “material breaches” and by not asking to inspect Iranian military facilities that Tehran has declared off-limits, even though they are the likely locations of covert nuclear-weapons work.

On January 30, 2019, U.S. President Trump criticized the U.S. intelligence community's Worldwide Threat Assessment, released January 29, 2019,[1] tweeting that it is "naïve"[2] about the danger posed by Iran. MEMRI research in recent years shows that the Iranian regime deceived the American intelligence community a number of times; the MEMRI reports are based on openly available information released by the Iranians. The following are four examples:

The Plutonium Reactor At Arak
The Iranian regime deceived the U.S., the West, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about shutting down the plutonium reactor at Arak, as it was required to do under the JCPOA. Ali Akbar Salehi, director of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) and a member of Iran's nuclear negotiating team, revealed in a January 22, 2019 interview that Iran had deceived the Americans and Europeans about the shutdown of the reactor, saying that Iran had not filled the reactor core with cement, but had filled only external pipelines. He said: "We have been saying for three years now that we did not pour cement into the pit of the Arak heavy water reactor. If we had, the Arak heavy water reactor would have been ruined." He also revealed that the Iranians had secretly purchased other pipes to replace the cement-filled ones, and boasted that only one other person in Iran had been party to the deception – Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Had the other side known about the deception, he added, they would have demanded that the Iranians fill the replacement pipelines with cement as well.[3]

Salehi revealed the deception at Arak in other interviews as well: in a January 15, 2019 interview with Iran's Tasnim news agency,[4] and in an August 22, 2017 television interview (see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 1341, Head Of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization: Only External Pipelines Of Arak Reactor Were Filled With Cement, Its Core Was Not; Within Five Days, We Can Begin Enriching Uranium To 20%, September 1, 2017).

Fatwa By Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei Banning The Development, Production, Possession, And Use Of Nuclear Weapons

The Obama administration espoused this alleged fatwa, despite the fact that no such fatwa exists, and no U.S. intelligence element ever addressed the fact that this fatwa does not exist. There would have been no secrecy constraints on stating that it does not exist.

On Monday, Iranians took to the streets nationwide to mark the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. The rallies celebrated Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's triumph in toppling Iran's monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, along with Iran's 2,500-year-old monarchy, on Feb. 11, 1979. Before the year's end, Khomeini would engineer the formation of the Islamic Republic—an oppressive, anti-Western theocracy—and become its first supreme leader, until his death in 1989.

Every major publication seems to have published an article reflecting on the anniversary, and on the state of Iran's revolution after 40 years, including the New York Times. The paper's Tehran bureau chief, Thomas Erdbrink, on Sunday wrote a piece whose headline—"The Iranian Revolution at 40: From Theocracy to ‘Normality'"—immediately reveals his hackneyed, pre-scripted take. Under the guise of a straight-news report, Erdbrink epitomizes the flawed, dangerous view of Iran that most of the political left, and some of the isolationist-leaning right, hold.

First, Erdbrink does not assign any explicit blame to the regime for Iran's dark situation. In a remarkable show of wordplay that would make any college professor cringe, Erdbrink employs vague language and the passive voice throughout his work to avoid holding the mullahs accountable for Iran's economic crisis and their oppression of the Iranian people.

"Forty years ago, Iranians swelled with pride, hope, and the expectation of a better future," Erdbrink writes. "But great, rapid change can leave deep and lasting wounds. There were lashings, hangings, amputations, and mass imprisonment. Thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands left the country, some fleeing for their lives, never to return."

"What materialized after those first bloody years was truly revolutionary: an Islamic republic, a theocracy built on ideological choices inspired to a great extent by Ayatollah Khomeini," he continues.

Progetto Dreyfus, an Italian-speaking Middle East watchdog, has condemned Iran in protest for their lack of democracy within the government and free speech for the public within Iranian society, following the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution of Iran.

Progetto Dreyfus is a "non-profit association that fights against antisemitism, fundamentalism and any kind of discrimination" and as noted, has recently set its sights on Iran.

The watchdog has focused on Iran's hostile politics, human rights violations and archaic ideals, claiming that Iran is the "single most aggressive country in international politics" and that normal would-be-allies of the Arab state seek alliances with Israel instead of Iran in order to protect themselves against the ideology of the religious leaders of the Iranian regime.

As a government with a Shia Islam being the designated religion of the country, Iran has faced many occasions where they cause rifts with their Sunni neighbors, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia due to their "aggressive politics."

"Modern democracies respect human rights. Iran does not!" Progetto Dreyfus explained in a tweet on February 7th.

Hey Ayatollah Khamenei, Hassan Rouhani & Javad Zarif - since you're the only ones allowed to use #facebook in #Iran, we figured we'd share your Year in Review with the Iranian people. #ComplacencyIsLethal

In 1939, 20,000 Americans rallied in New York’s Madison Square Garden to celebrate the rise of Nazism – an event largely forgotten from American history. A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN, made entirely from archival footage filmed that night, transports audiences to this chilling gathering and shines a light on the power of demagoguery and anti-Semitism in the United States.