Meanwhile, Dems close their eyes to the pair’s blatant anti-Semitism, which is only growing after Israel’s decision. On Friday, for example, the two posted an anti-Israel cartoon by an artist known for drawings that mock Holocaust victims and feature anti-Semitic imagery. Outrage from Dems? Ha.

The pair also upped their “We Hate Israel” campaign. Tlaib teared up before the cameras over how her family members had to pass through “dehumanizing” checkpoints — with nary a word about how those stops are needed to prevent terrorism by Palestinians. Omar called for ending aid to Israel (which lets it buy US military equipment).

Where are the Dems who’ll stand up for the Jewish state against such attacks?

True, Democrats have been moving away from Israel for years now, a shift that makes little strategic — or moral — sense. If they continue to stick with Tlaib and Omar, the split will be complete.

I suggest that the visit would have been a nightmare for Israel, one with possibly far worse implications than might initially had been conceived. The two women are skilled demagogues, and everywhere they would have gone would have been an up close and personal indictment and delegitimization slugfest.

Israel would have been on the defensive, and as it often is, and not very effective or compelling in its responses.

The greater damage would have taken place on their return as the two would have sought to whip up anti-Israel sentiment in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party based on their personal experiences.

They would have pulled the center of gravity of the party toward the left-wing position (as they have been doing on several fronts), which is increasingly hostile to Israel.

While those who are upset with Israel’s decision believe it will weaken bi-partisan support (meaning Democratic support), the aftermath of the Magical Misery Tour would have been intense criticism of an “apartheid, colonialist regime.”

It is hard for many Israelis to understand just how toxic American political discourse has become. Given the Democratic hatred of all things Trump or Trump-related, Israel, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular, are walking around with targets on their backs. In the world of intersectionality, with designated victims and designated oppressors, Israel and, increasingly, Jews are being categorized as bad guys.

The visit would have heavily played into this narrative and mindset.

While we can never know the implications of that which did not happen, my strong intuition is that notwithstanding the current criticism, Israel dodged a bullet.

The actors playing the roles of the hilltop youth do a professional job of convincing us that all young settlers are just as crazy as the young Haredi killer. The scenes involving the Israel Police and Security Forces are dramatized in a constantly negative light, as if the Israeli Authorities are conducting a cover-up, not wanting the truth to be discovered, making all of Israeli society seem responsible for the Arab boy’s murder.

All these decisions are deliberate directoral decision.

The director, Yosef Cedar, has allowed the main actor, playing the role of the investigating Shabak agent of the Jewish Division, only one facial expression throughout every scene, a constant sneer which seems to say, “Everything in Israel is corrupt and evil.”

In short, in this unabashedly leftist Israeli masterminded TV mini-series, the Jews are always the villains, and the Arabs always are the victims.

When you add to this the very deliberate use of one-sided dramatization, manipulated dialogue, slick camera angles which make the Jews look constantly guilty and the Arabs persecuted, plus professional editing favoring the Arab side of the story, scary music accompanying the Jews and sympathetic music heightening the injustices against the Arabs, with seasoned actors in tear-jerking performances portraying the victimized Arabs and no actors at all playing the three slaughtered Jewish boys and their families, you end up with a movie that is sure to win top awards in Hamas and Islamic Jihad film festivals and Cannes.

Of course, Israel’s Minister of Culture, Mir Regev, will raise her voice in protest, but no positive and truthful movies about the life of Israel’s brave and idealistic settlers are ever funded and therefore never made, leaving a vacuum for movies like “Our Boys” and their hateful propaganda to thrive.

NewsHour also introduces us to Dr. Adnan al Borsh, who treated many Palestinians injured that day. He’s disturbed that so many Palestinians were all shot in the leg, and that the bullets did a lot of damage to bones, blood vessels, and nerves.

But Ferguson misses the obvious point.

IDF sharpshooters aimed at peoples’ legs because they were not shooting to kill.

Dr. Borsh’s talk of bullets, damage, and entry points are a red herring. Israel faced thousands of Palestinians violently seeking to breach the border. Yet PBS NewsHour gives a platform to a doctor who implies that Israeli soldiers are war criminals because they’re not equipped with magic bullets capable of dispersing rioters without causing unpleasant damage.

A big problem with the NewsHour dispatch is that there are no Israeli voices. To be fair, Ferguson says that she sought to talk to the IDF, but all they provided was a short statement, which the video notes. She also refers to an old quote by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejecting the findings of a UN inquiry on the Gaza violence.

But that doesn’t mean NewsHour is off the hook for the lack of balance. This was not a 90-second update; this was a 10-minute dispatch. The time invested to line up interviews with disabled Palestinians, a doctor, and officials from Amnesty International, as well as Doctors Without Borders isn’t insignificant. NewsHour is better than that.

Were there no Israeli experts available to provide fresh quotes to a PBS reporter?

Was her query to the IDF merely going through the motions?

Would an Israeli point of view have ruined the arc of her story?

Toward the end of the report, Ferguson makes a small, but telling observation, perhaps oblivious to its importance, or maybe taking a half-hearted stab at even-handedness:

The most cynical here encourage the smallest to approach the fence, goading Israel guards.

Who exactly are these “most cynical” Palestinians sending children to the border?

Could they be the same Palestinians who sent Ahmed Abu Nair and his soccer friends to be cannon fodder as well?

This, American Zionists realized early on, is a tricky proposition in a meting pot society where, as Woodrow Wilson thundered in 1915, “you cannot dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every respect and with every purpose of your will thorough Americans.” Conscious of the perpetually pending charge of dual loyalty, Brandeis helped engineer an ingenious solution.

“Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with patriotism,” he wrote, adding that “a man is a better citizen of the U.S. for being also a loyal citizen of his state, and of his city, for being loyal to his family… every American Jew who aids in advancing the Jewish settlement in Palestine, though he feels neither he nor his descendants will ever live there, will likewise be a better man and a better American for doing so.”

Put simply, Brandeis believed that if you didn’t support Israel, you either lacked knowledge or showed a great disloyalty to your own people — a view that would’ve been utterly uncontroversial, even banal, until very recently. Unless you require neither context nor reason and are inclined to hear everything the president says as hate speech, you can rest easy and understand his latest gaffe as poorly stated at worst.

So where does all of this leave us American Jews? Many of us are losing a bunch of sleep these days, feeling as if the world may be coming to an end. It’s not, but it is changing, which is history’s single defining characteristic and the thing that makes human life on this planet so terrifying and so thrilling. And, historically speaking, Jews who refused to take heed when things started changing dramatically all around them very often wound up as dead Jews.

Let us, then, observe these changes candidly and without succumbing to the pressures of screaming ideologues on either side. The party our parents voted for, the party we thought would be ours for eternity, appears to be well on its way to becoming something entirely hostile to Jews. The president we are told again and again is the single greatest menace to our community is many things, but certainly not that.

What you choose to do with these realities is entirely up to you. Decent people will likely invest their energies in divergent projects, working in good faith to create a safe and sustainable future for themselves and their children. We may still disagree. We may still find ourselves divided on important, substantive questions, from immigration to health care reform to foreign policy. Arguing, after all, is our birthright. But if we grow addicted to the narcotic effect of absurd histrionics masquerading as moral outrage on social media, and if we insist that observable reality take a backseat to our feverish fantasies and desperate hopes, we’ll find ourselves the authors of a new and particularly bleak chapter of the timeless Jewish story.

I wonder if anyone asked what would happen to the Jews if the Palestinians controlled all of Hebron or if Israel ended the “occupation” of the entire West Bank. Mahmoud Abbas has already given the answer: “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli — civilian or soldier — on our lands.” Would it bother these students to learn that “Palestine” would be one of the few places on earth to ban Jews?

Ofran reportedly compared the massacre of 67 Jews in Hebron in 1929 with Baruch Goldstein’s murder of 29 Muslims in 1994. The killing of Jews on August 23, 1929 was part of a countrywide campaign to murder Jews, instigated by the Mufti of Jerusalem. Arab terrorism against Jews has continued unabated for the last 90 years — before and after the “occupation.” By contrast, Goldstein’s monstrous act was an anomaly, one that was condemned by all but a lunatic fringe of Israelis.

Everyone today understands that young Jews cannot be educated without exposing them to Israel’s faults and challenges. Any student who wants to learn about these on their own can read Haaretz online. Focusing on Israel’s deficits, however, without understanding its history and surroundings or the context of its actions, will produce the type of Jews who join Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine and become boycott advocates.

It should come as no surprise that Halbfinger found that “as the day grew long, the facial expressions more pained and the questions more anguished, the J Street tour seemed increasingly incompatible with Birthright’s goal of hooking young American Jews on Israel.”

This should give pause to the trip’s funders, especially those worried about the next generation’s commitment to Israel, and their ability to respond to the myths about Israel they hear from detractors on campus.

Bipartisanship: At what price?

The first of these is the question of the price that Israel is called upon to preserve bi-partisan support for it. After all, no-one can assume that the two fiercely anti-Israel Congresswomen would not exploit their stay in Israel to inflict the maximum possible damage on it—irrespective of any “inconvenient facts” they might have happened to encounter on it.

Accordingly, if Israel is required to forsake important national interests in order to appease a party, in which some of its most prominent members are viscerally opposed to the Jewish state, one might very well question the value—even, the very point—of preserving such bi-partisanship. Indeed, at some point, bi-partisanship may well cease to be an invaluable asset and become a burdensome liability instead!

In this regard, perhaps the most telling—and most surprising—censure came from the prestigious and powerful pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, which, as a rule, has consistently backed the decisions of the Israeli government—virtually without exception. Accordingly, public reproach from an organization so closely identified with pro-Israel advocacy is, without doubt, extraordinarily significant. Of course, for AIPAC, the issue of bi-partisanship is an almost sacred value, the very “holy grail” of its political influence. Indeed, it attributes—with considerable justification—much of its political stature and sway to its ability to harness such bi-partisan support for Israel. It is thus, clearly understandable that it will react negatively to any development that appears to threaten that ability.

Those of us who had some previous trepidations about how to best defend Israel found themselves no longer in a defensive crouch, but standing tall and seizing the initiative. It was like the opposing football team turned the ball over, leaving the pro-Israel team with excellent field position. And the entire playbook was open for the offense.

Right out of the gate, a steady light could be focused on Miftah, an organization that publishes ancient blood libels against Jews, along with neo-Nazi propaganda and praise for suicide bombers. That isn’t merely anti-Israel sentiment — it is unadulterated and vile anti-Semitism.

Just about every subsequent development in the arc of the story has reflected poorly on the two congresswomen: From their anti-Semitic cartoon tweets to HBO’s Bill Maher roasting them to their disastrous Monday press conference.

There are many lessons at the intersection where the Jewish world and Democratic politics meet — to the extent there still exists a distinction. That Trump and Netanyahu agreed on the decision to bar Tlaib and Omar’s entry reflects their calculation that the bipartisan pro-Israel congressional consensus that existed in the past is vanishing and they are not willing to pretend otherwise. Many of us on the Jewish and political Right have already accepted this reality, as unfortunate as it is.

This drift away from Israel on the political Left, however, is nothing new. But the rapid elevation of the kind of voices represented by Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib is different and worrisome. While House Democratic leadership may believe the anti-Israel trend is reversible, it is leadership’s decision not to confront the rising anti-Semitism in its own chamber that is solidifying the very reality it refuses to recognize. And in the process, it serves as a reminder for the rest of us of the importance of the Jewish state. It is, among many other positive things, the greatest insurance policy against the kind of anti-Semitism that flourishes when people of good conscience look the other way.

Let's go back to a time before checkpoints @RashidaTlaib, when Jewish markets filled with young mothers shopping with their children were blown to smithereens, as in this British Movietone newsreel from 1968, where terrorists bombing killed 11 civilians & injured 50. pic.twitter.com/3edaMrfwx8

— American Zionism (@americanzionism) August 21, 2019

Cable talk-show host and comedian Bill Maher fired back at Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on Wednesday after the freshman congresswoman called last week for boycotting his HBO show, where he criticized the anti-Israel BDS movement that both she and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) have been vocally supporting.

“Maybe folks should boycott his show,” tweeted Tlaib, who compared boycotts of Israel to that of apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.

“I am tired of folks discrediting a form of speech that is centered on equality and freedom,” the congresswoman continued. “This is exactly how they tried to discredit & stop the boycott to stand up against the apartheid in S. Africa. It didn’t work then and it won’t now.”

Maher responded on Twitter,

Some people have one move only: boycott. Cancel. Make-go-away. But here’s the thing, the house voted 318 to 17 to condemn the #BDS movement, including 93% of Dems. Does Tlaib want to boycott 93% of her own party? pic.twitter.com/0QrPQmwwiw

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) August 21, 2019

In July, a whopping 89 percent of Democrats voted for an anti-BDS resolution in the US House of Representatives.

The back-and-forth began when Maher said on his latest show that BDS is “a bulls**t purity test by people who want to appear woke but actually slept through history class. It’s predicated on this notion—I think it’s very shallow thinking—that the Jews in Israel are mostly white and the Palestinians are browner, so they must be innocent and correct, and the Jews must be wrong.”

“As if the occupation came right out of the blue, that this completely peaceful people found themselves occupied,” he continued. “Forget about the intifadas and the suicide bombings and the rockets and how many wars.”

A would-be terrorist attacker denounced safety procedures at a Jewish house of worship this morning, asserting they made him feel “less than human” by reducing him in that moment to nothing but a potential threat and dismissing the rest of his emotional, biographical, and intellectual being as irrelevant.

Ahmad Subhi, 24, failed to gain access early Thursday to a synagogue in the center of the city in advance of morning services, where he hoped to set off his explosive belt packed with ball bearings and metal shards and kill or maim as many Jews as possible. A security guard refused to allow him into the building unless he passed through a metal detector and underwent other screening measures. The frustrated bomber later abandoned his effort to enter the synagogue and called Gisha, one of several dozen prominent NGOs that monitor and critique Israel’s restrictions on Palestinian movement that the Jewish State’s leaders call essential for national security.

A a press conference this afternoon, Mr. Subhi decried the inhuman treatment that faced him in undergoing such a check. “I am not some animal,” he insisted. “I’m a human being with inherent dignity and rights, and those cannot be waved away because some people think it’s more important to keep Jewish pigs from getting the bloody, violent deaths they deserve. This is just one more demonstration of the inhumanity of the Occupation. It cannot continue.”

World Vision has a history of ignoring finance risks. In 2016, Mohammed El Halabi, head of World Vision’s Gaza operations, confessed to redirecting $50 million to the terrorist group Hamas. In 2012, World Vision diverted $1.68 million of Australian government aid to a fake Palestinian charity established by the PFLP terror group.

World Vision maintains a strong New York presence, where supporters have largely turned a blind eye to the group’s sinister activities. World Vision’s partners include three of New York’s biggest evangelical churches: Redeemer, Hillsong, and Times Square Church, along with local civil society and non-governmental groups, including Operation Exodus, Crossroads Tabernacle Church, Real Life Church, South Bronx United, Manhattan Bible Church, and Hope for New York.

Institutions reached for comment about World Vision’s record appeared indifferent or defensive.

“I’m not very aware of their international work but that sounds out of character with the people and the ethos that I see coming out of the organization,” said Matt Mahony, CPO of Operation Exodus.

Local World Vision partners presented with information about these cases responded with silence or defensiveness.

“I’ve never heard anything like that about World Vision,” said Pastor Willie Lopez of Manhattan Bible Church. “All I know is that they are a tremendous help to the community.”

One affiliate isolated the El Halabi scandal, claiming his church would stand by World Vision because charges weren’t proven in court. Another church administrator said accusations were driven by an anti-evangelical agenda.

Pro-Israel evangelicals should also be troubled by World Vision staffers’ anti-Israel stances and borderline anti-Semitic comments — like those of former World Vision International Operations Director Tom Getman, who called Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a “friend.”

Hey there @@wristcandywc, care to explain? https://t.co/PMLJ2C1NMP

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) August 22, 2019

The New York Times faced intense backlash on Thursday after one of its editor's anti-Semitism was exposed and the scandal trended to the top on Twitter — which led multiple high-profile figures and politicians to call for his firing.

The latest anti-Semitism scandal to break out at The New York Times came after writings from Senior Staff Editor Tom Wright-Piersanti, who oversees the infamously left-leaning newspaper's political coverage, were revealed on Thursday morning and showed years worth of anti-Semitic and racist views.

The revelation comes after The New York Times has repeatedly defended anti-Semitic Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) while trying to cast President Donald Trump — the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history — as being anti-Semitic.

In a tweet from 2010, Wright-Piersanti tweeted: "I was going to say 'Crappy Jew Year,' but one of my resolutions is to be less anti-Semitic. So… HAPPY Jew Year. You Jews."

In another tweet that included a picture of a car with a Menorah on the roof, Wright-Piersanti wrote: "Who called the Jew-police?"

Wright-Piersanti, who also wrote numerous racist things about Indians, began to aggressively delete his old tweets once they went viral on social media and eventually locked his Twitter account so that people could not see other things he tweeted.

During a Twitch livestream on Tuesday night, "The Young Turks" commentator Hasan Piker, who is the nephew of "Young Turks" co-creator Cenk Uygur, mocked U.S. Military veteran Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) for losing an eye in combat.

"This guy has the understanding of foreign policy of, like, a 12-year-old. What the f***. What the f*** is wrong with this dude? Didn't he go to war and like literally lose his eye because some mujahideen — a brave f***ing soldier — f***ed his eye hole with their d***?" Piker rambled, adding, "Isn't that how he f***ing lost his dumba** eye, because he got his f***ing eye hole f***ed, by a brave soldier?"

Crenshaw responded to the vile remarks made by Piker on Wednesday. "[Hasan Piker] seems to confuse 'Improvised Explosive Device' with some weird terrorist fantasy," he wrote via Twitter. "Lol sorry for triggering you Hasan."

"You're no Pete Davidson, stop trying so hard," the Texas representative added, referencing a "Saturday Night Live" comedian who made a much-maligned joke about Crenshaw's wartime injury last year. Unlike Piker, Davidson apologized for the (in comparative terms, mild) joke about Crenshaw, who, in turn, graciously appeared alongside the comedian for a powerful SNL segment.

.@hasanthehun seems to confuse “Improvised Explosive Device” with some weird terrorist fantasy.

Lol sorry for triggering you Hasan. You’re no Pete Davidson, stop trying so hard. https://t.co/0w2Cp95ctt

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) August 22, 2019

This coming weekend will mark ninety years since the Hebron Massacre in which sixty-seven Jews were killed and sixty wounded. That and subsequent violent events brought hundreds of years of Jewish life in Hebron to an end for nearly four decades.

Ten years ago the BBC published a report titled “Long shadow of 1929 Hebron massacre” which is still available online.

The background to the violence is presented as follows:
“Hajj Yussef says problems with the Jewish community started in the mid-1920s, when more Jews began to arrive from abroad. They did not speak Arabic and they dressed differently. They were coming in their hundreds.”

The article closes with a quote from its main interviewee:
“Hajj Yussef believes today’s settlers have no right to live in Hebron at all.

“I have no problem living with the Jews, like we lived many years ago,” he says. “But today’s settlers are not Palestinian Jews, they came here from abroad. And I have a problem if the Jews live in my country as occupiers and settlers.””

In 2014 BBC Radio 4 aired a history programme (also still available online) which included an account of “an outbreak of rioting between the Muslim and Jewish population” which completely erased one key piece of context: the role played by the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al Husseini in inciting the violence.

Guardian journalists Amanda Forslund and Charlotta Lindblom have combined forces to write a piece that accuses the Israeli government of abandoning its soldiers who suffer from PTSD. Any idea that this might be a piece showing concern for Israel’s brave soldiers is dispelled almost immediately when they write “the UN accused soldiers of intentionally firing on civilians protesting at the Gaza frontier”.

The catalyst for their piece is a study that was released on 13th February 2013 called Attention to threats and combat-related posttraumatic stress symptoms: Prospective associations and moderation by the serotonin transporter gene.

The study acknowledges that “soldiers psychiatric responses to combat stress vary markedly between individuals” and it analyses soldiers deployed in various combat situations (see table above).

But in their piece Forslund and Lindblom reduce this complex report down to 19 words:
“As many as one in 12 Israeli soldiers who experience high intensity combat report PTSD symptoms, one study found,…”

The study seems to be a general study into the effects of combat and was carried out for the American Medical Association, not the Israeli army. Neither the Israeli army nor its soldiers are named in the title of the study as you can see. The results are presumably applicable to different armies and combat situations throughout the world. The IDF was used merely as a guinea-pig six and a half years ago.

Forslund and Lindblom use the study as a catalyst to specifically track down disatisfied Israeli soldiers to write about their fight for recognition of the illness and for treatment to be financed by the Israeli government.

Kesby made no effort to clarify to audiences that those so-called “protests” are in fact weekly episodes of premeditated violent rioting organised by terror groups and that fifty-three of the sixty-two people killed that day were claimed by terrorist organisations. Instead she continued her innocuous questioning.

Kesby: “And was it quite challenging to strike the right balance between reflecting ordinary live people, you know, getting married, going about their normal lives, trying to educate their children, trying to enjoy themselves and this constant pressure and…and, you know, elements of violence and threat that people live under?”

Towards the end of the item listeners heard three times – twice from Hannona himself and once from Kesby – that he has not seen the film “because there’s no cinema in Gaza”. Seeing as that talking point also arose in the earlier ‘Today’ interview, Kesby should have been able to inform listeners that the reason there is no longer a cinema in Gaza is because it is ruled by an extremist Islamist terror organisation.

And so for the second time BBC audiences heard uncritical, unchallenging and uninformative promotion of this film in an item which only served to hinder their understanding of a complex topic.

Brandeis University said Wednesday it does not believe there’s a threat to campus safety after photos of several students and professors were posted to an anti-Semitic website.

School safety officials are investigating after images from the university’s website appeared on the Vanguard News Network Forum, which promotes white nationalist views.

The photos were posted in a thread containing hundreds of other images along with comments mocking the appearance of Jews.

The university issued a campus letter this week saying that the situation is “obviously disturbing” but that safety officials found “no direct threat” to Brandeis or those depicted in the photos.

Campus officials say they will monitor the situation.

Brandeis is a private, nonsectarian university that was founded on Jewish values. It enrolls about 6,000 students at its campus west of Boston.

Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) condemned on Wednesday a group of 10 or so members of the boys’ water-polo team at Pacifica High School in Garden Grove, Calif., which is part of his district, who were caught on camera doing a Nazi salute and singing a Nazi song last year during an awards ceremony.

“This disturbing incident saddens me greatly,” Lowenthal, who is Jewish, told JNS. “We as a community must face uncomfortable facts, and ask hard questions about hatred and ignorance in our midst. I can only hope that this can become a teaching moment—not just for the students who participated, but for the entire student body on the horrors of the Holocaust and the evils of the Third Reich.”

The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust has invited the students from the awards ceremony to tour the museum and interact with Holocaust survivors. It also plans to invite those boys depicted in the video, which was first reported by The Daily Beast on Monday.

“Flashing Nazi salutes and singing Nazi songs is contemptible,” said Lowenthal. “These are not issues to joke about, use for shock value or be taken lightly. I sincerely hope that this lesson is instilled in these students by both the school district and by their parents.”

The Garden Grove Unified School District and the high school condemned what occurred in which the school administration was unaware of the video until March, when “school administrators took immediate action and addressed the situation with all students and families involved,” said the district, without specifying how the students were disciplined, citing the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

On Monday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood at Kyiv’s Babi Yar ravine with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s recently elected Jewish president, and praised the former Soviet republic for what he said was its commitment to memory.

More than 30,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis at the site over a period of two days in 1941.

“I thank you President Zelensky, and I also thank the Ukrainian government, for your efforts to preserve the memory of the Holocaust,” Netanyahu said. “You are continuing your efforts in the war against anti-Semitism.”

While Ukraine has indeed made efforts to commemorate the Holocaust in recent years, especially at Babi Yar, its record on memory is far more complicated than Netanyahu’s statement indicated.

The US Air Force has showcased a cutting edge Israeli-made firing control system at the Beale Air Force Base in California.

According to a statement by the USAF on its website, Chief Master Sgt. Dustin Hall and Col. Andrew Clark, the 9th Reconnaissance Wing's command chief and commander, tested the SMASH 2000 fire control system developed by Smart Shooter last week.

“The 9th Security Force Squadron Airmen have been using off-the-shelf commercial technology to help train and improve how their missions are conducted to protect the installation,” the USAF said.

The SMASH 2000 fire control system has been using innovative technologies to help militaries and other security or law enforcement agencies accurately neutralize moving targets. It has a built-in storage system allowing for videos and images to be recorded for training and debriefings.

The SMASH 2000 sighting device attaches to a weapon and has built-in targeting algorithms that can track and accurately hit targets, including moving and aerial ones, at ranges of up to 120 meters, with the first shot.

With the system, the user selects and locks onto the target. As soon as the trigger is squeezed, the system calculates the target’s movement and predicts its next location using advanced image processing and algorithms. SMASH 2000 prevents the bullet from being fired until the target is precisely in its cross hairs.

US ridesharing startup Via has been chosen by the New York City Department of Education to provide “a revolutionary school bus management system” for the nation’s largest school district, the company said on Thursday.

“Via for Schools” will be the first integrated, automated school bus routing, tracking, and communication platform in the world, the company, founded by two Israelis, said in a statement.

Parents and students will be able to track in real-time the locations of buses, boarding and alighting of passengers, route changes, and delays, the statement said. Via’s algorithms to optimize school bus routing will make the system safer, “significantly improve operational efficiency” and ultimately reduce transportation costs.

“Through our partnership with Via, we’ll soon have a state-of-the-art app for families to track buses and get real-time automatic updates,” said Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza in the statement. “Safe and reliable transportation is critical for all families, and we’re committed to getting it right this year.”

The European Film Academy, a pan-European film body that, like Eurovision, includes Israel, announced the short list this week from which nominees for this year’s European Film Awards will be drawn, and three Israeli films made the cut. The films were selected by a committee made up of the film academy board and several other film professionals.

All three of the Israeli films had their world premieres in Europe. Sameh Zoabi’s Tel Aviv on Fire, the story of a Palestinian who writes for a soap opera in Ramallah, was a huge hit at the Venice International Film Festival last fall, where its lead, Kais Nashif, won the Best Actor Award. Yaron Shani’s Chained, about a desperate policeman, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and won the top prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival earlier this month. Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms, a look at a troubled Israeli in Paris, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Festival in February.

All three films are nominated for the multiple Ophir Awards, the awards of the Israel Academy for Film.

Israeli movies have won many important European Film Awards, including the Best Actor Award for Sasson Gabai for The Band’s Visit in 2007.

More than 3,600 members of the European Film Academy will vote for the nominations in the European film, director, actor, actress and screenwriter categories over the next few weeks. The nominations will then be announced on November 9 at the Seville European Film Festival in Spain before the awards ceremony on December 7 in Berlin.

Among those 100 companies are 10 “hottest startups” from Tel Aviv (and Israel generally). In an article highlighting “success stories” from the Startup Nation, WIRED UK’s business editor Katia Moskvitch emphasizes that Israel’s tech capital – Tel Aviv – has “the highest number of startups per capita in the world…with more than 6,000, of which 18 are unicorns…more than 100 venture capital funds, plus hundreds of accelerators and co-working places.”

The article cites Amit Gilon, an investor at Kaedan Capital VC fund, as saying that “Israel is not just about successful B2B [business-to-business] companies anymore, such as Checkpoint, Nice and Amdocs, but also about ‘big B2C [business-to-consumer] success stories like Playtika, Wix, Fiverr and others.'”

WIRED has slowly been rolling out its top 10 lists from cities across Europe (and Israel, which is technically in Asia) this past month. The “hottest startups” in London, Berlin, Dublin and Helsinki, are already available online.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation (MASHAV), have inked a historic memorandum of understanding that will see the two countries cooperate on a variety of global development efforts.

USAID Administrator Mark Green signed the MOU together with Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz in Jerusalem, with the administrator saying, “We are much more than partners, we are true friends.”

The MOU states that it “aims to establish the framework for further international development cooperation between the Participants in trilateral activities that advance the development of third countries, including, but not limited to, those in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.”

“The Participants intend to share knowledge, experience, and resources to develop projects in a wide range of development sectors, including the private sector, water, education, technology, science, agriculture, cyber-security, and humanitarian assistance,” it adds.

“The Participants share the purpose of strengthening, in all cases, the institutional and socio-economic capacities of governments, civil society, and the private sector in partner countries towards self-reliance,” the MOU says.

A delegation of Israeli government officials visited the central African nation of Chad this month to discuss bilateral economic ties.

The delegation to Chad—a Muslim-majority nation—was led by Economy and Industry Ministry Foreign Trade Administration export-policy director Itai Melchior, as well as other officials from regional cooperation ministry, the agriculture and rural development ministry, and the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute.

According to the Israeli government, the delegation met with ministers and director generals from the ministries of economy, finance, agriculture, water, energy, communications, education and health. Meetings were also held with international partners such as representatives from the World Bank and the US embassy, in order to consider increased foreign investment in Chad.

The local chamber of commerce invited the delegation to meet with leading local businesspeople in order to consider cooperation with the Israeli business sector. The government mining company briefed the delegation on the relevant economic potential of Chad.

Melchior noted that delegation members were impressed by efforts of the Chadian government and private sector to cooperate with Israel.

“After an intensive two days of meetings, I can say with certainty that there is definitely room for cooperation with both the government and the business sector,” he said. “I assume that we will see Chadian visits to Israel soon in order to continue the dialogue.”

Shooting has begun on Israel’s highest-budgeted television show ever.

“Valley of Tears,” an ambitious eight-episode miniseries that depicts the 1973 Yom Kippur War through the eyes of three young combatants, reportedly will cost $1 million per episode.

The heretofore-secretive project was first revealed by Deadline.

The cost is due in part to the battle scenes, but also because of the well-known creatives behind the project.

The cast features Israeli star Lior Ashkenazi, best known to American audiences for his roles in “Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer” (opposite Richard Gere), the Academy Award-nominated “Foxtrot” and “7 Days in Entebbe.”

The writers are Ron Leshem — who wrote the anti-war novel (and co-wrote the Academy Award-nominated film) “Beaufort” and created “Euphoria,” the Israeli hit whose successful American version was recently renewed for a second season on HBO — and Amit Cohen, who created the successful TV series “False Flag.”

80 years ago this week in Geneva: 21st Zionist Congress learns of the Hitler-Stalin pact. C. Cruise O'Brien: “They do not look like people who have just heard a piece of political news. They look like people who have heard a death sentence pronounced on members of their family.” pic.twitter.com/6dsZXcj2WK

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 22, 2019

Zionist protest SJP conference at UCLA

Gurutam Thockchom, an SJP board member and third-year mathematics student, said they hoped the conference would promote discussion among student activists about human rights issues in Palestine.

Thockchom said SJP would not release the names of the speakers because of security concerns.

“The Israel and Zionist lobby have many ways to try to silence people who are speaking out in support of Palestine,” Thockchom said. “One of those ways is with blacklists and smear campaigns.”

An Israeli teenage girl was killed and her father and older brother were wounded on Friday when a bomb was detonated at a natural spring near the West Bank settlement of Dolev.

The fatality was identified as 17-year-old Rina Shnerb, from the central Israeli city of Lod. Her father Eitan, 46, and brother Dvir, 21, were helicoptered to a hospital in Jerusalem for medical treatment. Neither is in life-threatening condition.

The late Rina Shnerb.

The IDF is conducting searches for the perpetrators of the attack.

The scene of the incident — the Bubin spring, a popular recreation spot — is located about halfway between Modi’in and Ramallah, adjacent to Dolev and the Palestinian village of Deir Ibzi.

It is believed that an improvised explosive device was planted on an access route to the site and later set off remotely when the Shnerb family was in its vicinity.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated, “On behalf of myself and the citizens of Israel, I send deep condolences to the family of young Rina Shnerb who was murdered in a harsh terrorist attack this morning, and wishes for a quick recovery to her father, Rabbi Eitan, and her brother Dvir.”

“We will continue to strengthen settlement,” Netanyahu added. “We will deepen our roots and strike at our enemies. The security arms are in pursuit after the abhorrent terrorists. We will apprehend them. The long arm of Israel reaches all those who seek our lives and will settle accounts with them.”

Security forces launched a large-scale manhunt throughout the central West Bank on Friday, after terrorists set off a bomb in a spring near the Dolev settlement, killing a teenage girl and seriously injuring her father and brother and the IDF chief said he believed they would apprehend the killers “quickly.”

“We are in the midst of a manhunt that is being led by troops from the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet security service and Israel Police. We are focusing our large operational intelligence effort to finding the perpetrators of this severe and deadly terror attack,” IDF chief Aviv Kohavi said at the site of the bombing on Friday afternoon.

At approximately 10:00 a.m., the explosive device was detonated at a natural spring, known as Ein Bubin, northwest of Ramallah, as three members of the Shnerb family from the central Israeli town of Lod were visiting.

The teenage daughter, Rina, 17, was pronounced dead at the scene. Her father, Eitan, a rabbi in Lod, and her brother Dvir, 19, were taken by military helicopter to a Jerusalem hospital in serious condition.

The army said an improvised explosive device was used in the attack. Police sappers determined that the bomb had been planted earlier at the spring and was triggered remotely when the family approached it.

Security services were reportedly tracking a car that fled the scene shortly after the explosion, believing it to have been used by the culprits.

Hundreds gathered Friday to bury Rina Shnerb, an Israeli teenager killed in a terrorist bombing in the West Bank earlier in the day. Her father, wounded in the attack along with her brother, was unable to attend but addressed mourners by telephone from his hospital bed.

“We are trying to be strong here in the Land of Israel, the people of Israel, Rina believed in that,” said Rabbi Eitan Shnerb. “Our response to the murderers is that we are here and we are strong and we will prevail.”

Shnerb, her father Eitan and 19-year-old brother Dvir were all wounded in the explosion at a natural spring outside the Dolev settlement. Shnerb was pronounced dead from her injuries, while her father and brother were hospitalized in serious condition.

“We’re in a war of love against hate and hope against despair. We came here in order to accompany our loved one,” said Eli Weissberg, Rina’s uncle, at the funeral in her home town of Lod.

Weissberg said Rabbi Shnerb had asked him to convey a message to the funeral: He “asked us only to deal with the strength and love we have and the wonderful nation we have here in this great land of ours,” said Weissberg.

The US on Friday condemned a bomb attack that killed a teenage Israeli girl and wounded her father and brother as “another savage attack by Palestinian terrorists,” saying that further terror would only bring about “endless suffering.”

“Another savage attack by Palestinian terrorists kills an Israeli teenager enjoying time with her family. This isn’t the path to peace, just endless suffering,” tweeted US Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt.

“May her memory be a blessing. Our prayers are with her family especially her father & brother also wounded in the attack,” he said.

Rina Shnerb, 17, of Lod, was critically wounded in the attack and received treatment at the scene from civilian and military medics before being pronounced dead of her injuries. Her father Eitan, a rabbi in Lod, and brother Dvir, 19, were taken by military helicopter to a Jerusalem hospital in serious condition, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said.

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman also tweeted that he was “heartbroken and outraged by the brutal terrorist attack.”

“No words to describe the sadness of the moment as we grieve and pray for the injured to recover. May they receive God’s blessings,” he wrote.

Right-wing lawmakers on Friday called for Israel to annex the entirety of the West Bank after security officials said an Israeli teenager had been killed in a terror attack in the Ramallah area.

Seventeen-year-old Rina Shnerb was killed when a homemade explosive device detonated near a natural spring outside the settlement of Dolev where she was sitting with her family. It was not yet clear whether the bomb had been planted there in advance or hurled at the family. Shnerb’s rabbi father and 19-year-old brother were critically injured in the attack, and Israeli security forces launched a manhunt for the perpetrators.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his “deep condolences” to the family and vowed to “continue strengthening” Jewish communities in the West Bank. Though he did not explicitly promise to extend sovereignty over the territory claimed by Palestinians for their future state, he promised to “spread our roots deeper and strike out at our enemies.

“Security forces are in pursuit of the vile terrorists. We will reach them. Our long arm will pay them their dues,” Netanyahu vowed.

Avigdor Liberman, the leader of the Yisrael Beytenu party who has in recent months become Netanyahu’s bitter enemy, blasted the prime minister’s policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians, calling the attack “a slap in the face to [his] policies of surrender.”

The Netanyahu government “has chosen to abandon the security of Israeli citizens in favor of buying quiet from the Palestinian Authority and Hamas until the elections,” he tweeted Friday afternoon.

The Hamas terror organization on Friday praised the perpetrators of a bombing in the West Bank that claimed the life of a 17-year-old Israeli girl and seriously injured her father and brother.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, and Israeli officials have yet to indicate who could have been behind the deadly attack.

Hamas in a statement said the bomb attack was “proof of the vitality and bravery of the Palestinian people, and of the fact that it will not surrender to the crimes and terrorism of the occupation.”

The group noted that it came on the 50th anniversary of the torching of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and said it showed that “our people have not abandoned and will not abandon the Al-Aqsa Mosque even for a day, whoever the victims may be.”

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, in his Friday sermon in the Gaza Strip, called the killing “a heroic attack,” though he claimed ignorance as to who was responsible.

But it “shows that the default state in the West Bank is one of resistance, despite what our residents suffer there. The West Bank has strong people who are no less faithful and steadfast than their brethren in Gaza,” he said.

Rina Shnerb was murdered today by a Palestinian terrorist. The news broke 3 hours ago, but has yet to appear in the Middle East section of the @Guardian, the @Independent, and the @nytimes.

The @AP filed a story on the attack 6 hours ago, but these news outlets have not run it. pic.twitter.com/YnUtS1rd4m

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 23, 2019

On the 21st of the Hebrew month of Av in the year 5763, 23 people were killed and more than 130 wounded when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated a five-kilogram device on an Egged bus #2 in the heart of the Beit Yisrael neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Beit Yisrael is a predominantly Haredi neighborhood in central Jerusalem, just north of Mea Shearim.

The Hebrew date falls on Friday, August 23 this year - marking 16 years since these 23 people were killed.

The attackers, members of the Hamas terrorist organization, murdered seven children. Many of the passengers were returning from prayer at the Kotel. The attack happened on the eve of the Hebrew month of Elul, the last month of the year, and time of year when many seek repentance and renewal in preparation for Rosh Hashanah.

Six terrorists were involved in the attack: the suicide bomber, two terrorists who were caught and killed and three others who were arrested and sent to jail. According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), those incarcerated terrorists and the families of the dead terrorists have received a cumulative NIS 2,692,500 from the Palestinian Authority since 2003.

Each month, the three incarcerated terrorists receive a monthly salary of NIS 7,300, explained PMW. After being in jail for 15 years, the PA raised the terrorists’ monthly salaries from NIS 6,000 to NIS 7,000. Further, because the terrorists held “blue IDs,” as they were residents of Jerusalem at the time of the attack, each terrorist receives an additional NIS 300 per month.

In four years, the PA will raise their salaries again, as per the government’s terrorist pay scale. The terrorists can ultimately get as much as NIS 12,000 per month plus the NIS 300, so long as they stay in prison.

So what would change if America ‘punished’ Israel by stopping aid?

Not all that much. Unlike other recipients of American aid, such as India, Egypt and Afghanistan, all previously Russian clients, Israel really has no choice but to be America’s ally.

On the other hand, not being compelled to buy American gives Israel the freedom to shop around and enter weapons research deals with others. Because other countries buy American, at least in part, because Israel wins with American weapons. So not only could Israel become be a competitor but its role as ‘celebrity endorser’ of the American product would be greatly reduced.

Would Israel cease being what late former NATO’s Supreme Commander and US Secretary of State General Alexander Haig, described as “the largest, most battle-tested and cost-effective US aircraft carrier …”††? Would it cease its role as a major intelligence source?

Once again, probably not. Mutual interest rules, again. Still imagine if Israel charged the real price for services it provides? Israel is responsible for over 600 modifications in the current generation of General Dynamics’ F-16 fighter aircraft. What would that be worth in money terms?

Going a little off in a tangent. Sometimes defenders of Obama’s hostile relationship with Israel point to his raising military aid from $3.2 billion p.a. to $3.8 billion as refutation. In my opinion that had little to do with love for Israel. His ‘lame duck’ F.U. at the United Nations proves that. It was far more likely a response to pressure from his own Pentagon and the American arms industry.

The European Union is citing diplomatic immunity as it continues to fund illegal activity by the Palestinian Authority while claiming its actions are protected by diplomatic immunity. For years, the EU has been involved in illegal construction in Area C, the most well-known example being the Bedouin outpost of Khan al-Ahmar.

EU funds have been invested in a hostile agricultural takeover project being led by Ramallah that has seen the PA taken over state land located in the heart of Gush Etzion through the use of fencing and the planting of thousands of trees. As the EU emblem was displayed on the sign announcing the financing of the illegal activities, Israeli activist watchdog group Regavim listed the body as a respondent to a petition it filed to the High Court of Justice over the lack of government enforcement in the area.

In its response to the petition, the state noted that the EU had recently dispatched a letter to the Foreign Ministry claiming that it's being added as a respondent contravenes the EU's immunity in Israel, in accordance with the agreement between a 1980 agreement between the State of Israel and the European Commission that holds that "the commission's representatives will enjoy the rights and immunities granted in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations" and that the petition, therefore, contravenes the EU's immunity from jurisdiction and as a result, cannot be invoked.

It should be noted that the EU is a witness signatory to the 1993 Oslo Accords, which explicitly state that the State of Israel has full administrative responsibility and authority over Area C. In addition, the EU's foreign policy principles dictate that its "work in the international arena will be guided by the principles that inspired its creation … democracy, the rule of law, and respect for the principles of international law."

In a visit to the Jalazone Refugee Camp near Ramallah earlier this month, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas claimed that the Palestinians "will enter Jerusalem - millions of fighters."

In a video uploaded to Abbas' Facebook page on August 10, and reported this week by the Middle East Media Research Institute [MEMRI], the Palestinian president stated that the Palestinian people "shall remain [here], and nobody can remove us from our homeland."

Referring to Israelis, he continued, "If they want, they themselves can leave. Those who are foreign to this land have no right to it.

"No matter how many houses and how many settlements they declare that they [plan to build] here and there – they shall all be destroyed, Allah willing. They will all go to the garbage bin of history."

To back up his statements, Abbas went on to claim that the Palestinians are descended from the people of ancient Canaan, saying "This land belongs to the people who live on it. It belongs to the Canaanites, who lived here 5,000 years ago. We are the Canaanites!”

The audience can then be heard chanting, "To Jerusalem we march, martyrs by the millions!"

PA President Mahmoud Abbas' spokesman recently announced the PA's intent to demand that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at The Hague file charges against senior Israelis for the "crime" of approving the construction of 650 residential units in Beit El. This demand joins a list of dozens of Palestinian complaints to the ICC about imaginary "crimes" of Israeli politicians and soldiers.

Several months ago, they demanded the filing of criminal charges against U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman for the "crime" of verbally supporting the potential legal rights of Israel in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.

The Palestinian demands for criminal charges against Americans will go unfulfilled due to the Americans' strategy that is based on understanding that the ICC is a hostile political organization. Israel still insists on viewing the ICC as a legitimate legal institution.
The American strategy expresses itself in three areas:
1. A complete refusal to cooperate with the ICC, anchored in U.S. legislation.
2. A campaign to delegitimize the ICC that includes transferring U.S. responsibility for dealing with the ICC to security officials rather than lawyers and presenting the ICC as an undemocratic, unaccountable, illegitimate institution that endangers the sovereignty of the U.S. and the constitutional rights of its citizens.
3. Concrete threats against The Hague, including a threat to liberate Americans with force should they be arrested at the request of The Hague.

The U.S. responded to the ICC prosecutor's request to open a full investigation of alleged crimes committed by American soldiers in Afghanistan by canceling the visas of ICC teams and threatening additional steps. Soon after, The Hague judges decided to close the case and terminate the investigation.

The ICC prosecutor has already surrendered to Palestinian demands and opened a preliminary investigation against Israeli "criminals." Israel's state attorneys are engaging in "informal" cooperation with ICC lawyers to try to convince them that the ICC lacks legal jurisdiction to act against Israelis. These claims are correct, but the American experience shows that they will be ineffective.

An effective Israeli strategy vis-a-vis the ICC requires only determination to fight a political battle, ending the treatment of the ICC as a professional legal institution, and an uncompromising struggle against its legitimacy.

No joke: brutal regimes now running for a 2020-22 seat on the UN Human Rights Council include:
🇮🇶 Iraq
🇱🇾 Libya
🇸🇩 Sudan
🇲🇷 Mauritania
🇻🇪 Venezuela

Current members already include:
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia
🇵🇰 Pakistan
🇸🇴 Somalia
🇳🇬 Nigeria
🇶🇦 Qatar
🇪🇬 Egypt
🇨🇺 Cuba
🇨🇳 China https://t.co/4Em1Se2lrP

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 22, 2019

In recent years, it has been an open secret that Israel and the United Arab Emirates enjoyed shared positions on a wide range of key issues in the Middle East. The existence of some level of communications between the two countries was also widely known. Israel and the UAE shared deep concerns in two key areas: first, regarding the Iranian ambition to attain regional hegemony; and second, on the threat of Sunni political Islam in general and of the Muslim Brotherhood in particular.

The UAE lacks the Islamist foundations of Saudi Arabia, and in Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed Bin Zayed, it possesses a leader highly regarded by Western and Israeli officials as a sophisticated strategic thinker.

Nor were the Emiratis focused only on theorizing. The UAE has invested heavily in its armed forces in recent years. Its air force recently provided effective air support to Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army. The UAE’s Presidential Guard, commanded by former head of the Australian SAS Maj.-Gen. Mike Hindmarsh, is a premier fighting force in the Arab world. The readiness to engage the UAE’s armed forces led former US defense secretary James Mattis to dub the country “little Sparta.”

As a result, those analysts who posit the existence of a “moderate alliance” of Middle East countries, of which Israel is a member, united by concerns regarding Iran and Islamism, tend to give the UAE high billing within this group.

Recent moves by the UAE, however, suggest this rosy picture only reflects part of the reality, and needs to be amended. Observe.

Sultan, 37, a clerk from Riyadh whose Twitter account is almost entirely dedicated to relations with Israel and the Jews, told the Times of Israel: "We, the young generation, aspire to have normal relations with all states. We also know that 70 years ago there was no Palestinian state, while the Jews have existed for 3,000 years. For us, Jerusalem has no significance; Islam's holy places are in Mecca and Medina. We want peace and coexistence."

Saudi analyst and journalist Abdul Hamid Ghbein told the Times of Israel: "There is no doubt that the attitude of Arabs, and specifically of the Saudis, has changed a lot, and that Israel is no longer an enemy state but a part of the region. I believe that there will be diplomatic, economic, and cultural relations with Israel before the end of 2020. The Jews have a right to this land where their ancestors were living thousands of years ago. The stories of the kings and the prophets in the Quran are clear evidence for that."

"The Arabs, and especially the Saudis, are amazed by the Israeli scientific, technological and cognitive development in all fields, and they know that the Jewish people are good and peaceful people. Very soon, there will be Saudi students studying in Israeli universities as well as Israeli students studying in Saudi universities."

A Memorandum of Understanding signed earlier this week by the US State Department with Algeria is causing consternation among organisation representing Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. They argue that it is simply an instrument for legitimising the seizure of Jewish heritsge in that country.

In the past JIMENA, the US organisation representing Jews from the MENA, has clearly stated its objections to such MOUs: "These MOUs claim to be about looting, but their broad scope and limited evidence of success suggests their real impact is providing a legal vehicle to legitimize foreign confiscations and wrongful ownership claims. Legitimate efforts to curb looting are essential, but they must be targeted to preserve archaeological resources, and not to disguise the brazen property confiscations of tyrants."

The Jewish community of Algeria, once numbering 130,000, no longer exists. Synagogues, cemeteries, sifre torah and other Judaica were abandoned at the time of the great exodus of 1962, when Algeria acquired its independence.

In April 2019,Rep. Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1) introduced the Protecting US Heritage Abroad Act. With North African Jews in mind who are now US citizens, the bipartisan legislation, cosponsored by Rep. Michael McCaul (R, TX-10) and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D, FL-23) would extend the current mandate of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad to include the Middle East and North Africa, and would provide access to protected cemeteries, monuments and buildings.

The IDF stopped yet another terrorist from entering Israel near the southern community of Kibbutz Nachal Oz, late Thursday night.

“The gunman,” as a Hamas affiliated Telegram channel referred to the attacker, approached the Gaza ‘security fence’ and “hurled several grenades at IDF soldiers,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said in a tweet.

The IDF “troops charged and stopped the terrorist,” the tweet said.

Palestinian media sources reported that the terrorist was killed by IDF troops. No Israelis were reported injured in the incident.

The Hamas affiliated Telegram channel said the terrorist "was shot before crossing the border," implying the armed Palestinian was attempting to enter Israeli territory.

אמש (ה'), סוכל פיגוע חדירה בצפון רצועת עזה, במהלכו מחבל השליך רימונים לעבר לוחמי צה"ל. המחבל זוהה על-ידי תצפיתניות ולוחמי צה"ל הוקפצו לנקודה. הלוחמים הסתערו לעבר המחבל מעבר לגדר, ופגעו בו pic.twitter.com/NIkYmrLD3f

— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) August 23, 2019

The Israeli army was on high alert along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel Friday ahead of weekly border rallies, amid concern of a potential escalation after days of rising violence in the region.

There were conflicting reports as to the intentions of the Hamas terror group, which rules the territory, ahead of the afternoon demonstrations.

Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that Israel was conditioning the entry of new Qatari cash into the Strip on Hamas maintaining the peace until after the Israeli elections on September 17. But it said Hamas intended to raise tensions at the protests, with sources in the organization saying events would be more violent than in recent weeks, and that Hamas was considering renewing widespread sabotage attacks on the security fence, launching of arson balloons and nighttime rioting.

However, Gaza sources quoted by the Kan news broadcaster said Hamas was not seeking to agitate and would deploy its so-called restraint forces to ensure the demonstrations remained contained, and organizers urged participants to keep the rallies peaceful.

The Israeli military issued a stern warning to Hamas on Thursday, saying it must enforce its control over other terrorist groups like Islamic Jihad as tensions continue to simmer on the Gaza Strip border, while Israel’s foreign minister said the IDF was prepared for a major operation in Gaza.

Recent days have seen an uptick in attacks on southern Israel, with rockets and mortars being fired, as well as an infiltration attempt. The IDF has engaged in measured retaliation for each incident, many of which are believed to be the work of Iran-backed Islamic Jihad.

Israel holds Gaza-ruling Hamas responsible for all violence emanating from the coastal enclave.

The Israeli news site Walla reported that Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson, addressed Gazans directly in a post on his Facebook page.

“The #Gaza strip is at the height of a path in which civil actions are implemented that will make tangible improvements in the civilian life of the population in the short and long term,” he said.

“It is enough to realize that follow-up on the state of electricity, fishing, export and import in the sector before and after these steps,” he added.

However, Adraee continued, “The #Islamic _ Jihad movement acts to destabilize, distort and prejudice those understandings. The Islamic Jihad movement has previously committed and is planning to commit subversive attacks, including rocket launches. #Israel does not and will not accept such attacks.”

American officials have confirmed that Israel has been carrying out airstrikes against Iranian targets in Iraq, the New York Times reported on Thursday. One senior official also expressed concerns that Israel was pushing the limits and its operation could eventually lead to the US withdrawing its troops from Iraq.

According to the US officials, Israel was behind several raids that struck military targets in Iraq with connections to Iran, including an attack that on July 19 hit a base used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to transfer weapons to Syria.

The NYT report added that the July 19 attack was carried out from within Iraq and destroyed a load of guided missiles with a range of 125 miles.

On Tuesday, explosions rocked an arms depot belonging to the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) near Balad air base some 80 km. north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

The PMF – militias incorporated into Iraq's security apparatus in 2016 to fight against Islamic State are directly financed and equipped by Iran. However, the PMF still cooperate with Iraqi troops, who work with the US military in the region. The Balad base itself hosts US forces and contractors, according to Reuters.

After the latest strike, Iraq's national security adviser Falih al-Fayadh said that Baghdad did not want to take a side in the conflict between Iran and other countries and being "pushed into a war," the NYT added. Al-Fayadh also stated that they did not know yet who was behind the attack.

Israel has recently carried out a series of airstrikes against Iranian-linked military targets in Iraq, two senior US officials told the New York Times on Friday.

The officials said that Israel has carried out “several strikes in recent days on munitions storehouses for Iranian-backed groups in Iraq.”

A senior Middle Eastern intelligence official said that Israel was also responsible for the July 19 strike on a military base north of Baghdad being used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to transport weapons to Syria.

The official said this Israeli strike was launched from inside Iraq, though he did not provide further details. He said it destroyed a cache of guided missiles with a range of 200 kilometers (125 miles).

The report comes on the heels of remarks by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that hinted that Israel was responsible for the spate of attacks against Iran-backed militias in Iraq over the past month.

The Palestinian Authority has agreed to accept approximately NIS 2 billion in fuel tax money from Israel, a move that alleviates some financial pressure but falls short of resolving the PA’s financial crisis.

The PA has been on the verge of financial collapse this year after it protested Israel’s decision to withhold a portion of the tax revenues it transfers. Israel this year decided to deduct from those transfer the same of money that the PA gives monthly to terrorists and their family members.

In response to that decision the PA has refused to accept any of the tax revenues.

PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said on Thursday that it was too early to talk about an end to the crisis with Israel surrounding the deduction of payments to families of security prisoners and “martyrs” from tax revenues Israel collects each month on behalf of the Palestinians.

Shtayyeh confirmed that the PA and Israel have reached “understandings” on the fuel tax.” He said that in accordance with the understandings, the PA will start importing fuel without the tax.”

PA Minister for Civil Affairs, Hussein al-Sheikh, announced that the PA has fuel tax (dubbed the “blue tax”) that were deducted by Israel for the past seven months.

The recovery of the funds, he said, “means the end of the oil tax crisis between the Palestinian Authority and Israel after painstaking negotiations.”

Hizbullah Secretary-General said in an August 16, 2019 speech that aired on Al-Manar TV (Lebanon) that if Israel attacks Lebanon, Hizbullah will destroy its military units and its tanks, and he threatened this will be broadcast live for the entire world to see. He said that the resistance axis is thriving and increasing in power and size, and he said that it enjoys support from the Bahraini, Tunisian, Algerian, and other nations. Nasrallah went on to say that reliance on the resistance axis will prevent terrorism from re-emerging in Syria and Iraq from falling into American "hegemony." He also said that it will bring about the end of the "aggression" against Yemen and the return of Jerusalem, and that it will fill the hearts of the Palestinians with hope. In addition, Nasrallah reiterated that a Western war against Iran would "set the entire region aflame." The audience chanted: "We respond to your call, oh Nasrallah!"

"You Will Watch A Live Broadcast Of The Destruction Of Israel's Tanks, Battalions, And Brigades Should They Enter Southern Lebanon"

Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah: "I say to all of Israel's brigades, battalions, and elite units: if you enter our land, every inch of our land in southern Lebanon will be like this area of steadfastness where we are celebrating today, only it will be 500 times greater. Your brigades will be destroyed, your battalions will scatter, and your tanks will be ruined, and this will be captured on camera for the entire world to see. I promise you again that you will watch a live broadcast of the destruction of Israel's tanks, battalions, and brigades should they enter southern Lebanon."

The photo could easily be mistaken as an advertisement for "Narcos," the popular television series about Central American drug cartels: A man, sitting on piles of cash, cigar in his hand and a look of content on his face. This is no television series, however; it's the reality in the Middle East.

The man in the photo is Amar Shweiki, a Syrian businessman who functions as one of the central conduits for moving money across the Middle East, helping Iran bypass economic sanctions and fund Hezbollah. In an article that will appear in full on Friday, Israel Hayom exposes Tehran's sophisticated mechanism for funding the Lebanese Shiite terrorist organization and terrorist activity across the region, and Western efforts to cut off its monetary supply.

Over the past year, Hezbollah has been mired in a severe financial crisis, and Iran has been forced to adopt unorthodox methods to fund the organization under US sanctions. Consequently, cash is used in a large portion of this financial activity. The US administration recently released a comprehensive document detailing Iran's efforts to circumvent sanctions. The aim of the document, earmarked for use by foreign governments, is to sever the numerous cash pipelines used by Tehran.

These counter-efforts have forced Iran to put increasing faith in cash. For example, Iran's foreign ministry delivers some $100 million in cash to Hezbollah annually: Iranian diplomats arrive in Beirut via commercial flights carrying suitcases stuffed with dollars and hand them over to Hezbollah officials. The money itself is categorized as diplomatic mail, while the couriers themselves exploit the immunity provided by their diplomatic passports. Although the identities of those involved and the transfer dates are known to Western agencies, the channel is still active.

It appears that the economic campaign against Hezbollah won't succeed if Lebanon remains out of bounds.

Rafik Nasrallah, the Director of the Lebanese International Center of Media and Research, said in a May 23, 2017 interview on Al-Jadeed TV that the Arab world has entered a "period of historic stupidity" and that U.S. President Trump is deceiving the Arabs. He sarcastically called upon Arabs to stop having sex so that they would stop procreating and so that they will be extinct in 20 years, because they have proven themselves to be a nation unworthy of being alive.

Britain is unlikely to alter its approach on Iran despite Prime Minister Boris Johnson meeting US President Donald Trump, as the 2015 deal remains the best way to ensure Tehran does not get nuclear weapons, a British diplomatic source said on Friday.

“We are strong supporters of the JCPOA (Iran deal). We think that it is very important that Iran doesn’t get the nuclear weapons,” said the diplomat speaking ahead of the G7 leaders summit in Biarritz, where Johnson and Trump will meet.

“It is important that it continues and I don’t think you will find any change in the British government position.”

The source said it was critical that Iran fully complied with the accord, but that while Johnson would listen to the US’s position, there would not be a radical change in approach.

With Washington increasing economic pressure on the Islamic Republic, and the mullahs responding with a series of naval provocations, Iranian media are claiming that Jews and Zionists are behind it all. David A. Weinberg writes:

After the U.S. blamed Iran for . . . attacks in June on two [oil] tankers in the Gulf of Oman, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency cited a former Iranian government spokesperson calling the attacks “a plot hatched by the Zionist regime of Israel and the U.S. to exert more pressure on the Islamic Republic.” . . .

After British authorities seized an Iranian oil tanker suspected of violating international sanctions on Syria on July 4th, the focus of Iran’s aggression and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories shifted somewhat from the United States to Great Britain. On July 19th, Iran seized at least one British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf in retaliation. . . . Iran’s Press TV reported in mid-July on Boris Johnson’s efforts to replace Theresa May as UK prime minister with the headline “The Zionists Tighten Their Stranglehold on British Politics.” The focus of this article was on decrying what it called “the depth of Zionist penetration across the British political establishment.”

[In May], Iran’s government-run Hamoon TV aired a music video showing the Statue of Liberty with a Jewish menorah in place of its torch, which the singer describes as “a flame straight from hell.” That same day, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s official representative to the Iranian city of Birjand called Iran’s enemies “a fusion of Jews and polytheists” who are “impure and evil, . . . a crossbreed of dogs and wolves that has pounced on the convoy of humanity, [and] predatory, reptilian, and satanic”.

Iran has produced highly accurate missiles which it has not publicized, Iranian Deputy Defense Minister General Qassem Taqizadeh said on Friday, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

Taqizadeh did not provide details about the weapons.

U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of an international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program last year and stepped up sanctions on Tehran in order to curb Iran’s development of ballistic missiles and its support for proxies in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq.

"Today we have very accurate missiles which we have not publicized," Taqizadeh said, according to Fars.

Iran displayed what it described as a domestically built long-range, surface-to-air missile air defense system on Thursday, amid rising tensions with the United States.

In a move that should surprise no one, Iranian judokas will boycott the World Judo Championship 2019 in Tokyo next week, despite a public promise issued by Iran's Olympic committee that its athletes would cease boycotting such competitions for political reasons.

The Israeli national team had believed that only Iranian judokas in specific weight classes would refuse to compete against Israelis, but the Iranian team, it now appears, won't arrive in Tokyo altogether.

In May, the International Judo Federation and media celebrated Iran's declaration that it would no longer boycott athletes from certain countries, but it was clear, even then, that they had no intention of ever competing against Israeli judokas.

The IJF said in a statement at the time that the Iranian commitment came after several rounds of talks regarding a “disturbing phenomenon” in which Iranian athletes suddenly claim "injuries" or intentionally fail their weigh-ins to avoid meeting athletes from certain countries, alluding to Israel.

Perhaps the most famous incident was the decision by two-time judo world champion Arash Miresmaeili, who deliberately showed up overweight for his bout against an Israeli at the 2004 Athens Olympics and was disqualified.

There are many reasons why the Democrats and their Jewish supporters refuse to call out the anti-Jewish bigots on their own side and instead accuse President Trump, the most pro-Israel president in American history, of antisemitism.

As has also been demonstrated in Britain over the epidemic Jew-hatred within the Labour Party, there is an iron conviction on the left that they cannot be guilty of antisemitism because they are “anti-racists.” Their political identity is rooted in their belief that they are always on the side of virtue against evil-doers.

If they were ever to admit evil attitudes on their own side, their political and moral identity would collapse. So they turn reality inside out to defend the indefensible. And to protect themselves, they project their own evil onto their opponents. Thus, they falsely accuse President Trump of having the odious views of which their own side is guilty.

Nor can they admit that the Palestinian cause they support may be vile. The journalist Peter Beinart tweeted in defense of Miftah: “Frustrating to hear people who’d never heard of Miftah until today use its alleged sins to distract from deep injustice [Omar and Tlaib] were going to witness. As if an anti-white comment by SNCC (the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee which fought for black civil rights) justified segregation.”

Genocidal attitudes and attacks by Palestinians most certainly do justify the security measures Israel uses against them. Through this tweet, Beinart has not only supported a virulently antisemitic outfit, but also whitewashed the Jew-hatred and Israel-bashing of those it promotes — and promoted his own.

Such moral bankruptcy has become a pathology that is steady poisoning the Democratic Party against the Jewish people, towards which those American Jews who still support the Democrats are indeed displaying a most tragic disloyalty.

Given the context in which Trump made his remarks — that is, the Democratic Party’s open embrace of anti-Semites and anti-Semitic messaging — it is literally impossible for even a semi-literate person to misunderstand what he was saying.

Moreover, it is telling that the same people insisting that Trump’s statement was anti-Semitic are giving a pass to the Democrats for refusing to take any action to rein in their Jew hating members. It shows the disingenuousness of their sudden professed concern for anti-Jewish bigotry.

American Jews refuse to see what is happening to them while it is happening.

The likes of Tlaib and Omar are rendering them political non-entities. By attacking Trump, the main politician supporting them, while giving a free pass to the Democrats who are facilitating discrimination against them, American Jews are disenfranchising themselves. Democrats see they can abandon the Jews without consequence, and Republicans see that there is no point in sticking up for the Jews who will hate them no matter what they say and do.

This is a tragedy of epic proportions, first and foremost for the American Jewish community but really for America as a whole and for the Jewish people as a whole.

The mainstreaming of antisemitic rhetoric within Labour’s ranks ushered in a debate within the Jewish community and beyond on whether it was ethical, sensible and — yes — loyal for Jews to continue to support Labour.

The Conservative cabinet minister Sajid Javid angered some Jews when, in a Rosh Hashanah greeting last year, wrote that when British Jews are feeling under threat from Corbyn, “all decent people” must “stand together and celebrate our Jewish community.” To critics, the implication was that Jews who support Labour aren’t decent.

Others have been more explicit. Fred Dalah, a 64-year-old Jewish businessman from Edgware in northern London, wrote in 2018 in the Jewish News of London that, “Jews who vote Labour are lambs to the slaughter.”

In addition to Sacks, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and three of the leading British Jewish newspapers have called Corbyn an existential threat to British Jewry. These warnings were designed to sound an alarm and prevent Corbyn from becoming prime minister. But they also emboldened British Jews and non-Jews to call out Jewish supporters of Corbyn as traitors.

At the same time, Corbyn’s supporters cite these loud warnings as a political attempt to weaponize antisemitism and sabotage a left-wing politician’s chances.

All this means that, in Britain, “Now you have the situation where there is good Jews, bad Jews, and good antisemites and bad antisemites,” said Dave Rich, head of policy at the Community Security Trust and author of a 2016 book, “The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and antisemitism,” during a speech in 2018. “I don’t think this is really going to work.”

Contrary to the outcry on the part of his critics, Trump was not accusing Jews of being disloyal to America, but rather to themselves.

In his bull-in-a-china-shop way, he was inadvertently repeating the aphorism coined in the 1950s by social critic Milton Himmelfarb: “Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans.”

In other words, Trump was expressing shock and disappointment that Jews would willingly betray their own interests. In his eyes, this means that they must be ignorant of the direction in which the party they overwhelmingly support has been going. If not, they appear to be purposely sabotaging US relations with the single state established in their ancestral homeland to protect their people and serve as America’s buffer against hostile, anti-democratic forces in the volatile, strategically important region.

THOUGH TRUMP’S disillusionment may be understandable, it indicates that he doesn’t know much about Jews. This is peculiar, considering the massive amount of time he has spent around them throughout his life as a New York real estate guy and Hollywood reality TV star.

Here is what he doesn’t grasp: Only a handful of non-Orthodox Jews vote Republican; the rest pray at the altar of the Democratic Party, no matter what, even when the party turns against Israel.

This apparent oddity spurred my father, Norman Podhoretz – a lifelong liberal Democrat who became a conservative Republican – to write an entire book examining the phenomenon.

Was there a country called "Palestine" before 1948? Who really are the Palestinians? What was the connection between Nazism, communism, and Palestinian nationalism? Why do media always take Palestinians side against Israel? And so much more. Everything in this film is factual and can be checked. (h/t vwVwwVwv)

Donald Trump communicates in unfinished thoughts, and this week’s inchoate pronouncement was a disaster. “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat,” he told reporters on Tuesday, “I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

No one quite knew what to make of it. Was Trump saying that Jews who would vote for a Democrat are disloyal to Israel, to their Jewishness, to the Republican Party, or to him? On Wednesday, he explained that he was referring to Jews and Israel.

But this only left additional confusions: Does Trump believe that Jews are loyal to Israel above all else? Or that they aren’t but should be? Was his statement anti-Semitic? Was it, in its twisted way, a refutation of the anti-Semitic charge of dual loyalty? Or was he simply stating what he saw as common sense—that there’s a rising tide of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment in the Democratic Party, and it’s bad for the Jews—without giving any consideration to the vexed issues around Jewish politics in America?

I’m certain the last interpretation is the correct one. For Trump, the only logic is transactional logic, and all games are zero-sum. He said what he said while criticizing the absurdity of those who suggest that the United States should punish Israel for banning Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering the country. Whatever Trump’s skills as a businessman and president, he’s talentless as an anti-Semite.

Answering press questions on Tuesday President Trump commented “Any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat — I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” While the Democrats, media, and liberal Jewish organizations (which covers most of them) are generating so much anger at what the President said they might lose their bowels. The Dems are even spinning his words. Trump wasn’t talking about disloyalty to America, he was talking about disloyalty to the Jewish people, and President Trump is 100% correct.

Over thirty years ago Secretary of State James Baker said: “F**k the Jews they won’t vote for us anyway.” But because most American Jews’ Blind Democratic Party Loyalty no matter what, today, the Democratic Party attitude is “F**k the Jews they will vote for us whatever we do!” So to please their far liberal base, they’ve drifted toward Antisemitism, and they know they won’t lose many votes and that hatred goes way beyond the BDS of Omar and Tlaib, and has been happening for years

My first article warning that the Democratic party was becoming anti-Semitic was posted on January 29, 2007. Eleven years later the party’s Antisemitism had metastasized and infected much of the party. In 2003 former Congressman James Moran (D-VA.) made the false charge that the leaders of America’s Jewish community sent America into war in Iraq to benefit Israel, a charge that Democratic Party President Barack Obama repeated in 2015

Louis Farrakhan was justifiably criticized for calling Jews termites, but before Farrakhan, Hank Johnson (D-GA) used that phrase. At an event at the 2016 Democratic Convention Johnson, who once worried that too many people on the island of Guam might tip it over, called Jewish people who live in disputed territories to “termites” that destroy homes. Johnson said it during an event sponsored by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, an anti-Israel organization that galvanizes supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS. After his comment caused an uproar, Johnson gave a half-hearted apology. He was sorry about offending but wasn’t sorry for saying it or even or recognized that it was anti-Semitic.

What did the Democratic Party say about Johnson’s Antisemitism? Nothing.

On today's Bulwark podcast, Batya Ungar-Sargon from The Forward joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss President Trump's spat with members of "The Squad" over Israel, Anti-Semitism, and America.

One of the first stories I was assigned as a young journalist in Israel in 1969 was the trial of an Australian sheepshearer who set fire to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, an act that threatened to unhinge the Middle East. It remains for me the most vivid story I covered during my 25 years with The Jerusalem Post, a period that included several wars.

August 23 marks the 50th anniversary of the event. The Muslim world assumed that Israel was responsible for the arson and Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal ordered his armed forces to prepare for a holy war. The Arab League met in emergency session, and from distant India came reports of rioting in Muslim areas, with many casualties.

As cries of jihad rose with the plumes of smoke over the Temple Mount and international condemnation loomed, the Israeli government gave top priority to apprehension of the arsonist. In annexing East Jerusalem after the Six Day War two years before, Israel had declared itself guardian of the holy places of all religions; its claim to sovereignty in Jerusalem rested on that pledge.

Within 24 hours police tracked a suspect, Denis Rohan, 28, to a kibbutz where he worked as a volunteer. He immediately confessed to the arson with an enthusiasm that startled his interrogators.

The trial was for Rohan the high point of his life. To stand “before the judges of Israel,” as he put it, confirmed the chosen status that had only recently been revealed to him by a voice. The journalists and diplomats packing the courtroom would, he knew, pass on that revelation to the world. He would build a temple in Jerusalem, the voice had said, on the ruins of the biblical Temple, and there be anointed king of Judea. His torching of the mosque was intended to clear space for the new structure.

“My trial is the most important event for the world since the trial of Jesus Christ,” Rohan told a psychiatrist who interviewed him.

In the eyes of many, the Hebron massacre of 1929 is the defining event of the 1929 Arab riots in Palestine.

For centuries, the small Jewish community of Hebron coexisted alongside a much larger Muslim community. Although Jews were never accorded full equality and often faced rampant discrimination and even extreme violence, at times relations were cordial.

All that changed exactly ninety years ago, as violent Arab riots against Jewish immigration swept through Palestine, which was then administered by the British.

Triggered by a baseless rumor that Jews were planning to march to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and claim ownership of their holiest place, thousands of Arab villagers streamed into Jerusalem to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, many armed with sticks and knives. The crowds worked themselves into a frenzy, with some 20-30 gunshots reported fired in the vicinity of the Temple Mount by rabble-rousers. A British report on the events describes the excited Arab crowds as intent on mischief and possibly murder. Fed by rumors that two Arabs had been killed by Jews elsewhere in Jerusalem, Arabs in the Old City went on the rampage, attacking and murdering Jews.

The rumors, and the violence they prompted, spread swiftly across the land – most notably to Hebron, where a massacre unfolded.

Today marks 90 years since the Hebron Massacre of 67 Jews. Rampaging Arabs also murdered Jews in Jerusalem and Tzefat. In total, in the course of just one week, Arabs murdered 130 Jews.

While the massacre took place in 1929, over 60 years before its creation, the Palestinian Authority has wholeheartedly adopted the event, glorifying three of its participants and perpetuating the spark that ignited the massacre.

In the aftermath of the massacres, British mandate forces arrested and prosecuted dozens of Arabs. While most of the death sentences handed down were commuted to life imprisonment, three Arabs who, according to a report by the British government to the League of Nations, "committed particularly brutal murders at Safad and Hebron" were put to death on June 17, 1930.

Every year the PA marks the execusion of these three murderers - Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Ataa Al-Zir.

In June this year, on the 89th anniversary of their execution, PA TV marked the execution of "the three heroes" and used the opportunity to add that they have become "a legend of self-sacrifice for the homeland" and that "souls that have been sacrificed for their country will not die." In this manner, the PA constantly reinforces its message that dying while carrying out an act of terrorism is an outcome that guarantees that the souls of the terrorists do not die.

One event in recent history explains what so many Israelis feel deep inside about their Arab neighbors.

It took place 90 years ago this week, on August 24, 1929, when a bloodthirsty Arab mob in Hebron raped, tortured, stabbed, hanged, burned, and sexually mutilated 67 of their Jewish neighbors.

That bloody day paled in comparison with the horrors that would decimate European Jewry ten years and one week later, but in the small and relatively peaceful confines of the British-run mandate of Palestine, it left a terrifying and indelible impression.

On that day, which fell on Shabbat, an Arab woman knocked on the door of the local pharmacist, Gershon Ben-Zion, who had served Jews and Arabs for decades. She was crying for help, but when Ben-Zion rushed to open his door to her, an angry Arab mob of locals and area villagers rushed in. They raped and murdered 20-year-old Esther, then cut off the hands of her mother, Zehava, and let her die in agony. And all the while they tortured Gershon who was watching this horror until he, too, died.

The baker, Rabbi Noach Immerman, was burned alive inside his own oven.

When the rioters broke into Shlomo and Nechama Unger’s home, they thought the couple were Christian tourists, so they asked, and Shlomo stood up and answered: I am a Jew. He and his wife were slaughtered on the spot.

Time has not dimmed the powerful memories that Avraham Kiryati, 98, has of the moment his grandfather, Eliyahu Capilouto, was stabbed during the Hebron massacre on August 24, 1929. "My grandfather was dressed just like the Arabs," said Kiryati. "He went out to see what was going on. They [the rioters] pushed him inside and stabbed him on the side of his body."

Kiryati escaped out the back door of his grandparents' home and made his way to the family chicken coup where he hid until it was safe. When he returned, he found Eliyahu lying on the floor in a pool of blood as his grandmother Rivka blocked the wound with coffee grounds. In the following months, his grandfather died of his wounds.

Kiryati is a descendant of Jews who escaped the Spanish Inquisition, settling first in Safed and then in Hebron. He said all of the survivors were taken to Jerusalem. In the early 1930s, his grandmother Rivka was among a small number of families who returned to the city and attempted to resurrect the Jewish community, but the British insisted that they leave during the Arab uprising of 1936.

Kiryati was in the British army and in 1942 he returned to Hebron with the British and took a photograph of the Jewish cemetery, which was later used to locate the graves of the massacre victims. During the 1967 Six-Day War he was part of the unit that liberated Gush Etzion and Hebron from the Jordanians. He went to Hebron to look for the Jewish cemetery, but instead of graves he found a tomato garden. Kiryati is a firm believer that today, as then, the Palestinians want to drive the Jews into the sea. "We do not have any choice but to remain strong," he said.

Tomorrow marks the 90th anniversary of the murder of 67 Jews by an Arab mob in the city of Hebron. Many of its victims were students of the city’s famed yeshiva, which had been relocated there from Lithuania in 1924. Among them was Aharon Dovid Shainberg, a native of Memphis, Tennessee—one of several American Jews who came there to study. Akiva Males discovered Shainberg’s letters to his family, and has published some excerpts. Signed “Dave,” and addressed to “Dearest Dad,” “Dearest Mother,” or “Dear Folks,” they end on August 20, 1929—just four days before the massacre.

On his visit to the Western Wall, and the British police presence there, Shainberg wrote:
So think of it! That the holiest & most sacred spot of the Jewish people is controlled by the heartless and brazen Esau! For the few feet remaining of our holy Temple we must regard the English soldiers as the “Baale Battim” [owners or bosses]—Oh! I tell you it is heart rending!

On his fellow students:
The Yeshiva itself is a revelation to me. The boys surely fall far short of the popular conception of what a “Yeshiva Bacher” [student] is. They, for the most part, are neatly and modernly dressed—although a bit shabby, of course. In manners and deportment they are perfect—the Yeshiva is insistent upon a high standard of etiquette within the Yeshiva and outside as well. The character of each of the 200 students is of the highest imaginable. Even I was surprised at what I have found. The student body is composed of the purest type of idealists.

Christopher Steele—now infamous for his false, concocted Anti-Trump “dossier”—was a Cambridge University Marxist/Socialist, who headed its Union “debating society,” in the mid-1980s. The Jewish Post of Indianapolis, reported March 12, 1986 on Steele’s invitation to the Palestine Liberation Organization—then a U.S. and Israel designated [Marxist-jihadist] terrorist organization—to a Cambridge University “debate” on Israel’s existence as Jewish state (amidst 20+ Arab Muslim states). Geula Cohen, the Israeli Knesset member invited, replied,

"To the Union President Christopher Steele: The sole dialogue to which I would be a partner with an official representative of the PLO, an organization I consider neo-Nazi in character in that it slaughters Jews merely for being Jews, would be one in which he stood in the dock of an Israeli courtroom."

Current U.S. Muslim Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are Steele’s ideological heirs on the Left (here; here), whose words and actions are much more blatantly pro-jihadist (here; here) and Antisemitic (here; here).

The BDS movement which both women aggressively support is a toxic amalgam of annihilationist Jew-haters, which includes operatives from the Marxist terror organization PFLP, and two major, overt jihad terror organizations, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Collectively, these terrorist organizations have a bloody 50-year legacy (ongoing) of murderous attacks on Jews. Upon the cancellation of their slated visit to “Palestine,” the Congresswomen re-tweeted a cartoon by the Marxist-Jihadist (here; here) sympathizer (at minimum) Carlos Latuff, whose oeuvre includes a second place “award winning” 2006 cartoon from Iran’s odious “International Holocaust Cartoon Contest”.

Nine decades after the 1929 Hebron jihad carnage of Jews—celebrated then by the Soviet Communist movement and its regional tentacles—the annihilationist Jew-hatred of the Jihadist/Green-Marxist/Red alliance lives on, embodied now, by the somehow more “acceptable” Tlaib and Omar. Their true mental and moral ugliness, however, was captured by the unabashed May, 13, 2011 interview of a 92-year-old Palestinian Arab woman who witnessed the murderous 1929 anti-Jewish ethnic cleansing pogrom in Hebron. She openly celebrated the slaughter of the Jews of Hebron as an appropriate paradigm for the present:
[Interviewer]: So you remember May 15, 1948, the day of the Nakba.
[Sara Jaber]: Why wouldn’t I remember? May Allah support us. I hope we forget those days. Allah willing, you will bury [Israel], and massacre the Jews with your own hands. Allah willing, you will massacre them like we massacred them in Hebron.
[Interviewer]: What does this day mean to you? You have lived 63 years since the Nakba. You have experienced the entire Nakba…
[Sara Jaber]: 92 years. That’s 92. I lived through the British era, and I lived through the massacre of the Jews in Hebron. We, the people of Hebron, massacred the Jews. My father massacred them, and brought back some stuff…
[Interviewer]: Thank you very much.

It should be noted, nonetheless, that Tlaib’s “calming feeling” is not coming from gratification at Jewish loss, but in her belief that her grandparents relinquished their freedom to help Jews directly after the Shoah.

I cannot know if Tlaib is deceiving herself, or if she is outright lying. But the historical record does not reflect the notion that the Arabs in the British Mandate struggled to “create a safe haven for Jews” at great cost to their own well-being during World War II. The very idea of it is laughable. This is a falsehood so gross in its distortions that it is amazing that Tlaib could utter these words.

The truth is that the Arabs in the Mandate did everything they could to keep Jews out of the Jewish ancestral homeland even as the Holocaust was happening. Between 1936 and 1939, the Arabs launched the “Arab Revolt.” These ongoing Arab riots concluded with the British issuing its infamous “White Paper,” agreeing to Arab demands and thus keeping hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Jews trapped in Europe.

And who among us can possibly forget the participation of Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem during World War II, who went to Berlin to strategize with Adolf Hitler on how best to bring the Holocaust to the Holy Land.

So, Representative Tlaib, please do not deceive yourself into thinking that the Arabs of the Mandate helped the Jews during the Holocaust. You are spreading what can be fairly described as a self-serving historical falsehood for the purpose of creating sympathy for the Palestinian-Arabs at the expense of the indigenous Jewish population. And if you are not aware of this, perhaps your time would be better spent tending to the needs of your constituency rather than making life even more difficult for Israelis.

In his brief but passionate attack on BDS morality, Maher touched on motive, racial bias, selective reporting, lack of context, lack of historical perspective, and antisemitism.

Highlighting the unfair racial bias of BDS proponents, Maher noted: “BDS is predicated on the very shallow thinking that since the Israelis who are Jewish are mostly white, and the Palestinians are mostly browner, the Palestinians must be innocent and correct, and the Jews must be wrong.”

A provocative and brave statement from someone on the progressive left, but no one ever accused Bill Maher of being shy or politically correct.

Regarding historical context, an exasperated Maher challenged the stunned panel: “As if the occupation came right out of the blue. As if this totally peaceful people suddenly found themselves occupied. Forget about the intifadas, suicide bombings, and rockets … and how many wars?”

Both Rick Wilson and Carl Hulse agreed that discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were often ahistorical. Hulse, however, claimed that the Times did provide historical context for its readers. This, of course, is a ridiculous assertion — which Maher failed to challenge — given the Times’ consistent lack of political and historical context in its biased coverage of Israel.

Touching on selective reporting and lack of balance, Maher pointed out that even today, Jews are not allowed into Saudi Arabia, and wanted to know why no one talks about that: “Isn’t that something?”

The momentarily-humbled panel just sort of dithered as Maher went on to talk about statistics of the Jewish victims of ethnic cleansing in Arab and Middle Eastern countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Eritrea and Iran. “Why doesn’t anyone mention that in the media?” he asked the group. “It’s not exactly a one-way street here, is it?”

THE PALESTINIAN plight is self-perpetuating. I don’t know about the curriculum in Detroit, but I do know what is taught in Palestinian schools: hatred and antisemitism. This ensures that no matter what, peace – true peace – is not attainable in the near future. A generation raised on the cult of martyrdom is doomed.

The attack last week in which an Israeli policeman was stabbed by Palestinians age 17 and 14 is just one recent example. The two were fueled on the rhetoric of “free al-Aqsa.” That’s the Temple Mount where Jews are not currently allowed to pray. Only Muslims.

Speaking of which: As others have noted, Israeli passport holders are banned – permanently – from entering more than a dozen Muslim and Arab countries. Many of those countries won’t let in anyone whose passport contains – the horror – an Israeli visa. This is not just a denial of rights, it’s a denial of existence.

Unlike Tlaib and Omar, I decided to review history rather than revise it. This month two anniversaries stand out in particular. In August 2005, Israel disbanded all the Jewish communities in Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip and four in Samaria. Somehow the more than 8,000 Jews who lost their homes, livelihoods and community support systems in the disengagement 14 years ago were never considered refugees. That is a status reserved for Palestinians, in perpetuity. Thousands of rockets have been launched on Israel from Gaza since the disengagement, including 600 in May this year and several last weekend while the Tlaib-related tweet war was being waged in the virtual world. Whatever the conflict is about, it’s clearly not “the settlements.”

A Washington Post columnist slammed Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar for falsely accusing Israel of denying them entry because they are Muslim and “implementing Trump’s Muslim ban,” saying instead that the two women were barred from visiting because they are antisemites.

“If Omar and Tlaib can boycott Israel, why can’t Israel boycott them?” Marc Thiessen asked in an oped published Tuesday.

“There is nothing outrageous about Israel’s decision to bar entry to politicians who advocate its destruction,” he added.

“Sorry, it’s not a Muslim ban; it’s an antisemite ban,” Thiessen said.

The two lawmakers on Monday released a statement saying they were barred from entering Israel because they are “the first two Muslim-American women elected to Congress.” On Twitter, Omar accused Israel of implementing “Trump’s Muslim ban.” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who Thiessen calls a “supposedly responsible” Democrat, tweeted “PM Netanyahu — Drop your Muslim ban.”

According to Thiessen, the problem is not — as Omar claims — that Israel barred entry to a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, but rather that there is an antisemite sitting on that committee in the first place.

Thiessen goes on to list Omar’s antisemitic remarks:
Omar has said that when she hears people call Israel a democracy, “I almost chuckle.” She has said “Israel has hypnotized the world“; has declared her hope that Allah will “awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel”; supports a boycott of Israel, a country she has compared to Nazi Germany; accused her House colleagues who support Israel of pushing “for allegiance to a foreign country”; and declared that support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins.” (She later apologized for the last comment, but not all the others, before or since that one.)

Thiessen then asks how it is that Omar, after making virulently antisemitic comments, is not stripped of her role on the very committee that aids the U.S. in shaping policy towards Israel. “When Rep. Steve King defended white-supremacist views, the GOP leadership in the House stripped him of his committee assignments and voted 424 to 1 on a resolution condemning the Iowa Republican,” Thiessen notes.

The Post columnist also blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for defending Omar’s “allegiance to a foreign country” remark when Pelosi said, “I don’t believe it was intended in an antisemitic way.”

Thiessen asks: “I’m sorry, what other way could she have intended it? Can you imagine if Republicans had defended King, saying, ‘I don’t believe it was intended in a white-supremacist way?'”

A Brazilian public university canceled a lecture about the Middle East peace process after what the moderator said were threats by a pro-Palestinian group.

The University of Pernambuco called off the lecture by Jewish political scientist Andre Lajst hours before it was scheduled to take place at its campus on Thursday afternoon in Recife, the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported.

“I had to cancel the event for security reasons. Since 8 a.m. the Pro Palestine Muslim Association of Recife called me and threatened myself, the speaker and the university in a tough and harsh way,” said a statement addressed to university staff from Karl Schurster, a history professor and the event moderator.

On Tuesday, the pro-Palestinian group released a statement calling for a boycott, objecting that the program lacked a Palestinian speaker. Lajst answered with a public post and video on social media.

“While they preach boycott and academic censorship, we make room for them and invite: appoint a representative to discuss with me in a peaceful, democratic and respectful dialogue,” said Lajst, who heads the Brazilian branch of StandWithUs, a pro-Israel group.

Lajst lamented the university’s decision to cancel the event.

The House of Representatives recently voted 398-17 to reject the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions effort against Israel. Against this lopsided vote, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar offered a resolution defending BDS as an exercise of free speech by Americans. We strongly support free speech, but BDS supporters often use free speech talk to try to dodge accountability for their misbehavior.

Case in point: The American Studies Association’s Israel boycott. In 2013, the ASA’s leadership, known as the National Council, endorsed a resolution to cut ties with Israeli universities. The proposal was put to member vote. Turnout was low; only 20 percent voted in support. But the National Council declared victory anyway and, ever since, claims the resolution was adopted.

The boycott flies in the face of important academic principles, such as freedom and neutrality. It was immediately criticized by the distinguished 62-member Association of American Universities. And its exclusive focus on the Jewish state smacks of anti-Semitism. The ASA has never boycotted any other country, either before or since.

Four distinguished ASA members subsequently sued, claiming the small turnout invalidated the vote’s result under the ASA’s bylaws and corporate law. The members also claimed the boycott violated laws barring the nonprofit from acting outside its chartered purpose to “promote the development and dissemination of interdisciplinary research on U.S. culture and history in a global context.”

After litigation commenced, plaintiffs’ lawyers found disturbing evidence that BDS activists had schemed to take over ASA and plunder its resources to push BDS.

Excitement was in the air today as a leading As-A-Jewish pundit took the plunge and embraced the religion of As-A-Jewdaism. Noted critic of Israeli policies Peter Beinart dipped into the mikvah at Brooklyn’s Congregration Gates of Self-Righteousness and became a part of the As-A-Jewish people. The Daily Freier was on the scene to share in the simchas.

As the Congregation waited for the ceremony to begin, machers from the various denominations of As-A-Jewdaism milled about in the Jewish Lobby: Bundists, Julia Carmel Bat Dolezal, IfNotNow, Jew-ish Voice for Peace, and some writers for the Forward. Then a hush fell on the crowd as Rabbi Ari L. Gold and Mr. Beinart walked into the room. Rabbi Gold welcomed the audience. “This is an amazing day for me As A Jew as we welcome Peter to the religion of As-A-Jewdaism. As a Jew I feel that Peter will be a great addition to our movement.”

The crowd remained silent as they waited for Mr. Beinart’s response.

“As a Jew I agree with you!” exclaimed Peter to wild applause.

We wanted to thank you for bringing to our awareness of the issue. We did not expect the possible misinterpretation that removing some of the countries (30+) would cause, but do now.

— Wrist Candy (@wristcandywc) August 22, 2019

Oh hi Marc! @marclamonthillhttps://t.co/fTcEmGC7KL

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) August 23, 2019

An Al Jazeera anchor promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theory on Twitter on Thursday.

“This Holy Land belongs to Palestinians Because Palestinians are Semitic unlike the Israeli Khazars who are occupiers !!” tweeted Ghada Oueiss, a Qatar-based news presenter.

The Khazar theory claims that European Jews are the descendants of Khazars, a Turkic people who lived in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, rather than from Jews who originated in the Middle East. The theory has been used by antisemites and anti-Zionists to discount Jewish claims to the land of Israel. Scholars have discounted the theory.

Oueiss sparred with critics and defended her comment, sharing a photo of a book that supported the hypothesis.

In May, the Qatari news channel suspended two journalists for making a video in which they said the Holocaust is “different from how the Jews tell it.”

A London production of “Falsettos,” a musical about a Jewish family, is being criticized for allegedly only casting non-Jews.

Among the artists who signed an open letter criticizing the West End production were British-Jewish actors Miriam Margolyes and Maureen Lipman, the Jewish Chronicle reported. The letter says that “to the best of our knowledge” no one in the cast is Jewish.

“In 2019, in London — a city famed for and proud of its tolerant and multicultural identity — it seems impossible that a production of a show as obviously concerned with Jewish religion and culture as Falsettos could announce a cast with no Jewish representation whatsoever,” the letter reads.

The production, which premiered in 1992 and recently had a revival on Broadway, tells the story of a Jewish man who tries to navigate his relationship with his ex-wife and son after he has come out as gay and started dating a man. The second act of the play centers on the son’s bar mitzvah.

The producers behind the London show told the Evening Standard that they were “hugely disappointed” to read the complaint. They said they could not confirm whether there were any Jews in the cast because it would have been discriminatory to ask people about their backgrounds.

Pro-Israel Jewish leaders slammed the New York Times on Thursday in the wake of a Breitbart News report that detailed how a senior political editor, Tom Wright-Piersanti, had a history of racist and antisemitic tweets.

Breitbart News’ Matt Boyle noted that Wright-Piersanti had tweeted “Crappy Jew Year” on Jan. 1, 2010, among other antisemitic statements; and had also made fun of Indian-Americans repeatedly. Ironically, the Times had printed an editorial Thursday accusing President Donald Trump of antisemitism for saying that Jews who voted for a Democratic Party that protected antisemitic officials were “disloyal” (to themselves, not to the United States).

On Thursday, Wright-Piersanti erased tweets, locked his account, and tweeted: “I have deleted tweets from a decade ago that are offensive. I am deeply sorry.” Former New York state assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Democrat who has occasionally campaigned for pro-Israel Republicans , tweeted: “Apology not accepted. Deleting tweets doesn’t equal a change in ideology. Go ahead and write a full length mea culpa, explain the errors of your thinking and how/why it changed, and maybe then we’ll believe you’re not the Antisemite reflected in your previous tweets!”

The Republican Jewish Coalition dinged the Times for its hypocrisy, noting that while it was attempting to frame Trump as a racist and antisemite, it had racism and antisemitism in its midst:

Turkey arrests 7 journalists throughout the country this week for their critical reporting.

Why is Turkey — the world's top jailer of journalists— sitting on the UN committee overseeing human rights NGOs? https://t.co/zLBizpQNzX

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) August 23, 2019

A report released by a senior counter-terrorism expert has exposed serious risks in the Government’s plans to build a Holocaust Center Victoria Tower Gardens.

In the report, dubbed the Tudway Report, former detective chief superintendent Adrian Tudway, who was the Association of Chief Police Officers national co-coordinator for domestic extremism, has said that the proposal to site the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Center within Victoria Tower Gardens would create a “perfect storm” of terrorism risks.

The report explains that the high-profile Jewish focused building would be a “high value” target for attacks because of its proximity both to Parliament and MI5, and because it lacks the same security measures it would be a “softer target.”

“The adjacent Parliamentary estate is protected by armed police patrols and significant security measures; Victoria Tower Gardens is not and will not be,” Tudway explains in the report explains. “This makes Victoria Tower Gardens a softer target for extremists than the Parliamentary estate or the Security Service building to the immediate South of Victoria Tower Gardens.”

This report also highlights how the attractiveness to extremists “is exacerbated by the world’s media having a front row seat through the TV facilities” as it would be opposite the BBC, ITV and Sky News TV studios, “which would guarantee terrorists the coverage they crave.”

The building is expected to attract up to 10,000 visitors a day, and “although it will not be a place of worship, it would be seen as a high value target because of its clear links to the Jewish faith.”

A Canadian editor was handed a one-year prison sentence for promoting hatred against Jews and women in his publication.

James Sears, editor of the quarterly newspaper Your Ward News in Toronto, was sentenced Thursday to two six-month terms by Judge Richard Blouin of the Ontario Court of Justice.

The publication promoted Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic blood libel claims and published columns justifying rape. It also contained racist, Islamophobic and homophobic messages.

In 2016, the minister in charge of Canada’s postal service banned Your Ward News from being distributed by mail.

Noah Shack, vice president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, hailed the conviction as a “moment of justice for the thousands of women and Jewish community members … who have been impacted by the toxic hate-mongering of Your Ward News.”

A New Jersey state employee who is also head of a local NAACP chapter was fired over several anti-Semitic and racist social media posts.

Jeffrey Dye, president of the Passaic NAACP chapter, was fired Tuesday from his job as a state Labor Relations representative. He was hired in February by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration.

In one Facebook post Dye said that “the Jewish news media don’t want to show us black news,” and that he believes elections in Passaic are being stolen “with Jewish votes coming from Brooklyn,” according to Politico New Jersey.

Other posts, all removed after they came to light, criticized US aid to Israel, calling it “a damn shame” and a “disgrace,” according to reports. He also wrote: “Jews at it again divide & conquering us.”

Dye has praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a notorious anti-Semite, and minimized the Holocaust in comparison to the suffering of black people, according to Politico. “The black holocaust has been & continues to be the worst of them all even though white media wants to make you think it’s the Jews,” he said, according to a report about the now-deleted post.

Concentration camp memorials in Germany should offer tours in Arabic, Germany’s main Jewish leader urged.

Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the Welt am Sonntag weekly newspaper that the former concentration camp in Flossenbürg is already considering adding tours in Arabic. “This should be expanded to all such memorials,” Schuster said.

Germany has seen an influx of some one million Arabic-speaking refugees in the past 4 years.

Schuster also warned against any political deals with the right-wing Alternative for Germany party, which is expected to gain parliamentary seats in local elections in former East German states next month.

With only a few weeks to go before elections in some former east German states, Schuster said that mainstream political parties should shun any parliamentary coalitions with the anti-immigrant, anti-minority AfD party, some of whose representatives have also relativized the Holocaust. He warned that the AfD is “closely connected to far-right extremism” but manages to present another image to the public by stirring and feeding off legitimate fears. Any political pact with the AfD would force other participating parties to“always look to the right.”

The United States and Georgia will partner to renovate the ancient Jewish cemetery of Akhaltsikhe, which houses tombs dating back to the 17th century.

This was decided during a meeting this past week between Georgian Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Mikheil Batiashvili, and Paul Packer, Chairman of the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. The two signed a Memorandum of Understanding which envisages the launch of a mechanism for further collaboration in the cultural field.

During the meeting, Batiashvili highlighted that the US as one of Georgia’s key strategic partners and noted that the two countries have close partnerships when it comes to education.

Some of the tombs in the Akhaltsikhe cemetery have inscriptions in Ladino, leading scholars to believe that some of the Jews of the city arrived from the Ottoman Empire and originally came from the Iberian Peninsula.

Hotels in Israel enjoyed another record year in 2018, driven by unprecedented incoming tourism and increased geo-political stability, according to a new report by hospitality consulting firm HVS.

Revenue per available room (RevPAR) for the country increased by 6% in 2018, driven by an increase in average hotel rates across all major destinations. Eilat and Dead Sea hotels, the report stated, witnessed a "slight reduction" in occupancy levels last year.

"Thanks to the continued lull in the turbulence of the geo-political situation in the area, the Israeli tourism industry is flourishing with an ever-growing number of tourists visiting the country," said report authors Lionel Schauder and Russell Kett. "However, it is important to remember that the 'sword of Damocles' remains suspended and that any incidents may halt this positive development."

More than 4.1 million tourists visited Israel in 2018, an increase of 14% from 2017 and 42% from 2016, according to the Ministry of Tourism. Direct revenues from tourism exceeded NIS 24 billion ($6.83b.).

Total demand growth for hotel rooms has outpaced supply growth in recent years, with demand increasing over the last three years by 6.7% year-on-year and rooms supply growing by 2.9%. Additional accommodation is needed, the report stated, especially at the budget end of the spectrum.

Cleveland Indians outfielder Yasiel Puig had what he said was “one of the best days of his life” by visiting Camp Simcha, a Jewish camp for kids battling cancer and other terminal diseases in Glen Spry, NY.

On a day off in the series between the Indians and the New York Mets, the baseball star rented a helicopter to visit campers on Monday in the Catskill Mountains.

“It’s a little bit sad to see young kids that have been sick from a young age, like 7-14 years old,” he said. “But when you see them smile, and them hanging out and jumping to the music, you forget and everyone forgets that the kids are sick.”

Puig continued, “I never expected it to be this way. I said, ‘Oh, I’m going to visit sick kids. It’s gonna be more slowed down, sitting in the room, explaining about life, keep going, fight. I only said like two or three words because these kids never stopped. They were excited.”

He visited the camp after meeting Irv Bauman at a Los Angeles Lakers game in 2013 when Puig played for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Today was one of the best days of my life. I want to thank so many people, starting with all of my new friends at @campsimcha. Thank you for welcoming me and giving me your smiles today. You are my inspiration and when I do good things on the field I will do it for you. pic.twitter.com/uSSrYX2ibW

— Yasiel Puig (@YasielPuig) 20 August 2019

For example, the Arab world contains around one-third of the world’s deserts. Most Arab countries have insufficient water resources, and poor water management, making the region especially vulnerable to desertification and drought. Israeli agricultural and water technology can resolve this problem.

However, the problem is that Arab hearts are full of conspiracy theories and Jew-hatred. According to the latest Pew research center study, 100% of Jordanian, 99% of Lebanese and 98% of Egyptians hate Jews.

This hatred is blinding Arabs to Israel’s contribution to the security of their countries and potential contribution to their economies. But then, the rest of the world has failed to see this as well.

Although Israel certainly needs to set out its case to the world, the world also needs to recognize the contribution Israel is already making in the Middle East, and open its eyes to the much larger potential. Israel on its own cannot do much to change Arab public opinion.

In conclusion, Israeli policy should not be defined by the narrow Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but mainly by the economic and security future of the wider Middle East, particularly Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.

What would the situation be today if the Golan Heights were under Syrian control? What would have happened to the security of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, etc., if Iran had established proxy militias in the Syrian Golan Heights? Would we see the rise of another terrorist group like Hamas and Hezbollah?

Above all Israel needs to see and think, remain strong and make sure that the Jordan Valley remains part and parcel of the Jewish state, indeed becoming its economic center and stays highly populated. The Middle East needs a strong Israel.

The controversy surrounding the crackdown on illegal workers and businesses, and the increased fear in Lebanon that the Palestinian protests could plunge the country into violence and anarchy, are likely to escalate in the coming days: the Lebanese authorities appear determined to continue.

Lebanon's discriminatory and apartheid laws and measures against Palestinians are not new. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Palestinians in Lebanon are excluded from key facets of social, political and economic life. Palestinian refugees face legal restrictions that limit their rights, including the prohibition to work in 39 professions and to own property. Moreover, they have limited access to state-provided services such as health and education. Professions that remain prohibited for Palestinians include healthcare, engineering, transport, fishing, and the public sector and law.

It takes little imagination to predict the global uproar were, say, Israel to ban Arabs from working as engineers, can drivers, nurses or physicians. The international community and pro-Palestinian groups, however, seem distinctly indifferent about the plight of Palestinians in an Arab country.

While the Lebanese people's fear of Palestinian violence in their country is warranted, there is no reason why any Arab country should be subjecting Palestinians to discriminatory and apartheid regulations. The story of the mistreatment of Palestinians in Lebanon is a microcosm of a bigger problem: the Arab "betrayal" and "abandonment" of Palestinians.

It is time for the Arab countries to replace lip service to the Palestinians with deeds. It is also time for the international community and so-called pro-Palestinian groups to start reckoning with the real suffering of Palestinians, particularly in Lebanon.

Once upon a time, Trotsky thought he was going to run the Soviet Union. Didn’t quite work out that way — and he at least had the decency to abandon the Jews, his Jewish identity, to change his name, to deny his Jewishness. Karl Marx was even more open: he hated Jews and Judaism so much that he made a central thesis of his entire Marxist agenda the eradication of the Jews and of Judaism, following in the steps of his father who abandoned Judaism and converted to the Evangelical Church of Prussia before Karl even was born.

Schumer, Nadler, Schiff. They are the Three Stooges who symbolize and epitomize the utter emptiness and myth of “Jewish influence” in the Democrat Party. Jews who lack loyalty to themselves or their roots. Those Jews are pure freiers (suckers), just as the Democrats have hoodwinked Black America. When the Democrats know they have you in their pockets, they move on. For example, they figure they have Blacks in their pockets, so they now focus on importing Hispanic voters to leap-frog Blacks socially and economically — which is exactly what is happening. And the Democrats likewise know they have non-Orthodox Jews, Fake Jews, and anti-Semitic Jews in their pockets. (Orthodox Jews, who are the fastest-growing demographic in American Jewry, voted 90 percent for Romney over Obama, and are rock-solid as President Trump’s strongest constituency.)

When Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib attack Israel, the Three Stooges — plus Elliot Engel, nukh a schlemazel (“NAS”)— thought they had all that influence among Democrats. They really started to believe the anti-Semites bewailing Jewish influence. And then they could not even pass a simple resolution condemning anti-Semitism. A year later, with a new form of American Nazi in Congress — the Jew-haters Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib accusing Jews of controlling the world, hypnotizing the world, disloyalties, controlling power with their money . . . and now trying to destroy Israel by using anti-Semitic allies and Holocaust-denial organizations to promote their anti-Semitic BDS efforts and Nazi tropes — the Three Stooges Plus NAS are powerless, useless, hapless.

The Democrats rally ‘round two Islamist Nazis who happen to be among 435 elected Congressional representatives, and the Three Stooges Plus NAS cannot so much as lead a counter-charge. What about some loyalty to themselves and to their roots? It takes Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mike Huckabee, Sean Hannity, Bill Maher (yes, Bill Maher!), Laura Ingraham, and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) to stand with Israel on banning those two Islamist Nazis from the Jewish State.

Omar and Tlaib have no right to be there, to set foot in Israel — ever. That is the beauty of living in an era when Jews have one small country, the size of Delaware: Jews finally have one place on earth where they can keep Nazis out. Tlaib waiting for how many years to visit her grandmother? And then suddenly wanting to visit her, merely to get Israel to refuse. And as soon as Israel called her bluff and said she could come in privately and visit, Tlaib exposed her innermost garbage: no longer interested in visiting the nonagenarian, once Israel said she could.

It was in the context of this whirlwind of Democratic denunciations of Israel that Trump reacted with anger and amazement at a reporter’s question about cutting foreign aid to Israel.

“Five years ago, the concept of even talking about this … cutting off aid to Israel because of two people that hate Israel and hate Jewish people – I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation,” said Trump.

He condemned Democrats for defending Tlaib and Omar and their comments against Israel and the Jewish people.

“I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” he said.

Trump was not being anti-Semitic; he was simply being honest and saying out loud what a lot of people are thinking.

Recent polls quoted in The Washington Post show that Democrats are equally split in their support for Israel and the Palestinians. This contrasts with Republican support for Israel, which is 76% in favor of Israel.

As the two Muslim freshman Democratic representatives defame Israel and lie about its history, the other Democratic members of Congress cower in silence. Can Jewish Democrats visualize what US-Israel relations will be like with a Democratic president from the current crop of candidates, egged on by a Democratic Congress?

Trump was just reminding American Jews of Hillel’s dictum: If I’m not for myself, who will be for me?

It’s almost at the point where instead of describing these situations as “unusual,” the Times would be more accurate to describe them as “routine” or “increasingly frequent.”

There’s a climate of increased scrutiny in Washington around the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) owing to the so-called “Mueller Effect,” and a cynic might view these moves by AIPAC as legally calculated to dispel decisively the false impression that the lobby’s actions are directed by the Israeli government rather than by the group’s American members. But a source familiar with AIPAC told The Algemeiner that FARA was not a consideration for the organization’s statements.

During the period when The New Republic was reliably contrarian, people used to joke that the publication should be renamed “Even The New Republic” on its front cover because of the frequent tendency of conservatives to cite the fact that the ostensibly-liberal political magazine endorsed some policy idea. Maybe the Times could save ink by writing EAIPAC — for “Even the American Israel Public Affairs Committee” — instead of spelling the whole thing out each time. Or better yet, the Times could skip the pose of surprise as the lobby maneuvers to make sure that support for the US-Israel relationship and for AIPAC itself remain strong and bipartisan long past the administrations of either US President Donald Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Matt Brooks, the RJC director, doesn’t think so, and insists Trump was putting into blunt terms what Jewish Democrats have long said about Republicans.

“The president is not plowing any new fields here,” he said in an interview.

Brooks said that Jewish Democrats promote their own problematic trope — that their party is better aligned with Jewish values. He mentioned his counterpart, Jewish Democratic Council of America director Halie Soifer, who debated Brooks at an American Jewish Committee conference in June. Soifer spoke of values, including advocacy for human rights and reproductive rights, that her party embraced.

“The Republican Party under President Trump has enacted policies that are antithetical to those values,” she said then.

I put it several times to Brooks that “antithetical” was not equivalent to “disloyal,” which attaches not to a policy, but to a person, and which implies intent. He insisted that Democrats were implying disloyalty, but also acknowledged, like Zeldin, that he would not use the term “disloyal,” instead preferring “misguided,” which does not imply intent.

What happens if it sticks? How do you work with someone you think is disloyal, or who thinks you are disloyal?

Zeldin said that he believes Trump is right on policy and that he hopes Democrats marginalize — “crush,” in his words — the Israel-critical minority Trump was targeting when he made the “disloyalty” comment. But while Trump keeps insisting that the two pro-boycott congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, are the “face” of the Democratic Party, Zeldin notably acknowledges that Democrats have pro-Israel leaders within their ranks.

Two days before the disloyalty kerfuffle, a pro-Israel group urged both Democrats and Republicans to refrain from painting the other party according to its extremes. The appeal did not come from a mainstream Jewish group, but a hawkish Christian one: Christians United for Israel.

CUFI’s statement referred to the previous week’s Israel-related drama, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government barred Tlaib and Omar from entering the country. But it might have as easily applied to the Disloyalty Affair.

“The leaders of both parties should keep their fringe elements in check and stop attributing the views of these outliers to the opposition,” CUFI said. “Allowing a handful of anti-Israel Members of Congress to hijack Congressional action on Israel has gone on long enough.”

Booker was reacting to President Trump’s statement this week that American Jews who voted for Democrats, after they supported anti-Israel and antisemitic members of their party, were “disloyal” to themselves.

The New Jersey senator told an interviewer in Iowa that Trump was not displaying the Jewish values of tzedakah (charity) and chesed (kindness). The Times of Israel reported:
“I know Jewish values… tzedakah, chesed… there’s an idea in Judaism about kindness and decency and mercy,” he said in a video posted to Twitter by the politics site Iowa Starting Line. “These ideals are not being evidenced by the president of the United States.”

The New Jersey lawmaker added that Democrats “are no less disloyal to this country” than Republicans are.
…
“The word tzedakah — I know you’re not a Torah scholar — it not only is used to talk about charity and decency and mercy, it’s actually the word for justice as well. We need to get back to that, to being good to each other,” he said to the interviewer.

In response, Rabbi Boteach, a Breitbart News contributor who befriended Booker at Oxford University before their political falling out over the Obama administration’s hostile approach to Israel, issued a statement:
In response to Cory Booker’s comments quoting the Torah and Jewish values to assail President Trump, I would remind him that firstly, “I was the one who taught him the Torah he knows” and what I always emphasized to him is that Judaism’s highest value is protection and preservation of life. This is something that Cory unfortunately violated in the extreme when he betrayed the American Jewish community by voting for the Iran nuclear deal for political gain.

Jewish values are about having core convictions that do not change based on any external benefits, especially when genocide is at stake. While I absolutely agree that President Trump’s words – and not only actions – should be consistent with Jewish values, there can be no question that in action he has been the most supportive President for Israel for security and legitimacy in the history of the United States.

Cory, sadly, has gone in the opposite direction, catering to left-wing extremists who sadly despise Israel and the Jewish people for no legitimate reason. Cory has condemned the moving of the American embassy to Jerusalem, voted against the Taylor Force Act in committee, which would simply have stopped Palestinian terrorists from being payed to murder Jews, and most famously he voted for the Iran deal and refused to even once condemn Iran’s genocidal promises to annihilate Israel.

Israeli fighter jets carried out airstrikes in Syria to thwart a planned drone attack on Israel by Iran-backed fighters, the Israel Defense Forces said Saturday night.

The Israeli military said its strike targeted operatives from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force as well as Shiite militias who had been planning on sending attack drones into Israel.

“The thwarted attack included plans to launch a number of armed drones intended to be used to strike Israeli sites,” the military said in a statement.

The rare Israeli announcement of a strike inside Syria came minutes after Syrian state television reported air defenses were activated against hostile targets.

Reports said blasts were heard in the skies of the capital Damascus.

A military airport in the capital was said to have been targeted. It was not immediately clear if there were casualties in the strike.

The IDF said the strikes targeted sites in the town of Aqrabah, southwest of Damascus.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the Israeli strikes in a tweeted statement. “Iran has no immunity anywhere. Our forces are operating in every arena against Iranian aggressiveness.”

“Rise first to kill those who come to kill you,” he added, referencing a Talmudic passage justifying pre-emptive strikes.

US officials said Friday a series of recent explosions in Iraq may be due to the scorching summer weather and not Israeli airstrikes as widely reported.

Earlier in the day, the New York Times quoted two US officials saying Israel was behind “several strikes in recent days on munitions storehouses for Iranian-backed groups in Iraq.”

In a briefing with reporters, a pair of Trump administration officials pushed back on the report, saying the US could not confirm Israel was responsible for the August 22 explosion, Bloomberg reported.

The officials posited that rather than Israeli airstrikes, the blasts may have been caused by the “absolutely raging heat in Baghdad over the summer,” when temperatures regularly average around 110º fahrenheit.

They also said Iran was culpable for the explosions due to its transfer of weapons to militia groups in Iraq and accused the Islamic Republic of working to make the country a client state like Syria.

According to US officials, Israel was responsible for a July 19 attack that targeted a base belonging to Iranian-backed paramilitary forces in Amirli in the northern Salaheddin province, and killed two Iranians. The attack was followed by at least two other mysterious explosions at a munitions depot near Baghdad belonging to the militias.

It would be the first known Israeli airstrike in Iraq since 1981, when Israeli warplanes destroyed a nuclear reactor being built by Saddam Hussein.

Two New York residents inspired by radical Islam pleaded guilty on Friday to planning a terrorist attack using explosives against law enforcement and military targets in the United States.

Asia Siddiqui and Noelle Velentzas of Queens intended to use explosives and a weapon of mass destruction in their attack and studied the worst terrorist attacks in the country during their planning, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

"In an effort to implement their violent, radical ideology, the defendants studied some of the most deadly terrorist attacks in U.S. history, and used them as a blueprint for their own plans to kill American law enforcement and military personnel," said U.S. Attorney Richard P. Donoghue.

The women's plans were thwarted by law enforcement.

According to the DOJ, between approximately 2013 and 2015 Siddiqui and Velentzas were planning to build a bomb. They taught each other chemistry and electrical skills to create explosives and detonating devices. They researched how to make plastic explosives and build a car bomb, and also bought the necessary materials.

Explosives used in past terrorist attacks including the Boston Marathon bombing, Oklahoma City bombing, and 1993 World Trade Center attack were discussed by Siddiqui and Velentzas and they researched potential targets.

When the women were arrested in April 2015, propane gas tanks, soldering tools, car bomb instructions, jihadist literature, machetes, and several knives were seized from their residences.

The IDF on Saturday arrested three Palestinians as part of a manhunt for the terrorists responsible for a terror attack that killed a teenage girl and wounded her father and brother near a natural spring close to the West Bank settlement of Dolev.

According to Palestinian news agency WAFA, two men were arrested during a raid in the village of Ein Arik close to Ramallah and another, a student at Birzeit University who has spent time in Israeli jails, was arrested in the nearby village of Ein Qiniya.

Other raids took place in the village of Beitunia. During the raids, IDF troops are also said to have confiscated surveillance cameras from businesses in the area.

On Friday, 17-year-old Rina Shenrav was killed by an improvised explosive device in attack at the Ein Buvin spring.

It was previously thought that the device had been thrown at the family from a car that fled the scene but it was determined that the IED had been planted earlier at the spring and remotely detonated when the family approached.

Rabbi Eitan Envy, who was injured in the terrorist attack and lost his daughter, in a message of strengthening and unity in conversation with PM @IsraeliPMpic.twitter.com/KtyemFMmEN

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) August 23, 2019

Following the murder of Rina Schenrav on Friday, Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Danon sent a letter to UN Security Council President Joanna Wronecka of Poland demanding condemnation of the terrorist attack.

According to Danon’s office, the ambassador emphasized the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority, saying that this attack, “like so many others conducted by Palestinians, was intentionally aimed at innocent Israeli civilians.

“It is being glorified in Palestinian social media,” he added. “The Palestinian Authority is directly responsible for this attack, a result of the Palestinians’ ongoing policy of educating and incentivizing their youth to kill Jews throughout Israel. The PA glorifies terrorists, rewarding their horrific actions with guaranteed salaries and renaming streets, schools and town squares in their honor.”

Danon demanded that the Security Council condemn the murder. “The international community must join Israel in our struggle against terrorism; this is the most justified fight. The international community needs to join it and condemn not only the murder but also the culture of incitement and salaries to murderers.”

House Majority leader Steny Hoyer condemned the terrorist attack.

A German foreign ministry statement unleashed a storm of criticism from German Jews because the diplomatic comment played down the role of Palestinian terrorism in the murder of 17-year-old Rina Shenrav and injuries to her father and brother on Friday.

Daniel Botmann, the executive director of the nearly 100,000 Central Council of Jews in Germany, wrote on Twitter: “Dear Foreign Ministry, the Tweet has a mistake. The end should read, ‘and we are working to stop such terrorist attacks on innocent Israeli civilians.’ Israel, reason of state”.

Botmann’s reference to “reason of state” was connected to German Chancellor Angela Merkel claiming in the Israeli Knesset in 2008 that the Jewish state is part of Germany’s national security or reason of state.

Botmann’s tweet was in response to the foreign ministry Tweet: “We strongly condemn such acts of violence, as well as instigating them or justifying them. The Federal Government is committed to overcoming the spiral of violence and hatred and to maintaining the perspective of a two-state solution that will enable all Israelis and Palestinians to live a life of peace and security.”

Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib once again criticized the state of Israel Friday night, following the death of an Israeli teen.

17-year-old Rina Shnerb was killed in a terrorist attack earlier this week in the West Bank, while her brother and father sustained serious injuries. Tlaib responded to the attack Friday night by making reference to the “Israeli occupation.”

“This is absolutely tragic & horrible. My heart goes out to Rina’s family,” Tlaib said in a tweet. “More than ever we need to support nonviolent approaches to ending the Israeli occupation and guaranteeing equal rights for all.”

Tlaib was responding to a tweet from “IfNotNow,” an anti-Israel organization with connections to anti-Semites and Palestinian radicals.

For the second time this month, a Nazi swastika symbol was raised by Palestinian rioters on the Israel-Gaza Strip border on Friday and documented by the IDF.

Thousands of Palestinians took part in demonstrations on the border on Friday, violently confronting IDF soldiers, who responded with riot-dispersal means.

Border unrest has been a near-weekly occurrence since the Hamas-orchestrated “Great March of Return” protests began in March 2018.

In a social media post on Friday, the IDF wrote, “Photographed today by a soldier stationed on the border fence with Gaza. Her relatives were murdered in the Holocaust by Nazis. Like them, she knows what the swastika means. But today, she saw that symbol while wearing the uniform of one of the world’s strongest militaries.”

At the #Gaza border yesterday .. but this is #Palestinianism=#Nazism . In other words #Palestinian#Nazis . They want the eradication of #Jewspic.twitter.com/uB6TrodTBQ

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) August 24, 2019

A flag with a Swastika planted once again at the #Gaza border today. Pictures of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the IDF's Arabic Spokesperson @AvichayAdraee featured on a poster attached to the pole. #Israelpic.twitter.com/BTg0ihqKgF

— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) August 23, 2019

Hamas in English vs. Hamas in Arabic pic.twitter.com/ljv3lqaiTL

— The Mossad: Elite Parody Division (@TheMossadIL) August 24, 2019

70 Gazans were injured during the recent Friday protests, including 40 by live bullets, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

About 8,000 Palestinians gather at the Gaza border to protest.

They threw dozens of bombs, stones and grenades at the fence and IDF troops, while some tried to breach the perimeter.

The IDF also announced earlier that four suspects, apparently children, crossed the perimeter fence in the northern Gaza Strip, but returned to the Palestinian side of the fence immediately.

These protests are part of the "Right of Return" marches, which have been held every Friday since March of last year.

Postal banks in the Gaza Strip will start to distribute small Qatari grants to 100,000 impoverished Palestinian families on Sunday, the Qatari Gaza Reconstruction Committee said on Friday.

Mohammed al-Emadi, a Qatari envoy who heads the committee, crossed into Gaza in the early hours Thursday morning.

In the past year, the banks have distributed $100 Qatari grants several times to tens of thousands of needy families in the coastal enclave.

Israel has allowed Qatar to deliver regular infusions of millions of dollars in cash to the Strip to help stabilize the territory and prevent a humanitarian collapse and further violence.

This week’s payment to 100,000 families marks an increase in the number of beneficiaries over the last two payments, when 60,000 families received disbursements.

The increase was aimed at “lessening the burden on the people of the Gaza Strip in light of the difficult humanitarian situation that it is living,” the committee said on its website.

The Syrian regime has a horrific record of using chemical weapons on its population. According to Tobias Schneider and Theresa Lütkefend of the Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government perpetrated 98% of the more than 300 chemical attacks over the course of the civil war. The other 2% were attributed to Islamic State.

And yet, when the Germany company Brenntag, the world’s largest distributor of chemicals, was found to have sold potential dual-use products that could help Damascus develop chemical weapons to a Syrian company with links to Assad’s regime, German authorities found no grounds to further investigate the sale.

In June, Brenntag disclosed that a Swiss subsidiary sold diethylamine and isopropanol to Syrian pharmaceutical company Mediterranean Pharmaceutical Industries (MPI) in 2014, just a year after the United Nations launched its April 2013 investigation into the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Brenntag claims the substances it sold were for the production of painkillers. However, isopropanol and diethylamine can also be used in the production of sarin and VX, respectively. According to a report by the Open Society Justice Initiative, the Syrian government has used the deadly chemical sarin in attacks against civilians. The extremely toxic nerve agent VX has also been found in Syria’s chemical weapons supply.

In April 2017, a chemical attack using sarin produced with isopropanol killed almost 100 people and injured more than 200 in Khan Shaykhun, a town in southern Idlib Province.

Many in the Jewish community have been basking over the recent success of having the California Department of Education cancel its proposed, highly biased Palestinian ethnic-studies curriculum. However, most are oblivious to the fact that there is an equally, if not more, insidious program that has been going on for decades on the federal level, affecting every single state throughout the United States.

This program has been slowly and steadily eroding the hearts and minds of America’s most impressionable students away from support of the State of Israel. It is a part of Title VI of the Higher Education Act (HEA), a law that was passed during the height of the Cold War in 1965.

The initial motivation for the program was a good one. It came about when folks in Washington realized that American students lacked sufficient knowledge in foreign regions, languages and cultures, and were therefore woefully ill-equipped to deal with the Soviet threat. So they set aside a pot of money to give to various universities in order to establish various regional studies programs, such as Soviet studies, Latin Studies, Asian Studies and Middle Eastern Studies.

Thus, a thriving regional studies industry was born.

Then, in 1978, the entire field of Middle Eastern Studies was revolutionized by the late professor of English comparative literature at Columbia University, Edward Said, with the publication of his book, Orientalism. The treatise said that no one could speak with any degree of scholarship and authenticity about the Middle East unless he or she was a native of the region (i.e., an Arab or a Muslim).

Therefore, wonderful scholars such as Efraim Karsh and Bernard Lewis were moved aside on the bookshelves, and the university library and classroom doors were opened to a new generation of highly-politicized, rabidly anti-Israel scholars.

A simple Google search of the words “Columbia University,” “Israel” and “Palestine” rarely yields positive results. Most likely, it will reveal a torrent of controversies and tensions surrounding what has been described as a “battleground campus” involving students and faculty stretching back decades.

The most recent search results are replete with stories of near-violent hostilities between groups such as Students Supporting Israel and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), of accusations of harassment toward pro-Israel students, pro-Palestinian professors, including comparisons between Israel and ISIS, stories of separation barriers erected by pro-Palestinian students during Israel Apartheid Week, and condemnations over the tactics used by outside pro-Israel advocacy groups such as Canary Mission and CU-Mission.

Throughout my first semester at Columbia, an overwhelmingly liberal Ivy League school, it became clear that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is one of the few topics that deeply divides the community. Small echo chambers permeate the college campus, isolating pro-Israel students from their pro-Palestinian counterparts. The anti-normalization policies advanced by some student groups such as SJP ensure that actual progress and collaborative dialogue seldom takes place.

Some students have even reported avoiding courses in Middle Eastern studies for fear of harassment and academic penalties for their views. Given this discouraging state of affairs, how should campuses such as Columbia teach something as polarizing as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict effectively without alienating entire groups of students?

And left-wing Zionists can gloss over their often-naïve and dangerous enthusiasm for a peace process that so far has made things worse. American left-wing Israel sympathizers like J Street can insist “But we’re against BDS!” all the while supporting policies like the Iran deal that put Israel at risk. (J Street even endorsed and helped fund Rashida Tlaib’s primary campaign, only to have to withdraw their support when she reversed her support for a two-state solution and aid to Israel.)

Some of the economic ill-treatment Israel faces that BDS takes credit for existed long before the movement was founded. And while BDS has created a rallying cry on college campuses, among cultural figures, and even in the halls of Congress, that only underscores my point. A movement of “let’s dismantle the Jewish state” (which is what Palestinians and their supporters really want) would not gain the trendy cachet of a boycott movement.

For decades, the American left has been plagued by a “Phantom Selma Syndrome” in which Democrats desperately seek something to march for, even if what they find is intellectually and morally vacuous. BDS supporters can bask in the fading light of the old anti-apartheid movement by refusing to eat Israeli hummus all they want, but the rot in Palestinian society that would make a peaceful Palestinian state a dubious reality is not going away.

And Israelis and their supporters can continue to beat the drum about the unfairness of the boycott without looking at any modifications to the status quo that might relieve the distress of everyday Palestinians.

Or everyone can just admit that BDS is a grand, failed distraction and get back to figuring out a future for the region shared by both peoples that everyone can live with.

California's Governor Gavin Newsom has unequivocally apologized for the California draft model curriculum, agreeing that it "was offensive in so many ways, particularly to the Jewish community.”

From Dan Pine, in the J Weekly Northern California's Jewish paper:

From his office in the Capitol building, Gov. Gavin Newsom last week made a full-throated apology to California’s Jewish community for a controversial ethnic studies draft curriculum that erases the Jewish story in America and takes unsubtle digs at Israel.

The draft, said Newsom, “will never see the light of day.”

In spite of the widespread criticism, some of the drafters of the curriculum have doubled down, calling for a rally and press conference next Tuesday, and accusing the groups marginalized by the curriculum of attempting to "dilute" it.

On her Facebook page, Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, an educator at the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center and one of the drafters of the curriculum, referred to those asking for inclusion as "loud ass critics", and pointed out that anti-semitism as a form of oppression is mentioned in the draft.

Anti-semitism is mentioned only once in the 300 page model curriculum, while Islamphobia is mentioned 59 times.

According to the 2018 publication Hate Crime in California, anti-Jewish bias events rose from 104 in 2017 to 126 in 2018, an increase of 21.2 percent, while anti-Islamic bias events fell from 46 in 2017 to 28 in 2018.

On 16 August this year people in the great UK city of Manchester turned out to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the city's tragic "Peterloo Massacre", when a two-year old boy and at least seventeen other people (male and female) lost their lives, and around 600 others were injured. These victims of the charging militia were among a vast crowd of peaceful demonstrators gathered in St Peter's Field to demand repeal of the Corn Laws and the extension of the suffrage.

The incident is well-known to people who take an interest in history. But this year, as this report from the BBC shows, more and more people swelled the ranks of those who gathered to commemorate the event, including, I suspect, a number of fairly fresh members of the Labour Party.

You know: Corbynistas.

That the story of Peterloo tugs at the heartstrings is not surprising.

So, of course, does the story of the "Tolpuddle Martyrs", six agricultural from a village Dorset, who in 1834 were transported to Australia, having organised themselves into a proto-trade union.

But among those exploiting the Peterloo event for their own ends were the ratbags pictured.

It is important... to note that, in recent years, many Muslims have openly and firmly come out to oppose all forms of Jewish hatred and anti-Zionism.

In the West, they are the best integrated, and therefore and should be given the greatest support from social agencies and governments.

On April 24, 2014, thirty French imams signed an open letter in Le Monde, in which they denounced antisemitism and terrorism... Similarly, [in] May 18, 2018, a group of prominent British Muslims placed an open letter... in the Daily Telegraph to urge other Muslims to come out against antisemitism whenever it can be seen.

"[W]e also admit and have to be honest that there is a substantial set of people within Muslim communities who circulate anti-Semitic tropes and who use the Palestinians and their quest for statehood, as a means of targeting Jewish communities. This is not acceptable...."— 'Muslims Against Antisemitism' website (United Kingdom).

These reform-minded individuals and groups deserve our full support.

In this important 9-part series in Israel National News, historian Dr Alex Grobman examines the influence of the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini on Arab opinion, and the Arab contribution to the Nazi war effort. Here is an extract from Part 3, 'Enlisting Arabs for the Nazi cause':
From 1941-1945, historian Antonio J. Muñoz estimated that about 5,000 Arab and Indian Muslims volunteered to serve in the German armed forces, hardly sufficient to constitute an army of liberation. Their worth as a military force was negligible compared with units created with Muslims in the Balkans and the USSR. Though the Germans failed to conquer the region, the units did have propaganda value which the Nazis exploited.

Joseph Schechtman credited the mufti in helping establish espionage networks to provide information about British troop movements. His news transmissions to the Middle East reported acts of sabotage that would normally have been censored. His agents, who infiltrated the Middle East by land or by air, cut pipe and telephone lines in Palestine and Transjordan and destroyed bridges and railways in Iraq.

His agents, who infiltrated the Middle East by land or by air, cut pipe and telephone lines in Palestine and Transjordan and destroyed bridges and railways in Iraq.

The Mufti's famous meeting with Hitler in November 1941

He also organized an Axis-Arab Legion known as the Arabisches Freiheitskorps that wore German uniforms with “Free Arabia” patches Schechtman said. As part of the German Army, the unit guarded communications facilities in Macedonia and hunted down American and British paratroopers who jumped into Yugoslavia and were hiding among the local population. The legion also fought on the Russian front. Another major success was el-Husseini’s recruitment of tens of thousands of Balkan Muslims into the Wehrmacht. Moshe Shertok (Sharett), chief of the political department of the Jewish Agency, reported that on a visit to Bosnia in 1943, the mufti appealed to local Muslims to join the Moslem Waffen-SS Units and met with the units that were already operational.

Fictionalized by Leon Uris, and later made into a movie, the story of the Exodus—a ship that left France in July 1947, carrying some 4,500 Holocaust survivors, headed for Mandatory Palestine—is well known in the West. The British, unwilling to allow more Jews into the Land of Israel, turned the ship back; its passengers refused to leave the French port; and eventually the Royal Navy brought them to Hamburg. Less well known is the group of former French resistance fighters who helped organized Exodus’ departure, as Tsilla Hershco writes:

The Jewish resistance organization in France . . . participated in the rescue of tens of thousands of Jews in France during the Nazi occupation through the fabrication of forged documents, the hiding of children and adults, and the smuggling of convoys to Switzerland and Spain. At the end of the war, David Ben-Gurion appointed Avraham Polonski, a leader of the Jewish resistance in France, as commander of the Haganah in France and North Africa. The volunteers who joined the organization, mostly veterans of the Jewish resistance, participated in many critical activities: clandestine and legal immigration [from Europe to Mandatory Palestine]; the forging of documents; the transfer of arms to the yishuv; and the setting up of communication systems, immigrant camps, and military-training camps. . . . Later, many veterans of the resistance went on aliyah and participated in the War of Independence.

Members of the Haganah in France and North Africa under Polonski’s command were involved in the Exodus operation from its early stages: they forged travel documents, assisted in the transporting of survivors to the Strasbourg-Mulhouse border, recruited medical students, organized the reception of refugees by the Red Cross, and accompanied the refugees on their journey from the border train stations to Marseille.

Members of the Haganah in France, under Polonski’s leadership, also played an important role in preparing accommodations for the refugees. By leveraging their contacts and making bribes, they even managed to overcome the obstacle of a truck drivers’ strike in Marseille by obtaining their leaders’ consent to transport the refugees to their destination. [After they were returned to France], Polonski’s team assisted in preventing the British from forcing the passengers to disembark.

A police officer in the German city of Cologne was dismissed from his post on Friday after he was discovered to have shared Nazi imagery along with crude jokes about the Holocaust while using the WhatsApp messaging platform.

One message sent by the officer contained a picture of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, along with a joke mocking the millions of Jews and others murdered in concentration camp gas chambers.

“What’s the difference between Santa Claus and the Jews? One goes down the chimney, the other goes up,” the joke read.

Other messages contained symbols associated with neo-Nazi and far-right groups that are banned in Germany.

Cologne police chief Uwe Jacob told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper that he had not hesitated to respond upon learning of the officer’s actions.

“When I heard about it, I immediately initiated a formal disciplinary procedure with the aim of dismissal,” Jacob said. “The dissemination of these inciting images is completely unacceptable to me and damages the reputation of the Cologne police.”

Amazon has removed an assortment of clothes sold on its UK site emblazoned with an iconic Holocaust photo in which a Jew in Ukraine is kneeling in front of a mass grave as a Nazi officer points a gun to his head, moments before shooting him, Channel 12 news reported on Saturday.

The retail giant took down the items plastered with the photo, known as “The Last Jew in Vinnitsa,” after it was contacted by the Israeli TV network.

The items included a hoodie, a t-shirt and a sweater pullover in various colors, all with the same Holocaust picture on them.

In the description of the items, the sellers from “Harma Art” wrote, “Choose from our great collection of authentic designs and stand out from the crowd!”

This was not the first time items charged to be anti-Semitic were sold on Amazon’s site.

Just last month, the Central Council of Jews in Germany denounced the online retail giant for allowing the sale of anti-Semitic books and pro-Nazi merchandise, calling for the practice to immediately stop.

Legend has it that the fiberglass shell of Autocars’ Sussita, the symbol of Israel’s brief flirtation with automotive manufacturing during the 1960s and 1970s, was considered a delicacy by the country’s camels.

While the story of hungry camels gnawing on cars was just a rumor, the first “blue and white” carmaker shuttered its manufacturing operations in 1981. Today, the modest Israeli vehicle manufacturing industry serves primarily military purposes.

If local manufacturing failed to live up to carmakers’ aspirations, Israel’s emergence as a global engine of automotive technology has surpassed all expectations. Home to more than 500 transportation start-ups; innovation hubs established by many of the world’s leading automobile manufacturers; and soaring investment, Israel has truly secured its place as a veritable driving force of automotive innovation.

It has been a bumpy ride at times. Ill-fated Better Place, the electric vehicle start-up that promised to revolutionize the worldwide automotive industry, was liquidated in 2013 despite $850 million in investment.

Yet just as the story of Better Place showcased the potential misfortune of Israel’s automotive pioneering spirit, Intel’s acquisition of Jerusalem-based vision technology start-up Mobileye for $15.3 billion in 2017 demonstrated the country’s potential to succeed. The deal remains the largest “exit” by an Israeli start-up to date.

According to Start-Up Nation Central, Israeli start-ups raised more than $750 million in funding last year, more than double the amount raised in 2014. Excelling in fields including autonomous mobility, e-mobility, smart mobility and vehicle technology, entrepreneurs have attracted the attention of the world’s leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and tier-one automotive suppliers.

Researchers at Technion University, University of Ben Gurion of the Negev and Bar Ilan University have been collaborating on a project to help rebuild coral reef systems across the world, using a 3D printing model to create the artificial coral structures, according to research published by the universities.

Due to the continuous degradation of coral reef systems around the world - the technology, now being applied of the coast off Eilat, will help to rebuild the diversity of the underwater ecosystem by introducing these manufactured structures into systems that are likely unable to regenerate themselves.

The coral reefs around the world are disappearing for many reasons, due to causes both natural and man-made, mainly from overheating waters affected by climate change, dynamite fishing, chemicals in sunscreen, as well as invasive fish, such as the lion-fish, a specie of fish that hunts the inhabiters of coral reefs.

Over thirty-percent of the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef system located in the Coral sea off the coast of Australia, was knocked out by heatwaves occurring in 2016 and 2017, raising water temperatures to unihabitable levels for these natural systems - scientists have indicated that if Earth's average temperature rises another four-degrees Fahrenheit almost the entirety of the coral reef systems around the world will be lost, which are used as essential nurseries for many specie of fish, used to feed over a billion people a year.

One of the most out-of-the-box approaches proposed to stop the thousands of Gaza “fire kites” – the incendiary devices that have been sent over the border from the Gaza Strip into Israel on kites and balloons, setting fire to thousands of acres and landing occasionally in kindergarten playgrounds – was to shoot the kites out of the sky using remotely operated “racing drones.”

Drone racing has become a popular niche sport around the world. Participants build extremely fast and agile multi-rotor drones and race them against each other around a course. Serious drone pilots use FPV (first-person view) goggles to experience what the drone is seeing rather using a monitor and a joystick.

When a small team of drone enthusiasts gathered last year on the Gaza border, they demonstrated that they could effectively neutralize the fire-kite threat. But there are not enough skilled racing-drone pilots in the country for the army to recruit.

The learning curve is steep: Racing a drone at speeds of up to 200 miles an hour takes years of trial and error (and many broken drones) to perfect. Controlling a drone using FPV goggles can be disorienting at first and result in motion sickness.

In the meantime, though, the fire kites keep coming.

That was the impetus for brothers Aviv and Matteo Shapira to found Xtend Reality Expansion, a company that aims to teach first-person drone racing in seconds rather than years.

In order to confront the evils of religious bigotry and hatred, we must realize that all of our destinies are linked.

I cannot speak out against Islamophobia if I am not also speaking out against the dangerous rise in anti-Semitism.https://t.co/SXU0tVfHSE

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) August 23, 2019

New Zealand has now joined the Swiss, Dutch, and Belgium governments in suspending donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) following an internal report that found “credible and corroborated” allegations of serious ethical abuses including “sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent, and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives.”

Originally, Foreign Minister Peters and officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) said

“We are aware of recent media reports of allegations of ethical issues and mismanagement within UNRWA. We expect UNRWA to cooperate fully with any investigation and to report back on the investigation’s findings and recommendations.”Rt Hon Winston Peters

However, after seeing a draft report from The Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ) that shows MFAT officials did not brief Ministers on substantial failings within UNRWA, did not record meetings where concerns about UNRWA were raised, and took the word of UNRWA officials without any apparent attempts at independent corroboration, MFAT responded that

“the Ministry will review the findings of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) report once the investigation is complete and provide advice to the New Zealand Government. New Zealand will not make any further payments to UNRWA until we have reviewed the report’s findings and assessed UNRWA’s response to any recommendations.”MFAT staff

This is the first time New Zealand has suspended donations to the UN agency.

Over the past decade, New Zealand taxpayers have contributed more than NZ$10m to UNRWA and recently committed to giving $3m over the next years in a deal struck between MFAT and the UNRWA staff member at the centre of the current allegations, Pierre Krähenbühl.

The US State Department website has deleted the Palestinian Authority from the list of countries and areas on its website.

Until recently, 'Palestinians' appeared on the site under the name 'Palestinian Authority' and before that the 'Palestinian Territories'.

Over the past year there has been a significant devaluation of the Palestinian status on the US side, with the State Department ordering to remove any reference that included the word 'occupied territories' in reference to the Palestinian Arabs.

Now the very existence of a Palestinian Authority is not present on the official website representing the US State Department.

Even within the United Nations, a sprawling multinational bureaucracy linked by luxury dining, corruption and complicity in terrorism, the UNRWA stands out for waste, corruption and terror.

The UNRWA’s abbreviation leaves out its full title, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and its heavy focus on Gaza. The UNRWA classifies 1.4 million or 73% of the people living in Gaza as “refugees” even though it’s an independent territory run by Hamas.

There are really two UNRWA agencies. One is a UN agency run by a small number of international staffers. Another is an arm of Hamas which employs thousands of “Palestinians”. Many if not most of these are members of Hamas. Some, like Suhail al-Hindi, the former head of the UNRWA union, who was also a member of Hamas’ leadership, serve in the upper echelons of the terror group.

While a handful of European UN employees act as the public face of UNRWA, the actual agency is run by Hamas operatives who control its schools, using them to recruit and to store weapons. The union representing UNRWA employees is controlled by Hamas and its employees implement Hamas policies.

Hamas had announced as much when its newspaper responded to a call to fire UNRWA Hamas members by writing, “Laying off the agency employees because of their political affiliation means laying off all the employees of the aid agency, because…they are all members of the ‘resistance.’”

The power struggle between the UN employees and Hamas was tested before during clashes over the teaching of the Holocaust in UNRWA schools and the use of UNRWA schools to launch attacks on Israel.

The real crackup came when the Trump administration cut off all funding to UNRWA.

On a Rosh Hashana call, President Trump told Jewish leaders that the free ride for terrorists was over.

“I stopped massive amounts of money that we were paying to the Palestinians,” he announced. “The United States was paying them tremendous amounts of money.”

New Zealand has now joined the Swiss, Dutch, and Belgium governments in suspending donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) following an internal report that found “credible and corroborated” allegations of serious ethical abuses including “sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent, and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives.”

Originally, Foreign Minister Peters and officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) said

“We are aware of recent media reports of allegations of ethical issues and mismanagement within UNRWA. We expect UNRWA to cooperate fully with any investigation and to report back on the investigation’s findings and recommendations.”Rt Hon Winston Peters

However, after seeing a draft report from The Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ) that shows MFAT officials did not brief Ministers on substantial failings within UNRWA, did not record meetings where concerns about UNRWA were raised, and took the word of UNRWA officials without any apparent attempts at independent corroboration, MFAT responded that

“the Ministry will review the findings of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) report once the investigation is complete and provide advice to the New Zealand Government. New Zealand will not make any further payments to UNRWA until we have reviewed the report’s findings and assessed UNRWA’s response to any recommendations.”MFAT staff

This is the first time New Zealand has suspended donations to the UN agency.

At least six members of a pro-Iranian Iraqi militia, including a field commander, were killed in an airstrike by an unidentified drone along the Iraq-Syria border on Sunday, amid escalating tensions between Israel and Iran, according to Arabic media reports.

The Lebanese Al-Mayadeen news site reported that the strike occurred in the al-Qaim region of Iraq, an area that is home to a number of pro-Iranian militia groups.

According to the outlet, the six were members of the 45th Brigade of the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group of militias that fight alongside the Iraqi military. The 45th Brigade is specifically affiliated with Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iraqi organization loosely connected to the Lebanese Hezbollah.

“An unidentified drone targets two cars belonging to the Popular Mobilization Forces’ 45th Brigade in al-Qaim in the border region between Syria and Iraq,” according to Al-Mayadeen.

Al-Jazeera reported that six people were killed in the drone strike.

Israel said on Sunday an air strike against an arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in Syria that it accused of planning “killer drone attacks” showed Tehran that its forces were vulnerable anywhere.

A senior Revolutionary Guards commander denied that Iranian targets had been hit late on Saturday and said its military “advisory centers have not been harmed,” the semi-official ILNA news agency reported.

The Israeli military said its aircraft struck “Iranian Quds Force operatives and Shiite militias which were preparing to advance attack plans targeting sites in Israel from within Syria over the last number of days.”

The elite Quds Force is the overseas arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), which the US has designated a terrorist organization. Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus told reporters the forces on Thursday had been preparing to launch “killer drones” armed with explosives at northern Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military had thwarted the planned Iranian attack.

“Iran has no immunity anywhere. Our forces operate in every sector against the Iranian aggression,” he said on Twitter. “If someone rises up to kill you, kill him first.”

Less than 24 hours after attacking Iranian forces in Syria, and less than a month before the elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured the north on Sunday and – in a rare confirmation of a cross-border operation – quoted the Talmudic dictum: “If someone rises to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”

“In a complex operation by the security services, we discovered that the Iranian Quds Force sent a special team of Shi’ite militants through Syria to kill Israelis in the Golan Heights, using explosive drones,” Netanyahu said.

"I want to stress this was Iran's initiative, it was under Iran's command, and it was an Iranian mission," he added.

The prime minister's comments came as he toured the North and held security consultations with IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi and other senior IDF officials.

Israel preempted the Iranian attack, Netanyahu said, adding that Israel will uncover all efforts by Iran to attack it and to hide behind various excuses.

“I want to emphasize that we will not tolerate attacks on Israel from any country in the region,” he said. Any country that allows its territory to be used for attacks against Israel will bear the consequences, and I stress, the country will beat the consequences.

Israel is believed to have attacked Iranian assets in Syria on dozens of occasions over the last two years, though it rarely takes such public credit for the action.

The IDF spokesperson released on Sunday a video of Iranian forces preparing a drone launch in Syria on Thursday.

The video shows the Iranian forces carrying a drone and preparing it for its planned launch point located in the village of Arneh, Syria.

The would-be terrorists were members of the Quds Force, an Iranian militia.

The Israeli military said on Saturday night that it foiled an Iranian drone attack against northern Israel from Syria.

IDF intelligence can now release the surveillance footage of Iranian Quds Force operatives in Syria carrying a killer drone that they intended to use for an attack on Israel.

How do you foil an attack of killer drones?

Killer intel. pic.twitter.com/5bgMvW61nr

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) August 25, 2019

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday warned neighboring countries that they would be held accountable for any attacks against the Jewish state emanating from their territory, hours after Israel carried out airstrikes in Syria to foil an Iranian drone attack.

“We won’t tolerate attacks on Israel from any country in the area. Any country that allows its territory to be used for attacks against Israel will bear the consequences. I stress: The state will bear the consequences,” Netanyahu, who is also defense minister, said during a tour of the Golan Heights with IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi.

Hours earlier, the IDF said the attack drones that Iran intended to use against Israel on Saturday night were flown into Syria from Tehran several weeks ago, along with Iranian military officials to act as advisers. The plan was personally overseen by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, the IDF chief of staff said.

The statement by the military came as the death toll in the Israeli raids on Saturday night climbed to five, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor.

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday said the attack drones that Iran intended to use against the Jewish state on Saturday night were flown into Syria from Tehran several weeks ago, along with Iranian military officials to act as advisers.

The plan was personally overseen by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, the IDF chief of staff said.

The statement by the military came as the death toll in the Israeli raids on Saturday night climbed to five, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor.

According to IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, four members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Quds Force were sent to Syria to form a team that would fly explosive-laden kamikaze drones into targets in northern Israel.

“Each one of these attack drones would carry several kilograms of explosives,” he said.

Conricus said the military has been monitoring the Iranian plot for “a number of weeks.”

When the IDF spotted the Iran-led team — made up of the four IRGC advisers and Shiite militiamen — moving to launch the drones on Saturday night, the Israeli Air Force took action and bombed their base.

At the same time, details began to emerge about the background to the planned Iranian attack.

According to Israeli news website Mako, the failed attack was planned by Iranian operatives together with members of Shia militia groups. They were brought to Syria by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force, which coordinates Iran’s terrorist operations abroad.

They arrived at Damascus airport together with the weapons and technology required to carry out the attack and were taken to the village of Aqraba.

According to the IDF, the operatives were then hidden in a private luxury villa that included a storage room, a large garden, and a swimming pool.

IDF Spokesman Ronen Manelis said that the villa belongs to the Quds Force and “that’s where the attack and other activities were planned. In addition, there is also a warehouse where the cargo is kept — all this, inside a civilian village in Syria.”

Veteran Israeli analyst Amos Yadlin said in a lengthy twitter thread that the Israeli strike proved “a wide, multi-dimensional (geographic, operational, intelligence, technological) campaign is waged in the Middle East, far beyond last night’s strike in Syria.”

“Impressive IDF Intel and AF capabilities last night. High quality RT intel along with a precise surgical operation prevented a significant attack on Israel,” he added. “I would not want to be in Qassem Suleimani’s shoes this morning.”

“Israel’s decision to take responsibility 1) signal as warning to the enemy to avoid further escalation, 2) increases readiness of our forces for an Iranian response, and 3) serves political purposes by distracting from the deteriorating security situation in Gaza and the [West Bank],” Yadlin stated.

Soleimani commanded an attack of killer drones on Israel. Iranian Quds operatives flew to the Damascus Intl. Airport with drones & explosives, and continued to an Iranian base in Syria to prepare for an attack on Israel.

An attack that never happened.

We attacked their base: pic.twitter.com/kXabH199r0

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) August 25, 2019

It must have hit Quds Force Commander Maj.-Gen. Qasem Soleimani in the gut: Another one of his plans to attack Israel blown to pieces by the Israel Air Force.

Soleimani had been personally involved in this latest attempt to strike Israel with armed drones, likely motivated by the alleged Israeli jets targeting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and their Shiite militias in broad daylight in Iraq.

Tehran even hinted that a response was forthcoming, with a commentator close to the IRGC writing in Iran’s Kayhan daily newspaper that IAF operations would lead to “surprises” including the launching of drones towards sensitive targets in Israel.

Sounds familiar, no?

Last year an armed Iranian drone infiltrated into Israeli skies armed with explosives that had been launched to carry out a sabotage attack in the Jewish State. The advanced Iranian drone believed to be a copy of a US stealth drone that was downed in Iran in 2011, took off from the T-4 airbase deep in the Syrian province of Homs and crossed into Israeli territory via Jordanian airspace.

The drone was intercepted near the Israeli town of Beit She’an by an Apache attack helicopter.

Perhaps Soleimani learned his lesson from that failed attack and chose to strike Israel with Qasif type drones used by the Houthis in Yemen against Saudi Arabia.

But Israel’s intelligence community closely monitors events in Syria, especially movement and plans by Iran allowing for successful strikes, easily disrupting any plans by Soleimani.

More recently, in June, an airstrike hit Tel al-Hara, a hill that overlooks the Israeli Golan from the Syrian side. Syrian state media accused Israel of another airstrike near the Golan in late July. Syria also accused Israel of other strikes near Damascus on July 1, May 19, January 7 and 21, and December 1 and 25, 2018, and December 1, 2017.

The August 24 airstrikes therefore come in the context of rising tensions across the region, from Yemen to Iraq. This also includes tensions in the Persian Gulf, where the UK has said it is sending a new warship this week.

In addition, the US and Iran are ramping up rhetoric. Some Iranian-backed Shi’ite paramilitaries have condemned the US for the airstrikes in Iraq, and there are calls for US forces to leave. Iran openly brags that it dominates the Persian Gulf, as quotes in Tasnim news revealed on Sunday. Iranian drones are now becoming more advanced, and Iranian allies in Yemen are showing off new air defense, claiming they shot down a US drone and Saudi drones. Iran also said over the weekend that it fired a new missile, and unveiled new air defense technology. Iran says its new missiles and air defense and even a new IRGC drone unit are part of a new IRGC doctrine of deterrence.

Iran’s major concern now is where to trigger that deterrence in the arc of influence it currently controls across Iraq into Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. According to US claims, it has sabotaged six ships in the Gulf of Oman. It has also used its proxies to fire rockets and mortars near the US Embassy in Baghdad in May, and next to three US bases in June, and it has downed a US drone and seized a British ship. Iran says this is in retaliation, arguing that the US drone was flying over its airspace in June, and that in July, the UK seized its oil tanker in Gibraltar. Iran’s drones, militias and other assets are arrayed across the Middle East, for thousands of kilometers of potential flash points. The August 24 airstrikes hit one of those assets, according to the IDF, but the context is regional.

Iran has tough financial problems and hardships faced by the average citizen like rising prices, poverty, drugs and prostitution in large cities, but these all take a backseat to the megalomaniacal games played by Soleimani and his IRGC buddies.

Billions of dollars are spent keeping arms flowing to Hezbollah in Lebanon, putting bases in Syria, waging endless war against the Saudis in Yemen and, of course, sending thousands of freelance militiamen, including from Pakistan and Afghanistan, to build up Shiite strongholds in Iraq.

But Israel is not going to just allow the Iranians to put a foothold where they want. And this means that the level of fighting between Iran and Israel will only ratchet higher and higher. Along the way, it may change shape in some ways; it’s eminently possible that, instead of drones, we’ll see an Iranian attempt to take revenge through some other sort of attack.

The contours of Israel’s actions may also shift away from the familiar routine of airstrikes in Syria and Iraq (according to foreign reports, of course; Israel doesn’t admit carrying them out).

Israel has shown more than once that it knows how to take out dominant Shiite-Iranian personalities, like Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh in 2008 and his son Jihad Mughniyeh in 2015.

According to American reports, while tracking the senior Mughniyeh, an opportunity opened up to assassinate Soleimani, but it was stopped by the US government, then under president George W. Bush.

Should the opportunity to hit Soleimani present itself to the US or Israel now, it’s unlikely there would be anyone in either government to call off the attack again.

The release of photographs of a drone that crashed in the Lebanese capital Beirut early Sunday morning cast doubt on the claim by the Hezbollah terror group that the craft belonged to the Israeli military, with some Israeli analysts speculating that the unmanned aerial vehicle was in fact an Iranian model.

In the predawn hours of Sunday morning, one UAV exploded in the air outside the offices of the Iran-backed Hezbollah, causing damage to the building. A second crashed nearby and was retrieved by the terror group.

Both Hezbollah and the Lebanese military claimed the drones were sent by Israel.

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri later condemned Israel, saying the UAVs were a “blatant attack on Lebanon’s sovereignty” and “forms a threat to regional stability and an attempt to push the situation towards more tension.”

Later that afternoon, official Lebanese state media released a photograph of the quadcopter-style UAV that crashed. It appears to be a civilian drone with extremely limited range that the Israeli military would likely be unable or uninterested in using for a sensitive operation like conducting reconnaissance in a Hezbollah stronghold.

Several well-connected Israeli commentators, including a former IDF general, said the drones appeared to be of an Iranian origin.

Hezbollah will retaliate to an alleged overnight Israeli provocation in Beirut by Sunday afternoon, sources close to the Shiite terrorist group told the Lebanese media hours after the incident, but the threat was later walked back by Hezbollah.

Two Israeli drones reportedly crashed in a Hezbollah stronghold in the Lebanese capital overnight, a spokesman for the organization said on Sunday, saying the first fell on the roof of a building housing Hezbollah's media office while the second landed in a plot behind it.

Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif said that a small, unmanned reconnaissance drone fell on a building housing Hezbollah's media office in the Moawwad neighborhood in Dahiyeh, the group's stronghold in southern Beirut.

He said a second drone, which was supposedly sent by Israel to search for the first one less than 45 minutes later, exploded in the air and crashed in an empty plot nearby, causing damage to nearby buildings. He said the second drone was likely armed judging by the damage that it caused.

Residents said they heard a loud blast that triggered a nighttime fire.

"We did not shoot down or explode any of the drones," Afif told The Associated Press.

He said that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was to give the official and "appropriate" response in a previously-scheduled televised appearance later on Sunday.

A part of that story which the BBC chose not to tell – even though the information was readily available – is as follows:
“The Israeli military said its strike late Saturday targeted operatives from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force as well as Shiite militias who had been planning on sending “kamikaze” attack drones into Israel armed with explosives. […]

[IDF Spokesman] Conricus said Israel had monitored the plot for several months and on Thursday prevented Iran from making an “advanced attempt” to execute the same plan. Then, Iran tried again late Saturday to carry out the same attack, he said. […]

“This was a significant plan with significant capabilities that had been planned for a few months,” Conricus said. “It was not something done on a low level, but rather top down from the Quds Force.”

He said the Iranian attack was believed to be “very imminent.””

Neither did the BBC bother to inform its audiences that, as reported by Ha’aretz:
“A commentator close to the Revolutionary Guards wrote [on Thursday August 22nd] in the Iranian newspaper Kayhan that Israeli actions in Iraq and Syria would be met with surprises, such as launches of UAVs at sensitive security targets, ports and nuclear sites in Israel. The plan that was foiled, according to the IDF, was identical to the action threatened beforehand by the commentator.”

The Observer's editorial has it precisely backwards.

It should read: "At the same time, Iran is using Syrian chaos to widen a declared war with Israel."

It's Iran, not Israel, that is destabilizing the entire Middle East. pic.twitter.com/bNY1YkhZZv

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 25, 2019

They use every tool in the Muslim Brotherhood playbook- demonize the Jewish people, eradicate the Jewish nation, and then they claim victimhood wanting to appear to be ‘ under seige’ to an oppressive West, an ‘ oppressive Israel’ - Qanta Ahmed (2)

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) August 24, 2019

Ilan Omar advocating for an Egyptian jihadi terrorist Hoda Abdelmonem senior member Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood -posting a photo of her meeting with pro-MBcampaigners, Omar doubled down on her push,RT the post linking to an Al Jazeera video that calls for Abdelmonem’s release pic.twitter.com/r2gBSELKRf

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) August 25, 2019

The condition of a rabbi and his teenage son who were both seriously injured in a deadly bombing at a West Bank nature spot has improved and they were set to be moved out of intensive care, a doctor told media Sunday.

Rina Shnerb, her father Eitan, 46, and 19-year-old brother Dvir were all wounded in the explosion at a natural spring outside the Dolev settlement. Rina was pronounced dead from her injuries, while her father and brother were hospitalized in serious condition.

Akiva Nachshon, a doctor in the intensive care unit at the Hadassah Medical Center Ein Kerem, said Sunday that Dvir had improved and was now considered in moderate to good condition.

Eitan, the father, he said, was in good condition.

Both father and son were to be moved from intensive care to the regular surgery ward later in the day, Nachshon said.

The IDF has made several arrests as it hunts for the terrorist cell responsible for the attack, carried out with a remotely detonated explosive device.

Envoys from the United Nations and European Union sharply condemned Friday’s terrorist attack in which Lod teenager Rina Shnerb, 17, was killed and her father and brother were wounded.

“Shocking, heinous bomb attack in the #WestBank today. There is nothing “heroic” in murder! NOTHING! It is a despicable, cowardly act! #Terror must be unequivocally condemned by ALL,” UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov wrote on Twitter.

EU Ambassador to Israel Emanuele Giaufret also spoke out on Twitter.

“Appalled by the news of the heinous attack on a father and his children in the West Bank this morning. My thoughts and condolences are with victims of this despicable act,” he wrote.

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman wrote, “No words to describe the sadness of the moment as we grieve and pray for the injured to recover. May they receive God’s blessings.”

US special envoy Jason Greetblatt tweeted, “Another savage attack by Palestinian terrorists kills an Israeli teenager enjoying time with her family. This isn’t the path to peace, just endless suffering.”

Roughly four hours after a terror attack took place near Dolev on August 23rd the BBC News website published a written report headlined “Israeli teenage girl killed in West Bank bomb attack” and a filmed report titled “West Bank bomb blast kills 17-year-old Israeli girl”.

The synopsis to the filmed report states:
“An Israeli teenage girl has been killed and her father and brother injured in a suspected Palestinian militant attack at a natural spring near a settlement in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli military says an improvised explosive device was used.”

All four versions of the written report similarly opened by telling readers that:
“A 17-year-old Israeli girl has been killed in a bomb attack near a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military says.”

A Tweet promoting the article used the same terminology:
“Israeli teenage girl killed in bomb attack near Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank”

All four versions of the report also closed with the BBC’s standard but partial mantra on ‘settlements’ and ‘international law’ despite the fact that it has nothing to do with the story being reported.

Hours after a bomb exploded at the "Danny Spring" on Friday Aug. 23, murdering 17-year-old Rina Shnerb and injuring her father and brother, US President Donald Trump's Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt took to Twitter to demand that the Palestinian Authority condemn the attack. He added: "If they don't, donor countries should demand the PA answer for why their donor funds continue to be used to reward attacks."

Despite numerous checks, and notwithstanding the fact that the PA media has referred to the attack on multiple occasions, Palestinian Media Watch could find no statement whatsoever of any PA official condemning the attack. Rather the PA media chose to falsely claim that Rina was a "soldier" and a "settler."

PA TV reported that Israeli forces had set up road blocks around Ramallah "on the pretext" that someone had killed an Israeli soldier.

Official PA TV newsreader: "The occupation forces closed the main roads to the villages west of Ramallah and increased their military presence at the entrances to the Ramallah and El-Bireh district. This took place on the pretext of the killing of a female Israeli soldier and the wounding of others near the settlement named Dolev, which is located on the [Arab] residents' lands of west of Ramallah."
[Official PA TV News, Aug. 23, 2019]

Needless to say, 17-year-old Rina was not a soldier and no Israeli authority ever claimed she was a soldier.

WAFA, the official PA news agency, printed a number of articles relating to the event. While Rina was a resident of Lod, a town in Israel (within the 1949 Armistice lines), the reports systematically described her as a "settler" and focused on the measures taken by Israel to apprehend the terrorists who carried out the attack:

Released terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, led suicide bomber to target, 15 people murdered: "We were released in the Loyalty to the Free People Deal (i.e., Shalit prisoner exchange) in October 2011. Our release was a great joy for us, the beginning of a new life after the Zionist entity had sentenced us to life sentences... Seven years after our release, now the American [authorities] are demanding to re-arrest me. This has shaken our lives to a certain extent... My being in Jordan strengthens me, as there is no extradition agreement between Jordan and the US. This has led to the issuing of a legal decision not to extradite me, and Jordan’s position on this matter is clear. Why are we defined as ‘terror’? Why is Ahlam defined as ‘a terror[ist]’? I’m part of an independence movement, a national liberation movement, a resistance movement acting for its freedom. The clauses of the UN General Assembly [charter] are on my side." [Al-Jazeera.net website, March 28, 2019]

In Nablus Friday Sermon, Sheikh Muhammad Nour Malhas: People Who Normalize Relations with Israel Will Not Be Among Muslims to Kill Jews on Judgement Day pic.twitter.com/8ALQHpNIsX

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 25, 2019

The PLO condemned an “assault” on its offices in the Gaza Strip and said the unknown assailants were backed by Hamas.

The assailants stormed the PLO’s Department for Refugee Affairs, destroyed furniture and stole various items, sources in the Gaza Strip said. No group claimed responsibility for the “assault,” and the motives of the attackers were unknown.

A Palestinian journalist in Gaza said he did not rule out the possibility that the incident was simply a break-in by burglars. Crime has soared as poverty has spread in the impoverished and lawless Hamas-controlled coastal enclave.

The incident drew strong condemnations from the PLO and its largest faction, Fatah, which rushed to blame Hamas for the “assault.”
The “pre-planned assault by rogue individuals and groups was carried out under the patronage and support of Hamas and its gunmen,” the PLO Executive Committee said in a statement on Sunday.

Noting that the offices that were targeted are responsible for following up on the interests of Palestinian refugees, the committee warned that such practices “reinforce the division” between the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Fatah accused Hamas of “facilitating the assault and providing protection and support for the assailants.”

@jdgreenblatt45 When the PA & PLO want to, they know how to use the word "condemn". But when it comes condemning the murder of a 17 yo Israeli girl, suddenly they get tongue tied. Maybe it's because they don't actually condemn the murder of Jews https://t.co/nnFg5x24Ob@palwatchhttps://t.co/HWh5zG0mjS

— Maurice Hirsch (@MauriceHirsch4) August 25, 2019

Peak @palinfoenhttps://t.co/ERc168rJQB

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) August 25, 2019

A top Iranian official paid an unannounced visit Sunday to the G-7 summit and headed straight to the buildings where leaders of the world’s major democracies have been debating how to handle the country’s nuclear ambitions.

France’s surprise invitation of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was a high-stakes gamble for French President Emmanuel Macron, who is the host of the Group of Seven gathering in Biarritz.

Zarif’s plane left Tehran on Sunday morning and touched down a few hours later at the Biarritz airport, which has been closed since Friday to all flights unrelated to the official G-7 delegations.

A senior French official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said Zarif went directly into a meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, said Zarif flew to Biarritz at the invitation of the French foreign minister. Mousavi said on Twitter that there would be no meetings or negotiations with American officials during Zarif’s trip.

US President Donald Trump appeared to brush aside French efforts to mediate with Iran on Sunday, saying that while he was happy for President Emmanuel Macron to reach out to Tehran to defuse tensions he would carry on with his own initiatives.

European leaders have struggled to tamp down the brewing confrontation between Iran and the United States since Trump pulled his country out of Iran’s internationally-brokered 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions on the Iranian economy.

Macron, who has pushed mediation efforts in recent weeks to avoid a further deterioration in the region, had told LCI television that the G7 had agreed on joint action on Iran.

The French presidency said G7 leaders had even agreed that Macron should hold talks and pass on messages to Iran after they discussed the issue over dinner at a summit in southwestern France on Saturday evening.

However, Trump, who has pushed a maximum pressure policy on Iran, pushed back.

Asked if he had signed off on a statement that Macron intends to give on behalf of the G7 on Iran, Trump said, “I haven’t discussed this. No I haven’t,” adding that Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe were free to talk to Iran.

“We’ll do our own outreach, but, you know, I can’t stop people from talking. If they want to talk, they can talk.”

Iranian lawmakers are preparing to issue a salvo of sanctions on top Trump administration figures and their supporters in Congress, according to reports in the country's state-controlled press that have already elicited reaction from those officials targeted.

Iran's parliament has set the stage for Tehran to sanction White House National Security Adviser John Bolton, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) for what Iranian officials have described as their "long record of animosity towards Iran."

The sanctions would ban each of the Americans from ever traveling to Iran, bar them from engaging in any sort of talks with Iranian regime figures, and deny them the ability to trade with any Iranian entity.

"The bill calls for lifetime bans on U.S. National Security Adviser John R. Bolton, U.S. Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin, and American senator Ted Cruz and their family members' traveling to Iran, in a reaction to Washington's embargos on Iranian officials, and these figures' strong hostile measures against Iran in the past few years," Iran's state-controlled Fars News Agency reported, adding the measure is payback for Bolton, Mnuchin, and Cruz seeking to isolate the Islamic Republic.

Cruz, speaking through a spokesman, brushed off the Iranian sanctions, telling the Washington Free Beacon he has no interest in traveling or speaking to a country that wants "to use nuclear weapons to attack American cities."

"Senator Cruz already avoids travel to terrorist regimes that take American citizens hostage and want to use nuclear weapons to attack American cities," a spokesman for Cruz told the Free Beacon on Saturday. "He urges all Americans to do the same, especially since interacting with Iran's economy in any way carries significant sanctions risk, including some sanctions that he's personally helped author and more that he intends to introduce in the near future."

Iran, an international sponsor of terrorism, has announced sanctions against a hawkish Washington think tank, threatening that any actions taken against it by "security apparatuses" will be "considered legitimate" by Tehran.

The ominous warning to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and its chief executive officer Mark Dubowitz was carried in state-controlled media, which cited a law titled "Countering America’s Human Rights Violation and Adventurous and Terrorist Actions” that was passed by the Iranian Parliament in 2017.

Iran's foreign ministry said the move had been made because of "economic terrorism" by the FDD, which has been sharply critical of the Iran nuclear deal and has advocated harsh American sanctions against the theocratic regime.

"Accordingly, taking any actions by the judicial and security apparatuses against the FDD and their Iranian and non-Iranian accomplices will be considered legitimate as their actions are against the Iran’s national security and the interests of Iranian people and government," the state-run Mehr news agency wrote.

The think tank addressed the news in a statement, and its leader Mark Dubowitz told the Washington Examiner, "The regime has a history of targeted assassinations on European soil, places in the Gulf, Latin America, Asia ... We're treating it as a targets list, not a sanctions list."

Those American think tanks like @CFR_org and @CrisisGroup who are hosting or visiting with @JZarif& @HassanRouhani when they come to NYC for UNGA should reconsider given their threats against another American think tank. https://t.co/631oU20jeM

— Mark Dubowitz (@mdubowitz) August 24, 2019

Amazon’s approach to Israel gets more confusing by the day. Only a few months ago, the retail giant appeared to have given up on the idea of online trading in Israel. Now, it seems, it has changed its mind again.

A few weeks ago, a number of Israeli suppliers received a message from Amazon, in Hebrew, informing them that they could add “Local Delivery” for customers in Israel. Local Delivery would imply that these customers will receive goods they have ordered within 5 days, but how Amazon aims to achieve this is still unclear.
New Services?

The messages invited merchants to become part of a “select group of sellers” that would be the first to offer Amazon deliveries in the country. For local delivery services like this, merchants may take orders from customers via the Amazon platform, but will ship goods from stocks held in Israel. Though sellers will get the advantage of trading under the Amazon name, the company will otherwise not be involved.

The move is similar to those that Amazon has made when it has expanded into other countries and territories. Amazon always starts with seller deliveries as the first stage of its activity,” Nir Zigdon, founder and CEO of eCommunity, an approved Amazon supplier, told Globes. “We’ve seen this happen in Australia, India, and now in Amazon Turkey. Later on, subject to viability, Amazon opens logistics centers and enables Amazon Prime membership.”

It may take some years before a fully-featured Amazon service comes to Israel, though. At the moment, customers in the country will use the US site to order products, since there is still no version of the Amazon website in Hebrew.

The Times of Israel is pleased to host the fifth episode of a series of seven special edition talks on Israeli startups, as part of Firewall, a podcast about tech, culture and politics hosted by Bradley Tusk.

In this episode, Tusk, the CEO of Tusk Ventures, and Michael Eisenberg of Israel’s Aleph VC talk to Erez Dagan, the executive vice president for Products and Strategy at Mobileye, a maker of technologies for self-driving cars that was snapped up by Intel Corp. in 2017 for a whopping $15.3 billion. Dagan, 42, has been with the firm for 16 years. After his army service, as part of his degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Dagan took a course in machine learning given by Prof. Amnon Shashua, the founder of Mobileye. He fell in love with the subject and the rest is history.

Together, they discuss how the firm’s first robotaxis — driverless autonomous vehicles hailed via an app — will likely hit the roads commercially in 2022. They also talk about the technological and political implications of autonomous vehicles, the social contracts that govern different driving cultures globally, and the business side of the self-driving industry.

In a first for North Africa, German nonprofit organization Pixelhelper is building a Holocaust memorial and education center in Morocco.

The monument is situated some 26 km. southeast of Marrakech on the road to the Ouarzazate Film Studios in the little town of Ait Faska, a n area that attracts thousands of tourists.

PixelHelper founder Oliver Bienkowski told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that the only other Holocaust memorial on the African continent is in South Africa.

“Between our place and this, there is no [other] remembrance to the Holocaust,” Bienkowski said.

The news of the project has sparked a wave of public and official anger and sharp criticism of the authorities in the media and a number of interested and anti-normalization jurists.

Ahmed Ihaman, head of the Observatory of Morocco the anti-normalization, said the construction of a memorial to the Holocaust monument Holocaust in Marrakech, Morocco is a Zionist breakthrough, expressing his strong condemnation of the Zionist penetration, which reached unprecedented levels with Morocco 

 Two Moroccan human rights activists called on the government on Sunday to clarify the alleged intention of a German organization to build a Holocaust memorial and educational center near the central city of Marrakech.

On Facebook, human rights activist Hamid El Wali urged the Moroccan government to show the truth in light of media reports of a Holocaust memorial.

The Holocaust is a term used to describe the campaigns of the Nazi German government and some of its allies to ethnically liquidate Jews in Europe during World War II (1939-1945), according to the Israeli occupying power, which subsequently received substantial compensation from European countries for this.

Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri has said two Israeli drones, which came down in the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs of Beirut, amounted to an open attack on the country's sovereignty and an attempt to foment regional tensions.

"The new aggression ... constitutes a threat to regional stability and an attempt to push the situation towards further tension," Hariri said on Sunday in a statement from his office.

Speaking later on Sunday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the fall of the two Israeli drones marked a dangerous development.

"The latest Israeli development is very, very, very dangerous," he said in a pre-scheduled televised speech.

Earlier, Mohammed Afif, a Hezbollah spokesperson, said a small, unmanned reconnaissance drone fell on the roof of a building that was housing Hezbollah's media office in the Moawwad neighbourhood in Dahyeh suburb on Sunday.

He said a second drone, which appeared to have been sent by Israel to search for the first drone less than 45 minutes later, exploded in the air and crashed nearby.

"We did not shoot down or explode any of the drones," Afif told The Associated Press news agency.

The release of photographs of a drone that crashed in the Lebanese capital Beirut early Sunday morning cast doubt on the claim by the Hezbollah terror group that the craft belonged to the Israeli military, with some Israeli analysts speculating that the unmanned aerial vehicle was in fact an Iranian model.

Several well-connected Israeli commentators, including a former IDF general, said the drones appeared to be of an Iranian origin.

Former head of Military Intelligence Amos Yadlin, who now heads the esteemed Institute for National Security Studies think tank, speculated that the drone may have been part of a plot by Tehran to send armed drones into northern Israel to bomb military installations and national infrastructure, an attack that the IDF said it foiled late Saturday night with a series of airstrikes in Syria.

Today, on a patch of land dreamed about for millennia, millions of Jews are living a different Jewish life. And they are doing it in a way that continues to preserve identity across generations. And increasingly, that unique approach to life and history and identity are exporting themselves—their cultural products, their innovation, their very life essence—to America.

a deep process of Israelification is underway in Arab society. Forty-six percent of respondents defined themselves as Israeli Arabs, 22 percent as Arabs, 19 percent as Israeli Palestinians and only 14 percent as Palestinians. In other words, 65 percent affixed the term “Israeli” to the way they define themselves.

Contrary to prevailing conceptions, it turns out that the Arab public yearns to participate in determining the political and social agenda of this country.

76 percent of Arabs say relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel in everyday life are “mostly positive” and only 18 percent described them as negative (compared to 53 percent and 33 percent, respectively, among the Jewish respondents). And 94 percent of the Arabs surveyed agree there is a Jewish people as well as a Palestinian people (while 52 percent of the Jews surveyed said there is a Palestinian people and not just a Jewish people). [emphasis added]

My conjecture is that the Arab public votes as it does, first and foremost, because most of them accept the Palestinian national narrative that the Arab parties represent. However, in its attitude toward the state, most of this public does not draw the natural emotional conclusions from this narrative.

Young Arabs, mostly boys, from the country’s north were invited to live, study and work on kibbutzim. They left their village homes alone and spent years in these communities – working, eating and sleeping alongside the Jewish kibbutzniks. In some cases they made the move with their family’s blessing, but others were rebelling against their parents and their society.

The Arab Pioneers learned Hebrew, danced the hora, raised the Israeli flag, sang “Hatikva,” the national anthem, and in some cases even took Hebrew names. Some began relationships with Jewish girls and aspired to assimilate into the kibbutz society. Others wanted to learn new agricultural methods with the aim of returning home and improving life in their villages. A few of them tried to realize a dream and establish an Arab kibbutz.

“The Jews we had met until then were part of the cruel suppression by the military government,” Mahmoud Younes recalls in a conversation at his elegant home in the town of Arara in the Triangle’s Wadi Ara area. Sitting next to an expressive painting of a dove of peace, he continues, “Suddenly we were sitting with Jews as equals. Eating with them in the [communal] dining room, working. A different Israel.”

The movement, which was an initiative of the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair youth movement, existed from 1951 until 1966, the same year that military rule over the country’s Arabs ended. At its height, around 1960, it had 1,800 members and 45 branches in Arab villages. The participants had a uniform – the standard dark blue Hashomer Hatzair shirt with a white string, along with a kaffiyeh and aqal (headband). They also had their own emblem, in the form of a proud youth movement member standing under an Arab-style arch, and they had a variation of the movement’s slogan: “hazak vene’eman” – be strong and loyal – instead of “hazak ve’amatz” – be strong and brave. The Arab movement members took part in hikes, in May Day parades, even in Independence Day folk dancing.

Members of the Pioneer Arab Youth movement, 1956. Credit: Hashomer Hatzair Archive

Jews and Arab youths dancing the debka on Kibbutz Yakum near Netanya, 1955. Hashomer Hatzair Archive / Yad Yaari Research & Documentation Center

he had taught his wards about the fate of the Jewish people and their need for a state, and at the time saw no contradiction between the national aspirations of the Jews and the Arabs. “The intention was to educate for positive Arab nationalism, not aggressive nationalism that would turn against Zionism, but one espousing historical and literary values.” 

o  In 1956, a cooperative vegetable garden called “The Pioneer” was founded in Kafr Yasif.
o  In Taibeh, an agricultural cooperative called “The Hope” was established. It included a plan for setting up a cooperative movie theater, that never came to fruition.
o  In 1957, a water-drilling project that Younes established in Arara.

“the coexistence was forced, not genuine. Coexistence is expressed in everyday life, in deeds, not in theories. It was hypocrisy per se, and I think that the same hypocrisy exists to this day. The kibbutzim believe above all that this is a Jewish state and that the Jews in it are more privileged than the Arabs and have priority in everything.

In July, Israeli media reported that the Trump plan calls for a land corridor linking the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian Authority. It would be better called a terror corridor. Israel’s internal security services revealed recently that Hamas, more or less confined to the Gaza Strip, is pushing to create terror cells in the West Bank. An unrestricted land corridor, effectively cutting Israel in two, would make the job that much easier.

If Israel is nervous, Jordan is even more so. King Abdullah fears that the peace deal will make changes to Jordan’s status on the Temple Mount. Its control of the Muslim holy sites there is what gives the kingdom its religious legitimacy. Abdullah also fears the deal will propose some sort of confederation between the kingdom and the West Bank, which would undermine Hashemite rule and turn Jordan into a "de facto" Palestinian state.

In fact, when it comes to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, the only thing worse than trying for an agreement is succeeding in making one. The Oslo Accords were a catastrophe for Israel. Land was handed over to a terrorist entity that proceeded to kill nearly 2,000 Jews in attacks the likes of which Israel had never seen. The Oslo process eventually led to Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which has exposed the country’s south to incessant rocket attack and the torching of thousands of acres of fields. With one such "peace agreement," can Israel survive two?

Trump could end this madness with a tweet. He isn’t overly invested.

Confronted with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s remarks that a deal may be "unexecutable," Trump responded quite simply that he "may be right." Just last week, on August 18, Trump said, "It is tough to make a deal when there is that much hate."

Such comments could swiftly lead to the exits. "Hey folks, we got it wrong. One side isn’t interested in peace." It would mean an end to the painful tradition of one administration after another jousting at the same peace windmills.

Lies can sow enormous suffering. But they’re also like balloons. Sometimes it just takes a pinprick.

A book titled Palestine: A Four-Thousand-Year History, which seeks to trace modern Palestinian identity back many centuries before the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible were composed, might be dismissed out of hand as a work of quackery. But the author, Nur Masalha, has a doctorate from a British university and a post at London’s prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies. In a careful review, Alex Stein takes apart the book’s various distortions, half-truths, cherry-picking of evidence, insinuations, and logical leaps, of which a few examples suffice:
On . . . the enduring use of the name Palestine itself, [one of the book’s core arguments], Masalha provides no evidence to back up this claim. Nor does he identify the people or peoples who [supposedly] used the name Palestine so habitually. . . . [O]f the four specific examples produced to link the term Palestine to the Late Bronze Age (3300 to 1200 BCE), three are taken from the 7th century CE onward. Despite its presentation as a 4,000-year history, Palestine has a distinct bias toward the era that followed the Islamic conquest of the Levant in 636 CE.

Even when he is writing about the Bronze Age, Masalha strives to emphasize the Arab connection:

Arabic-language epigraphic evidence from Palestine east of the Jordan River is extensive, with some Arabic inscriptions dating from the Roman era and as early as 150 CE. In fact, Palestine is extremely rich in Arabic inscriptions, most of which date from the early Islamic and Umayyad periods.

A more relevant observation, especially in a chapter dealing with the Late Bronze Age, [which ended by] 500 BCE, would clearly be the numerous Hebrew inscriptions discovered by archaeologists and dating from that period.

Likewise, despite repeatedly insisting that his goal is to “read the history of Palestine through the eyes of the indigenous” in order to create a “pluralist” version of history as opposed to the version shaped by colonialism, Masalha goes to great lengths to minimize Jewish history in the land of Israel. As Stein puts it, “there is no room for Jews in Masalha’s ‘pluralist’ reading of Palestine’s history, other than as passive members of a ‘faith community’ living under Arab Muslim hegemony.” And as a historian explicitly hostile to imperialism and colonialism, Masalha has a notable blind spot, as evidenced by his discussion of “indigenous” vs. “settler-colonist” place names:

THE ONLY way to prevent further decline in American capabilities, particularly in the Middle East, is to bolster deterrence. A withdrawal from the Middle East must be accompanied by steps that reduce the general impression of a weak US going home in defeat.

The place to make a stand is regarding Iran. Obama cut a deal with Iran that only encouraged its quest for hegemony and drive for nuclear weapons, while buying time in the hope that Iran will not harass the United States. In contrast, Trump understands that the Islamic Republic of Iran is an enemy of the US and that it is determined to acquire a nuclear weapon. But his hopes for forcing Iran to change its policies under diplomatic and economic pressure, while pursuing a policy of US disengagement from the Middle East, are unlikely to be realized.

The only way to leave the Middle East with as little as possible damage to US standing and security is to leave with a big bang. Washington must instill fear in the hearts of its enemies.

Despite the significant reduction in American military capabilities, the US still has enough punch to punish regional opponents and to generate fear. The US still possesses a strong enough air force to conduct a short campaign to destroy the critical Iranian nuclear installations.

Such military action would also delay nuclear proliferation, an important goal for the US, encourage US regional allies and discourage its opponents.

Indeed, action against a nuclear-aspiring Islamist Iran would reverberate beyond the Middle East and send a clear signal to anti-American forces all over the world.

Enhanced deterrence would prevent further Iranian provocations and would buy the US time to put its house in order and get serious about being a superpower.

Abu Rudaineh said that the Palestinians reject and condemn the US move which, he added, “shows that the US administration is biased in favor of the Israeli occupation.” He further claimed that the move “reflects the content of the so-called American Deal of the Century” – reference to US President Donald Trump’s upcoming Middle East peace plan.

The PA spokesperson added that the US administration’s move “emphasizes its isolation in wake of international recognition of the Palestinian state.” The US administration, he said, “must know that there will be no peace, security and stability in the region without the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the June 4, 1967 borders.”

PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat also criticized the US move. “Cancelling Palestine (Palestinian Authority or Palestinian Territories) from the US State Department’s list is not related to American national interests,” he said. “The decision aims to support the schemes of the Israeli Council of Settlements.”

The PA Foreign Ministry in Ramallah accused the US administration of “implementing the Israeli vision of destroying the two-state solution and whitewashing the occupation.” The ministry said that the US move will not change anything, and again demonstrates the US administration’s “total bias in favor of the occupation and how it has lost its credibility.”

The ministry accused the US administration of being hostile toward the Palestinians and their rights and of carrying out a policy aimed at “liquidating the Palestinian cause.”

New Zealand has not formally suspended funding to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. The statement contradicted an earlier report by the Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ).

Earlier this week, IINZ reported that the country suspended donations to UNRWA following an internal report that found “credible and corroborated” allegations of serious ethical abuses, including “sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent, and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives.”

IINZ reported that over the past decade, New Zealand taxpayers have contributed more than NZ $10 million to UNRWA and that the country recently committed to giving $3 million over the next year in a deal struck between New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) and the UNRWA staff member at the center of the current allegations, Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl.

An investigation in July found that the commissioner-general of UNRWA was allegedly centralizing management, exploiting its power to promote associates and neglecting his role in favor of extensive travel around the world.

MFAT said the country provides NZ $1 million in core funding to UNRWA each year and periodically makes additional one-off humanitarian contributions to UNRWA’s emergency appeals.

The response said that New Zealand contributed a total of $2.5 million to UNRWA between January and June 2019.

IINZ shared a letter it received from MFAT with the Post that indicated that the ministry would review the findings of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) report and, until then, “New Zealand will not make any further payments until we have reviewed the report’s findings and assessed UNRWA’s response to any recommendations.”

2. In that internal email, @MFATgovtNZ on 24/1/2018 reported: "There is nothing in their assessment about alleged complicity with 'terrorism' acts or anti-Jewish bias in educational materials/teachings."

And now here's the evidence @MFATgovtNZ was hiding:https://t.co/dLTzQ3BPtJpic.twitter.com/06Kl2mzvvP

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 26, 2019

2/3 Arab-American Researchers: Our Intellectual Elite Created Illusions about Israel and Zionism pic.twitter.com/PuHnpJ33MT

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 26, 2019

3/3 Arab-American Researchers: Zionism Should Serve as a Lesson to Anyone Trying to Establish a State; Israel Is the Most Successful Country in the Middle East pic.twitter.com/J9NDAPi87s

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 26, 2019

??We remember Irit Gidron, murdered in London 41 years ago today by Palestinian???? PFLP terrorists targeting @ELALUK staff, injuring 9 others.

The PFLP is a proscribed terrorist group. Why is its flag still flown at ‘Palestinian solidarity’ rallies in London??? pic.twitter.com/uVQ92ocgjj

— Mark Regev (@MarkRegev) August 20, 2019

Few places in the world are as intensely-contested as Hebron, an ancient city with significance for Jews, Muslims and Christians. Narratives abound, with Palestinian Arabs, human rights groups, and Israeli anti-occupation organizations portraying the city as suffering under Israeli control, while many Jews and Israelis focus on the right of the local Jewish community to exist, pointing out that no place in the world should be Jew-free, much less here — one of the most sacred sites in Judaism. With the “anti-occupation” narrative so strong, and with groups like Breaking the Silence repeatedly manufacturing headlines and influencing international leaders and cultural figures, some facts about Hebron are routinely downplayed.

Breaking the Silence Fails to Show Hebron as a Bustling, Thriving City
Breaking the Silence tour participants leave Hebron under the impression that it is a “ghost town”. This is not by a chance – it’s the precise term featuring prominently on a B’tselem-produced map of Hebron distributed by Breaking the Silence tour guides.

In fact, it’s nothing of the sort.

Believe it or not, but Hebron is a bustling, thriving city. Breaking the Silence tour participants are shown a very restricted fragment of the old town area, walking along one long street, known as King David Street to Israelis and as Shuhada (Martyrs) Street to Palestinians, before turning off at the end up another street and along a dirt track to visit local Palestinian activist group Youth Against Settlements. Tour participants then retrace their steps and head back to the beginning of their linear route to be driven back to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. The few streets in which Palestinian civilians are restricted compromise less than 1% of the entire city. The vast majority of the city does not undergo the restrictions imposed on the roads shown by Breaking the Silence.

Two members of the British Consulate reportedly chauffeured a co-founder of the NGO Breaking the Silence (BTS), which is made up of former IDF soldiers who report about negative experiences serving over the Green Line, in an official consulate vehicle, it was revealed on Monday.

The right-wing organization Im Tirtzu said BTS co-founder Yehuda Shaul hosted the two British Consulate members on July 25, but it was the British who did the driving. When The Jerusalem Post asked BTS about the matter, the NGO refused comment.

Since 2005, BTS has been conducting tours to Hebron for members of the Israeli public and foreign visitors, though they were temporarily suspended in 2008 when a group of United Kingdom diplomats were harassed with stones and eggs by Jewish settlers.

But it is less common for the organization to travel in officially marked cars.

Im Tirtzu sent videos to The Jerusalem Post of the two members receiving a private tour of Givon Hahadasha, which is located near the West Bank settlement of Givat Ze’ev, by Shaul, claiming that the British consulate members had picked up Shaul and were driving him around prior to and during the tour.

A security guard, who asked to remain anonymous, witnessed the events and was able to confirm for the Post that the car belonged to the British Consulate and was an official vehicle.

Several firefighting teams across Israel have been working since Monday afternoon to extinguish three forest fires in Beit Shemesh, Mt. Yaaran and Kfar Mash'had.

Houses in Beit Shemesh were been evacuated following a forest fire raging in the city's Geffen Park, which has now been deemed contained. Ten firefighting teams and two firefighting planes were sent to the area. Police have evacuated nearby residents from their homes as a precautionary measure, fearing smoke inhalation, though no property damage is expected. Roads that had been blocked off have been reopened and residents have been told that it is safe to return to their homes.

The wildfire in the Mt. Yaaran hiking path, near Route 375, is not yet under control. Eleven firefighting teams and six firefighting planes have been deployed to help extinguish the flames.

The wildfire in the village of Kfar Mash'had has been contained, and is most likely the result of dry thorns catching fire. Eight firefighting teams and two firefighting planes were sent to the area. No injuries or casualties have been reported. As a precautionary measure, police and firefighters evacuated 15 houses near the wildfire.

The cause for the Beit Shemesh and Mt. Yaaran wildfires is as of yet unknown.

Last week, U.S. military officials confirmed that Israel has carried out multiple attacks on munitions storehouses and bases used by Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq. These attacks appear to be an extension of the IDF’s efforts to prevent an Iranian military buildup in Syria. Meanwhile, writes Eyal Zisser, Tehran has been planning its revenge

The Israel Air Force managed to thwart a terrorist attack by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Sunday night. The foiled attack, which was likely to have taken place well within Israeli territory by means of drones, was probably designed to serve as retaliation for . . . Israeli strikes on Iranian assets in Syria and Iraq.

It appears that Israel’s success in denying Iran a permanent military presence in Syria, and its successful efforts to target Iran and its allies across the region, have enraged the Revolutionary Guards, leading them to take the unusual step of launching a (now-foiled) terrorist attack. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Guard’s expeditionary wing, was probably certain that the attack would be successful, to the point that he apparently leaked his plans to the Iranian paper Kayhan, [which] warned last week that Israel would wake up one day and discover that its population centers had been attacked by Iranian drones.

The Israeli attack near Damascus was a great military and intelligence success, and it sends a message to Iran that its plots will be discovered and thwarted by Israel. This is not enough to stop Iran from carrying out hostile acts, but in this protracted match between Israel and Iran, the former has so far scored more points.

The Shin Bet security agency announced Monday afternoon that reports circulated earlier that the terrorists who planted the bomb that killed Rina Shnerb, 17, near the Dolev settlement in Samaria on Friday had been arrested.

"The reports that the terrorists who perpetrated the attack [near] Dolev were published without the Shin Bet's knowledge or approval. An investigation into the attack is underway, and we must wait until it is complete to issue official announcements," the Shin Bet message stated.

Earlier Monday, former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman tweeted that the terrorists responsible for Friday's roadside bomb attack had been arrested. Meanwhile, Palestinian media outlets reported that two Palestinians had been arrested during IDF operations in the village Kobar, north of Ramallah. The Palestinian reports tied the detainees to the Friday attack.

With Rina’s funeral taking place Friday afternoon as her father and brother were undergoing emergency surgeries at Hadassah Medical Center in Ein Kerem, the thoughts of everyone who cares about human decency should have been with the family and their horrible loss.

But even as Rina was being buried and kaddish said over her body at the grave site, her death was being shamelessly exploited by all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The anti-Israel organization IfNotNow, which tried to disguise itself as a pro-peace organization, tweeted condolences to Rina’s friends and family and then squarely blamed her death on Israel because “the rightward drift of Israeli and US govts make the situation on the ground less safe for Israelis and Palestinians.”

Certainly less safe for Israelis, they got that right, but no mention that the violence was perpetrated by Palestinians? And nothing about their “rightward drift.”

Similarly, US Rep. Rashida Tlaib, never one to ignore suffering in her ancestral home for her own political gain, tweeted about supporting “nonviolent approaches to ending the Israeli occupation” and condemning “extremism” in calling the attack “tragic & horrible.” But she failed to acknowledge that it was Palestinian extremism that was causing the current suffering.

As champions of the Palestinians were predictably targeting the extremists on both sides in rationalizing the barbaric attack on the Shnerbs, political opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost little time in blaming the murder on his policies.

“The attack... is a slap in the face of Netanyahu’s ‘surrender government,’ which chooses to abandon the security of Israeli citizens in favor of bribery payments to Hamas and the PA to buy quiet until the election,” said Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman.

Tamar and Avichai Lavnoni, sister and brother-in-law of Rina Shnerb, spoke to Arutz Sheva about the family's message to the Jewish people following the terror attack on Friday in the Danny spring in Binyamin, which killed Rina and wounded her father and brother.

"Rabbi Eitan and Shira and the whole family are constantly saying that the message is that we are getting stronger," Avichai said. "We won't lose strength. We are growing from this incident - we grow from every difficulty and we'll even grow from this horrible difficulty. The Jewish people also grows from its difficulties."

Tamar added, "We haven't absorbed anything yet. The entire Jewish people is here, they're with us. We feel all of the Jewish people. On Shabbat, we felt the embrace of the Jewish people. This isn't only our personal mourning, it will never be just our mourning."

Avichai described the reaction of Rina's father, Rabbi Eitan, immediately after the attack in which he himself was injured. "Immediately after the blast, Rabbi Eitan shouted 'Rina, Rina' and when she didn't answer he understood what had happened to his daughter. He sat next to her for about half an hour until the rescue forces arrived. He told Dvir 'she died as a sacrifice to the public.' The mourning is not our private mourning. It's an empty space for the whole nation that we need to complete now. This is not just a task for the Shnerb family, but for all of Israel - how we fulfill the legacy that Rina left us."

"Two nations say they love the land of Israel," Avichai continued. "One throws explosive devices and the other goes for a hike. We won't be broken by this. We'll show them and the Jewish people that when they try to break us, we will only be strengthened."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed the Prime Minister's Office to approve 300 new housing units to be built in Dolev, following a terrorist attack in the area on Friday that killed a 17-year-old girl and wounded her father and brother.

"We will take root and cripple our enemies," Netanyahu said. "We will continue to strengthen and develop the settlement."

The new units will add a neighborhood in Dolev, a West Bank settlement situated 17 miles northwest of Jerusalem.

On Friday, an improvised explosive device (IED) had been detonated at the Ein Buvin spring, the IDF said. The attack killed Rina Shnerb and wounded her father, Rabbi Eitan Shnerb, and brother Dvir.

A wide, multi-dimensional (geographic, operational, intelligence, and technological) campaign is being waged in the Middle East, far beyond Israel's latest strike in Syria to foil an Iranian drone attack.

This is an Israeli-Iranian conflict in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon (and Yemen and Saudi Arabia?) with both significant Russian and American forces present, and their discontent about the events. So far, all remains under the threshold of war, but a consistent escalation control is vital.

Impressive IDF intelligence and air force capabilities were seen in the Syrian strike. High-quality, real-time intelligence along with a precise surgical operation prevented a significant attack on Israel. I would not want to be in Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani's shoes after yet another operational failure in Syria.

Israel's decision to take responsibility for the attack in Syria signals a warning to the enemy to avoid further escalation and increases readiness of our forces for an Iranian response.

Maybe a more interesting incident took place in Beirut. Were Iranian drones prevented from taking off from the Beirut area?

The strategy of the two sides appears to be "cooling" the situation down to avoid full-scale conflict. But at the end of the day Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah is an Iranian proxy, and it is possible that Soleimani will use him to settle the score.

With Monday morning’s jaw-dropping sharing of a wealth of intelligence by the IDF about the Iranian drone crew it struck in Lebanon, the power of Israeli intelligence became ever clearer.

The key to the IDF thwarting the planned attack by Iran on Israel was not merely that it identified the Lebanese operatives working with the Iranians who were en route to carry out their attack, but that it traced the presence of particular operatives involved in using drones on their way to the area before they got there.

Let’s analyze the information put out by the IDF. First, there were three casualties from the strike, two of whom were Hezbollah operatives being trained by Iran’s external intelligence Quds Force: Hassem Yussuf Zabib from Nabatieh in southern Lebanon, born in 1996, and Yasser Ahmed Tzahr from Beleide village, born in 1997.

According to the IDF, the two visited Iran several times this year and went through training targeted at operation of unmanned aerial vehicles and explosive drones at the Quds Force base.

Stunningly, there are pictures of the two onboard a flight and near an airplane to Iran to take part in some of the training sessions.
According to IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis, the IDF was ordered specifically to strike Aqraba early Sunday morning after they received intelligence that the attack would happen on Sunday.

Iranian media in Farsi responded to the airstrikes in Syria Saturday night initially with silence, and then with an array of analysis and claims. The major outlets in Iran regularly report on tensions with Israel, often repeating what officials say, but also providing some analysis and differences.

Fars News had a long analysis about the “Zionists unprecedented acknowledgment” of the attack. This article said eight explosions were heard near Damascus, and that air defense near Mezzeh military airport engaged the incoming missiles. It claimed that Israel deployed the Iron Dome defense system, and that “Zionist air force squads” were warned to “fear Iran, Syria and Hezbollah response.” It asserted that Israeli fighters were “continuing to fly in Lebanese airspace,” and claimed that Israel’s response was largely propaganda.

Tasnim News had a very short report, quoting Syria’s state SANA media and noting that Syrian air defense had intercepted “targets.” It said there was an explosion in Damascus and claimed the airport was targeted.

“SANA reported that Syrian air defense had shot down all the missiles,” Tasnim said, and then quoted a “spokesman for the Zionist army,” which it noted had acknowledged the attack. It then noted that the attack was aimed at Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force operations, Shi’ite militias and UAVs or drones. It noted this only in relation to claims that Israel asserted these were the targets, without any further elaboration.

Mehr News reported explosions near the Syrian capital, and also repeated the counterclaims of Syria and Israel. “This is not the first time such an air strike has taken place,” the report said, mentioning an attack in July. “It should be noted that earlier, Zionist regime officials have acknowledged the ‘hundreds’ of air strikes against Syria.” It said the airstrikes were aimed at countering “alleged Iranian presence” and affiliated forces of Iran. Four were killed and others injured. Syria condemned the strikes, said Mehr, which also had an article noting that Iran was prepared to confront possible threats.

Press TV in English reported the attack by repeating Syria’s claims to have downed the missiles. It also quoted IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus: “Israel has launched recurrent attacks on Syria in defiance of international laws.”

Israeli drones struck a base belonging to a Palestinian terrorist group in Lebanon’s Bekaa near the border with Syria early Monday, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said.

"Three hostile strikes" hit Lebanon's eastern mountains near Qusaya after midnight "where the PFLP-GC has military posts,” NNA said, adding that "they responded with a barrage of anti-aircraft fire."

According to the report, the strikes caused material damage and no casualties.

Videos posted on social media showed explosions as well as heavy anti-aircraft fire by militants.

The PFLP-GC split from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1968, claiming it wanted to focus more on resistance and less on politics.

Led by Ahmad Jibril, a former captain in the Syrian Army, the PFLP-GC is closely tied to both Syria and Iran. While its political leadership is headquartered in Damascus, it has bases in southern Lebanon, in Palestinian refugee camps and a small presence in the Gaza Strip.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun discussed on Monday the "Israeli assault on the southern suburbs of Beirut" with the country's United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Ján Kubiš, Aoun's office said.

Aoun said his country had a right to defend itself after Israeli drone strikes that were like a "declaration of war."

"What happened was similar to a declaration of war which allows us to resort to our right to defending our sovereignty," Aoun's office quoted him as saying on Twitter.

"We are a people seeking peace, not war, and we don't accept anyone threatening us in any war," added Aoun, a political ally of Hezbollah.

Lebanese media reported Sunday that two drones, which the Lebanese army and the Iran-backed Hezbollah said were Israeli, crashed into a Hezbollah building in a southern suburb of Beirut, prompting the leader of the Iran-backed movement to warn the Israeli army that his group was preparing an "appropriate response."

On Sunday, Hezbollah said it would retaliate to an overnight "provocation" in Beirut it attributed to Israel, sources close to the Shiite terrorist group told the Lebanese media hours after the incident. The threat was later walked back by Hezbollah.

A powerful bloc in Iraq’s parliament called for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq following a series of airstrikes blamed on Israel that targeted Iran-backed Shiite militias in the country.

The Fatah Coalition said on Monday it holds the United States fully responsible for the reported Israeli strikes, “which we consider to be a declaration of war on Iraq and its people.”

The coalition is a parliament bloc representing Iran-backed paramilitary militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.

The coalition’s statement came a day after a drone strike in the western Iraqi town of al-Qaim killed a commander with the forces — the latest in strikes allegedly conducted by Israel against the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.

The statement added that US troops are no longer needed in Iraq.

The field commander killed in the strike was buried Monday morning near Baghdad.

Kazem Mohsen was killed on Sunday “in an Israeli drone strike in Al-Qaim while on duty,” the Popular Mobilization Forces said in a statement, adding that he was a “logistical support chief” for the group’s Brigade 45.

“Hundreds participated… in the funeral procession this morning for Kazem Mohsen,” also known as Abu Ali al-Dabi, it said.

Israel announced Monday it has reduced fuel shipments to the Gaza Strip’s power plant in response to recent rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave.

A statement from the Defense Ministry’s liaison to the Palestinians said it would halve the amount of fuel sent through the Kerem Shalom crossing, effective immediately.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT, said the downsizing of shipments was ordered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also defense minister.

The move was condemned by Hamas, which called on international mediators to intervene.

“The decrease contradicts the understandings with Israel. This is collective punishment that violates all international laws,” a spokesman for the terror group was quoted saying by the Kan public broadcaster.

Ramy Shaath, the 48 years old son of Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator for the Gaza-Jericho agreement following the Oslo accords, was arrested in Egypt on July 5, 2019, accused of “assisting a terrorist group.”1 Ramy’s French wife, Celine Lebrun-Shaath, who had been living in Egypt for the last seven years, was deported, and only immediate family members are allowed to visit him once a week in prison for 20 minutes. Ramy Shaath’s detention has been extended every 15 days; he is being held at the infamous Tora prison.

Nabil Shaath was an advisor to PLO leader Yasser Arafat, formerly responsible for the foreign affairs of the Palestinian Authority, and a member of the executive committee of the PLO.

The reason for the younger Shaath’s arrest by the anti-terrorist brigade in Cairo has not been disclosed, but regime sources suggest on social media he was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to his father and wife, Ramy Shaath was arrested for his activism on behalf of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Egypt, which he founded in 2015, and for publishing and disseminating anti-Egyptian slogans following Egypt’s participation in the Bahrain economic workshop. He opposes Egypt’s continued normalization process with Israel and had been very active in anti-Israeli societies and activities. Shaath has also been a vocal opponent to the American “deal of the century” peace initiative.

Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians on Monday warned residents of the Gaza Strip that the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group was actively trying to ignite a fresh war in the region.

In an Arabic-language statement, Maj. Gen. Kamil Abu Rukun — known formally as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories — told Gazans they would bear the brunt of the suffering if another round of fighting broke out.

“Hostile elements near and far, attempting to ignite a war, are dragging you into violence and destroying the stability and security of your home,” Abu Rukun said according to an English translation provided by his office.

“Islamic Jihad, in the service of Iran, is causing destabilization again and again and harming the security of the area,” he said. “You are the ones who will suffer the consequences.”

Since the start of August, an uptick in rocket fire and attempts by Palestinian gunmen to cross from Gaza into Israel have been met with IDF airstrikes on Hamas military targets, threatening a fragile ceasefire between Israel and the ruling terror group.

A 29-year-old man held in a Hamas prison in Khan Yunis (southern Gaza Strip) dies of electrocution. Hamas says the 'accident' occurred while he was carrying out renovation work in prison.

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) August 26, 2019

The chief of Iran’s main Shiite proxy militia in Lebanon now engages in intimate relations with his wife through remote electronic means, sources familiar with his routine reported today, given new, tighter security procedures to protect him from Israel.

Hezbollah insiders noted this morning (Monday) that organization leader Hassan Nasrallah rarely emerges from his bunker in the capital city’s Shiite stronghold, and that only a select roster of senior movement figures and liaisons with Tehran may enter his presence. As such, they observed, even Mr. Nasrallah’s wife Fatimah cannot enjoy direct conjugal relations with him, and the couple must instead rely on Skype or other online means by which to couple.

A Hezbollah spokesman disclosed this development as part of an information campaign by the organization to project a more realistic image than before, including footage of facilities destroyed in Israeli strikes. “Our public relations efforts must evolve with the times,” acknowledged the spokesman. “Once upon a time we could boast of thousands of rockets rising to intercept the cowardly Zionist drones, but our audience appears to have outgrown such naked exaggeration. We now have to couch the propaganda in more subtle terms. Thus the admission that Sayyid Nasrallah must modify his conjugal habits, but with the clear message that our noble leader retains his virility even as he approaches sixty years of age.” The honorific “Sayyid” refers to certain descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.

In an August 18, 2019 column[1] titled "Turkey's Concerns Increase As U.S. Continues Its Sweet Talk" and published in the English- and Turkish-language editions of Turkey's Yeni Şafak daily, which is a mouthpiece of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party, Turkish columnist Hasan Öztürk asked: "If Turkey is a reliable NATO ally of the U.S., then why was the Turkish Parliament bombed on the night of July 15 coup attempt by the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETÖ), using NATO warplanes?"Öztürk was referring to when, in the early hours of July 16, 2016, during an attempt to overthrow the Turkish government, Turkish pilot Hüseyin Türk reportedly used an F-16 fighter jet to bomb Turkish parliament twice, injuring 32 people.[2] Öztürk refers to this matter alongside diplomatic disputes between the U.S. and Turkey, including those related to the Patriot missile system and the F-35 fighter jet, and in doing so seeks to blame the actions of this one individual on NATO.

Öztürk also referred in his column to the recent U.S.-Turkey talks about forming a security zone in northeast Syria, saying: "The day we start calling the north of Syria 'North Syria' is the day the U.S. will have reached another of its goals." The Turkish government has been announcing that it would invade northeast Syria since as early as October 2018, when Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said that the area east of the Euphrates River in Syria would be "our working point, our working area after Manbij."[3] On July 26, 2019, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said: "No matter how the talks with America end, we are determined to smash to pieces the terror corridor east of the Euphrates [River]. We will do whatever we have to. We do not need to get permission."[4] On July 29, Akar said, following a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper: "It was expressed that if we do not reach a common point with the U.S., we will be forced to form the Security Zone by ourselves."[5] On August 4, it was reported that President Erdoğan said in a speech: "We entered Afrin, we entered Jarablus, we entered Al-Bab, and now we will enter the [area] east of the Euphrates."[6] On August 12, he said: "We expressed that we will begin our operation to save the [area] east of the Euphrates from the divisive terror organization within a few days."[7]

If you were asked which was the most unlikely nation to be experiencing Christian conversions on a large scale, the chances are that the 40-year-old Islamic Republic of Iran would be near the top of the list.

The country is ruled by a hardline theocratic regime where conversion from Islam and sharing the Christian faith are both illegal, and persecution of Christians is intensifying. Yet not only is the church remaining steadfast in the face of persecution, it is growing so rapidly that Iran’s government leaders are openly acknowledging its staggering expansion.

In 1979, when the hardline Islamic regime was established, there were approximately 500 known Christians in Iran. The subsequent two decades ushered in a wave of persecution that continues today. All missionaries were expelled, evangelism was declared illegal, Bibles in the Persian or Farsi language were banned, and pastors were killed. There were genuine fears that the small Iranian church would be crushed.

Instead it has multiplied in an extraordinary fashion. Today there are approximately 500,000 Christians and some sources put the number higher. More Iranians have become Christians in the last 20 years than throughout the previous 13 centuries since Islam subjugated Iran. Multiple reports indicate that even children of political and spiritual leaders are leaving Islam for Christianity.

Contrary to expectations, Iranians have become the Muslim people most open to the gospel in the Middle East. In 2016, Operation World named Iran as having the fastest-growing evangelical church in the world.

The harsh rule of the ayatollahs and the violence perpetrated by Islam throughout the world has given rise to widespread disillusionment amongst the young with both the regime and the Islamic faith underpinning it. It is this, coupled with the faithfulness of Christian believers who, in the face of persecution, risk everything in order to share the gospel, that has given birth to the remarkable growth of Christianity.

New report: "The Islamic Republic of Iran is now the world’s biggest jailer of women journalists."

Why is the Islamic Republic of Iran a member of @UN_Women's Working Group on Communications on the Status of Women?https://t.co/vC9vr3MA2S

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 26, 2019

Following news that President Donald Trump had suggested using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the US, the Iranian regime is now insisting that its nuclear weapons program is in fact aimed at protecting the country from severe weather events.

“We said all along that our nuclear program was peaceful,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told The Mideast Beast. “Sure, we were planning on building a nuclear bomb all along, but not to nuke the US or Israel. We just want to make sure we can nuke the hurricanes before they strike.”

Rouhani went on to claim that any international action aimed at stopping Iran from building a weapon would leave it vulnerable not just to hurricanes but to earthquakes, tornados, and drought, all of which could be defeated by a volley of tactical nukes. Trump was initially dismissive of the Iranian claims but began to come around after Rouhani said in a tweet that Trump was a “brilliant genius with a very big brain” for pointing out the connection between nuclear weapons and strong winds. Trump ultimately said he’d lift all restrictions against Iran’s nuclear program after the Iranian agreed to recognize him as an honorary Ayatollah and Supreme Leader of America.

Antisemitic trope and disingenuous rage

Like the boy in the tale of the emperor’s new clothes, President Trump has once again spoken a taboo truth: Some American Jews seem to be more loyal to an increasingly anti-Jewish and far-left Democratic Party than they are to the Jewish people. That’s not necessarily an immoral position for most American Jews to take: As individuals, they have no concrete duty of loyalty to the Jewish people, and it is their absolute right to seek stronger allegiances through political, rather than through religious or ethnic affinity. But American Jewish leaders, picked and paid as such by the Jewish community, are in a different position. Those Jewish leaders whose fiduciary duty of loyalty is to the Jewish missions of their organizations, but whose primary loyalty is to the Tlaibanized progressive movement and the party that champions it, are betraying that duty in some truly indecent ways.

Consider Reconstructionist Rabbi Toba Spitzer. As president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis (MBR), and as the long-time rabbi of the cultish Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, Spitzer has aggressively promoted extreme left-wing causes. Many are direct threats to the Jewish community: embracing anti-Semitic Islamist extremists like Linda Sarsour, hostility toward the U.S. government, hostility toward the Israeli government, support for the anti-Semitic Occupy Wall Street movement, support for the anti-Semitic Black Lives Matter movement, and open border refugee policies are some examples. Yet Rabbi Spitzer and the MBR insist that these causes are Jewish religious imperatives, even as they proclaim Jew-haters like the Hamas front group, CAIR, and the terror-affiliated Islamic Society of Boston to be their friends and allies. At the same time, Spitzer and the MBR demonize in vicious terms those fellow Jews who don’t agree with their political viewpoints.

Last year, Spitzer wrote that, when it comes to Israel, American Jews should ask themselves: “Do we believe that the physical continuity of the Jewish people supersedes other Jewish values?” In other words: Should the Israelis choose to die en masse instead of committing what Rabbi Spitzer feels is the unforgivable sin of perpetuating the fight with the Palestinians? Implicitly answering in the affirmative, Spitzer challenged the “existential narrative” of Israel, arguing that Jewish sovereignty -- and the Jewish lives protected by its existence -- should not supersede the Jewish values of “lovingkindness” (chesed) and “mercy” (rachamim) toward “supporters of Hamas” -- her words, not mine.

Rabbi Spitzer’s question, and the argument implicit in it, comes from ignorance. According to the Jewish canon, which deals with the laws of armed conflict at length, war against the likes of Hamas is literally a mitzvah. Beyond Judaism, the principle of individual and collective self-defense of life and property is a universal human value enshrined in the law of nations and in free sovereign legal systems like those of the United States. It is an inhuman demand, most often made by totalitarians, that a class of people die or submit to being robbed without putting up a fight -- for the good of another class or people. (h/t MtTB)

We American Jews are not disloyal when we turn our backs on Israel and insult its friends and treat them as though they are enemies–and when we treat its enemies as though they are our friends, Peter Beinart.

At best, we are blind fools who do not see how a mere twist of fate has kept us from speaking Hebrew as a first language as we ride on a bus headed toward Mount Scopus that will be blown up or ensanguined by a knife-bearing terrorist.

At worst, we are far lower than merely disloyal. We are acting as active collaborators with those who wish our destruction. Such people do not bother sorting out which Jew is full of deep feeling for Palestinian rights and which Jew is a settler seeking to annex the entire West Bank. What they see is a Jew, and the Jew should be dead, and that Jew could be you or your mother or your baby.

Clearly, Trump shouldn’t have wandered into this minefield. But spare me the outrage about Trump saying no Jew should vote Democrat. This isn’t about Jews. Trump thinks no person in America should vote Democrat. This is just part of his own evolution as a partisan since he was a Democrat until about five minutes ago. Now, he’s a Republican, so he thinks everybody else should be, too, especially because he’s sure he so wonderful. Why is this surprising? Every liberal thinks everybody should vote liberal. Every conservative thinks everybody should vote conservative. Every Jew thinks every other Jew should vote the way he does. You think you’re right and the other side is wrong. You can work to understand the opinions of others and respect them, but you still think they’re wrong. If you didn’t, you would vote the other way.

Donald Trump says things no president has ever said before, and many of his rhetorical innovations have not been good for our political life or our country. But in this respect, he’s just like everybody else these days. (h/t IsaacStorm)

Hosted by Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen, John Podhoretz, Noah Rothman
What was Trump doing talking about Jews and loyalty? Why does everyone have a cow every five minutes about what Trump says when he’s been doing the same thing for four years now? Whom does this help? Whom does it hurt? The whole podcast gang is back to offer maybe a little insight.

Many Americans now know that Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar—two members of “the squad” of far-left congresswomen so much in the news—were recently barred from traveling to Israel to agitate for the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Fewer know all four members of “the squad,” including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, have co-sponsored a bill that accuses the Jewish state of torturing children. Fewer still know the claims made in the bill originate mostly from a group that could be described as the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization.

The so-called “Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act“ was re-introduced in the House by Rep. Betty McCollum, whose congressional district neighbors Omar’s in Minnesota. Until recently, McCollum was considered a supporter of Israel, but a critic of its government.

In February, however, she condemned “[t]he right-wing, extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu and its apartheid-like policies,” adding “there are now members of Congress who are not willing to ignore the Israeli government’s destructive actions because they are afraid of losing an election.”

McCollum’s invective prompted Mark Mellman of the Democratic Majority for Israel to respond that Netanyahu “came to office in a fair and democratic election in which every Arab citizen of Israel had the same right to vote as any Jewish citizen.” Mellman added that “by suggesting that Jews have disproportionate influence on U.S. elections, the Congresswoman exploits an anti-Semitic trope widely used by far right forces from Czarism to fascism.”

McCollum’s bill, while not directly exploiting the anti-Semitic trope of blood libel, trades on the accusation that Israel treats non-Jewish children cruelly and inhumanely. The bill claims Palestinian children detained by Israeli defense forces suffer torture and physical violence, are deprived of lawyers and parents, not informed of their legal rights, and so on. (h/t MtTB)

The birth of the modern-day State of Israel in 1948 caused “the wholesale flight and expulsion of much of the Arab population of Palestine” (still unidentified, according to Khalidi, as Palestinians). Indeed, as late as the 1950s and 1960s, “there were few indications … of the existence of an independent Palestinian identity or of Palestinian nationalism.” But “the experience of defeat, dispossession, and exile guaranteed that they knew what their identity was very soon afterwards: they were Palestinians.” The argument that Palestinian nationalism has “deep historical roots” expresses “a nationalist consciousness and identity that are, in fact, relatively modern.”

Abbas’s claim prompted Eli E. Hertz, a student of myths and facts about the Middle East, to illuminate its absurdity from a different perspective. He notes that before 1948, “Palestine” had been the preferred term of Jewish identification. The pre-state Jewish Agency began as the Jewish Agency for Palestine. The Jerusalem Post had been The Palestine Post. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was known as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra.

While there may be no better way to assert a claim of ancient Palestinian identity than to locate it in the pre-Israelite Canaanites, it should be recognized as an absurd fictional myth disguised as fact. To be sure, some Palestinian Arabs deferred to historical truth. Shortly before the birth of the State of Israel, Arab historian Philip Hitti conceded: “There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not.” Why was it, wondered Walid Shoebat from Bethlehem, “that on June 4, 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian. … We considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of a sudden we were Palestinians.”

Even Columbia literary scholar and prominent Palestinian advocate Edward Said (whose name adorns Khalidi’s professorship) constructed his own “Palestinian” identity. Born to a Lebanese mother and Egyptian father during a brief family sojourn in Jerusalem, his boyhood was spent amid family wealth and comfort in Cairo. Like Yasser Arafat, he was more Egyptian than Palestinian.

In the end, what is most striking about Palestinian identity — Mahmoud Abbas to the contrary — is its derivation from modern Jewish and Zionist, not Canaanite, sources.

Check out this short clip from Israel Indivisible. Pick up your copy now at the PJTN store at https://t.co/AW51H1ZPgJ | A willful blindness - Israel Indivisible https://t.co/7acqVDc4G9pic.twitter.com/8KW7ivg78D

— PJTN (@PJTN) August 25, 2019

In September 1940, the British established a Palestinian battalion attached to the East Kent Regiment, but the Jews wanted to fight under their own Jewish flag. The British wanted the battalion to be composed of equal numbers of Jews and Arabs, but this was unrealistic due to the large number of Jews who volunteered and the “greater proneness to desertion of the Arabs.” Christopher Sykes, Conservative Member of the British Parliament

By the end of war, Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer said there were more than 26,000 Jewish men and women from Palestine serving in the British Air Force, Navy, and Army. After six years of protracted wrangling by the leaders of the Jewish Agency, the British allowed the formation of the Jewish Brigade in September 1944. The Brigade fought in Italy in the last battles of the war.

Jewish efforts on behalf of the British amounted to little more than a moral victory, Bauer concluded, as they had little effect on changing British policy. The importance of the Brigade became apparent at the end of the war when the soldiers aided Jews in the Displaced Persons (DP) camps, assisting them to immigrate illegally to Palestine and to acquire arms.

In the spring of 1940, the Haganah, the Yishuv’s underground military organization, secretly offered to provide the British with Romanian-speaking agents to help incapacitate Romanian oil fields, but this turned out to be too ambitious a task. The contacts did lead the British military to training members of the Haganah in fighting behind enemy lines.

This is the little-known story of Heba Selim, an Egyptian woman who spied for Israel. Heba was recruited into the Mossad while a financially-strapped student in Paris. Later she passed on military secrets through her husband Farouk Abdul Hamid el-Feki, which enabled Israel to bomb targets in Egypt with pinpoint accuracy at the outbreak of the Six-Day War. Both Heba and Farouk were later executed. A film was made in 1978 about her. Egyptian Streets has the story:

If one were to list the most influential and important scenes in the history of Egyptian cinema, a strong contender would have to be the ending of the 1978 movie Climbing to the Bottom (El Soud Ela Al Hawia). Actress Madiha Kamel plays the character of Egyptian spy Heba Selim, or ‘Abla’ in the film, who was on a plane approaching Cairo airport after her arrest. Next to her was an intelligence officer, who pointed at the pyramids and the Nile and said the famous line, “and this is Egypt, Abla.”

At a time when Egyptian President Sadat was planning his next step for peace with Israel as part of the Camp David Accords, young Heba Selim was in the shadows working with the Mossad to seduce an Egyptian army officer and gather confidential information to help Israel defeat Egypt during the Yom Kippur War. In her own words, she reckoned that she was also working for peace, telling General Rifaat Osman Gabriel in her last days, “I am not a spy, but I work in order to preserve the human race from destruction.”

Here’s Bernie’s full measure of Jewish pride on display.

A Harlem man demanded Sen. Bernie Sanders explain his relationship “with your Jewish community” at an event at the iconic Apollo Theater today.

“You went to Israel for a year. As you know, Zionist Jews—I don’t mean to offend anybody—they running the Federal Reserve, they running Wall Street, they’re running everything,” John Prince, who came to the event wearing a Black Lives Matter pin, yelled. “What is your relationship with your Jewish community?”

So Bernie Sanders responded to that by saying, “I’m proud to be Jewish”. That got applauded. And that was nice.

Then he pivoted to… “I may be Jewish, but you’re not going to find any candidate running for president, for example, to talk about Zionism and the Middle East.”

That was followed by talking points on the need to treat both Israel and the “Palestinians” with equality and how there are bad people and good people on both sides.

And those were just two examples of anti-Semitism directed at Bernie Sanders.

Bernie has mainstreamed, campaigned for, and defended countless anti-Semitic figures ranging from Jesse Jackson, after the Hymietown slur, to Keith Ellison, and the Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Tlaib gang.

And every time he’s defending an anti-Semite, the son of a Polish immigrant, suddenly declares himself to be a proud Jewish person, when he’s actually a shameless leftist weasel who colludes and collaborates with the worst sorts of anti-Semites on a regular basis.

Maybe it’s time for Bernie to go back to the USSR and have another rousing musical number with the regime that was locking up Jews in camps.
(h/t IsaacStorm)

On the day the Knesset passed its nation-state law last year, Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed, “This is our state—the Jewish state. . . . This is our nation, language, and flag.” This declaration, argues Wiliam Voegeli, points precisely to what the American left finds so unpalatable about Israel:

Combine this with another key belief favored by the segment of the left that terms itself “woke”—namely, the inclination to divide the world between the privileged and the oppressed and to organize the latter in a hierarchy of victimization—and the consequent attitudes toward Israel are predictable:

In the belief that Palestinians have, as a rule, darker complexions than Israel’s Ashkenazim, the woke apply the implicit rule of their privilege hierarchy, which holds that melanin is the most reliable proxy for moral worth. . . .

The future of Israel, America, and other nations will be shaped by the contest between the Great Awokening and “Somewhereism” [i.e., the sense of rooted belonging]. If the latter prevails, it will be because national majorities around the world come to feel that “this is our nation, language, and flag,” is not just a legitimate thing for an Israeli prime minister to say, but also for patriotic citizens of any decent country to believe.

Sarsour compared the people protesting her in March were just like these KKK members only they also had Israeli flags. When confronted, she posted a picture of regular people with Israeli and American flags.

Video also does not show confederate flags or any KKK at that protest. pic.twitter.com/uhpkRGygHV

— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) August 26, 2019

Suspended Labour Party activist Laura Stuart continues to spread antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric in the party through "Unite Community," which belongs to the Barnet branch of the Unite trade union, it was reported in the Jewish Chronicle.

The Sunday Times exposed that Stuart is the secretary of the Unite Community Barnet, which was set up by Labour's Unite trade union to help the unemployed.

The Labour Party permits the affiliates of the Unite Community to be included in the governing body of the local Labour Party in locations where they are represented.

Stuart was suspended in November 2017 from the Labour Party for making antisemitic comments on social media. She was also arrested as a “terror suspect” in 2015.

Stuart was behind the “GazaBoatConvoy” Twitter account, whose aim was stated as: "We are a group of driven individuals working within the UK. We work with many different charities all with the same aim and goal. To FREE PALESTINE!"

Content from David Duke - a recognized white supremacist, white nationalist politician and antisemitic conspiracy theorist - and Paul Eisen, a well-known Holocaust denier, was often tweeted on the GazaBoatConvoy account.

Stuart also used a Facebook account, called "Laura Macdonald London" to spread offensive content. She posted a picture of Eric Pickles holding up a promise to remember the Holocaust at a Holocaust Educational Trust event which had been edited, so the event's logo was altered to say “Zionist Fairy Tales.”

Tweets and comments by antisemites calling for the Jewish Labour Movement to leave the Labour Party have stated that they “cannot wait to hear the last of you, please please disaffiliate.”

Others have said they should disaffiliate because they are “racists,” using hashtags like #ZionismisFacism and #ZionismRacism.

The organization said the attacks occur daily, including those that call them “backstabbers,” “traitors,” “fifth columnists,” and also play “on the antisemitic trope of Jews being untrustworthy and having dual loyalty. One particularly common variation of this is the idea that as an organization affiliated to the Labour Party for almost 100 years, our members are Tories despite their campaigning efforts for the Labour Party that span decades.”

Users claimed that the movement was “being paid” by the Tories, and that the affiliate “ain’t JewishLabour, you’re the JewishTorries (Traitors).”

A user even said that it was “a disgrace” that the Jewish Labour “has been part of Labour for nearly 100 years. To vote no confidence in JC [Jeremy Corbyn], you are a disgrace,” and calling them traitors.

The Jewish Labour Movement said that “this is the reality for many politically active Jews on the Left,” pointing out that users have also claimed that Jewish politicians on the Left are accused of using Labour “as an attempt to hijack [it] as a mouthpiece for your Zionist movement.”

It concluded that “social media platforms need to step up to the challenge of online hate. We will never allow it to silence us.”

Nubani, a Palestinian who came to the United States from Kuwait when he was four years old, has also represented at least "21 people accused of terrorist ties," the Washington Post reported in 2016.

One such individual represented by Nubani was Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden's son-in-law. Abu Ghaith was with bin Laden in the hours following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and was accused of "giving voice" to bin-Laden's attempts to recruit young suicide bombers. In 2014, Abu Ghaith was sentenced to life in prison in Manhattan.

Nubani also defended some members of his Northern Virginia mosque, the Dar Al-Hijrah, which in the 2000s was dubbed by outsiders as the Virginia Jihad Network.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was convicted of conspiracy for plotting the assassination of President George W. Bush and providing material support to al Qaeda. Abu Ali is serving life in prison. Another member, Randall "Ismail" Royer, pled guilty to helping Americans join a terrorist group in Kashmir. Royer spent 14 years in prison. Both were represented by Nubani.

Anwar Al-Awlaki, an imam who preached to two of the 9/11 hijackers at the mosque, joined al Qaeda, and was killed in a drone strike.

"I was a part of that community," Nubani told the Post, "and being an attorney, I was a wanted commodity. Everyone needs representation—a child murderer, a rapist, and people ask, how could I even do that? But everyone needs representation."

Nubani declined a request for comment.

According to Sarah Stern, founder and president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), more worrisome in the long run than the anti-Israel ethnic studies curriculum recently proposed---and then scrapped due to widespread opposition---for California's high schools is the US government's funding of biased, politicized Middle East studies academics via Title VI of the Higher Education Act. These "overwhelmingly anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, post-colonial, and anti-American" academics, she notes, then participate in Title VI-mandated K-12 teacher-training workshops, leading to the dissemination of the radical curriculum California high school students narrowly avoided (for now).

Campus Watch has a long history of educating for Title VI reform along with EMET and other groups to encourage such reforms under successive presidential administrations. Despite succeeding in doing so under President George W. Bush and currently working to expand those earlier gains, the problem persists.

It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration's Department of Education, with Betsy DeVos at the helm, and Congress will rise to the occasion. Nothing less than the education, or miseducation, of the next generation depends on it.

Your interview @normfinkelstein quoted that “Israel is a nation of murderers ”. That would mean 8.5million #Israeli citizens are all killers? Under-the #IHRA def of #antisemitism how can you justify that quote? @PeterRBolton@TheCanaryUK@Campaign4Thttps://t.co/wBcwIuRFlu

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) August 25, 2019

This should be good https://t.co/PdeufRDJHK#larakollab cc: @canarymission

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) August 25, 2019

Executive director @AMPalestine -Missouri Neveen Ayesh has tweeted about her desire to "personally set Israel & all the Israelis in it on fire."https://t.co/zeBB3fSFFxpic.twitter.com/efunRTifUd

— Canary Mission (@canarymission) August 13, 2019

Another woman has accused once-prominent Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan of raping her, Le Monde reported on Sunday.

According to the French paper, in May a radio-journalist pressed charges against Ramadan for raping her together with his assistant. She claimed that he lured her into his hotel by promising her an exclusive interview. The alleged rape occurred in 2014.

Last January, he tried to contact the woman again by sending her a message. After she did not respond, two men showed up at her door saying that "if she was ill-intentioned towards Ramadan, he was ready to fix things." The name of the victim has not been disclosed.

Ramadan is a professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford, but he has been on a leave of absence since November 2017, after allegations against him emerged when two women filed complaints in France alleging rape.

A grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Ramadan became one of the most influential intellectuals on Islam in Europe, in spite of being surrounded by controversies.

Star Islamic lecturer Tariq Ramadan, charged in France with raping two women, is now accused also of taking part in gang rape of journalist. Ramadan’s key mentor & backer is UN human rights official Jean Ziegler, founder of the Qaddafi Human Rights Prize.https://t.co/lFUn8RKO9v

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 25, 2019

In broadcast media, pictures rule and can often muddy the narrative. The more compelling the pictures, the more airtime they receive, and the images can also overshadow the mitigating factor for violence.

On a recent visit to Bali, I directly experienced how photography and video can determine how people interpret a story. Speaking with a highly educated and accomplished Australian woman about the conflict, she expressed sympathy for Gazans, citing Israel’s military superiority as the reason. “The Palestinians only have rocks to fight against Israeli tanks and aircraft,” she claimed. This perspective is shared by many Westerners due to the power of imagery alone to shape opinions.

I asked what she knew about the 700 rockets fired at Israel the prior week, resulting in Israeli fatalities. She was shocked to know nothing about rockets and Israeli casualties. Even though, at times, Hamas rockets are launched relentlessly, most of them are intercepted by advanced Israeli defense systems, most notably the Iron Dome – which, by happenstance, has saved hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinian lives by significantly reducing Israeli casualties that otherwise would have prompted a much stronger military response.
Mishmeret

Yet, Israel must strike back, and the resulting images broadcast around the world of destroyed Palestinian infrastructure are what people remember.

Chatting further, she revealed that she knew about the violent year-long “March of Return” protests along the shared border, but nothing of the thousands of incendiary devices that were concurrently flown into Israel that caused massive ecological devastation.

She also knew nothing of the terror tunnels discovered in the back yards of northern Israeli residents, dug from Lebanon by Hezbollah. These pictures don’t make headlines, nor does a story about an intent to kill or kidnap Israelis rouse international attention.

Since the BBC has refrained from reporting the majority of those attacks (with four of those seven months seeing no reporting on terrorism against Israelis whatsoever) it is hardly surprising that Yolande Knell portrays this latest attack using an IED as being ‘unusual’.

As for Knell’s claim that the device was “homemade”, the Times of Israel reports that:

“The army said an improvised explosive device was used in the attack. Police sappers determined that the bomb had been planted earlier at the spring and was triggered remotely when the family approached it. […]

Channel 12 quoted unnamed officials as saying that the size and complexity of the device indicated that one of the major terror groups was behind the attack.”

Channel 13’s military correspondent Alon Ben David reported that the IED weighed between three and four kilos and contained a large amount of shrapnel, adding that the incident was “planned and organised – and not a spontaneous or improvised terror attack”.

Yolande Knell’s use of the term “homemade” does not convey that information to BBC audiences and – as was the case when she used it in 2014 – downplays the gravity of events.

Moreover, Knell then went on to promote a politically motivated narrative long embraced by the BBC: the notion that any and all Jews living in the Old City are ‘settlers’ and their homes ‘illegal settlements’.

Knell: [shouting] “A Palestinian woman screams after she’s evicted from her Old City home earlier this year so Jewish students can move in. Settlements are seen as illegal by most countries but Israel disagrees and in East Jerusalem one group – Ateret Cohanim – is behind a lot of the house purchases. Its director Daniel Luria recently told me he hopes to see many more Jews living here.”

Following that short and obviously carefully edited interview, Knell closed her report.

Knell: “Back at the Imperial Hotel an Israeli court worker serves Abu Walid Dajani with a new lawsuit, freezing his assets. The pressure on him from the settlers is mounting. At the heart of this deeply contested holy city, real estate has much more than just a financial value. It has an emotional and political one too.”

Not only did this report repeatedly promote inaccurate information concerning the properties which are ostensibly its subject matter but Yolande Knell has clearly exclusively embraced the Greek Orthodox Church’s narrative.

More gravely, Knell unquestioningly promoted the partisan political narrative she long since adopted with her framing of Old City houses inhabited by Jewish Israelis as ‘illegal settlements’, the inhabitants as ‘settlers’ and her uncritical amplification of the claim that the location is “Palestinian”.

Clearly this report does not meet the standards of either accuracy or impartiality laid down in the BBC’s editorial guidelines.

A third-party company called "RugzT" was selling what they call a "Holocaust Classic" T-shirt, which featured a Nazi poster for "The Eternal Jew," the name of both a Nazi propaganda film and a Nazi exhibit.

The Amazon advertisement claimed that the shirt is "[an] IDEAL GIFT for teens, men, women. Suitable for casual, sport, outdoor, hip Hop, especially for couples, girlfriend and boyfriend." It goes on to describe the shirt as "casual and versatile," saying it's an everyday clothing item.

"Der ewige Jude" (the eternal Jew) exhibition was an example of virulent and hateful antisemitic propaganda in Nazi Germany.@AmazonUK offers a t-shirt with a horrible exhibition poster described as "IDEAL GIFT For Teens, Men, Women".

We hope it will be removed. #antisemitismpic.twitter.com/g6yenyFzGO

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) August 26, 2019

Printed on the shirt was a poster from the Nazi exhibit, which opened in Munich in November 1937 and ran until January 31, 193,8 and displayed what Nazis considered to be "typical" Jewish physical features, according to the BBC.

The film of the same name was directed by Fritz Hippler, who disguised the film's antisemitic message as a "documentary," and attempted to use it to justify the Holocaust. Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's minister of propaganda, organized the film's production, which many consider it to be the most violent anti-Jewish film ever made.

The players of the Chemnitzer football team (ranked 19th in the third division) did not stand and clap in appreciation for their fans on Friday night at the end of their third-division match against Bayern Munich’s AA team on Saturday (it was a 2-2 tie), because those fans had been making racist catcalls throughout the game.

On Saturday, the club issued a statement saying Chemnitz FC (CFC) and all its active participants consider these chants repulsive and utterly reject them.

On August 5, 2019, CFC sporting director Thomas Sobotzik terminated striker Daniel Frahn’s contract with the club after accusing the player of openly displaying his sympathy for neo-Nazi groups.

It really didn’t help that the German word for striker is Stürmer…

According to the club statement, the fans called Sobotzik “Jewish pig” and chanted “at least Daniel Frahn is not a negro.”

According to Deutsche Welle, CFC has been mired in an ongoing fight with its far-right supporters for a few months now, and has already lost some of its older fans as far-right hooligan presence has increased.

During a March game, the neo-Nazi fans held a minute of silence and displayed a banner honoring Thomas Haller, a local far-right leader who used to head the club’s security firm. Haller was the founder of a neo-Nazi group called HooNaRa, short for “Hooligans, Nazis, Racists.”

Anne Frank’s diary has inspired millions and been the basis for a hit Broadway play and a movie, and now a musical version will be opening in September in New York City. A much-anticipated animated film version is also in the works.

The musical will be the US off-Broadway premiere of a successful French musical, with music and lyrics by Jean-Pierre Hadida, and will be performed for the first time in English in an adaptation by Dylan Hadida. Directed and produced by David Serero, this off-Broadway production will be performed at the American Sephardi Federation, located at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan, starting in mid-September.

In addition to producing and directing, Serero will star as Otto Frank, alongside Kristyn Vario, who plays Anne.

This musical was well-reviewed in France and has been touring for 10 years. It received the approval of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

“I am deeply honored to bring this important story to the New York audience,” said Serero. “Since the first time I watched this musical back in 2009 in Paris, I fell in love with Jean-Pierre Hadida’s gorgeous music and his unique way to express Anne Frank’s life, as well as the ones who lived with her while hiding. From that moment on, I dreamed to bring this musical to New York. This theater piece includes emotive music, very respectful to Anne Frank’s character. This is a sad musical, yet full of hope with a strong message for humanity. It’s a perfect way for everyone to know about Anne Frank and her legacy, as well as the Holocaust.”

The Israeli-made transportation app Moovit has reached half a billion users, the company said in a statement. Moovit also announced that they released new features for their Israeli users that will be gradually introduced in other countries as well.

Launched in 2012, the app has become a leader in the field of urban mobility. It operates in more than 90 countries and 40 languages.

On lines currently showing real-time arrival times, users in Israel will be able to track their bus as it moves along its journey thanks to a bus icon moving on a map in real-time.

Moreover, the app will offer instant directions to their favorite locations when opened.

“Moovit continues to invest in upgrading the travel experience and grows daily at a fast and completely organic rate,” Yovav Meydad, Moovit’s VP of growth and marketing, said.

“We estimate that by 2021 we will reach one billion Moovit users, and will provide guidance for all modes of transport in thousands of additional cities globally,” he added.

An Israeli invention that pulls water from air will be deployed in Nigeria following a meeting at United Nations headquarters in New York regarding the freshwater crisis in the Chad Basin of Africa. Lake Chad is the main source of drinking water for millions of people in Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria.

The Watergen atmospheric water generator extracts water from the air and purifies it. The portable unit needs only a source of power (solar, diesel or electric) and at least 30 percent humidity in the ambient air – not a problem in the hot, humid Chad Basin.

“Our company is ready, willing and able to assist to save lives wherever our technology can help,” said Watergen USA President Yehuda Kaploun, noting that “30 million people are currently drinking toxic water in the Chad Basin, and the problem is getting worse.”

Watergen units already have been installed by charitable organizations in South Africa and Sierra Leone, among other countries including Mexico, Chile and Panama.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and her family dedicated a new ambulance to Israeli EMS organization United Hatzalah during a visit to the organization’s national headquarters in Jerusalem last week.

The ambulance will be stationed in the southern city of Sderot, servicing the city and surrounding area that is often victim to Hamas rocket fire from Gaza.

The Sandberg family’s visit focused on United Hatzalah’s women’s unit, which sends female EMTs to treat other women, particularly when dealing with sensitive and private issues such as childbirth and miscarriage. They met a diverse range of women: unit founder Gitty Beer; Orthodox mother of three Sassya Simon; Rania Abu Shaban, a devout Muslim whose grandmother died while waiting for an ambulance; and Kayla Tzur, who responds to multiple emergencies a day via bicycle.

“United Hatzalah’s work to quickly respond to emergencies and save lives is one of the most impressive programs I’ve ever seen,” said Sandberg.

“I’m in awe of these brave women and all of the United Hatzalah volunteers, who race toward people when they need help most.”

Israeli-American Rock music icon Gene Simmons, leader singer of the band KISS, celebrated his 70th birthday on August 25.

Born Haim Witz in Tirat Carmel, Israel, Simmons has become an icon in his industry as the front man of KISS, where he plays the character of "the Demon." Simmons founded KISS in the early 1970s with Paul Stanley, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley, and were well known for their distinct outfits and personas, as well as incredibly elaborate live performances. The group remains active today, and is one of the most commercially successful bands of all time, having released 20 studio albums and 60 singles, including such hits as "Detroit Rock City" and "Rock and Roll All Nite."

Simmons wrote on his official Twitter account, "what a life. thank you all for the birthday wishes."

After such a long career, however, the band is currently embarking on what is ostensibly their farewell tour. Called the "End of the Road World Tour," it began in January 2019 and, with five legs and 111 shows total, is slated to end in December.

Happy 70th birthday Haim Witz! @genesimmons

This israelly good. pic.twitter.com/GajgrlHNTm

— The Mossad: Elite Parody Division (@TheMossadIL) August 26, 2019

For the first time in history - the International Astronomical Union will allow Palestine to name a planet and a star outside the solar system!

We announce the launch of the Palestinian National Campaign to name a planet and a star outside the solar system for the first time in history, after the agreement of the International Astronomical Union to allow Palestine to name the planet and the star. All Palestinians can participate in this national campaign to choose the name for the star and the planet to represent our civilization, culture, history, hope and love for our homeland Palestine high in the sky.

 1. There must be a link between the names proposed for the planet and the star (for example the names of characters from the same story)
2. Not offensive, and not very similar to an existing name of an astronomical object
3. In addition, it is not permissible to suggest:
- Names of a commercial nature
- Names of individuals or places known primarily for political, military or religious activities
- Names of living individuals
- Names of individuals who died less than 100 years ago
The process must respect intellectual property: it should be possible to prove that existing names, when submitted, are free for public use (for example, are not subject to copyright as with names that have been created in fiction such as books, games and movies, etc.

Israel is actively promoting the emigration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, and is working to find other countries who may be willing to absorb them, a senior Israeli official said Monday.

Israel is ready to carry the costs of helping Gazans emigrate, and would even be willing to consider allowing them to use an Israeli air field close to Gaza to allow them to leave for their new host countries, the official said, apparently referring to air force bases deep inside Israel.

The senior official, in Ukraine as part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s delegation to Kiev, spoke on condition of anonymity.