Q    Hi, it's Karen DeYoung at the Washington Post. ...On the larger question of Hizballah and Iran, I wonder if you could -- any of you -- talk a bit about the recent Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon, and whether the United States is playing any role in encouraging or discouraging those attacks, and just what you think of them in general.  Thank you.

OFFICIAL 1: I'll leave it for the Israelis to comment on what they did or they didn’t do.  But the United States neither encourages nor discourages the Israeli attacks.  The United States believes that the government of Israel has a right to defend itself from threatening activities throughout the region, wherever they may be.

OFFICIAL 2:  ...It's our position that Israel is only acting because of Iran's actions.  If Iran was not pouring heavy weapons and fighters into Israel's neighbors with the express purpose of threatening Israel, I don't think Israel would be needing to take any of these actions.  And we fully support Israel's right to self-defense, and denounce Iran's regional campaign to violence. 

     Q    Hi.  This is Jeff Schogol with Task & Purpose.  I just wanted to follow up on my colleague's question.  The U.S. supports Israel's right to self-defense and Iraqi sovereignty.  But if Israel attacks targets in Iraq, what does the United States do when Israel's right to defend tramples over Iraq's sovereignty?
 
     SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  I think that's actually an excellent question for the Iranians.  Where is their respect for Iraqi sovereignty when they are putting this material into Iraq?  That seems, to me, a pretty gross violation of sovereignty if that's the topic under discussion.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned Honduras' decision to open a diplomatic mission in Jerusalem linked to its embassy in Tel Aviv, calling it a direct aggression against the Palestinian people and their rights and a flagrant violation of international law and international legitimacy and its resolutions.

It decided to file a complaint against Honduras with the Secretary-General of the United Nations over the opening of an official diplomatic mission in Jerusalem linked to its embassy in Tel Aviv, and to submit a draft resolution in the General Assembly against Honduras for violating Security Council resolution 478 of 1980, and announced that it had withdrawn from its intention to open an embassy in Tegucigalpa.

The Foreign Ministry also decided to ask the Arab League Ministerial Council, which will hold its ordinary session chaired by Iraq on September 10, to condemn this step and push for punitive measures against Honduras for the crime committed against the Palestinian people, ignoring its obligations towards the resolutions of the Security Council, which condemns the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the transfer of any embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Ministry indicated that it would go to the OIC General Secretariat for the same purpose and ask for a trade boycott action against Honduras.

"The status of Jerusalem as an occupied city is endorsed by the vast majority of states, in line with their standing legal and moral obligations to uphold international law," [Hanan] Ashrawi said.

As readers may be aware, an internal UN report has been leaked accusing the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN body that looks after Palestinian refugees, of corruption, sexual misconduct, nepotism, waste, and poor management among its leadership team. This comes on top of long-standing complaints about the agency, including:
- Its tolerance of incitement to hatred and violence in its schools and other institutions;
- Its unique definition of who is a Palestinian refugee that means the number of such refugees will expand forever;
- Its political promotion of the legally-baseless Palestinian “right of return”, contradicting the two-state solution and thus damaging any realistic hopes for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Now, the American blogger “Elder of Ziyon” has called attention to some material from UNRWA’s own website demonstrating how the latter two political stances lead to gross waste by the agency, quite apart from the current scandal.

Basically, “Elder of Ziyon” points to three facts noted on the UNRWA website:
- UNWRA says it has “started construction on a new health centre in Zohour area within the Jordanian capital Amman. … The actual construction activities started late in July 2019 and the health centre is expected to be functional by August 2020 and will improve access to health care for over 68,000 Palestine refugees in the area.”
- UNRWA admits “In Jordan, the 2.2 million Palestine refugees who are registered with UNRWA enjoy broad inclusion in social and economic life. The vast majority have Jordanian nationality, with the exception of some 158,000 ‘ex-Gazan’ refugees,” and “[M]ost of the over 2 million Palestine refugees in Jordan have been granted citizenship, and have the same access to health care as other Jordanian citizens.”
- UNRWA says “In Jordan, our clinics serve more than 1.1 million people, nearly 56 per cent of the registered Palestine refugees in the country.”

What these three facts amount to is this: UNRWA is paying to run, and even currently expanding, a separate and discriminatory health care system in Jordan which is almost completely unnecessary.

Completely reliant on donors, UNRWA is always living on the edge, with uncertain funding and a culture of secrecy. The agency regularly assesses its management, but it publishes uniformly positive reports. The imperative is always to support calls for future funding and avoid lending ammunition to critics, namely the US and Israel.

One lesson is that funders must demand internal controls, external audits and public access to information. Assurances regarding Palestinian needs aren’t enough. Scrutiny is also needed for the Palestinian Authority, which uses foreign aid to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in pensions to terrorists and their families.

A second lesson concerns the danger of devoting an international organisation to a single population. UNRWA was effectively taken over by Palestinians decades ago. Politicisation began at the bottom with school curricula, but crept upward with senior managers calling for the Palestinian “right of return”.

The US funding cuts were the first serious challenges to a long overripe status quo. This latest scandal is an opportunity for the US, joined by other angry donors, to demand a phaseout plan for the entire organisation.

UNRWA’s 30,000 employees could join the Palestinian Authority, which would take over its health, education and welfare responsibilities like the state it claims to be. UNRWA’s expensive international cadre, including lobbyists in Washington and Geneva, should be disbanded. And Palestinian residents of Arab states – all of whom are considered refugees by UNRWA – should become citizens of those states, as they are in Jordan, or of the Palestinian Authority. If Palestinians truly desire a state, they should join the call for UNRWA’s abolition.

No joke: 🇨🇭 Switzerland paid for this.

"In 2015, UNRWA chief Pierre Krähenbühl created a post of “Special Advisor” and gave the position to his mistress. Costs of this post were funded by the Swiss foreign ministry from March 2015 to December 2018." https://t.co/Tvhmxr4nyohttps://t.co/DyePU0dA0C

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 29, 2019

Video has emerged showing Palestinian children staging a mock terrorist raid on an Israeli military outpost as part of a kindergarten graduation ceremony.

The footage was filmed at Dar al Huda school in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City in March last year, and shows five youngsters wearing uniforms of terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad staging the raid.

In the video - which includes footage shot by a drone and bodycamera - the children can be seen carrying replica sniper rifles and assault weapons as they perform sophisticated military manoeuvres in order to 'capture' the building.

Inside are two children - one dressed as an Israeli civilian and another as an Israeli soldier - both of whom are shown being captured.

The video was posted to Facebook and uncovered by research organisation NGO Monitor, which passed the footage to Mail Online.

The group also uncovered an image of a training guide the school uploaded to its Facebook page in the same year which shows the Save the Children and Swedish Government logo at the top.

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) website shows that the country was giving aid money to schools in the West Bank and Gaza that year as part of a programme running from 2017 until 2019.

Last week, UNRWA “youth idol” Mohammad Assaf performed at the new Arab city of Rawabi to conduct a rally in honor of the new school year for 321,000 UNRWA students from UNRWA refugee camps spread throughout Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza.

We dispatched a TV crew to cover that event, which will be screened this week at the UN.Filming a rock concert where a crowd is swayed by a sexy singer is not unusual. Who has not seen that in their lifetime? What is new this time?

After all, the singer who sways the crowd does so in the spirit of a United Nations agency. What could possibly be wrong with that? Except that the message from this UNRWA youth idol is that Jews must be wiped out of Palestine, and replaced with by Palestinian Arabs, only by Palestinian Arabs.

And where does such an agency get its support? Yes, from the usual suspects: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Yet also from leading democratic nations of the world – Germany, the UK, the US, Canada, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, France, Spain, Italy and Belgium. All turn a blind eye and closed ear to the “Voice of Judenrein”, presented so clearly by UNRWA Youth Idol Mohammad Assaf, who has emerged as the singular voice of the UNRWA path of destruction.

The new school year in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem comes amid growing concern among Palestinians over the fate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), which operates hundreds of schools and provides educational programs to hundreds of thousands of students.

In the West Bank and east Jerusalem, UNRWA provides education to more than 45,000 students in 96 schools. In addition, UNRWA runs two vocational training centers that serve more than 1,000 students.

The remaining schools in east Jerusalem are privately-owned or belong to the Jerusalem Municipality or the Islamic Wakf.

In the Gaza Strip, UNRWA schools and education programs serve nearly 180,000 students in 274 schools that are run by the agency.

Palestinian officials are worried that recent reports about corruption among the top brass of UNRWA may result in ending the agency’s mission and deprive hundreds of thousands of students from going to school.

On the eve of the new school year, New Zealand announced that it was suspending funding to UNRWA pending the end of an investigation surrounding allegations that senior agency officials had engaged in “sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination, and other abuses of authority.”

Why doesn't UNRWA Commissioner Gen. Krahenbuhl focus on Hamas when he says “Gazans live under real suffering & that they are deprived of their basic rights, including the right to movement”?! I agree Gazans suffer badly, but making a statement w/o laying blame on Hamas is absurd

— Jason D. Greenblatt (@jdgreenblatt45) August 29, 2019

Senior administration officials told reporters via teleconference on Thursday:
"For the last 40 years, the [Iranian] regime has prioritized developing proxy militias that have their own long and bloody legacies to violence against civilians. Hamas has utterly ruined Gaza, isolating and impoverishing the Palestinian people living there, while Hamas uses the funds from Iran to support an endless cycle of violence against Israel."

"Hizbullah has systematically infiltrated Lebanese institutions. And the designation of the Jammal Trust Bank illustrates how they are trying to exploit the Lebanese financial system....All legitimate institutions should be extremely wary of any interactions with Hizbullah or its affiliates."

"The United States neither encourages nor discourages the Israeli attacks. The United States believes that the government of Israel has a right to defend itself from threatening activities throughout the region, wherever they may be."

"It's our position that Israel is only acting because of Iran's actions. If Iran was not pouring heavy weapons and fighters into Israel's neighbors with the express purpose of threatening Israel, I don't think Israel would be needing to take any of these actions. And we fully support Israel's right to self-defense, and denounce Iran's regional campaign of violence."

Q: "If Israel attacks targets in Iraq, what does the United States do when Israel's right to defend tramples over Iraq's sovereignty?"
A: "I think that's actually an excellent question for the Iranians. Where is their respect for Iraqi sovereignty when they are putting this material into Iraq? That seems, to me, a pretty gross violation of sovereignty."

"It's our position that if neighbors of Israel allow a malign third country that does not share a border with Israel to use their sovereign territory as a holding ground for increasingly sophisticated dangerous weapons, the only purpose of which is to attack Israel, I think those governments, if they cannot curb or control those elements, are going to have to be prepared to be responsible for them. So, be it Lebanon, be it Syria, be it Iraq, I think that has to be our very clear message to those governments."

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated on Thursday that Israel can rely on diplomatic, legal and military assistance from Washington in the event of a war with Iran, however long.

In an interview with syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt, Pompeo pledged that Israel can rely on the United States for aid if the growing tensions with the Islamic republic escalate into a full-fledged war.

Pompeo stressed that the Trump administration has been “incredibly supportive each time Israel has been forced to take actions to defend itself.”

"We’ve been very clear about a couple of things. First, with respect to Iran, we flipped the US policy there. The previous administration guaranteed Iran a path to nuclear weapons systems, allowed them to foment terror, and allowed their missile system to run amok. President Trump has directed that we do just the opposite – to deny them the resources to create risks not only for the United States and its citizens but for Israel as well. And we’ve been successful with that."

"We’ve also been incredibly supportive each time Israel has been forced to take actions to defend itself – the United States has made it very clear that that country has not only the right but the duty to protect its own people. And we are always supportive of their efforts to do that. So with respect to ensuring that Israel is treated fairly at the United Nations, Israel can certainly count on the United States of America," Pompeo said.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday that the Trump administration is considering allowing U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to list “Jerusalem, Israel” on their U.S. passports.

“We’re constantly evaluating the way we handle what can be listed on passports,” he told JNS in a wide-ranging interview. “It’s something that’s actively being looked at.”

Despite the United States recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017 and relocating its embassy from Tel Aviv months later, Americans born in Jerusalem are still unable to list “Jerusalem, Israel” on U.S. passports.

“The president has made clear that the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem remain subject to final-status negotiations between the [Israelis and the Palestinians],” a State Department spokesperson told JNS in October. “We have not changed our practice regarding place of birth on passports or Consular Reports of Birth Abroad at this time.”

Pro-Israel organizations responded positively to JNS regarding the development.

B’nai B’rith International CEO and executive vice president Dan Mariaschin said “it’s encouraging news. This is a logical follow-on to moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and in the process, corrects a historical wrong which denied this designation for over seven decades.”

“The [U.S.] Supreme Court has determined that the passport issue is within the purview of the administration, which has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” said American Zionist Movement president Richard Heideman. “It is most appropriate for passports for those born in Jerusalem, such as my three grandchildren born at Hadassah Hospital, to be listed as born in Jerusalem, Israel and not simply born in Jerusalem as if they were stateless, which they are not.”

The UN Security Council on Thursday voted to renew its long-running peacekeeping mission in Lebanon for a year, warning of a “new conflict” with neighboring Israel as tensions with the Hezbollah terror group spike.

The draft resolution, written by France and approved unanimously, would allow for the approximately 10,000 members of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, to stay in place. It also calls for a review of the peacekeeping mission, amid Israeli concerns that Hezbollah and Lebanon “continue to significantly hinder the full and effective implementation” of the Blue Helmets’ mandate.

“Should these restrictions remain, UNIFIL’s relevance is questioned,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said

According to the draft text, the Security Council warned that “violations of the cessation of hostilities could lead to a new conflict that none of the parties or the region can afford.”

It “condemns all violations of the Blue Line” between Lebanon and Israel, “both by air and ground, and strongly calls upon all parties to respect the cessation of hostilities.”

IDF soldiers in northern Israel have been on high alert this week over fears of a reprisal attack from Hezbollah or another Iranian proxy following Israeli airstrikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria, and an armed drone attack on Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold, which has been blamed on Israel.

Israel welcomed a United Nations Security Council vote on Thursday afternoon that renewed and strengthened the mandate of UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

The new provisions in the mandate include a clear call on the Lebanese government to allow access to UNIFIL forces and increased reporting on the transfer of weapons to terrorist groups in Lebanon such as Hezbollah, a political and military proxy of the Iranian regime.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, commented in a statement that the “updated mandate sends a clear message to the Lebanese government: restrain Hezbollah.”

Danon asserted that Hezbollah’s “grip on southern Lebanon is intended to only harm the State of Israel and endanger the entire region.”

He continued: “Israel will not accept such a reality, and calls on the international community to act resolutely against the Iranian proxy in Lebanon.”

The strengthened mandate of UNIFIL — a force of more than 10,000 UN peacekeepers from countries including India, France, Ireland, Nepal and Ghana — was a result of diplomatic efforts by Israel and the United States to strengthen the peacekeeping force following revelations of Hezbollah attacks on UNIFIL personnel.

"We must ask ourselves a question that has arisen as a result of this experience. People in our country and in many countries ask: What is the use of a United Nations presence if it is in effect an umbrella which is taken away as soon as it begins to rain?"
—A. Eban, 6 June 1967

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 29, 2019

Since 2013, #Iran has been trying to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon with precision guided missiles. Here's how: pic.twitter.com/S0d1ckvu3e

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) August 29, 2019

What’s more dangerous than a missile pointed at Israel?

A missile with @waze. pic.twitter.com/N3doKzRe8R

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) August 29, 2019

A week passed since Rina Shnerb, 17, of Lod, was critically wounded in a terror attack at Ein Bubin spring and was treated at the scene before succumbing to her wounds, as her father Rabbi Eitan Shnerb and her 19-year-old brother Dvir were also injured.

The place where the IED that killed Rina Shnerb exploded near Ein Bubin spring (Credit: TPS)The place where the IED that killed Rina Shnerb exploded near Ein Bubin spring (Credit: TPS)

Today, Friday, hundreds left their homes to visit the place where the terror attack occurred, sending a clear message that terrorism will not stop or scare them.

The water at the Ein Bubin spring where Rina, Eitan and Dvir were planning to spend their Friday at could barely be seen due to the amount of people who came in spite of last week's terror attack.

We are strengthened by the Bible of the people of Israel in the Land of Israel,” rabbi Shnerb said from his hospital bed last week.

The IDF on Saturday arrested three Palestinians as part of a manhunt for the terrorists responsible for the terror attack.

The stabbers at the Chain Gate to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the car-rammers near Elazar, the strangler on the Allenby Bridge, and the bombers at the Talmon spring all feed off the same religious source - the modern-day blood libel that "Al-Aqsa is in danger." This false story describes Israel as working to take down the Temple Mount mosques, a story preached at mosques, in media, in cartoons, and in speeches of both Hamas and PA leaders.

Hundreds of attackers have taken action "to protect Al-Aqsa." The Palestinian public has been drinking it in for years. This is part of an ongoing "festival" of glorifying terrorism, jihad, and bloodshed against Jews, and its roots are religious. The battle against Israel and over Jerusalem is repeatedly described as "ribat" - a holy war to defend Islamic territory. That is how they truly see the conflict

Israel is doing everything it can to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It even made an enormous, inconceivable concession by giving up the basic Jewish right of allowing Jews to pray on the Mount at Judaism's holiest site.

Israel’s Minister of Education Rabbi Rafi Peretz said on Thursday that private schools run by Hamas affiliates in eastern Jerusalem, even with the official approval of the Ministry of Education, would close if the allegations are corroborated.

“It shall not be. I say it unequivocally: An association or a school that has an affiliation to terrorism and Hamas will close. If it turns out that this is true, we will not allow the association’s activities,” he tweeted.

Peretz was responding to a report in Ynet news that schools in eastern Jerusalem were being run by the Al-Iman group that works with Hamas-supporting organizations.

The schools had been recognized as an educational institution that could receive funding from the Education Ministry, according to the report.

The Al-Iman network has ties with Turkish organizations that identify with Hamas.

Last Friday, the Hamas-organized demonstrations along Gaza’s border with Israel were the largest and most violent in some time, with protestors throwing Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers; Sunday, Hamas fired rockets into Israel; on Tuesday, an Islamic State-linked group carried out two suicide bombings in Gaza, killing three Hamas police officers. Michael Milshtein warns that these events, which follow nearly two years of increased violence from the Strip, could be the harbinger of greater unrest to come. But he also cautions that Israel’s options for dealing with Hamas are limited:

[I]t would best if Israel were to drop . . . the idea it can find a solution to the Gaza problem. . . . In practice, there is no willingness or ability on the part of Egypt, the United Nations, or any other local government to step into Hamas’s shoes. [Moreover], although Hamas is [Israel’s] bitter enemy, it may be the lesser of two evils compared with a possible power vacuum that could give rise to anarchy or the ascendance of more extreme forces in the Strip.

[T]here needs to be a long-term plan that has at its core the downfall of Hamas. We should, however, strive to avoid two opposite scenarios—one in which a [new] king is named in Gaza and the other Israel’s total and lengthy direct control of the Strip. Israel must wait for internal change in Gaza, especially by the younger generation, whose distance from Islamic rule only deepens with time and occasionally bursts into civil protests.

Ultimately, Israel needs to understand that it must choose between bad or worse scenarios as a solution to the Gaza issue. Its decisionmakers have to wake up from the dream of easy and quick solutions in either the military or political spheres, . . . and adopt a more patient state of mind.

Israeli soldiers on Friday captured four Palestinians who crossed into Israel from the Gaza Strip armed with a grenade and a knife

The four were arrested shortly after crossing the border and taken in for further questioning, the army said.

The incident came shortly after an incendiary balloon launched from Gaza started a fire in the Sdot Hanegev Regional Council and as Palestinians took part in the weekly “March of Return” rallies along the border.

Channel 13 news reported some 2,000 Palestinians took part in the protests.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said seven Palestinians were injured during clashes with Israeli troops, five of whom from live fire.

Recent weeks have seen an increase in violence from Gaza, which is ruled by the Hamas terror group.

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since the Islamist organization took over Gaza in 2007, the last of which ended five years ago this week.

According to a report Friday in Lebanon’s al-Akhbar newspaper, Israel has offered Hamas economic concessions and to ease its blockade of Gaza in return for a long-term ceasefire.

During the talks between the Hamas delegation, Egyptian intelligence officials proposed a long-term ceasefire between Israel and Hamas - Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported Friday morning.

According to the report, the Egyptians suggested a long-term ceasefire in exchange for humanitarian and economic improvements for the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptian officials warned the Hamas delegation that, given the tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel would strike a fatal blow to the strip in a case of conflict.

During the talks, the Hamas delegation guaranteed that the March of Return protests will be restrained this Friday - Ynet reported.

According to the report, if Hamas maintains its promise, Israel will restore the fuel supply to Gaza to its full capacity on Sunday after cutting it by half this week following rocket launches.

While the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been threatening a financial meltdown over the U.S. decision to withhold aid and its own refusal to accept taxes collected by Jerusalem, the residents of the areas under its control have been flourishing. Dan Zaken explains why:

Exports from the West Bank to Israel have grown and Israelis—mainly Israeli Arabs—are coming to West Bank cities to buy goods. The shopping malls of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Kalkilya are packed every weekend with tens of thousands of Israeli Arabs who come to buy in the stores and eat in the restaurants. Jerusalem Arabs go shopping in Ramallah and Bethlehem. . . .

[P]erhaps most significant of all is that the Palestinian economy is based mainly on the private rather than the public sector. . . . [T]he 130,000 Palestinian workers employed in Israel [have an] average salary of over 5,000 shekels ($1,400) per month, two-and-a-half times the average salary in the Palestinian autonomous areas. Income in this sector . . . is even rising, as are the number of requests for licenses to work in Israel. The number of Palestinians working in Israel, [whether in Jewish areas of the West Bank or in other parts of the country], also is rising constantly. New facilities at the border checkpoints have shortened lines and waiting times at the crossings from hours to minutes.

The continual growth of construction in Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, after years in which new building was frozen, has also . . . provided more work for Palestinians. Moreover, it’s easier and quicker for a Palestinian to get a work permit for such work, which pays “Israel-level” salaries.

Shaban Khalaf’s advice to any other Gazans thinking of heading to Europe in search of a better life, as he did, is blunt: don’t bother — it’s not worth the danger and the expense.

Khalaf should know. Despairing of ever finding a decent job in Gaza, where the economy is near collapse, the journalism graduate flew to Turkey via Egypt in June 2018 and tried no fewer than 18 times to cross into Europe, mostly by boat.

“One time a naval boat hit ours, our boat flipped and we almost died,” said Khalaf, 25, adding that each time Turkish or Greek authorities would send them back to Turkey’s shores.

By February this year he had given up and returned home to Gaza, much poorer for his ordeal after having paid off the people smugglers who had tried in vain to get him to Europe.

“I don’t advise people to leave unless a job is waiting for them there. It is better to stay and die with their families in Gaza than to throw themselves into the unknown, or die in the sea,” he said.

Thousands of other Palestinians have had similar experiences as they try to escape the rampant unemployment, poverty and violence of life in Gaza, a tiny enclave between Israel and Egypt run by the Islamist Hamas group.

Former Iraqi MP Misha'an Al-Juburi said in an August 22, 2019 interview on Alsharqiya News TV (Iraq) that the government's harshness in Iraq's Sunni provinces is worse than the American occupation was. He gave the example of a family from which 40 members were arrested, and he said: "Today, the people in the Sunni areas are longing [for the return] of the Americans [and] are willing to accept any occupation and any invader that will rid them of this injustice… [They] will seek help [in] confederalism, in federalism, from America, from Israel, [and even] from Satan himself."

The Trump administration on Thursday issued a new batch of sanctions on the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah in the latest salvo aimed at disrupting the Iranian-backed organization's illicit funding and weapons networks, according to information provided by the State and Treasury Departments.

As Iran continues to ratchet up regional support for terror groups that have attacked American and allied forces, the Trump administration is moving to disrupt these terror groups by hitting them in their pocketbooks. The latest sanctions target Lebanon's Jammal Trust Bank SAL, which the Trump administration has identified as providing "illicit financial and banking activities" for Hezbollah.

The Trump administration has walked a tricky diplomatic line with Lebanon as it seeks to support the country's legitimate military forces while attempting to ensure money and military hardware does not make its way to Hezbollah operatives, who have bragged in the past about siphoning American weapons from the Lebanese Armed Forces.

Hezbollah continues to keep an overwhelming grip on Lebanon's economy, government, and military, making it all the more difficult for the international community to work with the country's government.

"Today's designation reflects our determination to counter Hezbollah's terrorist and illicit activities in Lebanon," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement accompanying the sanctions. "We will continue to target individuals and entities involved in financing and providing support to Hezbollah while working closely with the Central Bank of Lebanon and other Lebanese institutions which work to preserve the integrity and stability of Lebanon's banking system."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, urging him not to negotiate with Iran at the present time.

According to a readout from his office, the Israeli premier said that, with Tehran increasing its regional aggression and threatening Israel and others, “now is “precisely not the time” to hold conciliatory talks with the regime.

In the phone call, initiated by the French side, the two discussed recent regional tensions in Israel’s north as well as with the Gaza Strip. The Prime Minister’s Office said Netanyahu told Macron Israel would defend itself from attacks by enemies who desire its destruction.

He added that whoever gives cover to aggression against Israel will not be safe from attack, in apparent reference to Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon. Israel has also been blamed for a series of recent strikes against pro-Iranian militias in Iraq.

Macron has been one of the leading voices in the European Union for dialogue with the Islamic Republic. This week he arranged the surprise arrival of Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, and proposed a summit between US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

US President Donald Trump’s willingness to hold direct talks with Iran doesn’t signal any change in his administration’s stance toward the Islamic Republic, his national security adviser, John Bolton, said Tuesday.

“Talking with them [Iran] does not imply for President Trump changing your position and the idea that Iran would receive some tangible economic benefit merely for stopping doing things it shouldn’t have been in the first place is just a nonstarter,” Bolton told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in an interview as he visited Ukraine.

“If there is a comprehensive deal then of course the sanctions will come off at point. When the regime in Iran is ready to talk about that then there’ll be a meeting,” he said.

Earlier, Iran’s top diplomat called a meeting between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Trump unthinkable.

Israel is deeply worried by US President Donald Trump’s declared readiness in principle to meet in the near future with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, top ministers were quoted saying on Monday evening. The fear is that the US president will open a dialogue with Iran similar to the ongoing one he has with North Korea, taking pressure off Tehran.

To say that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is uncomfortable with the US president’s newly open-minded stance on Iran “is the understatement of the millennium,” Israel’s Channel 13 reported, quoting what it said were three senior cabinet ministers expressing profound concern that just as Trump has “gotten nowhere” with North Korea, while relieving the economic pressure on Pyongyang, the same would now happen with Iran.

“We have no interest in a negotiations between the United States and Iran,” the TV report quoted one minister saying, “but our capacity to influence and confront Trump is extremely limited.” This, the report went on, was because Trump has “bear-hugged” Netanyahu so tightly that going out against him is deemed impossible.

Netanyahu has been a strident opponent of the P5+1 countries’ 2015 deal with Iran on its rogue nuclear program, arguing that Tehran is intent on attaining a nuclear weapons arsenal, has lied to the world about its plans, and that the 2015 accord actually paves the way to an Iranian bomb. Trump has hitherto adopted a similar stance, and pulled the US out of the accord last year.

Mark Dubowitz is the chief executive of FDD, a Washington think-tank that is known for its hawkish stance on Iran. Just last Saturday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry threatened Dubowitz personally, as well as FDD as an organization.

“I don’t think it’s a surprise,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “The president has indicated repeatedly a willingness to meet with officials from the regime in Iran.”

According to Dubowitz, “Israel and US supporters of the president should be making it very clear to Trump that his maximum pressure campaign should not be diminished in any way, and if there is an agreement it has to be an agreement that meets the 12 demands that the president and Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo laid out last year.”

Dubowitz said that a meeting by itself is not a negative development, but that he’s worried about the possibility that such a meeting would come with American concessions.

“When the president is now talking about what he expects from Iran, he doesn’t even mention terrorism,” said Dubowitz. “He mentioned the nuclear program and the sunsets. He mentioned ballistic missiles. But he doesn’t mention Iran support for terrorism. He doesn’t mention Iran’s destructive regional behavior. So at least rhetorically he sounds like backing off from these 12 very specific demands that were laid out by the president through Secretary Pompeo last year.”

As for the Iranian threats against his think-tank, Dubowitz said, “We’re certainly taking the threat seriously. We’re taking the proper steps to secure and defend our organization and our personnel. We’re heartened by the significant support that we’ve received across the policy and political spectrum. But we also hope that our think tank colleagues would not meet with Zarif in New York when he comes for UNGA.”

Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday urged the United Kingdom to follow in the US’s footsteps and designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization.

In a meeting with his British counterpart Dominic Raab, Katz thanked the UK government for officially designating the Iran-backed group Hezbollah a terrorist organization earlier this year, but pressed for the IRGC to also be included on the government’s terror blacklist, the Walla news site reported.

Citing Iran’s malign activities throughout the region, Katz said the terror designation would be the “appropriate and just response” to the attacks masterminded by IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani.

Raab made no formal comment on the matter. Following the meeting, he tweeted a photo of himself and Katz and said Israel “remains a close partner and friend.”

An Iranian rocket exploded on its launch pad at Imam Khomeini Space Center in northern Iran before its scheduled launch on Thursday, an Iranian official said.

The launch was due to have taken place despite US warnings to Iran that it should avoid such activity.

“It was due to some technical issues and it exploded but our young scientists are working to fix the problem,” the Iranian official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. He gave no further details.

A US official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, also said that Iran suffered a satellite launch failure.

The United States, Iran’s long time foe, fears long-range ballistic technology used to put satellites into orbit could also be used to launch nuclear warheads.

Tehran denies the US accusation that such activity is a cover for ballistic missile development.

Turkey's Jewish community is still reeling from the content of a video that went viral at the end of July. The video shows what appears to be a summer camp at which young children, with a group of burqa-clad women behind them, are being led in an anti-Semitic cheer in Turkish by a young girl or woman counselor.

In the 39-second clip, when the girl says, "The Jews," the women and children reply, "Death!"

When she says, "Palestine," they reply, "It will be saved."

When she calls out, "Hagia Sophia" -- referring to the Byzantine cathedral-museum in Istanbul that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced will be turned into a mosque -- they chant, "It will be opened."

A few days after the footage began to circulate, Garo Paylan, a Member of Parliament from the opposition Peoples' Democratic Party, tweeted his outrage. He announced his intention to file a criminal complaint against the camp counselor and the organization behind her. Two days after posting the tweet, Paylan submitted the following parliamentary questions to Family, Labor and Social Services Minister Zehra Zümrüt Selçuk, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu and Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül:
- Where and under whose care were the children in the film?
- Were their parents or other family members present during the event?
- Did the children who were instructed to shout "Death to the Jews" come together at that event as part of an organization?
- Did the event take place with the knowledge of your ministry?
- Will you launch an investigation into the organizers and the families of those children who abuse and encourage them to commit hate crimes?
- Will you launch administrative investigations into the authorities that neglected to expose the event?
- Will you put these children under the protection of your ministry?
- What kind of precautions will your ministry take so that our children are not exposed to such abuses again?

Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Monday that Russia would resume the delivery of its S-400 missile defense system to Turkey this week.

Akar told reporters that Russia would begin transporting parts of a second S-400 battery to Turkey on Tuesday.

“Our aim is to protect our country and people from external aerial and missile threats,” he told reporters in the eastern province of Erzincan.

Turkey took delivery of the first part of the Russian system last month despite strong objections from the United States, which had been pressing Ankara to cancel the deal with Russia by threatening to sanction its NATO ally.

Washington said the S-400 batteries would compromise the F-35 stealth aircraft program and aid Russian intelligence.

In a major break with a longtime ally, US President Donald Trump last month announced that Ankara was being kicked out of the F-35 program for purchasing the Russian-made system.

FACT: The UN Human Rights Council has never once condemned Erdogan’s Turkish regime for anything & cannot even say the word ‘Kurd’.

Since the council was created in 2006:
0 resolutions
0 urgent sessions
0 commissions of inquiry@UN_HRC, why are you silent for Erdogan’s victims? https://t.co/ghZkfjQmt0

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 26, 2019

The children of the Lubavitcher Yeshivoth are Orthodox Jews and do not look like other American children. They wear skullcaps and have the fuzzy beginnings of beards and there is to them a look of the Old World and of the ghetto.

They do in fact, go to school in a ghetto. It is not the ghetto of the Old World, but a ghetto of the new, the black ghetto of Bedford‐Stuyvesant.

In that black world that one Negro referred to yesterday as “the bottom of the bottom” they represent a curious focus of hatred. They are white, yet they are a minority, and in the eyes of the Negroes, a weak and defenseless minority. For about a decade trouble has been simmering.

Tuesday the tension erupted in a brief explosion when a gang of older Negro youths shouting anti‐Semitic slogans attacked the Jews. Several of the students and two rabbis were injured.

Yesterday the police kept a close watch on the school and promised a round‐the‐clock guard for an indefinite period. The Jews were shaken, more emotionally than physically, and during the day there was a long series of visitors of all faiths and colors, come to assure them that the incident was unfortunate.

Yet in the eyes of the school's officials it was more inevitable than unfortunate.

“It's been building up for several years,” said Rabbi Samuel Schrage. “We are desperate to get out of here.

“We are not wanted here, we are not liked here, and we do not have the respect of our neighbors.”

At almost the same time a police official, a Negro, was saying: “It has all the makings of trouble. This is a very tough area. You don't have to be a genius or a sociologist to spot the dangers.”

Another police officer added: “The Negroes are simply doing to the Jews what the Irish used to do to the Jews.”

Rabbi Schrage disputed this. The yeshiva had trouble with the Irish, he said, “but the Negroes are more flagrant, more audacious.” He smiled and added: “They have more chutzpa.' Chutzpa means gall, among other things.

Tuesday's incident, because of its racial and anti‐Semitie nature, overshadowed an event of far greater violence that indirectly triggered the Tuesday attack.

This was a stabbing on Saturday night that took the life of a 14‐year‐old Negro boy, Major Jones. The attack took place in a dispute among a group of Negro youths. According to the police, young Jones was probably not a member of a gang, and so technically he did not die in a gang fight.

On Tuesday a wake was held for him at the Brown and Mitchell funeral home, which is only a block and a half from the yeshiva. Many of the youth's friends were at the wake. The mood was highly emotional. Many of the young Negroes sobbed.

After the wake, a group of Negroes ‐ not an organized gang ‐ passed the yeshiva as the students were having a lunchtime break. Some of the Negroes, shouting epithets, tried to shake down the Jewish children. Rabbis went to the aid of the students, and soon there was a fight. The Negroes reportedly were armed with knives, bottles, chains and sticks.

“It was like watching a movie from Africa, one of those rebellions where the Africans attack the whites,” Rabbi Schrage said.

A crowd of about 50 persons, almost all of them Negroes, gathered to watch. They made no move to stop the fight.

Finally a white man, Leo Berman, grabbed one of the Negroes, and the others fled.

The neighborhood was not always Negro. Twenty years ago, when the yeshiva opened, it was primarily Irish. The school building, bought at an auction, had once housed the old Unity Republican Club.

In the early days on Bedford Avenue, the Jews with their skull‐caps and the older students with their beards were frequently taunted by the Irish.

“They had beards, and people with beards are different, and so people threw water on them,” Rabbi Schrage related. “But with the Irish kids it was mostly a case of yelling a curse and running. And some of the parents would come by the school and apologize. That doesn't happen now.”

Other, less Orthodox, Jews in the neighborhood at that time began to move, partly because the neighborhood was changing and partly because the anti-Semitism that went with the yeshiva also affected them.

The Irish, too, moved away, and about 10 years ago the neighborhood became predominantly Negro—and then finally altogether Negro.

At the same time, ironically, the yeshiva flourished as Orthodox families all, over the city sent their children there. Many of the fathers of the current students are rabbis. Many work in the garment, diamond or pearl industries. More than a third of the students, according to Rabbi Schrage, will become rabbis.

They could hardly offer a sharper contrast with the young Negroes in the area. They know nothing of fighting, nothing of gangs. In many of their homes television is not permitted because there is too much violence on it.

“These kids don't know dancing or dating,” said Rabbi Schrage. “For them a big treat is if someone reads a Bible story.

“They can't protect themselves, and the Negroes know this. So the Negroes would sooner go after them than some white kid who might fight back.”

The shakedown of the Jews began almost immediately after the neighborhood became a Negro one. “It was always anti-Semitic,” he said. “It was always: ‘Give me a dime, Jew,’ not ‘Give me a dime, boy.’ ”

The students, he said, were regularly shaken down for small change, and frequently lost hats, coats and briefcases. The transit passes that all city school children get are specially stamped “Good on Sunday” because the Yeshiva students go to school on Sunday, and the Negroes covet these, too, Rabbi Schrage said.

The Negro youths' world, in contrast, is a violent one. It is a world of gangs, of absenteeism from school, of early sexual experience and sometimes of early death.

To the Negroes, the Jews are white, richer, different. They are also obviously weaker. In addition, said a rabbi, an undercurrent of anti‐Semitism is frequently evident in the meetings and teachings of the Black Muslims.

All this, added to what one police official called “the overpowering feeling of frustration in that area,” led to the conflict.

Political Football

Nazmi al Jubeh, an associate professor of history and archaeology at Birzeit University outside Ramallah, told a UN conference last June that there was no evidence linking the Jews to Jerusalem.

Thus far, so predictably mendacious. But thanks to the Elder of Zion website, a piece has now surfaced written by al Jubeh in 2006 in which he demolished the myth of Palestinian identity and made plain that it was invented solely to destroy Zionism and Israel.

Not that he acknowledged the Jews’ own history in the land. He made correct but passing reference to the Romans renaming Judea as “Palestina” in order “to challenge the memory of the Jews” after the Romans put down “the Jewish rebellion.”

Yet he didn’t provide the context for this by explaining that the Romans had crushed the Jewish kingdom, which had existed for centuries before being conquered in turn by successive waves of colonial invaders.

Instead, he claimed that the “Palestinian Jews, an essential component of the Palestinian people, started at the beginning of the twentieth century to identify themselves with the Zionist movement, thus separating themselves from the rest of their own people … ”

Despite this egregious and absurd falsification of Jewish history, the striking element of al Jubeh’s account is his admission of what we know to be objectively true – that, from the earliest times, there was no Palestinian identity.

For many centuries, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated, and widely neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts, and malarial marshes. This was Mark Twain’s description when he visited in 1867:

A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds—a silent mournful expanse.

A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action?.?.?.?We never saw a human being on the whole route.

There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country (Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (London, 1881).

As late as 1880, the American consul in Jerusalem reported the area was continuing its historic decline. “The population and wealth of Palestine has not increased during the last forty years,” he said (Melvin Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (Bison Books: 1995), p. 29).

Take a look at some of the photos from the late 19th and early 20th century to see the desolation Twain talked about:

The Oslo Accords were based on the illusion that the PLO could totally change and suddenly become a "partner for peace"... It soon became clear that the Palestinian Authority was still the PLO: terrorist attacks quickly multiplied. The money received by the Palestinian Authority was used to continue incitement to murder and payments to incentivize it.

In 1967, a change of strategy took place. No one, the PLO decided, would speak of a "war for the destruction of Israel". Instead, they would call it a "war of national liberation". From then on, the PLO was presented as a "liberation movement".

Arabs who had left Israel in 1948-49, many of whom remained in refugee camps, were defined as the "Palestinian people"; in this way were the Palestinian people invented. As PLO Executive Council member Zuheir Mohsen said in 1977: "The Palestinian people does not exist... Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people..."

The leaders of the Palestinian Authority have, in fact, never stopped resorting to "armed struggle", the name they give to terrorism and murdering Jews. To "frustrate all the schemes of Zionism", they invented the Palestinian people; their "struggle for national liberation" gave them international recognition. By renaming terrorism and murdering Jews "armed struggle", they made their use of terrorism and murder acceptable. By signing the Oslo Accords, they could appear interested in peace without having to renounce terrorism. They could even demonize Israel and give it the image of a barbaric and cruel country while continuing to murder Jews.

"If you look at history... what ends conflicts is one side giving up.... and then it's over.... in World War II, [the Germans] were forced to give up... and note how much they benefited by giving up." -- Daniel Pipes, historian, November 19, 2017.

No U.S. president had ever told Palestinian leaders that they were lying, or had required them to stop inciting murder and financing terrorism, and no U.S. president had ever decided to cut funding for the Palestinian Authority as long as it continued to incentivize terrorism. President Donald J. Trump did.

You’ve all heard the story: A Haredi Jew violently assaulted in broad daylight somewhere in New York City. It happens so often now, with what is almost a chilling regularity, it’s virtually impossible to miss. According to the NYPD, anti-Semitic hate crimes have skyrocketed in the past year; the 145 complaints so far in 2019 alone are sharply up from 88 in that same time frame a year earlier — a year which itself saw a 22% increase from 2017.

As Tablet Magazine’s Armin Rosen put it so pithily, “Everyone Knows.” And yet, as Forward Life editor Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt pointed out yesterday, nobody cares.

After every attack, the same playbook repeats itself: The perfunctory condemnations from elected officials roll in and out, barely stopping for a moment to take a breath. It’s better than nothing, I suppose, but not much better.

Why does no one care? Because the past few decades have seen a steady increase in the otherization of Orthodox Jews, to the point where we are being attacked with bricks and no one cares.

The replies to Chizhik-Goldschmidt’s article on Twitter were instructive. So many were filled with people — other Jews — blaming Orthodox Jews for what has been happening to us. A friend — not Orthodox — texted me in shock at the replies. I was not shocked. I got some of that same treatment last night when I shared an utterly offensive video the Republican Party of Rockland County posted to their Facebook page, which portrayed Orthodox Jews as an invading host that is threatening the good white folks of Rockland. It’s your fault that people hate you.

No other minority group in this country would be subjected to this sort of rhetorical abuse — to say nothing of the violent attacks — and see the same sort of wholesale hand-waving we see when Orthodox Jews are abused.

But it doesn’t start with physical violence. It starts when people deliberately otherize Haredi Jews in pursuit of whatever their agenda happens to be. The Rockland County issue is perhaps most overt, but similar situations are playing out further upstate, in Kiryas Joel and Chester, and in New Jersey towns bordering Lakewood where I live. In each of these instances, Jews are portrayed as greedy developers, outsiders who want to “invade” these towns, with misinformation about their supposedly nefarious plans spread via Facebook pages which do more than just dabble in overt anti-Semitism.

Violent antisemitism has reached an unbearable limit in NYC. We need our @NYCMayor to take charge and address not only the symptoms, but the root causes!

Enough is enough of Jews living in fear anywhere in America, let alone New York City! pic.twitter.com/4imO53hxKb

— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) August 30, 2019

Take 3 minutes of your time to watch @chrislhayes tonight on the anti-Semitism in America that doesn't make headlines, but often persists in polite company, particularly towards Orthodox Jews: https://t.co/PvQHC7VHFa

— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) August 30, 2019

Police officers in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn pledged to “step up” their patrols on Friday following the second violent attack on a visibly Orthodox Jewish man this week.

Brooklyn North Police Chief Jeffrey Maddrey told Chanina Sperlin of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council (CHJCC) that he will be sending extra patrols to the neighborhood in response to the recent uptick in crime, local Jewish website COL Live reported.

The website also quoted Inspector John Buttacavoli — commanding officer of the New York Police Department’s 77th Precinct — saying the NYPD will increase patrols in the area, as the spate of assaults on Orthodox Jews over the last year has shown few signs of abating.

The latest attack occurred on Thursday afternoon. A delivery truck driven by an Orthodox Jewish man was being held up in traffic when a group of African American youths approached the vehicle and threw a stone through the glass of the driver-side window. The rock hit the Jewish man in the eye, and he sustained cuts to his face. He later filed a report with the NYPD.

The incident is now being investigated by the NYPD Hate Crime Unit. It followed Tuesday’s assault by a lone African American male on 63-year-old Rabbi Abraham Gopin, who fought off his brick-wielding assailant and sustained several injuries in the process.

I guess @LSarsour did not think we would notice https://t.co/fi7grmz1x6

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) August 30, 2019

In an August 29 Washington Post op-ed, the journalist Eve Fairbanks goes after the arguments of a group she calls “reasonable right.” By reasonable, she means unreasonable. And by right, she means closet racists.

Neither Fairbanks nor the Post’s fact-checkers can be bothered even to verify that the objects of her smear are, you know, conservatives. For example, she gives us Jonathan Haidt, co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind. Haidt is a self-identified, and seemingly actual, centrist. Then there’s Sam Harris, the militant, and by no means conservative, atheist. But that doesn’t matter because Fairbanks is simply using the term “conservative” to apply to anyone with the gall to criticize left-wing intolerance. The individuals she names—from Haidt to Harris to Bari Weiss of the New York Times—have nothing in common apart from the opinion that freedoms of speech and thought should be defended against efforts to curtail them.

That’s the problem for Fairbanks, you see, because one of the arguments that Southern slaveholders made was that the North was infringing on their freedom of speech and thought. Advocates for slavery, she explains, “anointed themselves the defenders of ‘reason,’ ‘free speech’ and ‘civility.’” Get it? By her bizarre logic, while advocates of free speech and thought aren’t slaveholders, per se, they sure are slaveholderish.

There’s not much more to Fairbanks’s disgraceful argument than that, and in truth, it all goes the other way around. As Nadine Strossen has observed, the claim that certain speech should be suppressed because it inflicts “emotional injury” was made by slavery defender John C. Calhoun. Free speech advocates often point out that abolitionists like Frederick Douglass were on their side of the argument, whereas the proslavery crowd, where it could, made anti-slavery speech a crime.

Strossen is right. Once you adopt, in the hope of suppressing speech you consider unjust, the argument that emotional hurt can be grounds for suppressing speech, you’ve got nothing to say when the same argument is made to suppress speech you consider just. The resemblance between Calhoun’s argument and arguments made by some of today’s speech restrictionists is more than an interesting echo. Unlike Fairbanks’s claim.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair has called on Germany to immediately stop its “outrageous” policy of providing funds to radical Israeli and Palestinian NGOs that are bent on bringing an “end to the Jewish state” and making Israelis feel as if Germany sees the Jewish state as its “colony.”

“For some reason the German government, the ministry of foreign affairs and especially the German ministry of economic cooperation (BMZ) are funding hundreds of radical NGOs and foundations in Israel that work tirelessly to destabilize the country,” the younger Netanyahu said at a speech to a Christian audience in Stuttgart, Germany earlier this month (video above).

“These organizations are openly anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anarchists and pro-Palestinian,” he added.

He noted that Germany was also funding radical organizations tied to the Palestinian Authority that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Netanyahu told his pro-Israel audience that the number one way they can help the Jewish state is to put pressure on the German government to stop using public money to fund these NGOs.

For several years, numerous newspaper and magazine articles and even entire books have been devoted to the theme of a growing divide between Israel and American Jewry. Yet U.S. Jews overwhelmingly tell pollsters that they support the Jewish state. Frank Newport takes a close look at the results of several different surveys:

My recent review of the available data shows that about nine in ten American Jews are more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians, compared with about six in ten of all Americans. Additionally, 95 percent of Jews have favorable views of Israel, while 10 percent have favorable views of the Palestinian Authority—[making Jews] significantly more pro-Israel than the overall national averages of 71 percent having favorable views of Israel and 21 percent views of the Palestinian Authority.

Research conducted in 2013 by the Pew Research Center showed that 76 percent of Jews (identified by religion) said they were at least somewhat emotionally attached to Israel. In addition, almost half said that caring about Israel is an essential part of being Jewish, with most of the rest saying it is important although not essential, and nearly half reporting that they had personally traveled to Israel.

Nonetheless, Jews’ longstanding loyalty to the Democratic party remains unchanged:

The clear majority of Jewish Americans identify with or lean toward the Democratic party, and we find no evidence that this has changed significantly during the Trump administration so far. Donald Trump took office in January 2017, and Gallup’s aggregated surveys conducted from February through December of that year show that 68 percent of Jews identified as Democratic or as independents who leaned toward the Democratic party, while 28 percent identified as or leaned Republican.The clear majority of Jewish Americans identify with or lean toward the Democratic party, and we find no evidence that this has changed significantly during the Trump administration so far. Donald Trump took office in January 2017, and Gallup’s aggregated surveys conducted from February through December of that year show that 68 percent of Jews identified as Democratic or as independents who leaned toward the Democratic party, while 28 percent identified as or leaned Republican.

Gallup: 95% of American Jews are pro Israel, which tells you exactly how much influence, @IfNotNowOrg, @elivalley, and @PeterBeinart have in the Jewish community. https://t.co/6ubpYlEMBK

— The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) August 29, 2019

Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle campaigned Wednesday for North Carolina State Sen. Dan Bishop, RealClear Politics reported.

Bishop is the Republican nominee for the Ninth Congressional District special election, scheduled for September 10.

At the event, Trump. Jr. Said: "We need guys like Dan in Congress, people who are willing to stand up to that, not people like he's running against who are getting support from what I call 'the Hamas wing of Congress.' And the Squad."

The Squad is a group of freshmen Democratic congresswomen, who are all considered to be "women of color."

"People like he’s running against who are getting support from what I call 'the Hamas wing of Congress," WFAE 90.7 quoted him as saying. "And the Squad. No, no… think about it…[they are] perpetuating socialist values and policies."

"It's a winning track record that we need to perpetuate. It’s why we need more people who are willing to fight. It’s why we need you out there fighting for Dan."

The Commerce Department on Thursday terminated its just-announced planned partnership with the nation's largest Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, after Fox News'"Tucker Carlson Tonight" asked about the arrangement -- given CAIR's reported ties to the terrorist group Hamas, and its repeated attacks on the president.

"Based on further review, the Census Bureau is no longer partnering with CAIR," the Commerce Department said in a statement to "Tucker."

The plan, according to the group, was to enhance outreach efforts to Muslims using CAIR's network of local offices. The census, conducted once a decade, has been used not only to determine congressional apportionment, but also as a critical planning tool for state, local and federal agencies.

However, CAIR and the Trump administration would have been strange bedfellows -- and tension in the relationship was evident earlier Thursday. Reached by Fox News prior to the Census Bureau's decision, CAIR openly derided the Trump administration as "white supremacist" despite the partnership.

"The Census Bureau, like CAIR, is nonpartisan," the organization said. "CAIR is not receiving any government funding as part of this project to promote Muslim participation in the U.S. census. We continue to believe that President Trump and his administration promote a white supremacist, anti-immigrant and Islamophobic agenda."

Jeffrey Dye, the president of the Passaic's chapter of the NAACP, blamed the "Jewish media" for getting him fired from his job at the New Jersey Labor Department after it was revealed he had a history of controversial comments on his Facebook page.

"Ok To Everyone Looking At This Racist Bullshit I Want You To Be Clear, The Statement ( 'I Don’t Talk To F--king Jews' ) Is Simply A Lie By David Wallstien Who Is A Jewish Reporter For The New Jersey Globe," Dye said in a Facebook post Wednesday. Dye also blamed another Jewish Assemblyman, Gary Schaer, of trying to get the "Jewish Media" to fire him.

Schaer, a political ally of Gov. Phil Murphy, said Murphy had made a mistake in hiring Dye in the first place. "His election was at best unfortunate. He is divisive," Schaer said. "He has not bordered but well-surpassed anti-Semitism. He has also made comments that were anti-Latino and anti-White."

Dye was fired last week from his job at the labor department after anti-Semitic and racist statements on Facebook were exposed by the New Jersey Globe. When confronted by a reporter about his posts, Dye responded "I don't talk to f---ing Jews.""Get the f--k out of here," he added in a brief phone interview.

If one were to look at the 2008 Democratic Platform, it would be hard to see much of a difference from the Republican Platform regarding Israel. Both parties considered Israel a strong ally and backed Israeli positions.

But Obama made a strategic pivot away from Israel running as an incumbent in 2012. With the blessing of left-wing groups like J Street, the Democratic Party officially changed courseon several key issues:
- Refugees. Until 2012, the Democrats agreed with Republicans that Palestinian refugees would find a home in a new state of Palestine, not Israel.
- Hamas. Until 2012, Democrats agreed that Hamas should be isolated until it renounced terror and recognized Israel’s basic right to exist.
- Borders. Until Obama, Democrats agreed with Republicans that a new Palestinian state would NOT be established along the 1949 Armistice Lines, but reflect current realities and need to ensure Israel’s security.
- Jerusalem. Until Obama, the Democrats and Republicans agreed that Jerusalem would remain a united city and the capital of Israel.

Those points – with the exception of Jerusalem which was bitterly contested on the convention floor – would disappear from the 2012 Democratic platform.

Years before Donald Trump considered running for president and the rise of the alt-left, the Democratic Party pulled back from supporting Israel’s position regarding establishing peace with the Arab world.

.@RashidaTlaib@IlhanMN We are the leading voices for the Uighur Muslims at the UNHRC. The State of Palestine just used its UN status to praise China for locking up 1 million Muslims. Can you please use your influence with Ramallah to demand they stop aiding & abetting racism? https://t.co/xwv651HhTW

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) August 29, 2019

With the BDS drama and the Al-Quds Day charade, the Left aligning themselves with the Islamists have made a platform of nothing but antisemitism, and the two Congresswomen are key players in this regard. Their remarks about the Jewish community as a whole are offensive, inflammatory and hateful.

As a Muslim woman who has been to Israel a dozen times, let me tell them how it’s done. I fully support Israel’s right to exist with Jerusalem as its capital and the right of the Jewish people to be free from orchestrated antisemitic attacks.

In my travels to Israel, I go with an open mind and no pre-conceived notions. I’m well aware of the problems, and I’ve met and spoken to people from both sides of the equation. I’ve met policy-makers, activists and ordinary citizens and heard their stories. It always amazes me how critical Israelis can sometimes be about their own government, but this is what a democracy is all about.

So I invite Omar and Tlaib to come with me. I will show them what Israel stands for and the beauty of the Israeli people.

Please feel free to contact me any time.

Those lines had no real legitimacy and now for the EU to retroactively demand that the territory gained in the 1967 Six-Day War should not have the same status as territory gained in the 1948 War of Independence (that is, by demanding, as it were, Israel go back to those lines without peace or other final status arrangements), is not only unfair and wrong but quite prejudicially discriminatory.

Jordan, invading Israel in June 1967, effectively put an end to the legitimacy of those lines. To sanctify, as it were, the “pre-1967 borders” is an act of nonsense.

Now, between you and me, everyone knows that Israel has extended its administrative rule to those regions of the Land of Israel that were under British Mandate rule until 1948, a rule quite legal and internationally recognized. That is the meaning of “belligerent occupation,” that is, as the result of military engagement. Israel, in an act of self-defense, thwarted the intentions of the invaders and assumed administration over Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza. Judea and Samaria are the heartland of the homeland.

Those regions were geographically part of the area of “historic Palestine” that the League of Nations awarded to the Jewish people to, among other purposes, "encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish Agency, referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews, on the land, including state lands and wastelands."

From 1922 until 1967, no recognized country or state legally ruled those areas except the Mandate. Jordan was an illegal occupier. In Hebrew, Mandatory Palestine was translated as “Land of Israel.”

All this leaves us with a simple solution for the requirement of the EU to note the origin of the product: the Land of Israel.

Gov. Matt Bevin signed Senate Bill 143, a law which will allow the Commonwealth to refuse to do business with companies that boycott other countries with which Kentucky has open trade, into law Tuesday.

The bill was supported by local Jewish leaders who say it will prevent openly antisemitic businesses from operating in the state.

Bevin was joined by Congressman Andy Barr, Rabbi Shlomo Litvin of Chabad of the Bluegrass and Kentucky State Senate President Robert Stivers as he signed SB143. The bill was born from an executive order aimed at companies engaged in the Boycott-Divest-Sanctions movement.

The BDS movement is a Palestinian led boycott of companies that support Israel.

The bill was sponsored by Stivers and senate majority whip Mike Wilson. The legislation does not specifically mention Israel, but rather states that Kentucky can terminate a contract if the company boycotts a person or entity with whom the state has open trade.

Members of the Jewish communities across the state gathered to participate.

A Jewish socialist philosopher who met with the leader of Hamas is running for president.

On Wednesday, Jerome Segal announced that he would run as the nominee of the Bread and Roses Party he founded last year. The party supports wealth redistribution, as well as guaranteed employment and income.

Segal, 75, is cleared to appear on the 2020 ballot in Maryland, where he lives, and is hoping to qualify in other states.

He told the Washington Post that he does not “have any fantasies about actually being president” but wants to add “something to the current political discourse that is lacking.”

Segal is an outspoken critic of Israel’s right-wing government and has met with leaders of various Palestinian groups, including the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas.

The PLO even took a significant portion of its 1988 declaration of independence from an op-ed he penned in the eastern Jerusalem daily Al-Kuds.

In 1989, Segal founded the Jewish Peace Lobby as a dovish alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

The broadcasting regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), has published their sanction decision in relation to Starz, a UK satellite TV channel, for broadcasting an antisemitic caricature.

After an investigation, Ofcom concluded that this is a serious breach of the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising and has issued a sanction.

According to the decision published by Ofcom: “On 11 March 2018 at 14:30 Starz broadcasted an image submitted by a viewer alongside a music video. It depicted a cartoon caricature of a Jewish person which conformed to racist stereotypes. In Ofcom’s view, the image, which could be found on various neo-Nazi websites, was likely to have been interpreted by viewers as being highly offensive and antisemitic. Over the next 51 minutes, the image was repeatedly reshown in rotation with photographs submitted by other viewers.” The image was shown 22 times and in total for seven minutes and five seconds.

The image depicted a cartoon caricature of a man with a large hooked nose, wearing a Jewish skullcap or “kippah” and a prayer shawl or “tallit” bearing a blue Star of David. The caricature was set against a backdrop of gold coins, with the man smiling widely and his hands flat against his cheeks framing his open mouth. Antisemitic caricatures often portray Jews as having large noses and being obsessed with money.

After corresponding with CAMERA staff, the New York Times corrected a story that had falsely characterized the BDS campaign as seeking only an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

The Aug. 21 article had claimed BDS, an anti-Israel boycott, divest, and sanction campaign, “advocates cutting ties with Israel until it ends its occupation of the West Bank.”

BDS, which targets Israelis for boycott but has also taken aim at non-Israel Jews, seeks to impose a range of demands that, according both to proponents and opponents of the campaign, would lead to the destruction of Israel.

The New York Times correction, published in print on Aug. 29, removed the passage casting BDS as merely anti-occupation and replaced it with language that, though less precise, is more accurate:
An earlier version of this article referred incompletely to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. It is an organization that promotes strong advocacy for Palestinian interests and hostility to the policies of the Israeli government.

The correction is an imperfect improvement. The paper has a long history of mischaracterizing BDS by downplaying its extreme goals and suggesting it seeks only to influence Israeli policy in the West Bank. For editors to now acknowledge BDS isn’t just an anti-occupation group is an important step, and will hopefully lead to more complete and informative descriptions of the campaign in the future. (That said, readers should have been informed that the campaign isn’t just hostile to the policies of this Israeli government, as the correction put it, but to the Jewish state’s very existence.)

In the video former IDF chief military prosecutor Maurice Hirsch clarified that the claims that teenagers had been asked to sign confessions “they couldn’t understand” is not true. That information was not communicated to listeners to this programme and as we see, Megha Mohan chose to repeat those unsubstantiated allegations anyway.

The BBC is clearly very keen to widely promote this report to its audiences even though it is based entirely on claims that the BBC has obviously not been able to independently verify made by a handful of teenagers convicted of acts of violence whom it is quite possible were put in contact with the BBC by the political NGO Addameer whose director was featured in the video.

But the BBC evidently has no intention of allowing facts to get in the way of the political narrative to which Yousef Eldin and Megha Mohan have self-conscripted.

Nearly every country in Europe has memorials to the Holocaust; its history is frequently evoked, or alluded to, by politicians and intellectuals. But while it is often taken as a given that commemoration of, and education about, the Shoah can inoculate against anti-Semitism, the continent’s recent experience suggests otherwise, as the Economist columnist writing under the name Charlemagne writes.

A poll by the European Union of 16,000 Jews in twelve member states found that 89 percent thought anti-Semitism had risen in the past five years, and that one in three had experienced harassment in the past year. Sometimes resurgent anti-Semitism is violent and proud, as with the beating with a belt of two men wearing skullcaps in Berlin last spring. Elsewhere it wears a mask of false innocence. . . . The leaders of Britain’s Labor party have for years tolerated anti-Semitism in the ranks. All this in a continent awash with memorials of what happens when one turns a blind eye to bigotry.

There are two possible conclusions to draw. One is that Europe’s commemorations of the Holocaust simply need to be bigger. But ten minutes by cab from the site of last year’s belt-beating in Berlin is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a sea of gravestone-like pillars taking up an entire city block. If prominence were the key, this should curb the attacks. The more awkward conclusion is that memorials are not enough—that, read wrongly, they can imply that anti-Semitism belongs only to the past, and engender complacency about the present.

Law enforcement must crack down systematically on anti-Semitic crimes. Leaders must shun politicians who blur the boundaries between mainstream politics and anti-Semitic filth. . . . [T]he past cannot merely be contained by designated places of memory. It seethes and writhes insistently, barely below the surface of everyday life. To learn the lessons, that surface must be broken.

Germany will on Friday enforce two decrees to make it easier for people, mainly Jews, who fled the Nazi regime because of persecution as well as their descendents to have their citizenship restored, the interior ministry said.

The move follows a campaign by descendents of refugees from Nazi Germany who are angry that their applications for citizenship have been rejected despite constitutional guarantees.

Britain's 2016 Brexit referendum triggered a jump in applications from the descendents of people who fled there between 1933 and 1945.

"Germany must live up to its historical responsibilities," said Interior Minister Horst Seehofer in a statement, adding that he wanted to help people whose parents or grandparents had to flee.

"With the legal degrees which come into force tomorrow, we will create a swift ruling that is immediately valid for these people to get German citizenship," he added.

Article 116 (2) of Germany's Basic Law states that former German citizens who between 1933 and 1945 were deprived of their citizenship on political, racial or religious grounds and their descendents can have their citizenship restored.

However, the "Article 116 Exclusions Group" represents more than 100 people, mostly of Jewish descent, who have had applications rejected or been told they are not eligible to apply.

Sarah Zoabi, who says she’s a “proud Arab, Muslim, Zionist Israeli,” happens to also have a great sense of humor. When Boomerang Fighting for Israel asked her to comment on news and social media accusations of Israel being an “apartheid state,” she invited us to follow her around several Israeli locations where she was the only recognizable Muslim woman, complete with her modest burqa and her thick, Arab accent, and try to catch Israeli Jews treating her as anything less than an equal.

Sarah went into Jewish restaurants and stores, walked around on the streets, struck up conversations with complete strangers, and finally stopped her car on the side of the highway, lifted the hood and asked for help.

Wherever she went, she was treated with respect, even friendliness. At one point, after borrowing a Jewish shopkeeper’s phone, she told him not to be concerned if he gets a call from someone with an Arab accent – he’s family.

Naturally, Israeli motorists gladly stopped next to her car on the side of the highway to fill up her radiator with water.

We won’t lie to you, Sarah Zoabi, whose cousin is the vehemently anti-Semitic Haneen Zoabi, is not very popular in her Israeli Arab society. She has been shunned by family members, received death threats and even beatings. But she appears to be unafraid, and her son Mohammed, who is a young adult now, is as fierce as his mother in voicing his support for the state of Israel.

Television host Yaron London's comments about Arab culture [earlier this week, the TV veteran referred to Arabs as "wild men" and called Arab culture "a failure"] spoke to a truth with which we are all familiar. It's not just me saying it – Arabs say it all the time, all over the world. If you ask any one of them during a casual conversation, even the biggest hater of Israel will tell you honestly that they prefer a conflict with Jews to a conflict with other Arabs, which would naturally result in brutal, unchecked bloodshed. The Arab citizens of Israel will admit that they prefer the Israeli government to an Arab one, even if from their comfortable positions at Israeli universities they prefer to call it "the occupation."

I'm not thrilled to agree with London – if only I could tear down his remarks. If only I could feel pride in and a connection to Arab culture without any hesitation. My "Arabness," the language, the music, and the tradition, are an inseparable part of my identity, and I would like to be proud of and feel connected to them.

But I, and I'm saying this carefully, feel shame. The Arab world, starting with its governments that are tainted by corruption and tribal alliances and including the man in the street, who exists on a basis of ignorance and violence, does not attempt to keep any of this a secret. Anyone with eyes in their head can point out these flaws, which should be addressed by a fundamental reform in thinking. You don't need to be an intellectual or a seasoned TV personality to understand that.

So I embrace my Israeli identity: I am an Israeli Arab because it's important to me to distinguish myself from the wider Arab culture. It's important to me to turn my back on what is happening in Syria and what happened in Lebanon and the story of Egypt's tragic fall. Because when I'm Israeli – I can feel proud sometimes.

The famous Israel supporter and well-known social media account, Stand With Us posted a new photo on Twitter and shared the thoughts of Gene Simmons, who is an Israeli – American Rock music legend about the Middle-East.

Here are Gene’s words about it:

“Israel is an astonishing little place, even though there are very few people in it.

The Middle East needs Israel to exist.”

Yesterday, Paul Stanley posted a really tear-inducing photo with his long-time buddy and bandmate, Gene Simmons.

Israeli-American Rock music icon @genesimmons just turned 70th and his love for #Israel is stronger than ever. Thank you for standing with Israel and Mazal tov! pic.twitter.com/ld0CfeI4No

— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) August 26, 2019

Exclusive video obtained by Fox News shows a peacekeeping patrol under attack by the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hezbollah. An intelligence source confirmed to Fox News the Iranian proxy force was behind the attack.

While the U.N. described the attack in a report, the video and the ensuing chaos following the ambush show how dangerous Hezbollah has made the situation for UNIFIL, or the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

The video shows groups of men block off the convoy with their cars. Once blocked off several men set upon the vehicles, trying to break in through the windows with hammers and stones.

At one stage, gasoline is poured over the second U.N. armored vehicle and then lit on fire. As it burns one peacekeeper leaves the vehicle while being accosted by the men. Another peacekeeper comes running out from behind the lead armored vehicle with his gun drawn, only to retreat. Another peacekeeper leaves the APV, surrendering his weapon to the terrorists. Men carrying automatic weapons can be seen during the melee.

In a rare UN criticism of the Palestinians, the world body’s racism watchdog urged Ramallah to combat “hate speech and incitement to violence,” saying it was “concerned” about statements by Palestinian public figures, politicians and media officials, as well as in school textbooks and curricula, pointing to “hate speech against Israelis” which it found “fuels hatred” and “may incite violence” and “antisemitism.”

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) further called on the Palestinians to “remove any derogatory comments and images from school curricula and textbooks that perpetuate prejudices and hatred.”

In addition, the panel found that Palestinians laws and policies failed to implement UN treaties on racism, or to properly investigate complaints for acts of racial discrimination.

The 18 independent experts reviewed the Palestinian record and those of six other countries at a session that ended on Thursday, when they issued their findings.

Palestinian Delegate Lashes Out at UN Watch
In wake of the review session two weeks ago, Palestinian representative Ammar Hiajzi lashed out at UN Watch after the Geneva-based non-governmental organization briefed the UN experts on Palestinian incitement.

“We must not allow our discussions to be diverted and side-tracked by those organizations founded and funded to deny the Palestinian narrative, dehumanize the Palestinian people by spreading lies and half-truths about them,” he tweeted on August 15th, prompting a sharp reply from UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.

The report marked the first time the panel had criticized Palestinian officials, according to UN Watch, a Geneva-based organization that addressed the session leading to the report.

The committee called on Ramallah to better protect journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents; to act against incitement to violence by public figures, politicians and media officials; and to remove inflammatory and discriminatory images and text from school curricula and textbooks.

The panel also recommended that Palestinian officials ensure that minorities enjoyed full rights and public services, especially Bedouins, and that minorities found adequate representation in politics.

Near the top of the report, titled “Concluding observations on the combined initial and second periodic reports of the State of Palestine,” the committee said that Israel’s presence in the West Bank, its settlements and its blockade of Gaza posed “severe challenges for the State party in fully implementing its obligations under the Convention.”

At the committee’s 99th session, held earlier this month, during a review of the “State of Palestine,” some delegates referred to examples of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish content in Palestinian textbooks and state-owned media outlets.

“What happened this week was unprecedented,” Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, said after the session. “Since 1974 when Yasser Arafat and the PLO were welcomed into the United Nations, this is the first time that the world body’s spotlight was officially placed on Palestinian racism, discrimination and anti-Semitism.”

An upscale restaurant in Ramallah backed out of hosting a lunch meeting between the US Embassy’s commercial attache and Palestinian businesspeople earlier this week, according to both an activist as well as a businessman who said he was invited to the lunch.

The restaurant said it would not host the meeting after the National and Islamic Forces in Ramallah, a group of local activists, contacted its management and demanded it cancel the event, according to Isam Bakr, a leading member of the group.

“We called the members of the management and told them that the restaurant should not host this meeting. We asked them how it could permit the gathering to take place on its premises following all of the US administration’s punitive measures against Palestine, including the State Department’s recent decision to erase Palestine from its site,” Bakr told The Times of Israel, referring to the department’s removal of the “Palestinian Territories” section from its website.

“Approximately half an hour later, the management informed us that it would not host the meeting, which we highly appreciated,” said Bakr, who asked that the name of the restaurant not be identified over concerns it could be targeted.

He said that the event was slated for Thursday at noon, but the restaurant decided to cancel it on Wednesday.

New York City has the largest Jewish population in the United States, and Jewish roots there are long and deep. And yet, the situation for observant Jews is quickly devolving into that of Europe, where Jews cannot safely walk to synagogue or through the streets while wearing a yarmulke without being attacked verbally or physically. This is a disgrace.

Why is everybody standing pat as Jews get targeted in a city where, if anything, they should feel most safe? Why in a voracious 24/7 media environment is it being given so little attention? The simple answer is that highlighting the attacks does not provide any clear partisan advantage.

It would be difficult to tie the attacks in Brooklyn to any comments from President Trump or to rising white nationalism. Additionally, they can't be easily linked to any of Rep. Ilhan Omar's tweets. Thus, this is a failure not only of Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who sanctimoniously tweets about anti-Semitism as he stands idly by as it rages in his own city, but also of major Jewish organizations. These organizations have collected tens of millions in donations to supposedly fight anti-Semitism and yet have proven absolutely useless in pressuring politicians to take action as observant Jews have become unsafe in the epicenter of American Jewish life.

As Rosen wrote, "The fact that the victims are most often outwardly identifiable, i.e., religious rather than secularized Jews, and the perpetrators who have been recorded on CCTV cameras are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic, inverts the perpetrator-victim dynamics with which most national Jewish organizations and their supporters are comfortable."

Anti-Semitism comes in many shapes and forms and is not confined to any one ideological camp. In some cases, it is not attached to politics at all. The only way effective way to fight anti-Semitism is to fight it in all of its manifestations, free from political blinders. (h/t IsaacStorm)

The Israeli-American scholar and commentator Daniel Gordis recently denounced an Israeli government cabinet minister as “a dangerous demagogue with medieval views.”

Name-calling is standard fare in Israeli public discourse, especially in the midst of an overheated election race. But whether or not Gordis meant his accusation literally, he will soon find himself face-to-face with someone who actually meets the dictionary definition of a dangerous demagogue with medieval views—medieval views about Jews and Jewish power, that is.

Later this month, Gordis will appear on stage at a prominent Manhattan synagogue alongside an American journalist who has publicly accused Jews of controlling the White House and paying off members of Congress. I’m speaking about Thomas Friedman of the New York Times.

The dictionary definition of a “demagogue” is someone who seeks to gain “power and popularity” through “use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises.”

That’s pretty much what Thomas Friedman has been doing his entire life: trying to gain popularity for himself, and his extremist views, through false claims, empty promises, and whipping up prejudice—against Israel.

It began during his years as a student at Brandeis University. In 1974, Yasser Arafat, gun holster on his hip, made his infamous first appearance at the United Nations. The Jewish community in New York City organized a huge protest rally against him. Friedman and a handful of his fellow radicals on campus signed an open letter denouncing the anti-Arafat rally.

Drone technology is a natural field for Israel as part of its wide-ranging arsenal.

They can track and attack a target far beyond the country’s border without having to send precious pilots into enemy airspace. Drones are also a force multiplier for a small country with multiple borders. Israel can monitor threats from groups such as Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Israeli drones such as the Heron TP can fly more than 600 miles for 30 hours.

Israel’s defense industry also produces an array of “loitering munitions” — drones such as the SkyStriker and Harpy that pack warheads and can carry out precise long-range strikes. Israel doesn’t comment on the types of munitions it uses in airstrikes.

Drones also provide a measure of deniability, even when the apparent source of the drone is widely suspected. Although accused of using drones in Iraq and Lebanon in the past week, Israel has not commented on either incident.

“We are operating in many areas against a state that wants to annihilate us,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a nondenial denial Aug. 22. “Of course I gave the security forces a free hand and instructed them to do anything necessary to thwart Iran’s plans.”

The Israel Defense Forces later revealed that an Iranian drone team had been spotted near the Golan Heights and published grainy video of the team.

The footage underscores that Israel is not the only participant with military drone capability. Israel accused Iran of flying a drone from Syria into its airspace in February 2018. Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield, which was built with U.S. support, showed that it could shoot down drones as early as 2015.

Israeli Smart Shooter technology enables rifles to be used against small moving UAV targets. Israel’s Drone Guard and Drone Dome are other defense systems.

PBS Newshour has once again grossly deceived its audience, with a propaganda piece that could have come directly from Hamas’ playbook. Coming more than a year after the start of the terror organization’s “Great March of Return,” the report twists those violent riots into an indictment of Israel’s military response.

The Aug. 20th special report by special correspondent Jane Ferguson, entitled “Gazans suffer life-shattering injuries when border protests turn violent,” focuses on Palestinian rioters who were injured or lost limbs during the riots, amplifying Hamas propaganda claims about criminal Israeli soldiers targeting innocent, peaceful Palestinian youth and – its central claim – using exploding bullets to maximize the damage inflicted upon their Palestinian victims.

The first two thirds of the 10 minute broadcast is devoted to interviews with injured Palestinians, their surgeon, and representatives from anti-Israel NGO’s to condemn Israel and exonerate the Gazan rioters. Ferguson does not interview any Israeli who might challenge the accusations and condemnations. Instead, she reads an IDF statement – 7 minutes into the broadcast– which she immediately refutes by citing a widely rejected report by the biased UN Human Rights Council.

Exploding Bullets Propaganda
A central feature of the report is the claim that Israeli troops employ exploding bullets as they target innocent Palestinian “protesters”:

CAMERA immediately debunked the claim:

According to ballistics experts and doctors, though, it is typical for exit wounds to be larger than entry wounds. “At high velocities, mainly over 2,000 fps the bullet deformity and tumbling in the body usually causes a larger and more irregular exit wound than the entrance,” doctors Nimrod Rozen and Israel Dudkiewicz explain in their chapter on “Wound Ballistics and Tissue Damage” in the book Armed Conflict Injuries to the Extremities: A Treatment Manual. (Wounds from low velocity bullets may behave differently.)

According to the British Journal of Surgery, “The exit wound is usually the larger.” A piece in the Canadian Medical Association Journal likewise explains that “exit wounds … are often larger than entrance wounds.” An article on gunshot wounds to the skull in Forensic Science International studied 17 entrance and exit gunshot wounds and found that, in all but one case, the exit wound was larger than the entry wound. And so on and so on and so on. (AP Sidesteps Skepticism and Science in Relaying Palestinian “Explosive Bullets” Charge)

The killings by Hamas of the Jewish teens is the starting point for the series, which is divided into three plot threads.

The main one is about Simon (Shlomi Elkabetz), a Shin Bet officer in charge of investigating Jewish extremists, who learns early on, after the first kidnapping, that the three boys have been killed and fears that the many intense prayer vigils calling for their safe return will backfire once the bodies are found. As soon as the deaths of the Israeli teens are confirmed, he is apprehensive about revenge killings, and when Abu Khdeir is abducted from his street in Jerusalem and a body is found soon afterward in the Jerusalem forest, he suspects Jews are the killers.

The second thread is the ordeal of the Abu Khdeir family, and the third is the story of the killers themselves, three Jews who feel they are misfits because they have not excelled in the yeshiva world.

When the fact that the series would focus on the killing of Abu Khdeir and the ordeal of his family rather than the murders of Fraenkel, Shaer and Yifrah was revealed in the pre-release publicity, the backlash began. Liat Collins wrote in her Jerusalem Post column: “The words ‘based on the true events’ are telling. This, of course, is neither the whole truth nor the whole story.”

Once the first two episodes of the series aired in mid-August, 120 Israelis who lost relatives — both soldiers and civilians — to terrorism signed a letter to HBO protesting the angle the series takes.

Their letter said, in part, “The kidnapping and the murder of the three youths is one of the many instances in which Jews have been murdered. The murderers receive... encouragement and are treated like heroes. In contrast, [Muhammad Abu] Khdeir’s murder was met with shock and condemnation by the vast majority of the Israeli public. Dozens of Jews are murdered as a result of the ongoing incitement by the Palestinian Authority every year. The Arab street does not condemn the murder of Jews and even supports and encourages it.”

Matan Peleg, the head of Im Tirzu, a right-leaning Zionist group, called the show’s focus “morally reprehensible.”

On July 8, following escalating tensions with the Gaza-based terrorist group, Israel launched a ground operation in Gaza known as Protective Edge.

But the series, which premiered on Aug. 12, does not spend much time on the kidnapping and its immediate aftermath.

Instead it uses the incident as the backdrop to the tragedy that followed: the revenge kidnapping and murder of a 16-year-old Palestinian, Muhammed Abu Khdeir. Autopsy results suggested that he had been burned alive. In 2016, a Jewish-Israeli man, Yosef Ben-David, was convicted for the murder along with two minors.

The decision to focus on the murder of the Palestinian teen has drawn criticism in Israel, despite what the creative team said was a conscious choice.

“We were drawn to understanding the perpetrators of this murder more than we were interested in understanding the victimhood of our side,” Hagai Levi, one of the filmmakers, told Drama Quarterly.

The series is “a story of pain turning into revenge,” he added.

Some 120 Israeli families who lost members in terror attacks disagree. They wrote a letter to HBO criticizing the show’s viewpoint, saying it equates two events that differ in significant ways.

“Khdeir’s murder was met with shock and condemnation by the vast majority of the Israeli public,” the parents wrote, according to Israel Hayom. “Dozens of Jews are murdered as a result of the ongoing incitement by the Palestinian Authority every year. The Arab street does not condemn the murder of Jews and even supports and encourages it.”

The Palestinian Authority has a policy of paying stipends to the families of terrorists either in prison or killed in the attacks — a policy that Israel has dubbed “pay to slay.” Its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, rarely speaks out against attacks against Israelis, though he did condemn the kidnapping of the teens.

This week I met with the family of IDF soldier Hadar Goldin who – along with Oron Shaul - is cruelly held by Hamas as a bargaining chip. Hamas must return Hadar & Oron as well as imprisoned Israeli civilians Avraham Mengistu & Hisham al-Sayed pic.twitter.com/zr56PPw0za

— Jason D. Greenblatt (@jdgreenblatt45) August 30, 2019

An Israeli soldier was lightly injured Friday evening from shrapnel during violent protests in the Gaza Strip. The army said it was not clear whether the shrapnel came from a grenade or a firecracker.

Some 6,000 Palestinians were said to be taking part in the protests. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said 75 Palestinians were injured during clashes with Israeli troops, 42 of them from live fire.

Israeli soldiers captured four Palestinians who crossed into Israel from the Strip armed with a grenade and a knife. The four were arrested shortly after crossing the border and taken in for further questioning, the army said.

The incident came shortly after an incendiary balloon launched from Gaza sparked a fire in the Sdot Hanegev Regional Council and as Palestinians took part in the weekly “March of Return” rallies along the border.

Recent weeks have seen an increase in violence from Gaza, which is ruled by the Hamas terror group.

Palestinians constructed gallows and demonstrated a mock hanging of Israel's Prime Minister @Netanyahu and the IDF's Arabic @AvichayAdraee near the #Gaza security fence today. #Israelpic.twitter.com/wLSKTbqRzR

— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) August 30, 2019

An Iranian judoka who was allegedly pressured into throwing a match to avoid facing off against an Israeli opponent has requested asylum in Germany.

The International Judo Federation confirmed Saeid Mollaei’s asylum request and expressed its backing of him, Radio Farda reported Saturday.

On Thursday, the chairman of the Israel Judo Association said Mollaei was coerced into throwing his semifinal battle against Belgium’s Matthias Casse a day earlier at the World Judo Championship in Tokyo in order to avoid facing Israel’s Sagi Muki in the final. Muki went on to win the championship, becoming the first Israeli man to win a World Championship gold.

In the past Iran has forbidden its athletes from competing against Israelis. In May, the International Judo Federation said it had reached an agreement with Iran to end the boycott, though the head of Iran’s national Olympic committee later denied it.

Mollaei has been accused of faking injuries and intentionally losing fights in the past to avoid facing Muki.

IJA head Moshe Ponti, speaking to Army Radio on Thursday, said that an hour before Wednesday’s semifinals, the Israeli team heard that Mollaei, ranked No. 1 in the world, “intended to continue the contest, even if he had to face Sagi Muki at the final. We heard he’d asked the head of the Iranian judo association to ensure his family was kept safe.”

In the recent weeks there have been a number of attempts by armed Palestinians to penetrate into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the killing of the Palestinian operatives by the Israeli security forces. Although neither Hamas nor any of the other Gazan factions officially claimed responsibility for these attempts, they made sure to praise them after the fact, calling them "heroic actions" by "angry young men" who were acting independently.[1] According to Gazan reports, Hamas's "restraining force" is present on the border to prevent such actions,[2] but at the same time the movement uses them as another means to pressure Israel in the indirect negotiations towards a long-term arrangement in Gaza. The Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily reported that Hamas had indirectly informed Israel that it was not behind these actions, yet threatened that the continued economic crisis in Gaza could lead to many further attempts of this kind in the coming period, which it would not be able to prevent.[3]

Following the August 17 attempt by an armed terrorist cell to cross the border into Israel, Gazan Facebook pages and the Hamas-affiliated paldf.net forum circulated a religious ruling (fatwa) by the "Shari'a Committee in the Gaza Strip" prohibiting independent "jihad operations" by individuals unless coordinated with the Gazan armed factions and/or authorized by their commanders. It should be noted that Hamas did not publicize the fatwa on any of its official media platforms, but neither did it renounce the fatwa. This allowed it to maintain an ambiguous position on these actions, in the face of Israeli accusations that it was instigating them and, on the other hand, condemnations from the operatives for restraining them.

There are three possible explanations for the appearance of this fatwa. One is that it serves an actual need, following a deterioration of discipline in the ranks of Hamas. In fact, the organization is reportedly acting to form general frameworks, including a regular army called the Al-Quds Army, and this requires tightening discipline and banning independent operations by individuals. Since Hamas is unable, for ideological reasons, to openly condemn jihad operations, it is trying to convey this understanding by circulating a religious ruling that was clearly issued on its behalf but does not officially bear its seal.

A second explanation may be the Hamas authorities' need to deal with the rising power of other jihadist and/or Salafi groups in Gaza, whose tension with Hamas recently erupted into open clashes.[4] Hamas fears that these groups may attract young members of its ranks who are disappointed with its current level of action and policy of restraint.

An upcoming report by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog organization, known as the International Atomic Energy Agency, includes new language suggesting the Islamic Republic has not been cooperating with international nuclear inspectors who are mandated to provide oversight on the Islamic Republic’s weapons program, according to multiple sources familiar with the contents of the report.

The IAEA’s yet-to-be-published report on the matter began circulating late Friday among reporters and Iran watchers in Washington, D.C., and it is said to show that Iran has stopped adhering to its transparency commitments under the landmark Obama-era nuclear agreement.

Iranian leaders have been warning for months that the country has ended its cooperation surrounding the nuclear portfolio, including efforts by Iran to enrich uranium to levels prohibited under the nuclear deal and necessary for a functional nuclear weapon.

The IAEA’s findings, the contours of which were confirmed by sources to the Washington Free Beacon, are likely to fuel calls by Iran skeptics on Capitol Hill for a full snapback of international sanctions on Iran, which were lifted under the JCPOA, the acronym used for the nuclear deal. This issue is more than likely to come to a head as top Trump administration officials and diplomats from across the globe gather in New York City for the U.N.’s upcoming General Assembly meeting.

New language in IAEA's latest report indicates claims that "ongoing interactions between the Agency and Iran relating to Iran's implementation of its Safeguards Agreement [and] Additional Protocol require full [and] timely cooperation by Iran," according to a portion of the report published Friday by the Institute for Science and International Security, a nuclear watchdog group that routinely has access to such reports. "The Agency [IAEA] continues to pursue this objective with Iran."

Turkey said on Friday that an Iranian tanker at the center of a confrontation between Washington and Tehran was headed to Lebanon after changing course several times, although Beirut said it was not informed of the plan.

According to Refinitiv tracking data, the Adrian Darya, formerly called Grace 1, made a U-turn on Friday and headed for Turkey’s Iskenderun port — 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Syria’s Baniyas refinery, the tanker’s suspected original destination.

However, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the tanker, which was carrying 2 million barrels of oil when released at Gibraltar, was headed to “the main port in Lebanon.”

On the sidelines of a forum in Oslo, Cavusoglu told Reuters that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke of the ship’s coordinates with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday. “We are monitoring (the tanker) very closely,” he added.

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that the United States was not involved with a failed Iranian rocket launch, and he wished Tehran luck at finding out what went wrong.

“The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran,” Trump said on Twitter. “I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One.”

The rocket exploded on its launch pad at a space center in northern Iran on Thursday, an Iranian official said. A US official also said Iran suffered a satellite launch failure.

The US has warned Iran against rocket launches, fearful the technology used to put satellites into orbit could enable Tehran to develop the ballistic missile capability needed to launch nuclear warheads.

Tehran denies the US accusation that such activity is a cover for ballistic missile development.

Several columnists in the Saudi Al-Madina daily have recently written against the phenomenon of homosexuality in the world in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular, noting that Islam forbids it and treats it as an offense punishable by death. They wrote that this practice, which is tolerated in the West and even condoned by Western leaders, goes against nature and threatens to bring humanity to a level lower than that of animals. They also praised the Catholic Church for condemning homosexuality, and one called on all religious organizations in the world, especially Islamic ones, to protect mankind from the "heresy" of homosexuality, which threatens it. Another article also called to sentence homosexuals to death.

The following are excerpts from the articles:
Muhammad Al-Baladi, a columnist for the Al-Madina daily, wrote: "A [recent news] report said that an American grandmother had given birth to her own granddaughter after carrying her in her womb for nine months as a surrogate, so that her homosexual son and his partner could have a child and form an 'alternative' family. Here are the details: Cecile Eledge, aged 61, gave birth to her granddaughter, Uma Louise, in Nebraska, USA, after offering her gay son, Matthew Eledge, to serve as a surrogate for him and his partner, Elliot Dougherty. The egg was donated – and this is not a typo – by her daughter (the baby's aunt), in order to complete the homosexual family [consisting of] a husband, husband and children.

"I apologize to the reader for this nauseating news item, but presenting it was essential in order to clarify the extent of the West's moral absurdity that is threatening the world, and the alarming escalation of [practices] which undermine the divine natural order of creation in favor of homosexual filth that is mounting in the industrialized and civilized world. [This world] is apparently threatening to bring mankind to a level lower than that of animals, for animals naturally abhor many of these acts, which are being performed in the name of personal freedom and human rights. As a matter of fact... I do not know where this horrific moral erosion, headed by the coalition of barbaric capitalism, or [this] immoral practicality that is gradually taking over the world and completely overturning its moral balance, based on perverted standards, is taking us!

Sirhan Sirhan, imprisoned for more than 50 years for the 1968 assassination of US senator Robert F. Kennedy, was hospitalized Friday after being stabbed by a fellow inmate at a San Diego prison.

A statement from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said the stabbing occurred Friday afternoon at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego.

“Officers responded quickly, and found an inmate with stab wound injuries. He was transported to an outside hospital for medical care, and is currently in stable condition,” the statement said.

The statement did not name Sirhan, but a government source with direct knowledge confirmed to The Associated Press that he was the victim. The source spoke under condition of anonymity, citing prison privacy regulations.

The stabbing was first reported by TMZ.

Corrections officials reported that the alleged attacker has been identified and has been segregated from the rest of the prison population pending an investigation.

Sirhan, a Palestinian born in Jerusalem, was convicted of shooting Kennedy shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, immediately after the New York senator had declared victory in the previous day’s California Democratic presidential primary.

Jeremy Corbyn has responded to a critical advertisement by accusing one of the signatories of having “lowered himself”.

Last month, 67 Labour peers took out a full-page advertisement in the Guardian accusing Mr Corbyn of having “failed the test of leadership” over his handling of antisemitism. The advertisement stated: “The Labour Party welcomes everyone* irrespective of race, creed, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (*except, it seems, Jews). This is your legacy, Mr Corbyn.”

Asked by a local Cumbrian newspaper about the endorsement of the advertisement by Lord Liddle, who is also a local councillor in the area, Mr Corbyn said: “I’m very sorry that he lowered himself by putting his name to that advertisement.”

The Labour leader went on to say that “Our party is big, our party is open, our party is diverse — there is no place whatsoever for antisemitism, xenophobia or any other form of racism, not just in my party but in our society. That kind of thing only divides people and weakens us all as a community. Our strength is our diversity.”

Epic from Tareq, shame he’s a terrorist sympathiser…

He’ll fit right in with Jeremy.

PJ Media's Tyler O'Neil examines a new Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) report showing how Huda Essa---a Dearborn resident and founder of the Michigan-based consultancy Culture Links, L.L.C.---subjected teachers in Michigan's Novi Community Schools District to a 2017 two-day "diversity" training presentation in which "Islam was glorified, Christianity disparaged, and America bashed—all funded by Novi taxpayers."

Among other radical and unfounded claims, Essa alleged that hijab-clad Muslim women in America had been subjected to a relentless onslaught of "Islamophobia," including being spat upon, having hot liquids poured over them, and being beaten and murdered.

In a canard recently invoked by Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, Essa implied that white Christian males are more of a terror threat than Islamist terrorists. She also engaged in Islamic supremacist propaganda that involved denigrating Christianity and Judaism.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, and as summed up by O'Neil, "the Novi school district did not fully vet Essa before her presentation and the district did not have documents showing any sort of investigation to fact-check her presentation. However, the request did reveal that the district paid $5,000 for the presentation. During the past five years, the school district has not forced teachers to take any seminar on Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion — only Islam."

Why, my children ask, would our Israeli cousin be a traitor to his own country?

In response, I try to explain about his illness, this most dangerous of hatreds, the eternal self-hate that some Jews have been infected with throughout our history.

But still, it is our family’s scandal, our shanda.

Our cousin, an Israeli professor paid by the taxpayers of Israel, exploits his position as an “expert academician” to tour university campuses throughout the world to accuse Israel of racism and apartheid, and he even publishes articles advocating boycotts of Israel.

And we feel deep shame that our cousin is often quoted in anti-Israel media, such as Al Jazeera and other anti-Jewish publications and websites, where he happily allows those who seek to destroy Israel to use him as evidence of how wicked Israel is, for here is a Jew who “speaks the truth” about the "evil" Jewish state.

At gatherings, the younger family members spit out his name, calling him a traitor to the Jews and his family. But the old men quietly sigh and shake their heads, since they know the very ugly truth.

For the old men share the knowledge that the cousin-professor’s self-hate has nothing to do with his screaming about "justice", or seeking to rectify "wrongs" or eternally protesting for the "underdog."

Rather, with complete certainty and heartbreaking pity, the old men know that the professor is acting out his deep, personal and emotional problems when he strikes out at Israel, since he can never acknowledge the true target of his rage, which is really his family.

StandWithUs strongly condemns an antisemitic event taking place at Clovis Community College (CCC) on September 18th. The event is being hosted by a media outlet called GV Wire.

"This event features a speaker notorious for spreading vicious hate and wild conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel," said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs. "While CCC may be legally required to allow this event to go forward, GV Wire and the organizations listed as cosponsors have no such obligation. If they do not withdraw support from the event, they will be complicit in promoting antisemitism - an increasingly deadly form of racism."

In addition to GV Wire, organizations listed as supporters of the event include Fresno State University, Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, Peace Fresno, Community Alliance Newspaper, and CAIR Central California.

CCC issued a press release, stating that "no organizations shall be denied the use of District facilities because of the content of the speech to be undertaken during the use." However, President Dr. Lori Bennet also said that, "Clovis Community College does not endorse hate speech or anti-Semitic remarks."

The event speaker, Alison Weir, has been widely condemned, even by anti-Israel organizations. Her record includes promotion of medieval antisemitic slurs and conspiracy theories about Jewish power, echoing the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Farah News and the evil Jews
An Australia-based Arabic-language online news and commentary platform is spreading viciously antisemitic content. An investigation into the Farah NewsOnline website has uncovered articles depicting Jews as an evil force conspiring to subdue humanity, caricatures featuring Nazi propaganda motifs against Israel and conspiracy theories about Zionism as a plot for world domination.

What is Farah News?
Farah News Online (www.farah.net.au) is a news portal publishing in Arabic and English. It is based in Sydney, and was established in December 2008. The website claims it is “managed by a group of qualified people and is updated around the clock.” It contains barely any original content, but rather republishes reports, articles and poems mainly originally published in Middle Eastern media, with some material from Australian sources, such as press releases by the Lebanese Embassy in Canberra, community notices and ads.

Farah News’ mission statement attests to its commitment to “objectivity, moderation and accuracy.” The disclaimer notice also emphasises that the website “does not accept any legal or moral responsibility for what is published on its pages of opinions, articles and comments. What is published [solely] represents the viewpoint of the writer”.

According to an Australian records search, the domain name for the website is registered to Rafic Dehaibi, owner of TPP Wholesale Pty Ltd and the C.H. Stop N Save store in Liverpool, New South Wales.

Website analytics suggest that Farah News is being viewed by up to 250 unique visitors a day, each reading two pages on average (the homepage being one of them). The Facebook page associated with the website is quite popular, with more than 17,000 followers as of August 2019.

Despite the claim on the Farah News website that it has “no relation with any political party or any foreign country”, it does seem to be aligned with Lebanon’s March 14 Alliance movement, which opposes Syrian and Iranian intervention in Lebanese politics, including by the Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organisation Hezbollah.

In Finland, I realized that antisemitism stems not only from immigrants, as was mainly the case in Sweden, but also from the native Finnish population.

My next-door neighbor — who I later found out belonged to a far-right organization — ran after me with a hammer and knife when he heard me speaking Hebrew. Thankfully, some neighbors were able to restrain him. The police only arrived a half hour later. A few months later, my assailant came before a judge, who ordered him to pay 300 euros in compensation to me. It baffled and frightened me that the Finnish judicial system not only failed to protect me from the attacker, but also allowed him to walk free with practically no consequences.

The extreme right is deeply entrenched in Finnish society and government, and Jews suffer because of this. The Nordic Resistance Movement — a Neo-Nazi organization — marches in the streets, and is growing in popularity. That is why I was not surprised to learn in the news that the Israeli embassy in Helsinki has been attacked at least 15 times in the last 18 months.

I still live in Scandinavia because I believe that things can change for the better. But time is running out. The Finnish and Swedish governments must act immediately and forcefully to combat the terrible antisemitism plaguing those nations, and terrorizing the Jews living there.

The account linked to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted a series of mysterious and increasingly racist, antisemitic and Holocaust denying tweets Friday night.

Initial reports indicated it had been hacked.

Despite his pinned tweet claiming that Twitter is committed to increase collective health, openness and civility, the account @jack tweeted the n-word, and that “Hitler is innocent.”

His account also tweeted that Twitter’s headquarters is “blowing up” as well as re-tweeting a tweet saying “Nazi Germany did nothing wrong.” The series of tweets went on for about ten minutes before it appears that staff of someone at Twitter was able to get a hold of the account a little after 4 p.m. EST.

By 4:07 the racist tweets and the re-tweets of antisemitic pro-Nazi tweets had been removed.

Roman Polanski’s “An Officer and a Spy” drew mixed reactions from critics Friday at its Venice premiere, hailed as “handsome and involving” by one but “lacking” by another who said parallels drawn by the director between his life and his art were “obscene.”

The 86-year-old, a fugitive from the US since he was convicted for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old in 1978, did not attend the Venice Film Festival red carpet event for his film about French Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus.

But its stars, including “The Artist” Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin and fellow French actor Louis Garrel, cracked smiles as they signed autographs for fans.

Campaigners have said the mired-in-controversy Polanski’s inclusion in the running for the top prize is out of touch in the era of the #MeToo movement.

The Dreyfus affair, subject of the new Roman Polanski film which is premiering at the Venice Film Festival, triggered a national crisis over anti-Semitism in France in the late 19th century.

Here is an account of the scandal, which had wide international repercussions.

Alfred Dreyfus was a 36-year-old Jewish French army captain, from the Alsace region of eastern France which was at the time occupied by Germany.

He was accused in October 1894 of passing secret information on new artillery equipment to the German military attache.

The accusation was based on a comparison of handwriting on a document found in the German’s waste paper basket in Paris.
On trial

Dreyfus was put on trial, against the background of a virulent anti-Semitic press campaign.

His family tried in vain to defend him and he protested his innocence.

Despite the lack of evidence, he was convicted of treason on December 22, 1894, and sentenced to life imprisonment at the infamous Devil’s Island penal colony in French Guiana and publicly stripped of his rank.

The scandal rocked the assumption that Jews had become an integral part of French life — revealing the depths of anti-Jewish sentiment in the country.

The 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II is approaching. Today one can regrettably notice how a politicized propaganda campaign sharing equal responsibility for this global catastrophe between both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union is gaining momentum. Its ultimate goal is to slander modern Russia, and doubt the legitimacy of its role in international affairs as one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council.

In order to get an unbiased picture of the true causes and culprits of the bloodiest conflict in human history, I suggest taking a closer look at the period which followed the Munich Agreement on the division of Czechoslovakia, signed by Great Britain, Germany, Italy and France on September 29-30, 1938.

The Munich Agreement marked the climax of the policy of appeasement of Hitler conducted by London and Paris in the 1930s, while increasing the international isolation of the USSR, particularly taking into account all non-aggression pacts signed by both Great Britain and France with Nazi Germany (September 30 and December 6, 1938). Nevertheless, the Soviet government was eager to establish a collective security system in Europe along with the British and French in order to retaliate against Nazi Germany.

Up until the second half of August 1939, trilateral Anglo-Franco-Soviet negotiations were held. The draft agreement proposed by the USSR required immediate military assistance to be provided by Great Britain and France in case of a Nazi attack. However, London and Paris followed their own way. Negotiations were being delayed by endless amendments and farfetched discussions regarding the definition of “indirect” and “direct” German aggression. The breakdown of talks was the eventual result.

Now, 80 years later, one can come to an unambiguous conclusion: These were British and French approaches toward negotiations – considered as a pressure tool to achieve yet another compromise with Germany – which led to such a failure.

September 1 marks the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland. Survivors of the Shoah – the Holocaust – are fading rapidly, and very few of those in their 80s or 90s have any clear recollection of what happened to them.

What they know is essentially what was told to them by whoever took care of them as children, or what they discovered later as adults when going through the various search options.

One of the great tragedies – other than the losses of human life and the atrocities to which so many who were murdered and so many who survived were subjected – is that close relatives who lost contact with each other were in many cases convinced that they were the sole survivors of their families, and were separated for decades not knowing of each other’s existence.

In some cases, they actually lived in the same neighborhood in a city far from where they were born, but never bumped into each other until the twilight of their lives, or only discovered that one of them had died when reading a death notice in a newspaper.
Today, with the use of DNA, tracing is easier, but not every survivor knows about it and of those who do, not everyone is willing to undergo a DNA test.

Unlike pre-20th century tragic events in Jewish history, future generations of Jews – thanks to people such as film producer Steven Spielberg and others like him in different parts of the world – will not have to rely on historical “facts” in the eyes of a handful of beholders such as, for example, Josephus.

Guernsey’s Auction House will host auction featuring a Torah Ark made by American Soldiers for refugees of the Krumbach displaced persons camp in Germany.

The auction will take place on September 19, 2019 at the 5th Avenue Synagogue in NYC.

This Ark may have facilitated some the first organized prayer services in Europe after WWII, and its sale is made to help a museum in Brooklyn that feeds the homeless.

Other items on sale during the auction include letters from, and a self-portrait of, Marc Chagall. As well as letters drafts and comment on Israel's constitution with signatures original to Golda Meir, David Ben-Gurion, and Moshe Dayan

A 21-year-old Palestinian woman died on Thursday in suspicious circumstances that have caused massive outrage among activists and social media users across the Middle East and North Africa. Israa Gharib, a makeup artist from Bethlehem, died in a coma due to head trauma, in what activists and sources close to the victim are saying was a brutal honor killing. The culprits are believed to be her father, her brother-in-law, Sheikh Mohamed El Safy, and her two brothers, Bahaa and Ihab, a resident of Canada.

It all began when Gharib went to meet a potential suitor in a public place and posted a video of the outing on her Instagram page. According to a friend of the victim’s, Gharib’s mother was fully aware of the meeting and the suitor’s sister was also in attendance.

According to sources online, Gharib’s cousin then showed the video to the victim’s father and brothers, allegedly urging them to act to prevent scandal and accusing Israa of dishonoring herself and bringing shame to the family by being seen in the company of a man outside the bonds of marriage.

Gharib’s friend claims that upon seeing the video, her brothers and brother-in-law began beating and torturing her, and proceeded to terminate the engagement. Other sources claim she fell from the 2nd floor while attempting to flee the brutal assault. She was later hospitalized due to a fractured spine.

Gharib’s father, brothers, and brother-in-law followed her to the hospital, her friend alleges, and resumed the beating, telling hospital staff they were performing an exorcism on the victim whom they believed was possessed by a demon. A harrowing audio recording of the assault was leaked by one of the nurses at the hospital that purportedly features Gharib’s repeated horrified screams.

She was then released from the hospital, after which she returned home where she reportedly suffered a head injury at the hands of her brother, Ihab, whom eye witnesses say was seen threatening to kill her, prompting some on social media to call on the Canadian government to take legal action against him. Gharib went into a coma, before her heart stopped.

In a Facebook statement, the victim’s family denied any wrongdoing, claiming she suffered mental and psychological disorders that led to her fall from the 2nd floor of their Bethlehem house.

The laws enacted in our country, by which I mean the Jordanian Penal Code No. 16 of 1960 deals with women as inferior whereby the perpetrator can marry his victim. What’s more, the perpetrator of crimes that fall under the category of “honor” can get a mitigated punishment. While it’s true that the President cancelled this article, in reality things are still the same. We have dozens of examples of this, the most recent one last night when a few brothers killed their sister and her husband in Ya’abad in the Jenin district even after the two families had reconciled. The reconciliation even happened under the supervision of the Palestinian intelligence services.

Palestinian laws are discriminatory in terms of gender-sensitivity. In addition, the laws enacted in Palestine are lacking in terms of respect for women; instead they treat them like second-class citizens. There is no equality. Socially, it is not such a big deal to kill a woman. Unfortunately, in some districts, the mourning for a women who is killed only lasts for one or two days instead of the traditional three days accorded to men.

We need amendments or a Palestinian penal code. The Ministry of Justice in addition to women’s institutions, civil society organizations and rights and academic institutions were able to draw up a draft law which is progressive and humane and that respects women’s dignity. Unfortunately, the President does not regard this as a priority and does not consider it a necessity. Hence, we have laws that not only do not respect women but almost encourage their punishment...

Israel will apply sovereignty to all West Bank settlements, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday morning as he celebrated the first day of school with first graders in the Elkana settlement.

"There won't be any more uprooting [of settlements]," Netanyahu said. "With God's help, we'll apply Jewish sovereignty on all the settlements, as part of the land of Israel and as part of the State of Israel."

Erekat considered that Netanyahu's public statement of annexation of all settlements on the West Bank posed not only a threat to the Palestinian people but a threat to the entire international system. And it would open the horizons in alliance with the Trump administration to completely overthrow the international system and create a system of power and hegemony.

The Hezbollah terror group fired several anti-tank guided missiles at an army base and a military ambulance in northern Israel Sunday afternoon, causing no injuries, the Israel Defense Forces said.

Miiltary sources said that the ambulance was empty when it was struck, but that soldiers had been inside half-an-hour earlier.

In response, the Israeli military said its artillery cannons and attack helicopters fired approximately 100 shells and bombs at Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.

IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the IDF considered the “tactical event on the ground” to be over as of Sunday evening, but that the larger strategic threat posed by Hezbollah on the border remained.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said no Israelis were so much as “scratched” by the Hezbollah attack. “There were no Israeli injuries, not even a scratch,” Netanyahu said, smiling, at the opening of a Honduras diplomatic office in Jerusalem.

The military said Hezbollah operatives fired two to three missiles at a battalion headquarters outside of the Israeli community of Avivim and at military vehicles nearby shortly after 4:15 p.m. Sunday. Several of the projectiles struck their targets but did not cause any casualties, despite claims to the contrary by Hezbollah, the IDF said.

The Iran-backed terror group took responsibility for the missile strikes, saying in a statement that its fighters “destroyed an ‘Israeli’ military vehicle on the Avivim barracks road [in northern Israel]… and injured those in it.” Hezbollah later said it targeted an armored personnel carrier.

The Israeli military fired artillery shells into a disputed portion of land on the Lebanese border on Sunday, amid soaring tensions along the frontier, a Hezbollah-affiliated news outlet reported.

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed conducting “activities” in northern Israel, which sparked a fire near the border, but refused to comment on the nature of those actions.

According to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar news outlet, the IDF fired the shells into the hills outside of the village of Kfar Chouba, next to a contested area along the border, known in Israel as Mount Dov and in Lebanon as Shebaa Farms.

The Lebanese Armed Forces said in a statement that an Israeli drone also dropped an incendiary device nearby, sparking a small fire that was extinguished by residents of the area.

Al-Manar also shared photographs of artillery shells it said were fired by the IDF into the area.

Residents of northern Israel reported seeing increased military activity in the area on Sunday morning, with soldiers establishing roadblocks along local highways and large numbers of aircraft flying overhead.

Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire on the Israel-Lebanon border. Will it escalate to an all-out conflict? What's behind these types of incidents? Our Adi Koplewitz and Owen Alterman analyze.

From the moment Hezbollah’s members fired their anti-tank missiles at Israel the entire Middle East was glued to what might happen next. This is because what is happening in northern Israel pits Iran’s ally against Israel, a key ally of the US. It has regional implications because Iran’s allies and proxies, from Syria to Iraq and Yemen, are all impacted by how Hezbollah performs and how Israel responds.

For instance, in the last month Iraqi Shi’ite paramilitaries linked to Iran have blamed Israel for a series of explosions at their munitions warehouses. In addition, the Houthi rebels in Yemen have been using Iranian technology to increase their drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia. They also say they have new air defense systems and that they shot down a US drone recently. It would be the second US drone downed since June.

In January, Israel’s former Chief of Staff said that Israel carried out more than 1,000 airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria over the last years. That was a major declaration that built on two years in which Israeli officials had hinted at a widening campaign against Iran in Syria. Israel has only admitted several of these strikes directly as they happened or after. In September an air strike in Latakia led Syrian air defense to shoot down a Russian plane by mistake, causing a crises and ending with Moscow sending S-300 air defense to Syria’s regime.

That means that Syria’s regime and other forces in Syria are watching closely. For instance, the August 24 airstrike Israel carried out against an IRGC “killer drone” force in southern Syria killed two Hezbollah operatives. For the IRGC and for other Iranian-backed groups in Syria, the escalation in Lebanon is important. They wonder if it could spill over to Syria. Iran’s bases in Syria have been used to fly a drone into Israeli airspace in February 2018 and also to launch missiles at Israel in May 2018 and January 2019. Iran’s IRGC is entrenched in Syria and Iran has benefited from the weakness of the Syrian regime to spread influence and move forces and munitions. This has included the deployment of Iraqi-based Shi’ite militias such as Kata’aib Hezbollah. A Kata’ib Hezbollah base in Albukamal was mysteriously hit with an airstrike in June 2018. No one claimed responsibility for that but Kataib Hezbollah has blamed both Israel and the US for attacks on it. It is led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis who has worked with the IRGC since the 1980s.

Hezbollah is in a complex situation because last Sunday, August 25, it claimed to have discovered and brought down Israeli drones. In subsequent days Hezbollah held on to the drones while Lebanon’s Prime Minister and President both said Israel had violated Lebanon’s sovereignty and that the country was on the verge of war. Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah gave speeches and statements indicating that a response would be forthcoming and Hezbollah sought to mock Israel, claiming that Israelis were worried about its response.

But this appeared to be bluff for several days. It comes amidst rising tensions between the US and Iran over Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign and its attempt to sanction Iranian officials and oil exports. It also comes amid tensions in Syria where Israel launched an airstrike against the IRGC on August 24. That airstrike was in response to Hezbollah members and the IRGC bringing “killer drones” toward the border with the Golan. In addition, Israel released details last Thursday showing how the IRGC was seeking to upgrade Hezbollah’s missile arsenal of some 130,000 missiles. Hezbollah has said in the past it can reach all of Israel with its rockets.

Hezbollah had choices over the past week, but it narrowed them as it said it would do something. It has made threats in the past, more general in nature. But Hezbollah wants an excuse to legitimize itself. It wanted to pave the way for war. It sought to do this by getting Prime Minister Saad Hariri and President Michel Aoun to release statements. Hariri is ostensibly opposed to Hezbollah. Hezbollah is accused of having killed his father in 2005. But Hezbollah has maneuverer since then to make itself indispensable to Lebanese politics and military affairs. For instance, Hezbollah claims to be “resisting” Israel by asserting Israel occupies the Sheba’a farms or Mount Dov area on the border. Hezbollah also emerged from the Syrian civil war as a kind of victor, having sent fighters to Syria in 2012. It lost many men in Syria but it also put down roots and infrastructure and helped to work with Iran as Iran sought to expand its presence through Iraq to Lebanon. This is Iran’s “road to the sea” or “land bridge” that includes Shi’ite militias in Iraq and Iranian-backed groups in Syria.

Hezbollah also sought to make sure that it had message discipline with Tehran, waiting for IRGC Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani to legitimate a “response.” The issue for Hezbollah is that it heard over the past week warnings from the US, including attempts to de-escalate the crises in Lebanon and also clear messages of backing from the US for Israel. Hezbollah’s gamble on September 1 is that it can “retaliate” and not create a massive war. It has been looking at Gaza and also Israel’s airstrikes in Syria and it believes that it might be able to commit itself to a “tit-for-tat” escalation without precipitating a massive conflict that has regional implications. Hezbollah naturally understands that it is sitting on a fuse that can ignite a much larger conflict. But it painted itself into a corner with threats to do something.

Israel’s military said on Saturday it had ordered extra forces to deploy on its northern border as tensions remained high with Lebanon’s heavily armed Shi’ite terrorist group Hezbollah.

The army said its “ground forces, air, navy, and intelligence forces improved their preparedness for various scenarios in the northern command area.” It said the measures had been taken in the past week.

“Reserve soldiers have received a message regarding the relevant time they need to deploy,” the army said in a statement.

As residents of southern Israel find themselves more and more running into bomb shelters to hide from explosive projectiles launched from Gaza, Israeli startup Navin is aiming to help them and residents in other communities find the nearest shelter. CEO Shai Ronen discusses with host Sarah Williamson.

The US Army has been testing Rafael’s Spike Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) anti-tank guided missile as a solution against the Russian surface-to-air missile systems, Defense News reported last week.

In the middle of the 2014 Gaza War, the Obama administration stopped deliveries of Hellfire missiles to the Israeli Air Force’s Apache helicopters, in an attempt to pressure the Israelis to stop their operation in Gaza.

And so, as part of the lessons of that war, the Israeli Air Force and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems adapted their fire-and-forget anti-tank guided missile Spike to be launched from Israeli Apache helicopters, to prevent dependence on American goodwill in future wars.

Now the Americans want to use the same Israeli missile on their own Apache helicopters. The US Army is anxious to improve their choppers’ ability to shoot at relatively distant targets, with the aim of reducing the risk to said choppers. Turns out the Israeli missile has the range that the American missiles currently lack.

Obama drama…

Judea and Samaria are as much a part of Israel as the Golan Heights, leading Republican US Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri told The Jerusalem Post.

Wagner spoke after visiting the West Bank settlements with three other Republican members of Congress on a trip sponsored by the US Israel Education Association (USIEA), founded and directed by Heather Johnson.

When asked by The Post if she thought Judea and Samaria was part of Israel, she responded, “Yes I do. I very much do. I know that there is a majority of Palestinians that live there. I believe that it is, just as I believe that the Golan Heights is.”

Wagner is the vice ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and was the first co-sponsor and a key architect of July’s House resolution against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan and 21 members of Knesset sent her and a number of other US representatives a letter criticizing them for including language in the bill that spoke globally of supporting a two-state solution, even though the statement did not include any territorial designation for such an idea.

When asked about the letter, Wagner said that a two-state resolution to the conflict was US policy.
“But you are seeing some evolution in this regard,” she said. “Time will tell if it’s feasible or not.”
Republican Representative Bradley Byrne of Alabama said that he “started out as being a two-state supporter and I am evolving. I am beginning to have doubts that it can work.”

The other two Republican representatives on the trip, Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington State and Phil Roe of Tennessee, also said they were “evolving” when it came to the notion of two states.

McMorris Rodgers also echoed Wagner in stating clearly that she saw Judea and Samaria as part of Israel.
Neither women clarified the territorial designation of Judea and Samaria, whether it included only Area C of the West Bank or all of the West Bank.

US President Donald Trump has rarely spoken of Palestinian statehood since coming into office, and the Palestinians fear he intends to withdraw his support for a Palestinian state.

Israel will apply sovereignty to all West Bank settlements, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday morning as he celebrated the first day of school with first graders in the Elkana settlement.

"There won't be any more uprooting [of settlements]," Netanyahu said. "With God's help, we'll apply Jewish sovereignty on all the settlements, as part of the land of Israel and as part of the State of Israel."

The Palestinian Authority immediately condemned Netanyahu’s words. PA Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina, said that Israel's continued attempt to create an unacceptable "fait accompli" on the ground would not lead to peace, security or stability.

Netanyahu’s announcement was his first clear pledge to apply sovereignty since the start of this electoral campaign.

While the bulk of the politicians in his party and in the Yemina party often speak of annexing the settlements, such statements from Netanyahu are rare.

Quoted in @washingtonpost on Bibi's speech about ending military rule in settlements https://t.co/DKUdEPxVTcpic.twitter.com/milKRMHNxK

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) September 1, 2019

The Palestinian Authority announced on Sunday that it was unilaterally canceling the division of Judea and Samaria into Areas A, B, and C, which has been in effect since the Oslo Accords were signed.

The PA's local authorities minister, acting under instructions from PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, instructed heads of Palestinian local authorities in Judea and Samaria to prepare long-term development plans for their areas, regardless of whether the lands in question fall under Palestinian or Israeli civil and security control or whether they are open public lands or currently populated.

According to the Oslo Accords, Area A includes all Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria and the PA is in full control of civil and security matters there. Area B falls under civil control of the PA but under Israeli security control, while in Area C, which includes most Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, Israel is in charge of all civil and security matters.

A senior official in Ramallah discussed the PA's decision to disregard the A, B, and C division of Judea and Samaria, telling Israel Hayom that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks in Elkana on Sunday, in which the prime minister announced that Israel would annex more of the West Bank, "had nothing to do with the decision. This is a decision of principle that [PA President Mahmoud] Abbas made as part of the process of detaching [the PA] from Israel."

They have been doing this for years now already, running a coordinated campaign to take over Area C lands through illegal building, migration of settlers. This just makes it official. And Israel has no serious response. https://t.co/IbNyteZCX6

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) September 1, 2019

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman, on Sunday censured a statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he repeated a pledge to apply Israeli sovereignty over settlements in the West Bank.

“This matter is a continuation of the attempts to create an unacceptable status quo that will not lead to peace, security and stability,” the spokesman said in a statement, according to the official PA news site Wafa. “The settlement building policy, attempts to achieve cost-free normalization in violation of the Arab Peace Initiative, and efforts to erode the two state solution are rejected and condemned.”

Addressing elementary school students Sunday morning in the Elkana settlement, Netanyahu echoed a promise he had made days before the last national elections in April: “With the help of God we will apply Jewish sovereignty to all communities, as part of the Land of Israel, and as part of the State of Israel.” A spokesman for the prime minister later clarified that Netanyahu was referring to Jewish communities in the West Bank.

The premier also told the students that no more settlements will be evacuated, as happened in 2005 when the Israeli civilian presence in the Gaza Strip — known collectively as Gush Katif — and parts of the northern West Bank was removed.

Saeb Erekat, the secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee, also responded to Netanyahu’s comments, urging the international community to take action against Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday called on Israelis to boycott Channel 12 and its owner Keshet for its role in producing the HBO series “Our Boys,” which the premier called “anti-Semitic.” In a Facebook post, he wrote Israelis should stop watching the network for “its choice to tarnish us in the world with lies against the State of Israel.”

The post was accompanied by a graphic that included the logos of Channel 12 and its news division, under which was written “fake news.”

“Our Boys” tells the story of the gruesome murder of an Arab teen by Jewish extremists in 2014. The series has been controversial in Israel for choosing to focus on that event while giving little attention to events that precipitated it — the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish teens in the West Bank.

Netanyahu has regularly slammed Channel 12 for its extensive coverage of a series of criminal cases he is a suspect in and has singled out for criticism a number of its reporters, one of whom it was reported Friday will receive a security attachment following threats against him on social media.

WTF is wrong with you @Jerusalem_Post for publishing this piece defending a vile Israel hater? https://t.co/mCUV2NdU82

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) August 31, 2019

What you call "groups," @paulmasonnews, others would more accurately define as terror organizations. At least call them militants.

Israel is hardly "lashing out wildly;" it's targeting Hezbollah and others gaining access to thousands of smart missiles, drones, etc. @NewStatesmanpic.twitter.com/4Sq3JAFjpJ

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 1, 2019

In a surprise move, Qatar’s envoy to the Gaza Strip said Sunday his government would cut its funding for fuel shipments to Gaza, needed to power the enclave’s lone power station, by half, Army Radio reported Sunday.

The statement comes within hours of Israel reportedly restoring shipments of fuel it cut last week over a spate of rocket fire and other violence from the enclave.

Qatar is signed on a contract, together with the UN, to supply three million liters of fuel weekly for electricity production in Gaza through the end of 2019. If the reports are correct, the envoy, Mohammed al-Emadi, appears to have unilaterally withdrawn from the agreement, telling Hamas officials on Sunday that Doha would only pay for 1.5 million liters each week.

The decision could reduce electricity supply in the territory to just six hours a day, Army Radio calculated on Sunday morning.

The reports appear to have caught both Israel and Hamas by surprise. Israel’s COGAT, the Defense Ministry agency that manages contact with Palestinian society and civilian agencies, said it was looking into the reports and had reached out to officials in the Qatari government for clarification.

What @QudsNen did not tell you about this man https://t.co/ahpc2sKvUN

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 1, 2019

“This Iranian threat against one think tank is a threat against all researchers and academics, and that’s why in a short space of time we were able to gather people across the full range of the political spectrum,” said AEI's Danielle Pletka. https://t.co/2VzqtBpWCm

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) September 1, 2019

I decided to create a timeline blog post about the #AdrianDarya1 and its recent news, as well as looking back to April 2019; with links to tweets and articles via @TankerTrackers@MarineTraffic@YorukIsik@LizSly@USTreasury@p_evans my map approximatehttps://t.co/0R9MwfGRHDpic.twitter.com/telaK3d70f

— Seth Frantzman (@sfrantzman) August 31, 2019

The Liberal Party of Canada turfed one of its Montreal-area candidates Friday after a Jewish advocacy group unearthed a series of old statements Guillet made on social media about Israel and U.S. foreign policy.

Hassan Guillet, a former imam whose sermon at the funeral of worshippers murdered at a Quebec City mosque attracted international attention, will no longer be the Liberal candidate in the riding of Saint-Leonard-Saint-Michel, the party announced.

The Liberals said in a statement the comments made by Guillet, who is also an engineer, do not correspond to the party’s values.

“Justin Trudeau and the Liberal team are strongly opposed to anti-Semitic, hateful, racist, Islamophobic, homophobic, sexist remarks and any form of discrimination,” the party said. “The Liberal Party condemns all forms of discrimination, and we always expect our candidates to do the same.”

Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith said Friday it uncovered “a pattern of disturbing anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements” made by the candidate on social media that have since been removed.

Aug. 27 article on CBS’s news site (“Netanyahu warns Hezbollah to ‘calm down’ . . . “) erroneously reports that the Gaza Strip is Israeli-occupied. The article errs: “The Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip is controlled by the Hamas group, which is also supported by Iran.” (Emphasis added.)

In fact, Israel ended the occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005, when it withdrew every last soldier and civilian from the territory. The only two Israelis known to be in the territory are two mentally-challenged civilians held hostage by Hamas which denies them visits from the International Red Cross, in violation of international law.

The article’s byline attributes the story to CBS/AFP. Notably, AFP never refers to the Gaza Strip as Israeli-occupied. Nor does the assertion that the Gaza Strip is “Israeli-occupied” appear to conform with CBS standards.

A number of experts of international have long argued that Israel does not occupy the Gaza Strip. George Mason Law professor Eugene Kontorovich, for example, makes clear (here and here) he disagrees with the view that Gaza is occupied. In the Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law (winter 2011), Solon Solomon states that although Gaza has a sui generis status which requires attention, “post-disengagement Gaza should not be considered ‘occupied’ by Israel” and “it is neither occupied nor under effective Israeli control.”

At the beginning of August BBC World Service radio aired an edition of the programme ‘The Food Chain’ which was titled ‘Food under siege’.

“Emily Thomas meets people who have lived under siege in Aleppo, Syria, the Gaza strip, and Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. They reveal the uncomfortable reality of eating behind siege lines.”

BBC WS food programme: inaccurate, lacks context and promotes Hamas propaganda

BBC Watch submitted a complaint concerning that programme’s repeated inaccurate portrayal of the Gaza Strip as being “under siege”, noting that in the week that this programme was aired twice, 1,768 truckloads of goods entered the Gaza Strip from Israel, including 6,785 tons of food. We pointed out that the “intermittent power supply” portrayed in the programme has nothing to do with Israel and that as well as breaching BBC editorial guidelines on accuracy by leading listeners to wrongly believe that the Gaza strip is “under siege”, it also compromises the BBC’s impartiality seeing as that false claim is one of Hamas’ main talking points.

An Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted Saturday in Brooklyn, in the third suspected anti-Semitic attack in the New York City borough in less than a week.

The attack occurred outside a synagogue in the Midwood neighborhood as Shabbat was ending Saturday evening, according to CBS2 New York.

Quoting police, the network said the victim was on his way home when he saw two people drinking outside the synagogue. Following an apparent argument, one of the men shoved the victim to the ground, took the victim’s belt and hit him in the face with it repeatedly.

The victim received medical treatment for facial and head injuries after the attack.

Police said it was too early to determine whether the incident was a hate crime, but former New York state assemblyman Dov Hikind labeled it as such.

“A young Jewish man was called a ‘F***ing Jew’ and then belted over the head with a metal belt buckle,” he wrote on Twitter.

Israeli distance runner Lonah Chemtai-Salpeter continues to smash records – on Sunday, she clocked a time of 30:04 in the Tilburg Ten Miles race in the Dutch city of Tilburg, cutting a jaw-dropping 17 seconds off the European women's record for the 10K, set by legendary runner Paula Radcliffe in 2003.

Chemtai-Salpeter's result of 30:04 also became a new Israeli women's record for the distance, as well as a course record for the Tilburg Ten Miles race.

"I'm pleased with today's result. I'm not surprised, because training has been going well. This race today was part of my training program for the Marathon World Championships in Doha [Qatar]," Chemtai-Salpeter said after the race.

"This time was confirmation that if you train properly and prepare a training plan professionally, including proper diet, injury prevention, and more, you can become a professional athlete. I'm happy that I broke the European record, and I'm heading in the right direction," Chemtai-Salpeter said.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado and his wife Ana visited the Western Wall on Sunday ahead of the planned opening of a diplomatic office in Jerusalem, a press release on behalf of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation reported.

Alvarado prayed for an hour, placed a note in the Western Wall – as per the Jewish custom that notes placed in the holy site are likely to come true – and signed the guest book.

He thanked God for allowing him to lead his country and wrote, “thank you Israel, our brothers, who keep guard over this holy city.”
He wished that peace will “keep spreading among the nations” and ended with “God bless Honduras.”

It all started with an overheard conversation.

In the U.S. to interview Henry Kissinger, gifted Israeli documentarian Dror Moreh (Oscar-nominated for “The Gatekeepers”) was asked to wait a moment while Kissinger conferred with diplomat Dennis Ross, the key State Department player in America’s decades-long search for peace in the Middle East.

“It was right before the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, and I was a fly on the wall as they candidly discussed a lot of different scenarios,” Moreh says on the telephone from his home in Israel. “I felt for the first time like I was in the White House with the president speaking to his adviser.

“You always get the photo op outside, you never hear the stories of what went on inside the rooms. I said to Dennis, ‘You were the main negotiator for so long between Israel and the Arabs, you were there, would you be willing to speak openly about that?’ He had to think about it, but he said yes.”

Having its world premiere at Telluride this weekend, “The Human Factor” is the compelling documentary that resulted. It’s as significant as it is fascinating, and it is drop dead fascinating, offering not only intimate personal stories involving the likes of Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad but also potent insights into what went wrong so many times in that most incendiary part of the world.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed kicked off a two-day visit to Israel on Sunday by talking briefly with the mother of Avera Mengistu, who is being held in Gaza, and sending words of comfort to the family of Solomon Tekah, the 19-year-old Ethiopian-Israeli teenager killed in June by an off-duty police officer in an incident that sparked massive demonstrations.

Abiy, who is visiting Israel for the first time since being elected in April 2018, went directly to Yad Vashem after arriving on Sunday morning, followed by a meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office with Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu invited Agamesh Mengistu, the mother of Avera Mengistu, to be among those in the receiving line when Abiy arrived, and the two spoke briefly.

Abiy, during his opening comments, sent condolences to the families of three Israelis who lost their lives in Ethiopia this year: Shimon Re’em and Avraham Matzliah, who were killed in the crash of an Ethiopian airliner in March, and Aya Na’aman, who died during a trek in the Danakil Desert in August.

Abiy then said that he would also like to “take this opportunity to pay respects to the family of Solomon Tekah, an Ethiopian-Israeli who lost his life in a tragic event here in Israel.”

In times of tragedy, he said, the two countries “mourn together as two families.”
Speaking two words of Hebrew, he said, “We are brothers.”

Israel is proud to welcome #Ethiopia's Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed Ali, the 4th Ethiopian PM to visit Israel, reaching yet another milestone in the ancient friendship between our peoples.

The most prominent of these myths are:

1) Allegations of the promised land; Palestine is the promised land that God gave to Abraham and his descendants.

2) The lie of a land without a people to a people without a land.

3) The myth of the Jewish people, which turned the religion of Judaism into nationalism, and did not recognize any national affiliation of any Jew other than belonging to the land of Palestine, which they call (Israel).

4) The Diaspora lie that lasted from 70 AD (as they claim) after the Romans demolished the Temple and took the Jews out of Palestine and sold them in the markets of Rome.

5) The racist myth about God's chosen people. Its incitement to the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews, based on which contemporary Zionist rabbis call in all their rulings the legitimacy of killing and liquidating Palestinians.

6) The myth of anti-Semitism, from which they took the cornerstone of the call for the establishment of a national national for them in Palestine, they mean anti-Israel (Israel).

7) The lie of hostility between Zionism and Nazism.

8) Exaggeration of the number of Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

9) Last but not least, their claims that the establishment of the State of Israel is the answer and the right solution to compensate for the Holocaust as stipulated in what they call the Declaration of Independence.

#Israel Air Force S-70A-55 Yanshuf-3 helicopter evacuating two #IDF soldiers who were wounded during #Hezbollah's attack. pic.twitter.com/vnq03Y5JeC

— دودول طلا (@LievanTem) September 1, 2019

The #IDF's deception operation: The helicopter didn't evacuate actually-injured soldiers as the entire exercise was planned in advance as a trick aiming to convince #Hezbollah that it succeeded in harming IDF troops: @RoySharon11 | #Israel#Lebanonpic.twitter.com/ZDjy5dSzxE

— Hezbollah Watch® (@HezbollahWatch) September 1, 2019

"Isra’s death illustrates an ever-present toxic masculinity and control over women’s bodies and lives."

Help get #JusticeforIsraa by exposing the truth: https://t.co/YghpBO6l0Vpic.twitter.com/QkrpBRx63h

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) September 1, 2019

Honor killings are not Muslim and they are not Arab. This is a universal phenomenon which takes places in nearly all corners of the globe, from the United States to Europe. The US president stands accused of rape. Honor killings were legal in Italy until the 1970s and still happen today. Do not use this narrative to reinforce dangerous stereotypes of Arab culture and Islam. Patriarchy exists every where. 

In Palestine, our legal system is the result of a century of occupation and political turmoil. It is a combination of Ottoman, British, Egyptian (in Gaza), Jordanian (in the West bank), and even no system (Area C). Despite various and continued efforts over the last decade, there has been very little reform to this outdated and dysfunctional legal system for two reasons: Israeli military occupation and a corrupt Palestinian Authority both hinder any legal, economic, and social progress. 

When it comes to power structures, women’s bodies are always tools to reinforce some sort of ideal, whether honor, or pink-washing...doubtless some Hebrew articles being published by some Zionist news outlets to try and pink-wash occupation (again lol). 

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu referred to Sunday's barrage on Hezbollah positions in retaliation for their attack on an IDF vehicle on the northern border: "We acted with determination and responsibility yesterday. We kept our citizens safe and also our soldiers.

"The man in the Beirut bunker knows exactly why he's in the bunker. We will continue to maintain Israel's security - at sea, land, and air, and continue to act against the precision missile threat."

Yesterday, Hezbollah operatives fired anti-aircraft missiles at Israel, after which the IDF fired 100 shells in response.

The exchange of fire over the Lebanon-Israel border comes one week after Hezbollah accused Israel of committing a drone attack on its southern Beirut position.

On August 24, Israel also said it had carried out strikes in Syria to avert an Iranian drone attack on the Jewish state. Hezbollah said those strikes killed two of its members.

Israel has carried hundreds of strikes in war-torn Syria, mostly against what it says are Iranian or Hezbollah targets.

PM Netanyahu: We acted yesterday with determination and responsibility. We maintained the security of our citizens and the safety of our soldiers. pic.twitter.com/ZFbp1ncLkW

— Ofir Gendelman (@ofirgendelman) September 2, 2019

The Lebanese government reached out to three countries on Sunday on behalf of Hezbollah in an effort to convey to Israel that it was not interested in any further escalation, as the IDF hurled some 100 shells at targets across the border in response to the terror group’s firing of anti-tank missiles at Israel, a senior defense official said Monday.

The message from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was relayed by Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to the governments of France, Egypt and the US, the official told Israeli reporters in a phone briefing.

“We received inquiries from Lebanon through three countries that implored us that there was no need to respond,” he said.

At 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, the IDF released a statement saying a barrage of Hezbollah anti-tank missiles hit an army base as well as military vehicles near Avivim. The army then launched heavy retaliatory fire.

The senior official briefing reporters said that Israel had not taken Nasrallah’s message into account in its eventual decision to hold its fire. “Nasrallah’s considerations do not bother me, as long as we advance our goals against the threats.”

“The bottom line is that Hezbollah sent us messages to hold our fire,” the official boasted.

Hezbollah’s precision missile program is the State of Israel’s top priority, right after working to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear capability, a top defense official said on Monday, admitting, for the first time, that Israel has carried out attacks against different fronts beyond Syria.

According to the official, Israel has been operating against Iran in several arenas and operated in several additional fronts within a recent 24-hour span of time. "In recent days, we were attacked from several fronts," the official said. "We were in simultaneous attack mode in multiple places."

“Had we had not acted correctly we would be in a different reality today,” he said.

"To prevent this consolidation by Iran, we are carrying out many operations that nobody knows anything about,” he said, adding that the operations are carried out by the IDF and the Mossad.

"Everything we have done during the last few weeks and days was planned and executed exactly how we wanted," he said. “Everything is part of our overall strategy that we are managing in several different ways and in several different arenas.”

The official spoke a day after Hezbollah and Israel exchanged blows along the Lebanese border in an attempt by the Iranian-backed guerilla organization to exact a price from Israel for the bombing of a terrorist cell in Syria in late August. While no IDF troops were injured, Israel fired over 100 artillery shells towards targets in south Lebanon in response to the attack and airlifted two uninjured soldiers to Rambam hospital in Haifa.

“We can’t hide injured troops in Israel for half an hour,” he said, disputing claim in Lebanon that troops had been injured in the attack.

The initial reports and images from the scene in Avivim on Sunday afternoon were horrifying: smoke billowing in the rolling hills of the Galilee after three Kornet anti-tank missiles were fired by Hezbollah toward an IDF position and a military ambulance.

Reports out of Lebanon claimed that Hezbollah had succeeded in hitting a military vehicle “killing and injuring” those inside. The IDF said that a “number of hits were confirmed” after several anti-tank missiles were fired from Lebanon toward an Israeli military base and IDF vehicles.

There were reports of casualties and injuries that were evacuated to hospitals in Safed and Haifa by helicopter.

Residents living within four kilometers of the border were also ordered to remain in their homes and open their bomb shelters.

Even while the picture was unclear, the IDF hit back hard, sending more than 100 artillery shells toward targets in south Lebanon, including an airstrike on the Hezbollah cell which carried out the attack.

But when the smoke cleared, the IDF stated: “There are no injuries or fatalities to our troops.”

Hezbollah retaliated against Israel, but they failed to hit their mark.

The United States voiced concern Sunday after Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire along the Lebanese border, citing the "destabilizing role" of Iranian proxies in the region.

It’s time to stand up to Hezbollah.
It’s time to stand up to Hezbollah.
It’s time to stand up to Hezbollah. pic.twitter.com/mVlxsPp150

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 1, 2019

Confusing confusion

As a form of psychological warfare, following the attack, the Israeli military flew soldiers made up to look as though they were seriously injured to Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center.

The ruse appeared to be successful, with news outlets affiliated with the terror group and others in the Arab world publishing photographs of the “injured soldiers.”

But in a confusing, apparently self-defeating move, within hours, the IDF confirmed that this was a pre-planned exercise in deception.

It is not clear why the military so quickly gave up the jig.

Was there an assessment that Hezbollah would only conduct one reprisal attack if it believed it to be successful? Did a senior politician — Construction and Housing Minister Yoav Gallant — prematurely out the trick by telling a news outlet there were no casualties in the strike? Or was this one minor aspect of some larger psychological warfare stratagem?

The IDF isn’t saying.

While it is clear that the next Hezbollah-Israel confrontation is only a matter of time, some aspects of Sunday’s dramatic border conflict remain obscured by that fog of almost-war.

For one thing, how can the military and political echelon so confidently assure Israel’s civilians that the danger has passed even as the IDF remains on wary alert at the border?

For another, why did Israel expose its decoy operation, when it had worked so effectively? Was it because Rambam hospital refused to play along, and issued a statement saying that the two evacuated soldiers were released without requiring medical treatment? Was it also because somebody, somewhere in the military or political hierarchy, decided that it would be unconscionable to maintain the fiction — to tell the Israeli public that two soldiers had been injured when they had not?

Israel’s Kan TV news on Sunday evening rebroadcast a recent interview with the IDF’s spokesman, Ronen Manelis, in which, when asked precisely about the readiness or otherwise of the spokesman’s unit to disseminate misinformation, Manelis promised that “everything that the IDF says in official statements is true” and that he would not issue “fake” news to either the Israeli public or “the other side.” Kan’s military reporter noted, in this context, that the IDF had not officially claimed that two soldiers were injured. Maybe not, but the decoy footage did the talking for it.

And finally, then, were Hezbollah and Israel really 30 minutes from war? Or, to put it another way, were there really IDF soldiers in that APC half an hour before Hezbollah destroyed it?

The Kan reporter, for one, was adamant that “there were soldiers in [that vehicle] until shortly before the [Hezbollah] shooting.” And maybe there were. In which case, thank heavens they got out when they did. Or maybe there weren’t. Days earlier, after all, the IDF was seen to be deploying army vehicles with dummy soldiers inside, apparently to draw Hezbollah fire.

When the fog of war is deliberately made foggier, even for the best of reasons, it gets harder to know who and what to believe.

Pro-Hezbollah news outlets on Monday highlighted the terror group’s claim that it killed and injured IDF soldiers in a missile attack Sunday afternoon, while casting doubt on Israeli declarations that there were no casualties in the incident.

A story leading the news site of the Hezbollah-sympathetic Al-Mayadeen TV on Monday morning, titled “The resistance carries out its promise,” repeated the Lebanese terror group’s assertion that its operatives destroyed a military vehicle, injuring and killing Israeli soldiers.

The article later mentioned that the IDF and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied that the attack caused injuries, but said their denial “did not last long” as photos of Israeli soldiers transporting injured people spread on social media.

Following the attack on Sunday, which Hezbollah had vowed it would carry out after Israel was blamed for strikes on the group in Syria and Lebanon, pictures and videos emerged on Hebrew and Arabic news sites and social media accounts of what appeared to be an IDF helicopter evacuating wounded soldiers near the border and those soldiers later arriving at Ramban Hospital in Haifa.

The photos initially appeared to suggest Hezbollah’s attack had injured and possibly killed soldiers, but military sources told The Times of Israel on Sunday evening that the IDF had staged an evacuation of soldiers who were not actually injured.

A number of other Israeli news sites published similar reports.
A ‘wounded’ IDF soldier, in a staged evacuation, at the scene of an APC that was struck by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile on the Lebanon border on September 1, 2019. (Screen capture/Twitter)

The military sources said Israel hoped that Hezbollah, thinking it had inflicted casualties, would conclude that it had retaliated sufficiently for the strikes in Lebanon and Syria and hold its fire.

Is @France24_en geographically challenged? Tel Aviv didn't fire back at Hezbollah. IDF forces in the north did. And in any case, Tel Aviv is not Israel's capital, Jerusalem is. Correct the headline s'il vous plaît. https://t.co/mCbH6cDUd7pic.twitter.com/XRU5agsNuu

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 2, 2019

IDF chief Aviv Kohavi on Sunday called on United Nations peacekeepers and the Lebanese government to take action against the Hezbollah terror group’s precision missile project, indicating that Israel would be forced to act if they didn’t.

Kohavi conveyed this position in a meeting with Maj.-Gen. Stefano Del Col, the head of the UN’s Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), following a clash along the border with Hezbollah on Sunday in which the terror group fired anti-tank guided missiles at Israeli positions near the security fence. No soldiers were injured, and the Israel Defense Forces retaliated by firing approximately 100 artillery shells and bombs at Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon.

“We will not accept harm to our citizens or our soldiers, and we will not accept Hezbollah’s precision missile project on Lebanese soil,” Kohavi told Del Col.

This was their first meeting since the IDF chief of staff took up his position in January.

“The state of Lebanon and UNIFIL must bring an end to Iran and Hezbollah’s precision missile project in Lebanon and fully implement [UN] Security Council Resolution 1701,” Kohavi said, referring to the resolution that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

“The current state of affairs is not one we can come to terms with,” he said.

UN Resolution 1701 calls for all armed groups, besides the Lebanese military, to be removed from southern Lebanon, in the area south of the country’s Litani River.

Hezbollah’s attack yesterday emphasizes the need for UNIFIL’s enforcement & Lebanon’s adherence to UNSCR 1701.

As such, the meeting between IDF Chief of General Staff, LTG Aviv Kohavi & UNIFIL commander, Gen. Stefano Del Col yesterday was especially significant. pic.twitter.com/UOX0GAr42V

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 2, 2019

Bizarre headline from the Irish News. Israel and Hezbollah engaged in a firefight yesterday, and Irish UN troops took cover to be safe. Neither Irish personnel nor their base was hit.

This headline is pure fantasy.https://t.co/wZCt0qhMVSpic.twitter.com/czNIUxjVjQ

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 2, 2019

The Palestinian Authority Grand Mufti continues to incite hatred and attempt to spark unrest in Jerusalem.

At a recent meeting of the Palestinian Supreme Fatwa Council headed by PA Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the council "warned" Palestinians of Jews "attacking" their religious and national symbols in Jerusalem. Urging Palestinians to take action, the council said that "the Palestinian people will not stand idly by in the face of this colonialist cancer."

"The [Palestinian] Supreme Fatwa Council warned of the danger of attacks against the religious and national symbols in occupied Jerusalem, and held the occupation government fully responsible for these violations.
This was said during the 176th meeting of the council, led by [PA] Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Territories and Supreme Fatwa Council Chairman Sheikh Muhammad Hussein...
The council expressed its rejection of all types of settlement, and emphasized that the Palestinian people will not stand idly by in the face of this colonialist cancer." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 30, 2019]

Recently, Palestinian Media Watch documented that the PA Mufti deliberately initiated clashes on the Temple Mount. By delaying the second morning prayer on the day of the beginning of the Muslim Eid Al-Adha - Feast of the Sacrifice - which coincided with the day Jews mourn the destruction of the two Temples, the Mufti ensured that many Palestinians would be present on the Temple Mount when the Jews were scheduled to start arriving, thus creating the perfect conditions for violence, which indeed took place.

Prior to this, the Mufti had closed all other mosques in Jerusalem on that day to force observing Palestinians to come and pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque - on the Temple Mount.

When Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas announced in July that he was canceling the PA’s security cooperation with Israel, veteran Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh pointed out that it was the 58th time Abbas had made such a threat. When Abbas issues his 59th threat, perhaps Israel should take him up on it.

Security cooperation is a cornerstone of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which have proved disastrous for Israel. Thousands of Israelis have been murdered in terrorist attacks as a result of this misguided effort.

According to the Social Security 2007 “Civilian Casualties of Acts of Hatred” document, the average number of Israeli fatalities due to terrorist attacks before the accords was 12.5 per year. After the accords, that figure shot up to 106 per year.

Maybe it’s time to begin to phase out these horrendous agreements and work towards a better solution for both Palestinians and Israelis.

One potential solution is to find a way of transitioning to working directly with local Palestinian community leadership, bypassing the PA on security and other matters. PA security forces can ultimately be supervised locally.

This is not a new idea. Prior to Oslo this was the Israeli military’s recommended plan, but at the time neither the Israeli nor the American governments were supportive.

The PA’s security budget is over $1 billion a year, which includes salaries for an estimated 35,000 to 42,000 security personnel in over half a dozen organizations. The PA leads the world in security personnel per residents (only the Vatican and a few islands have higher ratios). Moreover, while the PA’s security cooperation with Israel has saved some lives, according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitoring project there are serious issues with the PA’s record on human rights.

Appeals judges on Monday ordered the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor to reconsider again her refusal to open a formal investigation into the 2010 storming by Israeli forces of a blockade-busting flotilla heading to the Gaza strip.

Presiding Judge Solomy Bossa ordered prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to decide by December 2 whether or not to open a formal probe. The 3-2 majority ruling by the court’s appeals chamber is the latest step in a long legal battle to bring the case before the court.

Bensouda earlier declined a request by the Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros to investigate the May 31, 2010, takeover of a vessel in the flotilla, which was sailing under a Comoros flag.

Israel is not a member state of the court but its nationals could face charges if Bensouda opens an investigation.

In her initial refusal to open a full-scale investigation, Bensouda acknowledged that war crimes may have been committed on the Mavi Marmara ship, where Israeli commandos boarded the ship and were met with violence, and in the ensuing melee 10 Turkish activists belonging to the pro-Hamas IHH group were killed and several other pro-Palestinian activists were wounded. Several of the Israeli soldiers were also wounded. But she decided that the case wasn’t serious enough to merit an ICC probe.

Comoros appealed that decision and sought a judicial review when Bensouda once again refused to investigate the case.

The ICC was set up as a court of last resort intended to prosecute senior leaders allegedly responsible for grave crimes including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity when national courts prove unable or unwilling to take on such cases.

The appeals panel on Monday criticized Bensouda for her rejection of calls by a lower panel of judges to reconsider the case.

French-Israeli member of the French National Assembly Meyer Habib called on French President Emmanuel Macron to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, warning that its continued activity threatened many in France and beyond.

Habib, who represents French citizens living in Israel and other countries in the region, sent a letter to the Élysée Palace several weeks ago asking Macron to join a growing number of nations, including Argentina and Paraguay, which have recently taken steps to outlaw Hezbollah or designate it as a terrorist organization due to its destabilizing activity in the Middle East and around the world as an Iranian proxy.

Hezbollah carried out many terrorist activities against Israel but also against Jewish and Western targets around the world. Members of the Shiite terrorist group perpetrated the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people were killed.

“In 2013, France blacklisted only Hezbollah’s military wing, but not its political wing. Such a distinction is artificial and divorced from reality,” Habib wrote in his letter to Macron. “Hezbollah has been a prototypical terrorist organization for the past forty years … and has caused the death of many citizens of the French Republic.”

The brother of a teenage girl who was killed in a terror bombing late last month was released from the hospital on Monday.

Dvir Shnerb, 19, was wounded at a natural spring near the Dolev settlement — approximately 10 kilometers east of the city of Modiin — in the explosion that killed Rina Shnerb, 17.

He was seriously wounded by shrapnel in his abdomen, and treated at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital alongside his father Eitan Shnerb, who was also injured in the attack.

Speaking to the press after his release, Dvir Shnerb thanked his doctors and the first responders who treated him in the field. His experience was one that people could not understand unless they went through it, he said, saying that the doctors treated him like he was one of them and “not like a stranger.”

He added that he was happy to be leaving the hospital, though he is expected to return for further treatments for the wounds he sustained during the attack.

Speaking from the hospital shortly after his daughter’s funeral last month, Eitan Shnerb described the bombing, stating that “it was a very big roadside bomb. It was black, everything went black … and I heard Dvir shouting to me, and I immediately called to Rina, shouting ‘Rina, Rina,’” he said. “I looked down and saw that she was not alive.”

Israel has offered Hamas economic concessions and will ease its blockade of the Gaza Strip in return for a long-term ceasefire, as tensions rise amid a flurry of rocket attacks emanating from the enclave and mutual threats, Lebanon’s al-Akhbar newspaper reported Friday.

According to the report, the proposal was made by Egyptian intelligence officials during a meeting with top Hamas members, Channel 12 news reported.

While making the proposal, the Egyptians reportedly warned officials from the terror group that Israel is serious in its threats to carry out a wide-ranging military campaign if the violence continues.

Hamas for its part, said it was not responsible for the recent firing of rockets from the coastal enclave toward Israel, blaming “rogue elements.”

Israel maintains that Hamas, as the Strip’s ruler, is ultimately responsible for all attacks emanating from the territory, while saying that it believes the Islamic Jihad is instigating the current unrest.

Israel has lifted a restriction on fuel delivered to Gaza for electricity, a defense official said Monday, a week after cutting the flow by half over a series of violent incidents.

COGAT, A unit of the Defense Ministry that serves as its military liaison to the Palestinians, announced on August 26 it was halving the amount of fuel allowed into Gaza from its territory, after three rockets were fired at the Jewish state the day before.

Israel responded at the time with airstrikes against the Gaza Strip’s ruling Hamas terror group, which openly seeks Israel’s destruction.

A series of other violent incidents in August preceded that.

A further round occurred on August 27, when Gaza terrorists fired a mortar round across the border and an Israeli aircraft struck a Hamas post in northern Gaza in response.

There have not been projectile launches from Gaza since.

The Qatari envoy to the Gaza Strip, Mohammed al-Emadi, reported that their administration will be cutting the weekly fuel shipments they supply to the Gaza Strip by half, it was reported Sunday.

The decision came soon after Israel announced it would allow the supply of diesel fuel to be brought into the Gaza Strip. The country had ceased delivering fuel to Gaza last week after rockets were fired from the Strip at Israel.

The Qatari government did not provide a specific reason for its decision.

Qatar normally funds three million liters of fuel to the Gaza Strip each week, as per a contract signed through the United Nations. The calculated loss of 1.5 million liters of fuel will reportedly only power the coastal enclave for six hours each day, according to Army Radio.

Israel's coordinator of government activities in the territories (COGAT) said the the organization is “looking into the matter with the relevant parties and the government of Qatar.”

Hamas accused the Palestinian Authority’s intelligence service of responsibility on Sunday for the suicide bombings in Gaza last Tuesday, in which three Hamas policemen were killed and six others wounded, according to the London-based Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat.

On Thursday, Hamas security forces in the Gaza Strip arrested nine members of the terrorist cell involved in the attacks, saying that “all of them are from the Islamic Jihad from Shuja’iyya,” referring to the central Gaza City neighborhood.

The Hamas source told Asharq al-Awsat that the PA’s intelligence service had exploited “people with inappropriate leanings and deviant thoughts” to undermine the political situation in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, meanwhile, said on Twitter that “the Palestinian intelligence service under [Palestinian General Security Service chief] Majed Faraj is behind every attempt to foment chaos in the Gaza Strip.”

Faraj, according to Barhoum, “is acting on behalf of the Zionist Shin Bet [security agency].”

Another parade full of peace and love #GAZA - TODAY: #PFLP commemorates the 18th anniversary of the #martyrdom of Abu Ali Mustafa pic.twitter.com/qPBIXqhnWI

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 1, 2019

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei thanking him for supporting the terrorist group, including by supplying weapons, Iranian media reported on Sunday.

Haniyeh reportedly ended the letter with a wish for the realization of Khamenei’s call for the “liberation of Palestine and the victory of the Palestinians over their enemies,” according to Iran’s Fars News Agency.

In July, the deputy head of Hamas’s political branch, Saleh al-Arouri visited Khamenei in Tehran and delivered another letter from Haniyeh to the Iranian leader.

Meanwhile, Iran said that Hezbollah’s attack on Israel on Sunday was a retaliatory move and that its aim was to safeguard Lebanon’s interests, Reuters reported.

“Hezbollah enjoys significant popular support in Lebanon … the Zionist regime’s [Israel] punishment by Hezbollah was a reciprocal measure that displayed the resistance front’s determination to counter threats,” said Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, according to Iran state news agency IRNA.

Iraqi Shiite Militia Leader Abu Alaa Al-Walai: If U.S.-Iran War Breaks out, We Will Fight alongside Iran, All Americans in Iraq Will Be Held Hostages by the Resistance; We Could Easily Send Drone to Strike (U.S.) Embassy pic.twitter.com/6mofU19sNF

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 2, 2019

We are buoyed by recent reports that the Trump administration is accelerating plans for a military coalition to safeguard waters off of Iran and Yemen but the situation is deteriorating quickly. A president known for decisiveness must exercise that muscle now.

Allies like Bahrain are doing what they can to counter Iranian threats in the Gulf by organizing a global maritime security conference this fall, but if we wait until then to act, it may be too late. Similarly, President Trump should work with the United Kingdom, which recently joined the coalition, to recruit additional European membership. Iran shouldn’t be able to use the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to shatter transatlantic unity.

America does not seek to confront Iran, but it cannot shirk its responsibilities to protect its national interests. Standing up to what amounts to guerilla tactics requires the resolve of the world’s most powerful naval force and U.S. allies must line up beside it, shoulder to shoulder, to thwart aggression from Tehran.

Iran is a nation that craves power and the ability to impose fear. America and its allies must combat Iran’s ability to achieve either. Because when the regime is not restrained, their malign intentions come closer to being fully realized and America cedes ground. Dealing with Iran’s aggression is a zero-sum game. There is no middle ground where both free nations led by Washington and the Iranian regime can find a win. Tehran must be disabused of its intentions to continue violating international law and it must happen now, before a mistake happens and lives are lost.

Iran will “take a strong step” away from its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers if Europe cannot offer the country new terms by a deadline at the end of this week, a government spokesman said Monday as top Iranian diplomats traveled to France and Russia for last-minute talks.

The comments from Ali Rabiei reinforced the deadline Iran had set for Friday for Europe to offer it a way to sell its crude oil on the global market. Crushing US sanctions imposed after US President Donald Trump withdrew America from the deal over a year ago have halted those sales.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was in Moscow, while his deputy was to travel to Paris with a team of economists Monday in a renewed diplomatic push.

Rabiei described Iran’s strategy to journalists at Monday’s press conference in Tehran as “commitment for commitment.”

“Iran’s oil should be bought and its money should be accessible to return to Iran,” Rabiei said. “This is the agenda of our talks.”

It’s unclear what the terms of negotiation are. In theory, anyone caught buying Iranian crude oil would be subject to US sanctions and potentially locked out of the American financial market.

Iran has for the first time acknowledged that a rocket explosion took place at its Imam Khomeini Space Center, with an official saying a technical malfunction caused the blast.

Government spokesman Ali Rabiei made the statement on Monday in comments broadcast by Iranian state television. He said the explosion caused no fatalities and also that officials had found no sign that sabotage was involved in the explosion. Satellite photos showed a rocket on a launch pad at the space center had exploded Thursday. The space center is located about 240 kilometers, or 150 miles, southeast of the capital, Tehran.

US President Donald Trump on Friday tweeted a surveillance photo likely taken of the site by an American spy satellite. He wrote that the US had nothing to do with the blast. Asked by reporters where he got the photo, which included annotations pointing to damaged vehicles and the launch gantry, he told reporters, “You’ll have to figure that one out yourself.”

“The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran,” Trump wrote alongside the picture. “I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One.”

Report: Turkey has sentenced 321 lawyers to 2,000 years in jail since 2016.

Question: Why is Turkey sitting the UN committee that oversees human rights NGOs?https://t.co/CDD3rBpzQx@ahval_en

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 2, 2019

Here are 5 ways to call out racism & hate. pic.twitter.com/33o7WCEJph

— Amnesty International (@amnesty) August 31, 2019