Melbourne doctor Ann Drillich, the daughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, is a rare kind of Jew who owns a Catholic church. The brick structure, Our Lady of the Scapular, stands on Drillich’s ancestral property in the medieval town of Tarnów, near Kraków. Her late mother, Blanka Drillich née Goldman, inherited the land at the end of the second world war. Aged 18, Blanka was the sole living heir to the Goldman estate, all others perished in the town’s ghetto: she found her mother shot dead in her bed.

But Drillich has never been inside her church.

“I tried to enter it once,” she recalls. “It was locked.”

The reason: in 1987, with the help of a trusted friend of the Drillichs, the Catholic church in Poland effectively stole the land and built the house of worship on the site. The Drillichs didn’t know. Ann Drillich only learned of the theft in 2010 when, as heir, she ordered a public records search about her family’s estate.

“At first it took a while to settle in, the shock of the betrayal,” she says. “And the idea that behind the injustice is a church.

“My mother’s family was one of the most prominent in town. It was like they had stolen not just our land, but my family’s history.”

And so after the shock settled, she sued.

“How could I not?” she asks.

So began an expensive, traumatic and escalating battle that pitched this meticulous woman with a scientific sensibility against a powerful religious institution.

The church appealed. Stalled. Obstructed. Counter-sued. The Polish courts, meanwhile, delivered justice to Drillich, again and again. And yet again, in a final ruling in 2016 when three district court judges found the church had acted in “bad faith” when it acquired the “abandoned” land. (h/t Yerushalimey)

Numerous Rockland County Republican elected officials in February previewed the controversial video put out by the party that critics have branded as anti-Semitic for warning of a “takeover” by the Hasidic Jewish community, The Post has learned.

The early look at the digital attack ad — some six months before its public release — shows that the targeting of the ultra-orthodox community was a well-thought-out, deliberate strategy, sources said.

No one in the room objected to it, a GOP source who attended the February meeting told The Post.

“The video was introduced by Lawrence Garvey [the county GOP leader] and played in front of a room of 20-35 people. The entire video was played with Ed Day [the Rockland County executive] there,” the source said.

“We were told we are raising money for the county legislators’ races and unveiling a strategy and we saw the video then. I thought it was a bad strategy,” the source said.

But the source didn’t raise an objection at the time.

In a tweet, the Republican Jewish Coalition wrote, “This video is absolutely despicable. It is pure anti-Semitism … . The Rockland County Republican Party is an embarrassment and has no place associating itself with our party.”

Dov Hikind, a former Democratic New York state assemblyman from Brooklyn, tweeted that the video is a “shocking & brazen display of antisemitism! [sic]The Republican Party of Rockland Cty [sic] has the audacity to put out this vile trash that amounts to ‘the Jews are taking over’ with ‘Jewish money and power’!”

Following the criticism, the video was removed from the Rockland County Republican Party’s Facebook page, although others have downloaded it, and it can still be found online.

Despite the backlash, Rockland County Republicans insist their message must be heard. Lawrence Garvey, the county’s Republican chairman, claimed the issue is not a religious one, but a matter of “right and wrong.”

“For those not living in Rockland, it is harder to see a real and unique problem that exists here. The people of Rockland have become desperate for attention to the problems facing our communities and many live every day with the threat of losing their homes and neighborhoods,” he wrote in a statement. “Anyone who dares speak up about overdevelopment, corruption or education is immediately labeled as anti-Semitic without any concern for facts or without any idea of the true issues at hand.”

Fellow Republican, Rockland County Executive Ed Day, said in a statement, “While the content of the video is factual, the tone and undercurrent is unacceptable. … I have a great deal of respect for our Jewish neighbors and want them to know that as their county executive, I will always stand up against hatred. That said, the concerns raised about overdevelopment are accurate, well-grounded and desperately need to be addressed, but must be done in a way free of rhetoric and rancor.”

An Iranian judo star said he is afraid to return home after exposing and criticizing his government’s pressure on him to deliberately lose in last week’s World Championships in Tokyo to avoid a potential bout against an Israeli opponent.

Saeid Mollaei, the defending heavyweight world champion, fled to Berlin after the championships, where he had been hoping to secure a place at the 2020 Olympic games.

“I could have been the world champion,” he said in an interview published by the International Judo Federation on Sunday. “I fought and won against an Olympic champion, an Olympics bronze-medalist and other opponents. I beat all of them. I even dreamed of the championship title… But that was not my fate: I could not compete because of the law in my country, and because I was scared of consequences for my family and myself.”

Mollaei said that he was coerced into losing his semifinal bout so as not to risk facing Israel’s Sagi Muki, the eventual winner, in the Tokyo final. The IJF said Mollaei had been pressured to lose by Iranian deputy sports minister Davar Zani. Mollaei was also reportedly pressured to bow out by Iranian Olympic Committee president Reza Salehi Amiri, who told him minutes before his semifinal match last Wednesday that Iranian security services were at his parents’ house in Tehran.

The IJF said an official from the Iranian embassy in Tokyo pretending to be a coach gained access to a restricted area to coerce the 27-year-old Tehran native to lose the match as he warmed up on the sidelines.

Mollaei, who was on track to face Muki in the finals of the men’s under-81 kilogram class, told the IJF that he bowed to the pressure and deliberately lost to Belgium’s Matthias Casse in the semifinals to avoid having to face the Israeli athlete, who ended up winning gold.

Saeid Mollaei (IRI) and Sagi Muki (ISR) were supposed to be the picture to mark history: Iran and Israel competing against each other and being present on the same podium at the World Judo Championships in Tokyo. For years, Iranian athletes have been prohibited from competing in any sport against Israel. From questionable injuries, to throwing matches, Iranian athletes across all sports have been ordered to crush their own dreams. (h/t vwVwwVwv)

The head of the International Judo Federation reportedly threatened to bar Iran from participating in the Olympics — in any sport — if its judoka refused to face Israel’s Sagi Muki at the sport’s World Championship last week in Tokyo.

Shortly before Iranian competitor Saeid Mollaei allegedly threw his semifinal battle against Belgium’s Matthias Casse on Wednesday, the athlete received a phone call from Iran, Israel’s Army Radio reported Sunday.

It was his mother, the report said, who begged him not to win the round and risk facing an Israeli competitor in the final, when he would be forced under the sport’s rules to bow to his opponent, and face the risk of later standing next to Muki with Israel’s anthem “Hatikva” playing in the hall.

The call was reported to International Judo Federation chief Marius Vizer, reportedly by a staffer attached by Vizer to the Iranian delegation for the express purpose of keeping tabs on any attempts to pressure the Iranian competitor to throw a match.

In the past Iran has forbidden its athletes from competing against Israelis. In May, after Vizer wrote to the head of the Iranian Judo Federation to protest the practice, the international body said it had reached an agreement with Iran to end the boycott. Despite a May 9 letter from Iranian judo and Olympic officials to Vizer promising to “comply with the Olympic charter and principles of non-discrimination,” the head of Iran’s Olympic committee, apparently under pressure over the commitment, later denied it had been made.

This weekend I went to Brighton. It was a quick getaway. I have been working flat out on a report into Amnesty International and having reached the end of a section, had a chance to get the kids away for a short break just before they return to school.

I used to like Brighton. It is an easy journey and the town is fun, but recently it has become a hub for antisemites. They’ve held several really nasty events and just a couple of weeks ago Chris Williamson was back in town. The Jew-haters have got a few events planned for when the Labour Party Conference comes back to Brighton in September.

Saturday in Brighton
On Saturday morning each of us went off to do ‘our own thing’ and we arranged to meet up for lunch by the Clock Tower. For those who don’t know Brighton, the Clock Tower is a grade 2 listed building situated right in the centre of town. It is next to the Churchill Square shopping centre, on the main road from the Station, near the beach and a good starting point for entry into the maze of narrow streets full of vintage stores and atmospheric cafes called the ‘Lanes’. If you were to choose a central meeting point in Brighton, you can’t go wrong with the Clock Tower.

I arrived at the Clock Tower sometime around 12:30 and sat to wait for my family. Brighton PSC were also in town. Each week they set up a stall at the Clock Tower and a bunch of ageing Marxists, ignorant fools and antisemites gather together to tell lies to anyone who will listen. After a while I saw them looking at me and talking. One had clearly ‘clocked’ me at the Clock Tower and had begun to tell everyone I was there.

They became visibly agitated and unsettled. I ignored them but began to notice cameras were raised to take photos of me. One, then another, then another. About six or seven took photos in total. One guy circled around pretending to take a ‘video’ of the surrounding area, he slowed as he passed me, turned the camera directly towards me, and filmed a few seconds of footage as he walked past. None of this fazes me. I have been doing this far too long and I know what the PSC are. Branches of the PSC are little more than pockets of antisemitism, detached from the mother ship to allow the main PSC organisation a little ‘deniability’.

Liberal economic orthodoxies do more to block the traditional path to better jobs and entry to the middle class that served past generations so well than to ease their way. For example, raising minimum wages is part of the left-wing catechism, though hiking hourly rates for workers always leads to fewer jobs as businesses fire people they can no longer afford to pay.

This leveling impulse is also having a deleterious impact on the other engine of social mobility: education.

In New York City, liberal elites led by Mayor Bill de Blasio are seeking to undermine, if not completely abolish, public schools that cater to gifted students. Such special schools offered the children of the Jewish poor a way to exploit their talents and ascend to the heights of every sector of American life. But while they have allowed so much of public education to become a dead-end for today’s children trapped in poverty, liberals now see schools for gifted kids as an obstacle to schemes that are more interested in racial quotas than advancement.

It is any wonder then that today’s average voter rejects liberal elites and helped elect Donald Trump president? They know that these top-down schemes are more likely to hurt than help them and rightly resent being told that their opposition makes them “deplorables.”

Concern for the poor is deeply embedded in Jewish faith, law, and tradition. Yet blue-collar Americans are far more likely to view liberal fixes as a threat to their jobs and their values. Those who seek to revive the spirit of the Jewish labor movement should recognize that what they are selling is exactly the sort of limousine liberalism that today’s American workers understand is out of touch with their needs.

As Congresswomen, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib should be working to build and not destroy bridges between their people and the US. Their fierce attacks on Israel and the US administration, unfortunately, have merely served to embolden Palestinian hardliners and fuel hate against Israelis and Americans. They should have been worried that the US Embassy was forced to cancel an event to help Palestinians because of threats and calls for a boycott. It would have been helpful had the Congresswomen made an effort to persuade Palestinian Authority officials to resume their relations with the US administration and explore ways of boosting the Palestinian economy and improving living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

If they really cared about the Palestinian Arabs, they would be campaigning against the PA and Hamas leaders engaged in a power struggle over money and power and they should be calling for reforms and democracy under the PA and Hamas. The least they could do is demand an end to human rights violations by the PA and Hamas or demand that they hold long overdue presidential and parliamentary elections. They could also demand an end to the crackdown on freedom of speech under the PA and Hamas … but they have entirely different agendas.

For all these reasons, Israel was wise to deny entry to Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. These are not good-faith actors earnestly seeking to visit the Holy Land to learn about its people, history and culture. The two Congresswomen have First Amendment rights - as do all American citizens - to express their beliefs. But Israel, as a sovereign nation like the United States, also has every right to decide who can and cannot enter its borders and for what purpose. No country on earth would allow its sworn enemies to use its territory as a base from which to continue an insidious campaign of de-legitimization.

Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arabs are free, can vote and can live in peace with equal rights. They also hold important position in Israeli industries, are members of Israel’s parliament, and Salim Joubran is an Israeli Arab and former judge on the Supreme Court of Israel who served as a Supreme Court justice from 2003 and became a permanent member in May 2004………but these facts do not form part of the hidden agenda of Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib to undermine and ultimately destroy Israel…….. and the Democrats’ deafening silence when it comes to these two is outrageous.

No question about it—Bernie Sanders was born a Jew. So what? Why is it that being born Jewish makes a person identified as a lifetime Jew, while being born a Christian or any other religion, requires some continuous practices, belief and affirmations of the religion, in order to maintain a religious identity?

To a serious, practicing Jew, the fact that Bernie Sanders makes use of his Jewish birthright, is somewhat disturbing. Senator Sanders has done almost nothing Jewish throughout his entire life. His disdain for Israel, his recent support for Linda Sarsour, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, his hatred of Prime Minister Netanyahu, makes him much more of a “Sonay Yisrael—an Israel hater,” than a supporter of the Jewish state.

So why is it that a Jew, who has dropped virtually everything Jewish from his life, from keeping Kosher to observing the Sabbath to even marrying Jewish, is still regarded as a Jew - of course, halakhically, he may be, but why should the media care about that? Why does the mainstream media refer to the Senator as if he were a Torah scholar who prays 3 times a day facing Jerusalem? The truth is that Bernie Sanders refers to his religion of birth only to validate his socialist and progressive core beliefs, which are actually quite removed from Jewish teachings and values.

Bernie Sanders refuses to confront the reality that his children are not Jewish; nor does he wish to face up to the concept that 3500 years of Jewish lineage in the Sanders family has ended with him. Yet Sanders holds on to the Jewish label because it happens to be his only vehicle to any historical credibility. His beliefs are so far out of the mainstream of American values, that Judaism is his only identifier that comports in any way with the American Founding Fathers’ ideals.

What is BDS, the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” movement against Israel? BDS myths characterize the campaign as grass roots social justice fighting for human rights against apartheid. But the facts are entirely different: BDS is as racist and destructive as it is dishonest.

We break down the BDS myths and facts you need to know.
BDS Myth: It’s a grassroots protest movement.

Fact: BDS leadership includes designated terror organizations.

The BDS “National Committee” includes the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine. This council includes several groups designated by much of the world as terrorist organizations: including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
BDS Myth: Its goal is to end the Gaza blockade and West Bank occupation force Israel to go back to the 1967 boundaries.

Fact: According to the leaders of BDS its purpose is to put an end to Israel as the world’s only Jewish state. Here is what three leading BDS figures say in their own words:

1) Omar Barghouti, co-founder, BDS:
Definitely most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, a rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, would ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.

(Separately he clarifies that “Palestine” means all of Israel.)

In later statements, Tlaib and Omar refused to address any of these issues and lied regarding the “opportunity missed” to meet with Israeli as well as Palestinian officials. They later went on to share a cartoon by the antisemitic French illustrator Latuff, previously a finalist in the Iranian “Holocaust Cartoon Contest,” showing them being “silenced” by Trump and Netanyahu.

In a press conference, Omar demanded that the US cut aid to Israel and give “full rights to Palestinians.” Some left-wing Democrats demanded a halt to Congressional travel to Israel, and a wider group of Democrats were reported to be considering retaliatory action against the Israeli ambassador to the US. Unsurprisingly, Tlaib quickly used the incident in fundraising appeals.

The Democratic presidential candidates were challenged on the issue of Tlaib and Omar’s association with antisemites, but none responded. Some critics from the left expressed astonishment that Tlaib and Omar’s association with an antisemitic organization and sharing of antisemitic materials were not being challenged by fellow Democrats. But an arguably stronger reaction came from Jewish BDS supporters such as Peter Beinart, who claimed that the entire incident was designed to “silence” Tlaib and Omar and “hide the occupation,” among other things.

In a sign that the consensus on the left is not absolute, gadfly late night host Bill Maher stated that the BDS movement was a “b***shit purity test by people who want to appear woke but actually slept through history class.” In response, Tlaib called for a boycott of his show and compared Israel to apartheid South Africa. Maher then mocked Tlaib, saying, “Some people have one move only: boycott. Cancel. Make-go-away. … But here’s the thing, the house voted 318 to 17 to condemn the #BDS movement, including 93 percent of Dems. Does Tlaib want to boycott 93 percent of her own party?”

As millions of students pack up and return to the dorms for the start of a new academic year, so too returns the scourge of the on-campus Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s ideology of anti-Zionism, Jew-hatred, and radical indoctrination.

Since 2005, over 130 BDS measures have been entertained by student council bodies at 68 of the nation’s most elite university campuses. At Barnard College, Brown University, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, Wesleyan University, and dozens more, these resolutions have passed — an unfortunate truth that is indicative of the grip BDS maintains among many young people.

As graduates of these universities progress into positions as titans of industry, politicians, and all manner of movers and shakers, they risk carrying with them the skewed BDS stance on Israel’s right to self-determination and the propagation of anti-Semitic rhetoric that is synonymous with BDS activism. As such, they risk fundamentally endangering Jewish presence in society and institutions in the years ahead.

Whether or not oftentimes-gullible students recognize the movement for what it truly is, the BDS phenomenon rejects the value of liberal discourse by advocating for intolerance and promoting divisiveness and discrimination under the guise of a political position.

First and foremost, the BDS movement is inextricably linked to recognized anti-Semitic, racist terror organizations. Indeed, BDS quietly serves as the international mainstream propaganda arm of these groups. “More than 30 Hamas and [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)] operatives hold senior positions within BDS advocacy organizations. Known terrorists are invited to national conventions of BDS affiliates, radicalizing followers to view terror acts as legitimate resistance,” noted Haym Salomon Center senior fellow Ziva Dahl in American Spectator. PFLP has hijacked dozens of planes since 1968 and has organized countless bombings against Israeli and Jewish civilians. Hamas continues to rule the Gaza Strip with an iron fist, launching rockets and incendiary balloons on a seemingly daily basis as well as digging terror tunnels beneath the border between Gaza and Israel. Likewise, it ought to come as no surprise that the Iranian regime, responsible for some 150,000 rockets directed at Israel from Lebanon, promotes the BDS movement. By proxy, college students subscribing to BDS are thereby perpetuating a pro-terrorist, pro-violence ideology in the halls of the world’s most exclusive and prestigious academic institutions.

The issue, @smh, is Israel's right to exist. This has nothing to do with the status the territories Israel has controlled since 1967. There's no reason to blur the lines here; please amend this article.https://t.co/PsYkfvhATjpic.twitter.com/4Dce1Yq0Lx

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 2, 2019

The Palestinian BDS National Committee called for the boycott of Israeli facial recognition technology firm AnyVision on Friday, labeling the company as "complicit in the Israeli occupation and repression of Palestinians."

"AnyVision plays a direct role in Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, which includes Israel’s illegal wall and military checkpoints," the committee wrote in a statement.

"AnyVision also maintains cameras for the Israeli military deep inside the West Bank to spy on Palestinians and enable the Israeli military’s illegal targeting of civilians."

According to the IDF, the company is part of a program to upgrade military checkpoints in the West Bank through adding technology for new "identification and inspection stations."

The facial recognition company has offices in Tel Aviv, New York, Mexico, London, Belfast and Singapore. It was founded in 2015 and has quickly gained investments, contracts and joint ventures with the Israeli military, governments and companies internationally.

In August, Human Rights Watch called on Microsoft to review its investments in AnyVision, given the “human rights risk associated with the investment in a company that’s providing [facial recognition] technology to an occupying power.”

Generously drizzle the interviewer’s credulousness over a heaping helping of anti-Israel propaganda, hold the professional journalistic standards of transparency, and what do you get? A caustic recipe for anti-Israel falsehoods and journalistic malfeasance. That toxic fare was on display Aug. 25, with Hari Sreenivasan’s PBS Newshour interview with Yasmin Khan, author of the new book “Zaitoun: Recipes from the Palestinian Kitchen.”

Host and guest alike depict Khan’s intention to “help foster cultural understanding,” as PBS’ Sreenivasan puts it. He invokes “the old idea of breaking bread with your neighbor or your enemy,” and later Khan quotes what she claims is “this old Jewish proverb”: “my enemy is just a person whose story I haven’t yet heard.” Khan presents herself as a human rights worker, trained in law, “really interested in sharing people’s stories,” who believes that “food can offer a vehicle that we can better understand each other.” Expounding on her purported mission to break down walls, Khan says her her passion is to “just share stories and try to break down this dehumanization that too often happens when we’re reporting on the Middle East, and build connection because I really believe that at the end of the day, humans, no matter where we are in the world, have got to do more to unite us than divide us.”

Khan is able to pull off this charade about a noble mission of building connection only thanks to PBS’ total failure to abide by the network’s lofty commitment to transparency. PBS Editorial Standards and Practice require: “Sources must be clearly identified.” And yet, despite the many statements depicting Khan as a builder of connections, including across enemy lines, PBS never discloses her past activity as a senior global justice campaigner of the anti-Israel NGO War on Want to promote an anti-Israel boycott, a bitter effort diametrically opposed to her sweet declarations about tearing down barriers. Indeed, as a BDS activist, Khan has a proven history of dividing people and dehumanizing the other.

Moreover, even under her current guise as a cookbook writer who says “food can be such a useful vehicle for exploring places of conflict,” Khan continues to actively peddle falsehoods. Khan erroneously asserts that Israel’s “blockade of Gaza that’s left over 80 percent of Gazans dependent on U.N. food aid to survive.” This is incorrect. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), “more than half the population depends on food aid from the international community.”

Following a complaint from BBC Watch in February of this year the BBC News website amended three reports promoting a similar statement in order to clarify that the unverified claim that most of the Lebanese casualties were civilians came from the Lebanese government.

As those three reports stated, 43 Israeli civilians were killed during that conflict which means that the BBC is now claiming that at least 957 Lebanese civilians also died.

Estimates of the total number of Lebanese casualties during that 2006 war range from 1,035 to 1,200. As has been pointed out here on several previous occasions, while the Lebanese authorities did not differentiate between civilians and combatants, Lebanese officials did report even before the conflict was over that some 500 of the dead were Hizballah personnel and UN officials gave similar figures while Israeli estimates stand at around 600 (of whom 450 were identified with certainty: see page 55 here). In August 2006 the BBC News website acknowledged that “there are no reliable figures” for the number of Hizballah combatants killed in the war that had just ended at the time.

In other words, despite having acknowledged seven months ago that the civilian casualty figures it quoted were based on statements made by a government held hostage by the Iranian terrorist proxy Hizballah, the BBC News website has resumed the practice of promoting inflated Lebanese civilian casualty figures that it has not independently verified.

Following a surge in violent attacks against Israelis in the autumn of 2015, the BBC began using this standard mantra:
“Israel says Palestinian incitement has fuelled the attacks. The Palestinian leadership has blamed frustration rooted in decades of Israeli occupation.”

As has been noted here repeatedly:
“…the BBC has consistently failed to provide its audiences with any serious reporting on the topic of incitement and glorification of terrorism by Palestinian officials. Readers are hence unable to judge for themselves whether or not what ‘Israel says’ is accurate.”

Neither – as we have also previously documented – have BBC audiences seen any comprehensive reporting on the issue of the incitement and glorification of terrorism found in Palestinian schoolbooks, official PA radio and TV children’s programmes and Hamas’ online children’s ‘magazine’.

Last week the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination published a report following a reportedly stormy review earlier in the month.

Germany’s president asked for forgiveness for his country on Sunday for the suffering of the Polish people during World War Two as Poland marked 80 years since the Nazi German invasion that unleashed the deadliest conflict in human history.

The ceremonies began at 4:30 am in the small town of Wielun, site of one of the first bombings of the war on Sept. 1, 1939, with speeches by Polish President Andrzej Duda and his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Few places saw death and destruction on the scale of Poland. It lost about a fifth of its population, including the vast majority of its 3 million Jewish citizens.

After the war, its shattered capital of Warsaw had to rise again from ruins and Poland remained under Soviet domination until 1989.

“As a German guest I walk before you here barefoot. I look back in gratitude to the Polish people’s fight for freedom. I bow sorrowfully before the suffering of the victim,” Steinmeier said at event later in Warsaw.

“I ask for forgiveness for Germany’s historical guilt. I profess to our lasting responsibility.”

Eighty years ago, Germany invaded Poland and the world changed forever. To mark the outbreak of World War II, high-level dignitaries from 40 countries arrived in Warsaw to participate in special memorial events on Sunday, including US Vice President Mike Pence and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Polish President Andrzej Duda, who is hosting the events, sat down with Israel Hayom for a lengthy interview to discuss how his nation was coping with the effects of the deadliest of all wars, during which the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, including 3 million Polish Jews.

Duda says the traumatic effects of the war are very much felt today in his country. He also insists that Poland never collaborated with Nazi Germany.

The following is a transcript of the interview, which was edited for clarity.

Q: Eighty years ago Germany attacked and invaded Poland, leading to World War II in Europe. Eighty years later, what does this day mean for Poland and for you personally?

"It is one of the saddest and most tragic dates in the whole world history. One has to remember that for 123 years there was no Poland. It was divided between its three neighbors – Russia, Prussia, and Austria – and it disappeared. The Poles tried to regain their independence in three bloody uprisings. After World War I, in 1918, Poland finally regained its independence, reappeared on the map of Europe and developed dynamically until September 1, 1939. You can only imagine what Poland would have become if this Nazi German invasion wouldn’t have taken place. This day started a conflict that claimed the lives of 6 million Polish citizens, in fighting but first and foremost murdered by the Nazis and the Soviets. Among those 6 million, and this has to be stressed, were 3 million Jews of Polish nationality who were the victims of the German-perpetrated Holocaust. For me personally, September 1 is the most tragic day in the history of the Polish nation as a whole. Remember that after the war, we became part of the Soviet sphere of influence, we were betrayed in Yalta, and for another 40 years, we were not a sovereign country. That was the Poland I was born in. I can say that up until this day we can witness the negative effects of World War II, both socially and economically."

In the third such attack within a week, an Orthodox Jewish man has been assaulted in Brooklyn.

New York’s local CBS affiliate reported that the attack took place in Midwood on Saturday just after the Sabbath.

According to local blog CrownHeights.info, the victim saw two men drinking in front of a synagogue before they began insulting him with anti-Jewish slurs. One of the men knocked the victim over and began hitting him in the face with his own belt.

New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind said of the attack, “A young Jewish man was called a f***ing Jew and then belted over the head with a metal belt buckle!”

Last Thursday, another Orthodox Jewish man suffered injuries to his eye when he was attacked in his vehicle.

On Tuesday, another man was severely beaten with a rock, knocking out two teeth and breaking his nose.

On Friday, the New York Police Department said they were stepping up patrols in response to the attacks.

The members of the Silver Gull Beach Club in Queens, New York were shocked when the club notified them that the playground would be closed. The New York Times reported that club management said the closure was “due to the recent and increasing incidence of vandalism from within the club.”

Members quickly heard that the playground was covered in antisemitic and racist graffiti including racial slurs against black people, a red swastika, the words "Heil Hitler," The Times reported. Additionally, The Times published a photo of a door with the words "gas chamber" smeared on it in red paint.

New York has seen an increase in hate crimes, and according to the NYPD, as of June 2, 2019, the number of reported antisemitic crimes rose from 58 in 2018 to 110 in 2019.

Some Silver Gull members spoke with The Times, including Harold Bretstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors.

“You can gloss it over. You can talk about it being a prank, but it’s much more than a prank, especially in terms of the times we’re living in when you’re seeing a rise in antisemitism everywhere,” Bretstein told The Times.

A member of the city council of an Italian town listed “antisemitic” as his religious views on Facebook, Italian media reported on Sunday.

Stefano Altinier, 35, was elected in the city council of Gorizia, North East of the Italian peninsula, in 2017. He belongs to the right-wing party League, whose leader Matteo Salvini recently triggered a political crisis, pulling the plug from League’s coalition with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement.

According to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Altinier deleted the entry on Friday after being alerted that someone had spotted his profile. However, screenshots of his Facebook page started to circulate online.

“The opposition is trying to discredit me in a boorish way. I have always thought that social media do not reflect reality. Some people claim to exercise a certain profession or to be married, and it happens not to be true. I have never been antisemitic, I have even attended a Hanukkah celebration once, and I’m fascinated by the history and tradition of this people,” Altinier said.

Altinier also claimed that he was “a teenager” when he compiled his Facebook profile identifying his religious views as antisemitic, “ten or fifteen years ago.”

Pictures of Thousands of Yeshiva University (YU) students were found posted on the neo-Nazi forum Vanguard News Network (VNN) on Friday, according to the YU Observer.

The Observer was informed of the threads, which included photos and names of Jewish people attending or teaching at the university. One of those threads was created in early June 2018 and dissected the "physical defects" of a Jewish journalist's "Jewishness" as well as listing the YU students and faculty as additional examples of the Jewish "phenotype."

Different comments preceding the thread included criticism of Jewish people for being ugly because of the "money sucked up their big noses" and that call the photographs are "proof that [Jews] are creatures of Satan hell-bent on destroying the White race."

Most of the photos were found on the YU website and were taken at several of the university's official events. Thousands of pictures and names were posted altogether, according to the Observer, including those of YU high schools students.

YU is working on a case with the NYPD to send a cease and desist order to VNN for harassment. Although there are no explicit threats to a physical attack on the people whose pictures and names were posted, the posts nevertheless brought about great concern.

Passengers on a Metrolink tram in Manchester were forced on Thursday to defend a young orthodox charedi Jewish couple from a man who repeatedly harassed them about “Gaza”.

As the tram passed through the city centre on the Bury line at approximately 22:30 on Thursday evening, a young black man began accosting the Jewish couple, demanding that they answer questions about Gaza. The man approached the couple but they then moved away from him and other passengers moved to stand between them.

As the man claimed: “He doesn’t care about the situation, I know for a fact” another passenger retorted: “Tell me have you been smoking something? You’re full of it.” Another interjected: “He’s been drinking. I’d close that mouth, mate.”

The man continued to shout “Does he know about Gaza?” across the carriage, forcing other passengers to stand up to him, physically barring his way and at points restraining him as he tried to approach the couple. One man said: “I’m not having this in my city” and another challenged him: “What right have you to ask a question of anybody?” The man kept calling out to the Jewish couple, telling the husband: “Rabbi, come here, mate.” When asked whether he was from Manchester, the man said he was from “Palestine”.

Another Jewish passenger asked the man why he was not asking her about Gaza, enquiring whether it was because she was not recognisably Jewish from her attire. The man was momentarily speechless as other Mancunians unanimously said: “Exactly!”

On Thursday, Fitch Ratings affirmed Israel’s long-term foreign-currency issuer default rating of A+, with a stable outlook. In early August, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) did the same.

Fitch stated Israel’s macroeconomic performance has been strong, adding that its five-year average real GDP growth is “stronger than rating category peers and growth volatility has been lower.” The agency forecasts that Israel’s growth will remain strong in 2020-2021 despite fiscal tightening, close to three percent per year. Part of the tightening is expected to be alleviated by the start of gas output from the Leviathan offshore field in 2020. Fitch has also stated Israel’s external balance sheet remains strong, its international liquidity ratio has continued to improve, and its net external creditor position remains significantly stronger than the A median and stronger than the AA median.

However, Fitch stated Israel’s public finances remain weak relative to the A category, and that its central government budget deficit widened to 2.9 percent of GDP in 2018, though it was on target. The agency forecasts that the deficit will grow to 3.6 percent of GDP in 2019 — in line with the forecasts of the Israeli Ministry of Finance — meaning the government debt/GDP will continue to rise in the next two years. Furthermore, despite a downward trend seen since 2007, which ended in 2018, Israel’s debt/GDP for 2018, 61 percent, was still much higher than the A median of 49 percent.

The Friends of Zion (FOZ) Museum in Jerusalem awarded the Friends of Zion Award to Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and his steadfast support for the State of Israel and the Jewish people. The ceremony was held on Sunday, following the opening of the new Honduran diplomatic office in Jerusalem.

The Friends of Zion Award is the FOZ Museum’s highest honor and is presented to world leaders who, the organization says, have gone “above and beyond” for the Jewish state. The award ceremony was held at the museum, with the presidential delegation of Honduras, including the first lady; Foreign Minister Lisandro Rosales, who was also awarded during the ceremony with the “Friends of Zion Psalms 122 Tribute”; and Honduran Ambassador to Israel Mario Castillo.

After a tour of the FOZ Museum, Dr. Mike Evans, founder and international chairman of the Friends of Zion Heritage Center, said that “When people have the moral courage to stand up and do the right thing, they need to be rewarded.”

After the award ceremony honoring Honduran support for the State of Israel, Hernández thanked the FOZ Museum for all their great work strengthening Israel’s relations around the world. “We admire the people of Israel,” he said. “It has been a blessing for us even before we made this decision, in our hearts and in our minds.”

FOZ has honored a number of heads of state for their pro-Israel accomplishments and has encouraged them to further their relations with the State of Israel.

Eighty years have passed since the start of the World War Two on September 1, 1939, an anniversary being marked by Yad Vashem with a new online exhibition, portraying the experiences of a dozen Jewish families in those first months, when they had no way of knowing the events that were going to unfold.

The exhibition, “1939: Jewish Families on the Brink of War,” describes the progression of the war using Holocaust-era documents, photographs and artifacts from Yad Vashem’s archives, many which were donated by Holocaust survivors and families.

One diary entry, written by Mira Zabludowski in September 1939, records her thoughts during the first months of the German occupation of Warsaw. She had already immigrated to pre-state Palestine and was visiting her parents in Warsaw at the time the war broke out.

“The time is 4:00 p.m. The sound of artillery fire has been going on nonstop for twenty hours. The noise of machine guns and the thunder of the planes overhead have been reverberating in the air and increase the terror. My ears and head ache. You can’t hear what’s being said. Just boom!

Zabludowski escaped Poland and made her way back to Israel. Her father died in July 1940 in Warsaw while her mother was deported along with other family members to Treblinka.

The USNS Marine Carp was originally built for the purpose of transporting military forces to Europe and back. Following the conclusion of World War II, the vessel was repurposed as a  passenger ship and set on a regular, commercial route. She embarked out of New York, crossed the Atlantic, and docked in Athens, Beirut, Haifa, and Alexandria. At the end of the route, she returned to New York via Italy. During the post-war period, the Marine Carp transported many American Jews to the Land of Israel in order to volunteer on kibbutzim, attend youth gatherings, or simply immigrate to the Land of Israel legally (if they were able to make it past the border checkpoints successfully). The ship set out from New York every five weeks. On May 4th, 1948, Marine Carp embarked on its regular route. There were many Jewish travelers aboard, including Jews from the Land of Israel studying or living in the United States who were answering a general enlistment call put out by the Hebrew Yishuv which was already fighting for its life in the War of Independence.

When the ship reached Beirut, a stop on its regular route, 400 Lebanese soldiers were waiting for the passengers at port. The Lebanese authorities did not want to allow Jewish men of military age to continue on to Israel. Indeed, 69 passengers, all Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 50, were forcibly removed from the ship. Among the detainees were 41 American citizens, 23 fresh Israeli citizens, 3 Canadians, and 2 others.

The ship’s crew tried to resist, but their efforts were in vain. Daniel Doron, another passenger (and a great-grandson of Zerah Barnett, co-founder of the city of Petah Tikva). testified:

“Most of the ship’s crew were black. We made friends with them. We would sing with them, drink with them and eat with them. They refused to leave Beirut. They said, ‘We are not leaving, not moving the ship. We are not leaving Beirut without the Israelis.’ It was only when the ambassador convinced them that the incident would be resolved within a week that they agreed to continue on their way.”

The detainees were taken by truck to the city of Baalbek, where they were held in an abandoned French military camp.

The detainees were taken by truck to the city of Baalbek, where they were held in an abandoned French military camp. Daniel Doron reflected on the drive to the camp:

“We drove all night. We departed at 10 o’clock or 12 o’clock at night. That was the most dangerous part because the trucks – Lebanese military trucks – were in bad shape. The brakes did not work very well. They bounced up and down, you know…”

Some of the passengers complained about how the U.S. was handling their detention, and even accused the U.S. consulate in Beirut of anti-Semitism. The United States condemned the refusal of the Lebanese to release the detainees, causing a minor diplomatic incident between the two countries.

So, what was the catalyst that eventually led to the liberation of the captive Jews? What finally contributed to stepping up U.S. efforts to end the affair? The official answer has never been revealed.

According to testimony from Daniel Doron, a family member was able to speak to then-US President Harry Truman about the issue. Truman was, apparently, able to find a solution to the crisis over the course of the two weeks that followed the meeting.

“Truman said, ‘What?!’ Then he told him the story. Truman fumed and went to the red phone. He picked it up, and the head of covert services was on the other end. He said, ‘Listen, my friend, either you free these people within two weeks or you can look for another job.’”

The American detainees refused to accept the release that had been arranged for them without their Israeli counterparts. Lebanese attempts to separate the populations had failed. Finally, on June 30th, almost a month and a half after the incident, the Lebanese agreed to release all of the detainees. They were sent back to New York, but many of them were unable to obtain a visa and were forced to stay on Ellis Island. From there, they again departed with the Marine Carp. Some of the passengers, anxious to return to Israel, had not waited to arrive on American shores. They chose to hop off the ship at other ports and found creative ways to get back to Israel.

The Marine Carp was a semi-converted Liberty ship, and accommodation was frugal. The women were bunked six to a cabin, two tiers of three bunks. The men slept in huge bays with racks of pipemetal framed steel spring bunks five high. By tacit understanding or something, we Jewish men, about 75 of us, were given one bay to ourselves though it was not full. Some were Israelis going home. A few were from Canada, Mexico and elsewhere, off to fight in Palestine. There were some old religious Jews. About 24 of us were native born US citizens fully covered with passports, visas, and blue jeans. Oded Bourla was the designated commander of us Americans including 5 of the women in the "first class" cabins.

The Atlantic was very rough and most of us on board were badly sea sick. I avoided being sick by sleeping on deck and never going below until I got my sea legs. There were some deck chairs lashed to a rail on a hatch cover and that was my place for the first three days and nights.

While cruising through a now calm Mediterranean we got the news on the ship's radio that the STATE OF ISRAEL had been declared. Somehow the Arab passengers on the "Marine Carp" disappeared, maybe they moved away from where we were. Us Jews gathered in the dining hall and roared out our joy and pride. We sang "Hatikvah" and a thousand other anthems and songs, danced the hora until we dropped, cried, laughed, and carried on. The fears and doubts were kept inside, for that evening.

The crew joined us. Their union was Communist led and they were radicals all, and they were very much on our side.

...

The captain of the "Marine Carp" (we later learned) was concerned about the well being of his Jewish passengers when the ship called in at Beirut on its way to Haifa. It was an American ship and so we were unlikely to be bothered, but still...... He contacted the US Consul General in Beirut by radiotelephone and asked for instructions. The story I heard, from good sources, is that the Consul told him that there would be no trouble, he was to bring the ship in.

At 5 in the morning we pulled into the harbor at Beirut and tied up alongside a pier. The US Consul was there to greet us. So were about 400 Lebanese Marines, in tight uniforms of blue wool - must have been awfully hot for them, when the sun came out fully. The Marines came up the gangplank and set up machine gun posts in the main corridors. An announcement was made on the loudspeakers: all Jewish passengers were to assemble in the main lounge.

We didn't do that. We bunched up in little groups throughout the ship talking and trying to work out what to do. My group crowded around Oded Bourla in the shower room next to our sleeping bay. Some of the wild ones said we should fight. Two of them had pistols. We gabbled like a bunch of geese. There were an awful lot of the Lebanese. Then another announcement on the PA system: if the Jewish men would come along and be "interned" in Lebanon, the Jewish women would be allowed to continue their voyage to Haifa unmolested. The women were under Lebanese guard while we decided. This was clearly a serious threat. Most of the women were wives of husbands on the ship; couples had been separated because of the barracks-like sleeping arrangements.

We decided to submit. The Israelis among us were fearful but they led in that decision. Us Americans felt confident we'd be repatriated in a few days at most.

The two guns were stripped down to small parts and hidden on (in, actually) the bodies of a number of the men, as was ammunition. Somebody had a compass. Each took from his bags what he thought best. And so we slowly shambled up to the main lounge. The US Consul was there, and he collected the passports of the US citizens (and, it transpired, turned them over to the Lebanese commander). Some of us passed notes to the crew, for our families. In glum, defeated dribs and drabs we went down the gangplank and climbed onto Lebanese Army trucks. The Lebanese left behind some old, sick men, but 69 of us were taken away. The Jewish women waved and called to us as the trucks drove away from the pier.

The trucks drove through the city of Beirut and out through its suburbs. Through small towns and valleys and villages we drove, until the pressure on my bladder became extreme and I pissed off the rear of my truck after getting sign-langauge permission from the Marines who guarded us. After what seemed like about four hours, the last parts climbing high into the cool hills, we arrived at Baalbek. We were taken to what had once been a French Foreign Legion barracks, a handsome building with large rooms opening out onto a long balcony on the second floor. At the head of the stairs, a washroom with a water tap, a pissing trough, and an Arab squat latrine.

In the three large barracks rooms were piles of boards of nice, soft pine. Three of these for a sleeping pallet and a thin blanket, a tin bowl and a spoon - these were issued to each of us. The guards turned out to be Palestinians, refugees. The Lebanese themselves acted frightened of us, very nervous. Some of the Palestinians were allright, some were sadistic bastards.

We were given a meal: a small cube of goats' milk cheese, a radish, a green onion, two pitas (the large flat kind, not the pocket kind). We could get water from the tap. That's what we got every day for our three meals though sometimes we each got a large spoonful of beans in tomato sauce for dinner instead of the cheese. I weighed 150 lbs when I got there, and 110 lbs when we got out six weeks later.

And so to bed, worried and fearful about what tomorrow would bring.

The morning brought the US Consul, all the way from Beirut. We all gathered together to meet with him. He told us that were a real nuisance, that the Lebanese were treating us very well, and that the families of the Americans were working for our release. He heard our requests for medicine for the two of us who were down with severe measles, and agreed to get us what we needed, we could give him the money now.

We had elected some leaders from among us, and they mentioned that the last time an American citizen had been taken by force from a ship (not even a US flag ship, at that) the US Navy had a cruiser in the harbor the next day and the citizen was released under the threat of our guns. The Consul assured us that there was no danger of that happening now. The Consul showed a marked distaste for Jews; of course he was accredited to an Arab state, so that would explain it.

(It was not until the 1960s when I subpoenaed my files from the US State Department in connection with my citizenship case that I felt the reality of the discrimination. The important document about me started out thus:"This obstreperous member of a despised race.......". The US Consul in Beirut had endorsed it thus: "Right!"). So much for the Consul. When we read in the local French language newspaper that he had been on the podium at an anti Israel rally at the American University of Beirut and had seen fit to stay there while a resolution calling for our (the US prisoners) death was passed by acclamation, we were not really surprised.)

The next big event for us was the Selection. (That term refers to the procedure in the concentration camps in Europe, where those who were to be killed that day were separated from the rest). We had contacts with some of the guards, who would bring us news and stuff for money, so we were prepared. The camp commander showed up with a specially big and tough retinue of guards, and called us all together. He had all our passports before him, and told us that the Israelis would be taken to a different location. We had discussed this possibility and it seemed to us that this would enable the Lebanese to kill the Israelis without risking the consequences of killing citizens of the USA or Canada. So the night before we had all - Americans, Canadians, the two with Argentinian passports, and the Israelis (who had British passports) - shaved our heads so we would not be easily identified from our passport photographs.

The first man was called forward and asked his name. "Yisrael ben Yisrael", he said, "Israel son of Israel". And so said the second shaven-headed man, and the third, and the Selection was called off.

After we'd been there for a month, and our families' efforts to get the US State Department to move on our case seemed to be stuck despite the best efforts of then-Congressman Jacob Javits of New York, we started to plan an escape. We had some Israelis among us who knew the topography pretty well, and they worked out a route to Israel (though we had no idea where the actual front line might be). We had the weapons we'd smuggled in, and accepted the fact that we would have casualties. We were tired now from poor nourishment, and dispirited from being prisoners, but we felt we had to do it.

Just as we were getting ourselves ready, storing food at the expense of eating it and so on, we got some hints that we might be released. Then the US Consul came to visit. The Lebanese offered to release us and let us go back to the USA, providing we would each swear never to attempt to go to Israel. That included the Israelis. We agreed. An oath under duress is okay.

Then we waited some more.

One morning, the Lebanese Army trucks came grinding into the courtyard. We needed no further notice, put our belongings into our pockets and lined up with the weakest and sick ones at the head of the line....just in case. But no, they took us all. Huddled together in heaps at the bottom of the truck, we were too weak to sit upright and too scared that it might not be for real to sing or joke around. But yes, they took us to the pier, and there was the same "Marine Carp", this time on its way back to the USA on another round trip.

Weakly, still very fearful that the ordeal was not really over, we climbed up the gangplank. Crew members helped us on board and down to the sleeping bay and up onto the bunks. Later they gave us a festive meal of turkey and all the trimmings, ice cream, the lot. We gorged ourselves and soon returned the goodies, which our shrunken and tender tummies refused to hold.

The ship now carried many refugees from the war zone, Americans going home, many of them Jews. I met some politicals who told me with great excitement that they had a message for us from Haganah!!! Special arrangements had been made, they said, and the ship would make an unscheduled call at Palermo where Haganah awaited us and would take us off and on to Israel! Huzzah!

As they say in Israel, "Lo dubim v'lo yaar", "No bears and no forest".

Yes, we did pull in at Palermo. But nobody, it seemed, awaited us. Of those who decided to make a break for it anyway, some bought their crew papers from crew members, some went over the side and swam ashore. Three of us, lacking in funds or anyway experience or imagination, pried fillings out of our teeth and went to the captain and begged to see a dentist. The captain agreed, and called an escort of eighteen Carabinieri to take us to the dentist. Foiled!

The three of us, scrawny young Dave from Montreal, hulking Big Joe ("Gonna kill me a thousand Ayrabs!") from New York, and scrawny young me. We were taken in a truck to the center of town. Off we got and went upstairs to the dentist's office leaving two Carabinieri to guard the downstairs entrance. Once inside, Joe offered to go first. Dave and I sat in the waiting room, with two Carabinieri guarding the door and the rest sitting around in the room with us.

What the hell, I thought, what the hell. I can't get out of this. But I can give it a try, and then won't be so ashamed when they drag me back to the ship. I had stuffed my pockets with packs of American cigarettes before I left the ship, primo currency in Europe in those days. I stood up, walked briskly to the door, handed a pack of cigarettes to each of the guards, said "Vino, vino" with great brio, and walked out. To my surprise, nobody stopped me. (Why did I say "Vino"? Well, I couldn't think of anything else, that's why). I walked briskly down the stairs. The guards at the street door barred my way with their carbines. I handed them each a pack of cigarettes and said my magic "Vino" at them. They seemed confused but did not stop me. I marched down the main street of Palermo with calm and confidence until after a minute I heard them yelling and their pounding feet behind me so I picked mine up and ran like hell.

I ducked into a shop, a pharmacy, and the woman behind the counter, quickly seeing that I was running from the police, grabbed my arm and pulled me down to a crouch behind a counter where I couldn't be seen from the street. After a minute the chase seemed to have passed me by so I got up, said "Grazie" to the woman, and walked out of the shop.

Turns out that all the Carabinieri ran down the street after me, so Dave Sidorsky, finding himself all alone in the waiting room, stuck his head into the dentist's office and told Joe Nagdimon and then he walked out and down the stairs and out the front door and away. Nagdimon chose to stay and be taken back to the ship.

There were over twenty of us who got off the ship in Palermo, but ten went back to the ship before it sailed. The rest of us were rounded up into a cheap restaurant by street urchins who seemed to understand what was going on. We had a meal, and decided to look for Jews to help us. In Palermo there were none left so we took a train up to Naples where we found some but they wanted nothing to do with us because the police were after us and sent us up to the Jewish Agency in Rome where we finally found people to take care of us.

After some more adventures in a DP camp near Rome, I was assigned to lead a bunch of sturdy young Bulgarian Jews on their way to Israel in a chartered airplane. This was about 9 July.

He pointed out that no matter how the Zionists tried to falsify some of the artifacts and claim that they prove their presence in Palestine, the largest and most famous museums in the world discovered the falsification by the occupation of these pieces and refused to exhibit any artifact coming from the occupation state to display in international museums because they are forged.

Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran have been joined at the hip from the very beginning, even before the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Even before Lebanon’s own system collapsed, and the country plunged into civil war, fueled in part by Palestinian weapons and ambitions, the country had become a training ground for revolutionaries from all over the world, and a magnet for cadres of the main Iranian revolutionary factions, from Marxists to theocrats and everything in between.

o In 1976, Sadr supported Syria’s entry into Lebanon, which the PLO opposed
o At the same time, Palestinian attacks on Israel from the south of Lebanon endangered the Shiite villagers which worried both Sadr and Chamran.

The formation of the IRGC may well be the greatest single contribution that the PLO made to the Iranian revolution.

In the conventional narrative of Hezbollah’s origins, it is the arrival of this contingent, the work it did there, and the men it trained that is typically said to signal the organization’s birth. However, by the time Dehghan, Mohtashami, and Mughniyeh engineered the October 1983 attack that killed 241 American servicemen, the Khomeinists had already been active in Lebanon for over a decade. [emphasis added]

And now it was all coming full circle as Iran’s triumphant Islamic Republicans, Hezbollah, spawned their namesake in Lebanon.

Arafat and Khomeini, 1979

o  Arafat tried to mediate the US Embassy hostage crisis, but his interference angered Khomeini, and made him suspicious.
o  The Iraq-Iran war only made things worse. Arafat could not afford to side with Iran against Iraq and risk losing the support of the Arab world that funded the PLO. He tried to mediate, but Khomeini refused to even see him.

By forging ties with the Khomeinists, Arafat unwittingly helped to achieve the very opposite of his dream. Iran has turned the Palestinian factions into its proxies, and the PLO has been relegated to the regional sidelines.

On the morning of Aug. 23, an Israeli teenager was killed by a terrorist bomb in Samaria. That night, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed an armed Palestinian trying to cross the Gaza border.

The next day, Israel’s Air Force bombed Syria to sabotage a planned Iranian attack of armed drones. That day, three rockets were fired from Gaza; Israeli drones reportedly exploded above Beirut; an explosive device was found and neutralized near a settlement.

On Aug. 26, the IDF concluded that Hezbollah planned an attack on its forces in the Galilee; Hezbollah’s leader made direct threats; opposition leader Benny Gantz was invited to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office for a security briefing; Iraqi leaders declared reported Israeli raids in Iraq an act of war. In the meantime Iran and the United States toyed with the idea of direct negotiations for a new Iran deal.

On Aug. 27, Netanyahu advised Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to “calm down”; Britain’s Times newspaper reported that Israel’s attack in Lebanon targeted machinery for precision-guided missiles; Just before midnight, an explosion killed two in Gaza.

And that was in less than a week.

Should we say this is war?

Consider this: There are attacks, counterattacks, maneuvers and threats. Israel is active on five fronts: the West Bank, where violence is contained and yet the situation is volatile; Gaza, where violence threatens to erupt daily; Syria, where Iranian forces keep trying to form a base against Israel that Israel won’t allow; Lebanon, where pro-Iranian forces feel compelled to act in response to Israeli actions; and Iraq, where Israel reportedly operates as part of the war against Iranian expansion.

Prominent Palestinian religious leader denounced "Jewish attacks" against Palestinian religious symbols in Jerusalem and referred to the Jewish presence in the land of Israel as a "colonialist cancer," NGO Palestinian Media Watch said on Monday.

According to a report by the Palestinian Authority official daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, as quoted by PMW, the Supreme Fatwa Council, led by Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, "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."

"The council expressed its rejection of all types of settlements and emphasized that the Palestinian people will not stand idly by in the face of this colonialist cancer," the report added.

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem is the Palestinian Authority's highest religious leader. Hussein, a former imam of the Al Aqsa mosque, was appointed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas in 2006.

Hussein is not new to controversial statements and incitement. Shortly after his appointment, he called suicide bombing: "legitimate as long as it plays a role in the [Palestinian] resistance."

In 2012, he quoted an ancient Islamic text encouraging Muslims to kill Jews while speaking at a ceremony broadcasted by the PA TV.

In 2015, Hussein denied that there had ever been a Jewish holy site on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Germany’s Protestant Church said on Monday it is sticking with its appointment of an accused anti-Israel cleric who has allegedly written in a Hamas style to serve as the interim provost for the landmark Redeemer's Church.

Last year, the virulently anti-Israel cleric Rainer Stuhlmann wrote in a German Protestant Church document on the 70th anniversary of the re-founding of Israel that the creation of the State of Israel was for the Palestinians a “reason for mourning” because Israel engaged in “expulsion, destruction, coercion and injustice.“

Stuhlmann continued his alleged tirade against Israel, stating: “In recent years, military superiority has led Israel to brutally enforce its interests against Palestine. With an aggressive settlement policy, facts are created that narrow the scope of Palestine more and more.”

Last year, the editor-in-chief of the Westdeutsche Zeitung, Uli Tückmantel, wrote that Stuhlmann’s writing is, “one-sided finger-pointing against Israel in the propaganda style of Fatah and Hamas.”

When asked by The Jerusalem Post if he is anti-Israel or antisemitic, Stuhlmann, who is presently in Jerusalem, wrote by email: “I have been a friend of Israel for decades. For decades I have been engaged in the fight against all forms of antisemitism, including antisemitism related to Israel.”

There’s a social media site whose glitzy videos populate your newsfeed. Its content overflows with typical leftist tropes. No, it’s not CNN or MSNBC. You should know what it is and the nefarious people backing it. Raheem Kassam, author of No Go Zones, explains why, when you come across these videos, you should swipe left.

For years, Iranian athletes have been prohibited from competing in any sport against Israel. From questionable injuries, to throwing matches, Iranian athletes across all sports have been ordered to crush their own dreams.

On May 9, 2019, the International Judo Federation received on official letter from the National Olympic Committee of Iran stating:"We would like to confirm that the I.R. Iran NOC shall fully respect the Olympic Charter and its non-discrimination principle."

On August 28 at the Judo World Championships in Tokyo, the Iranian coach received a call from Iran's first deputy minister of sport, Davar Zani, ordering him to withdraw Iran's world champion, Saeid Mollaei, from the competition to avoid a potential contest between Iran and Israel. The demand was accompanied by threats against Mollaei and his family.

Mollaei continued to compete, reaching the semi-finals. Then a delegation from the Iranian Embassy arrived at the venue, and one delegate trespassed into the athlete warm up area to approach Mollaei with messages of intimidation.

Just prior to the semi-final, Mollaei's coach received another phone call, this time from Iranian Olympic Committee President Reza Salehi Amiri, who explained that Iranian national security officials were at his parents' house. Mollaei's friends from Iran also texted him that people came to his house and asked his father to tell his son to follow the law or he would have problems.

Mollaei explained: "Today, the National Olympic Committee of Iran and the Sport Minister told me to not compete, that I had to comply with the law. I am a fighter. I want to compete wherever I can. I live in a country whose law does not permit me to....I need help. Even if the authorities of my country told me that I can go back without any problems, I am afraid. I am afraid of what might happen to my family and to myself."

Judoka Sagi Muki feels bad for his Iranian counterpart, Saeid Mollaei, who plans to compete in the 2020 Olympics under the Olympic flag rather than his home country’s due to the political tension between Israel and Iran.

The 27-year-old Israeli, who captured the gold medal in the under-81-kilogram competition at the World Judo Championships last week in Tokyo, broke his silence on Sunday concerning Mollaei being whisked away to Germany amid rumors of him throwing matches and seeking asylum.

In an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post, Muki spoke about Mollaei’s extenuating situation, going into the political and sports ramifications, as well as the relationship between Israel and Iran.

On Sunday, Mollaei spoke to the Iran International news outlet based in London about being forced to lose his final two bouts so as not to face Muki or share the podium with him. Mollaei also discussed his desire to compete at the highest level possible, with his goal being to win a gold medal at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

“But I came to compete for real, not to put on a show... I will compete in the Olympics under the Olympic flag,” he said.

Iranian Judoka Saeid Mollaei, who claimed authorities in Tehran forced him to engineer his elimination in a tournament last week in order to avoid playing against Israeli Judoka Sagi Muki, may arrive in Israel in 2020.

Israel Hayom has learned that the Israel Judo Association invited Mollaei to take part in the Tel Aviv Grand Prix 2019 in January.

After Mollaei was eliminated from the World Judo Championships last week, Muki ended up winning the gold medal and made Israeli sports history.

Mollaei then announced that he would seek asylum in Germany and even praised Muki online and congratulated him on his win, to the chagrin of the Iranian regime.

International Judo Federation president Marius Vizer wants the Iranian asylum-seeker to attend the Israeli-hosted competition in January and has said he would punish Iranian authorities for pressuring Mollaei to lose a match last week so that he would get eliminated.

I should tell you that I pray for Trump because he believes in America. He wants an America that is true to its founding ideals of liberty and free enterprise. I also pray for him because he’s been the victim of the most consistent, slimiest hate campaign since Abraham Lincoln. He hasn’t done anything seriously wrong and yet the media powers treat him as if he were John Wilkes Booth. I don’t like his tariff fights with China but what can we do? They’ve been robbing us blind in terms of technology for decades now. For the Chinese, a brilliant and proud people and at least the equal of any people on this earth, there is no stopping point between now and them ruling the earth.

That’s what Trump’s struggle is about: to stop the world from becoming a vast Chinese empire. I don’t blame the Chinese for their ambitions. They were treated very badly all over the world for generations. But now, like a spring that has been compressed for too long, they are springing back madly.

They have their own problems: they are doing deficit spending on a titanic scale and it cannot last. They have restive minorities like the Uighurs and others. They will eventually spend themselves into big trouble. But in the meantime, they cause trouble in their very large orbit. Trump understands this and wants to stop them and get them to work cooperatively with us and the rest of the big countries. Would Kamala Harris get it? Would Bernie? Would Cory?

Trump is the only one who understands how fragile our system is and wants to save it. He’s not angry at America. He loves America.

So for this and for many other reasons, I pray for him. I am an economist — student of the allocation of scarce goods — and the scarcest commodity on earth is human dignity. I think Trump gets it. The Chinese who are busy suffocating the earth don’t get it. I pray for them to understand that if they kill the earth, that includes them. If Trump can slow them down, he’s the ultimate environmentalist. More on Trump and Law and Economics to come.

Blue and White leader Benny Gantz promised on Monday that if he becomes prime minister and decides to withdraw from any territory, he would bring it to the public in a national referendum.

Speaking at a conference organized by the religious Zionist website Srugim, Gantz said there would not be a repeat of the 2005 Gaza Strip withdrawal, in which he said too many mistakes were made.

“When we get to such a juncture, the public will decide, but it is not relevant now,” Gantz said in an interview on stage with Srugim editor Or Izraeli.

Gantz spoke at the event in an effort to attract religious Zionist voters. He earned applause from the crowd when he promised that the Joint List would not be part of a governing coalition, and called for Israeli Arab citizens to perform national service inside their communities.

“They have problems with crime, education and employment, so there is no reason for them not to serve their communities, and I tell them that,” he said.

While Gantz defended himself from left-wing criticism for coming to a conference in which right-wing extremists were speaking, he attacked Yamina minister Bezalel Smotrich, saying that his past racist statements “stain the religious Zionist community.”

I need not inform the reader that my hometown bears the distinction of one of the most radicalized locations in the region, of not the world. A hardcore group of several hundred Jews, with military protection, has settled in the immediate vicinity of the Ibrahimi Mosque, where various patriarchs are buried. Our hometown boasts my own clan, one of the most extreme Hamas-affiliated groups in the land. A larger settlement of radical Jews resides on the outskirts of the city, but 97% of the city itself lies under the administrative aegis of the Palestinian Authority and Jews may not enter. As human rights advocates continue to note, this racist curtailment of rights cannot continue: we must rid the entire city of Jews, not just the vast majority that was already ethnically cleansed.

Palestinians have endured decades of occupation, all with the ostensible purpose of ensuring freedom of worship for a bunch of Jews. But that freedom of worship came from nowhere – where was Israel when the Ottomans and others before them banned Jews altogether from the Tomb of the Patriarchs? This sudden Israeli interest in protecting its people reeks of something more suspicious, and we in Hebron have long called it a mere pretext to violate our right to a Jew-free city. Our ancestors killed, pillaged, and raped until all the Jews left in 1929 – what now gives them the right to be racist and undo that effort?

All the more galling is the brazenness with which the Israeli military shields these radicals from our righteous wrath. They cleared the vendors from Sh’hada Street into a spacious, modernized shopping center a short distance away, and now prevent Palestinian vendors from returning to man their run-down shops, all in the name of keeping “terrorists” away from the Jewish settlers. But it is the Jews who are terrorists, defiling sacred Islamic land with their Talmudic rituals such as praying and just generally not dying enough in repeated massacres. The war criminals prevent us from correcting that historical injustice and pile wrongdoing on top of wrongdoing.

A new video from a northern kibbutz's security cameras shows an anti-tank missile fired by Hezbollah narrowly missing an IDF vehicle on a road near the Galilee town of Avivim on Sunday, refuting claims by Hezbollah that the attack succeeded in hitting its target, according to Mako news.

The video, captured by security cameras at Kibbutz Yir'on, shows the anti-tank missile striking the road as an IDF "Ze'ev" vehicle comes into view from the site of the explosion seconds later.

On Monday, Hezbollah-affiliated Al Manar news published footage of the attack carried out on Sunday from the Lebanese side of the border, claiming that it refuted "all the claims that the attack failed to hit Zionist soldiers." The footage showed that two missiles were fired from two positions.

Israeli officials stated that no IDF troops were injured.

Minutes after the Hezbollah anti-tank missiles hit, soldiers with bandages and fake blood were flown by helicopter to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.

They were taken off the helicopters in stretchers and were discharged after the round of fighting ended.

“We can’t hide injured troops in Israel for half an hour,” a top security official said, disputing claims in Lebanon that troops had been injured in the attack.

Hezbollah will begin firing at Israeli drones that enter Lebanese airspace, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Monday evening, adding that the terrorist organization had “no more red lines.”

Nasrallah’s remarks came during a televised address in the aftermath of Hezbollah’s recent missile attack against an Israeli military vehicle in northern Israel, which was followed by retaliatory Israeli strikes on multiple Hezbollah targets.

“Enough,” said Nasrallah, “The Lebanese have the right to defend themselves. There is now a new operational space, and it is Lebanon’s skies. When it comes to dealing with the [Israeli] UAVs, it will happen. I won’t specify when and how, but it will come.”

The Hezbollah leader went on to say that “[Israel in the past] would not tolerate anyone putting a hand on the [border] fence, sending something like a drone back and forth quickly, shooting in the air or throwing a bomb into an open area. It would respond harshly because for it that was a red line. What happened yesterday is that the resistance broke what has for the past dozens of years been the biggest Israeli red line.

“It is no longer a red line,” he said. “That has ended. There are no more red lines.”

Elie Mahfoud, the leader of the Lebanese Movement for Democratic Change, said in an August 25, 2019 interview on Al-Arabiya TV (Saudi Arabia) that everybody in Lebanon wants to know who rules over Lebanon and who holds the power to make decisions. Mahfoud said that the current anarchic state of affairs in which Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has the power to declare war cannot continue, and he said that Lebanon's military is perfectly capable of defending Lebanon and its borders. Mahfoud warned that if the Lebanese government does not take initiative, then the situation in Lebanon will decline to an even worse situation than during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War, and he emphasized that Lebanon suffered much heavier losses and destruction during that war than Israel did, despite Hizbullah's celebration of the war as a victory. In addition, Mahfoud said that Iran's militant activity in the Middle East is a "sad joke" because there hasn't been a single military operation against Israel, and he said that the Lebanese are "exploiting and riding the horse of the Palestinian Cause" while actually harming the Palestinians and giving Israel more excuses to sow ruin and destruction in the entire region. Mahfoud's remarks were made in light of Hassan Nasrallah's recent speech in which he said Hizbullah will engage Israeli drones flying in Lebanese airspace (see MEMRI TV Clip No. 7439).

On Sunday, when Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at a border post in northern Israel, Israel responded by launching 100 artillery shells into southern Lebanon, sparking fires in agricultural fields. Reuters’ brief captions accompanying photographs of the burning Lebanese fields clearly identified the fires’ cause: Israeli shelling. In contrast, Reuters captions failed to identify the cause of scorched earth near Avivim, the Israeli border area initially targeted in the Hezbollah attack Sunday which prompted the Israeli response. Similarly, Reuters photo captions frequently omit the source of the fires that have plagued southern Israel for over a year: Gazan arsonists send flaming kites and balloons across the border. Through the smoke, one thing is clear: Reuters does not apply a consistent standard in photo captions about fires resulting from conflict between Israel and its neighbors. When Israel is to be blamed for fires, Reuters says so. When the other side is culpable, Reuters frequently remains mum.

A sampling of Reuters photos and captions about Sunday’s fires in Lebanese fields, caused by retaliatory Israeli shelling follow. They clearly report the Israeli shelling responsible for the blaze.

Explaining Hamas's rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, CBS News informs its readers that the rockets were fired from "the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip."

It's not like they're not even trying. pic.twitter.com/y8KEsvdgEB

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) September 3, 2019

Drat! Our plan to distract you all with a hurricane was foiled once again @arielelysegold. Clever girl. pic.twitter.com/PywrDTJl6q

— The Mossad: Elite Parody Division (@TheMossadIL) September 2, 2019

A prominent Palestinian diplomat in the UK assured on Friday that the Palestinian leaders and institutions do not discriminate against the LGBTQ community, despite a group being banned from carrying out activities in the West Bank.

Responding to a letter by 60 Labour MPs and Peers, the head of the Palestinian Mission in the UK Husam Zomlot said that “Palestine honours and respects the dignity of all Palestinians and does not discriminate or tolerate any form of discrimination,” according to a report by the Jewish Chronicle.

In August, the Palestinian Authority banned the LGBTQ group Al-Qaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society (Arabic for “the bow”) from carrying out any activity in the West Bank.

The group engages and supports Palestinians who identify as LGBTQ and operates both in the West Bank and among Arab-Israelis.

Explaining the decision to ban the LGBTQ group from operating in PA-controlled areas, Luay Zreikat, spokesperson for the PA Police, said that such activities are “harmful to the higher values and ideals of Palestinian society.”

Israel this week restored full fuel shipments to Gaza after it had reduced the amount by half last week in response to Palestinian rocket fire, sources told The Jerusalem Post.

The NGO Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement announced the fuel restarting by stating that three turbines were now working at Gaza’s power plant, providing 12 hours of electricity per day to the Strip.

Last week, that number had dropped down to six hours after the Israeli fuel cuts.

On Monday 10 trucks carrying 380,000 liters of fuel entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

It expected that the quantity of trucks and liters of fuel that enter Gaza will increase next week.

Some 3.1 million liters of fuel allocated weekly for the Gaza power plant has been funded by Qatar since October 2018.

Qatar, frustrated over Israel’s August decision to cut the fuel by 50%, stated Sunday that it had no plans to restore the fuel shipments now that Israel had rescinded that restriction.

Through its website, Hamas stated that its leader Ismail Haniyeh had spoken with Qatari Ambassador to Gaza Muhammed Emadi about the decision to cut the fuel, and that after the conversation, Qatar decided not make any cuts.

Israel’s draconian restrictions on the movement of necessities into the Strip such as fuel are often seen as a bellwether of relations between Gaza and Israel.

Iran is refusing to cooperate with a UN investigation into its alleged storage of nuclear equipment and radioactive material in Tehran by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Diplomats claim that Iran has refused to answer important questions asked by the IAEA over allegations that it had established a now-dismantled site in Tehran to store nuclear equipment and material used during past weapons development.

These allegations were first publicly raised by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September 2018 at the UN, when he disclosed the existence of a facility in Iran’s capital that he referred to as an “atomic warehouse” full of material related to the country’s nuclear program.

“The IAEA still has not taken any action. It has not posed a single question of Iran. It has not demanded to inspect a single new site discovered in that secret archive,” the prime minister said. “So I decided to reveal today something else that we revealed to the IAEA and to other intelligence agencies.

“They had to get it out of the site, so they took it out and they spread it around Tehran in an effort to hide the evidence,” he asserted, suggesting that Iranian citizens were at risk of exposure. (h/t IsaacStorm)

Iran’s atomic energy agency said Tuesday that it could resume enriching uranium to 20 percent within two days unless the remaining European signatories to the nuclear deal provide economic relief to counter US sanctions.

“If the signatory states to the nuclear deal delay selling the 20% (enriched nuclear) fuel, it is Iran’s right to provide its needed fuel,” agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said, quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency.

“If the Islamic Republic of Iran decides, it can have 20% enriched fuel within one to two days,” he said.

On Tuesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned that the Islamic Republic was ready to further reduce its commitments to the nuclear deal “in the coming days” if the negotiations with the remaining parties to the deal yielded no results by Thursday.

Uranium needs to be enriched to 90% to be used in a nuclear weapon and 20% purity is considered an important benchmark toward reaching weapons grade level.

The behavior of European leaders towards Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during his visit illustrates how frightened they are of the Iranian regime and how these non-stop moralists will seemingly do anything for money. Iran's strong anti-Israel rhetoric apparently does not bother them, either.

Trade with Iran is crucial to many European countries. That is one possible explanation for the seeming doublespeak in which European leaders have been engaging since the establishment of the Islamic Republic 40 years ago -- boasting among themselves and with the United States about setting a shining example of human rights, yet giving their Iranian counterparts a pass on this issue.

Those of us who sought refuge away from the brutality of the Iranian regime observe with sadness and horror these desperate attempts by many European leaders to please Tehran. Europeans should be viewing the situation with equal sadness and horror.

Western diplomats told Asharq Al-Awsat that French President Emmanuel Macron had offered Iranian President Hassan Rouhani financial incentives to the tune of $15 billion to convince him not to reduce his country’s commitments under the 2015 nuclear agreement (Macron Offers Financial Incentives to Persuade Iran to Respect Nuclear Pact).

According to the same sources, the money would be paid out in installments, and, even more important, Rouhani was receptive to the proposal.

On Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met with Russian FM Sergei Lavrov and in a joint press conference the two praised the role played by President Macron to save the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Zarif said his country would “be complying with its obligations in full when the Europeans comply with theirs in full.”

On Tuesday, Rouhani told parliament that holding bilateral talks with the United States was not on the table: “We’ve said it before time and again, and we say it again: we have no intention to hold bilateral talks with the United States,” he insisted. “We never did and never will. It has been the case in the past year and a half, and even in previous years. There have been calls for talks, but we never responded to them.”

Abu Alaa Al-Walai, the Secretary-General of the Iraqi Shiite militia Kata'ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada, said in an August 28, 2019 interview on Dijlah TV (Iraq) that the "easiest" thing to do in retaliation against Israel for drone strikes it has reportedly carried out in Iraq is to send similarly-equipped drones to bomb Israel's embassy and its military bases. He also said that Kata'ib Sayyid Al-Shuhada would fight alongside Iran if a U.S.-Iran war broke out. He said: "If fighting broke out between Satan and America, I would stand with Satan, because America is the Greater Satan." In addition, Al-Walai said that all of the Americans in Iraq would become hostages of the Islamic resistance if a U.S.-Iran war breaks out.

Seventy top U.S. think-tank scholars have signed an open letter of support for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which has been blacklisted by Iran.

The organization and its executive director Mark Dubowitz last week were added to the Islamic Republic’s sanctions list, accused of being involved in “designing, imposing and intensifying the impacts of economic terrorism against Iran,” meaning the Trump administration’s economic sanctions against the country, according to a statement issue by Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

The Foreign Ministry statement also said it would consider legitimate “any further legal measures that the other administrative, judicial or security institutions and organizations may take in order to counter, prosecute or punish” FDD or Dubowitz or their “collaborators and accomplices.”

The open letter in support of FDD and Dubowitz was published on Friday.

It read, in part: “As members of the public policy and NGO community of which FDD is a part, we take strong exception to sanctioning a research organization because of a difference of political views, whether by Iran or other governments. We also condemn the suggestion that Iran’s security institutions might ‘punish’ FDD personnel. This is a further example of a troubling trend whereby governments attempt to stifle and intimidate independent researchers.”

In a recent interview, the defense analyst and former three-star general, Lieutenant General (r) Ghulam Mustafa, shared what has been more than interesting. According to him Pakistan’s Shaheen-III missile has the capability of destroying Israel’s Tel Aviv in mere 12 minutes.

He said that the Shaheen III is 18 times faster than the speed of sound. He also declared that the enemies are well aware of it and they were afraid on 27^th of February that Shaheen III would be launched at them. The Indian media had itself broke this news.

On 27^th February two Indian Airforce jets were shot down by Pakistan. The Indian army was planning an intrusion in Pakistan which they failed.  Mustafa also claimed that the United States (US), had this rightful fear that Pakistan would attack Tel Aviv as well.

This was the reason to why it handed over its Air-3 missile to Israel on 28^th of February. He also believes that the Pulwama attack was a pre-planned one and was actually planned by “India’s premier intelligence agency and Israel” in which the US played a vital role.

To make things clear, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) has issued a statement allowing Mustafa and 25 other retired officers of the armed forces to appear in media as defense analysts. However, whatever they say are their opinions and are not attributable to the institution.

Palestinian girls pose in front of Dalal Mughabi Center named after a mass murderer

Journalist Yoram Ettinger, in an article published in the Israel Hayom newspaper, said: "Palestinian terrorists are, above all, graduates of the Palestinian education system in nurseries, schools and mosques. This body is governed by the PLO, which refines the opinion of Palestinian society." The Palestinian Authority hides these principles and actions behind the mask of gentle and friendly rhetoric, to delude Israel and the Western world to believe that they support peace and coexistence, but hate education on the one hand, and coexistence for peace, on the other, are contradictions that refute the approach that claims that a Palestinian state is part of the solution to the conflict. "

The 975,000 thousand or so British news consumers who purchased the Sunday, Sept. 1st print edition of the Daily Mail (The Mail on Sunday) gotta nice freebie: a “giant, glossy” map of the world featuring “essential geographical facts“.

Here’s a promotion of their special offer on Twitter, noting that the map is “just in time for going back to school”.

However, they got one “essential geographical fact” wrong, as you can see here in this close-up of the Middle East section of the map.

Elsewhere on the map, it makes clear that the square icons (which you see next to Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Amman) represent the capitals. So, the maps from the Daily Mail delivered “just in time for school” contain a blatant factual inaccuracy about Israel.

Despite the fact that we’ve posted countless times on this issue, and contacted editors to remind them that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, usually resulting in corrections, this mistake continues to crop up periodically. Though we contacted Daily Mail editors to ask for a prominent editor’s note acknowledging the error, in light of the fact that the claim was made in an actual paper map that nearly one million Britons received (and not merely online), the damage can’t really be undone.

✏️Today's crossword clue: The Holy Land (9)

Surely the answer is Israel? Unless, you are doing the crossword in today's @theage and @smh newspapers, where the Holy Land is apparently Palestine. pic.twitter.com/lD3D0lBtab

— AIJAC (@AIJAC_Update) September 3, 2019

Besides being a gifted singer and actor and a tireless and eloquent advocate for the civil rights of African Americans during the Jim Crow era, Paul Robeson was also a committed Communist of the Stalinist variety. Even after the Soviet purges began in the 1930s, and as he became aware that all was not well in the workers’ paradise, Robeson continued to defend the regime in public and to toe the party line. His interactions with leading Soviet Jewish figures—he was deeply connected with Jewish circles and often performed Hebrew and Yiddish songs—illustrate much about his attitudes. Describing these relationships in a longer discussion of Robeson’s Communism, Ron Radosh writes:

Despite Robeson’s constant cheerleading [for the USSR], he was privately dismayed by Soviet repression of the Jews. During his 1949 Soviet concert tour, Robeson asked to meet his friends [the Yiddish poet] Itzik Feffer and [the great Yiddish actor] Solomon Mikhoels, . . . whom he had first met in 1943 when Stalin sent them to tour the United States on behalf of the “Jewish Anti-Fascist League.” Little did Robeson know that Mikhoels had since been murdered on Stalin’s orders, on January 13, 1948, in what was disguised as a hit-and-run car crash. Feffer, meanwhile, was being held at the infamous Lubyanka prison in Moscow, having been arrested by the NKVD in December 1948.

The authorities made [Feffer] presentable for the occasion and brought him to meet Robeson in his hotel room. Feffer signaled that the room was bugged, and that they should only make pleasantries but communicate with hand gestures and written notes. Feffer told Robeson about the growing anti-Semitism, and the prominent Jewish cultural figures who were under arrest. Then Feffer put his hand across his throat, indicating that he expected that his days would be short. He was shot to death a few years later.

Robeson was shaken, and to his credit told the audience at his concert in Moscow that night that he was friends with Feffer and Mikhoels and had just met with Feffer. He then sang in Yiddish the Warsaw Ghetto resistance song written by Hersh Glick, a Jewish poet and fighter, Zog Nit Keynmol. It was indeed a bold gesture. By singing this song and mentioning his friendship with Feffer, he signaled his disapproval without having to say anything publicly against Stalin.

Yet when Robeson returned to the United States, he told the waiting press that he had seen Feffer in Russia and saw no traces of anti-Semitism there. . . . Robeson’s denial of Soviet anti-Semitism was the one always [cited] by American defenders of the Stalinist regime.

The BBC has included a pro-Corbyn political activist who has made deeply problematic comments on antisemitism as a “historian and expert” on Nazism as part of a new multi-part documentary.

Ash Sarkar, a contributing editor of Novara Media, did not substantially contribute to the first episode of BBC Two’s Rise of the Nazis, produced by production company 72 Films, however the introduction to the programme signalled that she will feature in later episodes.

Ms Sarkar has defended the vandalism of the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto and claimed that the International Definition of Antisemitism is merely a front to silence criticism of Israel.

In 2010, activist Ewa Jasiewicz sprayed political “Free Gaza and Palestine” on the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest and most well-known of the ghettos designated by the Nazis in German-controlled territory, from which hundreds of thousands of Jews were sent to death camps or killed by shooting and another hundred thousand died of starvation and courageous revolt. Essentially a mass grave, the Warsaw Ghetto serves as a salient symbol of the Holocaust for all and evokes sensitivity and strong emotion on the part of Jews in particular.

US Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defended her past criticism of Israel to Israeli television, saying it is directed at the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not the entire country.

In comments aired by Channel 12 Tuesday evening, Ocasio-Cortetz also rejected accusations by US President Donald Trump that she discriminates against the Jewish state, saying the “cudgel of anti-Semitism” cannot be used to ward off censure of Israel, which, she said, employs “unjust and inhumane policies.”

Ocasio-Cortetz is one of four Democrat congresswomen that Trump has repeatedly cast as “anti-Israel” and “anti-Semitic.”

The four — Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — have diverse opinions about the Jewish state.

“I think that the Netanyahu administration has been pursuing a lot of extraordinarily concerning policies,” Ocasio-Cortetz told Channel 12, which questioned her about her attitudes toward Israel while the congresswoman was on the campaign trail in the Bronx over the weekend.

“To conflate an individual leader or ego with being against the entire country, I think, is a hallmark behavior of folks like our president,” Ocasio-Cortetz said. “Just like we have the ability to criticize our president without being anti-American, I believe we can criticize the policies and decisions that the administration over there is pursing without being against a country overall.”

.@aoc on Israel : "the Netanyahu administration has been pursuing a lot of extraordinarily concerning policies". Tells us her criticism is being intentionally conflated with anti-semitism. Video: pic.twitter.com/M5GqwbfjbE

— יונה לייבזון yuna leibzon (@YunaLeibzon) September 2, 2019

Nearly half of Israelis believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the right decision in barring entry to far-Left Democratic congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar last month, according to a monthly survey conducted by the Guttman Center at the Israel Democracy Institute.

The poll released found on Tuesday asked respondents whether they thought the decision was unwise because it will seriously damage Israel’s relations with the Democratic Party - for which most American Jews vote - or whether it was the right decision, because the congresswomen have antisemitic views and support a boycott of Israel, and their visit would have caused Israel great harm.

Jews agreed more with the second choice, 47.3% compared with 25% for the first choice. Among Israeli Arabs, 41.1% agreed with the first choice and 12.3% with the second. The rest did not know or declined to answer.

The poll also found that the September 17 election has failed to generate as much interest among voters as the last election in April.

The poll found that 39% of respondents are following the September election to a lesser extent than they followed those held in April, 36% reported following both election campaigns to the same extent, while only 17% replied that they are following the upcoming election to a greater extent than the previous campaign.

Looking ahead to the formation of the next coalition, 27.3% of the general public prefers a right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 15.5% a unity government led by Netanyahu, 19.9% a unity government led by Gantz, 19% a Center-Left government headed by Gantz, 8.4% none of the above, and 9.8% did not know or declined to answer.

This follows a petition presented to the Council in July. The Palestinian Ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot,will be present to mark this historic event. At 1 p.m. there will be a flag raising event in front of the Town Hall conducted by the Ambassador with senior Councillors (2)

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 2, 2019

The country of Palestine (lol) is the 8th most racist "country" in the world according to @WorldPopReview.

Spoiler alert: The democratic country @rogerwaters says is "worse than Nazi Germany" is not on the list. https://t.co/U9Ej5serzq

— The Mossad: Elite Parody Division (@TheMossadIL) September 3, 2019

A red baseball cap with the phrase "Make Israel Palestine Again" in the style of US President Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" hat was trending on Monday for a short time on online retailer Etsy.

Marketed as a protest cap, the hat, created and sold by Jordanian designer Mjcodez but ostensibly manufactured in the United States, was favorited by over 60 people.

The page for the hat contains the following description: "Seriously though, time to take back what's rightfully ours... If you're headed to a protest or demonstration for Palestine, civil rights or any of the sort - this will be definitely catch people's eyes."

Mjcodez's store contains several other items, mostly clothes, bearing English and Arabic text, while his page on e-commerce site Teespring contains a wider variety of clothes, posters, cell phone cases and more, each featuring Arabic text. A prominent motif on merchandise sold on the Teespring page depicts an Uzi submachine gun over lines of text, which read "VIOLENCE" in English and Arabic.

BBC Sport did not show much interest in the Judo World Championships which took place in Tokyo between August 25th and 31st. During that period of time visitors to the BBC Sport website’s Judo page saw just two reports (see here and here), both of which concerned a Scottish Judoka.

However, on September 2nd a report on a five day-old story titled “Saeid Mollaei: Iranian judoka fears for safety after refusing to quit World Championships” was published on that page as well as on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page. Readers were told that:
“Iran’s Saeid Mollaei says he fears for his and his family’s safety after ignoring calls from Iranian authorities to pull out of the World Judo Championships in Japan.

Mollaei said he was told to withdraw from his match against Russia’s Olympic champion Khasan Khalmurzaev to avoid the prospect of facing Israel’s Sagi Muki later in the tournament.”

Only in the tenth paragraph were readers informed that “Muki later beat Casse to win the gold medal” but they heard nothing of an earlier incident involving an Egyptian competitor.

The BBC’s report gave a distinctly tepid portrayal of the pressures put on Mollaei. In addition to citing “calls from Iranian authorities to pull out”, the report told readers that Mollaei said:
“But the National Olympic Committee of Iran and the Sport Minister told me to not compete, that I had to comply with the law.”

Facebook Exchange

Olson’s initial post about Ryan prompted another Facebook user to reply, “He’s a neo-con, too, you know.”

Olson replied, “No he’s not. Neo-cons are all Upper East Side Zionists who don’t golf on Saturday if you know what I mean.”

The same commenter then replied, “That’s what I meant. He’s a Jew. Everyone knows that.”

Olson at 12:46 a.m. Houston time wrote the following about the apparent Jewish faith of Ryan, an observant Catholic: “It must be true because I’ve never seen the Lamestream Media report it, and you know they protect their own.”

A review of a decade of Olson’s Facebook posts shows that he usually promotes his Christian faith and conservative views. The Paul Ryan exchange appears to be the only appeal to Jewish stereotypes. A few weeks later, he took to Facebook again on the eve of the Jewish New Year Rosh Hashanah: “My Jewish friends, I wish you a happy new year. My non-Jewish friends, I wish you a happy Jewish new year.”

As of last week, Olson’s Facebook settings allowed users who aren’t his “friends” to peruse his account history, although a Twitter page associated with his name has been scrubbed of all tweets.

One of France’s most celebrated novelists published caricatures 30 years ago mocking the Holocaust as well as texts denying that the Holocaust happened.

Yann Moix, whose first novel won a prestigious Goncourt Prize in 1996, apologized this week for his actions and suspended the promotion of his latest novel, “Orleans,” over the discovery.

The weekly L’Express published an exposé last week detailing Moix’s contributions in 1989-90 to a self-published periodical he called Ushoahia — a mashup of the Hebrew word for Holocaust and the name of a French television travel program.

Moix drew one caricature of a man wearing a striped prisoner uniform while holding up a can emblazoned with the words “Coca-Crema,” short for crematorium. He wrote: “You can beat the Jew!” and drew Stars of David around the caricature.

Another drawing featured similar figures performing like a rock band outside a Nazi-like camp encircled with barbed wire.

“Everybody knows the camps never existed,” a caption alongside that caricature read.

The members of the Silver Gull Beach Club in Queens, New York were shocked when the club notified them that the playground would be closed. The New York Times reported that club management said the closure was “due to the recent and increasing incidence of vandalism from within the club.”

Members quickly heard that the playground was covered in antisemitic and racist graffiti including racial slurs against black people, a red swastika, the words "Heil Hitler," The Times reported. Additionally, The Times published a photo of a door with the words "gas chamber" smeared on it in red paint.

New York has seen an increase in hate crimes, and according to the NYPD, as of June 2, 2019, the number of reported antisemitic crimes rose from 58 in 2018 to 110 in 2019.

Some Silver Gull members spoke with The Times, including Harold Bretstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors.

“You can gloss it over. You can talk about it being a prank, but it’s much more than a prank, especially in terms of the times we’re living in when you’re seeing a rise in antisemitism everywhere,” Bretstein told The Times.

Michelle Freedman, whose mother survived the Holocaust told The Times, “We cannot sweep this under the rug, we have to acknowledge when these things happen and all the members of the club need to know the club doesn’t tolerate racism or antisemitism."

A district court in Helsingborg, Sweden, has fined Imam Samir el Rifai 3,000 kronor ($305) for hate speech during a July 2017 demonstration, Expressen.se reported Monday.

The speech was sponsored by the Swedish-Palestinian Center in Helsingborg, and was carried out in Arabic at the city’s Gustav Adolf Square. The anti-Semitic content was reported to police by the Jewish Assembly in Helsingborg.

In his speech, el Rifai said the Jews had conspired against both Jesua and Mohammed, and, in fact, “there is no prophet against whom those who are the progeny of monkeys and pigs have not made evil plans. They did it to all the prophets and to all nations, and this has also affected our prophet, peace be upon him.”

In court, the defendant argued that he had only attacked the State of Israel, over its restriction of access to al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, but plaintiffs’ attorney Ylva Norling Jönsson told Expressen: “We believe it is clear from the speech in its entirety that the statement was aimed at Jews in relation to their religion, not the [Israeli] regime or its military force.”

A German parliamentarian is calling on one of the country’s top soccer teams to take firm action against fans who abused an Israeli referee with a medieval antisemitic epithet during a major European contest last week.

Green Party MP Omid Nouripour said on Sunday that the management of Bundesliga soccer club Eintracht Frankfurt needed to work with police to identify the fans who called Orel Grinfeld — the Israeli referee who officiated at Eintracht’s 3-0 victory over French club Racing Strasbourg in their Europa League qualifying match last Thursday — a “Judensau,” or “Jewish pig.”

Nouripour, who is also the chair of Eintracht’s supporters club in the German Parliament, explained that while he had not been in attendance at the match, several of his contacts who were present confirmed hearing the offensive chant. Nouripour urged the Eintracht management to issue permanent bans and launch legal proceedings against the offenders.

A local politician who attended the match told the Jüdische Allgemeine Jewish news outlet that he had personally remonstrated with the fans who showered Grinfeld with antisemitic abuse after he issued a red card to Eintracht forward Ante Rebić on the cusp of half-time.

Serbia’s parliament will block plans for construction, including those for a shopping mall, on the grounds of former concentration camps, the country’s president said.

President Aleksandar Vucic told Efraim Zuroff, the Eastern Europe director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, on Thursday in Belgrade that a bill that would make the plans impossible would be passed this year, Zuroff told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The law would also create a memorial center in Belgrade for tens of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Roma killed by Nazis in World War II.

Originally a 1937 trade fair complex built in the then capital of Yugoslavia, one of the former camps, Staro Sajmiste, became a death camp when Nazis invaded the country in 1941. Some 30,000 died there, including 7,000 Jews.

After the fall of Communism, Staro Sajmiste and another site of a Nazi-era camp in Belgrade, Topovske Supe, were partly sold off by the state, but have been spared large-scale redevelopment, Bloomberg noted in a report Thursday.

The world’s first drug to prevent proliferation of cancerous cells, established by Israeli scientist Dr. Sharon Shacham, just received FDA approval, kicking off Leukemia Awareness Month.

XPOVIO was developed by Karyopharm Therapeutics, a Newton, Massachusetts company established by Israel’s Dr. Sharon Shacham.

“We believe that our activity at Karyopharm constitutes an important milestone in the war on cancer,” she said.

The FDA first approved the drug for sale in July after 10 years of development. Karyopharm wrote in a press release that within six days of the FDA’s approval, cancer patients in the USA began receiving XPOVIO.

During a pivotal trial that led to the drug’s approval, approximately 40% of patients saw their tumors shrink. Karyopharm also reported that patient life expectancy increased by three to five times thanks to the treatment.

XPOVIO has been mainly used to treat myeloma, the second most common type of blood cancer, which affects 400 to 500 people in Israel annually, according to a Karyopharm Therapeutics press release.

Fauda star and creator Lior Raz said that when he was shooting the Michael Bay film, 6 Underground, in Abu Dhabi, he had to have a body guard, “Not because I’m Israeli, because all of the Arab people from all of the countries just wanted to take a selfie with me all the time,” the Cleveland Jewish News reported.

Raz, who was speaking at an event at the Joseph and Florence Mandel Jewish Day School in Beachwood, Ohio, in late August, reminisced about the wonderful reception he got from fans in the United Arab Emirates: “Everyone watched that show. Why? I asked a lot of them: Because we honored their language, because we are not trying to show anyone as the good guy, anyone as the bad guy. It’s an Israeli narrative, I’m an Israeli, I’m a warrior, I’m a Zionist … And people love it.”

He said that a key to the show’s success was that much of it is in Arabic, including the credits (which are in both Arabic and Hebrew). “For me the Arab language, Arabic, is super important, super, super important. I think that in order to understand our enemies, we have to know them much better. In order not to fight with them, we have to honor them. In order to honor them, we have to learn their language because Arab people in Israel know Hebrew. Everyone. But in Israel, if you ask someone in school what you prefer, French or Arabic, most of the Israelis will go and (study) French. Why?” Answering his own question, he became sarcastic: “Because our border with Switzerland is very close and… they need to know French.”

He recalled learning Arabic as a child, while spending time with the Arab workers at his father’s plant nursery, so he could feel that he was part of their group. “I didn’t know what was going on, but I became an undercover soldier when I was 10 years old.”

A couple of years later, he said, he killed some porcupines that been destroying plants at his father’s nursery. “We ate them later. It’s not kosher. I’m sorry.”

Earlier at the event, while talking about how therapy helped him cope with PTSD from his army service – in an undercover unit that was the inspiration for Fauda – he showed that he was could still be a tough guy. Seeing someone videotaping him on their cellphone, he said, “Please don’t videotape it, OK? I’ll kill you. I’m talking about very personal stuff, so please don’t record anything. We know that I can.” The person stopped and Raz calmed down.

Hundreds of colorful, embroidered tapestries, woven and sewn by thousands of people worldwide in memory of Ori Ansbacher, a 19-year-old who was murdered in a Jerusalem forest last year, were stitched together to form a massive, three-meter-long Israeli flag, and hung prominently outside the Cardo in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

The project, which brought together 5,200 embroidered works made by a wide range of people from around the world, though mostly women, was a project created by Bat Sheva Sadan, whose own parents were killed 16 years ago in a terrorist attack.

Sadan was tremendously saddened and pained by Ansbacher’s murder, and called upon women to embroider their feelings on fabrics. She reached out via Facebook, and ended up collecting more than 5,000 embroidered squares from 11 countries.

“Embroidery has been women’s work through the ages,” said Sadan, who is still seeking funds to complete the project and move it to be displayed in other locations in Israel.

The embroiderers included a child with special needs, who held the hand of her teacher who did the embroidery, a group of older women with dementia, a Belz Hasidic woman and a mother sitting next to her son’s hospital bed.

One woman worked on a piece of fabric taken from material she brought from the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, while another used a piece of her dead brother’s Israel Defense Forces uniform.

Expectations are high for a dramatic announcement on Wednesday, when Benjamin Netanyahu will make Israeli history by becoming the first prime minister to deliver a public address in Hebron. The event is a state ceremony at the Tomb of the Patriarchs marking 90 years since Arab rioters killed 67 Jews in the biblical city, thereby decimating the ancient Jewish community.

No Israeli prime minister has ever attended or spoken at such a ceremony in Hebron, and few have ever visited the city.

A group of fanatic illegal Israeli colonialist settlers installed, Tuesday, a large tent in Tal Romeida Palestinian neighborhood in Hebron city, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank, to welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who intends to conduct a provocative visit to the city, Wednesday.

 The Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs warned of the serious repercussions in the occupied city of Hebron after Israeli settlers erected large tents in the Tel Rumeida area in preparation for receiving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday under the pretext of participating in official rituals to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Buraq Revolution.

The Ministry of Endowments pointed out that Netanyahu's visit and what is happening in the occupied city of Hebron is a reminder of Ariel Sharon's visit to Jerusalem in 2000, which ignited the Al-Aqsa Intifada, stressing that the visit is a serious escalation and prejudice to the feelings of Muslims, and dragging the region to a religious war that will have great consequences.

The main monument of the town is the centrally sited Al Haram Al-Ibrahimi Mosque/The Tomb of the Patriarchs. Elements of the current building date back to long before the Mamluk Period, as do its religious associations and the reasons why it is revered by Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. The mosque is said to host the remains of God’s prophet Abraham/ Ibrahim, his wife Sara, their sons Isaac and Jacob and their wives Rebecca and Leah, as well as Jacob’s son Joseph. (?)
There is reference in the Book of Genesis to Abraham purchasing the field for the tomb. The sanctity of the tomb site was known from as early as the Herodian Period, (1st century BCE) when a monumental enclosure was built around the sacred Cave of Machpelah, whose location is now lost. This enclosure of massive, finely dressed stone blocks still frames the mosque and within it are structures that reflect later Fatimid, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods. The great covered prayer hall was constructed in 12th century out of the remains of the Crusaders 11th century Romanesque church which in turn arose from the ruins of a 7th century mosque.

There was something unprecedented about the latest escalation between Israel and Hezbollah - and it's got nothing to do with firepower.

For the first time in the Israeli-Arab conflict, significant Arab officials (and mouthpieces for Arab regimes) openly and unabashedly took Israel’s side over their fellow Arabs, while others fell silent
.
Bahrain’s Foreign Minister attacked Lebanon's government for "standing by, watching battles taking place on its borders," the UAE foreign minister said - in a dig at Hezbollah - "The decision to make war, peace or stability should be the decision of the state," Saudi regime loyalists cheered and applauded Israel’s attack on "the ugly face of Iran," and the crown prince of Gulf Likudnik trolls, Mohammed Saud, declared: "Netanyahu knows what to do against Hezbollah."

Not long ago, such full-throated support for Israel from states and their subjects who don’t even officially recognize Israel would have been astonishing. Not long ago it was the expectation that any even tentative references to Israel had to be justified by - at least - paying lip service to the Palestinian cause, or the peace process.

One word has changed it all: Iran.

This [normalization] paradigm embraces the humiliating, defeatist path of normalizing relations with Israel regardless of, and untethered from, any progress on the Palestinian front, because: Iran.
...
What a victory for Benjamin Netanyahu: he can present himself as the pioneer who broke the normalization game and exposed its fragility, while offering a vision of another new Middle East which doesn’t require any practical or ideological retreat vis-a-vis the Palestinians.

Along the way, he accumulates domestic political capital by framing himself as a King who can twist Arab leaders’ arms, humiliating - if not forcing - them into submission. 

Indeed, it’s a common belief in the Arab world that Netanyahu deliberately humiliates Arab officials engaged in normalization, whether this is grounded in fact or not.

And they’re ignoring the depth of Arab popular solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Netanyahu himself has admitted that the biggest threat to normalization is grassroots Arab opposition: "The greatest obstacle to the expansion of peace today is not found in the leaders of the countries around us. The obstacle is public opinion on the Arab street," he declared at the event marking the 40th anniversary of Sadat’s Knesset speech. 

Normalization without any progress on Palestine is a trap: covert cooperation is fine, but public acts have to be kept occasional, and contained, for fear of a potentially destabilizing public outcry.

For any peace process, the implications are severe. Israeli-Arab normalization has always been one of the last bargaining chips Palestinians retained in peace negotiations. Losing that leverage leaves Palestinians cornered, isolated and in despair, increasing the possibility of an explosion of chaos in the occupied territories.

In addition, the text of Yasser Arafat’s letter of mutual recognition to Yizhak Rabin is presented with what appears to be intentional deletions. Arafat announced that the signing of the Declaration of Principles was an "historic event opening a new era of coexistence in peace and stability, an era without violence," and proclaimed the PLO's commitment to "assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance." Both appeared in the previous curriculum. Instead, violent struggle for the liberation of Palestine in its entirety is propagated. Jews and Israel are delegitimized and demonized to such a degree that one cannot perceive either as partners for peaceful coexistence.

Kerry frankly admitted that America’s decision to abstain on United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 on 23 December 2016:
“was about preserving the two-state solution. That’s what we were standing up for: Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, living side by side in peace and security with its neighbors. That’s what we are trying to preserve for our sake and for theirs.”

Kerry was consumed by his own ignorance and arrogance when proclaiming:
“Today, there are a number – there are a similar number of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. They have a choice. They can choose to live together in one state, or they can separate into two states. But here is a fundamental reality: if the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic – it cannot be both – and it won’t ever really be at peace. Moreover, the Palestinians will never fully realize their vast potential in a homeland of their own with a one-state solution.”

It obviously did not dawn on Kerry that there was another alternative to his “one state or two states” mantra: the division of the West Bank and Gaza between Israel, Jordan and Egypt in direct face to face negotiations to complete the allocation of sovereignty in former Palestine between Arabs and Jews first contemplated by the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, and the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

Obama and Kerry’s treacherous act of abstaining on Resolution 2334 was swiftly repudiated by the House passing H -Res 11 by 342 votes to 80 on 5 January 2017.

The PLO has committed political hara-kiri since – refusing to negotiate with Israel on Trump’s yet-to-be-released peace plan – vacating the field to other Arab states including Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to fill the negotiating void.

The State Department’s recently re-designed website sends a clear message to Arab states wanting to end the Jewish-Arab conflict to come to the negotiating table.

Is the PA trying to ignite a new terror campaign? In anticipation of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs today, the PA Ministry of Religious Affairs has threatened "religious war."

The ministry compared Netanyahu's visit to the visit of then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount in 2000, which then PA Chairman Arafat exploited to ignite the PA's 5-year terror campaign - the Intifada. Over a period of 5 years, more than 1,100 Israelis were murdered in terror attacks that included numerous suicide bombings:
"The Ministry of Religious Affairs emphasized in a statement it published yesterday that Netanyahu's visit constitutes a grave escalation and a blow to the Muslims' sensibilities, and that it will drag the region into a religious war whose consequences will be grave. It reminds us of [Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon's visit in Jerusalem (i.e., to the Temple Mount) in 2000, which ignited the Al-Aqsa Intifada."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 4, 2019]

The PA ministry also encouraged violence and confrontations:
"The ministry called on our people to defend the Ibrahim Mosque and prevent all of the plans to take it over and remove the Muslims from it. He called on the international community to help and stop the Israeli actions, out of fear that the entire area will go up in flames."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 4, 2019]

While the cancellation of at least two events planned by the US embassy and scheduled to be held in Ramallah is significant, the fact that the organization taking credit for thwarting the events is the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces should possibly raise alarm.

During the September 2000 - 2005 terror war initiated by the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces functioned as the umbrella organization for coordination between many different terrorist groups, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Recently, one of the founders of Hamas, Hassan Yousef, elaborated on how Hamas terror activities during the terror war were coordinated with the PA under and directed by Yasser Arafat, and the active role played by the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces.

Hamas founder Hassan Yousef: “We were in contact with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (Hamas founder and leader), regular daily contact with Sheikh Yassin’s office. And for your information, at the time my office was the [Hamas] Movement’s gateway to the PA. Yasser Arafat was here in Ramallah, and did not leave, to the point that everything that the [Hamas] movement wanted I would convey [to Arafat], and we would sit and reach understandings, and discuss and talk among ourselves. For instance, Yasser Arafat would say to us: ‘At this stage we want to calm things,’ and we would calm them. There was mutual agreement. [Arafat would say]: ‘This time we want to move together and encourage things’ - and there were mutual understandings. The national relations were at the highest level at that time...”

“Area C,” which comprises some 60% of Judea and Samaria, is making news these days. This time, the hot-button issue is illegal Palestinian settlements sprouting across the region, shredding the last vestige of the Oslo Accords, which, for a generation, propelled the two-state solution.

Most observers of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis are accustomed to hearing talk of “illegal Jewish settlements” on slivers of land comprising 1 to 2% of the West Bank, mostly near Israel’s Green Line. But attention now focuses on an explosion of thousands of illegal Palestinian constructions: village clusters, agricultural tracts, water networks, roads and general infrastructure crisscrossing Area C of the West Bank. All of this violates the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords, which specify full Israeli administrative control in Area C. Under the international agreement, only the Israeli Civil Administration can authorize new construction in the zone – for Israeli and Arab alike. However, continuous waves of recent Palestinian settlements are being established without permits, often without even bothering to apply. One senior official of the Israeli security apparatus called it “the Wild West.”

According to Israeli activist watchdog groups such as Regavim, in the past half-decade, illegal Palestinian settlements and infrastructure have sprawled across more than 9,000 dunams (9 16square kilometers) in more than 250 Area C locations, supported by more than 600 kilometers of illegally constructed access roads and more than 112,000 meters of retaining walls and terracing. This massive works project is being conducted in broad daylight, often heralded by announcement placards and press releases.

When questioned, various Israeli government officials did not dispute the Regavim numbers. In exasperation, one military spokesman close to the Area C files located at Beit El estimated “close to 10,000” illegal construction efforts are now underway, adding that they felt “powerless to stop them.” The rapid buildup is funded by hundreds of millions of euros annually, funneled by the European Union and individual European nations into scores of building and infrastructure projects.

Understanding the tortuous history that created the current sovereignty vacuum in Area C can be daunting and confusing.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: “Area C,” which makes up about 60% of the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria (known as the West Bank since their 1950 annexation by Jordan), is making news these days. This time, the hot button issue is the illegal Palestinian settlements that are sprouting up across the region. These settlements shred the last scraps that remain of the Oslo Accords, which propelled the idea of the “two-state solution” for a generation.

The funding for these illegal Palestinian settlements, which amounts to hundreds of millions of euros annually, comes from the EU. According to the Oslo Accords, only Israel can issue construction permits in Area C. In joining forces to promote the rapid expansion of illegal Palestinian settlement in Area C, the EU and the PA have dispensed entirely with any coordination with Israel, in direct contravention of the Accords. View PDF

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that US President Donald Trump’s peace plan will be released “immediately” after Israel’s elections later this month.

Netanyahu made the remark at a Likud campaign event in the northern city of Kiryat Ata, while assailing his political rivals for their positions on Iran and an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

“Who do you want to be dealing with talks over the Deal of the Century of President [Donald] Trump, which will be coming in just a bit, immediately after the elections?” he asked supporters.

He did not give a specific date for the release of the long-delayed proposal.

Last Wednesday, US special envoy Jason Greenblatt tweeted that the Trump administration had decided against releasing the plan until after elections, after Trump appeared to toy with the idea of rolling it out before the September 17 vote.

The Lebanon-based newspaper Al Akhbar reported that an official source in one of the Palestinian factions revealed that there is an understanding between the United States and Canada for Canada to receive 100,000 Palestinians (40,000 from Lebanon and another 60,000 from Syria).

In addition, there is a further understanding with Spain to receive 16,000 Palestinians from Lebanon, alongside similar agreements with Belgium and France. The understandings would lead to the reduction of the cost of migration from $12,000 to $7,000 per person.

The representative of Hamas in Lebanon, Ahmed Abdel-Hadi, told Al Akhbar that part of the Deal of the Century aims to resettle between 75,000 to 100,000 Palestinians in Lebanon and displace the rest to more than one country.

About 40,000 Palestinians have left Lebanon in the last four years through legal immigration. Others have taken illegal routes.

Many Palestinian youth are trying to emigrate from Lebanon at all costs, but many attempts end in tragedy, according to Al Akhbar. Some who try to emigrate die while trying to cross seas or deserts.

Two weeks after an improvised explosive device killed a teenage Israeli girl at a spring in the West Bank, the terror cell responsible for the deadly attack are still at large.

Rina Shnerb, 17, of Lod, went with her father, Eitan, and older brother, Dvir, to the Ein Buvin spring near the West Bank settlement of Dolev. As the family was approaching their destination, an improvised explosive device (IED) went off. Rina was critically wounded in the attack and was pronounced dead shortly thereafter by military medics. Her father and brother who were evacuated to hospital in serious condition have both been released.

Israeli police said that the bomb had been planted earlier at the popular spring and was triggered remotely when the family approached it.

While dozens of Palestinians believed to be connected to the terror attack have been arrested, the cell itself is still on the loose.

While Hamas did not officially take responsibility for the attack, Gaza-based terror group released a statement on Wednesday warning that “there is no security” for Jews on “our land.”

“Resistance in the West Bank by our heroic people will not allow the settlers to live safely on our land,” the group said. “The heroic resistance operations witnessed by the West Bank recently assures the enemy leaders and settlers of that.”

Dvir Shnerb, 19, who was seriously wounded in the terrorist bombing two weeks ago in Samaria that killed his sister, Rina, 17, was released from the hospital on Monday.

Dvir and his father, Rabbi Eitan Shnerb, who was also wounded in the attack, were evacuated by helicopter to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.

Dvir was admitted in an induced coma and attached to a respirator. Immediately upon arrival, he underwent surgery to repair shrapnel wounds to his stomach.

Rabbi Shnerb was released from the hospital last week.

Dvir expressed his thanks to the Hadassah Ein Kerem medical staff, as well as to the first responders who arrived at the scene of the bombing. He will have to return to the hospital for follow-up visits and further treatment.

US Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt this week addressed a letter to the United Nations, urging the international body to step up efforts to release the Israelis held by Hamas in Gaza, Israeli TV reported on Monday.

According to the report, Greenblatt wrote the letter on the heels of a meeting with Leah and Simcha Goldin, the parents of IDF soldier Hadar Goldin, whose remains are believed to have been held by Hamas since the Gaza war of 2014 – as are those of Oron Shaul, another IDF soldier killed in the operation.

Additionally, two Israeli civilians are also believed to be in Hamas custody after crossing into the blockaded Gaza Strip.

In July, a Hamas spokesman said that Israel still had the opportunity to recover the captives and the remains of the fallen soldiers.

"There is an opportunity to resolve the issue of prisoners and missing persons if the enemy's leadership is serious," he said.

First visual in U.N. Visitors area: the “State of Palestine.”

Funny thing, though: when they were reviewed last month by the U.N. committee against racial discrimination, the Palestinian reps argued they should not really be held to account because they’re not really a state. pic.twitter.com/NFfKGxlVAF

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 3, 2019

No joke: U.N.'s "Human Rights Council" to hold panel event on Sept. 12 to condemn human rights sanctions by U.S. & Europe against dictatorships.

Speakers:
🇻🇪 Venezuela FM J. Arreaza, Chair of NAM
🇻🇪 Venezuela's UNHRC rep
🇺🇳 UNHRC expert Jean Ziegler, founder of the Qaddafi Prize pic.twitter.com/buMjcNoOzW

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 3, 2019

What is further emerging is that the initial effort by the Israeli political and military hierarchies — via a mix of statements, leaked footage and unsourced briefings — to depict the incident as not merely a failure by Hezbollah, but one in which the Iranian-proxy terrorist army across the border was outmaneuvered and outsmarted in an episode of psychological warfare, did not accurately represent what had happened.

There was, inevitably, a lot of confusion in those first minutes and even hours after the Hezbollah missile attack. Even now, the full picture is not completely clear; the IDF itself is now investigating exactly what occurred. Some of the reporting inaccuracies and contradictions were doubtless a consequence of misunderstandings amid the initial chaos. But some, too, was a product of disinformation designed to make the IDF look good — and to make Hezbollah look both bad and lacking in credibility — when the full picture was far more complex.

Let’s make this clear: The first obligation of our military and political hierarchies is to protect and safeguard Israel and its citizenry. And this writer does not doubt for a second that this imperative sits front and center for Israel’s army chiefs and government. But a core component of our national resilience is the Israeli people’s confidence that their military and political leaders are, within the limitations of their wider security concerns, telling them the truth.

We have for decades mocked Arab leaders who utterly misled their citizens over the progress of their various wars against Israel, and have rightly regarded the desperate disinformation with which our enemies attempted to cover up their military failures as a sign of weakness. Israel’s readiness through the decades, by contrast, to acknowledge strategic and tactical failure, to face it head-on and thus learn the lessons to avoid it in the future, has been rightly regarded as a key component of our strength.

In that context, it is deeply discomfiting to watch Hezbollah footage of a missile attack on a most emphatically moving, occupied IDF vehicle, a day after Israel’s official hierarchies, through a combination of things said and carefully left unsaid, initially facilitated a narrative designed to suggest a less threatening, less effective attack.

Israelis do not want to get our credible information about what is unfolding near our northern border, or anywhere else for that matter, from Hassan Nasrallah or our other enemies. Again, within the limitations of their wider security concerns, we expect to get it from our leaders.

The limited skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah this past Sunday might have looked familiar, only they reflected a shift in the conflict. In a similar incident in January 2015 Hezbollah responded to an Israeli strike on its cadres in southern Syria by firing antitank missiles on IDF vehicles from the Israeli-controlled Shebaa Farms area near the Golan Heights. Sunday’s attack was also carried out in retaliation for an Israeli strike on Hezbollah operatives in southern Syria, and followed an alleged Israeli operation in Dahieh, one of the main Hezbollah-controlled neighborhoods in Beirut, and once again utilized antitank missiles fired on an IDF vehicle—but, unlike in 2015, this time the attack was carried out from inside a Lebanese village, underscoring the shift to Lebanon as the front from which the group now retaliates.

The operation, reportedly involving a drone attack, marked the end of an almost six-year hiatus, during which time the Israelis limited their strikes against Hezbollah and Iranian assets to targets in Syria. Israel’s tacit agreement not to conduct operations inside Lebanon, which was intended to prevent an escalation into full-on war, had jibed well over the past six years with a U.S. policy that prioritized “preserving Lebanon’s stability.” Unable to respond directly to Israel’s ongoing operations in Syria, Iran and Hezbollah launched a project to upgrade the precision of Hezbollah’s stockpile of missiles inside Lebanon.

For the Israelis, this was a red line. About two years ago, Israeli officials began exposing and speaking openly about this emerging threat. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the matter at the U.N. General Assembly last September, displaying a map with the location of missile sites in Beirut. The Israelis also began exposing Iranian commercial flights to Beirut Airport carrying components to turn rockets into precision missiles. The Israelis, communicating through French diplomatic channels, warned: “The Lebanese government must be careful when it comes to Hezbollah’s rocket factories. If the issue isn’t dealt with through diplomatic means by the Lebanese government, Israel will act on its own.” The U.S. has impressed the same point on Lebanon’s government, including most recently during Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri’s visit to Washington last month. Hariri revealed that U.S. officials raised this issue with him again—this after Hariri had accused Israel of fabricating the whole thing. But, Hariri told reporters in D.C., “we are not a policeman for Israel, which continues to violate UNSCR 1701.”

The many warnings went unheeded, and it appears that Israel took action. Reports from late August claimed that the target of what appear to have been drone attacks in Beirut was an industrial planetary mixer, “a vital component in the machinery used to build a precision guided missile, which requires solid fuel. The item is thought to be manufactured in Iran.” Following these reports, the IDF publicized declassified information on the precision missile project in Beirut, and exposed the Iranian figures leading the effort in Beirut.

The reaction of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah to this blow threw his dilemma into sharp relief. It wasn’t just that a number of his promised retaliatory steps were pitiful—namely, vowing to shoot down Israeli drones in Lebanese skies, or demanding that the Lebanese government go and ask the Americans to put pressure on Israel. It’s also that his very threat to retaliate “from Lebanon” itself reflects his and Iran’s failure.

The Lebanese-based terror organization Hezbollah came very close to hitting an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) ambulance which carried five soldiers and drove near the Lebanon border against the army's protocol, reported Hebrew-language Haaretz outlet on Monday night.
According to the report, the IDF vehicle breached the army’s directives and was lucky to come out of the incident unscathed. IDF senior officers were cited by Haaretz as saying they were “very lucky” to end the incident with no casualties -- which otherwise could have meant an entirely different response scenario by Israel's military.
In the Haaretz report, it was stated that the IDF armored vehicle was traveling on a road around 3.4 miles from the border when it was targeted, still within range of the Kornet anti-tank guided missiles, which was used by Hezbollah in the incident.
The army launched a probe into the incident as it is yet unclear why the soldiers took that particular route when the IDF had minimized vehicular movement ahead of the expected attack.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah on Monday released footage of what they said was a successful attack carried out against an IDF vehicle the previous day.

Israel launched drones into Iran from Azerbaijan and the United States held a practice bombing run on a mock nuclear facility in the western US as part of plans both countries had to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear capability back in 2012.

The revelations came as part of aNew York Times expose on Israeli and American efforts in recent years to stop Iran’s race to a bomb.

In an interview, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that Israel was close to attacking Iran in 2012 but stopped after he did not have enough support in his cabinet. An Israeli strike, he said, “was not a bluff — it was real. And only because it was real were the Americans truly worried about it.”

“If I’d had a majority, I would have done it,” he told the NYT. “Unequivocally.”

According to the report, Ehud Barak, then Israel’s defense minister, was invited to the Pentagon and shown a highly-classified video by Leon Panetta, the secretary of defense, of an American strike – using a massive 30,000 pound bomb – to destroy a replica of Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility. Barak was reportedly impressed by the show.

According to the report, the Obama administration sent a senior official to Israel every few weeks to “Bibisit” and try to stop Israel from attacking.

“It did not escape our understanding that having a visit of a senior American official on the calendar probably bought you a couple of weeks — before the visit and then after the visit,” Dan Shapiro, the former American ambassador to Israel told the Times. “For an Israeli official, it meant you knew you could not strike without feeling that you’ve deceived somebody while they were sitting in your office.”

The US monitored Israeli activity to make sure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not carry out an uncoordinated strike against Iran’s nuclear program, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, the US believed that Israel was on the verge of attacking the Islamic republic in 2012, and at one point discovered that Israel was allegedly carrying out extensive intelligence operations without its knowledge through Azerbaijan.

The Times said that the information was gathered through “interviews with dozens of current and former American, Israeli and European officials over several months reveal the startling details of how close the Israeli military came to attacking Iran in 2012.”

The interviews also showed “the extent to which the Obama administration felt required to develop its own military contingency plans in the event of such an attack, including destroying a full-size mock-up of an Iranian nuclear facility in the western desert of the United States with a 30,000-pound bomb; how Americans monitored Israel even as Israel monitored Iran, with American satellites capturing images of Israel launching surveillance drones into Iran from a base in Azerbaijan; and previously unknown details about the scope of Netanyahu’s pressure campaign to get Trump to leave the Iran deal.”

Netanyahu is quoted in the report as saying “this [the potential attack] was not a bluff – it was real. And only because it was real were the Americans truly worried about it.”

“If I’d had a majority, I would have done it,” Netanyahu said. “Unequivocally.”

Iran is construction a new military facility in Syria that can house thousands of soldiers, according to a Tuesday Fox News report.

Quoting Western intelligence sources, the US cable network said the base is located near the Syria-Iraq border, and its construction is being overseen by the Quds Force, the overseas branch of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Satellite photos of the base, known as the Imam Ali compound, showed what appeared to be five recently constructed buildings that can store precision-guided missiles, according to ImageSat International.

ImageSat, an Israeli satellite imagery analysis firm, said the photos also show other structures at the facility that could be used for storing missiles.

The images also show what appears to be Iranian construction on a new border crossing that near the existing al-Qaim border crossing with Iraq.

Hezbollah has set up a production and conversion site for precision missiles near the town of Al-Nabi Sheeth in Lebanon’s Bekaa, Israel’s military announced on Tuesday, saying the facility was established in recent years as a site for the production of weapons led by Iran and Hezbollah.

Various activities to facilitate the manufacture and conversion of precision-guided missiles at the facility have lately been identified, including the establishment of a dedicated assembly line for precision weapons, and the transfer of sensitive and dedicated equipment.

“This facility is of superior importance to the Hezbollah precision-missile project, which is why Hezbollah, in fear of strikes, evacuated precious and unique equipment from the compound to civilian locations in Beirut,” the military said.

The facility has a number of machines designed to manufacture the motors and missile warheads for missiles capable of hitting within 10 meters from its target. Iran, the IDF said, is providing special machinery, trains production operators, and regularly provides guidance and support.

The facility is divided into different sections, including for motor production, quality assurance, logistics, and the manufacturing of explosives for warheads.

Last week the IDF announced that Hezbollah – which has been working on the expensive and classified precision-missile project since 2013 – has been attempting to build factories to produce precision missiles in southern Lebanon, Beirut and the Bekaa under the guidance of senior Iranian officers.

Israel was alleged to have struck a base last week belonging to the Palestinian PFLP-GC terrorist group near Qusaya in Lebanon’s Bekaa, close to the border with Syria, causing material damage but no casualties.

Hezbollah has over 130,000 rockets and missiles with varying ranges and payloads, and while the group has been working on this project since 2013, they only have several dozen precision missiles.

Iran is trying to turn its proxy Hezbollah into the first terror group in the world with precision guided missiles.

We won’t let them. pic.twitter.com/0DIS7hkawd

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 3, 2019

Israel continues to complain that UNIFIL is not fulfilling its mission to safeguard peace and prevent conflict on the Israel-Lebanon border. Is UNIFIL doing enough to keep the peace? Spokesperson Andrea Tenenti discusses with host Nurit Ben.

Israeli intelligence > Nasrallah's lies

It’s time to debunk the terrorist hiding in the bunker: pic.twitter.com/gEa4US9e3q

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 3, 2019

In what seems to be another indication of thawing relations between Israel and Gulf states, several prominent figures have come forward and publicly condemned the Hezbollah terror group for attacking Israel and expressed support for the Jewish state’s right to retaliate.

Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, who has in the past expressed support for Israel’s right to self defense, slammed the Lebanese government for allowing Sunday’s attack to take place.

“The aggression of one state on another is something prohibited by international law,” he wrote on Twitter.

“A state standing by, watching battles taking place on its borders and putting its people at risk, is a state that greatly neglects its responsibilities,” he added.

On Sunday, Hezbollah fired several anti-tank guided missiles at an army base and struck a military APC in northern Israel in an apparent reprisal for an Israeli attack in Syria that saw two of the terror group’s operatives killed. No one was harmed in the attack.

Israel retaliated by firing at around a hundred Hezbollah targets inside Lebanon.

In a separate tweet Monday, Khalifa also quoted Lebanese Christian politician Samir Geagea as saying it is “unacceptable” for Hezbollah to jeopardize Lebanon in facing a war not of its own choosing.

The IDF tweeted a satirical video showing Syrian President Bashar Assad and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Qasem Soleimani texting birthday wishes to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, including promises to deliver gifts of weapons.

The video begins with Nasrallah making a group with the two allies titled, "You forgot my birthday [sad face emoji]."

Soleimani was quick to put the Hezbollah leader at ease, ensuring that they had not forgotten his birthday and were just busy. The IRGC commander also promised that Iran's presents are on their way, prompting Assad to complain that Hezbollah always gets "the better toys."

Israel has warned repeatedly that it would not allow for an Iranian presence in Syria, and has admitted to hundreds of airstrikes to prevent the transfer of weapons such as ammunition and surface-to-air missile kits to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and its forces in the Golan.

The somewhat humorous video includes animated images and not-so-subtle jibes about the three leaders, including a reference to Nasrallah as "bunker boy."

It was Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah’s birthday on Saturday and he thought no one remembered...

Don’t worry, we did! ?? pic.twitter.com/pXIASfJSnt

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 3, 2019

Israel's alleged attack in Dahiye, the Beirut Shi'ite neighborhood where Hizbullah is headquartered, was met with a very limited Hizbullah response, sending a signal, acknowledged by the Israeli side, that Hizbullah wanted to avoid escalation that could lead to all-out war.

There are several reasons why Hizbullah is restrained, but probably the most important has to do with its demographic predicament. Hizbullah's recruitment pool is strictly limited to the Shi'ite community in Lebanon which numbers 1-1.5 million souls.

The community is suffering from a rapidly declining birth rate similar to the declining fertility rate in Iran - less than is needed to maintain the existing population. Moreover, small families are reluctant to sacrifice what is all too often their only son in a society where the two-child family becomes the norm.

Hizbullah has been sacrificing Shi'ite blood for the last 37 years. The ardor to sacrifice is hard to maintain.

It's also a problem Hizbullah hardly can counter. Declining birth rates are the result of urbanization. Most Lebanese Shi'ites live in the
multi-storied apartment buildings of Dahiye as opposed to the small villages and towns in the past.

In the city, children can no longer help on the farm, becoming consumers rather than producers. The parents want them educated, and many want to see them in Canada and Australia rather than fighting Iran's wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

The balance between Sunnis and Shi'ites in Lebanon has grown in favor of the former as hundreds of thousands of Syrian Sunnis found refuge there. Shi'ite Hizbullah, then, faces a more uncertain future in Lebanon itself as a result.

Mustapha Allouch, a Lebanese politician who is a member of the March 14 Alliance, said in an interview that was uploaded to the Internet by Orient Net that Hizbullah has hijacked Lebanon and the authority to make decisions regarding war and peace in the region. He said that the Lebanese people suffer from Stockholm syndrome since they are sympathizing with and defending Hizbullah, and he stated that everybody in Lebanon knows that Iran and Hizbullah call the shots rather than the Lebanese government and military.

A new Israeli military tactic in the long-running conflict with the Shiite militia Hezbollah has created combat opportunities for soldiers who otherwise would not meet the physical fitness and ability requirements to serve in such units, an IDF spokesman announced today.

Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, the official IDF spokesperson, convened a press conference on this northern border town today to notify the public of the change in policy, which heretofore had required more stringent levels of fitness for inclusion in units that come into direct contact with the enemy. Now, he stated, the army will expand eligibility for “combat” status, which commands greater prestige and higher pay, among other benefits: soldiers whose physical profile falls short of the profile required for infantry, cavalry, or artillery units of the ground corps may still opt for combat status by serving as decoy troops to fool would-be attackers.

A weekend incident in which Hezbollah fired antitank missiles at an Israeli military vehicle they thought contained soldiers – but in fact contained lifelike dummies – followed a period of efforts on the part of the IDF to sow confusion among Hezbollah and permit the organization to “retaliate” for losses over the last several weeks by taking out an IDF target – one that the IDF had tricked them into thinking carried humans. In the wake of the disclosure that the targeted vehicle contained only mannequins, Hezbollah has scrambled to conduct public relations damage control. Experts differ on whether the episode will prove effective in defusing the anticipated escalation that such attacks can spark, or whether Hezbollah will try again to kill real people.

From Ramallah to Tel Aviv — this Palestinian man, Jamil Mohammed, is afraid to go back to his Palestinian community in the West Bank for expressing pro-Israel attitudes. Our Adi Koplewitz has the story.

Payment has come due in a two-year-old court case, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) now must forfeit 12.7 million shekels ($3.61 million) for arresting and torturing more than 50 Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship, an Israeli court ruled.

The victims were arrested between 1990 and the early 2000s on suspicion of collaborating with Israel. The arrests date back to the days of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

The people — arrested on charges of communicating with Israel — filed the lawsuit in Jerusalem District Court in April 2017. The court said it accepted the case because the PA had violated the Taba agreement signed between the PLO and Israel in Washington in 1995. The agreement states that Palestinians who have maintained contact with Israeli authorities will not be subjected to acts of harassment, violence, retribution or prosecution.

In July 2017, the court ruled the PA did not have the authority to arrest the individuals, and their detention caused them grave physical and psychological harm because they were tortured in Palestinian prisons.

The PA appealed the ruling, but the Israeli Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and in November 2018 ruled that the PA must pay the funds. The Israeli Ministry of Finance recently transferred the money from Palestinian tax funds to the Offices of Foreclosure of the Israeli Law Enforcement and Collection System Authority, Israeli newspaper Maariv reported Aug. 15.

Islamic State gunmen in the Sinai Peninsula intercepted a shipment of rockets being smuggled into the Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources told i24News Arabic on Tuesday.

The shipment, likely bound for Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, contained dozens of missiles with ranges of 37 to 50 miles (60-80 km), capable of reaching central Israel from Gaza, the report said.

Operatives from the Islamic State (IS)’s Sinai Province seized the shipment after raiding a truck and another vehicle belonging to arms smugglers.

The rockets likely came from either Libya or Iran, the report cited sources as saying.

Since Egypt has destroyed most of the subterranean tunnels between Gaza and Sinai, Gaza-based terror groups have struggled to smuggle more weapons into the coastal enclave. Materials for the production of rockets have been smuggled in by sea.

Most of the Grad rockets belonging to Hamas and PIJ have a range of 37 miles.

Although they share a mutual hatred of Israel, there is no love lost between the Islamic State and Hamas — despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2014 proclamation that “Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas.”

Last week, Hamas blamed the Islamic State for explosions at two Hamas police checkpoints in Gaza City that left three officers dead.

Two months after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, its leader, Yasser Arafat, tried to personally smuggle four arch-terrorists into Israel, revealed former Director of the Shin Bet, MK Avi Dichter (Likud).

During an interview last month in Tel-Aviv at a conference organized by the Zionist organizations Im Tirtzu and Canadians for Israel's Legal Rights, Dichter recalled receiving a troubled call from a Shin Bet officer who noted that Arafat "looked taller" upon his return to Israel from Egypt.

"There was a convoy of Mercedes," recalled Dichter, "and my guy says, 'I have no doubt that Arafat is smuggling someone in his car.'"

Despite not being able to check the cars due to stipulations in the Olso Accords, after "15-20 minutes later and we already had all the intel," said Dichter.

"Four arch-terrorists were smuggled in the convoy of the PA President Arafat. Three terrorists were in the trunks of each Mercedes, and the fourth, Jihad al-Amarin, was lying on the back seat and Arafat was sitting on top of him."

Dichter told how the information was passed on to then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who issued Arafat an ultimatum to send the terrorists back to Egypt or he would freeze all talks.

An Iranian engineer recruited by the Netherlands planted the Stuxnet virus at an Iranian nuclear research site in 2007, sabotaging uranium enrichment centrifuges in what is widely regarded as the first ever major use of cyber-weapons, Yahoo news reported Tuesday.

At the request of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad spy agency, the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD recruited an Iranian engineer to implant the virus program into Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility, four intelligence sources familiar with the details told the news site.

The report apparently provided the answer to one of the mysteries about the Stuxnet virus story — how the malicious program was introduced into Iranian control systems at Natanz, which was quarantined from the internet.

“The Dutch mole was the most important way of getting the virus into Natanz,” a source told Yahoo.

The Stuxnet virus was uncovered in 2010 and was widely reported to have been developed together by US and Israeli intelligence. It penetrated Iran’s rogue nuclear program, taking control and sabotaging parts of its enrichment processes by speeding up its centrifuges.

Up to 1,000 centrifuges out of 5,000 were eventually damaged by the virus, according to reports, setting back the nuclear program.

The Trump administration, in a global first, issued sanctions on Iran's space program, which has long operated as a front for Tehran's advanced work on nuclear capable ballistic missile technology.

The latest sanctions come as Tehran's economy teeters on the brink in the face of the Trump administration's tough economic penalties. The new sanctions are significant as the first time an American administration has targeted Iran's space program and acknowledged it is all part of Iran's nuclear weapons industry.

Iran last week took renewed steps to launch rockets and satellites as part of its space program. The latest launch is believed to have ended in catastrophe, according to satellite photos and a subsequent image of the destruction disseminated on Twitter by President Donald Trump.

The technology and know-how needed to conduct these strikes is similar to that used to fire intercontinental ballistic missiles, which could carry a nuclear payload, the Trump administration said.

"Space launch vehicle (SLV) technologies, such as those developed by Iran's space program, are virtually identical and interchangeable with those used in ballistic missiles," the State Department said in information provided to reporters on the new sanctions. "Iran's civilian space launch vehicle program allows it to gain experience with various technologies necessary for development of an ICBM—including staging, ignition of upper-stage engines, and control of a multiple-stage missile throughout flight."

The new sanctions target Iran's Space Agency and two of its affiliated research institutes "for engaging in proliferation-sensitive activities."

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani gave European powers another two months to save a 2015 nuclear deal on Wednesday, but warned that Tehran was still preparing for further significant breaches of the agreement if diplomatic efforts failed.

His statement came as Iranian officials appeared to give a guarded welcome to a French proposal to save the atomic pact by offering Iran about $15 billion in credit lines until the end of the year if Tehran comes fully back into compliance.

Rouhani said talks with European powers were moving forward, raising hopes of at least a pause in a diplomatic confrontation between Iran and the West that has stoked already heightened tensions across the region.

Iran emerged from years of economic isolation after agreeing a deal with world powers in 2015 to curb its nuclear development program in exchange for sanctions relief. However, US President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal last year, arguing it did not go far enough, and reimposed sanctions.

Tehran responded with two separate moves that breached some of the terms of the deal, although it says it still aims to save the pact.

Rouhani had threatened to take further measures by Sept. 5 unless France and the other European signatories of the pact did more to protect Iran from the impact of the US penalties.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an August 28, 2019 interview on Channel 1 TV (Iran) that Iran will only implement the JCPOA in full if the oil sanctions are lifted and if it gets access to revenues from its oil sales. He also said that Iran will not meet or negotiate with the United States unless it changes its policy of applying economic pressure to Iran, and he said that Iran has gone to great lengths to avoid meeting with American officials. He gave the example that Iran only agreed to meet with France and other G-7 members on the condition that the Iranian delegation would not even accidentally meet with the American delegation.

Qais Khazali, the leader of the Iraqi Shiite militia Asa'ib Ahl Al-Haq, said in a September 1, 2019 speech that aired on Al-Ahd TV (Iraq) that the Jews, who he described as the enemies of mankind, attempted to assassinate Imam Hussein and that they are today trying to locate and kill Imam Al-Mahdi. He claimed that there has always been a Jewish-Zionist lobby that has been the main enemy of the Iraqi people, that there has always been a superpower, such as the United States, used by the Jewish-Zionist lobby to execute its plans, and that there have always been "hypocrite Bedouins," like Saudi Arabia, that have been used by the superpower to achieve its goals. In addition, Khazali said that the Iraqi PMU and its storehouses are being targeted because the enemies know that their "evil plans" cannot succeed if the PMU and Iran are strong. He threatened that Israel's attacks on Iraq will not go unanswered and that they constituted a "sentence of extinction" for the "plundering entity."

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

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

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

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

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

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that Jews would remain in the biblical West Bank city of Hebron forever on Wednesday.

"Hebron won't be Judenrein," Netanyahu said.

The prime minister made history when he became the first sitting prime minister to speak at a state ceremony in the divided city at a ceremony marking 90 years since the 1929 Hebron massacre in which 67 Jews were killed. However, despite expectations, Netanyahu did not deliver any dramatic announcements.

Netanyahu did not speak of the application of sovereignty in Hebron or elsewhere in Judea and Samaria, even though two Likud ministers, Yuli Edelstein and Miri Regev, had called on him to do so.

Earlier in the day, Knesset Speaker Edelstein said that “the time has come” to apply Israeli sovereignty in Hebron… We have to do everything we can to ensure that when the state ceremony is held for the 100th anniversary of the massacre, it will be held in Israel’s sovereign territory” of Hebron.”

Rather, the prime minister told the crowd that, “We did not come to dispossess anyone, but neither will we be dispossessed.”

Israel and Switzerland will work together to consider alternatives to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday after meeting with Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis in Bern.

Switzerland suspended payments to UNRWA in July until completion of a UN investigation into ethical misconduct among senior officials in the organization. This decision came after Switzerland has already paid its $22.5 million pledge in 2019 toward the organization’s $1.2 billion budget.

Katz, according to a statement put out by his office, told his Swiss counterpart that some UNRWA officials in Gaza had cooperated with terror organizations in attacks against Israel, and quoted Cassis himself as saying in May that UNRWA is “the problem and not the solution.”

During those comments, Cassis said the organization fueled “unrealistic” hope among Palestinians of a “right to return” to Israel from refugee camps in the Middle East.

Katz recently directed the Foreign Ministry to come up with a document outlining an alternative to UNRWA, and a team established in the ministry has held a number of meetings on the matter.

Khoury excels at imagining the “how” that historical fiction is meant to capture. But when it comes to why things happened and what they meant, My Name Is Adam raises questions it fails to answer. Why, for instance, did the Israeli army conquer Lydda in 1948? A full explanation would require mentioning the 100,000 Jews who were slowly starving in Jerusalem, which was under siege by Arab forces; it was to open the road to Jerusalem that the Israelis launched their offensive against Lydda and Ramle. But Khoury doesn’t discuss this background, any more than he takes account of the reciprocal massacres that Jews and Arabs had been inflicting on one another for 20 years before 1948. The fall of Lydda appears to the reader as it must have to many of its inhabitants, as an inexplicable catastrophe, a bolt from the blue.

The main problem, however, lies in Khoury’s insistence on identifying what happened in Lydda with the Jewish experience in Europe during the Holocaust. The chief example is his use of the term “ghetto” to describe the Arab quarter of the conquered town. As Khoury acknowledges, this neighborhood was sealed off with fencing only for about a month, while the war went on. Yet he insists that the term applies equally well to Lydda and to Warsaw, where 400,000 Jews were held captive for two years until they were murdered in death camps.

Adam Dannoun cultivates a mystery about his origins and identity, telling people that he is actually a Jew who was born in the Warsaw Ghetto. Khoury suggests that this was not actually a lie: “I really was a son of the ghetto, and my claims to Polish origins and to being from Warsaw were no more than an appropriate metaphor to describe my childhood in Lydda,” Khoury writes. Dannoun approvingly quotes his Jewish Israeli girlfriend Dalia’s equation of Israel with Nazi Germany: “The Palestinians are the victims of the victims, and the Jewish victims have no right to behave like their executioners.” He refers to the Arabs conscripted to bury the dead at Lydda as “Sonderkommandos,” the term used for Jewish prisoners forced to empty the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

This kind of rhetoric is common enough, and to a reader who knows nothing more of the relevant history than what they read in My Name Is Adam, it might seem apt. But it is a vast distortion of the meaning, cause, and scale of what happened in 1948 to equate the suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of the Jews with the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis. Of course, it’s not incumbent on victims to place their tragedy in historical perspective: Each individual’s suffering is unique and deserves to be mourned on its own terms. But in comparing Lydda to Warsaw—and also, earlier in the book, to Sabra and Shatila—Khoury is precisely failing to mourn Lydda on its own terms. Perhaps this is a sign that 1948 does not yet belong to history, but remains in the bitterly contested zone of memory, myth, and politics.

At last, Georges Bensoussan's groundbreaking book: Juifs en pays arabes: le grand deracinement is available in an English translation by Andrew Halper. Here is a review by Aaron Howard in Jewish Herald Voice, a newspaper published in the Houston area.

The history of Mizrahi Jews is largely silent, writes French Jewish historian Georges Bensoussan. One reason is that most Jewish historians take a Eurocentric view of history; Jewish history is the narrative of Ashkenazi Judaism. Second is that Anglo-American Jewry is overwhelmingly Ashkenazic. In contrast, about 60 percent of French Jewry is from North Africa and the Middle East.

Third is Arab archives are, for the most part, closed or not accessible unless the historian in fluent in Arabic.

Bensoussan is the author of “Jews In Arab Countries” (Indiana University Press). Originally published in France as “Juifs en Pays Arabes, le Grande Racincement 1850-1975,” the book is now available in an English translation.

Much of the author’s source material comes from the archives of the Alliance Israélite Universell. As the most important Jewish philanthropic organization of its day, the AIU first tasked emissaries to examine the state of the Jewish population and report on their needs. The AIU also established a comprehensive educational system in North Africa and parts of the Middle East.

The narrative begins in the middle of the 19th century when Western nations began colonizing the Arab world. Granted, AIU agents carried certain prejudices with them. Yet, in location after location, agent after agent recorded a Jewish population marked by fear and submission to the point of “internalizing the idea that he was the natural inferior of the Arabs.”

To the extent that Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement supporters can claim their effort to isolate Israel is a success, they note how it has integrated itself within in academic circles. In her 2018 book, Boycott, for example, Susaina Maira, a leader of the academic wing of the movement, insists that “a host of . . . academic associations” participate in the effort to make a pariah state of Israel.

In fact, as a list maintained by Maira’s own organization demonstrates, the academic organizations that have adopted BDS are few, small, and radical. Some “host.” When you are forced to include a single department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa on your short list of “academic associations supporting boycott,” you’re reaching.

In reality, BDS’s momentum has stalled. The campaign hasn’t attracted a U.S. scholarly organization since it snagged the National Women’s Studies Association in 2015. Meanwhile, they lost big at the American Historical Association in 2016. The Modern Language Association grew so tired of BDS propagandists that they passed an anti-BDS resolution in 2017. BDS even lost in anthropology–among our most politically lopsided disciplines—when the American Anthropological Association narrowly defeated a boycott resolution three years ago.

This year, BDS lost the Society for the Study of Social Problems, an organization committed to the pursuit of “social justice” with no compunction about passing resolutions on subject matters outside its members’ range of expertise. The BDS resolution failed at the same time that one in support of the Green New Deal passed!

Are you familiar with the Boycott Israel movement, also known as BDS? The leaders of this movement deny Israel the right to exist and advocate for Israel's complete destruction. Learn more in this 60 second recap. pic.twitter.com/6yG5fMed2H

— Secure America Now 🇺🇸 (@SecureAmerica) September 3, 2019

Gov. Matt Bevin signed Kentucky’s anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) legislation in the State Capitol in Frankfort, Kentucky on August 27.

The signing was primarily ceremonial since the law went into effect when it was passed by the state legislature during its last session, codifying into law Executive Order 2018-905 made by Gov. Bevin last November. It reflects official opposition by the commonwealth to doing business with significant contractors who participate in boycotts of the State of Israel.

Jewish organizations in the state, such as Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the Jewish Community of Louisville (JCL), claim such calls are mildly veiled antisemitsm as reported by the Jewish Louisville community newspaper.
Matt Goldberg, director of the JCRC, said, “We are thankful for the many Kentucky citizens, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who made this possible.”

Guests at the ceremony included US Rep. Andy Barr (R- Kentucky) and state Senate President Robert Stivers, Frank Weisberg, Leon Wahba, rabbis from Chabad of the Bluegrass and Kentucky and representatives from Christians United for Israel (CUFI).

“My colleagues and I condemn the BDS movement, and we have sent a letter to the Office of Foreign Asset Control requesting an update on ... organizations engaged in antisemitic hate against our allies in Israel and the Jewish people worldwide,” said Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) at the signing ceremony, according to the Jewish wire service, JNS.

Kentucky became the 26th state out of 50 states in the US to pass an anti-BDS law.

Eighty organizations today wrote to the California State University (CSU) Chancellor and the University’s General Counsel demanding answers regarding San Francisco State University (SFSU) Professor Rabab Abdulhadi’s continued use of the university’s name and logo to spread anti-Semitism and false propaganda against Israel on social media.

The groups initially learned that an image with the message “Zionism = Racism” and “Boycott! Divest! Sanction!” had been posted to the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora’s Program (AMED) Facebook page, and asked CSU and state officials to address the matter, more than a month ago. To date, nothing has been done. The hateful posts remain, and Abdulhadi has added new posts soliciting funds for her lawsuit against SFSU and to fight the “Israel Lobby.” The response from newly appointed SFSU President Mahoney is that the AMED Facebook page is an independent page and unaffiliated with the university.

“When we raised our serious concerns about the apparent illegality of the postings with SFSU, the response was that the AMED Facebook page is a private page unaffiliated with the university. That response is completely insufficient,” wrote the groups today. “The official AMED logo and ‘San Francisco State University’ are displayed front and center for all to see. Furthermore, a suggested university disclaimer that the views of the site ‘are not those of the university’ will not address the continued blatant misuse of an SFSU program’s logo and the name of the university. An SFSU academic program should never be allowed to use its departmental logo and the name ‘San Francisco State University’ to disseminate politically-motivated and hate-filled messages.”

In the wake of a Palestinian Authority police ban on organized activities by LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer) groups, Israel has offered a helping hand to those affected, two American Congresswomen have weighed in, and a local Palestinian advocacy group has shifted attention to “the occupation.” Who will be the winners, who will be the losers, and what will happen next?

The most immediate impact of this police crackdown has been on Al-Qaws, a Palestinian organization that advocates on LGBTQ issues in Palestinian society. Al Qaws has always faced an uphill battle, as Palestinian society overwhelmingly rejects homosexuality. The Palestinian government technically keeps a 1936 British Mandate law on the books that criminalizes homosexuality with a punishment of ten years in prison, but in practice, the result for LGBTQ Palestinians is more frequently arrest, torture, blackmail and sometimes even execution.

Since the police announcement, members of Al Qaws have received hundreds of threats and hate messages from Palestinians, especially through Facebook. One member of Al Qaws told the Jerusalem Post, “The attack on us is unprecedented … they are calling us traitors and corrupt people and many are calling for our execution. We are afraid for our lives.”

In response, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, deputy mayor of Jerusalem tweeted, “I would like to officially invite the LGBTQ group from the West Bank to hold their event in #jerusalem or closer to home in one of the Jewish community centers in Judea and Samaria. This should not be happening to you and Israel stands with you #LGBTQ.”

StandWithUs calls upon FIFA, the international soccer association, to ensure that the Qatari government will issue entry visas to Israeli fans wishing to attend the FIFA World Cup to be held in Qatar in 2022. To date, Israel is not included in Qatar’s online list of nearly 250 nationalities and territories eligible for an entry visa. Like most Arab states (with the exceptions of Egypt and Jordan that have peace treaties with Israel) Qatar does not recognize Israel and bans Israelis from entering.

FIFA’s Code of Ethics unambiguously forbid the banning of people based on their country of origin. Article 22 proscribes “offend[ing] the dignity or integrity of a country, private person or group of people through contemptuous, discriminatory or denigratory words or actions on account of race, skin colour, ethnicity, nationality, social origin, gender, disability, language, religion, political opinion or any other opinion, wealth, birth or any other status, sexual orientation or any other reason.”

“We call upon FIFA not to score an own goal and to uphold their Code of Ethics, which is premised on protecting international football from ‘illegal, immoral or unethical’ practices. If Qatar is allowed to ban fans on the basis of national origin, this would be a clear violation of FIFA’s guidelines,” said Roz Rothstein CEO and Co-Founder of StandWithUs.

Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of London-based Cornerstone Global Associates, told Fox News there is a risk arising from incompatible FIFA ethics and Qatari laws. He said, "Unless the differences between those two are reconciled, the risk remains stacked against the sponsors. The sponsors may find themselves in a situation where they appear to be promoting values that are contrary to what they publicly state they stand for.” International partners and sponsors of the 2022 FIFA World Cup include Coca Cola, Adidas, Hyundai-KIA, Visa, Wanda Group, Anheuser-Busch InBev and Vivo.

StandWithUs calls upon FIFA, the international soccer association, to ensure that the Qatari government will issue entry visas to Israeli fans wishing to attend the FIFA World Cup to be held in Qatar in 2022. To date, Israel is not included in Qatar’s online list of nearly 250 nationalities and territories eligible for an entry visa. Like most Arab states (with the exceptions of Egypt and Jordan that have peace treaties with Israel) Qatar does not recognize Israel and bans Israelis from entering.

Vile agenda much, @CRG_CRM? https://t.co/TrMf8D8EPJ

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 4, 2019

BREAKING: @rogerwaters performed in support of Julian Assange and no one cared. https://t.co/1IJzRwfuT9

— The Mossad: Elite Parody Division (@TheMossadIL) September 3, 2019

In one of the most shameful, egregious media failures of the year, a Trump appointee to the Department of Labor was forced to resign after a Bloomberg reporter started asking officials about a Facebook post spun as anti-Semitic, even though it was a clearly satirical post mocking the alt-right.

Earlier this morning, Bloomberg reporter Ben Penn proudly tweeted out a "scoop" about Leif Olson, who recently started as an adviser in the department's Wage and Hour Division:

SCOOP: Trump Labor Department's new sr adviser Leif Olson posted on Facebook that Jewish media "protect their own." In response to my request for comment on Olson's anti-Semitic post, @USDOL says they've accepted his resignation. https://t.co/68kDvaFn0h
— Ben Penn (@benjaminpenn) September 3, 2019

In reality, the Facebook post in question was the opposite of anti-Semitic. It was a clearly sarcastic post from 2016 about Paul Ryan crushing alt-right challenger Paul Nehlen. If the over-the-top language isn't a tip off, it's a fairly dead giveaway that Olson refers to Ryan having "suffered a massive, historic, emasculating 70-point victory."

When one of the commenters suggests Ryan must be a "neocon" and a Jew, Olson, clearly joking, responded, "It must be true because I've never heard the Lamestream Media report it, and you know they protect their own."

And yet Bloomberg used this to tear him down. Ted Frank, a lawyer and friend of Olson (who happens to be Jewish), has a Twitter thread on this disgrace. Frank also notes that "a good man who just moved his family from Texas to engage in public service has his life disrupted." Even liberal Jonathan Chait, no fan of the Trump administration, acknowledged this was "terribly unfair."

As readers may know, while posted in Israel in 2004 Barbara Plett Usher produced a report which is still available online about Yasser Arafat that was described in a Telegraph editorial thus:

“Many listeners to the BBC were rightly outraged last week by the broadcast from its Middle East correspondent, Barbara Plett, in which she cloyingly described how she wept as Yasser Arafat was airlifted from Ramallah for medical treatment.

She said: “When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry . . . without warning.” Almost as a footnote, she later admitted that an “ambivalence towards violence” was one of his failings. […]

Ms Plett’s flood of feeling is just the most overt and recent manifestation of a pro-Palestinian bias endemic within the BBC. As a publicly-funded organisation, it should remember that it is not paid to take sides. As things stand, however, we might conclude that Mr Arafat’s culpable “ambivalence towards violence” is echoed by our national broadcaster.”

The BBC received a large volume of complaints concerning that item and in 2005 the BBC governors ruled that Plett Usher’s report “breached the requirements of due impartiality”.

That apparently has not deterred the BBC from sending Barbara Plett Usher – who has been reporting from the US in recent years – back to Israel.

In other words, not only did Razia Iqbal fail to clarify to listeners that Hizballah is entrenched among the civilian population of southern Lebanon in violation of UN SC resolution 1701, she also gave them the erroneous impression that Israel had ‘retaliated’ against civilian communities – “three villages”.

The item continued with an interview with Brigadier General (Res.) Assaf Orion during which Iqbal unnecessarily qualified Israeli intelligence findings.

Iqbal: “I wonder if we can just focus on the extent to which Israel believes that these precision missiles are already in possession of Hizballah [sic]; how advanced that programme is from Israel’s point of view.”

Following that interview listeners heard from Barbara Plett Usher in Jerusalem and that conversation included more irrelevant qualification from two people who are not military correspondents and without the BBC as far as we know having carried out any independent investigation into the subject.

Plett Usher: “They [Israel] have been bombing…ah…Iranian bases and convoys in Syria, thinking that they’re trying to get weapons to Hizballah and now if the Iranians are indeed trying to convert Hizballah rockets in Lebanon, that by the Israelis would be seen as an even bigger threat. So they have this campaign out there – information campaign – claiming that this is happening and providing details about it.”

Significantly though, neither Iqbal nor Plett Usher bothered to clarify to listeners that Iran’s supply of weapons to Hizballah violates UN SC resolution 1701 and so once again BBC audiences were exposed to inaccurate and superficial reporting which fails to contribute to their understanding of this story.

CAMERA’s Israel office today prompted correction of an egregious error in Haaretz‘s English edition after Chemi Shalev referred to the July 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens as “the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers in July 2014.” Shalev, Haaretz‘s U.S. editor and correspondent, wrote (“A respite up north from PM’s deranged election campaign,” page 2, Sept. 3, and online here):
In a transparent effort to harm Channel 12, Netanyahu picked on the new HBO series “Our Boys,” which recounts the brutal murder of Palestinian teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir by Jewish zealots seeking revenge for the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers in July 2014.

Eyal Yifrach (19), Gilad Shaar (16), and Naftali Frankel (16) were all civilians – yeshiva students, not soldiers. Indeed, Gilad and Naftali, still in high school, were too young to have been soldiers, when they were kidnapped and murdered, not just kidnapped. Given that the brutal crime shocked and deeply traumatized the Israeli nation, and sparked a series of events which led to Israel’s 2014 war with Hamas, it is not clear how Shalev got this wrong. It is also troubling that the misinformation made it past additional Haaretz editors who may have reviewed the piece.

In response to communication today from CAMERA’s Israel office, editors commendably corrected the digital article. The amended text now accurately states:
In a transparent effort to harm Channel 12, Netanyahu picked on the new HBO series “Our Boys”, which recounts the brutal murder of Palestinian teen Mohammed Abu-Khdeir by Jewish zealots seeking revenge for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in July 2014.

Spend some time on YouTube and you can learn quite a bit about Jews.

They are responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy; they are behind the worldwide distribution of pornography; they are the enemies of the Catholic Church; and they peddle an undue influence on American policy — the United States Congress, for instance, is controlled by Jewish money.

At least, that’s what you might think if you watch — and take to heart — the hours and hours of easily available YouTube videos that promote foul anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Despite the video-sharing website’s June 2019 crackdown on hate speech, in which it updated its policy to prohibit videos that advance ideologies such as white supremacy, clips which deny historical atrocities including the Holocaust, or posts justifying discrimination against other protected classes, there remains a vast reservoir of bigoted invective and extremism on the platform.

According to a recent analysis by the Anti-Defamation League, much of the same kind of hateful content remains on the site, despite YouTube’s recent promise to do better.

“In the time since then, we’ve been able to locate more than 30 channels that continue to disseminate anti-Semitism and bigotry and white supremacy,” Aryeh Truchman, associate director of the ADL’s Center on Extremism, told The Times of Israel.

The Jewish watchdog group found that five of those channels “promulgate a variety of allegations and tropes which have been used for generations to stoke fear and hatred of Jews.”

But it’s not bad enough that these channels exist. Some of them have massive followings.

In the past week, there were three separate violent attacks on Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn during which the perpetrators shouted anti-Semitic epithets. Such incidents, almost always committed by African Americans, have become almost commonplace—and make up the overwhelming majority of the 150 anti-Semitic incidents recorded by the New York City police department in 2019. Meanwhile, the Republican party of Rockland County, NY released an appallingly anti-Semitic advertisement appealing to those who want to keep ?asidic Jews out of their towns. Jonathan Tobin comments on the scant attention paid to these issues by either the national media or major Jewish organizations:

Those who are being insulted, threatened, and assaulted don’t look like most American Jews. Even worse, those responsible for these crimes don’t fit into the narrative about anti-Semitism that has been established by groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the media. Instead of white supremacists who can be loosely, if inaccurately, linked to President Donald Trump, the perpetrators are African Americans.

You don’t have to be a Jewish community-relations professional or a sociologist to understand that a replay of the tensions that tore New York City apart in the 1960s and 1970s . . . is not the topic that the organized Jewish world wishes to discuss in 2019. [But] there is a conspicuous source of anti-Semitic incitement and influence among African Americans that many political liberals have struggled to ignore: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

Though the members of Nation of Islam mosques are estimated to number only around 50,000 nationally, Farrakhan’s sympathizers and admirers are more likely to be counted in the hundreds of thousands. Moreover, it is a fact that African American leaders don’t treat the hatemonger as an extremist to be shunned. The same is true of the heads of leading anti-Trump “resistance” groups like the Women’s March, who are open admirers of this purveyor of crude anti-Semitism. . . . And while there is, as of yet, no evidence that those attacking Orthodox Jews are linked to Farrakhan, it’s far easier to connect the dots between him and those crimes than it is to try to blame Trump for acts of far-right extremism that the president has repeatedly condemned.

A Jewish man and his teenage son were seriously wounded when they were stabbed with a box cutter outside a synagogue in Brooklyn.

The father, 45, and his son, 18, got into an argument early Sunday morning with three men who were drinking outside the synagogue in the Kensington section bordering the heavily Jewish Borough Park. One of the men stabbed the father in his arm and neck, and the son in the neck and stomach. They were taken to Maimonides Medical Center in serious but stable condition, the New York Daily News reported.

One of the men, Vinesh Marajh, 42, was taken into police custody and charged with assault, disorderly conduct and harassment. The other two men were not apprehended.

Police do not believe the attack was a bias crime, as WABC-TV reported, but a recent string of attacks on the Jewish residents of Brooklyn has residents worried.

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday announced hiring Anti-Defamation League veteran Deborah Lauter as the new Executive Director of the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes (OPHC), only to be criticized on that same day by Lauter over his claim that anti-Semitism is a right-wing movement.

“He’s correct to say there are threats that come from the right-wing,” the anti-hate chief said at the City Hall press conference that announced her new post, and added, “There are also threats that come from the left.”

The mayor spoke at a June press conference where he addressed the 90% rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the city, and said that “the ideological movement that is anti-Semitic is the right-wing movement.”

According to the NYPD, there have been 146 anti-Semitic hate crime complaints so far in 2019, compared with 88 for the same period last year.

“I think all New Yorkers should be appalled at what we’re seeing,” Lauter said.

Many of you saw my recent interview on L’Chayim on JBS. You can see it at the end of this article.

I was challenged to answer the question if my family members were afraid to wear yarmulkes on the streets of New York, I said that anti-Semitism is alive and growing in both political parties in New York.

True, the Democrat Party has been openly more anti-Semitic and anti-Israel, but as I have been reporting for months, it’s growing in the NY Republican Party too.

That saddens me, it’s not at all President Donald Trump’s personal feelings or policies. It sickens me that Jews are the only minority group not to increase their support for his re-election, despite all he has done for Israel. From Asians to Hispanics, and record high support from the African-American community, so many are donating time, money and support in record numbers.

It also saddens me that so many Jews choose to defend elected officials who make angry statements, but do nothing. They sit by and watch the New York City School system leadership openly spur hate. Every single day, Jews are brutally attacked and it’s getting worse, not better.

The hate on the left is obvious. AOC, Omar, Tlaib, and many of the Democratic presidential candidates speak against Israel with one issue or another, and the list goes on.

A Toronto man is facing criminal charges after he shouted “Heil Hitler” and accosted participants at a recent Jewish community event.

The man was arrested following a complaint filed by B’nai Brith Canada with the Toronto Police Service, the organization said in a statement on Tuesday.

The incident in question took place on May 20, 2019. The man, Ali Amirsalam, was filmed shouting, “Hitler, please come back and kill all the Jews – not 100%, but 90% of them” outside the 2019 Toronto Walk with Israel hosted by the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) in North York, Ontario.

Amirsalam also made his own recording of his outburst and uploaded a video of it to Twitter, adding an anti-Semitic screed demanding that money be taken away from Jews and “be given to the poorer children of G-d.”

He also posted a video of an Israeli flag being burned, and called for “No more Israel on the planet Earth,” according to B’nai Brith Canada.

David Aherne from Tottenham has been jailed for shouting “one, two, three, Heil Hitler” and “go have a sausage sandwich” at a Jewish family on 10th July.

While on the 149 bus in the vicinity of Stamford Hill, Mr Aherne shouted the antisemitic comments at a Jewish couple and their three children. When the victims tried to prevent Mr Aherne from alighting until the police arrived, he threatened to pull down his trousers in front of the family.

Mr Aherne appeared at at Wood Green Crown Court on 13th August 2019 where he pleaded guilty to causing racially aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress and causing religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress under section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986. He has been sentenced to 12 weeks in prison.

Stephen Silverman, Director of Investigations and Enforcement at Campaign Against Antisemitism, reacted to the sentence: “At a time of rising antisemitism, Jews who are recognisable from their clothing, are being increasingly targeted by antisemites. With this verdict and sentence, the courts have sent an important message: Jew-hatred has no place in Britain’s free and open society.”

A restaurant in Iraqi Kurdistan named after Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler has been forced to change its name.

Reports about the controversial new eatery in the city of Duhok came out earlier this week, triggering much debate on social media but little concern by local customers, who had been seen filling up the restaurant and saying they did not care how it was called.

The restaurant’s logo resembles a swastika and reads “Hetlar Resturant” in English.

The owner, Rebar Mohammed, said he did not identify with the ideology of the Holocaust perpetrator and claimed it had merely been a bid for publicity.

“Hitler was the dictator of Germany and has nothing to do with me. I know I have named my restaurant ‘Hitler,’ but that does not mean that I love him,” he told local news site Rudaw. “I have done it just to make my restaurant famous among people.”

“Whoever visits my restaurant says they do not care what the name of my restaurant is,” he added. “What is important for them is the cleanliness and taste of my food.”

“My business does not operate in the name of a dictator, but a famous person,” he argued.

After more than 20 years of neglect, one of the Argentinian capital’s oldest synagogues has been returned to the community that founded it. Dating back to 1907, the synagogue is located in the neighborhood of La Boca, where most of Buenos Aires’s first Jewish immigrants settled.

The original facade has been preserved nearly intact, with the exception of the graffiti covering the synagogue’s exterior. Inside, sordid anti-Semitic images are painted on the walls throughout.

The congregation was shuttered shortly after the death of its rabbi, 20 years ago. Soon after, it was taken over by squatters who desecrated it, creating an underground club called House of the Stars, presumably in mocking reference to the Star of David. The club regularly held rave parties with music, alcohol, and drugs.

“I used to walk down the street and simply couldn’t believe what I saw. I started to investigate, and it turned out to be that big parties were being held in this holy place,” said Rabbi Shneur Mizrahi, who heads a nearby Chabad house.

Neighbors, as well as members of the local Jewish community, often argued with the new occupants, but were threatened with violence.

“Some younger Jewish boys told me they saw swastikas and pictures of Hitler inside the property. A non-Jewish woman also brought us photos clearly showing what was happening there. We had to do something,” Mizrahi said.

Cleese held sway from a stool at center stage in the high-ceilinged Heichal Hatarbut (Charles Bronfman Auditorium), following, and frequently departing from, a script scrolling across large tele-prompter screens hanging down from above the stalls a few feet in front of him. Even for a native English-speaker, it was hard to catch everything he was saying, and I found myself turning back over my shoulder to read from his screens at times. But the crowd was with him throughout, and appreciative even of some somewhat below par, relatively recent video clips featuring Cleese as Stig Ohmquist, glum organizer of the doomed Swedish Fun Week.

His telling of how the first Monty Python series came to be commissioned in the late 1960s was fascinating and, as he said, “extraordinary,” in that the BBC’s head of comedy, one Michael Mills, approved 13 episodes of a debut series by a team who admitted to him they had “no clue” what it was going to include. Mills granted them total freedom to be very, very silly. Which they were — peaking, in Cleese’s opinion, with the Fish Slapping Dance.

But silly was never stupid, and the Pythons’ “Life of Brian,” their crowning achievement, was not only very, very funny, but also wise, and a necessary antidote to the pious hypocrites who control organized religion and claim to speak on behalf of the divine. A century ago, Cleese recalled, Pope Pius X pronounced that “kindness is for fools” — something of a departure, he noted acerbically, from Jesus’s blessings of the meek, the pure of heart, and the peacemakers.

Much of the second half of Cleese’s show was dedicated to telling jokes against various nationalities and religions, ostensibly showing himself an equal opportunity offender, though he and the jokes were actually gracious and good-natured and not remotely offensive. He made great play of announcing that “I think it’s time for a few Jewish jokes,” but nobody shrank in fear at what might coming, confident by now in Cleese’s judgment. And his selection was indeed endearing, and included one joke that he said had been given to him by an audience member at a previous show, about the elderly Jewish man who converts to Christianity on his death bed because “if someone’s got to go, I’d rather it was one of them.” John Cleese is accepting jokes, folks; there’s hope yet for all of us would-be comedy writers.

Welcome to #Israel@thisisbwright! https://t.co/b0vjSLLjAu

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 4, 2019

After a cat was injured in a traffic accidents last week, the Coordination and Liaison Administration in Gaza (CLA) organized life-saving treatment for the feline in Israel.

The ally-cat was brought into Israel through the Erez Crossing from the Gaza Strip through combined efforts of the CLA and the Unit for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).

"COGAT, through the CLA for Gaza and the Land Crossings Authority, makes possible this kind of effort for the welfare of animals that suffer in the difficult civil environment of the Gaza Strip,” said head of the CLA for Gaza, Colonel Lyad Sarhan. “We work together with the veterinary organizations in order to interface with the Palestinian side in the Gaza Strip for the humanitarian transfer of the animals. The CLA will continue working around the clock to assist and advance humanitarian activities.”

The PTROA organization for animals' rights planned a veterinary visit for the feline to gain the life-saving medical treatment upon arrival in Israel.

In March, COGAT and the CLA saved the life of an African grey parrot from the Gaza Strip, who was improperly fed by its owners and was found with a hole in its throat. The parrot was brought into Israel through the Erez Crossing, as well, and his life was saved.

At least seven people are confirmed dead in the Bahamas’ Abaco Islands in the wake of Hurricane Dorian and the death toll is expected to rise.

“We are in the midst of a historic tragedy in parts of the northern Bahamas,” the Bahamas’ Prime Minister Hubert Minnis, said in a news conference on Tuesday.

He said the “devastation is unprecedented and extensive.”

The hurricane stalled over Grand Bahama Island for nearly two days, leaving whole neighborhoods, as well as airports and hospitals submerged. At least 13,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed on Abaco and Grand Bahama islands.

IsraAID, the Israel-based humanitarian aid agency that responds to emergency crises and engages in international development around the world, said in a Tuesday that it would send emergency support to the Bahamas.

Its Emergency Response team will distribute urgent relief supplies, offer psychological first aid, and deploy water filters to restore access to drinking water, while conducting further needs assessments in affected communities, the NGO said in a statement. In 2018, IsraAID Emergency Response teams reached 26,300 people with safe water, psychological and community support, and relief following nine disasters in seven countries. The group has opened an Emergency Response Fund, to pay for its work.

B’nai Brith International is accepting donations to its Disaster Relief Fund to assist those affected by Dorian. The money raised will go to assist local recovery and rebuilding teams, the group said in a statement.

Rabbi Sholom and Sheera Bluming, directors of Chabad of the Bahamas in Nassau, have been in touch with the Jewish community in Nassau, which was relatively unscathed by the hurricane, but have not been able to reach some of those living on Abaco, who still remain unaccounted for, according to Chabad.org.

The rabbi said that about 1,000 Jewish expats have made their home in the Bahamas, and that more than 100,000 Jews visit the islands each year.

A team of eleven specialized Israeli firefighters was sent to Brazil to help to fight the blazes that are devastating the Amazon rainforest.

According to a statement by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, members of the team belong to the Israel Fire and Rescue Services.

They were expected to leave Israel on Tuesday night.

The dispatched delegation, comprised of experts in the fields of rescue, intelligence and bush and forest fires, is headed by Deputy Commander of the Northern District Yair Elkayam.

"We have the experience, although not with such large fires. The strategies do not change. We are also bringing technology from Israel," Elkayam told the army radio on Tuesday.

On August 24, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to express his solidarity and support for the rainforest crisis. Following the conversation, Bolsonaro tweeted that his country had accepted the offer of a specialized aircraft to cooperate in their efforts against the fires.

Israel's offer and Brazil's response was widely reported by international media, especially because many other offers for help by the international community had not been received as warmly.

The Torah is rich with warnings about how a bystander is not exempt from certain levels of responsibility. If you see a neighbor’s animal that is lost, you must not turn away. If you see a neighbor in distress, you must not turn away. If you witness a crime, you must testify.

And I would add: If you know a truth, you must not conceal it. If you hear a truth or if you see a truth, you must not hide from it. …

When we seek to meet an “Other,” we can only honestly meet that Other with a full awareness of what truths that Other holds dear. If we close ourselves off to such truths, even if those truths terrify or anger or confound us, then our meeting can never be successful. …

[the authors of the essay] Mezuman and Azzam-Jalajel assert that there is a valid Palestinian national narrative that Israelis must understand and recognize. Even if a separate Palestinian State comes into existence alongside Israel, the Palestinian residents of Israel must be treated as equal citizens with formal recognition of their own unique attachment to the Land. If Jews have a Right of Return, why shouldn’t we then contemplate a Palestinian Right of Return? Why shouldn’t our shared goal be a Jewish, Palestinian, and democratic State? …

Naqba is a truth from which many Israeli Jews and many Americans Jews willfully hide. That truth, a Palestinian truth to be sure, but accepted by some Jewish Zionists as well, doesn’t have to become our truth. But if we ever want to build an infrastructure of peace and understanding, we must recognize the power of that truth within the Palestinian community - and we cannot willfully hide from it.

What I was hoping that I could communicate is the need for both sides to hear and understand each other's narratives.  Understanding why someone or some group feels the way that it does is a key to meaningful communication - but is not at all the same as accepting the Other's narrative as true or even equally true or as compelling as our own narrative. [email response]

Israa Gharib has become a community issue, and we feel the pulse of the street towards this issue.

With our full commitment to the provisions of Palestinian law and the confidentiality of the investigation and  not to rush to prejudge the outcome in respect of the spirit of the deceased and the feelings of their families, we must strengthen the system of legislation protecting Palestinian women, the protector of our national project, who are our mothers and sisters and our partners in the struggle and building society, and without her we would not be a society.

With our deep belief that no person has the right to take the law in his own hands, we will take every necessary legal action to give maximum penalties to anyone involved in the killing of any human being and we are waiting for the results of the investigation into Israa's case.