The troubles of the Jews stemmed not just from external threats, but from what they had become after centuries of exile. They survived unthinkable turmoil, but also lost the spine, dignity and inner fire that free peoples depend on to command their collective destiny.

They were cut off from the qualities of character that produced the immense achievements of ancient times – qualities that would be needed again to survive the coming horror.

Traces of uranium were found in samples taken by United Nations nuclear inspectors from a Tehran facility alleged by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be a “secret atomic warehouse,” according to a report Sunday.

Iran has not provided an explanation for why uranium was found at the site to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which is investigating the facility in the Iranian capital, Reuters reported.

In a speech last year at the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu revealed the existence of the warehouse in Tehran, which he said held “massive amounts” of equipment and material that were part of a secret Iranian nuclear program.

Netanyahu called for the IAEA to inspect the facility and, in July, Israeli television reported that soil samples from the warehouse turned up “traces of radioactive material,” without specifying the type.

Citing two unnamed diplomats, Reuters reported that the material found at the site was determined to be uranium. One of the diplomats, however, said the uranium was not enriched enough to be used for a nuclear bomb.

“There are lots of possible explanations” for why uranium traces were found there, the diplomat said.

The IAEA has been seeking answers from Tehran for two months, a senior diplomat said, with no success.

New images showing the extent of the Iranian regime's efforts to cover up its use of a storage facility for nuclear materials has been released exclusively to i24NEWS.

The images show massive cement blocks used to hide radioactive material from being discovered at the site, just outside Tehran.

The new evidence ostensibly provides verification of claims made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year at the UN General Assembly.

Netanyahu's remarks were made months after an Israeli clandestine operation obtained a trove of highly sensitive documentation from the Islamic republic outlining parts of its opaque atomic program, supposedly shelved after world powers and Iran signed the 2015 nuclear accords.

On Sunday, the UN's nuclear watchdog found traces of uranium at the facility Netanyahu once described as a 'secret atomic warehouse,' Reuters reported Sunday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is investigating the origin of the nuclear materials and asked Tehran to explain the samples, diplomats told Reuters.

New images showing the extent of the Iranian regime's efforts to cover up its use of a storage facility for nuclear materials has been released exclusively to i24NEWS.

The UN’s nuclear watchdog confirmed Monday that Iran was installing advanced centrifuges as the troubled 2015 deal with world powers over Tehran’s nuclear program threatens to fall apart.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement that on September 7 it had “verified that the following centrifuges were either installed or being installed…: 22 IR-4, one IR-5, 30 IR-6 and three IR-6s.”

The IAEA’s confirmation comes a day after Tehran hit out at European powers, saying they had left Iran little option but to scale back its commitments under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The IAEA added in its statement that the centrifuges had been installed at Iran’s Natanz facility and said “all of the installed centrifuges had been prepared for testing with UF6 (uranium hexafluoride), although none of them were being tested with UF6 on 7 and 8 September 2019.”

“In addition, in a letter to the Agency dated 8 September, Iran informed the Agency that it would reinstall the piping at two R&D lines to accommodate a cascade of 164 IR-4 centrifuges and a cascade of 164 IR-2m centrifuges,” the agency’s statement said.

Iran has said that notwithstanding its reduction of commitments under the JCPOA, it will continue to allow access to IAEA inspectors who monitor its nuclear program.

After the IAEA assessment was released on Monday, Foreign Minister Israel Katz called on the remaining signatories of the 2015 deal to follow the US example by abandoning the accord and re-imposing sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

In an in-depth report on the Jewish state’s grand strategy, the scholars at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security argue that “the most important challenge facing any government in Israel is nurturing cohesion in Israeli society.” They also caution that, at present, “high-risk military operations, dicey diplomatic gambles, and ambitious territorial changes” are unlikely to be worth the dangers that accompany them. In particular, “unilateral Israeli withdrawals in the West Bank will not enhance Israel’s security nor improve its international standing.”

So far as military preparedness is concerned, the report criticizes the IDF’s current doctrine of relying on airpower and precision missiles combined with extensive intelligence, which has failed to bring any decisive victories. While the patient containment of Hamas may still be the best strategy for dealing with Gaza, Israel will have to return to its older doctrine—sending ground troops deep into enemy territory—to deal with the graver threats posed by Iran and its proxies, not to mention the unforeseeable dangers that could arise in a notoriously unstable region:

In most clashes [with Hizballah and Iranian forces in Syria], a deleterious dynamic has repeated itself. At first, Israel successfully launches a salvo of firepower based on accurate intelligence gathered over a long period of time; then follows a decline in the quality of targeting intelligence with an attendant reduction in the number of targets that justify a strike; a recovery by the enemy and a continuation of its attacks against Israel; Israeli frustration, leading to attacks on targets with high collateral damage or on useless targets; an immense effort to acquire new quality targets, which can lead to an occasional success but does not alter the general picture; a prolonged war campaign, leading to public anger and frustration; and a limited ground-forces maneuver, not sufficiently effective to bring the enemy to the point of collapse.

Consequently, a return to combat along more traditional lines is inevitable in cases where a ground campaign, aggressively pursued, will render better results than air activity. In such situations it is necessary to maneuver into enemy territory to locate and destroy enemy forces—or to capture them, thus undermining the myth of the self-sacrificing jihadist “resistance.” . . . Only a determined ground effort can break the spirit of the enemy. . . .

UN rights chief @MBachelet just spoke on Palestinian-Israeli conflict & forgot to say 1 word on #Palestinian attacks such as (from March '18-July '19):
• 8 Israelis killed
• 282 wounded
• 1932 rockets
• 841 petrol bombs
• 25 shootings
• 128 IEDs
• 2155 fires by arson kites pic.twitter.com/gozXPczQi9

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 9, 2019

Various experts have expressed admiration toward Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah. Senior military officers in uniform and retirement, researchers, and journalists analyzing every gesture, smile, outburst of anger and criticism, shout or laugh and attributing meaning to it all assert that Nasrallah is reliable. He makes promises and delivers. He is faithful to his patrons in Tehran despite Lebanon’s attempts to restrain him.

The picture is more complicated because of the bottom line: it can be said with certainty that Nasrallah is an actor and a liar who has turned manipulation into an art.

Nasrallah closely follows everything that is published about him and Hizbullah in Israel and primarily abroad. He attributes great importance to the words and commentaries of senior Israeli officers both present and past. The interpretation that he gives these reports is that Israel is afraid of Hizbullah’s military might and especially the precision missiles in Hizbullah’s arsenal with their ability to strike deep inside Israel and at strategic installations.

Nasrallah is particularly following those “experts” who provide details and outline the enormity of Hizbullah’s military threat, primarily those who mention the names of the most endangered places and sites inside Israel. Senior security officials assert that in the next war there will be no boundaries between the military front and the civilian home front due to the impressively accurate Hizbullah missiles, which blur this differentiation. The more details provided in Israel on these matters, the more Nasrallah derives more encouragement and pleasure. He believes that Israeli society is weak and unprepared for war, and it will do anything to avoid a confrontation with Hizbullah.

Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary-General of Hizbullah, has managed to penetrate and inject Hizbullah into the Lebanese nation-state because of its inherent weakness and sectarian paralysis. He has exploited Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon as well as the Second Lebanese War to present Hizbullah as the alternative shield to the Lebanese national army that has been relegated to military parades and domestic police duties.

But its six-year involvement in the Syrian civil war to quell a Sunni-led rebellion at the direction of its Iranian patrons cost Hizbullah more than 2,000 fatalities, untold injuries, and irreparable damage to its image as the "Resistance Movement" against Israel.

In the Golan Heights, Arab sources indicate that Hizbullah has positioned intelligence units along the border with Israel, in some places deployed less than 200 meters from UN peacekeepers.

The Israel Defense Forces launched a wide-ranging military exercise in northern Israel on Sunday, simulating a war against Hezbollah and other Iran-backed forces.

The four-day drill, known as “Keystone,” mainly focuses on the IDF’s command level and will involve officers from the air force, navy, ground forces, intelligence, logistics and cyber divisions.

The drill was set to begin earlier in the month, but was delayed due to heightened tensions with Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border.

“As part of the exercise, various scenarios will be simulated, with a focus on collaboration, multi-system planning and emergency operations,” the IDF said in a statement. “The goal of the exercise is improving the performance of the [IDF] General Staff and the various headquarters in war.”

The exercise is scheduled to run until Wednesday.

A former Hezbollah official was found dead in his Beirut apartment on Sunday, state media reported.

Local police opened an investigation into the circumstances of Ali Hatoum’s death and ordered that an autopsy be conducted, Lebanon’s National News Agency said.

Hatoum was formerly a regional commander of the terror group in the Beirut region, but had not been in a senior position for several years.

Limited verifiable details were immediately available, but “informed sources” told the an-Nahar news site that it was unlikely Hatoum had been assassinated.

It was largely by chance that Israel scored one of its greatest ever intelligence coups in 2007.

At the time, Mossad was running surveillance on the director general of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission, a pudgy, bespectacled bureaucrat named Ibrahim Othman. Othman was visiting Vienna that winter to attend meetings of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Mossad sought to learn more about his secretive activities. The Israelis hacked the Syrian’s personal computer after he left his hotel for meetings in the Austrian capital.

The Israeli government was shocked by what Mossad found on Othman’s laptop. A trove of downloaded photos detailed a box-like building being constructed on the Euphrates River in eastern Syria. Israeli and American spy satellites had detected the mysterious structure during earlier scans of Syria, but derived no special significance to it. Othman’s photos, however, revealed the building, located near a Syrian trading town called Al Kibar, to be a virtual replica of North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor, a plutonium-producing facility that the U.S. viewed as a virtual bomb-making factory. The facility had no real civilian applications. The Israelis’ concern about the North Korea link was only amplified by a photo Othman stored on his laptop. It showed him standing arm-in-arm with an Asian man whom the Mossad identified as Chon Chibu, a North Korean nuclear scientist who worked at the Yongbyon facility. Chon had previously taken part in disarmament talks with the U.S. and other world powers.

While the discovery of the Al Kibar nuclear reactor sparked panic among Israeli and U.S. officials, the fact that North Korea appeared to be taking an active role in providing lethal weapons expertise to one of Israel’s enemies could not have come as a surprise. In fact, while North Korea is not often thought of in the ranks of Israel’s enemies or, for that matter, as a player in Middle Eastern affairs, the so-called Hermit Kingdom in Pyongyang has been actively bolstering states hostile to Israel, and facilitating attacks on the Jewish state, since the 1960s. Despite occasional attempts to broker a truce between the two nations, the Israeli-North Korean relationship has been defined for decades by covert hostility and proxy conflict—a shadow war between the two nations. The pattern continues through the present day in North Korea’s alliance with Iran and Syria.

Last week, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American envoy in Afghanistan, told reporters that his negotiating team was on the cusp of an agreement with the Taliban, and outlined its terms. The U.S., according to Khalilzad, planned to remove its troops from the country in exchange for the Taliban’s promise not to allow it to be used by al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups. Soon thereafter, a series of attacks by the Taliban, which left an American soldier among the dead, drove Washington to suspend negotiations. Michael Rubin argues that no agreement along the proposed lines will bring peace:

President Donald Trump and Khalilzad [appeared] to have embraced the John Kerry school of diplomacy, in which desperation for a deal substitutes for bringing leverage to bear. . . . A more fundamental problem is Pakistan. The Taliban would not exist without Pakistani support. . . . [T]he Taliban negotiators were based in Qatar and answered to leadership in [the Pakistani city of] Quetta which in turn took direction from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence in Islamabad. . . . Most Afghans see the Taliban as foreign puppets . . . willing to rape and murder.

The Taliban [also] continue to embrace and incorporate al-Qaeda’s philosophy and personnel. . . . Nor does what happen in Afghanistan necessarily stay in Afghanistan. [During a discussion of U.S. foreign policy] at the University of Hargeisa in Somaliland earlier this year, students and faculty asked repeatedly whether negotiations with the Taliban would mean that negotiations with Al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, would be next. Even if that is not the plan, every militant group now understands that the way to advance its interests is not through the ballot box but through violence and terrorism. That is a legacy to the Taliban deal which will not be easy to overcome.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said "conditions are about to get worse" for the Taliban in Afghanistan after President Donald Trump called off a meeting between Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, Taliban leaders, and the United States.

"We're going to make sure that everyone in the region understands that America will always protect its national security interests," he said.

Pompeo emphasized that the objective was to get a deal that would have both sides stand back and reduce violence, and that would require the Taliban to make a public announcement that it's breaking ties with al Qaeda.

"We're not going to withdraw our forces without making sure we achieve President Trump's twin objectives," Pompeo said. "Any reduction in our forces will be based on actual conditions, not commitments, actual conditions on the ground."

"If you're the Taliban, conditions have been worsening. They're about to get worse," he added.

Meet the Press anchor Chuck Todd asked if this means the United States would increase military activity against the Taliban. Pompeo warned that no one "should underestimate President Trump's commitment" to achieving his goals in the country, and he informed Todd that U.S. forces recently killed more than 1,000 Taliban fighters.

In a local election in the German state of Hesse last week, mainstream parties, including Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and her coalition partner the Social Democratic Party (SPD), voted for a neo-Nazi to serve as a community representative.

Stefan Jagsch is a member of the neo-Nazi party National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) that supports a boycott of the Jewish state. German media outlets on the weekend reported on the CDU, SPD and the Free Democratic Party politicians voting for Jagsch. He will represent the community Altenstadt, a municipality in the district Wetteraukreis, with about 2,500 citizens.

Seven members of the mainstream parties, who were present on Thursday at the vote, supported Jagsch. Two members of the CDU and SPD were not present at the vote. Jagsch will be the first point of contact for citizens with grievances and concerns.

The district chairman of the CDU Wetterau, Lucia Puttrich, and the chairman of the CDU Altenstadt, Sven Müller-Winter, said in a joint statement that the choice of a politician of this party was “unbelievable and unacceptable for the CDU.” SPD politicians also criticized the vote on Twitter.

The outrage over Jagsch’s vote comes amid a Friday scandal in Berlin with the city’s Social Democratic mayor. The mayor, Michael Mueller, welcomed his Iranian counterpart from Tehran, Pirouz Hanachi, who has participated in the antisemitic Al-Quds rally in Tehran calling for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Joint efforts or similar activities among mainstream German parties and far-left and far-right parties typically merge in attacking Israel.

The Green Party, some of whose founders had roots in Nazism, has been engulfed in neo-Nazi scandals over the years.

Newly appointed Sudanese Foreign Minister Asma Abdullah suggested on Sunday that Khartoum would be interested in establishing relations with Israel if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved, and said that most Arab states maintain some degree of ties with Israel.

Sudan on Sunday swore in its first cabinet, including Abdullah, since the ouster of autocratic president Omar al-Bashir in April following mass pro-democracy protests.

Asked by the Qatari satellite broadcaster Al Jazeera in a televised interview whether Sudan and Israel would establish ties, Abdullah, the first female Sudanese foreign minister, said: “Now is not the time.”

Pressed by the interviewer whether she was saying Sudan does not in principle have a problem with establishing ties with Israel and could make such a move in the future, she stuttered: “Of course, in principle… I mean, if you look at the Arab states…Most of them have relations in one way or another. Sudan is one of the Arab states, but now is not the time.”

The interviewer then told her that her statement “appears to be dangerous,” noting that some states oppose ties with Israel because the Palestinians have not achieved their “interests and rights.”

Airstrikes hit positions of pro-Iranian forces and allied militias in eastern Syria overnight, killing 18 fighters, a war monitor said Monday.

It was not clear who carried out the raids in the region of Albu Kamal near the border with Iraq, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based Observatory, which has a vast network of contacts across Syria, said “18 fighters were killed, but their nationalities have not yet been determined.”

“Warplanes whose identity is not known so far targeted vehicles and positions of the Iranian forces and militias loyal to them,” the Observatory said.

The blasts targeted a base belonging to the Popular Mobilization Force, according to the Saudi Al Arabiya network, citing sources in the area.

Al Arabiya said the base, in the al-Boukamal area, also housed forces from the Lebanese Hezbollah terror group.

Since mid-July, five arms depots and training camps belonging to the Popular Mobilization Forces have been targeted in apparent attacks.

An Iran-backed militia in Syria fired several rockets toward northern Israel in the predawn hours of Monday morning, but they fell short of the border, the army said.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, the attack was carried out by operatives of a Shiite militia operating under the command of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force.

The IDF said the rockets were fired from the suburbs outside Damascus.

The alleged attack came amid reports of a series of airstrikes against a pro-Iranian militia in eastern Syria, which killed 18 fighters, according to a Britain-based war monitor.

In a statement, the IDF said it “holds the Syrian regime responsible for every action that takes place in Syria.”

In a tweet, the Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesperson warned Syria’s Assad regime that it would “pay the price” for allowing Iran and its proxies to use Syria as a base of operations against the Jewish state, either by turning a blind eye to their actions or by actively cooperating with them.

Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias fired rockets at Israel from Syria on Monday but they fell short, the Israeli military said.

“A number of rockets were launched by Shi’ite militias operating under the command of the Iranian Quds Force from Syrian territory near Damascus,” the military said, referring to the overseas arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

“All failed to hit Israeli territory.”

The IDF denied claims that Hezbollah shot down a drone in the pre-dawn hours of Monday over south Lebanon, stating that a small surveillance drone crashed.

According to the military, the UAV fell in southern Lebanon while performing reconnaissance operations. There was no concern that the Lebanese Shi’ite group got hold of any intelligence from the drone.

Hezbollah, meanwhile said they had "confronted" the Israel drone with "appropriate weapons" as it was heading towards the town of Ramiyeh. The wreckage is now in the hands of Hezbollah's fighters, the Iranian-backed terrorist group said in a statement.

The drone came down outside the village where Hezbollah had dug their flagship 1-km.-long cross-border tunnel that infiltrated several dozen meters into northern Israel, close to the communities of Zarit and Shetula.

The High Court of Justice on Monday ruled that the military has the legal right to hold on to the bodies of slain terrorists for use as leverage in future negotiations with Palestinians.

The decision, adopted after a majority vote by an expanded panel of seven justices, reverses a 2017 High Court ruling on the matter and came in response to a petition by the families of six terrorists whose bodies are currently in the government’s possession.

The justices in their decision determined that withholding terrorists’ bodies falls within the purview of national security, and said the practice was not illegal under international law governing armed conflict.

Israeli security forces regularly take custody of terrorists’ bodies. Sometimes the bodies are later returned to the assailants’ families for burial. At other times they are withheld — to prevent celebratory funerals in attackers’ hometowns, or with a view to using using them in negotiations to retrieve the bodies of Israeli soldiers held by terror groups.

In its December 2017 decision, the court did not outright forbid Israel from holding terrorists’ bodies but said it could not be done as long as there was no law in place dictating how it is managed.

“The State of Israel, as a nation of laws, cannot hold on to corpses for the purposes of negotiations at a time when there is no specific and explicit law that allows it do so,” the justices wrote at the time.

The National Council of Young Israel (NCYI) today called on Iran and the Palestinian Authority (PA) to be banned from the Olympics.
High ranking Iranian officials reportedly instructed Iranian judoka Saeid Mollaei to throw his semi-final match at the recent 2019 World Judo Championships in Tokyo in order to ensure that he would not have to face an Israeli competitor in the final. To his credit, Mollaei fled to Germany and stated that his days of competing for Iran are over.

The head of the International Judo Federation, Marius Vizer, is reported to have threatened to ban Iran from taking part in the Olympics as a result of the incident. Vizer reportedly told Iran that International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach supported his proposed ban.

The PA has repeatedly failed to condemn the massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics Games in Munich, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes in a brutal terrorist attack. In fact, Fatah, which is headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, has praised the attack and called it a “heroic operation.” In addition, Abbas dedicated a building at Jericho’s Istiqlal University in honor of Khalil Al-Wazir Abu Jihad, a terrorist who was the chief architect behind the massacre in Munich. Abbas himself reportedly played a role in financing the deadly Olympics attack.

The mistress was appointed after an "extremely fast internal recruitment process." Since 2015, Krähenbühl has taken his girlfriend on trips and "used his position of power so she could travel business class with him while other staff were expected to fly economy class...

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 9, 2019

...even on intercontinental trips," according to the UNRWA internal report. Last year they were on 52 work trips. Some went to Brazil and China, where business tickets from the Jerusalem base cost nearly $7,000... https://t.co/mzrYCkXQpZ by @GunillavonHall in @SvD

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 9, 2019

You simply cannot burn pictures of the Saudi crown prince one day and rush to Riyadh to seek money the next. You cannot shout slogans against the Egyptian president one day and go to Cairo to seek political backing the next.

Remarkably, Turki al-Hamad, a Saudi writer, did what even some Western countries refuse to do: he dared to condemn Hamas and other Gaza-based groups for firing rockets at Israel.

"Palestinians bring disaster to anyone who hosts them. Jordan hosted them, and there was Black September; Lebanon hosted them, and there was a civil war there; Kuwait hosted them, and they turned into Saddam Hussein's soldiers. Now they are using their podiums to curse us."— Mohammed al-Shaikh, Saudi author, RT Arabic, August 13, 2019.

Many people in the Arab countries are now saying that it is high time for the Palestinians to start looking after their own interests and thinking of a better future for their children.... The Arabs seem to be saying to the Palestinians: "We want to march forward; you can continue to march backward for as long as you wish."

"We should not be ashamed to establish relations with Israel."— Ahmad al-Jaralah, a leading Kuwaiti newspaper editor, arabi21.com, July 1, 2019.

Wounded Palestinian terrorists are popular as marriage material because of the lifetime monthly financial reward the Palestinian Authority is paying them.

On a program on official Palestinian Authority TV about young Palestinian women leaving the Gaza Strip due to the difficult financial situation, the TV host explained that young Palestinian women prefer marrying "wounded" men because they get a steady monthly salary from the PA, rather than marrying healthy university graduates who are unemployed:

Official PA TV host: "The young women have actually begun to prefer young men who, let's say, are wounded or have a wound, because in the end they have a monthly salary from the [PA] Ministry of Social Affairs, from the prisoners' institution, or from the institution for the wounded. For [the women], they [the wounded] are preferable to young men who have studied at university or have no kind of [physical] problems and therefore have no source of income."
[Official PA TV, Sea Breeze, July 20, 2019]

A statement by former PA Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Ashraf Al-Ajrami seems to underscore this tendency. Al-Ajrami stated that Palestinians in Gaza "prefer to be wounded" during confrontations with Israel at the security fence rather than "remain unemployed and without a livelihood" - implying that the wounded become eligible for the lifetime monthly financial rewards the PA pays to imprisoned and wounded terrorists as well as to the families of dead terrorists - the so-called "Martyrs":

"In the Gaza strip a marked decline can be seen in the participation in the weekly marches (refers to the violent March of Return riots in Gaza; see note below -Ed.). This is despite the fact that participation there has been reinforced by free transports, sandwiches, and sometimes by the participants' desire to break free of the misery in which they are living as a result of the siege and tragic situation under which the Gaza Strip residents are buckling, and their preference to be wounded rather than remain unemployed and without a livelihood."
[Al-Ayyam, Aug. 7, 2019]

With a family of five, a two-story home and a pharmacy, Tamer al-Sultan had a life many in the besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip would envy, but he still felt trapped.

Fed up with the heavy-handed rule of Hamas, al-Sultan braved a treacherous journey in hopes of starting a new life in the West – only to die along the way. His death has drawn attention to the growing exodus of middle-class Gazans who can no longer bear to live in the isolated coastal territory.

It has also struck a nerve among many Palestinians because he appears to have fled persecution by Hamas, rather than the territory's dire economic conditions following a 12-year blockade by Israel and Egypt, imposed when the Islamic terrorist group seized power.

Al-Sultan had vented about Hamas' rule on social media and joined rare protests against a Hamas tax hike in March that were quickly and violently suppressed. Amin Abed, a friend who was arrested with al-Sultan on three occasions over the protests, said they were doused with cold water and beaten with plastic whips.

So al-Sultan left, following in the footsteps of thousands of other educated, middle-class Palestinians. The exodus has gathered pace in recent years, raising fears that Gaza could lose its doctors, lawyers, teachers and thinkers, putting the Palestinians' dream of establishing a prosperous independent state in even greater peril.

Iran is once again trying to blackmail the world for billions of dollars, after announcing that it is beginning work to develop centrifuges to accelerate uranium enrichment. The world must not give in to Iran. While the Islamic Republic claims it is only interested in developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes, its behavior points to its desire to keep its options open to develop atomic bombs. Those bombs would pose a threat to Israel, other U.S. allies in the Middle East, and eventually Europe and the U.S. itself.

The U.S. and Europe would be making a mistake of historic proportions if they surrender to the latest Iranian demand for a $15 billion line of credit aimed at offsetting the impact of crippling U.S. economic sanctions. Instead, they should stand firm and make clear that Iran will receive sanctions relief only if and when it negotiates a comprehensive new nuclear deal that meets the 12 conditions stipulated by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a May 2018 address. Premature concessions would merely incentivize Iran to engage in further nuclear blackmail.

Iran's covert atomic archive, which Israel seized from a Tehran warehouse last year, discloses a range of sites, equipment and activity previously unknown to the International Atomic Energy Agency, thereby raising the possibility that illicit conduct continues today without the agency's knowledge.

Should the world capitulate now to Tehran's threats, it would make productive negotiations less likely. After all, Iran would have no incentive to compromise on its nuclear program if it faces no meaningful economic penalties for its misbehavior. Ultimately, Iran will only negotiate a stronger nuclear deal if the costs of its nuclear misconduct far exceed the benefits.

The U.S. and Europe should, therefore, double down on economic sanctions against Iran. In the absence of such measures, Iran will likely continue its efforts to blackmail the international community, pocketing concessions without altering the malign behavior that spurred the crisis in the first place. These sanctions should remain in place until Iran concludes a new agreement ensuring, in a verifiable manner, that it has abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

If, for any reason, the Israeli government ever issued a declaration, about destroying Iran "in half an hour," as Iran recently said about Israel, we would probably never hear the end of the criticism from all parts of the world. The European Union would likely take even more measures to counter Israel. There would doubtless be an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to hurl slanders against Israel, followed by countries pledging solidarity and support for Iran.

Amazingly, Israel has been bullied and criticized by the same international community for merely taking precautionary measures to defend its citizens and territorial integrity, as any country would.

For some reason, the Islamic Republic is getting a free pass for constantly threatening to wipe out Israel off the map. This lopsided injustice is either a case of selective amnesia or outrageous double standards by the international community.... The international community... needs to stop its double standards by taking measures against Iran's vows to annihilate Israel.

Fortunately, since President Donald J. Trump took office, America's Iran policy has been heading in the right direction. Steadily escalating economic sanctions have inflicted serious damage on Iran's economy. Maximum pressure is the right policy to adopt to bridle this predatory regime.

Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, recently said that America wants Iran to be a “normal” country. Normal? That’s a vain hope. The Iranian regime is essentially abnormal. As a state it’s aggressively exceptional. It expresses, by word and action, a hope for more power. It has a nuclear arms program. It supports two terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas. It operates an ominous foreign policy on the back of a run-down economy. We outsiders can observe it through scattered glimpses.

Hezbollah, which plays a political role in Lebanon, essentially operates as an owned-and-operated-Iranian subsidiary. Recently, presumably following Iran’s orders, Hezbollah fired two anti-tank missiles into Israeli territory, striking military targets but causing no injuries or casualties. Israel responded with a counter-strike on Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. Bahrain and the UAE protested Hezbollah’s aggression. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed those protests.

“They condemned the helplessness of Lebanon, which allows the Hezbollah terrorist organization to operate from its territory against Israel. The Arab world also understands that the Iranian aggression endangers not only Israel, but the entire region.”

The tyranny of Iran and its extreme punishments extend even to harshly dictating the garments of women. A week ago an Iranian court sentenced a woman to 24 years imprisonment for refusing the hijab during a women’s equality protest. Saba Kord Afshari, 20, was charged with “spreading corruption and prostitution by taking off her hijab and walking without a veil.” This was “spreading propaganda against the state” according to the Iran Human Rights Monitor.

The Iranian Regime is using proxies in Lebanon , Syria, Yemen and Iraq to destabilize the Middle East, one attack at a time. Iran heavily relies on its largest proxy, Lebanon-based terrorist organization Hezbollah, to spread violence and war in the region. In the past three decades, Hezbollah has killed and injured thousands of Israelis in rocket attacks, suicide bombings and kidnappings. The Iranian proxy's ongoing activities in Lebanon and around the world endanger Lebanese and Israeli civilians and pose a grave threat to regional stability.

The decisive factor in next week’s election — and the reason for Benjamin Netanyahu’s durability — is a repressed memory.

When trying to understand Israel’s election on Sept. 17, the second in the space of six months, you can easily get lost in the details — corruption charges, coalition wrangling, bickering between left and right. But the best explainer might be a small film that you’re unlikely to see about something that people here prefer not to discuss.

The opening scene of “Born in Jerusalem and Still Alive,” which just won the prize for best first feature at the Jerusalem Film Festival, catches the main character grimacing as he overhears a glib tour guide. When she describes downtown Jerusalem to her group as “beautiful,” the “center of night life and food for the young generation,” Ronen, an earnest man in his late 30s, interrupts.

“Don’t believe her,” he tells the tourists in Hebrew-accented English. “You see this market? Fifteen years ago it was a war zone. Next to my high school there was a terror attack. Next to the university there was a terror attack. First time I made sex — terror attack.” One of the tourists sidles over, interested. “Yes,” Ronen tells her, “we had to stop.”

No single episode has shaped Israel’s population and politics like the wave of suicide bombings perpetrated by Palestinians in the first years of the 21st century. Much of what you see here in 2019 is the aftermath of that time, and every election since has been held in its shadow. The attacks, which killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, ended hopes for a negotiated peace and destroyed the left, which was in power when the wave began. Any sympathy that the Israeli majority had toward Palestinians evaporated.

More than any other single development, that period explains the durability of Benjamin Netanyahu, which outsiders sometimes struggle to understand. Simply put, in the decade before Mr. Netanyahu came to power in 2009, the fear of death accompanied us in public places. There was a chance your child could be blown up on the bus home from school. In the decade since, that has ceased to be the case. Next to that fact, all other issues pale. Whatever credit the prime minister really deserves for the change, for many voters it’s a good enough reason to keep him in power on Sept. 17. (h/t Yerushalimey)

MK Ayman Odeh, Head of the Arab Joint List on official PA TV: "Bringing down this government together with Benjamin Netanyahu is a great [Palestinian] national goal." What do you think? https://t.co/mzhQ5QZ4Mcpic.twitter.com/EAvFFYBJbW

— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) September 9, 2019

In order to be welcomed as a Jew in a growing number of progressive groups, you have to disavow a list of things that grows longer every day. Whereas once it was enough to criticize Israeli government policy, specifically its treatment of Palestinians, now Israel’s very existence must be denounced. Whereas once it was enough to for­swear the Jewish Defense League, now the very idea of Jewish power must be abjured. Whereas once Jewish success had to be explained, now it has to be apologized for. Whereas once only Israel’s government was demonized, now it is the Jewish movement for self-determination itself.

This bargain, which is really an ultimatum, explains so much.

It is why Jewish leaders of the Women’s March were subjected to anti-Semitic attacks and exclusion by the movement’s other leaders.

It is why at the University of Virginia, Jewish student activists were barred from a minority-student coalition to fight white supremacy.

It is why Manny’s, a popular café and event space in San Francisco, is being regularly protested. Its owner – a gay, progressive Mizrahi Jew – is, according to the protesters, “a Zionist and a gentrifier.”

And just as those on the far right have an out when accused of anti-Semitism – we like Jews just fine so long as they self-deport to Israel and keep our country unsullied – those on the far left have an out as well. We like Jews just fine, they say, as long as they shed their stubborn particularism and adhere, without fail, to our ever-shifting ideas of justice and equality. Jews are welcome so long as they undertake a kind of secular conversion by disavowing many or most of the things that actually make them Jewish. Whereas Jews once had to convert to Christianity, now they have to renounce Jewish power and convert to anti-Zionism.

Of course, Judaism has always been uncool, going back to its origins as the planet’s only monotheism, featuring a bossy and unsexy invisible God. Uncoolness is pretty much Judaism’s brand, which is why cool people find it so threatening—and why Jews who are willing to become cool are absolutely necessary to Hanukkah-style anti-Semitism’s success. In the days of Antiochus, this type of anti-Semitism needed those boys who voluntarily underwent painful genital surgery to prove that Jews weren’t the problem—just the barbarity of Jewish law. During the Soviet era, it needed proud internationalists to prove that Jews weren’t the problem, just the repulsive chauvinism of Jewish national identity—including what we now call Zionism.

The Soviets actually went one better. In 1918, they created an entire branch of their government solely for cool Jews, whose paid job was to persecute the uncool ones. This was called the Yevsektsiya, or the Jewish Sections of the Communist Party, and in their brief and bloody lifespan, one finds the origins of today’s supposedly novel concept: Jews who are of course not anti-Semitic (how could they be? they’re Jews!), but simply anti-Zionist. In the course of not being anti-Semitic and being simply anti-Zionist, the Yevsektsiya managed to persecute, imprison, torture, and murder thousands of Jews, until their leaders were themselves purged.

Yevsektsiya-style anti-Semitism, or Hannukah-style anti-Semitism, always promises Jews a kind of nobility, offering them the opportunity to cleanse themselves of whatever the people around them happen to find revolting. The Jewish traits designated as repulsive vary by country and time period, but they invariably contradict the specific values that the surrounding culture has embraced as “universal.”

The reason for this is clear: There is actually nothing “universal” about those particular values, except the insecurity of the societies hoping to enforce them. Not everyone feels it is critical to a well-lived life to play sports in the nude; not everyone believes that Jesus is the son of God; not everyone agrees that authoritarian central planning is the solution to the world’s ills; not everyone thinks that denouncing one’s ties to an ancestral homeland is a sign of virtue. Jewish particularity exposes the arrogance of a society’s self-righteous leaders along with their profound insecurity, their deep fear of any suggestion that there are other ways to be. Those insecure leaders then enlist the help of Jews by promising them a merit badge of universal righteousness. Thanks to Judaism’s inherent uncoolness, there will never be a shortage of Jews willing to comply.

In his latest dramatic revelation on Iran’s nuclear program, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday exposed the existence of a secret nuclear facility in central Iran in which he said the regime had conducted experiments in the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The reveal, he said, was made possible by Israel’s raid on a warehouse in Tehran last year housing Iran’s secret nuclear weapons archives.

“Today, we’re revealing that yet another secret nuclear site was exposed in the archives that we brought from Tehran. In this site, Iran conducted experiments to develop nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said in a brief statement delivered to journalists at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.

Once Iran detected that Israel had learned about the secret nuclear site, located in Abadeh, south of Isfahan, the regime quickly destroyed it, Netanyahu said. The prime minister, who showed before and after photos of the site captioned June and July of this year, did not specify the nature of the experiments conducted there.

Analyst Ehud Ya’ari, of Israel’s Channel 12 news, said later Monday that the site was near one of the largest air defense facilities Iran has built in the past seven years, and not far from Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility and a yellowcake production facility at Isfahan.

“When Iran realized that we uncovered the site, here’s what they did: they destroyed the site,” Netanyahu said. “They just wiped it out. They wiped out the site… They destroyed the evidence or at least tried to destroy the evidence.”

In the book’s penultimate chapter, Dershowitz takes on “The New Antisemitism” — from Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, and intersectionality to outright attempts to silence pro-Israel advocates, of which Dershowitz has often been a victim, primarily on college campuses.

This fervent Zionist closes by describing an attempt to smear him with fantastically fabricated stories about his alleged sexual misconduct — and his defiance in the face of all lies.

It doesn’t matter to Israel haters whether the allegations are completely disproved, struck, withdrawn, mistaken and made up — as they were in this case — as long as it negatively impacts my ability to defend Israel. I will continue to fight back against these anti-Israel motivated defamations.

We who deal with the daily drumbeat of wild, baseless lies against the Jewish state can appreciate Dershowitz’s frustration in the face of such incessant unfair attacks — but we can also draw strength from his determination to stand tall against the haters. At 80 years old and still unbowed, may Dershowitz continue to provide such empowering inspiration for years to come.

Despite the drastically falling rates of religious affiliation and practice in advanced Western countries—and despite the claims of secularists that religion has altogether caused quite enough trouble in the world and should best be ignored or kept private—religious faith itself has stubbornly declined to disappear.

Not only has the world’s population at large continued to be deeply religious, if not increasingly so, and not only has secularism, for its part, compiled its own record of shame in terms of tyranny, persecution, and bigotry, but the deep convictions instilled by religious faith have inspired any number of history’s noblest achievements for the betterment of humankind.

In what follows, I want to bring to the fore a little-known development in, specifically, modern Catholic thought that has the capacity to render a wholly positive service of its own. The development in question is the salutary emergence of, in brief, Catholic Zionism, a stream of thought that has the potential to influence for the good the attitudes toward the state of Israel held by billions of believers around the world.

Its story is best told in parts.

I. The Two Faces of Christian Zionism
Most people, if asked to reflect on the state of relations between Christians and Israel, will instinctively mention the ardently pro-Israel and pro-Zionist sentiments not of Catholics but of evangelical Protestants: sentiments that in several instances have helped to shape British and American politics.

And people would be right to do so. Thus, when asked in a 2013 Pew survey of American religious attitudes whether God gave Israel to the Jewish people, more white evangelical Christians (55 percent) than Jews (40 percent) answered in the affirmative. Of that same group of evangelicals, 72 percent sided exclusively with Israel on the Israel-Palestinian dispute, compared with 49 percent of the general U.S. public.

An advertisement that many, including the Republican Jewish Coalition, have deemed antisemitic against the Chassidic community will be re-aired by the Rockland County GOP in New York, announced the head of the local Republican branch.

The video, titled “A Storm Is Coming,” blames Chassidic Jews for housing overdevelopment in what is the southernmost county west of the Hudson River—one that boasts a significant Jewish population.

It includes captions such as “Aaron Wieder [a Jewish Rockland County legislator] and his Ramapo bloc are plotting a takeover.”

“The Video came down for 2 reasons: first accomplished its goal of highlighting the issues that face our county. And second, took it down because the controversy stopped adding to number one above,” said Rockland GOP chairman Lawrence Garvey in a Facebook post on the Village of South Nyack site, reported The New York Post.

“However, the video will be back, because this conversation is important to Rockland,” he added.

The ad was planned months in advance of its release in August, reported The New York Post.

It was condemned as antisemitic, including by the RJC, which tweeted, “This video is absolutely despicable. It is pure anti-Semitism and should be immediately taken down. The Rockland County Republican Party is an embarrassment and has no place associating itself with our party.”

An emotive and disturbing image of a Kurdish child disfigured by an airstrike.

But when included just after text suggesting that Israel has just carried out an airstrike, it is clear what the average reader will take away.

The BBC report itself refers to the airstrike’s targets as “bases, arms depots and vehicles” belonging to a militia. This was certainly an airstrike aimed at a specifically military target and not civilians.

Yet a child’s face is what we see and not those of the “wounded fighters” who were the actual targets of the airstrike.

Whether Israel is responsible for this incident, it’s air force never deliberately targets civilians. The BBC’s placement of its graphic video image is inflammatory, misleading and inappropriate.

It belongs in a story concerning airstrikes that Syrian government and Russian forces have carried out against unarmed civilians during the Syrian civil war, not one about an alleged Israeli attack on military targets.

What the Jersey Evening News, while plugging a free event, won’t tell you is how the PSC as an organization has been exposed as riddled with antisemitism and Holocaust denial. As for the Jersey branch, researcher David Collier noted examples of antisemitism on its Facebook page, concluding:
Natalie Strecker appears to be one of those who screams about fighting ‘racism’, but doesn’t notice it when it is on her side. Shameful.

As for the Jersey PSC event itself, Dr. Ghada Karmi has a long and sorry history that certainly doesn’t deserve free advertising in the local newspaper. A significant figure in the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign in the UK, an interview in 2018 has her on record saying that: the Palestinians are victims of genocide similar to Jews under Nazi rule, and that European Jews are all ‘converts’ from other religions – thus those of European Jewish descent living in Israel are not “real” Jews.


Of course, you won’t know any of this from the Jersey Evening Post nor the background of the Jersey PSC and its affiliation to such a dubious organization. Instead, Jersey PSC and Natalie Strecker are treated as brave human rights activists.

Even though the Karmi event is free, the Jersey Evening Post states that “Donations are welcome.”

This isn’t a charity event to feed starving children or raise money for cancer research. This is an event for an anti-Israel organization. Since when is it acceptable or ethical for a journalist or media outlet to casually pitch for donations for a clearly politicized organization?

We’ve sent a complaint to the Jersey Evening Post. Watch this space.

Anti-Israel author and activist Max Blumenthal appeared in Damascus on September 8, according to his tweets, where he praised the Syrian regime and condemned the former US ambassador as “fake.”

The Syrian regime has used chemical weapons and brutal tactics to suppress a rebellion since 2011, leading to the deaths of 500,000 people and the displacement of millions. Blumenthal tweeted that he was in Damascus “in hopes of providing a few days perspective from inside the territory where most Syrians live, one that has been ignored by a Western media that has provided the mood music for a ruthless proxy war.”

Blumenthal has mocked Syrians in the past for preparing plastic bags to protect against Syrian regime chemical weapons attacks. A harsh critic of Israel and son of a former Clinton administration adviser Sidney Blumenthal, Max’s trip to Syria was criticized on social media for mistranslating and mischaracterizing signs he saw.

On Sunday, Blumenthal posted photos of a poster that showed members of the Ja’afari Force, an IRGC-backed Shi’ite militia.

“Posters honoring Syrian army soldiers killed in the war against foreign backed extremists,” Blumenthal tweeted.

However, others were quick to point out that the posters were of a militia that included fighters from Iraq and Lebanon, and that the militia was also foreign-backed. One writer condemned Blumenthal as a “white American son-of-a-millionaire politician.” Other critics slammed Blumenthal for not speaking Arabic and misunderstanding the poster he referenced in the tweet.

He was also criticized for posting a photo of Jobar in Damascus, which Blumenthal claimed had been “occupied by the Saudi-backed Jaish al-Islam until early last year.”

One Twitter user said that the Syrian regime had used snipers to kill dozens in this area during the war.

A bunch of Americans are on a Syrian regime-sponsored propaganda tour of Damascus. They include the usual suspects—Max Blumenthal, Rania Khalek, Anya Parampil, Ajamu Baraka. The photos are posted by a woman named Yasemin. Can someone help identify the rest? pic.twitter.com/m8O8XOXhPS

— Idrees Ahmad (@im_PULSE) September 8, 2019

A group of BDS activists violently assaulted visitors at the Israeli Seret International film festival on Sunday in Berlin, causing injuries and disrupting a podium discussion, according to German police. An estimated 10-12 BDS activists participated in the disruption and attacks.

According to the police notice reviewed by The Jerusalem Post, the BDS activists punched two women, who filed criminal complaints against the BDS supporters. BDS is the abbreviation for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign targeting the Jewish state. The German parliament classified BDS as antisemitic in May.

The police report said after the screening of the documentary film “King Bibi,” a question and answer discussion was planned with the director and a 42-year-old started to scream. At the same time, a second 42-year-old man and a third unknown person held a poster in front of the film screen. It is unclear what was written on the poster. The discussion could not continue after the disruption.

A 62-year-old man, who organized the evening film presentation, called on the three men to leave the event. The BDS activists refused to leave the cinema. The 54-year-old manager of the cinema attempted to force the activists out of the building.

The police said all participants were released after showing identification. The Green Party politician, Volker Beck, wrote on Twitter on Sunday: “When BDS violently attacks everything that is Israeli, it is time the rule of law shows where the borders are. That’s not criticism, that’s violence.” Beck urged Berlin’s police to take a more aggressive posture against BDS.

A week after anti-Israel agitator Firas al-Najim posted videos on Facebook calling for a boycott of Toronto businesses that support Israel, the owner of the Taste of Israel grocery store said sales had more than doubled.

"A lot of people are coming - Christians, not just Jews - to make solidarity," said Gabriel Bolotin, who has operated the store for 14 years. "People came to my store non-stop. It's amazing."

Meanwhile, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) credited its "BUYcott" campaign for helping stores like Taste of Israel resist BDS.

"Once again, through the power of BUYcott, we have succeeded in demonstrating that those who target Israelis will ironically achieve the opposite of their intended goal," said Noah Shack, CIJA's vice-president of the Greater Toronto area.

?Who is The BDS Movement?

A gov’t report exposes the connections between designated terror organizations & the BDS campaign.#Hamas and PACBI (cultural arm of BDS) co-led the boycott campaign against Eurovision.

Click to read more: https://t.co/LrkBPyTy87#TerroristsInSuitspic.twitter.com/ibEpfDQFrI

— 4IL (@4ILorg) September 9, 2019

A controversial project claiming to measure anti-Muslim attacks will not have its government grant renewed after police and civil servants raised concerns about its methods.

The project, called Tell Mama, claimed that there had been a “sustained wave of attacks and intimidation” against British Muslims after the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby, with 193 “Islamophobic incidents” reported to it, rising to 212 by last weekend.

The group’s founder, Fiyaz Mughal, said he saw “no end to this cycle of violence”, describing it as “unprecedented”. The claims were unquestioningly repeated in the media.

Tell Mama and Mr Mughal did not mention, however, that 57 per cent of the 212 reports referred to activity that took place only online, mainly offensive postings on Twitter and Facebook, or that a further 16 per cent of the 212 reports had not been verified. Not all the online abuse even originated in Britain.

Contrary to the group’s claim of a “cycle of violence” and a “sustained wave of attacks”, only 17 of the 212 incidents, 8 per cent, involved the physical targeting of people and there were no attacks on anyone serious enough to require medical treatment.

Vile comparison of Brexit to Nazi Germany, @IndiaKnight. In the 1930s, Jew-Aryan relationships were banned, all parties but the Nazi party were banned, and relentless propaganda incited against the Jews. Being a European citizen in 2019 is NOTHING like being a Jew in 1930s Berlin pic.twitter.com/X4rKYBKMRD

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 8, 2019

A group of Israelis were accosted and one severely beaten in Warsaw, Poland by a group of Arab men, who attacked them because of their national origin, the brother of one of the victims alleged on Sunday.

Yotam Kashpizky was left with facial and ocular fractures by the assault, which his brother Barak described in a Facebook post together with photographs of his brother’s injuries.

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Barak stated that Yotam was assaulted in the early hours of Sunday morning by “a group of Arabs” who attacked him without provocation.

“The Arabs began beating him and his friends only because they were Jewish,” Barak said. The group of Israelis were returning to their hotel from a nightclub, he added.

“A group of Arabic-speakers approached them and asked if they were from Israel,” Barak recounted. “When they replied in the affirmative, they were mercilessly attacked, accompanied by shouts of ‘f**k Israel.’” He later told an Israeli news station that they also chanted “free Gaza” during the attack.

Yotam, he added, was in a taxi at the time, and ran toward his friends in an effort to stop the attack.

“An Arab man, who was apparently wearing brass knuckles, punched him and Yotam lost consciousness,” said Barak. “Afterwards, another friend came out of another taxi in order to help.”

At that point, some girls in the Israeli group began to scream and the attackers fled.

A violent attack on a group of Israeli students in a Warsaw nightclub has been condemned by Poland’s foreign ministry.

The details of the incident were posted on Facebook by Barak Kashpizky, the twin brother of one of the injured Israelis, Arutz Sheva reports.

Yotam Kashpizky, who lost consciousness during the attack, suffered a broken nose and a broken eye-socket, according to his brother.

The assailants, described as “Arabic speakers,” allegedly asked the group as they left a Warsaw nightclub if they were Israeli. When the students answered that they were, the assailants assaulted them, reportedly shouting “f**k Israel” and “Free Gaza.”

Jews first arrived in Poland in the Middle Ages and for centuries the country was home to the world’s largest Jewish community. However, the population was decimated during the Nazi German occupation, when six million Poles — half of them Jews — were killed.

Today, there are only around 8,000 to 12,000 Jews living in Poland, according to estimates, and the Polish government has stepped forward again to defend them.

A 21-year-old Israeli tourist was attacked and punched in the face as he was speaking Hebrew in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, police authorities reported. The police termed the assault, as "Bodily injury with antisemitic background," in the official police notice reviewed by The Jerusalem Post.

The Israeli was speaking with three other men, who were in the same age group, in Hebrew when he was attacked in front of a night club. The suspect overheard the man and attacked him in the early hours of Monday morning, resulting in facial injuries. The perpetrator fled after the attack but was described by the Israeli as having an Arab-looking appearance. Police authorities launched an investigation.

Germany's interior ministry noted that there have been four antisemitic offenses every day in the federal republic since 2001.

In August, two men spat on Berlin Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal and insulted him in Arabic. In the same month, a man and a woman spat on a rabbi and his two sons in the Bavarian capital of Munich and termed them "Sh...T Jews." According to a federal parliament report on antisemitism, 40% of Germans hold modern antisemitic views.

Dozens of local residents joined by local clergy gathered at the historic Fort Revere Park in Hull, Massachusetts, to protest anti-Semitic and racist graffiti.

The gathering on Thursday came several days after the discovery of the vandalism painted on the walls of the fort, including swastikas, messages advocating violence against Jews, the slogan “Hitler 2020” and stickers depicting Anne Frank painted over in red.

Joining Rabbi David Grossman of the local Temple Beth Sholom were members of the Hingham-Hull Religious Leaders Association, the daily newspaper The Patriot Ledger reported.

Grossman told the newspaper that he has received many messages of condolence and support from the community since the incident. The graffiti was painted over the Labor Day weekend.

The graffiti reportedly has been painted over.

“This is not something that will be written off as ‘kids being kids.’ There is no place for hate in our society. These kinds of messages instill fear in members of our community,” Hull Police Chief John Dunn said in a statement.

During the dark days of the Holocaust, more than 27,000 thousand non-Jewish men, women and teenagers risked their lives to save their Jewish neighbors and friends from a certain death at the hands of the Nazis.

On Sunday, a special event in Warsaw on Sunday to honor Polish Righteous Among the Nations who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust was held by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (JFR).

Some 30 Polish rescuers – who today are in their eighties, nineties and even hundreds – attended the event with their families.

“These righteous gentiles are dwindling in number, such that the JFR luncheon is likely to be among the last of such commemorations of its kind,” the organization said in a statement.

The JFR’s website explained that the organization “provides monthly financial assistance to the aged and needy Righteous Gentiles living in 18 countries.”

“The majority of the rescuers receiving financial support live in Eastern Europe, with Poland having the largest number of rescuers,” according to the site.

As of September 1, the JFR said it gives financial assistance to a total of 275 aged and needy rescuers, including 147 Polish rescuers, 37 rescuers in the Ukraine, 23 in Lithuania, 12 in Belarus and 11 in Hungary.

Four Israeli universities are ranked among the top 50 undergraduate programs globally that produce the most VC-backed entrepreneurs, according to the latest ranking by PitchBook.

Tel Aviv (8), Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (14), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (34), and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (49) were the four Israeli universities that made it into the ranking.

The rankings of Tel Aviv University and the Technion were unchanged compared to last year. Hebrew University climbed up one notch and Ben-Gurion University jumped three spots to make it into the top 50 for the first time this year.

Tel Aviv University has churned out 694 graduates-turned-entrepreneurs, who founded 577 companies raising $10.6 billion in a first round of venture funding in the period between January, 1, 2006, and August 2019, according to the ranking compiled by the Pitchbook Research Institute.

Companies set up by Tel Aviv University graduates include Houzz, Innoviz and Monday.com.

The Senior Director of Strategy of Israel's autonomous driver assistance company Mobileye, sits down with host and Altice President Jon Steinberg to talk about Mobileye's role in the autonomous driving industry.

Yisroel has missed a lot — blogging, Napster, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter. Like many other Orthodox Jewish men, most of his education was spent studying the Torah and Talmudic law.

“I never went to business school or college — I barely finished high school,” the 46-year-old told BuzzFeed News. “I didn’t know how to turn on a computer until I was 35.”

Which makes him an unlikely founder of a multi-million dollar Amazon business.

Yisroel — who asked to be identified by his Hebrew name for reasons of privacy — is a deeply observant Orthodox Jew, one of the many who have turned to third-party sales on Amazon. The company’s third-party sellers make up 58% of all sales on the site. But there’s an estimate passed around third-party Amazon consultants that claims 7% of all Amazon third-party sales originate from a single zip code in Brooklyn, and that Orthodox Jewish–owned businesses make up 15% of marketplace sellers. Amazon declined to comment on both numbers. But sources told BuzzFeed News the company is well aware of this particular community, and Amazon seemed to nod to that in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “Brooklyn is home to many impressive independent retailers selling on Amazon,” it said.

Outside Yisroel’s sparsely furnished office, the warehouse hums with activity. Several Latinx workers, and one Orthodox worker, stand over tables opening and repacking rolls of Scotch packing tape. Wrought iron pallet shelves burst with school supplies ready to be packed and shipped. A man in a yarmulke and tzitzit — tassels on a four-cornered undergarment worn by many observant Jews that peek out from the sides of their pants — hunches over a computer inside an open cubicle office with an Amazon listing beaming across the screen. A Bluetooth speaker fills the 10,000-square-foot space with cumbia sonideras. Meanwhile, two men in trousers and yarmulkes with iPhones in their hands rush around, occasionally disappearing behind rows of Magic Bullet blenders, mason jars, glass buffet serving sets, Smoby Builder Max trucks, four-inch LED tubes, and patio umbrellas.

Of all the ancient parchment texts that have been discovered in the caves of Qumran, one, known to researchers as the Temple Scroll, has withstood the ravages of time to an exceptional extent. A recent scientific study may explain how, as Luke Tress writes:

[Most of the] scrolls were written on animal skins that had been stripped of hair [and] thinned. But unlike [the others], the Temple Scroll had an added layer of inorganic material, essentially finishing the process. Today, the scroll stands out from the rest in the Israel Museum’s collection because of its thinness and bright ivory color, which is in stark contrast to the dark hue of most of the other scrolls, due to the tanning processes used in their production.

According to the researchers, the Temple Scroll has a multilayered structure, with the text written on an ivory-colored inorganic layer, mostly made up of salts, on the inner side of the skin—[while] most of the [other] scrolls have writing on the side of the skin that once had the animal’s hair. The finding suggests “a unique ancient production technology in which the parchment was modified through the addition of the inorganic layer as a writing surface,” the researchers write.

While the team cannot say definitively where most of the minerals came from, they have determined that the salts did not originate in the caves and are not common in the Dead Sea region.

Therefore, they conclude, it is likely that this scroll was produced outside of the Land of Israel, perhaps elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

A minuscule 7th century BCE clay sealing reading “Belonging to Adoniyahu, the Royal Steward,” was recently discovered in the City of David’s sifting project.

In earth excavated from the foundations of the Western Wall under Robinson’s Arch in 2013, a national service volunteer some three weeks ago unearthed the one-centimeter inscribed letter sealer bearing the ancient Hebrew name of a character found several times in the Hebrew Bible, Adoniyahu, literally, “The Lord is my Master.”

According to archaeologist Eli Shukron, this inscription is unique and “of utmost importance.” The role of the Royal Steward (Asher al Habayit), he said, appears several times in the Bible and is used for the highest-level minister in the royal court. For example, the title of Royal Steward was used in the Book of Genesis for Joseph’s high-powered position in Egypt.

The clay sealing, or bulla, was used in the First Temple period to seal important documents, said Shukron.

In March, another rare bulla was published by the City of David bearing the inscription “(belonging) to Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King” (LeNathan-Melech Eved HaMelech). Nathan-Melech is named in 2 Kings as an official in the court of King Josiah. And in February 2018, another, partial clay sealing was discovered, which may spell out “Belonging to Isaiah,” (l’Yesha’yah[u]) and is arguably tied to the Prophet Isaiah.

The new Adoniyahu inscription gives a potential link to a 150-year-old mystery: a First Temple, 7th century BCE rock cave grave, which is also inscribed with “Asher al Habayit.” The inscription, today found in the British Museum, has a partial name ending with the same three Hebrew letters as that of the new clay bulla.

The most insidious lie that @bariweiss tells us is that legal right wing antisemitism which has literally *killed* American Jews is *less dangerous* because “everyone agrees about it.”

— harry reis (@harryreis) September 5, 2019

The death of a young Palestinian woman in the West Bank has sparked widespread outrage across the Middle East amid accusations that it is nothing but another case of so-called honor killing.

The suspicious circumstances of 21-year-old Israa Ghareeb’s death in Bethlehem have also drawn attention to a practice increasingly seen as a stain on the conscience of Middle East societies.

...Soon afterwards, #WeAreAllIsraa began to trend on Arabic Twitter, with more than 50,000 tweets displaying the hashtag.

Part IV - Responsibility

Chapter II - in mitigating reasons

Mitigating causes

Article 99

If the case is found to be mitigating, the court may order:

1. Instead of execution for life or fifteen to twenty-five years.

2. A- Instead of life imprisonment, the same penalty shall be imposed from fifteen to twenty years.

(B) Instead of 20 years of imprisonment, the same penalty shall be imposed from twelve to fifteen years.

3. It may degrade any other criminal penalty by not more than one third.

4. Except in the case of repetition, it may also reduce any sentence of a minimum of three years to a minimum of one year imprisonment.

5. If the court takes the mitigating reasons, it is not obliged to go down to the minimum penalty.

Mohammad Abequa, a U.S. citizen born in Jordan, confessed Wednesday in an Amman courtroom that he strangled his estranged wife in her New Jersey apartment in July. Abequa, 46, said he killed his 40-year-old Turkish-born wife, Nihal, to protect his honor, an argument accepted by Jordanian courts as a reason for a reduced sentence. He is charged with murdering his wife, whose body was found July 4 in the apartment in the community of Parsippany Troy-Hills, as well as kidnapping his children, Lisa, 6, and Sami, 3. Abequa brought the children to Jordan after his wife's death. In what was seen as an effort to get a reduced sentence, Abequa told a crowded courtroom that he lost his temper when his wife told him that the man leaving her house as he arrived was her boyfriend. 'I asked her who the man was, and she told me it was her boyfriend and showed me a new tattoo on her thigh that he gave her,' Abequa said. [emphasis added]

But judicial sources doubted Abequa would receive a reduced sentence because the highly publicized case has been the focus of U.S. interest and personal attention from Jordan's King Hussein.

It was troubling enough to the victim's family that Mohammad Abequa, who murdered his wife in New Jersey in 1994 and fled to Jordan with their two young children, was sentenced to only 15 years by a Jordanian court.

But then yesterday came the news that the confessed killer had been pardoned for his crime after serving five years in prison, and had been set free.

“We discovered that (Jordan) had taken this article from the Syrian penal code, which was taken from the French penal code,” Hassan explained. “So the basis for it was France: French law, not Islamic, nor Arabic.”

She noted: “Of course, France had abolished this article, and honor crimes were never again a problem the French legal system had to face.”

I realized how damaging colonization has been.

I felt a surprising sense of pain — but also hope — at this revelation. It made me realize just how damaging colonization has been for the Middle East.

The frequent argument made by Muslim advocacy organizations that honor killings have nothing to do with Islam and that it is discriminatory to differentiate between honor killings and domestic violence is wrong.

the batterer-murderer is seen as a criminal; no one defends him as a hero. Such men are often viewed as sociopaths, mentally ill, or evil.

Honor Killings	Domestic Violence
Committed mainly by Muslims against Muslim girls/young adult women.	Committed by men of all faiths usually against adult women.
Committed mainly by fathers against their teenage daughters and daughters in their early twenties. Wives and older-age daughters may also be victims, but to a lesser extent.	Committed by an adult male spouse against an adult female spouse or intimate partner.
Carefully planned. Death threats are often used as a means of control.	The murder is often unplanned and spontaneous.
The planning and execution involve multiple family members and can include mothers, sisters, brothers, male cousins, uncles, grandfathers, etc. If the girl escapes, the extended family will continue to search for her to kill her.	The murder is carried out by one man with no family complicity.
The reason given for the honor killing is that the girl or young woman has "dishonored" the family.	The batterer-murderer does not claim any family concept of "honor." The reasons may range from a poorly cooked meal to suspected infidelity to the woman's trying to protect the children from his abuse or turning to the authorities for help.
At least half the time, the killings are carried out with barbaric ferocity. The female victim is often raped, burned alive, stoned or beaten to death, cut at the throat, decapitated, stabbed numerous times, suffocated slowly, etc.	While some men do beat a spouse to death, they often simply shoot or stab them.
The extended family and community valorize the honor killing. They do not condemn the perpetrators in the name of Islam. Mainly, honor killings are seen as normative.	The batterer-murderer is seen as a criminal; no one defends him as a hero. Such men are often viewed as sociopaths, mentally ill, or evil.
The murderer(s) do not show remorse. Instead, they experience themselves as "victims," defending themselves from the girl's actions and trying to restore their lost family honor.	Sometimes, remorse or regret is exhibited.

Families that kill for honor will threaten girls and women if they refuse to cover their hair, their faces, or their bodies or act as their family's domestic servant; wear makeup or Western clothing; choose friends from another religion; date; seek to obtain an advanced education; refuse an arranged marriage; seek a divorce from a violent husband; marry against their parents' wishes; or behave in ways that are considered too independent, which might mean anything from driving a car to spending time or living away from home or family. Fundamentalists of many religions may expect their women to meet some but not all of these expectations. But when women refuse to do so, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists are far more likely to shun rather than murder them. Muslims, however, do kill for honor, as do, to a lesser extent, Hindus and Sikhs.

In this study, worldwide, 91 percent of perpetrators were Muslims. In North America, most killers (84 percent) were Muslims, with only a few Sikhs and even fewer Hindus perpetrating honor killings; in Europe, Muslims comprised an even larger majority at 96 percent while Sikhs were a tiny percentage. In Muslim countries, obviously almost all the perpetrators were Muslims. With only two exceptions, the victims were all members of the same religious group as their murderers.

You cannot pin this all on France.

Here is the Jordanian law in Article 340 again, this time with revisions made in 2010:

Now the law specifies that the killing has to be done "immediately," apparently to allow for this to be a crime of passion as opposed to being premeditated.

Also, in the spirit of evenhandedness, the woman is allowed to kill her husband as well, but without mentioning other relatives as is allowed to the man.

But the point of all this is not about nitpicking.

This is about dealing with the problem of honor killing by addressing the problem itself. Treating honor killings as just another manifestation of domestic abuse just avoids the issue and fails to understand this for what it is. That is why these public grassroots protests are an important step towards attacking the problem. There is more to be done than just applying a bandage to the existing law.

Now there are signs that people are beginning to realize that.

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We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Tuesday that if he is re-elected, he will express Israeli sovereignty over all the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, starting with the Jordan Valley.

Netanyahu said the steps would be taken in coordination with the administration of US President Donald Trump. He revealed that Trump intends to announce his Middle East peace plan the day after the September 17 election.

“This is an historic opportunity that we may not have again,” Netanyahu said in his statement that he delivered at Ramat Gan’s Kfar Hamaccabiah Hotel.

Pointing to a map of the Jordan Valley, he said Israel could carry out the plan without annexing a single Palestinian and while ensuring that Palestinians maintain complete freedom of movement.

He warned that if he did not win the election, Blue and White leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid would not take such steps and would not be able to handle the Trump administration’s plan.

But both Gantz and Lapid have said in the past that they envision keeping the Jordan Valley forever.

Fatah, like all terror promoting organizations, needs a platform to turn its unknown terrorists into heroes and role models to emulate. Fatah has chosen Facebook as its prime tool, and through its Facebook page instantaneously promotes terror to its 224,000 Facebook followers.

PMW again demands that Facebook immediately close down Fatah’s official page before more innocent lives are lost to murderers who are inspired and drawn to terror by Fatah’s Facebook page.

In January 2019, Palestinian Media Watch sent a copy to Facebook officials of our comprehensive report on Fatah’s Facebook page documenting Fatah’s use of its official Facebook page to promote terror and glorify terrorists throughout 2018. PMW director Itamar Marcus spoke with the Director of Facebook’s Global Counterterrorism Policy Team, Brian Fishman, and described how Fatah’s use of Facebook for its terror promotion was both life threatening and in violation of Facebook's Community Standards.

Tragically, in spite of the clear documentation, Facebook has chosen to knowingly let Fatah continue.

Below is PMW's new report on Fatah’s use of Facebook from January to June 2019, which shows that Facebook still constitutes a central part of Fatah’s terror promotion mechanism. Facebook’s willingness to ignore all the evidence and keep the page open makes Facebook a willing and active partner in Fatah’s terror promotion. Whereas in 2018 Facebook was an unwitting accomplice in Fatah's terror promotion, in 2109, Facebook is a partner by choice.

Fatah says this 17-year old suicide bomber is “Magnificent” and is using @facebook to publicize its terror mission. Demand Facebook stop partnering with Palestinian terror promotion & close Fatah’s terror page. #CloseFatahFB

Email Facebook: https://t.co/7VhTTICsJ7pic.twitter.com/7oMbjoM55G

— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) September 10, 2019

The order of the region changed again in 2015, July 14 to be exact, when the Obama administration struck the JCPOA. Arab nationalist and Islamist ideologues were partly proven right after having warned for decades that there was a regime intent on dominating Arab lands from east to west. But it wasn’t the Zionists who carried out the industrial mass slaughter of Arabs. Rather, it was Iran.

That’s why Obama will go down in Middle East history as the great demystifier, the man who drew back the curtain and gave the regional powers a glimpse of what hell truly looks like—America allied with a state sponsor of terror that makes endless war on Sunnis. The effects can be seen most vividly in Syria with a war that uprooted millions, fragmented polities, and left hundreds of thousands dead after eight years.

The JCPOA and the ensuing violence, from Lebanon through Syria and Iraq to Yemen and the Gulf, is therefore perhaps an even more strategically consequential regional event than the Yom Kippur War. Jerusalem’s 1973 victory pushed Cairo into the U.S. fold, but the Iran deal put Israel and the Arabs in one column, facing a common enemy. All that remained was for a superpower to lead the column.

In embracing Israel and Saudi Arabia, Trump pocketed the cards that Obama left on the table. Thus, only a short time after Obama administration officials regularly tried to kneecap Israel by leaking details of Israeli strikes on Iranian targets, the Trump administration now supports those strikes. There are no Arab powers complaining to U.S. officials, because the Israelis are blowing up their enemies.

Nevertheless, Trump and Netanyahu will be careful to modulate their actions. A hot war with Iran is likely to hurt Trump’s chances at reelection and could have hellish costs for Israel.

Iran doesn’t want a war either. Among other reasons, it’s running out of money. Tehran and the international lobby created by the JCPOA believe that all the regime has to do is hold out until 2020, when a Democrat moves into the White House and restores the deal. But that strategy may prove even riskier than Trump’s play, especially as the Iranian economy continues to weaken. If Trump wins, he will have even more leverage and fewer restraints to push the same maximalist deal.

Criminal lawyer and pro-Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz has told a conservative TV network that former President Barack Obama lied to him.

“I got a phone call from Obama … who invited me to the Oval Office,” Dershowitz, who is known for his role in several important legal cases and as a commentator on the Arab–Israeli conflict, told One America News. “He made me promises, which he broke, and I broke my relationship with Obama.”

Dershowitz said that the former president told him that he would always have Israel’s back, but he believes Obama stabbed the Jewish state in the back.

“President Obama’s decision on the way out to allow the United Nations to condemn Israel for occupying the Western Wall, the holiest place in Judaism, the Jewish Quarter, Hebrew University, the Hadassah Hospital bypass road, was abominable.

“I took very strong positions against President Obama,” he continued.

In 2016, the Obama administration abstained from voting on United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 that demanded an immediate halt to all Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, enabling the measure to pass.

Dershowitz, who conducted the interview last week to promote his new book, “Defending Israel: The Story of My Relationship with My Most Challenging Client,” said that Obama’s policies emboldened the Iranian regime, which has pledged to destroy Israel if it develops a nuclear weapon.

The main problem with that interpretation being Ernie's apparent preference for imposing an Arab king over a union of Palestine-Jordan in order to secure the area for a British military base.

— James Vaughan (@EquusontheBuses) September 10, 2019

Israeli fighter jets touched down at Waddington Air Force Base in the United Kingdom to take part in a high-intensity tactical drill with aircraft from other nations.

The jets joined 50 aircraft of various types from the German, Italian and American air forces for the 20-day Cobra Warrior exercise.

The aircraft deployed from Tel Nof to RAF Waddington consist of 3 F-15 “C” Baz and 4 F-15 “D” Baz fighters as well as a KC-707 Re’em tanker and C-130J Hercules.

“We are happy and proud to participate in the Cobra Warrior exercise. This is the first time IAF fighter aircraft are deployed to and flying in Britain,” said Brig.-Gen. Amnon Ein-Dar, head of the IAF Air Division. “The deployment will help improve IAF readiness and capability. We view this exercise as the highest standard of training [and] an excellent opportunity for mutual learning and bolstering cooperation between partners.”

Formerly named Exercise CQWI (Combined Qualified Weapons Instructor), the annual Cobra Warrior is the RAF’s largest collective-training exercise.

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has warned Turkey that Washington is considering imposing sanctions on the country over Ankara’s purchase of the S-400 missile defense system from Russia, Reuters reported Monday.

Speaking with journalists, Mnuchin said that, while no decision has yet been made, the Trump administration is “looking at” penalizing its NATO ally over that country’s importation of the missile batteries, whose presence in Turkey the US believes would compromise its F-35 stealth aircraft program and aid Russian intelligence.

“We’re looking at that, I’m not going to make any comments on any specific decisions, but we are looking at it,” he said.

In a major break with a longtime ally, US President Donald Trump this July announced that Ankara was being kicked out of the F-35 program for purchasing the Russian-made system. Turkey took delivery of the first part of the Russian system that month,, despite strong objections from the United States.

Turkey — which had ordered more than 100 of the F-35s for some $1.4 billion — has repeatedly dismissed claims the Russian system would be a danger to the American warplanes, and urged Washington to reverse its decision.

The Western defense alliance NATO, which counts Turkey as one of its members, has also expressed concern about the purchase.

A US official visiting Beirut to mediate between Lebanon and Israel over a maritime border dispute is a "friend of Israel," keen to defend its interests, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah warned on Tuesday.

Nasrallah urged Lebanese officials to negotiate from a point of strength with US Assistant Secretary of State David Schenker over the nearly 860 square kilometers (330 square miles) of the Mediterranean Sea claimed by both countries.

Schenker met with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri after his arrival on Monday. On Tuesday, he met with Lebanese President Michel Aoun and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who complained about new American sanctions that targeted Jammal Trust Bank for, as the US Treasury Department said, "knowingly facilitating banking activities for Hezbollah."

In comments released by Berri's office and circulated on local media, he said that Beirut has drafted laws in the past years to fight money laundering, adding that "the Lebanese economy and banking sector cannot take this amount of pressure."

The US considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization and has been imposing sanctions on the group for years. In July, the Treasury for the first time imposed sanctions on two Hezbollah legislators.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Tuesday that the Israel Defense Forces showed weakness in the incident earlier this month in which it staged an evacuation of “wounded soldiers” from an APC that his group targeted with anti-tank missiles, and that Hezbollah had learned lessons from the incident.

“The legendary and invincible [IDF] has turned into a Hollywood army, acting in movies, because it has become weak, debilitated, feeble and cowardly,” Nasrallah said.

He said Hezbollah’s takeaway from the staged evacuation was that it should hit more Israeli targets in the future.

“You are saying to us: ‘Next time, don’t strike one military vehicle and don’t strike only in one place. Instead, hit more than one military vehicle and hit more than one place.’ We are not going to see anymore Hollywood films,” he said.

Hezbollah gleefully announced it had killed and wounded soldiers after firing the anti-tank missiles into northern Israel earlier this month, but Israel later said no soldiers were injured and Israeli sources indicated that footage of wounded soldiers being rushed to a hospital was part of a ruse.

The IDF retaliated by firing approximately 100 artillery shells and bombs at Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. No Lebanese casualties were reported. Hezbollah, apparently believing it had already exacted sufficient revenge for DIF strikes the previous week, refrained from any further response. The group has continued to assert that the APC suffered a direct hit.

In light of the recent tension between Israel and Hizbullah, there has been criticism in Lebanon against the organization itself, and also against the leaders of the state, for backing Hizbullah and enabling its actions.

Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah's August 16, 2019 speech, in which he said that war against Iran would mean war against the entire resistance axis and would set the entire region aflame, evoked condemnations against him on the grounds that he prefers Iran's benefit over that of his own country. This criticism mounted following Israel's August 25, 2019 drone attack on the Dahia, Hizbullah's stronghold in southern Beirut, and Hizbullah's September 1 retaliatory firing of anti-tank missiles into Israel. The critics called not to embroil Lebanon in wars that serve regional powers, chiefly Iran, stressing that Nasrallah does not represent all Lebanese, as he purports to do. Hizbullah, they said, is not authorized to act independently of the state and intervene in other countries, as it did in Syria, or to operate against Israel and then expect the Lebanese government to bear the responsibility for its actions. They warned that a war on Lebanon would entail death and destruction, and that only the Lebanese government is authorized to take decisions on issues of war.

Other critics, among them former Lebanese PM Fouad Al-Siniora, also called to renew the public debate on Lebanon's defense strategy and to subordinate Hizbullah's arms to the Lebanese army, lest the U.S. expand its sanctions on Lebanon, leading the country to complete economic collapse. Some also mocked Nasrallah for making empty boasts about the victories of the resistance when he cannot even prevent the Israeli attacks in Lebanon. Nasrallah's behavior, they stated, confirms the statements of U.S. State Secretary Mike Pompeo that Hizbullah is a danger to Lebanon.

As stated, harsh condemnations were also directed at the leaders of the Lebanese state, including President Michel 'Aoun and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil. The latter was criticized mainly for his remark that all Lebanese are partners of Hizbullah. 'Aoun was condemned for rushing to declare, on his own initiative, following the Israeli drone attack, that Lebanon has the right to respond to Israel's aggression, a statement that was understood as lending legitimacy to retaliatory action by Hizbullah. The critics stated that these two leaders were effectively supporting Hizbullah and its weapons, eliminating the distinction between Hizbullah and the Lebanese state, and dragging the country into an unwanted confrontation with Israel. Lebanese Prime Minister Sa'd Al-Hariri was also censured, for his feeble response to the events and lack of control over them, which enable the Hizbullah-'Aoun-Bassil alliance to steer Lebanon as they wish.

The U.S. military is likely to accelerate the pace of its operations in Afghanistan to counter an increase in Taliban attacks, a senior U.S. general said on Monday following Washington's suspension of peace talks with the insurgents.

U.S. Marine General Kenneth McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, said during a visit to Afghanistan that the Taliban overplayed its hand in peace negotiations by carrying out a spate of high profile attacks, including one that killed a U.S. soldier last week.

The Taliban, which controls more territory than at any time since 2001 when it governed the country, said on Sunday that more American lives https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan/more-americans-will-die-after-trump-abruptly-ends-afghan-talks-taliban-say-idUSKCN1VT05L would be lost.

McKenzie declined to comment on the Taliban statement. But he noted that U.S. troops in Afghanistan were hardly "defenseless."

"We're certainly not going to sit still and let them carry out some self-described race to victory. That's not going to happen," McKenzie told a group of reporters traveling with him during a stop at Bagram Airfield in northeastern Afghanistan.

Asked whether increasing operations against the Taliban could include airstrikes and raids by U.S. and Afghan commandos, McKenzie responded: "I think we're talking a total spectrum."

A range of top global counter-terror experts warned on Monday that al-Qaeda is back, has reached a new high in followers worldwide and may pose an escalating cyber terrorism threat.

In several speeches at the ICT-IDC Herzliya counter-terrorism conference, the officials repeatedly returned to the theme of the threat of al-Qaeda, making it clear that the group has supplanted ISIS as the number one global terrorism threat.

Jay Tabb, the executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, told the conference that al-Qaeda and its affiliates now have 20,000 followers worldwide – a high for the group which carried out the 9/11 attacks, but was upstaged in recent years by ISIS.

Following ISIS’s physical defeat in Syria and Iraq (ISIS still has small units in other countries and an active online presence), al-Qaeda has been on the rise.

Former US cyber command deputy chief Lt. Gen. (res.) Vincent Stewart warned the conference that the West was underestimating the dangers of cyber terrorism posed by al-Qaeda and even still potentially by ISIS.

He said that the West was finally getting serious about defending itself from state-sponsored cyber attacks from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

British authorities have foiled 22 attacks since March 2017, three more than previously reported, Scotland Yard's most senior counterterrorism officer said on Monday.

Seven were related to "suspected right-wing terrorism," Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu told a conference on international terrorism in Herzliya, Israel, according to the text distributed by Scotland Yard.

Basu said attacks were becoming easier to carry out and harder to detect. He promoted the merits of "Prevent," a British counterterrorism program involving several government agencies, including social services, which is designed to spot and deter people who might be vulnerable to recruitment or indoctrination by violent radicals.

"'Prevent' is designed to break the cycle of extremist violence by empowering communities and individuals – to make them resilient to radicalizers and able to spot the vulnerable that radicalizers target and manipulate," Basu said.

"A recent study showed that in the time before most lone-actor attacks, someone close to them knew about their growing ideology and violent intent. Mostly, they chose not to report it," Basu said.

Israeli security forces thwarted an attempt to smuggle materials to produce military uniforms into the Gaza Strip, the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said in a statement on Monday.

Large quantities of olive-green fabric, a product that can be used both for civilian and military purposes, were discovered at the Kerem Shalom crossing.

The cloth rolls were hidden among other goods that were entering the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave.

Kerem Shalom is the point of entry and exit for equipment and goods from Israel to the Strip.

The crossing is managed by the Land Crossings Authority in the Ministry of Defense and the Coordination and Liaison Administration.

According to COGAT’s website, every day an average of 800 trucks enter Gaza carrying medical equipment, food, fuel, building materials, agricultural inputs, textile products and more.

Hamas is using a restraining force, tasked with keeping the peace in order to bargain with Israel. Craig Johnson has the story. Story: Hamas current policy of restraint is being used for bargaining with Israel before the elections. This restraining force is allowing Hamas to continue to receive aid from Qatar through Israel.

When Israelis vote next week it will be their sixth general election since 2006, when Palestinians last had the chance to cast ballots in parliamentary polls.

30-year-old Palestinians have never had the opportunity to choose their leadership.

"For both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, governing without elections is very comfortable. The split provides a cover - you can say you want elections but the other side doesn't," said Khalil Shikaki, a prominent Palestinian pollster.

Shikaki's polling found little optimism about new PA elections, but also that democracy was not a top priority.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the second-largest armed terror faction in Gaza, has in recent days taken a lead role in the latest escalation with Israel. PIJ, which is funded and orchestrated by Iran, has an interest in inflaming the security situation and destabilizing the region.

Unlike Hamas, PIJ has no responsibility for Gaza’s estimated 2 million people.

PIJ is challenging Hamas, which for the most part is not interested in an escalation or full-out war with Israel at this time, and is instead interested in reaching an arrangement to prevent an economic collapse of the Gaza Strip and avoid the risk of a popular rebellion against its Islamist militant regime.

It is therefore safe to assume that PIJ fired five rockets into southern Israel on Friday night, narrowly missing an Israeli family fleeing into a safe room in Sderot.

In retaliation, the Israel Air Force struck Hamas military targets in northern Gaza as part of Israel’s policy of holding Gaza’s ruling entity responsible for what occurs in its territory.

It also seems safe to assume that PIJ is the organization behind the armed drone attack on an IDF Humvee vehicle on Saturday, which caused light damage, but no injuries.

Security forces in Saudi Arabia have arrested over 60 individuals identified as Hamas members, the Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen reported on Tuesday, quoting Palestinian sources based in Saudi Arabia.

According to the Lebanese report, the detainees are Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip who are members of the Hamas government.

The report said that Saudi forces raided the offices of Palestinian Hamas operatives in the kingdom, seizing computers and documents.

Al Mayadeen reported that for some weeks, Saudi security forces have been arresting and questioning Hamas supporters and operatives in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government has reportedly issued orders to confiscate the money and assets of Hamas operatives and supporters, as well as an order banning Hamas activity in the kingdom and banning membership in organizations suspected of helping Hamas launder money.

Hamas put out a statement claiming that on April 4, Saudi authorities arrested senior Hamas official Mohammed al-Khoudari, who is nearing 80 and has been living in the Saudi coastal city of Jeddah for the past three decades. For two decades, al-Khoudari was a prominent figure in Hamas-Saudi relations, as well as filling other roles in the leadership of the terrorist group. He is known as the "Hamas ambassador" to Saudi Arabia.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bomb shell revelation Monday of another Iranian nuclear site that was operational as late as three months ago is big news aimed at the international community.

Even so, Israel's intelligence services will have to provide more information proving Iran had, or had at least planned to develop nuclear weapons at the Abadeh installation.

Satellite images of the installation before and after it was uncovered by Israel will not be sufficient to sway EU leaders or the Russians and Chinese, who are signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. It will not even be enough to convince the Trump administration.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will not examine Israel's claims based on aerial photography alone. The Iranians will - as always - deny the claims and the IAEA inspectors will need more information in order to proceed.

But if more proof is supplied, IAEA inspectors will be able to launch an investigation that may prove embarrassing for Iran, because it will show they have not only violated the nuclear deal (aka the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA), but also the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Netanyahu's revelations are grave because of Iran's consistent claims that their uranium enrichment is for civilian purposes while denying it is developing nuclear weapons.

Iran has been trying to cover up a secret nuclear warehouse and IAEA wants answers as to why there were traces of uranium found at the nuclear site. Jotam Confino has the story.

Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said in a September 7, 2019 interview on IRINN TV (Iran) that a plan has been presented to the Supreme National Security Council for Iran to have centrifuges that will be able to produce between 272,000 and 1 million separative work units (SU) of centrifuges when the JCPOA expires in 2030. Kamalvandi said that this plan would not rely on IR1 centrifuges, which he said are going to be retired and replaced with newer IR2M and IR4 centrifuges. He explained that the JCPOA would enable Iran to use new centrifuges starting in 2025, but that, as part of the third stage in its reduction of commitment to the nuclear deal, Iran has started reactivating centrifuge chains that the JCPOA had required it to deactivate. Kamalvandi said that it would cost roughly a billion dollars to build new enrichment structures in the Natanz enrichment facility, and that it is therefore better to install advanced centrifuges with a capacity of 10 SU. In addition, Kamalvandi said that Iran has begun experiments that involve injecting gas into IR6 centrifuges, even though the JCPOA stipulates that Iran would only be allowed to do this in November. He added that experimental stages with new centrifuges increase Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium.

Iran responded furiously to Israel’s revelation that it uncovered a previously unknown nuclear facility, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of marching to war at all costs.

In a televised address Monday, Netanyahu said Tehran had conducted experiments in the pursuit of nuclear weapons at the secret nuclear facility in central Iran, violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Responding to Netanyahu, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif accused the Israeli leader of seeking a war with his country.

“The possessor of REAL nukes cries wolf—on an ALLEGED ‘demolished’ site in Iran,” he wrote on Twitter.

“He & #B_Team just want a war, no matter innocent blood & another $7 TRILLION,” he added, referring to Netanyahu, US National Security Adviser John Bolton, Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, and Abu Dhabi crown prince Mohammed Bin Zayed.

Iran's top diplomats lie about the regime's nuclear program at Turquzabad. The only way to stop Iran's dangerous nuclear ambitions is through decisive international pressure.

A recent exploration of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s various offices and laboratories has turned up evidence that the organization possesses the capacity to conduct effective monitoring of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, a fact that critics contend the agency has attempted to conceal.

External auditors arrived unannounced last week at the various offices and technical facilities of the IAEA in Europe, Canada, and Japan, and swept the buildings for evidence as they appropriated or reviewed documents. The team’s initial findings, reported an auditor spokesman, give strong indications that the IAEA may have or have had in its possession the ability and means to live up to the part of its mission devoted to preventing the proliferation of atomic weapons. Representatives of the agency declined to comment.

Oversight specialist Natdemo Saad told reporters that the preliminary information collected in the sweep points to failures in IAEA mechanisms designed and thought to prevent the exercise of competence, especially in the context of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons technology. “Figures within the organization, in addition to advocates outside it, have claimed for years that the IAEA cannot verify Iranian compliance with the JCPOA,” he stated, referring to the 2015 agreement brokered by US then-Secretary of State John Kerry of the Barack Obama presidential administration. “What appears to emerge from our initial inspection of documents and other evidence, however, contradicts that assertion, and raises the distinct possibility that the agency could have played a role in living up to its stated mission. We will continue to examine the evidence and report our conclusions as we reach them.”

Iraqi Shiite politician Jalal Al-Din Al-Saghir said in an August 25, 2019 speech that aired on Al-Ayam TV (Iraq) that the Shiite movement in Iraq has been standing up to America, spitting in its face, and confronting and retaliating against Israel. Al-Saghir claimed that the U.S. controlled the Baath Party and that it effectively ruled Iraq between 1968 and 2003, and he said that the reason that America has been unable to replace Saddam Hussein the same way he claimed it replaced Egypt's Hosni Mubarak with Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi is because the Shiites have taken part of America's "political share" in Iraq. He added that the conflict with the U.S. over political influence in the region is not over, but that what has been achieved in Iraq since 2003 has been a great disaster for American policy.

Iraqi academic Dr. Akeel Abbas said in an August 30, 2019 interview on NRT TV (Iraqi Kurdistan) that conspiracy theories tend to thrive in societies that are replete with indoctrination and sacred narratives about absolute truth, and he said that since Iraqi society does not have a long traditional of serious analytical critique, it does not properly understand the roles that Israel and Iran play in the region. Dr. Abbas said that Iran has strategic advantages for cultural and geographic reasons and because it has proxies that are willing to fight on its behalf. In contrast, he said that Israel is far more successful than Iran and other Middle Eastern countries in developmental and economic parameters, despite psychological, moral, religious, and political barriers between it and Arabs and Muslims. He said that Israel's success is also why Arabs have a tendency to attribute Israel's preeminence to conspiracies and Western support. In addition, Dr. Abbas said that Iranian influence in Iraq has prevented the emergence of a unified and democratic Iraq, partly because Iran insists on dividing Iraq along sectarian and racial lines. In contrast, he added that Israel has not posed a threat to Iraq in almost 20 years.

In an August 31, 2019 interview on Al-Rafidain TV (Iraq), Iraqi writer and researcher Rafe' Al-Falahi questioned why Iran is moving missiles into Iraqi territory and giving them to militias, especially in light of all its talk about long-range missiles that can strike Israel. Saying that this is all part of a conflict that Iran is part of, he asked why a "shattered" country like Iraq should be trusted with these missiles, and he said that Iraq is tired of wars, for which he said it has been paying the price since the American occupation in 2003. He said that he doubts that the militias in Iraq have the country's best interests in mind or that Iran is seeking to strengthen Iraqi sovereignty, security, and honor. In addition, Al-Falahi said that "resistance" is a deceitful and misleading term used by Iran and its militias. He gave the example of the resistance movements in Yemen and Syria, which he said have ruined the countries and spread corruption on behalf of Iran, and he said that Hizbullah has, similarly, hijacked Lebanon and caused the Lebanese people to suffer. Al-Falahi added that Israel has remained untouched in the meantime, and he said that Iran's actions have strengthened the relationship between Israel and many Arab regimes.

An Iranian female soccer fan has died after setting herself on fire outside a court after learning she may have to serve a six-month sentence for trying to enter a soccer stadium.

Women in Iran are banned from soccer stadiums, though they are allowed at some other sports, such as volleyball.

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The semi-official Shafaqna news agency reported on Tuesday that the 30-year old woman identified, only as Sahar, died at a Tehran hospital.

Sahar was known as "Blue Girl" on social media for the colors of her favorite team, Esteghlal.

She set herself on fire a week ago, reportedly after learning that she may have to go to prison for trying to enter a stadium in February to watch an Esteghlal match.

No verdict had been delivered in her case so far.

🇸🇪🇮🇷 Congratulations, @AnnLinde, on replacing @margotwallstrom as Sweden's Foreign Minister. My good friends in the Islamic Republic of Iran can't wait for you to return & sell out your feminist values again.

"Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss"https://t.co/yZBtI75jH3https://t.co/GG80KRR6nGpic.twitter.com/YDj7SgrItl

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 10, 2019

Iran is the largest prison in the world for female journalists. You can make a difference by contacting Javaid Rehman, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran and demand the release of these female journalists.

An Israeli Jewish woman visited her once homeland Tunisia & met her Muslim childhood friend who she had not seen for 44 years ??

Peace is possible if we learn how to co-exist https://t.co/T1n92nb8jc

— Sarai (Sarah Idan) Miss Iraq (@RealSarahIdan) September 9, 2019

The Egyptian state security prosecutor's office has again extended the detention of activist Ramy Shaath, the son of a former Palestinian foreign minister, on suspicion of having terrorist ties, an accusation his family denies.

Shaath was arrested July 5 at his Cairo home after prosecutors added him to a list of previously arrested suspects that includes journalists, businessmen, politicians and former members of the Egyptian parliament, and involves 19 companies. All the suspects are accused of being members of and funding the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt considers a terrorist group.

A Hamas leader and his son in were arrested in Saudi Arabia for several months without any justification, as part of a campaign against many Palestinians living in the kingdom.

Mohammed Saleh al-Khodari (Abu Hani) and his son Hani, who have been living in Jeddah for nearly three decades. were detained. Hamas considers the arrest of al-Khodari and his son a strange and reprehensible step, especially since he was responsible for managing the relationship with Saudi Arabia for two decades.

A former Palestinian Arab terrorist who was ordered to be deported by Canada's federal government is a guest speaker at an upcoming University of Toronto student event.

In response, Hasbara Fellowships Canada, which empowers student leaders to become advocates for Israel, is urging the university to intervene and prevent his participation in the event.

Issam Al-Yamani is a self-admitted former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is a recognized terror group in Canada.

Despite the Immigration and Refugee Board ordering his deportation in 2005 for his terror associations, he remains in Canada. A 2007 federal court decision confirms that he admitted to being a member of the PFLP.

In 2014, Mr. Al-Yamani gave a speech in downtown Toronto that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) interpreted as inciting violence. The CBSA then issued a report stating that he is a "danger to the security of Canada.” A CBSA report also claims that two PFLP members tasked with bombing an airplane “confessed to placing the bomb on instructions from Al-Yamani.”

According to a Global News investigation on Mr. Al-Yamani published in March of 2018, the Government of Canada has been "trying to deport him" for the past 26 years.

Despite lip service offered by senior French officials, Jew hatred still runs rampant in France and the main threat is solidly contained in the Muslim migrant community.

This the French have not addressed with any conviction. Until they do, French Jews will continue to enjoy the protection of Israel.

It should be beholden on the French to have Polanski’s movie screened on their own soil at the Cannes Film Festival.

In a sense, Israel is the Dreyfus of today. The Jewish state is constantly accused of criminal charges that Israel did not commit.

The accusers cover up for the crimes of others, those they support and welcome into their societies. They shower these criminals with money, honors, invitations to join their austere organizations. They do not question their evil intent. Their Esterhazy must be protected lest their finger pointing at the collective Jew be considered as something that dare not speak its name.

And so it is the Middle East Jew, that imposter, that must continue to be condemned while the Palestinian Esterhazy is allowed to literally get away with murder and treachery against the whole notion of justice and peace.

Ian Austin MP, who resigned from Labour in protest at antisemitism within the Party earlier this year, delivered a passionate indictment of the Labour leadership in a speech in Parliament yesterday, branding Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party’s leadership “extremists”.

Standing amongst Labour MPs on the opposition benches, Mr Austin said: “I left the Labour party to shine a spotlight on the disgrace it’s become under his [Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s] leadership…I regard myself as proper, decent traditional Labour, not like the extremists who have taken over this Party and are dragging it into the mud…These are people [Mr Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell] who spent their entire time in politics working with [and] defending all sorts of extremists, and in some cases terrorists and antisemites…They always back the wrong side, whether it’s the IRA, Hamas and Hizballah, whom they describe as ‘friends’.”

As Labour MPs heckled him and told him to stop sitting with them, Mr Austin continued: “No previous Labour leadership would have allowed a Party with a proud history of fighting racial prejudice to have been poisoned by racism, which is what’s happened under these people — racism against Jewish people, to the extent that members have been arrested on suspicion of racial hatred, that the Party itself has become the first in history to be investigated under equalities laws by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. These people, and the people around them, are a million miles away from the traditional, mainstream, decent politics of the Labour Party. They have poisoned what was once a great party with extremism. They cannot be trusted with the institutions that underpin our democracy. They are completely unfit to lead the Labour Party, let alone our country.”

Mr Austin was joined by another former Labour MP, Ivan Lewis, who also resigned the Labour Party whip over antisemitism. Mr Lewis added his condemnation of Mr Corbyn, saying: “He does not have the leadership skills required at a time of so many challenges facing our country, and his leadership has led to the party of anti-racism and equality becoming the party of institutionalised antisemitism, so much so that a majority of Jews in this country feel that they would not be safe in the event of his becoming Prime Minister.”

Ouch, @IoWBobSeely MP with more truths..... pic.twitter.com/qxZ8Uc3Vck

— SussexFriendsofIsrael (@SussexFriends) September 9, 2019

US congressional candidate Valerie Plame, who once tweeted antisemitic conspiracy theories blaming American Jews for causing America’s wars, now claims to be of Ukrainian Jewish descent in a new campaign video. The snazzy new spot shows someone driving backwards in a sports car, while the candidate recalls that she was once an “undercover CIA operative,” whose identity was leaked.

Plame is running for Congress in New Mexico and in the past was seen as a victim of the Bush administration. But in 2017 she tweeted an article titled “America’s Jews are driving America’s Wars” which showed a photo of Bill Kristol. Challenged on the offensive headline and antisemitic tweet, she told people to “calm down, re-tweets don’t imply endorsements. Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish.” She walked back that claim later and said she had “skimmed” the piece. However she has consistently been contradictory about the tweet, first claiming that the article was provocative and thoughtful, and then claiming that she had just skimmed it. The headline, “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars” is antisemitic. There is no “thoughtfulness” in it. And it doesn’t say “neocons,” a term that has been repackaged too often to mean “Jews.”

Later, on CNN in May 2019 when her candidacy became known she was asked about the tweet. Her story changed again, claiming she hadn’t liked the article and that the “only thing that I focused on in the article was that I thought it was a bad idea to get out of the Iran nuclear deal.” There are tens of thousands of articles arguing why it might have been bad to leave the Iran Deal, why did Plame tweet the one claiming “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars” from an antisemitic site that spreads conspiracies? Asked by CNN she then claimed that she “stupidly did not read the rest of the article.” Which is it? She read the offensive headline and tweeted it anyway? Or she skimmed it? Or just read the part about the “Iran deal” and tweeted the headline anyway? Or she focused on the “neocons.”

She told CNN she was “embarrassed” by the whole episode, as if it was just mistake. But most people don’t make mistakes and tweet that America’s Jews control America and cause America’s wars, unless they hate Jews. No one in recent memory has run for Congress so prominently and claimed Jews cause America’s wars. Plame’s contradictory statements raise questions about her judgement and underlying antisemitism or predilection for believing conspiracies. During the original scandal she had told people “read the entire article, just for a moment, to put aside your biases and think clearly.” So she told people shocked by the antisemitism that they were biased. Then she claimed that she had “missed gross undercurrents to this article.” Undercurrents? The article’s headline said Jews drive America’s wars.

Cuomo wasn't done pressing Plame on her excuses for sharing the anti-Semitic articles on her Twitter page, saying, "You've shown other interests in that website before. Why would you have anything do with a website that is operated or at least provided by a guy that's a Holocaust denier?"

"Because social media and Twitter can be a pretty hateful environment, and it doesn't exactly lend itself to thoughtful discussion or reading all the way through," Plame said. "I made a terrible mistake, and I hurt people whose beliefs I respect and I apologized for it."

Cuomo asked Plame whether there was something particular about that website she likes, noting she previously shared nine articles from the site. One was titled "Why I Still Dislike Israel" and another was about "Dancing Israelis" on 9/11.

"Sometimes all sorts of things come across, as you know, in social media that you don't read all the way through," Plame said. "That's why I'm not on Twitter anymore."

When pressed by MSNBC's Kasie Hunt in May about sharing the posts, she claimed, "It's not who I am and it's not what I believe. It was extremely painful. I had not read the whole article all the way through and when I realized what it was, it was embarrassing and hurtful, so I apologize deeply and sincerely, and I've done it multiple times both privately and publicly."

She went on to say "we all make mistakes" and that sharing the article was a "doozy."

US Jewish groups and local politicians are criticizing an event scheduled to be held on a local college campus in Fresno, California, with a speaker who is critical of Israel and who frequently uses anti-Semitic tropes.

The program scheduled for September 18 is titled “Uncovered: Israel’s Occupation of Palestine,” and features Alison Weir, director of If Americans Knew and the Council for the National Interest, two grassroots anti-Israel organizations. Weir has accused American supporters of Israel of fomenting wars and involving the United States in them, has said that Nazi and Zionist leaders colluded during World War II, and has claimed that Israel harvests Palestinian organs.

The event, which will be held at Clovis Community College in Fresno, is being hosted by the local media outlet GV Wire, whose publisher Darius Assemi told the Los Angeles Jewish Journal that “the mission of GV Wire is to explore, explain and expose. We are bringing Ms. Alison Weir to Clovis Community College as part of our ongoing speaker series. Our hope is that audience members will listen and weigh what she has to say about Israeli and Palestinian relations and decide for themselves the best path to peace.”

Assemi said he is reaching out to Jewish groups to schedule a speaker with a countering viewpoint to Weir’s.

Among the groups who have criticized GV Wire for hosting Weir are ADL, American Jewish Committee, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, and the Progressive Zionists of California.

Dr. Lori Bennett, president of Clovis Community College, noted that the college is not co-sponsoring the talk and that the college is not associated with the speaker in any way. She said GV Wire is renting the college’s facilities and that the college does not automatically endorse such speakers.

“Clovis Community College does not endorse hate speech or anti-Semitic remarks.” Bennett told the Journal.

The ADL called on the leadership of the college and on other leaders to condemn Weir.

Veganwashing is also ridiculous b/c nobody washes vegans

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) September 9, 2019

Jewish students at Bristol University in the United Kingdom have accused the institution of mishandling a complaint regarding a lecture claiming the "Zionist movement" as one of the "five pillars of Islamophobia."

In March, sociology Prof. David Miller claimed in a slideshow presentation that the “Zionist movement (parts of)” is one of the “five pillars of Islamophobia,” in addition to the “neo-conservative Right,” some of whose founders and leaders were Jewish. Examples included Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, who was known as the “godfather of neo-conservatism.”

One problematic slide showed a network of UK Jewish organizations and individuals culminating in the top "contributor"– "Israel Government."

"In context of a lecture about Islamophobia this echoes conspiracy & dual loyalty tropes. It is extremely disturbing that this was taught to students," tweeted The Community Security Trust (CST), one of the so-called "Islamophobic" organizations featured in the slide.

"This is a disgraceful, wholly untrue slur against CST that we completely reject," they added.

Meet "rapper" @spekulation, who seems to harbor ambitions to be a Hamas spokeshit https://t.co/3zmdsXi7bZ

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 9, 2019

There appears to be concerns voiced ‘by some’ that newly appointed US-Middle East peace envoy Avi Berkowitz is, like his predecessor Jason Greenblat, and White House advisor Jared Kushner, a “Zionist Jew”.

Unfortunately, we don’t know who exactly feels that, by virtue of his religious background and the fact that he supports Israel’s right to exist, Berkowitz can’t be trusted to faithfully carry out his diplomatic role, as Leila Molana-Allen, the reporter who penned the Telegraph article in question, didn’t say.

Here are the relevant paragraphs from the Sept. 6th piece:
The appointment [of Berkowitz] “demonstrates a lack of seriousness” in the administration’s approach to the peace plan and Mr Kushner’s complete dominance over the process, former Middle East advisor to the US defence department Jasmine El-Gamal told The Telegraph. “They are not even pretending otherwise by hiring a qualified person as an envoy.”

Others have raised concerns that Mr Berkowitz, like Mr Greenblatt before him and Mr Kushner, is a Zionist Jew, which may lead to a perception of bias in any peace negotiations with Palestinian officials.

Though The Telegraph is normally extremely responsible when it comes to avoiding language that could be seen as antisemitic, this particular sentence clearly serves to legitimise the historically toxic dual loyalty trope, codified as antisemitic by the IHRA Working Definition.

On the latest episode of The Ezra Levant Show, we covered the unprecedented censorship handed down by YouTube to one of our recent videos dealing with a foreign report stating that Canada would soon take in 100,000 Palestinians from Lebanon and Syria.

I don't always cite @Haaretz, but when I do... https://t.co/0HNlMRCp4p

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 10, 2019

In response to communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, Thomson Reuters promptly corrected, removing the incorrect claim from the story. In addition, editors commendably appended the following note alerting readers to the change:
(This version of the story removes incorrect reference to Israel not granting parental leave to gay couples)

The Thomson Reuters article was about a study by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) which found that a minority of 33 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) grant gay fathers the same amount of leave as heterosexual new parents. Reuters reported:
First published in the Journal of Social Policy, the research found that gay male couples received the same number of weeks off as different-sex couples in just 12% of those nations.

Israel, therefore, stands among a distinct minority in granting equal parental leave for gay fathers. It is unclear whether the error originated in the study itself.

Anthony Davidson is preparing for his worlds to collide. An academic, an avid soccer fan and the son of a Holocaust survivor, Davidson is spearheading an upcoming conference addressing antisemitism and sports at Fordham University in New York.

Davidson, who is dean of Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies in the Bronx, launched the initiative as a way to inspire change at a time when antisemitic hate crimes, and bias in general, are on the rise in the US and around the world.

“I believe that sports is a vehicle through which we can effect change in the world,” he said in an interview with The Algemeiner.

“We obviously have a rising problem with hate crime and antisemitism and is growing exponentially, even compared to other forms of hate,” he added. “And so, as somebody who’s mother was a survivor of Auschwitz and the concentration camps, I’m a big sports fan for that matter, I thought this was an appropriate thing to have.”

Antisemitic attacks and incidents rose by 18 percent worldwide in 2018 from the previous year, according to research by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry.

New York City, specifically, has counted almost 150 anti-Jewish hate crimes and bias complaints in the first half of 2019.

MUST WATCH: Why are Jews being attacked in Brooklyn for being Jewish?

I went to speak with African American residents of Crown Heights to understand the feelings on the ground.

We have to engage in dialogue rather than simply point fingers if we want to solve the problem. pic.twitter.com/y6ZhEKtles

— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) September 10, 2019

Notorious British neo-Nazi Nathan Worrell has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison after being found guilty of eight hate crime offenses.

Worrell previously served a prison sentence in 2008 for racially aggravated harassment and for being in possession of terrorist material.

According to a statement released by the UK Counter Terrorism Policing network, Worrell “was intending to still up racial hatred” and his conviction was also related to “possessing terrorist material.”

All eight offenses fall under the Public Order Act of 1986.

During his trial in August at the Grimsby Crown Court, it was revealed that Worrell is a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and he told the court that he didn’t believe in “diversity or multiculturalism.”

He is also a vehement Holocaust denier, and had been putting up stickers on lampposts and other places in the coastal town of Grimsby, which called diversity “white genocide.” Other stickers that he placed pledged support for white supremacist groups including Combat 18, which is a known neo-Nazi terrorist organization originating from the UK. Some of the stickers also encouraged racial divisions and anti-immigrant sentiments.

During proceedings, he was asked whether the Holocaust had happened and he denied it saying that the six million Jews had died because of “allied bombing and starvation.”

A group of 20 to 30 “preachers” reportedly targeted Jews leaving synagogue on during the Jewish Sabbath last weekend, haranguing them with a string of antisemitic epithets. As the community ended its prayers, the families were allegedly told that “Jews control the world”, “Jews control money”, “Jews will destroy the world” and “Jews have long noses”.

The comments were made outside Sainsbury’s in Stamford Hill on Saturday 7th September between 13:00 and 16:00 to hundreds of Jews and other passersby, amplified through a loudspeaker reportedly heard up to half a mile away.

Non-Jewish passersby called the police, but when two officers arrived the preachers stopped making antisemitic remarks. The officers declined to make arrests as only two officers were available. When the officers left, the antisemitic denunciations began again.

Following an outcry from Stamford Hill Shomrim, a neighbourhood watch patrol run by Jewish volunteers, the Mayor of the Borough of Hackney has offered assurances that investigations are underway.

Close to 50 high-ranking American police officers are in Israel to take part in a series of consultations and events marking the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Known as the Police Unity Tour, the delegation will be in Israel for nine days to hold discussions with their Israeli counterparts and strengthen the domestic security cooperation between the two allied nations, as well as a two-day motorbike ride across Israel to honor officers killed in the line of duty.

“The cooperation between Israel and America is wonderful and the bond is very strong,” Michael Safras, chief of New Jersey’s Essex County Sheriff’s Department, told The Jerusalem Post.
While Safras has been to Israel over 40 times, 35 of the 49 officers taking part in the delegation are visiting Israel for the first time.

“It’s going to be an eye opener,” he said.

The officers will also be visiting communities and law enforcement officers in communities next to the Gaza border as well as in northern Israel, where they will be briefed by IDF officers on the tense security situation and the threat of infiltrations by terrorists from across the border.

Israel will hold a ceremony to commemorate the 9/11 Twin Tower attacks on Tuesday afternoon at the Jerusalem Park.

As a tribute to the Tribute in Lights representing the Twin Towers, Jerusalem's skies will be lighten up – reaching up to 300 meters.

The Tribute in Light is an art installation of 88 searchlights six blocks south of the World Trade Center on top of the Battery Parking Garage in New York City, which creates two columns of light representing the Twin Towers in remembrance of the September 11 attacks.

The event is organized jointly by the Keren Kayemet LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF), Jewish National Fund-USA (JNF-USA) and the US Embassy in Israel,

I'm thrilled to announce that Amb. Nikki Haley will be receiving our 2019 Eleanor Roosevelt Award, at UN Watch's Inaugural NYC Gala on Dec. 5th. With grace and grit, Amb. Haley stood before the world to fight bigotry & defend freedom and democracy for all. https://t.co/Laue54rk1hpic.twitter.com/ERDz8bZUDu

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 10, 2019

When Westerners think of Afghanistan, if they do at all, the mental picture evoked by decades of news coverage is of a remote, desolate and war-ravaged land.

However, during the 9th to 11th centuries, the region was booming, being at the time an integral part of the Silk Road trading route connecting Europe and China.

The region featured a thriving Jewish community whose history is chronicled in a series of documents collectively known as the Afghan Geniza, which are set to go on display this week at St. Petersburg’s famous Hermitage museum.

A geniza is a storage area for disused sacred texts awaiting their traditional burial, though many documents of a more mundane character have also ended up in such depositories over the years.

Some two dozen artifacts from the National Library of Israel’s collection will be viewable at the storied Russian museum through December, highlighting Jewish life in a region now barren of Jews. The National Library began collecting documents from the Afghan Geniza after learning of their existence in 2011 and now has some nearly 300 pages.

“This is a particularly impressive find related to the lives and culture of Jews from this part of the world from the beginning of the second millennium,” Prof. Haggai Ben Shammai, an expert on Jews in the Islamic world, said in a statement released by the library. He explained that the importance of the collection stems from the previous lack of information on Jewish life in medieval Afghanistan.

Tributes have been paid to poppy seller Ron Jones, who has died aged 102.

The retired steelworker, who died on Sunday, was a prisoner of war in the Auschwitz concentration camp after being captured during the Second World War.

Mr Jones, from Newport, South Wales, collected for the Royal British Legion poppy appeal for more than 30 years, stopping last year aged 101.

Lynne Woodyatt, a Royal British Legion community fundraiser for South Wales, said: "We are very sad to learn of the passing of Ron Jones, who was a dear friend of mine and much loved by all who knew him.

"His passion for the Legion and the Poppy Appeal shone through and for over 30 years he dedicated his time to helping raise funds for those in the Armed Forces past and present.

"We will be forever grateful for his support, and will deeply miss his enthusiasm, drive and commitment to helping those that served their country.

Dutch Christian Zionists donated what was Europe’s largest Hanukkah menorah to the Israeli city of Sderot in solidarity with its residents’ plight over rocket attacks from Gaza.

The 36-foot menorah was erected Sunday in Sderot, said Arjen Lont, the Christian Zionist philanthropist from the Netherlands who in 2013 donated about $40,000 to build the object.

Boasting a 6-ton base and a frame shaped like a Star of David, the Dutch menorah has featured in Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremonies organized across the kingdom over the past six years by the Christians for Israel group.

“After unspeakable suffering, the horrors of the Holocaust and most recently the attacks on Israel, Jews may feel they are alone,” Lont told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency shortly after the menorah was built. “This is our way of saying you are not alone, we are behind you.”

On Sunday, Lont wrote on Twitter: “Today, we set up the Hanukkah menorah in Sderot in Israel’s south. It is here to stay for good.”

Vandaag hebben we Sderot in het zuiden van #Israel de Chanoekia kandelaar op gebouwd. Hier blijft hij definitief staan. pic.twitter.com/HNlkO1byxk

— Arjen Lont (@Arjenlont) September 8, 2019

When visiting Holocaust memorials in Lithuania and Poland this week, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf will bring along the mezuzah hat was on the office door of Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, where 11 Jewish worshippers were shot and killed by a gunman during Shabbat-morning services on Oct. 27, 2018—the deadliest attack in American Jewish history.

“What I’m hoping for is that this act will bring solace—some solace to the survivors—and will remind them that we Pennsylvanians will never forget their loved ones,” said Wolf, a Democrat, at a press conference on Friday in his office in the state capitol in Harrisburg.

The governor said he called Myers and told him that during his eight-day trip, which he mentioned he intends to pay for the traveling and lodging costs, he planned to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp memorial in Poland and inquired how he could remember the shooting victims.

Wolf said he will also carry it to the Paneriai Holocaust Memorial, where he will sign the victims’ names in commemoration books. It is located in the forests outside the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, where many of the country’s Jews were killed.

I spent 2 years on this passion project and now - FINALLY- my book “Exile: Portraits of the Jewish Diaspora” is available for pre-order on Amazon. Please buy it, read it and learn about the most exotic parts of the Jewish world ❤️ https://t.co/NKkmcpNrs9

— Annika H Rothstein (@truthandfiction) September 10, 2019

Israel is using veganism as a calculated facade to justify its military’s program of terror, gloss over its occupation of Palestine, and appropriate regional culture and traditions that predate Israel by hundreds if not thousands of years.

Put simply, veganwashing is the act of using veganism to create positive image associations or appear more compassionate than one actually is. A classic example is Ben & Jerry’s line of non-dairy ice creams, which they use to brand the company as vegan-friendly without ever actually decreasing their contribution to animal exploitation. 

I am also sure that there are many vegan Israelis who are committed to ending the occupation of Palestine, which is why I deliberately focused on veganwashing as propagated by the Israeli government, corporations, and public figures such as bloggers and business owners, rather than private citizens of Israel. 

Restaurants in my current home of Washington, DC engage in this kind of cultural appropriation all the time, which might be slightly less disturbing to me if they weren’t so successful as a result. When fellow District residents find out that I’m vegan, Israeli-owned restaurants Shouk and Little Sesame are two of the top five restaurants people tend to ask if I’ve visited. These spots quickly became favorites among vegans and non-vegans alike who don’t realize just how problematic it is to eat at a place that calls its cooking “modern Israeli street food” (Shouk). News also just broke that the NYC-based“Tel Aviv-style” falafel chain Taïm will be opening its first location in DC this fall.

Hamas, which seeks to annihilate Israel, certainly was none too pleased with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement Tuesday evening that if re-elected, he would apply Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea in coordination with the United States.

Hamas has good reason not to like what Netanyahu said. It even made sense that Gaza’s terror regime tried to harm Netanyahu politically by launching a volley of missiles at Ashdod while Netanyahu was giving a speech in the city. (Netanyahu’s political rivals on the Left and Right were quick to take Hamas’ bait and use Hamas’ aggression as a means to score political points against Netanyahu.)

Hamas was right to hate what Netanyahu said because Netanyahu’s statement Tuesday evening was a strategic blow to the hundred-year-old Palestinian war against the Jewish state.

What did Netanyahu do in that statement? Most media commentary claimed his statement wasn’t substantive. It was just another political promise from a desperate politician who is looking with increasing panic at unflattering polls.

But that assessment obscures more than it reveals. Netanyahu may be concerned about his polling numbers. But his statement Tuesday was not a display of political desperation but of diplomatic triumph. Netanyahu’s statement made clear that he enjoys a cooperative relationship with US President Donald Trump that has no parallel in the history of Israel-US relations.

The Jordan Valley lies in Area C of the West Bank where, under the Oslo Accords, Israel retains full civilian and military control. According to the Israel Democracy Institute, 48% of Jewish Israelis support extending sovereignty over the Jordan Valley with U.S. support, with 28% opposed.

Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, director of international law at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum, said, "The Prime Minister's announcement is fully in line with Israel's international legal rights. Because these territories were part of the British Mandate, Israel has as much legal right to them as to Tel Aviv." Kontorovich said such a move should not be seen as annexation because the territory currently does not belong to a foreign country and annexation means the taking of the territory of a foreign country.

"Israel waited for more than 50 years to regularize the status of these territories, giving the Palestinians opportunity after opportunity to make a peace deal that would have given them a sovereign state. The Palestinians refused time after time, rejecting initiatives under presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump. Israel has now decided that the people in these areas cannot be held in limbo forever; Israelis should not pay the price for Palestinian intransigence."

Likud voters – buoyed by the post-April statements detailed in 1, 2 and 3 below – will most likely vote again – whilst Blue and White and Yisrael Beiteinu voters – unhappy with their leaders’ post-April statements detailed in 4 and 5 below – are more likely to stay home.

Any increase in general voter turnout this time beyond 67.97 per cent would defy the diplomatic downturn – but should still see parties on the Right securing more of those new votes than parties on the Left. Statements made since April by Trump’s Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, President Trump himself, Likud’s Netanyahu, Yisrael Beiteinu’s Lieberman and Blue and White’s Gantz support this conclusion.

1. Ambassador Friedman indicated that some degree of annexation of the West Bank would be legitimate.
“Under certain circumstances, I think Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank”

More new voters – conscious of their own families’ personal safety – would vote Right – than those opposing any annexation – who would vote Left.
2. Trump endorsed Netanyahu as “a great guy”
3. Netanyahu – speaking in Elkana – located in Samaria – pledged:
“With God’s help we will extend Jewish sovereignty to all the settlements as part of the (biblical) Land of Israel, as part of the State of Israel. “This is our land…”We will build another Elkana and another Elkana and another Elkana. We will not uproot anyone here”

In a first-ever public address from Hebron by a sitting Israeli prime minister – Netanyahu vowed:
“To cite the late Menachem Begin and the late Yigal Allon: ‘Hebron will not be devoid of Jews.’ It will not be Judenrein [ed: i.e. Jew-free]. And I say on the 90th anniversary of the disturbances [ed: when 67 Jews were murdered] – we are not foreigners in Hebron, we will stay here forever.”

These patriotic declarations should attract more Right-supportive than Left-opposing new voters.

The United States on Tuesday announced sanctions on a “wide range of terrorists and their supporters,” including the Palestinian group Hamas and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, on the eve of the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The targets include 15 leaders, individuals and entities affiliated with groups such as Hamas, al Qaeda, Islamic State and Iran’s IRGC, the US Treasury Department said in a statement.

The sanctions were applied using new tools from an executive order recently updated by President Donald Trump.

“Since the horrific attacks of 9/11, the US government has refocused its counterterrorism efforts to constantly adapt to emerging threats,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement.

“President Trump’s modernized counterterrorism Executive Order enhances the authorities we use to target the finances of terror groups and their leaders to ensure they are as robust as possible,” Mnuchin said.

Sanctioned leaders include Turkey-based Zaher Jabarin, the head of Hamas’s financial office; and Muhammad Sa’id Izadi, the chief of the IRGC-Quds Force’s Palestinian office in Lebanon.

Hizballah was proscribed in its entirety by the UK earlier this year as govt could no longer distinguish between “military” & “political” elements. This was always false distinction. Now it’s time to proscribe whole of Hamas rather than maintain the military-political fiction. pic.twitter.com/XoeE4r6The

— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) September 11, 2019

This clip shows a news bulletin that aired on Iraq TV on September 11, 2001. The anchor announced that two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in Manhattan, that Washington, D.C. was attacked, that thousands of people were killed or injured, that panic and hysteria were spreading among the American public, and that the American government has declared the highest state of emergency. Over footage of the WTC buildings burning, a reporter said that the "heart of evil" has been struck. He said that an unknown aircraft crashed into the first WTC building and that, shortly after, a civilian Boeing 767 crashed into the second building, which he referred to as the "Empire Styre Building." The reporter described the Twin Towers as a symbol of globalism, and he added that the American political decision-making centers had not been "out of reach of those who had had enough of the hostile American policy." The reporter said: "The question now is whether the Americans will learn that violence only begets more violence." The video was uploaded to a YouTube account of Iraq TV's archival footage.

"This Led To Panic And Hysteria Among The American Public, Thousands Were Killed Or Wounded In The Explosions – The Pentagon Declared The Highest State Of Emergency"

Anchor: "Dear viewers, a series of explosions rocked the cities of New York and Washington today. The explosions destroyed the two towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan after they were hit by an airplane. This led to the collapse of stock markets throughout the world. The White House, the Pentagon, Congress, the State Department, and other vital American institutions were not spared from similar incidents, which followed and escalated. This led to panic and hysteria among the American public. Thousands were killed or wounded in the explosions. The Pentagon declared the highest state of emergency and completely stopped all air traffic in the United States. They evacuated the important buildings and the skyscrapers. More details in the following report."

"The Strikes Hit The Heart Of Evil, An Unknown Airplane Crashed Into The WTC Building, The Symbol Of Globalism, Indicating Things Yet To Come"

Reporter: "Since the Bay of Pigs crisis in 1961, the United States has not witnessed an earthquake that has sent the American political and economic centers into confusion. This time, the strikes hit the heart of evil. An unknown airplane crashed into the WTC building, the symbol of globalism, indicating things yet to come. Less than 18 minutes later, a civilian Boeing 767 passenger plane crashed into the second building, the Empire Styre Building [sic], a few minutes before the opening of Wall Street. The [building] completely collapsed after it was devoured by the flames. The political decision-making centers in the United States were not out of reach of those who had had enough of the hostile American policy.

In a video uploaded to the Internet on September 4, 2019, Sheikh Yahya Bin Taher Al-Farghali, an Egyptian member of Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham's (HTS) shura and shari'a councils, commented on 9/11. He said that "if additional acts [like 9/11] were to keep happening against America – another attack, and a third, fourth, and fifth attack – then America would collapse, along with its will to keep ruling the world, and it would seclude itself once again" but that after 9/11, the U.S. "caught numerous cells that could have continued to carry out attacks like 9/11 many times over."

"If Other Acts Were To Come In The Wake Of [9/11]... Then America Would Withdraw From The Islamic Countries And Seclude Itself Again, As It Has Done In The Past"

Sheikh Yahya Bin Taher Al-Farghali: "There were three opinions among the mujahideen regarding the events of 9/11. According to one opinion, the benefits of this act outweighed its harms. Naturally, this was the opinion held by Al-Qaeda, which was led by Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, may Allah have mercy on his soul, and by people who espoused this idea. According to another opinion, the harms of this act outweighed its benefits.

"Of course, I am talking only about the mujahideen who evaluated this act in light of the shari'a. The third opinion stated that if other acts were to come in the wake of [9/11] – acts as powerful as [9/11] – then America would withdraw from the Islamic countries and seclude itself again, as it has done in the past. However, Allah decreed that no similar acts came in the wake of [9/11], as a result of a number of unbelievable measures taken by America."

"But America Threw The Human Rights It Used To Brag About Out The Window... And It Caught Numerous Cells That Could Have Continued To Carry Out Attacks"

"At the time, I was in my fourth year at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science [at Cairo University]. Because of my studies, I knew very well that if additional acts [like 9/11] were to keep happening against America – another attack, and a third, fourth, and fifth attack – then America would collapse, along with its will to keep ruling the world, and it would seclude itself once again.

The political significance of his Jordan Valley promise is plain: Netanyahu unveiled it as proof of his ostensibly unique capacity to build the kind of relationships with leaders like Trump that can enable such a move. Tellingly, he focused on the Jordan Valley because it is more of a consensus issue than the overall settlement enterprise. Many of the residents of the Jordan Valley’s small settlements are traditional Labor Party supporters, living for decades in relatively isolated farming communities, and regarding themselves as performing a vital security function, protecting Israel’s eastern border.

Netanyahu will be hoping that his calculated focus on this area will win him support from beyond his home turf on the right, as well as sapping votes to Likud from smaller right-wing parties. His main rival Benny Gantz, head of the centrist Blue and White, also toured the Jordan Valley recently, describing the area as “the eastern defensive shield of the State of Israel” and vowing to retain it under any peace agreement. Indeed, Netanyahu took pains on Tuesday to assure his current supporters and those he hopes to attract that his planned move would not involve annexing “a single Palestinian.”

By that stage of his speech, the Channel 12 and Channel 13 cameras had cut away from what they had branded election propaganda. In a week, we’ll find out how effective it has proved.

Sooner or later, we may also discover quite how supportive the somewhat unpredictable US administration really is of the idea. Unpredictable, in Netanyahu’s specific context, because Trump is showing every sign of wanting to meet with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani even as the prime minister, most recently with his Iran “weapons site” revelation on Monday, strives to highlight Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and duplicity. Unpredictable, too, in that news broke even as Netanyahu was wrapping up his performance on Tuesday that his recent Jordan Valley guest John Bolton had been fired.

So now we wait to see whether Netanyahu’s appearance on Tuesday was a genuine harbinger of genuine US-backed diplomatic drama to come. Or whether the prime minister was putting the best face on a failure to extract a specific US commitment to back his move now — something that truly would have boosted his re-election hopes, and that no Israeli TV station would cut away from.

Until Tuesday, there had also been some debate over whether Netanyahu wanted to annex the territory of the Israeli settlements — which then would beg the question of how to define the borders of each outpost — or merely to “annex” the people residing there, by determining that Israeli laws apply extraterritorially to Israeli citizens who live in areas that are not technically part of the state.

(Currently, laws passed in the Knesset do not apply to the West Bank; this territory is ruled by military law. But in practice, all Israelis enjoy the same legal rights and privileges, regardless of their address.)

Tuesday’s statement put that discussion to rest, as Netanyahu made plain that he intends to annex physical territory.

The Jordan Valley, which he presented as some sort of pilot annexation project for which he would not await specific American approval, is Israel’s “eastern defensive wall that guarantees that we will never again be a mere few miles wide,” the prime minister declared. Therefore, the Israeli army must remain in the entire Jordan Valley, he added. And “in order for the IDF to always remain there,” he spelled out, “it is imperative that the Jordan Valley be under Israeli sovereignty.”

Not the people, that is. The land.

Would this hurt the chances for peace?
Chances for peace are already pretty slim. The Palestinians and Israelis haven’t been in any kind of serious negotiations for more than five years. Palestinian leaders won’t talk to the Trump administration because they view it as overly pro-Israel. Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he will not evacuate any settlement and opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state.

This move would make any thought of future evacuation of the territory as part of a peace plan that includes territorial compromise unlikely. The Palestinians have insisted on governing the Jordan Valley as part of a future peace deal.

Netanyahu also promised, in his speech and earlier, to annex even more Israeli communities in Area C, which is where all the Jewish communities and 4% of the Palestinian Arab population are located, down the line. The more Israel annexes, the less possible a contiguous Palestinian state would be.

How are people reacting?
For opponents of an Israeli withdrawal from the 'West Bank', this is good news. Yishai Fleischer, the spokesman for the Jewish community in the city of Hevron, tweeted (in all caps) that Netanyahu’s speech was “A HUGE MOVE FORWARD!”

Many Palestinians and many across the international community had a different reaction. A United Nations spokesman called Netanyahu’s pledge “devastating to the potential of reviving negotiations, regional peace and the very essence of a two-state solution.”

“If the annexation is carried out, it will have succeeded in burying any prospect of peace for the next 100 years,” tweeted Palestinian Arab negotiator Saeb Erekat,. “The Israelis, the international community must stop this madness. Annexation is a war crime.”

Israelis as a whole are split. Nearly half of Israeli Jews and 11 percent of Israeli Arabs favor annexing the Jordan Valley if Trump supports it, according to a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute. Twenty-eight percent of Jewish Israelis and a majority of Arab Israelis oppose the idea.

The White House responded Tuesday to Prime Minister Netanyahu's announcement that he will apply Israeli sovereignty in the Jordan Valley "immediately" after the elections.

An administration official said Tuesday, "There is no change in the United States policy at this time. We will release our Vision for Peace after the Israeli election and work to determine the best path forward to bring long-sought security, opportunity, and stability to the region."

Israeli officials informed the White House in advance about Netanyahu's upcoming statement. The White House peace team did not consider the statement as one who will prevent a future agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that he will submit for cabinet approval a proposal to retroactively legalize a wildcat outpost in the Jordan Valley, a day after he vowed to annex the entire area if he wins next week’s election.

Ministers will vote and likely pass the motion to legalize Mevo’ot Yeriho at their Sunday meeting, just two days before Israelis go to the polls for an election that could see him ousted from power.

Mevo’ot Yeriho is one of 16 illegal Israeli outposts located on the map that Netanyahu used to illustrate which land he plans to annex from the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea areas.

Roughly 300 national-religious Israelis reside in the outpost, north of the Palestinian city of Jericho. It was founded in 1999 by settlers who set up wildcat agricultural concerns on the land.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu vowed to immediately annex the entire Jordan Valley, excluding the city of Jericho, if given another term as prime minister. He also said he would begin work on annexing settlements across the West Bank.

No cabinet decision would be necessary to legalize Mevo’ot Yeriho once it has been annexed.

Settler leaders lined up on Tuesday to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he vowed to annex the Jordan Valley if reelected next week, but some on the right urged the prime minister to go further or dismissed the promise as electoral spin.

In a campaign speech billed by his Likud party as a “dramatic announcement,” Netanyahu said he would immediately move to extend Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley if voters put him back in office. He also repeated his vow from before elections in April to extend sovereignty to West Bank settlements, but said he would do this with “maximum coordination” with the United States.

Meanwhile, the Yesha settlement umbrella council lauded Netanyahu’s announcement, calling it “a historic event” and “unprecedented news for the State of Israel.”

“Sovereignty is the vision of the settlement movement and the path of the future for deepening our presence in the region. The Yesha Council congratulates the prime minister on the historic declaration, which places settlement as an integral part of the State of Israel.”

Noting that a US peace plan for the region would be rolled in shortly after the September 17 vote, Netanyahu claimed that Israel had an unprecedented opportunity to quickly extend sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and later to all West Bank settlements.

Netanyahu's vow to extend Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley comes after strategic shifts in the Middle East have pushed the Palestinian cause down the priority list of many Arab leaders.

Across the region, Arab states like Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Iraq are still reeling from the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings and the fight against the Islamic State, leaving them more focused on internal issues.

Persian Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia now worry more about Iran's regional influence, a concern they share with Israel.

Arab foreign ministers condemned a plan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex the Jordan Valley as "aggression" undermining any chances of a peace settlement with the Palestinians.

"If I am elected, we intend to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea area," Netanyahu said at a press conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening.

"Along with applying sovereignty during the next Knesset, I will present the next government with a broad plan to bolster Jewish settlement in the Jordan Valley and develop infrastructure," the prime minister said.

"We have a historic opportunity," he told the audience, adding that he would wait for the Trump administration to announce its "deal of the century" before announcing any major Israeli policy changes.

The Arab League "considers his announcement a dangerous development and a new Israeli aggression by declaring the intention to violate international law," Arab foreign ministers said in a statement after a meeting in Cairo.

"The league regards these statements as undermining the chances of any progress in the peace process and will torpedo all its foundations," the statement said.

Bahrain joined other Arab states on Wednesday in condemning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise to begin effectively annexing parts of the West Bank, if he is given another term in office following next week’s national vote.

Netanyahu pledged in a speech on Tuesday to apply Israeli sovereignty over significant portions of the West Bank, including the vast majority of the Jordan Valley, if he wins another mandate to serve as prime minister.

Netanyahu said that, if reelected, he would quickly apply Israeli sovereignty over the majority of the Jordan Valley, and would aim to do the same for settlements in other parts of the West Bank after the US administration releases its plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The foreign ministry of the Kingdom of Bahrain strongly condemns the Israeli prime minister’s announcement of his intention to apply Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the northern part of the Dead Sea in the occupied West Bank,” the Bahraini Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that Netanyahu’s comments “represent a barefaced and unacceptable violation of the Palestinian people’s rights and reflect resolve to not achieve a just and comprehensive peace.”

Bahrain has recently expressed greater openness to Israel, with its Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmad Al Khalifa describing the Jewish state as a part of the region.

A spokesperson for the United Nations secretary-general stated on Tuesday that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to follow through with his promise to extend Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, the move would not have any international legal effect.

“The Secretary General position has always been clear and consistent: unilateral actions are not helpful in the peace process. Our position today is unchanged and is reflected in relevant UN resolutions,” said spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.

“Any Israeli decision to impose its law jurisdiction and legislation in the occupied West Bank is without any international legal effect,” he added.

Earlier on Tuesday, the prime minister announced that if reelected, he will apply sovereignty over all settlements in Judea and Samaria, starting with the Jordan Valley.

Netanyahu added that the steps would be taken in coordination with the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Commenting on the announcement, a White House official said "There is no change in the United States policy at this time. We will release our Vision for Peace after the Israeli election and work to determine the best path forward to bring long-sought security, opportunity, and stability to the region."

The EU warned Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to annex the Jordan Valley in the West Bank if he wins next week’s election undermines chances for peace in the region.

Netanyahu’s vow was roundly condemned by the Palestinians as well as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, with the EU saying it would not recognize any change to Israel’s borders that was not agreed to by both sides.

“The policy of settlement construction and expansion… is illegal under international law and its continuation, and actions taken in this context, undermine the viability of the two-state solution and the prospects for a lasting peace,” an EU spokesperson said in a statement.

In a televised speech, Netanyahu also reiterated his intention to annex Israeli settlements in the wider West Bank if reelected.

Critics have warned that such a move could effectively kill any remaining hope for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, long the focus of international diplomacy.

All agreements signed between the Palestinians and Israel will end if Israel expands its sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and the Northern Dead Sea, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned on Tuesday.

Abbas made his statement in response to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement that he will extend Israeli sovereignty to the two West Bank areas if he’s re-elected in the upcoming election.

Last July, Abbas announced that the Palestinian leadership has decided to “halt work related to the agreements signed with the Israeli side.”

The PA later announced that a special committee has been set up to study mechanisms for implementing the decision. However, it remains unclear whether the committee has made any decision in this regard.

Abbas said that the Palestinians “have the right to defend our rights and achieve our goals with available means, notwithstanding the results.”

It now appears Trump, going into 2020, will need yet another new team. He lost Defense Secretary James Mattis in December 2018 over his Syrian policy. Patrick Shanahan, who was supposed to replace Mattis, only lasted six months. Jason Greenblatt, who was supposed to be pushing the “Deal of the Century” with the Palestinians, is also leaving. The Afghan deal envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, may not be at the helm much longer. If this were an episode of Survivor, it would be time to combine the tribes. In an administration that sometimes seems a bit more like it was scripted for reality TV in an era of social media driving politics, these things matter.

McMaster, Bolton’s predecessor and a competent hire who is largely forgotten as the man who steadied the ship for the first year of Trump’s tenure, is emblematic of the revolving door. He replaced Michael Flynn, who had to leave due to a scandal in the first days of the administration. It is easy to forget that Trump’s second chief of staff, John Kelly, left in January. He, like McMaster, sought to steady things. Mick Mulvaney is still acting chief of staff.

The big question is whether Bolton’s departure will also eventually erode Pompeo’s agenda, or if Pompeo will simply assume more power now. Having gone from CIA to State, he has eclipsed both. He has also brought in a competent team with Brian Hook to play linebacker for Iran issues, and Jim Jeffrey to deal with Turkey, ISIS and Syria issues alongside Joel Rayburn, who is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Levant Affairs.

On foreign policy, whether dealing with China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia, Iran or Syria, Pompeo has proved a center of gravity. But The Washington Post reports that he may be eying a political future. There are thoughts he could run for Senate. But why would he do that when he is the administration’s rock?

Bolton warned Iran frequently, talking about not mistaking prudence for weakness, warning of hell to pay and that there would be “serious consequences.” He also warned foreign countries not to meddle in Venezuela against US policy. His departure will be seen in Tehran and Caracas as signaling that the more isolationist tendencies of Trump have won out. That may not be accurate, and those countries should not test the US, as the Taliban learned.

Notably, Bolton got a fond farewell from the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group that has otherwise enthusiastically embraced the Trump presidency in the last year.

“Thank you for your longstanding friendship, moral clarity and passionate defense of America and our allies, especially Israel,” RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said on Twitter.

Democrats were ready to pounce on an administration that has seen significant turnover in its upper ranks. Bolton was Trump’s third national security adviser in less than three years.

“This national security — and cabinet — turnover is unprecedented and a clear sign of Trump’s failed leadership, domestically and in the world,” Halie Soifer, the executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said on Twitter. “It also indicates the incoherence and danger of Trump’s erratic foreign policy.”

Following the resignation on Tuesday of US national security adviser John Bolton, Charles M. Kupperman has taken up the post on an interim basis.

Kupperman, a former defense contractor executive, served in the Reagan administration and was appointed deputy national security adviser in January.

While he is reportedly close to Bolton, which could work against him, according to The New York Times, US President Donald Trump likes his straight-shooting style and there is a chance he may take up the post on a permanent basis.

The Islamic American organization CAIR reacted to the news with a Facebook post bashing Kupperman and implying he was Islamophobic. The group said it was “appalled” by Kupperman’s appointment, and noted that he had “served on the board of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), an organization headed by notorious Islamophobe and conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney.”

CAIR has been linked to Islamists, including Hamas, a US-designated terrorist organization. Andrew McCarthy has documented the roots of the organization in the Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas network.

Former Defense Minister Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon spoke with Jeff Smith on the recent dismissal of US National Security Advisor John Bolton and how this action will effect Israel.

The controversy over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rapid evacuation from a Likud campaign rally and his rapid return to the stage moments after rockets were fired at the southern Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod continued on Wednesday.

Numerous politicians from across the political spectrum commented on the incident, which was broadcast live on the Likud's Facebook page and later removed. Blue and White party leader and former IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi took to Twitter after the sirens were sounded to say, "We don't run. We are committed, and we are here, carrying on with a conference in Ashkelon as usual. We are not afraid, not of Hamas and not of Hezbollah."

The No. 4 on Yemina's list, former Education Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted, "This is a national humiliation."

Government ministers from the Likud were busy responding to the attacks on Netanyahu.

In an interview with Israel Radio, Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz said, "He has to obey the orders of the Shin Bet security agency and must be evacuated to a safe room, he has no discretion. I, personally, as a figure with a security detail, asked to remain at the conference, but I was met with an outright refusal and was escorted with the prime minister."

Three rockets were fired toward Israeli communities north of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday afternoon, in the second such attack from the Palestinian enclave in as many days, the army said.

One of the projectiles struck inside an Israeli community, causing light damage to a home. The other two appeared to have landed in open fields. There were no reports of injuries, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.

In response, the Israel Defense Forces targeted two Hamas observation posts in northern Gaza.

“An IDF tank attacked two military posts belonging to the Hamas terror group in the northern Gaza Strip. This attack was carried out in response to the rocket launches at Israeli territory,” the army said in a statement.

Palestinian media reported that several people were injured in the Israeli retaliatory strike, but that was denied by the Strip’s Hamas-run health ministry, which said that there were no casualties.

The Israel Defense Forces launched a series of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip early Wednesday, just hours after terrorists fired two rockets at the southern cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was holding an election rally.

The IDF said warplanes hit 15 different targets across the Strip, “including a number of targets in a military base producing arms, a number of targets in a compound belonging to the naval forces and a terror tunnel belonging to the Hamas terror group.”

The army said it held Hamas responsible for the rocket fire.

Palestinian sources reported heavy strikes and explosions in Beit Lahiya just north of Gaza City, Deir el-Balah in central Gaza and in Khan Younis in the south.

There were no reports of injuries.

#Gaza rockets being intercepted over #Ashkelon just minutes ago.

This is our life under fire. #Israelpic.twitter.com/d225jVgDQz

— (((Emily Schrader))) (@emilykschrader) September 10, 2019

Two Israeli teenagers seriously injured in a terror attack south of Jerusalem continue to show signs of improvement, but face long roads to recovery.

Arutz Sheva spoke with the two injured teens’ grandmother, Rochel Sylvetsky – an editor at Arutz Sheva – about her grandchildren’s condition nearly a month after they were hit by a car driven by a terrorist outside of the town of Elazar in Gush Ezion.

Last month, Nahum, 17, and Noam Nevies, 19, were hit in a ramming attack as they walked to a bus stop next to the entrance of Elazar. Both of the siblings were seriously injured, with Nahum left fighting for his life.

“Two of my grandchildren were severely injured at Elazar three weeks ago,” said Sylvetsky.

Sylvetsky said her granddaughter, Noam, had been released from the hospital, but is still confined to a wheelchair for the time being, though she hopes to return to her dance troupe.

“I’m thankful to Hashem [God] to say that Noam is at home… She is in a wheelchair, she has a cast on each of her legs and has months of physical therapy ahead of her. But she’s cheerful and wonderful – her regular self. We hope she gets back to her dancing – she was in a religious dance troupe. She also played piano beautifully and many other things and we hope she gets back to all of them, she’s working hard at it. Pray for her: Noam Aliza Bat Zahava Rivka.”

By contrast, Nahum’s injuries were so severe, Sylvetsky recalled, that doctors at Hadassah Hospital were unsure if they could save him.

Israel's goodwill gestures, however, have so far failed to deter Hamas and other Palestinian groups from repeatedly violating the ceasefire understandings.

Israel is prepared to do whatever is required to help the Palestinians in return for a cessation of terrorist attacks against Israel. Meanwhile, the Egyptians themselves offer nothing but broken promises regarding the crisis in the Gaza Strip. Egyptian policy, it appears, is based on the assumption that the Gaza Strip is – and must remain – solely the problem of Israel.

Why do Egyptians have to travel all the way to Israel to discuss supplying the Gaza Strip with food, medicine and fuel (through Israel) when Egypt can easily do so through its shared border with the Gaza Strip? The world seems to have forgotten that the Gaza Strip has a shared border not only with Israel, but with Egypt as well.

Egypt's shifting and sometimes contradictory policy toward the Gaza Strip seems to have one goal: to divert attention from Cairo's responsibility for the ongoing plight of its Palestinian neighbors.

Here is what Egypt and the Arab states should be telling Israel: "Thank you for all that you have done so far to help the people of the Gaza Strip. However, these are our Arab brothers. Therefore, it seems fair that we step in and assume this burden."

Operations against Israel by individuals operating independently have led Hamas to make major changes in the ranks of its security forces in Gaza, beginning with the replacement of the chief of police on Aug. 29. Other personnel changes have involved internal security, border protection, political guidance, and military police. The shuffle followed rocket launches from Gaza at Israel despite Hamas and Israel having agreed to a cease-fire.

Talal Awkal, a political analyst at Al-Ayyam, said: "These changes... are a message to Egypt and Israel indicating that Hamas is actually dealing with securing the border and stopping the launch of rockets into Israel" and attempted infiltrations into Israel by Palestinians operating on their own. Their actions served to make Hamas look weak in its ability to control Gaza's border with Israel.

Ibrahim Habib, former vice dean at the Gaza Police Academy, said that Hamas "does not want to guard Israel, but it wants to stop random operations against Israel since they frustrate its maintaining the cease-fire."

The Palestinian Authority released a leading human rights activist on Sunday, a week after he was detained for criticising the government's controversial "electronic crimes" law.

Issa Amro, director of the Hebron-based Youth Against Settlements activist group, was arrested on September 4 after denouncing on Facebook the arrest of a journalist calling for the resignation of PA head, Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas has come under scrutiny for the vaguely worded decree, which allows security forces to jail those deemed to be harming "national unity" or the "social fabric" online.

Critics say the law, rolled out without consultation in July, is a restriction on freedom of expression.

Speaking after his release, Amro accused Palestinian security forces of physical and verbal abuse during his imprisonment.

"They want to silence me and silence every voice defending human rights, but they are wrong. I will continue defending human rights and struggling against occupation," he said.

Human rights groups have expressed concern over the increasing number of journalists being detained by the PA in the West Bank, with Amnesty International calling Amro's arrest a "shameless attack on freedom of expression". (h/t L_King)

UNIFIL’s $450 million budget and 11,000 on-site “peacekeepers” have yet to discover any Hezbollah rockets or related sites, although many of them are literally yards away from UNIFIL bases in southern Lebanon.

But this avoidance of responsibility by UNIFIL is utterly consistent with all U.N. actions regarding Israel’s security since 1948.

Having voted to partition the British Mandate of Palestine, the U.N. did nothing to thwart the pan-Arab invasion of the new State of Israel.

After the Suez Campaign of 1956 and an Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, Israel signed onto U.N. guarantees of a demilitarized Sinai—enforced by the U.N. Yet a decade later in 1967, Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser blockaded the Straits of Tiran and massed his troops and tanks for a genocidal war against Israel. Egypt requested that the U.N.’s peacekeepers be withdrawn, and U.N. Secretary General U Thant quickly removed the “guaranteed” force, thus enabling the Six-Day War.

Years later, the UNIFIL-supervised withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon turned into a frenzy of Hezbollah missile purchases and deployments that yielded the 2006 Lebanon War, in which over a hundred Israelis and 1,500 Lebanese lost their lives.

Clearly, it is suicidal for Israel to agree to any further role for the U.N. in its affairs. When things again get ugly in Lebanon—which will probably happen sooner rather than later—Israel must recognize that the U.N. is in league with its enemies, and minimize its involvement.

Always bear in mind that the once-promising U.N. of yesteryear has become the corrupt and inept U.N. of today—and has betrayed Israel time after time. Harebrained schemes involving “U.N. peacekeepers in the Jordan Valley” or, even more outlandish, “the internationalization of Jerusalem under U.N. auspices” are guaranteed to be disastrous for Israel and for any hope of a peaceful Middle East.

In a September 10, 2019 speech in honor of Ashura that aired on Al-Manar TV (Lebanon), Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah reiterated Hizbullah's loyalty to Iran and its Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Nasrallah said that, as part of the Islamic resistance, Hizbullah will never be neutral in the battle between truth and falsehood, and he assured the audience that a regional war would spell the end of Israel and of U.S. hegemony and presence in the region. Referring to Supreme Leader Khamenei as the "[Imam] Hussein of this age," Nasrallah said that Hizbullah and its followers would follow Khamenei even if they knew that America and the Zionists were to kill them, burn them, and spread their ashes into the wind 1,000 times over. This is the same pledge that Imam Hussein's companions told Hussein on the eve of Ashura. The audience chanted: "We would not abandon you, oh son of Hussein!"

Iraqi researcher Muayad Algehiche said in an August 25, 2019 interview on Al-Rasheed TV (Iraq) that Iraq should recognize that it does not pose a threat to Israel because it does not have weapons or technology that can compare to Israel's. He said that the threats made by Iraqi militias against Israel are meaningless and that even Iran does not have military capabilities that can stand against Israel. Algehiche gave the example of the F-35 jets, which he said are so stealthy that only Allah can detect them, and he pointed out that neither Hamas, Hizbullah, not Syria have attacked Israel. In addition, Algehiche said that Hassan Nasrallah declared that Hizbullah would engage Israeli drones in Lebanese airspace (see MEMRI TV Clip No. 7439) because it cannot respond to Israeli aggression near the border or within Israel itself.

U.S. Ambassador Jackie Wolcott told the International Atomic Energy Agency board on Tuesday: "Iran has a history of deception, and we must ensure that Iran's actions do not distract from the IAEA's vital verification efforts....Nuclear escalation of the kind Iran is attempting will only deepen the pressure Iran is facing and exacerbate the crisis Iran continues to make for itself. Such brinkmanship and extortion tactics will neither resolve the current impasse nor bring Iran sanctions relief."

"The United States is open to negotiation with Iran without preconditions, when the time is right, to resolve the issues that divide it from the international community, and we are offering Iran a possibility of a full normalization of relations and the lifting of sanctions."

"Our goal remains the conclusion of a comprehensive deal with Iran that addresses our concerns, ends Iran's destabilizing behaviors, and fully reintegrates Iran into the international community. To achieve relief from sanctions pressure, however, Iran must be willing to end its malign behavior and take lasting steps that deny it any pathway to nuclear weapons."

"Iran must finally address why it secretly retained an immense archive of materials from its past nuclear weapons program that could easily facilitate a resumption of nuclear weapons work. And...in light of new concerns...we should all be asking ourselves what else is the Iranian regime continuing to hide?"

Iranian Filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh Discusses 2019 "New Horizon" Conference That Will Take Place in Lebanon, Says It Will Be About Israel's Infiltration into America's "Deep State," Announces Next Conference Will Be in Iraq pic.twitter.com/HJ8FIL8geT

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 11, 2019

As we began Kabbalat Shabbat, I asked everyone to rise and the Cantor led us in the “Star Spangled Banner.” Since our synagogue, like most in the US has an American flag proudly displayed, we all turned and looked at it. Some saluted. Some put their hands over their hearts. Some war veterans wore their caps for the service, and some people cried – both women and men. Those moments were parallel to what was going on the city where almost every block had an American flag flying.

When I took the pulpit, I first asked everyone to rise and recite the Kaddish mourner’s prayer for the nephew of a doctor in our congregation. The young man in his 30s had been killed in the Pentagon where he worked. Most people have forgotten that Washington, DC, was a major target. The only place the first plane was able to hit was the Pentagon. The plane, which the assailants took over before the passengers overpowered them, was headed for the White House. The passengers triumphed over these terrorists.

Sadly, the plane went down and everyone aboard was killed.

I read from President Bush’s address to the nation the night of 9/11. Then I added a few of my own thoughts.

“I feel today that we are one nation – Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, black and white and brown. We are one nation, indivisible, united in our fear and outrage. Our compassion and resolve from now on September 11 will be a second Memorial Day in honor of our civilian casualties of war.

“Each of us is a reservoir of hope and strength. Surely we all saw hope in the firefighters who stood in burning debris, with boots melting, trying so hard to find more survivors. That hope should be a part of all our lives. We must do what we can to help. Ve’im lo achshav, aymatai? If not now, when?”

Then I asked everyone present to rise, and we offered a prayer for America and for all of us. As we stood, we sang “Hatikvah” as we looked proudly at the Israeli flag. On this 9/11 eighteen years later, let us pray that terrorism will be combated and peace will reign.

2,977 men, women and children lost their lives on September 11th, 2001. We remember their names. We mourn the lives that could have been.

Danny Lewin, veteran of the IDF’s elite commando team, outstanding graduate of Israel’s Technion and MIT PhD student at MIT will be forever remembered for his attempt to prevent the hijacking of Flight 11, becoming the very first victim of 9/11.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Danny Lewin boarded American Airlines Flight No. 11 in Boston, expecting to reach Los Angeles. Instead, the flight was hijacked and commandeered by Arab terrorists, crashing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. On that fateful flight, Danny Lewin became the very first victim of the largest terrorist attack in history in which almost 3,000 Americans died. An internal memorandum of the Federal Aviation Administration says “that in the course of a struggle that took place between Lewin, a graduate of Israel’s elite commando unit, Sayeret Matkal, and the four hijackers who were assaulting that cockpit, Lewin was murdered by Satam Al Suqami, a 25-year-old Saudi.”

Sometime after the attack, the Lewin family in Jerusalem received a telephone call from the FBI offices in New York. On the line was the agent responsible for the investigation of the attack on Flight 11. He told Danny’s parents that there is a high degree of certainty that Danny tried to prevent the hijacking. The FBI relied, among other things, on the testimony of the stewardess Amy Sweeney.

Sweeney succeeded in clandestinely getting a call out during the flight to a flight services supervisor in Boston, from the rear of the plane: “A hijacker slit the throat of a passenger in business class and the passenger appears to me to be dead.” To this day the American investigators are not convinced that Danny Lewin was murdered on the spot. An additional stewardess, Betty Ong, who succeeded in calling from a telephone by one of the passenger seats, said that the passenger who was attacked from business class seat 10B was seriously wounded. It turned out that 10B was the seat of Danny Lewin.

The Lewin family, Danny’s parents and brothers, have no doubt that Danny battled the hijackers. And it is for them a tremendous consolation. “I wasn’t surprised to hear from the FBI that Danny fought. I was sure that this is what he would do,” Yonatan, his younger brother, said. “Danny didn’t sit quietly. From what we heard from the Americans, the hijackers attacked one of the stewardesses and Danny rose to protect her and prevent them from entering the cockpit. It is a consolation to us that Danny fought. We see it as an act of heroism that a person sacrifices his life in order to save others. That battle in the business section ended quickly. Lewin was overcome and bled to death on the floor. Two additional flight attendants were knifed and the captain was murdered. The hijackers were already inside the cockpit. They announced to the passengers to remain quiet in their seats.

Eighteen years is a long time. If you were born 18 years ago, you are today a young adult, old enough to find a job, begin college, enlist in the military, and vote for the first time. You also should know what happened in 2001, the year you were born. But, given the state of America’s educational system, I’m not confident you do. So let me briefly fill you in.

Back then, the Soviet socialist experiment had collapsed ending the Cold War which had followed World War II which had followed a decade of economic depression which came 11 years after the end of World War I.

That led to the belief – naïve but widely held – that there was a “new normal,” that Americans could cash a “peace dividend,” that whatever differences remained among the world’s peoples could now be resolved through diplomacy, commercial relations, and the intercession of transnational bureaucrats.

Then, on Sept. 11, 2001, a sparkling late summer morning, enemies of America hijacked four passenger jets and turned them into guided missiles.

Two planes brought down the World Trade Center, symbol of America’s economic might. One struck the Pentagon, headquarters of America’s military strength. A fourth was headed for the White House, where America’s top elected leader resides. That fourth jet failed to reach its target thanks to the heroic resistance of the passengers onboard.

Nearly 3,000 people, ranging in age from 2 to 85, were killed, a higher death toll than Pearl Harbor in 1941. Al-Qaida, the organization responsible, spent about a half million dollars to plan and execute the attacks. The cost to the U.S. has been estimated at over $3 trillion.

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri called Wednesday on Muslims to attack US, European, Israeli and Russian targets in a speech on the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.

SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks online activity of jihadist groups, reported that in a video released by the militant group, the 68-year-old al-Zawahri also criticizes “backtrackers” from jihad, referring to former jihadis who changed their views in prison and called the 9/11 attacks unacceptable because innocent civilians were harmed.

“If you want Jihad to be focused solely on military targets, the American military has presence all over the world, from the East to the West,” he said. “Your countries are littered with American bases, with all the infidels therein and the corruption they spread.”

The coordinated al-Qaeda hijackings on September 11, 2001 killed nearly 3,000 people, when airliners slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and another crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

Al-Zawahri’s speech was recorded in a 33-minute, 28-second video produced by the group’s as-Sahab Media Foundation.

As an indicator of when the speech may have been recorded, al-Zawahri references US President Donald Trump’s recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, which was announced on March 25. He calls on Palestinians to seek “martyrdom” by attacking Israelis with a suicide vest in response.

The 9/11 Commission report in 2004 found that "senior managers in al-Qaeda maintained contacts with Iran and the Iranian-supported worldwide terrorist organization Hizbullah....Al-Qaeda members received advice and training from Hizbullah." A large percentage of the 14 Saudi "muscle" operatives "traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001."

In his 2011 book, The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle against the World's Most Dangerous Terrorist Power, journalist Ronen Bergman exposed the ties between the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorists and the government of Iran.

"Starting in the 1990s, Iran and Hizbullah helped Osama Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri create a new terror organization from scratch. Iran trained group members, equipped them with advanced technological means, enabled them to move freely and provided them with plenty of terror-related expertise and experience accumulated by Hizbullah in its operations against Israel and the United States."

"Many of the terrorists headed from Afghanistan to Iran, with Iranian officials ordering border control officers not to stamp these passports. Following the attacks, many senior al-Qaeda men found shelter in Iran. Tehran denied their presence for some time and later admitted that hundreds of al-Qaeda members are in the country and are under 'house arrest.'"

In December 2011, Federal Judge George Daniels signed a default judgment finding Iran, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda liable for the 9/11 attacks. He found that the 2001 attacks were caused by the support provided to al-Qaeda by the defendants. The judge also found that "Iran continues to provide material support and resources to al-Qaeda by providing a safe haven for al-Qaeda leadership and rank-and-file al-Qaeda members."

In 2017, the CIA released a 19-page al-Qaeda report written in Arabic on the history of al-Qaeda relations with Iran, seized in the U.S. Special Forces raid in 2011 that killed Bin Laden. The report, written in 2007, revealed that Iran offered al-Qaeda fighters "money and arms and everything they need, and offered them training in Hizbullah camps in Lebanon, in return for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia."

A rocket exploded at the US Embassy in Afghanistan just minutes into Wednesday, the anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the United States, but officials at the compound declared an all-clear about an hour later and reported no injuries.

A plume of smoke rose over central Kabul shortly after midnight and sirens could be heard. Inside the embassy, employees heard the message over the loudspeaker: "An explosion caused by a rocket has occurred on the compound."

There was no immediate comment from Afghan officials. The NATO mission, which is nearby, also said that no personnel had been injured.

It was the first major attack in the Afghan capital since President Donald Trump abruptly called off US-Taliban talks over the weekend, on the brink of an apparent deal to end America's longest war.

Two Taliban car bombs shook Kabul last week, killing several civilians and two members of the NATO mission. Trump has cited the death of a US service member in one of those blasts as the reason why he now calls the US-Taliban talks "dead."

The 9/11 anniversary is a sensitive day in Afghanistan's capital and one on which attacks have occurred. A US-led invasion of Afghanistan shortly after the 2001 attack toppled the Taliban, who had harbored Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader and attacks mastermind.

Hong Kong activists called off protests on Wednesday in remembrance of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and denounced a Chinese state newspaper report that they were planning "massive terror" in the Chinese-ruled city.

Hong Kong has been rocked by months of sometimes violent unrest, prompted by anger over planned legislation that would have allowed extraditions to China but broadening into calls for democracy and for Communist Party rulers in Beijing to leave the city alone.

"Anti-government fanatics are planning massive terror attacks, including blowing up gas pipes, in Hong Kong on September 11," the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily said on its Facebook page on Tuesday alongside a picture of the attacks on the twin towers in New York.

"The 9/11 terror plot also encourages indiscriminate attacks on non-native speakers of Cantonese and starting mountain fires," it said. The Facebook post said "leaked information was part of the strategy being schemed by radical protesters in their online chat rooms."

Worshipers hoping to have sweets on hand to mark eighteen years since nineteen Al-Qaeda hijackers killed nearly three thousand people in a group of coordinated attacks in the US faced disappointment this morning upon learning that Israel’s restrictions on imports had delayed the arrival of the special treats. The attendees had to make do with local candies and pastries.

Imam Awil Qildemal told reporters his flock voiced anger and frustration at the incident, since they had anticipated receiving several crates of imported delicacies from Turkey to celebrate 9/11, but bureaucratic and technical issues at the Kerem Shalom crossing prevented timely arrival of the packages. To prevent the smuggling of weapons, Israel has maintained a naval and land blockade of the Gaza Strip since Hamas took it over from rival Palestinian faction Fatah in 2007 and launched several wars against the Jewish state. Consumer goods may enter the coastal territory, but only through Israel via the Kerem Shalom facility or through Egypt via the Rafah crossing. Egypt keeps Rafah closed much of the time.

“We’re all disappointed, of course, but this is hardly the first time we have suffered oppressive deprivation,” stated Qildemal. “Many of us have learned to take such setbacks in stride, but for most of us, this serves at one more piece of motivation to drive the pigs off of our land.” No members of Qildemal’s mosque have ever lived in what is now Israel, though most have ancestors who fled from there at the urging of Arab leaders who promised they could return following the quick victory over the Jews that Arabs anticipated in 1948. Instead the Jews prevailed and established Israel, leaving those who left under Egyptian rule until 1967, when Israel again foiled Arab plans to wipe her out, and took control of territories held by Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, including the Gaza Strip. Israel dismantled Jewish settlements and removed its military presence from the territory in 2005.

Chicago-Based TV Host Eddie Redzovic, Muslim-American Academic Dr. Kevin Barrett: Denying Muslim Involvement in 9/11 Is a Form of Jihad pic.twitter.com/wk6aExJHE5

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 11, 2019

In How to Fight Anti-Semitism, Bari Weiss points out that anti-Semitism is as much a creature of the left as of the right, and that the anti-Zionism that has overtaken progressive circles and college campuses is indistinguishable from other forms of hatred of Jews. That the book must be judged brave for saying so, and that Weiss has attracted so much vitriol for holding these opinions, writes Hillel Halkin in his review, is “a badge of shame for the ‘progressive’ America” of which Weiss considers herself a part. Halkin praises the book for its “careful organization and articulate prose,” and the force with which it makes its main arguments. But he also finds certain aspects “disappointing”:

[N]owhere in her book does Weiss indicate that—apart from its anti-Zionism—she has any problem with the deadening mental conformity of contemporary American liberalism. The question she never raises is why someone of her intelligence should want to belong to such a world. “Maintain your liberalism,” a section of her book’s last (and least convincing) chapter exhorts the reader as one of its prescriptions for fighting anti-Semitism. To what end? At what intellectual and moral price?

Weiss fails to realize that she herself is an example of the wishful thinking about Judaism that is ubiquitous among American Jewish liberals. One might call this the Judaism of the Sunday school, a religion of love, tolerance, respect for the other, democratic values, and all the other virtues to which American Jews pay homage. This is a wondrous Judaism indeed—and one that has little to do with anything that Jewish thought or observance has historically stood for.

Judaism as liberalism with a prayer shawl is a distinctly modern development. It started with the 19th-century Reform movement in Germany, from which it spread to America with the reinforcement of the left-wing ideals of the Russian Jewish labor movement. As much as such a conception of their ancestors’ faith has captured the imagination of most American Jews, it is hard to square it with 3,000 years of Jewish tradition.

House Democrats are unlikely to move forward on any declarative action against the Israeli government over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision last month to prevent two sitting congresswomen from entering the country over their support for the BDS movement.

While senior House Democrats and stalwart Israel supporters were quick to condemn and criticize the decision by to bar Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), discussions of a more formal response have floundered as Congress returns from its summer recess.

“I don’t believe at this moment any further action is required,” Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), told The Algemeiner on Tuesday, Congress’s first full day back in session. Rep. Phillips was one of the members to issue a statement saying he was “appalled” by the decision of the Israeli government, and said he “voiced extreme disappointment” in a meeting with the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC.

Another Democratic member of Congress, who asked to speak on background to speak more freely, bluntly stated that any action is “not happening.”

The American Jewish Committee is pushing for the US Court of Appeals to uphold a Texas anti-BDS law.

Texas Government Code Chapter 2270 prevents the state government from doing business with companies or contractors that support or practice a boycott of Israel.

The law has been challenged in the case of Bahia Amawi v. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in which it was found to be unconstitutional by a district court. The case is on appeal.

The AJC’s amicus brief states that the law does not infringe constitutional rights to free speech, saying, “It does not compel State contractors to endorse or engage in speech opposing the BDS movement or BDS activities, does not prevent individuals affiliated with State contractors from participating in boycotts in their personal capacities, and does not prevent contractors from expressing their personal views regarding boycotts or associating with others who share their views.”

“Plaintiffs have identified no contractor and no set of circumstances in which application of the verification requirement would be unconstitutional,” the brief adds.

“The US Supreme Court has long recognized that the government is not obliged to expend public funds in a manner contrary to its own express interests in deference to a contractor’s preferred use of public resources to a different end,” it says, “regardless of whether that preference is couched as an exercise of personal or political expression.”

Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog sent a letter on Monday to the president of the Belgian regional parliament of Wallonia in an appeal to lift the ban on kosher ritual slaughter without stunning in the region.

The ban, initially legislated in 2017 in relation to Jewish and Muslim slaughter, had been in effect since Sept. 1, 2019. It is currently being enforced in the region of Wallonia, although a court ruling is pending on an appeal. A similar law was previously passed by the Flanders regional parliament in Belgium.

The bill passed by the Wallonia Parliament states that animals must be stunned before being killed—a technique that is not acceptable in accordance with Jewish and Muslim ritual slaughter, which requires animals to be conscious when their throats are slit.

Animal slaughter without prior stunning is already banned in several EU countries, such as Sweden and Denmark, and other nations in Europe, including Switzerland and Norway.

“This is not only an issue of freedom of practice for traditional kosher butcheries. … This is an unacceptable infringement of general freedom of religion,” Herzog said about the ban in his letter. “We thought that restrictions on the practice of religion belonged to Europe’s history, not to its present and even less so to its future. I call on you to do your utmost in order to attempt to roll back this legislation so as to find the right balance between animal rights … and freedom of religion.”

An Jerusalem-based watchdog group has accused Facebook of being an accomplice to terrorism for its continued refusal to shut down the official Fatah Facebook page.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) on Tuesday released a report documenting dozens of incidents in which Fatah used its page to promote violence and glorify murderers of Israelis.

The 42-page report is the second of its kind. The previous report, published in February 2019, tracked Fatah’s Facebook activity the year before. Both reports were sent to Facebook.

According to PMW’s CEO Itamar Marcus, the first report was not only reviewed by the social networking site, but Marcus had a 45-minute conversation with the director of Facebook’s global counterterrorism policy team, Brian Fishman, about its findings.

“During our conversation, I emphasized that every time Fatah posts a new terror message on Facebook encouraging violence or presenting murderers as role models, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are given more motivation to kill Israelis,” Marcus told The Jerusalem Post. “Facebook still chooses to do nothing to stop it.

“Their willingness to ignore the role they are playing in Fatah’s terror promotion is incomprehensible,” he said. “Whereas in 2018 Facebook was an unwitting accomplice in Fatah’s terror promotion, Facebook is Fatah’s partner by choice in 2019.”

Antisemitic rag @Mondoweiss engages in some gaslighting https://t.co/0dJesrQlF2 cc: @GoldsteinBrooke

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 11, 2019

Startup Nation has done it again, releasing an exciting App this week to great fanfare. ‘That’s Gold!’ is an application for Iphone and Android users that alerts you whenever noted BDS supporter/Deep Thinker Ariel Gold says or does something ridiculous. The Daily Freier wandered down to that WeWork office near Rothschild (no not that one, the other one) in order to meet the creators of this amazing application.

“With our ‘That’s Gold!‘ app, we provide our customer with a one-stop shop to stay up to date on the latest dumb shit that Ariel came up with.” explained lead engineer Pinchas G. “Our state of the art algorithm pulls data from Ariel’s Twitter feed, Code Pink press releases, and the comments section for Hen Mazzig’s pet rabbit’s Instagram page.” Pinchas feverishly typed a line of code on his Macintosh and continued. “The 2.0 version even has a feature that notifies you whenever she uses a Yiddish phrase incorrectly.”

Well if you think this App is selling like latkes in December, you are correct. The Daily Freier ran into a number of happy customers on Rothschild Boulevard.

“OMG This is A-Ma-Zing!” extolled Arielle (NOT Ariel) C. “This gives me something to do whenever the Daily Freier is going through Writer’s Block.”

“Changed my life!” enthused David S. “I really like the feature that alerts me whenever she takes a selfie with Neteurei Karta.”

A recent article in the Financial Times (Netanyahu vows to extend Israeli sovereignty in West Bank, Sept. 10) includes the following claim about the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords.
Extending Israeli sovereignty to the sprawling settlements that divide up the occupied West Bank would make it extremely difficult for future prime ministers to live up to pledges made in the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords to negotiate a possible withdrawal of Israeli forces in order to facilitate the birth of a Palestinian state.

However, the agreement did not pledge Israel to facilitate the birth of a Palestinian state.

As our CAMERA colleagues have noted previously, this fact was made clear by by Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, in a piece for the Atlantic marking the 25th anniversary of the agreements. The Oslo Accords, he wrote, “did not provide for a Palestinian state.” He also re-emphasized that the two-state solution is “a concept that is nowhere mentioned in the Oslo Accords.”

Moreover, the New York Times, responding to a complaint from CAMERA in April, corrected an article which similarly claimed that the Oslo Accords committed both sides to a two state solution.

A Sept. 5th obituary at The Times for Princess Dina bint Abdel Hamid, the first wife of Jordan’s King Hussein, included the following sentence, in the context of noting Princess Dina’s role in prisoner-exchange negotiations between Lebanon and Israel:

It had all started in June 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon and rounded up all males aged between 9 and 75…

This staggering claim, that, upon invading Lebanon in 1982 to stop PLO rocket attacks on northern Israel, the IDF rounded up “all males” as young as 9 years old, was not supported with a source, and we hadn’t previously come across this allegation, even from anti-Israel activists. The closest thing we could find online or in books we reviewed on the war was a claim by radical academic Noam Chomsky in his book ‘The Fateful Triangle’ that Israel had rounded up males as young as 16.

So, we contacted editors at The Times to ask for a source. However, instead of providing one, they instead slightly toned down the sentence to claim that the IDF had rounded up not “all”, but only “thousands of males aged between 9 and 75“.

Again, we asked editors for the source of this revised, but still wild and unsubstantiated accusation.

The “Baba Sale Congregation” in Los Angeles was the latest attack against Jews in the United States. This hate crime was committed early on 9/11.

According to reports on Twitter, the perpetrators waited for congregants to enter and begin Davening, and then sprayed the graffiti, so that when they come out they should see it.

“Free Palestine” was scrawled in large lettering on the building.

A video posted to social media (embedded below) shows the Shul painting over the words later on Wednesday morning.

The Baba Sale Congregation is located at N. Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles.

Police are investigating the incident.

#Jewish Synagogue tagged with #Antisemitic graffiti in Los Angeles by BDS activists. BDS is the 21st Century #Antisemitism, it radicalized all other extremist movements, promotes violence against Jews and resembles the Nazi methods to boycott The Jewish people. pic.twitter.com/Ue9zB7hBym

— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) September 11, 2019

Six days, six attacks. Where is the outrage? #nyc#jewspic.twitter.com/Zomv7bCJoM

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 10, 2019

HORRIFYING: ILLINOIS CORRECTIONAL OFFICER Laith Elhaj has a horrific plan: “We should build camps again and start burning the Jews again. No lie.”https://t.co/OuaLRKxOnBpic.twitter.com/EtVjwX1Jee

— Canary Mission (@canarymission) September 9, 2019

Street artists all across Germany are fighting far-Right neo-Nazi views with street art, turning hateful graffiti into artistic works of inclusiveness.

The neo-Nazi graffiti, which is aimed at spreading anti-migrant propaganda as well as intimidating passersby who don't share the same views as these groups, have been showing up in neighborhoods all over Germany - as the far-Right movement has conquered some of these areas into becoming safe havens for neo-Nazi groups.

In the Dortsfeld District of Dortmund, or the so-called "Nazi Neighborhood," police are supervising street artists to cover up hateful slogans, after city authorities approved an initiative by a group called Association for Diversity, Tolerance and Democracy to commission street artists with the task of brightening up the streets with colorful works of art - in order to protect the artists and keep the initiative moving forward.

"We will also in the future thwart any plans to create a space of threat and intimidation in Dorstfeld or elsewhere," said Dortmund police chief Gregory Lange.

One of the neo-Nazi slogans was covered up with a beautiful landscape of a lush, green, flower-filled meadow and the words: "Our Colors are beautiful."

"You cannot let neo-Nazis take a millimeter of room," said Interior Minister Herbert Reul. "That's why it's a great thing for the citizens, the city and the police to stand up against the racist hurlers and remove their disgusting smear."

McDonald’s Corporation has entered an agreement to buy Israeli-founded, Silicon Valley based startup Apprente, “a leader in the field of conversational voice-based technology,” the fast food giant said in a statement Tuesday.

The technology will allow for “faster and simpler and more accurate ordering” through speech at McDonald’s drive-thru stations, the statement said. According to the deal, Apprente’s employees will become part of the US firm’s global technology team. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Apprente team – made up of workers with PhDs in machine learning and computational linguistics – will also form the base of a new, internal team at McDonald’s called McD Tech Labs, that will work closely with the firm’s Innovation Center just outside Chicago. The skills of both teams will help McDonald’s meet the changing needs of customers, the statement said.

The Israeli startup has developed a technology that enables the automation of voice ordering, supporting a variety of languages and accents and complicated orders.

Apprente was set up in 2017 by CEO Itamar Ariel, an AI researcher and a former professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Tennessee. He has degrees, BA, MS, MBA and PhD, from Ben-Gurion University in the Negev, Israel. Moshe Looks, co-founder and CTO, is a former AI and software engineer team leader at Google’s Machine Intelligence Group. He has a degree in computer science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD in machine learning from Washington University, according to the Apprente website.

New York-listed medical device company Baxter International has entered an agreement to acquire Boston and Tel Aviv-headquartered Cheetah Medical for $190 million in cash, with potential for an additional $40 million based on certain milestones, the former announced Tuesday.

The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2019, subject to customary closing conditions.

Founded in 2000, Cheetah Medical develops and provides non-invasive fluid management monitoring systems for use in critical care, operating rooms, and emergency rooms. Cheetah Medical’s fluid management systems are currently in use in 400 hospitals throughout the US and in 30 countries worldwide, according to company statements.

The company employs a team of approximately 120 employees, according to LinkedIn, in its Tel Aviv research and development center, and in offices in Boston, Vancouver, Washington, and the UK. Prior to the acquisition, Cheetah Medical had raised $117 million, according to Pitchbook data.

A previously unknown center of Canaanite-era settlement was recently stumbled upon by a curious electrician on his way to work. A 4,500-year-old copper dagger blade and a collection of intact pottery containers were discovered by Ahmad Nassar Yassin, a resident of the northern Israel village of Araba, who noted something out of the ordinary while he was driving to service a local customer.

“When I identified something unusual on the mountain ridge close to the dirt road, I stopped to check it out. The minute I touch the boulder it crumbled and, in front of my eyes, ancient-looking containers appeared,” said Yassin.

Concerned about damage to the artifacts due to their unplanned exposure, Yassin moved the items to his home and immediately reported his finds to the Israel Antiquities Authority. Shortly thereafter Nir Distelfeld, an IAA Theft Prevention Unit inspector, retrieved them from Yassin and realized they came from a burial cave. Yassin was awarded a certificate of good citizenship.

According to an IAA press release, the items include northern-style 4,500-year-old storage jars and pouring vessels, as well as the bronze dagger blade, which would have been attached to a wooden handle. As was typical of the era, the artifacts, most likely including foodstuffs, were meant to accompany the occupant of the burial cave on his way to the afterlife.
4,500-year-old artifacts discovered in a burial cave near Araba in northern Israel. (Nir Distelfeld/Israel Antiquities Authority)

In conversation with The Times of Israel on Wednesday, Distelfeld commended Yassin’s reporting of the ancient artifacts to the IAA and said he hoped it would spur more cooperation with Arab communities, which are not aware enough of IAA’s work in preserving the heritage of all cultures and civilizations who settled in the Levant.

Americans like to think of ourselves as being at the center of the universe, with Hollywood serving as a giant air freshener spraying our pop-cultural essence all over a grateful globe. But the transmission has long worked in the other direction too, with the U.S. entertainment industry adapting work from other countries, particularly the U.K. (The Office, American Idol, All in the Family, House of Cards, and Veep all started out as Brit hits). Over the last decade, Israel has emerged as an increasingly rich supplier for American TV executives ravenous for shows that stand out amid the programming glut of peak TV.

Homeland and In Treatment are two critically lauded examples from the recent past; following in their footsteps is a slew of new Israeli-derived TV series appearing on our screens or entering the development process. Netflix will soon unveil The Spy, a limited series created by Israeli Gideon Raff and starring Sacha Baron Cohen as a real-life 1960s Mossad agent, while HBO has aired Euphoria, the edgy teen drama based on an Israeli program of the same name and starring Zendaya, and Our Boys, a co-production with Israeli studio Keshet that dramatizes a string of political murders that spiraled into a war in Gaza.

Euphoria and Our Boys are the latest sections of an Israeli-American TV pipeline that HBO has been laying since 2008. That’s when the prestige cable network adapted Hagai Levi’s half-hour psychotherapy drama, Be’Tipul, into the Emmy-winning series In Treatment. Many of the early episodes were almost word-for-word translations of the original. In contrast, Showtime’s 2011 hit Homeland was substantially adapted and altered from its source, the Gideon Raff series Hatufim. The original Israeli series focused on former prisoners of war during its two-season run, whereas Homeland revolved around Claire Danes’s magnetic, dysfunctional CIA agent, Carrie Mathison.

Israel—which had only one television channel until 1993—is so flooded with programming from America and from other countries around the world that native writers and producers are forced to take creative risks in order to grab viewers’ attention. “We have such small budgets that we really have to be unique in how we tell a story,” says Raff. “If I want to convince the audience to watch [Hatufim] and not Breaking Bad, I really have to be special.” To “be disruptive” in the current crowded media environment, Raff continues, “what the most successful Israeli shows have done is be extremely Israeli. Be very, very local and in making it as personal as possible, somehow there you find the universal themes that an international audience can enjoy.”

Among the Israeli adaptations currently in the works are Your Honor, a Showtime legal drama starring Bryan Cranston and adapted from the Israeli series Kvodo, and ABC’s culture-clash comedy The Baker & the Beauty, about a working-class baker who falls in love with a glamorous superstar. The original, Lehiyot Ita (which translates to Being With Her), played in part on class tensions between Jews of European and Middle Eastern origin; the American version, set in Miami, throws a Cuban American (Victor Rasuk) into the mix instead.

British comedian and actor Sasha Baron Cohen said in a recent interview that he used to pass up offers that he feared would “typecast” him as a Jewish actor.

Cohen, who currently stars as Mossad agent Eli Cohen in the Netflix miniseries “The Spy,” told The New York Times, “I used to be reluctant to play anyone Jewish, because I didn’t want to be typecast as the Jewish actor. There are other Jews in Hollywood besides me. But somehow, people thought of me as ‘a Jewish actor’ even after I played Borat, the most outwardly antisemitic character probably since Leni Riefenstahl directed movies.”

“Finally, a number of years ago, I read Gideon [Raff]’s script, and I couldn’t put it down. So I gave up this position of avoiding Jewish or Israeli roles,” he added, referring to the Israeli director’s project, “The Spy.”

The Netflix show is based on the true story of Eli Cohen, who was selected by the Mossad to infiltrate the Syrian government in the 1960s and given a fake identity as a wealthy Syrian businessman named Kamel Amin Thaabet. The Syrian government discovered his double-agent status and he was publicly hanged in Damascus in May 1965.

TV critic of Syrian extraction Linda Maleh was ready to be disappointed by Netflix's news series 'The Spy'. But she needn't have worried - the show, which focused on the Egyptian-born Israeli spy Eli Cohen, introduced the mainstream viewing public to 'Sephardi culture', she writes in Alma.

What bothers me is that most of the world doesn’t even know that Sephardi Jews exist. They think all Jews are European. They have no idea that hundreds of thousands of Jews used to live in countries across the Middle East, and were forced to flee due to intense persecution by these countries following the establishment of the State of Israel. They don’t know we exist, and so they are certainly not making movies and TV shows about us.

Except for The Spy. One of the first things we learn about Eli when the Mossad agents are reading his file is that he had to smuggle his family out of Egypt because things had gotten so bad for Jews there, and after he did, he stayed for years to help smuggle other Jews out, too. This is a familiar story for Middle Eastern Jews. My own community in Brooklyn worked very hard to help get Jews out of Syria when it all became unbearable. (My family in particular was spared this, having immigrated to America much earlier, for the same reason Eli’s family left Syria for Egypt, which was economic hardship.) Right there from the jump, Sephardi heritage is recognized.

The first time the word “Sephardic” is used in the show is in episode 2, when Eli’s handler, Dan Peleg (Noah Emmerich in a familiar role) visits Eli’s wife, Nadia (Homeland’s Hadar Ratzon Rotem), because he feels guilty about what he’s putting them through. While he’s there, she insists that he stay and eat. “I’m a Sephardic woman,” she says. “I’m not going to let you go home unfed.” My first instinct at this was to laugh. I was raised by Sephardi women, none of whom would ever let a guest leave without trying to feed them either.