Beyond humanitarian reasons, there are good strategic reasons to resettle refugees in safe places: the frustration of endless stays in refugee camps tend to make them breeding grounds for radicalism and regional instability. But Trump isn't listening. https://t.co/lLt2uCwRQFpic.twitter.com/Xy2LwFpNuK

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) September 11, 2019

• Marwan Issa: Marwan Issa is the deputy commander of the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the operational arm of HAMAS.

Al-Hindi

• Muhammad al-Hindi: Muhammad al-Hindi is the Deputy Secretary General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

• Baha’ Abu al-‘Ata: Baha’ Abu al-‘Ata, a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Higher Military Council, is a commander of the Gaza and North Battalion in the Al-Quds Brigade.

• Ali Karaki: Ali Karaki, is a senior leader within Hizballah’s Jihad Council. He led Mu’awaniyeh 105 (Southern Command) and was responsible for military operations in southern Lebanon.  Southern Command was divided into five geographic fronts (Mihwar), each consisting of a group of villages in a geographically contiguous strip.

• Muhammad Haydar: Muhammad Haydar is a senior leader within Hizballah’s Jihad Council.  Haydar was the Chief of Bureau 113, and ran Hizballah networks operating outside of Lebanon and appointed leaders of various units.  He was very close to deceased senior Hizballah official Imad Mughniyah.  In 2004, Haydar was elected to the Lebanese Parliament.

• Fu’ad Shukr: Fu’ad Shukr, a senior Hizballah Jihad Council member, oversaw Hizballah’s specialized weapons units in Syria, including its missile and rocket unit.  He is a senior military advisor to Hizballah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah and played a central role in the planning and execution of the October 23, 1983 U.S. Marine Corps Barracks Bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 U.S. service personnel.

• Ibrahim ‘Aqil: Ibrahim ‘Aqil, a senior Hizballah Jihad Council member, is Hizballah’s military operations commander.

Hundreds of Palestinian refugees demonstrated outside the Canadian Embassy in Beirut on Sept. 5 to request asylum in Canada or the European Union, the second such protest in the last month. The most surprising aspect of these demonstrations is that they have been so long in coming. Only now, after more than 70 years, are Palestinians publicly protesting the fact that they alone, of all the world’s refugees, are denied the most basic of refugee rights—the right to seek resettlement in a safe third country.

All other refugees worldwide are handled by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which resettles tens of thousands of refugees in third countries every year. But Palestinian refugees aren’t allowed to apply to UNHCR; they are handled by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, an agency created exclusively for them. And UNRWA hasn’t resettled a single refugee in its 70 years of existence.

The only option it offers the refugees and their descendants is eternal limbo: awaiting a “return” to Israel that will never happen. Thus it’s unsurprising that the protesters also assailed UNRWA for depriving them of “their most basic rights.”

Moreover, this refusal to grant Palestinians a right of resettlement enjoys the full support of so-called human-rights organizations and self-proclaimed advocates of human rights like the European Union. Thus it’s equally unsurprising that groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch completely ignored the demonstration.

Palestinian Authority media is controlled by PA Chairman Abbas himself. A statement by the General Supervisor of the Official PA Media Ahmad Assaf who has the rank of minister and was appointed by Abbas demonstrates that Abbas actively involves himself in determining the content of the official PA media:

"Assaf expressed his pride that the official media is representing the cause of the Martyrs, the wounded, and the prisoners under the instructions of [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas, who is constantly reemphasizing that this is our people's most important cause."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 26, 2019]

Assaf made this statement in July at a tribute ceremony held at the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation headquarters in Ramallah for "journalists who are members of the official media."

Abbas' control over the content of the media is effective. Earlier this month, a Palestinian Martyrs' association honored the head of PA media Ahmad Assaf for doing precisely what Abbas had instructed: "To serve the Martyrs and their families and the prisoners and their families":

"Secretary-General of the National Association of the Families of the Martyrs of Palestine Muhammad Sbeihat honored General Supervisor of the Official [PA] Media [with the rank of] Minister Ahmad Assaf for the role that the official media plays in serving the Martyrs and their families and the prisoners and their families."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 3, 2019]

Fatah wants Palestinian children to see these men as role models & is using Facebook to publicize its terror mission. Demand Facebook stop partnering with Palestinian terror promotion & close Fatah’s page. #CloseFatahFB

Email Facebook: https://t.co/7VhTTIU47Hpic.twitter.com/DpWrwAXIuw

— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) September 12, 2019

Announcing the Palestinian Authority's intention to begin international arbitration proceedings regarding the tax revenues Israel collects and transfers to the PA, the PA Minister of Finance Shukri Bishara chose to obfuscate reality presenting a financial picture that has little to do with real facts, but rather simply reinforces the PA narrative.

In the announcement, Bishara claimed that the payment for services Israel provides to the PA and an agreed handling fee are unrightfully "withheld" by Israel:
"The total amount of what Israel has withheld from the clearance revenues, which are the Palestinian taxes on imports from Israel and abroad collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA), has exceeded $3.5 billion in the last five years alone, of which $400 million was taken as 3% commission on the collection and over $3 billion for services, electricity, water, medical transfers and sanitation."
[WAFA, English edition, Official PA news agency, Sept. 4, 2019]

Comprehensive statistics obtained by Palestinian Media Watch from Israel's Ministry of Finance under the Freedom of Information Law, show that Bishara's claims are outrageous.

First, it should be noted that when Bishara refers to the amounts "Israel has withheld," he is, in reality, referring to the PA's payments for services provided by Israel to the Palestinians, such as "electricity, water, medical transfers, and sanitation." Distorting this simple fact - in order to create the impression that Israel arbitrarily deducted these sums - becomes an additional element of the PA's "Palestinian victimhood" narrative. Clearly, however, if Israel provides services to the PA, Israel is entitled to be paid for those services.

The Arab countries roundly - if rather perfunctorily - condemned Prime Minister Netanyahu's announced intent to extend Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley. Dore Gold, the head of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a former director-general of the Israel Foreign Ministry, said that the muted response has to do with "understanding very well...the Iranian threat to the eastern portion of the Arab world."

He said that there is a degree of understanding about the context of the move, and how it has "strategic military significance" in checking malign Iranian intentions in the region.

Gold noted that one of the significant aspects of Netanyahu's announcement was that he presented a map where he defined the area that he feels is necessary for Israel's security, and that the map he used is very close to the one that Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon proposed soon after the 1967 war.

Gold said that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin also adhered to the Allon Plan to retain the Jordan Valley, saying in his final address to the Knesset in 1995 that in any future agreement, "the Jordan Valley in the widest sense of that term would be the security border of the State of Israel."

At the time, Gold said, "Israeli planners were largely preoccupied with the future threat of an Iraq expeditionary force that could cross Jordan in 35 hours."

While Saddam Hussein has been eliminated, he said, the threat to Israel from the east did not disappear, since Iran "is very actively trying to project its military power westward toward the Mediterranean."

While Peace Now’s Ofran recognized the political timing of the announcement, she argued that it deserved to be taken seriously given the specifics provided by Netanyahu.

“I know he said no Palestinian will be annexed, that Jericho, Al-Auja and a few other villages would remain under PA control, and that they would even be given access roads to the [rest of the] West Bank and Jordan — but this is exactly what apartheid is,” she said.

“In South Africa they called them Bantustans. Blacks had autonomous towns, access roads and even had parliaments to vote for. In our case, it will be [a separation] not based on race or color but on nationality,” Ofran charged.

But George Mason law professor Eugene Kontorovich called that conclusion “absolutely ridiculous,” pointing out that in South Africa, Bantustans were controlled by the government, whereas in Netanyahu’s plan, the territory surrounded by the land slated for annexation would remain under the control of the PA.

Where the director of the Center for International Law in the Middle East at George Mason University appeared to agree with the Peace Now analyst was regarding the seriousness of Netanyahu’s announcement — flawed map notwithstanding.

“He presented the plan with a degree of specificity, detail and drama that will make it difficult to not implement it if in fact he wins,” Kontrovich said. Those elements, he added, would also make it harder for the more right-wing Yamina party to remain in a Netanyahu government if he did not in fact move forward with applying sovereignty.

How did those work out? https://t.co/BfxP7zo97S

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) September 11, 2019

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement on Tuesday regarding his plan to formalize Israeli sovereignty in Jordan Valley has sent shockwaves across the world. However, much of the outrage has stemmed from a misunderstanding about Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria and historical claims over the region. Even the standard newspaper accounts of Netanyahu’s plans as envisioning the “annexation” of territory is inaccurate.

Netanyahu never said “annexation.” Instead, he spoke of “applying sovereignty” to refer to Israel’s territorial claims over the Jordan Valley. International outlets, particularly left-leaning ones, have referred to Netanyahu’s campaign promise as a promise to annex land. But there is a reason for the PM’s careful choice of wording, and for its mistranslation and misrepresentation abroad.

A nation cannot annex land over which it already has sovereign claims. Netanyahu purposefully referred to the process as an application of Israeli sovereignty, abstaining from using the Hebrew word for annexation, sipuach. As Eugene Kontorovich, director of the International Law Department at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum, noted, Netanyahu’s proclamation is about “translating long-standing Israeli consensus into action.”

Foreign media is doing its best to portray the potential application of sovereignty in this scenario as far-flung or illegitimate. This interpretation is incorrect. Indeed, after Netanyahu’s announcement, the center-left Blue and White Party, which leads the opposition, sarcastically commented that they were pleased to see Netanyahu “adopting Blue and White’s plan for recognizing the Jordan Valley.”

To his credit, Israel has achieved awesome results under his leadership, from the economy to security. He has not dragged Israel into more wars in Gaza, and has navigated the Iranian challenge in Syria – which is one of the most complex challenges Israel has faced historically – avoiding war there while keeping back the Iranians and neutralizing their threats. Netanyahu and his team have threaded the needle.

Netanyahu’s terms as prime minister have generally been empty of bold decisions regarding the Palestinian issue. He believes Israel can reach out to Gulf states and other regional states without a two-state solution. He used his first period as prime minister in the 1990s to work against the Oslo Accords, correctly understanding that they could lead to renewed Palestinian terrorist attacks. Netanyahu prefers to manage the conflict.

But this tinkering with the conflict has been thrown out the window now that Trump is in Washington. It was fine when it came to Jerusalem and the Golan, which Israel had already annexed. But Netanyahu’s vow to annex the Jordan Valley would be the first major change in Israel’s policy since disengagement and the momentous decision like Oslo or the peace accords with Egypt, steering Israel in a new direction.

This has led to concern abroad and among Israel’s friends. Is Israel about to bury Oslo and set a new course? If that is happening, then Israel needs to explain what the full strategy and plan are, not just to its friends but to Israeli citizens. What comes after the annexation? What happens to the Palestinians who live in the Jordan Valley? What happens to the rest of the West Bank? We don’t know the plan, probably because there is no plan. Instead, Netanyahu is pushing a massive policy change just for votes.

This cheapens Israel, cheapens the image of the prime minister, and erodes trust abroad. It is essential that Israel have that trust to receive support, and it is important that foreign leaders don’t think Israeli politicians make bold decisions just for votes.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu took a much more dangerous step, showing a willingness to hurt Israel's national interests in the hopes of mustering a small political advantage - something he is actually unlikely to achieve.

After all, no one from the left or the center will think about switching to the Orthodox, right-bloc in the wake of Netanyahu's statement.

So, what’s left for Netanyahu? Just a hope of syphoning more votes from other right-wing parties.

For last few days before the elections, the Likud leader going to move more and more to the right, aiming to take votes from Ayelet Shaked's "Yamina" party.

Throughout most of Netanyahu's rule, he has shown national responsibility, that the national interest was more important to him than personal interest.

But now, that is not the case. Something terrible has happened to him in recent years.

For example, he knew proposed legislation to retroactively legalize all West Bank settlements was bad for Israel, but he persisted with it anyway, because that's what far-right MK and minister Bezalel Smotrich wanted, so that’s what Netanyahu delivered.

Now, the specter of the proposal is being revisited, because that's what Smotrich wants, and that's what Netanyahu delivers.

At the end of the day, it's not clear if Tuesday's announcement will benefit Netanyahu. What is clear though, is that it will hurt Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu batted off criticism from Russia of his pledge to annex the Jordan Valley, speaking on Thursday to reporters just before taking off to Sochi to meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

“What did you think they were going to say?” Netanyahu replied to a question on the matter. “We received condemnations from Arab countries, it wasn’t a tsunami of condemnations, but they have to say it and they will always say it.”

“The Americans said that the annexation plan presented by the prime minister does not contradict [US President Donald] Trump’s ‘deal of the century,’” added Netanyahu. “Which is a remarkable statement. I am working to establish secure borders for us, which is a historical turn of events.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry warned on Wednesday that such a move by Israel "could sharply escalate tensions in the region, undermine hope for establishing a long-awaited peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.”

But Netanyahu said the main focus of his trip to Russia would be to discuss matters concerning Iran. “The common goal we agree on, which is still far from being fulfilled, is extracting all of the Iranian forces from Syria,” Netanyahu said.

Palestinians in the Jordan Valley said on Wednesday they vowed to never give up the West Bank territory that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to annex.

"We tell Netanyahu, and whoever follows him, you will not break the Palestinians' will. You will never break our will. Never, never," said Hassan Al-Abedi, a 55-year-old farmer who lives in the village of Jiftlik.

"It's our parents' and grandparents' land. We will hold onto it no matter what it costs."

Netanyahu announced on Tuesday that he plans to "apply Israeli sovereignty" to the Jordan Valley and the adjacent northern Dead Sea area if he prevails in what is shaping up as a tough battle for re-election on Sept. 17.

The plan drew condemnation from Arab leaders and Palestinians, who seek to establish a state in all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Iran's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that Netanyahu's plans to annex the Jordan Valley and his frequent accusations against Tehran were ploys to win re-election, the semi-official news agency Tasnim reported.

Netanyahu's plans to annex the Jordan Valley and northern part of the Dead Sea is facing criticism. Jonathan Regev has the details.

Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah terror group on Wednesday blamed Gulf countries for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s election pledge to extend Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley.

The Shi’ite organization, which earlier this month exchanged cross-border fire with the Israeli army, argued that steps towards closer Gulf-Israeli ties were emboldening Netanyahu against the Palestinians.

“Measures toward normalization and Gulf attempts to foster alliances with the enemy have created an opportunity to chip away at more Arab lands,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

Netanyahu, who is campaigning for September 17 elections, said on Tuesday that if re-elected, he would annex the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea area in the West Bank.

Gulf countries condemned Netanyahu’s pledge, but Hezbollah argued that recent contacts between Israel and some of the US-allied, oil-rich monarchies had encouraged Netanyahu to take a more aggressive stance.

Among the many surprises in this poll, conducted in June-July by the Palestine Center for Public Opinion, is the relatively high consistency of views among younger and older Palestinians regarding a wide range of political matters. On most of the survey’s forty questions, only a few statistically insignificant percentage points separate the two generations, apart from some of the current issues described above.

Overall, then, this younger generation of Palestinians appears to be neither more moderate nor more radical than their elders, and neither more secular nor more religious. For example, the overwhelming majority of all respondents (nearly 90%) said that religion is important in their lives.

One modest variation in this realm concerns Gazan attitudes toward the Muslim Brotherhood. In that territory, 54% of respondents over 30 expressed support for the Islamist group, compared to 41% among younger adults. Similarly, 62% of older respondents in Gaza said that Hamas should be allowed to operate freely in the West Bank, compared to around half among the younger generation.

Also mostly consistent across generations, though by a much narrower majority, was rejection of permanent peace with Israel. Asked if a two-state solution should be “the end of conflict with Israel,” just 34% of young West Bank respondents answered yes; the proportion was even lower among older residents (25%).

In Gaza, overall opinions on this and many related issues were somewhat more moderate, but the generational difference was reversed there: 38% of young Gazan respondents said that a two-state solution should end the conflict, while 46% of their elders agreed with that ideal. Similarly, while 41% of young Gazans would recognize Israel as “the state for the Jewish people” if that would help Palestinians obtain their own state, this figure unexpectedly rose to 56% among older Gazans.

The Congressional Research Service on August 7 issued a report titled US Foreign Aid to Israel, which includes a review of past aid programs, data on annual assistance, and analysis of current issues. According to the report, “Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II. To date, the United States has provided Israel $142.3 billion (current, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. Almost all US bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance, although from 1971 to 2007 Israel also received significant economic assistance.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS), known as Congress’s think tank, is a public policy research arm of the United States Congress. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS works primarily and directly for Members of Congress, their Committees and staff on a confidential, nonpartisan basis.

According to the report’s executive summary, authored by Jeremy M. Sharp Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs, in 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a new 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on military aid, covering the budget years 2019 to 2028. Under the terms of the MOU, the United States pledges to provide $38 billion in military aid ($33 billion in foreign military financing grants, plus $5 billion in missile defense appropriations) to Israel. This MOU replaced a previous $30 billion 10-year agreement, which ran through 2018.

Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, to the UN Human Rights Council: "We consider the permanent Agenda Item 7 an historic anomaly, resulting in an unacceptable and disproportionate singling out of Israel. This has been the position of the Netherlands for years." https://t.co/aznWpJoTTX

— Dutch Embassy Israel (@NLinIsrael) September 11, 2019

It sounds like a screenplay for a movie: According to the Israel Defense Forces, the Jewish state is operating a spy in a very senior position in an Arab state — without his even knowing he is providing invaluable intelligence to Israel.

The case was reported Thursday by the Yedioth Ahronoth daily, which released an excerpt of a longer piece that will be published over the weekend, after receiving approval for publication by the military censor.

According to the report, the high-level source in an unnamed Arab country, nicknamed “Torpedo,” works for what he thinks is a non-military body. He was recruited in a complex operation five years ago, and continues to unknowingly provide Israel with immensely important information to this day.

The report cited officials in Israeli Military Intelligence’s Unit 504, which employs agents beyond Israel’s borders, adding that it was at the initiative of that unit that the story was published.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service played a role in the investigation, which may also have involved the NSA and CIA, Politico reported.

“It was pretty clear that the Israelis were responsible,” a former US senior intelligence official said.

A former official said such investigations are typically spearheaded by the FBI’s counterintelligence division. The devices would be examined to “tell you a little about their history, where the parts and pieces come from, how old are they, who had access to them, and that will help get you to what the origins are,” the official said.

The Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement on the report, calling the accusation “a blatant lie.”

“There is a longstanding commitment, and a directive from the Israeli government not to engage in any intelligence operations in the US. This directive is strictly enforced without exception,” the statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office read.

Netanyahu himself later dismissed the report. Landing in Sochi ahead of talks with Russian leaders, he called it “a complete lie. There’s not a scintilla of truth to it. Nothing.”

Former head of IDF intelligence says Politico story alleging Israel spying on US is "fake news spiced with antisemitism," and that Israel has unequivocally prohibited spying on the US for decades. https://t.co/4BBLIo7EqP

— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) September 12, 2019

Switzerland has revoked the citizenship of a man convicted of helping recruit jihadist fighters, invoking a law allowing dual nationals to be stripped of their Swiss passports for conduct detrimental to national interests or reputation.

Though the Swiss federal immigration office said this was the first time it had made such a move under the 66-year-old law, other Western nations have also stripped citizenship of people linked to extremist violence in the Middle East.

Last year, Australia revoked the nationality of an Islamic State (IS) recruiter, despite some concerns the move would leave him stateless, while Britain in February stripped a 19-year-old teenager of citizenship on security grounds.

The Swiss office did not release the other nationality of the man, who is in prison after receiving a multiple-year sentence for crimes including membership in a terrorist organization, spreading IS propaganda and seeking to convince fighters to participate in jihadist violence in the Middle East.

The man, likely to be expelled from Switzerland after his eventual release from prison, still has the opportunity to appeal, the immigration office said, without identifying him.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said Israel would likely be forced to go to war in Gaza in the near future following spiraling tensions on the southern front in recent weeks.

“There probably won’t be a choice but to launch an operation, a war with the terror forces in Gaza,” the prime minister said in a radio interview with the Kan public broadcaster, kicking off a media blitz five days before the national elections. “There probably won’t be a choice but to topple the Hamas regime. Hamas doesn’t exert its sovereignty in the Strip and doesn’t prevent attacks.”

“We have a situation in which a terror group that launches rockets has taken over, and doesn’t rein in rogue factions even when it wants to,” Netanyahu said of the Hamas terror group, which has ruled the Strip since it took over in a bloody coup in 2007, and which openly seeks Israel’s destruction. It has fought three wars with Israel since 2008.

Rockets have been fired at Israeli cities and communities multiple times over the past week — with most intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system or landing in open areas — drawing retaliatory Israeli airstrikes. On Tuesday night, two rockets were launched at Ashdod during a campaign rally in the city by Netanyahu, forcing the premier to be briefly shepherded off the stage by bodyguards to take shelter.

“Israel’s citizens know very well that I act responsibly and reasonably, and we will start an operation at the right time, which I will determine,” said Netanyahu, who is also defense minister.

The Hamas terror group on Wednesday gloated over a rocket attack the night before which forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to interrupt a live broadcast of a campaign speech while he took cover, saying the missiles had struck at the heart of Israel and shaken its image.

“Everyone saw Netanyahu fleeing because of the resistance’s strikes,” Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar told the Gaza-based Dunya al-Watan news site. “This incident is significant because the resistance has made it all the way to the heart of the Israeli occupation and Netanyahu. This is something that has shaken Israel’s image.”

Two rockets were fired at Ashdod and nearby Ashkelon from Gaza on Tuesday evening. Both were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Israeli jets targeted 15 sites in the Gaza Strip in retaliation overnight.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has not taken responsibility for the attack. Though other Gaza terror groups possess rockets, Israel holds Hamas responsible for such attacks.

For many of his domestic political rivals, the scenes of Netanyahu being whisked away by a group of bodyguards provided a counterpoint to the image he has attempted to cultivate as Mr. Security, highlighting what critics say is his government’s failure to deal with attacks from Gaza terror groups.

Hours before the recent false alarm, rockets were launched from the #Gaza Strip into southern Israel — one of the rockets damaging the property of a family home, Pierre Klochendler shows us the impact.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met Wednesday night with the father of an Israeli believed to be held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, reportedly vowing to speak to parties that maintain influence with the terror group to secure his release.

Ethiopian Israeli Avera Mengistu has been missing since September 2014 after he was apparently seen crossing into the northern part of the Palestinian enclave from the beach.

"Abbas said that he sees Avera’s case as a humanitarian one and that he does not believe in taking civilians captive," former Israeli MK Shlomo Molla told The Times of Israel, accompanying Haili Mengistu in his meeting at the PA office in the West Bank's Ramallah.

“He said he will do everything, directly and indirectly, to obtain information on his whereabouts and bring him back to his family including working with parties that hold influence with Hamas,” added Mollah.

According to the Mengistu family, a deterioration in Avera’s mental state following the death of his brother had caused him to cross the border into Gaza, captured by IDF cameras.

The Prosecutor General’s Office in Ramallah on Thursday revealed the full details of the investigation into the death of Israa Gharib, 21, from the village of Beit Sahour in the Bethlehem area, who was reportedly murdered in late August at the hands of her three brothers after she had posted her picture with her fiancé on Facebook. According to Attorney General Akram al-Khatib, the deceased fell from the balcony of her family’s home, but died as a result of excessive beatings.

But the prosecutor insisted that according to his investigation, the killing was not an honor murder. Instead, he claimed, Gharib had been subjected to pressures from her family regarding her engagement in witchcraft and sorcery. Gharib’s family denied any wrongdoing and told Al Jazeera that Israa, a successful makeup artist, had been possessed by an evil spirit which caused her a heart attack.

AG al-Khatib reported that three individuals are being charged with murder in the case of Israa Gharib, who dies as a result of “acute respiratory failure … as a result of multiple injuries to the young woman.”

On Sept. 5, thousands of Arab women across the Palestinian Authority as well as abroad protested Gharib’s murder, blaming the young woman’s brothers of beating her so hard that, attempting to escape, she fell off a balcony and sustained severe spinal injuries. She was then assaulted again in the hospital, where she was heard screaming and calling for the police.

The Trump administration is not seeking regime change, but rather to maintain its “maximum pressure campaign to get Iran back to the table” for a “better deal than the JCPOA,” a top US state department counter-terror official told the Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

Speaking to the Post on the sidelines of the ICT-IDC Herzliya counter-terror conference and only days after US National Security Adviser John Bolton exited the scene and Trump himself hinted to a lighter hand with Iran, Nathan Sales tried to clear the air.

In a speech at the conference, Sales said that Iran is currently offering al-Qaeda operatives refuge on its soil and allowing them to move funds to other parts of the region.

When asked if the Trump administration’s standards of what would be an acceptable improved deal would be lower now that Trump seems more intent on talks with Iran, Sales said that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s 12 principles remained the standard and that an improved deal would be a major change, not merely cosmetic.

During a single week in August, Jerusalem attacked military installations belonging to Iran and its proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. It seems to have struck Iraq again since then. Rejecting the explanation that these strikes are a cynical attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu to rally support in the weeks before an election, as well as the claim that they somehow make the Islamic Republic more combative, Steven A. Cook argues that such effective military operations increase Tehran’s willingness to compromise—perhaps far more than American economic pressure.

Earlier in the summer—before the Israelis stepped up their operations—the Iranians were busy sabotaging shipping in the Persian Gulf, shooting down an American drone, and seizing a number of tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Now they are believed to be inching toward talks with the United States.

Of course, there are several reasons why the Iranians may be showing some new flexibility—the Iranian economy’s continuing struggle under sanctions being chief among them. That is certainly pressure, and perhaps they fear the consequences for internal stability [and thus] they are looking for some relief in the way of negotiations. It is certainly plausible; crippling sanctions brought the Iranians to the table before, producing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Still, it seems it is the combination of sanctions and Israeli military prowess that may . . . cow the Iranians into talks.

Iran was quick to “celebrate” the dismissal on September 10, 2019, of John Bolton, President Trump’s hawkish national security advisor. Due to his harsh and uncompromising policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, senior officials in Tehran view his removal as a kind of victory that includes the possibility of change in U.S. policy toward the Islamic regime.

From Iran’s point of view, the timing of Bolton’s dismissal could not have been better. It occurred on the Shiite religious holiday, Ashura, which fell on September 10-11 and is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the prophet Mohammed, at the Battle of Karbala in 680. This occurrence is the guiding tradition behind Shiite Islam, and it is cited to justify the concept of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. Some opinions in Iran perceive this to be a “divine sign” and an indication of divine intervention in the history of Iran and its success in overcoming the obstacles in its way. This is how they perceive the struggles of Hamas and Hizbullah against Israel, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and more. In any case, from Iran’s perspective, this is another sign of the success of its policies and its firm stand against the pressures imposed upon it by the United States.

On September 11, 2019, President Hassan Rouhani indirectly alluded to Bolton’s dismissal at a government meeting, saying (without mentioning names) that, “other sources inciting war should also be removed.” He added that the United States must internalize that incitement to war, and the inclusion within the U.S. government of sources interested in provocation to war will not do it any good, and it should remove (all) the sources calling for war and maximum pressure on Iran.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played down the impact of hawkish John Bolton’s exit from the post of US national security adviser, predicting on Wednesday that Washington would hold to a tough line on Iran.

US President Donald Trump fired Bolton on Tuesday, citing policy disagreements. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said immediately after that Trump might meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the UN general assembly this month.

Netanyahu was among the most vocal champions of Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers and has voiced misgivings about Western engagement with Tehran unless this leads to sweeping restrictions on sensitive nuclear projects.

But Netanyahu, in an Israeli television interview, sounded unfazed by Bolton’s departure and possible Trump-Rouhani talks.

“Look, the one who formally crafted the American policy was Pompeo … and President Trump of course. But I’m not getting into the personality changes in this administration,” he told Channel 20.

Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, urged the United States to “stay the course” and increase pressure on Iran amid reports that the Trump administration is open to diplomatic initiatives with the Islamic Republic.

“What is important now is to stay the course, stand up to Iran’s aggression and continue ratcheting up the pressure until Iran abandons its nuclear ambitions once and for all,” Dermer said Tuesday evening at a pre-Rosh Hashanah reception at the embassy. “Israel looks forward to working with the Trump administration to do just that in the year ahead.”

Dermer otherwise lavishly praised President Donald Trump for his increased sanctions on Iran as well as for other moves, including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

But his remarks came the day Trump ousted his national security adviser, John Bolton, for among other reasons opposing Trump’s openness to diplomatic engagement with Iran. Bloomberg on Wednesday reported that Bolton forcefully opposed a plan recently to reduce sanctions on Iran as a means of setting up a meeting later this month between Trump and the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani.

The Council on American Islamic Relations said it was “appalled” that Charles Kupperman, who served on the board of a group that peddled conspiracy theories about Muslims, is serving as interim national security adviser.

“While we welcome the resignation of John Bolton, who has a long track record of promoting anti-Muslim policies and associating with hate groups, we cannot simply replace one Islamophobe with another,” CAIR executive director Nihad Awad said Wednesday, a day after Bolton’s abrupt departure from the post.

Kupperman served for a decade on the board of the Center for Security Policy, which peddles theories that Muslim Americans hope to institute Islamic religious law in the United States and have infiltrated American institutions and the government.

Kupperman, who is Jewish, is not likely to remain long in the job. US President Donald Trump has said he intends to name a new national security adviser, which does not require Senate confirmation, as soon as next week.

Billboards with the slogans "Death to America — Death to Israel" have appeared in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in recent days. There are at least five of the large signs in central Baghdad, some less than a mile from the U.S. Embassy, the Iraqi presidential palace and the national government's headquarters.

The signs appear to be part of a campaign by Iran, carried out through proxy groups that directly threaten U.S. troops in Iraq, to demonstrate its strength and reach in the region as tension between Washington and Tehran threatens to explode into conflict.

"The billboards erected in the streets of Baghdad are evidence of the government's inability to control pro-Iranian groups who want to drag Iraq into an international conflict that endangers the country's future on behalf of Iran," Atheel al-Nujaifi, the governor of Iraq's Nineveh province, said last week.

Iraqi political analyst and former presidential adviser Hiwa Osman told CBS News the signs show how firm a foothold Iran has in Iraq. "There isn't a difference between Iran and its militias inside Iraq," Osman said.

I'm becoming increasingly suspicious that our state building efforts in Iraq are falling short https://t.co/XeBsZNnDQ2

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) September 12, 2019

A pair of Australians now being held in a notorious Tehran prison have been identified as travel bloggers who were reportedly arrested for flying a drone without a licence.

Jolie King, a building designer, and Mark Firkin, an Australian construction manager, were named by Persian-language broadcaster Manoto TV.

The pair left Perth, Western Australia, in June 2017 by off road vehicle bound for the UK, planning to travel for two years driving across 36 countries. They have been documenting their travels on Instagram and Youtube with a stated aim of going to countries less likely to fall on the average traveller’s radar due to unsympathetic media coverage.

“Our biggest motivation behind making the vlogs is to hopefully inspire anyone wanting to travel, and also try to break the stigma around travelling to countries which get a bad wrap (sic) in the media,” they said in a post on crowd-funding platform Patreon.

The young British-Australian woman and her Australian partner were arrested 10 weeks ago, as Breitbart News reported.

King and Firkin have frequently used a drone in photos and videos published of their travels through Australia, Asia and the Middle East, with nearly 19,000 people following their adventures on their Instagram page.

No joke: U.N.'s "Human Rights Council" held panel just now to condemn Western sanctions on dictatorships.

On the dais:
🇻🇪 Venezuela Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, Chair of NAM
🇮🇷 Iran's UN rep
🇺🇳 UNHRC's Jean Ziegler, founder of the Qaddafi Prize
🇺🇳 UNHRC's Peggy Hicks, ex-@HRWpic.twitter.com/vgTkfK2UYy

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 12, 2019

Gazans burn synagogue in Netzarim

Mostly consistent across generations... was rejection of permanent peace with Israel. Asked if a two-state solution should be “the end of conflict with Israel,” just 34% of young West Bank respondents answered yes; the proportion was even lower among older residents (25%).

In Gaza, overall opinions on this and many related issues were somewhat more moderate, but the generational difference was reversed there: 38% of young Gazan respondents said that a two-state solution should end the conflict, while 46% of their elders agreed with that ideal. 

A new art installation lit up Jerusalem's skies Tuesday evening in a ceremony marking 18 years since the devastating attacks in the U.S. on September 11, 2001.

The ceremony held at the KKL-JNF 9/11 Living Memorial Plaza in Jerusalem Park presented an art installation called a “Tribute in Light.”

The installation comprises two 300-meter tall illuminated pillars shining from Emek Ha’arazim in the north of the city all the way to the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway.

At the ceremony, jointly held by KKL-JNF and JNF-USA, the beams were lit up by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, U.S. Ambassador David Friedman, KKL-JNF Chief Development Officer Ronnie Vinnikov and JNF-USA Chief Israel Officer Eric Michaelson.

The “Tribute in Light” has been held each year in New York in remembrance of the victims of the September 11 attacks, with Israel being the first country to participate in this ceremony outside of the United States.

“Tribute in Light” will continue through the annual 9/11 Memorial Ceremony on Wednesday until the morning of September 12.

To mark the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, columnist for the Jordanian Al-Dustour daily Ismail Al-Sharif, a previous CEO of the paper, wrote that the Muslims are the real victims of the attacks. Since September 11, 2001, he claimed, "no fewer than six million Muslims" have been killed in direct and indirect crimes and wars launched against Muslims by the West.

He explained that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and the West needed a new enemy to fight and chose Islam, as they saw it as a threat to Western civilization, and that ever since, and in particular ever since 9/11, the West has provoked wars in various Arab countries – Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and others. It is fanning the flames of these wars to this very day, he added, thus allowing Muslim blood to continue to be shed as they are slaughtered in droves. He urged Muslims to adhere to Islam and to instill its lofty values in their children, because this, he added, is the only way to become stronger and change the situation.

The following are translated excerpts from his column:
"In a few days it will be the 18th anniversary of the events of September 11, [2001], and on television we will see the victims' families shedding tears for their loved ones and hear commentary attempting to prove that this operation was nothing but a big conspiracy. Obviously, the president of the world's most powerful country [the U.S.] will deliver a speech in which he will say: 'These events have made the U.S. stronger.'

"[Meanwhile,] in other parts of the world, mothers will weep for children who died in an attack in the springtime of their lives; people will be arrested for no reason; refugees will be expelled; and people will be tortured. The common denominator of all these people is that they are Muslims – the greatest victims of the September 11 events. We will perhaps debate the question of whether the events were [indeed the result of] a conspiracy, or whether bin Laden planned them in a cave in Afghanistan. In this context, it should be mentioned that the well-known British journalist Robert Fisk wrote in one of his books that he had met with bin Laden in a cave in Afghanistan, and that bin Laden was eager to know what was happening in the world since the [only] source of information he had at the time was a two-month old copy of Newsweek!...

On September 11, 2019, Al-Sahab, the media arm of Al-Qaeda, released a video featuring the group's leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri urging the mujahideen in Palestine and across the Muslim ummah to target Israeli, U.S., European, and Russian interests worldwide.

In the video, which was posted on Al-Sahab's official Telegram channel,[1] Al-Zawahiri addressed Muslim scholars, who had condemned Al-Qaeda for killing unarmed civilians and asked them to attack U.S. and European military bases around the world if they want jihad to be only against military targets. Al-Zawahiri also accused Iran of partnering with the U.S. in its wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and praised the Taliban saying they have drained the U.S. "which sought to negotiate with Taliban to get out of Afghanistan."

The video, which is titled "And they shall continue fighting you" (Quran 2:217), started by condemning the U.S. and accusing it of continuing to be hostile against Islam and Muslims, citing President Trump's decisions to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, and recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights as examples.

Al-Zawahiri then claimed that the majority of Zionists throughout history have been non-Jews, saying Napoleon, Balfour, Mark Sykes, President Trump, and thousands of others were "non-Jew Zionists." According to Al-Zawahiri, "these Zionists plot against Muslims everywhere and immigrate to Israel from all over the world; therefore, it is necessary to take the battle to them everywhere."

Encouraging martyrdom-seeking mujahideen to carry out attacks around the world, Al-Zawahiri noted that those who want to wage jihad against Israel can do so anywhere. He said: "After ensuring that his target is permissible in the light of the shari'a, that no harm should occur to Muslims as a result of his actions, and that the benefits of his actions outweigh the costs, all he needs to do is to put his trust in Allah and head for his target after leaving a message that the aim of his jihad operation is avenging the crimes in Palestine and all such Muslim lands."

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has been monitoring, translating, and documenting content about them in Middle East- and South Asia-based media. For the 10th anniversary of 9/11, MEMRI launched its 9/11 Documentation Project, which examines the roots of the ideology that ultimately led to the attacks. It features primary-source material from Arab and Islamic print, broadcast, and online media, and from other sources; together with the archive of MEMRI research from the past two decades, it comprises the most extensive collection of material on this and related subjects in the world.

The MEMRI 9/11 Documentation Project includes MEMRI translations of documents from Al-Qaeda and affiliate organizations, speeches by and interviews with Al-Qaeda and affiliated leaders, wills and statements by the 9/11perpetrators and their colleagues, and Al-Qaeda recruitment and indoctrination materials. It also tracks and documents conspiracy theories from across the Arab and Muslim world denying any Arab responsibility for the attacks and implicating others in them.

Throughout 2019, MEMRI has added new clips and reports to the project website. Among these are an archival clip of a September 11, 2001 Iraq TV news bulletin in which a reporter stated, in a voice-over to footage of the burning World Trade Center and chaos in Manhattan, that the "heart of evil" had been struck; a clip of an official of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) organization stating that additional large-scale attacks in the U.S. after 9/11 would have caused the country's collapse; a clip of an Iranian filmmaker calling 9/11 a "fabricated crime" and reiterating the claim that 3,000 Jews had been warned the previous day to stay away from the area; a report from the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor on Al-Qaeda's Urdu-language magazine's commemoration of 9/11; and, from the MEMRI Sermons By Imams In The West project, a report on a Pittsburgh imam who in an audio recording stated that 9/11 – and most other terrorist attacks – were false flag operations.

The announcement of political activist Linda Sarsour’s appointment as Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign surrogate comes as little surprise to those who understand the enamorment of some on the political left with Islamism. The tendency for some on the left to assign the prestige of select victimhood as the pinnacle of American culture, allows them to be duped into believing Islamism is de facto Islam and not its appalling imposter.

In reality, Islamism’s right-wing supremacist totalitarian origins are only masked as a minority religion. Add to this the ill-disguised but virulent anti-Semitism that passes for anti-Zionism among some on the left, and American democracy has now mainlined Islamism into a presidential election.

The irony here is that Sarsour recently announced, “I would be so proud to win, but also to make history and elect the first Jewish American president this country has ever seen,” even as she has long endorsed an anti-Zionism consistent with Islamist sympathies.

Sarsour, the Muslim American of Palestinian origin, co-chair of the 2017 and 2019 Women’s March and former executive director of the Arab American Association, openly embodies contemporary anti-Zionist sympathies typical of an Islamist ideologue.

Her actions have long demonized Jewish Zionists and been perceived widely as anti-Semitism both in the Jewish community and beyond, including among those who work to combat contemporary anti-Semitism.

Sanders’ embrace of Sarsour means that the future of the Democrats as the progressive left envisions it will be defined through the lens of racist anti-Zionism.

A man speaking at a ceremony memorializing the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on Wednesday criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) for her comments in March that "some people did something" on 9/11.

Nic Haros spoke at the site of the twin towers in New York City to honor his mother and friends lost in the attacks on the World Trade Center. He pointed at his black t-shirt, which read "some people did something," and called out Omar.

"‘Some people did something,' said a freshman congresswoman from Minnesota to support and justify the creation of CAIR," Haros said. "Today I am here to respond to you exactly who did what to whom. Madam, objectively speaking, we know who and what was done. There is no uncertainty about that. Why your confusion?"

Haros then said members of al Qaeda had killed thousands of people and caused billions of dollars in economic damage.

"I was attacked. Your relatives and friends were attacked," he said, pointing at the audience. "Our constitutional freedoms were attacked. And our nation's founding on Judeo-Christian principles were attacked. That's what some people did. Got that now? We are here today, congresswoman, to tell you and the Squad just who did what to whom. Show respect in honoring them, please."

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) March 23 dismissal of the Islamic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 — describing the murder of thousands of Americans as “some people did something” — is “disgusting,” said Johnny Spann, father of Mike Spann, a former CIA officer and the first American killed in the war in Afghanistan.

Spann joined Wednesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow on the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Marlow asked if Americans are remembering and learning the lessons of 9/11.

“I think, maybe, the majority of people have made good on that,” replied Spann, “but I’m really fearsome that a lot of folks are forgetting [and] becoming complacent, again. You can just look around and see the people that we’ve elected to put into Congress and the Senate, and we’re beginning to get people with … that far-left mentality, and people that are not as vigilant to keep America strong and free. It worries me.”

Spann continued, “If you told me 20 years ago when this happened that we’d ever be in the position we’re in right now, I would’ve said, ‘No, we won’t be, because we’re all of one accord, right now,’ but, hopefully we’re going to be able to regain consciousness of what happened and [make sure] it can’t happen again.”

My status as wealthy Jewish-American grants me numerous privileges, which I acknowledge, but I savor none of them as much as I enjoy pontificating about the excessive measures the Jewish State takes to protect its citizens, a task I undertake from the comfort and sanctuary of the suite I inherited at Daddy’s firm.

Yesterday’s somber anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack on US soil in history called to mind the horrific events of that day, back when I was in an out-of-town college, and restrictions on New York-area air traffic prevented me from riding in my father’s helicopter all the way back home to be with him at our town house. The frustration, anger, and powerlessness of that time have stayed with me, forming part of what drives to work toward the prevention of anyone else’s concerns getting in the way of what I feel is right. Media images and commentary sympathetic only to Palestinian distress give me all I need to form an opinion about the generations-old conflict; suggesting that I absorb and assimilate the concerns of Israelis, even fellow Jews, takes me out of my comfort zone and will not put you on my list of people to invite to the next celebrity-studded event.

I do my assimilating on my own terms, ever since preschool.

Not surprisingly, the now-confirmed antisemites of @BDS_Wi are very proud of how they disrupted a showing at an Israeli film festival in Germany this week. They act like babies and they want everyone to see! OK:https://t.co/bWjm7i3F8O

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 12, 2019

A city councilman in Paterson, New Jersey, used the term “Jew us down” at a public meeting to criticize developers looking to buy land for less money.

Colleagues of Michael Jackson condemned his use of the term, calling it “highly insensitive,” “reprehensible” and “totally inappropriate.”

Councilman Al Abdelaziz, who is of Palestinian descent, was the first to call for an apology, the Paterson Times news site reported. Business administrator Vaughn McKoy left the council chambers after hearing the remark.

Jackson called the comment a “mistake.”

“That statement should have never been made. I ask everyone to forgive me for my brief lack of sensitivity,” he said, adding that he meant it with “no malice.”

Jackson said he heard the phrase growing up and that it was then a “term of endearment.”

The Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, Richard Burgon MP, reportedly participated in a “Standing with Corbyn” rally in Brighton on Monday along with numerous activists who have been suspended by the Party over their comments about Jews and Israel.

In addition to Mr Burgon, who has stated that “Zionism is the enemy of peace” and then lied about having done so, other prominent activists to appear at the rally included Lara McNeil, who represents Young Labour on Labour’s National Executive Committee, and Liam Young, an activist running for the London Assembly.

According to political website Guido Fawkes, participants in the rally included:

• Daniel Harris, who was reportedly suspended from Labour after posting a video of councillors who had stood up to antisemitism adorned with Jewish prayer shawls and skullcaps;
• Alex Braithwaite, who was suspended from the Party over a series of tweets which included conspiracy theories about Israel and the Rothschild family, as well as dismissing Labour antisemitism as a smear;
• Anne Mitchell, who was reportedly suspended from the Party over allegedly antisemitic posts; and
• Mel Melvin, who left the Labour Party (which has not disclosed whether she was expelled or suspended) over tweets claiming that Israel faked a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad against his own people.

In case any further evidence were needed that the Labour Party’s disciplinary process is entirely unfit for purpose, even those who are removed from the Party over antisemitism are apparently still able to participate in its activities. Even more appallingly, senior figures in the Party are evidently happy to associate with them. Clearly, Labour’s leadership cannot be trusted to address the antisemitism crisis, which cannot be solved by those who created it.

A party’s conference is their opportunity to allow members to debate policy, market their party to donors, and show the public the best of what their party has to offer. The Labour party are ensuring they tick this last box this year with a number of very questionable fringe events this year, featuring Jackie Walker and Chris Williamson.

Labour conference-goers can also look forward to a “Labour Against the Witchhunt” meeting with Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker. The problem for Labour is surely within their party these views are no longer fringe…

Labour's candidate in Finchley and Golders Green has announced she is standing down after a backlash against her for saying that antisemitism had been "weaponised."

Sources close to Sara Conway have told the JC she believed she could not continue as Labour's parliamentary candidate in the marginal seat after the reaction from Jewish voters over her comments.

In the interview last week with the Jewish News, Ms Conway sparked fury by saying: "You can’t weaponise without there being a problem but this issue has been weaponised by certain media commentators. I don’t mean necessarily in the community."

While stressing that she was not seeking to “dismiss or push back” claims about antisemitism she said she felt the row had been “whipped up”.

The Barnet councillor later conceded she "used the wrong word by saying weaponised" and then claimed she was "referring to Far Right commentators particularly on Twitter who use this issue as a political football to create polarisation and division."

"UNESCO seems to have taken a position against" a planned Holocaust memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens in Westminster, London, said Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations Dr. Shimon Samuels in a press release.

The concept for the Making Memory UK National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre was born in 2015, but the planning application is still being considered by Westminster City Council.

Royal Parks, a charity, described the gardens as a "highly sensitive location in planning and heritage terms," insisting that “the structure will dominate the park and eclipse the existing listed memorials which are nationally important in their own right.”

The park is currently home to three other memorials.

A member of the "Save Victoria Tower Gardens" campaign claimed that “The scale... is deliberately obtrusive because it’s intended to be shocking and attention-grabbing” and that the memorial should be moved to Westminster's College Green or the Imperial War Museum.

"The memorial is designed to honour the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and all other victims of Nazi persecution, including Roma, LGBT and the disabled," said Samuels. "The planners argue that they will take up 27% of the green space currently in the park...Its propinquity to the British Parliament aims to focus on the need to sensitize the public and their MP’s to the dangers of bigotry, prejudice, hate and violence against the other."

A speech by a Palestinian man accused of having significant ties to a terrorist organization was moved off the University of Toronto campus following protests by Jewish groups.

Issam Al-Yamani, who lives in Canada, is alleged by the Canadian government to have played a significant role in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and has been under a deportation order since 2006. He was to speak on Tuesday night.

But the groups hosting the event — Students Against Israeli Apartheid U of T St George, the Canadian Union of Public Employees 3902 Racialized Workers’ Caucus and U of T Divest — announced the night before that the address titled “Worker Solidarity, Israeli Apartheid and Struggle for Palestine” would be held at a venue off campus and not related to the university.

Al-Yamani spoke at a building belonging to a branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents professors and teaching assistants at the university.

“We are surprised that a Canadian union representing public employees would agree to allow someone to speak at their office who is an accused terrorist, someone alleged to have been involved in terrorist operations that led to the death of children,” Avi Benlolo, president and CEO of the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said in a statement.

The New York Times deleted a tweet and updated a piece Wednesday after writing that the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred when "airplanes took aim" at the World Trade Center.

"18 years have passed since airplanes took aim and brought down the World Trade Center," the Times Twitter account tweeted. "Today, families will once again gather and grieve at the site where more than 2000 people died." The language about the airplanes "taking aim" was lifted from the linked Times piece.

The Times's assignment of agency to inanimate planes, and apparent reluctance to acknowledge that they were flown by Islamic terrorists, immediately sparked mockery and criticism. "Man, those towers really must have done something to upset those airplanes," read one typical tweet. Others noted that "more than 2000 people" was an awkward descriptor, when the casualty total was closer to 3,000.

Eventually the Times deleted the tweet and updated its piece. The piece now reads, "Eighteen years have passed since terrorists commandeered airplanes to take aim at the World Trade Center and bring them down."

It is pretty incredible that on the 18th anniversary of 9/11, the NYT online op-ed page has precisely one editorial on that historic marker -- and it’s about the effects of Islamophobia on American Muslims post-9/11. pic.twitter.com/dpBAZO3eJG

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 11, 2019

A series of Agence France-Presse photograph captions this week erased the crimes of Bassam al-Sayeh, a Hamas field commander convicted for the authorization and finance of the murder of Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin, shot to death in front of their four children as they were driving in the West Bank in October 2015.

When al-Sayeh died this week in Israeli prison, as a result of complications from cancer, AFP photo captions ignored both his crime and his disease. While the captions noted that he died in Israeli prison, and included many other biographical details such as his age, that he was from Nablus, that he was allegedly the 221st Palestinian prisoner to die in Israeli jail, and that he was arrested by Israeli forces in October 2015, they omitted the two key points to understanding why he died in prison. 1) He died from his disease. 2) He was in prison for his role in a double murder. The failure to note his fatal medication condition falsely implies that he died due to prison conditions.

Here is a sample of the many incomplete captions AFP which omit his terror conviction but nevertheless include far less significant and less relevant biographical information about al-Sayeh:

Notably, the posters featured in the above photo are emblazoned with an antisemitic, inciting poem that originated in North Africa and is popular among Islamists including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. The poem reads:

Take a hear that became as hard as iron
Take it and stone [with it] all Jews
Take my spirit/soul that will provide shade to you all
It didn’t live while flapping [it wings] from far away
My people, be patient for the dawn is coming
And the sun of victory shall rise again

Having learned that as-Sayeh died of cancer, the outlets (AFP on Sep. 9, Independent Arabia on Sep. 9 and Sky News Arabia on Sep. 8) uncritically quoted Palestinian officials who leveled allegations at “the Occupation” (i.e, Israel) for “medical negligence”, “withholding treatment” and engaging in a “slow-motion execution” – though without providing any evidence of such conduct.

Even more telling was the fact that all three outlets ignored as-Sayeh’s conviction in an Israeli court for a series of terrorist acts, the most significant being his role in the murder of Eitam and Na’ama Henkin in October 2015.

The Itamar couple was gunned down in front of their four children while driving the family car, and As-Sayeh was found responsible for funding and authorizing the attack. While AFP and Independent Arabia mentioned his involvement as merely an Israeli accusation used to justify his “arrest” (thus omitting his conviction), Sky News Arabia – a venture between UK-based Sky News and UAE-based Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corp – ignored his connection to the attack altogether:
AFP:
“As-Sayeh was arrested in 2015, having been accused of participation in the shooting deaths of two Israeli settlers near the settlement of Itamar […]. The Israeli prosecution demanded that as-Sayeh be sentenced to life in prison.”

The report also refers as-Sayeh as “detainee” (Arabic: Mu’taqal) rather than “captive/prisoner” (Aseer/Sajeen), thus creating the false impression he was still waiting trial, or sentencing, at the time of his death.

Independent Arabia:
“Four years after the arrest of Bassam as-Sayeh under the accusation of killing two settlers near the city of Nablus, the latter has died after a long suffering from blood and bone cancer, [which lasted] since 2011.”

Ironically, the most decisive confirmation of as-Sayeh’s involvement in the Henkins’ murder appears in Hamas’ response, which was indirectly quoted by Independent Arabia:
“The ‘Izz ad-Deen al-Qassam battalions, the military wing of Hamas movement, has stated that Bassam as-Sayeh was one of its field leaders, and one of those who committed the ‘Itamar attack’ in October 2015.”

If you are still on @facebook take this account down NOW! this vile excuse for an account apparently sharing too many lost cats can lead to a 30day suspension but sharing #Jew hate is fine ! #Antisemitismpic.twitter.com/YBOcsqr9ev

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 11, 2019

Italian Auschwitz survivor and senator for life Liliana Segre gave an impassioned speech warning against hatred in public discourse and urging a more humane and open society, ahead of the vote on the new country’s government on Tuesday, a day that also marked Segre’s 89th birthday.

Addressing the Italian Parliament’s highest chamber, the senator announced that she would vote in favor of the unprecedented coalition formed by the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, and the center-left Democratic Party “with some concerns but also with hopes.”

A month-long political crisis in Rome officially came to an end on Tuesday, with the new government receiving a green light.

Born into a Jewish family in 1930 in Milan, Segre was expelled from public school in September 1938, after fascist dictator Benito Mussolini passed anti-Jewish laws in the country.

In January 1944, she was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 13, after she and her father had been sent back to Italy by Swiss guards who patrolled the border to prevent hunted Jews from finding refuge in the neutral and Nazi-free country.

President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella appointed her senator for life ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2018.

The city of Rome is going to replace street names dedicated to scientists who signed the anti-Jewish Manifesto della Razza (Racial Manifesto) in 1938, and rename them after scholars who opposed and were persecuted by the fascist regime, including two Jewish scientists, Mayor Virginia Raggi announced on Tuesday.

The process for changing the names of the selected streets started about a year ago. A motion was approved by Rome’s municipal council, Raggi wrote on Facebook, adding that the actual rededication might take a little longer.

Students and residents of the neighborhoods where the streets are located participated in the process of choosing the new, historical figures to honor.

The streets are currently named after Arturo Donaggi and Edoardo Zavattari. Zavattari was a biologist who promoted the idea of scientific racism, and Donaggi was a psychiatrist.

The Racial Manifesto, which they both promoted along with other prominent Italian scholars, became the ideological and pseudo-scientific base of the racial policies of the regime.

A New York activist who is gay and Jewish tweeted a video he took on his cellphone of a stranger who approached him at a Manhattan subway station and demanded he remove his pink kippa.

The man told Adam Eli that he was “desecrating the name of God.” In addition to the pink kippa, Eli was carrying a pink bedazzled purse and wearing a denim jacket with a rainbow patch and the words Never Again is Now surrounding an upside-down pink triangle.

“Stay in the closet,” the man, who has not been identified, also shouted. “Make sure your closet is in another closet… this is not Judaism!”

The man followed Eli for several blocks before Eli, fearing for his safety, ducked into a store in an effort to get away. He did not file a police report.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the video has been viewed 1.2 million times.

A man who committed an antisemitic assault in Symmes Township, Ohio, is now at large after failing to surrender to prison authorities.

According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, Izmir Ali Koch, 34, was convicted of beating a man outside a restaurant after voicing a series of antisemitic threats.

On Feb. 4, 2017, Koch began shouting that he hated Jews and “wanted to slaughter them.”

He asked a group of people, “Who is a Jew?” One man, who was not in fact Jewish, replied that he was. Koch then assaulted him and beat him to the ground, causing facial fractures.

The victim has relocated for fear that he will attacked again by Koch or his “associates.”

Prosecutors pointed out that Koch had shown no remorse whatsoever, saying, “Koch denies yelling antisemitic remarks, denies attacking the victim, denies lying to the FBI, and even denies that the victim and witnesses in this case experienced fear.”

Koch was convicted on federal hate crimes charges and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. However, the judge permitted him to self-surrender.

Prosecutors criticized this decision, saying that Koch was financially capable of flight, but the decision stood.

The British government’s research and development agency – UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – will partner with experts from Israel, the US and China to study the evolution and transmission of infectious diseases.

Led by UKRI’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the joint project will examine the interaction between humans, livestock, crops, wild animals and plants, which can lead to diseases spreading.

Many devastating diseases have proved able to cross the species barrier and infect humans, including Zika, Ebola, African Swine Fever and Anthrax.

UKRI has announced that it will contribute £8.3 million ($10.2m.) to the joint research project. The agency also unveiled new collaborative projects with US experts to examine subpolar ocean currents in the North Atlantic and with Chinese researchers to create products and services to help the elderly.

Participating in the international effort together with UKRI to combat infectious diseases will be the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Agriculture and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

German multinational software firm SAP SE is setting up an accelerator program in Israel, seeking new technologies in order to expand the portfolio of technologies and services it can provide to customers.

The Foundry program will be run by SAP.iO, a strategic business unit of SAP set up in 2017 to work closely with startups and tap into their innovations. The unit either invests in early stage startups or runs accelerator programs that provide selected startups with mentorships, a co-working space, and access to its 400,000 customers globally who can work closely with entrepreneurs to make sure their specific needs are met. The program will also make available data and SAP platforms startups may need to develop their technologies.

“There is a huge ecosystem of very innovative startups in Israel,” said Alexa Gorman, head of SAP.iO Foundries EMEA. “Tapping into these startups will enable SAP “to provide our customers with innovation that we are not necessarily going to develop ourselves.”

The SAP.iO Fund has to date invested in four Israeli startups, out of a portfolio of a total of 24 firms, Gorman said.

Watch the real story of Israel and how it treats its minority groups in this revealing piece.

A US woman from western Michigan who authored a book chronicling her efforts that helped save hundreds of Jews in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation of World War II has died.

Diet Eman died September 3 in Grand Rapids at age 99, according to Seymour Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids.

Eman was born in the Netherlands and was part of an underground resistance following Nazi Germany’s 1940 invasion of the northern European nation. Her 1994 memoirs, “Things We Couldn’t Say,” detailed how Eman provided forged identification cards and shelter for Jews, and how she helped allied pilots shot down by the German military.

During a 2015 visit to Grand Rapids, Dutch King Willem-Alexander called Eman one of his country’s “national heroes,” according to MLive.com.

“We had to help the Jewish people,” Eman told WXMI-TV in a 2017 interview. “You live by prayer … ‘Lord these are your people and we want to help them.'”

Eman also told the television station that she had a fake identification card when stopped by Gestapo inspectors and taken to a prison.

“I was always traveling because they were after me and I had a false name,” she said. “I had so many different names.”

Oxfam has received substantial USAID funding in recent years. In order to be eligible for funding, Oxfam had to execute certifications indicating that it has not provided material support or resources to terrorist persons or entities in the last 10 years.

...From approximately 2013 to 2017, Oxfam sponsored a project in the Gaza Strip to promote agriculture in urban and suburban areas. The project came to be known as "GUPAP," which stands for "Gaza Urban and Peri-Urban Agricultural Platform."

Among other things, the GUPAP project provided support and assistance to the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of National Economy in Gaza.

Since Hamas controls the government in the Gaza Strip, the substantial effect of such assistance is to aid Hamas, which has been a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department since 1997. 

Even when Iran was killing American and British soldiers in Iraq, or when its proxy army Hezbollah bombed the US embassy in Beirut in 1983, and the Israel embassy, and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994, the West failed to treat these as acts of war.

It failed to do so even after Iran seized a British-registered oil tanker this summer in the Strait of Hormuz and harassed other commercial shipping there.

It was revealed this week that two British-Australian women and one man have been arrested and jailed in Iran, adding to a growing number of British nationals being effectively held as hostages in Iranian jails.

And yet, Britain has not only been a principal cheerleader for the Obama nuclear deal but, along with the European Union, is seeking ruses to get round the sanctions on Iran reimposed by America.

It is still possible that Trump will hold firm against Iran. If he does not, Israel will act alone to defend itself if that becomes unavoidable; and if that happens, the United States will find itself unavoidably sucked into a terrible war.

John Bolton’s steady and clear-minded focus on preventing this from happening was a standing rebuke to the feeble-minded West that has supinely stood by as this unconscionable threat by the Iranian regime has remorselessly increased.

Bolton has now left the West Wing; but Boltonism — the strategic grasp of how to defend the West against its mortal foes — must not be allowed to disappear with him.

With Bolton’s departure, the world has not become a safer place. It has become far more dangerous.

From the day he took up his duties a year and a half ago as Trump’s third national security adviser, Bolton was under assault. The campaign against Bolton was initiated by the Iranian regime.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif blamed poor US-Iran relations on Bolton, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Zarif’s campaign was quickly joined by Obama administration officials who took to the US media parroting the same allegations. The Iranians, by their telling, were guileless lambs. The big bad wolves were Bolton, Netanyahu, and the crown prince.

In recent months, as Iran stepped up its aggression against international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, the attacks against Bolton were joined by members of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party led by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

It is true that Bolton is known as a prickly policymaker, out of his element in the Trump world. But it is also true that Trump and Bolton agreed far more than they disagreed. Unfortunately, every time there was a dispute between the two men, former President Barack Obama's carry-overs in government and their allies outside government from the Obama administration and the media were quick to report those disagreements and angrily slander Bolton as a warmonger and a mercenary who had neither America’s nor the president’s best interests at heart.

The allegations were entirely false. But their force and volume transformed every normal and entirely legitimate disagreement between Bolton and Trump into a major, widely reported event.

Under the circumstances, it was probably a foregone conclusion that Bolton’s days would be numbered.

In other words, Bolton’s departure had more to do with the stress of working in the toxic environment in Washington than with a change in Trump’s basic predisposition regarding foreign policy.

Asked on Wednesday whether the US would ease up its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, Trump left open the possibility that he would ease sanctions, saying “We’ll see what happens.”

“I do believe they’d like to make a deal,” Trump added. “If they do, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s great too.”

Not long after, The Daily Beast reported that Trump is also open to a proposal from Macron to extend a $15b. line of credit to the Iranians if they comply with the Iran Deal.

These recent developments follow a trend that is extremely dangerous, and it appears that there is no longer someone in the White House fighting Iran.

Iran has never stopped cheating, and sanctions have been putting the necessary pressure on the regime. Lifting them now would squander all of Trump’s work before Tehran is ready to make real concessions. And a $15b. credit infusion would allow Iran to bolster its sponsorship of terrorism across the Middle East.

Trump has, thus far, been a good friend to Israel. Most of the Israeli political spectrum views his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and of the Golan Heights as part of Israel to be extremely positive; and while he plans to present his “Deal of the Century” later this month, he is not expected to put undue pressure on Israel.

But if Trump were to repeat his performance with Pyongyang – talking tough about North Korea before negotiating weakly without following up – in the Iranian arena, he would be putting Israel in great danger.

Trump needs to be a true friend to Israel, and not a fair-weather friend that would pander to those who seek to destroy us. The Iranian threat not only endangers Israel; it is a matter of national security, and, as Netanyahu said, the way to handle it is through “pressure, pressure and more pressure.”

His message to the “tyrants of Tehran”: “Israel knows what you’re doing … and will continue to expose your lies.”

His message to the rest of the world: Iran’s “consistent pattern of lies, deception and violations” about its nuclear weapons program is ample reason “to join President Trump’s sanctions to exert more pressure on Iran. The only way to stop Iran’s march to the bomb . . . is pressure, pressure and more pressure.”

Critics painted Netanyahu’s announcement as a ploy heading into next week’s Israeli elections. In fact, it was an answer to Iran’s ongoing efforts to restore its privileges under the nuke deal: Just days earlier, for example, its foreign minister threatened to resume research that Tehran (supposedly) had suspended under the agreement.

He wasn’t playing domestic politics, just fighting back against Iran’s relentless drive to manipulate European and US politicians into letting it off the hook.

Iran is concentrating all its resources today trying to save the formidable benefits it gained in the Iran nuclear deal (the JCPOA). In the eyes of the Islamic regime in Tehran, the deal is worth keeping even after the U.S. withdrawal because it allows Iran to move safely towards attaining a large arsenal of nuclear weapons in 11 years.

It could not make it to the first bomb before the deal, because Iran could not safely cross the threshold between accumulating enough enriched uranium to produce a bomb and actually making one. In addition, the deal legitimized Iranian efforts to develop long-range missiles and its wide intervention in Middle Eastern countries, and provided Iran with the financial resources necessary to pursue these policies.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei reacted to the American maximum pressure by turning to brinkmanship - taking action that clearly demonstrates to the U.S. that pressuring Iran is costly and could trigger unwanted escalation. He hopes to force the U.S. to succumb to Iranian pressure and ease the sanctions to avoid escalation.

Israel always considered the JCPOA as a dangerous and disastrous deal. It wants to make sure that the U.S. preserves its position of strength if and when negotiations with Iran start on a new agreement.

Iran's multi-national arms build-up forced Israel to alter its defensive strategies, triggering new and aggressive actions in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, where Iran stores medium-range rockets that can reach Israel at camps controlled by Shiite militias. It is understood in the region that Israel was forced to behave this way by Iran.

Israel has proved again that it enjoys a profound intelligence dominance (manifested by the Mossad seizing the nuclear archives from Tehran) and air superiority over Iran and its proxies. Israel has shown that it can protect itself and foil attempts to hurt it. Israel also proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a strategic asset for the U.S., for the pragmatic Arab states, and for the liberal democracies.

In the Middle East, this has meant that the Chinese government's ambitions have grown in the past five years from merely buying energy and selling arms to a far deeper involvement. Symbolic of this transformation, annual Chinese investment in the region a decade ago amounted to $1 billion; at just a single forum recently, it pledged $23 billion in loans and development aid. In August, it sent a $1 billion cash infusion to Turkey alone.

Militarily, Beijing become a leading contributor to UN peacekeeping operations, sent the People's Liberation Army Navy on visits to many ports, and opened its first regional base in Djibouti in 2015. The future presumably holds many more Chinese military bases.

As Beijing begins to "alter politics and security in the region," Berman notes "tremendous consequences." Here are three:

U.S.-Israel ties: China's leaders so appreciate the Jewish state's technological prowess that they invested $3.2 billion in the first half of 2019 and now are estimated to control or have influence over as much as one-quarter of Israel's tech industry, including military contractors working on confidential projects with American firms. Indeed China may soon replace America as Israel's single largest source of investment, a prospect that not only has official Washington "increasingly alarmed" but could damage a decades-long, particularly close and productive bond.

Xinjiang: China's massive repression of its Muslim population, especially of the Uyghurs in its far western province of Xinjiang, has met with a collective shrug from such Muslim notables as Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This inexcusable lack of concern contrasts dramatically with the Muslim world's prolonged tantrum over little Israel's far milder treatment of the Palestinians, It also signals that China's size, power, and ruthlessness renders it free to repress Islamic religion and culture within its domains and perhaps beyond.

While Beijing insists officially that its rapidly growing involvement in the Middle East—arms sales, trade deals, technology-sharing agreements, and massive infrastructure projects—is purely economic and politically neutral, Ilan Berman discerns something more sinister. As an example, Berman points to the muted reactions of such Muslim rulers as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi Arabia’s Muhammad bin Salman to China’s massive and brutal persecution of the Muslim Uighurs of its northwest, noting that China has invested heavily in both Turkey and Saudi Arabia:

[W]hen the region’s most influential leaders have chosen to weigh in on China’s anti-Muslim offensive, they have done so in support of Beijing, rather than in opposition to it. . . . The result is tantamount to an abandonment of Chinese Muslims by their Middle Eastern co-religionists for economic reasons. The signal sent to Beijing is that its domestic policies, no matter how repressive, will be considered off-limits for criticism or inspection so long as the price is right. That, in turn, is likely to fuel Beijing’s current offensive of forcing assimilation and subservience among its Muslim minority by any means necessary.

Arguably the most profound effect of China’s expanding presence in the Middle East, however, has been its adverse impact on governance throughout the region. Today, the digitally enabled authoritarianism that China’s government has used to great effect to reshape its own society in a more rigid, censored, and compliant direction has begun to proliferate in the countries of the Middle East. Most blatantly, Chinese companies have long helped Iran’s clerical regime to repress its own people, [sometimes] doing so in violation of U.S. sanctions.

Egypt has similarly allowed the PRC to obtain a major stake in its communications sector and to disseminate technologies that have strengthened President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s grip on power at the expense of freedom of expression there. . . . Other regional states could soon head in the same direction. . . . The “China model” of social control could thus easily become an export commodity in Beijing’s dealings with the Middle East—much to the detriment of prospects for pluralism and democracy in the region.

A "screaming match" occurred on Tuesday before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to annex the Jordan Valley after the elections between Netanyahu and senior security leaders.

The conversation involved a difficult exchange between the prime minister and the security officials over his upcoming announcement.

Netanyahu's announcement was delayed by over an hour due to the conversation.

According to some sources, Netanyahu told them of his intention to announce the immediate annexation of the West Bank but changed his position due to harsh criticism from several heads of security branches, as well as legal opinions which addressed potential difficulties attendant to such an annexation as this. Netanyahu had called the security officials a short time before he was to make his speech.

None of the heads of the security bodies who were said to criticize Netanyahu agreed to comment.

With the election just four days away, Benjamin Netanyahu has gone on a blitz of interviews, yelling his trademark “Gevalt” to pull votes away from the smaller right-wing parties.

An examination of what the prime minister has said in interviews and his own broadcasts found that not everything has been entirely accurate. Here are seven incorrect statements from the past two weeks:

1. Likud will lose: Netanyahu told KAN on Thursday morning that if the election happened now, he would not win the election. But pollster Rafi Smith, who takes polls for both Netanyahu and Maariv, found that Likud would win the most seats in the election.

2. Mandelblit blocked annexation: In the KAN interview, Netanyahu said that he would have annexed the Jordan Valley before the election but Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit blocked him. The Justice Ministry released a statement shortly thereafter denying this, saying that Netanyahu asked a more general question about legislation in a transition government. The Central Elections Committee fined Likud on Thursday for saying Netanyahu’s Jordan Valley speech was not election propaganda when it was.

3. Quitting before disengagement: In an August 30 Facebook Live post, Netanyahu said the Right was wrong to blame him for the 2005 Gaza Strip withdrawal. “The moment [then-prime minister Ariel] Arik Sharon said he would evacuate communities, I quit,” Netanyahu said. Netanyahu not only stayed in the cabinet, he repeatedly voted for disengagement and refused the calls of rebel Likud MKs to stop it. Netanyahu only quit on August 9, 2005, six days before the withdrawal, when it was no longer possible to prevent the withdrawal.

Even our friends in the US know how terrible the Israeli media is.https://t.co/TBM8P6S2Qi

— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) September 13, 2019

France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom issued a statement on Friday expressing “deep concern” at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement Tuesday of intention to annex the Jordan Valley.

“We are deeply concerned about the announcement of possible annexation of areas in the West Bank, particularly the Jordan valley and the northern portion of the Dead Sea,” the statement read.

“This would, if implemented, constitute a serious breach of international law. France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom will continue to call on all parties to refrain from actions in contravention of international law that would imperil the viability of a two-state solution, based on the 1967 lines, and make it harder to achieve a just and lasting peace.”

The statement said that the five countries “are clear about Israel’s right to security and strongly condemn recent attacks on Israel from Gaza.”

Interestingly, the statement came in the name of those five countries, and not the whole 28-member EU. While the EU did not issue a formal condemnation, an EU spokesperson was quoted this week as saying that the EU “will not recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties.”

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he did not believe Israel was spying on the United States after a published report said Israel was most likely behind cellphone surveillance devices found near the White House and elsewhere in Washington, DC.

Politico reported the miniature surveillance devices, colloquially known as “StingRays,” were discovered and that they were most likely linked to the Israelis.

Israel has denied the report.

“I don’t believe that,” Trump stated on Thursday about the report. “No, I don’t think the Israelis were spying on us. I really would find that hard to believe.”

“My relationship with Israel has been great,” he added. “You look at Golan Heights. You look at Jerusalem — with moving the embassy to Jerusalem becoming the capital. You look at even the Iran deal — what’s happened with Iran. Iran is a much different country right now than it was two and a half years ago. It’s a much — it’s in a much different position.”

“No, I don’t believe that,” Trump reiterated. “I wouldn’t believe that story. It could — anything’s possible, but I don’t believe it.”

IT WAS a family Shabbat dinner with his wife and children at his home in New Jersey when he raised the possibility of leaving the administration. “It started over many discussions over Shabbat, but it lasted way into the Sunday night barbecue,” he says.

Asked why he wouldn’t stay to try to promote direct negotiations between the sides once the plan is revealed, he says it could take a long time.

“Originally, I planned to stay approximately two years. I’ve stayed close to three years now. I do have an obligation to be a father and a husband. I’ve neglected my family in many ways, and I think the time has come for me to start transitioning out so I could go back to being a father and a husband.”

Some of his kids, he says, told him to keep working on the peace team. “My family has been exceptional. They all have that attitude, which is that I should stay, but I know on their faces that it’s hard. It’s hard on Sunday when we separate until Friday. They’ve been incredibly supportive. I have to say that after last Thursday, after the announcement, we all felt a sense of tremendous relief, knowing that at some point over the coming period – we don’t know if it’s weeks to months, we’ll see – knowing that I’m finally going to be back home.”

He says he still believes that despite the Palestinian refusal to engage with the US peace team, the plan can still succeed.

“I think that we have crafted something that’s different than the past but gives both sides a tremendous hope for the future,” Greenblatt says. “So, I think that if both sides study it and stay away from the political talk and understand that we delivered a realistic plan – one that is actually implementable, not one that just talks in lofty ideals, I think there is a chance that something good could come out of it”

Future US sanctions could target allies of Hezbollah in Lebanon, extending beyond direct affiliates of the Iran-backed Shi’ite Muslim group, a US envoy said on Thursday.

“In the future we will designate, because we have to, individuals in Lebanon who are aiding and assisting Hezbollah, regardless of their sect or religion,” the new US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs David Schenker said in an interview with Lebanon‘s LBCI television.

When asked by the interviewer if this means sanctions will target allies of Hezbollah, Schenker said “absolutely,” adding that the United States is constantly reviewing its sanctions lists.

The proposed targeting of allies of Hezbollah has been a sensitive subject for Lebanon in the past.

In 2017 a draft copy of proposed, tighter US sanctions on Hezbollah caused disquiet in Lebanon because the wording, seen by Reuters, implied the legislation could target the Shi’ite Amal movement of parliament speaker Nabih Berri for investigation.

Lebanon‘s Maronite Christian President Michel Aoun is also a political ally of Hezbollah.

Targeting both Amal and Hezbollah and their associates — the two parties representing Lebanon‘s Shi’ite population — risked marginalizing a large section of society, banking and political sources said at the time.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday morning, upon returning from a brief visit to Russia, that war with terror groups in the Gaza Strip could break out “at any moment.”

Rockets have been fired at Israeli cities and communities multiple times over the past week — with most intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system or landing in open areas — drawing retaliatory Israeli airstrikes. On Tuesday night, two rockets were launched at Ashdod during a campaign rally in the city by the premier, who was whisked off the stage by his bodyguards to take shelter.

In his comments, which came hours after he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Netanyahu asserted, “An operation in Gaza could happen at any moment, including four days before the elections. The date of the elections does not factor [into a decision to go to war].”

Israelis go to the polls on Tuesday, September 17. Netanyahu, who is facing stiff competition in his bid to reclaim the premiership, has been seeking to hammer home his credentials and past achievements in security and diplomacy, but ongoing attacks from Gaza have remained a nagging thorn in his side, repeatedly exploited by his political rivals.

For many of those rivals, the scenes of Netanyahu being forced to take shelter from rockets provided a counterpoint to the image he has attempted to cultivate as Mr. Security, highlighting what they say is his government’s failure to deal with ongoing attacks from Gaza terror groups.

The Israeli military has informed the families of two Palestinians suspected of murdering Israeli student Dvir Sorek last month that it plans to demolish their homes.

On August 7, Nazir Saleh Khalil Atafra, 24, and Qasem Araf Khalil Atafra, 30, are believed to have stabbed to death the 18-year-old Sorek outside of his religious seminary in the West Bank settlement of Migdal Oz.

The two were arrested two days later after a manhunt.

The army said Thursday that the families were also informed they “can request an injunction against the demolition.”

The army’s notice comes exactly a month after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised on August 12 that the homes of the two suspects’ families would be demolished in the near future.

Ori Ansbacher, 19, was brutally murdered in a Palestinian terrorist attack in Jerusalem on Feb. 7. Feeling that she could not be the only one who felt the outrage and pain, Bat Sheva Sadan posted on Facebook that others should send her 10cm x 10cm embroideries that she would put together to make a chuppah (a marriage canopy). She was expecting around 20 and hoping for 80. People of all ages and from all over the world created and sent in 5,000 intricate and beautiful pieces of embroidery work.

With a lot more than enough for the chuppah, she decided to make a tapestry. The stories behind the embroideries were amazing as well. Someone gave a piece of her wedding dress. Another used special fabric she got from her grandmother. Some of the fabric survived the Holocaust.

The tapestry is 22 meters long and 3 meters tall and is currently hanging in the Cardo, in the Old City of Jerusalem. Everyone who sees it is moved by the expression of hope and solidarity.

71.5% of Arab Israelis are satisfied with their life in Israel, according to a poll commissioned by the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University.

65.2% believe they are generally treated equally, and 64.7% have an overall positive view of the state.

But when asked to rate their sense of belonging in the country on a scale of 1 to 10, the average response was 4.

Respondents defined their identities thus: 33.5% Arab Israeli, 17.3% Israeli, 16.3% Palestinian Israeli, 14.1% Arab, 14.1% Palestinian, and 4.6% "other."

59.2% said crime, unemployment, welfare, and housing should top the Arab parties' political agenda; only 13.3% said Arab lawmakers should focus on the Palestinian issue.

Lebanon said Friday that a Lebanese-American has been referred to prosecutors after confessing he’d worked for Israel.

Amer Fakhoury was detained after returning to his native Lebanon from the United States earlier this month. He had worked as warden at the Khiam Prison in southern Lebanon that was run by an Israeli-backed militia, known as the South Lebanon Army, until Israel ended an 18-year occupation of the area in 2000.

Lebanon and Israel have been officially at war since Israel’s creation in 1948.

The Lebanese General Security Directorate said Friday Fakhoury used an Israeli passport before Israel’s withdrawal to travel from Israel to the US

Hundreds of former Lebanese members of the militia had fled to Israel, fearing reprisal if they remained in Lebanon. Others stayed and faced trial, receiving lenient sentences.

Israel has been cutting down on the number of medical treatment permits it issues to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, fearing that they are being abused to move illegally to the West Bank, state prosecutors reportedly told the High Court of Justice this week.

Prosecutors disclosed the efforts on Wednesday in a response to a High Court of Justice petition filed by Arab human rights groups, the Haaretz daily reported.

According to Haaretz, the prosecutors said cutting the number of permits issued was part of active steps to “halt the growth” of Palestinians moving from Gaza to the West Bank without a permit from Israel. The response said that Israel regards them as “illegal aliens.”

Prosecutors said that since 2017, there has been a sharp uptick in the number of Gazans making the move.

As of mid-2018, 2,671 Gazans were living in the West Bank without an Israeli permit. Just over half of them, 1,397, were granted a permit to leave Gaza for medical reasons but never returned.

The recent study "Israel, Jews and Peace in Palestinian Authority Teachers' Guides" by Dr. Arnon Groiss, based on 89 Palestinian teachers' guides published in 2016-18, showed that they promote delegitimization, demonization and war indoctrination instead of peace education. Groiss told JNS that Jewish "cowardice,""slyness,""deceit," and "greed" are repeated in teachers' guides to define Jews as enemies of Islam.

Educational material consistently describes a future where there will be an Arab removal of Israel, with any surviving Israeli Jews exterminated. A poem taught to third-grade students says: "I will sacrifice my blood in order to...remove the usurper [Israel] from my country and exterminate the foreigners' defeated remnants."

By referring to war, rather than peace and coexistence, Palestinian educators impose on their students "a bleak future of hatred and misery, with no hope other than becoming a martyr in an endless struggle," says the study. "This is hate education - a war of indoctrination against peace, in which the UNRWA agency has clearly been involved for the last 70 years," said Groiss.

Palestinian propaganda has a lot to say about #lifta. But here's the truth: https://t.co/DCjO7nSav3

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 12, 2019

Bashar al-Assad destroyed whole cities and gassed and starved his own people. Against all the odds, the monster has won. Yet it is a hollow victory. Assad has displaced half the population. Eight years of civil war have destroyed the economy and cost 500,000 lives. What rebels remain are holed up in Idlib province. The area is controlled by the hardest core jihadists linked to al-Qaeda, who will not go quietly.

When the fighting stops, the tensions that originally threatened the regime will remain - but they will be worse than ever. Millions of Sunnis have fled the country, but millions remain. They have seen their homes looted, property confiscated and districts overrun by Assad supporters. Resentful, fearful and oppressed, they will be a source of opposition to the regime.

Then there is Assad's cruelty. His secret police has tortured and killed at least 14,000 people in the regime's prisons. Nearly 128,000 people are thought to remain in the dungeons, though many are probably dead. Even as the war nears its end, the pace of executions is increasing.

Some European leaders think it is time to engage with Assad, participate in reconstruction and send the refugees home. This is misguided. The refugees will not return willingly. Reconstruction will only benefit the regime and the warlords and foreigners who backed it.

Syrian rebel fighters on Wednesday said Russian-backed forces were amassing troops in preparation for resuming a five-month offensive in northwest Syria after a second day of raids by jets believed to be Russian threatened to end a fragile ceasefire.

The jets that flew overnight at high altitudes struck a village near Kafr Takhareem and an area near the town of Darkoush, both in rural areas in western Idlib province, two opposition sources and a resident in the area said.

The overnight bombing raid came hours after air strikes hit a part of the northwest for the first time since the truce was declared 11 days ago, according to activists and a monitor. Moscow denied conducting the first strikes.

Russia said the Syrian government unilaterally agreed to a truce on Aug. 31 in opposition-controlled Idlib, where a “de-escalation zone” was brokered two years ago between Russia and Turkey.

Since then, there has been an end to the intense air strikes by Russian and Syrian warplanes that since late April had accompanied the Russian-backed ground offensive to retake the last rebel bastion.

The JCPOA enabled Iran to maintain key parts of its nuclear infrastructure, to preserve its blueprints for producing atomic bombs, and to develop the intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of carrying them. With many of the deal's provisions expiring in less than a decade, Iran could have eventually carried out plans to make hundreds of nuclear weapons and mount them on ICBMs. Overnight, Iran would become a global power. Only one obstacle remained.

The Israelis, of course, would not have sat passively by while Iran nuclearized and threatened their existence. But Iran clearly had another plan: to surround Israel with tens of thousands of terrorist rockets and proxies. Any Israeli attempt to stop an Iranian nuclear breakout would inevitably be met with devastating fire from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and Iraq, as well as from Iran itself. Paralyzed, Israel would be helpless to prevent the Islamic Republic's emergence as a nuclear power.

Then came Trump's decision to end the nuclear deal, followed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's demands on Iran -- including an end of all support for terror, withdrawal from Syria, and the cessation of the ICBM program. With its economy buckling under the sanctions, Iran had to choose between negotiating under Pompeo's severe terms or proving that it could plunge the entire Middle East into chaos.

Whether Iran assumed that Trump would be reluctant to take on the Iranian militarily ahead of the 2020 election or believed that he would fail to win a second term, the regime apparently concluded that provocations would suffice to lift the sanctions. The results: Iran's harassment of US forces, seizure of a British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, accelerated enrichment of uranium, and heightened hostilities against Israel. Such actions were ostensibly designed to show the United States that Iran could exact a price for sanctions in terms of regional stability and global oil prices.

Iran's theocratic establishment is spreading the narrative that Europe and the U.S. are to blame for Tehran's violation of the nuclear deal. Iran has clearly been blackmailing the Europeans, and the European powers' efforts to satisfy the Iranian regime's demands have been unsuccessful.

They came up with a special purpose vehicle to facilitate trade and payments to Tehran, but it has failed. Even though the European governments agreed to participate in the plan, corporations, firms and private financial institutions have been reluctant to do so. It quickly became clear that the European business giants were not willing to run the risk of losing access to the $18 trillion U.S. market for the sake of Iran's $400 billion market.

The international community must not be distracted from the larger picture. The JCPOA deal was never a permanent solution to Iran's nuclear threat and, more importantly, new evidence points to the fact that Iran was most likely not in compliance with the nuclear deal from the outset.

The ensuing diplomatic stand-off between London and Tehran eventually resulted in Britain agreeing to release the Grace One, but only after the British authorities received written assurances from Iran that the oil would not be delivered to Syria.

Now it appears that Iran has deliberately misled the British government about its intentions after satellite photographs revealed the ship, which has now been renamed the Adrian Darya 1, is in Syria, where its $130 million oil cargo has been handed over to the Assad regime.

"Anyone who said the Adrian Darya-1 wasn't headed to #Syria is in denial. Tehran thinks it's more important to fund the murderous Assad regime than provide for its own people. We can talk, but #Iran's not getting any sanctions relief until it stops lying and spreading terror!"— Ambassador John Bolton, then US National Security Advisor, September 7, 2019.

The Ashura[1] ceremony held annually by the Iranian regime was attended this year by Muqtada Al-Sadr, a senior Shi'ite leader in Iraq known for calling to preserve Iraq's political independence. Moreover, Al-Sadr was given a place of honor beside Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, taking precedence over high-ranking military commanders such as Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Hossein Salami, and others. It is noteworthy that Iranian President Hassan Rohani was absent from the ceremony.

Al-Sadr's presence at the ceremony had not been publicized in advance. According to the pro-Iranian Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, Al-Sadr has been staying in Iran for the last three months.[2]

The photos below, posted September 11 on the website of Iran's Supreme Leader (farsi.khamenei.ir) and also published the same day by Iran's official news agency Mehr, show Al-Sadr sitting beside Khamenei at the Ashura ceremony, with Soleimani and Salami on Al-Sadr's other side.

The public appearance of Muqtada Al-Sadr – a prominent Shi'ite Iraqi leader who has called for Iraqi political independence – alongside Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, indicates his return to the Iranian regime's orbit of influence after several years in which he preferred to distance himself from this regime. One of the factors that prompted his rapprochement with Iran is presumably the rising status and strength of the Hashd Al-Sha'bi (Popular Mobilization Units – PMU), the umbrella organization of Shi'ite militias in Iraq affiliated with Iran and at the same time embedded in the Iraqi army, a possibility which seriously threatens Al-Sadr's power in Iraq.

Another possibility is that Al-Sadr's visit to Iran is actually part of his efforts to keep Iraq independent and prevent it from becoming a theater of struggle between Iran, the U.S. and Israel, a struggle that has escalated recently with the aerial attacks on bases of the Iran-backed militias in Iraq and threats by officials in these militias to attack U.S. interests in response.[3]

Tens of millions worth of seized Iranian government properties have been sold off in Canada and the proceeds handed to victims of terrorist groups sponsored by the regime, Global News has learned.

According to a document filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice last month, the victims got a share of the money earned through the sale of Iran’s buildings in Ottawa and Toronto.

The properties went for more than $28-million, documents show. The recipients were victims of Hamas and Hezbollah — terrorist groups bankrolled, armed and trained by Iran.

“The distribution to creditors as authorized by the court has been made,” the Toronto law firm appointed as the court-appointed receiver, Albert Gelman Inc., informed the judge on Aug. 7.

READ MORE: Toronto charity disputes CRA accusation it was formed to spread ‘Iranian revolutionary ideology in Canada’

Normally that would be an unremarkable statement but the creditors in the case were terrorism victims and the assets were Canadian properties seized from the Iranian regime.

As a Jew - I support Israel.

I also support Israel as a normal, thinking human being.

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 11, 2019

Goysplaining https://t.co/uk0pqBFYKs

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 12, 2019

I created this photo-illustration on September 11, 2006, showing the "hole in the sky" of what was lost from the Manhattan skyline. pic.twitter.com/lIBOqbKPvk

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 11, 2019

Oh! Can I play?

As a Jew who is the son of TWO Holocaust survivors, who lost two grandparents and uncountable other relatives, I say Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour party are undoubtedly antisemitic.

According to your rules, my opinion matters more, @andrewfeinstein. https://t.co/t7OYrF9ZAV

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 10, 2019

If you vote for someone because they are Jewish or black or a woman or gay or a white straight male, you aren't doing it right.

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 10, 2019

Thanks, @bds_wi, for proving that you are Jew-hating scum.

The question is whether anyone elsewhere who supports the @BDSmovement who claim they are not antisemitic will publicly denounce your support for defacing synagogues.

I highly doubt it. https://t.co/LqZDFlIojF

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 12, 2019

Another quiz: Which country in the Middle East would happily use any nuclear weapons they build or buy against Israel? (Multiple answers allowed)

Syria
Iran
Hezbollah Lebanon

Which countries do "progressive Jews" like @ArielElyseGold support against Israel?

Syria
Iran
Hezb Leb https://t.co/Fv2DC9vChm

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 12, 2019

For the idiots saying this isn't antisemitic:

Defacing a synagogue with ANYTHING is antisemitic. The words "Free Palestine" proves that the person who did this who supports Palestine is an antisemite.

Not really rocket science. https://t.co/bLm200bSdS

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 11, 2019

For all those freaking out over Bibi's announcement today, like @PeaceNowUS and @jstreetdotorg:

Netanyahu's words are exactly in line with what Yitzhak Rabin wanted to see in a final peace deal. pic.twitter.com/dZErk30e04

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 10, 2019

One of Al Qaeda's stated reasons for the attack was alleged US attacks on Muslims in Somalia.

Southern Somalia, where you were born, was known as a haven for Islamist terror.

Muslims worldwide celebrated 9/11. Somalia included.

Which side did your family support on 9/11?

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 11, 2019

Some people think that saying Kaddish for Hamas terrorists (as equivalent to their Jewish victims) is part of "moral fabric of progressive American Jewish identity."

How much more proof do you need to understand that the anti-Israel progressive movement is fundamentally immoral? https://t.co/YQZFB6e34J

— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 12, 2019

On the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, government officials and institutions throughout America commemorated the horror of that day. But after all these years, there is a sense that – other than for those who lost family members or close friends – the ceremonies are increasingly becoming more a matter of going through the motions than of national grief.

Much like the way the memory of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 – a comparable tragedy that altered the life of the nation – because routine and then ultimately a footnote as the decades passed, 9/11 is becoming a moment frozen in the past and not a reminder of the dangerous world in which we still live.

That this is true is probably as much a product of human nature as it is of the failure of our leaders in the post-9/11 world. But it’s worth pointing out that this same process hasn’t been repeated in Israel as time has passed since the end of the Second Intifada that brought similar widespread horror to its victims. As a prescient op-ed published in The New York Times by Matti Friedman noted, the memory of the slaughter hangs over Israeli society and is still a decisive factor in its politics.

There are profound differences between 9/11 and the intifada. September 11, 2001 was one day that thankfully was never repeated again on American soil (a point that seemed to earn President George W. Bush no credit with the public even though most of us assumed that it would be). By contrast, what happened to Israelis was several years of a terrorist war of attrition involving hundreds of attacks, including suicide bombings that struck throughout the country rather than being concentrated in just a couple of places.

Throughout history, rising anti-Semitism has always been accompanied by other forms of radicalization and the degradation of democracy overall.

Will Democrats continue to creep closer to radical anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic policy positions? Will they undermine the party’s traditional values of tolerance and equality? If so, they risk consigning themselves to the tragic fate of Jeremy Corbyn’s British Labour Party, which has allowed a culture of anti-Semitism to take root and poison the entire institution.

In an all-too-familiar routine, far too many Democrats pander to the Jewish community on pro-Israel issues when running for office and then turn around and show their true colors after Election Day.

To date, the candidates running for president have skated by – banking on the fact that no one is asking them about a subject they’d rather ignore.

It’s time for the media to ask these questions and get real answers. Voters like me will be watching closely.

We were taught in the Arab world that the Holocaust was just a big lie. It was only when we grew up and opened ourselves to the world of ideas and humanity that we discovered Jews are in fact human beings, and good people, too.

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ensaf Haidar. I am the wife of Raif Badawi, a prisoner of conscience who is now serving his seventh year behind dark, cold prison walls in Saudi Arabia.

Two days after the horrific Charlie Hebdo massacre, my husband was dragged from his jail cell in Jeddah, brought to a square in front of Al-Jafali Mosque, and administered the first phase – 50 lashes – of a public flogging.

His crime? His indictment says he was guilty of “insulting Islam” and “producing what would disturb public order, religious values and morals.”

His real crime, in fact, can be summarized in one sentence: He believed in his fundamental right to express his opinion.

Freedom of expression is at the heart of Raif’s case.

Also central to his case is Raif’s vision of a different future for his country and region; a future based on our shared humanity; one based on acceptance, respect and mutual understanding; one that aspires for peace in the region.

In a serialized memoir, the British political theorist and member of the House of Lords Maurice Glasman recalls his Jewish education, the Sabbaths and Passovers of his youth, his extended family of East European immigrants, and his recent visit to the remote Ukrainian shtetl of Vinkivtsy, where his grandfather (“my Zaida”) was born—among much else. He sums up the values of his upbringing thus:

I was brought up to love Yiddishkayt [Jewishness]. I was brought up to love all those who have ever spoken Yiddish and their descendants. All of them. It’s true that I have mixed feelings about Litvaks but I try to put them to one side. The thing I love most is being a yid, with everything that means. All yidn. Always.

In just my Mum’s family we still have Communists, Zionists, ?asidim and Misnagdim [the religious opponents of ?asidism]; we have assimilationists, Bundists, capitalists and socialists, monarchists and anarchists. I love them all and I can’t deny that my head is a cacophony of ancestral argument and I can be any one of those things in the course of a single day.

My ability to hold, with great conviction and sincerity, several entirely contradictory opinions at the same time explains my calling as a politician. It comes very naturally to me.

During his journey to Ukraine, Glasman notes that “my Zaida left . . . as a pauper but I was returning as a Lord. I couldn’t have done it without him.” He concludes by imagining himself buried in the Jewish cemetery in Vinkivtsy, with the name of his favorite soccer team engraved in large letters on his tombstone:

The memory of a British war hero is being commemorated at a museum close to where he was killed in action during the First World War. Captain John Fox-Russell, from Holyhead , was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions at Tel el Khuweilfe, north of Beersheba in the Judean Hills, in November 1917. His body is one of 1,200 servicemen buried in the Commonwealth military cemetery in Beersheba.

Fox-Russell's great-niece, Victoria Fox, said: "Avi Navon has spent much of his life researching and telling the stories of the battles of World War I in Palestine. He lives in a kibbutz adjacent to Tel Khuweilfe where the huge battle took place....His plan [is] to raise a plaque telling the story of the battle and of Captain John Fox-Russell....It is a very important part of the history of Israel because if these battles had not been won, it would probably still be under Turkish rule and who knows where the Jewish people would be."

Fox-Russell was a medical officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps. During the battle Fox-Russell repeatedly went out to attend the wounded under murderous fire from snipers and machine guns, and, "in many cases where no other means were at hand, carried them in himself, although almost exhausted."

The specific question of what went wrong with the blocking of the visit to Israel of antisemitic Congresswomen Omar Ilhan and Rashida Tlaib is a minor issue within a much larger framework. This event was not an incidental mishap. It is part of a broader structural failure in the functioning of Israel’s government.

No other democratic country in the world is verbally attacked as frequently as is Israel. This includes vile verbal aggression by democratic governments and by mainstream politicians from those countries.

Nations under attack create defense organizations. Against enemy armies, Israel set up the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It invested heavily in all aspects of the armed services. The IDF is now one of the best armies in the world. So are Israel’s three intelligence services: the international security agency (Mossad), the domestic security agency (Shabak), and the military intelligence branch (Aman). Cyberattacks on Israel have led the government to invest in an expensive cyber defense program that is likely to make the country a world leader in the field.

Yet Israel’s defense against extreme propaganda assaults, which have been going on for decades, remains amateurish. The only successful response to such aggression is: “You hit me and I’ll hit you back harder.”

A British television star has been subjected to “disgusting bullying” online due to her criticism of antisemitism in the UK Labour Party.

Tracy Ann Oberman starred in the long-running TV show “EastEnders,” and has been outspoken on Twitter against Jew-hatred.

In particular, she went after a BBC commentator who praised a woman who desecrated a wall of the Warsaw Ghetto by painting on it, “Free Gaza and Palestine.”

The Daily Mail quoted Oberman as saying, “The abuse was incredible. I had never had a single negative comment on Twitter. The abuse was prolific.”

“To be told ‘your family didn’t really die in the Holocaust, you made it up’ — disgusting,” she said.

Along with television host Rachel Riley, who is also outspoken on Labour antisemitism, Oberman said she got little support in the face of the online abuse.

“When you find something you’re truly passionate in and want to speak out on, often men will try and silence us and intimidate us,” she stated.

“That’s the problem, when organizations don’t police their own people and their own employees,” she added. “Myself and Rachel Riley did really look for someone to slap the wrist of somebody, but it didn’t happen.”

The leader of the Liberal Democrats has assured her party’s newest MP that it would be “impossible” for her to work with the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, “in any sort of arrangement.”

Jo Swinson reportedly made the pledge to Luciana Berger, saying she “would not enter any coalition with Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister” or support any government led by him in any way, in part due to Mr Corbyn’s failure to address antisemitism in his party.

Ms Berger left the Labour Party earlier this year over antisemitism, and citing her refusal to be complicit in a Labour election victory that might put Mr Corbyn in Downing Street. She has now joined the Liberal Democrats.

The assurance from Ms Swinson echoes her earlier pledge during her party leadership campaign not to prop up a Corbyn-led government, in part due to his handling of antisemitism within the Labour Party. Delivering her promise to Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, Ms Swinson explained that, in addition to their disagreement on political questions, “Corbyn[’s]…inability, at best, to act on antisemitism within his party would make it impossible for me to work with him on a personal level in any sort of arrangement.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that protects the right of Jewish residents to place a mezuzah on their doorposts, including dormitory rooms and apartments.

Senate Bill 652, known as the “Mezuzah Bill,” mandates that property owners “shall not enforce or adopt a restrictive covenant or any other restriction that prohibits one or more religious items from being displayed or affixed on any entry door or entry door frame of a dwelling.”

A mezuzah is a parchment scroll with Torah verses handwritten on it by an expert scribe placed on the doorpost of a Jewish person’s home and often on interior rooms of the home.

The bill was authored by Legislative Jewish Caucus chair Sen. Ben Allen. Each member of the caucus, which is comprised of seven state senators and nine assembly members, signed on as co-authors. The bill passed four committee hearings, and floor votes in the Senate and the Assembly, with sweeping support.

When a French-Jewish medical student revealed last year that some of her classmates were harassing her with Holocaust jokes and Nazi salutes, the story made headlines.

The affair prompted French Education Minister Frederique Vidal to say that the alleged harassment of the student known as Rose was “profoundly unacceptable.”

On the campus of the prestigious Paris 13 University, authorities took Rose’s complaints seriously. She also took them to police, Rose said in an interview published Tuesday in Le Point.

Yet a year later, Rose told the magazine, she has transferred, on faculty’s advice, to a different university and her complaint alleging hate speech and racist harassment was closed by prosecutors for what they said is lack of evidence.

The case of Rose, a 21-year-old who grew up in the impoverished suburb of Bobigny, grabbed the country’s attention not because campus anti-Semitism is rare in France, but because she described incidents shocking in their crassness at one of the republic’s most prestigious universities.

Rose described a class Facebook page in which students listed and ranked Jewish classmates according to their level of affiliation as part of a string of jokes online and on campus featuring anti-Semitic hate speech.

Shame on @Algemeiner who, after years of lifting posts from me w/o attribution, saw fit to publish this vile attack piece on me. All because I spoke out against the hijacking of @ZionessMovement. I will have more to say about this in due course https://t.co/5gUWXdeFj8

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 13, 2019

The jury for the Nelly Sachs literature prize in the city of Dortmund is reconsidering its decision to honor an author who supports the anti-Israel boycott movement.

An announcement is expected soon regarding the planned honor for British author Kamila Shamsie, Spiegel magazine reported on Thursday.

The prize, named for the Jewish Nobel Prize-winning German-born poet and playwright Nelly Sachs (1891-1970), recognizes authors who champion “tolerance, respect and reconciliation.” The 15,000-euro prize, or about $16,500, is presented every two years.

Shamsie, born in Pakistan, was slated to receive the prize for work that “builds bridges between societies.”

But Shamsie supports the anti-Israel BDS movement, which the German Bundestag declared in a resolution last spring to be anti-Semitic. Several German cities had already passed laws barring any official support for the movement.

Shamsie has refused to have her works published in Israel, and reiterated her support for the boycott movement on Wednesday.

Thank you @bds_wi for playing anti-Zionist-not-antisemite. Unfortunately, you lose! https://t.co/vwRXNHicdp#BDS@BDSmovement

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 13, 2019

The US State Department announced on Thursday that Cherrie Daniels has been tapped to be its Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues.

Founded in 1999, the Office of the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues “develops and implements US policy to return Holocaust-era assets to their rightful owners, secure compensation for Nazi-era wrongs, and ensure that the Holocaust is remembered and commemorated appropriately,” according to the State Department website.

The special envoy will also work on State’s efforts to combat antisemitism, said department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus.

“Her assignment underscores the secretary’s commitment to the importance of resolving outstanding issues of the past,” said Ortagus.

The Trump administration has made Holocaust reparations a priority, as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised the issue with the Polish government in February. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki responded that the issue has been “resolved.”

A bipartisan group of 88 US senators signed a letter to Pompeo in August, asking him to “act boldly and with urgency to help Poland resolve this issue comprehensively.” The senators stated they were “deeply troubled” with Morawiecki’s reply.

Poland is the only affected nation that doesn’t have legislation dealing with confiscated restitution from the last century.

The popular video blogger PewDiePie announced a donation of $50,000 to the Anti-Defamation League, then rescinded it a day later after fan feedback.

PewDiePie, whose name is Felix Kjellberg of Sweden, made the announcement of the donation on Wednesday during an online celebration of surpassing 100 million subscribers, saying he wanted to get past previous “controversies.”

“I made a lot of mistakes on the way but I’ve grown. I feel like I have at least, and I feel like I’ve finally come in terms with the responsibilities I have as a creator. 100 million subs too late,” he said during the announcement, “but, you know.”

Among the mistakes were those that occurred in February 2017, when Disney and YouTube distanced themselves from PewDiePie after he broadcast a video of two South Asian men dressed in green loincloths holding a sign reading “Death To All Jews.” The video was viewed more than 6 million times before it was removed by Google, which owns YouTube. In addition, the shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, said “Subscribe to PewDiePie” before carrying out his attack last spring.

Included in the comments from his followers panning the donation were suggestions that he was blackmailed by the ADL in order to be in good standing again on YouTube and in the media, implying that Jews control the media. They also objected to him giving money to an organization that has criticized him.

Police have collared a 26-year-old man in connection with an assault of a rabbi in a Crown Heights park, cops said Thursday.

Oneil Gilbourne allegedly smacked the 64-year-old in the face with a paving stone, knocking out his teeth, while the rabbi was on his morning stroll through Lincoln Terrace Park on Aug. 27, according to police.

Gilbourne was charged with assault as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon, cops said.

The encounter started just after 7:40 p.m. when Rabbi Avraham Gopin, father-in-law of popular Hasidic singer Benny Friedman, said Gilbourne hurled a rock in his direction, cops said.

When Gopin, who was wearing a yarmulke, confronted the random man, the man punched him in the face, according to police.

A Florida man who threatened to shoot up a local synagogue and has said publicly that he hates Jews was apprehended on Friday by the FBI.

Hanson Larkin, 25, was in an Orlando federal court the same day, charged with making threats through interstate communication to, according to police, a Jewish man that included: “If meeting me for five seconds is not worth the lives of multiple Jews then I have no other option” and “There’s a Chabad near me. And Amtrak has no security for weapons. Don’t make me make a choice they’ll regret.”

A Jewish man, Lizardo Rivas, 44, allegedly rejected romantic advances from Larkin and notified authorities of the threats.

Rivas said he has communicated with Larkin for two years, and that the suspect has expressed bigotry toward Jews and had suicidal thoughts.

Larkin appeared in court again on Tuesday and was denied bail. He could face up to five years behind bars if convicted.

Also on Friday, a 45-year-old man in Daytona Beach, Fla., was charged with making threats, including against Jews.

A landmark at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti on Wednesday night.

According to Knox News, the words, “Jews did 9-11,” and, “Google: Dancing Israelis,” were found scrawled on “The Rock” — a large stone on the university campus that has become an informal designated area for graffiti and often political messages.

The graffiti refers to the conspiracy theory that Jews and/or Israel were the real culprits behind the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda terrorist attacks. “Dancing Israelis” refers to a connected conspiracy theory that claims a group of Israelis were caught celebrating the attack.

University Chancellor Donde Plowman condemned the graffiti, saying, “Last night, someone covered that message of love with an antisemitic hate message. We condemn that hate aimed toward members of our Jewish community, and we understand that words are not enough.”

“We want to work together to create a movement around what we want to be,” the chancellor added. “I will start by meeting with members of our Jewish student community this morning. We will expand the conversation to all [students] so we can work together on an action plan and will share more in the coming days.”

Graffiti including swastikas was painted on the walls of a San Francisco-area high school.

Days after the incident, hundreds of students came to Burlingame High School wearing red T-shirts or hoodies in red, a school color, to display “unity against hate.” They placed their painted handprints on banners reading “We are stronger than hate” and “Panther strong.”

The principal, Paul Belzer, described the graffiti painted in 10 different places as “anti-Semitic, homophobic and racist.” He said an investigation by the Burlingame Police Department and the San Mateo Union High School District is underway. No suspects have been identified.

“I am outraged,” Belzer wrote in an email to parents, J. The Jewish News of Northern California reported. “I feel our students and school, and our school’s values of integrity and community have been attacked.”

Warsaw police arrested on Wednesday two Dutch citizens and are looking for a Palestinian man in relation to a Monday assault on Israeli students that took place in the Polish capital, JTA reported.

The assaults gained public attention in Israel thanks to a social media post the brother of one of the students who was assaulted posted online with the picture of his bleeding brother. The user claimed that the Poles who witnessed the attack did nothing and blamed the Israeli diplomatic mission of not caring enough about the case.

The two brothers, Barak and Yotam Kashpizky, are twins with Yotam being attacked and Barak writing about it online.

Yotam suffers from a broken nose and a broken eye socket, Barak says.

One of the assailants punched Yotam in the face and he lost consciousness. He believes the assailant used a knuckle-duster, given the serious injuries he sustained and the fact that he was knocked unconscious.

The students were leaving a nightclub when the attackers asked them if they are from Israel, when they replied yes the beating began with the attackers screaming ‘f**k Israel’ and ‘Free Gaza.’

The Jewish community of Warsaw expressed sorrow over the incident in an online post as it took place very close to the Nozyk synagogue, which has security.

A judge in Poland called Jews a “despicable, filthy nation” in an online forum in 2015.

Jarosław Dudzicz was promoted in 2017 to president of the court in Gorzów Wielkopolski by Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro. But while serving as a member of the National Council of the Judiciary, he wrote in an online newspaper forum that Jews are “A despicable filthy nation, they do not deserve anything.”

The comment was first reported Thursday by the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper.

According to the report, the comment was written by a user with the handle “jorry123” in response to an article about the World Jewish Congress. A resident of Wrocław reported the comment to the prosecutor’s office, which determined that its author was Dudzicz, then a district court judge.

The judge admitted to posting the comment in the online forum. However, he was not charged because as a judge he has immunity.

Under Polish law, a person can be jailed for up to three years for publicly insulting a group of people because of their national, ethnic, racial or religious affiliation.

Vandals spray-painted swastikas and slogans about the crash of flight MH17 on a British cemetery for World War II soldiers in the Netherlands, police said Friday.

The desecration of the cemetery at Mierlo, near the southern city of Eindhoven, comes as the Netherlands marks the 75th anniversary of the start of its allied liberation from the Nazis.

"We take the matter very seriously and have started an extensive investigation," police said, adding that they were probing possible further incidents of vandalism in the town.

A large swastika was daubed on a chapel at the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery, while letters were painted on several of the 664 graves at the cemetery, and a large stone cross was also defaced.

The vandals also wrote "MH17 Lie" on an outer wall of the cemetery.

The Netherlands was the country that lost the most people in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in July 2014 over part of eastern Ukraine that was held by pro-Russian separatists.

Senator for NSW Andrew Bragg speaks about Antisemitism https://t.co/SQfe5OcDAz via @YouTube

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 13, 2019

The diary of Renia Spiegel, a teenage Jewish girl known now as the "Polish Anne Frank," is being released for publication for the first time since she began writing it 80 years ago.

Spiegel lived in Nazi-occupied Poland in a town called Przemysl, where she saw the country break into war and was eventually shot to death by German troops in 1942. The diary begins when she is 15 years old and describes air raids, going into hiding, Jewish families' disappearances, and more.

The publication, titled Renia's Diary: A Young Girl's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust, is coming out in the United States on September 17.

The hand-written diary, which ran 700 pages long, survived the war thanks in part to Spiegel's first love, Zygmunt Schwarzer, according to the Polish publication The First News. Schwarzer kept the diary safe after Spiegel's death, even adding one final entry himself. He kept it throughout his incarceration in Auschwitz, and managed to retrieve it after the war.

Schwarzer tracked down Spiegel's mother and sister in the United States where they had relocated after the war and gave them the diary in 1950.

Elizabeth, Renia's sister, told the BBC that their mother was too overwhelmed emotionally to read the diary and instead she kept it in a vault.

Surrounded by children and older women, an adolescent girl tilts her head and grins. Unlike most Jews in the “transport,” she does not have a Jewish star affixed to her clothes. Her name is Bella — Baila in Yiddish — and she seems to be showing off the new Passover dress made by her aunts.

It was a clear day in late May of 1944 when 16-year old Bella Solomon — my grandmother — stood for “selection” at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Those thick chimneys are for bakeries, the new arrivals were told. Families will be reunited after disinfection, and make sure your luggage is marked.

The photograph of my grandmother appears strangely sanitized. There is no sense of the hell-upon-arrival described by Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi. It’s daytime, so no floodlights are pointed at victims emerging from boxcars under the whip. No dogs are trained on the victims.

The image of my grandmother is one of 197 photographs in the so-called “Auschwitz Album,” one of the most important but poorly understood primary sources of the Holocaust. Although I’ve known about the album for at least 20 years, I did not consider searching within its pages for my grandmother until 2015.

For reasons unclear to historians, an SS photographer (either Ernst Hoffman or Bernhard Walter) documented the 11-step “processing” of Hungarian Jews during several days that spring. The camp had just been modified to handle a record influx of 424,000 Hungarian Jews, most of whom were murdered upon arrival. Innovations included extending the train-tracks into the camp itself to hasten the process.

Howard Jacobson is a funny writer. He has penned several comedic novels, and many commentators said his 2010 Man Booker prize-winning work “The Finkler Question” was the first humorous book to win the prestigious award for decades.

But Jacobson, one of the most celebrated authors in the United Kingdom and an outspoken liberal Zionist, has trouble finding much humor in the current state of a world dominated by politics and social media.

“People don’t get irony,” Jacobson, 77, said in a wide-ranging conversation with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Because of the internet and Trump and Brexit and all that, we’re living in very non-ironical times. The mode of discourse of the moment is you say something, and I say something back, and you say something back, and we are separate, and we brutally contradict one another.”

Nevertheless, conversation is a central part of his latest novel, “Live a Little,” which was published this week. In this case, it’s conversation between Shimi and Beryl (at times called “the Princess”), two 90-year-olds who (sort of) fall in love. Shimi remembers everything, while Beryl is losing her memory.

Jacobson spoke about the novel, on the anxiety of being a British Jew in 2019, his self-definition as the “Jewish Jane Austen” and much more.

JTA: What brought you to this story of these elderly folks who develop a surprising friendship, maybe romance?

Jacobson: It’s quite mysterious, really. I always do find where a book comes from mysterious. You can trace some of these things, and some you can’t.

Israeli singer Netta Barzilai is rumored to have a role in the Will Ferrell-Rachel McAdams Netflix film “Eurovision.”

Barzilai was the international song contest’s winner in 2018, allowing Israel to host the event this year.

Ferrell and McAdams were seen on the sidelines of Eurovision in May in Tel Aviv and reportedly shot some scenes there.

The Kan public broadcaster reported that “it appears” that Barzilai will participate in the film. When asked, Barzilai said that she is “prevented” from addressing the topic, but that she is “always excited about new adventures.”

Ferrell reportedly is a fan of Eurovision after being introduced to the competition by his Swedish-born wife.

In a July 2018 interview, just weeks after winning Eurovision and when rumors first began to swirl that Ferrell would do a satirical film about the contest, Barzilai said in an interview that she hoped Ferrell “would treat Eurovision with the respect it deserves.”

An Israeli Paralympic swimmer set a new world record on Tuesday at the 2019 World Para Swimming Championships, held in London after Malaysia was stripped of the event for refusing to let Israelis compete, according to The Jewish Chronicle.

Mark Malyar, 19, claimed a gold medal in the men’s 400m freestyle S7. The athlete, who has cerebral palsy, clocked in at 4:33.64 and was said to have “obliterated” the previous record, of 4:42.81, set in the 2012 Paralympics by gold medalist Josef Craig.

Malyar’s win in the swimming final qualifies the gold medalist to compete in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.

The 2019 World Para Swimming Championships were originally set to begin in late July in Malaysia but were rescheduled after the country, which changed governments since being awarded the competition, announced it would not allow Israeli athletes to participate.

The International Paralympics Committee stripped Malaysia of its right to host the event, with IPC President Andrew Parsons saying, “When a host country excludes athletes from a particular nation, for political reasons, then we have absolutely no alternative but to look for a new championships host.”

A 2,600-year old bulla (seal) bearing a Hebrew name was uncovered recently in earth excavated in 2013 from beneath Robinson’s Arch at the foundations of the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. The seal bears not only a name but also a role – the most prominent in the courts of the kings of Judah and Israel.

The seal, which was used to sign documents, bears the Hebrew name and title “Adoniyahu asher al habayit,” which literally translates as “Adoniyahu, who is over the house.”

The term, which means “royal steward,” is used throughout the Bible to describe the most senior official serving under a king of Judea or Israel.

According to archaeologist Eli Shukron, who conducted the initial excavations on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority just north of the City of David at the foundation stones of the Western Wall, “This is the first time this kind of archaeological discovery has been made in Jerusalem. The biblical title ‘asher al habayit’ was the highest-ranking ministerial position beneath the king during the reigns of the kings of Judea and Israel.”

As small as it is, the seal is of tremendous significance, said Doron Spielman, vice president of the City of David Foundation, which operates the site where the seal was discovered as well as the Archaeological Experience, where it was uncovered.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday said he had spoken with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone of a potential Mutual Defense Pact, or MDP, between the two countries, and that he hoped to continue such talks after Tuesday’s election.

“I had a call today with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss the possibility of moving forward with a Mutual Defense Treaty, between the United States and Israel, that would further anchor the tremendous alliance between our two countries,” he tweeted.

“I look forward to continuing those discussions after the Israeli Elections when we meet at the United Nations later this month,” he added, in a comment that was interpreted in Israel as indicting his hope that Netanyahu will win the elections on Tuesday.

....between our two countries. I look forward to continuing those discussions after the Israeli Elections when we meet at the United Nations later this month!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 14, 2019

In a statement Netanyahu thanked Trump, who he called his “dear friend,” and said he too looked forward to continuing the conversation to advance “a historic defense treaty.”

Together, we will continue full steam ahead with our common battle against terrorism.
Congratulations on your latest success against Bin Laden’s son. God bless America. God bless Israel.

— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) September 14, 2019

“The Jewish State has never had a greater friend in the White House,” the premier tweeted.

Haaretz reported earlier this month that Netanyahu and Trump were discussing such a gesture ahead of the election in Israel, in a bid to boost the Israeli premier’s electoral prospects.

The newspaper had reported that among options being considered were a vow by Trump — with few practical implications — that the US would defend the Jewish state from any potential existential threat; or a joint declaration by both leaders that they would seek an MDP between the two countries, the main upshot of which is that each side is obligated to come to the aid of the other in the event of military conflict.

Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel and the second of the Obama administration’s three Mideast peace envoys, on Saturday said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not giving the true facts in his claim that he’d stopped an effort by rival Benny Gantz of the Blue and White party to support an Obama-era settlement withdrawal plan.

Indyk said it was in fact Netanyahu who had encouraged and shown interest in the plan, and that it was his defense minister at the time — now a Gantz ally — who had slammed the breaks on the discussions.

Netanyahu published a video on his Facebook page Friday which repeated his claim that Gantz, the former Israel Defense Forces head, had cooperated with the administration of former US president Barack Obama on a plan that included withdrawing settlements from the Jordan Valley and West Bank. It further claimed that Netanyahu had stopped these efforts in their tracks.

The so-called Allen Plan was drawn up by retired US general John Allen and advanced by then-secretary of state John Kerry as part of 2013-2014 peace talks with the Palestinians.

“The truth: Bibi encouraged and showed considerable interest in the Allen Plan and never said annexation was necessary. Blue and White’s Bogie Ya’alon, as Bibi’s Defense Minister, vetoed the Allen Plan, NOT Bibi. Bogie also forbad Gantz from discussing the plan with US officials,” Indyk wrote on Twitter, referring to both Netanyahu and Moshe Ya’alon by their nicknames.

While allowing for an Israeli military presence in the border area between Jordan and the West Bank, the plan would have required the dismantling of all Israel’s settlements in the Jordan Valley, according to reports at the time.

Until now, the controversy over inviting Henry Kissinger to speak at an upcoming Jewish conference in Manhattan has focused on his actions during the Yom Kippur War, his hostility to Soviet Jewry, and his mistreatment of Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

But there is another important aspect to the debate: Kissinger’s harsh and vulgar treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The details of Kissinger’s mistreatment of Rabin are set forth in Prof. Gil Troy’s recent book, Moynihan’s Moment. Basing himself on previously unpublished internal memoranda and transcripts of Kissinger’s conversations with his aides, Troy presents a side of Kissinger that is not widely known—but should be.

The story began in early 1975. Kissinger undertook what was termed “shuttle diplomacy,” and it was aimed at getting Israel to make one-sided concessions to Egypt. He demanded that Prime Minister Rabin surrender the Mitla and Giddi mountain passes, two of the most strategic points in the entire Sinai Peninsula. Kissinger also insisted that Rabin surrender the Abu Rudeis oil fields in Sinai, which had the potential to make Israel energy-independent.

And what did Kissinger offer in exchange? A vague five year pledge of “non-belligerency” from the Egyptians. In other words, Israel would give up vital, tangible assets, and Egypt would be free to invade the Jewish state again in five years. No wonder Rabin hesitated to agree to those outrageous terms.

Kissinger was furious that Rabin was not immediately surrendering to all his demands. Israel was “bringing the world to the edge of war for three kilometers in the Giddi and eight kilometers in the Mitla,” Kissinger complained to his aides, according to Prof. Troy. Yes, the secretary of state accused Israel of provoking World War Three.

As CAMERA has reported in the past, the difference in permit requests across Jerusalem has indeed correlated with the difference in permits issued by the city, a fact inexplicably elided in too many media reports.

Other variables would also have to be considered in order to gauge the existence and extent of discrimination. To what degree are Jewish-majority neighborhoods and Arab-majority neighborhoods surrounded by built-up space? Are there different incentives in different neighborhoods — financial, political, or otherwise — to either build illegally or to request a permit?

And what are the trends over time? By parroting Peace Now’s framing, AP missed other information conveyed by their out-of-context numbers.

As explained above, absolute numbers of permits mean little on their own. But if Associated Press reporters nonetheless believe those numbers are worth discussing, why didn’t they point out that the discrepancy between permits issued to majority-Arab and Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem has been steadily declining since 1991, the first year of Peace Now’s data set? This is because the number of permits to majority-Jewish neighborhoods has trended downward over the past 30 years, even as the number issued to majority Arab-neighborhoods has trended upward.

These trends show that something — again, without more information we can’t know whether it’s municipal policy, residential attitudes, a combination of the two, or other factors — has been working to erase the discrepancy AP and Peace Now point to. They also mean that, although the Associated Press announces that Arab neighborhoods “have received only 30% of the building permits” issued to east Jerusalem since 1991, that figure doesn’t reflect the current reality very well: The discrepancy was largest in the early 90s, which means that over the past 5, 10, 15, and even 20 years, the percentage was much closer to 40 percent.

None of this proves that discrimination can’t exist in Jerusalem. It can exist there just like it can in other cities across the world. It does, however, show that Peace Now’s announcement falls short of the minimum standards expected from serious scholarship. And it does show that the Associated Press has failed in its obligation to fully and fairly inform readers.

The controversy between Israel and Russia regarding airstrikes of Iranian targets in Syria and Iraq continues, despite the meeting Between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin. This was reported on Friday by Independent Arabia.

According to the report, Moscow has prevented three Israeli air strikes on three Syrian outposts recently, and even threatened that any jets attempting such a thing would be shot down, either by Russian jets or by the S-400 anti-aircraft missiles. The source cited in the report claims a similar situation has happened twice – and that during August, Moscow stopped an air strike on a Syrian outpost in Qasioun, where a S-300 missile battery is placed.

Moreover, it was claimed that another air strike was planned for a week later on a Syrian outpost in the Qunaitra area and a third one on a sensitive area in Latakia. This development is what pushed Netanyahu to have his quick visit in Russia to try and convince Putin to ignore Israel's attacks in Syria. According to the Russian source, Putin let Netanyahu know that his country will not allow any damage to be done to the Syrian regime's army, or any of the weapons being given to it, because giving such a permission would be seen as giving Israel leniency – something that contradicts Russia's goal of assisting the Syrian regime.

The British-Arabic news outlet reported that Netanyahu tried to present a positive message of the cooperation between the two countries and even tried to use it for his election campaign, but it didn't work. Israeli sources who have spoken with the newspaper called the meeting "a failure." They claimed that everything regarding the air strikes in Iraq and Syria, since they were in the public eye, embarrassed the Russians terribly in the eyes of their allies in the area – Syria, Iran and the militias that support them.

Hamza bin Laden, a son of slain al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and himself a notable figure in the militant group, was killed in a U.S. counter-terrorism operation, the White House said on Saturday.

A White House statement said the operation took place in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

"The loss of Hamza bin Ladin not only deprives al-Qa’ida of important leadership skills and the symbolic connection to his father, but undermines important operational activities of the group," the statement said.

Hamza, believed to be about 30 years old, was at his father’s side in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. He also spent time with his father in Pakistan after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan pushed much of al Qaeda’s senior leadership there, according to the Brookings Institution.

The U.S. State Department designated Hamza a global terrorist in 2017 after he called for acts of terrorism in Western capitals and threatened to take revenge against the United States for killing his father.

Reuters reported on July 31 that Hamza had been killed, citing a U.S. official with knowledge of the matter. But Saturday's statement represents the first time the U.S. government has confirmed the operation.

The attacks began around four in the morning; video showed massive fires, billowing smoke and locals reported explosions. Iranian media implied that the attacks were carried out by Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have been backed by Theran. However the facilities that were struck are in northeastern Saudi Arabia, closer to Bahrain and Qatar. A drone would have to fly 1,000 km. to reach the facilities.

Drone attacks from Yemen have usually targeted areas close to its border. Two exceptions stand out. First was a May 14 attack that also caused Aramco to stop pumping oil. That attack was later blamed, according to a US report in The Wall Street Journal, on a paramilitary group operating from Iraq. The second case was the Shaybah attack in mid-August. Allegedly, that attack was carried out by up to ten drones, according to the Houthis.

The full details of the most recent September 14 attack were not available on Saturday morning and it was not clear where the drones had come from.

Iran has frequently boasted of new drone technology over the last nine months, including longer-range drones. In early September Tehran unveiled the Kian long-range surveillance and attack drone. Iran’s Press TV is seeking to highlight the attack and blame it on a Saudi-led war in Yemen that has sought to support the Yemeni government against the Houthis.

The war has been controversial because it has been blamed for suffering in Yemen. Iran’s Press TV claims that the “Western-backed military aggression, coupled with a naval blockade, has killed tens of thousands.” Iran says this is a “quagmire” for the Saudis, and it is clear that there is a kind of proxy conflict taking place in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia received strong support from its allies in the US, Pakistan and along the Gulf after drone strikes targeted key oil facilities. Smoke and fires could be seen in the early morning hours of Saturday and satellites showed the smoke covering areas in northeast Saudi Arabia, not far from the border with Bahrain.

The proximity to Bahrain, some fifty kilometers from the areas hit, leads to serious questions about how drones penetrated deep into Saudi airspace and hit such a strategic facility at Abqaiq and Khurais. The US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain and there are US air bases and other bases along the Gulf from Kuwait to the UAE. These institutions are defended by US air defense. They also have radar that can detect threats more than 150km away, and they should be able to detect drones. Yet the drone attacks at four in the morning don’t seem to have triggered a US response or alert. An email to CENTCOM resulted in a response that although the US was aware of open source reports, further inquiries should be directed to the Saudi interior ministry.

The US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, John Abizaid, condemned the attacks. “These attacks against critical infrastructure endanger civilians, are unacceptable and sooner or later will result in innocent lives being lost.” Kuwait expressed support for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates called the attacks a terrorist attack. “We stand fully with Saudi Arabia in combatting all threats to security and stability,” a UAE statement said. Pakistan also joined in condemning the attacks. Kuwait strongly condemned the attack and called on the international community to redouble efforts to combat the Houthi attacks, according to the website Arab News. Kuwait has condemned attacks on Saudi Arabia before, recently in August when another long-range drone attack struck Shaybah ail facilities.

The support for Saudi Arabia is clear, but Riyadh’s response is forthcoming. Saudi Arabia must now weight what comes next and who it will hold responsible. There are questions about how drones from Houthi rebel-held areas in Yemen could actually reach the area near Bahrain. It appears more likely they were launched from somewhere else. That leads to question about why air defense didn’t intercept them or at least raise an alert. Video from Saudi Arabia allegedly includes sounds of gunfire against the drones. Gunfire at night against drones is not effective. In addition another video allegedly from Kuwait includes the noise of a “drone” passing over, although the sound appears more like a jet engine of a an aircraft, not a UAV.

Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said Friday that Israel will return to Jordan two pieces of land along the border, indicating Israeli efforts to guarantee continued access to the areas were unsuccessful.

Jordan announced last year it would not renew clauses in the 1994 peace treaty between the countries granting Israel 25 year leases on the agricultural lands, which are set to expire next month.

Amman later said it received a request from the Israeli government to hold formal negotiations on the future of the lands, known in Israel as Naharayim in the north and the Tzofar enclave in the southern Arava desert.

In an interview with Army Radio, Steinitiz was asked if there was any chance Israel would be able to retain access to the lands.

“No. This was a special clause in the peace treaty,” he said, explaining that the areas “are part of Jordan but Israeli farmers could work them.”

Steinitz, a member of the security cabinet and ruling Likud party, said Israel would need to find alternative lands for the farmers in areas under Israeli control.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday appeared to blame a US strategist working with the Blue and White campaign for being behind a report that Israel was likely behind the placement of devices in the vicinity of the White House that can capture cellphone calls.

In a video to supporters on Friday Netanyahu repeated a theory advanced by Fox News host Mark Levin, who suggested Thursday that former Barack Obama strategist Joel Benenson was behind the leak to Politico.

The Politico news outlet reported Thursday that the FBI had determined Israel was responsible for the placement of cellphone surveillance equipment near the White House and at other sensitive locations in Washington, DC.

“Yesterday you heard the lies that Israel tried to spy on the White House, a complete lie,” Netanyahu said in a Hebrew-language video.

He then quoted Levin as saying on his show that “this is exactly like the tricks carried out by Joel Benenson. He was an adviser to Obama and now he is the adviser to [Blue and White leaders Benny] Gantz and [Yair] Lapid.”

“For them everything is kosher,” said Netanyahu without offering any proof that Blue and White was behind the report. “They are willing to do anything and don’t care if they damage this valuable asset, our relationship with the United States and my relationship with the president.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Friday weighed in on a disputed report that said Israel was likely behind the placement of devices in the vicinity of the White House that can capture cellphone calls.

Zarif mocked the US-Israel relationship in a tweet directed at US President Donald Trump that referred to his relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“With a BFF in the #B_Team — who empties US coffers and takes US foreign policy hostage — SPYING on the US PRESIDENT, America doesn’t need enemies,” Zarif wrote, alongside screenshots of the report.

Zarif on Twitter often refers to the “#B_Team,” which includes former US national security adviser John Bolton, who left the post Tuesday, Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, all hawks on Iran. “BFF” is an acronym used online that stands for “best friends forever.”

An Israeli soldier who specializes in locating Gaza terror tunnels has moved to Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, which borders the Strip, and has brought 28 other young Israelis with him, Channel 13 news reported on Friday.

The soldier, who can only be identified by the first letter of his name — Aleph — serves in the Israel Defense Forces in the area of the kibbutz and decided to move to the community after seeing that the security situation was pushing residents away.

He did not want to make the move alone, and sent out a request for volunteers to join him on the WhatsApp messaging platform. Hundreds responded, and 28 other soldiers eventually made the move.

Aleph grew up in the Gush Etzion bloc in the West Bank and began his army service as a combat soldier in a special unit of the Kfir infantry brigade. Around two years ago, he suffered an eye injury and could not continue to serve in the infantry. He then transferred to a unit specializing in countering the threat from Gaza tunnels.

“There is a moment when the person drilling says ‘we feel something here,’ and you insert the camera, and that’s it, you know you succeeded. You understand that you have saved lives,” Aleph told Channel 13 about his role. “In my job there’s no room for mistakes. If I miss something, maybe in a few months people will come out of a tunnel and kill civilians.”

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is warning of an imminent collapse of the Palestinian Authority (PA) economy in a new report that was presented in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday.

The report said the causes of the situation were Israel’s withholding of some of the tax revenue it collects on behalf of the PA, cuts in American financial support, and a decline in grants and foreign aid from countries and organizations.

Mahmoud Elkhafif, a Coordinator for UNCTAD, told The Media Line that “some of the donor states have decreased their contributions to the PA, while Israel has implemented Paris Protocols in such a way that has put the Palestinian leadership under pressure and forced it to shrink its budget.”

The Paris Protocol, also called the Protocol on Economic Relations, was signed by Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as part of the 1995 Oslo II Accord. It specifies that the Israeli government will collect tax revenue on behalf of the PA for a commission of 3 percent, transferring the balance to the Palestinian Interior Ministry.

Last year, the Israeli cabinet decided to withhold funds to the PA in the amount equivalent to what the PA pays to Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, and to the families of Palestinians who died in clashes with Israeli soldiers. While that amount represents about 10 percent of the total taxes and tariffs collected, PA President Mahmoud Abbas previously refused to accept the remainder of the monthly installments, which total about $150 million.

"The Israeli move to deduct from the Palestinian tax money isn’t within the limits of the Paris Protocol,” Elkhafif said. He also noted the impact of Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank, which he said “prevents the movement of people and trade.”

Around 5,000 Palestinians rioted at three locations on the Israel-Gaza Strip border on Friday, the IDF said.

The rioters threw improvised explosive devices, firebombs and rocks at Israeli troops and damaged the border fence in several spots.

IDF troops responded with riot-dispersal means. Health officials in Hamas-ruled Gaza said 55 demonstrators were injured, including 29 by live fire.

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

When asked on Thursday about continued sporadic rocket fire from Gaza, including several such incidents this past week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who is facing a stiff challenge from ex-IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, leader of the centrist Blue and White alliance, in the Knesset elections that will take place on Tuesday — said, “We will probably be forced, there’ll be no choice, to enter into a campaign, a war, in Gaza.”

He added, however, that he would not risk soldiers’ and civilians’ lives “just to get applause,” and he was vague about when any such operation might start.

Because of course you'd mourn the Gukurahundi guy. pic.twitter.com/p3SW6Jn0Qr

— The Mossad: Elite Parody Division (@TheMossadIL) September 13, 2019

A British-Australian woman jailed in Iran has been identified as Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a specialist in Middle East politics at the University of Melbourne.

The academic's family issued a statement through the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade saying they were in close contact with the Australian government, and thanking both the government and Moore-Gilbert's university for their support.

"We believe that the best chance of securing Kylie’s safe return is through diplomatic channels," the family said in the statement.

British and Australian media have reported that Moore-Gilbert has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by Iranian authorities.

Moore-Gilbert is one of three Australian citizens detained in Iran. Australia's Foreign Minister Marise Payne said on Thursday that the government had been working on securing their release for more than a week.

On Tuesday, the Australian foreign ministry identified two of the detainees as Australian Mark Firkin and British-Australian Jolie King.

Before coming to college, I heard stories of Jewish students being harassed on campus. Most of these stories revolved around the Israel-Palestine conflict, with debates turning nasty between Israel advocacy groups, whose members are predominantly Jewish, and pro-Palestinian groups. As an Orthodox Jew who is deeply concerned about human rights, I was ready to join campus discourse and shut down those who used anti-Semitic tropes in their arguments.

What I discovered was that anti-Semitism is alive and more insidious than I had expected.

My first experience with anti-Semitism at Hofstra happened before I had even arrived on campus. I was planning to room with a friend of mine who is also a religious Jew. We had been assigned to a suite with two other girls. At first it seemed great – until I mentioned that my roommate and I are both religious Jews.

Six hours later, both girls suddenly decided to find an alternate living situation.

After telling a professor I would need to miss class for the Jewish high holidays, I was told I needed to re-evaluate my religious beliefs. That same professor told the class to imagine a world without Jews in it.

Later, a student compared the Jewish tradition of marrying within the religion to Nazi eugenics. When I approached the aforementioned professor after class to tell her how uncomfortable the comments had me feel, I was essentially told to be less sensitive.

Then, just three days after the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in which 11 Jews were shot attending services, another professor asked the class to discuss whether the shooter was “truly evil.” Many students expressed the belief that the shooter, who murdered 11 innocent Jewish people, could not be considered evil as he did what he believed was right.

A former professor has sued Pace University in New York for discrimination, claiming observant Jewish and older teachers were pushed out of the math department.

Jonathan Gersch, who is Jewish and wore a yarmulke to the school’s Manhattan campus, said he worked as an adjunct math and statistics professor at Pace for more than 15 years, according to a New York Post report Thursday about his $500,000 lawsuit.

In 2016, a new department chair, Shing So, started cleaning house to bring in younger and cheaper staff, according to the lawsuit, which Gersch filed Wednesday in Manhattan State Supreme Court.

Gersch alleged that he was forced out under false pretenses after the university did not renew his position in March 2017.

His suit claims that soon after 2016, all of the “observant Jews” and 50 percent of the employees at the university for 15 years or more were let go.

“While observant Jews were under 8 percent of the 51 adjuncts, ALL of them — 100 percent — were pushed out after the 2016 academic year,” the suit says.

Oxford street London PSC Palestinian protest fail 6 people ? A joke for a #bdsfailpic.twitter.com/NDfI8vGDjH

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 14, 2019

The leaders of British trade unions, which for years have expressed support for various forms of boycott against Israel, passed a motion seen as endorsing the measure.

The non-binding motion passed Wednesday at the union’s main gathering and internal elections event in Brighton by the Trades Union Congress calls for prioritizing “Palestinians’ rights to justice and equality, including by applying these principles based on international law to all UK trade with Israel.”

The motion, introduced by the member group Artists’ Union England, also accuses Israel of “destroying prospects for peace,” The Jewish News of London reported.

The Trades Union Congress, which has 5.6 million members, has adopted several similar motions in recent years. In 2010, it agreed to “encourage affiliates, employers and pension funds to disinvest from and boycott the goods of companies who profit from illegal settlements, the occupation and the construction” of Israel’s security barrier with the West Bank.

Such language has been used to justify blanket boycotts of Israel, whose water company, banks, pension funds and food industry all service Israelis within the country’s 1949 armistice lines and in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley.

These idiots are blaming us for climate change!

We change the climate. There's a difference. https://t.co/ony4da3xTY

— The Mossad: Elite Parody Division (@TheMossadIL) September 13, 2019

Minnesota authorities said Friday that a suspect was arrested in connection with the fire that destroyed the historic Adas Israel Synagogue.

The fire broke on out in the early hours of Monday morning and completely destroyed the 119-year-old building, though fire fighters were able to save several religious relics from the fire.

The Synagogue is located in the city of Duluth about 155 miles north east of Minnespolis.

While a spokesperson for Duluth told CNN that the fire was caused by arson, how the fire started remains unknown.

The Synagogue, which was originally built back in 1902, is one of two in the Duluth Jewish community. Most of its 75 members are orthodox Jews.

A fundraising campaign on behalf of the synagogue was started by local Jewish federations.

A chief rabbi of Ukraine disputed reports that he had helped commemorate a monument for those who are believed to have fought for a militia whose members killed many Jews.

Rabbi Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich said the reports earlier this month originated in the fact that he attended a commemoration event at a Jewish burial place for Holocaust victims in Sambir, near the western city of Lviv. That ceremony, he said, directly followed another ceremony nearby in which a monument for alleged militiamen was unveiled.

Bleich said he neither prayed for nor eulogized the alleged militiamen believed to be buried there. He also spoke at the event about the need for interfaith cooperation, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The event featuring two ceremonies was part of a compromise, Bleich said, aimed at having crosses removed from the immediate vicinity of the Jewish bodies. The compromise entails the erection of a monument for 17 non-Jews believed to be buried there and to have belonged to the UPA/OUN nationalist militias, which cooperated for a time with Adolf Hitler’s army against the Soviets during World War II.

Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, on Facebook criticized Bleich’s presence at the August 21 event, adding that Bleich had “inaugurated” the monument along with other dignitaries. Dolinsky did mention the existence of two ceremonies.

Since 2006, the only occupants of the United Kingdom’s spectacular Merthyr Tydfil Synagogue have been bats, as it crumbled away into disrepair.

Now, preservation activists in London have bought the unique building in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales that used to house a once-vibrant synagogue with plans to open there the first major museum of the history of the Jews of Wales.

The Foundation for Jewish Heritage announced on Thursday that it had purchased for an undisclosed amount the Victorian stone structure, which was built in 1872 in Gothic Revival style. The building, which last functioned as a synagogue in 1983, is considered one of the United Kingdom’s most important and has been awarded Grade II listed status out of three distinctions ranked in ascending order of significance.

The tall and narrow building, whose imposing double spires form a vestibule of sorts in front of the main hall, used to be the heart of a community with some 400 members in the first half of the 20th century.

But it fell into disuse as the population of the Jewish communities of Britain gradually reconsolidated itself, at the expense of far-flung congregations, around the three main cities of London, Manchester and Newcastle.

The Israel Navy’s submarine training course is—much like the world of submarines itself—submerged in the lesser known world of military operations.

A submarine is the most expensive platform that Israel can buy, and the Israel Defense Forces is about to expand its fleet to six German-made Dolphin platforms—half of them new-generation vehicles that can stay submerged for longer.

These vessels, bristling with advanced technology, can covertly gather intelligence on enemy activities, approach distant coastlines and strike targets with precision missiles, while remaining out of the reach of the enemy’s missiles and rockets. According to international media reports, they are a key aspect of Israel’s nuclear deterrent and second-strike capability.

Yet training the sailors who will serve onboard the secretive vessels is as vital for mission success as any of the submarine’s technological capabilities.

“When we returned to dock after some sort of operation and read all kinds of headlines, we understood that there is great significance in what we did,” 1st Lt. I (full name withheld), a commander of a navy submarine course, told JNS.

He served onboard a Dolphin submarine for a year and eight months after being drafted in 2013. He then chose to attend a naval officer’s course to join the training personnel.

Carice van Houten, a Dutch actress known for her portrayal of the priestess Melisandre in the hit series “Game of Thrones,” has purchased the film rights to a Holocaust rescue story in Holland.

Van Houten, whose character had a prominent presence in the HBO series until its finale in May, and her business partner, Halina Reijn, bought the rights this month to adapt the book titled “The High Nest.” Its author, Roxane van Iperen, reported the news Wednesday on Twitter and added the book “will become a movie.”

The book tells the true story of two Jewish sisters, Janny and Lien Brilleslijper, who during the Holocaust turned their hiding place near Amsterdam into a Dutch resistance center for harboring Jews and others wanted by the Nazis.

It is unclear whether van Houten and Reijn, who are both among the Netherlands’ best-known performers, intend to portray the sisters. Van Houten has appeared in the two previous productions of her firm, Man Up, which she launched recently with Reijn.

“The High Nest” has been on the top slots of the Netherlands’ list of best-selling books since its release last year.

Matthew James Amiot, from his Facebook page

Minnesota police made an arrest Friday in connection with a fire that destroyed Adas Israel Synagogue in Duluth earlier this week.

Matthew James Amiot, 36, was booked on a first-degree arson charge Friday and is in custody at the St. Louis County Jail. He is scheduled to appear in court Monday.

The Star Tribune reported that no one else was arrested on Friday and that the suspect had nearly a dozen misdemeanor convictions for trespassing, burglary and theft.

The cable-car project is an example, illustrating how Israel wields architecture and urban planning to extend its authority in the occupied territories. Whatever its transit merits, which critics say are negligible, the cable car curates a specifically Jewish narrative of Jerusalem, furthering Israeli claims over Arab parts of the city.

...Cable car passengers will be funneled through a Jewish version of the city’s history. After disembarking at the City of David, they can tour the archaeological site, then proceed underground to the Western Wall via Herodian passageways walked by Jewish pilgrims during the era of the Second Temple and now partly excavated beneath the homes of Palestinian families in Silwan.

Notwithstanding that several Arab homes may be demolished to make room for it, in effect the cable car pretends Arab Silwan isn’t there. Tourists will fly over and tunnel under Silwan’s Palestinian residents without actually having to encounter them.

I was the head of the preservation committee in #Jerusalem and most of the buildings we were preserving were Arab ones because we understand the value of history, what the @nytimes is doing is completely denying #Jewish history

— פלר חסן נחום Fleur Hassan-Nahoum (@FleurHassanN) September 14, 2019

The plan can bring to mind Israel’s so-called bypass roads, built to safely speed Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank to Jerusalem without passing through Palestinian towns.

Even the cladding of East Jerusalem’s settlements in Jerusalem stone, the architectural uniform traditionally worn by buildings in Jewish West Jerusalem, helps spread the image of a single Jewish city.

Heaven intrudes upon Jerusalem in another way, too, in the recurring question of how much the whole city should itself resemble a perfect kingdom, or simply be allowed to look like other places. The British, who governed Jerusalem from 1917 to 1947, made a powerful gesture toward a higher Jerusalem when they decreed that all buildings had to be faced with Jerusalem stone, a local form of limestone with an exceptionally warm, golden hue. .... This rule may be the most important single act of city planning ever in Jerusalem. The stone is an extraordinary material, rich and textured and almost magical in the glow of dawn and dusk in the city's heavy light, and it brings even the most mediocre architecture into a sense of wholeness with the city.

Modern Jerusalem was spared Disneyfication, first by the highborn culture of British colonialism, with its awe for the city’s antique past, and next by Jordanian paralysis, which froze the Old City as if in amber.

One of the central elements of the Palestinian narrative is the negation of the entire Jewish history in the Land of Israel in general and in Jerusalem in particular. Despite numerous sources and archeological finds proving the opposite, the Palestinian Authority regularly repeats this claim because it is the basis for the PA's denial of Israel's right to exist. Recently, the PA Minister of Culture emphasized this Palestinian lie, claiming Israel has "no connection" to Jerusalem, history, geography or even to the future. He then asserted the second fundamental Palestinian historical revision intended to create a Palestinian right to exist. He claimed that Palestinians were Canaanites with a 6,000-year history in the land:

PA Minister of Culture Atef Abu Saif: "Our struggle is with this State [of Israel] that came out of nowhere, without a history and without geography, stole our land, and wants to put an end to our existence... There is a lying author who wrote a story about his false presence on this land, and then comes and wants to realize his tale. There is nothing in history that proves this presence. They have not found one stone... [Israel knows] that they have no connection to this city [Jerusalem], that they have no connection to this history, and that they have no connection to the geography, just as they have no connection to the future... If Israel celebrated the lie of '3,000 years [of Jewish history] in Jerusalem,' we have 7,000 years in Jerusalem - so what? We Canaanites are the first ones who built Jebus more than 6,000 years ago. And perhaps we need no celebrations because it is natural that we are here. Those who celebrate are foreigners."
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, Aug. 26, 2019]

Palestinian Media Watch documented that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas himself recently voiced the PA claim that today's Palestinians are descendants of the biblical Canaanites in order to establish an ancient historical connection of "5,000 years" to the land:

Abbas: "[Israelis] will remember that this land belongs to its people; this land belongs to its inhabitants; this land belongs to the Canaanites who were here 5,000 years ago - and we are the Canaanites!"
[Facebook page of the PA Presidential Office, Aug. 10, 2019]

PA Minister of Culture denies Jewish history: Nothing proves it, they have no connection to history.

One of the central elements of the Palestinian narrative is the negation of the entire Jewish history in the Land of Israel.

Read more here: https://t.co/YfsahT5gi0pic.twitter.com/De4M0QZ548

— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) September 15, 2019

Its critics have accused Israel of a lot of terrible things over the course of its 71 years of existence, but The New York Times has now added one more to the list that will particularly resonate with intellectuals. While Israeli policies in Jerusalem since its reunification in 1967 have often been blasted, a recently approved proposal to deal with the city’s seemingly insoluble traffic problems is being put down as “Disneyfication.”

The object of scorn is a cable car that will start its journey at the First Station cultural complex in western Jerusalem and then travel over the Hinnom Valley to a stop at Mount Zion before landing in the City of David archeological park in eastern Jerusalem. There, visitors and worshippers will be able to tour the historic excavations at the site and walk to the Western Wall via recently excavated underground passageways that were taken by pilgrims on their way to the Second Temple 2,000 years ago. If planners have their way, this line will be the first of many that will crisscross the city in the future, delivering people to destinations that would otherwise require them to navigate jammed streets.

The accusation that Jews are trashing the holy city and turning it into a theme park due to this plan was the focus of a feature published this week by the Times. The cable-car scheme is fair game for criticism from architects and others who worry about the potential aesthetic damage to the ancient capital. But the subtext of the campaign against the initiative goes far deeper than whether or not it will make Jerusalem look like a Swiss ski resort or even Disneyworld. For Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman and many of the Israel-bashers he quotes in his piece, the real story is about how Israel is seeking to emphasize Jerusalem’s Jewish history.

Kimmelman is perfectly entitled to critique the Israeli cable car plan on the grounds of architecture and design. Indeed, one of the critics he interviews is Moshe Safdie, the architect responsible for many Israeli building projects including within Jerusalem. But Kimmelman goes further:
The cable-car project is an example, illustrating how Israel wields architecture and urban planning to extend its authority in the occupied territories. Whatever its transit merits, which critics say are negligible, the cable car curates a specifically Jewish narrative of Jerusalem, furthering Israeli claims over Arab parts of the city.

What is this architecture and urban planning that Israel wields? An illustrative photo below the paragraph shows a walled section of Israel’s security barrier as an example. The barrier is not about extending Israeli authority but preventing acts of Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.

And what exactly is a “specifically Jewish narrative of Jerusalem,” a city that has been central to Judaism and the Jewish people for thousands of years?

Later, Kimmelman also states:
Cable car passengers will be funneled through a Jewish version of the city’s history.

As if Israel is somehow imposing on or ‘Judaizing’ the city.

Indeed, according to Kimmelman:
the cable cars will swoop down from a Jewish neighborhood in the western part of Jerusalem to Mount Zion.

This is an interesting use of language given that cable cars usually descend fairly slowly. Instead, we have them “swooping down” almost like a predatory bird, which might well be a subliminal image for Kimmelman who sees Israel preying on the holy city.

Related reading: Deal With It: Jerusalem is Israel’s Capital

It’s also worth pointing out that while Kimmelman sees Israel promoting a “Jewish version of the city’s history,” Israel is the one authority that has consistently and effectively protected all holy sites in Jerusalem for all religions. Indeed there is nothing preventing tourists from visiting the many Christian or Muslim historical sites. The only party that denies a Jewish historical connection to the city is the Palestinians.

Speaking of the NYT was reading Deborah Lipstadt’s review of a new book on it and my lord the stuff the Times pulls and still calls itself a newspaper pic.twitter.com/sHrNEyDFQs

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) September 15, 2019

Everyone has a story.

My story is a long one, which is why I put the main parts of it in a book. To make sure that all my friends and followers can read my book, I recently instructed my office to make the E-book version affordable to everyone for almost nothing.

Here, I explain how I was indoctrinated by the educational system of Islamic Regime in Iran, and how I managed to break free. This is important because I do not speak of a matter that took place twenty or fifty years ago, but a matter that took place less than ten years ago.

How did Imam Tawhidi, go from this:


To this?:

Anti-Semitism — in any form — must be condemned.@imamofpeace explains. pic.twitter.com/NTLTlY7ts0

— PragerU (@prageru) September 4, 2019

In 2006, my friends and I were taken on a journey from Western Australia to Iran, in order to visit the holy Islamic sites as well as participate in a short Islamic studies course. Around a month later, we returned to Australia. Out of the group of 20 people, I was the only one that decided to return to Iran and complete my studies. With encouragement from friends and family, I returned to Iran the following year.

I landed in Tehran at 2:22 am on February 3, 2007. Amar, a taxi driver my family friends had arranged to meet me at the airport, took me to the Holy City of Qum. I told him to take me to the Imam Khomeini Islamic Seminary, located at Jihad Roundabout, because I was familiar with that institute and its people from the previous trip. I was transferred to another location, a student dormitory, where students from all countries waited for their interview with the university committee.

I spent over five months in a dormitory with prospective students from Russia, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Africa, the UK, and the USA. The room I was placed in included six other students waiting their turn, with the entire building holding over 50 other students. It was not a pleasant time. Many had applied to study in this university simply because there was no other option for them in life. They had either come from war-torn countries, or fled their families. Some were converts to Islam. Fights would break out between them, and some students were extremely violent.

Bari Weiss says the Left only cares about Muslims when it involves Israel:

“There are a million Uighurs in China, Muslims in concentration camps. Somehow the Left who claim to care so much about Muslim lives don’t talk about that.” pic.twitter.com/1y9LyOhGYm

— Ib (@IbrahimAS97) September 14, 2019

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his final pre-election cabinet meeting on Sunday in the Jordan Valley on Sunday, reiterating his pledge to annex the area.

During the special cabinet meeting, the cabinet also voted to approve a new settlement in the area. The settlement, Mevo'ot Yericho, has previously been an illegal outpost, but now it is set to get official recognition.

Netanyahu further said that it was clear that the US peace plan was going to be released just days after the election, even before a new coalition is formed and a new government is sworn in. He said Israeli Ambassador to the United States had a similar assessment, and therefore it was imperative to green light the new settlement.

The meeting, along with the new pledges, came despite an international outcry over Netanyahu's promise to annex the West Bank's Jordan Valley. Annexing the area, considered to be the heartland of any future Palestinian state, would all but extinguish any remaining Palestinian hopes for independence.

Netanyahu has staged a flurry of media appearances to beseech supporters to vote in large numbers to stave off the prospect of a left-wing government he says will endanger the country's security.

Legal officials in the Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces have reportedly concluded that Israel could allow Jews for the first time to purchase property in the West Bank as private individuals, which would mark a significant achievement for settlers and make it easier for them to acquire land.

The legal opinions have been submitted to the office of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who is expected to approve them, the Haaretz daily reported on Sunday.

While the IDF legal adviser has warned of potential diplomatic repercussions over such a move, the Defense Ministry adviser called for implementing the recommendation, saying it wouldn’t mark a radical change from the current legal situation, the report said.

The current military laws in the West Bank — based on old Jordanian law from the time the Hashemite Kingdom controlled the region from 1949 to 1967, when Israel captured it in the Six Day War — only allow Jordanians, Palestinians or “foreigners of Arab origin” to purchase land.

Israeli Jews are only able to carry out real estate deals via a company and require approval from the head of the Civil Administration, an Israeli body belonging to the Defense Ministry which is in charge of civilian matters in the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement of his intention to annex areas of the West Bank following next week’s elections shows Israel is becoming a “racist, apartheid regime,” Turkey’s foreign minister was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Netanyahu said on Tuesday he would annex the Jordan Valley, a swathe of the disputed West Bank that Israel captured in 1967 and which Palestinians want as part of a future state. The move alarmed Middle Eastern nations, European powers, and Arab foreign ministers.

On Saturday, Turkey’s foreign ministry said the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) would convene in Jeddah on Sunday to discuss Netanyahu’s statement.

Speaking in Jeddah, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Netanyahu’s “embarrassing” plan was a “despicable” attempt to earn votes ahead of Tuesday’s election, and criticized what he called a lack of reaction from other Muslim countries.

“Israel, encouraged by the support of certain countries, is continuing its aggressive policies that are turning it into a racist, apartheid regime,” Cavusoglu was quoted as saying by the state-run Anadolu news agency.

“If the whole Muslim community had reacted together, the reckless plans, policies, and behavior of the United States and Israel would never have reached this point,” Cavusoglu said.

Yamina candidate Naftali Bennett unveiled Sunday what he claimed was the long-delayed Trump peace plan’s scheme for dividing the West Bank between Israel and the Palestinians. His party later acknowledged it had “compiled” the map itself based on various reports.

The alleged plan, shared by Bennett on Facebook together with a map, shows what he calls “islands” of Israeli control surrounded by a majority of the West Bank set aside for a Palestinian state.

The map shows Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley as Israeli.

The politician, whose party is battling the ruling Likud for right-wing voters ahead of the elections on Tuesday, slammed the alleged plan as “hell” for Israelis living in the West Bank, and claimed it would be the de facto end of the settlement enterprise.

“Folks, it’s time to reveal: This is the ‘Islands Plan’ of the deal of the century, which will be imposed on us right after the elections,” Bennett wrote.

“In black — Palestine. In white, isolated Israeli ‘islands’ in an ocean of Palestine, surrounded 360 degrees by Hamas, Tanzim, PLO,” he wrote.
A map of the West Bank that purports to show the final arrangement proposed by the Trump peace plan, with Israeli-controlled areas in blue and white, and a Palestinian state in black. (Facebook screen capture)

He called the map “hell for every resident of Ariel, Ofra and Kiryat Arba. An end to the settlement [enterprise].”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “spoke of sovereignty in the ‘settlements,’ but intentionally avoided saying, ‘sovereignty over Area C,'” the roughly 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli control,” Bennett said.

The map shows Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria annexed to Israel, along with the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea area, while most of Judea and Samaria is ceded by Israel for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

A senior US official pushed back, Sunday, telling The Jerusalem Post that the map presented by Bennett was “inaccurate”, and does not reflect the actual peace plan.

"The map posted by Naftali Bennett today on twitter and his claim that this represents the vision for peace of the Trump administration is highly inaccurate," the official said.

Earlier on Sunday, Likud officials blasted Yamina over the map, saying it “hurt the sensitive relationship with the Trump administration.”

"The map that Bennett, Smotrich and Shaked are advertising - is incorrect and not part of Trump's Deal of the Century. Absolute Fake News.”

"Trump's ‘Deal of the Century’' will come immediately after elections on Tuesday, and Israeli citizens have to decide who they want to send to negotiate with President Trump - his close friend Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who protected the land of Israel for the 8 years of Obama and brought about great achievements from the Trump administration, or Yair Lapid, who wants to evacuate 90 thousand settlers, and with whom nobody serious in the US is even familiar.”

It is an unfortunate Washington reality that stories about US intelligence breaches are often exploited to charge Israel with spying on the United States, or otherwise compromising US security. A story in Politico is the latest example, charging – without any obvious evidence – that Israel was responsible for planting cell site simulators that would allow cellphone calls in Washington, DC to be tracked and intercepted. Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, issued categorical denials that Israel had planted such devices, or spied on the US in other ways either.

The Politico article, Israel accused of planting mysterious spy devices near the White House, by Daniel Lippman, charges that:
The U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.

Lippman further claims that:
Based on a detailed forensic analysis, the FBI and other agencies working on the case felt confident that Israeli agents had placed the devices, according to the former officials, several of whom served in top intelligence and national security posts.

But Lippman seems confused about whether the devices in question were ever recovered – he implies they were by referring to devices “found near the White House,” but elsewhere in the article he refers to “evidence of the devices,” meaning signals picked up from the alleged devices, rather than the devices themselves.

In order to clear the air, Israel should work to get an official and formal denial of last week’s Politico story alleging Israeli spying on the White House, former ambassador to the US Zalman Shoval said on Sunday,

Shoval noted that US President Donald Trump denied the story in a response on Thursday to a reporter’s question, but that it “would be in order” for Jerusalem to get an official denial from the White House or the State Department.

“I don’t believe that, no, I don’t believe the Israelis were spying on us. I really would find that hard to believe,” Trump said.

“My relationship with Israel has been great,” Trump continued. “You look at the Golan Heights, you look at Jerusalem, with moving the embassy to Jerusalem. You look at even the Iran deal, what’s happened with Iran. Iran is a much different country right now than it was two and a half years ago. No, I don’t believe that, I wouldn’t believe that story. Anything is possible. But I don’t believe it.”

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) request to join the Universal Postal Union (UPU) was denied, following an Israeli campaign.

The PA in March made an official request to join the UPU, and on Friday their application was rejected after failing to obtain the majority required for its approval.

Established in 1874, the UPU is the second oldest international organization. The UPU is the primary forum for cooperation between postal sector players.

Joining the UPU for United Nations member states is automatic, and therefore all 192 countries are members. According to the organization’s rules, adding a “non-member state” requires the support of two-thirds of countries. The PA’s request to join was sent to the Member States in early April and they were given four months to respond. Countries that did not respond to the request were counted as abstentions.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has been campaigning with the Member States and has prevented the PA from obtaining the required majority to join.

Given what a big human rights problem business in occupied territory is supposed to be according to @UNHumanRights@AmnestyCIJ@hrw, amazing UN Sec Gen doesn’t mention it once in his report last week https://t.co/qgJPlt4X2D. Does the SeGeb not care about int’l law or what?

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) September 15, 2019

By contrast, Hezbollah has a dominating presence in Lebanon thanks to Iranian support. Israel wants the US and others to focus on biting economic sanctions, to reduce among other issues, Iran’s ability to finance Hezbollah and Hamas. One needs a quiet southern front to ensure that focus.

To prevent the Iranian build up might require massive retaliation in Lebanon – an outcome that will bring about a campaign of massive delegitimization against the Jewish State. Why waste Israel’s precious few reserves of legitimacy at the present moment on a far less lethal southern front?

Hamas’s strategic objective is different from both Iran and Israel. If the former wants hot war on the southern front, then Hamas wants intermittent and limited violence to extort Qatari aid and Israeli concessions, which also includes indirect subsidies toward its enemy – like the creation of a new electricity line from Israel, which Hamas knows Israel will subsidize for a considerable period of time as in the past (another shame-provoking act!).

Despite election rhetoric, no serious politician or political party disagrees either with Netanyahu’s reading of Israel’s geostrategic predicament, the steadfast way he pursues it, or the need to bear the pain and the shame of a quiet southern front.

His detractors, Gantz, Lapid (much less so Ya’alon) only take him to task for failing to leverage the three-and-a-half years to explore international and regional schemes that seemingly would put Gaza on a trajectory of peace.

Here, indeed, is the difference between Netanyahu’s acumen and courage and these detractors’ empty rhetoric. They should read Prof. Benny Miller, an astute geostrategic Israeli scholar on regional war and peace in the Middle East, who states that outside powers are helpful in ending wars and preserving cold wars, but it is local powers that decide on war and peace.

Israel’s enemies know what they want – certainly not peace. So much for the importance of international and regional schemes.

Only another round of war and victory will do in Hamas, but not right now. Iran and the northern front in the immediate future are far more important.

Palestinian Attorney-General Akram al-Khatib has charged three of Israa Ghrayeb's relatives with murder in her untimely death. He made the statements during a press conference over the weekend.

However, despite claims made on social media and by the Palestinian public, he ruled out that that she was the victim of an honor killing.

Khatib said that the three relatives are being charged with "beating [Ghrayeb] to death," proclaiming that she suffered from "severe respiratory failure" from "torture and abuse" at the hands of those charged, adding that anyone else believed to have been involved in her death will be prosecuted.

He added that grievous psychological and physical torture contributed to the deterioration of Ghrayeb's health.

Activists worldwide have been calling for retribution for Ghrayeb, who was a 21-year-old Palestinian woman from Beit Sahour, Bethlehem. She was allegedly murdered in late August by her brother, after she posted a video on social media of herself with the man she was planning to marry.

Ghrayeb’s brother, Ihab, a Canadian resident, was apparently exasperated by the video, claiming that the post “dishonored” the family by presenting her with her soon-to-be husband before the actual wedding.

The victim's father allegedly ordered her brother to beat her after relatives witnessed the footage online.

Turkey’s defense ministry said on Sunday that the delivery of a second battery of Russian S-400 missile defense systems has been completed as of Sunday, and added that the systems would become active in April 2020.

Ankara and Washington have been at loggerheads over Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 systems, which the United States says are not compatible with NATO defenses and pose a threat to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 “stealth” fighter jets.

The initial parts of the system were delivered to Ankara in July despite warnings about possible US sanctions over the purchase. The United States has also expelled Turkey from the F-35 program, but Ankara has so far dismissed the warnings.

In a statement, the defense ministry said the delivery of the second S-400 battery to Ankara was completed. Efforts to mount the systems and train personnel who will use them were continuing, it said, adding that it planned to activate the S-400s in April 2020.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusglu told an interview with CNN Turk on Saturday that the S-400s would be activated despite repeated US warnings.

A US warship docked in the port of Lebanon's capital of Beirut on Saturday, for the first time in 30 years.

According to the US Embassy in Lebanon, the arrival of USS Ramage, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, comes as a goodwill gesture and a sign of US commitment to regional security and freedom of navigation.

Daily Star also quotes the US ambassador to Lebanon as saying the visit was a political message signifying the depth of the relations between the US and Lebanon.

A reception hosted by Fifth Fleet commander Vice Admiral James Malloy saw representatives of all Lebanon's factions, except for Iran-backed Hezbollah.

The visit comes at a time of heightened regional tensions stirred by what many see as an increasingly assertive Iran operating via its many proxies.

On Saturday, Iranian-linked Yemeni rebels claimed responsibility for a drone strike on key Saudi oil facilities. The US was quick to point at Tehran as the actual perpetrator, with Iran dismissing the allegations as nothing but a pretext for future US actions against Tehran.

A twitter account affiliated with Hezbollah posted a photo of the terror organization's new missile on Sunday afternoon, which he says is capable of destroying all military battleships.

"Our new missile is capable of destroying all military battleships, killing all who are on board," wrote the Hezbollah activist, who often posts photos of South Lebanon Army (SLA) members and their families who have moved to Israel, announcing that they are being called to trial.

In August, Hezbollah released footage and pictures of the anti-ship missile that struck the INS Hanit during the 2006 Second Lebanon War, an incident that killed four Israeli soldiers in one of the most significant attacks against the IDF in the war.

In a documentary called #Army_To_Be_Drowned aired on Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV channel marking the war the group aired reconnaissance footage of the ship from the Lebanese coastline, preparations for the launch of the missile, the operations room which directed the strike as well as nighttime footage which showed the impact of the Chinese-made C-802 anti-ship cruise missile.

During the first week of September 2019, a large group of Druze sheikhs from the Golan Heights sought to visit Syria. However, Israel did not allow them to cross into Jordan on their way to Damascus.

The incident begs the question: what is going on between the Druze on the Golan Heights and their brethren in Syria and Lebanon?

Since the Assad regime returned to the Syrian side of the Golan Heights in July 2018, pro-Syrian activities have increased among the Druze in the area. These activities ceased during the time that Assad lost control over the border area in the Syrian civil war (2012-2018). The pendulum even swung in the opposite direction, with activities showing solidarity with the rebels and a distancing from Assad.

Today, the offices of the Mukhabarat – Syria’s Military Intelligence Directorate – have reopened in Quneitra and are already intervening in villages on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights. The city of Quneitra is also being rebuilt. While Assad is maintaining quiet on the border, he is also interfering on the Israeli side to stir up riots and unrest.

Before the delegation of sheikhs, there was a demonstration against the Trump plan. What do the Druze have to do with the Trump plan? The anti-American Mukhabarat in Quneitra provided the answers.

A top Iranian commander warned on Sunday that Tehran was prepared for an all-out war with the United States and said his country could launch advanced missiles at US bases and aircraft carriers within a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles).

The statement appeared to be a response to Washington casting blame on Iran Saturday after Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched drone attacks on the world’s largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia and a major oil field, sparking huge fires at a vulnerable chokepoint for global energy supplies.

Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said the kingdom was temporarily halting production at two Aramco oil facilities that were attacked by the Yemeni rebels, interrupting about half of the company’s total output.

The Iranian-backed Houthis, who hold Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and other territory in the Arab world’s poorest country, took responsibility for the attacks in the war against a Saudi-led coalition that has fought since 2015 to reinstate the internationally recognized Yemeni government. But the US blamed Iran, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeting, “There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.”

“Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply,” Pompeo added.

An Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said on Sunday that US bases and aircraft carriers in the region were within range of Iranian missiles after the US accused Iran of leading attacks on Saudi oil plants, raising tensions in the Middle East.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group said it attacked two Saudi Aramco oil plants on Saturday at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, knocking out more than half the Kingdom’s output.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of being behind the attacks, ruling out Yemeni involvement and denouncing Tehran for engaging in false diplomacy.

Pompeo said on Twitter on Saturday that there was no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.

“Everybody should know that all American bases and their aircraft carriers in a distance of up to 2,000 kilometres around Iran are within the range of our missiles,” the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force Amirali Hajizadeh said on Sunday.

IRGC Quds Force Commander General Qasem Soleimani Posts Video after Yemeni Drone Attacks in Abqaiq and Khurais: We Are the Nation of Martyrdom; Iraqi PMU, Yemeni Ansar Allah Are Following Imam Hussein’s Path pic.twitter.com/05tAtCQW4C

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 15, 2019

In 2016, 46% of Democrats in the United States said their sympathies aligned with Israel, compared with 29% who sympathized with the Palestinians. In 2018, only 27% of Democrats supported Israel, compared with 25% for the Palestinians. That’s a drop of 20 percentage points in support for Israel in just two years.

Today’s European anti-Semitism comes mainly from liberals. A study conducted in 2012 by the German-based Friedrich Ebert Foundation shows that 63% of Poles and 48% of Germans think that “Israel is waging a war of extermination against the Palestinians,” along with 42% in Britain, 41% in Hungary and 38% in Italy.

According to a survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 48% of the European Jews interviewed have heard or read charges that “Israelis behave like Nazis toward the Palestinians.”

Younger liberals, perhaps especially young people of color, are the engines of rising discontent with reflexively pro-Israel policy. They often struggle to understand, much less to embrace, the way older liberals see Israel.

Here are three reasons for the success of BDS:

First, BDS successfully allied itself with Western leftist causes by portraying Israel as a white, apartheid, racist, colonialist state engaged in the ethnic cleansing of its brown indigenous Arab population.

Second, Israel failed to recognize the large demographic, cultural and ideological shift that has taken place in the West and adjust its actions, narrative, and policies to fit the new reality.

Third, Israel is not fighting the cultural and media war of delegitimization being waged by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Meanwhile, Israel is spending its time and resources in promoting unnecessary legislation to prevent economic boycotts and sanctions that have not yet materialized.

San Francisco's Arab Resource Organizing Center is celebrating the 5th anniversary of their failure to permanently prevent Zim cargo from off-loading in Oakland.

The 2014 action, dubbed "Block the boat" was a triumph of bullying, ultimately achieving nothing. Zim trailers still abound in the Bay area.

Even in the tumultuous world of international shipping, with the on again, off again tariffs, Zim's doing just fine financially, with total revenue of $834.3 million in Q2 2019, a 3.9 % increase from last year. Thats in spite of the best efforts of the BDS holes.

In the 2nd quarter of 2019, ZIM carried 731 thousand TEUs, its' second highest carried volume ever.

Rather than an action reflective of "activists working in close partnership with members of ILWU Local 10, " as claimed by AROC, the gates to the docks were physically blocked, with activists using their bodies, their bikes, and their children to prevent workers from uploading the ships.

Yesterday was a defining moment . #BDS& the @PSCupdates in London and suburbs are finished . Over the years we’ve watched them dwindle to 6/7 . Nothing in Kensington ,Oxford st was the premiere of Young PSC demo of HSBC every year.They’re rhetoric isn’t changing new minds . pic.twitter.com/9nZi796VgU

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 15, 2019

Amid growing concerns over global antisemitism, a panel of experts convened at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on New York’s Upper East Side to discuss the “weaponization of antisemitism” and ways to combat it.

At the event, which was hosted by the Bnai Zion Foundation, panelists began by discussed the sources of antisemitism: the Israel-hating radical left, the far-right as exhibited by white supremacist and Islamic extremists.

“As bad as this is, it isn’t the 1930s because we have friends and allies in powerful places around the world who are incredibly good partners,” said Elan Carr, US Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism.

Carr, who served as the international president of Alpha Epsilon Pi—the Jewish fraternity that he led in fighting antisemitism on college campuses in North America and Europe—also called the “24/7 indoctrination” against Jewish people and Israel taking place on North American college campuses “absolutely disgraceful.” He said the Trump administration is working on an “interagency process on antisemitism” that will unite the State Department, the Department of Education, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department to deal with an issue that has become graver and more prevalent.

Holocaust historian, author and professor Deborah Lipstadt kicked off the event by talking about the current increase of antisemitic attacks around the world, saying, “I’m not sure if there are more antisemites today or the antisemites feel more embolden and freer to say and do what they want. It’s a little bit of both.”

Flyers described as “anti-Semitic in nature” were posted on several Jewish institutions in Indianapolis.

The flyers were discovered on Friday morning, according to local reports.

The Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council said in a statement that the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department was notified of the incident and that it had opened an investigation. The police are classifying it as a “bias crime,” according to the statement.

The Jewish institutions opened as usual and police provided additional patrols, according to the statement.

“The Jewish community in Indianapolis has well-established and open lines of communication with the Office of Homeland Security, IMPD, and the Marion County Sheriff. Organizations remain vigilant and responsible to all incidents regardless of severity,” the statement also said.

Polish prime minister Wladyslaw Gomulka was once ironically referred to by Jews as a “great Zionist” since he initiated not one, but two waves of immigration to Israel. The description was slightly ironic because while the first wave in the 1950’s enabled those who survived the Holocaust to rebuild their lives in Israel, which was seen as a positive thing, the second, in the late 1960’s, was pushed on the remaining Jews in Poland against their will and best-interests.

Following the Israeli victory in the Six Day War the entire Socialist Block, the Eastern European nations dominated by the USSR, had to confront the uncomfortable truth that technology provided to the Jewish State by the so-called decedent West was able to defeat Soviet weaponry offered to the Arab countries.

In Poland, where people were encouraged to ignore the historical truth of the Soviet invasion to their country alongside the Germans and only speak of the Red Army as liberators – the Jewish victory was seen as, odd as it may seem, “our victory” as many Israelis at that time were born in Poland or to Polish-born parents.

The authorities, fearing a massive revolt like the one that eventually took place in the Prague Spring of 1968, decided to find a scapegoat.

The choice was the Jews of Poland, those who chose to stay in Poland and believe that under Socialism a better life might be built for them and their children.

Imagine visiting Auschwitz and making it your priority to take a photo with your ass sticking out on the same tracks that transported millions to their death. pic.twitter.com/eNF1yydqgl

— Grant Tucker (@GrantTucker) September 14, 2019

NYSE-listed cardiac and vascular surgery company CyroLife has signed a distribution agreement, credit facilities, and option agreement to acquire Israel-based stent graft company EndoSpan, the two announced Wednesday.

Founded in 2008 and based in Israeli central town Herzliya, EndoSpan develops stent graft systems for treating aneurysms and dissections throughout the aorta. Its Horizon system for endovascular treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysms is currently in preparations for starting an approval process in Europe. Its Nexus system for treating aortic arch disease has already received a CE Mark (European approval).

Under the deal, CyroLife will pay EndoSpan $10 million for the European distribution rights for Nexus, and provide up to $15 million in debt financing subject to Endospan’s progress in its US clinical trial as its works towards US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. The option agreement gives CyroLife 90 days from the FDA approval to acquire EndoSpan for $350 million plus up to an additional $100 million depending on the commercial success of the system.

An Iranian judoka coerced by Tehran to lose at the Judo World Championship last week congratulated his Israeli counterpart in a social media post on Monday. Saeid Mollaei, who confirmed that he was forced to throw a match in Tokyo on Wednesday, took to Instagram to praise the eventual gold-medal winner, Israeli star Sagi Muki. "Congratulations champion," Mollaei commented on a message Muki posted after the winning the prestigious competition.