Iran has been suspended from international judo competitions because of its policy of boycotting bouts with Israeli athletes.

Less than a month after Iranian athlete Saeid Mollaei walked off his national team in protest of the boycott policy, the International Judo Federation (IJF) said Wednesday that Iran was suspended ahead of a full hearing.

The Iranian judo star said he was afraid to return home after exposing and criticizing his government’s pressure on him to deliberately lose his semifinal bout in last month’s World Championships in Tokyo so as not to risk facing Israel’s Sagi Muki, the eventual winner, in the Tokyo final.

“Following what happened during the last World Judo Championships Tokyo 2019, the International Judo Federation pronounces against the Iran Judo Federation a protective suspension from all competitions, administrative and social activities organized or authorized by International Judo Federation and its Unions,” the IJF said in a statement on its website.

“The Commission has a strong reason to believe that the Iran Judo Federation will continue or repeatedly engage in misconduct or commit any other offence against the legitimate interests, principles or objectives of the IJF,” the statement said.

Iran’s judo federation is accused of discriminating against Israeli athletes and breaking rules over manipulating competition results.

The suspension went into force immediately, and is subject to an appeal that can be filed by the Iranian federation within 21 days.

The British Labour Party’s latest attempt to shake long-standing allegations of anti-Jewish bias drew harsh criticism this week after it emerged that a planned meeting to discuss the issue was scheduled to be held on a Saturday, the Jewish day of rest.

On Tuesday, the Jewish Labour Movement issued a harsh statement condemning the party for effectively sidelining Jews from the debate, which will focus on streamlining the process of expelling members found guilty of anti-Semitism.

In a statement posted on Twitter, the JLM called the choice of date for the meeting an “institutional failing” and decried the party leadership’s “complete failure in both judgement and commitment to tackle anti-Semitism.”

“We have learnt tonight from press reports that the Party wishes to make sweeping changes to the disciplinary rules on anti-Semitism, without consulting us, its only Jewish affiliate, or any communal organization. To add insult to injury, they will debate these changes at conference on the Jewish Sabbath, when religiously observant Jewish Labor delegates will be silenced, unable to participate in the debate.”

The Jewish community “has zero confidence” that the measures being debated will solve the anti-Semitism crisis, the statement continued, accusing party leaders of “engaging in anti-Semitism or turning a blind eye to it.”

“It will simply streamline the process of letting anti-Semites off the hook.”

Last month, I had a delightfully anachronistic experience. I met representatives of seven youth movements, from Right to Left. These smart, idealistic, passionately committed twentysomethings proudly call themselves “Zionist.”

That Friday night I sang and danced-in the Shabbat with dozens of students from one Jewish high school. Most are “nonreligious” – many drove there. Nevertheless, they welcomed the Sabbath Queen with a hassidic-level nuclear-powered intensity. They do this weekly, voluntarily, joyously!

Welcome to Australia, where I recently completed a 29-speech, 11-day, three-city tour with the Zionist Federation of Australia. It’s truly “down under,” charmingly upside down.

Unlike their American cousins, most Australian Jews attend Jewish day school, join youth movements, visit Israel – repeatedly – and cherish their Jewish traditions.

Ninety-two percent have visited Israel. In America it’s barely 50%, having doubled thanks to Birthright. In Australia, 33% intermarry, twice as many as did 20 years ago, but half the American rate. And, unlike many Americans, most Australian Jews still consider intermarriage a threat to the communal future, not an “opportunity.”

Many Australian students are “out” as Zionists. Considering themselves Jews “first,” they are proudly nationalist. Similarly, most communal leaders are passionate Zionists. They’re often to the community’s “Right,” religiously, politically. They’re modern Maccabees, not Social Justice Warriors in rabbinic robes. In America, many non-Orthodox rabbis and community leaders lead the charge against Israel, wasting precious Torah-teaching time sermonizing against Netanyahu, politicizing the relationship, then wondering why so many Jews seem fed up with Israel – and Judaism.

Luckily, my father, the rock of this family, the one who told us countless times over the past year that this is the card we were dealt and we need to live, luckily he spoke on my behalf and brought the world to tears.

Over the next 12 months, I learned about heroism. I thought I knew Miriam. I didn’t. She taught me who she was. Like who she really was. A hero. A superhero. Just like her husband.

I thought I knew Tamar. I didn’t. I got to know her. A rock. Like her Abba. She got engaged and married to Michaya, a man Ari loved.

Naomi. “How was she strong?” A question I asked myself thousands of times. Thousands.

Yakir. A 6” 6’ giant whose insides make his physical body seem microscopic. And Natan, such maturity. Strength. The little guy is anything but little.

My brothers? Broken but strong. Every one of them.

As for me, there were books. There were words. There were stories. There were messages. Everything contributed a little bit to helping me get out of bed.

Ari created a tsunami in this world the ripples of which I believe we’ll feel for decades. He left this world the way only he would want to leave this world. He wrote the script of his death and that script was his life. The life of a hero.

He left behind a legacy of a hero, an extended family of heroes, a group of close friends who are all heroes, and me, his very sad little brother.

One whole year.

The Arab-Israeli conflict traverses decades, manifests in regular wars, terrorism and endless political skirmishes in international forums. It is also a battle to establish narratives — victims and aggressors, Davids and Goliaths, oppressors and oppressed. Language and the meaning given to basic concepts form a key part of this battle. It is easy for Jewish people to establish a claim to the territory known as Judea and Samaria. The later formulation “West Bank,” coined by the Jordanians following their occupation of the area in 1948 is a bland geographic descriptor that strips the territory of its historical significance.

The Associated Press recently stumbled into the morass of political language when it declined to identify the men who tortured and killed Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972 as Palestinian terrorists, instead calling them “guerrillas” and “gunmen.”

There is no term in the vernacular of the conflict that is misapplied and distorted more than “Zionism.”

Zionism, correctly understood, refers simply to the return of Jewish people to “Zion” — one of several names given to Jerusalem and the surrounding lands in which the Jews lived and governed in ancient times. In the late nineteenth century, the idea of returning to those lands shifted from a seemingly intangible ideal and wistful age-old expression of yearning for freedom, to a precise, secular, political movement.

The aim of Zionism was to reconstitute a Jewish state in the territory the Jews knew as Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel), and which had been renamed “Palestine” following the suppression of the final Jewish rebellion by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the year 135 CE. The Balfour Declaration, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), and a succession of binding instruments of international law from the San Remo Resolution to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, had all recognised that the Jews were a distinct people with an unbroken connection to the land and a right to reform their state in some part of that land.

Zionism therefore was the foundational movement of the modern state of Israel. As such, those determined to erase an autonomous Jewish presence from the Middle East have assessed that if they can succeed in depicting Zionism as something loathsome and unjust, the case for Israel can be dramatically undermined.

The contemporary campaign to distort the meaning of Zionism and to associate it with popular concepts of evil, has its origins for the most part in the rapid deterioration of Soviet-Israeli relations, which conditioned attitudes to Israel among the political left.

Huge tech companies like YouTube and Facebook have developed algorithms that they use to determine “hate speech.” When the determination is made, the entry is banned. The algorithms are needed to handle the vast amounts of material posted on these sites, too much for humans to monitor and then rationally decide. Instead, a computer makes the decision. Certainly, computers make the determination in the first stages of “hate-speech” selection.

Billions of elements in the system are filtered through the hate-speech algorithm.

The words “Zionist” and “Zionism” seem to have become trigger words. That means posting a presentation on YouTube about being a Zionist may land you, your site, or your organization in the category of being banned due to “hate-speech.”

That is exactly what happened to JBS TV last week.

On Friday, YouTube banned a JBS presentation. A speech delivered by JBS TV president and CEO Mark S. Golub and then presented on its station before being uploaded to YouTube, titled Being a Liberal America Zionist Today, was removed from the YouTube site. The taped presentation was delivered in an established Reform temple, L’Dor V’Dor Congregation, located in the very liberal town of Little Neck, New York.

The exact quote from the screenshot on YouTube after Rabbi Golub’s presentation was pulled read, “Removed for violating YouTube’s policy of hate speech.” The video was down for six hours, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Conservative author and radio personality Mark Levin has never been shy about criticizing opponents on the Left or his support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump.

Fresh off his latest best-seller, "Unfreedom of the Press," Levin spoke with JNS on the stakes of the upcoming Israeli elections, the criminal investigations into Netanyahu, as well as how the Left in both countries is attempting to criminalize politics.

Q: Would you say that by announcing the possibility of a defense pact with the State of Israel and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights ahead of the last election Trump is trying to sway the election in Netanyahu's favor?

"No. Every time our president takes actions that support our greatest ally, the Israelis, it is said to be political. The problem is as a result of [the Israeli] political system; somebody is always running for office. So what's our president supposed to do? You had an election in the spring, then a few months later, you have another election. The Left and some of that media will interpret it as such. But you know he intends to meet Netanyahu in October at the UN, and so a few weeks before he says, 'this is one of the things I want to discuss.' If I were an Israeli, I'd view that as an extremely positive thing."

"I noticed that Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz immediately attacked it, suggesting that in so many words Israel would be a small player. When it comes to its own defense (as a result of the United States), that's not true. That's preposterous. First of all, Israel doesn't have to agree to anything. If you have a strong prime minister like Netanyahu, he would make sure nothing like that would happen. Secondly, when Gantz makes a comment like that, he's really smearing my president, because Trump has no intention of doing such a thing."

Avi Shlaim, an emeritus professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, has been chairing sessions at a conference in London called 'Jews of Iraq: Engagement with Modernities'. Shlaim, who was born in Iraq but left for Israel as a five-year-old, revealed to the audience he has nearly completed a memoir. Its provisional title is : From Baghdad to Jerusalem: Memoir of an Arab-Jew. The main focus, he said, was on 'The Baghdad Bombs and the Jewish exodus from Iraq, 1950 - 51.' Waving a piece of paper, he then presented 'new evidence of Israeli involvement in the bombs'.

There followed uproar, as Shlaim's claim was fiercely disputed by members of the audience. (There was also some controversy over the expression 'Arab-Jew'.)

The venerable professor is no stranger to controversy. He has moved from mildly critical of Israel to becoming a staunch anti-Zionist during his career. Now that he has resurrected the old 'Baghdad bombs' chestnut, it is perhaps time to dig into Point of No Return's archives and revisit the subject.

Mordechai Ben Porat, Mossad's leading operative in Baghdad, had his name cleared in an Israeli court when he sued an Israeli magazine for libel. The court heard evidence in support of the theory that non - Jews threw the January 1951 bombs and that Muslim peddlars were tipped off to clear the scene just before grenades were thrown at the Messouda Shemtob synagogue, which was being used as a registration centre for would-be emigrants. This was the only fatal bombing (four were killed).

The so-called new historian Tom Segev refuted the charge that Zionists were behind the bombs.

It is a mystery why the Mossad might have thought it necessary to set off bombs when by late 1950 there was a backlog of tens of thousands of Jews stranded in Iraq who had already registered to leave. When the Massouda Shemtob bombing occurred, there were only six weeks still to go before the deadline for emigration expired. Indeed, the Iraqi government toyed with the idea of dumping these Jews on Israel's borders or in the Kuwaiti desert because Israel was not shipping them out fast enough.

As Israel headed into its second set of elections this year, the latest talking point of the American anti-Israel left was Benjamin Netanayahu’s pledge to formalize Israel’s sovereignty over the Jordan Valley.

Some media outlets, anti-Israel organizations, and leftist politicians falsely claimed that Israel was annexing the West Bank. Not only is this far from the truth, but it highlights the fact that these groups are not pro-Palestinian, only anti-Israel.

Much of American Jewry is woefully misinformed about the issues of the Palestinian community. According to the popular narrative, the only thing in the way of Palestinian prosperity is Israel, which subjugates the Palestinians with its racist policies, apartheid laws, and occupation. The best way to fight back, they say, is to boycott Israeli goods and demand that American policy towards Israel be radically altered.

One group fighting back against this misinformation is Fuel for Truth, a nonprofit organization that holds programs in Boston, Miami, New York, and Los Angeles to teach “Israel advocacy training and Jewish communal engagement for population segments unreached or underserved by traditional organizations and institutions.”

Ron Wasserman, the organization’s chairman, describes himself as “pro-Palestinian,” but not in the same way that groups like Jewish Voice For Peace, IfNotNow, and others claim to be. He is actually looking for the Palestinians people to thrive, he says. When discussing these issues with people on the left, he asks them, “How are you helping the Palestinians? How are you helping the Palestinians face the real issues they have every day?”

The number of Israel-related anti-Semitic incidents against Jewish students on campuses increased 70% from 2017 to 2018, according to a report published on Tuesday by the nonprofit watchdog AMCHA Initiative.

For its report, AMCHA monitored more than 400 college campuses across America for anti-Semitic activity. The report, titled "The Harassment of Jewish Students on US Campuses: How Eliminationist Anti-Zionism and Academic BDS Incite Campus Anti-Semitism," highlights the increases in campus anti-Semitism in the past year, as well as recommendations for how universities can tackle the issue.

"While acts of classical anti-Semitism in the US reached near-historic levels in 2018, and included the deadliest attack against Jews in American history, the nation's colleges and universities revealed a somewhat different but nonetheless troubling story. On US campuses across the country, harassment motivated by classical anti-Semitism actually decreased, and significantly so. At the same time, however, the number of Israel-related acts of harassment increased significantly," according to the report.

The report documented how academic BDS-compliant behavior was linked to 86% of Israel-related acts of anti-Semitic harassment of students. Overall, academic BDS activity more than doubled from 2017 to 2018, while promotion or implementation of academic BDS increased by more than 100% in the same time frame.

The report further showed that expressions calling for the total boycott or exclusion of pro-Israel students from campus life nearly tripled from 2017 to 2018. In addition, acts accusing Jewish and pro-Israel students of supporting racism, genocide, and other evils more than doubled, while there was a 147% increase in linking Jewish and pro-Israel students to "white supremacy."

Expression promoting or condoning terrorism against Israel also increased by 67%.

The US Department of Education deemed that the Duke-University of North Carolina Consortium for Middle East Studies misused federal funding in hosting an antisemitic and anti-Israel conference in March.

A letter from US Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education Robert King stated that the consortium has “little or no relevance to Title VI” under the Higher Education Act of 1965 that deals with higher education.

“Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics and Possibilities” reportedly used $5,000 of taxpayer funds from the US Education Department.

“Although a conference focused on ‘Love and Desire in Modern Iran’ and one focused on Middle East film criticism may be relevant in academia, we do not see how these activities support the development of foreign language and international expertise for the benefit of US national security and economic stability,” stated King.

The letter contended that “foreign language instruction and area studies advancing the security and economic stability of the United States have taken ‘a back seat’ to other priorities at Duke-UNC CMES.”

Israel’s embassy in Belgium on Tuesday condemned a hook-nosed gesture in a Belgian university’s sign-language dictionary that refers to “Jews.”

“The Embassy of #Israel expresses its shock and dismay following the ugly initiative of creating a new sign in Flemish sign language for ‘Jew’: a hooked nose. Its sole purpose is the promotion of #AntiSemitic stereotypes,” the embassy wrote on Twitter alongside a Times of Israel report on the gesture.

Emmanuel Nahshon, Israel’s ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg and former Foreign Ministry spokesperson, posted a video of the gesture on Twitter Tuesday.

“This is sickening. Beyond words,” he wrote.

The European Jewish Association on Monday protested in a statement the gesture’s inclusion in online videos on the website of the dictionary, which was compiled in conjunction with the University of Ghent. In a letter to the rector, it demanded the clips be removed.

The first videos, that function as sign language definitions for Jew, “seem standard,” the Association’s director, Menachem Margolin, wrote in the statement. Both videos show a presenter stroking an imaginary beard.

“The second involving side-locks are borderline acceptable if misleading, and the last two are simply racist and demeaning to Jews, using a gesticulation of a large and hooked nose to define Jew,” he added.

There's no mitigating the sheer bias in @nytimes piece on a cable car 'Judaizing Jerusalem' but the least we could do was achieve this published correction about the Western Wall. https://t.co/ApikvhcdInpic.twitter.com/dlVdLxn6VF

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 18, 2019

A Hasidic Jewish man was assaulted and robbed in Brooklyn in an incident captured on video and posted on social media.

Authorities said the Tuesday evening attack in the heavily Jewish Williamsburg neighborhood is not being considered a hate crime because no anti-Semitic slurs were made, CBS New York reported. New York Police are calling the incident, which was captured on a surveillance camera, a random attack and robbery.

Four men cornered the man, with long sidelocks and wearing a long black coat, then punched and kicked him. The victim, 24, surrendered his cellphone to his attackers.

Former New York state assemblyman Dov Hikind in a statement called on the police department to increase patrols in Jewish areas such as Williamsburg “until this wave of violent anti-Semitism subsides.” Hikind is organizing a rally at City Hall Park on Sunday to call for an end to attacks against Jews.

SHOCKING VIDEO: A Hasidic Jew gets assaulted and attacked in the head in Brooklyn on Warsoff Place between Flushing x Park avenues, anyone with info please call @WspuShomrim 7182370202 or @NYPD79Pct (added another angle) pic.twitter.com/gbxj2rpfML

— WILLIAMSBURG NEWS (@WMSBG) September 18, 2019

The Anti-Defamation League announced in a statement that it is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual or individuals responsible.

“The video footage of this violent encounter is incredibly disturbing, and we are glad that the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is assisting in the investigation of this horrific crime,” said Evan Bernstein, the ADL’s New York-New Jersey regional director. “This incident comes at a time when visibly observant Jewish individuals are unable to walk the streets of Brooklyn without feeling fearful that they may be assaulted or attacked because of their religion or faith.”

Desecration of Holocaust memorials, Nazi salutes at a football game and threats against Jewish leaders – including newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky – are just some of the antisemitic incidents that have taken place across the Ukraine in the last few weeks.

A Holocaust memorial was vandalized on Tuesday afternoon in Golovanevsk (also known as Holovanivs’k) commemorating the murder of some 900 Jews from the village between late 1941 and early 1942.

“The Jewish population of the village was annihilated in two major murder operations: in late September 1941, when 570 people were shot at three murder sites located next to each other, and in February 1942, when 165 Jews were shot,” according to Yad Vashem.

Antisemitic graffiti including swastikas and a note threatening another Holocaust were found on Sunday on a Holocaust memorial in Bogdanovka near Odessa. The note threatened both Zelensky and Ukranian Jewish Committee director-general Eduard Dolinsky, saying “the sale of Ukrainian land will quickly lead you to a second Holocaust.”

According to Yad Vashem, tens of thousands of Jews were killed at the site, which was a concentration camp established by the Romanian occupation authorities.

It is estimated that 54,000 Jews from Odessa and Bessarabia were imprisoned there.

Following a Typhus outbreak in December 1941, a decision was made to liquidate the camp. Some 5,000 sick and disabled prisoners were locked into two stables, which were then burnt down.

Canadian officials are receiving backlash from the Jewish community for honoring members of Ukrainian organizations that helped the Nazis in World War II.

A new monument in Sambir, Ukraine, honors members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)—two groups that supported the Nazis, and helped round up and execute Jews after the Germans invaded Ukraine, according to historians. In 1943, the UPA started massacring Polish civilians, killing an estimated 100,000 people.

The statue is situated at the edge of a cemetery where more than 1,200 Jews, murdered by the Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators, are buried.

Canada’s Ambassador to Ukraine Roman Waschuk, speaking at the monument’s unveiling on Aug. 21, said the statue is a memorial to 17 OUN members who Ukrainians say were killed by the Nazis. Military personnel from the Canadian Forces also attended the event at the request of the Canadian embassy in Ukraine.

The event was condemned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Director general of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee Eduard Dolinsky called the monument a desecration and a “double murder of the Jewish victims.”

“It’s like putting a monument to killers on the top of the graves of their victims,” he explained. “All Jews of Sambir were murdered by Nazis and their collaborators from OUN and UPA.”

The Weisenthal Center announced yesterday in Jerusalem that it denounces the vandalism with swastikas of a Holocaust memorial in Bogdaovka, Ukraine, where one of the great atrocities of the Holocaust took place. The massacre by Romanian soldiers, the regular Ukrainian police Kazachievici, civilians and ethnic Germans murdered over 40,000 Jews.

Bogdaovka was the location of an extermination camp in Transnistria, Romania, with mostly Ukrainians from Odessa and the rest from Bessarabia. With the outbreak of typhoid, the German and Romanian administrator decided to kill all the internees.

The massacre took place from December 21 through December 31 in 1941. In the first stage, the infirm were forcibly packed into two locked stables, doused with kerosene and set ablaze. In the next stage, other prisoners were led to a ravine and shot in the neck or killed by hand grenades. The rest of the prisoners froze to death while digging pits in the freezing cold with their own hands. The Romanian administrator then ordered that all the bodies be burned.

In the center’s press statement, Director for Eastern European Affairs and Holocaust historian Dr. Efraim Zuroff also noted that there were threats made against three prominent Jews: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Jewish activist Eduard Dolinsky and former minister Evgeny Chervonenko, now a television presenter.

Zuroff's statement said that antisemitic vandalism was "frequent" in the Ukraine and was due, in part, to the failure of Ukrainian authorities to criminalize antisemitic acts. He stated that as long as the perpetrators of “these disgusting and offensive actions” are not punished, “they will continue and increase.” The center urges expediting the passing of legislation to outlaw “antisemitism and all other forms of racial hatred and xenophobia."

The Association of British Scrabble Players updated its guide to label the listed definitions of “jew” and “jews” as “offensive” after receiving complaints from British Jews.

Dave Rich, head of policy at the Jewish organization Community Security Trust, tweeted a screenshot of the association’s online dictionary, which defines “jews” as “to swindle” and “jew” as “to haggle, get the better of.”

Chairman of the ABSP, Mike Whiteoak, told The Jewish Chronicle that the association did not publish its own dictionary, but rather published “online lists of words on our website under different categories.” He added, “The words and the definitions are taken from the actual dictionary, which is published by HarperCollins — and we’re not responsible for how they define them.”

Whiteoak, who is Jewish, said the ABSP had decided “to take the time to go through the list and add ‘offensive’ to words that obviously were so,” including the word “jew.”

Rich said of the ABSP’s decision, “It is progress of sorts that the ABSP has finally labelled their definition as offensive, but this still does not address the fact that they are helping to perpetuate, and implicitly legitimize, antisemitic usages of the word ‘Jew.’ This is different from including swear words or other racist insults, because ‘Jew’ is a normal word that antisemites have given an alternative meaning as a way of slandering all Jewish people.”

Investors taking part in the Meet and Pitch event held during Calcalist’s third Mind the Tech conference in London last week tended to repeat one major advantage the Israeli ecosystem has. “What I love about Tel Aviv is that everyone is working within and for the ecosystem,” Alston Zecha, a director at London-headquartered venture capital firm Eight Roads Ventures, told Calcalist at the event. Even competing companies talk to each other and that is something the London ecosystem could benefit from as well, he added.

The sheer number of startups within the Israeli ecosystem encourages cooperation and mutual inspiration, Mario Cohen, founder and CEO of Madrid and London-based firm Demtech Ventures, told Calcalist. Within an ecosystem where everyone knows each other, new companies are established on top of existing ones, utilizing the accumulated experience from older companies, he explained.

Hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders from Israel and the UK attended Calcalist’s conference, including over 100 executives from Israeli startups. The conference included the Meet and Pitch event, which brought together Israeli entrepreneurs with executives in UK corporations and funds for a speed networking session.

Neil McGeough, the technology manager at British supermarket chain Tesco, came to the conference to scout for technologies that can improve the company’s services throughout the supply chain. The Israeli ecosystem is vast and Israeli entrepreneurs have a can-do spirit that is very exciting, McGeough told Calcalist. He added that it is hard to say which technologies will prevail, but automation is definitely one of the key areas for every industry.

DreaMed Diabetes, the Petah Tikva-based developer of personalized diabetes management solutions, has received US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its artificial intelligence-powered insulin recommendations technology.

The company’s AI-based insulin dosing decision-support software, DreaMed Advisor Pro, aims to assist people with Type 1 diabetes (T1D) using insulin-pump therapy with continuous glucose sensors or blood glucose meters.

Some 1.25 million Americans have T1D, including 200,000 people under the age of 20. By 2050, the number is expected to soar to some 5 million in the United States alone. Individuals with T1D are required to take insulin to keep blood glucose levels under control.

Approximately one-quarter of US patients with T1D use both insulin pumps and continuous glucose sensors, and about 40% use insulin pumps and blood glucose meters to manage glucose levels.

The cloud-based Advisor Pro software generates insulin delivery recommendations by analyzing information from continuous glucose sensors, self-monitoring blood glucose meters and insulin pump data.

The technology, which received a European CE Mark last year, sends personalized, real-time recommendations to healthcare providers on how to optimize a patient’s insulin pump settings.

Tel Aviv’s Kerem Hateimanim and Carmel Market neighborhood has been named among the world’s “coolest” by global magazine Time Out.

According to a survey of 27,000 city-dwellers around the globe and the magazine’s local editors and contributing writers, the Tel Aviv neighborhood was ranked 15th among the “planet’s cultural and culinary hot spots right now.”

Kerem Hateimanim, which literally means “the Yemenite Vineyard,” was home to many of the 49,000 Yemenite Jews who were transported to Israel in a secret operation between June 1949 and September 1950.

Today, the neighborhood’s narrow streets are home to a “hotbed of sun-chapped surfers, strolling Filipino caretakers, hungry foodies, global nomadic types and ageless Yemenites hawking home-cooked deliciousness straight out of their ground-floor kitchens.”

While many basic buildings have since been converted into luxurious apartments in recent years, the neighborhood – squeezed between the Mediterranean Sea and the Carmel Market – has succeeded in maintaining its authenticity.

The bustling Carmel Market is in sharp contrast to the tranquil alleyways of Kerem Hateimanim, described by Time Out as “the neighborhood’s coolest hangout.” Offering recommendations of places to eat, drink and stay, the magazine recommends purchasing food and a beverage at the vibrant market and taking a short stroll through the Kerem to Tel Aviv’s sandy beaches.

To historians of the ancient Near East, the period from the late fourth millennium BCE until around 1200 BCE—that is, the biblical period through the time of Moses—is known as the Bronze Age because of the common use of bronze weapons, tools, and other items. It was followed by the Iron Age, which was in full swing by the time of King David in the 10th century BCE. But archaeologists have long been puzzled about how the ancient residents of the region produced bronze, which requires the smelting of copper—which is abundant in the Levant—with tin—which is not. A new study, based on a comparison of the age of various samples (which can be determined chemically) suggests it was imported from Britain, as Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

According to the authors [of the study], the most likely suppliers of the 13th- and 12th-century BCE tin ingots from Israel were tin mines from Cornwall and Devon. . . . The scientists studied samples that were discovered . . . off the coasts of Mochlos, Crete and Uluburun, Turkey as well as in three locations near Haifa.

an earlier find of a 13th-century BCE shipwreck at Hishuley Carmel in 2012 also was a source of the study’s tin ingots. That shipwreck, [one of the study’s authors wrote in an earlier article], “provides direct evidence for marine transport of copper and tin along the Israeli coast and may indicate inland and maritime trade-routes of metals in the Mediterranean.”

Knowing the origin of the Israeli tin ingots points to a complicated and far-reaching ancient trade route.

Based on these results, without Yisrael Beytenu's eight mandates, the Center-Left bloc would have counted on 56 seats and the Center-Right bloc 56.

Hours after the call of the "Temple Groups", Jews desecrate Al Aqsa

Hours after the so-called " Temple Groups "called to take over the Al-Aqsa Mosque, dozens of extremist settlers and Israeli intelligence agents stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the Mugrabi Gate with heavy security.

The Israeli police provided full protection for these extremists, from entering through the Moroccan gate and wandering in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa to the exit of the Chain Gate.

According to the Islamic Endowments Department in occupied Jerusalem, 64 settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and wandered in the courtyards amid attempts to perform Talmudic rituals, in addition to 33 elements of the occupation intelligence storming the site.

Our management of the conflict with the Zionist enemy failed during the previous stage, and we were led to that failure unconsciously. Our rhetoric of hatred and contempt was based on a naive nationalist content, followed by a similar religious rhetoric in a manner and method  which cut all forms of emotional communication with the community of Arab Jews, who found before them no choice but to case their lots with the Zionist trend.

We need to weave practical lines of communication with the various Jewish Arab communities in occupied Palestine, who have been associated with us for centuries.

I can imagine that when we can achieve this, we will emerge from the deadly negative nature of the conflict to its positive and constructive form, and we will be able to create a common civil state, in which the loser is the Zionist mind in its abhorrent capitalist spirit.

The 9/14 attacks, correctly referred to by Secretary of State Michael Pompeo as "an act of war", is a harsh humiliating blow dealt to the U.S., signaling an American multilevel failure:

First, there was a failure of deterrence. The Iranians took a calculated risk and were proven correct. They view themselves the military regional equals of the US and via their proxies even beyond the region.

American military officials openly betray their fear of Iranian power and retaliatory capability on CENTCOM targets and they thus make Trump's boast that the US is the world's strongest military power, empty posturing In fact it is Iran that is actually deterring the U.S. from any retaliation. Iran relies on its proven ability to act in the local theater while its results have a global ripple effect.

Secondly, it was a failure of U.S. intelligence (military, NSA, CIA and others). Apparently, there was no early warning about an operation that must have had dozens of parties engaged in the decision process, the secret planning and the preparations. Since May 2019, MEMRI has issued several strategic warnings about the Iranian threats to carry out such attacks, based on open Iranian sources.

Thirdly, the successful Iranian attack represented an American technological failure, as not a single cruise missile or drone was intercepted. Iranian Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif ridiculed the U.S., tweeting "Perhaps [the US is] embarrassed that $100s of blns of its arms didn't intercept Yemeni fire".

Fourthly, and most disturbingly, it is a case of political failure - no one in the U.S. administration expected such a bold direct Iranian attack. True, Iran has resorted to proxies to afford it deniability, but now the Iranian leadership has realistically gauged American hesitancy and conflict aversion and believed that Iran could risk making a direct attack, discounting the possibility of strong American retaliation. Considering the global effect of this bold attack, so far, the calculated risk has proven to be a sound bet.

The principle of reciprocity would logically limit Saudi strikes to the targets responsible for the attack on the Aramco plant in Abqaiq. A tailored response that would be seen as proportionate and, therefore, not worth risking a broader conflict over would be limited to the bases and infrastructure north of the Arabian Peninsula from which the cruise missiles and drones that struck the Saudi refinery over the weekend originated. But Riyadh’s options are not—and, perhaps, should not—be so limited.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and Quds Force soldiers and brass are spread out across the Middle East, and their locations are reportedly known to American officials. Regular Iranian military outposts are in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria, too. Hitting these locations outside Iranian borders would rob Tehran of the claim that its territorial sovereignty was violated, but such an operation would also validate the claim that the Saudis are executing a region-wide strike on the sources of Shiite political authority. That claim could fast become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

These pitfalls are not unknown to American military planners, and the risk these scenarios present arguably outweigh the rewards. In the end, a mission designed to reestablish deterrence and restore balance to the relationship between the Middle East’s two competing regional hegemons could have the precise opposite effect. If such an option is being seriously considered by the president, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there will be no U.S.-led military response, much less a U.S.-supported military response from one or more of its allies. And that could be disastrous.

Iran’s aggressive behavior follows a clear pattern of escalation. It has executed sophisticated covert operations targeting the global oil supply by disabling and hijacking ships in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz. It has destroyed a $120 million American aerial surveillance drone operating above international waters. And now, it has executed an elaborate assault on a Saudi refinery. Iran is behaving rationally by testing the limits of provocation as a tool of statecraft. Its strategic objective is to stoke anxieties among America’s Middle Eastern and European allies and, ultimately, erode global will to maintain the present suffocating sanctions regime. Eventually, Iran is likely to miscalculate, executing a bloody attack that demands a disproportionate response from the United States. This is an outcome that American policymakers are right to avoid, but not at any cost.

It would be a shame to see Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran derailed by a limited retaliatory strike on Iranian targets, but the alternatives are intolerable. Unfortunately, the Trump administration doesn’t seem to see it that way.

The idea of a defense pact between Israel and the U.S. has already been considered several times and rejected. Both sides are cautious about making commitments that would limit their freedom of action and require them to act militarily in contexts that are not viewed as vital by their respective populations.

Israel has reserved the right of nonintervention in conflicts that do not directly affect Israel, preserving its independent decision-making when it comes to using its power, and, above all, upholding the principle that Israel should be able to defend itself by itself.

To date, Israel's expectations of the U.S. in the security domain have gone unfulfilled in a number of cases. According to unwritten understandings, Israel is to deal with threats within its own immediate environment while relying on U.S. assistance in intelligence, equipment, and resources, and the U.S. is supposed to prevent, with Israeli help, the emergence of strategic threats to Israel and to the U.S. from the second and the third tier.

At several critical junctures the U.S. has decided to prefer other interests over Israel's security needs, allowed the threats to its security to intensify, and forced it to stretch its capabilities to the limit, with Israel devoting huge budgets to its defense.

Nevertheless, a U.S.-Israeli defense pact could help promote the common goal of deterring Iran and curbing its activity by making it clear that aggression against Israel is tantamount to aggression against the U.S. and would prompt harsh American countermeasures.

Such a pact must preserve both sides' independence of decision-making in case of disagreement about a joint action; reinforce the principle that Israel must continue to be capable of defending itself by itself, to the extent possible; and it must not put new limits on Israel's ability to develop ties with other important states such as China and Russia.

Writing yesterday morning, with most but not all of the ballots counted and the results not yet final, Liel Leibovitz examines the results of Israel’s recent election:

Blue and White, the center-left party, . . . has failed miserably—in April or now—to propose a solid agenda or a sweeping vision for Israel’s future. At its best, it reminded Israelis that it was the only credible alternative to Benjamin Netanyahu, while implicitly promising to pursue all of the policies that had worked so well for him. . . . In his years in office, Netanyahu was responsible for real and impressive achievements, from forging strong diplomatic ties with India, Brazil, and other nations formerly reluctant to embrace the Jewish state, to keeping Israelis safe and their economy booming.

The Joint List, [a collection of Arab parties that appears to have come in third and is thus] the biggest winner of this election cycle, is as diverse as the Israeli Arab population it represents: some of its candidates are committed Communists, others are Islamists, and more yet are hard-edged nationalists, which makes it hard to pin down on any one side of the political spectrum. Nor is the party really a member of any bloc, as it’s highly unlikely that any mainstream Zionist politician would ever agree to form a coalition with a fiercely anti-Zionist Arab party. . . .

When Israelis vote, they vote because what’s at stake . . . is life and death. The issues Israelis face today are the same they faced yesterday, beginning with Iran, Hizballah, and Hamas. The left continues to offer no real alternatives, nor is it ready to reckon with the spectacular failure of the Oslo Accords. If you want to understand Israeli society, consider the following number: 103. That, most likely, is the number of Knesset seats, out of a possible 120, that will go to parties . . . that support more or less the same military, diplomatic, and economic agendas. Israelis stand united even if their politicians do not.

Netanyahu’s goal remains building a coalition with Shas, United Torah Judaism and Yamina but without Blue and White, even if it means bringing in the left-wing Labor-Gesher alliance.

“We need a strong government, a stable government, a Zionist government – a government that is committed to Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people,” Netanyahu said. “There will not be and there cannot be a government that leans on Arab, anti-Zionist parties.”

It is a sad indictment of the current political situation that Netanyahu rejects Arab parties with impunity in the same way that Liberman and Gantz reject haredi ones. This is untenable prejudice on both sides, particularly in a Jewish state that prides itself on its democratic values.

Much could depend on President Reuven Rivlin, who has promised the public that he will do all he can to prevent calling a third election in 2019. Can Rivlin convince Netanyahu and Gantz to lock heads and hammer out a national unity deal? And if they both refuse or fail to garner a majority, will he choose an alternative leader?

In the interests of Israel and all its citizens, we urge the president to promote the establishment of a national unity government. There is too much at stake for the country facing security threats from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the diplomatic challenge of the Trump administration’s “Deal of the Century” soon to be unveiled, as well as pressing socioeconomic challenges that need to be addressed.

Despite the predictions of voter apathy, Tuesday’s turnout rose from 68.5% in the April election to 69.4%. That’s a good sign. Now is the time to put aside personal, political and partisan interests and internal bickering in favor of the country as a whole and our collective future, as well as its relations with the Jewish Diaspora, our Middle East allies and the world. Instead of seeing the results of Tuesday’s election – which was costly and exhausting – in a bleak light, let’s pray that they augur a new era of unity, hope and peace, both at home and with our neighbors.

Many options, none of them good

Netanyahu’s address in the early hours of Wednesday was neither a victory speech nor a concession. It was a holding action, as he awaits the final results and considers his next steps.

Should he seek to contest the results, claiming that the Arab voter fraud he warned against had come to pass and that, as he had warned, the elections were stolen? Should he announce a timeout, as Gantz has long urged, to fight the legal allegations against him, with the aim of proving his innocence and even making an eventual return? Should he seek to somehow bend these unsatisfactory election results to his formidable will?

Netanyahu turns 70 next month. Among the clearer consequences of these complex elections is that he would seem to have run out of time to build himself an immunity shield against his looming prosecution.

He hasn’t yet been abandoned by his own party, unlike that other decade-long prime ministerial force of nature Margaret Thatcher, who had also sought to go on and on and on. He remains a potent force at the heart of Israeli politics, and he could immensely complicate our political reality for weeks or even months to come. He still has some political options.

But, ultimately, none of them are much good. However desperately Netanyahu would have wanted to declare victory early Wednesday, to will himself to victory, to shout down that infuriating heckler and orate himself to victory, he just couldn’t.

Benny Gantz’s Blue and White centrist party has opened a two-seat lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, according to updated voting results Thursday morning from the Central Election Committee.

With some 96.5 percent of all votes in Tuesday’s elections having been counted, Blue and White had 33 seats to Likud’s 31. Third was the Joint List alliance of Arab-majority parties at 13, followed by the ultra-Orthodox parties Shas with nine and United Torah Judaism with eight.

Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu also had eight seats, after briefly moving up to nine. Rounding out the list were Yamina with seven seats, Labor-Gesher with six and the Democratic Camp with five.

The center-left bloc, including the predominantly Arab Joint List — which has never been a member of the government — has increased its power to 57 seats, with the right-wing and religious bloc at 55. Neither has the 61-seat majority necessary to form a coalition, leaving Yisrael Beytenu in the kingmaker position.

US President Donald Trump appeared to distance himself from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday as the Israeli leader battled for his political survival after a tight election left him short of a Knesset majority.

Speaking with reporters in Los Angeles, Trump said he has not spoken with Netanyahu since Tuesday’s Knesset election, while indicating that the US relationship with Israel went beyond any individual leader.

“Those results are coming in and it’s very close,” Trump said. “Everybody knew it’s going to be very close. I said we’ll see what happens. Look, our relationship is with Israel. We’ll see what happens.”

Netanyahu made his close relationship with Trump a centerpiece of his reelection campaign, erecting billboards across the country showing him with the US president and other foreign leaders and casting aspersions on his rivals’ ability to match his diplomatic achievements.

The leaders of all the parties in the right-wing religious bloc on Thursday signed a document pledging to recommend Benjamin Netanyahu as the next prime minister and vowing to enter a coalition only as a single unit, as the premier called on Blue and White chief Benny Gantz to join a “unity government” that includes those parties.

“I suggest we meet as soon as possible, without preconditions, to work together to establish a broad unity government representing all who believe in a Jewish, democratic Israel,” the prime minister urged, having made a similar call in a statement earlier in the day, after Israeli elections Tuesday left the rival blocs headed by Netanyahu and Gantz short of a Knesset majority.

Speaking at a state memorial event marking three years since the death of former president and prime minister Shimon Peres, Netanyahu hinted at a readiness to rotate the premiership, as Peres and Yitzhak Shamir did after deadlocked elections in 1984. “Shimon sided with the imperative to unite the people” and with that goal “he and Shamir agreed to cooperate,” Netanyahu recalled.

It wasn’t clear whether Netanyahu’s mention of talks “without preconditions” included the significant condition that Yamina, United Torah Judaism and Shas be included in his proposed unity government.

Blue and White rejected the offer as “spin,” noted that Gantz’s party was ahead of Likud in the non-final election count, and accused Netanyahu of seeking to blame Blue and White as he seeks the eventual recourse of a third round of elections.

The leaders of Blue and White rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's calls on Thursday to form a government led by him that would also include all his satellite parties on the Right.

Netanyahu signed an agreement with three right-wing and religious parties to negotiate a coalition deal as one bloc, but then called on Blue and White to begin immediate negotiations without preconditions.

At a meeting of his faction in Tel Aviv, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz said it was not serious to come to negotiations with a political bloc.

"Blue and White is the largest party," Gantz said. "We won 33 seats and Netanyahu did not succeed in winning the 61 seats for his bloc that he sought. I will build a broad and liberal government that will deliver the will of the people. We will not surrender to any dictate. The negotiations will be directed by me responsibly and with good judgment."

MK Yair Lapid asked for patience, saying that building a government will take time and that meanwhile, there will be more attempts at political spin that should be ignored.

"The people did not put trust in Netanyahu, so he is trying to replace the people," Lapid said. "The people of Likud are starting to realize it's the beginning of the end for [Netanyahu]. One person is preventing the formation of a liberal unity government."

MK Moshe Ya'alon called upon right-wing and religious parties to shun Netanyahu, saying "With him, it will not happen."

Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman reportedly told associates that he intends to recommend Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz as the next prime minister rather than Benjamin Netanyahu.

Liberman’s comments, made behind closed doors according to an unsourced Channel 12 news report on Thursday afternoon, would mark a significant boost to Gantz, who is seeking President Reuven Rivlin’s backing to form a new government and unseat Netanyahu.

Yisrael Beytenu MK Yevgeni Suba denied the report later Thursday, however. “We’re not recommending anybody at this stage — not Gantz and not Netanyahu,” he said, noting that Gantz has not ruled out sitting in a coalition including the ultra-Orthodox parties, which Suba said was a core Liberman demand.

According to near-final election results, Liberman holds the key to forming the next government following a political deadlock between Netanyahu’s Likud and Blue and White.

Liberman has vowed to push for a “liberal, nationalist, wide” unity government made up of both Likud and Blue and White, and his support for Gantz, if forthcoming, could hold extra weight with Rivlin as he holds consultations with party leaders about whom to task with forming a government.

The disdain shown towards Israel by The Independent is obvious. While there is clearly a visceral and nasty attitude, the paper’s staff editorial (paywall) on the Israeli elections also demonstrates an embarrassing level of ignorance.

Referring to Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz, The Independent says that he
is making some brave noises about constructing a “national unity” government, comprising his own movement and a variety of smaller left-wing groups, and possibly with the tacit support of Israeli Arab parties.

Oh dear. It doesn’t take a politics degree to understand that a national unity government by definition is one that comprises of parties from both sides of the aisle joining together. Blue and White is considered to be part of the center-left bloc of Israeli parties. That means that any coalition government comprising it along with smaller left-wing parties would be a center-left coalition, not a national unity government.

Amidst all of the complicated political machinations currently taking place right now in Israel, a national unity government, if it were to come about, would be based on Blue and White with Likud.

Palestinians did not conceal their joy at the results of Tuesday’s election, particularly over what they perceive as “the severe blow” dealt to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party.

Many warned, however, that Palestinians should not expect major changes in Israel’s policy in the aftermath of the election, because they don’t see real differences between Netanyahu and his political rivals, including Blue and White head Benny Gantz.

Referring to the failure of the Right bloc to secure a parliamentary majority, two Palestinian officials in Ramallah expressed hope that Netanyahu would soon disappear from the political scene.

“This man was a disaster for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” said one of the officials. “We hope this is the beginning of his end.”
The other official told The Jerusalem Post that “many Palestinians are very happy to see Netanyahu defeated and humiliated,” and that he saw “a big smile” on the faces of several senior Palestinian officials upon learning that Netanyahu and his right-wing allies did not score major achievements.

Stressing that Palestinians don’t meddle in Israeli internal affairs, the PA denied allegations on Wednesday that it had attempted to meddle in Tuesday’s vote, despite its tacit support for the Joint List and some left-wing candidates.

Your President was meant to have faced Palestinian voters a decade ago. Instead of complaining about #IsraelElections2019, how about holding one of your own? https://t.co/s6JF7bHeQx

— Mark Regev (@MarkRegev) September 18, 2019

.@guardian editorial mentions "Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, who do not have a vote" implying they've been denied a vote in Israeli elections. Wrong: Palestinians are entitled to vote in elections that their own leadership has refused to hold for over a decade. https://t.co/2Zrv8gWfSt

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 19, 2019

That is a completely fair request. We are amending it. Thank you for pointing out.

— Catherine Philp (@scribblercat) September 19, 2019

The Jewish and pro-Israel community immediately reacted to the selection of Robert O’Brien as US President Donald Trump’s fourth national security adviser, replacing John Bolton, who was ousted on Sept. 10.

“We congratulate Mr. O’Brien on his appointment, and we look forward to working with him to further strengthen the US-Israel relationship,” American Israel Public Affairs Committee spokesperson Marshall Wittmann told JNS.

“O’Brien is a solid pick, with a good reputation within the State Department bureaucracy as a result of his previous role as the administration’s point man on hostage affairs,” Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, told JNS. “In that capacity, he is intimately familiar with most of the hot-button issues – Iran, North Korea, the ‘War on Terror’ – that are on the front burner in Washington at the moment.”

The appointment, which doesn’t require Senate confirmation, came as America weighs how to respond to Iran striking two Saudi Aramco oil facilities on Sept. 14.

“He also inherits a national security bureaucracy that has increasingly begun to ‘think big’ about strategy in places like the Middle East and Africa, and will be able to harness this team to great effect, if he chooses to do so,” said Berman.

.@amnesty continues to be a lying disgrace https://t.co/ePUgzQN3oT#Israel

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 19, 2019

Iran’s judo federation called its suspension from international competition this week “unfair” and said it “was a pre-planned scenario,” the country’s state media reported.

“I believe that suspending Iran’s judo was a pre-planned scenario and unfortunately one of our athletes got involved and intensified” the problem, the official IRNA news outlet quoted the head of Iran’s judo federation Arash Miresmaeili as saying on Wednesday.

The International Judo Federation (IJF) said this week it was banning Iran from competition for allegedly ordering a judoka to lose at the world championships to avoid facing an Israeli competitor.

Saeid Mollaei, who entered last month’s event in Tokyo as the reigning world champion in the under-81 kilogram class, said he was ordered to throw his semifinal rather than risk facing an Israeli in the final.

The IJF said Mollaei had been pressured to lose by Iranian deputy sports minister Davar Zani. Mollaei was also reportedly pressured to bow out by Iranian Olympic Committee president Reza Salehi Amiri, who told him minutes before his semifinal match that Iranian security services were at his parents’ house in Tehran.

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia have been blamed for recent air strikes targeting pro-Iranian militias in the Albukamal area of Syria near the border with Iraq, according to Arab media. The attacks resulted in a number of deaths and injuries and the destruction of weapon storage facilities and rocket launchers.

"Saudi fighter jets have been spotted along with other fighter jets that have attacked facilities and positions belonging to Iranian militias," said an unnamed source to the Independent in Arabic. The attacks targeted positions belonging to the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in Albukamal and other areas near the Iraq-Syria border.

According to the source, it is believed that Iran was about to use the facilities to hit other targets after targeting the Saudi Aramco oil facilities on Saturday. The source added that the Global Coalition Against Terrorism has started targeting not just ISIS, but also other groups such as the Quds Force, as well as various Iraqi and Iranian militias active in Syria, Iraq and other areas.

Saudi sources later denied the report, according to the Independent.

Pro-Iranian militias in Albukamal in Syria near the Iraqi border have been targeted by multiple air strikes since Monday night, resulting in at least 15 deaths, according to Arab media.

On Wednesday, five people were killed and another nine were wounded in an air strike carried out by unidentified aircraft that targeted positions of the Iranian-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces militia in Albukamal, according to Sky News Arabia.

Seven Palestinians were reportedly wounded Wednesday when a rocket barrage from the Gaza Strip, aimed at Israel, exploded near a house inside the coastal enclave.

Palestinian eyewitnesses said two of the three rockets struck outside a home in the southern city of Rafah, and a third fell near the fence separating Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said seven people were wounded, but didn’t elaborate on their condition.

Also Wednesday evening, the army said a mortar shell was fired at Israel from Gaza, but appeared to have landed inside the enclave.

The attack did not trigger rocket sirens in any Israeli community, but did set off alarms in an open field in the Eshkol region of southern Israel, a regional spokesperson said.

“A failed launch from the Gaza Strip was detected. It did not cross into Israeli territory,” the army said.

Lebanon’s Jammal Trust Bank has been forced to wind itself down after being hit last month by US sanctions for allegedly helping to fund the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, the bank said on Thursday.

The central bank said the value of the bank’s assets, and its share of the national deposit guarantee body, were “in principle enough to pay all deposits and commitments.”

Jammal Trust Bank denied the US allegations in August after the bank and its subsidiaries were hit with sanctions, accused of helping to fund the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.

“Despite its sound financial situation … and its full compliance with banking regulations, the (bank) was forced to take the decision to liquidate itself in full coordination with the central bank,” Jammal Trust said in a statement.

The bank has 25 branches in Lebanon and representative offices in Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and Britain, its website says.

It is a relatively small lender, with net assets of 1,600 billion Lebanese pounds ($1 billion) at the end of 2017, according to the annual report on the latest year for which data is available.

Iran’s foreign minister warned Thursday that any attack on his country over a drone-and-missile strike on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry would result in “all-out war,” further pushing up tensions across the Persian Gulf.

The comments by Mohammad Javad Zarif represent the starkest warning offered yet by Iran in a long summer of mysterious attacks and incidents following the collapse of Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, over a year after US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord.

Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have claimed the attack, but the US alleges Iran carried out the assault.

Zarif’s comments also appeared to be in response to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who a day earlier while traveling to Saudi Arabia referred to the attack as an “act of war.”

Asked by CNN what would be the consequence of a US or Saudi strike, Zarif said: “All-out war.”

“We won’t blink to defend our territory,” he said. “I’m making a very serious statement that we don’t want war. We don’t want to engage in a military confrontation.

“We believe that we do not need war in this region,” he added. “We believe that we need dialogue, we need cooperation, we need confidence building in this region.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Thursday that a claim by Yemeni rebels that they carried out attacks on two Saudi oil facilities “lacks credibility.”

“The Houthis, who are Yemeni rebels, announced that it was they who provoked this attack, which lacks credibility,” Le Drian told France’s CNews channel.

Tehran-backed Houthi rebels in Saudi Arabia’s southern neighbor Yemen have claimed responsibility for the attacks, which knocked out half of Saudi oil production.

But both Washington and Riyadh have ruled that out and pinned the blame on Saudi’s arch-foe Iran.

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia displayed what it said were fragments of 25 drones and cruise missiles, which they said proved the attack was carried out by Tehran.

Le Drian cast doubt on the ability of the Houthis to carry out an attack of that scale and range from Yemen.

“But given that there is an international investigation let’s wait for the results,” he said.

Following the September 14, 2019 attacks on the Aramco oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, Saudis who were near the attack sites posted images and videos of the aftermath, including images of missiles found by the sites and of the large fires that had broken out. These images were posted independently on social media and were widely disseminated before the Saudi state media and security authorities could control the story, thereby placing the Saudi authorities in an embarrassing position.

The circulation of these posts evoked criticism from other social media users, who claimed that they exaggerated and distorted the events and jeopardized state security. Criticism was also voiced by writers in the Saudi press, who called on the security apparatuses to educate the public about responsible use of social media and to punish those who disseminated harmful information.

This report presents some of the posts that were circulated about the attacks, and some of the responses on Twitter and in the Saudi press.

Tweets By Saudi Users Reveal Details About The Attacks Precede Official Reports, Criticized By Fellow Users

Posts published by Saudi Twitter users on September 14 showed remnants of "cruise missiles that were fired at the Abqaiq oil [facility]," when the official media was still referring to the incident as a drone attack.

A user called Qassem_saad1 posted a video of the fire at Abqaiq and expressed his joy about the attack. The post evoked furious responses from Saudi users, such as a user calling herself Gharaam MBS, who wrote: "After this video this animal should be banished."

In his September 17, 2019 column[1] titled in part "Saudi's Aramco Has Been Struck... Take This Attack Very Seriously! What If Two Missiles Were To Strike Dubai!" in Turkey's Yeni Şafak daily, which is a mouthpiece of Turkey's ruling Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP), the paper's editor-in-chief, İbrahim Karagül, commented on the recent cruise missile and drone strikes on Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq oil processing plant and Khurais oilfield.

Karagül wrote: "The attack conducted by Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen against Saudi oil company Aramco is the most dangerous attack to date... The civil war in Yemen was already a Saudi-Iran war. But this truth is now out in the open; parties of the fight are going to start attacking one another more directly." He predicted that following the attack, "the U.S.-Israel provocation will continue... to ready the region for a new Arab-Persian war."

Following is Yeni Şafak's translation of Karagül's column:
"The Civil War In Yemen Was Already A Saudi-Iran War... Parties Of The Fight Are Going To Start Attacking One Another More Directly"

"The attack conducted by Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen against Saudi oil company Aramco is the most dangerous attack to date. It will have consequences much beyond the surge in oil prices. This attack turned the Yemen war into the Saudi Arabia war. It is now the strongest sign of the regional earthquake which was scripted as the Persian-Arab war.

"The matter is no longer a Houthi issue. It is not a Yemen war either. The civil war in Yemen was already a Saudi-Iran war. But this truth is now out in the open; parties of the fight are going to start attacking one another more directly. After the attack, Saudis first stopped oil production, then reduced it to 50 percent. What the Saudi administration is capable of doing in the event of a new attack needs to be considered, and the regional and global consequences of this need to be evaluated.

Houthi Military Spokesman Brigadier Yahya Saree Threatens the "Glass Towers" of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Adds: We Have Dozens of Targets in the UAE pic.twitter.com/9bunhmfCkP

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 19, 2019

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised US President Donald Trump for announcing his intention to bolster sanctions on the Tehran regime.

“Iran’s aggression has increased of late, including in the Gulf, and this is precisely the time to increase pressure and sanctions,” Netanyahu said. “I am pleased that President Trump has done exactly this.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
“Iran’s aggression has increased of late, including in the Gulf, and this is precisely the time to increase pressure and sanctions. I am pleased that @POTUS@realDonaldTrump has done exactly this.” pic.twitter.com/PKyiAdNAwA

— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) September 18, 2019

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump tweeted, “I have just instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to substantially increase Sanctions on the country of Iran!” — without providing further details.

Trump’s tweet followed repeated US assertions that Iran was behind Saturday’s missile and drone attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia.

A new German intelligence report from the state of Hesse outlined the Islamic Republic of Iran’s efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction during 2018, as well as illicit espionage activities inside Germany.

“Against this background [of proliferation], weapons of mass destruction continued to be a powerful political instrument during the reporting period, which could shake the stability of an entire state structure in both regional and international crisis situations,” the Hesse report noted on Wednesday. “In particular, states such as Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Syria attempted to acquire and redistribute such weapons in the context of proliferation, for example by concealing transport routes via third countries.”

The Jerusalem Post reviewed the 312-page document that details threats to the democratic state in Hesse.

The intelligence agents said that foreign academics seek to obtain knowledge about the uranium enrichment process.

According to the intelligence agency, visiting professors from states such as Iran, North Korea and Pakistan are connected to “proliferation conduct” that is coordinated with intelligence services from those countries.

“An example of this is the field of electrical engineering combined with the use of centrifuges in the process of uranium enrichment,” the report said. “Here, again and again, there are suspicions that foreign intelligence services put pressure on their own visiting scientists to obtain the desired technical know-how.”

The Hesse domestic intelligence agency findings have not been previously reported.

On September 14, just a few days after former National Security Advisor Ambassador John R. Bolton was comfortably disappeared from the administration, Iran inflicted major damage on a massive oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia,

Macron, in short, has done as much or more than any other European country to favor the Iranian regime -- more than Germany, and even more than the European Union itself. He could have chosen to act as a reliable ally of the United States, but the choice he made was a different.

The French officials act and speak as if the Iranian regime was totally honorable, and as if they did not discern the obvious: that the Iranian regime has destructive goals. The nuclear deal did not divert the regime from its goal of building nuclear weapons. The deal, in fact, floated the regime toward precisely that end. The American strategy of applying maximum pressure through economic sanctions seems the only non-military way to pressure this regime to change course.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Says America Has Been Conspiring against Iran for 40 Years, Responds to "Death to America" Chants: May This Come True Soon pic.twitter.com/9hvjz311wg

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 19, 2019

Iraqi Researcher Hashem Al-Kindi: Iraqi Hezbollah Brigades Refrained from Assassinating Obama Because Iraq's President Was Standing Next to Him pic.twitter.com/6hz02ScpWR

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 19, 2019

Regime officials in the Islamic Republic expressed desire this week that their ongoing efforts to sow instability, political violence, ethnic cleansing, and attain regional hegemony will encourage US political figures of a less antagonistic orientation than the current administration to assert themselves more in policymaking.

Iranian leaders told visiting journalists that in the interest of reducing tensions with the US, they hope to empower moderates within the American government and legislature, and to that end they will continue to direct their proxies in the Middle East to attack American and American-allied interests, and will continue to plan and bankroll terrorism around the world. Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif informed reporters that the current Iranian strategy of blowing things and people up aims to soften President Trump’s attitude toward Iran, and to provide legitimacy for those within his administration who otherwise might feel too timid to advocate for conciliatory measures toward Tehran.

“We know this strategy worked during the Obama administration,” noted Zarif, who represented the regime in talks that resulted in a 2015 deal all but green-lighting Iran’s eventual access to nuclear weapons. “Our support for Hezbollah, Houthis, and other violent actors demonstrated to the president and Secretary Kerry how serious we were about achieving a peaceful resolution of tensions after decades of friction. Given the success we enjoyed with this approach during the previous administration, we remain confident it can yield similar strategic dividends now.”

Lebanon's Central Bank announced Thursday it had agreed to the self-liquidation request it received from a bank hit by US sanctions last month over ties with Hizbullah.

"Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh announced today he approved the request made by Jammal Trust Bank SAL," the Lebanese state-run National News Agency reported.

On August 29, Washington slapped heavy financial sanctions on JTB, which was accused of acting as a key financial institution for Hizbullah.

The US Treasury said the bank was used for enabling several of the Shiite militant group's financial activities, "including sending payments to families of suicide bombers."

Iran-backed Hizbullah has been a US-designated terrorist group since 1997 and fights alongside the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the neighbouring country's civil war.

One of a handful of Shiite-owned Lebanese banks, JTB had specialised in micro-credit in remote areas of the country's Shiite-majority south, which is also Hizbullah's heartland.

Considering Israel’s relationship to what he calls the liberal world order and the new anti-liberal world order peopled by nationalist and authoritarian leaders, Kagan poses the question, “Which side does Israel want to be on?” And he answers: “in recent years Israeli foreign policy has been trending in a decidedly anti-liberal direction,” thus showing that the country actively desires to join the anti-liberal camp.

In justification of this charge, Kagan notes that Israel has pursued and maintained relations with the new leaders around the world whose authoritarian power and politics are replacing, to his dismay, the old liberal international order created by the United States after World War II and again at the end of the cold war. Kagan cites many such leaders: Putin of Russia, Xi of China, Modi of India, Orban of Hungary, and others, including the authoritarian leaders of Middle Eastern countries.

Setting aside the question of whether there are any Middle Eastern leaders besides Netanyahu who are not and have not long been authoritarian, the burden of this account would seem to be completely vitiated by two elements that Kagan himself mentions: first, that the new anti-liberal order is a fact of life, however unfortunate; and second, that Israel, despite its present success, is a tiny country endangered in a truly existential way by truly mortal enemies from its founding 71 years ago down to the present day, most recently in the form of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Indeed, in the course of his essay Kagan goes out of his way to insist on how ultimately small, weak, and thus inconsequential Israel is. He describes it as essentially a burden to the U.S. ever since its founding. Even at present, on his reckoning, were it not for America’s concern for the Jewish state, neither Iran nor Israel’s efforts to defend itself and even others in the region from Iran’s predations would matter to the U.S. Iran itself, he reassures us, is “not yet” a threat to America.

If so, what’s the big deal? The obvious conclusion to be drawn from these facts is that Israel, in order to continue to survive, is adapting to a new order created by forces much greater than its own and very much beyond its control. In so doing, it is behaving the same way other small states must behave, now and always—as a historian like Kagan well knows. From time to time in his essay, he even seems to draw the same conclusion. How, then, does the behavior of this small and ultimately inconsequential state matter as anything more than another sign of our lamentable times? Why Kagan’s preoccupation with Israel, of all the small states faced with the same circumstances?

If you follow Israeli politics, then you know that within the past year, the Jewish state has experienced two deadlocked elections. What explains this political stalemate?

According to Micah Goodman, one of Israel’s leading public intellectuals, Israeli politics is trapped in a Catch-67. Most Israelis have been persuaded by the Right that peace with the Palestinians isn’t feasible and that withdrawal from Judea and Samaria would be a security nightmare. But they are also persuaded by the Left’s argument that Israel’s control over the West Bank poses a demographic time-bomb that threatens the nation’s character as a Jewish and democratic state. They think that establishing a Palestinian state right now would be a disaster and that remaining in the territories would be a disaster.

How can Israel get out of this impossible situation? By abandoning comprehensive peace plans and messianic solutions, argues Goodman. Rather than solving the conflict or ignoring it, Israel ought to focus on shrinking the conflict by improving the day-to-day lives of Palestinians while maintaining an unwavering commitment to national security. In his Altantic essay, “Eight Steps to Shrink the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Goodman describes how Israel can do just that. And in this week’s podcast, he joins Tikvah to explore his vital book and thought-provoking essay.

In 2003, Pakistan’s then-dictator Pervez Musharraf floated the idea of establishing diplomatic ties with the Jewish state, a position he has also repeated even after stepping down—although little came of the suggestion. A few weeks ago, the country’s current government told reporters that it is considering an overture to Jerusalem. Ephraim Inbar explains what Islamabad would gain from doing so, and that Israel’s ever-closer friendship with India—Pakistan’s chief rival—is an inducement, not a hindrance, to a thaw between the two countries:

Pakistani national interests dictate better relations with Jerusalem. Israel’s new relationship with India was gradually transformed into what Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed “a strategic partnership.” Israeli technology and arms served the Indian military effort well in the 1999 Kargil war against Pakistan. Moreover, closer Indian-Israeli cooperation after the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks enhanced Delhi’s capacity to deal with Pakistan-sponsored terror. It can be argued that better relations with Israel might balance the intensified Indian-Israeli military ties. . . .

Iran is also a point of convergence. Pakistan fears Iran, its neighbor to the west, less than Israel does. Yet it’s hard to imagine that Islamabad is indifferent to the possibility of having another nuclear-armed neighbor on its western border. In addition, both countries play games with the Baluchi minorities beyond their borders and compete over influence in Afghanistan. Therefore, the Israeli campaign against Iran, which weakens an adversary, is not [inimical] to Pakistani interests. . . .

Israel, a state in quest of international legitimacy for many years, has always welcomed Pakistani overtures. Pakistan is a large Muslim state, and better relations with Islamabad could be useful in further diluting the religious dimension of Israel’s regional conflict. Israel desires a normalization in relations with all capitals of the world. Furthermore, the Pakistani-Saudi special relations could be leveraged to let both states overcome their inhibitions on relations with the Jewish state.

A simple test. The website has a search function. All things being equal, the number of returns that nations receive should ‘rank’ them in order of relevance and importance. False positives should equal out. And it seems to work. Germany has 338k, France 225k, Russia 245k and the USA 302k. China gets 286k and New Zealand 90k. The UK is an important global power situated in Europe and with deep connections to the Commonwealth. These results appear to include every reference to those nations, so we can assume New Zealand’s 90k has a fair few rugby and cricket references included.

How about Israel? Not in the commonwealth, nor in Europe. Israel receives 101k. What can we compare Israel with? Geographically, Syria for a start. A nation that has seen 500k deaths – 94k. Saudi, the Arabian Kingdom that controls so much of the world’s oil? 63k. What about Lebanon – 21k. For a regional power, how about Pakistan, a nation in the commonwealth that also plays cricket. 79k. What is most interesting about Pakistan is that unlike Israel, it really is a brutal oppressor of human rights. Yet only 79k hits, including of course ‘x’ amount of cricket scores.

A few more. Bangladesh 26k. Turkey? Erdogan’s Turkey only gets 81k, and that probably includes Christmas recipes along with all those holiday recommendations in Antalya. How about Cyprus, an invaded and occupied Island? 18K. Lesser nations in Europe? Sweden 59k, Romania 22k and Poland 41k. I looked at the eight bloodiest conflicts of the 21st century. Syria (94k) I already mentioned. There is also Congo (21k), Darfur (6k) Afghanistan (79k), Yemen (20k) and Ukraine (45k). Only Iraq, a war that actually involved the UK for years, scores more highly than Israel. Fun stuff huh?

It gets really silly. ‘Palestinian’ gets 60k results. 300% more than Lebanon. Kurds only get 17k. Perhaps if even more of the Kurds had been killed through Genocide, they may have made 20k, but it does seem as if the Kurds have to make Israel their enemy for the Guardian to really take any notice. ‘Palestine’ gets a whopping 50k, which is 10x the number of references to Kurdistan. In fact, ‘Palestine’ gets more mentions than the illegal occupation of Cyprus and the bloody conflicts of Lebanon combined. Think about it. On what planet can ‘Palestinian’ return as many results as the Saudi Arabian Kingdom that controls so much of the world’s oil? Perhaps it is a good thing that Palestinians don’t play much cricket.

Hamas, a terror organisation in a tiny regional spat in the Middle East gets 14k returns, which is more than Boko Haram (4k) and Al Qaeda (7k) combined. Guardian editors sure seem to have funny priorities.

An Israel obsession? Never mind. I am sure this is all just an editorial error.

The title of the talk was “The War in Syria Is Not Over,” but it was more like Nir Rosen’s valedictory address. For roughly 20 minutes, the gonzo war-journalist-turned-mysterious-diplomatic-operator—who counts top advisers to both former U.S. President Barack Obama and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad among his acquaintances and admirers—laid out his narrative of Syria’s civil war, the most lethal and defining conflict of the 21st century. In the speaker’s view, no one but he had gotten it right.

The U.S., Europe, and others that continued to sanction and isolate the Assad regime would be culpable for the “new social collapse” likely to follow Assad’s reconquest of much of his devastated country, Rosen told his audience at a Valdai Discussion Club event in Moscow in late February of 2019. “The same countries who claimed to care about the Syrian people and speak on their behalf supported insurgents, tried to overthrow the government and now are trying to starve Syrians,” the published version of the speech reads. “That the Syrian government behaved abhorrently does not justify the international intervention that followed and in fact the intervention helped cause these crimes.” The West’s motives for these ongoing “crimes” in the Levant were so obscure that they could only be described in theoretical terms. “Capitalism doesn’t work the same way everywhere,” he explained. “[T]he value of the Middle East is the accumulation of capital through war.”

In the text, one can forget Rosen is discussing a government that had murdered tens of thousands of people in a network of secret torture camps, bombed bread lines and hospitals, and gassed entire towns. In fact the Syrian dictator and his backers deserved thanks for defending the global order against the jihadist hordes at a steep cost in manpower and prestige. “The world owes Russia and Iran a debt of gratitude for preventing the collapse of the Syrian state,” Rosen said, to an audience that included senior Iranian and Russian foreign policy officials, as well as Robert Malley, the National Security Council’s Middle East director for most of Barack Obama’s second presidential term.

The fact of Rosen speaking on-record was more surprising than any of his actual statements. The Moscow speech represented some of Rosen’s only attributed public statements since 2012—a long public silence that would once have been unthinkable. In the 2000s, Rosen emerged as one of the edgiest American journalists working in the Middle East, embedding with Iraqi insurgents, Hezbollah, and the Taliban and publishing richly detailed, sometimes-admiring accounts of their operations.

A newly appointed board member of the Women’s March has been voted off it just days after her new role was announced, after tweets promoting extreme anti-Zionism and conspiracy theories were revealed.

Zahra Billoo, a lawyer and executive director of CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations) in San Francisco, tweets included: “Zionism is the violent ideology responsible for the genocide and displacement of indigenous Palestinians and the destruction of Palestinian land.”

She described Zionism as “racism”, and wrote in 2015: “I’m more afraid of racist Zionists who support Apartheid Israel than of the mentally Ill young people the #FBI recruits to join ISIS.”

The previous year, she tweeted: “Blaming Hamas for firing rockets at [Apartheid] Israel is like blaming a woman for punching her rapist.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American antisemitism watchdog, had called on the Women's March to "condemn the statements and sentiments" of Ms Billoo, describing her "long history of deeply offensive and antisemitic statements.

"Fair criticism of any government and its policies, including Israel, is an important aspect of democracy. But outright rejecting Jewish nationhood and singling out solely the Jewish state with inflammatory and virulent rhetoric is antisemitic, plain and simple."

In a Twitter thread she sent after she was removed, Ms Billoo claimed to have been the subject of “an Islamophobic smear campaign led by the usual antagonists, who have long targeted me, my colleagues, and anyone else who dares speak out in support of Palestinian human rights and the right to self-determination.”

pic.twitter.com/UKBkUtBdxp

— The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) September 16, 2019

I'd like to be the first to congratulate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on becoming the next board member of the Women's March. https://t.co/piLKdNZejX

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) September 19, 2019

Please join me in signing the petition calling on @umnews to cancel upcoming @NationalSJP conference aka terror-and-antisemitism-fest https://t.co/6j6GVakyXU

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 19, 2019

.@AMPalestine -NJ director of community outreach Mohamad Habehh has a terrible approach to outreach: “If you work with the Jews you deserve any punishment possible in this dunya [world]."https://t.co/crnXkU6e8Xpic.twitter.com/TEWy221Wse

— Canary Mission (@canarymission) September 18, 2019

Next week’s Labour Party Conference Fringe in Brighton includes events hosted by groups that claim that the Party’s antisemitism crisis is a smear and featuring speakers who have been suspended or expelled from the Party over antisemitism.

On 24th September at 19:00, Labour Against the Witchhunt, a group that was set up to protest the expulsion of Labour members for alleged antisemitism and that opposes “the false antisemitism smear”, is hosting a public meeting with Ken Livingstone and Asa Winstanley.

Mr Livingstone was suspended from the Labour Party over antisemitism and eventually resigned from the Party in 2018 during a two-year investigative process that was never concluded. He went on to dismiss Labour’s antisemitism crisis as “lies and smears” manufactured by an “elite” wishing to protect their “tax-dodging in the Cayman Islands”. Mr Winstanley, meanwhile, has called the Jewish Labour Movement an “Israeli Embassy proxy” and was reportedly suspended from Labour in March, pending an investigation.

The Labour Representation Committee, a pro-Corbyn pressure group which has a long history of belittling claims of antisemitism and publishing extremely disturbing articles, is reportedly hosting an event with Chris Williamson MP and Jackie Walker. The president of the organisation is the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell.

Mr Williamson, was suspended from Labour and then readmitted, only to be resuspended following a public outcry after claiming that Labour has been “too apologetic” over antisemitism.

In a barnstorming speech at the Liberal Democrats’ party conference, Chuka Umunna, an MP who left Labour for reasons including antisemitism and recently joined the Liberal Democrats, shared his thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn.

“The Labour Party likes to think of itself as a champion of liberal values at home and abroad,” Mr Umunna said, before lamenting that Labour is in fact no longer “the party of [Clement] Atlee and [Ernest] Bevin: this is Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.”

Mr Umunna warned Labour that “you cannot be a champion of liberalism if you are currently subject to a formal investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission for institutional racism against Jewish people.” He was referencing the full statutory investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which was launched on 28th May following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

Mr Umunna went on to criticise Mr Corbyn for “lauding authoritarian regimes in Venezuela and Iran [and] failing to support the proscription of Hizballah as a terrorist organisation.” Hizballah was banned in the UK earlier this year following years of campaigning by Campaign Against Antisemitism and others.

Labour Friends of Israel has revealed today it will not have a stand at this year’s party conference over safety concerns.

LFI will not be joining organisations such as the BBC, the British Red Cross and Sky News exhibiting at the five-day conference in Brighton this weekend until next Wednesday.

But the parliamentary group, which did not exhibit last year for the first time in recent memory, will hold a fringe event on Tuesday evening chaired by Dame Louise Ellman MP, with Deputy Leader Tom Watson and Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev speaking.

LFI claimed it would not be “responsible” to place staff on a stand at the five-day conference due to safety concerns after “incidents of antisemitism in previous years.”

“The ongoing abuse of Jewish party members – highlighted by July’s Panorama programme – and the failure of Jeremy Corbyn to do anything to deter his supporters from engaging in it, means that we have decided it would not be appropriate for us to have a stand at Labour party conference this year,” LFI said.

“Our staff have faced incidents of antisemitism in previous years and, given that the situation appears to have further deteriorated, we do not feel it is responsible as an employer to put them in this environment.”

The latest ban on kosher slaughter in Europe is just another restriction placed on the continent's Jews and adds to the sense that the community is not wanted, says the head of the European Jewish Association (EJA).

"This is a true tragedy for the entire Jewish community," says Rabbi Menachem Margolin, regarding the recent prohibition of kosher slaughter in the Wallonia region of Belgium

The Wallonia ban joins a prohibition on kosher slaughter in the northern Flanders region of Belgium, making the Jewish ritual effectively illegal in two thirds of the country, where more than 40,000 Jews reside.

The rabbi, himself a Belgian citizen, sees growing restrictions and limitations on the rights of the European Jewish communities all over
the continent, and does not accept the humanitarian reasons legislators cling to in explaining the ban on kosher slaughter.

"Hunting for fun and sport is still allowed in Belgium," Margolin tells Ynet. "More animals are killed by hunting across Belgium than by kosher slaughter, not to mention the problemetic conditions of regular slaughter, which are allowed throughout the country.

"From the way the animals are transported to the food they eat and the conditions they live in, there are endless problems regarding the treatment of animals in Belgium. Jewish people care for the animals, and kosher slaughter is much more humane then any other forms of slaughter."

Although anti-Semitism in Europe is on the rise, Margolin doesn't see it as the reason for the new law; instead he blames political lobbyists.

"The real tragedy is the fact that the politicians who were so moved by the animal rights lobbyists ignored the pleas of the Jewish community, and this kind of law makes the entire Jewish population of the country feel unwelcome."

Over the last few years, thousands of Americans Jewish adolescents who were raised in Zionist households have been taught that Israel is unworthy of their support. And some have been persuaded to believe that if they join the BDS campaign, they will become champions of social justice.

The truth, however, is that these Jewish students have been seduced and manipulated by a dangerous cult that has stripped them of the opportunity to think and reason independently and interact with whomever they choose, as well as sometimes damaging their familial and childhood relationships.

Proponents of the BDS movement sometimes use the practices of cult leaders, which can be illustrated by analyzing Steven Hassan’s “BITE” model of mind control. Hassan, an American Jew, former cult member, and now one of the world’s leading authorities on cults, created the “BITE” model, which is used to describe Behavioral Control, Information Control, Thought Control, and Emotional Control.

Throughout my years as an anti-BDS activist, I have witnessed the outrageous behavior of pro-BDS student groups, who shout down and physically intimidate pro-Israel speakers and threaten Zionist students verbally and in writing. This is behavioral control.

In February 2016, I communicated with an Oberlin College student who described how pro-BDS student groups expect behavioral compliance in exchange for social acceptance.

In addition, I have observed pro-BDS student groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine refuse to engage with Zionists, which these groups present as a self-righteous refusal to “normalize Israel.” However, when viewed within Hassan’s framework, it becomes clear that instructing SJP members not to engage is actually an attempt to limit their access to information.

How does one distinguish antisemitism from legitimate criticism of Israel? The answer is rather simple: One can criticize Israel and its government just as one would any other nation and its government. Far too often, however, Israel is relentlessly demonized on college campuses, which frequently devolves into harassment of Jewish and pro-Israel students.

Anti-Israel advocates decry the putative evils of Israel, and endlessly pontificate as if Israel were the source of the entire world’s evil. Unsurprisingly, this creates a dangerous situation for the safety of the Jewish community.

Fortunately, two New Jersey lawmakers have decided to tackle this crisis head-on. State Senators Steve M. Sweeney (D) and Robert W. Singer (R) proposed an amendment to New Jersey’s Statute 18A that would establish protections for Jewish people against discrimination on the basis of their religion. It extends protections to specifically include the Jewish people as a religious/ethnic group, and it prohibits acts of antisemitism in public schools, colleges, and universities.

The amendment targets:

• Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing of harming of Jewish people, often in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion;
• Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jewish people or the power of Jewish people as a collective, especially, but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jewish people controlling the media, economy, government, or other societal institutions; and
• Accusing Jewish people as a whole or the State of Israel of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.

Notably, the amendment also includes anti-Zionist manifestations of antisemitism:

• Demonizing Israel by using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism to characterize Israel or Israeli people, drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, or blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions;
• Delegitimizing Israel by denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and denying Israel the right to exist;
• Applying a double standard to Israel by requiring behavior of Israel that is not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation, or focusing peace or human-rights investigations only on Israel; and
• Clarifying that criticism of Israel that is similar to criticism toward any other country may not be regarded as antisemitic.

A Jewish student at Tufts University found a swastika affixed to the door of his dorm room.

The swastika was discovered Sunday night when the student returned to his room, according to a letter Tuesday from President Anthony Monaco to the school community.

Monaco called the incident a “cowardly act of hatred and ignorance.”

“It is a direct attack on our Jewish community and an affront to our values as an institution,” he wrote.

Campus police and the school’s Office of Equal Opportunity are investigating, he said.

Monaco noted the incident at the beginning of a scheduled address on the suburban Boston campus by Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, who spoke Tuesday evening to a standing-room-only crowd about the rise in anti-Semitic rhetoric in the country.

Lipstadt, whose most recent book is “Antisemitism: Here and Now,” praised the university’s unambiguous and forthright response, but also sounded a note of caution about painting Tufts as a place where there is anti Semitism. She said it is important to “keep things in perspective” so that it doesn’t “make it seem more dire than it is.”

"This was an attempt to intimidate a Jewish student," Rabbi Tzvi Backman of the Rohr Chabad House that serves Tufts students, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Noga Tarnopolsky, who, along with Laura King, wrote today’s story, herself rightly referred to the West Bank as “disputed” in a Dec. 15, 2017 article. Similarly, an Associated Press article reproduced in the LA Times on Aug. 20, 2019 referred to the West Bank, along with eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, as “territories the Palestinians want for a future state.” This too is correct. Josh Mitnick, formerly of The Los Angeles Times, also used similar precise language in 2017, referring to the West Bank as “which Palestinians claim as the site of a future state.”

If the West Bank were simply Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory, in particular territory belonging to another sovereign state and acquired by aggression, then Israel would be required to withdraw and no negotiations would have been necessary. But since Israel is the obligatory military occupational authority, having won the territory from Jordan in a war of self-defense in 1967 and retained them in a similar conflict in 1973, and competing claims remain unresolved, the West Bank is land Palestinians want for a future state, and land at least some of which many Israelis claim for Israel.

In response to communication from CAMERA, editors issued a speedy and forthright correction to the digital edition, changing the reference to “Palestinian territory” to simply “territory.” Moreover, the following correction appears prominently at the top of the article:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to “Palestinian territory” in the Jordan Valley. The land in question was seized from Jordan in 1967 and has been occupied by Israel. Palestinians want it as part of a future state.

CAMERA previously prompted correction of the identical error at The Washington Post. The Post’s Sept. 6, 2014 correction stated:
A Sept. 5 A-section article about Jordan agreeing to buy natural gas from Israel incorrectly referred to Israel’s occupation of ‘Palestinian lands’ in the West Bank. The Israeli-occupied territories are disputed lands that Palestinians want for a future Palestinian state.

Morocco World News has been poohpooh-ing an article in The Times of Israel about an Israeli called Martha Retthig who is giving financial support to an Amazigh (Berber) called Mohamed. The implication is that the Zionists are trying to subvert Morocco's quiet Atlas villages and to foster Amazigh nationalism which, it claims, only a small minority supports. In order to affirm Moroccan loyalty to the Palestinian cause, the article alleges that relations between Morocco and Israel are going through a rough patch.

Mohamed’s village and his last name are not revealed because, the Israeli paper writes, his university teachers and friends—and even perhaps his neighbors—will surely harm him if they knew that he is pro-Israel or his family and education is sustained by Israeli generosity.

“Some people here are crazy and I’m afraid for my safety. Please don’t use my pics or family name I beg you, because it’s serious here,” Mohamed told the newspaper shortly before they ran the report.

What is “serious,” the piece comments throughout, is both the unbearable lives of the village-dwelling Amazigh and the supposed Arab supremacy under which they live. They have been “Arabized” and “Islamized” and are denied access to Morocco’s most visible jobs and government positions, the kinds of promotion that bring political and economic clout.

Rettig and Mohamed met on Facebook and the Israeli woman was immediately “touched” by his life story. But implied in the larger narrative of the story is a supposed historical affinity between Jews and Berbers. This is based on the claim that Islam and Arabs somehow constitute an existential threat to the survival of both peoples.

Patrick Little, a known white supremacist who espouses antisemitic views, is lowering his sights after running for the U.S. Senate and flirting with a 2020 presidential candidacy.

Little is running for a City Council seat in Garden City, Idaho, a Boise suburb. He filed his candidacy form and will run as a Republican, Little told the Idaho Press.

“The only way to challenge Jewish power in this country now is with local elections because it would have to be word of mouth,” he said Tuesday.

Little told the newspaper that the “top priority” of the Jewish people is to displace white people specifically, and that he believes Jews control the media, the entertainment industry and politics.

He had a brief run for the presidency as a “Nationally Social Democratic American Patriot Republican,” according to his campaign’s webpage. His platform included a plan to require the death penalty for any politician introducing a bill to provide aid to Israel and to introduce “a bill in the Senate making it illegal to raise funds for any foundation related to the perpetuating of propaganda related to a ‘holocaust,’ formally making the U.S.’s stance on ‘the holocaust’ that it is a ‘Jewish war atrocity propaganda hoax that never happened.’”

Little was endorsed by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke for his California Senate run. He was banned from the state Republican Party convention.

The report, titled “Hate Beyond Borders: The Internationalization of White Supremacy,” chronicles how American white supremacists are coordinating with foreign counterparts to export their message and activities by meeting online and in person, sharing ideas and tactics, and recruiting new followers.

The report profiles 18 European influencers and nearly a dozen white-supremacist leaders from the United States and Canada who are having a major effect on one another and on the white-supremacy movement internationally.

Several factors that have aided the internationalization of white supremacy are also identified.

According to ADL’s report, “American and foreign white supremacists are increasingly coordinating their activities and messaging, and this newfound collaboration has led to a cross-pollinating of ideas, jointly holding events and conferences, and building a global network of followers both online and off. Global white supremacist ideology is easily disseminated across borders on various social media platforms, and noxious anti-immigrant and pro-white rhetoric are finding their way into mainstream politics and society.”

“This activity has fueled a rise in hate crimes and antisemitism in both the US and in Europe as minority communities—particularly, Jews, Muslims and immigrants—are increasingly threatened with racism, antisemitism, xenophobia and nativism.”

The report is a collaboration between ADL and extremism researchers from anti-hate organizations in five European countries.

Every House member from New Jersey (there are 12) on Wednesday condemned the anti-Semitic remarks made last Saturday by Trenton Council President Kathy McBride, NJ.com reported.

McBride said during an executive session of the council in early September that a city attorney had been able to “Jew her down” in negotiations over a lawsuit settlement.

Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora emailed McBride: “It has come to my attention that on September 5, 2019, at the Executive Session of City Council to discuss settlement of a claim for personal injuries, you said that a member of our Law Department was ‘able to wait her out and Jew her down’ to some lesser amount than she would have somehow been entitled to make otherwise.”

Gusciora continued: “This anti-Semitic remark, particularly about an attorney in our law department that happens to be Jewish should have no place in our public discourse. I hope that after reflection you would apologize for these remarks.”

The city council president in New Jersey's capital city apologized Tuesday for using an anti-Semitic trope while discussing actions taken by the city's Jewish attorney.

Trenton City Council President Kathy McBride said at a council hearing she was sorry for the language she used.

"I am apologizing to the community at large," said McBride, a Democrat, according to The Trentonian newspaper. "Because in my position you cannot make anyone feel insulted or you cannot be insensitive to any ethnic backgrounds, so I am apologizing to the community at large."

McBride's comments were initially made in a closed-door session of the council on Sept. 5, but became public after a local newspaper, The Trentonian, obtained an audio recording.

On the recording, McBride is heard expressing concern over a $22,000 legal settlement that the city struck with a woman who sued over an injury suffered on a city sidewalk.

"I'm sad for her that they were able to wait her out and Jew her down for $22,000 with pins in her knee that can never, ever be repaired," McBride said.

The ADL is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a group of men who beat and robbed an Orthodox Jew in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Tuesday.

The attack was caught on video, which shows an Orthodox man walking alone at night who is then set upon by several men. They begin beating him and pursue him as he flees.

The attackers apparently demanded the victim’s belongings before attacking him.

The incident was only the latest in a series of such assaults against identifiably Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. Statistics show a serious rise in antisemitic hate crimes in New York City.

The ADL announced its reward in a press release, and its New York and New Jersey regional director, Evan R. Bernstein, said, “The video footage of this violent encounter is incredibly disturbing, and we are glad that the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is assisting in the investigation of this horrific crime.”

“This incident comes at a time when visibly observant Jewish individuals are unable to walk the streets of Brooklyn without feeling fearful that they may be assaulted or attacked because of their religion or faith,” he added.

“This is completely unacceptable and contrary to everything we stand for as New Yorkers,” said Bernstein. “The violence must stop now.”

With another violent antisemitic attack on an identifiable Jew last night, it’s all the more imperative that New Yorkers come together to denounce this hatred & demand proper protection!

Join the rally against antisemitism this Sun, 9/22, 12pm at City Hall Park (249 Broadway) pic.twitter.com/uxpAcZBPk0

— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) September 18, 2019

At the end of August, the New York Police Department Hate Crimes Task Force investigated an alleged anti-Semitic attack near Brower Park in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Someone had allegedly thrown a block of ice at a Hasidic man driving a car. It was the second allegedly anti-Semitic attack that week, coming days after an assailant had bashed a Hasidic man’s head with a brick.

Two weeks later, at the same park, the famously fraught neighborhood projected a much different image: one of a diverse and peaceful community.

At a community festival on Sunday, a popular Orthodox Jewish children’s singer shared the stage with a Caribbean dance group on stilts. Jewish and African-American children played together on a closed-off street. And inside a tent behind the stage, attendees sat in a circle and discussed contentious issues like hate crimes and gun violence.

This was the fourth annual #OneCrownHeights festival, but it felt especially relevant this year following a string of attacks on Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn that has heightened tensions in the area.

Crown Heights, a majority African-American neighborhood with a sizable Hasidic Jewish community and a growing population of hipsters, was the site of some of those attacks.

The president of the Holocaust Survivors of Miami-Dade County wants to allow survivors and their families to use the courts to get payouts from European insurance companies for policies that were upended by Nazi Germany.

And after years of advocacy from South Florida lawmakers, David Mermelstein might have the White House on his side.

Mermelstein was sent to Auschwitz when he was 16 years old and was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. After two years in a displaced persons camp, Mermelstein came to the United States in 1948, met his wife in New York, and then decided to stay in Miami for the rest of his life after honeymooning there.

Now, 75 years after leaving Auschwitz, the 90-year-old Mermelstein is pushing to get a law passed that gives Holocaust survivors the right to use the U.S. court system to compel private European insurance companies to look through their own records and pay out the money owed to survivors and their families, which could total up to $25 billion when factoring in compound interest over time.

“Without action by Congress, the insurance companies will be the heirs of the victims of the Holocaust,” Mermelstein said. “This is unacceptable.”

After the killing of Naboth and the seizure of his vineyard, Elijah thundered at Ahab, “Hast thou murdered and also inherited?”

That Bible story found chilling modern-day expression in the dispossession of Jewish property that was part and parcel of the annihilation of European Jewry in the Holocaust. The lure of plundering Jewish assets was often a catalyst for the involvement of local citizens and collaborationist authorities in killing their Jewish neighbors or subjects, and the Holocaust became the greatest act of larceny in modern history.

Seventy-five years after the war ended, the fast-dwindling number of survivors and heirs are still seeking recognition and restitution for their material losses – often to no avail. Certainly, one of the best models in modern Europe for equitable legislation to contend with these claims can be found in an unlikely place: Serbia.

In the spring of 1941, Germany quickly and ruthlessly subjugated Yugoslavia. The multi-ethnic kingdom of the South Slavs was carved into several territorial units, parts of which were occupied by Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. Croatia was granted independence and spun off as a German satellite.

Serbia fell under direct German control, and its Jews were immediately subjected to the full force of the Nazis’ murderous anti-Jewish policies. In May 1942, after presiding over the slaughter of the Jews held in the Sajmište camp, SS-Standartenführer Emanuel Schäefer hastened to cable Berlin that Belgrade was the only European capital that was now Judenrein, “cleansed of Jews.” The destruction of the Jews of Serbia, including in a gas vans specially imported for this purpose, was accompanied by the wholesale plunder of Jewish assets, both private and communal, movable and immovable.

In an effort to promote religious tolerance and understanding between the world's great monotheistic religions, the Chief Rabbinate of France, the Council of Christian Churches in France (Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox) and the Muslim World League will all embark on an extraordinary trip to Auschwitz next year.

According to Agence France-Presse, delegations from these three parties "will travel jointly to Auschwitz in the first quarter of 2020 on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps."

The visit was confirmed during the annual International Peace Conference, currently being held in the Netherlands, which also brought together high-level religious leaders from around the world.

"This is the first time that dignitaries of the MWL will go there," said Ghaleb Bencheikh, President of the Foundation of Islam of France.

A "Memorandum of Understanding and Friendship between the Three Monotheistic Religions" was also signed between the three parties during the conference, which commits to fighting against "extremism and terrorism."

"The parties pledge to promote freedom of conscience and religious freedom," the text stated.

The journey looks to provide "young Jews, Christians and Muslims tools for reflection and places of training to address the problems of the contemporary world and address the ethical challenges that face especially young people," the statement adds.

When Mikhail Radotsky’s mother became ill, Radotsky – adviser to the Ukrainian president for health and medical affairs – brought his ailing parent to Israel for treatment.

He was so impressed by the Israeli healthcare system’s “professionalism and efficiency” – in particular the Magen David Adom (MDA) national emergency medical and disaster service – that Radotsky later promised his mother on her deathbed that “we would try to bring to Ukraine what we saw here in MDA.”

Radotsky, who also holds the title of head of the Ukrainian State Health Committee, was in Israel this month along with Sergiy Shefir, first assistant to the president of Ukraine, to learn more about MDA’s technology and methods in order to “improve response and arrival times in Ukraine.”

The two surveyed MDA’s system for quickly activating volunteers and the organization’s range of rescue vehicles, including mobile intensive care ambulances and mini electric vehicles. They also toured MDA’s emergency ambulance driving simulation system.

“We believe that by using your technologies, we will be able to shorten patient arrival times in Ukraine, thereby saving lives,” Radotsky said after the visit.

The biblical kingdom of Edom has always been a significant puzzle for biblical archaeology. Although evidence is supplied in the Bible, the archaeological record has always had trouble interpreting the text, which said that it existed as a kingdom long before the kings of Israel.

But research has uncovered the untold story of a thriving and wealthy society in the Arava Desert – in parts of Israel and Jordan – that existed during the 12th-11th centuries BCE.

“Using technological evolution as a proxy for social processes, we were able to identify and characterize the emergence of the biblical kingdom of Edom,” explained Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Ezra Ben-Yosef, who led the study with Prof. Tom Levy of the University of California, San Diego. “Our results prove it happened earlier than previously thought and in accordance with the biblical description.”

According to the study, which was published on Wednesday on the site of the scientific journal PLOS ONE, the kingdom’s wealth appears to have been built on a “hi-tech network” of copper, the most valuable resource in the region at the time. Copper was used in ancient times to craft weapons and tools, and the production process for copper is incredibly complex.

“Copper smelting was essentially the hi-tech of ancient times,” Ben-Yosef told The Jerusalem Post.

Using a methodology called the punctuated equilibrium model, the research team analyzed findings from ancient copper mines in Jordan and Israel to create a timeline of the evolution of copper production from 1300-800 BCE. The investigation found a significant decrease of copper in the slag – the waste of copper extraction by smelting – at the Arava site, implying that the process became more efficient and streamlined.

Researchers say the more efficient process was a result of the military invasion of Pharaoh Shoshenq I of Egypt (the biblical “Shishak”), who sacked Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE. Rather than result in destruction in the region, the researchers argue that it instead sparked a “technological leap” in copper production and trade.

Here’s everything we know about this video clip which compresses Israel, the election campaign and lots and lots of Benjamin Netanyahu, including an amazing martial arts bout between the PM and Avigdor Liberman (don’t ask).

According to Google Translate, イスラエル国 means “Israel,” pronounced “Isuraeru kuni.”

Directed & Motion Graphics: Akim Dolinsky & Theo Dolev
Produced: FRANKENDO
Based on the manga: ALTNEULAND by Benjamin Ze’ev Herzel
Main Illustrator: Vu Dinh Lan
2nd Illustrator: Art0ni – Daniel Johnson

So, without further ado, the State of Israel Anime Intro.

2 years ago today, an IDF humanitarian delegation of 71 soldiers and officers flew to #Mexico after it was struck by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake.

Saving lives should know no borders.

🇮🇱🇲🇽 pic.twitter.com/eOTF3lMX0k

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 19, 2019

• No mention of terrorist attack from Al-Abbasiyya and Jewish fatalities before Irgun retaliated.
• Arab fatalities in Irgun attack are 350% higher in the English and Arabic versions.
• No mention of “Palestinian Holy War Army” and Arab legion making the village a military base starting from April 1948 in the English and Arabic versions.
• No mention of the civilian Arab population fleeing in April 1948 in the English and Arabic versions.
• No mention of several battles between Jewish and Arab forces in the village between April and July 1948 in the English and Arabic versions.

 For three years now, Asmaa Azaizeh has run a popular Arabic-language book festival in Haifa, a mixed city that has become a vibrant culinary and cultural capital for Palestinian citizens of Israel.

But as this year’s festival opens on Friday, it is being held without hundreds of titles Ms. Azaizeh wanted to showcase. Israeli border officials barred them from being imported from Jordan, under an 80-year-old law that predates the existence of the state of Israel.

Arabic translations of George Orwell, James Joyce and William Faulkner; of Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag and Nelson Mandela; of Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence, Orhan Pamuk, and Agatha Christie were all rejected and sent back to a Jordanian distributor.

The reason? The books were printed in Beirut.

An Israeli law that dates back to World War II-era British Mandatory Palestine forbids trading with the enemy, and Israel applies that policy to Lebanese, Syrian and Iraqi publishers, among others.

The books’ content is not the issue, Ms. Azaizeh said. Only the location of the publisher — despite the fact that she was purchasing the books from a company in Jordan, with which Israel does have a peace treaty and trade relations.

When Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman abruptly resigned his position as defense minister last November and started the countdown to the Knesset elections in April, he plunged Israel into a state of political instability. Following the April elections, by refusing to serve in a government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and so forcing Israel into a second election, Lieberman prolonged the instability he instigated.

Tuesday’s elections ended in deadlock. Neither major party can form a governing majority. And so, there is no end in sight for the instability Lieberman provoked and prolonged.

Israel’s prolonged political volatility and uncertainty have had a disastrous impact on Israel’s strategic flexibility. Indeed, it has induced strategic paralysis. Israel cannot respond in a meaningful way to threats or take advantage of strategic opportunities that present themselves.

The implications of this dire state of affairs were brought to bear twice in one day during the campaign. In a press conference last Tuesday, Netanyahu announced his intention to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley after the elections. Netanyahu’s announcement included the revelation that US President Donald Trump supports the move. American officials backed his claim after the fact.

This was a stunning development. No US administration has ever supported Israel’s right to assert its sovereign rights in Judea and Samaria without Palestinian permission until now.

But the media and Netanyahu’s political opponents on the left and right ignored this basic fact and instead derided his statement as nothing more than a cheap election stunt to rally his base.

In a way, they were right. After all, all Netanyahu did was make a promise. But it was due to Israel’s strategic paralysis that he had no other option.

‘Six things does the Lord hate,” observed King Solomon, and “seven are an abomination unto him” (Proverbs 6:17-19). Three of those – “a proud look, a lying tongue,” and “him that sows discord among brethren” – add up to Bibi Netanyahu’s moral meltdown and political demise.

Pride made Israel’s longest-serving prime minister misjudge the mainstream electorate’s size, priorities and feelings, which under his sleepy radar traveled steadily from respect through doubt to wrath.

The social discord he sowed as a matter of ploy and habit needs no elaboration, nor does the “lying tongue” he deployed while libeling almost everyone, from judges and cops to the entire press.

At this writing it is too early to say that Netanyahu’s 37-year public career is over. It is not too early to say that a critical mass of the electorate this week announced the beginning of its end.

Having entered this election with 41 lawmakers (Likud’s 35, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon’s four, and Moshe Feiglin’s equivalent of two) Netanyahu lost a fifth of this original electorate. Yes, in terms of parliamentary blocs we face a cloud that will take time to scatter, but on the personal level this poll produced a resounding vote of no confidence in a leader who lost touch with his nation and task.

NETANYAHU MISJUDGED the voters on three planes: the social, the institutional and the ideological.

Socially, he assumed that average Israeli Jews see Israeli Arabs as fair game. In his superficial reading of Israeli society – a binary us-and-them dichotomy between “the Left” and “the Right” – the former are ready to give “the Arabs” everything and for no price, while the latter trust not one Arab, will cheer any anti-Arab broadside, and will prize whoever delivers it.

We don’t yet have a prime minister candidate, nor a clear path to a government. Both will take some time. But there are already valuable and useful lessons that have emerged from this week’s election.

The first relates to Israel’s Arab population. For years, the Arab Knesset members focused on nationalistic issues in the parliament, serving as the mouthpiece of the Palestinian Authority in decrying “the occupation,” criticizing the Israel Defense Force, and not indicating any desire to be partners in the leadership of Israel.

Arab MK’s would not even recommend anyone to be prime minister lest they be accused of having any association with Jewish candidates from Zionist parties. The recognition that their representatives would not be working for their interests and needs, and would not even consider joining a government which is where real societal reforms can be made, played a significant role in the low Arab voter turnout in past elections.

But in this election, MK Ayman Odeh, chairman of the Joint Arab List, changed course. He gave an interview in Yediot Aharonot just a few weeks ago in which he said, “I want to lead Arab politics from a politics of protest to a politics of influence. We are 20% of Israel’s population, and we are needed to bring equality, democracy and social justice to Israel.”

While Odeh ruled out the possibility of joining a Netanyahu-led government, he presented four conditions for entering a Gantz-led government:

“The first is the construction of a new Arab city and redoing the rules to allow for more Arab construction and stopping demolitions in Arab areas. Second is a government focus on fighting crime in Arab areas, including an operation to gather all the weapons that people own in the Arab population. Third is in the welfare realm including building a public hospital in an Arab city, and raising stipends for the elderly. Finally, there must be direct negotiations with the Palestinian leaders to bring an end to the occupation and to establish a Palestinian state, alongside canceling the Nation-State Law.”

The first three conditions focus on needs also relevant to the Israeli community and could be easily accepted by Benny Gantz. While the last condition is more complicated, the very fact that their leader is placing real day-to-day issues on the table as a possible entry into a government energized much of the Arab population, making them feel that it was worthwhile to vote to try to place their representatives in positions of influence. And that led to a larger Arab turnout than usual, which enabled them to stay in double-digit mandates despite the high turnout throughout the country.

Armenia has announced that it will be opening an embassy in Israel. The two countries established formal diplomatic ties in 1992.

According to an announcement from the Armenian Foreign Ministry, the embassy – which would be the 90th foreign embassy in Israel – will be located in Tel Aviv and opened "as quickly as possible," sometime between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020.

The Foreign Ministry said, "Israel welcomes the Armenian government's decision to open an embassy in Israel.

"This decision reflects well on the closer diplomatic ties of the past year. The opening of an Armenian embassy marks a new and important chapter in bilateral relations, and we are sure that it will lead to even closer ties of friendship between the two peoples and increase cooperation between the two countries in all fields," the ministry statement continued.

Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz welcomed the decision.

"There is no doubt that this is testimony to Israel's rising status in the world," Katz tweeted.

"We will continue to work to strengthen Israel's international ties and anchor its international status," Katz added.

THE TRUTH about Bibi, however, is that he is a master, not a magician. His maneuvering of Israel’s implausible political system – while running the country, conducting measured military operations against its many enemies, chief among them Iran, and diplomatic ones against the BDS movement – is nothing short of miraculous. Denigrating it by suggesting that it’s more a function of trickery than leadership is shameful.

Israelis who engage in that kind of sophistry are ingrates. Some are also ignoramuses with short memories who refuse to recognize that the bulk of Netanyahu’s antagonists abroad were just as hostile to previous Israeli prime ministers. Others oppose his policies – or hate his guts for personal reasons -- and have used every tool at their disposal, including the police and the courts rather than the ballot box, to try to oust him from office.

This is not to say that Bibi warrants no criticism, or that without him at the helm, Israel is doomed. On the contrary, the Jewish state was established five months before he was born. It managed not only to survive but thrive for nearly five decades before he became prime minister for the first time in 1996.

Nor is it reasonable or desirable to hinge the country’s continued resilience and strength on a single leader, no matter how great. If Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is destined for destruction – whether at the hands of its enemies or through internal societal implosion – it might as well pack up shop now and be done with it.

The Central Election Committee published early Friday what it said were the “almost final” results from Tuesday’s election, with Benny Gantz’s Blue and White centrist party maintaining a two-seat lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud.

The committee said that 99.8% of the votes had been tallied, with the exception of those from 14 polling booths where irregular activities had been recorded on election day, which were still being investigated.

Israelis voted at more than 10,000 polling stations.

The “almost final” results gave Blue and White 33 seats to Likud’s 31. Third was the Joint List alliance of Arab-majority parties at 13, followed by the ultra-Orthodox parties Shas with nine and United Torah Judaism with eight.

Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu also had eight seats. Rounding out the list were Yamina with seven seats, Labor-Gesher with six and the Democratic Camp with five.

The center-left bloc, including the predominantly Arab Joint List — which has never been a member of the government — has increased its power to 57 seats, with the right-wing and religious bloc at 55. Neither has the 61-seat majority necessary to form a coalition, leaving Yisrael Beytenu in the kingmaker position.

Even the much-discussed union of Likud and Blue and White, which Netanyahu is apparently considering, looks like a pipe dream. Why? Because it would necessitate two highly unlikely scenarios. The first is that Netanyahu would be replaced as leader of Likud, something he’d fight to the death. The second is Gantz teaming up with Netanyahu, something he’s sworn he’ll never do.

And in the middle of this messy stalemate is President Reuven Rivlin, who has promised he’ll do everything he can to ensure a coalition is established so as to prevent yet another “do-over” election.

But numbers are numbers. No amount of effort from Rivlin or anyone else can fit square pegs into round holes. Over the next few days and weeks, we can expect lots of posturing and horse trading, lots of analyses about cynical politicians selling their souls to gain power, but that won’t change the stubborn numbers.

Of course, this is Israel, the land of miracles, so it’s always possible something dramatic will happen to break the deadlock, like a revolt in Likud against Netanyahu, who has now failed twice this year to bring victory to his party.

At least one thing is for sure: Both sides will have plenty to pray for during the coming High Holidays.

As the prospect of a third election — the mandatory last resort if nobody can form a coalition — looms larger, he hopes, Likud’s legislators will start to calculate that their party will do less well next time. It seems to have dropped about four seats from its 35 in April, but really shed more, given that on Tuesday it included Kulanu in its ranks, a party that won four seats on its own last time. The ultra-Orthodox parties gained some ground, but the rise of the Joint List, and the significant rise in support for Liberman — whose voters knew on Tuesday, unlike in April, that a vote for Yisrael Beytenu was no longer an automatic vote for a Netanyahu-led government — will not have been lost on Likud legislators.

By the time a third election comes around, moreover, Netanyahu could well have been indicted in the corruption cases against him. And while he may then seek to portray himself still more desperately as the victim of a political witch hunt, that gambit manifestly did not play to his advantage on Tuesday. Indeed, several of his familiar gambits backfired — including the cameras in the Arab polling stations “voter fraud” ploy, the demonizing of the Arab electorate campaign, and the “gevalt… we’re losing” interviews and social media blitz.
While Gantz is hoping Likud will start to crack, Netanyahu is scouring for options — playing for time, with the advantage of being prime minister. And this is the Middle East, where external affairs can intrude at any moment on the plots and schemes of politicians; where external affairs can also be encouraged to intrude

Netanyahu is on the defensive, compelled to cancel his trip to the UN in New York next week, and thus forced, ignominiously, to cancel a planned meeting with US President Donald Trump, who responded Wednesday with the devastating revelation that he hadn’t spoken with Netanyahu since the elections and, anyhow, “our relationship is with Israel.” But, for now, his party is standing by him.

While Gantz is hoping Likud will start to crack, Netanyahu is scouring for options — playing for time, with the advantage of being prime minister. And this is the Middle East, where external affairs can intrude at any moment on the plots and schemes of politicians; where external affairs can also be encouraged to intrude.

The Israeli electorate has had its say. The one man who could single-handedly break the deadlock we produced, Liberman, is insisting on the unity partnership both of the big party leaders claim to want but not really with each other.

And so our president will on Sunday begin the sensitive task of trying to convert the will of the people, the diverse will of the people, into a viable leadership for Israel — to cajole our elected representatives into some kind of stable government. Otherwise, if Netanyahu sees it as his last hope, and Gantz thinks he’ll emerge from it stronger, we may yet have to go through this all again.

Tom Gross on international views of Israeli elections. Israel Channel 13 (Sept. 19, 2019). Starts in English at 43 seconds into the video. With observations about the New York Times and Haaretz at the end.

The September elections in Israel were not much different than the April elections. Each a statistical tie with neither Benny nor Benjamin willing to join forces so it led to this election which was the essentially same result. Clearly neither Ben has a sole mandate, although the Right (without Liberman) has 12 more Jewish party seats than the Left (without Liberman) which needs the Arab parties to reach that number, proving that a clear majority of Israeli Jewish voters are Right wing. So what’s a politician to do?

Easy, stop being a politician and be a statesman.

Here’s the natural solution: Prime Minister should offer a Deputy Prime Minister position to his former ‘natural coalition partner,’ Avigdor Liberman.

Huh, did I hear that right? Certainly, you meant to say to offer Benny Gantz that right-hand-co-governing position. No! You heard right. Far Right. Not need to offer Leftist Benny Gantz anything. And following a logical process of elimination, Netranyahu can’t offer the job to anyone on the Arab list since their sole mission in life purpose is not necessarily to see Israel shine and thrive - they were never part of a coalition in the history of the Jewish State, at most vowed to support a reigning coalition in opposition voting to dismantle it. So, who does it leave? Liberman! Natural coalition partner Avigdor Liberman—Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Liberman.

Ok, I know jaws might drop over this suggestion, and Trump haters might even go so far as to suggest an investigation as to Russia’s possible ties to the ‘mad’ Russian Avigdor, but there is nothing wrong with being mad like a fox.

Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman on Friday denied that he has any kind of agreement with Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, saying his party would be fine either joining a coalition or sitting in opposition.

Addressing a Channel 13 report that Gantz would take Yisrael Beytenu into any coalition, Liberman wrote on Facebook that a reported agreement under which Blue and White will not join a coalition without him “does not exist,” adding that, “we will get along fine in either the coalition or in the opposition.”

Liberman also said that he has spoken to neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Gantz, and does not intend to do so ahead of his Sunday meeting with Reuven Rivlin where he will tell the president who he recommends be tasked with forming a government.

Liberman also said that Ayman Odeh, leader of the Joint List alliance of Arab parties, owed his party’s success to Netanyahu, joking he send Odeh a bouquet of flowers ahead of the Sabbath as a token of his appreciation.

Liberman said the Joint List’s jump to 13 seats was a result of Netanyahu’s scaremongering and the furor around the placing of cameras in or outside polling stations.

Voter turnout among Arab Israelis rose by about 10 percent to 60% on Tuesday as compared to the last national elections on April 9. Joint List MK Ahmed Tibi on Wednesday also attributed the higher than usual turnout to the prime minister’s attempts to suppress the minority vote and demonize them.

The Yisrael Beytenu leader concluded his message by saying that he welcomed the recent decrease in name-calling from the ultra-Orthodox parties, noting dryly that he is no longer called “Hitler” by religious leaders.

Ubiquitous spin that Netenyahu inadvertently boosted Joint Arab List makes no sense. They are one seat down from where they were four years ago. Lieberman did seem to boost Haredi turnout though. https://t.co/HsVBbXsDQD

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) September 20, 2019

"We talked about the general situation of Palestinian refugees who have been living in Lebanon for the past 72 years. We told them that Palestinians in Lebanon are banned from working in 70 professions and have no right to own property. We gave them a list of 2,300 Palestinian refugees from Syria who want to go to Canada."— Mu'awya Abu Hamideh, a representative of the Palestinian refugees who fled from Syria to Lebanon after 2011, akhbarten.com, September 9, 2019

Human Rights Watch says that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live in "appalling social and economic conditions" and are barred from employment in at least 25 professions, "including law, medicine, and engineering."

"The Palestinian factions and others who benefit from our stay in Lebanon are denouncing us as traitors and of serving foreign agendas... but if anyone has another solution, he should bring it to the table. We are sure, however, that these voices are designed to prevent us from living in dignity."— Mu'awya Abu Hamideh.

Instead of encouraging and assisting their people to move on with their lives and seek a better future for their children, Hamas and other Palestinian groups continue to lie to the refugees by promising them that one day they will go back to their villages and towns in Israel.

Russia cast its 13th veto on Thursday of UN Security Council action on the Syrian conflict, blocking a demand for a truce in northwest Syria because it does not include an exemption for military offensives against UN-blacklisted militant groups.

China backed Russia by also blocking the text, drafted by Kuwait, Belgium and Germany. It was Beijing’s seventh veto on the Syrian conflict. Equatorial Guinea abstained and the remaining 12 members of the council voted in favor.

Russia and China then put forward their own draft resolution demanding a truce in northwest Syria — with an exemption — but it failed to get enough votes. Only Russia and China voted in favor of their own text. Nine members voted against and South Africa, Indonesia, Ivory Coast and Equatorial Guinea abstained.

A resolution needs nine votes and no vetoes by Russia, China, France, Britain or the United States to pass.

Western states have accused Russian and Syrian forces of targeting civilians in northwest Syria, a charge they deny. They say they are targeting militants.

Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council before the votes that he believed the “real objective” of the draft resolution by Germany, Kuwait and Belgium was “to save the international terrorists who are entrenched in Idlib from their final defeat.”

A man suspected of being an operative in New York for the terrorist group Hezbollah was recently arrested.

Alexei Saab, 42, of Morristown, NJ, has been in federal custody in the US since July, facing charges for scouting dozens of targets for the terrorist entity, including the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and the George Washington Bridge.

According to the Justice Department, he also traveled to Istanbul more than a decade ago and tried to kill a person he believed to be an Israeli spy.

He is also accused of scouting and taking pictures of possible targets for Hezbollah's external terrorism arm.

In addition to New York, Saab allegedly scouted places in Boston and Washington, D.C.

“In particular, (Saab) focused on the structural weaknesses of locations he surveilled in order to determine how a future attack could cause the most destruction,” said the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.

Saab became a naturalized American citizen in 2008, even though, according to the US government, he has been a Hezbollah member since 1996 and has an extensive background in making explosives. He began training with Hezbollah in 1999.

“Even though Saab was a naturalized American citizen, his true allegiance was to Hezbollah, the terrorist organization responsible for decades of terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds, including US citizens and military personnel,” Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said. “Thankfully, Saab is now in federal custody and faces significant prison time for his alleged crimes.”

An Australian court has found a man guilty of planning to blow up an Etihad Airways flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi nearly two years ago with a bomb hidden in a meat grinder, a spokeswoman for the New South Wales Supreme Court said on Friday.

Police had accused the man, Mahmoud Khayat, and his brother Khaled Khayat of planning two terrorist attacks: the bomb and a chemical gas attack on the flight to Abu Dhabi in July 2017.

Khaled was found guilty by the New South Wales Supreme Court in May, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict against Mahmoud. His retrial ended with a guilty verdict on Thursday afternoon for planning “the terrorist act,” the spokeswoman said.

Khaled and Mahmoud Khayat were arrested after police raids in Sydney. Police had said that high-grade explosives used to make the bomb were flown from Turkey as part of a plot “inspired and directed” by the Islamic State.
September 20, 2019 9:59 am
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The court will hear sentencing submissions later, the Australian Associated Press reported.

The verdict in Mahmoud’s case came only a few hours before Lebanon’s military court acquitted another brother, Amer Khayat, of the plotting to blow up the Etihad flight.

An Israeli military officer on leave was moderately wounded Friday afternoon after being hit in the face with a rock while driving in the northern West Bank.

The 23-year-old was hit when the rock flew through the windshield of his car near the settlement of Ma’aleh Shomron, west of Nablus. The officer’s father was with him in the car at the time.

The wounded man was treated by medics at the scene and taken to a hospital in Petah Tikva.

Several other rock-throwing incidents against Israeli cars were reported in the area, with no injuries.

Rock-throwing attacks against Israeli vehicles are common in the West Bank, though they rarely cause casualties. Extremist settlers have also been known to attack Palestinian drivers with rocks, and in one incident last year an Israeli teen is accused of having thrown a rock that killed a Palestinian woman.

Israeli police said Thursday that security guards at a checkpoint near Jerusalem were in “immediate danger” when they shot and killed a Palestinian woman carrying a knife, after a widely circulated video of the shooting raised concerns about excessive force.

The video of the shooting early Wednesday appears to show a private security guard firing at the woman from several meters (yards) away at the Qalandiya checkpoint, just outside Jerusalem. The woman drops what appears to be a knife before falling to the ground. Three other armed guards move in and one of them kicks the knife away. The woman crawls a short distance before lying motionless.

Palestinians have carried out dozens of stabbing attacks against Israeli security forces and civilians in recent years, many of them fatal. But human rights groups say Israeli forces often use excessive force, opening fire when suspects could have been disarmed and detained through non-lethal means.

There have also been cases in which distraught Palestinians appear to have deliberately ended their lives by attacking Israelis, a variation of the “suicide by cop” phenomenon.

This has been especially true with attacks at checkpoints, which are heavily guarded and are specifically designed to limit the possibility of stabbings

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the woman was armed with a knife and walking in an area reserved for vehicles.

“She shouldn’t have been there in the first place, which shows clearly that she had intentions of carrying out an attack,” he said. The security guards “made a decision at a time when they were in immediate danger and they opened fire according to the danger, the life-threatening situation.”

Several thousand Palestinians were taking part in weekly protests along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel Friday afternoon.

According to the Walla news site, some of the demonstrators attacked Israeli soldiers with improvised explosive devices and rocks, and others attempted to sabotage the security fence.

Palestinians were reporting that several had been injured by Israeli military fire.

The demonstrations come after a week in which seven Palestinians were wounded when a rocket fired from the Strip towards Israel exploded near a house inside the coastal enclave.

Palestinian eyewitnesses said two of the three rockets struck outside a home in the southern city of Rafah Wednesday, and a third fell near the fence separating Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Egyptian President Sissi said tens of billions of Egyptian pounds had been allotted to develop the Sinai Peninsula. The government now realizes that restoring the Sinai economy, especially in the northern peninsula, may create jobs for the many Bedouin who joined terror groups or helped them as a way to support their families. So Sinai residents are starting to see change brought about by the new policy.

In southern Sinai, particularly in the tourist areas along the Red Sea coast, the president gave the army control over 47 islands in the Red Sea and over hundreds of thousands of acres along the shore. In some places the military will build resorts and sports facilities, while some of the already operating tourist sites will now be managed by the National Services Projects Organization, a subsidiary of the armed forces. Egypt is expecting 12 million tourists this year, most of them at the Red Sea resorts. Most of the profits will go to the military.

Saudi Arabia, the planet's third-highest defense spender, fell victim to a drone and missile attack on the world's largest oil facility. The kingdom's defenses are designed for entirely different threats. The low-flying and relatively cheap drones and cruise missiles used in the attack are a fairly new challenge that many nations are not prepared to counter. It also doesn't help that massive oil plants are just easy targets.

"Saudi oil assets are vulnerable for the simple reason that when flying over them at night, they stick out against the desert background like a Christmas tree," said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute. "This means that enemies don't need high-tech GPS-guided drones, even though they might have them, but can also use relatively lower technology drones."

Saudi Arabia boasts an arsenal of sophisticated and expensive air defense equipment. They have the American-made Patriot, German-made Skyguard, and France's Shahine mobile anti-aircraft system.

But, as Jack Watling, a land warfare expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told CNBC, "The track record of Patriot engaging missiles of any kind is pretty awful, they very rarely hit the target."

The other issue, he says, is that it's designed for shooting down high-altitude ballistic missiles, not cruise missiles and drones. "These were low-flying cruise missiles. They were coming in far below the engagement zone for Patriot."

"The Saudis have a lot of sophisticated air defense equipment. Given their general conduct of operations in Yemen, it is highly unlikely that their soldiers know how to use it," Watling said. He added that Saudi forces have "low readiness, low competence, and are largely inattentive."

Following the September 14, 2019 Iranian attack on the oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, many Saudi officials called on the international community to take active measures against Iran's regional policy and play a role in defending the world's energy supply.[1] Similar calls were also made by writers in the Saudi press, some of whom condemned what they called the hesitant and feeble policy of the U.S. and the international community towards Iran. Prominent among these responses was a September 18 article by Hamoud Abu Taleb in the daily 'Okaz, titled "We Have No Ally But Ourselves." Abu Taleb wrote that the superpowers are not interested in taking any significant action against Iran, because the chaos sowed by Iran in the Middle East actually serves their long-term interests. He urged Saudi Arabia to calculate its course based on the assumption that it is alone in the fray against Iran, while warning that the kingdom faces an existential threat of unprecedented proportions.

The following are translated excerpts from his article: [2]
"It is almost certain that neither the international community, nor the superpowers, nor the U.N. and its Security Council will take any serious practical action in response to the significant, dangerous and unprecedented attack carried out on Saturday [September 14, 2019] against the Saudi oil facilities. An examination of [their] positions leads to this conclusion. The statements of [U.S.] President [Donald] Trump, which contradict those of the heads of his administration, and the contradictory nature of Trump's own statements, teach us that the U.S. position on Iran, which was unclear to begin with, is feeble. The position of the European [countries], such as France and Germany, is always inclined in Iran's favor. Britain – which follows the lead of the U.S. – is preoccupied with its domestic crises and ultimately adopts America's [position]. [As for] Russia, despite Putin's polite and diplomatic expressions of support for Saudi Arabia, [this country] is known to be closely aligned with Iran when it comes to regional issues, especially the Syrian one. China has almost completely disregarded the events, although it is among [the countries] most dependent on Saudi oil. So who is left? The real answer that emerges is that nobody will forcefully intervene to stop Iran's extreme [behavior] and its threats to the security of the region and to the world's most important energy sources.

"Deception by means of internal contradictions, [and by creating] crises and instability, is part of the superpowers' policy in managing their interests. They disagree on minor issues but agree on the overall strategy. It would be superficial and naïve to think that they are interested in the security of the region. They clearly and openly decided to sow anarchy in the region by means of the Arab Spring in order to make it fragile and rearrange the balance of power within it. It will benefit them if Iran keeps escalating [its aggression] and drags the region to the brink of the abyss. If Iran has its agents in the Arab countries, it [itself] is one of the most important agents of the superpowers, who make plans for the region as they please.

The drone strikes on Saudi oil facilities last Saturday caused the global price of oil to go up nearly 15 percent earlier this week, but experts say the worst is behind us.

Saudi Arabia’s oil output was temporarily cut by more than 50 percent, or 5.7 million barrels per day (mb/d), according to the state-owned petroleum and natural gas company Saudi Aramco.

The Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack on two massive facilities, while the US government alleges Iran is responsible for the hit that lowered the global supply of oil by 5%.

However, the House of Saud and its subjects will not feel the financial impact. There are also indications that if oil production is down only short-term, there will be minimal effect on the cost of gasoline in the West, especially in America, despite media reports stating otherwise. Asian countries, particularly China, will disproportionately feel the impact of the drone attacks, and Russia has the most to financially gain.

According to George Dix, an oil analyst at the London office of Energy Aspects, an international energy research consultancy, the 5.7 mb/d shortfall has already been improved to 3.2 mb/day, and he expects Aramco to plug the gap this week.

“We believe an optimistic scenario is that by end of September, Saudi Aramco could have restored over 4.5 mb/d of lost production, with the remaining 1.0–1.2 mb/d returning by end of November. This still represents a significant loss of oil supply that will provide support to oil prices,” Dix told The Media Line.

The human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center’s chief Nazi-hunter, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, on Wednesday accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her administration of placating Iran’s regime by promoting business with Tehran in Berlin.

Zuroff told The Jerusalem Post that the German government’s foreign policy recalls “Shades of Munich 1938, only this time it's the Germans who think that they can achieve ‘Peace in our times,’ by appeasing a totalitarian, fundamentalist regime intent on genocide of Jews. The participation of German ministry officials in an event to encourage business with the mullahs makes the pronouncements by Chancellor Merkel ['Israel's security is a national interest of the Federal Republic'] and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas ['I entered politics because of Auschwitz'] ring embarrassingly hollow.”

The reference to Munich is the failed attempt by former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain to appease Adolf Hitler in 1938 by allowing Nazi Germany to annex territory of Czechoslovakia.

Merkel claimed in 2008 Knesset speech that Israel's security interests are of part of Germany's reason for being (raison d'etre) and are "non-negotiable." Maas said last year he went into politics "because of Auschwitz."

Zuroff response was in connection with the German federal government’s participation in a Thursday pro-Iran business conference titled: “8th Banking and Business Forum Iran Europe: Change through Trade and Détente.”

Iran is the greatest threat to the West. It has worked for decades to undermine moderate Arab regimes in the Middle East, to develop and acquire nuclear weapons, and to arm and support some of the worst terrorist organizations known to man: Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

Israel has single-handedly been fighting Iran along its different borders for years. Israel's conflict with Hamas and Hizbullah is, in reality, against Iran. Both groups are Tehran's proxies. The world cannot let Iran continue to get away with its attacks. The time has long come for Tehran to pay a price for its violence, support of terrorism and nuclear violations.

If Iran can get away with attacking the U.S., attacking Saudi Arabia, and violating restrictions on its nuclear program, what will stop it from building a nuclear weapon one day and then using it against Israel or another Western country - especially when some of their leaders have made no secret of their intentions to do just so? If Iran's attacks go unanswered they will only intensify.

Since its war with Iraq ended, writes Michael Eisenstadt, the Islamic Republic has taken to operating in a “gray zone” between war and peace, using proxy militias, terrorist groups, and plausibly deniable attacks to achieve its goals without open warfare. Taking the recent attack on Saudi Arabia as an example of this strategy, Eisenstadt urges the U.S. to retaliate by giving Tehran a taste of its own medicine:

Pursuing a gray-zone strategy of its own represents Washington’s best chance of avoiding significant escalation while buying time for its pressure campaign to work. U.S. policymakers need to abandon the notion that Tehran has a high tolerance for risks and costs, and that the path from local clash to regional war is a short one.

Forty years of experience have taught Tehran that it can conduct gray-zone activities (including lethal operations) against American interests without risking a U.S. military response. [Thus] Washington has frequently failed to deter the regime. Bolstering U.S. deterrence is therefore central to [dealing with the Islamic Republic’s current behavior]. This means responding to Iran’s probes and provocations in the region in order to show that Washington is now more willing to accept risk than in the past.

Just as the [most recent] strike demonstrated the vulnerability of Saudi oil facilities, Iran’s own oil industry is vulnerable to sabotage, cyberattacks, and precision strikes that could threaten its current export flow of several hundred thousand barrels per day. . . . Undue restraint can increase the risk of escalation by inviting new challenges. Conversely, abandoning restraint and opting for escalation can unnecessarily increase U.S. risks while engendering domestic and foreign opposition to further action.

In gray-zone competitions, the advantage is often achieved by incremental, cumulative gains rather than rapid, decisive action. Washington should therefore resist the desire to escalate in order to achieve quick results.

In 2016, Iran's Revolutionary Guard started shipping kits to convert Hizbullah's short-range rockets into longer-range missiles, with precision guidance systems capable of hitting strategic targets in Israel, from an electricity grid to an airport or a desalination plant. "That's what's called a game-changer," said Uzi Rubin, the former head of Israel's Missile Defense Organization. "They converted a weapon of terror into a military weapon for war. They'd only need two hundred to stop Israel's ability to wage its own war."

By early 2018, the Revolutionary Guard had deployed at 40 military facilities in Syria, with their own headquarters, drone-control rooms, and training centers. At least a third were deployed to target Israel, Israeli defense officials said. The Iranians are not visible. They dress in Syrian military uniforms.

Iran's so-called axis of resistance - which totals more than a hundred Shiite militias - has become entrenched across the Middle East, right up to Israel's borders with Syria and Lebanon. Iran's network spans half a dozen countries and has fundamentally altered the region's strategic balance.

In a September 17, 2019 article titled 'Rescue the World from the Persian Nazism,' Ahmed Al-Jarallah, editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti English-language daily Arab Times, wrote that the issue of confronting Iran is no longer just a matter of thwarting the Persian expansion project but a matter of countering a threat to global security. In this situation, he said, American and European notions of going back to the Barack Obama policy of rapprochement with Iran are no longer feasible; the world must act to ensure a steady supply of oil at reasonable prices, for a failure to do so will result in a global recession. Al-Jarallah added that a failure to respond to Iran's aggression will be a degrading surrender, even more humiliating than the 1938 Munich Agreement with Nazi Germany, which led to World War II.[1]

The following is his September 17 article, as it appeared in Arab Times.[2]
"The issue of confrontation with Iran has gone beyond self-defense and thwarting the Persian regional expansion project, over which the Arab coalition forces are clashing with Houthi gangsters in Yemen, to threat against global interests and stability.

"For this, the equivocal and softening doors policy behind political skirmishes and crossfire for possible US-Iranian summit on the sideline of the United Nations General Assembly meetings is no longer an election tool through which President Donald Trump can win military opposition votes for war in his country.

"There is no more room for European mediation on the issue of relationship with Iran. The world either defends its interests to ensure oil supply at moderate prices or succumb to the state of terrorism by allowing the Mullah regime, which stakes success in blackmail, to dictate the pace.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has told Iran it is time to allow women into football stadiums and the global soccer body expects “positive developments,” starting with their next home match in October.

While foreign women have been allowed limited access to matches, Iranian women have been banned from stadiums when men’s teams have been playing, since just after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Infantino said in a FIFA statement he was hopeful that the Iranian football federation and government authorities had been receptive to “our repeated calls to address this unacceptable situation.”

He added, “Our position is clear and firm. Women have to be allowed into football stadiums in Iran. Now is the moment to change things and FIFA is expecting positive developments starting in the next Iran home match in October.”

Twenty-four hours before the dramatic moment the polls opened, two Jewish men and two Arab women faced their own dramatic moment: a chain of operations that saved the lives of two of them. Ido from the religious community of Hoshaya intended to donate a kidney altruistically to Israel, which he did not know before, but unfortunately he was found unsuitable for matching. So did Aida Mashfaram, who intended to donate a kidney to her sister-in-law Hanan, but the results of the tests showed that this would not be possible. At Rambam Hospital, the four proposed a "chain of transplants", which led to Aida donating her kidney to Israel, while Ido donated a kidney to Hanan.

Israel Belban (35), a resident of Kiryat Bialik, needed a kidney transplant due to hereditary disease. He says that four years ago he began receiving dialysis, and since then his life has changed: "I stopped working and almost every day came to Rambam Hospital for four hours. At one point I was hospitalized for six months, I was a transplant candidate and was waiting for a donation.The Matnat Chayim organization called me one day,"he recalls the day he was informed that a kidney had finally been found for him, just before he was disappointed: " They said there was a potential donor, but unfortunately in the tests we conducted he wasnot fit to donate to me, "he said.
 
At the same time, and without knowing each other, Hanan, a Muslim from Shfaram, lay in the hospital waiting for a donation from Aida Husari, her 52-year-old sister-in-law. "I got a genetic test which told me that the kidney was not right for her," Aida said.

The transplant operation performed by surgeon Dr. Ahmed Asalia and vascular surgeon Dr. Tony Karam took twelve hours. The crossover was indeed successful, and this week the donors and recipients met. "I met Aida in the hospital, thanked her and bought her a gift and chocolates," Israel said excitedly. Aida added: "I am very happy to have saved the lives of two people. The racism of the politicians is killing us - we have learned to live together, Arabs and Jews."

Rabbi Yeshayahu Haber, chairman of the Matnat Haim Association, which has been responsible for hundreds of transplants in recent years, welcomed the special transplant: "This transplant is a wonderful union between the different parts of the nation has been exciting and uplifting: Jews and Muslims, religious and secular, women and men. That is the beauty of a gift of life, and I hope we will continue to connect and unite the people through an altruistic life-saving. "

And when the Nazi Holocaust confronted the world with the ghastly handiwork of unbridled evil, the world embraced the Jewish people as the poster children for the overarching moral standards that govern civilized society. The innate empathy of mankind began to emerge. Anti-Semitism became as indefensible as infanticide.

Tragically, the pendulum has swung back again.

In part, memory fades. More significantly, politics has come to replace religion as the guiding doctrine of mankind. The principles introduced to the world by the Jews have been hijacked and conscripted to defend an ideology of utopianism. Judge every person favorably has mutated into non-judgmentalism. Charity has morphed into entitlement. Liberty has devolved into libertinism. Civility has been weaponized into political correctness.

Most perversely, Israel has been compared to Nazi Germany.

As moral autonomy supplants moral duty, the traditional values of Judaism become worse than irrelevant; they become a threat. The mere suggestion of higher moral authority annuls the right of the individual to define his own moral code. Traditional values become a form of heresy, and all heretics must die.

Ideologies become entrenched. Truth becomes subjective. Civil discourse disintegrates. Rhetoric becomes weaponry. Society descends into empathy deficit disorder.

Inevitably, violence follows as bullying becomes the new normal.

The resurgence of Jew-hatred, therefore, is a symptom of the moral decline of man, not into immorality but amorality, the rejection of moral absolutes and embrace of relativistic moral autonomy.

Ironically, anti-Semitism, has much more to do with non-Jewish society than it does with either the Jew or his Judaism. It is the bully’s reflexive response in the face of moral maturity on the playground of human society.

Is there a solution? Of course.

Do my fellow proud Zionists see the problem here? The Palestinian-Arab side of the argument may be genocidal and jihad-loving, but at least they present a morally framed narrative (no matter how grossly immoral that narrative actually is). The pro-Jewish/pro-Israel side, by contrast, tends toward an AIPAC-inspired, overly defensive posture that relies on a non-substantive, purely procedural narrative.

Interestingly, then, the fight against Israel-inspired Jew-hatred on the university campus can actually learn much from the ongoing conservative dialogue between the New York Post’s Sohrab Ahmari and National Review’s David French. Procedure-based arguments, especially when confronted with a substance-based argumentative opposition, are unlikely to be sufficient; the only way to truly make a dialectic dent is to argue on the substantive merits of an issue and argue in overtly moral terms. I wrote as much in June: "Advocates for Israel on the American university campus must transition away from pleas for 'peace' and 'tolerance' and toward arguments grounded in the inherent, biblically derived morality of a Jewish state existing between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea."

This simply must be the path forward for Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus who are invested in helping to turn back the tide of rising on-campus anti-Semitism. Jewish and Zionist students must make the moral, historically informed case that Zionism — which is simply the Jewish right to self-determination in the Jews' biblical, ancestral homeland — is an inherently beautiful phenomenon. These courageous students must argue that the culmination of Herzl's Zionist vision, the establishment in 1948 of a sovereign Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael for the very first time in millennia, represents one of the most profoundly beautiful developments in human civilization over the course of the last century. These students must advance direct, overt, morally based arguments that defend the beauty of that Zionism. These students must also advance historically and legally informed arguments that rebut the utter mendacity that is "Nakba" and other purported Palestinian-Arab "national" humiliations.

Appeasement and unilateral disarmament — here, in terms of the use of overt moral terminology — never work. The students who take the lead on this initiative will necessarily be bold. They will be valiant. And they will face mighty resistance from the leftist/Islamist alliance all across the nation. But these students will have the benefit of standing for truth, morality, and, fundamentally, justice. It's time to get the ball rolling and begin to defeat on-campus Jew-hatred in America.

The co-founder of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, who was due to speak at a number of fringe events at the Labour party conference, has been denied an entry visa to the UK.

Omar Barghouti had been due to speak at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign event in Brighton on Sunday, alongside prominent Labour party politicians including Diane Abbott, the Shadow Home Secretary and Lisa Nandy, chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East.

Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union, and Josie Bird, president of the Unison union, were also due to speak alongside him.

However, on Friday, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) announced that Mr Barghouti had been unable to travel to the UK “because his visa was abnormally delayed by the British government without explanation.”

The PSC blamed his lack of a visa on “growing efforts by Israel and its allies to suppress Palestinian voices and the movements for Palestinan rights.” The organisation added that Mr Barghouti would speak via a video link-up instead.

Late last month, in a ceremony alongside a North Carolina highway, a small group of scholars and politicians unveiled a black-and-gray plaque dedicated to Joachim Gans, the first recorded practicing Jew in North America. A metallurgist from Prague, Gans played a key role in the first attempt by the English to settle the New World. His accomplishments in the 1580s helped plant the seed for what became the United States.

Gans’ long-delayed recognition comes at a time of escalating anti-Semitic attacks such as the deadly shootings targeting Jews earlier this year in Pittsburgh and near San Diego. The modest sign commemorating Gans is a potent reminder of the largely forgotten but surprising diversity that marked early English colonization.

It also arrives amid a national debate about the meaning of monuments and memorials to the Confederacy. The Gans marker now stands 200 miles east of the University of North Carolina campus where Silent Sam, a bronze statue of a Confederate statue, once stood. Erected in 1913, student activists toppled the statue last year and the controversy over whether or not to raise him back up continues to roil the state. Amid these controversies, highway markers like the one dedicated to Gans offer a quiet, cheap, and democratic alternative to memorialize new heroes ignored by previous generations.

How did a German-speaking Jew end up in the first English colony in the Americas? Gans grew up in 16th-century Prague, then the center of innovation in mining and metallurgy. England was still a relatively poor and backward European country, desperate for help in extracting copper and tin. Growing tensions with the Spanish Empire would soon would lead to war, and the English needed cannon to arm their merchant ships and navy. Jews had been banned since 1290, but a courtier of Elizabeth I secured Gans a kind of Tudor H-1B visa. Soon after, Sir Walter Raleigh sought a credible scientist to join England’s first venture to colonize the Americas on what is now the North Carolina coast. In Gans, Raleigh saw the perfect candidate for the specialized job of sourcing and analyzing metals.

Gans arrived on Roanoke Island in 1585, along with a motley crew of more than 100 men that included French, Portuguese, Belgian, Irish and Scottish men as well as English soldiers and merchants. The Prague Jew, who made no secret of his religious background, quickly constructed a state-of-the-art chemistry lab outfitted with Bavarian crucibles and a high-temperature furnace. He tested metals brought to him by local Algonquian-speaking tribes and tramped through the swamps in search of mineral deposits. Though he failed to find gold, , as Raleigh had hoped, there is evidence he isolated iron, silver, and copper in his experiments. That was promising news for an England eager to access metal deposits. (h/t Zvi)

The miniseries Our Boys—created, directed, and acted by Israelis and released simultaneously in the U.S. and Israel—takes place in the summer or 2014, on the eve of the Gaza war. At its heart is the abduction and brutal murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, an Arab Jerusalemite, by three religious Jews, and the police who identify and capture the perpetrators. While calling the series “a drama of uncommon power,” Stephen Daisley finds it deeply flawed:

What Our Boys does not tell is the story of Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Fraenkel. They were the Israeli teenagers whose deaths inspired [Abu Khdeir’s murderers]. The yeshiva students were abducted while hitchhiking home from Alon Shvut in Gush Etzion, a hill-scattered region south of Jerusalem and frequent target of Palestinian terrorism. Despite police efforts, their mothers’ appeals, and prayer vigils in Rabin Square, their bodies were found dumped in a field eighteen days later. They had been shot at close range.

The yeshiva boys of Gush Etzion, like thousands of other Israeli victims of homicidal Palestinian anti-Semitism, do not long detain the plot of Our Boys. [We] learn nothing about them. On the other hand, we learn that Mohammed, the Arab victim, went to the mosque faithfully, that he was planning to meet up with a girl from Turkey, and that he preferred flirting with her on WhatsApp to working for his father.

This is a series that communicates a particular perspective on Israel to a particular audience, namely Americans. Brian Lowry has given the game away on CNN.com, writing that the series “puts faces on a conflict often seen—especially in the U.S.—from a distant aerial view.” . . . [W]e can infer that what he means by “distant aerial view” is a view insufficiently sympathetic to the Palestinians. Our Boys does put faces on the conflict—but its Arab faces are almost entirely sympathetic while its Israeli faces are crazed settlers, racist cops, and a smattering of well-meaning liberals trying their best in a suffocatingly hateful society.

Critics have accused the drama of moral equivalence, but in truth there is no equivalence: the introspection is entirely one-sided. All the harsh truths are broken to Israelis, all the urgent conversations about race and hatred are to be held in Hebrew. With the macho-liberal bravado of the Israeli center, Our Boys tells Israelis to shape up but has nothing to say to Palestinians.

On Monday, the organization that runs the now-annual anti-Trump Women’s March announced that, after a variety of complaints, it had severed its ties with three of its four former leaders: Bob Bland, Tamika Mallory, and Linda Sarsour. Presumably among those complaints were Mallory’s close association with Louis Farrakhan and Sarsour’s record of venomous hatred of the Jewish state. Siraj Hashmi comments on what followed:
Monday’s announcement should have been a turning point for a movement that has been tainted by the recurring strain of anti-Semitism. Instead, in a move both remarkable and disheartening, the Women’s March has managed to find yet another anti-Semitic Muslim woman to serve on its board.

Zahra Billoo [is] an attorney and the executive director of the San Francisco chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Billoo’s hateful and anti-Semitic tweets, particularly in relation to Israel, were brought back into focus when she was promoted to the Women’s March board. In a June 2012 tweet, [for instance], Billoo wrote, “Apartheid Israel kills children as a hobby.” . . . Billoo also made direct comparisons between Israel and the terrorist Islamic State (IS), posting on Twitter, “Who has killed, tortured, and imprisoned more people: apartheid Israel or IS?”

In the intervening days, the organization announced that it was removing Billoo from her position; but, to Hashmi, the incident points to a larger problem, which he sees as well in the progressive left’s elevation of Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and Minnesota’s Attorney General Keith Ellison:
Unfortunately, Billoo’s racist tweets do not stand alone. They seem to reflect the views of most prominent Muslims in America on the left. . . [I]t’s disheartening, not least because not all Muslims are anti-Semitic. The left’s apparent alliance with American Muslims who hate Israel and are openly anti-Semitic is doing a great disservice to all Americans, including Americans who are Muslim like me, and is damaging to the fabric of our country.

In an attempt at reflection, Billoo acknowledged that “anti-Semitism is indeed a growing and dangerous problem in our country, as is anti-Blackness, anti-immigrant sentiment, Islamophobia, ableism, sexism, and so much more. I condemn any form of bigotry unequivocally, but I also refuse to be silent as allegations of bigotry are weaponized against the most marginalized people, those who find sanctuary and hope in the articulation of truth.”

But she cannot bring herself to consider that her blind hate towards Israel and its supporters, which include 95 percent of American Jews, constitute a form of the bigotry she claims to condemn.

She acknowledges “that I wrote passionately. While I may have phrased some of my content differently today, I stand by my words,” she wrote.

The Women’s March was slow to act with Sarsour and her colleagues. That may be one reason why it quickly saw a problem with Billoo, although her controversial views were hardly a secret before she joined the board. But the March was dogged by antisemitism accusations, and it quickly became clear that Billoo’s presence would only exacerbate the problem.

She remains safely ensconced at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), however, where she runs the group’s San Francisco chapter. Zahra Billoo: Too antisemitic for the Women’s March, but right at home with CAIR.

Social justice activist and MSNBC host Al Sharpton testified on Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee as an "expert" witness on policing practices in the United States, but when a Republican congressman from Florida asked about a resolution submitted in 2000 by former Rep. Joe Scarborough, now one of Sharpton's fellow MSNBC hosts, the hearing quickly unraveled.

When given a chance to asked Sharpton a few questions Thursday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) pulled out a copy of Scarborough's House Concurrent Resolution 270 "Condemning the racist and anti-Semitic views of the Reverend Al Sharpton," which Scarborough submitted to the Judiciary Committee back in March of 2000 (full text below).

"Mr. Scarborough's resolution began by saying, 'Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as "bloodsucking [J]ews'', and "Jew bastards",'" Gaetz read. "My question to you is does Mr. Scarborough's assertion that you said these things, is that true or did you not say those things?"

"They are patently untrue," said Sharpton, clearly agitated by the question.

As Sharpton and Gaetz begin to talk over each other, Committee Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) sided with Sharpton, saying since "aspersions" had been cast against him, he should be allowed to speak.

"No, I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman, aspersions weren't cast," countered Gaetz, noting that he was asking Sharpton if the claims in the resolution submitted by Scarborough were true.

Appearing to be increasingly annoyed, Nadler brought the gavel down again, this time with a little more force, and again gave the floor to Sharpton.

"The answer is no, that was not true," said Sharpton of the infamous comments. He then noted that he and Scarborough are now colleagues at MSNBC.

But Gaetz wasn't done. He then asked Sharpton about the resolution's assertion that he "has referred to members of the Jewish faith as 'white interlopers'' and 'diamond merchants,'" a reference to inflammatory rhetoric Sharpton made amid the ultimately deadly Crown Heights riots.

Gaetz: "Have you ever referred to African Americans that disagreed with you as ‘cocktail-sip negroes’?”

Reverend Al Sharpton: "I have."pic.twitter.com/oSUNri8XC7

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) September 19, 2019

This weekend the Labour Party Conference opens again in Brighton. I was there in 2017 the last time it was held in the town, and the level of antisemitism witnessed at the event led to threats to ban the party from holding future conferences there unless it tackles antisemitism. I find it difficult to believe how anyone left sane on this planet actually believes Labour have tackled anti-Jewish racism – and yet here we are.

The conference fringe
Running alongside the conference there is the ‘fringe’. A host of events that allow Labour ‘deniability’. Most of the entities who bait Jews or rely on antisemites for support, manage their antisemites with a similar strategy. For example, the Palestine Solidarity campaign (PSC) distances itself from the high levels of antisemitism in their camp by denying any responsibility for its own branches. At conference, Labour uses the fringe. The fringe contains hundreds of events by organisations that are not officially ‘inside’ the conference. But whether the Labour Party like it or not, there is a registration process and the party have to accept you.

There is little excuse for the run of events scheduled for this year’s conference. Both Jewish Voice for Labour and the PSC have official fringe events scheduled. But the true situation is worse. The gathering of the faithful creates ‘unofficial events’. Inside the Labour CLPs and online forums, groups like Labour against the Witchhunt are advertising their ‘unofficial’ events.

Labour’s response of course is – ‘anyone can organise an event in Brighton at the same time as our Conference. This does not mean they are part of it.’ Deniability. In the JC article on the issue the Labour Spokesperson even resorts to the most twisted excuse of all – by suggesting that ‘nobody who has been suspended or expelled’ is a part of the official fringe listings. This may be true, but what about all those the party should have expelled but haven’t. It isn’t for nothing the party is being investigated by the EHRC.

A simple official statement from Labour to say these people are not welcome, nor wanted by the party, may have ‘cleansed’ some of this, but those inside the Labour Party know that their movement is as reliant today on the energy of antisemites, as the PSC is.

Disgraced conspiracy theorist Rev. Dr Stephen Sizer, who claimed that an Israeli conspiracy was behind 9/11, was due to speak at a “Charity Dinner for Gaza” on 3rd October organised by Ilford Momentum, before the hosts withdrew the invitation following an outcry.

Upon being made aware of Rev. Dr Sizer’s views and record, the organisation announced that “we weren’t aware of Stephen Sizer’s past comments. After having been made aware of them this morning we rescinded his invitation and cancelled the charity fundraiser within minutes…We deeply regret not checking the history of the speaker prior to promoting the event online,” adding that “we strongly oppose the harmful conspiracies spread by Stephen Sizer and antisemitism in all its forms. We sincerely apologise for any offence caused.”

The original invitation to the dinner presented praise for Rev. Dr Sizer by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn: “I do admire the excellent work that he does and personally.” This is not the first time Mr Corbyn has been associated with Rev. Dr Sizer. In February 2015, the reverend was ordered by the Church of England to stop using social media after posting the conspiracy myth that Israel planned 9/11. While the Church said the material that Rev. Dr Sizer posted was “clearly antisemitic”, the Daily Mail revealed that Mr Corbyn wrote to the Church defending Rev. Dr Sizer, saying that he was being victimised because he “dared to speak out against Zionism.”

Momentum is an influential grassroots organisation that supports Mr Corbyn and his wing of the Labour Party. Numerous controversial individuals have been associated with it, including Jackie Walker, a former Vice Chair who rejected the International Definition of Antisemitism before eventually being expelled from the Labour Party.

Momentum’s pick to be the next Labour candidate for West Midlands Metro-Mayor has put out some pretty professional looking material. But sadly

for former Respect Party leader Salma Yaqoob, virtually none of it is her own work. Her main campaign video is completely ripped off from the US Democrats’ new socialist firebrand AOC…

Yaqoob isn’t the first Labour politician to nakedly plagiarise US Democrats. Disgraced Labour MP Kate Osamor stole her campaign victory speech from President Obama, and plagiarised her maiden speech. Plenty of Labour Party precedent…

Across the pond Joe Biden plagiarising Neil Kinnock’s ‘first in my family’ speech destroyed his presidential hopes in 1987. Sadly Guido somehow doubts it will do the same to the Momentum backed candidate…

For our American readers, Guido thought an introduction to Yaqoob was in order:

• She called the 2005 London 7/7 bombings a “reprisal event” for the Iraq war
• She was part of the campaign team which supported the family of Abu Hamza
• She wrote an article in which she imagined Britain becoming an Islamic Republic
• She attended a protest at which the Israeli flag was burned
• She referred to the IHH terrorists on board the Mavi Marmara as “martyrs“
• She endorsed the closure of the Israeli embassy in London
• She supported the pro-Hamas ‘Viva Palestina’ convoy
• She accused “Zionists [of abusing] the memory of the Holocaust to bolster support for today’s Israeli state“
• She is a staunch supporter of the boycotting Israel economically and culturally

The Corbynisation of the Democratic Party is not all one way…

A Change.org petition protesting an upcoming Sept. 25 speech at Columbia University by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad — who has a long record of antisemitic statements — had received more than 800 signatures by Friday afternoon.

“Universities should present divergent and radical opinions, but they are not environments in which absolutely anything goes,” the petition — an initiative of the Students Supporting Israel (SSI) chapter at Columbia — says. “A language that encourages racism, bigotry and hate speech has no place in academic discourse.

“Free speech is an important fundamental right to any individual living in a free society,” it continues. “Mohamad can say anything he wants, of course — that is free speech. But being able to speak at Columbia University — or at any university, for that matter — is a privilege, not a right.”

“This is not a matter of free speech, or of scholarly freedom,” the petition notes. “It is a matter of basic academic decency.”

The petition concludes by urging Columbia President Lee Bollinger to “undertake immediate measures to ensure the safety and well being of Columbia’s Jewish students.”

“Such measures should be canceling Prime Ministers Mohamad’s expected speech at Columbia, or at the very least, denouncing, on stage, the Prime Minister’s vile and antisemitic remarks,” it demands. (h/t Dave4321)

The city of Dortmund’s jury for the Nelly Sachs literature prize pulled the plug on its award for a British-Pakistani author on Wednesday because she supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting the Jewish state.

The author, Kamila Shamsie, also rejects translations of her books into Hebrew because it involves the State of Israel, she claimed.

According to a statement from the jury, at the time of voting for the award, “the members of the jury, despite previous research, were not aware that the author since 2014 has participated in the boycott of the Israeli government because of its Palestinian policy.”

The jury added that it "decided to cancel their original vote and take back the award to Kamila Shamsie. Kamila Shamsie's political stance to actively participate in the boycott of culture as part of the BDS campaign against the Israeli government is in clear contradiction to the goals of the awards and the spirit of the Nelly Sachs Prize."

The Ruhrbarone news website first broke the story this month about the city’s award to Shamsie, triggering widespread media coverage.

The prize is named for poet and playwright Nelly Sachs (1891-1970) who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966.

Four outstanding StandWithUs High School interns were in Sacramento on September 20th, opposing antisemitism and anti-Israel bias in California public schools. They traveled to the state capital to speak to the Instructional Quality Commission (IQC), an advisory body to the California State Board of Education. The IQC is in the process of reviewing a deeply flawed and widely criticized draft Ethnic Studies curriculum.

"As a member of an ethnic minority, I fully support the goal of ethnic studies," said Michaela Pelta, a student from Lowell High School in San Francisco. "However, this proposed curriculum not only doesn't include me, but actively marginalizes me with antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric."

"My family's experiences as Jewish immigrants from the Middle East are nowhere to be found in this curriculum," added Kian Mirshokri, a student from Palisades Charter High School in Los Angeles. "I'm urging the IQC to make changes, so public high school students like me are represented and understood by our peers."

On August 2nd, 2019 StandWithUs released an urgent action alert calling on the public to submit feedback about the draft curriculum to the IQC. Through our efforts alongside IAC, AJC, JCRC of San Francisco, AMCHA Initiative, Club Z, and others, we mobilized nearly 18,500 comments focused on, "concerns with a lack of inclusion of Jewish Americans and antisemitism, and concerns with the inclusion of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement".

The move – due to be announced by Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick – comes after a record 1,652 anti-Semitic incidents were reported in the UK in 2018. Mr Jenrick, who today writes in the Sunday Express, will also unveil an extra £100,000 of funding to tackle anti-Semitic hatred online. Speaking to the Board of Deputies of British Jews tomorrow, Mr Jenrick is expected to say that institutions taking taxpayers’ money cannot duck signing up to the definition.

He will say: “Councils have a duty to stamp out anti-Semitism wherever they find it so it’s troubling that, in some cases, we’re seeing the reverse.

“I am also concerned with some of the stories coming out of our universities – Jewish students whose experiences on campus are not the same as everyone else’s.

“We wrote to many universities urging them to adopt the IHRA definition yet many didn’t reply.

“These organisations are recipients of public money. Failure to act is simply unacceptable.”

The rise of anti-Semitism in the UK has been largely fuelled by leftwing ideology and a criticism of Israel.

Earlier this month, Sheffield City Council was criticised for refusing to adopt the IHRA definition and recognising the state of Palestine instead.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has also faced accusations of anti-Semitism within the party. Jewish MP Luciana Berger quit Labour over the abuse while John Mann left after the party failed to tackle the issue.

#MirandaGallo is a disgrace who should not be allowed to run for @NDPhttps://t.co/PjlAPl4zko cc: @theJagmeetSingh#NDP#Canada#BDS#Israel

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 20, 2019

The New York Police Department said it will increase its presence in Jewish neighborhoods before and during the High Holidays.

Increased foot patrols and specialized units such as counterterrorism teams will be deployed throughout the communities, Commissioner James O’Neill announced Wednesday. He said not all of them would be identifiable.

The NYPD has reported a 63 percent rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes throughout the city this year. Brooklyn’s heavily Jewish neighborhoods have seen a slew of attacks on visibly Jewish people over the past several weeks.

O’Neill appeared at a news conference with Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“It’s my obligation as mayor to make sure the Jewish population is protected not just the High Holy Days but every day, and the sacred responsibility of the NYPD as well,” De Blasio said. “We’ve seen the rise of hate crimes in this city even this year compared to last year, but we cannot be afraid.”

He added: “We will not accept hatred in New York City.”

New surveillance images of the men who attacked and robbed an Orthodox Jewish man in Brooklyn this week have been released by police.

The surveillance images come following the initial release of a lower quality surveillance video of the assault, which shows the suspect being accosted, chased, and assaulted by four men.

According to the local New York CBS affiliate Channel 2, the victim, 24, was attacked at Warsoff Place in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The men surrounded the victim and said, “Give me everything you’ve got.”

The victim threw his cell phone away, at which point two of the suspects attacked him.

Police are not investigating the attack as a hate crime.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) offered a $10,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the attackers.

The assault took place amid a rise in antisemitic hate crimes in the area that has deeply disturbed the Orthodox community.

“This incident comes at a time when visibly observant Jewish individuals are unable to walk the streets of Brooklyn without feeling fearful that they may be assaulted or attacked because of their religion or faith,” said the ADL.

A man suspected of opening fire at a Southern California synagogue last spring told a 911 operator in the moments after the shooting that he did it to save white people from Jews, according to a recording played Thursday at a preliminary hearing to determine if the case should proceed to trial.

One woman was killed and three wounded in the shooting, which happened at the Chabad of Poway synagogue on the last day of Passover.

“I’m defending our nation against the Jewish people, who are trying to destroy all white people,” John T. Earnest is heard saying on the 911 call. He told the operator he believed he had killed people and gave detailed descriptions of the San Diego intersection where he was parked shortly before he was taken into custody.

The recording was played at the hearing where witnesses also included a combat veteran who confronted the suspect and a medical examiner who described the wounds of the woman who was killed.

Earnest, 20, has pleaded not guilty to murder, attempted murder and an unrelated arson charge at a mosque. The murder charge, classified as a hate crime, would make him eligible for the death penalty if convicted, but prosecutors have not said what punishment they will seek.

Oscar Stewart, an Iraq combat veteran, testified that as the gunfire erupted he moved toward the suspect and screamed at him. The shooter dropped his rifle and fled.

A former security guard was charged with compiling bomb components and guns to kill people at a Las Vegas synagogue, and of drawing up plans to attack a bar catering to LGBTQ customers and a McDonald’s.

Conor Climo, 23, pleaded not guilty to a federal firearm charge in federal court on Wednesday.

He was accused of possession of unregistered destructive devices found at his home after he was arrested on Aug. 8. Prosecutors and a US magistrate judge said the suspect identifies himself as a white supremacist and shared with an FBI informant detailed plans to attack a synagogue near his northwest Las Vegas home.

“The defendant is a member of the Feuerkrieg Division of Atomwaffen, which is known as an organization that encourages, and may even commit, violent attacks on people of the Jewish religion, homosexuals, African-Americans and federal infrastructures,” Magistrate Judge Nancy Koppe wrote in Climo’s detention order.

“The defendant had gathered component parts that can readily be assembled into a destructive device,” said Koppe, and “had very specific plans about attacking one specific synagogue near his house,” including “wanting to light an incendiary device and having others join him to shoot people as they came out of the synagogue.”

A synagogue in Los Angeles was vandalized with an anti-Jewish message.

“Six million $ was not enough,” read the message drawn in marker on the welcome sign affixed to the gate of Temple Ahavat Shalom.

The Anti-Defamation League called the graffiti “blatant anti-Semitism.”

The graffiti refers to the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. The dollar sign apparently is meant to slur Jews as rich or greedy, per the stereotype.

California has seen a rise in anti-Semitic harassment assaults and vandalism for three consecutive years into 2018, when there were 126 hate crimes targeting Jews compared to 104 the previous year, Spectrum News reported. The California paper reported that 2019 “is seeing much of the same.”

A Hitler-themed swastika painting by a local politician that was recently put on display at a Brussels art gallery has sparked outcry in the Belgian Jewish community.

Fatmir Limani is an artist and the Socialist Party alderman in charge of cultural affairs in the Brussels-area municipality of Koekelberg.

His painting, titled “God created A. Hitler,” is scheduled to be featured until Sept. 30 in the prestigious Bog-Art gallery. The gallery is located 600 yards from the Jewish Museum of Belgium, where four people were killed in a 2014 terrorist attack allegedly perpetrated by an Islamist.

“It’s shocking,” Yohan Benizri, president of the CCOJB umbrella group representing French-speaking Belgian Jews, told the RTBF broadcaster Tuesday. “Seeing something like this on the streets of Belgium, it can be offensive. Seeing it in the context of rising anti-Semitism, it makes Belgium’s image seem even worse than it’s seen locally and international today.”

The artist, Benizri added, has a record of using shocking visuals and did not seem to attempt to single out Jews, but has nonetheless displayed “bad taste” with the swastika painting.

A law passed by the Austrian parliament on Thursday will grant citizenship to descendants of Nazi persecution.
According to the Jewish Chronicle, a British publication, the law applies to children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Jews and other ethnicities who had to flee Austria because of Nazi persecution up until 1945, the year World War II ended.

The law will come into effect in September 2020.

Last year, then-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz told the Jewish Chronicle that he was interested in having Austria’s citizenship laws amended so that "all children and grandchildren of Holocaust victims would have the opportunity to become Austrian citizens if they want to.”

The new law does not differentiate between those who were Austrian citizens when they fled and nationals of a country that used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The Israeli Air Force took part in its first aerial exercise in the United Kingdom this month, sending fighter jets and transport planes to simulate dog fights, airstrikes and refueling flights over enemy territory, the army said.

In addition to Israel and the UK, the United States, Germany and Italy participated in the nearly three-week-long exercise, known as Cobra Warrior, according to the British Royal Air Force.

This was Israel’s first time participating in an aerial drill in the UK, marking a shift toward a more open relationship between the two nations’ air forces. The RAF and IAF have worked together extensively over the years, but they typically keep this cooperation quiet.

The Israeli planes traveled to the United Kingdom late last month ahead of the exercise, which ended on Thursday.

“This was the Israeli Air Force’s first deployment in Britain, and the first exercise of this size in which the Israeli Air Force and British air force took part,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.

The head of IAF training, Brig. Gen. Amnon Ein-Dar, noted the historical ties between the two militaries, namely that Israel’s air force was largely created with British aircraft, specifically World War Two-era Spitfires.

“This is a very special and important exercise for us — foremost on a historical level. The Israeli Air Force was formed from within the British Air Force, so this was a special opportunity to come full circle,” Ein-Dar said.

The Royal Netherlands Army will employ active defense systems developed by Israel’s Elbit Systems, European defense contractor BAE Systems Plc announced on Tuesday.

BAE was selected to integrate Elbit’s Iron Fist Active Protection System (APS) into a fleet of 150 CV90 Infantry Fighting Vehicles after successful testing.

“Iron Fist is an advanced technology that automatically detects, tracks and neutralizes incoming threats to protect the vehicle and its crew,” said BAE Systems in a statement.

“The APS will give us a significant combat advantage and will improve tactical operation,” said Joost Vernooij, Dutch project manager for the CV90.

Elbit’s Iron Fist won a Israeli Defense Ministry deal worth $250 million, Israel business daily Globes reported in August, and the U.S. Army in the process of acquiring the system for use with its Bradley armored vehicles.

Iron Fist uses electro-optical sensors, tracking radar, launchers and countermeasure munitions to neutralize missiles fired at a vehicle.

Israel's Enlight Renewable Energy has officially opened the 104.5 MW Kovacica wind farm in Serbia, the country's largest, on September 19, energy minister Aleksandar Antic said.

"The project is worth 190 million euro ($210 million) and will produce about 300 GWh of electricity annually, more or less 1% of the total power production of Serbia," Antic said in a video file posted on the website of Tanjug news agency on Thursday.

The wind farm will supply electricity to 68,000 households and was constructed with the support of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Erste Bank, as well as Serbia's central government, the president of Enlight, Yair Seroussi, said in the video file.

Enlight started operating the Kovacica wind farm in July. The company estimates that the project will generate revenues of about 28 million euro ($31.4 million) annually from the sale of electricity throughout the 12-year regulatory period, the company said.

Pop star Demi Lovato made a surprise appearance at the Western Wall in Jerusalem during a trip that appears to be personal and not related to any music touring, The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday.

The two-time American Grammy nominee, who has sold millions of albums, has not mentioned the trip on social media.

The Post reported that she tweeted from her now-deleted account in 2012 that she has Jewish roots.

According to the Walla news site, Lovato is accompanied on the trip to Israel by her mother.

Despite his serious thoughts about an NBA comeback, Amar’e Stoudemire is taking a little break from basketball to go to school. The former six-time NBA All-Star, who had never attended college, started this fall as a freshman at Florida International University in Miami.

Though the semester just started, Stoudemire — who has converted to Judaism, has Israeli citizenship and spent three years in the Jewish state playing for Hapoel Jerusalem — has already become a big name at the campus Hillel.

On Wednesday, he launched an initiative to strengthen ties between Jewish and African-American students at FIU. Stoudemire is working with Hillel and the campus Black Student Union to host bridge-building and educational events.

The basketball star has a longtime connection to Judaism. He is in the process of completing a second conversion — “more Orthodox,” he says — and also has associated with the Hebrew Israelites, African-Americans who believe they are connected to the biblical Israelites and adhere to some Jewish customs.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency talked with Stoudemire on Tuesday about the initiative, his Jewish identity and his plans for the upcoming High Holidays.

When the Miracle Mets won the World Series in 1969, baseball was virtually unknown in Israel. Israel had come out victorious in the Six-Day War only two years earlier, the first field was built at Kibbutz Gezer in 1979, and the Israel Association of Baseball (IAB) would be established less than a decade afterwards, in 1986.

Fifty years later, the New York Mets may need to share their “miracle” nickname with Israel’s National Baseball Team. Team Israel shocked the world in last week’s European Championships and now has its sights on the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.

Israel got off to an unexpected 4-0 start with victories over the Czech Republic, Sweden, Germany and Great Britain. Israel then lost on Sept. 11 to current European champions, the Netherlands.

Israel finished second in its pool with a record of 4-1 and advanced to the quarter finals, held last Friday through Sunday in Bonn, Germany.

On Sept. 13, Israel faced France, which Pool B with three wins and two losses. Team Israel handily beat France 8-2 in the quarter finals, securing a coveted place in the Olympic Games qualifiers for this week in Italy.

But over last weekend, Israel dropped two games to Italy and Spain, finishing fourth overall in the European Championships. This was the first time that Israel has even gotten that far.

The Memorial Hall of Israel's Fallen soldiers, located in Mount Herzl, will be presented with the international Dedalo Minossee prize for Commissioning a Building on Saturday, a press release on behalf of Dedalo Minosse reported.

Designed by Kimmel Eshkolot Architects and commissioned by the Ministry of Defense, the site is inside the mountain, offering an intimate and quiet location for remembering those who had given their lives in the wars of Israel. A formation of bricks, with each brick bearing the name of a soldier who gave the ultimate sacrifice and his or her name and date of death, creating a formation which is funnel-shaped and opens to the heavens.

Each brick also has a space for a light-candle to be lit every year on that date, called the Wall of Names, there are currently roughly 23,000 names on it.

Visitors who walk the circular path leading to the sky-opening will see these lights during their journey, each day the site changes a little as names of different fallen soldiers are lit, making the site an example of how to represent "living" memory.

The prize will be given at the Teatro Olimpico in the city of Vicenza, Italy. The city will also host an exhibition at the Palladian Basilica from September 26 to October 6 depicting the winning projects. The exhibition will then be shown in other cities around Italy and the world, including Tokyo, Paris, and Dubai.

Memorial sites for those who died in combat often have a social effect which is larger than just architecture or memorial services.

Moshe Holtzberg, whose parents were killed in the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai when he was 2-years-old, celebrated becoming a bar mitzvah by donning phylacteries for the first time during a ceremony in New York.

Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg were the directors of the Nariman Chabad House in the Indian city when it was attacked on November 26, 2008. Along with the couple, four other Israeli and American visitors to the house were killed.

The Chabad House was among 12 locations targeted in coordinated shooting and bombing attacks by Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic terrorist organization based in Pakistan, that killed 166 people and injured hundreds more in a three-day rampage in Mumbai.

The child was dubbed “Baby Moshe” when a photo of his terrified-looking nanny running from the besieged Chabad House clutching the little boy was splashed on the front pages of newspapers around the world.

On Tuesday, Moshe celebrated the ceremony of Hanachat Tefillin, or putting on phylacteries for the first time, during a ceremony in Stony Point, New York, surrounded by family and friends of his parents, Crown Heights info reported. He also helped a US Navy SEAL put on tefillin.

Israeli Arabs are poorly served by their elected members of Knesset. According to a recent survey by researchers at Tel Aviv University, crime, unemployment, welfare, and the community’s dire housing crisis top Israeli Arabs’ concerns.

Their Knesset members, however, are interested only in political posturing that bashes Israel, behaving as a kind of disloyal fifth column inside the Knesset intent upon harming the state to whose legislature they have been elected.

MK Ahmad Tibi, for example, does not support Israel as a Jewish state, opposes the Law of Return and has challenged the Jewish religious symbols on the national flag.

Former MK Hanin Zoabi has walked out of Knesset during the singing of “Hatikvah,” claims that the Israel Defense Forces are a greater danger than the possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons, and has said that Palestinians who kidnap Israeli civilians are not terrorists because such actions are their only alternative to suffering under occupation.

Before April’s election, some Israeli Arabs were quoted bitterly criticizing the Arab List MKs.

“It didn’t represent us, and it did great damage to the [average] Arab citizen who wants to integrate,” said one resident of Abu Ghosh, an Arab village near Jerusalem. “The infrastructure in the Arab communities needs to be taken care of, and they [the Arab lawmakers] aren’t dealing with it.

“We recognize the existence of the only democratic country in the Middle East and want to be a part of the country. And we’re proud of it. We, Israeli Arabs, exist with our Jewish brothers. Not coexist, exist.”

Those living in east Jerusalem, where civic status falls into an unhappy legal limbo under uneasy Israeli sovereignty over that part of the city, are by default Israeli residents but not citizens.

Officially, they are citizens of Jordan. Most choose not to exercise the right to which their residency entitles them to vote in Jerusalem’s municipal elections.

But Jerusalem’s city hall is currently swamped by applications from Israeli Arabs in east Jerusalem who are keen to activate the right they enjoy under Israeli law to convert their residency into Israeli citizenship.

They want to be Israelis. They don’t want to be citizens of a future Palestinian state.

The United States has enough firepower at its command that it can afford to wear its idealism on its sleeve.

Is the United States going to go to war against Iran on behalf of Saudi Arabia? Probably not.

Should it?

Probably not.

The Saudi regime is, to be plain about it, detestable. It is wildly corrupt and horrifyingly repressive, it tangles together sundry absolutisms and fanaticisms (religious, nationalist, monarchist) into a mess of diplomatic and military trouble, it is duplicitous, and — perhaps most dangerous of all — in spite of its aspirational absolutism, it cannot even control its own contradictory internal constituencies, which is why the Saudi elite cultivates Islamic terrorism with one hand while fighting it with the other. Americans invested a lot of hope and diplomatic currency in the belief that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was going to turn out to be the great reformer that the West keeps hoping will emerge in the Islamic world, and he’s shaping up to be just another Arab caudillo, if a slicker and more intelligent specimen than the general run of them. There is not much there to hang American hopes on.

But the Iranians are worse. At least, that is the conventional point of view in Washington. The question of what is worth fighting for sometimes is distinct from the question of what is worth fighting against.

And that, fundamentally, has been the argument underpinning continued U.S. support for Saudi Arabia, which is put forward as the great counterweight to the forces of jihad and chaos in Tehran. It is classical great-gaming, the enemy-of-my-enemy thinking that — while not always wrong and occasionally even necessary — has led the United States into so much trouble in the Muslim world, with so many unintended consequences. The legend that the United States “created al-Qaeda” is not exactly true, in the way it usually is put forward, but it is not entirely an invention, either.

The rat bastards in Riyadh, we keep telling ourselves, are our rat bastards — mostly, and most of the time, when they are not murdering columnists for American newspapers or torturing human-rights advocates as a prelude to raping and murdering them or launching ill-advised wars on their neighbors. This so-called foreign-policy realism (which can be very unrealistic) is what is used to paper over both the domestic abuses of the Saudi state and, more important, its habit of acting in a way that is inconsistent with long-term American interests in the region. Of course the Saudi leaders are vicious, depraved, and fundamentally anti-American, the story goes, but they are not quite as vicious, depraved, or anti-American as their Iranian counterparts.

As Frantzman leads us through the sequence of events that slowly but surely squeezed ISIS out of the vast areas of Iraq and Syria that it had originally conquered, he provides an informed commentary on their impact. He embraces issues ranging from the effect on Europe of the influx of refugees from the Middle East, to the success of the Kurds’ peshmerga fighters against ISIS, the subsequent boost to their independence aspirations, followed by the efforts by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to remove what he saw as a Kurdish threat to his regime.

Frantzman brings to light the temporary battlefield alliances that were formed and disintegrated as the US-led coalition slowly crushed ISIS, and also with more profound changes in political thinking in the region, for example how Iran’s growing influence encouraged Saudi Arabia and the UAE to look increasingly toward Israel as an ally, and how it changed the strategic thinking of Jordan and Egypt.

In considering whether the post-ISIS era would simply replicate the worst days of al-Qaida terrorism under Osama bin Laden, he is not wholly pessimistic. He sees hope in the rise of a younger generation of Middle East leaders that came of age in the 1980s or 1990s, in an era of US hegemony, taking over from leaders who had run the region since the colonial era. “With the Saddam Husseins, Mubaraks, Gaddafis, and Salehs out of the way,” he writes, “there may be a new way forward.”

The basis for Frantzman’s qualified optimism lies in his belief that the whole ISIS episode was a unique phenomenon – a one-off. In his words: “It appears that the power of ISIS was sui generis. A group like this will not appear again. This was the apogee of Islamist extremism and jihadist groups.”

“After ISIS” is a comprehensive, insightful, thought-provoking account of how an exceptionally ruthless and brutal organization succeeded in capturing the imagination of scores of thousands of Muslims the world over, how it rose to control large parts of Syria and Iraq and rule over millions, and how finally it was defeated. For anyone wishing to understand how this all came about and what might follow, “After ISIS” is essential reading.

Following a decadeslong history of frostiness, in recent years there has been a significant change in India's attitude towards Israel. Hostility and opposition have given way to an unprecedented burst of support and enthusiasm. Among other things, India has changed its voting habits in the United Nations, and huge deals are being signed in the fields of security, technology, and agriculture. No one familiar with Israeli diplomatic affairs can forget the photograph of Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu standing barefoot at the seaside in Hadera. That picture was worth not just a thousand words, but millions of dollars, and reflected a bold friendship.

In light of this, national security experts from the two countries are also increasing cooperation. One of the Israeli researchers who has been pushing to strengthen relations with India for years is Professor Efraim Inbar, now president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security. In early September, Inbar and his institute hosted Sujan R. Chinoy, director general of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, an autonomous think tank of the Indian Defense Ministry. Together with the Moshe Dayan Center, JISS and IDSA held a seminar on India-Israel relations and on what is happening today in Asia in general.

For most of his career, Chinoy served in the Indian Foreign Service, including as the ambassador to Japan and the Marshall Islands, deputy chief of mission to Saudi Arabia, and as a member of the Indian delegation to the United Nations. He spent more than two decades dealing with China in his diplomatic career. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is introducing reforms that are fundamentally changing the face of India. This week, for example, India announced it will appoint for the first time a chief of Defense Staff, a significant step towards achieving integration of its defense forces.

Jeanine Pirro is America’s Judge. Need proof, check out her ratings every Saturday night. Need more proof, check out the demand she gets for live appearances. Need further proof, read her new number ONE bestseller, Radicals, Resistance and Revenge.

It’s no secret Judge Jeanine Pirro loves Israel, and Israel loves Pirro. The host of Fox News' Justice with Judge Jeanine and I met at the Embassy opening in Jerusalem, where she was the only American to interview Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at that time. Pirro was suspended last spring for calling out remarks by anti-Semitic Ilhan Omar, something I believe Fox News mishandled, given the words and actions by the three congresswomen since.

I have the honor to be only of the first journalists to interview her. We discussed how disappointing the Jewish support for President Trump is, despite multiple legislation not only championing our relationship, but actually going against Israel’s opponents. It’s especially frustrating watching Jewish Democratic elected officials going against the president, even calling for his impeachment when investigations they oversea prove no wrongdoings.

We also talked out her administration for people like Ambassador David Friedman and Zionist Organizations Of America President, Morton Klein, two men I know well.

Her book picks up where her #1 New York Times bestseller, Liars, Leakers and Liberals, left off, and exposes the latest chapter in the unfolding liberal attack on our most basic values.

It is an easy read. Fans will recognize popular themes and “opening statement” quotes Pirro has become legendary for. She makes no apologies for appreciating democracy, freedoms and America’s friendships with Israel.

Trump, to his credit, reacted with rare restraint when asked last week about Israel’s election results.

“The relations are between our countries,” he said, implying that the special US-Israel relationship goes beyond himself and Netanyahu.

While some pundits considered that as giving Netanyahu the cold shoulder, it was the correct statement to make from an ally, showing what most people already know – the ties between Israel and the US transcend their leaders, they are between the peoples and don’t depend on one prime minister or one president.

Even though holding off the publication of the plan will push it deep into the US presidential campaigning period, and likely detract from Trump’s interest or involvement in its implementation, it’s a course that needs to be taken.

No matter whether Netanyahu or Gantz, or some surprise candidate, forms the next government, it is unlikely for us to see a major shift in Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Palestinian issue. Gantz is as security minded as Netanyahu, and the Israeli reaction to the peace plan’s thorny elements won’t veer sharply no matter who’s in power.

The coalition negotiations are going to focus on a myriad of topics, but peace with the Palestinians is not going to be at the top of the list. The US will be wise to let those negotiations take place without the extra element of the ‘deal of the century’ to contend with.

The outgoing US envoy to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, on Friday penned an op-ed marking his resignation from the position expressing his regrets about stalled peace efforts and his hopes for future progress.

Greenblatt, who met on Friday in Jerusalem with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is one of the architects of the Trump administration’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan, which has yet to be unveiled, has raised widespread skepticism, and has already been dismissed by the Palestinians.

Earlier this month, Greenblatt announced his intention to quit his position shortly after the plan is unrolled. He later clarified that he may stay on longer to see the peace proposal unfold.

“Nothing is perfect, and compromises are necessary. I am deeply hopeful that the vision we created will appeal to Israelis and Palestinians enough to start down the hard road of negotiating a peace agreement, and that peace extends to the countries in the region beyond Jordan and Egypt,” Greenblatt wrote in the essay published by CNN. “If the vision achieves peace, the lives of millions of people will be so much better.”
US President’s peace process envoy Jason Greenblatt, left, meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the President’s office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, March 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

He said he was grateful for assistance on the project, including from those who disagreed with the administration’s views, and that he was proud to have served the US and protected Israel “under a President who has been the greatest friend to Israel in its history.”

Greenblatt wrote that he was “sad for the many Palestinians I was so fortunate to meet who seek a better life,” and castigated Gaza-based terror groups.

You’ve probably never heard of Baarle-Hertog, a Belgian territory consisting of an unremarkable three square miles in an otherwise unremarkable part of Europe. However, things get interesting when you look at a map. Baarle-Hertog contains about two dozen unconnected areas entirely surrounded by the Netherlands. Complicating matters, some of these territories in turn completely encircle parts of Dutch Baarle-Nassau.

In the wake of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announced plans to annex the Jordan Valley, which will in turn fragment parts of a future Palestinian state, Baarle-Hertog challenges the dogmatic insistence that only a maximally contiguous Palestine can be viable. The town provides a small-scale working model of how such a state will look and operate.

When Netanyahu first proposed a Baarle-Hertog style approach to drawing borders in 2014, then in reference to annexing Israeli settlements completely surrounded by Palestinian land, local officials pushed back. Representatives from the Belgian territory emphasized the peaceful nature of area compared to Israel-Palestine. In their words, “We have no war here, no wall and no religious struggle,” and “We don’t walk around with hand grenades and don’t throw stones.” This sentiment was echoed by Vincent Braam, mayor of the Dutch territories.

Several interesting points arise from the European officials’ bewilderment. First, the primary issue centers on peace rather than the size of the territory. Baarle-Hertog is significantly smaller than Israel-Palestine, which would seem an intuitive objection to the analogy. In fact, the opposite is probably true. Whereas in the European territories, situations arose in which patrons of a restaurant straddling the border would need to move to one side at the time of other side’s mandatory business closing hour, such situations would not arise in the Jordan Valley.

Instead, issues will probably center on municipal services, which are easily managed. In large Palestinian territories such as Jericho, services would remain under Palestinian control. In smaller areas, Israel could continue to extend such services when most efficient. If Israel can presently supply electricity to Gaza, a belligerent territory governed by a terrorist organization, it could just as easily continue to provide services to any fragmented Palestinian villages after peace has been achieved.

The question of whether the United States and Israel should sign a formal mutual defense pact is a recurring theme in relations between the two countries. It came up again in the run-up to this week’s tumultuous elections as a result of public advocacy on the part of Washington and behind-the-scenes encouragement from Jerusalem.

The motivation on both sides is understandable; the US wants to demonstrate its enduring commitment to Israeli security, while the Israeli government is eager to capitalize on the pro-Israeli attitudes of the Trump administration (which have already produced significant dividends, from the relocation of the US Embassy to a formal recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights). But it nevertheless is a misguided effort, and one that is potentially dangerous to the long-term health of bilateral ties.

This is so for at least three reasons.

First, as former IDF intelligence chief Amos Yadlin has noted, it puts previously taboo topics squarely on the diplomatic table. If a mutual defense agreement is indeed signed between the two countries, the US will naturally need to know what, exactly, it has committed to defending. That makes the true status of Israel’s nuclear program a valid subject of discussion.

It will also naturally force Israel to much more definitively articulate where it thinks its final borders vis-à-vis the Palestinians will be – since presumably US troops would be required to defend them in the event of a future Arab-Israeli or Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Given the importance of nuclear “opacity” to Israel’s deterrent posture, and the volatility of present-day relations with the Palestinians, Israeli officials shouldn’t be eager to discuss either of those things in more detail than they do currently.

Second, a defense pact runs the risk of stoking anti-Israel sentiment in the US. The past several years have seen the emergence of a growing isolationist streak on the American Right, while the Democratic Party has of late tolerated mounting anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiments from its vocal progressive wing.

Kelly Craft, the recently-appointed US Ambassador to the UN, vowed on Friday to maintain support for Israel. Craft, who replaced Nikki Haley – a staunch supporter of the Jewish state, made it clear that she would act the same way.

In her first appearance at the monthly Middle East debate at the UN Security Council, Craft declared: “The United States has always supported Israel in the past. The United States supports Israel today. The United States will always support Israel moving forward.”

“Israel will have no better friend than Kelly Craft,” she added. Danny Danon, Israel’s envoy to the UN, thanked her. “We welcome your presence here, and look forward to your voice being heard on behalf of the American people.”

Following their statements in the Security Council, Ambassadors Danon and Craft met outside the Council chamber.

“The United States will have no better friend than the State of Israel,” Danon added. “Ambassador Craft made it clear today that the US remains strongly committed to Israel and our security. With her help, together, we can continue to change the culture at the United Nations.”

In his speech, Danon called on the Security Council to maintain pressure on Iran: “Iran poses the greatest danger to regional stability and security. Iran must be stopped. Not with smiles and handshakes, but with economic, political, diplomatic and any other pressure, as necessary. I call on the members of this esteemed Council to act against the Iranian violations and exert more pressure on Iran.”

Danon also addressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks last week regarding the future status of the Jordan Valley.

Palestinian Authority officials said on Saturday that they are hoping to persuade donor countries to continue their financial contributions to the United Nations Work and Relief Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas and senior Palestinians officials are expected to meet in the coming days with representatives of the donor countries on the sidelines of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly to discuss the issue of UNRWA.

On Saturday, Abbas traveled to New York, where he is also scheduled to deliver a speech before the General Assembly and hold talks on the future of UNRWA.

The officials said the discussions on UNRWA were designed to ensure the agency’s mandate is renewed by the General Assembly. The agency’s mandate is renewed every three years.

Last year, the US administration cut its funding to UNRWA. The move came as US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt called for dismantling UNRWA and handing its duties to countries hosting Palestinian refugees or to international organizations.

The Palestinians see the US move as part of a US-Israeli “conspiracy” to eliminate UNRWA and deny Palestinian refugees and their descendants the right to return to their former homes inside Israel.

Recently, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and New Zealand announced they were temporarily suspending their financial contributions to UNRWA in the aftermath of charges of mismanagement by the agency’s leadership.

The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday denied any connection to a drone captured by Syria near the Israeli Golan Heights, saying it was an Iranian aircraft.

“Today we saw the Syrians prove that [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force commander Gen. Qassem] Soleimani does what he wants in Syria and definitely doesn’t tell the Assad regime what he is up to,” wrote the IDF’s Arabic spokesman Avichai Adraee.

Earlier Saturday, Syria’s state news agency SANA said authorities have captured and dismantled a drone rigged with cluster bombs near the border with the Israeli Golan Heights.

SANA gave no further details about the drone but posted several photos.

The news agency also reported that Syrian forces found Israeli-made vehicles and material in Bariqa, a village near the deserted border city of Quneitra.

Israel frequently conducts airstrikes and missile attacks inside war-torn Syria but rarely confirms them. Israel says it targets mostly bases of Iranian forces and the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah in Syria.

But Adraee said it was definitely “not an IDF drone,” noting that it was found in the same area where the IDF attacked last month to foil an Iranian drone attack on Israel.

Greek police said Saturday they have arrested a suspect in the 1985 Hezbollah hijacking of a flight from Athens that became a multi-day ordeal and included the slaying of an American.

Police said a 65-year-old suspect in a 1985 hijacking and a 1987 abduction was arrested Thursday on the island of Mykonos in response to a warrant from Germany.

Lt. Col. Theodoros Chronopoulos, a police spokesman, told The Associated Press the hijacking case involved TWA Flight 847. The flight was commandeered by hijackers shortly after taking off from Athens on June 14, 1985, demanding the release of 700 Shi’ite Muslims from Israeli custody. The flight originated in Cairo and had San Diego set as a final destination, with stops scheduled in Athens, Rome, Boston and Los Angeles.

The hijackers shot and killed US Navy diver Robert Stethem, 23, after beating him unconscious. They released the other 146 passengers and crew members on the plane in stages during an ordeal that included making three stops in Beirut and two in Algiers. The last hostage was freed after 17 days.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh has ordered senior members of the Gaza-based terror group not to publicly comment on rare protests held in Egypt Friday against President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.

Haniyeh sent an audio message to Hamas leaders telling them not to address “any matter connected to Egypt” whatsoever.

“Everyone must obey and promise this,” he said in the message, according to Israel’s Ynet news site.

Hamas and Egypt have worked to repair ties in recent years following the 2013 coup that brought Sissi to power.

Hamas, which has historic links to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, enjoyed warm relations with Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, a top Brotherhood figure who was overthrown by the military after a divisive year in power.

The Egyptian government tightened an Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza shortly thereafter, but since then there have been signs of a thaw in relations.

Hosni Mubarak, the longtime Egyptian ruler whose deposal led to Morsi coming to power in Egypt’s first and only democratic presidential election, has claimed Hamas sent hundreds of fighters across the Gaza border during the 2011 uprising.

Hamas has denied the claim.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now wants to make Turkey a rogue state with nuclear weapons.

For several decades, Turkey, being a staunch NATO ally, was viewed as the trusted custodian of some of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In the early 1960s, the U.S. started stockpiling nuclear warheads at the Turkish military's four main airbases

Presently, the nuclear warheads in Turkey at Incirlik airbase still remain at the disposal of the U.S. military under a special U.S.-Turkish treaty. That treaty makes Turkey the host of U.S. nuclear weapons. According to the launch protocol, however, both Washington and Ankara need to give consent to any use of the nuclear weapons deployed at Incirlik.

"Countries that oppose Iran's nuclear weapons should not have nuclear weapons themselves."— Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Hürriyet, 2008.

If Turkey overtly or covertly launched a nuclear weapons program -- as Erdogan apparently wishes -- the move could well have a domino effect on the region. Turkey's regional adversaries would be alarmed, and Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Greece might be tempted to launch their own nuclear weapons programs. Erdogan should not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons.

It wouldn’t seem hard for anyone remotely interested in the fate of the planet to draw at least one clear lesson from last Saturday’s Iranian strikes on Saudi Arabia: There is no way that the regime that casually took 50% of Saudi oil production offline can ever be allowed to get anywhere near possessing a nuclear bomb. Imagine what a nuclear-armed Iran might do to the oil production on which the entire planet depends for energy, transportation, and food. Does anyone really care to wager that an Iranian regime that had such devastating weapons wouldn’t actually use them? That seems like a bad bet.

And yet that was precisely how a highly visible segment of political partisans in Washington has chosen to see things. The oil fields were still burning as former Barack Obama aides, Democratic Party officials, political operatives, and journalists rolled out an arsenal of tweets, quotes, and op-eds laying down cover for a military attack targeting the world’s oil supply. In a different time, the idea of a public campaign to cheer on an operation whose intended effect was to raise oil prices and terrorize a traditional US ally might seem like a deranged PR stunt by campus nihilists. But in DC’s toxic new zero-sum political game, an attack on Saudi Arabia is good news— not because it benefits America or Americans in any conceivable way, but because it benefits Iran. Same difference, right?

The public conjoining of US and Iranian interests represents the fulfillment of Obama’s signature foreign policy initiative, the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The purpose of the JCPOA was to bribe the Iranians to hold off on building a bomb until Obama left office by legitimizing a future Iranian bomb while filling the regime’s coffers with hundreds of billions of dollars. The effect of the deal was to arm and fund the country that Obama saw as America’s new ally in the region.

Right or wrong, Obama believed t his was in the American interest. Minimizing the US footprint in the region required partnership with a power that could bear the load after America’s exit. From Obama’s perspective, that power could only be Iran: Saudi Arabia was not a military power, Iraq was a mess, Egypt was politically unstable, and Israel was a non-starter. So he tabbed Iran as the curator of US regional interests, even though its elevated standing came at the expense of traditional US allies. This is what Obama meant by regional “balance.”

The Iranian regime is the most destabilizing force in the Middle East and the world’s top sponsor of terrorism. That’s why the U.S. launched a campaign of maximum pressure. It’s producing maximum results. pic.twitter.com/asht69DikZ

— Department of State (@StateDept) September 20, 2019

Mike Cushman, a member of antisemitism denial groups Jewish Voice for Labour and Labour Against The Witchhunt, has claimed that he has never observed antisemitism in the Labour Party and that the evidence on which antisemitism allegations are based emanates either from the Israeli Mossad or British security services, which he insists oppose the election of a Labour government.

The claims were made at a 19th September screening in Brixton of the film, Witchhunt, which disputes the degree of antisemitism in the Labour Party, hosted by expelled Labour member and former Vice-Chair of the pro-Corbyn group Momentum, Jackie Walker.

In his remarks, Mr Cushman said: “I’m not saying that antisemitism doesn’t exist in the Labour Party, but I’ve never seen it — I’ve never experienced it. I’ve seen anti-black racism; I’ve seen islamophobia; I’ve seen misogyny; I’ve seen homophobia; I’ve seen many awful things, but personally I’ve never observed antisemitism.”

He went on to explain that “when the allegations of people like Louise Ellman [a Jewish Labour MP] and Luciana Berger [a Jewish MP who resigned from the Labour Party] are examined properly, they fall apart as a tissue of lies. I cannot emphasise enough just how much lying and falsehood is going on in making these allegations.”

Complaining that criticism of Israel and talking about Zionism are interpreted as antisemitism, and that even telling an MP “they’re just no bloody use as an MP” is also interpreted as antisemitism, Mr Cushman concluded that the twin motivations behind those exposing antisemitism in the Labour Party are “to stop us talking about Palestine” and “to stop us getting a socialist Labour government elected.”

Columbia University's World Leaders Forum will be hosting Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has a history of making antisemitic statements.

The 93-year-old leader described Jews as "hook-nosed" last October, and blaming them for creating trouble in the Middle East. "They are hook-nosed," he said in defense. "Many people called the Malays fat-nosed. We didn't object; we didn't go to war for that."

In 2003, he said that "the Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.”

He has also said that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust is exaggerated and that, in reality, four million were killed rather than six million.

He has also previously denied Israel's connection to Jerusalem, claiming it is a Palestinian territory. "Jerusalem has always been under Palestine, so why are they taking the initiative to divide Jerusalem not belonging to them, but to divide the Arabs and the Jews? They have no rights," Mohamad said.

In January, Mohamad announced that he would not allow any Israelis to enter Malaysia. The comment was in response to criticism after the Southeast Asian nation banned Israeli participants in the Paralympic Swimming World Championship.

"The world is talking about freedom of speech, but whenever we say anything against Israel and the Jews, it is considered antisemitism," he stated. "It is my right to criticize Israel for its policy regarding the Palestinians and say they do many bad things."

In July, CAMERA wrote about Muhammad Shehada’s claim, made in the Forward, that the Palestinian pay-to-slay program was just a “canard,” when his own source, the Washington Post, explained that, “in the Palestinian Authority’s budget, one can find $350 million in annual payments to Palestinian prisoners, ‘martyrs’ and injured….”

Yet, despite this grossly dishonest claim, the Forward inexplicably continues to give Shehada space.

Last week, Shehada wrote a piece that was disingenuously entitled, “A Plea To My Israeli Brothers And Sisters, From A Palestinian Who Can’t Vote” (September 11, 2019). And in August, in “Israel Is Now Trolling Us Palestinians On Social Media,” (August 28, 2019) he claimed to tell “the truth about COGAT,” Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the territories. Missing from both pieces, however, is the truth about Palestinian leadership.

In the August piece, Shehada wrote that COGAT “is a military unit in charge of civilian affairs, a perfect encapsulation of the problem with military rule over a civilian population without the right to vote.” Palestinians, of course, do have the right to vote. In Gaza, where Shehada is from, the last election was in 2006. That election brought Hamas, a genocidal terrorist group that vows to destroy Israel, to power. Hamas promptly ousted the opposing political party, and today, arrests and beats journalists and violently suppresses internal protests. Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last stood for election in 2005. Since then, Abbas rejected Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s 2008 offer for statehood that would have removed COGAT from the West Bank, and continues to refuse to negotiate.

A Dutch museum has banned visitors from taking photos at a controversial exhibition of designs from Hitler’s Nazi regime to stop them being “interpreted the wrong way.”

The crowds at the Design Museum in Den Bosch — which has been sold out since “Design in the Third Reich” opened earlier this month — look like those at any other museum, but with two important exceptions.

Firstly, there is the extraordinary backdrop — 277 articles ranging from a 1940s Volkswagen Beetle to statues of Hitler’s favorite sculptor Arno Breker, propaganda posters and films by Nazi director Leni Riefenstahl.

And secondly, the tell-tale lack of the smartphones that are normally ubiquitous at any tourist attraction or place of interest anywhere in the world.

The exhibition’s opening prompted protest from left-wing and anti-fascist groups who said they feared it could serve as a Nazi shrine.

Museum spokeswoman Maan Leo said extraordinary measures had been taken, including banning photography inside, posting extra staff and only allowing 50 visitors entry at a time.

Tickets can only be purchased online.

A Canadian social media influencer has made a presence for himself online by removing graffiti and drawings on public property depicting hateful messages, such as racist or antisemitic symbols.

Corey Fleischer uses different kinds of equipment, from pressure washers, to regular drugstore nail polish remover, to get rid of swastikas and hateful messages painted around the world.

Most recently, Fleischer uploaded videos of him visiting Portugal and Spain, wearing his signature vest reading "#ErasingHate" on the front.

Fleischer hails from Montreal, where he regularly makes sure that no hatred is not put on display. He video tapes the removal of the graffiti and uploads them to his Instagram and Facebook pages.

In August, he was joined on his mission by a Holocaust survivor named Angi Richt as they removed a small, drawn-on swastika from a street sign in a park. Richt has joined Fleischer in several videos to remove hateful graffiti. She, according to Fleischer, is one of the two people to have ever been born in Auschwitz concentration camp.

"It is an absolute honor to have [Richt] here," Fleischer said. He proceeded to explain how to use nail polish remover to erase the drawing.

We know, we know: the moniker “startup nation” has become a kind of cliché since the book of the same name reached the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists a decade ago.

However, the story of tiny Israel’s unlikely climb to the top of the global innovation ladder is no less fascinating and relevant today, as investment in Israeli high-tech continues to break records and the country begins its transition to “scaleup nation.”

The books below explore various aspects of this frankly amazing phenomenon. We’re proud to share that the newest of these titles, Inbal Arieli’s Chutzpah, traces its origins in part to popular columns she wrote, and continues to write, for ISRAEL21c about Israel’s unique innovation-nurturing youth culture.

START-UP NATION: THE STORY OF ISRAEL’S ECONOMIC MIRACLE by Dan Senor and Saul Singer
First published in 2009, this book fast became a classic. It’s the most logical place to start a journey of discovery about Israel’s unparalleled entrepreneurial success despite its tiny size, hostile neighbors, constant conflict and scarce natural resources. Senor and Singer share lessons of the country’s adversity-driven culture, which flattens hierarchy and elevates informality– all backed up by government policies focused on innovation.

As coral reefs the world over suffer in the face of climate change, pollution and harvesting for aquaria, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and Haifa’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology are experimenting with 3D printed corals, and finding that fish species that can see color prefer bright designs to dull ones.

The project is the first known attempt to accurately simulate the structure and functionality of natural living corals, taking into account factors such as water flow around the coral structures, sizes that fit the diversity of fish species and proximity to food (plankton).

Coral reefs provide a home for 25 percent of all marine fish species. With the aim of ascertaining what kind of coral makes a “good home” and which designs the fish prefer, the team used 3D design tools to scan natural coral colonies, then structurally and spatially manipulated the scans before printing the artificial ones. They experimented with different materials and printers, ultimately whittling the possibilities down to four different forms of printed corals made of sustainable bioplastic, in several colors.

The corals were then attached to a reef at the northeastern coast of the Red Sea, close to the Inter-University Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat. The biologists then visited over several months to track colonization of the models by real fish.

They found that the fish readily accepted the 3D printed corals, and even preferred some designs and colors over real living ones.

With recent hurricanes in the Bahamas and forest fires in the Amazon, Siberia and Indonesia, one may find something of a haven in “Solar Guerrilla: Constructive Response to Climate Change,” the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s design-heavy exhibit about sustainable living running from July through February 2020.

The exhibit is administered by Maya Vinitsky, an associate curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the museum, who was responsible for the museum’s last environmental show in 2017, “3.5 Square Meters: Constructive Responses to Natural Disasters.”

“We wanted to tie this exploration to things that are visual, colorful and even tactile,” said Vinitsky. “Whoever comes to the museum, to this exhibit, will hopefully see things that will make them think more, and become more active.”

Much of what is on display in “Solar Guerrilla” was created by architects, landscape designers and industrial designers from all over the world, looking at a wide range of responses to climate change.

Set in the spacious one-room Marcus B. Mizne Gallery in the museum’s main building, the exhibit features 36 projects divided among six themes: 1.5 to 2 Degrees Celsius, Solarpunk, Sponge City, Anti-Smog, Sunroof, and Passive House.

The range of the exhibit’s topics and exhibits offer an indication of which countries are more developed with regard to sustainable living, said Vinitsky, and generally display “multi-solving,” as there is no one solution to any specific problem.

Her previous exhibit about responses to natural disasters highlighted the fact that disasters are brief but hold long-lasting effects. Climate change, meanwhile, is generally measured over a great time scale of 30 to 40 years, pointed out Vinitsky.

Damian talks to Jewish pianist Ariel Lanyi about the cruel cat-and-mouse game that the Soviet Union played with Jewish classical musicians at a time when it was sneakily trying to extinguish both their religion and their ethnic identity.

On  the Eve of the Jewish New Year Nemah and I  would like to extend our best wishes for a happy , peaceful and good year for all those who follow the Jewish faith , and a happy and good year for all .

— Dr. Saeb Erakat الدكتور صائب عريقات (@ErakatSaeb) September 20, 2019

The pattern:
Before:
"ZIONISM IS RACISM! ISRAELIS ARE NAZIS! APARTHEID! THEY POISON PALESTINIAN WATER, STEAL ORGANS AND ENJOY KILLING BABIES! I CAN UNDERSTAND ARMED RESISTANCE! JEWS ARE WHITE SUPREMACISTS!"

After:

"What's the fuss? All I did was legitimate criticism of Israel."

— Elder Of Ziyon  ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 20, 2019

This isn't criticism. This is unhinged hate for the Jewish state, calling for its destruction and proudly showing support for terror against Jewish civilians.

But when the Women's March changed its mind about the appointment, she suddenly says that she is the victim of a smear campaign - she only "challenges the occupation:"

Her words show that she is a liar, but her fans that hate both Israel and Jews who do not want to be second class citizens flocked to her defense - the same defense we always see: "Oh, this is just legitimate criticism, and you are falsely accusing us of antisemitism."

No other state in the world is ever told it shouldn't exist. No other state is falsely represented as being guilty of apartheid. In no other case are people who shoot rockets at civilians lauded by people who otherwise swear they support human rights. And disgustingly comparing Israel to Nazis has only one purpose: to hurt Jews.

Yes, this is antisemitism. And claiming that it is mere opposition to Israeli government policies or "challenging the occupation" is meant to be a smokescreen to blind the world to the obvious, vicious and psychopathic hate that these people have - hate so vicious that its only historical comparison is to "old" antisemitism.