UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief Ahmed Shaheed

The Special Rapporteur received numerous reports that in countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Jews are frequently conflated with Israel and Zionism, even in countries with a deep history of Jewish life. Literature demonizing Jews is prevalent in the media in this region. Saudi school textbooks contained antisemitic passages, with some passages even urging violence against Jews. 

Footnote:
Examples: In Saudi Arabia, the newspaper Al-Iqtisadiyya printed an editorial cartoon showing a grinding machine in the shape of the Star of David, grinding Gazans into skulls. In Algeria, Echourouk El Youmi published an article claiming that Jews had been plotting against Muslims for centuries, that Jews were responsible for most of the disasters that have befallen Muslims, and that Jews controlled the media, cinema, art, and fashion. In Qatar, the privately-owned Al-Raya newspaper published a cartoon showing a witch with a Star of David wand causing inter-Arab disputes.

The Special Rapporteur also takes note of numerous reports of an increase in many countries of what is sometimes called ‘left-wing’ antisemitism, in which individuals claiming to hold anti-racist and anti-imperialist views employ antisemitic narratives or tropes in the course of expressing anger at policies or practices of the Government of Israel. In some cases, individuals expressing such views have engaged in Holocaust denial; in others, they have conflated Zionism, the self-determination movement of the Jewish people, with racism; claimed Israel does not have a right to exist; and accused those expressing concern over antisemitism as acting in bad faith. He emphasizes that it is never acceptable to render Jews as proxies for the Government of Israel. He further recalls that Secretary-General Guterres has characterized “attempts to delegitimize the right of Israel to exist, including calls for its destruction” as a contemporary manifestation of antisemitism.

The Special Rapporteur further notes claims that the objectives, activities and effects
of the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement are fundamentally antisemitic. The movement promotes boycotts and stockholder divestment initiatives against Israeli or international corporations and institutions that BDS supporters maintain are ‘complicit’ in violations of the human rights of Palestinians by the Government of Israel. Critics of BDS that the architects of the campaign have indicated that one of its core aims is to bring about the end of the State of Israel and further allege that some individuals have employed antisemitic narratives, conspiracies and tropes in the course of expressing support for the BDS campaign. The Special Rapporteur notes that these allegations are rejected by the BDS movement, including by one of its principal actors, who asserted that the movement is “inspired by the South African anti-apartheid and U.S. Civil Rights movements;” maintained that they oppose all forms of racism and that they take steps against those who use antisemitic tropes in the campaign, and stressed that they employ “nonviolent measures to bring about Israel’s compliance with its obligations under international law.” Concern about the adoption of laws that penalize support for the BDS movement, including the negative impact of such laws on efforts to combat antisemitism have also been communicated to the Special Rapporteur. He recalls that international law recognizes boycotts as constituting legitimate forms of political expression, and that non-violent expressions of support for boycotts are, as a general matter, legitimate speech that should be protected. However, he stresses that expression which draws upon antisemitic tropes or stereotypes, rejects the right of Israel to exist, or advocates discrimination against Jewish individuals because of their religion should be condemned.

The Special Rapporteur notes that critics of the Working Definition have expressed concern that it can be applied in ways that could effectively restrict legitimate political expression, including criticism of policies and practices being promoted by the Government of Israel which violate the rights of Palestinians. Such concerns are focused on three of the illustrative examples attached to the definition namely, claiming that the existence of Israel is a racist endeavour; requiring of Israel a behaviour not demanded of other democratic states; equating Israeli government policy with that of the Nazis. The Special Rapporteur notes that the IHRA definition does not designate these as examples of speech that are ipso facto antisemitic and further observes that a contextual assessment is required under the definition to determine if they are antisemitic. Nevertheless, the potential chilling effects of the use of these examples by public bodies on speech that is critical of Israeli government policies and practices must be taken seriously as should the concern that criticism of Israel sometimes has been used to incite hatred towards Jews in general such as through expression that feed on traditional antisemitic stereotypes of Jews. Therefore, the use of the definition, as a non-legal educational tool, could minimize such chilling effects and contribute usefully to efforts to combat antisemitism. Where public bodies use the definition in any regulatory context, due diligence must be exercised to ensure that freedom of expression within the law is protected for all.

The Special Rapporteur recognises that the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism can offer valuable guidance for identifying antisemitism in its various forms, and therefore encourages States to adopt it for use in education, awareness-raising and for monitoring and responding to manifestations of antisemitism. The Special Rapporteur recommends its use as a critical non-legal, educational tool that should be applied in line with guidance provided by the Rabat Plan of Action, Human Rights Committee in General Comment 34, and the CERD in General Recommendation  In this regard, the Special Rapporteur notes that criticism of the Government of Israel is not per se antisemitic, as stated in the Working Definition, unless it is accompanied by manifestations of hatred towards Jews in general, or expressions that build on traditional antisemitic stereotypes.

Rivlin made the statement directly to representatives of Blue and White, who said they want a unity government but have been ruling out Prime Minister and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, because of his pending criminal charges. Rivlin reminded them that Netanyahu has not been indicted.

"The people of Israel want a government that will be stable," Rivlin said. "A stable goverrnment cannot be a government without both of the two largest parties."

The head of the Blue and White delegation, MK Moshe Ya'alon said "all Zionist parties" would be welcome in the coalition, a statement interpreted as excluding the Joint List.

MK Zvi Hauser told Rivlin that Gantz's goal would be national reconciliation.

Rivlin told the MKs that the people of Israel were "disgusted" by prospects of a third election.

Members of the Joint List decided to recommend Gantz to build a coalition. This will be the first time since Yitzhak Rabin that an Arab party recommends someone for Prime Minister.

The answer is that Gantz knew that challenging Netanyahu on security from the left was a recipe for defeat. The sole rationale for his party’s existence is to oust Netanyahu, not to make nice with the Palestinians.

The same is true about relations with President Donald Trump. Netanyahu’s contentious relationship with President Barack Obama and his warm embrace of Trump is a particular bone of contention for Democrats. But expect Gantz to be every bit as grateful to Trump, who is immensely popular in Israel, as Netanyahu has been.

Nor will a future Democratic president — should Trump be defeated next year — find Gantz to be any more willing to abandon the West Bank or divide Jerusalem than Netanyahu has been. The political success of the former Israel Defense Forces’ chief of staff rests on his being part of a broad consensus that believes there is no Palestinian peace partner. Democrats will have to accept that even an Israel led by Gantz will refuse to trade land for terror.

As for American Jewish resentment about the lack of religious pluralism in Israel, that will depend on the composition of the next coalition. Should the religious parties wind up outside the government, plans for expanding the egalitarian prayer area at the Western Wall will be reinstated, no matter if Netanyahu or Gantz stands at the helm. But should the new coalition include those religious parties, you can bet that the scheme will remain on hold.

Just as important, Gantz will be no more acceptable to the growing ranks of anti-Zionists in the left wing of the Democratic Party than Netanyahu. For BDS supporters, Gantz is just another criminal Zionist. If left-wingers like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) represent the future of the Democratic Party, it won’t make any difference who is prime minister of Israel.

The gap between Israelis and Americans on these issues has always been bigger than one leader. Israel’s critics may pretend that Netanyahu is the primary obstacle to peace as opposed to the Palestinians, but it won’t take long for them to be hurling the same sort of accusations at Gantz if he gets the top job.

Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman on Sunday said his right-wing party will not recommend any candidate for prime minister during its consultations with President Reuven Rivlin later in the evening.

In his remarks, Liberman — whose party won eight seats in last week’s election — said he could recommend for the task of forming the next coalition neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Blue and White’s Benny Gantz, who could receive the endorsement of the predominantly Arab Joint List.

“In the Knesset there is a party that is trying to destroy us from within, and in the best case scenario, they belong in parliament in Ramallah, not in Israel,” said Liberman, referring to the Joint List. “Therefore we cannot recommend Benny Gantz. Therefore our recommendation to the president is that we won’t recommend anyone.”

“The Haredim [ultra-Orthodox] are political rivals, but not enemies. The Joint List are our enemies,” said Liberman. “Wherever they are, we will be on the other side.”

The Joint List alliance of Arab-majority parties will reportedly on Sunday present a list of demands to the Blue and White party as conditions for recommending Benny Gantz as the next prime minister, although, despite talks, the centrist party has not yet made any commitments in return.

Blue and White has established a back channel to communicate with the Joint List — an alliance of four parties — which is said to be leaning toward endorsing the former IDF chief of staff. However, three of its 13 newly elected Knesset members, from the Balad party, are opposed to the move.

The primarily Arab slate will have to make a decision by 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, when its representatives are scheduled to meet with President Reuven Rivlin and tell him whether they recommend Gantz — the chief rival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — as leader of the country.

Senior party members were quoted Sunday by Hebrew-language media as saying they would present their demands later in the day to Blue and White. These include freezing home demolitions in unrecognized Arab villages, forming a team to examine the issue of those villages, passing a government decision on battling violence within the Arab sector, canceling the controversial nation-state law — which enshrines Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people — and initiating a peace process with the Palestinian Authority.

For so long, American Jews have felt secure here in a way they hadn’t almost anywhere else. But the attacks on the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue in October 2018 and the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California this year have shattered that illusion.

The shootings, which left 12 people dead, also proved that anti-Semitism isn’t just on the rise in America — it has fully risen and now needs to be urgently challenged.

Bari Weiss, opinion writer at The New York Times, explores why it’s happening and what to do about it in her new book “How to Fight Anti-Semitism” (Crown), out now. The Pittsburgh Tree of Life massacre hit her particularly hard. Weiss’ family is from the area, and her bat mitzvah, a Jewish ceremony when a child turns 12 or 13, was at that very synagogue.

Weiss argues that current anti-Semitism in America comes from some old and expected places: white supremacists were behind both synagogue attacks, and in August 2017 neo-Nazis marched on Charlottesville, Va., chanting “Jews will not replace us.”

But the rot comes from new sources, too.

Between the fans of Louis Farrakhan who organized the original Women’s March in 2017 and the anti-Semitic rhetoric of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar who, among other things, used an old “dual loyalty” trope to accuse Jews of pushing “allegiance to a foreign country,” Jewish Americans are suddenly feeling under attack from the left as well as the right.

With this comes a divide: “Your” side versus “my” side, and which side is more anti-Semitic or dangerous.

On the surface, the linkage between Trudeau’s blackface and the hook-nose sign language isn’t obvious. What both issues reveal is how deep and ingrained racist views of “the other” permeate societies from Canada to New Zealand, even societies where the official line is “tolerance” and “diversity.”

The problem in society when one repeats the mantra of “we are tolerant” without first subjecting the self to a rigorous critique of ingrained stereotypes, is that we end up preaching to others about “racism” without first admitting our problems. White supremacy has too often given way to moral supremacism in many western societies, leaping directly from the Holocaust to lecturing the world about “human rights” without even apologizing for the worst crimes of the 20th century. This is a kind of moral supremacy that seeks to inure these societies from deeper questions about how deep and widespread racist and antisemitic views are.

It used to be that when we said “that was decades ago” it was in the 1990s talking about the 1950s, some bygone era of lynchings. But it’s not some bygone era.

Interracial marriage was illegal in many US states up until the 1967 Supreme Court ruling. At least two US presidential candidates this year were in their 20s when it was still illegal for a black and white person to marry. Imagine that. This is within living memory. Now we pretend that some racist incidents in the 1990s was “long ago.” It wasn’t long ago. I was in my teens in those years. Unfortunately, too often societies have not even interrogated themselves about racism and antisemitism, preferring instead to just move rapidly on to claiming to be “diverse” societies where we are “opposed to racism.”

Yes, we are officially opposed. And then we have a member of a city council in Washington, DC, that believes the “Rothschilds” control the weather. And our response is to “educate” him by taking him to the Holocaust museum. Because he “made a mistake.”

How many racist mistakes – racist hand gestures, sign language, swastikas on bathroom stalls, war graves and everywhere else – do you need before it’s not a mistake.

On September 22, 1979, exactly forty years ago today, an American satellite detected two flashes of light in the Atlantic Ocean south of South Africa.

US military analysts at the Patrick Air Force Base in Florida who examined the data from satellite Vela 6911 quickly concluded the flashes were the unmistakable telltale sign of a nuclear detonation, and promptly notified the military chain of command.

Then-president Jimmy Carter was briefed on the apparent nuclear test on the same day, and convened top advisers and national security officials in the White House Situation Room the following morning.

A lengthy and detailed report published in Foreign Policy magazine on Sunday, the test’s 40th anniversary, argues that Carter then made a conscious decision to ignore the believed test, not wanting it to overshadow his foreign policy successes in an election year, and out of fear it could undermine the US backing — including massive military and financial support — that enabled the forging of the new Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty signed that year.

If Israel conducted a test that day in 1979, it could constitute a violation of the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which Israel had signed and ratified and which prohibited such tests above ground.

It could also mean, according to US nonproliferation laws, the almost automatic cancellation of US military and financial aid for the violating state, though a US president is allowed to waive the punishment.

In order to avoid the many problems raised by an Israeli nuclear test, the FP report argues, Carter decided to cover it up.

Leah Goldin, mother of captured IDF soldier Hadar Goldin, will address the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva later this week, calling on the international community to help return her son's remains.

This summer marked five years since Hadar was killed by Hamas during a UN ceasefire in Operation Protective Edge.

With each passing day, as the Palestinian terror group refuses to return Hadar (and the remains of another IDF soldier, Oron Shaul), Goldin says they continue to “cruelly torment our family, with their inhumanity seemingly knowing no bounds.”

The Human Rights Council session will coincide with the opening of the UN General Assembly in New York, where world leaders and heads of state will be gathering.

Although the primary responsibility for Hadar’s release rests with Hamas, Goldin will stress that the UN and the international community, under whose watch the ceasefire that took their son was enacted, “bears both moral and legal responsibility for his return.”

According to Goldin, there has been a “paradigm shift” in the way her son’s case must be approached, in the wake of the UN Security Council’s unanimous adoption this June of Resolution 2474, regarding the return of all persons reported missing in armed conflict.

Construction on the United Arab Emirates' first official synagogue will begin next year and be completed by 2022, according to local media reports.

The synagogue will be part of the multi-faith "Abrahamic Family House" complex in Abu Dhabi, which will also feature a mosque and church of which full construction will be completed in 2022, Abu Dhabi newspaper the National reported on Sunday.

The complex was announced in February following a visit by Pope Francis to the UAE, the first by a pontiff to the Arabian Peninsula.

Muslim UAE promotes itself as a center of tolerance and says it supports religious freedom and cultural diversity. However, the government does not allow dissent against its leadership and is criticized by human rights groups for jailing activists.

Though the synagogue will be the first in the UAE, a small Jewish community of expatriates currently use a house in Dubai for private worship.

Other official non-Muslim places of worship in the country include Christian churches, a Hindu temple and a Sikh Gurdwara.

The IDF officer killed in a botched Gaza raid last year was awarded a citation of merit for his actions during the operation.

The commendation for Lt.-Col. “M.” was presented to the parents, wife and children of the officer by IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi at the officer’s home along with the Head of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Tamir Heyman and other commanders.

M. earned the citation of merit for “acting with his team behind enemy lines with determination, level-headedness and courage in order to defend his comrades with initiative and fearlessness, for taking a lead role in dominating the enemy and for acting wisely in moving to dominate [the enemy],” the military said in a statement.

The team taking part in the intelligence operation in November in the southern Gazan city of Khan Yunis were identified by Hamas members, leading to a firefight in which M. was killed by friendly fire and saw another officer moderately injured. Six Hamas terrorists, including the Khan Yunis commander Nur Barakeh, were also killed in the firefight.

M.’s actions were credited with being crucial to the complicated rescue operation with Kochavi saying that his decisions stopped the situation from deteriorating even further.

Lebanese player Dominique Abi Nader, withdrawed from the 2019 Senior European Wrestling Championships, held in Bucharest, Romania, after refusing to play against Israel.

In this context, Lebanese Wrestling Federation, President, lawyer Omar Iskandarani, stressed that "the union rejects normalization with the Israeli enemy in any way."

Iskandarani told player Dominique Abi Nader "not to play and withdraw" from the tournament after the draw with an Israeli opponent, stressing his rejection to the normalization with the Israeli enemy.

He also congratulated Abu Nader on his patriotic spirit for his refusal to face the Israeli player and withdrawal from the championship.

Finally, Iskandarani will inform the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Olympic Committee of their decision.

Lebanese wrestler Dominique Abi Nader, has withdrawn from the 2019 Senior European Wrestling Championships, held in Bucharest, Romania, after refusing to play against an #Israeli participant #racistpic.twitter.com/psmZF94eHT

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 22, 2019

Israel’s national electric company said Sunday it has begun reducing power supplies to Palestinian areas of the West Bank due to a financial dispute.

The Israel Electric Corporation said that it took the step because the Jerusalem District Electricity Co., the Palestinians’ main power distributor, has debts of roughly $485 million.

Ali Hamodeh, an official with the Palestinian distributor, said power is expected to be cut for two hours daily in several Palestinian towns in the coming weeks.

He accused Israel of “exaggerating” the level of debt and called the power cuts a “political exploit.”

The Palestinians rely on Israel for nearly all of their electricity.

According to Al-Monitor, the Palestinian distributor received its first warning in August, prompting it to take out a NIS 100 million loan ($28.3 million) to repay a portion of its debt to the Israel Electric Corporation. This was deemed insufficient, however, and the IEC issued two additional warnings before taking action on Sunday to reduce power to Palestinian areas.

Palestinian officials have decried the step as a form of “collective punishment,” according to the official PA Wafa news agency.

According to the indictment, Halabi arranged for World Vision to overpay Atar’s agriculture business for its services, which would then return the extra money to him to give to the terror group.

Hanna said that Atar’s testimony is crucial because he can specifically explain that he and Halabi did not participate in a scheme to transfer funds to Hamas.

“He could totally undermine the accusations they made against Mohammed,” Hanna said. “He has begged Israel to allow him to go to the court and testify, but they have not permitted him to do so.”

An Israeli security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Atar submitted a request for a permit to enter Israel, but clarified that it was denied for security reasons.

The Shin Bet security service declined to respond to a request for comment on Atar and several other matters relating to the case.

Hanna said he now intends to ask Natan Zlotchover, the Beersheba District Court judge who is presiding over Halabi’s trial, to permit Atar to testify by video-conference.

Former deputy state prosecutor Yehoshua Resnick, however, said that Zlotchover almost certainly will not allow Atar to do so, because it would require cooperation between Israeli and Hamas-run courts.

Bild, Europe’s most-read newspaper (circulation over 1.5 million), described the role of the German Foreign Ministry as “shameful” in a blistering Friday commentary for its participation in a pro-Iran business conference in Berlin that the US government said supports terrorism.

The Bild article, penned by Björn Stritzel, noted that “Not even a week ago, Iran attacked one of the most important oil facilities in the world in Saudi Arabia. The attack cut global oil production by five percent and was the high point of Iranian terror against the global economy.”

He added that “While the Tehran regime plays with fire, Germany is also offering the mullahs a stage in Berlin! Yesterday, the Federal Foreign Office sent a business director [Miguel Berger] to a conference to give tips on how to cleverly bypass US sanctions against Iran. Every penny from the business deals that were initiated there [at the conference] flows directly into Tehran’s terrorist coffers, with which the mullahs oppress their own people.”

Stritzel said the Iran business takes place “All with the blessing of the German Foreign Ministry. This is not only shameful, but a slap in the face of all freedom-loving Iranians.”

US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, sharply criticized the German government on Tuesday, stating: “Thursday’s conference by the Maleki Corporate Group to promote trade with the Iranian regime is a dangerous move that will fund terrorism and undermine US sanctions.”

Grenell added, “Iran perpetuates gross human rights abuses against its own citizens, has planned and carried out terror attacks and assassinations on European soil, and is facilitating Assad’s war crimes in Syria. Now is not the time to promote business deals that will only send euros to the regime’s coffers at the expense of the Iranian people.”

Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of Iraq’s Sadrist movement, paid a visit to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s home in Iran for the Ashura ceremonies as part of his attempts to maneuver between Washington and Iraq’s complex and problematic relationship with Iran.

Over the past year, and especially in the wake of recent attacks on Popular Mobilization Forces (al-Hashd al-Shaabi) military targets in Iraq that were attributed to Israel, al-Sadr has sharply criticized Iran’s expansionist regional policy and its support for the Iraqi Shiite militias allied with Iran.

Since the election of Iraq’s former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to his second term of office in 2010, al-Sadr has tried to lead a policy of distancing Iraq from Iran and bringing it closer to the Arab world. Al-Sadr’s visit to Saudi Arabia in 2017 and his meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman caused a severe breach of relations with Iran.

Al-Sadr’s visit to Tehran was perceived as unusual and has even created differences of opinion among the Shiite communities in Iraq.

It is possible that during his visit to Iran al-Sadr is signaling that at the present time, when Iraq is facing many dangers threatening its security, he is the central personality of the Shiite community in Iraq.

Tensions grow over the continued operation of various Shiite militias and primarily al-Hashd al-Shaabi within Iraq, which is much to al-Sadr’s distaste as he foresees that this Iranian policy will eventually lead to a conflict with Israel on Iraqi territory and will sow destruction and disaster.

Mashhad Friday Sermon by Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda: The PMU, Hizbullah, Ansar Allah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Are All Iran; We Can Destroy Israel in Half a Day pic.twitter.com/wbuXbZnyGu

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 22, 2019

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leader’s latest rhetoric is Tehran saying “we can down your drones as well and show them off,” while quietly letting the media reports show how Iranian drone technology has enabled Iran or its allies to violate Saudi Arabia’s airspace.

Maj.-Gen. Hossein Salami made the speech during an exhibition of US drones that have been downed by Iran. This was an interesting tit-for-tat to Saudi displaying parts of the drones used in the September 14 attack.

The IRGC warned that any country that threatens Iran will become the “main battlefield,” which illustrates that Iran’s strategy will be to strike back hard and quickly in response to an attack. This is a coded warning to the entire Gulf, including key Saudi and US allies such as the UAE or Bahrain. It is likely a warning directly to Riyadh that the attack on Abqaiq is just a taste of what could come.

“Be careful, a limited aggression will not remain limited. We will pursue the aggressors,” said Salami. Tasnim news reported that Salami said Iran has only showed off a part of its capabilities. Symbolically, the IRGC chief gave his Saturday speech in front of an image of Iranian drones.

The overall message from Tehran is threefold: We can strike everywhere in the region, we will respond aggressively throughout the region to any attacks on us and we have already downed your drones – we have the technology to do worse. This is a serious moment for the US and their allies, because Washington doesn’t want to look like it is backing down.

But it has few good options and it doesn’t want its allies to pay the price for a war. It knows that discussions with Saudi Arabia have revealed that air defenses in the kingdom were unable to prevent this strike and two other long-distance drone strikes since May.

Khamenei's Special Military Advisor General Yahya Safavi: If We Are Attacked, We Will Respond from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean pic.twitter.com/M1SNCGwiCB

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 22, 2019

IRGC Commander-in-Chief General Hossein Salami: A Limited Attack on Iran Would Not Remain Limited; We Will Pursue and Punish Any Aggression to the End pic.twitter.com/AN0JuUU2s7

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 22, 2019

FIFA president Gianni Infantino said Sunday that world soccer’s governing body has been “assured” by Iranian authorities that women will be able to attend a World Cup qualifier in Tehran next month.

FIFA had demanded Iran allow women free unlimited access to stadiums following the “Blue girl” incident in which a woman killed herself after being arrested trying to access a soccer stadium.

“We have been assured, that as of the next international game of Iran, women will be allowed to enter football [soccer] stadiums,” Infantino told a FIFA conference on women’s soccer in Milan on Sunday.

FIFA wants Iran to end its ban on women entering stadiums, which breaches international soccer statutes prohibiting discrimination.

“We need to have women attending, we need to push for that with respect but in a strong and forceful way and we cannot wait anymore,” Infantino added.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) on Friday came to the defense of an anti-Israel activist voted off the Women's March board earlier in the week, telling her, "we have the truth on our side."

Tlaib took to Twitter to defend Zahra Billoo, the executive director of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Billoo, who was voted off the board after serving for two days, sent out a 25-tweet thread about the vote, where she blamed an "Islamophobic smear campaign" and "right-wingers" for the scrutiny she and her colleagues received.

#FreePalestine always sis! They won't silence us for speaking out against human rights violations. They will lie, smear our names and call us anti this and that, but we always be pro- humanity & we have the truth on our side. Stay strong @ZahraBilloohttps://t.co/Q921q5JFc4

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) September 20, 2019

Billoo, who has been a vocal supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), said the campaign against her was "driven by people who oppose me and my work challenging the occupation of Palestine, our country's perpetuation of unjust and endless wars, and law enforcement operations targeting the American Muslim community."

Ian Austin’s Mainstream commissioned polling from YouGov of Labour Party members and found a party that has moved on a long way from being Blair’s “political wing of the British people”. Corbyn’s Marxist Labour Party is very different and so are the members. Of course we knew they would nationalise and tax everything that moves and seek to muzzle the opposition press – there are however a whole raft of sentiments that are shocking.

YouGov’s poll of over 1,100 members shows how out of touch with Labour voters the middle-class lefties really are:
- 79% want to control who runs newspapers
- 69% think it would be legitimate for unions to stage a general strike to bring down a Tory government;
- TWO THIRDS believe the party doesn’t have a problem with anti-Semitism, OVER HALF believe the crisis is the fault of the media or Corbyn’s opponents;
- Members would rather do a post-Brexit trade deal with Russia than Israel!

If someone doesn’t take this down I’m coming down to Brighton myself to rip it down. @UKLabour you disgust me #LabourConference2019pic.twitter.com/n6dyojwwQL

— Tracy Ann Oberman (@TracyAnnO) September 22, 2019

Labour Party halls all lit up with the #Palestinian PSC flags pic.twitter.com/Exhyep6gFR

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 22, 2019

The U.S. Education Department told Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to revise its federally funded Middle East Studies program because of an alleged pro-Islam bias.

The assistant secretary for postsecondary education, Robert King, wrote in a letter to university officials last week that programs run by the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies appeared to be misaligned with the $235,000 federal grant it had received, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Federal resources offered to the program are part of Title VI funding, which strengthens diversity in international studies.

In June, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ordered a probe of the consortium, which sponsored an event in March titled “Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics and Possibilities” featuring supporters of boycotts against Israel.

Too few of the Duke-UN. programs focused on “the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yazidis, Kurds, Druze and others,” the department said.

There was “a considerable emphasis placed on understanding the positive aspects of Islam,” the letter also said, but of no other religion or culture. (h/t Yerushalimey)

Organizers of the Eurovision Song Contest said Saturday they had fined Iceland after the band it entered displayed scarves with Palestinian flags during the contest’s final in Israel.

Iceland’s group Hatari brandished scarves with Palestinian flags when the final results were being announced at the end of the event, which was held last May in Tel Aviv.

Contest organizers the European Broadcasting Union said Saturday in a statement sent to AFP that the gesture infringed their rules banning political gestures.

They declined to say how much they had fined Iceland’s public broadcaster, but said it was “in line with the rules of the competition.” The fine had also been upheld following an appeal it said.

Hatari is known for their opposition to Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territories.

Rule 2.6 of the competition stipulates that participants should do nothing to use it for political ends.

During the same event guest performer Madonna also provoked controversy when her dancers carried Israeli and Palestinian flags on their costumes.

As noted when he was previously featured in BBC content, despite those alleged “borders imposed on his life” Murad:
“…was educated in an American school in Jerusalem, attended Bridgewater College in Virginia [USA], and had his work sponsored by the United Nations’ Men and Women for Gender Equality program.”

None of that was however mentioned by Ralston, who went on to promote the notion of “Palestinians with an Israeli passport” even though the majority of Israeli Arabs do not self-identify as Palestinians.
“Since its launch four years ago, the spot has become a second home for Palestinians with an Israeli passport or those with documents allowing them to travel through Israel.”

Readers were told that:
“In cash-stripped [sic] Gaza, the smaller Palestinian territory, there are even fewer opportunities. Recording studios are scarce, and any equipment must be sourced from Egypt or Israel at an extraordinary premium. Hamada Nasrallah, vocalist for Sol, a seven-piece folk outfit from Gaza, explains that he had to sell off his possessions just to afford a guitar, only for it to be destroyed in the August 2018 Israeli bomb attacks on the Said al-Mishal Centre.”

Not only does that promoted link lead to a politicised and partisan report from the Guardian but readers were not informed that the ‘cultural centre’ was located in a building also used by Hamas’ interior security unit or that the strike came in response to over 180 missile attacks from the Gaza Strip against Israeli civilians.

The article failed to inform audiences that the reason why the population of the Gaza Strip suffers from a lack of electricity and clean water is internal feuding between Palestinian factions.

Two people were murdered and eight wounded in attacks during the month of August.

The BBC News website reported the August 7th murder of Dvir Sorek the following day but no follow-up reporting was seen until over two weeks later. The murder of Rina Shnerb and injury of two additional civilians in an IED attack on August 23rd was reported.

An incident which took place on the border with the Gaza Strip on August 1st and resulted in injuries to three members of the security forces did not receive any BBC coverage. A stabbing attack in Jerusalem in which a police officer was wounded on August 15th was not reported. A vehicular attack in Gush Etzion the next day in which two civilians were injured was ignored at the time but referred to in a report a week later.

None of the seven separate incidents of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip during August received any coverage on the BBC News website.

Between January and August 2019 the BBC News website reported 25.7% of the terror attacks which took place and 80% of the resulting fatalities. Four of those eight months saw no reporting on terrorism against Israelis whatsoever.

As Pittsburgh prepares to commemorate last year's deadly shooting at a synagogue, Jewish leaders say returning to the synagogue remains a priority.

While there is no set time frame, "it is indeed our goal we will one day return to Tree of Life," said Tree of Life's Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who was leading Shabbat services when the shooting began.

The three congregations that were attacked on Oct. 27 – Tree of Life, New Light, and Dor Hadash – now worship at two other synagogues.

Leaders from the congregations were gathering Friday to reflect on the past year and discuss plans for next month's observance.

The theme for the October commemoration is "Remember. Repair. Together." Events planned for Sunday, Oct. 27 – exactly one year after the massacre – include a private Jewish service in the morning, doing community service in the city, studying the portion of the Torah that was to be read when the shooting occurred, and a public memorial service in the evening.

"There is no intention to make this an anniversary. Anniversary indicates a happy event. This is not. We will commemorate to remember and repair together," said New Light's co-president, Stephen Cohen.

"Our hearts were torn 11 months ago, and healing does not occur overnight," he said. "Even now, there are family members who cannot even drive by the building – they are in so much pain. We look upon this day as a way of repairing that hurt."

A former college student will stand trial on charges he opened fire with an assault rifle inside a Southern California synagogue, killing one woman and injuring three people last April, a judge ruled Friday.

John T. Earnest had no reaction when San Diego Superior Court Judge Peter Deddeh ruled that a trial will proceed for Earnest on murder and attempted murder charges in the attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue during services on the last day of Passover.

Earnest, 20, will also be tried on an arson charge for a fire at a nearby mosque that happened before the synagogue shooting.

Prosecutors on Thursday played a 12-minute recording of the gunman calmly telling a 911 dispatcher that he had just shot up a synagogue to save white people from Jews.

Earnest could face the death penalty if he is convicted of murder as a hate crime, although prosecutors haven't said whether they will pursue capital punishment.

The 911 recording was heard publicly for the first time at Thursday's dramatic hearing, which included playing the surveillance video of the shooting and a congregant describing how he confronted the gunman and chased him away

A man has been handed a 12-month suspended sentence for sticking antisemitic posters to the outside of a Chabad synagogue.

Shehroz Iqbal, 27, pleaded guilty to displaying written material that is “threatening, abusive or insulting, intending thereby to stir up racial hatred”, contrary to the Public Order Act.

At Snaresbrook Crown Court on Friday he was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years, 30 days’ rehabilitation activity, 60 hours of unpaid work and a £100 fine for breaching a previous sentence.

On the evening of March 17 2017, Iqbal, who was dressed in camouflage and a hoody, taped the posters to the walls of an underpass near Gants Hill underground station, in Redbridge, east London.

A member of the public then saw Iqbal, of Kenwood Gardens in Ilford, walk towards the nearby Chabad Lubavitch Centre, to which he attached more antisemitic posters.

Should We Bomb Auschwitz? This BBC documentary is worth watching to help understand this historic atrocity. It also has lessons for today. https://t.co/80bWFsYPUd

— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) September 22, 2019

The oldest Austrian Holocaust survivor, who lived through four concentration camps, has died at the age of 106, Vienna’s Jewish Community organization (IKG) said Friday.

Marko Feingold, who survived Auschwitz, in Nazi-occupied Poland, and three German concentration camps, died in the city of Salzburg on Thursday after a lung infection, Austrian news agency APA reported.

Despite his advanced age, Feingold had remained active in speaking out about the Holocaust, taking part in numerous conferences and events for schoolchildren.

“I must have spoken to around half a million people all in all,” he told AFP in a 2018 interview, adding he swore to himself in Auschwitz that he would tell his story.

Why would a Hollywood mogul who produced films such as “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” become involved in bringing German Jewish refugees to the United States in the 1930s?

Because Carl Laemmle understood, earlier and more clearly than most Americans, that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were preparing to carry out an all-out war against the Jews. On this week’s 80th anniversary of Laemmle’s passing, his little-known efforts to help Jewish refugees are worth recalling.

Laemmle immigrated to the United States from the German town of Laupheim in 1884. He was the founder, in 1912, of Universal Pictures, the studio responsible for such blockbuster films as “All Quiet on the Western Front,"“The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” and the aforementioned horror classics.

Laemmle experienced the Nazi menace even before Adolf Hitler rose to power. The Berlin premiere of “All Quiet on the Western Front” in December 1930 was violently disrupted by a Nazi mob led by future propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. They claimed the film’s account of World War I made Germany look bad.

Laemmle repeatedly sought to raise the alarm about the dangers of Nazism. In January 1932 – more than a year before Hitler became chancellor of Germany – Laemmle outlined his fears in a letter to newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, who had published occasional columns by Hitler.

“I am almost certain that Hitler’s rise to power, because of his obvious militant attitude toward the Jews, would be the signal for a general physical onslaught on many thousands of defenseless Jewish men, women, and children in Germany, and possibly in Central Europe as well,” Laemmle warned.

The love affair continues between Azerbaijan and the Jews, as a monument is unveiled to an Azeri Jewish military hero, Albert Agarunov. But the Azeris' Armenian adversaries are not impressed, and the comments thread on this JNS News story is replete with insults from Armenian readers.

On Dec. 8, 1991, Agarunov and his driver, Agababa Huseynov, managed to disable nine Armenian tanks and two armored trucks.

During another skirmish, Agarunov managed to disable two tanks by a method called the “Jewish sandwich” by his comrades.

He was wanted by the Armenians, who allegedly offered 5 million rublуs to catch him. In 1992, he voluntarily served in the Karabakh war; on May 8 of that year, he was killed by a sniper’s bullet.

He won awards from his country; a school in Baku is named after him; and in 2017, a memorial plaque was erected in front of his home.

A Jewish travel vlogger met with legendary professional Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao earlier this week to talk about Judaism and later posted a video of their discussion on YouTube.

Drew Binsky said he was “very surprised” to see how interested Pacquiao, 40, was in Judaism, having studied the religion and also the Hebrew language. The famed boxer talked about supporting Jews by saying, “Jewish people, we support, we help [them] because that’s the promise of G-d, that whoever bless you will be blessed and whoever cursed you will be cursed.”

Blinksy spent over an hour talking to Pacquiao even though he was told he would only have two minutes with the boxer. During their conversation, Pacquiao showed off his Hebrew skills by reciting a few blessings and also revealed he would be visiting Israel this year. He has been to Israel many times in the past and said he was very familiar with the country’s history.

Binksy arranged the sit-down with Pacquiao with the help of Filipino Jewish musician Mike Hanopol, who was already scheduled to meet Pacquiao that day. Pacquiao had asked Hanpolo to produce a few songs in Hebrew for him.

Israel's national baseball team secured its participation in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics following a crucial match against South Africa on Sunday, marking a historic moment for the Jewish state.

Sunday's match ended with a score of 11-1 in Israel's favor.

On its way to the historic milestone, Israel played against Italy and the Czech Republic in a tournament that reached its peak over the weekend, with Israel almost eliminated Friday.

Ultimately, though, Israel managed to get a ticket to Tokyo after winning 5 out of 6 games in the tournament.

Israel is the only country so far that has managed to win a spot at the Summer Games in this field. Japan, as the host, automatically qualified.

Only five other national baseball teams will get to compete for a medal in the summer games.

The Israeli baseball squad comprises mostly American Jews who already play in leagues in the United States.

Dozens of Israeli settlers stormed the area of ​​Bab Al-Zawiya and Beersheba Street in the center of Hebron. According to witnesses, large numbers of settlers stormed the center of Hebron through the military roadblock at the entrance to the Martyrs Street towards Beersheba Street , under the protection of the occupation army, which closed the area.
They pointed out that the Israeli army prevented citizens from moving to ensure the access of settlers to the so-called "Hebron" tomb, where they performed Talmudic prayers.

The border police barricaded the area with armored vehicles while a group of settlers from the illegal outposts within al-Khalil, some of them carrying automatic weapons, exited the checkpoint and walked to a destination within the Palestinian administered part of the city.

— CPT Palestine (@cptpalestine) September 19, 2019

An elderly woman who was seriously injured by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip last November has died of her injuries.

Nina Gisdenanova, 74, from Ashkelon, was in a four-story building that took a direct hit from a rocket during a barrage of hundreds of projectiles fired by Palestinian terror groups in Gaza over a 24-hour period.

Gisdenanova died last week at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer.

It is noteworthy that the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, rained settlements "Israeli" and especially the city of "Ashkelon" hundreds of rockets, in response to the crimes and attacks of the occupation against the Palestinians.

In presenting my own views, I should first define what I mean by anti-Semitism because of the fuzziness that prevails in contemporary discussions of anti-Semitism in Islam. This fuzziness emanates especially from representatives of the counter-myth school, for whom every nasty expression about Jews in the Qur’an, the hadith and other Arabic literature, and every instance of harsh treatment or violence experienced by Jews in the past, is deemed anti-Semitic. But this is decidedly not anti-Semitism. It is, rather, the typical, though nonetheless unsavory, loathing for the“other” found in most societies even today, a disdain that, in the Middle Ages, was shared by all three Western monotheistic religions in relation to pagans and rival monotheist claimants to divine exclusivity and the right to dominate society.

The proper definition of anti-Semitism, which is shared by most students of the subject, is a religiously based complex of irrational, mythical, and stereotypical beliefs about the diabolical, malevolent, and all-powerful Jew, infused, in its modern, secular form, with racism and the belief that there is a Jewish conspiracy against mankind. Defined this way, I can say with a great deal of confidence, in agreement with other seasoned scholars, that such anti-Semitism did not exist “under the crescent” in the medieval Muslim world.

After completing meetings with party representatives to hear their recommendations as to who should form the next government, and with neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz receiving majority support in the new Knesset, President Reuven Rivlin on Monday issued an invitation for a meeting between the two in an attempt to move forward in the coalition-building process.

Netanyahu and Gantz both confirmed that they would attend the meeting, called for Monday evening.

Shortly after Rivlin’s appeal, Netanyahu, speaking at a Likud party faction meeting at the Knesset, said that “the only government that can be formed is a broad unity government” between his Likud and the centrist Blue and White.

Netanyahu, who received 55 MK recommendations to Gantz’s 54, made his own plea for Gantz to agree to a meeting “to achieve unity and compromise between the national camp headed by me… and the left-wing camp headed by Gantz.”

Gantz has so far rejected an invitation to meet with the prime minster “with no preconditions,” a call Netanyahu made immediately after signing an agreement according to which his Likud party and all the parties on the religious right agreed to only enter a coalition as a single unit and negotiate the terms of the new government together.

whom to task with forming the next government, with no candidate securing the backing of the necessary 61-strong majority needed for a governing coalition.

After the final two parties that Rivlin consulted with, the center-left Labor-Gesher and left-wing Democratic Camp, recommended Benny Gantz as expected, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has the support of 55 lawmakers in the 120-member Knesset to Gantz’s 54. That seemingly gives the incumbent leader a slight edge over his rival, although Gantz’s Blue and White party is bigger than Netanyahu’s Likud.

Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party is in the kingmaker position with its eight seats, having refrained from recommending either candidate. The three-member Arab faction Balad within the Joint List also opted to back neither Netanyahu nor Gantz.

Rivlin is expected to try to force a unity government comprising Likud and Blue and White, although significant disputes remain as to who would be prime minister and what other parties would be members of such a coalition. He is expected to make a decision later this week or early next week.

Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman said a unity government was no longer a question, after meeting with Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz ahead of talks between the two prime ministerial candidates initiated by President Reuven Rivlin and set to take place Monday evening.

Liberman said the only point of contention remaining between Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was who would lead the unity government as prime minister first.

Netanyahu and Gantz both lack majority support to form government, after Rivlin consulted over the past two days with parties elected to the Knesset in last week’s elections.

Liberman has refrained from recommending either one as a candidate for prime minister.

The secularist Yisrael Beytenu leader campaigned on forcing a unity government between his party, Likud and Blue and White if neither could build a coalition without him and now holds the balance of power in the Knesset with Gantz and Netanyahu likely needing his support to secure a ruling majority.

On Tuesday, Arab voters flocked to the polls, defying expectations of a low turnout.

Arab turnout skyrocketed compared to the April 9 election, reaching 59% on Tuesday, almost as high as the Jewish turnout.

This could suggest that the Israeli Arabs are no longer trying to distance themselves from the state's institutions.

Although Arab voters voted for the Joint Arab List, the only Arab list on the ballot, their high turnout sent a message to the Jewish public. The Arab voters essentially said that they viewed themselves as Israelis and want to take part in the Israeli experience.

Likewise, during the campaign Arab candidates put aside their solidarity with the Palestinian Authority in its struggle against Israel, and scaled back their rhetoric on changing Israel’s Jewish character.

Instead, the Arab politicians campaigned on better education, employment, housing, education and so forth, highlighting the need to address the festering problems in the Arab sector.

Arab candidates had realized that their attempt to drive a wedge between Arabs and Jews and their refusal to accept Israel as the nation-state of the Jews were turning off voters. Consequently, they figured they could only win back the Arab street if they changed the discourse and promised a course correction.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned his Likud MKs in a closed-door meeting on Monday that the current political dispute could take months to resolve.

Netanyahu told the MKs that the most likely scenario if the current situation does not change is that President Reuven Rivlin would ask either him or Blue and White leader Benny Gantz to form a government and then the other would be given a chance and they both would fail. He said that only after both failures would he be given another chance and succeed.

According to MKs present in the meeting, Netanyahu said that whoever gets the mandate third would definitely form a government so it would better to avoid months of political tension and form a government now.

Tom Gross on the media obsession with Israel (Sunday Sept. 22, 2019, ILTV) Why barely any mention in the western media that the US military admits killing over 30 innocent Afghan farmers in a drone strike three days ago? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/0... Why the obsession in the NY Times with Israel and not with West Papua where up to half a million people have died (and thousands raped) since it was illegally occupied by the Indonesia militarily in 1963.

President Reuven Rivlin will subtract Balad, one of the parties making up the Joint List, from the recommendations for Blue and White leader Benny Gantz to be prime minister, his spokesman said Monday morning.

The statement came after his legal advisers investigated whether Balad can revoke its three MKs’ recommendation.

This puts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the lead, with 55 recommendations to Gantz’s 54.

The remaining Knesset seats belong to Yisrael Beytenu, which chose to recommend no one, because neither candidate committed to forming a Likud-Blue and White-Yisrael Beytenu coalition.

The Joint List recommended Gantz – the first candidate it supported since Yitzhak Rabin in 1992 – in the name of all 13 MKs on Sunday evening.

Soon after, Balad released a statement that it does not support the recommendation, but Joint List leader Ayman Odeh said the recommendation is still in the name of all 13 MKs.

Later, Joint List faction chairman Ahmed Tibi sent Rivlin a letter taking back Balad’s recommendations.

This is incorrect, @Guardian. Not all of the Joint Arab List provided an endorsement of Benny Gantz for PM. One of the component parties, Balad, refuse to endorse either candidate. As things stand, Gantz is expected to received 54 recommendations.https://t.co/ZnWeCjCQZcpic.twitter.com/ZXD8wuSuZi

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 23, 2019

Beautiful thought about “shared future”, not shared by Arab politicians in any Arab-majority country, all of which have entirely expelled or made conditions intolerable for Jews. Plus the Palestinian Authority, which seeks to perpetuate Jordan’s ethnic cleansing of Jews. https://t.co/ZRhmV7B8F3

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) September 22, 2019

Our alliance of Arab parties has finally reached its fateful conclusion in the ongoing drama of the recent parliamentary elections: we have told President Rivlin that we back Benny Gantz as incoming prime minister, provided that at the same time we can have him charged with practicing genocide.

You must understand our predicament. We prefer anyone to Netanyahu, whose rhetoric in recent years has made us as Palestinian-Israelis (a term I wield as a cudgel despite the majority of Arab-Israelis preferring not to identify specifically as Palestinian) feel insecure in our citizenship, safety, and civil rights, though it can be difficult to point to anything specific he has done that changes our legal status one iota. No matter. We dislike him enough to recommend someone else, almost anyone else, as long as that recommendation comes with a way to get someone in the dock for oppressing Palestinians. Rampant unemployment, crime, misogyny, and other major issues plague the Arab sector in this country, but you know how it is. Priorities.

The main thing for us involves getting rid of Netanyahu, of course. The specific identity of his preferred replacement as Gantz matters less, but that does not render it unimportant. Politics has always been the art of the possible, which necessitates compromise. We in the Joint List have no illusions that anyone who garners enough votes to unseat Netanyahu will come from our little corner of the political map. But we can establish, and have established, certain essential red lines on which we will not compromise, chief among them that Benny Gantz be indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, or whatever. The specific nature of the charges we have in mind is less crucial than having an Israeli leader indicted for defending Jews.

Abbas to German leaders:
We “act to spread the culture of peace and battle terror in our region and the world”
Abbas to Palestinians about terrorists:
"We view the Martyrs and prisonersas stars in the sky of the Palestinian people”
Op-ed lauds Abbas as “the president of peace, the human president”

The modus operandi of the Palestinian Authority is to pretend to be peace-seekers when meeting foreign audiences, while lauding terrorists and “Martyrs” who died murdering Israelis when facing the Palestinian home audience.

The technique is fundamental to the PA leadership’s diplomacy. When PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas recently met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, he claimed the PA is “spreading the culture of peace”:
“The president emphasized [to Merkel] that we will continue to act to build our national institutions according to the rule of law, and also act to spread the culture of peace and battle terror in our region and the world, regardless of its source. He condemned the use of violence against civilians and emphasized that all of the monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - must be honored equally, and all forms of racism and discrimination must be rejected." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 30, 2019]

Were this statement true, Abbas would actively be speaking out against Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli civilians. But to the contrary, Abbas encourages terror and promises terrorists that "Martyrs" will "reach Paradise" and that the wounded will be “rewarded by Allah.” Abbas lauds and praises those who follow this call to violence, and emphasizes that they are “stars in the sky,” “the most sacred,” and “sanctified.”Moreover, Abbas’ party Fatah is using its official Facebook page to promote terror.

The following are some examples of Abbas lauding terrorists and "Martyrs":

Mainstream media outlets have derided President Trump’s yet-to-be-released Israeli-Palestinian peace plan as a “sideshow divorced from reality” that is “destined to fail,” and it’s become fashionable to attribute this to the shortcomings of his soon-to-be-departed Middle East special envoy, Jason Greenblatt. But claims that Greenblatt “wasn’t the right guy” for the job are dead wrong. Whatever the outcome of the plan, he has arguably done more to advance the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians than any American diplomat in recent memory.


Though coming into government with comparatively little knowledge of, or experience dealing with, the Middle East, Greenblatt keenly understood that the primary source of the festering conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is the unwillingness of Palestinian leaders to accept a Jewish state as a legitimate political entity. Hamas and Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders may disagree over tactics and political vision, but they share an absolute rejection of living alongside Israelis as equals, and thus see no need to tone down the viciously anti-Semitic content of their educational curriculum, halt violent anti-Israel incitement on state-run media outlets, or take other steps essential to a good-faith conflict resolution.

For a quarter century, Greenblatt’s predecessors glossed over such harsh realities in their zeal to coax PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and his successor as Palestinian Authority (PA) president, Mahmoud Abbas, into signing agreements and smiling for the cameras. Much of the language used to do the glossing has changed little. In 1988, U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz coached Arafat on the words he needed to utter so that the Reagan administration could say the PLO had “renounced” terrorism. Nearly three decades later, President Obama and his Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, could be found repeating the mantra that Abbas had “long since renounced violence” — never mind that the bloodiest period of Palestinian terrorism was sandwiched between. As rejectionism and incitements to violence running rampant in Palestinian society continually thwarted any movement toward peace, high-level U.S. diplomats continued their incessant glossing.

From his first days on the job, rather than parroting the false narratives and biased framings that had become staples of ineffective American diplomacy, Greenblatt set out to publicly discredit them.

This is most striking in his use of terminology. In his frequent public statements, Greenblatt rejected both the term “occupied” to describe disputed territories controlled by Israel and the word “settlements” to describe Jewish towns and villages there. He pointedly abstained from using the term “refugees” to describe the 5.4 million Palestinians registered by UNRWA, on the grounds that “only a very small fraction” of them are true refugees who fled their homes during the 1948 war for Israel’s independence.

A bill that would sanction sponsors of Palestinian terrorism was watered down significantly after a lobbying campaign by the Palestinian Authority and Qatar targeted Bronx Rep. Eliot Engel, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, public filings show.

When the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act was first introduced by Florida Republican Brian Mast in 2017, the bill called out Qatar for aiding and abetting terrorists.

“Hamas has received significant financial and military support from Qatar. Qatar has hosted multiple senior Hamas officials, including Hamas leader Khaled Mashal since 2012,” it read.

“Qatar, a longtime US ally, has for many years openly financed Hamas, a group that continues to undermine regional stability,” US Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen said in language which was also included.

The bill made it out of committee, but never onto the floor for a vote.

28 years after being revoked by #UNGA , the PA representative in Geneva praised res. 3379, which claimed that Zionism is Racism, taking us back to the @UN's darkest days!

These poisonous words cannot remain unanswered. They must be condemned. #CERD#HRC42@UNHumanRightspic.twitter.com/9KcDovXfSN

— Israel in UN/Geneva (@IsraelinGeneva) September 23, 2019

Dictators opening #UNGA on Tuesday:
🇪🇬 Abdel Al Sisi, President of Egypt
🇹🇷 Recep Erdoğan, President of Turkey
🇶🇦 Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, Emir of Qatar
🇧🇴 Evo Morales, President of Bolivia
🇯🇴 Abdullah II, King of Jordan

1 dictator, 1 vote, is the UN's idea of democracy. pic.twitter.com/lxDHJW9u1k

— Hillel Neuer - watching #UNGA #UNGA74 (@HillelNeuer) September 22, 2019

Today as world leaders gather at #UNGA, we're placing "The Future of UNRWA" on the international agenda at the UNHRC. Featuring #UNRWA General Counsel James G. Lindsay (2002-2007) & Dr. Einat Wilf, co-author of "The War of Return: The Battle over the Palestinian Refugee Problem." pic.twitter.com/EpWmnvCrQ8

— Hillel Neuer - watching #UNGA #UNGA74 (@HillelNeuer) September 23, 2019

UNRWA regional director proud he forced 10-year-old students to thank his chief “for his relentless efforts,” about which they could not know, and which the world knows is a lie because 4 donor states froze funds over said chief’s abuse of power, sexual misconduct & corruption. https://t.co/gZH5eeQvJR

— Hillel Neuer - watching #UNGA #UNGA74 (@HillelNeuer) September 23, 2019

Washington refused to grant a travel visa to Lebanon's Health Minister Jamil Jabak, a representative of Hizbullah in the government, ahead of a visit to New York to attend the UN General Assembly as part of the official delegation accompanying President Michel Aoun.

The U.S. has been tightening economic sanctions on individuals and entities directly or indirectly involved with Hizbullah.

Earlier reports said that Jabak was the personal doctor of Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.

A lawsuit has been filed against Turkish bank Kuveyt Türk Katilim Bankasi A.Ş. for aiding and abetting Hamas terror activity. One of the bank’s largest shareholders is the Government of Turkey, which has permitted Hamas to operate within its borders.

Stein Mitchell Beato & Missner LLP, Osen LLC, and MM~LAW LLC have been successful in bringing banks and corporations that fund and equip terrorists to justice or securing compensation for victims of terror.

This case is one of many seeking to bring international banks that have provided material support to or aided and abetted terror organizations to justice.

The lawsuit states that "Plaintiffs allege that Kuveyt Bank aided and abetted the Islamic Resistance
Movement ('Hamas'), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization that murdered Eitam Henkin and Naama Henkin and injured their children, by knowingly providing it substantial assistance via financial services during the relevant period. Kuveyt Bank aided and abetted Hamas knowing its own role in facilitating funds transfers through the international and U.S. financial systems on Hamas' behalf and fully aware of Hamas’ violent activities."

While driving in Judea and Samaria in 2015, the Henkin family was shot to death by terrorists in another vehicle. The terrorists, all of whom have admitted to being members of a Hamas terrorist cell, murdered parents Rabbi Eitam Henkin and his wife Na’ama, while their children, ages nine, seven, four, and ten months, looked on from the back seat of the car. The children survived after Rabbi Henkin – a citizen of the United States – fought back against the terrorists to defend his family and one of the terrorists suffered a friendly fire injury.

A woman severely injured in a rocket attack last November in southern Israel has died from her wounds.

74-year-old Nina Gisdenanova from Ashkelon was severely wounded after her building sustained a direct hit from a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip. She had been in a coma at Sheba Hospital at Tel Hashomer for 10 months.

The municipality of Ashkelon was quoted by Ynet news as expressing sorrow for her death, saying that “upon learning of her passing, teams are in contact with the family and providing them with the necessary assistance.”

Ashkelon mayor Tomer Glam was quoted as telling Gisdenanova’s son Igor that, “unfortunately, we lost another resident in the never ending war with terrorist organizations in Gaza. Hopefully she will be the last victim. The municipality will continue to help and provide the dear family with everything it needs at this difficult time.”

Gisdenanova was one of two civilians killed during the round of violence between Israel and terror groups in the Hamas-run coastal enclave, which broke out following a botched IDF intelligence raid in Khan Younis.

The barrages began after a Kornet anti-tank missile was fired toward a bus full of soldiers at the Black Arrow Memorial Site in the Sha’ar Hanegev region. A 19-year-old soldier was transferred to Soroka hospital in Beersheba in critical condition after he was hit standing near the bus.

Over 460 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip toward southern Israeli communities as well as the Dead Sea and the West Bank’s Hebron Hills.

An Israeli man was hit in the face and injured while driving in the northern West Bank when a rock crashed through his windshield and hit him in the face.

The driver, a 23-year-old Israel Defense Forces officer who was on leave, was driving with his father near the settlement of Maale Shomron on Friday afternoon. He was taken to a hospital in Petah Tikvah and required surgery. The officer lost consciousness after being hit with the rock, and his father had to take over the wheel and pull the car over, he told the Israel National News website.

There were several reports of rocks being thrown at cars bearing yellow Israeli license plates in the area.

A day earlier, three firebombs were thrown at a car driving on the road between Maale Shomron and the Palestinian village of Azzun on the way to the settlement outpost of El Matan. It was in the same place five years earlier that a firebomb hit a car carrying a father and his 11-year-old daughter. Ayala Shapira was severely burned in the attack.

The IDF on Sunday released a recording made by an Air Force helicopter during the rescue of a Special Forces unit from the Gaza Strip, November 11, 2018.

In the recording, the pilot can be heard refusing to take off until all the soldiers are accounted for, despite heavy Hamas gunfire.

On Sunday, Lt. Col. M., 41, who was killed by friendly fire in the operation, was awarded a Chief of Staff Citation posthumously. In a private ceremony, his widow, children and parents accepted the award from IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi.

The IDF issued a clipped statement saying M. was “an example of outstanding bravery, courage, and sacrifice.”

Another soldier who was injured during the same IDF clandestine operation inside the Gaza Strip was also awarded the same citation.

Al-Qassam Brigades battalion commander Nour Baraka, 37, was killed together with six other Hamas terrorists, and seven Hamas men were wounded in the operation.

Israel is denying entry to most players on a Gaza soccer team scheduled to play a West Bank team later this week.

The Shin Bet security agency says a security check turned up information pointing to "most" of the team's "links to terrorism." It did not elaborate.

Gisha, an Israeli rights group, says an Israeli court sided with the state on Monday, meaning Wednesday's scheduled game is unlikely to take place.

Gazans have lived under a blockade since Hamas seized power in 2007 and must seek permits to leave. Critics say these are increasingly harder to come by and are withheld arbitrarily. Israel disputes this and says it grants tens of thousands of permits for Gazans "uninvolved in terror."

The Palestinian Authority (PA)’s violent treatment of the gay community under its rule offers a gloomy reminder of this community’s difficult situation in most Muslim countries.

On August 18, the PA barred the Al Qaws (Rainbow) organization, which combines several LGBT groups, from holding an event in the Nablus area.

Palestinian policemen not only forcibly prevented the gathering but issued a harsh and threatening warning to members of the gay community. They asked citizens to provide the police with any information they might have about the organization’s activities, and made the following statement:

The Palestinian police will prevent the holding of the event and notes that it did not know about the similar previous events that were held in Nablus. The event in question is not suitable to the conservative nature of the city and will offend the values of the local population and the city of Nablus…The event, if held, will constitute an affront to the tradition and a blow to the values that Palestinian society has upheld throughout its history.

The police spokesman went on to warn that anyone connected to the event would be prosecuted, and promised full confidentiality to anyone providing the police with information that might lead to prosecutions.

In the Palestinian Authority, gay activists and the LGBT community at large are subjected to continual and severe persecution. This persecution comes directly from the PA itself, which is supposed to prevent discrimination and protect all its citizens.

In Al-Aqsa Mosque Address, Palestinian Sheikh Abu Mahdi Baydoun Calls on Soldiers, Officers in Muslim Armies to Overthrow Muslim Leaders, Support Those Who Strive to Establish an Islamic State pic.twitter.com/Lu2hWwUV5N

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 23, 2019

The U.S. Navy, responding to the Iranian attack on a Saudi Arabian oil field, recently sent a destroyer to the Middle East to demonstrate its willingness to defend its allies. But, write Tony Badran and Jonathan Schanzer, the fact that the ship was dispatched not to the Persian Gulf but to Beirut highlights the confusion of American policy toward Lebanon. For at least a decade, policymakers in Washington have hoped that supporting the country and its armed forces could give it the political and military power to rein in Hizballah, the Iran-backed guerrilla group that operates from its territory. Instead, the opposite has happened:

The institution receiving the most U.S. support, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), has worked hand in hand with Hizballah nationwide. It has deployed jointly alongside Hizballah fighters battling Sunni militants both in Lebanese cities and on the border with Syria. It has laid down supporting fire [for the terrorist group] using U.S.-provided weapons and ammunition. UN Security Council Resolution 1701, passed in 2006 [at the end of Israel’s Second Lebanon War], called for Lebanon to disarm Hizballah. Instead, the LAF looked the other way when Hizballah spent two years digging subterranean cross-border attack tunnels into Israel. The LAF allowed the import through Lebanon’s international airport of technology, flown in by Iranian planes, to upgrade Hizballah’s projectiles into precision-guided missiles. Hizballah controls large parts of the country, even where the LAF is deployed.

The problem isn’t only a lack of control—it’s collusion. Israel recently exposed a Hizballah precision-rocket facility in eastern Lebanon. The site of the Iran-led project is a short drive away from an LAF base, where the U.S. has delivered equipment, including ScanEagle reconnaissance drones. The base also hosts the U.S.- and UK-funded Land Border Training Center, designed to help the LAF secure Lebanon’s porous border. Hizballah, with Iran’s assistance, built a missile facility next door.

The State Department has long classified Lebanon as a “safe haven for terrorism.” In fact, it is something worse. With the banks, the military, and the government itself answering to a terrorist organization, Lebanon is fully entwined with Hizballah. The Trump administration deserves praise for going after dirty Lebanese banks. It’s time to . . . acknowledge Lebanon as the Hizballah state, and act accordingly.

The IAEA first ignored the reports. This should not come as a surprise: the IAEA has a long history of misreporting the Islamic Republic's compliance with the deal and declining to follow up on credible reports about Iran's illicit nuclear activities. Iran's clandestine nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak were revealed by the opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

In any event, after a significant amount of pressure was imposed on the IAEA, and after the IAEA's chief passed away and Iran was reportedly able to moving the suspected materials out of the secret nuclear facility, inspection of the site was recently implemented.

What was the outcome? Even though the Iranian leaders had cleaned up the facility, the IAEA's inspectors were able to detect traces of radioactive uranium at the site. Israel's warning and other reports had proved accurate.

Now, Tehran is declining to answer the IAEA's questions about the secret facility. More importantly, one of the most basic requirements of the nuclear deal (while it lasted) was that Iran had to reveal its nuclear activities to the IAEA -- a condition with it even overtly failed to comply.

In other words, the detection of radioactive particles in Turquz Abad, Iran's reluctance to answer simple questions about the secret facility and non-partisan evidence about Iran's nuclear activities at the location, all point to the fact that Tehran was most likely violating the nuclear deal since it was reached.

Where, you may ask, are the strong advocates of the nuclear deal after the new evidence revealed that Iran has long been violating the nuclear deal and pursuing its nuclear ambitions? They are silent.

The international community would truly do itself a great service to recognize that the nuclear deal was nothing more than a pro-mullah agreement which provided Iran's ruling clerics with billions of dollars to pursue their anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Iranian people and pro-terror activities, while simultaneously providing cover for Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

From the day Emmanuel Macron entered the French Presidential Palace in May 2017, he has tried to improve France's image in the international arena and play a central role in resolving conflicts. Macron is essentially the only leader on the Continent who is capable of "restoring the former glory" of the European community, maintaining friendly relations with all sides, and negotiating directly and equally with the leaders of the great powers.

Macron seeks to return to the doctrine of Gen. Charles de Gaulle, which entails following an independent foreign policy that will conform to that of the U.S. and the West only when it is in the interests of France. He has proposed giving Iran a credit line of $15 billion.

Despite their closeness to Iran, the French have always preferred the Sunni camp to the Shiites. During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, France wholeheartedly supported Saddam Hussein. It supplied him with weapons and even a nuclear reactor (that was destroyed by Israel in 1981).

Macron's primary motivation is economic. Since the imposition of new U.S. sanctions, the export of French products to Iran has fallen by 42%. France is the third-largest exporter to Iran in Europe after Germany and Italy. Total Energy and Renault built factories in Iran, employing thousands of locals. However, today both factories are almost idle.

The French president's diplomatic moves are dangerous because Iran would receive the removal of the sanctions on a silver platter and financial credit even before talks began.

Israel's recent discoveries of clandestine Iranian nuclear sites and Iran's continued subversive operations in Syria, Iraq, and especially in Lebanon with the construction of accurate missiles for Hizbullah obligate the international community to consider the dangers that could threaten the Jewish state rather than looking only at economic gain.

Saudi Arabia has restored more than 75 percent of crude output lost after attacks on its facilities and will return to full volumes by early next week, a source briefed on the latest developments told Reuters on Monday.

Saudi’s oil production from its Khurais plant is now at more than 1.3 million barrels per day, while current production from its Abqaiq plant is at about 3 million bpd, the source said.

The Sept. 14 attacks on the Abqaiq and Khurais plants, some of the kingdom’s biggest, caused raging fires and significant damage that halved the crude output of the world’s top oil exporter, by shutting down 5.7 million barrels per day of production.

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman and the chief executive of state oil company Aramco, Amin Nasser, have said the output will be fully back online by the end of September.

The kingdom has managed to recover supplies to customers to the levels they were at prior to the attacks by drawing from its huge oil inventories and offering other crude grades from other fields, Saudi officials said.

No casualties were reported at the sites even though thousands of workers and contractors work and live in the area.

Saudi said it would ensure full oil supply commitments to its customers. The kingdom ships more than 7 million bpd to global destinations every day, and for years has served as the supplier of last resort to markets.

Saudi FM Adel Al-Jubeir: The International Community Must Stand Firmly against Iran; Loans, Money Transfers, Normalization Only Encourage Iranian Hostility pic.twitter.com/cLuorajd78

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 23, 2019

Both ostensibly and legally, the Omar Shakir case coming before the Israeli High Court on September 24 is not about Human Rights Watch (HRW) per se. The formal question is whether Shakir, the “Israel and Palestine Director” at HRW, violated both the terms of his visa and the law that mandates the exclusion from Israel of leaders of the BDS movement.

The government’s case, reinforced by amicus briefs filed by Israeli watchdog groups (including NGO Monitor), includes overwhelming evidence of Shakir’s BDS activity. HRW’s legal team argues that the case is political, asserting that Israel is targeting HRW for alleged human rights work that is critical of Israel. The organization claims that Shakir’s BDS work ended when he arrived in Israel in 2016.

The Jerusalem District Court was unimpressed by the HRW spin, and its ruling accepted the government’s position. Shakir was nevertheless allowed to stay in the country pending the High Court appeal.

Although its language is narrowly legal and technical, this case reflects major issues not only for Israel but in the wider realms of lawfare, soft power, and public diplomacy. The arguments on human rights and nebulous aspects of international law are proxies for a multi-front war that has been escalating for 20 years around soft power de-legitimacy. This 21st-century political, legal, and economic war seeks to demonize and thereby destroy Israel, much as the wars fought by armies and missiles attempted to defeat the Jewish state on the battlefield.

From its opening shots almost 20 years ago, HRW has been a leader in the attacks against Israel, and the Shakir case is an important milestone in this history. HRW brings an annual budget of $92 million ($641 million over the past decade) to the battlefront and provides a vast array of skilled social and mainstream media warriors. The image of a small group of volunteers sacrificing their spare time to promote universal human rights values is a façade. These are highly paid mercenaries waging propaganda wars with all the weapons money can buy. (h/t IsaacStorm)

When the Joint List, the Arab party that emerged as Israel’s third largest in the recent round of elections, endorsed Benny Gantz as its candidate for prime minister on Sunday, pundits took to every available perch to declare the moment historic. After all, no Arab party has ever endorsed a Jewish leader, and Ayman Odeh, the party’s Obama-esque leader, seized the moment properly by tweeting a line from Psalms. To many, this felt like a breath of fresh air, a surge of coexistence and compromise after Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line policies.

The hosannas, however, are premature: The Joint List, sadly, remains a vehemently anti-Zionist party whose members have often expressed their support for convicted terrorists. All it takes is a brief look at the party and its principles to learn why Gantz—whose Blue and White party is currently Israel’s most popular, with 33 Knesset seats—should immediately and forcefully reject this endorsement.

Most egregious among the party’s members, perhaps, is Heba Yazbak. A doctoral student studying gender and colonialism at Tel Aviv University, Yazbak has occasionally taken to Facebook to praise convicted terrorists, most notably Samir Kuntar. On April 22, 1979, Kuntar, the teenage son of a wealthy Lebanese family, landed a rubber dingy on the shore of the northern Israeli town of Nahariya. Together with three other terrorists, he shot and killed a police officer before breaking into the apartment of the Haran family and taking them hostage. Smadar, the family’s mother, managed to hide with her 2-year-old daughter, Yael. Fearful that the toddler’s cries will give them away, she stifled the child’s whimpers, accidentally suffocating her to death. Kuntar then led the family father, Danny, to the nearby beach, together with his 4-year-old daughter, Einat. When IDF soldiers arrived to free the hostages, Kuntar executed Danny in front of his daughter’s eyes. He then grabbed Einat, and, using the butt of his rifle, smashed her head against a nearby rock.

Kuntar was released from Israeli prison in 2008 in return for the bodies of two fallen Israeli soldiers. He received a hero’s welcome from Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and continued to plan attacks against Israelis, earning himself an international terrorist designation from the United States Department of State. He was killed in 2015 in a strike south of Damascus, which many believe was orchestrated by Israel. (h/t IsaacStorm)

Such direct admonitions appear to have helped prompt Special Envoy Carr, to, paraphrasing the bard, “show us the mettle of his (intellectual) pasture.” Rising to the occasion, without hesitation, Elan Carr replied: “So, first of all, there is no question that’s the case,” openly acknowledging the ADL findings demonstrating a disproportionate prevalence of extreme Antisemitism amongst Muslims, worldwide.

Carr then added, emphatically,
Virtually all of the violence against Jews in Western Europe has been from the Arab [Muslim] and [broader] Muslim population—virtually all. So, we cannot ignore that fact, we can’t downplay that fact. That is, we’re stuck with it, and that is something we have to acknowledge.

Although Carr further suggested going “to the source,” the Arab Muslim Middle East, and encouraging “these countries to change the way they speak about Jews,” he failed to identify the canonical Islamic Antisemitic motifs inculcated by the Middle East’s most authoritative religious teaching institutions, notably, Sunni Islam’s Vatican, Al-Azhar University, which animate this Jew-hating discourse.

Kudos to Elan Carr for courageously shattering the prevailing, enforced silence of our national political class regarding the global pandemic of Muslim Jew-hatred, embodied by Malaysian Prime Minister, and 2019 Muslim Man Of The Year, Mahathir Mohamad. It is my fervent hope Mr. Carr will next acknowledge how this pandemic of hate is rooted in mainstream Islam. Such acknowledgment must be followed, in turn, by intellectually honest admonition of institutional Islam to begin its own mea culpa-based process—akin to Vatican II/Nostre Aetate—for removing theological Islamic Jew-hatred from the minbar.

I already blogged Meir Zamir's previous discovery, that the British in 1944 were engaged in convincing the Syrian opposition to reject the French Mandate, accept the British and together they'll create a Greater Syria with Jordan and there'll be no Jewish state.

And now?

U.K. Intel Encouraged Arab Armies to Invade Israel in 1948

Intelligence obtained by the French secret services in the Middle East sheds new light on Britain’s role in the Arab-Israeli War of Independence. It was reported that

Brig. Iltyd Clayton...“architect” of the Greater Syria plan, the Oriental Bloc and the bilateral defense treaties with the Arab states – was now advocating a new scheme for the partition of Palestine. The plan proposed that : “Imperialist Lebanon will annex the Western Galilee up to Shavei Zion; Syria the northeastern part of the Galilee and part of its southern region; Egypt will have part of the cake; and Transjordan will swallow up the rest.”

More excerpts:

In fact, these and other reports in the Lebanese press on the activities of British secret agents were part of a secret war being waged by French intelligence against the British.

Information conveyed by the French intelligence services to the Haganah [the prestate underground Jewish army] in the fall of 1947 indicated that Brig. Clayton and his assistants were involved in a new initiative to secure Britain’s strategic position in the Middle East, and linked Clayton to the escalating Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine...Brig. Clayton had, on December 17, 1947, reached an understanding with Lebanese Prime Minister Riyad al-Sulh, according to which the British forces would evacuate northern Palestine and give free rein to the irregular forces of the Arab Liberation Army, headed by Fawzi al-Qawuqji, to attack Jewish settlements.

Ankara hosted a pro-Palestinian conference last week that featured radical Islamists who urged the obliteration of the Jewish state and advocated the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign targeting Israel.

“Israel must be dissolved and destroyed,” said one speaker, according to a report in the German daily Die Welt.

Speakers also urged boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) against Israel at the event titled “Congress on the Future of Islamic World and Palestine.”

Kadir Arakas, the chairman of a Turkish-Shi’ite association, said “resistance in Palestine is important” during the “weakest period of Israel’s history.” Arakas urged that no Islamic country reach agreements with Israel or work toward closer relations with the Jewish state.

He did not define “resistance” but the meaning of the word for Iran’s mullah regime and its chief proxy, the Shi’ite movement Hezbollah, is violence against Israel. “If we want the liberation of al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem], we have to help the mujahedeen,” said Arakas.

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Ayatollah Mohsen Araki also spoke at the event. At a conference of Islamic clerics in Beirut in 2015, Araki supposedly said that “annihilation of the Zionist regime is a sure thing and Quranic pledge.” The pro-Iranian Taghrib News Agency reported on Araki’s genocidal antisemitic remarks. Araki served as the personal representative for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in London.

It would also be a mistake to think that anti-Semitism is confined to the political Right. Karl Marx, in 1847, repeated the ancient calumny that “Christians really did slaughter human beings and eat and drink human flesh at Communion.” The Second Intifada and the Arab–Israeli impasse retrained focus on the Jews. In 2001 journalist Chris Hedges wrote in Harper’s that Israeli soldiers “entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.” On Holocaust Memorial Day in 2003, The Independent ran a political cartoon that showed Ariel Sharon eating the head of a Palestinian baby. Recently Rutgers University professor Jasbir Puar was celebrated for enrobing the canard of Jewish organ theft in a sumptuous fabric of critical theory.

A Left that insists on a myopic analysis of race and power, taking the supernatural coordination inherent in conspiracy theories and offloading it onto “systems” and “structures,” is, at best, oblivious to the anti-Semitism of putative victims who “punch up.” In that moral void, the Holocaust becomes a drain catch for whatever is the crisis of the day. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez retrofits it to Trump’s border policies, which she calls “dehumanizing.” Yet she defends Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who partner with present-day peddlers of the blood libel. The Holocaust parallel there is much clearer.

We cannot afford double standards. In Poland in the aftermath of the Holocaust, 42 Jewish residents of Kielce were murdered by their neighbors acting on rumors that Jews had kidnapped a young boy. In Brooklyn today, Jews are attacked on the street with increasing frequency. Many of those hate crimes are committed in Crown Heights, where in 1991 an anti-Semitic riot broke out after rumors that Jews had hoarded emergency medical attention for themselves while a local young boy died.

America has seen two mass murders of Jewish worshipers in the past year. Stereotypes of the anti-human are the armature of extremism. “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god,” Eric Hoffer observed, “but never without a belief in a devil.” (h/t IsaacStorm)

The new board included Zahra Billoo, who has tweeted that “apartheid Israel kills children as a hobby” and that she see no “difference between American youth leaving the country to join isis or idf . . . both are murderous, war crime committing terrorist entity.” That’s ISIS and the Israeli Defense Force, the law-bound army of a democratic US ally.

An instant outcry led the new board to vote her out, but its members still include:
Charlene Carruthers, who in 2018 after a trip to the Middle East, dropped an extended Twitter rant about the “massacre in Gaza,” adding that she is “afraid . . . to speak out against the Israeli occupation [because she’s] witnessed the consequences”

Samia Assad, a Palestinian activist with the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice, retweeted a video with the caption “Israel = worse than the devil.” In a “Voice of Santa Fe” podcast, she ranted that, under President Trump, “[Muslims] are going to be targeted like no other time in history . . . I feel like I’m in Nazi Germany.”

Rinku Sen penned a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed complaining of America’s acceptance of the “supremacist aspects of Zionism.” She also called Zionism — the movement that created a country whose population consists of at least 30% Sephardic Jews and 20% non-Jews, including Muslims — as a “movement that claims all of the land from Iraq to Egypt for Ashkenazi (white) Jews”

This is no course correction: The Israel-haters have colonized the Women’s March, and they’re not letting go.

Most importantly, however, Tlaib’s enthusiastic embrace of Billoo elevates a radical fringe voice that is not representative of mainstream American Muslims. Pew surveys show that American Muslims are “largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.” Pew found that two-thirds of American Muslims acknowledge “that the quality of life for Muslims in the US is better than in most Muslim countries.”

And nearly half (48 percent) of American Muslims say that Muslim leaders in the United States “have not done enough to speak out against Islamic extremists.”

Billoo, by contrast, has always been very proud of her extremist brother.

In 2007, Billoo happily announced on her blog: “my lil’ brother was quoted in the Jewish Journal.” But Billoo had no reason to be proud of her brother Ahmed, who told The Jewish Journal that “the righteousness of suicide bombers needs to be evaluated on a ‘case-by-case basis.’” Ahmed Billoo was clearly reluctant to condemn suicide bombings and explained that he believed they were “something that Islam justifies,” claiming that it was “very rare that I meet someone who says suicide bombings in Palestine are not justified.”

Fast forward to July 2019, and Zahra Billoo’s brother Ahmed is a cleric, also known as Ahmed Ibn Aslam Billoo, who leads a trip to Jerusalem for his employer, the “Institute of Knowledge” in California. When departing from BenGurion Airport, Ahmed Billoo reportedly posted a no longer publicly accessible — but archived — Facebook update that he was “feeling annoyed,” adding an invocation in Arabic that reads in translation: “Oh God, reduce their numbers, exterminate them, and don’t leave a single one alive.” The hashtag “Zionists” in English clarified whom Ahmed Billoo wanted exterminated.

Upon his arrival in the US, Ahmed Billoo apparently complained about harassment by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials, and his sister Zahra eagerly seized the opportunity to emphasize: “My brother @AhmedIbnAslam makes me proud often but there’s a special appreciation I have here – putting his privilege to good use, asserting his rights, speaking out against @CBP harassment, and thereby making it somewhat easier for those who are unable.”

Rashida Tlaib legitimizes Zahra Billoo’s unhinged views, and Zahra Billoo legitimizes her brother’s extremism, all for the sake of a supposedly “progressive” #FreePalestine agenda that seems motivated primarily by a bigoted and even murderous hate for the world’s only Jewish state.

Every left-wing cause is 'Cause+anti-Zionism'. Hating Israel is the price of entry pic.twitter.com/eeTQ4Jgum4

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) September 23, 2019

Pressure is mounting on Sen. Bernie Sanders to cut ties with longtime campaign surrogate Linda Sarsour, with critics such as Manhattan billionaire Ronald Lauder citing her long history of anti-Semitic comments.

“Linda Sarsour is a virulent anti-Semite who has publicly stated that ‘nothing is creepier than Zionism.’ Her views have no place in our political discourse and any candidate who associates with her is guilty of handing a megaphone to anti-Semites around the country,” Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, told The Post.

“What’s even more disturbing is that Bernie Sanders, the only Jewish candidate, has chosen an anti-Semitic surrogate,” the Manhattan cosmetics mogul added.

Lauder’s sentiments were echoed by the Zionist Organization of America, which also called on the Brooklyn-born Democratic Socialist to pull the plug.

“It is particularly painful that Jewish Senator Bernie Sanders is (again, as he did in 2016) employing vicious Jew-hater and terrorism promoter Linda Sarsour as a campaign surrogate,” according to a statement issued by the group.

“ZOA likewise urges Senator Sanders to immediately disassociate himself from vicious Jew-hater Linda Sarsour.”

Deven Anderson, who recently joined Pete Buttigieg's (D.) presidential campaign as a regional organizing director in Columbia, S.C., has a history of praising anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and attended a sermon where Farrakhan said "You can walk with a Jew, but you can't walk with me."

Between April 2010 and August 2013, Anderson tweeted more than 20 times about Farrakhan, praising his sermons and tweeting out quotes. Two days before Farrakhan spoke at Union Temple Baptist on April 25, 2010, in southeast Washington, D.C., Anderson tweeted about planning to attend the sermon.

In another tweet on April 23, he responded to a now-deleted tweet saying he has "never seen the Honorable Minister Farrakhan in person," adding that choosing between Cornel West and Farrakhan will be a "real tough decision." On the morning of the service, he tweeted that he and two friends were "on [their] way to see The Honorable Minister!"

After the event, Anderson tweeted, "all i can say is The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan preached today." While Anderson didn't tweet about anything Farrakhan said during his sermon, there is video on YouTube of the remarks, which commemorated the 37th pastoral anniversary of Reverend Willie Wilson.

"When Wall Street saw they were going to regulate, Wall Street paid back all the money. The banks still not loaning you nothing. Do you know why?" Farrakhan asked. "They print money right over there next to the Holocaust Museum. That is not an accident either."

The followed and the follower
Ignorance was everywhere. These people who wear the lanyards and hate the ‘zionists’, gave ridiculous answers to every question that was raised. Yet even amongst the ignorance we faced, there were subtle differences that separated these people into types.

Some had nothing beyond empty ‘keyword answers’. Know-nothings who have comfortably given themselves over to supporting Palestinians the way they would a football team. The Zionists who support the other team are therefore legitimately open for a torrent of vile and incoherent abuse. These type of discussions are depressingly similar. Where every decision that goes against you is down to nothing more than an ‘off day’ or a blind and biased referee.

They’ve simply joined a cult and learnt as much as necessary to comfortably wear the teams colours.

Then there were those who have more vigorously rationalised their anti-Jewish racism. When confronted with a ‘left field’ question, they could formulate an answer. You could taste the flavour of conspiracy in every response they gave. When questioned about the EHRC, and whether a total condemnation from the commission would shift them, the EHRC simply joined a list of groups conspiring against them. It was all about the rich and powerful manipulating the events of the world.

The end for Labour
The sheer weight of the hostility was like nothing I have ever experienced. Not even at a pro-Hezbollah rally and far beyond the conference of 2017. There is no way back from this. You cannot just remove Corbyn and move on. Too many members of the Labour Party have fully embraced and internally legitimised the logic behind a foul racism. There are far too many in the party who have bought into the split community myth and swallowed the virus whole. They have broken down the walls.

They have even dangerously associated ‘national survival’ and the ‘creation of a new society’ with the need to rid the party and country of ‘Zionist power’. It gets no more insidious than this.

These people can NEVER, not EVER be given the power to turn these thoughts into policies. It will take a generation to undo this damage. So much hate. And this was just day one.

A recent row has surrounded Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn after it was discovered that he signed his named to the 2002 Cairo Declaration which essentially accuses Israel of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people as well as backs armed resistance to "the Jewish state," according to the Telegraph.

The document, signed by Corbyn and a myriad of high-level British politicians including close ally and former Communist Party member Andrew Murray, calls for the boycott of Israel and accuses the state of being guilty of systematically administrating "apartheid" against Palestinian citizens.

The controversy emerged on the night of Labour's conference in Brighton and was handed out in the form of pamphlets to arriving delegates to paint the party further in a negative light. Critics have claimed that his decision to sign the document places him on the side of those who question Israel's right to exist.

Many moderate party members have called out Corbyn's stance, adding that British Jews are fearful of what a government under his leadership might look like.

"Jeremy Corbyn's disturbing obsession with the world's only Jewish state is once again clear for all to see," said Labour Friends of Israel Director Jennifer Gerber. “This declaration shows not an ounce of sympathy for the hundreds of innocent Israelis who were being brutally murdered at the time by Palestinian terrorists on buses, [in] pizza restaurants and nightclubs. No wonder the Jewish community fears Corbyn becoming Prime Minister."

The document claims that Israel robbed the Palestinian people of their land with the help of the United States'“unlimited support to the Zionist perpetrators of genocidal crimes against the Palestinian people," and its intent is to give support to the "legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people to resist occupation, liberate their land and return to their homes.”

We have just been given this flyer at the Labour Conference advertising a talk by Azzam Tamimi.

A Malaysian news agency, Bernama, referred to Tamimi in 2006 as a “Hamas special envoy”.

This is what the Labour Party has become 😔 pic.twitter.com/oIC2XhMTtt

— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) September 23, 2019

It has emerged that the figure behind an emergency motion at the Labour Party Conference against controversial new disciplinary rules on antisemitism previously said that Jewish organisations are “in the gutter” and “part of the problem” and was himself suspended from the Party.

Glyn Secker, the Secretary of the antisemitism-denial group and sham organisation, Jewish Voice for Labour, was suspended from the West Dulwich and Norwood Labour Party in May, but he was able to attend the Party Conference and propose a motion as a member of the Lambeth and Southwark Unite Community union branch.

Under the proposed rules that Mr Secker opposes, panels of Labour’s National Executive Committee would have the power to expel members in disciplinary cases, particularly over antisemitism, whereas currently only the Party’s National Constitutional Committee can do so.

It is extraordinary that a suspended Labour member is able to participate in proceedings of the Labour Party Conference, especially to propose a motion relating to antisemitism despite his record. This is yet another reminder of Labour’s institutional antisemitism and the total failure of its leadership to tackle the problem.

Some of the most telling stories are the ones The New York Times doesn’t print.

In that category falls the recent decision of a section of the American Political Science Association to reject a resolution calling for a boycott of Israel.

Miriam Elman, a political scientist on leave from Syracuse University who is the executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, which opposes boycotts of Israel, wrote a Facebook post reporting, “The proponents of a discriminatory anti-Israel academic boycott resolution (and its accompanying obnoxious FAQ) experienced a colossal defeat.”

She wrote, “This spectacular fail needs to be advertised WIDELY, as we all know that BDS zealots will either try to bury it or spin this as some kind of remarkable victory”

“Bury it” was precisely the approach The New York Times took to the news.

A lengthy Times examination in July of the movement to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel reported, “The idea has significant support, and may be gaining ground” and noted “votes by two faculty groups last year — the Association for Asian American Studies and the larger American Studies Association — for limited boycotts of Israeli academia.”

While Times readers were informed of the votes for boycotting Israel by two faculty groups, the subsequent decision by the political scientists not to boycott Israel was not reported by the Times.

The Munich branch of the Catholic social service organization Caritas pulled the plug on an event slated for Monday in one of its rooms with the pro-BDS Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group (JPDG) due to alleged antisemitism.

The Munich-based Abendzeitung paper reported on Thursday that the head of the city’s Jewish community, Charlotte Knobloch, protested in a letter to Caritas against the slated lecture by JPDG.

JPDG supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that targets Israel.

According to the paper, Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor, wrote that Caritas’s decision to offer JPDG a room “in the best case scenario, I have to understand is dangerous carelessness.” She said Caritas was understood up until now as a “reliable partner in the fight against antisemitism.” She urged Caritas to reconsider its decision to host JDPG.

The German parliament classified BDS as antisemitic in May. The City of Munich passed legislation proscribing BDS as antisemitic and banning providing pro-BDS groups with space or subsidies in 2017.

This is SICK. Shame on @ajplus and their Jewish beard for emboldening the Jew haters of the Left @mattliebhttps://t.co/dnUaMicXVF

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 22, 2019

We have sent correspondence to the school with regards to Dr Swee Ang event and her brush with KKK David duke and hope the school reconsiders platforming of this event https://t.co/KOY6cDIF0Z (2014) by @JakeWSimons@Campaign4Tpic.twitter.com/5xFS4iT1K6

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 23, 2019

Outside the Puma Store in London's Carnaby Street at the weekend, hardcore Israel-haters trying, on behalf of the Muslim-dominated Inmnds organisation, to persuade shoppers to boycott the Puma brand owing to Puma's sponsorship of "Israeli apartheid" attract hardly a glance as shoppers do their own thing.

On this Alex Seymour/Seymour Alexander footage, only one person of their own volition approached the pedlar of the leaflets, specifically to take one. Most people dodge and walk on by.

Little wonder that the Israel-haters attract little custom, given their atrocious and in some cases raucous delivery of the kind of script once so theatrically intoned by Ms Sandra Watfa, who used to be imitated to the best of her ability by the woman with the long grey hair (who, with the dude with an Irish brogue whose shtik is calling for Israel to be expelled from Fifa, had a penchant for boarding Tube trains to recire anti-Israel "poetry").

The BBC reported only three out of 149 terrorist attacks against Israel in August 2019, and none of the seven rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, according to media watchdog organization BBC Watch.

The Shin Bet security agency's report on terror attacks (Hebrew) during August 2019 shows that throughout the month a total of 149 incidents took place, including 97 in Judea and Samaria, 25 in Jerusalem and inside the Green Line, and 26 in the Gaza Strip region.

In Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, the agency recorded 95 attacks with petrol bombs, 14 attacks using pipe bombs, five arson attacks, two shooting attacks, two stabbing attacks, one attack using a grenade and one vehicular attack.

Incidents recorded in the Gaza Strip sector included nine attacks with petrol bombs, three attacks using pipe bombs, one attack using a grenade, three shooting attacks and seven incidents of rocket fire.

Two people were murdered and eight wounded in attacks during the month.

The BBC News website reported the Aug. 7 murder of Dvir Sorek the following day but no follow-up reporting was seen until over two weeks later. The murder of Rina Shnerb and injury of two additional civilians in an IED attack on Aug. 23 was reported.

An incident that took place on the border with the Gaza Strip on Aug. 1 and resulted in injuries to three members of the security forces did not receive any BBC coverage. A stabbing attack in Jerusalem in which a police officer was wounded on Aug. 15 was not reported. A vehicular attack in Gush Etzion the next day in which two civilians were injured was ignored at the time, but referred to in a report a week later.

None of the seven separate incidents of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip during August received any coverage on the BBC News website.

There’s a new player within the Western Arabic-language media universe: Independent Arabia – a joint venture of the UK based Independent and the Saudi media group SRMG, with ties to the Saudi state.

Unfortunately, so far it’s shown little commitment to western journalistic standards, and often prefers following Arab newspapers’ preference for parroting anti-Israel propaganda.

For example, a recent article by ‘Izz ad-Deen Abu ‘Eisheh, Independent Arabia’s correspondent in the Gaza strip (“Reviving ancient manuscripts in Gaza to refute the Israeli narrative”, Aug. 12) included an interview with a Hamas government official about the restoration of several manuscripts, dating back to the 16th century.

Mr. Abd al-Lateef Abu Hashem, an expert overseeing the project on behalf of Hamas’ Ministry of Waqfs and Religious Affairs in the Strip, made a few preposterous claims about Israel and its relation to local history, claims that went unchallenged in the article. Abu Hashem was uncritically quoted stating (all translations, emphasis and in-bracket remarks are by CAMERA Arabic unless otherwise specified):

He claims that the “Israeli narrative” suggests that, in the past, “Palestine” was uninhabited:
“the manuscripts are the memory of the Ummah [this could mean either the Islamic Ummah, i.e. all Muslims, or the Arab Ummah, i.e. all Arabs], they […] prove that this land was teeming with its residents and scholars. This is contrary to the Israeli narrative, which says that Palestine was void of residents”

It is unclear what Abu Hashem means when he refers to the “Israeli narrative”. However, if there is, among Jewish Israelis today, a generally-accepted view of the history of their homeland, it clearly does not include the assumption that it was completely empty of residents, either Jews or non-Jews, at any given time since antiquity.

Situation: An Arabic-language book festival in Haifa attracts 5,000 people

New York Times reporter: "Hmmm... how do I make Israel look bad? I know, I'll write about the fact that Arabs can't get books published in Lebanon because Israel doesn't trade with enemy countries." pic.twitter.com/aLHSpaZMPI

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 23, 2019

This passage in particular is telling. Why is Lebanon's ban on Israeli products understandable worthy of a brief reference and a glib "of course," while Israel's ban on particular kind of Lebanese product warrants an entire article? pic.twitter.com/CubHKqF7ZW

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 23, 2019

On September 21st the BBC News website published a report headlined “TWA Flight 847: Greek police arrest aircraft hijacking suspect” which opened by telling readers that:

“A 65-year-old Lebanese man suspected of involvement in the hijacking of an American airliner in 1985 has been arrested in Greece, police say.
The man, who has not been named, was detained on Mykonos after disembarking from a cruise ship on Thursday.
His identity came up as being wanted by Germany during a passport check.
The TWA Flight 847 was seized by militants thought to belong to the Islamist group Hezbollah, a claim they denied. A US navy diver was killed.”

In other words, in just one sentence the BBC managed to portray airline hijackers as “militants” and a terrorist organisation as an “Islamist group” as well as to suggest to audiences that the hijackers’ connections to Hizballah are still in doubt thirty-four years after the event and to amplify the terrorist organisation’s related denials.

The bizarre incident of the rogue Marrakesh Holocaust memorial, built by an idiosyncratic German "guerilla-artist," and the heavy-handed destruction of the monument by the Moroccan authorities, reveal a much larger angst about the meaning of memorializing the Holocaust and its politicization, claim Aomar Boum and Daniel Schroeter writing in Haaretz. The Marrakesh case is reminiscent of an earlier incident in Ashdod, Israel, in which a plaque praising the Moroccan wartime king Mohamed V for 'saving the Jews' from the Holocaust, became the object of controversy.

Clearly the government felt it had to act, once international attention was drawn to a freelance Holocaust memorial with neither official sanction nor the approval of the Moroccan Jewish community leaders, and was triggering loud opposition.

But the Moroccan government's bulldozing of this rogue monument was not only about its unauthorized construction. It was also about controlling the narrative of the Holocaust in Morocco.

For the Moroccan government today, the story of Mohammed V, protector of the roughly 240,00 Moroccan Jews in the then-French Protectorate, exemplifies Morocco’s open-mindedness and tolerance.

Praising Mohammed V’s heroic role defying Vichy to protect the Jews of Morocco is a sine qua non of any Holocaust commemoration in Morocco - and by all indication, this was Bienkowski’s crucial mistake.

The descendants of a Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jewish lives during the Holocaust are demanding that their government take a more active role in pressing Russia to divulge details regarding his death, 74 years after he disappeared into the Soviet prison system during the final months of World War II.

Raoul Wallenberg, a businessman-turned-diplomat often described as the “Swedish Schindler,” saved around 30,000 Hungarian Jews by placing them in an ad hoc network of safe houses with diplomatic status around the Hungarian capital.

When the Soviets entered Budapest months before the war ended, they summoned Wallenberg to their headquarters over allegations of espionage in January 1945, after which he was never seen again. He was 32.

“I want specific answers to specific questions,” Wallenberg’s niece Marie von Dardel-Dupuy told The Guardian on Monday, describing her family’s effort to push the Swedish government to take a more assertive stance vis-a-vis the Russians, who have long resisted releasing information that could cast light on the diplomat’s fate.

Von Dardel-Dupuy and Wallenberg’s daughters Marie and Louise have long argued that Stockholm has been largely passive regarding the matter out of a desire not to antagonize the Russians. This week the three women plan on visiting the Swedish capital to lobby for action.

Less than a year after he immigrated to Israel from Russia, Dima Eygenson has already voted twice in his adopted country.

In April, Israeli voters cast ballots in an election that resulted in a virtual tie between the longtime incumbent prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and political newcomer Benny Gantz. On Tuesday, they were back at the polls because Netanyahu couldn’t cobble together a governing coalition.

“I’m a seasoned voter by now,” Eygenson, a 39-year-old marketing specialist, said “It’s pretty exciting and new to me that voting could actually make a difference, lead to a real change in the country’s fate. You can vote in Russia, but it will make no difference.”

The sense that Russia is growing increasingly illiberal is helping drive a surge of emigration by Jews there to Israel in the past four years. Since 2015, nearly 40,000 of them have arrived in Israel. In the entire decade prior to 2015, only 36,784 Russian Jews had come.

That’s not the only reason for the current wave of immigration: among other causes are economic woes and a persistent crime problem. Yet many observers and immigrants see those issues as merely contributing factors to an exodus pushed largely by the significant deterioration in personal freedoms under President Vladimir Putin, a phenomenon some have begun to call the “Putin aliyah.”

Local residents gawked from doorways and windows on Sunday as hundreds of Jews careened down the narrow cobbled roads of Szentendre, dancing behind two crimson canopies.

A rolling PA system on a makeshift bicycle cart played a series of horas throughout the sleepy town on the banks of the Danube River, situated about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the capital, Budapest. Many locals smiled and bobbed their heads along with the music. Others looked puzzled — fair enough given the odd spectacle in the town where only 300-400 Jews live among its 25,000 residents.

The celebration honored the opening of a new synagogue and community center in Szentendre by EMIH, a Hungarian Orthodox Jewish group affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic sect, along with the dedication of a newly written Torah scroll for the congregation. The complex, in the process of completion, will have a prayer sanctuary, classroom and playground facilities for children, a kosher café, and a small art gallery with Judaica and Jewish art.

The hoopla represented only half of the day’s festivities for the EMIH: Directly following the dedication, revelers packed onto buses which proceeded directly to the inauguration of another synagogue, with a brand new Torah scroll of its own, in Budapest’s 13th district.

The State of Israel this week congratulated Saudi Arabia on its national day, showering the Gulf kingdom with warm wishes for peace and security, despite the absence of formal diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Arabic-language Twitter accounts run by the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem on Sunday and Monday issued at least three messages on the occasion of Saudi Arabia’s 89th national day, which, every year on September 23, celebrates King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud naming the area after his family in 1932.

“We congratulate the Saudi people on the occasion of its 89th national day,” the Foreign Ministry’s Arabic-language channel wrote.

“May this holiday take place again in safety, security and a climate of peace, cooperation and good neighborliness. We ask God, the exalted, that your efforts to develop, prosper and advance will be successful,” it said.

Electric battery-powered cars have stolen much of the buzz that hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles generated before the rise of Tesla and its fellow EV makers.

A new technology developed by researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in collaboration with the team that founded the popular Israeli-made phone app Viber promises to put hydrogen back on the grid.

H2Pro uses a water-splitting technology called E-TAC (electrochemical thermally activated chemical) that draws hydrogen out of water by separating it from oxygen. Water is composed of one molecule of hydrogen and two molecules of oxygen.

Removing hydrogen from water is the only environmentally clean way to produce liquid hydrogen, but it’s inefficient and expensive. As a result, hydrogen hasn’t taken off for the generation of electricity production. Nearly all hydrogen produced today (for fertilizers, refineries and methanol production) comes from fossil fuels that release harmful CO2 emissions.

E-TAC technology was developed by Prof. Gideon Grader, Prof. Avner Rothschild and Dr. Hen Dotan at the Technion. Their research was spun off earlier this year into the new company H2Pro of Caesarea, which has raised $5 million from investors including Hyundai.

Bluestar Indexes CEO, Steven Schoenfeld recommends investors to invest in Israeli companies. Our Michelle Makori has the interview.
Story: Israel is known as start-up nation, Steven Schoenfeld goes into detail on why you should be investing in the growing companies in Israel.

Alex Borstein and Tony Shalhoub of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” won best supporting acting awards at Sunday’s Emmy Awards, which included varied messages of female empowerment after the hostless ceremony.

“I want to dedicate this to the strength of a woman, to (series creator) Amy Sherman-Palladino, to every woman on the ‘Maisel’ cast and crew,” Borstein said, and to her mother and grandmother. Her grandmother survived because she was courageous enough to step out of a line that, Borstein intimated, would have led to her death at the hands of Nazi Germany.

“She stepped out of line. And for that, I am here and my children are here, so step out of line, ladies. Step out of line,” said Borstein, who won the award last year.

Shalhoub added to the three Emmys he earned for his signature role in “Monk.”

The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust will reveal a shofar (ram’s horn typically used during Jewish High Holiday religious services) that was hidden and blown in the Auschwitz concentration camp 75 years ago.

The shofar, which has never before been presented in public view, will be revealed at a Monday news conference. Museum leaders, a descendant of the survivor who inherited the artifact, and religious leaders will come together to display the artifact.

The shofar will join the more than 700 original objects and 400 photographs in the groundbreaking exhibition, which has been visited by more than 100,000 people since opening in early May and which is on view until January 3, 2020.

"Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away." explores the dual identity of the camp as a physical location - the largest documented mass murder site in human history - and as a symbol of the borderless manifestation of hatred and human barbarity.

Hooy meeting Palestinian diplomat earlier this year

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry today summoned an Australian diplomat over the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s remarks in favor of Israel.

Undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry, Amal Jadou, stated that the Acting Director of the Australian Representative Office, Warren Hooy, was summoned following Foreign Affairs Minister Riyad Malki’s instructions over Morrison’s remarks in favor of Israel.

Jado met with Hooy to express Palestinian “dissatisfaction and resentment” of Morrison’s remarks in which he underscored a shift by his government to take “an even stronger stand against the biased and unfair targeting of Israel in the UN General Assembly.”

Beyond our region, we share a commitment to the sovereignty, also, and prosperity of Israel.  For 70 years — and especially recently — we have, in Australia, together, consistently advocated for the nation of Israel and for a peaceful future for the region.

Most recently, under my government, we have taken an even stronger stand against the biased and unfair targeting of Israel in the U.N. General Assembly, together with the United States.  And, Mr. Vice President, we will continue to do so.  (Applause.)

Intersectionality theory does have much to say about the possibility of being oppressed in one respect and responsible for oppression in another respect—a part of that theory that Weiss does not address. The mechanics of the concept do not seem to elude her; in fact, we might describe her as arguing in an intersectional spirit when she claims, for instance, that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is subject to racist attacks at the same time that, in Weiss’s view, she is guilty of antisemitism. “Two things can be true at once,” Weiss reminds us. Indeed they can. This situation is well-known by many Jews who vigilantly oppose antisemitism and yet also bear responsibility for a continuing and unjust occupation of Palestine.

But that tension remains oblique in this ahistorical text. Weiss regards Israel’s founding as a state based on Jewish political sovereignty as the end of a “clear line” that ran from biblical times through the aftermath of the Holocaust, spanning “two thousand years of history [which] have shown definitively that the Jewish people require a safe haven and an army.” The Holocaust, in other words, necessitated “the fulfillment of a biblical promise” to establish a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. And yet another line of history runs through and past the Naqba, a history that intersects with the story Weiss tells: state Zionism provided sanctuary for Jewish refugees even as it dispossessed more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, producing more refugees for whom there is no clear sanctuary. 1948 was a year in which multiple histories intersected. There is no one line of history. If we accept wholesale Weiss’s proposition that Israel exists and is therefore legitimate, then we are excused from asking too many historical questions about why it was established in the way that it was—on what legal terms, and at what price, and through the vanquishing of what alternative possibilities.

But if two things can both be true at once, shouldn’t we be able to think through the paradox of a dispossessed population gaining sanctuary only through the dispossession of another population? Shall we not name this as a founding contradiction, one that remains unsolved, and whose resolution could lead to less violence and more common life—cohabitation on equal grounds?  Unfortunately, that order of complexity does not enter into this book and seems rather rigorously excluded. 

Two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, on Tuesday last week, his intention to annex the Jordan Valley after the election, forces of the Civil Administration carried out yet another brutal operation of destruction. The target this time was particularly remote: a rocky hillside adjacent to the village of Tamoun in the northern valley. The goal was singularly vicious: the uprooting of hundreds of olive trees that were about to yield their first fruit...

Four days later, on Monday, the groves’ owners stood next to their felled trees and their ruined cisterns, sadly rolling bits of olives from the felled trees between their fingers. The first crop of these seven-year-old trees was set to be harvested in another few days, but the Civil Administration’s terminators got here just before – as if to rub salt in the wound. The butchered trees are withering on the ground; their fruit is dying on the slashed branches. 

the crazier parts of the progressive left increasingly see politics as public theater, with heroes and villains, cheers and hisses from the audience, and costumes, such as outfits from “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Because modern politics is, for the lonely and strange on all sides, entertainment and diversion. And one’s people must be entertained. [emphasis added]

So, what should Israel’s goal in Gaza be?

The occasional show of force against Hamas interests has failed, as has destroying Gaza’s infrastructure; so too the opposite policy of good will and the prospect of economic prosperity. It’s time for something altogether different, a goal that transcends sending signals and punishing misdeeds, something far more ambitious.

Victory is such a goal. That is, aim to impose a sense of defeat on Gazans, from the head of Hamas to the lowliest street sweeper. Aiming for an Israel victory is entirely in keeping with historical war aims, but it is out of step with our times, when even the words victory and defeat have dropped from the Western war lexicon. The Israeli security establishment seeks just peace and quiet vis-a-vis the Palestinians; Mr. Inbar speaks for them in dismissing the goal of victory over Hamas as “naive.”

Negotiations, mediation, compromise, concessions and other gentle means have replaced victory. These sound good; but they have failed in the Palestinian-Israeli arena since 1993, and blindly persisting with them guarantees more destruction and death.

With imposing a sense of defeat on Gazans the goal, what are the strategy and tactics? These cannot be decided on in advance. They require a contemporaneous and detailed study of the Gazan population’s psychology. Questions to be answered might include:

• Does the deprivation of food, water, fuel and medicine in retaliation for attacks on Israel inspire a sense of resistance (muqawama) and steadfastness (sumud) among Gazans or does it break their will?

• Same question about the destruction of homes, buildings and infrastructure.

• Would knocking out the Hamas leadership paralyze the population or prompt an insurrection?

Israel’s security establishment needs to explore these and related issues to map out a sound strategy and to offer reliable counsel to the political leadership. That done, with victory as the goal, Israel finally can address the hitherto insoluble problem of Gaza.

3. Anonymous sources close to Rivlin told Channel 13 that the president has not made up his mind who to charge first with the task of building a coalition. “He does not have a name in his head,” the TV station quoted an unnamed source as saying.

The president has until Wednesday, October 2 to make a choice — which happens to be the same day as Netanyahu’s hearing pending indictment. Rivlin could choose one of the two to form a government as early as this Wednesday or Thursday, the TV report said, but would be perfectly prepared to wait another week, enabling them to reflect on his unity appeal during the two-day Rosh Hashanah holiday, which begins Sunday.

4. If Netanyahu and Gantz cannot agree between themselves on a process of coalition building, Rivlin will indeed face a complex choice. Neither would-be prime minister has majority support or a clear path to a coalition. Fifty-five MKs (from Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism and Yemina) have recommended Netanyahu as prime minister, compared to 54 for Gantz (from Blue and White, Labor-Gesher, the Democratic Camp, and 10 of the 13 Arab MKs from the Joint List). By that measure, Rivlin could opt to give Netanyahu the first shot at mustering a majority. But Blue and White party has 33 seats, compared to 31 for Likud. So that favors Gantz.

In 1984, when elections also produced political deadlock, the Labor Alignment had 44 seats to Likud’s 41, and the Alignment’s leader Shimon Peres took the first two years as prime minister, before the role rotated to Likud’s Shamir.

Israel's Supreme Court on Tuesday heard the appeal of the local director of Human Rights Watch, who is seeking to block an attempt by the government to expel him for allegedly supporting the international boycott movement against Israel.

A lower court in April upheld a decision not to renew Omar Shakir's work visa and ordered him to leave the country, saying his advocacy against Israel's settlements in Judea and Samaria amounts to support for the Palestinian-led boycott movement.

"We want to be able to do the same work we do in nearly 100 countries across the world and here in Israel," Shakir said, speaking to reporters outside the courtroom.

"The kind of work we've been doing in Israel for three decades, the kind of work that we've done with Palestinian Authority, with Hamas, with every country in the Middle East and North Africa."

Human Rights Watch says neither it nor Shakir has called for an outright boycott of Israel. It says Shakir, who is a US citizen, is being targeted for the rights group's opposition to the settlements and its calls for companies to stop working with the settlements.

Tuesday's hearing had been delayed for months and an immediate ruling was not expected.

YESTERDAY: Human Rights Watch joins Iran, Syria, North Korea in demanding UNHRC blacklist "of companies working in settlements"—a form of anti-Israel BDS, per UNHRC reps like Leilani Farha.

TODAY: Human Rights Watch tells Israel Supreme Court it doesn’t support anti-Israel BDS. pic.twitter.com/VGWu8XbwWP

— Hillel Neuer - watching #UNGA #UNGA74 (@HillelNeuer) September 24, 2019

As of now, each side and all the parties are doubling down on their campaign promises. Netanyahu corralled a solid right-wing bloc that gives him the keys to forming a government at all, while Blue and White is refusing to enter coalition talks. It's safe to assume that as time passes, the glue holding these promises together will start to weaken.

This won't happen right away, but coalition talks last a minimum of 28 days, with an option for a 14-day extension thereafter. Another election, which would be Israel's third in the past year, is an extreme and outrageous scenario. We can reasonably expect all sides to do their utmost to gradually and eventually eschew most if not some of their campaign vows to avoid dispersing another Knesset. However, the fact that the first candidate's failure to form a government simply means the second in line receives the opportunity, could lead the parties to harden their stances in the near future and prevent progress.

Hence, only after the second candidate's attempt to form a government – in other words in another two-three months from today – will the pressure reach a breaking point conducive to compromise. Or perhaps other solutions will arise, such as party defections capable of tipping the scales.

For the time being, once the president is done receiving all the parties' recommendations, the decision is entirely his. It stands to reason that Rivlin, who is motivated by a healthy appetite for revenge toward the prime minister, will consider the option most likely to hurt Netanyahu, whether that means tasking him first or second, and will choose accordingly. The reasons for any decision he eventually makes, after all, are already known.

As teams representing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief rival Benny Gantz met Tuesday as part of negotiations for a possible unity government, a senior figure in the Blue and White party raised questions over the premier’s true intentions in the long-shot effort to solve the political paralysis that has emerged from last week’s deadlocked national elections.

Speaking to The Times of Israel on Tuesday as the two teams met, a senior Blue and White source said the centrist party’s lawmakers, including its chairman, did not believe Netanyahu really wanted to form a unity government and was instead planning on forcing a third round of elections.

“We support Benny’s decision to meet with Netanyahu 100 percent. But we are under no illusion that he really wants a unity government with us,” the Blue and White member said, speaking for fellow MKs.

“This is a ploy by Netanyahu to push new elections. Period,” the source added. “Benny knows it just as well as the rest of us.”

The prime minister on Monday met for the first time with Gantz, at the residence of President Reuven Rivlin, and agreed to begin talks aimed at building a unity coalition. Rivlin invited them to return on Wednesday and they agreed for their negotiating teams to meet on Tuesday.

Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman reiterated his opposition on Tuesday to sitting with the ultra-Orthodox and right-wing religious parties, as well as the Arab parties and the Democratic Union.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that any unity government between his Likud Party and Blue and White needs to include his ultra-Orthodox allies as well as the religious-Zionist Yamina Party.

In comments he made on Facebook Tuesday afternoon, Liberman doubled down on his commitment never to join such a coalition and insisted that the formation of a national unity government including Blue and White, Likud, and possibly his own, was an urgent need due to Israel’s security and economic challenges.

Liberman said he was responding to “spin” and “commentary” published of late regarding the possibility that Yisrael Beytenu might enter a government including the parties it has previously declared to be out of bounds.

He also insisted that his party was not “coordinating” with Blue and White or with Likud, as has been speculated, given his enigmatic decision not to recommend either Blue and White co-chairman Benny Gantz or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form the next government.

The news that the Arab Joint List has for the first time endorsed Benny Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White party as a potential Prime Minister, brings Arabs closer to power than ever. Perhaps it comes as a surprise to learn that its leader, Ayman Odeh, has also made overtures to Mizrahi Jews in Israel.

According to Wikipedia, Odeh has 'expressed strong support for increasing recognition of Mizrahi culture and Arab Jewish history in official Israeli and Palestinian discourses; in a widely cited speech to the Knesset plenum in July 2015, MK Odeh argued that the State of Israel has systematically discriminated against and suppressed the culture of Jews who immigrated to Israel from Arab and Muslim lands in order to feed the idea of a natural separation between Jews and Arabs. He also argued that the large role played by Jews in forming historical and modern Arab culture (including famous Jews such as Rabbi David Buzaglo, who wrote Jewish religious poetry primarily in Arabic, and famous Jews who were popular in the Arab world in the mid-20th Century, such as Leila Murad), has been forgotten by Jews and Arabs alike due to the ideological elements of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the desire by Israel's elite to portray a Western image of Jews and of the country.'

Odeh called upon Jewish and Arab members of the Knesset alike to support a new Knesset committee (which he had joined as a member) lobbying for the re-emphasizing of the culture of Jews from Arab and Muslim lands. In that speech, Odeh summarized his position thus: "The culture of the Jews of Arab and Islamic countries is a shared Jewish and Arab culture. Because of this, the state has fought [against] it, and yet because of this [same reason], we must fight to strengthen it."

In a prank on live radio, radio presenters pretending to be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his aide managed to get Ra'am member and outgoing MK Abd al-Hakim Hajj Yahya to admit that Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas had met with Nathan Eshel, part of the Likud Party's coalition negotiation team, and Likud MK Miki Zohar.

"I'm happy that you didn't recommend Blue and White," said the Netanyahu impersonator, confusing Ra'am with the Balad Party that retracted it's recommendation for Gantz. "I'm ready to promise everything. We'll meet and sit. I said we'll sit on all the regulations of the Arab sector, to deal with them as needed, to give you anything you need. Enough. It's time to stop the extremism of this discrimination." Throughout the conversation, the impersonator promised to give Ra'am whatever they needed.

Yahya seemed to consider the offer throughout the discussion, telling the Netanyahu impersonator that, if he's serious, he still has influence in the party, even though he's no longer going to be an MK.

The presenter pretending to be Netanyahu's aide asked Yahya if he could really convince the other members of the party to consider it.

"I still haven't left the field. I'm in the political office of the party. I have my voice in any case," said Yahya.

Netanyahu then asked Yahya to promise to support him as he would be the one that Rivlin would choose to form the government. Yahya stated that nothing was sure yet, and he and the presenter pretending to be an aide asked the Netanyahu impersonator, "What about Liberman?"

Yahya told the presenters that "Eshel can talk with Mansour Abbas. He was in a meeting with Abbas and apparently there was even chemistry between them even more than with me. We were together at that meeting."

My name is Leah Goldin. I am the mother of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, a proud soldier in the Israel Defense Forces.

Hadar was 23 years old. A gifted artist, he was engaged to be married to the love of his life, Edna, in summer 2014.

But that August, hours after a UN ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, Hamas terrorists emerged from a tunnel in Gaza, ambushed an IDF unit, and killed Hadar.

For five years, Hamas has been holding our son, and the remains of another soldier, Oron Shaul, refusing to release them, in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.

For five years, Hamas has cruelly tormented our family, denying Hadar a proper burial and Red Cross access.

In June, the Security Council adopted Resolution 2474, mandating that all nations share responsibility for the return of the remains of missing persons in armed conflict and for UN special envoys to take this into account in implementing their mandates.

Last month, I met Secretary-General Guterres, who reiterated he stands behind this resolution, calling to immediately and unconditionally release our son’s remains.

Israelis have the most negative view of the United Nations by a large margin among countries polled in a new survey.

The poll by the Pew Research Center published Monday, as the UN General Assembly convenes in New York, showed 65 percent of Israelis view the UN negatively — a number considerably higher than in any of the other 31 nations surveyed. Only 31% view the world body in a positive light.

The Israeli part of the survey was conducted among 974 adults with a margin of error of 4.2%.

Second in unfavorable views was Russia, with 43% holding negative opinions and 34% holding positive opinions; next was Tunisia, 40% to 33%; then Greece with 36% negative, though positivity won out in that country with 48%.

The Israeli view was an outlier in Pew’s spring 2019 Global Attitudes Survey. The poll, which included 34,904 respondents across 32 countries and was conducted between May and August, found a median of 61% have a positive view of the UN, while a median of 26% have a negative view.

The highest ratings came from the Philippines (86% positive), South Korea (82%), Sweden (80%) and Poland (78%).

While next month marks 25 years since Israel and Jordan signed their peace agreement, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned that Israeli annexation of the West Bank would have a “major impact” on ties between the two countries.

Abdullah, in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, said that he took Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s preelection statement regarding annexation with a “pinch of salt” because of the timing.

However, he added, “a statement like that does not help at all, because what you do is hand the narrative to the worst people in our neighborhood. We – who want peace and want to be able to move forward – tend to be more isolated.”

In the days before last week’s voting, Netanyahu said that if elected he would immediately annex the Jordan Valley, and – after that, and in consultation with US President Donald Trump – would extend sovereignty to other settlements and “vital areas.”

“If the policy is to annex the West Bank, then that is going to have a major impact on the Israeli-Jordanian relationship and also in the Egyptian-Israeli relationship, because we are the only two Arab countries that have peace with Israel,” Abdullah said. “If there is a box that is being ticked on a certain government getting everything that it wants, without giving anything in return, what is the future? Where are we going to go unless we are going to be able to get Israelis and Palestinians to come together, to live together, and be the message for the future?”

Abdullah said that once a government is formed in Israel, countries in the region and the international community “will all jump on board and say we can focus back on what most of us believe is the only solution: the two-state solution.”

A one-state solution, he said, would be “an apartheid future for Israel, which I think would be a catastrophe for all of us.”

Israeli plans to annex West Bank settlements is an excuse for Israel to ethnically cleanse the area, South Africa warned the UN Human Rights Council on Monday during its 42nd session in Geneva.

“South Africa is concerned that the annexation of Palestinian territory is highly likely in the South Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley – selected because of their low population density with potential for ethnic cleansing,” South African envoy Clinton Gary Swemmer said. “What started in east Jerusalem is going to spread unannounced and without an outcry, but with devastating consequences for Palestinian communities that will be left utterly defenseless and without residents.”

Arab countries, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and Ehypt all spoke out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to annex West Bank settlements staring with the Jordan Valley should he form a new government.

Settlers and right-wing Israelis have welcomed the announcement, made in advanced of the pending publication of US President Donald Trump’s peace plan.

But at the UNHRC, Arab States warned it would have devastating consequences and pledged their support for a two-state solution at the pre-1967 lines.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used “racist hate speech” against Palestinians during his re-election campaign, PLO Ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday as it held its 42nd session in Geneva.

“You may have followed the recent Israeli elections campaign, which included racist hate speech against Palestinians, including a statement by the racist Israeli Prime Minister who wrote a post against Arabs claiming that women, children and older Palestinians plan to exterminate us,” Khraishi said.

“This is added to the racist statements issued by various racist Zionist political parties. We have sent to you by e-mail some such videos,” Khraishi said.

He spoke during an Agenda Item 7 debate. The UNHRC is mandated to hold a debate on alleged Israeli human rights violations during each of its meetings, which occur three times a year. Human rights violations committed by all other countries around the globe, are all debated under Agenda Item 4. Israel, whose actions are debated under Agenda Item 7, is the only country for which there is such a standing mandate.

Israel boycotts the Agenda Item 7 debates and has called on all other countries to do so as well. It has urged that all human rights complains against it be dealt with under Agenda Item 4.

On Monday none of the European Union members states participated in the debate. Western countries also refrained from speaking. European and western countries have increasingly boycotted Agenda Item 7.

Victims of the Palestinian Hamas terror group are suing a prominent Turkish-controlled bank with business ties in the United States over the financial institution's backing of the terror group and its violent attacks.

The estate of Eitam Henkin, a U.S. national who was killed in a Hamas terror attack in 2015, alleges in a suit filed Monday in a U.S. court that Turkey's Kuveyt Bank, knowingly provided "substantial assistance via financial services" to Hamas from at least 2012 to 2015.

While Turkey’s ties to Hamas have long been a flashpoint in its diplomatic relations with the United States, the suit could unearth new ties between the Middle Eastern bank and Hamas. The suit could also deter U.S. banks from working in the Turkish banking system for fear of incurring risk.

Kuveyt Bank carries out U.S. dollar-denominated transfers via several American financial organizations, including Citibank, HSBC Bank USA, Standard Chartered Bank, and the Bank of New York Mellon, according to financial records offered to the court as part of the case.

During the time Kuveyt was dealing with U.S. banks, it also was providing funding to Hamas with the knowledge of Turkish officials, according to the suit.

"Transnational terrorism poses an immediate threat to us here in the Western Hemisphere. Although the perceived center of gravity seems far away, groups like ISIS, al-Qa'ida, and Lebanese Hizballah operate where they can find recruits, raise support, operate unchecked, and pursue their terrorist agendas."— U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan; ministerial conference on counterterrorism, December 11, 2018.

[W]hen the Department of Justice (DOJ), on October 15, 2018, designated Hezbollah as one of the world's top five transnational criminal organizations, many Latin American governments turned their attention to Hezbollah's illicit networks.

Argentine President [Mauricio] Macri's leadership and political will have succeeded in establishing tremendous momentum for other Latin American governments to think critically about Hezbollah, as evidenced in President Abdo's recognition of the Lebanese terror group in Paraguay last month.

At this moment, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, and President Ivan Duque of Colombia, are working potentially to designate Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization.

Recent Hezbollah-related cases in Peru and Paraguay show that [Hezbollah's] crime-terror actions in Latin America are far from Over.

Five French women have gone on trial in Paris for trying to detonate a car bomb near Notre Dame cathedral in September 2016.

Five gas canisters in the vehicle, which had been doused in diesel fuel, failed to explode when a cigarette was thrown at them.

The defendants are all Muslim converts. A defense lawyer said the women had been brainwashed on the Internet.

The women planned the attack on the instructions of Rashid Kassim, an ISIS handler, who is thought to have been killed in a drone strike in Iraq in 2017.

They are believed to have been planning other attacks in the Paris area.

“Incitement,” a film about about the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin viewed through the eyes of his killer, won Best Picture at the 2019 Ophir Awards on Sunday night, drawing immediate criticism from Israel’s populist culture minister, who said it libeled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Best Picture winner at the Ophir Awards, the country’s most prestigious cinema awards ceremony, is traditionally sent on to compete as Israel’s entry for Best Foreign Picture at the Oscars.

Despite the film being well reviewed, Culture Minister Miri Regev renewed her long-running feud with the Academy of Film and Television and slammed the choice of “Incitement,” saying there was “no place” in Israel for such a film and charging that it maligned Netanyahu, who has been accused of incitement in the lead-up the the November 4, 1995, murder.

“Yigal Amir is a murderer who shot a bullet into the heart of the nation and did the worst thing possible, kill a prime minister in a democracy,” said Regev. “There is no place for a film that tries to understand him or his motivations, or to hint or accuse others of being behind his heinous act.”

Regev in particular took umbrage at the way that Netanyahu was portrayed.

“The creators did not miss an opportunity to assign Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a part in the incitement campaign,” she said, calling such a portrayal “a distortion and an attempt to mislead the public, which was completely detached from reality.”

Walking through the streets of any southern Israeli neighborhood, the untrained eye could be led to believe that life there is no different to any other city or community in the country. In fact, one might need to be alerted to the pieces of infrastructure unique to a region which, for almost two decades, has endured the threat of rockets being fired from Gaza, compelling residents to run for cover.

In Kibbutz Alumim, less than three kilometers from the coastal enclave, Israel’s well-known air defense system, the Iron Dome, can be seen sitting up on a hill pointing towards the sky, in full view, as residents mosey through their neighborhood.

Meantime, underground, Israel’s military is building a defensive wall against Hamas attack tunnels.

Life in the Sha’ar HaNegev region is anything but ordinary.

A thin barbed wire fence is all that blocks the view from Israel into Gaza, where now a thick cloud of smoke is all but permanent since those Great March of Return protests began in 2016.

One could mistakenly believe an Israeli child had neglected their kite in the garden, looking at it laying torn and deteriorating in a family’s back yard. In reality, this is the remnant of an arson device flown over the border fence into Israeli territory from Gaza.

While the first Palestinian rocket was fired from Gaza in 2001, the launches have increased after Israel withdrew from the Strip in 2005.

Since the disengagement, more than 13,000 rockets and mortars have been fired at Israel.

In the most intense barrage, Palestinians fired more than 600 rockets in one weekend in May 2019.

Satellite images released Tuesday showed expanded construction at compounds allegedly controlled by Iran along the Syria-Iraq border, despite repeated airstrikes on the site in recent weeks that have been attributed to Israel.

The photographs, released by the private Israeli intelligence company ImageSat International, indicated the building of the site in the Boukamal region of eastern Syria has advanced over the past month.

The compound — known as the Imam Ali Base — is considered a critical element in Tehran’s efforts to create a land corridor under its control from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, into Lebanon and out to the Mediterranean Sea. Israeli officials have expressed grave concerns about such a “land bridge” as it could allow Iran to more easily transport weapons, fighters and materiel throughout the Middle East.

Several airstrikes have been reported at sites in this area in recent months, at least two of them in September alone, including one on September 9 in which 18 pro-Iranian fighters were reportedly killed.

Yet during this time, from September 9 to 21, new fortifications were built, access roads were created, buildings were completed and additional construction equipment was brought in to the base, according to the photographs released by the satellite image analysis firm.

The IDF arrested 19 Palestinians on Monday night as violent clashes broke out in multiple Palestinian towns.

The 19 suspects were arrested for involvement in terrorist activities, popular terror and violent disturbances towards civilians and security forces, according to an IDF's spokesperson. The suspects were transferred for questioning.

The IDF also secured the entry of about 1,200 Jewish worshipers to Joseph's Tomb overnight.

While IDF soldiers were patrolling the city of Nablus, they found an IED next to the roadway. Sappers removed the device from the scene and no injuries or damage were reported.

Violent clashes broke out between Palestinians and IDF soldiers throughout the West Bank on Monday afternoon and overnight, according to Palestinian media. Some of the confrontations were sparked in support of 140 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails who have been conducting a hunger strike for over two weeks, according to the Palestinian Quds news agency.

A military court on Monday sentenced a Palestinian man to life in prison for his involvement in a deadly West Bank shooting attack in 2015.

Four Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were also indicted Monday for belonging to the Hamas terror group and taking part in a series of attacks along the border of the coastal enclave.

Fa’iz Hamed was part of a terrorist cell that killed Malachy Rosenfeld, 25, in a drive-by shooting. Hamed was convicted on a number charges, among them intentionally causing death — the military legal system’s equivalent to murder.

The West Bank Military Court also ordered Hamed to pay compensation to Rosenfeld’s family, but the amount was not disclosed.

Besides the attack in which Rosenfeld was killed, the verdict said that the cell Hamed was a part of also carried out a shooting near the Beit El Settlement days before in which no one was wounded.

Hamed was the third member of the terrorist cell to receive a life sentence for Rosenfeld’s murder.

Palestinian Authority security forces have thwarted an attempt by Islamic Jihad to manufacture rockets in the West Bank.

The Israeli news site Mako reported that the terrorist group was operating under Iranian guidance in the building of low-tech rockets.

Despite their crude nature, such rockets would place central Israel under direct threat from short-range projectiles, compounding the threat from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip that southern Israel has faced for nearly two decades.

According to intelligence assessments, various terrorist groups in the West Bank are attempting to establish infrastructure to enable them to conduct major attacks.

While there have been recent terror incidents in the West Bank, most have been stabbings or shootings, rather than rocket attacks or suicide bombings.

According to Israeli law and the rules of the Israeli Prison Service, Palestinian terrorist prisoners are not allowed to study for academic degrees while imprisoned in Israel. Despite this, Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Palestinian terrorist prisoners continue to enroll and study at several Palestinian universities, earning degrees while in prison, and receiving university diplomas - in absentia.

At a ceremony in Nablus this summer, Al-Quds Open University President Younes Amr and Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Qadri Abu Bakr handed out university degrees to the relatives of prisoners. The choice of a song played at the ceremony stresses the PA's ideology and policy to continue promoting violence and terror:
Song lyrics: "Give me the machine gun so that I can keep going
Our occupied land will not return without it...
The machine gun and the bullet are the essence of the path
Whoever destroys my home - we will shoot them with a bullet..."
[Official PA TV, July 23, 2019]

At the ceremony, Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Qadri Abu Bakr praised the terrorist prisoners and stated that almost a fifth of Palestinian prisoners are registered at Palestinian universities:
"They [the prisoners] armed themselves with desire and determination and completed the path of struggle through knowledge...They have enrolled in the Palestinian universities [while in prison]...1,026 prisoners [out of 5,700] are currently registered at the Palestinian universities."
[Official PA TV, July 23, 2019]

University studies during imprisonment is one of the many benefits that the PA grants terrorists and murderers, in addition to paying them monthly salaries.

Arafat’s Former Press Secretary Raeda Taha: Many Palestinians Moved into the Vacated Homes of Other Palestinians in 1948 pic.twitter.com/PKqgx3Go8Y

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 24, 2019

One major secret Hezbollah has kept for many years now concerns its decision to join the Syrian civil war, which Iran and the organization has consistently claimed served the interests of the international, and as a result, the Lebanese community. Had Iran and Hezbollah not joined the fighting, they argue, the Islamic State group would continue to control the country and threaten global and Lebanese security. Keep in mind, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has consistently fostered the narrative that the Shiite group entered Syria of its own volition, as part of a defensive war aimed at protecting Lebanon from the terrorism of the Islamic State group.

According to this narrative, the war in Syria is not a popular uprising against the Syrian regime but an American-Israeli conspiracy, within the framework of which groups that are identified with global jihad, comprising tens of thousands of terrorists, were brought to Syria from all over the world.

But Nasrallah's claims that his organization entered Syria by choice are incompatible with the testimony of the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards in Tehran province. In an interview with state-aligned media, he revealed that in a meeting with an Iranian delegation, Nasrallah had said he did not want to enter the campaign in Syria and explained that Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had convinced and in fact forced him to do so.

The decision to take part in suppressing the popular uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad was one of the most difficult decisions Hezbollah has made since it was established in 1982. Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah officials are fostering a false narrative that holds that the decision was independently made and aimed largely at serving Lebanon's interests. Israel is in possession of information that could interest Lebanon's citizens and its Shiite community in particular. It could disprove Hezbollah's false narrative and force it to confront the version of events revealed by its patrons in the Revolutionary Guards. It is quite possible that this will also serve to reveal the names of Hezbollah operatives killed in the organization's activities in Yemen, something that will further deepen the image crisis the organization would face. The time may have come for Israel to use the information at its disposal in order to remove the mask from the organization that is terrorizing Lebanon.

As world leaders gather in New York this week to participate in the UN General Assembly, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) is launching a TV ad campaign on major US cable networks, calling on the European Union to recognize Hezbollah as a terror organization.

In addition, the AJC bought a full-page ad in Tuesday’s New York Times, criticizing the EU’s distinction between the terror group’s military branch and other parts of the organization. “Hezbollah is a global terrorist organization, armed and supported by Iran,” the ad reads.

“Its deadly reach extends to Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia, and across the Middle East. Yet, defying all logic, the European Union insists there are actually two Hezbollahs—one ‘political’ and the other ‘military,’ banning only the latter in 2013. This is self-delusion at its worst and most dangerous, allowing Hezbollah to operate its ‘political’ wing in Europe by recruiting members and raising funds. As Hezbollah leaders themselves declare repeatedly, it is one indivisible organization.”

The ad continues: “To date, the Arab League, Argentina, Canada, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Israel, Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States have recognized without qualifications the reality of Hezbollah, and added it to their lists of terrorist organizations.”

The AJC also launched a new website, which contains short video clips of the bloody terror attacks Hezbollah has been responsible for in the past 35 years. The TV ads will appear on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, i24 and BBC America. The ad emphasizes that Hezbollah poses a threat to Europe.

The International Institute of Independent Thinkers and Artists, a.k.a. New Horizon, a Tehran-based NGO, on Monday launched the seventh annual New Horizon anti-Zionist conference in Beirut, Lebanon, featuring “renowned figures from different countries, including countries in the Middle East, North and South America and Europe.”
The 7th New Horizon anti-Zionist conference, in Beirut, Lebanon, 2019 / Fars News

American and European “high-ranking anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist” academics, political & military figures, media analysts, writers, activists, singers, actors, movie critics and filmmakers will address the conference, some of them via video conferencing, because the FBI would not permit them to participate in person.

The three-day event focuses on Israel’s influence on United States foreign policy, particularly under President Donald Trump’s tenure; political rifts within the US; Washington’s sanctions and their impacts on world order; and the role of religious convergence in dialog among civilizations.

Iranian filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh, chairman and founder of New Horizon, delivered a speech about “Israel’s recent acts of aggression and the US support for the Israeli regime.” Talebzadeh and his wife have been put on the US sanctions’ blacklist for participating in the conference.

A US official warned Lebanese politicians on Monday that future US sanctions would target any party suspected of providing “material” support to the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group, a Lebanese source told AFP.

Treasury Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing Marshall Billingslea met Prime Minister Saad Hariri and parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Monday during a two-day visit to Lebanon.

During the meetings, Billingslea warned that US sanctions may extend beyond direct affiliates of Hezbollah, according to a source present at talks.

“The US will sanction any group that provides material support to Hezbollah, be it through supplying weapons or money,” the source quoted Billingslea as saying.

But sanctions “will not target groups who are only tied to Hezbollah politically,” he added, easing concern that the group’s political allies, including President Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement and Berri’s Amal Movement, could be targeted.

The arrest in Greece of a Lebanese man accused of involvement in a 1985 plane hijacking by Hezbollah is a case of mistaken identity, Lebanese officials said on Monday.

Greek authorities detained the 65-year-old man last week on the island of Mykonos.

They said there was a European arrest warrant issued by Germany against him for his suspected involvement in the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and the murder of an American passenger.

A Lebanese diplomatic official and a security official, neither of whom wanted to be named, identified the man in Greek custody as Mohamed Ali Saleh.

Saleh has a nearly identical name to the suspected Lebanese hijacker, but his father’s name does not match that of the suspect, the diplomatic source said.

Both sources told AFP the arrest was a case of “mistaken identity.”

US President Donald Trump accused the Iranian government of a "fanatical quest" for nuclear weapons in an address to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday.

"The regime's record of death and destruction is well-known to us all," the president said. "Not only is Iran the number one state sponsor of terrorism, but Iran's leaders are fueling the tragic wars in both Syria and Yemen.

"At the same time, the regime is squandering the nation's wealth and future in a fanatical quest for nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. we must never allow this to happen.”

Trump stated that the 2015 Iran nuclear deal "has very little time remaining" and had severe gaps in its inspection regime.

"Following our withdrawal [from the nuclear deal], we have implemented severe economic sanctions on the country. Hoping to free itself from sanctions, the regime has escalated its violent and unprovoked aggression. In response to Iran's recent attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, we just imposed the highest level of sanctions on Iran's central bank and sovereign wealth fund.

"All nations have a duty to act. No responsible government should subsidize Iran's bloodlust. As long as Iran's menacing behavior continues, sanctions will not be lifted: they will be tightened," he declared.

Why has Iran's proxy war evolved into direct action against Saudi Arabia with the September 14 attacks on two Saudi Arabian oil facilities? Because no one has stopped Iranian escalation in recent years.

Since 1979, when the Iranian Islamic regime came to power, its policies have been motivated by the doctrine known as the export of the revolution "beyond the frontiers of Iran," as articulated in the preamble of the Iranian Constitution.

Consequently, Iran's regional role has been increasing across the Middle East. Iran has established itself as the dominant power around the Strait of Hormuz, the naval chokepoint affecting the movement of ships from the Persian Gulf into the Indian Ocean. The Yemen War is giving Iran a position along a second choke point, Bab al-Mandab, controlling movement of ships from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

The collapse of Syria has given Iran the option of penetrating the Middle East from another end, constructing a land bridge from its border with Iraq, across Syria and Lebanon, to the Mediterranean.

Iran has began to network with the Polisario through Algeria, providing weapons and training for its war against Morocco. The Iranian-supported Al-Ashtar Brigades claimed responsibility for bombing a strategic oil pipeline connecting Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, Western shipping came under Iranian attack in the Persian Gulf, including oil tankers. After a period of restraint, the U.S. unleashed its military strength, sinking or damaging half of Iran's operational navy. As a result, the U.S. bought quiet for a number of years. But thirty years have passed since then. Unless Western deterrence of Iran is restored, Iranian expansionism is only likely to get worse.

Britain, Germany and France backed the United States and blamed Iran on Monday for an attack on Saudi oil facilities, urging Tehran to agree to new talks with world powers on its nuclear and missile programs and regional security issues.

The Europeans issued a joint statement after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron met at the United Nations on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders.

European leaders have struggled to defuse a brewing confrontation between Tehran and Washington since U.S. President Donald Trump quit a deal last year that assures Iran access to world trade in return for curbs on its nuclear programme.

The United States reimposed sanctions on Iran and recently sharply tightened them. Iran has responded by breaching some of the limits on nuclear material in the 2015 accord and has set an October deadline to reduce its nuclear commitments further unless the Europeans keep their promises to salvage the pact.

"The time has come for Iran to accept negotiation on a long-term framework for its nuclear programme as well as on issues related to regional security, including its missiles programme and other means of delivery," Britain, France and Germany said.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it’s time to strike a new nuclear deal with Iran, breaking ranks with European allies France and Germany, which are still trying to preserve the 2015 agreement President Donald Trump withdrew from last year.

“Whatever your objections to the old nuclear deal with Iran, it’s time now to move forward and do a new deal,” Johnson told Sky News on Monday in New York, where he’s attending the United Nations General Assembly.

Johnson also suggested it’s “plainly” clear that Iran was responsible for attacks this month on key oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, pulling into line with the Trump administration’s assessment. “How do we respond to what the Iranians plainly did?” Johnson said. “What the U.K. is doing is trying to bring people together and de-escalate tensions.”

Saudi Arabia's cabinet on Tuesday renewed the kingdom's call for the international community "to put a limit" to what it described as Iran's aggressive behavior and "sabotage acts," the state Saudi Press Agency reported.

The world's top oil exporter has said preliminary indications show Iran was to blame for the Sept. 14 attacks on Saudi oil facilities, rejecting a claim of responsibility by Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group. Tehran denies involvement.

SPA quoted King Salman as saying at the cabinet meeting that the attack represented a "dangerous escalation."

Iran said on Tuesday that a statement by Britain, France and Germany accusing it of responsibility for the attacks on Saudi oil facilities showed that they lacked the will to confront US "bullying," the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

"The statement showed that the European parties have no strength or willpower to counter US bullying," Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi was quoted as saying.

On Monday, Britain, France and Germany joined the United States in blaming Iran for the attacks, but the Iranian foreign minister pointed to claims of responsibility by Yemeni rebels and said: "If Iran were behind this attack, nothing would have been left of this refinery."

Do YOU even know what CIVILIZED means Javad Zarif? While the Iranian Foreign Minister has been busy on Twitter here's what his regime has been up to lately. Take a deep dive into the chasm of Iranian lies.

🇹🇷 —  NEWS: Erdogan During His UN Address Speaks About Israeli–Palestinian Conflict:  "What is the role and point of the UN if it fails to implement its own resolutions against Israel...”

pic.twitter.com/wBDa31GNzm

— BELAAZ (@TheBelaaz) September 24, 2019

Given recent events in the Middle East, our leaders would benefit from the wisdom shared in the Book of Esther. Despite the name of God never appearing in the book, Esther’s story shows us that He will always preserve the nation of Israel, no matter how grave the danger. And vitally, this history also reminds us that God calls ordinary people to help in this righteous calling.

In fact, the word of God is replete with examples of common and flawed individuals who are now immortalized as heroes of faith — all because of their willingness to be used by God for the benefit of His people. Abraham was disobedient, Moses was a murderer who stuttered, David was the youngest and the runt of the family, Esther was an orphan. All of these people changed the trajectory of the world not because they were perfect, but because they were brave and willing to go forward.

Unfortunately, the enemies of Israel did not disappear with Haman and his sons, or the Nazi cowards of World War II. The modern enemies of Israel take on more insidious forms than their predecessors, and some of them were recently granted visas to the United States in order to attend the UN General Assembly this week.

While the Book of Esther is set in ancient history, its principles remain true today. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are modern-day Hamans. Like Haman the Agagite, they have not been discreet about their plans for Israel and the Jewish people. In fact, Iran’s weapons are emblazoned with the words “death to Israel.” So, what are we willing to do about it?

In his new book, ‘We Stand Divided,’ Daniel Gordis examines the deep roots of the growing rift between American and Israeli Jews

In the book’s most stimulating and provocative chapter, Gordis presents American and Israeli conceptions of democracy as being fundamentally at odds. In the U.S., politics have been organized around the right to free and equal exchange in the public square, Gordis argues, and American Jews acculturated into this system have come to idealize a form of “naked” democracy, utterly stripped of all cultural symbols. Such “hypercivility,” as Gordis describes it, is incompatible with the Jewish particularism that is a founding mission of Israel, a nation created, after all, not to enshrine universal values but to ensure the survival of a single people. “For long before there was a Jewish state, there was an implicit understanding in the yishuv that Jewish substance should pervade Israel’s ether,” Gordis writes. Accordingly, Shabbat sirens in Jerusalem, temporary halting of bus services, strict religious conversion standards, and even forbidding the public display of hametz during Passover are seen as legitimate, and necessary, infringements on individual rights to preserve Judaism’s national identity.

To uphold the divide between Israeli and American Jews as the result of incompatible visions of Judaism and democratic politics rather than a temporary, contingent rift, Gordis can, at times, reduce the internal complexity in both of these communities to a simple binary contrast. We Stand Divided sometimes skirts around the deep divisions emerging within the American and Israeli camps by granting the two groups singular voices where they are more often characterized by a cacophonous bickering that may be unhelpful for illustrating stark themes, but are instinctively recognizable background noise to Jews all over the world. For instance, Gordis’ suggestion of consensus among Israelis regarding their nation’s ethnic democracy threatens to suffocate the great national divisions within Israel over religion’s growing political prominence and the treatment of minority groups—divisions that have animated the last several Israeli elections and contributed to the country’s political gridlock.

We Stand Divided is a natural progression from Gordis’ previous work, Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn, offering a broad spectrum of readers, from the unacquainted to the well informed, a constructive, digestible framework for interpreting recent developments in the American-Israeli relationship. Gordis succeeds in demonstrating the essential point of We Stand Divided in that today’s strained ties are neither new nor novel. “I argue that although most observers believe that the fraught relationship is due to what Israel does, a closer look at Jewish communities in Israel and the United States suggests that the real reason has to do with what Israel is,” Gordis writes. Locating the divisions over Israel as a matter of essence rather than particular actions, Gordis suggests that Israeli and American Jews are prone to misunderstand each other—but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to inevitably drift further apart. That remains to be seen and depends partly on whether they can look honestly at what divides them.

I was surprised and genuinely shocked to learn that the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs has turned a blind eye to the toxic indoctrination of Palestinian children who are being fed a hate-filled version of their history. In 2010 a new initiative was launched between the Palestinian Authority and five European states to support the education sector. Ireland was to focus on curriculum development and basic education as the lead nation on textbook development. The result is that the bad old PA curriculum is now much worse.

The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE) monitors school textbooks to see how they measure up to UNESCO and UN standards for peace and tolerance. What emerged from the Palestinian Ministry of Education was filled with violent wording and is openly anti-Semitic: Jews control the world and are corrupt, there is no possibility of peace with Israel, martyrdom and jihad are the most important things in life, and "dying is better than living." Killers classified by the UN as terrorists are glorified as role models and heroes to be emulated.

Marcus Sheff, chief executive officer of IMPACT-SE, has been astounded by the silence of Ireland. "The Irish Government is involved in these textbooks to a greater extent than any other donor government," he noted.

Speaker after speaker spoke of the horrors of Palestine. It really is an amazing thing to hear. I am standing inside an event deeply connected with a mainstream political party in the UK, but I may as well be at a Hamas propaganda rally.

The speakers have all been to ‘Palestine’. They’ve been because it is safe to go. They get met by delightful hosts who are all too willing to take them everywhere they have been told they want to go. These delegations get showered with love and talk of justice. When they return – they are activated.

The crowd is white. Just as the audience in the hall was. A mix of nasties. The toxic Miko Peled, the ex -Irish Republicans, the ageing Marxists and the antisemites. Mixed in with them are a few yet to be fully converted. Hanging around the back of the room where the Arabs. They weren’t participants – but just there to make sure all these naive puppets play their roles as expected.

The nation state law becomes something it is not. The Gaza blockade ‘doesn’t let anything in or out’. Lie after lie. This isn’t political opinion, but rather a twisted bubble of hate-filled balderdash. The audience get told that Israel demolished 10 – yes, that is 10 – houses. Excuse me for interrupting but have you seen the 500,000 people who have just been slaughtered in Syria? 10 houses. I am willing to wager that there is barely a council in the UK that hasn’t forcibly purchased and destroyed more than 10 houses recently.

Britain’s Labour party on Monday called for a future government led by Jeremy Corbyn to adopt a raft of anti-Israel policies.

With a general election expected before the end of the year, Labour delegates, at the party’s annual conference in Brighton, overwhelmingly backed a boycott of Israeli settlement goods for the first time and vowed to reject trade agreements with the Jewish state which “fail to recognize the rights of the Palestinians.”

The party also appeared to endorse a Palestinian “right to return” and reaffirmed Labour’s opposition to British arms sales to Israel.

The debate was part of a wider session on foreign policy, which was dominated by discussion on Labour’s stance on Brexit.

The anti-Israel motion was passed nearly unanimously in Brighton after a debate in which Palestinian flags were unfurled and chants of “Free Palestine” were shouted.

The move followed the release of polling on Sunday which showed that two-thirds of Labour members do not believe the party has a “serious” problem with anti-Semitism, and more than half oppose the UK signing a trade agreement with Israel after Britain leaves the European Union.

A Jewish pro-Palestinian activist and member of the UK Labour party hailed leader Jeremy Corbyn at the party’s annual conference on Monday, claiming there is no antisemitism in the party.

Polls have shown that the overwhelming majority of British Jews view the far-left Corbyn as personally antisemitic. Since he took charge of the party in 2015, Labour has been beset by antisemitism scandals that have seen multiple members and officials suspended or expelled, and prompted an investigation by the country’s Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The Daily Mail reported that Vanessa Stilwell, a Jewish member of the party, did not see it this way, however.

A member of Jewish Voice for Labour, a fringe group that seeks to deflect accusations of antisemitism, she declared that she was “one of thousands of Jews in this party who have never experienced any antisemitism and who support Jeremy Corbyn as the most anti-racist leader this party has ever had.”

“I want to speak in support of our Palestinian brothers and sisters,” she said. “There are far too few in this party.”

We challenged Labour journalist Lizzie Fletcher from The Canary and Skwawkbox at the #LabourConference2019 on whether Labour has an antisemitism problem. To all the non-Jewish Labour members who approached us expressing solidarity with us against antisemitism in their party, thank you ????

The Labour Party reportedly invited Ilhan Omar, a Democratic Party congresswoman from the United States who has repeatedly courted controversy over antisemitic tweets and statements for which she has not fully apologised, to speak at their Party Conference.

Ms Omar has tweeted that Israel “hypnotises” the world and suggested that American lawmakers’ support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins”, a reference to the $100 bill, which is adorned with the picture of Benjamin Franklin, and an allusion to supposed Jewish financial clout. She has also spoken of people “push[ing] for allegiance to a foreign country,” a statement redolent of dual loyalty charges made against Jews.

Ms Omar reportedly declined the invitation to attend the Party Conference.

Also invited was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another controversial US congresswoman, who back in February spoke to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on the telephone, for which she subsequently apologised after being made aware of his and Labour’s antisemitism. Ms Ocasio-Cortez also declined the invitation, citing commitments in the United States. The Labour Party noted that Congress is currently in session, which may make travel difficult for legislators.

Another controversial speaker, Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, who rejects Israel as a Jewish State, was invited to speak, but reportedly has been unable to obtain an entry visa to the UK.

In a Sept. 23rd Independent op-ed, BDS leader Omar Barghouti, who rejects Israel’s right to exist, responded to the fact that he was unable to speak at the Labour Party conference in Brighton (due to his visa request being delayed) by peddling a conspiracy theory.

I was set to take part in a Labour Party conference fringe event this weekend talking about my work advocating for Palestinian rights – but was unable to travel to Brighton because of a peculiar delay in the processing of my UK visa application. I suspect that Israel’s far-right government has once again outsourced its desperate war of repression against those supporting Palestinian rights to another western government.

Barghouti’s suggestion is clear: that his visa application delay was not the fault of the UK Home Office, or even Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but, rather, the government in Jerusalem – an allegation of Israeli control over foreign governments for which he naturally provides no evidence.

Further in his op-ed, Barghouti – who addressed the Labour conference via a video link – also frames his visa delay as part of what he characterises as a “shrinking space” for pro-Palestinian activism in the UK. Of course, this charge would come as a huge surprise to the those attending the Labour conference, which some likened to a big Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally.

A group John McDonnell is president of has been offering cartoons deemed too anti-Semitic to be published by the Guardian as raffle prizes. At the Labour Representation Committee event, the panel included suspended Labour Party figures Chris Williamson and Jackie Walker. The Independent’s Benjamin Kentish is reporting that Jeremy Corbyn’s wife attended too…

The cartoons by Steve Bell involve Netanyahu holding puppets of Boris and Trump as Tom Watson, dressed as a 17th century witchfinder general, rides behind him on a horse of the apocalypse he calls ‘auto-excluder’. The group decided to auction the cartoons because of the Guardian’s decision to refuse to publish them, not despite it…

Former Labour MP and Government Anti-Semitism Tsar John Mann told Guido the organisers of the event should lose their roles in the LRC. “I’m sure that McDonnell will want to have the people who organised this event removed from his organisation. I am sure he will want them replaced and removed as swiftly as possible and I am sure that Corbyn will back him in that.”

A spokesman from the Jewish Leadership Council has questioned the shadow chancellor’s role in the organisation “John McDonnell has been made aware of the issues with LRC on multiple occasions.” McDonnell’s people tell Guido that he has “no day to day involvement in the operation of the LRC and is not responsible for its activities”. But he remains president of the organisation…

A singer and Holocaust denier who was convicted of broadcasting "grossly offensive" songs about Jews has been jailed after violating her sentence by posting on her blog.

Alison Chabloz, 55, made “at least 50” separate posts on her website, which was deemed to be in breach of the terms of her suspended sentence she receied in May 2018 for her songs.

Chabloz, from Charlesworth in Derbyshire, was convicted last year for writing, performing and publishing songs which mocked Jews and the Holocaust.

The charges related to songs titled Nemo’s Antisemitic Universe, I Like It How It Is, performed at the right-wing London Forum in 2016, and a third, titled (((survivors))).

In the latter, Chabloz mocked Jewish figures, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, as well as Anne and Otto Frank, to the tune of Hava Nagila.

She was sentenced to 20 weeks’ imprisonment, which was suspended for two years, and ordered to abstain from posting on social media for 12 months.

Waterstones in Brighton has cancelled a Monday evening event on the fringes of Labour Party Conference to mark the launch of Bad News for Labour: Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief.

The event was to feature the author of the book, Prof. David Miller of the University of Bristol. Prof Miller is a conspiracy theorist who has been the subject of complaints by students and Jewish communal bodies. In the past, Prof. Miller has belittled antisemitism in the Labour Party as “mostly false”, condemned Ken Livingstone’s treatment by the Party as a “disgrace” and dismissed concerns about the safety of Jewish students on campus.

The controversial filmmaker, Ken Loach, was also expected to feature at the book launch. Mr Loach caused outrage in 2017 when, during an interview with the BBC, he refused to denounce Holocaust denial.

The event was part of a schedule also featuring Jackie Walker and Chris Williamson MP. Ms Walker is a former vice-chair of Momentum who was repeatedly suspended by Labour and finally expelled earlier this year and who has persistently claimed that complaints of antisemitism are part of a plot to destabilise the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and has rejected the International Definition of Antisemitism. 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.

A crisis was narrowly averted today by quick-thinking security personnel at Britain’s annual Labour Conference. A man carrying the Union Jack attempted to gain access to the Conference this morning but was stopped before he reached the auditorium. The Daily Freier was on the scene to get all of the facts.

“I knew something was amiss when the individual did not quickly provide a list of preferred pronouns.” explained a Momentum activist named Stephanie at the Credentialing Booth. “Then I noticed that he had a bizarre handkerchief in his pocket with red and white crosses on a blue background. He said it was a keffiyeh, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. I remembered seeing that thing on a Spice Girls album a long time ago. That’s when I called the Police.”

As the man was led away in handcuffs, frightened attendees shared their feelings with the Daily Freier. “This is absolutely terrifying.” stated a volunteer wearing a “Free Gaza” smock. “Yet the fear I felt is the same that the people of Jenin have felt since 1967. Today’s events have placed me in greater in Solidarity with Palestine. Yalla.”

Israeli, Jewish and pro-Israel groups all applauded the publication of an ‘unprecedented’ United Nations report on anti-Semitism, that, among other issues, links anti-Semitism to criticism of Israel and the BDS movement.

“This report marks one of the first times the U.N. has addressed the issue of anti-Semitism in any detail,” said Anne Herzberg, Legal Advisor and U.N. Liaison at NGO Monitor. “The Special Rapporteur condemned the use of anti-Semitic tropes and denial of Israel’s right to exist by BDS activists. Importantly, the Rapporteur also recommends the IHRA definition as a useful tool in combating anti-Semitism. Hopefully, U.N. bodies, particularly the Human Rights Council, will follow the Rapporteur’s lead by adopting IHRA and ending their promotion of anti-Semitic tropes and attacks on Israel’s legitimacy.”

The report, “Combatting Antisemitism to Eliminate Discrimination and Intolerance Based on Religion or Belief,” that was released by the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Ahmed Shaheed, defines anti-Semitism as a global phenomenon—not one largely confined to the United States and Europe—as has been the case in many previous U.N. reports. The Special Rapporteur recognizes that the sources of anti-Semitism are varied, coming from the far right, from members of radical Islamist groups and from the political left.

The report identifies violence, discrimination and expressions of hostility motivated by Jew-hatred as a serious obstacle to the enjoyment of the right to freedom of religion or belief. It expresses “serious concern that the frequency of anti-Semitic incidents appears to be increasing in magnitude and that the prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes and the risk of violence against Jewish individuals and sites appears to be significant, including in countries with little or no Jewish population.”

The University of North Carolina is disputing the Trump administration's accusations of bias in a Middle East studies program that the school operates with Duke University.

In a letter sent to the department Friday and obtained by The Associated Press through a records request on Monday, UNC's research chief defends the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies, saying it has been a leader in Middle Eastern language studies for years.

UNC, which houses the consortium, was responding to an Aug. 29 letter from the department. Threatening to cut federal grant money, the department said the program focused too much on cultural offerings and not on language or national security and that it also placed too much emphasis on "the positive aspects of Islam" and not other religions.

Terry Magnuson, the school's vice chancellor for research, said UNC and Duke were the first universities in the Southeast to teach Middle Eastern languages on a regular basis. He said that UNC started offering Arabic classes in 1959 and that it now has the nation's highest enrollment in the Urdu language and the eighth highest in both Arabic and Turkish.

He rebuffed the argument that the consortium fails to provide adequate instruction on national security and economic issues, saying it hosts dozens of programs a year on the topics, sometimes featuring former national security officials from the Trump, Obama, and Bush administrations.

More than 250 writers have come to the defense of British author Kamila Shamsie, after a German literary prize withdrew its award due to her support for the anti-Israel boycott movement.

They signed an open letter published on Monday in the London Review of Books that said that the Nelly Sachs prize has chosen to “punish an author for her human rights advocacy.”

The prize, named for the Jewish Nobel Prize-winning German-born poet and playwright Nelly Sachs (1891-1970), recognizes authors who champion “tolerance, respect and reconciliation.” The 15,000-euro prize, or about $16.5 thousand, is presented every two years. The German city of Dortmund runs the award.

Shamsie has refused to allow her works to be published in Israel.

The eight-member jury awarded Pakistan-born Shamsie the prize on September 6, but after learning of her support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement against Israel announced on September 20 that it would withdraw the award.

Interrupting another panellist, she went on:
Alibhai Brown: “And one must not forget…it becomes so normative but what’s been happening in Gaza in the last three or four years is unspeakable.”

Sacerdoti interjected to point out that “what’s been happening in Gaza” includes the launching of rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, to which Alibhai Brown retorted with a dog whistle reference to the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.
Alibhai Brown: “It’s horrible and we are not talking about it here, partly because of this ridiculous definition that was forced upon us that we may not discuss some issues.”

The IHRA definition of course says nothing of the sort but Ley made no effort to intervene and clarify the matter to audiences. As Sacerdoti pointed out that the Gaza Strip is controlled by a terrorist organisation, Alibhai Brown interrupted:
Alibhai Brown: “But you don’t punish the people. You don’t shoot twelve-year-olds.”

That context-free allegation also failed to prompt a reaction from Ley.

Even by @AJEnglish's standards, this is a ridiculous article with an even more ridiculous headline.

The truth is that those who promote a campaign which delegitimizes Israel and seeks its destruction are incompatible with the values of “tolerance, respect and reconciliation.” pic.twitter.com/dsqcTxx5w8

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 24, 2019

Anti-Semitism in America.
Jews wake up. It isn't Islamophobic to protect yourselves and America from Islamic anti-Semitism.https://t.co/VdtDpTZrAT

— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) September 23, 2019

MUST WATCH: I’m proud of everyone who showed up, organized and spoke with passion about the growing antisemitism that’s plaguing NYC!

The message is clear: we’re here, going nowhere and will not tolerate violence in our communities!

It’s time for city officials to do their part pic.twitter.com/O0N8dlrvk0

— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) September 24, 2019

US Jewish men were attacked in two incidents in Brooklyn neighborhoods in recent days.

The New York borough has seen a number of assaults against identifiable Jews in the past several months.

On Monday, a man walking to morning prayers in the Gravesend neighborhood was verbally assaulted before the assailant attempted to punch him several times. The attack was first reported by New York City Councilman Chaim Deutsch in a tweet. He said the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Unit is investigating the incident.

On Friday, a group of seven youths knocked the shtreimels — the fur hats often worn by some married ultra-Orthodox men on Shabbat and Jewish festivals — off the heads of two Hasidic Jews in the Williamsburg neighborhood in an incident caught on surveillance video.

On Sunday, dozens of people gathered in City Hall Park for a rally condemning the increasing number of anti-Semitic attacks taking place throughout the city. They condemned city officials for not taking more action to stop the attacks from happening.

There have been 152 anti-Semitic hate crimes so far this year in the city, according to the NYPD, compared with 93 in 2018.

An attorney under contract with the city of Trenton, New Jersey, resigned after the City Council president used the term “Jew her down” during an executive session earlier this month.

Stuart Platt sent a letter of resignation to the city clerk on Thursday, giving up a $25,000 contract to serve as the city’s redevelopment attorney, the Trentonian reported.

“I am an American and I am a Jew. I am resigning because of the disgraceful and shameful anti-Semitic remarks that were in fact made by the council president of the city of Trenton, Kathy McBride,” Platt wrote. “The vitriolic and hateful anti-Semitic comments were exacerbated by councilwoman Robin Vaughn, who defended McBride by saying that the word ‘Jew’ is a verb and then claiming not to know this is an anti-Semitic slur.”

Platt also criticized Councilman George Muschal, who defended the use of the phrase, saying it is “used all the time.”

McBride was criticizing a personal injury settlement.

“I’m sad for her that they were able to wait her out and Jew her down,” she said at the Sept. 5 meeting. The city attorney who handled the settlement is Jewish.

The three council members, amid calls for their resignations, have apologized for their use and defense of the term.

But Platt remains steadfast.

Officials said graffiti that included Nazi symbols was found spraypainted on a synagogue in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

David Holden, president of Temple Jacob in Hancock, said the graffiti was discovered Saturday by someone who noticed the vandalism and called police.

The Daily Mining Gazette reported swastikas were spraypainted on the synagogue, as well as the symbol of the SS, a Nazi paramilitary organization.

Holden said nothing was damaged inside the synagogue. Police are investigating.

The newspaper reported people came by the same day the damage was reported to help clean off the graffiti. Holden said that response was “really remarkable.”

Karl Muenter, a former SS soldier who was convicted in France of a wartime massacre but who never served any time for his crimes, has died in northwestern Germany. He was 96.

Marcus Tischbier, a representative of the district mayor’s office in Nordstemmen, the village where Muenter lived, confirmed Monday that the man had died on Friday. He had no further details.

Muenter was a sergeant with the 12th SS Panzer Division “Hitler Youth,” which was responsible for the massacre of 86 men in Ascq, France in April 1944, about two months before the Allied D-Day landings.

After partisans blew up a railroad line being used to shuttle German troops to Normandy, Muenter and other members of the division were ordered to arrest all males in the town. The victims, ranging from teenagers to the elderly, were lined up and shot.

The sergeant was convicted in absentia of war crimes and sentenced to death by a French court after the war, along with other participants in the massacre.

But by the time he was tracked down in 2013 in the Lower Saxony village where he lived at the home of one of the great-grandson of one of the Ascq victims, the statute of limitations had passed.

On Lithuanian Holocaust Memorial Day, 1000 participants and graduates of "March of the Living" from across Europe marched through the Ponary Forest where 70,000 Jews were murdered in World War II.

National Memorial Day for the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews is observed on September 23, the day that the Vilna Ghetto was liquidated in 1943, sealing the fate of the Jews living there, most of whom were either murdered in Ponary or sent to extermination camps.

The march through Ponary Forest serves as a response to the death marches from the Ponary Railway Station to the mass graves where many were murdered.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, and Speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament, Viktoras Prankietis, joined the march.

Shmuel Rosenman, Chairman of the International March of the Living said “This march exists, in tandem with two days of educational seminars and the attendance of so many young people who came here on Lithuanian Holocaust Memorial Day is an essential response which faces the rising waves of hatred around us."

DustPhotonics, a maker of pluggable high-speed optical transceivers and cables for data centers and high-performance computing connectivity, said it has raised a Series B investment of $25 million led by Intel Capital, the VC arm of tech giant Intel Corp.

The investor is joined by VC firm WRVI Capital, and the round also includes continued investment from semiconductor entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz, who in 2000 sold chip maker Galileo to Marvell Technologies for $2.7 billion.

The money raised will help DustPhotonics further develop its the next generation products and expand its operations and global market presence, the Modiin-Maccabim-Re’ut-based startup said in a statement.

“Our optical transceiver products address the key and challenging requirements for hyperscale applications, and we will also leverage our electro-optic technology in high-density, future architectures,” said Ben Rubovitch, CEO and co-founder of DustPhotonics, in the statement.

As data rates double with every successive generation, so does the complexity for meeting demands for lower cost, lower power and higher reliability technologies that allow better performance, the statement said.

Israeli fintech start-up Fundbox has raised $176 million in a Series C funding round and secured a $150 million credit facility to expand its business-to-business (B2B) payment and credit network service, the company announced Monday.

Fundbox said the investments totaling $326m. will enable more companies to use its machine learning and big data-driven online lending platform, boosting the start-up’s stated goal of “democratizing access to credit and credit services.”

Co-founded by Israeli entrepreneurs Eyal Shinar, Tomer Michaeli and Yuval Ariav in 2012, the San Francisco-headquartered firm aims to eliminate cash flow unpredictability by quickly providing short-term cash loans and credit for small and medium-sized businesses through its platform.

Fundbox employs approximately 250 workers at its Israeli development center and San Francisco and Dallas offices.

The Series C round was oversubscribed, the company said, and secured backing from a long list of major institutional investors, including Allianz X, Cathay Innovation, Arbor Ventures and Hamilton Lane. Existing investors also participated in the round, including Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst and Spark Capital Growth.

“The status quo for B2B transactions is uncertain cash flow and antiquated payment systems, which stifles business growth,” Shinar said. “The remedy to this uncertainty is the ability to facilitate quick risk decisions, faster payments, and more flexible terms so our customers have greater predictability related to their revenue and cash flow. This new investment round validates the market opportunity and that our team is on the right path as we continue to focus on transforming B2B commerce for the better.”
Fundbox has recruited about 100 employees over the last year, and now plans to hire a further 80 employees to expand its development and data departments.

Social media giant Facebook has acquired Israeli startup Servicefriend for an undisclosed amount of money, TheMarker financial paper reported Sunday, citing one of the investors in the company.

The startup, founded in 2015 by Shahar Ben Ami and Ido Arad, builds bots that chat and interact with clients via messaging or text apps, using artificial intelligence. The hybrid technology developed by the firm enables humans to step in and take over when the bots don’t know how to handle a situation, and clients never find out if the messages were generated completely, partly or not at all by humans. The result is a “natural and conversational experience.” the startup’s website says.

In some cases, the startup says, the bots outperform human agents in terms of customer satisfaction by over 20 percent.

Facebook has confirmed the acquisition, saying in a text message: “We acquire smaller tech companies from time to time. We don’t always discuss our plans.”

The Hyundai Motor Company is set to conduct an extensive pilot of hydrogen-fueled trucks in Israel in 2020, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke with Calcalist on condition of anonymity. A Hyundai delegation visited Israel last month to advance the venture and met with executives at the Prime Minister’s offices, the people said.

The test will be executed by Israeli automotive retailer Colmobil and transportation and logistics company Taavura Holdings, which owns the largest local fleet of trucks, the sources added.

Hydrogen vehicles have existed since the 1960s but have never been widely adopted due to the high availability and low costs of petrol and diesel. Unlike petrol and diesel-fueled vehicles, which operate by burning fuel and creating pollutants, hydrogen vehicles utilize an electrochemical process that converts hydrogen and creates electricity and water as byproducts. The electricity is stored in the vehicle’s battery.

Increasingly stringent environmental regulations implemented in recent years have caused some global manufacturers to turn back to hydrogen vehicles, among them Hyundai and Toyota. Truck manufacturers are also affected by the new regulations, as they are considered highly polluting vehicles. Hyundai has already presented a hydrogen truck that started operating in Europe earlier this year, with a stated driving range of 400 kilometers between fueling. The company said it intends to start using hydrogen trucks in Switzerland and New Zealand in 2020.

A much-anticipated exhibition at the Israel Museum, showcasing works once held by an art dealer with extensive ties to the Nazis, provides for a potent mix of art, history, and ethical debate.

“Fateful Choices: Art from the Gurlitt Trove” features some 100 works of art from a 1,500-strong collection, discovered in 2012, which had been gathered by Hildebrand Gurlitt, a museum director, art dealer — and questionable agent for the Hitler regime.

The trove was celebrated when it was first publicized, but tainted by the realization that it surely included pieces that were looted or taken from families who suffered and died during the Holocaust. Several works from the collection have indeed since been restituted.

The exhibit, which officially opens Tuesday, September 24 and closes January 15, 2020, was marked and celebrated Monday night, as curator Shlomit Steinberg, museum director Ido Bruno, German Ambassador to Israel Susanne Wasum-Rainer, and other visiting dignitaries from Germany and Switzerland gathered to view the exhibit and reflect on its development.

The three galleries used in “Fateful Choices” explore works from the trove and expose the range of the kind of artworks that Gurlitt amassed throughout his career.

Bulgaria’s Jewish community opened its first Jewish school in over 20 years.

The opening last week of the Ronald S. Lauder Day School in Sofia is a significant development for the some 6,000 members of the Jewish minority in Bulgaria.

Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress and a major donor to Jewish communities and organizations, attended the school’s opening in Sofia, the capital, on September 15, WJC said in a statement.

Prior to the opening of the school, whose 88 students are all under 12, Bulgarian Jewry had a Jewish school in the Lauder-ORT No. 134 “Dimcho Debelianov” Jewish School in Sofia. However, No. 134 is a public school that in 1998 received, with support from the Lauder Foundation, some Jewish-oriented content, including Hebrew language classes, in addition to its regular curriculum.

A rabbi in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, is opening there what he says is the city’s first yeshiva, or Jewish religious seminary, since World War II.

The Vilna Yeshiva will have about a dozen students when it opens this fall, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s emissary to Vilnius, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Vilnius used to have many dozens of yeshivas and synagogues before the Holocaust, when it was a major hub of Jewish religious and cultural life. The Nazis and local collaborators, however, killed more than 90 percent of Lithuanian Jewry. Today, about 3,000 Jews live in Lithuania and Vilnius has one functioning synagogue, the Choral Synagogue, where Krinsky officiates.

“The Vilna Yeshiva will restore a semblance of that intensive Torah study, back to its roots,” Krinsky said.

Krinsky and other teachers will teach the teenagers attending the yeshiva, he said. They hail from Jewish religious Orthodox families from several countries and will study at the yeshiva on a full-time basis, he said.

On the same day World War II broke out in Europe, Mahatma Gandhi wrote a short Jewish New Year greeting to a local Indian Jewish official, offering ominous good wishes to his “afflicted people.”

The National Library of Israel recently unearthed the 80-year-old handwritten letter during a massive review of millions of its archival documents. It was publishing it online Tuesday for the first time, offering a glimpse into the father of modern India’s complex relationship with the Holocaust.

“You have my good wishes for your new year,” Gandhi wrote to Avraham Shohet, the head of the Bombay Zionist Association, on September 1, 1939. “How I wish the new year may mean an era of peace for your afflicted people.”

The famed pacifist who would ultimately lead the successful campaign for India’s independence from British Rule, inspiring future civil rights movements, expressed deep compassion for the plight of European Jews. But he also faced criticism for not speaking up forcefully enough against their persecution. Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust.

Gandhi advocated only for non-violent resistance to the Nazis and sent a conciliatory letter to Adolf Hitler in which he addressed the Fuhrer as a “friend” and wrote that he did not believe the German dictator was the “monster” his opponents described.

العلج #اردوغانخلال 24ساعة:

اجتمع مع حاخامات اسرائيلين متشددين حيث استقبلهم في مقر اقامته وأكد استمرار دعمه للكيان الصهيوني #إسرائيل.

وبعد اجتماعه مع الحاخامات بـ24ساعة ظهر في الامم المتحدة يهاجم إسرائيل للضحك على السذج من قطيعه.

اخبث وانجس ما خلق ربي#اردوغان_يكذب_علي_العالمpic.twitter.com/TxZB5ddSgR

— سـهـم➹ (@s_hm2030) September 24, 2019