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

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

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

I confronted this professor too, and while he did apologize to me personally, he never brought the issue up with the class. Students left thinking they had said nothing wrong.

Like Bari Weiss, I consider myself a proud Jew who recognizes the need to combat anti-Semitism. However, I think she makes a serious mistake by conflating two different phenomena. Right-wing white nationalism abetted by the Trump administration is a grave threat to Jews and to democracy in the United States and must be vigorously challenged. Urban tension in gentrifying communities where racial and ethnic minorities are being displaced by gentrification and in Brooklyn, New York, by an expanding orthodox religious group has led to anti-Semitic slurs and physical assaults on religious Jews, but they are not an attack on Judaism as a religion and on the Jewish people as a whole. This behavior can best be addressed by building an inclusive community.

The author cited a series of microaggressions by what she considered to be insensitive students and non-supportive faculty and administrators and called on the Hofstra community to “confront this issue now to curb the rise of anti-Semitism, before it’s too late.”

I don’t dispute the student’s feelings, but I disagree with her accusations of anti-Semitism on the Hofstra campus. As a teacher, I distinguish between bias and racism or anti-Semitism. Everyone has biases. They are products of culture, what we are taught and our understanding of experiences. But everyone does not act on biases to restrict or hurt other people. Biases can be examined based on evidence and new experiences and be dismissed, or at least controlled. Racism and anti-Semitism belong in a separate category. Racism and anti-Semitism mean acting on biases and even promoting biases to justify discrimination against and exploitation of groups of people to achieve economic, political or social advantages. It can be a slippery slope from bias to racism when groups are pitted against each other for political power or scarce resources, but the transition is not inevitable. 

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Source: Youtube screencap

o  "Jews rule this world by proxy”
o  “1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counterattack. We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. ”
o  “The Jews are not merely hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively.”

I have some Jewish friends, very good friends. They are not like the other Jews, that’s why they are my friends.

Following Palestinian Media Watch's two major reports and a two-week public pressure campaign, Fatah’s terror promoting Facebook page is closed as of this morning. PMW's campaign started in February this year when we released a detailed report about Fatah’s Facebook page documenting its terror glorification and incitement to violence during 2018. The report showed that Fatah’s content was in direct violation of Facebook’s guidelines. Inexplicably, Facebook refused to close the page at that time.

PMW followed up with a new report released earlier this month, documenting the terror promoting content on Fatah’s Facebook page during the first 6 months of 2019, which was likewise sent to Facebook. In addition, PMW also launched a public social media campaign with many partner organizations worldwide, developed by volunteers at ACT-IL, which was aimed at Facebook's directors, urging them to close down Fatah’s page. The campaign included daily tweets and Facebook posts showing Fatah’s terror promoting content on Facebook, and also included a public campaign through which individuals and organizations sent a pre-written letter of protest to Facebook. Thousands of ACT-IL activists from 74 countries and other PMW partner organizations sent thousands of emails to Facebook's policy directors, and made thousands of reports directly on the page through Facebook.

As of this morning Fatah's Facebook page is down.

PMW thanks ACT-IL and their thousands of volunteers and the many other partners, organizations, and individuals who joined PMW in this project to close down Fatah's Facebook page. With your help we eliminated the terror promotion, and saved lives.

Already yesterday, Fatah was alarmed by PMW’s campaign. Fatah posted three different items about the campaign against its Facebook page, refusing to refer to Palestinian Media Watch by name, preferring to call us "the occupation," a term it often uses to refer to Israel.

Fatah posted copies of PMW’s posts calling to close the Fatah page, in which they accused PMW of inciting against them and asked its followers to “support the page”:

Liberman’s party did not form Government with 60 other members of the Right last April after Netanyahu refused to accept a bill drafted by Liberman calling for ultra-orthodox Jews to do military service. Netanyahu was captive to the ultra-orthodox Jews comprised in the Right bloc who threatened to bolt if he wavered. Liberman’s continuing insistence that his military service bill be legislated was countered by United Torah Judaism MK Yakov Asher declaring this the best possible get-out-the-vote campaign the religious parties could wish for.

The religious parties failed big time.

Netanyahu is now in an easier political position to agree to Liberman’s demand than he was in April – the latest voting results showing:
1. Liberman’s vote increased from 173004 to 309688 – an increase of 136684.
2. The combined votes of the religious parties – Shas and United Torah Judaism – increased from 507324 to 598522 – an increase of only 91198.
3. Likud’s vote decreased from 1140370 to 1111535 – a drop of 28835

The turnout of ultra-orthodox voters opposing Liberman’s bill did not match the turnout of new voters supporting Liberman’s bill and those Likud voters changing their votes for possibly the same reason. The religious parties are now on far weaker ground to oppose Liberman’s reform as they are locked in to a single negotiating bloc containing 55 members - presumably acting by majority vote.

Cutting a deal between Netanyahu and Liberman remains an option to prevent Israel going through this electoral agony for a third time if Rivlin’s call fails.

An op/ed posted by The Independent on September 17 accused Israel of being part of a new “axis of evil.” Written by philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek, it accused Israel of being involved in this axis alongside “Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the [United Arab Emirates].” The rules of the game are changing, the author claimed.

Zizek’s main wrath was reserved for criticism of Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. This little-noticed piece dovetailed with another article at Middle East Eye that claimed the attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq by drones was “in retaliation for Israeli drone strikes on Hashd al-Shaabi bases and convoys in August, which were co-ordinated by the Saudis.”

No evidence was presented for this extraordinary claim, but the article claimed Saudi has financed Israeli drone strikes launched from eastern Syrian areas controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces. This narrative is part of several recent pieces that allude to the same claims.

The lack of evidence here is not as important as the perception. Israel is increasingly perceived as linked to Egypt and the southern Arab states, including Gulf countries. The level of alliance and cooperation is not always spelled out. For example, The New York Times reported in February that a “secret alliance” of Israel and Egypt regarding Israeli support for Egyptian operations against ISIS in Sinai.

Iranian media unsurprisingly tries to play up these stories. Press TV in Iran claimed in August that “Israel, UAE hold secret US-mediated talks” and claimed on September 5 that an Emirati jet landed in Israel. It has also pushed programs on “the UAE’s deal with Israel.” Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, has gone as far as to attack the UAE as a “second Israel.” Press TV even claimed this summer that Israel inked a “spy aircraft deal” in the Gulf.

The narrative of “second Israel” in the Middle East is one heard across the region in propaganda from Iran to Turkey. Turkey’s Yeni Safak claimed in January that there was a “secret Israel-Saudi-UAE meeting” that “takes aim at Turkey.” The website Middle East Observer claimed in March 2018 that there was a “conservative front” of Israel-US-Saudi-UAE plan to topple Turkey’s leader. The article, by Ibrahim Karagul, said that there is a “UAE-Saudi-Israel-US axis” that was established and founded to “stop Turkey.” Qatar’s Al Jazeera has also sought to highlight claims that a “UAE official says Arab countries should be more open to Israel.”

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday urged Middle Eastern nations to fully normalize diplomatic relations with Israel, while maintaining that crippling US sanctions imposed on Iran would continue until the Islamic Republic changed its behavior.

Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly, the US president accused Tehran of trafficking in “monstrous anti-Semitism” and engaging in a “fanatical quest” to obtain nuclear weapons. Trump said the rogue regime’s aggression had created newfound regional alliances to counter the Iranian threat.

“Thankfully, there is a growing recognition in the wider Middle East that the countries of the region share common interest in battling extremism and unleashing economic opportunity,” Trump said. “That is why it’s so important to have full normalized relations between Israel and its neighbors.”

He continued, “Only a relationship built on common interest, mutual respect, and religious tolerance can forge a better future.”

In a highly anticipated address before the international community — as tensions with Iran intensified after it allegedly attacked two Saudi oil facilities — Trump insisted that he would maintain his “maximum pressure campaign” against Tehran.

Iran, he said, was on a “fanatical quest for nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.” The world, Trump continued, “must never allow this to happen.”

Iran’s antisemitic hatred of Israel is unacceptable, US President Donald Trump told the UN as he warned Tehran that sanctions against it would not be lifted as long as it’s “bloodlust” and nuclear drive continued.

“For 40 years, the world has listened to Iran’s rulers as they lash out at everyone else for the problems they alone have created,” Trump said as he addressed the opening segment of the 74th General Assembly.

In describing the dangers of Iran, Trump said that its leaders “conduct ritual chants of ‘Death to America’ and traffic in monstrous antisemitism.”

“Last year, the country’s supreme leader said that Israel was a ‘malignant cancerous tumor that has to be removed and eradicated. It is possible and it will happen,’” the US president said, adding that such antisemitism is “unacceptable.”

“America will never tolerate such antisemitic hate,” Trump said. “Fanatics have long used hatred of Israel to distract from their own failures. Thankfully, there is a growing recognition in the wider Middle East that the countries of the region share a common interest in battling extremism and unleashing economic opportunity.”

Those common interests present an opportunity, Trump said, and that “is why it is so important to have full, normalized relations between Israel and its neighbors. Only a relationship built on common interests, mutual respect and religious tolerance can forge a better future.”

He called on the international community to stand up to Iran.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will renew a pledge to hold fresh parliamentary elections in a speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday, a senior official said.

Abbas will say that “after he returns to Palestine he will call parliamentary elections and specify a date and begin formal preparations,” Ahmed Majdalani, a senior Palestinian official and Abbas aide, told AFP on Wednesday.

Abbas, 84, has made similar pledges in recent years, but no Palestinian parliamentary elections have taken place since 2006.

Those elections, which were surprisingly won by Islamist terror group Hamas, eventually led to a dramatic split, with Hamas seizing control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Since then Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah faction have traded accusations of blame over the lack of elections.

In December 2018 Abbas pledged to hold parliamentary elections within six months.

Israeli leaders on Tuesday lashed out against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who likened the Jewish state’s Gaza policies to the Nazi treatment of the Jews during a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

According to a report by Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, Erdogan told US Muslim leaders in a Monday meeting in New York that “we view the Holocaust in the same way we view those besieging Gaza and carrying out massacres in it.”

On Tuesday, in his UN speech, Erdogan slammed Israel again, questioning its borders and accusing it of harboring expansionist aims.

“The Palestinian territory under Israeli occupation has become one of the most striking places of injustice,” Erdogan said, brandishing a map frequently featured by critics of Israel purporting to show how Israeli territory grew over the years at the Palestinians’ expense.

He also claimed that a Palestinian woman shot and killed during an alleged stabbing attempt last Wednesday — while carrying a knife at a checkpoint — was “murdered heinously.”

Immediately after the speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Erdogan of “lying.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads a a faction meeting of his Likud party at the Knesset on September 23, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“Someone who does not stop lying, who slaughters Kurds, who denies the massacre of the Armenians, should not preach to Israel,” he said. “Stop lying Erdogan.”

Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday to either impose global nuclear disarmament or establish laws that allow any nation to develop nuclear weapons, as the status quo breeds “inequality.”

Erdogan repeated his anti-Security Council mantra, “the world is bigger than five,” a reference to the five permanent members of the Security Council: China, Russia, America, France, and the U.K., all of which are nuclear powers.

He also boasted of Turkey’s repeated violations of Syrian and Iraqi sovereignty in attempts to bomb Kurdish targets in both areas. Turkey shares a border with Syria and routinely sends fighter jets into Syrian airspace, much to the chagrin of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Erdogan’s troops target Syrian Kurdish troops allied with America, however, not Assad’s forces or Shiite terrorist groups like Hezbollah.

The Turkish president has never explicitly said he wants Turkey to become a nuclear-armed nation, but this month decried as unfair the fact that Turkey signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and thus cannot possess nuclear weapons legally.

Erdogan opened his speech Tuesday with a warning that “the international community is gradually losing its ability to find lasting solutions to challenges such as terrorism, hunger, misery, and climate change.”

For years, we in Israel thought that the hostile reality at the UN was something unalterable. We became impervious to automatic condemnations and stopped getting upset when Palestinian incitement was met with open arms.

To clear the air the anti-Semitism that pervaded the corridors of the organization, we launched a long but justified battle, possibly the most justified one ever waged in the UN.

In the past few years, we have spearheaded a number of precedent-setting initiatives that helped us throw off the hostile atmosphere and strengthen our status in the organization.

It started on the day I was appointed chairman of the Justice Committee, an unprecedented occurrence that proved that Israel can win, even in the UN. The new balance of power stood out especially when ambassadors from the countries hostile to Israel were forced, for the first time, to face a senior committee head who was also Israel's ambassador to the UN, and ask for the right to speak.

In every fight, we assemble the moral majority, led by our friend the US. Together we have led proposals for resolutions that were voted on in the General Assembly and designed to isolate nations that support terrorism and block anti-Israel declarations.

Eighty-seven countries stood alongside Israel and the US when we brought to the vote a resolution to condemn Hamas in the General Assembly. A broad coalition of nations openly stated that the loathsome terrorist group was an international problem.

We are proudly making Jewish culture and legacy part of the organization. For the first time, Yom Kippur was recognized as an official UN holiday, kosher food was made available in the cafeteria, and Jewish holidays are marked by official events.

As dozens of heads of state convene for the annual UN General Assembly in New York this week, the lingering conflict in Syria is taking a back seat while tensions in the Persian Gulf and global trade wars take center stage.

Now in its ninth year, many Syrians fear the unresolved war has become a footnote in a long list of world crises, with weary leaders resigned to live with President Bashar Assad ruling over a wrecked and divided country for the foreseeable future.

On the eve of the global gathering in New York, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced that a long-awaited committee that would draft a new Syrian constitution has been finalized — a step the UN hopes will put the war-ravaged country on track for a political solution.

But few see any real chance that the committee can make significant progress toward that end.

“The world has forgotten about us — not that anyone cared about Syria to begin with,” said Hussein Ali, a 35-year-old internally displaced father of two. He now lives with his family in one rented room in the opposition-controlled northern town of Azaz, near the Turkish border. “The rise of Daesh made the West care momentarily, but not anymore,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

Last year, Mahmoud Abbas’s government submitted requests to join several international organizations generally open only to UN member states, including the United Nations Universal Postal Union (UPU), which coordinates mail deliveries among countries. The effort failed to get the requisite number of votes last week. To David May, UPU membership was not a mere bureaucratic formality, but part of an effort to create a Palestinian state without negotiations with Israel, in violation of the Oslo Accords:

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), acting under the name of the “state of Palestine,” has for eight years been angling to become the 194th country recognized by the UN, a campaign known as “Palestine 194.” The United States and Israel have discouraged this initiative on the grounds that it removes one of the most important incentives for Palestinian leaders to negotiate with Israel, namely the promise of statehood.

[In 2011], the PLO gained membership at the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization [UNESCO]. This triggered a Clinton-era American law that prevents the United States from funding any UN agency or affiliate that “grants full membership” to non-states. . . . The next major step for the Palestinians came when the UN General Assembly recognized the “state of Palestine” as a non-member observer state in 2012, an upgrade from its status as a non-state observer. This change allowed the Palestinians to sign UN treaties.

Israel fears that the Palestinians could use their membership in international organizations as a weapon. For example, Palestinian membership at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has dramatically increased the threat of spurious war-crimes lawsuits against the Jewish state.

Rejection by the Universal Postal Union was a clear defeat for Palestine 194, which [heretofore] appeared to be on a clear path toward success.

In October 2012, captain Ziv Shilon opened the gate between Israel and Gaza so that IDF soldiers could return to Israel, following the nation’s disengagement plan from the Strip. At that very moment a terrorist bomb planted at the gate went off, causing a massive explosion. Shilon lost his left hand, but was still able to direct his soldiers to safety.

He was evacuated from the scene and transfused with 56 units of blood, which helped saved his life. Despite the loss of his hand, he runs marathons and engages in other intensive sports.

Israel’s wars and the constant security threats it faces makes having a handy reserve of blood a strategic need. Yet it falls short of requirements set out by the World Health Organization, which state that nations should strive for self-sufficiency with a minimum blood supply sufficient for 4 percent of their population, at any given time. Israel holds blood supplies sufficient for just 3 percent of its population, or a stock of some 260,000 units instead of the 350,000 or 400,000 it should have, by WHO standards.

Furthermore, the blood is processed and stored at a facility in Ramat Gan’s Sheba Medical Center that is unprotected from missiles, biological and chemical attacks, and earthquakes. The labs, the blood storage and the donor rooms are surrounded by windows looking out onto the hospital campus. Lovely, but definitely not safe in case of an attack.

An Israeli woman was lightly injured Wednesday in a stabbing incident near the central city of Modiin.

Police arrested a 14-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank on suspicion of committing the stabbing at the Maccabim Junction along Route 443.

The woman was treated for a stab wound in her upper body.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service said the woman, in her 20s, was taken in stable condition to Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer.

Police said a Border Police officer was also lightly hurt while restraining the suspect.

According to police, Border Police officers driving on Route 433 spotted the suspected trying to flee and chased after him on foot. The officers fired a number of bullets in the air, and collared the suspect a few hundred meters from the scene of the stabbing.
A knife that was used in a stabbing at the Maccabim Junction along Route 443 on September 25, 2019. (Israel Police)

The stabbing came after a lull in attacks following an uptick in violence in August.

"Frustrated Palestinian youths are committing suicide because of poverty, while the sons of the leaders are holding birthday parties!"— Hussein Qatoush, on Facebook.

The problem... is when your father is a senior terrorist leader who devotes himself to inciting against Israel and Jews and encouraging other young Palestinians to sacrifice their lives in the war against Israel. Hamad, like the rest of the Hamas leaders, would never send his own son to attack soldiers at the border with Israel.

It is time for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to revolt against the leaders who are keeping them chained in poverty and sending them to their deaths.

It is also time for the international community to wake up to the fact that it is wealthy Hamas leaders, and not Israel, who are responsible for the humanitarian and economic disaster that is known as the Gaza Strip.

Israeli police on Wednesday said they arrested the Palestinian Authority Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, Fadi al-Hadami, for conducting political activity in East Jerusalem.

Police said Fadi al-Hadami was charged with allegedly breaking a law prohibiting the Palestinian Authority from carrying out political activities in Jerusalem.

The PA governor of Jerusalem Adnan Ghaith was summoned for questioning on the same offense.

Palestinian official Adnan Husseini said in a statement that Hadami’s arrest was meant to stop “social and cultural activities.”

Sources told Wafa, the official PA news site, that Hadami was arrested in a raid on his home in the early hours of Wednesday, but that when security forces arrived at Ghaith’s East Jerusalem residence, he was not there. Family members were given a summons for Ghaith and his son.

More effective implementation of restrictions on the movement of goods and people into and out of this coastal territory has resulted in a shortage of rockets and other weapons with which to target the Jewish State, a spokesman for the Islamist group that governs the strip admitted today, limiting the organization’s arsenal of projectiles to the wads of cash that Doha provides each month.

Fawzi Balsaq of Hamas lamented to journalists and human rights workers Wednesday morning that Israel’s almost complete control over what enters and exits the Gaza Strip now prevents the Islamist movement from augmenting its inventory of missiles, incendiary devices, explosives, bullets, mortar shells, and firearms, such that all that remains to launch at Israel is the meager quantity of American dollars left over once Hamas’s leadership has distributed the monthly allotment from Qatar to its loyalists and embezzled much of the rest.

“We used to have an impressive stockpile of explosive and incendiary materials, and any number of ways to deliver them,” complained Balsaq. “But we have been, shall we say, zealous in our use of those items, and now we have maybe a few days’ worth of inventory at current expenditure levels. I’m not only talking about bombs, mortar shells, bullets, and rockets, but even helium, balloons, and plastic sheeting for making kites to carry the firebombs. We’re even low on rocks, if you can believe such a thing, because we’ve chucked them all over the border fence.”

“Now all we can do is take wads of twenty- and one-hundred-dollar bills and fling them at Israeli soldiers,” he continued. “I suppose we could light the money on fire beforehand, which would be an apt symbolic act.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is in New York for the 74th UN General Assembly. He is pushing a message of “peace,” but it is one in which the peace Iran desires is a Middle East controlled by Tehran. This is a dangerous time, made more complex by the roles of Russia, Turkey and the United States in the region.

Israel is, as ever, at the center of Iran’s nefarious plans. Iran regularly excoriates our state, lashing it with various conspiracies and accusations. Iran claims that Israel is an enemy of Islam, one that threatens the holy mosque in Jerusalem, and is an artificial and temporary imprint here, one that will be washed away with the help of Iran’s precision-guided missiles.
For decades this has been the narrative from Tehran, and for decades its threats have been largely ignored by the world, as though the rules of international relations do not apply to Iran.

The Iranian regime kidnaps people, detains boats via piracy and even attacks countries in the region with missiles and drones. It sends its arms flooding into Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. But this all goes unchecked. No other country in the world behaves like Iran does. Other countries seek peace, they behave with dignity toward their neighbors, rather than trying to subvert and colonize them using militias.

“We hope in the very sensitive situation of the region today we would be able to convey the message of our regional nations, which is the message of regional peace and end of any interference in the sensitive regions of Persian Gulf and the Middle East,” Rouhani said before his speech at the UN. He claims Iran is under pressure from a cruel economic war.

Iran is very good at playing the victim and perpetrator at the same time, part of its “good cop, bad cop” approach to foreign countries. It pretends to be a victim, but then again it continually threatens Israel, the US and other states.

This endless indulgence has only encouraged Iran’s progressively provocative behavior, culminating in Sept. 14’s brazen drone-and-missile assault on giant oil installations in northeastern Saudi Arabia.

The Europeans are right to fear a conflagration in the Gulf region, but they should by now recognize that it is Iran, and not the U.S., that is most likely to spark a war. Bolton’s removal from the White House should clarify their thinking. However deep their distaste for Trump, they can’t ignore his repeated offers to negotiate. Nor can they deny that Iran’s actions are endangering the global economy.

The most powerful signal of disapproval the Europeans could send to Tehran would be to supplement American economic sanctions with their own — the nuclear deal they are so eager to protect, in fact, requires punitive action for breaching enrichment limits. They should also contribute naval assets to help protect the shipping lanes of the Persian Gulf from marauding Iranian speedboats.

If the prospect of standing behind Trump is too much for Europe’s leaders to stomach, the next best thing would be to get out of the way. They should communicate to the regime that all efforts to save the agreement are suspended until Iran ends its aggression against its neighbors and resumes compliance with the nuclear deal. There must be no more talk of lines of credit and sanctions waivers. Instead, they should press Iran to take up Trump’s offer of negotiations — with European mediation, if that helps — or face the consequences without German, French and British support.

Former IRGC Commander-in-Chief General Mohsen Rezaee, who currently serves as the secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, said in a September 22, 2019 interview on Channel 2 TV (Iran) that there can be no security in the Persian Gulf unless America, England, and other foreign countries pull out of the region. He said that America's presence is at the root of the lack of security in the region and that all the countries in the region will "become friends" the day America leaves. In addition, Rezaee said that America's inability to retaliate against Iran for downing an American drone is evidence that the U.S. cannot help defend Saudi Arabia. He said that Iran will eventually catch President Trump, who he said has "played all his cards," and place him on trial before an international court for the crimes he has committed against Iran and other nations. Furthermore, Rezaee said that China has been strengthening its relations with Iran and that the two countries are working on a 25-year strategic agreement.

"The Root Of The [Region's] Lack Of Security Is America's Presence"

General Mohsen Rezaee: "Commerce in the Persian Gulf has never stopped. The [export of] oil through the Persian Gulf has never stopped. If we had wanted to block the Strait of Hormuz or to prevent international trade, we could have done it. We did not do it and we did not let others do it.
[...]
"Look, there cannot be security in the Persian Gulf unless the foreign forces pull out. As long as America, England, and other foreign countries wish to remain in the region, the lack of security of the past 40 years will continue.

"So the first condition for security is the independence of [the region's] countries. There can be no security without the independence of these countries. The root of the [region's] lack of security is America's presence. The day the Americans leave the region, all the countries will become friends with one another.

Following the September 14, 2019 Iranian attack on Aramco facilities in Saudi Arabia, Ibrahim Al-Amin, editor of the Hizbullah-affiliated Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily, which is known to support the resistance axis, warned in a September 23 article in the paper that further attacks, against Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and additional targets, are likely.

In his article, Al-Amin outlined the "new strategy" which he says has been adopted by the resistance axis to contend with the enemy led by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and their allies, especially with respect to the Yemeni arena. The most significant aspect of this strategy, he said, is the transition from the stage of restraint to the stage of punitive attack. According to Al-Amin, the stage of punitive attack is already in effect, and cannot be stopped unless the American enemy and its allies cease their wars against the resistance axis. He also claimed that the resistance axis is willing and able to move to the stage of all-out war if necessary. Stressing that the punitive attack is not limited to a specific period of time or to a specific target, he noted that it may be extended to include all those involved in these wars against the resistance axis. The operation against the Aramco facilities, he said, had revealed only "the tip of the iceberg of the capability of the countries and forces of the resistance axis," and that the punitive attacks will include more painful blows to the aggressive countries. He added that recently the UAE had received a clear and final warning that it must quit the war in Yemen or face an extremely harsh attack.

Mocking Saudi Arabia and its allies, which he said had been embarrassed and surprised by the technological and military means which the Houthis have proven that they have at their disposal, Al-Amin warned that the Houthis will, if they have no choice, escalate their response to the point where red lines no longer constrain them.

It should be noted that in recent days the Houthis have continued to threaten Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Houthi leader Abdul-Malik Badreddin Al-Houthi and Houthi Supreme Political Council chairman Mahdi Al-Mashat announced that if the coalition headed by Saudi Arabia does not cease its aggression against Yemen, the Houthis would step up their attacks.[1] Similarly, in a September 17, 2019 Al-Jazeera interview, Houthi spokesman Muhammad 'Abd Al-Salam warned of an attack on UAE territory. The next day, September 18, Houthi military spokesman Brig. Yahya Saree said that the Houthis have a list of dozens of potential targets in the UAE, and added, addressing the UAE leaders: "Even one single operation will cost you dearly."[2]

In October 2018, a pro-regime Iranian news website reported that two people working for a senior officer of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps had been arrested as alleged Israeli spies.

According to Radio Farda, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naghdi (Naqdi) denied the report. He also announced that he would file a complaint against the pro-reform former minister and member of parliament, Behzad Nabavi, who spread the claim in an interview he gave to the news site Alef, which is managed by conservative former member of parliament Ahmad Tavakkoli.

"Two persons working for the office of an IRGC general were discovered as Israel's spies and arrested. They were behind bars along with several political prisoners," Nabavi said, as quoted by Radio Farda. "One of the two was later executed," he added.

The Iranian branch of the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty pointed out that this was not the first time that people with ties to the IRGC have been accused of cooperating with Israel.

Ground-hugging swarms of drones and cruise missiles that decimated Saudi oil production facilities this month did billions' worth of damage and defeated U.S.-made Hawk and Patriot air-defense systems.

Washington Institute analyst Michael Knights wrote, "Many of the components needed to defend against a cruise missile swarm are in place - radars, missiles batteries, and anti-aircraft cannon - but they were evidently not alert enough or not handled boldly enough to parry this blow."

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said that U.S. air and naval forces in the region did not track the swarms. "We don't have an unblinking eye over the entire Middle East at all times."

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) analyst Anthony Cordesman said the drones and cruise missiles hugged the ground to evade radar and had "the ability to home in remotely with great precision on key point targets that can include the most expensive fixed industrial, infrastructure and military targets and use comparatively small amounts of explosives to destroy key components."

CSIS analyst Seth Jones noted, "All of Saudi Arabia is threatened by Iranian missiles, and the number of Iranian missiles capable of reaching the country would overwhelm virtually any missile defense system."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
Britain, France and Germany have said that Iran is responsible for the recent attack on Saudi Arabia.

Let me say on behalf of Israel, very simply: Iran did it. A to Z. pic.twitter.com/Udi3YMneqp

— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) September 24, 2019

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday claimed that Israel was backing the Islamic State jihadist group, and accused the United States of being the primary supporter of terrorism in the Middle East.

“Israel… on a daily basis targets the people of Palestine, Lebanon and most recently even Iraq and Syria… there is no terrorism in the world that matches the activities of Israel,” he said in a Fox News interview on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

“Those who fight for the freedom for their land, they are not terrorists,” he said, referring to Palestinian groups that target Israelis.

“The ones who are terrorists are those who render aid to Daesh,” he said, using the Arabic name for the Islamic State.

Rouhani said that Israel was “certainly and undoubtedly” supporting the jihadist group, based on the fact that it had provided some aid to rebels fighting against the Assad regime in Syria, one of Tehran’s staunchest allies in the region.

“Israel is the country that takes care of injured IS fighters and they make weapons available to them — so Daesh are the terrorists,” he said.

Iran has spent more than $16 billion during the past several years to fund militant terrorists across the Middle East, cash that was repatriated to the Islamic Republic under the terms of the landmark nuclear deal, according to new disclosures from the Trump administration.

As Iran's economy teeters on the brink of collapse under the tough sanctions regime imposed by the Trump administration, the Islamic Republic's authoritarian leadership has spent its limited cash reserves to bolster terror groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as militant terrorists in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

The Trump administration is taking a range of steps to thwart what it describes as Iran's expansionist foreign policy that seeks to establish hardline governments across the region.

"Our pressure is making the regime's extremist foreign policy and the ideology that drives it more expensive than ever before," Brian Hook, the administration's special representative for Iran told the Asia Society on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, or UNGA, which is being held this week in New York City. "This was long overdue."

In July, the head of the coordination council of Ansar-e Hezbollah, a paramilitary organization that crushes dissent inside Iran, spoke openly about Tehran's strategy toward the United States.

"If the Americans make a mistake, we can use our missiles with a range of less than 70 kilometers to hit oil centers that the world needs in the Ahmadi area [in Kuwait]," said Hossein Allahkaram, a former general in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to a clip flagged by the Middle East Media Research Institute. "We can hit oil areas of Dharan [in Saudi Arabia], and areas in the UAE. Twenty million barrels of oil leave that area every day. We can hit them all at once."

"But we are not doing it," he continued, "because of our defense strategy. So we are acting in keeping with the crisis escalation theory. We keep escalating the crisis more and more. On the nuclear issue, we have made ourselves clear. We keep escalating the crisis. We keep escalating the crisis in the regional issues as well, and we do it also with regard to the oil."

Iran certainly escalated tensions with the West over the summer, shooting down an American drone, harassing international oil tankers, and breaching core measures of the 2015 nuclear deal. But the Iranians took their aggression to a new level with attacks on oil facilities inside Saudi Arabia earlier this month—Saudi, American, and now British officials all say Iran is responsible. Each belligerent step is part of Iran's effort to test President Trump's resolve to continue his campaign of maximum pressure against Tehran, create international fear and pressure other countries not to cooperate with Washington's campaign, and create leverage in future negotiations with the United States.

I'm curious, when Chancellor #Merkel just met @HassanRouhani at #UNGA, did she raise #Iran's:

* Holocaust denial?
* Threats to annihilate Israel?
* Support for Hamas & Hezbollah?

Or is #Germany's support for #Israel's security no longer 'part of Germany's raison d'etre'? pic.twitter.com/erlPjuJT3h

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 25, 2019

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed the United Against Nuclear Iran Summit in New York on Wednesday, ahead of Iranian President Hassen Rouhani's expected address to the #UNGA

"This is the beginning of the awakening that Iran is the aggressor not the aggrieved. Iran has a long 40-year history of unprovoked aggression, for murdering and torturing their own people, killing Americans, harboring Al-Qaeda," Pompeo said.

Pompeo then referenced Iran's involvment in backing terror groups, after the country signed the 2015 nuclear deal. He said Iran "protected and preserved its nuclear know how, indeed after the deal was signed."

He also said Iran was "calling every play in the playbook," before going over Iran's list of actions including, attacking oil tankers, threatening to defy its nuclear commitments, and calling for death to Israel, as evidence that "the playbook won't succeed."

The Secretary of State accused Iran of telling "flat out lies" and said that "each of us needs to call them on it." He continued, "Too many people listen to Rouhani and [Iranian Foreign Minister] Zarif. Rouhani is desperate to deceive."

He acknowledged that "More and more nations are standing up to Iran's thuggish behavior."

"No responsible government should sponsor Iran's blood thirst."

Presidential hopeful Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D., Hawaii) attempted to justify Iran's attack on vital oil facilities in Saudi Arabia as "retaliatory."

"This latest attack on Saudi Arabia is a retaliatory attack because of all the sanctions that are in place that are essentially blocking Iran from selling their oil on the market," Gabbard said Tuesday on CNN.

She also argued the United States cannot enter a cycle of retaliation with Iran due to the high costs of a war, saying conflict with Iran would make the Iraq War look like a "picnic." Gabbard pledged to reverse the Trump administration's maximum pressure strategy if elected president.

"What I would do is re-enter the Iran nuclear agreement, take away those sanctions that have been put in place so that Iran is brought back into an agreement where they are complying, we have inspectors going in," Gabbard said. "Every single day that this doesn't happen, Iran is moving forward towards developing a nuclear weapon."

"Our troops deploying now to Saudi Arabia at his direction are not there serving the interests of the American people or our own national security," she added.

If it wasn’t already clear to you that @rogerwaters is a Jew hater, surely you must see it now. https://t.co/E7VI01MQsH

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 25, 2019

Four years ago this coming Tuesday, a group of Hamas operatives murdered Eitam and Naama Henkin while they were driving with their children. Earlier this week, the four children—who were injured but survived the attack—filed suit in a federal court against the Turkish bank Kuveyt Turk, which they accuse of providing financial assistance to Hamas. (Since Eitam Henkin had American citizenship, the case can be tried in the U.S.) Jonathan Schanzer and Aykan Erdemir write:

The lawsuit against this . . . bank, which counts the Turkish government as a shareholder, comes two weeks after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned eleven Turkey-linked entities and individuals for supporting Hamas and other jihadist outfits. . . . Between 2012 and 2015, Tehran [too] relied on Turkish banks and a gold trader with dual Iranian-Turkish citizenship to circumvent U.S. sanctions at the height of Washington’s efforts to thwart the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions. It was the biggest sanctions-evasions scheme in recent history.

Turkey has also proved a forgiving host to terrorists. . . . Islamic State terrorists continued to operate from Turkish territory well into 2018. . . . Saleh Arouri, the Hamas military commander responsible for the 2014 kidnapping and killing of three teens in the West Bank, spearheaded that operation from Turkish soil. . . . Arouri is just one of many Hamas operatives who have operated in Turkey. In 2011, ten Hamas operatives released by Israel as part of a prisoner exchange arrived in Turkey, and many remain active there.

It’s already clear that Erdogan’s Turkey has become a permissive jurisdiction for illicit and terror finance. But this new case on behalf of an American victim of terrorism and members of his family could finally begin to hold the regime in Turkey responsible.

While Nutella has previously faced criticism for its use of palm oil, it’s now under fire for a different ingredient – the humble hazelnut.

Three quarters of the world’s hazelnut supply are produced in Turkey, with a new BBC investigation revealing that many of the nation’s farms use child labourers. That puts Nutella and its parent company Ferrero – the world’s largest hazelnut buyer º in a tight spot. The product is wholly reliant on hazelnuts, buying a staggering one-quarter of the entire global supply to make its cocoa spread.

The BBC has reported that the majority of hazelnut pickers are Kurdish migrants, including children. The Kurds are an ethnic minority group living predominately in the poor south and east of Turkey. For their physical labour on one of the 400,000 small hazelnut farms dotted around Turkey, they can be paid as little as $13 a day according to the BBC.

Once the nuts are picked they are then sold on to traders by the sack before Ferrero gets its hands on them. That convoluted supply chain makes it difficult to ascertain exactly what kind of labour was used, Ferrero maintains.

“We are determined to prevent and eliminate child labour all along our supply chains, with the conviction that every child should be protected, by all possible means, from any form of exploitation,” a spokesperson told Business Insider Australia.

“Ferrero is committed to contributing to influencing and driving sustainable changes in the hazelnut production sector. This includes combatting child labour with a multi-stakeholder approach… the complexity of the hazelnut supply chain means it cannot be transformed by one single actor, and cooperation is absolutely essential to tackling the issue of child labour.”

Rosh Hashana is a’coming and I decided to do a roundup of all the random stuff that’s been floating in my head for a while. This will hopefully give you some food for thought for the new year. Included are two product recommendations, a recipe, some mussar, and of course, me being the Vard, some sarcastic political commentary, too.

In short, in this particular column, there’s a little something for everyone. So if one segment is not to your liking, by all means, skip past it to the next. I hope you’ll find some of it, useful.

Apple Noodle Kugel Recipe On An Old Orange Post-It

Apple Noodle Kugel

Ingredients:

·         1 lb. wide noodles, cooked

Method:

Speaking of Apples (and the Land)

Childrearing Advice from Rabbi Dr. Avraham Twerski

Can Arabs and Jews Make Peace?

Two Blue and White Products

Us pro-Israel people like to buy blue and white. So when I find a product that makes me happy and is made in Israel, I figure I should share this information with other likeminded souls. One product I’m currently in love with is this EvenShampoo with Linseed Oil for Dry/Damaged Hair. I found this expensive (just under $10) but amazing product at a pharmacy located at the Gush Etzion shopping center. But you can order it online at the Judaica Webstore if you don’t mind paying more.

Why do I like this shampoo? Well, for one thing, this shampoo is not like the cheap stuff that lathers up like crazy. You get this thick, velvety lather. And the smell is clean, subtle, and sophisticated. Finally, my hair looks better than it has in about 3 decades. (So sue me. I’m a toiletry snob.)

Flash forward to last year, when the hubster and I visited the newish Jerusalem branch of the Isrotel chain, the Orient Jerusalem, to have coffee in the lounge (note that the coffee is excellent!). After, we took a stroll around the hotel, and in the process checked out the shops where we saw they have all the room scents for the various branches of the hotel chain in various formulations. We bought a small bottle (4.05 oz.) of the Carmel Forest scent for 100 shekels (or $28.59, as of this writing). Nine months later, the level of the liquid inside the bottle is only one-third of the way down, so it is definitely long-lasting stuff.

Is the Poway Shooter Colorblind?

I read that and my mind flashed to the photos I’d seen of Lori Kaye, the woman he’d murdered in cold blood. She was fair and blond and absolutely white. Which had me wondering with not a little sarcasm if perhaps Earnest is colorblindand whether maybe he could use that as a defense, kind of like the insanity plea.

Lori Kaye, HY"D, who took a bullet for her rabbi.

Of course, not all Jews are white, but plenty of us are, so you have to wonder how anyone believes this stuff. (Or maybe they don’t and they just want to believe it so they can handle guns and shoot people up. Like John T. Earnest did in Poway.)

The Annoying Resurgence of Jewish Life in Europe—Next Year in Vilna??

And now the latest in the rush to repopulate Europe with Jews (to kill): Vilnius is getting its first yeshiva since WWII. Now I read that and think: why would you learn Torah in the Jerusalem of Lithuania when you can learn Torah in the actual Jerusalem, in Israel? (I really don’t get this. Will someone please explain it to me. Slowly, in words I can understand.)

Israeli and US officials warned Wednesday of a rise in attacks on Jews in western Europe and urged European Union leaders to stop funding organizations that support an international boycott of Israel, claiming they are encouraging anti-Semitism.

Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said before meeting with a group of European lawmakers that the EU should make sure its money does not go to groups that support the Palestinian-led boycott movement.

In Brussels, Erdan also released a report cataloging alleged examples of BDS branches or activists using anti-Semitic content in their campaigns.

He accused movement activists of hiding their true agenda behind liberal values such as protecting human rights and freedom of expression.

“BDS leaders who use anti-Semitic language and images that also prove their principles, of boycotting the Jew among the nations, Israel, are anti-Semitic,” Erdan said.

The report included 80 examples of what Erdan called anti-Semitism by key European promoters of the BDS movement against Israel.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) defines the denial of the Jewish right to self-determination as antisemitism. IHRA is accepted in over 18 Western countries and over 30 US states. The Ministry of Strategic Affairs exposes the antisemitism of BDS leaders in a new report called "Behind the Mask".

"Mohammed Al-Issa, who heads the World Islamic League, is credited for more than 500 executions when he was Minister of Justice of Saudi Arabia from 2009 to 2015, and countless orders of torture including the conviction of the famous Raif Badawi with 1.000 lashes."— Michel Taube, Le Figaro, September 16, 2019.

Raif Badawi has just launched a hunger strike over mistreatment by the Saudi prison officials. "As part of their cruel crackdown, they've just confiscated his books & crucial medication."— Irwin Cotler, former Canadian Justice Minister and head of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, in a tweet.

How can France, the country of "liberty, equality, fraternity," welcome the former Saudi minister who was in charge of Badawi's torture and imprisonment... who condemns apostates to death and inflicts public flagellation on dissidents such as Badawi?

Right after the extremist massacre at the weekly Charlie Hebdo, then-French President François Hollande invited the Saudis to join the march of solidarity in Paris. When the Saudis returned home, they started flogging Badawi.

Among the French Muslims, political Islam is rapidly increasing. Instead of embracing the West where they were born, the youngest generations are rejecting it.

Éric Zemmour, apparently, was found "guilty" by a French court of saying that Muslims should be given "the choice between Islam and France" and that "in innumerable French suburbs there is a struggle to Islamize territory". Freedom of expression... [is] under threat in France.

After Israel’s ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff and his counterpart US ambassador Richard Grenell urged Berlin authorities to ban a slated Wednesday event with two Palestinian rappers who glorify terrorism against the Jewish state, the government of the German capital city relented at the 11th hour on Wednesday.

Martin Pallgen, a spokesman for the city’s interior ministry senator, wrote on Twitter: ”A decision with a ban on political activity is ready and will be sent to the musicians.” However, the pro-Palestinian rally was not banned.

Issacharoff tweeted on Tuesday: “I appeal to the #Berlin authorities to prevent this disturbing event at the Brandenburg Gate featuring antisemitic rhetoric and glorification of violence against Israel. Berlin should unite, not divide!”

Grenell said that he agrees with Issacharoff’s appeal and that the “rappers sing about the annihilation of Jews.”

Berlin’s mayor Michael Müller, who is reeling from hosting an antisemitic Iranian mayor of Tehran just weeks ago, faced another crisis moment. Müller has been accused over the years of being soft toward rising Jew-hatred in Germany’s capital.

The Palestinian rappers, Shadi Al-Bourini and Qassem Al-Najjar, have sung for military action against Tel Aviv and urged the destruction of Israel.

In 2012, a video featuring a song by the duo circulated Palestinian websites threatened Israel and promised to attack Tel Aviv, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Their music was “accompanied by still images of rockets being fired, a plane being shot out of the sky, and Israelis injured and bracing for imminent landing of rockets, among others,” MEMRI said.

The rappers sung: “Strike a blow at Tel Aviv. Strike a blow at Tel Aviv. Strike a blow at Tel Aviv and frighten the Zionists. The more you build it the more we will destroy it.”

Israel’s Supreme Court decided Tuesday to push off making a decision regarding the deportation of Human Rights Watch’s Israel/Palestine Director Omar Shakir until after Rosh Hashanah, extending a 14-month legal battle centering on whether Shakir is engaged in illegal boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activities in Israel.

In a hearing Tuesday, the court appeared to agree with Shakir’s lawyer, who argued that the decision should be postponed until the new government is formed, because new officials could have a different perspective on his client’s case.

Shakir was initially denied a work visa to enter Israel in 2017, due to Israeli concerns that he was engaged in “Palestinian propaganda.” He ultimately received a temporary, one-year permit in April 2017, the same year that Israel passed a law allowing it to deport or bar entry to any foreign national publicly backing or promoting the BDS movement.

The United States, of which Shakir is a citizen, criticized Israel’s visa denial.

In 2018, Israel’s Interior Ministry rejected Shakir for a work and residency permit, citing his alleged support of a boycott of Israel on social media.

Shakir and Human Rights Watch said Shakir has not promoted a boycott of Israel, and accused Israel of attempting to thwart criticism of its policies through the use of the 2017 law.

HRW criticized an April court decision to uphold the deportation of Shakir as a “new and dangerous interpretation of the law,” due to its equating of Shakir’s promotion of boycotting Jewish businesses in Judea and Samaria with promotion of boycotting Israel.

Omar Shakir (@OmarSShakir) of @hrw is no human rights activist.

He is a virulent anti-Israel and pro-BDS activist.#Israel has every right, moral and legal, to deny him entry. pic.twitter.com/g9FvK9grcY

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 24, 2019

The British Labour Party voted in on Tuesday several anti-Israel policies, including what is believed to be its first formal policy regarding BDS.

During the Labour Party conference in Brighton, delegates voted to support a boycott of Israeli settlement goods and called for the rejection of trade agreements with Israel. Reports noted that the nearly unanimous vote came after attendees shouted “Free Palestine.” The party also reaffirmed its opposition to British arms sales to Israel and endorsed the Palestinian “right to return.”

Labour Friends of Israel director Jennifer Gerber condemned the vote, calling the party a “home for anti-Jewish racists and Israel-haters.”

“It’s depressing but thoroughly unsurprising that Labour has today ended its decades old opposition to the extremist Israel boycott movement. Boycotts do nothing to bring about peace and are designed entirely to demonize Israel,” said Gerber. “With [Labour leader Jeremy] Corbyn now uniquely singling out the world’s only Jewish state for boycotts, it’s no wonder the Jewish community fears the prospect of him becoming prime minister. This is another dark day in the history of the Labour Party.”

The conference has been stirring controversy since it began this weekend.

One pamphlet distributed at the conference revealed Corbyn’s support for the 2002 Cairo Declaration, which accuses Israel of apartheid, while another pamphlet compared Israel to Nazis. Other materials at the conference include an anti-Semitic banner, later removed by police, and fliers that accused the Jewish Labour Movement of defending the “racist apartheid State of Israel.”

The TV personality and activist, Rachel Riley, appeared on ITV’s Peston on Thursday and observed that over 55,000 people have signed Campaign Against Antisemitism’s petition denouncing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”

Ms Riley was discussing her campaign to encourage users of social media not to engage with trolls, noting that when she began speaking out about antisemitism she became “subject to racist abuse”. Challenged by host Robert Peston when she labelled Mr Corbyn an “antisemite”, Ms Riley cited the petition, as well as a 2018 poll that showed that over 85% of British Jews regard the Labour leader as antisemitic.

On 28th May, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In recent months, twelve MPs and three peers have resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism, along with a large number of MEPs, councillors and members.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan was accosted on the street on Monday by Labour party activists outraged by his speech before a Jewish organization that has been critical of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is widely seen as antisemitic.

The Daily Mail reported that journalist Jonathan Freedland stated he was speaking to Khan outside the party’s annual conference in Brighton after Khan spoke to the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), a century-old organization of Jewish party activists.

Two Labour members approached Khan and demanded to know why he had given the speech.

Khan replied, “To show solidarity with our Jewish brothers and sisters.”

One of the activists then said, “But they’re Zionists. Why would you show support to Israeli Zionists?”

JLM is not an Israeli organization.

Khan asked, “Why do you assume that members of the British Jewish community support every action of the Israeli government?”

Freedland recounted, “They answered that ‘these Israeli Zionists’ were trying to destabilize Labour and undermine Jeremy Corbyn: JLM should be expelled. Why hadn’t Khan gone to the Jewish Voice for Labour event, rather than supporting a group they again referred to as ‘Israeli Zionists.’”

Jewish Voice for Labour is a far-left organization founded in 2017 to deflect accusations of antisemitism against Corbyn. It is viewed by British Jews as out of the mainstream, as polls show the overwhelming majority of British Jews consider Corbyn personally antisemitic.

Five of the whistleblowers who appeared on the BBC’s Panorama investigation into the handling of antisemitism complaints by the Labour Party are intending to bring libel cases against the Party, it is understood.

The claims relate to an episode of Panorama, the BBC’s flagship investigative documentary programme, titled “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?”, which was televised in July. Over the course of the programme, former Labour Party employees spoke out publicly to reveal Jeremy Corbyn’s personal meddling in disciplinary cases relating to antisemitism. The programme explained how senior Labour Party staffers, some of whom Campaign Against Antisemitism has known for years, used to run Labour’s disciplinary process independently, but soon after Mr Corbyn’s election as Party leader found themselves contending with his most senior aides, who were brazen in their efforts to subvert due process.

The programme was peppered with unconvincing denials from Labour’s press team, including claims that the staffers had political axes to grind and lacked credibility — assertions that apparently may now be challenged in court.

The libel cases are being brought by Mark Lewis, a highly esteemed media lawyer who is also an honorary patron of Campaign Against Antisemitism.

Meanwhile, it has also emerged that the annual report prepared by Labour’s National Constitutional Committee that usually contains the names of individuals being investigated, their constituency party, the rule alleged to have been breached and the result of the investigation, has now been anonymised, making it harder to identify antisemitism cases and track their progress. The Party blames data protection rules for the change.

Jackie Walker is scheduled to appear on a panel at University College London (UCL) marking the launch of a volume of essays titled The Responsibility of Intellectuals – reflections by Noam Chomsky and others after 50 years.

The event is being organised by the Institute of Advanced Studies, which in the billing anticipates that Ms Walker and others will “describe the personal price they have paid for speaking out”. Ms Walker has a chapter in the book titled “I Don’t Want No Peace — a Black, Jewish activist’s take on the responsibility of intellectuals”.

Ms Walker is a former vice-chair of Momentum who was repeatedly suspended by Labour and finally expelled earlier this year. She 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.

The book’s release and the event marks fifty years since the publication of The Responsibility of Intellectuals by the controversial American professor, Noam Chomsky.

UCL has defended the invitation to Ms Walker, despite her record, citing “freedom of expression”.

Most Unsurprising News of the Day award goes to... https://t.co/ErjMclGZ6W

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 25, 2019

Muslim leftist political activist Sumaira Farrukh who was once nominated for a ‘British Muslim of the Year’ award is being investigated by police after she was filmed saying ‘Jihad is the only solution' in a speech. @Campaign4Tpic.twitter.com/Ow8tKd8swn

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 25, 2019

Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s grandmother is not a fan of America. The 90-year-old Muftia Tlaib made that much clear in an interview with USA Today.

She was quoted telling the newspaper:
“Even if I get an invitation from Trump to travel to the U.S., I won’t go,” she said. “Even if my husband returns from the grave and tells me to go, I refuse,” she said.

“I don’t like it there,” she added.

She said that she spent about 18 months in the U.S. when her granddaughter was in high school. “I decided not to ever go back after I made ‘Hadj'” – pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, prescribed as a religious duty for Muslims.

Tlaib along with fellow extremist Congresswoman Ilhan Omar were barred last by the Israeli government from entry into the country in keeping with a law that allows Israel from denying passage to supporters of the BDS movement seeking to destroy the Jewish state.

“We had planned to slaughter a sheep to celebrate her coming back to visit with us,” Tlaib’s uncle Bassam Tlaib told USA Today. “But we supported her decision. And we know why the Israelis didn’t want her here: Her visit would have shown how we Palestinians are suffering under their occupation,” he claimed.

Omar and Tlaib are both prominent BDS supporters who in July introduced a resolution in Congress aimed at supporting the BDS Movement, which targets the Middle East’s only democracy, seeks the end of Israel and is engaged in economic warfare against the Jewish state.

Mere sampling of what Tlaib is defending for the idiots in my mentions pic.twitter.com/FBCIkG3MB0

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) September 24, 2019

A prominent US Jewish leader is calling for a halt of donations to Columbia University over a scheduled appearance there on Wednesday of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, who has a long record of antisemitic statements.

In a letter sent to Columbia President Lee Bollinger on Tuesday, World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder wrote that the school’s decision to host Mahathir was “consistent with the double standard against Jewish people, which would never be tolerated with someone who spoke similarly against people of color, gay people or other minorities.”

Lauder went on tell Bollinger he would be encouraging his friends to “immediately cease any of their contributions to your institution until such a time anti-Semitic despots are no longer welcome on your campus.”

A Change.org petition protesting Mahathir’s Columbia speech had received nearly 3,000 signatures by Tuesday afternoon.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad defended his right to express antisemitic views in the name of free speech in remarks to Columbia University students on Wednesday.

Speaking to a packed audience at the university’s Global Leaders Forum, the 94-year-old leader — whose decades-old conviction that “the Jews rule the world by proxy” has never wavered — also refused to say whether he accepted the fact that six million Jews were murdered during the Nazi Holocaust.

“Why can’t I say something about the Jews, when people say nasty things about me and about Malaysia?” Mahathir complained, as he responded to a powerfully-worded challenge posed by a member of the Columbia chapter of Students Supporting Israel.

The Malaysian leader went on to argue, “When you say ‘you cannot be antisemitic,’ there is no free speech.”

Pressed by the questioner to state his views on the Holocaust, Mahathir said he accepted that “there was a Holocaust,” but pointedly refused to discuss the number of Jews exterminated by the Nazis and their collaborators.

Conceding only that there were “many Jews killed,” Mahathir attempted to turn the tables on his questioner. “I was very sympathetic to them during the war, that was when you were not around,” he said.

Amid increasing concerns over Israel-related antisemitism found on college campuses, the anti-Israel group National Students for Justice in Palestine announced its upcoming national conference at the University of Minnesota from Nov. 1-3.

The NSJP said that the conference is titled “Beyond Struggle: From Roots to Branches Towards Liberation,” and recognizes the “support for the Palestinian cause is increasing within mainstream politics,” noting the inflammatory words and actions of Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). The University of Minnesota is in Omar’s district.

According to NSJP, their national conference will attempt to achieve the following goals: recognize the current political climate and build on the visibility of Palestine; bridge the grassroots and grasstops; articulate the full history of Palestine as intertwined with the future of liberation; and reaffirm the fullness of Palestinian liberation.

Last year, the SJP chapter at the University of Minnesota sponsored a pro-BDS resolution that passed a student-wide referendum. That resolution was condemned by university’s president, Benjie Kaplan, who said that the resolution could have a “harmful impact to our campus climate,” and that the BDS movement fails to delineate “between opposition to the policies of the government of Israel and opposition to the existence of Israel.”

Luther College professor and "Islamophobia expert" Todd Green, speaking on an interfaith panel organized by University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Islam scholar Jaclyn Michael, insisted, against all evidence, that "by almost every metric, Islamophobia is getting worse in America." Not only is the US "a nation where Islamophobia" is embedded in "our foreign policy and . . . our domestic policy," he declared, but, in the post-9/11 era, the "marginalization of Muslims" has become "systemic."

Exhibiting his own brand of bigotry, Green put the onus on "white Christian Americans" and the country's entire "non-Muslim majority . . . to fight Islamophobia" due to its alleged "moral responsibility."

Of the demonstrable (see FBI religion-based hate crimes statistics) rise of anti-Semitism since 9/11 in the US, and worldwide---likely fueled, in part, by the increasing prevalence of Islamic anti-Semitism---Green had nothing to say. His co-panelist, Rabbi Susan Tendler, inadvertently alluded to the irony of the situation when she noted that Jews are often falsely blamed for the 9/11 attacks---attacks that were, in fact, perpetrated by Islamist terrorists. No doubt, they, too, according to Green, were merely victims of "the social and political conditions that lead to terrorism."

An article in the Independent (“Trump accused of using antisemitic trope during UN speech”) centered on the US President’s use of the term “globalists”.
“The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to strong, independent nations,” the president said, while discussing international trade.

The Indy contextualized it thusly:
While it has been suggested the term ‘globalist’ is not necessarily antisemitic when juxtaposed with ‘nationalist’ – or ‘patriot’ – many on social media interpreted the president’s deployment as offensive.

Though the term can be problematic depending on the context, what really strike us is the Indy’s double standards in their putative concern for the use of antisemitic tropes.

Readers may recall our post earlier in the year about an article by their long-time Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk that used explicitly antisemitic language. The original headline for the March 26th piece, for US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights was something out of Strormfront:

Though, following complaints, the Indy toned down the headline to something slightly less offensive, they refused, after repeated communications with our office, to revise equally offensive sentences from the article, such as Fisk’s characterisation of what he called the media’s “grovelling, cowardly, craven obeisance to Israel”.

I can post videos too! Here's Trump's full comment about globalism: pic.twitter.com/8CeUigqWSI

— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) September 24, 2019

On September 17, The Independent published a story on the Israeli elections where members of the voting public were asked for their opinions on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It included the following:
In the Arab neighbourhood of Jaffa, Eliran Ben Iolo, 32, another Blue and White supporter, agreed: “It feels like it’ll work, because Bibi’s already lost it. Now you see he’s throwing all kinds of punches, not smartly and not with any kind of understanding.”

We contacted The Independent to point out that Jaffa’s Arab population is approximately 31% i.e. it has a Jewish majority and is not an ‘Arab neighborhood.’

An easily corrected error. Or so we thought.

In an email to HonestReporting, The Independent responded:
The article was not making a claim that Jaffa is a predominantly Arab neighbourhood. It simply sought to explain that the individual being interviewed was in a neighbourhood within Jaffa, which is predominantly Arab.

We followed up pointing out that the article text refers to the neighborhood, not a neighborhood, implying Jaffa to be one geographical entity. If it is one geographical entity then it is demographically around 70% Jewish. The Independent’s ‘clarification’ may have been understandable if the article text matched its explanation. But it does not.

The impressive turnout on the part of Arab citizens of Israel in last week's elections -- making the Joint List of Arab parties the country's third largest party and placing it in position to lead the opposition -- garnered significant media coverage. Some media outlets, unfortunately, provided confusing coverage by insisting on referring to Israel's Arab voting population as "Palestinians," despite the fact that they are Israeli citizens, they do not reside in Palestinian controlled areas, and the overwhelming majority of them do not identify as Palestinian.

Particularly in the context of Arab citizens exercising their right to vote in Israeli elections, the "Palestinian" label is unjustified and misleading.

In The New York Times, for example, bureau chief David Halbfinger confounded:
Mr. [Ayman] Odeh’s ads practically beg Palestinian citizens to vote on Tuesday, saying that one million citizens, if they all voted, would translate into 28 seats in the Knesset. . . .

Indeed, such misleading nomenclature for Arab citizens of Israel confuses them with Palestinians -- Arabs who live in Palestinian-controlled territories and who do not hold Israeli citizenship. For example, in the same article, Halbfinger refers to "Israel's treatment of the Palestinians living under the occupation" and also to an Instagram photo of an "iconic Tel Aviv skyscraper with its facade displaying the Palestinian national flag." How are all but the already well-informed readers meant to unpack this terminology, and distinguish between the voting "Palestinians" versus Arabs in the West Bank or Gaza who are not Israeli citizens?

In contrast to previous election campaigns in 2013, 2015 and April 2019, BBC News website coverage of the September 17th election was relatively limited with just seven written reports appearing between September 16th and September 22nd.

Nevertheless, some familiar themes were evident in that coverage along with some new ones.

September 16th: Israel election a referendum on Netanyahu, Jeremy Bowen

In that article the BBC’s Middle East editor – whose job it is to provide “analysis that might make a complex story more comprehensive or comprehensible for the audience” and “to add an extra layer of analysis to our reporting” – employed the standard BBC tactic of presenting history as having begun in June 1967 while erasing the Jordanian occupation of Judea & Samaria and parts of Jerusalem from audience view.

“The southern end of the [Jordan] valley, where I am, has been occupied by Israel since 1967, a big part of the land it captured in that year’s Middle East War.”

As has been the case in BBC coverage of all Israeli elections throughout the past six years, this time too the topic of the ‘peace process’ was framed as being exclusively dependent on Israeli actions.

“Usually the valley is a sleepy place. But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed it into his country’s general election, which is coming up this Tuesday. He declared that if he was returned as prime minister, he would annex the Jordan Valley, and Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. The suggestion has been condemned by many of Israel’s friends, including Britain, on the grounds that it would be yet another nail in the coffin containing hopes for peace. Israel would have absorbed land Palestinians want for a state.”

The new president of the European Parliament told a delegation of European rabbis and community leaders on Monday that he would protect Jewish practices and fight antisemitism.

Certain Jewish customs have been under considerable pressure in Europe, especially kosher slaughter and circumcision. Many outspoken activists consider kosher slaughter a form of animal abuse and circumcision a form of mutilation. There have been attempts to ban both practices in several European countries.

The delegation, led by Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt of Moscow, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, was told by European Parliament President David Sassoli that he would continue to protect Jewish practices, as well as combat the rise of antisemitism on the continent.

Goldschmidt stated, “Our institutions are hundreds of years old. Our food preparation and circumcision practices are governed by our communities in accordance with EU regulation.”

“These practices are for the sole benefit of our own communities and we are proud of our high standards,” he added.

It can be a heady thing murdering six million Jews and then becoming a comedy sensation. Hurray – Hitler has done it.

With the looming threat of war with Iran and the ongoing deadlock in Israeli elections, few in the Jewish community can be blamed for not having their fingers on the pulse of all the goings-on of American popular culture. However, as antisemitism awareness becomes the brightest star in the constellation of American Jewish objectives, we’d be smart to bear down and focus. If we did we, might raise an eyebrow or two at the noticeable rise of the Hitler comedy.

Last week, the comedy film Jojo Rabbit won the people’s choice award at the Toronto Film Festival, a prize that’s seen by many as a major predictor of Oscar success. Directed by Taika Waititi of Thor: Ragnarok fame, the film tells the story of a lonely boy in Nazi Youth camp who finds an imaginary friend in a laughing, dancing Adolph Hitler. Waititi, a New-Zealand native who describes himself as a “Polynesian Jew,” plays the lovable Führer.

Having the man responsible for the murder of six million Jews hop around with children in a forest was sure to be alarming. So the director defended his film by claiming that it didn’t depict Hitler but a ten-year old’s imagining of him, which “doesn’t have to share anything with [the] actual Hitler.” His depiction of the Nazi leader was essentially “a version of myself that happened to have a bad haircut and a [expletive] little mustache.” In other words, this character didn’t even depict Hitler but was arbitrarily chosen as a sort of comic vehicle. It’s as if the writers ran out of jokes but found that Hitler was available.

A Dutch broadcaster that receives public funding apologized for allowing a caller to rant for several minutes about Jewish greed and the need to “annihilate” it.

The caller, who identified himself as Mario, said at around 5 a.m. Tuesday on the radio talk show Gaan! on NPO Radio 1 that the world is being led by “Money grubbing Jewry” who “must be annihilated.”

The broadcaster responsible for producing the show, BNNVara, said in a statement: “This listener should absolutely not have received the opportunity to express anti-Semitic sentiments” on air.

Mario’s musings veered toward anti-Semitic conspiracy theories four minutes into the interview. The show’s host, Morad El Ouakili, encouraged Mario to elaborate on the theories.

Throughout the Dutch-language interviews, Mario began calling Jews by the English-language word kikes. Al Ouaskili asked him: “I don’t quite understand what you’re saying,” and “What do you mean by ‘Jewry’?”

After eight minutes, Al Ouaskili thanked Mario for the call and ended the interview.

BNNVara has faced allegations of anti-Semitism recently.

A homeless man who admitted starting a fire that destroyed a 117-year-old synagogue in Minnesota, then walking away from the growing blaze because he couldn’t douse it by spitting on it, is expected to get probation after pleading guilty.

Matthew Amiot, 36, entered his guilty pleas on negligent fire charges Tuesday in St. Louis County District Court.

The fire destroyed the Adas Israel Synagogue on September 9 in Duluth. Authorities say Amiot used a lighter to ignite a pile of combustible materials outside the main building, near a separate religious structure called a sukkah.

The complaint says Amiot admitted starting the fire and told police he tried to spit on it to put it out, but walked away when that didn’t work. Police say they don’t believe the fire, which came just weeks ahead of the Jewish high holy days, was a hate crime.

Sentencing is scheduled for October 25. The Star Tribune of Minneapolis reported that prosecutors are recommending probation. As a condition of his release from jail, he was ordered to remain at a homeless shelter until his next hearing.

🤦‍♂️https://t.co/9mtP3iCBhR

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 25, 2019

Comedian Louis C.K. has scheduled a performance in Tel Aviv, his first in Israel since he admitted to sexual misconduct in 2017.

He will perform in Tel Aviv’s Hangar 11 venue on November 23. Tickets will go on sale at 4:00 p.m. Wednesday and will cost between NIS 194-344 ($55-$100).

Attendees will be required to leave their cellphones at the door and will not be allowed to bring in cameras or recording equipment.

C.K. performed twice in Israel in the summer of 2016.

Jewish actor Paul Rudd makes a guest appearance on Zack Galifianakis’ new Netflix film, “Between Two Ferns: The Movie,” and the two talk about Rudd’s Jewish background.

Galifianakis’ movie, based on his web series of the same name, centers on him interviewing celebrity guests as they sit between two ferns and discuss hilarious but also awkward and personal topics, while the guests try to dodge Galifianakis’ rude, insulting remarks.

Galifianakis asks Rudd questions such as, “Some people have it all: looks, talent. How does it feel to only have looks?” The questions then turn to Judaism and Galifanakis asks, “What advice would you give to a young actor who wants to hide his Jewishness as well as you have?”

“I’ve never really tried to hide my Jewishness,” Rudd replies, to which Galifianakis says, “Jesus was Jewish and he didn’t hide it.”

Rudd tells him “No, he put it out there for everybody to see. He’s one of our best.” Then, when Galifianakis asks, “Are you practicing?” Rudd replies with a smirk, “No, I’m not a practicing Jew… I perfected it.”

The Israel Air Force’s first female leader of a flight squadron took command on Tuesday, the army said.

The pilot — who for security reasons can only be referred to by her rank and first initial of her Hebrew name, Lt. Col. “Gimel” — will command the Nachshon Squadron, which operates surveillance aircraft.

“Lt. Col. ‘Gimel,’ the mother of two boys, you are a role model and an inspiration for thousands of women in the State of Israel,” IAF chief Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin said at the ceremony.

“Congratulations to our first female commander of an operational squadron in the air force, we’ve been waiting for you for 71 years,” he said.

Gimel, 35, joined the Israel Defense Forces in 2003 and completed the air force’s grueling pilots training course three years later, having specialized in flying transport planes.

A multinational crew made up of an American, a Russian and the first space traveler from the United Arab Emirates blasted off successfully on Wednesday for a mission on the International Space Station.

A Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off as scheduled at 6:57 p.m. from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and entered a designated orbit en route to the station.

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir — a Swedish-American Jew whose father is Israeli — Oleg Skripochka of Russian space agency Roscosmos, and Hazzaa Ali Almansoori from the UAE are set to dock at the orbiting outpost six hours later.

The mission is the third spaceflight for Skripochka and the first for both Meir and Almansoori, who is on an eight-day mission under a contract between the UAE and Roscosmos.

Thinking each other had perished in the Holocaust during World War II, two cousins were miraculously reunited after 75 years apart.

Morris Sana, 87, and Simon Mairowitz, 85, were cousins and best friends growing up in Romania until they were ripped apart by the Nazi invasion of Romania in 1940. Their families fled the country separately and the cousins grew up assuming each other had died in the Holocaust along with six million other Jewish men, women, and children.

More than half a century later, Sana's niece and daughter connected with Mairowitz's family on Facebook and, after discovering that the long lost friends were both living, set up a meeting in Tel Aviv.

The men joyfully embraced in a heartwarming encounter this Saturday, both overcome with emotion. "Good to see you," Sana said to his long lost friend. Mairowitz responded through tears of joy, "Good to see you too after all these years ... Seventy-five years you waited."

"I imagine you when you were a little boy," Sana said to Mairowitz, through his own tears. "I’m glad to see you."

"So am I,” Mairowitz said. “Very, very glad."

After Nazis invaded Romania during the Holocaust, these cousins were separated and thought they were both killed. Now, 75 years, they're seeing each other again for the first time. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/X7tElwMnSa

— People (@people) September 25, 2019

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been given the chance to form a government for the sixth time on Wednesday, after succeeding in his five terms in office but not having the opportunity to do so following the April election.

President Reuven Rivlin formally gave Netanyahu four weeks to form the government, after a meeting at the President’s Residence with Blue and White leader Benny Gantz failed to bring about a breakthrough. The deadline will be October 24.

“Netanyahu had the best chance to form a government,” Rivlin said in a speech alongside the prime minister.

A Channel 12 poll broadcast Wednesday night found that the public prefers Netanyahu go first in a rotation with Gantz. But to avoid another election, a majority of respondents would like to see Likud replace Netanyahu with another candidate.

The survey of 700 respondents representing a statistical sample of the population was taken by pollster Camil Fuchs. The margin of error was 4%.

Rivlin said he gave the mandate to Netanyahu because he received 55 recommendations from MKs, compared with Gantz’s 54. He called upon parties to stop disqualifying each other and lamented that a unity government was not formed.

UNRWA staff members, including teachers regularly share antisemitic and pro-terrorism content on social media and face no consequences, according to NGO UN Watch.

In a report published on Wednesday, the Geneva-based organization exposed posts from 10 United Nations employees that included praises of terrorism against Israelis, and a picture of Adolf Hitler describing him as a humanitarian.

The latest cases bring the total number of staff members uncovered sharing similar content to 100, according to the report.

“Despite our prior identification of UNRWA teachers who endorse Hitler and call for killing Jews, I am not aware of a single UNRWA teacher who has been fired as a result,” commented director of UN Watch Hillel Neuer. “Why is it that an ostensibly neutral UN agency that claims to teach tolerance continues to employ terrorist-supporting and antisemitic staff?”

UNRWA has often drawn widespread criticism for its soft stance on terrorism, including allowing Hamas to place rockets and weapons in its schools in 2014.

Moreover, the United Nations is currently investigating allegations of ethical misconduct by its senior staff members.

According to a report leaked to the media in July, the officials are accused of engaging in “sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain.”

Following the allegations, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and New Zealand announced that they were temporarily suspending their financial contributions to the agency.

UN Watch collected the material included in the report based on information displayed publicly on Facebook, and by searching for UNRWA-related key words.

Yesterday, Palestinian Media Watch reported that Fatah's terror promoting Facebook page had been closed. This came two weeks after PMW released a new report on Fatah's use of Facebook during 2019, documenting its continued terror promotion. This was joined by PMW's public pressure campaign, in cooperation with ACT-IL, in which thousands of people sent complaints to Facebook demanding that Fatah's page be permanently shut down.

Following the closure of the page, Facebook notified the press yesterday that they are still reviewing the complaints against Fatah's Facebook page and had not yet made a final decision and were not the ones who closed the page.

Yesterday evening, the editor of Fatah's Facebook page, Munir Al-Jaghoub, told The Times of Israel that Fatah itself closed the page because of PMW's campaign, apparently to hide it so that people won't be able to make complaints. Al-Jaghoub explained:
"We decided to close it down for a period of time as a precautionary measure. We were worried that Facebook would shut it down permanently because of that Israeli organization's [PMW] campaign and complaints against it." [The Times of Israel, Sept. 25, 2019]

The Times of Israel further reported that "He [Al-Jaghoub] and his [Fatah] staff decided to temporarily deactivate the page after they grew concerned that Facebook would shut it down over mounting complaints against its content... Jaghoub said he and his team intend to reactivate the page in the future, but have not settled on a date yet.

'We will be patient,' he said. 'We can reactivate it at any moment, but we want to make sure we do that after this wave of attacks against the page passes.'"

PMW views Al-Jaghoub's statement as a striking indicator of the terror content of Fatah's Facebook page that Fatah itself decided to close it down and hide it from public scrutiny to prevent their page from being shut down by Facebook.

There is no justification for Facebook to permit Fatah to reopen its page. We hope that Facebook will recognize what Fatah itself understands, namely that its Facebook page promotes terror, and keep Fatah's page permanently closed.

How Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah sees the Jewish role in the world:

• "The [Jewish] tribe led the project to enslave humanity"
• "[The Jews] were hated because of their racism and their filthy behavior"
• The Jews allied with Nazis to burn Jews "to accumulate wealth"
• The Jews say: "Only we are people, and all the others are our animals"
• "Non-Jews... according to their worldview are snakes"
• The Jews established "ghettos in order to separate from other people out of arrogance and disgust for non-Jews"
• "Seventy years have passed since the artificial state's [Israel's] establishment... They [the Jews] have not removed from their consciousness the view of the other as inferior and the right to spill the blood of the nations"

Like many Israelis, I was horrified when April’s election led to another in September; it seemed a colossal waste of time and money. But the do-ever election proved critical to maintaining Israel’s democratic legitimacy among half the public – the half that would otherwise have thought that April’s election was stolen from them.

In April, rightist parties that explicitly promised to support Benjamin Netanyahu for prime minister won 65 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. In other words, a clear majority of voters seemingly cast their ballots for a rightist, Netanyahu-led government. But after the election, Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Lieberman refused to join such a government.

Thus even if an alternative government could have been formed – whether a unity government or one led by Netanyahu’s rival, Benny Gantz – it would have undermined rightists’ faith in the democratic process. Any such government would have looked like a product not of the majority’s will, but of the whims of a single individual who “stole” right-wing votes and gave them to the left.

The do-over election showed this wasn’t the case. Lieberman’s party not only maintained its strength but increased it, thereby proving him right that his voters cared more about curbing ultra-Orthodox power than about keeping Netanyahu in office. Moreover, the pro-Netanyahu bloc shrank even further – from 60 seats (excluding Lieberman) in April to 55 in September – due entirely to Netanyahu’s own appalling behavior in the intervening months, which prompted a nontrivial number of center-right voters to either switch sides or stay home and a massive increase in Arab turnout.

That doesn’t mean Gantz won; the bloc he heads can’t form a government on its own. But neither can Netanyahu’s bloc. Any possible solution – a unity government, a Netanyahu government with leftist partners or a Gantz government with rightist partners – will require a compromise between the blocs. And nobody will be able to claim the election was stolen when that happens.

The Iranian strike on Saudi Arabia’s oil installations is an opportunity to carry out a strategic assault on Iran. Such an assault could target Iran’s nuclear installations, Revolutionary Guards bases and other regime targets. The goal of such a campaign would be to significantly set back Iran’s nuclear weapons program and undermine regime stability.

Today is an opportune moment for Israel to conduct such an attack, in cooperation with Saudi Arabia. U.S. support for a retaliatory strike would increase the probability of success significantly.

Were Israel to conduct such an operation, it would safeguard its regional position and deterrent power for a generation. It would do so at Iran’s expense and so vastly diminish the strategic threats it faces.

On the other hand, if due to its strategic paralysis Israel fails to take advantage of this opportunity, the strategic balance of power in the Middle East will shift in Iran’s favor.

Iran will be empowered by America’s weak response, Saudi fecklessness and Israeli inaction.

Israel’s credibility and position in the region—built through Netanyahu’s effective cooperation with the Americans and the Sunnis—will be destroyed as the Americans and the Sunnis cease viewing Israel as a dependable partner.

Inside the United States, Trump will take a political hit. Following Obama’s pro-Iranian administration, Trump has made restoring the American alliance with Israel and the Sunnis the centerpiece of his Middle East policy. Israeli inaction combined with Saudi incompetence will be used by Trump’s political opponents and the isolationist wing of his support base to condemn his key policy as a failure. Obama’s nuclear deal and his maximum appeasement strategy will get a new lease on life.

The major failing of the Israeli media and most Israeli politicians is their chronic inability to understand how outsiders in the region and throughout the world perceive Israel. They don’t consider, let along understand, the ramifications of those perceptions on Israel’s national security. Consequently, they don’t understand that Israel’s prolonged political instability imperils our most critical strategic interests and squanders our greatest strategic opportunities.

Western progressives are no doubt horrified that, on Wednesday, Israeli president Reuven Rivlin tasked current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with forming Israel's next government. Netanyahu has until Oct. 24 to form a governing coalition of at least 61 of the 120 members in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. Currently, 55 members of the Knesset have recommended Netanyahu for prime minister, while the premier's rival, Benny Gantz, has secured 54 recommendations. Rivlin, who said Netanyahu has a better chance of obtaining the necessary support, originally offered Gantz and Netanyahu an opportunity to form a unity government, under which the political rivals would rotate as prime minister. Both men refused the offer.

Progressives are horrified because they believe Netanyahu is, along with President Trump, responsible for destroying the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and thus any hope of a two-state solution. Earlier this month, for example, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) described Netanyahu's stated intention to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley—a step that Israel has the legal right to do and that Gantz, too, has said he would take as prime minister—as "the nail in the coffin to a two-state solution or any peace deal." Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) similarly said at the time that Netanyahu would "shatter what is left of a two-state solution" and "make a two-state solution nearly impossible."

Never mind that the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state—thus rejecting the foundation of a two-state solution—and that they have repeatedly rejected offers of statehood, including remarkably generous Israeli proposals. Netanyahu is still the problem.

Though it all sounds logical, it’s still just as likely that the negotiations will fail. Netanyahu may be cornered, but as long as he maintains his grip on his party, he isn’t going anywhere, and his fate is the only roadblock to unity that cannot be finessed or overcome with political bargains.

Were Israel narrowly divided as it was in 1984 between two great camps that were far more split on ideology, a government of “national paralysis” – as the unity government formed that year was often called – might be viable since the consensus was that the nation was prepared for a virtual truce until one side gained an advantage.

While Lieberman fought the election on the secular-religious divide, the most potent issue hampering Israeli voters in the second round was Netanyahu himself. Even as threats still loom from Hamas to the south, Hezbollah to the north and Iran generally, the results last week can be seen as not a defeat for the prime minister’s ideology, but a blow to the idea that he is the country’s one indispensable man.

Seen from that perspective, a third election seems more an inevitability than a nightmare scenario. That’s especially true since both Netanyahu and Gantz think they will do better next time (though I think the latter has far more reason for his faith in the voters).

That the divisions between Israelis on the one issue that has always counted the most have narrowed so much ought to make national unity an imperative is remarkable.

But as long as the question is not so much how to pursue peace, but whether or not Netanyahu should remain in office, unity may be more a figment of Rivlin’s imagination than a realistic plan.

Netanyahu has served a record-breaking number of years as prime minister and he will be recorded as probably the most effective of all Israeli leaders. History will extol his handling of security, the economy, alerting the world to the Iranian nuclear threat, and, above all, breaking down barriers and transforming Israel from a pariah status to a country enjoying unprecedented relations with the US, Russia, India, China, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and now even moderate Sunni Arab states.

But all good things come to an end. For Netanyahu to try to carry on as head of a caretaker government at this juncture could also be disastrous. Unless he has a rabbit to pull out of his hat in a matter of days, he should bow out graciously and, in the national interest, offer his services to his successor.

Likud and Blue and White representatives should agree on the major issues about which they share a consensus and invite those who agree to their terms to join and form as broad a government as possible. This would exclude the anti-Zionist Joint List. However, it should include the haredim on condition that their representatives cannot veto legislation desired by the two leading parties, that military or national service is gradually introduced among their young men, and that secular studies are reintroduced into their schools. The latter in particular would encourage their youngsters to grow into self-sufficient adults rather than subsist on welfare payments. The haredim must be willing to share a government with Lieberman and Lapid and their parties — and conversely, should Lapid or Lieberman refuse to share power with the haredim, they should be directed to the opposition.

The ultimate objective of a broader new government must be to rectify the social problems and tensions that have been created as a result of sectoral pressures. It must seek to unify the nation by breaking down the barriers between the different sectors, including also Arab Israelis who are willing to act as loyal citizens.

Blue and White leader Benny Gantz on Thursday called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party to hold negotiations on forming a unity government — a day after the premier was tasked by President Reuven Rivlin with forming a coalition and after efforts to foster talks on a unity partnership broke down.

At a Blue and White faction meeting in Tel Aviv, Gantz said the focus of coalition negotiations should be not on doling out ministerial portfolios but on policy.

“The position is not important. Why is it important who holds what portfolio? This should be talked about only after [matters of] substance,” he said. “I am not looking to be a prime minister for the sake of honor. I asked for the public’s trust for the sake of a mission and not for the sake of power.”

Gantz stressed that Blue and White was not motivated by personal animus toward Netanyahu but rather, in refusing to partner with Likud so long as Netanyahu is the party leader, it opposes him over his pending indictment in a series of graft cases.

“We’re not just ‘Not Bibi.’ We’re not attacking him on a personal level. We’re looking for integrity in public,” Gantz said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “We’re looking to act against corruption and can’t sit with a prime minister against whom there are active indictments.”

In a stunning turnaround, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman said on Thursday morning that he was ready for his Yisrael Beytenu party to negotiate with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud "without preconditions."

Speaking on KAN Radio Reka to Ma'ariv diplomatic correspondent Anna Ravya-Barsky, Liberman said: "There are no preconditions. If the Likud will make an official overture to us, we are prepared to negotiate with them."

Liberman's associates were quick to downplay his statement, noting that in the same interview, he said he would negotiate only with Likud and not the other members of its 55-member right-wing and religious bloc. His spokeswoman said the party's refusal to sit in a coalition with United Torah Judaism, Shas and most of Yamina had not changed.

Yisrael Beytenu MKs added in other radio interviews that a narrow right-wing government was unacceptable and that only a secular coalition of Likud, Blue and White and Yisrael Beytenu would work.

But Liberman's statement still gave hope to Likud officials, who said Yisrael Beyteynu would be formally invited to negotiate soon. They noted that the party's eight MKs along with the right bloc's 55 could form a very stable government.

Last week, a civil suit was filed in the Netherlands, accusing Benny Gantz of committing war crimes during the 2014 Gaza war. Will he be tried? How do Israel and European governments address these types of cases?

Wrong @Independent@Beltrew. The president proposed LENGTHENING the period for which a prime minister could take leave without surrendering his job beyond the current 100-day limit. It's complicated enough without you getting the facts wrong. Pls correct. https://t.co/1q514pjQ7epic.twitter.com/GxIW4H9ezY

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 26, 2019

Another major smokescreener toward Israel is Barack Obama. While president of the US, he visited Israel in March 2013. He said at the Jerusalem Convention Center, “I bring with me the support of the American people, and the friendship that binds us together.” He added, “As the president of a country that you can count on as your greatest friend, I am confident that you can help us find the promise in the days that lie ahead.”

In that same Jerusalem speech, Obama openly bent the truth. He said, “But while I know you have had differences with the Palestinian Authority, I believe that you do have a true partner in President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad. Over the last few years, they have built institutions and maintained security on the West Bank in ways that few would have imagined a decade ago. So many Palestinians — including young people — have rejected violence as a means of achieving their aspirations.” A few months later, Abbas would push Fayyad out.

In 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas discussed a peace agreement. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who was present at the negotiations, told PA TV that Olmert accepted all the PA’s demands. He even offered Abbas a little more than the full area of the West Bank. Erekat said he told Abbas to accept the extremely generous proposal, but Abbas rejected it.

In December 2016, in one of his last acts as president, Obama had the US abstain from voting on a major anti-Israel UN Security Council motion. The proposal demanded an immediate halt to all settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Through the abstention, Obama enabled the measure to pass. Donald Trump had already been elected president and would be installed a few weeks later. Trump had made it clear that he opposed the resolution and notified the White House, to no avail.

American law expert Alan Dershowitz said the former president told him he would always protect Israel, yet he believes Obama hurt the Jewish state with the abstention. He said, “President Obama’s decision on the way out to allow the United Nations to condemn Israel for occupying the Western Wall, the holiest place in Judaism, the Jewish Quarter, Hebrew University, the Hadassah Hospital bypass road, was abominable.”

Jordan Valley: Strategic Value

Israeli security experts look at the Jordan Valley as providing “strategic depth.” Without the West Bank, Israel at some points is only 15 km (9 miles) wide. Although modern conventional warfare has changed, downplaying the fear of an armored attack from the east, the last two decades has shown a dramatic increase in the strategic threat of short-range rockets particularly from Gaza. The Hamas terrorist organization controls Gaza and does not hide its desire to take over the West Bank, nor its total rejection of the peace process.

Following the 1967 Six Day War, cabinet minister Yigal Allon proposed to annex most of the Jordan Valley as part of a plan to either return the populated part of the West Bank to Jordan or make it autonomous. There have been variations on that plan since, none of which have been taken seriously. In an apparent election ploy before the September 2019 vote, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to annex parts of the valley, but that failed to gain him more public support.
A view overlooking the Jordan Valley as seen from the archaeological site The Star of Jordan, near Beit She’an. Photo courtesy Israel GPO.

An assessment in 2019 by the respected Institute for National Securities Studies at Tel Aviv University noted that “the U.S. administration accepts the core demand of Prime Minister Netanyahu for freedom of action for Israeli security forces in all territory west of the River Jordan … in accordance with Israel’s security needs.”

In the United States, the Congressional Research Service prepares background reports on a regular basis for the Congress, detailing issues affecting Israel and Israel-US relations. One of those reports concluded that for the Jordan Valley “…Israel may not be willing to agree to phase out its presence—largely owing to recent historical instances in which Israeli military withdrawal from southern Lebanon (2000) and the Gaza Strip (2005) led to the entrenchment of adversarial Islamist militants armed with rockets that have hit Israeli population centers and remain capable of doing so.”

A hand-drawn map by former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, sketched in the year the Oslo Accords were signed between Israel and the Palestinians, is up for auction.

The 1993 map, drawn by Rabin on stationery paper from the Sheraton Jerusalem Plaza Hotel, measures 5.5 x 9 inches and is the only known such drawing by the prime minister, Nate D. Sanders Auctions said in a statement Wednesday.

In addition to roughly marking out Israel’s pre-1967 borders, the map includes numbers marked at various locations, but no place names, and Rabin’s signature scrawled in English letters at the bottom. An accompanying piece of paper, “likely in another hand” explains that the numbers are population figures, according to the lot’s description on the auction house website.

On the reverse side of the map page is a first draft of the map, which is scribbled over.

Bidding is to start at $25,000 when the map goes under the hammer on Thursday, the statement said.

“The context for this map is as important as the sketch itself,” auction house owner Sanders said in the statement. “Rabin, [Shimon] Peres and [Yasser] Arafat received the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, an award that continues to be discussed today. Rabin’s hand-drawn map is of tremendous historical, political and cultural importance.”

Jacques Chirac, a two-term French president who was the first leader to acknowledge France’s role in the Holocaust and defiantly opposed the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, died Thursday at age 86.

His son-in-law Frederic Salat-Baroux told The Associated Press that Chirac died “peacefully, among his loved ones.” He did not give a cause of death, though Chirac had had repeated health problems since leaving office in 2007.

Chirac was long the standard-bearer of France’s conservative right, and mayor of Paris for nearly two decades. He was nicknamed “Le Bulldozer” early in his career for his determination and ambition. As president from 1995 to 2007 he was a consummate global diplomat but failed to reform the economy or defuse tensions between police and minority youths that exploded into riots across France in 2005.

Yet Chirac showed courage and statesmanship during his presidency.

In what may have been his finest hour, France’s last leader with memories of World War II crushed the myth of his nation’s innocence in the persecution of Jews and their deportation during the Holocaust when he acknowledged France’s part.

“Yes, the criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French state,” he said on July 16, 1995. “France, the land of the Enlightenment and human rights … delivered those it protects to their executioners.”

A policewoman was lightly wounded Thursday afternoon in a stabbing attack in Jerusalem’s Old City, police said.

Just before 4 p.m., a Palestinian assailant walked up to a group of officers at the Temple Mount’s Chain Gate, above the Western Wall area, pulled out a knife and attempted to stab the officers.

The cops at the site overpowered the man, and he was taken for questioning.

The man’s identity has not been released, but police characterized the incident as a terror attack.

During the scuffle, the female officer, age 34, was stabbed and lightly wounded in the hand, according to medics at the scene.

Intelligence agencies have warned about plans of international terror outfits including al-Qaida and cells affiliated to the Islamic States (IS) of attacking Jewish and Israeli communities in India during their holiday season in September and October.
The agencies have alerted the states having a significant Jewish population about the possible attacks.

Three Jewish holidays fall between September and October, starting with Rosh HaShanah (Jewish New Year) which runs through September 29 and October 1, Yom Kippur (the holiest day in Judaism) falls on October 8 and 9 while Sukkot will be celebrated between October 13 and October 22.

According to an official communication accessed by ANI, the agencies have received an intelligence input from the spy agencies of other countries about the terrorist outfits' plans to attack the Israeli embassy in New Delhi. The places frequented by Israelis including schools and hotels are also on the target.

Sources said terror outfits are desperate to carry out attacks on Israelis living in the country after Israel supported India over the abrogation of Article 370 which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir.

Hamas has called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to renounce the Oslo Accords with Israel during his speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday.

On the eve of Abbas’s speech, Hamas said in a statement that “the time has come for the PA leadership to announce to the world its decision to renounce the disastrous Oslo Accords after 25 years of political illusion that has brought on our people nothing but additional suffering, land theft, and the desecration of holy sites.”

Last July, Abbas announced that the PA leadership has decided to form a committee to study setting up a mechanism for “halting work related to all signed agreements” with Israel. His critics have dismissed the announcement as yet another “empty threat,” pointing out that it remains unclear whether the proposed committee had ever been formed.

PA officials in Ramallah said that Abbas was expected to announce during his speech that the Palestinians will hold a new parliamentary election. Abbas is also expected to repeat his appeal for convening an international conference for peace in the Middle East and again call for providing international protection for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the officials added.

The last Palestinian parliamentary election, held in January 2006, resulted in a Hamas victory. The Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform list won 74 seats of the 132 seats of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction won only 45 seats.

But it must somehow be #Israel's fault, right? https://t.co/VN6Ael3dVl#Gaza cc: @peta

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 24, 2019

In spite of the relatively small turnout, the demonstrations in Egypt on Sep. 20 should be a warning sign for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. While the call to demonstrate came from wealthy Egyptian building contractor Mohamed Ali, in self-imposed exile in Spain, in Egypt many say that the power behind the incitement of the public is the Muslim Brotherhood. There were demonstrations against President Sisi's government in Cairo, Alexandria, and several outlying cities. However, these demonstrations were much smaller than the information about them posted by the Muslim Brotherhood.

President Sisi should be most concerned by the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood has come back to life. This means that Egypt's security apparatus failed to quash the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, though they eliminated the senior and middle ranks of the movement. A new cadre of the Muslim Brotherhood is inciting the public against the regime in coordination with those of its leaders who are currently in Egyptian jails, and Turkey and Qatar. Sources in Egypt claim that opponents of President Sisi within the army are also cooperating with calls to demonstrate.

President Sisi has created a positive relationship with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, which has benefited the Egyptian economy. He also supports the Palestinian political figure Mohammed Dahlan, who is today an adviser to the ruler of Abu Dhabi. Sisi sees him as the successor to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Dahlan is considered to be a sworn enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egyptian authorities have arrested up to 1,900 people, rights groups said Thursday, broadening a crackdown that has seen prominent critics detained after rare protests calling for the ouster of general-turned-President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

The wave of arrests comes ahead of a “million man march” Friday called for by an exiled businessman whose online videos accusing Sissi and the military of corruption sparked last week’s rallies.

The Egyptian Center for Freedoms and Rights (ECRF) said 1,471 people had been detained since the scattered demonstrations erupted last Friday in Cairo and other cities across the country.

The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights reported that 1,909 had been arrested during the protests.

New breach comes as Washington ups pressure on Tehran, sanctioning Chinese companies importing Iran's oil

Iran has started using advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges in a new breach of the 2015 nuclear accord, a report by the International Atomic Agency (IAEA) revealed on Thursday.

Advanced centrifuges at Iran's Natanz facility "were accumulating, or had been prepared to accumulate, enriched uranium", the IAEA document, seen by AFP, said. According to Reuters, the agency was able to verify this on September 25.

Earlier this month, it was reported that Iran started installing advanced centrifuges in a move that breached the landmark 2015 accord.

In a statement, the IAEA said that on September 7 it had "verified that the following centrifuges were either installed or being installed...: 22 IR-4, one IR-5, 30 IR-6 and three IR-6."

Under the nuclear agreement, Iran is only allowed to use the IR-1 centrifuges.

After an Iranian drone and missile attack devastated Saudi oil facilities, the UN General Assembly gathered to discuss the gravest threats to international peace and security. Through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and with the use of its national airlines, Iran has spread its tentacles to Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, as well as Gaza, dedicating years and more than $7 billion annually to building this extensive terrorist network.

Due to its narrow borders, Israel lacks the strategic depth necessary for our defense forces to detect and respond to an attack before it threatens population centers. An Iranian military presence near the Golan Heights virtually guarantees that any strike will result in Israeli civilian casualties. Thus, Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes against IRGC and Hizbullah forces in Syria to prevent Iran from gaining a permanent foothold.

All along, the United Nations has remained silent in the face of Iran's growing aggression. For years, Tehran has staged terrorist operations in dozens of countries across six continents. Last year, Israel revealed the existence of a nuclear site Iran constructed in violation of the nuclear agreement. Two weeks ago, we exposed another Iranian nuclear research facility that the regime never disclosed. While Israel continues to sound the alarm about Iran's genocidal ambitions, the regime itself has been steadily building its own case for why it is deserving of international sanction.

Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo told the 2019 summit of United Against Nuclear Iran on Wednesday in New York: "Iran is the aggressor and not the aggrieved....From murdering and torturing their own people, to killing Americans from Lebanon to Iraq, to harboring al-Qaeda even today, Iran has rampaged for four decades, and sadly with too few consequences."

"During the nuclear deal negotiations, Iran's malign activity didn't abate one bit....Thanks to Israel, we now know they were also protecting, hiding, and preserving their nuclear knowhow at that very same time. Indeed, after the deal was signed and the pallets of cash were delivered, they continued backing Hizbullah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Shia militias throughout the region. The world too much appeased them, and then underwrote their terrorism."

"More and more nations are beginning to stand up to Iran's thuggish behavior, and disengaging economically....Countries are indeed awakening to the truth that the more Iran lashes out, the greater our pressure will and should be....Today we are imposing sanctions on certain Chinese entities for knowingly transporting oil from Iran contrary to United States sanctions....And we're telling China and all nations, know that we will sanction every violation of sanctionable activity."

The IDF's intelligence branch thinks that Iran could fire missiles at Israel like the ones it sent flying at a Saudi oil field last week, the head of Military Intelligence's Research Division, Brig. Gen. Dror Shalom, told Israel Hayom in a special Rosh Hashanah interview.

According to Shalom, the military's working assumption is that Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the elite Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, would be the one to oversee a missile attack of that type, which Shalom said could be launched from Iraqi territory.

"In the end, when he [Soleimani] takes a hit to the nose, he wants to hit back, and he has taken some blows recently. So my working assumption is that it's only a matter of time until he tries," Shalom says.

"It could be in the form of a surface-to-surface missile, cruise missiles, or long-range UAVs. He has UAVs that can fly 1,000-1,200 kilometers (600-1200 miles) which he has used in the Persian Gulf," Shalom says.

Shalom expressed major concern about the progress Iran is making with its nuclear program, saying that Military Intelligence might be forced to divert resources to address the issue.

"I'm a lot less easy today. We've gotten into a gray area in which they're moving ahead without, which requires us to be a lot more sensitive. Will we know [about an attack]? The Iranians are a very sophisticated enemy, and it bothers me."

Iran’s president accused the United States of “merciless economic terrorism” on Wednesday, using his UN speech to stress that security in the Persian Gulf can be guaranteed only when his nation’s security is as well — and only with the involvement of Iran’s neighbors.

Hassan Rouhani told the UN General Assembly gathering that Iran would not negotiate on the issue of its nuclear program as long as sanctions remain in place.

“Our response to any negotiation under sanctions is negative,” he said. He said Iran has “resisted the most merciless economic terrorism” from a nation that is engaging in “international piracy.”

Iranian state television broadcast Rouhani’s speech live across the country of 80 million people.

He spoke as his country’s nuclear deal with world powers unravels under pressure from the Trump administration. Iran has turned back to expanding its nuclear enrichment program after US President Donald Trump’s decision last year to pull out of the accord and re-impose sanctions on Tehran, targeting its ability to export oil.

Israel walked out of the United Nations General Assembly plenum to protest Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s speech on Wednesday.

When Rouhani started speaking, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon stood up, adjusted his suit and slowly walked out of the room.

"Israel will not respect the world’s number one exporter of terrorism," Danon said regarding his actions. "Rouhani takes advantage of the UN stage to distract and blind the international community from his regime's aggression. World leaders need to issue a clear ultimatum to Rouhani: dismantle the nuclear program or we will bring more sanctions to bring the collapse of the regime.”

Iran has long called for Israel’s destruction. On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said that the Iranian leaders' statements “traffic in monstrous antisemitism.”

The proclamation repeated U.S. accusations that Iran sponsors terrorism, arbitrarily detains American citizens, threatens its neighbors and carries out cyber attacks.

“Given that this behavior threatens peace and stability in the Middle East and beyond, I have determined that it is in the interest of the United States to take action to restrict and suspend the entry into the United States, as immigrants or non-immigrants, of senior government officials of Iran, and their immediate family members,” Trump said in the proclamation.

The U.S.-Iranian confrontation has ratcheted up since last year, when Trump withdrew from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with major powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy. Trump wants to go beyond that deal to further curb Iran’s nuclear program, halt its ballistic missile work and end its support for proxy forces in the Middle East.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani earlier said the United States would have to “pay more” if it wanted a wider deal and rejected meeting with the U.S. president for now. Both men were in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly gathering of world leaders.

Trump has pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran to try to force Tehran to change its policies, and a senior U.S. official said it would continue to “increase pressure on the Iranian regime... until it abandons its outlaw behavior.”

Jordanian Professor Ahmad Nofal: The Arabs Are Too Weak to Beat Iran; Their Actions Led to Saddam Hussein's Defeat, Presence of Iran, U.S. in Iraq pic.twitter.com/qGiykyeCXv

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 26, 2019

Cuban Ambassador to Iran Alexis Bandrich Vega on Whether Cuba Needs Iranian Weapon Systems: We Would Fight the Americans Face-to-Face , Defeat Them pic.twitter.com/ApSgOxATEa

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 26, 2019

Since Hamas' rise to power in the Gaza Strip, Christians living in the sector have become the  scapegoats and a target for harm from both Hamas and extremist Salafis. Due to their predicament, most of them fled; out of a community of 4,200 people twelve years ago, there are now several hundred left.

Until recently, Kamal Teresi was there to,o but managed to escape 4 months ago: "The Hamas people took over my house and turned it into a war room," he says.

Teresi provides a rare glimpse into the unbearable reality he and his community have had to face every day. "I was put in a number of prisons, and the Hamas prison is nothing but beating and psychological torture," he recalls. According to him, the attacks on Christians in Gaza has become routine, and it does not stop even in times of war.

"We Christians are not bystanders in Palestine, we have been in Palestine for two thousand years, we are not guests," says Kamal painfully. "They are harassing and hurting the Christian public and Christian institutions, churches and associations."

...One thing is certain for Kamal: he no longer has a way back: "I can't go back to Gaza, returning would be a death sentence."

To distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, 20 years ago I formulated the 3D test for anti-Semitism. The three Ds are demonization, delegitimization, and double standards - the three main tools that anti-Semites employed against Jews throughout history. This test shows that the same tools are being used today against the collective Jew - the Jewish State.

Many who support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement may do so out of a naive belief that it is working to achieve a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the movement takes it cue from the BDS National Committee based in Ramallah in the West Bank. It has one goal: the destruction of the State of Israel - a goal cleverly masked behind the veneer of fighting for human rights.

When caricatures against Israeli leaders repeat the worst anti-Semitic caricatures of Czarist Russia or Nazi Germany, depicting Israelis as crucifying Palestinians and portraying Palestinians as living in Nazi death camps - that is demonization.

When the legitimacy of the Jewish State is denied and, in the language of some of the founders and key promoters of BDS, there is no place for a Jewish state in the Middle East in any borders - that is delegitimization. Indeed, the movement's leader, Omar Barghouti, has said unequivocally: "Most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.''

When the Jewish State is singled out for criticism that not even the vilest dictatorship is subject to and it is held to standards that not even the most vibrant democracy is judged by - those are double standards.

The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Ahmed Shaheed, just released a report titled, “Combatting Antisemitism to Eliminate Discrimination and Intolerance Based on Religion or Belief.” Sadly, it came as no surprise to read about the proliferation of antisemitism across the globe, and about its multiple sources from across the political spectrum.

But when I read the Rapporteur’s recommendation that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s “Working Definition of Antisemitism” be regarded as a source of guidance for identifying future acts of antisemitism, I recognized that a new chapter in the opposition to the BDS campaign against Israel had arrived.

As noted in the report, the IHRA’s Working Definition defines antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” The definition continues: “Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The report also provides the definition’s multiple examples of “contemporary antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere” — two of which could have been taken from the BDS playbook. They include:
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

In concert, these two examples clearly reveal the antisemitic nature of the BDS campaign.

The @BDSmovement has been officially recognised as antisemitic by 15 countries, the EU and 33 US states who have adopted @TheIHRA definition of antisemitism.

Why do they still have a blue checkmark?#UncheckBDS#UnmaskBDS@4ILorghttps://t.co/ZsdvzKqU93pic.twitter.com/rGvLcM1RQ6

— The Mossad: Elite Parody Division (@TheMossadIL) September 25, 2019

So where do British Jews go?
It would be nice to be rooting for the opposition, but I can’t root for Jeremy Corbyn or for Jeremy Corbyn’s party. What’s the more terrible? This is something that all the Jews I know say: What’s more terrible, Boris Johnson and his cynicism or Jeremy Corbyn and his rigid anti-Semitic ideology? He doesn’t think he’s an anti-Semite. He doesn’t call himself as an anti-Semite, but he’s an anti-Semite. Everything he says, everything he does, all these predilections, all the things he doesn’t notice. It’s anti-Semitism. So we can’t want him to win.
He doesn’t call himself an anti-Semite, but he’s an anti-Semite. Everything he says, everything he does, all these predilections… It’s anti-Semitism

I wouldn’t say it’s a perilous time for Jews, but it’s an anxious time for Jews.

Is the anti-Semitism people talk about in the UK as bad as it seems from the outside looking in?
Well, I mean, it’s not as though I go out onto the streets and fear for my life. I shouldn’t say that because I’m gonna get knifed today, but I don’t. I go around, I appear in public, I say things and I don’t get attacked for them. I’m not on Twitter, otherwise I might discover that people are abusing me roundly all the time. And there are places, of course, where people are attacked. There are places where if you were an Orthodox-looking Jew, and you’ve got a kippah and you’ve got your tzitzit [fringes], then you could be attacked, and some are attacked.

It’s an intellectual tone that’s discomforting. You never know how these things move from the opinion makers, the intellectuals, the politicians, the universities down into the mob. I think we can call them a mob again; they’re behaving like a mob. The universities are hotbeds of that form of anti-Semitism which claims it isn’t anti-Semitism, and says it’s anti-Zionism, which is nonetheless anti-Semitism. Those who say “I’m an anti-Zionist, I’m not an anti-Semite,” I will not admit that distinction. If they say “I don’t like Israel’s foreign policy, I don’t care for Netanyahu,” fine. That’s not anti-Semitism.

To not see the necessity of Zionism, or to refuse to see the necessity of Zionism, and to think of it as an ideology of cruelty, you have to be an anti-Semite, you have to be uneducated and ignorant. Then once you’ve been shown the truth, to persist in the idea, as Corbyn does, that “Zionism is a racist endeavor” — that’s the phrase that Corbyn likes — I think that’s a deeply anti-Semitic thing to say.

It’s a story all-too familiar to Jews around the world.

A four-year-old Christian girl goes missing in a small suburban town. The community bands together to search the forests for her as her family hopes for the best but plans for the worst.

And then, as the optimism begins to fade, rumors spread that the small Jewish community is at fault; that they had likely murdered her to use her blood for a religious ritual. The town’s authorities get involved.

While this exact story, or one like it, has occurred countless times throughout history – leading to pogroms and expulsions, murders and torture – this time it didn’t happen in Ukraine or Poland. This time it’s the Jewish community in a small town in upstate New York that gathers in its synagogue to also hope for the best but plan for the worst.

The blood libel that occurred in September 1928 in Massena, New York, is the only recorded blood libel to occur in the United States.

Why did it happen? And perhaps even more confusing: Why hasn’t it happened again?

New York University history professor Edward Berenson attempts to answer this question in his fascinating book The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town. The 229-page page-turner recounts the details of the event and the ramifications that resulted from it.

The book offers a gripping tale of a community of immigrants and foreign workers dealing with fear and xenophobia while the country is in the throes of a heated election season. At a time when Ellis Island was packed full of Yiddish-speaking men and women seeking a new life in the Goldene Medina (the “Golden” or “Promised Land”), the country was facing a battle for its very identity. The Ku Klux Klan was gaining prominence, and the battle between Catholics and Protestants was reaching a fever pitch.

Dear Antisemitism,

I never thought that you and I would dance the tango.

I thought you only existed in the past like in blood labels, Nazi Germany, or my parents fleeing their home in Iran. But you, the pesky virus that you are transformed and persevered and is now in the mainstream, how fun…

Yes, I know a lot of us are doing well today, my family included, many of us living the American dream…but that doesn’t lessen the pain. Well, at least not for me.

That same sense of pity and longing to help that I as a “good progressive” convey to my fellow minorities is not typically reciprocated. I stand up for others, yet, at times I feel that we as Jews are just standing alone.

In my classes, I rarely hear about antisemitism yet we hear time and time again about the other struggles minorities are facing today. Antisemitism is rising, but, for many others, it isn’t as urgent. Many don’t realize the fear many of us schlep as Jews living in 2019 in the United States of America.

For thousands of years we were persecuted, I really hoped that we were going to be the Jews that were spared the effects of antisemitism.

Let’s call this phenomenon “the Fools’ Crusade.” They’re too old to be called children (even if they think and act like them), so the moniker “Children’s Crusade” doesn’t work. They’re fools who seek to demonstrate how moral and righteous they are by giving propaganda victories to people who murder civilians – Jews especially.

The worst offenders are associated with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). If you live anywhere in Jerusalem or the West Bank, there’s a good chance you’ve seen these activists, who have been recruited by the World Council of Churches to come to the Holy Land and annoy Israeli soldiers as they protect Jews living in places like Gush Etzion and Hebron.

They wear brown vests with the logo of a cross and a dove on the back and the words “World Council of Churches” stenciled across the top. The vests (which the volunteers sometimes hide when they want to downplay their connection to the WCC) give their wearers an air of authority. When they do things that bring shame on the WCC, the organization’s staffers in Geneva say that their volunteers do not engage in political activism while in the Holy Land.

EAPPI activists have, on at least one occasion, visited with the families of known terrorists and then bragged about it afterward. The visit happened in November 2016 when EAPPI volunteers graced the homes of Labib Khaldon Anwar Azzam and Mihmoud Hisham Ali Z’jalan, two 17-year-old youths who were killed while attempting to murder Roy Harel and his family in their home in Eli.

The attack happened in March 2016 when Labib and Mihmoud assailed Harel early in the morning as he was leaving his home for reserve duty. They had waited outside his house after praying at the mosque the night before.

“They started attacking me with heavy wooden clubs,” Harel told reporters after the attack. The two young men were able to gain entrance into his home where they headed for the children’s bedroom. Harel was able to push them back out of the house and close the door behind them. During the melee, Harel yelled for his wife to call for help. After they were driven outside, the two hid nearby and attacked with knives the soldiers who arrived on the scene before they were shot and killed.

Erupting on BBC’s Politics Live programme, the Conservative MP Sir Charles Walker passionately insisted that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn would not be appointed as Prime Minister by the MPs in the House of Commons forming a coalition headed by him.

“The House of Commons will never put Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10, that will never happen. Ever,” he asserted, going on to clarify: “It will never happen. Because we have brands as political parties. And you know why we’ll never put him there: because he has a fundamental problem with parts of our community who happen to be Jewish. And we will not put him in Number 10. It will never ever happen in this country. And Labour won’t let it happen either. And you know it. Ever.”

Sir Charles’ blunt remarks are a refreshing reminder of how seriously antisemitism is taken outside of the Labour Party.

Equally noteworthy was the revealing reaction from the Labour MP on the in-studio panel, Lisa Nandy, who did not dispute Sir Charles’ assessment of Mr Corbyn and his antisemitism, meekly mentioning only that it will be up to the people to determine Mr Corbyn’s political fate.

Sir Charles finished by saying of Mr Corbyn that “he is not [a] fit or proper person to be in Number 10 with the views that he holds.”

“The House of Commons will never put Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10, that will never happen. Ever.” says Conservative Charles Walker

“He is not fit or proper person to be in Number 10”https://t.co/xZ54TdOAam#politicslivepic.twitter.com/whHb367LJV

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) September 25, 2019

The Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Tom Watson, has disclosed that he was intending to attack Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s record on antisemitism in his Labour Party Conference speech, before it was cancelled due to events in Westminster.

Alluding to Mr Corbyn’s empty statements on the antisemitism crisis engulfing the Party, Mr Watson said: “In my speech I was going to say that it is not just about being anti-racist, even if you mean it. It’s no good just condemning something — it’s about actually doing something about it.”

Mr Watson went on to condemn the “sickening intimidation” of Jewish delegates at the Conference and the antisemitic banner positioned outside (which police eventually removed), and lamented that Labour had “a very long way to go” before it could restore “anything near trust with the Jewish community.”

On 28th May, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

In recent months, twelve MPs and three peers have resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism, along with a large number of MEPs, councillors and members.

Over 55,000 people have now signed our petition denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”

The Labour leadership:
- Campaign against racism… spread antisemitism
- Want to abolish private schools… send their kids to private schools
- Say houses are unaffordable… own multiple houses
- Protest the 1%… are worth millions Share if you’re tired of Labour hypocrisy!

Speakers at a UK Labour event held on Tuesday dismissed the idea of antisemitism within the party, denounced the internationally-accepted definition of antisemitism and accused the “the State of Israel and its lobby” of a conspiracy to “smear the left” with “false accusations of antisemitism.”

Representatives of the group HOPE not hate, which campaigns against racism and antisemitism, attended the meeting of Labour Against the Witchhunt against the backdrop of the Labour party’s annual conference in Brighton.

Labour Against the Witchhunt is a far-left group founded to fend off accusations of antisemitism, oppose organizational attempts to deal with it and defend party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is seen by the majority of British Jews as personally antisemitic.

Among the featured speakers at the meeting were Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone and Chris Williamson, all of whom have made statements widely viewed as antisemitic.

According to HOPE not hate, Livingstone, who falsely accused the Zionist movement of collaborating with Nazism, appeared to blame the increase of antisemitism on criticism of antisemitism, saying, “There has been an increase in antisemitism because all this media attention on it has led to real antisemites attacking people.”

The controversial filmmaker and longtime Labour supporter, Ken Loach, has complained to the Morning Star that “Tory supporters are more likely to hold antisemitic views than Labour supporters, but there is no mass demand for investigations into their Party.”

In his interview published on 24th September, Mr Loach conceded that “where there is evidence of antisemitism [in Labour] that has been properly scrutinised, that has been looked at in a proper, open hearing, if someone is found guilty, then appropriate sanctions should be taken,” but insisted that “this campaign [of antisemitism allegations in Labour] has not been about that.”

Mr Loach went on to contrast “individuals like Margaret Hodge…[who] indulge in revolting foul-mouthed abuse of the leader” with “an MP like Chris Williamson, where the evidence was heard and it was considered that [he] should remain in the party….And then it was overturned because of political pressure!…Everybody knows Chris is not an antisemite.”

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.

Mr Loach’s voice has been among the loudest of those who attempt to dismiss Labour’s antisemitism crisis as non-existent and a right-wing smear campaign.

A former Labour leader of Brighton City Council revealed how following the last Labour Party Conference in the city two years go he “wrote a letter saying Labour would not be welcome back in Brighton if it failed to sort out its issues with antisemitism”, only to find that “the backlash against my message was swift and took me by surprise.”

In a remarkable article in The Spectator, Warren Morgan, who was Labour leader of Brighton and Hove City Council from 2015 to 2018 and resigned from the Party in February, recounted how at that previous Conference he had “sat in a studio listening to people who had faced abuse because they were Jewish. I heard statements recorded at a fringe event suggesting it was fine to question whether the Holocaust had ever happened.” He then felt he had to take action.

However, he went on to document what happened next: “For all my good intentions in speaking up for Jewish people who were afraid, months of e-mails, motions and unpleasant messages followed. Apologies and retractions were demanded. There were calls for me to step down. Many of these messages came from the local party, where now-suspended or expelled members labelled Jews ‘Zios’, depicted councillors — including me and one whose husband is Jewish — as dancing rabbis and called for people to march on the local synagogue in response to the suspension by Labour of a council candidate for tweeting about the ‘Israeli bloodline’.

“Finally, a motion calling for me to resign passed by some forty votes to two. It had been moved by the person later suspended after calling for a march on a local synagogue.”

Mr Warren observed that now, “despite the promises of action two years ago, and the small number of suspensions and expulsions, those pushing the same anti-Israel messages which so quickly morph into antisemitism have not gone away.

One of the four stars of Labour’s new party political broadcast (which fails to include Corbyn once) is a GP who talks about how much Labour loves the NHS. Youssef El-Gingihy is also very concerned about the NHS having authored a book entitled “How to Dismantle the NHS in 10 Easy Steps: The blueprint that the government does not want you to see” which alleges Tory, New Labour, and Coalition governments had a secret plan to end the NHS. Despite supposedly evil Tory, coalition, and New Labour governments having run the NHS for 58 years of its 71-year life…

But Youssef’s conspiracy theories don’t stop there. In the last few years, Labour’s star GP has also…
- Claimed 9/11 was an inside job.
- Repeatedly claimed the US is supporting ISIS.
- Claimed the assassination of JFK was a ‘false flag’ inside job, Lee Harvey Oswald worked for the CIA, and it was all so that the US could invade Cuba.

Where I expose some antisemitic, anti-coexistence tweets from @ZahraBilloo, which have not been reported https://t.co/ktLL9rNa3f

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 26, 2019

A Montreal mayoral candidate is facing demands to step down after videos surfaced where she defaces Israeli products.

Miranda Gallo, candidate for the New Democratic Party, starred in 2016 videos in which she presented herself as an employee of the organization “Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East” and placed “warning” labels on Israeli products in the store, encouraging Canadians to boycott them. Doing so is against Canadian law.

In response to this, a demand to drop Gallo as a candidate has been issued by B'nai Brith Canada, though it has been declined. The explanation given was that she had since been made aware of the NDP's policy to work toward a two-state solution.

“Someone who thinks it's okay to vandalize store products based on the origin of their producer has no role as a candidate for a major Canadian political party,” said Michael Mostyn, chief executive officer of B’nai Brith Canada. “Not only do Ms. Gallo’s actions demonstrate her anti-Israel bigotry, but they also reveal a profound disrespect for the rule of law.”

This is not the first time such a label has caused these kinds of disputes in Canada. As far back as July, the question of whether or not wines made in the West Bank can be considered a product of Israel was brought up, though it was ruled that they would not be.

Canada’s B’nai Brith, which is a party to the case, said it was “disappointed” by the ruling. “In our view, it is reasonable and not at all misleading to label wines produced by Israeli citizens in Israeli-controlled territory as ‘Products of Israel.’” It added that “We will be asking the attorney-general to appeal this decision, since we cannot do so as interveners.

Columbia University is hosting the far-right anti-Semitic Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, at a time of rising anti-Semitism in the US. It comes twelve years after the university also invited Iran’s Holocaust denying anti-Semitic President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, revealing a disturbing trend of one of America’s top universities disproportionately inviting antisemitic far-right leaders to give high-profile talks.

Malaysia's Mohamad is a favorite of UK universities and he has been invited to speak at Oxford and Cambridge. In an era of rising anti-Semitism it is remarkable that leading western universities extend invitations to one of the sole proudly anti-Semitic world leaders without asking any contrition of him. It’s hard to ignore that out of some 200 countries in the world those like Mohamed appear to receive more invitations than others and it raises questions: if he weren’t anti-Semitic would he receive the same invitation? Are western universities excusing anti-Semitism and inviting foreign leaders under the guise of merely being foreign leaders with the affect that they can push a far-right racist agenda by proxy? There are hundreds of leaders who have not expressed hate speech as foreign policy, so why does Mohamad continually get the red carpet?

In October 2003 Mohamad gave a speech to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. He claimed that European countries created the state of Israel to “solve their Jewish problem.” He argued that “the Muslims will forever be oppressed and dominated by the Europeans and Jews.” He argued that there should be a different was. “1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be away.” He went on, “the Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.”

Despite his comments and hate speech he frequently gets invites by western media and academic institutions, almost as if they hope that he will make these comments. One wonders what their agenda might be since they don’t host any other racist leaders or give air time to racist views of others. There is only one type of hatred that western universities and media give a rubber stamp to: Hatred of Jews. For instance, in 2018 on BBC’s Hard Talk he attacked Jews as “hook-nosed.” He then claimed that four million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. “The problem in the Middle East began with the creation of Israel.”

Hamas is suppressing the people of #Gaza not #Israel - pic.twitter.com/laJr2hQkpo

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 26, 2019

In light of the failure of UMASS Amherst to hold Communication’s Professor Sut Jhally accountable for the manipulation of the journalistic record in his movie “The Occupation of the American Mind,” the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) has contacted the school’s chancellor, Dr. Kumble R. Subbaswamy. In a letter sent on Sept. 18, 2019, CAMERA asked Chancellor Subbaswamy to address Jhally’s persistent propagandizing against Israel.

A staffer from Dr. Subbaswamy’s office has informed CAMERA that a response is forthcoming.

The full text of the letter is posted below.
Kumble R. Subbaswamy, PhD September 18, 2019
Chancellor
UMASS Amherst
[Address omitted]

Dear Dr. Subbaswamy:
I write to you from the offices of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) in Massachusetts. We are a media-monitoring organization supported by 65,000 members in the United States.

A member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, CAMERA promotes fair and accurate coverage of the Middle East. Most of our work is focused on media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict in media outlets such as the New York Times, CNN and National Public Radio. We also have a campus program that seeks to promote honest and accurate discussion about the Middle East in colleges and universities throughout the United States.

One of the troubling realities that we have been forced to address is how inaccurate and biased media coverage about Israel promotes hostility toward Jews in American civil society. This problem is particularly acute on college campuses.

Delighted to announce that after complaints to Chelmsford girls school about Dr Swee Ang event , and her connections in sharing David Duke posts, event has been cancelled @UKLFI@NGOmonitor@Campaign4T@JakeWSimonspic.twitter.com/ab0yz1wY74

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 26, 2019

Hundreds of demonstrators rallied in front of City Hall in New York on Sunday, calling on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and other municipal leaders, as well as those on the national level, to act against antisemitism and the wave of antisemitic hate crimes taking place against the Orthodox Jewish community.

The rally—titled “Name It to Fight It! It’s Antisemitism!”—was organized by WoMen Fight AntiSemitism (WMFA) in coalition with 14 organizations, including The Lawfare Project and Zionist Organization of America.”

Protestors held signs that read “We Will Not be Silent #HateStopsHere,” and “Anti-Semitic attacks nearly doubled in NYC in 2019! Where are our elected officials?!” Another sign asked, “Where is [New York City] Mayor de Blasio?” in the fight against anti-Semitism, while one read “A little less conversation, a lot more action.”

“We’re angry. Rightfully so and long overdue,” said Rhonda Hodas Hack, who attended the demonstration. “This rally was different from others because you had speakers—Jewish, Christian, black, American, European—who spoke not only articulately, but with the courage to demand truth not only from our leaders, as need be and should be expected, but from our peers. Our peers who have failed us, Jews and blacks and whites … for they have capitulated to the demands of those who wish to control us with their many manipulations, not who wish to lead us with authentic truths and towards genuinely healthy solutions.”

Demonstrators hailing from New York, Boston and Florida slammed the media, as well as Jewish organizations and elected officials, for not caring enough about the hate crimes committed against Jews.

The “OK” hand gesture, a mass killer’s bowl-style haircut and an anthropomorphic moon wearing sunglasses are among 36 new entries in a Jewish civil rights group’s online database of hate symbols used by white supremacists and other far-right extremists.

The Anti-Defamation League has added the symbols to its online “Hate on Display” database, which already includes burning crosses, Ku Klux Klan robes, the swastika and many other of the most notorious and overt symbols of racism and anti-Semitism.

The New York City-based group launched the database in 2000 to help law enforcement officers, school officials and others recognize signs of extremist activity. It has grown to include nearly 200 entries.

“Even as extremists continue to use symbols that may be years or decades old, they regularly create new symbols, memes and slogans to express their hateful sentiments,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement.

Some of the new entries started as trolling campaigns or hateful memes on internet message boards such as 4chan, 8chan and Reddit, before migrating to Facebook, Twitter and other mainstream platforms, and to public forums and fliers.

The ADL has updated its database to include the “OK” hand symbol, which became fodder for a 4chan trolling campaign to dupe viewers into thinking the fingers formed the letters “W” and “P” to mean “white power.”

Members of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community convened a press conference late last week to talk about the Oct. 27 synagogue massacre almost a year ago and their plans moving forward.

At the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, a panel of leaders from the three congregations housed in the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Synagogue building discussed how their members have been coping in the aftermath of the attack, and the struggle of taking care of their congregants and themselves.

Rabbi Jeffrey Myers from Tree of Life said, “I live with Oct. 27 every minute of every hour of every day, and I will for the rest of my life. Each of us finds the strength and the courage to integrate what happened into our beings, to move forward. I refuse to let the perpetrator make me another full-time victim. I won’t let it happen. I refuse.”

Stephen Cohen, co-president of the New Light synagogue, said his congregation is “committed to moving back to the Tree of Life building,” but he expects that process to “take many years.” He also called for a discussion with state and city officials on how to memorialize the deadly shooting.

Details were also revealed regarding the “Remember. Repair. Together” program, complete with planned volunteer opportunities and Torah study.

A World War II heroine who used her harmless appearance to gain the trust of Nazis before executing them has died in The Netherlands, aged 92.

Freddie Oversteegen was born in Haarlem, near Amsterdam on September 6, 1925 and raised by her communist mother.

She was just 14 when she joined the Dutch resistance, the Daily Mail reports.

Together with her older sister Truus and their friend Hannie Schaft, she blew up bridges and railway tracks with dynamite, smuggled Jewish children out of concentration camps and executed as many Nazis as she could, using a firearm hidden in the basket of her bike.

The trio had a routine: first approach the Nazi men in bars, and, having successfully seduced them, ask if they wanted to 'go for a stroll' in the forest, where, as Freddie herself put it, they would be 'liquidated'.

"We had to do it," she told one interviewer. "It was a necessary evil, killing those who betrayed the good people." When asked how many people she had killed or helped kill, she demurred: "One should not ask a soldier any of that."

Freddie died on September 5 - one day before her 93rd birthday. She was the last surviving member of the Netherlands' most famous female resistance cell, who dedicated their lives to fighting Nazi occupiers and Dutch "traitors" just outside Amsterdam.

Israel, one of the pioneers of drone warfare, is now on the front lines of an arms race to protect against attacks by the unmanned aircraft.

A host of Israeli companies have developed defense systems they say can detect or destroy incoming drones. But obstacles remain, particularly when operating in crowded urban airspaces.

“Fighting these systems is really hard … not just because you need to detect them, but you also need to detect them everywhere and all the time,” said Ulrike Franke, a policy fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations.

Drones present unique challenges that set them apart from traditional airborne threats, such as missiles or warplanes.

They can fly below standard military radar systems and use GPS technology to execute pinpoint attacks on sensitive targets for a fraction of the price of a fighter jet. They can also be deployed in “swarms,” which can trick or elude conventional defense systems. Even small off-the-shelf drones can be turned into weapons by rigging them with explosives or simply crashing them in crowded areas.

A series of drone strikes across the Middle East, including an attack on a Saudi oil field and processing plant that jolted international markets earlier this month, has underscored the devastating effectiveness of small unmanned attack aircraft.

November brings the chance to rock on with Joe Lynn Turner, former soloist for Deep Purple and Rainbow, who arrives in Israel for two performances.

Turner will perform in Tel Aviv’s Bronfman Auditorium on November 19 and Haifa Auditorium on November 20, where he’ll sing rock classics backed by the Ra’anana Symphonette Orchestra.

Turner has toured the world with Rock the Opera, the name of his symphony-backed show, as he performs rock classics from Queen, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, U2 and AC/DC.

He’s called it a musical journey, as the 68-year-old from Hackensack, New Jersey draws on the favorite rock sounds of his past, backed by the full tones and rhythms of local orchestras.

French-Canadian superstar Celine Dion will be making her Israel debut in Tel Aviv this coming August.

“See you soon Tel Aviv, Love, Celine” was posted on Dion’s Twitter page on Thursday. Hours later, Israeli promoter Shuki Weiss issued a release announcing the show at Park Hayarkon on August 4th as part of Dion’s Courage World Tour (named after her new album).

The show will have full seating, without standing room tickets, owing to the more mature nature of Dion’s following.

“Good evening Tel Aviv!” shouted Brett Anderson into the microphone, as he opened a spectacular Suede show that took place in Live Park Rishon Lezion Wednesday night.

It was the British rock staples’ sixth visit to Israel, this time as part of an international tour in honor of their eighth record The Blue Hour.

Anderson, together with Neil Codling (guitar/keyboard), Simon Gilbert (drums), Richard Oakes (guitar) and Mat Osman (bass), gave his heart and soul to the screaming crowd.

The show started in full gear with “As One” from The Blue Hour, but it included a generous number of tunes from the band’s illustrious career, including “Snowblind,” “Outsiders” and “Animal Nitrate.”

Dancing, jumping, getting down on his knees, dramatic and glorious, Anderson’s face was dripping with sweat as he proved once again that he is a great performer.

When he wasn’t spinning the microphone over his head like a cowboy, or down on his knees, he stepped down from the stage and into the arms of his adoring crowd, shaking hands and basking in the love of the Israeli audience.

As the summer aliyah season comes to a close, the hundreds of Nefesh B’Nefesh olim who have arrived in recent weeks are not only unpacking boxes, beginning jobs, and taking their children to new schools, but pausing to take stock of how it feels to be a new immigrant to Israel at the beginning of the New Year of 5780.

For Rachel Margolin of Jerusalem, who moved from New York’s Upper West Side, arriving in Israel on August 29, making aliyah to Israel before Rosh Hashanah means a more public appreciation of being Jewish. “The other day,” says Margolin, “I saw a screen shot of the Shufersal website, which has a special tab for shopping for Tishrei and Rosh Hashanah. It was a cool moment. That is what is unique and special about being in Israel for the High Holidays.” But beyond the public acknowledgement of the holiday season, Margolin senses something different in the air. “There is something about the mentality here that feels different. Everyone is mindful about the upcoming holidays and is thinking about how to best enter Tishrei with that perspective. It just feels more expansive here than it does in New York. Everyone is bracing themselves in a positive sense for the holidays.”

Margolin, who recently turned 28, says, “There are so many things happening at once. My birthday is 25 Elul, my aliyah, Rosh Hashanah – it’s all happening at once. It is easy to view this entire experience as a new beginning in every sense.” Margolin notes that when she thinks about Israel, she thinks about hospitality in the truest sense of the word. “When I made aliyah, everyone kept asking me if was returning to the States for the High Holidays. I told them that I was confident that I would be taken care of.” She cheerfully reports that she has been invited out for all of her holiday meals.

Margolin, who taught Tanach at SAR High School in New York for six years, is looking for employment in the educational non-profit sector, and in the days leading up to the holiday, has been studying at the Pardes Institute Elul program in Jerusalem. “It’s incredible to have so many different opportunities to live and re-focus my mind, and form resolutions before the New Year, so I have really enjoyed being in that space.”

A record 4.6 million tourists visited Israel during 5779, according to data published by the Tourism Ministry ahead of the beginning of the new Jewish year. An estimated 24,000 travelers are also expected to arrive during the next few weeks.

The record constitutes an 18% increase since the previous year, from 3.9 million to 4.6 million tourists with a revenue of NIS 22.4 billion this year, as opposed to NIS 19 billion last year.

“This is the third year we are breaking the all-time record in tourism,” Tourism Minister Yariv Levin explained. “The impressive increase is a direct result of strenuous work and revolutionary change made by the Ministry, with an emphasis on expanding accommodation options in the country and lowering holiday prices. The momentum in the tourism industry creates opportunities, and we are happy about the trend in the number of entrepreneurs who see tourism as an economic growth engine and investors in Israel.”

Tourists spent no less than seven days in Israel on average. During the month of Tishrei, tourists visited for a record of 11 days on average

The British Library, the largest national library in the world by number of items catalogued, has made available its collection of 250 of the most rare and ancient religious texts online, many available to the public for the first time.

According to Tuesday’s press release, the unparalleled online collection, titled “Discovering Sacred Texts,” is accessible online for free from around the world and includes access to an incredible range of texts, videos and curated articles, including one of the only copies of the Talmud that escaped public burnings suffered by most of the other Jewish law books during the Middle Ages.

Also in the collection are: the first complete printed text of the Mishnah; the Gaster Bible, one of the earliest surviving Hebrew biblical codices, created in Egypt around the 10th century CE; the Johann Gutenberg Bible, probably the most famous Bible in the world and the earliest full-scale work printed in Europe using moveable type; the earliest surviving copy of the complete New Testament, Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from the 4th century; and the Ma’il Koran, one of the very earliest Korans in the world, dating back to the 8th century.

The project was supported by Dangoor Education and Allchurches Trust, among other donors, with the goal of providing access to the “richness and diversity of the texts from the world’s great faiths.” According to the press release, the online catalogue was designed for religious education students, teachers and lifelong learners to learn about Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, the Baha’i faith and Zoroastrianism.

Israel’s population stands at 9,092,000 and is expected to reach 10 million by Rosh Hashanah 2024, the Central Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday.

In figures published ahead of the Jewish new year which begins Sunday evening, the report said the country’s 6.744 million Jews make up 74.2 percent of the total population, and its 1.907 million Arabs represent 21%.

Other minority groups comprise 4.8 percent of the population with 441,000 residents.

Since Rosh Hashanah 2018, the population rose by 184,000, marking a 2.1% increase, a similar change to previous years. Israelis gave birth to 196,000 children in the past year, while 50,000 died, and 38,000 moved to the country, of which 35,000 were Jewish immigrants who received citizenship.

At its current pace, the Jewish State will have 15 million residents by its hundredth birthday in 2048 and 20 million by 2065, the report said.

Worldwide, there are now 14.8 million Jews, a slight increase from the 14.7 million tallied the year before, the Jewish Agency reported on Thursday.

There are 8.1 million Jews living outside Israel, with the largest population in the United States, which has 5.7 million Jews.

In the American Jewish imagination, the story of Israel’s founding is a story of East European pioneers, socialist kibbutzim, and a Jewish state rising from the ashes of the Holocaust. And all of these things are indispensable elements of Israel’s early history. But they are not the whole picture.

After the founding of the state, Israel absorbed a massive influx of Jews from Middle Eastern lands—Mizrahim—who came from a society and culture vastly different from that of their East European co-religionists. These Jews are also part of the story of the Jewish state’s beginnings; today they represent over half of Israel’s Jewish population, profoundly shaping the culture, religion, and politics of 21st-century Israel.

In 2014, author and journalist Matti Friedman penned an essay in Mosaic titled, “Mizrahi Nation,” in which he tells the story of these Jews from Arab lands and explains how one simply cannot understand contemporary Israel without understanding that it has been profoundly shaped by the Mizrahim. Israel, Friedman argues, is a much more Middle Eastern country than many Jews in the West imagine it to be.

In this podcast, Friedman joins Jonathan Silver to reflect on his essay. They discuss the long and remarkable history of Mizrahi Jews, how they have shaped the Jewish state, and how understanding their role in Israel’s past and present can give us a clearer picture of the nation’s future.

In conclusion, I salute all our Palestinian people in Palestine, in the refugee camps and Diaspora and across the world and express our pride in them. I tell them: we are confident that this occupation, like all occupation that preceded it, will inevitably end; that the dawn of freedom and independence is coming; and that the oppression and aggression they have endured for so long will not last. A right is never lost as long as someone strives to claim it.

We salute our honorable martyrs, courageous prisoners and wounded heroes, and salute their resilient families who we will not give up on their rights. We salute to those remaining steadfast in our beloved homeland. The date of our freedom and the independence of State with its eternal capital Al-Quds is soon approaching.

In conclusion, I salute all our Palestinian people in Palestine, in the refugee camps and Diaspora and across the world and express our pride in them. I tell them: we are confident that this occupation, like all occupation that preceded it, will inevitably end. Many countries have been occupied, including the United States - it was occupied once, and that occupation ended. In Europe and Africa, Latin America, we have seen many forms of occupation, and we say that the occupation of Palestine will end, Allah-willing, as it has ended in other countries, and we will continue to call for respecting our rights. A right is never lost as long as someone strives to claim it.

We salute our honorable martyrs, courageous prisoners and wounded heroes. We salute their resilient families. We will protect your rights regardless of the cost. I will not accept the claims of Israel. Even if I have only one penny left, I will give this penny to the families of the martyrs , the prisoners and heroes, and I will not accept these demands.

Peace, mercy and blessings of God. 

My friends,
Collective action is also vital for ending bitter crises and conflicts. And no crisis has done more global damage than the core conflict in my region, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict

It begins with respect for the holy sites and rejecting all attempts to alter the legal status of East Jerusalem and the authentic historic character of the Holy City, Jerusalem. What lessons do we teach young people, when armed personnel enter Al Aqsa Mosque/Al Haram Al Sharif, even as Muslim worshippers gather to pray?

Forty years ago, my father, His Majesty the late King Hussein, who loved peace, stood in this very chamber, and decried the occupation and attempts, in his words, "to eradicate from the world's memory centuries of history and tradition and of spiritual, moral, and cultural ideals."

The elements of the Trump administration’s plan which have been rolled out could also be read as undercutting a key component of the rejectionist position: the so-called “right of return” for Palestinian refugees in neighboring Arab countries. At the “Peace to Prosperity” conference, which the administration organized in Bahrain in June, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner presented a plan to invest $50 billion in the Palestinian territories and in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. While the investment aims to encourage “Strengthening Regional Development and Integration,” it also might suggest an incentive to turn the page on the “right of return” fantasy. At any rate, this ought to be the US position, thereby putting an end to American indulgence of Palestinian maximalism, which the Obama White House chose to sign onto with UNSCR 2334.

As of now, there’s no information on the proposed shape or nature of the Palestinian polity. In July, the US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman pointedly spoke of “Palestinian autonomy” and self-governance, but shied away from any talk of Palestinian “statehood.” The history of the Levant, from ancient times to the present, is full of such polities acting as buffer or vassal states for larger neighboring powers. To be sure, the existing arrangement between Israel and Jordan in the West Bank is the only thing preventing that territory from becoming an Iranian satellite, more or less like Gaza, the Iranian outpost between Israel and Egypt.

This, after all, is the main point of the entire exercise. President Trump’s approach returns the issue of the Palestinians to its real size and function in the Levant as well as in US policy in the region. It readjusts America’s focus away from the fractured Levant and back on a sound geostrategic approach centered on the states on the Levant’s outer rim.

Bearing this in mind, the US cannot allow itself to be sucked into the irrelevant minutiae of the “peace process” enterprise and such fictions as “state institutions” in the Levant — already a proven failure in Iraq and Lebanon, where the state institution-building chimera has only strengthened Iran’s position.

Instead, the path forward for the US is to continue to strengthen Israel’s position as a security pillar in the region while shoring up the US-allied Arab states and fostering closer cooperation between them and the Israelis against Iran. Key to this effort is the dismantling of the central tenets of the rejectionist position, namely the 1967 lines. This would not only nullify the Obama administration’s attempt to realign the US position, but also would make it all but impossible for that legacy to be revived in the future.

What matters for the US in the region is to consolidate its state alliance system to contain Iran and its assets. Progress in peace talks with the Palestinians is a matter of far less concern.

Israel knows from dramatic diplomatic years.

The Hebrew year 5738 (1978) was such a year, with the White House signing of the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel.

Another such year was 5752 (1991), with the onset of the Madrid Conference. So was 5753 (1993) with the Oslo I Accord, 5755 (1994) with the signing of the peace treaty with Jordan, and 5778 (2018) with the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

But not 5779, which will end Sunday night with Rosh Hashanah. This year will by no means enter the annals of the country’s history as one of those dramatic diplomatic years. It is not as if nothing happened diplomatically; there were some significant events – and especially nonevents – but it was by no means a diplomatic red-letter year.

Here’s a look at some of the key diplomatic events – and nonevents – that shaped 5779.

Our Person of the Year 5779 is not a scientist, artist, athlete or indeed any representative of merit.

Unlike other choices we have made along the years, like Nobel laureate Ada Yonath (5770) or world-renowned economist Stanley Fischer (5769), this time we could not flee to any of the many stories of Israeli excellence, for two reasons: first, there was no such major story this year, and second, 5779 was one of the most intensely political years in Israeli history, and our choice must reflect that distinction.

For that reason we also cannot choose this year a world leader, the way we did last year (Vladimir Putin) and three years ago (Donald Trump), or a Middle Eastern leader, as we did with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mohamed Morsi and Bashar Assad in 5766, 5772 and 5773, respectively.

Nor can we nominate a humble person who sacrificed for a cause, like Yigal Gueta (5777), the Shas MK who attended his gay nephew’s wedding even though it cost him his Knesset seat; or a martyr like Muhammad Bouazizi (5771), whose self-immolation sparked pan-Arab revolt; or a war victim like Alan Kurdi (5775), the Syrian toddler whose shipwrecked body was washed to a Turkish shore.

At the end of a year in which Israel held two general elections within five months, our choice must reflect this unprecedented distinction, the way we chose Alef (5767), the code-named woman whose accusation of Moshe Katsav triggered the president’s downfall, or Moshe Talansky (5768), whose testimony signaled Ehud Olmert’s political demise.

Having understood this, our choice of 5779’s Person of the Year is a no-brainer: Avigdor Liberman.

THE 61-YEAR-OLD tennis enthusiast who single-handedly thrust us into monumental tumult shaped this stormy year more than anyone else. All the rest of the year’s political protagonists seemed like pawns on Liberman’s chessboard.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly that despite Israel's demands, the Palestinian Authority will continue to pay salaries to terrorists.

"Even if I had only one penny, I would've given it to the families of the martyrs, prisoners and heroes," said Abbas and received a round of applause from the crowd.

Abbas also attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following Netanyahu's statement earlier this month to annex the Jordan Valley.

"We completely reject this plan. If the Israeli government goes through with it, all our commitments to previous agreements will be canceled," Abbas said.

Abbas also bashed the United States for its last year's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a disputed territory up until that point, calling it an "aggressive measure".

"The United States has taken illegal and aggressive measures, such as recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and transferring its embassy to it. Jerusalem is part of the religious heritage of the Muslims and will remain the eternal capital of the Palestinian people. The U.S. administration continues its aggression, shutting down the PLO's agency in Washington for no reason," said the Palestinian president.

Abbas also said that the Palestinians would no longer agree to only one country mediating at a time in their negotiations with Israel and called for an international conference to promote the peace process.

"Our hands are always extended for peace. More than one country has invited Netanyahu and me to meet. Netanyahu refused three calls from Russia, but we always turned to peace. I am calling for an international peace conference, which will involve Arab and international parties. The international community must put an end to Israeli aggression and arrogance," said Abbas.

Terrorist prisoners father children outside of prison via smuggled sperm
Palestinian terrorist prisoners smuggle their sperm out of prison to father children, and a clinic in Ramallah helps the prisoners’ wives become pregnant with the sperm. Palestinian Media Watch has reported on this system, which according to the PA by August 2018 had produced at least 61 babies.

A prisoner's wife who gave birth to a son via smuggled sperm shed more light on the issue and the procedures. Lydia Al-Rimawi is married to prisoner Abd Al-Karim Al-Rimawi, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (Fatah’s military wing), and together they have their son Majed who was born from sperm that the father smuggled out of prison. In an interview published by the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, Lydia Al-Rimawi explained that “six witnesses” are needed to verify that the sperm actually “came from prison”:

Lydia Al-Rimawi: "We took out the sperm that came out [of prison] in the morning and arrived [at the medical center] at around 10:00 p.m. There need to be six witnesses with you to witness that this sample came from the prison. My relatives came and waited at the gate of the [medical] center. We brought the sample and, thank Allah, from the first examination the sample was very good."
[Facebook page of the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, Sept. 18, 2019]

Lydia Al-Rimawi didn’t elaborate on how the witnesses are supposed to verify it.

Political hatred in Israel is no longer as decisive as it was back in the early days of the state, when Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion refused even to mention the name of opposition leader Menachem Begin, much less invite him to join a coalition government. The fighting in the recent campaign was more pro wrestling than blood sport.

Partly this is a function of intimacy. Today's political Israel (including journalists and commentators as well as candidates and office holders) is a small circle of players, many of whom grew up together, served in the same military units, attended the same universities, and worked with one another on the way up the ladder.

To outsiders, Jewish Israel may seem to be in a perpetual state of civil war, but beneath the turmoil there is surprising solidarity, based on shared national insecurity. There's very little space between Netanyahu and Gantz on the fight against Iran and Islamic terrorism (including in Gaza), the need to hold strategic land and major settlements in the West Bank, or the crucial nature of the U.S.-Israel alliance.

The detriments of BDS (Bibi derangement syndrome)

I have purposely avoided broaching the subject of the pending indictments against Netanyahu – as this is something I have dealt with elsewhere – and about which, I am convinced, that anyone, who is not an obsessive Bibiphobe, would tend to agree that “[t]he unrelenting drive to bring an indictment – any indictment—against Netanyahu has long exceeded the bounds of reasonable law enforcement”.

Instead, I have focused on the issue of Netanyahu’s record of governance, rather than on his alleged personal misdeeds.

It is here that his political opponents should exercise greater caution and restraint.

For in their unbridled assaults on Netanyahu and on what Israel has allegedly become under his leadership, they are playing right into the hands of the country’s most vehement detractors. Indeed, it is difficult not to imagine them rubbing their hands in malicious glee, gloating over every caustic condemnation of Netanyahu by his domestic rivals.

After all, what more need they do to prove their case that Israel has become a fascist, racist state, run by xenophobic religious zealots, nudging it ever closer to totalitarian theocracy, than to quote the largely baseless barbs, hurled at him by those struggling to dislodge him from power?

Indeed, by their own hand, they are laying the foundation for incalculable—and potentially irreversible – damage to Israel, damage which, even if they manage to remove and replace Netanyahu, they themselves will not be able to repair.

We are entering days of crisis - Israeli democracy isn't in danger, it's functioning, but it doesn't offer even a shred of comfort, because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz were supposed to show flexibility, which they haven't.

Netanyahu's responsibility is a little greater because he has already led us to unnecessary elections in order to save himself.

His gamble didn't pay off and now he might put us through another one of his gambles. We are all held hostage.

President Reuven Rivlin had offered compromise: A government headed by both Netanyahu and Gantz.

The experienced Rivlin should have known that the moment Netanyahu created a 55-seat bloc and insisted on negotiating on the bloc's behalf and not only on behalf of his Likud party – these are no longer negotiations. It was just a way to kill time.

After all, unity should create a compromise between the parties and Netanyahu's insistence on sticking with the right-wing bloc was meant to thwart any chance of a compromise.

Negotiating on behalf of the bloc and not Likud doesn't only show Netanyahu's clear attempt to put a spoke in Gantz's wheel, it's also a statement of principles - that which hath been is that which shall be.

What is Blue and White's answer? What does Gantz have to say about Israel's must crucial issues? We have no clue.

The first official coalition talks between Likud and Blue and White started and ended on the wrong foot on Friday, but in a sign of hope, teams representing the two parties did meet for more than four hours at Jerusalem's Orient Hotel.

The meeting ended with the two parties issuing statements summarizing the meeting in which they both complained that the other party did not want to talk about what really mattered and focused instead on issues that are irrelevant.

The Likud complained that Blue and White did not respond to the Likud's request that the basis for the talks be a compromise idea presented by President Reuven Rivlin as a basis for negotiations. Rivlin's idea is to pass a law enabling a prime minister to suspend himself indefinitely to deal with an indictment and a bolstered vice prime minister to run the country until the prime minister is cleared of charges.

A Blue and White spokeswoman said the Likud liked Rivlin's plan because it would let Netanyahu start off as prime minister, but refused to discuss key policy issues. She also complained the the Likud continued to insist on negotiating as a bloc.

"Blue and White will continue to insist that the essence and the content be the thrust of the negotiations to form a government," the spokeswoman said. "But the Likud just cared about Netanyahu remaining prime minister as the basis for the discussion."

The September 18th edition of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme included six different items (three in news bulletins) relating to the previous day’s election in Israel. In the last of those items (from 2:35:17 here) presenter Mishal Husain spoke with the BBC’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen before going on (from 2:37:59) to interview Likud MK Sharren Haskel. However things took an interesting turn when the Israeli member of parliament raised the issue of the Palestinian Authority’s payments to terrorists.

In one of her later questions (from 2:40:36), Husain made the false claim that the Israeli prime minister said he “wanted to annex the West Bank”. Netanyahu actually spoke about applying Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Rift Valley and Israeli communities rather than to the entire area previously illegally occupied by Jordan.

Husain: “Now over the course of this election campaign Mr Netanyahu said that he wanted to annex the West Bank. Would that prevent an alliance – a coalition government – with Blue & White?”

Haskel: “I don’t think that’s what’s going to prevent it because even Blue & White have spoken about the Jordan Valley and the north of the Dead Sea, which was the declaration of Prime Minister Netanyahu. There is a consensus among most Israeli[s] about these area[s] because it is a very important security and defence strip for the State of Israel and it is also a very historical area that goes back thousands of years…”

Husain [interrupts]: “And occupied territory under international law.”

Unsurprisingly, Husain did not bother to clarify which country’s sovereign territory she thinks that area was before it was ‘occupied

Palestinians are among the largest recipients of donor assistance per capita in the world today. Yet despite decades of work and billions of dollars, euros, shekels, and dinars donated, life continues to get worse in Gaza and in what some call the West Bank and others call Judea and Samaria.

Hamas has driven Gaza to a state of utter desperation. With unemployment at nearly 50%, Hamas' decade-long experiment in governance is an utter failure. The West Bank has fared better, but efforts there are frustrated by the Palestinian Authority's self-made budget crisis, its continued diversion of funding to reward terrorists, and an anti-normalization movement that delegitimizes Palestinians who do business with Israel.

Donor countries must ask themselves why they should keep struggling to raise money when everyone can plainly see the Hamas regime and the Palestinian Authority are squandering the opportunities that donor money provides. It is time to demand more of the Palestinian leaders. The many Palestinians I meet want the opportunities we are seeking for them, none of which will be accomplished through maintaining the status quo of donations.

The Middle East today is not the Middle East of 2000. In 2000, Iran was still weakened by its war with Iraq, ISIS did not even exist, the Iranians had not provided over 100,000 rockets to Hizbullah, Hamas was controlled in Gaza and not the ruling party there, and Turkey was an ally of Israel, not a partner of the Muslim Brotherhood and a place of refuge for Hamas figures.

As a result, the security arrangements in any contemporary peace agreement would have to be different. The fear that a Palestinian state might become a failed state or dominated by Islamists is real.

At the same time, the mood of Palestinians is so negative that there is little or no inclination to look for possible compromises and creative solutions.

Having socialized their publics for so long to believe they should not have to make concessions, Palestinian leaders now fear any concession would produce a backlash.

With succession to Mahmoud Abbas looming in the West Bank, all those around him are positioning themselves for the future - and they know that purity, not accommodation, is the political coin of the realm.

Formal agreements with Israel now are seen as surrender and are not in the cards.

Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Thursday where he took the opportunity to slam critics of Israel, declaring that the Jewish people would not be "separated from their homeland," and warned of the growing threat posed by Tehran and its proxies.

Katz, who was announced as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's replacement after Israel's general election on Sept. 17 ended in deadlock, began his speech by thanking US President Donald Trump for his support of Israel before launching into a condemnation of Israel's greatest antagonists in the region.

Addressing the Palestinians, Katz urged leaders in Ramallah "to stop incitement … and financing terrorism."

He also called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to recognize "the right of the Jewish people to its own state" and "to come back to direct negotiations without any pre-conditions."

The foreign minister also urged Hamas, the ruling authority in the Gaza Strip, to release "two Israeli citizens, Avraham Mengistu and Hisham Al-Sayed, and the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul," from their custody.

In addition, Katz issued a condemnation of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who earlier in the UNGA accused Israel of stealing Palestinian land while questioning the country's sovereign borders.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz lashed out against Iran during an address at the United Nations Thursday, calling the Islamic Republic the world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism and urging the world to join America’s sanctions against the regime.

Katz teased the leadership in Tehran by citing a well-known Iranian adage, in Persian, that implies the regime’s opponents will have the last laugh.

In a relatively brief speech to the UN General Assembly, Katz also called on the Palestinians to resume direct negotiations with Israel, but refrained from endorsing a two-state solution to the conflict or even raising the prospect of a peace agreement with Ramallah. By contrast, he repeatedly stressed Israel’s desire to normalize relations with Arab states in the Gulf.

“The main problem threatening stability and security in the Middle East is Iran, which threatens to destroy Israel, and works against the regimes of many countries in the region,” he said.

Katz, who is also intelligence minister, said a recent attack on Saudi oil facilities was carried out with Iranian missiles with the clear goal of destabilizing world oil supplies.

“This terror attack against Saudi Arabia was done on the direct orders of Iranian [Supreme] Leader Ali Khamenei,” Katz claimed. “Iran is the biggest terror state, and the biggest sponsor of terror in the world.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz reached out to representatives of the Arab Gulf states in an address to the United Nations General Assembly Thursday, saying they all face a common threat from Iran.

Katz said that Iran is the main threat to stability and security in the Middle East and accused Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khameni of ordering a recent attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities. Saudi Arabia is one of seven Arab states that border the Persian Gulf. The others are Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Iran has denied responsibility for the attacks, for which Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility. He also called on the international community to support Trump's "maximum pressure policy" against Iran.

"They promote terror in the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, and all over the world," Katz of the Tehran regime. "And the world must stop them."

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Thursday evening called out Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and called on the United Nations to designate Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as terrorist groups.

“The other day I heard Erdoğan attack Israel, and I want to say to him: You that brutally oppress the Turkish people, slaughter the Kurdish minority and support the terror organization Hamas,” said Katz in his speech at the annual UN General Assembly. “You are the last one that can lecture Israel. You are not the sultan, and Turkey is not the Ottoman Empire. Shame on you.”

In his UNGA speech on Tuesday, Erdoğan compared Jews in Europe during World War II to the situation in the Gaza Strip.

“The immediate establishment of an independent Palestinian state with homogeneous territories, on the basis of the 1967 borders with east[ern] Jerusalem as its capital, is the only solution,” he said.

On Thursday, September 26, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz addressed the United Nations General Assembly at the 74th Session in New York.
FM Katz stressed the need for the international community to put an end to Iran's global terrorism and discussed Israel's ongoing and growing cooperation with its Arab neighbors.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned Thursday he would cancel all diplomatic agreements with Israel if the next Israeli government carries out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign promise to apply Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank.

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, Abbas slammed Netanyahu for “arrogantly” promising the annexation of the Jordan Valley and Israel’s “colonial settlements,” and warned a religious war could break out over Israel’s policies in Jerusalem.

“We reject entirely and completely this illegal plan. Our response, if any Israeli government is to proceed with this plan, all signed agreements with the government of the occupation and any obligations therein will be terminated.”

Abbas called on the international community to bring an end to “Israeli aggression and arrogance” and enforce UN resolutions related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The PA leader also used his platform at the world’s most prominent diplomatic gathering to slam the Trump administration’s policies toward the Palestinians, saying the US could not act as a peace broker in the region.

A senior official in Polish President Andrzej Duda's office dismissed a Jewish Insider report claiming that the Polish leader had accused Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz of causing an uptick in anti-Semitic attacks in Poland.

The official said the report was "fake news" and the accusation was never made.

According to Jewish Insider, during a meeting with Jewish leaders in New York this week, Duda reportedly said that Katz caused the increase in incidents in his country because the Israeli chief diplomat accused Poles of "suckling their anti-Semitism with their mother's milk," causing a diplomatic war of words between the two countries.

According to the report, Duda said Katz’s comments, which were a reiteration of a famous accusation uttered by the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, "were a humiliation and were the reason for an increase in antisemitic attacks against Jews in Poland."

Later, the office issued an official statement. The Spokesperson of President Andrzej Duda, Błażej Spychalski, said: "The quote is not only inaccurate. It is plainly not true. President Duda never said that 'Israel is responsible for recent anti-Semitic attacks in Poland.' All participants of the said meeting can corroborate this. Jewish Insider made this up."

The president told our group the Polish people were incredibly offended by Katz’s remark. He said many Poles had told him he should not visit Israel until Katz apologizes. Duda seemed disappointed not only that Katz has not apologized but also that not enough people have spoken out against his remarks.

I jumped in again and pointed out that many people in the room had spoken out against Katz’s comments. I said at the time that his remarks were unacceptable and unfortunate. I told President Duda that the Foreign Minister’s statement in which he collectively blamed all Poles as being antisemitic was, obviously, not just factually wrong but an affront to Jewish values. Judaism judges each person by their individual actions. We always reject collective guilt.

Going back to last February, I told the Jerusalem Post at the time that Katz’s comments were particularly misguided coming at a time when the Polish government had made the incredibly courageous decision to host a conference in Warsaw – which I attended – holding Iran accountable for their aggression against Israel. The conference, which was attended by Vice President Pence, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, and the foreign ministers of many Arab states was unprecedented. Why would Katz have chosen to attack Poland – especially with words that deeply contravene Jewish values – at that precise moment? It was mind-boggling. I was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as saying that Prime Minister Morawiecki had just “showed great moral courage in convening an international conference with the United States to counter Iranian aggression and genocidal threats to Israel and the Jewish people.”

The conversation continued with the other Jewish leaders and then Edward Mosberg stood up to speak. Mosberg is a well-known holocaust survivor and someone who commands respect as an eloquent witness to the decimation of our people. A man in his 90s, a successful real estate developer in New Jersey, and a survivor of multiple camps and philanthropist, he speaks every year at March of the Living and his fire-and-brimstone speeches rattle the crowd with the depth of the horrors of what the holocaust represents and what he experienced.

He was born in Poland and is close to the Polish government. He was wearing the Order of Merit medal they had given him. He started to speak and mentioned that Katz’s comments had created antisemitism in Poland.

The more he said and the insinuation that Jews are responsible for any Polish antisemitism, the more uncomfortable I began to feel.

Muhammad, the younger brother of notoriously nasty teen Ahed Tamimi, has been photographed holding a gun, which officially starts the countdown to his arrest on terrorism charges, if not worse.

The picture, uncovered on Instagram by rightwing nonprofit ‘Ad Kan’ investigators, shows terrorist Ahed Tamimi’s brother holding a Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle. The person who initially posted the photo on social media was Mom, Neriman Tamimi.

What a mishpucha.

The brother, Muhammad Tamimi, was part of the infamous August 2015 video which led to Ahed Tamimi’s arrest for assaulting two IDF soldiers who stood quietly and took the abuse. In fact, it was Muhammad the soldiers were arresting on suspicion of throwing stones at them when the ululating started. The video, which went viral, begins with the soldiers attempting to arrest Muhammad, when a large group of crazed Arab women attacks one of the soldiers in what emerges in a a life-threatening situation.

Our nation turned its lonely eyes to you, IDF soldiers driven crazy by wicked rules of engagement, and all we wanted to see was a short sub-machine gun burst – even if just in the air. Instead we saw our beautiful boys being slapped around by a sinister kennel of repulsive women.

The photograph published by ‘Ad Kan’ demonstrates yet another level of the Tamimi family’s support for terrorism, as they are grooming of their 12-year-old to a life mired in weapons and murder.

Hamas arrests Palestinian journalist Hani al-Agha. https://t.co/JuhH7BDgqH

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) September 27, 2019

The motto of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) states: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our constitution. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." If "jihad is our way" and "the Quran is our constitution," it would irrational not to postulate that the MB and its related groups in the U.S. endorse violence to change the U.S. constitution and replace it with the Quran.

We cannot say at this stage that Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been brought fully into modernity. We can say, however, that we have two leaders who want to -- or are actually are -- taking their Muslim majority countries onto this path. This is a nightmare for the MB, whose goal is to return the Muslim world to the time of Islamic Caliphate. Designating the MB as a terrorist group can impede their ability to resist the noble attempts of these leaders.

"The importance of identifying the Muslim brotherhood as a terrorist organization could not be more clear to our national security and counterterrorism strategy.... Designate the Muslim Brotherhood (MP) a foreign terrorist organization beginning in Egypt and then on a country by country basis. Libya, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq and Yemen branches of the MB are the most obvious follow-ons.... Stop engaging Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups in government and media and NGO's and recognize their Islamist terror sympathies, misogyny, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and anti-American ideological underpinnings. We must recognize that they are not the only voice for American Muslims or any community of Muslims."— Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives, July 11, 2018.

On Friday, September 20, 2019, citizens took to the streets in several Egyptian cities to demand the ouster of President 'Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sisi. Apparently, the immediate cause of the sudden outbreak of protests was the allegations and calls made by Mohamed 'Ali, an Egyptian actor and contractor who worked with the Egyptian regime, and in particular with the Egyptian military, in the last 15 years. After leaving Egypt a month ago, 'Ali began posting videos on social media in which he made bold corruption claims against top officials in Egypt's military. He also harshly criticized the management of mega-projects initiated by Al-Sisi, including the widening of the Suez canal and the construction of new presidential palaces, stating that they were wasteful, especially considering the desperate poverty of many Egyptians.[1]

'Ali's social media campaign was extensively promoted by Qatar's Al-Jazeera network and other Qatari media outlets, which lent 'Ali a platform as part of the hostility that has prevailed between Qatar and Egypt in the last few years and Qatar's support of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, which is outlawed in Egypt.[2]

Egypt's pro-regime media initially tried to disregard Mohamed 'Ali and spoke in general terms against maligning the army, without mentioning his name. However, after 'Ali's videos went viral, Al-Sisi decided to respond and answer his claims directly. In a youth conference he convened in Cairo on September 14, he called 'Ali's claims "falsehoods and lies" while declaring his own integrity and his loyalty to Egypt, and came to the defense of the army. On the construction of presidential palaces he said that he builds them for Egypt, not for himself, and that he is proud of this.[3]

'Ali, for his part, continued to post videos against Al-Sisi and called on Egyptians to take to the streets on Friday, September 20, 2019, and hold non-violent protests for an hour to demand Al-Sisi's resignation.[4] The call was heeded by hundreds to thousands of Egyptians who dared to demonstrate against the regime, which in the last two years has escalated its measures against its critics and taken steps to control the media and limit freedom of speech in the country.[5] Protests were reported in several Egyptian provinces and in Cairo, including in Tahrir Square, the emblematic site of Egypt's Arab Spring protests, which had been empty of demonstrators for several years. Videos circulated on social media showed protesters chanting "Al-Sisi, leave!" and "Say without fear, Al-Sisi has to go." The security forces eventually dispersed the protests with tear gas and arrested dozens of them. On the next day, September 21, the protests continued but on a smaller scale.[6] Since the outbreak of the protests, the Egyptian regime has exacerbated its measures against its critics and opponents, and against human rights organizations, which report that over 1,000 have already been arrested.[7]

On September 14, 2019 the Sharia and Islamic Studies Faculty in the University of Qatar announced via Twitter that Dr. Ahmed Al-Raissouni, head of the International Union of Muslims Scholars (IUMS), has joined its teaching staff.[1] The website of the IUMS reported that Al-Raissouni will teach at the university for three to four months during the coming academic year. [2]

Al-Raissouni is known for promoting extremist, anti-Western and antisemitic discourse in his statements and writings and in communiques issued by the IUMS, which he has headed since November 2018. The IUMS, which is supported by Qatar and Turkey, [3] was founded in 2004 by Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradawi, who headed it until late last year. Considered to be a major ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaradawi resides in Qatar and has been supported and sponsored for decades by the Qatari regime. He and the IUMS under his directorship likewise promoted an extremist discourse, including rhetoric against Jews and Christians and encouragement of jihad and martyrdom.[4]

As stated, this extremism continues to be disseminated by Al-Raissouni and by the IUMS under his directorship. The following are examples from reports published by MEMRI in the recent months.

IUMS Under Al-Raissouni Supports Jihad In Palestine
In a statement it issued on June 23, 2019, the IUMS called on the Muslim nation and the Arab leaders to boycott the Peace to Prosperity workshop in Bahrain, which was held on June 25-26 to discuss the economic part of the U.S. administration's peace initiative known as "The Deal of the Century." The statement, signed by Al-Raissouni and by IUMS secretary-general Dr. 'Ali Al-Qaradaghi, blasted the Arab leaders for "rushing towards the deal" instead of rejecting it and for falling over each other in their haste to serve the enemies. It warned them that the current and future generations may curse them and that Allah may condemn them for this on the Day of Judgement. The statement also urged the Arab leaders, the entire Muslim nation and "all people of conscience in the world" to take part in restoring Palestine to its rightful owners, since this is a religious and human duty, and to support the jihad of the Palestinian people against the occupiers.[5]

“The Assad regime is responsible for innumerable atrocities, some of which rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Pompeo told a news conference in New York, where he has been attending the United Nations General Assembly.

“Today I am announcing that the United States has concluded that the Assad regime used chlorine as a chemical weapon on May 19,” Pompeo said.

The United States said in May it had received numerous reports that appeared consistent with chemical exposure after an attack by Syrian government forces in northwestern Syria, but it had made no definitive conclusion as to whether they used chemical weapons.

The Trump administration has twice bombed Syria over Assad’s suspected use of chemical weapons, in April 2017 and April 2018.

According to the Saudi Defense Ministry, 18 drones and seven cruise missiles were fired at Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities on Sept. 14.

Impeded by radar ranges as well as the speed and angle of the drones and missiles, Saudi air defenses did not engage the drones.

"If U.S.-supplied air defenses were not oriented to defend against an attack from Iran, that's incomprehensible. If they were, but they were not engaged, that's incompetent. If they simply weren't up to the task of preventing such precision attacks, that's concerning," said former U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro, a visiting fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies.

"And it would seem to validate Israeli concerns that even effective air and missile defense systems, as Israel has, could be overwhelmed by a sufficient quantity of precision-guidance missiles."

IDF Brig.-Gen. Pini Yungman, former air defense commander with the Israel Air Force, noted, "Drones, even drone swarms, are not a strategic threat, even if you take dozens to attack. They carry a very low weight of bomb or ammunition."

Uzi Rubin, former director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, doesn't think what happened in Saudi Arabia could happen in Israel. "We have a smaller area, and that has an advantage in many respects because it is an advantage in controlling our airspace."

"When it comes to guarding, the issue is things that can sneak in near the ground," Rubin explained.

He said shooting down drone swarms can be accomplished with anti-aircraft guns, noting that Iraq downed several Tomahawk cruise missiles in 1991 after discovering their flight path.

Iranian President Rouhani's UN address provided a fresh insight into how Tehran really views the world. Rather than acknowledging the destabilizing influence Iran's confrontational approach has on the Middle East, as well as the wider world, Rouhani sought to portray Iran as the victim, the innocent target of American aggression that aimed to destroy the country. The biggest challenge to regional security, he contended, was not Iran but the U.S. and its allies.

Rouhani declared that the conflict in Yemen could only be resolved when Saudi Arabia terminated its "aggression" in the country, a somewhat ludicrous claim given that it was Iran's support for the Houthi rebels in their bid to remove the country's democratically elected government that provoked the conflict in the first place.

Rouhani said the U.S. was engaged in "merciless economic terrorism" against his country, and defended his support for Hizbullah and Hamas, widely regarded as terrorist organizations. He defended the continued financial support Tehran gives to these groups by arguing that they were freedom fighters, not terrorists.

Rouhani's comments might appear delusional but they underline the enormity of the challenge Western powers and their allies face in trying to curb further acts of Iranian-sponsored aggression.

US president Donald Trump denied on Friday that the US has agreed to lift sanctions in exchange for opening negotiations on a new agreement between the sides.

"Iran wanted me to lift the sanctions imposed on them in order to meet. I said, of course, NO!" The president tweeted.

He responded to the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, who claimed earlier today that European leaders told him that the US "would lift all sanctions" to enter negotiations with Iran.

“Americans had propagandised about being ready for negotiation, and that it is Iran who is stubborn," Rouhani said, according to his official website. "They had sent messages to almost all European and no-European leaders that they wanted one-to-one negotiations between the two Presidents, but we had rejected it, saying that negotiations had to be done in the framework of P5+1, and they accepted.”

He added that three European leaders, Chancellor of Germany, Prime Minister of Britain, and President of France, "all insisted for the meeting to be held, saying that the US would lift all sanctions."

“But the problem here is that under sanctions and maximum pressure," he continued, "even if we want to negotiate with the Americans within the framework of P5+1, nobody can predict about the end and upshot of the negotiation”.

A British-flagged oil tanker held by Iran since July was released Friday and was heading toward the United Arab Emirates, the company that owns the vessel said.

Iran’s marine and port authority said the Stena Impero left Iran Friday morning. Hours earlier, the tanker had begun transmitting its location for the first time in weeks just outside the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, where it had been held since its seizure.

Erik Hanell, President and CEO of Swedish-based Stena Bulk, the ship’s owner, said the vessel and its crew had been released, and the ship would be transiting through Dubai for the crew to disembark and receive medical checks.

“The families of crew members have been informed and the company is currently making arrangements for the repatriation of its valued seafarers at the earliest possible opportunity,” Hanell said in a statement.

An award winning dissident outspoken Iranian women's rights activists, Masih Alinejad, reported that the Islamic Republic of Ministry of Intelligence arrested her brother on Wednesday.

Alinejad currently works as a journalist, author, activist, correspondent for VOA Persian Service and contributor to other Persian outlets, according to Radio Farda.

"We have no information about my brother's whereabouts. My mother and the family members of my brother's wife are deeply worried," Alinejad said Wednesday, adding that, "They have been threatened to remain silent, or else."

More notably, Alinejad is the founder of the anti-hijab protests known as "White Wednesday" and "My Stealthy Freedom."

White Wednesdays, is a popular campaign which urges women to share pictures and videos of themselves on social media every Wednesday, wearing white headscarves or white pieces of clothing in protest of compulsory veiling; My Stealthy Freedom, encourages women from Iran to post online pictures of themselves without headscarves [to show opposition to] forced veiling.

Intelligence forces pillaged their family home, confiscated all of her brother's electronic devices, blindfolded him and then took him off to prison, according to Alinejad.

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) are weighing plans to send a delegation to Tehran October 10, to ensure that women will be admitted and able to attend the World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Cambodia.

Youri Raffi Djorkaeff, a former French national team member and part of the squad who won the 1998 World Cup in France, was recently elected CEO of the FIFA Foundation and told AFP Thursday that he plans to be a part of the delegation hading to the Islamic Republic in October.

"Established in March 2018, the FIFA Foundation was created as an independent entity with the objectives to help promote positive social change around the world and raise support for the recovery and reconstruction of damaged or destroyed sports infrastructure worldwide," according to the FIFA website - one of their founding goals include making soccer more accessible to women in the Middle East, especially in countries such as Iran who ban women from entering stadiums.

"Iran is a hot topic and I am organizing myself to be there on October 10," Djorkaeff said, adding that the presence of the delegation is "to show that FIFA intervened [against the situation in Iran] with conviction."

FIFA has been "assured" by Iranian authorities that women will be able to attend the October World Cup qualifier in Tehran, Gianni Infantino, president of the body said last week.

A 29-year-old female Iranian fan died earlier this month, after setting herself on fire to protest against her arrest for attending a match.

I am exercising my right to free speech. Why is it that I can’t say something against the Jews, when a lot of people say nasty things about me, about Malaysia? I didn’t protest, I didn’t demonstrate.

We have to be willing to listen to views which are not in our favor because of free speech. Free speech is about free speech. When you say, ‘no, you cannot say this, you cannot be anti-Semitic,’ then there is no more free speech.

TV presenter and campaigner against antisemitism Rachel Riley, spoke at Algemeiner’s J100 gala, where she received the US paper’s illustrious ‘Warrior for Truth’ award.

The Countdown host addressed the New York event on Thursday, picking up the prestigious gong alongside British actor Sir Ben Kingsley.

Billed as the Jewish answer to the TIME 100 gala, past honourees and participants have included Elie Wiesel, Michael Gove, Donald Trump, and Bernard-Henri Levy.

Riley was honoured for taking on antisemites in wake of the Labour antisemitism row, using her public profile to call out hate. She has recently helped set up a campaign against abuse online, called ‘Don’t Fed The Trolls’, and the ‘Stop Funding Fake News’ initiative, against media organisations which deny or downplay antisemitism.

Read Rachel’s full address to the J100 Gala here:
Rachel Riley (Credit: Yakir Zur)

It’s probably the biggest honour of my life to be here with you today. I am here because of something that started for me, a year ago. Back then, I was just a maths geek, a Manchester United fan and daytime TV gameshow host.

A secular, atheist Jew.

Social media was a great way to connect with people. It helped me promote the things I cared about: education, getting more girls into STEM subjects, and frequently, my favourite football team. But watching the news one day, I saw something really peculiar.

British Jews protesting in Parliament Square against the growing rise in antisemitism.

At first I thought this can’t be real.

Antisemitism wasn’t a “thing” anymore, was it?

Just a relic of the past?

The cumulative effect of this concerted effort has been both counter-factual and unfortunate. Already in 2006, the World Heritage Site Committee of the United Nations Economic, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) passed a resolution referring to the Temple Mount -- the holiest site in Judaism -- solely by its Arabic, Islamic name, al-Haram al-Sharif.

Nonetheless, extensive documentation from antiquity and countless archaeological finds continue to confirm both Judaism's ties to Jerusalem and the Jewish people's millennia-old presence in the land of Israel.

Foremost among the findings that provide proof of ancient writings about the Jews and Jerusalem -- apart from the Bible, much of which is magnificently displayed by the new excavation of the City of David – are the written histories by Josephus Flavius (37-100 AD), The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, and the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. There are also extraordinary excavations by the Israeli archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazor, who in 2012 unearthed a Solomon-era wall and other related sites. This followed and preceded many other discoveries, such as a wide street filled remnants of shops and tunnels, as noted in the New Testament, that runs near the Western Wall.

Where Palestinian propaganda is concerned, however, none of the above appears to matter. During the very week in early September that the City of David Foundation revealed the ancient Hebrew seal found near the Western Wall, Dr. Ghassan Weshah, the head of the History and Archaeology Department at the Islamic University of Gaza, told the Gaza news service Felesteen:
"One of the biggest lies of the Zionists with regard to the Al-Aqsa Mosque is that it was built on the ruins of the Temple, which was destroyed on August 21, 586 BCE. This is a false statement. There is no other building under the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

If statements such as Weshah's were not taken seriously by members of the international community, they would be dismissed as the propaganda tools they are by the reams of irrefutable scientific evidence to the contrary. It is thus incumbent on all honest academics to be vigilant and determined about setting the record straight.

The Times doesn’t explain to readers what this “Project on Middle East Democracy” is or who funds it. The organization’s website says the group was formally established in 2006. Its most recent readily-available tax return, filed in 2017, reports 13 employees and total revenue of $1,642,238.

Online records show the group received $845,000 from 2012 to 2019 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a charity that has been well documented by NGO Monitor, Bloomberg News and The Algemeiner itself as funding an array of efforts both to boycott Israel and to promote a nuclear deal that provided Iran with sanctions relief over the objections of Israel’s government.

For the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Project on Middle East Democracy, getting quoted in the New York Times article is a win. It’s not so clear, though, that it’s a win for Times readers to hear from an “analyst” funded by boycott-Israel-but-trade-with-Iran advocacy Rockefeller money, especially when that funding is not disclosed. Whenever there’s a pro-Israel or anti-Iran policy move in Washington, the Times is quick to describe it as transactional, a “return on investment” for pro-Israel campaign contributors. Yet on the anti-Israel or pro-Iran front, the Times is remarkably incurious about the money trail. As usual with the Times writing about Israel, it’s a double standard.

An argument’s ultimate test, in the end, is less the source of its funding than its logical strength. By that measure, the claim by the Times-quoted Miller that “penalties imposed by the Trump administration are what set Tehran on its current course of confrontation with the United States” is laughable. As a different Times news article conceded this week, “Since its inception, the Islamic Republic has made rejecting the United States a subject of street performance, from the chants of ‘Death to America’ at Friday prayers to the branding of the country as the ‘Great Satan.’” That regime’s “inception,” in 1979, long predated the Trump administration.

As Britain’s Brexit agony erupted this week into a full-blown constitutional crisis with a ruling against the prime minister by the Supreme Court, the Labour Party was also tearing itself apart over Brexit at its annual conference. This was small comfort to British Jews.

For the Brexit chaos, in which parliament has set itself against the people while the judiciary has now further undermined Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s attempt to deliver Brexit by its Oct. 31 deadline, has increased the possibility of Labour — under its far-left and antisemitism-enabling leader Jeremy Corbyn — coming to power.

And at the conference, any faint hope that the party might start to address the Jew-hatred that has been convulsing it now for more than two years was brutally crushed in what turned into an ugly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate-fest.

Vile antisemitic and unhinged anti-Israel material was on widespread display. One pamphlet compared Israel to the Nazis. Flyers were distributed by a group calling itself “Labour Against Zionist Islamophobic Racism,” accusing the Jewish Labour Movement of defending the “racist apartheid State of Israel.”

The conference also passed a number of anti-Israel policies. Amidst shouts of “Free Palestine” and a sea of Palestinian flags, delegates overwhelmingly backed a boycott of Israeli settlement goods for the first time and pledged to reject trade agreements with Israel that “fail to recognize the rights of the Palestinians.”

Some of the Israel-bashing was almost certainly an act of defiance against the claim that the party has become institutionally antisemitic. For despite overwhelming evidence of rampant bigotry against Israel and the Jewish people, many from Corbyn down refuse to accept that this is indeed a mutation of the oldest hatred.

They use anti-Zionist Jewish members as human shields to enable them to claim that they have no bad feelings towards Jews.

Blue and White No. 2 Yair Lapid slammed the British Labour Party on Twitter on Friday morning for their support of Palestinian right of return demands.

"The British Labour Party's decision to support Palestinian right of return is a new low in antisemitism, terror support and BDS mobilization," he tweeted. "Mr. [Jeremy] Corbyn is an old-fashioned antisemite who has downgraded his party to one of Jew-hatred."

Despite having traditionally been the home of British Jewry, the British Labour Party under the leadership of Corbyn has faced numerous accusations of antisemitism in recent years. Several Jewish MPs have left the party due to the rife climate of antisemitism, and the BBC aired a detailed expose on the party titled "Is Labour anti-Semitic?"

Corbyn has also come under fire from personal scandals, having infamously said he considered Hezbollah and Hamas to be his friends and having signed a document accusing Israel of waging a campaign of genocide against the Palestinians.

Due to Blue and White having won the most amount of seats in the latest round of elections and with an existing rotation agreement in place between Lapid and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, it is likely that Lapid's condemnation will carry more weight in the coming months.

With the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, approaching, it is a season for reflection. We at Campaign Against Antisemitism are also now marking our five years of existence and how far we have come.

We say ‘marking’ because our anniversary is not a moment of celebration: we would prefer that our work were not necessary. Neither, however, is it entirely an occasion for lamentation, as we take pride in the community of dedicated volunteers that we have created (well over one thousand strong), the individuals whom we have helped or witnessed showing social, political or legal courage, and the accomplishments we have achieved.

These accomplishments include successfully lobbying the British Government to become the first in the world to adopt the International Definition of Antisemitism (the IHRA Definition), which was followed by many more institutions in the UK and abroad.

They also include Campaign Against Antisemitism’s formal referral and detailed legal representations to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (ECHR), which led to the ECHR’s full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party, which was launched on 28th May 2019 and in which CAA is the complainant. The Labour Party has thereby joined the British National Party as the only political parties to be the subjects of such an investigation.

We have also been at the forefront of highlighting antisemitism within the Labour Party and post-Holocaust antisemitism on the political left. We were the first to speak out about Jeremy Corbyn’s past, clearly name him as an antisemite and describe the Labour Party under his leadership as institutionally antisemitic.

Meanwhile, following a gruelling effort over several years by Campaign Against Antisemitism and our allies within and without the Jewish community, Hizballah was completely proscribed in the UK. Hizballah supporters are no longer able to intimidate British Jews with relative impunity as they have done for years. This has formed part of our campaign against Islamist antisemitism.

When Labour last came to Brighton for its annual conference, I heard statements recorded at a fringe event suggesting it was fine to question whether the Holocaust had ever happened. As leader of the city's council, I wrote a letter saying Labour would not be welcome back in Brighton if it failed to sort out its issues with anti-Semitism. Two years on, I have been forced out of the party I loved.

The backlash against my message took me by surprise. I had been a member of the party for a quarter of a century. Jeremy Corbyn's vow to root out racism made me feel I was helping. Yet few of my fellow Labour members seemed to agree. For all my good intentions in speaking up for Jewish people who were afraid, months of emails, motions and unpleasant messages followed. Many of these messages came from the local party. They depicted councillors - including me and one whose husband is Jewish - as dancing rabbis and called for people to march on the local synagogue. Finally, a motion calling for me to resign passed by 40 votes to 2.

Since Labour's 2017 conference, hundreds of examples of awful anti-Semitism have emerged. Some of those disciplined have been quietly readmitted. Those like me who have spoken out on anti-Semitism, however, have been pushed to the point of resignation or deselected. Perhaps the most damning indictment came when Labour Friends of Israel pulled out of this year's conference, saying their staff could no longer be subjected to the anti-Semitic abuse faced in previous years.

It is clear that for some Labour members, the perceived role of Jewish people in the global economy and the actions of the Netanyahu government are things that every Jewish person should be held accountable for. Make no mistake: that is racism. You don't get to pick and choose the racism you stand up against; and being a member of a political party gives you a greater responsibility to challenge it, not a free pass to stay silent.

(The writer was Labour leader of the Brighton and Hove City Council from 2015 to 2018. He resigned from the party in February.)

It is being reported that the Scottish National Party (SNP) “has come round to the idea that Jeremy Corbyn may shortly have to become temporary caretaker prime minister.”

As the second largest opposition party in Parliament, the SNP yields considerable influence in determining who, if anyone, may succeed the sitting Prime Minister in the event of his resignation or a successful vote of no confidence.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has always been clear that Mr Corbyn’s record over the course of his political career and as leader of the Labour Party renders him entirely unfit to hold public office, and we, along with 85% of the Jewish community, have reached the conclusion that he is an antisemite. Under his leadership, the Labour Party has become institutionally antisemitic and is now under investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, at the behest of Campaign Against Antisemitism. A Corbyn-led Government, however temporary, poses an existential threat to British Jewry.

Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, released the following statement: “With Jews already fearing for their future in Britain, every decent person should be horrified by reports that the SNP is preparing to install a racist as Prime Minister. Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite under whose leadership the Labour Party has become institutionally antisemitic. There is no situation of national crisis that can only be resolved by an anti-Jewish bigot. SNP MPs have spent considerable time this week complaining about divisive language but when it comes down to it they are abject hypocrites if they are content to betray British Jews and install an antisemitic extremist as Prime Minister in order to meet their political objectives.”

In its latest effort to mitigate accusations of anti-Semitism, the Women’s March has named Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Bin Mohamad, who has called Jews hook-nosed and said that he is proud to be called anti-Semitic, as its new board chairman.

The Malaysian prime minister replaced Samia Assed, who was revealed to have posted anti-Semitic tweets. Assed herself had replaced Zahroo Billoo due to the latter’s anti-Semitism after Billoo replaced outspoken anti-Semite Linda Sarsour.

“We’ve been trying really hard to find leaders who are willing to speak out for women but don’t think Jews are responsible for the slave trade or use Christian blood in Matzah,” one Women’s March organizer explained. “We didn’t do any vetting, but we think this Bin Mohamad guy might be the one.”

The optimism did not last long, however, as shortly after the appointment the prime minister openly defended his anti-Semitism.

“Why is it that I can’t say something against the Jews, when a lot of people say nasty things about me?” he asked a stunned group of reporters during a press event announcing his appointment.

Arab Israeli politician Ayman Odeh, leader of the Arab bloc in the Knesset, announced that he would recommend Gen. Benny Gantz as prime minister. With his announcement, Odeh just poked the BDS movement in the eye. The first rule of BDS is never talk to Zionists. There can be no conversation because co-existence is forbidden. To co-exist is to normalize.

Odeh doesn't seem to have any difficulties in demanding normalization. In this month's election, an overwhelming number of the country's Arab voters responded to his call for engagement, which was in essence a call for co-existence.

BDS organizers have claimed since the beginning that Israel is an illegitimate state and the problem of the Palestinians can only be solved by undoing Israel's founding in 1948 and establishing a single Arab-majority state from the river to the sea. To American supporters of BDS, Odeh's gambit should be a wake-up call. It should tell them that there's a profound disconnect between the BDS movement and those actually working to promote Palestinian rights. On a day-to-day basis, Palestinians want more normalization, not less.

The U.S. Treasury recently decided to level sanctions against the Lebanon-based Jammal Trust Bank for supporting Hezbollah’s illicit financial and banking activities. This led almost immediately to the bank’s collapse, showing just how much of an effect targeted sanctions can have.

This is a welcome development that may well deter others from working with terrorists or working with those who fund terrorists.

But unfortunately, one group seemingly in need of such a deterrence is part of our own government. The U.S. Agency for International Development, as late as last year, was still openly touting its work with Jammal Trust.

Indeed, in a series of Facebook posts in 2018, USAID Lebanon openly touted a $250,000 grant in “partnership” with Jammal Trust for their “The Livelihoods and Inclusive Finance Expansion” project, which was aimed at expanding microfinance to Lebanese entrepreneurs. Jammal Trust reciprocated the celebration, advertising the same program on their Facebook page (since removed, but still visible here).

It is true that until last month, Jamaal Trust was not a sanctioned entity. However, the problems with the bank are not new. Treasury’s press release announcing sanctions specifically mentions that the relationship between Hezbollah and Jamaal Trust went back to “at least the mid-2000s.” Wikileaks documents show that American diplomatic officials have been raising these concerns with Jammal Trust officials since at least 2007. And earlier this year, a major lawsuit was filed on behalf of victims of Hezbollah’s terrorism that named Jamaal Trust as a defendant.

In other words, this problem had been percolating well before USAID entered into its partnership with Jamaal Trust.

If this were the first time USAID had been funding groups closely linked to terrorism in regions dominated by terrorist organizations, it could be written off as a simple mistake. Unfortunately, it’s a recurring issue.

The Economy and Industry Ministry is working to promote the online purchase of products manufactured in Israel in November when shoppers take advantage of special deals on Thanksgiving, as well as online shopping holidays like Cyber Monday and China's Singles Day.

In light of the success of last year's effort, the ministry's Blue and White Headquarters will once again join forces with Google Israel to set up a dedicated manufacturers' complex for products to receive the "Made in Israel" label.

The Blue and White Headquarters, in cooperation with the Manufacturers Association of Israel and the Histadrut labor federation, is promoting collaboration with trade sites and digital platforms to encourage the public to buy blue and white.

The Blue and White complex will operate from Nov. 6-7, during which shoppers will be able to access the websites of Israeli manufacturers that bear the "Made in Israel" label and buy items at a discounted prices.

The dozens of manufacturers that took part in Google's ShoppingIL initiative last year saw on average an over 60% increase in earnings as a result of their participation in the initiative.

You hopefully know about the Canada case, whereby a Jew has taken upon himself to effectively halt the import of Psagot Wines and other products that are produced in Judea and Samaria.

I mentioned it here, with a solution. The issue has been referred back to legal and political consultations which has angered the Pals. Israellycool noted a problem with the Nadim Winery and it continues, as Daoud Kuttab has tweeted.

Read on, here:
‘PRODUCT OF PALESTINE WINE’ DELAYED IN ONTARIO OVER LABELLING

In a case of unexpected blowback, products from the Taybeh winery and Taybeh Brewing Co. in Ramallah are being withheld from shelves in Ontario, as officials work out whether they can be labelled as a “Product of Palestine.”

Taybeh products that have been delivered to Canada “are currently on hold due to uncertainty surrounding labelling of products from the Israeli-occupied West Bank,”...

...In an Aug. 29 post on its website, Palestine Just Trade said the Liquor Control Board of Ontario’s (LCBO) World Destination Program arranged to include five “Nadim” wines from Taybeh and five varieties of Taybeh beer earlier this year – all labeled “Product of Palestine.” The products were ready for release in early August, when notification came that they were put on hold.

“… the LCBO informed Palestine Just Trade that ‘due to the recent decision by the Federal Court regarding labeling requirements for wines from this region, we have placed these products on hold,’ ” the group stated...

That has been the way the Education Department and the federal government have treated instances of anti-Semitism up until 2017. For instance, the Obama administration ignored many anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses during its eight years in office and dismissed calls (from people like Marcus) for it to use the threat of loss of federal funding to force those responsible to act. It was only after DeVos and Marcus were appointed to their posts by Trump that the Education Department began to take an active interest in the way hatred of Jews has found a home on some campuses and especially within departments focused on the Middle East.

These departments, like the one operated by Duke and UNC, are free to go on teaching the history of the Middle East in a manner that treats the presence of Christians and Jews there as illegitimate or to promote BDS and other forms of anti-Semitism. They have a choice. If they don’t want federal criticism, all they have to do is to give up the money they get from the federal government or any other entity that seeks to uphold the standards of decency one would not think has to be imposed on such elite institutions. Indeed, there are plenty of Middle East governments, such as that of Qatar, whose Muslim Brotherhood-run foundation is happy to dispense money to American institutions while promoting a very different agenda than that of the administration.

But if they do so, they can’t pretend that they are responsible scholars or anything other than promoters of hate.

What Trump’s Education Department has done is neither Islamophobic nor an unconscionable interference in academia worthy of an authoritarian regime. It’s merely upholding the values and principles that liberal academics claim to support.

For this, it is denounced by Jewish publications and groups, like the Anti-Defamation League, that claim to defend the community from anti-Semitism and are now silent when they should be speaking up in defense of the administration. Whatever you may think of Trump or DeVos, the Jewish community should be standing with the administration on this issue. The failure to do so is nothing short of a disgrace.

This is a shame. @IfNotNow-ers REALLY could do with the repentance https://t.co/nyY9BBJS05

— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 27, 2019

Written over the course of 3 years, the book is entirely derived from conversations Shlomo had with Sarah as they drove around Jerusalem, and it covers the course of a friendship that started with Shlomo innocently trying to charge Sarah double the normal rate and graduated to Shlomo inviting Sarah to his niece’s wedding 40 minutes later. The Daily Freier bought a copy of the book, and it was almost as good as the advance copy of Sarah’s book that we stole from Crave Gourmet Street Food last year. So without further ado, here is our synopsis:

Chapter 1: It’s December. Where the Hell is her coat?
Chapter 2: We’re in a traffic jam & Sarah is writing her Fauda fan-fiction again.
Chapter 3: That’s a police checkpoint. Please put away your flask.
Chapter 4: I never actually said “Nu, Saralah?”
Chapter 5: Those cats are NOT getting in my cab.
Chapter 6: I don’t think she likes Bibi.
Chapter 7: The time she had me read her kid’s 6th Grade Essay about Tu B’Shvat and Feminism.
Chapter 8: What’s are edibles?
Chapter 9: No, I never asked myself whether Queen Esther was secretly bi-sexual.
Chapter 10: By all means, please tell me who makes the best hummus in Lod.

When asked about his next steps in the literary world, Shlomo told the Daily Freier that the book’s royalties mean he never has to work again. Also, last year in a fit of entrepreneurial genius, Shlomo introduced Sarah to his wife Sarit, who sells scarves.

UPDATE: Israeli literati woke up in shock this morning to allegations that Shlomo had plagiarized several chapters using a controversial algorithm to build counterfeit Sarah Tuttle-Singer stories that are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. An angry Shlomo addressed these accusations at a hastily held Press Conference, blaming them on “jealous” neighbors and his idiot cousin Dovi who moved to Miami in the 1990’s.

CAMERA generally avoids addressing fictional TV shows, but the latest Israel-focused HBO series, “Our Boys,” claims it is “based on the true events which led to the outbreak of war in Gaza” during the summer of 2014 and interweaves truth with fiction. It has become so mired in controversy that CAMERA has reviewed the complete 10-episode series and explains why there is controversy surrounding it.

Conclusion

What is emphasized?
In the last three episodes the murder is rehashed at least 9 times with multiple re-enactments, flashbacks, scenes of the prosecutor reading the detailed indictment to Mohammed Abu Khdeir’s father, then again of the father explaining it to the mother, scenes of those testifying at the trial, reading of the indictment and news reports of the indictment.

Exaggerated again and again is the extent of incitement, hatred, and support for the murderers in Israel and especially in the religious world.

Also emphasized repeatedly are Israeli strikes against Hamas terrorists.

What is ignored?
While Prime Minister Netanyahu and Naftali Frankel’s bereaved mother are shown condemning Abu Khdeir’s murder, the widespread condemnation in Israel from across the political and religious spectrum is completely ignored.

Also missing from the series is the institutionalized incitement against Israelis by the Hamas and PA leadership and the numerous deadly attacks by Palestinians against Israelis.

A series that exaggerates and inflates certain parts of the story while ignoring the other parts, and that misrepresents the details is one that strays far from the truth.

The problem is that the series purports to represent an honest and factual history of what happened. And its deviation from that fundamental is precisely the reason for all the criticism and controversy.

Sharp made no effort to remind listeners that the PLO agreed to Israel being in control of Area C when they signed the Oslo Accords or to clarify that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians live in Areas A and B which are under Palestinian Authority control. She continued with a description of four Israeli political parties as “Palestinian” and the uninformed suggestion that they are “in the government”.

Sharp: “What’s really interesting though…I want to bring that…because you also called it undemocratic; the Arab Palestinian parties did well though this time, didn’t they? Third largest party now in the Knesset, never seen before in the government. So there’s a bit of hope there.”

Elad: “So we’re talking about the 20% of the – or so – of the citizens of the State of Israel who are Arab and also of course there are also Jewish voters to this party. But between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea there are 14 million people or so – thirteen and a half, fourteen million people. And there is one government that controls the lives of all the people in this area and controls all the territory in this area and in this area there are 5 million Palestinians in the occupied territories – in the Gaza Strip, in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank – and they are not citizens. They live under Israel’s military occupation and they do not participate in the political process. They have no political rights.”

Sharp once again failed to challenge Elad’s blatant and materially misleading claims. Arab residents of East Jerusalem are of course entitled vote in Israeli general elections if they have chosen to take Israeli citizenship (and in municipal elections even if they have not) and Palestinians living under Palestinian Authority rule in parts of Judea & Samaria or under Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip (which, contrary to Elad’s claim, has not been under Israeli control for fourteen years) of course vote – when their rulers allow it – for the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Seeing as the BBC’s Jerusalem bureau decided to produce a feature article on the under-reported topic of violence against Palestinian women, one would have expected some factual information concerning the broader legal and social background and indeed the final section of the article included some fairly generalised discussion of those topics – and a rare reference to the nineteen-year Jordanian occupation of Judea & Samaria.

“Campaigners blame a culture of impunity towards male perpetrators, bolstered by a penal code dating from the 1960s in the period that Jordan occupied the West Bank.

Some of its provisions create a loophole used by Palestinian courts to pardon or issue lenient sentences to men who commit violence against women when they plead they acted out of family honour.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2011 amended the law with the aim of deterring the so-called “honour killings” excuse.

But a 2017 report by the United Nations said judges in most cases still resorted to articles 99 and 100 of the code, “whose application mitigates the penalty of killing, including if the victim comes from the same family of the perpetrator”.

It also said Palestinian women suffered “multiple sources of discrimination and violence” both in public and private.”

However, Bateman apparently could not resist including another gratuitous reference to Israel taken from that politicised report by UN rapporteur Dubravka Šimonovic.

“”They suffer the violence of the Israeli occupation, whether directly or indirectly, but they also suffer from a system of violence emanating from the tradition and culture, with embedded patriarchal social norms,” the report added.”

In other words, even when producing an extremely rare feature article on the very serious issue of discrimination and violence suffered by women in Palestinian society, the BBC’s Tom Bateman could not resist promoting irrelevant politicised references to Israel.

There will be some differences — and some constants — over the coming days as the New Light congregation observes Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, for the first time since three of its members were among 11 Jews killed by a gunman nearly a year ago at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

The man who last year blew New Light’s shofar, the ram’s horn trumpet traditionally sounded to welcome the High Holy Days, was among those killed. Richard Gottfried, 65, a dentist nearing retirement, was one of the congregation’s mainstays in reading the haftara, a biblical passage that follows the Torah reading.

In Gottfried’s place, the shofar will be blown this year by the congregation’s rabbi, Jonathan Perlman. And the venue for the services will not be the Tree of Life synagogue, the site of the massacre. All three congregations that shared space there have been worshipping at neighboring synagogues since the attack on Oct. 27, 2018.

However, Perlman’s wife, writer Beth Kissileff, said the congregation plans no changes in the substance of its services over the two-day holiday that starts Sunday evening.

“I feel conducting Rosh Hashana prayers as we have in the past is a form of spiritual resistance,” Kissileff said. “Part of our defiance of what the shooter was trying to do is to conduct our religious lives with as much normality as possible.”

A slight drop in the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin during the first half of this year is no excuse for complacency, the city’s antisemitism commissioner emphasized on Thursday following the publication of statistics for hate crimes targeting Jews in the German capital from January-June 2019.

“Antisemitism remains a serious problem that we cannot tolerate in Berlin,” Lorenz Korgel — the city’s commissioner for combating antisemitism — told local news outlet Berliner Morgenpost. “The number of antisemitic incidents remains at a high level. ”

Data assembled by RIAS Berlin, an antisemitism monitoring organization, showed that there were 404 reported antisemitic outrages during the first half of 2019 — an average of two per day. While the great majority of these incidents were confined to verbal insults and abuse, there were 13 instances of physical attacks and 20 instances of damage to Jewish communal property.

Those numbers represented a drop on the previous year, when 579 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the first half of 2018. However, according to the Taggeschau news website, the change was down in the main to a decline in the reporting of antisemitic incidents online. The level of real-world incidents remained worryingly high, the website said, highlighting that a total of 55 people had been directly targeted in public spaces around the city.

Italy is facing renewed backlash for allowing the continued sale of wine bottles that feature Adolf Hitler’s face and Nazi slogans on its labels.

The controversial wine bottles, produced by Italian winemaker Vina Lunardelli as part of a “Historical Series,” features Nazi slogans, and pictures of Hitler and notorious SS members, such as Heinrich Himmler.

Over the summer, members of the Simon Wiesenthal Center reported and photographed the bottles being sold in supermarkets from Venice in northern Italy to Puglia in the south.

Its director for international relations, Shimon Samuels, and the president of the European Coalition of Cities Against Racism, Benedetto Zacchiroli, in a joint letter to European Commission Coordinator on Combating Antisemitism, Katharina Von Schnurbein, said, “We urge Italy to take seriously the abuse of its image and wine industry, casting its current status as ‘the hatemongering wine-waiter of Europe.’”

A judge has refused to jail Shehroz Iqbal, who was convicted of posting antisemitic posters and has two known past antisemitism convictions.

Mr Iqbal pleaded guilty at Snaresbrook Crown Court on 20th September to displaying written material that is “threatening, abusive or insulting, intending thereby to stir up racial hatred”, contrary to section 19 of the Public Order Act, after sticking antisemitic posters on a Chabad-Lubavitch centre in East London.

Mr Iqbal, dressed in camouflage and wearing a hood, appended the posters to the building and an underpass on 17th March 2017. A member of the public witnessed the crime but police arrived too late. The police explained that they forensically examined the posters and Mr Iqbal was arrested the following March.

He was given a twelve-month sentence, suspended for two years, along with 30 days’ rehabilitation and 60 hours of unpaid work. He was also ordered to pay £100 for breaching a previous sentence.

However, Campaign Against Antisemitism notes that Mr Iqbal already received a suspended sentence in 2016 for making antisemitic death threats and again in 2018 when he pleaded guilty to sending a false message over a public electronic communication network to cause annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety, under section 127(2)(a) of the Communications Act 2003 after sending a threatening message to Stamford Hill Shomrim, the Jewish neighbourhood watch patrol.

West Ham United FC, the East London football club, has reportedly banned a supporter for life after video footage emerged apparently showing fans singing antisemitic chants in a game early in the football season.

The video appeared on social media and the club took action within days, noting in a statement that “we are disgusted by the contents of a video circulating on social media on Monday evening, filmed near the start of the 2018-19 season. We have taken immediate action to identify the offender and have subsequently handed our evidence to the Metropolitan Police. Additionally, the individual concerned will be banned for life from the London Stadium.”

Under section 3 of the Football (Offences) Act 1991 “It is an offence to engage or take part in chanting of an indecent or racialist nature at a designated football match”.

Campaign Against Antisemitism commends West Ham for its swift and decisive action and reminds all clubs of the need to remain vigilant toward displays of antisemitism at matches.

1) Artist Uses 100,000 Banned Books To Build A Full-Size Parthenon At Historic Nazi Book Burning Site. https://t.co/npqK9iFy3Lpic.twitter.com/JCRe0LsIqJ

— McKay Smith (@McKayMSmith) September 27, 2019

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the terrorist bombing of the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires.

The resolution honored the victims and reiterated the Senate’s “strongest condemnation” of the 1984 attack, which left 85 people dead and hundreds injured and remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history. It also expressed “serious concern about Iran’s influence networks in the Western Hemisphere.” Several Iranian nationals are suspects in the case.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland; Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Tim Kaine, D-Virginia; and Todd Young, R-Indiana.

“Today’s passage shows our continued commitment to finding justice for victims of terrorist attacks across the world,” said Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I look forward to working with my colleagues as we continue to support the government of Argentina in their investigation into the event. Our world has no place for anti-Semitic acts, not then, not now, and not ever.”

The resolution also recognized the efforts of Alberto Nisman, the Jewish prosecutor who investigated the bombing. Nisman was found dead hours before he was to testify about the efforts of Argentina’s president to cover up alleged Iranian involvement in the bombing.

The last thing most American Jews needed was another excuse to skip synagogue. But after the shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway within the last year, many members of the Jewish community are worried about going to services, since they think that doing so could place them in danger.

Part of that is understandable.

What happened at the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh and Chabad of Poway in Southern California was a frightening reminder of the way the virus of antisemitism continues to spread across the globe, even in the United States. And in a country like America, where mass shootings have become a shockingly regular feature of life, it’s hardly surprising that some of those mentally disturbed and/or Jew-hating white supremacists that have been guilty of these crimes would seek to target Jewish institutions. The threat of violence is real, not imaginary, and it would be foolish to ignore it.

But there is an unfortunate by-product of the entirely commendable efforts of Jewish organizations to speak up about both the antisemitic threat and the need for greater security at synagogues, as well as at other Jewish sites. The problem is that after so much talk about rising anti-American antisemitism, some have been so frightened that they may be convinced that the discretion is the better of valor and will stay away from synagogue, even on the High Holidays, which are the two or three days a year when most Jews normally show up.

Is there such a thing as too much support? We’d love to hear reports from Jews whose synagogues were watched over by their Christian neighbors this Rosh Hashanah. Laurie Cardoza-Moore, a leading American Evangelical leader, has called on Christians to stand in solidarity with their Jewish neighbors over the High-Holidays, in response to what she dubbed the most fatal year for American Jewry ever. There have been 12 deaths in Synagogue shootings in 5779.

Cardoza-Moore, president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations and host of the popular weekly Christian television show “Focus on Israel,” with a global audience of more than two billion viewers, wants US Christians to stand vigil outside synagogues on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

“As millions of Jews across America prepare to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, many will be fearful of attending services because of the increase in anti-Semitic attacks,” Cardoza-Moore told her followers. “I therefore call upon all American Christians to stand vigil outside their local Synagogues this weekend to let our Jewish brothers and sisters know that they are not alone. Some have tried to use warped understandings of Christianity to justify attacks against Jews, but nothing could be further from the Bible’s truth. There is no justification on earth for these heinous attacks and no American should feel unsafe in their house of worship.”

The global Jewish population hovers around 14.8 million ahead of Rosh Hashanah, which marks the start of the Jewish new year 5780, according to estimates published by Professor Sergio Della Pergola of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the American Jewish Year Book 2019.

Of this year’s nearly 15 million Jews, an estimated 8.1 million live outside of Israel, including around 5.7 million in the United States. In Israel, the number of Jews is close to 6.7 million, compared to 6.6 million in the Jewish year 5779. Many more reside in Europe and countries around the world.

The numbers include those who define themselves as Jews and who do not identify with another religion. When including those who are eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, the number rises to 23.6 million people, of whom 16.5 million live outside Israel.

“In the past year, tens of thousands of people have made aliyah [immigrated to Israel] with assistance from the Jewish Agency for Israel, along with tens of thousands of young Jews who visited Israel on educational programs such as Masa Israel Journey,” said Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog.

On the eve of the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, ushering in the Jewish year of 5780, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics released its traditional end-of-the-year findings.

Israel’s population now stands at 9.092 million people — 6.744 million (74.2 percent) of whom are Jews, with 1.907 million (21 percent) Arabs and 441,000 (4.8 percent) listed as “other.”

The population is growing at 2.1 percent annually and, if current trends continue, will reach 10 million by 2024, 15 million by 2048, and 20 million by 2065.

Some 196,000 babies were born in Israel in the past year, 45,000 residents died and 38,000 people immigrated to the country.

The bureau found that Israel is largely a happy country, with 88.9 percent of citizens saying they are satisfied with their lives — 91.1 percent of Jews and 80.9 percent of Arabs.

Col. Richard Kemp has "seen evil at first-hand" on the battlefield and says fighting it "becomes personal".

In our wide-ranging interview, Richard discusses his extensive military career across three decades, starting in Northern Ireland and culminating in Whitehall as a senior government advisor - and as commander of British Forces In Afghanistan.

Richard says Iran is the world’s chief menace and warns of the growing threat from Russia and China and no room for complacency on Sunni extremism.

He's an unwavering friend of Israel, explains why then describes the "hundreds of years" of damage that Britain could self-inflict if Jeremy Corbyn became Prime Minister.

Col. Richard Kemp speaks in measure with immense experience and gravitas. It was truly a privilege to sit down with him.

Happy Rosh Hashanah to my Jewish friends.
(British Army Jewish Brigade Rosh Hashanah card from 1943.) pic.twitter.com/2xp3z22xJd

— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) September 27, 2019