Hezbollah and its allies are getting more and more confident in attacking Lebanon’s liberal traditions.

A very amusing example came rom the Facebook page of Shiite cleric Abbas Hoteit, who posted on Sunday photos of bikini-clad women from a Sidon newspaper “Ya Sour.”

Ten photos.

He apologized profusely for being forced to show his followers such filth – ten times – but felt he had to let his followers know exactly how terrible things are in Tyre, where the beaches now resemble those of Europe and Israel.

I apologize to the believing brothers and sisters and all those who guard their honor, be they of any religion, for me presenting these pictures, which were presented today on the "Ya Sur" site, about the state of the beaches of Sidon in Jabal Amil today. But the ignominy of staying silent about this social tragedy in this region– which was the pride of the Shi'ism of Ali and the chastity of Fatima, and a center of the Hawzas of the Levant – is many times (worse) than the ignominy of presenting them on my (Facebook) page.

Just to make sure that the point got across, he posted the same pictures a second time today.

Some people are making fun of his hypocrisy of spreading what he considers filth in the name of fighting filth.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a similar controversy  when Shiite fundamentalists attacked photos of young people swimming and drinking beer by a beautiful stream in southern Lebanon, saying “their personal freedom contradicts our customs and norms especially in this land that the Mujahideen have tread upon and watered with the blood of the martyrs.”

One of the beach photos ironically shows how tolerant Lebanon still is – for now.

Apparently, posting bikini photos is halal when they are used as clickbait.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Asher Fredman just published a book (free online) where he goes into great detail about the BDS movement’s methods and what has worked against them.

I found one chapter to be particularly important. It showed that whenever BDS targets give the Israel-haters the tiniest amount of attention, this emboldens the BDSers to increase pressure on that company.

Meeting with them will make them increase their pressure. Partial concessions will increase it more. Even when they cave to BDS demands completely, the BDSers don’t leave them alone – they keep demanding more and more in terms of “reparations” for previous damage.

If a company shows the BDS movement that it is vulnerable to pressure by giving in to some BDS demands or engaging with BDS activists, this will increase the chances that the BDS campaign against the company will intensify.

CEMEX, the Mexican building materials company, is a good example of this BDS tactic. In 2015, CEMEX gave in to one BDS demand by selling its holdings in an Israeli quarry located in the West Bank. It has since refused to give in to other BDS demands and continues to operate three concrete mixing plants in Israeli-controlled industrial zones in the West Bank (in which, it should be noted, the majority of workers are Palestinian). …

However, despite Cemex’s declaration that it does not intend to give in to further BDS demands, the BDS movement, seeing that the company once showed itself vulnerable, continues to prioritize it as a target.

This principle applies not only to companies that surrender to BDS demands but even to those that merely attempt to engage BDS activists in serious dialogue. While it is understandable why companies may believe that engagement is a good policy and that the activists might be open to hearing the company’s point of view, in practice, such a policy only serves to intensify BDS campaigns. BDS activists interpret such attempts as a sign of pressure and an invitation to push harder. Companies that consistently ignore BDS pressure are more likely to see the campaign against them decrease, as the BDS movement chooses to look for softer targets.

The case of HSBC is a good example of this principle. Following the launch of a BDS campaign against the bank, HSBC attempted to engage British BDS groups in dialogue. This willingness was interpreted by BDS groups as a sign that the company was under pressure and could be pressed into accepting their demands. As described by the organization, “War on Want,” a key member of the British BDS campaign:

In summer 2017, we launched our campaign to pressure HSBC to cut all ties with companies selling weapons and security services to Israel’s repressive regime. Activists held pickets at HSBC branches in over 20 locations in the UK, and over 10,000 people emailed HSBC demanding divestment.

HSBC responded by asking for a meeting. In September 2017, and again in March 2018, we met with bank executives to reiterate that HSBC must immediately divest from companies selling arms to Israel.

We took one clear message away from our meetings with the bank’s executives: HSBC is nervous about the public response to its business complicity. And to us, that means one thing: time to increase the pressure on HSBC. (emphasis added [in book])

Likewise, the G4S security company discovered that each time it attempted to engage BDS groups involved in the campaign against it that began in 2010, or to respond to BDS accusations, the campaign not only intensified but broadened the scope of its demands.

Similarly, if one company in a particular sector has given in or engaged with BDS, this increases the probability that other companies in the same sector will be targeted. The BDS movement reasons that if one company can be successfully pressured, other companies in the same industry may prove vulnerable as well.

This is demonstrated by the intensified focus on the tourism and travel companies, Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor. This focus is a result of Airbnb’s November 2018 decision to delist approximately 200 Jewish-owned properties in the West Bank (following a BDS campaign against the company). After extensive public and legal backlash, Airbnb reversed its decision in April 2019. However, although Airbnb reversed its decision, and although the company from the outset repeatedly denied that it supported BDS, and insisted that it remained committed to investment in Israel, major BDS groups “smelled blood.” The BDS movement, therefore, continues to focus on travel companies, with the hope that the initial success against Airbnb can be replicated.

If a company has shown that it can be pressured into giving in to BDS demands, then even after it has capitulated, and the BDS movement has declared victory, the BDS movement is still unwilling to end the campaign. As long as the BDS campaign has hope that a few more drops of “victory” can be squeezed out of the vulnerable company (and given that in most cases, extensive resources have already been invested in creating and disseminating the campaign), the campaign will continue.

For example, in October 2014, even as BDS celebrated as a “major success” SodaStream’s announcement that it would be closing down its production plant in the Mishor Adumim industrial area located in the West Bank, and moving its plant to Israel’s southern Negev region,88 the BNC’s spokesperson declared, “SodaStream will remain a focus of boycott campaigning.” While it is undeniable that the Negev is within the Green Line, the BDS used, as an excuse for its continued campaign, the land disputes between the state and the semi-nomadic Bedouin citizens of Israel living in the area. Given that SodaStream had shown itself vulnerable to BDS pressure,91 and given that extensive resources had already been invested in disseminating the anti-SodaStream campaign worldwide, the BNC had no interest in ending the campaign. This, despite the fact that the company moved entirely to within the lines of pre-1967 Israel.

In 2018, it was announced that SodaStream would be acquired by PepsiCo for 3.2 billion dollars. Following news of the sale, BDS leader Omar Barghouti affirmed that “SodaStream is still subject to boycott by the global, Palestinian-led BDS movement for Palestinian rights.”

Another tactic used by the BDS movement, which serves both as an excuse to continue BDS campaigns against vulnerable companies even after “victory,” and as a potential method for financial gain, is the demand for “reparations.” A company that fully complies with BDS demands implicitly recognizes the validity of the accusations made by the BDS movement against it. It will, therefore, likely become subject to BDS demands and legal actions seeking reparations.

For example, in September 2015, the BNC celebrated the French corporation Veolia’s full capitulation to the demands of the BDS movement. It declared “The sale of [Veolia’s] stake in the Jerusalem Light Rail project ends all of Veolia’s involvement in the Israeli market, including all projects that violate international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people.”93 BNC Coordinator Mahmoud Nawajaa stated that “Veolia's withdrawal from Israel sets an example to all companies that are complicit in Israel’s human rights violations.”

However, Nawajaa added: “We call for legal action, by specialized organizations, against Veolia to compel it to pay reparations to the Palestinian communities adversely affected by its infringements of international law.”

A June 2017 announcement by the BNC shows that this demand for reparations was not just a one-time statement made in the exuberance of a BDS victory, but an ongoing effort. The announcement, regarding a BDS campaign in the Netherlands against an Israeli transport company, noted:

Veolia and Connexxion [a Veolia-owned transport company] have ended their complicity with Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights, but have yet to pay reparations to the Palestinian communities they harmed, and campaigners are still demanding that they do so.

What would happen if a company is so scared that they actually pay “reparations?”  I imagine BDS would demand s public statement of contrition and apology plus  a demand that the company funds further BDS projects and gives a percentage of its profits to Palestinian “civil society” forever.

Modern jizya tax.

The only policy that corporations can and must take when BDS targets them is to state clearly that they will not give in to blackmail – and then ignore the haters forever more afterwards.

For at least the past five years, Palestinian media have been using this photo as a generic image to illustrate a story about someone being arrested by Palestinian police:

I just saw an example this morning, but there are hundreds of uses of this photo across Palestinian Arabic news media.

Meaning that placing a knee on a suspect’s neck is considered normal behavior for Palestinian police.

And the image is being used post-George Floyd, which means that Palestinians don’ treally think there is anything wrong with this.

In fact, using the exact logic that the Israel haters have been using, we can say that since US cops have met with their Palestinian counterparts, then they probably learned the knee-on-neck technique from Palestinian police!

During the last half-century, several reputable scholars and defense professionals have devoted careful attention to the world view and aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs. Working independently, these researchers described the strategic goals of the Palestine Liberation Organization and exposed the widespread denial of their importance.

The PLO program has never been a secret. The destruction of the State of Israel and the pursuit of the "armed struggle" has been its main goal since its founding in 1964. Despite having adopted a facade which has lent them a veneer of respectability, terror and violence have constantly remained a part of their program. Proof of this may be found in the well-publicized program of the PA to subsidize terrorists who have committed violent crimes against civilians. No Jewish (and Israeli) civilians can be innocent and they are considered legitimate targets.

Beyond the failure of the Oslo process to bring peace, there is a broader cultural dimension: how the Israelis view themselves and their place in the world and how official Israel understands its relationship with the Palestinian Arabs.

One of the most surprising aspects of the sovereignty debate (or as some prefer, annexing parts of the West Bank) is the opposition shown by many settlers and Israel’s closest friends. While opposition was expected from the left and Israel’s opponents (no, they’re not the same), opposition wasn’t expected from right-wing settlers, centrist scholars, and Israel’s friends in Congress. Settlers fear a Palestinian state that the Trump plan promises, scholars fear the impact of annexation on the war for Israel’s legitimacy, and Israel’s friends in Congress fear, “Unilateral annexation would likely jeopardize Israel’s significant progress on normalization with Arab states at a time when closer cooperation can contribute to countering shared threats, insecurity in Jordan, and that unilateral annexation could create serious problems for Israel with its European friends and other partners around the world.”

When asked why they believe Israel should extend sovereignty, most proponents explain that to build in Judea and Samaria Israelis need permission of the land authority, an extra step of bureaucracy Israelis on the west side of the Green Line don’t suffer. Other proponents say that after 50 years without an Eastern border, it’s time to declare one, and that after years of the two-state solution going nowhere, Israeli and Palestinian leaders unable to even negotiate, it’s time to move in a different direction to end the conflict.

I’m not a representative of the “settler movement,” I’m just one man living in Mitzpe Yericho, with a slightly above-average familiarity with the issues of the conflict and an affinity for truth and justice. I maintain that Israel should extend sovereignty according to the terms of the Trump Plan. Israel should extend its laws to Judea and Samaria because doing so aligns with truth and justice. We’re often too scared to say it, but an honest look at history demonstrates that Judea and Samaria is the heartland of the historic homeland of the Jewish people. This isn’t “just” a religious belief. It is historic fact that Jews lived in these lands, only left because they were forcefully exiled, and yearned to return for 2,000 years.
There is a confusing duality to the Jewish people. We are ancient people who embrace modernity. Our embracing of modernity often confuses people into thinking we aren’t connected to our past. Israeli Zionists are the descendants of the ancient Jews who lived in these lands. We might wear suits and lab coats today, but we used to look just like the Bedouins who are my neighbors today. Progressives dedicated to everyone’s truth but that of the Jews, tend to restart the clock a few hundred years ago and declare that the “West Bank” is Palestinian land. Only moral gymnastics and historical revisionism can stand by that claim. Liberals who stand for human rights should be standing with the Jewish people’s just claim to these lands. Ease of building, setting forth a realistic future by determining final borders and instituting civil law for both Israelis and Palestinians are good reasons to extend sovereignty. But truth and justice of returning the land to its ancestral people is the ultimate reason that Israeli sovereignty should be extended to Judea and Samaria.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Tuesday with US Ambassador David Friedman and special Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz, a day ahead of his self-imposed date for beginning to annex West Bank lands under an American peace proposal, and indicated after the meeting that he would miss the July 1 target date.

“I spoke about the question of sovereignty, which we are working on these days and we will continue to work on in the coming days,” Netanyahu said shortly after wrapping up the talks, meaning the groundwork ahead of the move will continue after July 1.

The Times of Israel reported on June 3 that US approval for annexation on July 1 was “highly unlikely.”

Also in attendance were Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin, National Security Adviser Meir Ben Shabbat and the bureau chief of the Prime Minister’s Office, Ronen Peretz, the PMO said in a statement.

The meeting comes as Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz continue to publicly spar over the timing of the annexation plans, with the premier dismissing Gantz’s assertion that it is too early to begin implementing them.

Gantz said Tuesday that Israel needs to move ahead on the Trump plan with “partners” from the region and international backing.

Earlier Tuesday, in a meeting with US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook, Netanyahu appeared to mock comments Gantz made during a meeting with the US team on Sunday, in which he said annexation should wait until after the coronavirus pandemic has passed.

For many of us in Europe, the relationship with Israel and Palestine is quite personal. For me, for instance, it is a longstanding one. After I finished university in 1969, I worked in a Kibbutz when the State of Israel was still building itself. I travelled all over Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, from Galilee to Eilat and met my first wife in Gal On. This was my first contact with the still lasting Israel-Palestinian conflict. As a European, it reminded me of the often tragic nature of human history and to look for peaceful solutions to conflicts. My family and I came back many times, and in 2005 I spoke before the Knesset as President of the European Parliament, recalling the EU’s commitment to Israel’s security following the second Intifada. At that time, there was still a widely shared sense of hope that, despite the setbacks, a two-state solution was still within reach.

The EU and its Member States have been consistently very active in supporting the two parties towards this goal. We helped build the Palestinian institutions in preparation for statehood, with financial support now reaching more than 600 million Euros a year.

We also understand Israeli concerns and are committed to Israel’s security, which is non-negotiable for us. The EU invests in cooperation that benefits both sides, on issues from counter terrorism to research, from tourism to the environment. We should be looking at ways to nurture this and develop our relations still further.

Once the political process stopped, conflict and entrenching occupation became daily life. In the last years, there has been little progress. But the current status quo does not provide satisfying answers and is no sustainable situation. The hard truth is that only a return to real negotiations can give Israelis and Palestinians what they rightly crave: sustainable peace and security.

Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King reads the “Jerusalem” clauses in the Trump plan, and discovers a tragedy that is being played down.
Included in the “Deal of the Century” plan of the president of the United States, is a plan for the future of Jerusalem. Public attention is less focused on this issue, but when Arieh King, deputy mayor of Jerusalem studies US President Donald Trump’s outline of his plan for the capital of Israel, he is shocked.

According to the plan, the neighborhoods of Shuafat, Kafr Akab, Anata and environs will be designated as the capital of the Palestinian state, which is being planned. King views the concept of delivering these areas as the first stage of a moral – and conceptual – collapse. He totally rejects the argument, often put forward, “We are not there anyway,” adding “We are also not in Umm el-Fahm – but when we want to be there, we are there! Whoever talks about moving any borders of Jerusalem is on a slippery downward slope which will subsequently lead to discussions involving the surrender of more and more territory.”

In his remarks, King emphasizes that this involves handing over sovereign areas of the State of Israel and the political significance is to permit, and consent, to the opening of negotiations relating to anywhere in the country, including the Galilee or the Negev.

“Remember that Likud, and Netanyahu, were initially elected under the slogan ‘Peres will divide Jerusalem.’ It is now becoming clear that the Likud delivered Sinai, Likud supported and participated in the expulsion from Gush Katif and parts of Samaria – today, Likud is already dividing Jerusalem.”

2/3 against the American peace plan, and to publish declarations before any decision has been made.
For a while now, Israel has lost any faith in the High Commissioner's abilities to promote human rights in our region in a fair manner.

— Lior Haiat 🇮🇱 (@LiorHaiat) June 29, 2020

There are times when annexation definitely violates international law. Other times, like when the United States annexed Hawaii and Texas, annexation was widely accepted. The topic of annexation has always been complicated. Today's complex territorial dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is no different.

Watch to learn more about annexation and its possible consequences for Israel and the Palestinians...

1. This is a bluff. Palestinians want to resume from 2014 (not the Trump Plan), as if nothing happened in between, bringing no new concessions or ideas to the table. This is blatant attempt to buy time ahead of U.S. elections and force Israel not to move ahead with sovereignty.

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) June 30, 2020

The Dutch parliament on Thursday passed a resolution urging the government to explore possible sanctions against Israel if it goes ahead with its plans to unilaterally annex parts of the West Bank.

The resolution calls on the country’s foreign minister to “to identify options of measures possibly to be taken should Israel proceed with annexation of Palestinian territory.”

It passed 87-63 with no abstentions. The People’s Party for Freedom — the slate of Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Foreign Minister Stef Blok — opposed the resolution not on substance but because of “timing,” officials said, noting that it was too early for a such a resolution given that Israel had not yet decided if and how it would proceed with annexation.

The non-binding motion called annexation a “gross violation of international law” and noted that the Netherlands has in the past “taken measures against countries that violate international law.”

The German Bundestag is expected to discuss a resolution condemning Jerusalem’s annexation plan as well, though no draft has been presented yet and it is unclear whether the motion would garner a majority. Most German lawmakers, though not all, are opposed to annexation, but are unlikely to call for sanctions against the Jewish state.

Earlier on Tuesday, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, hinted at possible punitive sanctions against Israel as a response to annexation.

While Egypt has expressed concern over possible moves to extend Israeli law in parts of the West Bank, the Palestinian cause may no longer be the regime's main priority. Balancing numerous crises, the Egyptian government can ill-afford to alienate close allies, especially Israel and the U.S., analysts say.

"There are far more substantial crises facing Egypt today: the coronavirus crisis and its attendant economic consequences, Turkish military intervention on Egypt's longest border [in Libya], the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. All of these crises take priority," said Ofer Winter, who studies Egyptian-Israeli relations at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

"There is widespread sympathy for the Palestinians, and that's not going away....But the importance of the Palestinian cause is no longer the same. It's no longer the Nasser era or the Sadat era," an Egyptian foreign affairs analyst said. If Israel takes steps in the West Bank, Egypt "will keep rehashing all the old diplomatic statements to express their disagreement....But I don't think Netanyahu's relationship with Sissi will be affected."

Four progressive House Democrats have written to the secretary of state calling on the United States to cut assistance to Israel should it proceed to annex parts of the West Bank.

In response, the AIPAC lobby has launched a campaign against the letter initiated by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Betty McCollum of Minnesota.

The letter, AIPAC said Monday on Twitter, “explicitly threatens the U.S.-Israel relationship in ways that would damage American interests, risk the security of Israel & make a two-state solution less likely.”

An action alert urged activists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to contact their representatives to oppose the letter.

The letter to Mike Pompeo is circulating among Democrats in a bid to add signatures.

“Should the Israeli government move forward with the planned annexation with this administration’s acquiescence, we will work to ensure non-recognition as well as pursue conditions on the $3.8 billion in U.S. military funding to Israel, including human rights conditions and withholding funds for the off-shore procurement of Israeli weapons equal to or exceeding the amount the Israeli government spends annually to fund settlements, as well as the policies and practices that sustain and enable them,” it says, according to a copy obtained by Jewish Insider.

Anti-Israel Congresswomen @AOC@RashidaTlaib@BettyMcCollum04@RepJayapal pen letter w/ support from "As-a-Jew" useful idiots at IfNotNow 2 condition aid to #Israel

The best part? They cite Rome Statute, which neither Israel nor the US are signatories ofhttps://t.co/FjrDE5AAPe

— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) June 30, 2020

Former officials of the previous presidential administration voiced puzzlement today at the limited impact of their alarm-sounding on potential application of Israeli law to areas beyond the 1949 armistice line, noting that no one could have predicted their cautionary statements would lose their compelling rhetorical force after that administration moved its Syrian intervention goalposts multiple times over the course of its eight years and refused to lift a finger to prevent Iran from securing regional hegemony and Basher Assad from using chemical weapons against his own people.

John Kerry, Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power, and other international relations fixtures of Barack Obama’s presidency conceded Tuesday they cannot explain the deaf ears on which their warnings fall when they speak of the dire consequences of Israel annexing territory taken in the 1967 Six-Day War, even though those same officials repeatedly allowed Assad, Iran’s proxy forces, and Russian military moves free rein in Syria to violate Obama red line after Obama red line: to commit genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, among other offenses, in the service of inducing Iran to agree to a nuclear weapons deal.

“I don’t understand,” wondered former Secretary of State Kerry. “We were quite clear on our red lines when it came to unacceptable behavior on the part of Syrian forces and their allies. We shifted those red lines as necessary to keep from putting any pressure on Iran, so Tehran would sign the JCPOA. Now, after we redrew the red lines several times to avoid having to confront Iran and possibly undermine the deal, no one of consequence heeds our warnings about the disaster for Israel, Palestinians, the Middle East in general, and American international standing if Israel does go through with annexation as planned. It’s almost as if no one believes us, and that’s not fair.”

Imagine your civilians- women, children, elderly- have rockets raining down on them, so many rockets that you are running out of defensive (non-offensive) missiles to protect them.

Now look at the 8 Nos on emergency Iron Dome funding in 2014. How many more would vote No today? pic.twitter.com/NDoG1wC9dY

— AZ עם ישראל חי (@americanzionism) June 29, 2020

Members of the Tanzim, the militant wing of the Palestinian Authority’s ruling Fatah faction, have replaced PA security forces in enforcing law and order in some parts of the West Bank, one of its commanders said Monday.

In addition, the Tanzim has not received instructions to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel in response to its intention to apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, said Khaled al-Daher, a senior Tanzim commander in Eizariya, which is located near Ma’aleh Adumim in both Area B and Area C of the West Bank.

The deployment of the Tanzim members came in the aftermath of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s May 18 decision to halt security coordination between the Palestinian security forces and the IDF in protest against Israel’s plan to apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, he said in an exclusive interview.

His men were now in charge of all affairs in the area, Daher said.

“The Palestinian leadership informed us that we are now responsible for civil peace and enforcing law and order,” he said. “Our role is also to prevent anarchy by stopping people from using live ammunition during weddings. The Tanzim has assumed the security responsibilities of the Palestinian security services. We have been assigned full power to deal with all issues concerning our people.”

The Palestinian Authority continues to protest Netanyahu’s plans for unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank as destructive to the peace process and denies Palestinians their historic right to say “No” to literally any other solution that might actually work.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a public statement that the Palestinian people would not be denied their historical right to say “No” to any peace proposal. Abbas did say that he would be willing to talk with Israel provided that there were guarantees that they would not be blamed for the inevitable collapse of the peace talks and that Israel could be condemned internationally.

Netanyahu has met plenty of pushback against annexation, with the European Union saying that it was unhelpful to peace and harmed the chances of Palestinians saying “No” to future offers for a Palestinian state. The Arab world has also said they would really appreciate it if Netanyahu didn’t do it, but also said if they did annex it would be “meh” because “Iran isn’t going to bomb itself”.

Left-leaning groups in the United States have also insisted that annexation would harm the peace process. J Street has said that annexation goes against the spirit of the peace process to try the same thing over and over again until it works. J Street President Jeremy Ben Ami said in a statement that at this point to try anything new would be insane and that “the lives of Palestinians as well as my speaking engagement fees rely on the peace process continuing”.

The 25-year-old Libyan man accused of killing three people in a Reading park shouted “Allahu Akbar” moments before the attack, a court has heard.

Khairi Saadallah, who was living in the Berkshire town, is charged with three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder.

He appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court via video link from Coventry Magistrates Court. Dressed in a grey, prison-issue tracksuit and wearing a surgical face mask, he spoke only to confirm his name and address and did not enter a plea.

Saadallah, who moved to the UK as a refugee in 2012, is alleged to have attacked his victims in Forbury Gardens on June 20 "without warning or provocation".

Jan Newbold, prosecuting, said: "At the time of the incident, the defendant was heard to shout words to the effect of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great)."

The Shin Bet security service on Tuesday accused an Arab Israeli woman living in Lebanon of working to recruit Israeli citizens as operatives for the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group.

According to the Shin Bet, Beirut Hamoud sought to enlist two female residents of her hometown of Majd al-Krum, an Arab town in the Galilee. The women, whose names weren’t published, were arrested on May 2 and were granted conditional release after they were interrogated.

Hamoud was questioned by Israeli security forces in 2013 over suspicions she had contacted Hezbollah operatives and met with them at one conference in Morocco in 2008 and another in Tunisia in 2012, after which the Shin Bet said she left Israel for Lebanon. There, she married Bilal Bizri and now works as a journalist at the Hezbollah-linked Al-Akhbar neswspaper.

“Alongside her work as a journalist in Lebanon, Beirut Hamoud and her husband Bilal are run by the terror organization Hezbollah to locate and recruit Israeli citizens for operations for Hezbollah,” a statement from the Shin Bet said.

The security agency said Hamoud contacted the two Majd al-Krum residents and met them in Turkey in December, after which the Shin Bet questioned them on suspicion that Hamoud and Bizri had tried to recruit them to Hezbollah.

“During the investigation the contact between the two and Beirut was confirmed, as well as information about the meeting in Turkey and the way in which Hezbollah worked through Beirut and her husband to enlist additional Israelis for Hezbollah operations,” the Shin Bet said.

Journalist Sima Kadmon and the newspaper Yediot Ahronot were ordered by Tel Aviv's Magistrates Court on Tuesday to pay NIS 105,000 in libel damages and NIS 20,000 in legal fees to Im Tirztu.

The Zionist NGO filed the suit in 2017 after the paper published two articles falsely accusing it of falsifying a letter sent to the sport and culture minister at the time. One of the articles named Im Tirtzu's spokesperson, accusing him personally of fabricating the letter.

The letter in question was written by 28 bereaved families from the Choosing Life Forum of Bereaved Families, lodging their objection to the three-part documentary Megiddo, which aired on YES Documentary in April 2017. The documentary followed the lives of Palestinian terrorist prisoners being held at the Megiddo Prison, and their Israeli guards.

Director Itzik Lerner was given unprecedented access to the prison, living alongside prisoners and guards for a year. However, expressing their disappointment that the government had helped fund the documentary and allowed the director access, the families wrote: "there was no mention of our suffering, of the bereaved families who lost their most precious due to terrorist attacks.”

Neither the PA nor Fatah are hiding their future plans should Israel apply Israeli law to the Jordan Valley and Jewish towns in the West Bank.

Using the different Palestinian euphemisms, the PA and Fatah openly say they will use violence and terror against Israel. Advocating a “popular uprising” and vowing to “use all means” and “resistance in all its forms,” they are determined to fight Israel – “the enemy.” The following are five examples, including PA and Fatah representatives, promising terror:

PA top official: We’ll use “resistance in all its forms” against Israel - “the enemy”

Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “If this occupation causes escalation, I believe that we will decide to start a confrontation… I also say that international legitimacy permits us resistance in all its forms, and nothing is forbidden… Our resistance in the occupied lands is against all the occupation’s symbols. Whether it is the settlers, their farms, their army, or all their brats and the like.”

PA TV host: “The coming battle will be against the settlers?”

Jibril Rajoub: “No, no, no! All of the occupation’s symbols in everything… National rebellion means that we’ll all go out into the streets and we’ll consider it [Israel] our enemy, and we’ll treat it as an enemy.”
[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, June 20, 2020]

Fatah official: We’ll use “all means” – including “armed struggle” - to fight Israel

Fatah Revolutionary Council member Muhammad Al-Laham: “Our message to the occupation and the world: We’ll fight to defend every grain of soil with all possible means… We’re not fleeing from any form of struggle! We’ve had situations even of armed struggle... All possible forms. We must discuss [it], and let’s not limit our creativity. Our people are always creative when it comes to finding effective tools to hurt the occupation… The Fatah Movement is the backbone of the Palestinian revolution... Fatah still exists in the sphere of struggle in all its forms.”
[Official PA TV Live, June 22, 2020]

The U.S. Justice Department is appealing a federal judge's decision to grant an early release to Hizbullah financier Kassim Tajideen, 65, who had pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges and was sentenced in 2019 to five years in prison. Tajideen's lawyers argued their client was "extremely vulnerable" to contracting Covid-19 due to his age and health.

In its appeal, the Justice Department said Tajideen's health had not seriously deteriorated and that he was not in any imminent danger from Covid-19 at the medium-security prison in Cumberland, Maryland, where he was being held. Out of 1,214 inmates at the prison, six tested positive for Covid-19, as have two staffers, but all have since recovered and no new cases have emerged at the facility.

Tony Badran of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies said it would be "a miscarriage of justice in letting a prominent financier of the premier global terror group, which has American blood on its hands, out of jail before serving out his sentence."

New Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi ordered the first confrontation with one of the pro-Iranian Iraqi militia responsible for rocket attacks against the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. troops stationed at Iraqi military bases.

Kadhimi promised to deal with the problem when he met with U.S. representatives in the first round of strategic dialogue between the two countries a month ago.

Kadhimi, who is the commander of Iraq’s armed forces, ordered an Iraqi counterterrorism unit on June 25, 2020, to raid a “Hizbullah Brigades” compound in southern Baghdad and arrested 14 militia operatives.

The compound contained a workshop for manufacturing Katyusha rockets. They also arrested an Iranian expert who instructed the militia members on how to make the rockets. In the workshop, there were rockets ready for operation.

The Al-Araby Al-Jadeed (The New Arab) newspaper reported on June 27, 2020, that among the detainees was also a man known as “Khaider Samatyah” who is wanted on suspicion of assaults and the murder of dozens of Iraqi protesters during former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s term.

The operation took place based on precise intelligence; a few days earlier, Iraqi intelligence arrested three militia activists who admitted during interrogation that they had fired rockets at U.S. targets in Iraq.

The “Hizbullah Brigades” militia is part of the umbrella organization of militias known as “Al-Hashd Al-Sha’bi” (Popular Mobilization Forces), an organization close to Iran that follows Iranian orders.

When I served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, I made it clear that the American people expect the institution to uphold its founding ideals, and to hold irresponsible regimes accountable for their actions. That was badly needed in the cases of Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, among others.

The same is true with the rest of the multilateral system. Our country helped establish that system after the Second World War, and we remain by far the world’s largest funder of it today. We need to examine closely whether we are getting a decent return on our investment.

The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare that many international bodies are still willing to do the bidding of some of the world’s most dangerous nations — including Iran. This is unacceptable, and it demands a swift and strong response from the United States.

The International Monetary Fund, a U.N. subsidiary and the world’s premier global financial body, has been quietly looking for ways to undermine U.S. sanctions against Iran. It is even mulling a multibillion-dollar loan to the regime. Such a move would prop up the world’s largest sponsor of terror and provide it with billions of dollars that it would use to oppress its people and threaten the U.S. and our allies across the Middle East.

The Trump administration must stop an IMF loan — period. While Iran and its enablers will claim that it needs the money to recover from the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus, the fact is the regime is already capable of providing for its citizens.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could easily tap into the funds under his control worth more than $200 billion, as well as Iran’s sovereign-wealth fund. Similarly, if the regime ended its support for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and the barbaric Assad regime in Syria, billions more would be freed up.

It says everything we need to know that the regime refuses to take these steps. In fact, Tehran has a long and terrible history of prioritizing funding for its terrorist proxies over providing for the Iranian people.

The domestic intelligence agency for the city-state of Berlin disclosed Thursday in a new report on antisemitism that Iran’s clerical regime is a leading sponsor of Jew-hatred.

“Antisemitism and hatred of Israel were also massively promoted by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The leader of the Iranian Revolution Ayatollah [Ruhollah] Khomeini already described Israel as the ‘little Satan’ and openly called for the destruction of Israel. Antisemitism has been part of Iran's state ideology ever since [the founding of the Islamic Republic] and is regularly fueled by statements by state representatives,” wrote the intelligence officials.

The Jerusalem Post reviewed the 49-page document that chronicles the various forms of antisemitism in Germany.

The US government has gone further in its classification of Iranian regime state-sponsored antisemitism. In January, US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism Elan Carr said at an US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) Global Efforts to Combat Antisemitism hearing that “Iran is not only the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, it is the world’s chief trafficker in antisemitism. The Islamic Republic of Iran has pushed antisemitic dogma throughout the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world beyond the Middle East.”

US administrations under both Obama and Trump have classified Iran's regime as the world's worst state-sponsor of terrorism.

Unilever continues to work in Iran, including with companies affiliated with the country's terrorist military arm, though it has stopped advertising on U.S. social media platforms that it says have spread "divisiveness" and "hate speech" ahead of the presidential election.

The global soap and food manufacturer, which is based in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, announced last week that it would cease advertising to U.S. audiences on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram until after the 2020 election. The company pointed to the "polarized atmosphere" of the social media platforms, which conflicts with Unilever's "responsibility framework."

Unilever operates in Iran through a foreign subsidiary and has advertised its products on Iranian government television, according to its annual reports. Unilever even conducted business with companies affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the United States designated as a terrorist organization in 2019. Unilever did not respond to questions about whether it would continue its business dealings in Iran.

Unilever's ad announcement that it would pump the breaks on social media advertising comes on the heels of a massive Democrat-led campaign to pressure Facebook into enacting stricter speech restrictions ahead of the presidential election. Joe Biden has blasted Facebook for its alleged failure to police "misinformation" from Donald Trump supporters on the platform, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) recently called on advertisers to boycott Facebook.

In a statement on Friday, Unilever said its decision to pull its ads was related to "divisiveness and hate speech during this polarized election period in the U.S."

"Continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society. We will be monitoring ongoing and will revisit our current position if necessary," said the company.

No such announcement was made regarding Unilever's business with authoritarian states, including countries that do not have free and fair elections. Unilever's most recent corporate disclosure statement from 2019 said it had no plans to halt its business operations in Iran.

Media producer Muzaffer Hyder said in a video that was uploaded to the Islamic Pulse YouTube channel on June 4, 2020 that American authorities may have instigated violence during the protests surrounding the killing of George Floyd in a fashion similar to how he said they backed violence in Iran during the November 2019 protests. He said that some American policemen collect KKK memorabilia, and he claimed that “Zio-America” is behind the concept of racial superiority since Zionists consider Jews to be superior to non-Jews. In addition, Hyder said that America fights Islam because Islam rejects racism and he claimed that the current events can be traced back to “the Satanic Zionist agenda.” Warning viewers in America to get out of America or resist against the system like the Palestinians do, Hyder said that the slogan of all “free-minded” and “free-spirited” people in the world is: “Death to America!” Hyder, who was born in Britain, currently lives in the Iranian city of Qom, where he studies Shiite Islam and is a producer for Islamic Pulse.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on China Monday to end the “horrific” and “dehumanizing” abuses against Uighur Muslims, including forced sterilizations, abortions, and coerced family planning practices.

“We call on the Chinese Communist Party to immediately end these horrific practices and ask all nations to join the United States in demanding an end to these dehumanizing abuses,” Pompeo said in a Monday afternoon statement.

His words came after an investigation by the Associated Press found that the Chinese government is committing “demographic genocide” against Uighur Muslims through forced abortions, birth control, mass detentions, and imprisonment. (RELATED: China Committing ‘Demographic Genocide’ Against Uighurs Through Forced Abortion, Sterilization, Mass Detention, AP Investigation Finds)

The AP investigation, based on interviews with 30 former detainees, family members, a former detention camp instructor, government statistics and state documents, found that the Chinese government seeks to dramatically lower the birthrates of Uighurs and other minorities while encouraging other populations to produce more children.

Chinese parents who have more than a few children are often sent to detention camps or subjected to huge fines, the publication found, and police instill terror into families by raiding homes searching for hidden children.

“The world received disturbing reports today that the Chinese Communist Party is using forced sterilization, forced abortion, and coercive family planning against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, as part of a continuing campaign of repression,” Pompeo said. “German researcher Adrian Zenz’s shocking revelations are sadly consistent with decades of CCP practices that demonstrate an utter disregard for the sanctity of human life and basic human dignity.”

I wrote last night that Wednesday is supposed to be a “Day of Rage” for Palestinians as a response to Israel extending its laws over parts of Judea and Samaria.

Now the Islamic Movement in Jordan is calling for another “Day of Rage” on Friday for Muslims worldwide.

In Gaza yesterday, there was a demonstration against the so-called “annexation”  sponsored by Fatah. The turnout was a bit underwhelming.

The Arab street – and even the Palestinian street - really doesn’t give a damn about the issue.

In Gaza, it will be “massive.”

In Madrid, they helpfully point out that they aren’t just against “annexation” but Zionism and Israel altogether.

In Los Angeles, the Jewish community is nervous that the protest will spread into rioting through the Jewish community. Notice it says “Zionist consulate.”

In Chicago, one of the sponsors is the Palestinian American Council, whose webpages do not have that logo.

Looking at that logo closer, it shows Israel not existing and “Palestine” is the flagpole for an American flag. The implication is that the destruction of Israel is a patriotic act.

Because we know how pro-America Palestinians are.

I somehow don’t think that the Palestinian American Council was upset when Abbas didn’t accept a phone call from the US vice president – or when Palestinians burn American flags.

It’s hard to think of a more prominent anti-Semite in American public life over the last 30 years than the Rev. Al Sharpton. Louis Farrakhan may give him a run for his money, but the leader of the so called Nation of Islam remains a pariah—Barack Obama was photographed with him once, in 2005, and never made that mistake again.

Sharpton is a different story. He has never apologized for leading a pogrom against the Jews of Brooklyn that marked the worst outburst of anti-Semitic violence in modern American history, but despite all that, or perhaps because of it, has laundered himself into an elder statesman and star television host whose endorsement ambitious Democratic politicians must now seek.

Look no further than MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who personally introduced a resolution condemning Sharpton’s "racist and anti-Semitic views" in his previous life as a Republican congressman. In his present life as a Trump-hating MSNBC host who has toyed with a presidential run, Scarborough celebrates Sharpton’s moral clarity about Facebook.

We never thought we’d see Sharpton embraced by Jews, but that’s what’s transpiring now as the Anti-Defamation League strays onto the Reverend’s turf—leading a boycott campaign against one of the most successful Jewish-owned businesses in the world. Its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, has tapped Sharpton as a partner in a political project to police objectionable speech that both are trying to cast as a modern civil rights issue.

Sharpton has come a long way. So has the ADL.

As Crown Heights burned, the organization had no trouble identifying Sharpton as an enemy of the Jewish people. "Anti-Semitism is all over the place in Crown Heights," the ADL’s then-director, Abraham Foxman, told the New York Times in August 1991. "It is ugly, it is crude, it is classical and it is deadly. And the fact that it is American and it is black should not make it invisible or tolerable."

A new Fox Broadcasting Company streaming channel canceled on Monday a scheduled live feed of an address by antisemitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan after facing a torrent of criticism.

Fox Soul — which is geared toward African Americans — advertised the July 4 speech under the title “The Criterion: The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan Speaks Live,” but soon after removed the ad from Twitter.

Following the widespread outcry, Fox Soul tweeted later on Monday that the Farrakhan speech would not be aired.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center had called for the broadcast to be scrapped, recalling, “Since the 1980s, Louis Farrakhan has denigrated the Jewish people, Judaism, and the Jewish State, members of the LGBT community, the United States of America, and entertainment leaders from Hollywood.”

It called Farrakhan “a demagogue and divider at a time when all Americans need to hear messages of unity and hope.”

“We urge Fox Television Network to cancel the speech by a person who has spent his adult life spitting on everything July 4th stands for,” they concluded.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders joined four House Democrats on Tuesday in calling for the United States to cut or withhold aid from Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu carries out his plan to annex parts of the West Bank or enacts policies to facilitate an eventual annexation, according to a source familiar with the matter.

A new letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urges the reductions to the $3.8 billion in annual American assistance to Israel if Jerusalem moves to unilaterally extend its sovereignty to West Bank territory.

The letter was orchestrated by the progressive powerhouse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and has thus far also been signed by Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, Washington state Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and Minnesota Congresseoman Betty McCollum.

Sanders’s signature adds new weight to the missive as Ocasio-Cortez continues to circulate it among liberal lawmakers on Capitol Hill, in an effort to gain more supporters.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, left, testifies before the House Oversight Committee on July 12, 2019 (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

“Should the Israeli government move forward with the planned annexation with this administration’s acquiescence, we will work to ensure non-recognition as well as pursue conditions on the $3.8 billion in U.S. military funding to Israel, including human rights conditions and withholding funds for the off-shore procurement of Israeli weapons equal to or exceeding the amount the Israeli government spends annually to fund settlements, as well as the policies and practices that sustain and enable them,” a draft of the letter says, according to a copy obtained by Jewish Insider.

The current level of US military assistance to the Jewish state was solidified in a 2016 memorandum of understanding between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government — roughly $38 billion over 10 years.

Michael Roth, a longtime president of Wesleyan University, is not one to bow to political pressure. He leads a university whose brand is emphatically left-wing. But in 2013, when the American Studies Association pledged allegiance to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel, Roth said that the boycott was “a repugnant attack on academic freedom.” Many university presidents rejected the boycott. But Roth’s rejection stood out for its clarity and force.

So when Roth opines that higher education has a special duty to “step up” as “anti-fascist,” I assume he means it. That’s unfortunate because, as noble as it sounds, the idea that universities should oppose fascism in the way Roth suggests is corrosive.

What does Roth mean by anti-fascist? Fascism, he argues, varies in character but shares some “core ingredients.” It “promises the return to a mythic greatness and an escape from the corrupt, weak and feminized present.” It “creates an enemy or a scapegoat whose elimination or domination will allow for those true, full members of society to thrive.” It “attacks ideas, science and education in the name of a deeper, pure belonging.” Let’s stipulate to Roth’s characterization. Being anti-fascist, then, means actively opposing fascism so understood, and not, as Roth makes clear, joining the antifa movement.

Universities, when they stick to their principles, are naturally inhospitable to fascism. In principle, university communities are distinguished by their willingness to follow arguments where they lead and to be ruled by the better argument. Without being closed to the value of myths, they aren’t friends of the “mythic.” In principle, university environments welcome inquirers of every kind. They aren’t friends of scapegoaters. In principle, universities are homes of science and education. Without being closed to the possibility that science does harm, they aren’t friends of the enemies of science. If, as the philosopher Jason Stanley has said, fascist politics is about “smashing truth and replacing it with power” universities, as friends of the truth, stand against fascism when they go about their business.

But when Roth says that universities should be antifascist, he means more than that. Now is no time to support “free inquiry and expression in the abstract” because “peaceful protesters are being beaten and gassed.” We “need to do more.”

I spoke with @NachumSegalNet about Black Lives Matter's structural anti-Semitism and the American Jewish community's refusal to acknowledge it or oppose it.https://t.co/f8Vvz0Q4Lh

— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) June 29, 2020

Former Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad: Muslims Should Attack Israelis, Not Europeans or Americans; We Should Support Blacks in the U.S. as a Means to Reduce American Pressure on Us pic.twitter.com/2f90DUEtLc

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) June 30, 2020

slamic terror group ISIS has seen a surge in popularity, particularly among left-leaning millennials, after officially changing its name to “Anti-ISIS.”

The group emphasized that it has not altered its mission or ideology and will continue to inflict mass casualty attacks on innocent civilians, primarily in the Muslim World. But calling itself Anti-ISIS has allowed the group to frame all its opponents as ISIS supporters.

“Why does that infidel Donald Trump keep dropping bombs on us, Anti-ISIS?” the leader of the terror group asked at a recent press conference. “Isn’t being anti-ISIS good? I guess he must support ISIS.”

Terrorists from the group said they were inspired by the success of their American counterpart Antifa, whose violent attacks against journalists, elderly and disabled people, and other civilians have been excused because their name literally means “anti-fascist.”

“I never thought Americans were dumb enough to embrace a violent nihilist group simply because they liked their name,” Anti-ISIS leader Amir Muhammad al-Mawla told The Mideast Beast. “I am very happy to say that I was wrong.”

We counted every instance in 2020 that HRW chief @kenroth tweeted "war crime," "war criminal" or "war criminals."

The results demonstrate a pathological obsession with demonizing Israel & the US.

So long as ideologues like Roth dominate world bodies, they will remain tainted.

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 30, 2020

Again I asked: "We just heard about Islamophobia from Pakistan for the Islamic states. Yet if they truly care about Muslims, why have they failed to bring a single resolution for 1 million Muslims detained in camps & persecuted for their religion by China?"

Room went silent. pic.twitter.com/H5tVxn0MZR

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 29, 2020

No joke: last summer 50 U.N. Human Rights Council reps PRAISED China for locking up 1 million Muslims:
🇵🇸 State of Palestine
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia
🇰🇵 North Korea
🇿🇼 Zimbabwe
🇻🇪 Venezuela
🇨🇩 DR Congo
🇵🇰 Pakistan
🇧🇮 Burundi
🇩🇿 Algeria
🇷🇺 Russia
🇪🇬 Egypt
🇸🇾 Syria
🇮🇷 Iran
🇮🇶 Iraq
...
READ: pic.twitter.com/ptSfmLOdIP

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 29, 2020

After Princeton canceled President Wilson:

PRESS: "Will the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights change the name of her headquarters, the Wilson Palace?"

UN: "Good question... you need to ask my colleagues at the Human Rights Council."

(U.N. Daily Press Briefing, June 29) pic.twitter.com/1q7babfFQh

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) June 30, 2020

During an Instagram live session with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) yesterday, Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour called on Jamaal Bowman, who currently leads Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) in last week’s Democratic primary in New York’s 16th district, to follow the legislative priorities of ‘The Squad’ — the group of progressive representatives comprised of Tlaib, Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) — with “no questions asked.”

“We told him, when you get to Congress he has very special instructions,” Sarsour said of Bowman. “You’re following four women of color there. When Rashida, Ilhan, AOC and Ayanna tell you to do something, no questions asked, you do what they say,” Sarsour said added while Tlaib chuckled.

Rebecca Katz, a spokeswoman for Bowman, told JI that Bowman “plans to work alongside the members of the Squad and all his colleagues.” Katz added: “As you will soon see, he will definitely ask plenty of questions.”

A subsequent post on Sarsour’s Instagram Sunday afternoon included a fundraising appeal on behalf of Tlaib, who is facing a serious challenge in her August 4 primary. Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones, who narrowly lost to Tlaib in 2018, is gaining in the polls on the incumbent.

Could Ann Arbor voters possibly pick a worse choice than Mozhgan Savabieasfahani for Ward 4?

If you lived in Ann Arbor, a leafy enclave in Michigan, you might be concerned about the cost of housing, or the deteriorating infrastructure. You might want to elect representative to the City Council with a commitment to fix "the damn roads".

Or not.

Mozhgan Savabieasfahani is hoping what motivates Ward 4 voters is local involvement in an intractable foreign conflict thousands of miles away from Michigan. She is running for Ann Arbor City Council on a "Divest from Israel platform"
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani , Candidate for Ann Arbor City Council

Savabieasfahani is no stranger to activist politics. Her facebook page is full of the language of demonization and dehumanization as she urges her followers to boycott Israeli "butchers"

Most alarming, Mozhgan Savabieasfahani is part of a contingent that has been harassing members of a local synagogue every Shabbat, when they go to pray. Much of the signage is unabashedly anti-Semitic.

The harassment has been going on for years, but was given wider attention when the Lawfare Project filed a lawsuit against the City, and the protesters. The plaintiffs are Beth Israel Congregation member Marvin Gerber and Ann Arbor resident Dr. Miriam Brysk, a Holocaust survivor.

Brooke Goldstein, Executive Director of The Lawfare Project described the situation:
"The City of Ann Arbor has completely abdicated its responsibility to protect the Jewish community from targeted, racist harassment at the hands of these protesters. There are few greater civil rights violations than impeding the free exercise of worship and assembly, and we are here to demand the city hold the protestors accountable under existing federal, state, and local laws."

Iowa state Sen. Randy Feenstra defeated longtime Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on June 2 in the Republican primary in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District.

Leading up to the election, King had made numerous remarks perceived to be bigoted, including inflammatory rhetoric condoning white supremacists and antisemites. These remarks, as well as similar ones over the years, were widely denounced by the American Jewish community, including conservative Jewish groups.

Last year, King lost his committee assignments and was heavily criticized in a resolution passed in the US House of Representatives that called him out by name after he asked how the term “white supremacist” was offensive.

Given King’s history, the Republican Jewish Coalition took the rare step and endorsed Feenstra against a sitting GOP incumbent.

In the lead up to the primary, Feenstra touted his conservative record and received key endorsements from social conservatives, pro-life groups and the US Chamber of Commerce. He also has an “A” rating by the NRA. Feenstra, who proudly noted his involvement in passing anti-BDS legislation in the Iowa state legislature in 2016, is looking to get back to basics and to bring an effective conservative agenda, Iowa values and strong support for Israel, to Washington.

In a television appearance on Monday, UK Labour leader Keir Starmer defended his decision last week to fire a top party official who tweeted and praised an interview with a British actress who claimed that Israel was responsible for police brutality against minorities in the US — an assertion Starmer described as an “antisemitic conspiracy theory.”

In an interview on the “Good Morning Britain” program, Starmer referred to the ousting of Shadow Education Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, saying, “I don’t want the Labour party and antisemitism in the same sentence ever again.”

Under Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour was plagued by antisemitism scandals, some involving Corbyn himself.

Starmer replaced Corbyn in April, in the aftermath of Labour’s resounding electoral defeat last December.

Labour’s Nia Griffith has said that defenders of Rebecca Long-Bailey are guilty of antisemitism while her colleague, Claudia Webbe, has refused to say whether she believes that the conspiracy theory publicised by Ms Long-Bailey was antisemitic or not.

Ms Long-Bailey was sacked from the Shadow Cabinet last week for sharing an article in The Independent in which the actress Maxine Peake promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theory that Israel was somehow to blame for the racist killing of George Floyd. Far-left factions of the Labour Party, including MPs have rallied to Ms Long-Bailey’s defence.

Ms Griffith, the Shadow Welsh Secretary, when asked whether MPs who supported Ms Long-Bailey were themselves guilty of antisemitism, replied: “Well I think they are and I think they’re also in danger of going backwards and going back over old arguments and old mistakes because what we need now is clear, decisive action to make sure that we root out antisemitism in the party.”

Among those defending Ms Long-Bailey are John McDonnell, the former Shadow Chancellor who launched a petition calling for Ms Long-Bailey’s reinstatement, and other MPs such as Claudia Webbe.

Ms Webbe appeared on BBC radio and was asked whether she believed that the conspiracy theory that appeared in the article shared by Ms Long-Bailey was antisemitic but refused to answer. “Was it antisemitic or not?” the host, Emma Barnett, asked at least four times, and Ms Webbe responded that “the leader himself has said that he didn’t fire Rebecca because she did something antisemitic,” an erroneous assertion that was quickly corrected by Ms Barnett. Ms Webbe refused to be drawn on whether the conspiracy theory was antisemitic, saying only “I’ve given you my answer,” “you’re not actually going to get any further from me” and “the conspiracy theory is wrong. Of course it’s wrong…I do know that it is a conspiracy theory absolutely.”

Ken Livingstone, who was suspended from Labour for comments about Hitler and Zionism, has also maintained, even following Ms Long-Bailey’s dismissal, that there is no antisemitism problem in the Party. Ms Webbe used to serve as a full-time advisor to Mr Livingstone.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has called on the BBC to ban Maxine Peake for appearances on its television and radio platforms until she makes amends for promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Ms Peake is reported in The Independent to have said: “The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.” Rebecca Long-Bailey MP subsequently shared the article and was consequently sacked from the Shadow Cabinet.

Ms Peake subsequently said for promoting the notion that Israel is to blame for the racist killing of George Floyd, saying: “I feel it’s important for me to clarify that, when talking to The Independent, I was inaccurate in my assumption of American Police training & its sources. I find racism & antisemitism abhorrent & I in no way wished, nor intended, to add fodder to any views of the contrary.”

However, Ms Peake did not apologise.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “Sir Keir Starmer has shown leadership by sacking a senior frontbencher for sharing Maxine Peake’s antisemitic conspiracy theory. The BBC should follow suit and end its work with Maxine Peake until she formally apologises for promoting an antisemitic trope and agrees to undertake antisemitism training. Her mealy-mouthed ‘clarification’ is not enough. If the BBC fails to act after having taken strong action against some of its own presenters for racial comments against other minorities, the public will rightly conclude that it has a double standard when it comes to antisemitism.”

An adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin whose salary is funded by taxpayer dollars launched a tirade on Twitter this weekend, in which he articulated a desire for Israel to be destroyed and for Catholicism to “die.”

First reported by the Young America’s Foundation, Spencer Wells was challenged by another user on his support for Iran bombing Israel and then launched into the hateful attack.

As YAF reported:
“After being questioned by a Twitter user if he was using sarcasm when encouraging Iran to bomb Israel, Spencer Wells replied: ‘Nope – I despise the Israelis. If you want to see the post-apocalyptic vision of what Apartheid in South Africa would have looked like in 2020, visit Israel. The Palestinians have suffered for far too long – bomb it until the sand turns to glass…'”

Wells also tweeted “F*** the Catholic Church” and an article detailing “10 Secrets the Catholic Church Hopes You’ve Forgotten,” with the hashtag #CatholicismMustDie.

According to his bio, Wells is a geneticist, anthropologist, author, entrepreneur, adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and owner of Antone’s, an iconic nightclub in Austin, Texas. (h/t jzaik)

“We are witnessing right now in the United States one of the most remarkable uprisings of black people against the structural regime of racial domination,” exclaimed Rutgers University law professor Noura Erakat. In a June 3 Arab Center Washington, D.C. (ACW) webinar alongside the equally extreme Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, this Palestinian-American academic duo drew on the intellectually vacuous rage of “intersectionality,” and the cult of victimhood it supports to connect America’s and Israel’s supposed sins. Along with five other panelists addressing the webinar’s topic, “The Threat of Israeli Annexation: Regional and International Implications,” the pair denounced America and Israel as allied imperialists.

Erakat’s family has a history of hostility towards Israel. She is the niece of PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat. Earlier this week her cousin, Ahmed Erekat, was killed by Israeli border guards at a checkpoint after a car-ramming terrorist attack in which he swerved, accelerated his car at a checkpoint and struck a guard, sending her flying through the air and leaving her with minor injuries. A video he made at some point before the attack shows a distraught Erekat (Campus Watch independently confirmed the translation) insisting he never betrayed his country, i.e., wasn’t a collaborator with the Israelis, that he had “degraded his parents and himself,” and that his “cowardice had driven him to this place,” meaning apparently suicide by police via his attack.

Despite this evidence, Noura Erakat went on the offensive, blaming Israelis for their “vicious, dangerous and disgusting allegations that this was a car-ramming,” calling it an “execution.” She claimed that “Israeli cowards” shot him and allowed Ahmed to “bleed out,” rather than render assistance (Israel denied the charge). “You lie. You kill. You lie,” she wrote; “the only terrorists” are the Israeli border guards who were attacked.

During her presentation, Erakat’s hatred for the West was equally clear, as she resorted to hackneyed leftist tropes about the American “empire” and “its colonies” even as looters nationwide destroyed productive free enterprises, often owned by minorities. America’s current rainbow coalition of rioters is thus “emblematic of a racial capitalist system that is built on settler-colonialism, which affirms once again the international nature of the black freedom struggle.”

Gibson’s extremist Catholic doctrine of hatred was evident in his film The Passion of the Christ. A nun who attended the clergy screening with me called it “a Jesus snuff film,” with the Jews in a strong supporting role directly responsible for the torture and crucifixion of Jesus. Even the Vatican denounced this interpretation, which had served as the basis for centuries of persecution of Jews by Christians.

Shortly afterwards, Rob Reiner invited me to his home to address a group at a screening of the film. A non-Jewish high-end carpenter pulled me aside later that night, and said, “Rabbi, I built Gibson’s library and at the end of a working day, he would sit me down for a drink. After imbibing four or five drinks, he would begin with his F*ng Jews rants. It made me extremely uncomfortable and I wanted to share this experience with you .”

On rare occasions, you can convert a truly repentant antisemite into an ally in the battle against hatred and bigotry. With Gibson, there was never a chance of that happening. One is left wondering why his friends in the industry won’t confront him on his bigotry. One also wonders why black Muslim celebrities and athletes won’t condemn another vicious antisemite, Louis Farrakhan. Ignorance as displayed by Chelsea Handler and others is no excuse, and failure to call out hate is unacceptable — especially these days.

Jewish actress and “Shameless” star Emmy Rossum posted a Twitter thread earlier this week about antisemitism in the film industry, prompted by the latest controversy involving Mel Gibson.

The Golden Globe nominee, 33, shared an article about Jewish actress Winona Ryder’s claim in a recent interview that at a party in the 1990s Gibson called her an “oven dodger,” a clear reference to the crematoria at Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and told her friend who was gay, “Oh wait, am I gonna get AIDS?”

Gibson denied the allegations.

Rossum — whose mother is of Russian-Jewish descent — commented, “This stirred up a lot for me in a time when I’m already pretty stirred. It’s disgusting. It’s sad. And yet not a surprising or unique experiece [sic] of the white supremacy and bigotry that pervades our country and industry at all.”

The “Phantom of the Opera” star then shared her own experiences with antisemitism in Hollywood.

“On multiple occasions I’ve had people — both in the industry and not — be surprised to learn that I’m Jewish. They usually react with “Oh! Wow. You don’t really LOOK Jewish,'” she wrote. “And when I offer no response and let the statement linger they continue with some kind of defensive qualifier like ‘I mean that in a GOOD way! As if ‘looking Jewish’ — whatever that means to them — is something I should want to avoid. This makes me sick.”

Antisemitic French comedian Dieudonné Mbala Mbala’s channel on YouTube was abruptly closed down on Tuesday morning as part of the online video platform’s effort to remove racist content.

A spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, told the news agency AFP that Dieudonné’s channel had been deleted due to his “repeated violations of our YouTube community policies.”

The comedian’s channel was one of “more than 25,000 channels violating hate speech rules” shut down by the platform over the last 24 hours.

Banned from the UK, Canada and Belgium among other countries, Dieudonné has been convicted numerous times in France for violating laws against hate speech and Holocaust denial.

In 2013, he suggested that a prominent Jewish journalist belonged in a “gas chamber,” which brought him a fine of $24,000.

Two years later, Dieudonné was hit with a seven-year suspended prison sentence and a $106,000 fine for a Facebook post in which he expressed sympathy with the Islamist terrorist who murdered four Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015.

In July 2019, he was fined 200,000 Euros and handed a two-year suspended sentence for tax evasion.

One of Dieudonné songs, titled “Shoananas” — a word that combines “Shoah,” the Hebrew word for “Holocaust,” with “ananas,” the French word for “pineapple” — pokes fun at the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis. The comedian is arguably best known for inventing the “quenelle” — an inverted Nazi salute that went viral in 2013.

Significantly, listeners were not informed that as yet no “plans” concerning what the BBC chooses to term ‘annexation’ have been made public.

As we have noted on previous occasions, the BBC has a history of ignoring stories which explain the need for security checks before permits are given to residents of the Gaza Strip to travel to or through Israel for the purpose of medical treatment. Knell made no effort to make up for that gap in BBC audience knowledge.

Notably, Yolande Knell did not interview Mahmoud Abbas or any of the other Palestinian officials responsible for the decision to harm only their own citizens by cutting off cooperation on medical issues, ostensibly as a way of protesting an Israeli action which has not yet taken place.

Instead – despite the fact that there has been no change at all in Israel’s approach – she echoed a campaign organised by assorted political NGOs by implying that Israel is also responsible for the failure of patients to receive medical treatment.

While it is obviously beneficial to BBC audiences that the BBC has finally shown some interest in at least one consequence of the Palestinian Authority’s decision to end “all agreements” with Israel, their understanding of the story would of course have been improved had Yolande Knell spoken to those responsible for the situation rather than just helpless patients and hospital staff.

Bateman refrains from informing readers that Givat Eitam – which lies within the jurisdiction of the Efrat local council – includes land owned by the Jewish National Fund subsidiary Himanuta as well as state land. Contrary to Bateman’s claim that “judges are due to rule”, various Hebrew media outlets reported in early May that the ruling has already been given.

Bateman recycles the ‘apartheid’ smear already seen in a previous BBC report.

“The Palestinian leadership, along with almost 50 experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, say this would formalise a system of “apartheid” in the West Bank – two peoples ruled by one state in the same space with unequal rights.”

Bateman’s road trip includes a press conference in Ramallah and readers get an extensive view of the Palestinian Authority prime minister’s stance. In addition to the headline portraying “Palestinians in despair”, readers are told that “[t]he Palestinians are defiant” but with the exception of the farmer from Artas, readers hear nothing of the views of ordinary Palestinians which may or may not support Bateman’s descriptions.

Tom Bateman’s account of his road trip does not provide readers with any new insights into the topic that the BBC has been pushing for almost a month and a half. The fact that audiences have not been given an objective and accurate account of the history of the region where Israeli civilian law may or may not be applied in the future in all that time indicates that the BBC is far more interested in promoting a chosen political narrative than in meeting the requirements of its public purposes.

Can you trust ANYTHING that David Irving wrote? In 1996, David Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt for libel (in the "Irving vs Penguin Books Ltd" trial) because Deborah Lipstadt had said Irving was a Holocaust Denier. Historian Richard Evans was called upon as an expert witness, and he examined Irving's works for two years, discovering many major factual errors in David Irving's works. Richard Evans came to the conclusion that Irving cannot even be classed as a 'historian', and says "not one sentence" in any of his speeches or written works can be trusted. Richard Evan's "Telling Lies About Hitler" presents a solid case against David Irving that casts serious doubt about every 'historical' text that Irving wrote, and this video presents 3 examples from Evan's brilliant book (this video is not a sponsored video, I genuinely think Evan's book is brilliant and you should get yourself a copy) that really should make you question the opinions of those who still promote Irving's works. (h/t MtTB)

Lithuanian lawmakers want to make 2021 the year of Juozas Luksa-Daumantas - a nationalist accused of participating in a Holocaust-era massacre of Jews.

Witnesses placed Luksa-Daumantas, a leader of the pro-Nazi Lithuanian Activist Front militia during World War II, at the 1941 Lietukis Garage massacre in Kaunas, where locals tortured and beat to death dozens of Jews.

Luksa-Daumantas was killed in 1951 by Soviet security services.

Celebrity chef Pete Evans has thrown his support behind notorious conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier David Icke.

Evans, 47, who himself is an anti-vaxxer and hoax peddler, interviewed the British author, 68, on Monday for an upcoming episode of his controversial podcast, Evolve With Pete Evans.

Promoting the interview via his Instagram on Monday night, Evans wrote: 'Just finished a 2 hour podcast with @davidickeofficial. Thank you David for a stimulating and enlightening heart opening conversation into the realm of infinite possibilities.'

Icke is known for his bizarre conspiracy theories such as claims the world is run by shape-shifting alien reptiles, that the moon isn't real and that the Jews bankrolled Hitler.

It is not suggested that Pete Evans endorses the views of David Icke relating to Holocaust denial.

Icke was banned from YouTube in May for making dangerous and unproven claims about COVID-19, including suggesting that the virus is linked to the 5G mobile network.

Israeli startup Healthy.io, a maker of an FDA-approved smartphone app that allows users to take urine analysis tests at home, has acquired US competitor inui Health for $9 million to “cement its leading position in the market” and increase its presence in the US.

In a blog post announcing the acquisition, Yonatan Adiri, the founder and CEO of the Tel Aviv-based firm, said that six years after its founding, the “Middle Eastern ‘Technology Camel’ is acquiring “a company from the valley of unicorns,” referring to Silicon-Valley based inui Health.

“inui Health has been working towards the same vision, back when routine home urine testing sounded crazy,” Adiri wrote. “Integrating the IP and know-how of the only other company to receive a Class II FDA clearance in our field will cement our leading position in the market, and will help us accelerate our ability to serve US patients.”

Healthy.io uses image recognition and artificial intelligence technologies to transform a smartphone camera into a scanner, to analyze urine test strips with clinical-grade precision. The firm was the first in the world to win US Food and Drug Administration approval for a smartphone camera used as a medical device that compares with a lab scanner.

Urine is the second most frequently conducted diagnostic test in the world. People around the world who need to get their urine tested — among which are pregnant women, diabetics and people with high blood pressure — generally need to go to a lab, pee in a cup, and hand in the sample to a nurse. The nurse dips a stick into the urine and scans it in a designated device that performs the analysis. The results are provided hours later to the doctor or the patient.

An Israeli startup, Redefine Meat, unveiled Tuesday what it said was the world’s first plant-based steak created using industrial 3D-printing and said it will start testing the alt-beef cuts at high-end restaurants in Israel as soon as next month, followed by marketing in Israel and elsewhere.

“We are actually printing steaks,” said Eshchar Ben-Shitrit, who set up the company, formerly known as Jet Eat, in 2018. “We have a product. It is something we are doing already in large amounts.”

The product fully replicates the muscle structure of beef. It is high-protein, no-cholesterol and looks, cooks, feels and tastes like beef.

“Today’s announcement marks the start of a new era in alternative meat – the alt-steak era,” Ben-Shitrit said.

The firm recently hosted Israeli chef Assaf Granit at its offices for a tasting. The chef said, in a video for The Great Big Jewish Food Festival, that eight out of ten people wouldn’t know the difference between real meat and the alt-meat produced by the company, and that the flavor of one of his recipes made with the Redefine Meat product was “almost identical” to the original.

The global meat substitute market is expected to reach $8.1 billion by 2026, according to data firm Allied Market Research.

Carl Reiner, the legendary Jewish-American comedy producer/writer/director/actor who created The Dick Van Dyke Show, movies such as The Jerk and the comedy skit, “The 2000 Year Old Man,” passed away at his home in Beverly Hills, California on Monday night at the age of 98, according to Variety.

Reiner, whose career began before World War II and continued to his last moments, set the standard for the Jewish-inflected humor that reshaped Hollywood and influenced all of American society. In one way or another, his Jewish identity was always an integral part of his work.

And, as the father of director/actor Rob Reiner, he was the patriarch of a comedic dynasty.

An enthusiastic Twitter user who posted several tweets on his last day on Earth, he regularly weighed in on the issues of the day or anything that piqued his interest.

His passing was mourned by a diverse group of luminaries on Twitter, including Steve Martin, Bette Midler, Natasha Lyonne, Mitzi Gaynor, Mel Brooks’ son Max Brooks, Dan Rather, Bill Kristol, Josh Gad, Ed Asner, Joy Behar, Alan Alda, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and David Simon.

The National Library of Israel is taking part in I-Tal-Ya Books, a new effort to create a unified listing of all Hebrew books in Italy.

The initiative, which will catalog some 35,000 books, is a collaborative effort by The Union of Jewish Communities in Italy, the Rome National Central Library, and the National Library of Israel. It is supported by the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe.

According to the National Library of Israel, there have been Jewish communities in Italy for more than two millennia, and they have played a critical role in global Jewish history, particularly as a significant center for manuscript production and printing.

Italy is home to thousands of uncatalogued rare Hebrew books, dating back hundreds of years. They are found among collections belonging to local Jewish communities, as well as in libraries owned by the state, the Italian Church Institutions, and the Vatican.

Until now, there has been no single integrated and standardized listing of the holdings, making it difficult for scholars and historians to find books.

The I-TAL-YA BOOKS initiative will ensure the protection and preservation of the books, using technology developed specifically for the project. The Union of Jewish Communities in Italy will oversee the project, with the Rome National Central Library hosting the catalog, and the National Library of Israel providing the relevant training, support and expertise related to Hebrew books.

Rare evidence of when and how Jerusalem was resettled after the Babylonian exile of 586 BCE has been discovered in an excavation in the City of David, just outside the Old City walls.

The two recent discoveries in an ongoing excavation in the Givati parking lot — a clay “official” seal impression and a strange DIY pottery sherd seal with fake writing — help illuminate the enigma that is 6th century BCE Jerusalem history. There are only 10 other similar artifacts discovered in Israel that date to the Persian period (circa 536 BCE-333 BCE).

“The Persian period is a black hole in archaeology,” Israel Antiquities Authority’s Dr. Yiftah Shalev told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. “Every time we find something, it’s like lighting a new candle — it gives a new light.”

Whereas the seal impression is made in an official imperial style, perhaps depicting a god, the crude clay seal is locally made, presumably by an illiterate underling. Combined, said Shalev, the seal and seal impression illustrate all levels of officialdom in the reviving city. They indicate, he added, that after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jews, Jerusalemites were rebuilding the city, including its bureaucracy, as told in the Bible.

During the Persian period, Jews are traditionally thought to have accomplished a “return to Zion” after the exile that followed the destruction of the First Temple, as depicted in the Biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The twin discoveries were uncovered in what appears to be a sort of shanty camp set up in the courtyard of an earlier Iron Age building destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and filled with two meters of debris.

“We knew there was a bureaucracy during the Persian period,” said Shalev. But the two seals — evidence that officialdom continued in the ruined city — represent “the first time that these things are shown in context in Jerusalem.”

Shalev said they date to the start of the Persian period and illustrate “how people are beginning to rebuild.”

Twenty years after the first woman took to the skies as Israel’s first combat pilot, the Israel Air Force will soon have its first female F-35 pilot, sources have told The Jerusalem Post.

She will reportedly fly in the 116th squadron, nicknamed “Lions of the South,” based out of Nevatim in southern Israel.

Israel was the first to use the F-35 in in a combat arena in 2018, just months after it declared operational capability. And according to foreign reports, Israel continues to use the jet for a range of missions.

By November, the IAF will have 27 F-35i Adir aircraft out of a total of 50 planes set to land in the coming years to make two full squadrons by 2024.

Once she gets her wings, she is expected to fly combat missions along with her fellow IAF pilots.

While there are several female F-35 pilots in the US Air Force, it is believed that she will be only the second woman to fly the advanced 5th-generation stealth fighter jet in combat.

In early June, US Air Force Capt. Emily “Banzai” Thompson made history by becoming the first woman to ever fly the F-35A Lightning II in combat out of Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.

“There’s a lot of females who have come before me, and there’s a lot of females already flying combat sorties in other platforms,” Thompson was quoted by a US Air Force news release as saying. “So just to be the person who gets that honor, that first, it just meant a lot.”

Last week, three women received their wings from IAF Commander Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin, joining a growing list of women who have taken to the skies in Israel’s air force.

Israeli singer-songwriter, Idan Raichel, was joined by the Commander of the "Hatzerim" Base, in a special performance for the new graduates of Israeli Air Force Flight Course 180.

The 40 graduates of the course received their wings on June 25, 2020, after completing the rigorous 3-year-long course. In the course, the new airmen underwent rigorous combat training—which included training with the IDF Paratrooper's Brigade—learned to pilot a variety of aircraft, and attained a Bachelor's degree in one of the optional tracks. These new graduates are prepared to defend Israel's skies!

It’s July 1, the day that Benjamin Netanyahu has been touting. The day that the Palestinian Arabs and their fans have declared a “Day of Rage.” The day that has been causing great angst in Western Europe. The day that countless articles and op-eds have been declaring the end of Israeli democracy. The day the UN said will witness a massive violation of international law.

And from all appearances, nothing will happen today.

The main reason seems to be that the Trump administration has not agreed to any change in the status quo, and possibly that it wanted Israel to make more concessions to Palestinians in concert with the move.

While I think Israel extending sovereignty on areas that it insists on keeping in any possible peace agreement is a good move that can contribute to peace, this entire affair was handled poorly and amateurly.

Here’s a scorecard:

Bibi is the biggest loser. His unfulfilled promise, especially one with a deadline, is a major blow to his credibility which has already been hit hard with his legal troubles and his insistence that he deserves tax breaks when the economy is in trouble.

Beyond that, Netanyahu didn’t plan for the day that sovereignty was to be extended. Israeli media was filled with stories about how no maps were prepared, no one who needed to know the details from the army to local mayors were kept in the loop. It was simply a fiasco. Major details like whether Palestinians in the newly sovereign territories would be offered citizenship were never clarified, allowing Israel’s haters to define the terms of the argument.

Bibi is normally a master strategist, but this was bungled from the start, and the lack of a contingency plan in case Trump didn’t approve is a huge rookie mistake.

Israel is a major loser. The plan generated lots of animosity towards Israel – and Israel doesn’t yet get any of the benefits. Furthermore, this fiasco has been a major speedbump in Israel’s improving relations with Gulf countries. It has damaged Israel’s relations with much of Europe. No one in the world has defended the plan. And Israelis themselves have not generally supported the plan; it was heavily criticized from the left and the right.

American Jewry and American Zionists have lost. This aborted plan has caused big splits in the community as organizations were forced to take positions they weren’t altogether comfortable with, with insufficient information as to the extent of the plan. Jewish unity towards Israel has already been battered by Obama and by Trump, but now it was done by the prime minister of Israel who never properly explained what extending sovereignty meant and the benefits it would have for everyone.

The Palestinian Authority has lost. Their attempts to inflame anger among their people has failed. No one cares. They cannot even claim victory, because Bibi might end up slowly extending sovereignty over some settlement blocs, and a single square millimeter would be considered a major loss to them.

Israel’s haters have won, but not because their tweets had any effect. They’ve won because Israel has lost credibility and its friendship with many countries has been hurt. They’ve won because they have had months of opportunities to slander Israel without Israel being able to answer because the plan was never solidified.

Possibly worst of all, this fiasco isn’t over. If Netanyahu decides to extend sovereignty over bits and pieces of Judea and Samaria, every single move will generate more anger, more negative media and more denunciations from world leaders who are otherwise sympathetic with Israel. Instead of weathering the world’s opprobrium all at once, it will be spread out over months or longer.

If Bibi abandons the plan altogether, it makes Israel look weak in a Middle East where only strength is respected.

This has been a debacle on every level.

The Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative describes itself this way:

MESPI is a curated interactive platform for Middle East Studies resources, specifically tailored for the needs of teachers, researchers, and students. It is a one-stop-shop for course design on the macro level, lesson planning on the micro level, and for scholarship vis-a-vis specific topics, countries, and disciplines. The MESPI project strives to reorient the way educators and students research, learn, and teach the Middle East.

In Cooperation with The Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University (GMU), The Center For Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, The Asfari Institute For Civil Society And Citizenship at the American University in Beirut, the Center for Global Islamic Studies at GMU, we are launching he Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI) to provide critical, user-friendly, and informative pedagogical material and instruction to educators in the field and beyond. MESPI will build on at least four counts: a) create and grow a community/network of educators; b) make available to them and to researchers, journalists, and students a wide array of resources; c) provide in good time a robust syllabus-building tool; and, finally, and most critically, d) MESPI will build partnerships with research centers, organizations, and projects that will constitute its evolving decision-making body.

Every article and book I see on the site that mentions Israel is anti-Israel. It is associated with Jadaliyya and the Arab Studies Institute. 

The site highlights such anti-Israel luminaries as Noura Erekat. A typical article on the site is an interview with Smadar Lavie, author of Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture, where she says

Wrapped argues that the plight of Israel’s Mizraḥim and the plight of the Palestinians are complementary. Both are subject to the state of Israel’s deployment of war as a unifying force to divert attention from domestic issues of racial and gender justice through the sanctity of the “chosen people” in their “chosen land.”

While Mizraḥi feminists stage protests against the neocon restructuring of Israel’s economy and society, this all but disappears when Israel undertakes a new cycle of violence against the Palestinians. They do not challenge their communities’ ultranationalism. As a result of the Jewish state’s unity against all goyim (non-Jews, Hebrew; enemies, colloquial Hebrew), the Mizrahim, Israel’s demographic Jewish majority—racialized and minoritized—increasingly vote for right-wing, authoritarian politicians.

This is antisemitism in an academic wrapping. And it is hardly the only example. Other articles include, for example, “a selection from the University of California Press on the theme of Occupation and Militarism in Palestine/Israel.”

Using academia to smear Israel is nothing new. But this is a project specifically meant to create fully anti-Israel curricula throughout universities, and possibly high schools, while positioning it in the larger context of Middle East studies.

(h/t Irene)

Is it antisemitic to like a post of a Louis Farrakhan video that has nothing to do with Jews? Or is liking such a post just plain ignorance of the fact that Farrakhan is an ugly antisemite? A sign of cluelessness?

Is it antisemitic to criticize Israel and its duly elected leadership? Or could it be an honest opinion or about not knowing any better: not realizing you’ve been fed a load of propagandist hogwash? 

By letting lesser antisemites earn the label, do we dilute the significance of our cause? 

These are questions at the heart of the hot debate generated by last week’s column, an attempt at building a comprehensive list of antisemitic celebrities, a work in progress.

The article in question begins with the statement that building such a list is probably impossible. First, there’s the question of whom to include. Some wanted me to include, for instance, Barack Obama, who took pains to hurt Israel whenever possible. Obama is no longer a politician, and since he is famous, he certainly qualifies as a celebrity. Keeping things simple, however, meant sticking to a narrow definition of the celebrity as entertainer: singers, actors, and the like.

Speaking of Obama, some said that if we’re going to include actors for liking Handler’s Farrakhan post, we should include all the actors who supported Obama.

Others said we should include all the entertainers who supported the Iran deal, which surely poses an existential threat to the Jewish State.

Satisfying IHRA

Some commentators, notably CAMERA UK’sAdam Levick, felt that some of the celebrities listed had clearly crossed the line, while others hadn’t, and that the inclusion of the latter diluted the significance of the word antisemitism, by conflating the former with the latter. Levick referenced the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, stating that this should be the only accepted criteria for such a list. While I respect and appreciate Levick’s thoughtful disagreement, I find that interpreting a celebrity’s behavior according to the IHRA definition is somewhat subjective.

In fact I had referenced the IHRA definition in building my list, in particular noting the examples listed below the definition for illustration purposes, including the following:

“Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

Mental Boxes

Keeping the above in mind, prior to including a name on the list, I asked several questions, ticking off mental boxes:

Had the celebrity leveled similar accusations against other countries? Or are the accusations made only against Israel?

Is the celebrity voicing benign tourist-type complaints about the weather or the food in Israel? Or is the celebrity with the public platform singling out Israel for criticism by insulting Israel’s leadership and/or accusing Israel of malfeasance in relation to its Arab population and its legal maritime blockade of Gaza?

If the latter, it seems to me such criticism of Israel is dissimilar to criticism of other countries, and directly targets the Jewish State based on anti-Israel propaganda, alone. But should we blame celebrities for believing what they read in the media? For not taking the time to read more varied reports from which a truer, more positive picture of Israel might emerge? 

Yes. Because in antisemitism, as in life, ignorance is always a choice. Especially when it comes to singling out the Jewish State from one’s very public platform.

Liking A Public Figure

The same is true of liking a post of Farrakhan speaking out against racism—a post having nothing to do with this public figure’s very vocal and infamous expressions of antisemitism. If you’re going to put yourself out there and like a Farrakhan post, you better know what you’re liking. And by now, who doesn’t know who Farrakhan is, and what he represents? And if you don’t, why don’t you? You’re an adult. You are putting yourself out there in the public eye on a variety of causes, using your celebrity to stump for presidential candidates and to advocate for change.

The use of a public platform is a responsibility, and like all responsibilities, requires a familiarity with current events and a thorough study of the subject in question. If you like a Farrakhan video, you better know all about the man. That, in essence, is your job as a celebrity voicing support for a movement or a cause.

When Israel is singled out for criticism—or when a celebrity favors a post highlighting the views of a notorious antisemite—I believe the IHRA working definition of antisemitism has been satisfied.

Natalie Portman's Calculated Insult 

Take Natalie Portman. The Jewish actress, who was born in Israel (hence an Israeli citizen), received the coveted Israeli Genesis Prize but refused to attend the awards ceremony because she “did not want to appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to be giving a speech at the ceremony.” But Portman announced her decision not to attend six months after she had confirmed her attendance to the Genesis Prize Foundation, and a full nine months after the award was announced. From the Genesis Prize website:

“This announcement was made almost six months after Ms. Portman confirmed her attendance at the Genesis Prize ceremony. Prior to accepting the Genesis Prize, Ms. Portman was made aware that the Genesis Prize is a partnership between our foundation, the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel, and The Jewish Agency for Israel. Moreover, we informed Ms. Portman that the Prime Minister of Israel presents the Genesis Prize and also delivers a keynote address at the award ceremony.”

So Portman accepted the award knowing that Netanyahu partners with the foundation, presents the prize, and delivers the keynote address at the award ceremony. But she let everyone think she was coming to Israel to accept the prize, then used her public platform, at the last minute, to insult the elected leader of Israel and to bash Israel’s policies on Gaza. In fact, Portman kept changing her mind: was she not coming to the awards ceremony to insult Bibi or to make a point about Israel’s policies in Gaza? Whatever the reason, it was a concerted attack on Israel: an insult, planned and calculated to embarrass Israel—to make Israel look bad.

Dave Lange (Aussie Dave) of Israellycoolfeels that Portman is within her rights to criticize Israel and Netanyahu, in part because she is an Israeli citizen. I disagree. Portman doesn’t live in Israel, doesn’t vote in Israeli elections and uses her celebrity to accuse Israel and Israel’s duly elected leadership of malfeasance. Her last-minute announcement regarding the Genesis Prize was planned, timed, and calculated to demonize Israel and its democratically elected leadership. Portman’s dissent with Israel’s prime minister and the policies of the Israeli government are based on a narrow, unflattering view of the Jewish State, an obvious byproduct of anti-Israel propaganda/biased media reports.

Comparing Israel to the Nazis

Portman’s statement (quoted in the above-linked Israellycool piece) regarding her decision to skip the awards ceremony further fulfills the IHRA working definition of antisemitism by accusing Israel of “atrocities” and appearing to compare Israeli actions in Gaza with Nazi activity during the Holocaust:

“Israel was created exactly 70 years ago as a haven for refugees from the Holocaust. But the mistreatment of those suffering from today’s atrocities is simply not in line with my Jewish values. Because I care about Israel, I must stand up against violence, corruption, inequality, and abuse of power.”

IHRA examples of antisemitism include: "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis."

Portman seems to own her Israeli citizenship when she can use it to hurt Israel. But when she stumps for Obama in Ohio, she’s suddenly “Very Ohio,” though Obama’s intention to fund the mullahs’ nuclear program, with its expressed intention of obliterating the Jewish State, was well known.

Will the real Natalie Portman please stand up? Actually, I believe she has. Which is why she stays on the list. Of course, part of the problem of creating the list was how to document antisemitism while keeping things simple.

Portman Email Chain Scandal

Each celebrity’s name was linked to a single news item. In Portman’s case, I could have listed many more such items. There was, for example, that public temper tantrum about having her email address outed on an email chain about Gaza. Was Portman only upset about having her address exposed, or was she upset at being included in an effort supportive of the Jewish State of Israel? From Gawker:

“A few weeks before sending the email, Kavanaugh, an outspoken supporter of Israel, had become the first major studio head to denounce a letter, signed by actors Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, that condemned the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip. He later wrote an editorial for The Hollywood Reporter calling for the film industry to stand with Israel against Palestine.

“Kavanaugh and Rotholz's forwarding habits were irritating enough to Portman that she'd previously asked Kavanaugh to remove her from the list: ‘you should not be copying me publicly so that 20 people i don't know have my personal info,’ she admonished the producer. ‘i will have to change my email address now.’

"’Sorry,’ he replied. ‘You are right jews being slaughtered for their beliefs and cannes members calling for the boycott of anything Israel or Jewish is much much less important then your email address being shared with 20 of our peers who are trying to make a difference. my deepest apologies.’ (Grimace emoji.)”

Antisemitic Or Just Clueless?

Moving along, many voiced disgruntlement at Jennifer Aniston’s name being included on the comprehensive list of antisemitic celebrities. Her name is linked to a story about all the celebrities who liked Chelsea Handler’s Instagram post with Farrakhan’s video about racism. She liked a post?? Why does that earn her the sobriquet of antisemite?

Because ignorance is a choice: lather, rinse, repeat. Farrakhan is a notorious public figure who has said so many horrible things that simply appearing in a photo with him is enough to damage reputations. The Southern Poverty Law Center called his organization Nation of Islam, a "hate group" (and so apparently did Martin Luther King). 

If Aniston doesn’t know about Farrakhan, she should. She has a duty to know before approving any message issuing forth from his mouth. But just for the record, here are a few choice Farrakhan quotes (see HERE for more examples):

“Satanic Jews have infected the whole world with poison and deceit.”

“The Jews have control over those agencies of government.  When you want something in this world, the Jew holds the door.”

“Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out, turning men into women and women into men…. White folks are going down. And Satan is going down. And Farrakhan, by God’s grace, has pulled a cover off of that Satanic Jew, and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through.  You good Jews better separate because the satanic ones will take you to hell with them because that’s where they are headed.”

What makes anyone think Aniston would be woke enough to know about Farrakhan? Aniston has, in the past, used her celebrity platform to take a stance on other political issues, which suggests she keeps up with current events. Aniston’s political activism goes back to at least 2003 and the Second Intifada, when she, along with ex-husband Brad Pitt, created their “One Voice” peace initiative.

Aniston: Describing A False Equivalence 

At a time when Israeli civilians, including children, were being blown to bits on buses by suicide bombers, I found it particularly insensitive when Aniston and Pitt, in their joint statement, drew a false equivalence between Arab and Israeli society, suggesting that Israeli children, like their Arab counterparts, were growing up learning to hate:

"The last few years of conflict mean that yet another generation of Israelis and Palestinians will grow up in hatred. We cannot allow that to happen."

A quick glance at the work of IMPACT-se, shows that the opposite is true. Arab school children are inculcated with hate by their teachers and their textbooks every day in their UNRWA classrooms. Israeli textbooks, on the other hand, contain no such incitement or racism. Because this is contrary to Jewish values and the values of the Jewish State. Which is why Arabs are found alongside Israelis in every Israeli sector and sphere, including in the Israeli parliament, where Arabs make up the third largest party in the Israeli Knesset. Which is why accusations of Israeli “Apartheid” are equally spurious. (Also: Israelis were not blowing up buses of Arab civilians in 2003 or at any other time.)

Aniston and Pitt, with their false assertion that another generation of Israeli children are growing up in hate, fulfill this IHRA example of antisemitism: "Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such . . . "

Some might suggest that Aniston is merely clueless for liking Handler’s Farrakhan post, or for suggesting a false equivalence between Israeli and Arab children. But actions have consequences and if you use your celebrity platform to prove you are woke, you better actually BE woke, by being conversant with current events and the varied perspectives on these issues. Is Farrakhan worthy of a like when he speaks out against racism? Is he an upright human being one should like or quote? Are Israelis actually growing up “in hatred” or is that something you say to make you feel better about Arab terror?

Silverman: Defending An Assailant Of IDF Soldiers

Sarah Silverman was another addition to my list to which some readers took exception. Silverman’s name was linked to her support for then 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi, who was arrested for physical and verbal abuse of IDF soldiers. Linking to an Amnesty International campaign for Tamimi’s release, Silverman tweeted, “Jews have to stand up EVEN when—ESPECIALLY when—the wrongdoing is BY Jews/the Israeli government."

The IHRA definition of antisemitism includes this example: "Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation."

Is it wrong to arrest a 17-year-old who assaults the military? Would it be wrong in America? Or is it only wrong when Israeli soldiers are on the receiving end of the assault?

This is “as a Jew” criticism of Israel at its worst. Tamimi has been assaulting Israeli soldiers for years. From the link I supplied with Silverman’s entry:

“Many Palestinians consider her a political icon as she has a history of confronting IDF soldiers. Ahed Tamimi had first came to public prominence when, aged 11, she appeared in another video threatening to punch a different soldier.”

Exploiting Fame

Dave Lange has been documenting Ahed Tamimi’s behavior at Israellycool for years, dubbing Tamimi “Shirley Temper” due to her youth, her big blond frizz, and her temper tantrums. The Tamimi family is notorious for using its children to attack the State of Israel. The whole family is involved in one way or another in this effort. Why not? This is, after all, the same clan that is responsible for masterminding the Sbarro Pizzeria Massacre. Which is why none other than Arnold Roth, responding to Silverman’s tweet, wrote:

“Entertainers exploiting their fame are often a poor choice for clarifying what’s moral or good. Sarah, did you stand up for our daughter Malki and the other 15 Jewish lives extinguished by Ahlam Tamimi, Ahed’s cousin and role-model-in-life? Do you stand with Ahed’s call to kill?”

If Silverman is going to stick her neck out and criticize Israel, she has an obligation to know all the facts, from every angle. A simple Google search would have led her to Lange’s comprehensive coverage of Tamimi’s antics. Is it fair for Silverman to single out the Jews and Israel for criticism in regard to Tamimi’s arrest? In my opinion, her tweet is antisemitism according to the IHRA definition. Because a girl of 17 with a long, documented record of assault, no matter in which country the assault occurs, and no matter the religion of the victims she assaults, should be held culpable.

When celebrities use their public platforms to demonize Israel on the basis of propaganda, that's antisemitism. If you're going to single out the Jewish State, you better be basing your assertions on fact, or we'll call you out on them. Otherwise, it's gratuitous hate.

Criticism Of Israel, Alone

Is Portman leveling accusations against the democratically elected leaders of other countries? Is she turning down awards from other countries based on what she thinks about their leaders? No. Her accusations extend to Israel, alone.

Is Aniston merely clueless? No. She is a person who follows current events enough to start a peace initiative on behalf of people who don’t live in her own country.

What about Silverman, who fights for the freedom of a girl who has been made into an anti-Israel propaganda tool by her family? Does Silverman have a right to criticize Jews and Israel for detaining this “girl” who is now on the cusp of adulthood? Context is everything.

Silverman used her celebrity to call for the release of a person with a long record of assaulting Israeli soldiers. That cannot be understood in a kind light. Silverman is singling out Israel. We don’t see her demanding the release of anyone else assaulting soldiers in any other country. No. She only holds the Jews, her own people, to account. Only the Jews are not allowed to pursue justice in response to physical assault, according to Silverman.

Shades Of Antisemitism

I do understand that there are levels and gradations of antisemitism. I understand those insisting on nuance and proof. Because there is a difference between making a political statement and outright Jew-hatred. There's a difference between Mel Gibson calling Jews "oven dodgers" and liking a tweet that has nothing to do with Jews.

The point of making a comprehensive list, however, is that it should be comprehensive. The idea of such a list is to let these people know we see them. We know what these celebrities are doing. And their behavior is unacceptable, no matter how rich, talented, and beautiful they are.

When celebrities use Israel to virtue signal, they turn Israel into a common icon for everyday condemnation and abuse, in which Israel becomes the pivot on which all attacks turn. Celebrities use Israel to get attention. Because when they demonize Israel, they know they will receive applause and approbation. And this is disgusting.

It's Not Torah M'Sinai

The “comprehensive list of antisemites” is not Torat Moshe M’Sinai. My suggestion is that you use it as a tool to take a stand and defend your values. One commenter suggested as much: “I think the list is fine even if—especially if—it's as blunt a tool as those used by the critics. Let them stand on their own values and defend them. We are in an either/or world now. Take a stand and live with it.”

My feeling is that the links on each name in the list tell us to be careful about these people at a minimum. We need to be careful about people who like a post featuring a notorious antisemite, even if that “like” was totally innocent and clueless. There are all kinds of (poor) excuses for bad behavior. But ignorance is no excuse at all. Just as we wouldn’t give the Nazis a pass because they had “no choice” or because they were swept away by Hitler’s charisma.

Some say that being cavalier in my determination of who is and isn’t an antisemite is not strategic. Guilty as charged. I am not a strategist. I believe in speaking out against even a hint of antisemitism. You don’t have to be a Mel Gibson to make it onto my list. At the same time, there has to be something to look at. One friend wanted me to include John Travolta because of an old (dismissed) lawsuit in which the complainant alleged Travolta said Hollywood was run by old Jewish homosexuals"who expect favors in return for sexual activity." 

The case was dismissed. It’s hearsay. I have no reason to believe this report and neither do you. It’s a rumor, it’s only slander: an anecdote. So Travolta stays off the list. Unless you have something real to show me.

Ignorance Is A Choice

Clueless about the antisemitism of Farrakhan? Ignorance is a choice. So is speaking out against what you don't know about. Of the famous four sons of the Passover Seder, the last is an ignoramus. The famous commentator Rashi calls him “evil.” Because . . . wait for it . . .  ignorance is a choice.

Which is why some of those who made it onto my list are, according to one commentator, “just ignoramuses and dolts, not antisemites. Useful idiots. But, still, stupidity is not an excuse when the issues are not trivial. They are taking a position, and should be called on it.”

I concur. Antisemitism is an important topic and we should be able to discuss it with due frankness. We need to be aware of our enemies, their supporters, and their enablers. Sometimes the three are indistinguishable.

If we lived in a kinder, softer world, we could ignore the threat and be fine. But considering the times, we need to take note. And when push comes to shove, it doesn’t much matter if a celebrity is motivated by ignorance or hatred. Liking a post about Farrakhan is as bad as admiring Hitler’s paintings. It’s fruit of the poisonous tree.

You may disagree with this or that entry on the comprehensive list of antisemitic celebrities. But the IHRA working definition of antisemitism tells us that when you slander Jews, it's wrong. The IHRA working definition of antisemitism tells us that when you take a position against Israel, singling Israel out for criticism, it’s wrong. It stands as a basic denial of the right of the Jewish people to be a people, it's a denial of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and self-defense. It’s siding with the enemy narrative. As such, there is no practical difference between anti-Zionists and antisemites.

Speech Has Consequences

One commenter wrote that in Judaism, we have a commandment to guard one’s tongue. “Because there is [the] realization that [the] consequences of one’s speech can be far-reaching and extremely damaging to others.”

We need to let people know that when they like a post focused on a notorious antisemite it makes us nervous. We need to let them know that when they single out Israel or the Jews for criticism, it’s wrong. Jews are made of DNA like every other people and we have a right to be treated as normal people. Our country has a right to be treated as any other normal country.

In this light, creating a comprehensive list of antisemitic celebrities serves as an attempt to dissociate ourselves from those who, with their unthinking actions and words, put the Jewish people in greater danger. Perhaps their deeds are unwitting. All the same, they aid our mortal enemies. We cannot afford to stick our heads in the sand, and ignore the things they do, clueless or not.

I will end this by saying thank you to all who helped to form the debate. I think the discussion helped to refine my own views. Thank you for letting me learn from you. I am sure you can see yourselves in this piece.

And to the world at large, know this: when you like a video of an antisemite or speak out against Israel and only Israel, or without fully knowing the facts, it makes you a willful ignoramus. Which makes you an antisemite. Because ignorance is always a choice.

No matter how famous you are.

Introduction

Israel has announced that it will apply Israeli civilian law to areas of Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley, (the area renamed “the West Bank” by Jordan after 1948), on or after July 1, 2020. Whereas this is seen by some as a hurried political decision, the more fundamental question is, does Israel have the right to do this under international law?

The answer to this question is a clear – Yes.

The League of Nations allocated all of Israel, including these areas, for the purpose of establishing the Jewish National Home in 1922. No other internationally recognized instrument has superseded that decision;
The Arab countries and most of the Arabs resident in British Mandate controlled Palestine, rejected the 1947 UN partition plan, so it has no relevance today under international law.
No other country has a legal claim to that territory;
No state border has ever separated Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley from the rest of Israel;
The application of Israeli law to Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley should not be referred to as “Annexation”, since annexation is the acquisition of territory by one State “at the expense of another State”.

Accordingly, Israel has the right under international law to Israel apply its civilian law to these areas.

The last few weeks have seen a herd mentality take hold and misrepresentations about Israel abound. There has been fevered discussion over Israel’s proposed application of civilian law to parts of Area C in the West Bank. The move is consistently misrepresented as “annexation” and a “violation” of international law. Both allegations are false. The misconceptions betray a concerning level of ignorance. Most importantly, they stand in the way of any informed debate about the pros and the cons of the move.

There is an urgent need to realise that what is being considered is a change to the internal administrative legal framework in certain parts of Area C of the West Bank, which would replace military law with the civilian law that applies throughout Israel. The existing framework was intended to be temporary, but it has been dragged out for 53 years, through decades of failed negotiations. It is regarded as an inadequate and antiquated administration, comprising a confusing patchwork of Ottoman, British Mandate, Jordanian law and aspects of international humanitarian law.

The clamour of allegations that this proposal would violate international law rejects fundamental principles of international law and deploys double standards against Israel. Any legal analysis of the status of the disputed territory cannot ignore the basic principle that a country cannot be said to “occupy” territory that does not belong to another sovereign and to which it has a credible claim of title. The UK certainly does not recognise Palestinian sovereignty over the territory. Israel has the strongest legal claim to the territory, based on a fundamental principle of international law governing the formation of new states and the delineation of their boundaries.

The universal rule for determining borders for emerging states, ‘uti possideitis juris’, dictates that they are established with the administrative boundaries of the prior administrative entity. Israel was preceded by the ‘Mandate for Palestine’, which was established by the League of Nations and administered by Britain. As the only state to emerge from the Mandate in 1948, international law dictates that Israel inherited the Mandate’s administrative boundaries. This principle provides that the territory concerned has been under Israeli sovereignty since Israel’s independence, even during Jordan’s occupation of the territory between 1948 and 1967. While the territory is politically disputed, the legal principle is clear. The term “annexation” is fundamentally misconceived.

As things heat up in @Israel with talk of #sovereignty being applied by @BenjaminNetanyahu in Judea & Samaria, check out the #CPAC2020 panel we featured with @LeeZeldin@ScottWalker@CarolineGlick @YishaiFleischer which helps make sense of it all: https://t.co/4TKvbmrHMV

— CPAC 2020 (Text CPAC to 56479) (@CPAC) June 30, 2020

I believe that it is possible for multicultural countries to succeed, but it is incredibly difficult to say the least, which is why most multicultural states do not succeed. It requires making the vast majority of a country's citizens believe in a national identity that supersedes any racial, ethnic, or religious identity. The only country I know that has been able to do this successfully and last through the centuries is Switzerland, which is largely a country of three distinct ethno-linguistic groups of Germans, French, and Italians. The Swiss Confederation has largely avoided the violence and strife that plagues so many other multicultural states. But as I understand Swiss history, the cantons that make up today's Swiss Confederation united for the sake of collective security to protect their freedom against neighboring imperial powers. Thus, over time, the Swiss have been able to forge a collective identity that has endured to this day.

A similar, but not identical, scenario has played out in Canada. The provinces that make up Canada united largely due to the threat faced by revolutionary America. Nevertheless, the unity of Canada has always remained tenuous, especially in regards to the majority French-speaking province of Quebec, in which many people yearn for independence. There is also the ongoing tension between different regions of the vast country as the needs of each region differ significantly from one another.

Quebec, and to a lesser extent, western Canada, want to preserve what they perceive as their distinct identities. It remains to be seen whether or not Canada will continue to flourish, or if regional, ethnic, racial, and linguistic differences will tear it apart. Moreover, it is almost impossible to export Canadian-style multiculturalism to the Holy Land, where the Jewish and Palestinian peoples have two very distinct narratives and national ambitions, and where there is no sense that a binational arrangement for the sake of collective security is needed.

If Jews and Palestinians were forced to live with each other in the same country, the results would be disastrous and would probably result in Jews being victims of another holocaust. Once such a state was formed, the Jewish people would quickly become a minority, as millions of Palestinian so-called refugees would stream into the country, thereby creating a Palestinian majority, who would attempt to erase any trace of Jewish heritage in the Holy Land. At best, we the Jewish people would be reduced to a persecuted minority, just like many of the persecuted minorities in Muslim countries. At worst, we would be exterminated.

On June 30, 1920, 100 years ago, Herbert Samuel landed in Palestine to assume his duties as Britain’s High Commissioner of the Mandate. He left Palestine in 1925 with one of his last duties attending the opening of Hebrew University. Much took place during his five years in office – firebrand Haj Amin el Hussein was appointed Grand Mufti, Arab rioters attacked Jewish communities, a British “White Paper” limiting Jewish immigration was issued, the Chief Rabbinate was established, and extensive public works were carried out.
The arrival of Sir Herbert Samuel, British Mandate.
“The new era in Palestine. The arrival of Sir Herbert Samuel, British Mandate. High Commissioner [wearing white]. June 30, 1920. Rowboat bringing Sir Herbert Samuel ashore at Jaffa.” (Library of Congress’ caption)

Herbert Samuel was active in British politics and a committed Zionist. At the beginning of World War I, Samuel, then serving in the Home Office, drafted a memorandum, “The Future of Palestine,” which he gave to Foreign Secretary Edward Grey and Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George. He proposed a Jewish state as a “foundation of enlightenment.”1 Little attention was given to the idea by the government until the Palestine front developed into a full-fledged war.

Samuel’s national standing can be deduced by this recruitment poster directed at the Jewish communities in the British Commonwealth, including Canada.

When the war in Palestine ended in 1918, a military government was established. Many officials and officers who were opposed to the Zionist goals, such as Col. Ronald Storrs, discriminated against the Jewish communities in many areas of administration and preferred to respond to Arab demands. “Thoroughly unsympathetic to the Zionist cause, Storrs made sure that, for example, Jerusalem’s Jewish majority was not reflected in the distribution of municipal power,” according to Balfour 100, a site dedicated to the Balfour Declaration centenary.

Today's Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews and glorify -- and handsomely profit from -- violence against them.

It is common today to find references to Palestine as a mainly Muslim Arab state that has supposedly been "stolen" by Jews, or promised but not given to those people who describe themselves as Palestinians. That is an immense misconception, albeit one that seems to influence political and legal thinking internationally, especially among people who would like to believe it.

In a clearer understanding [of international law], Israel's planned move appears to be legal.

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.... [T]he moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."— PLO leader Zuheir Mohsen, the Dutch newspaper Trouw, March 31, 1977.

This is where the plan for extending Israeli law over more territory becomes simpler to resolve both legally and morally. However many times the Palestinian Arabs have been offered a state, they have chosen to turn it down, rejecting generous peace offers. They have preferred to use terrorism and three wars launched from Gaza in pursuit of their fantasy of destroying Israel. By 2017, they had rejected no fewer than seven peace offers, and this year Mahmoud Abbas turned down the new US-Israeli peace plan.

Fortunately, if Israel were to extend Israeli law to more land, the move could present a great opportunity to end the conflict. The decisive end by Israel to a Palestinian fantasy that should never have been humoured in the first place might finally enable Palestinian leaders finally to start their citizens on a constructive -- rather than a destructive -- path.

Israel will annex portions of the West Bank in July but only after US President Donald Trump has made a statement on the matter, Regional Cooperation Minister Ofir Akunis (Likud) told Army Radio on Wednesday.

Sovereignty “will certainly happen in July,” but it has to be done in partnership with the US, Akunis explained, noting that Israel and the US were still ironing out their differences on the contours of an annexation plan.

Israeli application of sovereignty “will only happen after “a declaration by Trump,” he said, emphasizing that this would be a new one, which would be issued from the US.

This declaration was initially scheduled for the end of last week, but was then delayed, he explained.

Israel is waiting for that declaration to be rescheduled before it takes any action and to date, it has not yet received word of when that declaration will be, Akunis said.

Last week, senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway spoke about an announcement on Israeli annexation that never happened.

Akunis pushed back at reports that the Jordan Valley would not be included in an Israeli sovereignty plan. He noted that the Jordan Valley has long been considered part of Israel’s sovereign borders dating back to the Allon plan, first put forward in 1967 immediately after the Six Day War by general and Labor politician Yigal Allon, who served as interim prime minister.

Akunis has been outspoken for years about his support for the Jordan Valley's inclusion in Israel’s sovereign borders.

“Of course it has to be in [the sovereignty plan],” he said.

But first and foremost, the population centers in Area C, known as the settlement blocs, had to be secured. This included the Gush Etzion region as well as the settlement cities of Ariel and Ma’aleh Adumim, he explained. He also included the Jordan Valley in that list, even though it was not a population center, because of its strategic value.

He spoke as confusion reigned in Israel with regard to the actual date for an annexation plan or even what the details of the plan would be.
According to the coalition agreement between the Likud and the Blue and White parties, Israel can apply sovereignty to up to 30% of the West Bank as early as July 1, as long as it is done in agreement with the US.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson cautioned Israel on Wednesday against annexing parts of the West Bank, saying it would violate international law and harm its drive to improve relations with the Arab world.

Israeli leaders decided in May that a cabinet debate on annexation could begin from July 1, raising speculation the government would convene on that date.

But with no agreement yet with Israel‘s main ally Washington on the scope and timing of the move, and talks ongoing, no cabinet session was scheduled for Wednesday.

“Annexation would represent a violation of international law,” Johnson said in an opinion piece for Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s top-selling daily, echoing remarks he made in parliament last month.

“Annexation would put in jeopardy the progress that Israel has made in improving relationships with the Arab and Muslim world,” Johnson wrote, calling for a solution that allows justice and security for both Israelis and Palestinians.

For many who have been asking me, this is an excellent summary of the legal aspects of #Israel's proposed 'annexation', i.e. application of sovereignty in the West Bank.https://t.co/PVqhvZnWQW

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 1, 2020

Statement by #Australia on #Israel's proposed application of sovereignty in West Bank.

As far as statements go, this one is rather balanced, taking into account also Israel's interests & Palestinian responsibility, without being condescending or lecturing. As an ally should act. pic.twitter.com/AU871CBJs1

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 1, 2020

One of the greater concerns over Israel’s application of sovereignty to the Jordan Valley is that the move will undermine mutually beneficial Israeli-Jordanian cooperation. Jordan’s King Abdullah II has substantiated some of the worry, declaring earlier this year that if Israel follows through on its plans with respect to the Jordan Valley, it will result in a “massive” confrontation with the Hashemite Kingdom. Others have expressed the possibility that such a move on the part of the Israeli government would jeopardize the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty.

Though applying Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley poses some risk to Israel’s relations with Jordan, it is unlikely that Jordan will gain much from jeopardizing its productive partnerships with both Israel and the United States.

When discussing Israeli-Jordanian relations, it’s important to note that there is a sizeable gap between how Jordan postures itself publicly vis-a-vis Israel in order to placate its Palestinian population and how it conducts itself privately in its relations with the Jewish state. Jordan has benefited considerably from the fact it is one of just two Arab nations to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.

Cooperation between Jordan and Israel was formalized in a peace treaty just over 25 years ago. However, as a consequence of the treaty’s nod towards normalization, informal relations between the two powers have become particularly poignant within the military, intelligence, and economic realms.

Indeed, on an informal level, Jordan benefits substantially from the Israeli Defense Forces’ presence in the Jordan Valley, a condition that would only be solidified by Israel’s application of sovereignty. Israeli security forces undoubtedly stop terrorists and weaponry from reaching Islamist terror cells in parts of Jordan’s former West Bank which remain under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, Jordan’s “Black September” in 1970, in which Syrian-backed Palestinian militants known as fedayeen attacked the Hashemite monarchy, remains a testament to the unresolved tensions over the East Bank of the Jordan River. Indeed, permanent Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley would ensure one safe border for the Hashemite Kingdom, a benefit it certainly lacks on its Syrian and Iraqi frontiers.

Was it also "painful" for #EU to see prospect of the two-state solution at risk, as Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel, or the Palestinian Authority used millions in aid from EU to pay salaries of terrorists and murderers? @eu_eeas@JosepBorrellF@EUinIsraelhttps://t.co/31qcnN33a7

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 1, 2020

Hi ironic, AfD is only one showing any sense of moral clarity here! https://t.co/QgPCmeKcKR

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 1, 2020

The PLO just produced this 100-page screed, but couldn’t find the time to produce a 1-page peace proposal. https://t.co/HsGGVYWpqY

— Jonathan Schanzer (@JSchanzer) July 1, 2020

A congressional letter organized by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and a delegation of progressive Democrats in Congress was endorsed by organizations that call for Israel’s destruction, promote boycotts of the Jewish state, endorse terrorism, and traffic in anti-Semitic rhetoric.

The letter, sent Monday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, threatens to withhold U.S. security assistance to Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moves forward with a plan to annex parts of the disputed West Bank, an act that "would lay the groundwork for Israel becoming an apartheid state." In addition to Ocasio-Cortez, the letter was backed by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.).

In an internal email circulated to House Democrats and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, Ocasio-Cortez lists 10 organizations that support her letter to Pompeo. Most of these groups are prominent leaders of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), which seeks to wage economic warfare on Israel. One such organization—Defense for Children International – Palestine—has been linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.- and European Union-designated terrorist organization.

Ocasio-Cortez’s collaboration with groups that have traditionally been seen among Democrats as extremist and outside the bounds of collaboration suggests an escalating fight within the party over not just criticism of Israel, but the acceptability among Democrats of supporting the Jewish state’s destruction through BDS and terrorism.

An overwhelming majority of the 233 Democratic members of the House of Representatives have publicly expressed opposition to Israel’s proposed unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank — but some holdouts have kept House Democrats from unanimous opposition to the move.

A House letter sent to Israeli leaders, cautioning against an annexation plan Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is looking to pursue in the coming days, has garnered 191 signatures and the backing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Another letter, addressed to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — threatening to condition aid to Israel over annexation — was signed by 12 lawmakers. But the members of Congress who have not signed onto either communique have not done so, they tell Jewish Insider, because of concerns regarding how the letters would impact relations between the U.S. and Israel.

Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D-NY), who represents New York’s 22nd congressional district, told Jewish Insider he did not sign onto the letter against annexation because it didn’t strongly oppose conditioning military aid to Israel.

“My concern with the letter is that I believe it’s important that we reiterate and make it very clear that it’s in America’s national security interests to maintain our commitment to security assistance to Israel without conditions,” Brindisi said in a recent interview with JI. “That’s a red line for me.”

Brindisi, who won his seat two years ago in a district President Donald Trump won by more than 15 points, added that he has “concerns” with unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank because he’s in favor of direct negotiations between the parties.

“What is most important to me is the long-standing permanent relationship between our two countries,” he said. “The security aid that we provide is not symbolic. In my mind, it saves lives, and we need to reiterate that commitment to make sure that it’s clear.”

In a city with a million Jews and the most radically to the left Jews on the planet (save perhaps San Francisco), they got about a dozen "protesters" to their protest. Why are they picking on Schumer who already came out against annexation I wonder? 🤔 https://t.co/JB0uc7rNLI

— AZ עם ישראל חי (@americanzionism) July 1, 2020

The obvious inference is that Abbas is worried about annexation a lot less than Satloff https://t.co/Z33ZZw4Dgu

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) June 30, 2020

Listeners may well have been asking themselves at that point why Israel would be pondering the application of Israeli civilian law to towns and villages in Area C if, as Bateman inaccurately claims, it already applies there. As explained by Professor Eugene Kontorovich:

“Today, more than 400,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, still governed by an odd patchwork of military regulations. As a result, property is governed by obscure Ottoman land law. Permitting for infrastructure projects is difficult and burdensome. Most Israeli environmental regulations don’t apply.”

Bateman closed his report with yet more unevidenced promotion of the Palestinian talking point according to which the application of Israeli civilian law to Israeli communities in parts of Area C would harm the prospects of a two-state solution.

Bateman: “So it would extend Israeli sovereignty to those areas making them a formal part of Israel and that would be seen to put a huge dent in the prospects of a two-state solution because of course the Palestinians want the whole of the West Bank as part of their future state.”

Bateman refrained from reminding listeners that those “prospects” are exceedingly dim anyway because long before the topic of application of Israeli law to parts of Area C arose, the Palestinians refused to engage in any serious negotiations.

Once again it is evident that Tom Bateman’s reporting focuses on the selective promotion of PLO talking points rather than on providing BBC audiences with the full range of information needed to understand this issue.

The US State Department called for “justice” one day after Pakistan’s Supreme Court refused to suspend a lower court’s ruling freeing Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted of being part of the 2002 killing in Pakistan of Wall Street Journal Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl, paving the way for him to walk free.

“The United States is watching this case closely. We are aware of reports that the Supreme Court did not stay the Sindh High Court’s decision to acquit those convicted in the 2002 murder of Daniel Pearl,” a State Department spokesperson told JNS on Tuesday. “We understand that the Supreme Court set the case for a hearing on the merits in the coming months.”

The spokesperson noted that “the appeal process continues and that the defendants will remain in custody. The Supreme Court has not yet rendered a decision on the appeal—that will happen after the hearing on the merits.”

The Supreme Court also declined to hear the Pakistani government’s appeal at this time and instead scheduled it for Sept. 25.

In April, Sheikh, along with Fahad Naseem, Sheikh Adil, and Salman Saqib, were rearrested after their convictions were overturned.

The interior ministry at the time said that they would remain behind bars “for a period of three months pending filing of the appeal.”

For Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, the announcement was routine, noting the inclusion of $500 million for Israel’s missile defense in a key defense funding bill.

But it was significant as well in its timing, demonstrating that the party’s mainstream remains committed to funding for Israel’s military at a time that some of its progressive members are calling for cuts.

“The US-Israeli Cooperative Missile Defense Program is critical for the safety and protection of Israel, our close friend and ally,” Gillibrand said in an email Tuesday to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I’m proud to fight for this vital program, which will promote stability and help keep countless citizens of Israel safe from missile attacks.”

Gillibrand is the top Democrat on the Armed Service’s Committee personnel subcommittee.

This is the third year that Gillibrand, along with the senior New York senator, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, led advocacy for the missile defense funding, which goes to the Iron Dome, Arrow and David’s Sling programs. The money is written into the National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass bill.

It’s a story as old as Jewish history itself. A community establishes itself, and inevitably splits into the synagogue you go to and the one you don’t, as the old joke goes.

Only this time it’s in Dubai, where a young rabbi from the Chabad Lubavitch movement is facing a backlash and an official reprimand, after a concerted public relations campaign introducing his new congregation in recent weeks persistently neglected to acknowledge the existence of the city’s established but media-shy Jewish community.

It could have been the feel-good story of the summer: the small but vibrant Jewish community of the United Arab Emirates coming out of the woodwork, opening social media accounts and giving interviews about Jewish life in the Gulf.

But local authorities last week ordered the people behind this particular community — a small group that splintered off from the city’s existing congregation — to “immediately” suspend their social media accounts, The Times of Israel has learned.

Rather than do so, however, the maverick group, led by enterprising Chabad rabbi Levi Duchman and his businessman associate Solly Wolf, has merely changed the name, description and profile photos of its Twitter account, which for several weeks created the impression they were the country’s officially recognized Jewish community.

The Twitter account, originally called “Jewish Community of the UAE,” has been renamed “Jewish Community” and no longer claims to be “official” in any way.

The group’s website is still functioning, headed by a “Jewish Community of UAE” logo in English and Hebrew.

A knowledgeable source told The Times of Israel that Duchman, in defying the instruction he received from the Dubai authorities, has angered the powers-that-be in the emirate and is thereby jeopardizing his chances of obtaining for his congregation the formal licensing required for religious groups.

It is easy to understand why Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are now furious with the European Union. Recently, the EU and its member countries have had the audacity to demand that EU taxpayer money not end up in the hands of terrorists or terrorist organizations.

As far as the Palestinians are concerned, Western donors are not entitled to demand that their taxpayer money not go to EU-designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

There are signs, however, that the EU is about to surrender to Palestinian pressure and threats.

This opaque language means that even if a Palestinian NGO applying for EU grants is an affiliate of terrorist groups, or employs individuals from those groups, the EU will, after all, provide it with taxpayer funding --whether designated for emergency responses to COVID-19 or for regular programs, according to NGO Monitor....

I quite like the vintage 'Visit Palestine' poster in the background!

Just no one tell our EU friends that it was designed in mid 1930's by an Austrian Jew named Franz Krausz, who fled Europe, to encourage Zionism, Aliyah and immigration to pre-state Israel. https://t.co/MHv8W3GGdD

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 1, 2020

"Al Qassam Brigades confirmed that the decision to annex areas of the West Bank is a declaration of war and warrants a response." #Gaza#Israelpic.twitter.com/UJGBZP8qbC

— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) June 30, 2020

With imagery of previous intifadas and attacks, al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - The Martyr Nidal al Amoudi warn #Israel against West Bank annexation. #Gazapic.twitter.com/wMbUsVg02X

— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) June 30, 2020

In a statement, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban organization) has rejected media reports that Russia paid the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. It also argued that the Taliban raised the banner of jihad when America was the sole superpower after the end of the Cold War.

Following are excerpts from the statement:
"[The] fact of the matter remains that the past nineteen-year jihad of our believing nation was a miraculous struggle enriched with the sense of freedom, independence and self-determination which has few peers in world history. This jihad of our believing people is not some proxy war from the Cold War era which might have ties to an eastern or western international bloc. Our nation raised the banner of jihad against occupation when the world was gripped by a unipolar order; murmurs were abound about history ending [as argued by academician Francis Fukuyama]; and the courage of even verbally or morally supporting the just struggle of our believing people was sapped from all.

"However, it was only the divine support of the Lord Almighty which blessed our people with unparalleled perseverance and determination as they rose to challenge the world's premier war machine with homemade explosives and in doing so, not only managed to keep alive their just struggle with old rifles, expired ammunition and insignificant resources but also crossed many stages of success along the way.

"This is a fact known and accepted by both friend and foe. Till this date no evidence has been found to show that a foreign country has given the Islamic Emirate any lethal aid. A proof of this claim is that if one was to search for the most effective weapon of the mujahideen of [the] Islamic Emirate, it would show the image of a water container IED or in other words, homemade explosive device.

"Independence and self-reliance to such a degree is an honor which very few liberation movements have been blessed with in the history of humanity, but all praise belongs to Allah, this great honor is what He... [Prophet Muhammad] has bestowed upon our proud people and sincere mujahideen. Now that some western media outlets are out to justify their own failures by attributing the jihadi accomplishments and glory of the Islamic Emirate to other parties by making allegations about support from Russia or other countries, all are fabrications that can neither be backed with evidence nor are they acceptable to anyone with a sound mind or information.

Pakistani PM Imran Khan Talks about Bin Laden's "Martyrdom," Complains: The Whole World Cursed Us Even Though We Fought Alongside America in the War on Terror pic.twitter.com/nWBNaLlKYs

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 1, 2020

Muslim Brotherhood's "Grand Mufti of Libya" Sadiq Al-Ghariani: Supporters of Khalifa Haftar "Are Worse Than the Tatars and the Mongols," and Serve as Zionist Proxies pic.twitter.com/RVLkVbBx1B

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 1, 2020

In May 2018, when the world learned that Iran had concealed a secret nuclear weapons archive before, during and after negotiations over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), supporters of the nuclear deal were quick to excuse Iran’s nuclear prevarication.

Two years later, with Iran in full breach of its JCPOA commitments, mounting evidence of undeclared nuclear material and sites inside the country, and the UN conventional arms embargo on Iran set to expire in October, it’s time for the United States and Europe to join together in restoring all of the sanctions and restrictions it once put in place to prevent the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism from acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons.

The Iran Deal was premised on Iran’s full disclosure of past nuclear weapons-related activities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a pledge never to pursue such weapons in the future, and a temporary limit on certain nuclear activities. In exchange, Iran received several strategic benefits, including the end of key international restrictions and embargoes over time.

Last week, the IAEA reported that Iran may be concealing undeclared nuclear material inside the country and is denying the agency’s inspectors access to two undeclared sites possibly connected to Iran’s work on nuclear weapons – a potential breach of Iran’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In addition, the IAEA reported that Iran is violating nearly every other nuclear commitment it made in the JCPOA – vastly expanding its stockpiles of low-enriched uranium and heavy water, restarting enrichment at an illicit underground facility and testing advanced centrifuges.

Nope. That's not how JCPOA was sold to the US Congress, and even then bipartisan majorities in House and Senate voted to reject it. Then Trump admin was elected on promise of shredding deal. UNSCR 2231 explicitly (!) says US has right to do that any time via para 10-15 snapback. https://t.co/8SUKBcp6ag

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) July 1, 2020

Iran has sentenced to death Ruhollah Zam, a journalist-turned-activist captured abroad last year, for allegedly fueling anti-government unrest in late 2017 on social media, Iranian media reported on Tuesday.

The son of a pro-reform Shi’ite cleric, Zam headed Amadnews, which had more 1 million followers on social media before it was suspended by the messaging app Telegram in 2018 after Iran accused it of carrying calls for violence during the protests.

The channel soon re-appeared under a new name.

Last October, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had “trapped” Zam, who had been given political asylum in France and was also based in other parts of Europe, in a “complex operation using intelligence deception.”

It did not say where the operation took place.

“Zam has been convicted of corruption on Earth by a Revolutionary Court,” judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said, according to the Mizan news agency, adding that he could appeal. The charge, used in cases of armed uprising and espionage, is a capital offense under Iran’s Islamic law.

The Middle East in last week has shown how Iran is pushing its own "maximum pressure" against the US and allies; Iran and its "axis of resistance" are active in many places on diplomatic and militant levels; from Afghanistan to Gaza, Houthis to Hezbollah; China, Russia, Turkey pic.twitter.com/t0yTPfLZKy

— Seth Frantzman (@sfrantzman) July 1, 2020

History will record that on the day China smashed Hong Kong's autonomy, the U.N.'s top human rights body not only refused to say a word, but broke its own rules to invite Beijing's puppet ruler of Hong Kong Carrie Lam to address the council & spin the takeover—without any debate. pic.twitter.com/Uc9Y7WBNdj

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) July 1, 2020

You literally just gave your platform to China on the day it smashed Hong Kong’s freedomhttps://t.co/htEOb7qEzqhttps://t.co/MTb5INZjLS

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) July 1, 2020

Students Supporting Israel is an impressive grassroots campus pro-Israel organization that has grown a great deal, with a philosophy I can get behind.

Last night I interviewed its co-founder and president where we discussed that things are like for Zionist students and how SSI helps them.

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

Recently the European Union announced that it would reopen its borders to visitors from some other countries. Israel was not on the list (neither was the US). Many Israelis reacted indignantly, but objectively our Coronavirus situation is not good.

On June 30, Israel marked the highest number of new cases of Coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic, with 803 reported. After succeeding to extinguish the first wave with an economy-crushing lockdown, the re-opening was marred by some strategic mistakes, for which we are beginning to pay the price. Here is a graph of new cases per day:

Although there has been a recent increase in the daily number of tests done, a Health Ministry employee said on 16 June that “the proportion of positive tests was higher than before,” and therefore the increase in reported new cases was indicative of a new wave of infection.

I don’t pretend to be an expert, but some of the reasons were obvious. In the educational system: it was necessary to reopen the schools, because Israelis have a lot of children, and it’s very difficult to get people back to work when there’s no solution for child care. The usual safety valve for parents, retired grandparents, was not available due to the danger to them from the disease. The first mistake was to open all grades almost at once. It would have been possible to open the lower grades first, which would have freed the parents to work, while reducing the risk. What followed was a sharp spike in the 10-19 year age group and a smaller one in the 0-9 group at the start of the second wave in early June.

The Education Ministry devised a plan that would separate students and teachers in the schools into “capsules” which would be isolated from one another, students would sit 2 meters apart, masks would be required for students and teachers, and so on. The second mistake was not following the plan. I am not sure if it proved unworkable, or if teachers and administrators didn’t take it seriously enough, as some said. But in many schools, compliance was lax. Schools in which cases of Corona occurred were closed, but the damage was done.

Coronavirus transmission is believed to be primarily by droplets released when an infected person sneezes, coughs, talks, or sings. These droplets may remain in the air for a few minutes. It is also thought that the more viral particles a person ingests, the more likely they are to become sick, although it is not clear if this affects the severity of the illness. Transmission outdoors where droplets may be blown away or dehydrated by breezes and diluted in a larger volume of air, is much less likely than in a confined indoor space. Masks may not be fine enough to prevent viral particles from passing through, but they do greatly impede the much larger droplets; they are useful both when worn by the person who is infected and by others nearby. There is also the possibility of droplets impinging on a person’s eyes, so a face shield is useful in addition to a mask.

Israelis love “life cycle events” like circumcisions, bar mitzvahs, weddings, and so forth. Big weddings are the rule, often held in large event halls. There are even websites that help you decide how much money to give according to the type of event, your relationship to the principals, and so on. These events are often held indoors, and the Health Ministry allowed event halls to reopen when the first wave subsided. There are guidelines on the number of people allowed at an event, but they were liberal. Religious services, which were initially sharply restricted, were reopened with more relaxed guidelines. These actions may have been premature, and some restrictions have been re-imposed.

What everyone wants to do is to find ways to protect the population without destroying the economy. The best way to do that (at least, until a vaccine or effective treatment is developed) is to identify each and every sick person and isolate them before they can infect others. This requires a) the ability to do enough tests, b) a rapid turnaround of test results so that it is possible to identify someone as a carrier of the disease before they can infect others, and c) trained people to investigate the sources of infection so that those exposed can be tested.
While the number of tests has been increasing, the turnaround time has been poor. In the early part of the second wave, when many cases were detected in schools, the labs were unable to keep up with the tests. As far as investigations are concerned the Health Ministry reports a serious shortage of personnel trained to do this; and it has been accused of poor management as well. They have just hired several hundred medical students and paramedics for this function; it’s mysterious why this took so long.

The public, which was relatively disciplined during the first wave, seems to have decided that “the Corona is over,” and that masks are best worn around the chin, to be moved up when a police officer, who might give them a ticket worth 500 Shekels ($146), is nearby. The latest news is that specific cities and neighborhoods will be placed on lockdown in order to try to break the chain of infection.

PM Netanyahu got good marks for his handling of the crisis during the first wave, when he made good decisions such as closing the country’s borders quickly. The removal of restrictions, however, has not been handled so well. Employment has not snapped back – unemployment stands at near 21% – and the epidemic has moved into a second wave, which could be as bad or worse than the first one. Some industries, like tourism and performing arts, have been devastated and little has been done to help them. Of course, everything isn’t his responsibility, but he is known for micromanaging what he believes are areas of importance, and many Israelis feel that he doesn’t believe that they are of importance.

It isn’t helping that after the scandal of the obscenely bloated unity government of 36 ministers and 9 deputy ministers, and after the unity negotiations produced unprecedented perks for the Prime Minister and his alternate, Bibi got the Knesset to pass legislation to exempt him from taxes on work done on his private residence by the government. He did not improve his image when he remarked that although he deserved the tax break, his “timing was wrong.” No kidding.

***

Israel’s approach to the Corona has been very – Israeli. First, we tried to overcome it by brute force. Then we became overconfident. And now, hopefully, we’ll try to be smart.

It is this modern politicization of anti-Semitism that ensured that Rebecca Long-Bailey, who would have been instantly awake to a racist jibe directed at any other minority group, could mistake the anti-Semitism in the interview for benign criticism of a state she doesn't much care for.

The belief that every injustice can be traced to Israeli evil was perhaps best demonstrated by another British Labour politician (now mercifully retired), Clare Short, who claimed during a pro-Palestinian conference in Brussels in 2007 that not only was Israel "much worse than the original apartheid state," but that it "undermines the international community's reaction to global warming." Given Short's conclusion that global warming could "end the human race," one can readily connect the dots about how loathsome and threatening Israel must be, and what should be done with it. For good measure, Israel has also been accused of causing domestic violence in Gaza.

More recently, Black Lives Matter, a group ostensibly formed to combat racism, adopted in 2016 a manifesto that, amidst the discourse on incarceration rates, police conduct and racial profiling, also accuses Israel of being an "apartheid state" and committing "genocide" of the Palestinians—whose population throughout the Holy Land has undergone a continuous and spectacular increase since the advent of modern Zionism in the 19th century. The British arm of the movement then paused its tweets on black lives in order to shoot off an anti-Israel medley, including offering its weighty legal opinion that Israel is in breach of international law and lamenting the "gagging" of attacks on Zionism.

The campaign to attach Zionism to every grievance and injustice has its origins in Stalin's deteriorating mind during the last years of his reign. It became the basis for official Soviet anti-Zionism and remains as a vestige in far-left political movements today. But in a sense, it runs even deeper than that. It is the hallmark of an irrational, fanatical mind, incapable of grasping the nuance and complexity of life. Just as traditional anti-Semitism brought ruin and misery, anti-Zionism will corrupt noble movements and worthy causes unless it is finally stamped out.

CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, recently prompted three corrections from The Forward. All involved one of the publication’s contributing columnists, Muhammad Shehada.

In one case, he had falsely claimed that, in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, officials in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip “have a shortage of the chemicals necessary to make disinfectants, including hydrogen peroxide and chlorine,” because “Israel bans both from entering Gaza under the pretext of ‘dual-use’ items—items they say can also be used for building weapons.”

The correction noted that “an earlier version of this piece stated that Israel bans hydrogen peroxide and chlorine. Israel does not ban either; it restricts hydrogen peroxide. We sincerely regret the error.”

Two other corrections that were made just this month pertained to factual misstatements made nearly a year ago in an August 28, 2019 opinion column. In those cases, notably, the publication did not even indicate that they had made any changes.

But these were just a few of the many false claims that Shehada has made over time in The Forward, a national Jewish media outlet that began publication at the end of the 19th century as a Yiddish-language socialist newspaper. And, as described below, some of those that remain uncorrected were of far greater magnitude.

Shehada is on the leadership team at the NGO EuroMediterranean Human Rights Monitor, an organization whose board of trustees is chaired by Richard Falk. Falk was condemned in 2011 by then-British Prime Minister David Cameron for publishing an anti-Semitic cartoon, and in 2012 by the U.K. Foreign Office “for providing a cover endorsement for an anti-Semitic tract called ‘The Wandering Who’ that compared Jews to Nazis.”

Falk has also embraced 9/11 conspiracy theories. In addition to writing for The Forward, which he has been doing regularly since January 2018, Shehada has written for The New Arab, Al Jazeera, Vice and others.

In the last few weeks, around 140 police officers have been injured in this country; 27 in just one night last week in Brixton. A day later, the force’s LGBT+ network could be found tweeting their support for asexual people. Perhaps the thugs who assaulted their colleagues in Brixton would have been mollified had they known how supportive the constabulary is of the asexuals in their midst? Or perhaps – and I simply put the possibility out there – such efforts by all branches of the British police do not in fact show how much the police have got with the beat, but just makes things harder for the policemen and women on the actual beat?

When you cast your mind back across recent months what are your most distinctive memories of the British constabulary? Dancing for public likes in TikTok videos? Skateboarding down major London thoroughfares closed down by climate extremists? Officers “taking the knee” before Black Lives Matter activists shortly before some of those same officers had to flee from the protesters who had turned violent?

All of these sights are indelibly linked in the minds of everybody who has seen them. But in the minds of a portion of the public they meld with another vision of the British police. A vision which numerous commentators and politicians have helped to exaggerate in recent weeks.

In the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, politicians and Left-wing pundits in the UK as much as in the US sought to make some grand strategic play off the back of that appalling incident. In the US, various commentators argued that the Minnesota incident was not isolated, but part of a broader problem of US policing and of American society as a whole. There is a debate to be had about certain aspects of US policing, certainly. But inevitably there were those in our own country who tried to make political gains by claiming the same situation exists here. These people – not least the organisers of BLM UK – wish to present the British police and the American police as being the same and the history of American racism synonymous with all British history.

It is a very dangerous game that such opportunists are playing. Some responsibility at least for the assaults on police officers that have occurred since the first BLM UK protests must be laid at their door. A week before the assault on police in Hackney, the Labour MP Dawn Butler stood in the House of Commons and told the Conservative government that it needed to “get its knee off the neck of the Black, African, Caribbean, Asian and minority ethnic community in this country.” It was a disgraceful intervention, that went off almost without censure.

More than anything else, however, Diaspora Zionism was a wake-up call: It asserted that the Jews must awake from their assimilationist slumber and abandon their desire for acceptance into the gentile middle class.

It is this desire, perhaps, that is the greatest obstacle to Jewish self-defense in the US. The century-old American Jewish dream of somehow becoming a middle-class WASP has castrated the possibility of Jewish empowerment. But this is no longer desirable or acceptable in the face of the sudden metastasizing of American antisemitism. If it is to survive as something other than a beleaguered minority dependent on the good will of others, American Jewry must awake from its domestication. It must foster a new ferocity of the soul.

We may be seeing the first seeds of such an awakening in the Jewish security organizations that protected synagogues during the recent riots, such as Magen Am. At the moment, however, these are small and local, and nearly all from the Orthodox community, which with its strong communal sense and tendency not to place middle-class comfort as its first priority, is more suited to collective action. But Jews of all denominations and secular Jews of none must embrace this awakening as well.

What is required, it seems, is a new league. A Zionist League that will unite these nascent self-defense groups into a national movement. One that rejects the sins and failings of its predecessors, but nonetheless insists on the right of American Jews to empower and protect themselves. In doing so, it will honor those who have died for the sanctification of the name, and ensure that no more will be forced to do so. Or at least, if there must be more, they will not have been taken from us without a fight.

Ice Cube is threatening to sue this journalist over the article “Ice Cube’s Long, Disturbing History if Anti-Semitism.” So whatever you do, do not read that article: https://t.co/Kc49nsD0sthttps://t.co/bfXyG4pn9j

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) July 1, 2020

The Black Lives Matter Movement has condemned “antisemitism slurs” directed at BLM UK, a separate entity which claimed that Zionism “gagged” Britain.

Campaign Against Antisemitism criticised BLM UK, an entity of unknown provenance that exists only on Twitter and GoFundMe, after it claimed that “British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism” following the dismissal of Rebecca Long-Bailey from the Shadow Cabinet for sharing an article that contained the antisemitic trope that Israel is somehow to blame for the racist killing of George Floyd.

Now the Black Lives Matter Movement, which describes itself as having been “formed in London in 2016 and is not affiliated to BLMUK,” published an article on its website titled “BLMUK, Palestine and media antisemitism slurs”, which insisted that the Black Lives Matter Movement “support[s] the struggle against racism in all its forms” including antisemitism, called for action against racism against black women MPs in the Labour Party (with reference to a controversial internal leaked report), and called the criticism of BLM UK a “witch hunt” which “weakens the fight against all forms of racism” and that this is “the aim of much of the media and the right in this country”.

It was not clear why standing up to antisemitism by BLM UK could “weaken the fight against all forms of racism”.

Gary Lineker has distanced himself from the Black Lives Matter movement after it published an antisemitic tweet accusing Zionism of having “gagged” Britain.

The footballer-turned-celebrity was asked by actor Laurence Fox on Twitter as to his views on the Black Lives Matter movement following the controversy this weekend, and he responded: “Why do you ask? I didn’t retweet it and wouldn’t dream of doing so, therefore I can’t really understand what your issue is.”

Meanwhile on Sky Sports, pundit Matt Le Tissier revealed that studio executives had required him to wear a badge supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and that he is reviewing doing so, while other sportsmen are also reconsidering their support for the movement following numerous controversies, distinguishing between their strongly-felt opposition to racism against the black community and their disenchantment with the Black Lives Matter movement itself.

Wow. They are still at it. Is the most important issue in the Black Lives Matter movement the Jews that this group is so obsessed with us? https://t.co/yPMVFaqD9V

— AZ עם ישראל חי (@americanzionism) June 30, 2020

London Shiite Scholar Ahmed Haneef: “Aryanist” Churchill and the British Are Guilty of the Same Crimes as the Nazis: What Hitler Tried to Do to Europe, Europe was Doing Elsewhere pic.twitter.com/7NHkreNRPE

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 1, 2020

Israel's national airline – El Al – has canceled all its flights as a pilot labor dispute and the ongoing global economic hardships continue to bite.

"El Al CEO Gonen Usishkin has ordered that all aircraft should return to Israel, including those on cargo flights. El Al has stopped flying. The company has canceled two passenger flights and four cargo flights scheduled for today," according to a report in Globes.

The decision to cancel flights after negotiations between Pilots Committee Chairman Nir Reuveni and Usishkin ended without resolution on Tuesday evening.

Reuveni reportedly said that El Al was not upholding agreements that it came to with the pilot's union about a month ago and that the airline's management was unwilling to help the company deal with the ongoing crisis.

The economic downturn due to the coronavirus pandemic has hit airlines particularly hard and El Al is no exception. A company statement released Tuesday highlighted that the airline has hemorrhaged $140 million in the first quarter of 2020.

Israeli start-up Nanoscent is currently in trials with Sheba Medical Center, testing technology that can “smell” COVID-19 in less than 30 seconds.

Dozens of trial participants have already been successfully tested for coronavirus infections. In light of this success, Magen David Adom (MDA) has begun incorporating the testing method into their drive-thru testing stations located across the country. A number of hospitals have also followed suit, including the Sourasky Medical Center and the Poriya Medical Center.

With the technology, suspected coronavirus patients blow air through their nose into a plastic bag fitted with sensor chips that can electronically pick up on scents emitted by COVID-19 – diagnosing the patient in half a minute, allowing for early detection of the virus in a world where the current methods take hours at best.

Current testing methods in Israel incorporate the common PCR (polymerase chain reaction) approach, which takes several hours – causing bottlenecks in testing while hindering the government's ability to isolate and stymie the viral spread in hot spots and problem areas.
Nanoscent's method itself was previously and successfully tested by researchers at the Technion University in conjunction with medical researchers at the Rambam Health Care Campus back in mid-March.

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) discussed their legislative effort to establish a joint partnership with Israel against COVID-19 during the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) Advocacy Anywhere webinar on June 24.

Coons said that he and Cruz are looking to include an amendment in the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act that allocates $12 million toward a bilateral program with Israel to fight COVID-19 during fiscal years 2021-2023.

“The purpose of our amendment together is to invest in that partnership, to look for a partnership from Israel and investment by the people of the United States in joint work to develop the therapeutics, the vaccines and the responses to this pandemic that will contribute to the security of Israel and to the United States,” Coons said.

The amendment has 26 cosponsors — 13 Republicans and 13 Democrats.

Cruz said the amendment is important because it decreases the U.S.’ dependence on China for medical and pharmaceutical supplies. “The Chinese communist government has systematically targeted the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, working to drive U.S. manufacturers out of business,” Cruz said, adding, “We saw in the midst of this pandemic that one Chinese state-owned newspaper explicitly threatened to cut off lifesaving pharmaceuticals to the United States as a tool of economic warfare. That is a vulnerability that is deeply, deeply concerning.”

I think we see a similar form of denial on the left over their support for the Palestinians. Having alighted on this cause as the signature motif of progressive conscience, they will not, cannot acknowledge that it is in fact an agenda of exterminating Israel based on profound, religious-based hatred of the Jewish people. Consequently, they just don’t see or hear the voluminous evidence of the demented, Nazi-style antisemitism that pours out of the so-called “moderate” Palestinian Authority in its educational materials or TV broadcasts; they don’t register at all the history of the region and the fact that the Jews are the only people with a legal, historical or moral right to the land; and they shut their minds to the evidence that the only people who have refused a Palestinian state over the past ninety years are the Palestinian Arabs themselves.

The point is that all these facts about these and other issues, all the evidence that is plain for all to see, all the inescapable logic of a situation, all of this is simply invisible to the dogmatic leftists who are so prevalent today. And that’s largely because of their great, overpowering fear that if they admit any of it, if they allow reality to chip away at any of their beliefs, their entire moral and political personality will be smashed to bits and they will become… right-wing.

No greater horror can there be. And so the the whole fantastic edifice of destructive, often vicious and sometimes murderous fantasies grows ever larger and more monstrous – while sad-eyed realists and truth-tellers are defamed, harassed, censored and fired, and the statues of a civilisation crash to the ground.

Seumas Milne, Jeremy Corbyn’s divisive senior aide, and Thomas Gardiner, Labour’s Director of Governance and Legal Affairs, have both quit their employment with the Party.

Mr Milne, who has a record of espousing extreme political views, served as Executive Director of Strategy and Communications under Jeremy Corbyn. As a political appointee, his departure following the election of Sir Keir Starmer as Leader of the Party was widely considered inevitable.

Thomas Gardiner’s role in Labour Headquarters involved overseeing the catastrophic complaints process, and became known for his decision that a meme showing an alien crustacean with a Star of David emblazoned on its back sucking the life out of the Statue of Liberty was somehow not antisemitic.

Mr Gardiner’s departure represents the next stage of the clearout of controversial Labour staff by the new General-Secretary, David Evans, who replaced Corbyn ally Jennie Formby.

Mr Gardiner is being replaced by Alex Barros-Curtis, an aide of Sir Keir, on a temporary basis.

While the removal of tainted staff is a welcome development, the promised independent disciplinary process has yet to materialise.

StandWithUs (SWU), in cooperation with the Iranian American Jewish Federation (IAJF) are using truck ads to fight back against vicious anti-Israel and antisemitic hate groups holding rallies and "caravans" in seven cities across the US and Canada. The trucks will drive around the vicinity of these events in Los Angeles (July 1), San Diego (July 1), San Francisco (July 1), New York (July 1), Chicago (July 1) Miami (July 2), and Toronto (July 4).

"Al-Awda and other hate groups that organized these rallies are dedicated to ending Israel's existence and promoting antisemitic propaganda," said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs. "While there is nothing wrong with having an open and vigorous debate about Israeli policies, that is not what these events are really about. We are answering hate with a message highlighting the urgent need for Palestinian leaders to choose peace negotiations over hatred and violence."

Importantly, these ads do not signal a position on Israel potentially applying sovereignty to/annexing parts of the West Bank/Judea & Samaria. StandWithUs will release educational materials about the many sides of this issue when a decision is made one way or another by Israel's democratically elected government.

Concerned members of the public are strongly urged NOT to drive to the locations where these hateful "caravans" are being held, to avoid a chaotic situation where it may be extremely difficult to ensure public safety. Especially given the heightened political polarization in our communities in general, we do not want to see opposing groups in cars protesting each other in the middle of the road. Nor do we encourage groups of people to gather in a way that risks the spread of COVID-19. This is precisely why we chose to use truck ads as a platform to express our opposition to hate and violence against Israel.

In order to fracture the Jewish community, Anti-Israel orgs like @IfNotNowOrg& @jvplive have been attacking stalwart Jewish orgs @ADL& @AJCongress portraying them as right wing betrayers of Jews & Jewish values.

Who cares more about Jews?

Please watch this important video... pic.twitter.com/P2dp6uYqFo

— AZ עם ישראל חי (@americanzionism) June 30, 2020

Here’s Jenny Manson of JVL openly saying she CHOSE to identify as a Jew to attack Israel better. Like you we should all be comfortable & have common sense to call out BS, ignoring bad faith sophistry that we have no right to question this sort of stuff pic.twitter.com/tvYSpbX81b

— leekern (@leekern13) June 30, 2020

Just days after Campaign Against Antisemitism exposed a journalist’s record of inflammatory social media posts, he is no longer featured as a writer at the online magazine for teenagers.

Toby Maxtone-Smith, who worked at The Day, responded to a report about antisemitic Chelsea fans performing Nazi salutes, singing about ‘Yids’ and imitating a gas chamber by complaining on Twitter about “snide journos [journalists] desperate to make a quick buck ruining someone’s life for behaving like a d***head while pissed”.

He also made jokes about foreskins and claimed that the reason the Labour Party’s antisemitism scandal was covered by the media supposedly to an extent greater than Jeremy Corbyn’s vote against the Falklands War was because “Jews are over-represented among the kind of people journalists know. The media is very bad at checking its own biases.”

Mr Maxtone-Smith has made further worrying comments on a different Twitter account, and he has also made derogatory comments about Chinese people and Roma, as well as women.

With Israel’s pending decision to apply sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, Canadian media outlets devoted considerable coverage, much of it was misleading and lacked context, while some reports contained outright falsehoods.

Case in point, on June 24, CBC Radio’s flagship World at Six program aired a feature-length segment by former Mideast Bureau Chief, Margaret Evans, which was replete with errors and which lacked vital context about Israel’s plans.

CBC Anchor Susan Bonner introduced the report by erroneously saying the following:
Israel is facing heavy diplomatic over its plan to start annexing parts of the Palestinian territories in the occupied west bank. Something it may start doing as early as next week. Today, the United Nations Secretary General condemned the proposal, so did more than 1,000 prominent lawmakers in Europe. Much of the world regards the land as illegally occupied and annexation could further destabilize the Mideast. Margaret Evans reports.”

As is commonly known, the status of the territories (which Israel regards as Judea and Samaria) is in dispute and the Palestinians have never had sovereignty over these areas. For this report to claim that Israel is making a de facto land grab of sovereign Palestinian territory is without foundation.

Secondly, while indeed much of the world regards Israel’s presence as “illegal”, Israel strenuously disputes this and Ms. Evans’s report should have acknowledged that. Secondly, the United States (the most important nation in the world arguably on this file) no longer views the settlements as being illegal, a fact omitted by Ms. Evans.

Citing server problems and widespread user ignorance, Facebook Tsar Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly contemplating a ‘total ban’ on anything related to the polarizing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

“Look, I’m a billionaire genius and I didn’t build this social media platform for Israelis and Palestinians to hate-post as if they’re all suffering from OCD, and certainly not for a bunch of white people outside the region who know fuck all about the conflict,” Zuckerberg reportedly said. “All of these Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, and individual comments on timelines are really screwing up our system…except for The Mideast Beast. We’re all kind of fine with those idiots.”

Such a ban would mark a significant escalation in the social media behemoth’s efforts to censor user activity. As The Mideast Beast’s long-time reporter and full-time onanist Marcus Thunderbolt reported, Facebook has also previously mulled introducing a ‘minimum postgraduate education requirement for commenting’ on Israel and Hamas’ repeated military confrontations, as well as the Arab-Israeli Conflict in general.

However, despite Zuckerberg’s enthusiasm, the proposed ban on ‘anything related to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’ is unlikely to be enforced. “We’re struggling with a concept widely known as ‘Freedom of Speech,’” said a Facebook legal expert. “I won’t lie, sometimes I wish it was known as a ‘privilege’ rather than a ‘freedom’ or a ‘right’ – kind of like having a driver’s license or health insurance in the U.S.”

Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, insisted that his heritage had nothing to do with the proposed ban. “Are you kidding me? I love Arabs. They gave us the number zero, and I could never have built Facebook and become a billionaire without it.”

An Oklahoma man with a penchant for flying swastika flags and wearing Nazi uniforms remained in police custody on Wednesday, following an incident last Sunday in which he shot a woman who was attempting to remove one of the offending flags on display outside his home.

Alexander Feaster, 44, has been charged with assault and battery with a deadly weapon, and shooting with intent to kill, and is due to appear in court on July 9.

Police officers in the town of Hunter, about 90 miles north of Oklahoma City, found the woman — identified as 28-year-old Kyndal McVey — lying in a ditch after she had been shot in the back by Feaster between three and five times with a 5.56mm rifle, Garfield County Sheriff Jody Helm said.

According to a police affidavit, McVey was approaching Feaster’s porch where a Nazi flag was hanging when he appeared brandishing a Colt AR-15 A2 assault rifle.

“Without warning, Feaster opened fire on Kyndal as she was running away from the residence,” the affidavit said. “On the video footage, it appeared that Feaster fired approximately 7-8 shots very rapidly, several of these rounds striking Kyndal. It is important to note that Kyndal did not appear to be in any way a threat to Feaster due to her obviously running away from his residence with only a flag in her hand.”

McVey is presently in hospital and is expected to recover from her wounds.

According to the police affidavit, she had been attending a party across the street from Feaster’s residence prior to the shooting incident.

A swastika was spray-painted in white on the sidewalk in front of a synagogue in Bangor, Maine.

Bangor police are investigating the incident, which occurred Thursday night. Security camera footage taken by Congregation Beth Israel captured clear images of the teenagers who drew the swastika.

“I do hope, rather than criminal mischief or vandalism charges, we can rope these kids into some kind of restorative justice,” Beth Israel President Brian Kresge said in a post on the congregation’s Facebook page.

Kresge used black spray-paint to cover the swastika before the start of the synagogue’s services on Friday evening, which are being held outdoors due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The synagogue installed security cameras in 2012 after antisemitic graffiti was spray-painted on the front of the synagogue building.

In an accidental breakthrough made while blowing kids’ soap bubbles, Israeli scientists have observed light behaving in a “beautiful” manner never before seen by the human eye.

They captured the process on camera and wrote an academic paper declaring themselves the first people to see a physical phenomenon called “branched flow” in action, which will be the cover story in Thursday’s edition of the renowned journal Nature.

“There is nothing more exciting than discovering something new, and this is the first demonstration of this phenomenon with light waves,” said Uri Sivan, president of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Anatoly Patsyk, a PhD student involved in the discovery, called it “another one of nature’s surprises.”

Technion physics professor Moti Segev told The Times of Israel that he had no idea, at first, what he was looking at.

“We were shining light into bubbles, and started to notice a very pretty and peculiar scattering process, in which the light splits into branches, like branches of a tree,” he said.

They had no idea why this was happening.

“I thought maybe it’s accidental, but little by little we unraveled the physics and then saw it was related to branched flow,” said Segev.

This process was discovered in 2001, but the closest scientists got to witnessing it was through an electron microscope, which doesn’t provide an actual view of the target being examined, but rather uses electrons to probe the target and construct an image of what is happening. Only limited scientific exploration is possible from this image.

Soap bubbles used by the scientists in order to see branched flow, illuminated with white light, as observed in the microscope (courtesy of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology)

Segev said his lab team was amazed when it dawned on them that what they were looking at — mostly through a magnifying glass or microscope, but also visible to a point through the naked eye — was branched flow.

Ibex Medical Analytics, a maker of cancer diagnostic software, in collaboration with UK’s LDPath, a provider of digital pathology services to England’s National Health Service (NHS), has started rolling out its clinical grade applications for prostate cancer detection in pathology for the first time in the UK.

Traditional pathology involves manual processes that have remained unchanged for years, with slides analyzed by pathologists using microscopes, and reporting often carried out on pieces of paper. But even as cancer rates have increased over the years, the number of pathologists globally is in decline.

The number of active pathologists in the US, for example, has plunged by some 17.5% between 2007 and 2017, putting the nation at a shortage, and a smaller workforce needs to handle a bigger workload, according to aMay 2019 study published in JAMA Network Open.

A shortage of pathologists in the UK has led to up to six-week waits in cancer diagnosis and, together with increased demand, is exerting tremendous pressure on pathology departments while raising concerns about diagnostic accuracy, Ibex said in a statement on Tuesday.

LDPath, which provides histopathological imaging and reporting services to 24 NHS trusts throughout the UK, including large teaching hospitals and district general hospitals, will integrate Ibex’s prostate solution into its digital pathology workflow.

“Imagine a tourist arriving in a foreign city,” the Israeli intel officer tells me, “the first thing they do is open Google Maps and look for a restaurant. Google helps them find a place. Helps them navigate. Helps them get there on time. We do the same.” Well, not exactly. The augmented reality mapping application Lieutenant-Colonel “N” is describing is designed to find hidden terrorists, not restaurants. “Mistakes can be fatal,” he tells me, “we need to get the right house on the right street.”

Welcome to the battlefield of the future—artificial intelligence, multi-source data fusion, augmented reality. Everything edge-based and real-time. Except this isn’t really a battlefield, as such. “What happened to us,” the officer tells me, “is that our enemies have adopted a technique to merge into urban areas populated with civilians, we need to unveil the enemy, precisely, and stop the threat.”

So, now you start to get the picture. Think Google Street View—except it’s not Google. And an augmented reality overlay that comes from the fusion of multiple sources of highly classified intelligence not big tech’s cloud servers And if that isn't enough, there’s also AI running pattern analytics on prior enemy tactics, techniques and procedures to infer what a hidden enemy is likely to do next, in real time.

This is military augmented reality and it’s not unique—such systems are under development, gaming-style headsets overlaying friendlies and likely combatants, helping targeting and the avoidance of blue on blue. Israel’s new system is different, though. The augmented reality comes from the fusion of multiple intel sources, the intent is not to present ground troops with an advanced gaming-style view of the battlefield, but to use live data to infer where actual targets are hiding.

Picture this Street View lookalike again—no screenshots, I’m afraid, it’s classified. Arrows and graphics explain to a soldier on the ground why the third-floor apartment with the wrought iron balcony is deemed a hostile environment, why anyone exiting the building can be considered a combatant. The intent is to root out threats, but also to keep others safe, to avoid collateral damage. “We need to make sure we only target the aggressor and not any civilians,” Lt-Col “N” tells me.

The story that I am about to tell is that of my late father, Yahya Qassim, the owner and editor of Al-Sha’b—a newspaper published from 1945 to 1958, when Iraq was under the rule of the Hashemite monarchy. The story is focused on Qassim’s defense of Iraqi Jewry in the tremendous ordeal that the Iraqi Jewish community faced immediately before and after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. This story almost certainly would have been forgotten had it not been recounted by professor Orit Bashkin in her 2012 book New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq.

The Jews of Iraq occupy an important place in Judaism, as the country was home to the oldest and second-largest Jewish community in the Arab world. As with other Jewish communities in various parts of the world, Iraqi Jewry suffered from varying forms and different degrees of repression, persecution, and pogroms throughout history—spanning biblical Babylonia, the Islamic Caliphate, the Mongol invasion, the Ottoman Empire, and modern Iraq in the 20th century. Prior to discussing the events of 1947-1953 in relation to the ordeal faced by the Jewish community in Iraq at the time of the creation of the State of Israel, it is interesting to highlight the major phases of the history of the Iraqi Jewish community in the modern era.

What is known today as Iraq consisted under Ottoman rule (1533-1917) of three provinces (Wilayats in Turkish): Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra, corresponding to the northern, central, and southern regions of present day Iraq. During this period, the Jewish community in Iraq had been generally treated fairly. This was one more point in the similarity between the Ottoman and the Austrian empires: Both were multiethnic and relatively benign toward their constituent ethnicities; both entered WWI on the same (eventually) losing side along with the German Empire; and both met the same fate, namely collapse and dissolution at the end of the Great War.

The Iraqi Jewish community, along with the rest of the population in Iraq, suffered great hardships during WWI, but under the British occupation that followed, Iraqi Jews enjoyed greater security and prosperity. Then came the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq (1921-1958). Under Hashemite rule, a pluralist Iraqi identity was created, forged, and nourished, and Jews were increasingly integrated into Iraqi society as a whole. However, this trend suffered a major interruption in April 1941, when an anti-British and pro-Nazi group of Iraqi army officers, supported by civilians, staged a coup d’etat and installed a short-lived dictatorship. Immediately after the dictatorship was ousted in late May, the Jewish communities in Baghdad and Basra suffered a pogrom at the hands of street mobs in an incident known as the Farhud (Arabic for pogrom). Rioters killed around 200 Jews and injured 1,000, raped an unknown number of Jewish women, and looted around 1,500 Jewish stores and homes. However, after the restoration of the Hashemite monarchy, the Iraqi Jewish community’s stability and prosperity not only began to recover, but also showed clear signs of growth.

Returning to the core of my story—Al-Sha’b (the people in Arabic) was launched in 1945 by Yahya Qassim with the aim of using the editorials he penned to advocate daily and emphatically for a pluralist, democratic Iraq, where citizens—whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or of any other set of personal faiths and beliefs—are considered fully equal under the rule of law. In less than a year, Al-Sha’b rose to become the leading newspaper in Iraq in terms of its circulation, its liberal editorial policy, and its independence from any political party or group. True to Qassim’s pluralist principles, there were several Jewish professionals working at Al-Sha’b alongside Muslims and Christians, both as journalists and in administrative positions.

A reporter in Portland’s KOIN News, Jenny Young,  came under fire when she tweeted a very accurate statement.

She described a speaker at a “Day of Rage” rally as  “openly anti-Zionist”, and the BDS movement as “an anti-Semitic movement that’s been admonished by U.S. lawmakers.”

All of this is perfectly true.

There was a huge outcry from anti-Israel activists, of course,  and the tweet was taken down after an hour.

All of this is depressingly familiar.

But here’s the part that is really upsetting:

Bob Horenstein, spokesman for the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, said he felt the reporter’s tweet was an oversimplification of the issue, but said he also took exception with some other organizations’ characterization of the BDS movement. He said the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland had made their stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict clear.

"We came out with a statement opposing unilateral annexation of the West Bank. We support a two-state solution," he said.

He said while the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland doesn’t believe everyone who supports the BDS movement is anti-Semitic, he said many people believe the effects of the BDS movement harm Jewish people.

He also noted that while some local Black Lives Matter chapters have come out in support of the BDS movement, most around the country have not taken a stand on the issue.

The newspaper already had quoted multiple Muslim leaders who all supported BDS and denounced Israel and Zionists. (It referred to them as “civil rights organizations.”) They wanted to hear from the other side for a token comment. And instead of a full-throated expression of support for Israel and against antisemitism and BDS, Mr. Horenstein hedged and dodged and declared how reasonable many Jews are in drawing fine lines between supporting Israel and opposing sovereignty over Judea and Samaria (which the reporter didn’t ask about) and how some people who want to see the Jewish state destroyed are perfectly fine people who aren’t antisemitic at all, oh no, they just want to boycott Jewish businesses and entertainers and academics from Israel while not boycotting Israeli Arab entertainers or businesses or academics.

He doesn’t even know what he is talking about with Black Lives Matter – it is a national BLM decision to support BDS, not local. If Horenstein wanted to make distinctions, he could have distinguished between the Black Lives Matter movement and supporting black lives.

It is possible that the paper selectively quoted Horenstein. He has explicitly called out antisemitism on the Left. But the way that this reads is that both sides are against the decisions of the Israeli government, both sides don’t consider BDS to be antisemitic  - and the Jews are wishy-washy while the Muslims are passionate.

The tweet should have been defended by the Jewish community. BDS has been recognized as antisemitic not only by US lawmakers but by European leaders as well, and it fits the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

Furthermore, Jenny Young should be supported by the Jewish community for what she wrote instead of getting hung out to dry.

Some scenes from yesterday’s “Day of Rage” rallies across America that glorified and incited to violence.

Salt Lake City’s rally had support for an airplane hijacker saying that “resistance” (i.e., terrorism) is justified.

The Brooklyn rally, in a heavily Muslim neighborhood, chanted support for “intifada” and had some direct incitement for American Muslims to burn down police precincts and cars.

Sheer, unabashed incitement. pic.twitter.com/lEkdQCm3Kl

— Tali Goldsheft (@TaliGoldsheft) July 1, 2020

In San Francisco, the crowd was told that of course Palestinians can murder Jews to protect “their land,” just as a mother can protect her children.

Yesterday’s “Day of Rage” demonstrations were ostensibly against Israel’s plans to “annex” parts of Judea and Samaria. The chants, however, told a different story: the message was to destroy Israel and replace it with a Palestinian state.

“We don’t wanna go just back to our homes in Gaza and the West Bank. We want all of it...we don’t want your two states.”

A taste of today’s #DayofRage in Brooklyn.

Additional chants from today include the genocidal “From the river to the sea” and “Intifada, intifada.” pic.twitter.com/DeUUZ6x44I

— Tali Goldsheft (@TaliGoldsheft) July 1, 2020

pic.twitter.com/o3WHFZYvlG

— Tali Goldsheft (@TaliGoldsheft) July 1, 2020

A Jewish state with an Arab minority given equal rights is “apartheid,” but an Arab state with a Jewish minority – which, history shows, would inevitably be as oppressed as Jews have been in every single Arab and Muslim state - is “justice.”

Israel wanting to set its borders in a way that 97% of Palestinian Arabs can still live in autonomy in their own self-declared state is “stealing land.” A Palestinian state “from the river to the sea”  where there is no Jewish autonomy is perfectly fine.

If Israel wanting to set its borders for its security is “apartheid,” then what is this PLO logo?

Twitter just suspended the Elder of Ziyon account…apparently for antisemitism!

I’m appealing, but please tweet to @Twitter and @TwitterSupport to ask them to restore my account!

UPDATE: Thanks for all the support and people who tweeted, I'm back up although it takes a couple of days for things to get back to normal (restoring followers, and I'm not seeing new tweets from those I follow yet.)

The parents of the one of the victims of a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem pizza restaurant in August 2001 have launched an online petition
demanding that the Kingdom of Jordan extradite the atrocity’s main planner, who has been residing in Amman since she was released in a prisoner exchange with the Israeli government a decade ago.

“Ahlam Tamimi today lives in Jordan where she is a television personality and icon of the kingdom’s social media and public opinion,” stated the petition posted by Arnold and Frimet Roth — whose 15-year-old daughter Malki was killed in the Aug. 9, 2001 bomb attack inside a Sbarro pizzeria in downtown Jerusalem.

Fourteen other people were killed in the bombing, among them a pregnant woman, while 130 more were wounded in an attack timed to coincide with the height of the lunch hour.

The bomber — a supporter of the Islamist Hamas movement — was driven to the restaurant by Tamimi, who participated in the planning of the atrocity and disguised herself as a Jewish tourist on the day of the attack.

The US Justice Department unveiled terrorism charges against Tamimi in 2017 and formally notified Jordan of its request that she be extradited to face trial.

Jordan has consistently ruled out the prospect of deporting Tamimi — a stance that has piqued some American legislators, seven of whom wrote to the Jordanian ambassador in Washington, DC, in April in protest.

Not long after 9/11, Adham Amin Hassoun, a Lebanese 'Palestinian' computer programmer, was arrested at a Florida traffic stop. The arrest had been a long time coming.

Hassoun had entered the United States on a student visa in 1989 and quickly got involved in Islamic terrorism. By the early 90s, the FBI had noticed Hassoun because of his conversations with the Blind Sheikh, the Islamic cleric at the center of the World Trade Center bombing and even larger terror plots targeting New York City landmarks.

The Blind Sheikh was the leader of Gamaa Islamiya or the Islamic Group, a Muslim Brotherhood splinter terrorist group responsible for horrifying atrocities like the brutal Luxor Massacre of foreign tourists, including women and children, where the Islamists had tortured young girls, cut off ears and noses, and left a note praising Islam inside a disemboweled body.

Despite, or perhaps, because of their atrocities, the Islamic Group won the support of leftist advocates like Lynne Stewart: the National Lawyers Guild member who was convicted of helping the Blind Sheikh relay guidance to his terror group from prison.

"The FBI has identified Hassoun as a focal point for communications among persons associated with AGAI and with the international radical fundamentalist community. He has been a major fundraiser for extremist Muslim causes in Chechnya and Bosnia and, since as early as 1994, is believed to have recruited... 'mujahideen,' for those conflicts." the FBI's counterterrorism section chief had warned.

According to the FBI report, Hassoun had been a member of Gamaa Islamiya. By the second half of the decade, he had moved on to Al Qaeda acting as a registered agent for the

Benevolence International Foundation. Despite its ‘benevolent’ name, BIF was a front for Al Qaeda and its name originated with an organization run by Bin Laden’s brother-in-law.

After the Saudis shut down BIF, it headed to Florida, where Hassoun helped out.

Hassoun had become quite fond of Osama bin Laden. “May Allah protect him,” he told one of his collaborators during a phone conversation after the Al Qaeda leader had threatened to carry out attacks against America in a CNN interview.

Experts at Hassoun’s trial later noted that the Islamist had called Bin Laden,

“Abu Abdullah”, a name usually used by Al Qaeda members and close supporters.

Many parts of the Israeli media, we find, are directly and indirectly using scare tactics to try and prevent implementation of the Israel law east of the Green Line. The word “annexation” is bandied around. As any legal resource, easily located online, indicates, annexation is an administrative action relating to the forcible acquisition of one state’s territory by another state and is generally held to be an illegal act. Since a Palestinian state does not exist, nor has it ever, Israel will not be annexing Judea and Samaria, since the territory in question does not “belong” to any other state. True, many, especially in Europe, already today consider Judea and Samaria as belonging to the Palestinian Authority and for them, this is the vision of the two-state solution.

But why does our media have to accede to this wishful thinking and accept a term wrongly defined as relevant to the discourse? It should describe the expected act of the government for what it is – extension or application of Israeli law instead of military law, on certain areas in Judea and Samaria.

We are being warned day in and day out that removal of the military government will irreparably harm our relations with the democratic world as it is a violation of international law. Tel Aviv University’s INSS, a research institute and think tank, has summarized these dire warnings succinctly: Imposition of Israeli law on all the settlement areas might be considered to be an attractive option, but such a move is expected to undermine the stability in the West Bank area, which has been under stable control for the past 15 years. It will cause an outburst of violence and even seriously harm Israel’s international and regional standing as well as the peaceful relations between Israel and Jordan and Egypt, who will find it difficult to handle internal criticism over a unilateral Israeli annexation.

Of course, our media makes sure that we know that Europe will “punish” Israel for such moves. For example, it will retract Israel’s standing in the prestigious Horizon scientific program. European ambassadors are interviewed on the media to bring their government’s position.

This last Sunday, Efi Trigger, the moderator of Galatz’s early morning news program, aired his interview with the Belgian ambassador. Apart from allowing him unrestrainedly to express opposition to Israel’s intentions, not a single serious question was asked. For example, one could have expected that Trigger would remind the ambassador of the 100 years old San Remo decision and how European policy relates to it. If Israel’s implementation of law in Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights is considered to be a serious violation of international law, then what about the US recognition of our rights in the Golan Heights. What are the steps that the European Union has taken against the United States? Or, is it the old story of Israel being handled differently than other nations?

BUT, NO, these questions and many others are not being aired. The mainstream approach was well-described by Ben Caspit in his June 21 report in Maariv: “Most security organs of Israel will establish, with high probability, that any one-sided annexation will lead to violence. The GSS will, it seems, lead in predicting the dire consequences. In internal discussions the GSS predicted that a wave of terror will come especially from the South. It would then move to Judea and Samaria and in the worst case scenario turn into a general conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, turning even into a third intifada… The assessment is that the GSS will officially warn that there will be a round of violence which might lead to a total loss of control.”

Notice how Caspit uses scare tactics. There is not one piece of solid news in his whole article. He is predicting what the GSS will conclude even though the GSS is at present in the midst of deliberations.

Parliamentarians from 20 different countries in Europe, Africa and Latin America signed a letter on Wednesday supporting Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank.

The signatories, who are all leaders of the Israel Allies Caucuses in their respective countries, signed the letter on the date when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is first allowed to bring up the subject of annexation to the Knesset for a vote, as per the coalition agreement between his Likud Party and the Blue and White Party, though he has yet to do so at the time of writing.

“We, the chairman of the Israel Allies Caucuses fully support our ally, the State of Israel, in her rights to apply sovereignty to the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria,” the letter states.

“We affirm that the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria have been a key part of the biblical and ancestral homeland of the Jewish nation for centuries. We maintain that Israel applying Israeli civil law to already existing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria is appropriate and recognizes the democratic wishes of those communities.”

In addition, the letter also cites the freedom of access to important biblical sites to members of all religions. This, the letter states, includes “the Tomb of the Patriarch and Matriarchs in Hebron, the site of Jacob’s dream in Beit El and the tabernacle’s resting place in Shiloh, among many other religious sites.

“We believe that the application of sovereignty to these communities in Israel will not affect the Palestinian people negatively but rather bring the possibility for peace and prosperity closer to the region. Applying Israeli law to already existing Jewish communities in Israel can be part of a realistic regional peace plan which recognizes current realities.”

One of the most serious accusations against Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria to “end the occupation” and in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns is that Israel systematically steals or “seizes” “private Palestinian land.” Not only would that be illegal, it is immoral. This seems to be the basis for the High Court’s decision to strike down the Regulation Law.

It is important to remember the reason for the Regulation Law. When Jewish communities (“settlements”) were established, it was done “in good faith,” and with government approval on vacant land. Arabs did not go to court to claim “their land.” Only much later, led by left-wing NGOs, were Arabs encouraged to make their claims.

The humanitarian purpose of the Regulation Law was to protect Jews who had built their homes “in good faith.” Most other countries have similar laws which protect homeowners in cases where the value of what was built far exceeds the value of the land. Destroying the homes of many thousands of Jews to resolve questionable or false Arab land claims would be unfair and unjust. Therefore, compensation was offered to Arab
claimants, regardless of proof of ownership.

The source for the charge that “Israel is stealing privately owned land” is not only PLO/PA, Hamas, left-wing and anti-Israel media, and Arab propaganda, but an agency of the Israeli government: Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).

COGAT, a unit of the Defense Ministry, is responsible for “implementing government policy in Judea and Samaria.” But COGAT not only “implements,” it also makes policy. And, as a separate independent military-legal administration, it is virtually unaccountable to anyone except the defense minister and the prime minister. They are responsible for this misrepresentation of fact.

From my debate about 'annexation' on @trtworld@The_Newsmakers:

'If the 2-state solution died, it died with 15,000 Hamas rockets & every dollar PA paid in salaries to terrorists. #Palestinian people also deserve better future, but their leadership is holding them back.' #Israelpic.twitter.com/M34McHjz9p

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 2, 2020

The UN and the vast majority of the international community strongly condemned Israel's announcement that it wanted to annex parts of the West Bank, a territory at the heart of Palestinian hopes for a future state. But with the backing of the US, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was adamant to forge ahead. But now Israel's July 1 annexation plans are delayed. Is this pause a win for Palestinians? Or is Netanyahu still committed to seizing land?
Guests: Nour Odeh? Former Palestinian Authority Spokeswoman?
Gideon Levy Haaretz Journalist
Arsen Ostrovsky International Human Rights Lawyer

The Trump administration is the first U.S. administration to state the obvious: Most Israeli communities in the West Bank are here to stay, so we might as well accept them. Doing so doesn't make a peace deal with the Palestinians less likely. In fact, any attempt to promote a resolution must begin by acknowledging this reality and proceed from there. Denying realities has gotten us, thus far, no closer to healing the rifts between the sides. Only grappling with these realities and finding ways to accommodate them can actually lead to peace.

In 1948, the UN wanted two states to be established in Mandatory Palestine: one for Jews and one for Arabs. The Jews established their state - Israel. The Arabs decided to fight a war and lost. In 1967, in another war instigated by the surrounding Arab countries, Israel took the West Bank, as well. The Israeli government believes that it has the moral and legal right to settle the area, as it is both the heart of the historic national homeland of the Jewish people and essential to the security of modern Israel.

Today, Israel's so-called occupation is more than 50 years old. The settlers are raising grandchildren and even great-grandchildren in Judea and Samaria. Around half a million Jews live in the West Bank. Whatever one's views of the legitimacy or desirability of these Israeli communities, they are facts that everyone has to acknowledge. President George W. Bush was the first American leader to acknowledge these facts a decade and a half ago. President Donald Trump went further in his peace proposal in January, indicating that no resident, Jew or Arab, would have to be evacuated from the West Bank as the parties move forward on their quest for peace.

Moves for Israeli sovereignty will merely take an existing reality and make it official. For example: Close to 100,000 Israelis live in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc right outside Jerusalem. No Israeli government is ever going to agree to make them leave. No serious mediator for peace is going to propose that these people must leave.

There is no question in my mind that President Trump will support Israel in its sovereignty plan. He understands how strongly evangelicals feel about the Bible, and the issue of the Peace Plan is not really relevant at this moment, because there's something that trumps the Peace Plan. It's called the election. If the President does not win, the plan goes in the trash in Israel.

Biden will be listening to Bernie Sanders and J Street. Israel must heavily weigh the possibility of that in considering their decisions. As evangelicals, we want Israel to move forward with all sovereignty over all Bible lands, and not just have a phased plan. If Israel does not annex Judea and Samaria before a Democrat is elected President, they won't be able to at all.

America has never had a President more pro-Israel than Donald Trump. He will continue to support Israel as he has in the last three years. The ball is in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hands. He has the Trump card. Israel's security is totally contingent upon the high ground. They cannot afford to negotiate over their security in Judea and Samaria.

A Palestinian State will never have airspace, an army, or treaties. Israel needs to define what territory is acceptable to Israel as a Palestinian State and do it unilaterally. The Sunni world is fed up with wasting money on the Palestinian mafia. Sure, there will be unhappy campers, but they were unhappy when Israel recognized Jerusalem. It's time for Jerusalem to seize the opportunity while Donald Trump is still President.

The Palestinians should decide for themselves if they want an autonomous region. But for that to happen, they must resolve the T question—terrorists, especially with Hamas and Islamic Jihad

This constant Palestinian rejectionism means we cannot sit around and wait for them to decide that we're finally going to accept that the Jewish state exists, we have to move forward and secure our borders, Deputy Mayor of #Jerusalem@FleurHassanN tells @calev_i24: pic.twitter.com/6vQyeNfEsP

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) July 1, 2020

This is Abba Eban, Ambassador to UN. This is 1959. West Bank is part of Jordan. Gaza is part of Egypt. Palestinians are still called Arabs as in Arnold Toynbee’s quote since it was 5 years before they assumed “Palestinian” as a noun and not as an adjective. Peace offers declined. pic.twitter.com/2pyqXjAaOz

— ❌Michael Elgort ✡️❌ (@just_whatever) July 1, 2020

In a little noticed video this week, the founder of the most important Israeli settlement advocacy group acknowledged that the movement he helped found had long “denied the reality” of the Palestinian presence in the West Bank — and suggested it could do so no longer.

Israel Harel, 82, was among the Israeli troops who liberated Jerusalem’s Old City in 1967 before going on to help found the Ofra settlement and becoming the founding chairman of the Yesha Council. On Tuesday he joined Rabbi Benny Lau for a conversation broadcast online as part of Lau’s 929 Bible study initiative.

Did the early West Bank settlers, as they planted their flag on mountaintops throughout the West Bank in the early 1970s, “see” the Palestinians? Lau asked Harel.

“Of course I saw them,” said Harel. “But a revolutionary movement sometimes needs to ignore reality to achieve its goal. Of course, it shouldn’t commit acts of injustice, acts of dispossession. And certainly in that period no settlement sat on the ruins of any Arab settlement. That didn’t happen at all… But for a revolutionary movement to gallop forward, it needs in large measure to ignore reality. It’s like a platoon or company charging under fire; if we’re afraid that every bullet will hit us, we won’t charge.”

Harel’s comments aren’t theoretical. The settlement movement he once led is now torn between two camps: those who support a limited Israeli annexation in the West Bank given the window of opportunity opened up by the Trump peace plan, and those who oppose it as the ushering into being of a dangerous, radicalized, certain-to-fail Palestinian state.

Binyamin Regional Council mayor Yisrael Gantz is an example of the latter, warning in a promotional video released Tuesday that accepting the Trump plan means “agreeing that 70% of the territory will turn into a Palestinian state… We must be clear that consenting to sovereignty [i.e., annexation] is not consenting to the future establishment of a Palestinian state.”

A group of several dozen anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews joined a protest in Brooklyn on Wednesday against Israel's plan to apply sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and settlements in Judea and Samaria. The protest was part of a "day of rage" against the sovereignty plan, which was marked by demonstrations in a number of US cities.

Protesters in Brooklyn called to liberate "Palestine" and booed Zionism, waving placards that bore anti-Israel slogans such as "End Zionism" and "Judaism Rejects Zionism."

Reports that preceded the demonstrations indicated that most of the protests were organized by well-known BDS groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace. Some high-level officials in the various cities that hosted the protests were worried that they would turn into violent anti-Semitic events.

One Jewish group sent a letter of concern to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, saying that while the group supported "the right of every American to protest," it had reasons to believe that the "day of rage" would devolve into violence and anti-Semitism.

“We don’t wanna go just back to our homes in Gaza and the West Bank. We want all of it...we don’t want your two states.”

A taste of today’s #DayofRage in Brooklyn.

Additional chants from today include the genocidal “From the river to the sea” and “Intifada, intifada.” pic.twitter.com/DeUUZ6x44I

— Tali Goldsheft (@TaliGoldsheft) July 1, 2020

The Likud expressed outrage at Joint List head Ayman Odeh’s participation at a Fatah-Hamas press conference in Ramallah on Thursday.
A Likud spokesman said that Odeh had hit a new low by participating in an event with Hamas, given that there were calls by Hamas and Palestinian political leader Jibril Rajoub to destroy Israel. The spokesman noted that Opposition leader Yair Lapid had tried to form a coalition with the outside support of Odeh’s party.

“There is no limit to shame,” the Likud spokesman said in a tweet that was retweeted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin (Likud) said he would not tolerate an MK participating in “an event in support of terror with the worst of Israel’s enemies.” He lamented that the Supreme Court has continued to allow MKs to run after showing support for terrorists.

Likud MK Shlomo Karhi filed a complaint at the Knesset Ethics Committee. His Likud colleague MK Keti Sheetrit asked for Odeh to go into a two-week quarantine because he went to Ramallah.

Odeh said he came to Ramallah in order to show support for internal Palestinian reconciliation.

The Palestinian ruling Fatah faction and Hamas will work together to achieve an independent Palestinian state and foil Israeli-American "conspiracies" against the Palestinians, senior Fatah official Jibril Rajoub said on Thursday.

Rajoub, who was speaking during a joint teleconference press interview with senior Hamas official Saleh Arouri, said: “We will lead our battle together under the flag of Palestine to achieve an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the 1967 borders and solving the issue of the refugees on the basis of international resolutions.”

The joint press conference was the first of its kind in several years between senior Fatah and Hamas officials.

The two rival parties have been at each other’s throat since 2006, when Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary election and its head, Ismail Haniyeh, headed the first Palestinian unity government.

On Wednesday, Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip were invited to attend a major rally organized by Hamas and other Palestinian groups in protest of Israel’s intention to extend its sovereignty to parts of the West Bank.

Fatah and Hamas officials said that the rally in the Gaza Strip would pave the way for the two parties to resume their efforts to end their dispute.

The Vatican, in a highly unusual move, summoned both the US and Israeli ambassadors to express the Holy See's concern about Israel's moves to extend its sovereignty to Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank.

A Vatican statement on Wednesday said meetings with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's secretary of state, and US Ambassador Callista Gingrich and Israeli Ambassador Oren David, took place on Tuesday.

A senior diplomatic source told Reuters that Parolin met the two envoys separately, a detail which was not clear in the Vatican statement.
It said Parolin, the Vatican's top diplomat, expressed "the concern of the Holy See regarding possible unilateral actions that may further jeopardize the search for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the delicate situation in the Middle East".

Israeli leaders decided in May that cabinet and parliamentary deliberations on extending Israeli sovereignty to Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, in coordination with Washington, could begin as of July 1.

But with no agreement with Washington yet on the modalities of the move under a peace proposal announced by U.S. President Donald Trump in January, and talks with the White House still underway, no cabinet session was scheduled for Wednesday.

A pro-Israel protest took place in Helsinki, Finland, on Tuesday with an attendance of more than 200 people.

The protest was organized quickly, as a response to an anti-Israel rally organized by the Finland branch of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, as well as youth organizations of left-wing and green political parties, which are against Israel's annexation plans.

Risto Huvila, chairman of the Federation of Finland-Israel Associations and vice chair of the March of Life Finland, organized the event on short notice once he heard of the anti-Israel rally on Monday morning.

Over 200 people showed up with flags, shofars and banners, many of whom drove several hundred kilometers, despite quite heavy rain. The number of attendees at the pro-Israel rally was almost double that of the Free Palestine audience.

"This rally really shows that the members of pro-Israel community in Finland are devout and faithful to show their support for Israel even on the very short notice," Huvila said. "And even in quite bad weather."

Guardian editorials on Israel can usually be relied upon to include the following elements of bias:

- Denying Palestinians agency – treating them entirely as victims, erasing decisions their leaders have made that are inimical to peace, and acting as if Israelis are the only party in the conflict that matters.
- Obsessive focus on settlements, whilst ignoring other issues relevant to the absence of peace.
- Using demonising rhetoric in condemning Israeli actions.

The first paragraph of the Guardian editorial published yesterday (“The Guardian view on Israel and annexation: unlawful, unwise and immoral”, June 30), as with the rest of the piece, evokes these three dynamics:
Annexation looks like the executioner of the two-state solution. Israel has changed the facts on the ground, with the rapid growth of settlements rendering that goal less and less viable. But the declaration of sovereignty over parts of the occupied territories, in putting a formal seal on physical realities, will be a new and terrible moment, and above all a fresh injustice to Palestinians.

Denial of Palestinian agency:
Not only is the – possible but far from certain – partial annexation of the West Bank seen a “fresh injustice” to Palestinians, but nothing in the opening sentence, nor in the rest of the 578 word op-ed, even alludes to the question of what Palestinians can do now or could have done in the decades since Oslo to advance the peace process.

In fact, editors even omitted reports on Monday that the PA stated its willingness to renew negotiations with Israel. This is important as it suggests Mahmoud Abbas reached the conclusion – never enunciated in the Guardian – that the PA’s prior decision to refuse talks with Israel and the US was detrimental to their interests. The editorial also of course fails to mention Palestinian decisions to reject offers of statehood since Oslo (deals that would have given Palestinians nearly everything they asked for).

Bad decisions by Palestinian leaders inevitably lead to bad outcomes for the Palestinian people.

A country that maintained a globe-spanning empire for more than four hundred years cautioned the Jewish State today against applying its sovereign laws to the Jewish heartland after returning from thousands of years of exile and longing.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared Wednesday that Israel must not risk destabilizing the region by annexing parts of territory taken from nineteen years of Jordanian occupation in 1967, a Jordanian annexation that Britain and Pakistan alone recognized. Johnson warned the government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in an official statement. Britain, which held the League of Nations Mandate over the once-Ottoman-held territory that gave rise to the modern state of Israel in 1948, cannot accept that Jews control the land that the League of Nations Mandate specifically assigned to Britain for purposes of establishing a Jewish national home.

British government representatives have sounded a similar tone over the last several months, in response to US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of previous administrations’ objections to Israeli claims on Judea and Samaria. Johnson’s government thus joins the European Union as the most vocal Western opponents of the move, the specifics of which Netanyahu has yet to announce – nor whether the application of Israeli law to parts of the disputed areas will occur at all. Netanyahu’s dithering amid an internal Israeli admixture of apathy and tentative opposition even among his centrist and right-wing allies has emboldened overseas opponents of the move to thwart it with forceful rhetoric. UK and EU opposition, though by no means unified, comes against the backdrop of two thousand years of European and other dominant powers trying to prevent Jewish sovereignty anywhere, let alone the place where Jews and Judaism began.

The Palestinian Authority and Fatah have always vocally condemned so-called “normalization” with Israel – i.e., any cooperation with Israel, be it in business, academia, culture, sports, or otherwise.

After PA Chairman Abbas’ announcement on May 19, 2020, that the PA had absolved itself from all agreements with Israel in response to Israel's plans to apply Israeli law to the Jordan Valley and the Jewish cities and towns in the West Bank, official PA TV has broadcast a filler against “normalization.” In it, the PA and Fatah announce that cooperating with Israel in any way is “treason”:

Texts on screen: “Fatah: Cooperation with the occupation and its institutions is treason”
“Fatah Revolutionary Council: We’ll strike with an iron fist and not go easy on those who agree to a truce with the occupation” …
“The Palestinian Federation of Industries stresses its commitment to the leadership’s position and its refusal to cooperate with Israel”
“The Private Sector Institutions Coordination Council: We support the leadership’s decisions, and won’t allow cooperation with Israel”
[Official PA TV Live, June 1, 6, 8, 9 (twice), 13, 2020]

Adding a death sentence to this, Fatah official Abbas Zaki stated that anyone who cooperates with Israel “should be shot”:

Nabil Shaath, Advisor to PA President Abbas: We Should Persevere Until the U.S. Loses Control of the World; We Have the Right to Use Military Force against Israeli Annexation pic.twitter.com/iK3jAbKNLu

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 2, 2020

Fighting has recently escalated in Libya between the two sides in the country's civil war: on one side the Government of National Accord (GNA), headed by Fayez Al-Sarraj, which is supported by the UN, Turkey and Qatar, and is also backed by Islamic circles in Libya, such as the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and on the other side the Libyan National Army, under the command of Gen. Khalifa Haftar, which is supported by Egypt, the UAE and Russia.

The Al-Sarraj government appears to have the upper hand at the moment, mostly due to Turkey's growing military intervention in Libya, which includes airlifts of fighters, weapons, drones and armored vehicles, in direct violation of the UN arms embargo on bringing weapons into the country. The Al-Sarraj forces and their allies have regained full control of the capital, Tripoli; captured considerable additional territory, and even managed to advance on the city of Sirte and the Al-Jufra area to the south of it, a strategic area connecting West and East Libya and the gateway to the oil-rich eastern regions. Al-Jufra is also the site of an airbase and a strategic operations room of General Haftar's forces.

This escalation on the ground, and the advance of Al-Sarraj's forces, with Turkish military assistance, towards the eastern regions of the country adjacent to the border with Egypt, intensified the existing tension between Turkey and the Arab countries, especially Egypt, which sees this advance as a threat to its western border. Turkey's actions in the Middle East have in general been a source of concern for many Arab countries, who view them as an attempt by Turkey to establish itself as regional power, which poses a threat to their stability.[1] The recent setbacks of Haftar's forces thus increased concerns in the UAE – the principal backer of these forces – and in Egypt, prompting Egyptian President 'Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sisi to issue the June 6, 2020 Cairo Declaration, a proposal for a ceasefire and a political solution in Libya. The declaration, issued by Al-Sisi in the presence of Gen. Haftar and the head of the pro-Haftar parliament in East Libya, Aguila Saleh, also calls for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Libya, including the Turkish ones.[2]

When his initiative was rejected and Al-Sarraj's forces continued to advance toward the Sirte-Al-Jufra line, Al-Sisi issued a threat from an Egyptian military base on the Libyan border, saying that Sirte-Al-Jufra frontline was a "red line," the crossing of which could lead to direct Egyptian military intervention in Libya.

Many Arab countries, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Jordan, hurried to express support for the Egyptian position. Some of them claimed that Egyptian military intervention would be legitimate based on the Joint Defense Treaty signed by several Arab countries in 1950.[3] Even Syria, which was suspended from the Arab League in November 2011, joined these expressions of support, although it has no official diplomatic relations with most of the Arab countries, including Egypt.[4]

Furthermore, at Egypt's request, on June 23, 2020 the Arab League foreign ministers held a video conference to discuss the situation in Libya.[5] Their concluding statement stressed the importance of a political solution for the Libyan crisis, while expressing support for the Cairo Declaration and opposition to any foreign intervention in Libya. Some states expressed reservations about parts of the statement, including Qatar, Tunis and Somalia, as well as the GNA.[6]

Egyptian Security Expert Gen. Mahmoud Mansour: Use of Military Force against Ethiopia – Only as a Final Recourse; We Will Wait for the Dam to Collapse So We Can Demand Reparations for the Drowning of Egypt and Sudan pic.twitter.com/X6cF2wm0nq

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 2, 2020

The United States will seek a permanent extension of an arms embargo on Iran that is set to expire later this year, setting up a confrontation at the United Nations with Russia and China, Iranian allies poised to block the Trump administration's efforts.

The October expiration of the United Nations arms embargo on Iran was a key part of the Obama-era nuclear deal that blocked nations from exporting arms to Tehran. The Trump administration has vowed to keep the embargo alive and in recent months expended significant diplomatic capital preparing a U.N. resolution to accomplish that goal. Russia and China promise to veto any such measure and are able to unilaterally do so as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Both countries remain close allies of Iran and have already discussed plans to sell Tehran billions of dollars' worth of advanced weaponry once the embargo lifts.

The Trump administration has made extending the arms embargo a centerpiece of its "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran, which includes crippling economic sanctions. The diplomatic push comes as Iran ramps up its contested nuclear work, particularly the enrichment of uranium, the key component in an atomic weapon. For months, Tehran has blatantly violated the nuclear deal by, among other things, preventing international atomic inspectors from accessing key military sites believed to contain undeclared nuclear materials. As the 2020 U.S. presidential election approaches, the arms embargo could be the Trump administration's last chance to prevent Tehran from becoming an international arms dealer.

Amid the showdown between the United States, Russia, and China, European countries on the U.N. Security Council have sought to forge a compromise. Under this proposal, the arms embargo would be extended, but only for a short time, and might be limited in other ways, according to multiple sources familiar with the negotiations.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ruled out such a plan on Wednesday in some of his clearest comments on the matter to date. The United States, he said, will not tolerate any plan that only extends the embargo for a limited time.

"Our objective is not to extend the arms embargo for another short period of time," Pompeo said in response to questions from the Washington Free Beacon during a briefing at the State Department.

The embargo is "not a time-limited matter," Pompeo said. "Extending it for six months or a year or two years fundamentally falls into the same trap that the previous administration fell into."

The Iranian regime doesn't deserve to have its arms embargo lifted- it hasn't abided by current restrictions and continues to commit violations. Iran cannot be trusted to act like a responsible nation when it continues threatening other nations and supporting terrorist activity. pic.twitter.com/urloUhGX36

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) July 1, 2020

An "incident" occurred at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility but no damage was caused and the site is operating as usual, Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said on Thursday.

The Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP), covering 100,000 square meters and built eight meters underground, is one of several Iranian facilities monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN nuclear watchdog.

"The incident took place in a facility in an open area near Iran's Natanz nuclear facility. There were no casualties or damages and the nuclear site is operating as usual," Iran's nuclear agency's spokesman, Behrouz Kamalvandi, was quoted as saying by Iran's Tasnim news agency.

A team of experts from Iran's Atomic Energy Organization are investigating the cause of the incident, he said.

"There is no concern about the possibility of contamination as one of the sheds which was inactive and under construction was damaged and not the facility itself," Kamalvandi told state news agency IRNA.

The incident immediately raised speculation whether someone physically sabotaged Natanz, hacked it using cyber weapons or whether Iran itself accidentally caused the incident by some kind of technological failure.

It is also unclear, since Iran often lies about setbacks, whether the damage was only to the nearby construction site or also to Natanz enrichment facility itself.

Three mysterious incidents, linked by explosions – at least two of them at secretive nuclear and weapons facilities – have rocked Iran in the past week. All three have been reported by Iranian media with various excuses about how they are less serious than they appear, that they are being investigated and that there is no major story to tell.

On June 25, a massive explosion, seen many miles away in Tehran, burned a hillside near a missile complex at Khojir. On June 30, a medical center suffered a fire in Tehran, killing at least 18 people. And on July 2, an incident at Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility was mentioned by the country's official media, without elaboration. Officials claimed that only a shed was damaged. In each case, officials appeared to try to get ahead of the story by obfuscating about the seriousness of the incident or why it took place at a sensitive facility.

This leads to key questions about why so many explosions or incidents have affected key aspects of Iran’s military-industrial complex. Rumors posted on social media and elsewhere online have suggested not only a cover up but also allegations of a “cyber” attack or other concerns about how these incidents unfolded. Iran alleged a cyber attack harmed Shahid Rajaee port in May, in the wake of an Iranian cyber attack on Israel.

AT THE HEART of this are concerns about Iran, increasingly pressured by US sanctions, lashing out across the region. The Islamic Republic has systematically walked away from the 2015 Iran deal, enriching uranium and ramping up its weapons programs. It has focused on ballistic missiles and precision guidance for munitions, as well as drones and nuclear facilities. The Natanz facility was well known for being affected by the malicious Stuxnet computer worm in 2010. Stuxnet was developed by the US and Israel according to The New York Times and may have destroyed up to 1,000 centrifuges at the Natanz facility.

Natanz consists of a fuel enrichment plant and is Iran’s largest gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facility, according to the BBC. It began working in 2007. Iran’s Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, said on July 2 that no casualties had occurred at Natanz and that the incident was being investigated. He said there was no need to worry about the possibility of contamination “due to the inactivity of the complex.” It was a strange statement, to deny that anyone had been injured and highlight that the facility was not operating. Kamalvandi’s statements headlined the Iranian Students News Agency website and others in Iran on Thursday.

At the same time, Tehran prosecutors have said that the explosion at the Sina Medical Center in Tehran was unintentional. But at least 18 people are dead. High level officials in the government speaking about the June 30 explosion also highlighted the mystery of it. If it was just a routine tragic fire and mistake, what was the need to have high-level officials looking into it, commenting on it and vowing to investigate?

Ever since the founding of the Ayatollah regime in Iran, the country has invested significantly in the export of the principles of the revolution to the world at large, in establishing local support bases in other countries, and in undermining local governments abroad. One of its most prominent measures to achieve these aims is by means of proxies which receive financial, political, propaganda and organizational assistance in the guise of armed militias which gradually infiltrate local politics, such as Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the Shi'ite militias in Iraq, and the Shi'ite clerics in Nigeria. In addition, the Iranian regime and its protégé, Hizbullah, operate various types of media, including social media accounts which address local audiences in their own languages. Thus, in an attempt to reach a Spanish-speaking audience, Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, has both a website and a Twitter account in Spanish.[1] Furthermore, in 2001 the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting set up a Spanish-language television channel called HispanTV.

The Organization for the Liberation of Argentina (OLA), a political organization headed by Argentine-born Shi'ites, appears to support Iranian regime flagship objectives to export the Iranian Islamic revolution's principles and values and to build support for the Iranian regime and for Hizbullah in Latin America.

Known in Argentina by its Spanish name, Organización para la Liberación Argentina,OLA was established in 2012 by a member of an Islamic Center in Argentina and a well-known local political activist. He heads the organization with his wife, a fellow activist, and with the organization's National Director.

The OLA leadership comprises active members of the Shi'ite community in Argentina and maintains ties to local Shi'ite institutions and religious leaders, most notably to the Al-Tawhid mosque in Buenos Aires, where prominent cleric Mohsen Rabbani was a key suspect in the bombings of the Israeli embassy and the AMIA[2] building in Argentina in 1992 and 1994.

Since its establishment in 2012, OLA has openly supported Iran's proxy organization, Hizbullah, and continues to do so despite Argentina's official designation of Hizbullah as a terrorist organization in July 2019[3] – a decision which OLA criticizes. OLA also supports the Iranian Islamic Revolution and its leaders and fully incorporates its principles, motives and terminology into the OLA political platform, which is critical of the government's neoliberal economic measures and of American influence in the country. In this way, the organization, which aims to address the general local population and not necessarily the local Shi'ite community, introduces the ideology of the Shi'ite Islamic revolution into the largely Catholic population.

US prosecutors late on Wednesday filed a lawsuit to seize the gasoline aboard four tankers that Iran is shipping to Venezuela, the latest attempt by the Trump administration to increase economic pressure on the two US foes.

The government of Venezuelan socialist President Nicolas Maduro has flaunted the tankers, which departed last month, to show it remains unbowed by US pressure. The United States, has been pressing for Maduro's ouster with a campaign of diplomatic and punitive measures, including sanctions on state oil company PDVSA.

Gasoline shortages in Venezuela, like Iran a member of OPEC, have grown acute due to the US sanctions, and the country has undergone an economic collapse. Still, Maduro has held on, and the failure to unseat him has been source of frustration for US President Donald Trump, some American officials have said privately.

In the civil-forfeiture complaint, the federal prosecutors aim to stop delivery of Iranian gasoline aboard the Liberia-flagged Bella and the Bering, and the Pandi and the Luna, according to the lawsuit, first reported in the Wall Street Journal. It also seeks to deter future deliveries.

The complaint, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, also aims to stop the flow of revenues from petroleum sales to Iran, which Washington has sanctioned over its nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and influence across the Middle East. Tehran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

Sweden said Thursday that Iran had agreed to compensate the families of the foreign victims of a Ukrainian passenger plane that was shot down outside Tehran in January.

The Boeing 737 aircraft was struck by two missiles and crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran airport on January 8, killing all 176 people on board.

The Islamic Republic admitted days later that its forces accidentally shot down the Kyiv-bound jetliner.

“We have signed an agreement of mutual understanding that we will now negotiate with Iran about amends, compensation to the victims’ next of kin,” Sweden’s Foreign Minister Ann Linde told news agency TT, in a statement confirmed by her press secretary to AFP.

Linde said the agreement had been reached after negotiations with Iran and the countries with citizens among the victims.

While it was still unclear what sums would be paid out, Linde said there was “no doubt” that Iran would follow through on the compensation.

Many of the victims were Iranian-Canadians, but there were also victims from Sweden, the UK, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, including the nine crew members.

#BREAKING
July 2—Natanz, central #Iran
"Burrow damaged" at the Natanz nuclear facility

Behrouz Kamalvandi, spox of Iran's Atomic Energy Org: There are no casualties, no damages in active areas & no concern of radiation leaks.

Natanz is home to a major nuclear enrichment site pic.twitter.com/u8FpxidVsO

— Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) July 2, 2020

Iranian Filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh: The Russian Duma Is Controlled by Jews, the Zionist Lobby pic.twitter.com/RMNzdV5lVt

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 2, 2020

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At Our 'Day Of Rage' Gathering We Almost Had A Minyan To Say Kaddish For Terrorists

by Yonah Lieberman, If Not Now

New York, July 3 - Yesterday's series of protests in solidarity with Palestine and against Israeli annexation of Palestinian land attracted so many attendees that at our best-attended event, in Philadelphia, we could almost cobble together the ten-person quorum necessary for the Mourner's Kaddish in honor of Palestinians who died trying to kill Jews. It was a smashing success.

Our organization aims to smash the monopoly that certain established groups have long exercised over perceived authority to speak for American Jews, and we do that by showing how out-of-step those mouthpieces for Israeli expansionism and Apartheid are with the bulk of American Jews. The fact that we could muster as many as two demonstrators for some of our Day of Rage rallies demonstrates to those stodgy mainstreamers just who has the numbers behind them, and who can make the more credible claim to speak for American Jewry.

The direction of the trend is clear, but that does not mean this accomplishment signals we can rest on our laurels. Much remains for us to achieve - keep setting higher and higher goals, or, as our Palestinian allies have always put it, keep increasing your demands after the other side has already made concessions, because concessions are a sign of weakness, so if they'll grant you autonomy over part of the territory from which you want to cleanse them, keep pushing and eventually you'll push them into the sea as you originally intended more than seventy years ago. It's not a perfect analogy to our situation, but I appreciate the poetry and obvious resonance of it.

Some of those in attendance at the Philadelphia rally argued for reciting the Mourner's Kaddish without the full complement of ten, but more circumspect heads prevailed, with the contention that if we want to portray ourselves as Jewish - echoing, as our name does, the admonitions of a famous Jewish sage - we ought to give at least some nod toward Jewish tradition. At our New York event, our activists woke up Chuck Schumer with Klezmer music, for example, the rationale being that only evoking a period when Jews were powerless and their security depended on the good will of cynical rulers who only saw them as political and economic pawns can we convey the compelling justice of our position. Wouldn't it be grand to bring that period back?

Someone also pointed out that Schumer is already opposed to annexation, but the rest of our groups shouted her down for implying we targeted Schumer just because he's Jewish. We did choose him for that reason, but you're not supposed to say that out loud.