Not necessarily [and away we go...]

As I said on this thread yesterday, I know people who aren’t Jewish but definitely get it. Your tweet is insulting to them which I hope is not your intention. We need all the friends we can get.

RG: They get it because they speak to Jews. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about goyim who make up definitions of it being about stealing land and killing people.

I don’t think you should generalise like that, some of us have been well taught

RG: I said "probably." And I'm referring to goyim who make up definitions about it being about ethnic cleansing or land stealing. If that doesn't apply to you, the tweet wasn't about you.

What do you mean "probably"?

RG: Probably means probably.

Probably wrong, and definitely irrelevant.

What about if that definition comes from a Clown? And he/she/it could be a Noahide? Or, also maybe he could be like me, right now. Absolutely drunk? How much, bad/wrong it could be that definition my dear?

I'm a Gentile. I believe in Israel's right to exist with secure borders without qualification. Are you going to cancel me?

I’m a Zionist & I understand Zionism but I’m not a Jew. Your comment saddens me.

What’s the definition?

RG: The belief of Jewish self-determination in our indiginous homeland

You can't just kill other people who live there.

RG: Thaaats not in the definition. Thanks for proving my point.

You might as well say all Palestinians are terrorists which clearly they’re not- I say that as a Jew before you all pile in! But in all seriousness, and as I keep repeating; if people study, research history, they’re entitled to form an understanding of Zionism. Don’t diminish friends

Defining Zionism is as problematic and controversial as defining antisemitism. That should not come as a surprise. But just as Jews should be able to define what qualifies as Jew-hatred when we are attacked, we should also be respected enough to define our own movement to reclaim and live on our indigenous land -- land that both European (Roman) and Muslim invaders conquered and colonized.

Fat. Chance.

One of the concerns expressed is an appeal to an "open tent" -- that we should do whatever is in our power to avoid turning away people who are potential allies.

Yes, there is some merit in the importance of not turning friends away, but we are talking here about a tweet, and even at that, a tweet that was qualified by the word probably. And even then, all that was being said is that some non-Jews are probably wrong. Not probably evil.

Other groups can say outsiders don't get it. Just now, I did a search on the phrase "white people just don't get it" and it got 112,000 hits. When I did a search on "white people don't get it," it got 837,000 hits.

I understand the sentiment, but I don't think it should stop us from admitting the truth -- and doing our part to educate Jew and non-Jew alike on what Zionism is.

Also, such a tweet is not an attack, let alone a threat to "cancel" someone. Jews did not go rioting in the streets when they were attacked on the streets of New York City and shot in their shuls. We have been working within the system. That claim borders on the "straw man" argument that criticism of Israel is accused of being antisemitic. Demonization of Israel is antisemitic, criticism is not. Not our fault that these days people don't know the difference.

And if that 'saddens' them, that is OK. It is not personal, it is a reflection of the reality of the growing power of antisemites in the Democratic Party and among antisemitic groups that recognize their growing impunity to attack Jews and Israel with vicious labels and lies. If anything, we need to speak out more forcefully about that, not less.

Yes, people who "study and research history" are entitled to form their own opinions. But is that supposed to mean that if they don't do the study and research, they are not entitled to their own opinions? The fact is on the one hand that people do not base their opinions on research, and on the other hand, even if they do their research -- that doesn't mean it is "correct" or that I have to agree with them.

Rafaella Gunz makes it clear that she was referring to non-Jews who actually twist and distort the meaning of Zionism. It is an important distinction.

The bottom line, it is great for Jews -- and Israel -- to have allies, but that doesn't necessarily mean that those allies fully understand us or our love of Israel in the same way that we do. Maybe some do. It doesn't matter.

Other groups have the right to have their history, culture and homeland respected -- regardless of one's ability to identify with them.

Jews deserve no less.

And we should say so.

My public relations agency has represented a myriad of interests promoting minority communities. In fact, over the years we have represented a number of individuals who are significant donors to the Anti-Defamation League, the latest organization working together with Sharpton. Civil rights issues in the African American community are indeed serious; and they should be taken seriously by leaders of the Jewish community. Indeed, it is important for there to be a united front among those in other minority communities in calling out racism in any way it may manifest itself. It's incumbent upon us as Jews to call out racism - and I've been personally heartened by the participation of members of the Jewish community in some of the peaceful demonstrations that have taken place.

But that does not and should not ever take place at the expense of promoting anti-Semites or bigots of any stripe. Indeed we are doing a disservice to the African American community by propping up someone like Al Sharpton by doing so. There are many decent and impressive civil rights activists within the African American community who deserve our support, and certainly deserve a platform. Al Sharpton is not one of them.

For those that don't know, Al Sharpton has a long and storied history of Jew hatred, that has been well documented over the years. Sharpton played a central role in provoking the rioters in Crown Heights back in the summer of 1991. Riots that led to the death of Yankel Rosenbaum. "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their Yarmulkas back and come over...," said Sharpton, during that three day stretch of riots.

Sharpton never properly offered genuine remorse for this sort of rhetoric. And his actual participation and fomenting of violence in the form of these riots is something that the Jewish community can never forget. Sharpton's list of anti-Jewish screeds go well beyond the rhetoric he employed during those riots. Sharpton has referred to Jews in the past as "diamond merchants,""white interlopers," and "Jew bastards."

It is not therefore unreasonable to ask why the ADL and Jonathan Greenblatt are proudly collaborating with Sharpton in the #StopHateforProfit campaign. This isn't about the merits of the campaign. It's about a figure who no Jewish lay leader ought to be working with when it comes to issues of civil rights. It's not only a disservice to the Jewish community; but a slap in the face to the African American community as well. The African American community deserves better.

The "coronavirus conspiracy theory [is] a modern-day blood libel, where Jews or the State of Israel is blamed for the pandemic," U.S. deputy anti-Semitism envoy Ellie Cohanim told Jewish leaders on Monday. "It is not being spread by the usual bad actors on the dark web or elsewhere, but by government officials spreading the lies - from Turkey, the Palestinian Authority and Iran."

Cohanim, who fled Iran with her family during the 1979 revolution, said she had learned two lessons from her family's experience: that even societies welcoming or hospitable to Jews, like Iran was under the Shah, "can suddenly flip overnight"; and that Jews can "never underestimate the threat of anti-Semitism."

Asked about the possibility that extension of sovereignty by Israel to parts of the West Bank may lead to increases in anti-Semitism, she said, "Just the fact that American Jewry is nervous about this shows that we have been conditioned to feel the anti-Semitism in our bones." She noted that no other country is subjected to the same kind of scrutiny when they make decisions for their populace.

Asked about the notion that one can be anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic, Cohanim said U.S. policy is that "anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Full stop." She added that when people criticize other countries for action they have taken, that doesn't lead to a discussion about the country's right to exist.

They changed the image but holy shit, CNBC. pic.twitter.com/azZILu9V7i

— Noam Blum (@neontaster) July 1, 2020

Israeli Public Security Minister Amir Ohana – a proud member of the LGBTQ community and equally proud member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party – has said that "being attracted to men doesn't mean you have to believe in creating a Palestinian state."

Ohana made that statement during an interview with The New York Times a year ago in June, when Netanyahu appointed him interim justice minister.

Ohana – a lawyer, a major in the reserves and a veteran of the Shin Bet security agency – is hated by the Left for the policies that he promotes and the bills that he has drafted. Among the latter is the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People.

But it is Ohana's view of judiciary overreach that has earned him the greatest wrath among his detractors. When he was first appointed justice minister, he made a statement to the effect that not all Supreme Court decisions should be honored.

In the wake of the ensuing uproar from the disingenuous "defenders of democracy"– those who don't believe in the separation of powers as long as the judges that they deem politically correct are occupying the bench –Channel 12's Amit Segal asked Ohana if he really meant what he had said.

"Yes," Ohana answered, quipping, "the 'supreme' consideration must be to safeguard the lives of [Israeli] citizens."

Nor did Ohana falter when Segal challenged him to contradict himself in relation to the Supreme Court's liberalism towards gays is concerned. Ohana – who lives in Tel Aviv with his partner, Alon Hadad, and their two children – smiled and shook his head.

The most important strides in LGBTQ rights, he replied, were made in the Knesset – the legislative body, not in the courts. The point he was trying to drive home is that the business of enacting laws is the job of elected parliamentarians, not judges appointed by committees comprising their cronies.

Protesters on Wednesday marched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol building in a demonstration intended to tie the cause of Black Lives Matter to the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment movement against Israel.

The march, led by Harvard University rising senior Christian Tabash, attracted about 200 people who carried signs with messages either supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization or Black Lives Matter. The event, although independently organized, was held in tandem with a series of "Day of Rage" demonstrations against Israel's territorial claims on the West Bank.

As the march progressed, Tabash led his followers in alternating chants about Israel and racial justice.

"Israel, we know you, you murder children, too," the crowd chanted at one point.

The crowd immediately followed that chant with alternating rallying cries of "Black lives matter!" and "Palestinian lives matter!" Many more shouted criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A woman waved a sign that on one side bore the Palestinian flag and, on the other, the phrase "Black Lives Matter."

Tabash also led the group in the reading of poetry detailing the crimes of Israel against Palestinian Muslims. One poem entitled "Mr. War" decried the Israeli government: "Curse thee, the corrupters of Zion. F--- this occupation!" The poem later referred to the Jewish state as the "puppet master of continents," a reference to a centuries-old conspiracy that Jewish people secretly rule the world.

It was only a matter of time before the DC protests turned anti-Semitic. pic.twitter.com/YTbwwGuOYh

— Nic Rowan (@NicXTempore) July 1, 2020

One can see how this rhetoric inspires terrorism. Amin Husain, an academic of post colonial theory & a leader in Decolonize This Place, gave a speech at today’s “Day of Rage” protest. The event was organized by numerous Islamic & left-wing groups. pic.twitter.com/nxFXCFxNgK

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) July 2, 2020

On June 5, 2020, we reported that Appeals Court Orders Molotov Cocktail Lawyers Back to Jail:

Two Brooklyn-based lawyers facing federal charges for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails into a NYPD cruiser during the riots are back in
federal custody after an appeals court reversed the bail decision.

That initial and temporary appeals court decision now has been reversed, with a panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, ordering the defendants released on bail and home confinement pending trial.

The majority Opinion ruled:
In sum, Pretrial Services, Magistrate Judge Gold, and Judge Brodie all concluded, notwithstanding the acknowledged seriousness of the charged offense, that bail is appropriate for both Rahman and Mattis based on the absence of any criminal records and on their family obligations, their ties to the community and the number of suretors who support them.
***
There is no question that the evidence before the district court demonstrated that the crimes charged are serious and the defendants’ conduct on the night of their arrests could well have resulted in significantly more harm than it did. By affirming the district court’s order to release the defendants on the conditions imposed, we do not seek to minimize the severity of the offense. Rather, we recognize the constraints on our appellate review and the fact that the gravity of an offense is not the only factor to be considered by the district court in deciding whether the conditions of release are adequate to ensure the defendants will not flee and do not constitute a continuing threat to the community.
***
Judge Jon Newman wrote in Dissent:
On the night of May 29 in Brooklyn, Appellee Urooj Rahman got out of a car driven by Appellee Colinford Mattis, lit an explosive device known as a Molotov cocktail, and tossed it through the broken window of an unoccupied police car, setting the console on fire. Parked where people were nearby, she attempted to distribute bombs to a bystander and others for their use. She then left the scene in Mattis’s car, which contained one completed bomb and components for making more bombs. Their thinking was expressed by Rahman on a videotape, about an hour before the crime: “The only way they hear us is through violence.” The majority’s decision to affirm the release of these Appellees from pretrial detention subjects the community to an unacceptable risk of danger. I respectfully dissent.

Here are the full list of those companies supporting the antisemitic #BLMhttps://t.co/uvqMGFDyHL

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) July 2, 2020

The Health Ministry on Thursday recorded 905 new coronavirus infections in 24 hours and two more deaths since Wednesday evening, bringing the national toll from the pandemic to 324.

The new figures came after a lockdown was imposed on parts of Ashdod and Lod early Thursday to contain the spread of the virus, and ministers were set to meet again to discuss further restrictions to rein in the alarming rise in infections. Late Wednesday, the Knesset reinstated the Shin Bet agency’s surveillance program to track virus carriers, effective over the next three weeks.

According to Channel 12, during Thursday’s meeting, health officials will implore ministers to limit the number of patrons permitted to enter a bar, restaurant or event hall to 50. Health officials are also seeking to cap the number of worshipers at prayer gatherings to 20, the TV report said.

The ministry said Thursday there have been 26,452 cases since the start of the pandemic, of which 8,647 were active; 17,481 people have recovered. That marked an increase of over 6,000 new COVID-19 cases over the month of June.

Fifty-eight people are in serious condition, 24 of them on ventilators, while 71 more are in moderate condition. The rest are displaying mild or no symptoms.

The ministry said 20,798 tests were conducted on Wednesday, of which 4.6 percent had a positive result.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Thursday approved the call-up of 500 IDF reservists to help combat the renewed spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which many in Israel believe has entered a second wave.

The decision was made in light of fresh assessments about the pandemic. Most of the troops will be used as staff at 10 coronavirus hotels the Defense Ministry plans to reopen to house people with light symptoms or who require preventive quarantine, Gantz’s office said in a statement.

The IDF Home Front Command was also instructed to set up headquarters in a number of Israeli cities and towns to help distribute information to residents and to safely move coronavirus patients to hospitals and hotels.

The Health Ministry on Thursday morning recorded 905 new coronavirus infections over 24 hours and two more deaths since Wednesday evening, bringing the national toll from the pandemic to 324.

The ministry said Thursday there have been 26,452 cases since the start of the pandemic, of which 8,647 are active, while 17,481 people have recovered. The month of June saw over 6,000 new COVID-19 cases.

The new figures came after a lockdown was imposed on parts of Ashdod and Lod early Thursday to contain the spread of the virus, and ministers were set to meet again to discuss further restrictions to rein in the alarming rise in infections. Late Wednesday, the Knesset reinstated the Shin Bet agency’s surveillance program to track virus carriers, effective over the next three weeks.

Israeli researchers have developed a highly accurate and efficient test for coronavirus antibodies that could greatly contribute to ongoing efforts to assess the extent of the virus spread among the population, Channel 13 news reported Wednesday.

Antibody tests are seen as a key component in finding out who already had the disease in order to better understand its spread and shape policy ahead of a possible second outbreak.

Professors Ariel Munitz and Mordechay Gerlic of Tel Aviv University say the serological test they have produced can, from one blood sample, identify all three of the key antibodies that counter the virus.

It is apparently the first time that anyone has produced a single serological test that can spot all three of the antibodies, the report said.

The test is very sensitive and accurate to around 98-99 percent, the researchers claim, better than the current method being used in the country, which is rated at between 95% and 98%.

During the course of research carried out in cooperation with Hasharon Hospital in Petah Tikva, the team also noticed a trend showing that patients who became seriously ill from the virus developed antibodies more rapidly at an early stage of their infection than did those who had light symptoms.

“We understand this as apparently the result of, in fact, a higher activation of the immune system,” Munitz said.

Plaid Cymru has launched an investigation after a leading Jewish organisation accused one of their candidates of antisemisitm.

Senior vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Sheila Gewolb, has called for prominent Plaid Cymru candidate Sahar Al-Faifi to be excluded from the party permanently following a tweet which appeared on her account and has since been deleted.

In a post on Twitter Ms Al-Faifi wrote: “If you wonder where did these American cops trained, look no further than Israel. Oppression is one and the struggle is transitional. We stand with Palestinians and with #GeorgeFloyd #BlackLivesMatter."

She has subsequently deleted posts she made on social media.

In a letter to Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price, Sheila Gewolb wrote: “Some US police officers have received anti-terror training in Israel, as they have from many different countries - law enforcement agencies across the world co-operate with each other.

“There is not now, nor has there ever been, any evidence to suggest that Israel instructed US police officers in the techniques they have used against African Americans or that any of the officers involved in such attacks received Israeli training.

“The attempt to blame Israel for terrible situations in other countries is regarded by many in the Jewish community as antisemitic, stemming as it does from a long and ignominious history of blaming Jews for any and all misfortunes.”

She added: “We would urge you, as the leader of Plaid Cymru, to show that you are serious about antisemitism and Ms Al-Faifi in particular by permanently excluding her from the Party. She has had too many chances already and it is clear that she will not change. By allowing her to again get away with it, Plaid Cymru would be sending a very negative message to the UK's Jewish community.”

Sahar Al-Faifi had previously been suspended from the Party after a number of antisemitic social media posts of hers from 2014 were found. However, she was later reinstated.

We’ve just been informed that @johnmcdonnellMP didn’t delete this tweet by Holocaust denier Sarah Wilkinson from his TL. It’s still there and he now is knowingly promoting a Holocaust denier.

Proof of his tolerance to the grossest antisemitism. https://t.co/d1IFRFzQOXpic.twitter.com/y3fsDQ3aUH

— (((GnasherJew®גנאשר))) #LabourAntisemitism 🔺 (@GnasherJew) July 2, 2020

Last week, two new profiles appeared on Instagram, @BlackatCuse and @BIPOC.Syracuse. These pages, presumably created by Syracuse University students, invited students and faculty to post about incidents of discrimination and bias on campus to unite the student body against hatred.

Unfortunately, several posts from these profiles inspired the exact opposite.

A June 19 post on the @BIPOC.Syracuse page stated “There are professors at SU who are openly Zionist to the point that it hurts Palestinian students…This shit runs deep.” This set off an anti-Semitic witch hunt targeting Miriam Elman, a Jewish faculty member at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs who was also mentioned in a @BlackatCuse post on June 20.

Despite being on leave for the past year, Elman was singled out by a malicious and libelous smear campaign for her support of Jewish self-determination and prior service in the Israeli Defense Forces.

The heinous anti-Semitic insults directed at Elman send a clear message: shed your Zionist identity or get canceled. It reeks of pure McCarthyism.

Inexplicably, while the university administration has engaged in public relations calisthenics for months to show its sensitivity to campus discrimination, their silence regarding this particular issue is deafening.

“Get your facts first,” Mark Twain once intoned, “and then you can distort them as you please.” Yet, when it comes to the Israel-Islamist conflict, the North Jersey Record isn’t even bothering with facts. The newspaper’s recent report, “‘We need to pursue systemic change’: Palestinian Americans in NJ brace for annexation,” offers a masterclass in both distortions and omissions.

Indeed, the report is so problematic and biased that it’s hard to know where to begin.

NJ Record correspondent Hannan Adely reported that on June 28, “about 200 people gathered outside Paterson City Hall” in New Jersey where they raised the Palestinian flag and protested “Israel’s plan to annex large swaths of the West Bank starting Wednesday, July 1 — a move they said would suffocate Palestinians and scuttle any remaining chance for peace.”

“Annexation,” the NJ Record claims, “happens when a country declares that land outside its borders is part of its own state.” The plan “would leave Palestinians with 15% of their historic homeland” and “allow Israel to encircle all Palestinian land and cut it off from the border with Jordan.”

Nearly every word in this paragraph is inaccurate. As international law scholar Eugene Kontorovich has noted: “Annexation in international law specifically means taking the territory of a foreign sovereign country.” And neither the Jordan Valley nor the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) belongs to a “foreign sovereign country.”

While Israeli citizens of Ethiopian origin may well suffer from racism or discrimination, they do of course have exactly the same rights as citizens of any other origin and to suggest that they do not materially misleads BBC audiences.

No less inaccurate and misleading is Okwoche’s reference to “white Jews”. The majority of Jews living in Israel are of Mizrahi or Sephardi origin or descent – i.e. they or their families came from Middle Eastern countries such as Yemen or Iraq or North African countries such as Morocco, Libya and Algeria. But not only is Okwoche’s suggestion that Israeli Jews who are not of Ethiopian descent are “white” inaccurate: the use of the term “white Jews” is in itself problematic because it negates Jewish history.

One would of course expect the BBC to avoid such tone-deaf stereotypes – particularly in an item supposedly about “a common struggle against racism”.

The BBC has reportedly ordered its television presenters not to wear Black Lives Matter (BLM) badges on air after Campaign Against Antisemitism exposed worrying antisemitism in the movement and its other extreme views emerged.

Executives at the public broadcaster declared that “visual symbols of support” for BLM should not be worn on screen after leaders within BLM hijacked the killing of George Floyd to spread antisemitism and to promote an extreme agenda. “The BBC cannot be seen to support any kind of cause over another, and Black Lives Matter is certainly a campaign,” the BBC ruled.

The decision was part of a wider backlash against the BLM movement after Campaign Against Antisemitism called out antisemitic tweets over the weekend. Police forces and several celebrities have distanced themselves from the movement, as has the Premier League.

Among the first football clubs to break with BLM were Tottenham Hotspur, which said that “it is unacceptable that a value-based action is being hijacked by those with their own political agenda,” and Crystal Palace, which announced: “We would like to make clear that we do not endorse any pressure group or body that carries the same term in its name, and we strongly believe that organisations should not use this important force for change and positivity to push their own political agendas. We want to be part of a world that is fair, inclusive and open to all.”

Palestinian city of Hebron !?!? Hello @YishaiFleisher@epieprz ... https://t.co/cC4aW9cySp

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 2, 2020

Editorial and reporting staff at Haaretz breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday upon discovering that an article on Orthodox Jews did not, as feared, let facts go unvarnished by the bias, disdain, and arrogance of the secular journalists involved.

Israel’s “paper of record” dodged a journalistic bullet, editors reported this morning, following indications that an article covering the Jerusalem Rabbinate’s refusal to continue certifying a certain restaurant as kosher failed to disguise the writer’s dismissal of religious sensibilities, his presumption, and his axiomatic view of adherence to Jewish tradition as Neanderthal. In fact the writer did manage to convey a mangled, immature understanding of the religious precepts involved, and did succeed in painting those who take care to follow those precepts as barbaric, sheep-like reactionaries.

“That was a close one,” breathed publisher Amos Schocken. “I was this close to ordering a thorough review of our editorial process, but it turns out our reporters followed proper procedure and included all the necessary anti-religious – which is to say, anti-Jewish – elements to meet our exacting standards. I still might conduct a different review, though, to determine how we came under the wrong impression.”

Editors, reporters, and columnists expressed their sense of making a narrow escape from potentially unpleasant circumstances. “I’m trying not to think about what would have happened if anyone left an article about Jewish observance go without at least negative or condescending subtext,” admitted entertainment critic Rogel Alpher. “The public, especially our readers of the English-language edition, have come to expect from us a certain detached, which is to say animosity-laden, attitude toward anything that respects Jewish heritage, Jewish practice, or Jewish attachment to the ancestral Jewish homeland. Letting even a paragraph slip by without continuing to hammer this ethos home might convey the mistaken notion that our assumptions have shifted, but in that respect we remain, well, conservative.”

Antisemitic behavior toward Jews is alarmingly common in Switzerland, a new academic study of victim experiences published on Thursday revealed.

The report — conducted by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) — surveyed 500 Swiss Jews about their experiences of antisemitism, discovering that 50 percent of the respondents had been personally targeted for antisemitic abuse during the last five years.

About 18,000 Jews live in Switzerland.

The survey’s director, Prof. Dirk Baier, told the Berner Oberlander newspaper that he was not surprised by the results, pointing to a recent Swiss government survey showing that one in ten citizens held negative views of Jews.

He pointed out that similar animosity existed toward other minorities.

“If you asked 500 black people in Switzerland about their experiences, you’d probably get responses similar to those of the Jewish community now,” Baier commented.

Hate crimes targeting Jews rose sharply in California in 2019 despite an overall decline in hate crimes in the state, according to a report released on Thursday by the state’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center.

Antisemitic crimes — including the deadly gun attack on a Passover service on a Chabad synagogue in Poway — increased by 12 percent in 2019, the report said.

The one person to have been murdered in a hate crime was Lori Gilbert-Kaye, a 60-year-old woman who was in attendance at the Poway synagogue on April 27, the last day of the Passover holiday.

Three other worshipers, including the community’s rabbi and an 8-year-old girl, were wounded in the attack carried out by John Earnest, a white supremacist.

The rise in antisemitic acts came as overall hate crime declined in California by nearly 5 percent, the report noted. A total of 141 antisemitic incidents were recorded in 2019.

California state law defines hate crimes as those targeting victims because of their race or ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender or a disability.

Henryk Broder, Germany’s leading authority on contemporary antisemitism in the federal republic, wrote on Monday that scores of left-wing German politicians are anti-Israel because they signed a letter slamming Israel’s plan to exercise sovereignty over parts of the disputed West Bank territory.

Broder, who has testified in the Bundestag about new forms of Jew-hatred since the Holocaust, titled his article “The anti-Israel International” on the popular journalist website “The Axis of Good.”

The German Jewish author and journalist writes commentary for the Die Welt –a large broadsheet paper. Broder has a significant readership in the German-speaking world.

He mocked German politicians from the Left, Social Democratic and Green parties who signed the protest letter for not directing their letter to Turkey’s occupation of North Cyprus, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and China’s occupation of Tibet.

Critics have cited the European political preoccupation with the Jewish state as a form of double standard. Israel’s democracy is singled out while non-democratic nations who commit massive human rights crimes are not targeted.

Amid the push to remove statues and symbols with historical ties to racist concepts and ideas in the United States, Canada and Western Europe, the city of Montreal has faced growing criticism to remove the name of Lionel Groulx (1878-1967), a French Canadian Roman Catholic priest, historian and Quebec nationalist who harbored strong antisemitic views, according to a CBC news report early last week.

Revered by ardent Quebec nationalists and separatists, controversy surrounding Groulx's antisemitic opinions first arose in 1990, in what became known as the Delisle–Richler affair, when famed Jewish-Canadian author Mordecai Richler and French-Canadian historian Esther Delisle accused several pre-World War II Quebec intellectuals, including Groulx, of virulent antisemitism and sympathies for Vichy France.

Richler and Delisle claimed that in 1933 Groulx, at the height of support for Fascism in Quebec, wrote under the pseudonym Jacques Brassier an article entitled "So That We May Live...", which was published in the journal L'Action nationale [National Action], and encouraged Quebeckers, especially French-speaking Quebeckers, to boycott Jewish businesses in the city as a means for dispelling the "Jewish problem."

Finland’s Air Force Command has quietly phased out its swastika emblem after over a century, a researcher said Wednesday.

Though Finland was allied with the Nazis against the Soviet Union during World War II, and though the Swedish count who introduced the symbol to the country in 1918 would become the brother-in-law of a prominent SS leader and friend to Adolf Hitler, the symbol’s use in the country preceded Nazism by several years and defenders say it has no links to the fascist movement.

University of Helsinki academic Teivo Teivainen noted the policy change in an interview with the BBC.

With Finland’s founding in 1918, Count Eric von Rosen of neighboring Sweden gifted the Finnish air force with a plane emblazoned with a blue swastika, which he saw as a good luck charm, according to the report.

The Nazi Party officially adopted the swastika two years later, in 1920.

In tribute to von Rosen, the emblem continued to be used on Finland’s Air Force planes through 1945.

Following World War II, the swastika was scrubbed from the planes but continued to appear on Air Force uniforms and other military items, such as flags.

New York-based online insurer Lemonade Inc., founded by Israeli entrepreneurs Shai Wininger and Daniel Schreiber, has raised $319 million on the New York Stock Exchange in an initial public offering of shares, at a market valuation of $1.6 billion.

The company sold 11 million shares at $29 per share. The market valuation of the IPO is less than the $2.1 billion the firm was valued at last year, after it raised $300 million in a private funding round led by Japan’s SoftBank, which owns a 27.3% stake in Lemonade, Reuters said on Thursday.

The firm’s shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LMND.

The firm, founded in 2015, is a licensed insurer in 40 US states and operates in 28 of those states, including California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Texas. Lemonade also holds a pan-European license, a prospectus filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in June said.

The company says it seeks to revolutionize the way homes are insured. Its technology does away with agents and replaces them with artificial intelligence and bots, applications that perform an automated task.

Israeli researchers have developed a new tomato strain that can fight severe degenerative diseases, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) said Thursday.

This new cultivar is rich in a substance called zeaxanthin, which may inhibit many degenerative diseases through the protection of light receptors in the retina from damage caused by strong blue light.

Zeaxanthin is a natural yellow coloring matter (pigment) that helps plants in the photosynthesis process and can be found mainly in corn, orange peppers, pumpkins and citrus fruits, and at very low concentrations in melons, mangos, apricots and peaches.

The researchers said adding zeaxanthin to the daily diet helps to reduce the morbidity of degenerative diseases, especially macular degeneration (AMD) that causes blindness in adults.

The development of the new tomato was done by classical genetic cultivation, using hybridizations of different strains, resulting in a new tomato strain whose zeaxanthin make up more than half of the pigments in it.

This is added to vitamins and other essential ingredients found in regular tomatoes.

The new tomato has seven times more zeaxanthin than corn, which is the main source of this substance in today's diets. (h/t Zvi)

A doctoral student at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa has invented a soft polymer that could be used as a self-healing high-tech “skin.”

Muhammad Khatib’s polymer is elastic and waterproof. It can heal itself if scratched, cut or twisted, or in the event of a disruption to its electrical conductivity and chemical sensing capabilities.

This “e-skin” could be used in a range of applications in the fields of robotics, prosthetics and wearable devices.

Khatib, who conducts his research at the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering at the Technion under the guidance of Prof. Hossam Haick, presented his innovative inventions in two papers in the journals Advanced Materials and Advanced Functional Materials.
Muhammad Khatib, inventor of e-skin, at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Photo: courtesy

“The e‐skin is empowered with a novel self‐repair capability that consists of an intrinsic mechanism for efficient self‐healing of small‐scale damages as well as an extrinsic mechanism for damage mapping and on‐demand self‐healing of big‐scale damages in designated locations,” writes Khatib.

“The electronic platform lays down the foundation for the development of a new subcategory of self‐healing devices in which electronic circuit design is used for self‐monitoring, healing, and restoring proper device function.” (h/t Zvi)

Effie Zero, the soldier who rescued a Palestinian from an attack by extremists in Hebron, was issued a certificate of appreciation by Golani Brigade General Colonel Shai Klaffer. pic.twitter.com/yAAR1KWzb7

— Ashager Araro (@AshagerAraro) July 1, 2020

It’s easy to see the sheer volume of anti-Israel material online and in social media and feel like we are losing.

But when you step back, you can see that the reality is that Israel is winning in every conceivable field.

While the haters scream about "occupation" and "annexation," Israel continues to grow, get stronger and become more indispensable to the region and the world.

Israel is strong militarily, economically and in innovation. Both Western and third-world nations want to be like Israel. They want to learn from Israel. It really is a "light unto nations."

Israel is getting closer and closer to the Arab Gulf nations, as they realize that the Palestinian cause is a self-created dead end. While Palestinians make more and more demands on their Arab “brethren,”  Israel offers solutions.

Israel has become a powerhouse in desalination, de-desertification, and water conservation in a dry region. It has a lot to offer to its neighbors. They know this. What can Palestinians offer them? Forcing them to defend terror to the West that they are trying to get closer to?

Israel is the most stable nation in the region, and when Arabs are afraid of Iran hey are turning to Israel to be their protector as well, at least implicitly.

Israel is becoming an exporter of energy, now selling natural gas to Egypt and Jordan.

The moderate Arab nations need Israel, and their support of Palestinians is lip service.

When you look at anti-Israel demonstrations, they do not reflect anything close to reality. Israel is stronger than ever - and more liberal than the socialists leading the hate train.

The volume of the Israel-haters’ sound equipment as they robotically chant “From the river to the sea….”  isn't a reflection of success. The chants and pro-violence messages are the screams of frustration that they cannot destroy the Jewish state they hate so much.

(based a thread on Twitter)

A press release from the Emirates News Agency:

ABU DHABI, 2nd July, 2020 (WAM) -- Group 42 (G42), a leading technology company based in Abu Dhabi, announced today it has signed Memoranda of Understanding with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Rafael, and Israel Aerospace Industries, IAI, two leading Israeli technology companies, to explore collaborations in the research and development of effective solutions to combat SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19 disease.

Executives from each company took part in a signing ceremony held via video conference between the UAE and Israel.

During the event, they discussed how they might capitalise on their respective expertise and technologies to develop cutting-edge solutions and medical initiatives that would benefit, not only the populations of both countries, but humanity as a whole.

This joint initiative brings together some of the most active players in the Covid-19 response in the region and aims to leverage their combined knowledge, human and technological assets, and other resources to accelerate the delivery of breakthrough solutions to safeguard the public health and support the global fight against the pandemic.

G42 is nominally an independent company specializing in artificial intelligence. However, its website makes clear that it works closely with, and aligns with, the strategic direction of the Abu Dhabi government.

While Israeli defense contractors have indeed pivoted to fighting the pandemic, they are still defense contractors –and the UAE chose those companies specifically to partner with. These are the very companies that Israel haters call out as violators of human rights.

My guess is that this agreement was made with a view to the future where Israel and Gulf countries will cooperate on military technology. After all, G42 could have chosen to partner with Israeli universities or pharmaceutical companies, and instead chose not one but two major military suppliers.

The UAE not only doesn’t care about what the pro-Palestinian crowd thinks, it is highlighting this agreement with the Israeli defense contractors  in its media.

This rapprochement between formerly bitter enemies shows what peace will look like and how we will get there. National decisions are driven by self-interest and Israel has a lot more to offer than Palestinians do.

Noura Erekat, an assistant professor at Rutgers University who was most recently seen exploiting her car-ramming cousin within a day of his death as an excuse to sell copies of her anti-Israel book, has created a ridiculous video for the far left video outlet Now This where she lies about Israel’s goals with extending sovereignty.

This one section of the video tells you what you need to know about Erekat’s interest in truth as well as her“human rights” credentials.

The “Deal of the Century” is better known as “steal of the century” and the “apartheid plan?” Where? Only in the fever swamps of anti-Israel propaganda that Erekat inhabits. I follow the topic quite closely and have never heard it called either of those things, and even Arabic media routinely call it the “Deal of the Century.”

But beyond that, look at the stock footage she chose when showing the words “the apartheid plan.”

Yup – religious Jews. Jews who have nothing to do with Trump or the deal, nothing to do with extending sovereignty, Jews who for all we know are walking in Brooklyn.

Not a Tel Aviv beach. Not IDF soldiers. No, she chose to show Orthodox Jews while flashing the word “APARTHEID” on the screen, so her viewers would associate Jews with gross human rigths violations.

Yes, that is antisemitic. And this entire video is propaganda that a Rutgers instructor is not the least bit embarrassed to spread.

(h/t kweansmom)

Israel was responsible for two blasts at Iranian facilities — one related to uranium enrichment, the other for missile production — over the past week, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported Friday.

The Al-Jareeda daily cited an unnamed senior source as saying that an Israeli cyberattack caused a fire and explosion at the largely underground Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in the predawn hours of Thursday morning.

According to the source, this was expected to set back Iran’s nuclear enrichment program by approximately two months.

The newspaper also reported that last Friday Israeli F-35 stealth fighter jets bombed a site located in the area of Parchin, which is believed to house a missile production complex — an area of particular concern for the Jewish state, in light of the large number and increasing sophistication of missiles and rockets in the arsenals of Iranian proxies, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Neither of these claims were confirmed by Israeli officials, who have been mum on the reports.

The reported Israeli strikes followed an alleged Iranian attempt to hack into Israel’s water infrastructure in April, an effort that was thwarted by Israeli cyber defenses, but if successful could have introduced dangerous levels of chlorine into the Israeli water supply and otherwise seriously interrupted the flow of water throughout the country.

Ultimately, the alleged Iranian cyberattack caused minimal issues, according to Israeli officials.

Four men sentenced to life imprisonment in Pakistan for the antisemitic murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 could go free later this year, following a court ruling earlier this week that paved the way for their imminent release.

British citizen Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh — who masterminded Pearl’s kidnapping and execution by beheading in the city of Karachi — saw his conviction for murder overturned by the High Court in the province of Sindh in April. His three collaborators — Fahad Nasim Ahmed, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Muhammad Adil — were also exonerated by the same court.

That ruling was upheld by Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday, triggering concerns that the four men would be released immediately.

But on Thursday, Hasan Sehtoo — superintendent of the Karachi Central Prison — said that the four would remain in custody until Sept. 30 under a law that allowed authorities to detain a suspect for up to a year. Sehtoo said that the release of the convicted men would threaten public safety.

Pearl’s parents have filed an appeal with the Pakistani Supreme Court in another attempt to reverse the Sindh court’s shock decision in April. In an interview with CBS News this week, Pearl’s father, Judea, denounced the decision as a “travesty of justice.”

Pearl remarked that “one theory is that somebody tried to take advantage of the corona situation. Assuming that no one will pay attention to this decision.”

He continued: “And, evidently, we did pay attention.”

Israel hit another record on Friday evening, as the Health Ministry reported that 1,130 people were diagnosed with the novel coronavirus the day before.

Among the now 10,060 sick patients (17,669 of Israel’s 28,055 patients have already recovered), some 77 are in serious condition - a number that has continued to grow in the past week.

Moreover, the death toll is rising, reaching 326 on Friday morning.

The new number of patients was released as a series of restrictions were rolled out at 8 a.m. on Friday morning. Event halls, bars, clubs and prayer houses will be limited to 50 attendees. Any other gatherings in closed spaces are now limited to 20 people.

During a briefing on Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the number of patients in serious condition increased by 50% in just the last week.

“We must return to the reality of restrictions in order to flatten the curve,” he said.

In a historic move, the United Arab Emirates's (UAE) leading technology company Group 42 (G42) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with two Israeli hi-tech companies: Rafael Advanced Defense Systems (Rafael) and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).

The three companies plan on exploring collaborations in research and development in order to offer effective solutions against the novel COVID-19.

The companies, which celebrated their cooperation in a virtual signing ceremony, intend to use each one of their fields of expertise and technologies to develop medical initiatives to combat coronavirus.

"At G42, we embrace international cooperation as a way to develop new and innovative technological solutions for the public good," said G42 CEO Peng Xiao. "The UAE has led by example in the global collaborative effort to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic, and our company is privileged to follow the lead and share resources and expertise with Rafael and IAI for such a significant cause."

Contrary to claims from both Chinese officials and the World Health Organization, China did not report the existence of the coronavirus in late 2019, according to a WHO timeline tracking the spread of the virus. Rather, international health officials discovered the virus through information posted to a U.S. website.

The quiet admission from the international health organization, which posted an "updated" timeline to its website this week, flies in the face of claims from some of its top officials, including WHO director general Tedros Adhanom, who maintained for months that China had informed his organization about the emerging sickness.

China and its allies at the WHO insisted in multiple interviews and press conferences that China came to the health organization with information about the virus. This is now known to be false. The WHO’s backtracking lends credibility to a recent congressional investigation that determined China concealed information about the virus and did not initially inform the WHO, as it was required to do.

The WHO’s updated timeline, posted online this week, now states that officials first learned about the virus on Dec. 31, 2019, through information posted on a U.S. website by doctors working in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged. This contradicts the agency’s initial timeline, which said that China first presented this information at that date.

That initial timeline stated that the "Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province" on Dec. 31.

These claims were carried in numerous American media outlets that relied on the WHO’s inaccurate timeline, including CNN and Axios.

Last week, the New York Times claimed – wrongly – that there had been a “longstanding American policy treating the settlements as illegal,” which remained in place until Secretary of State Pompeo announced a reversal in 2019.

Although the newspaper is aware of the error, it has refused to correct, and refuses even to put forward a defense for its claim.

To be fair, the Times isn’t the first to make this mistake. In October 2016, the Washington Post corrected its claim that the US regarded settlements as illegal. A month later, the Associated Press corrected. The following month, The Times (UK) corrected, as did ABC News and the Times of Israel. In 2018, the Times of Israel corrected again. The Financial Times corrected in November 2019. And two days the Economist ran a correction of its own.

Even the New York Times itself has corrected the false claim. After a March 2017 editorial asserted that the United States “has consistently held that settlement building in the occupied territories is illegal,” a correction clarified,

An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated the United States’ position on settlement building in the occupied territories. It has been highly critical of the activity, but has not consistent held it to be illegal.

From the news side, an Aug. 8, 2013 correction in the Times likewise acknowledged that “the United States has taken no formal position in the last several years on whether [settlements] are legal or illegal.”

The Dutch parliament passed a number of motions that speak of the need to fight antisemitism. A draft motion calling for the government to pay for security around synagogues failed to pass, however.

The motions were voted on earlier this week at the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the parliament, in the framework of a two-day session of the house’s Justice and Security Commission.

The rejected motion stated that the Jewish community in the Netherlands “often lacks the means to adequately protect their infrastructure, events and synagogue services” and called on the government to supply the finances for this purpose.

The motion, filed by Geert Wilders and Gidi Markuszower of the anti-Islam Freedom Party, received 28 votes in the 150-member Tweede Kamer, with the ruling VVD party, Dutch Labour, the Socialist Party, and the D66 and Green Left progressive parties voting against it.

Institutions from the Dutch-Jewish community, which belongs to a minority of about 40,000 people, spend over $1.2 million annually on security, according to community leaders.

Representatives of rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas on Thursday united against Israel’s plans to extend sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.

At a press conference in Ramallah, senior Fatah official Jibril Rajoub declared, “We are now talking about a joint struggle, a campaign on the ground. We call on all Palestinian factions to see cooperation between Hamas and Fatah as a historic opportunity for a joint fight to establish a Palestinian state and oppose the Israeli occupation.”

“We have no enemy except for Israel,” Rajoub added, according to Ynet.

Rajoub called Hamas a “complete partner” in the battle against Israel’s intention to extend sovereignty.

“We are leaving this meeting under one flag, with which we oppose annexation,” he said. “We want to open a new page [in Hamas-Fatah relations] and set an example for the people, prisoners and martyrs.”

The Belgian government is financing organizations that in their appeal for federal funding promised to “mitigate the influence of pro-Israel voices.”

The appeal by three nongovernmental Belgian organizations, the Catholic aid group Broederlijke Delen, Oxfam Solidarity and Viva Salud, appeared in a document from 2016 by the Belgian Joint Strategic Framework Palestine, a platform that distributes federal money.

NGO Monitor, an Israel-based organization that investigates the activity and funding of players in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, published a report on that funding Thursday.

Arnaud Gaspart, a spokesman for the Belgian Foreign Ministry, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the document “does not reflect Belgium’s position or point of view.”

In 2018, the Belgian Ministry for Development Cooperation allocated at least $1.8 million for Joint Strategic Framework projects, Belgian government documents show. In the years 2015-18, it gave approximately $20 million to “NGOs and Civil Society.”

In the 2016 appeal, Joint Strategic Goal No. 3 for “Good Governance, Civil Society and Human Rights” calls for strengthening local civil society organizations “to increase their advocacy efforts towards the European institutions and member states, promoting respect for international law and mitigating the influence of pro-Israel voices.”

NGO Monitor in a statement called this a “misuse of European taxpayer funds to benefit radical groups.”

A woman was jailed for life, with a minimum sentence of 14 years, on Friday for plotting to blow up London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, a nearby hotel and a subway train in a suicide attack.

Safiyya Shaikh, 37, extensively researched how to cause maximum carnage at the historic church and visitor attraction. Police said she had planned to leave a bomb in a bag at the cathedral before detonating a suicide vest on a London Underground train.

Her defense lawyers said she had doubts about the plot, but prosecutors disclosed details of a call she made to a friend from prison last week in which she said she “didn’t get cold feet” and “was ready to go through with it.”

The Muslim convert, who was a supporter of the Islamic State jihadist group, pleaded guilty to creating a terrorist act and dissemination of a terrorist publication.

Shaikh, born Michelle Ramsden, was arrested in October after she sought help from an undercover officer who posed as a bomb-making expert.

“She engaged with others, who she believed to be of a similar mindset, to instigate and plan a terrorist attack involving the use of improvised explosives to attack St Paul’s Cathedral and a hotel nearby,” prosecutor Alison Morgan said. “She visited the cathedral to assess its security arrangements and the best place to detonate a bomb.”

“She stated that her intention was to kill herself and as many other people as possible,” she added.

Two male staff members of the UN peacekeeping operation in the Middle East have been placed on leave after an initial inquiry found they had engaged in sexual misconduct, a UN spokesman said.

The United Nations’ internal investigations office launched the inquiry after a video circulated on social media appearing to show a woman straddling a man in the back seat of a UN-marked vehicle as it was driven down a coastal boulevard in Tel Aviv.

“Two male international staff members who were in the UN vehicle in Tel Aviv have been identified as having engaged in misconduct, including conduct of a sexual nature,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said in a statement late on Thursday.

Dujarric said the video involved staff of the Jerusalem-based United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), which provides military observers to monitoring missions in south Lebanon and the Golan Heights, according to its website.

Given the seriousness of the allegations, Dujarric added, the two were placed on administrative leave without pay, pending the conclusion of the investigation by the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services.

The Palestinians’ frustration and anger with the Arab world for its general indifference to “the Palestinian cause” is on the increase. It seems the PA had expected solid backing from the Islamic nation after Abbas announced that the PA had absolved itself from all agreements with Israel because of Israel's presumed application of Israeli civil law to the Jordan Valley and Jewish towns on the West Bank.

But serious Arab backing is not coming. The cartoon above expresses the PA’s discontent with the Arab world, criticizing its lack of help to the Palestinians by showing “the Arabs” as an ostrich burying its head in the sand through a hole in a document announcing the Israeli “annexation of the West Bank.” [Official Fatah Facebook page, June 25, 2020]

The cartoon was published the day after the Arab Parliament (i.e., the executive body of the Arab League) in fact did express support for Abbas’ decision to cut ties with Israel:

“The Arab Parliament emphasized its support for the Palestinian leadership’s decision – which was declared by [PA] President [Mahmoud] Abbas – to cut off all types of relations with the occupying power (Israel) [parentheses in source] and to be released from the agreements and commitments stemming from it… The Arab Parliament emphasized that it rejects and condemns the occupying power’s (Israel) continued implementation of the settlement plans.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 25, 2020]

But apparently the Palestinians felt it was not strong enough, expecting much more.

2/2 At Brooklyn “No to Annexation” Rally, Speakers Call to Abolish Police, Israel, and U.S. Government, Crowd Chants: “Death to America!”, “Millions of Martyrs Are Marching to Jerusalem!”; Activist: When a Precinct or a Cop Car Burns, It Feels Closer to Palestine pic.twitter.com/WL4tU5Riu0

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 2, 2020

Two senior Hamas and Fatah leaders appeared in a joint Zoom press conference on July 2, 2020; it deserves our attention. Jibril Rajoub, secretary-general of the Fatah Central Committee, spoke from Ramallah, while Salah al-Aruri joined via video call from Beirut, from where he directs Hamas’ terrorist activities on the West Bank.

While the presentation was described in the media as Hamas-Fatah joint meeting, it was much more. It was a meeting between the two prominent clients and representatives of Qatar (and Turkey) in the West Bank and Gaza, and the event should be understood as a declaration by Qatar (and Turkey) that they were entering into the fray to decide on the successor to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

In the opening of his address, Rajoub repeated what Abbas had said earlier about the need for unity based on his personal point of view. It was strange to mention that the leader of the PLO speaks on his personal behalf, but it positioned the entire meeting with Aruri as a personal event.

And indeed – when we watch the TV screen, we cannot find any formal symbols – neither of Fatah or the PLO nor Hamas. Just Palestinian flags behind them. Aruri, sitting in Beirut, had a picture of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

While Rajoub was speaking about the regional challenges like stopping Arab states from normalizing with Israel, he added an implied warning when he said, “We shall protect your oil” – that is to say— we may attack your oil unless….” Aruri concentrated on the West Bank and Jerusalem only. He did not refer to Gaza at all despite Hamas’ exclusive rule there.

The Hamas terror group arrested several members of an “Israeli-directed” spy ring planning “sabotage” in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas Interior Ministry announced on Friday morning.

“The security services discovered a cell directed by the Israeli occupation as it attempted to conduct sabotage against resistance elements,” the ministry said in a statement.

Hamas did not say how many people it had detained and did not provide any evidence of its claims, nor any photos or names of the alleged cell members. It also gave no details on the targets of the cell.

Hamas security services said they had been tracking the cell’s activity for several days before catching them in the act. In addition to capturing the operatives, Hamas agents confiscated equipment and money Israel used to pay its operatives in the spy ring, the ministry claimed.

The spy ring was in direct communication with Israeli intelligence, Hamas said.

Along with the statement, the Hamas Interior Ministry released a propaganda video praising its “men in the arena — the knights of the Interior Ministry.”

The Shin Bet security service declined to comment.

Hours after Fatah-Hamas 'unity' agreement, PA security forces break up Hamas rally in Jenin, confiscate Hamas flags. pic.twitter.com/dzD1n5Fcus

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) July 2, 2020

"Almost three-quarters of the country's butchers have stopped working. Imports of meat have been halved. There are still three to four more shipments of livestock arriving this month; without government guarantees of assistance, they will be the last." https://t.co/vYKrggWVZR

— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) July 3, 2020

Regime spokespeople and apologists in the coming period are likely to highlight the difficult humanitarian situation in regime areas and call for a softening of restrictions. But it’s hard to credit any sincerity to the regime’s belated discovery of humanitarian concerns toward its own citizens. In covering Syria from the early years of the civil war, I witnessed the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, by the Assad regime’s air force in Aleppo in the summer of 2012. Such tactics, replicated throughout the country, were the main reason for the terrible loss of civilian life during the Syrian war, and they were never informed by the regime’s newfound humanitarianism.

The U.S. strategy has not yet succeeded at its ultimate aim of changing the Syrian regime’s calculations. The main result instead is emergent strife between different elements of the pro-regime camp, including Russian public criticism of Assad, the falling-out between the president and Makhlouf, and growing tensions between Russian-aligned and Iranian-aligned elements of the Syrian security forces in strife-torn Daraa. But a strategy of this kind doesn’t require immediate results. The direct cost to the United States of an economic blockade of Assad’s Syria—like the maximum pressure campaign against Iran—is low or nonexistent.

Those wondering about the future shape of U.S. power projection in the Middle East should be paying close attention to the current look of Syria policy. The key element is the weaponization of Western economic strength. The camp around Assad is practiced in political and proxy warfare, and ruthless in pursuit of its goals. It has bested over the last decade the efforts of Western-aligned regional powers to oust the Assad dictatorship. But the Achilles’ heel of this camp is its scarcity of economic resources. This vulnerability is now being exploited, at minimal cost to the United States and without the large military commitments that both the president and the public prefer to avoid. The intention is to turn Syria into a quagmire for the dictator and his allies.

Although Syria’s active war may have largely concluded, the United States has ensured that its underlying issues remain unresolved. The resulting stalemate—marked by frozen conflict, continued poverty, and a messy de facto division of the country—has prevented a triumph for Assad and his allies. This will remain the country’s only practical future until Assad and his allies are finally prepared to negotiate on terms that their opponents are willing to accept.

Iran will retaliate against any country that carries out cyber attacks on its nuclear sites, the head of civilian defense said, after a fire at its Natanz plant which some Iranian officials said may have been caused by cyber sabotage.

The underground Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) is one of several Iranian facilities monitored by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog.

Iran's top security body said on Friday that the cause of the "incident" at the nuclear site had been determined, but "due to security considerations" it would be announced at a convenient time.

Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation (AEOI) initially reported an "incident" had occurred early on Thursday at Natanz, located in the desert in the central province of Isfahan.

It later published a photo of a one-story brick building with its roof and walls partly burned. A door hanging off its hinges in the photo suggested that there had been an explosion inside the building.

"Responding to cyber attacks is part of the country's defense might. If it is proven that our country has been targeted by a cyber attack, we will respond," civil defense chief Gholamreza Jalali told state TV late on Thursday.

An article issued on Thursday by state news agency IRNA addressed what it called the possibility of sabotage by enemies such as Israel and the United States, although it stopped short of accusing either directly.

"So far Iran has tried to prevent intensifying crises and the formation of unpredictable conditions and situations," IRNA said. "But the crossing of red lines of the Islamic Republic of Iran by hostile countries, especially the Zionist regime and the US, means that strategy...should be revised."

Kuwait’s Al-Jarida newspaper, which covers security incidents and sometimes alleges Israeli involvement, says that Israel carried out a cyber attack on the Natanz nuclear facility on Thursday. The incident has been downplayed by Iran but experts say that a sensitive warehouse that deals with centrifuges was damaged.

According to the report a source informed Al-Jarida that a cyber attack hit the facility. The report linked this to an earlier cyber attack on Israeli water infrastructure that Iran allegedly carried out and then another cyber attack on an Iranian port in May. It also links the Natanz cyber attack to the earlier Stuxnet computer worm attack in 2010.

These are coordinated sabotage operations, according to the newspaper. The Natanz incident explosion and another explosion near Parchin targeted UF6 gas storage that was used for uranium enrichment. This is uranium hexafluoride gas.

In November, 2019 Iran unveiled the production and injection of the gas into IR-6 centrifuges. These are the advanced centrifuges Iran has increased at Natanz. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI)’s Ali Akbar Salehi has spoken openly about the gas and the new centrifuges. Iran added around 30 of these IR-6 centrifuges to Natanz in November 2019, making at least 60 in total at the site.

The Kuwaiti paper argues that Iran has now lost 80% of its stock of this gas. “This is likely to be an electronic attack on the computer network that controls the storage compression tanks. Iran will need about two months to compensate for the gas that was lost.”

Iran does not deserve to have the arms embargo lifted. pic.twitter.com/HIri6hFKbf

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) July 2, 2020

From the UN’s OCHA-OPT report for the last two weeks of June:

An eight-month-old baby boy, who needed a heart surgery at an Israeli hospital, could not exit Gaza and died on 18 June. Since 21 May, the PA has not accepted or transferred applications for exit permits from Gaza to the Israeli authorities, as a response to Israel’s plan to annex parts of the West Bank. Since then, only few patients referred for medical treatment in the West Bank or Israel managed to exit Gaza, with the help of NGOs or international agencies.

Not only does the Palestinian Authority stop these medical transfers, but so do Palestinian NGOs– the NGOs that the UN refers to are Israeli NGOs.

As is always the case, Israel and Israelis care more about Palestinian lives than Palestinians do. The PLO and PA and Fatah and Hamas are eager to sacrifice their own people for nebulous “principles,” in this case the “principle” of not talking to Jews to save Palestinian lives.

The world remains unmoved by the cruelty that Palestinians show to their own people, because the false narrative of Israel hating Palestinians is too strong to allow counterexamples to be widely spread.

A lot of nearly-viral tweets this week, feel free to retweet them!

Screw the antisemites - old and new. pic.twitter.com/qB9nq1xHtt

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 3, 2020

The Israel haters know this, too. When talking among themselves they now curse Saudi Arabia and the UAE as much as they curse America and Australia.

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 3, 2020

Palestinians care about black lives about as much as Palestinians care about gay lives.

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 3, 2020

Another police officer describes what he learned in Israel. Not chokeholds, not targeting Arabs, not knees on necks - but civil liberties.
"You don't sacrifice civil liberties for security - in fact you compromise security by doing that."https://t.co/B5FYQGn4I7

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 3, 2020

How Palestinian police subdue suspects. pic.twitter.com/sCt5Dwfeps

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) June 30, 2020

Exactly! Here's another tragic accident at a checkpoint 2 months ago with a very confused young new driver exiting his car and trying to perform life-saving surgery to the person he accidentally hit, using scissors. https://t.co/V4vMHvLtZ8pic.twitter.com/8iOj0kKeSB

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) June 28, 2020

Hate to tell you, but Palestinians are not a good role model for Blacks.

Jews are.

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) June 28, 2020

The "Zionists are White" meme is a thinly disguised version of "The Jews are Khazars" meme.

Antisemitism doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes.

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 2, 2020

It would be nice if the socialist Left would be as upset over Palestinians naming public squares and schools and camps and sports leagues after people whose entire accomplishment in life were to kill Jewish civilians as they are over Woodrow Wilson.

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) June 28, 2020

The hate remains the same. pic.twitter.com/N2zm2w2iRr

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) June 28, 2020

In the view of those cheering on the efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement, this July 4 will be one less of celebration than of soul-searching and reassessment. Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the normal festivities were always going to be muted. But the brutal death of George Floyd on May 25 sent angry crowds of sometimes peaceful protesters into the streets seeking to topple monuments of not just Confederates, but also the nation's Founding Fathers and a host of other historical figures who don't measure up to the woke standards of the demonstrators.

As such, it is a deeply ominous sign that some advocates of the BLM movement, which has always been linked to anti-Semitic intersectional claims, are sometimes diverging from their usual arguments about racism to attacking Israel with blood libels. This week, one BLM march up Washington, D.C.'s Constitution Avenue, demonstrated its solidarity with a Palestinian "Day of Rage" by chanting, "Israel, we know you murder children too."

No doubt, some will claim that these chants are not typical of BLM sentiments, even though the movement has always supported smears of Israel. Others might say that among them were "some very fine people," a conclusion that few accepted when that sentiment was put forward by US President Donald Trump about those opposed to the removal of Confederate statues during a neo-Nazi march in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Va.

But at the heart of the marches is contempt for the basic idea that the American experiment in democracy – flawed though it is – is a uniquely successful effort in expanding the realm of liberty. As efforts like The New York Times'"1619 Project" that has served as an ideological guide to the protesters' vision of America as an incorrigibly racist nation made plain, the goal of the BLM movement is not so much to reform the police or cleanse the country of hate as it is to recast the entire national narrative that has provided a haven for religious minorities like Jews.

As such, it may be an appropriate moment for Americans to think seriously about their origins as a nation and to ask not only whether this 1619 narrative is true, but to ponder as well why we should still be cheering the memory of 1776.

The "1619 Project" is so named because in the view of the Times, the arrival of the first black slaves in North America was the true beginning of American nationhood, and the revolution in 1776 was fought mainly to preserve slavery. Once we set aside this inherently mendacious premise of that account, it's important to understand that the American Revolution succeeded primarily because it was rooted in a belief in the rule of law.

Recent weeks have seen a heated discussion among American Jews about whether there is a “right time” to talk about anti-Semitism. And if so, does now qualify, since our country is going through a reckoning over racism?

American Jews want to show solidarity with peaceful protesters, but should that include support for the Black Lives Matter organization, which called Israel an apartheid state, supported the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, and accused Israel of genocide in its 2016 manifesto? And should Jews remain silent while Israel is falsely accused of teaching brutal tactics to police, or when protests include “vandalism to Jewish businesses and synagogues” in Los Angeles, chants of “From the river to the sea” in Brooklyn, and slanderous accusations that Israel murders children in Washington, D.C.?

There was, by contrast, no such debate during Christians United for Israel's annual summit this week. Conducted virtually for the first time because of the pandemic, CUFI’s national conference included numerous speakers determined to speak up for Zion’s sake, as the book of Isaiah urges.

One message that echoed across the summit was that it’s always the right time to shine a light on anti-Semitism. Speakers encouraged the summit’s tens of thousands of participants to educate themselves about anti-Semitism. That education would include not only learning from dark, historic moments such as the Holocaust, but also how to recognize the anti-Semitism that hides in plain sight today, on college campuses and in the halls of Congress.

During a panel discussion on anti-Semitism, Holocaust survivor Irving Roth explained that words “direct people to the truth.” Words matter because they lead to actions, whether they are atrocities like the Holocaust or the possibility of a better future. Roth was joined by CUFI Middle East analyst Kasim Hafeez, who was raised as a radical Islamist in the United Kingdom and reflected: “I love this country, and it saddens me. There’s this horrible moment of seeing a parallel of what I saw in the U.K. with anti-Semitism. ... It doesn’t just roll in on a truck one day. It’s gradual. There’s little hurdles and steps; it creeps in. People fall asleep at the wheel. It’s almost ignored. There’s this attitude of, ‘It could be worse. At least we’re not the situation in Europe.’” Hafeez warned that ignoring those small changes means losing the chance to halt anti-Semitism while there is still time. Hafeez encouraged participants, “You can make the difference.”

Former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who signed the nation’s first anti-BDS bill into law as governor of South Carolina, told participants, “We must keep telling the truth about Israel.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talked about realizing in law school “how anti-Israel some parts of academia can be” and that “Israel needs to be protected from BDS.” Among Pompeo’s examples of the importance of truth-telling was his simple statement, “Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”

Emboldened by Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, and fueled by the Great Depression, anti-Semitism increased throughout the United States, and over 100 anti-Semitic organizations sprung up across the country. They had names like the Friends of the New Germany (Nazi Bund), the Silver Shirts, Defenders of the Christian Faith, the Christian Front, and the Knights of the White Camellia, among others. Protected by the constitution’s First Amendment, they held public rallies, paraded through the streets in their uniforms carrying Nazi flags, published scurrilous magazines, and openly flaunted their hatred for Jews. American Jews were intimidated and frightened. Fearful of stirring up even more anti-Jewish sentiment, the American Jewish establishment’s response was often tentative and cautionary. They worried that what happened in Germany, home to Europe’s elite Jewish community, could easily happen in America. One group of American Jews who had no compunctions about meeting the anti-Semites head-on were Jewish gangsters. Not bound by conventional rules and constitutional legalities, they took direct and violent action against the Jew haters.

Nazi Bund rallies in New York City in the late 1930s created a terrible dilemma for the city’s Jewish leaders. With 20,000 members, the Nazi Bund was the largest anti-Semitic group in the nation. They organized large public rallies and marched to drumbeats wearing brown shirts and swastikas, and carrying Nazi flags. Jewish leaders wanted the meetings stopped, but could not do so legally. Nathan Perlman, a judge and former Republican congressman, was one Jewish leader who believed that the Jews should demonstrate more militancy. In 1935, he surreptitiously contacted Meyer Lansky, a leading organized crime figure born on the 4th of July, and asked him to help. Lansky related to me what followed.

Perlman assured Lansky that money and legal assistance would be put at his disposal. The only stipulation was that no Nazis be killed. They could be beaten up, but not terminated. Lansky reluctantly agreed. No killing. Always very sensitive about anti-Semitism, Lansky was acutely aware of what the Nazis were doing to Jews. “I was a Jew and I felt for those Jews in Europe who were suffering,” he said. “They were my brothers.” Lansky refused the judge’s offer of money and assistance, but he did make one request. He asked Perlman to ensure that after he went into action he would not be criticized by the Jewish press. The judge promised to do what he could.

Lansky rounded up some of his tough associates and went around New York disrupting Nazi meetings. Young Jews not connected to him or the rackets also volunteered to help, and Lansky and others taught them how to use their fists and handle themselves in a fight. Lansky’s crews worked very professionally. Nazi arms, legs, and ribs were broken and skulls cracked, but no one died. The attacks continued for more than a year. And Lansky earned quite a reputation for doing this work.

Lansky later described to an Israeli journalist one of the onslaughts in Yorkville, the German neighborhood in northeast Manhattan:

“We got there in the evening and found several hundred people dressed in their brown shirts. The stage was decorated with a swastika and pictures of Hitler. The speaker started ranting. There were only 15 of us, but we went into action. We attacked them in the hall and threw some of them out the windows. There were fist fights all over the place. Most of the Nazis panicked and ran out. We chased them and beat them up, and some of them were out of action for months. Yes it was violence. We wanted to teach them a lesson. We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back and accept insults.”

CAMERA analyst Dexter Van Zile said about the Boston protest, “Kaffiyeh-wearing college students and mostly middle-class white activists with Palestinian flags were shouting for the violent elimination of the world’s only Jewish state. Think about that: they’re chanting eliminationist rhetoric outside the offices of mainstream American-Jewish organizations – a fact which shows that this wasn’t simply about Israel, but about Jews as Jews.”

“What struck me about the rally wasn’t just the hatred, but the outright lies,” said CAMERA’s Hali Haber. “An SJP leader at Boston University repeatedly screamed into the microphone that Israel is guilty of ‘genocide,’ a lie easily disproved by looking at Palestinians’ soaring birth rates and increasing lifespans. I can’t decide whether the people at this rally were ignorant or malevolent – maybe both.”

Aryeh Tuchman, Associate Director of ADL’s Center on Extremism, told The Algemeiner, “Although many of the Day of Rage protestors focused on solidarity with Palestinians and legitimate criticism of Israeli policies, we are deeply concerned by numerous cases where Zionism was equated with racism or where Israel’s right to exist was called into question.”

In its own press statement, BDS Boston said it had targeted the JCRC “for coordinating annual all-expenses-paid ‘study trips’ to Israel for MA state senators and representatives” and the ADL “for coordinating police training trips to Israel.”

Other “Day of Rage” events took place in Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.

The ADL’s Center on Extremism said that many of the rallies were small, with between ten and thirty participants.

In Brooklyn, video footage released by the Middle East Media Research Institute shows protesters chanting “Death to Israel,” “Death to America,” and “A million martyrs are marching to Jerusalem!”

The protests were organized by, among others, Al-Awda, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

In Los Angeles, the “Day of Rage” protesters were confronted by pro-Israel counter-demonstrators, who claimed they were physically threatened by at least one demonstrator who called for the genocide of Jews.

After Black Lives Matter - Los Angeles, a hate group which has partnered with the Nation of Islam and whose lead organizer praised Farrakhan, led a protest that resulted in mass attacks on Jewish schools, stores and synagogues, the leaders of 22 left-wing Jewish organizations signed letters condemning not the attacks, but the Jewish leader who spoke out against the antisemitism of the racist hate group. They made no reference to the BLM attacks on Jews.

The letters singled out Mort Klein, the President of the Zionist Organization of America, for describing Black Lives Matter as, among other things, "antisemitic,""Israel hating", and "extremist". They did not offer a rebuttal to this accurate description because none is possible.

Instead, a letter signed by 16 members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, accused Klein of hate and divisiveness. The letter's signatories, including HIAS and Americans for Peace Now, included groups notorious for their hostility toward Israel.

A separate letter by a slate of militantly anti-Israel groups, including J Street, The New Israel Fund, which sponsors BDS hate groups, and T'ruah, which has led a soft BDS campaign against Israel, demanded Klein's expulsion from the Conference. That aligns with their previous calls for the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from historic parts of Israel.

The signatories to the letters by Conference members included the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism, National Council of Jewish Women, whose previous CEO had signed a letter in defense of Linda Sarsour and agreed to work with antisemitic and anti-Israel groups, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Women of Reform Judaism, and Rick Jacobs, the anti-Israel head of the Union of Reform Judaism.

Jacobs had previously welcomed Ayman Odeh who heads Hadash, a merger of the local Communist Party, and whose current Joint List coalition includes a faction of the Muslim Brotherhood, and praised his, “inspiring vision”. But Jacobs doesn’t think that Klein has an inspiring vision, protesting that, “Black Lives Matter is at the center of one of the most critical fights for justice in our country”, while accusing Klein of “Islamophobia” and “racism”.

A new group of radical activists has emerged in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. They are called Within Our Lifetime, and they are unapologetically anti-Zionist, anti-American, pro-violence, and anti-peace.

Within Our Lifetime (WOL) announced their formation in a March Twitter post. An offshoot of a New York branch of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the group said they felt limited by their designation as a campus group and opened up membership to the general public, taking their fight to the streets of New York City.

Within Our Lifetime is small in terms of manpower, usually attracting not more than 25 participants to their rallies and weekly community meetings. But they have over 5,000 followers on Facebook and strong allies including American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the Muslim Students Association (MSA), and the ADL-designated hate group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). They have also inherited SJP’s ties to jihadist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Hamas.

On November 24, Within Our Lifetime signed a statement calling for the release of the “HLF5” — referring to five organizers of the Holy Land Foundation who were convicted on multiple terrorism-related charges, including material support for terrorism. HLF was a Hamas front — an Islamic charity established by US-based Muslim Brotherhood members, according to evidence submitted by the Federal government during a 2008 trial.

Nerdeen-Mohsen Kiswani, the co-founder and chair of Within Our Lifetime, has a disturbing history of Jew-hatred and support for jihad.

In a Facebook post in 2017, Kiswani celebrated the perpetrators of a Jerusalem attack that left four civilians dead and 17 injured. In 2014, she interrupted a New York City Council hearing where members were discussing an upcoming trip to Israel and holding a ceremony commemorating 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. She also disrupted a scheduled “Jewish Lives Matter” rally in Times Square, and took part in a counter-protest where participants were caught singing “the Jews are our dogs” in Arabic.

Her Twitter comments include calls to kill settlers and to eradicate the state of Israel by way of “intifada” (violent uprising).

Internal Division

The financial and moral support garnered for the #BlackLivesMatter cause during the protests that followed George Floyd’s tragic killing has been unprecedented. To conflate George Floyd’s murder with baseless anti-Zionist claims motivated by hatred of the Jewish state only impedes this support.

Perhaps that is why the Movement for Black Lives has not publicly come out to directly link the two and why even the BDS-affiliated American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) put out a statement in the wake of the killing went no further than the anodyne “…ADC knows that the liberation of all marginalized groups is tied to that of our Black brothers and sisters. ADC stands against injustice, discrimination, and racism regardless of the group it is targeting.”

There is still debate among Palestinian American activists about whether or not this is the right time to seize on the Deadly Exchange campaign by capitalizing on Floyd’s killing. For example, activist George Zeidan argues “Leave Palestine out of Black Lives Matter. For now.“ while others, for example, Gabriel Khoury and anti-Israel propagandist Miko Peled argue the opposite.

Perhaps the JVP leadership was directed by allies to temporarily tone down the group’s “Deadly Exchange” campaign or perhaps they recognized that exploiting George Floyd’s murder to further an anti-Semitic campaign could eventually backfire. Whatever the reason, JVP attempted to walk back its “Deadly Exchange” campaign in an updated statement on its website. The update states:

Making connections between the U.S. and Israel without context can do harm

Highlighting these police exchange programs without enough context or depth can end up harming our movements for justice. Suggesting that Israel is the start or source of American police violence or racism shifts the blame from the United States to Israel. This obscures the fundamental responsibility and nature of the U.S., and harms Black people and Black-led struggle. It also furthers an antisemitic ideology. White supremacists look for any opportunity to glorify and advance American anti-Black racism, and any chance to frame Jews as secretly controlling and manipulating the world. Taking police exchanges out of context provides fodder for those racist and antisemitic tropes.

But once a demon is created and unleashed, it is not so easily stuffed back into the bottle, even temporarily. JVP chapters across the country continue to feature Facebook posts blaming Israel for Floyd’s murder, as do others who seize on the vicious JVP campaign as a handy tool to demonize Israel. For example:

The anti-Semitic “Deadly Exchange” is JVP’s signature campaign, and if it means exploiting the killing of an unarmed black man in order to further the delegitimization of the Jewish state, so be it. Despite JVP’s updated statement and its pretense of interest in the situation of African-Americans in the U.S., it is clear that JVP’s primary focus is, and has always been, on demonizing Jews.

How many times can Al Jazeera be proven antisemitic? This has already been proven false. Why doesn’t @Twitter label this? https://t.co/rbsT5uYAgL

— AZ עם ישראל חי (@americanzionism) July 3, 2020

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ECLA) has spoken out against Israel's plan to annex parts of the West Bank in a series of articles published on their website, one of which additionally accuses Israel of having had a part in the murder of George Floyd.

The comment was made in an article that mentioned a letter that the ECLA, along with 26 other churches, sent to the US congress in opposition to the annexation plan. The letter demanded that the US government not provide funds for the recognition, facilitation or support of annexation.

"The Rev. Rafael Malpica Padilla, executive director of ELCA Global Mission, said that one should be aware of the connection between the Israeli government’s repressive tactics against Palestinians and those taking place against people of color in a number of localities around the United States," the article stated.

In the letter that the ECLA sent to the US congress, the aforementioned Rev. Padilla wrote, "As it has been reported, the kind of police tactics used to kill George Floyd are among those taught to a number of police departments that have taken part in training by Israeli police and military forces.

"For example, 100 Minneapolis police officers received counterterrorism training from Israelis at a conference held in 2012."

According to the ECLA page, the letter to congress was initiated by Churches for Middle East Peace in connection with their #ChurchesAgainstAnnexation campaign.

Concern over antisemitic and anti-Israel social media posts by groups linked to the Black Lives Matter movement this week led to the first supportive organisations distancing themselves from it.

According to reports in the Telegraph, Tottenham Hotspur Football Club and the BBC are among the first to advise their personnel to drop any physical or overt display of support, including the wearing of badges and ‘taking the knee’.

It follows a tweet from BLMUK account – which is not the movement’s official organisation – that “mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism”.

The official BLM account is yet to disavow the tweet.

At a local level, there was concern after BLM Oxford used an image of an antisemitic mural for an event on Facebook, although it quickly removed the post and apologised after a councillor pointed it out.

The Telegraph reported a BBC source as saying that the national broadcaster “cannot be seen to support any kind of cause over another, and Black Lives Matter is certainly a campaign,” as they confirmed that presenters would not wear “visual symbols of support”.

It also noted that Spurs had become the first Premier League football club to distance itself from BLM, with director Donna-Maria Cullen telling a fan that chairman Daniel Levy was “equally disappointed” by the tweets, adding: “It is unacceptable that a value-based action is being hijacked by those with their own political agenda.”

Sandwell Council leader Yvonne Davies is the subject of a probe by the Labour Party over tweets she sent in 2018, while Dudley Council is investigating a complaint against Councillor Pete Lowe, the authority’s former leader, over a tweet apparently intended to support Labour MP Rebecca Long-Bailey.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism has today described the tweets as “totally unacceptable” and called for the Labour Party and both local authorities to take “strong and decisive action” against the councillors.

A complaint to Labour Party head office seen by the Express & Star accuses Councillor Davies of "breaching Labour’s social media policy”.

One of the tweets cited as evidence is a link to a petition calling for a parliamentary debate over whether Israel has “improper influence” over British politics.

Another features a link to a story entitled, “Is Israel’s hand behind the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn?”, with Councillor Davies’s comment: “This makes interesting reading if anyone is wanting to understand where all this emphasis on Labour and antisematism (sic) comes from...”

It is understood the Labour Party is investigating the matter.

Jeremy #Corbyn main speaker are Pal expo ! @Campaign4Thttps://t.co/flgEXDWIfJ

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) July 2, 2020

In his new book in defense of Pessin, Salem on the Thames: Moral Panic, Anti-Zionism, and the Triumph of Hate Speech at Connecticut College, Richard Landes writes, “This probably should have been the end of the episode: a misunderstanding about a written comment, a clarification of original intent, an apology for intended offense, and a deletion of the offending post.” But Landes, a professor of medieval history at Boston University with a side gig keeping the anti-Israel intelligentsia honest, knows that Pessin wasn’t dealing with good-faith interlocutors. Before Pessin had a chance to respond, Khandaker had already emailed a friend: “wtf he literally just dehumanized the f— out of human beings. . . . This man needs to go.” Meanwhile, religious studies professor Sufia Uddin was planning a campaign of “public shaming,” she told an unnamed colleague.

Salem on the Thames is a collection of essays, but most of them, including a very helpful annotated chronology of events, are by Landes, who has also compiled an extensive archive of primary-source documents at his blog. He and his other contributors dissect each and every way Pessin was sucker punched, lied to, manipulated, and thrown under the bus.

The sucker punch connected when, without warning, the student newspaper published three letters attacking Pessin simultaneously. One letter, written by two students of Arabic studies, spliced quotations from the Facebook post’s comments to accuse him of calling for genocide: “Professor Pessin directly condoned the extermination of a people.” Khandaker claimed in her letter that Pessin had sloughed off her concerns, even though it was she who had rudely dismissed Pessin. She also insisted his post referred to Palestinians in general as rabid dogs, raised the specter of Islamophobic violence, and cited his other comments about Islamic extremism and intolerance—in short, his liberalism—as evidence of consistent bigotry.

Did Pessin write anything wrong in his post? In one sense, perhaps it doesn’t matter. Wilfred Reilly’s research on hate-crime hoaxes has shown that where no racism is forthcoming, many activists will fabricate it. They know that lectures on structural racism aren’t enough; enemies are needed to spur radical action. On US campuses, “the demand for bigots exceeds the supply,” Reilly has said. Still, the truth should guide our judgments. We owe it to Pessin to search for it.

Landes has no doubt the post was exclusively about Hamas. At some points he accuses all misreaders of deliberate distortion or worse, but elsewhere he makes a more fitting claim: Although readers “may not be blameworthy for initially misreading the text out-of-context, they should be held accountable for acting on the misreading . . . without the most elementary exegetical diligence expected of a community of scholars.”

A leading anti-Israel group has expanded its call to boycott the Jewish state and is now calling for a boycott against Barstool Sports, accusing the popular website of "unapologetic racism" and violent "hate speech."

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), a group that has accused Israel of carrying out "apartheid" and "ethnic cleansing," called on all Barstool sponsors and viewers to boycott the company on Wednesday.

"We can no longer excuse hatred and must hold racists accountable for their actions and their rhetoric," the ADC said in a statement. "Hate speech is not funny and can lead to violence."

The call to boycott came after jokes that Barstool founder Dave Portnoy made in 2016 resurfaced on social media. Portnoy questioned Colin Kaepernick's decision to kneel during the national anthem, joking that he thought the ex-NFL quarterback was an "ISIS guy" who looked "Arabic."

The ADC supports the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which seeks Israel's destruction. Former ADC leaders have praised terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, calling them "very respectable,""disciplined," and "responsible." The group has also defended Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) against accusations of anti-Semitism, calling them "fictitious" and "dangerous to the victims of true anti-Semitism." Omar, who also supports BDS, has likened boycotting Israel to boycotting Nazis and said the Jewish state "hypnotized the world."

Barstool did not reply to a request for comment. Portnoy has refused to apologize for the comments, saying he won't "bend the knee" to the "no-fun club."

There's a borderline pogrom happening at @USC right now. Here's one example of open anti-semitism from radical leftist grad student Miranda Leibig who is helping lead a successful effort to expel Jews (sorry, "zionists") from student government. USC admin is silent. pic.twitter.com/Hj1HPNnRyd

— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) July 3, 2020

Twitter suspended the account of a prominent pro-Israel Jewish blogger Elder of Ziyon, apparently for anti-Semitism.

The blogger received a message from Twitter claiming that he violated the social media platform's "rules against abusive profile information."

"You may not use your username, display name, or profile bio to engage is abusive behavior, such as targeted harassment or expressing hate towards a person, group, or protected category," the message stated.

Elder of Ziyon's account was later reinstated.

The Elder of Ziyon blog combats anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. The blog, which is written anonymously, has operated since 2004. The name of the blog was chosen to poke fun at anti-Semitic conspiracy theories such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

A California trade union placed a political advertisement on Facebook about a Jewish state senator that evoked antisemitic stereotypes about Jews and money.

The State Building and Construction Trades Council later removed the ad and apologized after being called out by the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, the political news website CalMatters reported Tuesday.

The ad accuses Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, of “selling out” to developers and the real estate industry. It featured an image of Wiener against a backdrop of a Monopoly game board, clutching a handful of Monopoly money.

The union objects to a bill authored by Wiener that would allow churches and other religious organizations to more speedily develop low-income housing on their property. The union wants union-level wages and union-trained workers for the projects, which would make them more expensive. The state Senate passed the legislation on Friday.

Jeremy Russell, a spokesperson for the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, called the ad “cringeworthy,” CalMatters reported.

Throughout the report, Mashharawi systematically omitted crucial information, based on the sole criterion that it did not fit the narrative he sought to promote:

1. Israel did not “refuse” any permit requests from patients due to the PA suspending coordination with it. Rather, it simply wasn’t receiving the requests because they were being withheld by the PA instead of being relayed to COGAT.
2. No Israeli approval is needed in order to use the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt; the only parties involved in operating the facility and determining who is allowed to cross are Egypt and Hamas, with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh confirming during his Moscow visit in early March that it has been regularly open for the past two years. This is relevant specifically for the case of Mira Alfejem, since her scheduled operation is in a hospital located in Amman, Jordan.
3. The reason Omar Yaghi’s father said that the only way for patients “to enter” was via Erez crossing was because in his case the hospital that scheduled his operation was itself in Ramat Gan, Israel (the NGO that was set to pay for the operation was Israeli as well).
4. The claims made by a single Gazan NGO of questionable reputation and reliability that Israel still occupies Gaza are refuted by the Strip’s own Hamas leadership (which referred to “the Occupation’s departure out of Gaza” in January 2012), as well as a gallery of legal scholars. They were also repeatedly retracted by several US media outlets, often at CAMERA’s request.

Yolande Knell’s road trip began with a reference to an archaeological site in Area C which is run by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. Despite the fact that under the terms of the Oslo Accords signed by the PLO in the 1990s, the final status of places in Area C is subject to negotiations, Knell has apparently already decided the status of that the location.

Knell: “From Jerusalem I’m driving towards a distinctive truncated hill – Herodium – an ancient fortress in the West Bank. According to the long-standing vision for peace, this area would belong to a future Palestinian state. But is that just as illusion? The main road signs here aren’t for the Palestinian villages but for Israeli settlements dotted between them like Tekoa.”

Listeners then heard a man saying that the site was where “Herod died 2,000 years ago”.

Knell: “Claims to the land go back a long way for Marc Zell of Republicans Overseas Israel who I meet at his home in Tekoa. He approves of the Trump plan allocating a third of the West Bank to Israel but proposing only a limited Palestinian State under strict conditions.”

BBC audiences heard that same talking point concerning “strict conditions” in a different report published on the same day. Like her colleague, Knell made no effort to inform listeners that the so-called “strict conditions” rather obviously include demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip and the disarming of the terror organisation currently ruling it as part of a plan for peace. Neither did she mention the proposed land swaps intended to “provide the State of Palestine with land reasonably comparable in size to the territory of pre-1967 West Bank and Gaza” or the fact that the Palestinian leadership rejected the US proposal without even seeing it.

Those omissions mean that her interviewee’s response would be incomprehensible to the majority of listeners.

Zell: “If those conditions were met I mean that would basically be judgement day and the coming of the messiah. Is that reasonable to expect to happen in our lifetime? I don’t think so. But I think we have to achieve a modus vivendi; a way of living together.”

Having supposedly ticked the ‘impartiality’ box, Knell proceeded with promotion of the view that Palestinians support the ‘two-state solution’, even though polls show that 88% reject the US Administration’s latest proposal to bring about such a solution to the conflict, half reject the concept of two states and over half support “armed struggle”.

The US Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear Germany’s bid to block it from facing a lawsuit in American court over medieval artwork that its former Nazi government pressured Jewish art dealers to sell in the 1930s.

Germany had asked for the case to be thrown out on the basis of sovereign immunity, which generally prohibits US courts from hearing claims against foreign governments.

The justices will hear arguments arising from a 2015 lawsuit filed in US federal court in Washington in which heirs of the art dealers said Germany owes them either the return of the artwork or more than $250 million in damages.

The court also agreed to hear Hungary’s bid to avoid litigation brought by US citizens who survived that nation’s World War Two-era campaign of genocide against its Jewish population.

The plaintiffs in the Germany case have said they are the rightful owners of a 17th-century collection of medieval art known as the Welfenschatz that includes gem-studded busts of Christian saints, golden crucifixes and other precious objects.

In 1935, a group of Jewish art dealers in Germany sold the collection to the state of Prussia, then being administered by prominent Nazi official Hermann Goering. The plaintiffs said that the sale was a “sham transaction” made under duress and that their ancestors received just 35 percent of the art’s market value.

In the 2015 lawsuit, the plaintiffs sought either money or the return of the Welfenschatz, which is currently in the possession of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, a German governmental entity.

A French appeals court ruled against an American couple that sought to get back the 1887 painting called La Cueillette des Pois ("Picking Peas") by Camille Pissarro that was looted from a Jewish collector during the Holocaust.

The court upheld an earlier ruling that the painting should be returned to the family of the collector, Jewish businessman Simon Bauer, according to the text seen by AFP on Wednesday.

Purchasers Bruce and Robbi Toll of the Philadelphia area, who are also Jewish, claimed that they didn't know the painting was stolen when they bought it in New York for $800,000 back in 1995.

The Vichy regime in France during the war collaborated with the Nazis and stole 93 paintings from Bauer, according to the report. Some of the paintings were returned to him after the war, though died in 1947, before he was able to retrieve La Cueillette.

Pissarro was born on Nov. 13, 1903 on St. Thomas in the Caribbean. His father was of Portuguese Jewish descent and held French nationality; his mother was from a French Jewish family from the island of St. Thomas. Few of Pissarro's paintings sold during his lifetime.

Everton Football Club and the Labour Party have both launched investigations after the JC alerted them to an image circulated on social media of two men carrying a banner including the club crest which calls for Israel to be kicked out of international football..

The ‘‘Toffees Say Kick Israel Out Of UEFA and FIFA’’ banner has been widely shared this week on Facebook by the James Larkin Society Liverpool site - a group set up to honour the memory of the Irish born trade-unionist – and by a group caling itself Boycott Israel Apartheid Ireland.

Sources have told the JC that the two individuals holding the banner are local Labour Party activists and that one of the duo has identified himself as a Liverpool fan on his own social media page.

Everton confirmed to the JC the club had begun an investigation into both the banner and the individuals pictured holding it. They have also lodged a complain with Facebook over copyright issues.

They said that if the two men were proven to be Everton fans the club would take action against them - although the club were aware of claims that at least one of the individuals was not in fact one of their fans.

The television personality and journalist Piers Morgan has not responded to comment regarding a historic photograph of him wearing a Nazi uniform at a costume party.

The photograph has been made exclusively available to Campaign Against Antisemitism by Guido Fawkes.

We have been told that the photograph was taken at a costume party about 30 years ago, at which Mr Morgan was heard saying “Heil Hitler!” and seen goose-stepping.

We wrote to Mr Morgan to advise that, while we do not imagine that he is an admirer of the Nazis and we recognise that he was very young at the time, nevertheless it did not appear to be an appropriate way to behave.

However, Mr Morgan has not responded. He has in the past demanded explanations and apologies from celebrities and politicians for their past conduct, however he seems not to apply the same rules to himself.

RUGBY league personality Matthew Johns says visiting the Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM) is “a day that I’ll always treasure”.

The former Newcastle Knights and Cronulla Sharks player was invited to tour the SJM after a segment on his Foxtel television show that featured a photoshopped image of Adolf Hitler caused outrage in May.

He visited the museum last Thursday morning with his wife Trish before meeting with and hearing the life story of Holocaust survivor Jack Meister, who rebuilt his life in Australia after losing his immediate family in the Shoah.

“On one hand it’s horrifying to go through and see the extent of the destruction of a people and a culture,” Johns exclusively told The AJN.

“But on the other hand, it’s inspiring – the toughness and determination of the Jewish people to survive and to get through and to preserve their culture.”

Of Meister, Johns said, “I don’t think I’ve ever met a more inspiring fellow.

The global university index system Shanghai Ranking ranked Haifa University above not only all other Israeli universities, but also renowned higher learning institutes across the world for educational studies.

The index grades and prioritizes universities around the globe based on a variety of factors, including Nobel Prize winners, published research and more.

Haifa University's new status was announced by Shanghai Ranking on July 1. The northern school in Israel, located on Mount Carmel in Haifa, ranked in the top 76-100 universities in the word for education studies above schools such as Cambridge University and Oxford University in England, and Yale University and Brown University in the United States.

Furthermore, in addition to having climbed the educational studies ladder, Haifa University also ranked among the top two hundred universities for Ocean Studies. Haifa University's Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences leads the research field in several different disciplines, while staff and students from the university lead research projects across the world.

"The high position of the University of Haifa in a wide range of fields is indicative of the success of many years of processes inside and outside the Carmel campus walls," said Haifa University Ron Robin.

Israel’s Eurovision champion and burgeoning international star Netta Barzilai made waves Tuesday as she performed a Live At-Home session for Billboard magazine’s series.

The performance raised money for New York’s Downtown Women’s Center.

“We all need clubs right now, don’t we?” Barzilai asked, as she performed a set that remixed Flo Rida and T-Pain’s No. 1 hit “Low.”

According to the report of the show in Billboard, she ad-libbed lyrics – “My name is Netta/ Welcome to this live/ Oh my God, it’s a vibe here... Oh my God I’m doing Billboard!” – in the midst of her electro-pop version.

Barzilai also performed original material from her at-home DJ booth, including “Nana Banana” and “Bassa Sababa” and ended up the 25-minute set with her new single, the groove-oriented ballad “Cuckoo,” from her latest mini-album Goody Bag EP, a song destined to become a hit.

She did not perform her Eurovision-winning tune “Toy.”

Israeli music company MUGO Inc. has been acquired by streaming giant Deezer as part of its investment deal with the Mexican company, Grupo Salinas. The Mexican company’s investment in the streaming service will be $40 million, bringing its total valuation to $1.4 billion — a major leap in value for Deezer. Following the investment, Deezer will acquire the assets of the Israeli company that will become part of Deezer.

Founded by Ori Segal, Roman Slutsky, and Shay Goldberg, the company has developed a patented Live Share technology that allows some listeners to sync to the same point in the song even when listening from a different source. In addition, the MUGO app lets you track users with similar musical tastes, share playlists, play music sorted by mood, and more.

Today, a television program called MUGO Live, which makes use of the Israeli app, is aired in Mexico. Following the acquisition, the program will change its name to Deezer Live. Talking to Calcalist, Segal spoke about the process the company went through until now. “In 2017, we won Calcalist‘s mobile app competition. We won despite thinking that we didn’t have a chance opposite the other companies that participated. Following the surprising win, we were able to raise a million dollars from private investors and went to the Barcelona Mobile Show, which was part of the prize. We had a tremendous flow to our stall and many people even took pictures with us,” Segal said.

“One of the people who came to us was the founder of Chinese company Baidu who at first we suspected was spying after us. After that, we met with an Israeli guy who worked with Deezer and already made an initial relationship because our app worked with Deezer. After him, we were approached by the right-hand man of Ricardo Salinas, the owner of Grupo Salinas, the largest business group in Mexico,” Segal recalled.

"There are no borders when it comes to medicine."

Little Usaid, a 3 week old son of Syrian refugees, was brought to Israel from 🇨🇾 with his father to undergo a complex life-saving surgery to fix a serious heart defect.

Now, he's on the road to recovery❤️🇮🇱

Watch Usaid's story: pic.twitter.com/SlLX7LeMun

— Israel ישראל (@Israel) July 2, 2020

At 10 a.m. on July 12, 1939, Lothar Nelken arrived at Berlin’s Potsdam station. Rounded up and sent to Buchenwald in the aftermath of Germany’s Kristallnacht pogrom, he was part of a large group of Jewish men who were about to commence a 36-hour journey to freedom and safety.

It was a journey that would take them across Germany to the Belgian frontier and then on to the coastal city of Ostend. “Within a short time we find ourselves on a beautiful ferry,” Nelken recorded in his diary. “The Channel is nice and calm. In sunshine, we enjoy a pleasant crossing; much too short at three hours.”

Arriving at Dover in southern England, the men were driven by bus the short distance to a previously disused World War I army camp on the outskirts of the Kent town of Sandwich. “We were welcomed with jubilation,” Nelken’s diary entry for the day concludes.

The Kitchener camp had, over the previous four months, blossomed into a small town housing Jewish male refugees. Many, like Nelken, had been arrested and sent to Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Dachau after Kristallnacht.

The camp was the concrete manifestation of a softening of the British government’s hardline approach to those fleeing Nazi persecution. Amid public and parliamentary revulsion at the terrible events of November 1938, and under heavy pressure from the Central British Fund (CBF) for German Jewry (now World Jewish Relief), the Home Office agreed to admit thousands of Jewish refugees, albeit under stringent conditions. As a result, the Kindertransport saw 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children brought to Britain.

Less well-known or celebrated, however, is the equally remarkable story of the “Kitchener Camp” rescue. The subject of an online exhibition at London’s Wiener Holocaust Library, it undoubtedly saved the lives of nearly 4,000 German and Austrian Jewish men.

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” ~ #ElieWiesel

Elie Wiesel (z'l) died #OnThisDay 4 years ago. May his memory and clarion call to action always be a blessing and lesson to us all! pic.twitter.com/jGwTnTjwmi

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 2, 2020

A small group of Republican members of Congress have been trying to right a great wrong by demanding that Jordan extradite Sbarro massacre mastermind Ahlam Tamimi to the United States. But as a proud and unrepentant murderer of Jews — including two American citizens — Ahlam Tamimi has many admirers, and it unfortunately seems that the Jordanian government has no interest in turning over this unrepentant terrorist.

This case not only reveals a lot about the continuing glorification of terrorism against Israel in the Middle East, but it also provides a depressing example that appeasing extremists is perhaps all too often regarded as prudent policy and diplomacy.

Tamimi, who planned and facilitated the 2001 suicide bombing that killed 15 people, including 7 children, and injured 130 at a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, has enjoyed the life of a celebrity ever since she was released in the controversial 2011 deal Israel struck in order to free Hamas hostage Gilad Shalit.

As reported on the Islamist website MEMO, Ahlam’s release was a reason to celebrate for the Tamimi clan of the West Bank village Nabi Saleh — not least because another terrorist member of the clan was also released, and the murderous couple got married in Amman, Jordan. Right after her release, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal met with her in Cairo, and when she arrived in Jordan, she received a hero’s welcome, including a reception in her honor at the Jordanian Law Court building.

Tamimi’s status as a Palestinian “hero” made it easy for her to start a TV career hosting a show that glorified Palestinian terrorists, and she reportedly got to travel “widely and often within Jordan and to numerous Arab countries — including repeat visits to Algeria, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Tunisia and Yemen — speaking to school and university groups, trade unions, and on TV — boasting of her central role in the massacre, of the high death toll and of her intention to kill Jewish children.”

Some three years ago, when the US first demanded Tamimi’s extradition after it was announced that she was on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists, she responded by proudly displaying her extremist Islamist views in an interview with a site that promotes the ideology of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood. She declared that, “Our war with the Zionist enemy is an ideological war from the days of the Prophet Muhammad to now.”

Obviously enough, there were no “Zionists” in the days of Muhammad — which means that what Tamimi actually claims is that murderous Jew-hatred is an integral part of Islam. Needless to say, this is a view that would normally be rejected as Islamophobic, and it would surely appall the Muslim faith leaders who have recently taken welcome steps to “foster a new era in Muslim-Jewish relations.”

The families of three US soldiers killed several years ago in Jordan are calling on Congress to suspend foreign aid to the US ally unless the country extradites their killer, as well as another terrorist wanted for a 2001 attack in Israel.

Marek al-Tuwayha is serving a life sentence for murdering the members of the US Special Forces on Nov. 4, 2016 at King Faisal Air Base. However, the AP recently reported that he might be released in 20 years.

The families of the men—Staff Sgt. Matthew Lewellen of Missouri, Staff Sgt. Kevin McEnroe of Arizona and Staff Sgt. James Moriarty of Texas—are also taking part in an effort to push for the extradition of Ahlam Tamimi from Jordan, where she has found safe haven.

Tamimi was convicted in Israel of helping mastermind the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem in which 15 civilians were killed, including seven children. Two of the victims were American: Malka Chana (Malki) Roth, 15, and Shoshana Yehudit (Judy) Greenbaum, 31, who was pregnant.

At the time, Tamimi was a 20-year-old female university student. She has never exhibited remorse for the attack.

In a statement, the families said King Abdullah of Jordan “should publicly apologize for the murders of their sons and explain why his country harbors a terrorist that killed Americans in the pizzeria bombing.”

What Odeh did is not just disappointing, it is also counterproductive. The people who voted for Odeh’s Joint List, and helped it obtain 15 seats in the Knesset, did not cast their ballot so the leader of the party could participate in conferences with known terrorists. They want him and his fellow Knesset members to work to improve their lives: to create jobs, to secure funding to upgrade infrastructure – roads, schools, hospitals and more – and to steer their community through the economic and health crisis caused by the novel coronavirus.

Let’s not forget that Arouri is one of the founding commanders of the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, and is said to be one of the key people – from his home in Turkey – trying to promote terrorist attacks in the West Bank. The US State Department has put a $5 million reward for anyone who provides information that leads to his capture.

This is the person Odeh wants to be associated with? A known terrorist behind dozens of attacks against Israel who is wanted by the IDF and the US?

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.”

It is unclear what Levin can actually do, but Odeh does need to decide where he stands and who he is as a lawmaker and a citizen of the State of Israel. He can, and should, of course, be able to openly show solidarity with the Palestinian people and also criticize Israel – all day and all night if he’d like – for its actions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But, participating in a conference with a known terrorist like Arouri though is a line that Odeh should have known not to cross.

Israel has a long way to go for its Arab citizens to feel like they are treated as equals, and for the words of the declaration of independence, which called for coexistence in this land, to come true.

Arabs needs to be seen as equal citizens and be treated as equal citizens. For too long Arab-Israelis have been demonized and portrayed as a fifth column. They have been spoken about by the Likud and Blue and White as illegitimate political partners.

What Odeh did is wrong, but what Israel is doing is also not helping. If we want Arabs to stand with Israel and not with Hamas, they have to feel like everyone here has a shared destiny. That has yet to happen.

He could’ve gotten moralistic, saying: “How can a country that murdered six million Jews now cowtow to a government intent on killing 6 million more?” “How dare you tell Jews to hide?” “We lost countless American lives and treasure because of your historic bloody power lust. Pay up!” He kept it classy, focusing on the mutual interest inherent in the policies he promoted, whether banning Hezbollah or the Iranian airline, Mahan Air. The Germans were spared guilt.

Nothing could explain Grenell’s fearlessness except to say he is a God-fearing man. He was more like a prophet preaching to the Germans before they bring upon themselves great disaster yet again by courting dictatorships like Iran, Russia and China.

The Hebrew prophets spoke in their own style unique to their upbringing and temperament. Amos, for example, spoke in simple metaphors taken from his life as a farmer. Isaiah, a prince, used more aristocratic metaphors. Grenell spoke as an American born in a small town in Michigan using not parables, but sharp tweets. Of course, he didn’t only conduct diplomacy over Twitter. A masterful professional and Harvard graduate, he activated and united the embassy to lobby for American interests utilizing all formal and informal channels at their disposal, but publicly, he communicated in the language and method of the people – social media – because he is one of the people.

Over time, his name came up again for other positions, and I kept tweeting #BerlinNeedsGrenell, until he got promoted as Acting Director of Intelligence. Americans now needed him. In just a few months, through long overdue declassifications and administrative reforms, he transformed the American Intelligence Community into one that is more effective, transparent and accountable to the people. What he started in Germany continued in Washington: bringing information that taxpayers had a right to know directly to them.

In the tradition of fools harassing a prophet, Der Spiegel contrasted him to previous ambassadors in one of their many hit pieces.

In Berlin, the representatives of Germany’s most important ally usually have the easiest jobs. Many previous US ambassadors were major political and social figures in the capital, enjoying excellent connections to the Chancellery and federal ministries, and playing host to the most powerful and influential personalities in Germany.

Barack Obama’s ambassador, Philip Murphy, invited longtime adversaries Helmut Kohl and Merkel to his dining room in 2012 for discreet talks aimed at reducing the tensions between them. By the time his tenure was over after four years, he had made so many friends he had to rent out the Olympic Stadium for his goodbye party.

Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we couldn’t throw a goodbye party for “Ric,” as he tells people to call him. Maybe it wouldn’t have been filled with power-players congratulating each other on how they’re all Masters of the Universe, but the Olympic Stadium wouldn’t have been able to fill the genuine love, appreciation, and deep respect that every day, decent, pro-American Germans felt for one of the most effective, honest, ethical and real ambassadors that Germany – and beyond – has ever known.

Grenell will greatly be missed. I don’t know what I’ll do now for upcoming Fourth of July. But I know that Berlin doesn’t need Grenell anymore. #TheWorldNeedsGrenell

The voice of #Israel⁦@MarkRegev⁩ - former Ambassador to the UK - talks to Political Thinking about his journey from Australian socialist kibbutznik to becoming a close aide to ⁦@IsraeliPM⁩ & explains why he’s optimistic about peace 🎧 https://t.co/M1eAtEkADS

— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) July 3, 2020

“Get your facts first,” Mark Twain once intoned, “and then you can distort them as you please.” Yet, when it comes to the Israel-Islamist conflict, the North Jersey Record isn’t even bothering with facts. The newspaper’s recent report, “‘We need to pursue systemic change’: Palestinian Americans in NJ brace for annexation,” offers a masterclass in both distortions and omissions.

Indeed, the report is so problematic and biased that it’s hard to know where to begin.

NJ Record correspondent Hannan Adely reported that on June 28, “about 200 people gathered outside Paterson City Hall” in New Jersey where they raised the Palestinian flag and protested “Israel’s plan to annex large swaths of the West Bank starting Wednesday, July 1 — a move they said would suffocate Palestinians and scuttle any remaining chance for peace.”

“Annexation,” the NJ Record claims, “happens when a country declares that land outside its borders is part of its own state.” The plan “would leave Palestinians with 15% of their historic homeland” and “allow Israel to encircle all Palestinian land and cut it off from the border with Jordan.”

Nearly every word in this paragraph is inaccurate. As international law scholar Eugene Kontorovich has noted: “Annexation in international law specifically means taking the territory of a foreign sovereign country.” And neither the Jordan Valley nor the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) belongs to a “foreign sovereign country.”

In fact, in contrast to the NJ Record’s claim, no sovereign Palestinian Arab state has ever existed and what Palestinian Arabs have claimed as their “historic homeland” has been largely malleable — with one important exception.

As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) has documented, many leading Arab notables sought to join Syria 100 years ago as the Ottoman Empire was dissolving. Early “founding fathers” of Palestinian Arab nationalism, including the future Nazi collaborator Amin al-Husseini, were active in the so-called “Southern Syria” movement. Indeed, al-Husseini and his successor of sorts, Yasser Arafat, coveted what are today the lands of Jordan, Israel, and portions of Syria and Lebanon. Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) even tried to overthrow the King of Jordan, an ambition that was thwarted 50 years ago this September.

As late as May 31, 1956, the future head of the PLO, Ahmed Shukeiri, told the UN Security Council, “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria.”

I am often asked what will actually change if the sovereignty-annexation plan goes ahead and the answer is: Not a lot. At least not on the ground. The value of the plan is that – while not perfect – it changes the paradigm. Or it should. It would move the Palestinians toward independence if that were their goal, and grant Israel the defensible borders it desperately needs, not the 1949/1967 borders from which the Jewish state was repeatedly attacked. It would also allow Israel to remain in charge of most of the significant Jewish religious, cultural and historic sites such as Shiloh, where the Tabernacle was once located.

The Palestinians in the West Bank (and Gaza) will continue to exercise self-rule and Israeli law will be extended to the Israeli citizens, who for a long time have been both “with and without.” As several friends have told me, the biggest change will be that if they want to build an extra room or a balcony, they will not have to apply to the Civil Administration for a permit.

When Menachem Begin’s government applied Israeli law to the Golan Heights in 1981 residents there quipped that the biggest difference was they were now obliged to wear seat belts when driving in the region. Until then they had been able to go without and feel nothing of it.

One change as a result of sovereignty is the extension of Israeli labor laws that would also protect Palestinian employees. In May, it was announced that for the first time Israeli employers are required to provide health insurance to Palestinian workers from Judea and Samaria who are employed in Israel. The measure is part of the “emergency regulations” in force due to COVID-19 but is an example of the sort of positive change that sovereignty could bring.

The whole world is praying that a vaccine for the novel coronavirus will be found soon. In the meantime, I’d be happy to find the ultimate comfortable mask. I already know the perfect marketing slogan for it: Lalechet im u’lahargish bli. “To go with and feel without.”

Jews are from Judea, Arabs are from Arabia! The simple truth by a young and proud Jewish-American member of ClubZ (Z for Zionism). Judea and Samaria are an integral part of the biblical land of Israel. pic.twitter.com/DrcnmxUBb0

— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) July 3, 2020

It’s been surreal watching from Israel as Americans discuss my future. I’ve gotten used to presidents spending years developing plans for my neighborhood and other towns in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank — they mean well and I truly appreciate their efforts. But recently I’ve been thrown by all the attention we’ve been receiving from the American Jewish establishment.

I’ve watched Zoom panels, Facebook Lives and read countless op-eds about my future and Israel’s annexation plan for parts of the West Bank. All the attention is gratifying, but I have noticed that many of the discussions, panels and debates have been missing some important nuance.

I’ve also noticed that many of these panels don’t include any speakers who are Jewish settlers or Palestinian residents of the area, which made it feel like I was watching an all-male panel discuss women’s issues or three white people discuss Black Lives Matter.

When I challenged one think tank about its 20-person panel that did not include a single Palestinian or Jewish settler, I was told that the discussions centered around security issues and a resident’s perspective wouldn’t be valuable.

But without a local speaker, these organizations are robbing their audience of the chance to hear a diverse set of opinions. Setting aside that security experts who live here are more familiar with the security challenges we face than former American security officials, their response shows a deeper flaw in how Americans view Israel and the region.

I watched a congressman who hasn’t visited a settlement in years — if ever — host an hourlong conversation about why it’s not in Israel’s interests to extend sovereignty over the West Bank. He authored a letter, and got 189 of his colleagues to sign it, which made the same points.
(h/t Zvi)

A lot is being written about the “Trump Peace Plan” and experts, on both sides of the political fence, are giving their side of what they think. It reminds me of a multiple-choice test:
A) I like the plan
B) I do not like the plan
C) I am somewhere in the middle
D) None of the above.

My answer is simple. It is a definite, positive “D” – “None of the above”. Let me explain.

The Land of Israel belongs to the Nation of Israel. The overwhelming majority of the world believes that! The problem, however, is with our own people. Most Jews agree that Eretz Yisrael is ours but they say that we need to be realistic and not just idealistic. “Yes, this is the land of our fathers... of course it was given to us as an eternal inheritance… but we are now part of the family of nations… we can’t operate alone… we dare not make any decisions without approval of the USA…” These are daily quotes said by Jewish leaders and their puppet followers and this is what drives me nuts…

Dearest friends; when the Zionist movement started 120+ years ago, we had rights to the Land of Israel on paper only. We had the Bible, we had the deed to the land and we had the unbreakable chain of 2,000 years of prayers, hopes and tears… but we did not have the “keys” to the house. That was when we needed the help of the nations of the world, so Hashem orchestrated a wonderful plan; Balfour declaration (1917), San Remo conference (1920), League of Nations vote (1947) – all so that His children could, once again, establish a Jewish State on His holy soil.

For many years after the founding of the state, we were young and still needed the world’s help, as a child taking his/her first steps. However, those early, weak and feeble days are gone and today, the Jewish Nation can proudly stand on its own. Our IDF is strong, our economy is stable and – thanks to our Father and King – the world needs us a lot more than we need them.

What’s all this have to do with the Trump Peace Plan? Simply this; that even today, Israeli leaders and most Jews around the world believe that Israel cannot move a muscle without permission of the United States.

It was a rainy first of July in Berlin, and a protest was expected outside of the Reichstag, Germany’s historic house of parliament (Bundestag) with its famously post-war transparent dome above the parliament that tourists can alight for a view of the capital and of modern Germany’s democracy in action.

For the handful of protesters on the wet stone near the neo-Baroque edifice, it was a day of shame for Germany democracy. An hour later, the “grand coalition” consisting of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democrats (SDP), along with the Free Democrats (FdP) from the opposition, would vote on a non-binding resolution to condemn Israel over plans to extend sovereignty over Israeli-controlled areas in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, a moved often dubbed “annexation.” The debate was symbolically timed on the day from which Israel could execute the move (but hasn’t yet) and in which Germany assumed the presidency of the Council of the European Union.

The protest, which essentially turned into a one-man show, starred its initiator, Marcel Goldhammer, a journalist with both German and Israeli citizenship.

“Germany killed 6 million Jews in World War II, in the Holocaust, and now Germany wants to tell Israel how to defend its security,” Goldhammer told JNS, holding an Israeli flag which he proudly waved to passersby, at one point breaking out in Israel’s national anthem “Hatikvah.” He also slammed Germany’s alleged funding of NGOs that support or excuse Palestinian terrorism, saying, “Shame on you!”

The only political opposition came from the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), which abstained from the motion largely on the grounds that Germany shouldn’t tell Israel what to do. The populist party, which has been embroiled in controversy over statements believed to minimize the Holocaust, is largely shunned by the mainstream German Jewish community.

The mass-circulation Bild paper blasted the German parliament on Friday for its condemnation of the Jewish state for seeking to exercise sovereignty over disputed parts of the West Bank.

“Commentary on the decision against Israel’s policy: You treat friends differently,” read the headline of the editorial by Louis Hagen.

The Bundestag (Germany's federal parliament) is believed to have only singled out one territorial dispute—the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—from well over 100 nation land conflicts across the globe.

“The Bundestag discussed internal borders in Israel. It is grotesque. Because the outcome of the debate was already certain. The Bundestag presents Israel as a threat to stability in the Middle East. It warns that Israel's actions have ‘significant effects on the peace process,”’ wrote Hagen.

“What peace does Israel endanger? There is no peace in the Middle East that could be endangered," he added. "As long as Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas and all the other neighbors from Syria to Jordan want to more or less wipe the Jewish state off the map. As long as the ‘moderate’ Palestinian government in the West Bank pays terrorists life-long pensions.”

The editorial declared that “unfortunately, we only hear the voice of the German Bundestag when it comes to criticizing Israel. Human rights violations by the Palestinians, in Iran, in Syria, in Egypt - one hears very little of that.”

An adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned Saturday there was a possibility of a third intifada if the Israeli government goes ahead with its plan to annex parts of the West Bank.

The Kan public broadcaster reported that Nabil Shaath told the Arabic-language arm of the France 24 network that Palestinian rivals Fatah and Hamas are in agreement that there should be a popular uprising if the controversial plan goes ahead.

“When things flare up and it becomes a fully-fledged intifada, we will see a combination of forces between Gaza and the West Bank,” Shaath said.

The Palestinian adviser also said that he expected the potential uprising to be funded by the Arab world, noting Saudi Arabia sent billions of dollars within the first few days of the Second Intifada, but without further elaborating.

The Second Intifada, which erupted in the early 2000s, included waves of suicide bombings and other terror attacks that killed more than 1,000 Israelis.

Israeli security officials last month started to hold discussions to prepare for various scenarios if the annexation plan goes ahead, including the possibility of a full-blown uprising.

Shaath’s statement came after rivals Fatah and Hamas pledged unity against Israel’s West Bank annexation plans and vowed to “topple” the Trump administration’s peace proposal, in a rare show of cooperation at a joint press conference Thursday.

Former US President Jimmy Carter has criticized Israel’s plans to apply sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria, more commonly known as the West Bank.

“Israel’s planned annexation of up to 30 [percent] of the West Bank as early as today would violate international laws prohibiting the acquisition of territory by force and changing the status of occupied territories,” said Carter in a statement on Wednesday. “The planned move would violate the Oslo and Camp David accords, and jeopardize Israel’s peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt.”

“For decades, Jewish settlements in the West Bank have expanded, jeopardizing any possible establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel,” he said. “Formal annexation will signal the end of the internationally agreed-upon two-state framework for peace, and with it the possibility for a just solution to the conflict.”

Carter, 95, concluded, “The envisioned annexation would amount to a massive, illegal expropriation of Palestinian territory. Annexation must be stopped, and the Israelis and Palestinians should return to meaningful negotiations based on UN resolutions and previous bilateral agreements.”

The reality however is that the only ‘endless quest’ of the Palestinians, is to destroy the Jewish state, not build one of their own. However people like @KenRoth frame it, it will never happen. https://t.co/fu5R9hUJTO

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 4, 2020

Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, lit up in American national colours on Saturday to mark the United States Independence Day.

An image on Burj Khalifa's Twitter account showed the building's famed LED screen draped with the American flag.

Acknowledging the tribute, the US Mission to the UAE tweeted its gratitude. "Thank you, UAE and @BurjKhalifa for celebrating Independence Day with the US Mission in the UAE!"

Earlier today, the President, His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, had sent a message of congratulations to US President Donald Trump.

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, also dispatched similar messages to President Trump on the occasion. (h/t jzaik)

A man drowned Friday after rescuing a woman and her three children after they got into trouble while swimming in a lake in southern Israel, medics said.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service said Michael Ben Zikri, in his 40s, was found after a short search with no signs of life near Zikim beach, south of Ashkelon.

Ben Zikri was said to be a resident of the southern port city of Ashdod.

Before going missing in the water, Ben Zikri helped rescue a woman from the Bedouin town of Hura and her three kids from drowning. MDA gave their ages as 40, 14, 10 and 7.

They were in a good condition.

“Today it’s hard to find a hero like this. The entire family apologizes for what happened,” a relative of the rescued family told Channel 13 news.

Ben Zikri’s brother-in-law told the network he was with his wife when he saw the four family members drowning and rushed to try to save them. The relative also questioned why the lake was not closed off given swimming is banned there.

“If they know there are sinkholes why are they leaving it open?” the brother-in-law said. (h/t Zvi)

Suicide rates are increasing in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said on Saturday after the death of three Palestinians in separate incidents.

Several other cases of attempted suicide have been reported in the Gaza Strip in the past few weeks, the sources said.

Palestinians took to social media to express outrage over the increase in suicide rates, with many holding Hamas and the Palestinian Authority responsible for the harsh economic conditions in the coastal enclave.

Sleman Alajoury, a 23-year old university graduate, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. In his last post on Facebook, Alajoury wrote: “This is not a futile attempt. This is an attempt at salvation. Complaining to none other than God is a humiliation.”

A Palestinian journalist in the Gaza Strip said that Alajoury had been previously arrested several times by Hamas security forces because of his political activities.

Sufyan Abu Zayda, a senior Fatah official in the Strip, said that Alajoury “could not stand the state of loss, oppression, poverty, unemployment, and the absence of hope for a decent life.”

"No to annexation," read some posters held by Hamas activists as they marched in the southern #Gaza Strip against #Israel's possible annexation of certain areas of the West Bank. pic.twitter.com/TTfRlmdseC

— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) July 3, 2020

Three Lebanese youths, including a son of a senior Hezbollah official, filmed themselves beating and sexually assaulting a 13-year-old Syrian refugee in east Lebanon, multiple Arab media sources reported this week.

According to reports, the names of the perpetrators are Hadi Qamar, Mustafa Sha'shoua and Hassan Sha'shoua.

The video, showing the three man verbally and physically abusing the boy, went viral on social media, with Syrian and Lebanese users calling for the perpetrators' arrest and prosecution.

"Three Lebanese men raped a 13-year-old Syrian refugee, taking pictures as they took turns abusing him," a Twitter user posted under the hashtag #العدالة_للطفل_السوري (Justice for the Syrian boy).

"Until they are arrested, here are the pictures of these fanatic monsters. I hope everyone posts them," the tweet said.

"May who[ever] decides to burn a little child's soul like that burn in hell and suffer for the rest of their life," another user named Sabin wrote on Twitter.

"These rapists need to be tortured [and] then executed," posted Jordanian user Sara. "Keep tweeting this...#justice_for_the_syrian_child."

The video was filmed in the town of Sohmor in the Beqaa valley of east Lebanon, according to Al Arabiya. Occupied by Syria until 2005, the valley currently remains one of the strongholds of Hezbollah.

An explosion reportedly damaged a power plant in the Iranian city of Ahvaz on Saturday, the latest in a series of mysterious blasts in the country that prompted Iran to issue a warning to Israel and the US earlier this week.

Persian and Arabic media reported an explosion and fire at the Zargan power plant in Ahvaz in Iran’s southwest, near the Persian Gulf and the Iraqi border.

Videos posted online showed a column of smoke at the facility and workers filing past a fire truck.

Iran’s IRNA news agency later reported that the fire at the plant had been brought under control. It said the blaze was ignited when a transformer exploded.

Mohammad Hafezi, the power plant’s health and safety manager, told IRNA the cause of the fire was under investigation.

A few hours later on Saturday, IRNA said a chlorine gas leak at a petrochemical center in southeast Iran sickened 70 workers.

Most of the workers at the Karun petrochemical center in the city of Mahshahr in southeast Khuzestan province were released after undergoing medical treatment.

The two incidents came after an explosion damaged Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility on Thursday, and last week a large blast was felt in Tehran, apparently caused by an explosion at the Parchin military complex, which defense analysts believe holds an underground tunnel system and missile production facilities.

One cannot rule out that despite all the inconsistencies and clearly fabricated and incredible explanations, Iran simply had a bad week of accidents. Iran’s system is so corrupt that Iranians have come to regard the constant stream of catastrophes to which they are subject as the wages of the vast incompetence.

However, while the explosions may be coincidental and resulting from the incompetence of Iranian authorities driven by pervasive corruption, it is looking increasingly possible that someone is incrementally sabotaging the Iranian nuclear and missile program. This suspicion is strengthened by the claims by an opposition group that the events at Natanz were the result of its attack. The highly sensitive nature of at least two of sites involved in these incidents further deepen the suspicion.

If this is indeed the hand of some entity seeking to damage Iran’s nuclear program, and because these events are so tightly spaced together to suggest a common actor, we can draw some preliminary conclusions.

Starting with the Iranian opposition group, this is the first time anyone has heard of them. It could be either a group acting alone, a group acting in coordination with a foreign power, or a foreign power acting using the fictitious cover of domestic opposition group. This is probably not a group acting alone, since the sophistication of collecting at the site and operational intelligence, as well as striking so broadly and consistently without leaving a trail could hardly have been done without some highly capable assistance from a nation-state. Moreover, there would have been no incentive to avoid claiming credit for all the attacks, since publicizing potency is the currency of attraction for opposition groups. More likely, ths was either an opposition group working with a foreign power, or a foreign power acting with a fictitious cover. But who? The two likely suspects are clearly the United States and Israel.

Israel and the U.S. share a common aim of stopping Iran as soon as possible from advancing in its nuclear program. And yet they have different aims surrounding the context of any operation. The United States has a history of acting overtly using its own power only. Nor does it have a tradition of keeping the attacks ambiguous. When General Soleimani was killed last winter, the United States fairly quickly accepted the credit. Indeed, such an overt act advances traditional American foreign policy goals since it draws a red line, which when crossed triggers an American reaction and is followed by the implied warning to the offending country that it will face worse if it tried again.

Tehran has triggered the “dispute mechanism” built into the 2015 Iran nuclear deal over compliance issues with France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell reported on Friday.

He did not specify what issues led Iran to trigger the mechanism, which could be the first step toward dissolution of the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

It was signed in 2015 between Iran and six world powers including: the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany.
The US withdrew from the deal in 2018, a move that has already significantly weakened the agreement under which Iran was supposed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Iran has already breached part of the deal, particularly with regard to limits set on uranium enrichment.

Borrell said on Friday, “I have received today a letter from the Foreign Minister of Iran referring Iran’s concerns regarding implementation
issues by France, Germany and the United Kingdom under the JCPOA to the Joint Commission for resolution through the Dispute Resolution Mechanism, as set out in paragraph 36 of the agreement.”

Any party to the deal can refer non-compliance issues to a Joint Commission that involves representatives of all parties to the deal, plus the European Union. There is then a 30-day two-step process to resolve the matter, with the potential to extend the time frame. If no resolution can be achieved, the deal can be dissolved.

“As I have said previously, the Dispute Resolution Mechanism requires intensive efforts in good faith by all. As Coordinator of the Joint Commission, I expect all JCPOA participants to approach this process in this spirit within the framework of the JCPOA,” Borrell said.

“The Joint Commission, which is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the agreement under the terms of the JCPOA, has met since 2016 to discuss the implementation of the JCPOA and address pertinent issues brought to the attention of the Coordinator by any participant,” he said.

#BREAKING: Another explosion in #Iran. This time at the Zargan power power plant in Ahvaz, which is in one of #Iran’s most restive provinces—Khuzestan. pic.twitter.com/DyK2smrg4G

— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) July 4, 2020

From writer/director Seumus Milne comes 'Jeremy The World's Unluckiest Anti-Racist In History' , a star-studded sophisticated yet slapstick comedy.

Here is the trailer. #EHRC#JeremyCorbynpic.twitter.com/UFoZCI5Cho

— Milk Media (@milkmedianewyor) July 4, 2020

A former adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin recently tweeted that Israel should be bombed “until the sand turns to glass.”

In the same Twitter thread, which has since been removed, Spencer Wells — whose describes himself as a “scientist,” “author” and “entrepreneur” — said, “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.”

After the thread came to light, the University of Texas at Austin distanced itself from Wells, stating, “Spencer Wells is no longer a faculty or advisory council member at UT. He previously had a courtesy, unpaid appointment as a part-time adjunct that did not involve teaching. That ended in May and was not renewed. We do not have any association with the views held by Mr. Wells.”

In her post, city council candidate Mozhgan Savabieasfahani depicts pigs with cash and calls out Jewish donors.

Ann Arbor city council candidate Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani has come under fire for posting cartoons in local political Facebook pages that carried anti-Semitic connotations.

Savabieasfahani, a longtime local protester who frequently targets Israel, is running in the August 4 Democratic primary to represent the city’s fourth ward. In a now-edited post in the “Ann Arbor Politics” Facebook page, a public group with more than 800 members, she posted a caricature of one of her opponents, Jen Eyer, popping out of a wallet. Next to Eyer in the image is a pig in a suit, smoking a cigar and holding a wad of cash.

The original post, published June 22nd, mentioned that Eyer has received donations from “old party hacks”. When asked by a group moderator to clarify the post, Savabieasfahani changed the word “hacks” to “honchos.” She also added that Ron Weiner and Lon Johnson, both former chairs of the Michigan Democratic Party, and retired school administrator Neal Elyakin, whom she noted in her edits is a former board member of the Friends of the IDF, have given money to Eyer.

Eyer is not Jewish. Weiner and Elyakin are both Jewish; neither are top donors to Eyer, according to the most recent campaign finance documents available from the campaign.

When Elyakin, who is not a member of the Facebook page, saw the post, he was upset. Though he has given $100 to Eyer’s campaign, he does not consider himself a party “honcho”. To him, the post felt like an anti-Semitic attack. He contacted the Facebook group’s moderator and posted a note on his own Facebook page to call awareness to the situation.

“I generally don’t get upset about politics like that, but I felt I needed to say something,” Elyakin, who lives in Ann Arbor’s fifth ward, told the Jewish News.

A Toronto eatery known for displaying radical messages on its premises and social media accounts was condemned on Friday for announcing that “Zionists” were not welcome there.

Local website blogTO remarked that the Foodbenders restaurant in the city’s Bloordale neighborhood was “back playing defense just a few weeks following its controversial ‘F*ck the Police’ sign at the height of Toronto’s anti-Black racism and police abolition rallies.”

A post earlier this week on the restaurant’s Instagram account announced that it was now open to “non-racist shoppers,” adding the hashtags “freepalestine” and “zionistsnotwelcome.”

Toronto resident Jamie Gutfreund slammed the restaurant in a direct response.

“I was quite shocked and surprised to see a local Toronto company @foodbenders openly promote their racism and Jew hatred by blatantly and proudly posting that anyone who believes Israel has a right to exist is not welcome – basically it means no Jews are welcome,” wrote Gutfreund. “Just imagine for one second if this were owned by any other person who openly promoted that Blacks, Muslims, Asians, LGBT, etc were not welcome – it would be a major story on every station and paper in the city. Advocacy groups would be parked outside this business raising hell!!”

Foodbenders’ owner Kimberly Hawkins rejected the charge that her stance sent a signal to Jews that they are not welcome at the restaurant.

“When I’m making a statement about Zionism, I am not referring to Jewish people,” she said. “It’s about the state government.”

There is a restaurant in Toronto that discriminates against Jews and creates an uncomfortable, racist environment for the Jewish community, veiled behind the word "Zionist" to try and skirt Canadian anti-hate laws.

If you are in Toronto, this is your fight. Go get'um. https://t.co/ycgw5zS7wT

— AZ עם ישראל חי (@americanzionism) July 3, 2020

In back to back editions of the Toronto Star on June 26 & 27, commentators Tony Burman and Rick Salutin (both in-house critics of Israel), produced polemics which singled out the Jewish state for condemnation and which ignored Jewish indigeneity to the historic land of Israel.

Tony Burman, former CBC News and Al-Jazeera English Editor-in-Chief, claimed that:
Beginning July 1, in defiance of international law but encouraged by Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to annex perhaps as much as 30 per cent of the occupied West Bank to make permanent the illegal Israeli settlements that he has allowed to develop on Palestinian land.”

To wit, the Palestinians do not and have never had sovereignty over the lands in question and Israel says international law enshrines its rights to these areas, while citing the need for defensible borders and biblical, historical and political connections to the land.

Burman’s piece referred to Israeli PM Netanyahu as “Israel’s most audacious land-grabber,” claiming that Jews are illegal occupiers who committed a “land grab”. This claim is without foundation and implies that Israel and the Jewish people’s connection to Israel is illegitimate. According to international law, these lands were promised to the Jewish people in the San Remo Resolution in 1920 which led to the establishment in British-mandate Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. Since 1948, Israeli governments have based the Jewish state’s legal rights on the League of Nations mandate, reaffirmed in 1922 by the League’s 51 principle powers, which recognized the Jewish people’s historical and legal rights to reconstitute its national home in Palestine.

After contact from CAMERA, The Washington Post changed a June 28, 2020 article which inaccurately claimed that a well-known Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official was born in Jericho.

The Post’s dispatch, “Once an oasis of peace, Jericho now fears Israeli annexation,” by reporter Ruth Eglash, asserted that PLO official Saeb Erekat “was born in Jericho, located in the Jordan Valley, and can trace his family’s history in the biblical town back many generations.” However, this is incorrect.

In fact, as numerous sources have noted, Erekat was born in Abu Dis. As the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) documented:

“Saeb Erekat’s family is Bedouin. According to Bedouin genealogy, the family is part of the Huweitat clan which originated in the Hejaz area of Saudi Arabia, arrived in Palestine from the south of Jordan, and settled in the village of Abu Dis in the early twentieth century.”

CAMERA informed Post staff that Erekat wasn’t born in Jericho and, what is more, the PLO apparatchik has a history of lying about his origins, having infamously claimed that Palestinian Arabs are descended from Canaanites.

Following contact from CAMERA, the Washington Post commendably issued a correction in their June 30, 2020 print edition. Additionally, on July 2, 2020, the newspaper added an addendum to their online story, noting:

New Hampshire will mandate Holocaust and genocide prevention education under a bill passed overwhelmingly by its House of Representatives.

If Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, signs the measure into law, New Hampshire would become the 14th state to require genocide prevention education in public schools, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s New England regional office, which supported the bill.

An Act Relative to Holocaust and Genocide Studies will also establish a commission to study best educational practices.

The bill will enable all students to acquire knowledge of civics and government, economics, history, and Holocaust and genocide education, according to state Sen. Jay Kahn, a Democrat and lead sponsor of the bill.

“Holocaust and genocide education is a fitting part of a school’s curriculum that enables students to participate in the democratic process and to make informed choices as responsible citizens,” Kahn said in a statement.

The German government's new report flies in the face of major EU reports... German statistics on anti-Semitism have been the object of criticism for quite some time.

"The majority of [anti-Semitism] cases in Berlin are attributed to right-wing extremists -- without evidence..."— Die Welt, May 7, 2019.

"For a long time, experts have criticized the attribution of the majority of cases to far-right perpetrators... and that too little attention is paid to other groups of perpetrators, such as those from Islamist and other Muslim circles". — Die Welt, May 7, 2019.

Yet, despite problematic evidence and flawed statistics, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer is still claiming that virtually all anti-Semitism comes from the far-right. Why?

Despite all these measures, anti-Semitic crime in Germany is the highest it has been in the past two decades. This news alone should raise concerns in Germany that hate-speech laws such as the NetzDG, while severely limiting free speech, are not working. It should also concern other EU countries, such as France, that are looking to Germany as an example to follow.

Anti-Semitic hate crimes in California rose nearly 12% in 2019, including a fatal shooting at a Southern California synagogue, even as hate crimes overall declined statewide by 4.8%, according to a state report released Wednesday.

Hate crimes are historically underreported and the 2019 data compiled by the state attorney general’s office does not include a recent rise in anti-Asian racism during the coronavirus pandemic, which began in China.

Although the report does not specifically mention the 2019 fatal shooting at the Chabad of Poway outside San Diego, it’s clear that the year’s sole hate crime homicide victim noted in the report is 60-year-old Lori Gilbert-Kaye.

Nursing student John T. Earnest is accused of opening fire during a Passover service at the synagogue on April 27, 2019, fatally shooting Gilbert-Kaye and wounding three others, including an 8-year-old girl and the rabbi, who lost a finger. Earnest, then 19, reportedly called 911 to say he had shot up a synagogue because Jews were trying to “destroy all white people.”

He has pleaded not guilty to hate crime-related murder, attempted murder and other charges. (h/t Zvi)

A recent study by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland, where approximately 18,000 Jews live, revealed that of the 500 Swiss Jews that were questioned, 50% reported having been targeted with antisemitic abuse in the past five years, according to the Algemeiner.

Professor Dirk Baier, the director of the survey, told the Berner Oberlander that the antisemitism “obviously comes from the middle of society,” referring to middle-class citizens. These are in contrast to residents of Western European countries, where it is those who live in poverty and who immigrated to such countries who hold biases against Jews, Baier claims. He says that attacks in such countries are often motivated by extremist views.

He said that the results did not surprise him following the governmental survey which revealed that one in 10 residents of the country held negative views of Jews.

“There is an ‘everyday antisemitism’ in Switzerland,” said Dominic Pugatsch, head of the GRA Foundation against Racism and Antisemitism, whose research supported the survey’s conclusions. “Verbal harassment is unfortunately widespread on the street, at work or at school.”

Animosities like those directed at Jews are also directed at other minorities, Baier explained. “If you asked 500 black people in Switzerland about their experiences, you’d probably get responses similar to those of the Jewish community now,” he said.

The survey showed that Jews were most commonly attacked with verbal threats and insults in workplaces, schools, and public areas. Other survey responders – 6% of them – said that they had experienced antisemitism in targeted vandalism of their properties, while 3.5% had been targets of physical violence.

The Aussie Jewish press seems slow in discovering the news that German-born Australian Holocaust denier and Adelaide Institute founder Dr Fredrick Töben has gone to his earthly reward.

His demise occurred on 29 June.

Good riddance.

Remember his flirtation with New South Wales Greens, that I outlined here?

Dead and buried is he, but, as we see here, unsurprisingly his stench remains.

AN AMERICAN PICKLE, directed by Brandon Trost, is based on Simon Rich’s New Yorker novella and stars Seth Rogen as Herschel Greenbaum, a struggling laborer who immigrates to America in 1920 with dreams of building a better life for his beloved family. One day, while working at his factory job, he falls into a vat of pickles and is brined for 100 years. The brine preserves him perfectly and when he emerges in present-day Brooklyn, he finds that he hasn’t aged a day. But when he seeks out his family, he is troubled to learn that his only surviving relative is his great-grandson, Ben Greenbaum (also played by Rogen), a mild-mannered computer coder whom Herschel can’t even begin to understand.

44 years ago,
the IDF carried out
its most daring mission
of all time.

This is Operation Entebbe: pic.twitter.com/HVbcWqpdsi

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) July 4, 2020

On the Fourth of July, music mogul Diddy hosted a heaviily-promoted speech by racist Louis Farrakhan on his “Revolt TV” YouTube channel.

Here are some of the things he said about Jews in this speech.

Farrakhan made up a story that in the Talmud, Jews have a tradition of poisoning people and if the victim survives the poison, then you are really from God. A Jewish woman poisoned Mohammad with poisoned meat and he survived, although he was weakened. Farrakhan then said that he too was poisoned with radioactive seeds that Jews placed within him to kill him, but he also survived although weaker. “If the Jews are saying that we did try to kill him and you know I'm alive then what should that tell you about who I am?”, he said to applause, comparing himself to Mohammed.

Speaking about ADL leader Jonathan Greenblatt, Farrakhan said, “Mr. Greenblatt, you are Satan. Those of you that say that you’re Jews, I will not even give you the honor of calling you a Jew. You’re not a Jew… you’re Satan and it’s my job now to pull the cover off of Satan. So every Muslim, when you see Satan pick up a stone as we do in Mecca.”

He went on a bizarre rant about Alan Dershowitz which sounds like a threat against all Jews: “So Mr. Dershowitz,  if you bring the vaccine and say you're gonna bring your army to force us to take it, once you try to force us, that's a declaration of war on all of us. You only have this one life; fight like hell to keep it and fight like hell to destroy those whose heart and mind is to destroy you and take your life from you.”

In this clip, Farrakhan says that Jews who believe in the Talmud (which is all Orthodox and most Conservative Jews, and even non-religious Jews quote it) are trying to kill him and if they succeed, it will mean they will all be destroyed:

How is this not incitement?

Here are a couple of clips where Farrakhan insisted he isn’t against Jews, but only against imposters – which conveniently happen to be pretty much every Jew.

Here's just one of the half dozen antisemitic things Farrakhan said today with the support of @Diddy.

Calling me an "imposter Jew" that Allah must banish, equivalent to Satan, doesn't make it any less Jew-hatred. Farrakhan defining who Jews are and aren't is just more Jew-hate. pic.twitter.com/GckmeeaX0g

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 5, 2020

More of his hate where this antisemitic bigot claims to define most Jews as not really being Jews and deserving of being killed.
Gee, thanks, @Diddy for making me and millions of Jews targets for Farrakhan's followers. pic.twitter.com/Yjcc6320E8

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 5, 2020

Everyone is so scared of calling out Farrakhan’s antisemitism because they don’t want to look like they are against black people. Yet excusing and coddling bigotry is what is insulting to black people - and every other human being.

If Jews are allowed to be insulted and demeaned in a speech promoted by the most respected and successful black person, then Diddy isn’t a fighter for justice – he is an enabler of bigotry.

The countries that voted for China’s “national security law” that imposes harsh penalties for Hong Kong residents protesting against China include every Arab country  in the UN Human Rights Council.

These include Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the UAE and Yemen – and “Palestine.”

Iran, Sudan, South Sudan and Pakistan also supported China.

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch mentioned the Arab countries that are HRW’s usual targets, but of course didn’t include “Palestine”in his list of “dictators and thugs.”

It takes a Who's Who of dictators & thugs to back China's repressive "national security" law for Hong Kong including Bahrain, Belarus, Burundi, Cambodia, Cuba, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, Nicaragua, NKorea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, Venezuela, Zimbabwe. https://t.co/iaBUyd40S8pic.twitter.com/T6viYVpm0o

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 1, 2020

I see no outcry in Arabic media about voting against freedom, even in the relatively liberal Lebanese media.

One takeaway is obvious: The UN, even its purported “human rights” arm, is not a moral arbiter of anything. Nations vote according to their own self-interests and not for any reasons that are remotely related to human rights.

But the other lesson is that even “human rights” groups are loathe to criticize the UN Human Rights Council because it usually aligns with their anti-US, anti-Israel mindset and if they publicly criticize it then they cannot point to its many anti-Israel resolutions as proof of Israel’s supposed immorality, which they love to do as Ken Roth himself did over the past couple of weeks.

Now that the UN rights chief has issued the database of companies doing business with Israel's illegal settlements, it's important that she keep it updated. That's the only way it will serve as a spur to companies to meet their human rights obligations. https://t.co/eC1VJ5bLnbpic.twitter.com/7AokYVJsal

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) June 23, 2020

The United Nations Human Rights Council, which if you listen to Trump only criticizes Israel, just condemned Iran (yet again) by a vote of 22 for, 8 against, and 15 abstaining. pic.twitter.com/7dzv2IM6oo

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) June 22, 2020

Abd al-Salam Abu Nadi was a Hamas terrorist who died a few days ago – of a heart attack.

But Hamas had some footage of him training and they didn’t want to waste it, so they made it into a boring 12-minute video dedicated to him.

But even in this video, Hamas proves how immoral it is.

In one scene, Abu Nadi is shown practicing shooting – into a “souk,” as the sign conveniently says, which is by any definition a civilian area.

Here’s the first ten minutes if you want to see more.

A new study conducted for Vibe Israel found that the Jewish state’s image in the international community was seen in a positive light during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

The study, based on data from research done by Bloom Consulting from March 30-April 2 and utilizing a new type of measurement called Brand-Nought, analyzed how a country was perceived internationally based on its government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. This analysis focused on image impact in four specific areas: Whether people would want to visit the country (Tourism), whether people would want to work in or live in the country, whether people would want to study in the country and whether people would want to buy products from the country.

When compared to over 140 countries, Israel was found to have a positive image, especially compared to countries like Italy and the United States.

“Israel being one of the first to close its borders and being quick to react was an indication on how positively it handled the virus,” CEO and founder of Vibe Israel Joanna Landau told The Jerusalem Post.

“During the first wave, countries like the US were reluctant to quarantine, Italy was in a terrible state and Israel was two weeks into its full on quarantine… While New Zealand literally crushed the curve, we were able to flatten it, while others were still struggling with it.”

Landau believes that there were three aspects that contributed to Israel having such a positive image: reacting quickly, keeping quarantine seriously and being one of the countries involved in the race to develop a vaccine.

However, not all specific areas studied were impacted to the same degree, with some, most notably tourism, being surprisingly unaffected.

Against the backdrop of a rising tide of anti-Semitic incidents across the country and the failure of many mainstream Jewish organizations to condemn anti-Semitism emanating from the left, communities of color, or Islamists, I’ve joined a group of Jewish-American millennials in founding a brand-new non-profit organization called HaShevet.

It is my honor to serve on HaShevet’s founding board of directors with a cadre of brilliant, ambitious, and passionate Jewish leaders.

HaShevet is not a part of or affiliated with the Legal Insurrection Foundation.

On Monday, June 30, we published our first press release, announcing HaShevet’s launch and explaining our mission. JNS reported on our project:

Amid dissatisfaction with mainstream Jewish advocacy organizations, a new alliance of young Jewish American leaders was launched on Monday: HaShevet (Hebrew for “The Tribe,” which is also a nickname for the Jewish faith and people).

The organization seeks to “represent a diversity of political opinions and professional backgrounds” and “come together, united in our dedication to promote moral clarity within the Jewish advocacy sector, strengthen and mobilize young Jewish professionals to publicly oppose all forms of anti-Semitism (including anti-Zionism), and take up the mantle of Jewish community leadership to safeguard the future of the Jewish people,” said the organization in an announcement.

We believe so strongly in our mission that all of us on the founding board are volunteers, working on this project in our spare time:

Ours is a time when antisemitism is surging and the popularity of intersectional politics has given new credibility to radical groups that are keen to link the war on Israel to the culture wars being waged in the United States. At such a moment it is the duty of those who speak up against this prejudice to be ever more vigilant rather than to relax our efforts. Yet when a person who has associated herself with some of these smears and was an editor at a publication that habitually trafficked in them rises to a position of eminence at the country’s most important newspaper, the advice from some quarters is to not be too hasty in expressing alarm.

That is the conceit of a piece published by The Algemeiner that alleges that I have done an injustice to Charlotte Greensit, an incoming managing editor at The New York Times because I called her to account for tweets in which she promoted an antisemitic blood libel about Israel training American police to kill African-Americans.

Greensit scrubbed her Twitter account of this and other outrageous tweets that she posted during her time at The Intercept. We are now told that promoting such awful articles was just part of her job and, according to the author of The Algemeiner article, since jobs are hard to find in journalism, we shouldn’t judge her. Her half-hearted non-apology for her past actions notwithstanding, that is, of course, a very low standard. Nor do I think it is likely that she, or anyone else at the Times, would be as charitable to those who retweet hateful views that they opposed.

Instead, we are told we should listen to Greensit’s friends, who all vouch for her virtue and opposition to antisemitism. One such friend cited in The Algemeiner repeated the discredited argument that she is merely guilty of holding “an unauthorized view” about Israel even if those views aren’t legitimate criticism but actually in accord with smears promoted by antisemites.

The point here is that actions and associations that would result in a person being “canceled” if they testified to links to racism never seem to apply to antisemitism. Since Greensit is a member in good standing of the elite chattering classes, we are told to judge her kindly. Had she categorically renounced the content of the antisemitic story and other awful tweets, that would buttress her defenders’ arguments. But she has not done so.

For the intersectional activists, the US is the world's biggest oppressor -- not China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, or Iran.

"What the media do not tell you is that America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have you. We have our problems and we need to address those. But our society and our systems are far from racist". — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Twitter, June 9, 2020.

"The new anti-racism is racism disguised as humanism (...) It implies that every white person is bad... and that every black person is a victim". — Abnousse Shalmani, born in Tehran, now living in Paris, to Le Figaro, June 12, 2020.

"America looks different if you grew up, as I did, in Africa and the Middle East". — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2020.

It is high time for the United States to stop funding the United Nations.... The United Nations is now being used to perpetuate injustice, not stop it.

Real slave traders and racists -- those who believe Western societies and values should not exist at all -- most likely look at the current Western self-flagellation and cheer their approval.

A chant of “death to Israel” and “death to America” triggered an enthusiastic response on Wednesday during an anti-Israel protest in Brooklyn.

Similar rallies were held throughout the country, ostensibly to oppose a possible Israeli annexation of some West Bank settlements. But the speeches and chants made it abundantly clear that the participants oppose Israel’s very existence, and the settlement debate simply offered an opportunity to voice their desire to see the world’s only Jewish state eliminated.

The rallies also witnessed the ever expanding spectrum of “intersectionalism,” in which organizations and movements — supporting everything from North Korea to the Seattle COVID Mutual Aid Group, which are entirely unrelated to the Middle East — are joined in a common cause: the destruction of the State of Israel.

So it was at the rally in Brooklyn that the crowd embraced a speaker who lauded North Korea — which has one of the world’s worst human rights records — for its refusal to recognize Israel.

A woman representing the New York-based Nodutdol, which says it is “[i]nspired by the democratic social movements in Korea,” said Koreans who seek to unite North and South understand the Palestinian cause.

“We Koreans recognized that the struggle against imperialist aggressors in our land back home is something our Palestinian comrades understand firsthand,” said the woman, who was identified as Jamie Tyberg. “And we also know that the fight for self-determination is as much Korea’s fight as much as it is Palestine’s. The solidarity between Koreans and Palestinians dates back to 1966, when the DPRK officially started supporting the Palestine Liberation Organization. The DPRK [provided] small amounts of arms and military aid to several revolutionary movements in Palestine. The DPRK also refuses to recognize Israel and calls it an imperialist satellite of the United States.”

It’s tempting to wonder if Sacha Baron Cohen wasn’t in disguise pulling another prank. But using North Korea to bash Israel fits neatly into a key element of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism: “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

The Grammy-winning, multi-millionaire rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs is showing his support for the anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan by promoting the Nation of Islam leader’s July 4th message, which aired Saturday on Revolt TV, the cable channel founded by Combs.

Farrakhan delivered a more than two-hour Independence Day speech in which he called the head of the Anti-Defamation League “satan” and urged people in Africa not to take medication for COVID-19, singling out Bill and Melinda Gates. He also assailed President Donald Trump and addressed the killing of George Floyd.

“We can’t trust you no more, white folks. Not with our lives,” Farrakhan said.

Farrakhan, 87, appeared frail and unsteady as he gave his speech, titled “The Criterion.” His meandering, semi-coherent discourse singled out several perennial targets, including Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL.

“Mr. Greenblatt, you are Satan. Those of you that say that you’re Jews, I will not even give you the honor of calling you a Jew. You’re not a Jew… you’re Satan and it’s my job now to pull the cover off of Satan,” Farrakhan said.

The Nation of Islam leader also spoke about the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, urging people in Africa not to take a vaccine against the virus.

“I say to my brothers and sisters in Africa, if they come up with a vaccine, be careful. Don’t let them vaccinate you with their history of treachery through vaccines, through medication. Are you listening? I say to the African presidents, do not take their medications,” Farrakhan said.

He then directed his ire at Bill and Melinda Gates, who have pledged $125 million toward global efforts to fighting the coronavirus and developing a vaccine.

“What the hell gives you that right? Who are you to sit down with your billions and talk about who can live and who should die?”

Farrakhan also addressed the death of George Floyd, launching into a bizarre conspiracy theory involving Israel.

“That’s why you gotta come at us like a coward,” he said. “Like snakes trying to wrap yourself around us so you could give us the treatment that you were taught in Israel. You may, as you gonna stop your police from going to Israel to learn how to kill better.”

Farrakhan continues to be accepted in the mainstream despite claims of #antisemitism. His July 4th speech was even broadcast by @Diddy's @revolttv.

Do you think you can tell the difference between Louis Farrakhan & Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels?

Play "Who said it..." pic.twitter.com/zRCwPghBhm

— AZ עם ישראל חי (@americanzionism) July 5, 2020

This isn't accurate, @JNorthcroft. Criticism of Israel is one thing, but unsubstantiated claims that smack of old-school antisemitism are something else entirely.

The article in @thetimes today needs revising to reflect this. pic.twitter.com/vJ1KisxVNq

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 4, 2020

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.

"The American window for deciding on the matter of Israeli sovereignty [in parts of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley] is between a month and 45 days," senior White House officials recently told Zionist Organization of America National President Morton Klein.

The officials also told Klein there was "more than a 50% chance" that the sovereignty initiative would be approved.

Klein, who heads the most influential Jewish-American organization in the White House, relayed the details to dozens of leading ZOA activists in a video conference call last week. He then confirmed the details to Israel Hayom on Friday.

Administration officials did not discuss the Israeli sovereignty issue over the weekend because of US Independence Day celebrations. Internal White House deliberations and talks with Israeli officials are expected to resume in the coming days. Many officials in Israel and the US have attested to the difficulties in implementing the sovereignty plan but emphasized that a final decision hasn't been made yet and that all options were still on the table.

In the conference call with ZOA officials, Klein laid out 12 reasons the Israeli sovereignty plan should be given the green light.

"Applying sovereignty is the most rational, humane and security-driven decision, which is reinforced by the Bible. It gives Israel defensible borders instead of the 'thin waist' it has now, and brings stability and normalcy to the lives of 500,000 Jews who currently reside in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley," he said.

According to Klein, "Opposition to the sovereignty initiative means the ethnic cleansing of half a million Jews from their homes in their national homeland."

Klein also lambasted the large Jewish organizations that have come out against the initiative.

A group of former world leaders urged European leaders on Friday to keep pressuring Israel against applying sovereignty in parts of Judea and Samaria, warning against complacency after Israel made no move to take over the territory on July 1.

The Elders, founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, said in letters to the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and the European Union that they should insist to Israel that annexation, as they call it, would have negative political and economic consequences for bilateral and regional relations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had aimed to start the process by Wednesday, July 1, saying he wanted to begin applying sovereignty in parts of Judea and Samaria in accordance with US President Donald Trump's Mideast plan.

But Regional Cooperation Minister Ofir Akunis said the sovereignty process had been delayed, telling Army Radio last week that officials were still working out the final details with their American counterparts. He said he expected the sovereignty initiative to take place later in July.

The Trump administration's peace plan, unveiled in January, envisions bringing some 30% of Judea and Samaria under permanent Israeli control and gave a green light for Israel to legally claim that territory. The Palestinians have vehemently rejected the plan as pro-Israeli.

The delay cast further uncertainty over whether Israel will ultimately follow through on the explosive sovereignty initiative, which has also drawn condemnations from some of Israel's closest allies.

Oh @jeremycorbyn -the #PalestineExpo talk -full of lies

just 4 from many examples-
-1949 lines are not agreed borders
-Palestinians aren't the world's poorest people
-Britain didn't get Mandate because Palestine was a former colony!
-The 'occupation' isn't illegal

Stop lying

— David Collier (@mishtal) July 5, 2020

In the last week @jeremycorbyn has tweeted FOUR time’s condemning Israel

In the last week @jeremycorbyn has not tweeted ONCE condemning China despite the clampdown in Hong Kong and millions of Uighur’s being held in concentration camps

A ‘defender of human rights’ my arse! pic.twitter.com/fPQK7Na2UV

— SussexFriendsofIsrael (@SussexFriends) July 5, 2020

Two falsehoods in one sentence in @TheTimes.

1. Britain does NOT "recognise Tel Aviv as the capital" of Israel.

2. "UN resolutions" DO NOT recognize Tel Aviv as Israel's capital, either.

@RichardJSpencer. pic.twitter.com/nV9rVVmeiu

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 5, 2020

Ishmael Khaldi, Israel’s first Bedouin diplomat who recently made headlines after a security guard in Jerusalem choked him, will be appointed ambassador to Eritrea, the Foreign Ministry announces.

The nomination still requires cabinet approval.

His is one of 11 ambassadorship nominations announced by the ministry, which will be brought for a ministerial vote.

Jewish and Beduin mourners joined together Sunday at the Ashkelon funeral of 45-year-old Michael Ben-Zikri, who rescued a 40-year-old woman and her three children from drowning on Friday.

Ben-Zikri, from Ashdod, didn’t have the strength to save himself after saving the distressed swimmers in a man-made lake near Zikim, after they apparently fell into sinkholes.

The members of the rescued family, from the Beduin village of Hura, including a 14-year-old girl, a 10-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl, were released from Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon on Sunday.

Their father, interviewed on KAN radio, expressed his remorse and gratitude for Ben-Zikri’s efforts, whom he labeled a hero. Many residents of Hura attended Ben-Zikri’s funeral in solidarity with the family.

Ben-Zikri’s wife Tali, who was with him at the lake, told the KAN Drom website that they had gotten married in February. “He was a good man, there wasn’t a second thought that he wouldn’t try to save that family.”

On Sunday, questions were raised as to why the lake wasn’t fenced off, if the sinkholes posed a danger?

Today @USMEP your President is sharing a platform with a man who called Mohammad Halabi (who murdered two men, one of them a rabbi, stabbed the rabbi's wife & shot their 2 year old son in the leg) a "martyr" saying "I consider what he did an act of revenge" https://t.co/xoMJFyPtH9

— Harry's Place (@hurryupharry) July 5, 2020

A most effective form of mind control is repetition. The PA excels in repetition. One message that it is repeating now is the value of Martyrdom for Allah. For example, one music video broadcast by PA TV Live repeats to Palestinians the ideal of dying as “Martyrs” for “Palestine”: “Martyr, we must follow in your footsteps.”

It also repeats something else. Part of the visuals in the music video is footage of a real stabbing attack. A Palestinian terrorist stabbed and wounded Israeli police officers near Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem in 2015 before he was killed and “became a Martyr.” The repeat broadcast of his attack is a reminder to Palestinians that carrying out terror attacks against Israelis is a good way to achieve Martyrdom for Allah:

Terrorist killed - achieves “Martyrdom.”

Lyrics: "Our Jerusalem, we’re at your service when you ask...
Our Jerusalem is a jewel of gold in the crown of the Arabs
O sun that lights up the homeland and is not extinguished
O [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu, listen or we'll make you listen
Your army needs to disappear from Palestine..."

Visuals of stabbing attack by terrorist Muhammad Sa’id Ali, who wounded 3 Israeli police officers; and clashes between Palestinian rioters and Israeli soldiers

"No matter how wide our Al-Aqsa is, there will be no place for you (i.e., Israel)
It won't allow a division (i.e., of prayer times for Muslims and Jews)
If you are not convinced, we'll convince you by force...
O our Martyr, we must follow in your footsteps
The homeland’s wound has been healed by your blow [against Israel]."

[Official PA TV Live, June 13, 16, 2020; Fatah-run Awdah TV, Jan. 9, 2017]

The same promotion of the PA’s culture of death has been repeated in the last few months in several music videos. One video presents two suicide bombers as role models for Palestinians to emulate while the lyrics explain that for Al-Aqsa “life is insignificant” and pleads “God, grant us Martyrdom there”:

Former Hamas Leader Khaled Mashal: The West Bank Must Rise Up against Israeli Annexation by Using Any Weapons Available, Vehicle-Ramming Attacks, Stabbings pic.twitter.com/rtGjWIGp4Q

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 5, 2020

Chanting “We want to eat, we want to live,” dozens of Palestinian men demonstrated on Sunday outside the offices of the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza City to protest economic hardship, poverty and soaring unemployment in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

The protest came following the death of three young Palestinian men, who committed suicide over the past weekend in the Gaza Strip. In addition, a woman from the southern Gaza Strip who tried to take her own life by hanging was critically injured.

On Sunday morning, another Palestinian man from the Gaza Strip was seriously injured after he too tried to commit suicide by swallowing a large number of antibiotics. It was the sixth failed suicide attempt in the Gaza Strip in the past few weeks.

The death of the three men – two unemployed university graduates and a disgruntled street vendor – has sparked widespread anger among Palestinians, many of whom are blaming Hamas and the Palestinian Authority for the failure to improve the living conditions of Gazans and providing jobs for young people.

Sources in the Gaza Strip said that Sunday’s protest in Gaza City could spread to other parts of the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave and trigger mass demonstrations similar to those that took place there in 2019.

#Gaza beach and port. #TheGazaYouDontSee#Gaza4realhttps://t.co/EqB8msq6o4

— Imshin (@imshin) July 5, 2020

Lebanese Judge Muhammad Mazeh, Who Issued Media Ban against U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon: I Found That She Endangered Lebanon’s Internal Peace, infringed upon People’s Rights; Free Expression Is Not Absolute pic.twitter.com/QALqLN0Ypi

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 5, 2020

Looks like the "NATO ally" doing what it does best, banning everything, imprisoning, suppressing, destroying anything that is free or open minded, democratic or involves critique. https://t.co/mLeKb2h4lk

— Seth Frantzman (@sfrantzman) July 5, 2020

Did Kadhimi Capitulate or Was There a Deal?

Sources close to Prime Minister Kadhimi claimed that the Hizbullah Brigade militants were released as part of a deal, in which they would halt attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq in exchange for release. However, senior officials at the Al-Hashad Al-Sha’bi umbrella organization have firmly denied this.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi took office just a few months ago, and this incident is considered by Iraqis to be a painful humiliation, harming his dignity and status as prime minister.

The Iraqi government is maintaining silence and has not provided a public explanation of what happened.

The obvious conclusion is that the release of the Hizbullah Brigades activists and the surrender of Iraqi Prime Minister Kadhimi to Al-Hashad Al-Sha’bi militia pressure indicate that the pro-Iranian militia can effectively veto any political decision that they do not approve. Kadhimi’s surrender is seen as a big political mistake that would be very difficult to correct.

All the Iraqi assumptions that the pro-Iran armed militias will agree to disarm after the new government is set up have faded. The Kadhimi government faces a major challenge: forcibly dismantling the armed militias or accepting the existing situation.

Akram al-Kaabi, the head of the pro-Iranian al-Nujaba militia, joined the circle of those refusing to disarm the militants, and instead called for “ignoring the demand to disarm and for strengthening the capabilities for the big campaign.”

Al-Hashad Al-Sha’bi militias formally belong to the Iraqi army, but they openly ignore Prime Minister Kadhimi’s demands. According to Iraqi law, Kadhimi is considered the supreme commander of the armed forces.

The bottom line is that the latest incident means that Iran registered another victory in Iraq. It will continue to influence the political system and decisions in the country, such as the Iraqi parliament’s decision to expel U.S. forces from Iraq. There is no doubt the Americans are outraged at Mustafa al-Kadhimi, which raises a question mark over Kadhimi’s expected visit to the United States.

Hours after the US reportedly tested a defense system that can stop mortars, artillery and small rockets, a rocket was said to be intercepted after it was fired at the Green Zone in Baghdad where the US Embassy is located.

This adds to 24 hours of tension in Iraq that coincided with American Independence Day. There were claims the US had deployed a C-RAM system to confront threats to its embassy and other facilities.

Anti-American forces in Iraq, consisting of Iranian-backed militias such as Kataib Hezbollah, have been firing rockets at US forces for more than a year. These have killed three members of the US-led coalition and one contractor. They have also frequently targeted the embassy and Union III facility in Baghdad, as well as Western coalition areas near the airport and Ayn al-Assad and Camp Taji bases.

On Sunday, rumors that Washington had brought missile-defense systems into Baghdad to be deployed near the embassy led to calls for the US to stop turning the area into an “armed camp.” Iraqi members of parliament, including the deputy speaker, said the US decision was a provocation.

While Iraqi politicians spread rumors about “Patriot missiles” in Baghdad, the actual system apparently is not the Patriot but the smaller C-RAM. Patriots are designed to intercept larger missiles and have been deployed at other bases in Iraq.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Sunday responded to a series of mysterious blasts in Iran, saying that not everything that happened there could be blamed on Israel.

“Everyone can be suspicious of us all the time,” Gantz said. “But not every event that happens in Iran is connected to us.

“A nuclear Iran is a threat to the world and the region, as well as a threat to Israel. And we will do everything to prevent that from happening. And we will do everything possible to prevent Iran from spreading terror and weapons, but I do not refer to any individual event,” he said.

An Israeli TV report Friday night said that Israel was bracing for a possible Iranian retaliation as officials in Tehran suggested that a mystery fire and explosion at the Natanz nuclear facility the day before could have been caused by an Israeli reprisal cyberattack to an April cyberattack attributed by Western intelligence officials to Iran, in which an attempt was made to increase chlorine levels in water flowing to residential Israeli areas.

The explosion reportedly “destroyed” a laboratory where Iran was developing advanced centrifuges for faster uranium enrichment, with a Kuwaiti report quoting an unnamed source assessing that the strike set back the Iranian nuclear program by two months.

Then on Saturday, an explosion reportedly damaged a power plant in Iran.

Persian and Arabic media reported the explosion and fire at the Zargan power plant in Ahvaz in Iran’s southwest, near the Persian Gulf and the Iraqi border.

Iran’s IRNA news agency later reported that the fire at the plant had been brought under control. It said the blaze was ignited when a transformer exploded.

Images of black smoke and fire billowing from a power plant in the city of Ahvaz, some 500 miles away from Tehran, were circulating on social media.

Some cited a faulty transformer as the cause of the blast. Mohammad Hafezi, the power plant’s health and safety manager, told Iran's official news agency that he launched an investigation to find the cause of the incident.

Later in the day, a chlorine gas leak at a petrochemical plant in Mahshahr, also in the Khuzestan province, sickened some 70 workers, the Associated Press reported.

The incidents come a week after an explosion near the Parchin military complex rocked the outskirts of the Iranian capital, and one day after an unspecified "incident" in the vicinity of the Natanz nuclear facility.

Some reports claim Iran's regional arch-foe Israel is behind both incidents, while others write this theory off as an example of the Islamic Republic trying to blame accidents caused by incompetence on external forces.

Via @IranIntl : #Natanz explosion shows much heavier damage to the building than previous published pictures. Traces of the explosion are clearly visible on the ground. pic.twitter.com/6UutpCeeMG

— Tal Inbar (@inbarspace) July 5, 2020

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif boasts he "coordinated weekly" with "the Martyr" General Qasem Soleimani—who orchestrated mass murder of Syrians—and enjoys great relations with Hezbollah terror chief Hassan Nasrallah.

If you imagine Zarif is a humanitarian, you are a fool. https://t.co/ugJ5Xk1JMhpic.twitter.com/MhTn6Vk4xK

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) July 5, 2020

The Anderson County Review’s Facebook page on Friday posted a cartoon showing Kansas Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, wearing a mask adorned with a Star of David, in front of a picture of Jews being hoarded onto the trains during the Holocaust, with the caption: “Lockdown Laura says: Put on your mask … and step onto the cattle car.”

According to Wikipedia, the Anderson County Review is a local weekly newspaper for Garnett, Kansas with a circulation of about 3,000. The publisher, Dane Hicks, is the Republican county chairman in Anderson County, and apparently drew the cartoon himself.

The governor called on Hicks to remove the offensive cartoon, which suggests that enforcing health regulations in an attempt to stop the spreading of the most lethal pandemic in US history since the Spanish Flu of 1918 was tantamount to the Nazis sending Jews to Auschwitz.

Seriously?

Hicks refused to remove the cartoon from Facebook, and promised to run it in his paper’s Tuesday’s edition. He wrote an email saying: “Political editorial cartoons are gross over-caricatures designed to provoke debate and response — that’s why newspapers publish them — fodder for the marketplace of ideas. The topic here is the governmental overreach which has been the hallmark of Governor Kelly’s administration.”

Berlin's public transport company BVG said on Saturday that completing the renaming of a city center metro station with a name based on a derogatory word for Black people will take until the end of the year.

"Mohrenstrasse" metro station literally means Moor Street, using the medieval term for people from North Africa.

It will be renamed after another nearby street, Glinkastrasse, named after 19th century Russian composer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka.

BVG said on Friday it would change the station name, amid a worldwide reckoning with buried legacies of racism and colonial crimes underpinning many western societies, sparked by the death in the United States of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a police officer.

The station lies a few hundred meters from the Brandenburg Gate at the very center of Berlin, and has had a string of names since it was opened in 1908.

"We will change all network plans, signs at the stations and on buses. Everything must be changed on the subways," said Rolf Erfurt, a BVG board member, in an interview with Reuters TV.

"We will have completed that by the end of the year," he said.

Last month, unidentified activists taped over the station's entrance, temporarily naming it "George Floyd Street."

With the US presidential race heating up, it seems anti-Republican elements are taking off their gloves in their campaign to remove US President Donald Trump from office.

In one such case of this no-holds-barred political fight, online retail giant Amazon recently posted for sale a protective medical mask featuring a US flag surrounded by Trump's name designed in the shape of a Nazi swastika.

The mask was available for a short time before Amazon removed the anti-Semitic item following complaints from shoppers.

This wasn't the first time that various elements, who tend to be opponents of the US president, have tried associating him with racist American movements and organizations.

Trump, for his part, has for years denounced expressions of anti-Semitism. His daughter, Ivanka, converted to Judaism. Either way, amid the tumult in the US over the Black Lives Matter protests and riots, which were triggered by the brutal death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, it appears that tensions between the right and left are once again boiling over.

Amazon was unavailable for a response.

"Israel is in many ways in the forefront when it comes to digitization, cyber and medical technology," said OECD Deputy Secretary General Ulrik Vestergaard Knudsen told The Jerusalem Post. Knudsen's remarks came ahead of Sunday's conference marking 10 years of Israel as a member state of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), presented by Maariv and The Jerusalem Post Group.

Israel has benefited greatly from its membership in the OECD, which helps promote reform and improve government policy.

"The Israeli level of development and digitization is twice that of other OECD countries," Knudsen said. "Israel has one of the highest levels in internet accessibility for children up to age 6. Israel has a lot of information in the field of network security, and it contributes a lot to our knowledge and experience."

"So many people around the world have discovered the amazing ability of technology to help in all areas of life, in leisure, work and even in conversation with the personal doctor," Knudsen said, in reference to the OECD's flagship Going Digital project. "Digital transformation must continue to encourage innovation, optimize efficiency and improve services while increasing growth and improving welfare. It is essential to build a coherent and comprehensive approach to help organizations get the best out of that digital transformation, in both the government and private sectors. Technological changes will benefit society as a whole."

Israel has devoted a great deal of resources to cybertech and digitization," Knudsen said. "This has given you a very strong foundation and an opportunity for rapid development in the future. The challenges are mainly in expanding capacity of your internet network, and providing advanced digital access in both the government and private companies."

My 24th pandemic interview was with Professor Avi Bell, who has written widely on legal topics concerning Israel. He described why Israel is de facto and de jure legal sovereign over Judea and Samaria today using the principle of uti possidetis juris , why Palestinians in Area C would be thrilled by this “civilianization” of parts of the territories, and what is likely to happen next. Avi also demolished the “apartheid” argument, the “demographic” argument, the politicization of the ICC and Europe’s role.

See the whole thing here, and browse through my other many interviews on TheElderOfZiyon YouTube channel.

World War Z was (as I recall) a zombie apocalypse movie starring Brad Pitt. At one point in the movie, Jerusalem is seen as the safest place to be because Israelis built a wall around the city to protect themselves from the zombies. Jews and Arabs were safe inside Jerusalem and at one point, they started to sing together, which inflamed the zombies to overrun the wall and get the peaceful Arabs and Jews.

According to this academic paper by Haneen Shafeeq Ghabra & Marouf A. Hasian of Kuwait University and University of Utah, this is really a lesson in how Palestinians are the monsters.

The abstract:

The authors deploy a critical cultural critique that extends the work of monstrosity scholars and other researchers who are interested in the application of zombie apocalypse analyses to critiques of contemporary nationalistic and social controversies. World War Z sets in motion a series of cinematic dynamics that invite audiences to consider how Israeli securitization of Jerusalem might serve as the world's best hope for containing the zombie apocalypse. By decoding the “monstering” features World War Z, the authors note the heuristic value of understanding how the rhetoric of autoimmunity influences mediated perceptions of Israeli and Palestinian conflicts.

The paper says:

We contend that through cinematic modes of monstering and discourses of autoimmunity, World War Z assuages Israeli and Western anxieties by creating characters clearly modeled on Western imaginings of Palestinian terrorists.

Clearly!

By choosing to put on display monstering images of zombies scaling walls, and by choosing to geopolitical situate the potential “cures” for this zombie apocalypse in Israel, the producers and promoters of World War Z are explicitly or implicitly suggesting that Palestinian dissenters, or indigenous “others,” constitute biopolitical threats that can be quarantined or contained by those who know how to battle zombies.

Except that the monsters were quarantined – the humans (Arabs and Jews) were. But, hey, they only get that part 100% wrong.

The authors quote serious movie critics: Arabs who tweeted their reviews.

Avinash Tharoor, in one Tweet, said to “forget the zombies,” because the “most unrealistic thing about World War Z was Israel inviting in displaced Palestinians.”⁵⁸Another blogger, writing from United Arab Emirates, complained that the film went from being “action film into Zionism pornography an hour into the film.”⁵⁹Rania Khalek seemed to echo these types of remarks when she tweeted that in World War Z, Israel’s “apartheid” wall apparently “helps keep out a massive horde of zombies.”

Here’s a nice part:

Viewers are asked to suspend belief and forget about how Israeli checkpoints, gates, and grids become the “forensic architecture” that dismantle the social fabric of this region.⁷⁶In World War Z, the checkpoints are configured as “salvation” gates, perhaps intended to appeal to the Judeo-Christian sentiments of viewing audiences who are taught on Saturdays and Sundays to believe that Israelis are a “chosen people,” and that Jerusalem belongs to those who fought off the infidels.

In reality, Israeli checkpoints are used to remind Palestinians of their subordinate power positions and their second-class status as dispossessed people.

And the checkpoints at Israeli malls and supermarkets? Are they also meant to demean Palestinians, or to, you know, stop bomb attacks?

What about the fact that the movie makes it very clear that Arabs and Israelis are on the same side and the zombies help unite them? Why, of course,!

The camera focuses on Muslims praying, Israelis and Palestinians chanting together as they wave both Israeli and Palestinian flags, and all of this can be viewed as cinematic form of hasbara (Israeli diplomacy) that elides, counters, or neutralizes the positions of those want to underscore the apartheid nature of Palestinian othering.

The final scene in Jerusalem is described in a truly twisted way:

One of the most intriguing parts of World War Z comes when all of the chanting and flag-waving appears to infuriate the zombies, who overwhelm the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that are there to protect the people from the zombies. As the camera moves beyond the wall, into Palestinian territory, we begin to hear grunting while dozens of monstrous bodies scurry toward the wall. Thousands of zombies are moving in dead-like piles as they breach the Israeli wall. Gerry, along with another Mossad agent, flees the country, barely making it out alive. It no coincidence that the viewer is not afforded space to sympathize with the zombies who symbolically may represent the Palestinians who threaten the security of Israel or the Palestinian terrorists who belong to organizations like Hamas. Situated thanatopolitically in the body of the zombies, the Palestinians, and their demographic threats, can be contained—at least at long as filmgoers, and Israelis, understand the necessitous nature of biosecuritizing walls.

A zombie film that doesn’t humanize the zombies is obviously showing its hate for Palestinians!

The only racists here are the academic authors, who are the only people on Earth who look at the swarming monsters in the film and automatically say – yup, those are Palestinians.

As I showed yesterday, Louis Farrakhan gave a nationally-televised speech, promoted by Diddy, that has at least a half dozen antisemitic parts. (I didn’t include them all – he also said that he told God to give Floria the coronavirus because Cuba’s Jews fled to Florida and hurts US relations with that country. Really.)

What did the socialist Left, which pretends to be so much against antisemitism, say?

Nothing. Nada. Gornisht. Zip.

Instead, IfNotNow posted an old clip of a Jew interrupting a Nazi party event in New York, pretending to be as brave as he was.

I pointed out that they aren’t brave – they are cowards.

And you are SILENT when Louis Farrakhan spouts the exact same kind of hate. You MINIMIZE when Roger Waters says the same thing. You HATE when Jews defend themselves. Stop pretending you give a damn about antisemitism. You enable it, you @IfNotNowOrg hypocrites.

Ooooh, you are against Nazis. How brave. What about when your political allies are antisemites? Then you turn into cowardly silent sheep. Screaming you care about "justice" and "racism" but allowing your pals to crap all over Jews. You are contemptible.

Your hate for Nazis doesn't overcome your tolerance for a Nazi admirer.

Here's the biggest piece of hypocrisy imaginable from people who are silent (or tacitly encourage) antisemitism from Arabs and Nation of Islam and Leftists.
When you actually grow some balls, give real Jews a call. Until then, don't pretend you represent any of us.

 

Of course, they didn’t answer. They cannot. They know they are cowards, pretending that fighting against Zionists – who won’t do anything to them – is bravery. If they would speak out against the Nation of Islam or Roger Waters, though, people on their side will denigrate them and they cannot even handle insults from their compatriots.

How very brave they are. They choose to condone antisemitism rather than risk their position as solidly socialist anti-Zionist and “woke.”

The few times that they've mentioned Farrakhan it has always been in the context of downplaying his antisemitism and its importance. One example:

Not once have they condemned Farrakhan without “context” meant to minimize his hate and danger.

The Jersey City murderers who espoused Farrakhan’s philosophy didn’t move them at all.

No, they don’t care about antisemitism unless they can associate it with the Right. Which means they don’t care about antisemitism, only about their own standing in their anti-Israel community.

Arab antisemitism? Black antisemitism? Leftist antisemitism? Not a word. But they are so assertive in countering the neo-Nazis, pretending that they are somehow showing some mettle by doing that.

Really pathetic.

And the same goes for all the people who insist they are against antisemitism as well as Zionism. In the end the Linda Sarsours and Ali Abunimahs and Rashida Tlaibs are all on the same side as the Arab, and black, and Leftist antisemites.

They let their own Jew-hatred slip through often enough.

(h/t kweansmom)

The BBC reported:

Italian police have seized what they believe is a world-record haul of 14 tonnes of amphetamines they suspect were made in Syria to finance the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).

About 84 million counterfeit Captagon pills worth an estimated €1bn ($1.1bn; £0.9bn) were found in containers at the port of Salerno.

They were hidden inside large drums of paper and gear wheels.

Officers are looking into whether local Camorra crime groups are involved.

Captagon is a brand name for the synthetic stimulant fenethylline. It was originally used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, but many countries banned it during the 1980s because of its addictive properties.

• Now, counterfeit Captagon is reportedly one of the most popular drugs among affluent youths in the Middle East, particularly in Gulf Arab states.

The drug has also been consumed by combatants in the civil war in Syria, including IS militants, who value its ability to inhibit fear and ward off tiredness.

Syria is believed to be the biggest producer and exporter of counterfeit Captagon.

Lebanon’s Al Modon says that Hezbollah is known to be a major partner with Syria for distributing this illegal drug.

The production and smuggling of drugs from Syria to the countries of the world is not limited to the partnership between the Assad regime and the Lebanese Hezbollah, which has long sales in this field; it is widely believed that the Russian mafia is in close relationship with such operations that used to flood the European market with drugs coming from India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and currently from Syria and Lebanon. This is after the Russian mafia benefited from the Russian influence, which has become strong on the eastern and southern Mediterranean coasts, and the costs of producing and shipping drugs from Syria to Europe have decreased.

Information shows that Samer al-Assad, Bashar's cousin, is primarily responsible for the manufacture and trade of drugs, and runs the system's operations in cooperation with Hezbollah and the Russian mafia.

This confirms the third face of Hezbollah, alongside its two known faces in Lebanon: the political side , and the military-security side.The third side is the manufacturing of Captagon, cultivating the plants from which drugs are made, trafficking cocaine and heroin, and smuggling goods, medicines and food through dozens of land crossings between Syria and Lebanon, and through the Beirut Port and Rafic Hariri Airport, and money laundering.

The article goes on to compare how Hezbollah is like the other organized crime cartels worldwide; hiding their activities under social programs, using strong family and ethnic connections to maintain an atmosphere of secrecy, flourishing in weak states.

A fundamental principle which is so lacking in the current discourse about sovereignty was highlighted by Israeli poet Naomi Shemer writing in Ma'ariv in December 1975.

"The Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people...regardless of conditions or temporary ownership of territory, regardless of the essence of a passing rule or a question such as how many Jews are living in the Land of Israel at any given moment."

That, if you will, is the unwritten constitution of the State of Israel, the one that begins with "Go from your country...to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1) and continues on to "the hope that is 2,000 years old" and the genetic code of "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem."
Even the League of Nations recognized that genome 100 years ago as "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" and "the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country" and the Jewish right to "settle in any place in the west of Palestine, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea."

Security is important but doesn't come before everything else. David Ben-Gurion didn't address the question when he insisted on holding onto far-flung settlements in the Jerusalem hills and in the Negev and the western Galilee.

We might be here today because of might, but even before that, because we have a right to be.

Israel’s plan to apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank puts an end to the “morally repugnant” notion — endorsed by all U.S. administrations except Trump’s – that Jews need to be ethnically cleansed from the territory, preeminent legal expert Eugene Kontorovich told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview.

“The Obama administration took the position that peace with the Palestinians requires Israel to pre-ethnically cleanse the territory,” Kontorovich said.

The Trump administration had the “moral clarity” to recognize that the “removal of the Jewish people [from West Bank settlements] as an Israeli obligation in a peace accord is morally reprehensible,” Kontorovich noted.

President Donald Trump’s so-called Vision for Peace sees Israel annexing 30 percent of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley. It also delineates a demilitarized Palestinian state established on most of the West Bank with parts of eastern Jerusalem that are outside the Israeli security fence as its capital.

If Israel goes ahead with the plans, the Palestinian leadership warned that it would unilaterally declare a state based on the pre-1967 lines.

According to Kontorovich, a law professor who serves as the director of the Center for the Middle East and International Law at George Mason University Scalia Law School, all peace proposals – except Trump’s – that have been put forward over the years since Israel liberated the West Bank from Jordanian occupation in the 1967 defensive war have been based on the erroneous idea that Jewish presence there is illegal and needs to be reversed.

Those proposals called on Israel to “maintain the area from which Jordan ethnically cleansed Jews in 1948 as a perpetual judenrein zone,” he said, using Nazi terminology for the exclusion of Jews.

While no Israeli government has ever proposed evacuating Palestinians from the area, he said, “expelling Jews is the minimum demand for any Palestinian negotiations.”

It is incumbent upon Israel to apply Israeli law over the area, as indeed should have been done 53 years ago after the Six Day War, the law professor told Breitbart.

The belief in Israel at the time was that it was only a temporary situation and the Jewish state would imminently come to a peace agreement with the Palestinians, he explained. But the Palestinians rejected all Israeli offers so instead, close to half a million settlers have had to live for decades under Kafkaesque bureaucracy relating to obscure Ottoman laws ruling the area.

Proving beyond doubt the error of those who claim Israeli settlements are illegal. Such claims are invariably based on an anti-Israel political agenda rather than legal facts. https://t.co/sz2TlOFmYL

— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) July 6, 2020

Students at Australia’s largest Jewish Day School – Moriah College – can be excused for being completely confused as to whether Israel’s proposed application of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria constitutes “annexation” or “restoring Jewish sovereignty” in the Jewish people’s biblical heartland after 3000 years.

There is a big difference – as College Principal Rabbi Yehoshua Smukler’s article “The myth of Israeli annexation” informed Moriah students:
“To use the term ‘Annexation’ in relation to Judea and Samaria is misleading. ‘Annexation’, a term applied to the forcible seizing of land or territory and annexing it into one’s own country or bringing it under its rule. It implies Israel is about to ‘seize control’ of areas that don’t already belong to Israel and that it doesn’t currently govern. This is simply untrue. Let’s look at the history.”

Regrettably the Principal’s look at history did not mention that:
- Judea and Samaria were designated by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922 as part of the territory within which the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted
- the United Nations description of this territory as “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is false and misleading
- Jewish rights to “close settlement” in Judea and Samaria under article 6 of the Mandate are preserved by article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Perhaps Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu underwent more difficult weeks in his 32-year-long political career, and should he be found guilty on at least some of the counts for which he is standing trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, he might undergo much worse. However, last week was undoubtedly not an easy week for our prime minister.

The fact that July 1 went by without even a mild signal of any annexation in Judea and Samaria, was not only an embarrassment for Netanyahu vis-à-vis the settlers and members of the more extreme Right, who danced and pranced at the White House on January 28, when US President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century” was launched at a press conference, but signals a possible political defeat for him – a defeat which, if realized, could bury his aspiration to go down into history as he who realized the annexation of all the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria to Israel.

Netanyahu apparently believed – and might still believe – that the deal would enable him to annex about 30% of the West Bank, without offering the Palestinians anything in return. Not surprisingly, today nobody in the world outside Israel – except for the Evangelicals, who have an agenda of their own designed to bring about the return of the Messiah, and the American Ambassador to Jerusalem, who also serves as the settlers’ Ambassador to Washington – appears to support a unilateral annexation at this point of time, and even Trump appears more concerned with other issues, although the Evangelicals might finally prevail, due to Trump’s electoral difficulties.

THE SECOND issue on which Netanyahu suffered a major disappointment last week concerns his request to receive a gift of NIS 10 million from his American millionaire friend Spencer Partridge to pay for his defense team in his trial, which was declined by the Permits Committee in the State Comptroller’s Office, after the attorney general refused to approve the request.

State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman, appointed by Netanyahu 13 months ago, with the intention that there should be a personality more partial to himself in the position than Englman’s predecessor had been, was unable to cancel the committee’s harsh verdict. In the past, Engelman was willing to approve a NIS 2m. loan from Partridge on commercial terms. It should be noted that the make-up of the committee was recently changed to facilitate a decision in Netanyahu’s favor.

Palestinian frustration and anger with the Arab world for its general indifference to Israel's plan to extend sovereignty to large parts of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley is growing, Palestinian Media Watch reported over the weekend.

Diplomatic sources told Israel Hayom Sunday that high-ranking officials in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and several Persian Gulf states have told their Israeli counterparts that while they must have their ear to the ground with regard to their respective publics' response to the move, their governments do not plan on taking any action against Israel beyond declarative condemnations.

So far, the only Arab leader to oppose Israel's plan outright has been King Abdullah of Jordan, who has explained that while it is in Amman's interest to have permanent Israeli security presence along the western border between the two countries, such a move could spark riots that would threaten the stability of Jordan's government, which is why he has to try to counter the move on the regional and international levels.

This type of caution in the Arab world coincides with the overall change in policy in many Arab countries, which no longer immediately dismiss the notion of normalizing relations with the Jewish state.

Saudi Arabia has long stopped denying it maintains behind-the-scenes diplomatic and intelligence cooperation with Israel, primarily in pursuit of mutual objectives with respect to the two countries' common enemy – Iran; and just last week United Arab Emirates firms signed a historic partnership deal with Israeli companies as part of the fight against the coronavirus

Overall, since the Arab Spring stormed through the Middle East in 2011, toppling longtime rulers and forever changing the geopolitical landscape, many Arab leaders have been busy stabilizing their regimes and focusing on counterterrorism efforts.

This change has marginalized the Palestinian issue with respect to Arab leaders' agendas. These leaders can no longer afford to prioritize the Palestinian interest over their own, something Ramallah has found hard to counter.

On July 2, 2020, the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), backed by Qatar and Turkey, and other Islamic organizations affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement calling on Muslims to wage jihad and self-sacrifice in order to foil the plan of the Israeli government to annex parts of the West Bank. The statement, issued following a Zoom conference on this topic, includes many quotes from the Quran and the Hadith calling on Muslims to perform jihad for the sake of Allah by sacrificing their lives, giving of their wealth, holding demonstrations or in any other way.

The statement describes the annexation as a crime against the entire Muslim nation, stressing that

acting to liberate Palestine and defend it is a religious duty incumbent upon every Muslim. It commends the “heroic” resistance of the Palestinian terrorist organizations, such as Hamas, adding that supporting them, materially and morally, is a form of jihad for the sake of Allah.

The statement also harshly condemns the Arab regimes that “rush to normalize relations with the Zionist entity” and to criminalize the resistance organizations, hinting at Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and urges the Muslims to take to the streets to protest against the Zionist crime of annexation.

The statement concludes by declaring that the annexation plan will not come to pass “as long as the jihad-fighters keep their finger on the trigger,” and as long as “there is a people [in Palestine] who seeks death so as to be given life.”

President Reuven Rivlin will honor Michael Ben-Zikri, who died while rescuing a 40-year-old woman and her three children on Friday, with a posthumous civilian award which will henceforth be given to Israelis who, through their actions, inspire society.

Rivlin will offer the award to the Ben-Zikri family as soon as they rise from their mourning (shiva). Rivlin also invited the family Ben-Zikri saved, a Bedouin family from Hura, to the event.

Ben-Zikri was 45-years-old when he went swimming in a man-made lake near Zikim with his own family. He noticed the woman and her children drowning and rescued them all. Sadly, he was so exhausted from his efforts he drowned.

The cause of the incident were sinkholes which were formed at the bottom of the lake.

Ben-Zikri will be the first to be given this award.

Former Arab MK Taleb el-Sana attended the Sunday funeral and vowed that Ben-Zikri’s memory will be honored by naming a main street after him in Lakiya.

He told the grieving family that “the entire Arab community, from the north to the south, each house, shares your pain.”

Israeli aircraft struck Hamas positions in Gaza after three rockets were fired from the Hamas-run enclave towards southern Israel on Sunday night a week after the last round of rocket fire.

IAF jets and helicopters struck an underground facility belonging to Hamas in the northern part of coastal enclave, the IDF said.

“The IDF views any kind of terror activity aimed at Israel with great severity and will continue operating as necessary against attempts to harm Israeli civilians,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said, adding that Hamas will “bear the consequences” for all attacks against Israel.

Two of the rockets, which caused thousands of Israelis in southern Israeli communities to run to bomb shelters twice in less than an hour, landed in open fields and caused no damage. The third was intercepted by the Iron Dome.

The rocket fire comes as tensions are high with the blockaded coastal enclave as Hamas and other Gazan terror groups have vowed to oppose Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank.

Israel is in the midst of a renewed, “very strong” resurgence of COVID-19 that will see “an increase and a doubling of the number of severe cases,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting.

“The World Health Organization has marked the Middle East as a focus of the global spread. This is not passing over Israel. It is here,” said Netanyahu, who added that the new outbreak posed a challenge for the state of Israel and its health system.

Four Israelis died of COVID-19 on Saturday, bringing the country’s death toll since the start of the pandemic to 330, according to the Israeli Health Ministry.

According to ministry data, there were 804 new cases recorded over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of active cases in the country to 11,189, of which 86 are considered serious. There have been a total of 29,366 confirmed cases since the beginning of the outbreak, including 103 since midnight on Saturday.

Based on discussions with the health minister on Sunday morning and with other officials on Saturday night, said Netanyahu, “We must take additional steps beyond what the [coronavirus] Cabinet and the [Security and Diplomacy] Cabinet decided at the end of last week.”

If urgent action was not taken many Israelis would die, said the prime minister.

On Monday, the government approved a set of new regulations to help limit the spread of the coronavirus across Israel. This is the first set of new directives that reduce freedom of movement and gathering since May, when Israel began relaxing restrictions and re-opening its economy.
> Event halls, clubs and bars - closed
> Restaurants - up to 20 patrons inside, up to 30 outside
> Gyms and public pools - closed
> Cultural performances - closed
> Hotels and tourist sides - clubs and bars are closed, hotel restaurants can seat up to 20 patrons inside
> Synagogues - up to 19 people
> Other gathering: up to 20 people, two meters apart with masks
> Organized sporting events - without fans (no change)
> Summer camps and youth activities - Only preschool through fourth grade to run; government authorizes Education Minister to make decisions on educational activities for fifth graders and up in consultation with the Higher Education minister
> Buses - up to 20 people per bus; the government agrees to allow the Transportation minister to decide on another number in collaboration with the Health minister and National Security Council
> Government office employees - 30% required to work from home

Israel’s public health services operate poorly and many of the coronavirus decisions made by the government were not based on “rational considerations” – and now, “the government has lost control of the pandemic,” Prof. Eli Waxman, former chairman of the National Security Council's expert advisors committee concerning the coronavirus outbreak, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Waxman said that the country’s public health services “function poorly” and that the “decisions they have taken are the major reason for us being without the capability to cut off the chains of infection today.

“Their resistance is a major cause for this situation,” he continued. “But it was supported by the former director-general of the Health Minister. They had a manager that should have taken action but failed.”

Waxman, who has the ear of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, newly appointed Health Minister Yuli Edelstein and National Security Council head Meir Ben-Shabbat, is once again counseling the team on how to handle the corona crisis, as the numbers continue to surge with seemingly no strategic plan in place.

A month ago, Israel was lauded for its ability to contain the spread of coronavirus and its low death rate per capita. However, despite a staged exit strategy – which Waxman helped define – the government made impulsive decisions to open too fast.

As of Monday afternoon, the number of serious patients had already reached 90 – up more than 30 people from the week before, and sure to increase by press time. Waxman said that around 2% of the roughly 1,000 people being diagnosed with the novel virus daily will exhibit severe symptoms, putting Israel’s health system at risk of becoming overwhelmed.

Israel launched the new Ofek 16 spy satellite into orbit from a launchpad at Palmachim airbase in central Israel early Monday morning, the Defense Ministry announced.

“The Space Administration in the Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D), of the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMoD), and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), have successfully launched the "Ofek 16" reconnaissance satellite into space, today at 4:00 AM,” the ministry said in a statement.

The "Ofek 16" is an electro-optical reconnaissance satellite with advanced capabilities and was the first launch of an Israeli satellite since Spacecom’s Amos-17 took off from Florida in 2017.

Israel successfully launches Ofek 16 spy satellite into space. (Defense Ministry) Israel successfully launches Ofek 16 spy satellite into space. (Defense Ministry)

Israel’s satellite program, which has been active since 1988, “significantly enhances the intelligence capabilities of the State of Israel, due to the groundbreaking technology and capabilities developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), and additional partner industries,” the ministry said.

The Ofek 16 joins a fleet of other spy satellites launched independently by the Jewish State since 1988, a technological feat on its own. A few hours after it was launched, it was already sending data back to earth and is expected to send its first pictures back next week.

While it is unclear the exact number of satellites Israel has launched into what used to be the “final frontier,” Harari hinted that they give the Jewish State almost constant coverage of enemy territory.

“You can assume that once you have more than one satellite in parallel in the sky, you achieve better visit times over the targets of interest.”

Despite Iran being a formidable enemy, Israel has shown that it is capable of penetrating into sensitive locations deep behind enemy lines, and a number of explosions over the last week, including one which led to a large fire at Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear site, has Tehran on edge.

Iran has admitted that the fire caused “considerable” damage to the centrifuge assembly facility, damaging or destroying key components needed to enrich uranium. While at first the fire was thought to have been caused by a cyberattack, Iran later blamed it on an explosive device having been brought into the center.

Though Israel has stayed relatively mum on the issue, as it usually does regarding possible operational activity away from its border, Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said that Israel “takes actions that are better left unsaid” to prevent Iran from having nuclear abilities.

Now, the launch of the latest spy satellite was obviously not planned to take place shortly after a wave of mysterious explosions in Iran. But in life, coincidence is a funny thing. Especially in the world of military reconnaissance.

An Israeli official flagged a possible security risk on Monday following a US move to allow American providers to sell clearer satellite images of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Under a 1997 US regulation known as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment, satellite images of Israel and the Palestinian territories used in services like Google Earth could show items no smaller than 2 meters (6.56 ft) across.

The curb, Israel had argued, would help prevent enemies using public-domain information to spy on its sensitive sites.

But the US Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs Office said on June 25 it would allow enhanced resolutions of 0.4 meter. In a statement to Reuters, the agency said "a number of foreign sources" are already producing and disseminating sub-2 m. imagery of Israel.

Amnon Harari, head of space programs at Israel's Defense Ministry, said he believed the move was designed to ease international competition for US commercial satellites, adding: "I don't think they (Americans) asked us" in advance.

"We are in a process of studying what exactly is written there, what exactly the intentions are, what we can respond to, ultimately," Harari told Israel's public radio station Kan.

"We would always prefer to be photographed at the lowest resolution possible. It's always preferable to be seen blurred, rather than precisely."

76% of Palestinian Christians gave the Palestinian Authority failing marks for how schools teach the history of Christians, according to a recent survey commissioned by The Philos Project.

Christians are a dwindling minority, accounting for a mere 1% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza.

"The history that we learn [in school] starts with the Islamic conquest of the land. Anything before will focus on the pre-Israelite era," said Khalil Sayegh, a Christian from Gaza and Philos Advocacy Fellow. "This leads to Palestinian Christians looking like foreigners."

"Crusader,""infidel," and "foreigner" are all epithets Sayegh experienced in grade school.

In the survey, 43% of Palestinian Christians said that they feel most Muslims do not want them in the land. 2/3 say they have little trust in the PA government; trust in the judiciary peaks at 16%, and confidence in the police stands at 22%

Ignoring a directive from the PA to all banks in the PA areas that they must accept money for payment of salaries to the accounts of terrorists and families of killed terrorists, at least four banks have refused to follow the PA’s dictates. This was exposed by PA Director of the Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, Qadri Abu Bakr yesterday. All the banks are refusing to allow these groups to use their ATM cards.

This comes two and a half months after Palestinian Media Watch, sent letters warning the banks operating in the PA-controlled areas of potential criminal and civil liability if they continued aiding and abetting the PA to pay rewards to terrorists.

Five weeks Palestinian civil servants waited for the PA to pay them their May salaries.

While the PA usually pays its employees in the first half of every month, until July 3, the PA had not paid any salaries to its employees for the month of May. The delay in the payment was ostensibly a result of the renewed refusal to receive the tax monies Israel collects and transfers to the PA, but was also potentially connected to the PA’s difficulties to pay the terrorist prisoners.

May 2020 could have been the first month in over a decade in which the PA did not pay salaries to terrorist prisoners and released prisoners. This was not the result of a change in PA policy, but rather, as PMW has shown, demonstrates that for the PA, the terrorist prisoners are equally entitled to their salaries as the rest of the PA’s law abiding, non-terrorist, employees.

On July 3, the PA paid all of its employees, including the terrorist prisoners and released prisoners, their salary for the month of May.

While the PA was determined to pay the salaries of the terrorist prisoners, it would appear that the banks operating in the PA-controlled areas were less than fully co-operative.

Jibril Rajoub, a senior official with the Palestinian Authority’s ruling Fatah faction, visited on Monday a prominent Hamas activist who was released from Israeli prison last week.

The visit is seen by Palestinians as part of his effort to achieve reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. Last week, Rajoub held a joint teleconference press interview with the deputy head of Hamas’s “political bureau,” Saleh Arouri, who is based in Lebanon.

During the press conference, Rajoub and Arouri announced their intention to work together to thwart Israel’s plan to extend sovereignty to parts of the West Bank and US President Donald Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” vision for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Rajoub, who is secretary-general of the Fatah Central Committee, led a delegation of Fatah officials who traveled to Jenin to congratulate Amjad Qabaha, 50, a senior member of Izzadin al-Qassam, Hamas’s “military wing,” who was released last week after spending 18 years in Israeli prison for his role in terrorist activities during the Second Intifada.

Qabaha is a resident of the Palestinian village of Barta’a, located in the Jenin area. His brother, Wasfi Qabaha, is a former PA prisoners’ affairs minister and a prominent Hamas figure in the West Bank.

"We see corruption everywhere. Is the Palestinian Authority headed towards self-destruction? Or is it just destroying the [Palestinian] people so that its own sons and relatives can rise to power?"— Nadia Harhash, journalist, who awoke on June 1, 2020 to find her car being torched, raialyoum.com.

Instead of heeding the call of the Palestinian Coalition for Accountability and Integrity and many Palestinians to end nepotism and ensure accountability and transparency, the PA has chosen to remain silent.

Thanks to the criminal negligence of the international community and the so-called human rights organizations, however, the Palestinian Authority leadership can simply continue to pursue its policy of deadly intimidation against Palestinian journalists. These groups are much too busy drafting condemnations of Israel to have time left over to expose the true Palestinian menace: the Palestinian Authority.

Iran on Sunday confirmed that a damaged building at the underground Natanz nuclear site was a new centrifuge assembly center, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported.

Iranian officials had previously sought to downplay the fire, which erupted early on Thursday, calling it only an "incident" that affected an "industrial shed." However, a released photo and video of the site broadcasted by Iranian state television showed a two-story brick building with scorch marks and its roof apparently destroyed.

Iran's top security body said on Friday that the cause of the fire that broke out on Thursday had been determined but would be announced later. Some Iranian officials have said it may have been cyber sabotage and one warned that Tehran would retaliate against any country carrying out such attacks.

On Thursday, an article by Iran's state news agency IRNA addressed what it called the possibility of sabotage by enemies such as Israel and the United States, although it stopped short of accusing either directly.

An online video and messages purportedly claiming responsibility for the fire were released Friday. However, the multiple, divergent claims by a self-described group called the "Cheetahs of the Homeland," as well as the fact that Iran experts have never heard of the group before, raised questions about whether Natanz again had faced sabotage by a foreign nation.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Sunday that Israel was not "necessarily" behind every mysterious incident in Iran.

Asked whether Israel had anything to do with the "mysterious explosions," Gantz told Army Radio: "Not every incident that transpires in Iran necessarily has something to do with us."

"All those systems are complex, they have very high safety constraints and I'm not sure they always know how to maintain them," Gantz said.
Three Iranian officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity on Friday said they believed the fire was the result of a cyberattack but did not cite any evidence.

Tehran has built underground “missile cities” along the Gulf coastline, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Navy chief said on Sunday, warning of a “nightmare for Iran’s enemies.”

“Iran has established underground onshore and offshore missile cities all along the coasts of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman that would be a nightmare for Iran’s enemies,” Rear Admiral Ali Reza Tangsiri told the Sobh-e Sadeq weekly.

Twitter employs people to investigate complaints about Americans’ tweets.

But @twitter allows Iran’s Supreme Leader to spew hate everyday. @jackpic.twitter.com/E18n1C4uhd

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) July 5, 2020

Offhand comments by senior Israeli intelligence officials today appeared to allude to an element of Israel’s alleged ongoing operations inside the Islamic republic of Iran to degrade that foe’s weapons capability across the board and compromise important strategic facilities and resources, among them dangerous accumulations, leaks and explosions related to various forms of gas such as chlorine, methane, and the hydrogen sulfide within the Supreme Leader’s intestines.

An unnamed Mossad official was overheard Monday morning making oblique reference to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s gastrointestinal metabolic processes, including, if sources heard correctly, an anticipated “resounding address in the Fartsi language.” Analysts believe the phrase refer to the latest in a recent series of calamities to befall the regime in Tehran, such as a strategic missile storage facility that self-destructed, mysterious explosions at a centrifuge facility, chlorine gas leaks, and others. The incidents occurred against continuing weakness of Iran’s economy amid crippling American-led sanctions to deter atomic weapons development and curtail Iran’s malign influence throughout the Middle East.

A spokesman for the agency declined to comment on the overheard remarks. “We have nothing to add to anyone’s speculation,” said the representative. “Rumors about our supposed activity in Iran waft everywhere all the time. If half of them were true, well, maybe they are. Maybe all of them are true. Whenever you get wind of something, consider the source, but also, maybe it’s true.”

Do you wear a mask when you push gays off buildings? https://t.co/ACmCRxLGR8

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) July 5, 2020

Here is the Mufti attending the dedication of Mussolini's new sports forum during his trip to lobby El Duce in favor of Arab Palestinian nationalism. pic.twitter.com/kGdvDus5TP

— AZ עם ישראל חי (@americanzionism) July 6, 2020

By Daled Amos

While writing a recent post on Jews: From Asiatic, Mongoloid, Slavonic, Low-Level Caucasians To Privileged White Supremacists, I came across this on Twitter:

Asian Americans continue to experience discrimination, hate crimes and racial violence, xenophobia, concerning levels of racial/ethnic bullying in schools, and other indicators of racial marginalization in the U.S.

In the context of American politics, to be “white” means to be a beneficiary of the past 500 years of European exploration and exploitation of the rest of the world — and hence to “owe” something to those who have been exploited. So when Jews are treated as white in the United States, the assessment is not a crude physical one but a judgment of Jewish culture and civilization, history and destiny.

The terms “women of color” and “people of color” are meant to be inclusive. But, from my perspective, they only help to leave black people behind — specifically black women. While every minority group faces its own challenges in America, a “one size fits all” mentality toward diversity erases the specific needs of the most vulnerable communities. [emphasis added]

But even more important is doing the hard work of understanding and fighting to overcome the distinct layers of injustice that face people of different identities — and different layers within those identities. A black person has different challenges than someone who is both Muslim and black, and a black, Muslim woman has different challenges still. Parsing the implications of these differences, instead of flattening them, is what it means to be “intersectional,” an important but widely misunderstood concept — even by the liberals who use it most. Intersectionality is not about building the biggest interracial team possible. It’s about catering to the individual needs of different communities to make sure no one is left behind.

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identifying as Asian American is not a biological destiny or question of geography, which would suggest a passive orientation (i.e. individuals are born Asian) rather than an active choice to identify in solidarity against matrices of oppression. [emphasis added]