The Abraham Accords is a moment to be remembered in Jewish history and an achievement in American diplomacy that, no matter what occurs in the election, deserves to be studied and celebrated. It ought to inspire us to ask what else “experts” might have been missing. What other aspects of the Arab–Israeli divide, once thought unbridgeable, can now be contemplated? Most interesting is a question raised by several Israeli writers: Is it now time to take a new approach to the Temple Mount? If parts of the Arab world can at least come to terms with a Jewish Jerusalem, is there a possibility that not only Muslims but also Jews can pray at Judaism’s most sacred site?

Three days after we sat on the South Lawn of the White House, I stood in the synagogue overseeing Rosh Hashanah services unlike any other. What was usually a packed sanctuary was this year marked by masked worshippers socially distanced from one another. We prayed, of course, for a return to health and normalcy, but we knew the pandemic would continue to impact our lives for months to come. In Jerusalem, a resurgence of the virus would lead to a shutdown of synagogues and a Western Wall largely devoid of worshippers. But in the midst of the depressing nature of that moment, I read from the Torah, to the congregation, of Ishmael, of God’s concern for Abraham’s eldest son.

For the first time, its text to me embodied not an abstract aspiration, but something that, in a very small way, seemed directed to us in our time. And then, as the Torah was returned, a millennia-old verse was suddenly sung, sanctified by the dreams of Jewish generations yet in the moment endowed with renewed relevance: Adonai oz le’amo yiten; Adonai yevarekh et-amo va’shalom.

It was a reminder that even amid our caustic politics and trials, we still live in an age of wonder of which our ancestors could only have dreamed, and that in such an age it was not unreasonable to have hope in the year to come—perhaps even more wondrous things than Passover programs in the United Arab Emirates will happen next year in Jerusalem.

Truman’s motive in supporting the Zionists has been ascribed variously to high principle, electoral expediency, and close Jewish friends. Neither he nor the advocates for a Jewish state framed it in terms of geopolitics. But Israel turned out to be a major strategic asset.

U.S. diplomats and brass were not alone in failing to foresee this. Moscow did not anticipate it either. Hoping to drive Britain from the region, it was arguably even more helpful than Washington in facilitating Israel’s birth. This moment, however, was short-lived, ending abruptly on Rosh Hashanah of 1948.

That day, Golda Meir, Israel’s first ambassador to the USSR, attended services at Moscow’s Great Synagogue, one of the very few left open. Despite a pointed warning in Pravda that “the state of Israel has nothing to do with the Soviet Union, where there is no Jewish problem and therefore no need for Israel,” a crowd estimated at 50,000—25 times the usual attendance—was waiting to see and touch her. In her autobiography, Meir records how deeply she was affected by this display of identity with the Jewish state. But Stalin, who brooked no loyalty to anyone or anything other than himself or his regime, was affected, too, in a quite different way. Within a month, Jewish cultural institutions were closed, and soon various Yiddish actors and poets were murdered or dispatched to the Gulag. An anti-Jewish campaign in the name of anti-Zionism raged until the dictator’s death in 1953.

Israel, thus driven from its original stance of neutrality, got its first stroke of revenge in 1956 when a Pole who went by the non-Jewish name of Viktor Grayevsky managed to get his hands on a copy of the secret speech that Premier Nikita Khrushchev had delivered at the Soviet Communist Party’s 20th congress. It denounced Stalin for having created a “cult” of himself and for choosing “the path of repression and physical annihilation” against whomever raised his ire. Grayevski, quietly a Zionist, daringly brought the document to the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw where intelligence officers made a duplicate. Ben-Gurion ordered it passed to the CIA, which leaked it to the New York Times, which ran it on page 1.

The impact on the world Communist movement was shattering. The one-time Trotskyist leader Max Shachtman captured the import sardonically: “Stalin…has been officially demoted from the office of greatest, wisest and most adored leader in recorded history to the lesser office of maniacal mass-murderer.” For three decades, Communists worldwide had parroted hymns to Stalin’s glories, deriding what they saw as calumnies against him from anti-Communists of all stripes (as well as Trotskyists). Now Stalin’s successor, the new leader of world Communism, was saying plainly that the anti-Communists had been right all along and that the Communists had been dupes and fools. The American and other Communist parties never recovered from this blow.

Meanwhile, deep processes are at work. The younger generation of Arabs did not experience the “Palestinian nakba” and it is not part of their historical memory. The “Arab Spring,” which precipitated the collapse of regimes and economies and the rise of the Islamic State, threw millions of Arabs into great distress and mass emigration for a life of refugee status, poverty, and suffering far from home. The Palestinians’ belief that those Arabs should fight for the “liberation of Palestine” is not uppermost among their concerns.

As for Palestinian conduct, here is an interesting case. One of Israel’s harshest critics is Jamal Rian, the brain behind Al Jazeera and its main newscaster. He was born in Tulkarem, moved to Jordan, and became a prominent activist in the Muslim Brotherhood. It was recently revealed that Rian’s father was a land dealer who, before Israel’s establishment, sold sizable tracts of land to the Jews. What Arab wants to be a “sucker” and fight Israel to liberate for Jamal Rian the lands his father sold to Jews, a transaction that did not exactly harm his son financially?

Another factor that works against the Palestinian ethos is the huge increase in the use of social media. Today, any Arab can see the truth about Israel without needing to rely exclusively on his government’s propaganda outlets for information. Automatic translation allows him or her to “read” Hebrew websites even if he does not understand a word of Hebrew. This makes it much harder for the Palestinians to keep selling “the problem” the way it used to. Indeed, many Arabs now intentionally misspell “the problem” in a way that expresses contempt for it.

The Arab world of 2020 differs from that of 2000 in many ways. It is not the delusional “new Middle East” envisaged by Shimon Peres but its complete opposite: a region that is violent, fractured, rife with failed states, and afflicted with mass killing. But these unfortunate developments work in Israel’s favor. True, there is still hatred among Arabs for Jews and the Jewish state that must be acknowledged and contended with, and there are still hundreds of thousands of rockets surrounding and threatening Israel. Nevertheless, the trend is clear.

The peace and normalization between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain signifies the collapse of the old theories, enabling the Jewish state to be accepted as a member, not an enemy, in the “right” coalition.

The Biden team’s policy proposals that would undermine any prospect of normalization don’t end there. The structural shift that pushed Israel and the Gulf States together allowed for the diplomatic opening, but wasn’t enough on its own for the UAE take the final step of formal recognition. In fact, as long ago as 2002, Saudi Arabia, and later the Arab League, expressed a willingness (in theory) to recognize Israel with the announcement of the Arab Peace Initiative. The problem was that the demands the initiative made of Israel were complete nonstarters, such as an Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 lines and the implementation of the Palestinian “right of return,” the standard Arab euphemism for Israel’s demographic subversion. No Israeli government is going to accept such terms, so whatever potential existed for normalization has been dead on arrival for almost two decades.

It was only the recent change in US policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue that altered the dynamic. Instead of making unreasonable and ill-founded demands on Israel for territorial concessions, the Trump administration demonstrated its willingness to go along with Israeli plans to assert sovereignty over parts of the Jordan Valley. This put an entirely new card on the table. It was the credible threat of annexation that opened the door for normalization. The Gulf States were interested in normalization for their own interests but needed another incentive to take the next step. Once annexation was on the table, there was a concession that Israel could reasonably make, as putting off the application of sovereignty for an undefined period is something even the Israeli right can live with. The UAE could then show it had achieved something concrete by taking the final step.

But Biden and his advisors intend to reverse that as well. As he and his team have made abundantly clear for months, Biden adamantly rejects any prospect of extending Israeli sovereignty to additional territory.

It is a basic principle in negotiations that a stalemate can be broken by adding more dimensions to the mix that can then be traded. But by preemptively rejecting even the notion that Israel could move forward with extending its sovereignty over vital territories in the future, Biden would be doing the exact opposite: he would remove dimensions for negotiation and deepen the state of deadlock.

In November, Americans will decide whom to elect as their next president, and Israel will work and cooperate with whomever the American people place in the White House. One would hope that whoever is making decisions in Washington will be open to learning the lessons of the Abraham Accords regarding what works in today’s Middle East and what does not, and to adapt their actions accordingly. If Biden wishes to further the historic process that began with Trump, he might want to consider retaining a little more continuity with current US policies in the region. This would be for the good of the US, Israel, and their Arab partners.

Channel 13’s Nadav Eyal has now provided excerpts from a classified memo of the meeting made by a senior Israeli official who was in attendance.

The unnamed official said Biden told Meir that during meetings in Cairo prior to his arrival in Israel, officials there assured him they accept “Israel’s military superiority.”

Biden warned that Israel’s actions in the territories it had captured during the Six Day War, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, were leading to “creeping annexation.”

Since he believed Israel was militarily dominant in the region, he suggested the Jewish state might initiate a first step for peace through unilateral withdrawals from areas with no strategic importance.

The official said Biden criticized the Nixon administration for being “dragged by Israel,” complaining that it was impossible to have a real debate in the Senate about the Middle East as senators were fearful of saying things unpopular with Jewish voters.

Meir rejected Biden’s call for unilateral steps, launching into a speech about the region and its problems (possibly the spiel Biden alluded to in his own comments years later).

The official added his own personal impressions regarding the young senator at the bottom of the document, saying Biden was full of respect toward the Israeli leader and repeatedly said he had come to learn, “and yet while speaking displayed a fervor and made comments that signaled his lack of diplomatic experience.”

In another major milestone for Israel-Gulf relations, a delegation of senior United Arab Emirates officials arrived in Tel Aviv on Tuesday for a series of meetings with their Israeli counterparts.

After landing, the UAE delegation, headed by the ministers of the economy and finance and two deputy ministers, signed four bilateral agreements with Israel, including a visa waiver agreement.

During the welcoming ceremony ant Ben-Gurion Airport, the United States, Israel and the UAE also announced the creation of a trilateral fund seeking to foster regional cooperation and prosperity.

“Today we are making history,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared minutes after the Etihad plane landed in Tel Aviv. “The enthusiasm for this peace agreement among our people is enormous. It’s real, it’s broad, it’s deep, and it reflects the potential that is realized today.”

Netanyahu listed the four agreements Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi had agreed to sign — including on aviation and taxation — vowing that they will bring many benefits to the people of both countries, including regular direct flights.

“The visit of such a high-level delegation from the UAE, and the agreements we are about to sign, will show our peoples, the region and the entire world the benefit of having friendly, peaceful, normal exchanges,” he said. “I believe that more and more governments across the Middle East understand, as we do here today, that we’re so much better off working together, as friends.”

The United Arab Emirates said Tuesday it wished to facilitate the reciprocal opening of embassies in Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi “as soon as possible,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said, as a senior Emirati delegation made a landmark visit to the Jewish state.

The Foreign Ministry said the UAE delegation — headed by the ministers of the economy and finance and two deputy ministers — had handed Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi a letter from his Emirati counterpart, Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, during a working lunch.

The two leaders met in Berlin earlier this month in the first public high-level bilateral meeting between the countries.

In the letter — said to have been written in Hebrew — Bin Zayed reportedly also thanked Ashkenazi for his hard work advancing ties.

“I have full trust in your unequivocal support for opening the diplomatic missions in Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi as soon as possible,” he wrote. “Best wishes for the two countries and the two friendly nations to enjoy progress and prosperity down the road.”

Speaking to Emirati journalists who made the trip, Ashkenazi told them that Israel appreciates the “courageous step taken by Abu Dhabi toward peace and leading the entire region toward a better future,” according to a separate statement from the Foreign Ministry.

“The relations between our countries are an important and significant step on the way to turning the Middle East from a region of conflict to a region of hope, prosperity, stability and peace,” he added.

Israel and the United Arab Emirates are set to sign a visa exemption treaty Tuesday, in what will be the Jewish state’s first such agreement with an Arab country, according to Israeli officials.

The treaty will be signed during high-level meetings and a ceremony in Tel Aviv attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and two senior UAE ministers — part of the first high-level delegation from the Gulf nation to visit Israel.

The Israel-UAE visa exemption agreement will mean that citizens from both countries will be allowed to enter each other’s countries without having to go through the hassle of applying for a visa first. However, it will enter into force only after it is ratified by both countries, a process that will require a vote in the Knesset.

Israel currently has normalization agreements with four Arab countries — Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and the UAE — but so far only the latter has agreed to allow Israelis to visit without a visa. Notably, even Israel’s closest ally, the US, has so far refused to sign a visa exemption agreement with the Jewish state.

In addition to the visa waiver, bilateral agreements in the areas of aviation, investment protection, science and technology are all expected to be signed at Tuesday’s ceremony, which will take place at Ben-Gurion Airport.

The visit is set to take place a day after both the UAE and Bahrain on Monday gave parliamentary approval to their respective normalization agreements with Israel.

Jews around the world are rightfully celebrating the historic and euphoric peace agreement between Israel and the UAE — and so are the Emiratis.

In particular, Israelis are looking forward to visiting the United Arab Emirates once travel is again possible. As a Jew with close ties to the UAE, I have insights about what they’ll experience — a place they’ll surely find both familiar and challenging.

Over the past two years, my husband, children and I have visited the UAE four times, most recently spending Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot in Abu Dhabi. I am intrigued by some striking parallels to Israel, such as taking great pride in “making the desert bloom,” building a hub for global tourism, achieving remarkable advancements in technology and maintaining the identity of a small nation with a huge impact.

My husband Yehuda, now the Chief Rabbi of the UAE, has visited more than 20 times during the past decade as the University Chaplain at NYU, working closely with NYU’s campus in Abu Dhabi, UAE representatives in the US, and the developing Jewish community of the Emirates.

I’m optimistic about the historic new partnership between Israel and the UAE, and the unique opportunity to learn and grow with and from our new partners and friends.

It is perhaps understandable — although not pardonable — that after decades of terrorism, tension and conflict with Islamic countries in the region, many Jews in Israel and Diaspora communities speak in generalizations and express fear and resentment toward our Muslim cousins. But after developing close personal relationships, my children have a hard time understanding that perspective. It has been heartwarming to observe how eager Jewish people worldwide are to embrace their Arab Muslim Emirati friends.

Israeli airline Arkia on Tuesday announced direct flights to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, starting at $149 for a one-way ticket. Arkia said the daily flights will begin on January 3, 2021 and some were already available for order on its website.

The airline is Israel’s first to announce a date for direct commercial flights to the Gulf Kingdom since Israel and the UAE signed a normalization agreement last month.

The flights will last 3-4 hours and will continue at least until March, 2021, the company said.

Oz Berlowitz, CEO of Arkia, said in a statement, “The decision to start a flight line to Dubai was made after increasing requests from our customers, private business clients and many requests from groups organizing conferences.

The airline is checking into the possibility of launching flights to Bahrain and Sharjah, another city in the UAE.

The flight lines are pending approval from authorities, which is expected to be issued soon, the statement said.

The company has also signed commercial agreements with tourism companies in the UAE and will offer vacation packages.

Last month, amid reports that Sudan could soon normalize relations with Israel, the northeast African Arab country’s leading governmental agency in charge of interpreting Islamic law issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, saying ties with the Jewish state remain forbidden.

But in good Talmudic tradition, a senior cleric from a rival group of Islamic scholars thought his colleagues were mistaken and issued a fatwa arguing the exact opposite.

“They issued their fatwa. I found it to be problematic and not in keeping with Islamic principles, which are more flexible in nature. And so I thought to issue a fatwa that does reflect this flexibility that is inherent in Islamic principle,” Sheikh Abdel-Rahman Hassan Hamed told The Times of Israeli in a recent exclusive phone interview.

“It is an effort to issue a fatwa on the basis of present realities,” he said of his religious ruling, issued earlier this month. “When circumstances change, it is the responsibility of the mufti to look at the situation as it is, and to evaluate it without any preconception — to face reality. That is what we did.”

Hamed, who heads the Sudan Scholars Organization’s fatwa department, said that Islamic law doesn’t know the modern political concept of “normalization.”

“From an Islamic standpoint, the terms that are relevant are sulh [treaty or armistice] and salaam [peace],” he said, speaking in Arabic through an interpreter.

“As a general principle, from an Islamic standpoint, there is no opposition to sulh or salaam with Israel. On the contrary, sulh and salaam are virtues that are to be earned, without exception.”

Food security is emerging as a key area in which the United Arab Emirates is eager for Israeli expertise, investors in each country tell ISRAEL21c.

The Gulf states import more than 90% of their food. This has long been a concern, but the issue intensified when pandemic-related transportation stoppages disrupted supply for several months. The UAE now has a food security minister and Food Security Council.

The Abraham Accords announced between Israel and the UAE on August 13 — and with Bahrain a month later — give these countries access to promising food-supply solutions from the ground up.

“The Gulf states see how we produce vegetables in the desert and are very impressed. This is essential to them and they seek companies that can deploy technologies tomorrow,” says Edouard Cukierman, chairman of Cukierman Investment House and managing partner at the Catalyst Fund.

He and senior partners of his Tel Aviv-based firm recently met with Hamed Ahmed Ali, CEO of Nasdaq Dubai and the local stock exchange, to discuss opportunities for Israeli businesses.

“One topic that came up again and again is food security,” Cukierman tells ISRAEL21c. “They are ready to allocate a lot of funds to assuring their food supply.”

🇦🇪 🇺🇸 🇮🇱
UAE, US & Israel announce creation of $3bn Abraham Fund to further regional development. Minister Ahmed Al Sayegh, says the fund “reflects the desire of the 3 countries to put the wellbeing of people first, regardless of their creed or identity.” https://t.co/29vFjuDlFN

— هند مانع العتيبة Hend Al Otaiba (@hend_mana) October 20, 2020

Sure, it’s ironic that a Palestinian leader who accused Israel of spreading the coronavirus has checked himself into an Israeli hospital now that he is afflicted with it. But the implications of this episode are much more significant than another chuckle over Palestinian hypocrisy.

This week’s two-face is Saeb Erekat, the secretary-general of the PLO executive committee. He has served as the PLO’s representative in various negotiations, and as Yasser Arafat’s spokesman to the foreign news media. Among the blood libels that Erekat has spread against Israel was his loudly publicized claim in 2002 that Israel “massacred” more than 500 Palestinian Arabs in Jenin. The actual number was 53, and they were terrorists who were killed in battle.

A more recent anti-Israel slander from Erekat was his announcement, in the official Palestinian Authority (PA) newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on March 20, that Israelis were “spitting on Palestinian cars and property in order to transfer the corona disease to them” (translation by Palestinian Media Watch).

When Erekat himself came down with the disease last week, he had many Palestinian Arab hospitals from which to choose. He could have opted to be treated at the hospital closest to his home, which is the Jericho Government Hospital. Or he could have gone to one of the 15 hospitals in other PA-occupied areas, such as the “Martyr Yasser Arafat Government Hospital” in Salfit. Or one of the five hospitals in predominantly Arab neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem.

But no, Erekat insisted on being taken to Hadassah Hospital in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ein Kerem. And the kind folks at Hadassah took him in, despite all the Jewish blood on his hands from all those years of terrorist attacks perpetrated by the organization of which he was, and is, a senior representative.

Germany refuses to say Nagno-Karabakh is occupied: If you need further proof that "illegal settlements in occupied territory" has become code for saying Jews can't live in their homeland. This counts as state practice too. https://t.co/XO6YXoRlBW cc @RaphaelAhren@AeyalGross

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) October 20, 2020

IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Hadi Zilberman announced on Tuesday that "in the past few hours IDF forces have exposed an offensive terrorist tunnel that crossed into Israeli territory, but did not cross the barrier that is being established these days."

Zilberman noted that the discovery was made on Monday thanks to the technological means that the underground barrier includes, and that the tunnel, which was dug from the area of Khan Yunis, was exposed today following excavation efforts.

He emphasized that "the tunnel was still in the process of being built, so that at no point did it pose a danger to the surrounding towns. It will be neutralized in the next few days." He stated that it is still unclear which terrorist organization is behind the tunnel. "The IDF estimates that it was part of a relatively new operational outline, but has not yet determined who was responsible for it."

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit added that "the barrier, which will be completed on March 2021 will consist of three sections: a wall dug dozens of meters underground, an obstacle above ground and technological means for locating tunnels. Most of the work underground has been completed."

Abbas’ Fatah Movement recently posted a video with a song calling for Jerusalem “to be freed of the Jews.” It also encouraged Arab states to unite and break down borders between them to “redeem” Jerusalem and prepare “the Jews’ graveyard”: Lyrics: “When the Arabness becomes heretical and it becomes Zionist and American We will come to you [Jerusalem] with the knights of Allah Rejoice! You’ll be freed of the Jews We will redeem you The borders [between the Arabs] will be broken down And we will be united This is the Jews’ graveyard” [Official Fatah Facebook page, Oct. 13, 2020]

This is an excerpt of the song “Our Jerusalem,” which calls on all Arabs and Muslims to “redeem” Jerusalem. It was originally published in December 2017 following US President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The reference to “the Arabness” becoming “heretical, Zionist, and American” also fits the current context of the UAE and Bahrain signing peace agreements with Israel. Something that the PA has criticized in strong terms, calling it “betrayal,” and naming the two Arab states “enemies of Islamic society.”

It’s the kind of story that drives a lot of friends of Israel nuts. One of its chief opponents, Palestinian Liberation Organization senior leader Saeb Erekat, recently fell ill with COVID-19. Faced with the decision as to where to be treated, it was only natural that instead of going to a Palestinian hospital or even one in neighboring Jordan, he chose to go to Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.

This is, after all, the same person who spent his career lying about Israel, and smearing it as a nation of oppressors and war criminals. He’s part of a government that spends far more on paying salaries and pensions to terrorists and their families than on hospitals. Indeed, in March of this year, he actually went so far as to falsely allege that Israelis were spitting on Palestinian cars so as to spread the coronavirus to them. And though he has served as the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s chief peace negotiator, he’s spent his tenure in that position working to make peace negotiations impossible, swearing that he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state and end the ongoing conflict.

However, when faced with the question of the best place in the region to seek help, Israel was the obvious answer.

One of the region’s pre-eminent health-care facilities, Hadassah and its doctors took him in. The odds may be against the seriously ill Erekat, who has already had a lung transplant and a heart attack, surviving the illness. But if he were to have a chance anywhere, it would be at Hadassah.

The better question is: Why would Israel, which has been on the receiving end of his vitriol, slanders, and worse, open its doors to Erekat and do what it could to save him?

Some Israelis and friends of the Jewish state can’t understand it. They see this willingness to help even enemies as a particular form of weakness. They cite the passage from the Midrash of the sages that says, “He who becomes compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate” as a good reason to turn Erekat down.

Veteran PLO official Saeb Erekat, who contracted the coronavirus earlier this month, was intubated on Monday after his condition worsened, and he is now considered in critical condition in Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem.

On Monday the hospital issued a statement reporting that Erekat was "ventilated on high concentration of oxygen and on nitric oxide gas and is in the prone position. He has received concentrated convalescent plasma with high levels of anti-Covid antibodies."

"We have consulted with specialists from Tel Aviv, New York and Washington," the spokesman said, adding: "Prognosis remains very guarded." Erekat was transferred to Hadassah on Sunday in serious condition.

Erekat, 65, underwent a lung transplant in the US in 2017 after suffering from pulmonary fibrosis, a condition that scars the lungs and damages their ability to circulate oxygen.

"Mr. Erekat had a quiet night but his condition deteriorated this morning, and is now critical," a statement from Hadassah said Monday morning. "Due to respiratory distress, he is in a coma and ventilated. Mr. Erekat's treatment presents a significant challenge as, as the recipient of a lung transplant, he is immunosuppressed and suffers a bacterial infection in addition to the corona."

According to the hospital, Erekat is in the intensive care unit for corona patients and required high-flow oxygen therapy (HFOT) and oxygen (Airbo). He was not ventilated and was deemed stable when he entered the hospital on Sunday, although his condition deteriorated on Monday.

This is a Tweet sent by the PLO’s negotiations affairs department on the afternoon of October 18th:

Even before that Tweet was posted it was known that Saeb Erekat had in fact been taken to a hospital in Jerusalem – Hadassah Ein Kerem – rather than one “in Tel Aviv” and the PLO-NAD put out another Tweet clarifying that about 90 minutes later.

Some seven hours after the appearance of the PLO’s first Tweet, the BBC News website published a report about Erekat’s hospitalisation – obviously without adequate fact checking.

The original version of that report was headlined “Covid-19: Top Palestinian official Saeb Erekat taken to Israeli hospital” and, like the PLO’s first Tweet, it wrongly informed readers that he had been “admitted to hospital in Tel Aviv, Israel”.

Several hours later the article was amended and its subsequent versions, which were titled “Covid-19: Top Palestinian official Saeb Erekat in ‘serious’ condition”, told readers that:

“Earlier on Sunday Mr Erekat was transferred from his home in the West Bank to Hadassah University Hospital – Ein Karem, near Jerusalem.”

The hospital is located in – rather than “near” – Jerusalem, as is acknowledged in the latest version of the report which is now titled “Coronavirus: Top

A high-ranking Palestinian official undergoing treatment at a leading Israeli medical facility threatened negative outcomes for the Jewish State in the even that he recovers from his current viral respiratory infection, given that such a recovery would remove from his people the opportunity to accuse Israel of assassinating him.

Saeb Erekat took several moments before entering an induced coma Monday at Hadassah Medical Center in southwestern Jerusalem, to warn Israel against allowing him to survive his treatment for SARS-CoV-2. The onetime chief negotiator for the Palestinians with Israel demanded that he be allowed to expire under Israeli medical auspices so that Palestinians get the chance to blame Israel for his death just as they did for that of Yasser Arafat in 2004, and use that accusation to incite further violence. If he lives, Erekat warned, Palestinians will become enraged that Israel deprived them of that propaganda pretext, and resort to violence.

“On behalf of my Palestinian brethren and the entire Palestinian national movement, I hereby warn Israel not to make the grave mistake of letting me survive this ordeal,” he stated. “The expected outcomes for someone in my condition are dim, and any outcome that defies those expectations will immediately lead my people to suspect a malicious hand in it, with consequences for whom the enemy alone will bear the blame.”

The United States will preemptively sanction any country that tries to deliver arms to Iran, effectively blocking new arms deals well before they develop, the Trump administration’s top Iran official told the Washington Free Beacon in an exclusive interview.

Elliott Abrams, the administration’s special envoy for Iran, said that in the aftermath of restoring all international sanctions on Iran in late September, the administration would not wait for new weapons to be transferred to Iran—in violation of sanctions—but would act preemptively to obstruct new deals as they advance.

"We don’t have to wait until a transaction is completed and someone has physically sent arms to Iran or imported arms from Iran," Abrams said. "We can go after people engaged in exploratory visits or negotiations as well."

Iran and its international partners, including Russia and China, have vowed to breach U.S. and international sanctions barring new weapons deals. This includes a United Nations arms embargo on Iran that was set to expire over the weekend, but was extended indefinitely by the United States under a mechanism known as "snapback." This enabled the United States to keep the arms ban alive and revive a litany of international sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile development, nuclear program, and weapons trade. Still, U.S. officials anticipate that Russia and China will move to sell Iran billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and advanced arms in the coming months.

"We will step in even before they become tangible and real," Abrams said, referring to possible Iranian arms deals with Russia and China. "We will be watching to see if there is movement towards arms deals."

The United States on Monday said it blacklisted two Chinese men and six Chinese entities for having dealt with Iranian shipping company Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and, in some cases, helping it to evade US sanctions.

The US State Department named the entities as Reach Holding Group (Shanghai) Company Ltd.; Reach Shipping Lines; Delight Shipping Co., Ltd.; Gracious Shipping Co. Ltd.; Noble Shipping Co. Ltd.; and Supreme Shipping Co. Ltd.

In a statement, it also said it had targeted Eric Chen, also known as Chen Guoping, chief executive of Reach Holding Group (Shanghai) Company Ltd., and Daniel Y. He, also known as He Yi, the company’s president.

As a result of being put on the US Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals list, the assets of the entities and individuals falling under US jurisdiction are frozen and US persons are generally barred from dealing with them.

“Today, we reiterate a warning to stakeholders worldwide: If you do business with IRISL, you risk US sanctions,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in the statement.

Among other things, the State Department accused the six entities of providing “significant goods or services” used in connection with Iran’s shipping sector. It also accused Reach Holding Group and its Reach Shipping Lines unit helping IRISL and its subsidiaries evade US sanctions.

Iran says that it is conducting a massive air defense drill that will cover half of Iran’s airspace this week. It will begin on Wednesday and comes in the wake of a joint Israel F-35 drill with the US. It comes in the context of increased focus on air defense in the region after Azerbaijan has used drones successfully against Armenian forces for the last three weeks of fighting. An arms embargo on Iran recently expired and the country is looking to improve its military and defense technology.

Iran’s Tasnim news says that the new drill with air defense units is aimed at “improving the combat readiness and increasing the air defense capability of the Armed Forces and is one of the goals of holding a joint specialized air defense exercise for the 99th Sky Defenders of the provinces.” The operation will take place as if it is a “real battle.”

In the drill, the network-based operation will coordinate air defense units, including using locally-produced missiles and radar. Iran says it is one of the leaders in missile and radar technology. Iran will also use electronic warfare and visual intelligence systems to track the “threats” during the drill. Iran has recently been trying to improve its defenses against drones. This is assumed to be due to Iran believing that its adversaries have stealth drone technology. Iran long ago downed a US Sentinel drone in 2011 so the country is familiar with some of the kinds of drones that might be conducting surveillance over the country.

The goal of this drill, Iran says, is to test real-time air defense using the latest technology. It will be designed to stop both drones and enemy bombers. Iran says it is observing its enemies and learning from them about the kinds of threats it faces. Iran shot down a US Global Hawk drone last year and it has increasingly sought to export air defense to Syria and Yemen.

the historian John Lukacs famously said, “the isms have all become wasms.” I am reminded of this line as I reflect on the 12th Annual ASDA’A BCW Arab Youth Survey, a remarkable annual barometer of youth sentiments across a vital part of the world. For many young Arabs, it seems, the idea of an ‘-ism’ - an all-encompassing ideology to solve their problems - seems almost as anachronistic as a landline telephone. Pragmatism, not ideological ‘isms’, rules the day among young Arabs, and in an era of pandemic-driven insecurity and political upheaval, this essential fact offers us hope for the region’s future. [p. 28]

The oldest of the Arab youth cohort would have been born in 1996. This means they missed the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, the Egyptian and Jordanian peace agreements with Israel, the first Palestinian intifada, and the Lebanese and Algerian civil wars, and probably have only the vaguest memories, if any at all, of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny in Iraq and his overthrow in 2003 or the second intifada, to name just a few of the seminal events that shaped the region.

This cohort’s formative memories are instead of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, the wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya, the coronavirus pandemic, and governing elites who seem to be doing more than fine themselves and stay in power for really long periods of time, but are unable to provide jobs, pick up the trash or keep the electricity running for the citizens they supposedly serve.

Following the events of the Arab Spring, when young Arabs in many countries took to the streets, calling for reforms and an end to corruption, four nations witnessed a change in government – Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. Eight years later, 2019 recorded a similar surge in youth-led protests, especially in Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan, once again, leading to changes in leadership. 

When asked specifically, to young people in these four nations, 82 per cent of young people in Lebanon, 89 per cent each in Algeria and Iraq, and 88 per cent in Sudan said they supported the anti-government protests. 

Young Arabs in Iraq (82 per cent) are most optimistic that the protests will lead to real positive change. [p. 19]

The survey also covers how young Arabs feel about the Palestinian issue:

One in four (25 per cent) young Arabs said resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict must be a top consideration, while encouraging technological innovation was cited as a key driver of progress by more than one in five (22 per cent) young Arabs. [p. 25]

When asked to rank their priorities, corruption and jobs ranked as more important, while defeating terrorism was equally important.

So what about the Abraham Accords?

“You are wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell.” —Louis Farrakhan

One thing irresponsible actors on both sides of the political spectrum now agree on—perhaps the only thing—is that the medieval bigot Louis Farrakhan and his followers are serious people who “represent” or can “speak for” black America.

And the poison is spreading.

It is being spread by Donald Trump, now partnering with rapper and Farrakhan fan Ice Cube, who enjoys tweeting anti-Semitic memes and images, like one depicting Jewish bankers seated around a Monopoly board resting on the backs of Black men. It is being spread by Barack Obama, headlining an event with the discredited Women’s March leader and Farrakhan acolyte Tamika Mallory. And it is being spread by the editors of The New York Times, who this weekend ran a fawning op-ed about the women behind Farrakhan’s Million Man March without so much as a nod to his overt and grotesque bigotry--which led the late John Lewis to boycott the event. When Jewish readers expressed anguish at this whitewashing, the author of the piece took to Twitter to tell them to stop “centering” themselves in this conversation. Can you imagine that being said by a contributor to the Times to any other minority group targeted for violence? And in the very year when there was a mass murder of Jews perpetrated by someone driven by the ideas that Farrakhan promotes?

The normalizing of America’s leading conspiratorial anti-Semite by both parties, in the hope of bringing out more African American voters, is one more symptom of the deeply corrosive and morally repulsive politics that has trashed the American liberal tradition. It makes a mockery of the left’s flood of outrage over Donald Trump’s failure to forcefully denounce white supremacists, while Trump’s courting of one of Farrakhan's outspoken fans, reportedly through the good offices of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, makes a mockery of the idea that he is a bulwark against Jew-haters on the progressive left. As for The New York Times, we look forward to the forthcoming magazine issue devoted to explaining that Farrakhan, and not Martin Luther King Jr., was actually the lead character in the fight for racial justice in America, in a series of essays to be given out next year in public schools.

In familiar laceration mode, the Editorial Board of The New York Times Sunday Review recently (October 18) offered “The Case Against Donald Trump.” Page one (of nine) presented the editors’ indictment litany, familiar to any Times reader: “Lies Anger Corruption Incompetence Chaos Decay.” Columnists cited Trump’s “Unapologetic Corruption,” “Demagogy” and “Fake Populism,” while the editors mourned “A Nation Adrift” amid “An Economy in Tatters,” “A Planet in Peril” and “Women’s Rights Under Attack.” So what else is new at the Times?

One journalist who contributed to the tirade caught my attention: Serge Schmemann, who had become the Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief shortly before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995. Among President Trump’s claimed successes, “dubious at best and illusory at worst,” he wrote, was its Middle East peace plan. For Schmemann it was nothing more than “a bag of gifts for the Israeli right, effectively undermining America’s potential as a mediator with the Palestinians.”

His familiar expression of the Times party line about Israel prompted a review of Schmemann’s coverage of Israel in the mid-1990s. He preposterously blamed Rabin’s assassination on “the bellicose settlers of Hebron” — a favorite Times trope — who “spew the violent religious ideology that fired Yigal Amir,” Rabin’s assassin. But Amir, who grew up in the town of Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, was not a settler nor did he live in Hebron.

Schmemann was most detached and moderate when reporting Palestinian terrorist attacks. Following the massacre by a suicide bomber that killed 26 Israeli passengers on a Jerusalem bus, he mentioned “Israeli rage and grief” but focused on Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ “tough tone” in a Knesset speech.

“In the fury of the moment,” Schmemann wrote, Israelis “reverted to their basic instinct: that war against terrorism must be constant and total” — rather, presumably, than occasional and minimal.

Bret Stephens, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the NY Times and before that the Wall St Journal, talks about his upbringing in Mexico, his family background in Europe, and becoming a journalist. Bret and Tom Gross discuss America’s place in the world, the ongoing ‘culture wars’ in the US, the pitfalls of Donald Trump’s presidency (but whether it is dangerous for some to suggest he’s a ‘fascist’ or ‘Nazi’), what Trump has got wrong but what he may have got right regarding China, the Mideast and the Balkans, and Bret’s own role at the New York Times, and the Times’ role in the world.

As Alan Dershowitz writes in his classic book The Case for Israel, “A good working definition of anti-Semitism is taking a trait or an action that is widespread, if not universal, and blaming only the Jews for it. That is what Hitler and Stalin did, and that is what former Harvard University president A. Lawrence Lowell did in the 1920s when he tried to limit the number of Jews admitted to Harvard because ‘Jews cheat.’ When a distinguished alumnus objected on the grounds that non-Jews also cheat, Lowell replied, ‘You’re changing the subject. I’m talking about Jews.’”

That’s exactly what the synagogue picketers are doing. Like Lowell pretended to care about cheating, but only cared about Jewish cheating, so Hirskovitz and Co. pretend to be for “human rights,” and to care for Arabs killed in conflicts, but, in fact, they only care about Arabs who are killed by Jews. It’s not about Arab lives. It’s not about justice. It’s about Jewish behavior. (And it's certainly not about what Arab terrorists do to Jewish civilians, ed.)

According to the vehemently anti-Israel NGO B’Tzelem, in the 27 years between 1987 (the First “Intifadah”) and 2014 (Operation Protective Edge), Israeli counter-terrorism measures killed a grand total of 8,441 Palestinians. But in only nine years (2011 – 2020), Arabs killed 586,100 Arabs in the Syrian Civil War, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’ report. Hirskovitz and Company were nowhere to be seen. Nor have they likely been writing about the grand slaughters of the last century, like those in the Soviet Empire (at least 20 million) and Máo’s China (perhaps 65 million). For him and his kind, only Israeli behavior — and it’s microscopic “massacres” — count.

The same disproportionate concern with Jewish conduct and its concomitant erasure of truly horrid crimes in Israel’s neighborhood and beyond can be endlessly extended.

So let us turn the tables. My organization, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, developed a way to counter such lies by moving the spotlight from fantasies of Israeli evil to the hideous human rights atrocities which appear not to really trouble this world’s Henry Hirskovitzs.

We produced a series of meme posters highlighting the moral hypocrisy of anti-Israel arguments, particularly those of the BDS movement. They can be downloaded here, or directly and in full resolution from our website.

For Mayor Schewel and his fellow Democratic Party members, though, the incident brought additional outside support for their political ambitions—much of it from Jews. Over the past 13 months, some $266,000 has poured into the Democratic Party platform campaigns. For State Attorney General Josh Stein—who was once a partner in a firm with JVP chapter leader Tom Stern—some 30% of his campaign support has come from donors outside of North Carolina, including $5,400 from George Soros and 290 donations from individuals in California, where JVP is based.

The rapid political progress in Durham has likewise attracted repeat marquee visits from BDS activist Linda Sarsour, who shared the city council’s misprisioned understanding of the Israeli law enforcement programs when she said elsewhere that American police are sent to be trained by “Israeli police and military, and then they come back here and do what? Stop and frisk, killing unarmed Black people across the country.” After Sarsour’s keynote last February at a UNC Chapel Hill public health conference—where Sarsour, who has no medical background, weighed in on the public health issues of the day by explaining that “I believe and I support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement”—she was brought back to give a $9,000 main address focusing on intersectionality and activism at a women’s history month Courageous Conversations event.

Wolf, Friedman, and others in the Durham community filed what would total three lawsuits against the city and leadership for both discrimination and violations of public records laws for using personal email accounts to communicate about the resolution before it was debated publicly. Two of those suits were eventually dismissed, and the third is now pending in a federal appeals court.

“In my view, making these sorts of announcements is discriminatory and illegal. However, it’s very difficult to get a court to agree to that,” David Abrams, a lawyer who represented one of the dismissed suits, told me. “If a town announced that we’re no longer hiring people of race X for position Y, and then it turns out that later they say, ‘well, we weren’t going to hire anyone for position Y,’ I don’t think a court would have a problem saying that the announcement itself is unlawful. It just seems that with Israel, people don’t take discrimination quite as seriously.”

In March, following the passage of the resolution, there was perhaps some indication that courts might wish to take anti-Semitic hate and its connection to passing purely speculative resolutions targeting the world’s only Jewish state more seriously. At a conference in Durham hosted by the Duke-UNC Middle East Consortium, a rapper named Tamer Nafar opened the performance of his song, “Mama, I Fell in Love with a Jew” and asked for assistance from the energized crowd. “This is my anti-Semitic song … I know it sounds like R&B stuff, but don’t think of Rihanna when you sing it,” Nafar said. “Think of Mel Gibson … Go that anti-Semitic … Let’s try it together. I need your help. I can’t be anti-Semitic alone.”

A video of the performance posted online led to outrage in some quarters of Durham. Others took a blithe view of the incident, including a UNC professor and adviser for JVP who challenged the logic of how someone could be anti-Semitic if they openly announced themselves to be anti-Semitic. “If your song is anti-Semitic, you’re not going to say that,” Eyse Crystall told one reporter. “The song was about being in love with a Jewish woman.”

Looking back since the passage of the resolution, Katherine Wolf told me that she anticipated the template used to pass the resolution in Durham would be implemented in progressive strongholds. “People think Durham is an isolated case. Actually, we’re the canary in the coal mine.”

For Deborah Friedman, the whole encounter with JVP and the institutions which rallied around them ultimately left her feeling unsure of her place in her own city. “You raise your kids here, they go to school in Durham, and you think you’re welcomed in the community. And you’re not. It really felt like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, you suddenly don’t know who your friends are anymore,” she said.

“They don’t care if they’re lying, or what they need to do. They just want to take their big old intersectional measuring stick and whack you over the head with it.”

The map of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s shutdown in Brooklyn can be perfectly correlated to the Orthodox Jewish community in the borough, and that is by design. In a video appearance, the governor has pegged spiking cases on the shoulders of only one community within the city: Orthodox Jews, and he linked the surge in the virus to the religious practices of Orthodox Judaism. In a public address, Cuomo explained, "We're now having issues in the Orthodox Jewish community in New York, where, because of their religious practices, we're seeing a spread.”

Through words and actions, the governor has shown that he views Jews as vectors of disease, and his mitigation strategy for the virus rests on shutting down the religious practices of Orthodox Jews.

Infection rates in the area are going up, and so the governor has decided to shut the entire area down: schools, stores, etc. Despite the fact that retail and education have not been tied to these spikes in cases (which have not resulted in nearly the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths we saw in the spring), the state punitively took action against only one entire area, those populated by Orthodox Jews, locking it down in its entirety.

In a recently released half-hour audio clip of a private phone conversation between Cuomo and rabbis in the community, we hear Cuomo say this: “I didn’t propose this, it was proposed by [Mayor Bill de Blasio] in the city. I’m trying to sharpen this and make it better. But it’s out of fear. People see the numbers going up and close everything, close everything. It’s not the best way to do it. It is a fear-driven response. The virus scares people. Hopefully, we get the numbers down in the ZIP codes, the anxiety comes down, and we can have a smarter, more tailored approach. Your point is right; why close every school? Why don’t you test the schools and close the ones that have a problem? I know. But, first, I don’t know if we have the resources to do that now. But I can tell you honestly, the fear is too high to do anything other than let’s do everything we can to get the infection rate down now; close the doors, and close the windows.”

On Friday, it was announced that a school in Brooklyn, Bais Yaakov Ateres Miriam, decided to push back against this fear-based response by the governor and demand its right to reopen safely, filing a lawsuit with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. The complaint on behalf of the Bais Yaakov school with the District Court for the Northern District of New York tasks the court to allow the school to reopen immediately and is the first of its kind, but should hardly be the last. In its briefing to the court, the Becket Fund explains, “Fear is not a compelling government interest, and—even in a pandemic—constitutional rights deserve better than a hatchet job. That is particularly true where the government admits public health is not in jeopardy.”

Despite the rising infection rate and the reopening of the school at the beginning of the year, the school has seen zero cases of the virus among its students or staff. The school has proven its ability to operate safely, and Becket is rightly fighting for it to continue to do so.

HAPPENING NOW: Media outside a Jewish Orthodox institution in Brooklyn, New York, attempting to report on lack of social distancing stymied by the community blasting car horns. pic.twitter.com/aFTTz2V0m5

— SV News 🚨 (@SVNewsAlerts) October 19, 2020

With the throngs of Paparazzi in #Williamsburg, you would think they found #Hunterbidenlaptop. pic.twitter.com/w9LqEpRs25

— Rabbi Yisroel Kahan (@ykahan) October 20, 2020

Fake Kazakh journalist Borat has blamed Israel and the Jews for the coronavirus.

The bumbling reporter is played by Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who is promoting the sequel to his 2006 hit film.

The character was known for being wildly anti-Semitic — more as a way of exposing and lampooning entrenched bigotry in American society than as commentary on Kazakhstan.

Baron Cohen, appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” opened the show by spraying disinfectant across the set and saying that his country’s intelligence services “have make discovery this morning that there is a virus.

“It come from a place called Wuhan, which is in Israel. There is no surprise. They are spreading everything,” Baron Cohen said.

“It spread from the you-know-whos,” he added, simulating a big nose with his hand.

He administered a “normal Kazakh plague questionnaire” to Kimmel, which opened with the question, “In the last week have you been in the presence of more than 15 minutes of any Jews?”

He also asked if Kimmel, “as a member Hollywood elite,” had recently drunk any “unpasteurized children’s blood” — a reference to anti-Semitic blood libels against Jews.

The problem with this coverage is that it would be like telling the story of lynchings in the US South by the KKK as a series of “extremists” killing “random people.”

For instance, the 2015 attack on the kosher market in Paris was described by US president Barack Obama as “a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.”

But it wasn’t random. Terming the systematic murder of African-Americans by the KKK as “random” would miss the nature of the terror campaign being conducted. The KKK sought out specific targets to spread fear, not just random people. The same methodology tends to underpin killings like the murder of the teacher.

This leads to questions about whether calling the KKK “violent extremists” would be better than reporting more narrowly on its white supremacist motivations. “Religious supremacist” is a term rarely, if ever, used to describe the terror attacks in places like France, but at the root of beheadings is a form of far-right, religious, supremacist attacks.

Re-focusing the attacks on the outcome, such as police shooting the perpetrator, tends to move the focus to the perpetrator rather than the victim and leave behind questions of motive and worldview.

Twenty years after the US declared a global war on terror, governments and the media still struggle with how to define these kinds of attacks.

Anti-fascists are incredibly quiet about the fascist in France who cut off a man’s head because he displayed some cartoons in a classroom. It is two days since the gruesome Islamist murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty for the supposed crime of showing caricatures of Muhammad to his pupils during a classroom discussion about freedom of speech. And yet the self-styled anti-fascists of the European and American left have said barely a word. There have been no big protests outside of France, no angry rallies, no Twitterstorms, no knee-taking or fist-raising, no promises by ‘Antifa’ to face down these extremists who slaughter schoolteachers for talking about liberty. Their craven, cowardly silence is as revealing as it is depressing.

After every Islamist terror attack, we hear the same thing from significant sections of the Western left, including those who style themselves as anti-fascist. Their first concern is always, but always, that an Islamist terror attack might give rise to an ‘Islamophobic’ backlash. We have to be careful about how we talk about Islamist terrorism, they say, or we might help to make Muslim communities into targets for racist violence. This is such a morally warped response to the extremist violence of radical Islamists. Imagine if, following an act of far-right violence carried out by a white man, someone said ‘Let’s not get too angry about this because we might alienate white people and put them at risk’. Imagine if, in the wake of the terrorist attacks by Anders Breivik in Norway or Brenton Tarrant in New Zealand, people’s first response was to wonder if white people would be okay, if white men were feeling safe. That is how crazy leftists sound when their Pavlovian response to the mass murder of children in Manchester or the slaughter of Bastille Day celebrants in Nice or the mowing down of Christmas shoppers in Berlin is to say: ‘I hope Muslims will be okay.’

Their instinct is always to hush and chill discussion of radical Islam. They have developed numerous strategies for doing this. The first, as described above, is to imply that there could be violence against Muslims if we get too angry or heated about an Islamist attack – a form of moral blackmail designed to stymie frank discussion of Islamist violence. Another is to promiscuously deploy the insult of ‘Islamophobe’ against anybody who raises awkward questions about the frequency and bloodiness of Islamist attacks in Europe, or who even uses that i-word at all (Islamist) to describe these acts of violence.

A mosque in Paris has apologised for sharing a video from a parent who called for a ‘mobilisation’ campaign against Samuel Paty, a teacher who was beheaded after showing his class a caricature of the Islamic prophet Mohammed shortly afterwards.

On Sunday, the leader of the Pantin mosque in Paris, M’hammed Henniche, admitted to sharing the video, which detailed the terror victim’s identity and address. Following the dissemination of the video, Paty was beheaded in an Islamic attack believed to have been committed by 18-year-old Chechen migrant Abdoulakh Anzorov.

“In hindsight, given what happened we regret having published it. We are now exploring how in the future we can take a step back before getting carried away with things like that,” the mosque leader said per FranceTVInfo.

“Nobody, really nobody, could imagine, on October 9 when I posted it, that it would end with this killing,” he added.

Henniche claimed that the video was widely shared through Muslim circles in the city, telling the French newspaper Libération: “At least ten people sent it to me. It circulated a lot, especially through WhatsApp groups.”

Following the Islamic attack, the mosque deleted the video from its Facebook page and called for its members to join tribute rallies for the victim.

Qatari Sociologist Abd Al-Aziz Al-Khazraj Al-Ansari: Samuel Paty’s Murder May Have Been Orchestrated Like 9/11; Killings, Stabbings Are Normal Reactions to Insults against the Prophet Muhammad pic.twitter.com/hGTSDDsTVJ

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 20, 2020

The outspoken Unite union leader, Len McCluskey, who has repeatedly downplayed antisemitism in the Labour Party, has apologised after saying that a Jewish politician should “go into a room and count his gold”.

Mr McCluskey made the comment about Lord Mandelson, a New Labour grandee and former minister, in an interview with the BBC. Told that Lord Mandelson had praised the new Leader of the Labour Party, Mr McCluskey told Newsnight: “I stopped listening to what Peter Mandelson said [sic] many, many years ago. I suggest that Peter just goes into a room and counts his gold, not worry about what’s happening in the Labour Party – leave that to those of us who are interested in ordinary working people.”

Lord Mandelson has made no secret of his Jewish heritage in the past. His grandfather founded the Harrow United Synagogue and his father worked at the JC. Lord Mandelson said in 2010: “It’s not that I am religious. It’s the extended family, which part of me wants to be part of.”

The notion that Jews are rich and self-interested is an age-old antisemitic trope.

Unite defended Mr McCluskey’s remark, reportedly saying in a statement: “Mr Mandelson’s religion was not relevant to the comments made by Mr McCluskey. Indeed, to the best of our knowledge Mr Mandelson is not Jewish. The ordinary meaning of the statement made by Mr McCluskey is one of his belief that in recent years Mr Mandelson has had more interest in increasing his own wealth than in fighting for social justice for working class people. The suggestion of any antisemitic meaning to the commentary would be ludicrous.”

However, late last night, Mr McCluskey tweeted: “Before this gets out of hand, let me say language is important and I apologise to Peter Mandelson and anyone else if mine has caused hurt.”

“Could be??!!” pic.twitter.com/J4TtrTEMWM

— SussexFriendsofIsrael (@SussexFriends) October 19, 2020

Ken Livingstone has said he has not seen a draft copy of the report by Britain’s equality watchdog into Labour antisemitism in advance of its publication.

Asked to comment on his response to the long-awaited Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report the former Mayor of London told the JC: “I haven’t objected to it. I haven’t seen it.”

Organisations and individuals which could be facing criticism in the report into Labour’s handling of antisemitism were sent draft copies in July.

The process - which saw the Labour Party confirming they had received a draft version -allowed them 28 days to mount any challenge to claims made within the document.

Mr Livingstone also told the JC he believed he had been subjected to "lies and smears” ever since he was first elected leader of the Greater London Council in 1981.

He said: “I’ve been accused of being corrupt, alcoholic...violent.

“I’ve had 39 years of lies and smears. Don’t worry about it.”

Mr Livingstone resigned from Labour after 50 years in May 2018 saying the issues around antisemitism had become a distraction.

He had been suspended since 2016 over comments relating to Adolf Hitler and Zionism.

StandWithUs, the pro-Israel organization that opposes anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist activities on college campuses, has written to Zoom Video Communications urging the company to deny a platform to airline hijacker Leila Khaled when she is scheduled to address students on Friday, Oct. 23, at the University of Hawaii. Zoom previously denied its platform to Khaled when she was scheduled to address students at San Francisco State University.

StandWithUs (SWU) released a copy of its letter to Eric S. Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom Video Communications, and also informed David Lasser, president of the University of Hawaii, of its strong objections to the event.

Below is a copy of the SWU letter that was sent to Yuan:

Dear Mr. Yuan, We write on behalf of the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Department and the StandWithUs Center for Combating Antisemitism, two divisions of StandWithUs, an international non-profit Israel education organization, concerning an upcoming Zoom event featuring convicted terrorist Leila Khaled. Ms. Khaled is apparently scheduled to speak through Zoom at an event at the University of Hawaii this upcoming Friday, October 23, 2020. According to the Facebook post, the purpose of the event is “to protest the lockstep censorship by Facebook, Zoom, YouTube, and SFSU of an Open Classroom featuring Leila Khaled. This webinar explores—and refuses!— the use of the label ‘terrorism’ to censor political speech and criminalize resistance.” In light of Khaled’s membership in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S. State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, and, more importantly, her terrorism convictions in connection with the 1969 hijacking of TWA Flight 840 and the 1970 hijacking of El Al Flight 219, we ask that you immediately take all necessary steps to ensure that a convicted terrorist not receive a platform on Zoom.

In a time of rising intolerance, boycotts only divide people and spread disunity and discrimination. There is a better way to bring about peace, and a better way to bring about change.

BDS is just a big lie!

> BDS has its own political agenda
> BDS is not a human rights org
> BDS aims to destroy Israel
> BDS does not seek to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians pic.twitter.com/UxrlY1SfgG

— Bassem Eid (@eid_bassem) October 19, 2020

With Beinart and Sarsour on a panel on Zionism, this should be totally balanced and not at a racist! #SaidNoOneEverpic.twitter.com/nkGsF27hO2

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 20, 2020

Approx. 95% of Jews are Zionists - a group of people @NerdeenKiswani and her organization @WOLPalestine are inciting violence against.

How does she make her money?

Via @Donorbox donations.

We are calling on Donorbox to cease all business relations with Kiswani and WOL. pic.twitter.com/1SFInn4sYr

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) October 19, 2020

Indeed, even narrowly thinking about suffering in the Middle East that’s on par with that of the Uighurs, O’Grady clearly didn’t consider Syria and Yemen – where hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed, and millions displaced.

To provide another comparison: The total death toll in the nine year Syria Civil War is believed to be over 400,000. In Yemen, six years of war have claimed over 230,000 lives. The number of Arabs (including Palestinians) killed in conflict over the last 100 years is around 91,000. (25,000 Jews were killed during that time period)

If you look at the past year, a total of 133 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces – a number (reported by the anti-Israel NGO B’tselem) which includes Palestinians slain whilst carrying out terror attacks, or in some way involved in hostilities (nearly half of the total number).

Using another metric of suffering, governments’ violations of their citizens’ human rights, the human rights organisation Freedom House lists, as the countries with the worst overall scores for political rights and civil liberties: Syria, Eritria, South Sudan, Turkmenistan, North Korea, Equatorial Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Somalia and Tajikistan.

By contrast, Freedom House ranks Israel as the best country in the Middle East on political and civil rights.

For the Indy journalist to assert that the collective suffering of the Palestinians is even in the same moral universe as that of the Uighurs suggests either profound malice or, more likely, a staggering level of ignorance.

On Aug. 28, a full-page advertisement was published in The New York Times to endorse Black Lives Matter. Claiming to represent “the majority of American Jews,” the ad not only proclaimed support for the “Black Lives Matter” message – the pursuit of racial justice, freedom and safety for Blacks – which the vast majority of American Jewish communities strongly support, but for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement – a framework encompassing different entities about which many American Jews are more apprehensive.

The ad celebrated the larger movement as America’s “current day Civil Rights Movement” and the “best chance at equity and justice.” Spearheaded by radical-left and pro-BDS groups like Bend the Arc and Jewish Voice for Peace, the ad purported to represent Jewish organizations from across the spectrum “speaking in one voice” to support the BLM movement. It also implicitly attacked those voicing concern about the movement’s antisemitism by suggesting they were racists and white supremacists who were “pointing fingers, scapegoating, and using antisemitic dogwhistles” in order to undermine Black-led movements. The advertisement thus provoked anger and anxiety within the American Jewish community.

What is the Controversy Over the Movement?The controversy about the BLM movement – in contrast to the cause – began years earlier, when movement leaders came out in support of the antisemitic BDS movement following a junket to “Palestine” organized by one of the BLM-affiliated groups called Dream Defenders that brought black activists to Israel and the West Bank to meet with BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti and other radical anti-Israel activists and militants. Among them was the BLM movement co-founder, Patrisse Cullors.

The December 2014 trip was the first of several such trips organized by Dream Defenders, a group founded by three alumni of Florida state universities in Tallahassee in reaction to the killing in Florida of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, following a physical altercation. Although the group’s co-founders were initially focused on repealing Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” Law which they believed resulted in Martin’s killing and Zimmerman’s acquittal, the mission quickly expanded. One of the co-founders of the group was a Palestinian-American activist by the name of Ahmad Abuznaid whose own focus was to create a nexus between Palestinian grievances and those of African Americans and to link the emerging BLM movement with BDS. In April 2014, Abuznaid spoke at an event sponsored by the BDS group, Students for Justice in Palestine, at his alma mater. His topic was “The Freedom Struggle From Florida to Palestine: A Look at Racial Oppression in America and Israel.”

So, where did the Telegraph get the 400 figure from?

Well, Reuters published a similar story a week ago (“Palestinian village installs cameras, accusing Israeli settlers of attacks”, Oct. 7), which quoted Ali Faraj, co-founder of the Palestinian camera project highlighted in the Oct. 19th Telegraph article, claiming more than 450 such incidents.

So, the 400+ figure appears to be nothing more than an unsubstantiated Palestinian claim.

To be fair, there is a lot of tree vandalism in the West Bank by settlers, with thousands of trees vandalized, per the UN database, yearly. But, physical violence is of course not the same thing as vandalism, which is an important distinction given that the article uses wording (“they are attacking us“, Palestinians have been “beaten”) suggesting daily occurrences of the former.

We’ve been in touch with the Telegraph, and asked that they either provide a credible source for the 400 figure, or clarify to readers that it’s merely an unverified Palestinian claim.

A combination of a recent Holocaust survivors' campaign, as well as a shocking US study that showed a serious lack of knowledge among so-called Generation Z, 48% of whom could not name a single concentration camp., has prompted social media giants Facebook and Twitter to announce last week that both platforms will ban posts denying the Holocaust, in line with their respective rules on violating hateful conduct policy.

While this is a very important step, US Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism Elan Carr argues that social media is rife with "raw hate" against Jews and will probably remain as such in the foreseeable future.

Carr, who was named as the Trump administration's special envoy on anti-Semitism in February 2019, told JNS that there is only so much that the federal government can do to curb online posts.

"Obviously, a portion of online anti-Semitism rises to the level of crime, and, of course, that should be addressed and addressed aggressively. But the vast majority of online hate is protected by the First Amendment, so the government can't go after protected speech nor should it," he said.

Asked whether a free-market approach could better combat anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism on social-media sites, Carr said, "Competition is always a good thing, and certainly, the government has expressed that view specifically in the context of the social-media platforms.

"At the end of the day, you've got some bad actors who are spouting hate on the Internet. One can decide to regulate this or that platform, but at the end of the day, we've got to go to the source of the problem. The source of the problem is people hold despicable views. The First Amendment protects despicable views, but it doesn't mean we can't condemn them or call them out. I think that is absolutely critical.

After more than 20 red Swastikas were spray-painted all along rue de Rivoli in the center of Paris, the Criminal Court, surprisingly, didn't, retain the "antisemitic character" of the act.

A 31-year-old man from Georgia was arrested at the scene on October 11 on suspicion of spray-painting the swastikas. He will be judged on November 18 by the court for "refusal of signaling" and "degradation of classified property" but "the antisemitic character" of the alleged act was denied and not retained by the court.

This decision was strongly denounced by the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA).

"Something is not right in the functioning of justice. The Minister of the Interior himself denounces the tags as Nazi's, but the prosecution does not retain any aggravating circumstances in the matter, considering that swastikas are not Nazi," LICRA declared in a tweet.

According to the Paris prosecutor's office, it is not legally possible to retain the aggravating circumstance of the commission of acts due to religion, insofar as these degradations have been committed without specifically targeting buildings identified as linked to the Jewish community.

Tagged in red on the columns of the arcades of the rue de Rivoli, the swastikas were visible early Sunday morning in photos posted on social networks.

A San Diego teenage boy was arrested by police last Friday in connection with a violent assault on a rabbi in the University City neighborhood the previous weekend.

The 14-year-old was booked into Juvenile Hall on battery and hate crime charges, San Diego Police Lt. Shawn Takeuchi said. On the previous Saturday, Oct. 10, the teen was alleged to have punched Rabbi Yonatan Halevy of the Shiviti Congregation to the ground as he walked to synagogue with his father for Shabbat services.

Halevy explained that the teen had ridden past him on a bike, and then abruptly turned and punched him in the face. After regaling the rabbi with insults and a reference to “white power,” he rode off laughing, Halevy told The San Diego Union-Tribune.

“I was shocked, stunned, and hurt, but was grateful that my father was unharmed,” the rabbi recalled.

Halevy said that the synagogue had been targeted by a group of teens, including the alleged assailant, for a few weeks before the attack. They had been heckled and a car window was broken, he said.

Even before the attack on Halevy, the Anti-Defamation League’s regional director had highlighted the problems faced by the synagogue.

“We don’t want to be dismissive and say it was just kids,” the ADL’s Tammy Gillies said. “We have to take hate and any hate incident very seriously.”

A Director of a Canadian human rights group has posted a virulently antisemitic meme and antisemitic text on Facebook and Twitter, according to a report.

Aliya Hasan, also known as Aliyawa Jamal Hasan, a Director of Canadian Defenders for Human Rights (CD4HR), uploaded a post to Facebook on 14th October featuring an octopus with a Star of David symbol and a letter “Z” (for Zionist) on its head and its tentacles wrapped around the Capitol building. Each tentacle bore the initials of a Jewish organisation. The caption read: “Dear Americans, Sorry to break it to you, but America is under occupation and Biden and the Democrats won’t change that. Sincerely, The rest of the sane world.”

Commenting on her own post, Ms Hasan wrote: “I’ll be getting blocked by some more diehard dems [Democrats] soon.” She accompanied her post with ‘sad-face’ and ‘crying’ emojis.

She added, “Just letting the trash take itself out,” with a series of ‘laughing’ and ‘crying with laughter’ emojis.

On October 14, 2020 Hasan tweeted: “Dear Americans, Sorry to break it to you, but America is under occupation and #Biden and the #Democrats won’t change that. Sincerely, The rest of the sane world.” She attached the same antisemitic meme of an octopus with its tentacles wrapped around America’s seat of government.

The notions of the Jews as excessively powerful – often illustrated through tentacles imagery – and parasitic are common antisemitic themes.

Several Jewish cemeteries and a Holocaust memorial have been desecrated in Greece, the country’s Jewish council said Monday, just days after neo-Nazi leaders were jailed in a landmark trial.

A graffito saying, “With Jews you lose,” was sprayed Friday onto a monument dedicated to the 50,000 Jews of Thessaloniki in northern Greece exterminated during the Holocaust, the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) said in a statement.

The words “Death to Israel” were also discovered at the Jewish cemetery of Thessaloniki, while four tombs were vandalized in the Jewish cemetery on Rhodes island in the southeast.

The acts of vandalism come after the leader of Greece’s neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn and his inner circle were handed 13-year prison sentences on Wednesday.

The sentences represented a major downfall for a party that had been the country’s third most popular in 2015 when the trial began.

An auction house in Munich, Germany, has again come under fire for selling Nazi memorabilia, this time including various speaking notes from Adolf Hitler.

The chairman of the European Jewish Association (EJA), Rabbi Menachem Margolin, said he couldn’t get his “head around the sheer irresponsibility and insensitivity” of selling such items to the highest bidder.

Hermann Historica was criticized in November 2019 for a similar auction. The lots ended up being bought by a Lebanese businessman, Abdallah Chatila, who then donated them to Yad Vashem to do with as they saw fit.

Following the fallout of the last auction, the EJA has been pushing European lawmakers to ban the sale of Nazi memorabilia as part of an overall plan to tackle antisemitism across the continent.

“It defies logic, decency and humanity for the very same auction house that came under fire less than a year ago for selling disgusting lots of Nazi memorabilia that they should do so again,” said Margolin in a statement. “What auctions like this do help legitimize Hitler enthusiasts who thrive on this sort of stuff.”

Margolin called for the auction to be stopped and for the German government to intervene.

An A-star student said to have fallen down “the rabbit hole of the internet” to become a neo-Nazi has pleaded guilty to fourteen terror charges.

Harry Vaughan, who is eighteen, is said to have begun taking an interest in Satanic neo-Nazism at the age of fourteen, unbeknownst to his parents, who were bewildered when he was arrested some years later.

He had “every advantage that could have been afforded to him,” according to his barrister, having been educated at a prestigious grammar school and received four A-star grades in summer exams.

In 2018, he applied to join the System Resistance Network, a white supremacist successor to National Action, which the Government proscribed as a terrorist organisation in 2016 following a long campaign by Campaign Against Antisemitism and others. He wrote at the time that “there is nothing I wouldn’t do to further the cause”.

He was arrested at home on 19th June last year in a counter-terrorism operation against a far-right online forum called Fascist Forge. His laptop was seized, revealing documents relating to antisemitism, Satanism and neo-Nazism, as well as as far-right terrorist book, bomb-making manuals and materials from the Sonnenkrieg Division, a neo-Nazi organisation that was proscribed by the Government this year.

Police also discovered videos of child abuse, which also led to charges to which Mr Vaughan has pleaded guilty.

A Nazi banner was seen draped out of a first floor window in a house in Stoke-On-Trent.

The banner in Birches Head was publicised on social media, where police announced that it was being investigated.

This is not the first time that a Nazi flag has appeared in the area. In 2017, a trader was suspended from a town market after displaying a Nazi banner at his stall in nearby Leek.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews almost four times more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.

Transparency International, a watchdog group fighting corruption worldwide, named Israel in its top category for enforcement against corruption in international transactions, financial daily Globes reported Sunday. This is the second successive year in which Israel gets top marks for combating this type of corruption.

Together with Israel, the US, the UK, and Switzerland were also given top marks among the 47 countries surveyed, the report said.

Transparency International operates in over 100 countries and its Israeli office is headed by former President of the National Labor Court Judge Nili Arad.

Recognizing the efforts Israel has invested in enforcing laws designed to eliminate corruption from international deals, the report said that between 2016 and 2019, Iocal law enforcement agencies have launched 10 investigations into such cases. One criminal indictment was filed and three cases concluded with imposing sanctions on the suspected parties.

According to Globes, the report made note of directives issued by the State Attorney's Office in October 2019, outlining policy with regard to indicting corporations and the relevant penalties under the law. Investigations of foreign bribery cases are carried out by the Israel Police's National Fraud Unit and are supervised by the Lahav 433 Major Crimes Unit. Some involve the Israel Securities Authority and Tax Authority.

Israel's pension system ranks third in the world, according to an annual global survey.

The Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index rated Israel's pension system 74.7 out of 100, giving it a B grade and placing it third out of the 39 countries surveyed.

This was Israel's first year being included on the 12-year-old index. The two countries that placed ahead of Israel, the Netherlands and Denmark, were the only two given an A grade, and are already widely regarded as having the best pension systems in the world.

For comparison, the US and UK both were graded C+. More than half of the countries on the list saw their ratings drop this year as global economies contend with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 crisis.

Broken down, Israel's pension system ranked fourth for sustainability, seventh for integrity, and 12th for adequacy.

"Israel’s retirement income system comprises of a universal state pension and private pensions with compulsory employer and employee contributions," the report said. "In most cases, annuities are paid from the private pension system."

Facebook said Tuesday it has started to test a new, lightweight version of its popular Instagram App, with improved speed, performance, and responsiveness while using less data, to target users in emerging markets where network connectivity is unstable and speeds can be slow.

Instagram Lite, the new version of the app for Android systems, is being developed by the social media giant’s technology team in Tel Aviv, which was also responsible for leading the product development of the Facebook Lite feature — the lightweight version of the regular Facebook app for cellphones, used today by millions of users worldwide.

Facebook’s R&D hub in Tel Aviv, set up in 2013, today employs a few hundred workers locally and is the second-largest strategic development center for the social media giant after the US, Tzach Hadar, director of Product Management for Lite interfaces and Tel Aviv tech site lead, said at a virtual meeting with reporters.

Instagram Lite is less than 2MB, compared to 32MB for the regular app, which makes it fast to install and quick to load. It is designed to offer the core features of the original Instagram app for millions of users in emerging markets, such as Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines, Egypt and Turkey, who cannot access the original Instagram experience as they don’t have access to high-speed Wi-Fi internet and are reliant on mobile connections that typically don’t go above 2G or 3G, explained Michelle Lourie, product manager of Instagram Lite.

Emerging markets will account for over 90% of new mobile subscribers globally, Facebook said in a statement.

As Israel finalizes an agreement to normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates, Netanya-based agriculture technology startup CropX Technologies is already fielding numerous calls and emails from the Gulf country, which only a few months ago was off limits to Israelis.

“CropX has started receiving many inquiries from interested agricultural companies and investors,” said Tomer Tzach, CEO of CropX, which makes simple to install underground sensors that track moisture and other soil properties. “The UAE market is very relevant to CropX and has the potential of becoming CropX’s third largest market.”

The company’s sensors store and analyze the data in the cloud and notify farmers via phone alerts when to water their fields, saving large amounts of water – a potential game-changer for the parched Gulf landscape.

The experience of CropX highlights how the US-brokered agreement with the UAE is opening up opportunities for Israeli tech companies that focus on water and agriculture. The water-starved and fast-developing Gulf region is eager to find invest

Viewers were gripped Monday night by the first episode of “Valley of Tears,” or “She’at Neilah” in Hebrew, a fictionalized retelling of the 1973 Yom Kippur War that is the biggest-budget Israeli TV series to date.

At 9:15 p.m. on Kan 11, and on the Kan 11 website, the main characters were introduced in an engrossing double episode lasting 83 minutes.

Intended to tell the stories of the soldiers who battled in the war and deal with the national trauma the war inflicted on the Israeli psyche, “Sha’at Neilah” brings the 1970s to life, from cars and fashions to slang and tanks.

During the episode viewers meet Dafna (Joy Rieger), whose boyfriend, Yoav (Aviv Alush), is stationed at the Mount Hermon outpost that’s later attacked by Syrian commandos; Alush (Imri Bitton), saying goodbye to his girlfriend before heading to the Golan, and Meni, a boozy journalist played by Lior Ashkenazi, who’s in bed with two young women on Yom Kippur when his ex-wife calls, hysterical that their son is heading to battle.

Up north in the Golan Heights, viewers meet the soldiers stationed at the Mount Hermon outpost, including Avinoam (Shahar Taboch), a genius and socially awkward intelligence soldier who speaks Arabic and is terrified about what’s coming their way.

Then Trump came into office. Trump made clear that his doctrine of America First meant America would work with allies who shared its interests and goals. He emphasized that the U.S.'s goal was to defeat the forces of radical Islam and terror. When along with Israel, Arab state after state lined up to join him, Trump realized that the tectonic plates had shifted and true peace was possible for the first time. And he sent his team to achieve it.

The Palestinians, so used to being feted by U.S. administrations convinced that without the Palestine Liberation Organization's permission, no peace could ever be reached between Israel and the Arab world, were left on the sidelines, screaming anti-Semitic curses at Trump, his family and his advisors.

As for Iran, to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and destabilize the regime that seeks to dominate the Middle East to the detriment of U.S. national security and the survival of U.S. allies, Trump vacated the U.S.'s signature on the Obama-Biden nuclear deal with Iran. He implemented a strategy of "maximum pressure" to economically and politically destabilize the regime, while supporting U.S. regional allies in their acts to defend themselves against Iranian aggression. The administration is now adding new sanctions to block weapons sales to Iran. News sales will be possible for the first time in 20 years because the Obama-Biden nuclear deal put a sunset clause on the UN weapons embargo, freeing Iran to purchase advanced weapons on the open market beginning this month.

Biden has pledged to reinstate the U.S.'s commitment to the nuclear deal and end economic sanctions on Iran, thus freeing the most prolific state sponsor of terrorism to develop a nuclear arsenal within a year. He has also pledged to restore the Palestinians and their opposition to Israel's very existence to the center stage of a renewed U.S. policy of hostility toward Israel.

In Asia, Biden and Obama strengthened U.S. ties with Beijing, to Beijing's advantage. Obama told U.S. workers that their manufacturing jobs would not come back. In the 1990s, Biden shepherded China to most-favored-nation trading status and World Trade Organization membership, setting the course for the outsourcing of the U.S manufacturing base to China.

But Trump revitalized manufacturing in the U.S. through his trade tariffs, his corporate tax cuts and his trade deals with Canada, Mexico and China. Trump has confronted China's growing rivalry head-on, recognizing that the superpower competition between the U.S. and China will likely define international power politics in the coming decades.

These and other issues might have been discussed in a presidential debate centered on foreign policy. Unfortunately, thanks to Welker and the Commission on Presidential Debates, the public won't have the opportunity to hear such a discussion. Instead, it will be subjected to brief regurgitations of talking points before Welker moves on to another topic.

Rather than the person, I advise a focus on a party's overall outlook. Does it take pride in American history or emphasize its faults? Does it favor the original Constitution or a living version of it? Does it emphasize individualism or equality? Does it focus on the free market or government oversight? Does it see the United States more as a force for good or ill in the world?

From these first principles derive the myriad of specific policies that characterize an administration and make it unique. These, not the president's appearance or college grades, determine his place in history and the trajectory of the country. Indeed, that the team's views and policies are often sharper-edged than the president's further emphasizes the central importance of his outlook.

Personally, I favor the first in each of those dualities: a proud view of the United States, caution about the Constitution, and an emphasis on individualism and free markets. In this election, only one of the two major parties agrees with my outlook. Despite my intense aversion to Trump's immorality, vulgarity, and egotism, these now worry me less than the Democrats' uniquely radical program. And so, I publicly endorsed him. To quote journalist Bernard Goldberg, "He is a detestable man. And I hope he wins."

Why then did I vote Libertarian in 2016? Because Trump appeared to be a populist out to wreck the Republican party, the conservative movement, and even American democracy. Then, to my surprise, he governed as a conservative on those issues I consider most important. So, consistent with the argument presented here, I put aside my distaste and fears.

Now, revoltingly, a mere hundred years after their forebears began arriving at the ports of Jaffa and Haifa, and 29 years after “Operation Solomon,” Haskel and his comrades have lost contact with their mother ship. “Zionism” for them is not an article of faith or even an ideological position. It is a marketing tool they use to present themselves as the rightful rulers of Israel. For the past decade, leftist parties have used it to hide their radical positions. In 2015 the leftist party called itself “The Zionist Union” while pushing a post-Zionist platform. In 2019, the leftist party called itself “Blue and White” to hide its ideological nihilism and blind quest for power.

The “Ingathering of Exiles” (kibbutz galuyot) that captivated the imaginations and steered the dreams of Jews through millennia of persecution, expulsions and massacre is for Haskel and his colleagues merely the name of a highway junction in Tel Aviv that they send protesters to block on a semi-regular basis.

Haskel instinctively attacked the police officers as ungrateful wretches because he either forgot or never really understood the purpose of the country. For him, the fight is about taking power away from the irritating Jews who keep faith with his grandparents’ vision and seizing it for himself and his friends in the name of his grandparents’ legacy.

Aside from the media that gives slobbering coverage to anyone who opposes Netanyahu, Haskel and his comrades’ most powerful ally in their lawbreaking, contemptuous protests is Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit. Like them, Mandelblit uses loaded language to try to give an ideological veneer to his self-aggrandizing behavior.

This brings us to the Knesset representatives of Israel’s Arabs. Odeh not only voted against the Abraham Accords, but told the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen that they are based on a “flawed assumption” about Iran being the “fundamental issue.”

Pooh-poohing the Iranian threat — to a network whose sponsors are Iranian proxies — he said, “The Israeli occupation is the fundamental problem.” Al-Mayadeen is used to and regularly promotes Israel-bashing. Having help from an Arab Knesset member who isn’t even as radical as some of the others on his list must have been especially welcome.

Speaking of which, Joint List MK Abbas Mansour, chairman of the United Arab List Party, explained to Israel’s Kan Radio on Monday why he couldn’t unequivocally condemn the beheading of a history teacher by a Chechen Islamist in a suburb of Paris on Friday.

Mansour said that the teacher should not have shown his students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, even in the context of a lesson on freedom of expression, since such depictions are offensive to Muslims. Try as they might, the interviewers did not manage to get him to concede that in this case, the cartoons were part of an educational exercise or that democracy involves free speech.

Instead, he ranted about the pluralism of Islam and its respect for all people and religions to prove his point that causing offense to Muslims goes against such values. In his eyes, apparently, decapitation does not.

Given the Palestinian honchos’ unwillingness to coexist with Israelis at the expense of their own people’s well-being, it is logical for the likes of Odeh and Mansour to be on their side against the Abraham Accords. What makes no sense at all, however, is that the Joint List — the third-largest faction in the Knesset — is more hostile to Zionists than the sheikhs of Abu Dhabi and Manama.

The following is an edited text of the interview given by US Ambassador David Friedman to Israel Hayom Editor-in-Chief Boaz Bismuth during "The International Shiloh Forum, Kohelet Forum and Israel Hayom Conference" in October 2020.

Mr. Ambassador, America will hold an election in less than a month, against the backdrop of a changed Middle East. Iran is under immense pressure and deterred due to the killing of [Quds Force commander] Qassim Soleimani, Israel's status is significantly improved, and its ties with the Arab world are stronger than ever. Russia is in check in Syria. Can you say that the peace deals in the Middle East between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain are the chief foreign policy accomplishment of the Trump administration?

"Well, thank you, Boaz. It is great to be with you. I think the peace agreements with UAE and Bahrain are certainly among the greatest foreign policy achievements of the Trump administration, but I think you need to look at all of it holistically, I think it began with the recognition of Jerusalem, as Israel's capital, the moving of the embassy, recognizing the Golan Heights as being part of Israeli sovereign territory, the recognition that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are not illegal. All those were building blocks along the way to a policy which I think demonstrated to the entire region that one can be pro-Israel without doing damage or God forbid causing conflict or war within the Middle East. And I think it created a platform for countries like the UAE and Bahrain and all the others to come in. So certainly the peace agreements, which happens once in a generation if at all, certainly, the peace agreement is a crowning achievement of President Trump's first term. But I think we have to look at it not in isolation but as part of an overall strategy where the Trump administration has stood with and empowered its allies and taken a much harsher view of its enemies, and I think that is why we are where we are today."

You mentioned the transfer of the embassy, which was a huge event. I remember being there, I was one of the lucky guests of course. And for you personally, having your desk transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, what an event. People at the time warned us that it would cause the Middle East to go ablaze, were you at the time, the administration, confident enough to know that this would not be the case?

"We were confident that this would not set the Middle East on fire. At the same time, we prepared for the worst. We were gauging the reaction or potential reaction all throughout the region, from as far West as Morocco to as far east as Pakistan. We were checking in with our embassies, we were collecting our intelligence, so we were preparing for the worst case but the more we prepared the more we confident that not only would this not set the world on fire, but actually it was a very positive step forward because it showed that America was willing to keep its promises and stand with its allies. And we have many allies in the region, and I think that other allies recognized that America was a good friend that could be trusted. It went according to plan and I think it set the stage for many further successes."

A visiting UAE delegation and Israeli officials signed several agreements on Tuesday to support cooperation in investment, tourism, financial services and technology financed via the newly launched Abraham Fund.

The Abraham Fund, launched under a commitment made in last month’s Abraham Accord peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, will mobilize more than $3 billion in private sector-led investment and development initiatives to promote regional economic cooperation and prosperity in the Middle East.

Focused on “people-centric investments,” the fund also aims to inspire young Arabs and Israelis to build a future that serves both themselves and their communities, explains His Excellency Ahmed Al Sayegh, UAE minister of state and chairman of the Abu Dhabi Global Market.

“It reflects the desire of the three countries to put the well-being of people first, regardless of their creed or identity,” he said, adding that the UAE “is confident the initiative can be a source of economic and technological strength for the region, while simultaneously improving the lives of those who need the most support.”

The delegation visit comes in the wake of the historic peace accord between the UAE and Israel, where both countries committed to multilateral engagement that benefits the entire region. Officials say that countries outside the region are also invited to advance the fund’s objectives.

A recap of Tuesday's historic signing ceremony between #Israel and the #UAE. The event marked the first ever official visit made by UAE diplomats to the Jewish state pic.twitter.com/tmgRTfTpPG

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) October 21, 2020

Israel has been conducting undercover diplomacy in Bahrain for more than a decade through a front company listed as a commercial consulting firm.

Why it matters: The existence of the covert diplomatic mission in the Bahraini capital Manama shows the depth of a secret relationship that came out into the open with a White House ceremony last month.

The existence of the secret diplomatic office remained under an Israeli government gag order for 11 years. A short report about it appeared on Israel’s Channel 11 news last week.

Today, I'm reporting many more details based on conversations with Israeli and Bahraini sources, as well as Bahraini Commerce Ministry records.

The backstory: Negotiations over a potential secret diplomatic mission started in 2007-2008 through a series of secret meetings between Israel's then-foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and her Bahraini counterpart, Khaled Bin Ahmad al-Khalifa.

Their close relationship, along with a decision by regional rival Qatar to shut down Israel's diplomatic mission in Doha, convinced the Bahrainis to approve the opening of a secret Israeli mission in Manama, Israeli officials say.

How it happened: On July 13, 2009, a company named “The Center for International Development” was registered in Bahrain. It was a front, providing cover for Israeli diplomacy.

ICYMI: Here is the joint statement between the United States, Israel, and Bahrain on a historic signing of agreements reached on a wide range of cooperation and growth opportunities. More to come! #AbrahamAccordshttps://t.co/4wJztBYjIe

— NSC (@WHNSC) October 20, 2020

Wow, that's quite the front page from @TheNationalNews paper! #UAE#Israel#AbrahamFundpic.twitter.com/ugi3AGQNyT

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 21, 2020

On the same day that a small senior delegation from the United Arab Emirates, including ministers of economy and finance and two deputy ministers, met in Israel, more than 650 people from 83 countries met on Zoom and Facebook to also make history. They participated in a four-hour conference sponsored by Access Israel, featuring Dr. Ayesha Saeed Husaini, founder and director of Manzil from the United Arab Emirates.

Husaini’s presentation on PRIDE (People Receiving Independence and Dignity through Empowerment), the Manzil employment program for people with disabilities, was part of the international webinar, titled “Employment of People with Disabilities – Challenges, Solutions, Technologies and Best Practices.” It was simultaneously translated into Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic and American Sign Language and was closed-captioned. The webinar included attendees from the United Arab Emirates.

Michal Rimon, the CEO of Access Israel, met Husaini in February 2020 in Austria at the Zero Project Conference, which brought together accessibility leaders and organizations from around the world. Rimon was particularly impressed with Husaini and the work she and her team were and are doing at Manzil, and began wondering how the organizations might work together.

“We discussed what options do we have? I have an American passport, someone there has Portuguese citizenship. You know, maybe we can meet and collaborate,” reported Rimon somewhat ironically, as she had no idea that in a few short months, Israel and the UAE would sign historic accords.

“The changes that have occurred... the peace treaty that was signed, opening the doors, making connections possible, overcoming barriers, this is for us really an exciting time, and I can tell you that when I met Dr. Aisha I was really impressed by what they were doing.”

Following the addition of #Kosher food options to menus at hospitality venues #InAbuDhabi, @dctabudhabi has signed an agreement with the ‘Emirates Agency for Kosher Certification’ to introduce a new Kosher Certification Project for the hotels in the capital. #AbrahamAccordspic.twitter.com/WlG8kbNDZ4

— حسن سجواني 🇦🇪 Hassan Sajwani (@HSajwanization) October 21, 2020

📢 ‘Bringing #Israel - #UAE Peace Down Under.’ 🇮🇱 🇦🇪 🇦🇺

The ZCNSW is delighted to host @omaralbusaidy from UAE on 27 Oct, in a special on-line event discussing the historic peace accords!

Omar will be speaking in conversation with ZCNSW’s @Ostrov_A, followed by a Q&A session! pic.twitter.com/YSbk2wVaWl

— ZCNSW (@ZC_NSW) October 21, 2020

While the Iranian leadership continues its long-standing pattern of hostile declarations regarding the U.S. and Israel, Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, daughter of senior regime official Hashemi Rafsanjan, who died under unclear circumstances in January 2017, called on the regime to change its policy vis-à-vis Israel. She said that it should prioritize the national interest over stubborn adherence to an ideology that in any case is not being uniformly implemented with the rest of the world's countries.

On October 6, 2020, Ms. Hashemi, a former Majlis member and women's rights activist, was asked about the normalization of relations between the Gulf countries and Israel. She replied that there is a need to update Iran's policy in all matters in order to move the country ahead – including in the issues of relations with Israel, fatwas, and Islamic law (fiqh) – so that the regime would be relevant. She spoke out strongly against the inconsistency of the Iranian regime, which focused on the ideological aspect in all things concerning the Palestinian Muslims, but which did not care about this aspect in its extensive dealings and relations with China and Russia, where Muslims are also oppressed. The regime shows a level of sensitivity on the Palestinian issue, she said, that exceeds the sensitivity to this matter existing in the rest of the Muslim world.

In contrast to Ms. Hashemi, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, commander of coordination in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reiterated, in a television interview, the regime's positions on Israel and the U.S. Naqdi said that Iran was much closer to the Zionists' borders than people knew, and that Israel was surrounded by Muslim fighters with weapons at the ready. He clarified that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's statements that Israel would no longer exist within 25 years had been misunderstood, and that it would cease to exist much sooner than that. He also warned that any move Israel made against Iran's national security would be met with a decisive response.

Explaining that the U.S. was on the wane and was no longer a superpower, Naqdi said that if it went to war against Iran, it would face a catastrophe in which it would not know what military base in the U.S. would be bombed or what would happen to the White House. The IRGC, he added, was planning for the possibility of an attack by the U.S. He expressed his hope, however, that Iran's victory would be achieved without bloodshed, and that like the Prophet Muhammad's conquest of Mecca and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's return to Tehran,[1] the Iranians would enter Jerusalem and reenact the Islamic conquest there. He concluded by pointing out the might of the IRGC and its ability to mobilize millions of volunteers from across the Islamic world, who would form an army 100 million strong that would join the Iranian army of 20 million.

In the wake of the normalization agreements signed by the UAE and Bahrain with Israel, several Arab media outlets, most of them opposed to the Syrian regime, have been discussing the possible renewal of peace negotiations between Syria and Israel, and have reported that diplomatic efforts to promote this goal are underway. For example, in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, senior analyst Ibrahim Hamidi assessed that secret negotiations between Syria and Israel may already be taking place, and that one of the issues addressed may be the Iranian presence in Syria. The Lebanese daily Al-Nahar, known for its support of the pro-Saudi and anti-Iranian camp, claimed that the U.S. and Russia have reached understandings regarding the need to promote a settlement between Syria and Israel, and that Arab countries were interested in advancing this issue was well. The articles stressed that the Syrian regime may currently be motivated to resume peace talks with Israel in order to break out of its international isolation and guarantee its survival.

As stated, these articles were published in papers opposed to the Syrian regime, and therefore the reliability of their claims regarding possible negotiations between Syria and Israel is unclear. The articles may represent an effort by opponents of the Assad regime, some of whom support normalization with Israel, to spark a media debate on this issue and investigate the reactions to it.

The Syrian regime, for its part, denied the reports and clarified that it opposes any agreement with the Israeli enemy. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad stated reiterated that Syria will not normalize relations with Israel until it withdraws from the Syrian territories it is occupying, adding that Israel has given no sign of being willing to do so.

This document reviews some of the reports on possible Syria-Israel rapprochement and the reactions of the Syrian regime to these reports.

The alliance of mostly-Arab parties in Israel’s parliament made clear following their vote last week against the peace deal with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain that they intend to adopt the same position vis-à-vis any such agreement between Israel and the Palestinian leadership, given that peace agreements fail to resolve the conflict.

Representatives of the four parties, which hold a total of 13 seats in the 120-seat legislature, made statements to that effect today in response to Sunday’s festive inauguration of commercial flights between Manama, Bahrain and Tel Aviv. Alliance leader MK Ayman Odeh repeated his faction’s opposition to any peace deals between Israel and Arab states, since those deals leave the Palestinian issue unresolved and deprive the Palestinians of political and diplomatic leverage. The same will hold true if the Palestinian leadership ever decides to resume long-suspended negotiations with the Jewish State over final status issues such as borders, refugees, the disposition of Jerusalem, and whether Jews may continue to inhabit communities that would end up under Palestinian control: the Joint List will oppose such a resolution of those hereunto intractable subjects, Odeh explained, because resolving them will mean Palestinians must relinquish their century-old dream of destroying Jewish sovereignty.

“These so-called ‘peace’ deals are nothing more than a betrayal of the Palestinian cause,” charged Odeh, echoing the rhetoric of PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and other prominent Palestinian leaders. “We who are charged by our constituents with keeping the Palestinian issue alive even within the 1948 borders will not be the ones to cement any such betrayal by Palestinians. This bloc will vote against any agreement with Israel no matter who signs it. If Muhammad the Prophet himself were to ink such a deal we would still oppose it. We would also claim it wasn’t really Muhammad, because that would be awkward.”

US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper addressed the recent agreements to normalize relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, saying that they could help deter Iran.

“It is a great success by the president and his team in the White House,” Esper said on Tuesday, in remarks at the Atlantic Council in Washington, adding that “we’ll see if more countries follow as well. We’re all hopeful, and everybody is trying to roll in that same direction.”

Esper said that the normalization agreements are essential for multiple reasons. “It’s the diplomatic opportunities it presents, it’s the security and it’s the economic [opportunities].”

He noted that Arab countries “see that there is great potential for economic growth if there is normalization.”

Another factor, he said, is that “so many of the countries in the region recognize that the biggest concern they have – [and that] we have – is Iran and its malign behavior through that region for four decades. It spans all the way from Africa across the Middle East into Afghanistan.

The American position is that West Bank settlements should remain in place permanently and Israel should apply sovereignty to them at a later date, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said on Wednesday.

“The position of the United States is that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria will never be evacuated. We will never ask any community in Judea and Samaria to ever disband,” Friedman said in a Kohelet Policy Forum conference on the Abraham Accords, conducted online. “We believe in long run, it is in Israel’s interest and America’s interest to extend [Israeli] sovereignty over these communities.”

The Trump administration’s plan, should he be reelected, is “to put all our efforts in the near future in diplomatic efforts to make Israel as safe, secure and prosperous as the nations of the region and reduce that threat level as much as possible” by encouraging more countries to normalize ties with Israel.

“When we feel we've exhausted these efforts, of course we will help Israel formalize its boundaries, including communities in Judea and Samaria,” Friedman said.

Friedman said he had “no doubt” that more nations in the Arab League will make peace with Israel, saying the whole region is made up of potential normalization partners.

This is one of the most efficiently brutal takedowns of a US foreign policy initiative I've ever heard. Every new line is more nuclear than the last. State Dept is spending enormous resources to build energy empire for Hezbollah. @Doranimated@AcrossTheBayhttps://t.co/bBJmQxfCnG

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) October 20, 2020

In a court filing on Oct. 6, Jason Fong, a Marine reservist arrested by the FBI in May, was charged for allegedly providing material support, resources and funds to Hamas, a U.S. designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

“On or about May 18, 2020, in Orange County, within the Central District of California, and elsewhere, defendant JASON FONG, also known as “asian_ghazi,” a national of the United States located in the United States, knowingly concealed and disguised the nature, location, source, ownership, and control of material support and resources and funds, knowing the same were to be provided to a foreign terrorist organization, namely Hamas, also known as the Izz al-Din al Qassam Brigades, in violation of 18 U.S.C.§ 2339B,” the court filing read.

According to a Los Angeles Times report, Fong was arrested and initially charged with ‘suspicion of possessing illegal firearms’ on May 20 at his Irvine, California home.

Additionally, Task and Purpose reported in May that Fong ‘joined the Marine reserves in 2014 and is currently a sergeant assigned to Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Squadron 4 at Camp Pendleton, California as a maintenance technician.’

The court document mentions ‘Hamas’ or its military wing ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades’ as the group Fong was allegedly supporting. However, the nature of Hamas’ involvement is unclear. Also, the court document doesn’t distinguish between Hamas’ political and military wings, which are two separate but related entities.

Given Fong’s military background, it is possible he provided support to Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades. Specifically, Fong’s background as a UAV maintenance could have been useful for al-Qassam Brigades who’ve been developing their own UAV capability for a number of years.

Military chief Aviv Kohavi described the cross-border attack tunnel uncovered by the Israel Defense Forces this week on the Gaza border as a “highly significant asset” to terror groups in the Strip on Wednesday.

“I don’t want to get into the technical details about the tunnel, but I can say that it was a highly significant asset for the enemy, and we will continue to take care of it and the subterranean threat with every method and every advanced means — from technology to intelligence,” Kohavi said.

Without providing additional details, he repeated that the tunnel was a “very, very significant terror tunnel.”

The military has yet to say which terror group it believes dug the tunnel, which was found dozens of meters inside Israeli territory, but on the Gaza side of the Israel-built underground border barrier.

The IDF chief made his remarks in military-run coronavirus treatment wards established earlier this month in Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center. During the visit, Kohavi met with a number of patients in the wards, where 100 IDF doctors, nurses and medics work.

Syrian state media said Israel fired a missile early Wednesday at a site in the Quneitra province in southern Syria, near the border with Israel’s Golan Heights.

The official SANA news agency said the midnight attack hit a school building in the village of Al-Harah, without providing further details.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The Israel Defense Forces would not comment on the matter, in line with its so-called “policy of ambiguity” regarding its military activities against Iran and its proxies in Syria.

Israel has repeatedly accused the Hezbollah terror group and other Iran-backed militias of setting up bases and operating along the Golan border.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights — a pro-opposition group with unclear funding sources — said the strike hit a base for pro-Iran militias, adding that Israel was “likely” responsible.

Reports of the strike came two weeks after Israeli soldiers reportedly destroyed two Syrian military posts in the demilitarized zone separating the two countries in a rare cross-border raid.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz seemed to hint that Israel was behind a strike on a Syrian position near the Golan Heights border in the predawn hours of Wednesday morning, indicating it was a move against Iranian entrenchment in the area.

“I won’t go into who fired what last night. We won’t allow terrorist operatives from Hezbollah or Iran to set up on the Golan Heights border and we will do what is necessary to drive them out of there,” he said in an interview Wednesday morning with the Kan public broadcaster.

Asked if that was the reason behind the alleged Israeli strike, Gantz responded opaquely: “Listen, things happen.”

At roughly 12:30 a.m., Syrian state media reported that Israel fired a missile at a site in the Quneitra province in southern Syria, near the border with Israel’s Golan Heights.

The official SANA news agency said the attack struck a school building in the village of Al-Harah, without providing any further details.

Last night I was in Netivot. Just 1 rocket was fired but at the time you don't know it. Israeli families should not have to live this way.

Netivot - founded by Nth African Jews & has a large Ethiopian community. It seems some 'black lives' don't matter.

Leaving now from Sderot pic.twitter.com/9HjPsz4fod

— David Collier (@mishtal) October 21, 2020

IDF stated that they successfully located and neutralized an attack tunnel built by militant groups in the #Gaza Strip. #Israelpic.twitter.com/tJ8Lwt1XDs

— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) October 20, 2020

The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday sealed off the room where resided a Palestinian man suspected of killing soldier Amit Ben-Ygal earlier this year, the military said.

The army had initially intended to destroy the entire building, but was twice blocked by the High Court of Justice, which cited the fact that the rest of Nazmi Abu Bakr’s family was unaware of and uninvolved in the alleged crime and thus should not have their home destroyed.

Last Wednesday, the IDF informed Abu Bakr’s family that it intended to seal off his room and fill it with concrete and barbed wire.

“The sealing was carried out in light of the Supreme Court decision that canceled the demolition order issued for the terrorist’s home,” the military said in a statement.

Abu Bakr is suspected of throwing a brick that struck Ben-Ygal in the head, killing him, from the roof of his family’s home, while the 21-year-old soldier was taking part in a raid in the West Bank village of Yabed on May 12.

Twenty years after the infamous 2000 Ramallah lynchings, in which IDF reservists Vadim Norzhich and Yosef Avrahami were brutally murdered by a Palestinian mob, Israel’s Knesset held a unique online conference on Monday focusing on the lessons learned from that event.

The conference, had some 900 attendees, was held under the auspices of the Knesset Israel Victory Caucus (KIVC), in partnership with the Israel Victory Project, an initiative of the Middle East Forum. The KIVC encourages Israeli decision makers and opinion shapers to work towards ending the Israel-Palestinian conflict by ensuring the Palestinians give up their 100-year war of violent rejectionism against Jewish sovereignty.

The lynching took place at the beginning of the Second Intifada, a few months after Israel-Palestinian peace negotiations broke down because of Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat’s refusal to accept Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s generous offer of concessions to end the conflict.

In October 2000, Norzhich and Avrahami had been called up for reserve army duty as drivers, but were picked up by Palestinian police after they mistakenly entered the Palestinian town of Ramallah. They were brought to Palestinian police headquarters in the center of Ramallah, where a violent mob of Palestinians stormed the building and tortured the soldiers to death, mutilating their bodies beyond recognition.

The event, much of which was filmed live by television crews, deeply shocked Israelis and many others around the world for its sheer brutality and the glee and pride of those who took part.

Twenty years after the Ramallah lynching that helped contribute to the start of the Second Intifada, Michal Norzhich, brother of victim Vadim Norzhich, said that he and his family feel repeatedly let down by successive Israeli governments.

Speaking at a special meeting of the Knesset Israel Victory Caucus (KIVC) titled “20 Years Since the Ramallah Lynchings: What lessons have been learned?” Norzhich said, “[Former prime minister] Ehud Barak promised us personally that we will be well looked after, but all we received was a slap in the face.

“The Schalit deal was a terrible agreement that hurt us deeply because it returned 1,000 terrorists to the cycle of violence,” he said. “Even today, the government and Supreme Court try and prevent us from seeking financial compensation from the Palestinian Authority, which was and remains responsible for the incitement and hate that leads to such attacks. There is no justice or logic to this.”

The 2011 deal that freed IDF soldier Gilad Schalit from years of captivity under Hamas in Gaza released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including Aziz Salha.

Salha became infamous throughout the world after media coverage of the Ramallah lynching showed him appearing at the window of el-Bireh police station with bloodied hands; he was later convicted of murdering Norzhich.

Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer, chairman of the KIVC, said at the event that “violent Palestinian rejectionism is alive and kicking. Twenty years later, they continue to broadcast the same hate and incitement as they did in the days leading up to the lynching.

A Border Police officer who shot and killed an autistic Palestinian man in Jerusalem’s Old City in late May after apparently mistaking him for a terrorist could be tried for reckless manslaughter, pending a hearing, the Justice Ministry’s Police Internal Investigations Department announced on Wednesday.

Iyad Halak, 32, was walking from his home in Wadi Joz to a school where he worked with his caretaker, Warda Abu Hadid. Two police officers in the area claimed they spotted a “suspicious object” in his hand. According to Wednesday’s PIID statement, the two officers had also received information that a terrorist was in the area.

The two officers, one of whom was a Border Police commander, began to chase after Halak, demanding that he identify himself, but Halak, apparently terrified, ran away. The two pursued him through the streets.

According to the PIID, during the chase, the officer who shot Halak calling out “stop or I’ll shoot” before firing two shots towards Halak’s feet. Both shots missed. Halak fled into a garbage room; the two officers followed him into the area.

The suspect in PIID’s investigation spotted Halak in the corner of the garbage room and began firing. As soon as he began shooting, PIID said, his commander began ordering him to cease.

The Israeli Electric Company announced on Monday that it had transferred to the Palestinian Authority three sub-stations in Tarqumiyah, Qalandiya, and Shechem, in addition to the sub-station in Jenin that was transferred to the PA in 2017. These sub-stations will not be generating power, which will continue to be transmitted from Israel.

Haaretz, which reported the move, added that the Palestinian Authority welcomed it, but this reporter’s attempt to find even a faint mention of it on the PA’s news agency WAFA’s website failed. The reader is invited to search here…

Haaretz also reported that Israel stressed that the Arab-owned substations would also benefit the residents of the settlements in Judea and Samaria.

Because it’s well known that the Palestinian Authority goes out of its way to improve the lives of the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria settlements.

In any case, Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz (Likud) explained the contribution of the move to the residents of the settlements, saying: “The construction and operation of three new substations in Judea and Samaria will lead to a dramatic improvement in the supply of electricity to both Jewish and Arab localities.”

The current visits by UAE delegations to Israel, particularly to Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, have sparked harsh criticism from the Palestinian Authority (PA), which opposes the UAE-Israel normalization.[1]

In his October 18, 2020 column in the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Muwaffaq Matar, a member of Fatah's Revolutionary Council, vehemently attacked an Al-Aqsa visit by a UAE delegation on October 15, accusing them of betraying the spirit of Islam and calling their false prayers pagan worship of Zionist idols aimed at pleasing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not Allah. Matar also claimed that Israel has transformed the delegation into "Virus BEN Z3"– a reference to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, who promoted his country's normalization with Israel – in an attempt to infect the Arab ummah with it, but added that the ummah's immunity would reject it.

On October 16, Fatah secretary in Jerusalem Shadi Al-Matour issued a statement criticizing the delegation's Al-Aqsa visit, calling it "a new invasion of Al-Aqsa no different from the repeated incursions by the soldiers of the occupation and the settlers, who defile the Al-Aqsa plaza under the patronage of the occupation soldiers." He insisted that "the sovereignty over Jerusalem and the holy places is solely Palestinian, and the Arab brothers who want to visit Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa should coordinate [their visits] with the legitimate leadership of the Palestinian people [i.e. the PA] and not enter via the occupation."[2]

In a second statement two days later, in advance of another UAE delegation's October 20 visit to Israel led by its economic and finance ministers, Al-Matour stressed: "The questionable visits by Arab delegations, and especially the delegations from the UAE, are a dagger in the Palestinian heart, and it is a national and religious obligation to confront them in order to protect our holy places and our land, which are undergoing Arab-sponsored Israelization… The expected October 20 invasion by members of the UAE government, headed by the economic and finance ministers, will bring with it more arrows aimed at the Palestinian body…"[3]

The PA has been just as adamant about not allowing any normalization with Israel as the animals in Orwell’s Animal Farm were about the need for animals to stick together against humans who were “the only real enemy.” But as happened in Orwell’s classic when the pigs decided they were superior and granted themselves rights that they refused the other “equal” animals, so too PA leaders are happy to have normal relations with Israel when it comes to themselves, while refusing and even condemning ordinary Palestinians for having any normalization with Israelis at all. Indeed, in the PA - as on Orwell’s farm - “some are more equal than others.”

Despite the PA’s cessation of all cooperation with Israel and nullification of all agreements, and its refusal to accept over 3 billion shekels that Israel has collected in tax money on its behalf - thereby bringing immense suffering to millions of Palestinians – the PA’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat is able to enjoy “normal” relations with Israel, choosing an Israeli hospital for his current treatment for the coronavirus disease.

In response to visitors from the UAE and Bahrain to the Al-Aqsa Mosque who arrived via Israel rather than through the PA as a result of the recent peace agreements, PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh complained that it was “very unfortunate” that the Arab delegations had entered “through the Israeli gate.”

Hypocritically, Shtayyeh said this the day after the PA had let Erekat enter through the Israeli hospital gate! That wasn’t apparently “unfortunate” at all:

PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh: “One enters the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque through the gate of its owners, and not through the gate of the occupation. It is very unfortunate that a number of Arab delegations are entering through the Israeli gate, at a time when the entry by worshippers to the mosque is prevented.” [Facebook page of PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, Oct. 19, 2020]

Just one more thing: The PA in early summer refused to take delivery of two planeloads with tons of medical supplies from the UAE to help in the battle against COVID-19 — including protective equipment, medical supplies and ventilators — because the cargo was flown into Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport. This, incidentally, was months before the UAE announced it was establishing relations with Israel…

As I write, Saeb Erekat, 65, is on life support at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center in Ein Kerem, suffering from COVID-19. Treating him, the hospital has said, is extremely complicated because he has a history of medical problems, including undergoing a lung transplant in 2017. The hospital said it has been reaching out to international experts for input.

Erekat was taken to Hadassah, the PLO’s Negotiations Department said, because his condition required “special medical attention and supervision.”

“Mr. Erekat is receiving top-notch professional care like all serious coronavirus patients at Hadassah,” Zeev Rothstein, the hospital’s director, said on Sunday. “And the staff will do everything to assist his recovery.”

There’s a whole world of tragedies, ironies, hypocrisies so foul and blatant they really don’t need spelling out, and, potentially, lessons in this story — about what genuine coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians could achieve, about failed leadership, about what ultimately matters most to us all.

I truly hope Saeb Erekat will live to internalize and benefit from some of those lessons. What is certain is that a leading hospital in the State of Israel is doing everything in its power to give him that opportunity. Of course it is. “At Hadassah,” said Rothstein, “we treat every patient as if he were our only patient.”

The PA leadership refused medical supplies from the #Emirates during the #COVID__19 because the plane had landed in Ben-Gurion Airport. Today they beg for @ErakatSaeb to be saved in an Israeli hospital. The corrupt leadership can get what they don’t allow their people #hypocrisy

— פלר חסן נחום Fleur Hassan-Nahoum (@FleurHassanN) October 21, 2020

U.S. State Department offers $5 million reward for #Hezbollah's Haytham Ali Tabataba'i for commanding the group's special forces in #Syria and #Yemen. pic.twitter.com/ZUXg6BdDfX

— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) October 20, 2020

Lebanese Journalist Muna Sukariya: Anne Frank Only Hid from the Nazis for Three Months; She Was Not Like the Victims of Sabra and Shatila pic.twitter.com/iTZiZBeCNg

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 21, 2020

Iraqi Militia Official Haydar Al-Lami: U.S. Forces Can Leave Voluntarily or in Coffins; We May Use Very Precise Missiles against U.S. Military Targets pic.twitter.com/0os7xf7Ry9

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 21, 2020

The spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Behrouz Kamalvand, described the removal of arms embargoes against Tehran as “a brilliant and glorious moment for the country’s diplomats.”

Why was the lifting of the embargo such an Iranian “diplomatic victory?”

Seyed Abbas Araghchi, deputy foreign minister for political affairs, explained that U.S. Secretary of State Kerry insisted on a 10-year embargo during the JCPOA negotiations. “Due to Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s furious tone of voice and his shouts, [U.S. negotiator Wendy] Sherman asked her colleagues to leave the room and leave the foreign ministers alone….Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif held a ‘stormy meeting’ with the foreign ministers and convinced them to agree to a five-year timeframe.”10

Iran has already expressed its desire to purchase stealthy Chinese J-20 fighter jets for its outdated air force and the Russian anti-aircraft system S-400 that could make it challenging to carry out airstrikes against nuclear targets in the country. Unverified press reports claim that Iran might try to buy from North Korea, through China, advanced long-range missiles of 4,500 KM (Hwasong-12) or even longer-range missiles.11

At the same time, Iran clarified that it is not going to rush to purchase new weapons as it has a broad military industry.

The absurdity of the lifting of the arms embargo lies in the fact that it was adopted as part of UN Security Council Resolution 1747 in 2007 with Russian and Chinese support as a means to force Iran to give up enrichment of uranium, and it is now lifted just when Iran has accumulated large amounts of uranium enriched to 4.5% and operates various facilities in its nuclear program, including the deep underground enrichment facility at Fordow that at the time was still unknown.

Quite interesting how @Twitter has no problem with #Iran's dictator @Khamenei_ir using this platform to publicly threaten all nations seeking to establish peace in the Middle East. pic.twitter.com/UncRyWlu25

— Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) October 20, 2020

Iranian Official Hossein Amir-Abdollahian Threatens UAE, Bahrain, Adds: So Far We Only Avenged Soleimani's Car, Revenge for His Death Will Be Greater pic.twitter.com/UY9uwyjP8w

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 21, 2020

Twitter has finally suspended the account of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei after the Ayatollah tweeted a link to a New York Post story about Hunter Biden, the son of the former vice president.

Jewish organizations have long called on Twitter to suspend Khamenei’s account due to its antisemitic content and frequent calls to violence. But Twitter has refused, referring to his tweets as “comments on current affairs.”

On Wednesday, Khamenei finally crossed the line with a tweet about a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden.

“Hunter Biden was using his connection to the Vice Satan to earn two billion rial a month from [Ukrainian energy firm] Burisma,” Khamenei tweeted. “If he were any better at exploiting the tentacles of power to fill his pockets with ill-gotten dollars, he would be a Jew.”

Twitter quickly deleted the tweet and suspended his account for publishing unverified material that could impact the election.

Turkey-Based Islamic Scholar Wagdi Ghoneim Calls to Boycott Netflix; It is a “Prostitute of a Channel” That Promotes Homosexuality, Lesbianism, and Heresy pic.twitter.com/IXRzz7zUM0

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 21, 2020

This is the gist of a bombshell tweet from Israel’s Channel 13 reporter Nadav Eyal containing excerpts from a classified memo from an Israeli official who attended that fateful meeting. While it may have been the first meeting between Biden and an Israeli prime minister, it was certainly not the last. In subsequent meetings with Israeli prime ministers, Biden threatened Menachem Begin with withholding U.S. aid, and publicly upbraided Benyamin Netanyahu because it had been announced in a town council meeting that 1600 homes were to be built in future in the Jewish Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo (more about this here).   

Here is the tweet:

1/Golda Meir and Joe Biden, the Israeli memo.
By far, the story Biden most frequently tells about his relationship with Israel leadership is his first meeting with Golda as a young senator. Here's Biden describing the encounter and Golda's punch linehttps://t.co/UsroQHRwog

— נדב איל Nadav Eyal (@Nadav_Eyal) October 15, 2020

Here is the content of Eyal's tweet, edited for readability:

Golda Meir and Joe Biden, the Israeli memo.

By far, the story Biden most frequently tells about his relationship with Israel leadership is his first meeting with Golda as a young senator. Here's Biden describing the encounter and Golda's punch line:

I've published this evening a classified memo documenting the meeting, made by a senior Israeli official present in the room. A fascinating meeting.

Biden comes from Egypt, some 40 days before Sadat ordered a surprise attack which will become the Yom Kippur war. He tells the Israeli PM that all the officials he met in Cairo assured him that they accept "Israel's military superiority.” Of course, they lied (not [Biden’s] fault, of course. Israel was misled by its own intelligence community). 

American Politics.

Biden criticizes the Nixon administration for being "dragged by Israel" [into supporting Israeli policies]. He says, according to this government memo, that there is no debate in the Senate about the Middle East because the Senators are "afraid" to say things that Jewish voters will dislike. (He SAYS THAT TO GOLDA)

He criticizes the Israeli labor platform arguing that it’s leading to a creeping annexation of the occupied territories. Considering Israel's military dominance, Biden suggests it will initiate a first step for peace by unilateral withdrawals. This will be done from areas with no strategic importance—not the Golan.

Golda responds with a long speech about the history of the Zionist movement from its very establishment. The instability of Arab regimes, the unfairness of Supreme Court decisions.

Golda rejects Biden comments on the Labor platform, rejects his offers of unilateral withdrawal and continues to argue that Israel can make no major mistakes considering the situation of the Jewish people after the Holocaust. The official making the notes remarked that Biden was full of respect to the PM yet his "enthusiasm as he spoke" signaled his lack of experience in the diplomatic field.

REMARKS: Biden warning to the PM on the eve of the war that Israel must make some concessions is   prophetic. Some historians argue that Golda's refusal to consider Egyptian diplomatic initiatives led to war. Biden's suggestion that Israel make unilateral concessions is interesting. The only time Israel opted for such a move is in 2005 when Ariel Sharon as PM initiated Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza strip. Much more to say. 

Part of the original Hebrew document from the unnamed Israeli official:

It is important to note that it was the Labor Party that initiated the policy of settling all parts of Jewish indigenous territory, including Judea and Samaria. From the Jewish Virtual Library:

In the past, Labor was more hawkish on security and defense issues than it is today. During its years in office, Israel fought the 1956 Sinai War, the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. Labor agreed to UN Resolution 242 and the notion of trading land for peace. Nevertheless, successive Labor governments established settlements in the disputed territories and refrained from dismantling illegal settlements, such as those established in 1968 at Qiryat Arba in Hebron by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, and others set up by Gush Emunim. By 1976, more than thirty settlements had been established on the West Bank; however, their population was fewer than 10,000.

Joe Biden paints that early meeting with Golda as something precious that cemented in his mind how important Israel is to the Jewish people. It is clear, however, that Joe Biden has always been against the Jewish people settling their indigenous territory. The very thought of Jews planning to build homes in Jerusalem makes him furious. Therefore, contrary to the love fest with Golda he has often described, Biden used the first chance he had to meet with an Israeli prime minister to broach the subject of unilateral concessions.

One wonders how much clout the young senator wielded at that time. Not to mention the timing of subsequent events, with the surprise attack on Israel by Egypt occurring just 40 days after Biden’s meeting with Meir. Is it possible that Golda Meir incurred wider U.S. displeasure by refusing to entertain Biden's suggestion of unilateral concessions? Was Egypt perhaps emboldened by this state of affairs to attack Israel without fear of American intervention?

At the time of Sharpton’s comment the historiographical flaws of Bernal’s thesis had been meticulously laid bare a year earlier by esteemed Wellesley classicist Mary Lefkowitz in her article “Not Out of Africa,” and later in books like Black Athena Revisited (1996) and Not Out of Africa (1997). Her thorough research undercut one of the major arguments of Afrocentrism, that ancient Greek culture was a “stolen legacy” filched from African peoples, a thesis based on egregious mangling of historical facts. For example, at a 1993 lecture at Wellesley by Yosef A.A. Ben-Jochannan, author of the Afrocentric classic Africa: Mother of Western Civilization, Ben-Jochannan claimed that Aristotle had plagiarized his philosophy from the Library of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt. During the Q&A, Lefkowitz asked Ben-Jochannan how would that have been possible, “when that Library had only been built after his death.”

The subsequent assault on Lefkowitz, documented in her 2008 book History Lessons, was an early example, of today’s “cancel culture,” and taking on the powerful black-identity politics academic lobby with such biting criticism was personally costly for Lefkowitz. Black studies professors and Afrocentric ideologues leveled against her vicious attacks, ranging from being dismissed as an “obscure drudge in the academic backwaters of a Classics department,” by the truly obscure black studies professor Wilson Jeremiah Moses; to the antisemitic smear of Lefkowitz as a “homosexual” and a “hook-nosed, lox-eating . . . so-called Jew,” by Khalid Abdul Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, whose active support of Afrocentrism was welcomed by many black studies professors.

Lefkowitz’s experience in defending history from political propaganda should have alerted both the academy and larger society to what was happening to higher education. But as we see today with the “1619 Project” and the nonsense of “white privilege,” Critical Race Theory, and “systemic racism,” politicized history has entrenched itself in the universities, and escaped from the rotting groves of academe to pollute K-12 curricula with Black Lives Matter and “1619” propaganda. Moreover, such fake history is poisoning our politics with an illiberal “cancel culture” that violates the First Amendment and the long tradition of academic freedom enshrined in the “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” promulgated by what’s now known as the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Worse yet, federally mandated policies based on ill-written civil rights laws have provided campus ideologues with powerful weapons to intimidate and silence any voice not singing in harmony with the “woke” identity-politics chorus.

What appears to be just another attempt by “woke” activists to bully an industry and indulge its anti-Semitic bigotry against an Israeli actress should not be lightly brushed off as the politically correct hysteria du jour. Nor should we forget the academic scandal from nearly thirty years ago that helped to institutionalize this particular variety of fake history and illiberal assaults on free speech. Today we all can see the consequences of such negligence, as intellectual and professional malfeasance once confined to the university classroom is now fueling violence in our streets and furthering the corruption of our K-12 and university curricula.

The Jesuits used to say, give me the child, and I’ll show you the man. The left has had several generations of our children now for over fifty years, and their men and women are rampaging through our biggest cities, controlling our corporate boards, censoring social media, polluting our culture, demagoguing in our legislatures and courts, and actively working to dismantle the Constitutional order that protects our unalienable rights and political freedom.

It’s time to start seriously reforming our schools.

Forget the silly Twitterstorm over whether Gal Gadot is too white to play Cleopatra – Reface, the app that uses Deep Fake technology to swap faces in videos, has created a clip of the classic 1963 movie Cleopatra, replacing star Elizabeth Taylor’s face with Gadot’s.

Two things are instantly clear from this clip, which shows Gadot in many of the costumes Taylor wore in the film. The first is that Gadot has a slight resemblance to Taylor that has gone unremarked upon until now. The second is that she has a suitably regal presence to shine in the role.

The clip is scored to a rap song in Arabic, which is both a tribute to the Egyptian setting and, possibly, an ironic nod to the controversy. The sets and costumes in the film are incredibly lavish, which makes sense because this was the most expensive film ever made until then, with a budget of more than $100 million. There was also a media storm that swirled around the set, as Taylor fell in love with her married co-star, Richard Burton, who played Mark Anthony. She left her husband, singer Eddie Fisher, and Burton left his wife, and the starring couple were married and divorced twice.

Taylor reportedly was initially not allowed to enter Egypt because she was Jewish. She converted to Judaism in 1959, influenced by Fisher and her third husband, producer Mike Todd. During the hostage crisis at Entebbe, Taylor offered herself as a replacement hostage and later appeared in a small role in the movie, Victory at Entebbe.

When President Dwight Eisenhower invited Jonas Salk — who discovered the polio vaccine — to the White House, the president reportedly choked back tears of gratitude. The polls indicated that “apart from the atomic bomb, America’s greatest fear was polio.”

Salk — the Jewish doctor in a lab coat — entered America’s pantheon with Mickey Mantle, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. The Jonas Salk Ward of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital was named after him.

Yet Salk denied that his Jewish origins had anything to do with his achievements, and also dismissed concerns about “religious discrimination.”

Salk, in fact, was brought up in the East Bronx. His mother hailed from Minsk, his father from Lithuania. The family kept kosher but was otherwise non-observant. A hard-working boy — whose heroes were Moses and Lincoln — he yearned for academic success. He reportedly had an unassuming personality in an era when Jews were not supposed to be “pushy.” Yet Salk was accused by the scientific community of not sharing credit for the vaccine.

Whether or not he admitted it, Salk’s Jewish origins shaped his career. His mentor at NYU’s medical school, Thomas Francis, Jr., an infectious disease specialist, pulled strings to get his protégé — “a member of the Jewish race” — a fellowship at the University of Michigan. There, he won the admiration of Basil O’Connor, president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, known as the March of Dimes. After World War II, Salk, then at the University of Pittsburgh, competed to develop a polio vaccine with Dr. Albert Sabin, another “Jewish boy” from New York. Salk’s “dead virus” vaccine was the initial winner, though later Sabin’s “live virus” vaccine eclipsed it.

Salk wanted his own research institute in California. His first preference was Palo Alto, but his friend, physicist Leo Szilard, joined Roger Revelle of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to convince him to choose San Diego’s exclusive seaside community of La Jolla.

The problem was that La Jolla contrived to maintain antisemitic restrictive covenants even after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) that such covenants could not be legally enforced.

Always a pleasure meeting up for a chat with @HenMazzig. He didn’t expect a Spanish Inquisition either! Our full discussion on disputations is available on my new #YouTube channel 📺▶️ https://t.co/LHEvY2oByCpic.twitter.com/KtjMaBd5VK

— Jonny Gould (@jonnygould) October 20, 2020

Less than a week after French teacher Samuel Paty was murdered and beheaded, Paris is uncovering the extent of the radicalization and hate networks that led to the unprecedented murder.

While France has dealt with extremism for years as well as many brutal murders, such as Ilan Halimi in 2006, the attack on the Toulouse Jewish school in 2012, the Bataclan massacre and the Charlie Hebdo attack in 2015, the country appears jolted by an attack on a teacher.

This goes to the heart of the Republic and France’s attempt to maintain its traditions of freedom and secularism against a rising tide of religious extremist hate linked to Islamist intolerance. The country has known about these problems for years, and often ignored the pool of hatred that extremists could draw on, whether resentment in the banlieues that led to mass riots in 2005, or the 2016 Normandy attack where a priest was beheaded.

France also knows that thousands joined or sympathized with Islamic State across the country, which led to mass murders such as the Nice truck ramming attack in 2016. The network linked to the recent killing includes a pro-Hamas group. Hamas has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, although the Gaza-based group has denied a connection to the Paris group linked to the killing.

In the wake of last week’s beheading of a Paris high school teacher, the French government on Wednesday announced a ban on an Islamist group named in honor of a Hamas terrorist killed by Israel.

Government spokesperson Gabriel Attal confirmed that the group — the “Sheikh Yassin Collective,” named for Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas leader who died in a 2004 targeted air strike in Gaza City — was “implicated” in the grotesque murder of Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old teacher of history and geography.

After Paty showed his students a set of controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a classroom discussion on freedom of speech, he received threats and abuse from Islamist activists in the run-up to his decapitation last Friday at the hands of Abdoullakh Anzonov, an 18-year-old Chechen refugee who was later shot dead by police.

“We have this morning pronounced the dissolution of the Sheikh Yassin Collective, linked to last Friday’s attack, and for a long time the sock puppet of an anti-republican ideology that spreads hatred,” Attal stated at a Council of Ministers press briefing on Wednesday.

The Yassin collective was founded by Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a Moroccan-born Islamist who was arrested on Sunday in connection with Paty’s murder.

Speaking on Tuesday night about the killing, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that the “evil had been named: it is political Islamism.”

Police in Paris on Tuesday arrested seven British nationals suspected of involvement in the attempted car-ramming of an officer stationed outside the Israeli embassy in the French capital.

The incident happened on Monday night, according to local media. It said a dark BMW with “three to four people” inside, followed by a Mercedes, attempted to hit an officer outside the embassy, then fled. The officer dodged the vehicles and was not hurt.

Paris police opened an investigation into “attempted intentional homicide of a person in public authority,” news site The Local reported.

The same two vehicles were seen “lurking” close to the Elysee Palace, the official residence of French President Emmanuel Macron later that evening, French news site 20Minutes reported.

A manhunt ensued and the suspects were arrested on Tuesday night, roughly 24 hours after the attempted attack.

The 20Minutes report described the suspects as being of Pakistani origin, without providing details.

The website of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) has posted statements by the organization's secretary-general, 'Ali Al-Qaradaghi, in response to the murder of French history teacher Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb on October 17, 2020. The teacher was attacked and beheaded for showing his students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as part of a lesson on freedom of speech. The murderer, an 18-year-old Chechen refugee, was shot dead by French security forces after refusing to put down his weapon.

On the day of the murder, the IUMS website posted statements by Al-Qaradaghi, in which he condemned the teacher's murder but also blamed the French authorities and the victim himself, saying that a teacher's role is to "instill peace in the young, rather than incite them." In another statement from the same date, posted on the website as well as on Al-Qaradhari's personal Facebook page, Al-Qaradaghi claimed that the crime had been planned and staged by the French authorities in order to accuse Islam of terrorism, and added that "the real murderer is still alive."

It should be noted that French President Emmanuel Macron said on October 2, 2020 that Islam was "in crisis all over the world," and outlined a plan to fight "Islamist separatism" in France.[1]

The IUMS is based in Doha and has been supported since its founding by the Qatari regime and by Turkey. The organization was established in 2004 by Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradawi, who also headed it until late 2018, and who has resided in Qatar and enjoyed the backing of its regime since the 1960s. The IUMS website has for years been promoting extremist discourse, including incitement to jihad and terror and hatred of Jews and Christians. [2]

On a September night in 2015, Laura Hansen left her home in Leidschendam, the Netherlands, with her husband and two children, setting out on the journey that soon would change all their lives. Destination: the Islamic State.

Fast-forward five years, and Laura, who returned home in 2016, is Holland’s newest superstar — the subject of a bestselling book and now the play Laura H., which has been performed to wide acclaim as it tours across the country.

That a journalist penned a 500-page tome about Laura Hansen, and that a 500-page book became a national bestseller, is of course laudable. It speaks of storytelling talent, intensive journalistic research, and the deep curiosity of readers.

But the play is something else. It isn’t a portrait of author Thomas Rueb’s hunt for Laura’s story (think All the President’s Men). It is not a coming of age story about a young girl (think Mystic Pizza). It is the elevation of a Muslim radical, a member of a terrorist group, to rock star status. It is the epitome of the very trend counter-terrorism expert Raffaello Pantucci warned us all about — the making of “jihadi cool.” And it is unacceptable.

Much of Laura Hansen’s life parallels the lives of other radicals — Islamist, white supremacist, and others: a narcissistic search for acclaim and importance, coupled with resentment and a tendency to blame others for one’s own mistakes and misgivings. It is a life history frequently darkened and yet energized by tragedy and drama.

BBC interviewer on Paris beheading: “How do you prevent anything like this happening again without alienating France’s Muslims?” Does the BBC think muslims are happy with this violent terrorism? pic.twitter.com/LWIeSTQJfo

— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) October 21, 2020

Going around chasidic whatsapp now.

After screaming at a chasidic Jew,
"Jew, where's your F*ing mask," she gets into an accident. pic.twitter.com/c128SSv9Oz

— Mordechai Lightstone (@Mottel) October 20, 2020

Oh, this is just fine. pic.twitter.com/AcOzB6ztxT

— The Meturgeman (@HaMeturgeman) October 20, 2020

Federal judge holds Colorado unconstitutionally restricted prayer services in COVID response https://t.co/8sfkIOnqUhpic.twitter.com/LAFsvM6div

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) October 21, 2020

A spokesperson for Zoom told the Journal that they won’t be allowing an upcoming University of Hawaii (UH) webinar featuring Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine member Leila Khaled as a guest speaker to use their platform.

“Zoom is committed to supporting the open exchange of ideas and conversations, subject to certain limitations contained in our publicly available Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy, and Community Standards,” the spokesperson said. “We determined that this event is in violation of one or more of these policies and have let the host know that they may not use Zoom for this particular event.”

The October 23 event, which is co-sponsored by the UH Mānoa (UHM) Departments of Ethnic Studies and Political Science and Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine (SFJP) at UH, is part of the “Day of Action Against the Criminalization and Censorship of Campus Political Speech.” The Day of Action was prompted by Zoom, Facebook, and YouTube deplatforming San Francisco State University’s (SFSU) September 23 webinar, which had also featured Khaled as a speaker. Zoom had announced on September 22 that it was deplatforming the event because of Khaled’s membership with “a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization.”

Prior to the Zoom’s spokesperson’s statement, UH spokesman Daniel Meisenzahl told the Journal, “The University of Hawaii is an institution where controversial viewpoints can be peacefully and openly considered and discussed. The sharing and debate of diverse and difficult ideas and opinions is fundamental to the mission of higher education in our society.” Following the Zoom statement, Meisenzahl said, “This event does not reflect the views of the university. It is being organized by an independent organization. Not sure how that organization will address this latest development.”

A quarter-century ago, peace was snuffed out by an assassin’s bullet. Or so the narrative goes.

On Tuesday night, Americans for Peace Now marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with a virtual memorial. The event features American Jewish actor Mandy Patinkin, Minnesota Attorney-General Keith Ellison, Israeli pop star Netta Barzilai and more. But it is in the headlines more for who is not there.

US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a star of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, initially accepted an invitation to speak at the memorial. Upon being made aware via tweet of the less-than-favorable view of Rabin within much of the Palestinian community, Ocasio-Cortez promptly backed out, claiming she had been unaware of the memorial’s purpose.

Her office would later tell a reporter – in what was supposed to be an off-record conversation – that Ocasio-Cortez thought the event was to be a discussion of how to advance peace, and not to celebrate Rabin’s life. And while she did not wish to “indict” Rabin’s legacy, she did not want to honor it either, just as “she wouldn’t honor American founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and George Washington due to their complicated history as slave owners,” her office said.

Rabin’s signing of the Oslo Accords with PLO leader Yasser Arafat earned him a Nobel Peace Prize. It also led to his being murdered by a far-right Jewish gunman who felt Rabin was willing to give up far too much to the Palestinians.

The assassination led to the lionization of Rabin globally as a man who paid the ultimate price in pursuit of peace.

Hasan Piker, a vlogger who last year said "America deserved 9/11," organized an online live streaming event last night with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) to energize young people to get out and vote.

Ocasio-Cortez joined a group of gamers to play "Among Us," a popular new video game, and live streamed the event on Twitch to encourage viewers to make plans to go vote. At the beginning of the stream, Ocasio-Cortez announced an "amazing lineup" of gamers, including Piker, who "wrangled" the event together at the last minute.

Last year, Piker, a Twitch vlogger and former contributor to the left-leaning news and commentary group the Young Turks, attacked Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas)—a veteran who lost his right eye in 2012 while serving in Iraq—in a video and said "America deserved 9/11."

"This guy has the understanding of foreign policy of, like, a 12-year-old," Piker said. "What the f—. What the f— is wrong with this dude? Didn't he go to war and like literally lose his eye because some mujahideen—a brave f—ing soldier—f—ed his eye hole with their d—."

"America deserved 9/11, dude. F— it, I'm saying it," Piker said in the video.

Piker clarified his statement after facing criticism and said he meant America, not the American people, deserved 9/11. Twitch suspended Piker for his comments last year.

Ocasio-Cortez was scheduled to participate in an event Tuesday evening to honor the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin but pulled out last month after facing pressure from Palestinian activists. She has also refused to meet with multiple Jewish leaders and community activists in New York City.

An anti-Israel group is falsely claiming it forced Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel an appearance at a U.S. Jewish school.

Netanyahu was reportedly scheduled to appear at a fundraiser event last weekend at prominent Jewish school Yeshiva Beth Yehuda in Oak Park, Michigan. According to local media reports, he canceled his appearance because of "unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances."

Anti-Israel group IfNotNow took credit for Netanyahu's cancelation, tweeting Monday that a pressure campaign from "us and anti-occupation groups in Michigan" forced him to bow out of the event.

Senior sources in the Netanyahu government, however, told the Washington Free Beacon that the prime minister never confirmed his attendance at or participation in the event.

One source close to Netanyahu dismissed the claim from IfNotNow, telling the Free Beacon the local pressure campaign had nothing to do with Netanyahu failing to appear at the event.

A second source familiar with the event said that it is nonsensical to believe that a pro-Israel Jewish school would cancel an appearance by Israel’s prime minister solely over pressure from outside anti-Israel groups.

Michigan-based Arab leaders and anti-Israel groups blasted the fundraiser event, objecting to giving Israel's leader any kind of forum. Such groups routinely attempt to pressure American institutions into canceling events with Israeli officials and cutting all ties with Israel.

"We are outraged that any community organization would honor Netanyahu," read an editorial in the state's Arab American News.

Academics have reportedly protested a call by the Education Secretary for universities to adopt the International Definition of Antisemitism.

Gavin Williamson wrote a letter to university heads calling on their institutions to adopt the Definition after a study showed that a limited number had done so, despite urging from the Government over the past several years and threats of loss of funding.

He also said that the Office for Students, which regulates higher education in England, could be tasked with taking regulatory action against universities, including over funding, if they fail to adopt the Definition by the end of this year.

“If I have not seen the overwhelming majority of institutions adopting the Definition by Christmas then I will act,” Williamson wrote.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has consistently backed efforts by the Government to encourage widespread adoption of the Definition by local authorities, universities and public bodies. The UK was the first country in the world to adopt the International Definition, something for which Campaign Against Antisemitism, Lord Eric Pickles and others worked hard over many meetings with officials at Downing Street.

However, universities have protested the intervention, with a spokesperson for Universities UK saying: “We recommend universities do all they can to tackle antisemitism, including considering the [D]efinition, whilst also recognising their duty to promote freedom of speech within the law. UUK has set up a taskforce to consider what can be done to address all forms of harassment, violence and hate crime on campus, including on the basis of religion. We are in regular contact with Jewish community leaders and student groups to ensure that universities are supported to do all they can to tackle antisemitism.”

Geography students at the @unibirmingham were made by a lecturer to watch the documentary ‘Poor us an animated history’ that depicts an Egyptian Jewish carpenter, with a hooked nose and hunched back hiding from tax collectors and baracading a door to avoid charity. pic.twitter.com/TiqKG2EcQK

— Chloe (@chloetsila) October 20, 2020

NGO Monitor Letter to H.E. Stef Blok, Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, and H.E. Sigrid Kaag, Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation

Re: Response to your statement on Dutch funding for Al-Mezan and allegations of terror ties

Dear Ministers Blok and Kaag,

We have taken note of your response to a parliamentary question (October 8, 2020)1 pertaining to the ties between a Dutch grantee, the Palestinian NGO Al-Mezan, and an EU-designated terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The allegations stemmed from a detailed report prepared by NGO Monitor, and we appreciate the importance of taking such charges seriously and carefully investigating them. Your response confirmed many of our findings, including your awareness of incendiary statements made by Al-Mezan officials on social media. Given that several expressed support for the PFLP, celebrated the murder of Israeli civilians, and generally glorified and encouraged violence, this alone should be sufficient to disqualify Al-Mezan from receiving Dutch taxpayer money – especially on projects geared toward human rights.

Unfortunately, such concerns were set aside. Most crucially, the response was incomplete, inaccurate in places, and incompatible with human rights. Instead of undertaking a detailed and independent investigation, the response appears to rely entirely on the self-interested and biased claims of Al-Mezan.

It is also notable that the issues related to Al-Mezan should have been identified in an effective pre-funding process by Dutch officials. Failure to conduct prior due diligence and timely investigations of Dutch funding to Palestinian NGOs appears to be a systemic problem, as exemplified also by the case of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC).2

Geography students at the @unibirmingham were made by a lecturer to watch the documentary ‘Poor us an animated history’ that depicts an Egyptian Jewish carpenter, with a hooked nose and hunched back hiding from tax collectors and baracading a door to avoid charity. pic.twitter.com/TiqKG2EcQK

— Chloe (@chloetsila) October 20, 2020

The Guardian has, once again, disseminated the erroneous claim that Israel has “50 racist laws”, in an op-ed by Sami Abu Shehadeh, an Arab MK who was recently revealed to have attended an event marking the release of a terrorist convicted of conspiring to murder Israelis.

The op-ed (“Israel’s pact with the UAE is not about peace. It’s a business deal”, Oct. 14), included the following:

Discrimination and racism against Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, an indigenous population that makes up over 20% of the country’s population, is present in every aspect of life. More than 50 laws discriminate against non-Jewish citizens. Israel’s trains do not stop in a single Arab city.

There are actually two erroneous claims in that sentence.

Turning to the second sentence we highlighted, that Israeli trains don’t stop in Arab cities: This isn’t accurate. There’s an Israel Railways station called Lehavim/Rahat – Rahat being the biggest Bedouin town in the country.

Now, regarding 50 laws that allegedly discriminate against non-Jewish citizens, which, though unsourced, is almost certainly based on a report by the radical anti-Israel NGO Adalah.

However, CAMERA and other watchdog groups have refuted Adalah’s claims of racist laws – a term they use so unseriously that even an Israeli public health law requiring parents to vaccinate their children is included as an example of “racist” legislation.

Nuseir Yassin has perhaps one of the most recognizable faces on Facebook. Over the last few years, his videos have taken social media by storm, racking up millions and millions of views.

Also known as Nas, or Nas Daily, his video clips, which are generally one minute long, touch upon a wide array of topics, including travel, food, arts, the environment and racism. His personable style, flashy video effects and youthful energy have enabled Nas to create a massively receptive audience online, with his posts generating huge amounts of likes, shares and comments.

But in an uncharacteristic video released on Wednesday, Nas took on Al Jazeera, exposing a campaign to smear him by the news network, which is effectively an extension of the Qatari government.

His wrongdoing? Being an Arab who openly promotes peaceful co-existence, including between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians.

In the video (see below), Nas shows clips of the Qatari channel spreading the lie that he is “using words such as… openness, coexistence, peace” in a bid to “make Israel look good.” If that wasn’t enough, Al Jazeera then claims that Nas is “using all the tools that the Israeli government provides him, and he is part of their official propaganda program.”

In his response, Nas shows how the false message was amplified by a network of shady Arabic-language “news” outlets that effectively operate as Al Jazeera subsidiaries.

In his eponymous CNN program Sunday (Oct. 18), Fareed Zakaria erred on two substantive points concerning Israel and the disputed West Bank (“Last Look: Bibi’s Settlement Dilemma“).

Some 40 seconds into the broadcast, he erroneously reported: “After all, over the past eight months [Prime Minister Netanyahu] halted the promise of annexation of the West Bank.”

But there was never any “promise of annexation of the West Bank.” Rather, the idea that was under discussion, in line with President Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan, was to extend Israeli sovereignty over parts of the disputed West Bank, namely the Israeli settlements, along with the strategic Jordan Valley, amounting to some 30 percent of the West Bank.

Asn CNN’s Oren Liebermann’s Sept. 10, 2019 report, “Netanyahu says he’ll annex parts of West Bank if reelected.” Likewise, CNN correctly reported June 2, 2020: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu campaigned in all three recent elections on the promise to extend the reach of Israeli sovereignty into parts of the West Bank, land captured by Israel in 1967.”

Last month the Guardian corrected the identical error after it erroneously referred to Israel’s “contentious plan to annex the West Bank.”

Louis Farrakhan's antisemitism is well-documented. And yet, he continues to be widely admired and garners positive coverage in mainstream media. A recent op-ed in The New York Times praised Farrakhan for his supposed “inclusiveness.” The NYT effectively sanitized the Nation of Islam leader's bigotry. Unfortunately, it is no longer surprising given the laundry list of antisemitic content that has appeared in the “paper of record.”

The Trump administration on Monday imposed sanctions on an Australian-based businessman and his gemstone company for helping Al Qaeda move money across the globe to sustain its operations.

Treasury officials said Ahmed Luqman Talib traded in precious stones, allowing him to “move funds internationally” for Al Qaeda. Mr. Talib’s business is based in Melbourne, but he works around the world, including in Brazil, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Turkey and the Persian Gulf region, the Treasury Department said in a statement.

Terrorist groups continue to use financial facilitators to help carry out their activities, Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in a statement. The department remained committed to disrupting those financial activities and networks, he added, expressing appreciation for “the collaboration with our Australian partners.”

The effects of the sanctions on Mr. Talib are unclear. The measure freezes assets he holds in the United States and prohibits American companies or individuals from doing business with him.

Treasury officials did not disclose whether Mr. Talib held assets or property in the United States. In 2010, he was a student activist in Australia who was shot when Israeli naval commandos killed nine activists on a ship that was carrying aid to Gaza.

The American action against Mr. Talib was notable, experts said, because it showed that the government was still concerned about how extremist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State continue to creatively raise and distribute money for their operations, despite military, intelligence and legal pressures that have dealt significant blows to their activity.

The @nytimes today states that in 2010 "Israeli naval commandos killed nine activists on a ship that was carrying aid to Gaza."

Which is NYT for: Israeli naval commandos killed nine attackers on a ship breaching a naval blockade and not carrying any aid to Gaza.

— Gilead Ini (@GileadIni) October 20, 2020

The executive branch of the European Union on Tuesday announced its first-ever strategy on combating antisemitism, to be launched in 2021.

The strategy will form part of the work program for the European Commission during the coming year.

“Given the rise in antisemitic violence and hate crime, the Commission will present a comprehensive strategy on combating antisemitism, to complement and support Member States’ efforts,” a statement from the European Commission pledged.

The commission’s annual work plan was adopted on Monday and is subject to the approval of the European Parliament.

Titled “A union of vitality in a world of fragility,” the commission’s agenda for 2021 includes a “promoting our European way of life” component that is focused upon strengthening existing security arrangements, as well as countering addressing terrorism, organized crime and hybrid threats.

Sky HISTORY has reportedly axed its programme, The Chop: Britain’s Top Woodworker, after Campaign Against Antisemitism and others protested the inclusion of a contestant who appeared to have neo-Nazi symbols tattooed on his face.

The contestant, Darren, was introduced by Sky HISTORY in a video on Twitter with the caption: “Meet the Woodman, the Bloke-With-All-The-Tattoos or Darren as we like to call him. #TheChop”, and he was due to feature on the show hosted by comedian Lee Mack.

The contestant is covered in tattoos, including on his face, where one tattoo reads “88”, a popular number in neo-Nazi numerology that denotes the phrase “Heil Hitler”, since ‘H’ is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Other tattooed numbers include 23/16, denoted White Supremacy, 18 for Adolf Hitler, and 1488, another white supremacist figure.

Sky HISTORY tried to defend one tattoo on the basis that 1988 was the year his father died, but this was disputed by a journalist on social media.

Now, the channel has reportedly cancelled the show, which was due to commence on Thursday.

Space Florida, the aerospace economic development agency of the state of Florida, and the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) announced they would be devoting an additional $2 million in funding for the research and development of new aerospace projects. For the past eight years, both organizations have streamlined a competition for innovators, and since 2013 have spearheaded and sponsored projects that call for increased commercialization of aerospace projects for Florida and Israel. Relations between Israel and the state of Florida have been in the running for a while; It was barely two years ago that Israel launched its Beresheet lunar mission off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The projects range from developing research in space technologies, including radiation shield technology (that has been used to protect spacecraft from harmful solar radiation emissions), capacitors which propel spacecraft, unmanned aerial systems or UAS for drone capability, and examining and testing the effects of space on human muscle and immune cells in low-gravity environments.

Both groups will then showcase their proposals, which are chosen based on feasibility, while funding is then given to those companies which exhibit high potential, collaboration, commercialization, and sufficient economic gains for both states.

Israeli pharmaceutical company NextGen Biomed announced it has successfully identified a number of initial indicators of biological markers that could allow it to map traces of COVID-19 in the breath and lead to the creation of a breathalyzer test to identify the virus.

The announcement by NextGen is the result of a study announced in April by Israeli Scentech medical, a Tel Aviv-based company specializing in breath-test diagnostics. NextGen’s stock jumped 35 percent after a merger with Scentech was announced.

In April, Scentech said the trial would analyze the breath of 50-60 coronavirus patients of different ages and medical conditions from Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba, and compare them with the breath of healthy subjects. The results would then be verified by using 100-200 ill and healthy soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force, with the hopes of using the breath to identify ill patients with an accuracy rate of at least 85%.

NextGen announced that the two-part study had successfully identified certain gas compounds in the breath linked to the coronavirus and that the findings were in line with other independent scientific studies, the financial daily Globes reported Sunday.

In response to the findings, Scentech CEO Drew Morris said, “We are very encouraged by the success in identifying the indicators and moving closer to completing initial performance biomarkers and the start of broader research for swift testing using breakthrough technology.

Gabriella Farber, a 22-year-old Jewish student at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, is very possibly an unprecedented phenomenon, at least when it comes to campus politics.

Earlier this month, Farber was elected to the Student Representative Council (SRC) of the Johannesburg-based university commonly known as “Wits” on the slate of the Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA) — a coalition comprised of the African National Congress, the Muslim Students Association, the South African Students Congress and the Young Communist League. All of these organizations have pushed the view, separately and together, that the State of Israel is the reincarnation of South Africa’s old apartheid regime, and therefore anyone who calls themselves a Zionist is a “racist,” and most probably a “fascist” and “colonialist” as well.

And yet Farber — who proudly identifies as a religious Zionist — came in second on the PYA’s slate of 13 candidates, and was duly elected to the Wits Council on Oct. 7.

As Farber explained in an extensive interview with The Algemeiner on Tuesday, getting to this point was far from easy. In the weeks leading up to her election, she faced a campaign of vilification from anti-Israel activists furious that a white Jewish woman who called herself a Zionist had been accepted as a candidate on a progressive slate. For her part, Farber insists that she would never allow a conflict thousands of miles from South Africa to interfere with the vital work of empowering disadvantaged students at her own university.

How exactly did Farber — who arrived on campus “having not been interested in politics before” — end up in her present position?

As she described it, she grew up in a “Jewish bubble” in Johannesburg, attending the Yeshiva College Jewish day school and becoming a leader in the Bnei Akiva religious Zionist youth movement. Upon leaving high school, Farber moved to Israel for two years, where she studied at Midreshet Harova, an all-womens’ seminary in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Join us on November 1st to hear @bariweiss as our 2020 UN Watch Online Gala honors her moral courage & eloquence in defending the principles of democracy and combating antisemitism.

Don't miss this unique opportunity! Reserve now to ensure your place: https://t.co/f65xEts4bLpic.twitter.com/3Wh3j5NoiK

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) October 21, 2020

President Trump seeks to replace Jewish Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a devout Catholic from Indiana. Some might worry that this would diminish the Court’s understanding or compassion for Jews in America. They may wonder whether the new Justice has ever met or had any contact with Jews. But having worked with Judge Amy Coney Barrett, I have seen her defend the rights of Jewish Americans firsthand.

As a young lawyer after her clerkship with Justice Antonin Scalia, Barrett was an associate in a law firm of which I am the sole surviving name partner – Miller Cassidy Larroca and Lewin. The firm merged in 2001 – shortly before Barrett returned to teach at Notre Dame – with Baker Botts. (Although invited to do so, I did not join Baker Botts. My daughter Alyza and I formed Lewin & Lewin instead.)

Our firm attracted the cream of young lawyers because of our exciting case docket and because we gave them front-line courtroom opportunities in real-life cutting-edge cases. Supreme Court law clerks vied for associate slots in our firm even after wealthy large law firms began dangling obscenely gargantuan signing bonuses to attract them to the drudgery of young associate labors.

Our firm was distinctly non-political. Jack Miller, the firm’s founder, was a Republican who had been an Assistant Attorney General in the Robert Kennedy Department of Justice. I was — and continue to be — a registered Democrat who has also voted Republican. I was abroad when Bush v. Gore was being litigated, but two of our partners supervised Amy Barrett’s work in Florida assisting the Republican side.

Amy Barrett worked with me in 1999 and 2000 on behalf of Hasidic clients. I had — and continue to have — an ongoing battle with authorities in cities, towns and villages across the country that attempt to hinder or prevent the display of Hanukkah menorahs on public property by Chabad followers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. (No one contests the right to display menorahs on private property, and no Jewish group other than Chabad-Lubavitch, to my knowledge, has tried to erect and display large menorahs on central public locations.)

Happy Birthday to this world leader, who turns 71 years young #OnThisDay. Who can guess who it is? pic.twitter.com/7LG4rRIgKm

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 21, 2020

Last Friday was not the first time the Quint made an appearance. That distinction apparently came last year in September, when the five European countries issued a statement expressing “deep concern” at Netanyahu's announcement just prior to that month’s elections of his intention to annex the Jordan Valley. 

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who holds the state-funded, statutory position of Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi, said in a March 12, 2016 sermon, partly in response to Eisenkot’s admonition to limit the use of lethal force, that the Bible authorizes a shoot-to-kill policy: “‘Whoever comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.’ … let them afterward take you to the High Court of Justice or bring some military chief of staff who will say something else … As soon as an attacker knows that if he comes with a knife, he won’t return alive, it will deter them. That’s why it’s a religious commandment to kill him.”

The Sephardic Chief Rabbi does not command police or soldiers, but he heads the Supreme Rabbinical Tribunal and is tasked with advising on the interpretation of religious law. 

...

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, about half of Jewish Israelis define themselves as religious or traditional, not including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who usually do not serve in the army. Conscription for non-ultra-Orthodox Jewish men is universal. Most soldiers are in their teens or early 20s, and after a few months of basic training, they can be sent to serve in the occupied West Bank.

This is an accusation that religious (and traditional) Jews are bloodthirsty fanatics who would kill Arabs at a drop of a hat - and against army regulations. That is antisemitic slander. 

Or Amnesty-USA sponsoring a tour by Bassem Tamimi, who accuses Jews of stealing the organs of Palestinians.

As the U.S. has reduced its regional footprint and ambitions, the Middle East has begun to change on its own. Saudi Arabia has opened its airspace to commercial flights from Tel Aviv to Dubai, while the UAE has shifted from not recognizing the Jewish state to building a warm peace and economic partnerships with Israel.

In the new Middle East, the younger generation is turning its back on religious radicalism, and Arab public opinion is moving to accept the presence of a Jewish state. The Palestinians have lost their position at the center of Middle East politics, and it is Turkey and Iran, not Israel, that Arab rulers are most concerned to oppose.

President Trump's peace plan, which many longtime Middle East experts dismissed as a ghastly blunder that would destroy the American role in Middle East peace negotiations, has turned out to be relatively popular on the Arab street. A Zogby survey found majorities in favor of the "Deal of the Century" in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. 56% considered America "an ally" of their country, up from a low of 35% in 2018.

U.S. national security adviser Robert O'Brien told me that key Arab leaders have embraced the idea that better relations with Israel are critical to their states' security and even survival.

It is Turkey even more than Iran that keeps some Arab leaders awake at night. President Erdogan has aligned himself closely with the Muslim Brotherhood, a regional Islamist movement. Iran can only call on the minority Shiites for religious support, but Turkey can attract supporters from the Brotherhood's networks within the Sunni majority.

Ironically, the current Arab nightmare is that the next U.S. administration won't support Israel enough.

Trump and Biden need to debate their very different policies on China, Iran and the Middle East.

Long before the recent emergence of Hunter Biden’s alleged email files - whose authenticity still remains undisputed - Biden’s relaxed attitude to China strongly differed from Trump’s no-nonsense confrontational approach to handling China during the last four years.

On 23 October 2019 Biden – vying for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination – said:

“We talk about China as our competitor. We should be helping and benefiting ourselves by doing that. But the idea that China is going to eat our lunch — I remember the debates in the late ’90s, remember, Japan was going to own us? Give me a break.”

The CPD decision will deny intending voters their right to know Biden’s China policy stance and the implications this has for America.

Trump’s 2020 peace plan - providing for an independent Palestinian State in Gaza and up to 70% of Judea and Samaria (aka 'West Bank') to be negotiated between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation - offers a pathway to ending the 100 years unresolved conflict between Jews and Arabs.

Biden’s response:“A peace plan requires two sides to come together. This is a political stunt that could spark unilateral moves to annex territory and set back peace even more. I’ve spent a lifetime working to advance the security & survival of a Jewish and democratic Israel. This is not the way”

CPD’s political stunt ensures Biden will escape explaining how his “way” will be better than Trump’s.

America’s voters are being taken for a ride by a highly-partisan Presidential Debates Commission.

And this is without eveb mentioning Ukraine and Russia.

Shortly before we presented the Clinton parameters on peace to the Israelis and Palestinians in December 2000, I briefed Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to America. Once presented, I wanted Saudi Arabia to urge then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to accept our bridging proposal to end the conflict. Bandar’s response is etched in my memory: “If Arafat rejects this, it won’t be a mistake, it will be a crime.”

Bandar said this privately to me.

After Arafat rejected the Clinton parameters, other Arab officials echoed similar, if less dramatic, views to me. But none were prepared to say anything publicly. None were prepared openly to criticize the Arafat decision or counter the Palestinian story misrepresenting what had been offered.

That was then — when the Palestinians could portray the diplomacy one way, and leading Arab figures would not challenge their story, even when they knew it was wrong.

But this is now, and the Middle Eastern landscape is changing when it comes to the Palestinian cause.

What was unthinkable before is no longer; the fear that Palestinians could arouse opposition to Arab leaders by claiming they were betraying Palestinian national aspirations is gone.

Last week Bandar bin Sultan — in a three-part interview on al Arabiya network, speaking to a Saudi and regional audience — engaged in truth-telling about the historic failures of the Palestinian leadership. From declaring that Palestinian leaders “always pick the wrong side” to bemoaning that “there were always opportunities, but they were always lost,” he debunked the Palestinian narrative. He spoke of the constant divisions among Palestinians and how the Saudi kingdom “had justified to the whole world the actions of Palestinians” even when “we knew, indeed, [they] were not justified.” But Saudi Arabia did so because, in Bandar’s words, they did not “wish to stand with anyone against them, nor did we wish to see the consequences of their actions reflected on the Palestinian peoples.” In other words, Saudi Arabia stood by Palestinian leaders even when they were wrong, producing in Bandar’s words, Palestinian “indifference” and a belief that “there is no price to pay for any mistakes they commit.”

After months of deliberations and under US mediation, Sudan is set to announce plans to normalize its ties with Israel, officials privy to the move told Israel Hayom Thursday.

Khartoum is likely to make an official announcement on the issue this coming weekend, the official noted, likely after US President Donald Trump and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, chairman of the Sovereignty Council of Sudan, discuss the projected timeline.

As reported in Haaretz daily, a rare direct flight departed from Israel to Khartoum on Wednesday. Israel Hayom learned that it was carrying a high-level Israeli delegation of Prime Minister's Office and Mossad intelligence agency officials, who then met with their Sudanese counterparts in the transitional government.

The delegations were able to then reach a bilateral recognition agreement between Israel and Sudan.

On Wednesday afternoon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to step away from a meeting of the so-called coronavirus cabinet, citing "urgent national needs." It is believed he was called to a briefing on the matter of the official ties with Sudan.

The expected Sudanese announcement of recognizing the Jewish state will join the historic Abraham Accords signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on Sept. 15.

A high-level Israeli delegation traveled to Sudan this week, amid growing speculation the two countries will soon announce the establishment of diplomatic ties, Army Radio reported on Thursday.

The report did not specify when the trip took place or who visited Khartoum. But it came a day after a business jet was spotted making a highly unusual direct flight from Tel Aviv to Khartoum, and heading back later in the day.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he hoped Sudan would soon recognize Israel, as Washington moved to remove the Arab country from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Pompeo said that the United States wanted every nation “to recognize Israel, the rightful Jewish homeland, to acknowledge their fundamental right to exist as a country.”

“We are working diligently with them to make the case for why that’s in the Sudanese government’s best interest to make that sovereign decision,” Pompeo told reporters.

“We hope that they’ll do that, and we hope that they’ll do that quickly.”

An overwhelming majority of both chambers of Congress have introduced resolutions in support of the Abraham Accords, which normalize ties between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) announced Wednesday.

Ninety-one senators co-sponsored a Senate version of the resolution, which congratulates the governments and people of Israel, the UAE and Bahrain on reaching historic agreements. It reaffirms “its strong support for a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in two states – a democratic Jewish state of Israel and a viable, democratic Palestinian state – living side-by-side in peace, security, and mutual recognition.”

The resolution also encourages other Arab nations to establish full relations with Israel with the vision of realizing full peace between Israel and all its Arab neighbors.

The list of cosponsors was not final, and more members might add their names, AIPAC said.

Senate Resolution 709 was introduced by Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), Todd Young (R-Indiana) and Ben Cardin (D-Maryland).

As of Wednesday, on the Democratic side, vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders had not signed as co-sponsors. On the Republican side, Sen. Ted Cruz had not signed as a co-sponsor.

US Special Representative for International Negotiations Avi Berkowitz, tells Israel Hayom the US is working actively to expand Israel's normalization deals with the Arab world.

Which countries might be next?

That is the question that I get asked most. If I were someone who went to dinner parties, that would be the type of thing that I would be hit with most. Luckily I have been able to avoid meeting too many people. We are in negotiations with a few other countries, right now, time is obviously a relevant component. The beauty of the UAE deal, what was so instrumental about it coming to fruition was the fact that nobody knew about it outside of a very select group of people that worked for Jared and then on the Israeli and UAE side as well. And the surprise factor wasn't just because it allowed us to frame what the actual deal was, in reality, because sometimes what happens is that somebody doesn't like a component of something so that they would just leak out that, which will make it seem like the deal is worse than it actually is, so in addition to that component it also allowed the parties to speak freely amongst each other and if you were to ask us at a specific snapshot it's sort of like us the story I mentioned earlier with Scott, you know we were at 65 percent, you might think that things were going in a bad way, when really, that's just how deals go. They take time and they are up and down and complicated, and I have obviously seen the news stories about Sudan and Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Oman, and other countries as well, but I prefer to allow whichever countries we may be talking with the privacy to actually really have these free discussions without the fear of things being leaked in ways that could harm the deals.

The United States and Bahrain are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on combating antisemitism, a senior Trump administration official told JNS.

The three-year MOU, which would be eligible for renewal, will be between the US State Department and the King Hamad Global Centre for Peaceful Coexistence to develop and facilitate programs to combat antisemitism and promote peaceful coexistence, according to the official.

The two-page MOU is slated to be signed on Thursday evening in a Washington ceremony that will include US Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism Elan Carr and Dr. Shaikh Khalid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, chairman of the board of trustees of the King Hamad Global Centre for Peaceful Coexistence in Bahrain.

“The spirit of this cooperation is intended to be guided by the principles of the Kingdom of Bahrain Declaration of July 3, 2017,” the MOU states, according to the senior administration official.

That 2017 document states, “For hundreds of years, different religious groups have lived harmoniously, side by side, in the Kingdom of Bahrain, fully practicing the tenets of their respective faiths in blessed, peaceful coexistence with each other. We humbly offer the centuries-old traditional Bahraini way of life as an example to inspire others around these principles.”

Albania’s parliament unanimously approved on Thursday a resolution to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

This made Albania the second Muslim-majority nation to adopt the definition, after neighboring Kosovo.

The US-based Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM) hailed the “landmark” decision and called on other countries to follow suit.

“At a time when anti-Semitism is increasing across the world, the IHRA definition has never been more important,” the director of CAM, Sacha Roytman-Dratwa, stated. “Not only does it spell out exactly what Jew-hatred looks like, but adopting IHRA’s definition makes clear that anti-Semitism has no place in free, democratic and tolerant societies such as Albania.”

Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog commented, “I congratulate the Albanian government on the significant step it has taken in the fight against anti-Semitism. The adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is the most important and effective tool currently in place in the international arena to take practical action against the scourge of anti-Semitism.”

The speaker of the Albanian parliament, Gramoz Ruci, said, “It is good news that we, the Albanians and the peoples of the Western Balkans, a region that has suffered more than any other part of the world, the consequences of ethno-centrist and religious-centrist views and attitudes, join this emancipatory action of contemporary civilization: the fight against anti-Semitism.”

Israel and the United Arab Emirates have opened talks over an oil pipeline linking the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, whose operations Israeli officials treat as top secret.

Europe Asia Pipeline Co., controlled by Israel’s government, and UAE-based MED-RED Land Bridge Ltd. signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on the transportation of crude and oil products between the Persian Gulf and Western markets, according to an EAPC statement on Tuesday.

The agreement comes after the UAE, OPEC’s third-biggest oil producer, and Israel announced in August they would normalize ties. The two have since discussed establishing embassies, starting direct flights and business deals.

EAPC operates the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, built by Israel and Iran in the 1960s. It has a capacity of 600,000 barrels a day and almost 23 million barrels of storage space. Most oil sent from the Gulf to Europe is either shipped through the Suez Canal or via Egypt’s Sumed pipeline, which can pump 2.5 million barrels daily.

Israel and Bahrain signed an aviation agreement on Thursday for weekly direct flights between Tel Aviv and Manama, following the normalization deal inked between the countries last month.

The agreement calls for the two countries to operate up to 14 weekly flights between the airports, as they seek to establish bilateral trade and tourism ties.

The agreement will also enable five weekly cargo flights along with an unlimited number of flights between Manama and Israel’s Ramon Airport, near Eilat, according to a statement from the Israeli Transportation Ministry.

“The historic peace agreements we have brought are advancing rapidly and by huge strides,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement, saying that the aviation deal would “greatly strengthen tourism and trade between [our countries] and all Israeli citizens will benefit from it.”

“This is what real peace looks like: peace for peace, economy for economy,” Netanyahu added, using an oft-repeated slogan to describe the normalization agreement as a paradigm shift from peace deals in exchange for concessions.

Transportation Minister Miri Regev said that the agreement will lead to the eventual formation of “express routes” between the two countries that will allow passengers to travel from Ben Gurion Airport to Manama in roughly three hours.

UAE media is speculating on Israel’s possible relationship with Sudan amid widespread rumors across the Middle East.

An Israeli delegation visited Khartoum on Wednesday to discuss signing a peace agreement between the two countries, “informed Sudanese sources” told Al Ain News, an online news portal based in the UAE.

In addition Kuwait’s Al-Jarida claimed to reveal secret talks between Israel and Lebanon that may predate the recent discussions about demarcating water boundaries.

The anonymous sources quoted by Al Ain News said the delegation, whose composition was not known, “met with the head of the Sudanese Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. “The meeting discussed the issue of signing a peace agreement between Tel Aviv [sic] and Khartoum, at a time when the United States announced its intention to remove Sudan from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism.” The article said the Sudanese government did not confirm the meeting as of press time.

Al Ain News also reported on Israeli media reports about an “imminent peace agreement” between the countries. The agreement would be the third after the UAE announced normalization in August and Bahrain in September. Both agreements have now been signed, and an Israeli delegation visited Bahrain this week and a UAE delegation traveled to Israel. Sudan would be the fifth Arab country to make peace with Israel, Al Ain News said.

Lebanese journalist Nadim Koteich mocked a statement by Palestinian ambassador to France in an October 14, 2020 show on Sky News Arabia (UAE). The ambassador had said that the Palestinian resistance has gone on for 100 years, and it will go on for 100 years more. He said that the ambassador is free to pledge another 100 years of resistance because he doesn’t actually have to live in Palestine. Koteich added that the Palestinians received an opportunity to establish a prosperous state in Gaza, after Israel withdrew from the Strip in 2005, however, they destroyed it. Koteich said that the UAE succeeded in turning warring tribes and chiefdoms into a prosperous union, while the Palestinians have done the exact opposite, creating warring factions upon factions. He said that the Palestinians could stand to learn from the UAE, and should not criticize it.

The possible normalization of relations between Israel and Sudan will have a negative impact on the Palestinian issue, Palestinian officials said on Thursday.

The officials, responding to reports that Sudan may become the third country in recent weeks to establish relations with Israel after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, warned that such a move would serve as another severe blow to the Palestinians.

They claimed that Khartoum has been facing heavy pressure and “blackmail” from the US administration to normalize its relations with Israel in return for removing Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terror.

“If Sudan joins the train of normalization with Israel, it will be another setback for the Palestinian issue,” a Palestinian Authority official told The Jerusalem Post. “It won’t come as surprise, but Sudan will become the third Arab country to stab the Palestinians in the back and act in violation of Arab consensus and resolutions.”

Earlier this year, Palestinians condemned a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sudanese leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Uganda.

PA officials said that the meeting was held in the context of US President Donald Trump’s plan for Middle East peace, also known as the “Deal of the Century.”

Demonstrators in Khartoum burn the Israeli flag in a message to the government against normalizing ties between #Sudan and #Israel. pic.twitter.com/Vh3om3sc23

— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) October 21, 2020

The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday said it determined that an attack tunnel discovered earlier this week from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory was dug by the Hamas terror group.

On Tuesday, the IDF announced it had uncovered what it called a “terror tunnel” that had been dug from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis across the border toward the Israeli community of Kibbutz Kissufim.

At the time, the IDF said it was not yet sure which terror group in the Strip had constructed the passage, though Hamas was seen as the likely culprit, having dug the majority of the attack tunnels out of Gaza. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad has also been known to construct such passages.

Though the tunnel penetrated dozens of meters into Israeli territory, it remained on the Gaza side of the underground concrete barrier around the Strip. IDF Spokesperson Hidai Zilberman said the sensor-studded barrier, which is due to be completed in the coming months, first identified an anomaly on Monday and military engineers confirmed that it was in fact a tunnel the following day.

The military said Wednesday night it had determined that Hamas was behind the tunnel based on the manner in which it was constructed. It did not offer any details.

The money spent on digging an underground terror tunnel from Gaza into Israel should be invested in the people of Gaza.

RT if you agree. pic.twitter.com/WfFBEM19j1

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 21, 2020

Reports of IDF leaflets dropped over the period of a week near the #Israel-#Syria border. First leaflet warns Syrians not to cross the border into #Israel for the sake of #Hezbollah& Iranian money. Second leaflet names & warns SAA commanders serving the interests of #Hezbollah. pic.twitter.com/94p0spT1Qj

— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) October 22, 2020

A group of nurses from the Gaza Strip staged a protest in a public square on Wednesday, saying an Israeli travel ban has led the Jerusalem hospital where they worked for many years to fire them.

The seven nurses gathered at a public square in Gaza City, wearing lab coats and holding banners that said: "Firing us is a death sentence on our profession and families."

They directed their anger at both Israel, which restricts the entrance of Palestinians from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip over security concerns, and at the decision by the Makassed hospital to lay them off. Each had worked there for at least 20 years.

"We never expected that Makassed would dismiss us arbitrarily," said Baher Lulu, 53, a critical care nurse who said he joined the hospital 30 years ago, when travel from Gaza to Jerusalem did not require Israeli permission. "This has hurt us and our families, which rely heavily on this income."

The workers said they used to receive renewable three-month permits that allowed them to spend the week at Makassed and return home to Gaza each weekend.

But starting in 2016, they say Israeli authorities gradually stopped issuing permits. By 2019, all of them had lost the permits. The medics say Israel cited security concerns.

The Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli defense body that oversees Palestinian civilian affairs, said it is forced to restrict access because Hamas "does not hesitate to promote terrorism by cynically exploiting the Gaza Strip's population." It said its rules for entry are available on its website, and every permit request "is thoroughly examined by the relevant professionals, subject to security considerations."

The leaders did not travel to Syria to find ways to help the Palestinians living there.

It is one thing to fail your people by stealing the money that the international community sends to them. But it is another level of unacceptable indifference to turn a blind eye to atrocities committed against your own people by an Arab country.

By praising the Syrian government for "achieving security and stability," the Fatah leaders are actually sending the message to Assad that he can continue to kill, imprison and torture Palestinians by the thousands.

By holding meetings in Damascus without discussing how to help their beleaguered people in Syria, Palestinian leaders are sending the message that thwarting peace plans and condemning Arabs for making peace with Israel take precedence over the safety of their people. In short, this visit marks another star "failure" of the Palestinian leadership.

Appreciate her acknowledging the Palestinian doctor, but how about all the Israeli doctors at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, working non-stop to help keep her father, Saeb Erekat alive? https://t.co/NIM2q7NQ65

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 21, 2020

Egyptian War Veteran Shows off Blood-Stained IDF Uniform He Had Taken as a Souvenir from Israeli Soldiers Killed in 1973 War. TV Host: We Crushed Them in the War pic.twitter.com/6pokUfGzGJ

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 22, 2020

Lebanese veteran politician Saad al-Hariri was named prime minister for a fourth time on Thursday and pledged to form a new government that can tackle the country’s worst crisis since its 1975-1990 civil war.

After his nomination, Hariri said he would quickly form a cabinet of specialists “with a mission to enact the economic and financial reforms” set out in a French roadmap to unlock foreign aid.

But he faces major challenges to navigate Lebanon’s sectarian politics to agree a cabinet, which must then fix a mounting list of woes: a banking crisis, currency crash, rising poverty and crippling state debts.

A new government will also have to contend with a COVID-19 surge and the fallout of the huge August explosion at Beirut port that killed nearly 200 people and caused billions of dollars of damage.

At 50, Hariri has already served three terms since 2009 as premier — a post reserved for a Sunni Muslim in Lebanon’s power-sharing system. His last coalition cabinet was toppled almost exactly a year ago as protests gripped the country, furious at the ruling elite for decades of state graft and waste.

Hariri, the sole candidate in Thursday’s talks, was backed by a majority of parliamentarians.

In a full-page ad in the Oct. 21 edition of the Wall Street Journal, American Jewish Committee (AJC) is calling again on the 27-member European Union (EU) to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

The ad is the latest effort in a multi-year, broad-based campaign by the global advocacy organization to raise awareness about the reality of Hezbollah.

"Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, armed and supported by Iran. It has a global – and deadly – reach from Europe to North and South America, from Africa to Asia, and across the Middle East … Yet, defying all logic, the European Union insists there are actually two Hezbollahs – one 'political,' the other 'military,'" the ad reads.

The Baltic country of Estonia imposed sanctions on the Lebanese Shi'ite terrorist organization Hezbollah, following a proposal of the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in response to acts of terrorism committed by the group, according to a government press release on Thursday.

“Hezbollah poses a considerable threat to international – and thereby Estonian – security. With this step, Estonia stands by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Lithuania as well as other countries who have concluded that Hezbollah uses terrorist means and constitutes a threat to the security of many states,” Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu said.

The sanctions will entail restrictions of entry to anyone associated with the terrorist group, on the basis that there are reasonable grounds to believe that their activity supports terrorism, and pose a threat to Estonians as well as international security.

A detailed list of persons affiliated with Hezbollah is expected to be subjected to Estonian government sanctions, which will be determined by the foreign minister after coming into force on Thursday.

Lebanese Politician Naji Hayek: There Is No Shame in Talking about Establishment of a Federation in Lebanon pic.twitter.com/L4EqXCXcMq

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 22, 2020

A statue of a woman by Lebanese artist Hayat Nazer -- made out of broken glass, rubble and a damaged clock marking the time (6:08 PM) of the mega explosion at the port of Beirut -- is placed opposite the blast site in the Lebanese capital

📸 Joseph Eid pic.twitter.com/2ws7RGo6GZ

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 22, 2020

Following the end of the UN embargo on Iran buying or selling weapons, the military component of a 25-year deal between China and Iran may now feature the deployment in Iran of North Korean weaponry and technology, in exchange for oil, according to sources close to the Iranian government.

This would include Hwasong-12 mobile ballistic missiles, with a range of 4,500 km., and the development of liquid propellant rocket engines suitable for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

As recorded in Jane's Intelligence Reviews, over the first five-year period from the onset of Iran's ballistic missile program in 1987, Iran bought up to 300 Scud B missiles from North Korea.

Pyongyang was also instrumental in helping Iran to build a Scud B missile plant that became operational in 1988. Iranian personnel traveled to North Korea for training in the operation and manufacture of these missiles.

In addition, up to 130 officers from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps receive training every year at various military institutions in China.

US officials accused Iran on Wednesday of being behind a flurry of emails sent to Democratic voters in multiple battleground states that appeared to be aimed at intimidating them into voting for US President Donald Trump.

The announcement at a rare, hastily called news conference just two weeks before the election underscored the concern within the US government about efforts by foreign countries to spread false information meant to suppress voter turnout and undermine American confidence in the vote.

The activities attributed to Iran would mark a significant escalation for a nation that some cybersecurity experts regard as a second-rate player in online espionage, with the announcement coming as most public discussion surrounding election interference has centered on Russia, which hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 election, and China, a Trump administration adversary.

“These actions are desperate attempts by desperate adversaries,” said John Ratcliffe, the government’s top intelligence official, who, along with FBI Director Chris Wray, insisted the US would impose costs on any foreign countries that interfere in the 2020 US election and that the integrity of the election is still sound.

“You should be confident that your vote counts,” Wray said. “Early, unverified claims to the contrary should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.”

My interview with @bbcpersian about the regime's decision to arrest my brother, Alireza Alinejad.

The regime has jailed my brother to break me down. Yes, today, I'm a broken person & I'm crying.

But beware of my anger the Islamic Republic of Iran. Broken people won't sit still pic.twitter.com/G4wMOHXAys

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) October 20, 2020

Postcolonial Theory, Israel, and Zionism It shouldn’t be far from anyone’s mind that the Woke, as a rule, are hostile to the existence of Israel. The relevant ideology is, in fact, deeply invested in uncritical support for Palestine and is openly anti-Zionist, often to the point of openly calling for the destruction of Israel. Weiss captures the public results of this attitude well, including the confusion among Jews who still think these ideologies are liberal, writing,

The most recent major outrage in the Jewish community, now several news cycles behind us, came on the Shabbat before Yom Kippur—the holiest day in the Jewish calendar—when many American Jews seemed dumbfounded by what was to me predictable news: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, progressive superstar, had pulled out of an event honoring Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister assassinated because of his efforts to make peace with the Palestinians. Rabin was, as Bill Clinton said at his funeral, “a martyr for his nation’s peace.”

Many Jews were shocked. If Rabin, the symbol of progressive Zionism, is out of bounds, are any Israelis acceptable? What about the 95% of Jews who support the Jewish state? Why would the congresswoman from the Bronx—representing the political party to which upward of 70% of American Jews have been consistently loyal—possibly do such a thing?

The answer to whether any Israelis are acceptable under Theory is no. For those who understand that Postcolonial Theory generally believes all actions made by the West anywhere else in the world, and especially where brown or black people live, as intolerable acts of Western colonialism and imperialism, this isn’t shocking, however. It’s perfectly consistent with what its activists continually say and its Theorists continually write. Israel would be considered in Theory as the result of white, Western imperialism and colonialism—largely in cahoots with conservative Christianity—robbing poor, brown Muslim Palestinians of their land, not least so that there is the ability to assert further Western hegemony and militarism in the Middle East (for the purpose of murdering more brown Muslims). The whole point is to establish, yet again, white supremacy in the Middle East. Its terms really are that stark. In the politically polished words of Linda Sarsour, which invoke precisely the crude racial frame of Critical Race Theory to make their effect,

Ask them this, how can you be against white supremacy in America and the idea of being in a state based on race and class, but then you support a state like Israel that is based on supremacy, that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else.

While Critical Race Theory sees Israel—no matter its racial makeup—as structural whiteness occupying the (brown) Palestinian Middle East, Postcolonial Theory regards the existence of the contemporary Israeli state in a way that is wholly critical (as Marx would be) of both it and the West that supports it. This is what Postcolonial Theory does; it claims that the West constructs the “East” (here: Palestine) in a way that is meant to make its own values look superior by virtue of being better than the “Other’s” values—a process now unfortunately called “Orientalism.” The point of Orientalism is to enable a means of domination that might then justify Western occupations of non-Western lands and people, which will then hold to its own ideologies, methods, and values. Within the Theoretical wing of the contemporary left, Israel is regarded as one such ongoing project even in a (Western) world that has rejected the idea of colonialism more or less entirely.

Again, as with the issue where Critical Race Theory collides with Jewry, this wretched analysis is exactly what we should expect from Postcolonial Theory’s collision with Israel. It simply lacks the tools for a more nuanced or reasonable analysis of the admittedly complex affair. Take the Palestinian-American Edward Said’s analysis in his landmark Orientalism, which is in some sense recognizable as the birthplace of Postcolonial Theory, wherein precisely this simplistic, cynical, zero-sum thinking can be found:

Thus if the Arab occupies space enough for attention, it is as a negative value. He is seen as the disrupter of Israel’s and the West’s existence, or in another view of the same thing, as a surmountable obstacle to Israel’s creation in 1948. Insofar as this Arab has any history, it is part of the history given him (or taken from him: the difference is slight) by the Orientalist tradition, and later, the Zionist tradition. Palestine was seen—by Lamartine and the early Zionists—as an empty desert waiting to burst into bloom; such inhabitants as it had were supposed to be inconsequential nomads possessing no real claim on the land and therefore no cultural or national reality. Thus the Arab is conceived of now as a shadow that dogs the Jew. In that shadow—because Arabs and Jews are Oriental Semites—can be placed whatever traditional, latent mistrust a Westerner feels towards the Oriental. For the Jew of pre-Nazi Europe has bifurcated: what we have now is a Jewish hero, constructed out of a reconstructed cult of the adventurer-pioneer Orientalist (Burlon, Lane, Renan), and his creeping, mysteriously fearsome shadow, the Arab Oriental. Isolated from everything except the past created for him by Orientalist polemic, the Arab is chained to a destiny that fixes him and dooms him to a series of reactions periodically chastised by what Barbara Tuchman gives the theological name “Israel’s terrible swift sword.” (p. 286)

Last Friday 47-year-old schoolteacher Samuel Paty was butchered and decapitated near the school at which he worked. His ‘crime’ was to teach his students about free speech. There is a horrific difference in this terror attack that is not being fully digested. This was a community effort. Some Muslims at the school were offended and a protest was launched. A parent brought in an ‘expert’ to help fight the blasphemous teacher. A fatwa was issued and a punishment for blasphemy was handed out. Worse still – despite statements of solidarity with the victim that inevitably filled the political chambers – the message was clear – and teachers all over France received it. Blasphemy in France is a crime punishable by death.

Many writers won’t touch this subject – they are too nervous in case they make a slight mistake that will be used against them. They fear they’ll be shouted down as an ‘Islamophobe’. This in itself is indicative of the problem and shows how our rights to free speech and to defend ourselves are being removed from us. A teacher was brutally murdered for doing his job. Earlier this year a 16-year-old girl in France needed police protection for criticising Islam. We have to talk about this. The Paris attack is different

Why is this terrorist incident different? In attacks such as the Manchester bombing, 7/7, Nice or even with the murder of Lee Rigby, the specific victims were random. There was nothing random about this attack. This was the application of Islamic law on the streets of Paris. Which is where we arrive at our first hurdle- the western PC reflex to terrorist attacks by radical Islamic Muslims is to publicly state that it is nothing to do with Islam.

But what may hold some weight (I am not saying it does) when a nutcase with ISIS ideology filling his head detonates himself in a crowded venue – does not hold at all when a particular target is butchered because of blasphemy.

Simple fact : It is an argument within Islam. Those Muslims who say a blasphemer must be killed are arguing Islamic law just as much as those who say it doesn’t.

Those who say this is nothing to do with Islam should consider this – if the teacher had done this in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Somalia or Saudi Arabia the same punishment (death) may well have been handed out – in a state sanctioned killing. In places such as Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Libya or the PA areas, he might just have spent a lengthy time in Jail. But the fact is this – one way or another all Muslim majority countries have criminalised blasphemy. All of them.

Ask yourself this question – how many devout Muslims have you spoken to who think Charlie Hebdo did nothing wrong at all?

Jews’ share of the population of Europe is as low now as it was 1,000 years ago and is declining even further, according to a landmark new demographic study.

The study published Wednesday by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research found 1.3 million people who describe themselves as Jewish in continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Turkey and Russia.

That figure has declined by nearly 60% since 1970, when there were 3.2 million Jews in the same area, wrote the report’s authors, Daniel Staetsky and Sergio DellaPergola.

That decline, which follows the death of about 6 million European Jews in the Holocaust, owes mostly to the emigration of more than 1.5 million people following the collapse of the Iron Curtain, their data shows.

But Western Europe, too, has lost 8.5% of its Jewish population since 1970. It is home to just over a million Jews today compared to 1,112,000 in 1970.

In particular, the Jewish community of Germany is in a “terminal” state because more than 40% of its 118,000 Jews are above the age of 65, whereas less than 10% are under 15, the study says. This reality, which exists also in Russia and Ukraine, “foreshadows high death rates and unavoidable future population decline,” according to the study.

The project is arguably the most comprehensive survey of Jewish demographics ever completed in Europe, more far-reaching than a 2018 European Union survey — although the new survey uses some information from the 2018 EU project. It is also based on official census data and figures provided by individual Jewish communities, which are often organized into organizations with official membership tallies.

Despite the apology, Roth said that he was “stunned by the coldness of the BBC’s formalistic, paint-by-numbers reaction to the torrent of criticism they received from an enraged public”.

He added: “I urge everyone with a sense of justice to re-read the detached, distorted, disingenuous response they issued (not to me or my wife – we haven’t heard a word from them) and ask themselves whether this empty, cruel, pointless and evasive ‘sorry not sorry’ note ought to close the chapter.

“They didn’t get the name of some capital city somewhere wrong. They misplaced their moral compass. They didn’t even mention that this woman boasts of killing… the killing of which she boasts is of children. Jewish children, as it happens. My Jewish child among them.”

Tamimi proudly claimed credit for the attack in 2001. Admitting to scouting the location of Sbarro – a popular eatery in downtown Jerusalem – because it was known to be a favourite for families, she previously said that she only felt disappointed as she had “hoped for a larger toll”. She was released from an Israeli prison as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011, her husband was also released in the Shalit prisoner exchange after being convicted of terrorism for murdering an Israeli student in 1993.

Lord Michael Grade, former chairman of the BBC, told the Jewish News there were “very serious issues of balance and impartiality raised” by the broadcast and the corporation, and possibly Ofcom, should investigate.

Bob Blackman, the Tory MP and Conservative Friends of Israel officer, had written to the BBC Director General Tim Davie asking for an apology to the families of Tamimi’s victims, after Roth told Sky News Australia that he was “nauseated” by the BBC coverage.

Blackman, the MP for Harrow East added: “Giving a platform for Tamimi’s appeal to be reunited with her husband is understandably deeply distressing for the families of her victims, who will never be reunited with their loved ones”.

The Tory MP instead suggested that the BBC should dedicate more coverage to ongoing extradition attempts by the United States, where a reward of up to $5million for information that leads to Ahlam Tamimi’s arrest or conviction has been offered.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office were approached for a comment.

Last week, PMW exposed that BBC’s Arabic show “Trending,” broadcast and item whose sole purpose was to give a voice

Last week, PMW exposed that BBC’s Arabic show “Trending,” broadcast an item whose sole purpose was to give a voice and sympathetic exposure to terrorist Ahlam Tamimi. Tamimi planned and coordinated the suicide bombing at Sbarro Pizza in Jerusalem in 2001, in which 15 people were murdered, including eight children, among them Malki Roth, the daughter of Frimet and Arnold Roth.

PMW and Arnold Roth called on BBC to remove the item promoting his daughter’s murderer:

“Together with PMW, and in the name of our murdered child, my wife and I call on BBC ‎management… BBC must immediately remove the videos from YouTube, and issue a ‎sincere public apology to the families of Tamimi’s victims whose memories BBC has ‎desecrated by promoting their murderer.” ‎

The Jerusalem Post reported PMW’s assertion that BBC had not only glorified a terrorist murderer, but also sent a message of support to all potential terrorists:

“ITAMAR MARCUS, Director of PMW, said that in airing Tamimi's appeal in this way, the BBC has sent a signal to other would-be terrorists that their actions are justifiable.

‘Terror is successful only when the terrorists receive media attention,’ Marcus said. ‘Without media, terror would have no purpose. BBC’s “reaching out” knowingly to a child murderer of Israelis in order to be the platform for this terrorist, not only supports this past terrorist, it serves as a catalyst for those considering terror in the future. The knowledge that BBC and other media will be there to honor, promote and support them is the fuel that the terror infrastructures need to thrive.” [The Jerusalem Post, Oct. 14, 2020]

After exposing the BBC item, PMW turned to NGOs around the world, such as ACT.IL, who joined in galvanizing additional pressure on BBC.

In response, BBC removed the interview with the terrorist murderer from its YouTube channel as demanded and apologized: A BBC spokesperson told Jewish News: “Following an editorial review we found that this segment was in breach of our editorial guidelines and we removed the clip from our digital platforms last week. We accept that the segment should not have been shown and apologise for the offence caused.”

[Jewish News, Oct. 21, 2020]

The BBC recently glorified a woman who murdered eight children. By providing unrepentant terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, notorious for her role in 2001 Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing in Jerusalem, with a massive platform, the news outlet showed its true colors when it comes to coverage of the Jewish state. Will the BBC's anti-Israel bias finally be exposed?

In my opinion, there are two places that Jew Hatred aka anti-Semitism has been growing over the last decade. The first place is on college campuses, both big/state university to small/local colleges.

Jewish and pro-Israel college students have been targeted by far left progressive groups who refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist and choose to only fight Jew Hatred when it comes from Neo-Nazi’s and White supremacists while dismissing those who state the BDS movement is just another form of Jew Hatred.

On Columbia University’s campus, Jewish college students have woken up to Nazi Germany swastikas painted on their doors for being proud Jews who support Israel. In a September 9th report, Greta Anderson wrote about the rise of Jew Hatred on college campuses. The stories from Jewish college students over the last decade are enough to make even the strongest person want to throw in the towel. Our Jewish college students have felt like they are under attack on their campus but they are breathing a little easier now thanks to President Trump and his administration for taking bold action to counter this disturbing trend of Jew Hatred on college campuses with Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism in 2019.

The purpose of the EO is to require that the Department of Education, when reviewing whether there has been a violation of Title VI, considers an individual’s actual or perceived shared Jewish ancestry or Jewish ethnic characteristics, as “anti-Semitism” is currently defined, as part of its assessment of whether the alleged practice was motivated by anti-Semitism.

The second place that Jew Hatred runs rampant is online via social media platforms like; FaceBook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and many others. I have personally been a target of online Jew Hatred on multiple occasions.

Earlier this year, I was moderating a conversation between U.S. Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Ellie Cohanim and Jewish high school students. At the end of the zoom meeting, a Neo-Nazi appeared on video and he lifted up his shirt to show everyone his swastika tattoo on his chest.

US State Secretary Mike Pompeo seeks to officially brand several major human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as antisemitic and cease US support for them, Politico reported Wednesday.

According to the report, which cited a congressional aide and was corroborated by other US media outlets, Pompeo is pushing for a report by US Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism Elan Carr.

The report would condemn alleged antisemitism on behalf of a number of top human rights NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Oxfam, and call for ending US financial support for them.

The document could be published as early as this week, Politico reported, adding that the material implications of ending US funding for the groups are not immediately clear.

In comments to the newspaper, all of the groups denied their alleged antisemitism and support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Earlier, Oxfam Solidarity was mentioned on a Belgian document as one of the groups working on projects with the strategic goal of “mitigating the influence of pro-Israel voices” in the EU.

In late 2019, Israel expelled a senior Human Rights Watch official over his alleged support for the BDS, which he denied.

Also in 2019, a lengthy report by a British researcher charged that Amnesty International is institutionally biased against Israel, spreads rhetoric of hate against the Jewish state, and aligns its anti-Israel campaigns with the BDS movement.

Anti-Semitism has been increasing globally for more than a decade, largely because of its propagation online. In the first eight months of 2020, 1.7 million anti-Semitic posts appeared on Twitter and YouTube alone. In the online world, increasing numbers of the world's youth are lured into dangerous virtual neighborhoods where they are vulnerable to poisonous influences and can be lost to violent radicalization. A recent European study found that radicalization to the point of violence is accomplished much more quickly on the Internet than through face-to-face interaction.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is hosting a conference on combating online anti-Semitism on Oct. 21 and 22, titled "Ancient Hatred, Modern Medium." Many of the conclusions and recommendations that emerge from the conference will be equally applicable to other forms of online hate and will serve as tools in the broader cause of defending human dignity and religious freedom everywhere.

Antisemitism is experiencing a resurgence among the ever-growing number of anti-vaccination advocates, prompting calls for the British government to act, the Jewish Chroniclereported Wednesday.

The study is titled "From antivaxxers to antisemitism: Conspiracy theory in the Covid-19 pandemic," and was prepared by Lord John Mann, the independent adviser on antisemitism, and molecular cell biology expert Dr. Lewis Arthurton.

It details how nationwide lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic have led to a climate of anxiety among the general public, creating an ideal environment for conspiracy theories about the virus to take root, many of which are antisemitic.

The study explains that, “for many with concerns about public health measures, Facebook groups promoting conspiracy theories provide easy answers to users desiring certainty.”

This, in turn, has led to conspiracy theories regarding the coronavirus vaccine, with the report predicting that “it will be essential to quickly sideline the conspiracy theories and misinformation of the anti-vaxxers,” the Chronicle reported.

It has been said often before, but in the aftermath of the two Parisian attacks, it bears repeating—both Islamists and their ostensibly secular defenders must be resisted. They must understand that the defense of universal human rights is not a provocation, much less a “phobia,” but a moral obligation. The campaign of undisguised menace against artists and writers and cartoonists who question or mock revered scriptures and religious figures is granted too much credence in certain quarters that proclaim to merely be respecting “Muslim sensibilities.” What these peace-at-any-price observers don’t grasp, however, is that it is only recently (with the rise of Wahhabism) that the portrayal of Mohammad has been deemed blasphemous. In any case, scrutiny of religious texts and prophets is a foundational element of the Enlightenment. Surrender that keystone principle, and what remains of the larger edifice?

The consequence of failing to prosecute this struggle in defense of freedom of religion and freedom of speech will be the steady erosion of tolerance and inquiry in the name of good manners. It could lead to what the British writer Kenan Malik has called an “auction of victimhood,” with offended groups competing to see if they can receive special exemptions and get their taboo images removed from the public eye. A decade after Jyllands-Posten published the Danish cartoons of Mohammad in 2005, it chose not to republish the Charlie Hebdo drawings, citing its “unique position” of vulnerability. Flemming Rose, the editor who commissioned the original cartoons, told the BBC, “We caved in.” “Violence works,” he added, and “sometimes the sword is mightier than the pen.”

The cycle of Islamist intimidation and secular surrender is fraught with risk. France faces the prospect of being split into rival nations: one that lives in a secular republic and another one that lives in the shadow of sharia and blasphemy codes, even if the Islamic law is de facto rather than de jure. If this fate is permitted to come to pass, the cause of civilization will lose a vital foothold in Europe, with repercussions far beyond the old continent.

The rising secularism and pluralism of modern societies has been a crowning achievement of the West. It need not become a problem so long as there is a staunch and pervasive belief in the legitimacy of the liberal creed. Without such belief, however, societies around the globe will be poorly equipped to cope with a confident and militant faith in their midst. And as long as this faith enjoys exaggerated deference and intellectual immunity, nobody’s throats will be safe.

On October 16, 2020, Samuel Paty, a French history teacher, was beheaded by an 18-year-old Islamist Chechen in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.

Seven people are appearing before an anti-terrorism judge in the murder case, which began today, October 21. One of them is Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui, president of the pro-Hamas Sheikh Yassin Collective and a member of the Council of Imams of France, an association of Islamist preachers.[1]

Yesterday, October 20, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that the Sheikh Yassin Collective would be dissolved because it is "directly implicated" in the attack on Paty.[2]

A week before the beheading of Paty, on October 8, Sefrioui met with the principal of Paty's school to protest against the teacher's use of a Charlie Hebdo cartoon in his freedom of expression class. He asked that Paty be suspended immediately, but realized that nothing would be done, and called for action.[3]

It should be noted that MEMRI published research in 2012 on the Sheikh Yassin Collective and on Sefrioui's activism and hate speech.[4]

Below are excerpts of a MEMRI report on Sefrioui and the Sheikh Yassin Collective that he heads. The report was published September 13, 2012 and titled "The Sheikh Yassin Collective, Headed By Abdelhakim Sefrioui."

Police in Paris on Tuesday arrested seven British nationals suspected of involvement in the attempted car-ramming of an officer stationed outside the Israeli embassy in the French capital.

The incident happened on Monday night, according to local media. It said a dark BMW with “three to four people” inside, followed by a Mercedes, attempted to hit an officer outside the embassy, then fled. The officer dodged the vehicles and was not hurt.

Paris police opened an investigation into “attempted intentional homicide of a person in public authority,” news site The Local reported.

The same two vehicles were seen “lurking” close to the Elysee Palace, the official residence of French President Emmanuel Macron later that evening, French news site 20Minutes reported.

A manhunt ensued and the suspects were arrested on Tuesday night, roughly 24 hours after the attempted attack.

The 20Minutes report described the suspects as being of Pakistani origin, without providing details.

The investigation into the murder of a French teacher for showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in class turned to Syria on Thursday, where the killer had a jihadist contact, a source close to the case said.

Seven people have been charged with being complicit in a “terrorist murder” after 18-year-old Chechen Abdullah Anzorov beheaded Samuel Paty on the outskirts of Paris on Friday, including two teenagers who helped him identify the teacher.

France paid homage to Paty on Wednesday, with President Emmanuel Macron saying that the history and geography teacher had been slain by “cowards” for representing the secular, democratic values of the French Republic.

“Islamists want to take our future,” Macron said. “They will never have it.”

In their search for accomplices, anti-terror investigators have now established that Anzorov had contact with a Russian-speaking jihadist in Syria whose identity is not yet known, the source told AFP.

The French regional newspaper La Nouvelle Republique has received threats on social media after it published a caricature of the Prophet Mohammad on its front page, one of its journalists said on Wednesday.

On Oct. 18, the Nouvelle Republique paper re-published an earlier satirical drawing of the Prophet Mohammad from magazine Charlie Hebdo, to highlight the threat from Islamic extremists, following last week's murder of French teacher Samuel Paty.

The journalist, Christophe Herigault, told BFMTV on Wednesday that while the vast majority had given the paper's front page a positive reaction, as a defense of freedom of speech and democracy, a small number had issued threats against the paper.

I'm helping @KyleKashuv raise money for Help NYC Jewish Cafe Survive De Blasio Harassment with donations buying meals for Hatzolah members (volunteer ambulance drivers). Click to Donate: https://t.co/IuvxPZ0k3z via @gofundme

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) October 21, 2020

Was a left-wing activist group being antisemitic when it called Northwestern University’s Jewish president “piggy Morty”?

The president, Morton Schapiro, said it could be. The activist group said it was not.

The ensuing debate has divided Northwestern’s campus just north of Chicago this week, with the school’s Hillel offering students the opportunity to reflect on the incident virtually in small groups Wednesday.

The activist group, called NU Community Not Cops, chanted “piggy Morty” outside Schapiro’s home over the weekend, according to an open letter Schapiro wrote on Monday. The group is calling for the abolition of the Northwestern University Police Department as part of a racial justice campaign.

Schapiro wrote that while he recognizes “the many injustices faced by Black and other marginalized groups,” he opposes disbanding the police and “condemn[s], in the strongest possible terms, the overstepping of the protesters.”

He noted the chant in particular.

“Many gathered outside my home this weekend into the early hours of the morning, chanting ‘f— you Morty’ and ‘piggy Morty,'” he wrote. “The latter comes dangerously close to a longstanding trope against observant Jews like myself. Whether it was done out of ignorance or out of antisemitism, it is completely unacceptable, and I ask them to consider how their parents and siblings would feel if a group came to their homes in the middle of the night to wake up their families with such vile and personal attacks.”

Popular Israeli Arab video blogger Nas Daily slammed the Qatari media outlet Al Jazeera on Tuesday for reporting “fake news” and falsely claiming that he was a propagandist for Israel.

The famed YouTuber, whose real name is Nuseir Yassin, posts video clips on social media that address a wide range of topics, including travel, food and the environment. His videos generally garner millions of views.

In an almost 6-minute video uploaded on Tuesday onto Facebook, he slammed efforts to smear him by Al Jazeera, which is owned and funded by the Qatari government.

“Oh my god… I can’t believe this is happening to us! This is fake news targeted at us by a government,” he began the video by saying.

Nas showed a clip from AJ+, an Al Jazeera spin-off that produces content for social media platforms, that accused him of “using words such as… openness, coexistence, peace” to “make Israel look good.”

Another AJ+ clip suggested that the blogger and his new company, the Nas Academy, were “using all the tools that the Israeli government provides him, and he is part of their official propaganda program.”

“That is comical!” Nas said. “In reality, Nas Academy is a great new startup that we started to create more creators. To teach people how to make videos. To teach people how to tell stories, so they go and create their own videos and become their own Nas Daily. That is the truth.”

He added, “We promote tourism and love, not politics and hate. And we definitely do not work with the Israeli government.”

Like many others, I quickly saw that something important was missing from the New York Times op-ed this week about the 25th anniversary of the Million Man March.

The piece, by Natalie Hopkinson, a professor at Howard University, highlighted the behind-the-scenes roles played by Black women like Cora Masters Barry and Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X. As the piece notes, hundreds of thousands of previously unregistered Black men were registered to vote, thanks largely to the tireless efforts of Barry and others.

But while the piece achieved its goal of rewriting the Million Man March story to include new voices, it also contained a shocking omission. It fails to mention — or even scratch the surface of — the serial bigotry of the march’s main organizer: Louis Farrakhan, the longtime leader of the Nation of Islam.

The op-ed does note that Farrakhan needed the help of Barry and other women to massage his messaging around the march, which was viewed, as the writer points out, as “exclusionary and sexist.” And while that may be true, it does not even begin to qualify as a passing glance at the record of bigotry that belongs to Farrakhan, the antisemitic leader of the Nation of Islam.

If you were to only read Hopkinson’s account of Farrakhan and the 1995 march, you most likely would walk away with a lukewarm impression of the man. But as with any narrative around a monumental historical event or person, it is necessary — at minimum — to be willing to acknowledge the significant negative or uncomfortable aspects surrounding such leaders, so readers are able to glean a clearer picture of what is true. This is where Hopkinson, and The New York Times, dropped the ball completely.

So let’s set the record straight.

.@nytimes gratuitously invokes George Floyd in the tragic killing of an autistic man in Jerusalem.

No knee on neck, just a new recruit who didn't follow orders. This article should be "instantly compared" to the Times' usual slanted Israel coverage.https://t.co/GzZLsCGkeLpic.twitter.com/2JPDZ60vV8

— Gary Weiss (@gary_weiss) October 22, 2020

COVID-19 has been elected to the UN Human Rights Council, joining countries such as China, Cuba, Russia and Pakistan on the international body.

COVID-19 is the first virus to sit on the council since it was established in 2006. But electors from the General Assembly noted that the virus will fit in well with the UNHRC’s current members of death and destruction, which also include Libya, Venezuela, and Uzbekistan.

“Judging by past electees, the ability to bring suffering and death on a large portion is what makes one qualified for the Human Rights Council,” one General Assembly explained. “By this metric, there is no one better qualified than COVID.”

As of press time, rapper and presidential candidate Kanye West has also been elected to the council.

The Protestant Church in the Netherlands will admit for the first time that it stayed silent as anti-Semitism rose before and during World War II, a report said on Thursday.

The confession is set to be made public next month at the 82nd anniversary of the “Kristallnacht” pogrom, when pro-Nazi mobs torched and ransacked synagogues and Jewish businesses across Germany, the Christian newspaper Trouw reported.

“We fell short in speaking out and by staying silent in actions and omissions, in our attitude and in our thoughts,” the paper quoted Protestantse Kerk Nederland secretary Rene de Reuver as saying as part of a prepared speech.

“During the war years, Church authorities often lacked the courage to choose the side of the Jewish inhabitants of our country,” De Reuver said.

Less than one third of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands survived World War II. Many citizens as well as the Dutch police and railways actively conspired with their Nazi overlords to round up Jews and deport them to death camps during WWII.

This included the diarist Anne Frank, who was arrested in 1944 after two years in hiding and sent Germany where she died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp aged 15, just before the end of the war.

Efraim Zuroff, 72, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Israel Office, is widely known as the "last Nazi hunter." In 42 years, Zuroff has submitted the names of more than 3,000 suspected Nazi war criminals to 20 countries. In 40 cases, legal action was taken against a Holocaust perpetrator.

In 1989, he came across the testimonies of dozens of Lithuanian survivors and identified 1,284 potential war criminals. Out of a population of 220,000 Jews in Lithuania, just 8,000 survived. There were only 1,000 Germans present during the occupation of Lithuania, with the majority of the horrors perpetrated by "willing local collaborators.""The Lithuanians didn't put people on trains," says Zuroff. "They personally killed their Jewish neighbors, usually by shooting them and throwing them, one on top of each other, into pits dug in the forest."

Zuroff cites as his biggest victory the case of Dinko Sakic, the sadistic commandant of the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia, responsible for the murder of 2,000 people. He was found living in Argentina and prosecuted in 1998. When he received his 20-year sentence, Sakic said, "I would do it again; let's finish the job."

The son of a decorated Nazi officer who discovered the nature of his father’s military service and went on to convert to Judaism and eventually join the IDF, recalled his relationship with his father and discussed his childhood in an interview with a British newspaper.

“The more I studied, the more I came to the conclusion that my father was a liar,” said Bernd Wollschlaeger in the Tuesday interview with London’s Daily Mail.

Born in Bavaria in 1958, Wollschlaeger said that he was told as a child that the Holocaust was a lie and was raised to admire his father as a decorated war hero. He said Arthur Wollschlaeger would still wear the “Knight’s Cross around his neck” at Christmas, years after the war was over.

Wollschlaeger was awarded the Iron Cross by Adolf Hitler for his actions in battle against Soviet forces.

In the interview, Wollschlaeger noted the 1972 Munich Massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian terrorists, as a major turning point in his relationship with his father.

“For the first time, at least in my life, the old wounds were opened and we were forced to deal with the past and why it’s such a big deal that Jews are being killed in Germany again,” Wollschlaeger told the Daily Mail.

“He actually referred to the slaughter of the Israeli athletes, saying, ‘Look what they do to us again! They, the Jews, are tearing down our reputation to make us look bad.'”

“On Friday morning I have on one ear a conference call and one hand mixing cholent, and with my foot I’m rocking the baby carriage,” says Ola Sergatchov. “That’s what my life looks like.”

Vice president of corporate strategy at Israeli data center and cloud security company Guardicore, Sergatchov was recently selected as one of the top 25 women leaders in cybersecurity of 2020 by The Software Report.

Sheis a rarity in the Startup Nation: An Orthodox woman at the top of the game on a largely secular playing field.

“I’m a human being, a haredi [strictly religious] person, and I’m still part of this big world,” she notes. “I’m just trying to get the word out that there is a way. It’s not easy but I think you can follow that path and it’s very beneficial at the end of the day for both sides.”

“I grew up in Russia for the first 17 years of my life. I became religious in Russia and that was one of the reasons I decided to come to Israel,” she tells ISRAEL21c.

She came to Jerusalem to study economics at the Hebrew University. But when her first husband turned her attention to the fact that she had what she calls “this head for programming,” she decided to switch to computer science.

Moderna Inc. said on Thursday it had completed the enrollment of 30,000 participants in a late-stage study testing its experimental coronavirus vaccine, with over a third of the participants from communities of color.

Over 25,650 participants have so far received their second shot of the vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, the company said.

Moderna said its study includes more than 11,000 participants from minority communities, including 6,000 Hispanic or Latin-American participants and more than 3,000 Black or African-American participants.

The company said it would evaluate the study's risks and benefits before submitting an emergency-use application for the vaccine to the US health regulator.

The US Food and Drug Administration requires at least two months of safety data after a full vaccination regime to review applications for emergency use authorization of an experimental vaccine.

The sight of an autonomous vehicle driving along Israeli roads is set to become an everyday reality, and a lot faster than anywhere else in the world. According to a legal memorandum submitted to the Knesset and which is set to be published towards the end of November, the Ministry of Transportation is pushing for quick adoption of a new law that would regulate autonomous vehicles on the country’s roads.

So far autonomous vehicles have conducted several test drives on Israeli roads, but these weren’t conducted in a regulated manner and in some cases included several blatant infractions of the law, for example driving without having both hands on the steering wheel.

At the end of August, a temporary memorandum was published which listed the types of autonomous vehicles that would be allowed on Israeli roads, the insurance coverage they would require, and addressed the issue of the cybersecurity standards that will be determined by the Israel National Cyber Directorate.

However, the final memorandum to be published next month is the crucial one, and according to a copy seen by Calcalist, the most important aspect of it will be the redefining of driving in an autonomous vehicle so that it is no longer characterized as experimental. Autonomous vehicles will be allowed to be used in the same way as regular vehicles, with issues like insurance and the liability in case of an accident to be determined at a later date.

One of the main reasons behind this approach is to ensure autonomous vehicles can legally drive on Israeli roads as soon as possible, especially as many of the R&D centers of the companies active in this sector are based in Israel, which will allow for a quick resolution of any problem that might arise.

I am so delighted to recommend this powerful new book #ISRESILIENCE, by @michaeldickson& Naomi Baum.

This book is not only about #Israel’s story ... but also the inspiring people of Israel. It is a story of hope, courage, of strength & resilience. 💪 🇮🇱https://t.co/5pG8moEnBRpic.twitter.com/yQcpBGiZyU

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 21, 2020