The Palestinian Authority slammed countries boycotting the upcoming Durban Conference anniversary event, with an emphasis on the US.

Meanwhile, Greece, Slovakia and Slovenia confirmed they also would not be attending the event in New York on September 22, bringing the number of countries boycotting to 19.

The 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, was marked with antisemitism and anti-Israel events. Israel was singled out for opprobrium as racist in the declaration released by UN member states participating, a declaration that accuses no other specific countries and that next week’s conference is meant to reaffirm. The parallel NGO forum accused Israel of apartheid, and organizations taking part gave out copies of the antisemitic canard The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and materials saying Hitler was right.

The Palestinian Authority Foreign Ministry tweeted in a statement on Tuesday that it “strongly objects to inimical statements and tendentious attacks against the upcoming Durban Conference... Such iniquitous calls to boycott the conference display an alarming level of deficit in morality and expose a hypocritical approach. The State of Palestine calls on all states and international organizations to attend the conference and adopt a political declaration for the full and effective implementation of its principles and values,” referring to the statement in which Israel is the only country designated a perpetrator of racism. “Palestine rejects morally corrupt and politically sinister attempts to disconnect the Palestinian struggle to freedom from this global cause” against racism.

In a thinly veiled reference to the United States, the statement adds: “It is not a coincidence that the same States that have long opposed the inclusion of acts of slavery in its current and past manifestations as a crime against humanity are now boycotting this past year’s conference on reparations, racial justice and equality for people of African descent.”

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ILF's new publication - '#????????????: ???? ?????????? ???? ????????, ???????? & ????????????????????????', with lessons & analysis from leading experts around the world. #SayNoToDurbanIV

Full report ?? https://t.co/vSpE59HxfSpic.twitter.com/0crUgXsXsV

— The International Legal Forum - ILF (@The_ILF) September 14, 2021

In 2001, 2 countries pulled out of Durban I.
In 2009, 10 countries pulled out of Durban II.
In 2011, 14 countries pulled out of Durban III.
In 2021, 19 countries—so far—pulled out of Durban IV.

Urge more countries to take a stand against antisemitism: https://t.co/5f21p40q6n

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 14, 2021

Israel was shaken last week with the news of six Palestinian terrorists escaping from the high-security Gilboa prison. But potentially even more disturbing was the concerted effort by activists – and even the press in some cases – to whitewash their crimes and present the terrorists as heroes against oppression. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. The inability of some to differentiate between actual political prisoners, the likes of whom suffer every day in places like Evin prison in Iran, and convicted Palestinian terrorists serving a sentence for actions they took, is inexcusable.

Immediately after news broke of the Palestinian terrorists’ miraculous escape, by digging a tunnel under the prison, Palestinian social media began celebrating. In addition, there were widespread celebrations in the streets of Gaza and the West Bank over the Israeli security failure. In one case, the Palestinian village of Beita celebrated by burning an effigy of a Jew and uploading the video to social media. Of course as expected, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas celebrated the escape of the prisoners as well. But even more disturbing were the activists, organizations and public figures, in some cases even journalists, who defended the terrorists and their activities.

Jewish Voice for Peace, known for their extremist viewpoints, had previously raised eyebrows for endorsing the intifada in their promotional materials. But in this instance they raised (or should I say lowered) the bar by comparing the Palestinian terrorists who escaped to Holocaust victims who attempted to dig their way out of concentration camps. In a similarly repulsive statement, Director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Ghada Majadli, explicitly endorsed the violence of the six terrorists, calling it “freedom fighting” and calling them “political prisoners.”

In the academic realm, there was no shortage of whitewashing terror: political analyst Yousef Munayyer tweeted in praise of the escape repeatedly, and even retweeted Harvard PhD candidate Randa Wahbe, who praised the terrorists as “heroes” and “political prisoners.” Noura Erekat, a professor at Rutgers University, also praised the terrorists and called for all Palestinian prisoners to be released.

When 6 terrorists escaped from an Israeli prison Islamic Jihad called for Israeli and Palestinians Arabs to take to the streets to interfere with efforts to recapture them.

The grand total number of Palestinians across all of Judea and Samaria who answered the call of Islamic Jihad numbered well less than a thousand with the largest incident accounting for half the total. Only around ten Arabs were seen chanting their support at Al Aqsa Mosque after Friday prayers.

Ten!

As for Israeli Arabs, when four of the terrorists we recaptured thanks to Israeli Arabs who tipped off the police, we learned that the terrorists couldn't find any Israeli Arab who was willing to help drive them across the Green Line.

Security officials remained concerned that the Palestinians would lash out in support of the terrorists and recommended that Jewish New Years movement restrictions from Judea and Samaria be extended until after Yom Kippur. Prime Minister Bennett overruled them and those Palestinians employed inside Israel returned to work on Sunday, So far nothing has happened.

Why did the security experts get it so wrong?

I suspect that they took the terrifying riots earlier this year as their model.

But, apparently, there is a key difference between the two situations.

The rioting took place because the street bought the line that "al Aqsa is in danger".

The escape of 6 terrorist had NOTHING to do with al Aqsa.

How do we use this insight?

The consulate issue was raised by Biden in his meeting with Bennett in Washington earlier this month. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also called for the consulate to be reopened.

The pressure puts Israel in a difficult position. Unlike the governments led by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Bennett-Lapid government wants to repair ties with the Democrats and work closely with the Biden administration on issues of mutual concern, such as Iran’s continued pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.

On the one hand, Israel should listen to US concerns and suggest innovative ways to engage positively with the Palestinians without the need for a consulate. A special envoy or some other form of diplomatic post at the US embassy in Jerusalem could, for example, serve the interests of the Palestinians.

But Israel also needs to clearly articulate its opposition to a consulate. It undermines the chances for peace, threatens the stability of the government and erases the accomplishment of getting the embassy moved from Tel Aviv.

In the past, the Palestinians used their claims to half of Jerusalem as a way to blackmail Israel. If the issues of Jerusalem and other “final status” issues weren’t solved, they said, then Israel would be stymied in its efforts to forge relations with countries in places like the Gulf. That has proven to be a false threat.

It is important that Israel explain all of this to the Biden administration. The opening of the consulate is not a technical matter: it undermines Israel’s sovereignty in the city that has served as the Jewish people’s capital for 3,000 years – and is about ideology, rights to this land and the meaning of the Zionist movement.

That sort of elision—one predicated on the assumption that American citizens are owed more from their government than U.S. residents or our wartime allies—would prompt white-hot denunciations of the former administration, and deservedly so. Joe Biden’s White House isn’t being deliberately coy about the number of eligible evacuees they left behind due to any sort of discriminatory impulse. Rather, to be honest about the mess they’ve made would be politically inopportune. That’s a distinction with a difference, but not one that makes this disaster any more palatable.

And as for what the State Department admitted was “the majority” of the Afghans who helped American forces and are now at risk of reprisal by the Taliban, they shouldn’t look to the U.S. for further assistance. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty revealed, State is advising Afghans that they are “unable to provide consular services” for immigrant visas, including the Special Immigrant Visas provided to Afghans on the U.S. payroll. Though the State Department is “considering” and “developing additional processing alternatives,” you’re on your own for now. Those Afghans are advised to seek out the assistance of the United Nations—a remote prospect, Geraghty observes, as the UN cannot even provide for its own personnel in Central Asia.

Quite unlike the Trump administration, Joe Biden’s White House is seeking ways to accommodate the Afghans who managed to scramble aboard an outbound plane from Kabul last month. They’ve made requests of Congress for billions in funding to put toward an Afghan refugee resettlement effort. But the administration has confessed that only a small number of those refugees qualify for a Special Immigrant Visa. It will take legislation to speed them through the system, as well as to properly vet their backgrounds to ensure we’re not importing foreign nationals with ties to terrorist organizations. But individual Afghans are not interchangeable. The resettlement of some Afghans in the West, no matter how deserving those refugees may be, does not satisfy the debt we owe the tens of thousands of Afghan allies the U.S. sacrificed to the Taliban.

“We inherited a deadline,” Sec. Blinken told Congress on Monday, “we did not inherit a plan.” That is not true. Not only did the Biden White House renegotiate the so-called deadline for withdrawal in Afghanistan, they did have a plan to execute that withdrawal. Indeed, they stuck with it well after it had become clear that it would produce a historic disaster and an unprecedented betrayal of our wartime allies.

A moral consistency would compel those who were incensed by the Trump administration’s sacrifice of American values to be just as outraged by the Biden administration’s failure to see to America’s responsibilities. The lack of that consistency today is instructive.

At the root of the ancient rift between Sunni and Shiite (literally, the tradition vs. the faction) lies a dispute over political history: Who should have been the rightful inheritor of the Prophet. With the Shiites loyal to the claim of his son in-law ‘Ali and his progeny, the Prophet’s grandsons Hasan and Husayn, their faction’s defeat at the hands of the Umayyads in the battle of Karbala in 680 became a cataclysmic event, an emblem of a history gone wrong. It was a wrong to be redressed in the fullness of time, with the return of the Imam: but until the twist it took under Khomeini in the last quarter of the 20th century, this Shiite mourning about the state of the world was not necessarily translated into a call to arms.

What Khomeini did—perhaps inspired, at least, to some extent, by Frantz Fanon and his “Third-Worldly” Marxist creed aimed at “the Wretched of the Earth”—was to translate the ancient Shiite grievance into a modern revolutionary agenda. The redress of the shattering wrong of the 7th century became synonymous with the overthrow of the existing order of the late 20th.

As it happened, the coming to power of the Islamic revolution in Iran coincided with the event that symbolized the final collapse of the secular (and socialist) pan-Arab nationalist agenda: Sadat’s peace with Israel, signed in March 1979, within weeks of Khomeini’s triumphant return to Tehran. This, in turn, gave Iran’s position on Israel a unique twist, which grew and persisted now for more than four decades: namely that while the treasonous Sunni regimes have laid down their arms, it is now the duty of the true faith of Islam—the Shiite version of revolutionary Islamism—to prove itself by remaining, alone if necessary, “in the business” of destroying Israel. Thus, despite the chasm separating Sunni and Shiite radicals (later erupting into bloody conflict in post-2003 Iraq), Tehran saw fit to honor Sadat’s assassin, al-Islambuli, with the naming of a major thoroughfare in Tehran.

In other words, the mullahs’ regime upholds the struggle that others have surrendered (including, today, much of the Arab world, and particularly the UAE, with whom Iran does have a concrete territorial dispute). This, in turn, becomes a legitimizing factor, abroad and more importantly, at home. Having failed to deliver for the Iranian people in any other respect—the country, once three times richer than Turkey, is now four times poorer; corruption, drugs, prostitution are rampant; brutal repression of dissent is the norm—at least the regime can stake its claim to fame (and legitimacy) on violently waving the anti-Zionist flag.

It does not end there. By its very existence, Israel—born in 1948—signifies and symbolizes the post-1945 dispensation in world affairs. It is this dispensation that the Shiite revolutionary agenda seeks to undo altogether, calling it “hegemonism” or “arrogance” and obviously linking it to the role of the “Great Satan,” the United States. In his day, Ahmadinejad managed to convey to the unamused German leadership his sympathies—he clearly thought the wrong side had won World War II—and in this respect, the exterminatory intent toward Israel indeed fits in well with a broader reading of history that tries to undo what went wrong, whether in 661 (‘Ali’s assassination), 680 (Husayn’s assassination), 1945 or 1948. Such meta-historical motivations are much more difficult to undo by “normal” diplomacy—unless it is backed by significant force—than practical conflicts revolving around specific interests.

The United Nations ambassadors of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco on Monday marked one year since the signing of the Abraham Accords at a ceremony in New York City.

The historic agreement, by which Israel normalized relations with the UAE and Bahrain, was signed at the White House on Sept. 15, 2020. Later, Sudan and Morocco joined the accords.

“The Abraham Accords are the best representation of practicing tolerance and living in peace with our neighbors,” said Israel’s Ambassador to the UN and the United States Gilad Erdan. Erdan was the first dignitary to address the audience gathered at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, which included about 70 ambassadors.

“I strongly believe that as others in the region see the fruits of our partnerships and feel this transformation, they will join our circle of peace,” he added.

Also speaking at the event was the UAE Ambassador to the UN Lana Nusseibeh, Bahrain Ambassador to the UN Jamal Al Rowaiei and Moroccan Ambassador to the UN Omar Hilale. They stressed the growing ties between their countries and Israel.

Joining them on stage was US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

Bahrain’s first-ever ambassador to Israel Khaled Yousif Al-Jalahma presented his credentials to President Isaac Herzog on Tuesday at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem.

Jalahma gave his letter of credence to Herzog in a formal ceremony, a day before the one-year anniversary of the signing of the Abraham Accords at the White House, which normalized ties between Jerusalem and Manama.

Jalahma held a diplomatic meeting with Herzog after the presentation ceremony, which was followed by joint statements to the press in Hebrew and Arabic.

“Brave states take brave steps,” Herzog said to Jalahma. “The Abraham Accords were the fruit of both vision and power.”

The president called the relationship “a model for the whole Middle East” and expressed his hope that other countries will follow Bahrain’s example.

Herzog also stressed the threat Iran poses to both nations.

What an honor it was to have handed in my credentials to HE President @isaac_herzog as #Bahrain’s first-ever Ambassador to #Israel on the eve of the anniversary of the historic #Abraham_Accords. pic.twitter.com/23PfgIoSfo

— Khaled Al Jalahma (@BahrainAmbIsr) September 14, 2021

The United Arab Emirates expects economic activity with Israel to grow to more than $1 trillion over the next decade.

“We have $600 to $700 million dollars of bilateral trade happening, we have funds of billions of dollars that have been announced jointly between the two countries, we are moving into so many areas of economic opportunities,” said UAE Minister of Economy Abdulla Bin Touq. “We are looking to create over $1 trillion dollars of economic activity over the next decade.”

Talking at a public event marking the one-year anniversary of the normalization of ties between Israel and the UAE, Bin Touq said that the Gulf power has signed over 60 memorandums of understanding with the Jewish state. The UAE and Bahrain last year agreed to formalize their diplomatic ties with Israel under the so-called “Abraham Accords” brokered with the help of the Trump administration.

One of the investments cited by Bin Touq was the $1 billion stake in an Israeli gas field by Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Petroleum. The UAE also sees renewable energy opportunities in Israel as well as investments coming from a recently signed agreement on food and agritech technologies.

According to figures from the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce (FICC), the trade volume between Israel and the UAE jumped to $523.2 million in the first six months of this year from about $189 million during the full-year of 2020. Since the normalization of ties between the two nations, about 200,000 Israelis have visited the UAE.

One year after the signing of the Abraham Accords, the relationship between the UAE and Israel is stronger than ever.

Learn how the historic normalization is being felt across the Middle East: https://t.co/nUwOCUGFWxpic.twitter.com/pJ9E8D2vIq

— UAE Embassy US (@UAEEmbassyUS) September 13, 2021

The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Israel commemorated a year since the Abraham Accords with billboards in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Tuesday touting peace.

“Peace is the future of our children,” the billboards read in Hebrew and Arabic, along with Israeli and Emirati flags and “Embassy of the United Arab Emirates Tel Aviv.”

One of the billboards is on The Jerusalem Post offices in central Tel Aviv.

On September 14, 2020, Israel, the UAE and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords at the White House, making peace and normalization of relations between the Gulf states and Israel official.

To mark the occasion, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat aimed to break a world record of most consecutive media interviews.

In an operation called “Talking Peace,” Haiat planned to give over 100 interviews to news outlets worldwide about the year of peace over 15 hours, beginning at 8 a.m. on Tuesday.

"Peace is the Future of our Children!”

Billboards in Hebrew & Arabic placed in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, by @UAEinIsrael.

I couldn’t think of a better message to celebrate first year of #AbrahamAccords and this beautiful peace between #Israel and #UAE! ?????????? pic.twitter.com/vgtZrHHvtu

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 14, 2021

The festivities marking one year to the anniversary of the signing of the Abraham Accords with the Arab Gulf states are far from over, and on Monday, we learned there was yet another cause for celebration: the first visit by an Israeli prime minister to Egypt in years and the first public meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

Add to that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's visit to Jordan two months ago, and we have three positive events, the importance of which cannot be underestimated. This is particularly true given the bleak Middle Eastern climate of increasing threats to Israel: Iran's race toward nuclear weapons, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the pro-Iranian militias in Syria, as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the south.

Israel's thriving peace with the United Arab Emirates, which is gaining speed by the day, reflects the natural process of the normalization of ties, which were once conducted behind the scenes. Although treaties have been signed, the peace that exists between Israel and Jordan and Egypt, however, is not exactly normal.

The reasons for this are well-known. We do not share a border with the Arab Gulf states, nor have we fought any wars against them. A majority of these states accepted the State of Israel's existence as a legitimate entity in the region and recognized its necessity as the sole power in the region capable of taking on the common enemy of Iran. Peace with Jordan and Egypt, who have gone to war with us, is the result of agreements signed between leaders. In both those countries, deep hatred toward us continues to bubble over.

At the regional level, Jerusalem and Cairo share a concern about Iran's aggressive policies, although Israel's threat perception is greater. Yet, they are fully in sync about Turkey's promotion of Islamic extremism (with Qatar) and its neo-Ottoman aspirations. Egypt and Israel also are in alliance against growing Turkish assertiveness in the eastern Mediterranean. Egypt is a key member of the strategic alignment embodied in the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF), alongside Greece, Cyprus and Israel – an alignment which is designed inter alia to contain Turkish quest for hegemony in the region.

Israel lends substantial support to Egypt in the latter's efforts to suppress an Islamic insurgency in Sinai. Gaza is sandwiched between Egypt and Israel and ruled by Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the archenemy of the Egyptian regime. Hamas has assisted the Islamists in Sinai. While not averse to bleeding the Jewish state a bit, Egypt is interested in lowering the flames of Israel-Hamas confrontation and has acquired an important role in the mediation between the two sides. This diplomatic role gains Egypt points in Jerusalem and Washington, and gives it leverage over Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

Egyptian and Israeli interests also converge in Libya. Both countries side with Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army, while Turkey intervened in 2020 in the civil war to prevent the fall of the Government of National Accord in Tripoli that includes Islamist elements. Israel's new partner, the UAE, also has assisted Haftar.

Even in Syria, Israel and Egypt seem to have the same preferences. Egypt opposed the efforts of Sunni rebel groups to depose Bashar Assad, while also Israel has been careful not to destabilize Assad's regime – to preserve Israel's freedom of action against Iranian targets in Syria in line with the quid quo pro reached between Israel and Russia after the in September 2015 Russian military intervention. Egyptians often call their country umm ad-dunya, the mother of the world, expressing self-importance. However, ever since the heyday of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's regional weight has declined. Cairo's focus is primarily domestic, like most Arab countries. Nevertheless, Egypt is the most populous and important Arab state with the strongest military among Israel's neighbors. Therefore, Egypt is an important strategic partner for Israel that rates high priority on Israel's foreign policy agenda.

The exact date of Bennett’s trip had been censored in Israel and Israeli media was not able to accompany the prime minister, because of very tight security arrangements.

As such, in a rare move, the Egyptian Presidency put out a statement to the press about the visit before the PMO did. The public nature of the trip added to previous indications of a warming of ties, like when Egypt and Israel’s energy ministers held a press conference in Egypt early last year.

When it came to discussions about Gaza, the emphasis was on stopping smuggling of arms into Gaza through the Rafah crossing in Egypt. “The fact that Hamas is on a trajectory of turning into Hezbollah is intolerable and will bring the next round of fighting fast,” the diplomatic source said. “We have to make sure weapons don’t enter Gaza.”

When it comes to allowing Qatari funds into Gaza without it reaching terrorists, the government still has not found a solution, the source said.

Captives negotiator Blum met with Egyptian intelligence chief Kamel to discuss the matter of Israeli civilians and soldiers’ bodies held by Hamas in Gaza.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Tuesday met with the family of Avera Mengistu, an Israeli man who has been held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip since 2014, his office said.

The meeting with Mengistu’s family on Tuesday at the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem followed a summit Bennett held the day before in Egypt’s Sharm el Sheikh with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, in which the two discussed the ongoing indirect talks between Israel and Hamas regarding the Israeli captives being held in Gaza.

However, the Prime Minister’s Office implied that the meeting was not an indication of a major breakthrough, saying it was “part of the periodic update meetings that the prime minister holds with the families of captives.”

Also at the Mengistu meeting were National Security Adviser Eyal Hulta, Military Secretary Maj. Gen. Avi Gil, and the government’s point person on the issue of captives, Yaron Blum. The Kan public broadcaster on Monday reported that Blum had attended the Monday summit with Sissi, despite his name being left off official communiques about the visit.

“The prime minister told the Mengistu family that he is committed to returning the soldiers and civilians held in the Gaza Strip, and that his door is always open to them,” Bennett’s office said.

2018 meeting reported here >>>https://t.co/T9LDMpkgEE

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 14, 2021

Israeli security forces allegedly thwarted a “major” attack this week as hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians escalate, Israel’s Channel 12 and Channel 13 reported on Monday.

Israeli media reported that the Shin Bet security services and the country’s police foiled a number of attacks, but did not provide further details.

Authorities are on high alert, fearing further violence in Jerusalem during the Yom Kippur holiday, which begins Wednesday evening.

According to Channel 13, nearly 2,000 police officers have been deployed to the city.

This week, several alleged attacks and attempted stabbings have been reported in Israel and the West Bank

Both Israelis and Palestinians have claimed that the perpetrators of the violence were galvanized by the escape of prisoners from the Gilboa Prison last week.

“I don’t know if we are on the verge of escalation,” Public Security Minister Omer Barlev told Israel’s public broadcaster Kan.

“It is certain that we are in a very sensitive period: the recent attacks, the escape of terrorists from prison and the two that have not yet been found, as well as our problems with Hamas,” he stated.

“Any incident could set fire to the whole region, so we are preparing for an escalation in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and Gaza,” he said, using an alternative name for the West Bank.

An Israeli court on Monday ordered Hamas to pay millions in compensation to the families of three teenagers who were kidnapped and murdered by members of the Palestinian terror group in 2014.

The Jerusalem District Court ruling requires the Gaza-ruling Hamas and Hussam Qawasmeh, the convicted mastermind the abduction and killings, to pay NIS 38 million ($11.8 million) to the families of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach.

Fraenkel, 16, Shaar, 16, and Yifrach, 19, were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on the night of June 12, 2014, at a hitchhiking post in the West Bank south of Jerusalem.

Their bodies were discovered June 30, in Halhul, near Hebron, after an 18-day search, and it emerged that they had been murdered hours after the kidnapping.

Tensions were further ratcheted up following the subsequent murder of Palestinian teenager Muhammed Abu Kdheir by Jewish extremists in an apparent revenge attack. The events were a major catalyst of the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that started on July 8.

“The fact that the youths were murdered around the time of the kidnapping and the murderers concealed the youths’ tragic fate shows their cruelty was also aimed directly at the relatives, who remained uncertain during this period” of their children’s fates, Judge Ilan Sela wrote in the ruling.

You’ve seen them. The headlines are full of stories about the IDF beating and sometimes killing Arab women and children. Unfortunately, no one bothers to go behind the headlines to find out the real story. Today, Josh lifts the curtain and brings you the truth.

Yesterday, two Palestinian terrorists carried out stabbing attacks against Israelis. One used a kitchen knife to stab and wound two Israeli teenagers in central Jerusalem, while another attempted to stab Israeli soldiers with a screwdriver at the Gush Etzion junction. A few days earlier, another terrorist used a knife to try and stab an Israeli security officer in the Old City of Jerusalem. All three attacks followed the call by Abbas’ Fatah Movement for “an urgent popular uprising in all the Palestinian cities, villages, and refugee camps,” which the movement issued following the recent escape of the 6 terrorists from prison. The official PA daily found this message so important that it printed it two days in a row:
“The Palestinian National Liberation Movement – Fatah called on the masses of our people to come out for an urgent popular uprising in all the Palestinian cities, villages, and refugee camps as a sign of support for the prisoners. It emphasized that it ‘will stand together with the masses of our people alongside our heroic prisoners and will not leave them alone in the battle.’”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 9 and 10, 2021]

As Palestinian Media Watch has documented “popular uprising” is a term used by Palestinians that also refers to violence and terror. The PA repeatedly called the “knife intifada” of 2015 – 2016 in which 40 people were murdered by Palestinian terrorists, a “popular uprising.”

Similarly, at a procession in Jenin organized by Fatah, “the speakers called on the masses of our people to carry out a comprehensive popular uprising in all the districts of the homeland”:
“Hundreds of civilians participated in a procession yesterday evening [Sept. 9, 2021] for the sake of the prisoners… The procession, which was organized by Fatah in partnership with the forces in Jenin… the participants waved the Palestinian flag and pictures of… the prisoners who succeeded in achieving their freedom from Gilboa Prison…

The speakers called on the masses of our people to carry out a comprehensive popular uprising in all the districts of the homeland.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 10, 2021]

Former Lebanese Minister Wiam Wahhab Causes Diplomatic Incident by Referring to Russian and Ukrainian Women as Prostitutes; TV Channel Apologizes following Protest by the Ukrainian Embassy @wiamwahhab#Russia#Ukraine#Lebanonpic.twitter.com/XGR6CIWRkP

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 14, 2021

Houthi rebels in Yemen have intensified attacks since late August with weaponized drones and ballistic missiles against civilian and military strategic targets in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

On September 11, 2021, the Associated Press reported that the United States removed its most advanced missile defense system (THAAD) and Patriot batteries from Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.

A combined ballistic missile and explosive drone attack on September 4 on the giant Aramco facility near Dammam in eastern Saudi Arabia (and close to Bahrain) is an apparent Iranian warning against Bahrain’s rapprochement with Israel.

On September 11, 2021, a ballistic missile and five explosive drones – believed to be Houthi – hit al-Mocha, a Red Sea port in Yemen, and destroyed humanitarian aid warehouses.

Iran will try to rally the Resistance Camp to press for proactive and reactive political and military activity. Israel, the Arab countries, and the United States must prepare to deal with this trend.

Iran has a goal in Lebanon and it involves sending tankers with fuel to Syria that will help make Lebanon appear less dependent on the West. Like many Iranian policies, such as enriching uranium, the actual policy is more complex than western media portray it. Iran likes to play foreign relations with a mix of threats, attacks and diplomatic and economic initiatives. It does this in a chess-like manner. Iran openly boasts of its complex multi-layered approach.

When it comes to Lebanon the appearance of a tanker or several tankers off the coast of Syria in coming days and weeks, may actually be just the tip of the iceberg of what is actually happening. The tankers may be a distraction. We know that Hezbollah has boasted of these Iranian tankers arriving off the coast of Syria.

TankerTrackers.com tweeted on September 14, “visual confirmation: The Iranian handysize tanker FAXON (9283758) is discharging 33,000 metric tons of gasoil. Unable to deliver directly by sea to Lebanon due to sanctions, the vessel went instead to Baniyas, Syria for land transfer. Shall require 1,310 truckloads.”

Now we know that one of the tankers of interest is off the coast of Syria. But what is Iran saying? Pro-Iranian media such as Al-Mayadeen are boasting that Iran is evicting the US and US partners from the region through its “axis of resistance.” This resistance includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iranian forces in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen and pro-Iran militias in Iraq.

An article at Al-Mayadeen details how Iran views this success story. “It is assumed that the US administration’s decision to allow the Lebanese government to communicate with the Syrian state in order to import Egyptian gas was not classified as exceptional or in response to the demand of the Lebanese state that it should be exempted from complying with the sanctions of the Caesar Act.

In 1938, after the UK and France tried to appease Hitler by giving Germany the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, Winston Churchill said to British prime minister Neville Chamberlain: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”

The famous quote came to mind this week, after the West backed down from considering taking the tiniest of stands against Iran – which, like the Nazis, does not hide its aspiration to kill millions of Jews – in exchange for an insignificant concession from Tehran in relation to its rapidly-advancing nuclear program.

There have been two tracks of nuclear negotiations with Iran this year.

First, there are the indirect talks with the US to return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal, which limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. The US has agreed to remove all sanctions former President Donald Trump put on Iran after leaving the nuclear agreement, in exchange for Iran returning to the terms of the JCPOA.

Six rounds of negotiations took place in Vienna between April and June, at which point Iran said it needed time for its presidential election last month and for its new government to enter office. That new government is much more skeptical about the JCPOA, which was negotiated by its predecessor, and has only made vague statements about returning to talks.

The second track is negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency to continue monitoring Iran’s nuclear program, under the terms of the JCPOA.

In February, Iran withdrew from the “additional protocol,” which gave the IAEA greater surveillance capabilities. The UN nuclear watchdog reached a three-month agreement with Tehran at that time, which it renewed once, to allow cameras to record information at Iranian nuclear sites. However, the IAEA would not have access to that information. After three months, the IAEA would have to change the cameras’ batteries and memory cards, which it was allowed to do in May, but not in August.

Iran is just one month away from having enough nuclear material to produce its first atomic weapon, according to a new International Atomic Energy Agency report detailed in The New York Times. According to The New York Times, however, US administration officials believe Iran is still a few months away from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Although the Iranians know how to manufacture cruise missiles, it may take them some time to produce a nuclear warhead regardless of whether they have the nuclear material necessary.

Nevertheless, the IAEA report has raised concerns as this is the closest the Shiite country has come to acquiring a nuclear weapon since former US President Barack Obama signed the US onto the 2015 nuclear deal.

According to a report by the Institute for Science and International Security released Monday and reported by The New York Times, Tehran's decision to increase uranium enrichment to 60%, just below weapons-grade, means Iran now has the ability to produce the fuel necessary to manufacture its first bomb in "as short as one month." To produce enough fuel for a second weapon, Iran would need three months, while enough fuel for a third weapon could be produced in under five months, according to the report.

Senior officials in US President Joe Biden's administration have declined to comment on the report.

Iranian security guards made female International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors remove clothing and then inappropriately touched them at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, according to The Wall Street Journal.

At least four separate incidents of harassment were reported since early June, one diplomat told The Wall Street Journal, while another diplomat said that there had been five to seven. The most recent incident was reported in the past few weeks.

"What I understand is that there was touching in different places, sensitive places and so on," said one diplomat to the newspaper. A paper circulated by the US among IAEA members ahead of a board meeting of the agency's member states this week demanded an end to the conduct.

"Harassment of IAEA inspectors is absolutely unacceptable, and we strongly urge you to make clear in your national statement at the Board meeting that such conduct is deplorable and must end immediately, and that the Board should take appropriate action if further incidents are reported," read the paper, according to the report.

German police arrested a German-Iranian man suspected of exporting equipment to be used in Iran’s nuclear and missile programs in breach of European Union sanctions, Germany’s federal prosecutor said on Tuesday.

Police searched 11 locations, including apartments and offices in the states of Hamburg, Schleswig Holstein, and North Rhine-Westphalia linked to the suspect, the prosecutor said.

The suspect, identified only as Alexander J. due to privacy rules, had shipped equipment worth 1.1 million euros to an Iranian whose company in Iran was blacklisted by the EU as a front to procure equipment for nuclear and rocket programs.

The GBA general prosecutor’s office said the suspect was approached in 2018 and 2019 to procure laboratory equipment. He shipped two spectrometers procured for 166,000 euros ($196,510.80) to Iran in Jan. 2020, and six months later shipped another two, procured for 388,000 euros.

The National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI) lodged a formal complaint with the Times late last week that says reporter Farnaz Fassihi routinely publishes "inaccuracies, falsehoods, and denials of basic truths" that empower Iran's anti-U.S. leaders.

The letter, sent to Times executive editor Dean Baquet and the paper's editorial board, comes on the heels of an open letter issued last week by Iranian journalists, dissidents, and victims of the regime's crimes leveling similar charges against Fassihi. "Farnaz Fassihi's professional infractions … include normalizing the Islamic Republic's brutality through the obfuscation of truth in her journalism over the course of several years," the group of Iranians wrote alongside a detailed list of reports they claim are factually inaccurate and slanted in favor of the Iranian regime.

"Farnaz Fassihi is an accomplished reporter who has covered Iran for several decades," a Times spokesperson told the Washington Free Beacon. "We are confident in the accuracy of her reporting for the New York Times."

Fassihi says she has been subjected to misogynistic vitriol online in the past several months, leading the Times to issue a blanket condemnation and defense of the reporter's work in early August. NUFDI, in its letter, condemned vitriolic attacks, but said it has substantial concerns with Fassihi's work.

The group points to Fassihi's reporting on the assassination last year of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. In one piece from January 2020, for instance, Fassihi claimed that Soleimani "had near cult figure status" and was "almost universally admired" by Iranians. The report quotes several individuals who bolster this characterization.

Fassihi's "commentary was so positive that the Islamic Republic's state propaganda services repeatedly cited Ms. Fassihi's writings as global recognition of Mr. Soleimani’s popularity," NUFDI writes. "The selection of these particular quotes, which all endorse a single viewpoint, ignore any and all opponents of Mr. Soleimani and those who supported his elimination."

Washington D.C. Area Shiite Imam Dr. Sulayman Ali Hassan: May Allah Allow All of Us to Enter Paradise through the Gates of Jihad – Jihad Can Be Physical, Intellectual, through Funding, or on the Battlefield #Jihadpic.twitter.com/KBvoh8Dpy6

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 14, 2021

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Yet even worse was to come. The Jewish Democratic Council of America released an Internet video ad in which the Trump-Nazi analogy was directly made. It's hard to imagine a more inflammatory and deeply wrong-headed example of a group trying to exploit the Holocaust for political purposes. That's especially true because, whatever his other failings, Trump deserved credit both for changing policies to take action against anti-Semitism on college campuses as well as his historic support of Israel.

This monstrous accusation was given a pass by leading liberal Jewish figures, including those who ought to have known better and who had in the past denounced those who did the same thing. Former ADL director Abe Foxman and Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, who were likely thinking ahead to the competition to be the State Department Special Envoy to Combat and Monitor Anti-Semitism in a Biden administration, both betrayed their principles and gave this outrageous slur their approval. In the end, Lipstadt was the one who was rewarded for doing so when she was nominated for the job by Biden.

In a political culture where demonization of political foes is now universal, calling opponents horrible names is how both parties react to every controversy. The brazen hypocrisy of those who are all over Mandel but saw no problem when Democrats did the same thing is a function of partisanship and nothing else.

Still, that doesn't excuse Mandel, Taylor Greene or anyone else who is guilty of dragging the Holocaust into discussions where it doesn't belong.

Is there any way to reverse this trend in which both liberals and conservatives now regard comparisons to the Nazis and the Holocaust as merely a way to say something is really bad, rather than a reference to the greatest crime in human history?

Right now, the answer is "no."

In a world where Democrats would have been furious with Biden for crossing this line rather than applauding or winking at his offense and Republicans were prepared to do the same for similarly outrageous things said by Trump, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

But we don't live in such a world. Instead, Americans in both parties find themselves not merely deeply divided by political differences but actually believing that their opponents are thinly disguised authoritarians who, if given the opportunity, would re-enact Nazi tyranny against them. The way back from this dangerous precipice is unclear, though it will have to start with Jews – those with most at stake in the effort not to degrade the memory of the Holocaust – and their leading groups taking a consistent stand against these outrages. Until that happens, expect even more of these controversies. Sadly, the consequences of that failure in the battle against anti-Semitism are incalculable.

In his book, “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History” (2020), researcher Andrew Bostom reveals that in 2011, Gunther Jikeli reported the results of his interviews with 117 young Muslim men in Berlin, Paris, and London — and found that “the majority [of them] voice some or strong antisemitic feelings. They openly express their negative viewpoints toward Jews. This is often done with aggression and sometimes includes intentions to carry out antisemitic attacks.”

Jikeli also reports that his interviewees looked “for justification of antisemitic views within what they perceive as Islam or part of their religious or ethnic identity and they often find confirmation in Islamic sources and social circles, which serve as strong, authoritative references.”

In his assessment of Jikeli’s findings, Bostom takes the scholar to task for his “excruciating reluctance to come to terms with his own findings, harping on supposed ‘perceptions of Islam’ by the interviewees, as opposed to voluminous Jew-hatred within Islam’s canon.” “Nevertheless,” Bostom reports, “Jikeli provided these critical, if understated observations, which, despite his obvious reticence, affirm the centrality of Islam in shaping the Antisemitic views of young Muslim adults in Western Europe.”

Fortunately, numerous Muslim scholars have addressed the problem of antisemitism on the part of their fellow Muslims. For example, Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist himself, has regularly condemned antisemitism expressed by jihadists. So has Tarek Fatah and many other Muslim scholars. But just like their counterparts in Christianity dealing with the issue of antisemitism, they have a lot of work to do.

Addressing the horror of attacks like those perpetrated in London on August 18 — and their roots in the Islamic tradition — is not an act of bigotry. Quite the opposite. These attacks are anathema to any religion of peace, and give bigots license to falsely stereotype all Arabs and Muslims as anti-Jewish thugs.

But as a growing number of Muslim-majority countries are starting to come to terms with Israel’s existence in the Middle East under the rubric of the Abraham Accords, it is time for people of good faith to come to grips with the roots of Muslim hostility towards Jews, so that in the future, we will have fewer days like August 18, 2021.

The children and grandchildren of Jews from Arab countries are taking a keen interest in their roots: Take Sandy Rashty, whose parents and grandparents fled Iraq, where only three Jews remain. She traces her family’s story as part of gal-dem‘s Forgotten Diasporas series:

The flowers in Iraq were special. I remember their smell. Each one was brighter than the next, each with a different scent. The roses were so big. I remember swimming in the Tigris River in Baghdad. It was cold, but clean and fresh. The water almost tasted sweet. We lived in a house overlooking the river. I grew up there with my parents, siblings and a dog named Lassie. I used to call down to the sellers from the balcony, asking what fresh fish had been caught that day.

“It was a different life. It was a time when we could all play, laugh and sing together.”

These are the memories of my grandma, who was born in Baghdad to an Iraqi Jewish family in 1927. She shares her story with me over a pot of Arabic tea at her home in north-west London.

She has a proud identity, having grown up in a small but established community in Iraq that dated back more than 2,500 years. Prominent members of the community included Sir Sassoon Eskell, Iraq’s first Finance Minister who served under King Faisal I in the early 20th century; Reneé Dangoor, crowned Miss Iraq in 1947; and multiple poets and musicians including Saleh and Daud Al-Kuwaity.

Many Iraqi Jews were named after Hollywood stars like Grace Kelly and Rita Hayworth, wore Western clothes and were taught both English and French in Baghdad’s Jewish schools, including its main secondary school, Frank Iny, where my parents first met as students.

My grandma remembers the country before the modern wars, rise of extremism and the purge of its once vibrant Jewish community after the establishment of Israel in 1948.

The sponsor of a bill that would have made Burlington, Vermont, the first city in America to divest from Israel is withdrawing his legislation, citing concerns that it would promote antisemitism.

Councilmember Ali Dieng, who sponsored the resolution, said Monday afternoon that he would withdraw it at the council meeting scheduled for the same evening, and refer the resolution for reconsideration at the council’s racial equity committee. The city’s Jewish mayor also publicly expressed concerns about the resolution.

Dieng told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that conversations he had with community members in recent days changed his mind and led him to believe that BDS is “one-sided” and that it contributes to antisemitism.

“A lot of community members who are Jewish have been experiencing antisemitism for a very long time and I didn’t know about it,” he said in an interview. “We are a small community and I want to make sure everyone feels safe. Many people [who supported the resolution] are not happy with me, but I think it is the right thing.”

Dieng also said that, going forward, he would like to avoid focusing on international issues at the expense of local concerns.

“My focus as an elected official should be on here first,” he said.

Dieng’s reversal came moments after Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger came out with a statement opposing the resolution. Weinberger, who is Jewish, has the power to veto council resolutions, but he didn’t specify whether he intended to use it on the BDS measure.

The sponsor of a bill that would make Burlington, Vermont the first-ever city in the United States to boycott Israel has for the moment backtracked. Amid accusations that the proposed bill is antisemitic, councilman Ali Dieng said he was sending the draft resolution endorsing the controversial BDS movement back to Burlington's Racial Equity Committee, which previously approved the measure.

Dieng added that after various conversations he now believes that BDS contributes to Jew-hatred. "Many people [supporters of the bill] are not happy with me, but I think it is the right thing," he stated. The BDS movement's co-founder, Omar Barghouti, is on record admitting that his aim is to destroy the world's only Jewish state.

On Monday, members of the public voiced their opinions on the resolution, co-signed by Vermonters for Justice in Palestine. Numerous BDS proponents expressed views considered antisemitic according to the widely adopted -- including by the US government -- IHRA working definition.

In July, Vermont-based ice cream company Ben & Jerry's announced that it would no longer sell its products in the disputed West Bank. The decision was reportedly made after years of pressure from Vermonters for Justice in Palestine. The words of their supporters speak for themselves.

A big thank you to the Mayor of #Burlington#Vermont for coming out strong against the crazy anti-Israel resolution brought up in the local city council to single out and boycott #Israel.@MiroBTV
More: https://t.co/sbQcPuhsPZpic.twitter.com/rqopG6tkeQ

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 13, 2021

On Monday, members of the public voiced their opinions on #Burlington's now-shelved #BDS bill, co-signed by @VTJP1948. Numerous proponents expressed views considered antisemitic according to the widely adopted #IHRA definition. More at @HonestReporting: https://t.co/9GFCFPh8j6pic.twitter.com/r4VKfqIQjA

— Akiva van Koningsveld (@koningsveld) September 14, 2021

Biden’s reluctance to demand Ben & Jerry’s retract their decision can be traced back to 23 December 2016 when - as Vice President - Biden authorised America’s abstention on – rather than vetoing of – the mendacious United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 – which reaffirmed:
“that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;”

Biden’s failure to condemn Ben & Jerry’s decision suggests he has not changed his 2016 position on Judea and Samaria being Occupied Palestinian territory - but additionally in 2021 believes that Jews living there now can be discriminated against and economically targeted.

Biden’s following promise to Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on 27 August was – as a consequence - shallow and insincere:

“The US will always be there for Israel. It’s an unshakeable partnership between our two nations”.

Illinois reportedly now seems set to follow Arizona’s lead and call out Ben & Jerry’s Jew-hatred – leadership which Biden so demonstrably lacks.

Since Unilever subsidiary Ben and Jerry's announced an Israel boycott last month, triggering numerous state anti-boycott laws, Unilever's market capitalization has fallen by almost $14 billion. Unilever's contractual rights give it a strong basis for overturning the boycott. Its puzzling failure to do so shows immense disregard for its own investors.

Unlike a typical subsidiary, which is fully controlled by its parent company, Ben & Jerry's is governed by a 2000 merger agreement that divides power between Unilever and the Ben & Jerry's board. The board has primary responsibility for "social mission priorities," while Unilever has "primary responsibility for financial and operational aspects" of the subsidiary. According to Anuradha Mittal, Ben and Jerry's board chair, this social provision gives Ben & Jerry's the right to boycott the Jewish state—a judgment to which Unilever has seemingly acquiesced.

But the merger agreement specifically requires Ben & Jerry's to help Unilever sell the premium ice cream in Israel. It says: "[Ben and Jerry's] shall use commercially reasonable efforts to obtain (at [Ben and Jerry's] expense) for [Unilever] the right to conduct all facets of the Business in Israel." It doesn't get much clearer than that. As a matter of contract law, a highly generalized contractual provision giving Ben and Jerry's board the final say on amorphous "social mission priorities" cannot override a specific and tangible legal commitment to conduct business in Israel.

Even if this specific requirement were ignored, the social provision does not permit the board to make "the financial and operational decision" to completely abandon an entire market—especially when that decision subjects Unilever to costly sanctions by states, consumers and investors who think the social priorities run in the opposite direction. That's one likely reason why, again and again, the contract confines the board's discretion within the bounds of "commercial reasonableness."

Maybe I don’t frequent the right journals, Internet sites, TV shows or radio stations, because all I’ve seen and read and heard since the 1960s is that the Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians” ––you know, those perpetual “victims” who have received literally billions––maybe trillions––in “aid” from America, have become famous for five or six things only:
- Strapping suicide bombs on three-year-olds to kill Jews,
- Building tunnels in which to store arms and bombs to kill Jews,
- Launching balloons of fire into Israel to kill Jews,
- Spreading lies and calumny through the craven mass and social media to vilify Jews,
- Conducting “honor killings” of their teenage daughters,

What I’ve never seen or read or heard is that the Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians” have done one single solitary thing to benefit mankind. Their singular obsession has been to annihilate the Big Satan, America, and the Little Satan, Israel.

LET’S TALK NUMBERS
Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the world, with 2.4 billion and 1.9 billion adherents respectively––literally half the people on our earth of about 7.8-billion people.

In stark contrast, Judaism is comprised of 15-million people, about eight million in Israel, about six million in the United States, and about one million scattered throughout the world.

To see the most vilified state in the entire world, look at the infinitesimal red strip, surrounded by 300-million Arabs, once enemies until President Donald J. Trump succeeded for the first time in history in establishing the Abraham Accords which now find Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, et al, all at peace and doing business with Israel.

Israel is home to more than a million-and-a-half Arabs, a number of whom have been elected to the Knesset, Israel’s law-making legislature, and now an Arab Party has been elected to Israeli leadership. Nevertheless, those scary Jews are such a menace that Israel’s surrounding states have practiced ethnic cleansing for decades.

But nothing compares to the long-and-besieged history of the Jews.

First, they were hunted down, marginalized, attacked, and ultimately murdered by the immensely powerful Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman empires, which significantly no longer exist––unlike the Jews who are still flourishing.

The Tax Court of Canada has been exposed as attempting to prevent a Jewish judge from presiding over cases involving Muslims due to the judge’s actions in a different case regarding the possible hiring of a virulently anti-Israel academic at the University of Toronto.

According to The Globe and Mail, Tax Court Justice David Spiro was discriminated against in this fashion while under investigation by the Canadian Judicial Council over several complaints.

At the time, Tax Court Chief Justice Eugene Rossiter wrote to the Council saying that Spiro would not adjudicate any case involving a Muslim.

The Council ultimately cleared Spiro, saying he made mistakes but that removal was not justified.

The complaints were made as part of a retaliatory campaign following the University of Toronto’s decision not to hire Valentina Azarova to head the university law school’s International Human Rights Program.

Azarova’s prospective hiring met with objections regarding her hatred of Israel and indirect ties to a Palestinian terrorist group. Critics noted that 90% of her academic work was on the Palestinian issue, with a stridently anti-Israel bias.

In addition, critics charged that Azarova had terrorist connections, having worked for the organization al-Haq, which has extensive links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), blacklisted as a terrorist organization by the Canadian government.

On Sunday, over 700 people signed an open letter in support of accused antisemite and University of Bristol professor David Miller, The Jewish Chronicle reported.

Professor Miller is currently under investigation by the university for calling for the “end of Zionism” in a lecture and accusing Jewish students on campus of being “directed” by Israel to pursue a campaign of censorship. Recently, leaked lectures revealed that he was teaching students that an Islamist terrorist was “an asset of the British state.”

Addressing Chancellor Hugh Brady, the letter said, “The campaign against Professor Miller is about censoring speech on Islamophobia and Israel. This campaign is carefully calibrated to muddy the waters between anti-Zionism (opposition to a dangerous, racist political ideology) and hatred of Jews.”

“The attacks on Professor Miller are an example of how the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism is being weaponized by supporters of Israel and by Islamophobes,” it claimed.

Among the signatories to the letter is Salma Yaqoob, former leader of the leftist Respect Party. In 2013, according to the Chronicle, he promoted conspiracies about the arrest of “Rothschild bankers.” Another signatory, Asim Qureshi, praised Hezbollah at a 2006 Hizb ut Tahrir rally for supposedly defeating Israel, saying, “We know what the solution is and where the victory lies.”

Well said, by @gilescoren in @thetimes. pic.twitter.com/VOv4E67El1

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 14, 2021

The work of CAMERA’s Shillman Research Fellow Dexter Van Zile was featured in a book recently published by The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy headed by Charles Asher Small. The book, titled Poisoning the Wells: Antisemitism in Contemporary America and edited by Corinne E. Blackmer and Andrew Pessin, is available on Amazon here.

In the introduction, Blackmer and Pessin write that the title “refers to the medieval European anti-Semitic canard that Jews caused the plague by ‘poisoning the wells’ of their Christian neighbors.”

They continue:
At first glance this might seem to have nothing to do with Jewish life—or the relationships between Jews and non-Jews—in contemporary America. However, this invidious fabrication metaphorically indicates the manner in which Jews continue to be perceived as agents or embodiments of the poisonous, through their putatively threatening, conspiratorial, disruptive, unaccountable, criminal, subhuman, treacherous, or polluted characters or actions. Within the world views that increasingly dominate certain sectors of American Society, Jews are seen as toxic problems, resisting accommodation within the simple categories of, race, religion, ethnicity, politics, or nation.

In a chapter titled: “Israel as the Repugnant Other: Anti-Zionism in Liberal Protestant Denominations,” Van Zile writes that “A [mainline] peacemaking journey that began, in part, with an innocent ideological impulse to stand with the weak and powerless—and a not so innocent desire to use Israel as a proxy for the Christian right—brought mainline churches to a place where Israel, and Jews, could be vilified in good conscience, in the pursuit of peace and justice in the name of God.”

This book includes essays by a number of prominent scholars including Miriam Elman, Cary Nelson, Charles Asher Small, and many others.

Since the death of Nizar Banat in June various BBC platforms have produced content (see ‘related articles’ below) showcasing critics of the Palestinian Authority. Five reports have featured Ubay al Aboudi without any mention of his own PFLP links or those of the NGOs employing him. One item featured two contributors linked to al Shabaka without that fact – and the organisation’s political agenda – being made clear to audiences.

BBC coverage of internal Palestinian affairs has long been patchy and unenthusiastic to say the least and so audiences have little existing knowledge on that subject. It is clearly then all the more egregious just to present an interviewee as a “critic” of the PA or a “human rights activist” without any clarification of that contributor’s own “affiliations, funding and particular viewpoints”.

The BBC’s own editorial guidelines acknowledge that “[w]e should not automatically assume that contributors from other organisations (such as academics, journalists, researchers and representatives of charities and think-tanks) are unbiased”. It is therefore essential that in reports about opposition to the Palestinian Authority, audiences are also informed of the broader political agenda – and certainly of any links to terrorist groups – of the people the BBC blandly presents as that body’s “critics”.

It would be a mistake to get too deep into the weeds of his word choices, but we should note that a Palestinian can be a “civilian” – meaning they aren’t affiliated with a known terror group – yet, on their own, carry out an attack on Israeli civilians that would be defined as “terrorist” in nature in any other political context.

Moreover, Tisdall is either extraordinarily ignorant or morally indifferent to the continuous onslaught of Palestinian terrorism – attacks that have been at least as ubiquitous during times of peace talks and optimism as they have when relations between Ramallah and Jerusalem reach their nadir. Since September 2000, Palestinian terrorists have murdered 1,375 Israelis, whilst injuring and maiming thousands more. There are also, year in and year out, countless planned terror attacks – at varying stages of completion – that are thwarted by Israeli security personnel.

One final note: when we described Tisdall as a “veteran” journalist, we’re referring to the fact that he began his Guardian career – which included a stint as foreign editor – back in 1979. That was around the same time that the historically Zionist publication was morphing into the obsessively anti-Israel media outlet we know today.

Nazareth-born film director Hany Abu-Assad has become something of a Tinseltown media darling since his 2005 feature film Paradise Now, which centers around two Palestinian suicide bombers, won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and earned him an Academy Awards nomination in the same category.

He later built on that success with another Oscar nod for the 2013 movie Omar, which tells the fictional story of a young man from the West Bank who is forced to work as an informant for the Israeli authorities.

His latest offering Huda’s Salon builds on similar themes: Palestinians who are tricked or coerced into working as spies for Israel. In this case, it is a woman who is drugged while she is having her hair cut at a Bethlehem salon that is run by a woman who is working for the “secret service.” After being rendered unconscious, the victim is stripped naked and compromising photos are taken of her which are then used to force the woman to become an informant.

The Hollywood Reporter (THR) published an interview with Abu-Assad this week in which he discusses why he felt compelled to bring this “real story” to life on the big screen.

The September 12 article titled, Hany Abu-Assad on Palestinian Thriller ‘Huda’s Salon’ and Using Anger to Make “Art With Meaning,” offers a brief introduction to the director’s interview:
Set in Bethlehem in the West Bank, the thriller centers on a young woman who finds her life turned upside down after a simple trip to a salon, where she is blackmailed into working for the occupation…. Speaking to THR, the director describes the real-life scandal at the heart of the story, why he loved going from a crew of 200 to just 20 (and no comfortable chairs) and why it’s important to use anger as fuel for your creative engine.”

Abu-Assad offers no further information that would verify his claim that his film is based on true events. When asked about the “backstory” behind his cinematic work, he replies:
I wasn’t actually planning on doing another Palestinian film, but my wife Amira asked me if I knew any stories about women in Palestine [sic] that were worth writing about, and I told her about the salon. It’s a real story about this salon that, let’s say, misused women to get them to collaborate with the occupation.”

In addition to verbal antisemitism, physical violence against Jewish people is rising, especially in the US. According to the ADL, hate crimes against American Jews were at record levels in 2020, and the number has tripled in the past seven years.

Violence against Jews isn’t only something I’ve heard about in the media; I’ve experienced it personally. In 8th grade gym class, I was chosen last for the soccer team because my peers assumed that, as a small Jewish student, I would be unathletic. Little did they know that, thanks to my Brazilian background, I had grown up with the sport.

When I began playing well and scoring goals, members of the other team started yelling that I was Jewish, and therefore unathletic, so I must have been cheating. Then Yassi, the same student from the cafeteria incident, pushed me down and attempted to beat me up.

Stories like these are far too common in my community, and we must act. One way to improve the situation is by encouraging open-mindedness and engaging with non-Jews, so they understand us better, and make personal connections with us. Another way is for non-Jews to read books or watch movies about Jewish people. According to a 2014 study, this can generate empathy for people who are perceived as different.

Education is a crucial part of the solution. Learning to identify and stop antisemitic behavior is important for all people, not only those of us within the Jewish community. When one group is targeted in America, we all are. Ignoring antisemitism won’t stop it from spreading. We must confront it boldly and prominently — and make our voices heard, whether at school, college campuses, the workplace, or our own community.

A new study has shown that most teachers in England do not have the requisite knowledge required to accurately teach about the Holocaust, the BBC reported on Monday.

The study was conducted by University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education and surveyed 1,077 teachers, of whom 964 had recently taught classes on the Holocaust. It also involved in-depth focus groups on the subject.

The results showed a lack of knowledge of some of the most basic facts about the Holocaust.

For example, most teachers did not know where or when the Holocaust began; the proportion of Jews in the German population in 1933, the year Hitler took power; or what the British government’s response was to the Holocaust while it was underway.

Equally disturbing was that a fifth of teachers who had recently taught the subject had been given no specialist training.

UCL Associate Professor Dr. Andy Pearce told the BBC that, due to this ignorance, students may have “skewed and fundamentally erroneous impressions of this period.”

“As a society, we should have no tolerance for misunderstandings, myths and mythologies about the Holocaust,” he asserted. “That can be a breeding ground for conspiracy theories and for revisionism and for denial and distortion.”

The Association of School and College Leaders General-Secretary Geoff Barton expressed “concern” at the report’s findings.

It was reported that a man who is alleged to have verbally abused Jewish people attending a synagogue was arrested for a hate crime and possession of cocaine in East London.

The suspect is alleged to have subjected members of the Jewish community to a “torrent of racist abuse” which included “Kill you Jews, F**k Jews” and invoking Adolf Hitler’s name.

The alleged incident took place on Clapton Common and was reported on 10th September by Stamford Hill Shomrim, the Jewish volunteer neighbourhood watch patrol.

The group Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM) has warned that the rapid spread of the “Qui?” movement across France this past summer poses an immediate threat to the safety of French Jews.

After a live television interview in June with retired French General Dominique Delawarde, in which he made references to age-old antisemitic conspiracy theories, the phenomenon has spread at an alarming rate and gained significant traction.

Premised on a question asked by General Delawarde during the interview, where he referenced “anonymous” groups with disproportionate amounts of power controlling the media, the movement’s name, “Qui?” or “Who?” in French, is an attempt to draw the public’s attention to the “obvious” answer, namely that Jews and supporters of Israel control the media.

While Holocaust trivialization has been seen worldwide over the past year and a half, with Nazi-era yellow Stars of David being appropriated as a protest symbol against pandemic-related public health measures, adherents of the French “Qui?” movement—hailing from both extremes of the political spectrum—engage in explicit anti-Semitism, propagating conspiracy theories that blame Jews for the pandemic as well as for associated public health measures, and the COVID-19 vaccines.

Soon after Delawarde’s interview, signs displaying the word “Qui?” began appearing at nationwide rallies that drew tens of thousands to the streets against the coronavirus health pass now required for many daily activities in France. Also: incitement demonizing French Jewish doctors by adherents of the movement has intensified over the summer.

Police in the French city of Lyon have arrested the ringleader of an antisemitic attack on a Jewish man wearing a kippa that took place last Wednesday night.

Local media reported that the attack took place around 8 pm, as Jews marked the end of the two-day New Year holiday. The unnamed man was set upon by a gang of five assailants as he walked through Place Gabriel-Péri, in the Guillotière district of Lyon.

The ringleader, who is reported to be a minor, allegedly called the victim a “dirty Jew.” After the victim remonstrated against the insult, he was punched and kicked by the gang. Police officers who had been attending to a separate incident nearby arrived at the scene and arrested the ringleader.

The victim, who was slightly injured during the attack, subsequently filed a complaint.

In a statement released on Friday, the National Office for Vigilance Against Antisemitism (BNVCA) — a French group that assists the victims of antisemitic violence — confirmed that it was joining the victim as a civil party to his complaint.

“The BNVCA denounces and strongly condemns the antisemitic aggression committed in Lyon on Wednesday evening, September 9, at around 8 pm against a man of Jewish faith identified because he was wearing a kippa on his head,” the group said.

A Toronto resident dubbed “Swastika Man” after being photographed with the Nazi symbol drawn on his chest is in the custody of local police, charged with a third antisemitic assault in the space of two months.

Michael Park, 32, of no fixed address, appeared in court on Monday over an incident involving a woman who was waiting on a Toronto subway platform on Saturday afternoon.

Park’s victim, Sarah Gillis, told Canadian news outlet Global News that he approached her while she sat waiting for a train, asking her twice whether she was a Jew. When Gillis didn’t respond, Park gave a Nazi salute and asked her if she knew what the gesture meant.

“So I said to him, ‘Have a nice day,'” Gillis recalled. “That’s when he said, ‘You are a Jew,’ and he came towards me.”

Park abruptly grabbed Gillis, who is not Jewish, forcing her into a headlock before another man intervened, pulling him off. According to Gillis, Park then fled the scene by jumping on a subway train. Police arrested him on Sunday.

The attack was at least the third antisemitic outrage carried out by Park since July.

On July 6, a shirtless Park was photographed with a swastika drawn on his chest shortly after he was seen yelling antisemitic slurs and throwing objects at another person at Stanley Park, in the King Street West and Walnut Avenue area of the city. He was arrested nearby and charged with assault with a weapon as well as two municipal bylaw infractions related to behavior in parks.

A man alleged to have performed a Nazi salute before assaulting a woman in a Toronto subway has been arrested.

It was reported by Toronto police in a statement that at approximately 12:30 on Saturday, a woman was sitting on a bench at Lawrence Station when a man approached her before assaulting her and fleeing the scene.

Sarah Gillis, who said that she is not Jewish, identified herself as the alleged victim and said that a man approached her while she was sitting on the platform and asked her twice: “Are you Jewish?”

Ms Gillis added: “He then did a Nazi salute and asked me if I knew what it meant. So I said to him, ‘Have a nice day.’ That’s when he said, ‘You are a Jew,’ and he came towards me.”

Ms Gillis alleges that the man then put her in a headlock before being pulled off by another man. The suspect reportedly then fled the scene by boarding a subway train.

“I wanted people to be aware that he was still out there and although he was saying hateful things towards Jewish people…it wasn’t necessarily Jewish people that he was targeting,” Ms Gillis said. She added: “It could’ve [been] anyone because personally I’m not Jewish but I still became a victim of him.”

?? Insanity in Brooklyn - woman walks on Flatbush Avenue threatening to burn down Jews while holding a gasoline can. @NYPD63Pctpic.twitter.com/r6pZpjeqGm

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 14, 2021

Tennants has assured Campaign Against Antisemitism that they will not put Nazi items up for auction again in future, after we contacted the auction house in connection with an auction of Third Reich items last week.

In a message, Tennants auctioneers replied to us to say that “As a family business, our deep-rooted friendships with the Jewish community are our number one priority and I can confirm we are no longer handling or selling any such items.”

Tennants describes itself as “the UK’s largest family-owned fine art auctioneers, and a market leader with offices in North Yorkshire and London.”

The company was auctioning numerous Third Reich artefacts, including a tin of Third Reich machine gun magazines for £120-£180, a Third Reich SS Officer’s visor cap for £800-£900, a collection of Nazi medals for £100-£150, two Nazi Party badges for £100-£150, a “small quantity of German Third Reich related books” for £60-£80, various articles of Waffen-SS uniforms and a lot more.

Israeli fintech startup Melio, the developer of a payments platform geared toward small and medium-sized US businesses, raised another $250 million for its Series D round, sending its valuation soaring to $4 billion, the company announced on Tuesday.

Melio last raised $110 million in January at a valuation of $1.3 billion. It is considered one of the fastest-growing companies in Israel, having nearly quadrupled its worth in eight months. The latest investment brings its total fundraising to over $500 million.

The company was founded in 2018 by entrepreneurs Matan Bar, Ilan Attias, and Ziv Paz, and launched its platform in 2019, tapping into a massive B2B (business-to-business) payment industry in the US that still often involves payments to suppliers by checks and paper invoices, long payment cycles, and cumbersome processes.

While consumers have started getting used to payment apps to transfer money between friends or to service suppliers, small businesses have lagged. Melio says its platform allows businesses to transfer payments faster and more easily, while providing them with data insights about their cash flow.

Water electrolysis is an easy way of producing hydrogen gas. While hydrogen is considered a clean, renewable fuel, efficient electrolysis requires high electric potential, high pH and in most cases, catalysts based on ruthenium and other expensive metals.

As detailed in an article in The Journal of the American Chemical Society and reported on the university's website, Technion researchers have developed a unique system for producing hydrogen from water using little energy and inexpensive materials. Led by Professor Galia Maayan, head of the Biomimetic Chemistry Laboratory at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, along with doctoral student Guilin Ruan, this is the fastest system of its kind reported to date that uses available copper catalysts.

Maayan and Ruan designed and developed a system in which the catalyst is soluble in water. The system is based on three elements: copper ions; a peptide-like oligomer (small molecule) that binds the copper and maintains its stability; and a compound called borate whose function is to maintain the pH in a limited range.

The major innovation in this work is the researchers' discovery that the borate compound helps stabilize the metallic center and helps catalyze it.

Israel-based Unlimited Robotics revealed its new service robot, Gary, geared and manufactured to perform any home, business or office chore, the company announced in a statement.

Alongside the big reveal, the 20-team member Israeli start-up also announced its new developer's platform, Ra-Ya, which "makes it easier for any software engineer to build robotic applications even without prior experience in hard-coded environments."

"The process of programming a robotic application is challenging, and it is not that simple for most software developers," said Unlimited Robotics CEO Guy Altagar. "Unlimited Robotics is democratizing the way people can build applications for robots with the company’s groundbreaking technology.

"We are empowering software engineers who do not have prior experience in robot programming, especially if they have experience in JavaScript and Python, to actually create pragmatic solutions for people’s homes, businesses, and offices."

Gary can autonomously navigate its surroundings, moving through both new and familiar places at a speed of up to 1.2m/sec (3.1 mph). Gary also holds capabilities to navigate outdoor and uneven terrain, such as grass, carpets and tiles.

The enrichment of the University across a wide range of fields through the admission of professing Jews was considerable already in the decades immediately after 1871 and much amplified by the outstanding contribution of refugee scholars in the 1930s, but in Oxford the study of Hebrew was considered primarily the province of biblical scholars in the Faculty of Theology (specifically excluded from the Universities Tests Act), so that, despite the efflorescence of the scientific study of Jewish history and Judaism on continental Europe from the early nineteenth century, Oxford was slow to encourage study of Jewish culture in its own terms. The outstanding Hebrew collections in the Bodleian had long attracted Jewish scholars, and Adolf Neubauer, who was employed to catalogue Hebrew manuscripts from 1868, was appointed reader in rabbinic Hebrew in 1884, but Hebrew and Jewish Studies only began to be properly recognised by the University as a serious area of study with the appointments of Cecil Roth as Reader in Post-Biblical Jewish Studies (in 1938) and of Chaim Rabin as Cowley Lecturer in Post-Biblical Hebrew (in 1943).

Roth (in the Faculty of Modern History) and Rabin (in Oriental Studies) were intellectually quite isolated in Oxford, despite their considerable impact on the wider world of Jewish Studies, but in 1972 the University accepted the arguments of David Patterson, a specialist in modern Hebrew literature who had been appointed in 1956 to succeed Chaim Rabin as Cowley Lecturer, that the destruction of centres of Jewish scholarship in Europe and the strength of the Bodleian collections provided a rationale for a major initiative to establish Oxford as a centre for the study of postbiblical Jewish culture, establishing the Oxford Centre of Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

The new Centre was set up as an affiliated centre of the University, to be governed as a separate charity with a proportion of trustees appointed by the University but without recourse to University funds. Such an arrangement was completely novel at the time, but it proved exceptionally effective. The Centre has flourished over the past fifty years, financing the majority of the posts which enable Jewish studies to be taught in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, enabling the Faculty of Theology and Religion to include the teaching of Modern Judaism on its syllabus and the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages to teach Yiddish, and housing a very wide range of research projects which build on the strengths of the University in the wider Humanities and library resources (including the Centre’s own Leopold Muller Memorial Library, now administered by the Bodleian Libraries).

Ida Nudel, a former refusenik and an activist for Soviet Jewry, died Tuesday in Israel aged 90.

Nudel arrived in Israel in 1987 after a 16-year battle against Soviet authorities to allow her to move to the Jewish state — including four years imprisoned in Siberia — which she won with the intervention of many international figures, including US actress Jane Fonda.

After settling in Israel, Nudel established the “Mother to Mother” nonprofit, which sought to provide afterschool activities for the children of Russian immigrants.

Mourning her passing, President Isaac Herzog recalled how moved his father, former president Chaim Herzog, was to meet Nudel when she first arrived in Israel.

“It’s important to remember and commemorate the stories of the Prisoners of Zion who with spirit and bravery changed the world. May her memory be a blessing,” Herzog wrote on Twitter.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett also paid tribute to Nudel, saying she was “an exemplar of Jewish heroism for us all.”

The Knesset held a commemoration meeting on Sunday to mark 80 years since the Babi Yar [Babyn Yar] massacre, the symbol of what is known as the "Holocaust of the Bullets," and which began on the eve of Yom Kippur.

In just two days, the Nazis murdered nearly all the Jews in Kiev: 33,771 people. During the German occupation of Ukraine (1941-43), nearly 100,000 victims were murdered and buried at Babi Yar, the overwhelming majority of whom were Jewish, but also included opponents of the regime, the mentally ill and Roma people, making it the largest mass grave in Europe.

The meeting was attended by Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy; Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai; chairman of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center Natan Sharansky; Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan; World Zionist Organization and acting Jewish Agency chairman Yaakov Hagoel; and Association of Ukrainian Immigrants in Israel chairman David Levin.

"The massacre at Babi Yar is one of the worst single atrocities humanity has ever known, as more than 33,000 Jews were murdered, shot to death, simply because they were Jews," Levy said.

Sharansky called on the Israeli government and Holocaust institutions that had visited the German extermination camps in Poland to visit Babi Yar.

"There were two methods to the extermination of the Jews," he explained. "Cold-blooded murder with bullets and burial in mass graves throughout Eastern Europe, of which Babi Yar is the symbol, and mass, systematic extermination using gas in camps established by the Nazis in Poland. In order to understand the entire story of the extermination of the Jews in-depth, I call on the Israeli government and anyone who has visited Poland to visit Babi Yar, as well."

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There has been a gradual change over the past two years, under the auspices of the police. Jewish communal prayer, with a minyan of at least 10 men, has become a regular, twice-daily occurrence, during the four hours in the morning and one in the early afternoon, five times a week, when Jews are allowed onto the Mount. [It's been more than two years - EoZ.]

I joined the pilgrims six times in the two weeks before Rosh Hashanah. Each time the groups entered on the same route, which takes about 45 minutes, without any noticeable friction with the Muslims there.

In my visits with the pilgrims last month, I failed to meet many of the bitter fanatics I expected to find. Instead, I met a variety of Israelis with diverse reasons for making the pilgrimage. Some harbored political and nationalistic motives. Others dream of building a Third Temple in our lifetime. But many see Temple Mount in much more abstract terms and just want to be there, without a clear objective.

One said he felt he was standing “at the window of yearning.” Another described “trying to touch a distant point of sanctity.” And others didn’t have any high words, but gave the impression of not being activists or dreamers, but simply wanting to break the shackles of what for many Israelis has become the limited and sterile experience of established routine worship within synagogues.

For them, Temple Mount has simply become the place to “visit God.”

After a few minutes walk to the easternmost point on the Mount, the group stops, with the sealed twin entrances of Mercy Gate behind them, and begin praying for about 15 minutes. It’s the standard Orthodox version, beginning with the blessings before kriyat shema, then amida (silent prayer) and the Chazan’s recitation following it, in rather unorthodox conditions.

Unusually, the Chazan reads the blessings in a muted tone, and everyone – men and women, Haredim, religious Zionists and the secular – bunch around him to hear and answer “amen.” Most make sure not to sway in prayer and if one of them does so, a police officer may gently advise them not to. But make no mistake: this is Jewish communal prayer on Temple Mount.

There is no agreed version on when the police began allowing the prayers: shaharith in the morning and minhah in the afternoon. .... In recent months, there have even been some reports about it in the news that didn’t create any waves.

The police began allowing the group to stop at that point for longer periods of time – enough not only to pray, but also for a short dvar Torah (sermon) – before asking them to walk on. Also, the Waqf custodians from the Muslim religious trust, who know everything that takes place in the Al-Aqsa compound, seem to be silently acquiescing.

On some days, they were nowhere to be seen around the group; on a couple of mornings, a Waqf monitor in an official white shirt and with a walkie-talkie could be seen watching from afar. It’s unclear why they haven’t vocally protested this ongoing erosion of the status quo. There’s now a fact on the ground. Jews are praying together on Temple Mount.

It’s hard to get reliable figures on the number of pilgrims, though they’re clearly increasing. One of the pilgrim groups released a statement recently claiming that in 5781 (the Jewish year that just ended), 25,581 Jews prayed on Temple Mount– a 13 percent rise over the previous year. They also claim that there’s been a dramatic jump in recent months, after the coronavirus lockdown ended.

What’s more interesting than their numbers is the sheer variety of the pilgrims. The pilgrimage used to be mainly a religious-Zionist phenomena, but today you can see Haredim (who say they have privately received the blessing of their rabbis), secular Jews and Jewish tourists from overseas too. It’s a more popular movement.

In recent weeks, I’ve met people who told me they go up on their birthdays and their parents’ Yahrzeit (memorial day). Like pilgrimages to the graves of ancient sages, Temple Mount is becoming part of a more traditional and less political act of worship.

You can also see it in the attitude of the police, who used to be much rougher with the pilgrims. Now, at the blessing for the ill at the end of the prayer, officers will join and ask for their relatives to be mentioned as well, or even for a blessing for themselves.

What has helped popularize the pilgrimage is the lack of normal Orthodox boundaries. There’s no segregation between male and female pilgrims, and there’s no religious judgmentalism. Despite the injunctions at the entrance to enter only “in purity” and “out of fear of the temple,” no one tells men or women that they need to cover their heads or checks your footwear.

Surprised at the lack of censoriousness, I asked one of the activists if he wasn’t bothered by bare heads and leather boots. “Who cares?” he shrugs. “The important thing is that you’re here.”

Anything Jews do can be a "provocation." That doesn't mean that Jews should follow the dictates of the fanatics who are looking for excuses to start a holy war. 

I get the impression that the mainstream media, with hundreds of reporters around Jerusalem, are embarrassed to have missed this story for years, a story in the change of the status quo that they were blind to. Now that it is out, they want to hang onto their old assumptions that any Jew who openly prays on the Temple Mount is a powder keg. 

These enlightened, non-racist reporters assume that if Palestinian Arabs manage to start an uprising using Jews as an excuse, it is the Jews' fault. Muslims are expected to be irrational and fanatic, and they aren't responsible for their violence that these liberal reporters are expecting.

Here we see that most Muslims don't care about groups of Jews praying on the Temple Mount in an area that Muslims rarely visit. They aren't acting in the way the Jewish liberals expect and are literally encouraging. 

The story does not fit the narrative on either the Jewish or Muslim sides, and the media hates when their narrative is shown to be false. 

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As two of the world’s most dynamic and advanced countries, the UAE and Israel together can help turbocharge economic opportunity by pushing for deeper regional integration. One element should be new institutions and co-operation to facilitate trade and to co-operate on public health and development.

Second, continued US and European involvement is critical. Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on much, but normalisation has had enthusiastic backing from both the Trump and Biden Administrations and across the aisle in Congress. Throughout Europe too, the Accords have been warmly received.

Active US and European political, financial, and technical support will help realise their full potential — as will the appointment of special envoys to co-ordinate these efforts. These moves will be welcomed as a clear signal of our friends’ sustained commitment to the stability and security of the region.

Third, the Accords underlined that even if a comprehensive peace agreement is still not in sight, better conditions for the Palestinians are a shared interest for us all. Normalisation must help facilitate increased investment, trade, and exchanges between Palestinians and the Arab world.

Sceptics will remain cynical, but they should look at what’s happened this past year, against all the odds. New ways of thinking and shared interests allow for breakthroughs and the building of relations. They encourage others in the region to initiate new channels of diplomatic dialogue.

Real breakthroughs are tough, but Emiratis and Israelis have shown that they are possible. This is just the beginning — the next step is to expand opportunity and connect people across the region. This is the best antidote to pessimism and the dead-end extremist ideology that has held the Middle East back for too long.

Last week, a laconic statement from the Department of Defense marked a tectonic shift in Middle East security cooperation, as the United States formally designated that Israel would now be part of the U.S Central Command (CENTCOM). President Donald Trump announced the proposed change on January 15, 2021, and while the escalation of violence in Gaza this spring seemed to put the designation in some jeopardy, it went into effect on September 1, 2021. The initiative to move Israel into CENTCOM is a direct result of the Trump administration-led Abraham Accords normalization agreements between the United States, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, signed one year ago today on the South Lawn of the White House.

CENTCOM got its name because the Middle East is literally located in the middle of everything. Israel is the most central point in that centrally located region, sharing as it does a maritime boundary with a European country (Cyprus) and a border with an African country (Egypt), as well as boasting Asian neighbors such as Jordan. In the wake of the Abraham Accords and the resultant burgeoning economic and cultural ties among the signatories, the timing is now ideal to develop a similar regional security relationship. This relationship would expand cooperation and improve Israel Defense Forces (IDF) integration with U.S. and partner forces throughout the region. It would also help CENTCOM promote a more holistic and inclusive regional security framework. There would be opportunities to conduct joint military exercises that include the IDF, which would indirectly provide Israel the occasion to communicate with countries that have yet to sign normalization agreements. Additionally, Israel would now be able to assign IDF liaison officers to CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa—and, hopefully in the future, to subordinate headquarters across the region.

As events in the Middle East crashed into the American consciousness due to the Iran and Afghanistan crises in 1979, President Jimmy Carter established the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (JTF) as a response mechanism for rapidly unfolding events. In 1983, under President Reagan, that JTF became CENTCOM. Its area of operation runs from the Pakistani border with India to Egypt's border with Libya. U.S. military regional combatant commands, including CENTCOM, are responsible for the deployment, support and operational employment of U.S. forces in their areas of responsibility, as well as for developing military relationships with allies and partners in their respective regions.

We are thrilled to celebrate one year of successful relations between Israel & Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates & the Kingdom of Morocco. May peace continue to prevail through the #AbrahamAccords& normalization agreements. @BahrainEmbDC@IsraelinUSA@morocco_usa@UAEEmbassyUSpic.twitter.com/2uYRXkd0YI

— Ned Price (@StateDeptSpox) September 15, 2021

Gulf-based investors are often looking for the strategic value in every project. While financial returns are important, there is also a need for a strategic alignment. The Delek-Mubadala deal — in which Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Petroleum purchased a $1 billion stake in the Tamar natural gas field — is a case in point. And more strategically-aligned projects like this are needed.

Cultural differences have also been identified. While Israelis have been looking for “quick wins,” such as venture investing with a short time-frame, Emirati and Bahraini individuals and companies often have different time horizons, expecting relationships to develop and mature over time until they can generate the expected results. This gap has created significant frustrations on both sides, and should be considered as part of the learning curve of the Abraham Accords. While cultures cannot change overnight, governments on both sides should not create false expectations and should better prepare the parties for a more constructive dialogue.

In addition, we should not forget the framework of the Abraham Accords and the original text of the declaration. The accords are named after Abraham, the common patriarch of the three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The spiritual aspect was an important component of the journey to the accords. Leaders from all relevant religions have met over the years as part of the track-II diplomacy efforts to bring the countries together. They all emphasized what values and practices those religions have in common.

Unfortunately, the rush to advance commercial transactions left the spiritual component behind. While certain projects and deals are short-lived, the religious aspect can give the long-term legitimacy, and much-needed resilience, to the accords. Despite the ongoing political sensitivities in the region, religious leaders and programs should be accelerated in the country-to-country interactions.

The need to re-emphasize the religious component should be part of broader efforts to add bottom-up stories focusing on individuals in these countries. A recent report by the Atlantic Council and INSS think tanks and policy groups highlights the areas where civic engagement can be improved and developed. Religious dialogue, sports activities, and academic research programs are some of the key elements.

Though we are all eager to see the next chapter of the Abraham Accords and Jewish-Muslim relations in the Middle East advance, only a nuanced and transparent approach can lead to the desired progress and regional growth.

Former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner called the Abraham Accords a “rare foreign policy effort that has achieved a bipartisan consensus” at an event in Washington on Tuesday celebrating the agreement’s one-year anniversary.

The White House signing ceremony normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain took place on September 15, 2020.

The US-brokered pact later added Morocco and Sudan.

“Thanks to the agreements, we are watching the Middle East transform before our eyes,” Kushner said in his opening remarks, while cautioning that if the Abraham Accords “are not nurtured, we run the risk that they could go backward.”

The event at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown was hosted by the Abraham Accords Institute for Peace, a center established by Kushner to further advance the diplomatic relationships established last year.

Israel's emergence as a regional power has been accelerated by a perception among our Arab neighbors that the U.S. role in the region is being reduced. Therefore, Israel's role in the strategic calculations of countries in the region is becoming more important, and the need to work with Israel, in terms of dealing with common challenges, becomes more important. There is a concern not only from Iran's fanaticism and radical revolutionary policies, but also from Sunni radical movements like al-Qaeda and ISIS.

You have a situation where you've got this Iranian tiger, and you've got this ISIS - or whatever comes next - leopard, and then you have an 800-pound American gorilla that's leaving the building. And so they look around and see, "well, there's this 250-pound gorilla wearing a kippah. Maybe we should work with them more closely."

In 2014, I said that I believe Israel will be the most important ally of the United States in the 21st century because of security and technology. Israel has a military that can defend itself by itself. Israel has a formidable intelligence capability and the finest intelligence service in the world. Israel is renowned for its cyber capabilities. Great Britain and Israel are the two allies whom the U.S. can partner with on a global level in terms of cyber. Then you have offensive and defensive weapons-making capabilities. There is the Iron Dome system that we jointly developed with the U.S. We have the Trophy system which helps tanks to avoid incoming missiles.

Israel, being the startup nation, is an emerging technology power and this affects its relations with other states. We are the second great center of innovation in the world after Silicon Valley. To the extent that leaders in the Arab world want to catapult their countries forward, Israel becomes a very good ally to do that with.

I think Israeli and American interests are moving closer together, not further apart. If the U.S. is going to withdraw militarily from the region, then the importance of having a solid, reliable, democratic ally in the heart of this region grows. Israel is bringing a lot more to the table than it did years ago.

The recipe for success is to confront Iran, embrace your allies in the region, and leave the door open for the Palestinians if they want to actually engage with us to reach peace. But don't give them veto power. The Palestinian Authority has poisoned an entire generation of Palestinians to hate Israel, to hate Jews, and has shown no willingness whatsoever to reach a historic compromise.

If you want to focus on the chances of the Palestinians moving towards peace, don't focus on what diplomats in Europe or the U.S. are saying. Just turn on a television set; look at what the Palestinians are watching; look at what they're reading. And then you understand whether or not you have a force here that is willing to compromise. There are Palestinians who would really like to reach a compromise with Israel, but they are not the ascendant force today.

#jerusalem#AbrahamAccords#israel#uae#bahrain#anniversarypic.twitter.com/xcRZPKdCY7

— ??? ??? ???? Fleur Hassan-Nahoum (@FleurHassanN) September 14, 2021

Morocco's hosting of an Israeli delegation in August, led by Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, was the first high-level bilateral meeting between the two countries since 2003.

Moroccan authorities have endeavored to present the normalization as a reconciliation between two natural allies due to the "Moroccanness" of so many Israelis, with over 800,000 Jews of Moroccan origin in Israel.

Diplomatic normalization was simply an opportunity for the Kingdom to recognize and strengthen cooperation that has always existed and meets essential needs - primarily in the areas of health, technology, tourism, defense, and cybersecurity.

Israel intervened with Pfizer so that the Kingdom could receive a shipment of two million Covid-19 vaccination doses.

Even before the normalization, some 50,000-70,000 Israeli tourists of Moroccan origin visited the Kingdom every year.

Yet in an opinion poll by The Arab Barometer, 59% of Moroccans say they are hostile to normalization between Morocco and Israel.

Several political parties have accused the Moroccan state of betraying the Palestinian cause and collaborating with the Zionists.

In Episode 20 of the Caroline Glick Mideast News Hour with Gadi Taub, Caroline and Gadi discuss the anniversaries we marked this week - 20 years since the Sept. 11 attacks, 28 years since the launch of the Oslo peace process between Israel and the PLO which led to 28 years of terror and war, and the one year anniversary of the Abraham Accord. What was learned, what was lost and who decided what we would understand and miss about the nature of our nations and our enemies.

When it comes to Afghanistan, the central question before U.S. policymakers was not whether full withdrawal from the country advanced human rights. It wasn’t whether our allies would be unnerved by America’s conspicuous lack of resolve or if our partners abroad would be disinclined to cooperate with the United States in the future. All of these fronts have deteriorated as a result of America’s bug out from Afghanistan. The central question facing America’s public officials was far narrower than that: Are Americans safer as a result? The Biden administration’s more political officials cannot answer that question honestly.

In testimony before members of the House of Representatives Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that the administration is “focused on counterterrorism.” Toward that end, the Taliban have suddenly become our invaluable partners. “The Taliban has committed to prevent terrorist groups from using Afghanistan as a base for external operations that could threaten the United States or our allies, including al-Qaida and ISIS-K,” Blinken claimed.

Based on all publicly available information, that statement is both preposterous and recklessly irresponsible.

Throughout the Trump administration’s dubious negotiations with Taliban representatives over the final year of his presidency, the Taliban’s steadfast rejection of Western request to renounce their support for al-Qaeda was a sticking point. It wasn’t one that prevented the Trump administration from securing and celebrating a tentative withdrawal deal, to the Trump administration’s discredit. But nor did that prove an obstacle for the Biden administration when its members renegotiated that deal, crafted their own plan for withdrawal, and executed it.

.@SenTedCruz to Sec. Blinken: "President Biden and the Biden administration have presided over the worst foreign policy catastrophe in a generation...just like Jimmy Carter owns the disaster of the Iran hostage crisis, you own this. The Biden administration caused this disaster." pic.twitter.com/Y0qBZOdroc

— CSPAN (@cspan) September 14, 2021

Motivated by the desire to justify the surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban, Western military and political leaders have forgotten who it was we fought in Afghanistan and Pakistan for two decades. Some now talk about "Taliban 2.0," as if it's a different entity, somehow, from the one that harbored al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden as he plotted the mass murder of 2,977 innocents on U.S. soil 20 years ago.

The Taliban are determined to impose a brutal form of sharia on the Afghan people and are intertwined with terrorists determined to continue their jihad against all who do not conform to their perverted interpretation of Islam. After their defeat in 2001, the Taliban regenerated, with the help of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and al-Qaeda. The new Afghan interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is the military commander of the Taliban and the leader of a terrorist organization connected to al-Qaeda that specializes in kidnapping and mass murder attacks.

The first step in mitigating the calamity in Afghanistan is moral clarity based on an understanding of these enemies of humanity.

We have reached a critical time in the global War on Terror in the wake of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. We failed in this war; it’s time to review what we have done and where we go next.

We are seemingly back to the time before the US invasion of Afghanistan. Terrorist organizations from the Middle East to the Horn of Africa and Central and Southeast Asia are now looking at what happened in Afghanistan and see it as an inspiring model.

They are hailing the defeat of a superpower. This message, the idea that they too can defeat the other powers, is spreading across the world’s social media.

It is time to sit together, reflect on what happened and contemplate the lessons to be learned while we develop a new global strategy.

The security and intelligence services certainly have a role to play but we have to think holistically and develop a preventive strategy that will target the roots of terror: extremist ideology and hate.

The engagement of all stakeholders is crucial in the War on Terror. We must focus on education and the engagement of NGOs, community leaders, religious leaders, and all the stakeholders in all communities and countries in the world’s fight against terrorism.

Religious leaders are vital in this war and must take the lead.

Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief Yaakov Katz and Diplomatic Correspondent Lahav Harkov sit down this week for a Yom Kippur edition of The Jerusalem Post Podcast.

As Israelis and Jews across the world prepare for the day-long fast to atone and repent for their sins of the year, Katz and Harkov discuss apologies in Israeli politics - or lack thereof - and the different ways Israel and its politicians have changed throughout the past year.

Later in the episode, Harkov sits down with the former secretary general of the World Jewish Congress Dan Diker to discuss the controversial annual Durban conference scheduled for September 22. The conference is marked by antisemitism and anti-Israel discussions. Israel has been singled out for opprobrium as racist in the declaration released by UN member states participating.

Some 18 countries will be boycotting the World Conference Against Racism.

In this episode:
> Yom Kippur and Israeli politics
> The controversial Durban conference - how it has changed, what stayed the same and does it matter for Israel?

Hey countries! Do you want to attend the @UN Durban IV conference and promote antisemitism?

Countries:
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— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) September 14, 2021

Because he still is? pic.twitter.com/GUJoN3E7Og

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 15, 2021

Israel’s security forces are on high alert as the Yom Kippur holiday begins, with fears of violence in the West Bank, rockets from the Gaza Strip, and fallout from the ongoing hunt for escaped Palestinian terrorist prisoners.

Walla reported that the IDF is imposing a closure of the West Bank beginning on Wednesday afternoon, with the holiday arriving in the early evening. It is also bolstering its forces in the area due to concerns about both civil violence and possible terror attacks.

There will also be a heightened alert along the border with Gaza in order to deal with border riots, incendiary balloons, and rocket fire.

Meanwhile, the hunt has continued for two of the six terrorist prisoners who escaped from Gilboa Prison in northern Israel. Four of the inmates have been found and arrested, and the Shin Bet, IDF, and Border Police are continuing their attempts to locate the others.

As a result, terror groups on the West Bank are attempting to foment further violence in order to express solidarity with the escapees.

IDF Central Command officers said that “any change in the issue, especially a worsening of [the prisoners’] conditions or harm to prisoners, can set fire to the territory, and cause violence and terror.”

“The goal is to calm the territory,” they said. “The holiday season is always tense even without connection to the issue of the security prisoners.”

A man was stabbed and seriously wounded in Jaffa outside Tel Aviv on Wednesday afternoon, police and medics said.

The circumstances of the assault and the identity of the victim were not immediately clear.

Police said the assailant was a Palestinian man who had illegally entered Israel and he had been arrested. Police said the motive was apparently a terror attack and identified the victim as a resident of Jaffa.

However, the Magen David Adom rescue service identified the victim as a 49-year-old East Jerusalem resident.

MDA said he was taken to Wolfson Medical Center in Tel Aviv in serious condition with stab wounds.

Pictures from police appeared to indicate that the man had been stabbed with a screwdriver while fishing.

Smugglers helping terrorists and other criminals cross borders is nothing to be proud of.

Illegally crossing a border is a crime. Yet the @dailybeast praises it? pic.twitter.com/1nvkXeW4lM

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 15, 2021

Experts warn that Iran is only one month away from nuclear capacity, which means that they’ll have the ability to build an atomic bomb, possibly within just a few months.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett held a historic meeting with Egyptian Prime Minister El Sisi. It is the first such meeting in ten years. The two discussed economic and security cooperation, as well as peace between Israel and the Palestinians. El Sisi remains committed to a two-state solution.

Four out of the six terrorists who escaped from Israeli prison last week have been caught. Incredibly, instead of assisting the terrorists to escape, Israeli Arab citizens actually aided police in their capture.

Pro-Iranian militias have increasingly used drones to target US forces. In the last week they allegedly flew a drone toward Erbil International Airport to target US forces in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Could those militias in Iraq now be working more closely with Palestinians? In an article at the pro-Iranian site Al-Mayadeen, hints of closer cooperation emerged this week.

Why does this matter? In May, an Iranian drone was flown from Iraq or Syria into Israeli airspace and shot down. Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz warned about Iran training proxy forces with drones in Iran this week. Hamas also used new Iranian-style kamikaze drones in May.

Gantz warned on September 12 at the annual International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) Conference at Reichman University that “Iran has developed ‘proxy terror’ which is perpetrated by organized ‘terror armies’ which are assisting Iran in achieving its economic, political and military goals. One of the most significant tools employed by Iran and its proxies is UAVs with a range of thousands of kilometers. Hundreds of these UAVs are spread across Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Iran is also attempting to transfer the know-how needed for UAV production to Gaza.”

He said that the Kashan base in Iran is used to train terrorists from Yemen, Iraq, Syria snd Lebanon. These terrorists are trained to employ UAVs produced by Iran. This base is a key point from which Iranian aerial terrorism is exported to the region.”

The Palestinian Prisoners Club announced on Wednesday morning that the Palestinian security prisoners have suspended their hunger strike, which was supposed to begin on Friday.

The club said in a statement that the "prisoners, in a unified and harmonious manner, decided to suspend the collective hunger strike, after their demands were met."

According to the statement, the Israeli authorities agreed to cancel the "collective punishments" imposed on the prisoners after the escape of six inmates from Gilboa Prison last week.

Israel also reportedly agreed "to stop targeting prisoners affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the statement added, without providing further details.

Five of the prisoners who escaped were members of PIJ.

Qadri Abu Bakr, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission, had said before that the first phase of the hunger strike would include 1,380 prisoners.

While four of the six escaped Palestinian terrorists are back behind bars, the PA, PLO, and Fatah continue to highlight the “victory” of the six “heroes” and “revolutionaries who succeeded in liberating themselves,” while praising all the imprisoned terrorists as “the best of us and a crown on the head of the Palestinian people.” Moreover, Fatah describes “everyone who resists this occupation” as “a freedom fighter,” while PLO calls the prison break “a mighty victory” and “heroic event”:
“The Fatah Movement said that ‘the prisoners are the best of us and a crown on the head of the Palestinian people, and we and the masses of our people will not stand idly by if our heroic prisoners are harmed in any one of the Israeli occupation’s prisons.’ … Fatah warned the occupation authorities against the consequences of harming the lives of the six heroic Palestinian prisoners who carried out their sacred right to freedom. It emphasized that the Palestinian people’s struggle against the occupation is a legal right and that the occupation itself is the one that is invalid according to international law, and everyone who resists this occupation is a freedom fighter…

Head of the PLO Department of Expatriate Affairs Rawhi Fattouh… mentioned the six prisoners’ liberation operation from the Israeli Gilboa Prison by saying: ‘Our heroic prisoners in the Israeli occupation prisons recorded a mighty victory, which is added to the list of their victories and legendary resolve, after six of them escaped through a tunnel they dug at Gilboa Prison.’

He described what happened as a great victory and a heroic event.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 10, 2021]

The term “resist” is a term the PA uses for violence and terror. Even Palestinian terrorists who murder civilians are said to be legitimately "resisting."

An editorial in the official PA daily made light of the arrests, pointing out that the escape is a “magnificent example” that has “entered history”:

An upset at the Palestinian Olympics
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— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) September 14, 2021

Salafist militant group in #Gaza calls for more attacks against Israeli Jews after yesterday's stabbing attack at Jerusalem's Central Bus Station. pic.twitter.com/QlTI72avC4

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) September 14, 2021

Al-Majd, a Palestinian Facebook page that dealt with security awareness against Israel and had over a million followers was deleted by Facebook earlier today. pic.twitter.com/2mCIRZqyKt

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) September 14, 2021

Palestinian Islamic Jihad's Saraya al-Quds published a statement earlier today saying one of its field commanders, Sa'ad Hassanien, died after being infected with COVID-19. #Gazapic.twitter.com/HV7Dda2ZG3

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) September 14, 2021

2/2 Egyptian TV Host Ibrahim Eissa: The Taliban Is the Essence and Culmination of All Islamic Ideas; Given the Opportunity the Muslim Brotherhood Would Implement the Same Version of Islam as in Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/m2efeZ6Kh1

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 15, 2021

Israel could accept a return to a US-brokered Iran nuclear deal, but they are calling on Washington to have a demonstration of power ready should negotiations turn sour, Defense Minister Benny Gantz told Foreign Policy on Tuesday.

“The current US approach of putting the Iran nuclear program back in a box, I’d accept that,” Gantz told Foreign Policy, referring to US President Joe Biden's efforts, but added that he wants the US to have a plan B with economic sanctions, and referred to Israel's plan C, which involves a military response.

Gantz explained to Foreign Policy what he would consider a viable plan B: full political, economic and diplomatic pressure by the US, Europe, Russia and China. However, he explained the IDF is preparing military means to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, should it come to that. The issue of the Iran nuclear deal has been a prominent one in Israeli and international politics for almost a decade now, especially with fears that Iran could be getting close to a nuclear weapon.

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu accused Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of enabling the Biden administration to return to the Iran nuclear deal. He criticized Gantz's statements about Iran in the interview.

"They are making a dangerous mistake," Netanyahu said.

Iran uses its energy exports to take advantage of regional states' inability to fulfill their own domestic requirements, and exert its influence throughout the Middle East.

In Iraq, Iranian gas and electricity powers more than a third of the country, particularly in the south.

Tehran also exports electricity to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as Turkey, though there has been a recent drop-off in energy imports from that country.

In Lebanon, where the price of petrol has risen by 220% in a year, Iran's Lebanese ally Hizbullah claimed that Lebanon would be importing Iranian oil paid for in Lebanese pounds.

At the same time, this summer saw power blackouts in parts of Iran as increased demand (including from Bitcoin miners) coincided with reduced hydro-electricity output during drought conditions.

An Iranian national convicted by a federal jury was sentenced Tuesday for sending the Islamic republic advanced military components used in nuclear weapons and missile guidance systems.

Mehrdad Ansari, a resident of the United Arab Emirates who is originally from Iran, was sentenced to 63 months in prison for circumventing U.S. sanctions on Iran through his distribution of sensitive military matériel. Ansari, who worked alongside Taiwanese citizen Susan Yip and Iranian citizen Mehrdad Foomanie to evade the American sanctions, over a four-year period obtained or tried to obtain more than 105,000 parts valued at more than $2.6 million.

American officials said the sentencing shows the Department of Justice will relentlessly pursue anyone who poses a threat to national security.

"Ansari and his co-conspirators attempted to profit from a far-reaching, extensive scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran," said National Security Division acting assistant attorney general Mark J. Lesko. "They repeatedly lied to numerous U.S. suppliers and illegally obtained very sensitive dual-use items. As demonstrated by this prosecution, DOJ pursues those who threaten U.S. national security, even years after their original crimes."

Iranian Army Unveils New Radar System That Is Said to Be Able to Detect and Intercept 300 Stealth Targets Simultaneously, 450 Kilometer Away #Iranpic.twitter.com/jOS0pqeAKK

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 15, 2021

Iranian Political Activist Heshmatollah Tabarzadi: Khamenei Is Responsible for Iranian COVID Deaths because He Banned the Pfizer Vaccine #Iran#COVID19pic.twitter.com/R9RjCONPmA

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 15, 2021

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On any given day, you can find the State of Israel coming in for some rough treatment in the media.

Detractors accuse it of being either an apartheid state, an occupying colonialist power, or both. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has gone so far as to initiate a probe into what it says are possible war crimes stemming from IDF actions in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.

For Professor Eugene Kontorovich, whenever the Jewish state’s legal standing or international legitimacy as a sovereign nation is impugned, it is grist for his legal mill and fodder for his laser-focused analysis. His forceful and well-reasoned arguments often appear in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. Fox News and other channels frequently tap his expertise in international and constitutional law.

Professor Kontorovich wears many professional hats. He heads the international law department at Jerusalem’s Kohelet Forum, a think tank that many Knesset members draw on for policy ideas. Eugene spends one semester a year in Arlington, Virginia, teaching at the George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, where he established the Center for the Middle East and International Law to train young scholars to take a deeper dive into the intricacies of the Middle East.

Kontorovich is highly regarded in the halls of Congress. He has testified frequently on issues of foreign affairs and national security, defending Israel’s claims of sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and shielding Israel from the economic warfare movement known as BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions). Pundits have dubbed Kontorovich the “intellectual architect” of anti-BDS laws passed in some 32 states.

Eugene is also no stranger to Mishpacha readers. He’s been one of my go-to sources since I first interviewed him in 2015, after the Palestinian Authority applied for membership in the International Criminal Court. I have described Eugene to my colleagues as a younger version of Alan Dershowitz, based on his media savvy and gift for formulating legally sound and persuasive approaches. For a journalist, one of Eugene’s endearing qualities is his knack for delivering a colorful “pull quote” — a one-line zinger that drives his point across without sounding hackneyed.

In this, our longest and most comprehensive interview to date, we sit across from each other over a desk at the Kohelet Forum on a steamy-hot Jerusalem afternoon. Eugene looks cool, calm, and collected, as usual. This day, he has ceded his own larger office to colleagues who need extra space for a meeting, to abide by Covid distancing requirements. So we are sitting in a smaller office, on the south side of the building, far from the panoramic view of northern Jerusalem that Kohelet’s office affords.

Eugene elaborates on how he found the niche that he fills so fervently.

We begin Yom Kippur with Kol Nidrei, and due to its inspiring melody and dignity with which the physical setting is conducted in, complete with Torahs and talesim at night (the one time a year), we instinctively know something that transcends the ordinary is going on.

After the Maariv shemoneh esrei there is a unique Selichot service — this being the only instance of the entire year when there is a lengthy additional section of prayers after shemoneh esrei. Here we request of God that He “bring us to Your Holy Mountain.” The next day at Yizkor, an emotional highlight of the day for many, we speak of God “dwelling in Zion” — that is on the Temple Mount, in the Beit HaMikdash. The Mussaf shemoneh esrei is the longest prayer service of the year. And the larger part of that is the Chazzan’s repetition. Within this section more time is devoted to a highly detailed and vivid description of the High Priest’s sacrificial service in the Holy Temple’s Holy of Holies — the only time of the year any human stepped foot inside. Included in this section is the lament that “Since our Temple was destroyed” we have no choice to recite words in place of the High Priest’s offering sacrifices, and we explain how we are like “orphans” without the Temple and we beg God to “bring the Temple back among us.”

During the afternoon Mincha service, the entire Book of Jonah is recited — the only time of the year that it is. And in the universally recognized episode of the whale (or more correctly, the large fish) Jonah cries to God — his “prayer came to You, to Your Holy Temple.”

And Neilah is the only day of the entire year when we add a fifth shemoneh esrei. At the conclusion of this one-time-a-year event, we mark the end of the Yom Kippur by saying: Next Year in Jerusalem! In reality, this means “Next Year on the Temple Mount in the Holy of Holies in the Holy Temple,” where the Yom Kippur offerings will be made in Messianic times.

This focus on Jerusalem, on the Holy Temple, and on the Holy of Holies, is the essence of Yom Kippur. It is what our ancestors dreamed, and prayed for during the nearly 2,000 year nightmare of exile. This Dream of Zion is the engine that created the available momentum that was harnessed by the modern Zionism of Herzl’s time, and used to create the modern State of Israel.

In this episode, Dara Horn explores the bizarre afterlife of a chance encounter that later caused an entire empire to lose its mind. In 1904, the American Jewish financier Jacob Schiff randomly met a Japanese banker at a dinner in London and decided to give Japan a $200 million loan to help ensure its victory in the Russo-Japanese War.

A generation later, when Japanese military officers were first exposed to an antisemitic conspiracy theory, they assumed, based on their country’s experience with Schiff, that it must be true—and convinced their government to take action. In twist upon twist, the Empire of Japan became more and more involved in “the Jewish Question,” to the point where they actually tried to answer it. Their answer? To build a Jewish state in Manchuria.

The State of New Jersey has warned Unilever that it will divest from the company within 90 days unless it can prove that the decision taken by its subsidiary Ben & Jerry's to cut ties with Israel does not constitute a boycott.

The state’s Treasury Department told Unilever it had determined that "the company boycotts the goods, products or businesses of Israel, boycotts those doing business with Israel, or boycotts companies operating in Israel or Israeli-controlled territories."

In a letter to the British-based company dated September 2, it explained that the company had 90 days to prove it had not engaged in a boycott that involved Israel or Israeli-controlled territories before any divestment action is taken.

The Treasury Department explained to the British-based Unilever that state law prohibits investment in firms that boycott Israel and mandates a divestment from such firms.

New Jersey is one of seven states that are either in the process of divesting from Unilever or which are contemplating such action. The others are New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Maryland and Rhode Island, according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

On August 3, Florida similarly issued a 90-day warning to Unilever.

To date, only Arizona has announced a full divestment. As of September 21, it will have withdrawn all of its investments from Unilever, totaling $143 million.

New Jersey plans to divest investments in the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s after an internal investigation found the ice cream company sought to boycott Israel, the state Division of Investment said today.

Unilever North America, which is based in Englewood Cliffs, will lose New Jersey as an investor after Ben & Jerry’s decision to stop selling ice cream in territories occupied by Israel under the state’s anti-boycott policy.

“No pension fund assets may be invested in the company, and DOI shall take appropriate action to sell or divest any existing pension fund investments,” said the director of the New Jersey Division of Investment, Shoaib Khan.

Khan said that the division worked with ISS, an independent consultant, to review the actions taken by Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever “to determine whether such actions constituted a boycott of Israel or companies operating in Israel or Israeli-controlled territory.”

“Following this review, the division reached a preliminarily determination that Unilever’s actions did in fact constitute such a boycott and sent a letter to Unilever notifying the company of its provisional determination,” Khan said.

Uniliver has 90 days to appeal the decision.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr., who sponsored the anti-boycott law with Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, said the state law works.

“Our anti-BDS law was one of the first in the nation to use the power of state investment decisions to remove support for businesses that boycott Israel,” said Kean. “The announcement by Treasury that state investment will be prohibited in the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s following a review we requested pursuant to the law we enacted is yet another example that the process works as intended.”

Kean said the law was first used in 2019, when Airbnb changed its policy after New Jersey threatened to pull its investments.

West Virginia - State legislator Joshua Higginbotham pens letter to Governor @JimJusticeWV asking for an investigation into @Unilever and @benandjerrys illegal Israeli boycott. pic.twitter.com/1eV2lZ84sy

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 14, 2021

A new Arabic-language video about diversity and coexistence in Israel, produced as part of the American Jewish Committee's "An al-Yahud" (About the Jews) series, went live on Tuesday.

The new animated short, Is Israel Only for Jews?, presents the reality of life in Israel. Although Jews make up a majority of Israel's citizens, approximately one out of every five Israelis is Arab, and all citizens are afforded the same rights and freedoms under the law. The government pays the salaries of imams and funds the construction of mosques in Israel, and Jerusalem is home to churches of almost every Christian denomination in the world. The film highlights the participation of Arab citizens in Israeli government, business, and academia and notes that while Israelis seldom agree on government policies, the right to protest and due process are ensured for all. The film is also being released in English.

"As the Arab world displays greater openness to Israel, it is important that perceptions of the Jewish state reflect its remarkable pluralism and diversity," said AJC CEO David Harris. "Israel is, at once, the homeland of the Jewish people and a thriving democracy that is home to more than 1.8 million Arab citizens, all of whom enjoy equal rights and freedoms.

While Is Israel Only for Jews? does not focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it acknowledges that the conflict "requires meaningful and lasting resolution," while challenging the notion common in the Arab world that Israelis are all Jewish or that Arabs in the Jewish state are oppressed. The film acknowledges inequalities and outstanding social challenges within Israel.

"The barriers to peace between Israel and the Palestinians are political, not religious or ethnic," added Harris. "Muslims, Christians, Jews, Druze, Bahai, and people of other faiths live, work, and worship freely in the Jewish state, and Arab Israelis are prominent leaders in government, business, national defense, and many other fields. We hope this new film will help promote Arab-Israeli peace by upending stereotypes about Israel and fostering greater understanding of the Jewish state throughout the Arab world."

The "An al-Yahud" series has been viewed by tens of millions of Arabic speakers around the world. The top locations of the videos' viewers include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. The previous five videos focused on the origins and beliefs of the Jewish people, the history of Muslim-Jewish relations, the Holocaust, Jewish ties to Jerusalem, and the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Jewish lawmakers critical of early drafts of an ethnic studies curriculum said they were satisfied with a version of the curriculum that cleared both houses of the California Legislature last week.

The bill mandating ethnic studies would make the state the first in the nation to require the course, which examines race and ethnicity with a focus on people of color.

The liberal California Legislative Jewish Caucus had criticized the original model of the curriculum, introduced in 2019, saying it carried an “anti-Jewish bias.” They and others charged it painted Israel in a negative light, barely mentioned antisemitism and included a rap lyric that they said contained an antisemitic trope.

Assembly member Jose Medina, the author of the bill to mandate ethnic studies and a staunch supporter of the discipline, also signed a letter condemning the draft (Medina is one of a handful of non-Jewish members of the Jewish Caucus). Gov. Gavin Newsom said at the time that the measure as drafted would “never see the light of day,” and the model was revised.

The revised version of the curriculum, which was approved by the state Board of Education in March, includes two lessons on Jews in California — one on American Jewish identity and another on the experience of Mizrahi Jews, or Jews from the Middle East. It also removed the sections deemed anti-Israel and antisemitic.

In a joint statement Wednesday, the Jewish caucus expressed its “sincere hope” that the revised Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum would benefit students across the state, pointing to “guardrail” language that it helped insert into the legislation in order to ease the worries of Jewish groups. That language prohibits discrimination in ethnic studies courses based on religion and nationality — including against Israelis — and prohibits the use of the original draft.

The American Civil Liberties Union has evolved into the most powerful legal advocate for the anti-Semitic Israel boycott movement in the United States, a move critics argue undercuts the organization's reputation as an advocate for minorities and other underrepresented groups.

Now, as it prepares to defend that movement before a panel of federal appellate judges next week in a lawsuit against the state of Arkansas, the ACLU is facing fresh scrutiny from state lawmakers and legal experts who argue that the organization sticks up for all sorts of embattled minorities but is now embracing anti-Semitism.

While the ACLU says its advocacy for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is driven by free speech concerns and it "takes no position" on the merits of Israel boycotts, some anti-BDS lawmakers question that motivation.

"The anti-Semitic BDS Hate Movement has no greater asset today than the sophisticated legal support it receives from the American Civil Liberties Union," said Arizona state senator Paul Boyer (R.), who sponsored anti-boycott legislation that was challenged by the ACLU, in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon. "The ACLU’s efforts in this matter showcase a stunning embrace of anti-Jewish bigotry and blatant hypocrisy that all civil libertarians should reject."

The ACLU in 2018 appeared to backtrack from its longtime stance as an unequivocal defender of free speech. The group said it would consider turning down cases that "undermine relationships with allies or coalition partners,""create distrust with particular communities," or "directly further an agenda that is antithetical to our mission and values and that may inflict harm on listeners."

These concerns have not deterred the ACLU from defending the BDS movement, which has been described as anti-Semitic by major Jewish organizations and the U.S. State Department. The organization has led legal challenges against anti-BDS laws in numerous states, including Arkansas, Arizona, Kansas, and Texas. The group has also registered to lobby against federal anti-BDS legislation from 2017 to 2020, according to lobbying disclosure records.

Last week, the University of California, Berkeley, took the top spot in the annual Forbes rankings of America’s top colleges. The business magazine offered a whole host of reasons as to why Berkeley had been awarded the coveted title, including its “world-class academics, great sports, a stunning Bay Area setting, reasonable costs and a storied history.”

Despite these plaudits, the college has been struggling with a deeply unpleasant problem for some years now: namely, rising antisemitism and a culture of anti-Israel bigotry on campus.

Just this month, Berkeley’s Chancellor Carol Christ was forced to issue an apology in response to revelations by the Anti-Defamation League that Hatem Bazian, an Islamic law and theology scholar who teaches in the university’s Departments of Near Eastern and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, had retweeted a gruesome cartoon depicting an Israeli soldier holding up the heart of a Palestinian man.

Bazian, who was apparently not censured over his social media use, has a long history of antisemitic outbursts.

He previously retweeted an image of a Jewish man celebrating alongside the caption: “I can now kill, rape, smuggle organs & steal the land of Palestinians.” Another image shared by the academic depicted North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un wearing a kippah and saying: “I converted all of North Korea to Judaism. Donald Tlump [sic]: Now my nukes are legal & I can annex South Korea & you need to start paying me 34 billion a year in welfare.”

.@ADL appalled @UCBerkeley lecturer @HatemBazian retweeted #antisemitic cartoon depicting Israeli soldier harvesting an organ; not the first time he propagated this vile conspiracy. Bigotry has no place on campus. Learn more about this antisemitic lie https://t.co/Daj7193AbT

— ADL San Francisco (@ADL_SF) September 2, 2021

In an email, Bazian later claimed he had not been “careful enough” in reading the image text. He deleted the posts and added: “The image in the tweet and the framing relative to Judaism and conversion was wrong and offensive and not something that reflects my position, be it in the past or the present.”

Just months later, Bazian, who is also president of the Students for Justice in Palestine, an NGO that has accused Israel of “genocide” and whose rhetoric has included complaints of “Judaization,” retweeted several comments that used the hashtag #PalestinianHolocaust and compared the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip to a “concentration camp.”

Despite Bazian’s virulent antisemitism, his position at Berkeley does not appear to be in jeopardy.

HonestReporting recently held a special Zoom briefing by CEO Daniel Pomerantz, who provided insights into Ben & Jerry’s Israel boycott as well as how the media is covering violence emanating from Hamas-ruled Gaza and our impact on the Associated Press’ reporting.

Pomerantz also discussed some of our newest projects, including an initiative to identify and expose antisemitic journalists, in addition to a program to help supporters of Israel communicate in the "woke" era.

Several speakers at the Rutgers University and San Francisco State University-sponsored virtual “roundtable discussion” “Whose Narrative? 20 Years Since 9/11 2001” laid blame for 9/11 on America.

Director of AMED Studies at SFSU Rabab Abdulhadi began this year’s 9/11 event by holding a “moment of silence” for all those who were killed on September 11, 2001. She then announced that the event will “depart from the US centric approach by remembering and thinking of all those who have fallen around the world as a direct result of U.S. interventionist and imperialist wars.”

History professor at University of California Los Angeles Robin Kelley then explained that 9/11 was a “manifestation of U.S. empire and the racism that undergirds it.”

“The lessons I think that every generation learns is that U.S. empire threatens the future of humanity,” Kelley continued.

Abdulhadi had introduced Kelley before his remarks and also stated that she wished to “challenge conventional wisdom” that 9/11 was a “unique and exceptional watershed.”

She continued by saying that this line of thinking “revolves around and builds upon the US and Israeli exceptionalism, legitimize imperialist wars and interventions, including the so called war on terror, justify the security state with its increased surveillance and profiling, incarceration, torture, rendition and assassination, and promotes hyper masculinity and a call colonial gender and sexualized violent order of modern modernity and civilization.”

Deepa Kumar, a professor at Rutgers University, claimed that 9/11 was a “turning point” for America because it “strengthened and consolidated U.S. imperialism” as well as “strengthened the domestic national security state.”

Kumar said that after the fall of the Soviet Union following the Cold War, the United States needed to find a new adversary. That new adversary, according to Kumar, was Islam.

“Pockets of the ruling elite, particularly the neoconservatives, began to write about Islamic fundamentalism as a potential key threat to U.S. global interests,” Kumar said.

Naturally, @KenRoth has no qualms about being on a panel with fellow racist and antisemite Linda Sarsour. https://t.co/2qGSH7mjEo

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 14, 2021

The Cobb County School Board in Marietta, Georgia confirmed that it is investigating the daubing of antisemitic graffiti on a bathroom wall of Alan C. Pope High School.

On Thursday, several students, who have since been identified and interviewed by school officials, graffitied “Hail Hitler” and two swastikas on a quadrant of wall tiles above a row of urinals.

Speaking to CNN, a Cobb County District spokesman called the vandalism “unacceptable” and said, “The principal has engaged with community groups who have been affected by this student behavior, and all applicable District policy and law will be applied.”

A statement by the Alan C. Pope High School Parents Teachers Students Association (PTSA) urged parents not to write off what happened as a “teenage prank” and see its link to a viral trend encouraging students to destroy and deface school property.

“Many will call these teenage pranks, but these are hate crimes — and destroying property and stealing from your school is a felony,” PTSA said.

“On the eve of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, I can’t believe THIS is what we are discussing, but last night our students came home talking about destruction of property at our school thanks to a Tik Tok trend that has infiltrated Pope, but also we saw very disturbing pictures of swastikas and messages of hate painted on the walls.”

Reminder: Ash defended the desecration of the Warsaw Ghetto, the resting place of 1000s of Jews, now she’s defending a slogan created by terrorists to mean the total destruction of Israel and annihilation of Jews. She does this on a few hours before Yom Kippur, she’s a ghoul. https://t.co/e9EG6aQ3iO

— GnasherJew®????? (@GnasherJew) September 15, 2021

"Palestinian voices are being silenced" say multiple mainstream media outlets with millions of followers who act as mouthpieces for Palestinian terrorism all the time. https://t.co/tKaRgDqPvH

— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) September 15, 2021

Hey @thenation, I fixed it for you. pic.twitter.com/oiv8l9XzS1

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 15, 2021

Seriously @TIME? You chose this racist, misogynist, terror supporter as one of your #TIME100? https://t.co/vTqEg459QWpic.twitter.com/47ZSOIDnjN

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 15, 2021

Is anti-Zionism always antisemitism? The knee-jerk reaction may be, “well, of course,” but philanthropist and Ruderman Family Foundation President Jay Ruderman and Rabbi Dr. David Barak-Gorodetsky, incoming director of the organization’s program for American Jewish Studies at the University of Haifa, argue that the answer is far more complex.

“The line between being anti-Zionist and antisemitic is blurred all the time,” Ruderman says.

“If someone is sending a Jew images of a Nazi flag, that’s clearly antisemitism. But there are people who use subtle dog whistles that call on antisemitic tropes and are more difficult to detect. Even politicians do this,” he said, mentioning US Rep. Ilhan Omar’s infamous tweet insinuating support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins” – a not so subtle reference to the stereotype that Jews are money hungry.

But antisemitism really comes to the fore when the anti-Zionist rhetoric “heats up.”

“We can have a whole discussion of the standards that Israel is held up to, while individuals and companies ignore blatant human rights violations all over the world,” he said referring to the latest boycott controversy surrounding Ben and Jerry’s decision to no longer sell its products beyond the Green Line. Once you reach that territory of anti-Zionism, he said, wading into antisemitic waters is not too far behind. “Often people don’t speak out, it’s only until something happens, like when Rabbi Shlomo Noginski of Chabad was stabbed in Boston in July,” he lamented, remembering an incident that occurred mere kilometers away from his home.

The Council of Europe’s expert body on racism and intolerance (ECRI) has today published an updated General Policy Recommendation on preventing and combating antisemitism, to help prevent increasing antisemitism and attacks on Jews in many parts of Europe.

Ahead of publication, Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejčinović Burić said: “Antisemitic attacks – including in schools, vandalism of synagogues and the spread of antisemitic hatred online – are on the rise. This is a dangerous trend and European governments should join forces to counter such extremism in all its forms”.

ECRI Chair Maria Daniella Marouda said: “ECRI strongly emphasises the role of education, including education about the Holocaust, in promoting tolerance and respect for human rights, and thus also in the struggle against antisemitism.”

Noting that antisemitic acts are committed by a wide range of perpetrators, including neo-Nazis, political and religious extremists, ECRI’s Recommendation provides comprehensive guidance to governments on how to combat antisemitism in four specific areas:
Policies and institutional co-ordination;
Prevention and education;
Protection of Jews, Jewish communities and their institutions;
Prosecution and law enforcement.

Regarding prevention and education, ECRI encourages political actors, opinion leaders and other public personalities to take a firm public stand against antisemitism, making clear that antisemitism should never be tolerated. ECRI recommends taking into account the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Antisemitism as a non-legal tool to better understand and identify expressions of antisemitism (see ECRI’s Opinion on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism).

During the first week of his sabbatical year abroad in Ottawa, Canada in 1984, University of Haifa Prof. Gabriel Weimann watched the trial of Ernst Zündel from his television. After just arriving to spend the year learning about antisemitism in the media, Dr. Weimann recalled, he watched the then-Canadian resident with a strong German accent contending from the walls of the Canadian courtroom that Auschwitz was not a death camp, and no Jews were exterminated there.

Zündel insisted that Auschwitz was an educational camp to teach Jews how to procure work, and the reason there was a fence around it, he connived, is not to keep the residents in, but to keep the many hopeful professionals out, who were vying to get into this highly desired vocational center.

“Either this guy is lying, or my mother, an Auschwitz survivor, is lying,” recalls Dr. Weimann. “Of course, I knew he was lying, but what about all the Canadians watching? Some of them don’t know about the Holocaust, as they don’t have a mother who came out of Auschwitz and survived,” he emphasizes.

Zündel was convicted for spreading hate and lies about Jews and the Holocaust and was eventually expelled from Canada. And Weimann is still researching antisemitism. But in the context of today’s internet and its ability to proliferate such hate messages exponentially, efforts to prosecute modern-day Zündels are virtually fruitless.

As large networks of people spread lies and hate through social networks 76 years post-Auschwitz, Dr. Weimann maintains, “not too many survivors can deny the deniers. The fight against messages online seems impossible.”

Weimann researches the spreading of antisemitic and hate messages online through the dark net and popular platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. A few years ago, with web intelligence analyst Ari Ben-Am, Weimann revealed a language that is used on social media by antisemitic groups, which often flies under the radar of artificial intelligence-designed algorithms.

A French court has acquitted an imam in the city of Toulouse of incitement to racial hatred for a sermon he gave in 2017 that quoted a hadith — a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammed — predicting the mass killing of Jews by Muslims.

The sermon delivered by the Imam of the Grand Mosque of Toulouse, Mohamed Tataiat, was not intended to “provoke hatred or discrimination,” the president of the Toulouse Criminal Court said in a statement on Tuesday.

“The words could have been said recklessly, but not with the desire to discriminate,” the statement added.

Six civil associations — among them CRIF, the main French Jewish organization, as well as the National Office for Vigilance Against Antisemitism (BNVCA) and the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA) — had pressed the legal case against Tataïat for the Dec. 2017 sermon, which was given shortly after the US moved its Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, raising the ire of many in the Muslim world.

Video highlights of Tataïat’s sermon were posted by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a US-based think tank that monitors radical Islamists. Tataïat was heard remarking on the Prophet Muhammed’s prediction of “the decisive and final battle.”

An Australian newspaper has posted recordings of violently antisemitic telephone messages left on the voicemail of a Melbourne synagogue in the midst of what one Jewish leader has described as an “epidemic” of antisemitism in the city.

The latest wave of antisemitism was significantly bolstered last month after local media reported on an engagement party in the city that was attended by about 70 Orthodox Jews, in violation of Melbourne’s strict COVID-19 social distancing protocols. In another incident that contravened social distancing rules last week, Melbourne police confronted Hasidic Jews at a synagogue where they had gathered to mark the first day of the Jewish New Year, resulting in a stand-off that began at 4:30 am, when the first worshipers arrived, and ending at 8.20 pm the same night.

“Neo-Nazi groups and other far-right groups have seized on publicity surrounding the illegal gatherings to vilify the broader community, often invoking Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust in their attacks,” Melbourne newspaper The Age reported on Tuesday.

Messages left on the voicemail of a synagogue in the Caulfield district of the city as well as at the offices of a major Jewish organization drew on Nazi demonization of Jews as subhuman, with callers referring to Jewish people as “germs.”

“All you Jewish are pieces of shit. How f—ing dare you guys have a party, an engagement, when the rest of Victoria are locked down? You f—ing imbeciles. Yous are a germ. Yous are a f—ing germ. I hope you all f—ing die,” one man ranted.

A federal court sentenced an Ohio man to 20 years in prison for planning deadly attacks on a Toledo synagogue.

Damon Joseph of Holland, a Toledo suburb, had pleaded guilty in May to providing material support to a terrorist organization and attempting to commit a hate crime. Along with the prison term, the US District Court in Toledo sentenced Joseph on Monday to a lifetime of supervised release.

Joseph was 21 in 2018 when he posted recruitment propaganda for the Islamic State terrorist group on social media. FBI agents engaged him online and Joseph said he wanted to carry out a mass killing attack on a Toledo Jewish target, inspired in part by the mass murder of Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October that year. The attack on the Tree of Life synagogue was the worst on U.S. Jews in history.

Joseph was arrested when he accepted two disabled assault rifles from an undercover FBI agent.

In statements, prosecutors noted that Joseph planned his attack for Shabbat.

“He hoped to cause mass casualties by selecting a time when numerous innocent victims would be present,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Mark Lesko of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said.

A man from the town of Buxton, Maine is now facing federal charges after he threatened to commit an antisemitic mass shooting, the Bangor Daily News reported on Monday.

Brian Dennison, 24, was arrested last Saturday after he tweeted that he intended “to kill Jews with my AR-15” during the High Holidays, along with the claim that he was building a pipe bomb.

The FBI was informed of the threat, which was tweeted on Sept. 8, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, and immediately dispatched agents to Dennison’s residence.

Dennison, who lives with his parents and several other family members, refused to speak to the agents, but, according to an affidavit, his parents told the agents that “Brian had been obsessed with Jews for about three years, and that he believed Jews were responsible for all of his problems.”

“They said they had many concerning conversations with Brian regarding Jews,” the agents stated.

Dennison’s parents also revealed that their son owned several weapons, including the AR-15 assault rifle mentioned in the Twitter threat.

FBI agents obtained a search warrant based on this evidence that allowed them to search Dennison’s cell phone, after which he was arrested on Sept. 11.

INSANITY in Teaneck, NJ - Cameron Cole bursts into a pediatrician's office with a hammer and blood dripping for his body demanding to know which patients are Jewish!

Cole has arrested but outrageously NOT CHARGED with a hate crime!https://t.co/u167Ux5iHxpic.twitter.com/iSkKUYDrmf

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 15, 2021

Several men dressed like Nazis were seen pretending to arrest a man wearing a yellow star as part of a rally against COVID-19 measures in the Netherlands.

Saturday’s incident in Urk, near Amsterdam, was the latest among the hundreds of rallies worldwide in which protesters have drawn what they regard as parallels between the persecution of Jews by Nazis to rules meant to curb the spread of the virus.

But the protest in Urk was unusual because of its theatrics and the fact that it happened where the Nazis actually rounded up Jews at gunpoint.

The 10 men involved in the incident apologized for their actions in writing in a statement obtained by the “Hart van Nederland” television program.

“We wish to express our sincere apologies,” the statement read, adding that the protest “crossed a line that it should have not crossed.” The protesters said they did not mean to offend Jews.

The young men played out a scene in which SS officers at gunpoint led a man wearing a striped uniform and a yellow star like the one that Nazis made Jews wear during the Holocaust, the NOS broadcaster reported.

The Urk municipality, which is considered one of the most pro-Israeli communities in the Netherlands, condemned the display in a statement.

“This behavior is not only objectionable, but also extremely inappropriate and offensive for many groups in the population,” the statement read.

A simple message of good wishes on #yomkippur to Liverpool's Jewish fan base turns into a cesspit of antisemitism.

Makes me ashamed to support the same club as they do.#YNWA? Unless your Jewish.

This is why you should understand and support #Zionism. https://t.co/x4iyBIBswx

— David Collier (@mishtal) September 15, 2021

Israel's coronavirus infection rate stands at 5.95%, according to Health Ministry data released Wednesday, as 9,539 of the 175,395 people who tested for the virus Tuesday were found to have the disease.

The reproduction rate is 1.06.

There are 84,098 active cases of the virus. There are 650 people in serious condition, 206 of whom are on ventilators.

Although 1,105,983 Israelis have recovered from the virus since the start of the outbreak, 7,444 have died.

Israel Hayom has learned that Israel is set to receive a relatively small shipment of UK-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine in late September. The AstraZeneca doses will be administered to those who developed an allergic reaction after receiving one dose of Pfizer's vaccine or those who are unable to be vaccinated with Pfizer's vaccine for other reasons.

"We are in the process of writing a brief for AstraZeneca vaccines. This is an important solution for those unable to be vaccinated or people who developed a reaction following other vaccines," Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, who heads the Health Ministry's Public Health Services Department, said.

Israel and the European Union reached an agreement on Wednesday to mutually recognize vaccine certificates, the Foreign Ministry announced, in a move that will allow travelers access to Green Pass programs.

The ministry said work on the agreement would be completed in early October and would give vaccinated Israeli tourists and business people access to the EU Green Pass, allowing entrance to “restaurants, cultural centers, public institutions and more.”

It would also allow Israel to gear up to begin accepting tourists from Europe, the statement said. Furthermore, it will allow Israelis access to other countries’ programs, should they join the initiative in the future.

However, the ministry cautioned that the program does not supersede entry requirements of individual EU nations, like Portugal and Sweden, which currently bar Israeli tourists. It also allows Israel to continue to bar entry to travelers from specific EU countries if it chooses.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid hailed the agreement as “an important step in laying the groundwork for a return to normal with regard to flight and tourism ties between Israel and the EU.”

“What are the odds that a company called Itamar Medical, named after my brother who was killed in the Yom Kippur War, will be sold on the eve of Yom Kippur, the day before going up Mount Hermon in his memory? Even a heathen like me begins to believe there is a God.”

Giora Yaron, 73, is the founder and chairman of Itamar Medical, which was just sold for $538 million in cash to Japan’s ZOLL Medical. He holds a 6.1% stake in the company and is expected to receive about $100 million for the value of the shares he owns. In an interview with Calcalist, he talks about the past and future of Itamar Medical, which developed a digital platform that focuses on home-diagnosis of sleep apnea and a non-invasive device called WatchPAT, used by patients and medical centers. The company is publicly traded in Tel Aviv and New York.

Itamar Medical’s acquisition comes as it displays low growth in sales and is still recording a loss (according to its financial report from a month ago, Itamar Medical’s revenues in the first half of 2021 were $24.5 million, and the operating loss was $9.9 million. The company invested a lot in manpower to boost sales but this fact also led to an increase in loss).

When the Yom Kippur war broke out in the fall of 1973, legendary Canadian singer Leonard Cohen was moved to come to Israel to try and help the Jewish state which was facing the most serious threat to its short existence.

Convinced by Israeli artists to join them and come down to the Sinai desert where the battle was raging against the invading Egyptian forces, Cohen went from base to base, playing concerts for the weary soldiers.

There, during a break between performances, he penned and performed what would become one of his most famous hits: ‘Lover, Lover, Lover.”

One particular verse in the song grabbed the attention of those who heard it, moved by the solidarity of the Jewish star: “I went down to the desert to help my brothers fight…,” the verse began.

And yet when the song was released to the world, the lines had disappeared, leaving the soldiers to wonder what had happened to the song, and Cohen’s attachment to Israel.

The doubt lingered until now, nearly five decades later, when Israeli-Canadian writer Matti Friedman rediscovered Cohen’s original drafts while researching a book on Cohen’s trip to Israel in a book recently published in Hebrew.

“Who by Fire: War, Atonement, and the Resurrection of Leonard Cohen,” comes out in English next March.

Nearly 50 years after the Yom Kippur War, a number of rare photos are being released by the National Library of Israel showing how the festival of Sukkot was celebrated during the conflict, on the tops of jeeps and military vehicles in the Sinai and the Golan Heights.

The 1973 war was named for the Day of Atonement, when battle broke out, but it extended into the week of Sukkot, which begins just a few days after Yom Kippur.

During the holiday, Jews sit — and eat and sometimes sleep — in temporary dwellings and booths called sukkot, often with a reed- or branch-strewn roof that allows dwellers to glimpse the sky above.

Given the ongoing war, the chief military rabbi at the time declared soldiers exempt from the commandment of sukkah dwelling. But it clearly held a strong emotional bond for many and they built improvised booths on jeeps and military vehicles, sometimes in enemy territory.

One newspaper reporting from deep inside Syrian territory described an improvised sukkah found on the way to the site of a critical battle at Hushniya junction, with one soldier recounting, “The guys from the armored division set up the sukkah. Yes, they managed to fulfill the mitzvah of sitting in it, before they were called to destroy the last enemy pocket.”

Forty-eight years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, never-before-seen images of the IDF's 8200 intelligence unit at work during the fighting in the Sinai Peninsula have been made public.

IDF forces were battling to stop the Egyptian army's advance. Israel suffered heavy casualties.

They received help from the 8200 personnel stationed at Babylon Base, located 40 km. (25 miles) from the Suez Canal. The unit was charged with listening in on the Egyptian military, locating anti-aircraft radars.

See more images here

The 8200 base operated around the clock to provide rapid, high-quality intelligence for Israel as the fighting continued. The technology was cutting-edge for its time, and Israel did not want to reveal its qualitative edge. For decades, the images now being published were classified.

The pictures show a team of wireless operators who were fluent in Arabic and had been briefed on how to tune in and analyze Egyptian military communications. The base also recorded reports which were transferred to the IDF's Southern Command.

The clip of @NeilDiamond singing Kol Nidre from 'The Jazz Singer' (1980) is still one of the most beautiful & piercingly powerful renditions of this central #YomKippur prayer! pic.twitter.com/zfo5HLg9sH

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 15, 2021

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Police averted a possible Islamist attack on a synagogue in western Germany and arrested four people including a 16-year-old Syrian youth in connection with the threat, the regional interior minister said on Thursday.

Authorities had received a "a very serious and concrete tip" that an attack on the synagogue in the town of Hagen could take place during the Jewish festival of Yom Kippur, the minister, Herbert Reul, said.

Officers tightened security around the building on Wednesday evening and searched it for bombs but found nothing dangerous, Reul, interior minister for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, told a news conference.

He said the synagogue had called off its celebration of Yom Kippur, when observant Jews hold overnight vigils. The tip-off had included details of the timing of an attack, he added.

Earlier on Thursday, police in Hagen said they had arrested four people as a result of their investigation into the threat and had searched various buildings.

Reul said one of those detained was a 16-year-old from Hagen with Syrian roots.

Provocative pro-Palestinian protests outside a Jewish synagogue in Michigan are protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment, a federal court appeals said on Wednesday.

The court declined to stop the demonstrations or set restrictions in Ann Arbor. The protests have occurred on a weekly basis since 2003, with people holding signs that say “Jewish Power Corrupts,” “Stop Funding Israel” and “End the Palestinian Holocaust.”

Members of Beth Israel Congregation, including some Holocaust survivors, said that the protests have interfered with their Saturday worship and caused emotional distress.

“But the congregants have not alleged that the protesters ever blocked them from using their synagogue or that the protests were even audible from inside the building,” Judge Jeffrey Sutton said.

He said a proposed remedy — a 1,000-foot buffer and limits on signs — would likely violate the First Amendment.

“The key obstacle is the robust protections that the First Amendment affords to nonviolent protests on matters of public concern,” Sutton said in summarizing the case.

He was joined by Judge David McKeague. Judge Eric Clay agreed with the result but on different grounds.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief in support of the activists, saying that the protests are entitled to protection even if “offensive, upsetting and distasteful.”

A major credit card company severed ties late last month with an organization accused of abetting Palestinian terrorism and backing economic boycotts against Israel.

Discover Card will no longer process donations to the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ), a left-wing advocacy organization that provides funding to the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a group that works to free Palestinians from the Israeli prison system. Discover Card froze donations after Israel designated Samidoun as a terror group earlier this year for its alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), according to information provided to the Washington Free Beacon by the Zachor Legal Institute, which has been pressing companies to cut ties with these organizations for several months.

Discover’s decision to cut ties with an organization accused of financially supporting Palestinian terrorism comes as online donation portals have increasingly come under scrutiny. In January, the online donation processing company Stripe cut ties with President Donald Trump’s campaign. Last month, ActBlue, the Democrats’ online fundraising platform, booted former New York Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo days before he resigned office in the wake of a sex scandal.

ActBlue, in particular, has come under criticism for facilitating donations to terror-tied groups that back the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which wages economic warfare on Israel. Rep. Tim Burchett (R., Tenn.) petitioned the Justice and Treasury Departments in March to investigate ActBlue for its work with these anti-Israel groups.

While Discover has not stated its reasons for booting AFGJ, its decision came after the Zachor Legal Institute pressured the credit card company to remove the group for its relationship with known terrorist organizations. Discover did not respond to a request for comment, but communications reviewed by the Free Beacon confirm that the company will no longer process donations made to AFGJ, and, by proxy, Samidoun. Israel’s designation of Samidoun as a terrorist organization tied to the PFLP came as part of Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s campaign against the PFLP and its affiliates.

Twenty years have passed since the largest terrorist attack humanity knew and carried out on U.S. soil. In the September 11, 2001 attacks some 3,000 people were killed and more than 6,000 wounded by 19 Al Qaeda Muslim terrorists.

In response to the attacks, the late Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time, gave a speech in which he called on the countries of the world to fight terrorism and declared a national day of mourning in solidarity with the United States. The summary statement of the Special Session of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, held on September 16 in solidarity with the American people, which was approved by all parties except the Arab parties, read, among other things:

"The Knesset considers these terrible terrorist attacks, carried out with satanic intent and with the aim of killing innocent civilians, as another illustration of the partnership of destiny between the people of Israel and the people of the United States. The Knesset notes that the acts of terrorism directed against the free world in the United States expose the longing and roots of fundamentalist "sons of darkness" and fanatical Islamic terrorist networks wherever they are, in their brutal struggle against one's freedom and values. The Knesset condemns and denounces the celebrations of joy of the supporters of terrorism, who could not resist and while overseas counted the bodies of innocent civilians, the latter chose to dance on the blood of the dead. The Knesset sees terrorism as the initial strategic threat to world peace and strengthens the hands of the administration and the President of the United States in their decision to embark on a determined struggle to eradicate terrorism – its planners, preachers, cheerleaders and sponsors – all of its carriers. We are all soldiers in the campaign against global terrorism, and no civilized member is entitled to declare his refusal to serve in this heavy campaign."

The period in which the 9/11 attacks were carried out in the United States will be remembered in Israel as "Tidal Events" or "The Second Intifada", in which a wave of murderous terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians led to Operation "Defensive Shield". During this period, serious attacks were carried out by suicide bombers from "Hamas", "Islamic Jihad", "The Peoples front", and even the "Tanzim" and "Fatah" P.L.O terror organizations, which claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Israelis and injured more than 8,000 others.

The response of the Arabs in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian Territories and the refugee camps in Lebanon to the terrorist attacks in the United States cannot be interpreted other than gloating. As such today, nothing has changed and there is a continues expression of support for terrorists after each successful attack carried out by those villains. Although the PA leadership tried at the time to prevent the record of mass joy on the streets and even threatened the lives of journalists who covered the comments, it failed to do so, and the false condolences of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat did not sound very convincing, while supporting and carrying out murderous attacks against Israelis.

For example, 3,000 marchers chanted: "Beloved bin Laden hit Tel Aviv", while carrying Hamas flags, enjoying candies and oriental sweets while a spirit of joy in the air. Near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, men, women and children were recorded waving Palestinian flags and expressing joy with chants of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) while distributing sweets to smiling passersby.

Perhaps they forget, or need to be reminded, that Israel is a sovereign nation, and Jerusalem is its capital…been so for 3,000 years. (A must read.)

The Palestinian Arabs have no legitimate claim.

The return of the US consulate, however, would let them pretend that they share the capital. Step one, in their minds, to taking it over completely.

The Palestinian Arabs, successfully pushed aside by Trump, don’t need much to place themselves back into the big picture. Nobody does it better.

Are the Abraham Accords still safe from Biden’s wrecking ball?

From day one, Biden has been on a spree to savage all of Trump’s accomplishments. So we can’t be sure about anything…nothing that he touches.

For the terrorists among the Palestinian Arabs, however, in Biden they see someone they can work with handily, being the un-Trump.

Biden, after all, cut and ran and gave up Afghanistan to the jihadists…. people of the same family as the PA.

That is surely a signal to Ramallah and Gaza that here is a man always ready to give up old friends in order to make a separate peace.

It would be a terrible mistake to create a Palestinian state, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a series of media interviews he gave on Tuesday night just after his return from his historic meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

"I oppose a Palestinian state. I think it would be a terrible mistake that would take the terrible situation in Gaza and recreate it in Judea and Samaria," Bennett told KAN news.

His comments referred to Hamas's ouster of the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in a bloody coup in 2007 and its forcible take over of the coastal enclave as well as the consequent rocket attacks against southern Israel.

He inferred that if Hamas or another radical Palestinian group would similarly take over the West Bank, it would turn the lives of Israelis living in Kfar Saba and his home city of Ra'anana into a living hell.

"I will not do that," he said.

Bennett said that he understands that in any event, Palestinian statehood is not feasible at this time and thus the question of whether to support it was not relevant.

It is, however, important to provide economic opportunities for the Palestinians that would improve their lives, he said.

"My outlook is a very business-like one," he said. "If we create more business, strengthen the economy and improve living conditions for everyone in Judea and Samaria, that would be better."

The US does not expect to see renewed talks between Israelis and Palestinians in the near future, US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.

“I don’t think you’ve heard us call for explicitly face-to-face negotiations at the present,” Price said.

He spoke in repose to a question about Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s statements in a media interview he gave on Monday that he has no plans to speak with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Bennett told KAN News, “I do not see the logic in meeting or talking to a person [Abbas] who is suing IDF soldiers and their commanders at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.”

Abbas is “accusing IDF commanders and soldiers of war crimes,” while he is providing monthly monetary stipends to terrorists, the prime minister said.

Price, however, clarified that the US at this time was not pushing for Bennett-Abbas talks.

“We are seeking to see to it that Israelis and Palestinians experience equal measures of safety, of security, of prosperity, and of dignity,” Price said.

“The starting point that we have right now… is not one where I think we would expect to see direct negotiations between the parties lead to any sort of breakthrough in the near term,” Price explained.

The list of global conflicts seems interminable. Tensions in the South China Sea. Violence between Turkey and armed Kurdish groups. India and Pakistan. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. And that’s just a sampling.

This year’s United Nations General Assembly opens today (Sept. 14), and its annual high-level debate session is scheduled for next week, when leaders from around the world are afforded time on the global stage to discuss peace, opportunities and grievances. Many analysts have criticized the UN for doing just that: discussing – for days, weeks and years – without taking concrete actions leading to peace.

It is on that note that nearly 70 ambassadors to the UN gathered on Monday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York to listen to a success story – one written nearly entirely outside of Turtle Bay. Ambassadors from Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and the United States took the stage to recount the dramatic steps that led to the creation of the historic Abraham Accords normalization agreement, and each of their respective nations’ vision for further peace and cooperation.

Wednesday marks the one-year anniversary of the signing of the accords between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain on the White House lawn.

The sight of it all begs the question: What did the United Nations, often seemingly stuck in quicksand when it comes to solving difficult global conflicts, learn from large-scale Israeli-Arab/Muslim normalization, which only a short time ago was considered unthinkable? Which pieces of the template for fuller Middle East cooperation – economic benefits, uniting against a common enemy, leveraging cooperation with a global power, pooling limited resources – can be utilized by the UN in order to lessen disputes around the world? It’s a question to which apparently few have given much thought, even those who practice the art of conflict resolution.

“I would need to think about that,” said Mitch Fifield, the Australian ambassador to the UN.

“I’m not sure I have an answer to that particular question,” said Ukrainian ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will host a virtual meeting on Friday with his counterparts from Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco to mark the first anniversary of normalization agreements between the Arab countries and Israel, officials said.

The event will be the Biden administration’s highest-profile display of support for the so-called Abraham Accords, which were widely seen as a diplomatic success for former President Donald Trump.

President Joe Biden has backed the deals since taking office in January, and senior aides have said they were working to get additional Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel after decades of enmity. But the administration until now had been cool to the idea of commemorating the anniversary of the accords.

A State Department official and an Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed plans for the meeting, which was first reported by the Axios news website.

The leaders of Israel, the UAE and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords at the White House in September of last year. Israel and Sudan announced in the following month that they would normalize relations, and Morocco established diplomatic ties with Israel in December, after Biden defeated Trump in the US election.

Palestinian officials said they felt betrayed by their Arab brethren for reaching deals with Israel without first demanding progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state. Until last year, only two Arab states — Egypt and Jordan — had forged full ties with Israel.

A couple days ago Biden's UN ambassador @lindat_g gave a speech about the Abraham Accords in which she refused to say "Abraham Accords."

In new intv, she says she learned how to do her job in a 4 day crash course & complains she has to know how to be "ambassador to everywhere." pic.twitter.com/vPzwu5DjTx

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) September 15, 2021

A coalition of Republican foreign policy leaders in Congress is demanding that the Biden administration turn over all internal documents and communications related to plans to provide the Taliban with cash assets, a move the coalition says would incentivize the terror group's taking of American hostages.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest GOP caucus in Congress, is spearheading a probe that requires the Biden administration to disclose if the Taliban has insisted on U.S. financial aid in exchange for allowing Americans stranded in the country to return home. The State Department announced last week that it is sending $64 million in humanitarian aid to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, generating concerns that the Biden administration has agreed to a quid pro quo in which the terrorist group gets aid dollars in exchange for providing safe passage to those still stranded in the country.

"We have serious concerns about negotiations with the Taliban leading to the payment of ransom—whether marketed as humanitarian assistance or sanctions relief—which will give the Taliban resources that could be used to attack the United States or our allies," a group of 21 RSC lawmakers wrote in a letter exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon and sent Tuesday to the State Department. "The payment of ransom to terrorists, likely including the September 13 announcement of $64 million dollars in humanitarian aid to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan provided without guardrails, will only further place Americans in harm's way by incentivizing the Taliban, and other terrorist groups, to kidnap more Americans."

The latest investigation is one of several helmed by Republicans in Congress who want to know why the Biden administration pulled U.S. forces from Afghanistan without a plan to stop the Taliban from regaining control of the country. The Biden administration is under intense criticism for leaving Americans and vulnerable Afghans behind in the country as the Taliban angles to use them as leverage in negotiations with U.S. diplomats. The State Department still "has not presented a plan before Congress illustrating how it will ensure that Americans will not be left behind through diplomatic negotiations," the RSC wrote in its letter.

COLONEL RICHARD KEMP, THE FORMER COMMANDER OF BRITISH FORCES IN AFGHANISTAN, JOINS THE SHOW TO DISCUSS THE TALIBAN TAKE OVER OF AFGHANISTAN AND THE FUTURE SECURITY THREAT A TALIBAN CONTROLLED AFGHANISTAN POSES WORLDWIDE. @COLRICHARDKEMPhttps://t.co/pjSCy8lalg

— Mahgdalen Rose ?? (@MahgdalenRose) September 10, 2021

Two people wounded in an alleged terror stabbing in Jerusalem on Monday were cleared to return home on Tuesday, the Shaarei Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem said.

The two men, ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students in their 20s, were rushed to the hospital in moderate condition after suffering stab wounds to their upper bodies during the attack near the capital’s central bus station Monday afternoon.

Authorities say that Basil Shawamra, a 17-year-old Palestinian from the Hebron area, entered a store near the usually-bustling bus station and knifed the two men. He was shot by a police officer as he fought with one of the victims and was hospitalized at Shaarei Zedek in serious condition.

Palestinian sources said that he was still in serious condition and intubated on a ventilator.

“He pulled out a meat knife, not a very large one, and stabbed my friend five times,” Meir Navon, one of the victims, told the Ynet news site. “Then he came at me and managed to stab me in the back. I ran toward the store and he caught me by the suit and tried to stab me in the neck, head and back.”

“I said to myself, ‘I have to defend myself,’ and I grabbed his throat and we fell together to the floor, where I grabbed his hand so he could not stab me anymore.”

The Palestinian Authority has decided to hold municipal elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in December, for the first time since 2017.

The first phase of the elections will be held on December 11 for 388 municipalities and village councils in the West Bank and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the PA government announced. The second phase of the elections will be held at a later date.

However, it was not clear on Thursday whether Hamas would allow the elections to take place in the Gaza Strip.

In June, the PA government dissolved the elected municipal and village councils after their term expired and turned them into caretaker committees under the supervision of the Ministry of Local Government until new elections are held before the end of the year.

Elections for the PA Parliament and presidency, which were supposed to take place on May 22 and July 30, respectively, were called off by PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Elections for the PLO’s legislative body, the Palestinian National Council, which were scheduled for late August, were also indefinitely postponed.

On Wednesday, the Palestinian Central Elections Commission discussed the PA government’s decision to hold the municipal elections.

Mahmoud al-Arida, the ringleader of the group of six Palestinian terrorists who escaped Israel’s Gilboa Prison last week, has given his lawyer copious details on the escape, which he described as a major achievement.

According to Palestinian news agency Ma’an, al-Arida said that preparations for the escape began in December of last year when the escapees began digging a tunnel out of the prison, and continued until earlier this month.

He also said that the prisoners’ destination was the West Bank, but this proved impossible due to Israel’s heavy deployment of security forces in the area.

Al-Arida claimed that the escapees tried to avoid entering Israeli-Arab villages and that no one alerted police to the prisoners’ presence, though both of these claims have been contradicted by Israeli media reports.

He further said that the prisoners’ arrests happened by chance and not due to any information given to police.

In addition, al-Arida claimed the escapees received no aid from other prisoners in their escape, which again contradicts Israeli reports.

He added that he considers the escape a major achievement.

Al-Arida and his lawyer also claimed without evidence that al-Arida has been subjected to harsh interrogation and torture since his arrest.

Qatar resumed its distribution of aid to Gaza on Wednesday for the first time since the May conflict between Israel and the territory’s terror groups, this time through a new mechanism that does not involve suitcases full of cash.

The Hamas-run government’s official news agency said that the money is being disbursed through supermarkets, money exchange shops and other retail stores in a process that will continue over the coming days. The United Nations has said that the funding amounts to $40 million.

The aid is part of an informal truce brokered by Egypt and the UN in recent years, in which the Hamas terror group, the Strip’s rulers, traded calm for the easing of a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt when it seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007. Israel views the blockade as a necessary measure to limit the ability of Gaza’s terror groups to arm themselves.

Israel had been allowing millions in Qatari cash to flow through Israeli crossings into Gaza on a monthly basis since 2018, in order to maintain a fragile ceasefire with Hamas. As of early 2021, some $30 million in cash was being delivered in suitcases to Gaza each month through an Israeli-controlled crossing.

Since an 11-day conflict in May, Israel has blocked the payments and imposed heightened restrictions on the enclave.

Dozens of tanker trucks carrying Iranian fuel arranged by the Hezbollah terror group arrived in shortage-hit Lebanon on Thursday.

As they entered from Syria through an illegal crossing in the eastern region of Hermel, the trucks were greeted by Hezbollah supporters waving the group’s yellow flag, ululating women tossing rice and rose petals, and men firing guns.

Hassan Nasrallah, the Iranian-backed terror group’s leader, had promised in August that he would bring fuel from Iran to alleviate the rationing that is sowing chaos across the country.

Lebanon defaulted on its debt last year and can no longer afford to import key goods, including petrol for vehicles and diesel to power generators during almost round-the-clock power cuts.

The first Iranian ship reached the Syrian port of Baniyas earlier this week. The cargo was offloaded there and trucked to Lebanon, the first of several planned deliveries.

A total of 80 trucks carrying four million liters (more than one million gallons) of petrol entered Lebanon on Thursday and were expected to fill the tanks of Al-Amana, a fuel distribution company which is owned by Hezbollah and has been under United States sanctions since February 2020.

Iran acknowledged on Wednesday that it had removed several surveillance cameras installed by United Nations nuclear inspectors at a centrifuge assembly site that came under a mysterious attack earlier this year.

The chief of the country’s nuclear program, Mohammad Eslami, sought to portray the removal of cameras as Tehran’s response to world powers reneging on their commitments under the tattered 2015 nuclear deal.

“The parties did not implement their commitments so there was no necessity for the cameras’ existence,” Eslami said after a meeting with lawmakers — remarks apparently aimed at his own domestic audience under the country’s new hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi.

Eslami’s comments come days after a confidential International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report that revealed that the nuclear watchdog found one surveillance camera to be destroyed and a second severely damaged after their removal from the centrifuge manufacturing site in Karaj, a city about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Tehran.

In June, Iran accused Israel of mounting a sabotage attack on the site, which makes components for machines used to enrich uranium. Without disclosing details of the assault, Iranian authorities acknowledged the strike had damaged the building.

Addressing swirling questions about the agency’s broken surveillance cameras, Eslami said on Wednesday that they were damaged during recent “terrorist operations,” without elaborating.

On Tuesday, the University of Manitoba Student Union (UMSU) approved a motion to issue a “Statement of Solidarity with Palestinian Students,” following a months-long campaign by an informal group of several dozen students, according to the campus newspaper The Manitoban.

UMSU approved the idea after nearly four hours of what its president called a “contentious” debate, the report said, joining several other student unions at Canadian universities following the conflict between Israel and Hamas in May.

“We’ve come such a long way. The word Palestine is going to be uncensored,” junior Zahara Rizvi told The Manitoban in response to the news. “There is nobody to speak for [Palestinian students.]”

On September 7, the UMSU Board of Directors declined to approve a draft statement addressed to “all students affected by events in the Middle East” after some students analogized it to the “all lives matter” slogan.

“I often don’t like comparing all social movements with Black Lives Matter, but there are definitely parallels to what’s happening here,” said Black Students Union President Reem Elmahi. “We shouldn’t be lumping all Middle Eastern issues together.”

During the meeting, Rizvi told the UMSU Board of Directors that the alternative proposed would be “not inclusive” and “disrespectful to the work that the coalition of students has done so far and an injustice [not to] just Palestinian and impacted students but also to every Black, Indigenous, and student of color.”

Labour MP Zarah Sultana has been invited into the Home Office to learn more about the work the government’s counter-extremism programme Prevent after she repeated a widely-debunked claim that a teenager had been referred to the scheme for wearing a ‘Free Palestine’ badge.

The invitation came after the Coventry South MP spoke at a Westminster Hall debate on Islamophobia last week, telling MPs about the “targeting of Muslims” and citing the case of a student referred to Prevent for expressing his support for Palestinians.

A senior source at the Home Office confirmed to the JC the story was not true and revealed an invitation had been issued to the MP to learn more about Prevent.

The programme was launched by the government in 2015 to combat the ideology of extremism and terrorism. Ministers announced in January a programme review, to be led by William Shawcross.

Muslim community groups and human rights campaigners have boycotted the review claiming Mr Shawcross, a former director of the Henry Jackson Society, has in the past expressed “Islamophobic views” – something he strongly denies.

Speaking about Prevent, Ms Sultana said: “Countless studies and human rights groups have demonstrated [it] discriminates against Muslims. From young girls being referred to the programme simply for choosing to wear a hijab to a Muslim teen being questioned by anti-terrorism officers for wearing a ‘Free Palestine’ badge.”

Two parliamentary candidates from Canada’s center-left New Democratic Party (NDP) have resigned over controversies regarding antisemitism just five days before the country heads to the polls for a snap general election.

NDP spokesperson George Soule said on Wednesday morning that Sidney Coles, running in Toronto-St. Paul’s, and Dan Osborne, running in the Nova Scotia riding of Cumberland-Colchester, were resigning by choice, but that the party supports their decisions, CBC News reported.

Both had agreed to learn more about the problem of antisemitism, Soule added.

Coles’ offense was to promote the fabrication that Israel was responsible for doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that allegedly went missing in the US last winter.

She later apologized for posting “unsubstantiated theories about vaccine supply linked to Israel” on Twitter, saying, “I recognize this frame is a common antisemitic trope, though that was never my intent.”

Osborne, meanwhile, sent a tweet to TV personality Oprah Winfrey asking whether the Auschwitz extermination camp was “a real place.”

Though the tweet was sent in 2019, Osborne said he had no memory of posting it in an apology he issued on Sunday.

So, we’re told that Israeli aircraft struck targets in Gaza “while” Palestinian militants launched rockets into Israel, and that there has been three consecutive nights of fighting between the two sides. But, the timeline of events, and the question of who initiated ‘hostilities’, is left vague. However, what clearly occurred is that, on late Sunday night, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza fired two rockets towards Israel. The IDF responded to recent rocket attack by striking Hamas military targets.

On Friday and Saturday, the two previous days, the same sequence of events occurred: terrorists in Gaza fired a rocket at Israel, and the IDF retaliated on military targets in the strip.

Beaumont’s language blurred cause and effect, obfuscating the fact that Gaza terrorists initiated the fighting during the last three days.

Now, here’s another sentence from the article, one that grossly misleads via an omission:
The last meeting between an Egyptian president and an Israeli premier was in January 2011, when Hosni Mubarak received Benjamin Netanyahu, weeks before Mubarak was toppled in a popular revolution.

In the political turbulence that followed, relations between the two countries deteriorated as protests were staged outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo in 2011.

It wasn’t merely “protests” outside the Israeli embassy in September 2011 that caused a deterioration in relations.

An Egyptian mob got past embassy security, broke into the embassy and, if not for a last minute rescue by Egyptian commandos, would have almost certainly killed six Israeli security staff who were hiding in a safe room. The Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent at the time, Harriet Sherwood, reported it:

And, we know for sure that Beaumont knows what happened during the ‘protests’ because he personally commented on it (here) in the Guardian’s Live Blogging of the 2011 protests, two days after the embassy was stormed.

A Westlake man was charged with assault and obstruction of justice following an incident at a pro-Palestinian rally May 14 at Crocker Park in Westlake, in which a Cleveland Heights couple who were counter-protesting said they were assaulted.

Rocky River Municipal Court mailed Alec Popivker a criminal protection order dated Aug. 31 showing Mohammed Ayman Sbeih, 20, was ordered to stay away from the Popivkers. Sbeih was arraigned Aug. 31 in Rocky River Municipal Court and released on personal recognizance.

The terms of the protective order include Sbeih not enter the residence, business, place of employment, day care center or child care provider of the victims, that he stay at least 500 feet from the victims, that he not use any form of electronic surveillance of the victims, that he not cause or encourage anyone to do any act prohibited by the order, that he not possess, use or carry any deadly weapon while the order is in effect, and that he not use or possess alcohol or illegal drugs.

Both the assault charge and the obstruction of justice charges are first-degree misdemeanors. Each carries a maximum fine of $1,000 and a maximum jail sentence of six months.

More than one in five Jewish adults who play online multiplayer games faced antisemitism while playing, according to a new survey from the Anti-Defamation League.

The survey, published on Wednesday, found that harassment and bigotry are common across the 97 million Americans who play multiplayer games. Among adult gamers surveyed, 83 percent said that they have been harassed while playing. 60% of gamers aged 13-17 who were surveyed said the same.

Among adults, nearly half of women said they were harassed, as did 42% of Black gamers and more than one-in-three Asian and LGBTQ+ gamers. A quarter of Muslim gamers also said they were harassed. More than seven-in-10 adults reported what the ADL calls “severe abuse, including physical threats, stalking, and sustained harassment.”

Among teems, Black, female and Asian gamers also reported the highest rates of harassment in their age group, though harassment is less common across the board among teens.

Only 7% of Jewish teen gamers said that they were harassed for their identity. But 10% of teen gamers, and 8% of adult gamers, said they’ve been exposed to white supremacist extremism online. Among teens, 17% said that they didn’t feel like talking to family or friends after being harassed, and 10% said that they did worse in school because they were harassed.

A hate-spewing anti-Semitic attacker spat on a man on a Brooklyn sidewalk, cops said Wednesday.

The 46-year-old victim, who wore a yarmulke on his head, was walking along Utica Ave. at Park Place in Crown Heights just after 5:30 p.m. Sept. 9 when the suspect approached him, cops said.

NYPD are looking for a man they say allegedly approached a 46-year-old male victim and made anti-Jewish statements towards him in front of 182 Utica Ave. in Brooklyn Sept. 9.

The man spat on the victim’s chest, then said, “F---ing Jew, I’m going to kill you,” cops said. He tried to punch the victim, but the blow didn’t connect.

The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the attack.

Cops released a photo of the suspect and are asking anyone with info to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.

A date has been set for the trial of a man accused of distributing racist and anti-Semitic podcasts.

James Allchurch, 49, also known as Sven Longshanks, appeared at Swansea Crown Court on Wednesday morning.

He denied 15 charges of distributing a sound recording stirring up racial hatred on or before May 17 2019 to on or before March 18 2021.

Allchurch spoke only to confirm his name and reply “not guilty” as each charge was read out.

The charges allege that he distributed recordings with titles including Rivers Of Blood, Banned In The UK, The Leftist Supremacist Mindset, and The Usual Suspects.

Judge Paul Thomas told him: “Your trial will be on June 27 but there will be a further hearing either in March or April.”

The defendant, of no fixed address but originally from Pembrokeshire, was released on unconditional bail.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has made TIME magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people, and his Arab-Israeli coalition partner Mansour Abbas thinks he knows why.

“It all comes down to courage,” Abbas, the leader of the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition, writes in the accompanying blurb explaining why his political opposite was recognized on the list published Wednesday.

“After four elections in two years, a bold act was needed to unite a country frayed by political stalemate and brought to a desperate standstill. Something dramatic needed to change, but more importantly, someone courageous needed to make that change.”

Abbas and Bennett agree on little ideologically. Abbas leads the United Arab List, a party that champions Palestinian self-determination, while Bennett comes from Israel’s right wing and has pledged that a Palestinian state will not arise on his watch. But they coalesced around the goal of removing Bennett’s predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, who they saw as divisive and corrupt.

Arab parties have been part of coalition negotiations previously, and for a period in the 1990s supported a government from outside the coalition. But, Abbas notes, those negotiations always were conducted behind closed doors.

“I don’t do things in the dark,” Abbas quotes Bennett as telling him when Bennett surprised him by opening their coalition talks to the media.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will fly to New York City to speak at the 76th United Nations General Assembly on September 27.

Bennett will speak about Israel’s national security and regional issues, according to his office. His remarks will likely focus on Iran’s nuclear program and its support for armed proxy groups.

The trip will be Bennett’s second official visit to the United States as prime minister. On August 27, Bennett met with US President Joe Biden at the White House, during which both sides sought to exude an atmosphere of warmth and cooperation.

Bennett’s predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, was known for making headlines with his speeches on the Iranian nuclear threat at the UN General Assembly, often using cardboard graphics and other props to get his point across.

The two-week-long event kicks off on Tuesday, and will be markedly different than last year’s event, which was conducted mostly online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bennett will be one of at least 83 world leaders who plan on attending in person, according to Turkish diplomat Volkan Bozkir, president of last year’s gathering.

Twenty-six leaders applied to speak remotely, said Bozkir last week.

Ephraim Einhorn, a rabbi and businessman who helmed Taiwan’s fledgling Jewish community after a career that included clandestine missions on behalf of oppressed Jews, has died.

Einhorn’s death on Wednesday morning in Taipei, just hours before the beginning of Yom Kippur, came after an extended illness and weeks of intermittent hospitalizations. He had turned 103 three days earlier.

Einhorn was Taiwan’s first resident rabbi and, for 30 years, the only one to serve the community that now includes an estimated 700 to 800 Jews. He was also a teacher, diplomat, businessman, scholar and father whose personality loomed large.

“He was sometimes impatient with people and could be intimidating. But at the same time you felt underneath that layer there was a great deal of kindness and empathy,” said Don Shapiro, a former president of the Taiwan Jewish Community group, who first met Einhorn in the early 1980s. “So he was a very complex individual. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone else even closely like him.”

Einhorn’s life spanned a century of upheaval and renewal for the Jewish people.

Born in Vienna in 1918, he attended several yeshivas across Europe before moving to the United Kingdom. (His parents, who remained in Austria, were murdered by the Nazis.) According to his retelling, he gained admission not by applying in the regular manner, but by impressing rabbis with his mature knowledge and remarkable recall of proverbs his rabbi father encouraged him to memorize when he was young.

After earning both rabbinic ordination and a doctorate in philosophy from a London yeshiva that is now defunct, Einhorn began working with the World Jewish Congress, first in England, and later in the United States, where he simultaneously led several congregations as a rabbi in the late 1940s through the 1950s.

On a spring day in April 2017, two jeeps, their windows blacked out, sped down a sandy highway in Iraqi Kurdistan toward the small Christian village of Alqosh.

In the cars sat two Israeli engineers, one in each, for security reasons. They had entered the country holding the only passports they had — Israeli — to take part in an extraordinary reconstruction mission.

The two, Yaakov Schaffer and Meir Ronen, watched through sealed windows as they drove past scenes of ruinous destruction left by nearly two decades of war. Some 15 miles away, fighters from the Islamic State terror group were battling the Iraqi army.

As they approached the village, the jeeps pulled over and Schaffer and Ronen got out, accompanied by their Kurdish security guards. On foot, they climbed into the town and made straight for the antiquities site at the northern part of the ancient city: the Tomb of Nahum, the Old Testament prophet.

For decades, the people of Alqosh, members of the Chaldean Catholic Church, guarded a shrine once revered by local Jews as the final resting place of Nahum of Elkosh. But on that day, the structure that lay before them was crumbling around a caved-in roof.

“The walls and pillars were cracked and crumbling. It looked like the rest of the building would collapse at any minute,” recalled Adam Tiffen, an American entrepreneur and project manager who had visited the site a year earlier and was there that day with the Israelis.

The three of them entered. As they began to examine the structure, they unfurl the options that lay before them to save the ancient shrine.

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مستوطنون يؤدون صلوات تلمودية داخل المسجد الإبراهيمي في الخليل pic.twitter.com/rdRDMdwMNi

— وكالة شهاب للأنباء (@ShehabAgency) September 17, 2021

Hundreds of citizens performed dawn prayers today, Friday, at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, despite the restrictions of the occupation, and hours after it was stormed and desecrated by dozens of settlers.

Citizens from all parts of Hebron arrived at the mosque to perform prayers and participate in its reconstruction, in light of the dangerous Judaization operations it is being exposed to. 

The freed prisoner Issa Al-Jabari said, "The settlers removed the carpets from the Ishaqi Hall, where the citizens prayed on the tiles on which light, worn mats were spread." 

The settlers posted on their sites scenes of their performance of Talmudic rituals inside the Ishaqi hall in the Ibrahimi Mosque after removing the prayer rugs and storming it with their shoes.  

The settlers deliberately photographed the mosque and its pulpit during the performance of rituals and chanting Talmudic heresies. 

Dozens of Jewish women also participated in the desecration of the Ibrahimi Mosque to celebrate the so-called Jewish Day of Atonement, which the occupation takes as a pretext to close the mosque and allow settlers to storm it.

Here's a photo of the rolled up prayer rugs. Awful, isn't it?

 

Except that these rugs aren't removed by the Jews and left there in a mess for the Muslims to clean up. The Muslims roll up the rugs to avoid the dirty Jews from walking on them! As this 2015 article notes:

Before relinquishing their side, Abufilat and his attendants rolled up the wall-to-wall prayer mats.

“We remove our carpets because we don’t want them to get dirty. The Jews come here, they conduct their dances, their celebrations, and also their drinking,” Abufilat says. It’s a reference to Jews drinking wine during holiday rituals.

Muslims know that the secular Jews who write these articles about Jewish "provocative" prayer at the Temple Mount are cowed by Arab threats. Every single time an Isabel Kershner or Eric Yoffie writes about how Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount is bad because it upsets Muslims, the Muslims have more incentive to incite more anger and violence.

The articles about the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Arab media are intended to roll back the gains that Jews achieved in being able to return there after being banned for centuries. And the Jewish useful idiots happily will agree that the right of Jews to their own holy places is less important than appeasing Arab Muslims - who will never be appeased until every Jew has been pushed out of the region.

(h/t Yoel)

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Faisal Husseini, who held the Palestinian Authority's Jerusalem portfolio, gave an interview shortly before his death in the summer of 2001 in which exposed the fraud at the heart of the Oslo process. Speaking with Al Araby newspaper, Husseini said that Yasser Arafat, his deputies and henchmen never saw the "peace process" as a way of achieving peace with Israel. Oslo for them was a means to advance their goal of destroying Israel, "from the river to the sea."

Husseini described the Oslo process as a "Trojan Horse." Arafat and his people were the hostile army that infiltrated the city "in the belly of the wooden horse." When Arafat rejected Palestinian statehood and peace at the Camp David summit in July 2000 and initiated the Palestinian terror war two months later, it was as if he and his men exited the horse and began the fight.

"This is the beginning of the real work," Husseini explained.

The PLO used the seven years that preceded the Palestinian terror war to build up their power. Arafat held "peace" talks and Israel paid through the nose for the privilege of sitting across the table from him and his apparatchiks. Israel gave them the Gaza Strip. Israel gave them the Palestinian cities and villages in Judea and Samaria. Israel gave them weapons and ammunition. Israel gave them international legitimacy. Israel – and with Israel's permission, the nations of the world – gave PLO terrorists billions of dollars every year. Israel permitted the EU and the CIA to arm and train Arafat's terror legions.

Arafat promised that in exchange for all that, he would fight terror and build the institutions necessary to run a state. Instead, he and his minions transformed the cities Israel gave them into terror bases. They used the funds to finance terror armies. They used the international legitimacy Israel's recognition conferred to escalate and expand their political war against Israel's right to exist.

The Israeli public didn't need Husseini's interview to know that Oslo was gravest strategic error in Israel's history. The first Palestinian suicide bomber blew up at a crowded bus stop seven months after Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat shook hands at the White House on Sept. 13, 1993. Between their handshake and the beginning of the Oslo war in September 2000 the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists was twice the total killed from 1967-1993.

Despite the public's opposition, today, 28 years after Oslo's launch, we are still living the world Oslo unleashed. The strategic and political realities the Oslo process created still dominate the life of the country. The Palestinian Authority still exists. It still finances and incites terror and wages its political war against Israel. The Oslo-obsessed "international community" still demands that Israel "make painful concessions for peace," and together with the Israeli Left, insists that the "two-state solution" is the only possible way to resolve the Palestinians' never-ending war for the annihilation of Israel.

The NGOs that contributed to the Durban auto-da-fé are still producing vicious and sustained anti-Israeli lies and incitement. Yet no governments denounce them or hold them to account.

The United Nations itself continues to act as the crucible of the campaign to delegitimise and destroy Israel. Last year, for example, the UN General Assembly adopted 17 one-sided resolutions against Israel and only six against any of the other 192 member states for human rights violations.

Last September, the UN’s Economic and Social Council condemned Israel alone for allegedly violating women’s rights — even though Israel is the only upholder of women’s rights in the Middle East.

Last May, the UN’s World Health Organisation accused Israel of violating the Palestinians’ health rights over COVID-19 — a wickedly false claim, and with Israel once again the only country to be singled out during the entire assembly.

The UN’s charter says its role is “promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion”.

The world body betrays this commitment almost every day. Conspicuously failing to deal with the racism and gross abuse of human rights around the world, it chooses instead to persecute Israel, a country that guarantees human rights for all its citizens.

The Durban conference displayed the moral bankruptcy of the United Nations for all to see. Yet the west continues to treat it as the legitimate arbiter of world peace and justice. Support for the United Nations is the pivot for the west’s loss of moral compass.

The boycott of the New York meeting is thus an empty gesture. It’s the United Nations itself that is allowing evil to triumph — and in which the two-faced, cowardly and self-indulgent west is all-too complicit.

19 principled nations have withdrawn from #Durban@UN antisemitic hate-fest.

These countries in #Europe though not prepared to #SayNoToDurbanIV. They are Ok with antisemitism & racial hatred@PolandMFA ????@dfatirl ????@NorwayMFA ????@SweMFA ????@SpainMFA ????@MFA_Lu ????@SwissMFA ???? https://t.co/MbGhmFBTOq

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 17, 2021

Sweden releases pledges to combat antisemitism, ahead of its hosting of the Malmö International Forum on Combating Antisemitism.

We ask @SwedishPM@SweMFA@Anna_Ekstrom: So why are you legitimizing next week's antisemitism-tainted Durban IV event?https://t.co/t6Iztczq0D

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 17, 2021

Tuesday will mark one year since the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump on the White House lawn to sign agreements that recognized Israel and pledged their countries to mutual cooperation. They were followed shortly thereafter by Morocco and Sudan. Colloquially known as the "Abraham Accords," these agreements will be celebrated today in Washington at an event featuring the Israeli ambassador and representatives from every Arab country that recognizes Israel, as well as former U.S. administration officials.

These agreements represented a sea change in Arab-Israeli relations and led to massive benefits both to Israel and their new Arab friends.

The Abraham Accords were in stark contrast to another agreement, signed 53 years before, almost to the day. In September 1967, the Arab League famously signed the Khartoum Resolutions, more colloquially known as the "Three No's," indicating that Arab countries would never have peace with Israel, would never negotiate with Israel, and would never recognize Israel. This rejection of Israel's legitimacy governed Arab-Israeli relations for decades.

But how did we move from Arab rejection of Israel's very existence to this new era of mutual recognition and cooperation?

The Khartoum Resolutions came in the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War, a multistate effort by several Arab countries to destroy Israel that ended in a catastrophic tactical defeat. By signing the "Three No's," the Arab League nations were signaling that while the battle may have been lost, they maintained their aim of destroying Israel and some day would finish the job. Israel, for its part, declined to commit national suicide.

More importantly, despite the usual doomsday predictions from opponents of peace, recognizing Israel has not led to backlash with local Arab populations.

In fact, Morocco’s Islamist party, which foolishly rejected peace with Israel, suffered a crushing defeat in this month’s parliamentary elections.

Once Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the UAE effectively conceded they cannot destroy Israel, they benefited economically, culturally, and in security terms.

“The Abraham peace deals took a totally different approach. Unlike previous administrations, the deals did not involve ‘land for peace,’ only ‘peace for peace,'” Jeff Dunetz wrote this week at The Lid. “The supposed peace experts of previous administrations had always bloviated that no Arab country would ever formalize ties with Israel before a Palestinian state was created. The Abraham Accords proved them wrong.”

Even the United Nations took a moment to recognize the achievement, one day after a major initiative to combat anti-Semitism was signed by more than 300 lawmakers.

Lastly, it’s a rare bipartisan moment for the United States.

Though begun by the Trump administration, the accords are also backed by the Biden administration, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying earlier this year, “We think that Israel normalizing relations with its neighbors and other countries in the region is a very positive development, and so we applauded them. We hope that there may be an opportunity to build on them in the coming months and years ahead.”

While the accords generated little backlash in the signatory nations, the same will not occur in Gaza and the 'West Bank' until the Palestinian Liberation Organization gives up its perpetual quest to destroy Israel. Cheered on by anti-Semites in the U.S. Congress, their futile religious war continued earlier this year, resulting in more poverty and loss of blood and treasure. As the PLO continues to fund terrorists, it’s clear it has learned nothing.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged on Friday that the Biden administration would actively work to support and expand the growing diplomatic ties between Israel and Arab nations.

Speaking at a Zoom event to mark the one-year anniversary of the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on the White House lawn, Blinken pledged that “this administration will continue to build on the successful efforts of the last administration to keep normalization marching forward.”

Blinken laid out three main lines of effort to support the agreements — fostering Israel’s ties with the UAE and Bahrain as well as Morocco, Sudan and Kosovo; deepening Israel’s existing relationships with Egypt and Jordan; and encouraging more countries to join the Abraham Accords.

Sudan and Morocco joined the Abraham Accords in the months after they were signed, while Kosovo agreed to recognize Israel as part of a separate US-brokered agreement involving Serbia.

“We want to widen the circle of peaceful diplomacy,” said Blinken, “because it’s in the interest of countries across the region and around the world for Israel to be treated like any other country.”

Notably, Blinken used the term “Abraham Accords,” something Biden administration officials have tended to avoid when discussing the agreements.

Blinken was joined by Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Morocco’s Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, former UAE foreign minister Anwar Gargash and Bahrain’s US envoy Abdullah Al Khalifa.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called for the resumption of Israel-Palestinian talks, which have been frozen since 2014 after he met this week with Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

"The two sides confirmed the importance of working .. to intensify international efforts to break the stalemate in the peace process and resume negotiations so as to resolve the Palestinian crisis based on international legitimacy resolutions," Sisi's office said in a statement about Wednesday's meeting at Sharm el-Sheikh.

"The Bahraini King lauded Egypt’s recent endeavors in this file at the highest level, its tireless efforts to firm up the ceasefire between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and its initiative for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip," Sisi's office said.

Egypt is attempting to broker indirect talks between Israel and Hamas that would lead to a permanent ceasefire over Gaza.

Sisi has also been holding talks with relevant players on the need to resume Israeli-Palestinian talks toward a two-state resolution to the conflict based on the pre-1967 lines.

A Palestinian state was never intended by the Palestinian nationalists. The 1964 Palestinian Covenant says as such: https://t.co/hwBgi31WkQpic.twitter.com/ij7zGJFPdC

— Conspiracy Libel (@ConspiracyLibel) September 17, 2021

Anything about Palestinian terror and incitement against Israel? No, didn’t think so. For folks like Omar and @hrw, Jews aren’t entitled to human rights. https://t.co/yNZaLQvKJw

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 17, 2021

Yes. Because of ongoing Palestinian terror, intransigence and rejection of peace. Not what these pseudo academic activists think. pic.twitter.com/YuoLsVDwSo

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 17, 2021

What a baseless and shameful act of PR. https://t.co/QPOY9joq7B

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 17, 2021

When Reem and Imad Younis launched the technological system they developed, it filled the biomedical community with hope and excitement. The system’s great potential, which started a revolution in intracranial navigation during operations, immediately captivated many. Naturally, all the excitement and wonder raised several eyebrows: when a senior Israeli brain researcher sent an exclamatory email to his colleague overseas, sharing the news of the system, the colleague asked where the company’s offices are based, and thought the researcher was joking.

The address was Maayan Mariam Square in Nazareth, a place that has long been considered a holy religious pilgrimage site for Christians and differs drastically from the high tech hub in central Israel. The company’s idea was born in the home of Imad when he was a young Arab engineer in 1993. Over the past few years, the company has become a leader in the field of surgical intracranial navigation and has also created lab equipment for conducting brain research. The company owes its success to its founders Imad, 60, and his spouse Reem, 57, who opened Nazareth’s gates, turning the city into the capital of the Arab high tech industry in Israel, which today houses no less than 70 companies.

Due to these impressive achievements, Reem and Imad were awarded the 2018 Industry Leaders Medal at a special ceremony that took place at the Israeli President’s Residence in Jerusalem. But despite their breakthrough success, Alpha Omega remains private and is owned by family, preserving its intimate character. Currently, it only employs 120 people — 48 percent of them women compared to the average of 33 percent in Israeli high tech. “We’re a small company that’s playing in the big leagues,” Imad said during an interview with Calcalist. “Our customers are Medtronic, Boston Scientific, or Abbott Laboratories, so people have high expectations from us. Surgeons who use our system don’t mind how many employees we have, or whether we’re from Nazareth or New York.”

The number of surgeons using Alpha Omega’s smart system is growing. It already operates in over 200 different hospitals around the world and has been used in a large number of life-changing brain surgeries.

Beautiful! 30 Muslim volunteers took it upon themselves to take over all ambulance shifts in Jerusalem for United Hatzalah over #YomKippur. pic.twitter.com/OQHrY6pQTP

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 16, 2021

Someone in the State Dept. went out of their way to clear different language for English-language engagement on same topic for same day in same place.

They had to do extra work.

"Use this wording about the Jewish thing for this acct but this other wording for this other acct." pic.twitter.com/v9rcYp6m4i

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) September 17, 2021

A 16-year-old Syrian boy was set to appear before a judge in Germany on Friday after he was arrested with three members of his immediate family over a threatened attack against a synagogue as Jews marked Yom Kippur, the holiest day in their calendar, on Thursday.

The unnamed minor was the only family member to remain in custody on Thursday night in the wake of a major police deployment around the synagogue in Hagen, a city just east of Dusseldorf in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. The 16-year-old’s father and two brothers were also taken into custody, but were released later on Thursday after police concluded that there was no evidence of their involvement in a crime. The family reportedly arrived in Germany in 2014 as refugees from the civil war in Syria.

In a statement following the arrests, Armin Laschet — the state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia and the main candidate for the center-right CDU Party in Germany’s Sept. 26 federal election — said that the planned attack was motivated by Islamist ideology.

“It appears that prior to today on Yom Kippur, an Islamist motivated attack was averted,” Laschet said. He said the local authorities would “do everything we can to clarify which networks may have been behind” the plot.

German media outlets reported that the 16-year-old in custody had admitted to being in contact with a bomb-making specialist on the Telegram social media channel, but denied that there was a plan to attack the synagogue in Hagen specifically.

The specialist was reported to have been an ISIS operative. Germany’s foreign intelligence service was tipped to the contact by a “foreign secret service,” the Jüdische Allgemeine newspaper reported.

????????#HAGEN SYNAGOGUE UPDATE:

•Tip came from ????Israeli intelligence.
•Terrorist attack avoided against a synagogue on #YomKippur.
•Prayer services cancelled.
•Five isis Jihadists arrested including a Syrian national with explosives. pic.twitter.com/yyiPQrjFfa

— Terror Alarm (@terror_alarm) September 16, 2021

Ten men accused of involvement in the March 2016 bomb attacks in Brussels that killed 32 people will face trial, Belgian federal prosecutors said Friday.

Six of the suspects, including 32-year-old French-Moroccan Salah Abdeslam, are currently on trial in France over the November 2015 Paris attacks.

“Ten of those charged were today ordered to stand trial in the Court of Assizes by the indictment chamber in Brussels,” spokesman Eric Van Duyse tweeted.

On March 22, 2016 two suicide bombers blew themselves up in Brussels international airport and a third in a crowded Metro station in Brussels.

Investigators linked the gang that carried out the attacks in Belgium to the earlier attacks in Paris in November 2015, which killed 130 people.

Abdeslam is the best known of the suspects, allegedly the only surviving member of the group directly involved in the Paris attacks, arrested after a shootout in Brussels.

Both sets of attacks were claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

An armed group of men opened fire towards IDF soldiers at the Jalama checkpoint, located between Mount Gilboa and Jenin, Walla reported on Friday morning.

According to the report, no one was harmed in the incident.

In addition, a number of violent disturbances were reported in the Palestinian village of Azun in the West Bank throughout the early hours of Friday morning.

IDF forces thwarted an arms smuggling attempt in the Jordan Valley in the early hours of Friday morning, according to Israeli media. The IDF apprehended 23 firearms that were suspected to be smuggled into Israel.

The smugglers were located and identified by IDF field observers in the Jordan Valley region, according to Walla. The firearms were given to Israel Police for further investigation.

Violent riots broke out Friday night at the entrance to Jericho, at the Huwwara checkpoint, and in front of Givat Evyatar, according to Walla News. The IDF dispersed the protesters with tear gas, and no casualties were reported.

Seven suffered bullet wounds during confrontations in Beita and Beit Dajan.

Last night, our troops thwarted a weapons smuggling attempt in the Jordan Valley area. Troops at the scene confiscated 23 weapons, which were then transferred to the @IsraelPolice. pic.twitter.com/UqnaekuQWe

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 17, 2021

The key aspect in Deraa al-Balad’s surrender was the Russian decision to abandon ambiguity and make clear that it would support further regime action against the area if the former rebel fighters did not agree to regime demands.

As of now, the former rebels have agreed to terms in the Russian mediated negotiations which represent their complete surrender to the demands of the regime. The agreement, according to reporting from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, will see the establishment of ten security points and checkpoints inside Deraa al-Balad, under Russian military police supervision, where the Russian flag and the Syrian regime flag will be raised. In addition, individuals wanted for mandatory military service will need to ‘regularise’ their situation with the regime. All individuals wishing not to conform to these terms will have to depart for the Turkish and Islamist rebel controlled area in the north west.

Abdullah Jabbasini, a Syrian researcher who monitors the south west, noted in addition that the agreement will include the surrender of light weapons by the fighters in Deraa al-Balad. Jabbasini also recorded that according to the agreement, Russian military police will be involved in direct contact with the community, including checking id cards at checkpoints, and that local notables will accompany the security forces.

These two latter elements are clearly intended to soften the blow for the former rebels, and to reduce as far as possible the friction that would result from direct contact between them and Assad’s security forces. But what has taken place is a significant achievement for the Iran-aligned element within the official Syrian security forces. It also represents an abandonment by the Russians of the stance which they sought to maintain since July 2018 – namely, the effort to maintain the status quo established by the reconciliation agreement of that time.

Why has this happened now? Tensions in this area are not new, and have smouldered ever since the regime’s return in 2018. But the latest events reflect growing Iranian confidence, which itself appears to derive from a fading Russian commitment to the status quo. The latter element is the crucial point, creating the space for change which the most Iran-aligned element of the regime has now exploited. The reason for this apparent shift in Russia’s position is less clear, but the direction appears unmistakeable. It may well be that the sense of an American weakening in the region also contributes to Iranian boldness, and Russian disregard of the concerns of local US allies. The result will be the further advance of the Iranian interest in south west Syria. This interest is woven into the decrepit structures of the Assad regime. It represents ambitions, strategy and priorities determined in Teheran, not in Damascus. And it is currently extending all the way to the border with Israel.

Alleged US strikes hit Iranian militias in the Syria-Iraq border earlier this week, according to reports, although the US has denied involvement.

Explosions were heard in Syria's Deir ez-Zor province, in the area of Al Bukamal, on Tuesday, said the Britain-based watchdog group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syria's state-run SANA news agency said the US struck the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group of Iraqi Shiite fighters, who were "securing the Syrian-Iraqi border strip."

The group said it does not operate outside of Iraq when asked about the incident by Newsweek magazine.

The attacks damaged three cars and four thermal cameras, with no casualties, SANA reported.

Four separate strikes by drones destroyed the vehicles, which had recently arrived from Iraq, the Observatory said.

Former Kuwaiti Minister of Information Saad bin Tefla: The Ideology of ISIS Has Already Been Preached by the Muslim Brotherhood in Sayyid Qutb’s Writings – the Movement has Never Renounced These Ideas #Kuwait@Saadbin6iflahpic.twitter.com/ml6St0CDso

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 17, 2021

The United States said on Friday it was imposing sanctions on Lebanon and Kuwait-based financial conduits that fund the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah as well as financial facilitators and front companies that support the group and Iran.

Among individuals designated and sanctioned, the US Treasury said the measures apply to businessman Morteza Minaye Hashemi, who lives in China and who had funneled money to Iran’s Quds Force. Two Chinese nationals had helped Hashemi establish bank accounts and served as straw owners for his companies, which were based in Hong Kong and mainland China, according to a Treasury news release.

It named the Chinese nationals as Yan Su Xuan and Song Jing. The statement said Yan Su Xuan, on Hashemi’s behalf, also purchased U.S.-origin, dual-use products for onward shipment to Iran.

“Together, these networks have laundered tens of millions of dollars through regional financial systems and conducted currency exchange operations and trade in gold and electronics for the benefit of both Hezbollah and the IRGC-QF,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement, referring to Iran’s Quds force, the arm of its Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) that controls its allied militia abroad.

“Hezbollah uses revenues generated by these networks to fund terrorist activities and to perpetuate instability in Lebanon and throughout the region,” the statement said.

Blinken said Hezbollah was increasingly looking for additional sources of revenue to bolster its coffers and he called on governments around the world to take steps to ensure it and other terrorist groups do not exploit their territory and financial institutions.

Israel won’t move to stop Iran shipments of fuel to Lebanon, amid the serious economic and energy crisis plaguing the neighboring country, according to a senior military official and a television report on Thursday.

Dozens of trucks carrying Iranian diesel arrived in Lebanon on Thursday, the first in a series of deliveries organized by the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group. The overland delivery through neighboring Syria violates US sanctions imposed on Tehran after former president Donald Trump pulled America out of a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in 2018.

The shipment is being portrayed as a victory by Hezbollah, which stepped in to supply the fuel from its patron, Iran, while the cash-strapped Lebanese government grapples with months-long fuel shortages that have paralyzed the country. Hezbollah operates independently from Lebanese authorities, which are struggling to deal with a crippling energy crisis.

While Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria to prevent Hezbollah weapon shipments from reaching their targets, officials are concerned that targeting the fuel would be seen as needlessly harming the economic recovery of Lebanon, Channel 12 reported on Thursday night. Israel has therefore decided to avoid intervening, the report said.

Israel’s just-retired navy commander, Vice Adm. Eli Sharvit, confirmed the policy in an interview with The Associated Press.

With Lebanon’s economy in disarray, he said Israel has “no interest” in stopping fuel deliveries meant for civilian use.

This is how #Iran backed Hezbollah's fuel trucks were welcomed today I. Lebanon. These people have the maturity of six year olds and they want nuclear weapons.

pic.twitter.com/tOXdsJppTK

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 16, 2021

In case you were wondering where the celebratory #RPG landed??????#Ignorance#Irresponsablehttps://t.co/XVd7qJkOD6pic.twitter.com/jk0scVVXSZ

— Rula El Halabi (@Rulaelhalabi) September 16, 2021

Iran on Thursday dismissed the UN nuclear watchdog's work as "unprofessional" and "unfair" shortly before the two sides are due to hold talks aimed at resolving a standoff over the origin of uranium particles found at old but undeclared sites in Iran.

The issue is a thorn in the side of both Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency since the particles suggest Iran once had undeclared nuclear material at three different locations, but the IAEA has yet to obtain satisfactory answers from Iran on how the material got there or where it went.

"The statement of the Agency in its report is completely unprofessional, illusory and unfair," Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Kazem Gharibabadi, said in a statement to a meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors.

Gharibabadi was referring to a passage in an IAEA report last week that said the lack of progress was seriously affecting the IAEA's ability to determine that Iran's program is entirely peaceful, as Tehran says it is.

Failure to resolve the issue complicates efforts to restart talks aimed at bringing the United States and Iran fully back into the fold of the 2015 nuclear deal, since Washington and its allies continue to pressure Iran to give the IAEA answers.

Having obtained concessions last weekend from Iran on another issue, keeping some monitoring equipment running, IAEA Director Rafael Grossi is due to meet Iranian nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami in Vienna next week for talks on the particles.

To Iran and allies like Russia, the fact the three sites mainly seem to date back to the early 2000s and there is no indication any of the material present was enriched to a high degree means the world and the IAEA should move on.

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