Author Dara Horn surprised herself by choosing “People Love Dead Jews” as the title of her new collection of essays. She was even more amazed that her publisher agreed to let her keep it.

Horn’s testing the limits of good taste is not gratuitous. It’s a justified provocation that draws readers into the incisive analysis that she weaves through the book’s 12 individual but thematically-linked pieces.

To be clear, Horn isn’t talking about dead Jews in the literal sense… at least not entirely.

“It’s not dead Jews, as in people wanting to see Jews die,” Horn explained in a recent interview with The Times of Israel from her home in New Jersey.

Rather, she said, it’s about the insidious ways in which non-Jewish societies — including contemporary America — pressure or gaslight Jews into modifying, glossing over, or erasing their own identity altogether.

Horn noticed this particularly with regard to how the general public uses dead Jews — from Anne Frank, to Hasidic Jews killed in a terror attack on a kosher market in Jersey City in December 2019, to fictional Jewish characters — to accomplish this.

“The role dead Jews play in non-Jewish civilization is not the same as the one that they play in Jewish civilization,” Horn said.

A scholar of Jewish history and literature, Horn has until now preferred to focus her work on how Jews lived in different places and eras, rather than on how they died.

But her observations made her want to “unravel, document, describe and articulate the endless unspoken ways the popular obsession with dead Jews, even in its most benign and civic-minded forms, is a profound affront to human dignity,” as she writes in the book’s introduction. ‘People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present’ by Dara Horn (W. W. Norton & Company)

After writing five well-received novels grounded in different eras in Jewish history, Horn, 44, turned her attention to “People Love Dead Jews” (and her parallel podcast, “Adventures With Dead Jews,”) after being asked to write opinion pieces and articles responding to events such as the fatal shooting attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018.

“I started noticing in the past several years that every time my editors from mainstream publications would ask me to write something, it was about dead Jews or antisemitism,” Horn said.

“I became the go-to person for this emerging literary genre — synagogue shooting op-eds. I did not apply for this job,” she said with the kind of dark humor that she laces throughout the essays in the book, some of them previously published.

[Australian] Federal Minister for Education Alan Tudge addressed Jewish community leaders on Monday night, voicing his support for a nationwide implementation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

During the Zoom hosted by president of the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) Jeremy Leibler, Tudge told his audience that the IHRA definition is currently being considered by the Morrison government and that he is “determined to see this implemented and adopted as government policy” – hoping that it would then be adopted by key institutions, including universities.

Earlier this year, addressing an Executive Council of Australian Jewry online forum, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese pledged that a future Labor government would endorse the IHRA definition.

Tudge went on to note that while the public universally calls out “filthy antisemitism” from the far right, his “equal concern to that antisemitism is the antisemitism which is emerging very rapidly and very aggressively, from the left”.

“Instead of it being done in the dark, at night when no one’s watching, it’s often done quite proudly, as if it’s a virtue signal from some on the extreme left,” he commented, recalling Melbourne barrister Julian Burnside’s recent tweets equating the actions of Israel to those of the Nazis.

Tudge recognised universities as a channel for what he called antisemitism “under the cloak of anti-Zionism”.

Acknowledging the discrimination some Jewish students experience on campus, he added that anti-Zionism is “the same as any other form of antisemitism”.

He said his greatest concern is that this “open left-wing antisemitism starts to infiltrate more broadly into our mainstream political parties”, suggesting that it already has in relation to the Greens and is starting to creep into the Labor party, noting what happened with the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn in the UK.

Awe and humility are my abiding memories of the evening. A packed room of Jewish students were thinking deeply about what incarceration and freedom could look like, and about how justice could be structured around atonement for crimes and self-improvement rather than around punishment. Without exception, the students who spoke to me afterward — none of whom came from an activist background — expressed how much they would be bringing from the evening to their seder tables.

Michael, Dominic, Derrick and Dana stayed on for dinner after the event sharing stories, taking pictures, answering questions. Schmoozing. In addition to telling their critically important stories, they had also come to meet the audience, hear their stories and find common ground. A friend of mine — a rabbi of an Orthodox synagogue in the U.K. — saw my Facebook posts about the event and brought Derrick and Dana to speak to his community.

After the event, Michael said to me that “if the Black and Jewish communities could work together, nothing would be able to stop us.”

Michael wished to tell the story of his own community, but simultaneously expressed a genuine curiosity about the Jewish community. We spoke about doing a series of conversations with one another on the book of Exodus — the original story of slavery and liberation — and its relevance to our times. One day he was in the building at the same time as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, and expressed an interest in meeting the man I had described to him as “the premier Jewish thinker, a man obsessed with justice.” The students’ meeting with Rabbi Sacks ran overtime, otherwise the King would have met the Lord.

Michael was open about his struggles with addiction and passed away from a suspected drug overdose. His passing has been in my mind throughout this week of preparation for Yom Kippur. It feels appropriate to reflect on what we can all learn from those who face similar battles to Michael.

Maimonides lists the threefold requirement of teshuvah, or repentance, as confession (vidui), regret (charata) and determination for the future (kabala l’atid). I have seen no greater lived example of the struggle to live those three elements than those who struggle to overcome addiction.

Those people I have been privileged to know, such as Michael, for whom every day is a challenge, show us the truth that we would all do well to remember, that teshuvah is not something that is “achieved,” a destination arrived at. Rather teshuvah, like the recovery from addiction, is an ongoing process and struggle that is never over but requires constant work and regular re-examination.

As Michael went through many struggles, he simultaneously used his story, fame and innate brilliance to help others. And he did this with humility and a smile.

No matter how great Omar Little is, Michael K. Williams was infinitely greater. May his memory be a blessing.

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.”

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 a leader in Students for Justice in Palestine, which 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.

Published six weeks after 9/11, Martin Kramer’s Ivory Towers on Sand rebuked professors of Middle East studies who championed one failed intellectual orthodoxy after another – even as they missed the real story, such as the rise of Islamism. Have Middle East studies improved or further degenerated since 2001? What can outsiders do to help?

700 Muslims from around the world, led by the divisive British politician Salma Yaqoob, rapper Lowkey and leaders of the controversial CAGE activist group, have signed an open letter claiming that Prof. David Miller is being censored from criticising Israel.

The letter states that “as British Muslims” the supposed “orchestrated pile-on by pro-Israel groups, politicians and public figures against Professor David Miller is a tactic we recognise very well.”

Prof. Miller, a Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol, is a conspiracy theorist with a history of controversy relating to Jewish students. In his latest outburst, which is under investigation, he asserted that “Zionism is racism”, declared his objective “to end Zionism as a functioning ideology of the world” and accused the Bristol University Jewish Society of being part of a worldwide Zionist conspiracy, adding that it is “fundamental to Zionism to encourage Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism”. At the same online event, Prof. Miller also observed that the Jewish Society and the Union of Jewish Students are Zionist, thereby implying that Jewish students (and the wider Jewish community) inherently “encourage Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism”.

He also portrayed the International Definition of Antisemitism as an attack on free speech and accused the Israeli Government of engaging in an “all-out attack” on the global Left as part of an “attempt by the Israelis to impose their will all over the world”. In comments reminiscent of the darkest years of the United Nations, Prof. Miller insisted that “Zionism is racism” and asked how “we defeat the ideology of Zionism in practice”, “how is Zionism ended” and about the way “to end Zionism as a functioning ideology of the world”.

The letter goes on delusionally to declare that Prof. Miller’s “work on Islamophobia is among the most highly respected in the world” and that “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 [International] Definition of Antisemitism is being weaponised by supporters of Israel and by Islamophobes.”

Labour Party councillor has been reported to the Party after video footage emerged that seemingly showed him partaking in the antisemitic “from the river to the sea” chant at an anti-arms rally in Liverpool.

Sam Gorst, Labour councillor for Liverpool’s Cressington ward, is believed to have been one of the protesters leading the crowd on Saturday. At one point, the crowd can be heard chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

The chant, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, only makes sense as a call for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state – and its replacement with a State of Palestine – and is thus an attempt to deny Jews, uniquely, the right to self-determination, which is a breach of the International Definition of Antisemitism.

Labour Against Antisemitism said on Twitter that in light of Mr Gorst’s alleged behaviour at Saturday’s demonstration, as well as his reported membership in the now-proscribed Labour fringe groups, Labour Against the Witch-hunt (LAW) and Labour in Exile Network (LIEN), the group has reported the Labour councillor.

Mr Gorst released a statement on Twitter in response to the backlash of his supposed appearance at the rally which stated that his record “stands for itself” and that “bullies will always be bullies”. He added: “They will not break me with their nastiness especially when all I am doing is showing opposition to injustices of the world.”

Dame Louise Ellman, the former MP for Liverpool Riverside – who was allegedly branded a “disgrace” by Mr Gorst for quitting the Labour Party due to antisemitism – condemned Mr Gorst’s reported involvement and said: “I was appalled to see a Labour councillor singing Hamas chants about annihilating Israel. This brings the Labour Party into disrepute.”

It has also been reported that Mr Gorst was recently reinstated after being suspended from the Party for twelve months, though the reason is not publicly known. In 2019, Mr Gorst was cleared of antisemitism accusations, later claiming that he was the victim of a “smear campaign”.

Jeremy Corbyn’s controversial liaison to the Jewish community is under investigation by the Labour Party in connection with alleged antisemitism-denial.

Heather Mendick’s appointment to the role by Mr Corbyn in 2019 was criticised by Jewish groups due to her views, which included that antisemitism claims had been “weaponised” and opposition to Labour’s adoption of the International Definition of Antisemitism. She also joined disgraced MP Chris Williamson on his “Democracy Roadshow” and expressed “solidarity” for Jenny Manson, a Chair of Jewish Voice For Labour (JVL), an antisemitism-denial group and sham Jewish representative organisation. Ms Mendick even signed a letter in The Guardian claiming that Mr Corbyn was a “formidable” opponent of antisemitism after Luciana Berger resigned from Labour over its institutional antisemitism.

Ms Mendick was a member of Momentum, the pro-Corbyn campaign group, and worked as a research consultant and Secretary of Hackney South Labour Party. Despite her unfitness, Mr Corbyn appointed her to the role, which reportedly involved working in his office one day a week.

She now faces scrutiny by the Labour Party over a litany of claims that she has made in relation to antisemitism, which have been set out in a letter to her. According to the letter, she is alleged to have described antisemitism allegations as a “smear” and a “false narrative”, among other outrageous claims.

The letter to Ms Mendick is part of a wider crackdown by the Labour Party on members who have affiliated to proscribed factions or expressed views that are either antisemitic or deny the Party’s institutional antisemitism problem. This crackdown has affected members of various factions, including JVL and Labour Against the Witchhunt, the latter of which has been proscribed.

Former resident of Afghanistan & of Guantanamo Bay, Moazzam Begg discussed with a former captive of the Taliban, Yvonne Ridley the future of Afghanistan. The star of the show was meant to be Mullah Abdus-Salam Zaeef the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan but he didn’t show up. Instead the two of them had a chat. Here’s some of what they said:

“There are so many people, who are traditionally supporters of anti-imperialism…who support the concept of fighting / defeating a foreign invader / occupier…why the reluctance of some people who are anti-imperialists to…welcome a Taliban victory and the withdrawal / defeat of the United States of America against a…poor group of people who are nowhere as advanced as them?” —Moazzam Begg (21:38–22:28)

“I’m a feminist, and I just don’t know how feminists around the world can wring their hands and bemoan the NATO forces leaving” —Yvonne Ridley (23:25–23:40)

“What I would do, if I was them [the Taliban]…I would get a rebuttal unit in place, to call out and factcheck every little bit of fake news that’s there” —Yvonne Ridley (33:22–33:36)

“They [the media] can’t bear to say anything nice…or anything…not even nice, just factual…about the Taliban” —Yvonne Ridley (38:42–38:55)

“Having seen how innovative and enterprising the Palestinians in Gaza are when it comes to [military] equipment and getting things up and running, I’m quite confident they’ll [the Taliban] probably do the same” —Yvonne Ridley, when asked by Begg about the US weaponry left behind in Afghanistan following withdrawal (45:19–45:35)

Notorious anti-Israel activists Muna and Mohammed El-Kurd, who each have a record of supporting terrorism, have been included in TIME Magazine’s annual list of the 100 most-influential people in the world.

Mohammed, in particular, has repeatedly disseminated baseless anti-Israel smears and clear-cut antisemitic tropes while inciting violence on social media. Mona, too, has posted undeniably antisemitic, terror-supporting content, including at least one image of Hitler.

For example, Mohammed earlier this month rejoiced as six Palestinian terrorists broke out of Israel’s maximum-security Gilboa Prison. “I am going to bed with a smile on my face and dreaming of the day all prisons are abolished,” he tweeted, calling the incident “excellent.”

Mohammed’s support for Palestinian terrorists dovetails with his long history of shockingly antisemitic remarks. For instance, in May he called the Israel Defense Forces “sadistic & bloodthirsty,” a slanderous charge reminiscent of medieval blood libels. Similarly, he shared an Instagram post that promoted claims that the Jewish state deliberately kills Palestinians to harvest their organs.

He has furthermore said that Israel “kills,” “blows up,” “burns” and “tortures” Palestinian children in order to “instill terror” in them. Mohammed, who was recently hired by The Nation as its “Palestine” correspondent, has gone so far as to describe Israel as a “child killing entity” — an overt example of Jew-hatred according to the widely adopted IHRA definition.

Related Reading: From Terror Supporter to ‘Palestine Correspondent’: Meet Mohammed El-Kurd, The Nation’s Latest Hire

In an equally repulsive Twitter post, Mohammed claimed — without proof — that “Holocaust survivors” threw Molotov cocktails at his home. He also accused a Hong Kong-based Jewish author of “ethnically cleansing” and “Kristallnachting” Palestinians, the latter being a reference to the Nazi-initiated pogrom in Germany in 1938 that various historians mark as the beginning of the genocide of some six million Jews.

In a similar vein, Mohammed El-Kurd in June praised the “eloquence” of black nationalist Kwame Ture, who in 1970 called Adolf Hitler a “genius” and the “greatest white man” in history. In Ture’s words, “The only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.”

In July, Mohammed retweeted a video in which Ture accused Zionists of being “followers of the Satan.”

Late on the evening of September 10th terrorists in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket at the Eshkol region in the Western Negev which was successfully intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system. As was the case in August when the first incident of rocket fire since May took place, the BBC did not bother to report that breach of the ceasefire that brought Operation Guardian of the Walls to a close.

On the evening of September 11th another rocket was fired at the Sderot area and it too was intercepted.

“A 29-year-old man sustained a light head wound after he fell while running to a bomb shelter. He was taken to Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center for treatment, medics said.”

The following evening – September 12th – saw yet another incident, with the rocket again successfully intercepted.

“Shortly before 9 p.m. on Sunday night, one rocket was fired toward the town of Sderot near the Gaza border, triggering sirens there and in the surrounding community. Three Israelis were lightly injured as they scrambled for shelter, according to medics. Another two Israelis were treated by medics for acute anxiety attacks, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.”

In the early hours of September 13th the Eshkol region was targeted once again.

“Rocket sirens went off in the Gaza border area communities of Kissufim and Ein Hashlosha after the rocket was fired and was intercepted by Iron Dome, according to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. That rocket marked four days in a row that rockets were fired from the enclave into Israel, and the fifth rocket fired since the conclusion of Operation Guardians of the Wall in May.”

BBC audiences did not see any stand-alone coverage of those attacks. However, those reading a report titled “Naftali Bennett makes first visit to Egypt by an Israeli PM in a decade” published on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page on the afternoon of September 13th found a euphemistic reference to the May ceasefire having been “tested” in a photo caption.

What could be more American than summer camp? It has fresh air, sailing, cookouts — and, in Bess Wohl’s new play, swastikas.

“Camp Siegfried” is based on a real-life camp on Long Island in the 1930s that indoctrinated young German-Americans into Nazi ideology. The play has its opening night Friday at London’s Old Vic Theatre, the venue’s first show to full-capacity audiences since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Photos from the era show brown shirt-wearing teenagers parading with Nazi flags, 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Manhattan. Like many Americans, Wohl was unaware of that piece of hidden history — until she found herself pandemic-stranded in a rental house on Long Island, close to the site of the camp.

“It was the pandemic, I was home and I just got really obsessed with the fact that there had been this camp 10 minutes away from where we were staying,” said the New York-born writer, whose plays include “Small Mouth Sounds” — set in a silent retreat — and the divorce comedy “Grand Horizons,” which had a Broadway run just before the virus struck.

“I started driving around the streets, which, of course, looked like these banal Long Island suburban streets. But that, I had found out, were once named Hitler Street and Goebbels Street and all of these things that just sounded incomprehensible to me.”

Camp Siegfried was one of several sponsored by the German-American Bund that aimed to seed Nazi ideology on American soil. The area later became a quiet neighborhood, with bungalows lining streets named for leaders of the Third Reich. The names are long gone, but rules requiring properties to be sold to people of German descent persisted into the 21st century.

Swastikas, Stars of David and calling Israelis Nazis was spotted on the FDR South Bound Highway on Yom Kippur.

Can you imagine being a Holocaust survivor and seeing this vile Jew hatred on the holiest day of the Jewish year? pic.twitter.com/I5SM78bIT4

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 17, 2021

A statue honoring Holocaust victim and teenage Jewish diarist Anne Frank was unveiled in Antigua, Guatemala, earlier this month, reported the San Diego Jewish World.

The Anne Frank Children’s Human Rights Memorial, which was dedicated on Sept. 3, rests in the San Sebastian Park across the street from the National School for Girls No. 2, Antonio Castro y Escobar. Saint Sebastian was murdered as a youngster by the Romans for being Christian.

The site for the statute was chosen by Antigua Mayor Victor Hugo del Pozo.

After a year-long delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, the bronze statue was delivered to the Jewish community of Guatemala two months ago. It was created by Jerusalem-based sculptor Sam Philipe and was funded by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (JASHP).

One stone panel of the sculpture holds a quote from Frank’s famous diary that was found by her father, the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. It says: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

The second panel states that of the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, 1.5 million were children, and “Anne Frank was one of them.” The third stone panel says: “Children are the ultimate victims of adult hatred, bigotry and ignorance.”

A Tel Aviv lab has equipped good bacteria with “poisoned arrows,” which they fire at bad bacteria, dealing them a fatal blow.

“We have built an antibacterial weapon that enables ‘good’ bacteria to attack bad bacteria with toxins and neutralize them,” Dr. Dor Salomon, the lead researcher of the Tel Aviv University project, told The Times of Israel.

His team at the Department of Clinical Biology and Immunology has published an article about its success, in lab conditions, in the peer-reviewed journal EMBO Reports.

It wants to try the technology in fish farms within months, and says that within a few years it could become part of doctors’ arsenal against infections in humans.

Salomon said that since antibiotic resistance is an ever-growing worry to the medical profession, solutions like his that fight infection without deploying drugs have the potential to save many lives.

One of the most effective systems that bad bacteria have for eliminating other bacteria is called the Type 6 Secretion System, discovered around 15 years ago.

Salomon’s team, which also includes researchers Biswanath Jana and Kinga Keppel, has removed this system from bad bacteria. It “installed” the system in harmless bacteria which have been “programmed” to recognize pathogens and attack them, while not harming other microbes.

The data also showed that the booster offered 20 times more protection against serious disease and that people who get the booster dose become only 5% as likely as unvaccinated people to get sick. In other words, the vaccine efficacy for individuals who got a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine stands at about 95% - similar to the original “fresh” vaccine efficacy that was reported against the original Wuhan strain. Top FDA members have been split on the necessity of the boosters, with interim head Janet Woodcock backing them and some of the agency's top scientists arguing they are not needed yet.

If the FDA goes ahead and approves the booster, a separate panel advising the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will meet next week to recommend which groups should get them.

The White House said it was ready to roll out boosters next week if health officials approve the plan.

In total, more than 6 million Israelis have already been vaccinated with at least one shot, including more than 5.5 million who have received both doses.

The Health Ministry reported on Friday that 3,227 people were diagnosed with coronavirus the day before - 6.33% of the roughly 55,000 people who screened.

NBA icon Kareem Abdul-Jabbar spoke about the important of atonement and repentance in a Yom Kippur message released after the end of the Jewish holiday on Thursday.

Speaking against a backdrop that featured the Jewish Star of David with the Hebrew word shalom in its center, the former professional basketball player called Yom Kippur “the holiest of Jewish holidays, because it asks believers to atone for their sins and seek repentance.”

He continued, “For me, atonement and repentance are the foundation of any humane civilization. Through prayer, meditation or simply self-reflection we admit our failings and try to do better. This is humanity at its noblest and our only hope for a just society.”

He concluded by wishing his Jewish friends a “g’mar chatima tova,” the customary Jewish greeting said during the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Abdul-Jabbar, who converted to Islam from Catholicism in 1971, played 20 seasons in the NBA for the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers. In July 2020, he denounced the lack of outrage against antisemitism in the sports and entertainment industries, and how it “perpetuates racism,” following incidents involving athletes and artists who made remarks that targeted Jews.

Wishing My Friends a Happy Yom Kippur pic.twitter.com/EntxStbpuX

— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (@kaj33) September 17, 2021

A century ago, communists shuttered the synagogues of Tomsk, one of the oldest cities in Siberia.

It was a painful blow, especially to the local community of Jewish Cantonists — former soldiers who had been recruited against their will or abducted into the Russian Tsar’s army and forbidden from practicing their faith. After many years of forced service and persecution, many of them returned to Judaism in Tomsk, a city of about 500,000.

This week, local Jews feel a circle has been completed, as the city opened a Jewish education center, the largest currently in Siberia — the area of Russia that is east of the Ural Mountains and has been home to tens of thousands of Jews.

The building, which has a floor space of about 25,000 square feet, was inaugurated on Sunday with the help of leaders from the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement. The festive ceremony was attended by about 400 people, including Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, who flew in from Moscow, which is situated about 2,000 miles west of Tomsk.

The new center, where 200 Jewish children will attend various classes and workshops, features a kindergarten with three classes of children. With 15 children per class — half of the average at public kindergartens — it’s the only Western-style institution in the city of 500,000, with a robotics lab, modern furnishings, pottery workshops and table tennis stations.

“This whole building was built with donations from Jewish philanthropists, and that’s impressive,” Rabbi Levy Kaminetzky, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s emissary to Tomsk, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

As Yom Kippur drew to a close this evening in Tel Aviv, the final act for the worshipers in Dizengoff Square was to sing the Hatikvah and its blooming marvellous. https://t.co/TTBRMf6q2e

— Self Declared Zionists (@SussexFriends) September 16, 2021

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The Islamist genocidal agenda is promoted by PA/PLO/Hamas media and textbooks, and by UN organizations, such as UNRWA. Not only is the Holocaust denied, it is portrayed as an attempt to “steal Palestinian land” and deprive Arab Palestinians of their goal to wipe out Israel. Enshrined in proposals for a “two-state-solution,” it’s the core of what the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, an acronym for “The Islamic Resistance Movement,” and others represent. It’s also promoted by Fatah and the PLO.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s totalitarian ideology has become dominant in Islam and among Muslims. Centered in Egypt, where the highest Islamic authorities convene, the Brotherhood asserts its gospel of hatred of Jews and Israel via mosques throughout the world and their media. In North and Latin America and Europe, it supports hundreds of student and political organizations. In Israel, it is represented by the largest Arab-Israeli political party, the Joint List, which is part of the current governing coalition.

The Muslim Brotherhood supported the Nazis and after the war it helped thousands of war criminals find refuge in Arab countries. Brotherhood apologists argue that this activity was in the past, but it’s not – documented by Palestinian Media Watch and NGO Monitor. Attacking Jews in Israel happens daily and is promoted by all Islamists.

This is their “holy war” against Israel and anyone who stands in their way – Muslims and non-Muslims. Any recognition of Israel and its right to exist is considered a betrayal of Islam. It’s what justifies their support for terrorism and suicide bombings, which they call “martyrdom.” Their goal is another Holocaust mandated, they preach, by their “prophet, Muhammad.” Ultimately, they boast, they seek world domination under their Caliphate.

According to Richard P. Mitchell (The Society of Muslim Brothers), jihad, death and martyrdom are not only a means to an end, but an end unto itself. David Brooks called the Brotherhood’s ideology promoting suicide bombing “the culture of martyrdom.” For further information, consult Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Radical Islamists, led by the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, are one of the greatest threats not only to America and Israel, but to our society and our civilization. Understanding this matters. It’s about survival.

Beyond that, though, it is worth taking a moment to bring the larger picture into focus – and to get a clear understanding of what’s wrong with this picture, as it were. The facts indicate that the recent pronouncements by Gantz and Bennett are nothing more than a smokescreen.

Since the ratification of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority has been in control of areas A and B; this includes the authority to grant building permits as it sees fit. As of this writing, 70% of the territory under PA jurisdiction remains completely empty. The PA has the right, the obligation and the means to plan and build, to utilize this territory as it chooses, without any Israeli involvement whatsoever, and without any expectation of commensurate approval of Jewish construction in PA-administered areas A and B – which are judenrein.

The fact that the PA chooses not to build in the areas under its own jurisdiction, and instead pours all of its resources into illegal construction in Area C, is a choice – with very clear motivations. This very simple fact makes the current government’s capitulation to the Biden administration’s demand for “construction parity” a dangerous precedent.

Just as the Americans have no expectation that the Palestinian Authority will match every construction permit issued in areas under PA jurisdiction with a commensurate approval for Jewish construction, so too can there be no justification for the demand that every construction project approved by the State of Israel for Jewish residents of the areas under Israeli jurisdiction be matched with projects for Arabs.

To make matters worse, the asymmetry extends beyond the issue of demography, into the realm of geography. The area taken up by residential structures in the Jewish sector, numbering about half a million residents (again, limited to Area C) is only 3.5% of the total area under Israeli jurisdiction, whereas the area taken up by Arab settlement in Area C, which numbers about 200,000 people according to recent estimates, currently takes up more than double that area.

Rather than counting the number of housing units approved for Jewish versus Arab residents of Area C, the question we should be asking about the new construction projects is how many more square meters will this add to the area taken up by Jewish settlement as opposed to the area that will be ceded to Arab settlement in Area C?

A government watchdog group is calling on New York's public pension fund to divest from Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry's, in response to the ice cream company's decision to boycott Israel.

The National Legal and Policy Center asked New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in a Thursday letter to "effect the immediate divestiture" of the state pension fund's $73 million holdings in Unilever, arguing that the company has not taken sufficient steps to oppose anti-Semitism and the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

The letter comes after Arizona and New Jersey announced they would pull investments from Unilever, and as Florida and Illinois have said they are looking at taking similar action. DiNapoli said in July that Ben & Jerry's boycott decision would make New York reconsider its investments with Unilever in the future.

"Unilever's position that it is opposed to anti-Semitism is belied by the actions and associations of Anuradha Mittal, the chair of Ben & Jerry's Board of Directors," wrote NLPC chairman Peter Flaherty in the Sept. 16 letter. "Mittal is the architect of the ice cream company's policy of ending sales in Israeli ‘occupied territories.' Reportedly, Mittal also proposed a boycott of all of Israel. Her Twitter account has many anti-Israel tweets and contain specific endorsements of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement."

Flaherty also noted that Mittal is a trustee of Ben & Jerry's nonprofit arm, which issued $170,000 in grants to an unrelated nonprofit that Mittal also controls called the Oakland Institute. The arrangement could violate IRS rules against self-dealing, according to the NLPC, which filed a complaint with the IRS about the financial activities last month.

Mittal's Oakland Institute has published defenses of Hezbollah and Hamas, the Washington Free Beacon reported in July.

In one article published by the Oakland Institute, former Green Party Senate candidate Todd Chretien argued that progressives should support Hezbollah during the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006.

Why does this matter for Israel and the Middle East?

The US, UK, and Australia often work closely on policies in the region. The UK was a key ally of the US in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Australia and the US have been deeply supportive of Israel over the years, and the current UK leader is close to Israel.

France is also an important player in the region, but its policies sometimes diverge from the American role. For instance, France has interests in Lebanon that are not always the same as the US. France has shown flexibility regarding talks with Hezbollah. In addition, France attended a recent meeting in Baghdad where Turkey, Iran and other key states were present. The US and UK did not come to the meeting.

What this shows is that France wants to play a more robust role in the Middle East at the same time the US and UK may be shifting policies. The US wants to concentrate on near-peer rivals like China. That means big investments in naval power. It also means the US is cutting back on counter-terrorism interests in the Middle East after leaving Afghanistan. Large questions loom about US commitment to eastern Syria and Iraq.

For Israel, this is important because Israel is confronting Iranian threats in places like Syria and Iranian proxy threats that include Hezbollah and also Tehran-backed groups in Yemen and Iraq.

These groups now have advanced Iranian drone technology. A shift in European and French relations with the US and UK in the region could have ramifications for Israel if those states appear keener on dealing with Iran and its militias. That also has ramifications for the nuclear deal talks. It is important for Israel to be aware of these shifting sands to analyze where the next moves may be.

When it comes to Israel, we should expect to see less diplomatic attention paid to Palestinian militants and more to pressing Israel to make more concessions. Already Biden has performed an about-face on the Taylor Force Act and resumed aid to the Palestinian Authority in spite of the PA’s funding the families of suicide bombers. Perhaps another premature push for a state of “Palestine” is in order — Oslo II.

Biden’s team has been dismissive of the Abraham Accords from the moment he took office. He may not actually push to overturn U.S. involvement, but his State Department will do nothing to advance the Accords.

What about Turkey? Will Biden’s diplomats press Erdogan to stop buying Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles? Will they push Turkey to act more like a NATO member and less like a rogue Islamist nation? Will they decline any of Erdogan’s requests? Fethullah Gülen better watch his back. Ditto for the Kurds.

Iran policy is where the State Department is likely to do the most damage, rushing to re-negotiate Obama’s nuclear deal and treating Iran’s newest president (a mass-murderer) like a diplomat. With Robert Malley as the State Department’s special envoy to Iran, new gifts surely await the Ayatollah in JCPOA II.

The Biden presidency makes one long for the rough and tumble days of the Obama era when Secretary of State John Kerry might muster up enough spine to prepare a harshly worded démarche to an enemy or at least a haughty speech. When Kerry went to China last week to implore the Communist Party leadership to be “greener” and stop burning so much coal, they wouldn’t even meet with him face-to-face (but they met face-to-face to welcome the Taliban back into power).

How bad can this get? If the current Biden/Blinken policies continue, we will soon face a nuclear Iran, a reconstituted Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and ISIS back in control of large swaths of land. The ultimate shame will come when we are forced to witness the Cavemen from Kandahar and the Haqqani Hillbillies giving speeches at the United Nations, lecturing us on imperialism, and demanding a seat on the Human Rights Council.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said Friday that he will visit Bahrain later this month, the first such visit by an Israeli minister to the Gulf country following a diplomatic agreement reached last year.

Yair Lapid announced the visit in a conference call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and diplomates from Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco, states that signed US-brokered agreements to normalize relations with Israel last year.

The officials marked the first anniversary of the Abraham Accords, which have led to the opening of embassies, the launch of direct flights and a raft of agreements to boost economic ties. They expressed hope that the new relationships would be deepened and that other nations would follow suit.

“This Abraham Accords club is open to new members,” Lapid said, before announcing that he plans to visit Bahrain by the end of the month.

Israel’s top diplomat had already visited the UAE in June and Morocco last month.

Germany and the Palestinian Authority have signed a 100 million euro ($117 million) cooperation agreement that will see German investment in areas under P.A. control.

The donation will finance “sustainable economic development in [Palestine] over the next two years,” according to P.A. Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh.

“We hope our friends in Germany, the European Union and the international community will help put pressure on Israel to allow elections to be held in all the Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem,” he added.

Germany’s representative to Ramallah Oliver Owcza praised the bilateral relations between his country and the Palestinians, reiterating German support for a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

No Western state has submitted candidacy for its leader to give a speech or lead a roundtable at Wednesday’s event marking the 20th anniversary of the World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, which was marked with antisemitism and anti-Israel bias.

At the beginning of September, UN General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir asked each group of member states to put in a bid for a president or prime minister to address the opening ceremony of Durban IV, and to send a representative to lead a roundtable on the topic of people of African origin.

Andorran Deputy Permanent Representative at the UN Joan Josep Lopez informed Bozkir in a letter a week later, “We have not received yet any candidature at the level of Head of State or Head of Government and no expression of interest for the position of Chair of the two roundtables.”

The 28-state Western European and Others Group (WEOG) at the UN includes countries across Europe, as well as Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Israel. The US is an observer.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said the lack of interest from anyone in the Western group “means Israel succeeded in labeling the event antisemitic and anti-Israel.”

Romania joined the list of countries boycotting Durban IV over its antisemitism, bringing the number to 20. The countries skipping the event, all of which are WEOG members, are: Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Slovakia, Slovenia, the UK and the US. Belgium downgraded its attendance from the ministerial level to the diplomatic level.

Portugal, a member of WEOG, facilitated the intergovernmental negotiations, together with South Africa, on the declaration to be adopted at Durban IV this week.

19 principled nations withdrew from #Durban antisemitic hate-fest at @UN.

But these countries not prepared to #SayNoToDurbanIV. They are Ok with antisemitism & racial hatred:@PolandMFA ????@dfatirl ????@NorwayMFA ????@SweMFA ????@SpainMFA ????@MFA_Lu ????@SwissMFA ????@BelgiumMFA ???? https://t.co/MbGhmFBTOq

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 17, 2021

Did he tell you that pulling a minister out of the Durban Conference doesn't count as boycotting it? https://t.co/FA1jSQO6oZ

— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) September 17, 2021

The State Department’s Palestinian Affairs Unit has come under scrutiny for a tweet stating that its office would be closed on Thursday for a "local holiday"—the Jewish religion’s holiest of days known as Yom Kippur.

"Our office is closed today, Thursday, September 16, for the local holiday. We will reopen for normal business tomorrow, Friday, September 17," the bureau tweeted Thursday, on Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is commemorated by Jews across the world, not just in Israel.

The tweet generated a flurry of responses on the social media platform from Jews and others who viewed the Biden administration as attempting to downplay the holiday on a Twitter account that primarily services the Palestinian community.

"The U.S. Embassy, including the Palestinian Affairs Unit, was closed from noon on September 15 through September 16, 2021, in observance of Yom Kippur," a State Department official told the Washington Free Beacon in response to questions about the tweet.

The Biden administration has made clear that it wants to elevate relations with the Palestinian government and move away from policies implemented by the Trump administration that they view as overly deferential to Israel and its government. One of the first foreign policy moves undertaken by the Biden State Department was to restart U.S. aid to the Palestinians even as they promote violence against Israel and use international aid dollars to pay imprisoned terrorists.

It turns out that whoever is doing social for @USPalAffairs also called Rosh Hashanah a "local holiday." Twice.

That's new language for the acct. Only other example that comes up is passport notice about upcoming airport holiday rush in 2016. Now it feels like cleared language. pic.twitter.com/rylVhBrw12

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) September 17, 2021

The piece ran Yom Kippur eve in internat'l edition & just days after @nytimes falsely reported that longest period of Jewish sovereignty in antiquity was 80 years. (Kingdom of Judah was extant for >300 years.) https://t.co/8FKgipkpsU

— Tamar Sternthal (@TamarSternthal) September 17, 2021

Some Jewish and pro-Israel groups criticized Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter.

“Slamming the Jewish nation in her new bill, AOC is silent when it comes to the 4500 terror rockets fired from Hamas, funded by US tax dollars,” Stop Antisemitism tweeted.

The Israel War Room Twitter account similarly tweeted that Ocasio-Cortez “neglects to mention that Hamas launching offensive rocket attacks and using civilians and media building as human shields are the leading cause of civilian deaths in Gaza.” Israeli Ambassador to the United States Gilad Erdan told AP executives in June that Hamas was using the building to “jam the Iron Dome.”

On the other hand, Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, praised Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter. “The media may have turned its attention away from the US made bombs that Israel drops on Palestinians, but progressives in the House haven’t.”

The Adalah Justice Project, a pro-Palestinian advocacy organization, called Ocasio-Cortez’s amendments “truly stellar” and urged people to pressure their members of Congress to support the amendments because “it’s past time to stop these weapons transfers.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not respond to the Journal’s request for comment.

Slamming the Jewish nation in her new bill, AOC is silent when it comes to the 4500 terror rockets fired from Hamas, funded by US tax dollars ?? pic.twitter.com/eWX3Nov7te

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 17, 2021

Next year in Jerusalem ???? https://t.co/YDyy3oHxd6

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 17, 2021

“I blame this debate on the yahood [Jew]” - Nourhan Mesbah (@nourhanmesbah)

We’re not sure what’s worse - this antisemitic bigot heads up Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the College Democrats of America or the fact she’s running for Vice President. pic.twitter.com/0H5eEcZkcP

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 18, 2021

Three Palestinians were detained by Israel Defense Force soldiers after trying to infiltrate into southern Israel on Saturday morning, the military said.

The suspects were found to be carrying knives and bolt cutters to break through the fence when they were captured near the northern section of the border, according to the IDF.

It was not clarified whether the three had successfully fully passed through the fence at the time of their capture.

The suspects were detained and taken for questioning.

While Israel has a high-tech series of fences and walls guarding its frontier with Gaza, both above and below ground, a number of gaps remain in the steel fencing surrounding the Strip.

These gaps have been used by Palestinians in Gaza to illegally enter Israeli territory, often with hopes of fleeing the beleaguered enclave.

While attacks on Israeli civilians by those infiltrating from Gaza are rare, in May, a Palestinian man, who crossed into Israel armed with several knives, attacked and lightly wounded a security guard some five kilometers from the border fence.

Palestinians in Lebanon are subjected to "apartheid" laws that prohibit them from 39 professions and from owning property, according to @WAFANewsEnglish.

Why are the "human rights" groups @hrw@amnesty silent about this discrimination? https://t.co/yAv76daIE1

— Tomer Ilan ?? (@tomer_ilan) September 18, 2021

International efforts to rescue vulnerable Afghans after the country’s takeover by the Taliban included the first-ever joint aid mission between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, almost one year after the two nations normalized ties.

The operation brought 41 Kabul Afghans — including human rights activists and members of girls’ cycling and robotic teams — across Afghanistan’s northern border into Tajikistan before flying them to the UAE, the UK’s Telegraph reported Thursday.

Yotam Polizer, CEO of the Israeli NGO IsraAID, described rescuers’ harrowing efforts to gather the passengers from a capital city suddenly under Taliban rule.

“The issue was they had to collect them from hiding,” he told the outlet. “[The rescuers] had to do rounds around the city in alleys to pick up these people and try not to create any suspicious movement.”

Those flown out of the country included a well-known singer, 19 members of the cycling team and three robotics team members, as well as female rights activists and a number of relatives.

Polizer said that after driving north, the group was temporarily delayed at the border with Tajikistan — stuck for two days in a safe house as they awaited permission from the Tajik government to enter.

“The stressful part really was around the border, there were a lot of Taliban in the area, they were not allowed to leave the shelter and we were very stressed that someone might find them,” he said.

Israeli aid workers met the escapees in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, and on Sept. 6, they boarded a jet bound for the UAE, chartered by Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams.

Trump's Doha Agreement only bound the United States to a "complete withdrawal of all remaining forces" with the "commitment and action" of the Taliban on its obligations as laid out in the accord. Those terms bound the Taliban not to "allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qaeda, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies," as well as "not to cooperate with groups or individuals threatening the security of the United States and its allies," and to "prevent any group or individual in Afghanistan from threatening the security of the United States and its allies."

Even prior to the final assaults on Kabul and the suicide bombings at Hamid Karzai International Airport, it was clear the Taliban was neck-deep in a proxy relationship with al-Qaeda via its relationship with the Haqqani network. Once again, the information that should have led to a pause and a hard-nosed assessment of how to complete the withdrawal in an orderly, safe way was ignored to meet a political deadline.

Instead, the Afghan men who helped the U.S., the women who breathed freedom for the first time, the military veterans from the U.S. and its allies who fought and died there all feel a sense of abandonment and frustration at this endgame incompetence. Those in the government who continue to hunt terrorist jihadis have lost their sources, bases of operation, and ability to quick-strike military targets that a resurgent al-Qaeda will now present there.

A drone strike in Kabul last month killed as many as 10 civilians, including seven children, the US military said on Friday, apologizing for what it called a “tragic mistake.”

The Pentagon had said the Aug. 29 strike targeted an Islamic State suicide bomber who posed an imminent threat to US-led troops at the airport as they completed the last stages of their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Even as reports of civilian casualties emerged, the top US general had described the attack as “righteous.”

The head of US Central Command, Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie, said that at the time he had been confident it averted an imminent threat to the forces at the airport.

“Our investigation now concludes that the strike was a tragic mistake,” McKenzie told reporters.

He said he now believed it unlikely that those killed were members of the local Islamic State affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan, or posed a threat to US troops. The Pentagon was considering reparations, McKenzie said.

The killing of civilians, in a strike carried out by a drone based outside Afghanistan, has raised questions about the future of US counter-terrorism strikes in the country, where intelligence gathering has been all but choked off since last month’s withdrawal.

And the confirmation of civilian deaths provides further fuel to critics of the chaotic US withdrawal and evacuation of Afghan allies, which has generated the biggest crisis yet for the Biden administration.

Since the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban jihadi organization) seized power in Kabul on August 15, the Taliban mujahideen's violence against journalists is growing by the day. The Taliban have regularly threatened and beaten reporters, photographers, and television cameramen. Although the Islamic Emirate had promised the world that it would respect the rights of the media, women, and minorities, reports show that the Taliban have abducted and tortured journalists during the first four weeks of the jihadi organization's rule in Afghanistan.[1]

Mullah Khairullah Khairkhah, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner and currently the Taliban's Minister of Information and Culture, told the media: "You are dangerous, that's our definition of media," and added: "You are like a pen that could turn into a shovel and destroy things."[2] The Taliban government's attitude toward the media has created a climate of fear among journalists, forcing many Afghan media organizations to shut down. According to a ToloNews report, at least 153 media organizations – radio, print, and television channels – have stopped publishing in 20 provinces of Afghanistan since the Taliban took power.[3]

After the Taliban took over, several reporters were beaten by jihadi fighters in various provinces. While the Taliban's torture of journalists in Kabul are noticed by the international press, such violence in other provinces goes unreported. "The Taliban's clash with journalists has been a concern for all reporters since they took control of Afghanistan and Kabul," said Parwiz Aminzada, the deputy head of a journalist's association in Parwan province.[4]

In late-August, TOLOnews reporter Ziar Yaad and his cameraman Baes Majidi were beaten by the Taliban in Kabul city while they were working on a report. "While we were taking footage, the Taliban came and, without asking us who we were... took my mobile phone and the camera of my cameraman," Yaad said, adding: "We showed our reporter badges but they came and slapped us and beat us with their guns."[5] On August 18, Taliban militants assaulted three journalists belonging to Ariana News, Pajhwok News, and Khurshid TV. Ariana News reporter Mahmoud Naimi and Pajhwok photographer Babrak Aminzadah were beaten while covering a demonstration in Nangarhar province, while Khorshid TV journalist Nawid Ahmad Kawesh was beaten at the Kabul international airport.[6]

On August 19, it emerged that the Taliban had forbade Shabnam Dawran, a female journalist at the nation's Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), from returning to work. "I wanted to work, but they did not allow me to work. They told me that the regime has changed, and you cannot work," Shabnam Dawran said.[7] Khadija, another female journalist at RTA, was not allowed to work. "I went to the office, but I was not allowed in. Later other colleagues were banned, too. We talked with our new director who has been appointed by the Taliban," Khadija said, adding: "There has been a change in the programs; they broadcast their desired programs; there are no female presenters or female journalists.[8]

Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers set up a ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” in the building that once housed the Women’s Affairs Ministry, escorting out World Bank staffers Saturday as part of the forced move.

It’s the latest troubling sign that the Taliban are restricting women’s rights as they settle into government, just a month since they overran the capital of Kabul. In their first period of rule in the 1990s, the Taliban had denied girls and women the right to education and barred them from public life.

Separately, three explosions targeted Taliban vehicles in the eastern provincial capital of Jalalabad on Saturday, killing three people and wounding 20, witnesses said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Islamic State militants, headquartered in the area, are enemies of the Taliban.

The Taliban are facing major economic and security problems as they attempt to govern, and a growing challenge by IS insurgents would further stretch their resources.

In Kabul, a new sign was up outside the women’s affairs ministry, announcing it was now the “Ministry for Preaching and Guidance and the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.”

Staff of the World Bank’s $100 million Women’s Economic Empowerment and Rural Development Program, which was run out of the Women’s Affairs Ministry, were escorted off the grounds Saturday, said program member Sharif Akhtar, who was among those being removed.

The UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Friday saying that Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers need to establish an inclusive government that has “the full, equal and meaningful participation of women” and upholds human rights.

The resolution adopted by the UN’s most powerful body also extends the current mandate of the UN political mission in Afghanistan for six months and delivers a clear message that its 15 members will be watching closely what the Taliban do going forward.

The statement reflects widespread disappointment over the recently announced interim Taliban government that left out women and minorities, heralding what could be a return to harsh Taliban practices during their 1996-2001 rule.

The Taliban have promised an inclusive government and a more moderate form of Islamic rule than during their previous rule. But many Afghans, especially women, are deeply skeptical and fear a roll back of rights gained over the last two decades.

Since their sweep into power last month and the departure of the last US forces after 20 years of war, the Taliban have broken up several protests by women and their supporters demanding equal rights from the new rulers.

"UN envoy meets new Afghan interior minister wanted by U.S."

"Haqqani, head of the eponymous network founded by his father, is one of the FBI's most wanted men with a reward of $10 million for information leading to his arrest."https://t.co/7KL9fZGy6c

— Richard Goldberg (@rich_goldberg) September 17, 2021

Iran’s chief military nuclear scientist and the father of its weapons program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in November 2020 by the Mossad using a remote-controlled artificial intelligence operated sniper machine gun, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

From the start, there has been controversy about how Fakhrizadeh was killed, but The Jerusalem Post can now confirm the accuracy of the Times report regarding the remote-controlled gun.

When he was assassinated, multiple intelligence sources told the Post that the killing of Fakhrizadeh might be as significant a setback to Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb as the destruction of its Natanz nuclear facility in July 2020.

According to the report, “Iranian agents working for the Mossad had parked a blue Nissan Zamyad pickup truck on the side of the road connecting the town of Absard to the main highway. The spot was on a slight elevation with a view of approaching vehicles. Hidden beneath tarpaulins and decoy construction material in the truck bed was a 7.62-mm sniper machine gun.”

“Around 1 p.m., the hit team received a signal that Mr. Fakhrizadeh, his wife and a team of armed guards in escort cars were about to leave for Absard, where many of Iran’s elite have second homes and vacation villas,” said the report.

Next, the report details how the sniper who took out Fakhrizadeh did so remotely from Israel, over 1,600 kilometers away, since the hit squad had long ago left Iran.

The gun which was used was a special model of a Belgian-made FN MAG machine gun attached to an advanced robotic apparatus. It was smuggled into the country in small pieces over several months because, taken together, all of its components would have weighed around a full ton.

One new detail in the report was that the explosives used to destroy evidence of the remote-gun partially failed, leaving enough of the gun intact for the Iranians to figure out what had happened.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday reasserted the Islamic Republic’s longstanding ban on competitive sport with Israelis, and promised support for athletes disciplined by international bodies for respecting it.

Iran does not recognize Israel — with top officials like Khamenei regularly calling for its destruction — and its athletes usually refrain from facing Israeli opponents, whether by forfeiting the match or by simply not participating.

But while their actions earn them praise from top officials back home, they have sometimes resulted in disciplinary measures from international bodies.

“Any Iranian athlete worthy of the name cannot shake hands with a representative of the criminal regime in order to win a medal,” Khamenei told a reception for Iran’s medallists from the Tokyo 2020 Games.

“The illegitimate, bloodthirsty… Zionist regime tries to win legitimacy by taking part in international sporting events attended by the world arrogance (Washington and the West), and our athletes cannot just stand idly by,” he added, in comments posted on his official website.

In Tokyo, Iran won seven Olympic medals, three of them gold, as well as 24 Paralympic medals.

Khamenei instructed “the sports and foreign ministries, as well as the judiciary, to deploy their legal resources to support athletes from this and other Muslim countries, like the Algerian who was recently disciplined.”

On Friday, a Canadian teacher’s union suspended its censure against the University of Toronto, imposed over accusations that the school had inappropriately denied a job to a legal scholar due to pressure from a pro-Israel donor.

In April, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), the union of 72,000 academic professionals in Canada, denounced University of Toronto officials for not hiring German law professor Valentina Azarova as director of the law faculty’s International Human Rights Program. Alleging that it had “violated academic freedom,” CAUT urged its members not to accept appointments or speaking engagements there.

While Azarova had drawn criticism for anti-Israel activism, an independent review in March determined that the university had based its decision on Azarova’s inability to acquire a work visa.

On Friday, CAUT announced it was temporarily “pausing” the censure, after the University of Toronto had re-offered Azarova the job for which she was previously considered. CAUT said it will lift its censure entirely pending the extension of “academic freedom protections to academic managerial positions and developing policies that prohibit donor interference in internal academic affairs.”

The Jewish group B’nai Brith Canada — which has previously characterized charges against the university’s hiring committee as an “antisemitic fantasy” — responded to the CAUT announcement on Friday.

“Valentina Azarova should have not been recommended by the search committee in the first place,” the group said on Twitter. “The suggestion that her initial non-hiring had anything to do with Jewish money and influence remains an unacceptable antisemitic trope.”

A Los Angeles school classroom has been pictured covered in flags and posters that include the messages 'F*** the police' and 'F*** America.'

Pictures posted to social media detail anti-America propaganda on the walls of Alexander Hamilton High School located in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

They also included a pride, transgender pride, Black Lives Matter and Palestinian flag. Meanwhile, a stars and stripes flag could be seen flung over a piece of wooden furniture in the corner of the room.

Although the pictures were taken by a pupil at the school, they were seen by a parent who called them a 'disgusting brainwashing of students with taxpayer dollars.'

Alongside an anti-police poster, an anti-American poster depicts Christopher Columbus and the U.S. as being tied to the Ku Klux Klan, the New York Post reported.

One poster states 'F*** Amerikkka, This is Native Land' while the anti-police poster goes into some detail as to the stance.

Remember when CUNY Law student Nerdeen Kiswani threatened to set a black man on fire over an IDF sweatshirt?

She and her group (WOL Palestine) are now targeting Jewish orgs in NYC during their "Globalize the Intifada" gestapo like targeting event. https://t.co/Y9MznhzaNgpic.twitter.com/kLX1BoyO4i

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 18, 2021

This is a gross disruption to business as well as highly frightening to children.

Why is this allowed @NYPDMTN ? https://t.co/TW5Vtv6sjD

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 18, 2021

Listeners wouldn’t know it, but even one of the Palestinian guests on the segment doesn’t quite agree with NPR’s narrative. Nasser Jumaa was a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an internationally designated terror organization responsible for dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israelis. And even he has been more willing than NPR to place responsibility on Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian leadership.

Jumaa certainly faults Israel, as would be expected, and he does believe 9/11 changed international opinion. But unlike NPR and Estrin, he hasn’t pretended the attacks changed Palestinian behavior. “It was clear that the Israelis closed the door on us, but also—let me be frank—the Palestinian leadership under Arafat was folly, mistaken,” he told the Independent in 2005.

Part of that folly was continuing terrorism after the attacks on America. “The resistance after 11 September should have kept itself far away from terrorism,” Jumaa said. It didn’t. “We…should have behaved more wisely,” he continued, saying it was the ongoing Palestinian terrorism that allowed Israel to make the case after 9/11 that the Palestinian groups were, like al Qaida, terrorists. And Jumaa continued to say what NPR wouldn’t:

Hamas’s strategy of suicide bombing, which helped to “drag” the Fatah factions into suicide attacks on Israeli civilians, was, he believes, a catastrophe. “The leadership led by Arafat took us to disaster … This is the fact.”

In another interview that year, he made similar arguments. The “resistance,” he told Al-Ahram Weekly, “made a number of mistakes.” One was that different Palestinian groups “vied off one another, without a clear vision, specifically in regard to the strategy of suicide operations, which in the end classified the Palestinians and the Palestinian resistance as terrorists,” an acknowledgement that his own group’s suicide bombings weren’t, as NPR suggested, simply a response to Israel’s assassination of the terror leader Karmi, but were part of a competition between terror groups over which could cause more destruction.

Why such admissions didn’t appear in NPR’s segment, which after all quoted Jumaa, is anyone’s guess. Did he simply not repeat for NPR what he’s said elsewhere? Maybe. But considering the other liberties taken in Estrin’s segment, it would be fair to ask whether such forthrightness about Palestinian responsibility just isn’t what the broadcaster is looking for.

Our existing guides – Love Thy Neighbour, designed specifically for Church of England schools, and Love Your Neighbour, for Catholic schools – have also been updated to cover new cultural developments and manifestations of anti-Jewish racism, including with reference to the social media platform TikTok, Black Lives Matter and the antisemitic grime artist Wiley.

These guides, like so many of our projects, represent the hard work of our dedicated expert volunteers, who have poured their wealth of experience in education and teaching antisemitism to young people into these guides.

Binyomin Gilbert, Programme Manager at Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “We are extremely proud of our teachers’ guides, which, thanks to the efforts of our tireless volunteers, have enabled countless schoolchildren of all ages to learn about antisemitism from their own teachers. These guides provide teachers with accessible resources to teach a complex topic and satisfy important requirements of the national curriculum. Following the success of our guides in the Church of England and Catholic school systems, we are delighted to launch our non-denominational guide for wider use in schools across the country. We continue to pursue innovative ways to discharge our mandate to educate society, including our youth, about the dangers of antisemitism and what they can do to stand up against it.”

You can download the guides here or visit BBC Teach here.

A senior imam in France who in a sermon recited a religious text commanding Muslims to kill Jews has been acquitted of incitement to antisemitic hate charges.

Mohamed Tatai, the rector of the Great Mosque of Toulouse, had no desire to incite hatred in his sermon from 2017, the Correctional Tribunal of Toulouse ruled Tuesday. The sermon came days after news broke that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Jewish community leaders, who broke relations with Tatai and his mosque following the discovery of his sermon, protested the ruling. Tatai leads an interfaith dialogue group called the Circle for Civil Dialogue.

Franck Teboul, the president of the Toulouse chapter of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, said it was reminiscent of a recent decision in France not to try the killer of a Paris Jewish woman who during the 2017 slaying of Sarah Halimi spewed antisemitic slurs and shouted about Allah. A court ruled that Kabili Traore was too high on marijuana to make him responsible for his actions.

“Even when you kill a Jew you’re not convicted but considered crazy,” Teboul told France Bleu. “So you tell thousands at a mosque to kill Jews and hide behind a centuries-old text to avoid conviction.”

A Canadian Jewish group has revealed details of a shocking antisemitic assault on an elderly Jewish man in Toronto, during which he was punched unconscious.

The incident took place on July 28 at a liquor store where the victim worked. According to B’nai Brith Canada — an organization assisting victims of antisemitism in Canada — the accused, a 26-year-old man, allegedly entered the liquor store and attempted to purchase beer. When asked by the cashier to produce identification showing he was of legal age, he became belligerent, prompting another employee, the victim, to approach in support of the cashier.

The accused then called the victim “a dirty f***ing Jew,” and lunged at him. As the melee developed, the attacker also hit the employee in the back with a wine bottle, threw other items at him and finally punched him in the face, briefly knocking him unconscious. The victim required stitches and was forced to take more than a week off work.

The suspect was arrested three weeks later and charged with seven criminal counts, including two counts of assault and two counts of assault with a weapon. B’nai Brith confirmed that Toronto Police are treating the incident as a hate crime.

“This deeply disturbing attack is yet another incident of antisemitic violence in Canadian cities,” said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada on Wednesday. “In the wake of July’s National Summit on Antisemitism, it is imperative that all levels of government and law enforcement take action and work with the Jewish community to stem this flow of violence and hate.”

Israeli company Utilis won the inaugural Innovation Award of the nonprofit American Water Works Association for its Asterra product line using patented algorithms to locate and assess underground leaks and other hazards around critical infrastructure from ground-penetrating satellite images.

The AWWA is an international scientific and educational society founded in 1881 to provide solutions for effective management of water. It is the largest organization of water supply professionals in the world.

Since 2016, Utilis technology used in multiple verticals around the globe has resulted in saving more than 9,000 million gallons of potable water and 22,000 MWH of energy per year, in support of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. An average of 3.3 leaks are found per day at each subscribing utility.

The Asterra division is headquartered in Israel with offices in the United States and United Kingdom. CEO Elly Perets said the company has expanded from leak detection to data provision for the greater infrastructure industry.

An eight-member ensemble comprised of Israeli musicians with disabilities performed on Friday at an online gathering about disability inclusion, as part of the 71st session of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Committee for Europe.

The Shalva Band performed “A Million Dreams” from the film “The Greatest Showman,” a song they first performed at the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv.

Before the start of the track, vocalist Dina Samteh told viewers, “We are all humans. We have our differences. And that’s what makes our lives interesting. Far too often, persons with disabilities face barriers and stigma, and don’t receive the health services they need.”

The band’s lead vocalist, Anael Khalifa, added, “I think of what the world could be if we broke down these barriers: a world of respect and acceptance. It is our responsibility to ensure that our voices are being heard and that no one is left behind.”

The online event on Friday was co-hosted by the European Disability Forum, Germany, Israel, Norway, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It was a side event of the 71st session of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe, a three-day agenda that formally ended on Wednesday.

In May 2021, the World Health Assembly adopted resolution WHA74.8 on the “highest attainable standard of health” for persons with disabilities. The goal of Friday’s event was to raise awareness among member states about the resolution, identify ways to highlight the importance of and advance disability inclusion in healthcare, and determine the next steps for advancing the resolution’s goals in Europe.

For years, to fulfill my second promise to Mom, I took on an 'alias' in the UAE.

I told people my last name had Polish Catholic (not Ashkenazi Jewish) roots.

To make my ‘story’ even more credible, I took Easter and Christmas off from work every year.

Sorry, former bosses!

— David Zabinsky (@DavidZabinsky) September 17, 2021

One of the most frequently asked questions about Sukkot is why it takes place in the fall, and not in the spring, when the weather is more suited to the outdoor aspects of the festival. Answers are abundant, but the answer that has always struck me as particularly sharp is the one suggested by Rashi’s grandson, Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir (1085-1158; “Rashbam”).

He suggests that God deliberately chose the fall, after the harvest is over, when an agricultural society feels most successful and complacent. The storehouses are full, life is good, and there is nothing to be worried about. It is exactly now that God asks us to leave the comfort of our homes and spend some time in a temporary dwelling — although, despite their ramshackle transience, we are expected to decorate and make them as nice as our permanent homes, or even nicer. And then, after being in them for a week, we dismantle them completely, and they’re gone.

As we approach the winter, God wants us to be aware just how temporary our livelihood and security really is — or can become; it’s here one day, and gone the next. Because, in the final analysis, it is not our status, our homes, our possessions, or our strength that give us security — it is God. And all of it can be gone in the blink of an eye.

All of us in the Western world are endlessly dazzled by our prowess and self-diagnosed superiority, as we navel-gaze and shoot the breeze on every topic besides for our own existential vulnerability, while at the same time the barbarians are at the gate waiting to turn our harvest festival into the harshest winter we have ever experienced.

That’s why we need Sukkot: so that we spend time reflecting on just how quickly our world can turn upside-down and be gone, with the edifice that is our home taken apart, leaving us to face the elements without the protection we took for granted. It is this Sukkot phenomenon that should have been the strategic takeaway of the Suez Crisis. Had that been the case, the Afghanistan situation might have unfolded quite differently. And this time the stakes are far higher, which is the reason I am so worried. Let us all hope and pray for a mild winter, and that spring comes much earlier than expected.

Shabbat Shalom from the soldiers who keep Israel’s skies safe! pic.twitter.com/u9I3xdHkLA

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 17, 2021

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I witness pro-Israeli arguments online every day – and one of the things that always depresses me is when I see those defending Israel get stuck down pointless rabbit holes. Anti-Israel activists are only interested in the present ‘what’ – as in ‘the prisoner’, ‘the checkpoint’, ‘the wall’ – and they do this because this is where they are comfortable. These propagandists deliberately avoid the ‘why’ because the truth is quicksand for them. Such as why the ‘wall’ was built in the first place. And why on earth would anyone argue over a ‘settlement’ like Ariel – if the person you are arguing with thinks that Tel Aviv is an ‘illegal settlement’ too. This cannot be stressed often enough – it is simply foolish to fight on their turf.

Nowhere is this more visible that in discussion over what they call the ‘Nakba’ – the Arab defeat in a war that they wanted, started and lost. A war in which they sought to annihilate the Jews. Arguing from within their narrative is like bitterly arguing over the size of the thrones in the Narnian Capital ‘Cair Paravel’.

A recent comment piece in the Jewish Chronicle provides a perfect example. One of our naive and privileged youth wrote a piece bemoaning the fact that she wasn’t prepared by her Jewish school to fight for Israel on campus – because as she sees it – ‘we do not talk about the Palestinian narrative in a meaningful way’. Her answer includes introducing ‘Israel-critical’ groups like Yachad into schools and to teach our children about the ‘Nakba’. This is an absurd and submissive response to the problem. Her suggested solution would send an entire generation down the rabbit hole.

The Nakba narrative is a lie. Should the UK have taught children Soviet propaganda so that they would have been better prepared to defend the UK at uni too? Yes campus is hostile. Some places have adopted a far darker and more Islamist vision. I know it is deeply uncomfortable for young Zionists, but submission is not the way forward. If we Jews do not defend ourselves – then who will defend us? Adopting the lies of our enemies onto our own platforms will only lead to self destruction.

The Nakba – as it is described by our enemies – never happened. They have taken isolated incidents, such as the disputed events of Deir Yassin or what took place in Lod – and built an entire fairytale around them. The truth of 1948 – the foundation of everything that followed – is very simple and we should never lose sight of it – nor stop teaching it to our children. The truth can sometimes be really unpopular – but it does not stop being the truth.

What follows is a list of pillars and myths. The pillars are the foundations of the self inflicted distaster that was to befall the Arab population. The myths are the lies upon which the history is being rewritten.

In his passionate attempt to restore the plight of the Jews to one academic’s mangled history of the period, a scholar of Iraqi-Jewish origin has revealed that the 1941 pro-Nazi government in Iraq was planning to intern Jews in a ‘harsh ghetto’ from which ‘they would not come out.’

London-based Dr E. N., who has 600 academic publications to his name, says that a senior Arab Muslim officer tipped off a group of Jewish army officers that there were plans to intern Jews in ‘terrains of the military’, a place where Jews would supposedly go in and never come out.

Following a coup on 1st April 1941, a virulently anti-Jewish, pro-Nazi government led by prime minister Rashid Ali al-Ghailani ruled Iraq until 31 May 1941 when it was defeated and put to flight by the British army.

The terrified Jewish officers, who had been recalled into the Iraqi army during the two months that the pro-Axis government ruled Iraq, ‘felt powerless’ at news of the internment plans. They would meet at the home of Dr N.’s grandfather, a Jew who felt compelled to resign from his post as commander in charge of the Baghdad Royal Arsenal in 1939, and converse in German and Turkish so that they would not be understood.

According to Dr N., the internment plans remained in place well after the pro-Nazi government had been deposed – until the defeat of General Rommel in the autumn of 1942.

The pro-Nazi government had already established a Jewish ghetto in the city of Diwaniyya.

Dr N.’s revelations come in his review of a book by John Broich, Blood, Oil, and The Axis: The Allied resistance against a Fascist state in Iraq and the Levant, 1941 (Abrams Press, New York 2019) The review, entitled A moral dilemma, appears in a book edited by Dr N.titled For the centennial of Berthold Laufer’s classic Sino-Iranica (1919): Sino-Iranica’s Centennial. Between East and West, Exchanges of Material and Ideational Culture. Broich also contributed a cover story on the 1941 British conquest of Baghdad in the July 1919 issue of the BBC History magazine.

When the former Trump administration announced that it was moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in December 2017, the reaction in the Muslim world and among Muslim communities in the West was predictably furious. In the Friday sermons that followed that announcement, several imams around the world denounced Israel in uncomplicated antisemitic terms, many of them quoting the same hadith — a saying attributed to the prophet Muhammed — that speaks of a mass slaughter of Jews by the Muslim faithful.

Writing about these sermons at the time, I highlighted three that were delivered at mosques in the United States in that same week, all of which spoke about Jews in genocidal terms. Two of the sermons — one at a mosque in Houston, Texas, the other in Raleigh, NC — cited a rather bloodcurdling hadith that reads as follows: “Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say, oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me — come and kill him.”

That same hadith surfaced at a sermon given by the Imam of the Grand Mosque in the city of Toulouse in southwest France, Mohamed Tataiat, right after the embassy move. Resident in France since 1985 and occupying the post in Toulouse in 1987, Tataiat has been hailed by his supporters as a voice of moderation and enthusiastic backer of interfaith dialogue with Christians and Jews.

Last week, the criminal court in Toulouse concurred with that dubious assessment, acquitting Tataiat of the incitement charges that were filed against him by CRIF, the main Jewish organization in France, as well as the National Office for Vigilance Against Antisemitism (BNVCA) and the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA). After a three-month trial, the court deemed that in quoting the hadith, it had not been Tataiat’s intention to “provoke hatred or discrimination.”

Since the authenticity of this hadith is not in question, one can understand why the act of simply quoting it might not be regarded as a criminal offense, even in countries, like France, with stringent hate-speech laws on the books. But as with any kind of hate speech, context is key.

Today, the Palestinian Authority, under the auspices of the ICC and various UN councils, has been vigorously working to fully exploit Durban IV for yet another savage attack. Israel’s tactics, however, have remained unchanged: plead with the countries participating in the conference to abstain from voting. Lashing back at our detractors isn’t even an option, lest we incur the wrath of the rest of the world.

The assumption that in any war against radical human rights organizations we will face another wave of anti-Israel hatred must be shattered.

In the face of relentless lies one must take decisive steps, and stop stuttering. We must prevent the entry of BDS activists into the country, just as France, the United States, Britain and Canada bar entry to their soil from those who threaten to prosecute them.

We must also exact a price from UN envoys who pen false reports on Israel Defense Forces operations.

Still, how we can complain about steps taken by other countries if Israeli authorities themselves become active partners in the boycott of Israel and turn their backs on the fight against antisemitism?

Israel’s attorney general is currently preventing Jewish business owners in Judea and Samaria from suing the UN Human Rights Council for its “blacklist,” even though it is discriminatory and racist.

The Jerusalem court has asked Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to rule on the matter six times since August 2020, but he refuses for fear of upsetting the United Nations, claiming that his representatives are negotiating to soften the decisions.

So before we point the finger of blame at countries worldwide, it would be better for the country’s top officials to stop behaving like exiled Jews who do not believe in our right to the state.

No Western state has submitted candidacy for its leader to give a speech or lead a roundtable at Wednesday’s event marking the 20th anniversary of the World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, which was marked with antisemitism and anti-Israel bias.

At the beginning of September, UN General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir asked each group of member states to put in a bid for a president or prime minister to address the opening ceremony of Durban IV, and to send a representative to lead a roundtable on the topic of people of African origin.

Andorran Deputy Permanent Representative at the UN Joan Josep Lopez informed Bozkir in a letter a week later, “We have not received yet any candidature at the level of Head of State or Head of Government and no expression of interest for the position of Chair of the two roundtables.”

The 28-state Western European and Others Group (WEOG) at the UN includes countries across Europe, as well as Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Israel. The US is an observer.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said the lack of interest from anyone in the Western group “means Israel succeeded in labeling the event antisemitic and anti-Israel.”

Romania joined the list of countries boycotting Durban IV over its antisemitism, bringing the number to 20. The countries skipping the event, all of which are WEOG members, are: Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Slovakia, Slovenia, the UK and the US. Belgium downgraded its attendance from the ministerial level to the diplomatic level.

Layered into this problem is a tendency among many Jewish groups and many Jews to view antisemitism only through the prism of their historical memories and contemporary partisan prisms. This leads groups like the Anti-Defamation League to see Jew-hatred as primarily a problem of the far-right, while either ignoring or minimizing the way antisemitism has always found a home on the left. The efforts of the Palestinians and their Third World and Islamic allies to use not merely the language of the left to delegitimize Israel’s existence but the structures of international organizations to pursue their goals is largely off the radar screens of Jewish defense groups. These groups have been too focused on looking for enemies among the extremists of the far-right while regarding anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist invective from the left as less threatening.

To point this out is not to deny that anti-Semitism also exists on the right, and that it can pose a genuine danger. But the almost exclusive focus on the right — motivated in part by the partisan priorities of some of those tasked with fighting antisemitism — led to a degree of complacency about the spirit of Durban, the antisemitism of the United Nations, and intersectionalism that caused it to metastasize in the last decade almost without the antisemitism monitors noticing.

It is also true that Israeli diplomacy has largely abandoned the field in international organizations both because its diplomats focus on other crucial matters and because the Jewish state has become inured to the influence of a United Nations that remains dead set against it.

The consequences of this failure are readily apparent in 2021. Other than a few groups that have taken up this task, the organized Jewish world has largely failed to recognize that allowing these slanders to become entrenched in international discourse can have a catastrophic impact on Jewish security. This is partly a matter of underestimating the influence of UN agencies. But intersectional ideology has taken hold of academia and, like most toxic ideas that begin on college campuses, migrated to the rest of society. The delegitimization of Jewish nationalism and Jewish nationalism alone has created a reality in which antisemitism has received a permission slip from intellectuals, activists, and opinion-influencers in the media in a way that would have been unthinkable two decades ago. And rather than crying “stop,” liberal groups like the ADL and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs are cheerleading for these dangerous notions.

It’s time the organized Jewish world started treating this problem and its connections to an increasingly popular variant of left-wing antisemitism in the United States seriously. The failure of major Jewish groups isn’t just a disgrace; it is creating a dangerous environment in which they have effectively cleared a path for those who hate Israel and the Jews.

On September 10, the Belgium government announced it would send “non-political representation, possibly a diplomat,” to the UN’s event commemorating the 20th anniversary of the infamous World Conference on Racism (also known as “the Durban Conference”). “Durban IV” will occur on September 22 at the UN headquarters in New York.

In sharp contrast to Belgium, twenty democracies have announced plans not to attend Durban IV, protesting the antisemitism the process embodies. The original 2001 conference was characterized by virulent antisemitism, especially from participating NGOs.

Similarly, Belgium funds a number of NGOs with links to Palestinian terror groups, and which lead the political warfare and demonization targeting Israel (including BDS and “lawfare”) that was launched at Durban.

In addition, Brussels has been criticized for its apparent ambivalence in the face of antisemitism within its borders, involving politicians, senior government employees, government campaigns, and NGOs that promote antisemitism.

Belgian Funding for PFLP-Linked NGOs
In 2017-2021, Belgium granted at least €3 million in funding to projects involving Palestinian NGOs linked to the EU-designated terror group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
- In December 2019, employees of Palestinian NGOs funded by Belgium were arrested and are currently standing trial for their involvement in the August 2019 bombing and murder of a 17-year old Israeli, Rena Shnerb.
- In February 2020, Belgium invited a senior member of the PFLP-linked Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) to brief the UN Security Council. Belgium rescinded the invitation following a public information campaign, in which NGO Monitor participated, that highlighted DCI-P’s link to terror.
- For more information, see NGO Monitor’s report on “Belgian Funding for PFLP-Linked NGOs.”

Standing up to @UN racism embodied, this time, in the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Durban Jew hate-fest.

??"Fight Racism, not Jews: The United Nations and the Durban Deceit"??

Today, Sept. 19, from 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM EST

Watch live here:https://t.co/MGiBK59cfLpic.twitter.com/jrsMPgQ88k

— Maurice Hirsch, Adv. ???? ??''? ????? ???? (@MauriceHirsch4) September 19, 2021

GOOD: ???? Romania pulls out of Durban IV.

Also out:
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???? Italy
???? Israel
???? Czech
???? France
???? Cyprus
???? Austria
???? Greece
???? Croatia
???? Canada
???? Bulgaria
???? Slovakia
???? Slovenia
???? Hungary
???? Australia
???? Germany
???? Netherlands
???? New Zealandhttps://t.co/pusCImgpKvpic.twitter.com/G0ohYqyt0G

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 18, 2021

Israeli Ambassador to the US Gilad Erdan criticized Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for submitting an amendment to the annual US defense spending bill to block the sale of precision-guided munitions to Israel.

“I would expect a Congressperson to understand that Israel is defending its citizens against Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” tweeted Erdan on Saturday night. “Your amendment further legitimizes their heinous attacks against innocent civilians, as well as antisemitic lies.”

Erdan added that the strategic alliance between Israel and the US is “critical to the security of our two countries. Israel is a world leader in the fight against terrorism, and our partnership has helped prevent terrorist attacks against American citizens many times in the past.”

The amendment submitted last week by Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic representative from New York, would prevent the transfer of $735 million worth of joint direct attack munition (JDAM) tail kits to Israel. The kits turn unguided bombs into GPS guided missiles.

In a tweet, Ocasio-Cortez said her amendment was “over the bombing of Palestinian civilians, media centers,” apparently referring to the bombing, during an 11-day conflict in May, of a building in Gaza City that housed the offices of the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera.

Israel has said that the building was used by Hamas to try to disrupt the Iron Dome missile defense system during the conflict. The Israeli military gave occupants of the building an hour to evacuate before it carried out its airstrike. No one was injured, but the high-rise was flattened into a pile of rubble.

Israeli forces on Sunday caught the last two of six Palestinian terrorists who had tunneled out of a maximum-security jail nearly two weeks ago.

Iham Kamamji and Munadil Nafiyat, both members of the Islamic Jihad terrorist group, were apprehended in the West Bank city of Jenin following a 13-day manhunt.

According to the military, special forces comprising IDF, Shin Bet security service, and Israel Police troops, surrounded the two's hideout and a short while afterward they surrendered and were taken into custody.

The IDF said both fugitives were unarmed when they surrendered, nor did they attempt to resist arrest. Both were handed over to the Israel Security Agency for interrogation.

The operation was overseen by Brig. Gen. Yaniv Alaluf, commander of the IDF's Judea and Samaria Division, which is responsible for the West Bank, and by Col. Arik Moyal, the military said.

"The Police Counterterrorism Unit, Shin Bet, and the Haruv Reconnaissance Unit entered the city of Jenin, sealed off and surrounded the house, including gunfire around the building in which the fugitive terrorists were hiding. They came out unarmed and without resistance," the IDF said in a statement.

"The two terrorists surrendered and came out without opening fire. The arrest was conducted smoothly," said Lt. Col. Alon Hanoni, deputy commander of the IDF's Menashe Regional Command, which is responsible for the Jenin area.

The arrests mark the end of an extensive search for the six inmates who fled Israel's Gilboa prison

The last two inmates of the six escapees from Israel's Gilboa prison were recaptured in the West Bank city of Jenin, the IDF announced on Sunday.

The two prisoners, Iham Kamamji and Munadil Nafiyat, were apprehended through the collaborative efforts of Israel's Shin Bet security services, counterterrorism police, and the IDF.

One militant says the escapees that were captured by the IDF early Sunday were not protected by the factions because they were located in eastern Jenin away from where the 'resistance groups' were located. More excuses will likely be heard over the coming days.

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) September 19, 2021

The inquiry into the Gilboa Prison break has to dig through all the dirt, not with a spoon but a D9, and bulldoze through all the other issues that have yet to see the light. It also needs to be as free as it can from political pressure because the security of the country is at stake.

Along with a commission investigating how the prisoners escaped, Israel’s Defense Ministry, IDF and Israel Police need to fix the holes in the West Bank fence. It cannot be that people, let alone high-security fugitives, are able to cross in and out of Israel through the numerous holes in the fence.

Nafayat and Kahamji crossed from Israel into the West Bank and could have very likely crossed back into Israel if they had wanted to. The issue of the holes in the fence is not a new phenomenon.

Thousands of Palestinians cross into Israel on a daily basis through the holes that are cut along various sections of the security barrier. It’s such a popular way for Palestinians to get into Israel that some even upload TikTok videos showing themselves making their way through the holes.

While many cross in order to work inside Israel, several Palestinians who have illegally crossed into Israel in the past have carried out deadly attacks.

This issue needs to be fixed. Unlike the warnings about the prison break, this cannot be ignored.

PLO Executive Committee member Wasel Abu Yusef praised the escaped prisoners as “heroes” and called on Palestinians to continue launching campaigns in support of all the security prisoners.

In an interview with the PA’s Voice of Palestine radio station, he called on the International Criminal Court “to expedite its investigation into the crimes of the occupation against the prisoners.”

Another PLO official, Ahmed Majdalani, praised the six fugitives for bringing the issue of all prisoners to the attention of the international community.

The PA leadership was planning to raise the issue of the prisoners before the United Nations General Assembly during its upcoming meeting in New York, he said.

Qadoura Fares, head of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Prisoner Club, said the six prisoners who escaped from Gilboa Prison “restored the unity of the Palestinian street and proved the importance of unity.”

Hamas said the Palestinian “resistance” groups would continue to work toward securing the release of all the security prisoners.

The time has come to “cut off the Israeli arm that kidnapped” the two fugitives in Jenin, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said.

Senior Hamas official Ahmed Bahr condemned Israel for recapturing the escaped prisoners in Jenin.

The arrest of the two fugitives “does not mean the end of the story,” he said, adding that the escape had dealt a severe blow to Israel. Hamas would do its utmost to free all the security prisoners, he added.

The rearrest of the six fugitives “will not erase the impact of the defeat inflicted on the occupation,” PIJ said in a statement.

It reiterated its pledge to continue working for the release of all the prisoners and held Israel responsible for any harm to the lives of the inmates.

PIJ also called on the military wings of the Palestinian factions “to remain in a state of alert and high readiness to defend the prisoners.”

Doctored images of the last two recaptured fugitives circulated on Palestinian social media on Sunday, showing the two men grinning after being captured by Israeli security forces nearly two weeks after their escape.

Iham Kamamji and Munadil Nafiyat, both members of the Islamic Jihad terror group, were apprehended in the West Bank city of Jenin, the Israel Defense Forces said early Sunday. Kamamji and Nafiyat were among six Palestinian security prisoners who escaped from Gilboa Prison in northern Israel earlier this month. The arrests of the two fugitives — a week after the four other escaped prisoners were recaptured in northern Israel — brings to a close a massive 13-day manhunt following one of the worst jailbreaks in Israel’s history.

After the Shin Bet released images of the two men following their capture on Sunday, the photos were doctored to show the nabbed fugitives smiling broadly — just as was done to images of the four men recaptured last weekend.

Among many Palestinians, the fugitives have been widely regarded as “heroes” who succeeded in freeing themselves from multiple life sentences. The jailbreak was followed by heightened tensions in the West Bank, a stabbing attack in Jerusalem, several attempted attacks, and sporadic rocket fire from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel.

Similar images circulated last weekend of the first four escapees to be recaptured by Israeli security forces: Zakaria Zubeidi, Yaqoub Qadiri, Mohammad al-Arida and Mahmoud al-Arida. The doctored photos disseminated of the fugitives after their capture turned their true-life grim and tired expressions into defiant grins to the cameras.

A nurse in a COVID ward at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem was attacked by stone-throwers on her way back from a shift on Yom Kippur, N12 reported.

The nurse, Shaked Alkobi from the Kfar Eldad settlement in southeast Gush Etzion, was on her way back from a shift in the COVID labor ward at Shaarei Zedek on Wednesday evening at 11 pm. At the entrance to the Har Homa neighborhood, her car was attacked by a number of kids aged 12-15. In the past, Haredi youth have thrown stones at vehicles that have driven on Shabbat or holidays, but Har Homa is not a Haredi neighborhood and the youth didn't look ultra-Orthodox.

"At 11 p.m. I finished my shift at the hospital and on the way home [my car] was smashed by stones," Alkobi said in an interview to N12.

"I initially wanted to speak to these kids, I began to slow down but I saw that they were continuing to throw stones like crazy. I was terrified and escaped the scene," she added.

"I was hysterical and didn't know what to do," she added. "My crazy frustration Grew because I could not understand - why are they doing such a thing? I am a first-responder for United Hatzalah and I have a Shaare Zedek sticker on the side of my car.

"Even if I were not a medical worker - this is a vicious and shameful act," Alkobi continued. "The kids threw large stones on me and I do not want to imagine what would have happened if one of them had hit me in the head."

"I am a mother to three kids, and their car seats were covered in glass," she said.

CNN host Fareed Zakaria Suggests Israeli "Assault" on Hamas is to Blame for Lack of Peace

Is Israel's response to Hamas attacks the reason that there's no peace? That's the position CNN host Fareed Zakaria seems to be taking.

A briefing compiled and sent out in Zakaria's name asks whether "the Abraham Accords succeeded, or have they failed miserably?" Four Arab nations have normalized relations with the Jewish state as part of the Trump administration-brokered accords.

Yet the briefing suggests that "Israel’s assault on Hamas positions in Gaza" is the reason why the conflict with the Palestinians remains unresolved.

As HonestReporting has repeatedly made clear, Hamas laid the groundwork for May's conflict by inciting violence in Jerusalem and atop the Temple Mount.

Zakaria has a history of misrepresenting reality in the Middle East, earlier falsely accusing Israel of "killing the two state solution."

Two men have been charged for an attack in which they allegedly hurled stones and fired fireworks at police officers, as well as blocking an ambulance in the northern town Umm al-Fahm during ethnic unrest that rocked the country in May, the police announced Sunday.

The suspects, aged 18 and 20, both residents of the Arab city, participated in a violent demonstration near the entrance of the city on May 11, Israel Police said in a statement. During the protest, the men also allegedly help set fire to a electric pole that supported a security camera.

The next night, an ambulance carrying a wounded police officer who was shot during violent clashes near the city’s entrance was attacked by a number of rioters including the two suspects, police said.

Police said the rioters blocked the ambulance, threw stones at it, broke its windows and tried to force open the door.

“This was in order to prevent the treatment of the wounded police officer and worsen his condition due to an ideological nationalist motive,” police charged.

The ambulance then turned back to the local Magen David Adom emergency services station, where the wounded officer was transferred to a police car that took him to another ambulance that was waiting outside of the city.

On September 5, 1972 at the Munich Olympics, Palestinian terrorists from the Fatah’s Black September terror organization took Israeli athletes hostage and murdered 11 of them.

This terror attack - “the heroic operation” in Palestinian terminology – is marked and celebrated every year in the PA as documented by Palestinian Media Watch. So too this year. Openly attributing the massacre to “the Fatah Movement’s foreign special operations branch,” Fatah called it “a heroic history written in blood by the Fatah self-sacrificing fighters”:

Posted text: “This day in 1972
#Munich_operation

A heroic operation that was carried out by the Fatah Movement’s foreign special operations branch (i.e., the Black September terror organization), whose goal was the release of 236 Palestinian and Arab prisoners in the occupation’s prisons and in the German prisons and directing the world’s attention to the Palestinian cause. This was together with a natural response to the occupation’s assassination operations and bombings of the Palestinian refugee camps at the time.”

Text on image: “Anniversary of the Munich operation
Sept. 5, 1972

A heroic history written in blood by the Fatah self-sacrificing fighters”
[Facebook page of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Sept. 5, 2021]

The image shows pictures of German police disguised as athletes trying to free the Israeli hostages during the Munich Olympics attack. In the upper left corner is the Fatah logo.

During the year, Fatah and the PA also honor and glorify the individual “heroes” who perpetrated the massacre. Fatah posted this video praising Abu Daoud – one of the masterminds and planners of the Munich attack – as “one of the symbols of the Palestinian revolution”:

We “honor everyone” who fought Israel, “the enemy,” with “armed struggle,” says Fatah official [Official PA TV News, Sept. 7, 2021]

Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki: “Our custom in the Palestinian arena is to honor everyone who waved this flag of struggle and fought against this enemy – whether with a pen, politics, armed struggle, or diplomatic activity.”

Abbas Zaki also serves as Fatah Commissioner for Arab and China Relations.

Ahmed Jibril - senior PLO leader and head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP - GC).

(2/3) 'Knights of Al Aqsa Mosque' is a video game about waging war on #Israel. It includes some very troubling images that validate terrorist attacks, showcases a distorted history of the conflict, and advertises images that demonize Israelis.

— Creative Community for Peace (@CCFPeace) September 17, 2021

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who took office less than 10 days ago, said shipments of Iranian oil into his country violate Lebanon’s sovereignty and were not approved by his government.

“Frankly, I am sad, because this [violates] the sovereignty of Lebanon,” Mikati told CNN about the oil shipments organized by Hezbollah — the first of which arrived on Thursday — in an interview that aired on the network on Friday.

Mikati said that he preferred “not to make any other comment” about the oil shipments “because we are trying to solve this in a very calm way.”

But asked by CNN anchor Becky Anderson about the potential of US sanctions against Lebanon for importing oil from Iran, Mikati said that “since the Lebanese government didn’t approve this… I don’t believe the Lebanese government would be subject to any sanctions.”

Dozens of trucks carrying Iranian diesel fuel 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.

A third tanker has sailed from Iran carrying Iranian fuel for distribution in Lebanon, TankerTrackers.com reported on Twitter on Sunday.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Friday that the Iranian fuel shipments, imported by the Hezbollah terrorist organization, constitute a breach of Lebanon’s sovereignty.

The Iran-aligned group says the shipments should ease a crippling energy crisis in Lebanon.

The first tanker ship carried the fuel to Syria and from there it was taken into Lebanon on tanker trucks on Thursday.

Both Syria and Iran are under US sanctions.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh denied the New York Times (NYT) report describing the November assassination of Iran's leading nuclear scientist in his weekly presser on Sunday, according to Iran International.

The nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in Tehran on November 26, and the NYT report claimed that it had been carried out by the Mossad. According to the report, the gun was a modified Belgian-made FN MAG machine gun attached to a robot and powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The NYT claimed that their information came from interviews with American, Israeli and Iranian officials "including two intelligence officials familiar with the details of the planning and execution of the operation."

Khatibzadeh denied the report's claims, however, saying that Iranian intelligence has all the details of the incident including all the people involved.

The New York Times on Saturday described the assassinated mastermind of Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program as having "wanted to live a normal life," someone who enjoyed poetry and spending time with family. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed last November in an operation attributed to Israel's Mossad spy agency.

Then-Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously shared intelligence about Fakhrizadeh's leading role in Tehran's development of an atomic weapon. A former brigadier general in the US-designated IRGC terror organization, he had been personally sanctioned by both the United States and United Nations.

Nevertheless, the "newspaper of record" highlighted Fakhrizadeh's love of driving through the countryside, prompting ridicule from many. Many pointed out that Iran has repeatedly threatened to fully annihilate Israel, and that Fakhrizadeh headed the initiative that could give the mullahs the means to actualize their genocidal ambitions.

The mastermind of a murderous regime’s secret plot to build a nuclear weapon that would threaten the world loved reading poetry and just wanted to live a normal life, explains the New York Times. https://t.co/84kgJna0e0

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 18, 2021

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is due to appear in conversation with an actor who joked about Jewish toddlers having their “cute little horns filed off”.

The event is set to be held next month to protest against this year’s Conservative party conference.

Catastrophe actor Rob Delaney, 44, wrote in 2009, “When I think of adorable Jewish baby boys getting circumcised AND having their cute little horns filed off, I get so sad!”

The tweet from 12 years ago resurfaced on social media ahead of the October 4 event organised by the People’s Assembly.

Online users were quick to highlight other potentially inflammatory tweets by Mr Delaney, including one from 2011 that read: “Somebody probably has the phone number 1-800-JEW-FART.”

In another tweet from 2012, he also quipped about wishing to atone on Yom Kippur “for the weeks I’ve wasted on chubby naked Jewish girls on bikes dot com” and in 2012 described a single by rock band Van Halen as being “worse than 3 Holocausts.”

The tweets sparked an outpouring of criticism, with the Jewish Labour Movement’s national secretary, Adam Langleben, describing the posts as containing “crap and crude jokes about Jews”.

A group of protestors from a coalition of left-wing organizations marched to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in midtown Manhattan on Friday, wielding Palestinian flags and a banner reading "globalize the intifada."

Friday's march was part of the so-called Strike MoMA campaign, which began as a series of 10 weekly protests which ran between April 9 and June 11, against MoMA's alleged complicity in war profiteering, environmental harm, dispossession of communities worldwide and association with morally corrupt billionaires.

The 10-week initiative was founded by the Strike MoMA Working Group, part of a collective that called itself the International Imagination of Anti-National Anti-Imperialist Feelings (IIAAF).

Friday's march was part of Strike MoMA's so-called "second phase."

The second phase's title is "Convening for a Just Transition to a Post-MoMA Future," and its goal is to "determine the next steps for disassembling the museum in light of its harmful history," according to the movement's manifesto.

1-2-3-4 open up the @MuseumModernArt doors so we can smash the settler Zionist state. #shutitdown#decolonizethisplace coz all our grievances from #occupywallst to #FreePalestine are connected. pic.twitter.com/346KI6YRjX

— #GeneralStrike (@OccupyWallStNYC) September 17, 2021

Kenneth Baker has published a book on the "bibliocaust", the burning of books from Caliph Omar to Hitler, passing through the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

When they burned the books in Berlin, the Nazis said that from the ashes of those novels would "rise the phoenix of a new spirit". The same hatred inflames Islamists and politically correct idiots. And we don't even have the faintest idea of ??how much of our Western culture has succumbed to Islam.

Somali-born dissident and essayist Ayaan Hirsi Ali in a video has just explained what Islamic fanatics and progressives have in common: ideological purity, hatred of pluralism, iconoclasm and censorship. There is the hell of the Taliban, who erase the irreplaceable colored murals to replace them with Islamic ones, and there is the hell of the "wokes", who erase the murals with Rudyard Kipling's poems.

Peggy Sastre on Le Point wrote that it is hard, indeed very hard, to condemn the Taliban for the burqa when one is “woke” and defends it here. Now we can say the same for the book burnings in Kabul and Kandahar.

Suzy Kies, president of the Indigenous Peoples Commission of the Liberal Party of Canada (the formation of which can be traced to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau), thus justified the burning of books this way:

“We are not trying to erase history, we are trying to correct it”.

Quranic students could not have said it better.

After reading through years of JVP “Jewish”material for my insta post today I think it’s time we call JVP what it is, an appropriative cult whose religion is antizionism. pic.twitter.com/IlxP5hg1GS

— Eli (@EliKohn3) September 19, 2021

Though the piece focused on Jared Kushner, to provide historical context, Fisk complained that the principle US Mid-East peacemakers under Bill Clinton “were all Jewish Americans”* and then derided “the myth that American peacemaking [could be] even-handed, neutral, [or] uninfluenced by the religion” of top officials.

He then quoted what he framed as wisdom by Israeli commentator Meron Benvenisti, who, on the pages of Haaretz in 1993, wrote that “it is hard to ignore the fact that manipulation of the peace process was entrusted by the US in the first place to American Jews…”, warning of “the tremendous influence of the Jewish establishment on the Clinton administration”.

In our complaint to the Indy managing editor at the time, we noted that the “dual loyalty” charge is codified as antisemitic by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Antisemitism, and cited CST, which wrote, “the ‘dual loyalty’ charge is one of the oldest antisemitic canards”. However, our complaint was rejected, as the editor disagreed that Fisk had engaged in antisemitism. (The outlet also rejected a complaint by Campaign Against Antisemitism)

However, yesterday, the Indy published the following:

The fact that the Indy is willing to clearly call out the dual loyalty charge as an expression racism after having defended it when employed by Fisk,is an example of how media outlets often circle the wagon to protect their ‘star’ journalists, defending the indefensible rather than calling out their factual errors or bigotry.

Moreover, it’s to the great shame of Indy editors that, during his three decades at the paper, they consistently tolerated Fisk’s anti-Jewish animus, including his use of a particular toxic calumny that – their journalists now concede – helped unleash the most lethal hatred history has ever known.

A man accused of killing one worshiper and wounding three others in a shooting spree inside a California synagogue about a month after setting fire to a nearby mosque pleaded guilty on Friday to federal hate crimes contained in a 113-count indictment.

Under the terms of his plea agreement with federal prosecutors, attorneys for John T. Earnest and the government will jointly recommend that he receive a life term in prison when he is sentenced on Dec. 28, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.

Earnest, now 22, was arrested shortly after he opened fire at the Chabad of Poway synagogue north of San Diego on April 27, 2019 during Sabbath prayers on the last day of the weeklong Jewish Passover holiday. He was 19 at the time.

A 60-year-old member of the congregation, Lori Gilbert-Kaye, was killed and three others were wounded in the attack, including the rabbi, who was shot in the hand and lost an index finger.

The gunman, whose assault-style rifle apparently jammed, was chased out of the temple by a former Army sergeant in the congregation and sped away in a car, escaping an off-duty US Border Patrol agent who shot at the getaway vehicle but missed the suspect. Earnest pulled over and surrendered to police soon afterward.

Authorities later identified Earnest as the author of a rambling, violently antisemitic, anti-Muslim “manifesto” found posted on the Internet under his name.

The growing normalization of Holocaust trivialization — largely in Western Europe and North America — is an alarming phenomenon that the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Information Hub detected earlier this summer and has been closely monitoring since.

This trend is mainly, but not exclusively, linked to rhetoric employed by critics of health measures implemented by governments to fight the ongoing global Covid-19 pandemic.

The most commonly-seen manifestation is the appropriation of the Holocaust-era “Judenstern” (“yellow Star of David”) as a protest symbol.

Demonstrators in cities such as London, Paris, Amsterdam, Montreal, and New York have donned the badges — which Jews were forced to wear in German-controlled areas of Europe during World War II — in an outrageous attempt to compare current health restrictions to the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

Such displays have also been witnessed at city council and school board meetings, particularly in the U.S.

A monument listing 102,163 Dutch victims of the Holocaust was unveiled by King Willem-Alexander in Amsterdam on Sunday, the first national memorial to be built in the Netherlands.

The monument, designed by Daniel Libeskind, 75, who lost relatives in the Holocaust, lies in the center of the Dutch capital and is a labyrinth of brick walls that, when seen from above, form Hebrew letters reading “in remembrance.”

Each stone carries the name of a Jew, Roma or Sinti who was deported from the Netherlands and who died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. It is the first memorial to commemorate all the victims from across the Netherlands in one place.

“It gives the feeling that they really existed,” said Hetty de Roode, a Jew whose parents, brother and sister all died in the camps. De Roode, who attended the unveiling, survived by hiding with a family in the north of the Netherlands.

Most of the Jewish population of the Netherlands was deported during the German occupation.

HBO Max in Latin America and Arte in France and Germany have picked up Israeli police corruption drama Manayek ("Maniac").

The critically acclaimed show is currently filming its second season.

Used in Hebrew slang as a derogatory term for a policeman, Manayek stars Shalom Assayag, Amos Tamam, and Maya Dagan. It tells the story of veteran Police Internal Affairs investigator Izzy Bachar (Assayag), who is on the brink of retirement when he finds himself investigating his best friend (Tamam) – a high-ranking police officer accused of operating a vast criminal network within the force.

Created and written by Roy Iddan and directed by Alon Zingman, Manayek is one of Kan's highest-rated dramas alongside Tehran. It was a favorite of the Israeli Academy for Film and Television in 2020, winning the awards for Best Drama Series, Best Director in a Drama Series, Best Screenplay for a Drama Series, Leading Actor in a Drama Series, and Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.

"It's a great honor to finally bring Manayek to viewers in Europe and in Latin America," Yoav Gross, CEO of the eponymous production company behind the show, said. "For us so far, it's been an amazing journey with this remarkable series and we are blessed with the huge success it already received in Israel.

"We are sure that the international audience will find in the series all the elements that made it so successful," he said.

Dozens of sets of the Four Species – etrog, palm, myrtle, and willow – traditionally used for prayers during the festival of Sukkot have recently been transferred to the few Jews still living in Arab countries like Syria and Iraq.

The Yad L'Achim organization took care to organize the shipments, which were transferred in a secret operation.

Amir, the Yad L'Achim official responsible for overseeing the organization's operations, explained this week that the Four Species sets were in transit to "various countries."

According to the outreach group, sets have also been supplied to Jewish women who married Arab Israeli men in Israel, and their children.

In recent years, Yad L'Achim has been working to bring Jews living in Arab countries and Arabic-speaking Jews elsewhere in the world closer together. Arabic-speaking Jews in Palestinian refugee camps, whose mothers are Jewish, have also reportedly reached out to the group and asked for help strengthening their Jewish identities.

Yad L'Achim offers them information about Judaism and support in the form of Torah lessons by telephone and shipments of items for Jewish holidays.

A special ceremony was held Sunday to commemorate the 48th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Officials and bereaved families gathered at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl to remember the victims of one of the nation's deadliest wars.

"Something within us changed 48 years ago," Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in his address. "The Yom Kippur War proved how dangerous complacency and arrogance can be. It taught us a lesson in humility, but also the importance of being prepared and organized.

"The heavy toll of the war was unbearable … But what many perceived as a failure, I see as a victory, for the difficult challenge of losing one's lofty status, but gaining victory nevertheless, both on the Syrian and Egyptian fronts, is remarkable."

Bennett also referred to the capture of the last two of the six Palestinian fugitives that occurred earlier in the day. "The escape itself reflected a serious intelligence, operational and systematic problem," he said, but praised how the forces mobilized and came together quickly to apprehend the escapees.

President Isaac Herzog also gave an address at the ceremony.

"The Yom Kippur war was a national event that taught us about inflexibility and arrogance. We must do our utmost so that a surprise like that does not happen again – we must always be prepared for war as well as never miss an opportunity for peace.

"Besides being vigilant, politically and security-wise, we must also learn the lessons on an internal level, within Israel, of unity and national resilience. We must stand up to polarization and rifts in Israeli society. To unite, come together, make connections and prevents division – that is the best and only way to deal with internal and external threats."

The Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) raised over $500 thousand at a private event on Monday evening in Lawrence, New York.

The fundraising event, a barbecue dinner, was organized by the FIDF Long Island Chapter and hosted by Ruthy and Ari Jungreis. The funds will be allocated towards the building of new housing for lone soldiers, IDF soldiers whose families reside abroad.

Notable participants in the event included FIDF CEO Steven Weil, FIDF National Director Major General (res.) Nadav Padan, and IDF Naval Attaché Cpt. Guy Barak. Four IDF lone soldiers also attended the event.

Over 1,000 lone soldiers from the US are currently serving in the IDF, out of which some 200 hail from New York and some 50 are from Long Island alone.

In a similar event on September 4, the FIDF raised over two million dollars at an event celebrating members of the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, a unit of ultra-Orthodox soldiers who forego their legal exemption from service.

FIDF was established in 1981 by a group of Holocaust survivors as a 501(C) (3) not-for-profit organization with the mission of offering educational, cultural, recreational, and social programs and facilities that provide hope, purpose, and life-changing support for the soldiers who protect Israel and Jews worldwide.

Today, FIDF has 24 chapters throughout the United States.

Sunset over southern Israel's beautiful Timna Park. pic.twitter.com/PfAsXeODaW

— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) September 18, 2021

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Our weekly column (delayed) from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

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Fleet Prison in London held prisoners, on and off, between 1197 and 1844. In the 18th century it held debtors and people who declared bankruptcy, and it ran as a for-profit enterprise, charging prisoners to remove their leg-irons as well as for food and rent.

The Caledonian Mercury, October 5, 1727 says that Jewish prisoners in Fleet Prison built their own sukkah to celebrate the Sukkot holiday. 

The Jews of the prison must have paid a great deal to be able to celebrate Sukkot.

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Israel had always been ready to make peace, but in the January before Durban, the peace process had collapsed. Israel was ready to negotiate over land, but never considered negotiating itself out of existence. Israel was not a racist elite clinging to privilege but an instrument of Jewish renewal and a survivor of three attempts by the Arab League states to eradicate it.

Today, academics and student activists across the world are signing declarations affirming the idea that Israel is an apartheid state that must be boycotted and destroyed to be foundational both to their scholarship and to their morality. These statements function as loyalty tests for Jews, which makes their membership in the community conditional. Demonstrating one’s legitimacy by contrasting oneself to evil Jews is an antisemitic practice that has been re-animated by self-defined “antiracists” in the 21st century.

Zionism is portrayed as an obstacle to progress and a spreader of racism and Islamophobia. Zionism is treated as a universal evil and as a keystone of a global system of oppression. The term “Zionist” has been substituted for “Jew” in accusations of child-murder, control over the media, police violence, betrayal of “the people” and the instigation of imperialist wars. This antisemitic thinking portrays that which is most feared in society as having a Jewish face. The antisemitic notion of “the Jews” has evolved through the changing ecosystems of human history into a nest of emotions, ideas and images perfectly adapted to symbolize the nightmares of the collective subconscious.

What is more profoundly dreaded in America than racism? Is America founded on human equality or is it corrupt in its heart because of its original sin of slavery? In Britain, the partly addressed nightmare is “colonialism.” Britain was the colonial power and the Israelis overthrew the mandate; but now Brits project their own past onto Israel’s present. Today’s Europe is founded on the certainty that antisemitism and racism have been transcended. Europe was often tempted to project its own unacknowledged horrors onto the Jews in its midst and onto other “races” outside. Now Europeans can project their own disavowed racism onto Jews who are no longer European. It is Europeans who accuse Israelis of failing to learn the lessons of Auschwitz and then of re-importing racism back into the now clean again Europe, in the form of Islamophobia. In South Africa, the global and nation-founding triumph over apartheid can feel like a token victory as misery, violence, inequality and poverty persist under a state that appears dysfunctional and quite unable to make life better. The temptation to re-focus anger and despair onto an emotionally satisfying symbolic target is irresistible to some.

Recently we have seen the appearance of the slogan “Globalize the Intifada.” It cements a fantasy of Israel as being symbolic of all evil and it raises a fantasy of the Palestinian struggle as a universal symbol of the innocence and courage of all those who suffer. “Globalize the Intifada” reconstitutes the passion plays of old Europe, by which good people could identify with the divine, and with the ultimate justice that would be theirs. The meek shall inherit the earth. And they shall do so by defeating Zionism.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others, including Israel's U.N. ambassador and a South African politician, spoke Sunday at a counter-conference organized by Touro College, Human Rights Voices, and CAMERA under the banner: 'Fight Racism, Not Jews: The UN and the Durban Deceit.'

'It's an outrage that in the year 2021 the United Nations has gathered world leaders together to celebrate an orgy of anti-Semitism and the intended destruction of a U.N. member state – the Jewish state,' counter-conference organizer Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News.

'All countries that are genuinely committed to combating racism should refuse to attend Durban IV and the 20th anniversary carnival,' said Bayfesky, who is also president of Human Rights Voices. 'The Durban deceit, the double-talk, the double standards – and, in particular, the discrimination – need to be exposed and rejected, period.'

Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for United Nations secretary-general, told Fox News that Antonio Guterres would attend next week’s event.

'For the secretary-general it is clear that racism and racial discrimination still permeate institutions, social structures and everyday life in every society. It must be condemned without hesitation or reservation wherever and whenever it occurs.'

'The Durban process is critical in fighting this scourge. However, whoever uses this process – or any other platform – for anti-Semitic diatribes, anti-Muslim discourse, hateful speech and baseless assertions, only denigrates our essential fight against racism,' Dujarric said.

Pompeo, a Fox News contributor, questioned the stated goal of the document and the conference that celebrates it, which he said was supposedly about fighting racism and injustice but said that couldn’t be further from the truth. 'The Durban declaration is laced with anti-Semitism and the goal of those who celebrate it is not racial equality but the undermining and eventual destruction of the state of Israel.'

Today, I addressed the Durban IV Counter-Conference organized by @AnneBayefsky. In my remarks, I made clear the Durban Conference is rotten to its core and any of its follow-up events are the fruits of a poisonous tree. Watch the Conference here: https://t.co/R6DQeiDR2Apic.twitter.com/49IRbzPmZw

— Ambassador Gilad Erdan ???? ???? (@giladerdan1) September 19, 2021

The people of Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Sudan, who gave the Muslim Brotherhood a chance to rule, discovered that the organization is as corrupt and incompetent as the secular Arab regimes and heads of state.

As with the Islamists in Tunisia, many Arabs are now also celebrating the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated party in Morocco.

[O]ne of the main reasons for the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood is related to the ideological component of the organization's groups, including lack of separation between religion and politics, their alleged monopoly over the absolute truth, and their claim to represent the true Islam. — Amr Al-Shobaki, a researcher at the Egyptian Al-Ahram Center for Studies, Al-Hurra TV, September 12, 2021.

Al-Shoqiran continued: "After a decade of the rule of the Islamists in Tunisia and Morocco, the Muslim Brotherhood only contributed to the spread of corruption, disregard for the state and its institutions, and the theft of people's lives and money."— Ashraq Al-Awsat, September 16, 2021.

"[T]he Muslim Brotherhood parties.... rule without providing those they govern with any services other than illusory victories and corruption."— Hafez Barghouti, Palestinian columnist and editor, Al-Khaleej, September 17, 2021

Tunisia got rid of the Islamists because they destroyed the economy and "stole the people's money." In Morocco...the Muslim Brotherhood was in power for many years, plunging the country into an economic and social crisis. — Hafez Barghouti, September 17, 2021

"The great fall of the Muslim Brotherhood, politically and intellectually, began in Egypt, then Sudan followed Tunisia and finally Morocco. Due to their spectacular failure in those countries, they are expected to fall also in Libya during the upcoming legislative and presidential elections."— Mounir Adib, Egyptian expert on Islamic movements and international terrorism, Elbalad, September 10, 2021.

The question, therefore, remains: Will Western apologists for Islamists also wake up to this fact and cease dealing with them as though they are good guys who seek to improve the living conditions of Arabs and Muslims?

The United States has not just lost America’s longest war in a spectacularly embarrassing fashion. It has lost the narrative. The facts speak for themselves. The Taliban are not partners. They are not friends. And they are not moderate. Al-Qaeda has helped to make that abundantly clear in recent weeks. As Joscelyn noted in the Long War Journal, al-Qaeda’s senior leadership has gloated about the Taliban’s return to power, praising it as a “historic victory” and calling upon Muslims worldwide to support the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the entire al-Qaeda network, has further sworn an oath of allegiance to the Taliban’s emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada. This should come as no surprise, of course. Al-Qaeda’s leader has maintained an oath of loyalty to the Taliban’s emir for more than two decades. But this history only underscores the absurdity of the Biden administration’s claims.

In 2014, al-Qaeda announced a new franchise: al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. It was deliberately created to support the Taliban. In the meantime, other al-Qaeda affiliates, such as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, have long operated in areas of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban, suggesting a modus vivendi, at minimum. My colleague Bill Roggio continues to track the presence of al-Qaeda throughout Afghanistan. It was significant before the pullout (Roggio predicted for that reason, among others, that the U.S. withdrawal would be a disaster). The al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, now that America is gone, is only likely to grow.

The glue that binds it all together is the Haqqani network, a terrorist group that is both one of al-Qaeda’s closest allies and also an integral component of the Taliban’s network. The Taliban’s new interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, embodies this relationship. He has served as the Taliban’s deputy emir since 2015, while a recent UN report identified him as a member of the “wider al-Qaeda leadership.”

The Taliban’s strong ties to al-Qaeda only reinforce the fact that the group has not grown more moderate or pragmatic in recent years. But one need not look to al-Qaeda for evidence of this. The group recently released propaganda venerating its “suicide squads.” In the same video, the Taliban blamed American “policy” for the attacks of 9/11—attacks they have never attributed to al-Qaeda.

In perhaps the clearest sign of what is to come, the Taliban have now formed a new government, and there’s nothing moderate about it. Many of the cabinet ministers have been sanctioned by the U.S. and the UN for terrorism. Several were Guantanamo Bay detainees. Two of them appear on the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program, whereby the U.S. government offers millions of dollars for information that could lead to their kill or capture.

America’s longest war, we are being told, should be remembered for its pain and its folly: the suicides of veterans, the sham of Afghanistan’s military, the greed of the contractors, the immolated wedding parties, the pederast warlords. The valor to be celebrated is now reserved for the airlift that commenced after the fall of a Potemkin regime, not the 20-year mission that allowed that government to survive until it didn’t. As the New York Times news alert to mark the exit of the last soldier put it: “The U.S. Occupation Ends.”

This is President Joe Biden’s narrative, a narrative in which America is no different from the past empires whose headstones dot the landscape of Afghanistan. The narrative claims they too tried to tame an untamable country, and we followed foolishly in their footsteps. As Biden quipped to a reporter on July 8, “it’s up to the people of Afghanistan to decide the government they want, not us to impose the government on them.”

It is an appealing pose for Democrats looking for a reason to support their president’s betrayal. It also suits the purposes of the America-Firsters who dance to the beat of Donald Trump’s drum. Why are we building schools for girls half a world away when our own schools are failing? they ask. Besides, the Afghans never wanted democracy. If they did, their army would have fought for it, and their government wouldn’t have collapsed.

How does this theory account for Afghans such as Hamed Kohistani? He is a doctor at a Kabul hospital who, in 2018, waited for five hours to vote in his country’s parliamentary elections. He told the New York Times, “The problem is not waiting, the problem is security. The longer you wait in line, the more the risk is.” That risk was the Taliban. Throughout the seven national Afghan elections since 2004, the Taliban waged a vicious war on voting itself. They warned Afghans on social media and official communiqués not to show up on Election Day. They targeted poll workers and police chiefs. They sent volunteers and conscripts with suicide vests and car bombs to polling stations. And in the territories the Taliban controlled or contested, they outlawed voting entirely.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid restarted formal diplomatic contacts at the ministerial level with Sweden on Monday, ending seven years of estrangement.

Israel’s Walla news reported that Lapid held a phone call with his Swedish counterpart Ann Linde just before Yom Kippur, and then again on Monday, before formally announcing the renewal of ties at the ministerial level.

This was the first such conversation between foreign ministers from the two countries since 2014, when they fell out over Sweden’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state.

Since then, Israel-Sweden relations have been essentially frozen, with previous Swedish foreign ministers being persona non grata in Israel, to the point that they were denied entry to the country.

During Monday’s meeting, Lapid said he appreciated statements of support for Israel’s security from Linde. He also said that Israel intends to participate in the upcoming International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance in the Swedish city of Malmo.

.@AOC is at it again, taking time from her busy “humanitarian” schedule to focus her “concern” on Israel by introducing legislation to stop arms sales…

In other words, she’d like to see Israel defenseless the next time Hamas or Hezbollah rain thousands of rockets on Israel! pic.twitter.com/ntQd4qkQRs

— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) September 19, 2021

AOC wants to block precision guided weapons sales to Israel claiming Israel shells Palestinian civilians…so just to clarify, AOC now wants #Israel to have less precise weapons.

?? I see shes still “not an expert on this geopolitical issue” pic.twitter.com/xpR8OSPc1F

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 19, 2021

The capture of the last two terrorist fugitives of the group of six who broke out of Gilboa Prison on the eve of Rosh Hashanah was successful thanks to "excellent intelligence, professional operations, determination, and the unit fighters' desire to get their hands on them," head of the Israel Police's Counter-Terrorism Unit, Cmdr. H., tells Israel Hayom.

Overnight between Saturday and Sunday, counter-terror forces were scrambled – along with special forces from the Shin Bet security agency and the IDF – to Jenin, where the last two fugitives were hiding in a local home.

"From the moment of the prison break, we were working with the Border Police, the Shin Bet, and the IDF to hunt down the escaped terrorists," explains Chief Supt. S., who commands the company that executed the arrests.

"We were operating in a few different areas at the same time, both in Israel and in Judea and Samaria. We always knew that Jenin was the 'hottest' spot, and we were prepared for that, along with the Shin Bet's operational unit, especially as there was a clear indication that one of them had crossed the security barrier," S. adds.

At 1:39 a.m. Sunday, after the Shin Bet supplied precise intelligence, the forces crossed the border and entered the outskirts of Jenin.

"We received the intelligence from the Shin Bet around midnight, quickly prepared for combat, and arrived at the home, which was the terrorists' safe house. We showed up at a residential building in east Jenin, which is home to families that are uninvolved [in the prison break].

"The first thing we did was to close and surround the building, covertly, especially since we had realized that innocent families were inside. We used small arms to fire shots at the walls, to make it clear to the terrorists that the army had them surrounded," S. explains.

2/9 pic.twitter.com/sjVd9TVoO4

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 19, 2021

Overnight, IDF, ISA and Israeli Police troops entered the city of Jenin. The forces surrounded, isolated, and fired at the building where the two remaining terrorists who had escaped the Gilboa Prison were hiding. The two exited the building un-armed and without any resistance.

— Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) September 19, 2021

?? #BREAKING: United Nations (#UNGA) to hold Emergency Session to condemn Jews for building ‘illegal structures’ across #Israel! ??????#Sukkot#ChagSameachpic.twitter.com/gLEsL86fde

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 20, 2021

Since its creation in 1995, the Palestinian Authority has created the most comprehensive system for funding, incentivizing, and rewarding terror and terrorism. As part of the policy that has been dubbed the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay” policy, the PA has paid billions of shekels/dollars/euros to terrorists and their families. According to Atef Abd Al-Gawad, an Egyptian journalist based in Washington, it is the PA’s terror reward program that is impeding the reopening of the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Washington.

The PA policy is divided, in broad terms, into two parts: PA payments to imprisoned and released terrorists, on the one hand; and PA payments to wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorists (so-called “Martyrs”), on the other. The 2017 US Taylor Force Act provides that “The Palestinian Authority’s practice of paying salaries to terrorists serving in Israeli prisons, as well as to the families of deceased terrorists, is an incentive to commit acts of terror.”

Ignoring the fundamental demand that the PA must entirely desist from its terror reward payments, according to Al-Gawad “the entire issue is semantics” and all the PA needs to do to deceive the US, is re-name the payments as social security payments:
“The legal problem is that the American Congress is conditioning the reopening of the PLO office in Washington on the PA ending the [payments of] salaries to the young Palestinians who are carrying out suicide attacks – in Palestine they are called Martyrdom-seeking [operations]. These are the kinds of legal obstacles that are preventing [US President] Biden from reopening the office... The responsibility is laid on the Palestinians. The responsibility that these salaries won't be paid as “salaries” for Martyrs, but rather as compensation from the [PA] Social Insurance to the mothers and families of these fallen who are the young Palestinians. The entire issue is semantics.”

[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, Aug. 21, 2021]

While some PA officials have previously attempted to explain the terror payments as “social welfare,” the unequivocal fact is that the payments have nothing whatsoever to do with social welfare.

First and foremost, the payments have no needs based criteria. The family of a dead terrorist receives a monthly payment that currently stands at 1,400 shekels ($432) per month, irrespective of the needs of the family.

The deaths of the militants mentioned above, including more than 40 Palestinians killed in a period of six months in clashes with Israeli security forces, have spurred armed groups to march openly in the streets calling for revenge.

Lastly, the escape of six militants from a high-security prison in northern Israel on Sept. 6 exacerbated the already unstable security situation in the West Bank. Factions held rallies in Gaza and the West Bank threatening a response if the escapees were harmed.

However, despite weeks of threatening rhetoric from militant groups, including a reported resurrection of the ‘Joint Operations Room’ of Palestinian factions in the West Bank, the last two remaining militants on the run were captured early Sunday by Israeli forces in the militant stronghold of Jenin, unharmed and undefended by Palestinian factions.

The surge in militant activity in the West Bank over the last six months has likely reached its peak with the capture of the last two remaining militants. A few rockets may be fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza out of frustration over the arrests in the coming days, but the success of Israeli security forces in capturing all of the militants alive and unharmed will likely have a stabilizing effect over the coming weeks in the West Bank.

Cognitive dissonance in action right here.

Because. His. Ancestors. Are. From. Egypt. https://t.co/tiSh7Wp2WY

— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) September 20, 2021

The Biden administration will withhold $130 million worth of military aid to Egypt until Cairo takes specific steps related to human rights, a State Department spokesperson has announced.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s move is a break with his predecessors’ policy of overriding a congressional check on military aid to Egypt. In the past, an exception was granted to free up Foreign Military Financing for Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government, worth $300m. this fiscal year, on the basis that it was in the interest of US national security.

The State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement, “We are continuing to discuss our serious concerns about human rights in Egypt.”

The US has provided around $1.3 billion in foreign assistance to Egypt annually since the 2017 fiscal year, according to a congressional research report.

Sisi, who ousted the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, has overseen a crackdown on dissent that has tightened in recent years. Rights groups say tens of thousands have been detained, including Brotherhood leaders and secular activists.

Dan Kurtzer, who has served as US ambassador to Egypt and Israel, told The Jerusalem Post that aid to Egypt continues to serve US national security interests.

“It is particularly important today to reassure our allies and friends of the constancy of our relationships,” he said. “Continuing that assistance can accompany a robust dialogue with the Egyptians on human rights and basic freedoms.”

A raft of foreign policy decisions since the Biden administration took office — some ill advised, some badly timed, and in some cases both — prompt a question I thought would never have to be asked: Do US foreign policy advisers know who their friends in this region actually are?

US allies and partners alike are puzzled. More dangerously, America’s enemies, who threaten regional stability, are empowered and emboldened.

Take the recent withdrawal by the US of its most advanced missile defense system and Patriot batteries from Saudi Arabia, a strategic partner. I am not sure if anyone in Washington has thought of it this way, but since Houthi terrorists in Yemen regularly and deliberately target civilian areas in the Kingdom, this is the equivalent of America denying Israel its Iron Dome technology while it was under attack from Hamas.

Even that comparison falls short of describing how inexplicable the US position is. The Houthis, whose official slogan is “Death to America” and who targeted the US Navy during the Obama era, have actually had their terrorist designation removed by the Biden administration (The claim is the removal helps facilitate the flow of aid into Yemen, strangely, aid still goes into Gaza despite Hamas remaining on the US terror list).

Of course, Saudi Arabia is fully capable of defending itself, as is its right. It has been remarkably successful in protecting innocent lives from most Houthi missiles and drones, all of them made or supplied by Iran. With those weapons, the Houthis do not hesitate to attack oil facilities, civilian airports, and Saudi cities.

The New York Times on Saturday described the assassinated mastermind of Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program as having "wanted to live a normal life," someone who enjoyed poetry and spending time with family. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed last November in an operation attributed to Israel's Mossad spy agency.

Then-Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously shared intelligence about Fakhrizadeh's leading role in Tehran's development of an atomic weapon. A former brigadier general in the US-designated IRGC terror organization, he had been personally sanctioned by both the United States and United Nations.

Nevertheless, the "newspaper of record" highlighted Fakhrizadeh's love of driving through the countryside, prompting ridicule from many. Many pointed out that Iran has repeatedly threatened to fully annihilate Israel, and that Fakhrizadeh headed the initiative that could give the mullahs the means to actualize their genocidal ambitions.

The NYT reporter who wrote this story whitewashing a genocidal terrorist recently had two formal complaints filed against her for pro-Iran bias and multiple faculties inaccuracies https://t.co/bMTWsSsOm2https://t.co/qasoqvY7QJ

— Adam Kredo (@Kredo0) September 19, 2021

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Speaks with Iranian Olympian Medalists: An Iranian Athlete Cannot Shake the Hands of the Representative of the Zionist “Criminal Regime” Just for the Sake of Winning a Medal #Iran@khamenei_ir#Tokyo2020#TokyoParalympicspic.twitter.com/wf1TmCGvNG

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 20, 2021

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Everybody hates the Jews. That’s the refrain from the brilliant satirist Tom Lehrer in “National Brotherhood Week,” a song that I had memorized by the time I was ten, given that I was raised by the kind of dad who made sure songs like “The Vatican Rag” and “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” were the soundtrack to our lives.

My sisters and I would laugh as we sang along to lyrics we only half-understood:
Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Muslims
And everybody hates the Jews

The very fact of the song’s existence, of course, is evidence of abundant American tolerance and pluralism.

But these days, the idea that “everybody hates the Jews” feels like less of a punchline and more like an accurate report of public sentiment. It seems every other day a new study or survey confirms what so many American Jews are feeling, as the old joke had it, that they are hating us more than is necessary.

Today, came the latest study from the Brandeis Center, which released a poll of “openly Jewish” college students. Seventy percent of the students surveyed reported that they experienced antisemitism. Half of the students said they have felt the need to hide their Jewish identity at school, explaining that they felt doing so would protect them from harassment, bullying or social exclusion. This is the kind of thing we would expect to hear about the Jews of Europe. But not here.

“What is so ​​alarming about these results is that the survey focused on more than a thousand AEPi brothers and AEPhi sisters. These are kids who generally enter college with strong Jewish identities and an eagerness to be active in Jewish organizations. Instead, they are learning to hide their Judaism. And the longer they are in college, we found, the more they closet themselves,” Kenneth L. Marcus, the head of the Brandeis Center, told me. “Anyone who has been paying attention can see that what happens on campus doesn’t stay on campus. This should be an alarm for the entire American Jewish community.”

This new survey (which you can read more about here) reflects the recently released FBI’s Hate Crimes Statistics for 2020. The bureau says that 57.5 percent of religious-based hate crimes last year had Jews as their targets, even though Jews represent 2 percent of the population.

TIME has made a laughing stock of itself - and its credibility - by including 23 year old rabid-Jew hating Palestinian Arab journalist Mohammed El-Kurd and his twin sister Mana El-Kurd among 16 persons listed as Icons in its 100 most influential people in 2021.

Other Icons include the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, tennis player Naomi Osaka and entertainers Britney Spears and Dolly Parton.

Edward Felsenthal Editor-in-Chief and CEO of TIME – said of the magazine’s choices:
“At TIME, we see the TIME100 as far more than a list. It is a community of leaders whose energy and commitment we hope inspires others to spring into action as well.”

El-Kurd’s Jew-hating credentials were exposed in a May 2021 interview when making the following false claims:
“My entire neighbourhood is being stolen by Israeli settler organisations working with the Israeli government to ethnically cleanse us from Jerusalem, as they have been doing for 73 years”

The truth: Just four Arab families residing in El- Kurd’s neighbourhood of East Jerusalem – Sheikh Jarrah - are facing the risk of eviction due to a legal challenge by Jews claiming ownership of these four properties.

These Arab families have refused an offer that they remain in their properties as "protected tenants", recognise ownership of their homes by their Jewish claimants and pay a symbolic annual rent.

Jordan occupied Sheikh Jarrah and East Jerusalem in 1948 and expelled every Jew living there. Jews were unable to return there until after the Six Day War in 1967 and subsequently begin the long legal process to reclaim their properties given to these four families by Jordan in conjunction with UNRWA.

The 1967 Israeli census showed 29904 Palestinian Arabs were then living in East Jerusalem. Today that population numbers 428304 according to World Population Review. El-Kurd’s accusation of ethnic cleansing is offensive, inflammatory and one big lie.

Massena is an undistinguished small town with a population of about 10,000 in upstate New York. But in the fall of 1928, an incident occurred that brought the town national newspaper coverage and frightened Jews across America. On Sept. 22, a few days before Yom Kippur, Barbara Griffiths, a 4-year-old girl, wandered into the woods surrounding the village and disappeared. When she did not return home hours later, her frantic parents contacted the mayor and the local police. Thus began the tale of the only blood libel accusation against Jews in American history.

The blood libel is the accusation that Jews murdered Christian children at Passover to use their blood for making matzo. The charge first appeared in Norwich, England, in 1144, and from then on it popped up repeatedly throughout European history. It even appears in Chaucer’s “The Prioress’s Tale,” which is included in his Canterbury Tales. The myth never received any official backing from the popes, but that did not prevent local Catholic parish priests from referring to it on Good Friday and in Easter services.

1920s America was rife with such antisemitic narratives. These feelings were undoubtedly stoked by Henry Ford’s libelous series, “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem,” which was first published in his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, from 1920 to 1922. The newspaper had a wider circulation than The New York Times. The articles were also collected and republished in pamphlets by the same title. Everyone who bought a Ford automobile received a copy. He was the most popular American, and millions of Americans bought his automobiles, and they believed and trusted him.

Thus it was easy for Protestant Americans, unnerved by the massive immigration and perceived social threat of Catholics and Jews into the United States during the early 20th century, to believe what Ford wrote. The Ku Klux Klan, which had been dormant, subsequently attracted large numbers of disaffected Protestants and reached a nationwide membership of 3 million by 1925. The Klansman’s creed concluded with the pledge, “I am a native-born American citizen and I believe my rights in this country superior to those of foreigners.” A contemporary observer remembered that Massena was awash in flyers advertising Klan meetings and hundreds of locals showed up at them.

Jean Améry is best known as the author of At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities. Less well known are Améry’s writings from the 1960s and 1970s in which he warned that under the guise of anti-Zionism, ‘the old, wretched antisemitism ventures forth’ again in a distinctively ‘left-wing’ form. ‘Anyone who questions Israel’s right to exist is either too stupid to understand that he is contributing to or is intentionally promoting an über-Auschwitz,’ he wrote. Alvin H. Rosenfeld examines Améry’s legacy in advance of the publication of Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left, edited by Marlene Gallner, translated by Lars Fischer (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, forthcoming).

The aim of these anti-Israel activities at their most extreme is to demonise and delegitimise the Jewish state in ways that recall the marginalisation and dehumanisation of Jews in Nazi Germany. The propaganda effect of such defamation worked against the Jews during the Third Reich, and Améry believed that it could work once again, this time against the Jewish state and its supporters. And so he raised his voice tirelessly against both antisemitism and anti-Zionism and the growing links he observed between the two.

He was not alone in doing so. Closer to our own day, Per Ahlmark, a former deputy prime minister of Sweden, wrote that ‘anti-Semites of different centuries had always aimed at destroying the then center of Jewish existence … Today, when the Jewish state has become a center of Jewish identity and a source of pride and protection for most Jews, Zionism is being slandered as a racist ideology.’ The aim of such slander is to reduce the state that Zionism founded to an entity unworthy of retaining a place within the family of civilised nations. More recently, other world leaders have also spoken out strongly against such bigotry, noting that anti-Zionism is nothing other than a reinvention of antisemitism. In October 2015, for instance, Pope Francis was emphatic in pronouncing against it: ‘To attack Jews is antisemitism, but an outright attack on the state of Israel is also antisemitism.’

Améry wrote similarly about the threats that a revived antisemitism, often under the cover of anti-Zionism, would pose, and not only to Jews but also to post-war Western civilisation at large. Reflecting on developments since his first book appeared, he noted, ‘When I set about writing, and finished, there was no antisemitism in Germany, or more correctly: where it did exist, it did not dare to show itself.’ As he looked about him, he recognised that those days were gone, and not only in Germany. Antisemitism was no longer hidden covertly in the shadows but was, once again, a threatening presence in the public sphere. If its most aggressive adherents were to gain still more prominence, the result, he was sure, would be a reinvigoration of eliminationist passions that could bring on new disasters. In his most severe vision of what such a turn might produce, he referred, chillingly, to ‘Auschwitz II.’

It is a fearsome prospect and, one hopes, it will never come about. Meanwhile, Améry’s writings, the product of its author’s painfully intimate knowledge of Auschwitz, stand before us in all their argumentative urgency as admonition and warning. We would do well to take them seriously.[1]

There’s an important line separating legitimate opinion that enhances the public discourse, from inflammatory rhetoric that interferes with constructive dialogue.

In our view, it’s alarming to see a Sheridan College Professor write a baseless and hateful column against Israel entitled: “The Mafia and Israel’s child killers,” which paints a grotesque and false caricature of Israel’s armed forces.

In his screed, Andrew Mitrovica, a journalism instructor in the Faculty of Animation, Arts & Design, describes the recent death of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, and bizarrely compares the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to the mafia, or as he describes it, a “ruthless crew of gangsters masquerading as ‘soldiers’ who populate the Israeli military.” In his eyes, the IDF is an organized crime syndicate and its soldiers, criminals. As he put it “Israel’s child-killing snipers” are no different than mafia-hitmen.

While Mitrovica attempts to portray the death of the preteen as a premeditated act of a murderous army, he conveniently omits a critical detail: that the boy was killed during violent clashes on the border between Hamas-controlled Gaza and Israel, where rioters threw explosives and attempted to breach the barrier to gain entry into Israel. Because if that detail was mentioned, readers would understand that there is a chasm of difference between a premeditated act of murder, and a casualty of war. Even more so, the fact that a 12-year-old boy was on the front lines of a violent riot on the border with Israel begs the question as to whether the boy was recruited into conflict by Hamas terrorists, as it has done with other child soldiers in the past.

Mitrovica feebly attempts to compare the Israel Defense Forces to the mafia, claiming both groups target children indiscriminately. While such nonsense may be fit to be published on Al Jazeera, it is demonstratbly false. Israel faces nonstop terror threats to the lives and safety of its civilians, who were bombarded by more than 4,000 Hamas rockets this past spring. Israel acts in an extraordinarily restrained and targeted manner when faced with such violent, hateful terrorism, whether coming from Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad or other groups. One cannot envision any other country who would tolerate nonstop terrorism, calls for its destruction, rockets fired indiscriminately at its civilian population centres, all emanating from the never-ending incitement of hate peddled by Hamas, the genocidal, homophobic and medieval Islamist death cult which rules Gaza with an iron fist.

Today the Seattle City Council will vote on US-Israel police trainings which promote community policing and train police to avoid using force. Yet anti-Israel activists are blaming police brutality on Israel, reminiscent of antisemitic tropes blaming Jews
pic.twitter.com/zn7SZ9tkEX

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 20, 2021

The co-chair of Momentum accused Jewish former MP Luciana Berger — who quit Labour after facing years of antisemitic abuse and death threats from pro-Corbyn activists — of being disingenuous in her account of Jew-hate in the party, the JC can reveal.

Screenshots of private Facebook posts from 2019 showed Gaya Sriskanthan making the comment in response to an interview in which Ms Berger revealed that six people had been convicted of antisemitic hate crimes and death threats against her.

A complaint has been submitted to Labour about Ms Sriskanthan’s remarks.

In her post, Ms Sriskanthan wrote: “She disingenuously conflates the increase in antisemitism across the country (and Europe) with the Labour Party.”

In the video interview, Ms Berger said about the abuse and death threats: “I feel very strongly that I have a responsibility as a parliamentarian to do everything possible to speak out about that.”

Ms Sriskanthan also appeared to deny the extent of antisemitism in Labour and suggested that the Independent Group — the party founded by Ms Berger and other MPs in response to the far-left leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and the fallout from Brexit — facilitated right-wing extremism.

Ms Sriskanthan was last year elected as co-chair of Momentum, the left-wing activist group set up to help get Mr Corbyn into government.

On September 14, The Daily Beast published a piece, titled The Courageous Men Who Smuggle Palestinians into Israel, that condones criminal activity and ignores the Jewish state’s precarious security situation. Cloaked as a review of a documentary about Palestinians engaging in human trafficking, the Daily Beast report blithely skips over inconvenient facts to tar Israel with the vile, baseless accusation of ethnic cleansing.

The incessant and severe security concerns that Jerusalem must cope with are, it seems, a non-starter for Daily Beast writer Caspar Salmon, who depicts Israeli security forces as simply paranoid:
For example, en route with the drivers, we see very well how all Palestinian civilians are cast as suspects by Israeli forces, and how the drivers and their acolytes live in a permanent state of threat.”

Seemingly out of nowhere and for no good reason, the Jewish state built a wall that has, according to Salmon, “facilitated the continued annexation of Palestinian territories by Israel.”

In fact, the construction of the security barrier was in direct response to the unprecedented wave of violence unleashed by Palestinian terrorists beginning in September 2000 against Israeli citizens during what became known as the Second Intifada. This dark period saw over 1,000 Israeli civilians and soldiers killed. An additional 7,000 were injured as a result of suicide bombings and shootings. The Israeli government thus approved and began construction of the security barrier in an attempt to stop rampant Palestinian terrorist infiltrations.

Due to the security fence’s effectiveness, suicide bombings carried out by Palestinians entering Israel from the West Bank decreased sharply. The number of such attacks fell by 90 percent. In 2002, 457 Israelis died from terrorist attacks. In 2009, that figure had dropped to eight Israelis.

NYT, in a nutshell: Page 1, the Israelis killed a nice, wonderful Iranian nuclear scientist; Page 8, the Biden administration droned an innocent aid worker to cover their abdication in Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/nOpuUljian

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 20, 2021

Oh yes, musician @johnlegend, another ‘expert’ on the Middle East conflict. Here when notorious racist and antisemite Mehdi Hassan. Please John, stick to the music. pic.twitter.com/6aiFRLHdET

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 20, 2021

The town of Huntington in Suffolk County, NY, has adopted the International Definition of Antisemitism.

The Definition was adopted following the passage of a majority resolution, without objection, at a meeting last week of the town’s governing board.

Earlier this year, Suffolk County, where Huntington is located, and neighbouring Nassau County adopted the Definition.

Britain was the first country in the world to adopt the International Definition of Antisemitism, something for which Campaign Against Antisemitism and Lord Pickles worked hard over many meetings with officials at Downing Street.

Four men who drove through London screaming antisemitic threats of rape and violence earlier this year have been formally charged, according to the London Metropolitan Police.

The incident took place on May 16, when the cars were filmed on Finchley Road in London, bearing Palestinian flags and shouting, among other things, “F*** the Jews, rape their daughters,” through loudspeakers.

Jewish News reported at the time that the cars were heading toward the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green. Someone could also be heard on the loudspeaker saying, “We have to send a message.”

The incident took place during Israel’s 11-day conflict with Hamas in May, amid a wave of antisemitism in the US and Europe.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan at the time called the incident “appalling,” while Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, “There is no place for antisemitism in our society. … I stand with Britain’s Jews who should not have to endure the type of shameful racism we have seen today.”

Metropolitan Police arrested the four men shortly after.

In a statement released on Monday, the Met identified the four criminals, who are all from the community of Blackburn, as Mohammed Iftikhar Hanif, 27; Jawaad Hussain, 24; Asif Ali, 25; and Adil Mota, 26.

A 60-year-old man was injured at a vigil in support of Israel and against antisemitism in the city of Hamburg after a group of young people insulted the gathering with antisemitic and anti-Israel slogans.

According to an initial police investigation, a group of three to four people approached the vigil “Hamburg for Israel and against antisemitism,” which took place on Saturday near the central train station in Hamburg. The unidentified 18-to-25-year-old perpetrator was part of the group allegedly yelling slogans at the organizers of the gathering, including “f**k Israel, free Palestine”

When several of the participants in the vigil approached the offender and asked him to stop, he punched the 60-year-old victim in the face with his fist, causing a laceration. The victim was taken to a hospital by ambulance for treatment.

The perpetrator along with his companions, who likely fled on rental e-scooters, managed to escape despite an immediate chase by several police cars. Hamburg authorities are calling for witnesses of the attack to come forward, while Germany’s state security has now taken over the investigation.

An off-duty New York City police officer has been arrested after he allegedly broke into Camp Young Judea on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, September 8.

Matthew McGrath, 37, was arrested and charged with felony burglary and criminal mischief after he allegedly smashed windows, destroyed the camp director's residence, and extensively damaged the property, according to a New York State Police press release.

According to the Mid Hudson News, McGrath appears to have a "history" with the camp and his mother lives nearby.

McGrath is required to be in court this coming October 6, after being released on his own recognizance.

Australian activists have condemned antisemitic graffiti in a park in Keilor, a suburb of Melbourne.

Swastika graffiti was found in Caroline Chisholm Park, which has since been removed by Brimbank Council and reported to the police.

A Council official said that the hateful graffiti “has no place in our community,” and police pledged to step up patrols. Local MP Andrew Giles launched a petition calling on the community to “reject this sort of hate.”

Antisemitic graffiti has also been found in Broadmeadows and Mernda, also Melbourne suburbs, over the past month.

A spokesperson for Victoria Police said: “We understand incidents of antisemitism can leave communities feeling targeted, threatened and vulnerable. These incidents have no place in our society. There is no excuse to engage in behaviour that promotes fear or hate in our community. We treat any report of antisemitism seriously, whether it happens on the street or online.”

Stop Antisemitism, a nonprofit watchdog group, has recognized Pittsburgh-based American Eagle Outfitters as one of the top 25 national corporations for its response to antisemitism.

In a report issued last month by the organization, American Eagle Outfitters and L’Oréal were the only corporations to receive an “A” rating. Those that received notably lower scores include Google and Unilever, which each received an “F” rating. Microsoft and Amazon each received a “D” rating and Apple and Nike each received a “C.”

Stacy Siegal, American Eagle’s executive vice president and general counsel, said that a commitment to inclusivity and diversity rests at the heart of American Eagle’s operations.

She noted that the corporation provides associates with opportunities to develop meaningful and educational bonds through its Network and Connection groups, such as its REAL Jewish Connection group, created to provide an opportunity for employees “to celebrate the Jewish culture through education and recognition of holiday rituals throughout the year,” according to the American Eagle website.

Caren Ieraci helped establish the REAL Jewish Connection group in August 2020 so associates could share traditions. And since its founding, the group has joined together to dip apples in honey for Rosh Hashanah, spin dreidels for Hanukkah and commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On August 23, 2021, Iraq celebrated its centennial. There was little of the pomp and celebration that the occasion would have called for; the country was too heavily weighed down by political turmoil and economic hardships. Still, a few articles in the local newspapers were written celebrating the occasion, and some spent time praising the name of an Iraqi Jew, Heskell Sassoon, as one of the key architects in the creation of modern Iraq after four centuries of Ottoman rule.[1]

The Jews Welcome The British Army
As the Ottoman Empire begun to crumble toward the end of World War I, the Jews of Baghdad were victimized for supposedly causing the collapse of the government's finances and some moneychangers faced degradation and torture. Not surprisingly, the Jews welcomed the British army when it entered Baghdad victoriously in 1917. Indeed, there is evidence that shortly after the British military government was established, the Jews of Baghdad, who constituted about 40 percent of the capital's population, sent an appeal to the military governor of Iraq, General Stanley Maude, signed by 56 leading personalities of the community, expressing their objection to the creation of an Arab national government and requesting to be granted the status of British subjects.[2]

The request was ignored, but Jews came to be important in the colonial government. With the language skills they had acquired at the Jewish schools and with what today would be termed a global outlook, Jews in large numbers were recruited by the British military government to fill many positions in the new administration. Other Jews used their trading skills and overseas contacts to import food supplies to meet the needs of the British army.

The Transition To National Government
In 1920 a deadly revolt erupted in central and southern Iraq against the British rule which the British tried to suppress by force. The revolt claimed the lives of 6,000 Iraqi and 600 British soldiers (primarily Indians with their British officers.). After months of fighting, the key leaders of the revolt decided to seek an end to the violence. They selected a Jew by the name of Menashe Eliahu Ezra Khalaschi who, together with Sheikh Salman Al-'Abtan, met with the British commanding officer in the city Kufa, and a ceasefire was achieved. [3]

With the revolt coming to an end, Great Britain decided to relinquish some of the governing powers to a national government, although under British tutelage. A provisional government was established in 1920 with Abdul Rahman Al-Naqib as prime minister presiding over a government comprising six additional ministers, including Heskel Sassoon as minister of finance. Gertrude Bell, who was the Oriental Adviser to the British military government, who is considered by some to be the person most responsible for the creation of modern Iraq, was a big booster of Sassoon. She would later write that he was the most competent of the Iraqi ministers.[4]

Haskell Sassoon was born in Baghdad in 1860 to a distinguished and wealthy Iraqi Jewish family. The son of a leading rabbi, he attended the Alliance School, and continued his education at the imperial school in Constantinople and then with law studies at St. Theresa College in Vienna. He returned to Baghdad after spending time in Berlin and London and, in 1908, he was designated as a member in the first Ottoman parliament where, incidentally, he befriended Prince Faisal, who was to become king of Iraq.[5]

Al-Naqib readily welcomed Bell's recommendation to appoint Heskell Sassoon as minister of finance, but Bell had difficulty persuading him to add a Shi'ite minister to the government. Throughout most of the history of Iraq under Muslim rule, from the advent of Islam in the seventh century to invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003, the rulers of Iraq were primarily Sunni Muslims. The Shi'a branch of Islam has been viewed by the Sunnis, particularly those in Saudi Arabia, as rawafedh, meaning apostate. Gertrude Bell, herself believed that the Shi'as "were almost all subjects of Persia, and not eligible for office in a Metropolitan government," [6] but she believed it was important for national unity to include them. Al-Naqib reluctantly agreed to appoint a Shi'ite as minister of education. The new government, also known as the Provisional Council of State, reported to the British administration.

The 80th anniversary of a pogrom against Iraq’s Jewish community in 1941, was marked by BBC Radio 4 on Sunday.

In a news package, the broadcaster recalled the history of the antisemitic attack against the Baghdadi community over the festival of Shavuot from 1-2 June 1941. It led to the deaths of at least 180 Jews, 1,000 people who were injured and the looting of 900 homes.

Interviewee Edwin Shuker, who fled Iraq in the 1970s, said his mother remembered the pogrom.

“She simply can’t speak of the atrocities she saw,” said Mr Shuker, who acknowledged that there was a time when Jews were at the forefront of Iraqi “music, literature, political scenes”.

Despite its 2,500-year-old history, there are now only three Jews believed to be living in Iraq. Most of its community – like Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa, from Egypt to Syria, Lebanon, and Morocco – fled their homes after the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Iraqi Jews, who once made up 40 per cent of Baghdad’s population, faced increased persecution after the establishment of the Jewish State. By the 1970s, their phone lines were cut, they were not allowed to attend university, private clubs and many were imprisoned for allegedly working as “Zionist spies”. In 1969, there was a public hanging in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square of nine Jews, three Muslims and two Christians accused of spying for Israel.

The majority of Iraqi Jews fled to Israel – although a significant number moved to the UK, US, Canada and Holland.

In an interview with BBC presenter William Crawley, journalist Sandy Rashty spoke about being the London-born daughter of Iraqi Jews who had fled persecution in the 1970s.

On the holiday of Sukkot, Jewish IDF soldiers hold and wave an etrog—a special citrus fruit—and a lulav—palm, myrtle and willow branches symbolically bundled together—in a ceremony that is thousands of years old.

We wish you a happy Sukkot! pic.twitter.com/SiNWffkrWJ

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 20, 2021

The Jewish holiday of #Sukkot begins this evening.

These photos, taken in 1941 in Lodz Ghetto, attest to the fact that even in the oppressive conditions of the ghetto, Jews observed the holiday as an act of faith & resistance.

Learn more: https://t.co/jgJFLuiGh7pic.twitter.com/rGOBkBo7zq

— Yad Vashem (@yadvashem) September 20, 2021

Here is a powerful clip from Rabbi Sacks zt"l on the meaning of Sukkot and the Sukkah in which he explores the idea that the permanent can become temporary and the temporary can become permanent. We wish you and your family a Chag Sameach! #Sukkot#Sukkot5782#ChagSameachpic.twitter.com/5dAvZmgmPs

— The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Trust (@rabbisacks) September 19, 2021

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Hatred is like a cancer. It spreads from cell to cell, from organ to organ, from person to person, from group to group. We saw it in action in Durban. Even a man of the stature of Kofi Annan somehow lost his way and said things that were inappropriate for him.

With the scandal of Durban in the backdrop, how can the world expect of Israel to trust the United Nations? And how can good people, idealists, have faith in the UN's mission to unite countries in an atmosphere of respect?

The conference in Durban will be remembered as a forum that was governed not by anti-Israelites but by anti-Semites. The fact that militant Palestinians hate Jews -- that is known already. One needs only hear the various Islamic leaders and read the books printed by the Palestinian Authority: They preach hatred and violence, not against Zionists but against Jews. Their slogan, naked and brutal and identical everywhere, was keenly felt and even heard in Durban: "Kill the Jews."

What is painful is not that the Palestinians and the Arabs voiced their hatred, but the fact that so few delegates had the courage to combat them. It is as if in a strange and frightening moment of collective catharsis, everyone removed their masks and revealed their true faces.

By means of the disgraceful conference in Durban, history has given us, the Jews, a sign. And we had better learn how to decipher it.

A total of 34 countries openly boycotted Wednesday’s conference at the UN marking the 20th anniversary of the World Conference Against Racism in Durban because of the antisemitism and anti-Israel bias at the 2001 event.

More than twice as many countries opted out of the event than the previous Durban Review Conference in 2011, when 14 did so.

The countries boycotting Durban IV were: Albania, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Moldova, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, UK, US and Uruguay.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry thanked the countries for their support.

“The original Durban Conference, an UN-hosted event, became the worst international manifestation of antisemitism since WWII,” the Foreign Ministry stated. “Inflammatory speeches, discriminatory texts, and a pro-Hitler march that took place outside the halls were only part of the ugliness displayed in 2001. The ‘World Conference on Racism’ actually ended up encouraging it, including through the parallel NGO forum, which displayed caricatures of Jews with hooked noses and fangs dripping with blood, clutching money.”

The Foreign Ministry said that the organizations seeking to demonize and boycott Israel 20 years ago continue their campaign, but have failed. “Israel is a thriving state that is increasing its cooperation with countries in the region and will continue to do so,” it said.

Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan, who has worked for the past year to bring more countries on board against Durban, pointed out that few heads of state addressed the conference, like those of South Africa and Cuba, and only a handful – like Iran and the Palestinian Authority – sent foreign ministers to the event, in addition to more countries boycotting it than ever before.

To state this proposition as plainly as possible, more Israelis must die if there is to be peace. The logic articulated here is so sordid that it’s understandable why progressives would fail to articulate it plainly.

On top of being ghoulishly cruel, it is an idea that is strategically unsound and devoid of almost any theoretical basis. We know what this conflict would look like in the absence of this system because most of us remember a time before Iron Dome’s relatively recent introduction. That was a time that did produce more Israeli casualties as a result of rocket barrages from within Gaza. It was also a time that involved far broader and bloodier Israeli responses to those provocations, including costly ground operations that produced vastly more Palestinian deaths. The elimination of this entirely defensive system of radar installations and interceptor missiles would produce more violence and destruction, not less. To hear the left’s more honest members tell it, that’s not necessarily an undesirable outcome.

Fortunately, and despite their outsize influence on committees, it’s not hard to find Democrats across their party’s ideological spectrum condemning (albeit obliquely) the left and the setback they’ve dealt their colleagues. Democrats are now forced to clean up after their blinkered congressional allies. After spending his evening on the phone talking interested parties from Jerusalem to Washington off the ledge, House majority leader Steny Hoyer promised on Tuesday to reverse the damage his leftwing colleagues had done with a stand-alone vote that will restore funding for Iron Dome.

This will not, however, be the last time that Democrats are forced to mop up the wake their ideologically rigid progressive friends leave if only because it isn’t the first. Until Democrats understand that the costs associated with the influence of “Squad”-type legislators are steeper than the benefits, the embarrassments will continue.

House Democrats have stripped a provision of the government funding bill that would have provided $1 billion toward Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

The provision was reportedly removed due to criticism from progressives in the House, including Representatives Alexandrio Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). The Continuing Resolution (CR) would fund the government until December 3; if it isn’t passed by the end of the month, a government shutdown would occur. The Iron Dome funding will instead be inserted into a separate defense bill.

Some House Democrats criticized the move.

“Iron Dome is a defensive system used by one of our closest allies to save civilian lives,” Representative Ted Deutch (D-FL) tweeted. “It needs to be replenished because thousands of rockets were fired by the Hamas terrorists who control Gaza. Consider this my pushing back against this decision.”

Representative Ritchie Torres (D-NY) similarly tweeted, “A missile defense system (i.e. Iron Dome) defends civilians from missiles. Hence the name. Only in a morally inverted universe would this be considered a ‘controversy.’”

Representative Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) also tweeted: “The Iron Dome protects innocent civilians in Israel from terrorist attacks and some of my colleagues have now blocked funding it. We must stand by our historic ally — the only democracy in the Middle East.”

It might be just politics. But news that Democrats are holding up $1 billion for the Iron Dome missile defense system led many Israelis to worry that the bond between the two allies is breaking.

And that bond, especially in terms of military aid for Israel and the Iron Dome missile defense system, is a lifesaver.

Israeli politicians like Foreign Minister Yair Lapid downplayed the move, and after Lapid spoke with US House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, he released a statement saying the defunding was a “technical delay” and that the money would be approved at a later date.

Former defense minister and chief of staff Moshe (“Bogie”) Ya’alon also said the move won’t affect Israel’s military superiority, but it brings to light the deep divisions between the Democratic Party and Israel.

Those major divisions, Ya’alon said, were because of the behavior of former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, actions that “severely harmed” Israel’s bipartisan status in Congress, and among American Jews who tend to vote for the Democratic Party. The new government led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has identified the loss of Jewish support as a major area of concern, and he is working to get that support back.

“It’s more a political issue because it brings out the issue that the Democrats are becoming more vocal on the issue of Israel,” Ya’alon said. “Netanyahu publicly supported the Republicans during the last election, and we are paying a price for it.”

Politics aside, Ya’alon also warned that the situation would make Israel’s many enemies happy.

“Israel’s enemies, led by Iran and Hezbollah, would be happy about any dispute between Israel and the United States, especially in the area of security assistance,” he told The Jerusalem Post.

Moderate Democrats so far have dismissed progressives’ calls to condition aid to Israel. They argued that those who call to condition aid are a small group who do not represent the majority of the party. However, following Tuesday’s 220-211 vote – along party lines – it is becoming clear that when every vote counts, and given the Democrats narrow majority, even a small group can have a great deal of influence.

The larger question, of course, is whether this was a one-time victory for the Left flank of the party or a new trend. It is still not clear what would happen the next time such funds are part of complex legislation that would come down to a slim majority, and whether Hoyer will again need to find creative ways such as using suspension bills to pass it.

Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, defended the party and told The Jerusalem Post, “The bottom line is that Democrats will ensure that Israel gets this aid.

“Joe Biden made the commitment to Israel after the latest conflict with Hamas that he would replenish Iron Dome beyond the commitment in the MOU [memorandum of understanding], and it will get done; and Democrats will make sure it gets done,” said Soifer. She went on to say that “Democrats have passed aid to Israel numerous times in this Congress, and it will happen again when they vote on a standalone measure later this week.”

Unlike Soifer, Dan Arbell, scholar-in-residence at the Center for Israeli Studies at American University, believes that “bipartisan support for Israel is eroding.” Arbell previously served as deputy chief of mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, and worked as former ambassador Michael Oren’s second-in-command from 2009 to 2012.

“Public opinion polls show a consistent decline in Democratic support for Israel and rising support and solidarity with the Palestinians,” he told the Post. “The funding for Iron Dome will go through at the end, but Israel must invest great efforts in widening and deepening the dialogue and contacts with elected officials and constituencies who do not feel a strong bond with Israel before it’ll be too late.”

Israel also gets billions of dollars from the US for weapons because we are a US ally, a democracy that shares America’s values, and fighting terrorist groups who profess to wanting to commit genocide against us.

Perhaps the most absurd response to The Squad is that the Iron Dome saves Arab lives too, which is true – it not only has saved Arabs in Israel and their homes from being struck by rockets, but it saves many Palestinians, because Israel would likely strike Gaza much harder if it faced more casualties at home.

But what is the implication there? That it’s understandable if The Squad doesn’t care if Jews die, but maybe they’ll care more if Arabs do? Why is anyone legitimizing that view?

The things the progressives find objectionable about Israel – ranging from its control over Judea and Samaria to its very existence as a Jewish state, depending on the squad member – did not change when Bennett and Lapid entered office in June, and they’re not going to change anytime soon. That means the obstacles Israel faces from the Democratic Party’s left flank are here to stay for a while, and this government in Jerusalem will have to learn to advance Israel’s interests in this complex reality.

The solution seems to be to work even closer with the Biden administration and moderate Democrats and Republicans in Congress to circumvent the progressives – as they are doing this week.

But minimizing the problem as purely technical, and blaming Netanyahu, is not going to help.

Israel part starts at 57 min
Today’s podcast points out the continuing scandal of the media’s and Big Tech’s efforts to suppress stories they don’t like—both about Hunter Biden and about China’s role in the promulgation of COVID—and what the practical consequences for them both may be. And then we get into the Democratic party’s courtship of political meltdown, shown in part by an effort to defund Israel’s anti-missile efforts.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) admitted on Tuesday that a sizable number of Democrats are constantly on the look out for ways to attack the state of Israel.

Slotkin made the remarks on social media after Democrat leaders removed a provision from a short-term government spending bill to help fund Israel’s Iron Dome which protects its citizens from terrorist attacks like the ones out of Gaza earlier this year.

“There has never been a situation where military aid for Israel was held up because of objections from members of Congress,” Axios reported. “While the funding will get a vote in its current defense bill, the clash underscores the deep divisions within the Democratic party over Israel.”

Slotkin then took to Twitter to address the issue, saying that the anti-Israel policy positions of some in her party were “devoid of substance” and that they were “irresponsible.” She did not call out any specific member of her party.

“Iron Dome is a purely *defensive* system — it protects civilians when hundreds of rockets are shot at population centers. Whatever your views on the Israeli-Pal conflict, using a system that just saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives as a political chit is problematic,” Slotkin said. “Iron Dome, like other missile defense systems, was co-developed by the US and Israel. The research that went into the design of this system is shared between our two countries and can be used to protect our bases abroad, in addition to Israeli civilians in their homes.”

Asked whether he supports Iron Dome replenishment, Nides responded curtly, “Yes sir.”

He also noted to the committee that the Iron Dome, which has been used to intercept thousands of rockets fired at Israel by Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip, is a strictly “defensive system.”

“Upholding Israel’s security serves America’s national security interest and ensures that we will always have a strong reliable and secure partner,” Nides said.

Nides’s unreserved backing of the Iron Dome funding could put him at odds with committee member Chris Murphy, a Democrat.

Murphy tweeted Tuesday that though he also supports funding the system and Israel’s need to be able to defend itself, “this funding cannot be at the expense of economic/humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. Iron Dome funding and Palestinian aid should move together.”

Nides also expressed concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. Confronting the potential of Iran to obtain nuclear weapons is a prime concern, he warned.

“Israel is one of our closest security partners in countering the broad spectrum of threats, chief among them is the critical threat that Iran poses,” Nides said. “President Biden has made it clear his commitment to ensure that Iran will never develop a nuclear weapon.”

The Abraham Accords, mediated by the preceding Trump administration and which normalized ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan “are critical to the region’s stability and prosperity,” Nides said.

.?@CUFI?: “Pelosi must decide who leads her party, the President of the United States or the fringe Democrats who held the CR hostage to block a lifesaving tool simply because they hate Israel.” pic.twitter.com/5x3voCBTPQ

— Adam Kredo (@Kredo0) September 21, 2021

House majority leader Steny Hoyer vowed on Tuesday to bring a suspension bill to the House floor later this week to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome, hours after Democratic leadership had to remove the $1 billion provision from a continuing resolution amid pushback from Progressives.

“It’s my intention to bring to this floor a suspension bill before the end of this week, that will fully fund Iron Dome,” Hoyer said on the House floor. “We ought to do it.”

Hoyer said he talked to Foreign Minister Yair Lapid “and assured him that the bill was going to pass this House. I hope that my colleagues on that side of the aisle would join me. I intend to bring it to the floor and it will be done. It is absolutely essential.”

He said that the air defense system was instrumental in warding off the 4,400 rockets that were fired from Gaza over 11 days in May.

“Iron Dome saved lives and property and held Israel secure,” Hoyer said. “The president wants this bill passed... and I believe scores of others on both sides of the aisle want to make sure that Israel is secure and that she could replenish the assets of Iron Dome – which are defensive only, not offensive weapons – so that if somebody sends a rocket toward either people or places in Israel, they will be able to intercept that rocket and save lives and save property.”

Senator Norm Coleman, Republican Jewish Coalition national chairman, said that House Democrats “should be ashamed of themselves. By cowardly caving to the Israel-hating wing of their party and blocking vital assistance to support our ally Israel, House Democrats have emboldened the likes of Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to continue dragging their party even further to the radical Left,” he said in a statement.

Upon my urging, House leadership has committed to bringing a standalone bill to the floor this week to replenish the Iron Dome missile defense system. We will pass this bill with the support of the majority of my colleagues and reiterate our ironclad support for our ally, Israel. https://t.co/TgfFudfTDJpic.twitter.com/1QJBsUvRUq

— Congresswoman Kathy Manning (@RepKManning) September 22, 2021

Wow Lara literally wants more dead Jews https://t.co/8zYFM0GXhj

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 22, 2021

Democratic leaders in the House are backing a measure to provide U.S. assistance to Iraqi militia groups that are known to be dominated by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

A Democrat-led amendment to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, the sprawling annual bill that funds U.S. military operations around the world, would permit U.S. funding for Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, a confederation of militia groups that work alongside the corps's Quds Force, Iran's paramilitary fighting brigade.

The amendment, authored by Rep. Brad Sherman (D., Calif.), was slipped into a larger package of measures that are backed by Democratic leadership and expected to easily pass into the larger National Defense Authorization Act, which is set to be finalized this week.

Sherman's measure, which purports to help vulnerable Christian populations in Nineveh Plains, would allow the United States to provide Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces with aid to help resettle religious minorities who have been attacked by the Islamic State terrorist group. Those militias, however, have close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a former leader of the group, was killed alongside Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in a 2019 drone strike. The United States has sanctioned the Popular Mobilization Forces' new leader, Falih Fayyadh, for mass human rights abuses backed by the Iranian corps.

The Popular Mobilization Forces include at least three designated terrorist groups and have been implicated in several drone attacks on U.S. positions in the region, including a deadly 2019 strike on the U.S. embassy compound in Iraq.

AOC wants to block precision guided weapons sales to Israel claiming Israel shells Palestinian civilians…so just to clarify, AOC now wants #Israel to have less precise weapons.

?? I see shes still “not an expert on this geopolitical issue” pic.twitter.com/xpR8OSPc1F

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 19, 2021

In light of this history, it is not enough to praise the countries that will boycott Durban IV nor to oppose the many more that apparently still plan to participate. Beyond that, we must face the reality that the United Nations has found it necessary to stage yet another major international event to commemorate this grand global travesty. To do that, we must understand why so many still support Durban despite its ugly legacy.

For those who celebrate Durban, that conference laid the foundation for the world to accept – and to believe – that systemic racism lies at the core of our global system. Over the last two decades, this worldview has taken hold internationally, nowhere more than in the United States. For many, Durban represents the war on a global system of white supremacy. It also reflects the growing worldview that capitalism is unsustainable, as is the global influence of the United States. These understandings are reflected in Critical Race Theory, the Black Lives Matter movement, and a host of government, corporate and educational programs.

Too often, these programs adopt not only Durban's commendable opposition to racism but also its tragic descent into bigotry. This can be seen, for example, in cases where university training sessions have separated employees by race, treating Jews and whites as privileged oppressors and teaching other groups to view them in stereotypical terms. In California, supporters of a first-draft Ethnic Studies Curriculum would promote the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel and omit lesson plans about antisemitism.

For those who are committed to ending racism, this new anti-racism is a diversion from the real, hard work of civil-rights enforcement. Instead of identifying actual instances of discrimination where people are treated worse because of their race or other group identity Durbanist approach is to overhaul our social order, dividing people by their perceived status as an oppressor or oppressed. This feeds into racial stereotypes, with Jews viewed in antisemitic terms as privileged, powerful, conspiratorial and controlling.

A day after the General Debate at the 76th UN General Assembly began, the international body turned the spotlight on the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the controversial UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, which was dominated by clashes over the Middle East and the legacy of slavery.

More than 30 countries are boycotting Wednesday's commemoration, according to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which urged more countries to join them "in continuing to fight racism, bigotry, and antisemitism."

The original Durban Conference in 2001 singled Israel out as racist, with draft resolutions saying Zionism is a form of racism. The legacy left by the first Durban conference, where Israel was labeled an "apartheid state," and, according to many of the speakers, Zionism was linked to racism in the lexicon of left-wing groups, was also evident in the follow-up conferences in 2009 and 2011.

The International Legal Forum (ILF) said in a letter to UN ambassadors and foreign ministers that the recurring event has "descended into an infamous hotbed of unbridled Jew-hatred, antisemitism and vilification of the State of Israel."

Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Gilad Erdan on Wednesday noted that the boycott of the event by so many UN member states was a major accomplishment for the Jewish state. "The Durban conference was rotten to its core and therefore any event that commemorates it is the fruit of the poisonous tree," he said. "I am glad that many more countries have realized this, and I will continue to fight this fight until the UN realizes that the Durban stain has to be erased."

"We doubled the number of countries that will boycott the hate conference!" Erdan wrote on Facebook, adding that "31 countries will boycott the shameful event ... more than twice the number of countries that boycotted the Third Durban Conference in 2011."

Albania ????
Uruguay ????
Poland ????
Montenegro ????
Ukraine ????
Georgia ????
Moldova ????
Serbia ????
Macedonia ????
Estonia ????
Lithuania ????
Dominican Republic ????

For your withdrawal from the 20th anniversary event of the UN’s Durban Conference (2/5)

— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) September 22, 2021

Isn't it odd - that the UN are not telling people that a list of 32 nations - which include most of the western democracies - have boycotted the event over antisemitism and extremism.

Seems like the toxic UN doesn't want people to know the truth. https://t.co/3Kd8TXnnAd

— David Collier (@mishtal) September 22, 2021

UN Sec Gen says anyone who uses
#DurbanIV for “antisemitic…diatribes” harms the cause.

That would make a lot more sense if the entire cause of Durban wasn’t promoting #antisemitism ?? pic.twitter.com/oUc6QfFeqJ

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 22, 2021

.@UNHumanRights, you forgot to mention that tomorrow more than 30 countries—including major democracies Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the U.S., Canada and Australia—are boycotting your celebration of the 2001 Durban conference. Reminder of why they pulled out: https://t.co/ajkIZoUwfupic.twitter.com/jFKm3202rx

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 21, 2021

Couldn't even get enough for a Minyan! 6 people is all #UNGA could muster for the first roundtable of #DurbanIV at UN. That's what happens when nations and leaders of principle #SayNoToDurbanIV antisemitic carnival. pic.twitter.com/qY0W2OTZ7T

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 22, 2021

US President Joe Biden said Tuesday that a sovereign and democratic Palestinian state is the “best way” to ensure Israel’s future.

“We must seek a future of greater peace and security for all people of the Middle East,” Biden said in a speech to the UN General Assembly.

“The commitment of the United States to Israel’s security is without question and our support for an independent Jewish state is unequivocal,” he said.

“But I continue to believe that a two-state solution is the best way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish democratic state, living in peace alongside a viable, sovereign and democratic Palestinian state,” he said.

“We’re a long way from that goal at this moment but we should never allow ourselves to give up on the possibility of progress.”

Disappointing to hear President #Biden at #UNGA announce U.S. intention to rejoin @UN_HRC. This is same disgraced Council that counts Venezuela, China and Russia as members, and whose sole purpose is to attack Israel. As @NikkiHaley said, it is "a cesspool of political bias." pic.twitter.com/zuDQdyzgcC

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 21, 2021

Police on Tuesday night arrested two Palestinian illegal workers suspected of being accomplices in the ramming of a police team in Nahariya in the morning, which left a police volunteer dead and an officer seriously hurt.

The two were allegedly at the construction site in the northern city when the chief suspect in the case, a manager at the construction company, allegedly ran over the two policemen.

Police nabbed the two suspects along with nine other illegal workers near Jerusalem in the evening. The two were taken for questioning. A third suspected accomplice is still at large.

Police roadblocks set up to catch the suspects caused heavy congestion on the major Route 1 highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Police said that the two-man police team had arrived at the Nahariya site in the morning, after residents complained of noise and work being done during the Sukkot holiday. The work was part of a project to improve flood defenses in the city. The team also began questioning Palestinian workers at the site to check whether they were in the country legally.

Hundreds gathered in Yarka on Wednesday to bury a police volunteer who was killed after a vehicle drove into him in the northern city of Nahariya a day earlier.

Hossam Zaghir, 32, a Druze father of two, had been volunteering since 2016, police said. He and Amir Abu Rish, a police officer, were seeking permits from workers at a construction site in Nahariya when they were hit by the vehicle inside the site. Zaghir was killed, while Abu Rish was injured.

The main suspect, Nasim Sah, 44, from the Lower Galilee city of Arraba, reportedly confessed to the ramming. His remand was extended by eight days on Wednesday morning.

In Yarka, Zaghir was given a police burial, which followed a religious Druze ceremony. It was attended by Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai, Public Security Minister Omer Barlev, Minister Hamed Amar who personally knew Zaghir, and Likud MK Fateen Mulla who lives in the town.

“How will I go home and he won’t be there?” Zaghir’s wife Ranin cried out, the Ynet news site reported.

“Dear Hossam, it hurts so much to mourn a young volunteer. You represent the beautiful side of Israeli society,” Shabtai said.

Police on Wednesday arrested a Palestinian suspect over an apparent hit-and-run near the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Michmash, during which an Israeli woman was moderately wounded.

According to the victim, the car passed her on the road between Ma’ale Michmash and Neve Erez, turned back, and then accelerated toward her. After she was hit, the driver fled from the scene.

She was taken to hospital, and only reported the incident to the police some two hours later.

Police located the vehicle at the Palestinian town of al-Eizariya near Jerusalem, and took the Palestinian man in for questioning.

An organization representing local security officers claimed the ramming was an intentional terror attack, but police officials did not confirm it as such.

Tensions have been running high across the West Bank over the past month, following the dramatic escape of six Palestinian prisoners from the high-security Gilboa Prison on September 6.

A Financial Times article (“Recaptured Palestinian prisoners become folk heroes”, Sept. 20) by Jerusalem correspondent Mehul Srivastava included the following claim regarding one of the terrorists captured by Israel after they escaped Gilboa Prison in northern Israel earlier this month.

In Jenin, the West Bank town where the last two men were eventually captured and historically a hotbed of militancy, the escape only added to the myth of Zakaria Zubeidi, the most high-profile of the six.

Zubeidi, 45, became a militant after Israeli soldiers shot his mother and brother, eventually rising through the ranks of the al-Aqsa martyrs brigade

However, the timeline – suggesting Zubeidi only turned to terror to avenge his mother’s death – is wildly inaccurate. His mother was killed in 2002. Zubeidi’s terror activities, by his own account, began during the 1st Intifada. His first stint in an Israeli prison was when he was a teenager, after being convicted of throwing Molotov cocktails at soldiers. That was around 1990.

Zubeidi was further radicalised while in prison and, by 2001, during the 2nd Intifada, a year before his mother was killed, was making bombs to use in attacks on Israeli civilians, and became leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah.

The Financial Times claim is clearly inaccurate, and we’ve complained to editors.

The settlements are NOT the main obstacle to peace. If they were there would have been peace before 67. Your attempt to score political points relieves corrupt Palestinian leaders of any responsibility for their kleptocracy and perpetuation of the conflict for personal gain. https://t.co/2DJpx3liik

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 20, 2021

Kinda tells you all you need to know about @HagaiElAd@btselem’s allegiance, when he quotes Qatar terror channel Al Jazeera, to satisfy his anti-Israel propaganda. https://t.co/hk9hOL89mb

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 21, 2021

Carlos the Jackal, the leftist militant who carried out attacks across the globe in the 1970s and 1980s, opened a bid in a French court on Wednesday to reduce the life sentence he had been given for a deadly grenade attack on a Paris shop in 1974.

The self-declared "professional revolutionary," whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, has been behind bars in France since he was captured and spirited out of Sudan by French special forces in 1994.

He was found guilty in 2017 over a grenade attack in 1974 on a shop on Paris's Champs Elysees, the Drugstore Publicis, that killed two people and injured 36.

The appeal that started on Wednesday will not seek to overturn that conviction but will only concern how many years he should be jailed for after the country's top court struck down the latest ruling over technicalities and sent it back to the lower court.

The decision is expected on Friday.

Ramirez, who was born in Venezuela and is now aged 71, is already serving two other life terms and has lost appeals against them. One is for the murder of two French police officers and an informant in June 1975 and the other for attacks on trains, a railway station and a Paris street in 1982 and 1983 that killed 11 people and wounded about 150 others.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Marxist militant became public enemy number one for Western governments and the world's most wanted man.

Some 78 percent of Palestinians want to see long-ruling Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas step down, according to a Palestinian public opinion survey released on Tuesday.

The survey was conducted by Khalil Shikaki, a veteran Palestinian pollster who directs the Palestinian Center for Survey and Policy Research. According to Shikaki, 1,270 Palestinian adults were interviewed for the survey across the West Bank and Gaza between September 15 and 18.

“This is the highest number we have seen calling for Abbas’s resignation since Abbas’s election,” Shikaki said in a phone call.

Abbas was elected to a four-year term in 2005 in a vote boycotted by his Hamas rivals. No national elections have been held in the intervening decade and a half, despite numerous pledges by the Palestinian leadership.

In mid-March, 68% of Palestinians demanded Abbas’s resignation, according to an earlier poll by Shikaki. But the Palestinian Authority has increasingly struggled to assert its legitimacy among Palestinians, many of whom see Ramallah as corrupt and ineffective at realizing their dream of an independent state.

Abbas pledged to finally hold parliamentary and presidential elections in January after 15 years of political stasis. But in late April, Abbas indefinitely delayed the vote, blaming alleged Israeli intransigence. Observers, however, said Abbas likely feared electoral defeat following internal divisions in his Fatah movement.

Hamas police officers today beat students at Al-Azhar University in the Gaza Strip for wearing the Palestinian kaffiyeh (which is affiliated with Fatah).

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) September 21, 2021

Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip announced on Tuesday that they are opposed to the Palestinian Authority’s intention to hold municipal elections in December.

They said that the decision to hold the elections, which was recently announced by the Ramallah-based PA government, was taken without consultation or agreement with the factions in the Gaza Strip.

The PA government said the initial phase of the elections, the first since 2017, will be held on December 11 for 388 municipalities and village councils in the West Bank and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. The second phase of the elections will be held at a later date.

Last week, the head of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission, Hanna Nasser, sent a letter to PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh informing him that holding elections in the Gaza Strip “requires political approval” of Hamas.

On Monday, Shtayyeh urged Hamas to allow the elections to take place in the Gaza Strip.

But Hamas spokesperson Abdel Latif Qanou said the decision to hold the elections was taken “unilaterally and without a general agreement.” The Palestinians, he said, are not interested in holding elections for municipalities alone.

Sheikh Hassan Yusef, a senior Hamas official in the West Bank, said there was no point in holding municipal elections separately from the presidential and parliamentary elections.

Activists in Ottawa, Canada held an event yesterday at Parliament Hill in solidarity with members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades who were recently captured by Israeli forces. Both groups are designated terrorist organizations by the Canadian government. pic.twitter.com/GGKEeq64hx

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) September 20, 2021

Hamas has presented mediators with a “clear road map” for a prisoner exchange agreement with Israel, Zaher Jabarin, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said on Monday.

Jabarin did not provide details about the alleged road map. He also did not name the mediators involved in the contacts to reach a prisoner exchange agreement, although it is widely believed that the Egyptians are leading efforts to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas.

He said the Hamas leadership and its armed wing “pay special attention to the prisoners’ issue, especially those serving lengthy sentences.” Jabarin said Hamas was also insisting on the release of all ex-prisoners who were re-arrested after being freed in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal.

The 2011 deal, brokered by German and Egyptian mediators, saw the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in return for kidnapped IDF soldier Shalit, who was being held in the Gaza Strip.

“Freeing the prisoners of the last swap deal who were re-arrested will be a condition for the completion of any upcoming deal,” Jabarin said in a statement. “The occupation tries to obtain information about its soldiers without paying any price.”

Tehran finances terrorism, poses a global threat and must never be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, the Foreign Ministry said in response to the speech of new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday.

“Raisi continues to fool the international community in a speech filled with lies and cynicism,” the Foreign Ministry said after Raisi spoke by video at the opening session of the annual UNGA gathering.

“Iran’s ayatollah regime constitutes a clear and immediate threat to the Middle East and world peace,” it added.

Israel has long been concerned by the Iranian regime, but it has been worried specifically by the hardline Raisi since he took office in June, given his involvement in political executions in 1988.

“The new government in Iran, headed by the “Butcher of Tehran” Raisi, and consisting largely of ministers suspected of [committing acts of] terrorism and [whose names are] on global sanctions lists, is the extremist face of a regime that has brought harm to Iranian citizens for over forty years. Iran encourages and finances terrorism, which is destabilizing the entire Middle East,” the Foreign Ministry said. “The international community must condemn the Iranian regime and prevent any possibility of nuclear capabilities and weapons falling into the hands of these extremists.”

"Any dealings with Ebrahim Raisi will be tantamount to dealing with a mass murderer. This is not only immoral, but counterproductive"@mikepompeo urges US & EU to hold Iran's President accountable for his role in the #1988Massacre of political prisoners

CC: @PressSec@ExtSpoxEUpic.twitter.com/8t9Niq4YgA

— M. Hanif Jazayeri (@HanifJazayeri) September 21, 2021

US President Joe Biden called on Iran to return to the nuclear deal and said Israelis and Palestinians were still a “long way” from two-states, when he delivered his first high-level address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

“We are working with the P5+1 to engage Iran diplomatically, to seek a return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. We are prepared to return to full compliance if Iran does the same,” Biden said.

He underscored, however, that the “United States remains committed to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”

Since taking office in January, Biden has unsuccessfully sought to revive the 2015 Iran deal, which former US president Donald Trump’s administration exited in 2015. European Union-brokered talks in Vienna to restart the deal signed between Tehran and the six world powers – the US, China, Russia, France, Germany and Great Britain – were last held in June.

Iran said on Tuesday that talks would resume in a few weeks, the official Iranian news agency IRNA said.

Speaking hours later, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told the UNGA that Iran wants a resumption of nuclear talks with world powers to lead to the removal of US sanctions.

“The Islamic Republic considers the useful talks whose ultimate outcome is the lifting of all oppressive (US) sanctions,” Raisi said in his address, which was his first before the UNGA since his election in June.

US sanctions, imposed by Trump in 2018, “were crimes against humanity during the coronavirus pandemic.” Sanctions are the Americans’ new method of war with the world, Raisi added.

Trump administration sanctions on Iran decimated the hardline regime's trade with the world's largest economies, knocking it from $46 billion in 2019 to $28 billion in 2020, according to a non-public report sent by the Biden administration to Congress earlier this month.

The roughly $18 billion decrease in trade was a significant blow to Iran's attempts to gain access to hard currency amid an ongoing cash crunch that has ruined the country's economy and sparked nationwide protests. All told, the reimposition of sanctions, which began in 2018, decreased Iran's trade by more than $70 billion.

The extent of damage caused by the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran was disclosed this month to Congress in an unclassified but non-public mandatory report, a copy of which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. It demonstrates that sanctions on Iran leveled by the former administration prevented the Iranian regime from making profits, even as critics of the GOP-led sanctions claimed such measures were ineffective.

The disclosure comes as the Biden administration pursues negotiations with Iran and aims to ink a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear accord, which provided Iran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief. Iran is pushing U.S. officials to dismantle the former administration's bevy of sanctions, which would provide the hardline regime with a cash lifeline. The Biden administration has signaled that it is willing to waive the most crushing economic sanctions on Tehran, drawing criticism from GOP hawks in Congress and others who say the United States is giving up its leverage on the regime.

The latest report was submitted to Congress under the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996, which requires the president to inform lawmakers about the dollar value of Iran's trade with leading global countries known as the Group of 20. The significant decrease in trade occurred after the Trump administration invoked in August 2020 a mechanism known as "snapback," in which all international sanctions that were lifted on Iran as part of the nuclear deal were reapplied.

The IAEA spokesperson did not respond to inquiries on whether its own staff had established that the June incident had caused damage to its equipment, or whether it was repeating Iran’s assessment.

In addition, the IAEA spokesperson did not address if any of its equipment was damaged during prior explosions at different nuclear facilities in the Natanz area (also attributed by Iran and others to the Mossad) in July 2020 and in April.

Despite Grossi’s talk of a deal for IAEA inspectors to replace their monitoring cameras at nuclear facilities, Fars reported on September 16 that Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency Chief Mohammad Eslami had said a large number of the cameras had been shut off.

Confusingly, Eslami seemed to distinguish between permitting certain cameras under a pre-JCPOA deal with the IAEA to continue, while deactivating additional cameras installed as part of the JCPOA.

The follow-up question is: would the IAEA know if Iran was smuggling some of its 60% enriched uranium to a clandestine site for a sneak-out to a nuclear weapon scenario?

Maybe Grossi will be able to give some reassuring answers in the coming weeks, once his inspectors receive the expected restored access to the cameras.

But this vacuum period of weeks or months might also be impossible for the IAEA to reconstruct.

If that is the case, the Mossad might need to perform yet another daring operation before the sneak-out scenario becomes a reality.

Fakhrizadeh, the man responsible for pursuing the means for the genocide of Jews, woke before dawn most days ‘to study Islamic philosophy’, the New York Times told us.

Despite his ‘prominent position’ in the murderous regime’s hierarchy, the authors added, the fanatic ‘craved small domestic pleasures: reading Persian poetry, taking his family to the seashore, going for drives in the countryside’.

He also routinely refused to be driven around in an armored car, preferring to drive his own car and ‘disregarding the advice of his security team’. So modest.

The journalists even went to great pains to ensure that we pronounced his name respectfully and correctly in our heads (‘fah-KREE-zah-deh’, they wrote).

By the time I got to the end of the story, it had become a tale of a kind of Iranian Gandhi, shot down in cold blood by murderous Israeli spies. The fact that Fakhrizadeh was committed to the ideal of mass murder was not mentioned.

‘Iran has steadfastly insisted that its nuclear program was for purely peaceful purposes and that it had no interest in developing a bomb’, the New York Times reminded us.

‘Ayatollah Khamenei had even issued an edict declaring that such a weapon would violate Islamic law.’

Wait. Isn’t Tehran the place where they hang gays from cranes? And isn’t Iran the foremost sponsor of terror in the region? And don’t we already know that the regime was lying about its nuclear… Oh, forget it.

The New York Times did find the time to credit one source, however: the Fars News Agency, a mouthpiece for the Iranian regime, for contributing the important detail that three bullets hit Fakhrizadeh’s spine. So what was it about the Jewish Chronicle that they didn’t like?

The New York Times is being criticized for allegedly romanticizing a top nuclear scientist for the Iranian government who was killed in November 2020.

The Times reported that the scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun that fired at the vehicle in which he was traveling at the time. The report states that the Israeli government was likely behind the assassination, as Fakhrizadeh was considered to be the mastermind behind Iran’s nuclear program.

In a September 18 tweet promoting the story, the Times tweeted: “Despite his prominent position, Iran’s top nuclear scientist wanted to live a normal life. He loved reading poetry, taking his family to the seashore and driving his own car instead of having bodyguards drive him in an armored vehicle.”

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon, who currently chairs World Likud, tweeted, “If you ask the @nytimes, Fahrizade was a poetry-loving family man. They ‘forget’ to mention that he was developing nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of destroying the USA and Israel.”

Other Jewish and pro-Israel Twitter users also denounced the tweet.

“Unbelievable this [New York Times] tweet remains up,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted. “Absolutely disgraceful to romanticize Fakhrizadeh as a ‘lover of poetry.’ Who cares about his hobbies when he made clear his true passion project was the annihilation of the only Jewish state in the world.”

“Scientist.” Nothing more? Shouldn’t building a bomb for the Islamic Republic at least earn one a qualifier like “austere”? https://t.co/vgIz16P3TX

— Mike (@Doranimated) September 20, 2021

A mysterious fire on Qazvin Street in Tehran, at a Revolutionary Guards Iranian terror regime factory. pic.twitter.com/rURFaXVAzf

— Avi Kaner ??????? ??? (@AviKaner) September 22, 2021

Florida’s top pension investment officer said on Tuesday he expects the state will divest Unilever PLC in October after the company’s Ben & Jerry’s brand halted sales in the West Bank.

Ash Williams, chief investment officer of the Florida State Board of Administration, which oversees pension assets, said at a webcast state hearing that “we’ve not seen any meaningful response from Unilever” after discussions with the company.

The Liberal Democrats have voted overwhelmingly in favour of “a ban on UK trade with the illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory” at their annual conference.

Welcoming the passing of a lengthy motion dealing with Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, foreign affairs spokesperson Layla Moran accused the UK government of doing “nothing” to stop Israel’s “continued expansion” outside its “sovereign territory.”

She tweeted: “The UK has condemned the settlements. It distinguishes between the settlements and the sovereign territory of Israel in its trade policy.

“But, despite continued expansion, the UK and the international community does nothing.”

Moran said she was a “firm believer of a two state solution” but she said a “new approach is desperately needed” by the UK to ensure that this scenario materialised.

In an occasionally fiery debate on Monday the conference – which took placed behind an online paywall this year – delegates backed a motion which committed the party to recognising two state solution with secure boundaries for Israel and Palestine based on 1967 lines.

Addressing the issue of settlements the motion committed the party to declare “illegal Israeli settlements represent a de facto annexation of Palestinian territory and that such settlements are a major but not sole factor in making the search for a listing peace ever more difficult to achieve.”

A poll released Monday found that half of “openly Jewish” college students have at times attempted to conceal their religious identity on campus, and that they are more likely to do so the longer they’re enrolled.

The study — conducted by the Cohen Research Group with the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — surveyed 1,027 members of the Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) fraternity and Alpha Epsilon Phi (AEPhi) sorority during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It found that fifty percent of students have masked their Jewish identity and that more than half have hidden their support of Israel, while some two-thirds experienced or were familiar with antisemitic incidents that occurred over the past 120 days.

The Brandeis Center said the study was the first to exclusively examine the college experiences of students who are “openly Jewish” and actively engaged with Jewish life on their campuses.

Kenneth L. Marcus, Chairman of the Brandeis Center and a former Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights, told The Algemeiner that choosing to be openly Jewish at school distinguished this cohort’s college experience from some of their more secular peers.

“It was our understanding, confirmed by the survey, that those students [in AEPhi and AEPi] who choose to live with other Jews in a Jewish fraternity or sorority are highly invested in Jewish life, and we wanted to know what’s going on for those students who don’t just happen to be Jewish but are highly invested in the Jewish community,” he said.

“I was especially alarmed that the longer they’re on campus, the more pessimistic they seem to become about the situation and the more they feel a need a need to hide who they are,” he commented.

The Brandeis Center’s survey found that 30% of students who concealed their Jewish identity did so out of concern for receiving low marks from their professors. Others feared being targeted for the kinds of verbal and physical attacks on campus they had seen or heard about; the respondents reported 47 assaults, with 16 Jewish students being spit on and 14 attacked with a weapon.

VICTORY - Seattle City Council DEFEATS the antisemitic 'Deadly Exchange' initiative

Thank you council members Gonzalez, Lewis, Juarez, Strauss & Pederson for voting NO on this vile excuse of activism that was an attempt to pin yet another non relatable issue on the Jewish nation pic.twitter.com/qqoiq2kRuq

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 21, 2021

On #Sukkot we observe G-d commanding the recently freed Jews to return home by making a pilgrimage to the great temple.

It is LITERALLY commemorating one of the biggest zionist movements in Judaism.

Who's going to tell her? pic.twitter.com/LHvt0t0AMF

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 21, 2021

So someone buying property legally (at a massively inflated price no less) is a “Nakba?”

The only thing being exposed here is your antisemitism in thinking Jews, uniquely, aren’t entitled to legally purchase property. https://t.co/IaTUKGyv9t

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 20, 2021

.@BerthaGHornface one of yours @BASISDC students- perhaps a good time to have a chat with her about social media do's and dont's.

We think tweeting about turning little 5 year olds into Israel haters falls into the category of "dont". pic.twitter.com/stQc2jUe9m

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 21, 2021

The Jewish community of the German city of Hagen — which had to call off its Yom Kippur religious services last week over a threatened Islamist attack against its synagogue — is planning to sit in the Sukkah as the Jewish holiday of Sukkot starts Monday evening.

“We would like to thank the many police officers who have stood by us in times of need, who continue to protect us and put up with many additional burdens,” Hagay Feldheim and Rimma Gotlib, chairpeople of the Hagen Jewish community, wrote ahead of the holiday. “It is thanks to them that we can now look forward to the Feast of Tabernacles with confidence.”

A 16-year-old Syrian boy was arrested with three members of his immediate family over an allegedly plotted terror attack against the synagogue in Hagen as Jews marked Yom Kippur, the holiest day in their calendar, on Thursday. Hagen, a city just east of Dusseldorf in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, has a small Jewish community with mainly elderly members, the Jüdische Allgemeine newspaper reported.

“For many, the prospect of being able to celebrate another Yom Kippur this year as usual, albeit still with a mask and socially distanced, has given strength and hope,” according to Feldheim and Gotlib. “This year, for the first time in the history of our community, we couldn’t celebrate together.”

Going forward, members of the Jewish community in Hagen declared that they would not be intimidated, and seek to take on their coming religious duties to celebrate Sukkot in close coordination with German security forces.

“In doing so, we will also fly our flag against terror and terror plans,” the Hagen Jewish community stated. “We think it is wrong to make the exercise of our fundamental rights and our religion dependent on terrorists or would-be terrorists.”

A court in Vienna has expunged a police fine against four activists who displayed Israeli flags while protesting against an event calling for the boycott of the Jewish state.

Vienna police fined four students €150 ($176) for waving an Israel flag at a protest in March 2019 against advocates of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) targeting Israel.

Benjamin Hess, from the Austrian Union of Jewish Students, told the Austrian daily Der Standard, which first reported the court decision, that it was “clearly decided” that holding up an Israel flag and expressing pro-Israel sentiments is a legitimate expression of opinion.

He asked, however, why it “is necessary in Austria at all to go to court in order to have something so fundamental to be established.”

The Vienna city authorities argued that police warnings against the Israeli activists has not deterred pro-Israel activists from showing Israeli flags, and that there was a threat of escalation between the rival groups.

Two suspects in an attack on Jewish men outside a Los Angeles restaurant earlier this year were charged Tuesday with a hate crime, prosecutors said.

The suspects were part of a pro-Palestinian caravan that stopped near Sushi Fumi on the city’s west side where diners were eating at outdoor tables on May 18, police said.

Witnesses told news media that people in the caravan threw bottles and chanted “death to Jews” and “free Palestine,” and men got out of the vehicles and began asking who was Jewish. A brawl erupted when two diners said they were Jewish.

Xavier Pabon, 30, of Banning, and Samer Jayylusi, 36, of Anaheim, were each charged Tuesday with two felony counts of assault by means of force likely to cause great bodily injury, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. The charges also include a hate crime allegation.

Jayylusi was scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday, while Pabon will make his next court appearance Thursday, CBS 2 reported. It wasn’t immediately known if the men have attorneys.

A conspiracy theorist vandalised bus stops with messages such as ‘Jews and gays are grey aliens’, a court has heard.

Nicholas Lalchan defaced 17 stops in London, causing £100 worth of damage each time, plus the windows of an accountancy firm, jurors were told.

He admits criminal damage but denies any religious or racial motivation.

Prosecutor David Patience said the graffiti ‘was daubed on bus stops in areas of north-west London, which have large Jewish communities, such as Edgware, Hendon, and Finchley’.

He said it ‘encouraged people to make searches on the internet’ which would make them ‘think badly’ of Jewish people and potentially believe in outlandish conspiracy theories.

Mr Patience said: ‘They were seen by Jewish people and non-Jewish people who were distressed by what they saw and reported it to the police.’

A still image of the culprit was recognised by a community support officer leading to the defendant’s arrest at his home in Edmonton, north London.

Three labor unions representing school teachers in France have roundly condemned repeated displays of antisemitic propaganda at demonstrations organized by opponents of the government’s “health pass” policy, which requires most citizens to obtain the COVID-19 vaccine in order to enter public places or go to work.

In a statement released over the weekend, three education unions in the Haut-Loire region of south-central France highlighted “the return of the ‘Filthy Beast'” at weekly demonstrations against the pass in the center of Le-Puy-en-Velay, the regional capital.

“For several weeks now, a handful of ultra-right activists have been instrumental in using the Saturday demonstrations against the health pass to display signs with hate messages with impunity,” the statement said.

It noted the presence of placards bearing slogans insinuating that the ongoing pandemic and the mass vaccination effort are part of a sinister Jewish plot. Signs on display have included “Je suis Cassandre” (“I am Cassandre”), declaring solidarity with Cassandre Fristot, an antisemitic activist and former far-right parliamentary candidate; “Non a la manipula-Sion” (“No to manipulation”), which underlines the French word for “Zion” (“Sion”); and “En marche vers le chaos mondial” (“Forward to global chaos”), a slogan associated with the convicted Holocaust denier and far-right agitator Alain Soral.

“Words and acts that target French people of Jewish faith, culture or tradition or attack their existence, their memory or their identity, hurt the whole of France,” the statement continued. “Antisemitism is a crime condemned by law. It should be neither excused nor trivialized.”

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Israel is forging collaborations with Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) and Université Internationale de Rabat (UIR) in Morocco.

These are expected to be among the first formal collaborations between universities from Morocco and Israel since the two countries signed a normalization agreement on December 10, 2020.

BGU and UM6P will sign a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on scientific research projects and student and faculty exchanges in the areas of agriculture, water, energy and ecological restoration. The sustainability research partnership will be supported by global companies ICL (Israel) and OCP (Morocco).

“BGU and UM6P have much in common,” said Ben-Gurion University President Prof. Daniel Chamovitz.

“From their desert settings to their focus on applied research and innovative teaching methods, the two universities are well suited to collaborate on projects in sustainability and climate change. Both universities are committed to thriving in the desert, and both look outward – focused on helping our regions, countries and the world.”

US actor Leonardo DiCaprio is investing in and joining the advisory boards of Aleph Farms and Mosa Meat, the two cultivated meat start-ups said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms offer new ways to satisfy the world’s demand for beef, while solving some of the most pressing issues of current industrial beef production,” DiCaprio said in a statement.

“I’m very pleased to join them as an advisor and investor, as they prepare to introduce cultivated beef to consumers.”

A new study presents evidence that a “cosmic airburst” destroyed the Middle Bronze Age city of Tall el-Hammam, located in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea.

The 21 co-authors of the study, published Monday in the journal Nature, speculate that the 3,600-year-old cataclysmic event could have inspired the biblical account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible records God’s destruction of the cities for their wickedness.

The researchers propose that the explosion was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, when an air burst of a stony meteoroid about 50 to 60 meters (160 to 200 feet) in size caused a massive 12 megaton blast.

The archaeologists and other researchers involved in the study conclude that the airburst hypothesis would make Tall el-Hammam the second oldest known city or town to have been possibly destroyed by an airburst after Abu Hureyra, Syria, which might have been hit by a comet 12,800 years ago.

We're gonna need to make the s'chach higher. @SHAQ is coming over.pic.twitter.com/a9RgJwWgYE

— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) September 21, 2021

On September 20, 1944, the British War Office officially announced the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group, an independent Jewish military force consisting of 5,000 Palestinian Jews who fought under the auspices of the British army.

— Im Tirtzu (@IMTIzionism) September 21, 2021

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