If anyone still has doubts about the Palestinian Authority’s determination to erase all traces of Israel’s ancient Jewish heritage, an important new report should lay to rest any such uncertainties.

The 65-page document, entitled “National Heritage Survey” and published by the Shilo Forum and the Shomrim al HaNetzach (“Preserving the Eternal”) organization, examined a selection of 365 of the most important national and cultural Jewish archaeological and historical sites in Judea and Samaria.

The findings are nothing less than shocking and infuriating and require immediate attention from Israel’s government.

Simply put, hundreds of cherished Jewish sites in the Land of Israel which survived 2,000 years of Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, Mameluke and Ottoman occupation are being systematically destroyed right under our noses by the Palestinians.

The report, which has not received the widespread attention it deserves in the Israeli and international press, found that 289 sites, representing a whopping 80% of those surveyed, have been damaged or destroyed.

These include sites dating back to biblical times, as well as those from the Second Temple, Herodian and Hasmonean periods.

The fact that the Squad picked on the Iron Dome to make its stand against Israel is significant. The Iron Dome is a system developed jointly by the United States and Israel that is purely defensive. It does not kill, injure, or threaten anyone. It only protects civilians against war crimes committed by terrorist groups that direct lethal rockets against innocent civilians.

The fact that the Squad would try to deny Israel the right to defend its civilians speaks volumes about the lack of morality and decency among Squad members and their allies.

It follows from this effort that the Squad will oppose any and all aid to Israel, including protecting its innocent civilians against Iran's nuclear threat. The obvious goal of Squad members is to deny Israel the right to defend itself against aggression. At least one of its members has denied that Israel has the right to exist.

These bigoted actions directly violate the platform of the Democratic Party (as well as that of the Republican Party). The Democratic Party must decide whether it will become captive to its most extreme wing or whether it will marginalize these radicals who are not only anti-Israel but, in many ways, anti-American. They are intolerant of dissent and due process for those who disagree with them. They are anti-police, anti-military, and anti-free market economy.

The time has come, indeed it is long past, for the Democratic leadership to stand strong against the anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-decency squalid Squad. The leadership can no longer stand idly by the bigotry of their members. If they persist in tolerating the intolerable, they will lose the support of the all-important mainstream voters.

IDF Lt.-Col. (ret.) Dr. Anat Berko is a criminologist, former Knesset member, and a world-renowned expert on terrorism, whose research focuses on suicide bombers and their handlers. Over the course of 20 years, she met with Palestinian terrorists, including senior Hamas figures such as the group's founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. "The personal relationships that I built with them led to deep insights," she said. "I come from an Iraqi family, I understand Arab culture from the inside."

Q: What is the recurring pattern in the inner world of security prisoners?
Berko: "They are...people who are rooted in a collective society, while we conduct ourselves as individuals. The issue of masculinity is very important to them, and they don't see incarceration as a blow to their status, as criminal prisoners do, but as something that reinforces their status in the eyes of society - something for which they receive recognition as future leaders."

"In their society, they are seen as normative people....They are essentially conformists, since acts of terrorism are not seen as something wrong [in Palestinian society]. Even inside the prison walls, they don't feel isolated, unlike criminal prisoners. Security prisoners feel safe in prison since they are jailed in certain affiliation groups, according to the terrorist organization to which they belong, so that they have social support from the inside, and public support from the outside."

Q: Is there a possibility of rehabilitating Palestinian prisoners?
Berko: "They don't express remorse; in my opinion, there's no potential of rehabilitating them because, from their perspective, they didn't do anything wrong or forbidden. Their society empowers them for what they did."

"Palestinian security prisoners...receive medical care that isn't included in the [Israeli] healthcare basket....There are security prisoners with serious illnesses who get imprisoned only so they can receive certain medications, or others who get imprisoned so they can study quietly for their matriculation exams. The life of Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar, for example, was saved thanks to brain surgery he had when he was a prisoner [in Israel]. If he had been in Gaza, he wouldn't be alive today."

In the coming months, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will collect nominations for recipients of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. There is probably no one more deserving of such an honor than Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the United States, for his role in facilitating the Abraham Accords.

The Abraham Accords, which had their first anniversary this week, marked the inception of a new era in the Middle East by concretizing a warm relationship between the Israeli, Emirati, and Bahraini peoples in a region historically fraught with conflict.

In the past year, ambassadors have been exchanged, and flights paths have been established. Israel and the UAE alone have struck 25 deals across 15 sectors, while trade has reached $500 million between the two nations and is expected to double in the next year.

Meanwhile, Bahrain and Israel just agreed on a framework for economic cooperation in July, which is expected to undergo review by the respective governments. The agreement encourages the free flow of goods, economic cooperation in the private sector, joint R&D activities and a system for the exchange of expertise and knowledge.

Al Otaiba was the brainchild of the normalization, beginning with a bold op-ed printed in Hebrew in Yediot Aharonot, warning against the application of sovereignty over parts of the Jordan Valley, including the possible exploitation of the situation by the inimical states of Turkey and Iran. Al Otaiba’s piece was the first op-ed by a Gulf diplomat to ever appear in an Israeli newspaper.

Al Otaiba’s epiphany: he saw normalization as the olive branch to halting Israeli sovereignty.

As Avi Berkowitz, former US special representative for international negotiations, told The Jerusalem Post last year that the Emirati ambassador was simply indispensable in the creation and conclusion of the accords. “He was the one who was in the weeds on every single detail, one of the main negotiators. The deal could not have happened without him.

“When you’re dealing with him, you know that you’re dealing with someone you can trust.”

Wrapping up the feel-good-fest that marked the first anniversary of the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and four Arabs states, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a shout-out to the big guy who started it all.

No, not Donald Trump, but Abraham himself.

“Abraham, in our Bible, had the temerity to engage God, to argue with God, to ask why, and maybe more important, to ask why not,” Blinken said at the virtual get-together Friday that marked the Sept. 15, 2020, anniversary (a day or so late, but Yom Kippur got in the way).

“And I think each of you and each of your countries asked, ‘Why not?’ And the answer now we see before us with the accords, with normalization, and with the manifest benefits that it’s bringing to people not just in the countries concerned, but I think increasingly more broadly.”

By invoking Abraham, Blinken put to rest any concerns that President Joe Biden was anything less than fully committed to the accords, despite the fact that they happened under Trump.

The friendly back-and-forth between Blinken, who is Jewish; the foreign ministers of Israel and Morocco; the former holder of that post in the United Arab Emirates; and the Bahraini ambassador to the United States covered what has become familiar territory: Praising the gains already made and pledging to expand the agreements.

But it was the tone that stood out, down to Blinken not just saying Abraham’s name, but in his assigning a quasi-religious significance to the accords by noting the shared Jewish and Muslim investment in the original founding father. Blinken and the Arab diplomats also made sure to wish Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, in attendance, a happy new year.

Speaking at the newly established Abraham Accords Peace Institute (AAPI) in Washington on the first anniversary of the accords, Jared Kushner, a former presidential advisor tasked with leading the Israeli-Arab peace process, said that within a 12-month period, Israel has exchanged ambassadors with Bahrain and UAE, opened an embassy in Dubai and a consulate in Abu Dhabi, and inaugurated a diplomatic mission to Morocco.

Commercial airlines have begun operating nonstop flights between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Egypt, and a flyover agreement with Saudi Arabia was reached.

There have been 35 diplomatic agreements and hundreds of business transactions involving innovation, tourism, sports, culture, science, air transit, and technology, as well as a drastic increase in Israel's trade with the accord's members.

"This means that more jobs and opportunities will be available for Jews, Muslims and Christians throughout the entire region," he said.

Kushner's speech was interrupted by a protestor screaming, "Free Palestine!"

After she was moved out of the hall, Kushner said, "I don't know why people do that....Quite frankly, there is so much that's available to the Palestinians today and to their leadership if they would just go with focusing on what's best for the people."

The Abraham Accords states worked together as a group at the UN for the first time on Wednesday, garnering support at the Human Rights Council for a statement promoting women’s involvement in peace and diplomacy.

The statement by Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco was presented by Bahrain’s Ambassador to UN Institutions in Geneva Yousef Abdulkarim Bucheeri. The timing was chosen to mark a year since the first three states signed the Abraham Accords.

“The integration of women in the peace processes and in all discussions relevant to promote peace around the globe has a significant value and importance,” Bucheeri said. “Although the contribution of women to peace-building is increasingly recognized, the role of women in preventive diplomacy has so far been quite limited. We need to have women’s voices influencing an agenda for human rights, sustainable development, security and peace.”

The Abraham Accord states called on UN member states to commit to giving “women a seat at every table” so they can contribute to finding solutions and resolving conflicts.

“We are committed to taking into account the experiences of women and girls, both living in conflict zones but also in peace and stability, and to always include a gender perspective, recognizing the unique impact different situations may have on women and girls,” Bucheeri stated.

The statement was supported by 52 states and the UN’s University for Peace.

“The emphasis on the integration of women in peace processes is important and shows the new dynamic that we want to promote in our region and beyond it,” said Israeli Ambassador to UN Institutions in Geneva Meirav Eilon Shaha.

ISRAEL’S top diplomat in Australia has told The AJN that the first anniversary of the Abraham Accords shows that peace truly can be achieved.

Over the weekend, Canberra’s iconic National Carillon and Telstra Tower were illuminated with the colours of the Israeli and United Arab Emirates flags to mark one year since the agreement was signed.

Speaking to The AJN on Monday, Israel’s deputy chief of mission in Australia Ron Gerstenfeld said the anniversary “is a living testimony of how the region could fulfil its potential for the good of all the people if we eradicate the extremism and fundamentalism”.

“The accords prove that modern and moderate nations, young and innovative people, could collaborate for the prosperity of the region,” Gerstenfeld said.

“It also shows that peace could be warm, people to people peace which promotes economic ties and joint solutions for the core issues of the countries and the world in the fields of water, food security, agriculture, space and more.”

Stating that the accords “changed the paradigm that an Arab nation could not promote peace and normalisation with Israel without getting the green light from the Palestinians”, he added that it is for the Palestinian Authority’s “own benefit to get on board the train of peace if it is genuinely concerned about the future and prosperity of its people”.

Over the weekend the National Carillon and Telstra Tower Canberra were illuminated with the colours of the #Israeli and #UAE flags to celebrate the first anniversary of the #AbrahamAccords!

Did any Canberra locals catch these stunning displays live? pic.twitter.com/EWMqkG8yHc

— Israeli Embassy OZ (@IsraelinOZ) September 20, 2021

The Alarming Rise of Fringe Politicians
Anti-Israel attitudes are nothing new, but they are becoming increasingly mainstream, even among American Jews. A recent survey of US Jewish voters found that 25 percent consider Israel an apartheid state, 34 percent view Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as comparable to racism in the United States, and 22 percent believe that Israel is committing “genocide” against the Palestinians.

And now comes the Congressional move against Israel that succeeded.

It is tempting to think of this week’s events in Congress as a mere “technical delay.” After all, Israel will in the end still receive precision-guided munitions and Iron Dome funding. However, this is the first time that supposedly “fringe” politicians have managed to produce such a large, mainstream impact: namely, altering a major Congressional budget bill.

Evidently, this “fringe” is growing in general popularity — which is what drives democracies — and, consequently, is increasing its real-world political impact.

Could Support for Israel Become Untenable?
If this anti-Israel trend continues, it will become increasingly untenable for American political leaders to support Israel in all the ways urgently needed. For example:
- It has been long understood that Israel must maintain a “Qualitative Military Edge” over its neighbors, because Israel typically acts defensively. But given the opportunity, Israel’s neighbors are liable to initiate hostilities. Consider what could happen if countries such as Turkey and Egypt, both US allies, possessed the latest F-35 fighter jets but Israel did not.
- Another area of concern is pending action in the International Criminal Court (ICC) that could make it impossible for Israelis to leave their country since they would risk being arrested on charges of “war crimes,” “apartheid” and “crimes against humanity.” This scenario is not merely theoretical: Israeli leaders have already faced arrest warrants for such accusations in friendly nations as the United Kingdom, Spain and others. The ICC does not function as an impartial court but rather is highly politically motivated. Without US political support behind the scenes, prosecution against the Jewish state may succeed, and many Israelis would be subsequently cut off from the world as a result.
- The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has often been dismissed as ineffective, but a boycott by Airbnb would have succeeded were it not for action taken through America’s legal system. A more recent boycott by Ben & Jerry’s is especially troubling because the brand is owned by consumer products giant, Unilever. If Israel loses popular and political support, then such boycotts could extend to other large corporations including oil, financial and shipping companies, global internet systems and more. Such boycotts, if imposed in concert, have the potential to destroy a sovereign state.

The incident prompted a call from Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid to Hoyer. In a statement following the call, Lapid blamed former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for having “neglected the Congress and the Democratic Party, and caused considerable damage to Israel-US relations.”

“We are today rebuilding a relationship of trust with the Congress,” Lapid continued.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said on Wednesday that he wanted funding for Iron Dome advanced alongside additional funding for Palestinian aid, setting up further battles once the measure reaches the upper chamber.

Murphy told JI he saw “a bunch of different pathways” forward, including the potential appropriation of additional reconstruction funds for Gaza and the release of Palestinian aid which, until recently, had been held back by Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) — a move Murphy called “indefensible.” Risch had been attempting to prevent funds from ending up in the hands of terrorists, a spokesperson has said. The Idaho senator has since lifted the hold, a spokesperson announced late Wednesday.

“I’m 100% for Iron Dome, I can get my head around the $1 billion number,” Murphy said. “But I think it’s important for us to use this as a moment to make clear that we are still in the business of setting a table for peace. And that involves U.S. support for Israel, and it also involves some support for Palestinians.”

Deutch, who emphasized that he has “steadily been supportive of providing much-needed humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians,” said he did not understand why the two issues would be linked together.

“Either it’s important to save civilian lives [with Iron Dome], or it isn’t. Likewise, it’s important to support humanitarian programs that help Palestinians,” Deutch said. “I think both of them stand on their own. I don’t understand why we wouldn’t do everything we can to advance our values, which I know is important to Sen. Murphy.”

#dems cave on israel defense. I thought Democrats should supper DEMOCRACIES. pic.twitter.com/t991Isr8I1

— (((noa tishby))) (@noatishby) September 22, 2021

.@AOC& the Hamas Caucus continue to show their true colors by trying to deprive Israel of defensive weapons critical for keeping civilians safe from Hamas and Hezbollah rockets: those colors are not of "humanitarians" but antisemites!

If ppl stay silent now, worse will follow! pic.twitter.com/ijuDdUj7wg

— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) September 23, 2021

This is what it looks like when terrorists launch barrages of rockets at Israeli cities.

Each flash is an Iron Dome interceptor destroying a rocket and saving lives.

The House will vote TODAY on funding to replenish Iron Dome. Urge your rep. to vote YES.

?? IRON DOME to 73075 pic.twitter.com/BVPXpVQA3i

— AIPAC - Text IRON DOME to 73075 (@AIPAC) September 23, 2021

when someone asks how the holocaust could have happened, i'm just going to ask them to read some of the bigoted ignorant responses to this wonderful post.

— MF ???? #stophamasnow (@mf_cohen) September 23, 2021

The kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia used their speeches to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday to urge a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by creating a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Jordan’s monarch recalled the 11-days of fighting between Israel and the Gaza Strip earlier this year in his speech before the United Nations, saying the latest round of conflict was a reminder that the status quo is “unsustainable.”

The war in May was the fourth in Gaza since the Hamas Islamic terror group seized power in 2007. There were 13 deaths in Israel, including one soldier as Hamas fired thousands of rockets at the country which responded with intensive airstrikes on terror targets. More than 4,000 homes in Gaza were destroyed or severely damaged. More than 250 people were killed in Gaza, including dozens of children and women, according to the UN. Israel believes roughly half of those killed were combatants.

“But how many more homes will be lost? How many more children will die before the world wakes up?” said King Abdullah, who delivered his pre-recorded remarks remotely to the UN General Assembly, though some 100 heads of state and government are attending in person amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “Genuine security for either side — indeed, for the whole world — can only be achieved through the two-state solution.”

He reiterated that such a solution must result in an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side-by-side with Israel in peace.

The Jordanian king is a close US ally and his nation has custodianship over the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews. The area was the scene of violent confrontations between Israeli security forces and Palestinian worshippers during the last days of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in May.

Saudi Arabia’s monarch used his speech to stress his country’s longstanding public position on Palestinian statehood, saying that lasting peace must guarantee an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

A liberal Jewish lawmaker on Thursday is set to introduce a bill that would make the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict official United States policy, Politico reports.

Andy Levin, a Democratic representative from Michigan, will unveil the legislation on Capitol Hill that is adding to an already heated debate about the US approach to the Jewish state that has divided Democrats between the moderate and progressive wings of the party.

That divide was clear this week when progressive Democrats in the House of Representatives blocked $1 billion in funding to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system that was depleted during May’s 11-day conflict with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Levin already has 18 Democratic co-sponsors and the support of left-leaning pro-Israel groups, including J Street.

Still, the bill faces an uphill battle in Congress, with expected universal opposition from pro-Israel Republicans and skepticism from moderate pro-Israel Democrats in the House and Senate.

The bill will also not be popular with the current Israeli government.

The “Two-State Solution Act” formally states “that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza are occupied territories and should be referred to as such consistently in official United States policies, communications, and documents.”

It is unclear why Gaza is mentioned since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the coastal enclave in 2005.

If it’s got Jeremy Ben-Ami and J-Street’s enthusiastic backing, you know this bill is bad for Israel. https://t.co/tmUCxx7HcE

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 22, 2021

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Tuesday released a pro-union video that features him alongside a New York state assemblyman who supports the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Schumer and Zohran Kwame Mamdani (D.), an assemblyman from Queens, released a two-minute video in support of the 25,000-member New York Taxi Workers Alliance. Schumer and Mamdani spoke out against what they said are predatory loans for taxi medallions in New York City.

A self-described democratic socialist, Mamdani supports various left-wing causes, including BDS and the movement to defund police departments. He has called BDS "a righteous movement for liberation" and has spoken out against U.S. aid to Israel. Mamdani at a rally this year criticized elected officials for accepting taxpayer-funded trips to Israel. He also blasted officials who march in parades in support of Israel.

"We ought to let them know that there are three letters that we have as an answer to what's happening in Palestine, and it's ‘BDS,'" Mamdani said at a May 12 rally.

Schumer, who is Jewish, has been a staunch opponent of the BDS movement. He cosponsored legislation in March 2017 with Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) to protect state and local governments that cut ties with companies that boycott Israel. He called BDS an anti-Semitic movement in 2018. Schumer has also repeatedly marched in the pro-Israel parades that Mamdani decried this year.

Though Schumer and Mamdani are at odds on the BDS issue, the Senate leader has in recent months courted the left wing of his party to ward off a potential primary challenge next year. Schumer has held a series of meetings with activists in New York and Washington to burnish his progressive credentials, the New York Times reported. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) said last month that she has not ruled out running against Schumer, who is seeking his fifth term.

New legislation by Republicans in the US House of Representatives seeks to reinforce the Trump-era instruction to label products of Judea and Samaria “Made in Israel.”

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-New York), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was set to introduce what she called the Anti-BDS Labeling Act on Thursday, meant to stop the Biden administration from reversing the instruction from former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo in the final months of the Trump administration.

Pompeo’s November 2020 decision reversed a guideline from the Clinton administration in 1995 that settlement goods must be labeled “Made in the West Bank.” That was not enforced until 2016, when the Obama administration republished those guidelines, warning that violators could incur fines.

US law states that every article of foreign origin imported into the US must be marked with its country of origin unless an exception is provided by law. Though decisions about settlement labeling have been made by the executive branch in recent decades, Congress has the authority to pass laws regarding foreign commerce.

Tenney argued that returning to the pre-Pompeo policy would empower those who seek to boycott Israel. Labeling Israeli products from Judea and Samaria differently from other products makes it easier to seek them out for boycott.

“The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is fueling antisemitism in the United States and around the world,” she stated. “The United States must remain steadfast in our support for Israel, which is why I introduced this bill. My legislation defends the integrity of the Jewish state and prohibits the Biden administration from targeting specific goods made in Israel by banning ‘Made in Israel’ country-of-origin labels.”

As CAMERA has detailed several times already, CNN’s series on “Jerusalem” has seriously struggled with accuracy. The material errors and bizarre narratives have slanted toward a telling of the story of Jerusalem in which Arabs are solely victims and Jews are repeatedly erased. This absurd storyline becomes less surprising, however, when examining which “experts” and commentators CNN chose to include in the series.

Many are vituperative partisans with long histories of anti-Israel and antisemitic statements and beliefs. While providing a range of viewpoints would be perfectly acceptable, CNN never adequately identifies these individuals as partisans, nor does CNN enable Jewish or pro-Israel voices to truly counter these partisan individuals when they cross into outright falsehoods and slander. Below are some of the more notable partisans CNN featured.

Among the most questionable decisions by CNN is the inclusion of Huda Imam, described by CNN as “Founder, Centre for Jerusalem Studies, Al Quds University.” Imam is allowed to make, unchallenged, multiple incendiary assertions. Most shockingly, CNN even gives her a platform to spew outright antisemitism:
“The whole of Palestine continues to be eaten up like a cancerous disease. Deleting, erasing, arresting, demolishing, and the world is silent again.”

This kind of invective has an obvious, implied meaning, in which the Jewish State is equated to a “cancerous disease.” What does one do with a cancer? Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei put it bluntly when he infamously tweeted: “Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated.” This kind of language – associating Jews with diseases – has a long history. Even before the Nazis compared Jews to lice, typhus, syphilis, and cancer, medieval Europeans were blaming Jews for the Black Death, such that between 1348 and 1351, “more than 200 Jewish communities were wiped out, their inhabitants accused of spreading contagion or poisoning wells.”

Referring to the Jewish State as a “cancerous disease” is not excusable because it is directed at Israel. As former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden Per Ahlmark once said, “This new anti-Semitism is often less directed against individual Jews. It attacks primarily the collective Jews, the state of Israel…”

Are Palestinian mothers (and fathers too) genuinely happy for their children who died as “Martyrs” and had “weddings” to the 72 virgins of Paradise instead of funerals? Or are they just keeping up appearances?

There’s no way of knowing, but one thing is certain: Expressing joy over a Palestinian child dying in terror attacks and violent confrontations with Israel is what the PA expects and demands of its people. One of the ways the PA promotes this is by broadcasting the parents’ statements repeatedly in official PA media. Palestinian Media Watch has been exposing this since the beginning of the PA terror campaign – the second Intifada - in October 2000. PMW’s first report on the PA promoting child Martyrdom entitled “Wajdi, a 14-year-old: “When I become a Shahid [Martyr], give out cake," published already in November 2000.

This PA practice of promoting child Martyrdom and pressuring parents to support it continues until today. The following are a few recent examples of statements of joy by mothers whose sons died “as Martyrs” – statements that the official PA TV chose to broadcast to the Palestinian public. Note that the parents’ references to the Martyrs’ weddings are based on the Islamic belief that a Martyr for Allah marries 72 “dark-eyed”, i.e., the Virgins in Paradise.

Mother of terrorist “Martyr”:
“My son had nothing called a funeral, rather it was a wedding”

Mother of terrorist “Martyr” Diya Al-Sabarini: “Praise Allah, my son had nothing called a funeral, rather it was a wedding… I didn’t feel that it was a funeral, I felt that it was a wedding. I told them: “Wedding.”

[Official PA TV News, Aug. 28, 2021]

Diya Al-Sabarini – Palestinian terrorist who shot at Israeli security forces in Jenin on Aug. 3, 2021 and was shot and killed by them.

Fatah leaders in Hebron have openly challenged the Palestinian Authority leadership, including PA President Mahmoud Abbas, in what appears to be one of the worst crises within the dominant Fatah faction in recent years.

The latest crisis erupted after Emad Khurwat, a senior Fatah official in Hebron, threatened to use force to prevent PA officials from entering the city.

The threat, which was made during a public meeting of leaders of several Palestinian clans in Hebron, came in the aftermath of lawlessness and anarchy in the city in the past few weeks.

Many of the clans in Hebron have thousands of members and are considered more powerful than the PA and its security forces. The clans administer their own legal system and often replace the PA security forces and courts in enforcing law and order and issuing verdicts, including in murder cases.

Khurwat and other activists in Hebron said that the PA has lost control over the city, paving the way for large clans to take matters into their own hands and deploy dozens of gunmen on the streets.

They said that several gunmen have been involved in various criminal activities in the city, including collecting “protection money,” vandalism and murder.

Journalist Salah Skaik says he was beaten by Hamas police officers in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/POeKtQcOZh

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) September 23, 2021

Sudanese authorities have taken control of lucrative assets that for years provided backing for Hamas, shedding light on how the country served as a haven for the Palestinian militant group under former leader Omar al-Bashir.

The takeover of at least a dozen companies that officials say were linked to Hamas has helped accelerate Sudan’s realignment with the West since Bashir’s overthrow in 2019. Over the past year, Khartoum has won removal from the US state sponsors of terrorism (SST) list and is on course for relief of more than $50 billion in debt.

Hamas has lost a foreign base where members and supporters could live, raise money, and channel Iranian weapons and funds to the Gaza Strip, Sudanese and Palestinian analysts said.

Seized assets detailed by Sudanese official sources and a Western intelligence source show the reach of those networks.

According to officials from a task force set up to dismantle the Bashir regime, they include real estate, company shares, a hotel in a prime Khartoum location, an exchange bureau, a TV station, and more than a million acres of farmland.

Sudan became a centre for money laundering and terrorism financing, said Wagdi Salih, a leading member of the task force — the Committee to Dismantle the June 30, 1989 Regime and Retrieve Public Funds.

The system was “a big cover, a big umbrella, internally and externally,” he said.

A Western intelligence source said techniques were used in Sudan that are common to organized crime: Companies were headed by trustee shareholders, rents collected in cash, and transfers made through exchange bureaux.

Hezbollah security official Wafiq Safa reportedly threatened Tarek Bitar, the judge leading the investigation into the Beirut Port explosion which devastated Lebanon's capital in August 2020, this week, saying the movement would remove Bitar from his position by force if the judge displeases them.

"We have had enough of you. We will go to the end of the legal path, and if that does not work, we will remove you by force," said Safa to Bitar, according to Edmond Sassine, a journalist with the Lebanese LBCI news.

LBCI and the Lebanese Annahar news both reported based on judicial sources on Wednesday that Bitar had confirmed the reports about the alleged threat by Hezbollah.

Lebanese Interior Ministry Bassam Mawlawi denied to the Lebanese Al-Akhbar news that he was aware of the reported threat to Bitar, saying that "security forces are doing their duty and the judge is doing his duty."

Families of the victims of the Beirut explosion expressed outrage at the report, telling Lebanese media that they would be guards under Bitar's house and stressing that the judiciary must be respected.

Great bi-partisan effort by @SenJackyRosen (D-NV) and @MarshaBlackburn (R-TN) urging the European Union to designate Hezbollah in full as a terrorist organization. https://t.co/PtawsBx5nh

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 23, 2021

A mural of Qasem Soleimani adorned with flags of the 'Resistance Axis' has been added to the border wall between Lebanon and Israel. pic.twitter.com/cG3RTNVxDj

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) September 23, 2021

Lebanese Expert Abdo Laqis: U.S., Israeli Intelligence Agencies Planned 9/11 Attacks as a Pretext for Invading Muslim Countries #nineeleven#ConspiracyTheoriespic.twitter.com/qpU9NTjhmg

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 22, 2021

2/2 Iranian Cartoonist Masoud Shojaei Tabtabaei on the Holocaust Cartoon Contests He Organized: Our Contests Were Counterattacks for the Prophet Muhammad Cartoons; There Were 4.5 Million Jews in Europe, So How Could 6 Millions Be Killed? #Iran#Antisemitism#Holocaustpic.twitter.com/wMXyxlfvIv

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 23, 2021

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Durban IV, held this year on Sept. 22 and marking the 20th anniversary of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance turned out to be a debacle. This was expected.

But the lies that it propagated, like those of its predecessors, did not begin in 2001, with the first such gathering in South Africa. The world should have seen what was coming back in 1975 when the "Zionism is racism" mantra was introduced with the passage of UN General Assembly Resolution 3379.

Indeed, Durban was and remains a most regrettable creation of the United Nations.

It is high time for the United Nations to reject useless distractions from its mission of promoting humanity and peace. It must simply prohibit this hateful commemorative event from happening again.

If member countries want to hold a festival of hate, they should do so without the blessing or the name of the United Nations. To go through this dishonest exercise of announcing something in the name of fighting racism, which prompts at least 20 Western countries correctly to boycott it, while others attend under political pressure, is ridiculous.

The United Nations should just save itself the embarrassment of having its name attached to this fiasco. The countries firmly committed to Durban are those that have called for Israel's destruction. Many of them commiserate with Iran.

On Sept. 22, 2021, an event marking the 20th anniversary of the Durban Conference will be held in New York as part of the annual UN General Assembly, but unfortunately, nothing has changed for the better in the last twenty years. They are the same wolves in sheep's clothing.

This year, too, when 31 [now 36] countries show support for Israel and are boycotting the event because of its antisemitic stench even more so than in previous conferences – it is not a real sign of progress. I do not believe for a moment that these countries tend to favor the State of Israel or are sympathetic to Jews wherever they are.

You can buy some fake smiles with money, but the world will not turn over and change as a result of it. It is impossible to solve the phenomenon of age-old antisemitism at conferences.

It is possible to gather from conference to conference, but other than money and publicity to promote political agendas or to mark that we have done something about it, no real benefit will come out from such events.

The only condition for change is the self-awareness of the people of Israel and a new attitude about our destiny. The Jewish people were founded from a collection of representatives from different peoples, a composition of different elements, equally committed to unity and love of others.

Antisemitism is resentment of us by the nations of the world. They feel Jews hold the secret for a better future but that we are not opening the pipe for that goodness to flow to all the peoples. Subconsciously, the world expects us Jews to connect with each other, to be united and reach a strong feeling of love for others. If we act in this way, we will be a light unto the nations, we will spread light and not darkness, love instead of hatred. Only in this way will we eradicate the hostilities against us.

The Foreign Ministry released a statement denouncing the conference as the commemoration began.

“The original Durban Conference, a UN-hosted event, became the worst international manifestation of antisemitism since WWII,” it said. “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.”

“Twenty years later, some of the same organizations have waged a BDS campaign against the only democracy in the Middle East, but they have failed,” the ministry added, referring to the Israel boycott movement.

“The halls of the #UNGA are empty, and with good cause,” tweeted Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Ushpiz along with a Foreign Ministry list of boycotting countries. “Honorable men and women will not dignify this antisemitic event with their presence.”

The United States still faults “the anti-Israel and antisemitic underpinnings of the Durban process and has longstanding freedom of expression concerns” with the results, UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement on Wednesday explaining her country’s decision not to participate in the anniversary meeting.

Thomas-Greenfield, who is African American, said that combating racism is a top priority for her and for the Biden administration. She said that the US would continue working on the issue in “more inclusive” settings, without detailing what she meant.

The US decision drew criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the nation’s most prominent rights groups.

The boycott “sends the wrong message to the global community regarding the US commitment to fight all forms of racism and racial injustice everywhere,” ACLU Human Rights Program director Jamil Dakwar said.

Opposed antisemitic Durban IV:
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— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 23, 2021

BREAKING: ???? Sweden pulled out of the U.N.'s Durban IV conference yesterday, due to its history of antisemitism and anti-Israeli prejudice.

?? This is the first time in 20 years that Sweden has boycotted one of the UN's Durban-related racism conferences. Statement by @SweMFA: https://t.co/vG5X1kAWydpic.twitter.com/pRNumYlfKB

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) September 23, 2021

In case you’re wondering which side #Ireland& #Belgium stood on at #UNGA#DurbanIV conference yesterday, they shared platform with such noted liberal democracies Iran, Qatar, Venezuela & Pakistan.

cc. @BelgiumMFA@BelgiumUN@Sophie_Wilmes@dfatirl@irishmissionun@simoncoveneypic.twitter.com/XETPICW2PU

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 23, 2021

The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a $1 billion bill to replenish Israel’s defensive shield against rocket attacks on Thursday, also known as the Iron Dome missile system. The measure — which passed by a final tally of 420 to 9, with two members voting present — will now move to consideration in the Senate. The House voted on the standalone legislation after funding for the Iron Dome was removed from a broader spending bill. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid praised the results of the vote, saying that it “reaffirms the special relations between our two countries, rooted in shared values and strategic interests.” “Upon my urging, House leadership has committed to bringing a standalone bill to the floor to replenish the Iron Dome missile defense system,” said Congresswoman Kathy Manning (D-NC) ahead of the debate on the House floor. “We will pass this bill with the support of the majority of my colleagues and reiterate our ironclad support for our ally, Israel.”

Is the Jewish-American love affair over? This is the question U.S. Jews are nervously asking—even sober souls not given to hysteria. The evidence is piling up: murder from Pittsburgh to Jersey City, Jews assaulted in West Hollywood and Times Square, vandalized synagogues, the BDS movement, ostracized Jewish college students, the ever-unfriendlier mainstream media. Add anti-Zionism, that veiled cousin of anti-Semitism, and the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and inevitably, the memories of 20th-century fascism well up. Yet I still believe that “it can’t happen here,” unlike Sinclair Lewis, who used the phrase in bitter irony as the title of his 1935 novel about the attempted destruction of democracy in the United States.

That destruction does not happen in Lewis’s novel, nor does it in Philip Roth’s counter-historical tale of a Depression-era Charles Lindbergh presidency, The Plot Against America. In both dystopias, the good America triumphs over anti-Semitism and homegrown totalitarianism. Back in the present and in the real world, Donald Trump proved not even a pale copy of Mussolini despite the efforts of his enemies to liken him to the fascists of old, and his assault on norms as a return to the days of the Weimar Republic. The Weimar analogy betrays ignorance of the real thing. Weimar was 14 years old when it fell to Nazis and Communists; the U.S. Constitution has defied all attacks for 234 years. The Great Depression spawned Hitler in Europe; over here, it brought forth FDR.

So, amid justified fear, let’s first lay out the good news. America, I will still argue, is different; hence, three cheers for the country’s genuine, not self-hyping exceptionalism. Why did Jews do so well in this ”blessed plot,” to crib from the Bard? How did the “tired, huddled masses” make it from the Lower East Side to Scarsdale? How did their offspring move from the cheder to Columbia and into the highest reaches of government? Think Cabinet members such as Henry Morgenthau and Henry Kissinger plus a slew of Supreme Court judges from Brandeis to Breyer. Hollywood is another towering symbol of Jewish achievement, though I will concede that the transgressive humor of Groucho Marx and Mel Brooks would not make it in today’s hyper-woke times. Recall the self-ironical black sheriff in Blazing Saddles who turns racial stereotypes into belly laughs. Today, that would be a “micro-aggression.”

Jews also flourished in the Kaiser’s Germany and continued to thrive in the doomed Weimar Republic. One-third of Germany’s Nobel Prizes went to Jews. But it ended in the Shoah. Meanwhile, America remained the “Land of Gold” it had been in the Jewish imagination on the far side of the Atlantic. This is no fluke of history; it is integral to the American experience. Before we get to today’s darker parts, let’s look at the three pillars of the Jewish-American house—a palace, actually.1 It has no analogue in the 2,000 years after the destruction of the Temple. There was no such sustained Golden Age anywhere.

Brooklyn’s streets clearly aren’t safe. Who’s responsible? Felder pointed to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “getting rid of the broken windows policy, and any time crime goes up in general, hate crimes go up.” For his part, Americans Against Antisemitism founder Dov Hikind cited now former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s embrace of bail reform, which created a 24-hour revolving door for arrestees.

Then there’s the district attorney. Some cases probably weren’t prosecuted because victims opted not to bother. Hikind has a different take, though: “I think people would be willing to pursue if they were encouraged by the DA, but I don’t think the DA is interested in pursuing these cases.”

There’s clearly a gap between arrests and prosecutions. Reflecting on that, Brooke Goldstein, founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project, emailed: “What we are seeing is a systemic problem within our justice system that fails to recognize the severity of antisemitic hate crimes as compared to hate crimes against other minority groups. ... Crimes committed against Jews are often ignored or put aside due to a fundamental misunderstanding of what Jew hatred looks like today.”

Any such misunderstanding could be remedied by communal engagement. However, Felder observed, “In general, the DA’s office in Brooklyn does not have a relationship with the Jewish community at all, and I don’t think they care much about the Jewish community.”

As proof, Felder, who represents Borough Park and Midwood, observed, “‘How many times has the DA’s office been in touch with [my] office over the years?’ The answer is zero. That’s not good—not because I need his attention, but I represent a district that has the largest concentration of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel, so hate crimes take on a bigger significance.”

Felder added, “Iam not by any means, G-d forbid, accusing him of being antisemitic in any way. ... [But] when hate crimes have occurred ... in this district, the Brooklyn DA has not been present ... whereas other times, when things happen in the city he makes sure to be around. ... the Brooklyn DA’s office doesn’t believe the Jewish community is a priority of any sort.”

It’s time for change. The next mayor should prioritize public safety and fully fund the police. New York's new governor should work to reform bail reform. The state legislature should pass legislation modernizing the courts; it’s absurd that the public can’t readily access public information about court proceedings. In general, it shouldn't be so hard for the public to access information about what's happened with reported crimes that directly affect members of the public. And Brooklyn’s district attorney should consistently prioritize antisemitic hate crime prosecutions, as he recently did with two related May 2021 incidents. Because Brooklyn’s Jews, like all other New Yorkers, deserve to live in safety.

Too many apologists indulge Yasir Arafat’s conceit that every Israel conversation must be about the Palestinians. That obsession distorts reality. It defines last year by Gaza, not the Abraham Accords. It defines the last half-century by the “intractable” Palestinian conflict, not Israel’s progress with Egypt, Jordan, even Saudi Arabia. And it defines the last 75 years by Israel fighting, not Israel thriving, building, ever-improving. My Israel timeline is not ’48,‘56 ’67… war-war-war. My chronology pivots around the Forties, the Fifties, the Sixties… – viewing the conflict in context, not making the conflict the context.

Most modern anti-Zionism is not logical or ideological but sociological – and irrational. In his important book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, Jonathan Rauch quotes social science research proving that “believing is belonging.” Most people cater their arguments and, increasingly, their truths, to reinforce their defining reference group.

These hyper-critical Jews are most committed to being Woke, to fitting in with Social Justice Warriors. They may sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” but they overlook Cohen’s lesson during the 1973 Yom Kippur, when Montreal’s legendary singer-songwriter traveled the Sinai, singing to buoy Israel’s troops. Asked what he was doing there, despite having criticized Israel harshly, he explained: “I am joining my brothers fighting in the desert… A Jew remains a Jew. Now it’s war and there’s no need for explanations. My name is Cohen, no?” “A Jew remains a Jew” is the strategic insight – and ideological stance – shaping Identity Zionism. Emphasizing belonging invites Jews to dream about what we can become working together, tapping into our rich heritage. It’s about values and vision, community and continuity, patriotism and pride. We didn’t come to Israel to build what the writer Herman Melville called a snivelization – we mastered that for millennia in Exile! Snivelized types feel “dreadful about their souls,” Melville warned; civilized types know how to nurture what the Home Depot philanthropist Bernard Marcus calls “a generation of proud Jews connected to Israel and the Jewish people.” Through the teen trips Marcus sponsors, through Birthright, Masa, and other Israel Experiences, we don’t start the conversation with “what’s wrong with us” or even “where do we stand politically.” We start with “who are we,” “who have we been” and “who can we become?”

That’s the recipe for long-term pride. Thats the recipe for a Zionism which isn’t about twisting ourselves into pretzels – that’s junk food! – but baking tasty Gen Z challahs: evoking warm memories, braiding us and our ideas together, while leaving us satisfied yet hungry for more.

Radicalisation is defined as the ‘the action or process of causing someone to adopt radical positions on political or social issues’. Extremists know that they cannot easily enter the mainstream using traditional routes, but Wikipedia, one of the world’s most popular websites, has provided them with a direct voice into every home with online access.

Editing Wikipedia, certainly at the high level needed to consistently edit Wikipedia’s ‘Jewish’ ‘Israel’ or ‘Palestine’ pages (please don’t tell me everyone can edit Wiki – it is a myth), is almost a full-time role that needs a particularly obsessive character. Who does this – and – more importantly why? I have no doubt the motives of some are benign – but what about those who you wouldn’t want to speak directly to your children – and certainly not when their true intentions are masked?

This article is part of ongoing research into Wikipedia’s radicalisation issue. It is even more timely considering that Wikipedia is currently on another donations drive. Please make sure that everyone you know is aware of the dangers inherent in using and funding the Wikipedia website.

The StandWithUs example
I start this tour with a look at the page for StandWithUs. SWU’s main function is education – empowering young Jews with enough knowledge to counter the incessant demonisation campaign they will face, especially on campus.

This is Wikipedia’s opening paragraph on the StandWithUs page:

Stand With Us - WikipediaThere are three issues here:
The opening sentence claims that it is a right-wing organisation; that it is known for working closely with the Israeli Government and the intro provides information regarding supposed positions on ‘settlements’ and the ‘West Bank’. Everything else about SWU is lost beneath these meaningless smears. What does ‘working closely with the Israeli government’ even mean? And is Wikipedia suggesting that if Israel were to reach an accord with the Palestinians, and to withdraw from some lands to enable the creation of a viable Palestinian state, that SWU would oppose the Israeli government? How does that even make sense?

And where does the ‘Right-Wing’ label come from. When the page was originally edited to include the smear (and it was intended as a smear, which is why I reference it as such), it relied on a single source. It now relies on four.

- Source 1. The original source. A ‘report’ on the ‘Israel Lobby’ by David Miller and his gang that was published by Miller’s outfit ‘Public Interest Investigations‘ (Spinwatch and Powerbase). Anti-Israel conspiracy theorist Miller is currently under investigation for antisemitism. The other two authors are also anti-Israel BDS activists (Cronin, Marusek)
- Source 2 – an unsourced use of the words ‘right-wing’ in an Israel-bashing 2012 article from Israel-bashing ‘Settler Colonial Magazine’ written by Nada Elia. Elia is an anti-Israel BDS activist.
- Source 3 – an unsourced use of the words ‘right-wing’ in a book review written by Nicola Perugini. Perugini is an anti-Israel BDS activist.
- Source 4 – an unsourced use of the word ‘right-wing’ on page 298 of a book written by Ilana Feldman. Feldman is an anti-Israel BDS activist.

In other words – *all of the sources* Wiki have relied on to smear StandWithUS in the opening sentence, are from unreliable, Israel hating, BDS activists.

Jewish students deserve the same Constitutional protections as any other minority group.

I have been trying to get members to sign a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, saying simply that, and it has become increasingly difficult to get democrats on board. Once, this sort of letter would be a “no brainer” to obtain ample bipartisan support.

There is a war within the soul of the democratic party, which ultimately is a war of the soul of much of America, and within much of America’s opinion shapers and thought leaders.

Enabling or accepting antisemitism within one major political party signifies a certain rot within our society.

As the late Rabbi Jonathon Sacks said, “The appearance of antisemitism in a culture is the first symptom of a disease, the early warning sign of collective breakdown.”

Looking back historically, we know that Rabbi Sacks was right. We have got to clean up our act within academia, because it is causing a deep rot within our society that might not be so easily eradicated.

The court decision that is a clear and present danger to America’s JewsTry painting a swastika on the wall of a synagogue, and you’ll be arrested and charged with vandalism and probably serve jail time for a hate crime. But a federal appellate court has just gone out of its way to grant constitutional protection to signs bellowing “Resist Jewish Power” and “Jewish Power Corrupts” at Jews attending synagogue services every Sabbath morning for the past 18 years in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The judges didn’t bother to explain why menacing Jewish Americans coming together to worship is less intimidating than cross-burnings were to church attendees in African-American churches in the South. The Supreme Court said in 2003 (Virginia v. Black) that “cross burning carried out with the intent to intimidate is … proscribable under the First Amendment.” No sane American thinks otherwise today.

The voracious wolf of rank Jew-hatred is cloaked in the sheep’s fleece of “American-Israeli relations.”

A decision rendered by three federal judges on the eve of Yom Kippur should send shivers down the collective spines of the American Jewish community. Since September 2003, a group of Ann Arbor residents has been harassing Jewish attendees at Saturday-morning services in Beth Israel Synagogue, a Conservative congregation, by gathering between 9:30 and 11:30 a.m., and posting 18 to 20 aggressive signs on grass near and opposite the synagogue. The signs challenge “Jewish Power,” and attack Israel as “apartheid” and as responsible for a “Palestinian holocaust.” They demand a boycott of Israel and an end to U.S. aid to Israel.

But their timing and location demonstrate that they address Jews coming for religious observance, whether or not they support Israel. It takes only a rudimentary knowledge of history to recall that the Third Reich began a program that murdered millions with similar harangues against the Jewish religion by hostile hordes at the doors of Jewish synagogues.

Beth Israel’s members suffered these meticulously timed taunts and the city’s refusal to prevent them for years, but finally took their tormentors to federal court with a complaint alleging 13 violations of federal law and 10 violations of state law. They encountered a district court judge who, they later alleged, should have been disqualified because she “had pre-determined the outcome of the lawsuit.” The judge brusquely dismissed the congregants’ lawsuit on the ground that they experienced only “intangible injury,” such as “extreme emotional distress.” This harm, she said, was not “concrete” enough to give them “standing” to file a lawsuit in a federal court.

The decision taken in July by the independent board of Ben & Jerry’s to end sales in the disputed West Bank sparked a media field day. Countless articles and opinion pieces were published that proclaimed the ice cream brand was “changing the moral calculus” and living up to its “progressive values.”

The subsequent backlash from Israeli politicians was widely reported.

HonestReporting published several pieces that laid bare the legal implications that could arise as a result of the Vermont-based company’s action, specifically because 35 US states have enacted laws to counter the controversial Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

These predictions have now come to fruition after multiple US states, including New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Maryland and Rhode Island, initiated reviews of their investments with Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever.

Earlier this month, Arizona treasurer Kimberly Yee announced that all state funds would be divested from the British conglomerate in accordance with a state law that prohibits investment or contracts with businesses or people that participate in boycotts against Israel. In total, investments in Unilever were reduced from $143 million to $50 million on June 30, while the remainder was scheduled to be withdrawn this week.

In a similar vein, 2016 legislation against allowing state pension funds to be invested in companies that boycott Israeli firms, goods or products has prompted the New Jersey Department of the Treasury’s Division of Investment to send a letter to Unilever notifying the corportation of the state’s intention to divest approximately $182 million.

The AFT local guild resolution denounced Israel’s "73-year occupation," a reference to the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. This claim goes beyond the accusations of many of Israel’s harshest critics, who trace the "occupied territory" dispute to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The union also defended itself against charges of anti-Semitism, claiming that "condemning Israel for its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, occupation, apartheid, and war crimes is not anti-Semitism."

Some members of the guild objected to the resolution and expressed concern that it would encourage hate crimes against Jews, according to meeting notes from the Sept. 5 vote obtained by the Free Beacon.

One dissenter said the statement was "factually inaccurate and takes much out of context" and added that it could "provoke and give people permission to engage in anti-Semitism." Another member said "Israel has the right of self-defense" and called the resolution "an anti-Semitic hate crime."

Supporters of the resolution rejected these arguments, with one claiming that "conflating Israel and Judaism is anti-Semitic," according to the meeting minutes. Others accused former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of "openly advocat[ing] for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians" and "engaging in a settler colonial project in line with historical colonialism."

The guild’s president Jim Mahler did not respond to requests for comment. The National ATF did not respond to a request for comment.

Sakran told the Washington Free Beacon he has "always been clear that vaccines work and ha[s] always encouraged their use" but declined to answer questions about his vaccine rhetoric during the Trump presidency. McAuliffe did not return a request for comment.

In his McAuliffe campaign ad, Sakran also made questionable claims to criticize Youngkin's positions on coronavirus-related measures. Sakran, for example, said Youngkin "is against requiring masks in schools, even though the science has made clear that's how we prevent outbreaks in schools."

That science, however, is far from clear. Many American allies in Europe have exempted children from wearing masks in schools, and the World Health Organization advises against requiring masks for children ages 5 and under.

"Scientists have an obligation to strive for honesty," hematologist and oncologist Vinay Prasad wrote in September. "And on the question of whether kids should wear masks in schools—particularly preschools and elementary schools—here is what I conclude: The potential educational harms of mandatory-masking policies are much more firmly established, at least at this point, than their possible benefits in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in schools."

McAuliffe's embrace of Sakran could also undermine the Democrat's position as a supporter of Israel. Sakran, a self-identified "Palestinian American," has referred to Israel as an "apartheid" state and condemned former president Donald Trump's "reckless" decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. As governor, McAuliffe notably denounced the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement but has since welcomed an endorsement from an activist group that staunchly defends the anti-Israel campaign. Sakran did not respond to a request for comment about his past Israel rhetoric.

Netflix, a media conglomerate with ties to former president Barack Obama, announced on Wednesday its acquisition of British author Roald Dahl's estate and promised to produce "a unique universe across animated and live action films and TV, publishing, games, immersive experiences, live theatre, consumer products and more."

In addition to authoring such classics as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dahl was a virulent anti-Semite who would have already been ruthlessly canceled by woke scolds if his bigotry had been directed at any other vulnerable minority.

Dahl, who served as a fighter pilot and intelligence officer during World War II, would go on to discharge a series of anti-Semitic tirades beginning in the early 1980s until several months before his death in 1990, when the author acknowledged he had "become [anti-Semitic] inasmuch as that you get a Jewish person in another country like England strongly supporting Zionism."

In a published review of a picture book about the Israeli-Lebanon War of 1982, Dahl lamented how the Jews had "switched so rapidly from victims to barbarous murderers" after the Holocaust, and compared Israeli Jews to German Nazis. "It is like the good old Hitler and Himmler times all over again," Dahl wrote.

"Must Israel, like Germany, be brought to her knees before she learns how to behave in this world?" Dahl asked rhetorically, while accusing the United States of being "utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions," a common anti-Semitic trope.

In a series of subsequent interviews, Dahl took his already considerable anti-Semitism to new heights, telling the New Statesman in 1983 that Hitler might have been onto something. "There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity," he said. "Even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason."

Legend, who is also a judge on the singing competition “The Voice,” then called on the US to hold Israel “to a higher standard” in light of the fact that the Jewish state is “the recipient of so much American aid and support and is named one of our stronger allies.”

“What [Israel is] doing to the Palestinian people is not fair and should not be done in our name and with our resources contributing to it,” the father-of-two concluded by saying.

Legend, who tweeted “Palestinian Lives Matter” during the Israel-Hamas conflict in May, has made several claims in the past about Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians. When asked about his position on the Palestinian territories in Israel during a live podcast recording with Hasan in 2020, the “Ordinary People” singer said, “There should not be a whole group of people in a country, because of their nationality or religion, being held in open-air prisons, denied freedom of movement and having their land annexed by settlers … that’s just a human position.”

In 2019, he defended US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar against accusations of antisemitism and discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on HBO‘s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

Ukraine's parliament passed a law Wednesday defining antisemitism and banning it in the country. The bill was approved by 283 votes, pending approval by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to enter into force.

"The lack of a clear definition of antisemitism in the Ukrainian legislation does not allow for the proper classification of crimes committed on its basis," the lawmakers who authored the bill said.

The law defines antisemitism as hatred of Jews, including attacks on the minority, making false or hateful statements about them, or denying the mass extermination of Ukrainian Jewry during the Holocaust. Damaging buildings and religious institutions also falls under the definition.

As per the new law, victims of antisemitism will be able to claim compensation for moral and material damage.

World Zionist Organization chief Yaakov Hagoel praised the move.

"I commend the Ukrainian parliament on the precedent-setting step. This is an important milestone in the long international struggle" against antisemitism, he said, expressing hope that Zelensky – who is Jewish - will sign the law, making it "a model for parliaments around the world."

Less than 1% of Ukraine's 40 million citizens are Jewish. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre, where over 30,000 Jews were killed over the course of just two days in a ravine outside Kiev.

Helmut Oberlander, 97, the last Canadian facing allegations of Nazi war crimes, died on Monday before the federal government could complete its 26-year-effort to deport him, according to Canadian media reports.

Oberlander had been in a legal battle with Canada’s federal government since 1995, when Canadian authorities opened an investigation into his alleged involvement in atrocities during World War II, according to The Globe and Mail. The government claimed that during his 1954 immigration, Oberlander had hidden his role as a Nazi death squad interpreter. He obtained citizenship in 1960.

The government argued that his citizenship had been received through “false representation or fraud,” and a Canadian court agreed that he had “significantly misrepresented his wartime activities when he and his wife applied to enter Canada,” according to the report.

However, the effort to deport him bogged down in appeals. It was only in December 2019 that the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear another appeal from Oberlander, opening the way for his deportation. In February 2021, a hearing to decide whether he should be deported was delayed.

Shimon Koffler Fogel, CEO of Canada’s Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), called the decision “the latest obscene abuse of the Canadian justice system,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Oberlander was conscripted at 17 into the Einsatzgruppen “mobile killing units” that followed the German army into conquered territory and carried out mass executions of civilians, according to the Globe and Mail. Oberlander claimed he only served as an interpreter and didn’t take part in any killings.

In 2012, the Simon Wiesenthal Center added Oberlander to its list of 10 most wanted Nazi war criminals.

Anti-Semitic graffiti has marred a section of the Harlem River Drive in Manhattan in recent weeks — drawing swift condemnation from elected officials and candidates.

Julie Menin, the Democratic City Council nominee for District 5, which covers the area, tweeted a photo Sunday of the graffiti seen near East 135th Street, including the word “Nazi,” a swastika in the center of the Star of David, and “No More Killings” and “No More Settlements” — a reference to the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip.

“A family member driving southbound on FDR near 135th just sent this,” she wrote. “This is totally unacceptable + must be immediately removed + condemned. My grandfather was killed in the Holocaust. There is no place for anti-Semitism.”

It’s unclear when the hateful messages first appeared.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer re-tweeted Menin’s post.

“It’s completely abhorrent that this happened,” she wrote. “I have followed up with DOT and they will be removing this hateful graffiti.”

Governor Kathy Hochul also decried the images.

In honor of the Sukkot holiday, which begins this year on Monday evening, the Israel Allies Foundation (IAF) has published its annual list of Israel’s Top 50 Christian Allies.

The diverse list spans continents and denominations, and includes prominent leaders such as Christians United for Israel founder Pastor John Hagee, as well as lesser-known figures such as Dr. Young Hoon Lee, who serves as senior pastor in South Korea at the world’s largest mega-church.

Former political leaders are also among the honorees, such as Mike Pence, who as U.S. vice president was active in moving the U.S embassy to Jerusalem, as well as Mike Pompeo, who defended Israel’s rights to Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria while serving as U.S secretary of state. Both Pence and Pompeo were members of the Israel Allies Caucus during their tenures as U.S. Congressmen.

Leaders of Christian organizations and individuals who provide significant financial assistance to the State of Israel, especially for Holocaust survivors, the needy and immigrants, are featured as well.

Many Christians feel a special connection to Sukkot, which they refer to as the Feast of Tabernacles, because of the verse in Zechariah 14:16 which foresees a time when individuals from all nations will come to Jerusalem to celebrate the holiday.

In a typical year, when regular air travel is permitted, thousands of Christians from all over the world travel to Israel to celebrate Sukkot and hold festive parades and events in Jerusalem.

Thousands of Christian Evangelists and Israelis march at a Sukkot parade in central Jerusalem, Oct. 17, 2019. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

“Recognizing the heroic work of our Christian supporters is an important display of our hakarat hatov [‘gratitude’] towards them,” said IAF Director Josh Reinstein.

“It is only due to Christian political support for Israel, which we refer to as faith-based diplomacy, that Israel enjoys such steady support from its allies around the world. It is Christians, not countries, that we can count on to always stand with Israel,” he added.

HAVING retaken the helm of the Victorian Liberal Party as we push closer to the upcoming election, Matthew Guy has hailed the Jewish community and spoken of his admiration for Israel.

Earlier this month, longtime Zionist and supporter of Melbourne Jewry Michael O’Brien was replaced as Opposition Leader by Guy, whose landslide defeat at the polls in 2018 saw him hand the reins to O’Brien.

Speaking with The AJN, Guy reflected on past occasions he had spent with the Jewish community, including Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations and the rally for Israel and Peace, and said he plans to “continue to develop this strong relationship as Opposition Leader and hopefully, as Premier”.

“I am in total awe of probably the most-organised community in Victoria as it rallies around its members and supports each and every one at each life stage and at each momentous life milestone,” he said, acknowledging the community’s contribution to the state of Victoria.

The reportedly skilled shofar-blower took a trip to Israel with his new deputy leader David Southwick in 2017 where the pair was plunged into lockdown just hours after arriving in Jerusalem after three terrorists had killed two Israeli police officers in the Old City.

The Liberal leader said the trip “left a deep, meaningful and positive impression and a hunger to return to experience and learn more”, adding that he looks forward to returning to Israel when possible.

2021 is not the year of the unicorn, because unicorns no longer garner attention. They are practically everywhere, in every corner like the e-scooters their employees enjoy so much. The real story of this past year is the additional leap forward the Israeli ecosystem took, and the birth of the first Israeli decacorn, the fintech company Rapyd, which reached a value of $10 billion in its first fundraising. Cyber company Snyk is also getting close to the new status with a value of $8.5 billion, and if China's Evergrande will not become 2021’s Lehman Brothers, we are likely to see another Israeli decacorn by year’s end.

Private companies worth $10 billion or more belong to an exclusive club, with less than 50 globally, including high-profile companies such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and gaming giant Epic Games, which has recently challenged Apple.

"In the first quarter of 2021 alone, 121 new companies received a valuation of more than $1 billion, compared to 159 new unicorns in all of 2020."

On the other hand, the number of unicorns around the world has already exceeded 800, double than at the end of 2019. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, 121 new companies received a valuation of more than $1 billion, compared to 159 new unicorns in all of 2020. In the second quarter, the number was even greater. Thus, a second look at the chart of Israeli unicorns illustrates well the inflation of unicorns both internationally, and in Israel, in the last two years. One has to look past the top 40 to find the Israeli unicorns trailing behind, those worth "only" $1 billion.

Swallowing unicorns
2021 is also not the year of the unicorn as the number of unicorns in Israel has declined, although it was for good reasons. 17 of them, from ironSource to Cellebrite, ended their role as a unicorn when they became publicly traded companies on Wall Street, each at more than $1 billion valuations. True, it feels less special because there are thousands of such companies in the American market, but in the end, most unicorns want to shed their wings and become a horse that gallops, with the help of the investing public and institutional bodies operating on Wall Street.

Cisco Systems Inc., a US maker of networking software and hardware, has led a $70 million investment in Israeli streaming software firm Qwilt at a valuation of $800 million, the company announced on Wednesday

Qwilt said the Series E funds will help fuel the company’s ambitions to build one of the world’s largest high-performing Content Delivery Networks (CDN) with global service providers. CDNs are a geographically distributed group of servers that work together to provide fast content delivery.

Founded in 2010, Qwilt built what it calls an Open Edge Cloud solution, running on commodity compute and storage infrastructure, that supports applications such as Open Caching, 4K Live Streaming, AR, VR and IoT. These solutions help deliver high-quality streaming experiences for consumers on a massive scale, the company indicated, and answer the huge demand for streaming video.

Qwilt has been working with Cisco since last year to offer a new service based on Open Caching, with BT, the UK’s leading telecommunications and network provider, as the flagship customer.

Open Caching “federates content delivery infrastructure deployed deep inside service provider networks, into a global CDN with open APIs for content publishers” and “is designed to help service providers easily deploy an edge CDN footprint, offering them more control over content flows,” the company said in 2020 when the partnership was first announced.

A historian and Israeli-French-American Holocaust survivor was one of the recipients of this year’s international Balzan Prizes, which recognizes distinguished scholars, artists and scientists.

Saul Friedlander, 88, was awarded the prize for Holocaust and Genocide Studies for his “unparalleled impact” on the development and study of the persecution of European Jews, and for “creating a historical narrative that expresses the unspeakable, intertwining scholarly analysis with the disruptive voices of the victims, perpetrators and bystanders.”

The prizes will be presented in Rome on Nov. 18 by Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella.

Born in Prague in 1932, Friedlander and his Jewish family fled to France after the German occupation in March 1939, reported The Associated Press. His parents hid him in a Catholic boarding school before they were captured and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Friedlander was baptized as a Catholic with the permission of his parents. He later considered becoming a priest, though said that after he was told in 1946 that his parents were killed at Auschwitz, “my Jewish identity was restored.”

Friedlander is a professor emeritus of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Tel Aviv University. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2008, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1999 and was awarded the Dan David Prize in 2014 for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary research.

A park in the heart of Florence was named after Wanda Lattes and Albert (Aaron) Nirenstein in a ceremony on Monday.

The two were a Jewish couple who resisted the Nazis during the Holocaust and became central figures in the Florentine intellectual scene.

The quaint park, close to the famous Church of Santa Croce, includes a grassy area, a playground and a small community center for both children and the elderly.

Trumpeters dressed in official Florentine garb played during the ceremony and the Mayor of Florence, along with a long list of dignitaries, colleagues, and family members, spoke about the couple's film-worthy lives.

Wanda Lattes was born to a Florentine Jewish family in 1922. She was expelled at the beginning of high school in accordance with the fascist government's racial laws. Lattes was affiliated with a communist youth group and after her expulsion she joined the Florentine resistance movement, Giustizia e Libertà, and remained active as a partisan until the German retreat in 1944.

Wanda adopted a non-Jewish surname, Latansi, and her role was to transmit information via bicycle. Towards the end of the German occupation, Lattes became responsible for a clandestine network designed to provide medical treatment to wounded partisans, including during the bombardment of Florence during the dramatic German retreat. She also helped her family find refuge during the Nazi and fascist persecutions.

This is the biblical metaphor: the human being as candle. But Senesh gives us a more modern image, seizing on an invention that did not exist in the biblical era: the match. Lamps and candles are infused with fuel so that their flames sustain themselves, but a match brings forth a fiery force from within that is gone within seconds. Yet if the match successfully kindles another flame, even as it is consumed it still lives on, and its apparently transient life endowed with endurance, continuity. In Senesh’s words, the match is nisraf, burnt up, consumed, but it can ignite others in its few moments in existence. And so we can pronounce ashrei hagafrur, fortunate is the match.

Did Senesh write these words because she had a sense of her coming death? We cannot know, but she certainly knew how dangerous her mission was, and this poem eerily captures her own life, one all too short but that nonetheless kindled and inspired others throughout Israel and the Jewish world. This past July, on the week of Senesh’s birthday, more than 100 Israeli paratroopers, along with members of European militaries, re-created Senesh’s jump. Their commander explained that they sought to perpetuate her memory in the land of her birth and “strengthen the sense of mission and the memory of heroism.”

Was Senesh, who had asked for a Hebrew Bible while in prison, inspired by the verse in Proverbs that tells us the soul of man is the candle of God? Again, we do not know, but Senesh had certainly thought about her soul. Soon after her 15th birthday, she reflected in her diary: “I would rather be an unusual person than just average. When I think of an above-average man I don’t necessarily think of a famous man, but of a great soul … a great human being. And I would like to be a great soul. If God will permit.”

At this point, Senesh had not even embraced Zionism, and certainly could never have conceived of the horror that would descend on her home in Hungary. But she did become a great soul, not a candle but a match. It is overwhelming to think of a young woman who suffered in prison and was murdered for trying to save Jews being remembered on the very same soil by so many, and by soldiers of a Jewish state of which she had dreamed but did not live to see.

In the hours before Yom Kippur, Jews light memorial candles for those who have passed away, a ritual inspired by the biblical proverb that the soul of man is the candle of God. I do not know whether this year, in some homes in Israel, a candle was lit for Hannah Senesh; but the truth is that perhaps in this case a candle is unnecessary. I will wager that there are Jews around the world who, whenever candles are kindled on Shabbat eve, on Hanukkah, or before Yom Kippur, see a match struck right before the candle is lit and think of Hannah. I know I do.

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In the aftermath of President Joe Biden's disastrously executed withdrawal from the Afghan backwater, that would have translated to $400 million directly subsidizing the Taliban. That's the same Taliban-run Afghan government that, as FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted to Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) during a Senate hearing earlier this week, counts eponymous Haqqani network member Siraj Haqqani as its interior minister. Haqqani remains wanted by the FBI, and there is a $10 million bounty for his capture. Some Democrats would apparently rather fund Haqqani's government than protect innocent Jewish, Arab and Christian lives in the Holy Land using state-of-the-art missile defense technology. Indeed, many Democrats would presumably still rather send amorphous "humanitarian aid" to Afghanistan which, due to ubiquitous venality, would of course just subsidize the Taliban, than fund the inherently defensive Iron Dome system.

That is, quite simply, perverse.

But at this point, it also should not be surprising. For years during the Obama administration, Democrats embarked on a broader Middle East-centric foreign policy realignment crusade by which the U.S. would create distance between itself and its formerly staunch Israeli and Sunni Arab allies, and cozy up to Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. Years later, the purported rationale for such a realignment remains unclear. The Iranian regime is the world's leading state sponsor of jihad, and regime propagandists quite literally chant "Death to America" in the streets of Tehran. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, for whom the Biden administration nixed in February the Trump administration's previously affixed "terrorist" label, have as their official slogan: "Allah is Greater, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam." They sound like nice people.

Democratic Party foreign policy is in complete shambles right now. Much of that intellectual descent goes back to the Obama, and even the Clinton, administrations. But it has rapidly accelerated in recent years, as the tail that is Ocasio-Cortez's Jew-hating "Squad" has come to lead the dog that is the broader Democratic Party apparatus. Unapologetic anti-Semites and anti-American zealots, sadly, are now steering one of America's two leading political parties. That is now an inescapable truth.

Those baying for Israel's blood deny that this singling out of Israel for demonization is essentially the same kind of deranged treatment meted out to the Jews through the ages.

Instead, more and more on the left – tragically, including many Jews – now nod along to the evil and patently ludicrous charges against Israel of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and war crimes.

When Israelis are murdered in the disputed territories of the "West Bank," the silence from the human-rights-obsessed, "anti-racist" left is deafening. These murders are simply ignored because, to supporters of "Palestinian rights," these Jewish victims are simply to be written out of the script of humanity.

Even to "moderate" Israel supporters on the left, there are good Israelis and bad Israelis; good Jews and bad Jews. The bad ones are deemed bad because they fight their enemies; the good ones are deemed good because they cave in to them.

The result is a vast increase in attacks on Jews, with students on campus increasingly hiding their Jewish identity.

So what should Israel and its supporters do in response?

Israel's new ambassador to the United States, Brig. Gen. Michael Herzog, has rightly said: "We are in the midst of a war of consciousness, and the State of Israel has to develop new, strong and profound tools to deal with this challenge."

In fact, Israel has never responded adequately to this great crisis of Western thought. This is partly the result of Israel's epic and endemic governmental incompetence.

But it's also because of Israel's deeply felt belief that trying to make Israel's case to Britain and Europe, where Jew-hatred has been ingrained for centuries, is a hopeless task – while (with the exception of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who understood that Israel had to appeal directly to the American public) it could take American support for granted.

Now it needs to revisit that last assumption as a matter of urgency. Yet at this most critical juncture, Israel has saddled itself with a feeble governing coalition that appears to believe that a plastic spoon should be brought to a gunfight.

The most common refrain from strong Israel supporters was: “Israel has a right to defend itself.” The people making those statements thought they were helping Israel, but they were not.

Of course Israel has a right to defend itself. Why wouldn’t it? By even mentioning the “right,” you are welcoming a debate whether Israel does or does not have a “right” to defend itself.

It is time for the pro-Israel and I daresay pro-America crowd to permanently change the lexicon. “Israel has an obligation to defend itself and its citizens.”

The most basic expectation that a citizen of any country has is the expectation to safety and security. This is an obligation of the state to its citizens, not a right, not an option. It is a non-negotiable obligation.

When a nation does not fulfill its obligation, it questions its ability to succeed as a state. To win a war, you must choose the correct battlefield.

This week it became clear that the Democratic Party is currently negotiating Israel’s surrender as their very right to exist has been called into question, and those willing to fight to extinguish it cared more than those who purport to defend it.

The cause is not lost, and strong bipartisan support for Israel is important to Israel, but it is even more important to America.

Combine this week’s capitulation with America’s disastrous retreat from Afghanistan – with Americans and allies left behind with zero repercussions for anyone in the administration or Congress – and we have a glaring lack of understanding of a country’s obligations to its citizens.

The challenge from the perspective of Israel and other countries in the region is to ensure the Iranian nuclear issue receives the appropriate amount of attention. Foreseeing this in advance, the Iranians announced their intention to renew nuclear talks in the coming weeks. The Iranians mustn't be allowed to continue deceiving the nations of the world. In the five years I served in the UN, I witnessed the Iranian deception apparatus in action. In one instance, when former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani visited, it so happened I was seated next to his table at one of the UN's various events. I saw up close the Iranian leader sweet talk and convince world leaders of his "pure" intentions. Since that event, the Iranian nuclear program has taken massive strides while the Iranian charade continues unabated.

For the first time in his life, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will speak on one of the world's biggest stages, the UN General Assembly. It is his responsibility to maintain former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's approach and shine the spotlight on the Iranian nuclear threat, which threatens regional and global stability. Israel's primary message must be strong and clear. Handling the coronavirus pandemic is important, but an equally significant threat exists that could undermine the fragile stability of the Middle East, and that is the Iranian nuclear program.

The delicate balance in the Middle East will be disrupted, and not just Israel, but other countries in the region as well will find themselves in danger if Iran acquires the nuclear capabilities to which it aspires. The nuclear deal Iran seeks will not stop its nuclear project; rather only grant international legitimacy to its pursuits.

In diplomacy, it is customary to be polite, but that doesn't mean conceding your positions. Israel must expose the truth, and say in a clear voice that signing a flawed nuclear deal with Iran while simultaneously vowing to never allow it to acquire a nuclear weapon are two irreconcilable things. From my experience in the diplomatic arena, I learned that many leaders talk about the importance of Israel's security while making decisions that in actuality weaken our security. Therefore, we must take our enemies' threats more seriously than the promises of our allies.

Since taking office, the Biden administration has made clear repeatedly that its only policy towards Iran is appeasement. Consequently, there is no way the administration will either work with Israel to sabotage Iran's nuclear installations, or approve any Israeli plan to sabotage Iran's nuclear installations on its own. So by giving the administration veto power over Israel's actions on that front, Lapid – followed by Gantz and Naftali Bennett – effectively ended Israel's own operations. It comes as no surprise then that there have been no reports of damage to Iran's nuclear installations in recent months.

Russia took an axe to Israel's military operations against Syria when it announced that Putin has cancelled his agreement not to interfere with Israel's operations against Iranian targets in Syria. But Syria isn't the only battlefield the government has abandoned. In late July, Iran attacked an Israeli managed cargo ship docked off the Omani coast. Two crew members were killed. Aside from a bit of huffing and puffing, Israel failed to retaliate. Likewise, Israel failed to retaliated when Iran's Lebanese proxy Hezbollah launched a missile strike against northern Israel. And last week, Israel did nothing to block Iran from supplying fuel to Hezbollah in Lebanon, despite the fact that the Iranian operation constituted a major breach of US sanctions on Iran.

Israel's diplomatic campaign against Iran had two audiences – the Arab regimes threatened by Iran, and the western powers – including the Democrat Party – that embraced nuclear appeasement. The Arabs responded to Israel's staunch diplomacy by embracing the Jewish state as an ally.

As for the western powers, by rejecting nuclear appeasement, Israel rejected the legitimacy that the western powers were providing Iran's nuclear weapons program through the JCPOA. The JCPOA didn't merely preserve Iran's nuclear capabilities and enable it to expand them while producing a missile arsenal capable of launching nuclear warheads. The 2015 nuclear deal also gave international legitimacy to an illicit nuclear program advanced in material breach of Iran's signature on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. On a practical level, Gantz's announcement that Israel no longer opposes the Biden administration's plan to restore the US to the JCPOA means that Israel has dropped its objection to the West's decision to legalize Iran's nuclear weapons program.

So what is the Lapid-Gantz-Bennett government's strategy on Iran? By cancelling all four components of Israel's longstanding successful strategy for containing and undermining Iran, the government has made clear that its strategy for dealing with Iran's nuclear program is to raise the white flag of surrender. Rather than present a new strategy for preventing Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold, the government has focused its efforts on selling its strategy of lying down and doing nothing. The government justifies its decision to let the clock run down by casting the blame for its failure to act on the person who conceived and implemented the Israeli strategy that blocked Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold until now. Although everyone knows who is it is they are scapegoating, Bennett has opted to refer to him only as "my predecessor."

Iran’s foreign minister said his nation’s "willpower is dedicated" to the elimination of Zionism at this week’s United Nations anti-racism conference.

With the United States and 33 [now 38] other nations boycotting a UN anti-racism conference due to its history of anti-Semitism, Iran’s new foreign minister invoked the destruction of the Jewish state, perhaps giving the countries who boycotted the conference more reason to have stayed away, observers say.

The event, known as Durban IV, had the theme of "Reparations, racial justice and equality for people of African descent." Wednesday’s event was to commemorate and adopt a statement 20 years after the first meeting in Durban, South Africa. While the original purpose of the event was combating racism, critics say it has been hijacked by an anti-Israel agenda that turned it into an anti-Semitic hate fest leading the U.S. and Israel to walk out of the first conference.

In this photo provided by the United Nations, United Nations General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid of Maldives, right, meets with Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian during the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021, at UN headquarters.

Iran’s new foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, who is in New York this week for the UN General Assembly, said his country opposed all forms of racism while threatening the existence of Zionism.

"As the new foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I’m honored to announce that my nation’s willpower is dedicated to the total elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, including apartheid and Zionism," he said. "These are crimes that constitute horrible atrocities such as child killing and the creeping occupation through settlements, which extends to the proximity of Al-Aqsa mosque."

Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who focuses on Iran, told Fox News, "Abdollahian didn't mince words: the Islamic Republic will use every opportunity afforded to it to seek ‘the total elimination’ of Zionism. That is code for working towards the destruction of the Jewish state."

As Rowan Polovin, the national chairman of the South African Zionist Federation, wrote in an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post, “The outcome of Durban was the launch of a global, organized and well-funded antisemitic machine, masked in the language of human rights and cloaked in the guise of anti-apartheid activism” known as BDS.

The BDS movement, which has chalked up several victories in recent years, has also suffered several setbacks, such as the decision by several US states from Arizona to Florida to divest from Ben & Jerry’s over its decision to cease sales in Israeli settlements.

Twenty years after Durban I, Polovin pointed out, “Israel is stronger, secure, richer, more loved and more respected than ever before.”

Rather than allowing itself to be portrayed in some parts of the world as “a racist, apartheid state,” Israel and its allies should seize the historical moment and stand together – including the Gulf states with which it recently celebrated the anniversary of the Abraham Accords – to lead the international struggle against racism and religious persecution.

Rather than needing to lead a boycott of world conferences on racism, the Jewish state should have a special place at the table.

Another source close to Bennett explained: “There is no possibility of negotiations, not because of Bennett, but because of reality. There are two Palestinian authorities.... That happened before Bennett arrived, and that needs to be communicated.”

Bennett was encouraged by Biden’s speech to the UN.

Biden said: “I continue to believe that the 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.”

However, he added: “We’re a long way from that goal at this moment.” Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken have made similar remarks in the past.

The senior diplomatic source described Biden’s caveat as “convergence into the world of possibility,” and called it one of the most important things he said on the topic.

When Bennett addresses the General Assembly on Monday, talks with the Palestinians will not be part of his speech.

As he’s been saying for almost a decade in politics, Bennett “doesn’t think his engagement with the world has to go through the Palestinians,” the senior diplomatic source said.

Instead, the core of his speech will be telling Israel’s story and pushing back against hypocrisy and the “vicious, idiotic and unjust” standards by which Israel is judged at the UN and other international forums.

The goal is – to adopt a former Bennett campaign slogan – to present an Israel with “no apologies.” Bennett wants to be a confident and optimistic Israeli voice at the UN.

Thirty-seven countries in total boycotted the Durban IV conference at the United Nations on Wednesday, over the event’s history of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias.

Sweden, Latvia and Denmark announced their boycott on Thursday, the day after the event took place.

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

Swedish Ambassador to Israel Erik Ullenhag said his country “didn’t participate in the high-level meeting marking the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration. We stand firm in the fight against racism and antisemitism in all its forms.”

The decision came days after Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid spoke with his Swedish counterpart Ann Linde, the highest-level contacts between the countries in seven years, since Sweden recognized a Palestinian state.

Lapid said on Thursday that the fact that more countries boycotted the Durban Review Conference than ever before comes from “intensive diplomatic work for the good of the State of Israel.”

Hola! Looks like #Spain also did not participate in #DurbanIV, which makes it 38 countries to have said No to this racist and antisemitic Festival of Hate at #UNGA.

Importantly, it also means 21/27 EU Member States (over three-quarters) did not participate! pic.twitter.com/6pO7pDiTKP

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 23, 2021

Senate Republicans are blocking Joe Biden's nominee for deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration, Dilawar Syed, over his affiliation with a group that advocates for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Republicans and conservative groups are raising concerns about Syed's board position with Emgage Action, a Muslim-American advocacy group that has described Israel as an "apartheid" state and lobbied against legislation that would penalize U.S. companies for boycotting Israel.

"As a board member of Emgage Action, Dilawar Syed has embraced the hateful [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] movement and anti-Semitic rhetoric calling Israel an ‘apartheid’ state," said Tom Jones, the founder of the American Accountability Foundation, a nonprofit group that conducts oversight on the federal government.

Republicans on the Senate Small Business Committee were no-shows at a Thursday hearing for the nominee, preventing the committee from reaching a quorum necessary to move forward with a vote. GOP senators said that they will stall Syed's confirmation not only because of his anti-Israel activism but also because he has not committed to recovering around $100 million in taxpayer-funded loans they say were illegally issued to Planned Parenthood. The Biden administration is under fire for awarding Planned Parenthood this cash via the COVID relief program, even though the organization was ineligible to receive these funds.

Behind closed doors, Israelis are questioning why a country as militarily and economically robust as theirs should continue to appear dependent on any foreign power. Why, they wonder, should Israel bear the opportunity costs of many billions of dollars by not selling its defense technologies to certain countries? And why should Israel, still a vulnerable country in the world’s toughest region, allow itself to be seen as open to progressive arm-twisting? Isn’t it time—with the Obama MOU set to expire in 2027—to begin asking whether Israel can continue to depend on U.S. military aid, whether its downsides outweigh its benefits, and whether or not more secure and mutually advantageous alternatives exist?

The answers to these questions may well lie in moving from the current donor-to-recipient model to a collaborative relationship based on both countries’ interests and strengths. Such an arrangement would provide for investment in joint research in artificial intelligence, directed energy (lasers), and cyber—all fields in which Israel excels. Such cooperation would bring immediate benefits to American and Israeli security and strengthen their abilities to counter common threats. “The U.S. and like-minded allies must lead in the development of emerging critical technologies,” I was told by Enia Krivine, senior director of the Israel Program and the National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The U.S. must invest in Israel and other techno democracies who share our values to secure the future.”

And nothing, it might be added, would be a better response to those legislators who are willing to cause harm to the Palestinians—and perhaps even to America—in order to attack Israel. Nothing could more effectively stimulate economic growth while contributing to Middle East security, and nothing could be more befitting for two sovereign, democratic states. In this way, perhaps, the blocking of aid for Iron Dome would not only be a wakeup call but also an opportunity for Israel and the United States to place their relationship on a more equitable and durable foundation.

There’s an old Jewish joke that describes an antisemite as someone who hates Jews more than what is strictly necessary. And boy, did Democratic members of the progressive ‘Squad’ reveal their enthusiastic Jew-hatred this week, pressuring their party to drop $1 billion in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

The Squad’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Cori Bush (D-MO), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) sided with a handful of other progressive Democrats, threatening to vote against an appropriations bill that included funding for the Iron Dome. They claimed that it allowed Israel to continue its abuse and persecution of the Palestinians.

American support for Iron Dome — which has zero offensive capabilities, and only protects Israeli civilians from terrorist rockets and other threats — is nothing new. The missile defense system has received American funding since 2011, with the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding, negotiated under President Barack Obama, securing another decade of military funding.

This is by no means the Squad’s first attempt to cut US funding for Israel. The Squad’s members openly support the movement to boycott the Jewish state, and, in both May and September of this year, led pushes to suspend the transfer of $735 million worth of weaponry to Israel.

But there is something particularly sickening about this latest move to prevent funding for the Iron Dome. As a solely defensive tool, Israel’s famed missile defense system has only ever played the role of saving Israeli lives — Jewish and Arab. By pressuring their party to nix this funding, this increasingly loud and attention-grabbing group of progressive lawmakers sent a clear message to their constituency: they want Israelis dead.

Israel makes every effort to prevent civilian casualties – even when Hamas is using them as human shields; that’s why the precision-guided missiles could help save lives. The “proportionate response” motto has been blown out of proportion. As I have found myself telling interviewers in war after war: I don’t have to apologize that, thanks to the Iron Dome, not enough of my friends, family and neighbors are being killed to satisfy an overseas audience. I don’t want to imagine what the death toll would be if the Iron Dome didn’t safely intercept the vast majority of the thousands of rockets launched on Israel.

And what would be an acceptable response, then? Would the death of more Israelis end the “cycle of violence” or encourage Hamas to sacrifice a few more “martyrs” for the cause? And it’s not relevant just for the well-published rounds of hostilities. There are intermittent rocket attacks on Israel that are under the international media radar, including some this month.

Shooting down the Iron Dome funding is part of “enduring” Durban in both senses of the word, ongoing and having to suffer.

Although this week’s 20th anniversary conference at the UN was boycotted by 34 countries, the spirit of the original Durban Conference is alive and being taught to the next generation in campuses across the world. A survey commissioned by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law to specifically examine rates of antisemitism among US college students who claim a strong sense of Jewish identity and connection to Israel was published this week. It found that large numbers of students are feeling unsafe and nearly 70% had either personally experienced antisemitism on campus or was aware of an antisemitic incident within 120 days of being interviewed for the survey.

The Iron Dome anti-rocket system needs a civilian equivalent to intercept anti-Israel lies and libel, distortion and demonization. It should be fueled by buy-cotts instead of boycotts of the Start-Up Nation. Above all, it must normalize normalization. The Abraham Accords, now celebrating their first anniversary, are doing more to bring about peace and fight terrorism than anything that came out of the Durban Conference 20 years ago. Giving Israel the cold shoulder does nothing to create a warm peace.

One of the most telling details about the complete defeat of the small but dedicated Israel haters in Congress was the fact that in the end, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who is the leader of the 10-member “Squad,” voted “present” on the bill that corrected her own vicious attack on Israeli security.

As you probably recall, earlier this week, a few hours before a scheduled vote on the US Budget, the Squad members forced the House of Representatives to remove a clause from the budget dedicated to replenishing Israel’s stock of Iron Dome rockets, which has been used heavily during the May clashes with Hamas (US Broken Promise: Congress Shoot Down $1B Emergency Aid to Replenish Israel’s Iron Dome). The move made the Democrats in the House look bad for a day, and then resulted in a whopping success for the vast majority in Congress who are true friends and allies of the Jewish State: the House of Representatives passed a stand-alone bill (H.R. 5323) to cover Israel’s costs in replenishing Iron Dome by a vote of 420 to 9.

How did AOC vote on the bill she personally caused? She voted “present.” Not because she suddenly had a change of heart and stopped aiding and abating the enemies of Israel, but because AOC is planning to challenge Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2022. You can’t be on the record as voting against replenishing Israel’s main defense against terrorist attacks on her civilians and win a Senate seat in NY State.

Still, the cameras caught a tearful AOC as she watched the complete collapse of her plot. Indeed, Israel owes the anti-Semitic former barista from the Bronx for helping galvanize astonishing bipartisan support for the US’ only true ally in the Middle East.

The New York Times was caught stealth-editing a report that suggested progressive lawmakers struggled to vote against funding Israel's Iron Dome amid pressure from "powerful" rabbis and lobbyists after the paper was criticized on social media for the story's original framing.

On Thursday, the House overwhelmingly voted in favor of providing $1 billion toward Israel's defense system after the Democratic "Squad" had initially stripped the funding from the larger spending bill, sparking backlash from the more moderate wing of the party.

The bill, which received strong bipartisan support in a 420-9 vote, was dramatic until the very end as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., changed her vote from "no" to "present," a decision that apparently caused her to shed tears on the House floor. Her "Squad" colleagues, like Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., voted against the financial aid toward Israel.

However, a report published by the Times documenting the turmoil among the Democrats offered a peculiar description of how conflicted the progressives felt when casting their votes.

"Minutes before the vote closed, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez tearfully huddled with her allies before switching her vote to 'present.' The tableau underscored how wrenching the vote was for even outspoken progressives, who have been caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party, such as influential lobbyists and rabbis," Times congressional correspondent Catie Edmondson initially wrote.

That paragraph raised eyebrows among critics on social media.

".@nytimes frames the #IronDome vote as pitting ‘principles’----the honorable goal of Israeli civilians getting murdered by Hamas---and the raw naked power of the evil Jew Lobby. Including rabbis! It's that bad!" journalist Gary Weiss reacted.

"97% of the members of Congress supported a resolution to fund the #IronDome because it saves lives. But the @nytimes wants people to believe it was a tough call, between *principles* & *powerful lobbyists* What a sick way to frame the issue of protecting civilians from missiles," Joel M. Petlin, a contributor to the Jewish newspaper The Forward, reacted. AOC 'cries' as the House passes $1B in funding for Israel's Iron Dome Video

"I do think most #Jews find it offensive - if not outright #antisemtic - to frame #rabbis as coercive conspiring emotional blackmailers into true belief - @AOC can make up her own mind - do better @nytimes," Sara Yael Hirschhorn, a visiting assistant Israeli studies professor at Northwestern University, scolded the Times.

Caught between their principles and their...rabbis? Are the rabbis being mean to the Squad? Did AOC switch her vote because she was afraid she'd get in trouble and miss Shabbos Party? She was supposed to be the ima this week! pic.twitter.com/5KfAiQyyH9

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) September 24, 2021

After @RashidaTlaib finished her diatribe, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann responded, yielding himself as much time as necessary to respond. Amazing: pic.twitter.com/o2TG5TNBRC

— Conspiracy Libel (@ConspiracyLibel) September 24, 2021

So Marc is angry @AOC wasnt antisemitic enough today ??

Always fun to watch Jew haters eat their own. pic.twitter.com/LGb6RM9H7b

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 23, 2021

The biggest LIES about the #IronDome. Here’s everything you (and the squad) need to know: pic.twitter.com/ujEpoC307r

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 23, 2021

AOC and her pals refused to support the government spending bill since it contained aid to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome Missile Defense System. As a result, the rest of the Democrats simply bowed to the pressure and removed the aid to Israel from the bill. The spending bill then promptly passed the House.

Unfortunately, “the squad” and others like them are gaining power, and may find themselves at the helm of the democratic party in the not-so-distant future. In the meantime, we should call it for what it is. Anti-Semitism equals Jew-hatred.

You also were one the few that refused to vote for the Holocaust Never Again Education Act yet constantly compare COVID mandates to the Holocaust, causing a Jewish intern of yours to quit.

You were also the sole Republican that refused to condemn the BDS movement in 2019. https://t.co/gavEJvvqOd

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 24, 2021

The Squad is not finished. Democrats defended Iron Dome because it’s a defensive system.

Next, the Squad will take on offensive weapons including precision munitions.

The Squad has launched a political war of attrition. They will stop when Israel is no longer a Jewish State.

— Mark Dubowitz (@mdubowitz) September 23, 2021

I experienced First World Israel first-hand last year when I upgraded my old national ID card for the new biometric one. I filled out the form on the Ministry of Interior website, scheduled my appointment online and was received at the Ministry at the allotted time, following which my new biometric identification was sent to me via registered mail; a prime example of First World E-government.

I have also experienced direct interaction with Third World Israel O-government (“O” is for Ottoman). Twice I was volunteered by my family to vouch for the Jewishness of a sister-in-law before she could be married by the Rabbinate. Twice I showed up at the Municipal Religious Council and on both occasions I was astounded (although not surprised) by the seemingly 19th-century work processes. The time of my scheduled appointment had only a casual relationship with the time of my actual appointment; in one case the relevant official apparently was not even in the building.

All this demonstrates the larger Israeli paradox. On the one hand, there is an Israel that is efficient, industrious, problem solving, results oriented and hi-tech; an Israel where outstanding intelligence work and effective interagency coordination within a fortnight successfully recaptures all of the six terrorists who escaped Gilboa prison. On the other hand, there is an Israel that seems to amalgamate the vociferous mayhem of the Polish shtetl with a Mediterranean carefree casualness and Middle Eastern dysfunction. This breeds an Israel that muddles along with an yihye beseder (it will be OK) mentality that made possible the escape of the six inmates in the first place.

These two Israels function in parallel, struggling for hegemony with each competing for dominance over different aspects of our national life. In many areas, First World Israel reigns supreme, in others it remains Third World Israel.

Maybe Third World Israel has some quaint appeal. Like the slightly mad uncle we meet on Jewish holidays, it can add some color and cheer to our lives. But if the State of Israel is going to succeed in facing the array of very real challenges it confronts, First World Israel must be triumphant. Wardens “asleep on the job” at Israel’s maximum security prisons are hardly a prescription for a more promising and secure future.

Here, let me help you: They were bad men who tried to hurt innocent people and deserve to be punished. pic.twitter.com/FTn9NoW9te

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 24, 2021

Social media users expressed outrage after the video was shared of a Palestinian crowd singing and dancing to Hebrew music at a wedding in Yatta near Hebron on Thursday.

Israeli Druze singer Mike Sharif performed at the wedding, with a video on his Facebook page showing him singing the song "Why Not?" with the crowd singing and dancing along.

The video showed Sharif being accompanied to the stage by a large number of security guards.

Some Palestinian social media users and news sites expressed outrage at the video, with commenters on social media writing "shame" and speaking out against the Palestinian Authority and its supporters. Some commenters claimed the concert was an attempt at normalization and linked the event to Fatah supporters.

Sharif is a Druze singer who began performing as a child in the 1980's, with his first album released in 1992.

In 2011, the Palestinian Authority banned Sharif from performing at a New Year's Eve party in Ramallah. The decision to ban Sharif, known as “The Druse Boy,” was taken following strong protests and threats by many Palestinians who oppose “normalization” with Israelis.

When a PA-appointed Shari’ah judge in his sermon recently called to “liberate the land and the people from the defilement of the criminal infidels” – i.e., Israelis/Jews – and prophesied that soon “the nation of Islam will be crowned with the purification of the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” it was not an isolated or unusual antisemitic statement. On the contrary, the PA, its officials, and its media regularly state that “Palestine,” “Jerusalem,” and “the Muslim (and Christian) holy sites” must be “cleansed,” “purified,” and “liberated” from the “defilement” and “desecration” of Jews.

Shari’ah Judge Hatem Al-Bakri: “Mere days stand between us and a new year… in which it is hoped that the nation of truth and justice, the nation of Islam, will have a decisive victory, and that the nation of Islam will be crowned with the purification of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the liberation of the land of [Prophet Muhammad’s] Night Journey… Allah… prepare a man for us who will follow the path of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, who will liberate the land and the people from the defilement of the criminal infidels.”

[Official PA TV, Aug. 6, 2021]

The same message has been voiced by other preachers and PA-nominated Shari’ah judges in sermons during the year, like PA Chairman Abbas’ personal advisor Al-Habbash:
“Supreme Shari’ah Judge of Palestine and [PA] President [Abbas’] Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Dr. Mahmoud Al-Habbash… emphasized… the series of daily crimes that the occupation state is committing against the Jerusalem Noble Sanctuary (i.e., the Temple Mount), … the escalation in the pace of the settlers’ daily invasions [of the mosque], and the desecration of it on baseless pretexts of ‘Jewish religious holidays and festivals.’”

[Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, April 14, 2021]

PA Shari’ah Judge Abdallah Harb in sermon: “The occupation is still making all efforts day and night to Judaize the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in order to defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It has harmed the structures, harmed the people, and spread drugs and other things.”

Official PA TV, April 9, 2021]

The Palestinian cheers over the “Afghan mujahedeen victory over the American Crusaders” create the impression that in their view, the Taliban are a worthy model to follow to eliminate the “Zionist occupation.” However, a crumbling Lebanon, a Gaza Strip plagued by poverty and unemployment, and Afghanistan itself, now under Taliban rule, do not indicate the success of the Islamic model.

What the Palestinians need is not a new model of “armed struggle,” but a reconciliation with the existence of Israel, while striving for a sustainable peace settlement that will ensure security, prosperity, and respect for mutual rights.

In May 2000, following massive pressure from left-wing organizations and after failing to reach an agreement with Syria and Hezbollah, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered the hasty withdrawal of the IDF from south Lebanon. Israel’s local ally — the South Lebanese Army, the establishment and maintenance of which had cost millions of dollars — collapsed and was unable to hold out against Hezbollah. Eighteen years of Israeli military presence ended in a frightened and confused retreat.

These events greatly influenced the head of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat (as well as the other Palestinian terrorist organizations), who saw it as confirmation of the mukwama (resistance) view that only a determined “armed struggle” (i.e., terrorism) could lead to achievements against Israel.

A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill on Thursday that calls on the European Union to fully designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

The legislation, introduced by Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), seeks to encourage the 27-nation block to designate both its military and political wings as terrorist entities. Currently, the E.U. only includes Hezbollah’s military wing on its list of sanctioned terrorist organizations.

The United States makes no distinction between its branches and includes Hezbollah in its entirety on the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization List. Several individual E.U. member states also recognize this, including Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Slovenia.

“Hezbollah is a brutal terrorist organization notorious for operating throughout the Middle East,” said Blackburn. “However, it derives both financial support and political legitimacy from every region of the world. The European Union cannot enable terrorists by allowing them to participate in diplomacy.”

The American Jewish Committee, which has long advocated for governments to label Hezbollah as a terrorist group, praised the bill.

Lebanon's Hezbollah terrorist organization announced the arrival of a second ship loaded with diesel from Iran to Syria's Baniyas port Thursday evening, the group's al-Manar TV said on its Telegram channel early on Friday.

The Iran-aligned group said the fuel shipments should ease a crippling energy crisis in Lebanon, while Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the Iranian shipments constitute a breach of Lebanon's sovereignty.

Both Syria and Iran are under US sanctions.

Hezbollah first began bringing Iranian fuel into Lebanon via Syria last week, when dozens of trucks carrying the fuel oil entered northeastern Lebanon near the village of al-Ain. The terorrist organization has said third and fourth shipments from Iran were also due.

Washington has reiterated that its sanctions on Iranian oil sales remain in place. But it has not said whether it is considering taking any action over the move by Hezbollah, which it designates as a terrorist group.

The Lebanese government has said its permission was not sought to import the fuel.

The moves mark an expansion of Hezbollah's role in Lebanon, where critics have long accused the heavily armed group of acting as a state within the state.

Israel and the US held secret talks last week to discuss a possible “Plan B” to deal with the issue of Iran’s nuclear program if negotiations between the US and Iran fail, Axios reported Wednesday, citing Israeli officials.

The US withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, but President Joe Biden has pledged to rejoin it. Indirect talks between the US and Iran in Vienna have been underway for some time, but are currently stalled. An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman recently said that the talks may resume within the month.

According to Axios, the secret US-Israel meeting was held by the two countries’ “Opal” strategic working group on Iran, and were the first engaged in by Israel’s new government under Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

The talks were held by video conference and headed up by White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and his counterpart Eyal Hulata.

The Israeli participants urged the US to formulate a “Plan B” on the issue due to Iran’s recent acceleration of its nuclear program and the current impasse in the Vienna talks.

The US responded positively, but not decisively, expressing concern about the state of the talks and saying it would impose further sanctions on Iran if they do not resume.

On Thursday, a senior US official told reporters that the window to revive the deal was still open for Iran, but not indefinitely so.

The sprawling annual defense bill includes several provisions that would block the Biden administration from providing Iran with cash and would require the administration to come clean about any economic sanctions relief it provides to the Islamic Republic.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest GOP caucus in Congress, is codifying its anti-Iran platform in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, which funds U.S. defense efforts and is expected to pass through the House this week.

Republicans are using the NDAA to crack down on Iran and expose concessions the Biden administration is making to Tehran as part of negotiations aimed at securing a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear deal. Several measures included in the House version of the NDAA—which will also have to be ratified by the Senate—would give lawmakers an unprecedented window into Iran’s malign activities, as well as efforts by the Biden administration to unwind sanctions on the hardline regime.

Republicans have been planning their NDAA approach for months, according to congressional sources working on the matter. The RSC and its members are spearheading several investigations into the Biden administration’s diplomacy with Iran and its efforts to provide Iran with a financial lifeline. The RSC worked with Democratic colleagues to sculpt several NDAA measures that would mandate transparency from the Biden administration as it negotiates with Iran, these sources told the Washington Free Beacon. These measures are included in the bipartisan legislation and expected to easily pass when the House votes Thursday evening.

Iranian cartoonist Masoud Shojaei Tabtabaei, who has organized two Holocaust cartoon festivals, spoke about the reasons behind the exhibits in an interview that aired on Channel 4 (Iran) on September 9, 2021. He said that the festivals were held in reactions to events such as the bombing of Gaza and the cartoons of Muhammad, adding: "Whenever they attacked, we immediately launched a counter-attack." Tabtabaei said that the Holocaust is the "Achilles' heel" of the Zionists, and that the Israelis have benefited from the Holocaust. He continued to say that it is the Zionists who benefited from the Holocaust and that the figure of six million Jewish victims is "very exaggerated." He then added that anyone who casts doubts on the Holocaust is persecuted and gave the examples of Holocaust deniers David Irving and Roger Garoudy.

Tabtabaei further explained that the goal of the Holocaust cartoon contest was to ask how come Western freedom of expression does not allow for even the "smallest of doubts" about the Holocaust, how come the Palestinians have to "pay the price of the Holocaust," and to raise concerns about "contemporary holocausts," such as those taking places in Syria, Iraq, or Yemen. Tabtabaei was asked by the interviewer how he defends himself against possible Israeli accusations that he is an antisemite or a supporter of Nazism. To this, he responded that the Zionists have been engaged in propaganda against the organizers of the contest, calling them neo-Nazis and antisemites, but because they have portrayed Netanyahu as Hitler, they cannot be accused of being neo-Nazis.

In June 2020, Tabtabaei organized an exhibition of anti-U.S. cartoons in Tehran titled "I Can't Breathe," following the killing of George Floyd in May of that year (see MEMRI Special Dispatch no. 8800 for more information). In May 2016, Masoud Shojaei Tabtabaei organized a Holocaust cartoon contest in Tehran following the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, (see MEMRITV clip no. 5472 for more information). In September and August 2006, Iranian TV aired reports about Tabtabaei's Holocaust cartoon contest. In the report from September Tabtabaei said the contest was in response to the Danish cartoon of the Prophet, printed in the Jyllands-Posten in 2005, (for more information, see MEMRITV clip no. 1280), and in the report from August, he said that he had organized the contest in response to the war in Lebanon (for more information, see MEMRITV clip no. 1240).

2/2 Iranian Cartoonist Masoud Shojaei Tabtabaei on the Holocaust Cartoon Contests He Organized: Our Contests Were Counterattacks for the Prophet Muhammad Cartoons; There Were 4.5 Million Jews in Europe, So How Could 6 Millions Be Killed? #Iran#Antisemitism#Holocaustpic.twitter.com/wMXyxlfvIv

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 23, 2021

The executive manager of United for Navid, an Iranian-run sports organization advancing the human rights of Iranian athletes, filed on Tuesday a formal letter of protest with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), arguing that the Islamic Republic should be suspended from the IOC because Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei urged discrimination against Israeli athletes.

Sardar Pashaei, a former head coach of Iran’s Greco-Roman wrestling team, the executive manager of United for Navid, wrote to the IOC’s president Thomas Bach that a video of Khamenei’s anti-Israel speech is “ further proof [of] Iran’s grievous violations of the Olympic and Paralympic Charters.”

Attached to the letter was a video of Khamenei from September 17, in which he meets with Iranian Olympic and Paralympic athletes who won medals at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

Pashaei wrote: “As you can see, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic once again firmly instructs Iranian athletes as well as Iranian sports officials that they are forbidden from competing or interacting in any way with athletes from the so-called ‘Israeli criminal regime.’ The Supreme Leader also instructs senior Iranian sports officials to support non-Iranian athletes from other countries who refuse to compete with Israeli athletes, including an Algerian athlete who refused to compete with an Israeli athlete at the Tokyo Olympics. “

Much like a six-foot tall Army Special Forces soldier wrestling a lady, sports organizations around the world have been wrestling with the contentious issue of transgender athletes in women’s sports. Those opposed to the idea argue that differences in size, hormones, and bone density make it unsafe for transgender athletes and cisgender athletes to compete against one another. While other people argue that it’s okay for a woman to have her skull fractured by some dude who’s only been a chick for a few months.

Now, in a move that is sure to please everyone, Taliban leaders in Kabul have unveiled the world’s first truly fair and egalitarian policy on the issue. Deputy head of the Taliban’s cultural commission, Ahmadullah Wasiq, announced on Wednesday that both biological males and biological females will be banned from participating in women’s sports. This means individuals born with a penis and XY chromosomes, whose higher levels of testosterone give them a natural advantage in feats of athleticism, will not be allowed to compete on female sports teams. And neither will individuals born with a vagina and XX chromosomes, whose higher levels of estrogen give them a natural advantage in feats of cooking, texting, and shopping.

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Colonial rule is considered by Western supporters of the myth to have disrupted this happy relationship. In practice, the colonial powers “liberated” non-Muslim minorities from their dhimmi status and granted them better education and security.

Israel became tarred with the brush of imperialism after the Suez Crisis in 1956 when Israel joined forces with Britain and France to invade Egypt. Further politicization followed when Israel became an “occupying” power after the Six-Day War in 1967. Beginning in the 1950s, Western intellectuals were so bewitched by Third Worldism that when Tunisian-Jewish writer Albert Memmi moved to France, he was astonished to have been almost congratulated by left-wingers for having been born in a country where racism did not exist.

Dhimmi-denial was mirrored in the attitudes of white Southerners who thought of themselves as upholding Christian values and even “high civilization.” After losing the cause of slavery in the American Civil War, they went to considerable lengths to praise slavery’s “benevolent features.” The master-slave relationship, they said, was amicable: “The only bonds were those of tender understanding, trust and loyalty.”

Pollack and Norwood argue that the “happy darkey” myth provided Southerners with a foundation to justify their “lost cause,” just as Arabs use the “happy dhimmi” to challenge Israel’s legitimacy.

Nowadays, as statues associated with slavery are being torn down, and any connection with slavery, however tenuous, is enough to make historical figures into non-persons, the “happy darkey” myth is thoroughly discredited.

How much longer will we have to wait until the “happy dhimmi” myth is consigned to the dustbin of history?

Institution after institution has caved before this strategy and thereby been renormalized. Shapiro goes into great detail, offering separate analyses of the renormalizations happening in government, media, science, education, and the workplace. Given that he wrote the book during the COVID-19 pandemic, his section on the renormalization of science lands with a fierce immediacy.

He identifies two dominant elements in the current corruption of science: the Ultracrepidarian Problem and the Bleedover Effect. “The Ultracrepidarian Problem widens the boundaries of science beyond the applicable,” Shapiro writes. This happened, for example, when scientists came out en masse proclaiming racism a public-health emergency. By contrast, “the Bleedover Effect narrows the boundaries of science to the ‘acceptable.’” Such was the case when, in 2018, the American Medical Association renounced any definition of sex that referred to “immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth.” Doctors, according to the renormalized AMA, “assign” sex. (Shapiro is never caught wanting for real-word events to bolster his arguments.)

Through the power and reach of American institutions, the radical left has managed to foist its oppressive agenda on the country in what seems like an overnight coup. But it merely feels as if it happened overnight. Shapiro lays out a valuable account of the revolutionary groundwork, a century in the making, that went into the establishment of the new dispensation. The American left, in his telling, has historically oscillated between dreams of utopia and a hunger for revolution. “But the two impulses are in conflict,” he writes. It was Barack Obama who finally tied the two together “by embracing the power of government—and acting as a community organizer within the system itself, declaring himself the revolutionary representative of the dispossessed, empowered with the levers of the state in order to destroy and reconstitute the state on their behalf.” This insight perhaps best explains Joe Biden’s clunky “Build Back Better” slogan. What the revolution has destroyed, the Biden administration will rebuild—along utopian lines.

Shapiro is famous, in part, for a rapid-fire speaking style that enables him to pack years of analysis into a single TV appearance. He manages something analogous in The Authoritarian Moment, conveying a door stopper’s worth of information in fewer than 250 pages (not counting notes). He is infamous on the left, however, as an emblem of right-wing nastiness. But that misunderstanding of Shapiro points to a paradox that gets at why the left truly detest him. He is a cool-headed and surgical expositor of complicated ideas—so cool-headed and surgical that his targets can only take their wounds for the work of a monster. He in fact models an alternative to political nastiness. What is his oft-repeated catch phrase—“Facts don’t care about your feelings”—but an admonition against excessive emotionality in discourse? In The Authoritarian Moment, Shapiro paints with a fine brush and makes a clear distinction between liberals (who respect free speech) and leftists (who do not). He throws powerful rhetorical bombs, but they’re smart bombs. “To be politically incorrect means to say that which requires saying,” he writes, “not to be a generic, run-of-the-mill jackass.”

The Authoritarian Moment says very much that requires saying. Shapiro is beloved—indeed, he is a phenom—among young conservatives because he can articulate the multitude of frustrations that most others can only groan or rage about. And he can do it more concisely than any human being alive. But, more than that, he dissects the actual mechanics of the current crackdown in a way that is undeniable. His new book is, in short, an argument-winner. Shapiro maintains that if conservatives and liberals are to resist the new reality, they must undo in reverse order the three-step authoritarian takeover. This means that they will finally have to win more arguments than they currently do. The Authoritarian Moment is, then, a vital step toward genuine normalcy.

Irene Lancaster has written a glowing review of my novel The Legacy in the magazine Christian Today. I am most grateful, and reproduce it here.

Review in Christian Today
Many would say that War and Peace, Tolstoy’s epic 1860s chronicle of the earlier Napoleonic invasion of Tzarist Russia, experienced through the lives and loves of a number of individuals, is his greatest novel – maybe even the greatest novel ever written.

At exactly the same time, that very English genius, George Eliot (real name Mary Ann Evans), was writing what she herself considered to be her greatest novel, Romola, based on Florentine Renaissance history also seen through the private lives and loves of a number of individuals.

Both these books are, as you might expect, immensely difficult to read. The mind and heart are expected to concentrate on two disparate subjects simultaneously – with individual loves and the great events of world history panning out before us both in parallel and in tandem.

Not every reader succeeds in this endeavour and ends up having to choose one aspect as against the other, simply in order to get through the book. Not really what the respective authors – giants of the novelistic genre – would have wished of their readers.

It is therefore something of a miracle that England’s greatest Jewish journalist, Melanie Phillips (now living in Israel), has managed to pull off this exacting feat in her very first novel, entitled The Legacy.

Hundreds of Iraqi leaders and activists gathered in the country’s Kurdistan region on Friday to publicly call for full normalization with Israel.

The group, which includes Sunni and Shiites, youth activists and tribal leaders, said the next step after the dramatic announcement would be to seek “face-to-face talks” with Israelis.

The 312 Iraqi men and women issued their statements from a hotel in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region. The conference was organized by the New York-based Center for Peace Communications, which works to advance engagement between Arabs and Israelis, and to protect activists supporting normalization.

The Times of Israel is covering developments from the conference as they happen.

One of the speakers explained that the group believes in peace with Israel “so that we might live in a stable region that brings conflicts to an end. We believe in it because we want our region to be a peaceful one, in which Israel is an inseparable part of the panoramic whole, and in which all peoples have the right to live in security.”

“We demand that Iraq join the Abraham Accords internationally,” wrote Wisam al-Hardan, leader of the Sons of Iraq Awakening movement, in The Wall Street Journal on Friday. “We call for full diplomatic relations with Israel and a new policy of mutual development and prosperity.”

The Sons of Iraq formed organically in 2005 as tribal leaders in Anbar province and ex-Iraqi Army officers allied with US forces to fight al-Qaeda.

“Some of us have faced down ISIS and al-Qaeda on the battlefield,” wrote Hardan. “Through blood and tears we have long demonstrated that we oppose all extremists, whether Sunni jihadists or Iran-backed Shi’ite militias. We have also demonstrated our patriotism: We sacrificed lives for the sake of a unified Iraq, aspiring to realize a federal system of government as stipulated in our nation’s constitution.”

In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas demanded that Israel withdraw to the 1967 boundaries within one year or else face repercussions.

While Abbas had initially announced that he would travel to New York for the diplomatic meet, he later opted to remain in Ramallah, citing travel concerns due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The Israeli authorities have one year to withdraw from the Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem,” Abbas said in a pre-recorded video message.

During this year, the PA would be willing to work with Israel on borders and other issues necessary to resolve in any Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, Abbas said.

If Israel did not comply, Abbas said the Palestine Liberation Organization could withdraw its recognition of Israel within the 1967 borders. The PLO recognized those boundaries as part of the Oslo peace process in the 1990s.

“If this is not achieved, why maintain recognition of Israel based on the 1967 borders? Why maintain this recognition?” Abbas said.

Abbas also threatened Israel with action at the International Court of Justice should the current deadlock in the peace process continue. The International Criminal Court in The Hague is currently investigating both Israel and the Palestinians for war crimes committed since 2014.

Just a week ago, all of Israel's political establishment was in an uproar over a debate in the finance committee on a topic that would normally be totally technical and utterly devoid of interest: the reauthorization of eligibility for Clause 46 in Israel's tax laws which grants tax benefits for donations to a long list of NGOs, among them "Ad Kan! Young Israelis for Israel" (an organization the first two words of whose name is an idiom meaning 'enough is enough').

During the discussion, a previously unknown Member of Knesset from the Labor Party accused my organization of "trying to criminalize leftist activists by forging documents" and of "leading a hunting expedition armed with lies and dubbed soundtracks." Her stance led to the non-renewal of the eligibility of donations to "Ad Kan" for tax benefits of Israeli donors' income tax.

What the previously unknown MK said was unadulterated nonsense, and we hereby request that she give up her Knesset immunity long enough to be forced to defend her accusations in court – or, alternately, to apologize and return to her colorless anonymity.

But what is the reason the anti-Zionist Left is so afraid of "Ad Kan"? We have the feeling that they are simply afraid that you as well as others will learn the real truth.

Here are a few examples of that truth, selected out of many:
When we at "Ad Kan" saw how the NGO "Anarchists against the Wall" organizes violent riots against IDF soldiers, we turned to investigators of ours who had become members of that NGO and were able to bring filmed evidence proving participation in and organization of disturbances to the public order, including rock-throwing at soldiers and policemen. As a result, the anarchists were summoned to the courts and their leader (who writes for the Ha'aretz newspaper) was sent to prison.

When the NGO "Breaking the Silence" falsely accused IDF soldiers of committing war crimes during Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza and distributed a booklet filled with trumped up testimonies, we decided to research those "testimonies" and a team of our investigators spent over a year collecting documentation that proved that the accusations were slanderous. We even checked the clips taken by the cameras on IDF fighters' helmets in order to prove that not only were there no war crimes but that the soldiers actually endangered their own lives to take care of the civilian population in Gaza, in the midst of battle and despite clear and present danger to themselves. Armed with this documentation, we filed two suits for slander for the sum of 3.8million NIS against Breaking the Silence. Perhaps this is what is worrying the radical Left.

Effective Thursday, Ben & Jerry’s and its London-based parent company Unilever have been added to the Texas state list of companies that boycott Israel, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced.

The action was taken in accordance with Texas Government Code Chapter 808 prohibiting the investment in companies that “boycott Israel” — defined as “refusing to deal with, terminating business activities with, or otherwise taking any action that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on or limit commercial relations specifically with Israel or with a person or entity doing business in Israel or in an Israeli-controlled territory.”

Including Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever, 11 companies are now on the Texas list of companies. The news comes a little over two months after the ice cream maker announced on July 19 that it would no longer sell its products in what it described as “the Occupied Palestinian Territory” because “it is inconsistent with our [company] values.”

Hegar said his office worked with research providers and “carefully reviewed statements and activities” by both Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever “before concluding that they are suitable candidates for the Texas list.”

He added, “Texas law is clear on this issue, and my office has long supported Israel through our Israel bond holdings as well as our lists of scrutinized companies with ties to Iran and those with ties to foreign terrorist organizations.”

A Jewish man was fired from Unilever, the Ben & Jerry's parent company, for taking time off during the Rosh Hashanah two years ago, The New York Post reported on Thursday.

David Rosenbaum was working as a general manager at Unilever’s Englewood Cliffs at its New Jersey headquarters when he told Frank Alfano, his boss, that he planned to take days off for the Jewish holidays in 2019, to which his boss responded that he couldn't take time off for the Jewish New Year nor for Yom Kippur, according to Rosenbaum's lawsuit.

Unilever has been making headlines as of late for its decision to ban the sales of its ice cream in the West Bank.

Rosenbaum emphasized that his religion prevents him from working on those days and took the time off anyway, notifying his superiors at Unilever via email about the situation.

Rosenbaum was fired over the phone the next day.

The selections below were chosen on their individual merits, so to speak. Some are blatantly vile, others unintentionally comical, but all illustrate the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of Middle East studies in North America. Each speaker should recoil in shame when confronted with his own words, but we aren’t so naïve as to expect it.

Wading through the archives was rather like reading “Dante’s Inferno” or C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters,” but with an obvious difference of authorial intent. Whereas the poet and the apologist seek to persuade their readers to pursue virtue by illustrating vice, our professors spew vice while masquerading as purveyors of virtue.

Below we expose some of their most infamous statements – and have a little fun while we’re at it. The winners follow, with brief commentary, in chronological order:
1. “We really idolize somebody like Leila Khaled, somebody who actually stands up for herself, speaks for herself, actually goes to a plane and hijacks it.” Rabab Abdulhadi, professor in Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas/Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University. Goldengate Express, September 22, 2020.

Who doesn’t get misty-eyed recalling the grand old days of Palestinian airline hijackings? What better way to preserve that glorious legacy than teaching students to idolize the Queen of Terror at 30,000 Feet, Leila Khaled? Back in 1970, Khaled helped hijack an El Al flight but failed to blow it up when her grenade didn’t explode. A role model for the ages.

The Jewish studies faculty at Michigan State University has condemned a string of three antisemitic incidents that occurred over a single weekend, calling for a swift investigation and education efforts.

In one incident, which took place during the weekend marking 20 years since the September 11th attacks, a 9/11 mural of an American flag captioned “Never Forget 2,977 Lives” was defaced to read “Israel Forget 2,977 Lives” — evoking the conspiracy theory falsely blaming the attacks on the Jewish state.

“This is a modern iteration of the centuries-old trope that Jews control world events,” said the school’s Michael and Elaine Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel in a Sept. 15 statement.

During the same weekend, someone with a profile picture of a swastika joined a biology class group chat promising to prove that “Jews are scum.” Later, someone using the same screen-name said “shut the hell up Jew boy” and “this is why you don’t trust Jews” in a group chat for an off-campus housing complex.

“These incidents make clear that antisemitism is a real problem that we need to address to realize our vision of MSU as an inclusive community for all its members,” the Institute said.

“We were already concerned about antisemitism on campus,” Serling Institute Director Yael Aronoff told The State News. “About five years ago, we heard about rising antisemitism on campuses and students started telling us more about their experiences, and that’s why, for the past five years, we’ve organized a forum for students to share their experiences on campus about antisemitism.”

“Each year on average we have about 25 students who share their experiences. Often the OIE Office [Office of Institutional Equity] says that every single one of those things should’ve been reported to OIE, most students, of course, don’t report.”

The head of the San Diego Community College District responded on Wednesday to a controversial anti-Israel measure recently passed by its representative union, expressing “sincere thoughts to those who were offended by the resolution.”

The resolution, which accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, occupation, apartheid, and war crimes,” was passed on Sept. 5, by the 6,000-member American Federation of Teachers Local 1931 (AFT Local 1931).

Jewish organizations condemned its passage, with the Los Angeles-based advocacy group StandWithUs calling it part of a “dehumanizing campaign targeting Israel.”

San Diego Community College District Chancellor Carlos O. Turner Cortez addressed the criticism on Wednesday.

“As many of you know, there have been a number of statements publicized that denounce Israel and its actions in the Palestine conflict,” Cortez said. “We recognize that the opinions expressed by some groups, including the [AFT] Local 1931, are not embraced by many employees and students.”

“Further, we offer our sincere thoughts to those who were offended by the resolution,” he said.

He added that the District took no position on whether the AFT’s resolution was appropriate, describing it as an area of disagreement between the union’s local and national leadership.

Great news - @UTLAnow (United Teachers LA Union) voted down a BDS resolution 94-35 and tabled it indefinitely!

The Union represents approx. 30,000 teachers in the LA unified school district. https://t.co/hmXcTQ1s7o

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 24, 2021

Videos promoting Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terror attacks continue to be rife on Facebook on the 20th anniversary of the tragic events despite the social media giant's repeated pledges to tackle fake news.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously said the company would do more to address the issue of false information on the platform but some conspiracy videos have remained on the site for years.

A newly published report from the Simon Wiesenthal Center highlighted the problem of Anti-Semitic 9/11 videos and pointed out that in some cases the videos have been viewed tens of thousands of times.

That report, "September 11 Conspiracies: 20 Years Later," draws attention to one Facebook video posted by the "Anti Illuminati Alliance" which falsely claims that no planes were used in the attacks.

"Illuminati" is a term associated with Anti-Semitism, according to the American Jewish Committee (AJC)'s Translate Hate Glossary.

The video was still available on Facebook when Newsweek reviewed it on Saturday and has been viewed more than 68,000 times. The video was posted on March 1, 2021.

Last month, we complained to Guardian editors regarding an op-ed (“Our art deals with real injustices, some in Palestine: no wonder we faced opposition”, Aug. 20) by the anti-Israel NGO Forensic Architecture which included the following claim:
[IDF] Attacks extended also to art institutions: our close friend the Palestinian artist Emily Jacir sent us videos of Israeli forces raiding Dar Jacir, a vital independent artist-run space in Bethlehem.

First, the source embedded in the sentence doesn’t show the alleged video, and in fact fails to provide any proof of the Israeli ‘raid’ on the art space. Also, a New York Times article in July which included these same accusations quoted the IDF denying the claims. We contacted the IDF Spokesperson Unit to see if they still stood by their denial, and they affirmed that their position hasn’t changed. After a series of follow-ups with editors, they finally agreed to amend the sentence to include the IDF’s denial.

The objective of the Proposed Bill emanated from the Madrid Assembly is to change current legislation to deny any public aid, contracts, or grants to entities that carry out discriminatory practices for reasons of birth, race, sex, religion, opinion, or any other personal or social condition or circumstance, especially insisting on anti-Semitism.

The initiative is the result of the exhortation of the European Union, which shows the existence of a serious problem of masked anti-Semitism. To stop it and fight against it the EU recommends every member state to adopt and apply the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

But the distinguishing fact of the project that makes it unique is that not only does it reflect the relevance of adopting the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, but that it also includes the necessary legal modifications for hatred, open or masked, not to find harbour in the public space.

For said fight to be effective, not only against classical formulations, but also against new formats, it is necessary to end the public financing of organisations that support delegitimising campaigns, such as BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel), which not only seek to discriminate against those who support the Jewish state, but its companies, citizens, to sum up, the disappearance of the Jewish collective represented by Israel.

A court in France has sentenced eight defendants to a two-month suspended prison sentence after they were convicted for the antisemitic harassment of a beauty queen who revealed that her father is an Israeli.

Last December, April Benayoum, who won the title of Miss Provence 2020, was the runner-up in the Miss France 2021 contest. In social media posts after the competition, Benayoum noted that her mother is Croatian and her father Israeli, leading to a flurry of antisemitic replies. One tweet sent to Benayoum read, “Hitler forgot to exterminate you, Miss Provence.”

In its report of Wednesday’s decision at the Paris Criminal Court, the news outlet 20minutes observed that most of the eight defendants had expressed regret for their online outbursts. One of them, named as Ahmet I., told the court: “I am ashamed to be here, to be seen as an antisemite or a racist. I apologize to Ms. Benayoum for having made remarks like that.” Another, named as Rayanne M., confessed to “being ashamed that people have this image of me as an antisemite.”

In her address to the court, Benayoum said that while she accepted the apologies, her experience had been traumatic. “Forgiving will be more difficult, this is something that hurt me a lot and spoiled an exceptional adventure,” she commented.

A Jewish congregation in Los Angeles was left in shock on Wednesday night after a man reportedly attempted to ram into a crowd of people as they were attending a Sukkot holiday concert.

According to Magen Am, a non-profit that provides security to Jewish institutions, the attacker allegedly accelerated down a one-way alley into a crowd of women and children as the concert at LA’s Shaarei Tefila synagogue was coming to an end.

The crowd of about 20 to 30 managed to jump out of the path of the vehicle before the assailant stopped short in front of a metal gate, yelled “f**k the Jews” and left, the group said.

The group also said that about 20 minutes prior, the man had “canvassed” the event and issued threats, saying, “I’m a real Muslim, I’ll show you what real terrorism looks like.”

The Los Angeles Police Department told The Algemeiner that officers responded to the scene at around 10:57 pm to a call of a possible hate crime, and completed a report for criminal threats. A victim of a possible assault with a deadly weapon declined to sign a report, the LAPD said.

A Magen Am security officer told The Algemeiner that the alleged assailant had first approached the synagogue, asking about the event, and soon after started making antisemitic insults and threats. After getting into an argument with another congregant who was reacting to the man’s remarks, the assailant threatened the Magen Am security officer, before ultimately being ushered away.

Police in Pittsburgh have arrested a 30-year-old man in connection with two verbal assaults on Jews in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood on Wednesday.

The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police said in a statement that two assaults involving antisemitic invective had been reported on Wednesday morning. Officers announced the arrest of Pittsburgh resident Tyrone Corell in connection with both incidents.

The first victim reported that he was verbally assaulted by an unknown male near the intersection of Murray Avenue and Nicholson Street at 6 am who yelled antisemitic abuse.

A second incident was reported around the same time, also on Nicholson, by a man who matched the description of the assailant in the earlier attack. The assailant yelled profanities at his victim but did not make any physical or verbal threats, police reported.

Corell charged with simple assault, harassment and ethnic intimidation, as well as charges stemming from his arrest that include making terroristic threats, disorderly conduct, aggravated assault and resisting arrest.

Israeli vehicle cybersecurity startup Cybellum announced on Thursday that it is being acquired by LG Electronics. LG will assume an approximate 64 percent stake in the tech company valued at $140 million. The remaining shares will be acquired in the near future with the final valuation and total investment amount to be confirmed at that time. On top of this initial investment, LG committed to a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) to invest an additional $20 million in Cybellum upon the conclusion of the trading process in the fourth quarter. This will be LG’s first acquisition in Israel and in the cybersecurity domain in general.

Cybellum, founded in 2016, had raised just $15 million in total to date from investors including RSBG Ventures, Blumberg Capital and Target Global.

Cybellum was founded by CEO Slava Bronfman and CTO Michael Engstler, who both served in the elite Unit 81 of the Israeli military’s intelligence. Cybellum provides automotive OEMs and suppliers with a solution to identify and remediate security risks at scale, throughout the entire vehicle life cycle. Cybellum’s agentless solution scans embedded software components without needing access to their source code, exposing all cyber vulnerabilities. Manufacturers can then take immediate actions and proactively eliminate any cyber risk in the development and production process before any harm is done, while continuously monitoring for emerging threats impacting vehicles on the road.

Cybellum, which has partnerships with the likes of Jaguar and Nissan, employs 50 people, 35 of which are based at its R&D center in Tel Aviv.

Professor Eliezer Rabinovici from Hebrew University was elected as President of the (European Organization for Nuclear Research) CERN Council on Friday morning, following a campaign run by the Foreign Ministry and the Israeli embassy in Geneva.

CERN is an international organization located in Geneva, Switzerland that focuses on the research of particles. The organization employs the world's leading physicists who conduct experiments and research with a particle accelerator in order to explore the theoretical side of particles and try to make them a reality.

The organization includes 23 countries, with Israel having joined in December 2013 as the only non-European nation. Until then Israel's role had been that of an observer.

Professor Rabinovici was the Israeli representative for the organization for ten years, ending his role in 2020. In that time he gained great professional and personal renown in CERN. He was also one of the leaders on the SESAME project that brought cooperation between the scientists of the Middle East. It is largely in thanks to his work that Israel was able to join the organization as a fully-fledgedd active member.

He will now serve as the president for the next three years.

The Israel in Geneva Twitter acount tweeted a video to introduce Professor Rabinovici to the world on Friday, in which he answered some questions regarding CERN and his role as the president of the council.

Meet the new President of the @CERN Council Eliezer Rabinovici! Mazal Tov! ?? ???? ?? pic.twitter.com/sHAxhduTFB

— Israel in UN/Geneva???? (@IsraelinGeneva) September 24, 2021

Nearly 50 years after the Yom Kippur War, the National Library of Israel has released a number of rare photos showing how the festival of Sukkot, or “Feast of Tabernacles,” was celebrated during the conflict, even as war raged in the Sinai and the Golan Heights.

Also known as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Yom Kippur War took this name because it broke out on the Day of Atonement, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Because of its name, many forget that Sukkot, which begins just a few days after Yom Kippur, also fell during the height of the fighting.

A biblical injunction commands Jews to sit in a temporary dwelling called a sukkah during the festival. Due to the circumstances during the war, the chief military rabbi had declared soldiers exempt from fulfilling this commandment, yet many soldiers built improvised sukkahs on jeeps and other military vehicles anyway, some even in enemy territory.

The photos include a number taken by the photographer Nathan Fendrich, a then-39-year-old American tourist who had come to Israel to document historical and archaeological sites. Stuck in Israel at the outbreak of the war, he decided to travel between the various fronts, armed with his camera.

Fendrich recently donated his collection, including hundreds of previously unpublished photographs, to the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.

??Israel, 1973

Watch how IDF soldiers carried out the tradition of celebrating Sukkot even during the Yom Kippur War: pic.twitter.com/dxWt6wqhEn

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 24, 2021

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We are faced today with a very remarkable phenomenon, one in which a group of people have decided that they are not simply the finest and most moral people in the world, but the finest and most moral people who have ever existed. For such people, hypocrisy is inevitable. But the hypocrisy of these self-appointed saints is most acute on the issue of Israel and their hatred of it.

There are innumerable examples of this, but it is worth noting a few of the most blatant:
Imperialism and Colonialism: The claim that Israel is an imperialist and colonialist state is one of the oldest cliches proffered by the saints. Israel, they claim, is an invasion of Palestine by a foreign people who colonized it at the expense of the indigenous population. These invaders must either “go back to Poland” — as the vulgar among them put it — or be exterminated.

We may put aside, for the moment, the complications of the term “indigenous” — no one, after all, is indigenous to anywhere except to the savannas of sub-Saharan Africa. If we must use the saints’ vague definition of the term, however, then we should note that even the most avowedly secular archeologists — who reject most or all of the biblical narrative — agree that the Jewish nation began several thousand years ago as a subset of the indigenous Canaanite tribes of the Levant.

More to the point, however, is the supposedly indigenous Arab presence, which to the saints is a sacred fact. But it is a matter of historical record that the Arabs came much later as foreign imperial conquerors who colonized the region and expelled or forcibly converted the native populations by various coercive means, not the least of which was placing them under an apartheid system. And this holds true not only of the land of Israel, but the entire Middle East and North Africa.

It is clear, then, that by the saints’ own logic, almost the entire Arab population of the Middle East and North Africa ought to be expelled and sent back to their homeland in Saudi Arabia, with the vacated territories returned to the remnants of their native populations. Those of us who are at least vaguely reasonable would not advocate such a thing in a million years, but then again, we are not hypocrites.

Genocide: Our self-appointed saints are, to say the least, extremely fond of accusing Israel of genocide. This blood libel is absurd on its face, but its hypocrisy is equally obvious, because Israel’s most dedicated enemies, sanctified by the saints, have displayed a remarkable weakness for genocide over the past 1,500 years.

Even a brief examination is sufficient proof of this. We may note, for example, Muhammad’s annihilation of the Jews of the Hijaz; the slow whittling of Egypt’s native Coptic or North Africa’s Berber populations down to a tiny minority; Turkey’s near-annihilation of the Armenians and the Anatolian Greeks; the slow-motion genocide that was the Ottoman Empire’s enthusiastic trade in both European and African slaves; Saddam Hussein’s murderous assault on the Kurds; and ISIS’s recent slaughter of Iraq’s Yazidis.

More to the point, however, is the fact that many Arabs and Muslims are currently threatening another genocide, this time against Israel’s Jewish population. And our self-appointed saints not only refuse to say a word against any of this, but in many cases whitewash, erase, or even openly collaborate with it.

Our various enemies were correct in assuming that our political leaders lacked the will to make the necessary decisions. Where they erred was in assuming too much and pushing too far. The Japanese made that mistake in Pearl Harbor, the Soviets in Berlin, and Al Qaeda on 9/11. The Jihadists haven’t made one final mistake yet, but history suggests that they will.

America, to its friends and enemies, and to its own patriots, can be an infuriating mix of weakness and strength, idealism and corruption, division and unity. And it’s never entirely clear, even to us, when the tipping point that turns one into the other will unexpectedly arrive.

The great tragedy of the aftermath of September 11 is that our leaders proved willing to sacrifice soldiers, but not the dream of a democratic world order, and instead sacrificed lives to that dream. They took the road that was easiest for them and hardest for so many military men.

The War on Terror only became a forever war because we failed to confront two of the three pillars from which the enemy draws its strength. After two decades, we’ve seen the limitations of a military option that is not combined with foreign policy and immigration decisions that would cut off the true economic and demographic sources of the enemy’s strength.

Until our leaders are ready to make the hard choices and our people are ready to elect those who will, the forever wars will go on, not just in distant countries, but in the streets of our own cities.

We have failed to identify the enemy. And until we do, we can never win.

Just nine congress members voted against the bill — eight of them Democrats and one Republican — amounting to less than two percent of the entire House of Representatives.

The small number didn’t even include all of the Squad. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who spearheaded the effort to have the Iron Dome funding removed from the government spending bill, chose to abstain, along with one other progressive colleague, Rep. Hank Johnson.

In a lengthy letter to supporters on Friday, she attacked her party’s leadership for jamming the vote through, while insisting that Israel did not deserve or need additional no-questions-asked funding for Iron Dome — and yet, she still voted to abstain, apparently fearful of further crossing pro-Israel constituents and lobbyists.

The bill even won support from some frequent Israel critics.

Rep. Betty McCollum, who has introduced legislation aimed at restricting aid to Israel and has regularly called out the Jewish state over settlement building and treatment of the Palestinians, voted in the same column as Reps. Ted Deutch and Ted Cruz.

And at a press conference introducing legislation to keep the two-state solution alive — which included provisions referring to the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip as territories illegally occupied by Israel — Reps. Andy Levin, Alan Lowenthal, Sara Jacobs and Peter Welch each proudly announced their plans to vote in favor of the Iron Dome funding later that day.

As for the aforementioned Two State Solution Act, the progressive group Levin leads can only dream of receiving the kind of wall-to-wall backing for that legislation enjoyed by those moderate Democrats who pushed for the standalone Iron Dome funding bill.

In the end, traditional pro-Israel stances still reign supreme on Capitol Hill. Those looking to criticize the Israeli government or advocate for Palestinian sovereignty undoubtedly have more of a voice than they once did, but that doesn’t translate into legislative power: Even after another Gaza war further polarized the American debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, fewer than 2% of House representatives cast a vote against robust support for the Jewish state.

In her letter to constituents Friday, Ocasio-Cortez questioned why the House leadership had rushed the Iron Dome funding bill through “without any of the usually-necessary committee debate, markup, or regular order.”

Procedural complaints notwithstanding, the answer to her query is, in essence, simple: In Washington, as polarized as it might be, support for Israel’s security remains an issue that’s not up for discussion.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Saturday night that “Israel extends its hand back in peace” in response to a Friday meeting of over 300 prominent Iraqis calling for their country to normalize ties with the Jewish state.

“Hundreds of Iraqi public figures, Sunnis and Shiites, gathered yesterday to call for peace with Israel,” Bennett said in a tweet.

“This is a call that comes from below and not from above, from the people and not from the government, and the recognition of the historical injustice done to the Jews of Iraq is especially important.”

“The State of Israel extends its hand back in peace,” the prime minister added.

Iraqi leaders on Saturday strongly rejected the call for normalization by the prominent figures, calling the gathering an “illegal meeting.”

Iraq has officially been at war with Israel since the Jewish state was founded in 1948. Iraqi soldiers have fought in three successive Arab wars against Israel. Saddam Hussein’s secret nuclear weapons program alarmed Israel, which ultimately destroyed the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981, and in 1991, the Iraqi dictator fired dozens of Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and Haifa in an attempt to draw Israel into the Gulf War.

At Friday’s conference in the Kurdistan region, Iraqi participants called on their country’s leaders to end the state of war and join the so-called Abraham Accords.

The agreements, formulated by the administration of former United States president Donald Trump, were signed on the White House lawn in September 2020 between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Morocco and Sudan signed normalization agreements with Israel in the ensuing months.

However, Iraq’s federal government rejected the conference’s call for normalization in a statement on Saturday and dismissed the gathering as an “illegal meeting.”

The conference “was not representative of the population’s [opinion] and that of residents in Iraqi cities, in whose name these individuals purported to speak,” the statement said.

The office of Iraq’s President Barham Saleh, himself a Kurd, joined in the condemnation.

Powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr urged the government to “arrest all the participants,” while Ahmed Assadi, an MP with the ex-paramilitary group Hashed al-Shaabi, branded them “traitors in the eyes of the law.”

The 300 participants at the conference came from across Iraq, according to CPC founder Joseph Braude, a US citizen of Iraqi Jewish origin.

They included Sunni and Shiite representatives from “six governorates: Baghdad, Mosul, Salaheddin, Al-Anbar, Diyala and Babylon,” extending to tribal chiefs and “intellectuals and writers,” he told AFP by phone.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett plans to hold his first meeting with senior ministers from Abraham Accords signatory counties, during his three-day visit to New York, where he will address the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

Bennett is scheduled to land in the United States early Sunday morning and will meet with Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani and United Arab Emirates Minister of State in the Foreign Ministry Khalifa Shaheen Almarar that evening. These follow meetings he has already held with Jordan's King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

The prime minister is also expected to meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield. He will also speak at a Jewish Federations of North America event, at which leaders of other Jewish Diaspora organizations are expected to be present.

The major focus point of his trip, however, is expected to be his first-ever address at the opening session of the 76th UN Debate scheduled for Monday.

Bennett only entered office in June, so the UNGA provides him an opportunity to introduce himself to the international community.

Bennett plans to speak out against hypocrisy and the double standards to which Israel is held in international forums such as the UN, which passes more resolutions against Israel than any other country.

Christians from nearly 30 countries sent a prayer for peace and divine blessing to Israel through a special Sukkot video that has thus far garnered around 100,000 views.

The video of “Btfilah Amen” was created by Christian Zionist recording artists, musicians, and choirs and debuted on the eve of the Sukkot holiday as part of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem’s Feast of Tabernacles kick-off event. It was then uploaded to social networks and has garnered 75,000 views on YouTube and around 25,000 on Facebook in just a few days.

ICEJ usually hosts the Feast of Tabernacles live in Jerusalem with around 6,000 attendees. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the embassy has been forced to move it online for the last two years. This year, hundreds of thousands of participants are watching eight days of broadcasts from the Holy Land. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, and President Isaac Herzog all took part in the opening ceremony.

The song “Btfilah Amen” was Israel’s entry into the 1995 Eurovision song contest. It was first sung at Eurovision by Liora.

Its lyrics are in Hebrew. Translated, they ask God to “give a blessing of peace and guard our house” and to “bring us closer to the dream within us” and to “open our hearts that we will always sing to you.”

A group of South African pro-Israel activists have held a demonstration against antisemitism in Durban to mark the twentieth anniversary in that city of the UN’s World Conference Against Racism — a multi-day event that was distinguished by repeated antisemitic attacks on Israel and Zionism.

Carrying placards reading, “No to Durban IV, no to racism, no to antisemitism,” the demonstrators from South African Friends of Israel (SAFI), a local advocacy group, conducted prayers for “an end to racism and antisemitism, and in support of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.”

In a statement, the group pledged “We will never stop fighting against racism and antisemitism!”

As well as highlighting the antisemitism that plagued the original UN anti-racism conference in 2001, the demonstrators condemned the follow-up process, including this week’s “Durban IV” conference at the UN’s Headquarters in New York. The conference was boycotted by 37 countries — including the United States, Canada and several European and Latin American nations — in recognition of the antisemitic nature of the 2001 event.

In a video posted to YouTube, SAFI spokesperson Bafana Modise said his group had taken a stand in support of those countries that skipped this week’s conference.

The parley in Durban “was the only conference in the whole wide world that seeks the destruction of the State of Israel,” Modise said.

“Israel is not apartheid state, it is the only democracy in the Middle East,” Modise added. “Jews are indigenous to that land.” He called on Christians in South Africa to “rise up and defend our apartheid history … our history has been used to demonize and to declare war against the God of Israel.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman from New York, said she changed her vote from “no” to “present” on a bill for special funding for Israel’s anti-missile Iron Dome defense system because of the “panic and horror” that seized the moment.

Ocasio-Cortez could be seen weeping on the floor of Congress Thursday after casting her vote. She was one of 11 representatives, including the other members of “the Squad” of progressives, who did not vote to support the $1 billion in Iron Dome funding; 420 representatives voted for the bill.

In a letter to her constituents in New York that she posted to Twitter Friday, Ocasio-Cortez said she was inclined to vote “no” at first because she opposes giving “unconditional” aid to Israel while “doing nothing to address or raise the persistent human rights abuses against the Palestinian people.” She did not explain what caused her to switch her vote to “present.”

She also emphasized that opposing the Iron Dome funding would not affect the ongoing support Congress has already approved for the system, which Israel says has saved lives by intercepting rockets aimed at civilian targets. The new funding, which Israel requested and the Biden administration approved, is meant to replenish the anti-missile system after Israel’s May conflict with Hamas in Gaza.

Most of all, Ocasio-Cortez said, said she objected to how the Democratic leadership at first tried to slip the vote for the $1 billion into an emergency stopgap spending bill earlier in the week. Ocasio-Cortez, joined by other progressives, forced the leadership to strip that money from the stopgap bill, leading to a standalone vote on the Iron Dome funding.

Ocasio-Cortez said she had pleaded with Democratic leaders to slow down the process, allowing time for constituents such as hers in New York’s 14th Congressional District to give feedback on the bill. The fact that the vote took place so quickly, she said, was “reckless” and led to “vitriol, disingenuous framing” and “hateful targeting.”

The process, she said, “created a real sense of panic and horror among those in our community who otherwise engage thoughtfully in these discussions.” She did not offer specifics but said that was the reason for her show of emotion.

The sheer contempt with which the Times appears to hold Jews, Jewish interests, Jewish safety and Jewish publications is tangible. Depressingly enough, it is hardly new. Despite its Jewish-ish ownership, as Ashley Rindsberg — author of The Gray Lady Winked: How The New York Times’s Misreporting, Distortions & Fabrications Radically Altered History — has pointed out, America’s most venerable publication has long had something of a blind spot for a certain ancient ethnic and religious group (you know, the one with the Nobel prizes).

In the 1930s, the paper employed a journalist with close Nazi connections, Guido Enderis, as its Berlin bureau chief, leading to a slew of stories that played down the Nazi party’s persecution of Jews while exaggerating its supposed peaceful intentions. When details of the Holocaust began to leak out, the Times notoriously stuck the news in its back pages (as books like Laurel Leff’s Buried By The Times have documented). Accounts of the gruesome 1943 massacre of Jews in Austria and Italy, for example, appeared only on pages six and 35, respectively.

This trend picked up pace with the advent of the Jewish State, as the Times rarely missed an opportunity to slander Israel and side with the Palestinians, especially during the Intifadas. And so to today, when during the recent Gaza conflict the paper published a front page riddled with lies, errors and half-truths, designed to paint Israel unfairly as a heartless killer of kids. As I argued back in June, modern Israeli wars are waged on two fronts: military and public opinion. The New York Times is helping Hamas win in the latter arena.

If you can’t be fair and objective to the Jews, what does that say about your moral compass? Sadly, the Gray Lady’s heart has rotted. The pro-Israel lobby is hardly the largest on Capitol Hill; it is vastly outspent by countries like South Korea and Japan, not to mention the gargantuan pharmaceuticals, electronics and insurance lobbies. The Times must know this. Yet this week, it gave oxygen to an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. And not for the first time.

There’s no consideration given to the possibility that certain of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s progressive principles might be consistent with missile defense — the idea, for example, that civilians, including Arabs and foreign workers in Israel, should be safe from rockets shot by the Hamas terrorist group that controls Gaza. Hamas, an Islamist fundamentalist group, is not exactly “progressive” when it comes to gay rights or feminism.

There’s no consideration given to the idea that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s constituents might themselves oppose leaving such civilians vulnerable to Hamas attack. And nor is any consideration given to the principle that the missile defense decreases the need for Israel to invade and re-occupy Gaza, at considerable cost of lives. Instead, it’s all about the powerful and influential rabbis and lobbyists. As if the Hamas side doesn’t also have powerful allies, like the powerful and influential New York Times owners and editors who consistently publish material like this? The newspaper’s managers seem caught between their principles of not letting their Jew-hatred be too blatantly obvious and their influential, powerful paying base of far-left, Israel-hating readers and commenters.

The Times publishes editorial after editorial denouncing antisemitism: “New York needs to show up against antisemitism” and “As the world once again contends with this age-old enemy, it is not enough to refrain from empowering it. It is necessary to stand in opposition.” A good place to begin would be with the paper’s own Congressional coverage.

Embedded in the story is the assumption that support for Iron Dome, which defends civilians from relentless rocket fire, can only be explained by power (“influential lobbyists and rabbis”) rather than principle. The causal Antisemitism never ceases to shock me. https://t.co/2obXrBR8Ze

— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) September 24, 2021

Just a reminder that reps @RashidaTlaib, @AOC and @IlhanMN all want more of this. May the victims' memories be a blessing. pic.twitter.com/sm3rmWL1Ta

— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) September 25, 2021

One of the more interesting things about this is describing the vote on Iron Dome funding as one of the "most controversial" of the over 20 votes the House took yesterday. The 420-9 margin was actually the most lopsided by far. The second biggest margin on a vote was 367-59. https://t.co/ORJzpON6aP

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) September 24, 2021

How it started How it's going pic.twitter.com/XhB2Vw40n8

— Rabbi E. Poupko- UNITED AGAINST ANTISEMITISM (@RabbiPoupko) September 24, 2021

Stop lying Rashida. https://t.co/LRxOsfjvAgpic.twitter.com/VUx29VHDmB

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 24, 2021

Hamas released a press statement today denouncing the U.S.' approval of additional funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. pic.twitter.com/qrBunmYrkn

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) September 24, 2021

Thirty Israelis were reported to have died of COVID-19 between Friday morning and Saturday night, the Health Ministry showed, as the fourth wave continues to surge across the country, striking hardest young, unvaccinated citizens. Nonetheless, the coronavirus cabinet is unlikely to meet until Wednesday.

There were 7,641 people reported to have died from the virus as of Saturday night and 7,611 as of Friday morning. In total, 535 people have died since the start of September – twice as many as had died in the four months from April through July when only 266 people died of the virus.

Some 627 people died in August. Last September, 651 people died. The month with the highest number of deaths was January 2021, when 1,444 Israelis succumbed to COVID-19.

Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who have been advising the government since the start of the pandemic, shared a report on Friday that they presented to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, in which they predicted a continued decline in the infection rate.

They also predicted that the number of serious cases would decline, but that it would take another week or two before this decline was felt in the country’s hospitals. They said that since serious cases tend to be younger people and the unvaccinated, they are hospitalized for longer periods of time and are therefore crowding the country’s intensive care units.

From @Abualiexpress | Normalization in Hebron |
Sharif "the Druze Boy," an Israeli singer, performed last night at a wedding in Yatta, near Hebron. When he sings in Hebrew, the Palestinian audience…sings in Hebrew as well. Gazans online are having a tough time accepting this. pic.twitter.com/2uvcIpNDpn

— Mike (@Doranimated) September 24, 2021

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Saturday night that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s demand that Israel withdraw to the 1967 boundaries within a year was “a tall tree that will be hard to climb down from.”

In the first high-level Israeli government response to Abba’s ultimatum during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, Gantz, who met with the PA leader last month, commended Abbas for pursuing a diplomatic resolution while lambasting his threats against the Jewish state.

“The fact that he continues to call for a political solution is good, but he issued an ultimatum and climbed a tall tree that will be difficult to climb down from,” Gantz said during an interview with Channel 13 news.

“It is important to remember one thing — no one is going anywhere,” the defense minister said. “It is important to recognize this and that the only way to deal with this reality is to develop security, develop the economy and strengthen the governance of the Palestinian Authority.”

In his speech to the UN General Assembly, Abbas offered to negotiate with Israel over the next 12 months, but threatened to reverse the PA’s recognition of Israel and turn to the International Court of Justice if Jerusalem did not withdraw from territory captured during the 1967 Six Day War.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague is currently investigating both Israel and the Palestinians for war crimes committed since 2014.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan slammed the speech on Friday, saying that it highlighted Abbas and the Palestinians’ rejection of peace. “Those who really support peace and negotiations don’t issue threats and delusional ultimatums from the UN platform,” he said.

Prominent Palestinian political analyst Dr. Fayez Abu Shamaleh said that prior to the speech, the Palestinian media created the impression that Abbas was going to drop a bombshell.

“I followed the Palestinian Authority’s media before Mahmoud Abbas’s speech,” Abu Shamaleh said. “They were talking about a ‘Day of Resurrection’ at the General Assembly, about the surprises that the president would make, about the Israelis who would flee the region, and about the people waiting in front of the satellite channels to watch their president. The truth is that 99% of the Palestinian people did not follow the speech and did not care.”

Palestinian lawyer Hasan Mezyed said that this was not the first time that Abbas had directed threats against Israel. Mezyed pointed out that Abbas has in the past failed to carry out decisions by Palestinian institutions to halt security coordination with Israel.

Social media user Raed Abu Jarad contemptuously remarked: “Mahmoud Abbas gives the occupation a full year to withdraw from the occupied territories, otherwise the response will be loud: ‘Leave us alone, go away, enough is enough and our patience is limited.’”

Political activist Issa Amro described Abbas’s speech as “weak,” saying it does not represent the aspirations of the Palestinians. Amro took Abbas to task for failing to label Israel as an “apartheid” state.

Addressing the president, he said: “What is needed to register your name in history and end your life in an honorable manner is a real fight against corruption, reform of the PLO and Fatah and reform of everything you destroyed.”

Hamas and other Palestinian factions also criticized Abbas’s speech, but focused on his claim that he is keen on holding general elections and that Palestinians enjoy democracy and pluralism.

Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum said the speech was a “reproduction of the failed policies” of the PA and “a clear recognition of Abbas’s inability to achieve anything through the Oslo Accords.”

Barhoum dismissed Abbas’s talk about democracy and pluralism as “false.” “The political arrests, torture and killing of political opponents in the West Bank are the biggest evidence of the [PA’s] totalitarian regime,” he said.

The Al-Ahrar Movement, a network of Hamas-backed Fatah dissidents in the Gaza Strip, said that Abbas’s speech did not carry anything new, but was a “continuation of the rhetoric of helplessness and failure.”

This is really something else pic.twitter.com/ijw45pXKkF

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 25, 2021

Now, we all know the UN is anti-Israel but this is taking the absolute piss!

Seems that according to this UN translator Mahmoud Abbas is now the ‘President of the State of Israel!’ @UNWatch@HillelNeuer

(Clip from here: https://t.co/HiOMwUomsl) pic.twitter.com/Ark4AclBjx

— Self Declared Zionists (@SussexFriends) September 25, 2021

The Palestinian Authority has called on Sudan’s government to hand over assets that it seized from Hamas as part of a recent crackdown on the terror group.

Hussein al-Sheikh, a close confidant of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, tweeted on Saturday: “We hope that the sisterly state of Sudan, which has always been with the people of Palestine, both the people and the government, will hand over the movable and immovable funds that were confiscated [from Hamas] to the State of Palestine and its government.”

He added: “The Palestinian people are in need of this money, especially our great people under siege in Gaza.”

On Thursday, a source told Reuters that a Sudanese committee set up to recover public funds after the ouster of autocratic ruler Omar al-Bashir has taken control of companies linked to the Palestinian terrorist group.

The source, at the center of the committee, named the entities as property firm Hassan & Al-Abed, the Al-Bidaya agricultural project, the highrise Paradise Hotel and the Al-Fayha money transfer company.

“They got preferential treatment in tenders, tax forgiveness, and they were allowed to transfer to Hamas and Gaza with no limits,” a task force member told Reuters on the condition of anonymity.

An unnamed source in Sudan’s ruling sovereignty council confirmed the seizures to Israel’s Kan news and said that all of the Gaza-ruling terror group’s assets in the country were confiscated.

Suicide bombers from al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and other armed militants from Hamas including Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Jenin at a memorial service this evening. pic.twitter.com/HLOw5thYgP

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) September 24, 2021

Around the Taliban, and in a bizarre combination of convergence of interests and ideological kinship, a new anti-Western circle is evolving, including a willing NATO member state.... anti-Western sentiments are bringing together these regional powers, who are now courting Afghanistan's radical rulers.

The hard lesson learned from relying on an "ally" for critical production, then needing to reshore that capability as politics change, ultimately will cost U.S. taxpayers between $500 million and $600 million in nonrecurring engineering costs, according to Ellen Lord, the previous Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition.

U.S. President Joe Biden's Afghan drama will spur a number of anti-Western alliances based on different anti-Western calculations. Proof? Just look at the names of the countries on Taliban's invitation list for its birthday party.

As the U.N. is considering to grant them recognition, the Taliban hang dead bodies from cranes in public square. This is their true flag.https://t.co/04QdToiLNl

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 25, 2021

Iran’s foreign minister on Saturday seemed to backtrack from comments he made a day earlier when he stated that stalled talks on the Iranian nuclear accord would resume “very soon,” now saying instead that the West and Tehran have a different concept of the timeframe.

“People keep asking how soon is soon. Does it mean days, weeks or months?” said Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, in remarks broadcast on state TV channel IRINN, cited by the Reuters news agency.

“The difference between Iranian and Western ‘soon’ is a lot. To us, ‘soon’ means really in the first opportune time – when our reviews [of the nuclear file] have been completed. What is important is our determination to return to the talks, but those that are serious and guarantee the Iranian nation’s rights and interests,” Amir-Abdollahian said.

To reinforce his point, made in an interview on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Amir-Abdollahian said: “I remind you of the West’s promises, such as repeatedly promising they would ‘soon,’ ‘in a few months,’ implement the Instex.” The minister was referring to the financing mechanism set up to get round US sanctions.

A day earlier, Amir-Abdollahian had accused the United States of sending “contradictory messages” on reviving the deal.

The nuclear talks, brokered by the Europeans, seek the return of the United States to the 2015 agreement trashed by former president Donald Trump — as well as Iran’s return to full compliance.

After Netflix announced that it acquired the entire catalogue of works by the late British children’s author Roald Dahl, the Board of Deputies of British Jews called on the streaming giant to produce a documentary examining the “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” writer’s antisemitic history.

Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl said in a statement on Thursday that Dahl’s “virulent antisemitism” is widely known and had “sadly marred the full enjoyment of his works” for many people.

“We do not believe that Netflix should be prefacing every film and TV series it adapts from Dahl’s works with disclaimers about his bigotry. However, we fear that, as part of Netflix’s stated plans to create a ‘unique universe’ around his works, a by-product of that may be to present Dahl — whether on-screen or off it — as some sort of paragon of kindness and virtue,” she explained. “To avoid such an approach, Netflix should produce a documentary fully exploring the antisemitism that so tarnishes Dahl’s legacy. Failure to do so will not go unnoticed.”

Netflix’s acquisition of the Roald Dahl Story Company (RDSC) gives the streaming platform full rights to all of Dahl’s works, which include “James and the Giant Peach,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Matilda,” “The BFG,” “The Witches” and “The Twits.” Dahl’s books have been translated into 63 languages and sold more than 300 million copies worldwide.

The author was unapologetic about his antisemitism. Months before he died in 1990, at the age of 74, he told The Independent that Jewish publishers “control the media” and said, “I’m certainly anti-Israeli and I’ve become antisemitic in as much as that you get a Jewish person in another country like England strongly supporting Zionism,” The Guardian reported.

He told Britain’s New Statesman magazine that “there is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews … Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”

None of these groups’ activity on mainstream platforms is obviously illegal, though it may violate Facebook guidelines that bar “dangerous individuals and organizations” that advocate or engage in violence online or offline.

Facebook says that it doesn’t allow praise or support of Nazism, white supremacy, white nationalism or white separatism and bars people and groups that adhere to such “hate ideologies.”

Last week, Facebook  removed almost 150 accounts and pages linked to the German anti-lockdown Querdenken movement, under a new “social harm” policy, which targets groups that spread misinformation or incite violence but didn’t fit into the platform’s existing categories of bad actors.

But how these evolving rules will be applied remains murky and contested.

“If you do something wrong on the platform, it’s easier for a platform to justify an account suspension than to just throw someone out because of their ideology. That would be more difficult with respect to human rights,” said Daniel Holznagel, a Berlin judge who used to work for the German federal government on hate speech issues and also  contributed to CEP’s report. ”It’s a foundation of our Western society and human rights that our legal regimes do not sanction an idea, an ideology, a thought.”

In the meantime, there’s news from the folks at the Battle of the Nibelungs. “Starting today you can also dress your smallest ones with us,” reads a June post on their Facebook feed.

The new line of kids wear includes a shell-pink T-shirt for girls, priced at 13.90 euros ($16). A child pictured wearing the boy version, in black, already has boxing gloves on.

Jewish organisations have again reacted angrily to comments by far right MP Thierry Baudet in which he said Jews ‘cannot claim’ World War II.

‘World War II is not owned by a specific group,’ Baudet said in parliament during Wednesday’s debate on the budget.

Jewish organisations had asked MPs to condemn the use of the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear during WWII by anti-coronvirus vaccine campaigners. Demonstrators say the coronavirus measures mean people who refused to get vaccinated are being excluded from society in the same way as the Jews.

In his initial response earlier in the week, Baudet said on Twitter that ‘the war is not yours, it belongs to all of us’ and put the Holocaust in quote marks. Asked about this in parliament, Baudet reiterated his earlier comments.

‘I don’t think they [the three Jewish groups] can claim the war,’ he said. The war is a ‘very interesting, very complex, question in history but it is not owned by a certain group or ethnicity’.

He also refused to apologise for putting the word Holocaust in quotation marks, saying that he was merely quoting someone else.

Apple TV+ is, following a pandemic delay, finally debuting “Foundation,” the first-ever screen adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s bestselling, award-winning science-fiction book series. First announced in 2018 and produced in association with Skydance Television, the TV show is one of the Apple streaming service’s most expensive and ambitious productions to date.

The series, which follows a mathematician struggling to convince a galactic federation that their society is on the brink of collapse, blends anxieties of the 1940s and ’50s, when the source material was originally written, with modern global concerns like climate change.

It was co-created by Josh Friedman and David S. Goyer. Friedman identifies as Jewish, while showrunner Goyer, son of a Jewish mother, wrote and directed the dybbuk-themed 2009 horror movie “The Unborn.”

But what of Asimov himself, a biochemist at Boston University and one of the most influential sci-fi writers of all time? That’s a much more complicated question.

Isaac Asimov was born in Russia in 1920, and his family emigrated to the United States when he was three years old. He had Jewish parents who were themselves raised Orthodox, and they raised him in Brooklyn. However, Asimov gravitated to more humanist beliefs from an early age, and as an adult identified vocally with atheism until his death in 1992.

On the one hand, Asimov became one of pop culture’s most prominent atheists; and on the other, he was open and proud of his Jewish heritage.

Were it not for Rudolph Vrba and Alfréd Wexler, would the world today know the true extent of the mass murder the Nazis inflicted during the Holocaust?

The two men, both Slovak Jews who escaped from Auschwitz, secretly recorded fastidious notes about details of the death camp unknown to the outside world.

These included schematics of the gas chambers, the Nazis’ use of the deadly chemical Zyklon-B, the number of prisoners being brought in to their deaths every day and the planned construction of a new rail line for deporting Hungarian Jews directly to the camp. The information the men smuggled out of Auschwitz formed the basis for the Vrba-Wetzler Report — the first time the international community had heard of much of these horrors.

The new Slovakian film “The Auschwitz Report,” directed by Peter Bebjak, somewhat clunkily dramatizes Vrba and Wexler’s 1944 escape and attempt to get their message to an outside world still largely ignorant of what was transpiring at the camps. This being a Holocaust film, Bebjak also spends considerable time (a full half of his 94 minutes) re-enacting the hell of the camp itself.

These early sequences — Nazis beating a man to death, shooting a father’s daughter in front of him, stacking naked dead bodies like meat — are stomach-churning in a familiar way, and serve as the film’s intent to align itself with more brutal siblings like “Son of Saul” rather than softer works like “Life is Beautiful.”

Whether you find such scenes a necessary tool of the “never forget” philosophy will likely depend on how many Holocaust movies you’ve already seen, and how many more you feel like you can tolerate.

#SaturdayNightArt
In this ink drawing, which pays tribute to the triumph of faith and hope over misery and despair, artist Ferdinand Bloch captures his fellow prisoners' observance of #Sukkot in an attic synagogue in Terezín Ghetto.

See more: https://t.co/usD0mn6JgNpic.twitter.com/TDDpeM0jJN

— Yad Vashem (@yadvashem) September 25, 2021

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Like all intellectual monopolies, postcolonialism denies the validity of other explanations and in its certitude becomes an illiberal and dangerous source of extremism and hate. Of course, the ideology contains a modicum of truth — the horrors of colonialism do explain some of today’s global disparities. The proponents of postcolonialism, however, completely paper over the highly successful Asian countries that were once colonies, and what that says about the long-term impact of colonial rule.

In simplistically dividing the world into oppressors and oppressed, postcolonialism holds successful nations morally culpable and struggling nations morally pure. And in insisting on this perverse binary, the ideology enables the expression of the usual resentment and ill-will toward Jews and Israel, both of which have succeeded in their respective environments.

Talking about the antisemitism at Durban without reference to postcolonialist ideology is like talking about the attacks of Sept. 11 without reference to extreme Islamist ideology. We should have grasped it then. “It’s the ideology, stupid.”

Fast-forward 20 years, and we see the same political dynamic not in a remote international conference of NGOs and diplomats, but in myriad mainstream American institutions, including higher education, K-12 schools, corporations, the law, medicine, nonprofits and even scientific research. Woke ideology is postcolonialism applied to the domestic scene in Western countries, dividing people neatly into victimizers and victims. And just like the post-Durban reckoning, those concerned about the resurgence of antisemitism today largely fail to understand and name the animating ideology.

About five years ago, it became apparent that woke ideology and its concomitant antisemitism, once confined to the margins, was gaining ground. Then a CEO of a national Jewish advocacy organization dedicated to engaging progressives, I wrote that “the growing acceptance of intersectionality arguably poses the most significant … challenge of our time [to the Jewish community]. Ultimately, how popular — and threatening — intersectionality becomes depends on the degree to which the far left … is successful in inculcating its black-and-white worldview … with the mainstream left.”

I thought at the time that Jewish organizations could best protect the community by positioning ourselves as members in good standing of the intersectional club. Such progressive certification would, I and others surmised, prevent the lion’s share of the left from fully embracing antisemitic and anti-Israel perspectives. I thought that these forces had a long way to go before gaining mainstream currency. Boy, was I wrong.

In 2011, 14 countries boycotted, and in 2009 there were 10, as opposed to in 2001, when only Israel and the US walked out.

Erdan considered the growing number of countries boycotting Durban, as well as the fact that not one Western country sent a high-level representative to Durban IV or volunteered to lead a roundtable, as a success for Israel “in labeling it antisemitic and anti-Israel.”

Cooper, however, said Israel should have reached out to Abraham Accords countries, as well as states in Africa, South America and elsewhere, “to gently, politely say, look, great things are happening bilaterally,” but they need to speak up against antisemitism as well.

Diker saw these announcements as a “silver lining” in Durban IV, together with an even larger number of countries accepting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, by which the Durban Declaration arguably and the NGO declaration certainly would be considered antisemitic.

It is up to the countries that adopted IHRA “to enforce that moral mandate and not allow international organizations such as the UN to upend and uproot and dismantle their own founding charter, which calls for righting against racism of any kind,” Diker added.

Bayefsky sees the boycotts by major democratic countries as an important milestone: “All the democratic members of the UN Security Council are with Israel on this. They have said no to Durban. That’s a big deal. They don’t agree on everything... Israel’s other solid friends and allies stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel on this abomination... saying this demonization of Israel is antisemitism. That message is getting through whether the other side likes it or not. They cannot make the case that calling for the dismantlement of the Jewish state is somehow unrelated to antisemitism.”

Bayefsky also said that the Jewish delegates who pushed back against antisemitism in 2001 are still involved today.

“We have been able to get the team back together, with some of us who were there and others of a younger generation who were not there and understand the danger to the State of Israel and the Jewish people and aren’t prepared to let it go,” she stated.

“We have no intention of lying down and letting the so-called human rights world walk all over us.”

The Madrid Assembly, the local parliament of Spain’s main region, adopted on Friday the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of antisemitism.

In addition, the Assembly demanded that the country’s national parliament adopt legislation precluding any possible grant or public aid to entities that promote antisemitism as defined by the IHRA, according to pro-Israel advocacy organization Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM).

This proposal would effectively exclude public financing of any BDS group or activity in Spain, a nation where BDS has gained popularity in recent years.

The law was supported by the Partido Popular, the ruling party in the Madrid region, led by President of Madrid Isabel Díaz Ayuso, “a strong and committed defender of Israel,” according to ACOM, with the support of the the Socialist Party (center-left) and the VOX Party (conservative).

A number of American Jewish organizations slammed a resolution adopted on Wednesday at a high-level meeting at the UN General Assembly that commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action (DDPA) stemming from a notoriously anti-Semitic World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.

"The resolution predictably claimed that the DDPA offered 'a comprehensive United Nations framework and solid foundation for combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,' and reaffirmed commitment to its 'full and effective implementation,'" stated B'nai B'rith International in a news release on Friday.

The original Durban declaration was censured by Jewish groups and nations such as the United States for allowing the presence of overt anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate, as well as including Palestinians as the only group named as victims of racism.

B'nai B'rith wrote that it has worked over the past few weeks in partnership with the Jewish Broadcasting Service on Durban, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The organization featured luminaries such as Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévi, former US National Security Advisor John Bolton and others, culminating in an hour-long interview with B'nai B'rith honorary president Richard Heideman, who led the Jewish delegation at the Durban conference and his wife, Phyllis Heideman, president of the International March of the Living.

In the past year, B'nai B'rith also lobbied other nations to join the United States and Israel in boycotting the anniversary conference, also known as Durban IV, leading to a total of 35 countries that declined to participate in the commemoration.

"This public disassociation by a substantial moral minority at the UN represents a meaningful victory against efforts to hijack the world body and the critical fight against racism – specifically, racism against people of African descent – for the purposes of delegitimizing Israel by obscenely equating only it and Jews' national liberation movement, Zionism, with racism," B'nai B'rith wrote in the statement.

Today, I met w/ @UNRWA Commissioner-Gen. @UNLazzarini. I explained to him why Israel cannot trust UNRWA & that it operates as a political org. I showed him how its officials side w/ Hamas terrorists & adopt their narrative & I demanded a change in the way UNRWA operates. pic.twitter.com/53GZLZHXp9

— Ambassador Gilad Erdan ???? ???? (@giladerdan1) September 24, 2021

Iraqi authorities announced on Sunday that they had issued warrants for the arrest of two Iraqis who addressed a conference calling for their country to make peace with Israel. The authorities said they would arrest all 300-plus participants once they have established who they are.

The over 300 Iraqis gathered on Friday in Erbil, in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, to issue statements backing normalization with Israel. The conference was organized by the Center for Peace Communications, a New York-based group that advocates closer ties between Israel and the Arab world.

“Israel today, as you know, is a strong country and an inseparable part of the world and the United Nations. Iraq cannot neglect this fact and live in isolation from the world,” Sahar al-Ta’i, a senior official in Iraq’s Culture Ministry, told the attendees.

“This is the manner in which the United Arab Emirates looked toward future generations and the greater good, and entered into the Abraham Accords,” al-Ta’i said, referring to the recent normalization deals between Israel and four Arab states, including the Emirates.

On Sunday, a Baghdad court issued a warrant for al-Ta’i’s arrest, as well as for the detention of tribal leader Wisam al-Hardan. The latter, who also participated in the peace conference, called for reconciliation with Israel in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Friday.

Iraqi Official Dr. Sahar Al-Ta’i at a Peace Conference in Erbil: We Want Peace with Israel; Iraq Must Recognize Israel as a Friendly Country, Join the Abraham Accords #Iraq#Kurdistan#AbrahamAccordspic.twitter.com/EpqT9JRTDF

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 26, 2021

The courage and desire for peace among Iraqis should be encouraged and supported. The #AbrahamAccords provide the foundation for progress! https://t.co/HvOZselIIV

— Abraham Accords Peace Institute (@Peace_Accords) September 26, 2021

What a pitiful statement from @Coalition@CJTFOIR. Instead of distancing themselves, they should have unequivocally offered their support for Iraqi peace with Israel and advancement of Abraham Accords. https://t.co/LyoAHOEFhk

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 26, 2021

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has long tolerated growing antisemitism in her party’s ranks, and this week that problem has reared its ugly head when some progressives forced her to remove $1 billion in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system from an emergency spending bill to keep the federal government open.

After the Iron Dome funding was removed, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted, “Here’s an idea: don’t sell arms to anyone who violates human rights.” But as Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, pointed out in a Twitter thread that the “Iron Dome is a purely *defensive* system” that “protects civilians when hundreds of rockets are shot at population centers.” It was co-developed by the United States and Israel, she continued, and is “used to protect our bases abroad, in addition to Israeli civilians in their homes.” For progressives to use “a system that just saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives as a political chit is problematic.”

That is the understatement of the year. Omar and her fellow progressives didn’t use Iron Dome funding as a “chit” to get something else they wanted. Their only demand was that the funding be removed from the bill — full stop — and they were willing to shut down the government to make it happen. The fact that they succeeded is an absolute disgrace.

In May, militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired 4,369 rockets at Israel from the Gaza strip, intending to indiscriminately kill Jews. Almost two-thirds missed their targets, but more than 1,500 rockets were still headed to residential neighborhoods where innocent men, women and children lived. Fortunately, the Iron Dome stopped more than 90 percent of the 1,500 missiles, saving countless innocent lives.

Imagine the carnage that would have ensued if those rockets had not been shot down. If you oppose funding for the Iron Dome, it means you want to deny Israel the ability to stop those rocket attacks. It means you want Hamas to retain the capability to kill Israeli civilians in their homes. And it exposes the lie that these progressive representatives are not antisemities. When you vote to let terrorists kill Jews, that is antisemitism.

For years, pro-BDS NGOs, some with links to terror groups, have lobbied Congress against American security assistance to Israel, including Iron Dome and other defensive systems. Although their efforts have failed to impact policy, the NGOs have gained support from high-profile progressive Representatives and garnered media attention for the anti-Israel agenda.

In the specific campaign against the Iron Dome funding, as reflected in the quotes below, NGOs and NGO officials falsely portrayed this as an offensive weapons system, mixed with accusations of “apartheid” and implying that it would be better if Hamas missiles and rockets could more easily reach Israeli civilians targets.

Earlier in 2021, Defence for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) , Human Rights Watch (HRW), and others partnered with Betty McCollum (D-MN) on a draft bill targeting Israeli companies and defense forces. Additionally, during the May Gaza conflict, the NGO network intensified its attacks, demanding that the United States impose an arms embargo on Israel and halt military assistance. In June 2021, 100 organizations – including PFLP-tied NGOs Addameer, Al-Dameer, Al-Haq, Al-Mezan, Defense for Children International – Palestine, as well as US-BDS NGOs Adalah Justice Project, American Friends Service Committee, American Muslims for Palestine, Center for Constitutional Rights, IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine Legal, and Samidoun – publicized their letter to President Biden to “Halt Weapons Sales to Israel.” The attack against Iron Dome funding is a continuation of these campaigns.

With all due respect, which honestly is none, f*** off. https://t.co/2wELtfY6BS

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 25, 2021

Israeli security forces exchanged gunfire with Palestinians early Sunday morning in separate incidents in the West Bank during Israel Defense Forces (IDF) arrest operations.

Two IDF soldiers were seriously wounded in an exchange of gunfire with terrorists in the village of Burqin near Jenin, an IDF spokesman confirmed.

The wounded officer and combatant were evacuated to a hospital for medical treatment.

At least four Palestinian terrorists — members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank — were killed during the armed clashes.

The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the four deaths during the firefight with the Israeli army.

Three terrorists were killed in Beit ‘Anan in north Jerusalem — Ahmad Zahar and two other terrorists whose identities are not yet known.

Another terrorist — Osama Suba — was killed in Burqin in the Jenin district when Palestinians opened fire on IDF soldiers.

Israeli security forces surrounded a house in Burqin during the arrest operations.

The IDF said that the clashes occurred during raids to arrest Hamas terrorists planning to carry out attacks.

Several Palestinians were reportedly wounded in the clashes.

Arrests were also reported in the town of Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem, and in Hebron.

Additional members of a Hamas cell planning imminent terrorist attacks in Israel are likely still on the loose, the military believes, despite a deadly raid overnight that killed five Palestinians and injured two IDF troops.

Sources said that the large and heavily armed Hamas cell that was targeted during the arrests planned to carry out attacks in the West Bank and inside Israel.

While security forces have arrested some 20 militants belonging to the cell and confiscated five guns, there are additional suspects who belong to the same cell who have not yet been arrested.

Though the IDF believes the raids struck a significant blow to the cell’s plans, it is still not sure if the threat posed by the cell has passed.

Following the raids, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi visited the Menashe Regional Brigade and held a situational assessment along with head of the Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, Commander of the Judea and Samaria Division Brig.-Gen. Yaniv Alaluf, Commander of the Menashe Brigade Col. Arik Moyal, and other senior officers.

Kohavi called the arrests a “significant achievement” that prevented “significant terror attacks” that could have taken place in Jerusalem, Netanya, Tel Aviv, Afula and elsewhere in the country were thwarted because of the “extraordinary cooperation” of all security forces.

Hamas' al-Qassam Brigades published a statement acknowledging the deaths of three of its militants and one member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The four were killed in clashes with Israeli forces early Sunday in the West Bank. pic.twitter.com/nF1ofgVTgc

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) September 26, 2021

Yes, sad to lose Palestinian peace activist Osama Soboh, the latest innocent martyr belonging to Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Al Quds Brigade, who was merely planning an imminent terrorist attack. https://t.co/PgCQJm1fCppic.twitter.com/hNqmp2C4hx

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 26, 2021

Mahmoud Hmedian, one of the al-Qassam Brigades militants killed Sunday morning in the West Bank, was released from an Israeli prison two months ago. pic.twitter.com/hP54ahY3Gx

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) September 26, 2021

I believe @AFP omitting important detail. These were actually 4 Hamas terrorists who were killed. https://t.co/HciowWR3ia

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 26, 2021

Those Jews.
"An official Palestinian report accused the Israeli government of seeking to build Jewish synagogues in many settlements and outposts"
What will we think of next?https://t.co/qcIuoQjSNl

— ymedad (@ymedad) September 26, 2021

IDF soldiers shoot down Nazi flag which was sadly put up by Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/WwnIQIQ5jd

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 25, 2021

Why is it obviously fake? https://t.co/mvxa9tFxImpic.twitter.com/go7fCtP0wU

— Daniel Rubenstein (@paulrubens) September 26, 2021

The escape of 6 Palestinian terrorists from an Israeli prison earlier this month was cause for great celebration in the PA, and the PA utilized the escape to reinforce what Palestinian children are taught daily: That terrorists and murderers of Israelis are heroes. The following images and texts published by PA schools, Abbas’ Fatah Movement, and the official PA daily, show that Palestinian school kids are being taught to honor all terrorists, with focus on the escapees (who were all recaptured within 2 weeks):

One example illustrates how central the message that terrorists are heroes is and how important it is for the PA and Fatah to get it across to children. Fatah posted the answers given by a 4th grader who chose to write sentences about the 6 escaped terrorists for an assignment on interrogatives. Fatah said the boy had “understood the lesson of the prisoners well”:
Posted text: “It is enough that our children have already understood the lesson of the prisoners well
This is how a child in fourth grade answered a question in an Arabic lesson”
The image shows the boy’s hand-written answers to an assignment.
Text: “We will write five sentences that begin with the following question words:
Schoolbook: Who: Who are the prisoners who escaped from prison? (refers to six terrorist prisoners who escaped from Gilboa Prison; see note below -Ed.)
Schoolbook: How:
Student: How did the prisoners escape from the prison? (With a spoon)
Schoolbook: What:
Student: What happened to the prisoners? (Four were caught)
Schoolbook: Did:
Student: Did they catch the prisoners?
Schoolbook: Where:
Student: Where did the two prisoners go?”
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement – Nablus Branch, Sept. 16, 2021]

Children were also taught to praise the escaped terrorists as “lofty lions” who “let the enemy taste from the bitter cup” as is seen in pictures of young girls from the Nusayba Al-Mazeniya Elementary School for Girls:

The Palestinian Authority has instructed its security forces to take all measures to halt increased lawlessness and anarchy in Hebron and its surroundings, a senior PA official said on Sunday.

“The instructions from the Palestinian leadership are clear and firm,” the official told The Jerusalem Post. “There will be zero tolerance for anyone who breaks the law and intimidates the residents.”

The instructions came in response to accusations by many residents, including senior Fatah officials and heads of local clans, that the PA was not doing anything to stop the recent wave of violent crime in the Hebron area.

Last week, Emad Khurwat, a senior Fatah official in Hebron, accused the PA of “conspiring” against the city. He also threatened to prevent Palestinian officials from entering Hebron and said that Fatah gunmen were ready to replace the PA security forces in enforcing law and order. Khurwat and other residents claimed that the city was now controlled by large clans that have dozens of gunmen who often intimidate and extort residents.

Khurwat’s unprecedented and public threat is seen by local residents as a direct challenge to the PA leadership. It also reflects increased tensions between local Fatah activists and the leadership of the faction, which is headed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey still intended to buy a second batch of S-400 missile defense systems from Russia, a move that could deepen a rift with NATO ally Washington and trigger fresh US sanctions.

Washington says the S-400s pose a threat to its F-35 fighter jets and to NATO's broader defense systems. Turkey says it was unable to procure air defense systems from any NATO ally on satisfactory terms.

"In the future, nobody will be able to interfere in terms of what kind of defense systems we acquire, from which country at what level," Erdogan said in an interview aired on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan at CBS News on Sunday. "Nobody can interfere with that. We are the only ones to make such decisions."

The United States imposed sanctions on Turkey's Defence Industry Directorate, its chief Ismail Demir and three other employees in December following the country's acquisition of a first batch of S-400s.

Because uranium enrichment is the most difficult step for states with nuclear ambitions to take, Tehran’s massive investment in enrichment is the most important indicator of Iranian determination to go the whole way to become a nuclear weapons state. Finally, when the enrichment process begins, the uranium that is injected into centrifuges is in a gaseous form. To build a nuclear warhead, the uranium has to be in the form of metal. In August 2021, the IAEA verified that Iran was producing uranium metal. It now seemed that Iran was preparing to make the final push to an atomic weapon, but that would not take years or months but rather, far less.

It would be a mistake to conclude that Israel has a great deal of time because the Iranians work sequentially, completing one component of their program before moving on to the next. The authoritative Institute for Science and International Security has made clear that the Iranians worked under the assumption that their work on the components would not be sequential and not be separated but rather had to be conducted “in unison.”

In Israel there has been a tendency for political leaders to blame each other for the situation that has emerged. There is only one party that is to blame and that is the Iranian leadership. Right after the first nuclear agreements were reached between Iran and the European Union’s EU-3 in 2005, Tehran was burying the evidence of its nuclear work at various facilities that were supposed to be inspected. This has been the pattern ever since. Unfortunately, the Western powers have been torn between their own naivete and their desire to protect their commerce with Iran. The inaction that resulted is what allowed the Iranian nuclear program to continue to expand.

The "American illusion" of Rafsanjani, Khatami and Rouhani did great damage to Iran, principally by fostering the belief that the solution to Iran's problems could only be found outside Iran. That illusion is now being replaced by the "Russian illusion" which is based on the same analysis.

However, neither America nor Russia nor China or any other power would be prepared to fully endorse a regime that tries to live in a fantasy world in which Khomeinism conquers the Middle East, wipes Israel off the map and leads in the creation of a "World Without America." US Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama went out of their way to help the Khomeinist regime consolidate itself but were ultimately not prepared to endorse its fantasies.

Presidents Putin and Xi treat Iran with even greater brutality by keeping it on a life-support machine and milking it as much as possible, but never accepting it as an equal strategic partner.

The Rafsanjani-Khatami-Rouhani trio took 24 years to understand that. Raisi now has four years to do so.

Taliban authorities in the western Afghan city of Herat killed four alleged kidnappers and hung their bodies up in public to deter others, a local government official said on Saturday.

Sher Ahmad Ammar, deputy governor of Herat, said the men had kidnapped a local businessman and his son and intended to take them out of the city when they were seen by patrols that had set up checkpoints around the city.

An exchange of gunfire ensued in which all four were killed, while one Taliban was wounded.

“Their bodies were brought to the main square and hung up in the city as a lesson for other kidnappers,” he said.

The two kidnapping victims were released unharmed, he said.

Herat resident Mohammad Nazir said he had been shopping for food near the city’s Mostofiat Square when he heard a loudspeaker announcement calling for people’s attention.

“When I stepped forward, I saw they had brought a body in a pickup truck, then they hung it up on a crane,” he said.

Footage of the bloodstained corpse, swinging on the crane was widely shared on social media, showing a note pinned to the man’s chest saying “This is the punishment for kidnapping.”

Hillel Neuer on Sky News Australia with Sharri Markson, September 26, 2021.

A teacher sacked by Eton College for a lecture criticised as sexist has again courted controversy by posting an interview with an American writer accused of anti-Semitism.

Will Knowland was dismissed by Eton after he refused to take down a lecture posted on YouTube called ‘The Patriarchy Paradox’.

In the video, he suggested that “patriarchy is, rather than being merely socially constructed, partly based in biology”, and that it benefits women.

He also said that “biologically speaking, the idea that men exert power over women is nonsense” and that women “exploit their power of sexual choice to get males to compete to do things for them”. Mr Knowland accused the school of suppressing his freedom of speech.

Earlier this month, he hosted an interview on his YouTube channel with the controversial Catholic writer E Michael Jones. In the interview, Mr Jones says that “the Jews were always behind pornography”, claiming they used porn “as a form of control” and “crushed” opposition to it.

A series of other claims against Jews were also made, and he labelled homosexuals “notorious narcissists”.

Mr Knowland does not challenge Mr Jones’ claims during the interview.

I quite often get emails from @academia. I've generally found them quite a lot more irritating than useful. But now this? Really?

What do they think they're doing here? This is supposed to be a website for academic research? pic.twitter.com/1qyOXaYAoX

— David Hirsh (@DavidHirsh) September 26, 2021

Some of the IG users that liked the post including business owners and every day Americans that walk amongst us in society. pic.twitter.com/8eHw5apeVS

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) September 26, 2021

In January 2017, undergraduate business student Harshit Godha wrote to ISRAEL21c explaining that our article, “Europe to Israel: More avocado, please!” inspired his dream of establishing one of India’s first commercial avocado orchards.

Wanting to learn from Israeli experts how to do this in his hometown of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, whose climate is similar to Israel’s, Godha contacted Benny Wisse at Kibbutz Ma’agan on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee.

“I emailed Benny if he could teach me about avocado farming. He was kind enough to invite me to visit his farm in Kibbutz Ma’agan and learn from him. I was thrilled and excited,” says Godha, now 26.

“I saw Benny for the first time at the Ben-Gurion Airport when I arrived in Israel. I don’t know why, but I had a gut feeling that it would work out just fine. Had I told my family that I never even had a face-to-face video call with Benny before going to Israel, they would have never approved.”

Wisse took Godha to the fields and taught him about different avocado varieties. He introduced him to industry experts including Oren Wallach of Oren Nursery.

“I was aware that Israel was a technologically advanced country especially in the field of agriculture. Israelis question traditional knowledge and innovate without compromising quality,” Godha tells ISRAEL21c.

“Greenhouse technology, drip irrigation, high-density orchards and optimal pruning techniques all came from Israel. Witnessing it firsthand changed my views about agriculture,” he says.

“Expo 2020”. The Israeli pavilion. Curious? You will be most welcome. pic.twitter.com/zuUg2KMDAn

— Eitan Na'eh (@AmbassadorNaeh) September 25, 2021

71 years ago today: The final 'Operation Magic Carpet' flight landed in Israel. Between June 1949 and September 1950, 49,000 Yemenite Jews were brought home to Israel on 380 different flights. pic.twitter.com/kxsl1pxwbk

— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) September 25, 2021

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Portrayed in the photograph are Heinrich Loewe, Moshe David Șuv and others at the entrance to a building bearing the sign "Exposition of Sons of Israel in the Holy Land"(In Hebrew and German), with palm trees and a mosque 

A Colonial Exhibition was held as part of the Great Industrial Exposition of Berlin in 1896, with grand displays replicating towns and villages in Africa, New Guinea and other places (for which purpose the organizers brought natives from these places, dressed them in traditional costumes and presented them to the public, in sets portraying indigenous life). The town of Cairo was "built" in one of the exhibition compounds where a Palestinian booth was erected (under the name "Exhibition of Sons of Israel Colonies in the Holy Land"). The pavilion offered for sale products from Palestine: "Carmel" wines, olive wood artefacts, books and booklets printed in Palestine, and more. 

The person in charge of organizing the Palestinian pavilion was Moshe David Șuv (one of the leaders of founders of the colonies Rosh Pina, Yessod Hama'ala and Mishmar HaYarden). In his book "Zichronot LeBeit David […]" he describes the exhibition: "Among the general exhibition displays, a miniature city was built in the form of Cairo… with shops, hotels and Arab cafes, with the Nile flowing…. Our exhibition, the Palestinian one, was arranged in Cairo, within one of the great mosques. When I sat in this exhibition I felt as if I was in an Arab town…Thousands visited the exhibition, Jews and non-Jews and almost all bought wine and other products" 

After being displayed in Berlin the exhibition was moved to Cologne and later to Hamburg.

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