During a visit last week to George Mason University, Harris was asked by a student why the US supports Israel, which the student accused of perpetrating "ethnic genocide" of Palestinians and "displacing" them. Harris nodded her head in what was interpreted as agreement with the claims, and in her response praised the student for voicing "her truth."

A thousand firefighters won't be able to extinguish the flame ignited by Harris, nor will the thousand apologies now being made on her behalf, albeit not by Harris herself. To be sure, even if it wasn't intentional, rather out of fear, she legitimized a contemptible blood libel. She also lent credence to the absurd notion that there is more than one truth – in other words, not just the voice of the Americans killed in the September 11 attacks deserve to be heard, but also the truth of the terrorists who committed those atrocities.

Bennett forgot, and the "Harris incident" reminded him that the question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a question that pertains to the future of Gaza under the rule of Hamas or even the future of Judea and Samaria. The question is about the roots of the existence of the State of Israel, which was established through war between the Jewish community in this land and the Arab population. Any attempt ever made to distinguish between the distant past (pre-1948) and the present – the question of Judea and Samaria and Gaza (pre-1967) – has failed, and anyone who has ever thought to possess the solution to the current problems has been forced to contend with the Palestinian demand for a "right of return" to the State of Israel.

Israel doesn't need to shy away from discussing the conflict with the Palestinians or its historical roots, and it mustn't squander opportunities to present its positions and "its truth"– which has broad consensus in Israeli society. After all, if we don't capitalize on these opportunities, the Palestinians and their supporters will.

President of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Nazhat Shameem Khan on Friday cut off a video presentation by UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer quoting antisemitic social media posts by UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) teachers.

After stopping the video, Khan said that “insulting and inflammatory remarks” were made that amount to “personal attacks” against individuals. She then went on to say that the “statement is out of order” before giving the floor to the UK-based Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), which has been accused of having ties with Hamas.

UN Watch is an NGO based in Geneva that monitors the intergovernmental organization for anti-Israel bias.

Neuer was highlighting a recent UN Watch report that, according to the organization’s website, “exposed more than 100 teachers, school principals and other employees that praise Hitler, propagate hatred against Jews and support terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians on social media.”

In response to the allegations in the report, UNRWA announced that it was investigating 10 of its staffers to determine if any of them violated “social media policies that prohibit personnel from engaging in non-neutral behaviors online,” according to a press release from UNRWA.

The PRC has been accused by the Israeli and German governments of being associated with Hamas, a militant movement based in the Gaza Strip designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and European Union.

No joke: The U.N. Human Rights Council just cut me off for testifying about UNRWA teachers who glorify Hitler. Chair says I made "derogatory, insulting & inflammatory remarks"—by quoting their own Facebook posts. "This amounts to personal attacks. This statement is out of order." pic.twitter.com/qPXohSdOfW

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 3, 2021

2. That the highest human rights body of the United Nations has just sent a dangerous message to the world when, without any basis, you summarily and arbitrarily blocked me from presenting a report about systemic antisemitism incited daily by the teachers of UNRWA, a UN agency.

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 3, 2021

Today @UN_HRC is holding its Agenda Item 7 debate on Israel

It's the only item dedicated to a single country. It is an insult that the debate is on Shabbat so that many Jews cannot join

This is not human rights @mbachelet
It's #antisemitism
Pre-recorded video - @AnneHerzberg14pic.twitter.com/edBmCOlXiZ

— NGO Monitor (@NGOmonitor) October 1, 2021

Yet in order to understand the significance of an incident that loyal Democrats insist is a meaningless kerfuffle, ask yourself this question.

What would Democrats have said if former Vice President Mike Pence had responded with the same sort of blather about diversity and pluralism if he was confronted with a question by someone who expressed racist views disparaging African-Americans or Hispanics?

After all, Jewish liberals spent the four years of the Trump administration insisting that the coarse and imprecise language used by Pence's boss was somehow responsible for a rise in anti-Semitism, even if his policies were the most pro-Israel in history, and he had taken strong stands against Jew-hatred.

More than an example of liberal hypocrisy, what happened at George Mason was likely an expression of the dynamic that currently exists on the political left these days.

Harris went to the school to generate support for her party's positions from student activists. She had no interest in a Sister Souljah moment in which she would demonstrate either her moderate chops or her pro-Israel bona fides. Speaking up for the Jewish state, under those circumstances, would have undermined the whole point of the appearance and alienated the very leftist base that is the cutting edge of Democratic Party activism these days.

Her instincts were to stay silent because that is what she and many others in her party think are in their best political interests. It was only later when the incident blew up that she and her handlers came to a different conclusion, though it's likely they still gauge that criticism from pro-Israel groups is a smaller price to pay than the blowback they would have gotten from party activists had she rebuked the student as she should have.

Instead of being a meaningless kerfuffle, more evidence that Harris isn't up to the challenges of being veep or even the perils of living in a 24/7 news cycle in which no gaffe goes unnoticed, what happened at George Mason University gave us some insight into the lamentable state of discourse on the left about Israel.

In addition to criticizing The Squad on voting against the bill, Silverman also noted how the four representatives do not discuss Hamas, and all their criticism appears to be directed only at Israel.

“It’s so bizarre,” she said. “Why do none of them even mention Hamas? A group that until just a few years ago had a mission statement that said ‘Kill all Jews.’ A group that just congratulated the Taliban for taking over Afghanistan. You are kidding yourself if you think that Hamas is good for Palestine.

“Please do not defund the Iron Dome. My family lives there. It just seems to prove the point that I didn’t think existed – people really only like Jews if they’re suffering. Dead Jews get a lot of honor. [The Squad’s] domestic policies completely align with mine, but they make it hard. Not having the Iron Dome is gonna kill people. I am for a Palestinian state, but I do also believe there should be an Israel too. There are Muslim states all over the place. We can’t have one Jewish state?”

In June, Silverman tweeted that she wishes that there were a “progressive Jewess” as a part of The Squad, to which Omar responded with a smile emoji “You could run and join us.”

Every Jew ultimately has their “pound of flesh” moment when they realize that however much they hand over to show they are the “good kind of Jew” - it is never enough.
(Shakespeare had it backwards of course - normally it is the Jews who are asked to hand over a pound of flesh). https://t.co/LCtqaxJCKK

— Dr. Einat Wilf (@EinatWilf) October 2, 2021

Former Governor of Vermont Howard Dean called Israel an Apartheid state in a tweet on Friday.

"I’ve been there [Israel] and I think our alliance with Israel is important [sic] both the US and Israel. And Israel is in fact, an apartheid state," said Dean in response to a tweet by Scottish journalist Eve Barlow.

When asked to explain what he thought Apartheid meant and how Israel met its parameters, Dean explained that "Palestinian Property is being confiscated in East Jerusalem, unarmed Palestinians are killed on the West Bank by both the IDF and settlers."

Dean's comments were in response to Scottish Journalist Eve Barlow writing on Twitter that "Israel is nowhere near an Apartheid state but I guess those who want desperately to believe that it is won’t ask anyone who’s actually been there."

Dean's remarks follow closely on the tail-end of two controversies in the Democrat Party over US relations with Israel — The Iron Dome funding vote and Vice President Kamala Harris's response to a student accusing Israel of genocide.

Also, to make this claim is to negate the responsibility of Palestinian-Arab leaders in Gaza and in Areas A & B of Judea and Samaria to actually govern. @GovHowardDean is just a lazy jackass who just goes with the flow of the woke mob rather than applying facts to law.

— Elliott Hamilton (@ElliottRHams) October 3, 2021

lol guy doesn’t know the full history of Sheikh Jarrah, nor does he understand that the century-long conflict between Nazi-sympathizing Palestinian-Arab terrorists and the Zionists is more complicated than his lazy, baseless claim of “apartheid” can outline. What a clown. https://t.co/BrZMQaUBg2

— Elliott Hamilton (@ElliottRHams) October 3, 2021

Even while calling the role of “dark money” troubling, Zogby has to admit, as was the case in the Percy and Findley races, that Jewish contributions were not the reason she lost. Approximately 5% of the district’s constituents are Jews, and 53% are black. Like Turner, Brown is black and had support from that community as well as Jews.

Turner was seen as someone, like members of “The Squad,” who would not vigorously support the president’s agenda. In fact, during the presidential campaign, she essentially called Biden “a bowl of sh**.” Consequently, it was Brown who was endorsed by Hillary Clinton, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), and the Congressional Black Caucus and its chair, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio). It was, in Zogby’s own words, a “classic ‘progressive versus moderate’ battle.”

Still, Zogby says campaign finance reform is needed to prevent Americans from supporting candidates who support Israel rather than “a more balanced US policy.” Not surprisingly, he seems to have no problem with J Street and others spending money to support the candidates he prefers.

Like other detractors of Israel, Zogby will never understand why Americans support candidates who recognize that there is one democracy in the Middle East, and that it is the only county that shares our values and interests. He can’t fathom why they don’t support the radical Islamic terrorists in Gaza and the authoritarian in Ramallah who is so corrupt that 80% of Palestinians want him to resign.

Zogby thinks that polls indicate Americans are turning away from Israel, so it must have been yet another crushing blow to his fantasy to hear the Democratic president reassert America’s ironclad support for Israel during his meeting with the Israeli prime minister and watch nearly every Democrat in the House vote to provide Israel additional aid at the same time his handful of allies were proposing cuts.

How campaigns are financed is a serious issue; however, Zogby’s singling out Jewish contributions as a problem is one more example of the normalization of antisemitism by the far-left of the Democratic Party. As long as supporters of Israel play by the rules, they have the right in our democracy to support the candidates they believe best represent their values and positions.

The Arab world of 2021 looks quite different from that of even a decade ago. Technology, trade, and new coalitions of nations have forged a geopolitical scene both dynamic and complex. In Enemies and Allies, Joel Rosenberg offers a primer on this "new Middle East."

A political novelist-cum-journalist and faith leader in between, Rosenberg offers readers a glimpse into his unfettered access to the leaders who make the Arab world tick. The Israeli-American tours Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and elsewhere during the Trump years, providing a portrait of what the future of the Middle East might look like.

Rosenberg identifies two basic trends: modernization and connectivity. In both "enemy" and "allied" countries—terms perhaps too Manichean to describe the complicated relationships of the Gulf—the proliferation of high technologies and modern methods of communication have made the region shrink.

Countries are finding new ways to live with each other, navigating centuries of historic enmity once thought unthinkable to overcome. But "enemies" are also seeking new partnerships potentially damaging to the free world. Meanwhile, in countries such as Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, leaders have pushed for changes that have led to growing religious freedom and pluralism almost overnight.

The trends peak with the Trump administration's Abraham Accords. Rosenberg's trips with other evangelicals throughout the region hint at the promise of the agreement: Arab leaders across the Gulf increasingly worry about Iran's strength and therefore favor heightening cooperation with Israel. The author also details his relationships with peace architects such as Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, giving the reader deeper insights into the strategic thinking of the Trump administration on the region.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas addressed the United Nations General Assembly last week, and to be honest, we have heard over the years speeches by Palestinian leaders that were far, far worse.

However, if that's how a calculated speech looks like, we have got a problem. And it's not like we thought any peace agreement was coming, but after that speech, one thing is clear — peace has never seemed further away.

In his speech, Abbas claimed millions of Palestinians had documents, proving their ownership of properties in Israeli territory. Well, I have news for him. There are tens of millions of people across the world who fled or were forced out of their countries as a result of population exchange. There are also nearly a million Jews who have been deported or forced to leave their property in Arab countries.

It happened to both Jews and Palestinians, and it happened countless times to millions of others and the majority of them never received the right to return to their homeland or to get their property restituted.

In response to Israel's claims that currently there is no partner for peace, Abbas said he challenges Israelis to "try and prove it," adding that Palestinians have never refused a real peace offer.

And we are well aware that the Palestinians and their supporters in media and academia have completely distorted the history of this conflict. But in his statement, Abbas reached a whole new level by distorting even the events of recent decades.

May I take on your challenge and disprove your claims, Mr. Abbas? It would be one of the easiest challenges I have ever taken upon in my life.

Abbas does not tire of repeating himself. Speaking to the UN General Assembly from Ramallah earlier this month, he demanded that Israel withdraw from "the Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem." If it did not, he warned, the PLO might even withdraw its recognition of Israel within its pre-1967 borders before biblical Judea and Samaria, until then comprising Jordan's "West Bank," were reclaimed as part of the Jewish state.

Furthermore, warned Abbas, if Israel did not move towards recognition of Palestinian statehood, the Palestinian Authority would appeal to the ICC to end Israel's "occupation of the land of the Palestinian state." But since the court only settles disputes between existing countries, it was an empty threat.

In perhaps his most noxious statement, Abbas defended welfare payments to the families of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel for their brutal terrorist attacks. "Why should we have to clarify and justify providing assistance to families of prisoners and martyrs, who are the victims of the occupation and its oppressive policies?" So terrorists become victims.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett recently made clear his opposition to a Palestinian state, stating: "I think it would be a terrible mistake." Showing every sign of resisting American pressure, he has reassured settler leaders that his new government would not slow construction. "We know what the Democrats are saying," Bennett told them. "The settlements are illegal and all that. They told me to build less. Guys, you know where I'm coming from. I'm committed to you." Despite pressure from the Biden administration, construction in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem would continue.

Addressing the United Nations, Bennett firmly declared: "We are an ancient nation, returned to our ancient homeland, revived our ancient language, restored our ancient sovereignty. Israel is a Jewish miracle of Jewish revival."

Mahmoud Abbas might do well to pay attention. His dark fantasies of Israel's disappearance have been irreparably shattered.

4. No Islamic holy sites are restricted by Israel AT ALL.
5. So called "settlers" are not there illegally. There is no law preventing Jews from going to holy sites. You claim we prevent access to Muslims, yet you just proved with your ignorance that access to Jews IS prevented.

— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) October 3, 2021

Six prisoners who escaped Gilboa Prison last month along with five other inmates who allegedly assisted them were indicted on Sunday, the Justice Ministry said in a statement.

State prosecutors filed indictments at Nazareth Magistrate’s Court against Zakaria Zubeidi, Mahmoud al-Arida, Munadil Nafiyat, Muhammad al-Arida, Yaquob Qadiri, and Iham Kamamji on charges of escaping detention.

Apart from notorious Fatah commander Zubeidi, the other five are members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Nafiyat, unlike the others, had not been charged with a crime and was being held under Israel’s practice of administrative detention, which allows it to imprison suspects without filing charges for security purposes.

The other prisoners accused of helping with the jailbreak are Mohammad Abu Ashreen, Qusai Mar’i, Ali Abu Bakr and his cousin Mohammad Abu Bakr, and Iyad Jradat, all Palestinians from the Jenin area.

The five are accused of standing watch to make sure that any approaching guards did not discover the digging in the cell and to prevent other prisoners from entering. Some also helped with getting rid of soil dug out of the tunnel, prosecutors said.

None of the 11 prisoners will face charges on terror-related offenses.

EgyptAir’s first direct commercial flight from Cairo to Tel Aviv touched down at Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday at approximately 11:08 am local time, signaling the start of regular operations between the two countries.

The Airbus A220-300 plane was greeted on the runway with celebratory water jets.

The state-owned flag carrier of Egypt is expected to fly the route four times a week.

Previously, the only flights between Ben Gurion Airport and Cairo International Airport were operated discreetly by Air Sinai, a subsidiary of EgyptAir. The Air Sinai flights were unmarked without the Egyptian flag.

Air Sinai was established in 1982 under the terms of the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty which stipulated that there must be active civilian aviation routes between the two countries.

EgyptAir did not schedule any flights to Israel for political reasons, but ties between the two countries have been warming, especially with Israel’s new government taking an active role.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met last month in Sharm el-Sheikh with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The visit marked the first time an Israeli prime minister has traveled to the country in more than ten years.

A Hamas delegation headed by the movement’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, visited Egypt on Sunday to discuss a number of issues, with the movement announcing the visit the night before.

Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, is reportedly part of the delegation as well. According to reports, the delegation will discuss ongoing efforts to reach a prisoner exchange with Israel, and continuing attempts concerning an agreement for calm between Gaza and Israel.

Hamas is holding Israeli citizens Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, and the bodies of IDF soldiers St.-Sgt. Oron Shaul and Lt. Hadar Goldin. Zaher Jabarin, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said last month that the movement had provided mediators with a “clear road map” for a prisoner exchange agreement with Israel, and that Hamas was also insisting on the release of all ex-prisoners who were rearrested after being freed in the Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange deal in 2011.

The Commission for Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs warned on Sunday that the prisoner movement in Israeli prisons has decided to start “escalating steps” in light of what it called “unprecedented Israeli attacks” on Palestinian prisoners, calling the alleged attacks “war crimes.” The commission did not specify what steps would be taken.

On September 30, 2021, the London-based Qatari Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily reported on a meeting that took place that day between Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh and Israeli Arab journalists, including a correspondent for Al-Quds Al-Arabi. According to the report, Shtayyeh asked that the meeting, which took place in his office, not be recorded. In the meeting, he said that Israel is not interested in a solution to the Palestinian issue – neither the two-state solution nor the one-state solution – and persists in its efforts to fragment the Palestinian people and ignore its cause. Given this reality, he said, there will be no choice but to go back to the starting point of the Palestinian issue in 1948, and in that situation the Palestinian people “from the river to the sea” will have a single united leadership. He also stated that Israel is bound to “die demographically since the Jewish human reservoir in the world has dwindled.” He added that, in a meeting one month ago in Ramallah between PA President Mahmoud ‘Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Benny Gantz, the former said that if the two-state solution was not implemented, the solution would be to return to the 1947 partition resolution. Ganz, said Shtayyeh, was astonished by the Palestinian president’s words.

According to the report, Shtayyeh also expressed disappointment in the current U.S. administration which, he said, has promised to reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem and the PLO offices in Washington, and to renew funding to organizations aiding the Palestinians, but in practice has done almost nothing to fulfill these promises.

It should be noted that, in his speech at the September 24, 2021 UN General Assembly, ‘Abbas gave Israel an ultimatum, saying it has one year to withdraw to the 1967 borders and reach a permanent solution with the Palestinians, otherwise the Palestinians will revoke their recognition of Israel. He stressed that, in such a situation, various options will be available, including “returning to a solution based on the partition plan of resolution 181 (II), adopted in 1947, which gives the State of Palestine 44% of the land,” and appealing to the International Court of Justice “on the issue of the legality of the occupation of the land of the Palestinian state.”[i]

Former Fatah top official Muhammad Dahlan: “I can say with certainty, with pride, and with honor that the Palestinian people has restored the Palestinian cause to being on the international community’s agenda (i.e., via Arab riots and Hamas rockets.)... It is a victory of the unity of the Palestinian people – the residents of the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and our people in the 1948 [territories] (i.e., Israel)… The Palestinian people took the reins in its hands without its leadership and did not ask for permission from anyone. It rose up in Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip identified with it, and the West Bank was dragged after it. Afterwards, the crown of this act was that our people in the 1948 [territories] worked to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque and identified with our people in Jerusalem. Therefore, this beautiful picture that the Palestinian people drew with its sacrifices, its Martyrs, its wounded, and with all these acts of heroism that we saw from the Gaza Strip, stated that Jerusalem is a red line and is upheld with Palestinian blood.”

Muhammad Dahlan - Palestinian politician, former Fatah official, and former head of the PA Preventive Security Force in the Gaza Strip (1993-2002). Dahlan now lives in the UAE after he fell out with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and had to leave the West Bank in 2011, later being convicted in absentia by the PA for fraud and sentenced to prison. Dahlan has been mentioned as one of the candidates to succeed Abbas.

Former Fatah top official Muhammad Dahlan: “Israel has attempted and succeeded… in removing the legal cover from every Palestinian national action: … from armed struggle, from politics, from protests, from peaceful demonstrations – even if you throw a rose at an Israeli soldier it will be considered forbidden and illegal. Every kind of resistance is turned into a crime. We are a people under occupation, and we have the right to resist the occupation in a way that international law allows. But we prefer different and diverse ways, everything in its proper time and place. The first popular Intifada in 1987 was a popular intifada – children, women, leaders, adults, and youth participated in it – and therefore we achieved international sympathy. We lost in a number of battles in the second Intifada because it was armed.”

Muhammad Dahlan - Palestinian politician, former Fatah official, and former head of the PA Preventive Security Force in the Gaza Strip (1993-2002). Dahlan now lives in the UAE after he fell out with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and had to leave the West Bank in 2011, later being convicted in absentia by the PA for fraud and sentenced to prison. Dahlan has been mentioned as one of the candidates to succeed Abbas.

Iran’s foreign minister said on Saturday that US officials tried to discuss restarting nuclear talks last month, but he insisted Washington must first release $10 billion of Tehran’s frozen funds as a sign of good will.

Iran has rejected direct talks with the United States, and indirect talks on reviving a 2015 nuclear accord aimed at keeping Iran from being able to develop a nuclear weapon stopped in June.

The United States used intermediaries at the United Nations last month to attempt to make contact, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told state television.

Iran has been unable to obtain tens of billions of dollars of its assets in foreign banks, mainly from exports of oil and gas, due to US sanctions on its banking and energy sectors.

“The Americans tried to contact us through different channels (at the UN General Assembly) in New York, and I told the mediators if America’s intentions are serious then a serious indication was needed … by releasing at least $10 billion of blocked money,” the minister said.

“They are not willing to free $10 billion belonging to the Iranian nation so that we can say that the Americans once in the past several decades considered the interests of the Iranian nation,” Amirabdollahian said in the TV interview.

Iran demands $10 billion from the Biden admin. "to send a signal that they are serious" about returning to the JCPOA, before a deal is even reached. Perhaps Biden should demand the release of all arbitrarily-detained foreign citizens of JCPOA participant states as quid pro quo? https://t.co/nopezHRh5Y

— Kylie Moore-Gilbert (@KMooreGilbert) October 3, 2021

Iranian Political Analyst Emad Abshenas: Growing Iranian Support for Producing a Nuclear Bomb in Order to Do Away with the Option of War against Iran; North Korea Faces Lesser Sanctions Than Iran #JCPOA#Iran@iaeaorgpic.twitter.com/iIDbeFQkvl

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 3, 2021

Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, warned Iran’s neighbors against “foreign influence” in a tweet published in Persian, Arabic, English and Hebrew on Saturday, amid heightened tensions with Azerbaijan.

“Powerful #Iran has always been benevolent to its neighbors & never posed a threat to them,” wrote Shamkhani on Twitter. “Problems will be resolved with the cooperation of all countries in region [sic]. Any foreign influence is fruitless so we call on neighbors to be vigilant in this regard & to stay away from them.”

The statement comes after Azerbaijan began targeting Iranian trucks with fines and arrests, and Iran moved military forces to the border and warned against Israeli influence near its borders.

Iranian trucks were fined, and at least two were detained as they traveled on a road between the Armenian towns of Kapan and Goris, which partially crosses through territory handed over to Azerbaijan after the Nagorno-Karabakh war last year, according to RFE/RL. The highway, patrolled by Russian peacekeepers, is Armenia’s only link to Iran.

Former Iranian Diplomat Amir Mousavi: Azerbaijan Should Not Play with Fire – Iran Is Running Out of Patience; Zionists and ISIS Use Azerbaijan Territory against Iran #Azerbaijan#Iranpic.twitter.com/fMXvz0Wkch

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 3, 2021

The Iranian Embassy in France denied that Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh spoke with the Israeli newspaper Maariv on Friday, after the Israeli paper published an interview with the spokesman.

"The news published by The Jerusalem Post about the interview of the spokesman of the Foreign Ministry with the Zionist media Maariv is a pure lie and is fundamentally false," said the press adviser of the Iranian Embassy in France, according to the Iranian Fars News Agency.

The press adviser added that Khatibzadeh had only spoken with French media during his stay in France for the Normandy for Peace World Forum. "The media belonging to or attributed to the Zionist regime already has a history of publishing fake news, and therefore the media do not give the slightest credence to such false claims."

Speaking with Israeli press is illegal in Iran, as all non-incidental contact and communication between Iranian nationals and Israeli nationals is prohibited by law.

Maariv had reported on Friday that Khatibzadeh had told the paper in an interview that "the war with Israel has already started."

"Israel has carried out attacks that were intended to destroy our nuclear program for peaceful purposes. It murdered nuclear scientists and harmed the Iranian people. Iran is accused of terrorism, but there is no good or bad terrorist. The whole crisis in the region is Israel's fault."

Lol all 5 of them. Boy Iran’s state TV must be proud of this impressive anti-Israel showing ?? https://t.co/fXG3NNjNet

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) October 2, 2021

Finally, it’s important in contextualising Bristol University’s decision to understand that Miller was a conspiracy theorist on other issues as well, demonstrating a cognitive orientation seemingly at odds with the intellectual requirements of academic life.

During one lecture, he claimed Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi was “effectively an asset of the British state”. According to the CST’s Dave Rich, he’s also one of the leading academic advocates of the theory that some chemical weapons attacks on Syrian civilians by the Assad regime were hoaxes or “false flag” operations, and has written that it is “unlikely” the Russian state would have tried to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in 2018.

If the Evening Standard wanted to pen an editorial making a principled argument that, despite his record of antisemitism, the sacking of Miller was unjust on academic freedom grounds, they could have of course done so. But, to obfuscate Miller’s explicitly conspiratorial racist tropes about Jews and Jewish power that was at the heart of the row, whilst suggesting it was merely about ‘Israel criticism’, the outlet grossly misled readers.

In an article about the Emmy Award-winning documentary “Advocate,” The Hollywood Reporter whitewashes Palestinians convicted of violent acts of terror, including attempted murder, as “political prisoners.” Trilby Beresford’s Sept. 29 article, “Israeli Film ‘Advocate’ Wins Best Documentary Emmy,” reports that the documentary “Advocate” “follows the work of human rights lawyer Lea Tsemel as she represents political prisoners.”

In fact, the two cases covered in the controversial documentary involve teen Ahmad Manasrah, who was convicted of two counts of attempted murder and Israa Jabris, who detonated explosives in her car as police approached her. A gas canister in the vehicle failed to explode.

Western nations do not regard convicted, incarcerated terrorists as political prisoners, as the European Council definition makes clear. Palestinians who carry out terror attacks against Israeli citizens are not protesting their own (Palestinian) government with non-violent activity.

Does The Hollywood Reporter consider those who carried out attempted murder and ignite explosives “political prisoners”?

Authorities released a video purporting to show the raid taking place, but many critics cast doubt on the authenticity of the heavily edited footage.

The KGB officer who lost his life during the raid was hailed as a hero and Zeltser was declared a "terrorist."

After the incident, Azaronak lambasted Zeltser, among other things, for living in Belarus, but working for an American software engineering firm.

"They [KGB officers] went to this bastard's apartment! Zeltser! The IT guy from EPAM, who according to some reports, is an American citizen," he said. "A cosmopolite to whom the [Belarusian] state has granted benefits and he only lined his pockets living in two countries, collecting money here and spending it there."

Azaryonok went on to compare Zeltser to other opposition leaders, including Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who many consider to be the real winner of the latest elections.

Azaronak describing Zeltser as a "cosmopolite" is no coincidence, for the term is a known pejorative Soviet epithet. Back then, Jews were called "rootless cosmopolites."

In addition, Azaronak's description of Zeltser as "living in two countries, collecting money here and spending it there" is an allusion to the common accusation that Jews are disloyal to the state.

Israel Hayom reached out to the Israeli Foreign Ministry for comment, but they were not immediately available.

Cyprus is in advanced negotiations with Israel to purchase Iron Dome batteries, Greek news agency SIGMA reported this week. Cypriot officials are currently engaged in deliberations on how the system would help the divided island nation meet its security needs.

SIGMA also reported that Cyprus would purchase four warships from France, which together with the Iron Dome will be "a comprehensive response to the Turkish threat."

Turkish Cypriots in the northern part of the island claim to be a separate republic. Despite having virtually no international recognition, they have been able to hold on to the land for decades with the help of Ankara. Greek Cypriots, who are aligned with Greece, consider this to be a form of occupation.

The Iron Dome deal, if it materializes, could further undermine relations between Jerusalem and Ankara, which have been at loggerheads for many years stemming from geopolitical issues and Turkey's efforts, although the two countries have been aiming to repair ties.

“The word ‘autonomous’ is thrown about with intolerable ease,” laments Idan Shimon.

“If you buy a simple drone, it will be autonomous in the sense that it will fly where you want it to and even land there,” he explains. “You’ll definitely be able to tell the drone to go somewhere, but if you tell it to land and there’s a child in its way, it will land on the kid.”

This is the sort of incident that Shimon, the CEO and cofounder of Israeli startup Wonder Robotics, wants to prevent.

“We’re developing a system that supplies drones with situational awareness – an understanding of their surroundings, a sense of the world around them and underneath them, an ability to analyze the world, as well as the ability to fly while understanding their surroundings without crashing into anything,” he says.

Shimon has decades of experience and passion for all things aviation. He flew model aircraft as a child and served as a drone operator in the army before starting work at Aeronautics, a military-use UAV company, and later on as a consultant in the field.

The idea for Wonder Robotics, he says, came up following an inquiry from a client in the defense establishment.

A groundbreaking point-of-care machine that determines whether an infection is viral or bacterial has received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for both children and adults.

Last year, MeMed received CE clearance for sales of its testing platform in Europe.

The MeMed BV test is an immune-based protein signature test that distinguishes, within 15 minutes, between a bacterial or viral infection from a blood sample.

This critical information enables physicians to know immediately if an antibiotic is called for, and to avoid antibiotic overuse.

“For those of us who care for acutely ill children, we have been waiting decades for accurate, rapid diagnostics to confidently guide the care of moderately ill children without a clear focus of infection or recognizable viral illness,” said Harvard Medical School Prof. Dr. Rich Bachur, chief of emergency medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“This novel test offers promise to help differentiate those children with self-limited viral illness from those with possible bacterial infection, thereby supporting the judicious use of antibiotics,” Bachur said.

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Iran was behind the attempt on Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi’s life last week, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s spokesman Matan Sidi said Monday.

“Contrary to some of what was published [Sunday] night in connection to the incident in Cyprus, I ask to clarify, in the name of security officials, that this was a terrorist attack by Iran against Israeli businesspeople living in Cyprus,” he said.

“This was not a criminal incident, and the businessman Teddy Sagi was not the target of the attack,” Sidi said.

The Iranian Embassy in Nicosia said the claims were baseless.

Sidi’s comments came after conflicting reports about whether the assassination attempt was a terrorist attack or the result of a business dispute between Sagi and Russian businessmen.

Sagi indicated that Iran was responsible for the attack.

The attempted murder was “another act of aggression by Iran aimed at Israeli targets,” Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Monday.

“Iran continues to be a global and regional threat and a challenge to Israel, and we will continue to act to defend our citizens and the security of the State of Israel everywhere and against every threat,” he said at a Blue and White faction meeting.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said: “Israeli businesspeople will continue to travel the world. They need to be careful and listen to instructions, but Israel can and knows how to protect its citizens.”

The Cyprus police arrested a 38-year-old Azeri-Russian man on September 27 for plotting to murder several Israeli businessmen living in Nicosia.

The Biden administration's talk about achieving a "two-state solution" does not seem to impress many Palestinians. They believe, according to a recent public opinion poll, that this solution is no longer practical or feasible. These Palestinians, the poll found, prefer to wage an "armed struggle" against Israel.

With such views, it is safe to assume that the Palestinian state the Biden administration is hoping to establish alongside Israel will be controlled by Iranian-backed terrorists such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.....

The findings of that poll confirmed that a majority of Palestinians continue to see Hamas and other terrorists as their heroes and role models. The results also confirmed that a majority of Palestinians continue to believe that violence and terrorism are the best and only way to deal with Israel.

Their demand reveals that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians have no confidence in Abbas and are likely to reject any peace agreement he signs with Israel. First, anyone who signs a peace deal with Israel will be regarded as a traitor and rewarded the same ill-starred way as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who signed a peace treaty with Israel and was assassinated. It is a consequence with which Abbas is acquainted.

Those who continue to talk about a "two-state solution" are not only deluding themselves, but also endangering the security of the Middle East by seeking to establish yet another terrorist state, especially so soon after the debacle of the U.S. surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Here is some well-intentioned advice for Biden and other world leaders: before you link the idea of peace and security to the idea of a "two-state solution," try believing the Palestinians when they say that the prefer "armed struggle." Try believing the Palestinians when they say that they would vote for any leader who supports violence and terrorism against Israel. Try believing, when the Palestinians say they reject peace with Israel, that they actually mean what they say.

Ah. So he really only likes dead Jews. Pretty sure that’s not just about Netanyahu. pic.twitter.com/7KHUqDzZhY

— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) October 3, 2021

Ahead of a meeting with ministers from the Meretz party on Sunday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas spoke with the parents of two Palestinians who were killed recently as they carried out attacks on Israeli security forces.

Official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Abbas called the father of Israa Khuzaimia, who police said was shot dead last Thursday as she tried to stab officers in the Old City of Jerusalem. Abbas offered his condolences over the death of Khuzaimia, 30, a mother of four.

Abbas also called the father of Alaa Nassar Shafik Zayoud, a member of the Palestinian Islamist Jihaad terror group, who was also killed Thursday after he opened fire on IDF and Border Police officers in Kfar Bourkin near Jenin, in the West Bank.

Later Sunday evening, Abbas met for talks with Israel’s Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz and Regional Cooperation Minister Issawi Frej from the left-wing Meretz party in the West Bank city of Ramallah, in the second such high-profile meeting in recent months.

In statements after the meeting, the ministers and Abbas said they were working to keep alive the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which envisions a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem alongside Israel.

These woke educators, like the students and faculty who express similar sentiments concerning aid to Israel, apparently have no issue with the huge sums of U.S. aid given in 2020, for example, to such countries as Afghanistan, Egypt ($1.445 billion), Iraq ($1.017 billion), Jordan ($2.388 billion), and Ukraine (more than $1.5 billion in security aid between 2014 and 2019), countries which are not reliable strategic and diplomatic partners and not useful in sharing technology and intelligence in the way that Israel is and does.

The US Department of Defense, in the case of Afghanistan, recently reported that our country’s total military expenditure from October 2001 until last December was $825 billion, not even including another $130 billion spent on reconstruction projects, for a total of just under a trillion dollars for a country that, after all of that blood and treasure, has almost immediately after our withdrawal reverted to a medieval theocratic state under Taliban rule.

And U.S. aid is not limited to the Middle East, obviously. The International Institute for Strategic Studies issued a report indicating that the United States spends some $36 billion annually on maintaining a military presence and capability in Europe. More than 170,000 active-duty personnel are currently deployed to overseas locations in some 140 countries, a presence that the Department of Defense Comptroller’s Office has estimated to cost American taxpayers over $24 billion in 2020.

Rarely mentioned, too, is the fact that, since the end of World War II, U.S. forces have been in Japan, and in South Korea since the outbreak of the Korean War. The price tag for that military presence is in the billions.

The recent effort by the Congressional “Squad” to kill funding for Iron Dome, the defensive technology which enables Israel to neutralize incoming rockets launched by Hamas from Gaza, indicated very clearly that for Israel-haters—in politics, academia, unions, NGOs, and other elite institutions and organizations—it is not enough to merely strip Israel’s ability to defend itself with offensive weapon and military technology.

They even revealed that their pathological loathing of the Jewish state is so fundamental to their ideology that they attempted, unsuccessfully, as it happened, to strip Israel of a defensive weapon that saves Jewish and Arab lives, alike. So, clearly, the issue is not the dollar amount the U.S. gives in aid to Israel—as it does in similar amounts to many other countries around the world.

Those who obsess about the very existence of Israel, and who focus exclusively on it and what it receives from American taxpayers while they are indifferent or ignorant of aid given to other, less deserving nations, reveal that their anti-Semitic desire to decrease or eliminate funding to the Jewish state can only be motivated by one insidious impulse: a desire to weaken and cause harm to Israel, the Jew of nations.

An earth-shattering event happened in Congress: House Democrats removed $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system from an emergency funding bill and later put it back in a different bill.

This is not a “right-left” issue and it’s not even an Israeli-Palestinian issue. It’s much deeper and more important than that.

The Iron Dome is an amazing technology that almost miraculously knocks attack rockets right out of the sky. It saves lives on both sides and prevents deadly military escalations. But it’s very expensive to operate, with each interceptor missile costing about $50,000.

Last May, Iranian backed US designated terror groups in Gaza launched nearly 4,500 rockets at Israel. Hundreds of those terror rockets fell short in Gaza, killing Palestinian people, in the same way that ISIS and Bashar Assad often kill Syrians. Israelis and Palestinians are both victims of terror groups. Iron Dome is everyone’s best protection.

The US presented a bill that included funds to help Israel replenish its supplies for this system, and to help keep everyone safe. A few extreme lawmakers altered the bill to remove this important aid, and they succeeded. But then almost every Democrat and Republican in Congress voted to reinstate the funding in a separate bill: the vote was 420-9.

So why would 9 members of Congress vote against a defensive system that weakens terrorists and protects ordinary civilians?

Because for those extreme politicians it’s not about saving lives, it’s about narrative.

The recent House vote on $1 billion in supplemental Iron Dome funding - 420 in favor, 9 opposed, 2 present - is even more one-sided than it looks. The vote was commonly portrayed as part of the Obama-era MOU that provides $3.8 billion in annual security assistance to Israel, but the Iron Dome request was a supplemental funding request coming on top of the $500 million for missile defense that is part of the annual $3.8 billion. Despite all the attention that cutting, conditioning, or restricting security assistance to Israel has received, only eight House Democrats voted against providing even more security assistance to Israel.

It is difficult to look at this vote and still credibly talk about the Democratic Party having been taken over by anti-Zionism. The vote also reveals the overreach in trying to portray Israel in the same light as the globe's worst actors and serial human rights violators; it is not a portrayal that aligns with policymakers or with the sentiments of most Americans.

The lesson is that there is and will remain wall-to-wall support for Israeli security when it is unambiguously clear that security is indeed the issue. Those who want to downgrade the U.S.-Israel relationship will get nowhere with spurious charges and legislative overreach.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Biden administration’s intended reopening of the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem is “illegal,” telling co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein in an upcoming episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” that President Joe Biden lacks the legal authority to reopen the consulate given the existing embassy’s presence.

“I think it’s illegal,” Pompeo said. “We don’t have consulates in the same city we have embassies anywhere in the world.”

The U.S. consulate in Jerusalem was closed in 2018 following the decision by the Trump administration to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. At the time, Pompeo announced that Palestinian relations would be handled by a special affairs unit within the embassy. In May, Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced the State Department would reopen a Jerusalem consulate.

Asked if a future Republican president would reverse such an opening, Pompeo, considered a possible 2024 presidential candidate, called the issue non-partisan. “I think every president needs to commit to it.”

“It’s unnecessary and counterproductive, and I think, frankly, sends the wrong signal to the Palestinians as well,” the former secretary of state continued. “It signals to them [that it’s] back to business as usual, back to the kleptocracy, and ‘pay to slay’ and all the horrors that the Palestinian leadership and the West Bank [has] imposed on its own people as well,” he said, invoking a term used for the Palestinian Authority’s payments to families of individuals who commit terror attacks against Israelis.

I was thinking about Rep. Rashida Tlaib's accusation last week that Israel is an "apartheid" state while at a cafe in Mamilla mall in Jerusalem. Next to my table sat a young Muslim woman wearing hip jeans and an elegant head scarf, ordering lunch and working on her laptop. You can read a thousand tweets and media commentaries, but when you actually walk the streets, "apartheid" is probably the last word you'd want to use to describe this place.

As Arab-Israeli Yoseph Haddad recently asked: Is Samer Haj Yehia, the chairman of Israel's largest bank, Leumi, living under an apartheid regime? And what of Dr. Masad Barhoum, director general of Galilee Medical Center, or George Karra, the Supreme Court justice? And what of the Arab doctors, lawyers and police officers, the Arab members of Knesset and the ministers? Are they living in an apartheid state too?

The prosaic reality of Arab-Jewish relations is driven by answers to simple questions, such as: Am I allowed to have a coffee here, to get a university degree there, to hang out at this park, to get a job in this hotel, to vote for this candidate, to take my kids to this hospital? The answers are the sharpest rebuttal to the apartheid charge.

Many Arab citizens are still bitter about Israel's very existence. But for the first time in Israel's history, an Arab-Muslim party is part of its governing coalition. This is a hopeful sign that pragmatic needs in the Arab sector are superseding the ideological toxins that feed passions but leave stomachs empty. That would be in keeping with the new spirit of the Abraham Accords, which are reshaping Israel-Arab relations around mutual interests.

The World Jewish Congress (WJC) and the Muslim World League issued a joint statement promoting the protection of human rights for all on Monday at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The declaration marks the first coordinated statement given by both Jewish and Muslim groups at a UN body.

"I am honored to make this statement on behalf of the Muslim World League and the World Jewish Congress, organizations that represent a wide majority of the Muslim and Jewish faiths," said WJC UN representative, Leon Saltiel in his address to the council.

"We come together in the spirit of peace, tolerance and respect for human rights. We believe that all human beings are given the same freedoms and rights by the Creator, are destined to live in liberty, prosperity and equality, free from conflict, oppression or harassment. We share a commitment to promote and protect human rights for all.

"Our two organizations have already commenced multifaceted cooperation, such as a joint Ramadan celebration we co-organized in April 2021 that featured community and religious leaders from both faiths from all around the world. We intend to continue, strengthen and expand these links with further joint activities, visits and exchanges.

"We also reiterate the importance of safeguarding freedom of religion or belief around the globe as well as the right of every individual to practice one's religion without restrictions of any kind, as a basic human right.

Interview with Dharur Bel Hol El-Fasi, member of Parliament of the Federal National Council fo the UAE

The Mossad conducted a special operation in the Middle East in an effort to find the remains and information about Israeli Air Force (IAF) Navigator Ron Arad, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett revealed in a speech to the Knesset plenum on Monday.

Despite the dramatic announcement, Bennett did not give any further information about the fate of the captive, who has long been presumed dead. Nor was his office forthcoming with context or explanations of the timing of the prime minister’s statement revealing the secret operation. Bennett told the Knesset he authorized the operation for the airman who has been missing since 1986 out of the spirit of the Jewish concept of redeeming captives and that he had informed Arad's family.

"Last month, Mossad agents - men and women - embarked on a complex, wide-ranging and daring operation to find the remains and whereabouts of Ron Arad," said the Prime Minister.

"That is all that can be said at the moment," Bennett said. He also thanked the IDF and Shin Bet for the "outstanding collaboration" in the special operation.

Bennett added that “redeeming prisoners is a Jewish value that became one of the holiest values of the State of Israel…It defines us and makes us unique. We will continue to act to bring all our sons home from anywhere.”

The prime minister also said that he informed Arad’s family of the operation. His relatives told Channel 12 that they “continue to hope that maybe one day we will know what was Ron’s fate.”

Arad was captured on October 16, 1986, after a bomb his plane dropped caused damage to the aircraft, forcing him and the plane’s pilot to bail out. The pilot was saved, but Arad was taken by Lebanese Shiite group Amal, and later transferred to Iranian forces.

Arad sent three letters from captivity, and two photos of him were released. Israel lost track of Arad in 1988.

There have been several Israeli operations to get more information about Arad’s fate, including the capture of Hezbollah members and offering a $10 million reward. A joint report by Mossad and the IDF determined in 2016 that Arad likely died in 1988.

I wouldn’t have imagined that 76 years after the Holocaust ended, I would be writing these words but here we go again. Last week, anti-Semites tried to burn Jews alive. And the world looked away.

Several hundred Jewish worshippers were on their way to hold peaceful, legal religious services on the holiday of Sukkot, at the tomb of the biblical patriarch Joseph, located in the city of Shechem. The city, better known by its Roman name, Nablus, had a sizeable Jewish community until Palestinian Arab rioters drove them out in the 1930s. Today’s generation of Palestinian Arab terrorists ambushed last week’s worshippers. The Palestinian Authority, which governs the city, did nothing to intervene.

The attackers hurled “homemade explosives”—that is, Molotov cocktails—at the buses of worshippers, hoping to set them on fire. If not for the heroic actions of Israeli soldiers, the buses would have turned into rolling infernos, and hundreds of Jews would have been burned alive. That was the terrorists’ intention. Yet the world looked away.

I checked the major newspapers and news websites in the days following the attack. Aside from the Israeli and Jewish media, I could not find a word about it. World leaders were not interested. “Human rights” organizations were busy elsewhere. The major news media outlets shut their eyes. They all looked away.

The moral outrage of an attempted massacre of Jews should have been sufficient to rouse the international community. But let’s put the moral considerations aside for a moment and just consider the legal implications.

The protection of Jewish worshippers is enshrined in the Oslo II agreement. The Palestinian Authority signed it. The PA has an obligation to abide by its terms. Israel fulfilled its side of the Oslo accords, by withdrawing from 40% of Judea-Samaria and allowing the PA to set up a de-facto state in that area. In return, the PA is required to fulfill its side of the deal, including the provisions applying to protection of Jewish worshippers.

You can find the relevant obligation in Annex I, Article V, Section 2, paragraph (b), under “Jewish Holy Sites.” It concerns Jewish religious sites that are located in PA-governed territory. And Appendix IV specifically lists “Joseph's Tomb (Nablus)” as one of those sites.

The agreement states that “the protection of these sites, as well as of persons visiting them, will be under the responsibility of the Palestinian Police.” The PA must “ensure free, unimpeded and secure access” to the site, and “ensure the peaceful use of such site, to prevent any potential instances of disorder and to respond to any incident.”

Since the PA has one of the largest per-capita security forces in the world, it would not have had any trouble preventing would-be murderers from attacking Jews at the site. That is, if the PA wanted to prevent them. But it doesn’t. In fact, the PA, through its anti-Jewish incitement in its mosques, media and schools, encourages Palestinian Arabs to aspire to kill Jews. Hence last week’s attempt to burn Jews alive.

Former Knesset member Hanin Zoabi and 12 others tied to the Balad party, including senior officials, were convicted Monday at the Nazareth Magistrate’s Court on forgery and fraud offenses in the party’s financial irregularities scandal.

As part of the plea deal, the officials confessed to the crimes and are expected to receive sentences ranging from community service to suspended prison sentences and fines ranging from NIS 25,000 to 75,000 ($7,700-$23,200).

The convictions pertain to financial irregularities in the party, a hardline Palestinian nationalist faction that makes up part of the Joint List alliance.

According to the indictment, Zoabi and the others were involved in the forgery of documents that were submitted to the state comptroller between 2013 and 2016. They then systematically deceived the ombudsman by misrepresenting the source of millions of shekels the party had received.

An investigation was opened in 2016 by the Lahav 433 fraud unit of the police after a state comptroller report found issues with the party’s donations and expenses.

In addition to Zoabi, 35 other people were questioned in the case.

In recent days, social networks have been flooded with incitement against Israel over images of an 11 year old Palestinian boy who was arrested by the IDF and his only crime was that he went down to buy milk...
I made a video that reveals the truth behind those pictures! pic.twitter.com/inuLEYnUbq

— ???? ???? - Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) October 3, 2021

The father of Yehuda Guetta, who was murdered by convicted Palestinian terrorist Muntasir Shalabi in an attack in May, requested the Judea Military Court judges to punish Shalabi with the death penalty during a sentencing hearing on Monday.

"That is the only way to prevent the next murder," Elisha Guetta said, adding the death penalty "is just what he deserves."

Guetta also demanded Shalabi's family, whose West Bank home was razed by the IDF in July, be deported from Israel.

"We demand to deport his family, maybe to Syria," Guetta said. "We can not allow his children to travel to Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) and take photos to upload on Facebook," he added.

In August, Muntasir Shalabi was convicted for the murder of 19-year-old Guetta in a drive-by shooting on May 2 at Tapuah junction. Shalabi, 44, was also convicted of multiple attempted murder counts after he wounded two other 19-year-olds during the attack.

Muntasir Shalabi, who holds dual Palestinian-American citizenship, said during the hearing Al-Aqsa was his motive for the drive-by shooting.

A Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant in Jenin shows off his gear. pic.twitter.com/VrOkDZfmIP

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) October 3, 2021

The opposite can and should be enacted. Israel should now be thinking about how it can break Abbas’s will to continue his rejectionism: diplomatic, legal, economic and violent. One just has to listen to Abbas refer to the creation of Israel as a Nakba, a catastrophe, and look at the maps on the wall behind him as he recorded his UN speech which do not feature Israel, to hear and witness that his ultimate goal is to turn back time and reverse the reality on the ground.

This should be shocking to every single Israeli, but many see this as harmless or irrelevant background noise or banter. However, on the Palestinian street, since the beginning of the year there has been a constant talk of a “Third Intifada.” Israel witnessed how quickly the fuse was lit to take advantage of the legal dispute in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

Israel is faced with a choice: Look back after there is further bloodshed, enacted or goaded on by a leader who has moved his people further away from peace, or instead the Jewish state can act now. It needs to raise and not lower the pressure on Abbas. He is teetering and the UN speech demonstrated this more than anything else. He is irrelevant to the vast majority of Palestinians, many of whom dream of a better tomorrow, so he should be made irrelevant for Israel.

By taking a strong hand against Abbas and his stalwarts in the Palestinian Authority, Israel can ensure that rejectionism comes to an end and the cycle of seemingly never-ending conflict and violence is ended. This will have obvious benefits for Israel, but it will be even better for the Palestinians. It will bring about the badly needed peace and prosperity, and allow them to build up their polity without the distraction of the conflict and for the betterment of the people.

This would be a win-win situation for both peoples, but first Abbas and his impermeable form of rejectionism must be defeated.

A large portion of Hamas' leadership were in Cairo Sunday including Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar, Saleh al-Arouri, Khaled Mashal, Mousa Abu Marzouk and others. The talks in Cairo involve a possible prisoner exchange with #Israel and reconstruction efforts in the #Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/CcauuLoCtE

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) October 4, 2021

Shortly before the recent 10-year anniversary of the exchange of 1,027 terrorist prisoners in return for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was held hostage by Hamas for 5 years (2006-2011), a representative of the terror organization Islamic Jihad stated that they expect similar prisoner swaps to free the remaining terrorist “heroes” from Israeli prisons.

Referring to Israeli hostages Avraham Mengistu and Hisham Al-Sayed and the bodies of soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin that are currently being held by Hamas, Islamic Jihad Information Office Director Daoud Shihab compared them to Shalit:
Islamic Jihad Information Office Director Daoud Shihab: “A great achievement was recorded by the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip. It’s still holding, as it held [former Israeli captive soldier Gilad] Shalit. It’s holding a number of Zionist prisoners and soldiers’ [bodies] today. This is good news for all our people… and all the heroes inside the occupation prisons, for all our people, because freedom is coming and the freedom celebration is coming.”

[Al-Mayadeen TV (Lebanon), Sept. 10, 2021]

When Israel released the first group of terrorists in exchange for Shalit, Palestinian Media Watch documented that Hamas called to kidnap 6 more Israeli soldiers to free the remaining 6,000 prisoners.

Hamas was not alone in its calls to kidnap more Israelis. Fatah leader Jibril Rajoub, who could potentially replace PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, has made similar calls. Representing Abbas at an event to mark the release of the terrorist prisoners Rajoub said:
"I say in the name of the Fatah movement -- We salute those who dug the tunnel [to capture the Israeli soldier]; we salute those who captured the captive (Gilad Shalit), and salute those who guarded the captive until this deal was completed."

[Official PA TV, Oct. 30, 2011]

Azerbaijan on Monday denied allegations from Tehran that Israel’s military was in the Caucasus country during drills run by Iran’s army on their shared border.

The Iranian claims about sworn enemy Israel come after its state television last week showed tanks, howitzers and helicopters firing at targets in the northwest of the country.

Israel is a major arms supplier to Azerbaijan, which last autumn won a six-week war with neighbor Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Leyla Abdullayeva said Monday that Iran’s claims were groundless.

“We reject the allegations of any third party’s presence near the Azerbaijani-Iranian border, such allegations are totally baseless,” she said.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev last week criticized the Iranian war games in an interview with Turkish news agency Anadolu, asking “why now, and why on our border?”

Israel came under diplomatic fire from Armenia during last year’s conflict between the Caucasus neighbors.

The fighting ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire that saw Yerevan cede swaths of contested territories, including the Karabakh section of Azerbaijan’s 700-kilometer border with Iran.

Houthi Islamic Scholar Dr. Ahmad Al-Shami: The West Has a Double Standard Regarding Freedom of Expression – How Come It Is OK to Burn the Quran but not the Rainbow Flag? #Yemen#Houthis#WomensRights#homophobiapic.twitter.com/ZKoMZLcZa6

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 4, 2021

Egyptian Islamic scholar Dr. Yosry Gabr Explains Wife Beating in Islam: If She Is Nasty and Does Not Want to Understand – Beat Her for the Sake of Instilling Discipline, but Not on the Face and Not in Public #WomensRights#Egyptpic.twitter.com/0Rri45LI01

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 4, 2021

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Since 2014, we have seen a dramatic shift regarding the discourse around Israel. In a nation that celebrates free speech, almost any conversation is encouraged. But when that conversation borders on incitement and causes Jews to feel unsafe, then there is a serious problem. The US State Department upholds the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of antisemitism, which posits that it can and does entail attempts to delegitimize Israel.

As for both Jews and non-Jews who want to criticize Israel and flinch every time they are accused of being antisemitic or a self-hating Jew, I would say this: We can have a whole discussion about the standards that Israel is held up to, as well as its policies. However, Israel is held to a different standard than any other country in the world when defending its citizens.

A misguided and simplified narrative that looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a powerful aggressor and an innocent underdog fails to understand that there are two sides to this complex situation, with people across Israel's border in the Middle East all too often committed to the country's demise. Moreover, an obsessed and myopic view on what the one Jewish state in the world does or does not do? That is antisemitic.

No matter what political affiliation we have, we are Jews first and foremost. It is crucial to come together on this issue before we splinter off into partisan leanings.

Across the Atlantic, for Israelis who think this is exclusively a problem for American Jews, they must understand that the broader erosion of support for Israel may very well lead to diminishing bipartisan support for the Jewish state, which will have a detrimental effect on Israel's own security.

On a macro level, though, antisemitism has historically been the canary in a coal mine. Any society that actively embraced Jew-hatred has shown acceptance for discrimination and prejudice that far extends beyond Jews. It may start with us, but it never ends with us.

To that end, I call on communal and world leaders to call out antisemitism when they see it and advocate for schools to actively teach about this complex phenomenon and what constitutes it (while also explaining that criticism of Israel is legitimate and valid). Meanwhile, politicians must cease using antisemitism as a political tool. Too often, we see politicians blame the opposing party of having anti-Jewish members for the sake of accruing political capital. Jews are not political pawns. We are active, contributing citizens of the United States who deserve protection and security amid this growing crisis.

As for our community, right now it is imperative for global Jewry to come together. It should not have to reach a point where we all speak out against antisemitism only when violence breaks out. We do not need another Pittsburgh or Poway. What we need is unity.

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), presented in March 2021, was created to replace the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, which had been adopted by 35 countries by 2020. The writers of the JDA wished to “clarify” the IHRA, which they feel is insufficiently obsequious to the Palestinians. Their real object is to use the fight against antisemitism as another weapon with which to vilify Israel.

The Jerusalem Declaration of Antisemitism (JDA) is the product of a group of international scholars of antisemitism and related fields who have been meeting since June 2020 in a series of online workshops convened by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Essentially, the new document charges the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism with blurring the “difference between antisemitic speech and legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism.” As a result, the IHRA definition “delegitimiz[es] the voices of Palestinians and others, including Jews, who hold views that are sharply critical of Israel and Zionism.”

The JDA was purportedly written as a resource for strengthening the fight against antisemitism, because “there is a widely felt need for clarity on the limits of legitimate political speech and action concerning Zionism, Israel, and Palestine.” The JDA is presented as the alternative, a “corrective to overcome the shortcomings of the IHRA definition.”

Nowhere in the IHRA definition are Palestinians mentioned; nor does it mention BDS. There are, however, three clauses that can be construed as applying to the actions of Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists. These are:
- the denial of the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination; e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor
- the application of double standards by requiring of Israel behaviors that are not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation
- the comparison of Israeli policies to those of the Nazis.

Pro-Palestinian activists and anti-Israel groups have long complained about the IHRA definition because, in the grip of their fixation on Israel as fundamentally illegitimate and their flat denial of the Jews’ right to self-determination, they reject the premise that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

So what is the Jewish community to do with all this perceived power? The gap between reality and perception is wide. Yet it opens up a space for skillful negotiation by thoughtful Jewish leaders who understand that, as in certain martial arts, the key to winning is to turn an opponent’s momentum against him.

By population, the Jews are a tiny people: almost 15 million worldwide, about 0.2 percent of the global population and about 2 percent of America’s. There are approximately 6.9 million Israeli Jews, compared with an Iranian population of over 80 million, more than 420 million Arabs, and almost 2 billion Muslims. By sheer numbers, Jews are clearly outmatched. The intersecting echo chambers I have described mutually reinforce one another in a way that elevates the perceived power of a people who usually haven’t had much power at all.

Yet the malignant perception of overwhelming Jewish power comes with a hidden but potent benefit: the chance to leverage the tropes used against Jews to Jewish advantage. If Khamenei, Hamas, and Hezbollah prefer to believe that Jews pull all the big levers of American might, it only feeds a mindset of paranoia and illogic that is usually self-defeating. It might even give them more reason to fear us than to fight us. If Tehran (or the Washington press corps) wants to feed the perception that my modestly sized think tank dictates U.S. policy in the Middle East, who am I to complain?

What goes for U.S. policy in the Middle East goes for other areas of Jewish concern: Especially in a democracy, the perception of power is power, at least in the hands of those who know how to use it judiciously.

From biblical times onward, Jews have often proved adept at this, not for nefarious reasons but because we appreciate how necessary that perception can be to our own survival. To take one example: In 1991, after Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam lost his Soviet patron, he approached Israel as a conduit to Washington — doubtlessly on the idea that Israeli influence in Washington would surely be enough to rescue him. The belief was antisemitic, but it still helped set the basis for negotiations leading to the rescue of Ethiopian Jews in Operation Solomon.

Something similar might be said about the way Jewish politics play out in the U.S. By any standard metric, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is far from the biggest lobby in Washington — certainly not when compared with, say, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Rifle Association, or the pharmaceutical lobby. What actual power AIPAC has derives mainly from three strengths: the talent of its staff; the passion of its members; and, above all, the instinctual support that a majority of Americans (only a small fraction of whom are Jewish) feel for a country they rightly see as an embattled bastion of democracy facing and fighting the same enemies that threaten the United States.

Yet AIPAC’s critics, at home and abroad, like to paint it as a Washington juggernaut that politicians cross at their own peril. In a city where perception counts for almost everything, such a view can work in AIPAC’s favor. As in the 1959 Peter Sellers classic, The Mouse That Roared, it’s better to be a midget thought of as a giant than the other way around.

Not every “truth” should be heard or legitimized by the vice president of the United States. Not everyone is entitled to turn lies into their own truths. Not everything is a narrative. Some views should be suppressed, such as the one about Israel committing ethnic genocide. Why? Because it is a lie. There are facts. And one fact is that Israel is not committing ethnic genocide. Period.

How can one prove that fact to those who will only think the worst about Israel? Simple: by looking at the numbers.

Before the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel won control of Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, there were some 955,000 Palestinians in those areas; today that number stands at about five million. Say what you will about Israel’s policies in the territories over the last 54 years, but those numbers do not add up to genocide.

The fallout from Harris’s appearance followed a predictable pattern. The Israeli press jumped on the story while, except for Fox News, it did not make that much noise in the non-Jewish media in the US.

AT LEAST in the beginning.

Israel supporters then pushed back, the Vice President’s office realized it had a problem on its hands, and then did damage control by reaching out to a few major Jewish organizations. The story then started to gain traction in the general media.

The message from the VP’s office was simple: she did not mean what her silence implied.

And surely she didn’t. Harris is a moderate Democrat with a good record on Israel. Neither anything she has ever said nor would her voting record on Israel lead one to believe that she actually thinks the Jewish state is committing ethnic genocide.

Then what’s the problem?

The problem is that she didn’t challenge the statement in real-time, with the other students in the room. The problem is that her silence could be interpreted by them, and others who might have seen a video clip of the exchange, as implicit consent.

Jeremy Corbyn has delivered a speech at a rally marking the 85th anniversary of Cable Street aided by an activist suspended by Labour last year for writing a letter criticising his MP’s efforts to try to improve relations with the Jewish community.

Labour members from Liverpool contacted Jewish News to express dismay that suspended activist Hazuan Hashim was seen standing alongside Corbyn holding a microphone for him during his speech on Sunday.

Hashim was one of four members of Liverpool Wavetree CLP suspended after circulating a letter criticising their local MP Paula Barker for an article she wrote in a local Jewish newspaper expressing a wish to patch up relations with the community after the breakdown of relations under Corbyn.

In her article for the Jewish Telegraph MP Barker also said it was “deeply regrettable” that her predecessor Luciana Berger felt she could no longer stay in the party.

But after the article was published four members of the Wavertree CLP executive sent a statement to local members describing Barker’s article as taking an “inaccurate and factionally motivated position on antisemitism which was used in order to personally attack and seriously undermine Labour’s socialist programme during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.”

Labour chiefs reacted swiftly and suspended Hashim, and the three others who had signed the inflammatory statement.

The suspended officials became known as the “Wavertree 4” as their actions were defended by groups such as Labour Against The Witch-hunt, who are now banned by Labour for downplaying or denying antisemitism.

Some people generously imagine Pilger must have fallen a long way to say things like this. He’s actually always been heedless of facts & hopeless at investigative journalism. He attacked western aid agencies after fall of Khmer Rouge for noting that Vietnam was blocking food aid. pic.twitter.com/9B5MsVvQa2

— Oliver Kamm (@OliverKamm) October 3, 2021

Since Mitrovica could never adduce such an example, he encourages the reader to believe that the IDF is not only unethical in its attitude to children, but uniquely so. Ironically, his piece is a perfect example of unethical journalism.

Let readers judge for themselves who is the more reliable authority on the IDF's ethical standards.

On the one hand we have a journalist with no expertise in Middle Eastern or military affairs, who proudly bruits his hatred of all adult Jewish citizens of Israel; a journalist whose polemically pithless rodomontade can only find a home in a publication where credibility regarding Israel ranks just millimetres north of what you'd ascribe to a neo-nazi blog run by some gormless Holocaust-denying pyjama'd loser out of his mother's basement.

On the other hand, we have the judgment of high-ranking, long-time professional soldiers from democratic countries whose own militaries set a high bar for honorable behaviour, military experts who have no ideological axe to grind, and who speak from a wealth of experience facing enemies in every imaginable kind of war theatre involving a variety of cultures.

It's totally up to you whom you should trust.

Circling back to Sheridan College's hate speech policy: I call upon Sheridan College president Janet Morrison to answer a question put to her on Twitter by Honest Reporting: "Does Sheridan consider that Professor Mitrovica's comments were delivered 'thoughtfully and respectfully' according to Sheridan's hate-speech policy guidelines?"

I know that Dr. Morrison has received scores of complaints from community leaders and from Jewish students. One deeply offended Jewish student wrote a heartfelt letter of concern to Morrison, writing, "I am horrified by [Mitrovica's] suggestion that Israeli soldiers believe 'life — including the budding lives of children — is considered cheap and disposable in the pursuit of their base, parochial instincts and interests.' It is a dangerous and misleading statement that has zero credibility."

"But who's to say that one of Mitrovica's students, after reading this article, would not come to the same conclusion about a country they know little about that's thousands of kilometres away?" she wrote.

Indeed, in which case, it seems to me, Mitrovica would have "incited" hatred of Jews. Over to you, Dr. Morrison.

University of Colorado Dental School Student Dana Ziyadeh (@dziyadeh)

- refers to Jews as pigs
- tweets "F*ck the Jews [yahood in Arabic]
- tweets "Cant wait till the Jews burn in hell"

Medical professionals must be held to the highest of standards @CUAnschutz@CUAnschutzDEICEpic.twitter.com/GxcgTdfw40

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) October 4, 2021

In every conflict between Israel and Hamas, the world media tallies up death tolls and Israel is invariably accused of a “disproportionate response” by journalists, critics in non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and by the United Nations.

But when looking at the actual casualty figures, it becomes quickly apparent that, far from being a “disproportionate response,” the number of Palestinians injured or killed is actually significantly less dramatic than the news coverage would suggest, especially in comparison to worldwide deaths due to conflict. Even more so, when you look at the breakdown of casualties, there’s almost a 1:1 ratio of combatant to civilian casualties, which explains why Israel has an earned moniker for being the most moral army in the world.

In our latest Rumble.com video, learn how the media (mis)reports Palestinian casualty numbers to tarnish Israel’s reputation.

Associated Press (AP) is at it again. See: There you will find an article with a headline saying that "Israelli troops kill Five Palestinians in West Bank gunbattles" which is actually a biased report on an Israeli counter-terrorism operation against Hamas terrorists. The article terms as "militants" those terrorists who target civilians, so as to give them some kind of moral equivalency to the Israeli army, when they should be pointing out that the dead operatives were terrorists planning an attack on Jewish civilians.

Associated Press supplies international news to western news media who can’t afford their own international bureaus. Since the cost of foreign bureaus is prohibitive, Associated Press, by default, exercises a large international influence.

The AP News Agency has approximately 15,000 media customers that in turn shares its reports to half of the world population every day, writes Amotz Eyal/TPS. Its bias, therefore, is a major problem for Israeli hasbara.

Its anti-Israel bias has been well documented by:the late Manfred Gerstenfeld in “The Associated Press Has a Clear and Dangerous Anti-Israel Bias" who wrote: "One wonders whether journalists new to the AP’s Israel office get an introductory session where they are told that they must not make use of the words 'Palestinian terrorists'.”

Amotz Eyal, TPS, in “The Associated Press (AP): A history of biased and anti-Israel media” writes, citinbg examples, that "the agency, which is supposed to be international, objective and professional, repeatedly reveals serious biases in its reporting on Israel."

Bassam Tawil at Gatestone Institute, in “Why Western Media is Biased Against Israel”, writes of a reporter at AP: "The AP evidently knew that Hamad was engaged in political activities. It nevertheless chose to turn a blind eye because Hamad was directing his hate only against Israel. As far as the AP is concerned, the moment Hamad spoke out against the brutality and repressive measures of the Palestinian Authority security forces, he crossed a red line. That is when he was informed of the decision to terminate his employment."

A state-of-the-art security command center was unveiled this week by the Secure Community Network to ensure that the Jewish community is prepared in the event of any violence or threats.

Dubbed the National Jewish Security Operations Command Center, JSOCC was built with funding by private donors and gives the SCN – the security arm of the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations – a high-tech, centralized location where its intelligence analysts and security professionals can monitor and track threats to the Jewish community and coordinate responses with its partners including local, state and federal law enforcement.

"The JSOCC will enhance our ability to provide greater protection and improved response time more effectively and efficiently, moving us into a more proactive position to address security concerns and threats with key partners from law enforcement to Jewish communities," Michael Masters, national director and CEO of SCN, told Jewish News Syndicate.

According to Masters, the command center, which is located in Chicago, will be staffed 16 hours a day, but can be increased to 24 hours a day if needed. It includes a 16-foot video wall to allow for "optimal incident track and response," as well as individual workstations. JSOCC can seat eight people, but has an overflow capacity to accommodate additional staff in the event of a major incident.

It is, he said, "a significant step forward in protecting our people."

"We are in the most complex and dynamic threat environment we have seen. In many years, recent data from the FBI and DHS, along with our own assessment and that of partners like the [Anti-Defamation League] confirms this," Masters said. "This past week, [FBI Director Christopher Wray] testified that the number of domestic terrorism cases doubled in the last year – roughly three cases a day are being opened."

As American Jewish communities have increasingly been the target of antisemitic harassment and violence over the past year, the Jewish Federations of North America announced a $54 million campaign to help deliver the resources and know-how needed to secure their institutions.

The three-year LiveSecure campaign aims to ensure that each of the 146 US communities with a Jewish Federation will have a community security initiative, up from 45 today.

“Together through our LiveSecure campaign, we are working to make sure that the entire Federation system has undertaken this task, and that all of them can continue to upgrade their efforts to meet the new risks and adapt newly-developed best practices in security,” Jewish Federations President and CEO Eric Fingerhut said at the organizations annual general assembly on Sunday.

Also speaking at the event, Israeli President Isaac Herzog called for forging “alliances with other communities that have been the targets of hate.”

“We must ensure that Jews are safe to be Jews in America and elsewhere around the world,” Herzog said.

Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley cautioned that there is an “urgent need to protect Jewish communities” and that the rise in antisemitism is “proof that we are surrounded by a moral pandemic.”

New York Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres said: “We are sitting on a powder keg of antisemitism, and the Jewish community and all of us cannot afford to be complacent. All of us in public life have an obligation to speak out forcefully against extremism, no matter what form it takes.”

Jewish organizations opposed to Belgium’s recently reaffirmed ban on religious slaughtering have been joined by two of the country’s major Muslim organizations.

Belgium’s Constitutional Court last Thursday upheld the country’s ban on all slaughter of animals that are not stunned beforehand. Both Jewish and Muslim religious dietary laws do not allow for stunning the animal, meaning the ban effectively makes both kosher and haram slaughter illegal.

The Brussels Times reported Sunday that the Executive Council of the Muslims of Belgium (EMB) and the Coordinating Council of the Islamic Institutions of Belgium are considering an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the issue.

The organizations stated that “the current religious slaughter techniques constitute a fully-fledged alternative to stunning and are perfectly compatible with the requirements of public health, food safety, and animal welfare.”

They asserted that the ban is intended to assuage the sensitivities of consumers, and has no real-world benefits.

Following the court’s ruling, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER), said that while his group was “disappointed with today’s judgement, we are certainly not surprised as it upholds the status quo in Belgium.”

The ruling, he said, “brings Belgium into line with those few other countries whose bans on shechita date from the Nazi era.”

World Jewish Congress (WJC) President Ronald Lauder said that the decision was “a continued maneuver to discriminate against Belgium’s Jewish and Muslim citizens.”

American rockers Counting Crows will be performing for the first time in Israel next year, Live Nation Israel announced Monday. The show will take place on April 20 at Park Ra’anana.

The California-based band is best known for their iconic song “Mr. Jones” off of their smash 1993 debut album August and Everything After, but have generated a strong catalog of durable songs and energetic live shows during the past three decades.

The band’s Jewish singer and lyricist Adam Duritz has been one of rock’s most colorful showmen and articulate writers. He sported trademark dreadlocks for much of the band’s career but shaved them off two years ago.

Jerusalem has many Instagram-worthy spots. If you’re looking to liven up your Instagram feed or just want to explore Jerusalem, searching out these places will be not only an enjoyable task, but you will learn much about Jerusalem’s rich history as you explore the remarkable city sites.

“I ♥️ JLM”
This sculpture (see above) is in Tzahal Square between City Hall and the Jaffa Gate entrance into the Old City of Jerusalem. It is reminiscent of many others around the world and has become a major tourist attraction. You will invariably find people posing with this iconic sign. Whether you’re standing or sitting or with a group of people, this landmark makes for a fun post to show your love for Jerusalem.

2. Western Wall (Kotel)


One of the most famous places in all of Jerusalem and a very religious and spiritual site for Jews, the very photogenic Western Wall attracts people from around the world. It is a small segment of the ancient retaining wall of the Second Temple (516 BCE-70 CE) and was built by Herod the Great, the Roman-appointed king of Judea.

Has the true location of Noah's Ark finally been ascertained? Archaeologists claim to have found a giant shape in the Turkish mountains that matches the shape and dimensions of the iconic biblical craft, but geologists insist that this mountainous formation is simply that – a rock.

Noah's Ark is the vessel in the Genesis flood narrative through which God spares Noah, his family, and examples of all the world's animals from a world-engulfing flood. The story is repeated in various forms in dozens of ancient cultures depicting massive floods, but for the most part, geologists and historians find the Genesis flood myth irreconcilable with the modern understanding of fossil records of the planet's age.

Historical records show that the hunt for the ark dates back to the time of Eusebius of Caesarea (275–339 CE), but no physical proof of the Ark has ever been found.

Now, archaeologists with the Noah's Ark Scans project said that using advanced 3D scans, they have located a giant shape in the Turkish mountains the proportions of which match the biblical descriptions of Noah's Ark.

The discovery was made in the Durupinar site on Mount Tendurek in eastern Turkey, the area believed to be the location of Mount Ararat – the mythical resting place of Noah's Ark, as described in the Book of Genesis.

Researcher Andrew Jones and lead scientist Dr. Fethi Ahmet Yüksel of the Department of Geophysical Engineering, Applied Geophysics Department of Istanbul University told British media that 3D scans of the area discovered a formation of the exact length of the ark, detailed in the bible as being around 150 meters, or 300 cubits in Biblical terms.

"Such parallel line and right angles below the surface is something you would not expect to see in a natural, geologic formation, ... but these results are what you would expect to see if this is a man-made boat matching the Biblical requirements of Noah's Ark," Jones was cited as saying by several media outlets.

Meet Salma Abu Ful, an Israeli Muslim and one of Israel’s finest surgeons at just 34. As minority within a minority, she’s pushing the glass ceiling for women in the field. “I want to progress and show Arab women and Arab girls that we are capable of engaging in this profession.” pic.twitter.com/KSKYsLB37e

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) October 3, 2021

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UN security personnel stopped Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan from bringing a display poster into the General Assembly on Monday showing a social-media post by a UNRWA teacher that glorified Hitler.

“I see it as a very dangerous precedent here, preventing my freedom of expression, preventing my freedom of speech and hiding the truth from the UN,” Erdan said during his public speech to the UNGA.

He had meant to display the post during a discussion on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees so that he could illustrate his concern about the problem of incitement in UNRWA schools.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan decrying the UN's prevention of his display of pro-Hitler posts by an UNRWA teacher, October 4, 2021.

“I am shocked because I brought here with me a photo of a UNRWA teacher’s post glorifying the most horrific mass murderer in history, Adolf Hitler,” Erdan said. “Unfortunately, shockingly, I was prevented from bringing in this photo in order to share this proof with the other distinguished ambassadors here.”

UN protocol prevents ambassadors from using props when delivering speeches, a UN representative told The Jerusalem Post.

However, heads of state who speak during the high-level opening sessions that take place every September can do so, the representative added.

Statement led by Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia in coordination with World Jewish Congress

At least 43 countries signed a statement pledging to combat antisemitism that was issued at the 48th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva on Monday.

The statement was led by Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia with the coordination of the World Jewish Congress.

Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg warned of the dangers of antisemitism in a video statement, saying that "we will remain steadfast in our pledge, never again."

"Even 75 years after the end of World War II it is a tragic reality that antisemitism is not a thing of the past," Schallenberg said. "This venom still exists, right in the midst of our societies. This is why today we declare our unequivocal solidarity in the face of hatred."

The statement was read at the start of a debate on racism, antisemitism and the growing threat from hate speech and the glorification of Nazism.

Countries that signed the declaration include: Israel, Germany, the United States, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Honduras, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Australia, the United Kingdom, Greece, Belgium, Cyprus, Ukraine, Cameroon, Japan, Slovenia, Argentina, Armenia, Croatia, Finland, New Zealand, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Poland, Moldova, the Netherlands, Latvia, Romania, Seychelles, Lithuania, Estonia, Uruguay, Norway and Sweden.

Also at the UNHRC special session on Monday, the World Jewish Congress and the Muslim World League issued a joint a statement calling for the protection of human rights for all in what is the first joint declaration between Jewish and Muslim organizations at a UN body.

The fall season of ?@JIPodcast? kicks off with ?@mikepompeo?. Topics: Iran, Afghanistan, Abraham Accords, Israel & the possible reopening of a consulate in Jerusalem. Plus: ?@jarrodbernstein? & I discuss Iron Dome funding & @Unilever. https://t.co/AS4mtMIBIu

— Richard Goldberg (@rich_goldberg) October 5, 2021

Why are attacks carried out by Israeli radicals that are denounced by Jerusalem more worthy of attention from media outlets and diplomats than the non-stop campaign of violence perpetrated by Palestinians with backing from their leadership?

On September 28, on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, dozens of Israelis and Palestinians clashed in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills. According to eyewitnesses, the violence started in the wake of reports that Israelis had stabbed sheep owned by a Palestinian herder in al-Mufaqara. Israeli extremists went on to injure at least 12 Palestinians, including a three-year-old boy apparently hit by rocks thrown inside his house.

Indeed, videos published by Palestinian media (see here and here) show masked Israelis attacking al-Mufaqara’s residents and damaging their property. In addition, Hebrew media published photos of Arab stone-throwers. According to reports, three Israeli civilians, as well as an IDF soldier, were lightly wounded in the confrontation.

In an attempt to de-escalate the situation, Israeli troops declared al-Mufaqara a closed zone. Defying the military order, several Israelis nevertheless tried to reach the town. Footage from a helmet camera, released on Thursday by Israel’s public broadcaster, documented how at least one Israeli civilian — seemingly under the influence of alcohol — assaulted soldiers enforcing the closure.

Police officers arrested two agitators, a Jew and a Palestinian, on the spot. Five more Jewish suspects — three adults and two minors — were apprehended in the days that followed.

As was the case when some Israelis shouted racist slogans at a Jerusalem march, officials immediately condemned the unacceptable “violent rampage of lawbreakers” perpetrated in the Palestinian village. In a statement, Hebron Hills Council head Yochai Damari said, “Our way is not violence. Not against soldiers and not against Arabs.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid went a step further, condemning the incident as “terror.”

On September 30, 2021, the London-based Qatari Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily reported on a meeting that took place that day between Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh and Israeli Arab journalists, including a correspondent for Al-Quds Al-Arabi. According to the report, Shtayyeh asked that the meeting, which took place in his office, not be recorded. In the meeting, he said that Israel is not interested in a solution to the Palestinian issue – neither the two-state solution nor the one-state solution – and persists in its efforts to fragment the Palestinian people and ignore its cause. Given this reality, he said, there will be no choice but to go back to the starting point of the Palestinian issue in 1948, and in that situation the Palestinian people "from the river to the sea" will have a single united leadership. He also stated that Israel is bound to "die demographically since the Jewish human reservoir in the world has dwindled." He added that, in a meeting one month ago in Ramallah between PA President Mahmoud 'Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Benny Gantz, the former said that if the two-state solution was not implemented, the solution would be to return to the 1947 partition resolution. Ganz, said Shtayyeh, was astonished by the Palestinian president's words.

According to the report, Shtayyeh also expressed disappointment in the current U.S. administration which, he said, has promised to reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem and the PLO offices in Washington, and to renew funding to organizations aiding the Palestinians, but in practice has done almost nothing to fulfill these promises.

It should be noted that, in his speech at the September 24, 2021 UN General Assembly, 'Abbas gave Israel an ultimatum, saying it has one year to withdraw to the 1967 borders and reach a permanent solution with the Palestinians, otherwise the Palestinians will revoke their recognition of Israel. He stressed that, in such a situation, various options will be available, including "returning to a solution based on the partition plan of resolution 181 (II), adopted in 1947, which gives the State of Palestine 44% of the land," and appealing to the International Court of Justice "on the issue of the legality of the occupation of the land of the Palestinian state."[1]

Fatah Leader in Jenin Ata Abu Rumeileh: The Battle Will Only Be Over when the Occupation Is Removed from All of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea #Palestinians#Fatahpic.twitter.com/awF7KZ0KId

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 5, 2021

President Mahmoud Abbas meets with US envoy Hady Amr, calls for US pressure on Israel and reiterates demand for holding international peace conference. pic.twitter.com/h3QGfZ1l6W

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) October 4, 2021

Israeli-Cypriot billionaire Teddy Sagi, who escaped an assassination attempt in Cyprus last week, is downplaying the incident, telling Channel 12 News on Monday that while he “thanks all relevant officials,” the dramatic investigation in Nicosia “has nothing to do” with him.

Cypriot authorities announced last Tuesday that they had arrested an Azeri national on suspicion that he had been hired to target Israelis in Cyprus. The suspect, 38, was arrested in Engomi, in western Nicosia, following an undercover investigation. At the time of his arrest, he was found in possession of a handgun with a silencer and is said to have been casing the office building where Sagi’s operations are headquartered on the island.

He also reportedly had a target list of at least five individuals, including Sagi.

Speaking with Channel 12, the Israeli tycoon said that while media reports made the events sound “very scary,” he was “never warned to leave” the eastern Mediterranean island nation, but rather decided to depart Cyprus in accordance with his regular business schedule.

Sagi, 49, is the founder of gambling software company Playtech and owns Camden Market in London. He splits his time between the United Kingdom, Cyprus and Israel. According to Forbes, he is worth $5.6 billion, making him the fourth richest person in Israel.

“It’s been a fascinating 24 hours,” he said. “At the end of the day, the truth has come out, for which I’m very glad. I continue about my business as usual.”

When early reports of the assassination plot emerged, Cypriot media pointed the finger at Iran, saying the plot may have been part of a plan to target high-profile Israelis as part of the shadow war being waged between the Jewish state and the Islamic republic.

In fact, the attack was not specifically targeting Sagi, Sidi said; rather, the Iranian-hired hit man arrested in Cyprus was trying to attack Israeli businessmen, generally.

When Sidi sent out his message, it seemed unusual, but it was easily chalked up to the shadow war between Israel and Iran, as well as the importance in highlighting to the world that Iran is a bad actor seeking to annihilate Israel.

Various outlets reported that the attempted murder of Sagi and others was an Iranian revenge mission; some tied it to the Mossad killing Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the leader of Iran’s nuclear program, late last year.

But new details emerging about the Arad-related operation could mean that the two matters are related.

The Mossad kidnapped an Iranian general based in Syria and took him to an African state and interrogated him, before letting him go, London-based Arabic newspaper Rai al-Youm reported the following day. Iran reportedly found out that the Mossad was responsible for the capture.

The Iranian operation in Cyprus was retaliation for the kidnapping of the general, Rai al-Youm speculated.

Although Iran has never needed a reason to attack Israelis, it is a distinct possibility that the kidnapping was the impetus.

Bennett and his office have been reticent to reveal more about the operation to garner details about Arad, other than to insist it was not a failure, though defense sources say no information was actually found.

The mysterious announcement could have been a way to get ahead of the news cycle of details of the Mossad operation that could have been revealed by local or foreign press following the trail of the attempt to kill Sagi.

A recent Mossad operation that aimed to discover information about the whereabouts of missing Israeli airman Ron Arad saw agents kidnap an Iranian general for interrogation, according to an Arabic-language report.

Mossad agents took the man from Syria to an unnamed African country, interrogated him there, and eventually released him, the London-based Rai al-Youm online newspaper reported on Monday.

The report, which was prominently cited in Hebrew media Tuesday amid considerable confusion and contradictory reports regarding the recent Mossad operation, provided no further details on the alleged abduction.

Speaking at the opening of the winter Knesset session on Monday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett revealed that Mossad agents recently went on a mission to uncover the whereabouts of Arad, an Israeli Air Force navigator who was captured in 1986 and was last heard from in 1988.

Initial accounts in several Hebrew media outlets late Monday portrayed the operation as entirely unsuccessful, and accused Bennett of revealing its existence for political reasons. Channel 12 news cited Mossad chief David Barnea as calling the operation courageous, daring and complex but nonetheless a “failure” in an internal meeting.

But on Tuesday, the same TV channel reported that Barnea actually asked for Bennett to reveal the operation and that “the praise and recognition for the Mossad sacrificing to return Arad and other captives and MIAs was important for members of the organization along with the praise for soldiers.” The network also said that Barnea sent a letter to the organization’s staff portraying the operation as a major success.

The Mossad reportedly carried out an operation to extract DNA from a body buried in Nabi Sheet village in Lebanon in September, according to a report by Al-Arabiya.

DNA was reportedly taken from a body buried in Lebanon to examine the possibility that the body may be Ron Arad.

A second concurrent operation, in Syria, involved the kidnapping and interrogation of a retired Iranian general to glean what information he may have regarding the whereabouts of the long-missing soldier. He was later released.

Additionally, there was an indication that Iran may have tried to respond to this development by trying to assassinate an Israeli businessman in Cyprus.

The European-funded A.M. Qattan Foundation recently completed a training course for Palestinian teachers in the Hebron area “in partnership with the supervisory unit of the North Hebron Directorate of Education” - i.e., a branch of the PA Ministry of Education. The foundation, which according to its website is an “independent, not-for-profit developmental organization” based in the UK with a branch in the PA, reported that the “learning experience” for 50 English and Arabic teachers was “applied to one of the 5th grade lessons titled ‘Dalal Mughrabi’.” [Website of the A.M. Qattan Foundation]

Terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi led the most lethal terror attack in Israel's history in which terrorists killed 37 civilians, among them these 12 children:​

The instructors from the foundation saw no problem choosing educational material for young children that glorifies the most lethal terror attack in Israel's history and honors the murderer who led it.

The material should certainly bother the foundation’s many European donors.

The A.M. Qattan Foundation lists among its “co-funding partners” the EU, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, UNICEF, and UNRWA. [Website of the A.M. Qattan Foundation, accessed Aug. 30, 2021]

The A.M. Qattan Foundation did not elaborate further on what educational material was used other than stating that it was “one of the 5th grade lessons titled ‘Dalal Mughrabi’.”

However, since the North Hebron Directorate of Education - which is a branch of the PA Ministry of Education - was a partner in the training course, they probably used the PA’s 5th Grade Arabic Language schoolbook. Palestinian Media Watch translated the chapter on terrorist Dalal Mughrabi of the book published in 2017, which glorifies the murderer as follows:
“Dalal rode the sea while leading her group of self-sacrificing fighters… . Dalal and her group snuck ashore. Dalal took a handful of the soil of her bleeding homeland (i.e., Israel's coast), and passionately inhaled its scent… ‘We are a people who demands its right to its homeland, which you have stolen.' Then she took out a flag of Palestine from her bag, kissed it, and hung it inside the bus… Dalal and eight of her heroic squad members ascended to Heaven as Martyrs… Dalal… watered the soil of Palestine with her pure blood, and brought to bloom a history full of unrelenting revolution."

[PA 5th Grade Arabic Language Schoolbook, Part B, 2017]

Hebron: Palestinian security forces raided and searched a number of homes belonging to relatives of anti-corruption activist Nizar Banat, who was beaten to death by Palestinian security officers in June. pic.twitter.com/VqacZbG5dw

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) October 5, 2021

Supporters of the current Palestinian Authority president and his ruling faction remain wary of the instability that threatens to occur upon the passing of that already-frail leader, and aim to guarantee a smooth transition to a successor despot who will also suppress dissent, imprison political rivals, intimidate journalists into silence, beat protesters, and both glorify and incite violence against Jews.

Mahmoud Abbas, who will turn 86 next month, has yet to name a successor or initiate any processes through which Palestinians may choose one. American and European diplomats sounded a tone of caution on the matter in numerous conversations over the last several months, with emphasis on the question of who will guarantee the continued abuse of power, corruption, cronyism, lifetime payments to terrorists, official antisemitism, and utter disregard for the notion of putting people above politics once Abbas dies, is incapacitated, or steps down.

“Much of American foreign policy over the last decades has relied on strongmen to impose decisions on the populace in the various non-democratic nations,” explained US Assistant Secretary of State for Near-Eastern Affairs Pupp Etrejeem. “It’s much easier to deal with just one guy – let’s face it; it’s always a guy – and his interests than it is to try to win over enough of a population to get some democracy behind us. Just look how hard it is to convince our own countrymen we’re not bollixing everything up! So naturally, we favor despots. Abbas is the go-to guy for the Palestinians, just as Arafat was before him. If he doesn’t find a way soon to designate his replacement, the peaceful transfer of dictatorship will be in peril.”

Top US officials will tell their Israeli counterparts on Tuesday that the Biden administration remains committed to diplomacy with Iran, but if necessary would be prepared to pursue “other avenues” to ensure Tehran does not acquire a nuclear weapon, a senior US official said.

A visit to Washington by Israel’s national security adviser, Eyal Hulata, will allow the two allies to share intelligence and develop a “baseline assessment” of how far Tehran’s nuclear program has advanced, the official said.

Under a 2015 deal, Iran curbed its uranium enrichment program, a possible pathway to nuclear arms, in return for the lifting of economic sanctions. Then-US President Donald Trump quit the deal in 2018 and the Israeli government opposes US efforts to revive it.

In broad terms, US experts believe the time it would take Iran to achieve nuclear “breakout” — enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb — has “gone from about 12 months down to a period of about a few months” since Trump pulled out of the pact, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Obviously that is quite alarming,” the official told reporters ahead of Hulata’s talks with US national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Iran has consistently denied it is developing nuclear weapons.

Echoing President Joe Biden’s comments in a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in August, the official said: “We of course remain committed to a diplomatic path.”

“But obviously if that doesn’t work there are other avenues to pursue, and we are fully committed to ensuring that Iran never develops a nuclear weapon.”

Iran on Tuesday urged the UN atomic agency to clearly condemn a “sabotage” attack on a nuclear facility west of Tehran that it has accused Israel of carrying out.

Tehran said on June 23 that it had thwarted the attack on the building belonging to its own nuclear agency near Karaj, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the capital.

At the time, it did not identify the nature of the attack, with state television saying only that “saboteurs failed to carry out their plan.”

On Sunday, Iran’s atomic agency chief Mohammad Eslami said the UN watchdog and Western powers had failed to condemn the “terrorist act” that “severely damaged” the site.

“The latest act of sabotage by the occupation regime in Jerusalem against our country’s nuclear program was the terrorist attack on the TESA complex in Karaj,” the official IRNA news agency said on Tuesday.

It repeated Eslami’s accusation that the site was targeted by Israel, adding that the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency “must therefore clarify its position on this incident.”

ayatollah, here's a reminderhttps://t.co/OV1ssIqC87

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 4, 2021

Iran’s media has begun to up the rhetoric against Azerbaijan, with a headline claiming that Baku has “denied the presence of the Zionist regime near the border with Iran,” a claim that appears to contrast with its insinuation that Israel’s close relationship with Azerbaijan is a threat to Tehran.

The larger context is that Iran has carried out military maneuvers near the border with Azerbaijan and Armenia and hosted an Armenian delegation, signaling its commitment to a robust policy that wants the status quo maintained on the border.

What’s really going on here? A year ago, Azerbaijan launched a war against Armenian forces in the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh. In Baku’s view, backed by Turkey, the Armenians had for too long dominated disputed areas that they captured in the 1990s. In Armenian’s view, these were historical lands where Armenians lived and which the Soviet Union had arbitrarily made an autonomous part of the Azeri Soviet republic in the 20th century.

Regardless of who is correct in this dispute, it shares similarities to many others such as in Northern Cyprus, the West Bank and other places. What matters is that a rising and increasingly powerful Azerbaijan is asserting itself militarily.

Israel and Iran’s northern neighbor enjoy close relations and Baku has acquired a large number of Israeli-made drones in recent decades, becoming a pioneering drone power. Azerbaijan frequently shows off Israeli-made drones and boasts of their effectiveness. Recent videos posted online even appeared to show IAI Harop drones in launch formation on the back of trucks being toured by Azeri leader Ilham Aliyev, according to videos on Twitter.

2/2 Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian: We Informed the Republic of Azerbaijan that Iran Would Never Tolerate the Presence of the “Artificial” Zionist Regime Near Its Borders pic.twitter.com/8VyTc7incW

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 5, 2021

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I am, quite simply, blown away by Dara Horn’s impeccable and original research, relentless courage, and sheer eloquence as contained in her latest book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports From A Haunted Present.

I think that Horn is rather like Ruth Wisse, only younger. And, it is no accident that they are both steeped in Yiddish literature and Jewish sacred texts. In addition, both are supremely literary Ladies—Grand Dames, really.

Please understand who exactly is being overwhelmed here. And overjoyed, because Horn is almost half my age. In her hands, the work of truth-telling against all odds, continues.

By 2000-2001, I was already writing The New Anti-Semitism and have proudly been seen as a traitor in certain circles ever since I published it in 2003. In lectures, I’d ventured the idea that Jewish deaths have long been worshipped as “redemptive” by Christians—but, like Horn, I was also made uneasy by the unsettling reverence that Jewish people manifested when they visited Holocaust exhibits.

In 2006, I published “How a Holocaust Happens,” a piece in which I wrote:

“As dangerous as Holocaust denial is, Holocaust Memorialization may also function as a form of denial…it may allow us the luxury—and the consolation—of assuming that the ‘worst’ has already happened. Alas, this may not be true. Certain intellectuals, Jews among them, attempt to hide their rabid Jew-hatred by focusing on the European Holocaust—on all the dead Jews—as a way of diverting attention from the impending (slow motion) Holocaust against living Jews. Because they oppose what was done to the Jews in World War Two, they feel justified, credentialed, to say that today’s attacks on Israel are ‘justified,’ that the Palestinians are now the true victims, (the ‘new Jews’ in a sense), and the Israeli Jews are their ‘Nazi’ persecutors.”

I am so glad to say that Horn has taken my insights to a whole other level.

Her essay on Anne Frank is masterful. She reminds us of the vast tourist industry that has grown up with visitors to Anne’s hidden room—just as if “people love dead Jews.” But there’s more, much more, especially the bizarre incidents in which Museum employees were prohibited from wearing yarmulkes—lest the Anne Frank House be seen as losing its “neutrality.”

Several years ago, we saw this occur with the Women’s March, which is absolutely a necessary and just cause. Yet instead of being able to grow the movement and gain allies across the aisle in fighting against sexual assault and sexual harassment, the co-founders of the Women’s March damaged the credibility of the movement by making multiple inflammatory and antisemitic comments, which frankly have nothing to do with the fight for women’s equality.

We saw a similar phenomenon with Black Lives Matter inserting anti-Israel positions based on outright lies into its agenda.

Unfortunately, these are just a few of many examples of how anti-Israel interests have made a concerted effort to dump Palestine onto any and every cause they possibly can, inserting the issue in debates that have absolutely no association whatsoever with Israel and the Palestinians or even the Middle East. These efforts polarize important discussions that should be taking place in society, be they racial inequalities, feminism, or voting rights.

For the vice president of the United States to fall into the trap of labeling outright lies as “your truth” sets a terrible example for the rest of society from a leader who absolutely knows better.

While her office has clarified her position, noting that, “the vice president strongly disagrees with the student’s characterization of Israel,” it’s too little, too late. Her response already gave legitimacy to anti-Israel lies when she had the perfect opportunity to set an example and take a stand for the truth the way any leader should.

The fact of the matter is that truth is not subjective. The second-highest elected official in the United States is not doing our undergraduates any favors by encouraging them to believe they can imagine the truth to be anything they want. And in this case, the truth is that the state of Israel is America's great and good ally which has flourished for more than seven decades as the only democracy in the Middle East, and is a critical security partner. Our alliance has enjoyed robust, bipartisan support in the United States Congress for decades, which both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris claim is their administration's policy.

It is also a truth, however inconvenient, that Jews are the disproportionate targets of violent crimes both in the United States and around the globe. Failure to respond to false assertions that demonize Jews implicitly condones this violence. Harris' shameful episode happened to have occurred on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre, which took place at the end of September, 1941.

Nazi forces had entered Kiev a month before, and booby traps left by retreating Soviet forces destroyed some of the buildings they occupied, causing significant casualties. Whether they knew who the real perpetrators were or not, the Nazis took advantage of the situation to scapegoat the remaining Ukrainian Jewish population. They swiftly massacred 33,771 Jews at the Babi Yar ravine, creating one of the largest mass graves in history. As the events of World War II become more distant in time, they run the risk of becoming abstract. Our contemporaries forget all too easily how the long, ugly history of anti-Semitism, and its tacit acceptance, erupted into the Holocaust.

Rather than gloss over pernicious bigotry, Harris would have done better to treat the George Mason student to a history lesson on what such attacks have led to in the past. "Never forget" doesn't mean we assume the Holocaust can never happen again. It means we all do everything we can, in ways great and small, to vigilantly oppose this evil. After the flare up of violence in Gaza this spring, there was a disturbing trend in both Europe and America of attacks on any and all Jews as surrogates for Israel, regardless of their citizenship. The way to reverse this trend is not to legitimize it as some sort of subjective personal truth, then have your communications team issue a "clarifying" statement. It is to personally and unequivocally reject false allegations, and forcefully defend the U.S. alliance with the Jewish state.

A survivor of the Pittsburgh massacre returns to the synagogue where the shooting took place

On Tuesday, the day that President Trump visited Tree of Life, Daniel Leger was in the hospital for the fourth day in a row. He was lying in bed, a breathing tube down his throat. He was with his wife, Ellen; his two grown sons, Noah, who was forty-five, and Jake, forty-two, as well as Noah’s wife, Chris. His ex-wife, Jo, had been in and out and may have been there this day—he couldn’t remember for sure. His congregation, Dor Hadash, was praying for him. He had been through multiple surgeries and was in stable condition. It was time, his doctors thought, to remove the tube. After the slow process of extubation was completed, Leger immediately tried to speak. “His voice is all craggly and scraggly,” said Ellen, “and I hear him say argh argh argh. And I can’t understand. And then I understand—he’s saying the Sh’ma”—the central prayer of Judaism, attesting to the singularity of God. Leger gasped for more air and then, looking at his family around him, said, “I love you all so much.” And then he said something that showed that he knew exactly what had happened to him. He said, “May God forgive him.” “Then I knew,” Ellen said, “that he was completely intact, because that is completely his thinking. That is who he is.”

Leger was released from the hospital on November 26, 2018, almost a month to the day after he had been shot in the abdomen and pelvis and nearly bled to death, sprawled on a staircase at Tree of Life. Leger felt ready to get back to his reading, his cello, his dogs and cats, and, in good time, his job as a nurse and hospital chaplain. His doctors agreed that he was ready to resume life at home.

The weeks ahead were not easy. Before the shooting, Leger had been a seventy-year-old who didn’t feel seventy, but now, for the first time in his life, he really felt his age, and his fund of energy, always limitless, was now frustratingly finite. He was napping all the time. It would be a while, he realized, before he could return to work. In his first couple of months at home, it was all he could do to walk the dogs or get to the supermarket.

The European Commission released on Tuesday its first official strategy on fighting antisemitism and promoting Jewish life, which includes millions in funding to secure Jewish sites.

The 26-page program has three central goals — preventing antisemitism in all its forms, protecting and fostering Jewish life, and promoting Holocaust research, education, and remembrance.

“We want to see Jewish life thriving again in the heart of our communities,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “This is how it should be. The strategy we are presenting today is a step change in how we respond to antisemitism. Europe can only prosper when its Jewish communities feel safe and prosper.”

The “EU Strategy on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life (2021-2030)” proposed a number of concrete measures.

To fight antisemitism, the Commission will lead the creation of a network of organizations across Europe to flag antisemitism content online, and will develop counternarratives. It will also work with tech companies and retailers to prevent the online sale of Nazi-themed merchandise.

One of our greatest priorities in Europe is to preserve and increase awareness of the Holocaust by means of educational programming. A recent survey by The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (the Claims Conference), the organization handling reparations for Jews despoiled by the Nazi state during the Holocaust, finds a woeful lack of Holocaust awareness even in the United States. Fully 30% of Americans – and more than 40% of millennials – averred that the number of six million murdered Jews was doubtful or exaggerated. Frequent polls conducted in Europe by the Anti-Defamation League find significant percentages of European populations claiming that Jews have too much power and care too much about the Holocaust. Our work is clearly cut out for us. We will not be remiss in our duties.

The American Jewish community has several tools to advance education, awareness and/or prevention around antisemitism and the Holocaust. We work with our partners in government, including the US Department of State’s Special Envoy on Holocaust Issues. We advocate for mandatory Holocaust education in various American states and in European countries. And we championed the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which among other insightful examples, draws a link between extreme forms of anti-Israel activity and antisemitism. Our member organizations operate offices in Paris, Berlin, London, Brussels, Warsaw and in other European cities – and we are on a constant lookout for new partners in these places and to deepen our collaborations with existing ones.

Last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Babyn Yar was “a black page inscribed in the common past of the Ukrainian and Jewish people. We bow our heads before all the victims of Babyn Yar. And we have no right to forget these terrible crimes,” he said. And his government is hosting a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of that barbarism.

I am honored that I will be present to join him in Kyiv this very week for this solemn occasion, and I hope to return home with an even deeper understanding of the atrocities that befell our people during the horrific period it will recall. But sadly, as the ongoing threat of antisemitism still plagues us to this day, we must continue to fight with all we have and with all the true allies we can muster.

A Telegraph article by US correspondent Josie Ensor (“US politics entering ‘new era of Left wing power’ led by fiery New York progressives”, Oct. 2) celebrated AOC and her fellow far-left members of Congress, but failed to inform readers about the dark side of the group known as the “Squad”.

Though the piece focuses primarily on AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Ortez), Ensor advances the narrative that the Squad’s six-member gang is re-shaping Democratic politics, and moving the party in a more progressive direction.

Such is the growing influence of the 31-year-old former bartender from the Bronx and her six-member gang of progressives known as the “Squad”, that they have successfully managed to hold up the centrepiece policy as they demand America spends – and taxes – more.

First, though AOC was born in the Bronx, her family left the city when she was five, moving to the wealthy suburb of Yorktown Heights, where she lived until leaving to attend college at the prestigious Boston University. Also, the reason the Squad was able to hold up Biden’s “centrepiece policy” isn’t due to their organic influence, but because the Democrats hold an extremely slim majority in the House of Representatives, which can allow them to leverage their meager numbers to hold up legislation. As even Ensor acknowledges, AOC has “no formal party leadership role”.

But, by far the most egregious misrepresentation of the “Squad” – consisting of AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush – is Ensor’s omission of their obsessive hostility towards Israel, which has included the rejection of Israel’s right to exist, and other expressions which constitute antisemitism according to the IHRA Working Definition. We’ve documented the anti-Jewish rhetoric of Omar and Tlaib – the most outspoken Israel haters among the Squad – on these pages.

The “Squad” may be, as Ensor notes, “disproportionately non-white”, but they’re also disproportionately hostile to Jews.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D), who helped lead an attempt by left-wing lawmakers to block US funding for Israel’s Iron Dome, defended on MSNBC her decision to vote “present” on a bill to support the air defense system.

Ocasio-Cortez claimed to interviewer Mehdi Hassan on Monday that the effort to defund Iron Dome was motivated by concerns over procedure, and not ideology, even though several of her allies, including Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, explicitly declared otherwise.

“When you want funding for use for preschool here in the United States, if you want funding for any sort of domestic priority, it must go through … different committee hearings, markups, etc.,” she claimed, “and here, just casually, a billion dollars was fast-tracked, no committee markup.”

“Leadership attempted to kind of slip in an extra billion dollars [for Iron Dome] into routine legislation,” she asserted.

She followed this with the false claim: “This funding was in addition to the already fully-funded Iron Dome, but Democratic leadership decided to run with the narrative that this was, in fact — to vote against it was to defund the Iron Dome, which sends many, many, many of our constituents into a panic.”

In fact, the funding proposed by the standalone bill was specifically designated to replenish the interceptor projectiles used to destroy incoming rockets during Israel’s conflict in May with Hamas.

The stupidity of @AOC here is mind-boggling. All but 9 members of Congress, from the left and right, voted for #IronDome funding. There is nothing “contentious” about this and to say otherwise, AOC, is to say you want more Israelis dead. pic.twitter.com/9YFTwh1HKr

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) October 4, 2021

It is 1962 and neo-Nazism is on the rise in Ridley Road. A lavish production leading BBC One’s autumn schedule, the four-part drama tells the story of Vivien Epstein (Agnes O’Casey), a Jewish hairdresser from Manchester, who arrives in a London still struggling to recover from the Second World War.

It is uncomfortably resonant. Characters talk of the descent of “our once great empire”, of “awakening”, of using “alien labour to undercut wages”. In the first episode, a yeshiva – a place of Jewish study – is attacked; today, the UK’s Jews still need security, and if that doesn’t disturb you, it should: there are no guards to the entrance of the village church fête. Google and you will find the world of anti-vaccine conspiracies is awash with anti-Semitism.

Sarah Solemani’s script, adapted from Jo Bloom’s 2014 book, is tense, shot through with bitter humour, and has been brought to the screen with tremendous attention to detail. Eddie Marsan is wonderful as Vivien’s dodgy East End uncle. He may not be Jewish, but his performance feels authentic.

An article from BBC News Magazine comments on the 70th anniversary (today) of the so-called Battle of Cable Street, in which 100,000 protestors reputedly repelled a march by the followers of Sir Oswald Mosley, and asks: “Seventy years ago, the Battle of Cable Street saw Jews and left-wingers stop fascist Blackshirts marching through east London. But is it still important?”

The answer is that it never was important. The historian Robert Skidelsky wrote a disturbingly sympathetic biography of Mosley (which thirty years later should be supplemented with the badly written but well researched and reliable Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism by Stephen Dorrill), but he does make the right point in this article: “It is partly true the opposition stopped Mosley from marching, but the reality is that he was asked to call it off, he gained support as a result of it, and he wanted to call it off anyway as he had an engagement in Berlin [to secretly marry Diana Guinness at Goebbels’s house] the next day. It was all a bit less heroic than it seemed.”

Mosley’s support in the area increased after the Battle of Cable Street, as did anti-Jewish violence. The so-called Pogrom of Mile End, in which Jews and their properties were attacked, took place a week afterwards. The anti-fascist protests were, on the evidence of one participant (my great-aunt, Margaret Kamm, who spoke to me about it many years later), politically hobbled and hijacked by the Communist Party. There is a longstanding mythology on the far Left of direct action whereby fascism was stopped. In fact Cable Street had little to do with Mosley’s increasing isolation and defeat. The British party system, in which all the main parties (Labour and the Liberals included, contrary to modern selective interpretations) made horrendous misjudgements about the gravity of the threat from Nazism, proved resilient against both political extremism and the forces of economic depression. Mosley was a sinister and repugnant figure, all right, but his bombastic absurdity – attempting to transplant the symbols of fascism to an altogether different political culture – along with the vicious sectarianism of extremist politics were the main influences in undermining his superficial appeal. By the time of his internment in 1940, he was an utterly discredited figure.

The main attraction of the myth of Cable Street is for parties that stress the politics of the street and revile parliamentary democracy. Their celebration is doubly inapt, first because it wasn’t street protest that defeated Mosley, and secondly because the forces of bigotry are not ones that those parties oppose. The fact that the area is now represented in Parliament by a blustering demagogue, George Galloway, who is supported by an unequivocally antisemitic organisation, the Socialist Workers’ Party (for which the Respect ‘Coalition’ is an electoral front), is an irony too obvious to comment on.

In the dark days of the Corbyn years, when the idea of this crackpot becoming Prime Minister was such a real and terrifying threat that many of us worried about our futures in our country, we were often told that as a ‘life-long anti-racist’ he couldn’t possibly hate Jews. After all, his defenders consistently intoned, his mother was at Cable Street.

It seems churlish as a people which has been around for so long to decry cultural appropriation; other worldwide religions have taken our patriarchs and our commandments, for goodness’ sake, and then frequently murdered us for not appreciating their new interpretations of them. Fish and chips are a British national dish, bagels a Sunday brunch staple, while the only chutzpah in non-Jews using Yiddish is when they frequently pronounce it incorrectly.

But this weekend’s 85th commemoration of the Battle of Cable Street seemed like cultural appropriation of the worst kind. Not only was the Jewish Labour Movement – the cultural inheritor of the Jewish socialists who claimed victory in 1936 – not invited, but on the stage was Jeremy Corbyn and many of his followers; the very people whose political ascent so frightened the Jews of today.

He had the unbelievable chutzpah to claim to stand as a protector of minorities at an event commemorating the defence of a minority he seems to care so little for.

In reality, practically the only Jews he has ever stood shoulder-to-shoulder with are those who denounce the one and only Jewish state. He lost the Labour whip because, even now, this vain posturing man refuses to accept the degree of antisemitism that he allowed to fester in the party.

"crucified" https://t.co/tO7ELCB92V

— David Hirsh (@DavidHirsh) October 5, 2021

The fall academic semester began with the American evacuation of Afghanistan and the takeover by the Taliban. No condemnations of the Taliban, including for murder and the abuse of women and children, were made by the BDS movement, or various student and faculty groups and politicians that vociferously attacked Israel during the May campaign against Hamas. This predictable silence went largely uncommented upon. In contrast, campus 9/11 commemorations were frequently countered by claims of “Islamophobia” from BDS-related Palestinian and Muslim groups both on and off campus.

BDS supporters also undertook direct action against 9/11 commemorations. At Washington University in St. Louis, a BDS-supporting member of the student government, Fadel Alkilani, removed 2,977 American flags that had been placed on campus as part of a 9/11 commemoration.

The university chancellor condemned Alkilani’s action, saying, “I want to make it very clear that, as an institution, we find the actions of this student to be reprehensible,” but Alkilani’s actions were defended by commentators who accused the university of not responding to the unspecified “Islamophobia” directed at the student.

A number of other 9/11 displays were vandalized, including at Michigan State University, where a campus landmark reading “Never Forget” was crossed out and “Never Israel” was written in its place. This distortion of 9/11 was also seen in instructions from the Virginia Department of Education to downplay Muslim extremism and “plan our 9/11 lessons in a way that does not seek to reproduce anti-Muslim racism.”

September also saw a number of fawning profiles of pro-Palestinian groups in campus newspapers, such as Students for Justice in Palestine. One result of making “Palestine” the central campus cause is growing fear on the part of Jewish students who are targeted by BDS-related antisemitism. A recent poll of “openly Jewish” students indicated that more than 65% felt unsafe on campus, 50% felt the need to hide their Jewish identity, and 10% feared physical attack. Almost 70% were aware of or had personally experienced a verbal or physical attack. These results must be seen in the context of recent FBI data showing Jews were the subject of 58% of religiously oriented hate crimes in 2020.

The Florida State University (FSU) Police Department has identified several teenagers behind a spate of handwritten, racist and sexually derogatory flyers that were found near the Collegetown area, jarring the school’s Jewish community and others on campus.

One of the flyers, which read “KKK MEETING NEXT FRIDAY CALL…,” was taped to a lamppost on the lawn of the FSU Hillel Foundation building on Augustine Street, according to a local CBS affiliate. Others reportedly included sexist and racist material.

“This kind of instilled a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety [in] people,” FSU Police Department officer John Baker told reporters. “Think about your actions before you do that. You know every action has a consequence so please think about what you’re doing.”

Police said that two high school students and one recent high school graduate were responsible for posting flyers, which did not constitute a criminal offense.

On Friday, FSU Hillel said “there is no credible threat to the safety of FSU Hillel or our Seminole Jewish Community.”

“FSU Hillel is saddened and disturbed by yesterday’s incident that seems to have targeted not only us, but others across our community,” the group said. “We are working closely with campus police and other authorities, and are gratified that this is being taken so seriously and is being thoroughly investigated.”

“We are so grateful for the support of our allies, and we extend the same support to all who have been hurt by this event.”

As many pointed out on social media, the BBC’s chosen framing misleads readers with regard to “comments” made on several occasions by David Miller that caused a long-running controversy which eventually resulted in termination of his employment.

It was not “comments he made about Israel” which promoted condemnation from hundreds of academics but rather statements concerning British Jewish students:
“We, the undersigned, wholly condemn recent statements by Prof. David Miller of the University of Bristol, purportedly about ‘Zionism’ and the so-called ‘Zionist movement’. Rather than geopolitical theories, some of these are statements directed at Jewish students, UK university Jewish Societies (JSocs) and the Union of Jewish Students. We believe that these statements are morally reprehensible and risk the personal security and wellbeing of Jewish students and, more widely, Jews in the UK. Prof. Miller’s views represent a conspiracy theory, and bring great shame upon UK academia as well as upon UK political discourse. We are of the opinion that these statements risk undermining community relations in the UK, while giving aid and comfort to antisemites everywhere.”

It was not “comments he made about Israel” that prompted the CAA to take legal action on behalf of students at Bristol University:
“Our legal case against the University concerned alleged unlawful harassment on the basis of Jewish ethnicity and Judaism, amounting to breaches of the Equality Act 2010, as well as breaches of contract.”

It was not “comments he made about Israel” that prompted a prominent law firm to provide pro bono legal advice to student organisations:
“…it is both hugely depressing still to be having to fight antisemitism on campuses in the UK today, and hugely satisfying to see the University of Bristol finally recognise that Professor Miller did not meet the standards of behaviour expected from university staff.”

An Islamic charity is under investigation by the Charity Commission after Jihadist and antisemitic material was found on its website.

The Miftahul Jannah Academy, based in Waltham Forest, was reported by the National Secular Society to the Commission over lectures delivered by Islamic scholar Muhammad Patel that allegedly praised the Taliban, encouraged Muslims to fund Jihad and contained antisemitic references, including to the “dirty qualities” of the Jews.

One lecture is titled “A quality of the Yahood — to kill those who want to guide them towards the commands of Allah”. Yahood is the Arabic word for Jew. Mr Patel reportedly says in the lecture that the killing of Islamic scholars is among the “wretched” and “dirty” qualities of the Jews.

The Miftahul Jannah Academy says that its aims and objectives include “to further the true image of Islam”.

The Masjid-e-Umer Trust, which runs Walthamstow Central Mosque where Mr Patel has apparently given sermons and run youth activities, has also been referred to the Commission.

As someone who came from Australia and now lives in Israel, I can comfortably say that @zehavgalon appears to know very little about the history of either country! https://t.co/90CCQIJ2Gp

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 5, 2021

The Polish Foreign Ministry angrily summoned the British Ambassador to Warsaw on Monday, demanding that she explain why a writer and propagandist with a track record of antisemitic and racist views had been denied entry to the UK over the weekend.

Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek said that the envoy, Anna Clunes, would be asked to clarify whether “freedom of speech is included in the catalogue of British values” after the UK’s Border Force on Saturday denied entry to Rafal Ziemkiewicz, a columnist for the far right weekly, Do Rzeczy.

Ziemkiewicz flew into London’s Heathrow Airport on Saturday with his wife and daughter, who is about to begin her studies at Oxford University. He told the Polish news agency PAP that he was handed an official refusal stating that his views “are at odds with British values and likely to cause offense.”

Ziemkiewicz is known for making inflammatory statements against those he considers are opposed to Polish interests. In June, he warned that “a major confrontation with international Jewry is coming” after the US strongly criticized recently-passed Polish legislation that closes off the possibility of restitution for survivors of the Holocaust in Poland.

A recent examination of Ziemkiewicz’s writings by the “Never Again” Association — a Polish NGO that combats antisemitism and racism — highlighted his constant use of crude antisemitic tropes.

In his latest book, Ziemkiewicz claimed that “Zionism under the influence of the Holocaust, or rather the myth of the Holocaust that they created, acquired a peculiar cruelty.” Demeaning young Israelis who serve in the IDF as “killing machines,” Ziemkiewicz also attacked what he called “Jewish aggressiveness,” saying that the “ideology of the Holocaust” could be summarized as “Jews, Jews über alles” — a reference to the Nazi anthem.

US apparel giant Gap has acquired Israeli AI company CB4, a developer of predictive analytics tools that offer data-driven insights and recommendations for retail businesses like grocery and retail chains.

The agreement was announced late Monday. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed but Israeli business daily Calcalist estimated the deal at approximately $150 million.

Headquartered in New York with offices in Tel Aviv, CB4 launched its operations in 2014 with a $6 million Series A round, followed by a $16 million Series B in 2019. Its investors include Sequoia Capital and Pereg Ventures, a New York-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage US and Israeli startups in the B2B data space.

The company developed an AI-powered platform that helps retailers “generate new sales by making meaningful corrections to shelf visibility and inventory,” CB4 says. Its technology has been implemented by retailers including Levi’s, Urban Outfitters, and US supermarket chain PriceRite.

In 2020, CB4 said that its technology was active in some 1,500 stores worldwide.

CB4 CEO Yoni Benshaul said in a statement Monday that the company was “excited to see how our team can drive even broader and deeper impact…[on a] global scale.”

The Israeli defense company Smart Shooter, which develops fire-control systems designed to significantly increase the accuracy and lethality of small arms, announced on Monday that it signed a contract with the US Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory for the purchase of several Smash 2000 systems for test and evaluation.

The agreement was signed with the Laboratory’s Rapid Capabilities Office, according to the statement.

Smash 2000 is designed to ensure that each round finds its target, in both day and night conditions, according to the company’s website. Its systems are external add-on solutions that can be integrated into any type of military rifle.

“Once the user identifies the target (independently or using the detection system guidance) and locks on it, Smash tracks its movements and synchronizes the shot release to assure a fast and precise hit on the target,” said the company.

The Israel Defense Forces employed this technology in recent years to allow soldiers to shoot down drones and incendiary devices sent over the border by terrorist operatives in Gaza.

Israelis and Emiratis will be able to travel to each other’s countries without a visa as of Sunday, Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked said on Tuesday.

Shaked announced the visa-free travel, which will begin on October 10, while on a trip to the United Arab Emirates.

Israeli tourists and those traveling to the UAE for business will not need visas to enter the country. Those who plan to study, work or volunteer in the UAE, or are traveling for religious reasons, will still need a visa.

If COVID-19 infection rates continue to drop, Israel plans to allow vaccinated tourists to enter Israel at the end of October.

Israel and the UAE signed a visa-free agreement in January, but the Emiratis put it on hold soon after due to the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, Israelis visiting the UAE would have had to quarantine for two weeks due to high infection rates in the Gulf state.

Now, Israelis who have received three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine only need to quarantine until receiving PCR test results after returning from abroad from most countries, including the UAE.

Doctors and donors from Israel and the United Arab Emirates have completed a historic series of kidney transplants that has saved the lives of three women suffering from kidney disease.

The procedures, the first ever between Israel and the UAE, are the result of a collaboration between the Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation (APKD) the UAE Organ Donation and Transplant Committee, and the Israel National Transplant Center.

The complicated exchange involved three kidney patients, two from Israel and one from the UAE, in a "pay-it-forward" series of transplants. Each patient had a willing, living donor whose kidney was not a match for them, but did match another patient. So they helped each other: An Abu Dhabi-based donor gave a kidney to a patient from Israel whose husband did not match. The husband donated one of his kidneys to a patient at another hospital in Israel, and in turn that patient's incompatible donor, her daughter, donated her kidney, where it was transplanted into the original Emirati donor's mother.

The transplants involved six surgeries and three hospitals. Kidneys were shipped between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv via private jet.

Kidney disease is a leading cause of death around the world. While dialysis helps, kidney transplantation is the only cure once the kidney has failed. Kidney failure patients often have living donors willing to help, only to learn the patient and donor are incompatible, ruling out the possibility of a transplant.

This "kidney diplomacy" is being hailed for saving three lives were saved, helping form valuable relationships, and contribute to new organ transplant regulations. Nations around the world often prohibit transplants among unrelated people in an outdated effort to prevent the black market sale of organs, rules that can block life-saving paired exchanges. Even the US and Canada cannot exchange kidneys across their common border.

"This exchange demonstrates how we can harness our differences for mutual benefit," said Dr. Michael Rees, PhD, chief executive officer of APKD and one of the world's foremost authorities on paired kidney exchange.

"APKD was created to lead innovation in the living donor kidney space, and we hope to connect the world to save more lives through kidney transplantation," Rees said.

In an unprecedented effort to find their relatives and raise awareness about their stories, Spanish authorities are releasing a list of the Hungarian Jews protected from the Nazis by a diplomat nicknamed the “Spanish Schindler.”

Ángel Sanz Briz was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial and museum, in 1966 for using an ingenious legal maneuver to save more than 5,200 Jews from being deported to Auschwitz in 1944.

But even though his efforts saved five times as many Jews as those of Oskar Schindler, his story is far less well known — in part because the staunchly anti-Israel Franco regime, which ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975, barred him from accepting Yad Vashem’s honor.

Now, the Centro Sefarad-Israel — a Sephardic cultural institution that is part of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs — is working to change that. With the support of the Spanish government’s archives, the group is publishing the names of the people he protected, along with details about them, with the goal of tracing their descendants and making their stories known.

Between June and December 1944, Sanz Briz, then a 32-year-old Spanish diplomat stationed in Hungary, took the law into his own hands by creating fake Spanish passports for thousands of Jews. Despite the fact that Hungary’s Jewish community was predominately Ashkenazi, Sanz Briz and his assistants granted Spanish citizenship to Hungarian Jews based on a long-expired 1924 Spanish law that extended citizenship to the descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492.

Sanz Briz went to extreme lengths to ensure hundreds of Hungarian families were put under Spain’s protection. As the Nazis closed in on the city’s Jews, the Spanish diplomat rented 11 apartment buildings to house approximately 5,000 people. He placed the Spanish flag on the buildings, passing them off as official properties of the Spanish Legation, ensuring that the authorities would not seize them. He also hid some families in the Spanish embassy in Buda.

“For him, the principle of humanity prevailed over the principle of legality,” Miguel de Lucas, director of Centro Sefarad-Israel, told the Spanish daily El País in a recent interview.

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