Writing here last month, Sabrina Miller made a plea: Jewish schools should teach Palestinian views. Her argument was that this would help woefully ill-informed young Jews better to argue Zionism’s case once they arrive on campus. Although the plea came with the best of intentions, it risks falling into a trap. The nakba (an Arabic term for the ‘catastrophic’ exodus of 710,000 Palestinian refugees) is the self-inflicted consequence of the Arab decision to go to war in 1948 — a war which their side instigated and lost. To talk of the nakba without balance or context would be to promote a one-sided narrative of Palestinian victimhood.

If we mention the Arab nakba, we are compelled as a matter of law and equity to talk about the Jewish nakba (I use the expression for convenience). As many as 870,000 Jews (persecuted by the Arab League as the “Jewish minority of Palestine”) were driven from, or fled, the Arab world at around the same time as the Palestinian refugees — and as a consequence of the same conflict, merely because Jews in Arab lands shared the same religion and ethnicity as Israelis.

Why should we take only the Palestinian refugee cause seriously, while dismissing the Jewish refugees? Why are Jews so quick to empathise with our enemies, while failing to defend our own rights? Furthermore, no credible and lasting peace settlement could be reached if the grievances of more than half the Jews of Israel — refugees from Muslim lands or their descendants — are ignored.

Recognising the Jewish nakba, the mass displacement and dispossession of ancient Middle Eastern Jewish communities, is central to achieving reconciliation. It would mean acknowledging that an irreversible exchange of refugees took place, similar to exchanges which occurred as a result of other 20th Century nationalist conflicts.

One cannot teach about the Arab nakba without also teaching about its root cause: Arab rejectionism. Today, such rejectionism has religious overtones. The Israel-Palestine conflict cannot be divorced from the eliminationist intentions of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian ayatollahs and Islamist groups generally. These do not even bother to camouflage their genocidal aims in terms acceptable to western ears, such as “occupation”, “settlements” and “Palestinian human rights”.

Diaspora Jews do not make the right counter-arguments because our approach to Israel is frustratingly “Ashkenormative”. The tragedy of the Mizrahi (eastern) communities is not known to the majority of Ashkenazi Jews. Consequently, we don’t adequately make the case for Jews in general.

Israel is the vindication of an aboriginal Middle Eastern people’s aspirations for self-determination. Over half its Jewish population — Mizrahim from the Muslim world — never left the region and pre-dated the Arab conquest by 1,000 years or more. (The long sojourn of Ashkenazim in Europe does not make them any less Middle Eastern in origin, culture and identity.) Why should Arabs have 22 states, while other indigenous victims of Arab imperialism such as the Amazigh (Berbers) or the Kurds — 99 per cent of whom have voted for an independent state — have no political rights? To the latter, Israel is an inspiration.

Campaigners against the proposed Holocaust memorial and “learning centre”, which is to be built in Victoria Tower Gardens next to the Houses of Parliament, have launched an appeal in the High Court which starts next week.

Some may be wondering at this 11th-hour challenge. Isn’t building this centre a done deal? Why are people making all this fuss? Surely such a memorial is a good thing?

To which the answers are: maybe; for very good reason; and no, it is not.

Let’s take these in reverse order.

The site is wholly inappropriate. It’s a much loved, small, green oasis. The proposed centre, with its 23 tall, bronze fins, would be an eyesore. As a tourist attraction, it would be submerged by people and traffic.

Being so close to the Thames, its subterranean levels would be at serious risk of flooding. And as Lord Carlile, the government’s former reviewer of terrorism legislation, told the planning inquiry, its location would turn it into a terrorist target.

So why did this deeply unsuitable site suddenly become the only site? Westminster City Council told the inquiry that it was presented to the Prime Minister as a fait accompli.

“No alternatives were offered,” it said, “nor professional advice sought as to the acceptability in planning terms” of the site. “There has been no public consultation on this less than transparent process”. Why not?

On Thursday I published an indepth study into antisemitism in Ireland – much of it disguised as anti-Zionist activity. This is Ireland’s shame.

These are the facts:
The report was based on years of research.
The report contains 760 footnotes that provide concrete evidence to support the findings.
It exposes Irish politicians who have shared blatant fake news stories.
Shows Irish politicians have also like or shared horrific antisemitic comments.
That violence, intimidation and antisemitism are pillars of anti-Zionist activity on campus.
It proves that on the street that there is foul antisemitism from key ‘human rights’ activists – including support for the Protocols and Holocaust denial.
That traditional Christian antisemitism plays a significant role and Christian NGOs facilitate the spread of antisemitism.
And It shows that a lot of antisemitism denial occurs where antisemitism is at its most concentrated.
In response to the report the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland called on ‘all the Irish political parties and both Houses of the Oireachtas‘ to take action.

And the response? Outside of the tiny Irish Jewish population and the small group of vocal allies that they have in Ireland – the response has been a wall of silence with just an occassional abusive comment thrown overhead. But what if… it wasn’t about Ireland…..?
What if a report had just been published in London, showing that an MP had liked a post saying Hitler’ wasn’t wrong’. The 200 pages of the report went on to prove that there were a few Westminster MPs sharing blatant fake news from the accounts of rabid anti-Jewish racists and Holocaust deniers – spreading anti-Jewish hate into the population. That these MPs were found to be obsessed with lying about Israel and openly calling for its destruction. What if the report also showed many of the UK’s well-known ‘anti-racist’ faces believed that the Protocols were real, the Holocaust never happened and evil Jewish bankers were secretly behind all the evil in the world. That antisemitism was a growing problem of the most vile kind.

What if too, the Jewish organisations in the UK expressed their outrage and horror – calling on the UK to take immediate action against the anti-Jewish racism.

And then what if nobody responded? Not a single MP from any political party said a word. And not a single member of the press thought it was worthy of writing about.

What if nobody cared and the cries of the Jewish citizens were just completely ignored? What if antisemitic Corbynism had risen and the response of the UK population was just to shrug its shoulders and call the Jews a bunch of liars?

What would that say about Jewish life in the UK? Or the US – or anywhere that such horrific anti-Jewish racism – at every level – was so easily ignored. This is the awful truth about how bad things are in Ireland.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Jerusalem on Sunday for a visit she did not need to make.

Merkel, who formally stepped down from her post in August after serving 16 years, could have decided to stay in Germany and ride out the remaining days of her government and until a new coalition is formed, most likely by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and its leader, Vice-Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

But instead, Merkel has come to Israel and will meet with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, President Isaac Herzog, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and participate in a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.

Merkel and Bennett will visit Yad Vashem and the outgoing chancellor will also be awarded an honorary doctorate from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and join a roundtable at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Merkel is doing all of this because she is a true friend of Israel and the Jewish people and for that we thank her. There is no pressing diplomatic issue that requires she presence in Israel and there is currently no major international crisis that she - a lame duck chancellor - needs to manage right now.

She has come to Israel on her eighth visit as chancellor to convey a message to Germany, Israel and Europe just how committed her country is to the security and viability of the Jewish state, its future and its success.

Under her tenure, Germany took strides toward Israel that were previously unseen. One clear example was in the subsidy provided for Israel’s procurement of the advanced German-built Dolphin-class submarines, an issue that later, unfortunately, became mired in controversy amid corruption charges brought against top Israeli officials involved in the deal. She helped Israel within the corridors of the European Union, with Germany frequently referred to as Israel’s closest friend on the continent.

The UK, Germany and nine other countries that boycotted the Durban IV Conference at the UN General Assembly because of its antisemitic history are set to support a pro-Durban resolution at the UN Human Rights Council on Monday.

The resolution in Geneva, much like the conference in New York less than three weeks ago, is mostly focused on racism against people of African descent. But it reaffirms support for the 2001 Durban Declaration, which singled out Israel as a perpetrator of racism and supports the very conference those 11 countries boycotted.

“Welcoming the commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action during the holding of a high-level meeting by the General Assembly... during which the Assembly adopted a political declaration to mobilize political will for the full and effective implementation of the Durban Declaration,” the resolution reads.

The resolution was proposed by Cameroon, Chile, Turkey and Yemen. It also requests the launch of an “outreach and a public information campaign for the commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the Durban Declaration,” as well as a two-year program to “raise awareness about and mobilize public support for racial equality... including about the content and contribution of... the Durban Declaration,” which would focus on young people via social media.

The UNHRC resolution against racism, including support for the Durban process, is set to be approved by the committee on Monday morning by consensus because no country has called for a vote. The resolution is passed every two years; when the US was on the committee, it called for a roll-call vote, but it is not currently a member of the panel, nor is Israel.

ALERT: Despite 38 nations having just rejected Durban IV for commemorating the antisemitic 2001 Durban Conference, the U.N. Human Rights Council is tomorrow planning to do exactly that.

UNHRC members—????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????—must vote No.https://t.co/nObxEAz2b8pic.twitter.com/w5oKsp0ORH

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 8, 2021

Israel is not an apartheid country and it does not occupy the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday during a special visit to the Psagot winery in the West Bank.

"This is the rightful homeland for the people of Israel here in Judea and Samaria," Pompeo said.

"We recognized that this is not an occupied nation, this is not an apartheid country. It is a democracy where faiths can be practiced from all of the Abrahamic traditions," Pompeo said.

Here on at the hilltop winery outside of Jerusalem just eleven months earlier Pompeo had announced a historic change in US policy, that allowed for Israeli products produced in the West Bank to be labeled made in Israel.

He was the first Secretary of State and the most high-level US official to visit an Israeli-held entity in the West Bank, in this case, the Sha'ar Binyamin Industrial Zone where the winery is located.

It followed an announcement Pompeo had already made in Washington. He said that the Trump administration recognized Israel's historic, religious and legal rights to the West Bank and believed that Israeli settlements were not inconsistent with International law.

Pompeo was most associated with those policy changes which have been loosely referred to as the Pompeo doctrine.

The stupidity of anti-Israel hate is endless.

In #Scotland they protest Israel’s “apartheid” outside the Israel-Scotland game. ??

Inside, Israeli Arab players are scoring goals for team Israel. ???? ??

So much for apartheid. pic.twitter.com/sgHF9LBGAa

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) October 9, 2021

If the Muslim world sees how tolerant and welcoming Israel is, new opportunities for peace and cooperation will open up, former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman said Sunday, ahead of the kickoff event of his Friedman Center for Peace through Strength on Monday.

Like many other former US officials involved in the Abraham Accords, Friedman looked for a way to continue the efforts toward Israel-Arab peace outside of government. Rather than doing what Jared Kushner’s Abraham Accords Peace Institute and other organizations are doing, Friedman found a different niche.

“I want to build trust through religious tolerance, to show how Israel respects the religious rights of all people and, in particular, of the Islamic world,” he said.

Friedman pointed to rumors and libels that Israel or Jews want to destroy al-Aksa Mosque, which have sparked violence since the 1929 Hebron massacre to the 2015 stabbing Intifada.

“Of two billion Muslims in the world, only a tiny fraction have ever been to al-Aksa,” he said. “They have limited information. Often the media in the Arab world has not been fair about this issue.”

In reality, “while not perfect, Israel does a really outstanding job of facilitating Muslim prayer at al-Aksa and other holy sites,” he added. “I want the Muslim world to see that.”

The speakers at the upcoming CUNY-NYU event have made it clear in many statements to the media over the years that denouncing Israel is their goal. One of the featured speakers is an Israeli radical named Yeela Raanan. She is a leader of a group called the “Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages.” In other words, she won’t be offering an objective academic analysis at the Oct. 27 event; while enjoying the prestige of an academic platform, she will be approaching the problem as a strident advocate of a partisan cause.

In an interview with The Electronic Intifada, an extremist anti-Israel website, Raanan described the Negev as the Bedouins’ “ancestral land.” So the nomadic sheep herders who wander back and forth from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to the Negev are awarded the desert as their “ancestral” possession, while the Jews, whose ancestors lived there for centuries before being expelled by the Romans, are somehow interlopers?

In her interview, Raanan favorably cited the ravings of an Israeli-Arab Knesset member who called the removal of illegal squatters in the Negev “a crime.” Raanan accused Israel of issuing “a declaration of war by the state against its Bedouin citizens.”

So, an academic center that studies “crimes against humanity” has set aside its mission of studying actual crimes against humanity, and instead will be hosting a program featuring a speaker who falsely accuses Israel of waging “war” against the Bedouins.

Jewish donors contribute generously to the CUNY Graduate Center and the NYU Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. Jewish parents pay enormous tuitions so their children can study at these two institutions.

Should the Jewish community’s donations and tuition dollars be used to sponsor vicious anti-Israel programs? Do the donors and parents realize what their money is being used for?

The horrible history of terror committed by Hamas brings into focus the tragic lack of accountable leadership that has befallen the people of Gaza. Since taking control of the enclave in 2007, the US State Department-designated Foreign Terror Organization (FTO) has proven wholly incapable of serving as a positive governing body for Gazans.

The dream and determination of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, when he led Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005, has been destroyed, but it can be and must be rebuilt. However, this cannot be accomplished with Hamas, which uses terror and control as its methodologies for governance and diplomacy, remaining in control of Gaza and the innocent residents there who deserve a better life.

What is needed is the establishment of a Gaza protectorate to replace Hamas.

Hamas, the Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, has spent donated aid on the missiles and incendiary devices it has been launching for decades into Israel, as well as on building terror tunnels. It has ripped sewer pipes out of the ground to create rocket- engine bodies, and repurposed fiberglass for rockets, although the materials had been sent to repair and upgrade fishing boats.

Moreover, when Israel has in the past sent trucks with humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, the convoy was often greeted by a barrage of Hamas mortar shells at the Erez border-crossing terminal. As a new form of terror during the past few years, Hamas has launched incendiary balloons over the Gaza border fence to torch Israeli forests, recreation areas, schools, and communities.

Hamas puts terror, not people, first. This behavior has not only deprived Gazans of much-needed food, clean water and air, electricity, quality education, a wholesome life, and hope; its misfired rockets and use of human shields against Israeli counterstrikes has led to the death of Gazan children and the destruction of their homes.

The Jerusalem District Court Judge Aryeh Romanov last Friday evening accepted the police’s appeal of the Magistrate’s Court’s decision which effectively allowed Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court Judge Bilha Yahalom on Wednesday revoked a restraining order that was handed to a Jewish rabbi who prayed on the Temple Mount, and confirmed that it is permissible for Jews to pray silently in the holiest Jewish site (Bombshell: Jerusalem Court Approves Jewish Prayer on Temple Mount).

On Friday, however, Israel Police appealed the decision of the Magistrate’s Court, and Minister of Internal Security Omar Bar-Lev (Labor), warned of a regional flare-up should the court’s decision be allowed to stand: “A change in the existing status quo would endanger public peace and may cause a flare-up,” the minister said, adding, “The State of Israel advocates freedom of worship and prayer for all, but at the same time, in view of the security implications, the status quo which states that the prayer of Jews on the Temple Mount will take place next to the Western Wall and that the prayer of Muslims will take place in al-Haram a-Sharif (Arabic for the Temple Mount compound, yes he actually used the enemy’s phrase – DI) – must be maintained.

Abdul Rahman Younes, a columnist for the Hamas publication Felesteen News (poor chaps can’t pronounce the P sound in the Roman empire’s second century’s name for Eretz Israel), on Saturday published a glowing response to the Jewish district court’s nullification of Jewish freedom of religion, under the headline: هكذا قُطعت “الصلوات الصامتة” قبل أن تبدأ (roughly translated as “This is how the ‘silent prayers’ were cut before they even began.”

The extension of US gestures and concessions to Islamic terrorists, and the waiving of a US military option while negotiating with Iran's regime of terror, are perceived as weakness by terrorists, adversaries and allies of the US.

Such a policy ignores, or takes lightly, the objective and well-documented 1,400 year old past track record of Islamic terrorism, while emphasizing the subjective and speculative future track record of terrorists.

Such a policy erodes the US posture of deterrence, which is a prerequisite to the minimization of global turbulence, undermining US interests in the international arena, while bringing the threat of Islamic terrorism closer to the US mainland.

Such a policy is based on the assumption that Islamic terrorism is driven by despair, and the need to dwell on the despair (diplomatically and economically) rather than dealing with terrorism (militarily).

However, Islamic terrorism has been driven – since the 7th century – by the imperialistic religious vision to establish a universal Islamic society, dominating the world and subordinating the "infidel" to Islam, peacefully or militarily.

Such a policy is based on the assumption that Islamic terrorism is driven by US policy. However, Islamic terrorism has haunted the US since the late 18th century, during Democratic and Republican Administrations (e.g., the Obama and Trump Administrations).

Israeli security forces raided a Hamas terror cell in the West Bank to thwart imminent terror attacks in the West Bank and in Israel, they had planned. During the raid, 5 terrorist were killed after opening fire against the Israeli forces, and another 20 cell members were arrested.

The mother of one of the dead terrorist “Martyrs” celebrated his “Martyrdom,” stressing her satisfaction that he fought Israel and was not a “spy, land seller, collaborator, drug addict, or gambler.” She also repeated the PA teaching that the Jews are the enemies of Allah and Muslims:
Mother of terrorist Ahmed Zahran: “[The Jews] have been our enemies since the days of the Prophet, May Allah take revenge on them in this world and in the Afterlife... I congratulate my son on this happy day on which he died as a Martyr... I am proud of my children. I am proud of them. They are not spies, not land sellers, not collaborators, not drug addicts, and not gamblers. My children are going on the path of truth.”

[Facebook page of Al-Quds, Sept. 26, 2021]

Following established PA policy - which is to idolize martyrdom-death for “Palestine” - the PA’s highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti, reinforced the status of “Martyrs,” implicitly urging Palestinians to seek death:

Lebanese Journalist Hassan Hamade: U.S. Used “Nuclear Bomblets” to Destroy Beirut Port in 2020, Sent Agents to Destroy Our Banking System #Lebanon#BeirutBlastpic.twitter.com/JTndUmDPOB

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 10, 2021

Iran has enriched more than 120 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium, the head of the country’s atomic energy agency said on state television Saturday evening.

“We have passed 120 kilograms. We have more than that figure,” said Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

“Our people know well that they (Western powers) were meant to give us the enriched fuel at 20% to use in the Tehran reactor, but they haven’t done so,” he added

“If our colleagues do not do it, we would naturally have problems with the lack of fuel for the Tehran reactor.”

In September, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran had boosted its stocks enriched above the percentage allowed in the 2015 deal with world powers.

It estimated that Iran had 84.3 kilos of uranium enriched to 20% (up from 62.8 kilos when the IAEA last reported in May).

Under the deal, Iran was not meant to enrich uranium above 3.67%, well below the 90% threshold needed for use in a nuclear weapon.

The coming weeks are decisive for the future of the nuclear deal with Iran, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday, adding that every day that passes without Tehran responding to US overtures will result in Iran enriching more uranium.

Speaking during a visit to Israel at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, the outgoing chancellor said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping also had a responsibility to help push Iran back to the negotiating table.

“I also see a responsibility for Russia and China here, since if the JCPOA (nuclear deal) is no longer doing what it’s meant to do then that’s very difficult, so we are now in very decisive weeks for this deal.”

The blood-curdling outburst may be caused by the fact that the usual chorus of verbal revolutionaries hasn't yet realized that their regime is in rather poor shape and can no longer afford the luxury of pseudo-revolutionary logorrhea. On the other hand, the soothing tune may be a lullaby to send real or imaginary foes into a slumber.

Taken as it is, this represents a huge climb-down by the Islamic Republic.

Biden might seize the opportunity provided by Tehran's claimed "pragmatism" to tackle the real source of tension with the Islamic Republic in the past four decades: its efforts to "export" the Islamic revolution and carve out an ideological empire in the name of its brand of Islam.

Some of us have always believed that the "nuclear issue" was a side show designed to divert attention from the fact that, even without a putative nuclear arsenal, the Khomeinist regime has been and remains a threat to regional peace and stability. It has always said it does not intend to make a nuclear bomb but uses the promise not to do what it says it doesn't want to do as a license for doing what it shouldn't be doing in other domains.

Our guess is that Tehran's new show of pragmatism does not represent a genuine change of nature by the regime.... Trust is useful only if it is coupled with stringent verification.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear physicist and engineer who is known to have spearheaded the country's nuclear program has died on Sunday, Pakistani media reported.

Khan, who acknowledged being part of a nuclear proliferation ring, died of cancer, aged 85.

Khan was admitted to Khan Research Laboratories Hospital on Aug. 26 after testing positive for COVID-19 and was later moved to a military hospital in Rawalpindi, said the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.

"He was loved by our nation bec(ause) of his critical contribution in making us a nuclear weapon state," Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan on Twitter. "For the people of Pakistan, he was a national icon."

He was at the center of a global nuclear proliferation scandal in 2004 that involved sales of nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya. After a confession on national television, Khan was pardoned by then-president Pervez Musharraf but he remained under house arrest for years in his palatial Islamabad home.

In his confession, Khan said he acted alone without the knowledge of the state officials. However, he later said he had been scapegoated.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist, was at the centre of a global nuclear proliferation scandal in 2004 that involved sales of nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya.

He died on Sunday aged 85. https://t.co/MpiA43rtwx

— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) October 10, 2021

Ascheduled speaking appearance by Muslim political activist Linda Sarsour at the upcoming Web Summit has some Jewish human rights groups calling for event sponsors like Google and Amazon to pull out.

Billed as the largest tech event in the world, the Web Summit, where Sarsour is set to speak along with about 500 others, will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, from November 1 to 4. Topics to be addressed at the four-day conference run the gamut, from emerging technologies, sustainability and venture capitalism to news, advertising and investing. Besides Google and Amazon, partnering sponsors include Siemens, Cisco Systems, the European Commission and the WebOps platform Pantheon.

Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist who has allegedly promoted anti-Israel policies and been accused of making anti-Semitic statements, rose to prominence in 2017 as co-chair of the national Women's March before a controversial departure. She is known for her support of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which promotes boycotts, divestment and economic sanctions against Israel.

Currently, she is the co-founder of Until Freedom, described as "a social justice organization with diverse people of color addressing systemic and racial injustice."

The “defenders of Israel ‘right or wrong’ is of course a straw man, as next to nobody who is pro-Israel believes such a thing.

But, even more problematic is the second part of the sentence, which egregiously conflates two separate ideas: 1.) The antisemitic trope that holds Jews worldwide collectively responsible for the actions of the state of Israel; 2.) the undeniable fact that Zionism is intrinsically linked to Judaism, and that the overwhelming majority of Jews believe Israel plays a part of their Jewish identity.

Alder also ignores the the fact that widely accepted IHRA Working Definition elucidates on the question of where criticism of Israel crosses the line to anti-Jewish racism – an extremely carefully worded document which makes clear that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”. Moreover, her claim that the occupation is “ignored”, and Palestinian voices silenced, is the opposite of the truth, as media outlets’ coverage of Israel and the Palestinians is obsessive, a dynamic drowns out coverage of far more bloodier conflicts in the region and the world.

Indeed, for Adler to complain of insufficient press attention devoted to the Palestinians, on the pages of the Guardian, the media home of pro-Palestinian coverage and commentary, demonstrates how blind she is to reality.

Ultimately, Adler’s thesis rests on two ideas: That there’s a dearth of Israel coverage in the media, and that the ‘Israel lobby’, through an orchestrated campaign to silence journalists, is largely to blame for this dynamic. Whilst the former is risible, the latter is far more sinister, presenting as ‘brave’, and as ‘speaking truth to power’, well-worn, toxic tropes about Jewish power that have incited antisemitism for ages.

Established in 1993 in cooperation with the PFLP-affiliated Addameer, Al-Dameer is a Gaza-based non-governmental organization (NGO) that claims to work on “development, upholding, protecting, publicizing and strengthening human rights in Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip, strengthening the importance of Palestinian civil rights, including the rights of detainees and children and the right of freedom of association…” Al-Dameer is a member of the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO). As detailed below, it has received significant funding from the European Commission and has also received government funds from countries such as Switzerland and the US.

Since NGO Monitor published its previous report in January 2020, Al-Dameer has introduced new executives and members of its Board of Directors. As detailed below, many of these individuals have links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. In addition, the NGO itself has partnered with other PFLP members. For example, according to the website of a program under the title of “Contributing to the respect, protection and promotion of the right to association in the Gaza Strip”, on December 30, 2019, Al-Dameer held a conference on “The reality of the right to association in accordance with international obligations of Palestine”; among the participants was Mariam Abu Daqqa, a member of the PFLP Central Committee.

For more information on Al-Dameer’s PFLP ties, read NGO Monitor’s previous report, “Al-Dameer’s Ties to the PFLP Terror Group.”

Funding
According to the Central Elections Commission – Palestine (CEC), Al-Dameer is CEC’s implementing partner in the EU-funded “2020-2021 partnership with civil society organizations (CSOs),” specifically in the program “It’s my right to elect,” in which Palestinian university students receive training and initiate activities regarding the election process. According to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), in December 2019, the European Commission (EC) provided the CEC with €769,5921 for “Support to the Central Elections Commission (CEC) in strengthening the civic engagement and electoral participation of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” In correspondence between EC officials and NGO Monitor, the former noted that Al-Dameer received €13,600 to implement its program with the CEC (see Appendix).2
- In 2017-2019, the EC granted Al-Dameer €401,833 for “Contributing to the respect, protection and promotion of the right to association in the Gaza Strip.” According to the EC, Al-Dameer and PNGO are co-grantees, (total funding is €446,482).
- In 2018, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) granted Al CHF 180,000 under the project “Core Contribution to Al Dameer – HR/IHL Organization” (contract number 81054995, on file with NGO Monitor).
- In 2016, Al-Dameer received $36,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy (United States) for “Promoting Human Rights in Gaza” and an additional $90,000 in 2017-2019 for “Promoting Rights-focused Leadership in Gaza.”

Some anti-Israel advocates have been quick to attribute the recent announcement that Nike will cease various operations in the Jewish state beginning May of next year to the Oregon-based corporation’s support for the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement.

In a letter circulated last week, the sportswear giant announced to Israeli retailers that “the continuation of the business relationship between you and the company does no longer match the company’s policy and goals.”

Nike representatives have not commented publicly since the announcement and HonestReporting has not been able to ascertain whether the multi-national’s restructuring is also being implemented in other countries.

That said, no clear evidence has thus far emerged suggesting Nike’s decision is anything but a business one.

But that did not stop British online newspaper The Independent from lending credence to the BDS claim in an article titled “Nike to End Sales in Israeli Stores.” The story, written by Olivia Petter, states that Nike has declared its intention “to terminate sales in Israel as of next year.”

Untrue.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the sporting goods behemoth is committed to directing Israeli “customers to buy its shoes, clothing, and gear on its website and in company-owned stores.”

According to the Nike website, the company operates 15 retail locations across Israel. None of these are expected to close as the company pivots to a more direct sales model.

Nevertheless, The Independent’s report implies that the initiative is somehow related to the BDS campaign.

A Jewish advocacy group on Friday strongly condemned California Governor Gavin Newsom’s signing of a law making the state the first to require an ethnic studies course for high school students.

Assembly Bill 101 (AB 101) had been opposed by some Jewish groups, who argued that it would allow schools to adopt previously proposed curricula that included antisemitic and anti-Israel material.

After its September passage in the state’s legislature, the bill was welcomed by the California Legislative Jewish Caucus for “guardrail” amendments that would prevent those materials from being taught.

AMCHA Initiative Director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin argued Friday that those changes were insufficient.

“To say we are deeply concerned is an understatement,” she said. “While certainly not all in the ethnic studies field fall into this category, there is a vocal and active faction of extremists who have long been seeking to inject their antisemitic and anti-Zionist agenda into our nation’s classrooms, and today that faction succeeded.”

Rossman-Benjamin asserted, “The fact that no less than seven ‘guardrails’ were deemed necessary for preventing AB 101 from facilitating the widespread promotion of antisemitism is itself a stunning indictment of the bill and the dangers it poses for Jewish students and the Jewish community.”

“This is a dark day for Jewish students in California and the dozens of other states that historically follow California’s lead,” she said.

This bill had to be amended with 7 "guardrails" in a late effort to partially reduce how much anti-Semitism it will force into California's curriculum. https://t.co/y4ka82y07m

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) October 10, 2021

In the last six months, two widely-covered HonestReporting investigations brought to light shocking antisemitism espoused by journalists working for mainstream publications. After our May 23 article on Tala Halawa, who tweeted that “#HitlerWasRight,” the reporter was promptly fired by the BBC. In August, our work on Mariam Barghouti, who contended that “Israel has been beating Hitler at his own game since 1948,” led to her effectively being blacklisted by the outlets that had previously disseminated her anti-Israel talking points.

Today, we expose a pundit whose sheer volume of vile Judeophobic tweets towers over Halawa’s and Barghouti’s.

On May 13, at the height of the 11-day Hamas-initiated conflict against the Jewish state, The New York Times published a guest essay by Refaat Alareer titled, “My Child Asks, ‘Can Israel Destroy Our Building if the Power Is Out?’” The article falsely alleged that the Israel Defence Forces hit targets in the Gaza Strip with “no strategic value,” while implying that Israelis “draw straws” or “roll a dice” to decide “which block to annihilate” — essentially promoting a modern-day blood libel.

Related Reading: NYT Collaborates With Terror-linked Palestinian NGO to Push Antisemitic Blood Libel About Children

Nevertheless, Alareer’s malicious propaganda piece was included in a lesson plan for high schools by the NYT’s Learning Network. The writer and literature professor has also been cited or interviewed by The Washington Post, The Guardian, NBC News, NPR, PBS, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Qatar’s Al Jazeera (see here, here, here, here and here).

The New York Times simply identified Alareer as “the editor of ‘Gaza Writes Back,’ a collection of short stories.” However, a modicum of research reveals that he’s also a raging antisemite.

At the height of Hamas' 11-day rocket-firing campaign against Israel in May, the @NYTimes printed a guest essay by Refaat Alareer @itranslate123, a man with a history of indisputably antisemitic tweets. pic.twitter.com/nW1H4vBN55

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 10, 2021

Dreyfus was a Jewish officer in the French army who was baselessly accused of treason by a deeply antisemitic establishment.

After initially being convicted and humiliated, he was later exonerated of all charges.

Yet the @BBC refers to him as a "notorious Jewish spy". pic.twitter.com/woFbgdnztM

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 10, 2021

Mohamed Tatai is the imam of the Great Mosque of Toulouse. One day he is filmed while giving a sermon in which he invokes the destruction of the Jews by quoting from the Koran. And we are not talking about an extremist imam off the radar.

In an investigation in the weekly Marianne we read that at the opening of the Great Mosque with Tatai they were all there, the mayor of Toulouse, the president of the Occitan region, the prefect and the president of the Islamic Council of Algeria, which financed the mosque with six million euros.

Well, the Toulouse court has just cleared the imam of "incitement to hatred".

We are in the city where an Islamic terrorist killed Jonathan Sandler, his two sons Arieh and Gabriel and 7-year-old Myriam Monsonego.

The same judges who tried the historian Georges Bensoussan for four years for daring to denounce Islamic anti-Semitism.

This is a strange concept of "hate speech".

A journalist under guard and threatened with death, Eric Zemmour, explains in a conference that the Islamization of France is underway and is condemned.

Latvia’s parliament has voted to pay $46 million to the country’s Jewish community for property that was stolen from it during the Holocaust from individuals with no surviving legal heirs.

The Holocaust restitution law passed on September 30 by the Saeima, Latvia’s parliament, in Riga states that the country is not to blame for the Holocaust or the theft, which the law states was conducted by the Nazis and later by the communists who replaced them as rulers of Latvia.

Rather than reparations, the law refers to the payment as a form of “goodwill compensation,” according to the LETA news agency. The compensation voted on last week will be paid in annual increments of $4.6 million from the state budget to the Jewish community until 2032.

Jewish groups have been lobbying for the compensation of communal-owned assets in Latvia since 1992. Claims for restitution of private-owned property have been largely denied in Latvia, according to the World Jewish Restitution Organization, an organization dedicated to the restitution of Jewish property in Europe.

Of the 70,000 Jews who were living inside modern-day Latvia when the Germans invaded in 1941, only 200 survived, according to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum. Locals, including Latvian police, played a key role in the genocide, according to the museum, forming armed groups to attack local Jews, whom they believed were collaborating with communists.

Aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel) increased by 31% so far this year compared to last year, with 20,360 olim (new immigrants) landing at Ben Gurion Airport to make a new life in the Jewish state, data shows.

The Ministry of Aliyah and Integration and the Jewish Agency for Israel released the report on Sunday ahead of Yom HaAliyah, or Aliyah Day, on October 13 — a national holiday celebrating the contribution of Jewish immigration to Israeli society.

“Israel has continued seeing a dramatic rise in Aliyah despite the Covid-19 pandemic, with the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration and the Jewish Agency ensuring that immigration continues despite the difficulty and limitations on international travel,” the statement on the report said.

However, compared to the pre-Covid numbers of 2019, this year is on track for lower numbers. In 2019, there were some 33,500 olim who arrived in Israel.

According to the data, the largest source of Aliyah so far this year is from Russia (5,075), despite a 5% decrease from 2020. The second largest source is the United States (3,104), up 41% compared to the first nine months of 2020.

Immigration from France increased by 55%, with 2,819 French olim; 2,123 from Ukraine (4% increase); 780 from Belarus (69% increase); 633 from Argentina (46% increase); 490 from the United Kingdom (20% increase); 438 from Brazil (4% increase); and 373 from South Africa (56% increase).

Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday laid a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, where she urged a constant stand against antisemitism.

“Every visit to Yad Vashem touches me at the core,” Merkel said, according to a translation provided by the museum.

“The crimes against the Jewish people that are documented here are a perpetual reminder of the responsibility we Germans bear — and a warning,” she added, saying it was Germany’s responsibility to stand up against antisemitism.

“That Jewish life has again found a home in Germany after the crimes against humanity that were the Shoah, is an immense expression of trust, for which we are grateful,” said Merkel. “This trust compels us to stand up with determination against antisemitism, hatred, every day anew.”

“This is an obligation for every federal government,” she said, referring to the ruling cabinet of her home country.

The German chancellor’s visit to the museum — her sixth since taking office — was part of her farewell trip to the Jewish state near the end of her 16-year term in office.

Today, November 10, is Danny's birthday. His last words "I am Jewish", have become a banner of peoplehood and identity to many, and are enshrined in this Book: https://t.co/g9HVuEVCTI
which I consider THE BEST for understanding how Jews define themselves in the 21st Century. https://t.co/ALJipaEnDQ

— Judea Pearl (@yudapearl) October 10, 2021

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The State of Israel is in a fight for its life: but you wouldn’t know it. For 75 years, Israel’s enemies could not defeat it militarily. What’s more, given enviable strides over the last decade, Israel’s enemies cannot defeat it economically. Yet we are in a far more dangerous place than ever.

That’s because these achievements are only part of the equation of Israel’s security and the battle for the safety of the Jewish people. Israel’s enemies have opened a new political front in their attacks – and Israel is losing that battle, which is not being fought on a border, in the sky or on the ground.

The battle for public opinion is being fought on campuses and billions of iPhones. And Israel has let itself fall behind and, as Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora, by not fighting the daily lies, distortions, dishonesty, and slander unequivocally and with one voice, we have let it happen on our watch.

Opponents of Israel’s right to exist have overtaken many mainstream press outlets, and this bias has infiltrated editorial boards and even supposedly unbiased reporting, who parrot anti-Israel, antisemitic talking points that would make the Muslim Brotherhood proud. They refer to Israel as an “apartheid state,” guilty of “ethnic cleansing,” and “crimes against humanity” – simply for defending itself.

On social media, influencers attack Israel for said self-defense in the face of rocket barrages launched by terror groups.

In the past, Israel’s opponents and enemies of the Jewish people funneled money to the state’s adversaries through weapons programs and militias. Today, it’s more insidious. It has effectively penetrated former staunch Israeli allies, including the US, through media and academia. It has split American Jews. Jewish students and professors are openly ridiculed, censored, and penalized for expressing support for Israel, including by fellow Jews. Universities recognize the problem, but most stay silent out of fear of condemnation and cancellation.

In government and politics, formerly unassailable allies of Israel and the Jewish people, including the Speaker of the House, are starting to bow to extremist factions including, terrifyingly, agreeing to temporarily pull votes for Iron Dome funding.

It should be clear: No Jew enters a Muslim building on the Temple Mount and surely not in a mosque. The compound is rather large and there is more than enough room for it to be shared. After all, in Hebron, Jews do pray daily in a structure considered a mosque (the Cave of the Patriarchs). So why is there this form of Islamic cancel culture which can be summarized so: The Temple Mount belongs solely to the Muslims and the Western Wall to the Jews.

First, the facts. Invading Muslim armies conquered Jerusalem in 638 CE and usurped, physically and theologically, Mount Moriah. Although Jews were permitted to enter at times, from the 13th century until the late 19th century, Jewish entry was prohibited. This also was the situation in Hebron. In 1947, a Jew who accidentally entered the compound was killed. Parallel to this, the majority rabbinic opinion was that, despite the compound being larger than the original sacred area, all entry would be prohibited.

On this background, in 1967, the famous status quo was adopted. But if that situation is not static – Muslims have opened three new mosques since then – do they have any right to protest? Are they the only ones who have the right to be “provoked?” The Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty’s Article 9 calls for the promotion of “interfaith relations … with the aim of working toward religious understanding … freedom of religious worship and tolerance.” Should that not be honored?

Can we not attempt to achieve peace through religious unity and compromise? Why do we need to tolerate such degrading language in the Arabic media on this issue as when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Jews "defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque with their filthy feet."

The Waqf, and its financial patron, Jordan’s Ministry of Awqaf Islamic Affairs and Holy Places, have prevented surveillance cameras that could reduce violence and encourage the bullying attitude that presages rock throwing and worse. They need to be more responsible.

In the spirit of Isaiah 56:7, that “my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations,” cannot we accept that all who seek to respect and worship at their holy sites be allowed to do so reasonably without recourse to threats of violence?

It is time to act to ensure the Abraham Accords fulfill their potential, former senior advisor to the US president Jared Kushner said at a ceremony in the Knesset on Monday.

“What we created is a new paradigm in the region. It can have many different outcomes,” he said. “It is imperative on all of us to set high expectations for what we want the Abraham Accords to achieve.”

Kushner, who founded the Abraham Accords Institute for Peace, spoke at an event in honor of the one-year anniversary of the peace and normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states. The Knesset Abraham Accords Caucus, which includes 107 MKs and is led by MKs Ofir Akunis (Likud) and Ruth Wasserman-Lande (Blue and White), hosted the event.

The adviser to former president Donald Trump recalled that the announcement of peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates “shocked everyone.” He quipped that it was “one of the few things between Israel and the US that didn’t leak out.”

Kushner said that when he, together with the first Israeli delegation, arrived in Abu Dhabi on a direct flight, “the image captured the imaginations of the whole region. People realized things were just different.”

Now, he said, Israel is more popular in Arab states than he had imagined.

“Muslims in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Pakistani are seeing that Israel is not what they thought it is. They are seeing that Israel is welcoming their Muslim brothers,” he stated. “A new era has really begun.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council approved a pro-Durban resolution on Monday 32-10, after the United Kingdom called for a roll call vote and prevented its anticipated passage by consensus.

"Racism should be tackled in all its forms and, regrettably, for far too long, the UN has downplayed the scourge of antisemitism. This must end," the British envoy Simon Manley told the 47-member UNHRC as it wrapped up its 48th session in Geneva.

Israel had worked behind the scenes to sway UNHRC members to oppose the resolution, which is approved every two years, and to refuse to allow it to pass by consensus.

But initially, UNHRC nations who only last month had boycotted the UN General Assembly event in New York that had commemorated the 20th anniversary of the contentious World Conference Against Racism, were reluctant to take a similar stand against that document.

On Monday however, the following 10 countries opposed the resolution: Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Ukraine and the UK.

Another five countries — Bulgaria, Japan, Marshall Islands, Republic of Korea and Uruguay— abstained.

BRAVO: Record amount of countries at UNHRC vote No to resolution celebrating antisemitic 2001 Durban Conference.
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UK led the vote. @BorisJohnson& @trussliz showed leadership. pic.twitter.com/emfXNGQQj3

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 11, 2021

Yes! UK did stand true! And showed true leadership @trussliz@SimonManleyFCDO@RitaFrenchFCDO@UKMissionGenevahttps://t.co/tYMhURqr2qpic.twitter.com/KrnZVp0fRg

— UKLawyersForIsrael (@UKLFI) October 11, 2021

Israel will keep the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in a 1967 war, even if international views on Damascus change, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Monday.

In 2019, then US President Donald Trump broke with other world powers by recognizing Israel as sovereign on the Golan Heights, which it annexed in 1981 in a move not recognized internationally.

Bennett’s remarks came as the current US administration hedges on the Golan’s legal status and some US-allied Arab states ease their shunning of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over his handling of a decade-old civil war.

Addressing a conference about the Golan’s future, Bennett said the internal Syrian strife had “persuaded many in the world that perhaps it is preferable that this beautiful and strategic territory be in the State of Israel’s hands.”

“But even in a situation in which — as could happen — the world changes tack on Syria, or in relation to Assad, this has no bearing on the Golan Heights,” he told the forum hosted by the conservative Makor Rishon newspaper.

“The Golan Heights is Israeli, full stop.”

In his speech, Bennett pledged to double the size of the Israeli population on the Golan, which at around 20,000 is currently about equal to that of a Druze Arab community that often professes loyalty to Syria.

Two Iron Dome batteries purchased by the US Army are heading to Guam for further tests and training of troops who will be manning the system, Defense News reported.

Dubbed Operation Iron Island, the deployment to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam will test the capabilities of the system, and further train and refine the deployment capabilities of air defenders, read a statement released by the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command.

According to an Army spokesman who spoke to the news site, the exercise is focused on “gathering data on sustainment, deployment considerations and how we integrate Iron Dome with our existing air defense systems.”

Soldiers and equipment from the 2-43Air Defense Artillery Battalion from Fort Bliss, Texas, will be deployed to Guam for the tests and there is currently no plan to conduct a live-fire of the system while it is on Guam, the statement added.

According to Defense News, the batteries will arrive on the Pacific Island in mid-October and the exercise will last through November.

Most Americans couldn’t find Azerbaijan on a map. The former Soviet republic is located in between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains, and has as its neighbors the republics of Georgia and Armenia—other former captives of the tsarist and Communist empires—as well as the southern reaches of the Russian Federation ruled by Russian President Vladimir Putin. To its south is Iran, a country that counts a third of its people as ethnic Azeris. All of which is to say that although this part of the world is largely unknown to Americans, it’s a fairly dangerous neighborhood.

So when Iran deployed a large portion of its army and conducted military exercises close to the Azeri border last month, the people of that much smaller country and its government, located in the ancient city of Baku, held their breath. For all of its obscurity and remoteness, the security of Azerbaijan is an issue that ought to concern more than the 10.2 million people who live there.

Understanding the complicated politics of the Caucasus region isn’t easy. Nor is all of what’s going on there directly connected to issues that concern the security of the Middle East, the West or the United States. But Azerbaijan’s current dilemma illustrates the ripple effect of actions taken elsewhere. That country’s conflicts with its neighbors in Armenia and Iran, as well as with Russia, cannot be viewed in isolation. More to the point, seemingly unrelated actions taken by other countries that do not, at least on the surface, have much to do with them, such as America’s disastrous retreat from Afghanistan or the Biden administration’s stubborn determination to revive former President Barack Obama’s policies aimed at appeasing Iran, are actually having serious consequences on the ground that cannot be ignored.

Azerbaijan's State Border Service (SBS) rejected claims by Iranian officials that Israeli forces are present in Azerbaijan near the Iranian border, saying that Azerbaijan "does not need the support of foreign forces."

Ahmed Ali Goudarzi, commander of Iran's Border Guard, claimed last week that Israeli forces are present in "sensitive areas" in neighboring countries and conducting intelligence and espionage work, advising Muslim countries "not to allow this," according to Iranian state broadcaster IRIB.

The commander additionally claimed that Israel incited neighboring countries to take action concerning their borders or impose large tolls on heavy vehicles, an apparent reference to fees imposed on Iranian truck drivers by Azerbaijan recently.

The Azeri SBS stated in response that there never have been, are not and never will be forces of any third country on Azerbaijan's border, according to the Azeri APA news source. The SBS added that it does not need the support of foreign forces.

The SBS additionally stressed that Azerbaijan has the sovereign right to apply border and customs control on roads that cross through Azeri territory.

The statement added that, despite weekly meetings taking place at various levels between Azerbaijani and Iranian border guards, no information concerning the allegations of foreign forces in Azerbaijan was ever given to the SBS, according to APA.

A leading candidate for mayor in Rome has apologized to the Jewish community over an article he wrote last year in which he suggested that victims of mass murders other than the Holocaust gain less attention because they “didn’t own banks.”

Jewish community leaders and others had decried the comments by Enrico Michetti, a radio host who is the center-right coalition’s candidate in the Oct. 17 and 18 mayoral election. He received more than 30% of votes in the election’s first round earlier this month, more than any other candidate.

“Each year, 40 Holocaust-related movies are shot, trips and cultural initiatives of all sorts are financed to commemorate that horrible persecution, and up to here, I have nothing to say,” Michetti wrote on the website of the radio station where he is a host. “But I wonder, why the same pity and the same consideration are not given to the dead killed in the foibe massacres [of Italians by Yugoslav Partisans], in the refugee camps, and in the mass murders that still take place in the world?”

Among the answers he offered: “Perhaps because they did not own banks, perhaps because they did not belong to lobbies capable of deciding the destinies of the planet.”

The comments, which were first identified and shared this week by Il Manifesto, a left-wing newspaper, echo the antisemitic trope that Jews control world financial systems. Jewish leaders were quick to condemn Michetti.

“The thought that our city institutions may be led by people whose thinking is imbued with prejudice makes us tremble,” said Noemi Di Segni, the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. “The culture of dialogue and the education on the memory of what fascism was are key points also at the basis of people’s electoral choices.”

WHY DO churches insist that they are not obligated to pay taxes to the Jewish state, even though their scripture states that “…it is necessary to submit to authority, not only to avoid punishment, but also as a matter of conscience” (Romans 13:5)?

The church’s disregard of the law (international and Israeli), as well as its own teachings, means that Israeli citizens, whether they be Jews, Christians, or Muslims (of Jerusalem and elsewhere) are paying more than their share for sanitation, garbage collection, municipal services, and other taxes because of taxes that are not being paid by the church’s owned commercial businesses (shops, hotels, and restaurants). Ironically, this puts a harder economic burden on the poor, who the church is committed to serve.

In addition, it should be mentioned that there are an untold number and invaluable Jewish artifacts in the Vatican archives that have been plundered over the centuries. The importance to return all of the plundered Judaica objects d’art, texts, and artifacts cannot be over stressed. [See also Dr. Calvo’s above mentioned paper and my September 19, 2021 The Jerusalem Post article “Napoleon, Hitler, Vatican: All collectors”.]

From the Jewish perspective, all these plundered items are part of the Jewish identity, history, and holy religious practices. Many original Hebraic texts contain insight into Judaism as to how and why it is practiced today. These sacred religious artifacts and objects d’art depict Jewish communal life throughout the ages.

If the Vatican’s tax bill was NIS 650 million (about $186 million) in 2017, how much is owed now, including interest and penalties?

Perhaps the State of Israel could cut the Catholic Church a deal and offer a credit against the tax bill for the return of the Jewish treasures to the State of Israel.

In response to communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, Haaretz‘s English edition today amended a subheadline which irrelevantly reported that a suspected arsonist had been a resident of a West Bank facility while simultaneously omitting the salient fact that she had just escaped from a mental institution.

The headline and sub-headline stated: “Israeli Suspected of Arson as Firefighters Battle Jerusalem-Area Blaze: Resident of West Bank settlement arrested after blaze breaks out near Beit Shemesh, weeks after a mega-fire devastated parts of the Jerusalem Hills.”

As the article itself states in the second paragraph: “The suspect had escaped a mental institution, according to police.”

Clearly, the fact that the woman is mentally ill and escaped from a mental institution is much more relevant to the suspected arson than her previous place of residency in a West Bank settlement.

Indeed, following communication from Presspectiva, CAMERA’s Hebrew site, Haaretz‘s Hebrew edition commendably amended its headline Friday to state: “Fire breaks out in Jerusalem hills: A woman who escaped from a secure institution is suspected of the arson.”

PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh: “Why is the [US] Consulate [in Jerusalem] and its opening important to us? Because it is the American address for taking care of the Palestinian cause, far from the embassy that the US transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on the pretext that Jerusalem is one city. The message from this [new US] administration is that Jerusalem isn’t one [united Israeli] city and that the American administration does not recognize the annexation of Arab Jerusalem by the Israeli side. We want the American Consulate to constitute the seed of a US embassy in the State of Palestine.”

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr discussed ending the Palestinian Authority’s monthly payments to convicted terrorists and their families in his meetings in the region this week.

Amr discussed “security, human rights and the rule of law, economic development, payments to individuals imprisoned for acts of terrorism, energy, water and humanitarian relief in Gaza” with Israeli and Palestinian officials, according to a statement from the US Embassy in Jerusalem.

A diplomatic source specified that Amr encouraged the Palestinians to end stipends to terrorists, which critics have nicknamed “pay for slay.” The Palestinian Authority pays convicted terrorists and the families of those killed while committing acts of terror a monthly sum. The living terrorists receive more depending on their prison sentence, meaning that the greater the severity of the crime – the more Israelis killed and wounded – the more they receive each month.

Israel’s National Bureau for Counter-Terror Financing in the Defense Ministry reported that the PA paid NIS 597 million ($185 million) in 2020. Amr’s “visit further sought ways to make tangible improvements for the Palestinian people with a view to preserving the vision of a negotiated two-state solution,” the US embassy stated.

His meetings in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Tel Aviv “advanced our goals for achieving equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity, and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians,” the statement reads.

Within his discussions of economic development, Amr emphasized increasing tourism in Bethlehem, the diplomatic source said.

During the Palestinian Authority’s 5-year terror campaign – the second Intifada (2000-2005) – one Palestinian terrorist murdered 3 Israeli civilians and 7 soldiers by shooting them with a sniper rifle from a hilltop in Wadi Al-Haramiya between Ramallah and Nablus. His name was Thaer Hammad and he is serving 11 life sentences in an Israeli prison. He is also one of the PA’s terrorist darlings.

Thus official PA TV glorified him as the “heroic prisoner sniper” on the 18th anniversary of his imprisonment:
Official PA TV host: “Eighteen years since the imprisonment of heroic prisoner sniper Thaer Hammad. The one who carried out the Wadi Al-Haramiya operation that defended our people from the occupation’s worst checkpoint at the time. This picture was shared by activists and gained many shares yesterday.”

Text on screen showing social media posts: “Thaer Hammad, the hero of Wadi Al-Haramiya, began his 18th year in the occupation’s prisons”

[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, Oct. 5, 2021]

Earlier this year, when preparing for elections and recognizing the popularity of murderers of Israelis among the Palestinian public, Abbas’ Fatah Movement enlisted murderer Hammad to promote Fatah’s election campaign:

Below terrorist murderer Hammad is Fatah’s logo.

Text on image: “I am a son of Fatah, and I will applaud none but it. I am committed to the decisions of Fatah’s bodies and to Fatah’s one and only [election] list. This is a revolution until victory

Prisoner leader Thaer Hammad

#I_will_vote – Fatah”

[Facebook page of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, April 4, 2021]

Palestinian policemen beating a Palestinian man in the town of Idna, west of Hebron. https://t.co/xlTTMMI9ac

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) October 10, 2021

Senior PMU Official Hadi Al-Ameri: The Liberation of Palestine will Begin in Iraq; There Can Be No Normalization with Israel #Iraq#pmupic.twitter.com/Bqj6JS1Mxw

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 11, 2021

While Bashar al-Assad is still shunned by the West, which blames him for a decade of brutal civil war in Syria, a shift is under way in the Middle East, where Arab allies of the United States are bringing him in from the cold by reviving economic and diplomatic ties.

The extension of Assad’s two-decade-old presidency in an election in May did little to break his pariah status among Western states, but fellow Arab leaders are coming to terms with the fact that he retains a solid grip on power.

The chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan has firmed up a belief among Arab leaders that they need to chart their own course. Anticipating a more hands-off approach from Washington, now preoccupied with the challenge of China, Arab leaders are driven by their own priorities, notably how to rehabilitate economies hammered by years of conflict and COVID-19.

Political considerations also loom large in Arab capitals such as Cairo, Amman, and Abu Dhabi. These include their ties with Assad’s most powerful backer, Russia, which has been pressing for Syria’s reintegration, and how to counter the influence carved out in Syria by Iran and Turkey.

Turkey and its support for Sunni Islamists across the region — including a swathe of northern Syria that remains outside Assad’s grasp — is of particular concern to Arab rulers, who can make common cause with Damascus against Islamist groups.

But while the signs of Arab rapprochement with Damascus are growing — King Abdullah of Jordan spoke to Assad for the first time in a decade this month — US policy will remain a complicating factor.

One can draw a clear line between the increase of Hezbollah’s power in Lebanon and the consequent increase in economic and other crises affecting the country. It is true that not every time two things coincide there is necessarily a correlation. However, it appears that Hezbollah’s role is the key to the hollowing out and destruction of Lebanon.

There are several facts here. Lebanon recently went days without power, and the army is now supplying fuel. However, that doesn’t solve the long-term energy problem and the country’s debts. Lebanon has trouble importing fuel supplies, and the power stations are out of fuel. This has set Lebanon on the path to constant and increasing crises. Yet it is not some blockaded country, such as the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

It’s worth considering this fact: Hamas, like Hezbollah, is backed by Iran and has been encouraged to fight Israel at the cost of harming the people it governs. That means the destruction of Lebanon and Gaza is in Iran’s interests.

However, whereas Gaza is indeed under blockade and has a constant fuel and electricity crisis, there is no excuse for why Lebanon has become an economic basket case. There are Lebanese who are incredibly wealthy abroad, and there is evidence that many have simply sent their money abroad, not investing in the failing state.

At the same time, Hezbollah has sponged up what remains in Lebanon, grabbing political power and leveraging it to have a stranglehold on the presidency and other parts of government, conducting its own foreign policy and involving Lebanon in the troubles of Syria’s civil war.

A fire has broken out at the Zahrani oil facility, according to Lebanese reports. #Lebanonpic.twitter.com/h39BkWI6yj

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) October 11, 2021

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and his Israeli counterpart, Eyal Hulata, and their teams met in the White House on Oct. 5 and discussed Iran. Diplomatic sources say the realization is growing that Israel and the U.S. aren't on the same page and their strategic perceptions of the Iranian nuclear threat differ substantially. A senior Israeli defense official described the situation to Al-Monitor:
"The atmosphere was very friendly and open, the messages were conveyed, but in terms of substance, the situation is bad. Perhaps even very bad. Right now, there is no joint operational contingency plan against Iran should efforts to return to the nuclear agreement fail. And even worse, the Americans do not have any solution whatsoever to such a situation. They do not have a Plan B. They do not have alternatives, and what is truly troubling is that they are not really concerned about it."

"True, the Americans continue to stress - at our request - that if the diplomatic path fails to yield results, there are other options, but it is not clear whether they mean it. They are not focused on Iran, they are focused on China and domestic U.S. issues....The severity of the situation does not really trouble them; they do not think that American national security is under threat of an Iranian nuclear effort."

Israel has been presenting the Americans with massive quantities of fresh intelligence. Israel is one of the world's largest repositories of intelligence information on the Iran nuclear issue, after Iran reportedly cracked and brought down a major U.S. intelligence network operating there. Israel is focused on proving Iran's true intentions of acquiring a military nuclear capability, and illustrating the potential results of its success. "We are simply trying to prove to them that the Iranian saga could end up like the North Korean one," the Israeli official said.

Iranian International Affairs Expert Hamid-Reza Gholamzadeh: Israel Behind Azeri Plans for Border with Iran; If Necessary, Iran Will Punish Azerbaijan, Turkey #Azerbaijan#Iran#Turkeypic.twitter.com/4TsULYMmef

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 11, 2021

and the execution of hundreds of #Kurdish political prisoners. He was among the first to delegitimise Kurdish struggle for self-determination, justifying mass murders against the #Kurds. (2)

— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) October 11, 2021

Iranian activists in #Oslo#Norway totally hijacked the scene from Iranian gold medal winner Alireza Gharayi by shouting the name of wrestler champion #NavidAfkari. Navid was executed by the regime in Iran in 2020 on false charges for protesting. pic.twitter.com/23TP4FNLBM

— mina bai (@bai_mina) October 10, 2021

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The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) - in attempting to whitewash European Union (EU) policies directed against Israel in Judea and Samaria being labelled as “antisemitic” – is itself engaging in antisemitic criticism of Israel’s right to claim sovereignty there.

Antisemitic EU anti-Israel policies:
- Require goods produced by Israelis living in Judea and Samaria to be distinctively labelled for sale in the EU: “Product from West Bank (Israeli settlement)”
- Facilitate and finance illegal Arab building in Area C of Judea and Samaria - totally under Israeli control pursuant to the Oslo Accords – without the EU seeking Israel’s approval

ECRI’s 47 members – one from each Council of Europe member state – are appointed:
“on the basis of their independence, impartiality, moral authority and expertise in dealing with issues of racism, discrimination, xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance.”

ECRI – in a recent report - clarified when it considers criticism of Israel to be antisemitic:
“Contemporary forms of antisemitism can differ from traditional forms of prejudice against Jewish people, but both forms can also exist in parallel. Nowadays, antisemitism can also be expressed in certain criticism of Israel that is baseless. For example, denying Jews their right to a national homeland, holding the State of Israel to a different standard of behaviour than other states, or demonising the State of Israel and viewing it and its people as inherently evil or racist, may be regarded as antisemitic.”

Under these guidelines:
- Textbooks used in Palestinian Arab and Saudi Arabian schools depicting hundreds of maps without “Israel” being designated on them - are antisemitic
- The Palestine Liberation Organisation and Hamas - whose respective Charters deny Jews have any right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in their ancient and biblical homeland – are antisemitic organisations and their leaders are antisemites.
- EU criticism of Israel for its responses in protecting Israel’s citizens from rockets fired from Gaza indiscriminately into Israeli population centres - is antisemitic - since European States would act similarly were their countries so confronted

ECRI however shoots itself in the foot when stating what criticism of Israel is not antisemitic:
“However, ECRI strongly emphasises that any attempts to stifle, or stigmatise as antisemitic, legitimate criticism of Israel and its policies, in particular towards the Palestinian people and in the context of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, will jeopardise efforts to combat antisemitism and should therefore be rejected.”

Ben & Jerry have never been shy about making politics part of their brand. The ice cream makers have made social activism a mainstay of their corporate outlook in recent years, with stunts including the refusal to serve two scoops of the same ice cream flavor in Australia (in support of same-sex marriage) and unveiling an anti-Trump batch flavor called ‘Pecan Resist’ to ‘lick injustice.’ They even found time to involve themselves in little local difficulties across the pond, berating UK home secretary Priti Patel last year for trying to stop migrants from crossing the English Channel in boats.

Now, though, one of the company’s stunts appears to have backfired spectacularly. In July the ice cream manufacturers declared that Ben & Jerry’s would stop sales in the ‘occupied Palestinian Territory’ as ‘we believe it is inconsistent with our values for our product to be present within an internationally recognized illegal occupation’. And who better to defend those values than Ben Cohen, appearing alongside his co-founder Jerry Greenfield in an Axios on HBO interview this weekend?

The septuagenarian Sanders supporter could only flounder when asked about the reasoning behind the Israel boycott, as the company he started continues to peddle its wares in Georgia and Texas, despite attacking the abortion and voting rights laws in those two states.

The activist co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s admitted in an interview with “Axios on HBO” that they don't know how to hold states like Georgia and Texas accountable when they pass laws with which they disagree.

Why it matters: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield have made progressive politics synonymous with their brand. The 70-year-old entrepreneurs, who no longer control the company but retained their right to be its social conscience, have shown they’ll use business muscle in pursuit of their ideals.

Axios' Alexi McCammond asked, during an interview in the brand’s home state of Vermont: “You guys are big proponents of voting rights. Why do you still sell ice cream in Georgia? Texas — abortion bans. Why are you still selling there?”
- “I don’t know,” Ben Cohen said with a laugh. “It’s an interesting question. I don’t know what that would accomplish. We’re working on those issues, of voting rights. ... I think you ask a really good question. And I think I’d have to sit down and think about it for a bit.”
- When pressed on the Texas limits on women’s access to abortion, Cohen said: “By that reasoning, we should not sell any ice cream anywhere. I’ve got issues with what’s being done in almost every state and country. ”
- "One thing that's different is that what Israel is doing is considered illegal by international law. And so I think that's a consideration," Greenfield said.

One of the company’s latest moves — its 2021 decision to stop selling ice cream in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories — led to serious backlash.
- Cohen and Greenfield wrote a joint NYT op-ed defending the company’s decision. “While we no longer have any operational control of the company we founded in 1978, we’re proud of its action and believe it is on the right side of history,” they wrote.
- Thirty-five states in the U.S. have anti-Israel boycott laws, and so far four have announced they’re taking action or considering divesting from Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company.
- Greenfield told “Axios on HBO” that those states’ decisions are based on “misinformation” that “Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever are being characterized as boycotting Israel — which is not the case at all. It’s not boycotting Israel in any way,” he said.

Two separate developments involving improved relations between Sunni and Shiite Muslims and women’s sporting rights demonstrate major shifts in how the rivalry for leadership of the Muslim world and the competition to define Islam in the 21st century is playing out.

The developments fit into a regional effort by conservative, status quo states: Saudi Arabia: the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt; and proponents of different forms of political Islam: Iran, Turkey, and Qatar — to manage rather than resolve their differences in a bid to ensure that they do not spin out of control. The efforts have had the greatest success with the lifting in January of a 3.5-year-long Saudi-UAE-Egyptian-led diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar.

The reconciliation moves also signal the pressure on Middle Eastern players in what amounts to a battle for the soul of Islam, to change perceptions of the region as being wracked by civil wars, sectarian tensions, extremism, jihadism, and autocracy. Altering that perception is key to the successful implementation of plans to diversify oil and gas dependent economies in the Gulf, develop resource-poor countries in the region, tackle an economic crisis in Turkey, and enable Iran to cope with crippling US sanctions.

Finally, these developments are also the harbinger of the next phase in the competition for religious soft power and leadership of the Muslim world. That next phase of the battle is being shaped not only by doubts among US allies in the Middle East about the reliability of the United States as a security guarantor, reinforced by America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, but also by a realization that neither China nor Russia can (or will) attempt to replace the US defense umbrella in the Gulf.

Dave Chapelle may not really be an antisemite but his new Netflix special contains some very antisemitic material.

What Chapelle may think are harmless jokes – about Jews coming from outer space to control the earth, about them taking land that is not rightfully theirs, and about them experiencing horrors and then perpetuating those same horrors on others – actually reinforce a number of dangerous anti-Jewish tropes.

To be fair, Chapelle makes fun of everyone, and part of what makes him special is that his humor often crosses lines. But jokes like these are different: The ideas behind them have led to innocent people getting killed throughout history, and as an influential public figure Chapelle needs to really be more careful.

Chapelle is probably not an avid student of Jewish suffering, and antisemitism is notoriously hard to define because it is a mutating virus whose focus can shift radically over time. But in terms of its perfidious process, one of the rare unifying themes that emerge from the annals of Jew-hatred is the antisemites' consistent attempt at the dehumanization of the Jewish people. Whether Jews are portrayed as malevolently superhuman, as in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or as worthlessly subhuman, as in the Nazi ideology, antisemites throughout history have found that it is easier to despise and eventually kill that which they do not consider human.

Jewish groups in Massachusetts are raising concerns about a bill being proposed by state lawmakers that would facilitate the teaching of ethnic studies in schools.

The legislation, known as S.365 "An Act relative to anti-racism, equity and justice in education" has been proposed by State Sen. Jason Lewis (5th Middlesex District). The bill, citing the Jan. 6 "insurrection" and the "imminent danger" posed by "disinformation and white supremacy," says that it would be in the best interest of Massachusetts students "that education in dismantling racism be taught to all students."

It calls for the establishment of a fund and a "Commission for Anti-Racism and Equity in Education," which would "develop curriculum materials with a social-justice perspective of dismantling racism" and "ensure that ethnic studies, racial justice, decolonizing history and unlearning racism are taught at all grade levels."

The bill was introduced earlier this year and has been referred to the committee on education. In September, a virtual hearing was held where Jewish groups submitted testimony raising concerns over the language.

Robert Leikind, director of the American Jewish Committee's New England regional office, wrote that while they support efforts to educate students on racial justice, the "terms used are undefined and vague, leaving the proposed commission broad discretion to interpret their meaning and shape policy accordingly."

On the October 8 broadcast of AM 640’s Toronto Today talk show with Greg Brady, radio listeners were treated to a nearly 10 minute anti-Israel diatribe by controversial Toronto author Desmond Cole. (Start at the 11:50 mark on the audio player below)

Cole, who recently attempted to abuse his position teaching about anti-Black racism for the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) by spewing anti-Israel misinformation, was given an unfettered platform on Greg Brady’s program to air his criticisms against Israel. For background on this incident, see True North Centre’s report by Sue-Ann Levy entitled: “The TDSB’s Desmond Cole disaster won’t go away any time soon”

Cole’s remarks were little more than a rehash of the same, tired anti-Israel arguments being used without factual basis for decades.

“People prefer to defend the State of Israel. They prefer to defend a settler colonial regime in another part of the world where you can occupy other people’s land…where you can make laws and erase the laws of the people who were there and take away their customs if that sounds at all familiar to Canada, where you can control people movement…and so we are sympathetic to another settler colonial country that is doing the same thing,” Cole said.

Cole’s claims are without any factual basis whatsoever. Israel is the ancient, historic homeland of the Jewish people, exiled from their land for nearly two thousand years, and who retain legal, moral and historic right to the land. To call them colonialists is not only deeply offensive and incredibly ignorant of three millennia of Jewish indigenous presence in the Holy Land, but it is also utterly illogical.

Despite its repeated usage by Cole, colonialism is not a catch-all term for what he happens to find objectionable about Israel. Rather, it refers to the “domination of a people or area by a foreign state or nation,” and of course, even a cursory reading of the Jewish people’s extensive history in their homeland – they were named Jews after the land, Judea – the claim of colonialism becomes exposed as pure fiction. Jews are not foreign to their land, and they cannot occupy their own land, either.

News headlines last week reported on the rare archeological find of a private Kingdom of Judah-era toilet discovered in the remains of a luxurious mansion in Jerusalem. Haaretz noted the presence of dozens of bowls around the ancient lavatory, about which an Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) official speculated: “they held air freshener, an aromatic oil or incense – anything to make use of the facility less onerous” (“Biblical-era Toilet With Possible Air Fresheners Found in Jerusalem“).

While aromatic oil might have done the olfactory trick in the First Temple-period bathroom, all the fragrant incense in ancient Judah can’t conceal the stench of media reports that erase the long, rich Jewish history of ancient Israel.

The Associated Press’ short article last week on the unusual toilet find was a prime example of news media dumping on Jews’ ancient history in their ancestral homeland (“2,700-year-old toilet found in Jerusalem was a rare luxury“). The leading news agency cited the “rare ancient toilet in Jerusalem dating back more than 2,700 years” while diligently failing to note the historic period in question: the First Temple Period.

The IAA press release, for its part, was clear and explicitly began: “A rare toilet cubicle from the First Temple Period, which was part of an ancient royal estate that operated at the end of the Kings of Judean period (7th century BCE). . . ” (All emphases added throughout.) The IAA statement repeatedly emphasized the historic period of Jewish sovereignty in the ancient homeland:

“Beneath the toilet, a septic tank was discovered, containing a large amount of pottery from the First Temple Period and animal bones. The finds were carefully collected, including the soil fill. Their investigation may teach us about the lifestyles and diets of the First Temple people, as well as ancient diseases.”

Listeners to one of the October 7th editions of the BBC World Service radio programme ‘Newsday’ heard a flimsy item about a non-event of a story based on an inadequately identified source, with comment from an inadequately presented contributor.

Presenter Bolo Mosuro introduced that item (from 10:01 here) as follows:
Mosuro: “Now, we head to the Gaza Strip where the past few months have seen a further deterioration in the state of Palestinians in the area. The blockade by Israel has meant a lack of clean drinking water, the electricity supply is intermittent, unemployment is high and even sick patients have to apply for exit permits before being allowed to leave the territory for medical treatment.”

Mosuro failed to clarify that Egypt has also placed restrictions on the Gaza Strip since it came under the control of a terrorist organisation in 2007.

Her claim that Israel’s counter-terrorism measures are the cause of “a lack of clean drinking water”, inadequate power supplies and unemployment are of course as inaccurate as they are unsurprising, given that the BBC has repeatedly promoted misinformation concerning water and power in the past. As documented here previously, in May of this year Hamas disabled Gaza City’s desalination plant, cutting some 250,000 residents off from their water supply. The long-running electricity shortage is the product of disputes between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and has nothing to do with “the blockade”.

The context essential for understanding why residents of an enclave run by a terrorist organisation should need permits to enter Israel for medical treatment (or other reasons) was absent from that part of Mosuro’s introduction.

For an article about Yavne not to mention that the city is widely considered the most significant site for post-biblical Jewish history after Jerusalem, or even "Judaism" or "Jews" at all, is a real oversight.

Please correct this regrettable omission, @jackiepeiser.

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 11, 2021

The Israel Security Agency’s report on terror attacks (Hebrew) during September 2021 shows that throughout the month a total of 251 incidents took place: 199 in Judea & Samaria, 42 in Jerusalem and inside the ‘green line’ and ten in the Gaza Strip sector.

In Judea & Samaria, Jerusalem and inside the ‘green line’ the agency recorded 187 attacks with petrol bombs, seventeen attacks using pipe bombs, five stabbing attacks, nine shooting attacks, 22 arson attacks and one vehicular attack. In the Gaza Strip one shooting attack, one case of anti-aircraft fire and 8 incidents of rocket/mortar fire took place.

Six people were injured in terror attacks throughout September. Two civilians were moderately wounded in a stabbing attack near Jerusalem’s central bus station on September 13th. On September 15th a civilian was seriously wounded in a stabbing attack in Jaffa and on September 22nd a civilian was moderately injured in a vehicular attack near Ma’ale Michmash.

Visitors to the BBC News website saw no coverage of any of those attacks.

Additionally, two members of the security forces were seriously injured near Jenin on September 26th. The BBC News website made a one-line mention of that incident in a report discussed here.

The website’s coverage of the incidents of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip on four consecutive days amounted to twelve words at the bottom of an article on a different topic.

The BBC described Alfred Dreyfus — a French-Jewish officer accused of treason in the Dreyfus Affair — as a "notorious Jewish spy" in its summary for the first episode of a period police drama released on October 9.

"Paris, 1899. The French Republic is in turmoil as rumors spread about the release from Devil's Island of Dreyfus, the notorious Jewish spy," read the summary for episode 1 of BBC's Paris Police 1900.

According to the BBC, the summary was later changed to avoid misunderstanding. The line from the program page was rewritten to describe Dreyfus instead as having been "previously arrested for spying."

"The sentence was not intended as an [sic] historical statement, but to reflect the rumors towards the Dreyfus case that we see in the drama — which also depicts the rise of antisemitism," the BBC Spokesperson said in response to a Jerusalem Post inquiry.

"For the BBC to produce a series featuring Alfred Dreyfus, who was baselessly accused of treason, and then describe him as a 'notorious Jewish spy' is an insult to his memory and to the Jewish community in general," Emanuel Miller, a media analyst at the media watchdog organization HonestReporting, told The Jerusalem Post. "The Dreyfus case represented a key moment in Zionism's history and in the eyes of many is a byword for the miscarriages of justice suffered by Jews throughout the ages. How many times must a Jew's name be smeared?"

An article in the Independent on the rise of antisemitism in Germany by the Berlin-based journalist Erik Kirschbaum did what so many media reports on anti-Jewish racism do: it focused entirely on the right-wing variety, whilst ignoring the far-left or Muslim variety.

The article (“How an antisemitic incident in Leipzig highlighted the chilling emergence of the far-right in Germany’s east”, Oct. 10) opened with a recent incident in Leipzig where a luxury hotel manager reportedly told an Israeli-German singer, Gil Ofarim, to cover up his Star of David necklace first if he wanted a room. The incident, we’re informed, “triggered a wider discussion about an alarming trend in recent years in which antisemitism has become socially acceptable in some circles in Germany”.

Kirschbaum attributes this disturbing phenomena to younger generations feeling “less burdened by the crimes of their grandparents”, “the insidious effects of Covid-19 conspiracy theories” and creasing support for the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party. Regarding the latter dynamic, the writer uses the term “far-right” eight times in the context of explaining the country’s surge in antisemitism, both in reference to the general trend of Jew hatred and in noting a deadly 2019 attack on a synagogue. Citing a more recent example, Kirschbaum recounts how, just last week, “fans of the Union Berlin football team shouted antisemitic insults at an Israeli team they were hosting during a match in Berlin”.

Kirschbaum was evidently unaware – or disinterested in reporting on – a series of antisemitic incidents in May that didn’t fit neatly into his narrative, as they were committed by largely Muslim anti-Israel activists. This included the chanting of murderous antisemitic slogans and attacks on German synagogues.

CAMERA’s Israel office last week prompted correction of a Reuters video which erroneously had placed the former U.S. consulate in eastern Jerusalem. Reporting on plans to reopen the American consulate in Jerusalem, the video had erred twice, incorrectly locating the former US Consulate which was home to the Palestinian Affairs Unit.

The video initially began: “Plans to reopen an American consulate in east Jerusalem serving Palestinians have prompted pushback from the Israeli government.”

The video misreports a second time: “A year later, the U.S. shuttered the east Jerusalem consulate . . . “

In fact, the Palestinian Affairs Unit of the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem was located on Agron Street, in the western part of the city, not in east Jerusalem. The Agron building in western Jerusalem appeared in the video when the voiceover erroneously referred to “the east Jerusalem consulate” (51 seconds) and again at 1:24.

Separately, the State Department also had operated America House Jerusalem, a center for cultural, tech and educational programs, located on Nablus Street in east Jerusalem. It is the America House logo which appears at 0:03 as the narrator refers to the “American consulate in east Jerusalem.” While the America House was in east Jerusalem, it wasn’t the consulate.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul visited the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday to announce an increase in state funding to help secure communities against hate crimes.

“This place is a stark reminder of what happens when hate goes unchallenged. The history is long and the history is sad, and the history is painful,” she said during a press conference. “ … And what we learned from way back, earlier in the past century, is if those seeds [of hate] are not destroyed and crushed early, they bloom even further. Then you have much worse to deal with. I sometimes feel those seeds are starting to grow.”

The state will allocate $25 million to help non-profits at risk of hate crimes or attacks to improve their security.

The funds, being distributed through the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, will support as many as 800 security projects. Among the non-profits that may now be able to receive security funds are daycare centers, day camps and community centers.

“It’s starting now,” said Hochul. “We’ll get that money out. We’ll get it where it’s needed.”

New York has already handed out $43 million to 362 non-profits to boost security infrastructure and enhance preparedness, according to a press release.

Jewish groups and German politicians condemned an antisemitic attack on a 29-year-old former Israeli soldier in Berlin over the weekend.

On Friday night, unidentified assailants attacked the Berlin resident, who was wearing a jumper with an Israel Defense Forces emblem. Outside a train station in the German capital, the victim was approached by a man who “addressed him about his faith,” German police stated. The attacker sprayed irritant gas in his face, knocked him to the ground and fled. Berlin’s criminal police opened an investigation into what had been determined an antisemitic act.

“In the last few weeks, we have experienced a social climate in which antisemitism is repeatedly played down and denied,” said Samuel Salzborn, antisemitism commissioner for Berlin. “In such a climate, violent antisemitic criminals felt encouraged to follow up their thinking with antisemitic acts like [Friday’s attack].”

“One has to understand this connection: whoever plays down antisemitism, objectively strengthens, whether intentionally or not, a climate of hatred, antisemitic hatred of Jews and of Israel,” Salzborn added.

AJC Berlin said they “wish the victim a speedy recovery and hope that the perpetrator will be identified quickly.”

Anna Staroselski, president of the German Union of Jewish Students (JSUD) marked the incident as “another antisemitic assault.”

“The trivialization of antisemitism, perpetrator-victim reversal and a lack of moral courage promote the breeding ground for antisemitic attacks. Perpetrators feel encouraged to let their hatred of Jews run wild, because nothing happens anyway,” Staroselski said.

A British soccer fan pled guilty to posting hate speech online, including antisemitic abuse, Sky News reported Saturday.

Nathan Blagg, 21, a fan of the Chelsea soccer team, made racist postings on Twitter after a game between Chelsea and the West Bromwich Albion team on Sept. 26, 2020.

A fan of West Bromwich Albion complained to Chelsea Football Club about the tweets, and Chelsea informed the Metropolitan Police, who traced the account to Blagg.

It was then discovered that Blagg had made antisemitic comments on Twitter in Nov. 2020 and Feb. 2021. He was arrested on Feb. 8 and has now pleaded guilty to seven counts of sending by public communication network an offensive/indecent/obscene/menacing message.

Police also found that Blagg had bragged about being able to post hate speech with impunity, saying, “Can’t beat days like this, can be as horrible as I like and not be judged it’s mint.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism will be writing to Amazon after it was reported that the online marketplace has cut a book deal with Mark Collett, the leader of far-right group Patriotic Alternative.

Patriotic Alternative is known for its efforts to recruit youth to its white nationalist ideology. Previously, the far-right group published an online “alternative” home school curriculum condemned as “poison” and “hateful” and attempted to recruit children as young as twelve through livestreaming events on YouTube, according to The Times.

It is led by the former head of the youth wing of the BNP, Mark Collett, who is reported to have dabbled in Holocaust denial, collaborated with the infamous American antisemite David Duke, and espoused antisemitic and racist views.

Mr Collett’s book, The Fall of Western Man, says that Adolf Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies would have been “something that one would have been proud to be a part of”, adding that “Those in attendance wore uniforms, looked healthy and were of good breeding stock.” He also said that “when it comes to the notion of white guilt, nothing is pushed more strongly” than the “alleged extermination of six million Jews at the hands of the German people”.

He continues: “The Holocaust has been elevated to a level of importance so great that it has its own worldwide day of remembrance, and a multi-million dollar industry exists to push the established narrative. The Holocaust industry churns out movies, books and television shows on a regular basis to ensure that the Holocaust is constantly kept in the collective mind of Western man.”

“Western man is also brainwashed and enslaved by notions of white guilt that stem from false historical narratives of his colonial past, slavery and the Holocaust,” Mr Collett writes.

Israeli cybersecurity startup Wiz said on Monday it had raised $250 million in a private funding round that values the company at $6 billion.

Wiz, established in 2020, completed a $350 million financing round this year that had valued the cloud security platform at $1.7 billion.

Wiz has 180 employees in Israel and the United States. It said its platform is used by 15% of Fortune 500 companies.

The company said most of the investors from its previous round — Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Insight Partners, Greenoaks, Salesforce, CyberStarts, billionaire Bernard Arnault and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz — participated in the current round.

Global corporate ground travel company Gett is closer than ever to going public in the US. Calcalist has learned that the Israeli-founded company is on the verge of merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) at a valuation of $1.3-1.5 billion, similar to its valuation in its most recent funding round in June 2020.

Gett is currently in the midst of closing its PIPE (Private Investment Public Equity) investments with the assistance of Morgan Stanley and the Jefferies Group. Following the closing of those investments, estimated to be in the region of $150-200 million, Gett will move forward with the merger, which is likely to take place in the coming weeks.

Despite the fact Gett is at the final stretch of going public, completing the deal at the valuation it is seeking is far from a given considering the company’s track record.

Gett has been looking into going public for the past two years, with its CEO already saying back in 2019 that it planned to do so by the end of that year. The company looked into the option of doing an IPO on Nasdaq, in Europe, and even on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in recent years, but now seems set to be heading to the market via an SPAC merger.

Rockers the Red Hot Chili Peppers have announced plans to perform in Israel in 2023, after the band’s planned June 2020 and then June 2021 concerts were postponed due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Promoters Shuki Weiss and Live Nation Israel said the exact concert date would be announced after the band’s 2023 touring schedule is set.

The American band, known for its mix of rock, funk and punk rock, is starting a world tour in 2022 that will continue for two years. Tickets are already on sale in North America, with tickets for the United Kingdom and European Union going on sale starting Wednesday.

Tickets purchased for the 2020 concert will be honored for the new concert date, and can also be refunded, according to Weiss.

The band was last in Israel in 2012, when it played to a crowd of 50,000 in Tel Aviv’s Park Hayarkon.

A sophisticated wine production facility, the largest from the Byzantine period ever found in the world, was unearthed in Yavne, the Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced Monday.

The factory was used to produce the legendary regional wine, known as Gaza or Ashkelon wine after the ports from where it was exported all over the Mediterranean. It included five impressive wine presses, large treading floors where the grapes were crushed, two huge octagonal vats, storage rooms and kilns to produce jars to conserve the wine.

The facility is said to have produced as much as two million liters of wine annually.

Yavne is located in central Israel and was an important city some 1,500 years ago was, according to IAA archaeologist Dr. Jon Seligman, co-director of excavation with Dr. Elie Haddad and Liat Nadav-Ziv.

“Yavne was important enough to be put in a map from the period with Jerusalem, featuring three large churches,” he said. “First and foremost, it was a Christian town. But we also know that there were populations of Jews and Samaritans living there during the same time period. It had a bishop. It was located in what at the time was on a major road, called the sea highway, which went from north to south, and on its junction with the Sorek River.”

The wine factory’s remains were first uncovered during a salvage excavation prior to the construction of a new residential and commercial neighborhood. In Israel, all development projects must be accompanied by such excavations.

HBO Films has bought the North American rights to a biographical movie about a boxer who survived Auschwitz after being forced to fight fellow prisoners.

“The Survivor” was directed by Jewish Academy Award-winning director Barry Levinson with BRON Studios and New Mandate Films. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and is based on the book “Harry Haft: Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of Rocky Marciano.”

The biopic is set in post-World War II and stars Ben Foster as Haft, who was forced to fight other concentration camp prisoners in boxing matches to amuse the Nazis.

After surviving Auschwitz, he moved to New York, and “haunted by the memories and his guilt, he attempts to use high-profile fights against boxing legends like Rocky Marciano as a way to find his first love again,” said BRON Studios.

“The Survivor” also stars Vicky Krieps, Billy Magnussen, Peter Sarsgaard, Saro Emirze, Dar Zuzovsky, Danny DeVito and John Leguizamo.

“At a time when hatred based on race and belief is escalating, Harry’s story is a reminder of overcoming adversity against all odds,” the film’s producers Matti Leshem and Aaron L. Gilbert said in a statement.

The Ukrainian government has asked the KKL-JNF Jewish National Fund to help it implement an ambitious plan to plant a billion trees over the next three years.

The vision was announced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in June as part of a move to address climate change.

The country’s environment and natural resources minister, Roman Abramovsky, turned to KKL Chairman Avraham Duvdevani with a request for knowledge transfer and advice on the technology needed to implement the plan.

According to a KKL spokesperson, the organization’s chief forester will be setting up a joint Israeli-Ukrainian team. Israeli experts will fly to Ukraine to instruct their counterparts there on how to plant and maintain trees, and will provide tools and technology to plant and monitor the forests.

The BBC in June contrasted Zelensky’s plan for a billion trees with the three billion tree target of all 27 European Union member states put together.

The city of Jerusalem on Monday dedicated a square in the Kiryat Yovel neighborhood in memory of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who issued over 2,000 visas to Jewish individuals and families, in breach of Japanese policy, when serving as the Japanese vice-consul to Kovno (today Kaunas) in Lithuania in 1940.

The recipients were overwhelmingly Jewish refugees and families who had fled Nazi-occupied Poland ahead of Germany’s invasion of then-independent Lithuania. With these visas, and a complex mechanism of aid from other consuls, companies and individuals, up to 10,000 Jews are thought to have been saved from WWII Europe, escaping via the Soviet Union to Japan.

Among the recipients were teachers and the entire student body of the Mir Yeshiva, which today thrives in Jerusalem’s Beit Yisrael neighborhood.

Sugihara’s deeds were recognized in 1984 by Israel, which bestowed upon him the title of Righteous Among the Nations, and posthumously by Japan, in 2000.

Chiune’s 72-year-old son, Nobuki Sugihara, who lives in Belgium, addressed the event, having been given a last-minute visa following a Times of Israel report that revealed Israel was denying him entry because of missing COVID-related paperwork.

Nobuki, who was invited to study at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University in the late 1960s after the story of his father’s heroism belatedly began to resonate, said he used to live in the neighborhood near the square, and that the area had developed beyond recognition: “The view is different, the trees are bigger, people grew, survivors made children and grandchildren.”

ISGAP Chair @NatanSharansky keynote speech 2 mark 80th anniversary of Babyn Yar massacre

“You’ll find nothing like scenes that happened here, 6 & then 7 layers of freshly killed people & more have 2 lie on top of them”#AcademiaAgainstAntisemitismhttps://t.co/12LyjOuaAt

— ISGAP (@ISGAP1) October 11, 2021

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Every couple of years, critics of Israel come up with a new slogan that they hope will pressure the Israelis into making more concessions to the Palestinian Authority. They’ve just trotted out their latest model: “Shrinking the conflict.”

Such slogans are usually invented to try to overcome some obstacle that’s interfering with the left’s campaign to force Israel to accept a Palestinian state in its back yard. The current obstacle is that it’s been more than seven years (!) since Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas has been willing to negotiate with Israel.

If Abbas won’t talk, there’s no way to talk Israel into surrendering half its country. So, Israel’s leftwing critics figure they will wait him out—after all, Abbas, now in the 16 th year of his four year term of office, is 85 and facing various domestic problems. He can’t last forever. While they wait, the pressure-Israel crowd is looking for other ways to engineer Israeli concessions. Hence “shrinking the conflict.”

The Israel-critics think they’re being very clever with this one, because it actually comes from a phrase that was spoken by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. But of course, they’ve taken it out of context and tried to turn it into a weapon against him.

The concept that Prime Minister Bennett has mentioned is that since there’s no way of ending the conflict, then all that’s possible is to “shrink” it somewhat, through small steps aimed at economic improvement for the Palestinian Arabs.

But critics of Israel see “shrinking the conflict” differently—they see it as a new formula for building a Palestinian state, just more gradually. So, they’ve seized on the phrase and are running with it.

A promotional flier for a course run by an internationally-funded Palestinian NGO shows how the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestinian NGOs abuse international donors, duping them into funding ostensibly worthy causes, but at the same time supporting terror.

While Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) welcomes European Union (EU) and United Nations (UN) funding for training courses for Palestinians, the problem arises when the courses offer full scholarships to the children of terrorist prisoners and dead terrorists, thereby rewarding the terrorists for their crimes.

A new flier — posted by Fatah Central Committee Deputy Secretary Sabri Saidam, the former PA Minister of Education and current advisor for communications and information technology to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas — promotes a Digital Academy for Scientific Innovation (DASI) program run by the Palestinian NGO Al-Nayzak.

According to the flier, while the children of law-abiding Palestinian families are potentially entitled to a 65% discount for the course, the children of “Martyrs and prisoners” are entitled to a full scholarship.

In other words, children of terrorists and murderers — be they imprisoned, released, or dead (so-called “Martyrs”) — are rewarded and can study for free.

Text on image: “Hurry to register at the following link:
Dasi.ps/register
With a possibility to receive a full scholarship for the children of Martyrs and prisoners.
And a discount of up to 65% for the rest of the recipients.”
[Facebook page of Fatah Central Committee Deputy Secretary Sabri Saidam, Sept. 18, 2021]

This means that Safa, the daughter of Abdullah Bargouhti, an imprisoned Palestinian terrorist convicted for the murder of 67 people in multiple terror attacks, and the children of Marwan Barghouti, convicted for his part in the murder of 5 people, are entitled to special privileges, simply because their fathers are mass murderers.

Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the founders of the eponymous ice cream brand, sat down for an interview with Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond as part of an Emmy Award-winning docuseries.

The in-depth conversation saw the famously progressive duo grilled about the Vermont-based firm’s divisive decision to end sales of its products in “Occupied Palestinian Territory” — that is, the disputed West Bank — as well as the subsequent fallout that included numerous US states divesting funds from Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever.

After acknowledging they were aware of having waded into an “emotional issue,” Greenfield was quizzed by McCammond on why the company only took a stance on the issue recently when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been ongoing for many years.

Greenfield replied:
The policy of the Israeli government has been to endorse these settlements in the occupied territories that keep on making it harder and harder to actually have a two-state solution.”

In fact, Israeli peace plans have been rejected repeatedly by Palestinian leaders, including those that would have seen the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

If anything, it is the actions of the Palestinian Authority that have stymied the peace process, not those of the Israeli government.

Greenfield later described the steps taken by US states to divest from Unilever as “largely based on misinformation,” before clarifying, “I think Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever are being characterized as boycotting Israel, which is not the case at all. It’s not boycotting Israel in any way.”

However, a noteworthy point of contention that is conspicuously absent in this exchange is that the Ben & Jerry’s independent board did want to boycott Israel in its entirety.

Like AOC, Cohen hooked onto the settlements, because that’s easy, because it takes a very complicated issue and reduces it to one source of all the problems. Because it’s acceptable and in vogue and “progressive” to bash settlements.

And how is the boycott of settlements good for business? Greenfield hinted at this when he said that Ben & Jerry’s “publicly supported Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, but over the years the company continues to sell more ice cream and thrive.”

Perhaps the “but” here is out of place. Perhaps he should have said, “Ben & Jerry’s publicly supported Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and as a result, over the years, the company continues to sell more ice cream and thrive.”

Might that also have been one of the rationales for the company taking its move now on settlements? Get behind an issue seen as cutting edge ‘woke,’ in the hopes that by virtue signaling on a popular Progressive issue, it may boost sales.

Or, as Nick Kostov wrote in the Wall Street Journal piece last month about various states divesting from Unilever stocks because of the Ben & Jerry/settlements brouhaha, the fallout for Unilever “comes as more companies take public stands on societal issues, an approach Unilever has put at the heart of its strategy. For decades, companies largely tried to avoid wading publicly into social and political debates, preferring to influence policy through lobbying efforts, campaign contributions and membership in industry groups. But in a reversal for many big businesses, brands have embraced what has become known as purpose marketing, which many believe helps to drive sales growth.”

What Israel-supporters opposed to Ben & Jerry’s move are seeking to do, is show that when it comes to the Jewish state, this type of “purpose marketing” will have the opposite effect.

We are woke foreign policy on Israel, and this is our MasterClass. pic.twitter.com/NKRgMwU46k

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 11, 2021

The retreat of the United States from the world stage could doom the Abraham Accords, former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman told The Jerusalem Post Annual Conference on Tuesday, in a warning to the Biden administration.

“This won’t work if America retreats from the world stage and fails to project its values in the region,” said Friedman as he spoke with the paper’s senior contributing editor and diplomatic correspondent Lahav Harkov at Jerusalem’s Museum of Tolerance.

He spoke of the deal brokered by the former Trump administration under whose rubric Israel normalized ties with four Arab countries: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

As a Trump administration envoy in the region, Friedman was a part of the process from its infancy. On Monday, he launched the Friedman Center for Peace through Strength to help continue to advance the accords. He has just completed a documentary on the process and is authoring a book on the initiative.

The accords, he said, were possible because they were backed by a strong US that guided and encourages ties between Arab nations and Israel, offering political, economic and security support.

Friedman never mentioned the US President Joe Biden’s withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, but he appeared to reference it when he said that the Biden administration needs to convince Arab states that it can be depended on as a strong regional ally.

Former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, who helped forge peace treaties between Israel and Arab states, said Monday that the so-called Abraham Accords “create a new paradigm in the region.”

Speaking at a ceremony at the Israeli Knesset marking the one-year anniversary of the historic agreements and the inauguration of the Abraham Accords Caucus, Kushner, who was accompanied by his wife Ivanka Trump, emphasized that “high expectations” should be set. The Caucus will focus on the promotion of the US-brokered normalization deals, and the advancement of future agreements with other countries.

The UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco last year agreed to formalize their diplomatic ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords brokered with the help of the Trump administration.

“The Abraham Accords entail a real opportunity to bond people, and opens for us all a wealth of opportunities in the fields of economics, science and technology,” said MK Ruth Wasserman Lande, who co-leads the parliamentary group. “The caucus for the advancement of the Abraham Accords will produce fruitful and significant cross-border initiatives with its counterparts in Morocco, Bahrain and the UAE.”

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid thanked Kushner and Ivanka Trump for helping turn the agreements into “reality” when few thought it was possible.

“You have already entered history, already changed history. History won’t forget you. The people of Israel won’t forget you,” Lapid said.

Not Omaha!

Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning spotted in Jerusalem.

Pictured Monday night with (L-R) @DavidM_Friedman, Norm Brownstein and @mikepompeo. pic.twitter.com/B4xVR2JWIA

— Jewish Insider (@J_Insider) October 11, 2021

These are Secretaries of State who have served United States with distinction, advancing U.S. foreign policy, promoting freedom abroad and defending U.S. national security interests. Blinken should be applauded for reaching out here.

It’s as if @IlhanMN hates America ?? pic.twitter.com/LNmZmiey0P

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 12, 2021

Israel formally agreed Tuesday to double the amount of freshwater it provides to neighbor Jordan, one of the world’s most water-deficient countries.

The agreement is proof that “we want good neighborly relations,” said Karine Elharrar, Israel’s infrastructure, energy and water resource minister.

Elharrar travelled to Jordan for a signing ceremony between representatives to the Joint Water Committee, which manages bilateral water relations.

The two countries agreed that Israel would sell 50 billion liters of water a year to Jordan, doubling what it already supplies.

“This represents the largest water sale in the history of the two countries,” said Israeli Director of EcoPeace Middle East Gidon Bromberg.

He said that the deal “reflects the growing understanding that the climate crisis already heavily impacting the region must lead to increased cooperation.”

Jordan’s cooperation with Israel on water predates their 1994 peace treaty.

Israel is also a hot, dry country, but desalination technology has opened opportunities for selling freshwater.

Israel is trying to “accomplish Jewish supremacy,” deputy chairperson of the lower house of Ireland’s parliament Catherine Connolly wrote in a parliamentary question this month.

The term “Jewish supremacy” is an accusation lobbed at Israel by its opponents, with ties to centuries-old antisemitic accusations of Jews trying to take over the world, similar to the notorious libel The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Connolly presented Israeli “Jewish supremacy” as a fact, asking Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney if by his ministry’s “indicating support for the Jewish character of the Israeli state agrees with the treatment by Israel of Palestinian communities in its attempts to accomplish Jewish supremacy.”

She also asked Coveney “his views on whether these attempts to perpetuate the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians amount to apartheid, and if he will make a statement on the matter.”

Coveney said he “respect[s] the strong connection between the Jewish people and the State of Israel.”

“By their very nature, all states have certain inherent characteristics,” he added, bringing “socialist, democratic, united, Islamic, Arab or Jewish” as examples, but said that those states should have “full respect for the equal rights of all citizens, irrespective of ethnicity, religion or other similar factors.”

#OnThisDay 2000 - In one of most gruesome acts of Palestinian terror, 2 #Israelis, Vadim Norzhich & Yosef Avraham, were killed and mutilated by wild horde of #Palestinian, when they accidentally entered Ramallah & were lynched to death.

May their memories always be blessed! pic.twitter.com/XzveDkZfls

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 11, 2021

Following Israel’s September raid on a Hamas terror cell in the West Bank, which resulted in 5 terrorists being killed and dozens arrested, a Fatah official threatened that Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Movement will return to terror, using “resistance in all its forms”:
Fatah Jenin Branch Secretary Ata Abu Rmeileh: “We’ll continue the resistance in all its forms, with all means, and with all our power to defend our Palestinian people and continue this resistance to realize the dream of the Martyrs and take revenge for the pure blood that flows every morning throughout our Palestinian areas.”

[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, Sept. 30, 2021]

Terms such as "all means,” "all means of resistance,"“all forms,” are ‎used by PA leaders to include using all types of violence, including deadly terror ‎against Israeli civilians such as stabbings and shootings, as well as throwing rocks and Molotov Cocktails.

A much stronger and completely straightforward terror threat was made by a member of the terror organization PFLP, which is a member of the PLO. Praising arch-terrorists and murderers, PFLP Political Bureau member Maryam Abu Daqqa stated that “our rifles” are directed against “the enemy”:
PFLP Political Bureau member Maryam Abu Daqqa: “Our compass is clear, our rifle is clear, in one direction. The enemy is one, the homeland is one, the people is one, our path and our rifles are clean and pure against the enemy… [Former PFLP Sec.-Gen.] Abu Ali [Mustafa] is the Martyrs, the prisoners, and the loyalty. We’ve always said: Whoever follows us, whoever follows our path, what do they see? Either Martyrdom-death or blessing. Our path is known, O Abu Ali, loyalty is our custom…”

Newsreader: “How is it possible to restore [this unity] and restore its spark, as Martyr commander Abu Ali Mustafa aspired to do?” …

Maryam Abu Daqqa: “[Through] loyalty to the Moon of the Martyrs [PFLP leader] Martyr Abu Ali, to [Fatah leader] Martyr Yasser Arafat, to [Hamas leader] Ahmed Yassin, to [Islamic Jihad leader Fathi] Shaqaqi, to Haidar Abd Al-Shafi, [Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades leader Marwan] Barghouti, and all the Martyrs.”

[Official PA TV News, Aug. 27, 2021]

According to a source cited by al-Ayyam, Hamas security forces raided the chamber of commerce & confiscated items related to the applications for work permits in #Israel. Last week, pictures circulated of Palestinians attempting to register for a permit to work in Israel. #Gazapic.twitter.com/fDBKJT4cOd

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) October 11, 2021

Hamas issued a statement earlier today offering condolences to the Pakistani people on the death of Pakistani physicist and nuclear weapons technology proliferator Abdul Qadeer Khan. pic.twitter.com/ry3mGH7GB5

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) October 11, 2021

Al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades' Khan Yunis brigade organized a military parade on Sunday in honor of the anniversary of its founding. #Gazapic.twitter.com/m1uuadwfW6

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) October 11, 2021

Lebanese Singer Elissa Takes a Jab at Hizbullah: People Follow Like Sheep Political Parties That Give Them Fuel, Food Stamps; I Don’t Want to Stop Wearing Low-Cut Dresses Just because Some Political Party Rules Us; Freedom of Speech Is Sacred #Lebanon@elissakhpic.twitter.com/sVIKALihN3

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 12, 2021

2/2 Lebanese Politician Samy Gemayel: We Should Treat Syria the Same Way We Treat Israel; We Should Only Interact with Syria through Mediators; Syria Is Planning to Blow Up Lebanese People pic.twitter.com/5c3esKACKr

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 12, 2021

The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) announced on Monday that Iranian hackers successfully targeted US and Israeli defense technology companies.

More than 250 Microsft Office 365 accounts linked to the US, EU and the Israeli government were hacked into through extensive password spraying.

In addition, Persian Gulf ports of entry and global maritime transportation companies with business presence in the Middle East were also targeted.

The hacking "likely supports the national interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Microsoft said.

The companies hacked included defense companies that support US, EU, and Israeli government partners producing military-grade radars, drone technology, satellite systems, and emergency response communication systems.

Microsoft assessed that Iran's targeting of these defense tech companies "supports Iranian government tracking of adversary security services and maritime shipping in the Middle East."

The United States said on Sunday the first face-to-face meeting between senior U.S. and Taliban officials since the hardline group retook power in Afghanistan was "candid and professional" and that the U.S. side reiterated that the Taliban would be judged on their actions, not just their words.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said the U.S. delegation at the weekend talks in Doha, Qatar, focused on security and terrorism concerns and safe passage for U.S. citizens, other foreign nationals and Afghans, as well as on human rights, including the meaningful participation of women and girls in all aspects of Afghan society.

He said the two sides also discussed "the United States’ provision of robust humanitarian assistance, directly to the Afghan people."

"The discussions were candid and professional with the U.S. delegation reiterating that the Taliban will be judged on its actions, not only its words," Price said in a statement.

It did not say if any agreements were reached.

The foreign ministry in Kabul said the two-day meeting went well. It welcomed the U.S. offer of humanitarian assistance and said local authorities would facilitate delivery and cooperate with aid groups but said such assistance "should not be linked to political issues".

"Detailed discussions were held during the meeting about all relevant issues. And efforts should be exerted to restore diplomatic relations to a better state," the ministry said in a statement, adding that similar meetings would be held in future if required.

Shocking. Just shocking. I mean, who could have ever predicted a terrorist group like Taliban would fail to uphold their premises on women’s rights! https://t.co/LF9Ifih0SP

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 12, 2021

Islamists are gonna Islamist. Only the UN would be surprised by this development.
https://t.co/ElFRQPPzal

— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) October 11, 2021

Reminder: The moment the U.N. grants credentials to the the Taliban, the misogynist terrorist group inherits the Afghan seat on the U.N. Women's Rights Commission.

Thread: https://t.co/dmr7NwFjRq

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 11, 2021

I went to UC Berkeley to see if students would give me money to finance terrorist attacks against America. You must see it to believe it!!!

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We live in a formative time with fewer and fewer survivors who can tell us what happened, which calls for intensified efforts to commemorate the Holocaust. Deniers should never be allowed to falsify the history of the worst crime against humanity.

On Oct. 13, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven will be hosting the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism, Remember ReAct, with President Isaac Herzog as one of the main speakers. The Forum aims to jointly take concrete steps on Holocaust remembrance and the fight against antisemitism.

During the pandemic we saw it again – when there is a crisis in the world, some will always blame the Jews. And during the flair-up of the Gaza conflict, Europe witnessed an appalling rise in antisemitism and hate crimes against Jews, so to in Sweden. In Malmö, a 12-year old Jewish girl found a derogatory comment about Israel written by her cloakroom hook in school. In Gothenburg, a man wearing a Kippa to show solidarity with his Jewish friends was assaulted. I am repulsed by these heinous acts and the hatred aired publicly and online. antisemitism is a poison that must be fought.

Going back to the personal engagement of former Prime Minister Göran Persson, who in 1998 initiated the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), successive Swedish governments have sought ways to combat antisemitism, with an emphasis on education. In these efforts, Israel and Yad Vashem have been indispensable allies.

This has yielded results, but much work remains. A recent report by a Swedish expert agency indicates a decrease in anti-Semitic prejudices among Swedes. But it also concludes that antisemitism is more prevalent among older people, persons born outside of Europe, and persons of the Muslim faith.

Anti-zionist activism reached fever pitch during the Israel-Scotland World Cup qualifier recently. Twitter lit up. Boorish Scottish fans threw food missiles at Israeli players on the pitch and jeered and heckled when the Hatikvah was played. The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) had a lovely day out screaming ‘apartheid’. A touch incongruous that, because one of Israel’s two goals was scored by an Arab-muslim Israeli, Mu’nas Dabbur. Israel was edged out by a 3-2 win by Scotland. Israel won’t be in Qatar for the World Cup. Yes the same Qatar that has its grand football stadiums built by slave labour in boiling heat and has seen over 6500 migrant worker deaths since it was awarded the World Cup hosting rights. One hopes that Scottish fans take their activist fervour to Qatar. Human rights are so important.

Truly sending out their best and brightest pic.twitter.com/K2wuFtI8Mn

— ~Jachnun Supremacist~ נפתלי בן מתתיהו (@JachnunEmpire) October 10, 2021

The Palestinian Authority has canceled a meeting with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Army Radio reported on Monday. The cancellation is due to Infantino's scheduled appearance at Monday's Friedman Center's inaugural gala at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem.

While Infantino's camp reportedly attempted to pass it off as a "schedule constraint," his appearance and scheduled speech are viewed by the PA as a "violation of the Islamic religion," Army Radio said.

The Friedman Center for Peace through Strength is a non-profit institution established with the goal of advancing peace and prosperity throughout the Middle East. Infantino will also speak at The Jerusalem Post's 10th Annual Conference on Tuesday.

In addition, the FIFA president met with Israeli Football Association (IFA) Chairman Ori Sasson on Monday. Infantino was also scheduled to meet the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) Chairman Jibril Rajoub.

"I'm happy to be in Israel," Infantino said, according to N12. "Oren Sasson and his team presented me with the vision and strategy to advance Israeli football to the next level," the FIFA president said.

"The hard work has already started. It is an encouraging time for Israeli football."

The best-selling novelist, Sally Rooney, has refused to have her new novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You? published in Hebrew. She told Modan, the Hebrew-language publisher of her first two books, that she wouldn’t allow the latest one to follow suit because she supports a cultural boycott of Israel.

Ha’aretz reports:
Rooney, 30, has been open about her opposition to Israel. In July, soon after the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Rooney was one of thousands of artists to sign a letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling for its international isolation. The letter called for “an end to the support provided by global powers to Israel and its military; especially the United States,” and for governments to “cut trade, economic and cultural relations”.

Rooney’s characters generally have leftist politics, and her books invoke Israel in that context. In “Normal People,” the main characters attend a protest against Israel during the 2014 Gaza War. And in Rooney’s debut novel, “Conversations with Friends,” a character named Bobbi talks about how relationships are about power, but people instead focus on “niceness”. She then says, “I mean this is an issue in public discourse. We end up asking like, is Israel ‘nicer’ than Palestine.”

Rooney thus joins a list of cultural figures whose ignorance and malevolence on the subject of Israel dwarf any talent they may possess. But there’s a further point to make about this particular individual. For she is Irish; and the Irish Republic has a particularly long and troubling record of antagonism towards not just Israel but the Jewish people.

This summer, it passed a motion condemning “de facto annexation” of Palestinian land. In 2018, Dublin’s city council passed resolutions endorsing a boycott of Israel and calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to Ireland.

Ireland is one of the most anti-Israel countries in Europe. But this bigotry goes further and deeper.

The researcher David Collier, whose indefatigable attempts to defend the Jewish people mean he has to wade through the foul cultural sewage of today’s surging Jew-hatred, has just published a 202-page report on antisemitism in Ireland. You can read his report, the product of several years’ research, here.

What he found shocked even him.

Bestselling author Sally Rooney won’t allow her recently published novel, “Beautiful World, Where Are You?” to be published in Hebrew because she supports a cultural boycott of Israel.

Like the acclaimed Irish author’s first two books, “Beautiful World” explores the life and romance of intellectual, urbane millennials. It debuted at the top of the New York Times bestseller list when it was published in September, following a publicity campaign that came on the heels of Rooney’s popular second novel, “Normal People,” which was also adapted into a TV series.

That publicity campaign, however, will not be reaching Israel. The Hebrew-language publisher of Rooney’s first two books, Modan Publishing House, told Haaretz last month that Rooney won’t allow her new book to be published in Hebrew because she supports an Israel boycott. Rooney’s agent confirmed the news to Haaretz.

Rooney, 30, has been open about her opposition to Israel. In July, soon after the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Rooney was one of thousands of artists to sign a letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling for its international isolation. The letter called for “an end to the support provided by global powers to Israel and its military; especially the United States,” and for governments to “cut trade, economic and cultural relations.”

Rooney’s characters generally have leftist politics, and her books invoke Israel in that context. In “Normal People,” the main characters attend a protest against Israel during the 2014 Gaza War. And in Rooney’s debut novel, “Conversations with Friends,” a character named Bobbi talks about how relationships are about power, but people instead focus on “niceness.” She then says, “I mean this is an issue in public discourse. We end up asking like, is Israel ‘nicer’ than Palestine.”

Rooney is not the first prominent author to refuse to publish a book in Hebrew. In 2012, Alice Walker, who also supports the movement to boycott Israel, would not allow “The Color Purple” to be translated into Hebrew.”

"If I can find a way to sell these [Hebrew translation] rights that is compliant with the BDS movement’s institutional boycott guidelines"

Oh take a walk. "I will pull back my war on Jewish language and culture if a racist Palestinian group approves of a method to do so." https://t.co/ae5ygeq1F7

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) October 12, 2021

A new social media analysis shows Billie Eilish's Instagram account was targeted by anti-Semitic bots and trolls after she promoted her new album on MTV Israel

The 19-year-old pop singer released a video to her Israeli audience on July 31, announcing the release of her second studio album, Happier Than Ever

Her account was then 'flooded with thousands of bot-driven comments consisting of Palestinian flags and other Palestine solidarity-themed comments'

A report by pro-Israel organization titled 'Manufactured Outrage' obtained by DailyMail.com six posts Eilish made between July 31 and August 5

Among the top comments, 30 per cent were anti-Israel and posted by users with no posts on their personal profile (a strong indicator of bot activity)

Director Ari Ingel told DailyMail.com it's 'difficult to say for certain' who's behind the attacks, but the CCFP suspects 'state actors' including Iran

'These are fraudulent accounts, carrying out coordinated Anti-Israel campaigns by actors who have one goal, and that's to demonize and delegitimize Israel,' he said

University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign (UIUC) administrators have said that academic departments will not be told to abstain from political advocacy, after over 40 faculty members lodged a complaint over several departmental statements that were harshly critical of Israel.

Amid the Gaza conflict between Israel and Hamas in May, four departments at the school — Gender and Women’s Studies, Urban and Regional Planning, Asian American Studies, and History — issued statements that pledged “solidarity” with Palestinians and variously accused Israel of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and settler colonialism.

In a September 6 letter seen by The Algemeiner, the group of 44 faculty called on Chancellor Robert J. Jones and Provost Andreas C. Cangellaris to “reaffirm the norm that departments — as opposed to individuals and groups of faculty — not advocate for political agendas unrelated to the University’s educational and research missions.”

As opposed to individual or group statements, the signatories argued that, those issued on behalf of a department risk chilling debate among students and scholars who disagree, and make it harder to bring together diverse views.

“Our concern is made more pressing as we watch academic departments commit themselves to one side of a complicated issue while dismissing, even scorning, alternative perspectives,” they wrote.

They also warned of alienating some Jewish members of the department who identify with Israel, and of the prospect of the practice spreading to other political issues.

This is the actual story. This is what Miller says.https://t.co/BmvKtozRv8

— David Hirsh (@DavidHirsh) October 11, 2021

I assume someone's already made the joke about how the Biden administration is twisting itself into knots about how to label wine from there...? https://t.co/qswupYGzw1

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) October 11, 2021

While promoting her starring role in Amazon Prime’s extraordinarily Jewish show “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” actress Rachel Brosnahan was asked a version of the same question over and over again: Are you Jewish?

The answer is a decided no, but Brosnahan gamely brushed off the query repeatedly, noting that she was surrounded by Jewish culture growing up in a heavily Jewish suburb of Chicago.

When the show premiered in 2017, there was only a little bit of noise about Brosnahan’s lack of Jewish credentials as the star of one of arguably the most Jewish shows ever to hit the small screen. Miriam “Midge” Maisel is not incidentally Jewish; she jokes about Yom Kippur and summers in the Catskills, and gossips in the synagogue pews.

But over the past few weeks and months, a growing chorus of voices has once again been speaking out about Jewish representation in Hollywood — at a time when Jewish stories and characters are more prominent than ever onscreen.

Many are pointing out that while casting directors are becoming more and more careful not to miscast minority roles — relating not just to race but disability, sexual orientation and more — Jewish characters are still regularly, if not predominantly, played by non-Jews. And that it has virtually always been this way.

“If you’re interested in this topic and this topic is really meaningful — and I think it is meaningful to the Jewish community — then the conversation has never lapsed,” Malina Saval, a Los Angeles-based features editor for Variety, told The Times of Israel. “People that care about this haven’t stopped talking about it, and I don’t think we will.”

The most recent backlash was kicked off by news that Kathryn Hahn will play the legendary comedian Joan Rivers in an upcoming Showtime miniseries. But the practice is commonplace and well-trodden: Helen Mirren was cast as Golda Meir in an upcoming film, Felicity Jones portrayed Ruth Bader-Ginsburg in “On the Basis of Sex,” Wendi McLendon-Covey played Beverly Goldberg in “The Goldbergs” and significant chunks of the cast of Jewish-centric shows such as “Hunters,” “The Plot Against America” and “Transparent” are not of Jewish descent. One of the few characters not played by Seth Rogen in the Jewish-steeped and brined film “An American Pickle” is played by the non-Jewish Sarah Snook.

The rise and the mainstreaming of antisemitism at high levels in politics and media is what keeps 68-year old Craig Newmark up at night.

Newmark, the founder of the legendary classified ad website Craigslist, spoke with The Jerusalem Post’s 10th annual Diplomatic Conference on Tuesday about his personal history creating the site, and his latest project, Craig Newmark Philanthropies.

“Israel meant a great deal to me as a youth, as a youngster growing up in New Jersey in the ‘50s and ‘60s,” Newmark said. “I recall feeling a lot of pride during and then the aftermath of the Six Day War. When I was in Sunday school, I was a chnoon (Hebrew for “nerd”), but my teachers helped me define what my values were.”

Regarding his philanthropic activities, said he is focused on “getting good information and protecting the country against misinformation and helping people counter harassment.”

“Those are fundamental issues, but they’re all about repairing the world, or ‘tikkun olam’ (repairing the world). These are the values instilled in me very early in school by Mr. and Mrs. Levin. They helped me understand that I should treat people like I want to be treated. They helped me understand the ninth commandment about not bearing false witness, of providing bad information. And that formed my spiritual direction.”

Newmark founded Craigslist when he moved to San Francisco in the early 1990s.

“A lot of people online, even in ‘94 and ‘95, helped me settle into this city. And I realized that I felt a need for greater social connection. I started a simple mailing list about events that sometimes merged arts and technology. I just kept plugging away, sending more and more things to that mailing list. And that worked. It connected people, and it felt pretty good. It asserted values of neighborliness, and that worked for me.”

A team of experts working for the Israeli Ministry of Communications is considering new laws that would hold social media companies liable for incitement posted by users on their platforms. Though newspapers and television networks have long been liable for such content, this is a potentially dramatic development for social media giants.

The discussion comes on the backdrop of a Human Rights Watch Report that claimed Israel and Facebook have been colluding to “silence” Palestinian voices on human rights issues. It also immediately follows a paradigm-shattering 60 Minutes special that featured Facebook “whistleblower” Frances Haugen, who charged that Facebook’s leadership “chooses profits over safety.”

Indeed, this is not just about the Jewish state because whatever course the Israeli commission charts will have a significant impact on the entire Western world as the decision stands to alter the global social media landscape. Silencing Palestinian Voices?

The Human Rights Watch report criticized Facebook’s removal of “hundreds” of posts by Palestinians but failed to provide an accurate overview of the content that was taken down.

For example, one post not only encouraged Palestinians to stab Jews to death but also offered specific instructions on how to go about doing so, including anatomical charts identifying the most vulnerable body parts.

Another post encouraged people to brutally butcher Jews, by graphically portraying a gory scene as an act of religious heroism.

Huge numbers of similar posts were the driving force behind a wave of anti-Jewish violence in 2015-2016, which came to be known at the “Knife Intifada.” Palestinians, typically armed with only a knife, along with knowhow and motivation derived from social media, murdered 38 Israelis (among them 31 civilians) and injured 558.

Just last May, massive online incitement induced Palestinians to mount violent riots in Israel. This was used by Hamas as a pretext to initiate a full-blown conflict in which US-designated terror groups launched nearly 4,500 rockets towards Israel, with hundreds of them misfiring and, as a result, killing Gazans as well.

None of these critical details made it into the Human Rights Watch report.

In a report on May’s Hamas-initiated war against Israel, Vice News parrots terrorist propaganda claiming that the IDF’s defensive actions somehow breached international law. In the video, correspondent Isobel Yeung repeatedly charges Israel with targeting Gazans during a May 14 operation to destroy Hamas’ network of attack tunnels.

There’s just one problem: There’s not a shred of evidence that Israel purposely struck civilian infrastructure, even as Hamas builds military sites in populated areas. PCHR and Al Mezan — Gaza-based NGOs with a long history of demonizing Israel — separately concluded that the Israeli Air Force did not target the structure in question.

This corroborates the IDF’s account that it intended to hit a “terror tunnel, placed in close proximity to the mentioned building.” But Vice still insists that Israel is to blame for the deaths of four Gazans.

The slanted video is reminiscent of The New York Times’ June 24 “investigation” that tried — but failed — to connect an Israeli strike on an underground terror tunnel to the collapse of a nearby building.

While Israel takes immense precautions to avoid civilian casualties, Hamas commits double war crimes by firing rockets at Israeli population centers and using Gazans as pawns to fend off retaliation. Unfortunately, Hamas’ Palestinian victims receive little sympathy from Vice. Yeung goes so far as to highlight Hamas’ training of child soldiers — while failing to mention the practice violates international law.

Contact Vice’s editor now to demand the outlet stops spreading Hamas disinformation about Israel.

France’s highest court has quashed the appeal clearing a notorious far-right activist and Holocaust denier of promoting antisemitic hatred with a rap video that featured the images of several prominent French Jews being burned.

In its decision published on Oct. 5, the Court of Cassation, the supreme appeal court in France, ruled that a lower court had erred in determining that the video pushed by the veteran extremist Alain Soral did not target the Jewish community as a whole.

The video — by a rap group calling themselves “Rude Goy Bit” — was entitled “Gilet Jaunes” (“Yellow Vests”) in honor of the radical French protest movement of the same name.

Posted by Soral to his website and social media feeds in 2019, the four-and-a-half minute video featured images of a sign carrying the name “Rothschild” thrown into a bonfire. The Jewish banking dynasty has been a favored target of antisemitic propagandists for more than a century.

Other passages in the video showed photos of the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, the writer Jacques Attali and the businessman Patrick Drahi — all prominent Jews — being burned by flames.

Accompanying lyrics declared that “only by burning the Rothschilds can we save France,” We’ll have to burn BHL and Attali too” and “The French people can no longer take these parasites.”

Soral was sentenced to two years in prison in September 2019, following a complaint against him filed by several civil society groups combating antisemitism and racism, including the French Union of Jewish Students (UEJF). However, that verdict was overturned by an appeal court which deemed that the video had not been aimed at the Jewish community as a whole, as it had also vilified certain non-Jewish individuals.

In an opinion poll on antisemitism in 16 European Union countries, respondents from Poland, Hungary and Greece displayed the highest prevalence of hostile attitudes toward Jews.

But despite a high level of antisemitic attitudes, those countries rarely see violent attacks on Jews while countries that experience more frequent attacks on Jews are often those showing the lowest rates of antisemitic sentiments.

The survey, published Tuesday by Ipsos, a polling company, together with the Europe Action and Protection League, a watchdog group based in Hungary, found little correlation between antisemitic attitudes and violent attacks on Jews in the 16 European countries surveyed.

The assertion that it “would be best if Jews left this country” received affirmation from 24%, 23% and 21% of participants in Poland, Greece and Hungary, respectively. It was rejected by 15%, 26% and 33% in those countries, where only a few dozen antisemitic incidents are recorded annually. A high prevalence of antisemitic sentiments was also observed in other countries with low levels of antisemitic incidents, including Latvia, Croatia and Romania.

In countries where more antisemitic incidents were recorded, the assertion about Jews being unwanted was overwhelmingly rejected and received little support.

Belgium’s Jews are feeling the detrimental effects of an effective ban on Jewish and Muslim ritual slaughtering that was recently upheld by the country’s highest court.

The law, originally imposed in 2017, bans the slaughtering of animals without pre-stunning. Neither Jewish nor Muslim religious law allow for stunning the animal before slaughter, effectively making their practices illegal in Belgium.

Politico Europe reported that merchants in the Jewish community are facing supply problems and other obstacles to providing kosher meat to their customers. In particular, as a result of the ban, all kosher meat must now be imported into Belgium, which raises prices and degrades quality.

The chef at Hoffy’s kosher restaurant in Antwerp’s Jewish quarter, Moishy Hoffman, told the outlet he was “ashamed” by the lack of choices available in his establishment as a result of the ban.

A Republican legislator in Connecticut faced a storm of criticism on Monday for comparing the problems faced by individuals who freely refuse to vaccinate against the COVID-19 pandemic with the plight of Jewish communities in Europe during the Holocaust.

In a Facebook post, State Rep. Anne Dauphinais compared Connecticut’s Governor, Ned Lamont, to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Dauphinais also accused Lamont of copying the horrifying medical abuses carried out by Nazi concentration camp doctors. Referring to the vaccine as “an experimental medicine, with unknown and untold side effects,” she claimed that Lamont was using his “dictatorial powers” to “force it … onto the public at large.”

Democrats, Jewish groups and the Connecticut Anti-Defamation League condemned the comparison between Lamont and Hitler and called for Dauphinais to apologize.

But in a follow-up post, Dauphinais doubled down on her comments, insisting that the comparison between Nazi genocidal antisemitism and the emergency public health measures undertaken in the US and other countries to combat a global pandemic that has taken the lives of over 700,000 Americans was “not antisemitic nor factually inaccurate.”

To justify her invocation of Nazi medical experiments that were grounded upon the physical torture and psychological humiliation of Jews, Roma, disabled people and other concentration camp prisoners, Dauphinais lifted a single sentence from an entry on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) website, which noted that in the “German concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Natzweiler, Buchenwald, and Neuengamme, scientists used camp inmates to test immunization compounds and antibodies for the prevention and treatment of contagious diseases, including malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis.”

Dauphinais refrained from citing elements of the same article that might contradict her position, such as the USHMM’s explanation that the medical experiments designed by the Nazis were part of a broader program of “racial health policies” that “began with the mass sterilization of many people in hospitals and other institutions and ended with the near annihilation of European Jewry.”

The Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC), a leading Australian civil rights organization, criticized a “perverse” auction of more than 100 Nazi items that is set to take place this weekend, calling on Western Australia’s Premier Mark McGowan to ban the public display of Third Reich symbols.

Nazi memorabilia that will be sold on Oct. 16-17 by the Perth-based auction house JB Military Antiques include World War II Germany iron crosses, badges and medals that all feature swastikas. The items are expected to sell for tens of thousands of dollars and the event will also be one of the largest auctions of Nazi items to ever take place in Australia, according to the ADC.

“If Hitler were alive today, he would be applauding them for glorifying his barbaric crimes and keeping his monstrous legacy alive,” ADC Chairman Dvir Abramovich, who is leading a national campaign to ban the sale of Nazi memorabilia, said in a statement on Monday.

He added, “You would think that by now, auction houses would understand that it is perverse to put a price tag on genocide. White supremacists are nourished by these cursed, blood-stained items, and use them to recruit new members to their dangerous cause. I can’t imagine the pain Holocaust survivors and their families would be feeling right now. Australians expect better than to see this flat-out disgusting event take place and would reject this ghoulish profiteering that is poisoning our society, and which violates our nation’s core values.”

JB Military Antiques has been selling Nazi memorabilia since at least 2016. It held an auction in April that included Adolf Hitler’s personal belongings and those of his mistress, Eva Braun. At the time, the auction house’s owner Jamey Blewitt, a former history teacher, said his company is “not political in any way.” He told The West Australian, “We’re aware that many people find these pieces absolute abhorrent. There are good and bad things in history.”

An anti-vax mummy blogger has been slammed for pinning the Star of David onto her children's clothing in an offensive comparison between 'segregated' Australians who refuse the Covid jab and Holocaust victims.

Sarah Mills, from the NSW mid north coast, is among a minority refusing the Covid vaccine - and therefore was unable to celebrate Freedom Day on Monday after 106 days in lockdown.

She compared the treatment of anti-vaxxers to Holocaust victims, stating 'history is repeating itself', beginning with the 'segregation and exclusion' of people who choose not to get the jab.

In a separate post, Ms Mills wore a striped button down shirt with a sticker numbered '385968' on the breast of her shirt.

'Does anyone know where we get our full uniform? I've found the shirt but wasn't sure if there's anywhere you can get them as a set? or are we just provided them upon arrival? Sending love to my future inmates,' she captioned the photo.

US convenience store mega-chain 7-Eleven is coming to Israel after signing a deal with Electra Consumer Products to open hundreds of stores over the next three years.

However, unlike other locations, the Israeli sites will be closed on Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, from Friday evening until Saturday night.

Under the terms of the deal, Electra will invest NIS 60 million ($18.59 million) in setting up stores by the end of 2024, with the first outlet opening in Tel Aviv in 2022, the company said in a statement Tuesday.

The deal is for 20 years with the option to extend it to 50. After a one-off unspecified payment, Electra will then pay a monthly percentage of the stores’ income to 7-Eleven.

Electra said the stores will at first be opened in city centers, office areas and other places where there is a large movement of people.

Electra CEO Zvika Schwimmer said the 7-Eleven stores will have an advantage over existing Israeli convenience stores and mini-markets by offering fast food, hot drinks and other unique items.

“I am sure that the shopping experience at 7-Eleven will be different and special for the Israeli consumer,” he said.

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) announced last week that it has reached an agreement with Estonia to arm the nation's defense forces with the Blue Spear (5G SSM) land-to-sea missile system.

The Estonian Center for Defense Investment (ECDI) announced that Proteus Advanced Systems, a joint venture of Israel Aerospace Industries and ST Engineering Land Systems, won the tender to provide the Estonian Defense Forces with advanced anti-ship missile systems.

The Blue Spear system allows for launching from land-based platforms with flight at high subsonic speed. This project is the most complex in Estonia's defense history, and can operate through all weather conditions, all hours of day and night, and provides the ability to strike targets out of sight at sea.

Estonia's Defense Minister, Kalle Laanet, said “This weapon system substantially improves our coastal defense and sends a clear message that we are contributing to the regional and collective defense effort. This is one of the most complex and high-tech weapon systems of all time and a huge leap forward for the Estonian Defense Forces. I am very glad that Estonia has a defense industry capable of participating in such high-tech projects.”

IAI is a world leader in aerospace innovation, delivering state-of-the-art technology in air, navy, land and space, for commercial and defense purposes. ST Engineering is a global engineering group that utilizes technology and innovation in the fields of aerospace and naval defense, in Europe, the Middle East, US and Asia.

For the first time in more than half a century, a Jewish couple was married in Bahrain on Sunday.

The wedding, which was held at the Ritz Carlton in Manama and certified kosher with help from the Orthodox Union, was a milestone for the Jewish community in the Gulf nation, which opened diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020 and has recently made an effort to build a relationship with the American Jewish community.

Houda Nonoo, Bahrain’s former ambassador to the United States and the first Jewish Bahraini to hold the position of ambassador, shared the news of her son’s wedding on Twitter.

“While I know that every mother thinks their child’s wedding is monumental, this one truly was!” she wrote in a tweet.

Bahrain has been home to a Jewish community for more than 140 years, but many of its younger members have chosen to leave the country to study, often remaining abroad permanently. Leaders of the community hailed the wedding as a sign of the community’s resurgence and expressed hope that more young people would raise families there.

“This wedding was an important moment for our family, the community here in Bahrain, and more broadly, for the Jewish community in the region,” Ebrahim Dawood Nonoo, a cousin of Nonoo and president of the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities, said in a statement. “The atmosphere was euphoric as we sat around the Chuppah (Jewish wedding canopy) which symbolizes the new home being built by the couple, it was also symbolic of the opportunity to further grow Jewish life in the region.”

During a visit to his native Libya in 2002, David Gerbi saw something that he says still haunts him almost 20 years later.

“I was horrified to see children playing atop the ruins of the Tripoli Jewish cemetery, scampering about debris littered with human remains,” Gerbi, who left Libya many years ago for Italy, told the Behdrei Haredim news site in Israel last week.

The experience turned Gerbi into an advocate for what are known as heritage sites in his old community. But over the years, his efforts to preserve or restore communal Jewish sites in war-torn Libya, where no Jews remain, came to naught.

So Gerbi began to consider alternatives. And now, the psychologist who lives in Rome has announced a new effort to set up a virtual cemetery to replace each of the physical Jewish ones that have been devastated in his country of birth.

“Especially in Tripoli and Benghazi, the Jewish cemeteries were obliterated,” he told the news site. “So I decided to make a virtual cemetery for our loved ones buried in Libya.”

The virtual cemeteries will have sections for prominent rabbis and commemorative pages for victims of the Holocaust — hundreds of Libyan Jews died in concentration camps operated by Nazi-allied Italy — as well as other pages recalling the victims of three waves of pogroms, in 1945, 1948 and 1967, he said.

Users of the website will be able to virtually light memorial candles and dedicate Kaddish mourning prayers through the website interface, he said. “It will be a way to remember the dead of a community gone extinct,” Gerbi said.

Holocaust survivor Eddie Jaku, who last year published his best-selling memoir, “The Happiest Man on Earth,” has died in Sydney, a Jewish community leader said. He was 101.

“Eddie Jaku was a beacon of light and hope for not only our community, but the world,” New South Wales state Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive officer Darren Bark said in a statement.

“He will always be remembered for the joy that followed him, and his constant resilience in the face of adversity,” Bark added.

Jaku died on Tuesday.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison paid tribute to Jaku’s decision to “make his life a testimony of how hope and love can triumph over despair and hate.”

“He will be sadly missed, especially by our Jewish community. He was an inspiration and a joy,” Morrison said.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, whose Jewish-Hungarian mother also survived the Holocaust and arrived in Australia in 1950 as a stateless child, said “Australia has lost a giant.”

“He dedicated his life to educating others about the dangers of intolerance and the importance of hope,” Frydenberg said in a statement. Advertisement

“Scarred by the past, he only looked forward. May his story be told for generations to come,” Frydenberg added.

A beautiful, heartwarming tribute by Prime Minister @ScottMorrisonMP to #EddiJaku, Australian Holocaust survivor, who passed away today, aged 101. pic.twitter.com/n17cfEvwfo

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 12, 2021

Two years ago, at the ripe young age of 99, Eddie Jaku (z’l) gave this incredible @TEDx talk titled “The happiest man on earth.” Please spare yourself 12 minutes, watch, learn … and be happy.https://t.co/w1vTI4nPa3https://t.co/KEHPtSps60

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 12, 2021

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