Significantly, the Jerusalem Embassy Act explained that declaring Jerusalem the united capital of Israel was merely recognizing what was already its authentic status: “Each sovereign nation, under international law and custom, may designate its own capital. Since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital of the State of Israel... From 1948-1967, Jerusalem was a divided city and Israeli citizens of all faiths, as well as Jewish citizens of all states, were denied access to holy sites in the area controlled by Jordan. In 1967, the city of Jerusalem was reunited... Jerusalem has been a united city administered by Israel, and persons of all religious faiths have been guaranteed full access to holy sites... The United States conducts official meetings and other business in the city of Jerusalem in de facto recognition of its status as the capital of Israel. In 1996, the State of Israel will celebrate the 3,000th anniversary of the Jewish presence in Jerusalem since King David’s entry... Jerusalem should remain an undivided city... Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel.” US law is saying that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was not only to acknowledge its de facto status but also to recognize its Jewish history. In addition, the Embassy Act notes that from 1948 to 1967, part of the city was under Jordanian control, and not Palestinian. By reviewing Jerusalem’s history, the American law is recognizing that Jerusalem has a rich Jewish history when it first became Israel’s capital 3000 years ago, never had Palestinian Arab sovereignty, is currently ruled properly by Israel allowing access to people of all faiths, and therefore should remain Israel’s undivided capital.

When the American Embassy was opened in Jerusalem the US Consulate, which was superfluous in unified Jerusalem, was closed. The PA wants the US to reopen the Consulate in Jerusalem because for them it means that Jerusalem is being redivided. Certainly, much of the international community would see the opening of a US consulate as the PA sees it, which would have a detrimental impact on Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s united capital.

It is unclear whether the US Biden administration intends to undermine the goal of American law. However, even if the US does not intend to declare that it is redividing Jerusalem through reopening the US consulate, sometimes actions speak louder than intentions.

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't we 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,” can't 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?

British lawmaker David Amess was stabbed to death in an Essex church on Friday by an assailant who lunged at him as he met voters, in what police said was a terrorist attack.

The alleged killer has been identified as Ali Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old British citizen of Somali heritage who is not believed to have been known to UK security, according to Sky News. He was arrested by British police, and a warrant of further detention has been granted. Amess, 69, from Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative Party, was knifed repeatedly in the attack at about midday in the Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, east of London.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett shared his condolences over Twitter on Saturday night, writing that he sent his "heartfelt condolences to the family and loved ones of British MP Sir David Amess. He was a true friend of the Jewish community and the State of Israel. His tragic loss will be felt by many."

Israel's Foreign Minister Yair Lapid also tweeted, "From Israel, we send our deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Sir David Amess. He always stood with the Jewish community and was a true friend of Israel. May his memory be for a blessing."

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said he was "deeply shocked" by the "horrific slaying."

"A true friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish People, he was cut down while serving the constituency which he loved so much," Netanyahu tweeted. "We grieve with the people of Britain over the tragic loss of a great parliamentarian and a great friend."

He also waged a long campaign to erect a statue in honor of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from deportation to Nazi death camps in World War II.

The campaign reached fruition when Queen Elizabeth II unveiled the statue in 1997 outside a synagogue in London.

In January this year, he called the event “one of the proudest moments of my life,” and urged the government to redouble efforts against antisemitism, during a speech to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Amess was the Honorary Secretary of the Conservative Friends of Israel from 1998, and was regarded as a longtime friend of the UK Jewish community.

“Although I myself am not a Jew but a Catholic, there is Jewish blood in each and every one of us. I would certainly have been proud to have been born a Jew, and I stand shoulder to shoulder with our local Jewish community,” he said in the January speech.

High-level officials from Israel and the six Arab countries with which it has normalized relations met in the United Arab Emirates for the first-ever multilateral meeting between senior representatives of the seven countries, Jewish Insider has learned.

The two-day conference that ended on Wednesday, named N7 — N for normalization and 7 for the number of participating countries — was hosted by the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation and the Atlantic Council, the culmination of six months of planning.

Senior officials from the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan and Israel participated in the conference.

While the organizations said they were not at liberty to reveal who was at the conference, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Idan Roll and Minister of Regional Cooperation Esawi Frej tweeted pictures of their meetings with Sudanese Justice Minister Nasredeen Abdulbari in Abu Dhabi.

“The event was tremendously successful and productive,” Oren Eisner, president of the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation, told JI. “It is clear to me that this conference will lead to real, tangible results that will help progress and deepen Arab-Israeli normalization and will put in place initiatives that can benefit all people in the region.”

Israel has not been shy about publicizing the meetings between its ministers and the Sudanese justice minister, but the privacy surrounding the conference indicates that other participating countries are not as forthcoming about their engagement with Israel.

The government of Morocco, which last year normalized ties with Israel, announced on Saturday that it was set to discuss and then potentially ratify two new agreements signed with Israel in the fields of aviation, as well as culture and sports.

“The [government] meeting will be devoted to the review of two cooperation agreements between the Government of the Kingdom of Morocco and the Government of the State of Israel, signed on August 11, 2021 in Rabat, the first concerning air services with a draft law approving this agreement while the second provides for cooperation in the fields of culture and sports,” the government said in a statement reported by the Agence Marocaine de Presse.

The agreements were originally signed by Foreign Minster Yair Lapid and Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita during the former’s trip to the north African nation in August.

Lapid was in Morocco for the first official visit by an Israeli top diplomat since 2003, and the highest-level trip since an agreement was signed by Jerusalem and Rabat last year to reestablish ties after some two decades.

The Trump administration brokered the Israel-Morocco normalization agreement, mending ties that were cut off following the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000. However, the 2020 deal did not establish full diplomatic relations.

Morocco reportedly hesitated to move forward until it was assured that the Trump administration’s recognition of its sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara region would be upheld by current United States President Joe Biden.

The lawyer for Robert F. Kennedy's assassin said he maintains the fact that he does not remember all the details of the night of the murder but does accept responsibility as the state of California decides his parole status.

Sirhan Sirhan's attorney, Angela Berry, said the 77-year-old man has trouble remembering that fateful day on June 1968 and has been susceptible to what other people have told him of the event.

'He accepts responsibility for what he remembers he did. He accepts the fact that the law has deemed him the killer of RFK,' Berry told Good Morning America.

A state parole board recommended that Sirhan be released on parole in August. The ruling by the two-person panel at Sirhan's 16th parole hearing is now being reviewed by the California Parole Board.

The final decision is left to the Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will have 30 days to decide whether to grant it, reverse it or modify it.

Newsome told reporters last month that he has not made a decision but noted that RFK was a personal hero.

'I think that gives you a sense of where I might be leaning right now,' Newsom said.

Berry said the statement does not bold well for Sirhan, but urged the governor to remain unbiased in his decision.

The governor said that he has been received an influx of messages from people expressing their strong opinions on Sirhan's parole.

Most notably, six of RFK's nine surviving children signed a letter publicly pleading with the Parole Board and Newsom not to grant Sirhan's parole.

According to a video released by IAM, Omar Mofeed is the son of Dr Mufid Al-Mukhalalati, who was the health minister in Hamas's Gazan government. Al-Mukhalalati died in 2014.

The Jewish Chronicle contacted Mofeed, who reportedly initially denied that his father was a Hamas member.

“My father died in 2014 when I was still young," Mofeed told the Chronicle. "He was a surgeon who did remarkable work, for which he is widely recognised in Palestine, building health services for the people of Gaza. I am deeply proud of the work that he did in caring for the health of others and his legacy is extremely important to me.”

The video also showcased social media posts by Mofeed in which he expressed support for Hamas, individual terrorists, and terrorist activity. Mofeed has since closed his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

In one 2013 Facebook post, Mofeed called to kidnap Israeli soldiers to ransom them for imprisoned Palestinian combatants. In 2015 he celebrated the anniversary of the death of Hamas chief bomb-maker, Yahya Ayyash.

"When it comes to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, mainstream political parties like Labour are expected to act impartially," Joseph Cohen of the Israel Advocacy Movement told The Jerusalem Post. "This is why we were shocked when an al-Jazeera interview suggested Omar helped draft a Labour motion highly critical of Israel.

"We were shocked because anyone visiting his Facebook would have seen numerous concerning posts. There were also a number of posts about his father. It’s staggering that in the wake of the antisemitism scandal that engulfed the Labour Party, someone with Omar’s public history would not just be active in Labour but contributing to motions about Israel."

A Liverpool councillor ,who has repeatedly spoken in support of Dame Louise Ellman over claims she suffered antisemitic abuse while an MP, has alleged he was threatened by a hard-left activist who labelled him “Zionist c**t” in an unprovoked confrontation.

Councillor Nick Small – who has represented the Central Liverpool area for 17 years – claimed he was approached on a bridge by Terry Clarke, who was with a group of other activists who had been taking part in an anti-arms fair demo outside the nearby Liverpool Arena on Wednesday afternoon.

Clarke, who is currently suspended from Liverpool Riverside Labour Party pending an investigation into a tweet he posted referencing former MP Ellman, is alleged to have shouted at the councillor, who was walking home from work, before walking up to him aggressively and confronting him.

Small, who is also a member of Riverside CLP, claimed on Thursday: “He did threaten me. He got right up into my face. I did think he was going to assault me at one stage.

“He’s clearly not a pacifist either. He did call me a ‘Zionist c**t amongst lots of other vile and abusive things. And he said I had ‘blood on my hands’

” He’s a 70 year-old man. I just said to him ‘I’m not going to fight with a drunk old man.’

“But it really was aggressive behaviour.”

Actor Eddie Marsan addressed the “relentless” abuse he has faced on Twitter for playing a Jewish character in the new drama series “Ridley Road,” which airs on Britain’s BBC One.

Marsan, 53, who is not Jewish, took on the role of Soly Malinovsky, the leader of the anti-fascist underground movement known as the 62 Group. The four-part series, which premiered on Oct. 3, is set in post-World War II Britain and chronicles the rise of fascism in London’s East End.

“F**k me, this is relentless, all I did was play a Jew, I dread to think what would’ve happened if I was actually Jewish,” Marsan wrote Thursday on Twitter about the backlash he has received. He also shared screenshots of several abusive tweets, including one from a user who said “Eddie, you are a crap actor and I’ll never watch shite with your Apartheid loving bake in it.”

The former “Ray Donovan” star confronted some of his critics on Twitter earlier in the week, highlighting a post by one user who called the series “excellent” but criticized Marsan and his co-star, Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman, for being in the show. Both Marsan and Oberman have spoken out against former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn over allegations of antisemitism in the party.

“[It] just leaves a bitter taste in the mouth knowing their work on Twitter throwing fake antisemitism around to stop a life long anti-racist Jeremy Corbyn & legitimizing Palestine,” the user wrote. Marsan responded to the message by saying, “I was grateful to do ‘Ridley Road’ because it gave me the opportunity to confront people like you, constructively and creatively. You can scream & shout all you want & throw around false accusations about but it just reconfirms your prejudice.”

Others asked the actor why BBC is even airing “Ridley Road.” One Twitter user wrote to Marsan on Thursday and said, “Why does the BBC do so many programs favoring the Zionists’ ‘return’ and so few favoring Palestinian’s Right of Return?”

The grandson of the late legendary Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, famed for his roles in “Doctor Zhivago” and “Lawrence of Arabia,” has been demonized by Egyptians for starring in season three of the popular Israeli television series “Beauty and the Baker,” he told Israel Hayom on Thursday.

It was announced last year that actor and LGBTQ activist Omar Sharif Jr. will join the cast of the romantic drama, known in Hebrew as “Lehiyot Itas.” The show’s third season premiered on Israel’s Channel 12 on Thursday.

The series premiered in 2013 and is about the unconventional romance between a Yemenite Sephardic baker (played by Avraham Aviv Alush) and a wealthy, Ashkenazi international superstar (played by Rotem Sela). Sharif Jr. will have a recurring role as a gay Hollywood agent with Palestinian roots who is married to an Israeli travel agent.

The former GLAAD national spokesperson said news of his involvement in the Israeli show was not well received in Egypt.

“They weren’t thrilled, unfortunately. There were negative comments, they called me a ‘traitor,'” he explained to Israel Hayom. He added that his grandfather “was treated the same way when he starred in ‘Funny Girl’ alongside Barbra Streisand.”

The actor continued to say that he “immediately fell in love” with the show after watching one episode, and in particular its multiculturalism, drawing parallels to his own family. His mother, an Ashkenazi Jew, is the daughter of Holocaust survivors from Poland and his father’s family are Egyptian Muslims.

A Syrian man who spent time in an Israeli prison for terrorist activities was killed in Syria at the end of last week, according to Syrian reports on Saturday evening.

The man, identified as Madhat al-Salah, was killed in the town of Ain el-Tineh near the village of Hadar on the Golan Heights along the border with Israel.

While initially his death was thought to have been the result of an Israeli airstrike in Syria over the weekend, a Syrian news agency reported that he was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper. Ain el-Tineh is a few hundred meters from the border.

According to Maj. (res.) Tal Beeri, head of the research department at the Alma Center, Salah, who lived in Jaramana near the capital of Damascus, might have been working for the group and was in the area in order to carry out an order.

“If it’s not an internal event, and he was indeed killed by Israel, then it’s likely that he was involved in an attack against Israel that was at an advanced stage,” Beeri told The Jerusalem Post.

Salah lived in the Mas’ada village in the Golan before he was arrested for trying to kidnap an IDF soldier in 1985 and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He was released in 1998, crossed the border to Syria and was voted into the Syrian Parliament a few years later, where he dealt with Golan affairs and Syrian citizens living in the Golan, according to a report from Walla.

According to N12, Salah spent four years as the representative of the Golan in the Syrian Parliament and then became head of the office that keeps track of Syrian citizens who still live in the Golan.

Beeri told the Post that Salah was considered a Syrian intelligence activist who was involved in recruiting sources in Israel.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is trying to stop a prisoner exchange agreement between Israel and Hamas, Egyptian sources claimed on Saturday.

The sources, quoted by the Qatari-affiliated media outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, accused Abbas of “playing a destructive role” in obstructing the completion of the deal brokered by Egypt.

According to the unnamed sources, Abbas is seeking to hinder Egypt’s mediation efforts because he opposes the inclusion in the list of jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who Hamas wants released from an Israeli prison.

Abbas believes that Hamas’s decision to include Barghouti and other prominent inmates “aims primarily to embarrass him and to show him as being negligent on the prisoners’ issue and efforts to release them,” the sources added. “Abbas’s fears have increased because he realizes that Barghouti is a strong rival.”

A senior Palestinian official in Ramallah denied the report, dubbing it “lies spread by the enemies of the Palestinians.”

Barghouti, 62, was arrested by the IDF in 2002 because of his role in terrorism activities during the Second Intifada.

In 2004, he was convicted of five accounts of murder and one account of attempted murder. He was sentenced to five cumulative life sentences and an additional 40 years.

In another blow to the US, after many years of Iran trying to be a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), SCO members finally agreed in September to elevate Iran's status from "observer" to "full member," even though the global financial watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force, had placed the Islamic Republic on its terrorism financing blacklist.

The SCO is a political, military, economic and security alliance that currently includes China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. This alliance will likely... assist the mullahs of Iran to defy the West.

In the face of these critical developments, the Biden administration has remained silent

The Chinese regime is profiting as well. This [25-year deal with Iran], which appears similar to a colonial agreement, grants Communist China significant rights over the nation's resources. Leaked information reveals that one of its terms is that China will be investing nearly $400 billion in Iran's oil, gas and petrochemicals industries. In return, China will get priority to bid on any new project in Iran that is linked to these sectors. China will also receive a 12% discount and it can delay payments by up to two years. China will also be able to pay in any currency it chooses. It is also estimated that, in total, China will receive discounts of nearly 32%. Another secret element of the agreement has a military dimension: China will deploy 5,000 members of its security forces on the ground in Iran.

Such a strategic and economic deal is a clear win for the Chinese Communist Party.... China will have full authority over Iran's islands, gain access to Iran's oil at a highly deeply rate and increase its influence and presence in almost every sector of Iranian industry, including telecommunications, banking, energy, railways and ports.

For the ruling clerics of Iran, appeasement means only more weakness.

An Iran-flagged supertanker on Saturday was about to set sail from Venezuelan waters carrying 2 million barrels of heavy crude provided by state-run oil firm PDVSA, Reuters reported citing vessel tracking services and official documents.

The shipment is part of a deal agreed by PDVSA and its counterpart National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) that exchanges Iranian condensate for Venezuela’s Merey crude. The swaps aim to ease an acute shortage of diluents that has cut Venezuela’s oil output and exports.

Dino I, a very large crude carrier (VLCC) owned and operated by NIOC’s National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), finished loading the Venezuelan oil at PDVSA’s Jose port late Friday.

The bilateral oil trade likely represents a breach of US sanctions on both nations.

The vessel arrived in Venezuela in September with its transponder turned off while carrying 2.1 million barrels of Iranian condensate.

Teen Vogue, the youth-oriented fashion magazine that has recently styled itself as an authority on news and politics as well, is once again promoting anti-Israel propaganda on its pages.

Now under the auspices of a new Editor-in-Chief, Versha Sharma, the magazine has reported on author Sally Rooney’s decision to decline translation of her most recent work by an Israeli publishing house in a biased and one-sided article. (“Sally Rooney Boycotts Israeli ‘Apartheid,’ Refuses Work With Publishers,” by Lexi McMenamin, October 12, 2021.)

Teen Vogue focused on Sally Rooney’s statement about why she chose not to work with Israeli publishers. The article subheading tells readers that the author “was inaccurately accused of boycotting the Hebrew language,” asserting that she would be happy to have her work translated into Hebrew – just not by an Israeli publishing house. Where Rooney might find a publisher to translate her work into Hebrew, outside of the only Hebrew-speaking nation, and to whom that publishing house might sell Hebrew language copies, outside of the only Hebrew-speaking country, is a question that does not appear to have occurred either to Rooney or to Teen Vogue.

Teen Vogue also hides the goal of the BDS movement and ignores the movement’s inherent antisemitism, writing only that it “calls for global supporters of Palestinian rights to refuse to financially support institutions based in Israel or connected to the Israeli government.”

In fact, as BDS founder Omar Barghouti and other BDS leaders have made clear, the movement’s goal is to turn the world’s only Jewish-majority state into the world’s 57th Muslim-majority state. Moreover, BDS singles out Israel alone for boycott, ignoring actual, grave human rights abuses in countries such as China, where Rooney has no problem having her book translated.

Echoing the racist Lowkey, the NEU President Daniel Kebede wants to "globalise the intifada". "Allahu akbar!"

This anti-Israel rally in Newcastle featured loud rounds of "Khaybar, oh Jews" chanting, the call to murderous religious hatred.

If you're in the NEU, please leave. https://t.co/MVKvs167IPpic.twitter.com/nDE1tcMAaN

— habibi (@habibi_uk) October 15, 2021

As if history hasn’t proved that some of the greatest anti-Semites of all were in fact Jews. Jews who hated their identity so much that they had to transfer their self-hatred unto other Jews.

It was the father of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud, who shared this remarkable insight.

When Freud was twelve and out walking with his father Jacob in the streets of Vienna, his father wanted to show his son how much better things had become for Jews since the days when he was a poor peddler wearing a beaver hat and a kaftan in the shtetls of Galicia. So he told his son about the time in Tysmenitz when a gentile had crossed his path on the pavement and had knocked his hat into the gutter jeering after him, “Jew, get off the pavement.”

“What did you do?” the indignant Sigmund asked his father. Jacob replied, “I stepped into the gutter and picked up my cap.”

From this bitter little memory, the adult Freud dated his disillusion with his father, and the birth of one of his most persistent fantasies, his identification with Hannibal, the warrior.

It is a tragic irony that some of the most zealous anti-Semites on the American white supremacist scene have turned out to have direct family links to the Jewish religion as well as the people they have devoted their lives to hating.

The truth is that Ben and Jerry chose Israel as the object of their boycott precisely because they are Jews. Jews who detest that part of their identity. Jews who cannot find peace in their own minds for their failure to exemplify the ethical beauty of the people into which they were born. Jews who bring shame to their biblical roots – and think they can find their redemption by ostracizing their fellow Jews and then denying the profound psychological truth of their deep-rooted self-hatred.

Holocaust educators are also speaking out about what the Texas incident could portend. The Holocaust and Humanity Center in Cincinnati said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned” about reports of the administrator’s remarks.

“With hate crimes in the United States soaring to record highs, it is imperative that teachers are encouraged to devote instructional time to teaching the Holocaust, a seminal event in human history, freely,” the statement said, adding that teachers may feel inhibited from “providing necessary historical context and discussing the practices and ideologies that contributed to the Holocaust, such as stereotyping and antisemitism.”

Bethany Mandel, another signatory of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values letter, says she doubts Holocaust education in Texas will be hindered. She said she felt that the administrator in the recording sounded like she opposed the restrictions — the administrator tells the teachers, “I think you are terrified, and I wish I could take that away” — and that the teachers appeared to find her remark on the Holocaust ridiculous.

Mandel, who homeschools her own children, said she opposes the Texas law because she believes states should strive not to dictate what teachers teach. She feels that the Texas law mirrors the recently passed California legislation, favored by liberals, requiring that schools teach ethnic studies. The fight over ethnic studies has divided Jews in the state and has animated opponents of critical race theory, who argue that the state’s sample curriculum exemplifies what they’re fighting against.

“I don’t think that government should come in from on high and have these diktats in the classroom, both with ethnic studies and with the Texas law,” Mandel said. “It really hampers teachers’ ability to recognize what their kids need and how to best serve those needs.”

A three-member faculty panel at San Francisco State University has upheld a grievance filed by Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, ruling that the school violated the scholar’s academic freedom when a 2020 seminar she organized was cut off because it featured an affiliate of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The online seminar, which briefly streamed live on YouTube in Sept. 2020 before the service provider cut its feed, had been denied a platform by both Zoom and Facebook over the participation of Leila Khaled.

Khaled — who as a member of the PFLP terror group took part in the hijacking of a Tel Aviv-bound commercial flight in 1969 — was a guest at the event, titled, “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled.”

The Faculty Hearing Committee at SFSU said Thursday that school officials violated the academic freedom of Abdulhadi by “not providing adequate support” to the organizers of the event, and that they had caused “mental health stress.”

The panel cited an email from school administrator warning Abdulhadi and co-instructor Tomomi Kinukawa of the possible risks of engaging in criminal activity. In denying a platform to the event with Khaled, Zoom at the time noted the possible violation of its terms of service because of the speaker’s reported affiliation with the PFLP, a US-designated foreign terrorist organization.

In finding for Abdulhadi, the panel called on SFSU to issue a public apology to the professor, issue a “public letter of support of faculty with regards to academic freedom,” and provide a site for rescheduling the event.

In an October 8 article in the Maple Leaf, the news outlet of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and the Department of National Defence, (DND) Lieutenant Colonel Len Matiowsky, a Canadian soldier stationed in Israel, painted a myopic picture of the conflict between Palestinian-Arabs and Israelis.

Matiowsky’s article is entitled an “Artistic initiative that made a difference in Palestine,” even though official Canadian policy does not recognize “Palestine” as a state as the Palestinians haven’t met the requirements for statehood.

He writes:
Members of Op PROTEUS work from one end of the West Bank to the other engaging with members of the PASF but also meeting people from all walks of life: vendors, artists, politicians, restaurateurs, and even the displaced and less fortunate. Palestinian refugees and their descendants, for example, are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. They fled or were expelled from their country over the course of the 1947–49 Palestine War and the Six-Day War. Most Palestinian refugees live in or near 68 Palestinian refugee camps across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

Contrary to Maitowsky’s article, Palestinians are citizens of the Palestinian Authority, furthermore, Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity that began in 1920 under the League of Nations mandate and ceased in 1948 following the Partition Plan that led to the creation of the State of Israel. It was in 1948 that the displacement of Palestinian-Arab refugees occurred due to a war of annihilation waged by pan-Arab armies seeking to wipe the nascent state of Israel off the map. This same type of displacement occurred again in 1967 in the Six Day War, which was another failed attempt by several Arab countries to purge the Jewish state from the Middle East.

Lieutenant-Colonel Maitowsky trained Palestinian Authority Security Forces under Operation Proteus. His article notes how Canada’s Embassy in Israel, Canada House in Tel Aviv, was converted into an art studio for a silent auction fundraiser for The Not-to-Forget Women Society which describes itself as “first established by educated and social activist refuges women, after the events of April 2002 in Jenin camp to response on the tragic situation caused by Israeli occupation in Jenin camp in that period.” According to this article, $14,000 CDN was raised for this organization.

Maitowsky observed the following that we take great umbrage with: The “Jenin Camp was also severely affected by the second intifada, when the Israeli Defense Forces occupied the camp in 2002 after the Battle of Jenin. 400 homes or more were destroyed, with hundreds more being severely damaged. More than a quarter of the population was rendered homeless. The United Nations Relief and Works (UNRWA) Agency was established to provide direct relief and works programs for 750,000 Palestinian refugees. Now, there are 5.6 million.”

Swedish police are investigating how the words “the Holocaust was a scam” were projected onto the main synagogue in Malmö while the city was holding an international forum on combating antisemitism.

The projection was seen on the Synagogue of Malmö and on other buildings in cities across southern Sweden on Wednesday night, the day of the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism.

Police are handling the case as a hate crime, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported.

The Nordic Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi group, claimed responsibility for the incident, according to Dagens Nyheter.

The conference had brought together heads of state and other prominent government officials from dozens of countries in a city known for its high rates of antisemitism.

Israel’s strikes in Gaza in 2009 triggered a wave of antisemitic assaults in Malmö, which had then over 1,000 Jews. Then-mayor Ilmar Reepalu reacted by instructing the local Jewish community to distance itself from Israel, giving many the impression that he was blaming the victims.

The Jewish community in Sweden’s third-largest city has since dwindled down to around 500.

American Girl released a new set of doll outfits for various cultural holidays, and it includes a Hanukkah ensemble with a Star of David necklace.

Each “Hanukkah celebration outfit” that is purchased for $36 comes with a navy velvet dress, matching headband and silver shoes; a silver Star of David charm on a silver chain necklace; and a booklet that highlights the five different cultural celebrations that the company is honoring.

The American Girl website also has a section where the company describes the eight-day Jewish holiday.

The company debuted its line of specialty holiday doll outfits last week; they include outfits for Eid Al-Fitr, Diwali, Christmas, the Lunar New Year and Kwanzaa.

In 2009, the company debuted its first Jewish doll, named Rebecca Rubin. That doll is no longer for sale but still available for purchase is her Hanukkah set, which consists of a metal menorah with pretend candles, a wooden dreidel and fake medal coins, also known as gelt.

Rebecca’s Shabbat set is also being sold.

Mezuzahs are tiny pieces of parchment containing verses from the Torah. They sit inside decoratives cases and are fixed onto doorways outside, and often inside, Jewish homes and businesses around the world.

Traditionally, mezuzah scrolls are placed on a slant. Yet in 1902, after putting the finishing touches on the Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem, Rabbi Yaakov Mann attached the institution’s mezuzahs vertically to the doorways.

Hospital director Dr. Moshe Wallach, an Orthodox Jew, was furious and consulted one of the city’s most prominent rabbinical authorities. That eminence replied that if the person involved was the learned Rabbi Yaakov Mann, there was absolutely nothing to worry about. When Mann heard about Wallach’s anger, he joked: “Not everything has to be crooked! It is better to have at least something that is straight.”

The first time I heard Mann’s name was at the municipal citizens’ advice bureau where I volunteer. During a discussion with two colleagues — brothers-in-law — about an art exhibit at the old Shaare Zedek building on Jaffa Road (the hospital moved to its current campus in the Bayit VeGan neighborhood in 1980), they mentioned that their wives were direct descendants of Mann, who was responsible for the hospital’s construction.

Research into the rabbi and his endeavors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries revealed that he had helped build nearly a dozen neighborhoods and institutions in Jerusalem. Indeed, this unsung hero was so prolific that some contemporary sources described him as the “Builder of Jerusalem.” Others called him the “Jerusalem Expander.” And just about everyone considered him the “Father of Manual Labor.”

Mann was born in 1849 in Rzeczyca, Belarus, at the beginning of a worldwide cholera pandemic that killed over a million Russians. While Mann was still a baby, the family moved to the village of Kamenka. Since the family planned to immigrate to the Holy Land in the future, Mann’s grandfather traveled around with his three sons trying to earn money for their passage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

On this day in 1941, over 1,000 Jewish civilians in Lubny, Ukraine were rounded up and massacred by the Nazis. Executions of the women and children were grotesquely documented by photographer Johannes Hähle. The children in this photo and their descendants would be alive today. pic.twitter.com/T4oIfjDRQN

— Avi Kaner ??????? ??? (@AviKaner) October 16, 2021

David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, was born today in 1886. (Pictured when PM in 1949.) He was a private in the British Army (39th Royal Fusiliers) in the First World War (also pictured.) pic.twitter.com/luiY4RKiFx

— R?????? K??? ? (@COLRICHARDKEMP) October 16, 2021

---

---

Ultimately, that is what “anti-Zionism” is. Instead of visiting or residing in Israel, one is welcome to prefer a vacation in Saudi Arabia – and please don’t forget to bring home some sand for the kids. No one has to like people who write from right to left, who have emergency medical vehicles with red Stars of David instead of red crescents or red crosses painted on the ambulances.

But to be “anti-Zionist?” That’s like being anti-kosher. Anti-matzo. Because, when it comes down to it, Zionism actually is a core part of the very definition of a Jew.

That is why “anti-Zionism” always is pure antisemitism. No one reasonable denies the Italian love for Venice, the French love for Paris, the British love for London, or the Spanish love for Barcelona. Even amid the COVID pandemic, expatriates’ hearts and minds remain fixed on lands of heritage.

To deny only Jews that simple human yearning shared by all others is to manifest something much deeper than a mere disagreement over where ice cream should be sold or fictional works should be translated. It is to be an antisemite.

Two days ago, activist JB Brager of the deceptively-named ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ published an illustrated analysis of Zionism as an indigenous rights cause in Jewish Currents.

Their picture book (a fitting medium, I suppose) is not so much an analysis as it is a puerile, recalcitrant temper tantrum. If nothing else, it is as stark an example of Jewish self-hatred as anything I could imagine from a purported Jewish outlet.

For the sake of digestibility, I’ll address everything in a piecemeal fashion.

On the meaning of indigenous – From the very first panel, we see the authors attempting to spin Jewish discourse on indigeneity into a blood and soil argument — a calculated bid at misrepresenting Zionism as the Jewish version of German Volkisch nationalism. Attempting to place us on par with our worst abusers, the Nazis, appears to be a common theme for antisemites.

To wit, the authors deliberately pervert the meaning of indigeneity, arguing that (at least in our case) it is about nothing more than blood.

While common ancestry with the land’s original inhabitants is certainly part of the criteria, it is only one part. Indigeneity is first and foremost about ethnogenesis, or ‘where a people became a people’.

Jews do not, and never have, claimed indigeneity to Israel solely on the basis of blood. We claim it because we originated as an ethnic group on that land. Virtually everything about us, from our language and alphabet to our holidays and laws and core culture, is specific to the land of Israel/Palestine.

It is true that ethnic Jews — who comprise roughly 99% of global Jewry — trace the bulk of their genetic ancestry to the Levant (specifically to Bronze Age Canaanites, from whom the Jews and Samaritans emerged as subsets), but this alone does not qualify a population for indigenous status. Ethnogenesis, core culture, national language, collective spiritual ties, etc are equally important, if not more so. Indigenous status is a package deal.

That Rooney sides with Israel boycotters isn’t surprising. Her first two books included characters attending an anti-Israel protest during Israel’s war with Gaza in 2014 and expressing displeasure that “We end up asking like, is Israel ‘nicer’ than Palestine.”

In May, while Israeli civilians were racing to bomb shelters to avoid Hamas’ rockets, Rooney signed “A Letter Against Apartheid,” which called for “an immediate and unconditional cessation of Israeli violence against Palestinians.” Rooney has also called the BDS movement an “anti-racist and nonviolent grassroots campaign.” That is, as opposed to, say, an antisemitic campaign that opposes the very existence of Israel (and vilifies Zionist Jews on American college campuses).

Rooney’s statement suggests that we imagine someone who might translate this novel into Hebrew while also being BDS compliant. A Hebrew-speaking Jew from Gaza? That wouldn’t work, because Jews haven’t lived in Gaza since Israel left in 2005. Perhaps a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian? No, such a person would incur the wrath of the BDS movement. So who does that leave?

Further, “there’s no such thing as a ‘BDS-compliant’ Hebrew publisher,” tweeted Anshel Pfeffer of the left-leaning Haaretz. “To be that, a publisher would have to agree to not selling its books in Israel and to Israelis who are ... the overwhelming majority of the Hebrew-reading market.”

Like Ben and Jerry’s announcing it will continue selling ice cream in Israel — just not beyond the Green Line — Rooney’s supposedly ideal translator and publishing house are absurd. Ben and Jerry’s has operated in Israel since 1987, and Rooney’s last two books were translated into Hebrew. However, neither Ben and Jerry’s nor Sally Rooney seem interested in continuing to do business in Israel.

When ice cream makers and novelists apply a double standard to the world’s only Jewish state, there’s a term for that — and it’s not “human rights defender.”

For those that don’t know, my website has been under attack again. For much of the last week, I suffered sporadic down-time – until by Thursday the site was taken off-line for almost two days straight.

Two years ago, I faced persistent, brute-force, distributed denial of service attacks, and I had to reinforce my website to resist them. This time around, it appears the attack was somewhat more sophisticated.

The motive behind the attack is a simple one. I produced an in-depth report exposing horrific levels of antisemitism in Ireland. The report captured politicians, academics and activists engaged in either spreading blatant antisemitism or helping it to spread through the Irish mainstream. Obviously some people simply wanted to stop the truth being told. As an additional handicap I had my gallbladder removed on Thursday, and rather than have an opportunity to rest – I needed to spend the first two days following the operation putting the pieces of my website together again – so as to get the crucial evidence back online. As you can see from reading this – the site is now operational once more.

So for those who may have missed some of what has been taking place, this post is here as both a reminder and a reference.

Last week I produced a blog to introduce the report. There is also the report itself – an in-depth 202 page study on antisemitism in Ireland. The report was uploaded to another location during the attack on the website so people could still access it (Open cloud link) – see also an upload on the website of the Israeli Embassy in Dublin. The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland published a statement on the back of the report calling for Ireland to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

The report laid bare the scale of anti-Jewish hatred in Ireland – running freely as it does wrapped up in the mask of a social justice argument. From politicians and academics – to the activists on the street, the word being spread through Irish towns is that Zionists are a demon race who must be eradicated from the earth. The evidence is all there – and the unbelievable story of the hounding of the Former Justice Minister Alan Shatter highlights the real world cost that Jewish people in Ireland pay for the Irish anti-Jewish obsession.

The Iron Dome Supplemental Appropriations Act passed 420-9, showing remarkable bipartisan support for Israel’s defense. Ocasio-Cortez voted “present,” but then in a great act of showmanship, proceeded to cry for the cameras. She wrote to supporters, apologizing for not voting “no” on the measure and explicitly stating that she opposed “the substance of the Iron Dome supplemental bill.”

Thankfully, the leadership of the Democratic Party condemned the Squad and their antics. In the debate surrounding the bill, there was a heated exchange on the House floor as moderate Democrat Ted Deutch of Florida slammed Tlaib, who labelled Israel an apartheid state.

“I cannot, cannot allow one of my colleagues to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and label the Jewish, democratic State of Israel an apartheid state,” said Deutch. “I reject it. When there is no place on the map for one Jewish state — that’s antisemitism, and I reject that.”

We can learn much from this debacle. First, that Israel’s right to defense has extremely strong bipartisan support. Overwhelming majorities from both parties rallied to vote in favor of ensuring that Iron Dome interceptor stockpiles do not dwindle in the wake of the latest series of rocket attacks by Hamas.

We who feel discouraged at times by Democrats’ policies toward Israel should take notice. We should always give credit for support of the Jewish state, regardless of party sympathies.

Second, the Squad and their fellow travelers do not care about human rights, at least not the human rights of Israel’s seven million Jewish and two million Arab citizens. These legislators are literally trying to ensure the Jewish state is left undefended, so that Hamas rockets will meet their marks on Israeli cities and towns. No other conclusion is possible.

If the Squad’s goal is met, it could lead to hundreds of Israeli civilian casualties in the next conflict. Moreover, because the Iron Dome is so effective in deflecting terrorist rockets, it gives Israeli decision-makers more leeway to not respond with overwhelming force — particularly with a ground invasion.

More deaths on the Israeli side would also increase pressure and justification for the Israeli Air Force to target Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad positions, risking greater Palestinian civilian casualties. Thus, the Squad are also placing more Palestinian lives in peril.

Ilhan Omar has been an outspoken proponent of the constitutionally protected right of free speech when it comes to criticizing Israel.

In 2019, for example, the “progressive” Democrat politician representing Minnesota, who prides herself on being the first black, Muslim congresswoman, introduced a resolution that stated economic boycotts are an expression of speech in a bill that was co-sponsored by fellow “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

While the legislation did not specifically mention Israel or Palestinians, when asked about it, Omar referenced the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which seeks to delegitimize and eventually dismantle the Jewish state:
We are introducing a resolution… to really speak about the American values that support and believe in our ability to exercise our first amendment rights in regard to boycotting. And it is an opportunity for us to explain why it is we support a nonviolent movement, which is the BDS movement.”

However, it seems Omar is less of a free speech advocate when it comes to the press criticizing her.

This weekened, she shared an open letter that attacked the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s editorial board for republishing an op-ed by New York Times writer Bret Stephens in which he condemned Omar for voting against United States funding for Israel’s Iron Dome defensive system in September.

The Star Tribune reproduced the column and added a picture of Hamas rockets being fired at Israel, in addition to changing the headline from the NYT’s original, ‘A Foul Play by Progressives Over Israel’s Iron Dome,’ to, ‘Omar, ‘Squad,’ Launch Another Anti-Israel Strike.’

However, according to the open letter’s authors, this was not simply a bit of wordplay that highlighted Omar and some of her Democratic colleague’s incessant attacks on Israel (see here and here).

Instead, they viewed the revised headline and included image as evidence the Star Tribune was promoting a “textbook example of Islamophobia” and accused the outlet of “equating Muslims with terrorism.”

The United States on Thursday won a seat on the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) beginning in January 2022, with the Biden administration vowing to prove it can reform the council from within. Biden’s first test: dissolving the council’s one-sided commission of inquiry on Israel.

In a statement issued moments after the UNHRC election results were announced, Secretary of State Antony Blinken put anti-Israel bias at the top of the Biden administration’s reform agenda. The council, he said, “suffers from serious flaws, including disproportionate attention on Israel and the membership of several states with egregious human rights records.”

Indeed, the council’s obsession with castigating Israel has long been atop the list of criticisms leveled against it. Since the council’s creation, it has adopted more resolutions condemning Israel than every other country in the world combined. In contrast, the council has adopted zero resolutions on the gross human rights abuses in China, Cuba, and Russia.

In addition, Israel is the only country to which the council dedicates a standing agenda item. As if Israel — a democracy rated by the respected Freedom House as a free country, which boasts Arabs on its Supreme Court, in its parliament and in its coalition government — were the world’s leading abuser of human rights.

The council currently is preparing its most insidious assault on Israel to date.

In May, the Hamas terrorist organization rained thousands of rockets down on Israeli civilians while using Palestinians as human shields — both clear violations of the law of armed conflict. Rather than condemning Hamas, the UNHRC voted to establish a new commission of inquiry designed to produce a report falsely accusing Israel of committing apartheid.

The mandate for this new commission includes not only investigating Israel for violations of the law of armed conflict but also investigating “systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity” and establishing facts of “crimes perpetrated.” This phrasing mirrors the language of a report issued in April by Human Rights Watch, which invented a new, broader definition of the decades-old crime of apartheid and falsely accused Israel of violating it.

Newsflash: Building in our capital Jerusalem is *not* a war crime. But @KenRoth of @hrw is so engulfed in Jew hatred and obsession against Israel, that neither facts nor law, are relevant for him. https://t.co/u7U1tyPamS

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 17, 2021

The tension between Israel and the United States over the Jerusalem consulate that would cater to the needs of Palestinian Authority residents stems from a lack of coordination between Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, according to a Sunday report in Israel Hayom citing a political source involved in the relationship between the government and the administration in Washington.

According to the source, Foreign Minister Lapid gave his American counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, an early commitment that it would be possible to carry out the move.

In a phone conversation with Blinken several months ago, Lapid noted that due to the sensitive political structure of the government, it would be better to open the controversial consulate only after the state budget is passed in the Knesset, at which point the stability of the government would be proven. Blinken accepted Lapid’s position and agreed to wait until the Knesset approved the budget.

However, about a month after the formation of the government, contacts began between Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s advisers and the administration on the same issue, the PM’s envoys to Washington made it clear that Bennett opposes the opening of the consulate even after the budget is approved. The American administration was taken aback, and according to IH’s political source, the reason Antony Blinken announced last week, with Lapid standing at his side, that he does intend to open the consulate—knowing Israel is opposed to the move—was the Secretary’s way of getting back at Lapid for misleading him.

It is utterly insane that an organization which considers itself pro-Israel has chapters lobbying to cut US funding to Israel which directly benefits BOTH parties and assists in preventing higher casualties. Sign the petition and tell J Street enough. https://t.co/sI1xYvOKuZ

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) October 16, 2021

Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde was set to arrive in Israel on Sunday evening, after a seven-year downgrade in relations between the countries.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Linde plan to meet on Monday, and she will meet with President Isaac Herzog, as well. She also plans to visit Yad Vashem and to take part in an event hosted by Sweden’s ambassador to Israel marking 70 years of relations between the countries. She plans to visit Ramallah on the second day of her visit.

Linde will be the first Swedish foreign minister to visit Israel since Sweden recognized a Palestinian state in 2014, sparking a diplomatic row, which continued when Sweden’s foreign minister at the time Margot Wallstrom accused Israel of “extrajudicial killings” of Palestinians. Israel recalled its ambassador from Stockholm for a month, and there was no contact between the countries on the ministerial level until this year. Lapid himself accused Wallstrom of antisemitism, at a pro-Israel rally in Stockholm in 2016.

But Sweden has made overtures to Israel in recent years, including speaking in favor of convening the EU-Israel Association Council and supporting Israeli candidacy to UN bodies.

Lapid and Linde met at the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council in July, where she asked to bring relations between Israel and Sweden back on track and he agreed. They spoke on the phone in September – the first official conversation between Israeli and Swedish foreign ministers in seven years – and Sweden announced soon after that it would boycott the anti-Israel Durban IV Conference at the UN.

A radical Islamist preacher alleged over the weekend that the assassination of Tory MP David Amess on Friday may have been due to his pro-Israel stance.

"The rumors are that he [Amess] was pro-Israel," Anjem Choudary told the Mail on Sunday from his home in East London. "Many people believe that [Israel] is a terrorist state, and who would possibly be a friend of Israel after you see the carnage that they carried out against Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and continue to do with the appropriation of properties?" he said. Amess was a member of the pro-Israel group "Conservatives Friends of Israel" and expressed strong support of the Jewish state during his long term in Parliament, dating back to 1983.

Choudary further stated that while "no one in their right and rational mind would support such a state," it nevertheless "does not give anyone the justification to kill."

The 54-year-old cleric is the former leader of the proscribed group Islam4UK. He also served two years in prison, between 2016 and 2018, for inviting support for the Islamic State. He was originally given a five-and-a-half-year sentence but was released early. He lived under license restriction until July this year but is free to preach again.

Nevertheless, security forces have said that if Choudary continued to preach extremism in Britain, he could be put under house arrest and tried again on terrorism and hate law charges.

His comments drew criticism from British officials and intellectuals alike.

"Not only is it outrageous and repugnant, but the whole motive of the attack is a matter for the police – not Mr. Choudary," British Professor Anthony Glees, an expert on extremism, said. "'Like all brainwashed radicalizers, Choudary will do everything he can to carry on making his poisonous comments. This is an attempt to radicalize others."

A 25-year-old British man – reportedly called Ali Harbi Ali – has been arrested in connection with the attack on Amess. Police have called his alleged action terrorism and have said that there were indications that his actions drew "potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism."

The BBC's home affairs correspondent was accused yesterday of trying to downplay the suspect's reported Somali origins.

As Dominic Casciani covered the crime, social-media users claimed he was 'desperate to diminish implications of a Muslim Somali immigrant killing an MP'.

Although every national newspaper with the exception of the Financial Times mentioned that the suspect had Somali 'origins', 'heritage' or 'descent' yesterday, Casciani appeared to wrestle with the issue on Radio 4's Today programme.

Presenter Nick Robinson asked him: 'The suspect is a British citizen, but he's also of Somali origin. Is that regarded as significant?'

Casciani replied: 'The Somali element – erm, no. The reason why some reporters have established this fact is that there has been some misreporting.

'Yesterday, during the day, there were some news outlets, and also on social media, some suggestions as to the identity of the individual.

'So I think the police are at pains to clarify in a statement last night that the individual is British.

'They haven't said anything about the heritage. But my understanding is that there was initially, potentially, some confusion over the individual's background and identity.'

The man known as the last Jew of Kabul could soon be heading to Israel, after agreeing to grant his estranged wife a religious divorce in a Zoom call.

Zebulon Simentov, who fled Afghanistan last month after the Taliban takeover, landed Sunday in Turkey on what his rescuers say is a final stop before traveling to Israel, perhaps as soon as this week.

It caps a weekslong odyssey that included an escape from his homeland as well as a videoconference divorce procedure meant to ensure he will not run into trouble with Israeli authorities.

Under Jewish religious law, a husband must agree to grant his wife a divorce, something he had refused to do for many years. Facing the prospect of legal action in Israel, where his ex-wife lives, Simentov, after resisting for years, finally agreed to the divorce last month in a special Zoom call supervised by Australian rabbinical authorities. During the sometimes chaotic discussion, conducted through an interpreter who struggled to explain the procedure, Simentov agreed to sign a divorce document known as a "get" after receiving assurances that he will not face trouble in Israel.

Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, whose nonprofit group Tzedek Association funded the journey, said Simentov had spent the last few weeks living quietly in Pakistan, an Islamic country that does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

Executive Summary
HonestReporting recently commissioned a professional study whose findings show that our framing and messaging during last May’s conflict involving the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip was highly effective at improving understanding of, and favorability towards, the State of Israel and its citizens.

Overall favorability towards Israelis rose by a dramatic 33% across respondents aged 18-44. Favorability in the critical 18-24 age group rose by 32%, correlating especially well with our approach of ‘meeting people where they are’ — that is, talking to youth on their own, often liberal progressive terms (sometimes referred to as “woke”) — which significantly increases sympathy towards Israelis and vastly improves understanding of the conflict with the Palestinians.

Given the survey’s parameters, 60% of respondents initially said their sympathies towards Israelis and Palestinians were “about equal” or that they were uncertain, suggesting that most individuals’ opinions about the conflict are not firmly entrenched. In fact, of those who initially said that they sympathized more with the Palestinians, following the video presentation a full quarter of them reported sympathizing with both Israelis and Palestinians about equally and 9% fully shifted to the Israeli side.

Among those who already held a favorable view of Israelis, 85% said that watching the video made them feel more confident to discuss the conflict. This comes on the backdrop of a recent study that found that 50% of “openly Jewish” college students avoid expressing their views on Israel (NB: Only 2% of those surveyed identified as Jewish).

Recent events in the "West Bank" have served as a reminder of the fact that there are certain places where the Palestinian Authority cannot move around freely, and that without IDF counter-terrorist operations, Hamas would soon begin threatening the PA's stability and very ability to rule.

The IDF disrupted a large, heavily-armed Hamas cell in late September, arresting some 20 members in a series of security raids that included shooting attacks.

Five Palestinians – at least four of them Hamas members – were killed in IDF pre-dawn raids in the village of Biddu, outside of Jerusalem, as well as near Jenin, on Sept. 26.

Days later, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) gunman was killed in Burqin, near Jenin, after opening fire on IDF units conducting an anti-Hamas operation in the area. Two IDF soldiers sustained serious injuries in that incident.

Israeli security sources said the Hamas cell was planning a massive terror attack against Israelis in Jerusalem, which was reminiscent of the kinds of attacks common during the Second Intifada between 2000 and 2005.

Jenin's refugee camp is an example of an area that has become off limits to the PA's security forces.

In recent weeks, gunmen in Jenin marched the streets, firing their automatic rifles the air, and pledging to repel IDF attempts to enter the city or its refugee camp.

The Palestinian leadership, an apparent euphemism for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, has suspended monthly payments to three Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) opposition factions in an attempt to force them to change their policies, the groups said in a joint statement on Sunday.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and Palestinian People’s Party (PPP), formerly the Palestinian Communist Party, condemned the decision to halt the funding, saying it aims to “blackmail” them and “undermine their political positions.”

The three groups said in their statement that the funds were halted four months ago. They claimed that the decision was taken on an “individual basis,” an apparent reference to Abbas, who also heads the PLO Executive Committee.

“The decision to suspend the payments constitutes a violation of the statute of the PLO and an infringement on the powers of its leading bodies,” the statement read. “It also seriously damages internal relations between the PLO factions.”

According to the PFLP, DFLP and the PPP, the decision “comes at a time when the responsibilities of the three factions are increasing in advancing the popular resistance and confronting the occupation’s policies of settlement expansion, Judaization, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.”

The groups said that the suspension of the funds will not succeed in “blackmailing” them or dissuading them from “continuing their role in defending freedoms and democratic rights of the people in the face of the policies of oppression and authoritarianism.”

Real apartheid in Palestinian territories. Expecting protest from @hrw@btselemhttps://t.co/FxnZziYmRy

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) October 17, 2021

Is this Palestinian nationalism's unlikeliest motif?

The PA has turned ~spoons~ into a symbol, to brag about the escape of 6 terrorist prisoners in September, despite their subsequent recapture.https://t.co/4M3Vc9oyrnpic.twitter.com/gWrpiq6QAf

— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) October 17, 2021

Palestinian security forces arrest Hamoudi Azmi, from Jenin, after he received a phone call from Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh offering condolences over the death of his nephew, who was killed by IDF troops. pic.twitter.com/wJrA9KlRmW

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) October 17, 2021

Hashim Safi Al-Din, Head of Hizbullah’s Executive Council, amid “Death to America” Chants: U.S. Behind the Deadly Beirut Shootout; They Are Sowing Sectarian Strife to Drag Us into Civil War #Lebanon#Hizbullahpic.twitter.com/zX7qmgBdSn

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 17, 2021

I'm sure they are all just waving goodbye ?? pic.twitter.com/4EZWGFVGuO

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) October 17, 2021

Saudi-Iranian relations, in particular, and the Arab world’s relations with Shiite Iran, in general, will continue to be characterized by the religious division between Sunnis and Shiites, which is the dominant theme defining these relations for centuries.

During his meetings in Beirut on October 8, 2021, Iran’s Foreign Minister said that “the talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia are on the right track,” and the cooperation and consultations should be continued to implement the agreements reached so far.

It seems that Saudi Arabia is signaling that it is willing to give international peace efforts a chance given the U.S. political efforts to end the war and the heavy toll and loss of prestige following ongoing Houthi drone and missile attacks. On October 9, Houthi rebels fired an explosive drone that wounded ten people at the King Abdullah Airport in Jezan.

Despite Iran’s open satisfaction with the progress of relations stemming from Tehran’s sense of security after recent developments in its nuclear program and its regional and international status, and Saudi caution, given the uncertainty in its relations with the United States, a genuine Saudi-Iranian reconciliation does not seem to be on the table.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said on Friday that Iran’s acceleration of its nuclear activities is putting the world in “a very dangerous place” amid efforts to bring Tehran back into a 2015 nuclear deal.

Speaking at a news conference in Washington a day after meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, bin Farhan called for a “quick suspension” of Iranian activities in violation of the agreement under which Iran curbed its nuclear program in return for economic sanctions relief.

Bin Farhan also urged a “quick resumption” of indirect talks between the United States and Iran. Regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia are arch rivals.

“I think we are in a very dangerous place. The fact that we continue to see acceleration of those activities … leads to the devaluation of the JCPOA,” he said, using the initials of the agreement formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who took office in August, has so far refused to resume the indirect talks in Vienna.

US President Joe Biden’s administration wants to negotiate a return to compliance with the deal after his predecessor Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and re-imposed sanctions, after which Iran resumed building its stockpile of enriched uranium.

“We have started a dialogue with Iran,” bin Farhan said, referring to four rounds of talks that the two countries began holding in 2020 that focused primarily on the conflict in Yemen. “These interactions, while cordial, have been exploratory in nature and have not reached a state where we can say that we’ve made substantial progress.”

In Honor of Police Week, Iranian Police Stages Show Demonstrating Officers’ Fitness, Acrobatics, Martial Arts: Policemen Jump through Flaming Rings, Lift a Motorcycle #Iranpic.twitter.com/aNwXwtkkP0

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 17, 2021

Netflix has launched a collection of movies on its global streaming service by and about Palestinians called Palestinian Stories. The collection has drawn criticism from some Israelis, and raises questions on whether releasing movies in Israel by directors who support the BDS movement – which advocates for a cultural boycott of Israel – violates the company’s guidelines.

Netflix said that they are releasing 32 films in the program. On the Israeli version of Netflix, 28 movies came up Sunday in a search for Palestinian Stories. A spokesperson for Netflix confirmed that some of this content, such as the Oscar-nominated short film The Present by Farah Nabulsi, which was already available on Netflix, has been repackaged as Palestinian Stories.

Im Tirtzu, an Israeli Right-wing non-governmental organization, researched the directors of the films and found that of 19 directors who made them, at least 15 have voiced support for BDS. But apparently, these directors do not have a problem with the films being shown on the Israeli Netflix service, or have not yet voiced this concern.

Ameen Nayfeh, director of The Crossing, one of the movies included in Palestinian Stories, told Reuters that he was happy that it was: “This is why we make films, because we want our stories to travel, we want people to know about us. Now when you type Palestine in the search button on Netflix, you will see so many different titles that you can watch. Before, when I would type Palestine, I would get Israeli titles.”

Earlier this year, Nayfeh and a number of these directors signed a statement in response to the Gaza war in May, calling for governments to “cut trade, economic and cultural relations with Israel” and calling Israel “an apartheid regime.”

Representatives of Im Tirtzu oppose showing these films on Netflix.

Boycott, Divest, Sanction which Sally Rooney supports, is dedicated to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish State. We should stop pretending this campaign is somehow respectable. It's very far from it. (My @SunTimesIreland column today). https://t.co/CcksUvIrqQ

— David Quinn (@DavQuinn) October 17, 2021

.@Alan__Shatter in today’s @TheSundayIndo on Sally Rooney’s demonising boycott of Israel & Hebrew language. Much of this language mirrors antisemitic language of 1930s Germany as referenced in @mishtal recent report ‘Antisemitism in Ireland’. https://t.co/hQg6R7u4Yt

— Ireland Israel Alliance (@irlisrAlliance) October 17, 2021

Awful! An openly anti-#Israel poster, playing on Sally Rooney's popular book 'Normal People', was spotted on a bus stop in London. Rooney herself recently refused to allow her new book to be translated into Hebrew in a bid to boycott Israel.

This is unacceptable! #NoPlaceForHatepic.twitter.com/w93y2W4h3C

— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) October 17, 2021

Update: Jeff Riddle is no longer a student at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

The school launched an immediate investigation and issued the following statement:

"We explicitly condemn antisemitism or bigotry in any form or forum.

(Continued in thread) https://t.co/ukPOkzo1Vk

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) October 16, 2021

Controversy has erupted over the admission by journalist Katie Couric that she doctored her 2016 interview with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in order to “protect” Ginsburg from criticism of her opposition to athletes kneeling during the national anthem.

Couric joins a growing list of authors who have altered the unflattering words of individuals whom they admire, in order to shield them from embarrassment. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman have been among the prime beneficiaries of such unilateral revising of history.

One instance involving Roosevelt concerns remarks he made in a private meeting on January 22, 1938, with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, the foremost American Jewish leader of that era. The only source for what they discussed is a memorandum that Wise dictated shortly afterwards, for his private records.

According to historians Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, in their 2013 book, FDR and the Jews, the topic of the conversation was Palestine. Roosevelt believed the country was incapable of absorbing many more Jewish immigrants, so he urged Wise to look for “some large areas [elsewhere in the world] as a second choice for the Jews.” Wise disagreed and “parried” with FDR about Palestine, Breitman and Lichtman wrote, citing Wise’s memorandum.

But Breitman and Lichtman omitted another part of the conversation, in which the president blamed Poland’s Jews for the rising antisemitism in that country.

According to the full text of the Wise memo, FDR claimed that “the Jewish grain dealer and the Jewish shoe dealer and the Jewish shopkeeper” had been undercutting Polish Christian merchants, and it was this alleged Jewish financial subterfuge that was provoking Christian shopkeepers to demand that “the Jew should go.”

After over a decade of delay caused by money problems, competing narrative visions and the COVID-19 pandemic, the $484 million Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles has finally opened to the public. The Academy heralds its new museum as the most important institution devoted to filmmaking in the world, and one visit bears this out: it is a must see for any cinema lover.

The capacious edifice is tricked out with meaningful exhibits, the latest digital and sound technology and two well-appointed theaters—the 1,000-seat, spherical David Geffen Theater is a sight to behold.

I hoped the museum would also pay homage to the motion picture pioneers who birthed the industry in the early 1900s and reflect the history of families like mine.

But after touring the museum’s seven stories, I discovered that Hollywood’s pioneers, who busted their tucheses building the industry it celebrates, ended up on the cutting room floor.

“We want to attract many different audiences. We want people to see themselves in our programs and exhibitions featuring highly known objects and films as well as lesser-known filmmakers. We aim to create dialogue,” Doris Berger, the museum’s senior director of curatorial affairs, told the Forward.

So, what does the museum’s inaugural main exhibit “Stories of Cinema,” interspersed throughout the first three floors, include? Museum Director Bill Kramer created an Inclusion Advisory Committee to spotlight the work of diverse filmmakers and explore historical omissions – a worthy goal considering the film industry’s notoriously poor record at elevating women and people of color.

On August 6, Dutch filmmaker of Palestinian descent Sakir Khader announced that his second film on the Arab-Israeli conflict is slated to be released by the end of this year. Initial footage shows Khader, who works for the Netherlands’ VPRO public broadcaster, glorifying violent rioters from the Palestinian village of Beita in the Samaria region of the West Bank.

Khader’s anti-Israel track record gives rise to serious concerns that the journalist will utilize public funds to incite more hatred against the Jewish state. On social media, Khader has for months tried to portray the antisemitic radicals from Beita in a positive light. He repeatedly hailed them as “brave people” and described Hamas terrorists as “martyrs,” while calling Beita “the frontline against injustice.”

Even after the Dutch government strongly condemned the genocidal antisemitism espoused by the Palestinian rioters, including the burning of an effigy of an Orthodox Jew, the VPRO filmmaker on Twitter continued to praise what he called “the revolting town” of Beita.

A vendor at the Biketoberfest in Daytona Beach, Florida, revved up controversy last week by selling hats featuring Nazi symbols and imagery, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported.

Identified only as Jenny, the vendor told the local news outlet that the merchandise was not reflective of racism on her part, saying the swastika-logoed hats were a tribute to veterans of World War II and that selling them at other biker rallies never sparked any complaints. Furthermore, not all of her merchandise contains Nazi imagery.

The Biketoberfest is a massive annual biker rally in the city that sees participants numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The items sold caused backlash from local Floridians, including Marvin Miller, president of the Jewish Federation of Volusia and Flagler counties.

“It’s just a shame in this day and age,” Miller explained to the News-Journal. “It never stops. We just have to deal with it and just remember that we’re still America. Unfortunately, people abuse some of the wonderful rights we have and take it to extremes to spread propaganda.”

Others also criticized the items sold, such as SS armbands and other Nazi insignia.

“It’s absolutely disgusting to see a vendor selling Nazi and SS gear, but it’s even worse that the only reason they would do so is because people are actually buying it,” said visitor Jonathan Davis, who took photos of the items and shared them over Facebook, sparking the outrage, according to the News-Journal.

Medical device company Medtronic is in advanced negotiations to purchase Israeli startup Triple Jump for $300 million, Calcalist has learned. This acquisition comes on the back of an investment made by Medtronic in the Israeli company in 2020 that also included an option to buy Triple Jump.

According to the Israeli Corporations Authority, the investment was made via Covidien, which Medtronic purchased in 2015. Triple Jump is developing a unique small insulin pump patch that is placed on the patient’s body. The patch has mobile connectivity capabilities and will be included in a future artificial pancreas system.

Triple Jump, which is based in the northern town of Yokneam, was founded in 2015 by CTO Guy Shinar and Ofer Yodfat. Shinar was the CEO of X Technologies that was sold to Guidant for $200 million in 2003. Yodfat was also one of the founders of Medingo, which developed an insulin pump and patch and was sold in 2010 to pharma giant Roche for around $170 million. In 2012, Roche shut down Medingo’s operations in Israel and fired all 150 employees. The CEO of Triple Jump is Assaf Guy, a former executive at Medtronic.

Among Triple Jump’s additional investors are Elixir Medical Corporation, Hong Kong investment fund Wealth Strategy Holding, and veteran entrepreneur Dov Moran.

Medtronic acquired Israeli AI-powered nutrition platform Nutrino for $100 million two years ago. Medtronic’s largest acquisition in Israel to date was the $1.6 billion it paid for Mazor Robotics in 2018.

A team of Israeli researchers was able to identify a Crusader encampment through archaeological evidence in the area of the Tzipori Springs in the Galilee, a new study recently published in the book Settlement and Crusade in the Thirteenth Century by Routledge showed. The research marked the first time ever that a Crusader encampment was found in the field.

Pursuing the idea of liberating the holy sites from Muslim rule and encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, European powers and sometimes peoples initiated several military campaigns in the Middle East between the 11th and 13th centuries, which led to the establishment of a number of Christian states in the area of modern Israel, Lebanon and Syria, and for a certain period managed to place Jerusalem under Christian rule following massacres against Jews both in Europe and in the Middle East.

The period is documented by a vast corpus of historical sources as well as massive structures such as castles and fortresses left by the Crusaders in the region. However, very little remains to testify moments of transitions, such as battles and encampments.

In recent years, a salvage excavation conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority during the works to expand Route 79 – connecting the coast with the city of Nazareth - offered an unprecedented opportunity.

Israeli law demands that all construction projects are accompanied by a salvage excavation. The one along Route 79 was conducted by IAA archaeologists Nimrod Getzov and Ianir Milevski from the Prehistory Department.

Violins taken during the Holocaust will be used at the Grandin Theatre in Roanoke, Virginia, in a special show presented by the Roanoke Jewish Federation.

Titled "And Their Music Lives on," the 75-minute show will include works by composers such as Viktor Ullmann, who wrote music while in a concentration camp and who later died in Auschwitz during the Holocaust, The Roanoke Times reported.

The show will be opened with remarks by Virginia Holocaust Museum chief historian Charlie Sydnor and an appearance will be made by Holocaust survivor Arye Ephrath.

But putting everything together is the Violins of Hope project.

The initiative was set up years ago by Israeli master violin maker and player Amnon Weinstein, who worked to meticulously restore violins to memorialize Jews who died in the Holocaust. Working with his son Avshalom, Weinstein has gathered a large collection of restored violins and organized concerts for them to be played by renowned musicians.

One of the most momentous performances was in 2014, on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The German government arranged for Weinstein to fly to Berlin with violins from his collection, which were played by Hitler’s former orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker. The audience included German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who was then the minister for foreign affairs. It was an act of defiance and restitution, and a powerful way of showing how the spirits of those who were killed still live on.

What does #Zionism mean to me? Two words: 'Hope' and 'Empowerment'. ??????

Watch my video exchange here with @JNFRobinson of @JNFUSA, who are in their own right such inspiring embodiment of modern-day Zionism. pic.twitter.com/J3QvM8fHug

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 17, 2021

---

---

Nearly 90% of films in Netflix's recently launched "Palestinian Stories" collection of films are directed by supporters of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, according to findings from right-wing watchdog group Im Tirzu.

On Friday, Israel Hayom reported the online streaming service had announced the launch of the collection of 32 films, which it said would be expanded in the future. Sixteen of the 19 directors whose films are currently available for streaming in the Palestinian category are BDS supporters, while 12 had called for a boycott of the Jewish state when they signed a letter blasting Israel as recently as May.

In the letter titled "A Letter Against Apartheid," the directors alleged "Palestinians are being attacked and killed with impunity by Israeli soldiers and armed Israeli civilians who have been roaming the streets of Jerusalem, Lydda, Haifa, Jaffa, and other cities chanting, 'Death to Arabs.'" The letter further accused Israel's government of carrying out a "massacre" in the Gaza Strip and fomenting "murder, intimidation, and violent dispossession."

"We call for an end to the support provided by global powers to Israel and its military … Israeli apartheid is sustained by international complicity, it is our collective responsibility to redress this harm," the letter's signatories said.

The films offer a one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and include scenes depicting interrogation by Israeli security officials and life in a refugee camp.

Critics of the new Netflix collection argue that the films portray a biased depiction of the conflict while glorifying terrorism and omitting the thousands of terror attacks perpetrated against Israeli civilians.

"It is unforgivable that Netflix has become an outlet for the spread of material written by propagandists who seek to boycott Israel and remove it from the map. This at a time of rising global antisemitism, much of it disguised as anti-Israel activity," investigative journalist David Collier said.

When Linda Sarsour recently tweeted about Palestinian films and documentaries arriving on Netflix, her choice of words was telling: “Educate yourself,” she told her followers. “Learn about the Palestinian experience.”

Not a word about Palestinian culture, cuisine, architecture, music or family drama. Sarsour summarised the function of Palestinian cinema as showing viewers about “the Palestinian experience,” a codeword for the story of what Sarsour and others term “life under occupation.”

In truth, the burgeoning Palestinian cinema scene has been developing for some years now, and is a key tool in Palestinian ‘soft power’ through which to influence the hearts and minds of people around the world. The relentless drab scenery and stories of alleged injustice meted out by an uncaring, unforgiving Israeli military machine are staples of Palestinian films and serve to influence the way people perceive the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians specifically, as well as the Arab-Israeli conflict in general.

Compare this to Israeli television. Many of the films and television series made in Israel have very little to do with the Palestinians or indeed the Arab world at all. Shtisel, aired by Netflix and subject of positive reviews around the world, focuses on an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family in Jerusalem and barely mentions any non-Jewish characters.

While Israeli films and television series often do relate to the conflicts Israel deals with, their scope is far more extensive than the simple victimhood narrative that is the hallmark of Palestinian film. Instead, Israeli television wrestles with the ethical dilemmas facing Israeli soldiers and the Israeli public, and attempts to humanize the people on both sides, most notably in Our Boys (2019), based on the kidnapping and murders of young Israeli teenagers in the summer of 2014 that led to a serious escalation between Israel and Hamas.

To a lesser extent, this is also true of Netflix’s global hit show Fauda, which shows numerous Palestinian characters at home engaged in day-to-day life, as well as a romance between a Palestinian woman and an Israeli man. In some cases, Israeli television and film productions are highly critical of the Israeli government and military, and sympathetic to the Palestinians.

For example, the recent Israeli film Let There Be Morning (2021), featuring a Palestinian cast, depicts a Palestinian accountant whose path home is blocked by an Israeli checkpoint.

Overwhelmingly, Palestinian film and television, however, simply do not display anywhere near such compassion for the people on the ‘other side’ of the conflict.

Taken in comparison with the type of jingoistic fare often seen on Palestinian television, which depicts Palestinians as crushing scared Jews, and often features military parades and Islamic preaching, a stark contradistinction emerges. These themes are entirely absent from the films made for Western consumption.

Anonymous Amazon and Google workers’ supposedly wrote a letter to the Guardian claiming 300 Amazon workers and 90 from Google had signed a letter calling on Amazon and Google to drop the cloud contract, which is known as Nimbus.

UKLFI has now written to Amazon and Google with information that undermines the claim that this campaign that was started by workers at Amazon and Google.

The time line indicates that the campaign was co-ordinated by anti-Israel NGOs.

On 12 October at 11.45 BST NBC News published an op-ed by two Amazon and Google workers, which attacked the Nimbus contract. One of the co-authors was Bathool Syed, a content strategist at Amazon, whose Instagram page links directly to a website called notechforapartheid.com.

A letter in the Guardian was published on Tuesday 12 October at 17.15 BST, by “anonymous Google and Amazon workers”, which stated that “So far, more than 90 workers at Google and more than 300 at Amazon have signed this letter internally “. Since the signatories were anonymous there was of course no proof of who or how many people actually signed the letter.

The “No Tech for Apartheid” website was launched on 13 October at https://www.notechforapartheid.com/, and it appeared to be in response to the Guardian article. The website urges people to add their names to an automatically generated email to these Amazon and Google executives, demanding that they should pull out of the Nimbus contract.

The Wayback Machine web archive shows that the activity on the website began on Wednesday 13 October 2021 at 14.43 BST. (screenshot at A4). The “No Tech for Apartheid” website is professionally designed and contains a great deal of content, including long articles from five different Palestinians describing “life under apartheid”. On 13 October it contained endorsements from 40 anti-Israel organisations.

Two major pro-Israel advocacy groups have sent a letter to Unilever, the parent company of the ice cream giant Ben & Jerry’s, arguing that, contrary to its claims otherwise, Unilever could overturn the latter’s decision to boycott the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.

Ben & Jerry’s stated in July that it will not sell its products in what it called the “the Occupied Palestinian Territory” because it was “inconsistent with our [company] values.” The ensuing backlash has seen a number of US states seek to divest from the company and its multinational parent company Unilever, on the basis of anti-BDS legislation.

In July, Unilever released a statement saying that “as part of the acquisition agreement, we have always recognized the right of the brand and its independent Board to take decisions about its social mission.”

In a letter dated Oct. 15, 2021 addressed to Unilever CEO Alan Jope and the company’s Board of Directors, StandWithUs and the Israeli-American Coalition for Action argued that the “right” referred to by Unilever is not absolute, and the company has the power to overturn Ben & Jerry’s decision.

Unilever’s contract with Ben and Jerry’s, the letter stated, “gives Unilever the power to make ‘financial and operational’ decisions for Ben & Jerry’s; the Board can make ‘social’ decisions only insofar as they are ‘commercially reasonable.’”

“Boycotting an entire country is, in fact, commercially unreasonable,” asserted the letter, “especially when it triggers counter-boycotts by states and consumer groups and divestment of state pension funds” — referring to legal and financial actions taken by various entities in reaction to boycotts of Israel in general and Ben & Jerry’s in particular.

“Ben and Jerry’s must explain — to you and to the investing public — how its social mission requires such a boycott when it signed a contract showing that doing business in Israel was consistent with its social mission,” the letter said. “Clearly, it is Ben and Jerry’s that is in breach, and it is within Unilever’s rights to reverse the Board.”

Compounding such hard feelings is the behavior of many Palestinians and their leaders, who not only expect Iraqi and Syrian solidarity without reciprocation but have even befriended Iraqi and Syrian tyrants.

The late Yasser Arafat stood next to Hussein as both men paraded the Iraqi army that had decimated a fellow Arab country, Kuwait. In 2014, Incumbent Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas sent Syrian president Bashar al-Assad a congratulatory note on Assad’s “reelection for a third term.” Earlier this year, Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, sent a delegation that praised Assad for his support of “the cause.”

Murals of Hussein decorate Palestinian streets, and when Palestinians worldwide protest any war in Gaza, many of them join rallies wearing shirts with pictures of Hussein.

To top it all, Palestinians expect Iraqis to boycott Israel even as Palestinians in the territories benefit from the stability of the Israeli currency and buy electricity and water from efficient Israeli facilities. Thousands of Palestinians earn a living by working in or trading with Israel, one of the region’s biggest economies.

Iraqis, however, are not supposed to seek the economic opportunity offered by the normalization of relations with Israel. Iraqis are supposed to boycott Israel, support Palestinians, and call on the world to focus on the “Palestinian cause,” all while ignoring their own interests until those of the Palestinians are served.

This is why, in private, Iraqis call for peace with Israel. In public, they are forced to say the opposite. Even Iraqis living abroad fear Palestinian social shaming should they support peace and normalization with the Jewish state.

Most people support peace, but only a few of them are willing to suffer for its sake. Had America been consistent in supporting freedom of expression and democracy in Iraq, then many of the peace supporters would have shown their faces. But in the absence of freedom, people should not expect much.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy. He Tweets @hahussain.

What is required in the region is a new infrastructure of relations. After the Second World War, the US wanted to withdraw its troops, but the Soviet Union kept its armored forces ready in Germany and Czechoslovakia. The Western powers created NATO, bringing together former enemies, in order to address the new threat to them all. Today our collective challenge is Iran and its proxies, which seek to re-establish Persian power in the framework of a renewed Safavid Empire.

That would bring the Iranian armed forces into most of Afghanistan, as well as Iraq, and large parts of Syria. Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been in Lebanon since 1982 and stand to take over that country today as its economy collapses. Tehran is claiming much of the Arab Gulf, as its sovereign territory, beyond the obvious case of Bahrain.

Iran is also active across Africa. It uses Hizbullah to train Arabic-speaking militias. It employed its embassy in Algiers to reach out to the Polisario in the Western Sahara, and arm them to fight Morocco. Iran has a clearly expansionist agenda. The West’s attitude to Iran is unclear. The last time it made a nuclear deal with Tehran in 2015 (the JCPOA), it removed sanctions’ leading to massive funds flowing to the Iranian treasury and then to its militia forces around the Middle East. This must not happen a second time.

The way forward is for like-minded Saudis and Israelis to draw together. Governments will follow. We need to create consensus for the security of our nations. There are great risks on the horizon but there are great opportunities as well if we can cooperate. The time for action is now. It cannot be delayed while we wait for political developments that might take years to reach fruition. Even private citizens can bring about the needed changes if they can reach out to visionary leaders on both sides.

This is not about geo-politics alone. Historically, Jews and Muslims have been cousins who surmounted their differences and reached a common language that brought us together. In the Middle Ages, Jewish religious scholars like Maimonןdes and Yehuda Halevi wrote in Judeo-Arabic–which was written in Arabic with Hebrew letters

Our religions are rooted in common concepts, especially the One-ness of G-d, which is called Tawhid in Arabic. Our concept has been enshrined in the Biblical verse: “Hear O Israel the Lord our G-d, the Lord is One.” We have both protected our peoples from the Byzantines, the Crusaders, and others who sought to obliterate both our civilisations. We overcame what separated us and we survived.

While we have security challenges that bring us together today, we should leave future generations with a new basis of cooperation and hope that keeps our peoples as one in an alliance of civilisations. Our region gave birth to our religions and to the nations that today live with us. We must embrace that history again and in doing so set the stage for a very different Middle East.

While the Palestinians and their supporters often claim that Palestinian terrorists are legitimate combatants who, upon arrest, are entitled to the status of POWs in accordance with GCIII, this claim has no basis whatsoever.

The POW status is defined in GCIII. The examination above of GCIII and its provisions demonstrates why even the former PA Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs Ashraf Al-Ajrami admits that Palestinian terrorists are not POWs. Asked to clarify how many of the imprisoned Palestinian terrorists are legally and lawfully entitled to enjoy POW status, Al-Ajrami was forced to concede that of a potential of 12,000 prisoners, less than 5 would legitimately have been entitled to be seen as POWs.

The reasons for this are numerous.

First and foremost, since GCIII only applies to “international armed conflicts” and since no such conflict exists between Israel and the Palestinians, there is no general basis to invoke the application of GCIII.

Additionally, examination of the provisions set in GCIII to warrant the POW status shows that the Palestinian terrorist groups do not meet the required conditions. The terrorists do not belong to hierarchical bodies in which commanders are responsible for the actions of their subordinates or in which there are disciplinary

YONATAN BEN ARTZI said that the anniversary of his grandfather’s death leaves no Israeli untouched, but for members of his family, it’s a daily loss. They remember Rabin’s valiant efforts to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians while defending Israel’s democracy.

Harking back to the hatred and incitement which caused deep rifts in Israeli society on the eve of Rabin’s murder, Ben Artzi said that in recent years, hatred, incitement and violence had prevailed, but 2021 had been a turning point.

“After years of fear and paralysis, the citizens of Israel straightened their backs and stood upright; liberty and democracy triumphed and overpowered the verbal and physical violence and the culture of tyranny and lies,” Ben Artzi said. “The rule of the people defeated the one-person rule. Gone was the notion of a single privileged individual.” The inference to Netanyahu was loud and clear. It was time for the nation to overcome its trauma and to begin to heal, he said.

Netanyahu’s reported reaction was that he has always been used as a political foil at Rabin memorial events. If he showed up he was attacked, and if he didn’t show up, he was also attacked.

The Israel Air Force (IAF) and German Luftwaffe flew over the Knesset in Jerusalem on Sunday, as the international Blue Flag exercise launched with the participation of seven countries.

Blue Flag, which will take place until October 28, will include air force soldiers from the US, Germany, Italy, the UK, France, India and Greece. This is the largest and most advanced aerial exercise ever hosted in Israel.

This is the first time that British fighter jets will take part in an exercise in Israel since the British Mandate, the first time that an Indian "Mirage" fighter squadron will ever be deployed in Israel and the first deployment of a French "Rafale" fighter squadron in Israel.

The exercise is meant to strengthen strategic international cooperation through shared learning about the integration of fourth- and fifth-generation aircraft in complex operational scenarios. The participating forces will drill air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, advanced surface-to-air missile (SAM) threats and a number of operational scenarios in enemy territory.

The flyover of Jerusalem, titled "The Wings of History," was led by IAF Commander Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin in a "Baz" F-15 fighter jet, alongside an "Adir" F-35. Luftwaffe (German Air Force) Inspector Lt.-Gen. Ingo Gerhartz flew alongside the Israeli aircraft in the "Eagle Star" Eurofighter, which was painted with the Israeli and German flags.

The president thanked Linde for hosting the Malmö Forum, stressing the need for international unity in fighting antisemitism. Herzog “emphasized the importance of the indisputable fact of Israel’s unique status in the family of nations as the state of the Jewish People, which maintains equality between all its citizens and is a liberal democracy,” his spokesman said.

The president also highlighted the Abraham Accords and encouraged Sweden to actively support efforts for peace and normalization with more states in the region.

The 2014 diplomatic dispute between Israel and Sweden was exacerbated when Sweden’s foreign minister at the time Margot Wallström accused Israel of “extrajudicial killings” of Palestinians. Lapid, then leader of an opposition party, accused Wallström of antisemitism, at a pro-Israel rally in Stockholm in 2016.

Israel recalled its ambassador from Stockholm for a month, and there was no contact between the countries on the ministerial level until this year.

But in the past two years, Sweden has made an effort to improve relations, including speaking in favor of convening the EU-Israel Association Council and supporting Israeli candidacy to UN bodies.

Those efforts culminated with Lapid and Linde meeting at the sidelines of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council in July, where Linde expressed her willingness to improve relations between the countries.

Following the first official conversation between Israeli and Swedish foreign ministers in seven years in September, Sweden announced that it would boycott the anti-Israel Durban IV Conference at the UN.

Ties between Israel and Sweden also fit with Lapid’s stated goal of strengthening Israel’s ties to liberal, democratic countries.

In a brief statement, the Powell family said he had died on Monday morning from COVID-19, had been fully vaccinated against the disease, and it thanked the medical staff at Walter Reed National Medical Center near Washington.

It did not address such matters as what vaccine he received or whether he had gotten a booster shot, when he fell ill, when he may have been hospitalized and whether he may have had underlying health conditions that contributed to his illness.

Condolences poured in, including from former President George W. Bush.

"Many presidents relied on General Powell's counsel and experience," Bush wrote in a statement. "He was such a favorite of presidents that he earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom - twice."

Israeli officials on Monday also offered their condolences to Powell's family and to the American people.

"I send my deepest condolences to the family of Colin Powel (sic) and to the American people," former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted. "Colin Powel served his country with great dedication and we will always remember his friendship to the State of Israel."

Israeli Ambassador to the US and the UN Gilad Erdan said Powell was a "friend & strong supporter of the State of Israel" and described him as "a true military & foreign policy leader and statesman."

Top of the list of concerns for security services is the fact that Ali Harbi Ali’s conduct was once troubling enough for him to have been referred as a teenager to the Prevent deradicalisation scheme, yet subsequently deemed harmless enough never to have made it on to MI5’s list of subjects of interest.

The Prevent scheme is voluntary and there are plenty referred to it who turn out to be no threat. The long gap between Ali’s referral and Friday’s attack — with no apparently signs of extremism in between — means that even if a different assessment had made in his teenage years, it’s unlikely he would still have been on MI5’s radar now, given the number of others posing a more visible threat.

That makes his activities online potentially the most relevant factor behind what happened. Reports already suggest that his teenage views were influenced by hate speech on YouTube, including inflammatory content posted by the convicted IS sympathiser Anjem Choudary, and police will be trawling the suspect’s accounts to see whether fears of radicalisation during lockdown, which both MI5 and senior counter terrorism officers warned about previously, were borne out in this case. Analysis of phones and computers will also make clear whether social media companies might have been able to spot extremist activity that they could have done more to flag or block.

The article later notes that while Sir David was a member of a group that backs the Jewish state, he was “not known for taking a hardline pro-Israeli stance.”

There are three troubling elements to this article.

First, from the description that Choudary was speaking from his home and the fact that, as yet, no other publication has printed his comments, we can only assume the MoS sent a journalist to doorstep or at the very least to call this publicly-reviled figure to ask his views on the brutal murder of an MP less than 48 hours after the tragedy occurred.

It is a mystery why a news outlet would give a platform to the ramblings of a man who inspired terrorists, including the killers of British soldier Lee Rigby in 2013, and who was once described as “the gateway to terror.”

Second, given the title of the article it appears the MoS contacted Choudary specifically with a view to manufacturing a “fury” — and, as a corollary, drive traffic to its site — even as Britain and the world at large were still reeling in shock from the murder.

In this respect, the MoS was the cause of the effect it subsequently reported on.

If so, to say that artificially creating an upheaval in order to sell some advertising on the heels of such a gruesome event is unethical would be an understatement.

.@thedemocrats Would you explain why one of your staffers (@MadisonKingPA) "liked" this utterly disgraceful tweet about the brutal murder of a British politician (which is also antisemitic)?
1/ pic.twitter.com/FMWr5A5bNy

— GnasherJew®????? (@GnasherJew) October 18, 2021

Border Police officers arrested a Palestinian woman armed with a knife as she approached an Israeli settlement outside Jerusalem on Monday, police said.

The suspect, whom Palestinian media identified as Samah Bakrawi, 37, from the village of Bayt Surik, was spotted by Israeli soldiers monitoring security cameras as she walked up to a locked gate into the Har Adar settlement.

Border Police officers were quickly sent to the scene and called for the woman to halt, according to police.

“The officers made the arrest without the use of gunfire as the suspect threw away the knife from her hand,” police said.

She was taken into custody for further questioning, according to a police statement.

Israeli security forces have in the past noted a phenomenon of Palestinians attempting so-called “suicide by cop” by acting in a suspicious or threatening manner with the hope that they will be shot dead by Israeli troops.

In his September 24, 2021 speech at the UN General Assembly, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud 'Abbas presented Israel with an ultimatum, giving it one year to withdraw to the 1967 borders and settle the final status issues with the Palestinians. He threatened that, if this fails to happen, the PA will revoke its recognition of Israel, and the Palestinian people will have a range of options, including "returning to a solution based on the partition plan of resolution 181 (II), adopted in 1947, which gives the State of Palestine 44% of the land"; demanding "equal and full political rights for all on the land of historical Palestine, within one state," and asking the international court to rule "on the issue of the legality of the occupation of the land of the Palestinian state.”[1]

Despite its harsh tone, the speech sparked intense criticism from journalists, politicians and former officials in the PA and the PLO, who stated that 'Abbas' ultimatum was meaningless, because similar threats had been made in the past but never truly implemented – and therefore that the statements would not be taken seriously by either Israel or the world.[2] They also argued that waiting a year for Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders constituted a passive position aimed at perpetuating the stagnation in the Palestinian arena, rather than a plan aimed at creating real change. One of the writers complained that 'Abbas had raised the one-state solution at this international forum without first bringing it to the Palestinian institutions, chiefly the PLO, for an in-depth discussion. This is wrong, he said, not only because it disregards the official Palestinian institutions, but because it accepts in advance that the cause of an independent Palestinian state is already lost.

The writers also criticized 'Abbas's conduct in the internal Palestinian arena, noting his postponement of the Palestinian elections and accusing him of cementing his autocratic rule, usurping the will of the people and suppressing freedom of expression. They urged him to stop clinging to his seat and hold elections for the Palestinian institutions, giving the Palestinians a chance to elect a new leadership that will correctly read the political map, formulate a vision, promote the Palestinians' national interests and improve their situation. It should be mentioned that these statements reflect the public criticism against the PA, and especially against 'Abbas, that has been growing in the recent months due to the repeated postponement of the elections and the repression of free speech, as seen, for example, in the context of the Nizar Banat murder.[3]

The following are translated excerpts from these articles:
Palestinian Journalist To 'Abbas: Instead Of Making Bombastic Speeches, Note The Situation On The Ground And Step Down

Ibrahim Du'aibas, a columnist for the Al-Quds daily, published in East Jerusalem, ridiculed 'Abbas's ultimatum and said that verbal threats against Israel will not be effective. He urged 'Abbas to leave office gracefully and let the Palestinian people elect a new leadership. He wrote: "President Abu Mazen addressed the General Assembly by video from his office in Ramallah, in a speech full of demands and reservations, saying that things have come to a head and that Israel has one year to withdraw from the territories it occupied in 1967. These are fanciful statements that evoke many questions, mainly, what if Israel fails to withdraw? What will we do then?

"In the past, Arafat threatened [to use] 'the rifle of the revolutionary,' yet he has passed from the world, and the [Palestinian] revolutionary has not used that rifle for decades. [My] question for President ['Abbas] is the following: What will you do if Israel does not withdraw in a year?... The role of the UN has ended, and so has the role of fiery speeches. People have long been considering only the reality they see on the ground. What we see is very painful, and there is no attempt to change this reality.

Here's the bottom line: int'l community says Jew owns a house but Palestinian demands to live there rent free, that's his right (Sheik Jarrah). But if Palestinian owns a house and wants to sell to Jew, putting him in jail is OK.

— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) October 17, 2021

At Ramallah Hizb ut-Tahrir Rally: The Thrones of the Arab Regimes Should Be Turned into Shattered Rubble Beneath Our Feet; The Nation Wants an Islamic Caliphate #Palestinianspic.twitter.com/9Ur9MQqwFp

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 18, 2021

Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip sentenced two men to death on allegations that they had collaborated with Israel, according to Sunday reports.

A Hamas court ordered that the two men, from Khan Younis and Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, be hanged.

Reports did not say when the sentence will be carried out.

Two other men were sentenced to hard labor, also for collaborating with Israel.

The sentences came as a Palestinian Authority court in the West Bank city of Bethlehem sentenced a man to 15 years in prison for attempting to sell land to Jewish Israelis.

Under Palestinian Authority law, selling land to Jews can be a capital offense.

Iraqi Hizbullah Brigades-Affiliated Telegram Channel Publishes Video of Fighters Shooting at Targets with Israeli, UAE Flags Painted on Them: Our Weapons Will Not Be Surrendered by Anyone but the Mahdi #Iraq@Iran#UAE#Israel#AbrahamAccordspic.twitter.com/OXy0XUId8f

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 18, 2021

Iran’s new president will snub Cop26 talks after we revealed calls for him to be arrested on arrival in Scotland.

Despot Ebrahim Raisi — dubbed the Butcher of Tehran — had considered making the UN climate change summit his first appearance on the global stage.

But Iranian state media has reported he will not attend.

Campaigners have said the tyrannical president should never be allowed on European soil amid accusations he tortured and executed 30,000 political opponents including pregnant women and children during the 80s.

Hossein Abedini, deputy director of the National Council of Resistance of Iran UK, said his organisation understood Raisi would not attend.

He said: “Raisi should be held accountable for crimes against humanity and genocide.” (h/t MtTB)

Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was forced to leave the United Arab Emirates after he arrived in the country to visit the Expo 2020 in Dubai, due to the recommendation of Emirati officials, according to Iranian Fars News. He reportedly returned to Iran on Sunday night.

Ahmadinejad served as the sixth president of Iran from 2005 to 2013. In May, it was reported that he wants to run for the presidency again. The Expo 2020, an event to display the achievements of all participating countries to the world, had been postponed to October 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was originally supposed to start last year.

The European Parliament voted last month to boycott the UAE Expo due to the country's human rights record, and also called on other member states to not participate in the event.

Ahmadinejad is known to be controversial due to his statements denying the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad attempted to justify his claims by saying that the Holocaust is "a pretext for Israeli oppression of Palestinians."

A fugitive businessman accused of acting as a money launderer for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s regime said Sunday he would not collaborate with the United States, a day after he was extradited to the country from Cape Verde.

Past media reports have said some of the laundered cash ended up with the Hezbollah terror group, Iran’s proxy terrorist militia in Lebanon.

Maduro said Sunday evening in a televised address that Alex Saab’s extradition on Saturday was “one of the most ignoble and vulgar injustices that has been committed in recent decades.”

Authorities had held a rally in Saab’s support earlier Sunday in Caracas, during which his wife, Camilla Fabri, read aloud a letter from him.

“I will face my trial with total dignity,” Saab said in the letter. “I want to be clear: I do not have to collaborate with the United States. I have committed no crime.

“I declare that I am in full possession of my means and I am not suicidal, in case I am murdered and then (they) say that I committed suicide.”

Saab, a Colombian national, and his business partner Alvaro Pulido are charged in the United States with running a network that exploited food aid destined for Venezuela, an oil-rich nation mired in an acute economic crisis.

They are alleged to have moved $350 million out of Venezuela into accounts they controlled in the United States and other countries. They risk up to 20 years in prison.

The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said on Monday he hoped EU and Iranian diplomats would meet soon to discuss a potential return to nuclear talks but declined to confirm reports of a meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

A senior EU official said last week Iran was not ready yet to return to actual talks with world powers over its nuclear program and related US sanctions but could discuss with the EU in Brussels texts that would later be put forward.

Iran’s Fars news agency said discussions could take place on Thursday, citing a lawmaker on Sunday after a meeting with Iran’s foreign minister. Borrell, speaking as he arrived for an EU foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday, said he was becoming more optimistic.

“No confirmation yet, but things are getting better and I am hopeful we will have preparatory meetings in Brussels in the days to come,” Borrell said in Luxembourg as he arrived for an EU foreign ministers meeting. “You never know, I am more optimistic today than yesterday.”

Western diplomats have said they are concerned Tehran’s new negotiating team — under a president known as an anti-Western hardliner rather than a pragmatist like his predecessor — may make demands beyond the scope of what had already been agreed.

Iran has long denied any ambition to acquire nuclear weapons.

EU political director Enrique Mora, the chief coordinator for the talks, was in Tehran on Thursday to meet Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, four months after talks broke off between Iran and world powers as Ebrahim Raisi was elected Iranian president.

Trust @Guardian's Simon Tisdall to defy the facts and cast Iran as a victim of the West, rather and speak of Israel's "visceral... enmity" of Iran, as if Iran has not funded Hezbollah, Iran, Islamic Jihad, developed ballistic missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and Jerusalem... pic.twitter.com/84Y6DjyXev

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 18, 2021

Danish Islamic Scholar Mundhir Abdallah Scolds the Taliban for Compromising on the Goal of Global Islamic Caliphate: You Cannot Recognize Countries Like China and Qatar; Your Goal Should Be to Liberate Humanity from the Filth of Liberalism, Injustice of Capitalism #Denmarkpic.twitter.com/ZxwoJiPkYU

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 18, 2021

---

---

In October, former President George W. Bush, Biden's DHS Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, ADL boss Jonathan Greenblatt, and other notables will descend on the massive Lawrence Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh. The occasion isn’t a party convention, but the inaugural Eradicate Hate global summit inspired by the Tree of Life massacre in the area.

During the Tree of Life massacre, a white supremacist gunman opened fire on worshipers at the suburban synagogue in Squirrel Hill and killed 11 people. The shooter had told police, “All these Jews need to die”. The Eradicate Hate summit will commemorate that occasion by inviting a hater, Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), to speak.

Salam Al-Marayati has defended Hamas and Hezbollah. MPAC had called for removing them from the list of terrorist organizations. He responded to 9/11 by suggesting that Israel was behind the attacks. Just last year he came out with an op-ed accusing Jews of having “weaponized antisemitism to marginalize critics of Israel, especially American Muslims.”

In the 90s, Jewish groups protested the decision by Democrats to appoint him to a counterterrorism commission after his organization argued that the murder of Jews had been adopted by terrorists as one of the "violent reactions to express their despair and suffering".

The Tree of Life gunman would have said the same thing.

Salam Al-Marayati is one of the summit’s “global advisers” and will be appearing on three different panels, including one on deradicalization. Even if MPAC is better at radicalization.

Flora Yehiel, a 24-year-old Jewish woman, was waiting at a Jerusalem bus stop when a Muslim terrorist rammed his car into the crowd killing her and wounding 23 others. After crashing the car, the terrorist shouted “Allahu Akbar”, got out and kept coming. A survivor at the scene shot him, but he still kept coming, until he finally died. Hamas claimed credit for the attack.

2. Who has presented himself since 2013 as to the right of Likud, this is the reason. Naftali Bennett (and Gideon Sa'ar) are right wing fig leaves for the most radical government Israel has ever seen. Shai's reported participation in a conference hosted by Beinart is.../3

— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) October 18, 2021

A prominent left-wing activist was criticized by a top American Jewish organization on Sunday for claiming on social media that the Holocaust is only considered important because its victims were Europeans.

Shaun King, an outspoken supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Black Lives Matter movement, posted on Instagram, “The only reason why people celebrate ‘Christopher Columbus Day’ and never ‘Adolf Hitler Day’ is because Columbus massacred non-europeans [sic].”

In response, the American Jewish Committee tweeted, “Shaun King’s comment is both deeply offensive and blatantly false, fueled by the age-old antisemitic trope of ‘Jewish privilege.’”

“Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis specifically because they were NOT considered white European,” said the AJC.

The group asserted, “King should apologize.”

.@ShaunKing‘s comment is both deeply offensive and blatantly false, fueled by the age-old antisemitic trope of “Jewish privilege.“

Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis specifically because they were NOT considered white European.

King should apologize. pic.twitter.com/Phgc1xZoKh

— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) October 17, 2021

In 2019, King drew criticism for telling a group of Sanders supporters that the senator had always spoken out for unpopular causes, and then saying, “Even today, he speaks out against apartheid-like conditions in Palestine even though it’s not popular.”

An Oct. 16th Economist article, “A prominent academic resigns after benefactors try to exert influence over her curriculum”, included several examples of academics whose careers were allegedly harmed due to the influence of university donors, including the following:
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign rescinded a job offer for a professor after his public criticism of Israel’s behaviour in the 2014 Gaza conflict prompted donors’ threats to withdraw their gifts.

Though they oddly don’t name the professor, it’s clearly a reference to Steven Salaita. However, contrary to the Economist’s claim, Salaita’s job offer wasn’t rescinded after his “criticism of Israel’s behavior”, but because of virulently antisemitic tweets, such as these:

If the author of the article wanted to argue, on academic freedom grounds, that Salaita was treated unfairly, that’s legitimate. But, to frame such racist comments as merely ‘anti-Israel’ is dishonest, and grossly misleads readers.

.@Independent is republishing 'classic' columns by the late Robert Fisk, including this, from 1997, casually evoking an antisemitic trope pic.twitter.com/HJQQWZm4eR

— CAMERA UK (formerly UK Media Watch and BBC Watch) (@CAMERAorgUK) October 17, 2021

@Channel4 cancelled Valley of Tears https://t.co/Si4dPhet5K about the Yom Kippur War they say for “no particular reason”. Surely there’s a reason a well advertised series is cancelled. Write on the link below to ask why. https://t.co/Mm8XP4arT1@AntisemitismEye

— Campaign4Truth (@Campaign4T) October 17, 2021

On October 16th a filmed report titled “Meghan Markle’s donation a ‘lifesaver’ for community kitchen users” was published on the regional ‘Nottingham’ page of the BBC News website’s UK section.

That short report concerns a Nottingham-based charity called ‘Salaam Shalom Kitchen’.

One of the participants states:
“We decided that it was really important for our two [Muslim and Jewish] communities to come together, to do something good for the city of Nottingham, to be visibly working together against perceived barriers. It certainly is a wider held belief that Jews and Muslims don’t get on and we wanted to prove that wasn’t the case.”

While it is obvious why that report appeared on a regional page on the BBC News website, what is less clear is why the site’s editors decided that it should also be published on its ‘Middle East’ page, where it was promoted with the caption “We’re proving Jews and Muslims get along”.

Anyone who has spent time in the one Middle East country with substantial Jewish and Muslim populations (including, one hopes, BBC staff) cannot fail to be aware of the fact that in Israel, Jews and Muslims work together in a wide variety of fields including retail outlets and hospitality, hospitals and other medical services as well as the security forces, government and the judiciary.

If BBC editors believe that the story from Nottingham warrants promotion to Middle East audiences simply because it involves British Muslims and British Jews and therefore should interest people of the same faiths in an unrelated part of the world, or that audiences in the Middle East need a two-and -a quarter minute film from the UK to provide them with an example of how to “get along”, that surely says more about BBC perceptions of the Middle East than anything else.

A progressive lobbying organization that bills itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace,” but has failed to resonate with the overwhelming majority of American Jews and Israel-supporters, disclosed today that while Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram went down for six hours two weeks ago, the organization registered no appreciable change in the traffic, shares, comments, or Likes of its materials on those platforms.

A spokesman for the liberal J Street outfit observed Monday that the major collapse on October 4 of several of the world’s largest social networks appears not to have had an adverse effect on its social media reach and engagement. The spokesman pointed to traffic and engagement statistics from during the outage and the close-to-identical numbers before and after the incident.

“We’re pleased that our outreach matrix is robust enough to maintain our reach even under such challenging circumstances,” stated J Street’s Assistant Director of Communications Bootstrap Stroehmann. “The task before us is to leverage that robust matrix to expand the reach beyond its current level, which unfortunately had shown disappointing growth since President Obama left office.”

With a Texas school district under fire for telling teachers to offer an “opposing view” to books about the Holocaust, a former British opposition leader has stepped in to save the day.

Jeremy Corbyn, who led the UK’s Labour Party from 2015 to 2020, said that he has flown out to Texas and begun work on a series of books with opposing views of those documenting the genocide of European Jews during World War II.

“Believe me, the last thing I wanted to do was spend the next six months to a year writing about how great a guy Hitler was, or how the Jews were really the ones to blame,” Corbyn told The Mideast Beast. “But if the Carroll Independent School District of Southlake, Texas needs me, then I will answer the call.”

Texas administrators were confused by Corbyn’s offer, calling his services unnecessary and saying the initial call for opposing views was based on a misunderstanding.

“We never asked for Jeremy’s help but he just keeps calling us non-stop,” said Gina Peddy, executive director of curriculum and instruction for the district. “Every day he’s leaving me messages asking, ‘How many books do you need? Should they say that the Holocaust was good, or just that it never happened? Do you need an opposing view on Kristallnacht too? He just won’t leave it alone.”

One Irish soldier was killed by Israeli military action between 1980 and 2000, @spencemads.

Yet your column in the @SunTimesIreland makes it seem as if Israel was responsible for the death of 45 Irish peace-keepers in Lebanon.

This is simply untrue. pic.twitter.com/zbwX90amC3

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 18, 2021

Police in New York City have arrested a 39-year-old Brooklyn woman in connection with an attempted arson attack last week on a Jewish school in the Flatbush neighborhood.

The NYPD announced on Sunday that officers had arrested Sharee Jones on a hate crime charge, with additional charges for reckless endangerment and attempted arson.

A woman alleged to be Jones was captured on CCTV setting fire to Yeshiva of Flatbush on Avenue J at approximately 7.30 pm last Thursday. The woman, dressed entirely in black and carrying a red gasoline canister, was seen dousing the entrance to the school with gasoline before she lit a fire.

A security guard who was inside the school discovered the arson attack while it was still in progress, extinguishing the fire by pouring water on the flames before alerting the police. No one was reported injured by the flames.

Police are also investigating whether the alleged arsonist was the same woman spotted just before the fire at the corner of Avenue J and Nostrand Avenue who was photographed while carrying a red gas canister and yelling through a megaphone.

Local residents — who include the largest community of Holocaust survivors outside the state of Israel — were reported to be deeply shaken by the attack.

The annual Drumming for Bubny event at Prague's former Bubny railway station on Saturday marked the 80th anniversary of the departure of the first Jews from Prague during the Holocaust. The event took place for seventh time, and was attended by survivors of WWII events and their families.

Like every year, the aim of the event was to subvert the silence with which many passively watch the suppression of human rights and genocide.

Silence was and is an accomplice of the mass murder than can be repeated, Pavel Štingl, one of the organizers of the event, stated.

Performers on Saturday were led by six drummers from the Tam Tam Batucada band, accompanied by some wind instruments. The crowd of spectators joined in by drumming their own hand-made paper drums. Several hundred people arrived, fewer than the thousand who turned up at the first Drumming for Bubny event in 2015.

The drumming was followed by an invitation to visit an exhibition of photos from the late Pavel Diaz that showcases the pain and memories of Holocaust survivors and recently opened in the House of the Black Madonna in the center of Prague.

Hello Heart, an Israeli digital therapeutics company that focuses exclusively on heart disease, has announced that a new study has shown that its digital health application for blood pressure management can achieve and maintain lower blood pressure over time, even for those most at risk for heart disease. Over 84% of participants with stage II hypertension achieved a reduction in their systolic blood pressure, which was maintained over three years, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Medical Association.

Hello Heart’s connected blood pressure cuff and smartphone app empower users to self-manage their heart health and detect serious issues before they occur. Founded in 2013, Hello Heart incorporates medication adherence reminders and clinically-based, personalized digital coaching to drive lifestyle change. This research is the largest multi-year study of the efficacy of a digital therapeutic in controlling hypertension.

Researchers tracked 28,189 adults with employer-sponsored health insurance who used the Hello Heart technology and program. They found that the more people engaged with the Hello Heart digital therapeutic, the more their blood pressure improved, especially amongst those with stage II, the most severe form of hypertension.

“This is the first peer-reviewed, published study reporting the long-term experience of a digital health application for blood pressure management, with a magnitude of association that is clinically meaningful,” said Alexis Beatty, MD, MAS, a cardiologist and associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and the lead author of the study. “On average, participants used Hello Heart for 25 weeks, a level of engagement I have not seen in other digital hypertension management programs. Sustained engagement and decreases in systolic blood pressure of more than 20 mmHg can reduce a person’s chances of heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, and death.”

The researchers found that for the majority of users, any level of engagement with the Hello Heart program was associated with a reduction in blood pressure. Further, Hello Heart demonstrated the ability to capture hypertensive crises in men and women and timely identify potential events before they become catastrophic. The results were statistically significant even after adjusting for demographic, socioeconomic conditions, and behavioral factors.

Israel and Germany have teamed up on lunar exploration. German space technology group OHB SE has signed a memorandum of understanding with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Israeli startup Helios to include Helios' technology for producing oxygen on the lunar surface in OHB's first three Lunar Surface Access Service (LSAS) missions to the moon.

Helios is an Israeli company founded in 2018 and has the backing of the Israeli Space Agency, the Ministry of Energy and the Israeli Innovation Authority.The company's vision is to enable sustainable human life on Earth and beyond. Among its core developments are reactors to produce oxygen on the lunar surface and reactors to produce iron and silicon on Earth with zero carbon emissions.

"Production of oxygen on the lunar surface is key to enable the expansion of humanity beyond Earth and to dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration. Oxygen is going to be the most sought after consumable in space as it makes up over 60% of the mass of any fully loaded space vehicle designated for lunar missions and beyond," explains Helios CEO Jonathan Geifman. "Helios' lunar mission with OHB serves to mature its oxygen production technology under real lunar environment, and is a significant step to realize the upcoming cislunar industry."

"Returning and establishing a permanent base on the Moon requires international cooperation and the creation of partnerships between space agencies and privately-held companies", says Director-General of the Israeli Space Agency Uri Oron. "The Israeli Space Agency welcomes the cooperation between OHB SE, Helios and Israel Aerospace Industries. This cooperation demonstrates the strong, long-lasting relationship between Germany and Israel, and the contribution this partnership can yield to the space industry."

A partnership created to boost precision medicine research in Israel has chosen 11 multidisciplinary projects that will together get some NIS 32 million ($9.9 million) in funding to promote a variety of studies. These include the use of advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence for treating breast cancer and Crohn’s disease, genomic sequencing and analysis for the discovery of new disease genes, and treatments for rare disorders, and advanced machine learning image analysis to profile different cancers.

The Israel Precision Medicine Partnership (IPMP), launched in 2018, aims to expand personalized precision medicine research by supporting studies that are expected to lead to a deeper understanding of human diseases and advance the implementation of new healthcare approaches. The overall IPMP budget, some NIS 210 million, enables funding of four application cycles. The duration of each project is up to four years.

The 11 approved research projects are part of the third cycle for the initiative.

IPMP is a collaboration between the Israeli government, including the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education and the Digital Israel initiative of the Ministry of Social Equality, the Klarman Family Foundation in the US, and the Yad Hanadiv Foundation in Israel. The IPMP program is administered and operated by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF).

“In IPMP’s third program cycle, we once again witnessed a wealth of outstanding research proposals that reflect the depth of science and the spirit of collaboration among researchers and physicians in Israel, and among universities, hospitals, and health funds,” said Prof. Yuval Dor, head of ISF’s Life Sciences and Medicine Division, in a statement. “The winning proposals come from a variety of universities and medical institutions, address fundamental questions in human health, and are expected to generate important scientific insights and medical applications.”

There is no glass ceiling that Dr. Marian Khatib believes she cannot shatter.

The 40-year-old mother of two, raised in a small Arab village outside Acre, has just been appointed the director of the Breast Surgery Center at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.

She is the first Arab breast surgeon in the country and the only oncoplastic breast surgeon in Israel’s public health system who performs both the resection and the reconstruction for breast cancer patients.

“I am proud that the public medical system in general and Ichilov Hospital, in particular, do not have a glass ceiling,” Khatib said. “I ask every girl, no matter where she grew up and what her background is, to see me and to believe that anything is possible and that the sky’s the limit.”

Sourasky is referred to as Ichilov in Israel.

Khatib was born in the United States to Arab-Israeli parents, who returned to Israel when she was just a baby. At a young age, her parents had her assessed, she was diagnosed as gifted and they decided to invest in her education. They moved to Acre and sent her to school in Haifa, where she could receive enrichment classes.

After she graduated, she began studying medicine at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. By her fourth year, Khatib said she was not convinced that she would even continue studying to be a doctor. But then, in year five, she encountered surgery.

In the last decades, all the new palm tree plantings in Israel are exclusively medjool and the very best ones come from the Arava desert. The same combination of extreme arid heat and a cocktail of brackish water drawn from artesian wells that is responsible for candy-sweet cherry tomatoes and extra juicy bell peppers also yields medjools of unparalleled beauty.

Such is the popularity of medjools today that they have eclipsed other date varieties. I recall a date vendor at the Tel Aviv farmers market calling them “beginner dates.” “Sure, medjools are large, super juicy and very sweet,” he argued, “but their flavor is one-dimensional.” The latest trend among knowledgeable foodies is to explore other date varieties, like golden toffee flavored zahidi, honeyed smooth skinned deglet noor, meaty chocolatey deri, or crunchy bar’hi, aka the yellow date, which is the first one to be harvested and it stays on the market for only two months around Rosh Hashana.

The renewed interest in less pervasive date varieties is spurred by a minitrend of varietal silan. Recently, in a Tel Aviv home of a fellow food writer, Adeena Sussman, I tasted side-by-side two organic silans produced according to traditional methods in kibbutz Samar, near Eilat. One was made from deglet noor (that used to be the most common date variety before the ascension of medjool), the other from medjool. Both silans were delicious, but the deglet noor was considerably better—less sweet, with more complex fruitiness, an unexpected hint of tartness and luxuriously thick, jammy texture.

If you travel around Israel right now, especially in the Arava desert or the Kinneret, you might still witness date-picking, called gadid in Hebrew. It is an impressive sight: pickers climbing to treetops on specially designed cranes, and hacking off majestic fruit-laden branches with machetes. Gadid starts in late summer and continues well into October. Freshly picked dates will reach markets in Israel and around the world, and some of them will be transformed into silan, the ancient biblical honey that has been given a new lease on life and culinary sophistication.

They lined up in rows of 10. Two hundred men and women in the nude, painted white and waiting for instructions from American photographer Spencer Tunick, perched on a ladder with a megaphone and his camera for this third installation about the Dead Sea.

The photographic installation was created to support the establishment of the planned Dead Sea Museum in Arad.

“The Dead Sea is disappearing,” said Tunick. “We need to find a way to sustain the level or to bring freshwater into the Dead Sea, but at the same time, keep all countries surrounding with water. Water is life.”

Tunick said this current installation was smaller and more conceptual than his last one in 2011. This time, the models were painted white to represent the pillars of salt from the biblical story of Lot’s wife, the Genesis character who was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at Sodom, the ancient city that was in the Dead Sea region.

“I don’t fear anyone turning to stone, that’s quite a punishment,” said Tunick. “No hummus for maybe a year, but no death.”

Rather, said Tunick, the photographs of white-painted models would channel the natural springs from the Dead Sea that create pillars of salt under the water.

From pastoral bike paths, cultural institutions and classic Bauhaus architecture to chic cafés, top-notch restaurants and charming kiosks — Rothschild Boulevard offers the perfect Tel Aviv experience.

Rothschild is not only Tel Aviv’s very first boulevard, but also the cultural center of the city.

This picturesque boulevard stretches from Habima Theater to the Neveh Tzedek neighborhood and is shaded by ficus and poinciana trees with pleasant benches scattered at their feet.

Edmond James de Rothschild, “the Known Benefactor,” was a French member of the Rothschild banking family and known for his support of art, science and the Jewish homeland. Respect for him in the Holy Land was so great, that in 1910 it was decided to name one of the first four streets in Tel Aviv after the baron: Sderot (Boulevard) Rothschild.

Over the years, Rothschild Boulevard became the center of a neighborhood where numerous national leaders once lived and many historic events took place, including the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948.

Rothschild attracts a large and diverse public, from local families and hip businesspeople to young couples enjoying a romantic stroll, and elderly Tel Avivians seeking a spontaneous game of pétanque (a type of lawn bowling).

Check out our guide to Tel Aviv’s most beloved boulevard.

An impressive meter-long sword dating back to the Crusader period was found by a scuba diver on the seabed off the Carmel Coast, the Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced Monday.

Shlomi Katzin, a diver from Atlit, spotted several ancient remains such as pottery fragments and stone and metal anchors, as well as the blade, which probably resurfaced after the shifting of sands. Fearing that the artifact might get covered up again, he brought it to the surface and contacted the IAA.

“The sword, which has been preserved in perfect condition, is a beautiful and rare find and evidently belonged to a Crusader knight,” said IAA’s Robbery Prevention Unit Inspector Nir Distelfeld. “It was found encrusted with marine organisms but is apparently made of iron. It is exciting to encounter such a personal object, taking you 900 years back in time to a different era, with knights, armor and swords.”

The Carmel Coast witnessed important moments in the history of the Crusades.

Pursuing the idea of liberating the holy sites from Muslim rule and encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, European powers initiated several military campaigns in the Middle East between the 11th and 13th centuries, which led to the establishment of a number of Christian states in the area of modern Israel, Lebanon and Syria.

Lost at sea: Israeli scuba diver Shlomi Katzin casually stumbled upon a 900 year old crusader sword and other relics while diving off of Israel's Carmel coast.

Read more: https://t.co/H7ubhikWkN

?? Shlomi Katzin/@AntiquitiesILpic.twitter.com/7H76fPWrbl

— Israel ????? (@Israel) October 18, 2021

---

---

For me personally, the most profound and enlightening statement former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin ever made about Israel is that it "must fight terror as if there is no peace, and make peace as if there is no terror."

In his characteristically laconic way, the war hero and tragic victim of radical politics gave our nation a guiding principle by which to follow.

Israel, however, finds itself sandwiched between a corrupt Palestinian Authority administration in Ramallah — masquerading as representatives of the Palestinian people — and the theocratic extremist regime of Hamas, sitting on endless stockpiles of guns, rockets, explosives and bodies to throw into the fray.

The aftershock of Rabin's assassination and the subsequent collapse of peace talks between the Jewish state and the Palestinians have put Israeli leaders on the defensive, unwilling to accept even the smallest overture or possibility that one day, God forbid, both parties might sit together in the same room and talk about anything other than security issues.

So now that peace is no longer an option, fighting terror is the only thing that matters.

But Rabin understood something very fundamental about the two sides of this conflict — without peace, there is only terror. If both sides do not show any willingness to talk, the radicals would rise up and take control.

Both Israel and the Palestinians have decided that the dangerous and bloody status quo is good enough for them.

Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and blockade the Gaza Strip because there presently seems to be no other way to maintain security, while Fatah enjoys international recognition for perpetuating the suffering of its people and Hamas draws the sword of Jihad and death.

As improbable as it may seem, the US State Department proposes to open a Consulate in the heart of Jerusalem dedicated to serving the PA and its exclusively non-Jewish, so-called Palestinian residents, of the areas in Judea and Samaria, governed by the PA.

Why not open the Consulate in Ramallah, where the PA maintains its government offices? It makes no rational sense to open a Consulate to the PA in what amounts to a foreign country. Moreover, apparently, the approximately 60,000 US citizens who live in Judea and Samaria (including parts of Jerusalem beyond the so-called Green Line) who are Jewish would effectively be excluded.

Besides being invidious discrimination of the most sordid variety, it is hard to imagine why the US would actually reward the PA for being Judenrein, including their jailing those convicted of violating their noxious laws prohibiting the sale land to a Jew. Is this ‘Jim Crow’-like paradigm the new policy of choice of the State Department?

The whole notion of opening a separate official Consulate office outside of the regular US Embassy in a country is for the purpose of serving as a convenience to US citizens and other legitimate US business purposes in a foreign country. Why then open a Consulate in a location that is not convenient for the intended constituency to be served?

Palestinian official: "We don't want a US consulate in Ramallah or Abu Dis. The consulate has to be in the occupied city of Jerusalem, the capital of the State of Palestine."

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) October 19, 2021

Perhaps. But why now? Domestic and international law enforcement have identified a conspicuous uptick in chatter among aspiring terrorist actors linked to the Taliban’s successful reconquest of Afghanistan. “That’s where they see this rallying cry and their opportunity. Now it’s ‘time to buy a gun, run people over with a car,’ do whatever they’re going to do,” one FBI official told Defense One reporter Jaqueline Feldscher.

Among those who might be enthralled by terroristic violence but find the Taliban uninspiring, the revivified Islamic State presents an attractive alternative. “ISIL has unmistakably positioned itself as the uncompromising rejectionist force in Afghanistan and has the potential to recruit quite a lot of people on that basis,” the FBI official continued. “You may see ISIS grow significantly in Afghanistan.”

Indeed, you’re likely to see every manner of radical Islamist organization enjoy a recruiting boom, particularly inside Afghanistan. That became apparent to foreign intelligence agencies mere hours after the collapse of the Afghan government. “Foreign intelligence officials said they are detecting signs that the Taliban’s victory has energized global jihadists,” the Washington Post reported one day after the fall of Kabul.

Although the ideological distinctions between groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State matter a great deal to Westerners, they don’t seem to preoccupy those inclined toward violence as long as violence is the result. “God willing,” on al-Qaeda militant quoted by the Post said, “the success of the Taliban will be also a chance to unify mujahideen movements like al-Qaeda and Daesh.” Just as the Islamic State’s short-lived caliphate in Syria and Iraq inspired acts of self-radicalized terrorism all across the globe, the reestablishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is likely to have the same effect.

As former National Counterterrorism Director Michael Leiter wrote recently, the U.S. and its allies “have made incredible strides” in the struggle against Islamic radicalism since 9/11. We are “vastly safer” now “than we were the last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.” But that didn’t happen by accident. It was an unfinished labor involving the development of local informants, friendly governments, actionable intelligence, and, of course, well-placed military assets capable of executing kinetic operations in a timely manner.

UAE Ambassador to Israel Muhammad Mahmoud Al Khajah invited Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to Abu Dhabi for an official state visit on Monday, on behalf of UAE Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

The invitation was extended during a lunch meeting Bennett held with Khajah and Bahrain Ambassador to Israel Khaled Yousif al-Jalahma.

The three discussed expanding ties between the nations and further strengthening the Abraham Accords.

“The stronger the bonds of our countries become, the stronger regional security and stability will become,” said Bennett.

While he was in New York City in September to address the United Nations General Assembly, Bennett met with UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khalifa al-Marar and Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani at his hotel. Bennett told Zayani that he was looking forward to meeting with Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa at some point in the future.

The foreign ministers of Israel, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and India have agreed to establish a forum for economic cooperation.

In a video conference on Monday evening, they agreed to meet in person at the Dubai Expo 2020 in the coming months.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid hosted his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in Jerusalem for the quadripartite meeting.

“Synergy is what we are going to create, starting from this meeting,” Lapid said. “Synergy is what will help us work together on infrastructure, digital infrastructure, transportation, ports, trains and maritime security.”

The ministers agreed to appoint a professional to form a joint working group on possible cooperation in these areas.

“The key to success is how fast we can go from ‘government-to-government’ to ‘business-to-business,’” Lapid said. “How fast can we turn this into a process that will put boots on the ground to change infrastructure around the world.”

The meeting was “fruitful,” Jaishankar said.

“Discussed working together more closely on economic growth and global issues,” he tweeted. “Agreed on expeditious follow-up.”

Israel and India will soon form a parliamentary friendship group, Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy announced Tuesday, when he hosted India’s external affairs minister, Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, at the Knesset.

“It was my great honor to host India’s External Affairs Minister Dr. Jaishankar, in what marks another significant milestone in the great relationship between Israel and India,” Levy said. “The strong and unique bond between our two great ancient nations and vibrant democracies blossomed in recent years.”

Levy said he looked forward to working with his Indian counterpart, Speaker of Lok Sabha Mr. Om Birla, with whom he will establish the friendship group.

“I asked the minister to spread the message that Israel welcomes in open arms peace with more Arab and Muslim nations,” Levy said. “We both agreed we must fight radicalization together and additionally, I urged the minister that Hezbollah, a deadly terrorist organization that only promotes violence and instability both regionally and domestically, must be outlawed.”

Israel and Comoros, an island country off the eastern coast of Africa, are in talks to establish diplomatic relations, a senior diplomatic source confirmed Monday.

A Muslim-majority country about a 10th of the size and population of Israel, the Union of the Comoros is a member of the Arab League and the only Arab country entirely in the Southern Hemisphere.

The US brought Israel and Comoros together for normalization talks, and they have continued bilaterally.

Israel views the negotiations as a continuation of the momentum of the Abraham Accords, the peace and normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab states last year.

By any objective measure, the Abraham Accords have been a success. The normalization agreements between Israel and several Muslim majority nations, including the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, have helped transform the Middle East, brightening the prospects for peace between the Jewish state and the rest of the region. Unsurprisingly, the Washington Post’s World Views columnist, Ishaan Tharoor, felt the need to minimize the Accords.

In an Oct. 13, 2021 article (“Biden carries forward a Trump-era Middle East Policy”), Tharoor omitted key aspects about the Accords.

Tharoor does refer to the Accords as “landmark normalization agreements” and notes their economic impact. “Normalization between the UAE and Israel has already led to at least $675 million in bilateral trade, direct flights between the two countries, an influx of tourists and expanded people-to-people contacts,” he writes.

Indeed, one would be hard pressed to think of downsides to the agreements. They are, in every sense, historic.

As JNS has noted, the Abraham Accords are the “first agreements between Israel and other Mideast nations since Israel’s peace with Egypt in 1979 and with Jordan in 1994.” Further, “the UAE and Bahrain are the first Gulf countries to normalize ties with the Jewish state.”

Have you ever heard the myth that Israel steals water from the Palestinians? Get ready to have your eyes opened as Joshua cuts through the fog with some hard-hitting content from Israel.

In fact, you may just decide that if it weren’t for Israel, the Palestinians would not have water at all!

Sorry to break it to you Madame Foreign Minister, but 'Palestine' is not a state, notwithstanding how many times you might say it. https://t.co/NsEj0vAPsk

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 19, 2021

Since the beginning of the fourth wave in June, almost 1,600 people have died, the majority in August and September – 631 and 668, respectively. Another 224 individuals have died from COVID since the beginning of October.

While the number of victims during the fourth wave has remained significantly lower than during the previous wave – in January the virus killed 1,445, in February, 947 – the past three months were still among the deadliest since the pandemic hit the country last year.

Most victims were over the age of 60 and unvaccinated, the ministry’s data show.

In the past four weeks, only four vaccinated people under the age of 60 succumbed to the virus, while another four who died had been vaccinated but more than six months earlier, compared to 46 unvaccinated people who by this point represent a minority of the population.

Regarding people over the age of 60, 61 died in spite of the fact they were fully vaccinated, and 56 were inoculated but over six months earlier, compared to 218 unvaccinated – a very high number considering that out of 1.56 million Israelis over the age of 60, less than 110,000 are not vaccinated at all, and over 1.2 million have already received their booster.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, morbidity in the country continued to decline.

Some 1,483 new cases were identified on Monday, with only 1.42% of the approximately 105,000 people screened testing positive. The previous Monday the cases were 2,432, and a week before that there were 3,273.

Israel announced on Tuesday that it approved registration as West Bank residents for some 4,000 Palestinians who have been living for years in the territory without official status.

The decision affects 2,800 former inhabitants of the Gaza Strip who left the enclave after Hamas Islamist militants seized it in internal Palestinian fighting in 2007, Israel’s COGAT liaison office to the Palestinians said.

Some 1,200 other Palestinians, among them undocumented spouses and children of West Bank residents, will also receive official standing.

Inclusion in the Palestinian Population Registry, which Israel controls, will enable the group to receive identification cards. The documentation will enable passage through Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank, an area captured in a 1967 war.

On Twitter, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said he approved the 4,000 residency registrations as a humanitarian gesture and “as part of my policy to strengthen the economy and improve the lives of Palestinians” in the West Bank.

Hussein Al Sheikh, a senior official of the Palestinian Authority (PA), said on Twitter that the 4,000 “obtained their right to citizenship” and would receive identification cards.

Under interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deals that established the PA, Israel committed to approve the residency in the West Bank and Gaza of some 4,000 new spouses of local residents each year under a family reunification program.

Right-wing lawmakers expressed outrage Tuesday after the Defense Ministry allowed the Palestinian Authority to register 1,200 undocumented Palestinians living in the West Bank as residents. The move comes after a recent meeting between PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

The 1,200 individuals will now be able to receive Palestinian passports. In addition, another 2,800 residents – who moved to the West Bank from the Gaza Strip before Hamas took over in 2007 – will be able to change their addresses.

Under the Oslo Accords, the Israeli government must approve permanent residency requests for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and any change in the Palestinian population registry, including change of residence.

The ministry stressed that all applications were approved on humanitarian grounds and that each applicant was thoroughly vetted. It further stressed that every applicant had been residing in the West Bank for an extended period of time.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak approved 35,000 such applications during his time in office. The move sparked outrage among right-wing circles, with some saying this was tantamount to granting the Palestinians a "right of return."

Video of an Israeli policeman being attacked by Palestinians at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. https://t.co/vDWPdyL8Z8

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) October 18, 2021

While people around the world see the arts, sports, and music as expressions of culture that could be highlighted during a “culture week,” the Palestinian Authority chose the murder of Israelis as its expression of Palestinian culture with which to launch its “Arab Culture Week.”

As “the start of the activities of the Bethlehem: Capital of Arab Culture 2020-2021 week,” the PA Ministry of Culture and the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs set up an exhibit featuring pictures and names of numerous terrorist prisoners who murdered at least 46 Israelis, and terrorist “Martyrs” responsible for the deaths of at least 136.

Bethlehem was chosen as capital of Arab culture 2020/21 by the Conference of Arab Culture Ministers, and it was PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas himself who launched the year-long event in April. [Website of the Arab League Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization, April 21, 2021]

It is a very significant statement about the PA’s self-image, its chosen values, and its revering of terrorists that it launches “Arab Culture Week” by honoring mass murderers as its expression of Palestinian culture.

A cartoon published on the website of #Fatah's Commission of Information and Culture shows Israeli Prime Minister @naftalibennett as the villain Bane from the Batman comics. Bizarre! The Arab text reads 'Naftali Bennett'. pic.twitter.com/rjUs1JaBsH

— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) October 19, 2021

Sohaib Hassan Yousef, Son of Senior Hamas West Bank Leader: Hamas Uses Aid Money to Procure Turkish Citizenship for Its Operatives; Hamas, Hizbullah Share Technology, Cooperate on Tunnels, Rockets #Hamas#Turkeypic.twitter.com/IAKiAxRKqs

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 19, 2021

Palestinian security forces arrest 8 members of the Bedouin clan Al-Ka'abneh for protesting the demolition of their homes by the Palestinian Authority. On September 29, the Palestinian Authority demolished houses belonging to 17 families near Jericho. https://t.co/txvmgCxyWO

— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) October 19, 2021

Gunfire erupted during a massive protest in Beirut last Thursday. The shooting led to the death of six people. It took place as Hezbollah and Amal supporters tried to topple a judge investigating the deadly blast last year at Beirut Port that killed 200 people.

The judge has dared to try to actually do his job, and because of that, and due to Hezbollah preferring a lawless corrupt state it can digest, the Hezbollah supporters oppose him.

It is not clear who the snipers were who targeted the protesters, but the armed protesters responded by shooting up buildings in the capital city. It may even be that trigger-happy soldiers and protesters shot at invisible, nonexistent snipers.

Nevertheless, blame has been cast on Sunni extremists and the Lebanese Forces, a Christian group. Pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iran media have alleged a conspiracy. Press TV in Iran even claims an employee of the US Embassy was one of the “snipers.”

The more favored conspiracy is to blame Samir Geagea, a Christian leader of Lebanese Forces, as being behind the violence. The conspiracy claims he is a “traitor” allied with the US and “Zionists.” “According to reports and evidence, militants from the Lebanese forces led by Samir Geagea were the main perpetrators of the attack,” a pro-Hezbollah media outlet reported.

When protests caused Syria to leave the country in the wake of the murder, Hezbollah plotted to attack Israel with direct support from Iran and its henchman Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani, Nasrallah and Imad Mughniyeh plotted and a war broke out in 2006. When that was over, Hezbollah used the destruction it wrought to increase power over construction, housing and its own phone and telecommunications network. When the parliament tried to take away the telecommunications network, Hezbollah invaded areas in Beirut in 2008 and showed off its new muscles. Soon, it was keeping a new president from being appointed, forcing Christians to make a choice: Lose their remaining power, or ally with the Islamist group. Michael Aoun chose to work with Hezbollah and got the presidency. Other Christians like Samir Geagea did not agree and neither did Sunnis like Saad Hariri.

Hezbollah systematically assassinated rivals, and intellectuals like Lokman Slim. It also sent fighters to Syria during the civil war and expanded its arsenal from 13,000 rockets to 150,000 rockets, missiles and drones. It also sent forces to the Golan to prepare for expanding the war against Israel.

All this is a long way of saying that Hezbollah’s real power is now through strangling parliament and the presidency and running Lebanon’s foreign and military policy. Now it even imports gas.

But it doesn’t have 100,000 fighters. That is because the overall Shi’ite community Hezbollah draws on for support is divided, with many backing Hezbollah ally Amal. To have 100,000 fighters you would need several million Shi’ite Hezbollah backers. Where are those people? Where are the trained fighters? How would you feed all those men?

The fact is that even though Hezbollah is a powerful terror army, has precision guided weapons, drones, bunkers and its own communications network – and runs drugs all over the world, stockpiles ammonium nitrate, destroys cities, bankrupts Lebanon and robs it of its future – its 100,000 figure is just in Nasrallah’s imagination.

Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah: The Lebanese Forces Party Is the Biggest Threat to the Existence and Security of the Christians in Lebanon; We Have 100,000 Trained Fighters #Lebanon#Hizbullah#Nasrallah@DRSAMIRGEAGEA@LFofficialpage#BeirutBlastpic.twitter.com/5D7umYKVOu

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 19, 2021

Technically that should read "... that Hezbollah had asked the US-funded, US-supplied, US-backed Lebanese Army to deploy..." https://t.co/JsNBJ8pGg0

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) October 18, 2021

Lebanese Author Jean-Marie Kassab: I Demand Peace with Israel; Israel Can Keep the Shebaa Farms, Nobody Lives There Anyway; We Should Declare War on Iran #Lebanon#Iran#Hizbullah#Israel@jmkassabpic.twitter.com/NsBcYpWKCt

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 19, 2021

Iraqi Journalist Ahmad Abdulsada Warns of Imminent Drone, Ballistic Missile Attack against the UAE in Retaliation for Allegedly Rigging Iraqi Elections, The PMU Will Mobilize Militarily against PM Al-Kadhimi If He Tries to Disband It #Iraq#UAE#pmupic.twitter.com/6oXU0we2W5

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 19, 2021

Recent mass murders of Muslims in attacks on mosques in Afghanistan have led to the deaths of hundreds. On October 8, a targeted attack led to the murder of more than 100 Muslims. Then another attack on Friday in Kandahar on October 15 led to the deaths of almost 50 people.

These are targeted attacks, during Friday prayers, designed to commit genocide against Shi’ite Muslims. However, such attacks are generally ignored by the international community. Countries that have backed the kind of extremism that leads to attacks on Shi’ites, such as Pakistan’s support for extremists like the Taliban, generally prefer not to condemn these attacks. Yet the same countries tend to speak out about “Islamophobia” in the West and condemn attacks on mosques in places like New Zealand.

Why aren’t attacks on mosques in Afghanistan considered a crime against humanity? This is one of the enduring questions that linger over how the international community confronts genocide. Targeted attacks against religious and ethnic minorities, which the Hazara Shi’ites are, usually would be defined as genocide. In addition, the kind of ethnic cleansing and discrimination against Hazaras that groups like the Taliban, al-Qaeda and now ISIS have conducted would tend to fit into the definition of genocide.

This begs the question of where the war crimes trials are in The Hague or other locations for members of ISIS and other groups that have targeted religious and ethnic minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and many other countries. ISIS, for instance, committed genocide against Yazidis in Iraq, ethnically cleansing half a million of the community and selling women and children into slavery.

Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Maj.-Gen. Hossein Salami this week celebrated the “retreat” of Iran’s enemies in the region. “We are witnessing obvious retreats of enemies and great powers from the region,” he was quoted by Iran’s Tasnim News Agency as saying. He was referring to the US leaving Afghanistan.

“These days, we look at the retreat and the last months of the US presence in Iraq,” he said. “We see their failure in the dangerous Lebanese project. We see the defeat of enemy targets on the Syrian front; we see the defeat of the enemy’s goals and movements in the sanctions against Iran, and we see the defeat of the enemy in the political and economic siege of our system.”

Salami bragged that the US is losing on all fronts. “We see the symbols of victory and the signs of retreat and defeat of the enemy,” he said. While he sees positive portents of Iran’s victory, another Iranian supporter was also giving an interview to Tasnim. Talal Naji, secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, looked at the recent May battle between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

He praised Qasem Soleimani, the late commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, for his “prominent role in countering US-Zionist conspiracies and strengthening and advancing the defense of resistance groups in the region, especially Palestine, Syrian relations and the resistance, and [removing] obstacles to the advancement of Palestinian national unity.”

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Tuesday urged the Muslim nations to fight to promote the Palestinian interest, saying, "The Palestinian issue must always be a top priority for the Muslim world."

Raisi, dubbed the "'Butcher of Tehran," is under US sanctions over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988." He spoke at the 35 International Conference for Islamic Unity, attended by delegations from 52 countries.

"Global arrogance has supported weak governments in the Muslim world in order to realize its interests and the interests of the Zionist entity," Raisi said.

On Monday, Raisi said he believes the nuclear talks with six major powers should be "result-oriented."

"We are serious about result-oriented negotiations. ... If Americans are serious, they should remove unjust sanctions on Iran," Raisi told state TV.

Republican lawmakers are concerned the Biden administration is delaying the trial of an accused Iranian agent as a bargaining chip to secure a return to the 2015 nuclear accord.

The Justice Department has for the second time this year postponed the trial of Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi, an Iranian citizen and U.S. permanent resident who was charged this year with acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the Iranian regime. Afrasiabi allegedly posed as a neutral Iran expert and talking head for the better part of a decade but "was actually a secret employee of the government of Iran," according to the Justice Department.

The trial was postponed earlier this year at Afrasiabi's request and set to resume on Dec. 1. The United States has agreed to postpone the case again, however, so that Afrasiabi, who is representing himself in court, has time to review a voluminous amount of discovery materials related to the case.

The delays are angering some Republican members of Congress, who are concerned the case has become bound up in ongoing nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran, which have stalled in recent months even as the United States unwinds economic sanctions and promises to remove all sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

"Given the increasing tension between the United States and Iran, we are concerned that Afrasiabi is being used by the Iranian regime as a political tool for backdoor negotiations" with the Biden administration, the lawmakers write, according to a copy of their letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The lawmakers late last week petitioned the Justice Department to explain why it will not move forward with Afrasiabi's prosecution.

Following an investigation, Oberlin College said it has cleared a faculty member accused of lying about mass political executions in Iran during the 1980s and of making antisemitic statements, according to a student newspaper report.

Professor of Religion Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, who served as Iran’s representative to the United Nations from 1987 to 1989, had been accused of concealing the 1988 killings of thousands of dissidents in an Oct. 2020 open letter, signed by families of the victims and two faculty members.

Later, reports of Mahallati’s declaring that “Palestine is an Islamic territory” under “occupation by Zionist usurpers” surfaced online, as well as statements disparaging the Baha’i faith — prompting the university to confirm that his past comments and conduct were under review.

The Ohio liberal arts college said its investigation did not find evidence supporting the allegations over the 1988 killings or antisemitic comments, the Oberlin Review reported Friday.

Enthusiasts of the wizarding world’s most popular sport burst into a fervor of animated discussion today following an announcement by the Islamic Republic of Iran that its team will refuse to compete in the championship game of the International League because the opponent in that game will be Israel, a country that Iran’s government refuses to recognize and has repeatedly threatened to destroy.

Director of Sport and Culture at Iran’s Ministry of Magic Ononat Dissaghen issued a statement Tuesday following Israel’s upset 160-20 victory over number-one-ranked Croatia two weeks ago in the semifinal match. Iran’s team had defeated Ireland, ranked at number three, two days before. “We will not grant the illegal, illegitimate Zionist entity the undeserved dignity of playing against its representatives in this competition. Our principles have always been, and will remain, stringer than any greed for accolades or trophies. The brutal occupation by foreigners of Islamic lands in Palestine must cease.” If Iran follows through on its threat to boycott the final, Israel will become champion by default, and Iran faces possible sanctions from the sport’s governing bodies.

Speculation that Iran might remove itself from competition rather than face Israel first occurred earlier this year, when both underdog countries overcame higher-ranked teams in a series of tight, often-brutal games. Most commentators and fans dismissed the possibility of Iran and Israel – ranked seventeenth and twenty-third, respectively – advancing far enough for such a matchup to become imaginable. However, after Iran pulled off a dramatic 200-190 upset over Indonesia in February, and Israel gave fifth-place Egypt a 330-110 drubbing, talk of a possible meeting between the two became a daily feature of sports analysis.

---

---

In the post-truth world, Hamas apparently no longer exists. Thousands of rockets and incendiary balloons no longer fall on Israeli towns and cities, killing people in their apartments, obliterating vehicles, and setting fields ablaze.

According to numerous academic departments here and abroad, Israel is no longer under assault. In the post-truth world, Israel and its military have instead become irrational opponents of all that is just and good, carrying out raids on Hamas strongholds in Gaza without cause or justification.

No wonder those academic departments have substituted self-congratulatory virtue signaling for academic freedom and open debate.

In May of this year, immediately after the most recent war between Hamas and Israel ended, over 100 academic departments representing their colleges and universities, for the first time in history broke with the established academic principle of departmental and university political neutrality, issued statements condemning Israel, and, in effect, joined the BDS movement.

Many women’s studies programs started the campaign, but some ethnic studies, history, and other departments joined it. Even during the Vietnam War, when by the 1970s most professors opposed the war, their departments stayed out of politics. By the mid-1970s, some voluntary professional associations took an anti-war stand — but not, as far as I can determine, university departments. Most departmental and academic statements this spring did not even mention Hamas.

The most influential guiding principle is clear: individual faculty, students, and staff are free to express and promote their political views. They can create voluntary groups to do so collectively. But official university units must not do so. Otherwise, all those affiliated with a department would suffer the coercive effect of anti-Zionist or other political groupthink.

In an interview Sunday, journalist and former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss charged the paper with having once turned down a column about a series of antisemitic attacks because the perpetrators “weren’t white supremacists.”

Weiss, who resigned from the Times in July 2020, told conservative commentator Ben Shapiro that she had drafted a column in the wake of two deadly attacks on Jews in late 2019, including a mass shooting at a Jersey City, NJ kosher grocery store and a stabbing at the home of a Monsey, NY rabbi during Hanukkah.

“I wrote a piece at the time … called ‘America’s Bloody Hanukkah,’ or ‘America’s Bloody Pogrom,'” she told Shapiro. “I thought it was really good column, it was really my subject. I’d written a book called “How to Fight Antisemitism;” I was Bat Mitzvah’d at the synagogue in Pittsburgh, Tree of Life, where the most lethal attack against American Jews in all of American history was carried out. I have some skin in the game, and I know a lot about this subject.”

“And I was basically called into my editor’s office and was told, ‘we can’t really run this.’ And the reason, at the end of the day why we couldn’t really run it, is that the people that were carrying out the attacks weren’t white supremacists carrying tiki torches,” Weiss continued, referring to the notorious 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

The former opinion section editor, who now runs a newsletter on the Substack platform, resigned from the Times in July 2020, publishing an open letter critical of the paper.

After working years in the legacy media, Bari Weiss is now stepping away from the biggest news outlets in the country, and is in the midst of crafting her own media property. She is producing with the freedom to investigate and pursue stories she simply didn’t have before and features unique conversations and stories that reflect the most fundamental issues in the country.

Bari wrote about and popularized the Intellectual Dark Web at the New York Times back in 2018 and finally joins us in this episode to discuss why she’s been avoiding joining my show these past 3 years. Plus, we will talk about her experience being attacked across the internet and media, as well as some ideas that may help preserve the country’s political middle.

1) NHJ fell for a completely fake quote. @bariweiss said no such thing. Not that NHJ is known for caring about facts or the truth.

2) Incredible projection. pic.twitter.com/StEwr2gbHJ

— AG (@AGHamilton29) October 19, 2021

How Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change tried to convince Amazon and Google to boycott Israel with the #NoTechForApartheid campaign

Here’s the timeline of events for the pre-meditated “No Tech For Apartheid” campaign against Project Nimbus organized by BDS groups Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower, who tried to portray it as “concerned employees” of Google and Amazon. pic.twitter.com/NxSJcFzofV

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) October 18, 2021

The last few weeks have brought with them several teachable moments, not just about Jews and antisemitism, but also ones relevant to our society as a whole. In her book, “How to Fight Antisemitism,” journalist and author Bari Weiss claims that the rise of antisemitism is a clear indicator of societal rot. “When a society begins to become unhealthy and tearing itself apart, as we see here and throughout Europe, antisemitism begins to show its face,” Weiss argued, appearing on “Real Time with Bill Maher” in 2019.

Signs of the rot have been all too visible recently, and they carry with them a great warning. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris addressed students at George Mason University to mark National Voter Registration Day at the end of September. Following her talk, the Vice President called on students for questions. One of those students accused Israel, and America, of committing “ethnic genocide.” Instead of using this as a teachable moment and focusing on the importance of truth in dealing with crucial issues within our society, Harris chose to avoid the mendacious claim and stated, “Your truth should not be suppressed.” Truth became a matter of perception. A few days later, in the pages of this esteemed publication, Gil Troy responded: “Genocide is the mass murder of a people, yet the Palestinian population has quintupled since 1967 … Millennia of Jew-hatred have provided the road map for such perversions. Decades of anti-Zionism paved the way.” When we don’t defend the truth and instead allow moral relativism on what is a clear-cut matter of fact, we open the door for antisemitism and ignorance to creep in, eat away at the foundations of our society and pave the way for nefarious outcomes to come.

At the beginning of 2021, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 2018 Facebook post came to light. In it, she claimed the California wildfires were started by PG&E, with the help of a “space laser” belonging to the Jewish Rothschild family, the focal point of many antisemitic tropes. This abominable accusation became the subject of much ridicule, exposing Greene’s antisemitism and ignorance, both of which are all too common, but not limited to, the far right.

The Holocaust is a historical fact. Denying that it happened is not a legitimate point of view or scholarly school of thought. Those who claim that the truth about the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators is a matter of debate are anti-Semitic liars whose only motive is a desire to erase the record of Jewish suffering so as to justify or rationalize contemporary hatred of the Jews.

Similarly, slavery and the facts about the role that despicable practice and its defenders played in American history, in addition to the way Jim Crow laws perpetuated its legacy after the Civil War, is not up for debate.

Unfortunately, modern American primary and secondary education have to some extent discarded the traditional teaching of history. In its place, we now have educational experiences that talk more about concepts and ways of thinking about the past while downplaying supposedly unimportant facts and dates.

Learning to think critically about history or any field of study is vital, but that can only succeed if it is based on a solid factual foundation—something that is often left out of contemporary schooling. That’s the only reasonable explanation for the fact that surveys consistently show that most Americans, especially those under 45, have an abysmal lack of knowledge about the history of their own country.

Nor is the teaching of the Holocaust exempt from this problem. Some 38 states, including Texas, have passed laws mandating some form of Holocaust education. But many of the courses designed to comply with those mandates tend to emphasize concepts that seek to universalize the lessons of the events in question instead of sticking to the facts about the attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

This has helped create a general belief in American society that the Holocaust is more a metaphor for anything or anyone that people think is awful than a reference to a particular set of events. In this way, inappropriate Holocaust analogies have proliferated, as, for example, right-wingers demonizing vaccine mandates and left-wingers comparing former President Donald Trump to the Nazis. Both sides of the political spectrum condemn their opponents’ misuse of the past while remaining blind to their own mistakes.

To elide this truth, some anti-Israel circles, for example the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, have taken to redefining genocide in a manner that lends credence to its very partisan view of the condition of the Palestinians. According to the leftist think tank: “The term [genocide] does not necessarily signify mass killings. More often [genocide] refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups.” And even this revised definition is not applicable to the State of Israel’s true relationship with Palestinians.

No less absurd is the charge of apartheid. Unfortunately, Israel’s Arab population, as is true for ethnic minorities in every Western democracy, are often the victims of social prejudice and discrimination.

But this behavior does not reflect the ethos of the state. Under Israeli law all the country’s citizens are equal. As pointed out time and again, many of Israel’s Arab citizens have achieved remarkable success in government, law, business, hi-tech, culture and the professions. Outside pre-1967 Israel, in Judea and Samaria, security restrictions imposed by the IDF upon the Arab population represent defensive policies that were established in response to years of Palestinian terrorism, both there and that crossed the border into the state. Israel’s detractors see racially motivated bigotry and apartheid instead of legitimate security concerns.

Within the “woke” ideological value system that has invaded and taken command of so much of liberal and progressive thinking, empirical truths and verifiable facts are irrelevant. What matters to Israel’s adversaries is branding the Jewish state with false accusations of genocide and apartheid, the two most emotionally charged weapons in the arsenal of political propaganda.

There is no quick or easy way for Israel to counter this deeply emotional conundrum. The response requires rigorous and ongoing exposure of foreigners to on-site experiences that contradict false Palestinian claims and that bear witness to the many unsung positive interactions between Israelis and Palestinians. How should this be done?

If anything, by clarifying where discussions around Israel can bleed into anti-Semitism, the definition will hopefully aid in creating spaces for vigorous – but more importantly, respectful – debate on what is an immensely polarising issue.

For those outside the Jewish community who oppose the definition, the question must also be asked as to why they feel better equipped than Jews to determine what constitutes anti-Semitism. The IHRA is, after all, overwhelmingly supported by mainstream Jewry – not just in Australia but worldwide.

Few, if any, non-Muslims would dare lecture Muslims about Islamophobia. Nor would it be considered acceptable for Australians of European descent to dismiss Indigenous Australians’ concerns of discrimination against their communities. The Jewish community should not be treated any differently.

This definition shouldn’t be necessary. But the tragic reality is that despite turning the Jewish people into history’s most persecuted minority, the West has consistently demonstrated woeful incompetence when it comes to recognising anti-Semitism.

Bigotry is a vile scourge on society. And in a world that is increasingly sensitive to the myriad forms of discrimination, all the Australian Jewish community asks is that its concerns are listened to. If we let it, the IHRA definition can help achieve that. At a period in history where the forces of extremism are on the rise, it’s needed now more than ever.

The video at the link shows the rabbi being asked if it's a teachable moment for the students of a Yeshiva that just had an arson attack on it. How about the arsonist get a teachable moment instead? Who else gets this kind of question? https://t.co/zpimujCN7Xpic.twitter.com/6V0yrh5yIB

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) October 18, 2021

The Cobb County School Board in Marietta, Georgia adopted a resolution denouncing antisemitism and racism, following two incidents in which swastikas and other offensive messages were daubed in school bathrooms, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reported on Thursday.

“The Board wishes to reaffirm its continued commitment to take proactive steps to address antisemitism, racism and all other forms of hate in Cobb County School District,” said the resolution, passed at the board’s monthly meeting with all but two of its members voting for it.

Hershel Greenblat, a Holocaust survivor and Cobb County resident, addressed the board, urging it not to “sweep these recent acts of graffiti and vandalism under the rug.”

“As a survivor, [I was there] to bear witness to a time in history which began with so many small acts of biased attitudes: fear, stereotyping and misinformation,” he said. “Left unchecked, there was discrimination, violence, assaults, and eventually genocide.”

“I hope this board will go beyond words and take action. Please, do something about this antisemitism and anti-human beings. This is all I ask.”

Responding to the news hours later on Twitter, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)’ Southeast office called the resolution a “good first step” — but added, “unless followed by specific actions, it’s an empty gesture.”

There are reports that Cllr Tasleem Fazal has been readmitted to the Labour Party group at Blackburn with Darwen Council despite previously suggesting that ISIS is a Jewish plot. According the Council’s website, Cllr Fazal continues to sit as an independent.

Cllr Fazal was suspended from Labour after it was revealed that he had made a video during an anti-Israel protest in 2014 when he called peace protestors “murderers” and during which he was asked by a demonstrator wearing a skullcap: “ISIS – is ISIS Jewish?” From behind the camera, he responded: “Who’s created it? Who’s created it? Do your homework.” The notion that Jews or Israel created the ISIS terrorist organisation is a popular antisemitic trope.

After being suspended, Cllr Fazal sat as an independent, but he also continued to sit on the Council’s select Licencing Committee. Cllr Andy Kay was also suspended from Labour but retained his committee portfolios as an independent.

Blackburn with Darwen Council had as many councillors suspended from the Labour Party over antisemitism claims on its committees as Liberal Democrats.

A recent piece in The Los Angeles Times refers to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) as a “civil rights organization formed in 1980 to combat anti-Arab stereotypes in US media while promoting balanced reporting on Middle Eastern affairs.”

What The Los Angeles Times and other media outlets have failed to report is that the ADC consistently demonizes Israel and is a proponent of and active participant in the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, whose explicit goal is to eliminate to the world’s one and only Jewish state.

As noted by news organizations such as CNN, for example, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has been a vocal advocate for worthy causes such as women’s empowerment, dispelling stereotypes, promoting racial equality and encouraging Arab-Americans to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

However, these same outlets have omitted the fact that “the largest Arab American grassroots civil rights organization in the United States” spreads baseless accusations that Israel is maintaining a system of “apartheid” and carrying out “ethnic cleansing.”

The ADC has also tried to revive the thoroughly debunked claim that “Zionism is racism.”

As the Israeli military in May shielded its citizens from rockets launched by Gaza Strip-based Palestinian terrorist groups, the United States urged a “de-escalation on all sides.”

However, Washington singled out Hamas for condemnation and supported Israel’s right to defend itself.

Yet, Jinan Deena, a national organizer for the ADC, was on May 11 quoted in The Washington Post (WaPo) as saying: “There is no both sides here…. Palestinians are under occupation, and the United States has systematically supported this — whether through funding Israel’s military with our tax dollars or narratives such as this where blame is placed on both sides.”

Essentially, one of the organization’s leaders justified the indiscriminate launching of some 4,500 projectiles towards Israel by a US-designated terrorist group.

Yet, WaPo has still referred to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee rather innocuously as a “civil rights group.”

A month later, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the Biden Administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, called the Human Rights Council’s frequent criticism of Israel “appalling,” adding that “antisemitic” countries from the Middle East sit on the body.

In response, Abed Ayoub, the legal director of the ADC, said:
That’s a failure of leadership coming from the Biden Administration…. It ignores the bigger problem in the region, and that’s the Israeli war crimes, the apartheid and the lack of accountability towards Israel.”

A Guardian article by Ben Quinn (“Social media ‘bringing antisemitic ideas to new generation’”, Oct. 13) cites a joint study by several anti-racist groups reporting that a new generation of users of social media platforms are being introduced to antisemitic conspiracy theories.

The report included the following:
The findings on online antisemitism comes against the backdrop of continued heightened concern about its impact on the streets and a number of prosecutions of far-right supporters on terror-related charges.

Britain’s Community Security Trust, which assists with the security of the Jewish community, said last month it had recorded 1,308 anti-Jewish hate incidents nationwide in the first half of this year, the highest total in the first half of any year.

The reporter’s suggestion that the record number of antisemitic incidents are connected to the “far-right” is extremely misleading. As the Guardian itself reported at the time of the CST’s publication, the spike was driven by a huge surge in antisemitic incidents in May during the war between Hamas and Israel.

The actual CST report was clear that the huge increase in expressions of anti-Jewish racism was driven by hatred of Israel. CST Antisemitic Incidents Report, Jan-June 2021

Such incidents include a pro-Palestinian convoy which drove through a Jewish neighborhood in London shouting antisemitic abuse and threats:

During the COVID pandemic, we have heard a lot about following the science, and it made me think about how much Jews follow the “science” when it comes to anti-Semitism. There is no shortage of data, and yet Jews are still apt to respond more to what their kishkes tell them. This is not to suggest that the current perception of anti-Semitism is exaggerated. My point is only that we should take a closer look at the data, and we might learn that reality is different from conventional wisdom and make decisions accordingly.

The most fundamental question is whether it is unsafe to be a Jew in America. What does the data tell us?

Consider the blaring headlines when the FBI hate-crimes report came out that said 59 percent of all victims of religious hate crimes in 2020 were Jewish. This is a misleading and, in some ways irrelevant figure because most victims (60 percent) are targeted because of race/ethnicity/ancestry bias, not religion. More than one-third of hate crimes are anti-black. The more salient finding was that Jews are 8 percent of all victims of hate crimes, which is still more than three times their share of the U.S. population. (Keep in mind the caveat that not all hate crimes are reported).

A total of 824 Jews were victims. That means 1 out of 7,000 Jews was a victim. The corresponding figure for blacks is roughly 1 out of 8,336 (there were more black victims than Jews but the black population is also much larger).

What also went largely unreported is that the number of Jewish victims was the fewest since 2015 and declined 18 percent from 2019.

The data on religious hate crimes is useful for distinguishing between the threats to Jews and Muslims. While we hear a lot of talk about “Islamophobia,” 124 Muslims (9 percent) were victims of religious hate crimes, which was 1 percent of all hate crimes. While the number of Muslims who were victims spiked to 554 in 2001 (compared to 1,196 Jews), the figure has not even been close to that since then and the 2020 figure was the lowest since 2014, having declined for the sixth straight year.

According to the FBI, one Jew was murdered, 93 were assaulted, and 207 were intimidated. Less than 12 percent were physically attacked; 58 percent of the offenses were vandalism. Attacks on Orthodox Jews in New York, for example, may get a lot of publicity, but those incidents, serious as they are, constitute the exception rather than the typical hate crime.

Mireille Knoll, the 85-year-old Holocaust survivor murdered in her Paris apartment in a horrific antisemitic attack in 2018, has been commemorated in the French capital with a street named in her honor.

In a ceremony on Tuesday, the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, inaugurated the “Allée Mireille Knoll” in the city’s 11th arrondissement, where Knoll resided, accompanied by local dignitaries and Jewish leaders.

Knoll was murdered in her apartment on the Avenue Philippe-Auguste on March 23, 2018. Firefighters who arrived at Knoll’s building later that night to answer an emergency call discovered her partially-burned body with 11 stab wounds.

Two men, Yacine Mihoub, 31, and his associate Alex Carrimbacus, 26, have been charged with the killing. The pair were understood to have targeted Knoll after Mihoub, a neighbor of Knoll’s since the age of eight, told Carrimbacus that she would have plenty of money as she was Jewish. Mihoub and Carrimbacus, who met each other in prison, have lengthy criminal records for offenses including theft, possession of narcotics and violence. Mihoub additionally has a conviction for sexual assault.

A police investigation following Knoll’s death established that Mihoub was attracted to Islamist ideas and slogans, and was already known to the authorities for having praised the Kouachi brothers, who carried out the deadly Islamist terror attack against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015.

According to the newspaper Le Figaro, Mihoub was also “compulsively addicted to antisemitic websites and a staunch defender of Hamas.”

A top Canadian Jewish group is asking Canada’s Department of National Defense to investigate its training of Ukrainian soldiers after revelations that a neo-Nazi group had infiltrated Ukraine’s military.

A study by the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University revealed that members of the Ukrainian military were involved with a far-right group called Centuria.

They were documented giving Nazi salutes, praising members of the SS, and pushing white nationalist ideas.

Some members of Centuria apparently claimed to have been trained by the Canadian military and participated in exercises with them.

The Canadian Armed Forces states that it does not investigate members of foreign militaries involved in joint training.

The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center has sent a letter to Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan and Acting Chief of the Defense Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre, calling for an investigation.

“It is unacceptable for our armed forces to be emboldening neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, or any other country, through the provision of CAF training,” Monday’s letter said.

A 96-year-old German woman who was caught shortly after going on the run ahead of a court hearing last month on charges of committing war crimes during World War Two appeared before a judge on Tuesday in the northern town of Itzehoe.

Irmgard Furchner, accused of having contributed as an 18-year-old to the murder of 11,412 people when she was a typist at the Stutthof concentration camp between 1943 and 1945, was taken into the sparse courtroom in a wheelchair.

Her face was barely visible behind a white mask and scarf pulled low over her eyes. Security was heavy as the judge and legal staff made their way into the court.

Between 1939 and 1945 some 65,000 people died of starvation and disease or in the gas chamber at the concentration camp near Gdansk, in today’s Poland. They included prisoners of war and Jews caught up in the Nazis’ extermination campaign.

The trial was postponed after Furchner left her home early on Sept. 30 and went on the run for several hours before being detained later that day.

The Polish witnesses of the German crime in Wojslawice lived for decades with the memories of their Jewish neighbors executed in 1942. They remembered a meadow that flowed with blood, a child who cried out for water from underneath a pile of bodies, arms, and legs that still moved days after the execution.

In the years that followed, those who had seen the crime shared their knowledge with their children, warning them to stay away from the spot behind the Orthodox church where some 60 Jews, among them 20 children, were murdered on that October day.

"When I was a young boy I was running around these meadows but the elders were saying: 'please do not run there because there are buried people, buried Jews,'" Marian Lackowski, a retired police officer whose late mother witnessed the execution in the small town in eastern Poland, said.

Born after the war, Lackowski has devoted years to ensuring that the victims receive a dignified burial, a mission he finally fulfilled Thursday as he gathered with Jewish and Christian clergy, the mayor, schoolchildren, and other members of the town.

Beginning at the town hall, the group walked solemnly down a hill to the execution site, their silence broken only by roosters and barking dogs. After they arrived at the spot, church bells rang out from the town's Catholic church and a trumpet called at noon. Jewish and Christian prayers were recited and mourners lit candles and placed stones in the Jewish tradition at a new memorial erected over the bones. "May their souls have a share in eternal life," it reads.

The mass grave site in Wojslawice is tragically not unique. During the German occupation of Poland during World War II, the Germans imprisoned Jews in ghettoes and murdered them in death camps including Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor. But they also shot them in fields and forests near their homes, leaving behind mass graves across Poland, many of which have only come to light in recent years.

Dr. Nahartabi, a Jewish professor of Semitic languages, taught both Hebrew and Arabic in Terezin ghetto, highlighting words in the 2 languages which described the harsh reality of ghetto life.#OTD 19 October 1944, Dr. Nahartabi was deported to Auschwitz. https://t.co/RfAzx629dmpic.twitter.com/or3Z9O83Pp

— Yad Vashem (@yadvashem) October 19, 2021

Portugal paid official homage Tuesday to Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese diplomat who during World War II helped save thousands of people from Nazi persecution, by placing a tomb with his name in the country’s National Pantheon.

Leading Portuguese politicians and public figures attended the formal televised ceremony as the tomb was placed alongside other celebrated figures from Portuguese history at the landmark Lisbon building.

The speaker of the Portuguese Parliament, Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, said Sousa Mendes’ conduct lent prestige to Portugal.

“People who at the decisive moment put their and their family’s safety at risk for the greater good are rare. Sousa Mendes was one of those people,” Ferro Rodrigues said in a speech.

The ceremony marked the completion of Sousa Mendes’ 80-year journey from ostracized Portuguese civil servant to honored international personage.

Perhaps Portugal’s most famous 20th-century diplomat, Sousa Mendes defied his superiors, including dictator António Salazar, when as consul in Bordeaux, France, in 1940 he handed out visas to many people who feared being hunted down by the Nazis.

You couldn’t Torquemada it: Mel Brooks is making a sequel to “History of the World: Part I,” the 1981 revue that delighted and/or appalled Jews with, among other segments, a cheery musical take on the Spanish Inquisition.

The original was a feature film; the sequel on Hulu will be a variety series, Variety reported on Monday. Brooks, who is 95, will executive-produce and write; joining him will be professional funny people Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes, Ike Barinholtz, David Stassen and Kevin Salter. Production is set to begin in 2022.

Most of the original film’s cast, including Madeline Kahn, Dom DeLuise, Gregory Hines, Cloris Leachman and Sid Caesar, have died in the 40 years since it was released.

“I can’t wait to once more tell the real truth about all the phony baloney stories the world has been conned into believing are History!” Brooks told Variety.

Brooks played a number of roles in the original “History,” including the Spanish inquisitor Torquemada in the Inquisition skit — a tough competition for the most joyfully tasteless segment. “We have a mission to convert the Jews,” Brooks sings as Torquemada, after sliding down a bannister, Broadway-style, to greet his prisoners in the torture chamber.

---

---