06/03 Links Pt2: BDS: A new face on an old hate; Jeremy Corbyn on Israel; Mekonen – Journey Of An African Jew

From Ian:

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Prof. Phyllis Chesler: This bigoted radical does not deserve a "feminist artist" award

[Angela] Davis experienced her first visit to “Palestine” (with other “scholars of color”) as a “nightmare . . . the wall, the concrete, the razor wire everywhere conveyed the impression that we were in prison.” Deftly, she compares the jailing of black Americans with the jailing of Palestinian . . . terrorists. She tells her audiences that if they support BDS, “Palestine will be free.”
In the guise of anti-racism, Davis is a bigot — an activist Jew-hater. In her lectures, she doesn’t condemn Jordan or Egypt for their anti-Palestinian actions, nor does she fault the many Arab and Muslim countries that have systematically refused citizenship and even employment to Arab Palestinians.
Davis doesn’t talk about the anti-black racism of Arabs or about the practice of real gender and religious apartheid in Muslim countries. She doesn’t even fault the Palestinian leadership for torturing and executing its gays and dissidents or for forcibly veiling and subordinating Palestinian women. A real feminist would do so.
Real feminists wouldn’t be honoring such a figure.
In early May, 100 activists and artists staged a protest at the Brooklyn Museum about “displacement both in Brooklyn and Palestine.” This demonstration was organized by the Decolonial Cultural Front and Movement to Protect the People.
No one mentioned the relentless Palestinian terrorism against Israeli Jewish civilians — or the enormous “displacement” and murder of Christians by Arab Muslims, or the “displacement” brought about by indigenous civil wars among Muslim Afghans, Libyans, Iraqis and Syrians, a “displacement” that threatens the stability and viability of the Western world.
I doubt they will demonstrate against Angela Davis.

BDS: A new face on an old hate

BDS- boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the world’s only Jewish State are nothing new, and are not related to the "occupation"- but against the very existence of Israel, within any borders.
From the Saturday Evening Post, Dec 27 1947 spoken by Salel Jabur, Prime Minister of Iraq
“What is it”, he asked me, that Americans want?” If it is a safe home for the Jews, that cannot be found in Palestine for Palestine is in the heart of the Arab world. We surround it. How shall a Jewish state live there?”
We will boycott it, give it no foods or raw materials, buy nothing from it. We will squeeze it in a ring of steel until it dies and our heart is ours again”

Richard Landes: Been up so long looks like down to me: own goal punching

Been Down So Long: Cheering the Intifada and Punching Up
Few incidents illustrate the topsy-turvy world of cognitive disorientation than last year’s controversy about PEN giving Charlie Hebdo an award for “freedom of speech.” A significant number of authors, including Joyce Carol Oates objected. Charlie Hebdo certainly had the right to do what it did, they argued, but that hardly means that we need to reward them for their actions, especially given the bad taste involved. Picking on the Muslim minority in Europe is “punching down,” and as any comedian can tell you, “punching down is not funny.” When one “speaks truth to power,” wittily or not, one punches up. Gary Trudeau, author of the Doonsbury cartoons explained:
By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech, which in France is only illegal if it directly incites violence. Well, voila—the 7 million copies that were published following the killings did exactly that, triggering violent protests across the Muslim world, including one in Niger, in which ten people died. Meanwhile, the French government kept busy rounding up and arresting over 100 Muslims who had foolishly used their freedom of speech to express their support of the attacks.
Unpacked, Trudeau’s remarks amount to the following:
Muslims cannot be expected to control themselves: if we offend them they’ll get violent.
We should be deferential to Muslims because of their tendency to violence.
We should view Muslims as a powerless, disenfranchised minority, whom we need to protect.
We should protect their right to support violence against those who offend them – i.e. those who “foolishly used their freedom of speech…”
We should protect their rights even as we disapprove of those who upset them.
Nor was he alone. Many a European newspaper, refusing to publish even the post-massacre cover depicting Muhammad shedding a tear – a newsworthy item if there ever were one – explained how they did so not because of intimidation, but just out of respect for Muslim feelings and contempt for the arrogance of those who would offend them. The NYT, the only US paper not to publish the cover, insisted it was out of consideration for the feelings of Muslims, not fear of Jihadi retaliation

When Muslim Antisemitism comes to Australia

As a boy, I spent many a Friday prayer in mosques hearing clerics wax lyrical about Jewish conspiracies and their intent to dominate the world and rid it of Islam. Descriptions of Jewish wealth, miserliness and hooked noses were commonplace. It just seemed normal and I didn't think twice about it until I started meeting Jews in high school, even being invited to my first bar mitzvah in Year 7.
There is a story told by Muslims to each other, repeated in sermons and conversations, one I remember hearing as a child, that Muhammad gloriously slaughtered hundreds of Jews.
After defeating an invading army in Medina, Muhammad allegedly turned on the Jewish residents of the Banu Qurzaya tribe, who had remained neutral in the battle. He picked hundreds of the men and murdered them before dividing the spoils of conquest, varying from women to horses, amongst his Muslim followers. The tale is not recounted in the Koran but is in the Hadith and the Sira, which is the biography of the Prophet, and is spoken about as a source of pride among clerics and scholars. There is no record of it in any Jewish historical documents.
Recent controversies in the UK have raised the prospect of antisemitism in Muslim communities and, as a consequence, a greater tolerance of it in UK Labour and other leftist parties, which those of Muslim origin overwhelmingly vote for. There is a growing view among Jews that the British Labour party no longer has a place for them, illustrated by prominent British figures such as author Howard Jacobson withdrawing their support.

Way to go, Jeremy Corbyn – root out those Jew-haters!

You can expect the Labour MP Naz Shah to be cleared pretty soon, given that she has now said she is terribly sorry, up to a point, Lord Copper. Naz had said that a perfectly good solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be to ‘relocate’ Israel to the middle of the United States of America. ‘Problem solved!’ she tweeted. She was suspended, but don’t expect that to last very long. Vicki Kirby, another activist with a colossal IQ, was suspended for saying, among other things, that Jews had ‘big noses’. She was reinstated — and then suspended again. But she’ll be back soon too, I would reckon.
At the moment, the Labour party — led by a man who calls the deeply anti–Semitic terrorist group Hamas his ‘friends’ — has suspended perhaps 18 people in the row over anti-Semitic comments. Jeremy Corbyn has said himself that anti-Semitism is not ‘a huge problem’ within the party. Following which analysis, he then appointed the not noticeably Jewish Shami Chakrabarti to lead the investigation into anti-Semitism within the addled ranks of his Momentum supporters and Muslim councillors.
I am one of the 18 still suspended, for having attempted to explain where Labour’s anti-Semitism came from — to wit, the infantile and sometimes fascistic white liberals who comprise Momentum and loathe Israel perhaps as an adjunct to loathing the West, and from Labour’s growing Muslim membership, many of whom simply hate Jews, full stop.
It is not remotely a serious investigation. Nor could it ever be, because — as Douglas Murray has pointed out — the very top of the Labour party is now comprised of people who support Muslim terrorist attacks upon Israel and, further, equate Jews with capitalism and in particular western capitalism. Oh, and they also have big noses, of course. Perhaps we should fling sausages at them.

Should Jackie walk? What Labour can learn from #football about tackling racism

Two years later, the Italian footballer Mario Balotelli, then playing for Liverpool, was banned and fined by the FA after he posted an image of computer game hero Super Mario on Instagram. At first glance it was a cute anti-racist cartoon. “Don’t be racist – be like Mario,” it read. “He’s an Italian plumber created by Japanese people who speaks English and looks like a Mexican.”
Then came the racist payoff: “Jumps like a black man and grabs coin like a Jew.”
Balotelli is Black, has a Jewish grandmother and a Jewish foster mother. He clearly isn’t racist or antisemitic and he misunderstood the meaning of the cartoon, which he quickly deleted.
Nonetheless, the FA takes a strict liability approach to the use of racist language. They charged Balotelli under FA Rule E3, invoked the “Aggravated Breach” clause in Rule E3(2) because of the reference to ethnic origin and/or colour, and Balotelli was banned for one match, fined and sent on an educational course about racism in football. His apology was genuine and heartfelt.
We know all of this because the FA published their findings on the FA website. We also know the names of the people who sat in judgement of Balotelli, an outline of the evidence they heard and the reasons for their decision.
Contrast this with the Labour Party’s murky dealings over Jackie Walker, a party activist from Kent who was recently suspended and then unsuspended for an alleged antisemitic comment on Facebook.
Walker wrote, in a discussion about the Holocaust, that “millions more Africans were killed in the African holocaust and their oppression continues today on a global scale in a way it doesn’t for Jews… and many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade.” She continued in a further post: “what do you think the Jews should do about their contribution to the African holocaust? What debt do they owe?”

Jeremy Corbyn on Israel

Here’s Jeremy Corbyn talking about Israel while on a demonstration outside Downing Street in September 2011. He has some really interesting views on what’s going on in Israel within the 1948 borders as he puts it:
“And within the 1948 borders of Israel there are another very large group of Palestinians whose homes are being destroyed by property speculators, their villages destroyed, the ecology of the desert destroyed as the settlements continue to strike out the life blood of the Palestinian people.”
Of course this is just Jez being himself but it gave us a wonderful opportunity to create our very own Youtube Channel.

Comparing Israel to Nazis Is Anti-Semitic, 31 Western Nations Declare

An intergovernmental body devoted to commemorating the Holocaust adopted a definition of anti-Semitism that includes some hate speech against Israel.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA, adopted the definition on May 26, according to a statement posted earlier this week on its website. The organization was launched in 1998 and has 31 member states, all of them Western nations, and 11 observer countries.
“Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews,” reads the newly adopted text, which the IHRA called a “non-legally binding working definition.”
Manifestations, the definition reads, “might include the targeting of the State of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity” though “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.”
The examples section of the definition includes classic forms of Jew hatred such as “stereotypical allegations about Jews as such” and spreading conspiracy theories about Jews, as well as calls to harm Jews.

PreOccupiedTerritory: UK Labour Sea Bed Survey Finds No Evidence Of Antisemitism (satire)

A study of the sea floor commissioned by the Labour Party to look for evidence of bias against Jews has concluded that the phenomenon does not exist, the party’s leader announced today.
MP Jeremy Corbyn told reporters that an exhaustive survey of the ocean floor has found nothing to indicate the presence of antisemitism, and that recent accusations that Labour has a problem with antisemitism in its ranks has now been conclusively disproved. He made the remarks at a press conference dedicated to the publication of the findings.
“It is my sincere hope that we can now put this unfortunate episode behinds us,” intoned Corbyn, members of whose party have been extensively documented vilifying Jews as a group, often failing to veil their hatred for Jews behind a veil of opposition to Israeli policies. “For weeks, this special commission looked at every available square metre of the earth beneath the North Sea, the Irish Sea, the English Channel, and all around Scotland, and found not a trace of antisemitism. It is time to lay this canard to rest, and return to the business of conducting an effective opposition to the Conservatives.”
Labour officials praised the results of the study. “I could have told you this would be the case,” said former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone.
The results of the undersea survey recalled a similar case during the last round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, when, despite Israeli accusations, a comprehensive geological study of Venezuela failed to turn up any evidence that Hamas had committed war crimes, such as using the residents of the Gaza Strip as human shields and placing military positions in, under, or abutting civilian targets.

There’s nobody left to oppose UCU bigotry

The reason that we do not hear much about anti-Semitism anymore in the University and College Union (UCU) is not that the culture has changed. It is that there are no Jews left in the decision making structures of the union willing or able to oppose it.
For more than a decade now UCU has had a tacit deal with its core of Israel-hating activists. The activists pass whatever motions they like about boycotting Israelis and about the threat of Israel and what it calls ‘Zionism’ on our campuses; and then the union bureaucracy rules that they will not be acted upon because to do so would be illegal. The activists are happy because they can make their radical speeches; the bureaucracy is happy because it does not have to do anything.
Back in 2005 and 2007 this was fun for the boycotters because they were able to have a fight with the Jews; those Jews anyway who did not support excluding Israelis, and only Israelis, from our campuses. The boycotters enjoyed going up the lectern, preening themselves and speechifying about how courageous they were to stand up against Zionist power.
Nowadays it is not so much fun because there are no Jews left at UCU Congress who are willing or able to stand up against them. There are a few Jews there, but they are Jews who support and kosherize the boycott campaign; there is also a handful of Jews who keep their heads down for their own reasons.

SPME BDS Monitor: Boycott Movements Thrive on Campus and in Sanders Camp

The academic year closed with dramatic protests to shut down pro-Israel and free speech events. But other developments, the rejection of a BDS resolution and further association with the movement by the United Methodist Church, and the appointment of BDS supporters to the Democratic Party’s platform committee, show BDS is firmly an issue in the religious and political mainstream. The two Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton who denounced BDS before the Methodist vote, and Bernie Sanders, who appointed the BDS supporters to the Democratic Party platform committee, neatly illustrate the role of political leaders in suppressing and encouraging anti-Israel sentiment. The divide also portends a bitter divide within the party.
The most dramatic campus BDS protest in May took place at the University of California Irvine where pro-Israel students screened a film about the Israeli army. Some 50 BDS protesters including the local Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) chapters attempted to enter the room and effectively prevented others from leaving or entering while yelling “intifada, intifada — long live the intifada! F—k Israel and f—k the police,” “displacing people since ‘48/ there’s nothing here to celebrate,” and “all white people need to die.” After the film ended campus police escorted the pro-Israel students from the building. Students complained of feeling threatened by the protesters.
Accompanying the protesters were representatives of the National Lawyers Guild, who claimed “The protesters made no threats, destroyed no property, and listened to UCIPD when they said they needed an unobstructed exit.” SJP celebrated the incident saying it had “successfully demonstrated against the presence of IDF soldiers on campus,” and denied that the slogan “All white people need to die” had been used.

Anti-Israel boycott movement hit by slew of cyberattacks

The international movement calling for a boycott against Israel said on Thursday its website was repeatedly attacked earlier this year and raised suspicions that Israel was behind the attacks.
The BDS movement released a report showing that its main website was hit by six attacks in February and March. The denial-of-service attacks, which work by flooding a target website with bogus traffic, knocked out the BDS website for several hours at a time.
The report, compiled by nonprofit online security service eQualit.ie, said the attacks had a level of "sophistication and commitment" it normally does not see. It also noted that an unidentified Israeli human rights group had been attacked at the same time, indicating there was a "common adversary."
Assigning responsibility for cyberattacks is notoriously difficult and the report did not speculate on who might be behind the rogue traffic.
In a statement, the BDS movement said the "advanced technology used in the attacks and the size of the botnets involved may show that Israel was directly involved," but it offered no hard evidence.
Israeli cybersecurity expert Gilad Yoshi, of the electronic defense training company CyberGym, said such attacks do not cause serious damage and it was unlikely a government was behind them.
"These are not high-level attacks," Yoshi said.

McGill U Professor Calls Student Judicial Ban on BDS ‘Huge;’ Says It Recognizes ‘Jewish Concerns Deserve Respect Like All Others’

A history professor and anti-BDS warrior at McGill University in Canada responded enthusiastically to a landmark decision taken on Wednesday by the legal arm of the institution’s student body to ban anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions activities on campus.
Gil Troy, among 150 academics at McGill who recently signed an open letter lauding the principal of the university for condemning BDS and calling on faculty everywhere to do the same, told The Algemeiner on Thursday that in his view, “This decision is huge! It means that Jewish concerns are respected with all others, and that antisemitism is also recognized as bigotry, as well as something that triggers macro-aggressions.”
Troy, author of Why I Am A Zionist and a Shalom Hartman Research Fellow in Jerusalem, where he lives, was responding to the “Reference re Legality of the BDS Motion and Similar Motions” — a long, detailed “legal” document issued by the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Judicial Board, which reached what it called a “unanimous” decision to eliminate efforts to promote anti-Israel boycotts at the Montreal-based school, asserting that such activities are discriminatory, unconstitutional and in violation of SSMU’s “equity policy.”
The decision came in the wake of three BDS motions over the past year and a half, which were put to a student vote at McGill and defeated.

Students Supporting Israel: Anti-Semitism on Campus: A Student’s Perspective

The elocution was the most terrifying hour of my life. I was told that the Holocaust was a myth perpetuated by Jewish to justify the “occupation of Palestine”; that rabbis tell Israeli soldiers to annihilate Muslims; that we control the media and the banks; that we as Jewish people are supremacists who view the rest of the world as cattle; that the Talmud is full of hateful doctrine and that we deserve the hate an prejudice against us. He said he would support “legitimate resistance” but left that vague which caused me to wonder whether that meant attacks against the Jewish people. I watched as the room with 500 or so people applauded this insane bigotry.
I wanted to cry or panic but I knew that if I did in that space I would have been outed as a Jewish Zionist and I worried that I would have been assaulted for it. I have never felt as scared to be who I am as I was in that room. I felt sick to my stomach listening to this slanderous diatribe, especially in what is meant to be a educational space.
The fact that our tax dollars fund this University means we have a say and an obligation to stop it. I was proud when Avi Benlolo, CEO of the Friends of Simon Weisenthal Centre and speaker at the rally introduced legislation to curb the BDS movement in Ontario, especially on campus, along with MPPs Mike Colle and Tim Hudak. The bill stated that public entities could not enter contracts with businesses that implemented BDS and that educational institutions could not implement BDS. This would have created a financial disincentive for companies to practice BDS.
I was dismayed when it failed as the failure illustrates complacency at best and deep seated prejudice at worst when it comes to tackling anti-semitism. I urge all of you to write to your MPP about this to show your disapproval if they voted this legislation down or to voice your support if they voted in favour of it. I also urge you to take a stand; write articles, come to rallies and fund initiatives that curb BDS and anti-semitism. We can make an impact if we come together.

BDS is failing: a continuing series (June 2016)

Here’s the latest installment in our monthly round-up of BDS fails.
Economic
VW Invests $300 million in Israeli rideshare Gett
German auto giant Volkswagen has made a $300 million investment in Israeli rideshare start-up Gett, which has a presence in more than 60 countries worldwide including London, Moscow and New York.
The deal will see the two companies form a “strategic partnership,” which will allow them to share data and explore collaboration for future projects. Volkswagen will offer Gett’s services to business customers, while Gett drivers will be able to buy discounted VW cars to use as taxis.
Volkswagen said the deal was part of a move towards modernizing the company’s technological and business platforms.
UK healthcare company BTG plc for $110 million
Cancer treatment company Galil Medical has been acquired by UK healthcare company BTG plc for $110 million. Galil Medical, which has its development operations in Yokneam near Haifa, has developed cryoablation systems and needles for treating kidney, prostate and other types of cancer. BTG, traded on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq specializes in cancer treatments and medical devices and has a market cap of $2.2 billion.

Disputed or occupied? Documenting the BBC’s continuing double standards

On June 1st the BBC News website published an article – “Western Sahara: Polisario Front leader Abdelaziz dies” – in which the corporation’s double standards were once again on display.
“Mohamed Abdelaziz, 68, was secretary-general of the Polisario Front, which fights for an end to Moroccan rule in Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony annexed by Rabat in 1975. […]
Morocco considers Western Sahara to be its “southern provinces”, but Algeria and other countries recognise the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) declared by the Polisario Front in 1976. […]
The Moroccan government has proposed wide-ranging autonomy for the region, but the Polisario Front wants self-determination through a referendum for the local population, as called for in UN resolutions.
In April Morocco expelled 84 UN civilian staff after after [sic] UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon referred to Morocco’s rule over Western Sahara as “occupation” during a visit to refugee camps in Tindouf.
The same month, senior Polisario Front member Bachir Mustafa Sayed warned of possible war over the disputed territory if the UN failed to set a timetable for a referendum on self-determination.”
The BBC’s presentation of Western Sahara as “disputed territory” contrasts markedly with its inevitable – and stipulated – portrayal of Judea & Samaria, parts of Jerusalem and even the Gaza Strip as “occupied”. As long as that inconsistency in terminology exists, the corporation cannot be surprised that its impartiality is called into question.

Washington Post on ‘Netanyahu’s Shift’ Conventional, Not Wise

Washington Post editorial writers opine under the headline “Mr. Netanyahu's rightward shift; He says progress on a Palestinian state is still possible, but he'll need to back such talk with action” (June 2, 2016, print edition).
Actually, no, he won't—at least not initially. Palestinian leaders will—unless The Post wants readers to imagine Netanyahu wields a magic wand. It's up to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of PA leadership to test the Israeli prime minister's rhetoric. If the Palestinian side seeks, despite its repeated rejections, what is still referred to as a “two-state solution,” then it should negotiate.
But as The Post editorial concedes, obliquely enough to be missed, “Netanyahu may protest, with some reason, that Palestinian leaders have been uncompromising.” How uncompromising? The newspaper declines to elucidate. But for readers who push through the 572-word lead editorial, some missing fundamentals:
*In 2000, at Camp David, the Palestinian side, led by Yasser Arafat, rejected a U.S.-Israeli offer of a West Bank and Gaza Strip “Palestine,” with eastern Jerusalem as its capital, in exchange for peace with Israel. Instead of a counter-offer, it launched the second intifada.
*In 2001, at Taba, Egypt Palestinian leaders rebuffed a similar two-state proposal and continued the intifada, in which more than 1,000 Israelis and more than 2,000 Palestinian Arabs died.
*In 2008, Abbas rejected a third two-state deal that included land swaps roughly compensating “Palestine” for approximately two percent of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), including the major settlement blocs, to be annexed by Israel. Again, the Palestinian side made no counter-proposal.
*In 2014, Abbas spurned U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's “framework” to resume negotiations with Israel leading to a two-state agreement.
*In March, 2016 Palestinian leaders likewise rebuffed an initiative with the same objective by U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden.

IHRA adopts working definition of antisemitism: when will the BBC?

At the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism held in May 2015, one of the many issues identified was the necessity for media organisations to adopt standard accepted definitions of antisemitism such as the EUMC Working Definition or the US State Department definition.
We have in the past noted here the need for the BBC to work according to a recognised definition of antisemitism in order to prevent the appearance of antisemitic discourse in its own content as well as on its comments boards and social media chatrooms.
Among the proposals included in BBC Watch’s submission to the DCMS public consultation on the renewal of the BBC’s charter was the following:
“The need for the BBC to work according to an accepted definition of antisemitism in order to ensure that complaints are handled uniformly, objectively and accountably is obvious. In addition, the absence of adoption of an accepted definition of antisemitism means that […] public funding is likely to be wasted on dealing with complaints from the general public which, if a definition were available, might not have been submitted.
Clearly the compilation of such a definition is neither within the role nor the expertise of the BBC and common sense would dictate that the definition adopted by Britain’s public broadcaster should be the one already used by the All Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism and the College of Policing Hate Crime Operational Guidance (2014) – i.e. the EUMC Working Definition. That definition was also recommended to media organisations as an industry standard by the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism in May 2015.”

French magazine forced to disable comments to ‘The Jews’

A well-known French magazine was forced to close the online comment section of an article about a new film about anti-Semitism because it was inundated with anti-Semitic statements.
Fifteen minutes after the article about “The Jews” was published Monday on the website of the weekly Marianne, “a flood of hysterical comments” appeared under the text, the author of the article, Martine Gozlan, wrote in an op-ed about the decision to shut down the comments.
The comments were “not only polemical or hostile: Those comment are welcome,” she wrote, “but bare naked hate, crass nonsense, ignorance made of a patchwork of rumors and conspiracy theories.” She added that “the taboo words ‘Israel’ and ‘Jews’ regularly provoke such reactions.”
“But this time, I said enough. Stop the flood. End the fanfare and the comments,” she wrote in a separate article, which also was closed for comments. Calling anti-Semitism a “malignant tumor,” Gozlan wrote that she was no longer prepared to “see it grow, flourish and disfigure Marianne.”

Anti-Semitism jumps by more than 100% in New England

Anti-Semitic incidents in New England are up more than 100% this year, according to numbers released this week by the Anti-Defamation League.
In 2015, an average of five such incidents occurred each month, while so far this year, there have been over 10 each month. The increase is "fueled by vandalism, harassment, and other acts at schools and colleges," reports the Boston Globe.
“Clearly, people are acting out on some long-held stereotypes and hatred toward Jews," said Robert Trestan, director of the New England Regional Office of the ADL, "and it’s designed to send a message of intimidation. We’re increasingly living in an environment where incivility is becoming common and accepted practice.”
In April, Newton's Mayor Setti Warren called a public forum to discuss ways to respond to the rising anti-Semitism in the city – though he did not use that term in his advance letter to residents about the forum. Despite this, most of the discussion at the forum did, in fact, center around the growing anti-Semitism in Newton, and particularly in its schools.
Of the 56 incidents so far this year, the vast majority, 47, occurred in Massachusetts. Half of these occurred at public and private schools and college campuses.

Rabbi slams Ukraine for honoring anti-Semites

The chief rabbi of Moscow condemned the honoring in Ukraine of nationalists whose troops massacred Jews.
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, who is also the president of the European Conference of Rabbis, spoke of his “concern” over the trend in an interview Tuesday with JTA during a gathering of the standing committee of the Conference in Vienna.
Goldschmidt was referring to Ukraine’s May 25 minute of silence observed in memory of Symon Petliura, a 1920s statesman whom a Russian Jew killed 90 years ago because the killer blamed Petliura for mass murders of Jews committed in the years 1917-1921 by militias under Petliura’s command.
A French court acquitted the killer in 1927 in what many interpreted as confirmation of Petliura’s culpability for pogroms that claimed the lives of 50,000 Jews. Earlier this week, a government official said Kiev would name streets after Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with Nazi Germany and whose troops also killed Jews.
“Russian Jews and Ukrainian Jews share our concern by this celebration of the memory of known anti-Semites and collaborators,” Goldschmidt said, noting that Ukraine has a Jewish prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman.

‘Mein Kampf’ Publisher: ‘Have the Courage’ to Judge the Book for Yourself

Der Schelm, a publishing house in Leipzig, Germany—it’s owned by Adrian Plessinger, who has been “convicted of multiple counts of inciting racial hatred” according to Deutsche Wells—has begun selling a new edition of the 1943 version of Mein Kampf that is “unchanged and without comment.” Doing so may be against the law.
Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s treatise on his vision for the future of the Austro-German state and the Aryan race, was published in two volumes between 1925 and 1926. During his time as a rising political force and eventual place as Führer of Germany and leader of the Nazi Party, the book sold by the millions within the expanding German empire, becoming de facto required reading for the German populace. Hitler’s death in 1945 brought an end to the Nazi regime, but it started another debate—that of intellectual property rights.
This January, after a period of seventy years in which the rights to Mein Kampf were still retained by the Bavarian government, Mein Kampf entered the public domain in Germany. The Bavarian government made a decision to allow a German publisher to release a critical edition of the books, complete with over 3,500 annotations and notes from German scholars and historians. The idea behind the release was to contextualize and preface the book for a new generation of German readers. Though that decision itself was not without controversy, especially among Jewish groups in Germany, these recent developments have complicated the situation even further.
According to The New York Times, prosecutors in Leipzig are currently looking into whether or not there is any legal precedent that would allow them to press charges against Der Schelm, since the sale of Mein Kampf in its original form—that is, without the updated annotations—”risks violating Germany’s law against the distribution of Nazi propaganda.” German law on the promotion or production of Nazi ideology is notoriously stringent, emblematic of the liberal bent of post-war German political ideology.

‘Overwhelming’ number of riders in Auschwitz bike event

A record 150 cyclists or more are scheduled to participate in the third Holocaust commemorative “Ride for the Living” in Poland.
Participants aged 16-81 from eight countries are scheduled to join the 55-mile trek from the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in southern Poland to the Jewish community center in Krakow that begins on Friday.
The solidarity ride will be led by Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, and Auschwitz survivor Marcel Zielinski, according to Jonathan Ornstein, the director of the Krakow JCC.
Last year’s event featured 85 cyclists.
“We are overwhelmed by the incredible worldwide response to ‘Ride for the Living,’” Ornstein told JTA, noting the first ride had only 15 participants.
He said some 1,000 riders will be participating in rides organized across the United States and Canada by local Jewish communities in solidarity with the Polish event.

Israel to light up Georgia with state’s first solar field

Israel will be a literal light upon the nations – at least in the US state of Georgia, that is – after an Israeli solar energy company opens the state’s first commercial- scale solar field on Friday.
On Friday, Georgia Power and Energiya Global subsidiary Energiya USA will inaugurate the 24-hectare (59-acre) solar power field in Glynn County, Georgia after winning the competitive $30 million tender in 2014. As part of the 20-year contract, with the state power giant, it will produce 22.5 megawatts of electricity.
As part of its renewable energy initiative, Georgia Power is building nine other solar fields throughout the state with different companies.
Ahead of the inauguration, Energiya CEO Yosef Abramowitz said that “as an Israeli company, we are proud to help the US government take advantage of the land’s potential, especially in the field of solar energy.”
Before the field’s inauguration on Thursday, Energiya will first receive the “Deal of the Year” award from Conexx America-Israel Business Connector, which links Israeli and American businesses, at their annual Eagle Star Gala.

Famous Bollywood Actress Visits Israel

Sonam Kapoor may not be a household name in Israel, but she is a huge deal in India, where she is one of the highest-paid actresses in Bollywood.
However, Israeli media have seemed to ignore her visit. But not to worry – that’s where Aussie Dave and Israellycool come in!
Sonam was here as a guest of the Israeli tourism ministry, for a magazine shoot by the sounds of things. She apparently extended her stay after her work was over.
A source close to the actress stated that, “Sonam was shooting in Jerusalem. After wrapping up her work, she decided to spend some more days in the country to spend time with her mum. They went for sightseeing. Usually, Sunita never accompanies Sonam for her shoots, but since she did this time, Sonam wanted to make the trip special for her.”

Israeli Who Won First-Place Award at Cannes Student Competition Says Not All Art Hailing From Jewish State Reflects Palestinian Conflict (INTERVIEW)

An Israeli filmmaker who won the top award at a competition at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival last month told The Algemeiner on Wednesday that not all films made in the Jewish state need to examine the conflict with the Palestinians — and that hers is a case in point.
“My film has no politics in it,” said Or Sinai, whose short film, Anna, won first place in the Cinéfondation student film competition. “Its story doesn’t reflect the ‘situation’ at all.”
“I guess when you’re outside of Israel, you think the conflict is something Israelis have to confront every day, but as an Israeli — as someone who has lived in Israel all my life — it’s simply a fact of life. Of course, there are periods when it is more on one’s mind, like two summers ago, during the war [Operation Protective Edge against Hamas terrorists in Gaza], which was horrible. But I don’t feel as though I create films about other subjects that they are some kind of therapy for the situation.”
Anna, which stars Israeli actress Evgenia Dodina, tells the story of a single mother who finds herself without her 10-year-old son for the first time in years, so she decides to roam the streets of her desert town in search of a man to be with, even for that one day. Sinai, 31, won a $16,800 cash prize for the 24-minute film, as well as a guarantee that her first full-length film will be screened at a future Cannes festival.

200,000 crowd Tel Aviv streets for annual pride parade

Under arches of rainbow balloons and flags, more than 200,000 people thronged through the streets of Tel Aviv Friday for the annual Gay Pride Parade.
Hundreds of police officers and volunteers were dispatched to help secure the march. Cars were banned from parking along the route of the parade, and traffic was redirected.
Knesset security also beefed up protection for Likud MK Amir Ohana, an openly gay member of Israel’s parliament, following threats to harm him during the event.
Sources close to Ohana blamed the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer (LGBTQ) community, telling Army Radio that it was unfortunate that such an open and accepting community would do to “the only gay MK in the coalition just because he’s right wing.”
Fellow Likud politician Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev told participants she “loves” the gay community and was happy to see so many participating in the event. She said the government “needs to do more for you because you deserve it like everyone else.”

Mekonen – Journey Of An African Jew

At UC-Irvine, violent protesters forced a Jewish student to hide and call police.
Protest organizers Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) commended the demonstration on Facebook, calling it a “success” and justifying the violent protesting tactics because of the presence of police and IDF soldiers.
Rabbi Raphael Shore of Jerusalem U and his wife Rebecca, produced “Beneath the Helmet,” the documentary film SJP tried to keep from being shown in California. Shore said that having 10 students willing to come out in the hostile campus environment to see the movie was an accomplishment.
One of the original characters in the real life story of young IDF recruits was Mekonen Abebe. Now a star in a follow-up film, “Mekonen – Journey of an African Jew,” we learn more about his life, trials and triumphs. Falasha means stranger. Mekonen talks about always being an outsider in Ethiopia. As a 5 year-old boy, he was a shepherd, in a family with dreams of returning to Zion.
He had only a mud roof over his head for most of his youth, but Mekonen has made it to Israel and is now an officer in the IDF.

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Haltwhistle to Alston in 1976

This branch is a branch that survived the closures of the Beeching years but succumbed in the following decade. The film here was shot in 1976, its final year of operation.

Today part of the trackbed is used by the South Tyndale Railway, but if the whole branch had survived only a few more years it might still be open today.

Thanks to Tim Hall on Twitter.

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Hamas arrests five Presidential Guards for "collaboration" - with the PA

Fatah media reports that Hamas arrested five members of the Presidential Guard for "collaborating" with Palestinian Authority that it claims it is unified with.

On Wednesday morning, Hamas reportedly arrested Mohammed Ghazi Khitab, Isaac Ibrahim Abdullah Hussein, Shadi Alslol, Hatem Yousef Mohammed Hasanat, and Mohammed Abdul Rahman Ibrahim Mattar.

The story goes on to accuse Hamas of building secret, underground prisons specifically for political opponents, where they routinely engage in torture. Some are in the basements of mosques which are soundproofed so that the residents nearby don't hear the screams.

Fatah media is even less trustworthy than Hamas media, but the arrests and charges of torture are probably true.

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Drunk vicar: ‘I’m from the Vatican, you're f**ked’

A new winner of our Headline of the Day Award: well done Court News UK.

Thanks to Joe Oliver on Twitter.

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Hundreds attend funeral of Holocaust survivor they didn't know

From Miriam Goodman on Facebook:

Now this is Israel...and her people!

Following an announcement that there was no minyan (quorum) to accompany Holocaust survivor Fernand Pavel Klitz, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, hundreds of people came to his funeral. They came from all over the country . Secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox. Old and young. School children
The burial society motorcycles escorted the procession and the coffin was carried by IDF officers and soldiers who came on their own initiative.

While this is impressive, it also points to a problem: people should worry more about these incredible survivors while they are still alive. so they wouldn't die alone.

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06/03 Links Pt1: Israel Criticized for Declining Invitation to National Suicide; Iran’s chess board

From Ian:

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Charles Krauthammer: Israel Criticized for Declining Invitation to National Suicide

This seems a gratuitous provocation. Sanders hardly made Israel central to his campaign. He did call Israel’s response in the 2014 Gaza war “disproportionate” and said “we cannot continue to be one-sided.” But now Sanders seeks to permanently alter — i.e., weaken — the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel, which has been close and supportive since Harry Truman recognized the world’s only Jewish state when it declared independence in May 1948.
[Cornel] West doesn’t even pretend, as do some left-wing “peace” groups, to be opposing Israeli policy in order to save it from itself. He makes the simpler case that occupation is unconscionable oppression and that until Israel abandons it, Israel deserves to be treated like apartheid South Africa — anathematized, cut off, made to bleed morally and economically. The Sanders appointees wish to bend the Democratic platform to encourage such diminishment unless Israel redeems itself by liberating Palestine.
This is an unusual argument for a Democratic platform committee, largely because it is logically and morally perverse. Israel did in fact follow such high-minded advice in 2005: It terminated its occupation and evacuated Gaza. That earned it (temporary) praise from the West. And from the Palestinians? Not peace, not reconciliation, not normal relations but a decade of unrelenting terrorism and war.
Israel is now being asked — pressured — to repeat that same disaster on the West Bank. That would bring the terror war, quite fatally, to the very heart of Israel — Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport. Israel is now excoriated for declining that invitation to national suicide.
It is ironic that the most successful Jewish presidential candidate ever should be pushing the anti-Israel case. But perhaps not surprising considering Sanders’ ideological roots. He is old left — not the post-1960s, countercultural New Left. Why, the man honeymooned in the Soviet Union — not such fashionably cool communist paradises as Sandinista Nicaragua where Bill de Blasio went to work for the cause or Castro’s Cuba where de Blasio honeymooned. (Do lefties all use the same wedding planner?)
For the old left, Israel was simply an outpost of Western imperialism, Middle East division. To this day, the leftist consensus, most powerful in Europe (which remains Sanders’ ideological lodestar), holds that Israeli perfidy demands purification by Western chastisement.

Caroline Glick: Iran’s chess board

Strategic thinking has always been Israel’s Achilles’ heel. As a small state bereft of regional ambitions, so long as regional realities remained more or less static, Israel had little reason to be concerned about the great game of the Middle East.
But the ground is shifting in the lands around us. The Arab state system, which ensured the strategic status quo for decades, has collapsed.
So for the first time in four generations, strategy is again the dominant force shaping events that will impact Israel for generations to come.
To understand why, consider two events of the past week.
Early this week it was reported that after a two-year hiatus, Iran is restoring its financial support for Islamic Jihad. Iran will give the group, which is largely a creation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, $70 million.
On Wednesday Iranian media were the first to report on the arrest of a “reporter” for Iran’s Al-Alam news service. Bassam Safadi was arrested by Israel police in his home in Majdal Shams, the Druse village closest to the border with Syria on the Golan Heights. Safadi is suspected of inciting terrorism.
That is, he is suspected of being an Iranian agent.

Israel Foes Will Always Have Paris

But times have changed. The Europeans are more hostile to Israel than ever. Their justification for this attitude is their belief that Israel has taken a hard turn to the right and can cite the recent coalition changes in the Jewish state as proof that they are right. They conveniently ignore the fact that the Palestinians have repeatedly refused peace offers that would have given them a state. Moreover, if they were really interested in working with the Israelis they’d follow up on Netanyahu’s renewed embrace of a two-state solution and stated willingness to negotiate about the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. But what can’t be ignored is the influence of a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe and the effect — however indirect it might be — on government attitudes toward Israel. There is no cost for treating Israel unfairly or giving the Palestinians a pass for their support for terrorism is and benefits to be had in terms of domestic and foreign applause.
At the same time, those planning these events know that after Election Day, President Obama will have a couple of months when he will feel free to settle scores with Netanyahu without having to worry about its impact on the presidential election. Whether that means a U.S. initiative to impose terms about borders, settlements, Jerusalem and refugees on Israel or merely a decision to not veto a Palestinian independence resolution in the Security Council, it’s clear that Obama has something up his sleeve before he leaves office.
What will begin tomorrow in Paris won’t lead to diplomatic progress but it must be considered as the start of an effort whose certain failure will serve as an excuse for imposing dangerous terms on Israel. As with past such efforts, the only thing that it will encourage will be more Palestinian intransigence and a new round of terrorist warfare. Those who want to encourage peace rather than the isolation of Israel must hope that the next president — whoever he or she might be — will seek to influence Obama from making things worse and make sure the world knows that they will have Israel’s back once they take office. Failing that, what the French start with lofty rhetoric about peace will likely only end in more bloodshed.

Paris summit ends with bland communique

The Paris summit on Middle East peace ended Friday afternoon with a brief statement acknowledging that “acts of violence,” and not only settlement activity, are endangering a two-state solution.
After a delay of some two hours with the delegates from the 29 countries and international organizations trying to come to a consensus statement, a joint rather bland communique was issued with the participants reaffirming their “support for a just, lasting and comprehensive resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
The statement read that the parties “reaffirmed that a negotiated two-state solution is the only way to achieve an enduring peace, with two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. They are alarmed that actions on the ground, in particular continued acts of violence and ongoing settlement activity, are dangerously imperiling the prospects for a two-state solution.”
A brief document put out by the French on Thursday explaining the purpose of the summit said that the two state solution was under increased threat, “particularly with regard to continued settlement activities.” That document made no mention of Palestinian terrorism.

Analysis: Israel can sigh relief at parve Paris communique

The communique that emerged Friday would not have been as neutral and bland as it was without US efforts to water down the language, and Israel was in close coordination with Washington over the last few weeks on this matter. The Obama Administration has not hidden its displeasure over the years with Israel's policies regarding the diplomatic process. But it also understands -- though this is less frequently stated or reported -- that Israel is not solely responsible for the stalemate, and that the Palestinians also bear much of the responsibility.
This came out clearly in the communique. While a French explanatory note on Thursday reflected Paris's thinking, that the two-state solution was under threat primarily because of the settlements, Friday's communique added another reason: “continued acts of violence.”
For weeks Israel had come out very strongly against the Paris meeting, concerned it would be the beginning of an international effort to gang up and force a solution on Israel. For exactly that same reason, the Palestinians embraced the summit. After the communique, they had little reason to rejoice.
The Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the Paris summit was a “missed opportunity.”

France says Israeli settlements main ‘threat’ to two-state solution, ahead of peace summit

Forget unrelenting terrorism, the Hamas-Fatah split, and the consistent Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as the national home of the Jews. According to a French pre-summit paper published on Thursday, settlement activity is the main threat to a two-state solution.
The brief document put out by the French Foreign Ministry to explain the French initiative and the one-day Mideast summit to be held in Paris on Friday said the two-state solution was under increased threat, “particularly with regard to continued settlement activities.”
Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold said in response that what has disrupted the peace process more than any other factor since the 1993 Oslo Accords has been the “breakdown of security due to the Palestinian adoption of violence against Israel.”
Citing the suicide bombings, the rockets from Gaza, and the current wave of knife attacks, Gold said that “to ignore this recent history and focus on Israeli settlements is to completely distort what is going on in the Middle East.”
The document did not include a word regarding any Palestinian culpability for the current diplomatic logjam. It also seemed to seek to revitalize the notion, which lost much of its currency following the Arab Spring, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was at the core of instability in the Middle East.

Israel MFA DG Gold Statement on the Paris Conference


Israel-Palestinian peace initiatives are suddenly popping up everywhere

Until a week ago, it seemed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process was a flat-liner.
President Obama thought so. In March, he said he wouldn’t seek to jump-start talks — the two sides were too far apart; it was not in the cards.
Now Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives are popping up all over.
On Friday, the French will host a meeting of about 25 foreign ministers, including Secretary of State John F. Kerry, to seek international consensus on a way to move talks forward.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said Kerry was going to Paris to learn and listen — not to lead.
“It’s about being there, being part of the discussion, exploring ideas and options that might get us closer to a two-state solution,” Kirby said.
But Kerry’s presence in Paris worries Israelis who fear that the international community is going to press them to end the 49-year military occupation of the West Bank and the partial trade and travel blockage of Gaza, and to stop ongoing construction of Jewish settlements on land the Palestinians want for a future state.
The Israelis also have their eyes on the calendar. They are concerned that the Obama ­administration will, before leaving office, enshrine a two-state ­solution in a speech or a U.N. resolution, in effect laying out the final status ahead of negotiations.

UN chief: Israelis and Palestinians must show commitment to two-state solution

Israeli and Palestinian leaders must ensure that their actions reflect their stated commitment to a two-state solution, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said at the French ministerial conference meeting on the Middle East peace process held in Paris on Friday.
“We all agree that a two-state solution is the only viable option for a sustainable peace,” he told the forum. “Yet we all can see that the two-state solution is at great risk.”
Ki-Moon added that “Israel and Palestine must pull back from the brink by undertaking serious efforts to create the conditions which will enable a return to meaningful negotiations.”
While the Secretary General condemned “terror, violence and the incitement that fuel them”, he also cited “the ongoing settlement enterprise” and the “lack of unity between Gaza and the West Bank.” as obstacles to peace.
“Settlement activity is illegal under international law and Israel must cease its policy of expanding settlements, legalizing outposts and demolishing Palestinian structures,” he stated. “These actions raise legitimate questions about its commitment to the two-state solution and to its obligations as the Occupying Power.”

Israel to Place Gorillas Near Gaza; Hopes Int’l Community Will Care About Rocket Attacks (satire)

Looking to raise awareness and concern over the flood of rockets launched from the Gaza Strip for the past decade, Israel has decided to place gorillas throughout the communities and neighboring towns surrounding Gaza.
“For years we’ve highlighted the deaths of innocent men, women, and children from these rockets, but people throughout Europe and on college campuses in the U.S. continued to support Hamas,” a spokesman for the Israeli government told The Mideast Beast. “After seeing the outpouring of anger over the death of Harambe the gorilla, we realized we’ve been doing it all wrong.”
Israel will now place a handful of gorillas in Ashdod, Ashkelon, Sderot and other communities in the south that have seen a high number of rocket attacks. While Hamas publically insists the move won’t change its military approach, some Hamas commanders expressed concern in private conversations.
“If one of our rockets were to kill a gorilla, we would completely alienate our core support base of 18 to 22-year-old left-wing American Facebook commenters,” one senior Hamas official told The Mideast Beast off record. “That’s not a risk we can take lightly.”

Who were the 1948 Arab refugees?

Contrary to conventional "wisdom," most Arabs in British Mandate Palestine -- and most of the 320,000 1948 Arab refugees -- were migrant workers and descendants of 1831-1947 Muslim immigrants from across the Arab world. At the time, Britain enticed Arab immigration and blocked Jewish immigration.
Thus, between 1880 and 1919, Haifa's Arab population surged from 6,000 to 80,000, mostly due to migrant workers. The eruption of World War II accelerated the demand for Arab manpower by the British Mandate's military and its civilian authorities.
Moreover, Arab migrant workers were imported by the Ottoman Empire, and then by the British Mandate, to work on major civilian and military infrastructure projects. Legal and illegal Arab migrants were also attracted by economic growth generated by the Jewish community starting in 1882.
According to a 1937 report by the British Peel Commission (featured in the ground-breaking book "Palestine Betrayed" by Professor Efraim Karsh), "during 1922 through 1931, the increase of Arab population in the mixed-towns of Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem was 86%, 62% and 37% respectively, while in purely Arab towns such as Nablus and Hebron it was only 7% and a decrease of 2% in Gaza."

European Union Declares War on Internet Free Speech

Opponents counter that the initiative amounts to an assault on free speech in Europe. They say that the European Union's definition of "hate speech" and "incitement to violence" is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the EU itself.
Some Members of the European Parliament have characterized the EU's code of online conduct -- which requires "offensive" material to be removed from the Internet within 24 hours -- as "Orwellian."
"By deciding that 'xenophobic' comment in reaction to the crisis is also 'racist,' Facebook has made the view of the majority of the European people... into 'racist' views, and so is condemning the majority of Europeans as 'racist.'" — Douglas Murray.
In January 2013, Facebook suspended the account of Khaled Abu Toameh after he wrote about corruption in the Palestinian Authority. The account was reopened 24 hours later, but with the two posts deleted and no explanation.

CENSORED: Facebook deletes a Gatestone author's page!

Dear Readers,
On Tuesday, the European Union (EU) announced a new online speech code to be enforced by four major tech companies, including Facebook and YouTube.
On Wednesday, Facebook deleted the account of Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestone's Swedish expert.
It's no coincidence.
Ingrid had posted our latest video to her Facebook feed -- called "Sweden's Migrant Rape Epidemic." As you can see, Ingrid calmly lays out the facts and statistics, all of which are meticulously researched.
It's a video version of this research paper that Gatestone published last year. The video has gone viral -- racking up more than 80,000 views in its first two days.
But the EU is quite candid: it is applying a political lens to their censorship, and it now has teams of political informants -- with the Orwellian title of "trusted reporters" -- to report any cases of "xenophobia" or "hate speech" to Facebook for immediate deletion.

Trump says ‘no place in society’ for anti-Semitism

Donald J.Trump condemned the flurry of anti-Semitic rhetoric and invective stirring among some supporters of his presidential bid on Thursday.
Addressing a number of incidents online in which his avowed supporters have targeted Israel, Jewish figures and journalists, Trump said in a statement that “anti-Semitism has no place our society, which needs to be united, not divided.”
The Republican presidential nominee was repeating a statement he made last month to The New York Times after controversy first stirred over his views of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan who warned of “Jewish extremists” thwarting his candidacy.
But some Jewish figures, pro-Israel organizations and media commentators have questioned whether Trump’s original condemnation was sufficient, given the sheer volume of anti-Semitic attacks lobbed on the Internet against Jews at all critical of Trump.
“He didn’t just say, ‘I denounce it,’ which is a good statement but doesn’t go far enough,” Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s top adviser on Israel and the Jewish world, told the Post. “What he instead said is, anti-Semitism has no place in our society, and we need to have a unified society. That to me is a statement that a leader should make.”
The Democratic National Committee has targeted Trump and Greenblatt for a campaign response they characterized on Thursday as “cowardly.”

Donald Trump’s anti-Semitism controversies: A timeline

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is facing growing accusations that his campaign is countenancing anti-Semitism – if not encouraging it outright.
Trump’s foreign policy slogan, “America First,” echoes the World War II-era non-interventionist movement championed by a notorious anti-Semite. During the height of the primary campaign, Trump delayed disavowing the support of white supremacist David Duke. And the candidate has failed to condemn the recent anti-Semitic vitriol directed by supporters against journalists who have written critically of Trump, including New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman and GQ writer Julia Ioffe.
In his defense, Trump and his supporters cite the fact that his daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren are Jewish (Ivanka Trump underwent an Orthodox conversion before she married Jared Kushner in 2009) [also daughter in law Lara Yunaska], that Trump was the grand marshal of the 2004 Salute to Israel Parade and that he has many Jewish friends.
“He’s not Hitler,” Melania Trump said of her husband in an interview last month after being told the comedian Louis C.K. compared the candidate to the Nazi leader.
Many, however, remain unconvinced of the defense.

Former Israeli and US officials unveil security-based proposals for two-state solution

Former Israeli and US security and diplomacy officials unveiled two proposals for achieving a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians, based on systems that would satisfy Israel’s security needs in the West Bank while providing Palestinians the sovereignty they require.
The proposals, which were facilitated and coordinated by the Israel Policy Forum, were developed by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), an independent nonpartisan research institution, and Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS), a coalition of some 200 former heads of the IDF, Shin Bet, Mossad and Israeli police forces who advocate in support of a two-state solution.
The CIS report, entitled “Security First” aims to be a “plan of action to extricate Israel from the security dead end and to improve its security situation and international standing.”
To do so, the group believes certain security measures are necessary including: completing the construction of the West Bank security fence; implementing a strict border control along the fence; continued military control over the West Bank until a permanent agreement is reached; freezing settlement building; restoring law and order in East Jerusalem and tackling illegal infiltration into Israel.

Experts Question Omission of Islamic Extremism in State Dept. Plan to Fight Terrorism

The State Department’s new strategy for fighting terrorism has been criticized by experts for failing to specifically mention the threat of Islamic extremism.
The Joint Strategy on Countering Violent Extremism, which was published last week, outlines the government’s official diplomatic anti-terror plan. In his introduction to the document, which was co-written with USAID, the U.S. government’s foreign aid bureau, Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the report:
Today we take another step forward. The Department of State and USAID have produced a proactive international strategy recognizing immediate needs, utilizing our strengths, and demonstrating our will to comprehensively address the challenge of violent extremism, including the root causes. Together, we are building organizational structures needed to pursue a more aggressive and integrated approach to this challenge. This is a generational struggle, but we must begin now.
But a memo by the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank, pointed out that “the word ‘Islam’ does not once appear in the US government’s CVE [Countering Violent Extremism] document. Neither does ‘Islamism’, ‘Islamist’, ‘radical-Islam’, ‘radical-Islamist’ or any other such formulation.”

The US Deletes Inconvenient Words — From Arafat to Iran

The US State Department’s admission that it altered an embarrassing video exchange about its nuclear negotiations with Iran is disturbing — but it’s not the first time that the Obama administration, or some of its predecessors, have tampered with words that it deemed politically inconvenient.
State Department spokesman John Kirby confessed this week that part of a 2013 video recording in its archive had been deliberately removed. In that portion of the video, then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed to a reporter that the department had sometimes lied to the press in order to hide information about its dealings with Iran. For the past three weeks, the State Department had claimed the deletion of Pskai’s statement had been caused by a technical “glitch.” Kirby, however, in admitting this week that the deletion was deliberate, claimed that the person involved “could not remember” which government official had ordered him to delete it.
The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was another beneficiary of political editing. It happened in September 1995, when Arafat traveled to Washington, DC, to meet with president Bill Clinton. The Israeli government had just agreed to withdraw from significant portions of the disputed territories, and many Israelis were nervous about the possibility that the concessions could lead to a Palestinian state.
When Arafat arrived at the White House, reporters asked him if he expected the latest developments would lead to a Palestinian state. According to Reuters, “Arafat was quite emphatic…Reporters clearly heard Arafat say ‘definitely’…A tape recording of the exchange shows that Arafat said ‘definitely’ twice.” The official White House transcript, however, omitted Arafat’s “definitely” reply. The gap in the transcript “raises the possibility that some diplomatic editing had taken place,” Reuters noted at the time.
In another instance, it was a president himself who benefitted from the State Department’s protective editing. At the 1945 Yalta conference, president Franklin D. Roosevelt mentioned to Joseph Stalin that he would soon be seeing Saudi Arabian leader Ibn Saud. The Soviet leader asked FDR if he intended to make any concessions to the king. Roosevelt replied — according to the official American note-taker — “that there was only one concession he thought he might offer and that was to give him the 6 million Jews in the United States.”
But when the Yalta transcripts were published by the State Department in 1955, Roosevelt’s remark about the Jews was replaced by a line of asterisks. Eventually, in 2011, a State Department researcher revealed that then-assistant secretary of state Walter Bedell Smith had instructed the typesetter, “Delete this — it is not pertinent history.” Translation: Smith, who worked closely with the FDR’s inner circle and frequently briefed Roosevelt during World War II, likely wanted to protect the president’s reputation by hiding his unpleasant “joke” about Jews.

Arab activist: 'Palestinians would love Israeli annexation'

Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Ayyad, a former investigator for the radical leftist NGO B'Tselem, surprised a conference of Judea and Samaria researchers at Ariel University on Thursday when he revealed unofficial Palestinian views.
Arutz Sheva got the chance to speak with Ayyad about how Palestinian Arabs view the Palestinian Authority (PA), and learned he thinks most would in fact love to see Israel annex Judea and Samaria.
Ayyad explained that "the Palestinians have become frustrated by the attitude and the behavior of the Palestinian Authority."
He noted that since the PA was created in the 1994 Oslo Accords, Arabs living under the organization only hear about corruption from it, and he emphasized that the PA hasn't built a single kindergarten in Judea, Samaria or Gaza in its entire existence.
If you were to secretly poll Palestinians, Ayyad asserted that "99.9% would ask to be under the Israeli authority rather than under the Palestinian Authority."
According to Ayyad, Palestinian Arabs living under the PA want something different, and they "would love to see themselves tomorrow annexed to Israel."

Israeli Arab Pundit Urging Louis C.K. to Cause Trouble on Jerusalem Visit

As preparations have begun for the single concert trailblazing comic Louis C.K. will perform in Jerusalem on August 18, Arab journalist, humorist and screenwriter Sayed Kashua is already upset because he fears the comic will betray the Palestinian cause—even though the comic has never declared his political views about the Middle East, other than to compare Israel and the Arabs on SNL to his two daughters having a tantrum fight. Or as Kashua put it on Friday, in his Ha’aretz column: “If he doesn’t cause a political scandal — me and Louis C.K. are finished.”
With brisk sales for the one-time event, and with prices reaching almost $200, Kashua already detects signs that the most innovative and popular American comic of the day is selling out the Arabs: he first announced his Israel concert on the Howard Stern radio show, Howard Stern whom Kashua calls “the shallow racist who thinks that if he were Israel he’s have eliminated all the citizens of Gaza in five minutes. Who claims that the Jews arrived at a totally empty place, that there were no inhabitants in that desert.”
Kashua sees the Louis C.K. visit as far more than a cultural event — to him this is a political event which legitimizes Israel’s policy, especially in Jerusalem, although the Pais Arena, where the concert is scheduled to take place, is just inside the ancient “green line” separating the pre- and post-1967 eternal city.

Like Mother, Like Son

The details of last month’s stabbing of two elderly Israeli women have finally been released, and they include several troubling revelations.
On May 11, the two women, ages 82 and 86, were stabbed by two Palestinian terrorists on the popular Haas Promenade in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood. We already knew, from one of the victims’ friends, that Arab workers standing nearby refused her pleas to call an ambulance.
But now we also know—from the details that the Israeli police recently released—that the attackers discussed their plans for the attack on their Facebook pages, and that after the attack, they also communicated via WhatsApp. Remember when we used to think that economic advancement, and the availability of modern technology, would lead the Palestinians to become more moderate? Remember the idea that if the Arabs personally experienced the benefits of the modern world, they would not risk losing it by resorting to terrorism? Instead of Facebook and WhatsApp leading to moderation, young Arabs are using them in the service of extremism and violence.
The most disturbing revelation about the May 11 attack is that the two attackers were only 16 and 17 years old, and the mother of one of them was herself recently arrested for attempting to stab Jews near Jerusalem.

Israel Steps Up Efforts to Locate Terror Tunnels Inside Gaza

The Israeli military has stepped up its efforts to locate terror tunnels inside the Gaza Strip in the last week, Walla reported Thursday.
Despite claims to the contrary by Hamas, Israeli authorities said they never agreed to stop using bulldozers or other heavy equipment on the Gazan side of the border fence as long as the threat of tunneling persisted. The IDF is also turning up the soil near the perimeter fence, preventing the growth of vegetation that could obstruct its views of Hamas activities and the placement of IEDs.
Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk claimed last month that the IDF had pulled its troops out of Gazan territory as part of an Egyptian-mediated deal.
Tensions flared earlier in May after Israel announced the discovery of two Hamas terror tunnels that extended into its territory. Hamas responded to the IDF’s efforts to uncover and destroy the tunnels near the border fence by firing mortar rounds. Israel announced that it had intercepted a Gaza-bound shipment of material that could be used for building rockets and tunnels shortly afterwards.

Palestinians to flood Temple Mount on Jerusalem Day

Palestinian Arab organizations are planning to flood Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount with Arab visitors for Jerusalem Day this coming Sunday.
Jamal Amru, an "investigator of Jerusalem affairs," spoke to the Hamas paper Palestine on Thursday about the preparations.
He said the Palestinians are preparing to take in a large number of visitors at Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday from all over "Palestine," indicating sovereign Israel, Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
Amru estimated that there will likely be clashes between Muslims and Jews at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday evening, when the Muslims perform their tarawih prayer at the start of Ramadan even as Israelis take part in the traditional Rikudegalim flag parade.
The annual Rikudegalim flag dance celebrates the liberation of the 3,000-year-old ancient Jewish capital in the 1967 Six Day War by waving Israeli flags and singing songs on Jerusalem Day.

Palestinian reality show underscores democracy woes

The winner of this “election” for Palestinian president was a 24-year-old lawyer from East Jerusalem, who defeated a woman and a Christian from Bethlehem. But this was reality television — not real life — and the vote came on a TV show called “The President” that is meant to educate young Palestinians about politics.
In reality, Palestinians haven’t had a chance to cast an actual ballot for president in over a decade.
The spirited competition among the three young finalists has drawn attention to the shortcomings of the Palestinians’ experiment with democracy, complicated by Israeli military rule, now in its 50th year, and two decades of failed peace efforts.
The last time the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip elected a leader was in January 2005, when current President Mahmoud Abbas won by a large margin. Now polls indicate widespread discontent with Abbas and the long-ruling entrenched leadership around him.
“This show was an opportunity for the Palestinian youth to raise their voice and deliver their message,” said Waad Qannam, the winner of Thursday night’s finale, who was awarded a new car and is expected to meet Abbas.

Why is Shi'ite Iran backing Sunni Hamas?

Hamas politburo member Mussa Abu Marzouk recently touted the "natural" ties between his Sunni terrorist organization and Shi'ite Iran, the leading state sponsor of terror in the world.
Speaking to the Turkish Anadolu Agency, Marzouk claimed there was no contradiction in the ties - even though Iran is fighting Sunni factions in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and has killed hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslims directly or through its regional proxies in recent years.
Marzouk said Hamas has connections with all the sources in the region regardless of their ethnicity or religious approach, in a stance based on the interests of Hamas and the "Palestinian nation."
It goes without saying that Hamas's approach does not extend to Jews, given that the terror group's charter calls for a genocide of the Jewish people.

Hamas Requires Chaperones for Female Student Drivers

Hamas has decreed that female student drivers must be accompanied by a chaperone when taking lessons, NPR reported Wednesday.
Driving schools were informed of the new rule by the government last fall.
One driving instructor, Mohammad al-Hatta, described being pulled over by police last fall with a single female student in the car, even though in his decade as an instructor he had never heard of the law. The police confiscated his identification papers. When he returned the next day to retrieve them, he was forced to sign a declaration that he would never again take a female student driving alone.
Due to the infraction, Hattab was temporarily suspended from his job by the police. He objected that finding a chaperone for female drivers is “complicated” and an unnecessary burden. “You can’t punish hundreds of instructors for the mistakes of a few,” he declared.
Driving schools now often book two female student drivers for simultaneous lessons so that they can chaperone each other. At least one school has hired a woman to work full-time as a chaperone.
The association of driving schools in Gaza has petitioned the government to stop enforcing the law. The matter will now be decided by a religious judge, who will issue a fatwa, a religious ruling, on the law’s acceptability.

The White House Spin, J Street, and Iran

J Street, usually critical of Israeli policies, sought to disarm criticism of its acceptance of the White House spin by asserting that it worked to advance the deal out of the belief that the important agreement contributed greatly to Israeli security, and that it blocked Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon for some years.
But that is not necessarily true. It is possible that the path of Iran to nuclear weapons may be limited for a short time with closer international inspection. It is equally possible that the deal may lead to better relations between the U.S. and Iran.
But already the U.S. Government Accountability Office in a report in February 2016 suggests that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) may have problems in monitoring and verifying Iran’s implementation of the nuclear deal, regarding nuclear materials and activities. Iran in the past has failed to notify the IAEA of some of its activity.
Observers may legitimately differ about Iran’s adherence to the nuclear agreement, but there can be no disagreement about Iran’s continuing provocative behavior. Iran’s missile program is proceeding with full support from its leaders, and its ambition to become the hegemonic power in the Middle East is clear, especially to Saudi Arabia. The PF group, in its obeisance to White House spin, have neglected the reality that Iran is a dangerous power. This is shown by its missile launches and testing of ballistic missiles, its support for the Assad regime in Syria, its support of Hizb’allah, its involvement in Yemen, and its detention of U.S. sailors.
In the bible, Isaiah 2:4, says “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares.” Ploughshares Fund by its acceptance of misleading official propaganda and its funding of organizations not usually regarded as advocates of peace in the Middle East nor concerned with the security of Israel has not been helpful in turning Iranian “spears into pruning hooks.”

Key Obama Ally Secretly Bankrolled ‘Funny or Die’ Video Mocking Iran Deal Critics

As the battle over the Iran deal waged in Washington in the summer of 2015, the comedy video website Funny or Die released a video called “The Dealbreakers” mocking the GOP opposition. In the video, benign-looking representatives of Iran and the United States peacefully make a mutually beneficial deal, before war-mongering Republican Senators run in and destroy it with guns and explosives. “You think we can’t get away with this sh*t again?” asks one Republican as another cackles, “Who’s going to stop us?”
It was amusing, crude, over-the-top, certainly insulting of the GOP senators in question… and secretly funded by an organization that the Obama administration has identified as one their top surrogates.
The actual video provides little evidence of who exactly funded it, only directing viewers to visit the generic-sounding url www.stopwarwithiran.com to sign a petition. The Huffington Post exclusive unveiling the video likewise didn’t mention that it was funded by an outside group. But a press release released shortly afterwards by an organization called New Security Action revealed that they had paid for the video as part of a digital advertising push.
That alone isn’t shocking. While Funny or Die has always had a leftward tilt, its full-throated advocacy for liberal political issues kicked up a notch in 2014 when they partnered with the White House to raise awareness for Obamacare enrollments. Since then, they’ve opened a D.C. bureau headed by former Obama White House staffer Brad Jenkins. The bureau’s bread and butter: making humorous videos funded by liberal action groups to promote issues like the minimum wage, gay marriage, and yes, the Iran deal.

U.S.: Iran Still Main State Sponsor of Terrorism

The U.S. said the number of global terrorist attacks declined slightly between 2014 and 2015, although the Islamic State group expanded its reach. Iran remained the leading state sponsor of terrorism despite sealing a nuclear deal with world powers, the State Department said in its annual survey of worldwide terrorism released Thursday.
The department reported a 13 percent decrease in attacks in 2015 from the year before — the first such decline since 2012 — but said the threat from extremists keeps evolving as groups exploit lawlessness in ungoverned areas and seize on corruption to recruit members.
“The global terrorist threat continued to evolve rapidly in 2015, becoming increasingly decentralized and diffuse,” it said. “Terrorist groups continued to exploit an absence of credible and effective state institutions, where avenues for free and peaceful expression of opinion were blocked, justice systems lacked credibility, and where security force abuses and government corruption went unchecked.”
Statistics compiled for the report by researchers from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism showed that there were 11,774 attacks that resulted in 28,328 deaths in 2015, compared with 13,463 attacks in 2014 that killed 32,727 people. Of those killed in 2015, 19 were private American citizens, compared with 24 in 2014.

Israeli ambassador blasts Vienna mayor for Iran visit

Israel’s top diplomat in Austria, Talya Lador-Fresher, took to Twitter to criticize Vienna’s Mayor Michael Häupl for his visit to Iran.
“For a high-ranking Austrian politician during an Iran visit Israel is ‘no issue,’” Ambassador Lador-Fresher wrote on her Twitter feed on Wednesday. Lador-Fresher’s tweet to denounce the mayor’s indifference to Israel’s security interests is a new form of reaching the public in Austria for the embassy.
Häupl also faced criticism from the anti-Iran regime group Stop the Bomb in Vienna. The group said “a Social Democrat (SPÖ), traveled to Iran to meet with high-ranking regime officials like Tehran’s mayor, although a Holocaust denial event is currently taking place in Tehran and despite the persecution of labor activists.
The Iranian regime on a regular basis threatens Israel and Vienna’s sister city, Tel Aviv, with annihilation.”

No Starving People in Besieged Syria, Says Sanctioned Assad Official in D.C. Event

A top spokeswoman for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad claimed that there was no starvation in besieged parts of Syria while remotely participating in a Washington D.C. press conference on Thursday.
The event, hosted at the National Press Club by a group that seeks to pressure the United States to ally with Syria against the Islamic State, ended up focusing on the Assad regime’s various human rights violations. Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, a close confident of Assad’s who was sanctioned by the Department of the Treasury in 2011, spent much of her time on the panel refuting reports of humanitarian crises and dodging questions about the regime’s well-documented abuses.
The rebel-held city of Daraya, which has been under a tight government siege since 2012, is actually “producing peas and beans and food and wild berries, and that is enough for the entire city. It is very fertile land, and nobody is starving in Daraya,” said Shaaban via Skype.
Some 8,000 people are currently living in Daraya—formerly a bustling Damascus suburb of 80,000—without access to running water and electricity. A group called Women of Daraya warned in April that the city has a severe food shortage, with some residents eating “soups made purely of spices in order to stave off hunger.”

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