06/16 Links Pt1: PA Minister of Education honors terrorist who murdered policewoman; Islamic Terrorists Are Not Motivated By Hate

From Ian:

---

PMW: PA Minister of Education honors terrorist who murdered 19-year-old policewoman

The Palestinian Authority Minister of Education visited a school this week in order to “honor the souls” of three terrorist “Martyrs” who had attended the school. Among the “Martyrs” was the murderer earlier this year of 19-year-old Hadar Cohen, an Israeli policewoman.
The article in the official PA daily points out that the students in the school named their class after two of the terrorists.
The Minister of Education, Sabri Saidam, added that:
“After the announcement of the results of the high school matriculation exams, a tribute to the Martyrs' families will be held at this school as a sign of loyalty to them and to their sacrifice.”[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 12, 2016]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that a central teaching of the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education is terror glorification.

A terrorist's mother makes 'V' sign at site of attack

The parents of Palestinian terrorist Muhannad Halabi, who murdered rabbis Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Bennett in Jerusalem's Old City last October, decided to carry out a provocation in the same spot: They recently visited the site of the attack, on Hagai Street, where the mother was photographed making a "V" sign.
It was just another effort to glorify Halabi, who was killed by Israeli security forces at the scene of the attack. He was recently honored by al-Quds University, where he studied law. During a recent event at the university, Halabi was praised by the speakers and his parents were given his diploma.
Recently, Palestinian groups began collecting money to rebuild his family's home, in the village of Surda near Ramallah, which had been demolished by the IDF as a deterrent against future attackers. After it became clear the home would not be rebuilt on the same plot, the money went toward buying a fancier place in the nearby village of Abu Qash. The place spans about 3,870 square feet and is currently undergoing renovations. Palestinian officials also named a road after Halabi and built a memorial honoring him.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Anarchy Returns to the West Bank

Hostility towards the Palestinian Authority (PA) seems to have reached unprecedented heights among refugee camp residents.
A chat with young Palestinians in any refugee camp in the West Bank will reveal a driving sense of betrayal. In these camps, the PA seems as much the enemy as Israel. They speak of the PA as a corrupt and incompetent body that is managed by "mafia leaders." Many camp activists believe it is only a matter of time before Palestinians launch an intifada against the PA.
Nablus, the largest city in the West Bank, is surrounded by a number of refugee camps that are effectively controlled by dozens of Fatah gangs that have long been terrorizing the city's wealthy clans and leading figures.
Hamas, of course, is cheering on the sidelines as it watches the PA-controlled territories going to hell.

Prime Minister Netanyahu Says What We’re All Thinking About Orlando Terrorist Attack

Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, released a statement on the Orlando terrorist attack that targeted the LGBTQ community this past weekend. His statement was posted to Facebook.
Unlike many American politicians, PM Netanyahu had no problem identifying the terrorist’s motives or speaking directly to the ideology behind them.
Text of his statement here:
In Orlando, a terrorist walks into a nightclub and murders nearly 50 human beings. Sons and daughters, brothers and sisters cut down in cold blood.
They did nothing wrong. They were dancing with friends, they were enjoying music with loved ones.
Why did the terrorist murder them?
Because he was driven by a fanatical hatred.
He targeted the LGBT community because he believed they were evil.
Now, the murderer wasn’t alone.
Regimes and terrorist organizations around the world ruthlessly persecute the LGBT community.
In Syria, ISIS throws gays off rooftops.
In Iran, the regime hangs gays from cranes.
Too many people have remained silent in the face of this awful persecution.
This week’s shooting wasn’t merely an attack on the LGBT community. It was an attack on all of us, on our common values of freedom and diversity and choice.
Radical Islamist terror makes no distinction between shades of infidel.

The Mottle Wolfe Show: Bibi is not Afraid to Say It

Bibi Netanyahu again makes a moral clarification that Obama totally misses. Also Mottle speaks with Dr Sherkoh Abbas, the President of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria.

ToI Podcast: After Orlando, after Sarona

This week’s podcast looks at reactions to the aftermath of deadly terror attacks in Tel Aviv and Orlando.
As some try to link the two, suggesting the shooting attacks are one and the same, the panel asks whether such comparisons are accurate, and if they are at all helpful.
Analyzing statements from US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the panel questions when an attack should be called “terrorism” and when it shouldn’t be called “Islamic fundamentalism.”
Plus, Times of Israel blogger Rachael Risby Raz shares her blog “A time to mourn” about Israelis’ resolve in the face of terror, and the panel asks if, at times, the determination not to give in to terror can trivialize tragedy and blur necessary conclusions.

Orlando Massacre: Like Paris and Brussels, it could have been prevented

The attack is reminiscent of the terror attacks in Tel Aviv this past year: the New Year’s Day Dizengoff shooting, last week’s Sarona Market shooting, as well as international terror attacks, including the Brussels airport attack and the Paris shootings.
All of these attacks have commonalities. They were carried out by young marginalized Muslims who disagree with western values of self-indulgence, become religious extremists and choose to take matters into their own hands. They are ready to kill themselves for the cause. In other words: suicide. They arrive at the scene of the attacks with weapons and determination, taking inspiration from ISIS, to kill as many people as possible.
They choose symbols of Western cultures, places ISIS sees as decadent: the streets of central Tel Aviv, a music club, a football stadium in Paris and now an LGBT club. They aim to shock western culture, killing indiscriminately.
Like Paris and Brussels, and maybe even Tel Aviv, Orlando exposed the weaknesses of defense and intelligence systems. True, intelligence can’t expose every plan, especially not those carried out by individuals acting alone. The attack in Orlando shows that with improved intelligence this attack and others could have been prevented.

ISIS Celebrates Mateen, Orlando Terrorist Attack

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has released a video called “Orlando Attack” that celebrates Omar Mateen and the murder of 49 people at Pulse in Orlando, FL.
Mateen called 911 and pledged allegiance to the terrorist group before he opened fire at the popular gay club. ISIS praised the terrorist:
“One of Islamic State’s lions, set out to restore the glory of the Ummah and avenge the death of Muslims. He shook the head of kufr America, terrorized it and shed its blood. He is Omar Mateen.”
As it shows scenes from the area, ISIS promises they are here stay and expanding in the Middle East. The group also promised more attacks on America, “the evil, crusade, infidel among the worst of the unbelievers,” if the military doesn’t stop airstrikes against them in Iraq and Syria.
The video also tells the viewer that the terrorist group “has alerted the Muslims to march forth and strike the Kuffar in the lands of Kufr.”

FBI Probes California Roots of Orlando Terrorist’s Palestinian Wife

It is unclear whether Salman had her own connections to radical Islam. NBC reports that her mother was so devout that she would not eat at the home of other Muslim neighbors, lest their religious dietary standards not match up to hers. Salman also had a traditional Muslim wedding, but no marriage license reportedly exists. The Chicago Tribune notes that Salman and Mateen had both been married previously, and that neither Salman’s parents nor Mateen wanted her to drive a car:
Growing up, Salman’s parents tried to shelter their four girls.
“Noor never played in the street, and the girls were never allowed to drive,” Chahal said.
The neighbor quoted Salman’s mother as saying Mateen also kept her daughter from driving, until he recently allowed her to take a test to get her drivers’ license.
The Daily Beast reports that the family showed sympathy for the Palestinian cause against Israel:
Facebook accounts for her relatives show they are Palestinian. But they don’t appear to have been strictly religious. Salman and her sisters did not wear the hijab, according to posts, in contrast to ISIS’s requirements for women. Mateen’s ex-wife has stated that Mateen was not very religious when they were married.
While Salman’s family posted about Israel’s 2014 war in Gaza, they don’t appear otherwise political or ideological, and their social media profiles don’t indicate any sympathies with extremist groups.
The Tribune adds that Salman’s first marriage was arranged in the Palestinian territories, and that she lived in Chicago, which has a large Palestinian-American community.

Special Report Panel Trashes ‘Single Dumbest Editorial in the History of the New York Times’

The All-Star Panel on Fox News’ Special Report Wednesday tore apart an editorial from the New York Times which partially blamed the terrorist attack in Orlando, Florida, on Republicans.
Host Bret Baier first read a portion of it:
Hate crimes don’t happen in a vacuum. They occur where bigotry is allowed to fester, where minorities are vilified and where people are scapegoated for political gain. Tragically, this is the state of American politics, driven too often by Republican politicians, who see prejudice as something to exploit, not extinguish,’ continuing, ‘as the funerals are held for those who perished on Sunday, lawmakers who have actively championed discriminatory laws and policies and those who have quietly enabled them with votes should force themselves to read the obituaries and look at the photos.
The 49 people killed in Orlando were victims of a terrorist attack but they also need to be remembered as casualties of a society where hate has deep roots.’
Jonah Goldberg, a senior editor at National Review, didn’t mince words.
“I’m reluctant to say this, but that might be the single dumbest editorial in the history of the New York Times,” Goldberg said. “It’s like a pinata, you can hit it from any angle and get some reward.”

Douglas Murray: Most Western Gays Remain in Denial about Islam

Back in January, the U.K.’s Gay Times ran a morbidly fascinating piece. Following the latest attacks in Paris and ISIS’s throwing of gays off buildings, the magazine asked, “Is Islam itself really a threat to the gay community?” Readers may be unsurprised to hear that the next sentence read, “The answer is simple. ‘No.’”
According to the piece (written by one Thomas Ling), there is nothing in Islam that need worry gays. But what, I hear you ask, about the Islamic traditions? What about the Koran? Fortunately, Gay Times had this covered, insisting that the Koran says “nothing at all” about being gay. Phew! So everyone can flip over to the articles on diets and work-out routines?
Well, not quite. The reason given was that “the word ‘homosexual’ simply didn’t exist when it [the Koran] was written.” Okay, but what about the founder of Islam, Mohammad, and his injunction to kill people who are gay? Our intrepid reporter avoided that hadith but did note another “prophetic narration,” which says, “When a man lies with another man, the throne of heaven shakes.” (The author fails to make the obvious frippery that if you’re really lucky the earth will also move.)
Anyway, having got near the rub, Gay Times author promptly slipped into the more comfortable issue of Biblical injunctions on homosexuality. He insisted that “the ruthless and reckless applications of Sharia law by IS are not inevitable consequences of Islam.” To give the reader a boost, we are reminded of a Muslim MP who voted for same-sex marriage and told how great the work of an “anti-Islamophobia” group was before closing with some bashing of tabloids for their publishing “negative” news stories about Muslims.
Maybe it’s time to accept that Islamic State has very little to do with the teachings of Islam. Maybe we should start comparing their fighters to terrorists like Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, motivated by skewed personal beliefs, instead of to an entire diverse religion. It’s maybe then that society can accept Islam and promote a tolerance that can be proudly looked back on by future generations of gay Muslims.
That’s a lot of “maybes.” So let me add a couple of my own. “Maybe” Gay Times and Mr. Ling are wrong. Maybe they are in fact only symptomatic of the slow learning of gay communities in the West when it comes to Islam. And maybe, just maybe, after Orlando, a few more people will realize that the patchwork-quilt paradise of societal atomization we call “diversity” is a hell of our own creation.

No, the Council on American-Islamic Relations Doesn't Like Homosexuals

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has touched the hearts of many journalists since an ISIS-inspired terror attack left 49 dead at a gay nightclub in Orlando early Sunday morning. CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad called for solidarity with "all communities who are the victims of violence and persecution in our country." CAIR-San Francisco Director Zahra Billoo vowed to "stand with the LGBT community against homophobic violence." The head of the organization's Florida chapter, Hassan Shibly, declared his "overwhelming love and support and unity" for the LGBT community.
In light of Islam's well-known prohibitions against homosexuality, it's great to hear such words in any context.
But let's not kid ourselves. CAIR was founded by members of the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, whose hatred of homosexuals is quite explicit. Shibly himself decried homosexuality as "evil" and a "quick way to earn God's wrath" in a 2009 Facebook essay on gay marriage.

Hackers Bombard ISIS Twitter Accounts With Gay Porn

In the wake of the deadly Orlando massacre on Sunday, online hackers have bombarded ISIS Twitter accounts with links to gay porn. Many have come out in defiance of Islamist homophobia over the last few days. Some have decided to celebrate gay personhood. Less than a day after the Orlando shooting at a gay nightclub, gay pride parade organizers in Los Angeles chose to go ahead with their event as scheduled in a show of collective empowerment.
Others have opted to take the more subversive route, intentionally inflaming those that seek to impose their parochial worldview on liberal societies.
The hacker responsible for the online attack first started breaking into ISIS-sympathizing accounts a few months ago. However, WauchulaGhost (the hacker’s internet alias) took his computer war against the Islamist group to new heights after receiving word of the savage assault in Orlando. For his magnum opus, WauchulaGhost systematically replaced ISIS iconography with pro-LGBT messaging, rainbow-colored flags, and yes, links to gay pornography.

“Islamic Refugee” With Gas Pipeline Plans Arrested in New Mexico Border County

Police in a U.S. town bordering Mexico have apprehended an undocumented, Middle Eastern woman in possession of the region’s gas pipeline plans, law enforcement sources tell Judicial Watch. Authorities describe the woman as an “Islamic refugee” pulled over during a traffic stop by a deputy sheriff in Luna County, New Mexico which shares a 54-mile border with Mexico. County authorities alerted the U.S. Border Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) has been deployed to the area to investigate, sources with firsthand knowledge of the probe confirm.
The gas pipeline plans in the woman’s possession include the Deming region, law enforcement sources say. Deming is a Luna County city situated about 35 miles north of the Mexican border and 60 miles west of Las Cruces. It has a population of about 15,000. Last year one local publication listed Deming No. 1 on a list of the “ten worst places” to live in New Mexico due to high unemployment, poverty, crime and a horrible public education system. The entire region is a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), according to the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center due to the large amounts of methamphetamines, heroin, cocaine and marijuana smuggled through the state by Mexican traffickers. Specifically, the renowned Juárez and Sinaloa cartels operate in the area, the feds affirm in a report.
Judicial Watch has broken a number of stories in the last few years about Mexican drug traffickers smuggling Islamic terrorists into the United States through the porous southern border. Last summer high-level sources on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border offered alarming details about an operation in which cartels smuggle foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso. Classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) by the U.S. government, the foreigners get transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. Once in the U.S., the SIAs wait for pick-up in the area’s sand hills just across Highway 20.

Pew Data, Islamic Expert: More Than 60 Million Muslims Hold Favorable Views of ISIS

In the wake of yet another bloody massacre perpetrated by Islamist terrorists, media and political elites are, like clockwork, tripping over one another to remind us that Islam as a whole should not be held responsible for the carnage. And of course that's true. Even raging Islamophobes understand that not every Muslim in the world is murderous or malicious, and most reasonable people happily acknowledge that the vast majority of the planet's 1.6 billion Muslims are peaceable people who adhere to relatively moderate interpretations of Islam. Virtually nobody disputes any of that.
But the fiction that Islamist violence has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam is both intellectually insulting and dangerously naive. We've written previously about the alarming number of Muslims worldwide who at best hold profoundly illiberal views on issues such as free speech, human rights, and the imposition of Sharia Law. A recent survey of British Muslims only underscores why serious concerns about Islam in the West shouldn't merely be waved away as ignorance and xenophobia. Are those who decry the "ignorance" aware of data like this? Do they have any idea what Sharia Law entails? Have they read this report, curated and authored by a human rights advocate who renounces many of his own landmark findings on "Islamophobia" from less than a decade ago? Back Stateside, The Federalist has published a commentary by an Islamic scholar who analyzes the deadly Orlando rampage through the prism of his religion's teachings on homosexuality.

Islamic Terrorists Are Not Motivated By Hate

Assimilate, Fight, Or Be Slaughtered
The words of Mohammad Sidique Khan, who bombed a subway in London, should ring in the ears of every politician, law enforcement official, and American citizen: “Our driving motivation doesn’t come from tangible commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam—obedience to the one true God, Allah, and following the footsteps of the final prophet and messenger Muhammad… This is how our ethical stances are dictated.”
These are the ethical stances that drive true believers to shoot up a nightclub, killing dozens. These are the ethical stances that require either death or obedience, slaughter or conversion to Islam: “Repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms,” the holy text says to unbelievers. If we do this, we will be allowed to live.
In other words, assimilate or die. This is unacceptable to every liberty-loving American, and it’s why we must fight back with courage, solidarity, and strength, without appeasement or apology. We must be willing to look our enemy in the eye as a united free people and call him by the name he has given himself—the name of Islam.

Casualties of War: Global Jihadism Linked to More Than Half of War Deaths

Today, conflicts arising out of jihadism account for the majority of war casualties, whereas hostilities are increasingly concentrated in the Middle East. However, Daesh itself is no longer the biggest threat to world peace, Swedish researchers say.
More than half of the world's direct casualties of war are now harvested in conflicts linked to militant Islamism and jihadism, a new compilation from the world's leading conflict researchers at Uppsala University showed.
According to the Swedish researchers, almost all great conflicts since 2006 have been classified as jihadism, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter wrote. Daesh has been the focus of the media coverage of violent Islamism ever since the terrorists spectacular advance in Iraq and Syria a couple of years ago. Although the jihadism category is still largely dominated by the war in Syria, Daesh proper is no longer the biggest player, as a constellation of Islamic groups has been mushrooming worldwide.
Of late, Daesh has opened "subdivisions" in countries such as Libya and Lebanon. At the same time, previously independent jihadists have been joining in, the most infamous being the Nigerian Boko Haram, which last year pledged allegiance to the "caliphate" in the Middle East.

Syrian Immigrant Who Said 9/11 ‘Changed The World For Good’ Is A Homeland Security Adviser

One of the sitting members on the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s (HSAC) Subcommittee on Countering Violent Extremism is a 25-year-old immigrant of Syrian heritage who said that the 9/11 attacks “changed the world for good” and has consistently disparaged America, free speech and white people on social media.

Laila Alawa was one of just 15 people tapped to serve on the newly-formed HSAC Subcommittee on Countering Violent Extremism in 2015 — the same year she became an American citizen. Just last week, the subcommittee submitted a report to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, recommending that the DHS avoid using Muslim terminology like the words “sharia” and “jihad” when discussing terrorism.
Alawa says she immigrated into the U.S. when she was ten years old. Her family had already left Syria by the time she was born. “But I will always be Syrian. I will always be from Syria. I will always be of Syria,” she wrote in November 2015, calling the country her “homeland.”

IDF Blog: After brutal terror attack in Tel Aviv, here’s what to keep in mind

Two terrorists opened fire on a busy Tel Aviv mall, killing 4. Here’s what you need to know following the deadly terror attack.
Overwhelming celebration for the attack in West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem
- Handing out candies
- Fireworks
- Marches in Hebron
- Viral celebrations on social media
Palestinian organizations rush to “brand” the event and revive the intifada/uprising
- “First Attack of Ramadan”
- “Carlo Gustav Attack”
- “Al-Quds Intifada Continues”
- Graphics and hashtags in order to keep the momentum of the terror wave
Transition from “Knife Intifada” to “Carl Gustav Intifada”
- Icon of “intifada” is now the Carl Gustav weapon
- 65% of Palestinians in the West Bank supported the suicide bombing in Jerusalem on April 18th
- Wide-scale support for raising the level of violence from knives and stones to shootings and bombings

Knesset approves anti-terrorism law

The Knesset on Wednesday approved a new, tougher anti-terrorism law, by a vote of 57-16. Representatives of all parties except Meretz and the Joint Arab List voted in favor of the law.
The new law significantly broadens Israel's anti-terrorism capabilities and its definitions of terrorist groups and terrorist acts. The law is a compilation that merges most provisions of the previous anti-terrorism law and replaces numerous outdated defense regulations enacted by the British Mandate more than 70 years ago.
Promoted by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, the legislation hardens punitive measures for terrorist activities. The legislative procedure to introduce the new law began several years ago in the 18th Knesset, under Tzipi Livni when she was the justice minister, advanced through the 19th Knesset, and ended Wednesday night.
Among other measures, the new law imposes a penalty of up to 30 years in prison for committing a terrorist act. A leader of a terror group, directly or indirectly, will be liable to receive a life sentence, as will terrorists who are found to have used chemical, biological or radioactive weapons during terror attacks. Publicly identifying with a terrorist group will carry a three-year sentence.

The daily Palestinian terrorism you don’t hear about

When two Palestinian terrorists opened fire last week at Tel Aviv’s Sarona market and murdered four Israelis, it appeared to catch much of the country off guard. After several months of seemingly sporadic attacks, many people had begun to think that the whirlwind of Palestinian violence had largely subsided.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
The sad fact is that Palestinian terrorism is literally a daily – and sometimes even an hourly – occurrence. It is just that the media doesn’t bother to report the overwhelming majority of incidents, thereby providing the public with a distorted view of reality.
Just speak to some of the 700 brave volunteers of Hatzalah Judea and Samaria (www.hatzalah.org.il), a superb emergency first-response organization consisting of professionally trained medics, paramedics and licensed physicians who find themselves working around the clock to assist the victims of Palestinian terrorism. The organization is independent of United Hatzalah of Israel.
According to a spokesman for the group, “there are an average of 10 to 15 reported Palestinian rock and firebomb attacks throughout Judea and Samaria on a daily basis,” or approximately one attack every two hours.

Bereaved mother on NGO Bill: Foreign governments funded my son's murder

The weekly discussions of the coalition’s controversial NGO transparency bill took an emotional turn on Wednesday, when a bereaved mother threw her support behind the initiative and accused foreign-government supported NGOs of funding terrorism.
Devora Gonen, mother of Danny Gonen, who was killed by a Palestinian terrorist while on a trip near Dolev in the West Bank last July, said: “Foreign governments fund murder. The lawyers defending the terrorist who murdered my son were funded by foreign governments.
That money encourages murder.
Terrorists know they will be defended, and their families will receive money. The terrorist is still alive, and his family receives generous support, while I have the privilege of being a bereaved mother.”
MK Zouheir Bahloul (Zionist Union) responded that while he has sympathy for Gonen’s pain, Israel receives billions in foreign aid for its security and uses it “to start wars that kill people.”
The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee meeting was called to discuss the NGO transparency bill, which would require organizations that receive more than half of their funding from foreign political entities to label themselves as such in all publications and contact with politicians and public officials.

Of the Justice Ministry’s list of 27 NGOs to which the bill would likely apply, 25 are left wing, making the proposal very controversial.

PreOccupiedtTrritory: Joint List Denounces Terrorism Law As Discriminatory Against Terrorists (satire)

Members of the Joint Arab List alliance in the Knesset condemned yesterday’s passage of a law toughening penalties for people convicted of involvement in terrorism, saying the legislation unfairly singles out terrorists for harsh treatment.
The bill passed its second and third readings on Wednesday to become law, winning a 57-16 majority in the 120-seat parliament. Among the law’s provisions is a clause that mandates thirty years of a life imprisonment sentence for murder be served before a terrorism convict is eligible for release or parole, and levies stiffer penalties than the previous law against people who abet terrorist activities or incite to terrorism. The law updated or replaced a number of statutes that had been in force since the days of the British Mandate of Palestine, before the establishment of Israel in 1948, a fact that the Arab MKs also constituted a discriminatory slap in the face to anyone who believes Israel should not have sovereignty.
“This shameful law targets only one segment of the population,” claimed MK Basel Ghattas of Balad, one of four parties in the Joint List. “It is an act of blatant discrimination against the population of terrorists living under Israeli rule, and yet another example of the way in which this racist regime undermines the values it claims to hold dear.”

Jerusalem authorizes Jewish building in Silwan

Just a few hours after the White House stated its opposition to increasing anti-missile defense aid to Israel, the Jerusalem Local Planning and Building Council approved a controversial building permit in Silwan. The three-story building is owned by Ateret Cohanim and was supposed to be discussed two weeks ago, but was removed from the agenda due to political pressures.
This issue was categorized as the 70th item on today's agenda, but the head of Local Planning and Building Council, Meir Turgeman, filling in for the mayor, decided to raise the issue at beginning of today's discussions in the presence of two members of the council, Yisrael Karlman and Yohanan Weizmann, who belong to Haredi factions. The three approved the building permit.
Laura Wharton, a member of the city council for Meretz [communist], claims that this issue was underhanded opportunism. She said, "The council's decision today was an additional scandal at the initiative of the Jerusalem Municipality, intended to cause an uproar and to express trust in the head of the extremist right wing head of the city controlling it and to advance on the ground plans that cover up all plans for peace and international law. We are talking about a political plan that doesn't abide by professional criteria."

Israel plans to build concrete wall along Gaza above and below ground

Israel’s defense establishment plans to build a concrete wall that goes tens of yards underground as well as above ground along the Gaza Strip border.
The plan, revealed on Thursday on the front page of the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot, will cost an estimated $568 million, less than previously estimated, according to the report.
A wall that stretches underground is believed necessary to combat the proliferation of attack tunnels running under the border between Gaza and Israel.
The existence of the plan to build a wall was cleared for publication in the newspaper by the military censor, Ynet reported.
On Wednesday, a senior Defense Ministry official cautioned during a news conference that Israel cannot indefinitely continue a war of attrition and that the next conflict with Hamas in Gaza will be the last.

IDF tank held by Russia since 1982 returns to Israel

An Israeli tank seized by Syria during the 1982 First Lebanon War in the battle of Sultan Yacoub, and which has been housed in a Russian museum for several decades, was returned to Israel last week, shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ended an official visit to Moscow.
The tank was flown to Israel at Netanyahu’s request following his meeting with Russia President Vladimir Putin. During his visit Netanyahu formally received the Magach-3 tank on Israel’s behalf.
It will likely be put on display at the Armored Corps Museum in Latrun.
An employee of a cargo company who was at Ben-Gurion Airport when the tank was lowered from the belly of a Russian cargo plane told Ynet News it was “a special and emotional sight” to see the tank return to Israel after 34 years.
The return of the tank, Netanyahu had said in Moscow, would be of some comfort to the families of three IDF soldiers who manned it and who have been missing since its capture.

Elliott Abrams: The new Palestinian city

The Associated Press reported this week on the arrival of the first families moving into Rawabi, a new city being built in the West Bank.
Rawabi is a marvel in many ways. I visited there in January, toured around, and spoke with the founder, Bashar Masri. Rawabi is about 5 miles from Ramallah and will eventually house 25,000 residents. Construction has been slowed by grudging cooperation from Israel, and even today Rawabi has not been permitted to construct an adequate access road and to connect to sufficient water supplies. But the project is an extraordinary achievement, well designed for living and shopping, with public spaces such as a beautiful open-air amphitheater.
The AP story states that Rawabi isn't just about real estate but is part of the statehood dream. Here I disagree. The "statehood dream" is in the hands of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, which are both far too incompetent and corrupt to have built Rawabi. It is successful in large part because it is a private sector project that has as little as possible to do with Palestinian politics. Rawabi is in my view more about Palestinians' desires for a normal life, in a new city where they can live well despite the political problems that surround them.

Iranian Cleric: Immoral Women Are Causing Climate Change

An Iranian cleric said in a recent speech that immoral women who don’t comply with strict Islamic dress codes are causing a local river to dry up.
“My office has received photos of women next to the dry Zayandeh-rud River pictured as if they are in Europe,” Seyyed Youssef Tabatabi-nejad told followers in a recent speech, according to ISNA NEws Agency.
“It is these sorts of acts that cause the river to dry up even further,” he said.
Tabatabi-nejad has gained a reputation for disparaging womens’ rights and even condoning violence against women who don’t follow the country’s strict dress codes, according to The Independent.

Not So Fast, Boeing and Iran

As Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies told the New York Times, despite the exception for aircraft sales in the text of the nuclear deal, much of Iran’s civilian aviation industry is run by companies linked to or run by the IRGC, which also operates the regime’s terror network. Business with the IRGC and everything related to it is still very much against U.S. law and nothing in the Iran deal supersedes that fact. As Dubowitz notes, that makes any Boeing-Iran transaction a “due-diligence nightmare” for any U.S. companies as well as the banks that will also be involved.
Given the high stakes involved, there is little doubt that the administration will be doing all it can to smooth the path for Boeing and to halt or sidetrack any annoying Treasury Department scrutiny that would highlight illegal activity.
That’s where Congress must step in. Despite the understandable desire of members of the House and Senate that will have constituents eager to have the Iran transaction bring jobs to their districts and states, the issue here isn’t employment but terror and U.S. security.
The regime’s behavior hasn’t changed a bit despite the president’s desire to welcome it into the family of nations. Their illegal missile tests and ongoing support for international terror give the lie to the White House spin machine’s myths about moderates taking over in Tehran, as did the recent election of more hardliners to ensure that the regime stays in the hands of the most extreme Islamist theocrats.
With the help of a largely tame Washington press corps, party-line loyalty from Democrats, and the help of a few foolish Republicans, Congress failed to stop the Iran nuclear deal. But by speaking up now, the legislative branch can still throw a monkey wrench into a deal that would put one of America’s most important aviation companies in bed with Iran’s terror network.

Islamic State genocide against Yazidis not abating, UN says

Islamic State jihadists are still committing genocide against the Yazidi minority in Iraq and Syria, United Nations rights investigators said Thursday.
“Genocide has occurred and is ongoing,” Paulo Pinheiro, head of the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) for Syria, said in a statement.
“ISIS has subjected every Yazidi woman, child or man that it has captured to the most horrific of atrocities,” he added, using another acronym for the jihadist group.
The Yazidis are neither Muslims nor Arabs and follow a unique faith despised by IS.
The Kurdish-speaking minority is mostly based around Sinjar mountain in northern Iraq.
In 2014, IS jihadists massacred Yazidis in Sinjar, forcing tens of thousands of them to flee, and capturing thousands of girls and women as spoils of war to be used as sex slaves.

---

---

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Read More

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah: "Long live Jihad!"

The Fatah Facebook page looks back nostalgically at some older PLO posters with identical themes of a rifle emerging from the Dome of the Rock that is covered in a keffiyeh:

The caption for this 1979 poster says "Long live Jihad!" And indeed, the Facebook post also emphasizes "on the path to Jihad" - where the meaning of jihad is clearly military given the context.

Fatah has long linked violence with the religious symbolism of the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock.

For example, these two Fatah posters with the themes "The Flags of the Revolution Will Fly Until Liberation" and "Confrontation is our choice" were both notably created during the Oslo process:

This Fatah poster is even more recent, from 2010, with the caption "No choice except resistance":

The use of the holy spot as iconography for Fatah posters is fairly widespread, and the message is unmistakable - the impetus for fighting is religiously-directed jihad, not a secular concept of independence.

---

---

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Read More

The Independent falsely claims Israel cut off water supply to Arabs

The headline and photo in The Independent:

The first paragraphs of the article by Peter Yeung:

Israel has cut off the water supply to large areas of the West Bank, Palestinian authorities have claimed.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have reportedly been left without access to safe drinking water during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, a period of fasting, at a time when temperatures can exceed 35C.

The northern city of Jenin, which has a population of more than 40,000, said its water supplies had been cut in half by Mekorot, Israel's national water company. Jenin is home to a refugee camp, established in 1953, which contains 16,000 registered refugees.

Finally, after 13 paragraphs of accusations of Israel deliberately withholding water from Arabs, comes the "balance:"

A spokesperson for the Israeli government told The Indepedent there is "no truth" in the claims, and said the shortages were down to faulty water lines.

They said: "Several hours ago, COGAT's Civil Administration team have repaired a burst pipe line, which disrupted the water supply to the villages of Marda, Biddya, Jamma'in, Salfit and Tapuach. The water flow has been regulated and is currently up and running.

COGAT even shows a short video of the burst pipeline, commenting "COGAT's Water Unit is available around the clock to address any water disruptions throughout Judea & Samaria, and we continue to work diligently to ensure that civilians have access to running water at all times."

Israel has no incentive whatsoever to purposefully withhold water from Arab civilians. The article makes it sound like the army is simply being vindictive and petty, when in fact the COGAT unit tries to help Arab civilians as much as it can - that is its entire purpose.

The International Business Times coverage was even worse.

Israel is reported to have cut the water supply to the West Bank during Ramadan, in a move often dubbed "water apartheid" by critics of Israel. The state-run Israeli water company, Mekorot, shut the valves of the lines leading to areas in the West Bank, reports have stated on Wednesday 15 June.

Israel's step is likely to leave tens of thousands of Palestinians living in the volatile region without water for safe consumption. Israel has sanctioned water available to Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip ever since Israel's occupation of the areas, which started in 1967.

It gets even worse.

UK Media Watch contacted COGAT and Mekorot:

COGAT has informed us (in a series of emails) that... due to increased usage during the summer months, Mekorot (Israel’s water carrier) was forced to reduce the overall supply to ALL areas of the West Bank – including in Jewish communities.

We sent an email to Mekorot, who then confirmed to us the increased demand during the summer months has resulted in shortages in the West Bank “to Israeli settlements and Palestinian areas“. A resident in an Israeli community in Samaria who we spoke to confirmed that the shortages have indeed affected Jewish communities.

COGAT told the Independent reporter this - and he didn't bother to mention it, because the idea of Israel discriminating against Arabs is simply too good to bother contradicting with facts.

UK Media Watch did further investigations that Peter Yeung didn't:

[COGAT] told us that, in order to accommodate Palestinians during Ramadan, when Muslims can’t drink water during the day, “the water supply has been increased during night-time in order to meet the needs of the residents”.

Additionally, COGAT noted that, beginning at the start of Ramadan, on June 6-7, “the water supply to Hebron and Bethlehem [was] expanded [by] 5,000 cubic meters per day in order to meet the needs of the residents“.

This shows another dimension to media bias against Israel. Accusations of mendacity against the Jewish state are treated as facts, as is often the case, but when those lies happen to coincide with the biases of the reporters, there is little or no attempt to find out if there is another side of the story. (In this case, the COGAT quote was only added after complaints to Yeung, he didn't bother to contact COGAT or Mekorot before submitting the article.)

---

---

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Read More

The deceptions of Ben Ehrenreich

Influential website Politico has an anti-Israel story by Ben Ehrenreich that is literally filled with lies that for some reason were not considered worth checking.

The centerpiece is an interview with a former Israeli soldier turned "peace activist" named Eran Efrati who described the horrors of what IDF soldiers do to Palestinians in Hebron. Of course it is not possible to debunk specific details of the soldier's anecdotes or alleged conversations with his superior, but this one incident that he mentions is simply impossible - and with it goes Efrati's credibility:

That weekend, Efrati recalled, settlers filled the central city. He was assigned to escort a group of them into the Patriarchs’ Tomb, a site holy to both Islam and Judaism, where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their wives Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah are believed to be buried. The settlers were allowed into the Palestinian side of the site, into the mosque. What he saw there shocked him: Israeli children were peeing on the floors and burning the carpets. Their parents were there—the mosque was packed with settlers—but no one was stopping them. He and another soldier grabbed one of the children and took a cigarette lighter from his hand. “He started screaming at us,” Efrati said. “We laughed at him.” Five minutes later, “one of our very, very high-ranking officers came inside the mosque and said, ‘Did you steal something from the kid?’” They tried to explain, but the officer only repeated the question. “We said yes.” The officer ordered them to give it back and apologize. They found the child, apologized and returned the lighter. The boy ran right into the next room, Efrati said, and resumed setting fire to the carpets.

The Cave of the Patriarchs is the second-holiest site in Judaism. Several times a year Jews are allowed to visit the entire holy site. Those are the only times of the year that Jews can visit the cenotaphs of Isaac and Rebecca. Naturally, on those days the site is crowded with fervently religious Jews who take the opportunity to pray in a place they are normally banned from.

The tomb is holier to Jews than it is to Muslims.

The idea that religious Jews would allow (or, as implied, encourage) their children to urinate and set fires in this sacred spot is beyond absurd. In 2009, there was a small fire at the site from Jews placing too many candles there for religious reaosns but it caused no damage. Arab websites would be filled with allegations of Jews urinating at the site and purposefully setting fires - but the story begins and ends in the sick and hateful imagination of Eran Efrati, and happily believed by Ben Ehrenreich.

(There have been reports of Muslims urinating next to the Torah scrolls at the site and otherwise desecrating it.)

Given that this story is simply not possible, Efrati's other lurid tales from Hebron should be treated as equally suspect. And for any real journalist, they would be. But for Ben Ehrenreichm these are too good to check, since the target is religious Jews and the army.

Ehrenreich then goes on to extrapolate on the reasons for the knife intifada based on these lies:

If you terrorize people long enough, they eventually lose their fear. They hold onto the anger. This last October, after a year of relative calm, young Palestinians began attacking Israeli soldiers, police and civilians, occasionally with guns or cars but most often with household implements: knives, scissors, screwdrivers. The attacks were uncoordinated and outside the control of the Palestinian leadership or the traditional armed factions. Many occurred in or near Hebron, often at checkpoints or other sites of friction between Palestinian civilians and the Israeli military, but also on buses and trains in Jerusalem, in supermarkets and in the streets.

This is the Western media view of the uprising, and as I demonstrated previously, it is a lie. Arab media never blamed the violence on "frustration" or general "anger" at "occupation." They were very specific as to their reasons: because of supposed Israeli designs on the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and later as revenge for Israel killing those who attacked Israelis. And it can all be traced back very specifically to Mahmoud Abbas' speech in September when he said, referring to Jews who peacefully visit the holy site, “Al-Aqsa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won’t allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem.”

It was a call to violence. And the attacks started shortly thereafter.

The incitement against Jews escalated and it expressed itself with stabbings and shootings and car rammings that were cheered by Mahmoud Abbas' own political party as well as by other factions. Those who were killed for trying or succeeding to kill ordinary Jews were heroes. Only after Israeli forces responded with increased security did the targets turn to the soldiers at the checkpoints, because the would-be stabbers could not as easily reach Jewish population centers. And the people most vulnerable to propaganda - teenagers - were the ones who were the most likely to attack,

The meme of "frustration" is a convenient untruth meant to blame the victims.

When I was back in Israel and the West Bank earlier this month, the violence appeared to be ebbing. Until Wednesday’s shootings, no Israelis had been killed by Palestinians since February 18.

This simple statement shows how Ehrenreich knows the facts and wants to minimize Arab responsibility for the violence.

On March 8, American Taylor Force was murdered, and 10 others injured, in a stabbing spree in Tel Aviv. But since he wasn't an Israeli, Ehrenreich wants to ignore that attack to make it appear that the timeline of "calm" is longer.

The terrorist who murdered Taylor Force didn't know that he was an American. But Ehrenreich chose to ignore this attack to minimize Palestinian culpability for violence and strengthen his thesis that Israelis are not in as much danger as they claim. That is why he chose to frame this sentence the way he did.

And it is all the proof you need to show that Ehrenreich isn't trying to illuminate the situation in Israel, but to obfuscate it for his own anti-Israel propaganda purposes.

---

---

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Read More

06/15 Links Pt2: When Someone Says He’s Only Anti-Israel, Not Antisemitic, It’s a Lie; What to Expect from an Independent Palestinian State

From Ian:

---

Sting Operation Reveals Facebook’s Double ‘Community Standards’ in Relation to Pro-Israel Posts
Facebook apologizes for removing pro-Israel post

Facebook was forced to restore a posting it had removed from a pro-Israel page, after a social-media experiment revealed that an identical pro-Palestinian posting was not deemed to be in violation of “community standards.”
The restored posting in question, on the Israel Video Network page, was a meme that read: “It is called Israel and not Palestine. Share if you agree.”
On May 25, the Israel Video Network received a notice from Facebook that the post was being removed for violating community standards. In addition, group administrators were warned that the page would be shut down if it continued to post similar items.
According to former Yesh Atid Party member of Knesset Dov Lipman — who now serves as the director of public diplomacy in the vice chairman’s office of the World Zionist Organization — after he was alerted by Israel Video Network of Facebook’s behavior, he and his team set up a sting operation to test whether an identical post — but one which favored the Palestinians — would produce the same results.
In a statement on Tuesday, Lipman wrote, “My staff set up a page called ‘It’s called Palestine and not Israel’ and we, with the help of a friend, loaded an exact replica of the first graphic but exchanged the words ‘Palestine’ and ‘Israel.’ We then had people complain about the new graphic and Facebook responded that the new graphic did not violate its community standards.”
After repeated attempts to get in touch with a live person at Facebook “to complain about this inconsistency,” Lipman penned an open letter in the Jerusalem Post, exposing Facebook’s behavior.

World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder: When Someone Says He’s Only Anti-Israel, Not Antisemitic, It’s a Lie

“When someone says they are not antisemitic — they are only anti-Israel – that is a lie,” the president of the World Jewish Congress said on Tuesday night.
Ronald S. Lauder made this assertion in a speech he delivered at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where he received the Guardian of Zion award from the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar-Ilan University.
Addressing the approximately 200-strong audience of movers, shakers and Israeli academics, Lauder — the 20th recipient of the annual award – spoke about the increasingly unabashed expressions of antisemitism and Israel-hatred “not just from the far-Right, but from the far-Left.”
Whereas in the past, he said, Jews were to blame for all ills, “According to today’s antisemites, whatever is wrong in the world, Israel is at fault.” This, he added, “is no longer a fringe element of society,” and “when you hold Israel to a different standard, when you lie about Israel, its past and its present and its people — and when you want Israel to disappear — that makes you an antisemite… pure and simple.”

Clifford D. May: Terrorism and economic warfare

So today, non-state actors lead the campaign. Omar Barghouti, credited as a co-founder of the so-called BDS (for boycott, sanction and divest) Movement, has stated plainly that the goal is not to pressure Israelis into making concessions that might lead to peace. “We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine,” he has said.
With two BDS supporters appointed — courtesy of Sen. Bernie Sanders — to the Democratic Party’s platform committee, even Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of left-leaning J Street, seems to have grasped the truth. The movement, he now says, “fails to recognize Israel’s right to exist, to support a two-state solution, to differentiate between the occupation and opposition to Israel itself.”
In recent months, more than 20 governors have signed anti-BDS laws. In response, BDS advocates are angrily asserting that their freedom of speech is being violated. That’s a canard. These laws simply make clear that taxpayers — in Illinois, South Carolina, Colorado, Florida and a growing list of other states — will not support companies that discriminate against Israel.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that conditioning government money on compliance with anti-discrimination policies does not violate the First Amendment,” legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich pointed out. He added: “Israel boycotts — which target all businesses from a particular country — have the key hallmark of impermissible discrimination: They cut off business to people and companies not because of their own particular conduct, but on the basis of who they are.”
BDS advocates claim to fight for “social justice” but they turn a blind eye to the Muslim-on-Muslim wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen, the genocide of Middle Eastern Christians and Yazidis, the enslavement of girls in northern Nigeria and the routine executions of gays in Gaza, Iran and other corners of the Islamic world.
“Anti-Semitism,” the British rabbi-philosopher Jonathan Sachs recently observed, “is a virus that survives by mutating. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, Israel.” There may be treatments for this virus but no one has a cure.

Fred Maroun: What to Expect from an Independent Palestinian State

France, with the support of the United States, is leading a new attempt at peace between Israel and the Palestinians, with the implied goal that an independent Palestinian state would be created -- but what should we expect from such a state?
Although past behavior is not a perfect predictor of future behavior, it is a strong indicator of it, especially if no corrective action has been taken.
Violence
When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared, "The dawn of freedom rises with the evacuation of the last Israeli soldier and settler." Yet, instead of using that freedom to build a successful economy, Palestinians destroyed the greenhouses that the settlers had left, and terrorists launched rocket attacks against Israel. These attacks forced Israel to institute a naval blockade of Gaza, to limit the supply of weapons to terrorists.
The Oslo Accords signed by Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s provided a transition period meant to lead to Palestinian statehood. However, instead of peaceful coexistence with Israel, the Palestinian leadership launched an assault that became known as the Second Intifada.
During the recent stabbing attacks by Palestinian terrorists, Abbas declared, "Each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it's for the sake of Allah. Every shahid (martyr) will be in heaven and every wounded person will be rewarded, by Allah's will."
These violent actions and the incitement are not exceptions. They are part of a pattern of Arab denial of the Jews' right to exist, which started well before Israel declared its independence, and that caused several wars and innumerable terrorist attacks against Israel.

Michael Lumish: Nothing Left - Episode 103

Nothing Left This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman have: Michael Lumish USA, 0:02;00 - Mmusi Maimane S.A, 0:30:10 - Mathew M Hausman USA, 56:0:00 - Dr Isi Leibler Israel, 1:21:20 - Dr Danny Lamm Aust., 1:48:00
My 5 minute bit is basically about the infiltration of the Democratic party with anti-Semitic anti-Zionists and starts at about the two minute mark.
Alan talks about the HonestReporting conference in Israel, among other things, and he notes that David Rubinger spoke. Rubinger is the photographer who took this photo that you may have seen once or twice before:

The West's Most Important Ally: Islam's Dissidents

Today a new Iron Curtain has been erected by Islam against the rest of the world, and the new heroes are the dissidents, the apostates, the rebels, the non-believers and the heretics.
This rapidly growing army of Muslim dissidents is the best liberation movement for millions of Muslims who aspire to practice their faith peacefully without submitting to the dictates of fundamentalists and fanatics.
They are alone against all. Against Islamism which uses Kalashnikovs and against an intellectual terrorism which submits them to media intimidation. Seen as "traitors" by their communities, they are accused by the élites in the West of "stigmatizing."
We should support them -- all of them. Some of the bravest defenders of freedom come from the Islamic regimes. Europe should give financial, moral and political support to these friends of Western civilization, while our disgraced intelligentsia is engaged in slandering them.

The EU is Coming to Close Down Your Free Speech

The German Chancellor was not interested in the reinforcement of Europe's external borders, the re-erection of its internal borders, the institution of a workable asylum vetting system and the repatriation of people who had lied to gain entry into Europe. Instead, Chancellor Merkel wanted to know how Facebook's founder could help her restrict the free speech of Europeans, on Facebook and on other social media.
Then, on May 31, the European Union announced a new online speech code to be enforced by four major tech companies, including Facebook and YouTube.
It was clear from the outset that Facebook has a definitional problem as well as a political bias in deciding on these targets. What is Facebook's definition of 'racism'? What is its definition of 'xenophobia'? What, come to that, is its definition of 'hate speech'?
Of course the EU is a government -- and an unelected government at that -- so its desire not just to avoid replying to its critics -- but to criminalise their views and ban their contrary expressions -- is as bad as the government of any country banning or criminalising the expression of opinion which is not adulatory of the government.
People must speak up -- must speak up now, and must speak up fast -- in support of freedom of speech before it is taken away from them. It is, sadly, not an overstatement to say that our entire future depends on it.

White House rejects increased Israel missile defense funding

The Obama administration on Tuesday opposed a call by US lawmakers to increase government funding for Israel's missile defense program by $455 million above the 2017 fiscal year budget request.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued the rejection of the proposal made by the US House of Representatives in a Statement of Administration Policy on defense appropriations released Tuesday.
In May, the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended a major increase in spending on Israeli missile defense programs – quadrupling a budget line proposed by the Obama administration.
The increase, supported unanimously and across party lines in the committee, proposed $600 million in funding for fiscal year 2017 – an increase of $113 million from last year and $454 million over US President Barack Obama's request.
In response to the White House's statement Tuesday, the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC said it was "deeply disappointed" by the US administration's measure that "has criticized Congress for funding US-Israel missile defense cooperation."`

PM rejects ‘panic’ over reported cut in US missile defense aid

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday dismissed widespread “panic” over reports implying the US government is refusing to increase financial aid for Israeli missile defense.
While not denying the reports, which prompted opposition politicians to harshly criticize Netanyahu, a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office insisted that American aid for missile defense system protecting Israel would ultimately be increased rather than cut.
On Tuesday, the White House said it opposed a move by the House of Representatives to increase funding for Israeli missile defense procurement by an additional $455 million above the administration’s budget request for the 2017 fiscal year.
Due to “multiple misleading reports,” the Prime Minister’s Office on Wednesday issued a statement insisting “there is no cut in US aid.” Rather, there is an “internal debate” between Congress and the White House over the size of the annual increase to the American missile defense program.
Netanyahu is seeking to anchor this additional aid as a part of his ongoing negotiations over the extension of an US-Israel memorandum of understanding, which regulates US military aid to Israel, the statement noted.
“Not only will the security assistance for missile defense not be cut, it will be increased,” it said.

AIPAC ‘Deeply Disappointed’ Obama Won’t Up Israel’s Missile Defense by $445 Million

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) issued a statement criticizing the White House Office of Management and Budget’s “Statement of Administration Policy” which threatened to veto the Senates $576 billion defense spending bill, among other reasons because the statement of policy “opposes the addition of $455 million above the FY 2017 Budget request for Israeli missile defense procurement and cooperative development programs.”
Last month, the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended $600 million in funding for 2017, which represents an increase of $455 million over the president’s original request.
The statement of administration policy released Tuesday by the Office of Management and Budget reads: “The bill is inconsistent with the [Bipartisan Budget Act], and the administration strongly objects to the inclusion of problematic ideological provisions that are beyond the scope of funding legislation. … If the president were presented with H.R. 5293, the President’s senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”
One of those “problematic ideological provisions” is the increased allocation for Israel’s missile defense research and development.

Trump: US must strengthen alliance with Israel

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday said the US must strengthen its alliance with Israel, in an address strongly critical of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Reading mostly from a teleprompter, in a speech to Evangelical voters in Washington, Trump delivered a sharp rebuke of Clinton, declaring her “unfit to be president” while vowing to “restore faith to its proper mantle in American society.”
As he took the stage, Trump boasted of the support he’s received from evangelicals Christians, including a series of endorsements from Christian leaders, including Jerry Falwell Jr., who leads Liberty University.
He said the US must strengthen its alliance with Israel to ensure its security, and added that the entire world must learn how to deal with radical Islam.

Hillary Clinton will target Hamas’s ‘virtual territory,’ campaign says

Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, plans to deny Hamas “virtual territory” should she win the election in November, a senior campaign official told The Jerusalem Post this weekend.
Last week, the Hamas leadership immediately praised the shooting rampage at the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv on social media. Ismail Haniyeh, the top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, has maintained a Twitter account since March 2012 and has 314,000 followers. Khaled Mashaal, the group’s chief, has had an account active since last May, now with 45,800 followers. The main Hamas Twitter page, active since October 2010, has 239,000 followers.
Israeli security experts told the Post last week that little had been done to deny terrorist organizations these platforms, despite concern by Western law enforcement agencies – as well as among the very organizations that host them, in particular Twitter and Facebook – over the effect these messages have in stoking violence around the world, from Israel to the United States.
Clinton campaign officials said that the candidate’s strategy to deny terrorist organizations the ability to recruit online “would apply to all terrorist propaganda, including that of Hamas.”

US Ambassador: 'Best weapon against BDS - a Palestinian state'

US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro addressed the 2016 Herzliya Conference on Wednesday, noting the close social, economic, and political ties between the US and Israel.
“Israel is home to over 2,500 US firms,” Shapiro said, pointing out that there “are more Israeli companies listed on the NASDAQ exchange than Indian, Japanese, and Korean listings combined.”
Looking to shore up President Barack Obama’s pro-Israel bona fides after more than seven years of diplomatic tensions with the Israeli government, Shapiro claimed the US President admired Israel for its many accomplishments.
“’Americans admire a people’, said President Nixon, “who can scratch a desert and produce a garden,’” said Shapiro. “That admiration was on full display during President Obama’s visit in 2013. ‘If people want to see the future of the world economy,’ he [Obama] said, ‘they should look at Tel Aviv, home to hundreds of start-ups and research centers.’”
Shapiro said the White House remained committed to fighting BDS, but claimed that the most powerful weapon against efforts to delegitimize and isolate Israel is Palestinian statehood.
“I always emphasize President Obama’s and Vice President Biden’s staunch opposition,” said Shapiro.
“I have directed my Administration to strongly oppose boycotts, divestment campaigns, and sanctions targeting the State of Israel,” President Obama said in February. “As long as I am President, we will continue to do so.”

Does France think Tel Aviv is Palestinian territory?

Does the French Embassy in Israel consider Tel Aviv to be Palestinian territory? According to a letter recently received by a Tel Aviv resident, that would seem to be the case.
A Tel Aviv resident who applied for a French residency card was surprised to receive a document from the embassy that included the words "Tel Aviv, Israel/Palestinian Territories."
A number of documents on the official website of the French Embassy in Israel have used the phrase "Israel/Palestinian Territories" in referring to areas that are not beyond the Green Line. The French Embassy is located in Tel Aviv, but its notices have referred to the area as "Israel/Palestinian Territories."
Knesset Member MK Oded Forer (Yisrael Beytenu) approached Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) about the issue, asking her to summon French diplomatic representatives for clarification.
The French Embassy in Israel responded to the complaint with a statement saying, "This was a technical error originating in the software. The error has been corrected and now all the documents on the website read 'Israel.'"

Muslims ‘Compete for Victimhood’ After UK Gov Announces Money For Security At Jewish Schools

The British government has announced millions of pounds in extra funding for heavy security at Jewish schools, amid a rising threat from Islamist attacks.
The Home Office confirmed to Schools Week that they have granted the Community Security Trust (CST), which funds security measures for the Jewish community, more than £13 million.
A spokesman for CST rejected “competition for victimhood” claims after a Muslim schools said they would expect similar funding.
The money will be used to step up security in Jewish state schools, and other community sites, after antisemitic attacks across Europe.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “A key responsibility for government and the police is to protect individuals and the communities in which they live.
“Following recent attacks against individuals and Jewish community sites, including in Paris, Copenhagen, Brussels and Toulouse, there have been considerable efforts from the police, working with the community, to mitigate any threats to Jewish interests in the UK.
“This funding is to provide further measures as part of these ongoing efforts to ensure the safety and security of the Jewish community.”

Alan Johnson: From Cable Street to Raed Saleh, Labour must understand anti-Semitism has shape-shifted

The degree to which the party simply does not currently ‘get’ antisemitic anti-Zionism was shown by the warm reception given to the Islamist anti-Semite Raed Salah by Jeremy Corbyn in 2012. Corbyn organised a press conference to defend Salah’s presence in the UK and said of him: ‘He is far from a dangerous man. He is a very honoured citizen, he represents his people extremely well, and his is a voice that must be heard.’ Corbyn even added this personal message to Salah: ‘I look forward to giving you tea on the terrace [of the House of Commons] because you deserve it!’
In fact, Saleh – as many pointed out to Jeremy Corbyn at the time– opposed not the occupation but the ‘bacteria of all times’. He did not criticise Benjamin Netanyahu, but the demonic ‘unique mover’ who was behind 9/11. He did not call for the West to apply diplomatic pressure on Israel but attacked the entire West as a ‘slave to Global Zionism’. These statements were all one click away on the internet and the leader was pointed to them. He ignored them all and instead issued fulsome praise for Saleh. About Saleh’s blood libel speech, the UK Appeal Court decided that ‘We do not find this comment [by Salah] could be taken to be anything other than a reference to the blood libel against Jews.’ It also decided that this would ‘offend and distress Israeli Jews and the wider Jewish community’.
If the party misses this opportunity to construct an intellectual and cultural firewall to separate legitimate criticism of Israeli policy from foul demonization of Israel per se, then the party’s crisis will likely become chronic. Antisemitic anti-Zionism will flourish, the fundamental perception of the party among the electorate will be that Labour is ‘extremist’, there may well be an exodus of long-standing members; and the climate for Jews in this country will become less welcoming and more dangerous. Much is at stake.
Professor Alan Johnson is the editor of Fathom and Senior Research Fellow at BICOM. His 15,000 word submission to the inquiry was titled ‘Antisemitic anti-Zionism: the root of Labour’s crisis.’

Ex-London mayor Livingstone sticks with ‘Hitler backed Zionism’ claim

Former London mayor and senior Labour party official Ken Livingstone on Tuesday doubled down on his controversial claim that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler supported Zionism, a comment that led to his suspension from Britain’s opposition party in April.
Addressing members of a parliamentary committee tasked with investigating a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents within the Labour party, Livingstone declined to apologize for the remark, insisting his claim was historically accurate.
He said that in recent weeks “hundreds” of people have approached him to express their support for the statement.
“If I had said that Hitler was a Zionist, I would apologize for that, because it’s rubbish,” he told the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

Bernie Sanders: Anything But Harmless

As Bernie Sanders’ campaign winds down, he has evolved from quixotic gadfly to persistent annoyance, to one who seeks to alter and shake things up, to one who may potentially inflict permanent damage on the US – Israel relationship. If unchecked his efforts could result in irreparable harm to bi-partisan support for Israel, the bedrock of our nation’s policy of guaranteeing Israel’s security.
His by now well-known appointments to the Democratic party platform draft committee coupled with pronouncements of his goals leave no room for ambiguity or uncertainty about his intentions. He is seeking not just a more balanced, more even-handed policy of the Democratic Party, but nothing less than a realignment of the relationship between the United States and Israel.
I find his angry rants, rallies and rhetoric in which he rails against segments of society, albeit, privileged ones, only slightly less frightening in their demagoguery than those of the equivalent of the rants of his counterpart on the other side, Donald Trump.

Any Jew Can Get An Op-Ed Published In The New York Times!

Let me guess, you are surprised by the headline, right? You think the New York Times is an antisemitic rag, right? But really, the New York Times is totally open to any Jew who wants his or her opinion in a national publication.
It’s super-easy! You don’t need any credentials or qualifications. All you have to do is bash Israel.
Take Sunday’s op-ed by Daniel Sieradsky. Daniel who?, you may be asking. Me, too. That’s the beauty of it! This formerly obscure “activist” and, according to his bio, former publisher of the Israel-bashing blog Jewschool, wrote an op-ed, published by the New York Times, on the subject of New York’s anti-BDS Executive Order. The Governor of New York himself, the man who signed the Order, Andrew Cuomo, could not even get his own op-ed published in the Times — he had to publish it in the Washington Post!
See the difference? Andrew Cuomo — not a Jew. Clearly, the New York Times is biased in favor of Jews! (As long as they hate Israel.)
Sieradski follows in the footsteps of College of Staten Island Creative Writing Professor and proud BA-holder Sarah Schulman, who used the Times to popularize the charge that Israel “pinkwashes” its treatment of Palestinian Arabs, and Meirav Zonszein, who was afforded space in the New York Times to complain about her own experience seeking an abortion in Israel.

Desmond Tutu is Wrong about Marwan Barghouti

Barghouti has declared many times (e.g. in a statement issued on May 15, 2014) that there shall be no peace with Israel without the “right of return.” What the Palestinians mean by the “right of return” is that the descendants from the 700,000 Palestinians refugees of 1948 (which UNWRA estimates at 5 million today) should be entitled to become Israeli residents and citizens. Besides having no basis in international law and no precedent in history, such a “right” is incompatible with the two-state solution, since its implementation would turn pre-1967 Israel into a binational state with an Arab majority. In a two-state model, each nation-state absorbs its own refugees, just as Israel did with many of the 900,000 Jewish refugees expelled from Arab and Muslim countries in the 1950s. Clearly, Barghouti’s struggle continues to deny the Jews’ right to their own nation-state.
Barghouti was the leader of the military wing of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, which carried out thousands of deadly attacks (including suicide bombings) against Israeli civilians. These deadly attacks included the murder of a Greek Orthodox monk on June 12, 2001; the murder of six Israelis during a bar-mitzvah celebration on January 7, 2002; the murder of three Israelis in a shooting spree at a Tel-Aviv restaurant on March 5, 2002. Barghouti was also directly responsible for operating the terrorist cell of Raed Karmi in Tulkarem, which carried out many deadly attacks against Israeli civilians.
As Alan Bauer, the victim of a terrorist attack masterminded by Barghouti, wrote to President Obama in March 2014: “We cannot re-wind the clock and make the injuries and suffering disappear; the one thing we can do is to pursue justice and to do everything in our power to prevent terrorists from striking again.” Archbishop Tutu would be well-advised to ponder those words.

Antisemitism Expert: Twitter Must ‘Step Up’ War Against Jew-Targeted Hate Speech

Twitter needs to “step up and deal with the hate speech” that is increasingly sweeping the popular social media platform, an antisemitism expert told The Algemeiner on Thursday.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), was responding to recent reports from Jewish personalities on Twitter that they have been coming under attack by antisemites and white supremacists.
According to Cooper, “Over the last six months, Twitter has taken considerable steps to remove terrorist accounts. ISIS alone has been sending out 200,000 tweets a day. When it comes to dealing with hate speech, they have done virtually nothing against disgusting, racist and antisemitic hashtags that are currently active on the site.”
Twitter’s purported lackadaisical response to antisemitic hate speech in its feeds even prompted prominent New York Times Washington deputy-editor Jon Weisman to shut down his account of 34,000 followers. After providing Twitter with a vast collection of antisemitic tweets sent to him over the last several months, Twitter responded that none of the offenders had violated the site’s rules.

New Proactive Strategies Are Necessary To Defeat Academic BDS

As a veteran of the academic BDS struggle, I am encouraged by the coming together of several academically-oriented groups to combat BDS. The narrow margin of victory against academic BDS in the American Anthropological Association has demonstrated to the faculty world wide that while BDS is seen as antithetical to academic freedom, there are still growing powerful threats that drain academics of their primary missions to generate new knowledge and research and to share that with colleagues, while teaching students to think critically and productively.
There is also a growing threat of faculty members hijacking academic association agendas to make political statements, now being challenged legally within these associations with the actions of senior members of the American Studies Association bringing legal action against their association for engaging in professional activities unrelated to the corporate charter of the association. These actions are both crippling intellectually and financially to the primary purposes of these organizations as their missions are hijacked.
If ever there was a time for grass-roots faculty to speak out against these actions, it is now. As academic institutions and associations become more steeped in this movement, there is less focus on academic excellence and more focus on politicization. It is time for academics to tell their institutions that BDS resolutions are antithetical to academic freedom and have no place being efforted in faculty governance councils and academic associations. Statements and principles adopted by the American Association of University Professors (reaffirmed over time) and many Nobel Laureates in response to BDS are well established and should be affirmed in such proactive resolutions.

‘Sophisticated’ Economist duped by Pallywood tale starring the Tamimis

The Economist fancies itself a sophisticated magazine, one which “offers authoritative insight” into news, politics, business, finance, science and technology. However, as it pertains to Israel, they’ve sometimes proven themselves just as vulnerable to the mindless groupthink plaguing the rest of the media.
A case in point involves their review of The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine by Ben Ehrenreich (The view on the ground, June 11), a book featuring the Tamimis of the West Bank town of Nabi Saleh. Though some British media outlets have caught on to the family’s well-choreographed ‘Pasbara’, the anonymous Economist critic barely shows even a hint of journalistic skepticism in the face of Ehrenreich’s risible narrative.
As noted by our colleague Tamar Sternthal, Nabi Saleh is “where photographers gather nearly every Friday to document repetitious scenes of Palestinian residents and international activists clashing with Israeli soldiers” and where activists often place their children in danger to score propaganda points.
Nabi Saleh’s most popular Pallywood child star, Ahed Tamimi (dubbed “Shirley Temper“), revived her recurring role as the symbol of Palestinian “resistance” last August, when she was seen attacking an Israeli soldier who had detained a rock-thrower.

Continuing the mapping of BBC inconsistency in terrorism reporting

An ambiguous approach is also seen in recently produced material concerning the 20th anniversary of the IRA terror attack in Manchester. An article appearing on the BBC News website does clarify what the story is about in its headline – “Manchester IRA bomb: Terror blast remembered 20 years on” – but anyone unfamiliar with the story who read the ‘About The BBC Blog’ post promoted by the corporation on social media would have great difficulty understanding that the “1996 Manchester Bomb” was a terror attack committed by the IRA.
As we see once again, the BBC not only has difficulty in achieving consistency – and therefore impartiality – in its reporting of terrorism in assorted locations, but even in different reports about the same incident.
Ten years have passed since the BBC chose to ignore the Thomas Report’s call to “get the language right”. As the past week has shown once again, that decision does not serve the corporation’s funding public by helping them understand international and domestic events and it certainly has not enhanced the BBC’s reputation as an impartial broadcaster.

BBC WS ‘Witness’ blames Israel for Iraqi nuclear weapons programme

Listeners also heard Selbi make the preposterous claim that were it not for Operation Opera, the 1991 Gulf War might have been avoided. Hidalgo made no effort to remind audiences that the war was the result of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and totally unrelated to Israel.
“If the Israelis had not bombard us we wouldn’t have gone to a covert activity and everybody would have been happy. The IAEA inspectors are [were] there continuously; this is a prerequisite for the nuclear reactor […] and Iraq would maybe, maybe wouldn’t have gone through the 1991 war.”
Selbi also made the following unchallenged claim:
“This line of activity – enriching uranium – we did not even think about it before the bombardment.”
The second of Hidalgo’s two interviewees was self-described Fatah conscript Imad Khadduri to whom the BBC previously provided a platform for the promotion of similar claims in an interview ten years ago. Khadduri and Selbi are among the co-authors of a book they self-published in 2011 and among the protagonists of the historically problematic notion that the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme only came into being after – and as a result of – Operation Opera.
The unchallenged promotion of such distorted historical accounts cannot possibly be said to contribute to meeting the BBC’s remit of building “a global understanding of international issues”.

German initiative preserves 70 Jewish graveyards

A German-funded pilot program for protecting Eastern European Jewish cemeteries has helped preserve at least 70 graveyards since 2015, the effort’s initiators told Council of Europe delegates.
The briefing Wednesday in Strasbourg about the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, or ESJF, came two years after its inception with an initial budget of $1.35 million, Yossi Beilin, a former justice minister of Israel and a member of ESJF’s advisory board, told JTA.
The briefing at the Council of Europe, a body of 47 member states that aims to encourage pan-European cooperation and dialogue, was partly intended to help “find more resources for the next steps” and make ESJF into a permanently functioning body with core funding, Beilin said.
The initiative has restored cemeteries in Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Belarus, Serbia and Moldova, Beilin said.

Louis Brandeis: The Jewish Boy From Kentucky Who Became a Supreme Court Legend

Exactly a century ago, President Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court. After a contentious confirmation process, he became the first Jewish justice, serving on the bench for 23 years. His rulings on privacy, workers’ rights, and free speech feel as relevant today as they did when he issued them, and his foresight, wisdom, and clear-spokenness cemented his reputation as nothing short of a visionary.
In Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet, writer Jeffrey Rosen explores Brandeis’ personal and professional life. He joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to discuss the influence Thomas Jefferson had on Brandeis—known as the “Jewish Jefferson,” the justice’s ruling in Whitney v. California—a landmark free-speech case, and why Brandeis is uniquely relevant in the fractious political climate of our day.

Israeli tech scene second only to Silicon Valley, Google exec says

A top Google official on Tuesday hailed Israel’s tech sector, saying it trailed only Silicon Valley in the United States when it comes to “initiatives.”
Eric Schmidt, formerly Google chief executive and now executive chairman of its parent company Alphabet, said Israel, a country of only around 8 million people, was punching far above its weight in technology.
“For a relatively small country, Israel has a super role in technological innovation,” he told an audience at Google’s offices in the commercial capital Tel Aviv.
“I can’t think of a place where you could see this diversity and the collection of initiatives aside from Silicon Valley,” he added. “That is a pretty strong statement.”
Israel has long self-styled itself as the “start-up nation,” encouraging entrepreneurship –- especially in the technological sector.
However, companies have often been sold to larger investors in the United States, rather than remaining in the Middle Eastern country.
Schmidt said he had seen a “maturation” of the “start-up nation” in recent years.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Returning for a Ninth Season

This is literally the only news that matters today:
Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” will return for Season 9 on HBO, the premium cabler announced Tuesday.
“We’re thrilled that Larry has decided to do a new season of ‘Curb’ and can’t wait to see what he has planned,” said Casey Bloys, president, HBO programming.
Asked why he decided to come back, David said, “In the immortal words of Julius Caesar, ‘I left, I did nothing, I returned.’”
This is what the people want to hear. This is what the people need to hear. Put this on cable news. Feature hours and hours of interviews with comedians talking about how the best sitcom in TV history (YEAH THAT’S RIGHT) is returning. It beats another billion segments of talking heads blathering on about stuff they don’t understand and can’t change anyway. It beats having to listen to Donald Trump whine and President Obama lecture. It beats idle speculation on an election that’s still months away or a tragedy that cannot be changed.
All Curb Your Enthusiasm news is good news. Tell the people. Spread the word. Larry David is coming back to cable.

---

---

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Read More

Tunisian Jews demand government inquiry into their ethnic cleansing

Representatives of the Jewish community in Tunisia are presenting a request to the Truth and Dignity Commission (Instance de Vérité et Dignité) to investigate institutional abuse of Jews in Tunisia from 1955 to 2013.

The filing demands an investigation into "abuses and violations and other illegal acts suffered by the Tunisian citizens, whose only fault is that they are affiliated with the Jewish religion, since independence."

The Commission was set up in 2013 to address these sorts of complaints from citizens.

The complaint lists various examples of abuse suffered by the community, such as losing their citizenship and losing their property.

There are about 1,500 Jews remaining in Tunisia. There were more than 100,000 Jews there in 1956 when Tunisia won independence from France.

Lyn Julius just wrote a biting Huffington Post article about Tunisian Jews in wake of the pilgrimage there a few weeks ago:

One of the modern-day pilgrims was a rabbi from England: Liberal Judaism’s senior rabbi, Rabbi Danny Rich.

As well as visiting Al-Ghriba — the oldest synagogue in Africa — Rabbi Rich met Tunisian government members.

“Jews have lived successfully in Tunisia for centuries and the authorities seem determined to ensure that the ancient Jewish communities in Djerba and Tunis are both safe and able to thrive,” Rabbi Rich told the Jewish Chronicle.

His words must have been music to the Tunisian government’s ears.

Yes, Jews had lived in Tunisia for centuries - indeed there were 105, 000 in 1948. But Tunisia had failed miserably to hang on to its Jewish community - just 1,000 still remain, most in the enclave known as Hara Kbira on Djerba. By anyone’s reckoning, Tunisia’s rapid cleansing of its Jews is a sign of catastrophic failure. Tunisian Jews have been departing in waves over the last 50 years.

The latest wave was in June 1967, following the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours. About 100 Jewish-owned businesses in Tunis were attacked and looted. The Great Synagogue, on the Avenue de la Liberte, was ransacked and set on fire. Rioters called out to “throw the Jews into the sea” and to burn them. Some 13,000 Jews took the hint and fled - many with nothing but a suitcase.

Numbers continued to dwindle and families left Djerba in the wake of the Arab Spring, which broke out in Tunisia in 2011.

But well-meaning westerners such as Rabbi Rich perpetuate the delusion that all is, and always has been, well. Tunisia is desperate to boost its fragile economy and image as a tourist destination, its Number One industry - and Rabbi Rich is all too willing to play the game. The Al-Ghriba pilgrimage is the highlight of the tourist calendar, bringing much-needed tourist dollars to the island of Djerba and filling its hotels.

While in Tunisia Rabbi Rich attended a conference at which the Minister of Culture promised support for a museum of Tunisian Jewry.

Few can argue with that. Except that if numbers continue to decline, the Museum of Tunisian Jewry may end up as nothing more than a forlorn reminder of Hitler’s project to establish the Museum of an Extinct Race.

---

---

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Read More

When Kate Hoey was a Trotskyist

Embed from Getty Images

This seems a good day to explore Kate Hoey's long-lost Trotskyist past.

Brian Deer wrote in 1993:

Although she admits the details only under protest, before she joined the Labour Party in 1972, she had been a member of a Trotskyite outfit called the Spartacus League - at the time perhaps the most loony of British extremists. 

The league followed the Russian revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg in expecting a spontaneous workers revolt, and was so notoriously penetrated by MI5, people joked that if security service agents raised their hands en bloc they could win every vote at meetings.

Read More

Avocado shortage triggers crime wave in New Zealand

An avocado yesterday

The Evening Standard wins Headline of the Day.

Read More

Clement Freud documentary is on ITV tonight at 11.05

The ITV documentary that gave rise to the revelations about Clement Freud is on ITV tonight at 11.05.

You can find a full preview on the Radio Times site:

The programme is being broadcast in the Exposure strand, the ITV documentary series that first exposed the seriousness of the crimes of Jimmy Savile.

Read More