From Ian:
The ‘Peaceful’ Movement to Destroy Israel
The immediate result of Israel’s recent election was a victory for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a close ally of American President Donald Trump. But the election results have also revived the perennial interest outside the country in the political lives of Israelis and Palestinians. Paradoxically, while formal relations between the governments of Israel and the U.S. appear to be at a high, anti-Israel political movements have also been getting stronger as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has inched closer to normalization in American progressive and to some extent liberal politics.The growth of the BDS movement in America presents a serious challenge. It means that even as the U.S. alliance with Israel may grow stronger on some fronts it will always remain vulnerable to changes in political administration and sudden setbacks and it has a negative impact on the relations between Israel and left-leaning Jewish Americans. It is imperative, therefore to confront the false premises on which the BDS case has been constructed and expose the great distance between the polite myths repeated by BDS supporters and the violent realities inherent in a political cause that holds as its ultimate goal the destruction of Israel.
Setting the record straight on the issue of the ‘two-state solution’
One place to begin examining the misconceptions surrounding BDS is with a long article written in The Guardian last August by the American journalist Nathan Thrall, which purported to explain the historical roots and current aims of the movement. In fact, Thrall’s thousands of words on the subject highlighted the fallacies animating the beliefs of progressive Americans on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.Thrall mentions “two-states” 15 times in his Guardian article, but not even once does he mention “two-states for two-peoples,” which indicates his deep misunderstanding of the issue. Indeed, the Palestinian leadership is ready to have a “two-state solution” as long as it is not a “two-states for two-peoples, with a mutual recognition of their national identity” solution. The Palestinian narrative thus negates the existence of a Jewish people and of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine throughout history, and treats Zionism as a racist, colonialist movement created by the Europeans to promote Western interests. It therefore rejects the idea of a state for the Jewish people on any grain of soil in Palestine.
This is the core of the conflict and has been so since this narrative was formed after the Balfour Declaration in 1917, since, before 1900, namely before the emergence of Zionism, the Arab residents of this piece of land did not consider themselves Palestinians.
Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day amid fears of resurgent anti-Semitism
Israel will begin marking national Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday evening, launching 24 hours of ceremonies, services and events honoring the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II and more who lived through the Shoah.The annual remembrance is one of the most solemn days on Israel’s national calendar, with much of the country all but shutting down to honor the victims of the Nazi killing machine.
Cities, towns and schools throughout the country will hold ceremonies featuring candle lightings and the memories of survivors, TV and radio station will focus exclusively on memories of the genocide. At Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Museum, an official state event will feature six torch lightings from those who lived through the genocide and addresses by Israeli leaders.
The Yad Vashem event will begin at 8 p.m., and be attended by the president, prime minister and other dignitaries.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday his speech would include comments about a cartoon denounced as anti-Semitic that appeared in the New York Times last week. The Times has since apologized for the drawing.
The ceremony will air live on Israeli television. It will also be available with simultaneous translation into English, French and Russian on Yad Vashem’s Facebook page as well as on YouTube.
“In 1942 the Italians, who had already determined to adopt a more radical policy against the Jews, used the Jewish community’s enthusiastic welcome of the Allied soldiers as a pretext to punish the Jews of Libya for their betrayal. Mussolini determined to disperse or remove the Libyan Jews; this campaign was called “sfollamento”. The sfollamento of the Libyan Jews was different depending on the area in which they lived. In the Cyrenaica area, the Jews were divided into three groups according to their citizenship:
- Jews with French citizenship or under Tunisian protection were to be sent to concentration camps in Algeria and Tunisia;
- Jews with British citizenship were to be sent to camps in Europe. Though initially they were thrown into detention camps in Italy, once the Germans occupied Italy in 1943 they were taken to Bergen Belsen, in Germany, and Innsbruck-Reichenau, an affiliate of Dachau, in Austria;
- Jews holding Libyan citizenship, especially those from the Cyrenaica region, were to be deported to concentration camps in Tripolitania, the most infamous of which was Giado (Jado). […]
Giado (or Jado), on the border of the desert, 235 kilometers south of Tripoli, was the most brutal of the camps in Libya. Jado was a former army camp, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Its commandants were Italian, and the guards were Italian and Arab policemen. By June, 1942, the Italians had deported, in stages, a total of 2,584 Jews to Jado; all but 47 of them were Libyan Jews. Living conditions in the camp were miserable. The camp was overcrowded – tens of families slept in a space of four meters and separated only by bedding and blankets. Daily food rations consisted of a few grams of rice, oil, sugar and coffee substitute. Men over the age of 18 were sent out everyday to forced labor. Water shortages, malnutrition, overcrowding, and filth intensified the spread of contagious diseases. Inmates buried the dead in a cemetery on a hill outside the camp which had been an ancient Jewish cemetery. On top of this wretched existence, the Italian guards of the camp enjoyed humiliating the Jews. Out of the almost 2,600 Jews sent to Jado, 562 Jews died of weakness and hunger, and especially from typhoid fever and typhus. This was the highest number of Jewish victims in Islamic countries during World War II.”
Holocaust Survivor Testimony: Iris Mozzeri
Watch my new whiteboard animation which explores the connection between #Jews as a people, #Judaism as a religion, & #Israel as a state. It shows how this connection is intrinsic to the link between antisemitism and anti-Zionism; something too often overlooked or misunderstood. pic.twitter.com/zJjedgZ2ZX— Rabbi Sacks (@rabbisacks) April 30, 2019
Torchlighters on Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day 2019
Each year, six Holocaust survivors are chosen to light torches at Yad Vashem on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins Wednesday evening, in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust.
- Bela Eizenman was born in 1927 in Lodz, Poland, and was imprisoned in the Lodz ghetto. Deported to Auschwitz, she was the last surviving member of her family. She was destined for the gas chambers, but a train to Bergen-Belsen was missing a female prisoner and Bela was sent in her place. In March 1945, she was sent on a death march with other prisoners but escaped. In Israel, Bela studied nursing and served as head nurse in a hospital.
- Shaul Lubovitz was born in 1934 in Braslav (today in Belarus). A local farmer, Stanislaw Szakel, who was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations, hid Shaul and his relatives on his farm. His uncle then took the family to a group of partisans in the forest. The family reached Israel in 1949. Shaul married Nechama, who was killed in a suicide bombing on a bus in Ramat Gan in 1995.
- Fanny Ben-Ami was born in 1930 in Baden-Baden, Germany. When Hitler rose to power, her family fled to Paris. The OSE, an organization that rendered aid to Jewish children, smuggled Fanny and a group of children into Switzerland. Her mother took her to the bus and said, “Who knows if we’ll see each other again?” They never did. Fanny was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her work in the resistance, but she declined to accept it. She immigrated to Israel in 1956.
- Menachem Haberman was born in 1927 in Orlova, Czechoslovakia, and lived in Munkacs, which was annexed to Hungary in 1938. In May 1944, the Jews in the Munkacs ghetto were deported to Auschwitz. Menachem, the last surviving member of his family, was put to work removing ashes from the crematoria. Once he fell and nearly drowned in a pool of human ash. Sent by train to Buchenwald, of the 150 prisoners who had been in Menachem’s open train carriage, 20 arrived alive. Menachem immigrated to Israel in 1950 and married Rivka, a Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands.
- Sara Shapira was born in 1933 in Radauti in Romanian Bukovina. In 1941, the Romanians deported the Jews of Radauti to Transnistria. During the long journey, many died from the overcrowding, hunger and thirst including Sara’s mother and uncle. She was alone at age 9. At a Jewish orphanage in Mogilev she lived in constant hunger. Because beds were in short supply, the children slept on them horizontally. Sara reached Israel in 1948 and married Meir Shapira, a fellow Holocaust survivor. Her son, Rabbi Elimelech Shapira, was killed in a Palestinian shooting attack in the West Bank in 2002.
- Yehuda Mimon was born in Krakow, Poland, in 1924. In the Krakow ghetto in 1942, he joined the underground group Hehalutz Halohem (The Fighting Pioneer). On December 22, 1942, Yehuda and other resistance members aided in an assault on the Cyganeria cafe in Krakow where German soldiers gathered. Yehuda was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in April 1943. On January 18, 1945, Yehuda and five of his comrades escaped the death march from Auschwitz. He immigrated to Israel in 1946, and returned to Poland in 1963 as First Secretary of the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw.
One Story Multiplied by Six Million
On Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, we gather to remember the Shoah. Although it happened almost 75 years ago, it has left scars on us all and forever blemished humanity. But for me, it is very personal.I was born in a refugee camp in Lansberg, Germany, near the ashes of my family and a vanished thousand-year-old Jewish community. My parents were teenage survivors of concentration camps. Between them, they had lost 182 family members. By miracle and chance, they survived, met each other after the war, fell in love, and made a heroic commitment to “choose life.” So it came that I was born in Lansberg, Germany, the same place where Hitler had written Mein Kampf, his plan for genocide, his plan to prevent my existence.
As most survivors, my parents attempted to shield their children from their experiences in the war. How could we fathom a world where “right” and “left” were not directions but life or death, where an entire industry was directed toward genocide, and where there were elaborate regulations for hunting Jews, especially Jewish children. I did hear some stories and listened most intently to the ones about children. Here is one. You can attempt to multiply it by six million.
My mother’s younger brother, David, the baby of the family, was a Norman Rockwell boy: bright, street savvy, red-headed, and blue-eyed boy; he loved American westerns. He often imitated his cowboy heroes, who always prevailed against villains in a world where the good guys win.
With fewer survivors, focus turns to preserving Holocaust artifacts
Under a fluorescent light, an archivist from Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial snaps photos and scans into her mobile database the last remnant that a pair of elderly siblings have of their long-lost father — a 1943 postcard Samuel Akerman tossed in desperation out of the deportation train hurtling him toward his demise in the Majdanek death camp.“It’s what we have left from him,” said Rachel Zeiger, his now 91-year-old daughter. “But this is not for the family. It is for the next generations.”
With the world’s community of aging Holocaust survivors rapidly shrinking, and their live testimonies soon to be a thing of the past, efforts such as these have become the forefront of preparing for a world without them.
Through its “Gathering the Fragments” program, Yad Vashem has collected some 250,000 items from survivors and their families in recent years to be stored for posterity and displayed online in hopes of preserving the memory of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis, even after the last of the survivors has passed away.
Newly revealed photographs chronicle aftermath of Dachau’s liberation
A previously unknown collection of photographs documenting the immediate aftermath of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in Germany in 1945 have been unveiled ahead of their sale later this month in Jerusalem.The collection includes images of the liberation, as well as the revenge killings of a few dozen SS guards at the camp by liberated inmates and American troops shocked by the sights they encountered. As they approached the camp, American army records say the troops found 40 train cars and trucks filled with rotting corpses and concrete rooms inside the camp full of naked bodies.
The photographs were made public ahead of their auction later this month at the Kedem Auction House on Jerusalem’s Ramban Street.
They belonged to Belgian anti-Nazi underground operative Adrian Aloy, who was captured by the Nazis during the war and held at the camp.
During the war, Dachau held Jews, political dissenters, Catholic priests, Soviet POWs, and others. Fully 32,000 inmate deaths at the camp are documented, while thousands more are known to have died there, but their deaths and identities were not recorded. Dachau, which during the war grew into a system of over 100 separate installations that included forced labor camps, was notorious for the widespread use of torture against inmates, including medical experiments that killed hundreds.
LA judge rules Spanish museum can keep Nazi-looted painting
A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled Tuesday that a Spanish museum that acquired a priceless, Nazi-looted painting in 1992 is the work’s rightful owner, and not the survivors of the Jewish woman who surrendered it 80 years ago to escape the Holocaust.Although US District Judge John F. Walter criticized Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, the German industrialist whose name now graces the Madrid museum where the painting by Camille Pissarro hangs, for not doing all of the due diligence he could have when he acquired it in 1976, he found no evidence the museum knew it was looted art when it took possession in 1993.
Under Spanish law, he ruled, the painting is legally the museum’s, although he also criticized Spain, calling its decision to keep it “inconsistent” with international agreements that it and other countries have signed “based upon the moral principle that art and cultural property confiscated by the Nazis from Holocaust (Shoah) victims should be returned to them or their heirs.”
The museum’s US attorney, Thaddeus Stauber, said he believes the decision finally puts an end to a bitter legal fight that has pitted the family of Lilly Cassirer against the museum for 20 years.
“I think it puts an end to it because the court conducted, and we conducted, what the appellate court asked us to, which was a full trial on the merits,” he told The Associated Press. “As a lawyer who has been involved in this case for 14 years, I’m pleased that the court did conduct a full trial. We now have a decision on the lawful owner and that should put an end to it.”
Rantz: As hate crimes rise, Seattle activists host anti-Semitic event
As hate crimes against Jews are on the rise both nationally and locally, Seattle activists are hosting an anti-Semitic event that one high-placed Democratic leader calls “important.”“We were not hoping to shine a brighter light on it, but unfortunately so many people are alarmed about this event and what it purports to represent, that we’re forced to speak out,” Randy Kessler tells the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH. Kessler is the Northwest Region Executive Director of Stand With Us, a group that fights anti-Semitism.
The Thursday night panel discussion is titled “Intersectional Dialogue on Weaponizing Charges of Antisemitism,” and comes as Progressive activists defend Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) widely condemned anti-Semitic remarks.
It is an intersectional view that a Muslim woman of color, such as Omar, cannot be anti-Semitic because, after-all, Jews are just rich, powerful, white people to them. It’s, indeed, an anti-Semitic argument.
The event description on Facebook says they will ask: “How are charges of antisemitism being weaponized to specifically target powerful Black and Muslim leaders, force Jews and Jewish allies into false dichotomies, divert attention from the worldwide rise of white nationalism and state violence, and divide progressive movement-building?”
Corbyn found to have written foreword for book claiming Jews control banks
In the latest explosive revelation, UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was found Tuesday to have authored a glowing foreword to a book that claims that Jews control global financial systems and describes them as “men of a single and peculiar race.”As uncovered by the UK’s Times newspaper, Corbyn in 2011 endorsed a new edition of the 1902 book “Imperialism: A Study,” by JA Hobson, a British economist who, according to historian William Rubinstein, is known for his “vocal anti-Semitism” both personally and in his writing.
In the book, Hobson describes the global and financial system as controlled by people “united by the strongest bonds of organisation, always in closest and quickest touch with one as other, situated in the very heart of the business capital of every state, controlled, so far as Europe is concerned, by men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience, they are in a unique position to control the policy of nations.”
As if to drive home the point, the author asks: “Does anyone seriously suppose that a great war could be undertaken by any European State, or a great State loan subscribed, if the house of Rothschild and its connections set their face against it?”
Corbyn’s foreword, which describes the work as a “great tome” and praises Hobson’s “brilliant, and very controversial at the time” analysis of global politics, was written four years before he was elected leader of the Labor party.
Corbyn endorses antisemitic book
There is now no doubt, Jeremy Corbyn is a racist! He’s just been exposed heaping praise on an antisemitic book that included hardcore Nazi-style comments about Jews. Corbyn called the author… “brilliant”… and wrote the foreward to the book!
Sadiq’s Photo Op With 9_11 ‘Zionist Jews’ Conspiracy Theorist He Personally Condemned Last Year
Meet Labour Councillor Nisar Malik – Malik has served as a Labour Councillor in Hounslow since 2014, he was mayor of Hounslow from 2015-6. He’s also a big fan of sharing Jewish conspiracy theories on Facebook…Last year Malik claimed that Israel and America created ISIS, suggested that they were conducting false flag chemical weapons attacks in Syria and ranted about how the “Zaniest [sic] lobby controls all the media”. Despite already being aware of this, Labour still allowed him to run for re-election in 2018…
Malik was then embroiled in a fresh storm when it emerged a few months later that he had also shared a video suggesting that “Zionist Jews” were behind 9/11. Labour still failed to take action and Malik is still a Labour Councillor – who Sadiq Khan decided to pop down for a PR opportunity with yesterday. Yet another case of Labour wilfully ignoring its chronic anti-Semitism problem…
George McManus, who was briefly suspended from the Labour Party after posting a Facebook comment about Tom Watson likening him to “Judas” for accepting donations from Jewish businessman Sir Trevor Chinn, has reportedly been made Labour spokesman in the East Riding of Yorkshire. He is also a local election candidate for Labour in the Minster and Woodmansey Ward in the East Riding of Yorkshire Council.Mr McManus, who sat on Labour’s National Policy Forum as a Momentum-backed member, wrote that: “Apparently [the] Electoral Commission states that Watson received £50,000+ from Jewish donors. At least Judas only got 30 pieces of silver.” Judas was supposedly a disciple of Jesus who betrayed him for money, and for centuries was used as a means of inciting hatred and even murder by portraying Jews as money-obsessed and disloyal.
Mr McManus deleted the post and apologised, calling his comments “crass”, “wrong”, “inappropriate and hurtful.” Labour reportedly reinstated Mr McManus after just eight weeks.
Victory to the intifada will be protesting the Ihra tonight at Ealing council -look forward to seeing antisemites in action tonight @Never_Again_UK_ pic.twitter.com/fKwsFEqeqD— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) April 30, 2019
NYU president says he didn’t support award for Students for Justice in Palestine
The president of New York University said he did not support an award that the college gave to the pro-Palestinian group Students for Justice in Palestine.Andrew Hamilton made his comments in a Monday opinion article in The Wall Street Journal written in response to an article that claimed the university was tolerant of anti-Semitism.
“Had it been up to me, SJP would not have received the award — not because of its politics or NYU’s opposition to its pro-boycott, divestment and sanctions positions, but because SJP’s behavior has been divisive,” Hamilton wrote.
SJP chapters across the country promote the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel on college campuses. The Anti-Defamation League says that chapters “regularly demonize Jewish students who identify as Zionists or proud supporters of the State of Israel.”
Student claims NYU has allowed ‘extreme anti-Semitism’ on campus
An NYU pro-Palestinian group whose leader blamed Chelsea Clinton for the New Zealand mosque attacks has created a “hostile atmosphere” for the school’s Jewish students, according to a complaint.The school has allowed “extreme anti-Semitism” to fester on the Greenwich Village campus, claims Senior Adela Cojab, 22, in a complaint filed last week with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
The alleged source of the tension is an anti-Israel group, Students for Justice in Palestine, led by Leen Dweik, who went viral last month after she cornered Clinton at an NYU vigil for the New Zealand massacre victims.
Dweik accused Clinton of encouraging “Islamaphobia” by criticizing Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s controversial remarks questioning US allegiance to Israel.
“The 49 people died because of the rhetoric you put out there,” Dweik spat at Clinton in the clip.
But Students for Justice in Palestine is “the master of campus strife” between NYU’s Jewish students and anti-Israel activists, the complaint notes.
Israel Journal Editors Reject Claims of Publishing ‘Anti-BDS’ Issue, Defend Academic Integrity
Editors of the Israel Studies academic journal are rebuffing claims that their latest work was rooted in political advocacy, rather than academic scholarship, amid calls by some critics for retractions and reforms.The controversy stemmed from objections to the summer 2019 special issue of the journal, titled, “Word Crimes; Reclaiming The Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”
The publication, according to its editors, sought to deconstruct the prevailing orthodoxy evident in scholarship on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — particularly its reliance on terms such as “apartheid,” “pinkwashing,” and “terrorism,” and the limits they impose on academic inquiry.
Yet critics have accused it of surreptitiously working in service of a political cause, namely opposition to the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, which frequently employs much of the vocabulary examined by the special issue when denouncing the Jewish state and its conflict with Arab powers.
One of the guest co-editors of the “Word Crimes” edition was Donna Robinson Divine, an emerita professor of government from Smith College who is also the president of the Association for Israel Studies (AIS), with which the journal is affiliated.
Due to these ties, as well as the AIS membership of other Israel Studies editors, some critics are calling for the association to either cut ties with the journal or force it to “undergo a serious overhaul.”
Jewish students sue to oust pro-Palestinian event at UMass, citing anti-Semitism
A group of Jewish students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst has asked a judge to order a panel discussion about Palestinian human rights off campus because it is anti-Semitic.The panel, titled “Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights” is scheduled for Saturday and features Roger Waters, a member of the iconic rock band Pink Floyd and vociferous supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel.
The panelists are expected to argue that pro-Israel groups have tried to silence Palestinian points of view.
A Superior Court judge heard arguments Monday but did not rule.
The panel is sponsored by an organization run by a UMass faculty member, and co-sponsored by two academic departments.
The university said it allowed the event on campus because UMass is “committed to the principles of free speech and academic freedom.”
There’s a gigantic lie in this tweet — the use of the word “researcher” to describe @OmarSShakir. He is in fact a career BDS activist and terrorism supporter. Of course Israel has zero obligation to grant him a work visa. Ken nobody is falling for this dishonest BS. https://t.co/X52uVHNVO7— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) April 30, 2019
Honest Reporting: Deal With It: Jerusalem is Israel’s Capital
4. What about the Green Line?In the 3,000 or so years of Jerusalem’s history, the city was only divided for a 19-year period. The armistice which ended the War of Independence left Israel in control of the city’s western neighborhood and Jordan in control of the city’s eastern neighborhoods. Israel made its capital in the western half of Jerusalem.
United Jerusalem
But that changed in June, 1967. While Israel launched a preemptive air strike on the Egyptian Air Force, Israel conveyed a message to Jordan’s King Hussein asking him to stay out of the fighting. But the king believed Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser’s denials of significant Egyptian losses and ordered Jordanian forces to launch attacks on Israel. The Israeli Defense Forces counter-attacked, recapturing eastern Jerusalem and driving Jordanian forces to the Jordan River’s East Bank.
Jerusalem was reunited and entirely under Israeli control.
Professor Eugene Kontorovich explains why the 1949 armistice line — more commonly known as the Green Line — has no bearing on the city’s capital status.
The “Green Line” was created in the wake of Israel’s 1948-49 War of Independence. Upon the country’s founding, Jordan and its allies invaded, with the goal of preventing the creation of a Jewish state. Although they failed at that goal, the Arab armies did occupy significant territory when the armistice was called, including what is now widely referred to as the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Jordan subsequently expelled all Jews from the areas under its control.
In 1967, during the Six Day War, Israel recaptured these places. But in the war’s aftermath the United Nations invested the temporary 1949 armistice line with talismanic significance. The U.N. claimed Israel was “occupying” the territory that Jordan had forcibly seized not two decades earlier. Thus the international community came up with a unique demand: Israel had to keep the areas under its control, including East Jerusalem and the Old City, free of Jewish inhabitants. Any move to unify Jerusalem would be considered a war crime.
In international law, armistice lines are not borders; they merely mark breaks in the fighting. The claim that the Green Line created a permanent “Judenrein” zone in the area occupied by Jordan, or that it in any way changed the legal status of the territory on the far side, is unique and illiberal.
Guardian falsely claims Palestinians were ethnically “cleansed” from Jaffa
The Guardian today published a review by anti-Israel writer Ben Ehrenreich of a book called Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel‘ by Andrew Ross.Ehrenreich’s review – which naturally avoids any semblance of balance or nuance and toes the desired Guardian narrative of Zionist original sin – includes the following claim:
[Jews] constructed a brand new modernist city distinct – and segregated – from its ancient neighbour, Palestinian Jaffa, which was built of weathered stone. In 1948, Jaffa would be cleansed of 97% of its Arab populationThe word “cleansed” of course would suggest to most readers that 97% of Palestinians were expelled or in some way forced out by Israeli forces that year – a claim totally at odds with the historical record. As CAMERA, commentator Dr. Petra Marquardt-Bigman, recently demonstrated, the overwhelming majority of Jaffa’s Arab residents fled in 1948 – and were not forcibly removed.
CAMERA wrote the following:
In City of Oranges: An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa (W.W. Norton & Co), journalist Adam LeBor detailed the flight of Jaffa’s Arabs…and contains considerable description of the Arab flight from Jaffa, [yet provides] no indication of any forced expulsions.
Israel-hating New York Times can’t help themselves. In story discussing merits of Muslim Brotherhood terror designation, “reporters” group Israel with Russia and Pakistan under the umbrella of “countries’ intelligence services that use violence.” Absurd.https://t.co/VQjlPTmrzD pic.twitter.com/HZ1OQP7sRp— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) April 30, 2019
Hey @nytimes, care to explain what you mean by this? Why would you place the intelligence agency of US ally Israel in the same company as Pakistan & Russia’s? Or did you just feel the instinctive need to mention Israel now that cartoons are off the menu? https://t.co/2njmI60zuX pic.twitter.com/c6qSeQhXnr— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 1, 2019
Only @guardian could manage to get a snide dig at Israel into an article about the abdication of Japan’s Emperor Akihito and other royal abdications. Pathetic. https://t.co/JkVGL7lON1 pic.twitter.com/RlXSE74VHL— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 1, 2019
German Intelligence Issues Taboo-Breaking Report on Muslim Antisemitism
The German Agency for Domestic Security recently published a report on Muslim antisemitism in the country – a development that is unprecedented not only for Germany but for all of Europe. The report makes clear that Muslim antisemitism is a major problem in Germany. At long last, Muslim antisemitism in Germany has been officially detailed for the public.The German Agency for Domestic Security (Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz) recently published a 40-page report entitled “Antisemitism in Islamism.” Never before has any European intelligence agency published a report on Muslim antisemitism. This report is a major break with the German past. It is the first official publication by a national body that exposes in reasonable detail the antisemitism originating in parts of the country’s Muslim community.
The report’s title doesn’t quite reflect its content. It was likely considered unacceptable – from a political correctness point of view – to give the report the more accurate title “Antisemitism and Islam.” In many (not all) of the quotes below, the word “Islamist” should be replaced by the word “Muslim.”
The report defines Islamism as a form of political extremism among Muslims that aims to eliminate democracy. Antisemitism is one of its essential ideological elements.
Instagram story of young Holocaust victim Eva aims at new generation
For seven decades, survivor testimony has been the centerpiece of Holocaust commemoration.But with the world’s community of aging survivors rapidly shrinking and global understanding of the genocide that killed 6 million Jews declining, advocates of Holocaust remembrance are seeking new and creative ways to share witnesses’ stories with younger generations.
Much as Anne Frank’s diary gripped the older generations, an Instagram account based on a true 13-year-old Jewish victim’s journal, called Eva.Stories, is generating buzz among the young.
“If we want to bring the memory of the Holocaust to the young generation, we have to bring it to where they are,” said the project co-producer, Mati Kochavi, an Israeli high-tech billionaire who hails from a family of Holocaust victims, survivors and educators. “And they’re on Instagram.”
Kochavi and his daughter, Maya, have created a series of 70 Instagram stories that chronicle the downward spiral of Eva Heyman’s life in the fateful spring of 1944 when the Nazis conquered Hungary.
Inside the Instagram-Based Holocaust Diary Series ‘Eva Project’
What would it like be a girl with Instagram documenting the Holocaust in 1940s Budapest? That’s exactly the idea ‘Eva Project’ creator and co-director Maya Kochavi took on in her efforts to fight Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. Kochavi discusses with host Jeff Smith.
Vimeo Buys Out Israeli Video-Creation Company
Israeli video creation company Magisto of Ness Ziona and Mountain View, California, will be bought out by ad-free open video platform Vimeo in a deal reportedly worth about $200 million.Founded in 2010, Magisto offers apps that have been used by 13 million people to make 450 million videos in 24 languages.
“To our Magisto family: For nearly a decade, we have focused on building tools that guide both consumers and business owners through the video creation process, so that they can more effectively share their stories with the world. Today we are THRILLED to announce that we’ve agreed to be acquired by Vimeo. Yes, Vimeo – the video community that is home to more than 90 million video creators in over 150 countries,” blogged Magisto founder and CEO Oren Boiman on April 15.
Boiman wrote that the two companies “share a similar belief in the power of technology to lower the barriers to quality storytelling, and we seek to build intuitive user experiences and simple, powerful video tools that are accessible to all.”
Will Ferrell to crash Eurovision in Tel Aviv
Hollywood star Will Ferrell is joining the long list of luminaries who will show up in Tel Aviv this month for the Eurovision Song Contest.The arrival of Ferrell – the star of Anchorman, Step Brothers, Zoolander and a host of acclaimed comedies – was first reported by Yediot Aharonot on Wednesday, and confirmed by KAN.
The actor and comedian will be arriving not as a fan, but as a filmmaker. Ferrell is in the middle of shooting a Netflix satire film about the Eurovision. The movie, titled Eurovision, will be directed by David Dobkin, who was behind Wedding Crashers and Shanghai Nights.
Netflix first announced the project last summer, just a month after Netta Barzilai won the 2018 competition in Lisbon. In fact, Ferrell also attended that Eurovision in person, and witnessed Barzilai take home the top prize.
Tech entrepreneurs dedicate 36 hours to aid Holocaust survivors
Israeli high-tech entrepreneurs will again this year turn their focus to the plight of Holocaust survivors for 36 hours in May, striving to find tech solutions to their needs and ways to preserve the memory of events and educate future generations.The five Israeli entrepreneurs behind the initiative, Nathan Leibzon, Erez Gavish, Anat Greemland, Talia Savchenko and Alon Rapaport, will be holding the “Spark Hackathon” for the second year running. It will see some 200 participants, entrepreneurs, developers, and mentors from the tech world team up with Holocaust survivors and representatives of nonprofit organizations to set up projects and find feasible solutions that will help commemoration and education.
“History is rewriting itself, and if we don’t act now, memories will fade,” said Gavish in a phone interview. Four out of the five entrepreneurs are third-generation survivors, he said. “We want to increase awareness of the challenges Holocaust survivors face, find new ways to preserve the memory in new content formats, and set people thinking about what happened.”
The Spark 2019 hackathon will be held on May 23-24 with the goal of creating “workable solutions for challenges in education, remembrance and quality of life of Holocaust survivors,” the website says. A second goal is to create a “powerful and meaningful event” to inspire participants.
Recommended Reading: Top 10 Israel History Books
Looking for some recommended reading about Israeli history? Type the search term into Amazon.com and you will be confronted with literally hundreds of books on the subject. So which ones to choose? How do you know if the author or the book is a trustworthy source let alone a decent read?We’ve come up with a selection (in no particular order of preference) of some of the best materials based on our knowledge of the subject materials and the authors themselves.
1. Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn, Daniel Gordis
2. Israel: A History, Martin Gilbert
3. The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict, Walter Laqueur & Dan Schueftan
4. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, Benny Morris
5. Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Michael Oren
6. The Balfour Declaration: 67 Words: 100 Years of Conflict, Elliot Jager
7. The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, Yehuda Avner
8. A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel, Walter Laqueur
9. The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland?Then, Now, Tomorrow, Gil Troy
10. Jerusalem: The Biography, Simon Sebag Montefiore
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.
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