From Ian:
Alan M. Dershowitz: Chomsky Calls Russian Interference a Joke – Blames Guess Who?
Noam Chomsky has gone off the deep end once again. This time he claims that in “most of the world” the issue of Russian interference in U.S. elections is “almost a joke.” The real villain, according to him, is, of course, Israel — as it almost always is with Chomsky. According to the world’s “top public intellectual,” Israeli intervention in U.S. elections, “vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done.” His proof of this absurd and false charge is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech in front of Congress “with overwhelming applause.” Only on Planet Chomsky would it be worse for the Prime Minister of an American ally openly to accept an invitation from the Speaker of the House to address Congress about an issue of mutual concern, than for Russian agents surreptitiously to try to manipulate voters by false social media campaigns, hacking emails, and other illegal actions.Chomsky simply fails to understand how democracy is supposed to work. Transparency and public accountability are the cornerstones of democracy. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s very public opposition to Obama’s Iran Deal — a deal opposed by most members of Congress and most Americans — was just as consistent with democracy as Winston Churchill’s public demands for the United States to help Great Britain fight the Nazis.
American presidents, as well as Israeli prime ministers, seek to influence the policies and electoral choices made by their allies. That, too, is part of democracy. The United States has pressured Israel to stop building settlements, Israel has pressured the United States to be more aggressive in preventing Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal. This, too, is part of democracy.
Waiting to Hear That USA Won’t Interfere in Foreign Elections
Yesterday I heard part of the press briefing by Sarah Sanders. In it she discussed the allegations of foreign interference in American elections, most notably the 2016 presidential elections. Of course she condemned any interference very firmly.But I was waiting for her to say that she also condemns American interference in foreign elections. Especially during Obama’s reign and even before, American officials backed Israel’s Left wing parties in an attempt to get the Likud out of office.
That’s how Labor led by Ehud Barak won in 1999. They unseated Likud and Binyamin Bibi Netanyahu with the help of American campaign experts. The wording of Barak’s slogan about leaving Southern Lebanon was very familiar… And the damage the fleeing from Lebanon did was horrendous.
It took ten years for Netanyahu to return to power, and those ten years were among the most notorious in the History of the State of Israel. Arik Sharon’s inexplicable turn Left to Disengagement, which placed Gaza in the firmly in the hands of Hamas terrorists who are at present burning Souther Israel with their incendiary balloons/kites etc, then Ehud Olmert who was tried and convicted for corruption. Since then, the Israeli public has made it clear that although Netanyahu may not be perfect, they prefer him, head of Likud, as Prime Minister. But that didn’t stop Barack Hussein Obama, during his presidency from supporting Bibi’s opponents.
Cory Booker smiling with BDS activists and terrorism advocates. The transformation is complete. @mattklapper https://t.co/7VzzXjUen3
— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) August 3, 2018
Glenn Greenwald Keeps the Ugly ‘Dual Loyalty’ Accusation Alive
Rather, Greenwald engages in an ad hominem attack on the Jewish congressman who, he notes, issued his remarks in favor of tough sanctions in front of “an Israeli and American flag.”Greenwald coolly notes that it is “simply impossible to deny that this highly influential American Congressman, devoted to pushing the US to war with Iran, is driven, at least in substantial part, by his fervent devotion to Israel.”
That Greenwald, a former Constitutional lawyer and civil rights litigator, could simply be ignorant of the lethal history of this facile narrative about Jewish power he so frequently engages in is certainly possible. But one thing is certain: 65 years after the Holocaust, with Jews representing roughly 2% of the American population, it is horribly dispiriting that the charge that organized Jewry is too powerful and pushing the United States to war is once again becoming fashionable.
Wieseltier, in his New Republic essay, describes Sullivan as belonging “to the party of Mearsheimer and the clique of Walt … to the herd of fearless dissidents who proclaim in all seriousness, without in any way being haunted by the history of such an idea, that Jews control Washington.” It is clear that this clique increasingly includes those who take cover behind a progressive veneer.
Douglas Murray: Owen Jones is lying about Israel. Plain and simple.
I am sure that, if Israel ‘wanted’ to carry out ‘indiscriminate slaughter’ in Gaza, they could. But they don’t want to, which is a major reason why they don’t. Israel’s aim is to minimize civilian casualties. Hamas’s aim — in Israel and in Gaza (where at least 10 per cent of Hamas’s own rockets fall short and hit Gazans) — is to maximise civilian casualties.But this is of no apparent interest to Owen or the thousands of people who turned out again last weekend to protest against Israel. To these people Israel is committing a ‘massacre’, an ‘atrocity’, ‘war-crimes’, ‘genocide’ and even a ‘Holocaust.’ There is no evidence for these claims. They are a wild and wilful distortion of the facts on the ground. The claim that Israel is engaged in ‘the massacre of children’ is not just a lie. It is precisely the sort of lie which makes its way into the body politic and then persuades some people that they must act on this outrage. After all, if you knew of a friendly government which was wilfully engaged in the deliberate ‘indiscriminate slaughter’ of children, what would you not do to stop it?
Here, in a nutshell, you can see the moral sickness of a portion of the Left. For good form’s sake — and doubtless sometimes with sincerity — they stress how much they loathe anti-Semitism. But as they hold one hand up in a scout’s promise that they oppose all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism, there they are with the other hand busily feeding the furies. Anybody really concerned about avoiding anti-Semitism should take another course. An honest person would realise that if you stop the lies then, although you might never entirely stop the anti-Semitism, you may at least subdue it.
Melanie Phillips: Judaism under attack: The Orwellian hijack of tikkun olam
In other words, “social justice” is all about self-interest and takes an axe to responsibility, duty and social order. It is therefore inimical to Judaism.Neumann’s book prompts one further question. Why has tikkun olam become such a feature of Jewish life in America but not in Britain (or anywhere else, for that matter)? To put it another way, the question is not just why so many American Jews are liberals but why they have now become so determined to make liberalism Jewish.
The answer lies perhaps in the fact that, over the past few decades, liberalism has itself mutated into its own antithesis. Far from enshrining personal morality, it has been hijacked by Marxism which stands for the absolute negation of morality – a transformation which, in suitably Orwellian manner, liberals now call “social justice.”
There is thus an absolute head-on confrontation between Judaism and Marxist “social justice.” And so, in order to resolve this crisis, American Jews for whom secular liberalism is their real religion have branded social justice tikkun olam – and thus rebranded Marxism as Judaism.
As a result, they are also turning not only anti-Zionism but also anti-Judaism into Judaism, thus frying the brains of American Jewish children.
This has now become an existential crisis for American Jews, and by extension a threat to the entire Jewish world.
Exposé: When the Dutch Red Cross failed the Jews
“In 2012, the Board of the Netherlands Red Cross (NRC) asked me to investigate the role of their organization shortly before, during and shortly after the occupation. I undertook this assignment as a researcher of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. My findings are contained in my book whose title translates as Matters of Life and Death; The Netherlands Red Cross in the Second World War ”Regina Grüter was born in 1953 in Bulli, Australia. She studied modern history at Leyden University. For her PhD she received the Dr. L. de Jong award. From 2003 until 2012 she held a senior position at the NRC. In 2010, she was an expert witness in the trial against war criminal Ivan Demjanjuk. Since 2013 Grüter has been a senior researcher at the NIOD.
“After the war the NRC board was highly criticized for doing little to nothing for two groups of citizens that needed their help most: persecuted Jews and political prisoners who had been sent to German camps.
“The war time board was replaced after the liberation and the new board appointed a commission to investigate the functioning of its predecessor during the war and the post-war repatriation. The commission’s conclusions were harsh: the NRC board had failed. It had been formalistic without showing imagination or courage to find ways to help Jews and political prisoners. That was even more true for the Dutch government-in-exile and the London Committee of the NRC, which had been founded in May 1940 by Dutchmen in the British capital.
“My research confirmed these conclusions. It nuanced some of them and also added new information. One of the first anti-Jewish measures of the German occupier which affected the NRC board concerned its Blood Transfusion Service. Jewish donors were no longer allowed to donate blood to non-Jews. The NRC eliminated Jews from its donor lists.
David Collier: This isn’t just a problem with antisemitism in the Labour Party
It was October of 2000, and the internet had suddenly exploded with anti-Israel venom after the outbreak of the Second Intifada. As a way of trying to understand the sea of hatred, I created my first ‘alter-ego’, an online account that was designed to ‘take a closer look’ at those that hated the Jews. This was long before Facebook, in an age of anonymous forums and chat rooms. Two months from now I will be ‘celebrating’ eighteen years of direct engagement with our haters.About three years ago I began to notice a change in the wind. British antisemitic anti-Zionism headed in the direction of the Labour Party. The reason? Jeremy Corbyn.
Elleanne Green founded the ultimate antisemitic playground in Palestine Live. Pam Arnold is a well known and outspoken antisemite. Tapash is Palestine Solidarity royalty and his vile posts have been picked up in my previous research. We cannot know how many of today’s Labour antisemites were in the stampede to join Labour in 2015 and 2016, but it would be logical to argue that quite a few brought their Jew-hatred into the party for Corbyn.
Yet it is vital to understand that what we see now is not a Jeremy Corbyn disease. The antisemitic poison that is spreading throughout the Labour Party has been growing in our society for years. We are fighting back a tsunami today because people have ignored all the warnings, and dismissed signs of antisemitism as fringe, trivial and insignificant.
When Corbyn and his people invited the late Hajo Meyer to speak at an International Holocaust Remembrance Day event at the House of Commons, they knew full well who they were inviting and what the subject of discussion would be. Meyer was the “pet Holocaust survivor” of the anti-Israel crowd. He was not alone. There is nothing quite like having a Holocaust survivor who hurls wild accusations at Israel and compares the Jewish state to Nazi Germany around to spare those hate-filled activists from being criticized for their anti-Semitism. If a Jewish Holocaust survivor says Israel is a Nazi state, how can we accuse these other “anti-fascists” of being anti-Semitic?In Germany, these “pet survivors” are commonly used to clear the Germans’ conscience and rewrite history. The most sought-after of these “alibi Jews” are of course Israeli, but any child, grandchild or great-grandchild of a Holocaust survivor can have a promising career as a professional “Israel critic.”
Corbyn is a hopeless case. He will continue to believe what his Palestinian friends tell him: that Israel is a Nazi state, that Hamas and Hezbollah are peaceful organizations, and that Israel must be sanctioned and isolated.
As long as Corbyn heads the Labour Party, he will pose a risk not only to Jews in Britain, but to Britain itself. His conduct is that of every tyrant on the radical Left who has succeeded in destroying everything in their path. Corbyn has already dealt a mortal blow to the image of a party with a fairly respectable tradition, not least through the anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism of its members.
The Labour Party is almost done for, just like every other center-left party the radical leftist world has taken over. Now, what remains to be seen is if a suitable political replacement can be found.
The Labour party is no longer a place for a Jew
Imagine three years of delivering leaflets and knocking doors and phoning voters with that on your shoulders. Three years, in which your justifications for not cutting up your membership card hinge on the belief that having the Jewish community thrown under the bus by Jeremy Corbyn is less bad than having the whole country thrown under the bus by Theresa May.Last week, that threadbare, humiliating logic finally stopped convincing me. It still feels like a betrayal at times, and I guess it is. But betrayal cuts both ways. And I can’t see it as anything but a betrayal when so many Labour members think that I – rather than a man who suggested that Israel could be behind jihadist violence in Egypt, or buddied up with Hamas terrorists – am a threat to their values.
One of the latest anti-Semitism scandals involves Corbyn sharing a platform with Hajo Meyer, an Auschwitz survivor who compared Israel to Nazi Germany. Meyer made his remarks at an event called ‘Auschwitz to Gaza’, which Corbyn hosted, lead, and allegedly had protestors thrown out of. Think about that. One Holocaust survivor was platformed because his fringe views excused his Judaism in Corbyn’s eyes, and his experiences could be usefully weaponised against the Jewish state. Another Holocaust survivor tried to disagree, marking him as the wrong type of Jew, so he had to be silenced. Imagine the cowardice, the cynicism, the downright inhumanity that could motivate such a decision. Remember that some – perhaps many – Labour members see this episode as a vindication of Corbyn. And I am sure that you would agree that this party is no longer a place for a Jew.
It’s not easy being a Corbynista Jew – just ask Jon Lansman
Being a Jew on the Corbyn left is soul- crushing. In the name of the cause, you must excuse racism in all but its extreme forms. The presence of a real Jew in its midst provides the left with cover. But stray from the party line, and you are not a comrade having a legitimate disagreement. You are a Jew and only a Jew, a corrupted and illegitimate voice that has no place in left-wing discussions.The compromises Jewish leftists must swallow can be seen in the faintly pathetic career of Jon Lansman. In theory, there is nothing pathetic about him. The founder of Momentum is the third most powerful man in the Labour movement, behind only John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn. In the current issue of the Jewish Quarterly, Lansman insists he is not living a kind of lie but combining left-wing politics with a principled stand against anti-Semitism. ‘Having grown up as a north London Jew, the fight against anti-Semitism is core to my political roots. Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust were what brought me to where I am politically.’
Lansman went on to tell Guardian readers that, far from producing a charter for racists, Labour’s rewriting of the internationally agreed definition of anti-Semitism set a new ‘gold standard’. There was not one person on Labour’s National Executive Committee who did not ‘want to deal with anti-Semitism’.
Here are the gold standards Lansman must live by. This week, Peter Willsman, a Momentum member of the very National Executive Committee which Lansman said was united in its opposition to anti-Semitism in Labour, denied its existence: ‘I’ve certainly never seen it.’ In a voice filled with venom, he boomed that concerns about racism weren’t genuine but the malicious inventions of Jewish ‘Trump fanatics’. Labour MPs condemned him for propagating straight lies, but Lansman stayed silent, as did his patron, Jeremy Corbyn. At the time of going to press, Momentum was recommending that its supporters did not vote for Willsman in a forthcoming NEC election. Lansman was maintaining his silence, however, and keeping Willsman as a Momentum member.
Jeremy Corbyn no longer scheduled to address Jewish audience
Talks between Jeremy Corbyn and the Jewish Museum in London on a speech by the leader of the British Labour Party, meant to address allegations of rampant anti-Semitism, have broken down.The party approached the Jewish Museum with a plan to host a speech on the issue, the London-based Jewish Chronicle first reported on Thursday. Corbyn also has been fighting accusations of harboring anti-Semitic sentiments.
But on Friday the Chronicle reported the speech was off following a disagreement over who would be invited to attend.
Last month, the party’s ruling body and leadership endorsed a code of conduct that is based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism, but excluded several of the definition’s examples concerning Israel.
The party has come under fire from Jewish members of Labour and the British Jewish community for not adopting the full definition.
The museum had been cautious about hosting the event.
IPSO SIDES WITH “JEWISH CABAL” LABOUR MEMBER IN HOLOCAUST ROW
Mike Sivier is a Labour member who is on the record claiming it “may be entirely justified” to say Tony Blair was “unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers”. He has also he suggested the SWP omitted Jews from the list of Holocaust victims because they were being “politically correct”, defended Ken Livingstone and Malia Bouattia’s anti-Semitic comments and got into an almighty row discussing whether “thousands or millions” died in the Holocaust. A real charmer, we can all agree (well, except Labour’s compliance unit).The Sunday Times broke the story of Sivier’s re-admittance to Labour back in February. Their piece was followed up by MailOnline. Sivier then submitted a complaint against MailOnline to the press regulator IPSO, which they have – farcically – partially upheld.
Edgar Davidson: All the subtleties of quiet antisemitism in the UK and the Jewish response to it – captured in this pathetic tweet by Nazir Afzal
All the subtleties of quiet antisemitism in the UK and the Jewish response to it – captured in this pathetic tweet by Nazir Afzal
Edgar Davidson: Why any Jewish leader who speaks to Baroness Warsi is part of the antisemitism problem
With news that the new President of the Board of Deputies is again meeting with Baroness Warsi**, here is an important reminder of why this is futile, dangerous and treacherous. The number one cause of the current wave of antisemitism is the media/political anti-Israel narrative based on vicious lies, blood libels and propaganda. Warsi has been prominent in pushing that narrative of lies. The continued ‘dialogue’ between her and Jewish leaders enables her to hide behind her ‘friend of the Jewish community’ claim while she pushes ever more vicious incitement against Israel (and she even sued the Jewish News for an article by Colonel Richard Kemp which was critical of her). Such meetings simply give her yet more credibility and prominence.
NGO Monitor: Flooding the Courts: The Norwegian Refugee Council’s European-Funded Proxy War
Executive Summary
The UK, EU, and UN provide millions of dollars annually to the Norwegian Refugee Council(NRC)for massive and unprecedented political campaigns exploiting the Israeli legal system. In sharp contrast to NRC’s ostensibly humanitarian agenda, this massive program focuses on some of the most complex and sensitive political issues in the Arab-Israeli context.NRC’s intensive involvement in the Israeli legal system, if carried out directly by its governmental donors, would be considered an unacceptable violation of international norms, including the principle of national sovereignty.
NRC also works closely with the Palestinian Authority (PA) in coordinating its advocacy campaigns, in violation of the principle of neutrality in humanitarian aid.In its flagship program, “Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance (ICLA),” NRC partners with and transfers funds to radical non-government organizations (NGOs). Through its Palestinian and Israeli partner NGOs and private lawyers, this program alone submits between 600-800 new cases to Israeli courts annually. In 2018, ICLA aims to pursue “5,399 opened and continuing cases for legal assistance in the West Bank (West Bank 1162 new and 4237 continuing)” as well as 10 cases to be submitted to the UN and/or other international mechanisms. From 2009-2014, NRC “provided legal representation in court for 4,069 cases.”
NRC is centrally involved in humanitarian aid implementation in the region through its leadership in a number of UN “clusters” officially mandated to focus on protection, food security, water, and other humanitarian sectors. These UN cluster projects are also avenues for NRC’s legal advocacy.
Dr. Arnon Groiss critiques the work of Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan
Following are some examples:1. She claimed that the 7 books she studied were denying Palestinian peoplehood and nationalism. I found over 20 examples to the contrary, including an assignment requiring students to describe the development of Palestinian nationalism in the years 1919-1939. She claimed the Israeli schoolbook never showed Palestinian figures and I found 15 photographs of Palestinians in those 7 books. She said that the Palestinian Arab city of Nazareth did not appear on the map and I found 16 such appearances. She further claimed that Israeli textbooks condoned massacres of Palestinians, in sharp contrast to the books’ condemnation of the massacres of Deir Yassin and Kafar Qassem.
2. Peled-Elhanan accused the Israeli schoolbooks of having a racist Euro-centrist perspective, because one of them used the expression “far-away Yemen” when comparing to Russia and the Balkan, wrongly assuming that Yemen was the closest to Israel.
3. She further accused the Israeli textbooks of racism because they used the term “Arab” for the minority population in Israel, suggesting it was derogatory, notwithstanding the fact that that population itself used that very term. She also interpreted a decorative picture of two Israeli soldiers on top of a map as a sign of expansionism since one of them aimed his weapon towards Syria [but the other soldier pointed his rifle at his fellow soldier!]. Finally, she claimed that the Israeli schoolbooks’ “positive” view of the massacres against the Palestinians was proved by their discussion of those massacres’ benefits to Israel’s cause, and she brought as an example the ruling against obeying unlawful orders that was issued following the Kafr Qassem massacre in 1956. But the wide discussion of that ruling in the books contradicts her very thesis of massacre indoctrination!
In short, Prof. Peled-Elhanan’s thesis proved to be falsely-based and, accordingly, should not be considered a scholarly work. She stated her preconceived thesis based on her personal political agenda and tried hard to find evidence to support it. She failed, for the simple reason that Israeli schoolbooks do not contain significant racist material, let alone massacre indoctrination. But she was not deterred and made formidable efforts to create evidence.
B’nei Brith: ‘Canadian postal union aligned with PA’
A labor union representing 50,000 Canada Post employees has aligned itself with a counterpart that supports terrorism and the elimination of Israel, B’nai Brith Canada reported.In a statement issued May 30, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) said it “has a joint project with the [Palestinian Authority Postal Service Workers Union, or PPSWU] designed to strengthen the Palestinian postal union and build greater solidarity between our two unions.”
According to B’nai Brith Canada, CUPW also hailed a recent visit to Canada by Imad Temeiza, President of the PPSWU.
PSWU is based in the Palestinian Authority-controlled city or Ramallah.
On its official Facebook page, the PPSWU has twice glorified Palestinian Authority terrorist Ahmad Nasr Jarrar, hailing him as a “hero of my country.” Jarrar was a member of Hamas, a designated terrorist entity in Canada, who murdered Rabbi Raziel Shevach on January 9, before being killed in a shootout with Israeli forces in February.
B’nai Brith Canada added that another recent post from the PPSWU page calls for the release from prison of Fuad Shubaki, who was convicted in 2009 of attempting to smuggle tens of thousands of weapons into the Gaza Strip for use by the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, another designated terrorist entity in Canada.
LGBT and International Human Rights
BBC News describes something it failed to report last week as ‘rare’
Seeing as the BBC completely ignored that attack at the time it is perhaps unsurprising that it now classifies the latest Israeli response as “rare”.The BBC’s report closes:
“The BBC’s Middle East correspondent, Tom Bateman, who is in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, says that despite the infiltration, Israel sees Iranian forces loyal to President Assad as the biggest threat from inside Syria.Israel says it will not allow Iran – Israel’s arch-foe – to strengthen its military presence in Syria – something Israel considers a direct threat.
Although Israel is not directly involved in the Syrian conflict, it has increasingly carried air strikes against Iranian assets and military personnel in Syria.”
Bateman did not bother to clarify to readers why Israel should consider Iranian entrenchment in Syria “a direct threat” or that Israeli strikes in Syria have for the most part been directed at Iranian weapons transfers –in breach of UN Security Council resolution 1701 – to its proxy terrorist group Hizballah.
BBC returns to its old modus operandi on Gaza casualty figures
As we have noted here on several occasions since the ‘Great Return March’ agitprop began, BBC reports have repeatedly quoted and promoted Palestinian casualty figures provided by the “health ministry” without clarifying that it is controlled by Hamas – the terror group co-organising the ‘Great Return March’ – and thus obviously not an impartial or reliable source.Now – just as it did during the 2014 conflict – the BBC has apparently moved on to quoting ‘United Nations’ figures which it presents as being reliable, even though UN OCHA clearly states that they are sourced from the same ‘health ministry in Gaza’ run by Hamas.
Moreover, in this item Jon Donnison materially misled BBC World Service audiences by repeatedly insisting that his “UN figures” are different to those provided by the terrorist organisation that perpetrates the violence in the first place.
Jewish cemetery desecrated in Lithuania, leaving bones scattered
A Jewish cemetery in Lithuania was desecrated and human remains were brought to the surface during digging connected to the laying of pipes.Pictures showing freshly dug soil, garbage and bone fragments on the grounds of the cemetery of Siauliai, in northern Lithuania, began circulating Wednesday on social media amid reports of a cover-up of the evidence documented, the Skrastas news site reported Friday.
According to the article, the soil containing bone fragments was removed after being photographed by Sania Kerbel, the chairperson of the local Jewish community, possibly to conceal the evidence of the desecration. But Marijus Velička, a senior municipal representative, told Skrastas that he believes “this is not true.”
“The cemetery is a cultural heritage site and all digging is prohibited there,” Kerbel told the news site. “This is not just desecration of burial grounds, there is vandalism here.”
Police are investigating the incident.
German court rejects case of Holocaust-denying ‘Nazi grandma’
Germany’s jailed “Nazi grandma” Ursula Haverbeck, 89, on Friday lost a challenge before the country’s highest court, which reaffirmed that constitutional free speech guarantees do not cover Holocaust denial.Haverbeck started her latest prison term in May for insisting that Nazi Germany’s mass murder of millions of Jews and others was “only a belief” and that Auschwitz was “not historically proven” to have been a death camp.
German law makes it illegal to deny the genocide committed by Adolf Hitler’s regime, which in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in occupied Poland alone claimed some 1.1 million lives, mostly of European Jews.
Holocaust denial and other forms of incitement to hatred against segments of the population carry up to five years in prison, while the use of Nazi symbols such as swastikas is also banned.
The Constitutional Court ruled that “punishment for denying the National Socialist genocide is fundamentally compatible with Article 5 (1) of the Basic Law,” which guarantees freedom of speech.
Ceremony marks 75 years since Treblinka death camp revolt
Israel’s ambassador to Poland has joined Polish officials and the relatives of former Treblinka death camp inmates in marking the 75th anniversary of a revolt by Jewish prisoners.Ada Krystyna Willenberg, whose late husband, Samuel Willenberg, was one of the few uprising participants to survive Treblinka, appealed Thursday for a proper museum to be built at the former site of the Nazi German camp.
The current memorial to the 900,000 Jews who were killed at Treblinka between 1941 and 1944 is a symbolic graveyard with boulders bearing the names of places in Europe where the victims lived before they were sent to the camp in occupied Poland.
The Nazis operated multiple gas chambers at Treblinka, considered the deadliest Nazi camp after Auschwitz.
Nvidia shifts Israel strategy to focus on training developers in AI skills
Nvidia Corp., a US gaming and computer graphics giant, is changing its strategy for Israel. Whereas a year ago it aimed to set up an R&D unit in Israel with up to 100 workers to focus on developing artificial intelligence-based technologies, the US firm is now looking to train as many local developers as it can on how to better use its graphic processors in their work.You have to “teach people how to use what you have,” said Jeff Herbst, VP of business development at the firm, which has seen its shares surge almost 50 percent in the past 12 months.
The firm’s processors, called Graphic Processing Units (GPUs), which have high processing and computational abilities, were developed originally for creating advanced computer games and 3D images.
Now, however, these capabilities are being used more broadly to speed up computational workloads in areas such as financial modeling, cutting-edge scientific research and oil and gas exploration. And as the tech world needs more and more computational powers, especially for all things concerning artificial intelligence, Nvidia sees itself transitioning from being just a maker of processors for gaming and computer graphics to a leader in artificial intelligence and visual computing technologies.
1,500 Boys and Girls from 29 Nations Competed in Int’l Children’s Games This Week in Israel
An opening ceremony on July 30 at Sultan’s Pool in Jerusalem welcomed 750 boys and 750 girls from 29 countries competing in the International Children’s Games.A recognized organization of the International Olympic Committee, the Switzerland-based ICG has held the summer event in 500 different cities in 110 countries since 1968. This year, it’s Jerusalem’s turn.
“Seventy years of Israel and 50 years of ICG are found together in Jerusalem. It’s a unique capital, full of rich culture and we are here to celebrate the sporting event of young athletes in the Olympic spirit for the first time ever in the city,” said ICG President Torsten Rasch.
Participants, aged 12 to 15, come from Australia, Austria, Canada, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Kenya, Lithuania, Mexico, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine and United States, as well as Israel.
Brian Wilson: Israelis ‘appreciate good music’
At his “greatest hits” show on August 7, Wilson will be joined by fellow Beach Boy Al Jardine and longtime collaborator Blondie Chaplin.In an email interview with The Jerusalem Post ahead of his show, Wilson said he is looking forward to returning to Tel Aviv just two years after his first-ever show in the Holy Land.
“I just love the people,” he wrote. “I think they appreciate good music.” The singer said he found Israel to be a “beautiful country,” and on his list of things to do this time around is “eat Israeli food – I’ve heard it’s good food.”
Unlike many artists who book concerts in Israel, Wilson said he hadn’t been pressured by anyone asking him to cancel the show or support the boycott movement.
“I haven’t heard of that,” he wrote. “I hope people would come see the show. I just want to make people happy with my music.”
And thousands of his fans will be turning out in Tel Aviv next week to hear that music – the songs that remain famous decades after they were recorded. Wilson, Jardine and Chaplin will surely give the fans what they want, playing everything from “Good Vibrations” to “God Only Knows,” “Surfin’ USA,” “I Get Around” and many more.
Singer Jason Derulo Shows Off Hotel Room in Israel, Drinks Arak Ahead of Concert
Singer and songwriter Jason Derulo gave his fans an exclusive tour of his hotel room in Israel ahead of his performance at the Coca Cola WOW Festival in Rishon Lezion on Wednesday.The “Talk Dirty” singer, 28, posted a video on his Instagram account of him showing off his presidential suite in Tel Aviv that overlooks the city’s beach. In the clip he also takes a shot of Arak, a traditional anise-flavored alcoholic beverage drank in the Middle East. Derulo called Arak “Israeli vodka” and described it as “spicy” after taking a sip of the drink. The performer also appears semi-nude at the end of the video.
At his concert in Rishon Lezion on Wednesday night, Derulo shouted at the cheering crowd “Shalom shalom!” and told them, “I’ve been here once before and it was magical. So when I heard I had the opportunity to come back, I promise I was so excited.” He then told the crowd “Yerushalayim shel zahav.” He was later joined on stage by Israeli pop duo Static and Ben-El.
Iconic Yankees closer Mo meets with IDF soldiers
Legendary New York Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera toured the Israel Defense Forces base Michve Alon in the Galilee this week as part of a spiritual interfaith mission led by The New York Board of Rabbis and coordinated by Galore Travel from New York City.The New York Board of Rabbis is the largest interdenominational rabbinic body in the world, comprised of all branches of Jewish life and working closely with the interfaith community.
As part of this mission, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces arranged a base visit, where Rivera and mission participants learned about the FIDF programs carried out at the IDF Alon Educational and Instructional Center, where support is given to soldiers from at-risk populations to help them adapt to their army service and become successful and contributing citizens. Among the FIDF courses for the about 6,000 soldiers stationed at Michve Alon are those which help new immigrants and soldiers from minority groups learn Hebrew.
“I’m privileged and honored to be here, and learn about the young men and women who are here in the IDF, being trained to be a better person, a better citizen, and a better human being,” said Rivera while meeting with the soldiers. “For me, it was something special that I will take with me through my life.”
“We were thrilled to host Mr. Mariano Rivera at Michve Alon to witness FIDF’s important programs in action,” said FIDF National Director and CEO, Maj. Gen. (Res.) Meir Klifi-Amir. “Considering Rivera’s own remarkable philanthropic endeavors, including his foundation’s work helping impoverished communities and providing education assistance, we believed that he’d recognize and appreciate how valuable FIDF’s programs are for IDF soldiers of all backgrounds.”
After an intense week of protecting Israel and its borders, the IDF wishes you a Shabbat Shalom! pic.twitter.com/YBJUXDCL5Z
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) August 3, 2018
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.
Leave a Reply