From Ian:
UN finds tunnel opening under UNWRA school in Gaza
United Nations officials discovered a tunnel built under a school in the Gaza Strip run by UNRWA, the international body’s agency for Palestinian refugees, the global body said in a statement.Since the discovery some two weeks ago, UNRWA closed the school and sealed off the opening to the tunnel. The school resumed operations last Wednesday, the UN organization said.
The statement Saturday did not say where the tunnel led, where it was found, or who was believed to have constructed it.
“The presence of a tunnel underneath an UNRWA installation, which enjoys inviolability under international law, is unacceptable. It places children and agency staff at risk,” the agency said.
UNRWA informed Israel’s Coordinator of the Government Activities in the Territories, IDF Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, of the incident and also lodged a complaint with the relevant authorities in Gaza over the violation of the neutrality of a UN facility, according to a Sunday report from the Hebrew-language Ynet website.
Over the years, Gaza’s Hamas terrorist rulers have built a labyrinth of tunnels, some passing under the border into Israel which they used to launch attacks during their last conflict with the Jewish state in 2014.
On June 1, UNRWA said it found “part of a tunnel that passes under two adjacent agency schools in the Maghazi camp” during construction work.
UAE apologizes to Israel for judo handshake snub
The United Arab Emirates’ top judo official apologized to his Israeli counterpart Saturday after a tournament in Abu Dhabi saw Israeli athletes repeatedly snubbed by their hosts because of their nationality.Mohammad Bin Thaloub Al-Darei, president of the UAE’s Judo Federation, and Aref Al-Awani, another senior Emirates sports official, apologized to Israeli Judo Association head Moshe Ponte over the fact that an athlete from the UAE refused to shake hands with an Israeli judoka after a match during the several-day tournament, according to a statement from the International Judo Federation.
Darei and Awani “apologized because of the UAE athletes not shaking hands with the Israel athletes and also congratulated the Israel team for their success here,” IJF president Marius Vizer said. He called the move a “gesture of courage.”
Stand With Us: Arab Athletes Run Away from Israelis After Losing in Judo
IsraellyCool: Not the Onion: Israeli Judo Federation Thanks UAE Counterparts for Their Hospitality
I am disgusted with this capitulation, that will likely guarantee the UAE is not penalized for their disgraceful conduct.Not that I had high hopes of this happening, given the IJF has been complicit in it – despite their demand that the UAE treat Israel equally.
I assume this is indicative of just how much Israel wants peace and good relations with the Arab and Muslim world. But we really need to stop showing weakness – and I am not just talking about in the world of Judo.
An independent monitoring group is asking UN chief Antonio Guterres to explain why the world body is planning to spend $1.3 billion across 16 different agencies to fund Palestinian lawfare campaigns against Israel in “international accountability mechanisms” — a reference presumably to the UN Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court.According to a document signed between the UN and the “Government of Palestine,” that “presents the strategic programming framework of the United Nations system in the Occupied Palestinian Territories” for 2018-2022 — to go into effect on January 1, 2018 — the UN will provide “training, capacity-building and technical advice” to ensure that “Palestinian victims” and institutions make effective use of “international accountability mechanisms” in order to “hold Israel accountable” for its “violations under international law.”
The UN will “increase its support” for Palestinian institutions and “Palestinian victims of violations” to “monitor, advocate and seek legal recourse for violations by the occupying power,” meaning Israel.
While the document, reported first by Israeli news site nrg, makes passing reference to the need for Palestinian elections, the UN nowhere refers to or presumes any “Palestinian violations.”
Notably, the $1.3 billion is not for humanitarian assistance, but rather “focused on development programming,” which includes as its first priority the “core programming area” of “supporting Palestine’s path to independence.”
The 16 signatory UN agencies — which include the U.N. human rights office (OHCHR), UNESCO, UNRWA, OCHA, UNDP and UN Women — promise “to uphold accountability” against Israel by “strengthening capacities to document violations” and Palestinian groups’ “ability to advocate effectively for rights to be respected.”
NGO Monitor: The UN’s Top Priority for Palestine: $18 million for More NGO-linked anti-Israel Lawfare
The United Nations Development Assistance Framework and the Palestinian Authority have signed a “strategic programming framework” for 2018-2022, providing over $1 billion to “support[] Palestine’s path to independence” and other “pillars of the government’s National Policy Agenda.”The 73-page document provides significant insight into the machinery (and machinations) of UN development programs and the politicization of development and humanitarian aid. These elements are worth further study.
Two disturbing aspects of this plan immediately stand out.
- According to “Strategic Priority 1: Supporting Palestine’s path to Independence,” and repeating the standard claims beginning with the infamous 2001 Durban NGO Forum declaration, “Human rights mechanisms are increasingly engaged to hold Israel accountable for its obligations under international law.” Building on this foundation “The UN will increase its support for Palestinian institutions (state and non-government)” (emphasis added), to help them “effectively access international accountability mechanisms in order to hold Israel accountable for its violations under international law” (pp. 15-16). This includes bolstering efforts for “Palestinian civil society representatives [to] submit[] written information to the human rights treaty bodies” and “actively monitor[], advocat[e] and mobiliz[e] on human rights violations” (pp. 39-40). (There is no parallel support for “monitoring, advocating and mobilizing” in response to Palestinian violations under the human rights treaties the Palestinian Authority has signed.)
- As with many UN initiatives, this strategy substantiates the longstanding collusion between UN agencies and radical anti-peace NGOs for political wafare – as documented extensively for years by NGO Monitor. Many of these NGOs promote antisemitism, rejectionism, and BDS.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign should immediately sever all ties with its patron, Alexei Sayle, following an interview with Sky News in which he claimed that all allegations of antisemitism “amongst supporters of Jeremy Corbyn are a complete fabrication”.There are many clear cases of vile antisemitism amongst supporters of Mr Corbyn, many of which have been forensically documented by the media and in our database of antisemitism in political parties.
For Mr Sayle to take to the airwaves to now claim that the victims of antisemitism at the hands of Mr Corbyn’s supporters are in fact liars is contemptible and enables antisemitism to flourish.
Mr Sayle has a track record, after claiming in 2014 that BBC presenter Emma Barnett supported the murder of children following an article and radio interview in which she had decried antisemitism amongst anti-Israel activists.
In March last year, Mr Sayle wrote that having performed comedy sketches about the Labour Party, he would refrain from making any jokes about the Party under Mr Corbyn. (h/t Zvi)
Supporters of Swiss Islamist call sexual harassment claims a ‘Zionist plot’
On Thursday, another complainant against Ramadan stepped forward. A convert to Islam who is suffering from a disability in her legs, she said she suffered “sexual violence of great brutality” by Ramadan in 2009. She also filed a formal complaint against Ramadan.All the complainants said they had been in contact with Ramadan for spiritual guidance. A lawyer representing Ramadan said he was working on libel suits against the complainants, whose accounts the lawyer said were mendacious.
Following Ayari’s decision to step forward, journalist Caroline Fourest, who has reported extensively about Ramadan’s controversial career, on Friday wrote in the Marianne weekly that supporters of Ramadan are calling the accusations the result of a “international Zionist plot” to tarnish his reputation.
Ramadan, who in 2009 was fired from Rotterdam’s Erasmus University for taking money from the Iranian regime and who has been refused entry to France and the United States over his ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups, has often aired conspiracy theories about Israel and Jews.
In a column titled “The Double Life of Tariq Ramadan,” Fourest wrote that she first heard in 2009 of sex crimes by Ramadan, whom many critics have accused of encouraging violence and alleged misogyny when speaking to Muslims, and then denouncing it when speaking to non-Muslims. She could not publish the accounts because none of the victims would step forward, she wrote.
Women’s Convention speakers raise eyebrows over past remarks
The first national Women’s Convention in 40 years opened Friday, featuring speakers who could not condemn female genital mutilation, who called white women “awful”, and who said they are more afraid of Israel supporters than “the mentally ill young people the FBI recruits to join ISIS.”An offshoot of the Women’s March, a protest that hit the streets following Donald Trump’s inauguration last January and led by radical activist Linda Sarsour, the Women’s Convention in Detroit features prominent progressive activists and Democratic Party politicians.
Among the big-name legislators, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Senator Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, are set to make appearances. Democratic PAC EMILY’S List President Stephanie Schriock was also scheduled to speak.
Zahra Billoo, an executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and another speaker at the convention, voiced seemingly hateful views towards Israel and those supporting it, going as far as to say “I don’t think we can work on civil rights together in the US” if someone supports Israel, which she called “baby killers.”
CAIR has long been accused of being an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and was named in 2007 along with 300 other organizations as an unindicted co-conspirator in a case on funding extremist group Hamas in Gaza.
“I’m more afraid of racist Zionists who support Apartheid Israel than of the mentally ill young people the FBI recruits to join ISIS,” Billoo, a close friend of Sarsour, wrote on social media, floating a conspiracy that the FBI recruits young people to join the Islamic militants in Syria and Iraq.
Billoo did not respond multiple requests for a comment.
Another confirmed speaker at the Women’s Convention in Detroit is Rosa Clemente – an activist who was Green Party Cynthia McKinney’s running mate during the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
She has followed Billoo’s lead in attacking the Jewish state and made numerous anti-women remarks as well as blaming white women for perpetuating “racism/patriarchy” for staying silent about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment allegations.
Calls to expel Iran diplomat from NZ after fiery anti-Israel speech ‘fuels radicalism’
An Iranian diplomat has been accused of fuelling radicalism with a fiery, anti-Israel speech at an Auckland mosque.Jewish community leaders want Hormoz Ghahremani, first secretary of the Iranian Embassy, to be expelled after he appeared alongside speakers who denied the Holocaust and called for the “surgical removal” of Israel.
In his speech, Ghahremani said Israel was trying to “deceive the world” by pretending to be an advocate of peace when in fact it was fuelling terrorism and extremism in the Middle East to divert attention from the Palestine issue.
Auckland resident Sayed Taghi Derhami, left, of Auckland and visiting Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Shafie talked of the Holocaust being “fake”.
Muslim nations needed to unite against “the anti-human regime of Israel and discern their common enemy with profound insight”, he said.
Israel advocacy group honors Mexican diplomat who protested UNESCO vote
Mexico’s former UNESCO ambassador, who was fired last year for walking out of a vote on an anti-Israel resolution effectively denying Jewish ties to Jerusalem, was honored in LA.Andres Roemer received the Guardian of Truth and History Award from StandWithUS during a ceremony held Friday in Los Angeles, reported the Milenio news website.
“More important than education is critical thinking. Many people with many academic degrees and educational degrees have voted, supported and made terrible leaders rise to power. It does not matter if they are right or left. It does not matter if they are Trump, Chavez, Maduro or Pol Pot. The followers end up being the leaders,” Roemer, who is Jewish, said during his speech.
Haley condemns UN official who urged economic sanctions against Israel
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley excoriated a UN official on Friday who urged economic sanctions against Israel and who released a report calling on increased international pressure to end Israel’s “illegal occupation” of the Palestinian territories.Canadian law professor Michael Lynk, who is the UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on the situation in the West Bank and Gaza, cited in a press briefing on Thursday South Africa’s occupation of Namibia as a precedent for calling for the international community to step up pressure on Israel, including through boycott tactics. Those remarks coincided with a report he released the same day making the same argument.
“The United States is deeply disturbed by recent comments from UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk calling for academic and economic boycotts against Israel, and by his report to the UN General Assembly,” Haley said in a statement released Friday afternoon. “Unsurprisingly, the mandate for this report comes from the Human Rights Council’s Agenda Item 7, the only Human Rights Council agenda item that targets a single country: Israel.”
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, also criticized Lynk, who he said was exploiting his position to spread hateful ideas and energize activists of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction’s (BDS) campaign against Israel.
Israel delays move to expand Jerusalem, citing US pressure
Under pressure from the United States, Israel has delayed a bill that would connect a number of settlements in Judea and Samaria to Jerusalem, officials said Sunday.The bill aims to solidify the city’s Jewish majority, but stops short of formal annexation, making the practical implications unclear. The bill says the communities would be considered sub-municipalities of Jerusalem.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper quoted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying Israel needs to coordinate the bill with the U.S.
The paper quoted Netanyahu as telling his cabinet Sunday that “the Americans turned to us and inquired what the bill was about. As we have been coordinating with them until now, it is worthwhile [to continue] talking and coordinating with them. We are working to promote and develop the settlement enterprise.”
Earlier Sunday, Coalition Chairman David Bitan, a close Netanyahu ally, told Army Radio the vote was delayed because “there is American pressure claiming this is annexation.”
Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog group, says the bill would amount to “de facto annexation” and be a clear step toward full annexation of Judea and Samaria.
Corbyn to skip Balfour centennial dinner with Netanyahu
UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has reportedly declined to attend a dinner in London this week with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which pledged Britain’s support for a Jewish national home.Although no reason was given for Corbyn’s decision to skip the event, which was reported by the Sunday Times, the Labour chief has long been a staunch Israel critic and has been dogged by accusations of tolerating anti-Semitism in his party’s ranks.
In his absence, Corbyn has asked Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry to attend the dinner, according to the report, recalling a similar incident last month when he dispatched Thornberry to a Labour Friends of Israel event in his stead.
Thornberry said at the time that Corbyn was unable to attend as he had to prepare for a speech, although he was later spotted at a separate party event that evening.
While declining to comment on Corbyn’s decision specifically, Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom said opponents of the Balfour Declaration are “extremists.”
US lawmakers demand progress on PLO lawsuit for American victims of terror
Conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats together penned a letter last week calling on the US solicitor-general to outline administration policy on a case involving US citizens attempting to sue the PLO.The case, Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Organization et al., involves American victims of attacks in Jerusalem, and survivors of American victims of attacks in the city, seeking redress from the PLO under a 1992 law that asserts the right of US citizens to sue foreign organizations over acts of terrorism.
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Several US courts have disagreed on the applicability of the law and its jurisdictional reach, and it is now before the Supreme Court for review.
Justices of that court have requested the Trump administration provide a brief on its position in the PLO case, and now 67 congressmen are encouraging the same. A letter written by the plaintiff’s representative, Democratic Congresswoman Kathleen Rice of New York, calls on Solicitor-General Noel Francisco to respond to the Supreme Court request with haste and in the plaintiff’s favor.
Letter with swastikas, powder mailed to Israeli consulate in NY
A letter decorated with swastikas that contained an unidentified white powder was mailed to the Israeli consulate in New York.The letter was received on Thursday afternoon, the New York Daily News reported, citing police sources.
The powder was determined to be non-toxic, according to the report.
The envelope also contained a hate letter, written in Hebrew, and was decorated with swastikas.
Early Wednesday morning, a pink swastika was spray-painted across the doors of the Sutton Place Synagogue, in New York’s Midtown Manhattan area, the newspaper reported. Surveillance video shows three men near the synagogue, with one spraypainting the doors.
Hezbollah releases new campaign in Hebrew claiming to operate within Israel
Hezbollah, the Shi’ite terror organization based in Lebanon, upped the ante in its ongoing war of words with Israel, taking to social media on Saturday evening to threaten Israel and its citizens in Hebrew.A tweet by the “Central Military Information,” the official handle of Hezbollah’s military wing, appears as the latest stage in Hezbollah’s offensive on the psychological warfare front. The tweet included several images whose caption was written in Hebrew as well as in Arabic, saying: “Whoever thinks they are following us, don’t forget to look behind your back.”
According to the tweet, the pictures were taken “at one of the Israeli settlements that are situated along the border between Israel and Lebanon.”
This use of the Hebrew language and bold images is certainly not Hezbollah’s first attempt at conveying a direct threat to Israelis, especially targeting the residents of the Jewish state’s northern region. The terror group also released images from within Israeli territory that appear to be far from the border with Lebanon as well as aerial shots of Israel.
Part of an ongoing campaign the Shi’ite organization has been running, other threatening images that recently surfaced online feature IDF officers who appear to be patrolling the northern border and military posts near the border.
2 Palestinians indicted for alleged terror slaying of Israeli man
Two Palestinians who allegedly stabbed to death Reuven Schmerling in the Israeli city of Kafr Qassem earlier this month were motivated by a desire to “avenge” their friend, who had been killed while attempting to carry out a stabbing attack in 2015, the Shin Bet security service said.On Sunday, Youssef Khaled Mustafa Kamil, 20, and Muhammad Ziad Abu al-Rub, 19, of the West Bank city of Qabatiya, were indicted for premeditated murder and entering Israel illegally in a Central District court.
Schmerling’s body was discovered by police on October 4 near his coal storage unit in Kafr Qassem’s industrial zone. He had been stabbed dozens of times.
It was initially unclear if the murder was a terror attack, but in the days that followed the Shin Bet announced that it was believed to have been nationalistically motivated — though it would not elaborate due to a court-issued gag order.
With Kamil and al-Rub’s indictment on Sunday, the court lifted the gag order, allowing for information about the case, including the suspects’ names, to be published.
‘Selling land to Jews is treason’
Azzam al-Khatib, director of the Islamic Waqf properties in Jerusalem, is calling on Christians not to sell Church land to Jews, calling it “treason.”In an interview with the Hamas newspaper Al-Risala, Khatib said that many sources in the Christian community had told of various real estate transactions that had taken place with Jews.
He said that the issue was being examined in conjunction with the Palestinian Authority and the Jordanian leadership in an attempt to find a solution to the problem.
Israeli archbishop Atallah Hanna, known for his support of the Palestinian Arabs, called for preventing the transfer of ownership of the assets of the Greek Orthodox Church, noting that the attempt by Israelis to purchase lands previously owned by the Greek Orthodox Church hurts the local Arab population.
Earlier, Christian cleric Manuel Muselim, a member of the Christian Islamic Council for the Support of Holy Sites and former head of the Latin Church in Gaza, warned that churches in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem “serve the Israeli occupation plan.”
Normalizing Anti-Semitism in Student Governments
In the campus war against Israel, the all too familiar refrain from student anti-Israel activists, many of whom form the loose coalition of groups and individuals spearheading the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, is that their quarrel is only with Israel and its government’s policies, not with Jews themselves. But that specious defense continues to fall away, revealing some caustic and base anti-Semitism, representing a seismic shift in the way that Jews are now being indicted not just for supporting Israel, but merely for being Jewish.At McGill University this week, as the latest example, three board members of the University’s Students’ Society were removed from their appointments after a vote at the Fall General Assembly due to what was reported to be their perceived “Jewish conflict of interest.” The ouster was led by a pro-BDS student group, Democratize McGill, which was campaigning against pro-Israel students in the wake of a September ruling by the Judicial Board that, once and for all, rejected the BDS movement on the McGill campus, stating that it was violative of the SSMU’s constitution because it “violate[d] the rights of [Israeli] students to represent themselves” and discriminated on the basis of national origin.
In retaliation, and to eliminate pro-Israel views on the board, Democratize McGill launched an effort to clear the board of BDS opponents, based on the cynical notion that these members harbored clear conflict of interests which arose from their purported biases, those conflicts of interests and biases stemming from the poisonous notion that because the students were Jewish or pro-Israel, or both, they could, therefore, never make informed or fair decisions as student leaders.
Ignoring their own obvious biases and the lack of any balance in their own views on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the pro-BDS members nonetheless felt comfortable with suppressing pro-Israel voices and Jewish students on the board, asserting that they sought to remove these students because they “are all either fellows at the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee (CJPAC), an organization whose explicit mandate is to promote pro-Israel discourse in Canadian politics, or primary organizers for the anti-BDS initiative at McGill.” In other words, they were being disqualified for having views that differed from those student leaders seeking to purge them from SSMU. The Jewish board member and two other non-Jewish, pro-Israel board members were subsequently voted off the board.
McGill has a previous history of seeking to suppress pro-Israel thinking by Jewish students, not in the student government but in its press. An example of that was the 2016 controversy involving The McGill Daily and its astonishing editorial admission that it was the paper’s policy to not publish “pieces which promote a Zionist worldview, or any other ideology which we consider oppressive.”
The hard reality is that the BDS movement is not motivated by a sincere desire to make things better for Palestinians, but rather a perverse drive to make things worse for Israelis and Jews around the world.This hateful attitude is on perfect display in the saga surrounding Ontario teacher Nadia Shoufani. Ellis tells us that she simply “spoke in favour of Palestinian rights.” In fact, Shoufani publicly hailed Samir Kuntar, a terrorist who smashed the skull of a 4-year-old Israeli girl against a rock, along with Ghassan Kanafani, who helped to plan a 1972 massacre at an Israeli airport in which 26 innocent people were murdered.
Apparently, for BDS advocates, “Palestinian rights” includes the right to murder Jews at will. For Canadian journalists to highlight this nonsense isn’t “shameful” — it’s just good journalism, and Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy should be commended for it, not condemned.
At B’nai Brith Canada, we won’t allow support for terrorism to go unchallenged. We will continue to expose the hypocrisy of former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, who is angered by Jewish boycotts of his own concerts even as he urges the boycott of Israeli musicians. And we will continue to expose the vicious and anti-Semitic agenda behind the BDS movement, no matter the cost.
Israel`s FIFA Victory – Great PMW Success
(Oct. 29, 2017)
FIFA adding that it was not imposing sanctions on the Palestinian FA is a significant part of the story and is a direct reference to the complaint initiated and submitted by Palestinian Media Watch.When PMW learned of the Palestinians’ political complaint against Israel to FIFA, PMW followed by going on the offensive, highlighting the Palestinian violations. PMW wrote a legal complaint and demanded that it is the Palestinians who should be sanctioned. PMW submitted complaints to FIFA in January 2017 and again in March 2017, demanding sanctions against the Palestinian Football Association for glorifying terror, and against its president Jibril Rajoub for glorifying terror, inciting terror, for racism and Antisemitism.
The second complaint was submitted in anticipation of the FIFA Congress meeting held in May. At the time, it appeared that the Palestinian demand to sanction the Israel FA, if considered alone, would have had a good chance of success.
PMW then called on other organizations and individuals to join us and resubmit PMW’s complaint in their own names. Dozens of organizations worldwide and numerous individuals including many terror victims all resubmitted PMW’s complaint to FIFA. In addition, PMW was pleased to see that many other organizations also used PMW’s documentation about the PFA and Rajoub’s terror glorification and likewise wrote to FIFA.
In the months since submitting the complaint, PMW continued its pressure on FIFA, most recently in August, by highlighting FIFA’s inaction in comparison to its swift treatment of other similar complaints. This was followed by the op-ed written by the Head of PMW’s Legal Department that was published just days ago.
The detailed nature of PMW’s complaint and its scope made it impossible for FIFA to accept the Palestinian complaint while ignoring PMW’s complaint. FIFA was faced with two complaints that it realized had to be dealt with simultaneously.
BBC amplified anti-Israel campaign rejected by FIFA
For over a year the BBC has been lending its voice to amplification of an anti-Israel campaign at the international governing body of football – FIFA.BBC WS news bulletins amplify HRW delegitimisation campaign
BBC’s Knell relegates impartiality to the bench in campaigning football report
PA’s anti-Israel campaign at FIFA gets BBC WS amplification again
BBC World Service tells sports fans tall tales of ‘stolen Palestinian land’Instigated by the Palestinian Football Association, the latest campaign led by Jibril Rajoub was supported by so-called ‘human rights groups’, BDS campaigners and political NGOs, some of which (e.g. Human Rights Watch) are frequently quoted and promoted in BBC content.
The Guardian Has No Excuses for Pimping Gilad Atzmon
It’s not as if Gilad Atzmon is a closet antisemite or that he accidentally went off the rails and made some comments he now deeply regrets. This is a man who is too toxic even for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, a group that is filled with members who share antisemitic conspiracy theories with each other on social media one of whom is on their governing NEC.Atzmon’s new musical ensemble was treated to a nice bit of publicity by the Guardian the other day. The only reference to his antisemitism was this delightful little study in understatement in saying that he has;
“bitten off as least as much as he can chew on the subject of Israeli-Palestinian politics”
What is that they’re missing over there at The Guardian? His commentary on Israeli Palestinian politics includes saying that;
“We must take the accusations that Jews are trying to take over the world with utmost seriousness. Israel is the Nazi Germany of our time. In fact, Israel today is worse than Nazi Germany.”
Report: Google A.I. Is ‘Biased’ Against Gay People, Jews
Google’s sentiment-analyzing artificial intelligence tool is biased against gay people and Jews, according to a report.After Motherboard experimented with the A.I., which allows users to enter text and see whether it’s positive or negative, they discovered that statements such as “I’m a homosexual,” or “I’m a Jew,” were being flagged up as negative.
According to Motherboard’s Andrew Thompson, “When I fed it ‘I’m Christian’ it said the statement was positive. When I fed it ‘I’m a Sikh’ it said the statement was even more positive. But when I gave it ‘I’m a Jew’ it determined that the sentence was slightly negative.”
“The problem doesn’t seem confined to religions. It similarly thought statements about being homosexual or a gay black woman were also negative,” he continued. “Being a dog? Neutral. Being homosexual? Negative.”
Google’s artificial intelligence has a history of being biased, with a Breitbart Tech report in August revealing the biases and preferences of the company’s Perspective AI.
A Jewish schoolgirl from the north London neighborhood of Stamford Hill neighborhood went to receive her package from a store providing internet mail services but was shocked by the racist slur she received from the salesperson.The girl reported that the salesperson stopped providing service for her while dealing with her order and started to address another customer.
When she asked to receive her package, she was told: “Be patient, Jews come last.”
The girl, who was extremely insulted, informed the Hashomrim organization who reported the matter to local police.
Police referred the incident to organizations working in England against anti-Semitism.
The European Forum for Ethnic Minority Individuals, Communities and Organizations (EFEMICO) is ostensibly an EU body that claims to represent all minority “migrant settlers to the EU” but which, at its launch, explicitly excluded Jews.An investigation by Campaign Against Antisemitism last December revealed that EFEMICO is, in fact a bedroom-based operation run by Jason Schumann, a known antisemite and convicted criminal who once told a Jewish Facebook user: “It is Jews who are the real nazis. [sic] No group of people more insidious, more evil, or more pernicious. An eternal curse upon them.”
Remarkably, ten months later, Mr Schumann continues to maintain the charade that he is at the head of an EU-wide organisation that champions anti-racism. However, it appears that Mr Schumann is finding the charade hard to maintain, especially since his personal Twitter account was suspended.
Earlier this month, we were told that the EFEMICO Twitter account had published a poll urging followers to agree that British Jews who support Israel are traitors, followed by a further tweet stating: “Any Jewish person who supports Israel more than his/her own country of birth, residence or citizenship is a traitor and should be gassed.” We were provided with screenshots by a member of the public, but the tweet cannot currently be found on Twitter. When we asked Mr Schumann to comment, he denied that he had deleted it, claiming that the tweet had never been posted at all.
A few weeks later, Mr Schumann appeared to call for a second Holocaust when he tweeted: “A given that Zionists fund & seek to support White supremacisy [sic]. All in effort to aid Greater Israel. Final solution needed.” Another tweet accused Israel of starting all wars since the 1970s, ending with the hashtag #FinalSolution. When we contacted him, Mr Schumann claimed that he had “clarified” his remarks but he did not explain why he had used the term “final solution”, nor did he apologise for doing so. He also claimed that he sought a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians and said that “The Jewish community are wonderful people”.
From the Scene: Treating Syrians at Ziv Hospital
Healthcare in Syria is almost non-existent after six years of civil war. Fares, an Arabic-speaking social worker at Ziv Medical Center in Tsfat (Safed), cited a few illustrative statistics: “Their medical system is 70% destroyed. About a million people live in the border areas, but there are only seven doctors.” One doctor for every 143,000 people? The number was shocking.We were on an HonestReporting field trip to learn more about how Syrian casualties were receiving care in Israel. Ziv’s program has evolved in response to a need.
When the civil war started in March 2011, the IDF had a policy of watchful waiting. On Saturday, February 16, 2013, seven badly wounded Syrians crossed the border into Israel. IDF medics evaluated them and then transported them to the nearest hospital. Ziv doctors were called to come in for an emergency. They had no idea who the patients were or what the problem was until they reported for duty and met the wounded Syrians.
Syria has been at war with Israel since May 1948. These wounded men were our enemies. But the doctors did not hesitate—an injured person is a person in need of care. The men were treated. When they recovered, the IDF took them back to the border and sent them home. Since then Ziv Hospital has treated more than 800 patients who have made their way over the border.
We were instructed not to take any photos. Photos could endanger the men and their families. We never learned any patient’s name. All newspaper and TV stories about treatment of Syrians in Israel change patients’ names and either blur their faces or photograph them from an angle that does not reveal their identity.
Why Israel Is Giving Syrians Free Spaghetti (And Health Care)
GOLAN HEIGHTS – In the middle of the night in early 2013, seven injured Syrians dragged themselves to the border fence separating Syria from Israel, pleading for help. Israel, after deliberations that reached the highest levels of the military and government, decided to take in and treat the Syrians; they wouldn’t have survived otherwise. What started with this one isolated event has, over four years later, expanded into a massive Israel Defense Forces operation providing thousands of Syrians across the border medical assistance, humanitarian aid, food and basic infrastructure. Israeli military officers are clear about the purpose of this largesse, dubbed the “Good Neighbor” policy: to assist desperate Syrians ravaged by years of civil war, and in the process stabilize the border region by showing this heretofore enemy population that Israel is not, in fact, the devil.Since the Good Neighbor policy’s creation in June 2016, the IDF has deepened and expanded its outreach to the Syrian side: According to official figures, more than 200 humanitarian operations have been conducted, 44 in the past month alone. On any given night, the IDF is active on multiple points on the Syrian frontier, interacting with locals on the other side. More recently, this has also come to include the establishment of a medical clinic beyond the heavily fortified border fence, in territory that while still legally (de facto) Israel, is for all practical purposes inside Syria. The IDF, however, doesn’t operate the clinic; it only guarantees its security from afar. Rather, a little-known U.S. humanitarian NGO sent in volunteers to build and staff the place. U.S. citizens and devout Christians all, they believe they are doing God’s work – helping Israel by helping Syrians (and vice versa) – on the very edge of the closest thing to a modern-day hell.
“Your neighbor could be closer to you than your brother,” read the blue sign in Arabic taped to the pallet of dry spaghetti boxes. “Those closest to God treat their neighbors well,” the sign went on, quoting from the hadith, or narrative of the Prophet Mohammed. The spaghetti filled most of one metal shipping container. On either side were yet more containers brimming with boxes of baby formula and diapers, warm clothing and blankets, school supplies and fuel jerrycans. This was the operations hub of the Good Neighbor administration, located inside the IDF’s regional division headquarters on the Golan Heights, a territory Israel conquered and later annexed from Syria after the 1967 war (the international community still considers it occupied territory). The aid would soon be trucked over to the border a few kilometers away for distribution. (h/t Zvi)
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