From Ian:
Letter from Colonel Richard Kemp to Vice Chancellor USYD
On the basis of my observations, as I have mentioned, Associate Professor Lynch and Dr Riemer sought to incite and encourage the student protesters. Can it be right that members of your university staff should indulge in such disgraceful action?
Peaceful and reasonable demonstration, such as handing out leaflets, chanting dissenting views or holding placards with messages of opposition to the views of a speaker, is of course acceptable. Indeed, such a peaceful demonstration was under way outside when I entered the room for my lecture. I was offered and accepted a leaflet, which I read and I briefly engaged in discussion with a protester. However the type of racially‐motivated aggression, intimidation and abuse that occurred at this event is wholly unacceptable. Also unacceptable in any respectable university is the curtailment of an invited and approved speaker’s freedom to speak and engage in legitimate academic discourse such as I experienced at your university.
I urge you to investigate this incident and to take action against the students and staff members who were responsible for the behavior that I have described. If you fail to do so then you will be failing to discourage such action in your university in the future. You will thus be failing in your duty to ensure that your students, visitors and guest speakers may take part in debate within the precincts of the University of Sydney without fear or
concern for their own safety.
I would add that you have a particular responsibility in respect of the racist, anti‐Semitic nature of this protest. As you know anti‐Semitism is a rising phenomenon in the world. Jews in many places live in increasing fear and concern that they will be singled out and discriminated against. Only by taking firm action against anti‐Semitic abuse and hatred whenever and wherever it occurs can this situation be reversed. Sydney University has the opportunity here to set an example to other academic institutions that lack the moral courage to face up to the modern scourge of anti‐Semitism.
Sydney University investigating after associate professor waves money in the face of a Jewish woman at a recent protest on campus
SYDNEY University will investigate an incident in which Associate Professor Jake Lynch was filmed waving a five dollar bill at an elderly Jewish woman enraged by anti-Israel protesters at a lecture.
Dr Lynch — Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies — claims he was threatening to sue the woman after she kicked him “in the meat and two veg”.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British military officer, was delivering a lecture on the ethics of armed conflict at the university on Wednesday when several students stormed the room and began chanting anti-Israel slogans.
Within minutes of their entry, Associate Professor Lynch began filming the fracas.
He was involved in a confrontation with a woman, believed to be 75 years old, with the two taunting each other.
Mr Lynch then reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a $5 note and began waving it in the woman’s face.
Dr Lynch said his actions were intended to represent a threat to sue the woman.
In a video viewed by The Saturday Telegraph, Dr Lynch can be seen arguing with the woman before she throws out her right arm at him.
Colonel Kemp, who witnessed the incident, said in his opinion the actions of associate professor Lynch suggested an anti-Jewish prejudice.
Source: Senate panel probes whether Obama administration funded effort to oust Netanyahu
A powerful U.S. Senate investigatory committee has launched a bipartisan probe into an American nonprofit’s funding of efforts to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the Obama administration’s State Department gave the nonprofit taxpayer-funded grants, a source with knowledge of the panel's activities told FoxNews.com.
The fact that both Democratic and Republican sides of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations have signed off on the probe could be seen as a rebuke to President Obama, who has had a well-documented adversarial relationship with the Israeli leader.
The development comes as Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel Two television station this week that there were “governments” that wanted to help with the “Just Not Bibi” campaigning -- Bibi being the Israeli leader’s nickname.
It also follows a FoxNews.com report on claims the Obama administration has been meddling in the Israeli election on behalf of groups hostile to Netanyahu. A spokesperson for Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio Republican and chairman of the committee, declined comment, and aides to ranking Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, did not immediately return calls.
The Senate subcommittee, which has subpoena power, is the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ chief investigative body with jurisdiction over all branches of government operations and compliance with laws.
Kerry tells Abbas he’ll press Israel to transfer withheld funds
US Secretary of State John Kerry held talks Friday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the leaders of Egypt and Jordan on the stalled Middle East peace process, officials said.
Kerry was attending an investment conference in Egypt’s Red Sea resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh along with hundreds of prominent figures to jumpstart its economy.
Ahead of the conference Kerry met Abbas, Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II to discuss the peace process, a State Department official and Sissi’s office said.
Referring to the breakdown in relations with Israel and the ongoing financial crisis in the PA due to withheld tax funds, Abbas said that “there’s no alternative but to re-evaluate the security and economic relations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.” Abbas has threatened several times recently to halt security cooperation between his forces and the IDF in the West Bank.
Hamas accuses PA of fomenting Gaza violence
The Hamas-held interior ministry in the Gaza Strip on Saturday accused security forces reporting to the rival Palestinian Authority of being behind a wave of violence in the coastal enclave.
Spokesman Iyad al-Bozum accused “members of the former security establishment in Gaza” of “exploiting the difficult conditions, especially since the last war, to spread chaos and confusion with explosions, car burnings and shootings”.
The war to which he referred was last summer’s conflict with Israel.
Palestinian Authority security forces were ousted from Gaza in 2007 by fighters from the Islamist Hamas movement’s armed wing.
Bozum did not elaborate, but explosions have targeted vehicles used by Hamas in recent months, as well as some owned by members of PA president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party.
He told a news conference investigations had shown the incidents were “the result of plans by security chiefs in Ramallah” — the headquarters of the PA in the West Bank.
The Administration’s Latest Plan to Get Around Congress on Iran
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote to President Obama yesterday, citing reports that the administration plans to take its nuclear agreement with Iran to the UN Security Council for a vote, and would veto any legislation allowing Congress to vote on it first. Corker asked the president to “advise us as to whether you are considering going to the [UN] Security Council without coming to Congress.” As it happens, Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, answered Sen. Corker’s question in his response to the “open letter” to Iran by 47 senators.
Zarif informed the senators that “if the current negotiation with the P5+1 results in a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the US, but rather one that will be concluded with … all permanent members of the Security Council [the P5], and will be endorsed by a Security Council resolution.” [Emphasis added.]
So the plan is to transform existing UN resolutions, which ban Iran’s enrichment and related nuclear activities, into a brand-new resolution that allows them. The foreign minister added that he hoped his comments would “enrich” the senators’ knowledge of international law: he took it upon himself to instruct the senators that the U.S. will be bound by the new UN resolution.
The administration’s plan is apparently, as Jonathan Tobin wrote earlier, to assert that the Iranian deal is not legally binding–and thus is not a “treaty” requiring a vote by the Senate–and then present it to the UN for incorporation into a “binding” UN resolution. At yesterday’s State Department press conference, spokesperson Jen Psaki was, understandably, having trouble explaining the administration’s strategy:
Obama warned not to take Iran deal to UN instead of Congress
US Senator Bob Corker warned President Barack Obama Thursday against a reported plan to take a nuclear deal for approval to the United Nations Security Council but not Congress.
Corker, the original proponent of a bill to force Congressional review of any nuclear deal with Iran, said such a move would be an insult to the American people
“Enabling the United Nations to consider an agreement or portions of it, while simultaneously threatening to veto legislation that would enable Congress to do the same, is a direct affront to the American people and seeks to undermine Congress’s appropriate role,” Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote to Obama.
Corker asked the president to “please advise us as to whether you are considering going to the United Nations Security Council without coming to Congress first.”
WaPo Editorial: Will Administration Tolerate Iranian Aggression to Preserve Nuke Deal?
Lamenting that the “the administration’s assurances are at odds with its actions,” a staff editorial in The Washington Post today expressed concern that President Barack Obama is prepared to accept increasing Iranian aggression in the Middle East in order to preserve the nuclear deal that the P5+1 nations are negotiating with Iran.
The administration’s repeated inaction prompted the editorial to ask, “Will [the administration] help its allies fight back, or will it restrain itself in the interest of preventing a rupture of the nuclear accord and in order to ‘improve relations over time’?”
The editorial concluded by agreeing with the president that a nuclear Iran would be bolder in expanding its influence throughout the Middle East, but warns, too, that the administration’s “current policies, combined with the lifting of sanctions, could have the same result.”
In a column written last month, the Post’s editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, wrote that Obama’s “litany of unfulfilled assurances” about past foreign policy decisions made it important for there to be a “congressional buy-in” to any Iranian nuclear deal.
After initially endorsing the Joint Plan of Action, the editorial of The Washington Post have, in recent months, taken a more critical look the administration’s negotiating with Iran. Recent editorials have called on the West to “hold the line” on Iran, asked the president to work more closely with Congress to shape a deal, questioned Iran’s credibility in light of its harsh treatment of Post reporter Jason Rezaian, and called for even more diplomatic pressure to be brought against Iran.
Iran starts production of long-range cruise missile
Iran on Saturday formally inaugurated what it said was mass production of a long-range anti-ship cruise missile.
The ceremony for the Qadir cruise missile, a homegrown Iranian invention said to be capable of striking naval targets up to 300 kilometers (186 miles) away, was attended by high-ranking members of the defense establishment, including Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan, according to a report by Fars News, a semi-official Iranian news agency.
Dehqan said he missiles could be deployed quickly and accurately from a variety of different platforms. He said the Qadir had highly advanced radar, anti-jamming and anti-electronic warfare systems, and was capable of delivering a missile with high destructive power while flying at low altitude.
The Qadir was publicly revealed in 2011.
IDF Soldier Injured in Palestinian Rock-Throwing Attack
The commander of an IDF combat unit was injured on Friday by stones thrown by Palestinian Arabs during a riot in the town of Silwad, near the West Bank community of Ofra, the 0404 website reported.
A rock hit the unit commander in his face, causing him to temporarily lose consciousness and breaking his teeth. After he was hit, the solder was transported to a nearby hospital for treatment. His injuries do not appear to be serious, according to the report.
Other reports indicated that there were at least 12 other stone-throwing incidents that occurred today, where Palestinian rock-throwers targeted both Israeli civilians and IDF forces in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, 0404 said
IAF jets scrambled in North after Syrian warplanes spotted near Lebanon border
Israel Air Force fighter jets were scrambled in the skies over the North on Saturday morning after higher-than-usual movement of Syrian aircraft was detected near the Syrian-Lebanese border.
The government of President Bashar Assad has used aircraft in its efforts to quell a rebellion launched by a coalition of secular and religious Sunnis seeking to install a new regime in Damascus.
Israeli warplanes often fly sorties over southern Lebanon. Lebanese press has been known to report that Israeli air force jets are visible in the Beka’a valley.
The IAF flyovers come against the backdrop of increasing tensions between Israel and Hezbollah following last week’s attack in the Golan Heights against a convoy of Hezbollah and Iranian military personnel.
Israel security officials recommend barrier on Jordan border
Israeli security officials have recommended building a barrier along the border with Jordan — the Jewish state’s only frontier that does not yet feature a fence.
“Security officials recommended the construction of a security barrier to protect the new airport which will be built at Timna” some 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of resort city Eilat, an army spokeswoman said, without elaborating.
Work has already begun on the new airport near Eilat, which lies across the Jordanian border from the port city of Aqaba.
Haaretz reported that the planned 30-kilometer (19-mile) barrier was designed both to protect the airport and to foil attempts by would-be “jihadist infiltrators” from Jordan, which is home to some extremist sympathizers and a number of radical clerics.
Southerners espy Hamas digging tunnels near border
Residents of a kibbutz near the Gaza Strip said Friday that Hamas is excavating new tunnels beneath the border with Israel.
Netiv Ha’Asara, which is under a kilometer (half mile) from the Gaza Strip, is home to about 700 Israelis. Members of the collective said that Hamas workers were digging new attack tunnels before the eyes of IDF soldiers stationed on the border and that the military was doing nothing to stop them.
A video published Friday by the Ynet news site, filmed by a resident of the kibbutz from inside Israel, appeared to show masked Hamas gunmen stationed atop massive piles of excavated sand, while others dug below.
Hamas training exercises and rocket launches out to sea are also regular occurrences in the northern Gaza Strip, opposite Netiv Ha’Asara.
The Best #AskHamas Tweets
Imitating its fellow ISIS terrorist group, Hamas tried to take over Twitter. It didn’t go so well.
Hamas had a few things going against it. Its English skills are somewhat lacking and with Stanley Cohen headed to jail and Code Pink off trying to help North Korea, it didn’t have much of a fanbase of supporters.
Berkeley's Bazian on Paris Attacks: It's the Islamophobia, Stupid!
Only in academe can a panel discussion on Islamic terrorism turn into an exercise in obfuscation and denial. Titled "Shooting Rampage in Paris: Free Speech, Anti-Semitism, Freedom of Religion, Islamophobia," the recent University of California, Berkeley panel—which promised to "start a dialog" on the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket attacks in Paris—featured six professors from a variety of UC Berkeley departments.
This mixture produced an array of contrasting views, yet neither of the two Middle East studies specialists involved—anthropology professor Saba Mahmood and Hatem Bazian, a Near Eastern studies lecturer and founder of the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project—addressed the topic in a forthright manner, but deflected controversial issues and issued apologias for terrorism.
The large audience of students, faculty and community members filled Booth Auditorium in UC Berkeley's law school, Boalt Hall, where Saba Mahmood began the discussion. She claimed to be a "longstanding defender of the right to free speech," yet condemned "the wide call in European and American media to recirculate and celebrate the [Charlie Hebdo] cartoons" and Slate editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg's promise "to escalate blasphemous satire," which she likened to an "escalation on the attack against France's most beleaguered minority."
Focusing on the "question of why so many Muslims who do not condone the Paris murders are deeply offended by the cartoons," Mahmood labored to explain that, "They felt what I would call a moral injury on the desecration of the prophet [Mohammad]." She insisted that "the caricaturists . . . find some better way, instead of making Mohammad the icon of terrorism itself," ignoring that satirists depict Mohammad precisely because they are told not to, both by Islamic prohibitions and Western self-censorship.
Growing security costs take toll on European Jews
Jewish communities in Europe are on edge after being targeted by Islamist gunmen in recent attacks in France and Denmark.
But even before that, many said they were victims of a growing tide of anti-Semitic crime, with the number of Jews leaving France for Israel nearly doubling between 2013 and 2014.
“Every Jewish community in western Europe certainly needs security support. Many of them are being bankrupted by the money they have to spend to protect their institutions,” Ira Forman told journalists in Stockholm.
“If current trends continue, and they’re not good… we have to worry about small Jewish communities in Europe and their very viability,” he added.
Danes form human ring outside Copenhagen synagogue
People of different faiths formed a human ring Saturday outside the synagogue in Copenhagen where a Jewish security guard was fatally shot last month.
Organizer Niddal El-Jabr said the idea behind the show of unity was to “send a powerful statement” that “Jews should able to have their religion in peace.”
Attendance was reported by The Associated Press to be in the “thousands.”
A similar event held in Oslo in the days following the attack had involved over a thousand people, but were later found to have been exaggerated.
Two charged over links to Paris kosher market terrorist
Two men with ties to one of the three gunmen who terrorized Paris in January were handed preliminary charges Friday, the Paris prosecutor said, describing hundreds of texts, regular meetings and DNA recovered from a stun gun among the belongings at a bloodied kosher supermarket.
The two men, identified as Amar R. and Said M., were given preliminary charges for participation in a terrorist group with the intent to commit crime.
Prosecutors said Amar R., a jailhouse acquaintance of Paris terrorist Amedy Coulibaly, had exchanged more than 600 texts with Coulibaly from September to January and met him on January 5 and January 6. That was just a day before two brothers killed 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris on January 7 and before Coulibaly shot dead a policewoman on January 8 and killed four of his hostages a day later at a Paris kosher grocery store.
DNA from Said M. was recovered from a stun gun in Coulibaly’s belongings at the market, the prosecutor said.
Argentina declassifies files on Jewish center bombing
The Argentine government on Friday declassified its files on an unsolved 1994 bombing at a Buenos Aires Jewish center that is at the center of a new political firestorm.
In a decree published in the Official Bulletin, the government declassified “all documents in their entirety” from the probe into the bombing.
It also declassified “any other new documents, reports or files that have not been part of the case and could be of interest in the investigation.”
The bombing at the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) killed 85 people and wounded 300, the deadliest such attack in the South American country’s history.
The case came back into the spotlight 21 years later after a prosecutor appointed to reopen the investigation died mysteriously in what his family says was an assassination.
Edgar Davidson: Whose idea was it to have an anti-Zionist and a Muslim Brotherhood supporter put Israel's case to the Cambridge Union?
Last week Cambridge University Union debated the motion "Israel is a rogue state". The motion passed easily (51% voted in favour, 19% against, and 30% abstained).That is both astonishing and depressing to Israel supporters. Of even more concern is the fact that, while the main speaker for the motion was the very experienced and obsessive anti-Israel propagandist Norman Finkelstein, the Israel 'case' was made by two people whose 'support' for Israel is at the very best ambivalent:
Hannah Weisfeld, the leader of the anti-Zionist Yachad - which is still trying to con British Jews into thinking it is pro-Israel, even though all the evidence suggests that they fully support the motion that their leader was supposed to be arguing against.
Vivien Wineman, the useless and discredited Chairman of the Board of Deputies who has devoted his leadership of the Board to developing ties with the Muslim Council of Britain (which is the official Muslim Brotherhood organisation in the UK) and to stopping pro-Israel speakers from coming to the UK.
It's a bit like choosing a Dalek and a Cyberman to make a toast to Doctor Who. And irrespective of their views, Weisfeld and Wineman are also both appalling speakers as anybody who has had the misfortune to hear them will know. It is difficult to imagine a more striking example of how the so-called Jewish leadership in the UK is failing the vast majority of British Jews; unlike Weisfeld and Wineman they are strong supporters of Israel and know that failure to properly support Israel (and counter the propaganda lies against it) is fuelling the rise in antisemitism.
The Southampton betrayal: UK academics against Israel
“Our age” wrote Julien Benda in 1927 in La Trahison des clercs, “is indeed the age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds.” The newest example of this organized hatred is the Conference to be held in the UK between April 17 and 19 under the auspices of the Southampton Law School.
The given title is “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility, and Exceptionalism.”
The title betrays the underlying animosity behind the conference: the existence of Israel, now in its 66th year, is something to be discussed and, for many of the participants, ended.
The conference is intellectually limited in two senses. No other country’s right of existence is being questioned, or denied, not even Syria, Libya, or Iran. Moreover, little genuine discussion of complex issues pertaining to the Arab-Israeli conflict can be expected.
Some of the participants in this “academic” conference have made previous public statements that have gone beyond what might be considered the limits of reasonable argument.
Attorney Warns New Israel Fund Against Funding BDS, Says Legal Action May Follow
Robert J. Tolchin, a New York-based civil rights lawyer who in 2012 helped a Florida family win a landmark $323 million judgment from Iran and Syria over those countries’ involvement in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, said he may file legal action against the New Israel Fund (NIF) if the organization fails to confirm that it does not fund boycotts against Israel.
In a letter dated March 12 that was obtained by JNS.org, Tolchin wrote on behalf of The Berkman Law Office, LLC to NIF President Rabbi Brian Lurie, “This letter is a warning that the New Israel Fund should under no circumstances support, publicly or privately, any boycott or similar effort against the Israeli government or the nation’s organizations, academic institutions, corporations or other entities. The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement’s efforts are unlawful racial discrimination on the basis of national origin and/or race, creed and religion under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (‘Anti-Racism Convention’) and numerous U.S. state and federal statutes.”
While the NIF publicly states that it opposes the BDS movement, the organization has come under fire over its funding of anti-Israel and BDS-linked groups such as B’Tselem, Adalah, Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence), Yesh Din, The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Rabbis for Human Rights, Machsom Watch, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.
CUFI Fires Back At HuffPo Attack On Hagee
After the Huffington Post printed an attack piece by Bruce Wilson in which he criticized Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) by taking statements out of context, CUFI fired back a blistering response in the form of two letters, one from CUFI executive director David Brog and one from the organization itself.
Brog wrote:
As a Jew whose extended family was murdered in the Holocaust, I find Wilson's claims deeply offensive. How dare he use the greatest tragedy in Jewish history to slander one of the greatest friends the Jewish people have ever known. Pastor John Hagee has devoted his life to standing in support of Israel and the Jewish people, and he's suffered repeated death threats from anti-Semites because of it. For Wilson to once again slander this righteous gentile as an anti-Semite is disgusting even for a journalist of Wilson's low reputation. Shame on him.
CUFI added:
In 2011 it was exposed that Bruce Wilson falsely attributed a quote to Hagee in a prior attack piece. Yesterday, Wilson returned to his old tricks. The sum total of the arguments Wilson makes in his 1,600 word screed against Hagee involved his quoting random phrases -- and even random words -- taken blatantly out of the context in which Hagee wrote or spoke them. Such dishonest reporting may not be beneath Wilson's dignity, but it should be below that of the Huffington Post.
Rasmea Odeh danced and celebrated after sentencing
The evidence of Rasmea’s guilt on both the immigration and terrorism charges was overwhelming.
Rasmea’s supporters continue to claim that Rasmea was found guilty in Israel only because she confessed to the bombing after 25 days of sexual torture.
In fact, Rasmea confessed one day after arrest, there was substantial other evidence against her, and years later her co-conspirators gave interviews to pro-Palestinian filmmakers highlighting that Rasmea was the mastermind of the bombing.
Rasmea was so admired in the terrorist community that a special brigade led by the infamous Leila Khaled was named after Rasmea, and Rasmea was part of a 1979 prisoner exchange for an Israeli soldier captured in Lebanon:
“I am the leader of the hijack. My name is Leila Khaled and a member of the PFLP and from the unit of Rasmieh Odeh, a Palestinian woman prisoner.”
Rasmea never has expressed any regret for her past, or condolences to the Joffe or Kanner families.
After her sentencing yesterday, Rasmea danced and celebrated.
US does not want to see Assad regime 'collapse', taken over by 'extremist elements'
The United States does not want to see the chaotic collapse of the Syrian regime, CIA Director John Brennan said on Friday, according to AFP.
Speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations event, Brennan, who took over the CIA's top spot in 2013, highlighted the possibility of a catastrophic breakdown whereby "extremist elements" seize power in Damascus.
"I think that's a legitimate concern," Brennan said when asked about the possibility that jihadist groups may hijack the Syrian government.
"None of us, Russia, the United States, coalition, and regional states, wants to see a collapse of the government and political institutions in Damascus."
The White House has endorsed a transition of power in Syria in the past, expressing its support for moderate forces within the Syrian opposition whom it sees as possible successors to the Assad regime. But advances by more hardline groups have eclipsed any success enjoyed by US sponsored rebels.
UN: Rouhani’s First Year as Iranian President Saw Most Executions in Over a Decade
The report notes that Iran’s latest penal code provides for the execution of minors (with some exceptions).
The increase in executions under Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, who was elected in August 2013, isn’t surprising. One of his earliest appointments was tapping Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi to serve as justice minister. Pour-Mohammadi is known as “Minister of Murder” for his role in thousands of summary executions that were carried out at the behest of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the late 1980’s.
Shaheed’s second area of investigation was the right to a fair trial. The report observes that “most violations of fair trial standards reportedly occur during the investigation phase.” The trial of Reyhaneh Jabbari, who was executed in October for killing a man who attempted to rape her, was marked by serious questions about its fairness.
French court: Centrists slandered leftist with anti-Semitism claims
In the ruling Thursday by the Correctional Tribunal of Paris, the judge ordered the three Union for a Popular Movement politicians – Alain Juppé, Jean-François Copé and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet – to each pay $1,300 to the defamed, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
The ruling, according to Le Monde, concerns claims made by the three against Mélenchon, asserting that he has anti-Semitic acquaintances or that he associates with anti-Semites. The claims were made after he posted on his blog a text by the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis against that government’s austerity measures.
In 2003, Theodorakis was quoted as saying that “Jews are the root cause of evil” in the world. But Melenchon said he had no knowledge of Theodorakis’ anti-Semitic statements when he posted the blog.
Separately, the French far-right author and Holocaust denier Alain Soral was called to appear before the same court on Thursday in connection with a complaint filed against him alleging incitement to racial hatred.
The complaint concerns a picture that Soral posted on his Facebook account in which he is performing the quenelle at a memorial site for Holocaust victims in Berlin.
Israeli agri-tech firm weeds out food insecurity
The genetic modification of plants and crops is still a red flag for many consumer groups and legislators, but GMOs are slowly making their way into the food and farming ecosystem. Eventually, supporters say, GMOs will become a vital tool to ensure that the world has enough to eat.
Israel’s Evogene is one company that is applying GMO technology to improve crop quality and productivity. Through its PointHit platform, the biotech firm is using big data to analyze molecules in weeds and identify key plant macro-molecules responsible for essential biological processes in weeds. By targeting those processes, Evogene — or the companies that license its platform — will be able to develop herbicides that will be more effective in killing weeds.
The cutting-edge technology has caught the eye of Monsanto — a multinational that has done more than any other to commercialize genetic modification — which is now a major investor in Evogene.
Israel opens its first embassy in Lithuania
Israel opened its first embassy in Lithuania. The event was marked during a ceremony Thursday, the Baltic News Service reported, in the capital city of Vilnius, where one in four residents was Jewish before the Holocaust.
Lithuania used to have 250,000 Jews but the vast majority were killed by German Nazis and their local collaborators.
Israel’s first ambassador to the Baltic nation is Amir Maimon.
Lithuania opened its embassy in Israel shortly after the two countries established diplomatic relations, in 1992 — a year after Lithuania regained its independence from Russia following the fall of the Soviet Union. In 2012, Lithuania, which has been a member of the European Union since 2003, appointed a commercial attache to serve in Israel.
After intrigue and theft, CU Boulder gains huge Holocaust collection
The yellowing document is crumbling and fading, but the smooth signature on its cover is as legible as it is chilling: Rudolf Hess, the Nazi who served as a Hitler deputy from 1933 to 1941.
The signature, which adorns a 70-year-old leniency plea for top Nazi Hermann Goering during the postwar Nuremberg trials, is one of some 500,000 discrete items and 20,000 books donated last year to the University of Colorado at Boulder — nearly the entirety of one of the world’s largest privately owned Holocaust collections. The unusual trove includes aerial surveillance photos of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, decaying copies of the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer, Nuremberg trial transcripts, and a trove of pro-Nazi and Holocaust denial literature.
“We don’t even know what we have,” said David Shneer, director of the Jewish Studies program at University of Colorado at Boulder and the person responsible for bringing the archive to the university. “We have teams of students inventorying it. We hope to get through everything by the fall.”
The unlikely story of how the archive, known as the Mazal Holocaust Collection, ended up in Boulder is a tale of Holocaust denial, a hidden Jewish past and the shady market for Holocaust artifacts.