From Ian:
Hamas: Fatality in Jerusalem bus attack was the bomber
Palestinian terror group Hamas said Wednesday night that the man who died earlier in the evening of wounds sustained in Monday’s Jerusalem bus bombing was the terrorist who placed the explosive device in the vehicle.
The terror group identified him as a 19-year-old Palestinian from al-Ayda refugee camp outside of Bethlehem. His name was still barred from publication on Wednesday evening amid the ongoing Israeli investigation of the attack.
The Hamas announcement appeared to fall short of a full claim of responsibility for the attack, in which 21 people were injured.
Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital confirmed earlier Wednesday that a man who was seriously injured in the Jerusalem bus bombing on Monday had died of his injuries. Police were said to still be investigating whether he was the bomber in the terror attack.
Caroline Glick: Where UNESCO and ISIS converge
Bokova said Palmyra “carries the memory of the Syrian people, and the values of cultural diversity, tolerance and openness that have made this region a cradle of civilization.”
Bokova added, “The deliberate destruction of heritage is a war crime, and UNESCO will do everything in its power to document the damage so that these crimes do not go unpunished. I wish to remind all parties present of the absolute necessity to preserve this unique heritage as an essential condition for peace and the future of the region.”
The problem is that UNESCO commits the very crimes for which it condemns ISIS. Indeed, it committed the crime of seeking to wipe out history, whose preservation is “an essential condition for peace and the future of the region,” the day it passed its resolution on Palmyra.
Right after UNESCO’s board unanimously passed its resolution on Palmyra, it also passed a resolution whose goal is to erase Jewish history in the land of Israel.
The resolution, titled merely “Occupied Palestine,” (a country that doesn’t even exist), defined the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most sacred site, as an exclusively Muslim site. Jews who visit it were referred to derisively as “right wing extremists.”
The Western Wall, Judaism’s second holiest site, was similarly referred to as an exclusively Islamic site.
The resolution reinstated a previous resolution’s false claim that the tombs of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people in Hebron and Bethlehem are mosques. The resolution, like the one from last week, was also a war crime, where UNESCO acted with malice to destroy the historical record.
Online petition: UNESCO must not erase Jewish Temple Mount ties
An online petition has been launched calling on UNESCO to reverse its recent "insulting" resolutions which deny any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount or Western Wall.
Last Thursday the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) provoked outrage when it adopted an Arab-sponsored resolution in which the holiest sites in Judaism - the Temple Mount and Western Wall - were labeled as Muslim sites. In the resolution, the Temple Mount was referred to as "Al Aqsa", while the Western Wall was labeled the "Al-Buraq Wall," the latter a reference to a relatively recent Muslim legend that claims Mohammed once tethered his mythical winged horse at the wall.
The shocking decision followed a similar move to deny Jewish heritage at two other holy Jewish sites - the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem.
Now, the International Legal Forum and StandWithUs are asking people throughout the world to sign an online petition in protest of the latest move to erase Jewish heritage in Israel.
As of the publication of this article, the recently-launched petition has garnered more than 1,700 signatures.
Haaretz Publisher Amos Schoken: If Palestinian Stabber is a Terrorist, IDF Soldier is a Murderer
A storm has been raging on social media in recent days over headlines in the English edition of Ha’aretz. Headlines such as “Yes, Israel is Executing Palestinians Without Trial” and “The Shooting in Hebron Was a Cold-Blooded Execution,” anti-Israel to the point of anti-Semitic, are causing tremendous anger. Ha’aretz’s positions are in any case extreme, but the English edition seems to be deliberately taking even more extreme positions.
This is particularly galling given that Ha’aretz’s English edition has tremendous influence. While only about 5 percent of the Israeli public reads Ha’aretz, for many around the world, the paper’s English edition is the main source of information on events in Israel, or the only source. All the thinking people and the really important people are part of this audience: journalists from all the international media, politicians, government officials, intellectuals, public leaders, and all kinds of other decision makers and tastemakers, who formulate their perspective on Israel and the conflict based on what they read in the paper.
Two incidents that occurred last month brought the disparities in reporting between the Hebrew and English editions of Ha’aretz to a grotesque new peak.
The intensive coverage of the incident in which a soldier shot a wounded terrorist in Hebron has supplied abundant case studies. The differences were evident even in the tags leading to coverage of the incident. While the Hebrew edition wrote about “the shots fired at the wounded terrorist in Hebron,” the tag in English was “Hebron shooting.” No terrorist, no attack, only shooting with no context. This framing was used throughout the coverage. Tal Refael, a researcher for Presspectiva—the Hebrew affiliate of CAMERA, The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, which closely follows Ha’aretz’s English edition—counted nine headlines on the issue published concurrently in the Hebrew and English editions. In each of the headlines in Hebrew, the Palestinian who was shot by the soldier was described as a “wounded terrorist,” while in the same news items in English, he was called a “wounded man,” a “prone Palestinian,” a “supine Palestinian,” and other variations of wounded/injured, but not a “terrorist.”(h/t Elder of Lobby)
Eugene Kontorovich: Lawsuit: ASA’s Boycott of Israel Violates Law, Professors sue American Studies Association
A group of distinguished professors and longtime members of the American Studies Association (ASA) today announced that they are suing ASA for its boycott of Israel. The lawsuit charges that ASA’s blatant politicization of an academic association violates District of Columbia (D.C.) law governing nonprofit organizations.
“Until a handful of zealots appropriated our learned society, the ASA was the leading organization for the study of American culture,” stated Professor Simon Bronner, one of the plaintiffs. “Yet in 2013, a handful of anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists aggressively steered the ASA to an organization of social change pushing a narrow political agenda.”
The lawsuit alleges ASA is in violation of the D.C. Non-Profit Corporation Act, which requires that an organization operate only within the provisions of its charter. Under D.C. law, the charter is a contract intended to protect members from those who seek to coopt a nonprofit for purposes outside the boundaries of its charter.
“This appears to be a clear example of a small group misappropriating assets raised for an agreed upon purpose and illegally using the organization to advance a completely separate and personal agenda,” stated University of California Berkeley Law School Professor Steven Davidoff Solomon, a renowned corporate law expert who served as an expert adviser to the litigation group representing the plaintiffs.
Northwestern Pritzker Law School Professor Eugene Kontorovich, a recognized expert in constitutional and international law who also served as an expert adviser to the litigation group added, “To be clear, this is not about silencing or stopping criticism of Israel, or in any way discouraging it. It is about non-profit corporations abiding by their own rules.”
Eugene Kontorovich: Palestinians trigger federal provision for defunding of U.N. climate organization
A group of 28 senators wrote to Secretary of State John F. Kerry Monday, demanding that, in compliance with U.S. law, no funding be provided to an obscure U.N. agency, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The little-noticed development raises larger questions about executive nonenforcement of federal law and the collateral damage to international institutions caused by the Palestinian issue.
UNFCCC (pronounced phonetically) has recently accepted the Palestinian Authority as a state party. The move is part of the Palestinian effort to be declared a state outside of negotiations with Israel. U.S. policy opposes such moves, and thus requires the defunding of any U.N. organization that grants the Palestinian Authority such status.
Federal law bars any funding for U.N. agencies or affiliates that “grants full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood.” In the official U.S. view, “Palestine” is not a state. Thus when the Palestinian Authority joined the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2011, it triggered federal defunding of that organization. Now, federal law requires a similar cessation of any funding to UNFCCC.
Anti-Semitic insults hurled at Tzipi Livni during Harvard talk
Harvard Law School’s newspaper, the Harvard Law Record, on Monday blasted as anti-Semitic an incident during a recent panel discussion involving MK Tzipi Livni (Zionist Camp).
Last Thursday, Harvard Law School hosted a panel discussion with guest speakers Dennis Ross and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
During a question and answer session a president of a student organization mocked the Israeli leader, asking her, “How is it that you are so smelly?”
When his question drew stunned silence, he clarified his "question."
“A question about the odor of Ms. Tzipi Livni, she’s very smelly, and I was just wondering.”
The Harvard Law Record did not disclose the identity of the student in question, or the campus organization he leads. But the paper found the insult a clear reference to Livni’s ethnicity and nationality, noting that the comments “revived the antiquated and offensive notion of the ‘smelly Jew’ – a term reeking of anti-Semitism – in order to insult her.”
The paper noted that the discussion focused on the Arab-Israeli conflict, attracting anti-Israel students like the organization president at the center of the incident. (h/t Bob Knot)
Arab MK Refuses Holocaust Day Invite, Says It Motivates Humiliating Arabs
MK Hanin Zoabi (Joint Arab List) on Wednesday refused an invitation to the final memorial rally of Holocaust Day at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai (named after Mordechai Anielewicz, commander of the Jewish underground in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). Zoabi said that “the lessons of the Holocaust should not be taught in order to increase the motivation to defend oneself by humiliating and repressing [others].” The organizers, the Havatselet group, invited all 120 Knesset members to the event on May 5.
Zoabi began her letter to the group saying she was honored to “participate in marking a human tragedy that took the lives of millions of people, and showed how far down it is possible to dive to the depths of human horror, to the boundary of the absurd and the loss of the human image.”
Then she noted, “It is an honor for me to stand in memory of the victims, but it is just as important to sound the alert for you regarding that which preceded the Holocaust and paved the road to it. And precisely for that reason I decided to refuse your invitation.”
JPost Editorial: Vote against terrorism
At least two resolutions hostile to Israel are currently slated to be presented to the United Nations Security Council – possibly as soon as April 22, when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is in New York for a high-level signing ceremony for the climate agreement reached in Paris in December.
This time there is real concern in Jerusalem that the US will not use its veto power to torpedo the resolutions.
A Palestinian draft would have the UNSC state its opposition to Israel’s settlement activity in the West Bank. The Paris-led initiative would have the UNSC force on Israel the parameters of a two-state solution. Both are counterproductive to peace, because they place the blame for perpetuation of the conflict on Israel while ignoring Palestinian aggression, and they undermine the principle that only through open dialogue and negotiations – not unilateral actions by outsiders – can Israelis and Palestinians hope to resolve their differences.
Though the proposed resolutions will do nothing to promote peace, but will only serve to strengthen Palestinian intransigence and encourage Palestinian terrorism, there is growing concern that the US will permit one or both to pass if they come up for a vote.
Unlike the last time Israel faced a hostile resolution in the UNSC in December 2014, this time it is almost certain the Palestinians will succeed in garnering the required majority.
The Golan and the Peace Fallacy
Before Israel can ever think of giving up the Golan or the even more strategic West Bank, it must have neighbors that are capable of believing in and keeping the peace with a Jewish state. After the experiment in Gaza, no one outside of the far left in Israel believes in repeating that mistake in the West Bank.
Peace requires more than a simple exchange of land for a piece of paper, and that is all Israel would get if it is willing to roll the dice in the West Bank or the Golan. The chaos in Syria may make that obvious even to the Netanyahu government’s critics at the State Department. But the chaos in Gaza and the support of the Palestinian Authority for terror ought to make it just as obvious that a similar land for peace effort with the Palestinians would be equally suicidal.
Should Syria or the Palestinians ever evolve into societies that can sustain peace then, it’s likely that an Israeli government will be willing to discuss just about any sort of terms to achieve that goal. But until that seemingly utopian vision is achieved, the West Bank, as well as the Golan, will never change hands.
MEMRI: Saudi Arabia, Gulf States On Eve Of Obama Visit
Obama Disappointed Us, Caused Us To Realize He Is Not A True Friend And To Start Relying Only On Ourselves
On April 21, 2016, U.S. President Obama is expected to arrive in Saudi Arabia for an official visit that will include meetings with Gulf leaders, similar to the summit that was held between the sides in Camp David in May 2015. According to reports in Arab press, the sides will discuss various topics on the agenda, including Iran; the crises in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and the strategic relations between the Gulf states and the U.S., as well as its commitment to assist them. However, Obama's visit takes place at a time of great tension between the U.S. and Gulf states on the backdrop of disagreements over various regional issues. In Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states there is much disappointment, frustration and even anger over Obama's Middle East policies in the last few years, including his handling of the crises in Syria, Yemen and Iraq and especially his openness towards Iran.
In fact, the May 2015 summit between the Gulf leaders and President Obama, which took place while negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over the nuclear issue were at their height, was also preceded by controversies so intense that the kings of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the UAE president and the Sultan of Oman canceled their participation and sent representatives in their stead. Back then, the Gulf states accused Obama of turning his back on his allies and strengthening Iran to an extent that threatened their interests. Tensions increased even further in July 2015, with the publication of the JCPOA. Articles published since then in the Gulf press, and particularly in the Saudi press, stated that by means of this agreement, the U.S. was strengthening Iran in the region at the expense of Arab countries and the Gulf states; empowering Iran and its subordinate organizations to interfere in regional countries; and turning its back on the Gulf states, the U.S.'s traditional regional allies. Some even accused Obama of leading the Middle East towards disaster.
Michael Totten: The Cold Arab-Israeli Alliance Against Iran
The most intractable fault lines in the Middle East are between Sunnis and Shias and between Arabs and Persians, and Iran has both a Persian and a Shia majority. Iran’s rulers can’t easily become the hegemons of an entire region that hates them. Their best bet, perhaps their only bet, was to unite all Muslims—Sunni, Shia, Arab and Persian—against the Jews.
So Khomeini abandoned Iran’s alliance with Israel and threw its support behind terrorist armies like Hamas and Hezbollah.
In The Persian Night, Amir Taheri sums up Khomeini’s pitch to the Arabs this way: “Forget that Iran is Shia, and remember that today it is the only power capable of realizing your most cherished dream, the destruction of Israel. The Sunni Muslim Brotherhood promised you it would throw the Jews into the sea in 1948, but failed. Pan-Arab nationalists, led by Nasser, ushered you into one of your biggest defeats in history, enabling Israel to capture Jerusalem. The Baathists under Saddam Hussein promised to ’burn Israel,’ but ended up bringing the American infidels to Baghdad. Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian ’patriots’ promised to crush the Jewish state, but turned into collaborators on its payroll. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda never gave two hoots about Palestine, focusing only on spectacular operations in the West to win publicity for themselves. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Hamas did all they could to destroy Israel but lacked the power, like flies attacking an elephant. The only force now willing and able to help realize your dream of a burned Israel and drowning the Jews is the Islamic Republic as created by Khomeini.”
It was a clever plan, but it failed, and its failure is a little more obvious with each passing year. Israel could have been the lighting rod that brought Arabs and Persians, and Sunnis and Shias, together. Instead, the Semitic tribes are slowly inching together. Not warmly—that’s for damn sure—but the Greeks and Turks, along with the Americans and the Saudis, showed the world a long time ago that cold alliances can work almost as effectively.
Ties between Hamas-linked charities and BDS highlighted in Congressional testimony
The US should boost transparency of nonprofit organizations in order to shed light on ties between a key pro-boycott organization and defunct charities that were implicated in funding Hamas, analyst Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told members of Congress during testimony Tuesday afternoon when two subcommittees of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs met to discuss current threats to Israel.
During testimony, experts including Schanzer highlighted regional nonstate actors such as Iran and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) as key threats to Israel.
The chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, Ted Poe, described the BDS movement as “a threat which seeks [Israel’s] ultimate destruction.”
Schanzer, a former terror finance analyst for the US Treasury, presented open-source research conducted by his group, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies which highlighted a network linking Hamas supporters with the leadership of the BDS movement.
The research tracked employees of three now-defunct organizations – the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, Kind Hearts Foundation for Humanitarian Development and the Islamic Association for Palestine — all of which were implicated by the federal government for terrorism finance, specifically of Hamas. A federal court found that the Holy Land Foundation had sent some $12 million to Hamas over the course of a decade.
20-Apr-16: Parliamentary committee says UK govt doesn't fully know how taxpayer funds are spent
A report of the UK Parliament's Public Accounts Committee has concluded, according to a summary posted on the parliamentary website today, that the UK government - which in this case specifically means the UK's Department For International Development (DFID) and its Foreign Office - does not fully understand how taxpayers' money is spent when it intervenes in crises overseas.
Does does this have any bearing on the years of UK taxpayer funds being handed over as aid to the terrorism-addicted PA regime ["13-Apr-16: Parliament will debate UK funding of the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme"]? Remember? Those millions of pounds of aid given annually to people about whom the Mail on Sunday published a blistering expose four weeks ago?
The scandal of how Britain fritters away billions in foreign aid – including paying salaries to convicted terrorists who have murdered hundreds of innocent people – is exposed today by a major MoS investigation. The shocking revelation that thousands of Palestinian terrorists, including men who have masterminded suicide bombings and murdered children, are given cash handouts from aid money will cause anger and disbelief, particularly in the wake of the Brussels massacres. Our probe exposed how huge amounts of taxpayers’ cash, that critics say should be spent in Britain, is being ‘squandered’ on wasteful schemes elsewhere by the Department For International Development (DFID) and Foreign Office. [Mail on Sunday UK, via the Daily Mail website, March 27, 2016]
New head of UK students backed Palestinian violence, wouldn’t condemn IS
Britain’s National Union of Students on Tuesday elected as its new president a pro-Palestinian activist who has in the past publicly advocated for violence against Israelis and refused to condemn the Islamic State group.
Malia Bouattia, a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement activist and the first black Muslim woman to helm the organization, will take office in September.
In a 2011 article, the University of Birmingham graduate called her alma mater “something of a Zionist outpost in British higher education,” and, in a 2014 speech, went as far as to suggest that British student activists should “take orders” from Palestinian terrorists.
In the speech, Bouattia expressed concern that “the notion of resistance has been perhaps washed out of our understanding of how colonized people will obtain their physical emancipation.”
“With mainstream Zionist-led media outlets — because once again we’re dealing with the population of the global south — resistance is presented as an act of terrorism, but instead of us remembering that this has always been the case throughout struggles against white supremacy, it’s become an accepted discourse amongst too many.”
Bouattia said it was a “very strange contradiction” to support non-violence and the liberation of the Palestinians.
‘Shock’ as opposition to Holocaust Memorial Day amendment applauded at NUS
The Jewish community was “in shock” this week after the National Union of Students applauded arguments why NOT to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day and voted a woman who rails against “Zionist-led media” to be its next president.
Before a vote was finally passed to commemorate HMD, there was bewildered reaction on social media to the debate during the NUS Conference.
Izzy Lenga, a theology student at Birmingham, tweeted: “I’m not quite sure what just happened. Delegates at conference legitimately spoke against NUS commemoration HMD. Vile.” Vonnie Sandlan, the president of NUS in Scotland, tweeted: “Honestly disgusted that we had to listen to speeches against commemorating HMD.”
Russell Langer, the campaign manager for the Union of Jewish Students, tweeted: “In shock that there was just so much applause for a speech against Holocaust Memorial Day, a stain on our movement.”
Students Supporting Israel: The True Face of Students for Justice in Palestine
What happened on April 12 at the University of Minnesota was a classic example of the true face of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) supporters and the main group that promotes this campaign, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). SJP tried to pass the a student government resolution calling for the university to divest from specific companies that do business with Israel, basing their claim on Israel’s violation of human rights. However, in a turn of the events that disrupted their plan, UMN United, a Pro-Israel coalition led by Students Supporting Israel, together with the Minnesota Hillel and other campus organizations, proposed an amendment to this resolution.
The proposed amendment suggested that if in fact SJP were so concerned with human rights violations and promoting responsible investment, the resolution should not focus on Israel alone but any country found to be violating human rights. By not naming any country specifically, the resolution will not appear as singling out Israel and holding the country to a double standard. At this point, one would think that all the student groups would want to sign on such resolution that calls for the university to invest responsibly, and indeed the students voted to amend the resolution to address human rights in all countries.
However, while Students Supporting Israel added its name to the sponsors of the new bill, members of SJP decided to remove their names from this new resolution that would consider human rights violations in all countries. Why? Because the resolution was no longer specifically targeting Israel. Despite SJP’s insistence that this was not the case and their resolution was not meant to promote BDS, their comments on social media that followed the vote revealed that there was never a true concern for justice, rather the plan all along was to single out Israel.
Israeli Flyer Begins Legal Action Against Kuwait Airways After Being Refused Seat
An Israeli traveller has begun legal action against Kuwait Airways alleging the carrier refused to sell him a ticket for passage between Geneva and Frankfurt.
The claimant’s lawyer alleges that travel was denied purely on the basis of nationality and that was a violation of Swiss law, which condemns discrimination based on race, religion or ethnic origin of a person.
Tribune de Geneva reports that lawyer Philippe Grumbach has asked the Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) to address this issue on behalf of his client, noting that the right of a person residing in Switzerland to travel was violated. The lawyer also claimed that Kuwait Airways operating license be suspended while the company does not comply with the law.
According to the Tribune, the case was drawn to public attention by the Lawfare Project, an American organization that fights against the global boycott imposed by some countries against the State of Israel.
Kuwait Airways in Geneva is reported to have responded that it has no knowledge of the matter and that any rules the airline imposes are for security reasons.
ALERT: Anthropologists begin voting on anti-Israel boycott
This post is an update on the upcoming vote to boycott Israeli universities at the American Anthropological Association (AAA).
As a reminder, at the Denver meeting on November 20th, attendees passed a resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions. The resolution is now being voted on by the general membership, starting April 15, through May 31.
Passage of a boycott means, among other things, that AAA will not cooperate with Israeli universities or the Israeli Anthropological Association (IAA), will not supply journals and databases to them and will not allow graduates of Israeli universities to partake in career fairs. It calls upon its membership to do the same, and more: e.g. not attend conferences at Israeli universities, not accept grants from them; this in addition to the “common sense” boycotts that are probably already in place.
By doing this AAA would officially join the Palestinian nationalist Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
This would constitute a giant leap towards throwing Anthropology’s lot with other marginal academic associations, like the American Studies Association (ASA) and the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA), in hollowing out what was once a distinct discipline and replacing it with political advocacy. Remarkably, the more these disciplines progress down this path, the more similar they all seem to one another, in their singular focus on highly politicized, jargon laden, anti-Israel and anti-Western advocacy masquerading (not very effectively) as scholarship.
Following complaint, Instagram restores Israeli flag photo that “violated community standards”
When Susanne Katz received a message by Instagram a little over a week ago notifying her that one of her photographs was taken down because it “violated community standards,” she never suspected it was over a seemingly innocent picture of her against the backdrop of an Israeli flag posted about 10 days prior.
The next morning, Katz reposted the photo, a selfie she took at work depicting a casual look with a messy ponytail in front of an Israeli flag, and again, it was taken down seven hours later.
Katz runs the young adult department at the Alpert Jewish Community Center in Long Beach, Calif.
She then contacted Instagram to ask why the photograph was taken down but did not receive a response, Katz said.
Independent Catholic News Broadcasting Anti-Israel Agitprop
Independent Catholic News, a publication that serves Catholics in Ireland, recently published an article about Israel demolishing a playground in the West Bank.
The main thrust of the article, which was published on April 14, 2016, is that Israel is behaving badly by demolishing the playground. Israel is acting well within the rights accorded to it under the Oslo Accords, which give Israel authority over the area where the playground was built — illegally and without permits — by Palestinians who do not own the land on which it was built.
Moreover, it appears that the Belgian government, which paid for the playground’s construction, is aiding an abetting illegal construction by local Palestinians, not to improve the living standards, but to provide a pretext for anti-Israel propagandizing, which sadly enough, the Independent Catholic News fell for.
Italian soccer team punished for fans’ anti-Semitic chants
Italian sports officials punished its top soccer team, Juventus, for its fans shouting an anti-Semitic chant, but suspended the penalty.
The order to close a section of the club’s stadium in Turin for its next game will only be enforced if there is a repeat of the behavior, ESPN reported Monday.
The Curva Sud section represents about a quarter of the stadium. The anti-Semitic chants were heard coming from there on Sunday during the team’s 4-0 win over Palermo in the Serie A championship match.
According to the chant’s chorus, for which Juventus has been punished in the past, people from Florence, where the team’s chief rival is based, are “not Italian” but “a bunch of Jews.”
Online Supermarket Apologizes for Using Quote by Nazi Leader Joseph Goebbels in Ad
An online supermarket operating in London apologized for sponsoring an advertisement that featured a quote from Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, the UK’s Jewish Chronicle reported on Tuesday.
Etefy admitted it was “wrong” to use an offensive passage from Goebbels’ diary. The quote read: “The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that has now overtaken them,” and the heading above the excerpt declared that “Millions of refugees have fled war and persecution last year.” Winston Churchill’s famous statement that “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” was also included and placed below a picture of a refugee, along with the hashtag #WhatWillWeDo.
A spokesperson for Etefy said that the company was trying to compare modern-day Middle Eastern refugees with Jews who escaped the Nazis. The Etefy rep said, “Families, children and women are fleeing murderous wars, dictators and persecution to come to Europe to be mostly unwelcome. And Jewish people in Europe have to be careful again, as right-wing parties have made big gains in elections, and it seems okay to be divisive again.
Formula One chief praises Hitler, says women drivers incapable
In a single interview this week, Formula One chief executive Bernie Ecclestone managed to praise Adolf Hitler, offend women, and claim that Vladimir Putin should be in charge of Europe.
Speaking at a conference in London on Tuesday with F1’s non-executive director Martin Sorrell, Ecclestone declared that comments he had made in praise of Adolf Hitler’s leadership methods in a 2009 interview were taken out of context, but reiterated that the Nazi leader “got the job done.”
In the 2009 interview he had said: “In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done.”
At the time, a spokesman for British Jewry’s Board of Deputies said: “Mr Ecclestone’s comments regarding Hitler, female, black and Jewish racing drivers are quite bizarre. He says, ‘Politics are not for me’ and we are inclined to agree.”
German museum shows 130 years of anti-Semitic stickers
Small, but poisonous and often effective: one of Germany’s main history museums is exhibiting racist and anti-Semitic stickers spanning more than a century in a show that comes as worries about racism are resurfacing amid the migrant crisis.
The show at the German Historical Museum, tiled “Sticky Messages,” features some 600 stickers and replicas, racist and anti-racist, from 1880 to the present day.
Among the earliest exhibits are a mock train ticket from 1893 offering Jews a trip “to Jerusalem, one way” and a Jewish group’s 1900 sticker proclaiming that “anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools.”
The exhibition includes a wide range of anti-Jewish stickers from before and during the Nazi era, carrying messages such as “Jews out” and “You have bought from Jews! We are watching.” There are also some illegal flyers from the Nazi era, one saying “Down with Hitler.”
The Jewish Plot To Kill Hitler
On Sept. 2, Special Agent Brantley submitted a final report to Hoover. He wrote that all outstanding leads regarding the threat to assassinate Hitler “have been completed without any definite information having been obtained. Accordingly, this case is being closed at the Washington field office.” Brantley assured Hoover that the case would be reopened if the German embassy received any additional information.
Upon my return to Israel, I called Dutch and told him what I’d found in the FBI files. I asked him if he had heard of Daniel Stern. Was the name an alias? Was he a professional killer? He said he heard a rumor about a young man named Stern but didn’t know much about him and had never met him. “Supposedly this Stern fellow had a lot of enthusiasm, but not a lot of brains or seykhl [sense]. Maybe he was meshuge [crazy]. He was determined to kill Hitler, and someone thought he was expendable. The timing was all wrong,” he said. “And maybe somebody backed the wrong horse. Nobody knew much about Stern. That was supposed to be good at first. But you never know. You never know.”
“That summer of 1933, we learned that just about everybody and his brother thought about taking a whack at the Fuhrer. When you got to Germany, I mean, you had to take a ticket and get in line for your shot. Later someone said there were more than a dozen attempts to get Hitler in the 1930s. Public figures are well-guarded, but Hitler, he was somethin’ else. I mean someone even tried to kill Roosevelt in 1933. That was close. But Hitler? He was bulletproof. I swear to God, the devil was his bodyguard. And you gotta remember that in the end, the only guy who could whack Hitler was Hitler himself.”
Documentary ‘The Last Laugh’ surveys humor and the Holocaust
“Do you have a Holocaust joke?”
That was director Ferne Pearlstein’s first, ice-breaking question when she sat down to interview comedians for “The Last Laugh,” her documentary about taboos and comedy, particularly in regard to the Holocaust.
Gilbert Gottfried, master of the over-the-top punchline, didn’t miss a beat.
“There was a Holocaust?!” he replied. “Nobody told me!”
“The Last Laugh,” which premiered this week at the Tribeca Film Festival, pokes and prods at the question of “Where’s the line?” in comedy, teasing out comedy’s cathartic, healing role in even the worst tragedies. It’s a debate with many differing perspectives, even in the comedy community where stand-ups are often taken to task for “going too far” or “too soon.”
Israel a role model for disaster medicine, says Red Cross chief surgeon
As far as Dr. Harald Veen is concerned, the International Committee of the Red Cross is apolitical and is strictly all about business – the business of saving lives.
“Medicine is neutral and must remain so,” Veen told The Times of Israel. “There are groups with agendas who try to frame field work and emergency care in a context that advances their agenda, but it is the job of doctors and emergency care workers to ignore those agendas and concentrate on saving people.”
Veen, the chief surgeon of the ICRC, was in Israel last week for an international conference on “Surgical Management in Austere Environments,” where he described his experiences all over the world in battlefield and mass emergency medicine.
“Providing medical assistance under emergency conditions where there are few resources and no order or protocol is far different than the ordered medical facilities where most doctors learn to treat people,” said Veen. “Israelis are very good at this kind of medicine, and they have successfully used their skills both on the battlefield locally and in emergencies such as earthquakes and floods, where they have set up effective and successful field care operations. Not all countries can do that.”
‘Once We Were Slaves, Now We Are Free’: The Passover Seder in Bergen-Belsen That Shaped My Family
Jewish tradition famously demands that the participants at the Passover seder bemoan the depredations of slavery and celebrate the salvation of freedom as if they themselves had escaped Egypt. For our generation, sitting in the comfort of our dining rooms, this can feel like an exercise in absurdity. Such hardship seems incredibly remote. But for my family, this recollection of suffering and redemption has served as our seder’s most moving moment, thanks to my grandmother and her remarkable story.
Until recently, I spent every Passover in Israel with my extended family. So long as he was able, my grandfather led the seder, taking us through each segment with erudite and academic commentary. He was a serious, quietly commanding force who could easily have led the entire affair. But each and every year, he would pause and hand the reins over to my grandmother, Masha, when we reached the time to sing “Avadim Hayinu.” The song consists of a single refrain: “We were once slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, now we are free.” And every year, my grandmother would tell us her own exodus story.
A Lithuanian Jew, Masha knew the experience of slavery firsthand, having spent the years of World War II in various ghettos, ammunition factories and concentration camps. In March of 1945, in the Nazi-operated Bergen-Belsen, Masha, her sister Shoshana, their mother Yehudit (for whom I am named), and several others sat down to conduct a seder—of sorts. Without food, wine, prayer books or even a table, they did their best to remember the liturgy and engage in some sort of ritual normalcy.
Somehow they spoke of the bread of affliction that their ancestors ate, despite the fact that they too were afflicted and had no proper bread to eat. Somehow they proclaimed, “Let all who are hungry come and eat,” despite their own hunger and lack of food. Somehow they spoke of how Pharaoh embittered the lives of his Jewish slaves, though they too were Jewish slaves whose lives had been impossibly embittered.
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