From Ian:
David Collier: Facebook. A pipeline for funding Hamas terrorism?
As a target audience, foreign activists are perfect. They are concentrated in a small space. Many are obsessive and almost none check the veracity of the message they are being given. The term ‘like shooting ducks in a barrel’ comes to mind.
Additionally, because Facebook is ‘merely’ a social media platform, anyone can open an account in any name they choose. Beyond an email account which can be set up freely in minutes, you need no documentation whatsoever. Double and triple accounts, deliberate misspelling of names, completely false identities. There are also tell-tale signs in what I did not see. I did not see a single message sent from anyone in the West Bank. None sent by anyone seeking assistance for the Syrian refugees. 100% of the private requests came from Gaza.
As Ami Horovitz found in Portland State University, people are willing to donate directly to Hamas. I cannot be sure of the scale of what is occurring, but I saw dozens in a single Facebook account. Each of them were connected to dozens if not hundreds of other activists. Each activist would have others connected to him. This in every community where BDS operates. Crossing nations, crossing continents. This is a massive industry, and we are potentially talking about millions of dollars.
As the foreign activists are truly duped by the propaganda, how many of them are giving their money online, directly to someone in Gaza? Someone who could well be sitting in a room with other Hamas operatives, all doing the same thing. And remember too, that for every visible project, for each of the crowdfunding pages, there are scores, hundreds, if not thousands of requests, taking place behind closed doors. An entire industry that lives in the shadows.
Israeli sovereignty and Arab responses
A current of political change for Israel is in the air. The moribund "two-state solution," that Prime Minister Netanyahu solemnly and routinely voices, and which the Republican Party has now ignored, can be transcended now by considering new thought and discourse.
Israeli Sovereignty
The justification for Israel formally annexing Judea and Samaria – as was done for East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights – is compelling: the right of an ancient people to the territorial core of its homeland; defending a narrow coastal plain from attack; and denying the emergence of an irredentist Islamic entity from threatening the very existence of Israel.
The imposition of Israeli sovereignty throughout Judea and Samaria, perhaps in stages, would however be a political game-changer evoking deleterious ramifications: domestically, grave dissension between Jewish segments of the population; internally, violent Palestinian resistance; regionally, Arab threats to actively oppose the decision; and internationally, condemnation of Israel and threatened sanctions for violating its legal obligation to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The inconclusive nature of the existing situation could yet prod Israel, while battered with interminable demands to implement a 'two state solution', to initiate a bold new political démarche.
JPost Editorial: Support the Kurds
In recent years numerous Israeli politicians, including Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former president Shimon Peres, have expressed support for Kurdish rights to self-determination.
There are many reasons Israel should foster ties and cooperation with the Kurds, including support of an independent Kurdish state in Northern Iraq when Kurds decide to take the next step toward statehood.
First, the Kurds and Israel have common enemies. The peshmerga fighters belonging to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq have proven to be the most effective power against the onslaught of Islamic State.
The Kurds organized under the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) are one of the few opposition forces effectively opposing the Revolutionary Guards. In the last several months the PDKI has renewed attacks, killing dozens of Iranian soldiers.
Working with the Kurds is also part of the “peripheral strategy,” begun by David Ben-Gurion, in which Israel seeks out diverse allies in the region.
Normandy attack: UK churches should have guards following Rouen priest killing, says intelligence expert
Churches in areas where there is a threat of radical jihadism in the UK should consider having their own guards as part of tighter security measures following the terrorist attack on a French priest, according to a former top intelligence adviser to the government.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former chair of the government's Cobra crisis response group, has said in interview with The Independent that community-funded guards, security fences and CCTV ought to be considered by churches.
He emphasised such measures could not "guarantee" total safety but that similarly visible security outside Jewish synagogues was already being used as a "deterrent" and the Church of England and Catholic Church may wish to do the same.
In the interview Colonel Kemp, who was the first commander of British troops in Afghanistan after 9/11, also said:
Many Muslims were "sympathetic" to the aims and tenets of radical jihadism as displayed by terrorist group Isis
Bombing Isis in Syria and Iraq was the only way to reduce the attraction of the extremist group for potential recruits
Muslims everywhere should voice their condemnation of the group as loudly as possible.
July Issue of ISIS’ Dabiq Magazine Celebrates Orlando, Nice, Normandy, Würzburg, Ansbach
The new issue, with a modern, slick design, very much like your prestigious coffee table magazine, offers the familiar arguments against the authenticity of Judaism and Christianity, repeats the argument of the Crusading Europeans and their Jewish beachhead looking to dominate the Middle East, rehashes the Quran verses that belittle Jews — it’s all very familiar fare. What’s new is the forward section, which is up-to-the-minute and especially vile. So here it is (redacted). For the full version, you’re invited to click here.
“After the attacks in Orlando (USA), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Magnanville, Nice, and Normandy (France), and Würzburg and Ansbach (Germany) led to the martyrdom of twelve soldiers of the Caliphate and the deaths and injuries of more than six hundred Crusaders, one would expect the cross-worshipers and democratic pagans of the West to pause and contemplate the reasons behind the animosity and enmity held by Muslims for Westerners and even take heed and consider repentance by abandoning their infidelity and accepting Islam.
“But the fever and delusion caused by sin, superstition, and secularism have numbed what is left of their minds and senses. Their hedonic addictions and heathenish doctrines have enslaved them to false gods including their clergy, their legislatures, and their lusts. As for worshiping the Creator alone and following His Final Messenger, then that is beyond their consideration.
“… And despite their wretched condition of ignorance and arrogance, we take this occasion of multiple massacres inflicted upon their citizens and interests to call them once again to the religion of pure monotheism, truth, mercy, justice, and the sword.
Michael Lumish: Obama's Racism and Counterproductive Stupidity
The Obama administration is both racist and seemingly incapable of learning from past efforts.
The reason the Obama administration is racist (or anti-Semitic) is because they harrass the Jews of the Middle East for daring to build housing for themselves in the very place that Jews have resided for millennia.
Long, long, long before there was any such place as London or Paris or Washington, D.C. there was Jerusalem... and it was crawling with Jews. Why was it crawling with Jews even many centuries before the first Arab showed up to steal Jewish land?
Because Jerusalem is, indeed, the ancient capital of the Jewish people.
The Arabs do not get to come along thousands of years later, take it, claim Jerusalem as "the third holiest city in Islam" - which is nonsense, they might as well claim Walla Walla, Washington as the thirty-seventh most holy city in Islam - insist that they are the actual indigenous population, and then carry out fourteen centuries of non-stop colonial violence against the Jewish natives to the region.
Sadly, however, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic Party do not see it that way.
They honestly believe that any future state of "Palestine" must be Judenrein and, yet, somehow, against all common sense and basic human decency, they see themselves as anti-racists.
They aren't.
Netanyahu ‘happy to work with whoever gets elected’ in US
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being “very careful” not to get involved in the US presidential campaign, he told reporters on Sunday.
Addressing Israeli diplomatic correspondents in the cabinet room at the Prime Minister’s Office, Netanyahu said he would be “happy to work with whoever gets elected” in November.
The Israeli prime minister and US President Barack Obama have had an often friction-filled relationship in recent years. The US administration has repeatedly criticized Netanyahu’s settlement-building policies, and the two governments are at odds over how best to advance peace efforts with the Palestinians. Additionally, Netanyahu has bitterly criticized the US-led agreement last year on curbing Iran’s rogue nuclear program. In March 2015, he spoke in Congress against the Iran deal, and Obama refused to meet with him on that trip.
A major supporter of Netanyahu, casino magnate and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson, is a key Republican donor, and some Democratic critics of Netanyahu have alleged that the Israeli prime minister gave an unduly warm welcome to Republican candidate Mitt Romney when Romney visited Israel in the summer of 2012 — an assertion rejected by the prime minister’s aides, who note that then-candidate Obama received similar warm treatment when he visited in 2008. A tentatively planned visit to Israel by Donald Trump earlier this year was called off by the candidate.
Social media darling revealed to be daughter of terrorist
The heartwarming story of a simple act of kindness that went viral just became much more complex.
Social media outlets were abuzz this weekend when a Facebook post by a young Muslim mother in the United States on Saturday spread, recalling a chance encounter with an elderly Jewish man in a local Barnes & Noble bookstore.
Noticing the mother’s clearly Islamic attire, the man, named Lenny, approached the woman, offering his “heartfelt apology for the general anti-Muslim sentiment in our society today,” the woman wrote on Facebook.
Lenny, who turned 90 on Friday, “had tears in his eyes” as he told the woman “that he feels awful about the bigotry my kids might one day experience, and that as a Jewish man whose parents didn’t speak any English growing up, he personally understands what it feels like to be rejected and discriminated against”.
“I asked if I could give him a hug… and he wanted to reassure me that most Americans are decent people who don’t hate people like me or believe what they hear on the news.”
But the story doesn’t end with the post.
As chance would have it, the author of the post happens to be Leena Al-Arian – daughter of the convicted Islamic Jihad terrorist Sami Al-Arian.
The Kuwaiti-born Sami Al-Arian, 58, who worked as a computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida prior to his arrest, was indicted in 2003 on 17 counts of aiding and abetting the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad.
Silent boycotts a worrisome phenomenon
The “silent boycott” is a growing and worrisome phenomenon, Prof. Rivka Carmi, president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, says.
Carmi, the only female president at the nation’s nine universities, sat down with The Jerusalem Post recently to discuss the BDS movement, strengthening ties with the East, and establishing Ben-Gurion University as a driving force in reshaping the Negev.
Regarding the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign, Carmi said she doesn’t believe any of the Israeli universities have been directly or significantly affected by the movement, noting that leading universities in the world have denounced the academic boycott effort.
“There is however, what we call ‘the silent boycott,’” she said. “I am very worried by this.”
A silent boycott entails incidents where Israeli academics and researchers are quietly shunned by the global academic community – from exclusion from academic conferences to the rejection of research papers by noted publications, Carmi said.
“There were cases where a professor would say, ‘I am having difficulties that I didn’t have in the past to get articles in leading journals’; and we thought, ‘Well maybe the papers weren’t good enough,’” she said. “We were looking for excuses and eventually there were more and more cases where scientists felt they were not being treated the same way they were before.”
Winning the BDS Wars: Foundations
Approaching the fight against BDS with a military mindset requires (1) letting goals drive our choices of strategy and tactics; (2) starting from an honest evaluation of our own strength and that of our enemies; and (3) letting this honest and objective understanding, rather than emotion, drive our decision-making.
With those principles defining “True North,” we can start to make choices that stand the best chance of defeating those who are using the propaganda tactics of BDS to try to bring an end to the Jewish state.
Given that BDS is just a tactic in service of the broader “Apartheid Strategy” (i.e., a strategy designed to brand Israel as the inheritor of the mantle of Apartheid South Africa), with Israel’s defeat as the ultimate end point, reason dictates that any steps we take to prevent that ultimate end point from being reached would constitute a setback for practitioners of BDS.
Remember that a siege war, like the one Israel has had forced on it since birth, can only end when the besieged city’s walls are breached, or one side outlasts the other. Israel’s military has primary responsibility for preventing breaches, although those efforts are enhanced by keeping the US-Israel alliance strong and building supportive relationships between the IDF and the Diaspora.
The Jewish Exception to Free Speech on Campus
In addition, the increase in incidents which trample on the civil rights of Jewish students indicates the growing success of a tactic known as “anti-normalization,” which members of SJP and similar anti-Zionist groups routinely employ to aggressively stifle all pro-Israel expression. For example, in one of its founding documents the SJP group at Binghamton University outlined strategies for harassing Jewish students and disrupting or shutting down their Israel-related events in a section entitled: “Tactics and Strategies Used to Counter Zionist Normalization.”
Adherents of “anti-normalization” target not only pro-Israel students, but anyone presumed to support Israel, first and foremost Jewish students, regardless of their actual personal feelings on Israel. As a result, Jewish students engaging in Jewish activity having nothing to do with Israel — wearing their Jewish sorority or fraternity letters, displaying Star of David necklaces, walking to Hillel for Sabbath dinner – report fearing for their safety and well-being. In addition, because of their support, or even just presumed support, for Israel, Jewish students report being rejected from progressive social justice activities such as pro-choice rallies, anti-rape demonstrations, Black Lives Matter events and racial justice conferences.
The situation has become intolerable for many Jewish students.
This past spring, the University of California system took a critical stand against the rising antisemitism plaguing its 10 campuses. Its Board of Regents issued a Statement of Principles Against Intolerance acknowledging that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism which incites additional Jew hatred and, like other forms of discrimination, has no place at the University of California system. The Regents’ statement also singled out “actions that physically or otherwise interfere with the ability of an individual or group to assemble, speak, and share or hear the opinion of others,” stating that they “impair the mission and intellectual life of the University and will not be tolerated.”
Universities across the country must follow suit.
Israeli float at Stockholm pride parade omits the word ‘Israel’
The State of Israel entered its own float at the Stockholm Gay Pride parade on Saturday, though the word “Israel” was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the float prominently promoted the coastal city of Tel Aviv, which is famous for its own extremely popular annual parade.
The Israeli officials who marched in the Swedish capital’s parade, led by Ambassador Isaac Bachman, waved Israeli flags and rainbow flags with the Star of David on them. The word “Israel” was noticeably absent, however, neither appearing on the float itself nor on the T-shirts worn by participants. A banner on the front of the truck carrying the float said “Tel Aviv Salutes Stockholm Pride.” The shirts said “I ♥ Tel Aviv” and “Tel Aviv Pride.”
A banner on the side of the float hailed the beach city as an attractive travel destination for gay tourists, and promoted the website visit-tel-aviv.com.
While Tel Aviv is the undisputed capital of Israel’s LGBT community — indeed, the city has been recognized as one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world — pride parades take place in other Israeli cities as well, most notably in Jerusalem.
'Black Lives Matter' movement arrives in Israel
A delegation from the radical “Black Lives Matter” movement arrived in Israel last week to promote what the group called “the fight for dignity, justice and freedom”.
Founded with the aim of raising awareness about fatalities among African Americans resulting from encounters with law enforcement officers, the Black Lives Matter movement has argued that American law enforcement agencies are explicitly “hunting down” young black males.
During the trip to Israel, the BLM delegation participated in a raucous anti-Israel protest in the Samarian village of Bilin, near Modi’in Illit. Two Arab protesters were taken into custody during the event, the Bethlehem-based Ma’an reported.
The BLM delegation in Israel highlighted the movement’s international goals, expressing its opposition to what it described as the “genocide” of Palestinian Arabs at the hands of “Zionist vigilantes”, as well as capitalism, and the “occupation” of Palestine.
“In the fight for dignity, justice and freedom,” the BLM movement stated in a Facebook post last Friday, “the Movement for Black Lives is committed to the global shared struggle of oppressed people, namely the people of occupied Palestine and other indigenous communities who for decades have resisted the occupation of their land, the ethnic cleansing of their people, and the erasure of their history and experiences.”
Palestinians file FIFA complaint over Israeli restrictions
The head of the Palestinian Football Association has submitted a complaint to the international soccer governing body, FIFA, after Israel prevented seven soccer players and staff from traveling from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.
Jibril Rajoub says the Shabab Khan Younis players were attempting to attend the final Palestine Cup match in Hebron. The game, scheduled for Saturday, was postponed.
Israel's Shin Bet security agency said team members were barred due to "severe negative security background." Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza since Hamas wrested control over the strip in a violent coup in 2007.
In 2015, Rajoub asked FIFA to suspend the Israeli soccer association because of restrictions of movement on Palestinian players.
Israel has asked FIFA to condemn Rajoub's hailing of Palestinians who attack Israelis as courageous heroes.
More ‘one man’s terrorist’ from the BBC
Last week’s ninety-fourth anniversary of the Mandate for Palestine (together with the related amateur dramatics from the Palestinian Authority) might perhaps have prompted audiences to search BBC websites for more information on the subject of the League of Nations.
Most of the information turned up by such a search appears on BBC educational sites – Audiences would also find an article from 2011 by historian Charles Townshend on an archived (but accessible) page of the BBC’s History website titled “The League of Nations and the United Nations” which includes an ‘added extra’ towards the end.
Beyond the fact that in more than five years since this article’s appearance the BBC has not noticed that it promotes the inaccuracy “President Assad of Egypt”, we see here unqualified promotion of the ‘one man’s terrorist’ cliché.
“Members of Hamas (the Islamic resistance movement), and the Islamic Jihad organisation, may be terrorists to the government of Israel, but to others they are fighters against oppression.”
As has been noted here before, that approach is employed by those who confuse (intentionally or not) the means – terrorism – with the end.
Wave of Islamic Terror Presents a Problem for Liberal European Media
Beginning with the bloody July 14 Bastille Day terror attack in Nice, France that left 84 people dead, Western Europe has seen an unrelenting wave of violence mainly perpetrated by individuals with connections to or sympathies with the Islamic State terror group. These attacks on European soil are now occurring with a near daily frequency, with five different lone-wolf shooting and stabbing terror attacks in Germany in late July, at least three of which were claimed by the Islamic State, as well as the slaying of a Catholic priest in northern France on July 26.
Amid the shock and confusion that many Europeans are grappling with over the unprecedented wave of terrorism, European media organizations are similarly confounded over how to report on the violence that conflicts with the values of liberalism and humanism that have long defined Europe.
After the attack in Nice, the BBC tweeted an article with the headline “France’s President Holland returns to Paris for crisis meeting for Nice lorry ‘attack.’” This headline, which used quotation marks to cast doubt on whether the incident was a deliberate attack, and did not use the word “terror,” was followed by other headlines in the BBC, and in other European news organizations, such as “Syrian migrant dies in German blast,” or “Bomb-carrying Syrian dies outside German music festival; 12 wounded,” and others.
In a June article, JNS.org reported on how many international media outlets have come under fire for initially reporting misleading information about the attack at the Sarona market in Tel Aviv, and in some cases not describing the shooting as terrorism.
Selective Omission: HonestReporting's 8 Categories of Media Bias, Video#5 of 8
HonestReporting’s “Red Lines: The Eight Categories of Media Bias” is a new video series based on our latest E-book. In this series, prominent journalists and media analysts discuss the ways news is often misreported.
In this fifth segment, the Times of Israel's Haviv Rettig Gur and Michelle Chabin with USA Today, NY Jewish Week, and Religion News Service give their insights into why journalists often leave out important information from news stories.
Terror couple who planned attacks against Jews acquitted
The Supreme Court of Canadian province British Columbia has acquited John Nuttal and Amanda Korody, a couple who converted to Islam and planned to plant an explosive device in parliament while entertaining the possibility of murdering Jewish children in a synagogue, of terrorism charges.
The judge ruled that the police had "entrapped" the couple, who were not capable of carrying out an actual attack, tricking them into preparing a bomb so they can be arrested and charged. "There are enough terrorists in the world. We don't need the police to help more people who've been marginalized if they're too incompetent to commit the terror attack by themselves," the judge wrote in her decision.
In videos the police submitted as evidence, the couple are seen telling the camera that Jihad is a religious obligation for every Muslim, and calling for Muslims to fight infidels with every means available. They declared allegiance to Al-Qaeda and its founder, Osama Bin Laden.
Court documents also show that while talking to a secret agent who presented himself as a fellow Jihadi, the couple discussed the possibility of breaking into a synagogue to murder Jewish children, explaining that these would be mercy killings, as the children would spend eternity in hell if the grew up as Jews, but will go to heaven if they died as children.
Memorial to Israeli airmen defaced in Romania
A memorial in Romania to six Israeli airmen and one Romanian who died in a training accident in 2010 was defaced in recent days.
The words “You are pigs,” swastikas and a pig were painted on the memorial’s stone face, according to the Ynet news site.
The site commemorates those who died in a July 26, 2010 crash of an Israeli Air Force chopper during a joint Israeli-Romanian training exercise in the Carpathian mountains. The crew aboard the Yas’ur (CH-53 Sea Stallion) helicopter included six Israelis and one Romanian air force officer.
The memorial, near the small town of Brasov in the center of the country, lies far from major population centers.
Report: UK Prison Authorities Ignored Alerts of Radical Islamist, Antisemitic Literature Distributed by Imams to Inmates
British prison authorities ignored warnings about the distribution of radical Islamist and antisemitic literature by imams to inmates, the Sunday Times reported on Thursday.
According to the report, five items of “extremist literature” remained circulating in prison libraries, despite an order by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to remove them.
The presence of the radical literature was first brought to the attention of the MoJ in November 2015 by former prison governor Ian Acheson.
In his report to the MoJ, Acheson said the literature contained “sectarian, homophobic and incendiary information that was freely available to vulnerable prisoners in many prisons with no obvious control over it.”
The titles in question included works from Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Al-Banna and Sayid Qutb, a prominent Muslim Brotherhood ideologue. The works of Al-Banna and Qutb are considered seminal in radicalizing Muslims and inspiring jihadists in the Arab world.
In Al-Banna’s now banned The Way of Jihad, the author wrote, “Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored.” Citing various verses in the Koran, Al-Banna said all Muslims must “strike terror into [the hearts of] the enemies of Allah and your enemies.”
Yad Vashem Holocaust Seminar Helps Rwandans Commemorate Genocide
The International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem and Israel’s Foreign Ministry held a seminar on the 1994 Rwanda genocide, whose anniversary took place earlier this week. Several Rwandan genocide survivors were part of delegations attending the seminar.
In 1994 members of Rwanda’s majority ethnic Hutu government killed an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 ethnic Tutsi Rwandans over a period of three months. The seminar at Yad Vashem continues a partnership founded in 2005, when the museum first hosted survivors of the Rwandan genocide who were making efforts to commemorate the genocide.
This delegation to this year’s seminar met with Israeli Holocaust survivors and learned about the work of the Holocaust Archive and Conservationists, and the Yad Vashem Museum. They also learned how they can use techniques developed at Yad Vashem to build their own memorial to the Rwandan genocide.
Maiden flight of Israel's first F-35 'Adir' fighter jet
Israel’s first stealth fighter, a Lockheed Martin F-35 “Adir”, took its maiden flight, passing all of the tests with flying colors.
The flight, which lasted some 20 minutes, is the first operation of an Israeli stealth aircraft since the plane was formally “delivered” to Israel at a ceremony in Fort Worth, Texas in June.
The plane is one of two aircraft which are scheduled to be delivered to Israel by December 12th, 2016.
Watch the maiden flight of Israel's first F-35 fighter jet, the "Adir"
British songstress Joss Stone throws shade at BDS after Israel concert
After taking to the stage in front of a packed house at Tel Aviv’s Barby club last week, British soul singer Joss Stone took to social media to dismiss those who invoke geopolitics to deter artists from performing in Israel.
“I feel so lucky today; I never thought I’d be playing in Israel,” Stone told the audience at her first-ever show in Israel on July 25 as part of her Total World Tour.
Backing that up, the English soul and R&B diva took to Facebook to rave about her experience at the gig in Tel Aviv and issue a rebuke seemingly aimed at proponents of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
“Firstly, I loved the experience of playing in this place... Mainly because of the people. Because of their beautiful spirit.
Because of their warmth and kindness, their ability to let go and feel,” she wrote in a post on Saturday.
While Stone refrained from specifically mentioning BDS, she went on to acknowledge the controversy that arises when popular, international artists plan stops in Israel.
“... I’d like to say how pleased I am when I read comments from people who clearly understand the point of the world tour, and how sorry I am that so many of you had to enter into arguments on whether I should have visited Israel or not.”
18 things you should know about Israel at the Olympics
The Summer Olympic Games are here and all eyes are looking towards Rio de Janeiro. The Olympic Committee of Israel is cautiously hoping that Israeli athletes will succeed in stepping on the podium at this summer’s games.
While not a powerhouse sports nation, Israel does have some world-class athletic aptitude.
ISRAEL21c combed through the country’s sports archives to find these 18 things you should know about Israel at the Olympics:
1. Israel has won seven Olympic medals — five bronze, one silver and one gold — since it first competed as a nation in 1952. The medalists: Yael Arad (silver, judo, 1992), Oren Smadja (bronze, judo, 1992); Gal Fridman (bronze, sailing, 1996); Michael Kolganov (bronze, canoeing, 2000); Ariel Zeevi (judo, bronze, 2004), Gal Fridman (gold, sailing, 2004); Shahar Zubari (bronze, sailing, 2008).
2. Israel will send 47 athletes to the 2016 Rio Olympics.
3. All of Israel’s Olympic medals were won during the Summer Games.
4. Israel’s physically disabled athletes have won 380 medals at the Paralympic Games.
5. Israel will send 30 athletes to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympic Games.
6. The 1968 Paralympic Games were held in Tel Aviv after the Mexican government cited technical difficulties in hosting the contest alongside the Olympics event.
As Rio Olympics prepare to honor Munich dead, still no envoy from Israel
Brazil’s Jewish community is dismayed over the fact that Israel has not yet appointed a new ambassador to Brasilia, particularly lamenting the fact that the Jewish state will not be represented by a senior diplomat during an upcoming event to commemorate the Israelis murdered during the 1972 Olympics.
“It is disappointing that there will be no Israeli ambassador in Brazil during the Olympics, especially in light of the event to remember the Israeli athletes killed in Munich,” Fernando Lottenberg, the president of the Jewish Confederation of Brazil, told The Times of Israel this week.
The summer Olympics officially open in Rio de Janeiro on Friday. A few days later, on August 14, City Hall is scheduled to host an event in memory of 11 Israeli athletes who were brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists in September 1972. The commemoration will be attended by family members of the Israeli victims and Olympic officials from Israel and Brazil.
Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev and Israel’s new consul general to San Paulo, Dori Goren, will represent the Israeli government at the event.
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