flowers and bacon

Tribute in Light

The Tribute in Light is seen beaming above the New York City sky from the Staten Island Ferry and lower Manhattan on Wednesday, September 9, 2015. 

The Tribute in Light is an art installation of 88 searchlights placed next to the site of the World Trade Center to create two vertical columns of light in remembrance of the September 11 attacks. (Gordon Donovan/Yahoo News)

See more slideshows on Yahoo News.

They did not differentiate between Ashkeanzi, Sephardi or Mizrachi Jews as they raped and tortured their victims.  The local baker was burned alive on his oven.

The British, btw, did nothing.  Before the rioting started, the Jews asked the British police commissioner to get the situation under control, but he just assured them that if they stay in their homes, they won’t be hurt.  After a few hours of rioting, he showed up on his horse.  Two young Jew begged him to stop the pogrom.  But he refused to stop and help. 

The two were murdered by the mob while still holding on to the police horses.   For a quarter of an hour, the mob stabbed them until they died, asking after every stab, “does it hurt, Jew?”

The police then feared they would be attacked next, so they fired a gun in the air.  The mob dispersed, and the pogrom ended.  That’s all it took - a few shots in the air. 

67 Jews were murdered by the rioting Palestinians.

The victims were buried in a mass grave.  Another grave was dedicated to the body parts.

Three days later, the British expelled the remaining Jews from the city.

These were not “Zionist” Jews.  They refused the protection of the Zionists, because they were sure their Arab neighbors wouldn’t hurt them.

In 2005, btw, one of Israel’s Arab parties marched in memory of three of the murderers who had been executed by the British.

Today, Jews who live in Hebron are called “settlers”.  It doesn’t matter if they’re descendants of the original Jewish community.  They are evil Jews who want to steal from the Palestinians what is rightfully theirs.  And we don’t care how it got to be rightfully theirs.

Matisyahu, American Jewish musician, was banned by the Reggae Festival under pressure and threats from the BDS movement. The Spanish press and government called the ban blatant and illegal religious discrimination.

The Festival organizers relented, apologized, and re-invited Matisyahu to appear. He sang his “Jerusalem” song unedited even in the face of many protestors waving Palestinian flags in the crowd.

#BDSFail Source: legalinsurrection.com

From UK-based Catholic newspaper The Tablet:

A Canadian Jewish businessman has told The Tablet he has overseen the rescue of more than 120 Christian and Yazidi girls kidnapped by so-called Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq as Pope Francis condemned the “silence” of the international community in the face of ongoing persecution of Christians and other religious minorities. Steve Maman, 42, an entrepreneur, founded the Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI) after the jihadists overran the cities of Mosul and Sinjar a year ago, forcing more than 100,000 civilians, including virtually all the region’s Orthodox and Catholic population, to flee. Francis in a letter to Iraqi refugees in Jordan issued on Thursday, a year after the jihadists’ offensive, said: “Many times I have wanted to give voice to atrocious, inhuman and inexplicable persecution against people in many parts of the world - above all Christians - who are victims of fanaticism and intolerance. Often this persecution occurs where it can be seen and heard yet all are silent. These are the martyrs of today, people who are humiliated and suffer discrimination because of their fidelity to the Gospel.” In a matter last August, the jihadists took up to 7,000 Yazidi women and girls, some as young as 13, into slavery. An unknown number of Christian women and girls were also kidnapped. CYCI estimates that around 2,700 are still being held by IS. Mr Maman, who cites as a personal hero Oskar Schindler, the German who saved as many as 1,200 Jews from the Nazi Holocaust, works closely with a team of negotiators based inside IS-held areas, who work to reunite the Yezidis with their families. “We liberate children from their captors through the use of on-the-ground brokers,” he said. The charity receives money for rescue missions from Mr Maman’s mainly Jewish business associates, who, he said, have been “remarkably generous”. But the said his approaches to 60 church organisations in Canada, including parishes in Montreal and national bodies, have failed to attract support. “This is a finite problem that can be solved with money,” said Mr Maman. “We need Christians to open up at the same rate as my Jewish friends have.” CYCI collaborates with Anglican Canon Andrew White’s Foundaition for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, which is providing shelter to hundreds of people who have fled IS.

*has an American Jewish musician’s performance canceled*

*Harasses non-Israeli Jews*

*active BDS members put a pigs head in the kosher section*

*Harasses Jewish students in North American College campuses*

Jewish pre-school - Jaffa, Palestine

Amnesty International keeps on deceiving its readers to demonize Israel.

From its website pushing its new anti-Israel campaign that includes the Gaza Platform that I have shown to be filled with lies:

It is in big letters so it must be true!

Now, it is true that 25 family members were tragically killed. And I do not know if any of them were terrorists. But to say that the house had nothing to do with the fighting is not quite true.

There is one crucial fact that Amnesty, and Tawfiq Abu Jame, don’t want you to know.

The house had a guest at the time of the bombing.

His name was Ahmed Suleiman Mahmoud Sahmoud.

And he was a commander for the Hamas Al Qassam Brigades.

Don’t take my word for it. This was documented by B'Tselem.

- -

Why would Amnesty purposefully ignore evidence that mitigates its charges against Israel that was documented by other groups like the UNRHC and B'Tselem?

The answer is in the question. Amnesty will ignore all evidence that exonerates or contextualizes Israel’s actions in war or afterwards. It does not care about the truth.

From Ian:

Why the Jews Are the Canary in the Coal Mine

When tyrants target the Jews and incite the people against them, the real target is everyone’s freedom. It is a mistake to point out that the same fate befell others, that non-Jews were also gassed and cremated, that the Inquisition persecuted “everyone,” so why are the Jews feeling sorry for themselves. The whole purpose of taking down the Jews is precisely to enslave everyone. If Jew-bashing is being stoked once again, it is because the enemies of liberty are ready to make a move on everyone’s liberty. The Jews are like the canary in the coal mine, not because the Jews, like the canary, succumb to the poison before everyone else. It is because the enemies of liberty know that all humanism, all doctrines of liberty and sanctity of human life in Western Civilization come from the Jews; from Jewish sources and from Jewish thinkers. In order to put those ideas to rest, they have to eliminate the Jewish roots, the Jewish frames of reference and the Jews, whose very presence is a reminder that people have the God-given right to live in freedom and equality. The goal of Jew-bashing is the destruction of everyone’s freedom, and that is why everyone should take warning. In historical terms, democracy has not lasted long: fewer than three hundred years in America; two hundred fitful years in France, punctuated by the occasional resurgence of tyrannical rule; one hundred and fifty years in Britain, and barely a hundred troubled years on various parts of the European Continent, where it was interrupted by fascism and its Nazi variant for as long as twenty of those years, and by Communism for more than seventy years. This record means that most of those countries – except Czechoslovakia, briefly, and the Scandinavian countries – never really experienced democracy. The rest of Europe had fascist regimes with only some of the trappings of democracy at most. In the Islamic world, only Iran experienced democracy, and only briefly. The CIA and British intelligence destroyed it because they feared the socialist government that the Iranians elected. The people liked democracy and they remember it, as was clearly evidenced by the failed 2009 “Green Revolution.” Democracy in Europe appears to be nearly finished by now, falling rapidly to Islamic tyranny on one side and autocratic rule by unelected, unaccountable, faceless European Union bureaucrats on the other, with a resurgent Imperial Russia in the wings. I fear America may not be far behind. And I fear that if liberty fails in America, it will fail everywhere.

Caroline Glick: The hour of the pro-Israel Democrats

It works out that President Barack Obama is a multi-tasker. Even as he and Secretary of State John Kerry have been devoting their attention to capitulating to Iran, they still managed to open a new front against Israel by buffeting the anti-Israel boycott movement. Last week State Department spokesman John Kirby announced a radical new US policy regarding free trade with Israel that paves the way for all of Israel to be placed on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) chopping block. The announcement came against the backdrop of two recent events. Second, last month Obama signed the Trade Promotion Authority bill. Weeks before he signed it, both houses of Congress added a provision to the bill instructing US trade negotiators to “discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel,” by foreign governments. The provision relates both to “business in Israel or in Israeli controlled territories.” As Prof. Eugene Kontorovich pointed out in a recent article in The Washington Post, Congress’s action was in line with nearly 50 years of US policy. Kontorovich explained, “US laws have long applied the same economic treatment to all areas under Israeli jurisdiction (including Jerusalem). For example, the pair of anti-boycott laws passed in the late 1970s treat Israeli companies the same regardless of their location in relation to the Green Line. And the US-Israel Free Trade Implementation Act, first passed in 1985, affords ‘areas under Israeli jurisdiction’ the same treatment as all ‘Israeli’ products for US trade purposes.”

Haaretz’s Amira Hass: Terror ‘Legitimate’ in Judea-Samaria

Terror attacks against Jews in Judea and Samaria are “legitimate,” Haaretz journalist Amira Hass insisted to an audience at Duke University in North Carolina. Hass gave two separate lectures at the university in March, ISLAMiCommentary reported earlier this month: one entitled “The Israeli Occupation and Jewish-Israeli Dissent” and the other, “Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Jew in an Occupied Land.“ During the talks, Hass deemed Gaza "a concentration camp” - a term she used even though her mother survived Bergen-Belsen - and called terror attacks on Jews a “legitimate” means of “resistance.” Hass claimed that Gazans “are deprived of so many basic things, because Israel deprives them of peace, (the) basic right of freedom of movement.” She based her “concentration camp” claim on the fact that Israel has required Gazans to travel with a permit back and forth to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) since 1991 to help stop the steady stream of terror attacks on Israelis. “From time to time Israel changes — I call it the policy of the goat,” she said. “You put inside people’s lives many hardships and then as a kind of goodwill gesture, you remove one of the hardships when you want. But it’s taken as a favor done, not as a right and not as a policy.” Hass further claimed that Israel’s security policies were implemented to enforce a system of segregation.

BBC defends translation of ‘Jews’ as ‘Israel’ in Gaza doc

The BBC defended its decision to translate the words of Gaza children saying that Israel was responsible for massacres rather than Jews. The translation appears in subtitles that BBC editors prepared for the public broadcaster’s documentary “Children of the Gaza War” by Lyse Doucet, which was cleared for airing this week. In one interview, a Gazan child says the “yahud” are massacring Palestinians. However, the subtitles read, “Israel is massacring us.” The Arab-language words for Jews and Israelis are pronounced “yahud” and “yisraelina,” respectively. The BBC in the past has offered a correct translation of the word “yahud.” Responding to complaints by viewers, the British Broadcasting Corp.’s complaints department sent one complainant a letter that read, “We took advice from a number of translators in Gaza and London and were advised that the most accurate interpretation of what the contributors were saying in this context was ‘Israeli.’”

Graham Smacks Down NBC Talking Points on Iran Deal: ‘Anybody Could Have Done Better’

Co-host Willie Geist asked Graham, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, what he would tell Iran in any negotiations were he in the White House. “I would tell the Iranians you’re not going to get a penny as long as you are you are the largest state sponsor of terrorism,” Graham said. “I would tell the Iranians we are not going to lift the U.N. arms embargo until you stop toppling your neighbors. I would make sure you never take inspections away as long as they were the largest state sponsor of terrorism.” Co-host Savannah Guthrie said, “Secretary Kerry says that sounds good, that’s a good soundbite, but ultimately it’s fantasy.” “Oh, please,” Graham said under his breath. “Please.” “You know what’s a fantasy is to believe that the Ayatollah was building a power plant, not a bomb,” Graham said. “A fantasy is to believe that this deal will not lead to a nuclear arms race in the Mideast. A fantasy is to believe that when they chant ‘Death to Israel,’ they’re just kidding. This is the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, where the Jewish people were almost wiped out. Now you’ve given their chief antagonist, the Ayatollah and Iran, a pathway to a nuclear weapon. You’ve enriched him, more weapons to wreak havoc on the region and putting us at risk. This is a terrible deal. Anybody could have done better, and you have taken a can of gasoline and thrown it on a fire, as far as I’m concerned.”

Bennett Takes on Sneering BBC Anchor: Iran Deal is a Farce

In an interview with a notably hostile, even antagonistic BBC anchor, Bennett outlined perhaps the most glaring hole in the deal: the fact that Iran will receive nearly a month’s notice prior to any inspections of nuclear sites - ample time to hide evidence of illegal, bomb-making activity. “Here’s the thing - in order to go and make an inspection, you have to notify the Iranians 24 days in advance. That’s a farce!” he said. “Of course within the 24 days they’re going to clean up the facility, get away with the inspections and continue with what they do.” “Imagine a local police station raiding a drug baron and telling him a month in advance that we’re going to raid you,” Bennett challenged. “You cannot have verifiable inspections if you have to notify them in advance, and then they can object, and then there’s a commitee - this is not serious!” Bennett further noted that initially, world powers had made “surprise inspections” a deal-breaker, before quietly abandoning an apparently crucial demand. “It was supposed to be surprise inspections - but there’s no surprise here any more!”

Obama spikes Iran Nuke football

The sanctions regime will have been shredded, so nothing short of military force would dissuade Iran from going nuclear. Iran likely has a hidden nuclear program, the scope of which we probably still won’t know. If Iran is suspected of cheating, there will be a committee, that includes Iran, that will make a determination, no sooner than a month, meaning that the threat of “snap-back” sanctions is meaningless. Friedman asked Obama no hard questions, though he allowed Obama to address his own criticism that the United States had not done enough to force Iran to give up its nuclear program. Of course this was an interview, a chance for Obama to spike the ball. And Friedman was there to be Obama’s stenographer. What would have been nice would have been for Friedman to ask Obama just one tough question. Like: if all the punishments for Iran’s illicit enrichment program are erased, how can you hope to enforce the nuclear nonproliferation regime in the future? The interview displayed Obama in all of his arrogant self-assuredness abetted by a journalist who hoped to be a part of history rather than do his job.

Andrea Mitchell Literally Rolls Her Eyes With Contempt For Netanyahu While Interviewing Iran’s Zarif

As part of her line of questions about the implications of the deal being reached, Mitchell, with a contemptuous air of embarrassment, asked Zarif about comments from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As she asked, she rolled her eyes, scoffed, sneered, and generally made her own opinion on the remarks abundantly clear. Zarif responded with typical spin that Israel needs and wants conflict and does not want peace. He called Israel’s position “the joke of the century”, a response that elicited no probing from the Mitchell about Iran’s own claims of peacefulness. Andrea Mitchell is what passes for a “legitimate” journalist at MSNBC. But her bias is abundantly clear: Israel is evil and Iran is benevolent and John Kerry is a giant of history. Journalism, folks.

PMW: Mocking Islamic suicide bombers

Contrary to the Palestinian Authority and Fatah policy of honoring Palestinian suicide bombers as “heroes,” recently two cartoons mocked ISIS and other Islamic suicide bombers. One cartoon by a Yemenite artist published on Fatah’s Information and Culture Commission’s website ridiculed the way radical Muslim groups persuade suicide bombers - the aspiring “Martyrs” for Allah - with the promise of being rewarded with the 72 Dark-Eyed Virgins in Heaven upon completing their “mission.” A satanic figure encourages a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt with the following words: “Remember, the more victims, the more virgins.” [June 27, 2015] Another cartoon which was shown on Fatah-run Awdah TV mocked Islamic State suicide terrorists. It showed a threatening looking man handing someone a car key labelled “car bomb,” saying: “Congratulations, you’ve been chosen because you’re the only sucker willing to carry out this mission!” [Fatah-run Awdah TV, July 8 and 9, 2015] Interestingly, these two cartoons published by Fatah media mock suicide bombers of radical Islamic groups, whereas the Fatah movement, along with the Palestinian Authority, has a long tradition of praising Palestinian suicide bombers who have killed Israelis, as Palestinian Media Watch has documented. Similarly, Fatah and the PA promote Martyrdom for Allah, and did so especially during the PA’s terror campaign (the Intifada, 2000-2005). Furthermore, they reinforce the belief in “Martyrs” being wed to the 72 virgins in Heaven.

Anti-Zionists: The proud “anti-racist” racists

Anti-Zionists tend to react with indignation at any hint of accusations of anti-Semitism. This is understandable, since anti-Zionists view themselves as spearheads against racism and injustice. How can they possibly be anti-Semites when some of their “best friends” are Jews? Let us ignore that these “Jewish friends” constitute a tiny minority of world Jewry and their supposedly “Jewish identity” is mainly manifested through their opposition to anything Jewish, especially a tiny sliver of land on the eastern Mediterranean known as Israel. Anti-Zionists weep while watching Schindler’s List and commemorate the Holocaust, while warning that Israel is committing “genocide” against Gaza and threatening humanity. Never mind that unlike the Jews of Europe, the population of Gaza has quadrupled — to a large degree due to continuous infusion of cruel Zionist humanitarian aid, food and health care. Math was never the anti-Zionists’ strong subject in school. Neither was history. This sliver of land which anti-Zionists refer to as the ”foreign Zionist entity” is saturated with 3,000 years of continuous Jewish history and has never been the homeland of any nation other than the Jews. Anti-Zionists know better and lament the “occupation” of the “indigenous Palestinian nation” whose proud and supposedly ancient history still remains to be uncovered by archeologists. The Roman emperor Hadrian, who fathered the term “Palestine” as a rejection of the obstinate entity Judea, probably never anticipated that his intellectual offspring would become the coveted name for a diverse group of 19th and 20th century Arabic-speaking immigrants who somehow overnight became “indigenous” since time immemorial.

CAIR Leader Slams Article Showing Her Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

Last week, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (in an article published on this website) showcased some pretty rabid, hateful rhetoric posted on social media by Lamis Deek, a lawyer and board member for the Council on American-Islamic Relations-New York (CAIR-NY). The story showed how Deek’s blind hate for Israel is consistent with many of her CAIR colleagues, including some who equate the marauding, beheading barbarians of the Islamic State terrorist group with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It featured a picture reposted on Deek’s Facebook page last August, glorifying the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group’s Al-Quds Brigades. The PIJ logo is clearly visible on a masked man featured in the image we published. The self-described “Human Rights Advocate” must not be a regular IPT reader, because she just caught wind of the story Monday. “Aw look a whole article dedicated to me…a pathetic attempt w fake photos but I’m flattered despite its desperation,” she wrote on Twitter. With all due respect to Ms. Deek, a couple things need to be noted. If the image is a fake, you only have yourself to blame. We took it straight off your Facebook timeline where you reposted it and others from the Quds News Network. The entire post, including the picture you say is a fake, was still on your timeline this afternoon.

Watch: Security forces arrest Fatah-Tanzim member for deadly terror shooting

Security forces arrested a suspected terrorist gunman and four alleged accomplices for the deadly June shooting of an Israeli civilian in the West Bank, the Shin Bet intelligence agency announced on Wednesday. Muhammad Abu Shahin, a Fatah Tanzim operative and resident of Qalandia Refugee Camp, is in custody for the murder of 25-year-old Danny Gonen, of Lod, and the shooting and injuring of a second Israeli civilian near the settlement of Dolev. In a joint operation by the Shin Bet, the Judea and Samaria counter-terrorism unit, and the IDF, Shahin and several terror operatives were arrested, security forces said. In the days after the shooting, a “wave of arrests occurred in the region, and Ramallah-area operatives were taken into custody. They confessed during questioning to carrying out a series of terror attacks, including the murder of Danny Gonen,” the Shin Bet said.

Terrorist Nabbed after Bizarre Confession to Emergency Hotline

The IDF raid which resulted in the arrest of the terrorist who murdered Israeli hiker Danny Gonen, along with several accomplices to the crime, was the result of a tip-off - by none other than the murderer himself. A police source has revealed to Arutz Sheva details of the bizarre call, received by the 100 Emergency Hotline not long after the deadly shooting. “The first clue was when the terrorist called to the 100 Hotline about a week and a half after (the attack), and said that he had carried out a terrorist attack,” the source said. “Usually after terrorist attacks there are all sorts of pranks, but the (police) dispatcher suspected this was something more than a prank.” The dispatcher passed on details of the call to the security services, who immediately launched an investigation which eventually tracked the terrorist to his home. The source noted that were it not for the intuition and quick thinking of the dispatcher the investigation would likely still be ongoing. The terrorist has been identified as 30-year-old Mohammed Abu-Shahin, a resident of Kalandia and an operative of the Palestinian Authority’s elite Force-17. As a Fatah member and PA employee, Abu-Shahin receives a monthly salary from the PA.

Glick: We’re here to protest against apartheid on the Temple Mount

Nearly 10 months after being shot four times by a terrorist for his staunch advocacy of Jewish prayer and visitation rights on the Temple Mount, Yehudah Glick on Tuesday evening led a protest in the Old City reaffirming his controversial position. “We’re here calling out for the recognition that Jews are also human beings, and we’re here to protest against the apartheid on the Temple Mount, where there is a total difference between if you are a Muslim or you are any other person,” he said at the gathering near Dung Gate. Glick called for the protest amid a police-enforced closure to non-Muslim visitors to the contested holy site for security reasons during Ramadan. While the police announced that the Temple Mount will be closed to non-Muslim visitors for the last 10 days of Ramadan, Glick cited three weeks. “And we’re here to call out the Israeli government to stop the discrimination against Jews and non-Muslims in general on the Temple Mount for freedom to pray, freedom to breathe, freedom to move your lips, freedom to bow down – freedom to just move with respect to all the other people on the Temple Mount.” Glick continued, “There is no reason in the world why Jews should not have basic human rights.”

Do Terrorists Get One Free Shot at Israeli Soldiers?

An Israeli soldier who shot back at an Arab who was trying to murder him is now under investigation, following protests by self-described human rights activists. Given the focus of the activists’ concern, perhaps it would be more accurate to call them terrorists’ rights activists. The activists, from the B’Tselem non-governmental organization, have released a highly edited five-second piece of security camera footage (from a nearby gas station) that shows part of the incident. Even with the selective editing, you can clearly see the terrorist race up to within a few feet of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) vehicle and hurl a brick at it, shattering the windshield. Stoning is the way killers in the Middle East have been executing their victims for innumerable centuries. Like in that GEICO commercial—it’s what they do. The soldiers responded exactly as army protocol, and common sense, dictate. They jumped out of the car and pursued the terrorist and his comrades. The terrorist, with an object in his hand, turned to confront the brigade commander, IDF Col. Yisrael Shomer, who shot and killed him. The footage released by B’Tselem shows only the terrorist attacking the car and the soldiers jumping out to chase him as he flees. B’Tselem says this proves that the soldiers were “not in mortal danger” when Col. Shomer shot, so the shooting was unjustified. If this were indeed the principle guiding the behavior of Israeli soldiers, it would mean that every Arab terrorist gets one free shot. He can try to murder Israelis, and unless the Israelis shoot at the exact moment of the attack, then they are no longer “in mortal danger” and therefore have no right to shoot at all.

Palestinian woman stabs IDF soldier in back in West Bank

An IDF soldier was stabbed in the back by a female Palestinian terrorist near the settlement of Nahliel in the West Bank, the army said Wednesday. MDA paramedics were treating an approximately 20-year-old youth suffering from light-to-moderate stab wounds at the scene. The soldier was carrying out routine security activity with his unit when the attack occurred. The terrorist has been taken into custody and will be questioned shortly, the IDF added. She has been named as 22-year-old Ruan Abu Matar, a resident of the village of Bitilu, northwest of Ramallah. She has no organizational affiliation, the Shin Bet said, and no known prior security offenses. During questioning, she confessed to attempting to murder a soldier, the Shin Bet added. “It is apparent that this is a terror attack committed by a lone attacker,” the intelligence agency said.

Facebook profiles touting hateful names will be removed

Facebook agreed to assist the Israel Internet Association take down the profiles of users who add “Death to Jews” and “Death to Arabs” to their profile names. After being made aware of the new phenomenon, Speaker of the Knesset MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud) wrote to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, and Richard Allen, Facebook’s head of policy in Europe and the Middle East, requesting that they use “all the tools at the disposal of Facebook in order to put an end to these pages” last week. Edelstein said he was “appalled” by what he called “acts of incitement” and added that while the “Jewish part of Israeli society at times finds itself in disagreement with members of the Arab public… in the heat of an argument, we must keep to the point and respect human dignity.” The Center for Safe Internet, part of the Israel Internet Association, also turned to Facebook with a request to help them take down the profiles.

Hamas Rocket Mastermind Sentenced to 21 Years

An Israeli court sentenced a Palestinian engineer from Gaza to 21 years in jail Tuesday for helping the Islamist terrorist movement Hamas to improve the range of rockets used against the Jewish state. Dirar Abu Sisi went missing in Ukraine in February 2011, and Israel said a month later that he was in its custody and would be put on trial. He was apparently arrested in an operation by Israeli secret service agents. A court in the southern city of Beersheba had convicted Abu Sisi of several “crimes against the security of the state.” In particular, he was said to have helped improve the range of the domestically-made Qassam rockets that Hamas’s “military wing,” the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades - has repeatedly fired at Israeli civilians from the Gaza Strip over the years. The rockets, produced in clandestine workshops that are often targeted by Israeli air strikes, can travel between 10 and 20 kilometers (six and 12 miles). They posses a relatively small warhead but are usually packed with shrapnel including ball-bearings, razor blades, nails and glass, allowing them to seriously maim or kill victims beyond the immediate site of impact.

Palestinian workers demand equal labor conditions to Israelis at court hearing

In a case with huge implications for Israeli-Palestinian work relations as well as possible diplomatic consequences, three Palestinians who work in Israeli industry near Tulkarm on Tuesday demanded that the National Labor Court recognize their right to equal work conditions to Israelis. The core of the debate, which has come up in parallel cases, is whether Israeli law applies to the Palestinians since they have Israeli employers, or 1967 Jordanian law, since the industrial workspaces are in Area C of the West Bank. Under international law, an “occupying country” (in the legal sense, absent the political debate, occupying just means a country that has conquered territory) is supposed to apply the law that already existed to the local population that comes under its rule. Since Israel conquered the West Bank from Jordan in 1967, Israel has always taken the position that 1967 Jordanian law applies to Palestinians in a number of areas of life. But in 2007, the High Court of Justice issued a major ruling that Palestinians who lived in the West Bank but worked for Israelis in the Givat Ze’ev settlement would get the same minimum level work conditions as Israelis in terms of pay, vacation days, work days and termination pay.

South African school allows student’s Hitler remarks

The University of the Witwatersrand said in a statement Tuesday that its legal office “found that Mr. [Mcebo] Dlamini’s utterances did not breach the exceptions to the Constitution regarding freedom of speech.” Although there were grounds for him to be charged for failing to meet his fiduciary requirements as president of the Students’ Representative Council, given the fact that he had already been removed from the position, the university “did not deem it appropriate to charge him in this regard,” while describing his remarks as “abhorrent,” The Mail and Guardian reported Wednesday. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies, or SAJBD, the community’s representative body, said in a statement that the decision was relevant only with respect to the internal rules and procedures of the university and had no judicial relevance outside its confines. “The SAJBD remains convinced that Mr. Dlamini’s comments are not protected by the Constitution and will continue to pursue the cases of hate speech that have been laid both with the South African police and with the SA Human Rights Commission,” it said in a statement. Dlamini made headlines after a graphic appeared on his Facebook page in April comparing the Israeli government to the Nazi regime. “In every white person there is an element of Hitler,” he wrote. He was subsequently ousted from his position, but Wits vice-chancellor Adam Habib said at the time that this was unrelated to his Hitler comments. Rather, Dlamini had been removed following a finding of misconduct against him by a disciplinary panel in February. At the time of the Facebook post, Dlamini told the Wits newspaper Vuvuzela, “What I love about Hitler is his charisma and his capabilities to organize people. We need more leaders of such caliber.”

The betrayal of the Palestinians by peace activists

How can this be? These so-called peace activists are not economically challenged, naïve, uneducated teens who do not know what Hamas really is. They are highly educated and highly paid individuals. What reason could there be for them to do exactly the opposite of what their stated philosophy and supposed support for the Palestinians would dictate? - Are they anti-Palestinian activists wishing to keep Palestinians from achieving peace and dignity? If so, they certainly fool a lot of people. - Are they not peace activists, but disciples of the warmongering philosophy of Hamas? That is possible. - Or have they reached such deep levels of hate of the Jewish state that they are unable to see that theirs actions go against the very essence of being a peace activist, and that they are hurting those that they claim to support? That in my opinion is the most likely explanation, and it is consistent with the general frame of mind of “pro-Palestinian” activists, who are in fact not pro-Palestinian in any practical sense. Non-violent tactics have of course been contemplated by some Palestinians. As far back as April 2001, Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid advocated non-violence as a means of achieving better success for the Palestinians. Eid also frequently denounces Hamas which he holds largely responsible for the deteriorating situation in Gaza. “Pro-Palestinian” peace activists therefore have a choice. They do not have to support Hamas. They can support peace-oriented Palestinians, but they freely elect to endorse, defend, and excuse Hamas. These “peace activists” are in fact not peace activists at all. They are champions of terrorism, in deed if not in thought.

Students Oppose Counter-Radicalism Campus Strategy on Grounds of ‘Racism’

The battle to tackle radicalism on Britain’s university campuses is being severely hampered by student union leaders and academics, working in conjunction with British Muslim community leaders, a new report has found. Under the guise of protecting freedom of expression, students and academics have continued to oppose the government’s Prevent strategy, designed to tackle radicalisation on campus, arguing that it is racist and discriminatory. They deny that there is any link between religious ideology and terrorism, insisting that social factors such as poverty are the root causes of people blowing themselves, and others, up. Students Rights, a non-partisan project of The Henry Jackson Society which monitors extremism on UK university campuses has investigated the problem, and discovered that there is an ongoing trend of resistance to Prevent on UK campuses. Students Rights reports that the most frequent incidents of students being exposed to extremism on campuses come in the form of speakers with a history of extreme or intolerant views, or with a history of involvement with extremist organisations, being invited onto campuses to speak. Despite the best efforts of Prevent to curb such events, Students Rights logged 132 speakers events in 2012, 145 in 2013, and 123 in 2014. In total 84 venues and 82 individual speakers were logged, although some are used repeatedly and often.

The Whitewash Continues: BBC Trust Refuses to Review Tim Willcox Appeal

In May, the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit issued its final correspondence concerning Tim Willcox’s outrageous reporting in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket terror attacks in Paris. The ECU rejected ours and many others’ criticisms of Willcox, whose statement that “Many critics of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well” inferred that French Jewry (and all Jews) were responsible for the actions of Israel and therefore may have justified the terror attack on the kosher supermarket. The ECU also rejected our assertion that Willcox’s “apology” on his Twitter page was inadequate. We therefore took our complaints to the next level by appealing the ECU’s decision to the BBC Trust, whose correspondence has only now been received, which you can read below. Ultimately, the BBC Trust’s Senior Editorial Adviser “decided that the appeals did not have a reasonable prospect of success.” It appears that the Senior Editorial Adviser is the arbiter or “gatekeeper” over which complaints even make it into the hands of the 12 Trustees who serve as the BBC’s governing body and it is her judgment that has prevented the Trustees from examining the issue.

BBC’s Keyworth mainstreams an inaccurate political narrative

As readers will recall, Marie Keyworth visited the Gaza Strip and PA controlled areas in May on behalf of the BBC’s business department. Her latest report – which also appeared as a written article titled “Love in a time of conflict” on the BBC News website’s ‘Magazine’ and Middle East pages on July 13th – is not about business matters but ostensibly tells a whimsical tale of romance. In among, however, listeners and readers are fed statements which are presented without any context or qualification. Keyworth’s narrative is one of entirely passive “Gazan lives” in a place where “conflict erupts” – apparently all by itself – and where “the shells that fall” when it is “frequently bombed” do so for no discernible reason. In Keyworth’s world there is no cause and effect, no responsibility and no agency. And of course, there is no terrorism. That banal and inaccurate portrayal obviously not only does nothing to meet the BBC’s remit of building understanding of “international issues” but even deliberately entrenches a politically motivated false narrative which is already disturbingly prevalent.

Montreal Jews Demand Arrests for Anti-Semitic Graffiti

Jewish businesses in Montreal have been targeted by a series of anti-Semitic graffiti in the past few days, raising concern among many members of the Jewish community. The first incident occurred when a vandal spray-painted a large swastika next to the front door of a business owned by a Jew in Canada’s second-largest city. According to what appears to be video footage from the building’s security camera, the perpetrator approached the entrance from the right of the building and looked around for witnesses, before taking something out of his pocket - like a spray-paint container. Within a few seconds, the young man finished drawing the swastika on the building’s wall and left the scene. In the days that followed, similar incidents occurred at other Jewish places of business.

‘Bookkeeper of Auschwitz’ sentenced to 4 years in prison

A German court Wednesday sentenced a former Nazi SS officer known as the “Bookkeeper of Auschwitz” to four years in prison, in what was expected to be one of the last Holocaust trials. Oskar Groening, 94, sat impassively as judge Franz Kompisch said “the defendant is found guilty of accessory to murder in 300,000 legally connected cases” of deported Jews who were sent to the gas chambers in 1944. Groening served as a bookkeeper at the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, sorting and counting the money taken from those killed or used as slave labor, collecting cash in different European currencies, and shipping it back to his Nazi bosses in Berlin. The sentence was longer than the three and a half years prosecutors had demanded in the court in the northern city of Lueneburg, which has been hearing the case since April. Groening had on Tuesday seized a last opportunity to address the judges and said he was “very sorry” for his time stationed at the concentration camp, telling them that “no one should have taken part in Auschwitz”.

TV’s shock jock remembers family’s Holocaust history

Jerry Springer receives documents detailing his parents’ World War II rescue The 71-year-old spoke about his family history at a private dinner last week to support World Jewish Relief, the international development agency that brought his parents to the US before the start of World War II. Springer was given a copy of his parents’ immigration documents created by the Central British Fund in 1939. The couple, originally from Germany, first settled in London, where Springer was born. Records show that his mother Margot, from Berlin, was 32 when she arrived in the UK, and his father Richard, from Landsberg, was 34. Jerry was born five years later in 1944, in the Highgate Tube Station, which then doubled as a bomb shelter. His mother, like many others, slept in the tube station rather than run to the shelter each time there was a siren. The Springers lived in London until 1949 when they moved to New York. “I was deeply touched when I received the records of my parents’ WWII immigration,” said Springer. “These papers are a piece of family history which I will treasure forever.”

Jewish peer who fled Nazis is rescuing Christians fleeing Isis to repay 'debt’

A Jewish peer who fled occupied Austria as a child is funding the rescue of up to 2,000 Christians from Syria and Iraq as a way of showing his gratitude to the religion whose members saved him from the Nazis. Lord Weidenfeld says he has “a debt to repay” to Christians fleeing Isis, because the Quakers and the Plymouth Brethren fed and clothed him and helped him to reach Britain in 1938. The publisher is spearheading Weidenfeld Safe Havens Fund, which last week supported the flight of 150 Syrian Christians to Poland on a privately chartered plane to allow them to seek refuge, making them the first beneficiaries of the resettlement project. Having arrived in Britain on a train a year before the start of the Second World War with just a few shillings to his name, Lord Weidenfeld went on to establish the Weidenfeld and Nicolson publishing business a decade later. He was made a life peer in 1976.

AnyClip raises $21m to expand global video reach

Russian oligarchs are famous for their savvy investing strategies, and that’s good news for Israeli digital video and advertising tech company AnyClip, which counts Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich among its latest investors. Abramovich, represented by Ervington Investments, is part of a just-completed $21 million funding round for the company, along with Limelight Networks (LLNW), a global leader in digital content delivery. Current shareholders Jerusalem Venture Partners, GTI and other investors also participated in this expansion round. As the owner of several soccer teams, among other things – he’s best known for his ownership of London’s Chelsea Football Club – Abramovich is known to watch a lot of video and game replays, looking for ways to make his teams play better. AnyClip is a video company too, which partners with content producers and owners to develop, curate and distribute their content for Web sites, devices, smartphones, etc. The company’s search engine can find almost any clip in thousands of movies, providing advertisers, video and film producers, music video directors and others with just the right clip to highlight their scene, product or musical composition. AnyClip, which has been operating in Israel in 2009, has actually evolved into one of the world’s biggest media companies. Via its distribution network and metadata search engine, the tech firm comes in among the top 10 of comScore’s list of sites with the most unique viewers — coming in just behind content giants Amazon, Vimeo and Turner Digital (the online arm of CNN and affiliated sites).

Gadget blooms your hydroponic garden

Whether you’re growing berries in Brooklyn or kale in Karachi, a small device coming soon from an Israeli entrepreneur will help you grow it better on water, hydroponically. “Our solution based on sensors and community lets individuals and smallholder farms access cutting-edge hydroponics technologies, until now available only to big industry,” says Karin Kloosterman, Jaffa-based CEO of Flux. “By monitoring, automating and adjusting optimal conditions for your plants indoors or out, Flux makes the most of your investment, and elevates your plants’ potential. The tool, based on precision agriculture, can increase yields by 30 percent.” Once Flux is mass-manufactured by the end of this year, consumers will be able to buy the patent-pending device through greenhouse builders to optimize their hydroponic crops – everything from cherry tomatoes and rare Japanese melons to medical cannabis. “You just have to plunk it in the water reservoir and it starts monitoring your water chemistry and gives you automated alerts about what to adjust,” Kloosterman, a former writer for ISRAEL21c explains. The system is monitored and controlled from any smartphone or tablet.

Surfer dudes test the Tel Aviv waves

“Tel Aviv is one of the ‘sickest’ places in the world,” declared surfer brothers Tanner, Patrick and Dane Gudauskas, about five minutes into “Down Days Israel,” a TV series sponsored by Vans — a shoe and apparel company popular among the surfer set — that takes the siblings to explore exotic surfing spots worldwide. The 29-minute episode follows the tall, rangy, bleached blonde G-Bros, as they’re often called, to the surf and turf of Tel Aviv, then into the religious intensity of Jerusalem, the politics of the West Bank and back to Jaffa for some more wave time. The San Clemente, California siblings — younger brother Tanner and twins Dane and Patrick — grew up in the heart of Southern California surf culture and are all surfing pros. In the episode, they’re duly impressed by Tel Aviv’s surfing culture, calling it the “Middle Eastern version of South Beach,” and by the wind-generated surf at Hilton Beach, a favored Tel Aviv spot. “Tel Aviv is as close to a fantasy land as you could dream of,” they commented, “and there’s a rad local crew in Tel Aviv.”

One year ago, today, the search for Eyal, Gil-ad and Naftali z’l came to an end.

After 18 days of tireless searches and prayers, an entire nation was overcome with loss when the bodies of the three teens, kidnapped by Hamas, were found in a field near Hebron.

How Free Israel Prospers As Islam Remains In Dark

BY CHUCK DEVORE

4/13/2011

Last in a series from a Middle East observer who just returned from the region and whose January report for IBD was “A Restive Egypt Faces Succession,” nearly two weeks before the revolt began in that country that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

Israel, a New Jersey-sized nation of 7.5 million people (1.7 million of whom are Arab) filed 7,082 international patents in the five years ending in 2007. By contrast, 28 majority-Muslim nations with almost 1.2 billion people — 155 times the population of Israel — were granted 2,071 patents in the same period.

Narrowing the comparison to the 17 Muslim nations of the Middle East from Morocco to Iran and down the Arabian Peninsula, the 409 million people in that region generated 680 patents in five years.

This means that the Arab and Iranian world produced about one patent per year for every 3 million people, compared with Israel’s output of one annual patent for every 5,295 people, an Israeli rate some 568 times that of Israel’s neighbors and sometime enemies.

The awarding of Nobel Prizes in the quantitative areas of chemistry, economics and physics shows a similar disparity, with five Israeli winners compared with one French Algerian (a Jew who earned the prize for work done in France) and an Egyptian-American (for work done at Caltech in California).

This phenomenon is manifested in other nations as well, where bad government begets poverty. Free South Korea, with 48.8 million people, filed 24,200 international patents from 2003 to 2007. The 24.5 million people in the North Korean slave state managed to produce 14 patents in the same period.

But wealth isn’t the sole explanation for this disparity in intellectual innovation. Saudi Arabia enjoyed a per capita income of $24,200 in 2010. Yet the Kingdom averages an anemic 37 patents per year compared with Israel’s 1,416 per year — and there are 3 ½ times more Saudis than Israelis, meaning that Israel’s per capita output of intellectual property is 132 times greater than Saudi Arabia’s.

My on-the-ground education in the Middle East began in 1984, when I attended school at American University in Cairo, Egypt. At the time, Israel was a socialist state, still very much mired in a planned economy focused on heavy industry and agriculture, replete with government subsidies and heavy regulation. Israel’s per capita output stood at $6,749 (in current U.S. dollars), 41% of America’s — slightly less than the Soviet Union’s per capita output at the time.

Egypt also featured a planned economy in the 1980s, with smoke-belching heavy industries making Cairo among the world’s most polluted cities. Egypt’s per capita production was $881, about 5% of U.S. per capita output. Israel produced about 7.7 times more goods and services per person than did Egypt.

In 2010, before unrest disrupted its economy, Egypt produced $2,759 per capita, a little less than 6% of U.S. per capita production. Israel, meanwhile, had improved its per capita wealth generation to $26,843, or 56% of America’s per capita GDP.

Remarkably, the populations of Egypt and Israel grew at almost the same rate, Egypt’s being driven by internal growth, Israel’s largely by more than a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union. By 2010, Israel had improved its ratio of productivity over Egypt, producing about 9.7 times more goods and services per person than its neighbor to the south.

Why this growing disparity in wealth creation between Israel and Egypt? The Egyptian Revolution of 1952 saw the overthrow of monarchy with the military running the nation’s economy. This invariably led to stagnation and a growing external debt. Egypt has launched two waves of economic liberalization since 1984, one under the auspices of an International Monetary Fund standby agreement in 1991 and another in 2004, when former President Mubarak appointed an economic-reform-minded Cabinet. The 1991 effort focused on the privatization of state-owned enterprises. The 2004 program reduced import tariffs, cut taxes and allowed the Egyptian pound to float. The reforms of the 1990s took some time to take hold, with the Egyptian economy seeing year-over-year growth in per capita income (purchasing power parity) rising an impressive 5.7% per year from 1997 to 2000. Mubarak’s 2004 free-market reforms bore even more fruit, with per capita growth averaging 6.9% from 2005 to 2008.

However, the demonstrators of Tahrir Square claim, with some justification, that the most recent round of reforms mostly benefited the nation’s elite. This crony capitalism is said to have generated a massive amount of wealth for the two sons of the former Egyptian president. And, with that wealth concentrated at the top, resentment mounted in the masses who saw their cooking fuel subsidies cut while the cost of basic necessities soared.

Now the Egyptian economy has been hammered by unrest. Crime has tripled since Mubarak’s ouster. A wave of child kidnapping has struck fear in wealthy and upper-class parents. Militant Islamists now operate in the open, brazenly attacking Egypt’s large Christian minority and moderate Muslims alike. Tourism, accounting for 11.3% of the economy, has dried up. Unemployment is surging.

Adding to Egypt’s travails, the Muslim Brotherhood is calling for “modesty police” — mirroring the actions taken by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood branch in Gaza, after its 2006 electoral win and subsequent bloody purge of its more secular rival, Fatah. These would-be mullahs of misery are also calling for the criminal prosecution of those who made money during the Mubarak era, coupling that call with a return to Egyptian socialism. This sure recipe for economic failure will inevitably cause Egypt’s new leaders to blame Israel, the Jews and America for Egypt’s problems. As the availability of bread declines, the index of hate will rise. This volatile equation is good for neither Egypt nor Israel.

After its founding in 1948, Israel was also burdened with a socialist economy. Israel’s main right-wing party, Likud, won the 1977 elections, but that win was mainly a reaction to Israel’s near-run victory in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Likud did little to change Israel’s socialist policies.

Israel’s commitment to socialism wasn’t challenged until former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed Benjamin Netanyahu as finance minister in 2003. Many thought Sharon made this move to bury rival Netanyahu’s career. Netanyahu sought to remake Israel’s economy, instituting reforms such as liberalization of the banking system.

Critics scoffed at these reforms as “Thatcherite,” worrying that Israel’s social safety net was being dismantled. But Netanyahu’s free-market reforms worked, causing Israel to see its longest sustained period of high economic growth, with per capita income (purchasing power parity) rising an average of 6% per year from 2004 to 2008. Israel is now considered a high-tech market economy. The telltale signs of Israel’s economic rise can be seen in the Tel Aviv skyline and the new office complexes around Jerusalem. International giant Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. was founded in 1901 by three pharmacists in Jerusalem. Today it employs 40,000 around the world.

Teva has a market cap of $44.2 billion — the most highly valued company based in Israel and the ninth-largest firm traded on the Nasdaq. Seventy percent of its revenue comes from generics, a niche it pioneered, while 30% comes from newly developed drugs. Teva’s history and forward-looking strategy is for revenue to double every four years, with 65% of that coming from internal growth.

Teva’s success in the generic market is predicated on rapidly developing high-quality formulations and quickly getting approval for them within 180 days after filing — a quick turnaround that competitors find difficult to match.

A few miles from Teva’s gleaming office campus west of the Old City sits the former national mint building for the British Mandate. Built in 1937, this renovated building, along with the old Ottoman Empire railway warehouses next to it, houses the JVP Media Quarter and 300 entrepreneurs.

The complex hosts Israel’s leading venture capital firm, Jerusalem Venture Partners, as well as 35 startups and a performing arts center for good measure. JVP, which has helped launch 70 companies since 1993, has more than $820 million under management with seven active venture capital funds.

The Media Quarter concept was created in 2002 when JVP founder Erel Margalit wanted to create a media-focused incubator that combined technology, culture, art and business. JVP has shepherded 18 initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, including some of the largest Israel-based companies: Qlik Technologies, Netro Corp., Chromatis Networks, Precise Software, Cogent Communications. The government of Israel created 28 incubators between 1990 and 1993 under the auspices of the Office of the Chief Scientist in the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Reminiscent of Japan’s state-guided capitalism through the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Israel’s incubators were designed to engage the scientific and engineering skills of the large influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

The government eventually viewed the effort as a burden, so it privatized its incubators. Today there are 24 incubators that can receive a government grant of $500,000 per company and up to $1.5 million in state seed capital. Less than 300 miles separate the purposeful creative buzz in the JVP Media Quarter from the restive streets of Cairo, where the Muslim Brotherhood tells Egypt’s unemployed that their plight is the fault of corrupt capitalists and Jews. It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize-winning economist to figure out where these two economies are going.