“It had been more than 10 years since the Peruvian immigrants landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, and not all had gone according to the group’s Holy Land dreams”

Posted on August 12, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JTA
An unlikely mass conversion in Peru gets a closer look in new book about ‘Bnei Moshe’ Jews
Philissa Cramer
August 5, 2022

The 1981 winner of Peru’s competition of Israel’s International Bible Contest did not come from among the country’s many devoted Christians nor from Lima’s elite Jewish school. Instead, the top prize went to Victor Chico, a self-taught man in his thirties who practiced Judaism with a small sect of Peruvian natives led by a man named Segundo Villanueva. Spurred initially by Villanueva’s searching for truth as a religious Christian, the group had adopted Jewish practices and beliefs, celebrated holidays and even hired a doctor to circumcise the men. READ MORE

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Words are not violence. Violence is violence.

Posted on August 12, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

COMMON SENSE
We Ignored Salman Rushdie’s Warning
Bari Weiss
August 13, 2022

We live in a culture in which many of the most celebrated people occupying the highest perches believe that words are violence. In this, they have much in common with Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who issued the first fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989, and with Hadi Matar, the 24-year-old who, yesterday, appears to have fulfilled his command when he stabbed the author in the neck on a stage in Western New York. The first group believes they are motivated by inclusion and tolerance—that it’s possible to create something even better than liberalism, a utopian society where no one is ever offended. The second we all recognize as religious fanatics. But it is the indulgence and cowardice of the words are violence crowd that has empowered the second and allowed us to reach this moment, when a fanatic rushes the stage of a literary conference with a knife and plunges it into one of the bravest writers alive. READ MORE

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Hamas helpfully suggests media lie about Gazan provication with Israel; when is challenged, policy changed

Posted on August 11, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hamas issues, then rescinds, sweeping rules on Gaza coverage
Tia Goldenberg and Joseph Krauss
August 9, 2022

Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers issued sweeping new restrictions on journalists after the recent conflict there, but then rescinded them, a group representing foreign media in Israel and the Palestinian territories said Tuesday. Palestinians who work with foreign journalists were first informed of the new rules earlier this week in messages sent by the Hamas-run Interior Ministry. They were ordered not to report on Gazans killed by misfired Palestinian rockets or the military capabilities of Palestinian armed groups, and were told to blame Israel for the recent escalation. The Foreign Press Association, which represents international media, including The Associated Press, said the guidelines were rescinded after discussions with authorities in Gaza. READ MORE

CAMERA BLOG Alex Safian: In Recent Fighting With Islamic Jihad, Half of Gaza Deaths Were Likely Caused by Errant Palestinian Rockets Putting these factors together for the present hostilities, based on the current data it can be expected that 200 errant Palestinian rockets would have killed roughly 27 Gaza residents, or about half of the currently known (or perhaps admitted) death toll according to Hamas.

ELDER OF ZIYON Jabaliya: How the Media Uses “Balance” to Obfuscate the Truth The footage of the Islamic Jihad rocket doubling back on Jabaliya was like something out of a Cecil B. DeMille movie. Except that it was real. The rocket begins its journey; its target, Israeli civilians. Then, all of a sudden, with a “whoosh,” the rocket reverses course, as if the hand of God itself were guiding it away from the Jewish people.

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“Hamas does not invite P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas to visit. But it does tolerate another rival: Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is fully funded, armed and guided by Iran’s rulers”

Posted on August 11, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
The ‘forever war’ against the West
Clifford D. May
August 11, 2022

…PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad], however, cannot abide even a temporary détente. Israeli intelligence learned that the group was preparing terrorist attacks not only from Gaza but also from the northern West Bank. PIJ fighters have been gradually displacing the PA security forces in this area and clashing with the Israeli Defense Forces, which have been responding to a wave of terrorist attacks that has claimed 19 Israeli lives since March. Knowing PIJ’s intentions, the Israelis decided it was necessary to do what they could to degrade its capabilities. READ MORE

JERUSALEM CENTER FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS What Iranian Officials Told the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Chief Even before Israel’s Operation Breaking Dawn in Gaza was launched, Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Secretary-General Ziad Nakhalah was in Tehran to meet with top regime officials and military commanders.

TIMES OF ISRAEL Gantz accuses Iran of funding Islamic Jihad with tens of millions of dollars a year Defense minister says Gazan terror group is a ‘violent Iranian proxy’ and has ‘an open tab in Iran’; says Israel continues to act to foil Tehran’s plots

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Iranian agent offered $300k to have John Bolton “purged”

Posted on August 5, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

ALGEMEINER
Iran Revolutionary Guard Member Charged With Plot to Murder John Bolton, US Justice Dept Says
Reuters
August 10, 2022

The United States charged a member of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps on Wednesday with plotting to murder John Bolton, a national security adviser to former President Donald Trump. The Justice Department alleged that Shahram Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi, 45, of Tehran, was likely motivated to kill Bolton in retaliation for the death of Qassem Soleimani, a commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps killed in a US drone strike in January 2020…Investigators said the following month Poursafi contacted the informant on an encrypted messaging application and offered the person $250,000 to hire someone to “eliminate” Bolton — an amount that would later be negotiated up to $300,000. READ MORE

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“As Israel decouples from China, there will be even greater opportunities for greater cooperation between close allies. Israel must support the US and keep a distance from China”

Posted on August 5, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

JPOST
Time for Israel to pivot away from Beijing
Jacob Nagel and Mark Dubowitz
August 9, 2022

The recent tensions between the United States and the People’s Republic of China over Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan could further deteriorate into open conflict. Israel cannot take a direct role in this conflict, but Jerusalem should send a clear message: Israel stands unequivocally with America. This is also the right time to reevaluate Israel’s relations with Taiwan. There is no reason to stick a finger into the eye of the Communist Chinese dragon. This is unnecessary as Jerusalem confronts its near enemies, most notably the Islamic Republic of Iran. But warmer relations between the democratic Jewish state and a democratic Chinese state, both under assault by dangerous dictatorships, is smart policy. READ MORE

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“Putin was supposed to be the Good Tsar. Instead he has closed the Jewish Agency. And now tens of thousands of Jews fear being trapped in Russia”

Posted on August 5, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

COMMON SENSE
A New Iron Curtain Descends on Russia’s Jews
Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt
August 9, 2022

Vladimir Putin was supposed to be The Good Tsar—the Russian president who, his KGB past notwithstanding, was a friend of the Jews. In Putin’s Russia, we could be billionaires and presidential advisers. We could go to shul. We could come and go as we pleased. My in-laws, Chief Rabbi Pinchas and Rebbetzin Dara Goldschmidt, were evidence of that. From 1993 until this year, my father-in-law was the chief rabbi of Moscow; my mother-in-law founded a Jewish school there…Since [March], more Jews have emigrated from Russia to Israel than they have from Ukraine. READ MORE

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“I shake my head in frustration at why so many left-wing Jewish Democrats are willing to abandon Israel and continue to vote blindly for their grandparents’ Democratic Party without demanding that it marginalize its anti-Israel extremists”

Posted on August 5, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE
Is the Jewish Democratic Council Really Jewish – or Just Democrats?
Alan M. Dershowitz
August 3, 2022

As President Joe Biden was returning from his productive trip to the Middle East, the Jewish Democratic Council was holding a fundraiser on Martha’s Vineyard to support Democratic candidates in the 2022 midterm elections and to help elect a Democratic president in 2024. Former President Bill Clinton and former Senator Hillary Clinton were the guests of honor and speakers, thus suggesting that this organization purports to represent mainstream Jewish Democrats…At this so-called “Jewish” event, there was no discussion of Israel, or the existential threat it faces as Iran comes closer to constructing a nuclear arsenal. Nor was there any discussion of the increasing anti-Semitism within the so-called “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party…READ MORE

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Israelis or Palestinians: Who’s More Tolerant?

Posted on August 5, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

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“Ben and Jerry’s speak with a forked tongue”

Posted on August 5, 2022 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK POST
Israeli students accuse Ben & Jerry’s of occupying tribal land in Vermont
Carl Campanile
August 9, 2022

Israeli students claim that ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s is “illegally” occupying land in Vermont that once belonged to a Abenaki native American tribe and should practice what it preaches and immediately evacuate the properties. A cheeky letter sent to B&J — signed by more than 1,000 Israeli students and academics affiliated with Students for Justice in America — accuses B&J of of hypocrisy. “We have concluded that your company’s occupation of the Abenaki lands is illegal and we believe it is wholly inconsistent with the stated values that Ben & Jerry’s purports to maintain…” READ MORE

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