“Business intelligence company Euromonitor International sees 38% growth in tourism to Jerusalem in 2019.”

Posted on December 19, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

GLOBES
Jerusalem ranked world’s fastest growing tourist destination
by Michal Raz-Chaimovich
December 15, 2019

The latest survey of the world’s most popular tourist cities by UK business intelligence company Euromonitor International shows Jerusalem as the world’s fastest growing destination. Jerusalem rose six places in the rankings of the Top 100 City Destinations report in 2018 to 61st place with 3.93 overseas tourists, up 12% from 2017 and is expected to enjoy 38% growth in 2019 to 4.8 million, according to Euromonitor International. With Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics projecting 4.9 million overseas visitors to Israel in 2019, this figure might be an overestimation.  READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL Immigration to Israel surging, asylum seekers no longer arriving — state report Israel is on pace for a 20 percent surge in immigration in 2019 over the year before, according to new figures released on Monday by the Central Bureau of Statistics. In 2019, some 27,300 people immigrated to the Jewish state between January and the end of October, the CBS report said. The state report said the figure was 20% more than the same period last year.

JNS Forbes Names Tel Aviv 2nd-Best City to Visit in 2020 Between its sandy beaches and vast array of culinary delights, Tel Avivians already know that they live in one of the best cities in the world. Now, however, it’s official: Last week Forbes named Israel’s White City the second-hottest world destination.

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“Prisoners of War debuted in Israel in 2009. Following the success of Homeland, it became available in the US on streaming platform”

Posted on December 19, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
‘New York Times’ names Israeli show top international TV series of decade
by Hannah Brown
December 21, 2019

The New York Times released a list Friday of the 30 best international television shows of the decade and put the Israeli series Prisoners of War in the top spot. The series, produced by the Keshet network, was remade in the US as Homeland in 2011. The series has a clever premise, with built-in suspense: Two Israeli POWs return home after 17 years in captivity, bringing the remains of a third soldier. As they work to integrate themselves back into their families and society, a military psychiatrist begins to suspect they are hiding something and launches an investigation. READ MORE

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“Jewish leaders worry over a backlash, as anti-Semites spread notion that a cabal of Jews is trying to oust the US president”

Posted on December 19, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
‘Jew coup’: The anti-Semitic conspiracy theories surrounding Trump’s impeachment
by Eric Cortellessa
December 19, 2019

…But to far-right anti-Semitic extremists, there’s been something else entirely driving the president’s woes: a cabal of powerful Jews determined to oust him from office. Last month, the founder of TruNews, a fundamentalist Christian platform that regularly publishes anti-Semitic and racist videos, raged against a “Jew coup” to impeach Trump. Many of the officials involved in the impeachment inquiry — such as California Congressman Adam Schiff, New York Congressman Jerry Nadler, and witness to the probe Trump’s US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, among others — are Jewish. READ MORE

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NJ school board member blames Jersey City Jews for kosher market murders

Posted on December 15, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK TIMES
After Anti-Semitic Killings, Jersey City School Official Called Jews ‘Brutes’
by Ed Shanahan
Dec. 17, 2019

Jersey City’s mayor called on Tuesday for a school board member to resign over a Facebook post in which she called Jews who had moved to the city “brutes” and suggested a deeper “message” to the deadly attack at a kosher market there last week. The mayor, Steven Fulop, was reacting to remarks posted online over the weekend by the board member, Joan Terrell-Paige, who is black. In her post, she questioned the outpouring of fellowship and support for Jersey City’s Jewish residents in the wake of the Dec. 10 attack. READ MORE

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Pompeo points out multiple errors in Democrat’s letter on settlement legality

Posted on December 15, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Pompeo brings down the House
by Ruthie Blum
December 17, 2019

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo returned fire on Monday to a large group of House Democrats who lambasted him last month for declaring that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) are not illegal. In a letter to Michigan Rep. Andy Levin, who led 106 of his colleagues to sign a joint complaint against what they called the “State Department’s unilateral reversal on the status of settlements, without any clear legal justification,” Pompeo picked apart each false claim lobbed by the likes of “Squad” members Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) with the force of an ax and the slice of a razor blade. READ MORE

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Kuwaiti youth: “I am Jewish and I am proud and if you think it is crazy you should be ashamed”

Posted on December 15, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

ELDER OF ZIYON
Kuwaiti man considers himself a religious Zionist Jew
December 15, 2019

…It turns out that Naftali is Youssef Al-Mebhanna from Kuwait. He grew up a Muslim but when he was twenty, after speaking with a friend from Qatar who asked him for proof Israelis are murderers, he realized that he was being told lies all his life. He became interested in Judaism and Zionism, and even though he never had a formal conversion he puts on a talit and tefillin every day, and he learned Hebrew from watching Israeli comedies…Naftali is now in England where he hopes to convert to Judaism and then make aliyah to Israel. READ MORE

Here is his interview and story, in Hebrew:

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#BDSFail “For Austria, Israel’s right to exist is non-negotiable, and any form of anti-Semitism, including Israel-related anti-Semitism, is unacceptable and must be severely condemned”

Posted on December 15, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
Boris Johnson to pass anti-BDS law, official says
by Lahav Harkov
December 15, 2019

The new Conservative government in the UK will pass a law making it illegal for public bodies to engage with BDS, UK Special Envoy for post-Holocaust issues Eric Pickles said at the International Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s conference in Jerusalem on Sunday. “BDS is antisemitic and should be treated as such,” Pickles said, explaining that the new law will not allow public bodies to work with those who boycott, divest from or sanction Israel in any way. Pickles, who is also the chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel, said that Labour’s historic defeat in last week’s general election in the UK showed that the British people reject antisemitism. READ MORE

GATESTONE Austrian Parliament to Declare BDS Movement as Anti-Semitic All of the major parties represented in the Austrian Parliament have agreed to support a resolution condemning the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic. The measure calls on Austria’s federal government to fight anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and to withhold any form of financial and other state support from anti-Semitic organizations and advocates of BDS principles…The Austrian resolution, one of the most forceful European statements of support for Israel to date, is part of a growing pushback against the BDS movement.

ISRAEL HAYOM BDS uses veil of social justice to spread Jew-hatred, report says With anti-Semitism on the rise in the United States and across the world, a new report has just been released that seeks to highlight how the delegitimization campaign against Israel is fueling such incidents. The report, titled The New Anti-Semites: The Radicalization Mechanism of the BDS Movement and the Delegitimization Campaign Against Israel, seeks to expose “the BDS faux ‘civil rights’ movement for what it is – a delegitimization campaign with genocidal aims, rather than the human rights movement that it purports to be.

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Follow the money: “Islamic Relief’s U.S. branch continues to receive increasingly generous funds from the U.S. government”

Posted on December 15, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

DAILY WIRE
Trump Administration Continues To Enable And Fund Troubled Islamic Organization
by Cliff Smith and Sam Westrop
December 11, 2019

Since 2014, the U.S. government, under both Presidents Obama and Trump, has given two branches of Islamic Relief, a global Islamist charity tied closely to the Muslim Brotherhood, over $2 million of U.S. taxpayers’ money. Most recently, in October, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) handed over $356,000 to Islamic Relief Worldwide, the radical franchise’s parent organization. Is the extent of Islamic Relief’s extremist ties small enough that a well-meaning bureaucrat might simply be oblivious? Or is this an appalling dereliction of duty that means taxpayers’ money is now subsidizing terrorist acts? READ MORE

GATESTONE Iran fills the Vacuum Created by Trump’s Withdrawal With next year’s presidential election contest now very much the primary focus of President Donald J. Trump’s attention, many of America’s long-standing allies in the Middle East are becoming increasingly concerned at the president’s desire to improve his electoral prospects by scaling down America’s military footprint.

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UN Ambassador Kelly Craft: ““Had I been the Ambassador at the time of the vote on the resolution, I would have vetoed it”

Posted on December 15, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
US pushes back at UNSC’s stance on illegality of West Bank settlements
by Tovah Lazaroff
December 18, 2019

The United States pushed back against the United Nations Security Council stance that West Bank settlements are illegal, declaring that the Trump Administration opposed the 2016 Resolution 2334 that condemned such activity . “It will not surprise anyone in this chamber to hear me say that the Trump Administration strongly opposes Resolution 2334. It is one-sided. It is unfairly critical of Israel,” US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft told the UNSC in New York on Wednesday. The US holds the rotating UNSC presidency position this month…[In 2006 the Obama administration] refused to use its veto power at the time and allowed the resolution to pass with the support of the other 14 committee UNSC members. READ MORE  

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“The American Jewish establishment needs Trump to be an anti-Semite to justify its continued support for the Democratic Party”

Posted on December 15, 2019 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Why American Jews slander President Trump
by Caroline Glick
December 15, 2019

…And while it is true that to date, white supremacist anti-Semitism has been the most lethal form of anti-Semitism in America, from a political and social perspective it poses a smaller danger to Jewish life in America than the three other forms of active anti-Semitism in America today: Progressive/socialist anti-Semitism, Islamist anti-Semitism and black anti-Semitism. These forms of Jew-hatred pose a greater threat to Jewish life in America than white nationalist anti-Semitism for two reasons. First, whereas white supremacists are political orphans, with no political party willing to embrace them, progressive, Islamist and black anti-Semites are deeply embedded in the political left. READ MORE

DAILY WIRE Ben Shapiro: The Left’s Grotesque Politicization Of Anti-Semitism Here’s a quick rule of thumb: If you only want to have a conversation about anti-Semitism when you can blame anti-Semitism on your political opponents, you don’t care about anti-Semitism.

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