“Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, president of the organization, described the efforts to find a way to continue Palestinian funding as “outrageous””

WASHINGTON POST
A U.S. law is about to end security aid to the Palestinians, and Israel is not happy
by Loveday Morris
January 31, 2019

U.S. security funding to the Palestinian Authority is set to dry up by midnight Thursday unless administration officials find a workaround to circumvent a law that was intended to help American victims of terrorist attacks secure damages, but which has also sparked concerns that it may hurt Israel’s security…However, an Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said Israel is supporting efforts now underway by U.S. State Department and other Trump administration officials to find a legal fix that will “maintain security cooperation on one hand and also justice to the families of the victims of terror.” READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

“There’s a particularly sweet spot in the enormous technology deal Israel has just pulled off”

JERUSALEM POST
Ireland’s obsessional hatred of Israel
by Melanie Phillips
February 1, 2019

…Over the next five years, the tech giant Intel will invest a whopping $11 billion in a new semiconductor fabrication plant in Israel. The investment will be worth around 0.7% of Israel’s gross domestic product and is expected to produce thousands of jobs. The sweet spot is that in securing this deal, Israel beat off competition from Ireland. For Ireland has become the most extreme Israel-bashing country in the West. Its Dáil, or parliament, recently gave a first reading to a bill which would make it a serious criminal offense to supply goods or services provided by Israelis in east Jerusalem or the disputed territories of Judea or Samaria. READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish | Tagged | Leave a comment

Democrat Omar and Republican Zeldin agree to meet to discuss antisemitism, Israel

THE HILL
Zeldin accepts Omar’s invitation to discuss religious discrimination over Somali tea
by Morgan Gstalter
February 1, 2019

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) on Friday accepted Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) invitation to discuss religious discrimination over Somali tea after the two lawmakers traded brbs over social media this week. Zeldin, who is Jewish, on Twitter this week shared a vulgar anti-Semitic voicemail message from a man who wished “Hitler would have done his … job.” “This new VM just came into my office,” Zeldin wrote in a tweet that tagged Omar on Thursday. “This is just another day in my world as an American Jew in Congress. Would love to know what part of this hate filled, anti-Semitic rant you disagree with?” READ MORE

ROLL CALL A Jewish Republican accused a Muslim Democrat of anti-Semitism, she accused him of Islamophobia Twitter spat appears to end after Rep. Omar offers Rep. Zeldin an olive branch

ALGEMEINER In New Interview, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Who Has Faced Antisemitism Allegations, Compares Israel to Iran

Posted in Islam, Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Israeli team to head home from Brazil after almost a week; 99 victims confirmed dead and over 200 more still missing

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Bolsonaro thanks ‘brave troops’ as IDF rescuers end search mission in Brazil
by TOI staff and AP
January 31, 2019

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday thanked Israeli rescuers who have been searching for survivors of a deadly dam collapse, saying their mission had ended after almost a week. A 130-strong Israeli military and search-and-rescue team landed in Brazil on Sunday and have been working to find survivors after a dam collapsed last Friday around a mining operation in a rural area of the Minas Gerais state. The dam disaster left at least 99 people confirmed dead, with 259 missing. READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

“Tom Brokaw was pilloried for urging immigrants to do a better job of assimilating. But he was right, and the success of the Jewish community is proof of it”

JNS
Assimilation and the American Jewish immigrant experience
by Jonathan S. Tobin
February 1, 2019

…While he implied that hostile attitudes towards immigration were rooted in racism, he [Tom Brokaw] also said the following: “I also happen to believe that the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation. That’s one of the things I’ve been saying for a long time…”For saying this, Brokaw—a liberal icon and darling of the mainstream media for decades—was called a “white supremacist” by the left-wing Latino Victory political action group. Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 elections Joaquin Castro accused him of “xenophobia.” READ MORE

Posted in Politics | Leave a comment

New Yorker article “full of mistakes, lies, and obfuscations — but mostly, an effort to delegitimize the Jewish presence in Hebron by casting it in a dark light”

DAILY WIRE
The New Yorker Promotes Far-Left, Radical Islamist Team-Up Against Israel
by Yishai Fleisher
January 28, 2019

Recently, The New Yorker printed a hit-piece against the Jews living in the heart of Judea entitled, “A Guided Tour of Hebron, from Two Sides of the Occupation.”…Not surprisingly, the Jewish story of Hebron is also missing in The New Yorker’s narrative. Jews have been living in Hebron for 3,200 years, almost without interruption, sometimes as an ethnic majority, and other times as an ethnic minority. That ended in a horrific act of ethnic cleansing, when an Islamist riot ripped through Hebron in 1929 murdering 67 Jewish men, women, and children, and which led to the British ousting of Hebron’s Jews. In the 1967 Six Day War, Israel took control of Hebron, and Jews began to repatriate the city. READ MORE

IM TIRZU Victory! EAPPI Flees Hebron After months during which Im Tirtzu has been continuously filming in Hebron to expose and disrupt the anti-Israel activities of EAPPI – the “Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel” run by the World Council of Churches – they announced this morning that they are leaving Hebron! Prior to our efforts of ‘filming the filmers’ and ‘shaming the shamers’ who work against Israel, EAPPI members roamed Hebron and harassed the Jewish residents and IDF soldiers with impunity.

Posted in Islam, Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Democrats join Republicans in bipartisan effort supporting Israeli sovereignty on Golan

JNS
Top Democrats voice support for Israeli sovereignty on Golan
by Ariel Kahana
January 27, 2019

U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights got a significant boost over the weekend after a senior Democrat joined prominent Republicans in this effort. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, told Jewish Insider over the weekend that “Israel should maintain control of the Golan Heights.”…In December a draft resolution calling on the U.S. government to recognize Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights was unveiled in the Senate. The draft resolution was introduced by pro-Israel Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton…Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) has also expressed support for recognition. READ MORE

JTA Leading Dems launch pro-Israel faction to counter Israel disenchantment on left Prominent Democrats are launching a pro-Israel group to counter a drift away from Israel on the party’s left. The Democratic Majority for Israel, according to a story appearing Monday evening on The New York Times website, will be led by Mark Mellman, a longtime Democratic Party pollster who has been active in the pro-Israel community. 

JEWISH INSIDER Senate Dems split on pro-Israel package 2020 hopefuls, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) were among the 19 Democrats opposing the package, which included a measure that would empower local governments to counter the BDS movement. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) was the only possible presidential candidate who voted in favor. Click here to see the actual cloture vote which many Democrats did support.

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

“We were officially kicked off of Birthright”

ELDER OF ZIYON
How immoral do you have to be to lie about Birthright?
January 29, 2019

In the Jewish Journal/Sun Sentinel of Florida, Rabbi Bruce Warshal writes a quite false op-ed about Birthright…”Two hours later, I stood on a street corner in Tel Aviv with two other participants, watching our trip’s bus drive away without us; we were officially kicked off of Birthright.”…This is an outrageous mischaracterization of what happened, of course.  Emily Bloch and her friends had pre-planned to hijack the conversation. They are members of IfNotNow, an organization that is explicitly against Birthright’s very existence as a program to instill pride in Jewish youth. In reality, Birthright guides deal honestly and forthrightly with questions about Arabs, although from an Israeli perspective. READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

“When he asked whether any of the Jews fought back, the Nazi’s wife, Stella — an accomplice — jumped in: “They were like lambs”

TIMES OF ISRAEL
P.I.-turned Nazi hunter blames passive Jewish leaders for the 99.9% who got away
by Dave Gordon
January 27, 2019

…Presenting himself as a young, clean-cut, strapping man in suit and tie, [Steven] Rambam gathered these stories throughout the 1990s, clipboard and tape recorder in hand. Told at length to the ostensible foreign university scholar, they came from Nazi war criminals who had been living comfortable lives on foreign soil for several decades, unashamed to use their real names, unashamed to speak openly about what they did. The first person Rambam interviewed and recorded was a police chief from Lithuania, Antanas Kenstavicius, who, with other men, murdered 5,000 Jews in six days, including children, in the town of Ignalina. READ MORE

JTA Book commissioned by Hitler with data for Jews in US and Canada on display A book commissioned by Adolf Hitler and which he would have used to continue the Final Solution in the United States and Canada is on display in Ottawa by its new Canadian owners as part of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Titled: “Statistics., Media, and Organizations of Jewry in the United States and Canada,” the 137-page German-language volume compiled in 1944 was part of Hitler’s personal library, and contained city-by-city statistical details about Jewish communities in the U.S. and Canada. The book presents a harrowing view of what might have happened if the Nazis had won.

TIMES OF ISRAEL Remembering the Holocaust, Poland blots out any mention of its complicity The Polish government marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday, but completely ignored the complicity of Poles who actively participated in crimes against Jews during World War II. Rather, Warsaw seemed to stress Polish suffering and Polish efforts to rescue Jews, leading an Israeli Holocaust historian [Havi Dreifuss] to charge that Poland is trying to make the Nazi genocide look like a “Polish rescue project.”

Posted in Jewish | Tagged , | Leave a comment

“Muslim Awareness event at the Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom will include a vegetarian dinner made up of dishes from Arab and Jewish communities”

MONTREAL GAZETTE
Breaking bread: Synagogue to host Shabbat dinner with Muslim neighbours
by Susan Schwartz
January 22, 2019

As Muslim Awareness Week gets under way Jan. 25 and the second anniversary of the mosque shooting in Quebec City that killed six worshippers and injured 19 is marked Jan. 29, the Westmount synagogue is holding a Muslim Awareness Shabbat. It will begin with a vegetarian dinner made up of dishes from Arab and Jewish communities, to be prepared by members of both communities and served family style. The Shabbat service following dinner will feature two speakers from Montreal’s Muslim community. “The whole idea of Muslim Awareness Week is to go out and build bridges,” said Ehab Lotayef, chairman of the week’s coordinating committee. READ MORE

Posted in Islam, Israel & Middle East, Jewish | Tagged , | Leave a comment