One anonymous employee said, “Every week, it gets a little harder being a Jew at the BBC”

Posted on August 4, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

JPOST
BBC executive dismisses letter from Jewish staff highlighting systemic antisemitism
August 2, 2024

Over 200 BBC staff, contractors, suppliers, and contributors wrote to the board and Samir Shah, the BBC chairman, in July to demand “an urgent formal investigation” into what the letter described as “anti-Jewish racism” at the BBC, The Telegraph reported on Friday. The letter provided examples of inaccuracy and bias in the BBC’s coverage of the war in Gaza and provided testimony from Jewish employees.The signatories stated that “Jews don’t count” and declared that antisemitism is systematic at the BBC, according to The Telegraph. Shah dismissed the calls for an investigation, praised the BBC’s “inclusive” culture…READ MORE

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EVENT Israel Bonds Chicago with The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

Posted on August 2, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

The Beauty of Advocacy with Swell Ariel Or
Date and time: Wed, Sep 4, 2024 11:30 AM, RSVP by August 25.
Dietary laws observed.
Location: Address will be provided prior to the event
Couvert: $85 with a minimum of $100 Israel bond investment per person or $225 per person.

Join Israel Bonds Chicago Women’s Division for their 2024 Premiere Event with featured speaker Swell Ariel Or, star of Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, as she shares about her film career, mental health advocacy, and involvement in the Nova Project. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE EVENT

For more information contact Janice Wahnon, (312) 558-9400, janice.wahnon@israelbonds.com

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The bomb which killed Haniyeh was hidden inside the guesthouse approximately two months before his visit

Posted on July 30, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

JPOST
Hamas claims Israel eliminated leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran
July 31, 2024

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran, Hamas confirmed on Wednesday morning, while claiming Israel was behind the attack. In a statement, the Islamist terror group said they mourned the death of Haniyeh, who it claimed was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran.” Haniyeh, along with one of his guards, was reportedly killed at his Tehran residence, according to an IRGC statement…Hezbollah-affiliated news site Al Mayadeen claimed that Israel eliminated him. Israeli officials have yet to comment…Three of Haniyeh’s sons were killed in an airstrike in April. Despite this, Haniyeh refused to release the hostages and step down from power. READ MORE

NEW YORK POST Hamas honcho Ismail Haniyeh was blown up by bomb smuggled into his Tehran guesthouse months ago Top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated Wednesday by a bomb that was smuggled into the Tehran guesthouse where he was staying two months before his arrival, according to a report. Haniyeh, who was initially thought to have been killed in an airstrike, died from a remotely detonated bomb inside the guesthouse, seven Middle Eastern officials, including two Iranians and an American official, told the New York Times. 

JNS Biden reaffirms support for Israeli self-defense against Iran in call with Netanyahu U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday and “reaffirmed” American support for the Jewish state’s security, after Hezbollah rained rockets on northern Israel and Iran vowed it would avenge assassinated Hamas leadership. Biden told Netanyahu that the United States supports Israel “against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis,” per a White House readout, which noted that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was also on the call.

YNET US deploys at least 12 warships to Middle East amid soaring tensions, report say The U.S. has deployed at least 12 warships to the Middle East, including the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, amphibious assault teams and over 4,000 Marines and sailors, in response to escalating tensions in the region following the assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah military chief Fuad Shukr, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing a Pentagon official.

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Israeli airstrike targeted Fuad Shukr, head of Hezbollah precision missile project wanted by US for role in ’83 bombing of US Marines barracks in Beirut

Posted on July 30, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

REUTERS
Killing Hezbollah commander in Beirut was biggest loss for group since 2008
August 1, 2024

Fuad Shukr, the top Hezbollah commander killed by Israel on Tuesday, was a founding member of the Iran-backed group who helped oversee its expansion from a shadowy Lebanese civil war militia to a major force in the Middle East. His killing was the heaviest blow to Hezbollah’s command since the 2008 assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, underlining the gravity of this week’s escalation in the conflict, which has been rumbling across region since the Gaza war erupted. While the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran marked a major political setback to the Palestinian Islamist group and its Iran-backed allies, Shukr’s killing has stripped their camp of one of its top military leaders. READ MORE

I24NEWS Mohammed Deif confirmed dead after Israeli airstrike The Israel Defense Forces said on Thursday that the military and Shin Bet security agency had confirmed that Hamas commander Mohammed Deif had been killed in an airstrike in July. Fighter jets struck the site in Khan Yunis to eliminate the senior leader. After an intelligence assessment, his death was confirmed. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant praised the announcement, calling him the “Bin Laden of Gaza” in an X post. 

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“Druze are outspoken advocates of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and proud Israeli citizens, boasting high rates of volunteering by men to serve in the IDF”

Posted on July 30, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Anger and grief mix as Majdal Shams buries 10 children killed in rocket strike
Canaa Lidor
July 28, 2024

Seething anger and profound grief were on display at this Druze town on the Golan Heights, where thousands gathered for the funerals of 10 of the 12 children who are believed to have been killed when a rocket from Lebanon hit a soccer field. An 11th victim was buried in the nearby town of Ein Keinya, while a 12th, a teenage boy, is missing and is presumed to have died in the attack. Black flags flew on the lampposts of Majdal Shams and the surrounding Druze villages – Buq’ata and Masa’ada – and all the local businesses were shuttered on Sunday during the funerals. Thousands of locals and visitors from beyond the Golan, most wearing black, filled the town center as the victims’ white coffins were being prepared to be taken to the cemetery overlooking the center…“Lebanon should burn for this,” shouted Samir Halabi, a 52-year-old radio host from Majdal Shams. READ MORE

JNS IDF on deadly Golan attack: Terrain, trajectory to blame for lack of interception
The Hezbollah missile that killed 12 and wounded more than 30 in the northern Golan Heights on Saturday was not intercepted due to the local terrain and the missile’s low-altitude trajectory, according to the Israeli military’s initial investigation into the incident. The probe also found that contrary to claims in the Israeli media, air-raid sirens sounded for 20 seconds prior to the impact and the alert system did not malfunction.

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United and Delta Airlines suspending Israel flights due to escalating security tensions in the region

Posted on July 29, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
US airlines cancel flights to Israel
August 1, 2024

United and Delta Airlines announced on Wednesday the suspension of flights to Tel Aviv due to escalating security tensions in the Middle East. The decision by the two American legacy carriers follows the back-to -back assassinations of a top Hezbollah leader in Lebanon and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, and again leaves Israel’s flagship carrier El Al as the only airline offering direct service to and from the United States…At least five other carriers—Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Air India and FlyDubai—also canceled flights to the Jewish state. READ MORE

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Pick of the day…Pipes: “This abnormal conflict cannot be ended through compromise. One side must win, the other must lose”

Posted on July 28, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

JPOST
The uniqueness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Daniel Pipes
July 16, 2024

…Palestinians can damage Israel through acts of violence and by spreading an anti-Zionist message, but they cannot prevent the Jewish state from ascending from one success to the next. Israel can punish Palestinians for their aggression, but it cannot quench the rejectionist spirit and its ever-more depraved expressions. That rejectionism is not temporary, does not bend to the pressure of carrots and sticks, and does not moderate over time explains the general inability to understand it or formulate a response to it. The mentality bewilders contemporaries as something hitherto unknown, a new phenomenon that prior experience cannot explain, like the French Revolution or Soviet Russia. READ MORE

QUIILLETTE Gadi Taub: “This war is just the first chapter of what will be a very long war”

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“We can’t turn away Jewish students who feel unsafe or unprotected on their college campuses”

Posted on July 28, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
US Jewish students transfer to friendlier schools post-Oct. 7
David Isaac
August 1, 2024

In the wake of the anti-Israel protests that swept across U.S. college campuses following the Hamas invasion on Oct. 7, anecdotal evidence suggests that Jewish students have started voting with their feet and decamping from the worst-offending schools. “We’ve seen an unprecedented number of students from top-tier institutions transfer to Yeshiva University, including from Columbia, Cornell and Barnard,” Yeshiva University President Rabbi Ari Berman told JNS…[Emmit] DeHart said he’s just one of a growing trend of Jewish students leaving problem campuses. He’s happy about his decision to go to a school “where being Jewish is normal and you can focus on your education without having to worry about all these protests and antisemitism.” READ MORE

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Schanzer: “Some warned that this would be Israel’s “forever war” and said that thousands of Israeli soldiers would be killed. But Israel’s majority-reservist army defied those experts and their expectations”

Posted on July 27, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

FREE PRESS
Two Assassinations and a Transformed War
Jonathan Schanzer
August 1, 2024

…Between the demise of the Hamas leadership and the loss of more than two-thirds of its fighting force in Gaza, Hamas is undeniably reeling. But the most meaningful development in Gaza has gone remarkably unreported. The Israelis now control the Philadelphi Corridor, which is the border area connecting Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip. More importantly, the Israelis now control the tunnels that lie beneath it. For most of the war, those tunnels enabled Hamas to bring weapons, cash, and materiel from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula into the Gaza Strip. Those days are over. In the meantime, Israel continues to get the better of Hamas in virtually every clash. All of this flies in the face of the conventional wisdom touted by the so-called experts early in the war. READ MORE

WATCH Miryam Institute CEO Benjamin Anthony: Israel’s military ‘very capable’ of defending itself against Hamas and Hezbollah…and we must take the battle to Iran, the head of the snake.

Posted in Islam, Israel & Middle East, Politics | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Mideast scholar John Oliver gets everything wrong on the subject but that doesn’t stop him from pontificating

Posted on July 26, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

CAMERA BLOG
The new Wall Street Journal – chasing clicks with anti-Israel bias
Andrea Levin
July 26, 2024

Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker is making changes at the venerable publication, pushing more “life-style stories with snappy headlines” in the news section and has reportedly downsized, if not gutted, the standards desk that handles corrections. She’s eliminated an editing team “responsible for prepublication review of sensitive stories.” The new direction, as described in a National Review story, resonates alarmingly for many readers of the newspaper who have long counted on its fact-focused, serious coverage but find something very different today. For many too the increasingly skewed, factually shoddy coverage of Israel is a striking indicator of the wider shift in tenor and content. READ MORE

CAMERA BLOG John Oliver’s Latest Rant About Israel Is As Misinformed As It Is Crass Not content with having embarrassed himself when he last discussed Israel in November, John Oliver is back with a 29-minute long Gish Gallop of a rant in which nearly every sentence is misleading. Oliver makes clear throughout that he is interested only in promoting the Palestinian narrative, and that facts contrary to this world view – such as every single missed opportunity the Palestinians have had for independence – have no place in his blame-Israel-first approach.

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