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September 2018

ISRAEL Comments turned off

God Said, ‘Be Fruitful and Multiply’ Israelis are taking Genesis 1:28 seriously. The Jewish state’s fertility rate is 3.1, far above replacement. Robert C. Hamilton

By on September 12th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/god-said-be-fruitful-and-multiply-1536705344

I was heading for the final leg of my flight to Tel Aviv when something curious happened. As I crossed the Brussels airport, I was joined by other travelers. At each corridor, the crew swelled in size. Kippah-capped men carrying heavy briefcases, young couples wearing Star-of-David embroidered backpacks, older Hasidic rabbis who looked like Moses, families with infants in strollers and several toddlers trudging behind—we were all heading to the same place.

At the gate, I felt as if I’d crashed a family party. A couple of young boys zipped through the crowd on scooters like dive-bombers on a mission, with tzitzis (knotted fringes) and peyes (long side-curls) flying in the air.

Where I had started, the airport was hushed and gray, a space designed for efficiency. Its unadorned industrial motif was utilitarian, if not nihilistic. At my departure gate, I found a vibrant and chaotic scene, alive with color, noise and frolicking kids. I relaxed. As a pediatrician, I recognized the messiness; I work in that universe each day.

My experience vividly displayed how two countries, Belgium and Israel, view children. Israel treasures them. According to a 2018 report from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the fertility rate for Israeli women stands at a robust 3.1, nearly double the level of most European nations. The Belgian fertility rate is 1.7, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

DISPATCHES FROM TOM GROSS-MP OF PALESTINIAN DESCENT CONDEMNS CORBYNITE POSTERS AS “BLATANTLY ANTI-SEMITIC”

By on September 12th, 2018

https://wp.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/
MP OF PALESTINIAN DESCENT CONDEMNS CORBYNITE POSTERS AS “BLATANTLY ANTI-SEMITIC”

Britain’s first MP of Palestinian descent told the BBC that the defacing of London bus-stops with “Israel is a racist endeavour” posters was “blatantly anti-Semitic”.

Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, said: “I’m a Palestinian. The fact that this has come from a group that purportedly is speaking for Palestinians, I take great offence at myself, because I think it is blatantly anti-Semitic.”

Moran was responding to comments by Labour Shadow Chancellor and key Corbyn ally John McDonnell who had told the BBC “It is not at all anti-Semitic to describe Israel as a state as racist.”

The posters were meant to mock the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of Jew-hate, which says that comparing Israel to Nazi Germany or singling out only one country, Israel, and calling it “a racist endeavor” are examples of modern anti-Semitism.
MUSLIM MAYOR OF MONDAY CONDEMNS ANTI-ISRAEL POSTERS

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, condemned the “Israel hate” posters on the city’s bus stops as “offensive” and said that any posters found would be rapidly removed.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Education Dept. Reopens Rutgers Case Charging Discrimination Against Jewish Students By Erica L. Green

By on September 12th, 2018

The new head of civil rights at the Education Department has reopened a seven-year-old case brought by a Zionist group against Rutgers University, saying the Obama administration, in closing the case, ignored evidence that suggested the school allowed a hostile environment for Jewish students. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/us/politics/rutgers-jewish-education-civil-rights.html

The move by Kenneth L. Marcus, the assistant secretary of education for civil rights and a longtime opponent of Palestinian rights causes, signaled a significant policy shift on civil rights enforcement — and injected federal authority in the contentious fights over Israel that have divided campuses across the country. It also put the weight of the federal government behind a definition of anti-Semitism that targets opponents of Zionism, and it explicitly defines Judaism as not only a religion but also an ethnic origin.

And it comes after the Trump administration moved the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, moved to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority and announced the closing of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington.

In a letter to the Zionist Organization of America, obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Marcus said he would vacate a 2014 decision by the Obama administration and re-examine the conservative Jewish group’s cause not as a case of religious freedom but as possible discrimination against an ethnic group.

In so doing, the Education Department embraced Judaism as an ethnicity and adopted a hotly contested definition of anti-Semitism that included “denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination” by, for example, “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards by requiring of” Israel “a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

In effect, Arab-American activists say, the government is declaring the Palestinian cause anti-Semitic.

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