Displaying posts categorized under

ISRAEL

Airbrushing Jews Out of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount The Orwellian ideological – and theological – war against history. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/airbrushing-jews-out-jerusalem-and-temple-mount-richard-l-cravatts/

Last week in Jerusalem, as Jews celebrated Passover and Muslims observed Ramadan, violent images were broadcast of Palestinian thugs vandalizing the Al-Aqsa Mosque and hurling Molotov cocktails, stones, and fireworks on the Temple Mount itself and at Jews praying at the Western Wall.

The motivation behind the Arab rage? Initially, false rumors were promoted that settlers were planning to make animal sacrifices, a claim that Ofir Gendelman, spokesperson to the Arab media in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, stressed was false and, in fact, had been promoted by Hamas for the express purpose of inciting terror,

But that spurious charge against Israelis was merely a new variant of the long-standing accusation made against Jews by Arabs that dastardly Jews were plotting to destroy the sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque, a baseless but recurring charge that Israeli journalist Nadav Shragai referred to as the “Al-Aksa [sic] Is in Danger” libel. In fact, as early as the 1920s, when Amin al-Husseini, the Nazi-loving Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, rallied Muslims with accusations that Jews intended to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and rebuild the Jewish Temple, Arabs have attempted to ignore and obscure any Jewish connection to the site and have sought to “liberate” purported Muslim holy places from the grip of the occupying Zionists.

While the current round of violence was predictably blamed on Israel, in fact, as with previous clashes on the Temple Mount, the violence and rioting were neither random nor pointless and had both a strategic and tactical purpose—to degrade the Jewish claim to Jerusalem and all of Palestine by erasing the Jewish identity, history, and religious significance of the Temple Mount and Islamicizing the entire site through physical and spiritual control.

Noura Erakat Unleashed: ‘Zionism Is a Bedfellow of Nazism’ by Andrew E. Harrod

https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/63179/noura-erakat-unleashed-zionism-is-a-bedfellow

“Palestinians have basically said . . . that Zionism is a bedfellow of Nazism and antisemitism,” claimed Rutgers University assistant professor Noura Erakat during an April 13 webinar.

Sponsored by the University of Illinois’s Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (CASMES), her presentation (video) on “Unfinished Business: Zionism as Racism and Racial Discrimination,” further established her reputation as one of academia’s leading bigots.

Moderated by CASMES chair Waïl S Hassan, a professor of comparative literature and a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, Erakat’s event sparked controversy even before it started. Although promoted as “Co-sponsored by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI),” Vice Chancellor for DEI Sean C. Garrick shot back in a mass email that his office was “incorrectly identified” as a co-sponsor.

“As worded, this title does not invite participation and engagement with all members of our community and does not represent the values of our university,” he wrote. “I am sorry for any additional discomfort or distress some may have felt” for thinking the event “was sponsored or endorsed by the office that is charged with helping us turn the aspiration of belonging into a universal practice.”

Erakat’s reputation as a flamethrower even among antisemites must have scared off the university. And she certainly proved them right.

Georgetown Law Scheduled to Host Antisemite Who Claims Israelis ‘Harvest Organs of the Martyred’ By Nate Hochman

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/georgetown-law-scheduled-to-host-an-anti-semite-who-claims-israelis-harvest-organs-of-the-martyred/

Georgetown Law is hosting Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian poet and writer with a long history of antisemitic comments, on campus this Tuesday. The event, hosted by the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), features El-Kurd and Harvard Law School attorney Rabea Eghbariah discussing “the ongoing legal battle settler organizations are waging to displace Palestinian families from East Jerusalem,” according to a flyer posted on the Georgetown Law SJP’s instagram.

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El-Kurd’s antisemitic comments, which include attacking “Israeli Jews” as “nothing but spineless colonizers,” tweeting that Israel is a “terrorist, genocidal nation,” and that “Zionists . . . have an unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood & land,” calling “Zionist settlers” “the sadistic barbaric neonazi [sic] pigs that claim to be indigenous to our land,” and writing in his book that Israelis “harvest organs of the martyred” and “feed their warriors our own,” led the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to raise concerns in a full profile of the writer on the group’s website. The ADL writes:

An analysis of his social media and his book of poetry, titled “Rifqa,” reveals a troubling pattern of rhetoric which goes far beyond criticism of Israel and into antisemitism. El-Kurd has accused Israelis of eating the organs of Palestinians and of having a particular lust for Palestinian blood. He has compared Israelis to Nazis, negated the historic Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, and vilified Zionism and Zionists…his willingness to employ these tropes raises serious concerns.

El-Kurd’s brand of anti-Zionism goes far above and beyond the normal criticisms of Israel — he regularly refers to Zionism in terms such as “murderous,” “sadistic,” “fascist,” and “genocidal,” and has repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany. But at times, the virulent anti-Zionist rhetoric has crossed over into outright antisemitism.

Where the ‘dual loyalty’ accusation actually applies By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/where-the-dual-loyalty-accusation-actually-applies/

 In a speech on Tuesday night, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman refuted the anti-Semitic canard that Diaspora Jews who defend and champion the Jewish state are guilty of “dual loyalty.”

Friedman, a proud Orthodox Jew whose four-year tenure was marked by the overseeing of and participation in a slew of pro-Israel moves, said that he’d been on the “receiving end” of that “shameful” accusation.

“Not only does support for Israel by American Jews not compromise or undermine support for our host country, but support for Israel is actually a quintessential American value,” he said in the opening remarks of his lecture, delivered upon his receipt of the Guardian of Zion Award from Bar-Ilan University’s Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies.

“Indeed,” he went on, “the Bible, so much of which is predicated upon God’s covenant to our forefathers to install, and then later to restore, the Jewish people in the land of Israel, is foundational to the principles upon which America was founded … [and] Jews who support Israel stand for the very best of our American heritage and our American values.”

Israel sustains high-favorability among Americans Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

  https://bit.ly/3OoVkB1

According to the February 2022 annual Gallup poll of country favorability, 71% of Americans accord Israel a “very favorable” and “mostly favorable” rating. It matches

Israel’s average favorability since 2013, compared to 58% in 2002, 71% in 2012, 69% in 2019 and 75% in February 2021.  Israel’s all-time high favorability was in February 1991 – 79% – in the aftermath of the January-February Iraqi Scud Missiles striking Tel Aviv.

Israel is ranked 7th among countries rated by Gallup, trailing Canada, Britain, France, Japan, Germany and India. However, none of these countries have been targeted – as has Israel – for daily criticism by the State Department (which fiercely opposed Israel’s establishment in 1948), the United Nations, the NY Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, CNN, MSNBC and many of the political and social science departments on US campuses.

While Israel is considered favorably by 71% of Americans, the Palestinian Authority has earned a meager 27% favorability rating, at the bottom of the favorability scale, along with Cuba – 40%, Pakistan – 21%, China – 20% (all time low), Libya – 19%, Iraq – 16%, Iran – 13%, Afghanistan – 12%, Russia – 12% and North Korea – 10%.

Israel has retained a high-level of favorability among the three major US political groups: 63% of (mostly moderate) Democrats, 71% of Independents and 81% of Republicans. At the same time the Palestinian Authority received a 38% favorability rating among Democrats, 29% – Independents and 14% – Republicans.

The unholy alliance of Israel haters Both Islamic fanatics and the Western woke left treat the Jewish State as uniquely wicked. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/12/the-unholy-alliance-of-israel-haters/

Certain rituals follow every terror attack in the West. People take to social media to express feelings of grief. They post an image of the flag of the nation whose citizens have been slaughtered. ‘I Stand With…’ France, Belgium, Spain, they say, or whatever unfortunate nation has attracted the bloody attention of ideological mass murderers. They might even take part in a sing-song. They might gather somewhere, flowers in hand, to sing ‘Imagine’ or hum along to a national anthem. But there’s one exception to this custom. One nation for which this never happens. For whom virtue is never signalled, flags never waved, songs never sung, no matter how much terror comes its way. You know which nation it is. Israel.

Israel has been subjected to a wave of terror over the past three weeks and social-media mourners are nowhere to be seen. You’ll be searching a long time – forever – to find a blacked-out square on Instagram or an Israeli flag in the Twitter bio of a member of the great and good. Many people I’ve mentioned the terror wave to hadn’t even heard of it. From the mass stabbing carried out by an ISIS-supporting fanatic in the city of Beersheba on 22 March, which left two women and two men dead, to the mass shooting at a crowded bar in Tel Aviv last Thursday, in which three people were murdered, horrific attacks on Israeli citizens have passed many by. Five terror attacks, 14 deaths, and it barely makes a ripple in the Western consciousness.

The individual stories behind the wave of terror are truly grim. In the attack of 29 March – in which a Palestinian terrorist opened fire in the city of Bnei Brak, killing five – two Ukrainian nationals were among the victims. Aged just 23 and 32, they were sitting outside a shop, taking a rest, when they were shot to death. So it isn’t only in Ukraine that Ukrainians face murder in the streets right now – they’re at risk in Israel, too. One of the other victims in Bnei Brak was an Israeli-Arab police officer, a 32-year-old Christian who was engaged to be married. Two of the victims at the Tel Aviv bar were lifelong friends, both 27, meeting for a post-work drink. These are the human realities behind a wave of indiscriminate slaughter that many in the West can’t even be bothered to notice.

The Temple Mount travesty and poor US policy  By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-704745

After Israel’s ambassador to Amman was summoned on Monday for reprimand over the riots on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher Al-Khasawneh praised “every Palestinian who throws rocks and every Islamic Wakf worker who stands tall against the pro-Zionists defiling the Aqsa Mosque under the auspices of the Israeli occupation government.”

Rather than call Al-Khasawneh to task for openly inciting violence in an official address to the Jordanian Parliament – especially during Ramadan, when Muslims are supposed to focus on faith, spiritual contemplation and self-discipline – King Abdullah II complained to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that Israel was committing “provocative acts [that] violated the legal and historic status quo” on the compound.

The falsehood that Israel is storming and trying to take over the Aqsa Mosque is an ongoing antisemitic propaganda ploy with multiple aims. One involves the rejection of ancient Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. Another is to obfuscate the fact that Israeli security forces were, as they always are, dispatched to the area solely to prevent the very deadly activities that Jordan’s premier is unabashedly encouraging.

A third is to fan Muslim flames within and beyond Israel’s borders whenever it suits the Hashemite Kingdom to do so. Finally, the fabrication is aimed at minimizing the enthusiasm of the Sunni states that signed or tacitly back the 2020 Abraham Accords with Israel, brokered by former US president Donald Trump.

Theoretically, this makes no sense. Jordan inked a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and has greatly benefited from it.

Bulldozing Debate About the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict Princeton radicals promote a toxic referendum to divest from Caterpillar, Inc. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/bulldozing-debate-about-israelipalestinian-richard-l-cravatts/

Last week, as Palestinian psychopaths murdered three more innocent Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv in an escalating campaign of terror, activist students at two American universities voted on repulsive resolutions to urge their respective universities to divest from companies doing business with Israel.

On April 5th, the undergraduate student government at Ohio State University passed what it categorized as an “emergency resolution,” asking the university to divest from Hewlett Packard and Caterpillar, Inc., and claiming that “by investing in such companies, The Ohio State University implicitly condones and profits from the decisions and actions of these companies, and, as such, becomes guilty by association . . , including, but certainly not limited to, the killing of innocent civilians.”

At Princeton University,  the Princeton Committee on Palestine (PCP) sponsored “Referendum Resolution 2-2022” that does not, like the Ohio State vote, include Hewlett Packard as a target of divestment but similarly calls on Princeton to “immediately halt usage of all Caterpillar machinery in all ongoing campus construction projects given the violent role that Caterpillar machinery has played in the mass demolition of Palestinian homes, the murder of Palestinians and other innocent people, and the promotion of the prison-industrial complex (among other atrocities).”

The Princeton Committee on Palestine is the University’s own version of the toxic Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the rabidly anti-Israel student group responsible for most of the campus activism against the Jewish state. So, it is no surprise that this referendum is peppered with the counter-factual, demonizing language of social justice, oppression, victimization, and Jew-hatred.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

Here are some highlights of two weeks in Israel brought to us by Michael Ordman:

For A (astronaut) to C (cancer cures) to Q (quantum computers) to T (Twelve Tel Aviv Techstars) to U (Ukraine and United Arab Emirates) to V (value ofIsrael’s 2021 exports volume of $143 billion) to W (women’s ice hockey team and whiskey distillery) to X (advanced x-ray tech) to Z and the legacy of Zionism-the dream of centuries and the reality in 1948. Happy holidays!

 

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Cancer therapy “double-whammy”. (TY UWI) Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a 2-in-1 anti-cancer nanoparticle. It is the world’ first RNA-based treatment to combine chemotherapy to destroy cancer cells and immunotherapy to stimulate the immune system to identify and attack the remaining cancer cells.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-2-in-1-cancer-drug-shows-promise-in-boosting-chemo-and-immunotherapy/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q88d4GVq9KM

Natural antibodies fight cancer too. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have discovered that in addition to cancer-fighting T-cells, the immune system’s B-lymphocytes also produce antibodies that take part in battles against cancer cells. They target the enzyme MMP14, a cause of metastasis and can be used in future therapies.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/antibodies-fight-cancer-too/
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/324515

Toxic cancer treatment made safe. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have improved a cancer therapy that killed tumors but was too toxic for use.  They added a specially created antibody that targets only the CD40 receptor protein molecule which stimulates the immune system to fight the cancer.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-lab-says-its-made-a-powerful-but-toxic-cancer-treatment-safe/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43018-022-00329-6

US approval for fast diagnosis of collapsed lung. Israel’s Aidoc (see here previously) has received US FDA approval for its newly developed X-ray solution that detects cases of pneumothorax (collapsed lung) on X-rays for more efficient triage. Fast diagnosis of the condition can prevent subsequent respiratory or cardiac failures.
https://nocamels.com/2022/04/aidoc-pneumothorax-lung-x-ray/

Eye-opening breakthrough. Doctors at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center have performed the first implant of the thinnest artificial cornea ever printed in the world. The 50-micron thick EndoArt implant (see here previously) reduces recovery time and risk of rejection. The patient had a previous human cornea rejected.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/eye-opening-breakthrough-israeli-doctors-implant-worlds-thinnest-artificial-cornea/

The first “shining star” baby. (TY Hazel) Israeli doctors delivered by Caesarian section the first baby born at the “Shining Star” Israeli field hospital in Ukraine. Mother and baby are doing well.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/first-baby-born-at-israeli-field-hospital-in-ukraine/

Israeli Arab leads Ukraine field hospital lab. Arab-Israeli Amir Zoabi heads up the laboratory at the Israeli field hospital in Ukraine. Set-up in an unused schoolroom, his lab can conduct any required test. In this article Amir shares his feelings about being part of the Israeli humanitarian delegation.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-arab-israeli-leads-lifesaving-lab-in-war-torn-ukraine/

Palestinians Are Going to End Up Starting a Third Intifada

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/palestinians-are-going-to-end-up-starting-a-third-intifada/

After a slew of deadly terrorist attacks this month and now rioting in Jerusalem, it’s increasingly starting to look like there’s a coordinated effort by Palestinian authorities to spark another Intifada. It’s unsurprising. Every time Abu Mazen needs more funding to prop up his kleptocracy, he triggers new bloodshed and takes his case to the international community. The traditional way to accomplish this is by fanning false rumors about Jewish plans to appropriate Islamic holy sites.

Back in 1929 — before the modern state of Israel was formed or “occupied territories” existed — the father of Palestinian nationalism, Amin al-Husseini, used the Holy Mount site to spread blood libel and whip up violence that resulted in the murder of 133 Jews. In nearby Hebron, an ancient neighborhood was destroyed and 67 Jews were slaughtered by their neighbors. This same strategy has been implemented numerous times since. The pretext for the Second Intifada was an Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount area. Any openly Jewish presence near Al-Aqsa is considered a “provocation” by Palestinians. And international organizations help fuel their grievances by attempting to erase the religious and historical connection between the city and the Jewish people.

There has never been a shred of evidence to back the claim that Israel wants to eject Muslims from the Temple Mount. Indeed, after taking back the site from Jordan in 1967, Israel handed custodianship to the Hashemites and Waqf Muslim religious trust. To put that act into context, it’s worth remembering that before 1967, Jewish holy sites that were occupied by Arabs were treated as garbage dumps — and not much better today in Arab-controlled areas.