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DAILY ALERT

Thursday,
February 3, 2022

In-Depth Issues:

Russian Jamming System in Syria Said to Cause Interference with Flights to Israel (Times of Israel)
Planes flying into Israel are experiencing navigation problems due to a signal jamming system installed by Russia in Syria, Israel's Channel 11 reported Monday.
In 2019, Israeli civil air authorities complained publicly of similar Russian interference.

UAE Seeking Advanced Radar for Missile Detection - Arie Egozi (Breaking Defense)
The UAE has reached out to the Israeli Ministry of Defense to discuss receiving advanced Israeli radar as the Gulf nation deals with another week of missile strikes from Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The Green Pine radar, produced by Elta, the electronics subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries, can detect and simultaneously track dozens of missiles from long ranges under all weather conditions.

Iran Stops Production at Sabotaged Nuclear Facility - Francois Murphy (Reuters)
Iran has moved production of parts for advanced centrifuges out of the TESA Karaj complex after an apparent sabotage attack there in June, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday.
IAEA inspectors installed surveillance cameras at a workshop in Isfahan on Jan. 24, but "the production of centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows at this new workshop had yet to commence," the IAEA said.

Iranian Wrestler Barred from U.S. after Calling for "Death to America" - Benjamin Weinthal (Jerusalem Post)
The U.S. barred entry to the head of Iran's national wrestling federation, Alireza Dabir, who called for "Death to America" with violence.
The U.S. and Iranian national wrestling teams are to meet on Feb. 12 in Arlington, Texas.
Iran's Fars News reported Tuesday that Dabir, a wrestling coach, and a wrestler were not granted visas by the U.S. State Department.

Iran's War on Its Own Athletes - Tess Rosenberg (U.S. Institute of Peace)
Since the 1979 revolution, the Iranian government has harassed, jailed, tortured and executed dozens of athletes - including world champions and Olympians - for criticizing the regime.
Dozens more have chosen exile after being mistreated by authorities based on their ethnicity, gender, religion, or political views.
At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, 5 of the 29 athletes on the IOC refugee team were Iranian.

UN: Taliban Have Killed Scores of Former Afghan Officials (Reuters)
A report by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to the Security Council says the Taliban and its allies are believed to have killed more than 100 former Afghan officials, security force members and people who worked with the international military contingent since the U.S.-led pullout in August, despite a general amnesty announced by the Taliban.

54 Palestinian Terror Attacks in Israel in 2021 (JNS)
There were 54 Palestinian terror attacks in Israel in 2021, the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center reported Wednesday.
There were 40 attacks in 2020, 34 in 2019 and 55 in 2018.
Three Israeli civilians were murdered in attacks during 2021, with 34 injured. Twenty of the attacks occurred in greater Jerusalem.
There were 30 knife attacks, 12 shootings, and 8 vehicle-ramming attacks.
In addition, there were 1,700 rock-throwing incidents and 350 firebombings in 2021.

Israel Joins U.S.-Led Naval Exercise in Red Sea - Judah Ari Gross (Times of Israel)
More than 9,000 people from 60 militaries will take part in the American-led, three-week International Maritime Exercise which kicked off on Monday.
"The Missile Ship Flotilla and the Underwater Missions Unit will train with the American 5th Fleet in the area of the Red Sea, as part of the overall exercise," the IDF said.
This will be Israel's first time participating in this drill.
See also Israel Part of Naval Exercise with Saudi Arabia, Oman (Al-Monitor)

Israel Donates Half Million Syringes for Covid-19 Vaccines to Nepal (Katmandu Post-Nepal)
563,000 syringes to support immunization efforts in Nepal were handed to representatives of the Health Ministry on Tuesday by Hanan Goder, Ambassador of Israel to Nepal. Earlier, Nepal had put the vaccination drive on hold due to a shortage of syringes.
Israel previously sent supplies to support Nepal in its fight against Covid-19 in June and July 2020 and in May 2021.

Israel Sends Food Aid to Tonga after Volcano and Tsunami (Scoop-New Zealand)
On Jan. 31, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs donated a substantial amount of food aid to the children of Tonga, impacted by the devastating volcanic eruption and tsunami on Jan. 15.

Israel's Global Coronavirus Efforts - Daniel Meron (Jerusalem Post)
The Israeli Foreign Ministry Agency for International Cooperation (MASHAV) is in the midst of its Better Together initiative, which has seen assistance packages containing personal protective equipment (PPE) gear, syringes, medications, and more sent to medical staff in 52 countries, including Kenya, Peru and Bulgaria.
MASHAV has brought medical staff and administrators from Tanzania, Rwanda, Guatemala, and many others to Israel for world-class seminars and lectures.
Israeli NGO IsraAID just finished a six-month project in Eswatini (Swaziland) in southern Africa, where an Israeli team set up and managed an operations center for distributing vaccines, training medical staff and more.
The writer is a Covid-19 project manager at the Israel Foreign Ministry.

Oxfam Stops Funding Palestinian NGO Three Years after Being Warned about Terror Links - Felix Pope (Jewish Chronicle-UK)
The British-founded charity Oxfam has finally stopped handing over millions of euros to the Palestinian NGO Union of Agricultural Work Committees after a 300,000 euro payment in November 2021 - three years after being warned about its terror links by the advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel.
The UAWC has received over two million euros from Oxfam since 2017.
Investigators from Proximities Risk Consultancy, commissioned by the Dutch government to probe UAWC, said the terrorist connections involved 34 people between 2007 and 2020.
28 UAWC board members had links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and, for a period, 12 had leading positions in the UAWC and the PFLP simultaneously.

University of Arizona Took a Meaningful Stand for Jewish Students. Others Should, Too - Alma Hernandez (AZCentral)
The University of Arizona's Center for Middle Eastern Studies demonstrated real leadership in protecting its Jewish community and supporting free academic exchange by ending its membership in the problematic Middle East Studies Association (MESA).
Last month MESA advanced a BDS resolution against Israel, ignoring the fact that Israeli colleges and universities are the most diverse in the Middle East.
Jews, Muslims and Christians study and teach together in a collaborative environment that would be unimaginable in most neighboring countries.
The writer is a Democratic member of the Arizona House of Representatives.

Hizbullah's Religious Cleansing of Lebanon - Alberto M. Fernandez (MEMRI)
In Lebanon there is a silent, slow-motion ethnic cleansing happening, driven by the economic crisis and benefitting Hizbullah.
As Lebanon's best and brightest flee, desperate people who have had their savings wiped out find that the only thing they can sell to finance their flight is their property.
Lebanese tell me of families selling their property to other Christians or other Sunnis only to find out that these were middlemen acting for Shia, Hizbullah-connected interests.
Other times the buyers are supposedly from Gulf states but in the end also turn out to be Hizbullah-connected.
The new Lebanon that Hizbullah is building will be more homogenous. It will have less Christians, Sunnis, and Druze, but also fewer Lebanese Shia that are willing to stand up to the Nasrallah regime.
Hizbullah-controlled Lebanon - a reality that is almost complete - will serve as safe haven, training ground, and university for the terror and insurgent groups of tomorrow, especially ones targeting countries with a local Shia population like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
The writer is Vice President of MEMRI.

Israeli Startups Raised $2.1 Billion in January (Globes)
Israeli startups raised $2.1 billion in January 2022, keeping pace with 2021's record year when startups raised $25.6 billion.

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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:

U.S. and Allies Close to Reviving Nuclear Deal with Iran - David E. Sanger
The U.S. and its European allies appear on the cusp of restoring the deal that limited Iran's nuclear program, Biden administration officials said on Monday. A senior administration official said the talks had reached the decision-making stage.
Restoring the deal from 2015 would mean all limits on the production of nuclear material would still expire in 2030, at which point Iran would be free to resume the kind of fuel production it has underway now. The new deal would not limit Iran's missile development or halt Tehran's support for terrorist groups or its proxy forces, which have stirred unrest across the Middle East.
Ali Akbar Salehi, former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said, "it appears that the nuclear negotiations will reach the end result that we have in mind."
Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said, "Any nuclear deal will allow Iran to take patient pathways to nuclear weapons as key restrictions expire and tens of billions of dollars flow into the coffers of the regime to finance its destructive activities." (New York Times)
See also U.S. Sees Iran's Nuclear Program as Too Advanced to Restore Key Goal of 2015 Pact - Laurence Norman
The Biden administration expects a restored nuclear deal would leave Iran capable of amassing enough nuclear fuel for a bomb in significantly less than a year, a shorter time frame than the one that underpinned the 2015 agreement, U.S. officials said. Administration officials concluded that Iran's nuclear program had advanced too far to re-create a 12-month breakout period. (Wall Street Journal)
U.S. Rejects Labeling Israel's Actions toward Palestinians as "Apartheid"
Responding to the Amnesty International report accusing Israel of apartheid, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Tuesday: "We reject the view that Israel's actions constitute apartheid....We certainly reject the label that has been attached to this....We think that it is important as the world's only Jewish state that the Jewish people must not be denied their right to self-determination, and we must ensure there isn't a double standard being applied." (U.S. State Department)
See also Germany Rejects Amnesty's "Apartheid" Label for Israel
"We reject expressions like apartheid or a one-sided focusing of criticism on Israel," German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Christopher Burger said Tuesday. (Deutsche Welle-Germany)
See also Australia Stands by Israel on Apartheid Report
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Wednesday in response to human rights accusations of apartheid against Israel, "Australia and my government in particular will remain a staunch friend of Israel." (Australian Associated Press)
See also below Commentary: Responding to the Amnesty International Report on Israel

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Israel's Defense Minister Arrives in Bahrain for First Official Visit
Israel's Defense Minister Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz arrived in Bahrain on Wednesday in the first such official visit by an Israeli defense chief to the Gulf kingdom. He was welcomed to the capital city of Manama by Bahrain's Defense Minister Lt.-Gen. Abdullah Bin Hassan Al Nuaimi. (i24News)
Two IDF Officers Dismissed over Death of Elderly Palestinian-American - Anna Ahronheim
Two Israeli military officers will be dismissed from their positions immediately and a third - a battalion commander- will be formally censured over the death of an elderly Palestinian-American. Omar Abdalmajeed As'ad, 78, was arrested by troops at a checkpoint on Jan. 12 after he began to shout at them, to prevent his warning others during a surprise operation. As'ad was detained along with several other Palestinians late at night, handcuffed and blindfolded for half an hour.
Believing that As'ad had fallen asleep and not seeing any signs of distress, troops did not attempt to wake him before they left. An autopsy performed under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority concluded last week that As'ad died of cardiac arrest. An IDF probe concluded that "the incident was a grave and unfortunate event, resulting from...poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers." (Jerusalem Post)

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:

Responding to the Amnesty International Report on Israel

Amnesty UK Publishes a False, Biased, and Anti-Semitic Report
The State of Israel absolutely rejects all the false allegations that appear in the report released Tuesday by Amnesty UK. The report recycles lies, inconsistencies, and unfounded assertions that originate from well-known anti-Israeli hate organizations. Repeating the same lies over and over does not make the lies reality, but rather makes Amnesty illegitimate.
The report denies the State of Israel's right to exist as the nation state of the Jewish people. Its extremist language and distortion of historical context were designed to demonize Israel and pour fuel onto the fire of anti-Semitism.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Yair Lapid said, "Amnesty was once an esteemed organization that we all respected. Today, it is the exact opposite....Amnesty does not call Syria an 'apartheid state' - a country whose government murdered half a million of its own citizens - nor Iran or any other corrupt and murderous regime in Africa or Latin America....If Israel were not a Jewish state, nobody in Amnesty would dare argue against it." (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
The "Apartheid" Libel of Israel - Editorial
Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran want to eliminate Israel, but who would have thought they'd find allies in Amnesty International? The nonprofit advocate for political prisoners issued a 211-page report on Tuesday labeling Israel an "apartheid" state that deserves the world's opprobrium and sanction. The report's executive summary refers at least 26 times to 1948 or 1947-1949 and is a denunciation of the very existence of Israel as a refuge for the Jewish people, treating Israel's founding as the original sin from which all other offenses flow.
This is a libel that distorts history. Israel was founded in the wake of the Holocaust with broad international support. The Jews who settled in historic Palestine had to fight to survive against Arab militias and national armies that wanted to push them into the sea. Amnesty makes no attempt to explain Israel's laws and practices in the context of the many wars Israel has had to fight since 1948. The report ignores that Hamas, which controls Gaza, is sworn to destroy Israel and that Israel has no choice but to impose security measures to protect against terror attacks.
Above all, the report all but ignores that Israel is a democracy that accords more rights to Arabs and Palestinians than does any other state in the region. The Palestinians in the West Bank could have their own state with comparable rights if they had accepted the concessions that Israel offered, under U.S. auspices, in the 1990s and again in 2000, but their leaders refused. The Amnesty report is especially ill-timed in an era when Israel and Arab states are negotiating new deals for commerce and travel since the Abraham Accords. (Wall Street Journal)
Amnesty International Joins the Anti-Israel Jackals - Elliot Abrams
Amnesty International (AI) has now produced a vicious attack on Israel reminiscent of the Soviet anti-Semitic and anti-Israel tracts from the height of the Cold War in its report, Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity. If I said that World War II started when "conflict broke out in 1939" rather than saying that it started when the Nazis disassembled Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland, you'd say I was a Nazi propagandist. But that's essentially what AI does in this document. That Israel accepted the UN partition and the Arab states all then attacked it is unmentioned.
In 2005, Israel removed every single Israeli civilian, every soldier, and every military base from Gaza, yet AI refers to it as "occupied" by Israel about a hundred times.
What about the terrible conditions under which AI says Israeli Arabs live? While Arabs are 20% of all Israelis, they are 35% of Israeli pharmacists. Already in 2015, 16% of all medical students in the country were Arab; at the Technion, Arabs comprised 38% of students by 2015, and at Ben-Gurion University, they comprised 31% - hardly a sign of apartheid and oppression.
According to Amnesty, Jews are Israelis; Arabs are "Palestinians." But that is not what Israeli Arabs say: a 2020 poll by the Jewish People Policy Institute reported "a dramatic rise in the share of Arab Israelis who define their primary identity as "Israeli" and a sharp decline in the share who self-identify as "Palestinian."
The writer is a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. (National Review)
The Amnesty Report on Israel Affirms the PLO's 60-Year "Apartheid" Strategy - Dan Diker
The indictment of Israel by Amnesty International is a voyage into an alternate reality. Its conclusions appear to have been drawn before any research was conducted. Its use of the term "apartheid" is meant to deny the Jewish people indigeneity in the Land of Israel, and recast Jews as the latest version of the Dutch Boers, who colonized and segregated black-majority southern Africa.
Perhaps most significantly, the report reflects the decades-old strategy by Palestinian groups - whether Fatah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - which have devoted the past six decades to assaulting and subverting the existence of the only democratic nation-state in the Middle East. Their goal has been to replace the sole Jewish state with another Muslim-majority one.
As early as 1961, Ahmad Shukairy, the PLO's first chairman, declared to the UN General Assembly that Israel was practicing the "apartheid of South Africa" - six years before Israel took control of the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War.
The writer is a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, where he directs the Project to Counter BDS and Political Warfare. (JNS)
Amnesty Tries to Distort My Arab Identity - Yoseph Haddad
As an Israeli Arab who grew up in Nazareth, Amnesty International's recent report tries to distort my identity. Israeli Arabs like me live under the democratically elected government of Israel with equal rights like any Jewish citizen. No matter how many times Amnesty International tries to erase my identity to advance their political agenda, that doesn't make it the truth.
I was a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces protecting the north of Israel - where most of the Israeli-Arab community lives - from terrorist rocket attacks by Hizbullah. I was also a commander of dozens of Jewish soldiers. What kind of "apartheid" would let Arabs give orders to Jews?
A recent report by the Israel Democracy Institute showed that the majority of Israeli Arabs identify as Arab or Israeli Arab. Only 7% identify as Palestinian. In our Arab-Israeli community, the majority want to live in peace with Jews. Many already are an integral part of Israeli society.
If Israel has a racial issue with Arabs, why did we then make peace with Morocco, UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain?
The writer is CEO of the NGO Together - Vouch for Each Other, which aims to create better understanding and cooperation between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. (Jerusalem Post)
The Amnesty International Hate Group - Melanie Phillips
Anyone with a functioning brain can see that Amnesty International's claim that Israel is an "apartheid" state is as ludicrous as it is malevolent. It's ludicrous to claim apartheid is enforced against the Palestinian Arabs living in the disputed territories of the "West Bank" because they aren't even citizens of Israel. It's ludicrous to claim apartheid is enforced against Israel's Arab citizens because they have full civil and religious rights.
An Arab Islamist party, for heaven's sake, holds the balance of power in Israel's ruling coalition. An Arab judge sent a previous Israeli president to jail. Arab Israeli superstars are making strides in culture, sports, medicine, environment, fashion, diplomacy, education and technology.
Where Amnesty really ties itself in knots is over its need to prove that the Palestinian Arabs are a racial group, as international law holds that the crime of apartheid relates specifically to the systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group.
But the Palestinian Arabs are not a race. Nor are they people of a different color from Israeli Jews, more than half of whom are Middle Eastern in origin and dark-skinned. They aren't a distinct ethnic group. Nor are they a national group because they were never a nation - Palestinian national identity having been invented in the 1960s as an artificial construct solely in order to write the Jews out of their own history and destroy the State of Israel.
Amnesty International is a hate group, and should be treated by all decent people as a pariah organization beyond the pale.
The writer is a columnist for The Times of London. (Substack)

Iran

We Cannot Allow Iran to Continue Building Its Nuclear Capacity - Sen. Bob Menendez
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Tuesday called on the Biden administration and our allies to exert more pressure on Iran to counter its nuclear program, its missile program, and its dangerous behavior around the Middle East. "The Secretary of State and others, senior members of the Administration, insisted they would look for a 'longer and stronger' agreement....However, a year later, I have yet to hear any parameters of 'longer' or 'stronger' terms....At this point, we seriously have to ask what exactly are we trying to salvage?"
"I have always believed that multilateral, diplomatic negotiations from a position of strength are the best way to address Iran's nuclear program. We cannot ignore Iran's nefarious support for terrorism or accept threats to American interests and lives." (Senate Foreign Relations Committee)
See also Top Senate Foreign Relations Democrat Signals Trouble for Biden's Iran Plans - Ron Kampeas (JTA)
Want "Never Again" to Mean Something? Stop Iran's March to the Bomb - Ellie Cohanim
In 1979, at the age of six, I fled Iran with my family after the regime executed the leader of the country's Jewish community and my father was threatened with denunciation as a "Zionist" spy.
77 years after the end of World War II, the U.S. retains a moral obligation to deny the one country in the world that threatens genocide against Jews the means to carry out that threat. The only way to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon is to stop financial concessions, build on the campaign of crippling economic pressure the previous administration inaugurated, continue the covert activities (likely Israeli-led) that have dealt setbacks to Iran's nuclear march, and establish a military deterrence posture that makes clear the intolerable costs the U.S. and Israel will impose on the regime if it ever does acquire a nuclear weapon.
The writer is former U.S. deputy special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism at the U.S. State Department. (Newsweek)

Palestinians

Selective Reporting at MSNBC Ignored Arab Riot - Tamar Sternthal
MSNBC's Ali Velshi broadcast a report on Jan. 22, 2022, which abandoned any vestige of professional, objective journalism. In a segment entitled "A Shepherd's Resistance," he presents the case of Suleiman al-Hathaleen, who died of injuries received two weeks earlier when he was hit by a vehicle in Israeli police service in the West Bank. He was known to Palestinians as a veteran protester against Israeli settlements, and had stood in front of a tow truck that had been sent to his village of Um El-Kheir on Jan. 5 to confiscate unlicensed cars, a relative said.
MSNBC reported: "The harassment continues. The goal was and always is to get Palestinians to leave the land, allowing more Israeli settlers to populate it....Haj Suleiman did what he had done for decades. He peacefully resisted. Then he was run over by an Israeli tow truck under contract to the Israeli police. Haj Suleiman was on the ground battered and bleeding."
Ha'aretz reported: "According to police, dozens of Palestinians were blocking the road to stop the tow truck and throwing stones at the Israeli force. The driver was hit in the head, and the truck's windshield was shattered....As stones were being thrown, one of the rioters sprinted toward the tow truck, fell to the ground and was injured. Given the situation that emerged, in which an agitated mob tried to cause real harm to the force, it was impossible to stop and assist the injured person."
Reuters reported that the police operation was not an embodiment of Israel's alleged nefarious population replacement plan, but was an effort to protect both populations. Velshi recast an effort to safeguard life by keeping unroadworthy vehicles out of circulation as nothing less than an Israeli population transfer scheme.
The writer is director of CAMERA's Israel Office. (CAMERA-Reuters)

Other Issues

Pragmatic Gulf States Are Tired of Iran's Proxies Disrupting the Region - David Isaac
In a Jan. 22 protest by the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza in support of the Houthis, after the Yemen-based group attacked the UAE in a drone strike, dozens of protesters shouted, "Death to the House of Saud." Although Hamas didn't participate, it was nevertheless blamed on social media in the Gulf States.
"I have never heard this level of hatred echoed on social media," said Orit Perlov, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies. "For two days, there was anti-Gazan, anti-Hamas anger on social media in Kuwait, the UAE and Saudi Arabia." Perlov described a typical message: "Last Ramadan, they asked us for food and then they yell 'Death to Saud' and 'Death to the UAE'." In Saudi Arabia, an informal Twitter poll by Saudi paper Al-Arabiya asking, "Do you still support the Palestinian cause?" found that 97% - 32,000 people - said "not anymore."
Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said, "A lot of these pragmatic Gulf states have had it with all of Iran's proxies. They've had it with the seemingly endless violence and the instability that these actors bring to the region." (JNS)
Manager Describes Escape from Knife Attacker Who Believed UK Department Store "Funded Israel" - Lizzie Dearden
Manchester Crown Court heard Marks and Spencer manager Samantha Worthington describe the moment she was stabbed in the neck by Munawar Hussain on Dec. 2, 2020, who believed the department store "funded Israel." Hussain started chasing her, and then stabbed a female customer, Janet Dell. Prosecutor Alex Leach said that by an "incredible stroke of luck," his knife was broken after getting caught in Dell's handbag, and he was caught after trying to flee.
Hussain was carrying a note in his pocket which read: "O Israel, you are inflicting atrocities on Palestinians and Marks Spencer helping you financially." Worthington said, "The intent were there, you could tell he wanted to kill me. He was coming towards me again."
Leach said that in a police interview, Hussain said "he had sought out the manager. He said he meant to kill her and that he meant to kill Janet Dell. He said that, had his knife not broken, he would have gone on to kill others. He said that he expected that the police might kill him and he intended to be a martyr." (Independent-UK)

Anti-Semitism

Whoopi Goldberg Isn't the Only One Who Doesn't Understand Anti-Semitism - Daniella Greenbaum
On Monday Whoopi Goldberg declared that "the Holocaust wasn't about race," because it was "two groups of White people." Her co-hosts pushed back: Joy Behar noted that the Nazis were obsessed with race, and Sara Haines reminded Goldberg that Jews were not considered White in Nazi Germany. Within eight hours, Goldberg had apologized, saying, "I'm sorry for the hurt I have caused."
But her comments reflect a disturbing ideology that is growing increasingly rampant: a concerted effort to rewrite the history of the Jewish people and render the nature of anti-Semitism as nebulous and as nonspecific to Jews as possible. It's an ideology that tries to turn Jews into White people, that tries to erase Jewish vulnerability and oppression, and which myopically categorizes the hatred against them into American considerations of what racism looks like. But Jews predate these categories (and America, as a nation) by thousands of years.
As I watched Goldberg, I found myself thinking of my Berlin-born grandmother. She remembers that she wasn't allowed to go to the park, the pool or have a bicycle. She wasn't allowed into restaurants. She couldn't go to the theater, the movies, museum exhibits or the beach. These racial discriminations were state-sponsored. She carries the trauma of that exclusion with her to this day.
The Nazi Nuremberg laws were highly specific, based on calculating the amount of Jewish blood in a person's veins. To describe the Holocaust as "not about race" betrays a profound ignorance of what the Holocaust entailed. The failing here is that Goldberg's misunderstanding is all too common. (Washington Post)
Why Anti-Zionism Is Anti-Semitism - Shuvaloy Majumdar and Michael M. C. Reardon
Of the pernicious tropes spawning from our political extremes, the most egregious is the conferral of "white settler" status upon Jews - an indigenous people defined both by religion and by multi-ethnic identity. "White settlers" are apex oppressors on the hierarchy of racial grievances, and Jews - with their inseparable Zionism - do not count among today's trending persecuted groups. This ill-conceived "white settler" trope negates the existence of millions of Jews from Arab lands, and overlooks the reality that Eastern European Jews have never been considered "white," either by self-identification or by anti-Semites.
Anti-Zionism extends beyond mere critique. It denies Israeli legitimacy and the right of Jews to defend a homeland secured through existential wars. It denies Israel's capital, Jerusalem, and sympathizes with bad actors who commit violence against synagogues and Jewish neighborhoods. It denies the noble cause of self-determination for an indigenous people, including their right to self-defense from genocide. Ultimately, anti-Zionism nurtures aspirations to exterminate Jews.
Any denial of Israel's right to exist and defend itself is a denial of the right of Jews to exist and defend themselves.
Shuvaloy Majumdar is Foreign Policy Director & Munk Senior Fellow at the Macdonald Laurier Institute. Michael M. C. Reardon is Director of the Eckstein Institute for Jewish-Christian Relations. (Toronto Sun-Canada)

Weekend Features

A 98-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Built a Massive TikTok Following to Combat Deniers - Jonathan Edwards
Lily Ebert, now 98, survived the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. After liberation, Ebert promised herself she would tell people what had happened there. Now, living in London, Ebert is keeping that promise with the help of her 18-year-old great-grandson, telling her story to millions of people on TikTok. Since Feb. 9, 2021, they have posted more than 380 videos, drawing in 1.7 million followers and amassing 25 million likes.
Ebert, born in Hungary, arrived with her family in Auschwitz when she was 20. Guards took her mother, brother and sister to the gas chambers the day they arrived. In total, more than 100 of Ebert's relatives died in the Holocaust. In her videos, Ebert talked about how the Nazis gave their captives so little food that some died of hunger. She told viewers about the smell of burning flesh and how, when she returned to the death camp years later, she felt like she was smelling it again. Female Nazis killed prisoners' babies. In a video viewed 25 million times, she shows the number Nazis tattooed into her left forearm. "My number is A-10572. That is what I was," she said.
In a video last week for International Holocaust Remembrance Day that was viewed 1.2 million times in five days, Ebert said, "The Holocaust was the biggest crime against humanity. Never before were factories - factories - built for killing people. I was there in Auschwitz-Birkenau. I am a witness." (Washington Post)
See also Video: Holocaust Survivor Lily Ebert, 98, Takes to TikTok to Share Her Story (CBS Mornings)
Warsaw Ghetto Fighters Warned Western European Jews to Flee Deportation Trains
The Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto broadcast a warning in 1943 urging Jews in Western Europe to flee Nazi trains taking them to death camps, the Ghetto Fighters' Museum revealed on Thursday. Adolf Avraham Berman, who headed Zegota, the Polish underground movement which worked to save Jews from the Holocaust, wrote, "The extermination sites in Treblinka, Auschwitz, Belzec and Sobibor have recently received, constantly, deportations of Jews from Western Europe, especially from France, the Netherlands and Belgium. Within 24 hours of arrival, they are destroyed in the steam and gas chambers."
"The populations of...all the countries of Western Europe must be called upon to...warn the Jews living there about the danger of death that threatens them - so that they hide before traveling east, flee en masse from the trains, save themselves from certain destruction." Berman smuggled the letter out of the ghetto to the Polish resistance, which brought it to London where it was broadcast on April 16, 1943, three days before the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Berman survived the war and became a member of the Polish parliament. In 1950, he immigrated to Israel and was elected to the Knesset in 1951. (Times of Israel)

Observations:

The Campaign to Weaken Iran Has Begun - Prime Minister Naftali Bennett (Prime Minister's Office)

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv on Tuesday:

In a Middle East that is constantly changing, "we must make friends and neutralize enemies. The United States has been, and will always be, our best friend, but Washington has its own set of interests, which we must honestly admit do not always overlap with ours....Its interest in the region is dwindling. The United States is currently focused on the Russian-Ukrainian border and it is in a strategic conflict with China."
"This is the reality....We must act within existing circumstances, not in a world that we wished existed....In the geopolitical arena...a void that is created is immediately filled. The U.S. presence in the region can be filled, God forbid, by the forces of terrorism and hatred or, with the right steps, it can be filled by Israel."
"Our region is full of people who get up in the morning, every morning, with one purpose: to disturb the peace...and create a perpetual state of chaos and war. This is prevalent from the Houthis in Yemen to Hizbullah in Lebanon, from Shiite militias in Iraq to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. What these extremists all have in common is that their invoice is sent to Tehran at the end of the month....When it comes to the majority of threats against us, Iran is the head of the axis and the 'head of the octopus'."
"The campaign to weaken Iran has begun. This campaign is being conducted in multiple fields: nuclear, economic, cyber, overt and covert operations, both by ourselves and in collaboration with others."
"The missile may have been launched from Beirut or from Gaza but the address is Tehran. The weaker Tehran is, the weaker its affiliates are. The hungrier the octopus is, the less reach it has with its tentacles. Then on our border we encounter something much weaker. The logic is clear."
"On the other hand, the removal of sanctions and the flood of billions of dollars for this regime means more rockets, more UAVs, more terrorist cells, more cyber attacks and malign activities...not only against us but also against our American allies in the region and other allies....No agreement will prevent us from protecting the citizens of Israel."

See also Israeli Prime Minister Bennett: A Nuclear Agreement with Iran Will Not Bind Us - Ben Caspit
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has said Israel is undergoing a "period of unprecedented [military] buildup." The goal is "for a buildup of our strategic advantages that would leave Israel's enemies far behind. This will prevent war, not bring it closer."
"Israel is now on a momentum of laser technology development that will be a game changer. We are making massive investments in this matter and we will win the war through the power of our economy, democracy and innovation....We must continue to work all the time, in the military field, too, and exert pressure on Iran's proxies in Syria. What business do they have there? What are they looking for on our borders?"
Even if world powers sign a nuclear agreement with Iran, "it will not bind us....And we have no intention of giving up." (Al-Monitor)

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