We aim to publish articles by journalists or professionals that are usually not available in the mass media.
Video Of The Week - Christian. Israeli. IDF Officer -https://tinyurl.com/yale4cl
By David m. Weinberg December 24, 2020
For the full article go to Israel Hayom: https://tinyurl.com/y7nyelwm
Video Of The Week -Cave For Holocaust Survivors- https://tinyurl.com/y9c9dep6
From
Israel Hayom by Dan Lavie - https://tinyurl.com/y6b4xaeb
It follows King Mohammed VI of Morocco’s decision to normalize relations with the Jewish
state in yet another historic peace deal brokered by U.S. President Donald
Trump’s administration and announced last week.
The move has had “the impact of a tsunami,” Serge Berdugo,
secretary-general of the Casablanca-based Council of Jewish Communities of
Morocco, told the French news agency AFP.
The decision concerning the curriculum was reportedly made
discretely, even before Rabat and Jerusalem formerly normalized relations.
According to AFP, the decision was made as part of an ongoing
revamp of the educational curriculum in Morocco, which began in 2014.
The move aims to “highlight Morocco’s diverse identity,” according
to Fouad Chafiqi, head of academic programs at Rabat’s Education Ministry.
AFP further cited two U.S.-based Jewish associations—the American
Sephardi Federation and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations—as saying that they had “worked closely with the Kingdom of
Morocco and the Moroccan Jewish community” on the “groundbreaking” academic
reform.
“Ensuring Moroccan students learn about the totality of their proud
history of tolerance, including Morocco’s philo-Semitism, is an inoculation
against extremism,” leaders of the two organizations said in a statement
published on Twitter.
As part of the plan, two new books will be introduced into the
curriculum. They include a description of the life and heritage of Moroccan
Jews under Sultan Mohammed Ben Abdellah al-Khatib, a descendant of the Alawite
dynasty that rules the country to this day.
The books, intended for fourth and sixth grades,
include historical accounts dating from the 17th century to the present day.
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Video Of The Week - 500 Ethiopian Jews Airlifted to Israel - https://tinyurl.com/yc2sx752
For the full article By SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPost, 13-12-2020, go to https://tinyurl.com/ycs96vbn
Hanukkah celebrations in Dubai last week and the national efforts to support tolerance and coexistence in the United Arab Emirates have created a reality in which Jews are more welcomed and safe in the UAE than in Europe. Many friends and contacts I have spoken to say they were surprised by the feeling walking around the Emirates’ most populous city over the last week wearing a kippah, something they would be hesitant to do in many places in Europe.
This is a testament to the reality of most Western democracies: It’s dangerous to be a Jew in Europe. Jewish schools are attacked and Jews with a kippah are assaulted. It happens almost every day throughout Western Europe and the US, where in some places half of all religious hate crimes target Jews.
Today, Jews are safer in the UAE than in most European countries and most American states. We measure antisemitism in most Western countries by how many thousands of attacks there are – that’s the reality. In most European countries, intolerance towards Jews is widespread, and growing.
This is evident on any visit to a synagogue or Jewish school in European countries. I have been to most of these countries over the last twenty years. I’ll never forget going to a kosher coffee shop near Oranienburger Strasse in Berlin. It was near the beautiful New Synagogue in that part of the German capital, a shul burned down during the Nazi era. Outside the coffee shop there were two policemen to guard against attacks. There were no people inside having coffee.
To be a Jew in Berlin, I wondered at the time, meant that if I go to a kosher coffee shop, there will have to be police guarding it. This is not “protection” but rather an illustration of the levels of hate directed at Jews. But this isn’t security. People shouldn’t have to pray behind armies of police and soldiers with assault rifles. When we talk about a decline or increase in antisemitic attacks in Europe, we count them in the thousands. In 2018, for instance, there were 1,652 antisemitic incidents in the UK.
A person has to
think twice before wearing a kippah in most countries in Europe – it’s risky.
One could be spat on, shouted at, randomly attacked or even murdered.
NOW, a new embrace of Jews appears to be happening in the Gulf. These words of tolerance are not just about words, but appear to be about making Jews feel part of the fabric of places like Dubai, where people from 200 nationalities live. This means Jews can become a fabric of these societies, so that a man with a kippah is as normal as anyone wearing any other type of outfit. That is the way it should be.
It should be normal to be Jewish, to celebrate Hanukkah, to wear a kippah if one wants, to do Jewish things and buy kosher food if one keeps kosher. It should be as normal as to be Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist. Yet, a Buddhist and people of other faiths can go to prayers in Germany or France or the UK and not worry that they and their children will be beheaded and murdered by extremists. Their graves will not be vandalized.
IT’S POSSIBLE to have zero levels of anti-Jewish attacks. But it’s difficult when members of some European political parties, such as the Labour Party in the UK, are found to be members of secret social media online groups that openly deny and mock the Holocaust. That’s the reality. When educated people in the leading political parties are “liking” and tolerating posts on Facebook claiming the Holocaust didn’t happen, or claiming Jews “exploit it,” then you have a problem. You can’t have tolerance when some of the people who are supposed to be progressive and in charge of tolerance in places like the UK deride and dislike Jews and tolerate Holocaust denial.
It’s not clear if
the new messages from the UAE, Bahrain and other states that are pushing
tolerance and coexistence will lead to a new era in the Middle East, but today
I’d feel safer in the UAE with a kippah than in most countries in Europe. That
says a lot about the disastrous failure of wealthy Western countries to create
a society of tolerance towards an ancient minority.
Video Of The Week - Christians Bring Golden Menorah From Rome To Jerusalem- https://tinyurl.com/y6dr3qhs
Islamic terrorists may be preparing to renew attacks against Israelis, expected to flock to Sinai vacations once the pandemic ends.
By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel- https://tinyurl.com/y6bavytw
Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies (INSS)
is warning that Islamic terrorists in the Sinai desert appear to be gearing up
to renew their deadly attacks against Israeli targets.
In a report on the state of Islamic terror in the Sinai
Peninsula on Israel’s western border, the INSS says the ISIS affiliate in Egypt
is transitioning from defense to offense, having stopped their border attacks
against Israel in 2012.
In 2011 and 2012 terrorists in the Sinai staged several
attacks on the Israeli border, killing at least nine Israeli civilians and
soldiers, several Egyptian soldiers, and wounding dozens of others. Following
those incidents they fired rocket into Israel on
two occasions in 2015 and 2017 that caused little damage and no direct
injuries.
INSS researchers are concerned that once the
coronavirus pandemic in Israel ends with the use of new vaccines, tens of
thousands of Israelis may stream back to resorts in the Sinai, a popular destination
for Israeli tourists – but turning themselves into potential targets for
Islamic terrorists who are still lodged in the Sinai and have struck before.
“Once the Taba crossing [from Eilat to Egypt] reopens,
Israelis who flock to the Sinai Peninsula may find themselves targets,
and Israel must prepare for this possibility – now more than ever,” researchers
Tomer Naveh and Yoram Schweitzer reported.
Once affiliated with Al Qaeda, the group known as
Wilayat Sinai swore allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 and has
mostly concentrated its deadly attacks against the Egyptian army and
government, slaughtering any Egyptian civilians who get in their way.
The horrific brutality of the Islamic terrorists was
shown in their deadliest attack to date on November 24, 2017, when they
attacked a mosque in the village of Al-Rawda in the northern Sinai,
slaughtering 311 unarmed villagers who were at prayers, injuring at least 122
others.
The researchers say that Wilayat Sinai may be making a
strategic change, “shifting from survival-based defensive action toward
offensive actions that inflict considerable damage on the Egyptian regime and
economy” that includes attacking the Suez Canal and tourism in the Sinai
Peninsula. A speech earlier this year by an Islamic State spokesman called on
Wilayat to attack Israel, but instead of attacking heavily armed IDF patrols,
the terrorists may go after the softer, easier target – Israeli tourists.
“Wilayat Sinai might attempt to fulfill this directive
by attacking Israelis, who are likely to return to Sinai once Covid-19
restrictions are lifted,” the researchers warned, with attacks against Israelis
also hitting Egypt’s struggling tourism sector.
The INSS also noted that the growing terrorist threats
against both Israel and Egyptian strategic assets “creates a convergence of
interests and invites a broad scope for improving security cooperation between
the two countries.”
“Israel should work with the Egyptians to coordinate a
swift and effective response to such scenarios and assist in improving Egyptian
security and formulating the required response,” the researchers concluded.
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Video Of The Week - City of David: Bringing Bible to Life - https://tinyurl.com/y59sdt8s
From Israel Hayom, By Leora Levian 18-11-2020 https://tinyurl.com/y42lkpyf
Anyone who stands in
the neglected Jerusalem neighborhoodsand shouts that it is
"Palestine" is about as relevant as someone standing on the outskirts
of Bethelehem, calling it part of east Jerusalem.
Anyone who heard the reports about
the approval of a construction plan for the Givat Hamatos neighborhood in east
Jerusalem could get the impression that it was a real estate jewel on which the
Israeli government wanted to build luxury apartments, make a fortune, and on
the way torpedo the dream of a territorially contiguous Palestinian states.
But the neglected caravan site with the impressive view is, first
of all, a human story, a social one, a story about domestic issues in Israel.
In the 1990s it was populated by hundreds of families who arrived as part of
the large waves of aliyah from Ethiopia and lived there until they could move
into permanent accommodations. They were joined by a few dozen families in need
of emergency housing, and they are the ones who live in the
"neighborhood" – a slightly puffed-up name for a twisted road with
broken streetlights, stray dogs, and broken-down mobile homes.
I know Givat Hamatos well because I
arrived there in 2009 after I called all the community centers in the area and
realized that the neglected site was a former part of Jerusalem. There were
four of us, looking to make the world a better place, who came to fill the
social and educational vacuum. We set up a clubhouse for children and teens
that is still in operation. For some, it rescued them. We became an integral
part of the place the responsibility for which has been passed back and forth
between the Jerusalem Municipality and the Housing and Construction Ministry's
Amidar building company for years.
Once every few years, including this week, the neglected
neighborhood makes it into the headlines. "Construction in east
Jerusalem," the left-wing organizations cry, and envoys of the European
Union rush to criticize the "attack on the peace process." Former US
Ambassador Martin Indyk took to Twitter to ask if Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu wanted to "embarrass" President-elect Joe Biden through
controversial construction in Jerusalem.
But the "peace process" hasn't been on the agenda for a
long time now, and the "embarrassing" construction includes hundreds
of housing units for the adjacent Arab neighborhood of Beit Zafafa, and Givat
Hamatos – get ready for this – is in the far south of the city, near Bethlehem
and Gush Etzion, not in its east. This perfect disorientation is so symbolic of
those who in the name of a dream ignore reality; those who seek out Palestinian
"oppression" and are blind to the fact that real people are
already living there. Before they run to lay out the borders of an imaginary
Palestinian state, maybe they could turn the spotlight (and resources) to the
big questions involving the people who live there now: questions of housing and
education policies; personal responsibility and government planning; massive
investment in certain sectors while others are ignored; historical mistakes and
who is responsible for fixing them.
Anyone who has a hammer sees only nails; anyone who has European
funding sees only a problem of Israel oppressing the Palestinians. But anyone
who stands on Givat Hamatos and screams "Palestine!" is about as
relevant as someone who stands on the outskirts of Bethlehem and calls it
"east Jerusalem."
