Jewish World Update Jul/Aug 2018
EUROPE: ACTS OF TERROR AGAINST JEWISH PEOPLE INCREASING
The brutal murder of 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll marks the 11th time in 12 years someone has been viciously killed in France specifically for being Jewish and attests to the alarming rise of anti-Semitism across Europe.
Knoll, who had survived the roundup of more than 13,000 French Jews sent to Nazi death camps in 1942, was found dead in her apartment in March after it was set on fire. An autopsy revealed 11 stab wounds, JNS.org reported.
Knoll’s granddaughter Noa Goldfarb, who lives in Herzilya, Israel, wrote on Facebook, “Twenty years ago, I left Paris knowing that neither my future nor that of the Jewish People is to be found there. . . . Grandmother was stabbed to death 11 times by a Muslim neighbor she knew well, who made sure to set fire to her home and left us not even one object, a letter, a photograph, to remember her by.”
Knoll’s horrific murder resembles that of Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Orthodox Jewish woman and physician who was killed in the same Paris district last year. Halimi’s Muslim neighbor broke into her apartment, beat her to death, then hurled her body off the balcony while yelling “Allahu Akbar” (Arabic, “Allah is Great”).
Other anti-Semitic attacks in France include the 2015 murder of four Jewish men at a kosher market in Paris, the 2012 shooting of four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse, and the 2006 barbaric torture and murder of 23-year-old Jewish man Ilan Halimi.
Such vicious anti-Semitism has become rampant across Europe. “Examples are legion,” wrote Michel Friedman for the German news site DW.com. “[They include] Britain, where the Labour Party is rocked by anti-Semitic scandals and the leader does nothing about it; Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban rants about a supposed conspiracy by the Jew George Soros; Poland, which is desperately trying to define itself as the innocent party with regard to its anti-Semitism before, during, and after the Holocaust, right up to the present day; Austria, where right-wing extremists skulking in government are lent respectability. . . . And yes, it is happening in Germany, too. Jewish schools, kindergartens and community centers have needed protection against original and neo-Nazis for decades.”
From news reports
ANOTHER LIFE-SAVING TECHNOLOGY IN ISRAEL
Magen David Adom (MDA) has introduced its newest life-saving technology: an innovative car system that immediately alerts emergency medical technicians if a car is in an accident and provides the driver’s location, even when the driver is unconscious.
Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical service, began rolling out the new system, eCall, in April. ECall uses high-technology sensors and geolocation capabilities to sense a crash and report it, along with the vehicle’s location, to an MDA dispatcher. The dispatcher then uses the system’s cellular connection to talk to the driver and send an ambulance if the driver is unresponsive or reports an injury.
ECall adds to the growing list of MDA’s emergency-response technologies. In 2016, MDA introduced its My MDA smartphone application, an innovation allowing users to call for emergency assistance, send their geolocation and preuploaded medical history to emergency personnel, and live stream photos and videos from the scene to the dispatcher.
My MDA’s video feed and command-and-control system allow dispatchers to make life or death decisions within seconds: Dispatchers immediately see the nature and scope of an incident, a patient’s vital medical information and location, and current traffic conditions for routing an ambulance.
From news reports
NETANYAHU: ‘IRAN LIED BIG TIME’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed Israel has obtained some 55,000 pages of documents and 55,000 files on 183 CDs proving Iran has a nuclear weapons program and lied about it. He also said the evidence has been shared with the United States.
“This is Israeli intelligence at its most extraordinary. . . . I expect this trove of documents will lead to a fundamental change in dealings with Iran’s nuclear buildup,” Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, told JNS.
JNS.org
SAUDI PRINCE TO PA: PUT UP OR SHUT UP!
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said recently the Palestinian Authority (PA) should accept peace plans proposed by the United States or stop complaining. “In the last several decades, the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all peace proposals. It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining,” Salman told Jewish leaders in a closed-door meeting in New York, WorldIsraelNews.com reported.
Salman also recently stated that Israelis and Palestinians have a right to their own land, distinguishing himself from most of the Arab world that denies Israel’s right to exist.
From news reports
NEW PAMPHLET DOCUMENTS NEO-NAZIS ON U.S. CAMPUSES
The David Horowitz Freedom Center recently published its newest pamphlet, SJP: Neo-Nazis on Campus, detailing the vehement anti-Semitism of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a campus organization founded by the Muslim Brotherhood and funded by Hamas. SJP spreads lies about Israel on 200 college campuses across the United States.
“Members of SJP have been caught praising Hitler, calling for a second Holocaust, and wishing death upon Jews—all while spreading the propaganda of the terrorist group Hamas, whose stated mission is to exterminate the world Jewish population,” the Freedom Center reported.
The pamphlet includes the 2013 posts by former SJP activist Nancy Salem, who tweeted, “@DictatorHitler: How many Jews died in the Holocaust? Not enough,” and “Have a safe trip Lulu. . . . Kiss the Palestine ground for me and kill some jews!”
From news reports
UNHRC PASSES MORE ANTI-ISRAEL RESOLUTIONS
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed five more anti-Israel resolutions at its March meeting in Geneva. The resolutions call on member states not to sell military armaments to Israel; condemn Israel for committing what it considers human-rights abuses against Palestinians; and demand Israel give the Golan Heights to war-torn Syria, withdraw to the 1948 armistice lines, and cease building homes in Judea and Samaria.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley expressed America’s outrage at the UNHRC’s treatment of Israel and warned the United States would reconsider its membership in the body. “When the Human Rights Council treats Israel worse than North Korea, Iran, and Syria, it is the Council itself that is foolish and unworthy of its name,” said Haley.
JNS.org
PA DEFIES UNITED STATES, REWARDS TERRORISTS
One week after the United States passed the Taylor Force Act, which discontinues financial aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) if it continues to pay terrorists, the PA openly defied the United States and released its 2018 budget, allotting $355 million to convicted terrorists and their families.
The budget’s release marks the first time since 2014 the PA admitted to rewarding terrorists, Palestinian Media Watch reported. The figure makes up 44 percent of the PA’s anticipated foreign aid funding for this year.
JNS.org
PA TV AIRS PHONY PHOTO
The Palestinian Authority’s television network, PA TV, recently aired an altered Holocaust photo that claimed the emaciated, dead bodies of Jews killed by the Nazis were Arabs killed by Jews in 1948.
The PA removed the striped concentration camp uniforms and American soldiers from the photo and claimed Jewish people put Arab women and children in ovens, UnitedWithIsrael.org reported. “PA TV altered the photo showing hundreds of dead bodies at the Nazi concentration camp at Nordhausen, originally a subcamp of Buchenwald, presenting the victims as ‘Arabs killed by Jews’ on April 9, 1948, in the Arab village of Deir Yassin,” UnitedWithIsrael.org reported.
PA TV also aired an interview the day before Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day of Palestinian political analyst Hani Abu Zeid denying the Holocaust, JNS.org reported. “They [the Jews] used to cry about the false Holocaust in the days of Hitler, the scope of which was not that large” Zeid said. The PA TV host agreed, adding, “a lie they spread worldwide.”
From news reports
ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVER ANCIENT ISAIAH SEAL
Israeli archaeologists have discovered an eighth-century BC clay seal with the words Belonging to Isaiah near Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. The seal also contains a partial word containing letters of the word prophet.
“We appear to have discovered a seal impression, which may have belonged to the prophet Isaiah, in a scientific, archaeological excavation,” said Hebrew University archaeologist Eilat Mazar. A grazing doe also appears on the seal, which is “a motif of blessing and protection found in Judah, particularly in Jerusalem,” according to Biblical Archaeology Review.
JNS.org
