
_Edwin Black is the_ New York Times _bestselling author of_ [IBM and the Holocaust](https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0914153277), [Nazi Nexus](https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Nexus-Corporate-Connections-Holocaust/dp/0914153099/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=E8C5WZ20X5F1SRXYWQ1R)_,_ [War Against the Weak](https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Weak-Eugenics-Americas/dp/0914153293/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=R30ABDGXSCCNEKAK5E90)_, and_ [The Farhud](https://www.amazon.com/Farhud-Roots-Arab-Nazi-Alliance-Holocaust/dp/0914153145/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8)_. In February 2016, he was awarded the_ [_Moral Compass Award_](http://www.edwinblack.com/uploads/cmimg_77227.pdf) _for Lifetime Achievement by the Naples Holocaust Museum. He can be found at_ [_www.edwinblack.com_](http://www.edwinblack.com)_._


Edwin Black

The media is <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/05/26/gun-deaths-children-america">pushing</a> this misleading CDC press release because it fits the gun control agenda after the latest school shooting.

<blockquote>
	
		Firearms were the&nbsp;leading cause of death&nbsp;for kids one and older for the first time in 2020, the most recent year for which&nbsp;CDC data&nbsp;is available.

	
		Why it matters:&nbsp;The firearm death rate among children is steadily rising, as more kids are involved in gun-related homicides like Tuesday's&nbsp;mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas,&nbsp;as well as suicides and accidents.
</blockquote>


	Yeah, no.


	The CDC <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761">release</a> to the New England Journal of Medicine, which normally loves to talk up racial demographics in the name of equity, buries them in its appendix. Here's what those look like.


	<img height="519" width="571" class="media-element file-default" data-delta="1" src="https://cms.frontpagemag.com/sites/default/files/uploads/2022/05/cdc_appendix_1.png" alt="" />


	Those aren't school shootings, they're the black nationalists of Black Lives Matter at work.&nbsp;


	Crime shot up due to pro-crime measures, like police defunding and bail elimination, as well as the massive BLM riots. But the impact among most groups, including white people, was limited.


	There was however a massive increase in the already staggeringly high death rate among black kids.


	But this just means that the CDC's numbers for black kids are in line with <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/black-lives-matter-killed-2000-black-people-daniel-greenfield/">black men in general</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		Homicide doesn't even make the CDC's&nbsp;top 10 causes&nbsp;of death for men in America, but it's number four for black men. In 2017, it caused 5% of the deaths of black men, more than strokes, diabetes, or most diseases. The only things more likely to kill black men than black-on-black crime are heart disease, cancer, and accidents.

	
		Among black men under the age of 20, homicide is the leading cause of death at 35.3%.

	
		It's also the leading cause of death for black men from 20-44 years old at 27.6%.

	
		Only at the age of 65 does homicide drop out of the top 10 causes of death for black men.
</blockquote>


	Since we can't blame "white supremacy" for this, we also can't talk about it.&nbsp;


	And the CDC buries this data inside the overall numbers for kids and then tries to act like school shootings, a rare event, have suddenly made guns a leading cause of death for kids.


	Look for the media to keep pushing this same lie, blaming guns, instead of crime and its BLM enablers.

CDC Releases Numbers Showing BLM is Killing Black Kids

The media is pushing this misleading CDC press release because it fits the gun control agenda after the latest school shooting.


	
		Firearms were the

CDC Releases Numbers Showing BLM is Killing Black Kids

Why did school shootings go from being a rare horror to an ongoing phenomenon? A big part of the puzzle is the Columbine Massacre.


	While there were school shootings before Columbine, the media frenzy, the live coverage, was a sea change, and police have often found that school shooters studied the Columbine psychos and wanted to be like them.


	We know mass shooters imitate each other and inspire copycat attacks. That's why school shootings<a href="https://www.center4research.org/copy-cats-kill/"> continue to pop up</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		In the month that followed, 400 related incidents were reported across the country. Students called in bomb threats and praised the shooters’ actions. Some schools feared additional shootings and shut down temporarily.

	
		In 2007, a Virginia Tech student killed 32 students and faculty at the university. Prior to the shooting, he expressed a desire in writing to repeat the shooting at Columbine. Since then, many shooters have cited the Virginia Tech gunman as an inspiration and others have threatened to kill more than the 32 victims killed.

	
		Studies indicate that the more media attention a shooter gets, the more likely the event will inspire a future mass shooter. For example, a 2015 study found that after a mass shooting, there was an increased chance of another one occurring in the next 13 days.&nbsp;A 2017 study found that media coverage of a mass shooting may increase the frequency and lethality of future shootings for much longer than two weeks.
</blockquote>


	The media knows perfectly well <a href="http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2013/02/the-wrong-track.html">the impact that it has</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		Suicides spike after front page coverage of a suicide. After Marilyn Monroe's death, 197 more people killed themselves than the statistical norm. Suicides rise even after fictional suicides on soap operas. And murders are also influenced by the coverage of real and fictional murders.
</blockquote>


	The internet makes the genie harder to put back in the bottle, but the media doesn't even try.


	Columbine broke the unspoken rule about covering teenage suicides to avoid the copycat effect. The media breaks it every time since while blaming Republicans for not abolishing the Bill of Rights. The media understands perfectly well that it's promoting similar mass killings and it wants that to happen because it helps its agenda.

The Media's Obsession With School Shootings is Killing Kids

Why did school shootings go from being a rare horror to an ongoing phenomenon? A big part of the puzzle is the Columbine Massacre.


	While there were

The Media's Obsession With School Shootings is Killing Kids

“The Second Amendment is not absolute. When it was passed you couldn’t own a cannon, you couldn’t own certain kinds of weapons. There’s just always been limitations," Biden <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/3501244-the-haunting-reason-congress-wont-pass-sensible-gun-laws/">insisted</a>, during remarks exploiting the mass shooting in Texas.


	The thing about Biden is that he tells the same lies, gets called on it, and does it again.&nbsp;


	He does it when talking about his own made-up biography and when discussing America.&nbsp;


	Biden's dumb "cannon" line has been repeatedly fact-checked to death even by mainstream media outlets.


	Here's Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/28/bidens-false-claim-that-2nd-amendment-bans-cannon-ownership/">dealing with</a> this same Biden line last year.

<blockquote>
	
		“And I might add: The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon.”
</blockquote>


	As Kessler noted then, "In this case, he repeated a claim — that Americans were prohibited from owning cannons — that has already been&nbsp;fact-checked as false&nbsp;when he made it during the presidential campaign."


	Variations of this same lie had already been fact-checked by lefty fact-checkers like Politifact. That's how completely groundless it is.


	And yet it says something that Biden and, quite likely, his staffers won't stop pushing the same lie. And that there's no actual accountability for it. When the media disagreed with something Trump said, they made a spectacle of it, they would assemble lists of what they claimed were lies and declared that political norms were being violated.


	Nothing like that for Biden, who we're told never lies, just "misspeaks". Again and again and again.

Biden Lies About Gun Control Again

“The Second Amendment is not absolute. When it was passed you couldn’t own a cannon, you couldn’t own certain kinds of weapons. There’s just always been

Wokeness is a symptom of brokeness. The harder they virtue signal, the worse they are at doing their jobs.


	Anyone who thought that San Francisco schools were going to dump the absurd wokeness and focus on education has <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/SFUSD-drops-the-word-chief-from-job-titles-17199311.php">another thing</a> coming.

<blockquote>
	
		The word “chief” will no longer be used in reference to job titles in the San Francisco Unified School District in an effort, school officials said, to avoid the word’s connotation with Native Americans.
</blockquote>


	One can only imagine how the parents who watched their children's education<a href="https://sfstandard.com/education/new-data-show-s-f-public-school-students-slipped-further-behind-amid-pandemic/"> get nuked</a> feel about the exciting new SFUSD focus.

<blockquote>
	
		In math, every student group saw a drop in proficiency from the year prior, though some drops were more pronounced. Thirty-eight percent of African American students were marked “Proficient or above” in 2020-21, down from 46% one year earlier. Pacific Islander students with “Proficient of above” math marks dropped to 47% from 60%. District-wide proficiency was at 67%, down from 74%.
</blockquote>


	Now it's fixed though.


	If the scores drop anymore, teachers will get another raise, SFUSD will spend a fortune on equity consultants and rename some schools.&nbsp;


	That's bound to work, chief.

SF School System Solves 38% Black Student Proficiency Problem With Wokeness

Wokeness is a symptom of brokeness. The harder they virtue signal, the worse they are at doing their jobs.


	Anyone who thought that San Francisco schools

SF School System Solves 38% Black Student Proficiency Problem With Wokeness

Another way of reading this is that the majority party has abandoned its legislative agenda and will govern through executive orders while trying to hold test votes on whatever outrage is trending right now.


	Is this supposed to turn the public against Republicans?


	Since no one pays attention to Senate&nbsp;votes, mostly it's a stop-loss effort to placate furious Dem donors.


	Schumer tried this with abortion and it didn't go anywhere. Next up, <a href="https://thehill.com/news/senate/3502557-schumer-vows-to-force-vote-on-gun-control-legislation-after-memorial-day-recess/">guns, guns, guns</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		Senate Majority Leader&nbsp;Charles Schumer&nbsp;(D-N.Y.) told colleagues Thursday morning that they should be prepared to vote on gun control legislation when they return to Washington next month after the Memorial Day recess, promising a showdown with Republicans after mass shootings in New York and Texas this month left 31 people dead.
</blockquote>


	Next&nbsp;week, it'll be more BLM or #MeToo or whatever is trending in the media right now.


	This is what virtue signaling defeatism looks like.


	Schumer is announcing his own irrelevance.

Schumer Will Continue Holding Meaningless Votes on Whatever Issue is Trending Right Now

Another way of reading this is that the majority party has abandoned its legislative agenda and will govern through executive orders while trying to hold test

Schumer Will Continue Holding Meaningless Votes on Whatever Issue is Trending Right Now

For the first time in human-rights history, an international mega-corporation has attempted to coerce a licensee into food apartheid. This unprecedented contractual demand has provoked a <a href="https://brandeiscenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Ben-Jerrys-Unilever-complaint.pdf">turning-point lawsuit</a> that asks whether it is legal to attempt to force a food licensee to discriminate against entire communities, especially ethnic ones. More distilled, the lawsuit asks to uphold the basic right to be fair, ethical and legal.


	The litigants are “David,” the tiny Ben &amp; Jerry’s licensee in Israel vs. the twin “Goliaths,” Ben &amp; Jerry’s of Vermont and its billion-dollar parent company, multi-brand behemoth Unilever.


	Ironically, the effort to compel this food apartheid springs from none other than the alleged icon of social values, Vermont-based Ben &amp; Jerry’s. The famous, funky ice cream brand—operated by aging millionaire hippies Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield—has demanded that its longtime Israeli licensee stop selling in eastern Jerusalem, as well as in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank. These regions are predominantly populated by Arabs.


	From the beginning, Ben &amp; Jerry’s Israel’s owner, Avi Zinger, knew he <a href="https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/why-im-suing-ben-and-jerrys?s=r">could not comply</a> with such an illegal request. In Israel, where communities and entire villages are historically ethnic, commercial discrimination by ethnicity, neighborhood or geographic location is <a href="https://edwinblack.com/uploads/Israeli-services-products-discrmination-law.pdf">strictly illegal</a>. The United States has enacted laws forbidding similar “redlining” activities by food distributors, service providers and financial institutions.


	Ben &amp; Jerry’s Israel could no more boycott heavily Arab Nabi Selah or Hebron than it could boycott the ultra-religious Jewish neighborhoods of B’nai Brak or Mea She’arim. If any Israeli food company tried to implement such discrimination against Arab neighborhoods, it would—within hours—become the subject of global protests by an alphabet of human-rights groups, backed by foreign ministries spanning the globe. But Ben &amp; Jerry’s, now commandeered by anti-Israel BDS zealots, seems determined to compel its Israeli licensee to redline Arabs, as well as many Jews, in its selling areas, violating Israeli law, international law, and Zinger’s own conscience and sense of decency.


	When Zinger <a href="https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/why-im-suing-ben-and-jerrys?s=r">balked</a> at the illegal discrimination, Ben &amp; Jerry’s—backed up by the executives at Unilever—notified Zinger that his license would not be renewed at the end of 2022. Ben &amp; Jerry’s and Unilever declared that Zinger would be replaced by someone willing to stop selling to eastern Jerusalem, as well as Judea and Samaria, to both Arab and Jew. This, the world was told, was for the betterment of humankind; presumably, because if a Jewish kid on one side of the street in Jerusalem can enjoy a cold scoop but an Arab kid on the other side cannot, we and they are all helped.


	A redlining demand is vastly different from withdrawing an entire business from countries engaged in genocide, such as Russia, which is now burning down Ukraine, or China, which is now trying to unexist a million Uyghurs. It bears repeating that Unilever continues to earn <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/russia-unilever-kyiv-volodymyr-zelensky-london-b2039460.html">millions of dollars</a> per day in both Russia and China while claiming a humanitarian motive in denying tens of thousands of Arabs a scoop of ice cream.


	In fact, Ben &amp; Jerry’s and Unilever want to remain in Israel, but <a href="https://www.benjerry.com/about-us/media-center/opt-statement">only on condition</a> that its licensee, Avi Zinger, stop selling to eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. This food apartheid is further complicated by the fact that Unilever also holds a majority stake in Strauss Ice Cream in Israel, so any Israeli market share they squeeze out of Zinger can go right back to Unilever through Strauss sales.


	Importantly, the delicate balance of Unilever’s control of both prominent ice cream brands in Israel has become the subject of an Israeli anti-trust action and a <a href="https://www.gov.il/he/Departments/legalInfo/unilever">binding consent decree</a>. That <a href="https://edwinblack.com/uploads/Israel-BJ-Unilever-merger-conditions-EN.pdf">decree</a> specifically prohibits both Unilever and Ben &amp; Jerry’s of Vermont from any interference in the Israeli licensee’s store and distribution plans.


	<a href="https://edwinblack.com/uploads/Israel-Antitrust-Authority-consent-decree-Unliever-English.pdf">Clause 4 of the decree stipulates</a>: “Unilever and/or BJH [Ben &amp; Jerry’s-Vermont] shall have no right to determine for the Concession Holder the marketing terms of Ben &amp; Jerry’s products in Israel; Unilever shall have no say in the Concession Holder’s decisions regarding the terms of engagement with retailers, the scope and timing of the engagement, and the opening of retail ice cream parlors, their locations and the prices of Ben &amp; Jerry’s products at these parlors. Unilever and BJH, including all their officers, shall not contact the Concession Holder directly or indirectly on such matters.”


	<a href="https://edwinblack.com/uploads/Israel-Antitrust-Authority-consent-decree-Unliever-English.pdf">Clause 5 stipulates</a>: “BJH, Unilever and Strauss Ice Creams shall not engage in any activity that may interfere with the Concession Holder’s activity in the frozen desserts industry in general, and in the distribution and marketing of Ben &amp; Jerry’s products in particular.”


	It seems that Ben &amp; Jerry’s in Vermont and Unilever have already violated the consent decree by “interfering with” and also by “contacting” Ben &amp; Jerry’s—Israel about its locations—especially since those actions were not accidental but deliberate. It remains to be seen whether the attempt to coerce Zinger rises to a criminal conspiracy to quietly violate both the consent decree and Israeli law. If so, prosecutions and extraditions may be on the horizon, and the central figures would be Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, along with corresponding senior executives at Unilever.


	Beyond Israeli law, there is applicable international law. A conspiracy to deny foodstuffs to largely Arab eastern Jerusalem or the Arabs in Oslo Areas A, B or C, may constitute an offense under the Fourth Geneva Convention. <a>Article 55</a> states in pertinent part: “To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.” An organized effort to deny dairy products could place the executives of Ben &amp; Jerry’s and Unilever in the crosshairs of international tribunals. People may scoff because the product is only ice cream. Today, it’s ice cream, tomorrow it’s milk, and the day after, it’s bread. Food must never be withheld from a population. The very discussion is distasteful.


	Poignantly, if Ben &amp; Jerry’s of Vermont and Unilever stand before the bar of history, they may find a shocking verdict—one that overturns their very understanding of the land and the people they claim are uppermost in their minds.


	By way of history, for centuries, Judea and Samaria were the essence of Jewish identity. The very word “Jewish” arises from the land’s name, Judea. In 1948, after the newly independent British protectorate Jordan illegally invaded Israel, Jordanian-occupied territory became known as “the West Bank,” referring to the left bank of the Jordan River. For generations, Jewish Zionists were known worldwide as “Palestinians,” even at the United Nations.


	Meanwhile, during the first six decades of the 20th century, Arabs in Jewish Palestine vehemently denied a land called Palestine, or that a people called Palestinians even existed—precisely because Palestinians were Zionists. After Jordan invaded Israel, local Arabs resolved in three major conferences—held in Hebron, <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-jericho-conference-on-palestine-jordan-unity">Jericho</a> and Ramallah— to deny themselves any independent national identity, choosing instead to become citizens of Jordan. Winston Churchill invented the previously never-existent country of Jordan by issuing a mere memo—known as the <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Transjordan_memorandum_approval_at_the_Council_of_the_League_of_Nations,_16_September_1922.jpg">Trans-Jordan Memorandum</a>—to the League of Nations on Sept. 16, 1922.


	In 1964, after the Arab League, in concert with the Soviet KGB, formed the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Jewish identity as “Palestinian” was co-opted by local Arabs as part of a Soviet-inspired agitation campaign. There is no record of any local, international or diplomatic document, and no headline, signage or name usage where Arabs of the area are called Palestinians or called themselves Palestinians—an identity they reviled. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel regained its original territory, and name confusion set in on a global basis.


	Fast forward to the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, originally started by Hitler’s Nazis, adopted by the Reich-allied Arab Higher Committee during World War II and then extended post-war by the re-constituted Arab League. A generation of misinformed, misguided activists perpetuated a false ethos and false facts to uproot a democratic government and a historic people by any means—from belligerence to boycott to food apartheid.


	Despite the hate-mongering by Ben &amp; Jerry’s board and the hate specialists at the 21st century United Nations, Judea and Samaria are not occupied territories. They are disputed territories, yes—but about 61 percent is internationally recognized as approved for Israeli control and presence, namely Area C, by virtue of the globally accepted <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo">Oslo Accords</a>.


	To fight back against Ben &amp; Jerry’s corporate headquarters and Unilever, Zinger has recruited some of the most accomplished civil rights and corporate misconduct attorneys on the planet. These include constitutional law legend Nathan Lewin, civil-rights crusader Alyza Lewin of the Brandeis Center, Brandeis Center vice chair Rachel Lerman, Israeli issues advocate Marc Zell, former New Jersey Assistant Attorney General Edward J. Dauber and New Jersey commercial superlawyer Linda G. Harvey.


	Ben and Jerry thought they could control who gets to eat what in the Holy Land. To borrow from their famous flavors, these two half-baked chunky monkeys may discover that a very rocky road lies ahead.


	Photo: Wikimedia Commons


	Human-rights writer <a href="https://edwinblack.com/">Edwin Black</a> is The&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;bestselling and award-winning author of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0914153277">IBM and the Holocaust</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Financing-Flames-Tax-Exempt-Culture-Confrontation/dp/0914153315/">Financing the Flames</a>, and other books. He hosts a weekly podcast at: <a href="https://theedwinblackshow.com/">TheEdwinBlackShow.com.</a>


	&nbsp;

Ben &amp; Jerry’s Tries to Force Food Apartheid

For the first time in human-rights history, an international mega-corporation has attempted to coerce a licensee into food apartheid. This unprecedented

Today, we speak of a largely forgotten ethnic cleansing largely unparalleled in the history of humanitarian abuses. Recall the coordinated international expulsion of some 850,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim lands, where they had lived peaceably for as long as 27 centuries. As some know, in 2014, the Israeli government set aside November 30 as a commemoration of this mass atrocity. It has had no real identity or name like “Kristallnacht.” But today, from this day forward, the day will be known as Yom HaGirush: “Expulsion Day.”


	It has been a years-long road to identify and solidify this identity. It began the moment Hitler came to power in 1933. The international Pan-Arab community, coordinated out of Palestine and spanning four continents, formed a vibrant political and later military alliance with the Nazis. This partnership functioned in the rarefied corridors of governments, the riot-torn streets of many cities on all sides of the oceans, and eventually the gun-powdered trenches and frontlines of war-strangled Europe. The overseer of this alliance was&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hajj-amin-al-husayni-the-mufti-of-jerusalem&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1638248504630000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3jFbpnSr3fyuBUkvJ89XXo" href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hajj-amin-al-husayni-the-mufti-of-jerusalem" target="_blank">Hajj Amin al-Husseini</a>, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, but he led an eager coalition of Arab leaders organized into the Arab Higher Committee, along with popular supporters from the Arab Street. They had fused with Nazi ideology and goals, which included the destruction of the Jews and the defeat of British influence.


	After the Mufti fled criminal prosecution in Jewish Palestine in October 1937, he relocated to Baghdad. Iraq became the new center of gravity for the Arab-Nazi collaboration. By the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Iraqi Arabs under the guidance of the Mufti had imported all sorts of Nazi ideology and confederation into Iraq. On June 1–2, 1941, as Germany was poised to attack Russia and needed Arab oil, Nazi Arabs in Iraq launched a bloody two-day pogrom against its Jewish community which had dwelled there for 2,700 years—a thousand years before Muhammad.&nbsp;The hyphenation Arab-Nazi applies, not merely because these Arabs were fascist in mind and deed, but because they actually identified with Germany’s Nazi Party. Some rioters wore swastikas; many had actually marched in the Nuremberg torchlight parades. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party adopted&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Flag_of_the_Syrian_Social_Nationalist_Party.svg/195px-Flag_of_the_Syrian_Social_Nationalist_Party.svg.png&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1638248504630000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02w7fQ1NwmovKeem7ImaQI" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Flag_of_the_Syrian_Social_Nationalist_Party.svg/195px-Flag_of_the_Syrian_Social_Nationalist_Party.svg.png" target="_blank">a flag</a>&nbsp;that spun off from Nazi Germany’s.


	In that nightmare June 1–2 riot, Jews were hunted in the streets. When found, Jewish girls were raped in front of the parents, fathers were beheaded in front of their children, mothers were brutalized in public, babies were sliced in half and thrown into the Tigris River. The Baghdad mobs burned dozens of Jewish shops, invaded Jewish homes and looted them.


	We will never know how many hundreds were murdered or mutilated because in the investigation that followed, many were afraid to come forward. But that bloody event became known as the Farhud, meaning&nbsp;violent dispossession. The Farhud spelled the beginning of the end of Iraqi Jewry—more than 140,000 souls.


	Just before the State of Israel declared its independence in 1948, the Arab League promised the world it would execute a mass expulsion of all of it Jews. The Arab League actually coordinated forms and procedures among more than a dozen countries. For example, in Iraq, Law 51 on criminality was modified to include “Zionist”—which could be defined as any Jew found with a Hebrew marking even from a prayer book. Law 1 on denaturalization was modified to deprive Jews of their long-held citizenship, and then Law 5 permitted confiscation of Jewish assets.


	Similar disenfranchisements were repeated across the Arab and Muslim world. Guiding and assisting in these processes were some 2,000 Nazis—ex-concentration camp guards, Gestapo, SS officers and Wehrmacht commanders who has escaped Nuremberg trials to continue Hitler’s war against the Jews—but now in the Middle East.


	At the same time, the Arab League promised to invade the new state of Israel. “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres,”&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://archive.jewishagency.org/maps/content/35916&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1638248504630000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1fVAgO0tB8y16n-GCA614T" href="https://archive.jewishagency.org/maps/content/35916" target="_blank">promised Azzam Pasha</a>, secretary-general of the Arab League.


	For four months, the World Jewish Congress pleaded with the United Nations, then convening in Lake Success, New York to stop the ethnic cleansing. Was this a secret? Hardly.&nbsp;The New York Times&nbsp;was then the newspaper of record in the United States. Its bold-type headline alarum declared&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://edwinblack.com/uploads/cmimg_77740.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1638248504630000&amp;usg=AOvVaw09js2nUelr8cjDoOhD8UnZ" href="https://edwinblack.com/uploads/cmimg_77740.pdf" target="_blank">“Jews in Grave Danger in All Moslem Lands.”</a>&nbsp;The article prominently listed the expelling countries and how many thousands of Jews would be ethnically cleansed. French Morocco: 190,000; Iraq: 130,000; Algeria: 120,000; and on, until the total touched the dark edge of 900,000.


	In many countries, it was made clear to the Jews that if they resisted, they would be subjected to more Farhuds and then deported to Nazi-style concentration camps. After all, Arab regimes during WWII, led by the Mufti, made efforts to send Jews to Auschwitz. The Mufti had been given guided tours of several camps including the SS’s camp system headquarters. During the war, local officials throughout the Arab-influenced world set up concentration camps as centers of slave labor and torture. Of&nbsp;the dozens of camps in Arab lands, names such as&nbsp;Im Fout in&nbsp;Morocco,&nbsp;Djelfa&nbsp;in&nbsp;Algeria, and Giado in Libya have been lost to faded footnotes.


	By the late 1940s, Farhud-invoking songs were popular, and numerous mini-Farhud pogroms had already burned through Jewish communities.&nbsp;So, community by community, the Jews were carted to remote locations where clandestine airlifts—often organized by the company that became Alaska Airlines—flew the Jews, packed in like human sardines, out to Israel.


	The Arabs thought they were creating a demographic bomb for the new state of Israel. But Israel’s refugee camps were quite temporary and most of the hundreds of thousands were fully absorbed into the Jewish State. This crime against humanity swelled Israel’s population almost by half, demographically converting the largely European population of newly independent Israel to one which was half Sephardic or Mizrahi—essentially derived from Arab states. This Arab-engineered expulsion gives the great lie to the smear that Israelis are a bunch of well-off Jews from London, Los Angeles, and Lvov. And it re-focuses and balances the issue of Arab refugees from 1948.


	In 1948, the newly formed and fabricated state of Jordan invaded and created the West Bank. In three official conferences in Ramallah, Jericho, and Hebron the Arabs voted to create no separate national identity, but rather become subjects of Jordan.


	In 1964, as Israel, proved it could not be driven into the Sea, the Soviet KGB helped engineer the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Arabs then expropriated the name “Palestinians” from Zionists—basically committing identity theft. No one can show me any identification of Arabs as Palestinians before 1964.&nbsp;On&nbsp;The Edwin Black Show, I have publicly asked for just one example. Yet the “Palestinian” cause has been championed … based on false history, fake facts, Jewish ignorance, and the forgotten realities of 850,000 expelled Jews. There have been many expulsions and forced migrations in history.&nbsp;The Spanish Inquisition broadly covers a single sphere of expulsion. The Trail of Tears covers one category of forced migrations, that of Native Americans. But never since the Roman Empire has the world seen some 15 countries openly coordinate the deprivation and expulsion of their citizens based solely on their religion.


	Even though this grave act was always a flame burning in the families of the dispossessed, it was forgotten by the world. The “sha-sha” virus can infect an entire people proving there is both collective memory and collective amnesia.


	But I stumbled upon the Farhud in researching my 2003 book&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bankingonbaghdad.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1638248504630000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3u6EE0MgXVZdANQ8__mRLw" href="https://bankingonbaghdad.com/" target="_blank">Banking on Baghdad</a>. This rekindled the torch of awareness. “The Farhud Recognition Project,” energized by Sephardim in the United States, only asked for the mass murder to be remembered. I dove further into the topic resulting in my 2010 book,&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Farhud-Roots-Arab-Nazi-Alliance-Holocaust/dp/0914153145&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1638248504630000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0Hfa4m9JElaqpIkb2G9yBD" href="https://www.amazon.com/Farhud-Roots-Arab-Nazi-Alliance-Holocaust/dp/0914153145" target="_blank">The Farhud—Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust</a>, which tracked the Arab-Nazi alliance, the awful pogroms, and the post-war expulsion. In June 2015, I and a group of committed communal leaders were able to do what many memory-seared families called the impossible: proclaim&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/History/Pages/June-1-declared-International-Farhud-Day-Jun-2015.aspx&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1638248504630000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0LBkT10zXOhFKWdsPDM0QQ" href="https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/History/Pages/June-1-declared-International-Farhud-Day-Jun-2015.aspx" target="_blank">International Farhud Day at the United Nations</a>&nbsp;in an historic event globally livestreamed by the UN itself.


	But I always wanted to do more and give identity and homage to the mass expulsion. In November 2021, with the support of my colleagues in many countries, on&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://theedwinblackshow.com/yom-hagirush-850000-jews-expelled-arab-states&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1638248504630000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1sceZj8_yBGwBmvCvWgiGW" href="https://theedwinblackshow.com/yom-hagirush-850000-jews-expelled-arab-states" target="_blank">a special edition of&nbsp;The Edwin Black Show</a>, I proclaimed November 30 forever more to be a day of remembrance named Yom HaGirush.


	That name, Yom HaGirush marks when Jewish communities across many countries were once again dispossessed, but became repossessed in the free nation of Israel. The Jewish State now possesses these people and their descendants—and they in turn now possess their Jewish State. Possession is nine tenths of survival. Israel has become the final stop for the Jews.


	From Morocco to India, and from Yemen to Afghanistan, the lives and centuries of legacies were incinerated. It was done in broad daylight with barely a murmur from the world. It happened not even five years after the world learned that six million Jews has been exterminated and millions more made refugees. Mark it down on a piece of paper: Yom HaGirush.&nbsp;&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://YomHaGirush.com&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1638248504630000&amp;usg=AOvVaw10WRq9oeK8iQaqVcJAlI8C" href="http://yomhagirush.com/" target="_blank">YomHaGirush.com</a>&nbsp;is now in embryonic form but soon will be a vibrant worldwide resource and a warning to the world that when we say, “never again,” we mean it.


	Edwin Black is the author of&nbsp;The Farhud&nbsp;and many other books. In 2015, he originated International Farhud Day. In 2021, he originated Yom HaGirush.

Yom HaGirush: The Inside Story of ‘Expulsion Day'

Today, we speak of a largely forgotten ethnic cleansing largely unparalleled in the history of humanitarian abuses. Recall the coordinated international

An egregious lie has been making the rounds lately. It is a timeworn smear against the Jewish people in a modern guise. The ancient blood libel —“Jews are poisoners”— which stoked antisemitic violence through the ages, from the Black Death to tainted wells, has reappeared. This time, it is the claim that Israel is denying COVID-19 vaccinations to its non-Jewish citizens and to the residents of the not-yet-sovereign Palestinian Authority. This lie is the same as all the predecessor lies.


	Yet, the vaccine slander is being widely disseminated by Israel’s enemies, especially on college campuses. For example, on March 2, 2021, the Palestine Solidarity Committee held a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/479842490066467/">teach-in</a> at the University of Texas at Austin alleging “medical apartheid” not only in Israel’s COVID response but in the ability of pregnant Palestinian women to access hospitals, allegedly leading to roadside deaths related to childbirth. Also in March 2021, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) Chicago held a <a href="https://twitter.com/sjpchi/status/1371952670500618242">three-day campaig</a>n called “End Medical Apartheid,” alleging that Israel denies Palestinians proper health treatment, drawing parallels to healthcare inequities for non-white Chicagoans. Likewise, SJP at the University of Maryland held an <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CKzZaMGgTBb/">open zoom call</a> to share the claim of “medical apartheid.”


	One misleading claim pushed by the medical apartheid libel is that Israel is responsible for but has failed to vaccinate all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Similar assertions have been advanced in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/world/middleeast/israel-palestinians-vaccine.html?searchResultPosition=2">New York Times</a> and on <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/netanyahu-s-covid-plan-even-more-racist-trump-s-n1257283">MSNBC</a>, as well as by Senator <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/bernie-sanders-slams-israel-for-sending-covid-vaccines-to-allies-before-palestinians-1.9567856">Bernie Sanders</a>. The Vermont senator called it “outrageous” for Israel to send vaccines to its allies before the Palestinian population is fully vaccinated. One writer in the <a href="https://www.camera.org/article/forward-publishes-egregious-lie-about-israeli-vaccinations/">Forward</a> alleged that Israel is "classifying people by ethnic identity—and allocating a life-saving resource accordingly" —a slander the Forward later <a href="https://www.camera.org/article/forward-publishes-egregious-lie-about-israeli-vaccinations/#update">retracted</a>. In February of this year, the BBC also <a href="https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/bbc-backtracks-over-claim-israel-is-responsible-for-vaccinating-palestinians/">retracted</a> a similar falsity.


	Media amplification of the blood libel, as occurred generations earlier in Eastern Europe, has been a boon to anti-Israel radicals. This newest medical apartheid slur has become a significant driver for efforts to undermine support for the State of Israel in the United States.


	Even casual observers on the ground know the facts are the opposite. It is the Palestinian Authority itself which hoards the Israeli medical permits it controls for its elite while denying the same access to its population. The PA’s health care malfeasance mirrors its well-known economic and kleptocratic misdeeds.


	To be clear, Israel does not in any way discriminate by ethnicity or religion in administering its COVID-19 vaccination campaign. It has made headlines for vaccinating a larger percentage of its population than any country in the world; this includes both Jews and non-Jews. While the rate of participation in both the Israeli <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/officials-concerned-by-low-vaccination-rate-among-arab-israelis/">Arab</a> community and the some parts of the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/orthodox-rabbis-in-us-israel-tell-followers-to-vaccinate-but-will-they-listen/">Orthodox</a> Jewish community has <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-02-26/israel-tries-to-convince-covid-vaccination-holdouts">lagged behind</a> that that of other parts of the population due to intrinsic social factors, as of March 2021, Israeli health statistics <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20210315.476220/full/">estimated </a>that among Israelis aged 50 or older, 68 percent of Israeli Arabs had been vaccinated at least once, and Haredi <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-03-12/israels-ultra-orthodox-jews-get-covid-vaccine-but-still-face-resentment">Orthodox Jews about 72 percent</a>. These numbers compare with 89 percent among other Israelis.


	Under the governing Oslo Accords, which constitute international law on the subject, <a href="https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/when-antisemitism-goes-mainstream-analysis-654206">public health responsibility</a> for most of the Palestinian population was transferred decades ago from Israel to the Palestinian Authority. Yet even before the outbreak of COVID-19, opponents of Israel had accused it of “medical apartheid” for not providing Palestinians the same quality of medical care that Israelis receive. It is the opposite.


	The Palestinian Authority declared in 2019 that it would not allow patients to receive medical treatment in Israel, <a href="https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/palestinian-challenges-pa-over-denying-his-daughter-treatment-in-israel-595683">denying treatment</a> to roughly 20,000 Palestinians annually, based on the number granted prior authorization by Israel. The PA took the action against its own citizens in retaliation for Israel’s adoption of $138 million in financial measures against the PA’s “pay for slay” terrorist payment policies. Palestinian journalist Fathi Sabbah was painfully typical when he <a href="https://group194.net/english/article/63135">publicly complained</a> with bitterness that his daughter Rima was denied a permit by Ramallah officials for treatment of her rare blood disease. Yet <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/10/19/925312241/top-palestinian-official-receiving-covid-19-treatment-in-jerusalem-hospital">Saeb Erekat</a>, a top Palestinian negotiator, was rushed to a Jerusalem hospital when he faced a COVID-19 respiratory crisis. Other elite Palestinian officials have received similar priority care.


	The situation has continued well into the COVID-19 crisis, with Palestinian officials reiterating in December 2020 that they had <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/palestinians-we-didnt-ask-israel-for-covid-19-vaccine-652703">not approached Israel</a> for help in obtaining vaccines and were planning to purchase them independently with the help of the international community. “We are not a department in the Israeli Defense Ministry. We have our own government and Ministry of Health,” a PA official announced to the Jerusalem Post, “and they are making huge efforts to get the vaccine.” The Palestinians have sought several foreign sources for scarce vaccines, especially Russia. In spite of the prohibitions on health outreach, Israel has managed to contribute a modest number of vaccines to the Palestinian Authority.


	Unforgivably worse, in May 2020, before the UAE established formal relations with Israel, the PA <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/5/21/palestinian-authority-rejects-uae-aid-sent-via-israeli-airport">refused</a> $14 million worth of COVID-19 supplies donated by Dubai with UN facilitation, arrogantly explaining that the Etihad airplane transporting the supplies should not have landed at Ben Gurion International, the nearest airport, only about an hour away from Ramallah. At a time when the world was scrambling, the PA refused urgent medical supplies intended to stem the spread among its people because it did not like the airport to which the supplies were delivered. A PA official told reporters, “Palestinians refuse to be a bridge [for Arab countries] seeking to have normalized ties with Israel."


	In terms of apartheid, it is the PA that insists when it achieves sovereignty that not a single Jew will be allowed to live in its territory and even now punishes Arabs with death for selling land to Jews. Of salient importance in Gaza is the underlying cause of lack of medical infrastructure. But why? Iran-sponsored Hamas, which governs Gaza, diverts foreign aid to build tunnels and others terrorist infrastructure. It is estimated that the cost of terrorist tunnels would pay for 35 hospitals to serve the small area of the Gaza strip, making it a medical haven.


	Israel wants its entire population vaccinated. In addition to the Israeli Arab population, Israel has voluntarily undertaken to vaccinate to <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-to-vaccinate-its-east-jerusalem-residents-living-beyond-security-barrier/">any residents of East Jerusalem</a>, including those beyond the security barrier. Palestinians in Israeli jails, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/01/14/956814041/israel-to-start-vaccinating-palestinian-prisoners-next-week">including terrorists</a>, have received vaccinations. And in February 2021, Israel announced that it would inoculate <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-delays-israel-kicks-off-vaccination-drive-for-120000-palestinian-workers/">over 120,000 Palestinian</a> workers employed in Israel or the West Bank. By March 18, 2021, more than 105,000 Palestinian workers had been vaccinated. Obviously, Israel urgently wants to vaccinate everyone it can of any background. The Jewish State’s COVID-19 successes could not have been possible without aggressively vaccinating the twenty percent of its population which is Arab. and the scores of thousands of Palestinians who choose to work daily in Israel.


	Notably, most vaccines delivered to the Palestinians so far, including through the international vaccine-sharing COVAX program, have traveled through Israel’s <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20210317-palestinians-receive-first-batch-of-covax-supplied-vaccines">Ben Gurion International Airport</a> despite the PA’s self-wounding earlier refusal. These medicines have been delivered to the West Bank via Israeli logistics.


	Given Israel’s prodigious efforts to inoculate its entire population, both Jewish and Arab, as well as those Palestinians for whose public health Israel is responsible under the relevant international obligations, why has the poisonous narrative of discrimination blazoned across headlines worldwide? It doesn’t take a medical detective to notice a pattern. Israel’s nemeses, foreign and domestic, are engaged in a generational struggle to delegitimize the Jewish state’s very right to exist. No good deed is too good to weaponize again Israel, whether it is disaster relief, economic opportunity for minorities, or medical assistance. By portraying Israel as an oppressor, Israel’s enemies hope to solicit the support of everyone who roots for the underdog. Make no mistake, these are same savvy foes who are attempting to recruit young people by tapping into movements for change in the United States and casting Israel as an evil player. But the opposite is true.


	Solid truth matters little when the enemies of Israel are ready to propagate updated medieval lies on today’s college campuses and beyond.


	Edwin Black is the author of the award-winning public health and eugenics investigation <a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Weak-Eugenics-Americas/dp/0914153293">War Against the Weak</a> and hosts the weekly <a href="https://www.theedwinblackshow.com/">The Edwin Black Show</a>.

The Blood Libels of Vaccine Denial and Medical Apartheid

An egregious lie has been making the rounds lately. It is a timeworn smear against the Jewish people in a modern guise. The ancient blood libel —“Jews are

Twenty years ago this week, my book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0914153277">IBM and the Holocaust</a> exposed with crystal clarity—backed up with a literal tower of physical documentation—that <a href="https://youtu.be/tP5EZtwTnYc">IBM knowingly organized all six phases of the Holocaust</a>: identification, exclusion, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and even extermination, all under the micromanagement of its celebrated CEO, Thomas Watson, Sr., operating from his New York office on Madison Avenue, and later through European subsidiaries.


	Without IBM, there would have always been a Holocaust of hundreds of thousands. Einsatzgruppen murder squads and their militia cohorts would still have heinously murdered East European Jews bullet by bullet in pits, ravines, and isolated clearings in the woods. But it was IBM that helped the Third Reich create the industrial, high-speed, six-million-person Holocaust, metering ghetto residents out to trains, then carefully scheduling those trains to concentration camps for murder and cremation within hours, thus clearing the way for the next shipment of victims—day and night.


	Custom IBM programs controlled the census and registration processes, organized the pauperization, and ensured that the trains ran on time. There was an IBM customer site—the <a href="https://miro.medium.com/max/1050/0*LO2lR0vXpPOpeXkx.jpg">Hollerith Abteilung</a>—in almost every concentration camp—some with tabulating <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/Holocaust/hollerith.jpg">machines</a> and some with card organizers. IBM even engineered Germany’s odious extermination-by-labor campaign, where skills were matched to slave labor needs, and Jews were called up to be worked to death. IBM’s code for a Jewish inmate was “6” and its code for gas chamber was “8.” The evidence indelibly proves that IBM was an indispensable and pivotal partner in the greatest crime in history: The Holocaust. But to IBM, it was just another business project.


	<img height="474" width="312" style="float: left;" class="media-element file-default" data-delta="1" src="https://cms.frontpagemag.com/sites/default/files/uploads/2021/02/imbed_ibm_-_holocaust_1.jpg" alt="" />Watson, a sociopath and narcissist lacking any moral compass, was no stranger to crime in pursuit of his business aims. He had been <a href="https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/ibm-and-its-legendary-founder-flawed-genius/">convicted of extortion</a> in the infamous National Cash Register scandal before he was ever handed the reins of IBM. An evidence technicality allowed his conviction to be overturned and Watson to escape prison time.


	Watson received a percentage of every Reich transaction and in 1937 was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1937/07/02/archives/thomas-j-watson-is-decorated-by-hitler-for-work-in-bettering.html">honored by Hitler</a> in Berlin at a <a href="https://images.computerhistory.org/revonline/images/500004054-03-01.jpg?w=600">grandiose award ceremony</a>.


	How did IBM get involved? When Hitler came to power, he wanted to locate and destroy the Jews of Germany, Europe and the world. That, of course, required the resources of a computer. But in 1933, there was no computer. What did exist, however, was the IBM punch card. The punch card was invented at the end of the 19th century for the US census bureau, from where IBM stole the technology. The punch card was a people tracker from its inception.


	It was the IBM punch card in Nazi Germany, that gave birth to “information technology.” Invented by a German American named Herman Hollerith, this card, about the size of a dollar bill, could store for retrieval any information about a person, place, or process depending upon how the holes were punched into various rows and columns. The punched card would then be fed into a high-speed reader and out would come something which had never existed before—information. Prior to the invention of the punch card, you could count on your fingers and toes, or an abacus, but you could not derive any information about the people, processes, or places you counted. However, with those punch cards, and the information that was punched into them, you could not only count the people in a room but also count how many men, how many women, how many Jews, how many Christians, how many had blonde or black hair, how many were bankers or tailors, how many were born in Westphalia or Warsaw—every trait. In other words, IBM punch cards not only delivered total counts, but they also delivered personal information about those counted. Behold: the Information Age was not born in Silicon Valley, but in Berlin in 1933. What is the Information Age? Answer: the individualization of statistics—identifying and quantifying a specific person within an anonymous count.


	The IBM alliance with the Third Reich was no rogue corporate operation run out of a basement. Day in and day out, it was Watson who personally micro-managed, all aspects of the 12-year Nazi relationship, which began in the first moments of the Third Reich, just after January 30, 1933, and ended in the last gasp of Hitler’s monstrous regime, in the first week of May 1945.


	Under Watson, IBM eagerly contacted the Hitler regime and made it clear that the company was “the solutions company.” Indeed, IBM would offer any solution the Nazis needed—including the Final Solution.


	The first thing Hitler wanted to know was exactly how many Jews actually resided in Germany. IBM hired thousands to execute a <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/locating-the-victims">door-to-door racial census</a>. Now Hitler had the Jewish names and locations. Then, IBM created systems to tabulate that personal data against professional and employment databases as well as financial institutions to help Germany systematically pauperize the Jews. Then, location data was used to organize the mass transfer of Jews from their homes into ghettos. Ghetto residents were then systematically forced onto trains. Those <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/mar/29/humanities.highereducation">trains ran</a> on IBM punch cards—they owed their punctual timetables to special IBM scheduling programs. All the work and prisoner data from all concentration camps was fed into a central nerve center in the <a href="https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Concentration_Camps_Inspectorate#Inspectorate_from_1935_to_1945">T-Building</a> at Oranienburg known as <a href="https://www.orte-der-erinnerung.de/informationen/system-of-terror-the-concentration-camps-inspectorate-from-1938-1945/">Section D-II</a> and powered by custom-wired IBM machines. Everything IBM did was <a href="https://www.theengineroom.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Data-gathering-in-the-Netherlands-prior-to-the-Holocaust-.jpg">custom</a>, specific, and tailored to the precise Nazi need.


	All IBM machines in Nazi Europe were leased, with monthly payments, insured by American and German insurance companies at their known Reich locations, and serviced by repairmen twice monthly on-site, whether the noisy, syncopating machines were located in downtown Berlin or Auschwitz II. Moreover, Hollerith machines olleithHollwere incapable of operating without IBM’s irrepressible stream of custom Hollerith punch cards, which were produced only by IBM. Each input card could only be used once. Without a continuing card supply, the machines would be like rifles without bullets.


	Twenty years after publication of the book … after hundreds of unrequited requests for comment by media and organizations … notwithstanding several negative book reviews by historians which were found <a href="https://edwinblack.com/index.php?page=80219">so fallacious that they were retracted</a> by their authors or publications with jaw-dropping public apologies … after hundreds of <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ibm-holocaust_b_1301691">by-lined articles</a>, public <a href="https://edwinblack.com/uploads/cmimg_77816.pdf">lectures</a> and interviews … after dozens of new, expanded editions … and after many <a href="https://edwinblack.com/uploads/cmimg_77227.pdf">awards</a>, not one word has been changed in the book. After endless requests by so many to apologize, IBM has not asked for a single change in the text of IBM and the Holocaust or rebutted a single fact. Indeed, not a comma has been deleted. The continuing documentation has only deepened the company’s guilt.


	Today, public fear of what big tech can do to surveil, censor, and control our lives—from China to California—has ignited heightening interest in this book and its detailed revelations. In January 2021, IBM and the Holocaust hit Amazon’s top 10 books in any category, #1 in WWII History, #1 in Military History, #1 in Company Profiles, and #1 in Jewish History. At the same time, <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ibm-and-the-holocaust-edwin-black/1111222985">Barnes &amp; Noble</a> reported the book as its number two most purchased.


	IBM has proven that some corporations can get away with murder and still function with impunity.


	To peer into our perilous future, we need only look back and see what IBM helped Hitler do during the Holocaust, in the era before computers existed. Now is the time to ask what could a Hitler-type regime do today and how quickly with today’s high-speed hand-held technology? But first pause to ask why IBM would ever engage in this genocide? The still bloodcurdling answer: It was never about the Nazism; it was never about the antisemitism—it was always about the money. <a href="https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/images/icp/C712987H37021D19/us__en_us__ibm100__making_ibm__icon__540x324.png">Business</a> was its middle name.


	Edwin Black is the author of the New York Times bestselling and award-winning <a href="https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0914153277">IBM and the Holocaust</a> and many other books. He can be found at <a href="https://www.edwinblack.com/">EdwinBlack.com</a> and seen at <a href="https://www.theedwinblackshow.com/">TheEdwinBlackShow.com</a>.

IBM and the Holocaust -- 20 Years of Corporate Denial

Twenty years ago this week, my book, IBM and the Holocaust exposed with crystal clarity—backed up with a literal tower of physical documentation—that IBM

Nothing will be the same as we enter our new age—the Remote Age. We can wish a return to the jam-packed days that effervesced everywhere until earlier this year when COVID-19 suddenly burned across the globe. But the return to what we knew will not happen. Of course, some of it will come back with a yelp and cheer—but not with the kind of swagger and roar the world’s economies have known throughout this hyper-connected century. To interpolate the well-known adage: “If they re-open it, the people may not come.”


	But unlike the 14th century, when the Second Black Death pandemic wiped out as many as 75 million worldwide, or the early 20th century, when the influenza pandemic—commonly referred to as the “Spanish Flu”—struck down some 50 to 100 million, today we will recover more quickly due to one factor: technology.


	Unavoidably, technology will once again change us. The chronicle of this pandemic will not just be inscribed into the history of medicine but also the history of technology.


	Like the advent of other modern tectonic and transformative advances—such as printing, electrification, railroads, radio, telephones, television, the computer, and the Internet—the Remote Age will usher us into a new hierarchy of influence, discussion, and idea proliferation.


	Four months ago, almost no one had heard of Zoom—or cared to. Today, mass meeting products such as Zoom, Skype, Hangouts, and GoToMeeting have become the new telephone, post office, conference center, water cooler, lounge, religious portal, news bureau, and broadcast network. Filters for judgment, ethics, and reason do not yet exist. As bad as social media has become, things will be worse in the early days of the Remote Age.


	Ideas, the ceaseless tremor of our history, the measure of our moment, and the portents of our future will now be an ever-evolving process that can be shaped by the best minds, the worst menaces, and every good, grey, and grim gradient in between. Hate seeks a vacuum. Ignorance thrives in the ecospace of uncertainty. Far-reaching missteps are manufactured by factories of fear. Two viruses now ravage the world: COVID-19 and PANIC-2020. One may be impervious to any vaccine.


	Those of us who have devoted our lives to excavating true history and purveying verifiable genuine fact-in-context are now called upon to take the next bold step. From the lecture stage, printed page, and television studio, we must now leap into the Remote Age on the wings of informed perspective and reliable information. For this reason, enabled by a half-century of investigative history and the latest connective Zoom technology, I have launched <a href="https://theedwinblackshow.com/">The Edwin Black Show</a>. Our mantra, mantle, and mission are summed up with a promise to “probe <a name="_Hlk38536489">our turbulent history, our tense present, and our evolving future </a>with distinguished guests and co-hosts—and then take questions from anywhere in the world.” Nothing will be off-limits.


	Our very first episode posits the enormous question of moral, economic, criminal, and juridical responsibility for the hell unleashed across the planet by the COVID-19 virus, now strongly suggested—but not proven—to be a laboratory accident that in turn may have spawned the biggest criminal cover-up in human history. Almost 200 countries have suffered. Numerous lawsuits against Chinese defendants have been launched in the United States and other nations. But what legal system in the world, which courthouse in which country will weigh the evidence, render judgment, and pronounce a verdict—and enforce it?


	Therefore, for my first episode, I have gathered two of the best minds, famed civil rights jurist <a href="https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/nathan-lewin">Nathan Lewin</a> and <a href="https://richardheideman.com/about/">Richard Heideman</a>, an international jurist specializing in terrorism cases, to explore whether a Nuremberg-style tribunal is needed to determine guilt and consequences—if the COVID-19 pandemic indeed arose out of a deliberate Chinese government cover-up.


	Subsequent weekday episodes will explore the inner crevices and outer limits of hate, injustice, imperative historical knowledge, artistic and cultural enrichment, and the cultivation of useful discourse based on reliable information by the best minds and most important voices.


	Zoom allows us to create a show that not only comes into your living room and the palm of your hand; it brings your living room and handprint into the conversation. Each episode will enable people to talk back and ask questions to enrich the conversation.


	<a href="https://theedwinblackshow.com/">The Edwin Black Show</a> will be among the first Zoom TV shows—without even getting permission from Zoom—but it won’t be the last. In our new Remote Age, we will witness a rush to influence judgement. I will do my part to set a standard of ethics and excellence as we drive across the hazy horizon into some new landscape that we can shape even as it shapes us. Join me for the journey.


	<a href="https://www.edwinblack.com/">Edwin Black</a> is the New York Times bestselling investigative author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0914153277">IBM and the Holocaust</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Nexus-Corporate-Connections-Holocaust/dp/0914153099">Nazi Nexus</a>, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Financing-Flames-Edwin-Black/dp/0914153315">Financing the Flames</a>. His latest venture is <a href="https://theedwinblackshow.com/">The Edwin Black Show</a>.

Probing Our Turbulent Past, Present, and Future

Nothing will be the same as we enter our new age—the Remote Age. We can wish a return to the jam-packed days that effervesced everywhere until earlier this

<blockquote>
	
		Seeking favorable publicity or offering it to a candidate or public official simply cannot be a crime in a democratic nation that reveres a free press.
</blockquote>


	This was the clear warning in the well-documented conclusion of the “Legal Memorandum,” submitted in October 2019 to Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, opposing the prosecution of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for media bribery. The 22-page brief, studiously authored in mid-September in Jerusalem by famed American constitutional and Jewish rights attorney Nathan Lewin, was co-signed by four eminent attorneys: Alan M. Dershowitz, Abraham Bell, Joseph Tipograph, and Richard D. Heideman.


	The brief failed to convince Mandelblit.


	Of course, it failed. The allegations against Netanyahu are so beyond the laws of journalistic and democratic physics that the arguments can only partially dampen a determined prosecutor who has already made up his mind. It would be easier to rationalize why an apple could levitate up to the tree instead of fall from it, thus confounding the laws of gravity. Little in the Lewin brief persuaded Mandelblit because the charge against Netanyahu and the apple rising instead of falling are both unthinkable. A rational rebuttal cannot overcome an irrational argument. Hence, the most salient and powerful parts of the memo were the signatures, and the attendant shimmer of those names.


	Israel veering off the democracy road is especially troubling for the concept of democracy itself as well as the very notion of western justice and free press. Hence, the issue of Netanyahu’s innocence or guilt is not anywhere as important as the claim that his high-handed dealings with media moguls constituted not just a disheartening act but also a prosecutable crime. Doing the right thing matters so profoundly for Israel because justice and democracy are the fiery alter egos of the nation itself.


	The very seeds of democracy and indeed the quintessence of justice and equality were first sown in the harsh, sun-blinded desert en route to the Promised Land. The holy books tell us that Moses led the Children of Israel out of bondage and injustice to create a new social fabric that wove together equality, liberty, and law. No longer was life to be lived based on the strong over the weak, the powerful over the powerless, but on fairness. When manna was provided to the starving Israelites in the desert, they were instructed as equals “Each one is to gather as much as he needs” but not more (so it is written in Exodus 16:18). No tent would be favored.


	The whim and tyranny of Pharaohs was to be replaced with God’s constitution, embodied in the Ten Commandments. Statutes arising from those precepts were enumerated in the Books of Moses. He judged according to God’s law and the statutes therein. Moses explained (so it is written in Exodus 18:15-16), that when people “have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and instructions.” But one day, his father-in-law, Jethro (so it is written in Exodus 18:18-23), told Moses to ease his burden by appointing judges from the best men.


	In Deuteronomy Chapter 17 Verse 18-20, the enduring principles of a judicial system are set forth. The system of fairness and equality under law created in the desert was to become a light unto the nations. Jews were enjoined in Leviticus 25:10 to “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.”


	In modern times, the yearning to be free and the quest for justice were re-ignited in Philadelphia when the Founding Fathers adopted the Biblical notion of liberty and continuously relied upon Old Testament teachings. On their great Liberty Bell, still on display, they emblazoned that self-same Mosaic injunction from Leviticus 25:10, “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.” The American system was not to be regal or dictatorial; it was to be “federal,” a word derived from the Latin word for “covenant,” that is, God’s Covenant.


	The great American experiment in democracy created a living, breathing social organism that interlaced its citizens with its leadership. Every biologist knows the indispensable requirement for every organism is the membrane that separates and yet connects the inner essence of life to the outside controlling elements. In a living, breathing democracy, the media make up that necessary permeable interface between the people and those who govern. The media is called upon to exercise a seven-fold mandate: to question, to accuse, to defend, to remember, to predict, to inform, and to entertain.


	Those who know the media know it is controlled by both scoundrels and saints, and every permutation in between. Like society itself, the media is imperfect and fallible. Those who know governments know they are controlled by scoundrels and saints, and every permutation in between. Government—like society itself—is imperfect and fallible. Politicians wield power; it is their oxygen. They are heavy breathers; and no matter how much oxygen they breathe, more is craved. Often, they take yours.


	History teaches that the mere printing of a newspaper does not make it a sinew of a free and fair media. Stalin proved that with the Soviet newspaper Pravda, which means “truth,” but which was often full of mere Orwellian doublespeak. Nazi Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels proved the same and committed suicide before answering at Nuremberg for the war crime of genocidal complicity by incitement. Ford’s Dearborn Independent was a font of falsity.


	In any genuine democracy, the extinguisher and nourisher of all media is the free mind and the free marketplace. Eventually, the people form their own conclusions as they abandon and flock to various newspapers as well as digital outlets. Without people’s attention, the media becomes a distant tree falling in the woods. If no one hears it, did it really happen?


	Corruption, mismanagement, duplicity, and bias in media has a way of emerging from behind the curtain. In prior times, it was a long process, such as when William Randolph Hearst fomented a needless American military adventure in Cuba with his infamous assurance, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Nowadays, corrupt, conniving media can be exposed in the twinkling of an eye and the speed of a Send button.


	Drilling into the Netanyahu case, the prime minister is accused of asking for something of value—better coverage—in exchange for official acts or the perception of official acts. He only asked for truthful coverage—whether deemed “favorable” is in the eyes of the beholder.


	American jurisprudence has already expressed itself on criminalizing punishing truth. In a case of unrelated media disclosure, <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/443/97.html">Smith vs Daily Mail</a>, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, “Our recent decisions demonstrate that state action to punish the publication of truthful information seldom can satisfy constitutional standards.”


	Attorney Lewin recently revisited the topic in an <a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/is-a-pending-criminal-charge-grounds-for-disqualification-in-american-law/">editorial</a> asking whether “a pending criminal charge can be grounds for disqualification for office under American Law?” An unexpected Knesset majority opposing Netanyahu is now trying to steamroll a “guilty until proven innocent law” to block Netanyahu from becoming prime minister while he is under indictment but before any verdict. “Would such a law meet American constitutional and legal standards?” Lewin asks. He concludes, <a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/is-a-pending-criminal-charge-grounds-for-disqualification-in-american-law/">“The answer is a resounding no.”</a>


	He adds,

<blockquote>
	
		American courts treat indictments as nothing more than unfounded allegations. Federal and state judges routinely instruct jurors who will decide whether a defendant is guilty that the indictment is not evidence of guilt and does not detract from the presumption that the accused is innocent. A respected federal appeals court said almost 50 years ago, ‘It is hornbook law that indictments cannot be considered as evidence.’
</blockquote>


	Lewin adds a compelling insight into the prosecutor’s mindset by recounting a meeting last year when he was “invited by Mandelblit to argue on the Netanyahu matter.” He recalls, “On October 7, 2019, in a Ministry of Justice room occupied by Mandelblit and more than 20 members of his staff, I challenged the view of the prosecutors that a promise of favorable publicity made to a political figure could be an illegal ‘bribe.’ Mandelblit was personally polite and appeared interested. His huge support staff had so little interest in what I said that they did not even take the trouble of introducing themselves to me or shaking my hand. In similar situations in the United States — when, as a lawyer for a person under investigation, I had a meeting in the Department of Justice to review a local prosecutor’s decision to seek an indictment — government lawyers always cordially introduced themselves and we exchanged business cards. Not so with Mandelblit’s staff. Their minds were made up before I opened my mouth.”


	Once more, Netanyahu’s innocence or guilt is not as important as what a conviction would mean to Israel’s democracy. An icicle would be placed next to every journalist who may now wonder whether their coverage was too favorable or too critical if they also received some special benefit or enhancement? For example, were they promised a scoop, embedded coverage, an embargo advance, a leak, access to a document—or any of a hundred quid pro quos that media regularly horse trade with elected officials to beat the competition or score an exclusive?


	Prosecution of media and government officials for “better coverage”—whatever that is… disqualification from office before a verdict is rendered… if Israel allows these corrosive attacks on the axles of its democracy, the nation risks driving off the road of democracy into an uncharted political ravine. From there, it will be a hard tow back.


	Edwin Black is the New York Times bestselling investigative author of IBM and the Holocaust, Nazi Nexus, and Financing the Flames.

Can Netanyahu Be Justly Prosecuted for 'Media Manipulation Crimes' in a Democracy?

Seeking favorable publicity or offering it to a candidate or public official simply cannot be a crime in a democratic nation that reveres a free press

[To read Part 1: <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274664/whos-funding-illegal-palestinian-settlements-area-edwin-black">CLICK HERE</a>, Part 2: <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274665/whos-funding-illegal-palestinian-settlements-area-edwin-black">CLICK HERE</a>.]


	Hundreds of millions of euros flow annually from European nations to fund illegal Palestinian settlements in Area C. Under the Oslo Accords, only Israel can issue construction permits. The current rapid expansion plan dispenses with any coordination with Israel.


	According to Israeli activist watchdog groups, such as Regavim, during the last five years, illegal Palestinian settlements and infrastructure have sprawled across more than 9,000 dunams (9 square km) in more than 250 Area C locations, supported by more than 600 kilometers of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.uawc-pal.org/news.php?n=3454&amp;lang=2" target="_blank">illegally constructed access roads</a>&nbsp;and more than 112,000 meters of retaining walls and terracing. This massive works project is being conducted in broad daylight. Palestinians no longer apply for permits in Area C; they deny Israel’s right to issue them. Now, they just start building, powered by millions of annual euros in joint projects with the EU.


	How is the money routed? Among the many NGO recipients, one name keeps appearing:Union of Agricultural Work Committees.


	A 2012 French&nbsp;<a href="https://pastel.diplomatie.gouv.fr/cncdext/dyn/public/atlas/detailProjet.html?criteres.prjId=3230" target="_blank">Foreign Ministry report</a>&nbsp;listing a €354,489&nbsp;multi-year water development project states: “The first action proposed under this Action Plan is being carried out by the Union of Agriculture Work Committees,” adding, “UAWC … is responsible for project management.” Agence Francaise de Dévelopment (AFD) committed&nbsp;€130,000 to the UAWC, also in 2012, according to a&nbsp;<a href="http://ndc.ps/sites/default/files/FS-2012_En.pdf" target="_blank">2012 Ernst and Young audit of the NGO Development Center</a>. In February 2019, AFD also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.afd.fr/sites/afd/files/2019-02-01-37-16/communique-ong-5-fevrier-2019.pdf" target="_blank">announced</a>, “Union of Agricultural Workers Committees and relevant stakeholders … [would be] granted by AFD amounts up to 232,000 euros out of a budget of 650,000 euros.”


	In 2010, German governmental and foundation sources included the UAWC in a series of€630,000 Palestinian grants extended to anti-Israel boycott and activist groups, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.medico.de/fileadmin/_migrated_/downloads/1/annual-report-2010.pdf" target="_blank">2010</a>&nbsp;annual report of the health rescue group Medico, which channeled the money. Medico annual reports in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.medico.de/fileadmin/user_upload/media/en/annual-report-2012.pdf" target="_blank">2012</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.medico.de/fileadmin/user_upload/media/en/annual-report-2015.pdf" target="_blank">2015</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.medico.de/fileadmin/user_upload/media/en/annual-report-2016.pdf" target="_blank">2016</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.medico.de/fileadmin/user_upload/media/en/annual-report-2017.pdf" target="_blank">2017</a>&nbsp;also list the UAWC as a recipient. An additional&nbsp;<a href="https://www.medico.de/das-recht-zu-bleiben-13954/" target="_blank">2010 Medico grant</a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;€180,000 euros funded UAWC in a program to assist “the fight against repression by the Israeli administration.” The UAWC was also included in Medico’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.medico.de/en/israelpalestine-15359/" target="_blank">2012 grant</a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;€1.2 million euros to establish “kindergartens for unrecognized villages.”


	In 2016, Spanish governmental agencies extended grants totaling&nbsp;€184,000 to the UAWC, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2016/02/11/pdfs/BOE-A-2016-1346.pdf" target="_blank">2016 official Spanish governmental bulletin</a>. In 2017, the Netherlands Representative Office in Ramallah announced an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/NLRepOfficeRamallah/posts/729114907258134" target="_blank">$11.2 million water project</a>&nbsp;with the UAWC.


	The UAWC’s&nbsp;financial reports are hard to come by, but its 2014 total income reached more than&nbsp;<a href="http://uawc-pal.org/Files/3a6e8918-0e80-4922-a607-7a83c05e31e3.pdf.pdf" target="_blank">$43.1 million</a>. The group’s income streams are diverse, from governmental units and foundations. Its key involvement in illegal Area C infrastructure is salient.


	Yet, for decades, open allegations have been publicly aired alleging links between the UAWC and the Popular Front for the Liberation Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP is one of the most notorious of Palestinian terrorist groups, so designated for decades by the&nbsp;<a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm" target="_blank">US</a>, the European Union, and other nations. Yet, foundations and governments continue to robustly fund UAWC.


	Accusations that the UAWC is directly linked to the PFLP are no secret.


	In May 1993, USAID’s Democratic Institutions Support Project “took a political economy lens” to popular movements in the Middle East, according to Prof. Glenn E. Robinson, who has frequently consulted for USAID. Back in the 1990s, Robinson’s field work in the West Bank included interviews with leading personalities of the UAWC and the PFLP. His report,Palestinian Institutional Configurations in the West Bank and Gaza, declared, “The PFLP’s agricultural extension services are provided by the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC).” That USAID report became the basis for a book titled&nbsp;<a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?isbn=0253210828" target="_blank">Building a Palestinian State—the Incomplete Revolution</a>,&nbsp;published by Indiana University Press. The Middle East Studies Association’s book review&nbsp;<a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?isbn=0253210828" target="_blank">lauded it</a>: “powerful and compelling … scholarship impeccable."


	Contacted at the prestigious Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California, Robinson recalled that his research showed the UAWC was indeed “linked and affiliated” and also “shared resources with” the PFLP. USAID still distributes Robinson’s&nbsp;<a href="https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNABY769.pdf" target="_blank">original report</a>&nbsp;online.


	A&nbsp;<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131212050700/http:/www.fatehorg.ps/index.php?action=show_page&amp;ID=11455&amp;lang=ar" target="_blank">2012 Fateh organizational chart</a>&nbsp;at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.fatehorg.ps/" target="_blank">www.FatehOrg.ps</a>&nbsp;purports to list all PFLP units. It includes an entry for the UAWC, under “Affiliated Institutions.” The web page has since been deleted but an Internet Archive has&nbsp;<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131212050700/http:/www.fatehorg.ps/index.php?action=show_page&amp;ID=11455&amp;lang=ar" target="_blank">preserved it</a>. A translation from Arabic to English of the purported key listing midway down the document can be seen&nbsp;<a href="https://edwinblack.com/uploads/cmimg_77772.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. The words “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine” can be located in Arabic in the middle of the document as a subhead just above the date “11/12/1967.” Robinson examined the archived page, and confirmed, “Each of the main four factions in the 1980s had essentially the same list of linked groups and competed with each other as part of the broad political mobilization of Palestinian society.”


	Former senior PFLP leader Bashir Kairi functioned as UAWC’s president for years. He signed the UAWC’s annual reports until about 2009. As far back as 2003, CNN&nbsp;<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/08/27/mideast/" target="_blank">reported</a>&nbsp;that Kairi had been arrested as a key figure in Israel after a major assassination, stating, “Palestinian sources said those arrested included Bashir al-Khairi, head of the PFLP political bureau.” In 2012, UAWC was prominently accused of terrorist links to the PFLP by Shurat HaDin, an Israeli legal group. Shurat HaDin&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jpost.com/printarticle.aspx?id=262581" target="_blank">demanded</a>&nbsp;that World Vision and the Australian government cease funding UAWC. Australian authorities and World Vision&nbsp;<a href="https://foreignminister.gov.au/releases/2012/bc_mr_120531.html" target="_blank">refused</a>.


	In July 2018, Amnesty International issued an “<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/8946/2018/en/" target="_blank">Urgent Action</a>” notice, which begins, “Abdul Razeq Farraj, Finance and Administration Director at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees … was released from Ofer prison.”


	The statement described Farraj as “the Finance and Administration Director at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees … for more than 30 years.” The next paragraph adds, “In addition, he has served a six-year sentence in an Israeli prison after being convicted of affiliation with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” Farraj appended a personal statement to the public notice, “I would like to express my deep gratitude, for your continuous support to the Palestinian people and to UAWC.” Farraj’s current LinkedIn self-lists him as “UAWC administrative manager.” His listing at the Addameer prisoner support organization’s website&nbsp;<a href="http://www.addameer.org/prisoner/abdul-razeq-farraj" target="_blank">indicates</a>&nbsp;Farraj has repeatedly been in prison on terrorism charges, yet also “Director of Finance &amp; Administration at Union of Agricultural Work Committees.”


	In 2017, Israel’s Shin Bet security service notified the UAWC, “The information we have indicates that the organization ‘Union of Agricultural Work Committees,’ based in the Gaza Strip, operates under the auspices of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” according to a copy of the confidential security document obtained.


	Over recent years, articles publicly accusing or reporting on UAWC’s alleged terrorist links have periodically appeared in the&nbsp;JNS&nbsp;news service,&nbsp;Times of Israel,&nbsp;Jewish Press, andJerusalem Post. NGO Monitor, which tracks anti-Israel NGO misconduct, maintains a page filled with links, recently updated and confirmed, documenting UAWC’s connection to the PFLP.


	“It’s clear from the evidence that the UAWC is closely linked with the PFLP,” concludes Caroline Turner, director of UK Lawyers for Israel, who has studied the UAWC. Yifa Segal, director&nbsp;of The International Legal Forum, active in litigation involving UAWC, asserts, “I would say that it's an inherent part of the PFLP—that doesn't mean that they are the same legal entity, or that each organization doesn't have its own leadership.” Attorney Andrew Hamilton, who has also filed legal actions involving UAWC, comments, “Based on my extensive research since 2012, it is quite clear that the UAWC is an arm of the proscribed terrorist group, the PFLP,” continuing, “It is controlled by and acts in the interests of the PFLP.”


	Despite, the growing body of public information about the UAWC and the PFLP, there is no indication that any of its donors intend to reduce the millions they are sending the UAWC for illegal development projects in Area C.


	The UAWC and its defenders have repeatedly stressed that it has no ties to the PFLP. Repeated documented efforts to reach the UAWC and its leaders, including Bashir Kairi and Abdul Razeq Farraj, as well as the PFLP, for comment were unsuccessful.

Who’s Funding Illegal Palestinian Settlements in Area C: Part 3

[To read Part 1: CLICK HERE, Part 2: CLICK HERE.]


	Hundreds of millions of euros flow annually from European nations to fund illegal Palestinian

[To read Part 1: <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274664/whos-funding-illegal-palestinian-settlements-area-edwin-black">CLICK HERE</a>.]


	“<a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/ocha_opt_area_c_map_2011_02_22.pdf" target="_blank">Area C</a>,” which comprises some 60 percent of the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, has become highly volatile again. In the past, debate has centered on Jewish settlements. Now, “illegal Palestinian settlements” sprouting across the region, are under the spotlight.


	According to Israeli activist watchdog groups such as Regavim, during the last five years, illegal Palestinian settlements and infrastructure have sprawled across more than 9,000 dunams in more than 250 Area C locations, supported by more than 600 kilometers of illegally constructed access roads and more than 112,000 meters of retaining walls and terracing. This massive works project is being conducted in broad daylight, often heralded by&nbsp;<a href="https://cdn.jns.org/uploads/2019/01/IMG_3797-880x495.jpg" target="_blank">tall announcement placards</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://english.pnn.ps/2019/06/28/eu-uk-renew-their-commitment-to-a-two-state-solution-by-supporting-projects-in-area-c/" target="_blank">proud press releases</a>.


	Israeli government officials contacted did not dispute the Regavim numbers. In exasperation, one military spokesman close to the Area C files estimated “close to 10,000” illegal construction efforts are now underway—adding they feel “powerless to stop them.”&nbsp;


	In the 1990s, after years of diplomatic wrangling, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords, envisioning a peaceful two-state solution.&nbsp;Under the complex Oslo Accords, the “West Bank” is divided into three separate administrative zones, Areas A, B and C.


	Area A is reserved for Palestinian civil and administrative control and seats the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Area B is governed by Palestinian civil control under a joint Israeli-Palestinian security apparatus.


	<a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/ocha_opt_area_c_map_2011_02_22.pdf" target="_blank">Area C</a>&nbsp;—also called Judea and Samaria—comprises roughly 60 percent of the West Bank. The majority of Area C residents are Israelis—an estimated 325,000 alongside some&nbsp;<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-un-300k-palestinians-live-in-area-c-1.5329286" target="_blank">300,000 Arabs</a>.&nbsp;Under the Oslo Accords, only the Israeli Civil Administration can authorize new construction in the zone—for Israeli and Arab alike.


	But in 2009, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Fayyad introduced the so-called&nbsp;<a href="https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/A013B65A5984E671852576B800581931" target="_blank">Fayyad Plan</a>, well-described by a&nbsp;<a href="https://pij.org/articles/1317" target="_blank">2011 article</a>&nbsp;in the&nbsp;Palestine-Israel Journal&nbsp;of Politics, Economics and Culture&nbsp;as having “the potential to dramatically transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, by extension, the Middle Eastern political landscape.” The analysis adds, “The essence of the Fayyad plan involves establishing an internationally recognized demilitarized Palestinian state encompassing both the West Bank and Gaza, based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Since August 2009, Fayyad, with the help of the Barack Obama administration and the European Union, has been quietly building national institutions and physical infrastructure … in the West Bank.”


	To create a&nbsp;de facto&nbsp;Palestinian State without further negotiation or even diplomatic consultation with the Israelis, European countries, individually and through the EU, have pumped hundreds of millions of euros annually into scores of illegal state-building and related projects—called Area C&nbsp;“interventions.” Just one cluster of the “European Union Area C Development Programme” boasts a&nbsp;<a href="https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/palestine-occupied-palestinian-territory-west-bank-and-gaza-strip/63085/european-union-and-palestinian-authority-inaugurate-multipurpose-building-and-public-park_en" target="_blank">€300 million annual commitment</a>,&nbsp;and within three years, is budgeted to reach about €1.5 billion. A single&nbsp;<a href="https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/palestine-occupied-palestinian-territory-west-bank-and-gaza-strip/65709/european-union-and-palestinian-authority-inaugurate-european-road-bartaa-al-sharqia_en" target="_blank">1650-meter road</a>&nbsp;near Jenin in Area C was funded with a €500,000 allocation.


	The Area C Palestinian boom advances without any coordination with Israelis about land use, security, environmental impacts, or close proximity to Jewish villages. The PA’s 2014 Roots Project&nbsp;<a href="https://www.regavim.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/WhatsApp-Image-2018-11-20-at-15.43.28-1024x576.jpeg" target="_blank">greatly accelerated</a>&nbsp;the entire process. Thus, European governments and the PA have completed the shredding of the already-weakened Oslo agreements.


	Most of new Area C settlements are not natural Arab urban growth or urban sprawl. Rather, they are often strategically scattered to effectively carve up Area C, sometimes surround Jewish villages, and sometimes push onto Israeli nature or military reserves.


	In many instances, Arab residents from Areas A and B are bused in,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-sep-10-oe-kuttab10-story.html" target="_blank">encouraged</a>&nbsp;by&nbsp;<a href="http://jcpa.org/article/prime-minister-salam-fayyad%E2%80%99s-two-year-path-to-palestinian-statehood-2/" target="_blank">incentives</a>&nbsp;to relocate or start a second home in the new settlements. Some structures are makeshift&nbsp;<a href="http://eipa.eu.com/wp-content/uploads-peipa001/2016/02/The-blue-EU-logo-seen-on-new-modular-structures-in-an-illegal-Beduin-encampment-in-the-Judean-hills-outside-the-Maalen-Adumim-settlement.jpg" target="_blank">festooned with the logo</a>&nbsp;of the European Union. Some are multi-floor office centers. Other times,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/260384" target="_blank">palatial homes</a>&nbsp;are built. The gamut of construction styles can be seen.


	In several cases, the illegal constructions are deliberately established on Israeli military reserves. Since the 1970s, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have maintained military training and firing ranges, such as Firing Zone&nbsp;<a href="https://www.btselem.org/facing_expulsion_blog?nid=206246" target="_blank">918</a>. That zone now has illegal settlements.


	One road, dubbed&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jewishpress.com/news/eye-on-palestine/arab-smugglers-route-to-arad-valley-disrupted-by-regavim-says-court/2019/02/17/" target="_blank">Smuggler’s Route</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jewishpress.com/news/eye-on-palestine/arab-smugglers-route-to-arad-valley-disrupted-by-regavim-says-court/2019/02/17/" target="_blank">courses through the hills</a>&nbsp;from the Palestinian city of Yatta all the way to the Arad Valley in the Negev.


	In prior years, Israel’s Civil Administration boasted of its many Palestinian construction permits. A glowing&nbsp;<a href="https://mfa.gov.il/MFA_Graphics/MFA%20Gallery/Documents/AreaCBooklet130912.pdf" target="_blank">report</a>&nbsp;cites 328 projects authorized during 2011 and 2012. That number has drastically diminished because Area C Palestinians no longer apply for permits; they deny Israel’s right to issue them. Now, they just start building.


	While the sudden development rush has been percolating into the Jewish and Israeli media, many Jewish leaders worldwide are completely unaware of this phenomenon. Many are incredulous that the Israeli government has not acted to block the illegal projects. But a security spokesman close to the Area C files located in Bet El blames the inaction on Israel’s complex legal system.


	“When we discover something,” stated a security spokesman, “we give them a stop order, and if they don’t stop, they are summoned to an [adjudication] panel. But they don’t come. They go to court to&nbsp;<a href="https://law.acri.org.il/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/918-petition-summary.pdf" target="_blank">enjoin</a>&nbsp;us.”


	These court cases are frequently financed and represented by well-funded NGOs, such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The Gordian knot of legal principles to parse includes Ottoman land law from a long-dismantled empire, Jordanian law from the withdrawn 1948 illegal occupation, post-Six Day War military administrative law, and a library of international legal codes--all stoked and poked with competing maps, surveys, expert opinions, decrees, chronologies, and historical accounts.


	“It can take years to decide, and without a court ruling, we cannot get close,” lamented the spokesman, adding, “Meanwhile, they are still building. We can’t do anything about it.” The spokesman continued, “Court can take half a year -- or four years. There is no specific time. Each case is different. We have some cases that were opened 15 years ago.”


	Once the court rules, if Israel takes enforcement action with bulldozers, the international headlines, EU accusations of war crimes, threats of sanctions, close-up photos of weeping people and global uproar makes being legally right a very unappealing political idea. The EU, the NGOs, and the illegal settlers know this process.&nbsp;


	What makes the Palestinian settlements “illegal” is the thin wisp of Oslo that remains. The Accords have now been fractured so many times that what remains is only the preserved corpse of a long-deceased vision.


	At the end of July 2019, when the Israeli cabinet voted to authorize an extra 715 permits, the Palestinian response was immediate. PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh declared: “<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/pa-prime-minister-we-dont-need-israeli-permission-to-build-in-west-bank/" target="_blank">We don’t need permission</a>&nbsp;from the occupying power to&nbsp;build our homes on our lands,” adding, the Oslo classification of land into A, B and C “<a href="http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=b1BDKMa111118114503ab1BDKM" target="_blank">no longer exists</a>.”


	Before year’s end, the PA is expected to issue thousands of new permits further circumventing Oslo. As Palestinian expansion roils across Area C, the prospect looms of Gaza fence-style encounters coming soon to a hill in Judea and Samaria.


	As Area C dynamics become clearer, still murky is the source and route of the diverse European funding that enables this confrontation. What’s more, there is widespread fear that millions in funds are continuously funneled through entities openly accused of being affiliated with established terrorist organizations.

Who’s Funding Illegal Palestinian Settlements in Area C: Part 2

[To read Part 1: CLICK HERE.]


	“Area C,” which comprises some 60 percent of the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, has become highly volatile

“<a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/ocha_opt_area_c_map_2011_02_22.pdf" target="_blank">Area C</a>,” which comprises some 60 percent of the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, is making news these days. This time, the hot button issue is illegal Palestinian settlements sprouting across the region, shredding the last vestige of the Oslo Accords, which, for a generation, propelled the “two-state solution.”


	Most observers of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis are accustomed to hearing talk of “illegal Jewish settlements” on slivers of land comprising one to two percent of the West Bank, mostly near the green line of Israel proper. But, attention now focuses on an explosion of thousands of illegal Palestinian constructions: village clusters, agricultural tracts, water networks, roads, and general infrastructure crisscrossing Area C of the West Bank. All of this violates the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.acpr.org.il/publications/books/43-Zero-oslo-accord.pdf" target="_blank">1993</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.acpr.org.il/publications/books/44-Zero-isr-pal-interim-agreement.pdf" target="_blank">1995</a>&nbsp;Oslo Accords, which specify full Israeli administrative control in Area C. Under the international agreement, only the Israeli Civil Administration can authorize new construction in the zone—for Israeli and Arab alike. However, continuous waves of recent Palestinian settlements are being established without permits—often without even bothering to apply. One senior official of the Israeli security apparatus called it “the wild west.”&nbsp;


	According to Israeli activist watchdog groups, such as Regavim, in the past half-decade, illegal Palestinian settlements and infrastructure have sprawled across more than 9,000 dunams in more than 250 Area C locations, supported by more than 600 kilometers of illegally constructed access roads and more than 112,000 meters of retaining walls and terracing. This massive works project is being conducted in broad daylight, often heralded by&nbsp;<a href="https://cdn.jns.org/uploads/2019/01/IMG_3797-880x495.jpg" target="_blank">tall announcement placards</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://english.pnn.ps/2019/06/28/eu-uk-renew-their-commitment-to-a-two-state-solution-by-supporting-projects-in-area-c/" target="_blank">proud press releases</a>.


	When questioned, various Israeli government officials did not dispute the Regavim numbers. In exasperation, one military spokesman close to the Area C files located at Bet El estimated “close to 10,000” illegal construction efforts are now underway—adding they felt “powerless to stop them.” The rapid build-up is funded by hundreds of millions of euros annually, funneled by the European Union and individual European nations into scores of building and infrastructure projects.


	Understanding the tortuous history that created the current sovereignty vacuum in Area C can be daunting and confusing.


	Leaving out 99 percent of everything … the indigenous Israelites of Canaan were expelled starting in 70 C.E. by the Romans, who renamed the region “Syria-Palaestina”—or&nbsp;Palestine,for the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sci-news.com/genetics/biblical-philistines-europe-07354.html" target="_blank">Philistine sea invaders from the Greek Islands</a>. In about 637 C.E., the Islamic invasion swept up from the Arabian Peninsula to conquer and convert. For about four centuries, the Turkish Ottoman Empire governed until its 1918 defeat in World War I. After WWI, the Allies dismembered Ottoman colonies throughout the Middle East and concomitantly encouraged self-determination for ethnic peoples across the Levant. The League of Nations, in association with 51 countries and competing nationalist groups, eventually established five modern Arab countries: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, modern Hejaz (Arabia) and post-colonial modern Egypt, plus one democratic and pluralistic Jewish State in Palestine. The original&nbsp;<a href="http://www.passia.org/media/filer_public/ff/40/ff40d409-e1ee-4eac-a0b3-3b7123dea2fa/pdfresizercom-pdf-crop_5.pdf" target="_blank">1920 “Mandate” boundaries</a>&nbsp;of the modern Jewish State extended from the Mediterranean Sea across the area now known as Jordan—a country which then did not exist.&nbsp;


	The Arabs were shortchanged by the French in their quest for an Arab Kingdom in Syria. So, in recompense, the British modified the Palestine Mandate in September 1922 by virtue of an&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Jordan_memorandum" target="_blank">official memorandum</a>, carving off some 70 percent of the intended Jewish nation to invent&nbsp;<a href="http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/his_transjordan.html" target="_blank">Trans-Jordan</a>&nbsp;(now Jordan)—the territory extended from the Jordan River east to the borders of Iraq and what is now Saudi Arabia. For decades, co-existence between Arabs and Jews in the former Turkish colony could not be achieved. In 1947, the non-binding&nbsp;<a href="https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/7F0AF2BD897689B785256C330061D253" target="_blank">UN Resolution 181</a>—known as&nbsp;Partition—recommended side-by-side Jewish and Arab states. In those days, the identity of the two peoples was “Arab” and “Jewish,” as local Arabs did not&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1945/12/04/archives/arabs-to-boycott-palestinian-goods-vote-action-against-jewish.html" target="_blank">adopt the identity of “Palestinian</a>” until about 1964.


	Israel accepted Partition, but the Arabs refused. The surrounding League-created Arab nations attacked the newly declared Jewish State. In 1948, Jordan (created by the British memo) illegally invaded and annexed&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanian_annexation_of_the_West_Bank#/media/File:Jordan_(including_West_Bank)_1955.png" target="_blank">the area west of the Jordan River</a>, including East Jerusalem, thus coining the new term, “West Bank” for the still-disputed former Turkish colonial provinces.


	In 1967, when Israel fought its preemptive Six Day War, expelling Jordan, the Jewish State occupied this same disputed former Turkish colonial region, still called the West Bank. In 1988,<a href="http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/88_july31.html" target="_blank">Jordan rescinded any claim</a>&nbsp;of sovereignty, deepening the sovereignty vacuum.&nbsp;


	In 1993 and 1995, after years of diplomatic wrangling, Israel and the avowed terror group Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords, envisioning a peaceful two-state solution.&nbsp;Under the complex Oslo Accords, and subsequent modifications at Wye, Sharm el-Sheikh, and elsewhere,&nbsp;the “West Bank” is divided into three separate administrative zones, Areas A, B and C.


	Area A is reserved for Palestinian civil and administrative control and seats the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Area B is governed by Palestinian civil control under a joint Israeli-Palestinian security apparatus.


	<a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/ocha_opt_area_c_map_2011_02_22.pdf" target="_blank">Area C</a>&nbsp;—also called Judea and Samaria—comprises roughly 60 percent of the West Bank. It more closely resembles the Biblical and original international demarcation of a Jewish State during the initial League of Nations mandate—but is now considered occupied by the international community. The majority of Area C residents are Israelis—an estimated 325,000 alongside some&nbsp;<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-un-300k-palestinians-live-in-area-c-1.5329286" target="_blank">300,000 Arabs</a>. In essence, Oslo normalized and structured the Israeli occupation and administration of the disputed former Turkish lands.


	But by virtue of a cumulative multibillion-euro effort, European capitals are working hard to destabilize the last pillars of the Oslo Accords. Thus, these countries seek to create a Palestinian state along the 1948 armistice line — also known as the 1967 lines— without further consulting the Jewish State. This ensures the Palestinian Authority knows it need not negotiate with Jerusalem—even as the United States and Gulf countries make a daring dash to achieve peace.


	As the urgency of Area C is becoming clearer, still murky is the source of the diverse European funding that enables this conflict and the routes those billions of euros take across the Mediterranean. What’s more, there is widespread fear that millions in funds are continuously funneled through entities openly accused of being affiliated with established terrorist organizations.

Who’s Funding Illegal Palestinian Settlements in Area C: Part 1

“Area C,” which comprises some 60 percent of the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, is making news these days. This time, the hot button issue is

Jerusalem Post&nbsp;editor Yaakov Katz probably had no way of knowing that this would be a perfect time to release his briskly-selling, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Strike-Israels-Mission-Eliminate/dp/1250191270" target="_blank">Shadow Strike—Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power</a>&nbsp;(St. Martin’s Press). Or did he?


	The world’s attention is once again and inevitably riveted to the nuclear threat from Iran, generating kaleidoscopic theories about a potential military strike to disable Tehran’s program. So, Katz’s case study of the run-up and run-down to the Jewish state’s clandestine destruction of Syria’s nuclear attempt in 2007 is now an imperative read.


	Katz flexes both his editorial sinews and his prior government connections (as a former senior policy advisor) to deliver a suspenseful chronicle, bolstered by rapid-fire precision and continuous in-room details. Understandably, this volume will be consulted time and time again by military theorists and diplomatic observers, wondering how it might be done—just in case it must be done again.


	From the first “you are there” opening scene that details Mossad Chief Meir Dagan’s White House presentation on the Syrian threat, the reader is put on notice to pay close attention. Never failing to paint in the details, Katz skillfully surrounds each personality in the story with a rich biography and a functioning profile in the time frame.


	For example, in Chapter 3, when introducing Israeli security cabinet official Rafi Eitan, the author ensures we know Eitan is more than just a security functionary taking notes. We are told that Eitan is a man who did a few other things, such as capture Adolf Eichmann. He was also the man who visited an American reactor when 200 kilograms of highly enriched uranium disappeared and&nbsp;perhaps, who-knows,&nbsp;found their way to Israel’s ambiguous nuclear program in Dimona. Eitan also worked ground operations against the PLO in Lebanon. He also happened to be the man who recruited and managed Israel’s infamous spy in the American naval establishment,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/why-jonathan-pollard-spent-30-years-in-prison" target="_blank">Jonathan Pollard</a>. This type of in-depth storytelling and character building travels from page to page in Katz’ superb volume. Hence, readers are enveloped in more than the historical facts. They are transported to the tense, unfolding world of personalities, events, clashes, countdowns, and decision-making that resulted in the successful Syrian takedown.


	So intense is the detailing of the decision process that the actual bombing of Syria’s reactor is but briefly reported in a few paragraphs as an&nbsp;ipso facto&nbsp;of the narrative.


	It might be easy to conflate the 2007 Syrian challenge to the current Iranian crisis. Syria was only taking preliminary steps toward nuclearization. Iran now has the essentials for a nuclear bomb that can be assembled and deployed within weeks, according to many experts.


	Tehran’s endless centrifuge arrays have spun off enough kilograms of 99 percent Highly Enriched Uranium that can be compressed into an unstable and dense core encased in an R-265 Shock Generator configured in a bifurcated sphere lined with 5mm grooves filled with PETN explosive that can be ignited with microsecond precision to create the synchronous implosion that will absorbed by an exploding bridgewire, sturdy enough to transduce and focus the massive implosion force triggering a neutron initiator to fire one particle into the warhead core to create the atomic chain reaction that will clap forth a murderous mushroom cloud.


	Additionally, Iran has developed a fleet of mobile Shahab-3 missiles derived from the North Korean No Dong, each with a nosecone large enough to carry the nuclear warhead. Tehran also possesses the flight guidance and ignition control to detonate such a warhead precisely 550 meters above the ground—mimicking the bombing of Hiroshima—thus unleashing a ferocious nuclear inferno. In fact, Iran recently&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jns.org/iran-insists-proscribed-missile-test-was-defensive/" target="_blank">test-fired such a Shahab-3</a>&nbsp;as a reminder that it still knows how to pull the trigger.


	As an added factor, Iran wields a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/News/Officials-Advanced-S-300-on-way-to-Iran" target="_blank">Russian S-300 missile defense system</a>&nbsp;fully capable of protecting its nuclear program and strike assets. All this just raises the stakes on decision-making and decisions.


	When reading Katz’s book, remember that as complex and difficult was the Syrian strike, any similar decision on Iran’s nuclear capability will be infinitely more daunting and riskier. If such a decision is made, the men and women who make it will stand on the shoulders of those who knocked down Syria’s facility—but reach for a perilously higher bar.


	Katz’s mastery of the facts and his relentless assemblage of puzzle pieces, together with his knowledge of the players and the potentialities, make&nbsp;Shadow Strike&nbsp;a powerful read. The volume also demands that Katz write another. No one knows if such a sequel will chronicle yet another shadow strike upon another nation to the north.

Shadow Strike

Jerusalem Post&nbsp;editor Yaakov Katz probably had no way of knowing that this would be a perfect time to release his briskly-selling, Shadow Strike—Inside

[Read Part I:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273315/israels-tourism-triumph-edwin-black">HERE</a>, Part II:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273400/israels-tourism-triumph-part-2-edwin-black">HERE</a>, Part III:<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273659/israels-tourism-triumph-part-3-edwin-black"> HERE]</a>.


	When the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement [BDS] mounted a campaign against Israel, it targeted more than Israel’s economy, including tourism—which has nonetheless flourished beyond any expectation. The “D” in BDS stands for delegitimize. So the anti-Israel movement also targeted the country’s very identity and legacy. A people’s future cannot be stolen unless first their history is abducted. BDS not only attacked Israel’s tourism industry, but also the country’s single greatest and most meaningful attraction—its multi-faith religious roots.


	Yes, Israel features excitement and awesome beauty in its museums and architectonic urban spaces, stem to stern coastline, as well as the country’s deserts, caves, hill treks, river trips, zip lines, and jeep excursions, not to mention its nightlife. Then again, many nations offer outstanding museums, mountains, and wilderness. However, there is one unique tourist attraction that Israel possesses that no other nation can offer, and which the people of all nations crave—its unrivaled religious heritage. This heritage is inextricably woven into the country’s national identity.


	All three major Abrahamic religions are anchored in Israel.


	Christians constitute the majority of tourists visiting Israel—many on religious quests. Generally speaking, Christian pilgrims are completely detached from Palestinian and Israeli political dynamics. Christian tourists can be seen on any day. On April 27, 2019, Holy Saturday before Orthodox Easter Sunday, some <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/orthodox-christians-mark-holy-fire-easter-ceremony-in-jerusalem/">10,000 Christian pilgrims</a> from across the world tried to squeeze into the hopelessly overcrowded Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem’s Old City for the 1,200-year old “Holy Fire” rite.


	On Ramadan, Muslims crowd into Jerusalem. In 2019, on the first Friday of Ramadan, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/180000-muslims-pray-peacefully-at-al-aqsa-mosque-on-first-friday-of-ramadan/">180,000</a> peacefully attended prayers—a <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/05/israel-permits-palestinians-al-aqsa-mosque-jerusalem-ramadan.html#ixzz5o1El7Hnt">50 percent increase</a> over 2018. In 2018, on the last day of Ramadan, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ramadan-prayers-in-jerusalem-end-peacefully-amid-gaza-violence/">some 200,000 Muslims</a> gathered at the Al Aqsa Mosque for their prayers. The faithful generally include <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/over-180000-worshippers-pray-at-al-aqsa-mosque-on-first-friday-of-ramadan-videos/">hundreds from Arab and Islamic countries</a> lacking diplomatic relations with Israel. For example, until a recent bilateral spat, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-05/israel-blocks-indonesian-passport-holders-from-entering-country/9835744">Indonesians</a> were regularly issued visas to tour Jerusalem.


	During Passover 2019, some <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/750000-people-visit-Western-Wall-since-start-of-Passover-587868">750,000 Jews</a> visited the Kotel, or Western Wall, many wedging a tiny note to God in the spaces between the massive stones.


	Despite the intense spiritual connections to Israel, BDS has tried to boycott the <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/news/germany-do-not-collaborate-israel%E2%80%99s-cultural-crimes-regards-looted-palestinian-dead-sea-scrolls">Dead Sea Scrolls</a>, Ireland has tried to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tux9jWZHO4">criminalize</a> the purchase of relics and religious mementos from the Via Dolorosa, and there has even emerged an almost-comical but <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/750000-people-visit-Western-Wall-since-start-of-Passover-587868">persistent misinformation</a> campaign, corollary to BDS, that asserts the Second Temple never even existed as Jewish edifice.


	Amidst all the veneration of Israel as a Holy Land, and against this international BDS campaign, two Jerusalem tunnels have emerged as among Israel’s greatest attractions, luring tourists from many countries. In the process, testifying from beneath the surface, these tunnels manifest Israel’s inhalable connection to the land and its history.


	Most prominent are the Western Wall or Kotel <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Jerusalem_Tunnel_BW_8.JPG/800px-Jerusalem_Tunnel_BW_8.JPG">tunnels</a>. Only an approximately 200-foot section of the Kotel is above ground. The rest—nearly 1,600 feet—lies underground and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&amp;v=QH_EqtsGwBA">can only be experienced</a> via the tunnel complex. The monolithic testament to Judaism’s ancient connection to Biblical Jerusalem is revealed in the enormity of the massive stones and their tell-tale chisel marks. One such stone weighs more than 500 tons—one of the heaviest ever handled.


	So many tourists are visiting, the official tunnel <a href="https://english.thekotel.org/western_wall_sites/western_wall_tunnels/about/">web site</a> now posts in <a href="https://cn.thekotel.org/">Chinese</a>, English, Spanish, French, Russian, and Portuguese as well as Hebrew. The most popular <a href="https://english.thekotel.org/western_wall_sites/western_wall_tunnels/about/">foreign languages</a> are Spanish, French, and Russian. In 2017, about 320,000 visitors from everywhere toured the tunnels, according to tunnel administration, who add that the 2018 number approximated 400,000. The 2019 tally is expected to hit another &nbsp;new record. All these visitors come against a backdrop of agitation against official or diplomatic visits to the Wall, especially after the controversial 2016 <a href="https://undocs.org/S/RES/2334(2016)">United Nations Security Council Resolution</a> 2334 which declared the Wall occupied territory. President Donald Trump’s administration broke that taboo. On May 14, 2019, attorney Alan Dershowitz <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14223/western-wall-note">invited all to join him</a> in committing “a war crime” by visiting the wall and slipping a note in the crevices.


	The second major underground attraction is Hezekiah’s Tunnel, a <a href="http://biblicalisraeltours.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/IMG_8540.jpg">below-ground water conduit</a> approximately 600 yards in length—that is, 1200 cubits. This length corresponds to the tunnel’s stone <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siloam_inscription#/media/File:Hashiloach.jpg">inscription</a> discovered in 1880 and now residing in a <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/despite-detente-ancient-hebrew-text-proving-jewish-ties-to-jerusalem-set-to-stay-in-istanbul/">Turkish museum</a>. The amazing engineering feat was presumably the work of King Hezekiah ahead of a siege by Assyrian King Sennacherib at the end of the eighth century BCE, described and alluded to in several Biblical passages. Among those texts is <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Chronicles+32%3A2-4&amp;version=NIV">2 Chronicles 32:2-4</a>, which <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/niv/2Chr.32.2-2Chr.32.4">states</a>, "When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and that he intended to wage war against Jerusalem, he consulted with his officials and military staff about blocking off the water from the springs outside the city, and they helped him. They gathered a large group of people who blocked all the springs and the stream that flowed through the land. ‘Why should the kings of Assyria come and find plenty of water?’ they said."


	Tunnel diggers are said to have started at opposite ends, advanced toward each other, and, astonishingly, <a href="https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Hezekiahs-tunnel1.jpg">met in the middle</a> to form a perfect conduit and gradient.


	For some years, Biblical archaeologists have <a href="https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/jerusalem/hezekiahs-tunnel-reexamined/">argued</a> about the exact dating of the tunnel and whether it was accomplished under the reign of Hezekiah or another king. But for travelers, the main attraction is the ankle-deep wet walk through the tunnel—and its riveting nexus to ancient Israel.


	Despite its dramatic connection to ancient Israel, a vigorous taboo has been promoted by international critics who claim the subterranean water conduit is located beneath the Arab neighborhood of Wadi Hilweh. Nonetheless, in 2017, more than 557,100&nbsp;visited&nbsp;the City of David and most&nbsp;sloshed through the underground passage. In 2018, the total jumped to more than 833,000. With 207,280 tunnel visitors in the first quarter of 2019, the year-end tally may reach near a million. City of David officials say most visitors are Americans, but that the number of Chinese tourists is rising dramatically.


	It is the measure of Israel’s tourism turbulence that even the most dramatic archeological manifestation of the Jewish connection to its ancient homeland has become a contentious flashpoint. But as&nbsp; in all other aspects of its international travel appeal, Israel’s Biblical tunnels are now permanently dug into the Jewish State’s tourism triumph.

Israel’s Tourism Triumph:  Part 4

[Read Part I:&nbsp;HERE, Part II:&nbsp;HERE, Part III: HERE].


	When the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement [BDS] mounted a campaign against Israel

[Read Part I: <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273315/israels-tourism-triumph-edwin-black">HERE</a>, Part II: <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273400/israels-tourism-triumph-part-2-edwin-black">HERE</a>].


	Israel’s adversaries in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement [BDS] thought they could starve Israel through economic warfare that included even its food sector. Many remember the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/03/27/471885452/when-500-palestinians-lose-their-jobs-at-sodastream-whos-to-blame" target="_blank">BDS furor</a>&nbsp;over&nbsp;<a href="https://bdsmovement.net/tags/sodastream" target="_blank">SodaStream</a>, Sabra&nbsp;<a href="http://bdslist.org/consumer/sabra-dipping-co-llc/" target="_blank">hummus</a>, ordinary&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2009/jan/23/israel-food-boycott-palestinians-gaza" target="_blank">fruits and vegetables</a>, as well as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/02/07/new-york-times-food-section-joins-the-boycott-israel-movement/" target="_blank">Israeli cuisine</a>&nbsp;and the country’s culinary&nbsp;<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-top-chefs-pull-out-of-tel-aviv-food-festival-following-bds-pressure-1.6652753" target="_blank">scene</a>. But none of it has stopped Israel’s restaurant sector from exploding into an audacious, red-hot success, now leading the planet in culinary excellence and bravado.


	As far as the Israeli restaurant scene is considered, “BDS” stands for only one thing: “Breakfast, Dinner, and Sweets.” Across the country, Israeli restaurants sizzle with celebrity chefs and horizon-expanding culinary wizardry.


	Decades ago, Israel’s culinary scene was largely defined by omnipresent falafel, shawarma and pizza stands, tomatoes and cucumbers sliced with endless variation, carrot juice vendors, over-glitzed coffee and pastry bars, and truck stop-style roadside eateries offering spiced Moroccan-style salads in drab arrays. Sameness and no sophistication were the main flavors of the day—every day. All that’s over.


	In recent years, highly trained and innovative, if feisty, chefs have been opening one trendy restaurant after another. Now hip dining spots can be found everywhere—from hotel rooftops with majestic views to disused warehouses, converted old homes, tight alleys and sidewalks, rooftops, seaside balconies, hilltop niches, spots overlooking the seashore, a hillside, or even a wall—and the sometimes just the cramped space between two other cramped spaces.


	What is called “Israeli cuisine” is an undefinable fusion-on-steroids of 150 or so indigenous and immigrant cuisines that have left their traces on an unrestrained determination to re-imagine past foods for the palate of the future. Most ingredients are obtained within a 15-minute to 60-minute drive—meaning unparalleled same-day freshness. Unchained—yet somehow tethered to a Jewish and regional past—today’s Israeli cuisine re-blends European, Arabic, and Asian traditions in a visual audacity that erases taste borders.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/celebrity-chefs-get-the-birthright-treatment-on-foodie-trip/" target="_blank">Israeli celebrity chefs</a>,&nbsp;such as Yotam Ottolenghi, Eyal Shani, andMike Solomonov&nbsp;have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Culture/Israeli-cuisine-How-did-we-get-here-512040" target="_blank">burned</a>&nbsp;their stamps on&nbsp;<a href="https://theculturetrip.com/middle-east/israel/articles/5-israeli-chefs-that-are-taking-the-world-by-storm/" target="_blank">kitchens worldwide</a>.


	Dinner can easily cost more than $100 per person. Tourists must compete with an estimated&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jns.org/forbes-ranking-of-world-billionaires-lists-21-israelis/" target="_blank">21 Israeli billionaires</a>—half of whom&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tel-aviv-billionaire-lifestyle-mansions-social-clubs-tech-real-estate-2019-4#facebook-too-has-an-office-in-the-city-11" target="_blank">live</a>&nbsp;in Tel Aviv, and more than 100,000 millionaires churned out by the nation’s rarified start-up and high-tech sectors. For more than 4.1 million annual tourists, reserving a table two to five weeks in advance is a must.


	Almost&nbsp;<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-in-2019-israel-s-restaurants-are-getting-eaten-alive-1.6495033" target="_blank">200,000 people</a>&nbsp;work in the restaurant industry, about half of them waiters, which has created a teeming industry touching all. Restaurants mean employment to immigrant workers, average Israelis, and Palestinians who have embraced the Israeli economy. Trendy restaurants are a national pastime and uplifting social force.


	Ironically, with all the dining fervor, today there are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-in-2019-israel-s-restaurants-are-getting-eaten-alive-1.6495033" target="_blank">fewer</a>&nbsp;restaurants in Israel today than a few years ago. The high cost of doing business and the compulsion to achieve excellence has squeezed many restaurants out of business. The cost and tribulations of official koshering is steep, and too often simply an&nbsp;<a href="https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-hotels-cut-costs-by-forgoing-kosher-certificates-1001279938" target="_blank">unnerving pressure</a>. Unthinkable a decade ago, many restaurants now forego kosher certification and even ignore kosher food guidelines regarding pork and shrimp. Most impacting, recent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-in-2019-israel-s-restaurants-are-getting-eaten-alive-1.6495033" target="_blank">tax rulings</a>&nbsp;on employee pensions and tips have squeezed the entire industry. About one third of restaurants close within their first year. Margins are carpaccio-thin. Asaf Lees, co-owner of Sucre Ltd. restaurant group, quips, “Opening a restaurant in Tel Aviv today is almost impossible without the power of suppliers."


	Nonetheless, Israel still offers more than&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurants-g293977-Israel.html" target="_blank">6,200</a>&nbsp;eateries—about 1,400 of which are in Tel Aviv.


	Any short list of recommended restaurants will be immediately assailed for leaving out 100 other recommended restaurants. But … three of Tel Aviv’s best restaurants are operated by one company, Sucre Ltd., which combines celebrity chef flamboyance and leveraged buying power to succeed. All three require two to three weeks to secure a table. At the top is&nbsp;<a href="http://www.kitchen-market.co.il/" target="_blank">Kitchen Market</a>, housed above a farmer’s market at Tel Aviv’s north port. Noisy and crowded, the establishment is overseen by celebrity chef Yossi Shitrit, who appears on his own popular culinary TV show.


	Less cacophonous is the restaurant&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mashya.co.il/" target="_blank">Mashya</a>, located in a small hotel near the beach. Also under Chef Yossi’s baton, yet offering a more distilled environment,&nbsp;Mashya’s&nbsp;presentations are just as style-revising. The third Sucre eatery is&nbsp;<a href="http://www.onza.co.il/" target="_blank">Onza</a>, a raucous inside-outside Turkish eatery dropped into an alley in Jaffa’s flea market area. Here the platters are sumptuous, and the music is loud and rhythmic.


	Jerusalem is also packed with must-try restaurants. Atop the Mamilla Hotel with an unparalleled view of the Old City is its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mamillahotel.com/rooftop" target="_blank">Rooftop Restaurant</a>. The dignity and diplomatic history of Jerusalem is reflected in the unparalleled Shabbat lunch every Saturday at the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.danhotels.com/JerusalemHotels/KingDavidJerusalemHotel/Restaurants" target="_blank">King David Hotel</a>. Little-known&nbsp;<a href="https://www.talbiye.com/home-page" target="_blank">Talbiye</a>&nbsp;crafts&nbsp;pork and shrimp dishes among its offerings.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sdnrest.com/home" target="_blank">Culinary Workshop</a>, secreted in a warehouse off the beaten path, also serves numerous incarnations of pork and bacon as well as shrimp; this place is in such demand, the hostess shocked us with this greeting: “Please finish your meal within an hour and fifteen minutes as your table is reserved for someone else.”


	Probably the most memorable eating experiences are squeezed together in the&nbsp;<a href="https://en.machne.co.il/" target="_blank">Machane Yehuda</a>&nbsp;market. Affectionately known as the&nbsp;shuk, this ramshackle and vivacious convergence of food and all portable things sold in stalls was&nbsp;<a href="https://en.machne.co.il/category/history" target="_blank">first established during the Ottoman Empire</a>. Here you can purchase and often sample every type of exotic spice, olive, halva desert, meat or fish, cheese, bread, specialty, or pastry in a crowded atmosphere made electric with the unmasked pulse of Israel.


	One of&nbsp;<a href="https://en.machne.co.il/" target="_blank">Machane Yehuda</a>’s best eateries is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/AZURARESTURANT/?rf=246605802020055" target="_blank">Azura</a>—breakfast and lunch only—which serves supremely sumptuous Turkish and Oriental dishes in basic surroundings.


	Nearby behold&nbsp;<a href="https://www.machneyuda.co.il/" target="_blank">Machenyuda</a>, Israel’s wildest, most in-crowded and sought-after restaurant, which requires five to eight weeks for a table—that is, if they answer the phone and don’t lose the reservation. Culinary mastery and innovation combine with loud music and an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=39&amp;v=yC9t4BzcYpM" target="_blank">edge-of-the-world canteen atmosphere</a>. If you order the insane dessert thing, prepare for&nbsp;<a href="https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0c/1a/f7/22/set-menu-table-desert.jpg" target="_blank">shock sweets</a>. See it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJJpDgKmKTI" target="_blank">here</a>—no&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaJfpCGCGf4" target="_blank">here</a>… okay, try&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVDREPPLGJA" target="_blank">here</a>.


	Finally, there are many emirs in Israel’s restaurant scene. But only one sultan—<a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Uri-Buri/197362996940734" target="_blank">Uri Buri</a>, a simple café hidden on a dark corner at the far northern Akko coast. It is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.departures.com/travel/black-book/legend-uri-buri-restaurant" target="_blank">acclaimed</a>&nbsp;as Israel’s culinary mecca, recognized by gourmands everywhere. Guru founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tastecooking.com/bearded-chef-akko/" target="_blank">Chef Uri&nbsp;Jeremias</a>, sporting a massive white beard cascading down to mid-belly, is worshipped for the purity, simplicity, freshness and inherent power of his seafood creations.&nbsp;Celebrity chefs and food aficionados alike make the 90-minute pilgrimage north of Tel Aviv to this tiny stone structure to be reminded that where food meets the soul, the elusive human quintessence can be faintly—if fleetingly—discerned.


	Whether one dines at the simplistic hummus cafes of Haifa or the exquisite Michelin-endowed concept restaurants of Herzliya, an inescapable conclusion accompanies the fare: Food is good for peace. Peace is good for food. No one makes war while enjoying a good meal.

Israel’s Tourism Triumph: Part 3

[Read Part I: HERE, Part II: HERE].


	Israel’s adversaries in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement [BDS] thought they could starve Israel

[Read Part I: <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273315/israels-tourism-triumph-edwin-black">HERE</a>]


	The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement [BDS] has taken particular aim at Israel’s tourism industry. Tourism accounts for about 11 percent of global GDP and 350 million jobs worldwide—more than ten percent of employment on the planet. In Israel, tourism is more than just sun, seashore, and spirituality; it infused Israel’s economy with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hotelmanagement.net/own/4-12m-visitors-2018-israel-plans-for-more-hotels" target="_blank">$6 billion</a>&nbsp;in 2018. Tourism is also the geopolitical inhalant that allows Israel to sustain its diplomatic and sovereign niche in the world.


	For all its efforts to isolate Israel—including convincing Airbnb to remove Jewish listings in Judea and Samaria—BDS has failed to even dent Israel’s triumphant tourism growth. In 2018, a record 4.1 million visitors streamed into Israel from all over the world. Massive tourist influxes are now seen from the Chinese and Indian travel markets as well as America’s Christian community.


	The escalating global demand has created an increasingly acute hotel room shortage. Year-round occupancy—with many seasonal and situational carve outs—now averages some&nbsp;<a href="https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israel-hotel-overnights-keep-rising-1001266045" target="_blank">70 percent nationally</a>&nbsp;for the country’s approximately&nbsp;<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/foreign-visitors-spending-record-number-of-nights-in-israeli-hotels-1.6315104" target="_blank">55,000</a>&nbsp;rooms. But on many days,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/291646/STR-Israel-hotel-performance-booming-due-to-higher-ADR" target="_blank">Nazareth achieves 85 percent</a>, Jerusalem hits 83 percent,&nbsp;<a href="https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israel-hotel-overnights-keep-rising-1001266045" target="_blank">Tel Aviv tops 79 percent</a>, Haifa reaches 75 percent, and Eilat scores 72 percent. About half those rooms are taken by overseas visitors, not domestic tourists. An estimated 20 percent of all foreign visitors aren’t even using hotels, opting to stay with friends and family, rent apartments, or utilize alternative&nbsp;<a href="https://shorttermrentalz.com/news/israel-hotel-association-blames-airbnb-for-declines-in-hotel-occupancy/" target="_blank">short-term boarding</a>.


	At times, the sheer volume can overwhelm capacity. One tourism insider indicates that a single American company, not of Jewish ownership, will be bringing 6,000 individuals to Israel in fall 2019 as part of a corporate incentive program. That one program is so large that no single city can host it. The company’s travelers are being split between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.


	Industry experts warn that Israel needs as many as 15,000 hotel rooms to keep up with the current growth demand. This is especially true in the North, where Christian pilgrims want to walk in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth and dip into the Sea of Galilee. Hotel operators complain it can take five to ten years to build a hotel due to Israeli bureaucracy. Translation: rooms are getting scarcer and more expensive. This trend will only intensify, as Israel is seeking to double its current levels to 10 million tourists annually, competing with other Mediterranean basin nations, such as Greece, which attract more than&nbsp;<a href="http://www.traveller.com.au/greece-tourism-numbers-europes-latest-victim-of-overtourism-h110v6" target="_blank">30 million</a>&nbsp;annually, and Spain, which enjoys more than&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-economy-tourism/spain-international-tourism-breaks-records-for-fifth-straight-year-idUSKBN1F01EI" target="_blank">80 million</a>&nbsp;per year.


	Proof of the economic gleam in Israel’s tourism increase is the quality of the hotel room growth. Israel is witnessing nothing less than an explosion of high-end luxury hotels.


	Although terms such as “luxury” have been bandied about by Israeli hoteliers for some time, the apex of true world-class luxury in Israel is arguably now occupied by Hilton International, one of Israel’s most venerated hotel names. The Tel Aviv Hilton, dominating the north of the city in its own seaside compound, has long hosted glitterati and accomplished world travelers fed by Hilton’s worldwide reservation system. For years, the Tel Aviv Hilton gave stiff competition to the Dan Hotel,&nbsp;which always boasts a lobby graced by diplomats and statesmen.


	Now the Tel Aviv Hilton has soared ahead by creating new peak luxury quarters within its existing hotel. The top floors of the hotel have been set aside as “the Vista at Tel Aviv Hilton,” featuring private, concierge check-in, expansive unobstructed floor to ceiling room views of the coast, and a&nbsp;<a href="https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0d/f9/64/b6/view-from-the-vista-lounge.jpg" target="_blank">club floor</a>&nbsp;with overwhelming gourmet food service. The Vista is unmistakably the platinum address in Tel Aviv for seasoned travelers and expense account-endowed businessmen, who stream in from across the globe. While more costly than the regular Hilton, the unending gastronomical offerings of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www3.hilton.com/resources/media/hi/TLVHITW/en_US/img/shared/full_page_image_gallery/main/HL_vistalounge01_2_675x359_FitToBoxSmallDimension_Center.jpg" target="_blank">club floor</a>&nbsp;are worth it for food value alone. What’s more, the Vista club floor is ringed by an unparalleled&nbsp;<a href="https://www.joyofkosher.com/.image/t_share/MTQ5MTI0MjQ5MjUwOTY0NTM1/vista_lounge.jpg" target="_blank">outdoor balcony</a>&nbsp;where guests can sip espresso and munch on savories as eagle-level wind currents swirl about.


	Outclassing even the Vista is arguably Israel’s number one luxury hotel, the Waldorf-Astoria, also Hilton-managed. The former&nbsp;<a href="http://www.zionistarchives.org.il/en/AttheCZA/AdditionalArticles/Pages/PalaceHotel.aspx" target="_blank">Palace Hotel</a>was built by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, to outclass the King David. The Palace opened in 1929, but closed in 1935. The British converted it to drab government offices—it even hosted the Peel Commission. The Hagana bugged the rooms to monitor progress.


	In 2005, the disused structure&nbsp;<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/jerusalems-waldorf-astoria-sold-for-160-million/" target="_blank">was purchased</a>, renovated for a reported sum of $150 million, and imbued with inspiring Moroccan, Arab, and Romanesque architectonic motifs. These include a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sdjewishworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Waldorf-Astoria-Jerusalem.jpg" target="_blank">breathtaking atrium lobby</a>&nbsp;dominated by a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.israel21c.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/11.jpg" target="_blank">majestic clock tower</a>&nbsp;emblazoned with Roman, Hebrew, and European numerals.&nbsp;<a href="https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/05/c2/15/4b/cascading-staircase.jpg" target="_blank">Every angle</a>&nbsp;of every view of the interior reveals a different visual sweep. Hilton broke with tradition and hired outside the native Israeli hotel industry, bringing in its finest staffers from the great hotels of the world to augment its local force. Located just steps from the Mamilla Mall and ensconced in its own entry street, the Waldorf is centrally located. Style and&nbsp;joie de vivre&nbsp;almost hypnotically envelop guests with an urge to return and make the Waldorf their must Jerusalem address.


	New luxurious hotels have appeared from Eilat to Akko in the north. But none is more&nbsp;<a href="https://images.haarets.co.il/image/fetch/w_1920,h_817,q_auto,c_fill,f_auto/fl_any_format.preserve_transparency.progressive:none/https:/www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.5661165.1515414362!/image/1018316866.jpg" target="_blank">compelling</a>&nbsp;than the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.isrotel.com/beresheet" target="_blank">Beresheet</a>&nbsp;in the Negev town of Mitzpe Ramon,&nbsp;<a href="https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OD-BK289_ISRAEL_P_20160503160524.jpg" target="_blank">sprawling</a>&nbsp;at the edge of the great Ramon crater. The Beresheet is nothing less than the eighth hotel wonder of the world. It single-handedly made obsolete the notion that Negev tourism is&nbsp;ipso facto&nbsp;a tent or hostel experience. Booked far in advance at a premium price, the Beresheet offers 111 private villas, 39 with private pools, sprinkled across 12.5 desert acres. Visitors are carted to their villas up steep stone runways where feral Nubian&nbsp;<a href="https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/09/f3/8f/c4/beresheet-hotel-by-isrotel.jpg" target="_blank">ibexes</a>&nbsp;saunter nearby in comfort. Every visitor to Israel should set aside 3 days to stay at the Beresheet and enjoy its fabulous spa.


	The Beresheet’s architectural triumph is emblematic of Israel’s determination to meet its astonishing tourism growth, employing all its most creative and environmental assets throughout the nation. By the end of this decade, thousands of additional luxury offerings will catapult the Jewish state to the pinnacle of world destinations. The torch of tourism ignites peace. The greater Israel’s tourism triumph; the more irresistible is the concept of peace with its neighbors.

Israel’s Tourism Triumph: Part 2

[Read Part I: HERE]


	The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement [BDS] has taken particular aim at Israel’s tourism industry. Tourism accounts for

The virulently anti-Israel movement known as Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions—BDS—is roiling through campuses, overflowing into city councils, encroaching into corporate boardrooms, and now chomping at the essence of Israel’s special niche in the world: its travel and tourism industry. Everywhere, the boycotters have been asking to isolate Israel. BDS even convinced Airbnb to stop listing Jewish locations in Judea and Samaria—also known as the West Bank (a term invented after Jordan invaded in 1948, when the UN’s partition suggestion failed to create two states). In Ireland, <a href="https://www.thejournal.ie/occupied-territories-bill-2-4365694-Nov2018/">a bill advancing</a> through Parliament <a href="https://www.francesblack.ie/single-post/settlement-goods">may criminalize</a> visiting the old city and even <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tux9jWZHO4&amp;feature=youtu.be">purchasing lunch</a> or a keepsake.


	Whereas similar boycotts against other countries have inflicted withering effects on national economies, in Israel—it simply hasn’t worked. The opposite is true. Yes, boycotters are busy demonizing Israel. Yet despite this, Israel’s tourism industry has rocketed to a singular triumph and now employs tens of thousands. Flights are packed and new non-stops are being added across the globe. Even though new luxury hotels are going up as fast as the Mideast sun will dry concrete, rooms remain in high demand and, thus, are scarce and expensive. Israel has become world famous for creative cuisine and trendy eateries; so if you want to get a table at the most popular restaurants, you’ll need to book weeks in advance.


	Travel and tourism to Israel has dramatically changed. It’s not just synagogue sisterhoods and Jewish organizations. Swelling up from Israel’s “Start-up Nation,” world famous top chef culture, and hard-won penetration of markets beyond America and West Europe, as well as its sophisticated travel industry burnishing, Israel is now a destination for the entire world. Traditional Jewish-American travelers from Miami to Seattle must now compete with Silicon Valley techies, Chinese students, Indian tourists, East European Christian pilgrims, and diverse businessmen from across the planet. The numbers are multiplying.


	In 2016, 2.9 million total worldwide visitors visited Israel. By the close of 2018, that number had boomed to <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/257226">4.1 million</a>—and the totals keep climbing. Within the coming decade, Israel expects to employ 98,000 people in its tourism sector.


	When Israeli tourism prospers, so does the Palestinian community. Christian pilgrims make a beeline for Bethlehem. Thus, tourism breeds economic interdependence and strengthens co-existence.


	Arrivals stream in from everywhere.


	Today, most North American travelers to Israel are not Jewish; they are Christian, often seeking Biblical discovery. From North America, Jews comprise about 40 to 45 percent of the travelers, while Christians generally hover at about 60 percent year to year, according to official estimates. While the Jewish-Christian percentages remain the same, the growth spurt for North America has seen the overall numbers increase by 42 percent since 2016.


	In 2009, only 20,000 Indians visited Israel, reports Israel’s tourism office in New Delhi. Some years ago, Israel hosted Indian travel agents knowing that in India, such agents book most of the travel. Reciprocal travel programs tapped such markets as India’s <a href="https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/kerala-sees-promise-in-israel-for-its-tourism/article26283725.ece">Kerala Christians</a>. Dramatically improved diplomatic relations between New Delhi and Jerusalem combined with <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/israel-targets-over-65-per-cent-growth-in-indian-tourist-arrivals/articleshow/63666072.cms">thrice-weekly direct Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner</a> service—which was granted special Saudi flyover permission, saving more than two hours—has created a steady flow of Indian visitors. This year, Israel expects <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium--1.6339672">more than 80,000</a> Indian arrivals, with travel officials working to achieve a further <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/israel-expects-3-lakh-indian-tourists-annually-in-next-3-4-years/story-IvaFOdNbkXLrgzAwqsbhkK.html">65 percent increase</a>. That may happen if, as planned, the Israeli film industry <a href="https://thewire.in/film/israels-charm-offensive-has-won-over-bollywood">entices Bollywood producers</a> to use Israeli locations.


	In 2015, only 30,000 tourists visited Israel from China. But when direct flights between Ben Gurion airport and numerous Chinese cities were added, the number more than trebled to <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201901/29/WS5c4fa845a3106c65c34e6fc8.html">100,000-plus</a> annually. Today, China is Israel’s greatest growth market. Celebrity Chinese chefs are now flown in, and Chinese-speaking guides are easily found.


	Air connections are the lifeblood of Israel’s tourism as well as its international viability. Nowadays you can fly nonstop to Israel from numerous North American cities. From New York’s JFK, <a href="https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/israel-news/1578756/delta-airlines-announces-two-flights-daily-from-tel-aviv-to-jfk-in-2019.html">Delta</a> is launching a twice daily nonstop. From Newark’s Liberty, United also flies nonstop twice daily. From Washington, D.C.’s Dulles, United will soon inaugurate thrice weekly non-stop service. From Toronto, Air Canada offers daily non-stops. From Montreal, Air Canada will fly twice weekly during the summer. From San Francisco, United flies daily, primarily for the surging nexus to Silicon Valley.


	North American carriers all compete with <a href="https://www.elal.com/">El Al</a>, which is by far the dominant carrier linking our continent with Israel—boasting 45 nonstop flights weekly that carry more than 50,000 passengers per month. For many Israel-bound travelers, El Al is the one and only carrier. And it has vastly improved. With the exception of the Jewish sabbath and holidays, Israel’s star-emblazoned national carrier flies day or night, rain or shine, good news or bad news, rockets or not. Its unique extra security, where young security staffers at the airport ask invasive personal questions to evaluate risk, are sometimes viewed as a mix between reassurance, ritual, and a Jewish guilt trip. “You’re coming to Israel? Why now?” Or the classic: “Who do you know in Israel?” Answer: “Everyone.”


	El Al has conquered labor problems, on-board religious tiffs, and more to expand and enhance its daily service to and from multiple U.S. cities. Not only can you fly <a href="https://www.elal.com/">El Al</a> nonstop direct from New York, Newark, and Miami, but now also from Boston, Los Angeles, Toronto, and this summer, from Las Vegas and San Francisco. In spring 2020, Chicago service starts. Most of all, El Al predominantly offers Dreamliner service. On its 747 and 777 fleet, El Al still offers <a href="https://www.elal.com/en/PassengersInfo/Uniqe-Services/Pages/Preferred-Seat.aspx">Economy Seat PLUS</a>, relatively affordable, spacious, and comfortable—especially in the <a href="https://www.elal.com/SpecialSeats?language=eng">bulkhead row</a>. For many traveling to Israel, El Al’s Economy Seat PLUS is now the go-to booking. What’s more, you can purchase business class check-in at either JFK or Newark for $35–$45, and your travel experience will be delightful. The lounge is restful and stocked with good food and beverages, allowing you await departure in luxury.


	Israel’s tourism triumph would not have been possible without an airline triumph as well. That triumph in the skies has finally happened.

Israel’s Tourism Triumph

The virulently anti-Israel movement known as Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions—BDS—is roiling through campuses, overflowing into city councils, encroaching

This is deeply personal. But what I have experienced should resonate with the entire Jewish community—the one we know and the one to come. In the whirlwind that seizes me and all who are communally aware, I have reached a new and stunning personal location, wedged between the searing past and the uncertain future.


	<a href="https://www.jta.org/2005/02/14/archive/first-person-after-escaping-from-nazi-boxcar-polish-jew-shared-inspiring-life-story">My story</a> begins before I was born, when my grandmother Fanya seized her slender teen-aged daughter—my mother-to-be— Edyka, and pushed her out of the <a href="http://www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/pic/bigjuden.jpg">small vent</a> at the top of a suffocating boxcar rumbling inexorably from <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/Bialystok_Ghetto_15-20_August_1943_%28liquidation%29.jpg/459px-Bialystok_Ghetto_15-20_August_1943_%28liquidation%29.jpg">Bialystok</a>, Poland <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82ystok_Ghetto#/media/File:WW2-Holocaust-Poland.PNG">toward</a> the <a href="http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/cab/imgContent/200708070007.jpg">Treblinka</a> death camp. Together, they made the split-second decision that at least one person should escape. My mother became a “jumper.” That day, she jumped into a hostile and dangerous Polish forest, was shot by local forces, and then buried in a hastily-arranged mass grave in the snow. Buried, yet one nearly lifeless limb protruded.


	Teen-aged Herschel, <a href="https://edwinblack.com/uploads/cmimg_77440">an audacious forest fighter</a>, came upon the area. Spying Edyka’s leg moving, he pulled her out of the pile. For two years, under cloak of night and by raw courage, they lived in the woods as brave partisans. They <a href="https://edwinblack.com/uploads/cmimg_77443">survived</a>. After the war, believing millions of Jews had been killed, <a href="https://www.momentmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/love-stories-from-the-Holocaust.pdf">they decided</a> to continue living as Jews, precisely because so many tried to kill our people. After two years in a <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/foehrenwald-displaced-persons-camp">displaced persons</a> camp, they found their U.S. home in Chicago. Their courage and determination allowed me to be born.


	Growing up, I eagerly inhaled my Jewish heritage and love of Israel. With imbued purpose, I devoted my life to unmasking and addressing the hidden players and hidden hands behind the darkest evils and injustices. I adopted the identity of a <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206058.pdf">Second Generation</a> author long before the larger Second Generation movement developed its own national identity.


	Among the disparate generation of unique survivors that came to America, many parsed themselves into two types. One group was determined to boldly keep the memory of Nazi crimes intensely illuminated as a warning beacon to all humanity—that was my family’s group. This group robustly fought for commemoration, investigation, and compensation. They demanded unending x-rays and dissection of the sick international body politic that perpetrated, facilitated, and tolerated the Holocaust. My eye was focused on corporate complicity by those too big to be exposed, such as <a href="https://ibmandtheholocaust.com/">IBM</a>, <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/66478">Ford</a>, <a href="http://pdfs.jta.org/2006/2006_11_30.pdf?_ga=2.150386166.1936145837.1551044232-1063212327.1551044232">GM</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Weak-Eugenics-Americas/dp/0914153293/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=241620725473&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocphy=9051526&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvpos=1t1&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvrand=11418920540843961392&amp;hvtargid=kwd-1125515942&amp;keywords=the+war+against+the+weak&amp;qid=1551044328">Carnegie</a>, and <a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-challenge-of-legacy/">Rockefeller</a>.


	A second group of survivors preferred not to talk about the unspeakable experience except among themselves—the so-called “sha-sha” survivors. Perhaps, while some were proud to survive, somehow they also felt shamed by the degradation they had overcome. Some felt guilty that they lived while their loved ones had perished by gas, gunshot or other gruesome means. Each had deeply personal reasons for their reticence. But all were protective of their American-born children. Many wanted to shield their sons and daughters from their traumatic experiences as a further act of conquest over their anguish. Even so, by this century, many “sha-sha” survivors had found their voices, and sought rooftops to climb and vociferously proclaim their identity. But by now, a new generation had grown up with far fewer nightmares.


	During those post-war decades, the “sha-sha” mindset among survivors was accompanied by the nonchalance of comfortable, non-refugee Jews who felt no threat to their safety in fortress America, the land of equality, freedom, and personal protections. Too many saw the bond with Israel to be a cultural encumbrance to their assimilated American existence. Family traditions were replaced with internet communities.


	Like many in the corridors of the communally aware, I have been repeatedly shocked by the eruption of open anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence in Europe, the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism in the United States, and the eroded position of Israel within certain flanks of the Jewish community. Like many who worry about such matters, my outlook was bleak.


	Then two things happened to me.


	Last year, my operatically-trained, rock-pop singer/songwriter and cantorial soloist daughter <a href="https://www.rachelblack.com/">Rachel Black</a>—with no advance notice to me—wrote a haunting Holocaust ballad. It is among the first songs of the Holocaust written in contemporary musical style. I was astonished to learn that it was titled “Edyka,” named for my mother. In piercing rhythms and searing lyrics, “Edyka” retold the story of my grandmother in that ghastly boxcar, saving my mother, which made it possible for me to exist and for my daughter to also exist, thereby keeping the memory alive. When we live beyond our days, it is only because we live in memory. My mother has passed, but her inspiring struggle lives on. I have repeatedly written about my parents’ story, and now my daughter has ignited a new vector of remembrance in song.


	Then, Rachel was invited to sing and deliver a keynote address at her state’s <a href="https://www.cjonline.com/news/20180409/granddaughter-of-holocaust-survivors-stories-need-to-be-told">official Yom HaShoah commemoration</a> in 2018. At the last minute, she received permission to sneak preview her song in a solo performance, evoking a rousing, emotional reception. Soon, Rachel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAycwqCD8Zg">performed Edyka</a> elsewhere in Kansas, where she lives, now with accompanying musicians, attracting a following who connected with the message. Crowds teared up and stood in applause when she chanted the song’s pulsing injunction to survive. The Kansas City Star learned of the buzz and published <a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article210286509.html">an extended Mother’s Day feature</a> about my daughter, her grandmother, her great-grandmother, and the song linking them all. The newspaper also video-recorded a performance of the song for its website. Quickly, the Kansas City Star’s coverage was syndicated, and then picked up by the Associated Press. Within days, the feature had been published by several dozen American newspapers including the <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/18/song-details-how-a-mother-saved-her-daughter-from-/">Washington Times</a> and <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article210839084.html">Miami Herald</a>. A few weeks later, Rachel and her group of accompanying musicians found themselves in a recording studio. Shortly after the <a href="http://www.kcjc.com/index.php/current-news/latest-news/5152-rachel-black-releases-single-of-her-haunting-holocaust-song-edyka">CD was released</a>, Amazon issued a big order, and it briskly <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Edyka-Rachel-Black/dp/B07K147LJ1">sold as a single</a>. Last October 2018, Rachel flew to Washington D.C. to perform her song at the National Press Club before a <a href="https://edwinblack.com/uploads/cmimg_77640.pdf">prestigious gathering</a> at a Holocaust Legacy ceremony. A few weeks later, she rendered a house-chilling <a href="https://edwinblack.com/uploads/cmimg_77647.pdf">performance</a> at a large commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht held at Temple Israel in Manhattan, sponsored by the Suzanna Cohen Legacy Foundation.


	I said two things happened to me. One was my daughter’s song about my mother and grandmother.


	The second was learning that Rachel would be bringing into the world another descendant, made possible by my grandmother and mother, eternalized in song by my daughter, now giving birth to my granddaughter as the generation-to-generation slow-motion staccato trumpet ceaselessly blasts. Second Generation, Third Generation, now Fourth Generation.


	The new 4G arrival is baby Cora Edyka. Korach gave rise to the original cantors who sang at the Ark of the Covenant. Edyka was in the boxcar. Thus comes Cora Edyka, fit and fighting to take her place in the legacy of survival. I received a video of Cora Edyka’s first moments in the world as her mother gently sang to her in Hebrew—<a href="http://www.zemirotdatabase.org/view_song.php?id=17">Hinei Mah Tov</a>. “How good it is… to dwell together.” Hence, the first sounds heard in Cora Edyka’s existence were not Sesame Street cheeps or baby doll squeaks, but the very sounds the Nazis worked so hard to extinguish.


	Whether <a name="_Hlk2256589">“sha-sha” or fiery activist, </a>the generations of the Holocaust have been determined to fortify and protect the ones to follow. Quite soon, all the survivors will be gone. The Second Generation, including me, will also soon be gone. The Third Generation has the duty to ensure that the Fourth Generation will carry the torch. Sha-sha is no more. It will be the Third and Fourth Generation’s challenge that we “Never Forget,” for ourselves and for the world. This challenge will be immeasurably more difficult in the decades to come than it was for me over the past half century.


	At issue is the question of whether the next generation of Jews will walk furtively looking over their shoulder, or boldly toward a gleaming horizon. I know Rachel and Cora will be among the bold. But they will need plenty of strength and help.

Bearing the Torch of Holocaust Memory

This is deeply personal. But what I have experienced should resonate with the entire Jewish community—the one we know and the one to come. In the whirlwind

Organized disruptors—both students and non-students—who shut down a pro-Israel gathering at University of California Los Angeles in May 2018 might not be prosecuted, according to information from LA City Attorney Mike Feuer’s office. Instead, they will be called to a confidential but mandatory proceeding called a “City Attorney Hearing,” an alternative to prosecution which can be described as a “warning” not to repeat the conduct. One legal expert compared it a “deferred prosecution,” but stressed a full trial could still result. Victims generally do not appear at such a hearing, the City Attorney’s office explained, and generally no criminal record attaches. Still, the prosecutor retains the right to issue charges later if he feels the illegal conduct has recurred or may recur. Los Angeles conducts hundreds of such closed-door hearings each year to dispose of minor misdemeanors arising from, for example, neighbor disputes, domestic disharmony, or curfew violations.


	To the south of Los Angeles, newly-installed Orange County Prosecutor Todd Spitzer is still undecided about prosecuting rambunctious disruptors of a pro-Israel event at University of California Irvine which also took place last May, according to official university sources. Spitzer’s office has asked for additional police investigation to develop more facts.


	With or without actual prosecution, the two incidents and the Jewish community’s response have potentially changed the landscape for belligerent disruption of pro-Israel events on California campuses, which last year arguably yielded some of the most pernicious in the nation. Those involved in the two California events—the affected students and the Jewish communal groups who rose to invoke prosecutions—expressed a range of reactions as to whether justice has been minimally obtained or seriously delayed.


	StandWithUs and Brandeis Center for Human Rights pivotally intervened to jump-start the criminal referral process on both UC campuses. Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs CEO, commented, “It shows good progress that the [Los Angeles] authorities are&nbsp;holding the disruptors accountable for attempting to remove&nbsp;the freedom of speech from those they disagree with.” Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, added, “We are gratified by this development. At long last, the universities are holding responsible the perpetrators of these egregious event disruptions. We trust this will deter similar behavior in the future and demonstrate that universities must take such criminal conduct seriously.”


	A spokesperson for Canary Mission, the anonymous online watchdog that closely monitored both cases, commented, “This is not a strong enough response.” Justin Feldman, president of Students Supporting Israel, himself victimized by the harassment, agreed, stating, “As one of the proponents of the effort to hold disruptors accountable at UCLA, I am deeply disappointed that such accused students will merely face a ‘slap on the wrist’ for their deliberate misconduct in silencing student voices on campus.”


	Outrage first emerged after two separate but particularly belligerent disruptions of pro-Israel UC student events in May 2018. On May 7, College Republicans at UCI, hosting Israeli reservists, saw their session shattered by a sudden invasion of bullhorn-wielding BDS advocates chanting anti-Israel slogans. A few days later, on May 17, Students Supporting Israel at UCLA sponsored an outreach panel discussion with indigenous students only to have it violently shut down by nose-to-nose BDS harassment. Both dramatic disruptions were captured on viral video.


	For Jewish students and legal defense groups, the two egregious incidents were the tipping point of campus harassment at UC schools. The consensus among Jewish leadership and students was that the school administrations had consciously created a permissive anti-Israel atmosphere so toxic that it virtually encouraged increasingly severe forms of anti-Israel harassment. At UCI, the video shows bull-horn disruption going for several minutes as police and university administrators watched.


	Disruption of public meetings explicitly violates California law. Three statutes pertain.


	<a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2016/code-pen/part-1/title-11/section-403/">Title 11, Sec. 403</a> concerns event disruption. “Every person who … willfully disturbs or breaks up any assembly or meeting … is guilty of a misdemeanor.” This was the very statute used to successfully <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/24/local/la-me-irvine-eleven-20110924">prosecute</a> and <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/09/irvine-11-sentenced-probation-no-jail-time.html">convict</a> the “Irvine 11.” <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2016/code-pen/part-1/title-11/section-415/">Title 11, Sec. 415</a> involves disturbing the peace. The statute calls for jail time for “any person who maliciously and willfully disturbs another person by loud and unreasonable noise.” <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2009/pen/182-185.html">Title 11, Sec. 182</a>, a conspiracy statute, can be invoked when “two or more persons conspire to commit any crime.”


	Initially, both UCLA and UCI administrations declined to refer the incidents to the police for investigation and prosecution. This reinforced the belief that the permissive environment on campus actually promoted harassment as a bizarre species of free speech. Moreover, the legal system itself permits the universities to exercise broad discretion—allowing them to simply look the other way.&nbsp;


	California’s unusual state laws juridically enable the universities to potentially create a double standard and promote unequal justice. The UC administration can decide who shall be referred to its own police force, and who shall be given a pass, or subjected to so-called “academic discipline.” No referral to the police means no referral to prosecutors.&nbsp;


	Two California statutes create the system. The California Education Code empowers UC officials to function as jurisdictions unto themselves—as though they were small cities. They can hire their own police departments and exercise discretion on police policy and conduct. Section 92600 states, “The Regents of the University of California are authorized and empowered to appoint one or more persons to be members of the University of California Police Department … [and] are peace officers … upon the campuses of the University of California and an area within one mile of the exterior boundaries of each thereof.”


	Section 830.2 of the California Penal Code states: “A member of the University of California Police Department, appointed pursuant to Section 92600 of the Education Code, is a peace officer whose authority extends to any place in the state … specified in Section 92600 of the Education Code.” The law also vests campus officers with “concurrent jurisdiction with local law enforcement agencies.”


	Within legal limits, UC police departments function like a private force, answerable to the campus administration, which, in turn, often pivots on the dictates of the college’s public affairs managers. If a university wants to downplay an incident, it can exercise discretion and instruct the police forces to overlook a disruption. If the police departments do not investigate and refer a case to prosecutors, no criminal action will be taken by prosecutors.


	Observers believe a built-in conflict of interest and system of unequal justice can emerge when publicity-shy media relations managers can give campus police their marching orders.


	One Jewish organization president called it “shameful,” adding “UCLA is not acting ‘neutrally’ when it shields students from prosecution.”


	Indeed, at UCLA, the campus administration officials were extremely sensitive to the adverse publicity attending the video of SSI students being harassed. Campus police referred all inquiries to UCLA Media Relations. When this reporter, first contacted Tad Tamberg, senior executive director of media relations at UCLA, he referred to a Letter to the Editor in the campus newspaper and declined to discuss the matter further or answer any questions. At one point when this reporter said, “May I ask a question?” Tamberg snapped back, “No, you may not.”


	UCLA campus police, eager to address the offense, repeatedly and apologetically declined to answer any questions, stating they were under specific instructions from Media Relations to refuse to answer. This included even UCPD media spokesman. Ironically, the UCLA police manual mandates, in section 505 entitled, “NEWS MEDIA,” that “In accordance with department policy, employees shall make every effort to cooperate and assist members of the news media, using care to ensure that any release of information is not detrimental to the conduct of police operations.”


	UCI had a very different response. Its media manager facilitated exploration of the criminal aspect of the incident and quickly assured its police department would investigate and refer the matter to prosecutors. The UCI investigation is still underway.


	UCLA’s refusal to refer its students for prosecution or even investigate the crime was thwarted when legal staff at StandWithUs and the Brandeis Center converged on the campus to walk students into the UCLA PD and UCI police stations to file criminal complaints. Filing those complaints forced the police to investigate and then refer the cases to prosecutors. Ultimately, that included both student and non-student participants.


	Whether or not the perpetrators at UCLA or UCI are prosecuted, it seems the reality on the ground at UC campuses has been altered. In the days after Thanksgiving 2018, I delivered four consecutive lectures on Israel history at California campuses: UC Davis, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State, and UCLA. Despite concerns, no interference or disruption manifested.


	The UCLA event was sponsored by a coalition of groups including the same Students Supporting Israel chapter that had been harassed last May. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center attended to kick off the livestreamed event. At UCLA, it was a new day. When campus police learned of the event, they took immediate steps to ensure it would proceed with no interference. Two UCLA PD officers were dispatched to the event itself, both highly trained and deeply conversant with the pro-Israel and Jewish communal scene. A representative of the administration joined the officers. The police and administration declared that, in the event of a disruption, perpetrators would be given one warning to immediately cease and desist; and if they did not, “they will be arrested and charged.” This, coupled with the LA Prosecutor’s watchful eye, combined to insulate the event from criminal disruption.


	Thus, thanks to leadership at StandWithUs and the Brandeis Center, and courageous students who stepped forward, combined with intense media scrutiny, the rate of acceleration of anti-Semitism on campus and especially at UC colleges, has been temporarily been slowed—at least, slowed for the moment.

Prosecution Efforts at UCLA and UCI Following Shutdown of Pro-Israel Event

Organized disruptors—both students and non-students—who shut down a pro-Israel gathering at University of California Los Angeles in May 2018 might not be

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