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By Sharona Schwartz / news.Yahoo.com

British cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who has motor neuron disease, giving talk to workers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, on Tuesday, April 9, 2013. (AP Photo / Cedars-Sinai, Eric Reed)

Stephen Hawking’s decision to “boycott an Israeli conference over the country’s treatment of the Palestinians” was big news in Israel Wednesday morning. Almost every Israeli news site ran the item as a top story that the acclaimed theoretical physicist had dropped out of the President’s Conference scheduled for next month in Jerusalem to make a political statement.

Along with the Israeli press, the Associated Press, and other news sites, TheBlaze also cited the exclusive report in the British newspaper The Guardian that Hawking’s decision to drop out of the conference was swayed by boycott Israel activists. Our earlier story also included a harshly worded reaction from the conference chairman slamming Hawking’s alleged decision.

The Guardian even inserted a poll on its site asking readers if they thought Hawking’s decision to join the academic boycott of Israel was right.

Now, University of Cambridge–where Hawking is a professor–has issued a statement saying Hawking canceled his Israel trip due to ill health, not ill will toward the Jewish State.

The Associated Press spoke with Tim Holt, media director at the University of Cambridge, who says Hawking’s decision was based strictly on health concerns.

“For health reasons, his doctors said he should not be flying at the moment so he’s decided not to attend,” Holt said.

“He is 71 years old. He’s fine, but he has to be sensible about what he can do,” he added.

A University of Cambridge statement released Wednesday and also reported by the AP said the decision was based on “personal reasons.”

Contradicting the Cambridge statement, organizers of the Jerusalem conference told the AP that an email from Hawking said the boycott was the reason he was not coming.

The AP quotes the Cambridge spokesman Holt saying that Hawking “did not specifically approve” a statement from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine which was the source for the Guardian report that the boycott was the reason behind Hawking’s cancellation.

CiF Watch, a website that monitors anti-Israel content in The Guardian, posted this e-mail sent to one of its readers from University spokesman Holt: CiF Watch asked: “The only questions which seems to remain is how long it will take for The Guardian to issue a mea culpa on their faux scoop.”

By Bob Unruh / WND.com

A website that is close to the Iranian regime is explaining why the Islamist powers that run the nation are having problems.

It’s the Jews.

Of course.

But not just the Jews … it’s their sorcery.

The report comes from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which monitors media in the Middle East.

The site reports Mehdi Taeb, who is close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and leads the Ammar Base think tank, said this month that the Jews are the most powerful sorcerers in the world today and that they have used their powers to attack Iran.

Taeb said the Jews have turned the United States into their tool and have gotten it to impose sanctions on Iran.

“He added that while Iran has so far withstood their assaults, they have not yet used the full scope of their powers,” MEMRI reported.

The Iranian regime website, according to Rasanews.ir, said: “Speaking on April 20, 2013, to students at a religious seminary in Ahwaz, Mehdi Taeb noted, ‘The Jews are currently subjecting us to an unprecedented trial. As you read in the Quran, Solomon ruled the world … and God ordered a group of sorcerers to come out against him. The Jews have the greatest powers of sorcery, and they make use of this tool.’”

The source continued quoting Taeb: “All the measures that have been brought against us originate with the Zionists. The U.S. is a tool in their hands. So far, they have not used the full [scope] of their sorcery against us. Sorcery was the final means to which they resorted during the Ahmadinejad era, but they were defeated. This ability of the Jews was eliminated by Iran…”

The Rasanews article, published March 7, said: “The Jews have always tended to resort to divination … that has its roots in astronomy, astrology and sorcery … when they consorted with various peoples in the course of history. They cherished this [knowledge] like a treasure, generation after generation. In most cases, they base their predictions on the holy book, especially on the book of Daniel, and they create an ideological climate in which the appreciation of sorcery and the yearning for it increase.”

The statement said: “Sorcery is known to be a practice of which the divine books (the Old Testament, New Testament, Quran) and the monotheistic religions disapprove. But Jewish mysticism regards it as a means to uncover the secrets of the holy book.”

The claim falls not far afield from the periodic allegations that appear among Muslims that the Jewish people hold “barbaric rituals.”

Earlier this year, a Lebanese daily newspaper published an article to coincide with Passover that accused Jews of using human blood in their religious rituals, a notorious anti-Semitic smear.

The author, Lebanese writer Sana Kojok, claimed that during Passover, the Jews eat matzah made with the blood of non-Jews.

Kojok also called on the Palestinians to turn Israeli’s religious holiday from one of joy into one of weeping and wailing.

Kojok wrote: “During the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins today, strange and bizarre rituals are held, according to instructions by the Talmud: Houses are cleared of all leaven, that is, all bread and bread products containing yeast, which are called ‘hametz’ in Hebrew.

“Additionally, on the holiday eve, the Zionist Jews eat unleavened bread which during its preparation is mixed with blood – but that blood must be from a non-Jew! This unleavened bread is called ‘matzah’,” Kojok claimed.

The “blood libel” myth dates as far back as 1840, when a tale was spread around Syria that a priest, Father Toma, went to the Jewish Quarter of Damascus, where he was slaughtered by a group of rabbis and other Jews. As the historically false account goes, not a drop of blood was spilled because it was collected to make Passover matzah.

“Imagine someone eating matzah made with blood!? How do these barbarians think?? Such barbaric behavior – even in eating and drinking?!” Kojok wrote.

In 2003, Arab media aired a program that depicted a boy being sacrificed and his blood used to make Passover matzah. Prominent Saudi clerics reiterated the myth in a 2012 interview, claiming also the Holocaust was “exaggerated.”

In 2000, the Palestinian Liberation Army mufti, Sheik Col. Nader Al-Tamini, stated in a debate on Al-Jazeera that there can be no peace with the Jews, because they suck and use the blood of Arabs on holidays such as Passover and Purim.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/iran-jews-using-sorcery-against-us/#RmWplf3BFdxToOsI.99

The following is the MEMRI report as posted on its website: www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/7154.htm

April 28, 2013
Special Dispatch No.5288

Iranian Official: The Jews Use Sorcery Against Iran

An Iranian regime official and a website close to the regime have recently accused the Jews of engaging in sorcery and of employing it against Iran.

Mehdi Taeb, who is close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and heads Khamenei’s Ammar Base think tank, said in April 2013 that the Jews are the most powerful sorcerers in the world today, and that they have used their powers to attack Iran – for instance by turning the U.S. into their tool and getting it to impose sanctions on Iran, and also through attempts, albeit failed, to interfere in the 2009 elections. He added that while Iran has so far withstood their assaults, they have not yet used the full scope of their powers against it.

In March 2013, the Rasanews.ir website, which is associated with the religious seminaries in Qom, posted an article about the status of sorcery and numerology in Jewish mysticism. According to this article, Jews cherish the knowledge of sorcery, pass it down from generation to generation, and believe that it can be used to control mankind, nature and even God’s decisions.

The following are excerpts from Taeb’s statements and from the article on Rasanews.ir.

Mehdi Taeb, Official Close to Khamenei: ‘So Far, [The Jews] Have Not Used The Full [Scope Of] Their Sorcery Against Us’

Speaking on April 20, 2013 to students at a religious seminary in Ahwaz, Mehdi Taeb noted: “The Jews are currently subjecting us to an unprecedented trial. As you read in the Koran, [King] Solomon ruled the world… and God ordered a group of sorcerers to come out against him. The Jews have the greatest powers of sorcery, and they make use of this tool.

“All the measures that have been brought against us originate with the Zionists. The U.S. is a tool in their hands. So far, they have not used the full [scope of] their sorcery against us. Sorcery was the final means to which they resorted during the Ahmadinejad era, but they were defeated. This ability of the Jews was eliminated by Iran. Five years ago they tried to oust Ahmadinejad [by this means].”[1]

Rasanews.ir, Website Associated With Qom Seminaries: The Jews Believe They Can Use Sorcery To Control God’s Decisions

The article on Rasanews.com, published March 7, 2013, stated: “The Jews have always tended to resort to divination, [a practice] that has its roots in astronomy, astrology and sorcery, [which they picked up] when they consorted with various peoples in the course of history. They cherished this [knowledge] like a treasure, generation after generation. In most cases, they base their predictions on the holy book [the Old Testament], especially on the book of Daniel, and they create an ideological climate in which the appreciation of sorcery and the yearning for it increase.
“The [Jewish] people think that ruling over man, nature, and divine traditions can be achieved only by means of sorcery. They believe that it is possible to conquer nature and control the world, and even to control God’s decisions, by using sorcery methods…

“Sorcery is known to be a practice of which the divine books [i.e., the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran and] and the monotheistic religions disapprove. But Jewish mysticism regards it as a [legitimate] means to uncover the secrets of the holy book [the Old Testament].”[2]

Endnotes
[1] Rahyab.news.com, April 20, 2013.
[2] Rasanews.ir, March 7, 2013.

Throughout history, politicians have used religious language to win elections. One world leader was particularly good at it:

“In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that He would give His blessing to our work, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right. I am convinced that men who are created by God should live in accordance with the will of the Almighty. No man can fashion world history unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessings of this Providence.”

That may sound like an ideal leader, but that speech was given in 1937 by the Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler. In his speeches, he challenged people to love their neighbors, to care for the poor and sick, and to take a stand against violence.

“His speeches were filled with hope,” says Ray Comfort, the author of Hitler, God & the Bible. “He says ‘I’m going to restore the glory.’ He also said that ‘I believe I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator.‘”

In public, Hitler often referred to himself as a follower of Christ. Even today, many people still believe the Holocaust was carried out in the name of Christianity, but what was the real relationship between God and Hitler?

“Adolf Hitler was the nastiest, most hate-filled, almost wickedest man in history,” says Comfort, “and to say that he was a Christian is to be tremendously ignorant, or to be disingenuous.”

As a child, Hitler was baptized into the Catholic Church. He was an altar boy, and at one point he even wanted to become a priest. But as history would later show, a church member and a Christian are two different things.

From his earliest political speeches, Hitler invoked God: a smart political move in the mostly Christian nation of Germany.

“At the very beginning of his career, Adolf Hitler was a baby-kisser, believe it or not,” says Comfort. “Even nowadays, if you want to get anywhere as a politician, you flavor your language and your speeches with maybe a Bible verse here and there, maybe have your picture taken with a robed minister outside his church on a Sunday, show up at a prayer breakfast and say something about God – then once you’re in your place of political authority, you can let your agenda come out, and that’s exactly what Hitler did.”

One of Hitler’s most public shows of solidarity with the Church was the signing of the Nazi-Vatican Concordat in 1933.

“That pact was that the Catholic Church would support Adolf Hitler politically, and Hitler would make sure they had freedom of religion,” Comfort explains. “Hitler in 1933 said wonderful things about Christianity. He even said he hated atheism and wanted to get rid of it in the country, so Hitler was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and he did pull the wool over the Catholic Church.”

So if Hitler wasn’t a Christian himself, why did he go to so much trouble to win the support of the Church?

As one author put it, he knew Christians would interfere with his plans if they were not hoodwinked first.

What you won’t hear in history class is that Hitler wasn’t just out to eliminate the Jews: he wanted to get rid of Christianity as well.

Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach said, “The destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the national socialist movement.”

And Nazi leader Alfred Rosenberg, a member of Hitler’s inner circle, stated at the Nuremberg Congress of 1938, “I am absolutely clear in my own mind, and I think I can speak for the Fuhrer as well, that both the Catholic and Protestant churches must vanish from the life of our people.”

In 1933, the German economy was in freefall, with unemployment over 30 percent. Germany was a nation in need of a savior, and Hitler decided that he would be the one to fill that role.

As Hitler grew more powerful, his religious tolerance disappeared, and he tried to replace Christianity with a new “Reich Church,” a religion in which there was no god but Hitler.

“I think after a while, Hitler begins to believe in Hitler,” says Dr. Anthony Santoro, a history professor at Christopher Newport University.

“Hitler set up a very horrible antichrist system disguised as a Christian church,” adds Comfort.

His fellow Nazis were only too happy to embrace their Fuhrer as Germany’s messiah.

“It is only on one or two exceptional points that Christ and Hitler stand comparably. For Hitler is far too big a man to be compared with one so petty,” said Julius Streicher, the publisher of the Nazi paper Der Sturmer.

Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels said, “Our Fuhrer is the intermediary between his people and the throne of God. Everything the Fuhrer utters is religion in the highest sense.”

And since every religion needs a house of worship, Hitler developed a 30-point plan for the new “National Reich Church,” which was even published by The New York Times in 1942. Among the rules:

No pastors, chaplains or priests were allowed to speak in church…. only National Reich orators.
All Bibles and pictures of saints were removed from the church altars and replaced with copies of Mein Kampf.
The cross was also removed and replaced with the swastika.
One of the most controversial Reich Church rules involved the Bible.
Although Hitler quoted scripture in many of his early speeches, he later referred to it as “a fairy story invented by the Jews,” and in 1942, the Bible became a banned book in Germany.

“Adolf Hitler hated the Bible,” says Comfort. “He had his own bible printed, 100,000 copies. There are some copies still around, but most of them were destroyed by people who realized what Hitler had done.”

In Hitler’s bible, all Hebrew words like hallelujah were removed. He also replaced the Ten Commandments with twelve of this own. Among them:

Keep the blood pure and your honor holy.
Maintain and multiply the heritage of your forefathers.
Joyously serve the people with work and sacrifice.
Honour your Fuhrer and Master.
Hitler also wrote his own version of the Lord’s Prayer, to be recited by the Hitler Youth:

“Adolf Hitler, you are our great Fuhrer. Thy name makes the enemy tremble. Thy Third Reich comes; thy will alone is law upon the earth. Let us hear daily thy voice, and order us by thy leadership, for we will obey to the end, even with our lives We praise thee; hail Hitler Fuhrer my Fuhrer, given me by God. Protect and preserve my life for long. You saved Germany in time of need; I thank you for my daily bread; be with me for a long time, do not leave me, Fuhrer my Fuhrer, my faith, my light – hail, my Fuhrer.”

Hitler had his own church, his own bible and even his own hymn, sung every day in German schools:

“Adolf Hitler is our savior, our hero. He is the noblest being in the whole wide world. For Hitler, we live. For Hitler, we die. Our Hitler is our Lord, who rules a brave new world.”

Now that Hitler had set up his own Reich religion, it was time to get rid of the competition. And while his persecution of the Jews was well- known, his “Final Solution” for Christians remained a secret for more than 60 years.

In 2002, a Jewish law student discovered a 120-page report from the 1940s.
It was compiled by members of the OSS, an American spy agency in World War II. The report was called The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches. The documents lay out a step-by-step plan to de-Christianize Germany:

“Take over the churches from within, using party sympathizers.
Discredit, jail or kill Christian leaders.
Re-indoctrinate the congregants.
Give them a new faith in Germany’s Third Reich.”

So where were Germany’s Christians in all this? Most of them were too frightened to protest, but a small remnant of Christians did stand up against the Reich Church. A group of 3,000 Protestants known as the “Confessing Church” openly defied Hitler and paid the price.

Hitler said, “I’ll make those damned pastors feel the power of the state in a way they’ve never believed possible. If I ever have the slightest suspicion that they’re getting dangerous, I’ll shoot the lot of them.”

Seven-hundred pastors from the Confessing Church were arrested. Many of them were murdered or sent to concentration camps.

“There is such a thing as evil, in my judgment, and this man is evil,” says Santoro. “Hitler has no permanent loyalties. If you cross him, you’ll die.”

The most important aspect of Christianity that Hitler ignored was the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. That’s a role Hitler preferred to take for himself. And even when he did mention Jesus, it wasn’t the Jesus of the Bible. For example, he refused to admit the fact that Jesus was Jewish.

“They didn’t take any notice of John 4, where the woman at the well says, ‘How is it, you being a Jew…’ and Jesus didn’t say, ‘Hang on – I’m a gentile.’” says Comfort. “And then you find the genealogies in the book of Luke; they go right back through David, through to Abraham, so obviously, they didn’t believe the scriptures, and they made up their own Jesus. “

The Jesus Hitler made up was an Aryan, to whom he often referred as “The Nazarene” and “the first great enemy of the Jews.”

Hitler denied the deity of Christ and forced people to worship him as god. Then he killed or imprisoned hundreds of Christian pastors and developed a detailed plan to destroy the Church. If he was a Christian, as many people suggest, then he wasn’t a very good one.

“If you are regenerated by the Holy Spirit, if you are truly born again, you will have the evidence of fruit,” says Comfort. “The fruit of righteousness, the fruit of praise, the fruit of thanksgiving, the fruit of repentance, and especially, the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, generous, faith, meekness and temperance. So if you haven’t got love, you are not a Christian.”

If someone claims to be a prophet and does not acknowledge the truth about Jesus, that person is not from God. Such a person has the spirit of the Antichrist.

Anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear.
I John 4:3, 8, 18

——————–

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Adolf Hitler

Dietrich Bonhoeffer actively resisted the Third Reich and Hitler. His life is an example for all Christians today.
See the videos God & Hitler and Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Prophet and Spy at www.cbn.com/700club/features/churchhistory/godandhitler/index.aspx

blogs.wjs.com
April 19, 2013

Cantor Joseph Malovany, right, sings during prayers in front of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial in Warsaw, April 19, 2013.

A small part of the chasm in Polish-Jewish relations closed on Friday, when, to commemorate the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, alarm signals sounded across the city. Until now, sirens have sounded on August 1, in honor of the fighters of the city-wide Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

These alarms mark the moment when an important part of Jewish history—when a small group in the Warsaw Ghetto opted to choose their own deaths, to resist rather than go to the gas chambers—becomes a part of the narrative of Polish history.

Often the two narratives, of Jewish suffering and of Polish suffering at the hands of the Nazis, run along parallel lines never to meet.

Simcha Rotem, who was honored by Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski with the Grand Cross of the Polonia Restituta order Friday, is now one of only three still living ghetto insurgents.

“Poland was our country and we were all its citizens,” said Mr. Rotem early in his speech, with the Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto rising behind him at official state ceremonies. Facing the monument was the newly-built, but not yet fully-open Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which is meant to emphasize the 1,000 years of shared history of Poles and Jews rather than the differences.

Simcha Rotem, left, one of the last living Warsaw Ghetto insurgents, speaks with Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, right, as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, second left, and Warsaw Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz listen, April 19, 2013.

Mr. Rotem, whose nom de guerre during the uprising was Kazik, didn’t shy away from touching on sensitive issues for Poland. There’s an increasing acceptance in Poland that the country can’t move forward if it doesn’t take stock that some of its citizens were not just victims, but sometimes perpetrators of war-time crimes against Jews, even as others risked their lives to save them.

After it was clear that the uprising was coming to an end, “we had to leave the ghetto so as not to burn alive,” Mr. Rotem said, adding the Jewish fighters’ requests for help in escaping to the Polish Home Army went unanswered.

Yet almost in the same breath, he listed the Poles who helped him and others escape through the sewers and hide, calling them “human in the full meaning of the word.”

“I’ve often wondered if I would have been able to risk my life and the lives of my family members in a similar situation,” he said. In German-occupied Poland, helping or hiding a Jew was punished with death for that Pole and his or her family.

But the painful truth about a stratum of Polish society that wasn’t sympathetic with the plight of Jews during WWII didn’t escape Mr. Rotem’s mention.

“There were also those, who just for the pleasure of it, without threats to their lives, by pointing a finger, condemned a Jew to death,” he said. “I can’t and won’t understand these people.”

The contrast of good and evil, life and death, echoed again and again in his address to the government officials, foreign dignitaries and regular people present.

“The war took my brother, my sister, my grandparents, many relatives and friends,” Mr. Rotem said. “It took me a long time before I could live again.”

And yet, he did.

“I have a wonderful wife, a painter, two great sons, five grandchildren.”

He left the audience with an admonition.

“The world has not drawn conclusions from the horrors of the 20th century at the heart of Europe, the words ‘war nevermore’ mean little.”

By Shane Dixon Kavanaugh / NewYorkDailyNews.com
THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2013

Stephan Stowe, 17, was charged with harassment after telling Jewish rider ‘They should have killed all of you.’ Police also wrestled a woman to the ground and arrested her after angry onlookers swarmed the station’s platform, snapping video and yelling at cops during the incident.

The attempted arrest of an allegedly hate-mongering teen aboard a Brooklyn subway quickly turned into a wild showdown between cops and a roiled mob, according to sources and video obtained by the Daily News.

The melee began when suspect Stephan Stowe, 17, and a group of eight friends approached a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke aboard a Brooklyn-bound 3 train just before 3 p.m. Monday, police sources said Wednesday.

“Assalamu Alaikum,” Stowe said to the man, using a common greeting among Muslims that means, “Peace be with you,” court documents allege.
When the man ignored the greeting, Stowe allegedly became combative.

NYPD arrested Stephan Stowe after he allegedly taunted a Jewish rider with racist slurs.

“You think you’re better than me?” the teen allegedly said. “We are cousins.”

“No we’re not,” The man shot back, and told Stowe to leave him alone.

The suspect then started hurling ethnic slurs and called the man disrespectful, according to court papers.

“I’m going to kill you right now,” Stowe said, according to cops and court records. He then swore at the man, according to cops and court records, and in an apparent reference to the Holocaust added, “They should have killed all of you.”

As the train pulled into the Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum stop, cops were waiting to collar Stowe, police sources said.

But that’s when a mob rose up against the cops.

A pair of police officers struggled to detain Stowe inside the empty train while the angry onlookers swarmed the station’s platform snapping video and yelling at cops. Alarmed by the swelling crowd, the cops called for backup, police sources said.

Amid the chaos — and while Stowe appeared to resist arrest — a woman aboard the train, Sheniqua Joseph, 22, got involved, according to police and the video.

After four minutes of alleged badgering of the officers, cops tried to place Joseph under arrest, video shows, and eventually slammed her against a wall while she went ballistic.
Joseph is accused of throwing a haymaker at one of the cops and kicking him in the stomach, court records allege. She was arraigned on charges of obstructing governmental administration, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

Sheniqua Joseph, 22, was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct during the incident.

Stowe was arraigned on eight charges, including grand larceny, which was charged as a hate crime, resisting arrest and harassment.

Gaza Strip in southern Israel

By Gavriel Fiske / TimesOfIsrael.com

Two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip Thursday night, landing in open areas in the Eshkol region of southern Israel, near Ein HaBsor.

No injuries or damage were reported from the strikes, which occurred around 11 p.m. Hebrew media sources reported that no red-alert alarm was sounded.

The rockets were the second salvo this week. On Wednesday, two rockets fired from Sinai hit Eilat, one causing light damage in a residential area.

Rocket fire from Gaza tailed off after Operation Pillar of Defense in November, but the last several weeks have seen a number of strikes.

JULIE STAHL AND CHRIS MITCHELL / CBN NEWS

In 1970, Linda Menuchin and her brother left Baghdad for Israel, keeping their flight secret from their father. (CBN News)

In the Middle East, much of the talk surrounding the Israeli-Arab conflict deals with land. Israel wants the world to know about hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees expelled from Arab lands as a result of the 1948 rebirth of the state of Israel.

“Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent, almost 900,000 of these Jews were exiled forcibly from their homes throughout the Middle East and North Africa beginning in 1948 when the State of Israel was founded,” Dan Diker, secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress, told CBN News.

Another major wave of persecution hit after the 1967 Six Day War that forced most of the remaining Jews to leave 11 Middle Eastern and North African countries.

Linda Menuchin became one of those refugees.

“Nobody would want anything with the Jews, especially with the incitement going on in the mosques, so we were labeled like the fifth column,” she recalled. “And also more constraints were put—like you couldn’t take out from your own (bank) account … more than 100 dinars a month.”

In 1970, Menuchin and her brother left Baghdad for Israel, keeping their flight secret from their father, a prominent lawyer.

“We didn’t even kiss goodbye because I thought we will meet again one day,” she said. “I had to run away through Iran.”

They escaped into the unknown.

“So we had only a very small suitcase with us, both of us, and just little money,” Menuchin recalled. “I was disguised like an Arab woman and my brother bought a very old coat. It was very cold winter.”

“To our big luck, everything went smoothly because at the time Jews were not allowed to be away from home more than 80 or 100 kilometers,” she said.

Such incidents happened all across the Middle East—expulsions, seizure of property, and murder of the Jews.

“In the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967, the mob in Libya, especially in Tripoli and Benghazi, took to the streets and started burning the homes of Jewish people and ransacking our warehouses,” said American Gina Waldman, founder of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, or JIMENA.

“And my father’s warehouse was burnt and then they came along and started pouring gasoline around my house,” she continued. “And a Muslim neighbor came down from the building and convinced the mob that the Jewish family wasn’t living there anymore, and of course he saved our lives.”

“I always felt that there was a sense of injustice, that even though we really made a good life for ourselves in whichever country hosted us, nonetheless we were never recognized for the wrongs that were done to us,” she said.

Two-thirds of the Jewish refugees resettled in Israel and the rest in other Western countries. Waldman and Menuchin both say they were traumatized.

Menuchin said there’s a message for the Western world.

“Eight-hundred-fifty-thousand Jews were expelled or were forced to leave or persecuted from Arab countries,” she said. “And when we try to overlook these issues they come again in a different way.

“So now it’s the turn of the Christians who are being killed, shot, and we cannot see really any effective action from the West,” she added.

For Israel, sharing the saga of Jewish refugees is part of gaining international recognition for their sufferings.

“We say, well, there are two sets of refugees,” Diker said. “There are Jewish refugees and there are Arab refugees and both sides should be compensated together.”

By Michael Curtis / AmericanThinker.com

The mainstream media in the United States and in Western Europe have often been uncritically receptive of the Palestinian Narrative. Media rarely question it, but instead disseminate its distortions of history and its deliberate misrepresentation of Israeli policies and often of the Jewish community. However, alert journalism recently demonstrated the true nature of that narrative when it uncovered one of the more historically flagrant and outrageous fabrications about Jews in an article published by Miftah, the Palestinian think tank, at the end of March 2013.

Miftah, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, was founded in Jerusalem in December 1998 with an ambitiously stated objective: “To disseminate the Palestinian narrative and discourse globally to both official and popular bodies and decision-makers.” It purports to adopt the “mechanisms of an active and in-depth dialogue, the free flow of information and ideas, as well as local and international networking.” Using language that appeals to freedom-loving societies, Miftah says it seeks “to promote the principles of democracy and good governance within various components of Palestinian society.”

The well-known Palestinian publicist and media personality, Hanan Ashrawi — a ‘Christian’ member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, member of the executive committee of the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization], and scholar of literature — was appointed as secretary-general of the organization and also serves as the chair of the Board of Directors. One of the members of the Board of Trustees is Rashid Khalidi, formerly a professor in Chicago and now the incumbent of the Edward Said Chair of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University.

The organization is very well funded, including contributions from many respectable sources such as the Anna Lindh Foundation (European Union), the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Germany), UNESCO, the United Nations Population Fund, Oxfam, the NGO Development Center, a number of European countries, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, and International Republic Institute.

In late March, Miftah published an article on its Arabic-language website accusing Jews of using Christian blood in the rituals of Passover. During his visit to Israel, President Obama had referred to Passover as “a sacred holiday.” While talking to Israeli students, Obama referred to the Passover story and to the history of the Jewish people as one of centuries of slavery, of perseverance amidst persecution, and finding freedom “in your own land.”

One of Miftah’s authors, a man named Nawaf al-Zaru — described as an “expert” on Israel and on Hebrew — used the president’s remarks as an opportunity to promote Miftah’s “principles of democracy.” This author, presumably a Muslim, used Christian allegations made since the 12th century to correct the president, whom he said did not know the relationship between Passover and Christian blood. Al-Zaru instructed his readers and Obama that the historical Jewish blood rituals are real and not fake; “the Jews used the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.”

When a journalist quickly criticized the article, Miftah issued a statement anonymously but presumably from its leader Ashrawi. Forgetting the organization’s supposed objective of “active and in-depth dialogue”, a concept welcomed by people and organizations in democratic societies, Miftah at first denounced the criticism as a “smear campaign” that slandered the organization. Ashrawi, who has always portrayed herself in American television as a political moderate, refused to disavow the blood libel accusation made by her own organization. Instead, she, or someone in Miftah, blamed the victim.

Within a day or so, Miftah recognized its blunder and removed the offensive article from its website. The organization offered an apology, reminiscent of typical bureaucratic excuses and defenses of mistakes. It explained that the article was “accidently and incorrectly published by a junior staff member.” That unnamed staffer had been reprimanded for the “disgusting and repulsive phenomena of blood libel or accusation, including its use against Jews.” (One might ask what other group of people has had to face the repulsive accusation of blood libel!)

The apology by Miftah declared that “Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, as founder has nothing to do with the day to day management at Miftah and was in no way involved in this incident.” Ashrawi has been much admired by the Western TV and press media, had been a close friend of [the late] Peter Jennings of ABC News, and one may take at face value her own statement that she has never been associated with any anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic campaign. The problem is that the nature and ideological thrust of various articles published by Miftah, as well as some of the statements made by Ashrawi, suggest caution in evaluating her true political position and that of the organization.

In spite of her self-portrait as a “moderate,” Ashrawi has been an exponent of some of the main tenets of the familiar Palestinian narrative. She was the highly articulate official spokesperson of the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Process, 1991-1993. At the United Nations Durban I Conference on August 28, 2001 she said, “I represent a narrative of exclusion, denial, racism, and national victimization.” She spoke of her heavy heart “leaving behind a nation in captivity, held hostage to an ongoing Nakba ["disaster"], as the most intricate and pervasive expression of persistent colonialism, apartheid, racism, and victimization.” Israeli settlements, she declared, lead to “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank.

One of the principal writers for Miftah, Joharah Baker, also editor of the Palestine Report, has written a number of articles arguing that Israel is a racist society, as well as praising the female suicide bombers who targeted Israeli civilians. In a July 2006 article, she applauded “the string of Palestinian women dedicated to sacrificing their lives for the cause.”

The criticism of the article by Miftah and consequent reluctant “apology” by the website is significant. It illustrates that a rapid response by independent and courageous media to inaccurate statements and prejudiced accusations can and sometimes does result in rectifying them and shaming the accusers. It is a valuable lesson to the mainstream media when in future they refer to Middle East affairs or are confronted by the Palestinian Narrative to return to Shakespeare and “stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,” and forgo their grudges against the State of Israel.

By Ian Deitch / Associated Press

JERUSALEM – Israel came to a standstill for two mournful minutes Monday as sirens pierced the air in an annual ritual to remember the 6 million Jews systematically murdered by German Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust in WWII.

Commemorations were being held around the country as Israel marked its annual Holocaust memorial day. The main wreath laying ceremony took place at the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem. Visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres were among officials and Holocaust survivors in attendance.

“I am the only one who stayed alive–survived–from all my family, about 100 people,” said Zvi Shofet, a Holocaust survivor who participated in the ceremony.

When the sirens went off at 10 a.m., Israelis stopped what they were doing and stood in silence with their heads bowed. Traffic froze as drivers stopped their cars and stepped outside in a sign of respect.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked worldwide on Jan. 27, the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. Israel’s annual Holocaust memorial day coincides with the Hebrew date of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

This year’s commemoration marked the 70-year anniversary of the ghetto uprising, a symbol of Jewish resistance against the Nazis in World War II that resonates deeply in Israel to this day.

The 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising was the first large-scale rebellion against the Nazis in Europe and the single greatest act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Though guaranteed to fail, it became a symbol of struggle against impossible conditions, and inspired other acts of uprising and underground resistance.

Holocaust memorial day is one of the most solemn on Israel’s calendar. Restaurants, cafes, and places of entertainment are shut down; radio and TV programming are dedicated almost exclusively to documentaries about the Holocaust, interviews with survivors, and somber music.

IsraelToday.com

Last week international computer hackers operating under the umbrella group Anonymous threatened to “erase Israel from the Internet” in a massive coordinated attack scheduled for today. By mid-morning Sunday, that attack had largely failed, and Israeli hackers had scored some blows of their own against the foreign assailants.

There was an increase in cyber attacks against Israeli government computer systems and the websites of local banks, as well as numerous smaller websites and networks. But nearly all of those attacks were repelled by Israel’s growing network of cyber defenses.

“There is hardly any real damage,” Yitzhak Ben Yisrael of Israel’s National Cyber Bureau told the Associated Press. “Anonymous doesn’t have the skills to damage the country’s vital infrastructure.”

A number of smaller Israeli websites were defaced temporarily, and in retaliation Israeli hackers defaced the websites of Islamist groups across the region.

More impressively, Israeli hackers penetrated the website associated with the Anonymous campaign against Israel — opisrael.com. Instead of reading about Anonymous’s anti-Israel views, those visiting opisrael.com on Sunday morning were presented with a pro-Israel banner and a long list of facts regarding the legitimacy of Israel and the history of the Jewish people.

The Israelis were operating under the newly formed banner of the Israeli Elite Strike Force.