Jewish News Syndicate – jns.org

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Ernst & Young Global Limited will no longer audit the Union of Agricultural Work Committees or Defense for Children International Palestine.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Ernst & Young Global Limited (EY), two of the Big Four accounting firms, have confirmed that they will no longer audit two Palestinian NGOs recently designated as terrorist organizations by Israel.

EY is no longer auditing the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), and PwC confirmed it no longer audits accounts for Defense for Children International Palestine (DCI-P), reported UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) in a statement.

The NGOs are among the six listed by Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz as terror organizations on Oct. 22 for their close ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

“Those organizations were active under the cover of civil society organizations, but in practice belong and constitute an arm of the [PFLP] leadership, the main activity of which is the liberation of Palestine and destruction of Israel,” said Gantz.

EY ceased auditing UAWC, even though it only took over the contract in May 2019. PricewaterhouseCoopers had audited DCI-P since 2014, according to UKLFI.

https://www.jns.org/big-four-auditors-ditch-ngos-listed-as-terror-groups-by-israel/

By: Melanie Phillips – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

Claims of moral equivalency are bogus. Bigotry is based on falsehoods, not fact.

One of the most obvious characteristics of anti-Semitism is the double standards it perpetrates, through which Jews are singled out for harmful assumptions and treatment directed against no other people in the world.

Yet the practice of double standards is perpetrated against anti-Semitism itself, as has been demonstrated recently in disturbing developments in both America and Britain.

In America, Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) has been accused of Islamophobia because of remarks she made about Muslim Democrat congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

Last month, Boebert referred to Omar as a member of the “jihad squad.” She also made a crack about an anxious police officer having nothing to fear from Omar because she wasn’t wearing a backpack, the signature apparel of a human bomb terrorist.

cont’d…

https://www.jns.org/opinion/double-standard-of-anti-semitism-and-islamophobia/

By: Judah Ari Gross – The Times of Israel; timesofisrael.com

IDF chief Aviv Kohavi says new 40-mile above- and below-ground fence is changing the reality along the restive border, where subterranean attacks have dogged the military for years

NETIV HA’ASARA — Standing in the shadow of a 30-foot-high concrete wall, top defense officials announced Tuesday that Israel had completed construction of a massive barrier running the length of the Gaza Strip both above and, critically, below ground.

The NIS 3.5 billion ($1.1 billion) project has taken over three years to complete and is meant to end the threat of cross-border attack tunnels from the Palestinian enclave, which the Strip’s Hamas rulers have utilized to deadly effect.

“This barrier, a creative, technological project of the first order, denies Hamas one of the capabilities that it tried to develop and puts a wall of iron, sensors and concrete between it and the residents of the south,” Defense Minister Benny Gantz said at the ceremony on Tuesday afternoon.

cont’d…

https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-wall-of-iron-sensors-and-concrete-idf-completes-tunnel-busting-gaza-barrier/

By: Israel Today Staff – israeltoday.co.il

Resolution passed by 129-11 vote calls on Israel, among other things, to stop unilateral measures in the “occupied Palestinian territories”

On December 1st, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution with an overwhelming majority of 129 to 11 votes denying the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount. The resolution calls on Israel, among other things, to end all unilateral measures in the “occupied Palestinian territories.” All states around the world are called upon not to recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders and to provide neither aid nor support for what it calls Israel’s “illegal settlement activities.”

Furthermore, a section on Jerusalem was adopted in which the assembly reaffirmed its determination that all measures by the “occupying power Israel” aimed at imposing its laws and administration on the Holy City of Jerusalem are illegal. A press release by the Security Council from 2015 was recalled, which called for the historical status quo at “Haram al-Sharif” to be retained unchanged.

cont’d…

https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/un-again-denies-jewish-connection-to-the-temple-mount/

By: Christina Colter – Daily Mail; dailymail.co.uk

• Col. Eddie Shames, 99, died peacefully in his home on Friday
• The World War II paratrooper in the Easy Company was played by Jonathan May in a 2001  in an HBO miniseries directed by Tom Hank and Steven Spielberg
• Shames parachuted into Normandy on D-Day, fought in Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge
• He was one of the first Jewish American soldiers to be held in the Dachau concentration camp
•  Famously, he and the members of the Easy Company raided Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest after Germany surrendered in 1945
• There, he stole bottles of cognac that he would later use to toast his oldest son’s bar mitzvah, according to his obituary 
• With his death, there is only one surviving member of the Easy Company: 97-year-old Bradford Freeman. 

Retired Colonel Edward Shames, the last surviving officer from the legendary Easy Company of World War II paratroopers whose exploits were featured in the award-winning miniseries Band of Brothers, died at age 99 on Friday. 

Shames died ‘peacefully at home,’ according to an obituary posted by the Holloman-Brown Funeral Home & Crematory. 

Born to Jewish parents, Shames forged his mother’s signature to enlist in the Army in 1942 at just 19, and was one of the officers in charge of the famed Easy Company, part of the US Army’s 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.

cont’d…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10276189/Edward-Shames-surviving-officer-WWII-Band-Brothers-dies-aged-99.html

By: Benjamin Weinthal – Jerusalem Post; jpost.com

“We will not back off from annihilation of Israel, even one millimeter.”

The spokesman for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s armed forces, Brig.-Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, on Saturday urged the total elimination of the Jewish state during an interview with an Iranian regime-controlled media outlet.

“We will not back off from the annihilation of Israel, even one millimeter. We want to destroy Zionism in the world,” Shekarchi told the Iranian Students News Agency.

Shekarchi’s genocidal anti-Semitic remarks come just days before the nuclear talks are set to restart in Vienna Monday on curbing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s illicit nuclear program. The United States and other world powers are seeking to provide Tehran with economic sanctions relief in exchange for temporary restrictions on its atomic program. Israel and other countries believe Iran’s regime seeks to build a nuclear weapons device.

cont’d…

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/iranian-brig-gen-urges-destruction-of-israel-prior-to-nuke-talks-687248

By: Sean Savage – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

The legislation seeks to address growing concerns over educational materials being used by the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) introduced a bill on Tuesday that seeks to address whether Palestinian students are being taught inaccurate or racist content about Israel and the Jewish people.

The bill, Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act, would require the U.S. Secretary of State to submit annual reports examining the curriculum Palestinian schools are using to teach students. The reports would also review whether Palestinian curricula encourage racist violence against Jews and whether U.S. foreign aid is supporting such material.

“The Middle East will never experience peace until Palestinians stop teaching their kids to hate Israel, and American dollars should not fund this anti-Jewish propaganda,” said Kennedy in a statement. “The Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act would give us a closer look at what Palestinian schools are teaching and whether or not American money is supporting anti-Semitism.”

cont’d…

https://www.jns.org/new-senate-bill-seeks-to-counter-anti-semitism-incitement-in-palestinian-classrooms/

By: Eran Bar-Tal – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

Despite the development, the Bank of Israel has avoided interfering in the market, and its governor has remained ambiguous about possible future intervention.

The U.S. dollar hit a 25-year low against the shekel on Tuesday, officially dropping below the benchmark that the Bank of Israel had hoped to avoid crossing. The euro also dropped sharply against the shekel and was traded on Tuesday at an exchange rate of 3.511 shekels to 1 euro.

At the end of official trading, the Bank of Israel (BOI) set the dollar-to-shekel exchange rate at $1 to 3.09 shekels. The dollar lost -0.387 percent of its value in total against the shekel on Tuesday.

Despite the development, the BOI has avoided interfering in the market, and BOI Gov. Amir Yaron has remained ambiguous about possible future intervention.

continued…

https://www.jns.org/us-dollar-hits-25-year-low-against-israeli-shekel/

By: Dmitriy Shapiro – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

The former Israeli Consul General in New York and current chairman of Yad Vashem acknowledged that when he first came to the United States in 2016, he didn’t see anti-Semitism as the pressing issue it is today, believing that it might have been an “overblown phenomenon” in the United States.

In his first visit back to the United States as chairman of the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, former Israeli Consul General in New York Dani Dayan seek to impart a sense of unity that he believes is an essential piece in knowledge of the Holocaust and Jewish identity around the world.

Dayan arrive in the United States this week to speak in Sunday’s virtual gala held by the American Society for Yad Vashem on the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht—the massive pogrom against Jews in Germany and Austria in November 1938.

“One of the interesting things that I value in Holocaust remembrance that Yad Vashem leads is that it’s one of the things that unites Jews across the ocean,” he said during an interview with JNS while on a train from Washington to New York. “There are many issues that divide us: political issues, religious issues and others, while the remembrance of the Holocaust is one that unites us in our pain, in our grief, and to some extent, also in the lessons we learn from the Shoah. So it is also important, it’s relevant, for the mission that I was very dedicated to when I was consul general in New York, and that is Jewish peoplehood and the unity of the Jewish people.”

continued…

https://www.jns.org/dani-dayan-on-what-holocaust-taught-about-extremes-and-how-anti-semitism-persists/

By: Marco Margaritoff – All That’s Interesting; allthatsinteresting.com

The Hellenistic fortress was destroyed by a Jewish Hasmonean army in their war to retake the region from the Greek Seleucid Empire, which had outlawed Judaism.

Archaeologists just excavated a 2,100-year-old Greek fortress in Israel’s Lachish Forest — and they say it confirms aspects of the origin story of Hanukkah.

Built by the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire in the second century B.C. to protect the Greek-controlled city of Maresha, the fortress failed to stop a Jewish revolt by the Hasmoneans. Hanukkah commemorates their ultimate victory over the Greek Seleucids and their Hellenistic rule.

The excavation site yielded numerous artifacts, including slingshots, iron weapons, pottery shards, burnt wooden beams, and dozens of coins dated. The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said these remnants served as evidence of Greek soldiers’ defeat at the hands of the Jewish Hasmonean warriors.

“The excavation site provides tangible evidence of the Hanukkah stories,” the excavation directors said in a statement.

continued…

https://allthatsinteresting.com/maresha-greek-fortress