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September 9th, 2015 
Awake Goy 
(JTA) — When he looks into the tired eyes of the Syrian refugees now flooding Europe’s borders, Guy Sorman is reminded of his father, Nathan, who fled Germany for France just months before Adolf Hitler came to power.
“He wanted to go to the United States. Visa declined. He tried Spain, same result. He ended up in France, neither welcome nor deported,” Sorman wrote last week in an Op-Ed in Le Monde in which he argued that Europe should learn from its abandonment of the Jews during the Holocaust and accommodate the stream of migrants pouring through its borders from the war-torn Middle East.
Sorman’s view is not uncommon among European Jews, many of them living in societies still grappling with a sense of collective guilt for their indifference to the Nazi genocide — or complicity in it. At a Holocaust memorial event in Paris on Sunday, French Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia urged Europe’s leaders to match the actions of non-Jews who saved Jews from the Nazis by welcoming Syrian refugees.
Yet as many European Jews rush to the refugees’ aid in word and deed, some worry that letting them stay may further contribute to the anti-Semitic violence driving Jews to leave Europe, much of it perpetrated by immigrants from the Middle East. Eager to exploit such fears, ISIS claimed in July that it had sent 1,000 fighters to infiltrate Europe as refugees.
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(JTA) — The editor of the Netherlands’ largest Jewish paper warned against applying an emotion-based policy on Arab refugees, whom she said could import anti-Semitism and should be settled in Gulf States.
Esther Voet, editor-in-chief of the Nieuw Israelitisch Weekblad and the previous director of CIDI, Dutch Jewry’s main lobby group, made the plea in an op-ed she published Monday on the news website jalta.nl about the European Union’s dilemma on how to deal with the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants from the Middle East in recent weeks.
Aid groups and other organizations, including Jewish communities, enlisted to help the refugees as international media published disturbing images of their plight – including the dead body of Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian boy whose body washed up on a Turkish beach after his family’s boat capsized en route from Turkey to Greece.
While the images left her “heartbroken,” Voet wrote, the reaction to them was “a light form of mass hysteria, in which it takes some courage to note that half of refugees come with an economic agenda, that single young men in search of prosperity constitute the majority of the refugee stream.”
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JERUSALEM (JTA) — The PLO said it was planning to back out of the Oslo Accords and other agreements signed with Israel.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will tell the United Nations General Assembly at its meeting later this month that it is not bound by the Oslo Accords since Israel has not abided by them, PLO Executive Committee member Ahmad Majdalani told the Palestinian Maan news agency.
“The Palestinian leadership has decided to terminate the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip known as the Oslo Accords II, which was signed in Taba on Sept. 28, 1995,” Majdalani told Maan.
“In light of the lack of commitment by Israel, the Palestinian leadership has decided that it isn’t bound by the agreement anymore and President Abbas will announce that before the U.N. General Assembly,” he said.
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Israeli military vehicles have carried out a cross-border military incursion into the southern part of the besieged Gaza Strip.
According to witnesses and local residents, four bulldozers escorted by military vehicles on Tuesday morning crossed into the Palestinian side of the border fence in the east of the city of Khan Younis and leveled fields belonging to local Palestinians, Ma’an News Agency reported.
Sources say Israeli soldiers used smoke grenades to conceal the movement of bulldozers. Palestinian farmers also left their fields, fearing possible shooting by the Israeli soldiers.
The Israeli regime repeatedly launches cross-border raids into Gaza on security pretexts, often razing land near the border in the so-called buffer zone it maintains on the Gaza side of the border.
Israeli forces have also frequently opened fire on Palestinians who approach the so-called buffer zone.
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Netanyahu arrives in the UK to discuss regional security cooperation with British Prime Minister Cameron after UK guarantees his diplomatic immunity as a visiting head of state.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara have arrived in London on Wednesday in order to hold talks aimed at strengthening security cooperation with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Europe should see Israel as a partner in confronting the “mediaevalism” of militant Islam rather than criticizing it for its policy towards the Palestinians, Netanyhu said before embarking on the trip.
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Officials from UNHCR to send tents, beds and thermal blankets to country’s border with Serbia
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Leaders of the United Nations refugee agency warned Tuesday that Hungary faces a bigger wave of 42,000 asylum seekers in the next 10 days and will need international help to provide shelter on its border, where newcomers already are complaining bitterly about being left to sleep in frigid fields.
Officials from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said it was sending tents, beds and thermal blankets to Hungary’s border with Serbia, where for the past two days frustrated groups from the Middle East, Asia and Africa have ignored police instructions to stay put and instead have marched on a highway north to Budapest.
Commissioner Antonio Guterres accused the entire European Union of failing to see the crisis coming or take coordinated action, even though the 28-nation bloc of 508 million people should have enough room and resources to absorb hundreds of thousands of newcomers with ease.
There was needless suffering in the migration crisis “because Europe is not organized to deal with it, because the European asylum system has been extremely dysfunctional and in recent weeks completely chaotic,” Guterres said. He told a news conference in Paris that it appeared “clear that if Europe would be properly organized, it would be a manageable crisis.”
The EU has struggled, in part, because front-line nations such as Hungary and Greece have not put enough facilities in place to house a human flow averaging 2,000 to 3,000 a day while the vast majority of people try to push deeper into Europe and seek refugee protection in Germany, the nation accepting the greatest number by far.
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(JTA) — Despite protests over Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Britain and a petition demanding his arrest there, British-Israeli ties are stronger than ever, the kingdom’s main pro-Israel lobby group said.
The Israeli prime minister, who left for London with his wife, Sara, on Wednesday, is scheduled to meet his British counterpart, David Cameron, in London to discuss, among other matters, ways to combat extremist Islam, Netanyahu said in a statement.
Despite disagreements on Iran — Britain is party to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran, which Israel strongly opposes for its suspension of sanctions on Tehran in exchange for some scaling back of its nuclear program – “bilateral economic ties are stronger than ever,” said Alan Johnson, senior research fellow at BICOM, the Britain Israel Communications Research Center.
Ahead of the two-day visit, the British government announced that Israeli companies will invest $4.6 million in South Wales, Johnson noted during a telephone Q&A session organized by the New York-based Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “Economic ties have deepened considerably in recent years,” added Johnson, who works for Britain’s leading pro-Israel lobby group. Bilateral trade with Britain – Israel’s second-largest export destination after the United States — stands at $7.84 billion.
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United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called on Israel to halt a plan to demolish some 13,000 Palestinian structures in the occupied West Bank.
“As we have said repeatedly, the secretary general calls on the Israeli authorities to halt demolitions of Palestinian-owned structures,” Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for Ban Ki-moon, told reporters in New York on Tuesday.
The UN chief also called on Israeli authorities “to revoke plans that would result in the forcible transfer of Palestinian communities, and to implement an inclusive planning and zoning regime that will enable Palestinians’ residential and community development needs to be met,” Dujarric added.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a Monday report that the Palestinian structures are currently under Israeli demolition orders, adding that the orders “leave affected households in a state of chronic uncertainty and threat.”
It also warned that the destruction of Palestinian homes leads to “displacement and disruption of livelihoods” among other things.
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Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, injuring three people, medical sources say.
The incident happened on Tuesday evening after a group of Israeli extremists threw stones at a Palestinian car in the city of Jenin, according to Palestinian medical sources.
The Palestinians were returning from a mourning ceremony held for the mother of a toddler, who died in a July arson attack by Israeli settlers on his home in the West Bank.
Riham Dawabsheh, the mother of 18-month-old Palestinian toddler, Ali Sa’ad Dawabsha, succumbed to her injuries on September 5 after spending more than five weeks on life support at a hospital in the southern city of Beersheba in the occupied territories.
The Palestinian woman had third-degree burns on 90 percent of her body.
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“We believe that in certain directions, notwithstanding of the developments in Donbass, we should expect toughening of the sanctions pressure,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said at the Russia Arms Expo 2015 in Nizhny Tagil on Wednesday.
According to Ryabkov, the new set of sanctions introduced by Washington last week against Russian companies, including arms exporter Rosoboronexport, “mirrors the policy of complicating operations of the Russian military-industrial complex and all of the mechanism of government.”
Sanctions come in handy as a “true instrument of aggressive foreign policy” aimed at Russia, the diplomat said.
People across the region have posted stunning pictures online of huge clouds of dust that speak for themselves. The deadly sandstorm is so large it can be seen from space. NASA has shared an image of the raging dust and sand, which caused breathing problems, reduced visibility in parts of Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Israel and Iraq and even forced school closures.
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Two Jewish senators announced their backing for the Iran nuclear deal, bringing the total of senators supporting to 41 — enough to block Republicans from advancing a vote against it.
Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., among the 28 Jewish lawmakers in Congress closely watched in the lead-up to a Sept. 17 deadline on the deal, were joined Tuesday by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., in announcing their support for the deal.
“My two paramount goals have been to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran and to do so by peaceful means,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “I believe the proposed agreement, using diplomacy, not military force, is the best path now available to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.”
In a post on medium.com, Wyden explained his stance on the deal.
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WASHINGTON (JTA) – Jesse Agler was pretty talented as a catcher and pitcher in Little League, yet his parents benched him regularly.
That’s because the Aglers had a no-baseball-on-Shabbat rule, one cloaked in sports royalty.
“It was a source of frustration as a kid, but I appreciated later what they tried to do,” said Agler, a 33-year-old radio broadcaster for the San Diego Padres who grew up in South Florida. “It goes back to Koufax making the point about that day, that it’s not for baseball.”
Agler was referring to the decision by Sandy Koufax, the star pitcher of the Los Angeles Dodgers, to sit out Game 1 of the 1965 World Series against the Minnesota Twins because it fell on Yom Kippur. Koufax instead started Game 2 the next afternoon. The Dodgers lost both days, but won the championship in seven games.
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WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Lois Frankel, a Jewish congresswoman from South Florida, came out against the Iran nuclear deal.
Frankel, a Democrat whose district includes West Palm Beach, said in a statement that the sanctions relief for nuclear restrictions deal reached in July between Iran and six major powers “legitimizes Iran’s nuclear program after 15 years and gives Iran access to billions of dollars without a commitment to cease its terrorist activity.”
“It’s too high a price to pay,” she said.
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The national Palestinian football team has for the first time played a World Cup qualifier at home.
The Tuesday game against the United Arab Emirates was a qualifier both for the 2018 World Cup and the 2019 Asian Cup.
About 14,000 spectators came to see the goalless draw at Faisal Husseini stadium in Al-Ram, near al-Quds (Jerusalem).
Palestinian Football Association chief Jibril Rajoub said hosting the UAE team proved that “Palestine exists and that Palestinians have the right to live in their own independent state.”
Rajoub had at one point in the past sought to have Israel kicked out of the World Cup competition for imposing travel restrictions on Palestinian players.
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The virus is called Mollivirus sibericum, translated as ‘soft virus from Siberia’, and measures at 0.6 microns, just over a thousandth of a millimeter. Thus, it is officially termed a ‘giant virus’.
It is also a monster among other viruses, with 523 genetic proteins, while, for comparison, a flu virus genome has only 11.
It is the fourth type of prehistoric virus found since 2003, and the second by the French researchers, who announced the discovery in the United States National Academy of Sciences journal. They found the virus in the same sample taken from a depth of 30m Chukotka, East Siberia where they discovered another prehistoric giant virus type, called Pithovirus sibericum.
Scientists are now set to ‘wake up’ the virus, but will first make sure that it is inactive and can’t trigger disease in humans or animals.
Attacks against Jews surge 93%, with 499 incidents recorded in the 12 months up to July; 816 anti-Muslim incidents reported
LONDON — Anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate crimes in London have soared over the last year, official figures released on Monday showed, with global events apparently contributing to the rise.
Police recorded 499 anti-Semitic incidents in the 12 months leading to July, up more than 93 percent from 258 the previous year. At the same time, 816 Islamophobic offenses were recorded, marking a 70% surge.
London’s Metropolitan Police said “world events” may have contributed to the increase, while there was also a rise in incidents on holy days when Muslim and Jewish communities were more “visible.”
A willingness by victims to report such crimes and improved ability of police to identify them were also factors, Scotland Yard said.
“In light of recent world events, we know communities in London are feeling anxious,” a spokesman for the force said.
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Source Article from http://davidduke.com/european-jews-mindful-of-risks-urge-aid-to-refugees-zio-watch-september-9-2015/
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