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FROM A SAUDI MAGAZINE — “Today, the IDF represents the whole nation, ‘the people’s army,’ in which Israeli Jews, Druze, Muslims, Arabs, Bedouins and Christians all are brothers in arms.” — | Majalla

By on July 14th, 2022

DPS Note: Thanks to Alex S we have the English language version of the Saudi magazine which had that picture of the Israeli Arab IDF soldiers on the cover.

https://eng.majalla.com/node/237956/politicsexclusive-idf-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%98our-mission-enlist-many-israeli-arabs-we-can%E2%80%99

By Suzan Quitaz 

08 July , 2022

It is early morning in the Negev desert, a battalion of soldiers crawls across the desert sand with assault rifles cocked. It’s a routine military exercise, but these are no ordinary combatants – they are Arabs who have voluntarily chosen to fight and even sacrifice their lives in order to protect the State of Israel. These young men, and some women too, are proud to be part of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). One of these young men is sergeant Emad, who proudly says “It’s an honor, to hold in one arm the assault rifle and on the other arm the holy Koran, to defend my homeland, Israel”

There is a massive misconception in the mainstream media about the Israeli Army. Most people believe it’s predominately Jewish, and it was at its early inception. When Israel’s independence was declared, there were a number of armed Jewish defense organizations like the Haganah, Palmach, Lehi and Irgun. Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, decided to establish a single, and unified armed force loyal to the government of the State of Israel: The Israel Defense Forces was created on 26 of May 1948.

The IDF is unique amongst the militaries of the world due to its being a conscript army. Since its formation, mandatory military draft applies to both Jewish men and women. Today, it is one of the largest and most influential institutions in Israeli society due to its influence on the country’s economy, culture, and political scene. But one noticeable change that should not be overlooked, is the IDF has changed greatly in the decades since it was born. Today, the IDF represents the whole nation, ‘the people’s army,’ in which Israeli Jews, Druze, Muslims, Arabs, Bedouins and Christians all are brothers in arms.

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The false accusation of “Israel apartheid” South Africa’s uniquely evil regime has been maliciously twisted into a uniquely evil lie Melanie Phillips

By on October 2nd, 2021

https://melaniephillips.substack.com

The campaign to demonise and delegitimise Israel has recently moved into a higher gear with the increased use of one particularly vicious falsehood.

This is the claim that Israel is an apartheid state.

The claim is as fatuous as it is pernicious. Apartheid was the name given to South Africa’s systematic oppression of its black inhabitants who were denied political, civic and human rights.

By contrast, Arab Israeli citizens have fully equal rights. They study in Israel’s universities; enjoy Israel’s beaches and parks; receive equal treatment as patients in Israel’s hospitals and work there as doctors and other medical staff; serve as members of the armed forces and as judges; and are represented by members of Knesset who are currently lynch-pins in Israel’s governing coalition.

Those Arabs who live in the disputed territories don’t have Israeli rights — for the very good reason that they aren’t Israeli citizens. They have no civic entitlements purely because the status of those territories remains unsettled as a result of Palestinian Arab rejectionism and violence — and because Arab states regard them as a nuisance preferably to be ignored.

The “Israel apartheid” smear, however ludicrous, isn’t new. It has its roots in the infamous 1975 “Zionism is Racism” UN resolution. Although that was revoked in 1991, it was resurrected at the scarcely-less infamous UN conference in Durban in 2001.

At that anti-Jewish hate-fest, the NGO forum referred to “Israel’s brand of apartheid and ethnic cleansing methods” to justify advocating “a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel”. This spawned the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and launched a propaganda campaign against “apartheid Israel,” resulting in grotesque campus “Israel apartheid” weeks.

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Behind Israel’s Swift Rollout of Covid-19 Vaccine Boosters By Dov Lieber and Thomas Grove 

By on September 29th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-israels-swift-rollout-of-covid-19-vaccine-boosters-11632821987

By getting early access to Pfizer’s vaccine, Israeli scientists had more and earlier data than their counterparts elsewhere—and were willing to act on it

TEL AVIV—In late July, dozens of Israeli scientists and government health officials were locked in a marathon video call where they examined new data indicating that the effectiveness of the Covid vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE was waning.

Infections from the new Delta variant were increasing, and growing numbers of people were falling seriously ill, even those who had had both shots of the vaccine. Lives were potentially on the line.

Within days of the midnight vote that decided to distribute a third shot, the first of millions of booster shots were administered, months before the U.S. or any other country would take the same step.

“It was a really tough discussion,” said epidemiologist Gili Regev-Yochay, who presented key research on the effectiveness of booster shots. “[But] it was a decision that was reached essentially with one voice.”

Throughout the global effort against Covid-19, Israel’s public health experts have been consistently ahead of their counterparts elsewhere in the world. By securing an early supply deal with Pfizer for its vaccine, sweetened in part by a promise to share data from Israel’s extensive network of health maintenance organizations, they have had an edge in understanding how the vaccine behaves in the real world.

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New York Times Blames Powerful “Rabbis” for Crushing AOC’s Principles

By on September 28th, 2021

Last week, the New York Times was the subject of uncomfortable attention for its coverage of a House of Representatives vote in favor of helping Israel procure more interceptors for its Iron Dome missile defense system.

In a piece that spent nearly as much time promoting the anti-Israeli arguments of the eight Democrats who voted against the bill as it did sharing the views of their 210 party colleagues who supported it during the September 23 vote, reporter Catie Edmonson also focused on one Member of Congress who voted “present.”

Along with most other members of the so-called “Squad” of like-minded legislators, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had initially voted against funding for the Iron Dome, which was put into heavy use last May to combat barrages of indiscriminate rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel. A short while later, though, she changed her vote from the House floor.

Edmondson had ideas about why the vote was changed:

Minutes before the vote closed, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez tearfully huddled with her allies before switching her vote to “present.” The tableau underscored how wrenching the vote was for even outspoken progressives, who have been caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party, such as influential lobbyists and rabbis.

Yet again, the Times has published a blatantly antisemitic trope. Though they subsequently removed it from the online version, this ugly smear appeared in the print edition — and it has not been corrected.

It is because of coverage like this that CAMERA placed a billboardoutside the New York Times building criticizing the newspaper’s handling of antisemitism, and calling on publisher A.G. Sulzberger to right the ship.

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Bank of Amerika The financial giant teaches that the United States is a system of “white supremacy” and encourages employees to become “woke at work.” Christopher Rufo

By on August 20th, 2021

https://www.city-journal.org/bank-of-america-racial-reeducation-program?wallit_nosession=1

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Sign up for his newsletter here.

Bank of America Corporation has implemented a racial reeducation program that claims the United States is a system of “white supremacy” and encourages employees to become “woke at work,” instructing white employees in particular to “decolonize [their] mind[s]” and “cede power to people of color.”

Earlier this year, Bank of America’s North Carolina and Charlotte market president Charles Bowman announced a new “equity” initiative called United in Action, in partnership with the United Way of Central Carolinas. According to documents I have obtained from a whistleblower, BOA executives launched the initiative by encouraging employees to participate in their “Racial Equity 21-Day Challenge,” a race-training program funded in part by the bank and built on the principles of critical race theory, including intersectionality, white privilege, white fragility, and systemic racism.

On the program’s first day, Bank of America teaches employees that the United States is a “racialized society” that “use[s] race to establish and justify systems of power, privilege, disenfranchisement, and oppression,” which “give[s] privileges to white people resulting in disadvantages to people of color.” According to the training program, all whites—“regardless of one’s socioeconomic class background or other disadvantages”—are “living a life with white skin privileges.” Even children are implicated in the system of white supremacy: according to the program materials, white toddlers “develop racial biases by ages three to five” and “should be actively taught to recognize and reject the ‘smog’ of white privilege.”

Over the next three days, Bank of America teaches employees about intersectionality, unconscious bias, microaggressions, and systemic racism. “Racism in America idolizes White physical features and White values as supreme over those of others,” the program asserts. As a result of being part of the “dominant culture,” whites are more likely to “have more limited imagination,” “experience fear, anxiety, guilt, or shame,” “contribute to racial tension, hatred, and violence in our homes, communities, and world,” and, subsequently, “react in broken ways as a result.” People of color, on the other hand, cannot be racist, because “racism is used to justify the position of the dominant group . . . and to uphold white supremacy and superiority.” Therefore, the discussion guide claims, “reverse racism and discrimination are not possible.”

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Over 850 Harvard Affiliates Denounce Antisemitism, ‘Demonization’ of Israel By Dion J. Pierre

By on June 12th, 2021

https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/06/11/over-850-harvard-affiliates-denounce-antisemitism-demonization-of-israel/

Over 850 students, faculty and other affiliates of Harvard University have signed a statement in support of Israel’s “right to self-defense” and the “right of the Jewish people to self-determination,” which also criticized what it called the rise of anti-Israel activism on campus.

The letter comes amid a nationwide spike in antisemitism that included two recent acts of vandalism involving the Harvard Hillel building.

“As members of the Harvard community we stand by the State of Israel in its right to self-defense and by the right of the Jewish people to self-determination,” the letter said.

Circulated on May 28 by the campus group the Harvard Israel Initiative (HII) — and signed by Harvard affiliates such as literature scholar Ruth Wisse, economist Kenneth Rogoff, and Harvard Chaplain and Executive Director of Harvard Hillel Jonah Steinberg — it denounced a rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes and encouraged “civil discourse” when discussing Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Other signatories included social psychologist Jennifer Lerner, attorney Alan Dershowitz, historian Niall Ferguson, and physician Jerome Groopman.

“We are tremendously saddened by the events of the last two weeks, starting with the tragic loss of innocent Israeli and Palestinian life, followed by a frightening spike in reported antisemitic attacks across the country and the globe, including cities such as New York and Los Angeles,” the letter said.

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Why I spoke out against lockdowns on the necessity of challenging the Covid consensus.by Martin Kulldorff

By on June 7th, 2021

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/06/04/why-i-spoke-out-against-lockdowns/
 …. the Tech Overlords have decided to support unprecedented government control over citizens’ lives and, in order for that to succeed, they keep from the public any arguments – no matter how expert they may be – that might give the citizenry the ability to question how they are being treated by the people they elected to be their public servants. DPS

By Martin Kulldorff, is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, an infectious-disease epidemiologist.

I had no choice but to speak out against lockdowns. As a public-health scientist with decades of experience working on infectious-disease outbreaks, I couldn’t stay silent. Not when basic principles of public health are thrown out of the window. Not when the working class is thrown under the bus. Not when lockdown opponents were thrown to the wolves. There was never a scientific consensus for lockdowns. That balloon had to be popped.

Two key Covid facts were quickly obvious to me. First, with the early outbreaks in Italy and Iran, this was a severe pandemic that would eventually spread to the rest of the world, resulting in many deaths. That made me nervous. Second, based on the data from Wuhan, in China, there was a dramatic difference in mortality by age, with over a thousand-fold difference between the young and the old. That was a huge relief. I am a single father with a teenager and five-year-old twins. Like most parents, I care more about my children than myself. Unlike the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, children had much less to fear from Covid than from annual influenza or traffic accidents. They could get on with life unharmed — or so I thought.

For society at large, the conclusion was obvious. We had to protect older, high-risk people while younger low-risk adults kept society moving.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, schools closed while nursing homes went unprotected. Why? It made no sense. So, I picked up a pen. To my surprise, I could not interest any US media in my thoughts, despite my knowledge and experience with infectious-disease outbreaks. I had more success in my native Sweden, with op-eds in the major daily newspapers, and, eventually, a piece in spiked. Other like-minded scientists faced similar hurdles.

Instead of understanding the pandemic, we were encouraged to fear it. Instead of life, we got lockdowns and death. We got delayed cancer diagnoses, worse cardiovascular-disease outcomes, deteriorating mental health, and a lot more collateral public-health damage from lockdown. Children, the elderly and the working class were the hardest hit by what can only be described as the biggest public-health fiasco in history.

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Dozens of Princeton Faculty Sign Letter on Mideast Conflict That Condemns Israel’s ‘Jewish Supremacy,’ Does Not Mention Hamas By Dion Pierre

By on May 20th, 2021

https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/05/19/dozens-of-princeton-faculty-sign-letter-on-mideast-conflict-that-condemns-israeli-state-as-jewish-supremacy-does-not-mention-hamas/

At least fifty Princeton University faculty and staff signed a statement condemning “the ongoing attacks on the Palestinian people in Gaza by the Israeli armed forces,” in an open letter that decried Israel as a system based on Jewish supremacy, and made no mention of the Hamas militant group’s attacks on civilians.

“We condemn the displacement of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem — part of a decades long campaign of warfare, expulsion, unequal residency rights, and discriminatory planning policies that advances the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem,” said the Tuesday letter. “The brutal system that controls Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is ideologically founded on Jewish supremacy.”

Also signed by several hundred Princeton students and alumni, the letter continued, “We mourn all loss of life. We also refuse the ‘two-sides’ and ‘evenhandedness’ narrative that ignores and conceals the meaningful differences between Israel — one of the most heavily militarized states in the world that receives $3.8 billion in military aid annually from the United States — and a Palestinian population resisting occupation and oppression.”

“We salute the bravery and will-to-survival of Palestinians — in the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and within Israel — as they resist the violence of the Israeli military, settler militias, and lynch mobs,” the letter said. It included no mention of Hamas, or the 4,000-plus rockets that the group has so far fired at Israeli territory.

Appearing in The Daily Princetonian, the letter also endorsed the so-called “Palestine and Praxis” open letter, a document signed by faculty from a range of universities urging their institutions to end partnerships with military, legal and academic entities “involved in entrenching Israel’s policies.”

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‘Truth,’ as Well as Israel, Is ‘Under Siege’ From Hamas, Declares NY Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres in Solidarity Speech

By on May 14th, 2021

https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/05/13/truth-as-well-as-israel-is-under-siege-from-hamas-declares-ny-democratic-rep-ritchie-torres-in-solidarity-speech/

Progressive Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York has delivered an impassioned defense of the State of Israel in the face of the escalating military threat from Hamas.

Speaking to a virtual UJA event on Wednesday night, the 33-year-old East Bronx native — whose 15th district includes the South Bronx and borders that of fellow Democrat and frequent Israel critic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — restated his “unwavering commitment to both the sovereignty and security of Israel as a Jewish State.”

Torres remarked that “what is under siege is not only Israel.”

He continued: “What is under siege is the truth itself. Circulating on social media is a vicious lie — a lie that deceptively reframes the terrorism of Hamas as self-defense and deceptively reframes the self-defense of Israel as terrorism. Increasingly, we seem to live in an Orwellian universe where the truth no longer matters.”

Torres — who has at times faced criticism from colleagues on the left of the Democratic Party because of his stalwart backing for Israel — then noted that “support for Israel, especially in moments like these, is not for the faint-hearted.”

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From inflation to jobs to the border, Biden is flailing — when will the media notice? By Eddie Scarry

By on May 14th, 2021

https://nypost.com/2021/05/12/from-inflation-to-jobs-to-the-border-biden-is-flailing-when-will-the-media-notice/

If the media could take a break from obsessing over the House Republicans choosing a new conference chair, they might have noticed that Joe Biden’s presidency is falling apart.

On every major front, Biden is flailing — even by the depressingly low bar set for him by the Washington press corps.

April just saw the highest rate of inflation in 13 years, according to the Department of Labor. Prices for everything, including food and gasoline, immediately skyrocketed after Biden’s $2 trillion welfare scheme (sometimes referred to as a “stimulus package”) went into effect and flooded the economy with more money than anyone knows what to do with.

Biden’s preoccupation? Spending even more.

The unemployment rate actually went up from March to April, even as Biden bragged that he’s the one responsible for mass vaccinations that are, at least in theory, supposed to be moving people back into the workforce. But no, his extension of the obscene amount of federal unemployment benefits has would-be workers choosing to sit pretty at home cashing government checks. Those benefits don’t end for another four months, assuming they aren’t extended again (you can never assume anything with Nancy Pelosi in charge).

Fuel is running out in several states after the US fell under attack from what appears to be a Russia-based cyber-hacking group that locked up one of the East Coast’s major fuel ­pipelines.

The White House response to the crippling of a critical energy supply has been to throw its hands up and say, “Sorry, but the pipeline is a private company.” Whaddaya do?
After acknowledging how “seriously” Biden took the matter, he said Monday at the White House that his administration is “committed to safeguarding our critical infrastructure.” But, he added, “much of [it] is privately owned and managed, like Colonial. Private entities are making their own determination on ­cybersecurity.”

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