Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 18, 2021

Some Venmo users are reporting that the PayPal-owned company is preventing them from completing transactions with descriptions mentioning Palestine-related keywords.

Venmo's customer support inquired about a $50 payment one user received that included the description "Emergency Palestinian Relief Fund," according to a screenshot the user tweeted.

Venmo said it was "trying to understand... the reference to 'Palestinian Relief Fund" as well as the "purpose of this payment, including a complete and detailed explanation of what is intended to be paid for and the establishment/location," according to the screenshot.

Venmo told Insider it was looking into the matter, which it said relates to its obligations under US sanctions laws.

"Venmo takes its regulatory and compliance obligations seriously, including adherence to U.S. economic and trade sanctions administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control," a Venmo spokesperson told Insider, pointing to a blog post about the company's review process.

That post says Venmo attempts to update users about the status of their payments within 72 hours.

"We strive to balance these obligations with the urgency of our users desire to send humanitarian aid. We understand the importance of these transactions and apologize for any delay that may occur as we work to quickly process payments in compliance with applicable law," the spokesperson added.

Venmo declined to provide details about what specifically led the company to initiate these reviews, citing security concerns.

A search of OFAC's sanctions list shows sanctions against groups such as "Palestinian Relief Fund," "Palestine Development and Relief Fund," and "Palestinian Relief Society," as well as Hamas.

But other non-sanctioned groups seem to be getting caught up in Venmo's automated filters.

A Twitter account affiliated with the Students for Justice in Palestine's local chapter at the University of Illinois at Chicago instructed potential donors to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, a legitimate charity, to use the acronym PCRF, saying Venmo appeared to be blocking transactions mentioning the charity's full name. (PCRF couldn't immediately be reached for comment).

Various campaigns have sought to raise funds for Palestinians in recent days amid escalating violence in Gaza that has left at least 200 Palestinians and 10 Israelis dead.

Around 600 airstrikes by Israeli forces, many targeting residential homes, have inflicted dozens of civilian casualties, prompting criticism from human rights groups such as Amnesty International, which said the raids "may amount to war crimes." Hamas has fired back some 1,600 rockets, around 90% of which have been blocked by Israel's "Iron Dome" missile defense system.

On foreign policy matters, the US has historically sided with Israel, which it considers an ally, though some Democratic leaders recently sought to block Biden's recent approval of a $735 million deal to sell weapons to the country.

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Venmo is blocking some payments mentioning Palestinian relief funds. The company says it's following the law. - Business Insider

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Posted By admin on May 18, 2021

Kyrie Irving turned the focus to the ongoing violence between Israel and Palestine rather than answer any game-related questions Saturday night.

"My goal out here, my purpose, is to help humanity and I can't sit here and not address that," Irving said following the Brooklyn Nets' 105-91 victory over the Chicago Bulls.

Irving spoke of the conflict between the two areas multiple times. The Nets, currently in second place in the East, close their season on Sunday.

Irving was asked about the first game playing with James Harden and Kevin Durant together since Feb. 13. He said it was nice to play they game they loved, but "basketball is just not the most important thing to me right now."

"There's a lot of stuff going on overseas," Irving said. "All my people are still in bondage all across the world and there's a lot of dehumanization going on, so I apologize if I'm not going to be focused on y'all questions. It's just too much going on in the world for me just to be talking about basketball.

"I've got to focus on this s*** 24/7 most of the time, but it's just too much going on in this world not to address. It's sad to see this s***going on. And it's not just in Palestine, it's not just in Israel, it's all over the world, man. I feel it. I'm very compassionate to all races, all cultures, and to see a lot of different people being discriminated upon or being discriminated against based on their religion, color of their skin, what they believe in, it's just, it's just sad."

The violence between Israelis and Palestinians is the worst in years after heavy fighting broke out a week ago. It is the first significant conflict between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, in seven years and the first major Palestinian uprising in 16 years, per the New York Times.

Story continues

Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City killed at least 33 people and demolished three buildings on Sunday in the deadliest single attack since fighting broke out, medics said via the Associated Press.

"I don't care which way you stand on either side," Irving said. "If you're a human being, then you support the anti-war effort. There's a lot of people losing their lives children, a lot of babies, and that's just what I'm focused on.

"So if you guys want to ask me questions about the game, I really don't care about it except for everyone leaving the game healthy and being able to go home to their families."

He added that he's siding with God and treating everyone with kindness and fairness.

The Nets (47-24) finish the regular season against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday and can cinch the No. 2 seed with a win. Irving scored 22 points in Saturday's game, which was only the third time the Nets' Big Three were together on the court this season.

American athletes are stuck in Israel with no evacuation plan, per tweets by Alexis Peterson. The former Syracuse star and Seattle Storm 2017 draft pick currently plays for Maccabi Bnot Ashdod of the Israeli Female Basketball Premier League.

The championship game was supposed to be played May 12, she said, but it was postponed because of the fighting. The men's season ends in June, and some Americans are also there, she said.

She took a video of an airstrike and said it landed five miles from her house. Some of her tweets from the past week are compiled by Girls Talk Sports TV.

Peterson said athletes are being moved north to a safer location while waiting to come back to the U.S. She said the airports are also being targeted, and certain airlines have stopped routes to the country.

The U.S. state department advised Americans to reconsider travel to the area on Thursday.

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Posted By admin on May 18, 2021

A "broad coalition" of protesters met near the east entrance of Crocker Park to call for "an immediate end to violence and repression by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in Sheik Jurrah, near East Jerusalem, Occupied Palestine, where Palestinians are facing more ethnic cleansing through forced evictions and attacks by the IOF." They are also demanding the United States "immediately" end all military aid to Israel.

A representative for Crocker Park told 3News that the demonstrators did not have permission to gather inside the shopping complex and were asked to leave. The below statement was given to 3News.

"A protest formed this afternoon on our private property that we did not give permission to do so and had no knowledge of. Therefore, the Westlake police immediately moved the protest out onto public property so that they can publicly protest in Westlake but not at Crocker Park."

The rally was held along the sidewalk on Crocker Road.

At one point during the rally, tensions were raised when a man charged into a group of people protesting and was detained by members of the Westlake Police Department.

Tensions in the Middle East have boiled over in recent days, with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli military exchanging rocket fire. 122 people have been killed in Gaza along with seven in Israel, including 31 Palestinian children and a 6-year-old Israeli boy.

You can watch the protest again in the player below:

Earlier this week, 3News also streamed a rally in support of Israel that took place in Beachwood, and you can view it again below:

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Rally in support of Palestine held in Westlake - WKYC.com

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Posted By admin on May 18, 2021

Amidst the second wave of the pandemic, Bangladeshis are filled with rage because of Israel's ruthless airstrikes on Palestine.

Poverty, frequent natural disasters and other socio-economic dilemmas nothing could affect the long traditional celebration of Eid-ul-Fitr in the South Asian nation of Bangladesh for many generations. On Eid, Muslims in the country usually visit each other. The hosts treat guests with homemade delicacies like Payesh, a sweet and spicy rice pudding. Payesh is offered to neighbours, poor people and people from other faiths, too.

Hindus, Buddhists and Christians offer Eid wishes to Muslims and Muslims in turn entertain them with desserts and feasts. Eid symbolises tolerance, ethnic harmony and multiculturalism in Bangladesh, a country with a population of 170 million people.

But this time, the Eid festivities were marred by both the economic and emotional impact of the pandemic as well as Israel's naked aggression on Palestine, which claimed 119 Palestinian lives, including 31 children, and injured over 800 more.

Bangladesh has supported the Palestinian cause for many decades. The people of Bangladesh have always protested the Zionist Israeli occupation whenever they have imposed war and committed atrocities against Palestinians.

In the 1980s, the government of Bangladesh released a postal card supporting the rights of the Palestinian Muslims and condemning Israeli aggression.

As Israeli jets continue to pound Gaza and mobs go berserk in Palestinian neighbourhoods, Bangladesh's Foreign Ministry strongly condemned Israel's attack on the worshippers at Al Aqsa mosque, calling it "the attacks of terrorist nature and violence unleashed on the innocent devotees and civilians at Al Aqsa mosque compound.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday urged the international community to take sustainable measures to end such "heinous acts" anywhere and everywhere in the world, including Palestine.

The people of Bangladesh are shocked by Israel's disregard for human rights and its penchant for waging war on Palestine. Bangladeshi people have often come out on the streets and put up massive demonstrations, formed human chains, to express their anger and resentment against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

How can I enjoy the Eid while my Palestinian brothers and sisters are being killed systematically by the inhuman Zionist Israeli forces? said Oliur Rahman, a student of a private university in Dhaka.

The festival amid a raging pandemic

Every year, Mohammad Mohiuddin, 50, a small trader from a remote Bangladeshi district of Barguna, celebrated Eid with great zeal. He bought new dresses for his children and some of his neighbours. He donated money to needy people, which is one of the significant teachings in Islam. The pandemic however changed all that. Since last year, he has been incurring massive losses in his business.

According to a recent study, at least 3 percent of Bangladesh's labour force has lost jobs, while 16.38 million people have fallen into poverty due to the pandemic.

My income has reduced to one-fourth of what I used to earn before the pandemic. Its become hard to even celebrate Eid and meet the basic needs of my family," Mohiuddin said.

The fear of the virus has been psychologically taxing as the highly transmissible Indian variants have been detected in the country.

The government on Wednesday warned of further deterioration of public health if social distancing and other measures weren't taken into consideration. Tens of thousands of people have already left the capital city Dhaka and other adjoining urban areas to celebrate Eid in their respective villages. They did not pay any heed to the government's appeal to abstain from traveling from one place to another.

Although public transport was taken off the roads, people still took long journeys in private minibuses, lorries, trucks and water ferries. Five people were killed on Wednesday in a stampede. Several dozen people have reportedly fallen sick with Covid-19 after taking a ferry ride.

Source: TRT World

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Posted By admin on May 18, 2021

As Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has directed all military branches to identify extremismin the ranks, officials with the U.S. Army Special Operations Forces on Fort Bragg say none of its soldiers are known to belong to such groups.

In April, NBC News released an investigation claiming extremist viewsand conspiracy theoriesare shared in anonymous Facebook groups with members who claim to be past or currentmembers of Special Operation Forces.

The NBC report does not name the Facebook users who said they are Special Forces soldier and does not say if their military status was verified.

More: How a Special Forces patch led to charges for former Green Beret related to Capitol riot

A spokesman for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg said there are no known soldiers in the commands unitswith connections to extremist organizations.

Soldiers are not permitted to be affiliated with these corrosive organizations and leaders at all levels would be required to investigate allegations and take appropriate action to ensure good order and discipline, said Col. T.J. Rainsford, a spokesman for the command.

Rainsford went on to say that Special Operation Forces leaders work closely withjudge advocates and law enforcement to investigate allegations of wrongdoing and hold offenders accountable.

Rainsford referenced the Armys Article 600-200 policy, which prohibits soldiersfrom participatingin organizations that advocate violence and/or discriminatory behavior.

Rainsford said commanders atall levels have a variety of tools to ensure that soldiers who may have engaged in extremist behavior are held accountable, including punishment under the Uniformed Code ofMilitary Justice or administrative action.

Members of other Facebook groups question the context of NBCs story.

A post shared on a public Facebook group that is not named in the NBC story Guardians of the Green Beretcalled the report ahatchet job from a very bias reporter, and posted a link to another articlewith the headlineNBC Cherry Picks Facebook to Discredit Our Republics Ultimate Defenders.

That articleappears on the conservative blog websiteAmerican Thinker,which the SouthernPoverty Law Center has called a far-right online publication.

The articleis by written by Matt Rowe,who said that he is a Special Forces veteran and part of the groups NBC reported on.

AsRoweexplains the difference between Special Forces soldiers and those who support those soldiers in Special Operations Forces,hesaidthatretired and former Special Forces veterans do most of the posting in the groups, notactive-dutysoldiers.

In the article, Rowe wrote that about 60% of the members in the group regularly post, and only a small amountespousesviews such asbelievinginQAnon.

The FBI haslabeledtheQAnonconspiracy theorya threat.

Its supporters believe a liberal deep stateof politicians, celebrities and business leaders, who are pedophiles, worked againstformer President Donald Trump.

Followers look toonline messages by "Q," whom they believe to be an anonymous whistleblower, for guidance on political events.

Personally, Rowe said in his article, he never paid much attention to QAnonposts because he viewed them as coming from a handful of extremeconspiracytheoristswho others in the groupridiculedor questioned out ofcuriosity.

During the past year, the U.S. Army Special Forces Command has battled rumors associated with some of the conspiracy theories.

In August, the 3rdSpecial Forces Group uploaded a photo to its social media pagesthat depicts a Special Forces soldier signaling to aUH-60 Black Hawk during a training exercise.

Some social media users questioned whether the signal, which appears as a neon ring in thephoto, wasa symbol ofQAnon.

It was tweeted to highlight our 24/7 operational readiness, not as a signal of any kind, said Capt. Richard Dickson, a spokesman for the 3rdSpecial Forces Group.

Following the Jan. 6riotat the Capitol,rumors circulated online thatSpecial Forces soldiers tookSpeaker of the House Nancy Pelosislaptop.

The laptop was stolen from her office, her aide, Drew Hammill, Tweeted on Jan. 8.

In a YouTube video, retiredAir Force Lt. Gen. ThomasMcInerneyrepeated the claim that Special Forces soldiers took Pelosis computer, according to USA TODAY.

A spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command told USA TODAYin January that the command had notreceivedreports of Special Forces or any other Special Operations Forces entering the Capitol to steal Pelosis laptop.

McInerneyhad also claimed in December that Special Forces seized election-related servers in Germany, according to USA TODAY and the Associated Press.

Rainsford said the claim is a rumor.

Past conspiracy theories, Rowe wrote in the American Thinker article thatextreme language should not be confused with extremist or radical intent and that based on his observations, group membersspeak out against and discourage any comments that are racist.

He said racists wouldn't last long, because much of the Special Forces soldiers work is with different races around the world.

The Department of Defense took a stance afterthe Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol.

"DOD policy expressly prohibits military personnel from actively advocating supremacist, extremist or criminal gang doctrine, ideology or causes," according to a Jan. 14 statement from Gary Reed, the director for Defense Intelligence (Counterintelligence, Law Enforcement & Security).

During Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's Jan. 19 confirmation hearing, he said he'd work to rid the military ranks of racists and extremists.

In February, Austin issued a 60-day stand-down directive for commanders to discuss with servicemembers extremism in the ranks.

Rainsford said all soldiers have attended trainings held by commanders, judge advocates and law enforcement about extremism, in accordance with Austins directive.

This stand-down was the first initiative to better educatesoldiers about the problem and how we will eliminate it, Rainsford said. The stand-down event addressed the impacts of extremism and the responsibilities of commands to create an environment free of discrimination, hate, and harassment to prevent harm to the Army and honor the American people's trust.

InAugust, thespecial operationsTrauma3medicalcourse changed its unofficial logo because it resembled one used by an extremist group.

A student in the course reported that it resembled a symbol used by the extremist group the Three Percenters.

According to theAnti DefamationLeague,Three Percenters are part of the militia movement, which supports the idea of a small number of dedicated patriots protecting Americans from government tyranny. The concept is basedaninaccurate historical claim that only three percent of Americans fought in the Revolutionary War against the British, according to theAnti DefamationLeague.

A spokeswoman for theU.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and Schoolat Fort Braggtold military.com that theunofficial logo, which had the Roman numeral III and 13, was used to represent the course and the cadre members part of the course.

The logo was never officially adopted, said Janice Burton, a spokeswoman for the warfare center and school.

The Three Percenters logo wasamong 14 logosincludingQAnonsymbols thatofficialsand the center and school discouraged soldiers from displaying during a presentation in February.

Burton told The Fayetteville Observer that the center and school and Army Special Operation Forces have a culture and history of developing small patriotic unit logos and symbols for esprit-de-corps and unitcohesion.

Because some extremist organizations adopt similar imagery andsymbols, Burton said, the commandtook deliberatesteps to educate and inform the force on symbols and logos used by extremist organizationsto prevent inadvertent use of similar symbols.

The command has made it very clear to its members that there is no place for extremism and racism in our formation in stride with broader efforts by the DoD and Army, Burton said.

Burton said the center and schoolhasa history of self-identifying and correcting the use of symbols and logos that can be misinterpreted as being affiliated with extremist organizations.

She said commanders at each unit within the center and school have emphasizedthat extremist organization objectives are inconsistent with the Armys values, goals and beliefs.

Our leadership discussed this information with theirsoldiers to better educate them on current offensive symbols and logos, she said. Commanders further remindedsoldiers they represent the Army, both on and off duty.

Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528

More: Former Fort Bragg soldier who fatally shot 3 at Kansas Jewish sites dies in prison.

Support local journalism with a subscription to The Fayetteville Observer. Click the "subscribe'' link at the top of this article.

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Fort Bragg Special Forces not part of extreme groups, and other rumors battled this year - The Fayetteville Observer

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Posted By admin on May 18, 2021

Yitzhak Arad, who as an orphaned teenage partisan fought the Germans and their collaborators during World War II, then went on to become an esteemed scholar of the Holocaust and the longtime chairman of the Yad Vashem remembrance and research center in Israel, died on May 6 in a hospital in Tel Aviv. He was 94.

Yad Vashem announced the death but did not specify the cause.

Mr. Arad was not even bar mitzvahed when the Germans invaded Poland and what is now part of Lithuania in 1939 and began rounding up and murdering Jews and forcing them into ghettos. His parents and 30 close family members would perish before the war ended in 1945.

But he survived, at first as a forced laborer cleaning captured Soviet weapons in a munitions warehouse and then, sensing what fate awaited, by smuggling weapons to partisans in the nearby forests and forming an underground movement in the ghetto. He, his sister and their underground associates eventually stole a revolver and escaped, meeting up with a brigade of Soviet partisans.

Acquiring the lifelong nickname Tolka (diminutive for Anatoly), he took part in ambushing German bases in what is now Belarus and setting up mines that blew up more than a dozen trains carrying German soldiers and supplies. Among his exploits was a battle with pro-German Lithuanian partisans in fields and forests covered in deep snow in the village of Girdan.

We fought with them for a whole day, but by evening none of them remained alive, he wrote in a 1979 memoir, The Partisan: From the Valley of Death to Mt. Zion. The next day we counted over 250 Lithuanian dead.

A Zionist since childhood, Mr. Arad made his way to Palestine, then a British mandate, aboard a ship, the Hannah Senesh, filled with immigrants who were entering the land in violation of a British blockade.

He changed his Polish name, Icchak Rudnicki, to the Hebrew, Yitzhak Arad, and joined the fight for an autonomous Jewish land, serving with the Palmach, the elite fighting force that was eventually incorporated into the Israeli Army after Israel declared its independence in 1948. Assigned to an armor brigade, he rose to the rank of brigadier general, retiring in 1972.

He devoted himself to researching the history of the Holocaust, completing a doctorate at Tel Aviv University with a treatise on the destruction of the Jews of Vilna, Lithuanias capital, now known as Vilnius. He was among the first scholars to study the Jewish partisans in the forests and the ghettos and the systematic murder of Jews by killing squads as the German Army moved deeper into Soviet territory.

What gave Yitzhak Arad credibility was both the fact that he was a survivor and a historian, said Abraham H. Foxman, former national director of the Anti-Defamation League. He could discuss and teach about the Shoah from a very personal perspective.

When another Palmach veteran, Yigal Allon, became a minister of education and culture, he asked Mr. Arad in 1972 to lead Yad Vashem which means a memorial and a name and is taken from a verse in Isaiah.

A complex of museums, archives and memorial sculptures on a Jerusalem hill, Yad Vashem is considered the worlds leading repository of Holocaust documents, survivor interviews and other material. He served as its chairman of the directorate for more than two decades, until 1993.

He never forgot, said Avner Shalev, Mr. Arads successor as chairman. He was part of the most important event for Jews in the 20th century the Shoah and he understood that it is an important mission in his life to research and commemorate that event.

For most of his tenure at Yad Vashem, the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries in its bloc cut off diplomatic relations with Israel. But Mr. Arad took pride in having established working relationships with archivists in those countries and securing hundreds of thousands of documents that detailed the scope of the Holocaust.

Under his leadership, Yad Vashem added a number of monuments, including the Valley of the Communities, 2.5 acres of intersecting walls made of rough-hewed stone blocks engraved with the names of 5,000 Jewish communities, most of which were destroyed in the Holocaust.

He lectured at Tel Aviv University and wrote several books considered essential for scholars, including The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, which won a National Jewish Book Award in 2009, and Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: the Operation Reinhard Death Camps, which chronicled the murder of millions in those death camps.

In 2006, he was briefly the target of a war crimes investigation in Lithuania. A state prosecutor claimed there was evidence that a Soviet partisan band to which he belonged had killed 38 civilians, mostly women and children, in January 1944 in the village of Koniuchy.

Mr. Arad denied ever killing anyone in cold blood and pointed out that the village had been defended by a Lithuanian militia that collaborated with the Nazis. In the international outcry that ensued, historians noted that, at that point, Lithuania had never charged any non-Jews with war crimes despite the thousands of Lithuanians who had collaborated with the Nazis in the slaughter of 200,000 Jews. The case was dropped in 2008.

Mr. Arad was born on Nov. 11, 1926, in the ancient town of Swieciany, then within Poland but now part of Lithuania and known as Svencionys. (Another prominent resident was Mordecai Kaplan, the co-founder of Reconstructionist Judaism.) His father, Israel, was a synagogue cantor, and his mother, Chaya, a homemaker. The family moved to cosmopolitan Warsaw and sent Yitzhak to a Hebrew school. He belonged to a club that was part of the Zionist movement.

After the German blitzkrieg, his parents sent him and his older sister to live with his grandparents in his hometown, Swieciany, thinking they would be safe there. But the Germans occupied the town in June 1941, ordered all the Jews into a ghetto and soon began deportations to death camps and labor camps.

Mr. Arads wife, Michal, died in 2015. He is survived by two sons, Giora and Ruli, a daughter, Orit Lerer, 11 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

Mr. Arad remained active with Yad Vashem until his last weeks. Last year, he took part in a photography exhibition about Holocaust survivors and their lives after the war. When it was his turn to speak, he confronted the audience with a hard truth borne of his own ordeals.

What happened in the past, he said, could potentially happen again, to any people, at any time.

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Posted By admin on May 18, 2021

On May 11, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas gave testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee pointing out that the greatest domestic threat facing the United States emanates from, as Garland stated, violent extremists, specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.[i] This followed March 2021 testimony of FBI Director Christopher Wray before the Senate Judiciary Committee in which Wray warned of a rapidly growing threat of homegrown violent extremism that law enforcement is scrambling to contain through thousands of investigations. Echoing previous FBI warnings on the threat of white supremacist groups, he added that the domestic terrorism threat has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now and is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. He also pointed out that the number of white supremacists and other racially motivated extremists has almost tripled since he became director in 2017.[ii] Likewise, last year, a former head of the Department of Homeland Securitys intelligence branch filed a whistleblower complaint in which he accused the department of blocking a report about the threat of violent extremism and described white supremacists as having been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent targeted attacks in recent years.[iii]

Indeed, in 2019 alone the Anti-Defamation League reported that domestic extremists killed at least 42 people in the United States in 17 separate incidents with the numbers rising steadily year by year. This number makes 2019 the sixth deadliest year on record for domestic extremist-related killings since 1970, the ADL reports, noting that as is typically the case, the extremist-related murders of 2019 were overwhelmingly (90%) linked to right-wing extremists.[iv] Moreover, when the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots were analyzed it became clear that an alarmingly significant number of members of both police and military had joined in on attacking our nations institutions, many having been exposed to disinformation that led them to conclude that violent action was needed to save our democracy.

Clearly, we need a better understanding of these domestic terrorist groups and movements, how they operate, what their ideologies are, and how they find resonance to recruit. In that vein, the present study was undertaken in which 30 former white supremacists were in-depth interviewed over a period beginning in October 2020 to April 2021 to learn what sorts of motivations and vulnerabilities exist within those who are recruited into these groups and how these individuals begin to believe that violence is heroic and begin embracing hate and at times carrying out or supporting hate crimes. Likewise, it is important not only to know how individuals join and what their experiences are within such groups, but also how they become disillusioned, deradicalize and disengage. While this is an executive summary of the ICSVE report, the full report can be found here.

The information gleaned from this research is needed both for prevention efforts, to stop the radicalization and recruitment that is currently swelling the ranks of white supremacism in many countries, but also to understand how to address and remove the grievances, vulnerabilities and motivations for joining. Likewise, for those already in its important to understand what may make them leave white supremacism and how they can be reached and served best to exit and deradicalize. This research, which is ongoing, with the sample continuing to grow, is an attempt to identify many of these issues. The reports important findings include:

The individuals in this study make clear that we cannot simply pull violent extremists from our society like weeds and expect no reappearances. This study makes clear that white supremacist recruitment in large part relies on the unmet needs of those who join and to do away with this type of violent extremism we must address the societal problems that made them vulnerable initially. Drug abuse, poverty, family dysfunction, and child maltreatment all contributed to serious vulnerabilities that left the interviewees with deep unmet needs for a sense of meaning, significance, and purpose in their lives. They felt desperate to belong, to be accepted, to be valued, to have their dignity established and to be given a sense of purpose. We also must address the context that made these individuals susceptible to the white supremacist ideology systemic and casual racism that makes a more violent racist belief system easier to adopt. We can see how many of these people were easily drawn into adopting deeply hateful racist beliefs in exchange for a sense of purpose, significance, dignity and belonging as well as how quickly the same peoples minds were changed by simple interactions in which they were granted kindness and compassion by members of minority groups. There are plenty of valid arguments to be made that it is not Black or Jewish peoples responsibility to reach out to white supremacists, potentially putting themselves in danger, and to humanize themselves, but this is clear evidence that it is a powerful antidote to white supremacist ideologies. Daryl Davis, who is Black and was mentioned by a number of the interviewees, risks his life when he courageously approaches white supremacists to engage in a productive dialogue later to extract many from these dangerous and violent groups.[v] These conversations are worth having, but it is nevertheless evident that efforts to help violent extremists disengage and deradicalize, and efforts to prevent and counter radicalization, must acknowledge violent extremists humanity, vulnerability, unmet needs and indeed their normality.

Scholars, practitioners, and law enforcement have made clear that white supremacist violent extremism is one of the greatest threats to American national security, far more so than any other type of violent extremism.[vi] We cannot make the same mistakes that were made in efforts to counter militant jihadist terror efforts that pathologized terrorists and securitized and alienated entire communities.[vii] Just as experts pushed for efforts that addressed the individual vulnerabilities that made people vulnerable to militant jihadist radicalization and recruitment, so should they push for broad, community-based preventing and countering white supremacist violent extremism efforts that provide young people with real opportunities to gain a sense of significance, belonging, dignity and purpose in prosocial ways and to be exposed to racial, ethnic, and religious diversity. These efforts must be rooted in an understanding that racism and taking part in white supremacism is a natural outgrowth of a confluence of factors, as articulated in this article. As is made clear by the interviewees, bigotry can truly feel like pride and patriotism, and deliver a sense of belonging and purpose as one believes their actions are in support of ones own people.

Likewise, this research, if the sample is representative of the larger groups which were described by the respondents, makes clear that men are more involved in these groups than women, but that women are also involved and also at times just as violent as the men. As with most violent extremists and terrorist groups, females self-reported and were reported as generally playing support roles, were venerated as breeders and did not hold leadership positions, with some exceptions occurring in the NSM, and there were far fewer women reported upon than men among the ranks of all the groups studied. Thus, a gendered approach is necessary and, in some cases, needs to address assaults to young boys sense of masculinity and the whole concept of being drawn into toxic masculinity. For instance, one respondent in this sample who had been sexually abused by a male was very committed to the positive sense of identity conferred upon him by being a member of the KKK, a group that makes its members pledge that they are not gay.

Similarly, given that the groups specifically target active-duty and veteran members of military and police, as was also reported in the RAND report,[viii] it is important to assist them with prevention and intervention efforts to thwart these members from joining white supremacism. The groups themselves see military and police joiners as potential weapons trainers for the entire group to help them prepare for race war and as well as potential suppliers of weapons and value them for their already trained sense of discipline. Likewise, military and police members confer an air of legitimacy and patriotism to the group and are also valued for their potential of recruiting others to the group.

Likewise, prevention for youth should be specifically addressed as those who were recruited as youth and those who recruited highlighted that the need for belonging was easily manipulated by white supremacists. In this regard, it is clear that any prevention measures aimed at reducing adverse childhood experiences are likely to also reduce the effectiveness of white supremacists being able to recruit youth.

Most respondents in this sample referenced the extreme polarization currently present in Western society and the role of reciprocal radicalization in further radicalizing white supremacists and keeping them involved in their groups. Many referenced violent interactions with Antifa as further radicalizing events that influenced them. While doxxing and even being attacked by groups like Antifa was referenced as having a very negative effect on those who experienced it, causing some to leave their groups for fear of losing jobs, being arrested, etc., it was also referenced as a warning and reason by those who spoke of it as a reason not to join white supremacism. Likewise, the effect of significant others threatening to or actually leaving their white supremacist partners caused some to re-evaluate the worth of staying with their group. Thus, systems-based approaches to promoting exits can be both creative and useful, although kinder more creative approaches than doxxing are likely more effective and dont have the side effects of further radicalizing others.

Like cults, white supremacist groups demand ideological and behavioral loyalty from their members and begin to isolate them from dissenting opinions as well as from members of the hated minority groups, making it hard for them to have any positive exposures. As isolation and the echo chambers of hate increase, fusion with the ideology and buy-in to conspiracy theories sets in. This underlies the usefulness of intervention and even prevention measures designed to create positive interactions and dialogue across racial, ethnic and religious divides.

For those who left white supremacism and deradicalized, spontaneously or with the help of a program or some kind of professional help, it was clear that there are ebbs and flows of involvement and that leaving white supremacism is not easily accomplished. In some cases, disillusionment with the group and disappointment with members not remaining loyal to each other or to the ideology served as the opening for beginning to leave. For others, positive interactions with the despised minority groups broke through the echo chamber they were living in and provided opportunities for reevaluating the group and its ideology with clearer objective views. However, exiting white supremacism involved deep personal losses and reckoning with that one had been wrong, and perhaps unjustly violent and harmful to others. Some had indelibly marked their bodies with marks of hate and need help with tattoo cover-up or removal to be able to engage with those outside their group without suffering rejection or fear from general society. While some in this sample reported serious growth accomplished in traditional psychotherapy, others referenced reaching out to formers, and the need for different and perhaps more support for exiting than would be available in traditional psychotherapy offered on a once- or twice-weekly schedule. Some very creative efforts are being undertaken by formers such as TM Garret with CHANGE, who arranges meetings between white supremacists and Jewish and Black people to help them overcome heavily ingrained prejudices and fully deradicalize. TM has also been highly involved in efforts to help former white supremacists remove their tattoos in a campaign aptly named Erasing the Hate. Jeff Schoep and Acacia Dietz of Beyond Barriers have a whole team of formers who intervene in various ways from speaking publicly to responding personally after texts and emails arrive from those wanting to exit their groups. They address ambivalence and fears of leaving by sharing their own stories, providing psycho-educational support, such as that offered by members who can now take their former groups ideology apart bit by bit, where formerly they were following it loyally. Daryl Davis and Deeyah Khan, both members of minority groups, follow a very unorthodox and brave method of confronting white supremacists face-on by going to talk with them in a kind and challenging manner while sharing their own basic humanity. Others, such as Ed Schofield, make YouTube videos debunking the former ideologies to which they once adhered. Many others are listed on our Escape Hate website. Clearly, there is no one size fits all, and programs like these need to be developed and tested for evidence-based effectiveness for who, when, and how they are useful in facilitating lasting exits and full deradicalization from white supremacism as well as perhaps preventing entry into white supremacism as well. For those in the sample who agreed to feature in a counter narrative video, ICSVE has created the Escape Hate Counter Narrative Project consisting of a growing number of short counter narrative clips of white supremacists speaking out against what they formerly supported.

Recognizing the underlying and unmet needs that lead to radicalization, which often have nothing to do with actual experiences with minority groups, is important to understand to address white supremacists. While the respondents in this sample were taught to hate Jews and blame them for most of societys problems, hardly any had ever met a Jewish person before joining white supremacy. Thus, our conclusions do not support some theorists views that grievances based on negative interactions with minority groups form the seed of discontent leading to white supremacist radicalization. Rather the vulnerabilities existing in these respondents lives identified in this research, vulnerabilities coming in many cases from adverse childhood experiences in their families and communities, and their unmet needs which were initially met by white supremacism are vulnerabilities and needs that must be redirected to better answers than provided by violent extremist groups. Understanding this and designing programs based on this knowledge will make efforts at prevention, disengagement, and deradicalization more understanding, compassionate, and, ultimately, more effective.

The views expressed here are the writers and are not necessarily endorsed by Homeland Security Today, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints in support of securing our homeland. To submit a piece for consideration, email[emailprotected]Oureditorial guidelines can be found here.

The International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) thanks Jeff Schoep and Acacia Dietz of Beyond Barriers and TM Garret of CHANGE for their help in locating subjects as well as advising, translating and giving useful background information for this research.

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PERSPECTIVE: What White Supremacists Tell Us About Recruitment and Deradicalization Homeland Security Today - HSToday

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This story is a part of Hearst Television's series "Hate in the Homeland." Our National Investigative Unit is uncovering the battle against hateful acts in America. Stay with this station for more stories on the fight against Hate in the Homeland.The vast majority of law enforcement agencies are not reporting hate crimes to a key federal database, hampering efforts to contain a rise in hate incidents and leaving communities nationwide in the dark about the prevalence of hate in the homeland, a Hearst Television National Investigative Unit series has found. In addition, almost none of the police departments and sheriffs offices that responded to an exclusive Hearst survey said they have dedicated hate crimes units, raising questions about how seriously Americas law enforcement takes the threat. The most recent data available now indicates at least 20 hate incidents per day in the United States. But experts caution that is likely a vast undercount given the dearth of law enforcement resources, the reluctance of some victims to come forward, and the absence of widespread, mandatory data reporting. Meanwhile, the threat from hate groups and extremists spewing hateful ideologies grows, metastasizing in communities big and small. In 2020, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) said it tracked 866 hate groups. "It is a lot. And it's scary. Yeah, it's a frightening number," said Susan Corke, director of SPLCs Intelligence Project."I feel like our country is at a reckoning."'I don't believe the Holocaust happened'The voice of Tristan Webb, 19, is the sound of hate in the homeland. "I think that the Jews, they are just a parasitical race. And I mean, I don't believe the Holocaust happened. I wish it did happen," Webb says in an on-the-record interview for season two of the "Sounds Like Hate" podcast, a lengthy excerpt of which was given exclusively to Hearst Television ahead of the premiere episode's May 12 worldwide release. LISTEN TO AN EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT OF TRISTAN WEBB SPEAKING ON THE 'SOUNDS LIKE HATE' PODCAST AT THE END OF THIS STORY. The 19-year-old from Michigan, who now lives in a state in the South, is also heard on tape being recruited to join The Base, a white nationalist organization designated as a hate group by the SPLC. "They tried to get therapists to talk to me. They tried to suspend me. They tried to do whatever they could to stop, you know, me, de-radicalize me and everything," Webb recounts on the podcast. "And it just didn't work and just made me more secure in what I was doing. And it worked. I mean, I got a group of people around and got people to wake up."On tape, Webb brags of founding a group called "Aryan Resistance" and resisting his own family when confronted. "Oh, yeah, no, it didn't work at all. I think no one wants to hear, you know, 'oh, you're wrong. You know, you need to stop this. Oh, you know, you're, you know, you're evil, you're radical,' because it just makes you more sure in yourself," Webb said. He declined to do a subsequent on-camera interview.Podcast co-host Jamila Paksima and her team convinced Webb to talk; the sound of his views becoming a canary in very dark coal mine. "My mother is Jewish," Paksima said in an interview for this story, "and I'm sitting here listening to this man talking about the fact that the Holocaust didn't even exist. It was you know, it's infuriating." "I think this is a huge problem in our communities we've avoided talking about and it's time to address it."'This is a national emergency' In interviews across the country, survivors of hate incidents recalled the horror, agony, and viciousness of attacks. "I didn't know if I was going to make it out alive or not," an African American man said."They put their hands on me," an Asian American boy remembered."It's so dehumanizing," another woman said."I was really at risk for my life," a fourth added.There are more victims every day. In the most recent year for which data is available, hate crimes in America rose to the highest level in a decade. Hate-motivated killings are at the highest in nearly 30 years, FBI data show. And hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans have soared 169%, according to a report from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University.The disparate hate groups nearly 900 by the SPLCs count span the spectrum of prejudice."The classic neo-Nazi Ku Klux Klan, there's the white supremacist, white nationalist groups, and then there's the more mainstream groups, the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Semitic," Corke explained.Because federal hate crimes reporting requirements are voluntary, data experts and anti-hate advocates agree the totals tallied nationally do not capture an accurate portrait of hate incidents each year."Hate crimes are vastly underreported, most of the vulnerable communities do not feel safe reporting it to the police. That is a national emergency," Corke said.Survey finds hate crimes units rareGreatly contributing to the lack of accuracy in hate crimes totals is that only 14% of law enforcement agencies nationwide report them to the FBIs federal database. So the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit sent a 40-question survey to more than 14,000 police chiefs and sheriffs in all 50 states and asked whether they think federal or state hate crimes reporting should be required. Of those who responded to the questionnaire, 81% said hate crimes reporting should be mandatory; 18% said it should not. Yet four in 10 told us hate crime reporting, in their view, is "insufficient" now. And only 2% of those agencies that responded said they have a dedicated hate crimes unit. Shown those survey results, Allison Padilla-Goodman, the Southern Division vice president for the Anti-Defamation League, said "absolutely" lawmakers in statehouses around the nation need to do more to combat hate incidents.Nearly 40% of states dont require hate reportingAccording to information provided by the U.S. Department of Justice, three states still do not have a traditional hate crimes law: Wyoming, Arkansas, and South Carolina. Those states, along with 17 more, the Justice Department said, do not require data collection on hate crimes; those include: Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. "Look, we cannot understand truly the landscape of hate and the landscape of hate crimes when we have faulty data," Padilla-Goodman explained in an interview recently in front of the state Capitol in Georgia, which passed a hate crimes law last year."We need for state lawmakers to really grasp and understand the impact of hate crimes and really commit to getting reporting right," she said.King's 'fierce urgency of now' enduresThe day before Emancipation Day in Washington, D.C., Susan Corke at SPLC sat for an interview at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial on the National Mall.Fifty-eight years after the civil rights leader's March on Washington, his "fierce urgency of now" remains as an effort to counteract the voices spewing hate in our homeland. "We need to find the next Martin Luther King," Corke said. "In each and every one of us, that we're willing to stand up and fight together." See exclusive 'Hate in the Homeland' survey results sent to 14,000 police and sheriffs nationwide Hear exclusive portion of "Sounds Like Hate" podcast below Read hate crimes laws in your stateWATCH THE HEARST TELEVISION NATIONAL INVESTIGATIVE UNIT SERIES, HATE IN THE HOMELAND: Part 1: Prevalence of Hate (May 11, 2021) Part 2: Monetization of Hate (May 12, 2021) Part 3: Prevention of Hate (May 13, 2021)Mark Albert is the chief national investigative correspondent for the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit, based in Washington D.C. April Chunko, Amanda Rooker, Diya Rijal, & Kevin Rothstein contributed to this report. Know of hate in the homeland? Have a confidential tip or inside information? Send information and documents to the National Investigative Unit at investigate@hearst.com.

This story is a part of Hearst Television's series "Hate in the Homeland." Our National Investigative Unit is uncovering the battle against hateful acts in America. Stay with this station for more stories on the fight against Hate in the Homeland.

The vast majority of law enforcement agencies are not reporting hate crimes to a key federal database, hampering efforts to contain a rise in hate incidents and leaving communities nationwide in the dark about the prevalence of hate in the homeland, a Hearst Television National Investigative Unit series has found. In addition, almost none of the police departments and sheriffs offices that responded to an exclusive Hearst survey said they have dedicated hate crimes units, raising questions about how seriously Americas law enforcement takes the threat.

The most recent data available now indicates at least 20 hate incidents per day in the United States. But experts caution that is likely a vast undercount given the dearth of law enforcement resources, the reluctance of some victims to come forward, and the absence of widespread, mandatory data reporting.

Meanwhile, the threat from hate groups and extremists spewing hateful ideologies grows, metastasizing in communities big and small.

In 2020, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) said it tracked 866 hate groups.

"It is a lot. And it's scary. Yeah, it's a frightening number," said Susan Corke, director of SPLCs Intelligence Project.

"I feel like our country is at a reckoning."

Eric Young, Huron Daily Tribune

The voice of Tristan Webb, 19, is the sound of hate in the homeland.

"I think that the Jews, they are just a parasitical race. And I mean, I don't believe the Holocaust happened. I wish it did happen," Webb says in an on-the-record interview for season two of the "Sounds Like Hate" podcast, a lengthy excerpt of which was given exclusively to Hearst Television ahead of the premiere episode's May 12 worldwide release.

LISTEN TO AN EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT OF TRISTAN WEBB SPEAKING ON THE 'SOUNDS LIKE HATE' PODCAST AT THE END OF THIS STORY.

The 19-year-old from Michigan, who now lives in a state in the South, is also heard on tape being recruited to join The Base, a white nationalist organization designated as a hate group by the SPLC.

"They tried to get therapists to talk to me. They tried to suspend me. They tried to do whatever they could to stop, you know, me, de-radicalize me and everything," Webb recounts on the podcast. "And it just didn't work and just made me more secure in what I was doing. And it worked. I mean, I got a group of people around and got people to wake up."

On tape, Webb brags of founding a group called "Aryan Resistance" and resisting his own family when confronted.

"Oh, yeah, no, it didn't work at all. I think no one wants to hear, you know, 'oh, you're wrong. You know, you need to stop this. Oh, you know, you're, you know, you're evil, you're radical,' because it just makes you more sure in yourself," Webb said. He declined to do a subsequent on-camera interview.

Podcast co-host Jamila Paksima and her team convinced Webb to talk; the sound of his views becoming a canary in very dark coal mine.

"My mother is Jewish," Paksima said in an interview for this story, "and I'm sitting here listening to this man talking about the fact that the Holocaust didn't even exist. It was you know, it's infuriating."

"I think this is a huge problem in our communities we've avoided talking about and it's time to address it."

Hearst Television

In interviews across the country, survivors of hate incidents recalled the horror, agony, and viciousness of attacks.

"I didn't know if I was going to make it out alive or not," an African American man said.

"They put their hands on me," an Asian American boy remembered.

"It's so dehumanizing," another woman said.

"I was really at risk for my life," a fourth added.

There are more victims every day.

In the most recent year for which data is available, hate crimes in America rose to the highest level in a decade. Hate-motivated killings are at the highest in nearly 30 years, FBI data show. And hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans have soared 169%, according to a report from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University.

The disparate hate groups nearly 900 by the SPLCs count span the spectrum of prejudice.

"The classic neo-Nazi Ku Klux Klan, there's the white supremacist, white nationalist groups, and then there's the more mainstream groups, the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Semitic," Corke explained.

Hearst Television

Because federal hate crimes reporting requirements are voluntary, data experts and anti-hate advocates agree the totals tallied nationally do not capture an accurate portrait of hate incidents each year.

"Hate crimes are vastly underreported, most of the vulnerable communities do not feel safe reporting it to the police. That is a national emergency," Corke said.

Greatly contributing to the lack of accuracy in hate crimes totals is that only 14% of law enforcement agencies nationwide report them to the FBIs federal database.

So the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit sent a 40-question survey to more than 14,000 police chiefs and sheriffs in all 50 states and asked whether they think federal or state hate crimes reporting should be required.

Of those who responded to the questionnaire, 81% said hate crimes reporting should be mandatory; 18% said it should not.

Yet four in 10 told us hate crime reporting, in their view, is "insufficient" now.

And only 2% of those agencies that responded said they have a dedicated hate crimes unit.

Shown those survey results, Allison Padilla-Goodman, the Southern Division vice president for the Anti-Defamation League, said "absolutely" lawmakers in statehouses around the nation need to do more to combat hate incidents.

According to information provided by the U.S. Department of Justice, three states still do not have a traditional hate crimes law: Wyoming, Arkansas, and South Carolina.

Hearst Television

Those states, along with 17 more, the Justice Department said, do not require data collection on hate crimes; those include: Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Hearst Television

"Look, we cannot understand truly the landscape of hate and the landscape of hate crimes when we have faulty data," Padilla-Goodman explained in an interview recently in front of the state Capitol in Georgia, which passed a hate crimes law last year.

"We need for state lawmakers to really grasp and understand the impact of hate crimes and really commit to getting reporting right," she said.

The day before Emancipation Day in Washington, D.C., Susan Corke at SPLC sat for an interview at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial on the National Mall.

Hearst Television

Fifty-eight years after the civil rights leader's March on Washington, his "fierce urgency of now" remains as an effort to counteract the voices spewing hate in our homeland.

"We need to find the next Martin Luther King," Corke said. "In each and every one of us, that we're willing to stand up and fight together."

WATCH THE HEARST TELEVISION NATIONAL INVESTIGATIVE UNIT SERIES, HATE IN THE HOMELAND:

Mark Albert is the chief national investigative correspondent for the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit, based in Washington D.C. April Chunko, Amanda Rooker, Diya Rijal, & Kevin Rothstein contributed to this report.

Know of hate in the homeland? Have a confidential tip or inside information? Send information and documents to the National Investigative Unit at investigate@hearst.com.

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EXCLUSIVE: Part 1: 'Hate in the Homeland' growing, crimes not reported to FBI - WISN Milwaukee

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Posted By admin on May 18, 2021

When the rocket sirens wail, said Yoni Ari, you have 90 seconds to get to a bomb shelter.

Thats the reality north of Tel Aviv for the regional director of the Philadelphia Israeli American Council, who traveled from Wynnewood to visit his daughter, a Lower Merion High School graduate who joined the Israeli army, then found himself under attack.

Everything you do during the day, you have to think where is the closest shelter, Ari said in a phone interview as fighting rages between Hamas and Israel. The streets in Tel Aviv and central Israel, theyre empty. Its kind of a war zone.

The conflict thats dominated world attention for more than a week continues to escalate raising tensions in Philadelphia as well as Israelis, Palestinians and their supporters take to the streets in a series of protests and rallies, each side denouncing the brutality of the other.

We cant just stand by and watch the massacre in Palestine by the racist state of Israel, said Walid Aloui, 40, originally from Algeria, who joined 300 others at a pro-Palestinian rally at Rittenhouse Square on Saturday.

Khaled Kayed, a Palestinian born in Jerusalem, came to the rally with his Palestinian wife, sister, cousin and uncle. All of them worried about relatives in the region.

So far, he said, they are OK.

The Black and Brown Coalition of Philadelphia sponsored the demonstration with the Philadelphia Free Palestine Coalition, whose organizer, Sean Emery, 22, called for an immediate end to the Israeli bombing campaign.

Not everyone needed to attend a rally to have strong opinions about the violence.

Abington house painter Zohar Fellus, 50, worries everyday for his mother and siblings in Israel. But he doesnt see a fast or easy solution to end the fighting. Israelis have been attacked in local bombings that kill and injure but get little international news attention since long before he came to the United States in 1998.

Israel doesnt want to attack any Palestinian territories unless theyre threatened, he said. Hamas, their motto is to eliminate Israel. You cant have peace with terrorists. With Palestinians, its possible. Terrorists, no.

This week the Israeli military unleashed heavy airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, the self-governing Palestinian territory on which Israel has imposed a land, air, and sea blockade. The strikes destroyed miles of tunnels and the homes of nine commanders of Hamas, the militant group that rules the area that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, and European Union, and other countries.

Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel amid the worst fighting since 2014.

As of May 18, at least 213 Palestinians have been killed in airstrikes, including 61 children, with more than 1,440 people wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Ten people in Israel, including a 5-year-old boy and a soldier, have been killed in the ongoing rocket attacks launched from Gaza toward civilian areas in Israel. More than 600 have been injured.

The roots of the conflict are enormously complicated, the immediate cause less so: Jewish activists who want control of the predominantly Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem invoked a law that allows Jews to reclaim homes they lost in the 1948 war that helped secure the existence of Israel, provided they still have old land deeds.

The law doesnt offer Palestinian residents the right to reclaim homes currently inhabited by Jews, from which they may have fled during the same war.

READ MORE: Palestinian author Reem Kassis explores the culture and cuisine of the Arab world in her new cookbook

When Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah protested in early May, Israeli security forces responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. The fighting swept into the al-Aqsa Mosque, where thousands of Palestinians visited for Ramadan prayer. On May 10, Hamas fired rockets from Gaza toward Jerusalem and the south of Israel, and the IDF responded with an aerial bombardment that leveled residential buildings. New showers of rockets soared from Gaza.

The world gets brainwashed by narratives to call terrorists freedom fighters, said Michael Balaban, president & CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. Its not just the rockets, not just the terror of every single day being bombarded, its this double-standard narrative that points the finger at Israel and says, Youre to blame. Ultimately if you support Hamas and believe Israel is not allowed to defend itself, youre condoning terrorism and you seek the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.

Imagine, said Ari, 49, the local Israeli American Council director, if a missile crashed into Philadelphia every couple of hours. Thats what its like. The Israeli Iron Dome defense system intercepts about 85% to 90% of the rockets, but some still get through.

The missiles dont see if youre Jew or Arab, he said, and both have been hurt in the mixed areas around Tel Aviv.

The solution, he said, is peace through an end to the violence directed at Israel by Hamas.

People who are controlling Gaza, their mission is to hurt Israel and they want to eliminate the Jewish state.

On May 12 in Center City, Israeli flags waved as about 100 people turned out for an IAC-led march from the Philadelphia Art Museum to the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza. Another pro-Palestinian rally is set for Saturday, May 22 in Center City.

Im reacting with horror at the now more than 100 Gazans who have been killed, and the thousands more made homeless by Israeli bombs, said Justin Marshall, 24, of Mt. Airy, who helps lead the Philadelphia chapter of If Not Now, a Jewish movement to end the occupation of the West Bank.

His friends in Israel find themselves dashing to bomb shelters, and thats terrifying, he said. But they have the shield of the Iron Dome. Contrast that to the people in Gaza, who have no protection whatever, Marshall said.

Sophisticated Israeli fighter jets and artillery systems have struck scores of targets in impoverished Gaza, the home of about 2 million Palestinians, and one of the most densely populated places in the world.

Israel has to end the apartheid system of laws in which Palestinians are allowed to be dispossessed of their homes, and dispossessed of their land, to make way for Jewish settlers.

Of course he wants peace, Marshall said. Everyone does.

I consider peace to be the presence of justice, he said. Anything less than full and equal rights for Palestinians is unjust.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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Passions rise in Philly amid escalating conflict between Hamas and Israel - The Philadelphia Inquirer

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Night in the Museum

Moscow began to celebrate a Night in the Museum not long ago, but the event quickly became a favorite of Muscovites of all ages. There is something delightfully transgressive about being in a public place after hours, when the lights are usually off and the doors shut tight. Last year it was held online, but this year many museums in and around the city will be offering special events well into the evening on Saturday night. See the site for a full list of possible evening entertainments.

Your kids might enjoy a backstage tourof the Obraztsov Puppet Theater or an evening of a Harry Potter sand painting concertat the beautiful St. Andrews Church right behind the mayors office in the city center (at 5:30 p.m.). If you have curious children ages seven to eleven, take them to the Marina Tsvetayeva house museum at 6 p.m. for a special interactive tour called Theres nothing interesting behind that door except, of course, its very interesting indeed to go into all the back rooms and store rooms that are usually locked up tight. For more information and registration, see the site here.

Active kids would certainly enjoy learning all kinds of useful medieval skills, like shooting arrows and cutting firewood, at the Archers Museum near the Tretyakov Gallery. But the best treat would be a trip to the Mosquarium at VDNH Park at 10 p.m., because what could be cooler than wandering around and under and above swimming sharks at night?

For a concert in a beautiful, unexpected location, head over to the Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts at 4 p.m. for a string concert on a balcony.

For a day outside the city, head out to Peredelkino at noon on a bus from the Voznesensky Center for the Voznesensky Fest a day of music, poetry recitals, talks and nature. While youre there, stop in at the Pasternak House Museum and the Yevgeny Yevtushenko Museum Galleryfor more events.

For night owls, after a long, leisurely dinner, head over to the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center at 10 p.m. for a full night of tours of art and history, an audio performance by poet Lev Rubenshtein, an excursion into the legends and myths of Jewish cuisine called If the stuffed fish could speak, and a synthpop concert by Nastavshevs and Lubennikov. Be sure to fill up on coffee their Night in the Museum ends at 3 a.m. And don't forget to register ahead of time; see their site for more information and times of events.

This weekend Moscows outdoor cinemas open for the season with some great films. Karo is opening a third outdoor theater after the Hermitage and Sadovniki Gardens in the courtyard of the Museum of Moscow. You can get comfortable in one of 150 beanbag chairs to watch Ilychs Gate, the first version of the beloved film I Am Twenty by Marlen Khutsiev Saturday night at 9 p.m. See the Karo site for more details and information about their other cinemas.

Meanwhile, the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is beginning their outdoor cinema season with some fascinating films. On Saturday night at 8:30 p.m. you can see El Planeta, a very quirky American-Spanish comedy about a mother and daughter. In English and Spanish with Russian subtitles. On Sunday evening at the same time you can see a Hong Kong production called Days of Being Wild, filmed in more than five different languages (including English and Chinese), shown with Russian subtitles. For more information about the cinema, exhibitions and other events, see the museum site.

If you want to stay inside, consider attending some events hosted by Moskino as part of their celebration of the 130th birthday of writer and screenwriter Mikhail Bulgakov. On Saturday at 7 p.m. the newly restored Art Theater will show free of charge Morpheus, directed by Alexei Balabanov and based on Bulgakovs Notes of a Young Doctor and Morpheus. Tickets will be available from noon on Friday. For tickets and information about a tour of the Aquarium Garden (prime Bulgakov territory), see the site here. Ivan Vasilyev Changes Professions and A Dogs Heart, both based on works by Bulgakov, will be shown at a number of venues around the city. For more information, see the Moskino site here.

Last October the Theater of Nations premiered a two-person play called Gorbachev starring Yevgeny Mironov as Mikhail Sergeyevich and Chulpan Khamatova as Raisa. Adapted for the stage and directed by Latvian stage director Alvis Hermanis, the three-hour play is actually a love story set against the background of politics. It is performed in what looks like a backstage dressing room. In the first few minutes, the two actors work on getting into the roles Mironov practices a dead-on Gorbachev imitation and Khamatova tries to get Raisas breathy voice down. And then, without the audience noticing how and when it happened, the two actors become Mikhail and Raisa, slipping behind a rack of clothing to age into a new decade, growing older before your eyes. At the end of the performance, the audience leapt to their feet and applauded for a long time, and even a few burly older men were wiping away tears. There are once again a few performances of this remarkable production, and tickets are still available for May 20, 26; June 2, 5 and 22. For more information and ticket sales, see the site here.

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What's On in Moscow May 14-16 - The Moscow Times

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