Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 3, 2021

Hackney Conservatives are calling for the resignation of scholar-activist Toyin Agbetu from the Town Halls review into the naming of local landmarks, buildings and public spaces.

Agbetu hit the headlines this week after allegations of antisemitism made by City Hall Conservative Mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey led him to resign from London Mayors Sadiq Khans new diversity commission.

The allegations relate to past comments asserting an immoral hierarchy of suffering from which victims and survivors of the Holocaust benefit as compared to those of African enslavement.

A spokesperson for Khan said it took the comments extremely seriously and described Agbetus resignation as the right course of action.

Cllr Harvey Odze said:Hackney Council, like most public bodies, also has a zero-tolerance policy towards racism and prejudice in any form.

Consequently, the Conservative group on Hackney Council calls upon Toyin Agbetu to do the right thing and in the same way that he has resigned from the Mayor of Londons Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm to resign from Hackneys community steering group for the Review, Renew, Reclaim project.

Cllr Simche Steinberger added: I believe [Toyin Agbetu] still has some kind of capacity in Hackney sitting on some kind of a group. I wonder why we havent done anything about that. It is very upsetting.

The Mayor keeps on speaking about racism, equality and different communities, so I would be very interested to know exactly what we plan to do about that.

The posts were uncovered by Bailey, according to theJewish News,which first reported Agbetus resignation, and were made by Agbetu in relation to the activists work seeking accountability for British war crimes during the Mau Mau Uprising.

In 2015, on the website for his pan-African human rights organisation Ligali, Agbetu wrote:It would seem that access to justice for African people continues to be decided through an immoral hierarchy of suffering.

Victims and survivor descendants of the Shoah (Jewish holocaust) have been served well by Nazi hunters, Holocaust remembrance days, apologies, acts of atonement and wide ranging reparations from those responsible for facilitating their unjust suffering.

In contrast, victims and survivor-descendants of Maafa (African enslavement and its legacy) have been denied moral, political, spiritual and economic justice at every turn.

It was also revealed that Agbetu had written in defence of academic Tony Martin, who wroteThe Jewish Onslaught: Despatches from the Wellesley Battlefrontafter an outcry following his propagation of a claim that Jews played a central role in the slave trade.

Bailey said: Why did Sadiq Khangive Toyin Agbetu a job in the first place? Either he was completely unaware of whats happening around him, or hes consciously hiring people with antisemitic views. Is this a Mayor who we can trust?

Challenged at a council meeting on Wednesday by Conservative councillors on Agbetus continued involvement with the Town Halls renaming work, Hackney Mayor Philip Glanville said:Toyin Agbetu is a volunteer on part of our renaming programme. Both the council and that project are reflecting on what has happened over the last couple of days, and what he may have said in the past.

I know that we are talking to him about what his future role will be in that project.

We must never forget though that that project is vital in terms of responding to the real, insulting and disgusting names that we see in the borough of former slavers, and we need to remove them as I have set out before.

Earlier this month, Glanville had praised Agbetu as key to informing us on how we build on our history of fighting racism and helped us set an example for how fellow councils can reconcile with contentious pasts.

A spokesperson for the Mayor of London said: The Mayor has a zero-tolerance policy towards racism and prejudice in any form, and all allegations of this nature are taken extremely seriously.

Toyin Agbetu has resigned from the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm and the Mayor believes this is the right course of action.

Agbetu had no comment to make when approached by theCitizen.

Writing on social media, he accused multiple newspapers of launching a coordinated attack supported by the Home Office, and Baileys campaign of Afriphobia, comparing the events to the London Mayoral campaign run by Zac Goldsmith in 2016, which sparked accusations of racism and Islamophobia.

Agbetu wrote: I cant take the risk that all the gains we have made regarding Black Lives Matter unravel so I have had to make a frustrating but strategic move.

I voluntarily decided to step back from the post before being asked, to help reduce the attacks on the important work of the commission, but I have no intention of letting such outrageous lies stand against me (will share some contextual info soon).I am also worried about all of you that have supported me over the years. They are going through my posts and articles from twenty years ago and framing them out of context to attack me.

They are looking for any means to destroy my reputation which includes going through you if necessary. Please wait until after the election for me to deal with this once Baily is kicked to the curb after losing again.

Hackney Council was approached for comment, but had not responded by time of going to press.

The coronavirus outbreak meant that the Hackney Citizen was unable to print a monthly newspaper for three months.

We're grateful that we have since been able to resume printing. This would not have been possible without the generosity of our readers, whose donations kept the paper from disappearing completely at a distressing time for residents.

A huge thank you to everyone who gave their time and money to support us through the lockdown, and to those who continue to do so as we slowly recover from the dramatic fall in advertising revenues, on top of the existing challenges threatening the future of local journalism.

A one-off donation or a regular contribution from anyone who can afford it will help our small team keep the newspaper in print and the website running in the coming months and years.

Find out how you can donate.

Thank you for your support, and stay safe.

The Hackney Citizen team

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Tories call for resignation of Toyin Agbetu from council naming review in wake of antisemitism claims - Hackney Citizen

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Posted By admin on March 3, 2021

I was a sophomore in college when my grandfather died. He was a good man82 years old, a trumpeter, soft-spoken and kind. He slipped on an empty Coke bottle getting into his car one day; he hit his head on the curb, passed out, and never woke up again.

I went down to Chicago to be with my family for his shivah. Shivah is the seven day mourning period in Judaism immediately following the burial of a close family member. Mostly the observance consists of scrupulously doing nothing opening a space to reflect, to process, to be with the loss. Its a long spiraling week of almost entirely unstructured time: there are regular prayers, but even mealtimes grow wishy-washy as the leftovers cycle in and out of the fridge.

And this, after all, is the point. Without distractions, thoughts turn naturally toward the departed. People reminisce. Anecdotes are traded, and the family history that might otherwise have been forgotten starts to bubble up to the surface. We found some interesting things in the boxes and closets: naturalization documents, yearbooks, war letters.

What most interested me at the time, thoughwhat I still think about todaywas a thick photo album, full of curling-cornered prints and washed-out color. I remember flipping through it on the couch during that shivah, tracking the family resemblance. Press clippings, informal groupings: my fathers disinclination to smile seemed to run back at least as far as the mid-60s. There were pictures of a vacation home in Union Pier on Lake Michigan, and my Dad pointed out his own grandfathera grocer upon whose monumental onion sacks he played as a boy.

At the very back of the album, though, there was a photograph that no one could recognize. It was thick, printed on card, the kind of thing that hasnt been produced in a hundred years.

In the picture, a man in a boxy yarmulke with a wild growth of beard stared directly at the camera. There were no markings on the back to confirm my suspicions, but I was convinced that he was a member of our family. The resemblance was there: the full lips and almond-shaped eyes, the expression just a bit more severe than I suspect hed intended.

Given what we know about the timing of our familys arrival in this country, it seems likely that someone carried that print with them across the ocean, but I still dont know who the man was. Years later when I began my own family, I indulged in some light genealogical research, but by that time, the photo album had been mislaid. I have some guesses nowa thin thread of names and dates that I try from time to time to hang that memory upon.

But the 20th century has proved to be something of an insuperable obstacle on my path back into the past. Records in the Old Country were made not only in a language I dont know, but in a different alphabet as well, and anyway, they were most often kept in church registers, where theres no mention of the Jews. My grandfathers father (Hirschl by birth, Harry by assimilation) was born in the little village of Hoholiv, Ukraine; these days, judging from their website, theres no memory that Jews were ever even there.

Its hard to exaggerate the cataclysmic havoc that the 20th century spilled out on the Jews of Eastern Europe. The Holocaust, of course, is the ready examplemillions of lives and a millennium of mimetic culture gone in just a handful of years. But Jewish Eastern Europe began the century on the back foot: hundreds of years of legalized oppression and popular violence in the Russian Empire culminated in a thick wave of pogromsstate sanctioned Jew massacresthat had already set off a major tide of emigration in the waning years of the 19th century. And if the beginning and middle of the 20th century didnt go well for the Jews of Eastern Europe, then the end was hardly any betterthe Soviet regime criminalized the practice of Jewish religion and invented spurious charges with which to sweep up those interested in preserving any hint of secular Jewish culture.

At the end of the 19th century, there were more Jews in Eastern Europe than anywhere else; by the end of the 20th, the largest body of Jews in the world had been decimated in human and cultural terms. Thankfully, neither Hitler nor Stalin managed to wipe out our culture entirelythe descendants of Ashkenazi Jews make up roughly 80% of the worlds Jewish community today, and when we fled to safer shores, we brought our language, our food, our books with us.

I, however, am more concerned with the things that didnt make the crossing.

There were manyall the secret recipes, all the art and artifacts. An entire architectural style was lost: the wooden synagogue, often highly figured and beautifully adorned. Perhaps a handful of examples remain in the world, and most of them are replicas.

If it was Jewish and it could burn, then they burned it.

I mourn the loss of the synagogues, of course, of the artifacts and recipes, but in the end, I am not an architect, or a chef. Im a writer of fantasies.

What keeps me up at night is the loss of Jewish magic. And I mean this literally.

Its sometimes hard to communicate to non-Jews the degree to which Jewishness is not just a religious identity. Founded as a nation roughly three thousand years ago, before the concepts of ethnicity, worship, and nationality were tidily separable, we are a peoplea civilization more than anything else. The most traditionally observant Jews will persist in identifying people born to Jewish mothers as Jews even as they practice other religions and renounce the Jewish God. There are even Jewish atheistsa lot of them.

Our religion is submerged, then, in a thick broth of associate culture, and thats why, despite the fact that the Hebrew Bible clearly prohibits the practice, we can still discuss Jewish magic just as easily as we can discuss Jewish atheism: its very clearly there.

From the ancient Near Eastern making of incantation bowls to the still-ongoing practice of leaving petitionary notes at the graves of sages, Jews have been practicing magic as long as weve been around. In some times and places, Jewish magic has been codified, elevated into theology and philosophy. Traces of this tendency exist in the Talmud, and notably in the various phases of Kabbalistic development throughout our diasporic history.

But these are the kinds of Jewish magic that havent been lost; anyone with a library card or an internet connection can find out about them. What I mourn is the loss of folk magicthe stuff too quotidian, too obscure, perhaps even too heterodox to have been recorded. We know it was there. We see traces of it in rabbinic responsa as well as secular literature: the way our grandmothers used to tie red thread to our bassinets in order to keep the thieving demons away; the way our grandfathers used to appeal to the local scribe for a protective amulet of angels names scratched out on a spare roll of parchment.

This was the magic of a people living among the same trees at the end of the same muddy lane for hundreds and hundreds of years. They knew that demons haunted the cemetery, that angels guarded their borders, that their sages could intervene for them with God Himself and make miracles to solve the problems of their day-to-day lives. It was an entire enchanted ethos, a magic stitched into their experience moment by moment.

And its gone now; it was a combination of place and time and people, a delicate ecosystem of superstition and socialization, and even if it could be resuscitated on these shores, it would, of necessity, be different. The demons who haunt forests and shtetls are surely not the same as those who lurk on fire escapes and at the back of service alleys.

No, we can no more bring back the dead magic of my ancestors than we can unburn an intricate wooden synagogue.

But we can build replicas.

The blueprints are already there. Yiddish literature is full of fantastical stories: the holy sages working miracles, the nefarious demons plotting for their own gain. Though many of these Yiddish masterworks have been translated into English, and are at least theoretically accessiblecheck out the work of I.L. Peretz, S. An-sky, Der Nisteroften, the tales are so submerged in Jewish context that theyre difficult for fantasy fans without a strong Jewish education to enjoy.

A few of us have begun to try to change this, though, writing fantasies as accessible to non-Jewish readers as they might be to members of our own community. In Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik gracefully transmuted the familiar tale of Rumpelstiltskin into a medieval Jewish context. Adam Gidwitz sent three exceptional 13th century kids on a quest to save a copy of the Talmud in The Inquisitors Tale, and now, I hope to make my own contribution to the small but mighty subgenre of Jewish fantasy.

My new book, The Way Back is the story of two kids, Bluma and Yehuda Leib, from the little Jewish village of Tupik in Eastern Europe: how they each encounter the Angel of Death; how this encounter sends them spinning off through the realm of the dead known as the Far Country; how, by bargaining with ancient demons and beseeching saintly sages, they finally make their way to the very doorstep of Deaths House. One of the main reasons I wrote it was to try and recapture the lost magic that the man at the end of my grandfathers photo album mustve known.

Its a spooky adventure of magic and mysticism, but beyond the fun of traveling alongside Bluma and Yehuda Leib, of meeting andsometimesevading the demons, I think The Way Back has something else to offer.

In the book, one of the ways you make your way into the Far Country is through the cemetery: a long and winding path that meanders among the gravestones. Maybe the book itself is such a path back through the death and destruction of the 20th century, back and back to my ancestors own worn kitchen table, where the world is a little darker, a little colder, and a lot more enchanted.

Here the demons lurk just beyond the bounds of the bright firelight; here the dead magic is still breathing and warm.

Come on back.

Gavriel Savit holds a BFA in musical theater from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he grew up. As an actor and singer, Gavriel has performed on three continents, from New York to Brussels to Tokyo. He is also the author of Anna and the Swallow Man, which the New York Times called a splendid debut. Learn more about Gavriel at his website.

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Protecting Ashkenazi Jewish Magic: Preservation Through Storytelling and History - tor.com

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Posted By admin on March 3, 2021

Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said on Tuesday that Israel and the United States have agreed that neither nation will make decisions pertaining to Iran and the Iran nuclear deal without informing the other first.

"If anyone thought the Americans would run to make an agreement with Iran - it did not happen up until now, and I hope it will not happen going forward," Ashkenazi said in a Zoom call with Israeli representatives to East Asia and the Pacific, stressing that relations with the Biden administration were good and that he has been in close contact with his U.S. counterpart, Anthony Blinken.

"There is a decision by a small forum constituting of the prime minister, the defense minister, foreign minister and the heads of the defense establishment to enter a dialogue with them in a non-oppositional manner, discuss Israeli interests and how to forge a great agreement that will safeguard Israeli and regional interests and prevent a nuclear Iran. Our policy is to exhaust this dialogue in person and to professionally converse with the Americans as allies."

He also added that he expected Israel to establish relations with more Arab countries in 2021 after normalizing ties with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco the previous year, saying "it's not a question of if, but under which condition."

Ashkenazi also said that one of his ministry's goals was to improve relations with neighboring Jordan and Egypt, and to expand cooperation with them at the business level as well.

Earlier on Tuesday, Ashkenazi met with his Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi, at the Allenby Border Crossing between the West Bank and Jordan.

The two discussed promoting cooperation between the two nations and economic and civil issues involving the Palestinians, read a statement from Ashekanzi's office.

This was the third such meeting between the ministers at Allenby Crossing.

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Israel, US reach behind-the-scenes agreement on Iran, FM says - Ynetnews

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Posted By admin on March 3, 2021

Mar 1, 2021

According to a Feb. 28 report byIsraeli news site Ynet, Defense Minister Benny Gantz had met secretly in Jordan with King Abdullah II. The meeting apparently took place a few weeks ago. The report did not divulge itssources for this information, nordid it give a precise date for the meeting.

Also, on Feb. 26, duringa Zoom meeting with Blue and White party activists, Gantz hinted at contacts with Jordan and also criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for allegedly damaging bilateral relations.

I think Jordan is a great asset to Israel, and I think that ourrelationship with Jordan could be a thousand times better. Unfortunately, Netanyahu is an unwanted figure in Jordan, and his presence harms [relations between the countries]. I have a continuous and ongoing connection with the Jordanian king and other senior Jordanian officials, and I know we can have great achievements, Gantz said.

Gantz expressed hope for advancing in strengthening bilateral relations, saying, I believe that its possible to do one or two civilian projects each year with Jordan, and within 10 years up to 20 or 30 projects.

Gantzs statements were made againstthe backdrop of an article by Jordanian Prince Hassan binTalal, published the same day byIsraeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. In thearticle, the prince called for the establishment of a stable Palestinian state, noting,Iran and the Israeli Palestinian conflict, the twin elephants in the room, must be at the top of the agenda. Still, Talal also referred extensively to advancing economic joint projects in the fields of energy, water and the environment, and called for promoting ties between civil societies in the region.

The issue of the two-state solution was addressed ina Feb. 25 speech by the king, addressing the Brookings Institution Conference titled "The Middle East and the New US Administration." There is no alternative to the two-state solution, and continued unilateral steps will only kill the prospects of peace, Jordanian monarch said.

Clearly, the arrival of theBiden administration, with its stated intention to revive Israeli-Palestinian talks, affects posivitelyalso diplomatic and economic ties between Amman and Jerusalem.

On Feb. 25, Israels public broadcaster Kan reportedabout the two countries advancing joint projects and improving bilateral relations. Kan Arab affairs correspondent Roi Kais revealed that a few weeks ago, government ministries' CEOs from both countries metin order to advance bilateral projects, and even trilateral projects with the Palestinian Authority (PA). Reportedly, Jordan would like to increaseexports to the PAfrom $100 million to $500 million,a request favorably being considered now by the Israeli authorities. A list of products and merchandise that could be exported from Jordan to the West Bank was submitted in that meeting to the Israeli delegation, headed by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

To these developments, we should add two face-to-face meetings over the past few months between Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi. One meeting took place Dec. 3at the Allenby Bridge crossing point on the Israel-Jordan border. This meeting occurred at the request of the Jordanians, to discuss several practical issues, such as the renewal of Jordanian export permits to the PAand increasing the number of Palestinians authorized to pass at the Allenby Bridge. Reportedly, Safadibrought up Jordans special status in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, andasked Israel to refrain from any bilateral moves that could block advancement towardthe two-state solution. Another meeting took place two weeks later, in Jordan, to discuss regional strategic issues and economic cooperation.

Recent statements by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken over Washingtons commitment to the two-state solution obviously encourage Amman, and could very well be at the source of its willingness to thaw its chilly relations with Jerusalem. Still, signs of rapprochement between the two countries were registered already prior to the US elections and Joe Bidens victory. Sources at the Foreign Ministry indicate that Ashkenazi has spoken with Safadi several times on the phone since taking office. Also, last October, Israeli and Jordaniancivil aviation authorities signedanew aviation agreementthat enables commercial flights to cross the airspace of both countries.

Other signs of rapprochement were registered at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.In March 2020, Israel facilitated the passageof some 200 Israeli-Arab university students studying in Amman back to the country, after the Hashemite Kingdom closed its borders. Then in April 2020, Israel donated to Jordan 5,000 surgical masks. On Jan. 25, the Israeli Embassy in Amman posted on its sitethat Jordanian authorities haveagreed for Israeli citizens to cross the border back into Israel through the Jordan River crossing point, without submitting prior notice or notifying ahead the Foreign Ministry.

As demonstrated earlier, this process of rapprochement is championed by Ashkenazi and Gantz. Publications over the past two years have suggested that relations between King Abdullah and Netanyahu are chilly at best. In June 2020, on the backdrop of Netanyahus push for annexing parts of the West Bank, the king reportedly refused to speak on the phone with the prime minister.

The problem is that Gantz and Ashkenazi are unlikely to be part of the next government. In fact, Ashkenazi has already saidthat he is taking a break from politics. Israels embassy in Jordan is headed by one of the countrys most professional, experienced and discrete diplomats Ambassador Amir Weissbrod. This capable ambassador should certainly get much of the credit for this positive change in relations, especially since he was appointed at a record-low point in bilateral ties. Still, people in the Foreign Ministry fear for the future of these ties. Much will depend on the identity of Israels next foreign minister.

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Israel, Jordan relations warm up, but not thanks to Netanyahu - Al-Monitor

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Posted By admin on March 3, 2021

Newswise STONY BROOK, NY, March 1, 2021 A team of researchers co-led by Michael Frohman, MD, PhD, of Stony Brook University, has identified an important cause of congenital heart disease. They discovered that certain loss of functions in the PLD1 (Phospholipase D1) gene causes congenital right-sided cardiac valve defects and neonatal cardiomyopathy. Their findings are detailed in a paper published early online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Congenital heart disease is the most common type of birth defect, accounting for one-third of all congenital anomalies with a worldwide occurrence of seven per thousand births. The majority of these defects include abnormalities of valve formation. Right-sided congenital heart disease incudes abnormalities of the pulmonary and tricuspid valves.

More than 25 years ago, Dr. Frohmans lab cloned the PLD1 gene and has since studied its physiological role, as well as the potential for developing drugs that inhibit PLD1 activity to treat thrombotic disorders and cancer. Their current research reveals that loss of PLD1 function in a recessive manner results in congenital heart defects.

PLD1 is an enzyme that cleaves a specific lipid found in all cells to generate a signal that changes how cells behave when they are stimulated by hormones, neurotransmitters, and growth factors. Many research groups have been working over the past quarter century to define how PLD1 helps cells communicate with each other, says Dr. Frohman, co-senior author on the paper, Chair of the Department of Pharmacological Sciences in the Renaissance School of Medicine, and a SUNY Distinguished Professor.

He explains that congenital heart disease caused by loss of PLD1 function generally leads to misdevelopment of the cardiac valves on the right side of the heart and sometimes the right ventricle. This improper development of the heart sometimes prevents live birth, and in most other cases thus far, the newborns would not survive without surgery or drug management.

The research on PLD1 and mutations related to congenital heart disease included 56 investigators worldwide, with the lead author being Najim Lahrouchi, MD, a physician-scientist at the University of Amsterdam; and his mentor, Connie Bezzina, PhD, who co-led the study with Dr. Frohman.

The team used whole-exome sequencing in 2,718 congenital heart disease cases and other approaches to identify 30 patients from 21 unrelated families of different ancestries with altered PLD1 genes on both chromosomes who presented predominantly with congenital cardiac valve defects. The investigation also demonstrated that PLD1 inhibition decreases endothelial mesenchymal transition, an established pivotal early step in embryonic development of the valves at around the seventh week of pregnancy.

One of the mutations found in PLD1 is at a high enough rate (2 percent) in Ashkenazi Jews that the mutation may likely be incorporated into prenatal genetic testing.

At Stony Brook, a graduate student in the Frohman lab, Christian Salazar, assayed the mutant PLD1 proteins for function and found that almost all of them had lost biochemical activity due to the mutations. Forrest Bowling, a graduate student in the Airola lab in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, identified the location of the mutations on the three-dimensional structure of PLD1. The structure, determined by Bowling and Michael Airola in collaboration with Dr. Frohman and Salazar, was published in Nature Chemical Biology. The placement on the protein structure provided detailed insight into why the mutations caused the PLD1 enzyme to become non-functional.

Overall, the study provides an increased understanding of disease mechanisms and phenotypic expression associated with PLD1 loss of function, in particular in regard to congenital heart disease. Dr. Frohman says that future studies will focus on improving the understanding of the role of PLD1 in the development of cardiac valves and on the continued development of clinical resources for families with or at risk of having affected children.

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Study Shows Loss of Function of PLD1 Gene is Causal to Congenital Heart Disease - Newswise

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Posted By admin on March 3, 2021

The Israeli government approved a plan Monday to provide compensation of up to 43,000 ($60,000) to some of the families of children who went missing while in state care in the 1950s.

But advocacy groups and several of the families have already rejected the plan, calling it a cynical move designed to silence their larger demands for accountability. They are demanding an official apology, an expansion of the eligibility criteria, and further access to state records that might shed light on the fate of their relatives.

The compensation plan amounting to roughly 35M ($50 million) represents a new phase for what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week said was among the most painful affairs in the history of the state of Israel.

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Over the years, hundreds and perhaps thousands of Jewish families from Middle Eastern countries, chiefly Yemen, reported that their babies and small children disappeared in the decades following Israels establishment.

Many suspected that hospital and social work officials abducted their children and gave them away to Ashkenazi families in Israel and the United States, who were thought to be better caretakers and, in some cases, had lost their own children during the Holocaust.

A full inquiry into the allegations has never been carried out, but several state commissions concluded that most of the missing children must have simply died and were hastily buried. The commissions dismissed claims of any conspiracy to abduct the children.

Still, Netanyahu said, The time has come for the families whose infants were taken from them to receive recognition by the state and government of Israel, and financial compensation as well.

Roughly a million Jews from Middle Eastern countries arrived in Israel after the countrys founding in 1948. Many of these Mizrahi immigrants were relegated to poor and crowded housing conditions or to tent dwellings in the countrys periphery while Ashkenazi immigrants from Europe received preferential treatment in employment, education, and other areas.

This painful period contributed to an ethnic divide that persists in Israel to this day, as seen in voting patterns, for example. Netanyahus Likud party found a formula for electoral success by appealing to the historic wounds of Mizrahi Jews.

Among Yemenite Jews in Israel today, it is common to hear stories of relatives who died mysteriously at a young age or went missing without explanation. Some in government and academia have suggested that whatever happened was not malicious but rather the tragic result of the chaos of Israels early years, when the country was poor, war-torn and overwhelmed by the influx of immigrants.

Many believe, however, that some officials took advantage of the chaos and the linguistic barriers of those days to systematically kidnap children from hospitals and clinics and deliver them to Ashkenazi families.

Families were told their missing children died from illness but most were never shown a burial site. Suspicions were inflamed in the 1960s as many families received mailed military enlistment orders ahead when the children would have come of age for service.

Three government-appointed commissions that looked at the claims said they found no evidence of collusion to disappear the children. Journalists and independent researchers have since repeatedly surfaced evidence that pokes holes in the commissions findings.

To be qualified for the new payments, a family must be among the 1,000 or so who have previously reported their case to authorities. The window to apply for money runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, and applicants must sign a waiver releasing the government of any further liability.

In cases where it is clear that a child died and the family was not notified, families are eligible for about $45,000. In other situations, where the childs fate is unknown, the payment is about $60,000.

The statement announcing the decision said the government regrets what happened and recognises the suffering of families. It is not in the power of a financial plan to provide a remedy to the suffering caused to families, the statement said. However, the State of Israel hopes that it will be able to assist in the process of rehabilitation and healing of the social wound that this affair has created in Israeli society.

Advocates who have been campaigning for years on this issue said the plan falls short.

Amram, a group that has collected accounts from some 800 families, said the compensation plan was inadequate because it was drafted without direction from the families and without acceptance of responsibility or apology.

Without this component, a process of correction and healing isnt possible, the group said. Amram repeatedly demands that the state of Israel take responsibility for the severe injustice.

Activist Rafi Shubeli, whose Forum Achai represents some of the families, also said the proposed resolution is a unilateral action by the government and will not lead to reconciliation.

Our struggle will continue, he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. This affair isnt going away.

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Israel to spend 35m compensating families of children who disappeared - Jewish News

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Posted By admin on March 3, 2021

More than 200 million people64 percent of U.S. adultsregularly play videos games, and COVID-19 lockdowns have only caused their popularity as a vital social space to surge. While many gamers have positive social experiences, there is also a harmful side of video games, leading to a lack of civility in online interactionsand sometimes outright defamatory interactions.

A recent Anti-Defamation League (ADL) report titled Free to Play? Hate, Harassment and Positive Social Experience in Online Games 2020 found that 81 percent of U.S. adults who played online multiplayer games experienced some form of harassment. Alarmingly, a significant portion of online harassment and abuse targets groups and individuals based on identity characteristics such as race/ethnicity, religion, and gender. Gamers can be exposed to extremism and disinformation linked to white supremacy, Holocaust denial, and other abuse.

On March 15, the Center for Technology Innovation and the Center for Universal Education will host a webinar to think about the world of gaming as a civic space where Americans develop and reinforce social norms that influence how they interact and treat each other. After a brief overview of the ADL report, a moderated panel discussion of experts will consider how laissez faire attention to these matters, and an overall lack of diversity among gaming developers, may contribute to pernicious interactions.

Viewers can submit questions via email to events@brookings.edu or via Twitter at #GamingCivility.

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How hate and harassment in online gaming influence civic life - Brookings Institution

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Posted By admin on March 3, 2021

A school board member in a Massachusetts city has said he is resigning immediately after his use of an anti-Semitic slur on live cable television.

Robert Hoey Jr., 66, announced his resignation in a Facebook video on Friday. He made the anti-Semitic comment during a live episode of the show "City Life," and a video clip of it surfaced on Wednesday.

Hoey was a member of the Lowell School Committee. He said in his resignation video that people should "condemn what I said," the Boston Globe reported.

In-depth news coverage of the Greater Boston Area.

City leaders condemned Hoey's use of the slur and had planned to hold a special session to consider a resolution calling for him to resign. Robert Trestan, the director of the New England chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, told the Boston Globe that he welcomed Hoey's resignation.

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Lowell School Board Member Who Used Anti-Semitic Slur on TV Resigns - NBC10 Boston

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Posted By admin on March 3, 2021

To the Editor:

Re What This Wave of Anti-Asian Violence Reveals about America, by Anne Anlin Cheng (Op-Ed, nytimes.com, Feb. 21):

The recent spate of horrific, pandemic-related violence against Asian-Americans is part of a troubling pattern of rising hate crimes across America. At both the state and federal level, we are doing a poor job at tracking these crimes, making victims and witnesses feel comfortable reporting them, and speaking out forcefully against them.

Data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation reveals that 2019 was the deadliest year on record for hate crimes, with 51 murders, a more than 100 percent increase over 2018.

Moreover, hate crime laws are unevenly applied and enforced across the country. A handful of states still have no hate crime legislation on the books. And many more states need to do a better job of training the police to recognize hate crimes and to make victims feel comfortable reporting them.

The first step in addressing hate violence is to know its full scope and magnitude. Beyond reporting from nonprofit watchdog groups, our state legislatures and law enforcement agencies need to ensure that these crimes are being fully reported and taken seriously.

Jonathan A. GreenblattNew YorkThe writer is chief executive and national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

To the Editor:

Re Fear and Rage Grip Asian-Americans in New York Amid a Wave of Attacks (news article, Feb. 27):

My heart breaks over the horrific wave of violence against our Asian-American neighbors and citizens across the country Americans whose only offense appears to be walking while Asian.

While former President Donald Trump did not invent anti-Asian racism, his ugly and false invective about a China virus undoubtedly reignited prejudice and hatred that were all too ready to spring back to life, seeking legitimacy.

I pray that communities and authorities will take a stand to protect their citizens against these monstrous hate crimes.

Elizabeth P. RaymondBryn Mawr, Pa.

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Opinion | A Rise in Hate Crimes Against Asian-Americans and Others - The New York Times

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Posted By admin on March 3, 2021

From the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to 2017's deadly Unite the Right event in Charlottesville, Va., a number of recent high-profile extremist incidents across the country have involved participants from the Buckeye State. Meanwhile, those with extremist sympathies have been found among the ranks of law enforcement agencies, including the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office.

Is Ohio a hotbed for right-wing extremism? If so, why - and can anything be done to coax people back from the fringes?

Plus, what leads individuals to join extremist groups and how do you deprogram someone who has been radicalized? We examine the psychology behind extremism.

Joining Cincinnati Edition to explore these questions are Anti Defamation League Center on Extremism Senior Research Fellow Dr. Mark Pitcavage;Hamilton County Sheriff Charmaine McGuffey; and University of Maryland Department of Psychology Distinguished Professor and National Center for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism Co-DirectorArie Kruglanski, Ph.D.

Listen to Cincinnati Edition live at noon M-F. Audio for this segment will be uploaded after 4 p.m. ET.

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Why Have So Many Recent Extremist Events Involved Ohioans? - WVXU

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