From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Everyone’s talking ISIS at the UN, leaving Netanyahu glaring
(JTA) – All anyone attending the United Nations General Assembly opening seemed to want to talk about was the threat posed to the world by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
That was much to the consternation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who argued in his speech before that body on Thursday that Iran, beyond the benefits accrued to it because of the sanctions relief for nuclear restrictions deal, was benefiting from the intensified focus on ISIS.
“When your enemies fight each other, don’t strengthen either one, weaken both!” he said.
In one of the most dramatic moments of the week of speeches, Netanyahu charged the assembled world leaders with silence in the wake of Iranian provocations, including calls for Israel’s disappearance, before and after it reached the deal in July with six major powers.
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From PressTV
Israeli settlers attempt to set Palestinian houses on fire in West Bank
Israeli settlers have once again attacked Palestinian properties across the occupied West Bank, attempting to set houses on fire.
The attacks took place on Thursday night when settlers, backed by Israeli forces, stormed towns and villages across the occupied territories and injured several Palestinians.
The attacks came after two Israelis were killed in a drive-by shooting in the territory on Thursday night. The Tel Aviv regime has blamed the incident on Palestinian resistance groups.
According to local media, the Israeli military declared the northern Nablus region in the occupied territory a closed military zone following the attacks.
Earlier on Thursday, Israeli forces also shot and injured a 28-year-old Palestinian in Bethlehem.
From PressTV
Israel kidnapped 562 Palestinians in September: Prisoners’ advocacy group
The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) says Israeli soldiers “kidnapped” 562 Palestinians, including dozens of children, in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip in September alone.
The Palestinian body, which represents detainees and their families, said on Thursday that Israeli soldiers kidnapped 294 Palestinians, mainly children, in the occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem).
Those Palestinians were mostly transferred to prison, the PPS said, adding that the arrests were made after the Israeli extremists and soldiers intensified their invasions into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
The recent wave of violence, which started in mid-September in al-Aqsa Mosque compound, has seen Israeli settlers and soldiers attacking Palestinian worshipers following the deployment of Israeli troops to the area for the Jewish Rosh Hashanah New Year holiday.
It was also reported that the Israeli troops kidnapped as many as 56 Gazans, including 40 fishers who were attacked in Palestinian waters.
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From PressTV
Israel mulls authorizing ‘wildcat settlements’ in West Bank: Document
The Israeli regime is contemplating authorizing so-called wildcat settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank near the town of Duma, a court document indicates.
Tel Aviv confirmed it was considering the authorization of five outposts, according to the court document, which was first made public by rights group Yesh Din.
Yesh Din has filed legal action against one of the outposts called Adei Ad outpost.
The group said in a statement that Israel “is willing” to sanction the Adei Ad outpost despite admitting that it “was established in violation of the law, and many structures in it were built illegally.”
The Adei Ad outpost should be removed “not only because it is constructed illegally, in part on land owned privately by Palestinians, but also because it serves as a hub for criminal activities and grave violence, leading to systematic human rights violations of the Palestinian residents in its vicinity,” Yesh Din added.
From Ynet News
Russia begins striking ISIS targets
WATCH: The Russian intervention in Syria continues to evolve, with Russian forces conducting their first air strikes against ISIS targets near the organization’s capital of Raqqa.
Russia has begun bombing the ISIS capital of Raqqa in Syria, which according to a statement issued by the Russian Defense Ministry resulted in, “An ISIS command post being incapacitated and infrastructure used for training terrorists completely destroyed.”
The attacks were the first Russian strikes to be carried out against ISIS targets, after the initial Russian strikes in Syria targeted a bevy of other opposition groups.
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From The Times of Israel
French politician in hot water over ‘white race’ remark
Once a close ally of Nicolas Sarkozy, Nadine Morano faces ejection from his party over her remarks on French society
A French European MP was fighting for her political future on Wednesday after coming under attack for describing France as a country of “white race.”
Nadine Morano, of the right-wing The Republicans party, could be barred from standing in regional elections in December over her remarks, in which she also said France was a “Jewish-Christian” country.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who heads the party — the main opposition to the governing Socialists — has asked the leadership to withdraw Morano from its list of candidates for the biggest electoral test of 2015.
Morano, a former minister with a reputation for gaffes and unguarded Twitter comments, said in a television interview on Saturday that: “We are a Jewish-Christian country… of white race, which takes in foreigners.”
Sarkozy, who once counted the 51-year-old as one of his closest allies in his government, said: “I will not accept any slip-ups.”
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
EU official to act as envoy on anti-Semitism
(JTA) — Following reports of underreporting of rising anti-Semitism in Europe, a senior EU official said he would act as the organization’s first envoy on the trend.
Frans Timmermans, a former foreign minister of the Netherlands and the first vice president of the European Commission, made the announcement on Thursday at a European Union event in Brussels attended by European Jewish Congress officials.
“The importance we attach to fighting anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hatred also means that we do not just want to listen to you and your concerns today,” Timmermans said in a speech during the event, which his office titled the first Annual Colloquium on Fundamental Rights in the European Union.
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From Ynet News
Oregon college shooter: ‘Are you a Christian?’
Chris Harper-Mercer, a student at Umpqua college, first kills the teacher, then tells victims ‘because you are a Christian you’re going to see God in about one second’; he was shot by police. A gunman stalked onto a college campus in southwestern Oregon on Thursday and opened fire, asking his victims to declare their religious affiliation before killing at least 10 of them one by one.
A law enforcement source said multiple agencies had identified the shooter as Chris Harper-Mercer. He was slain in an exchange of gunfire with two police officers in Snyder Hall at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg following the morning rampage.
According to the testimony of one of the wounded, Anastasia Boylan, immediately after Harper-Mercer came into the classroom he shot the teacher dead at point blank range. Before getting into surgery Boylan told her father and brother that others were also hit by the initial shooting, and everybody ducked trying to take cover. But ten did not survive.
Chris Harper-Mercer’s photo on Myspace (Photo: Myspace)
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Play JTA’s Jewish News of the Week Quiz
(JTA)— We’ve got Drake getting busy, the pope getting off schedule and Lena Dunham getting insight from Hillary. Not to mention deli-flavored ice cream. Dig in!
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Haim Saban reportedly pulls out of campus BDS initiative
(JTA) — Entertainment mogul Haim Saban reportedly has pulled out of a campus anti-BDS initiative he launched with fellow billionaire Sheldon Adelson.
Saban’s partnership with Adelson on the effort, called the Maccabees, was supposed to show bipartisan support for campus pro-Israel activism. Saban is a major donor to Democrats, while Adelson is a major giver to Republicans. But Saban has withdrawn from the project fighting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement because of its right-wing tilt, according to the Jewish Daily Forward.
“He didn’t like that Adelson was pushing the group towards funding right-wing groups that are only speaking in a right-wing echo chamber and not towards pushing a message that would actually change hearts and minds,” an unnamed Jewish communal official told the Forward.
Saban has also minimized his role in the Israeli American Council, an Israeli-American organization that he has funded along with Adelson, the Forward reported. Saban will not be at the organization’s conference this month.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
U.S. determines Kuwaiti airline discriminated against Israeli
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The United States Department of Transportation said Kuwait Airways unlawfully discriminated against an Israeli passenger.
“By refusing to transport Israeli citizens to and from the U.S. and a third country that accepts Israeli citizens, in this case the United Kingdom, the airline is in violation of the law,” the Sept. 30 letter from the department to the airline said, concluding an investigation into a complaint.
The Kuwaiti airline refused in 2013 to sell a ticket to Eldad Gatt, an Israeli citizen who wanted to travel on an Israeli passport from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport to London Heathrow Airport.
Gatt was unable to order tickets online on the website of Kuwait Airways, as the airline’s online booking system prevented him from selecting Israel as his passport-issuing country.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Bernie Sanders campaign claims more than 1 million individual donors
(JTA) — The presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders claims to have netted more than 1 million individual donors.
The claim is not independently verifiable, but if true, Sanders says he will have been the fastest presidential candidate ever to reach the milestone, according to MSNBC. Federal law requires campaigns to report individual donations of more than $200. The campaign for the Democratic hopeful, a Vermont senator, says its average individual donation is less than $25.
Sanders touts the small donations as evidence of grass-roots support. Sanders’ Democratic rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, raises much of her campaign funds from larger donors.
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From The Times of Israel
Obama voices anger over Oregon shooting, urges gun control
‘Thoughts and prayers no longer enough,’ says visibly upset president, adding that lawmakers answerable to victims’ families
WASHINGTON — A visibly frustrated President Barack Obama said Thursday that thoughts and prayers are no longer enough as Americans respond to another deadly school shooting, and he challenged voters wanting to deal with the problem to vote for elected officials who will do something.
Obama addressed the nation from the White House after 13 people were killed by a 20-year-old gunman at Umpqua Community College in southwestern Oregon. As he noted, he’s done this before. Mass shootings have become embedded in the arc of Obama’s presidency. He’s traveled to Aurora, Colorado; Tucson, Arizona; Charleston, South Carolina, and numerous other cities to mourn victims of gun violence.
Obama, with some anger in his voice, said the nation has become numb to such shootings and the response has become routine. He called for changes in the nation’s gun laws, though it’s unclear at this stage whether the changes often proposed would have prevented Thursday’s massacre.
“Somehow this has become routine,” Obama said at the White House.
From The Times of Israel
Jewish conspiracy looting Mideast antiquities, say Arab archaeologists
Prominent Iraqi, Syrian historians claim Jews seek to destroy region’s Arab heritage to avenge 2,500-year-old Babylonian exile
According to a prominent Iraqi historian and archaeologist and a Syrian director of the country’s famed Palmyra museum, an “international Jewish mafia” is plotting to loot Iraq and Syria of its most valued antiquities in an effort to prove the veracity of the Jewish Bible and eradicate evidence of Arab heritage in the Middle East.
“The Jews are always looking for antiquities – especially Middle Eastern ones, and particularly Iraqi ones – in order to prove that the Torah is true,” Ali al-Nashmi, the Iraqi archaeologist, said on the pan-Arab Mayadeen television channel earlier this month.
“And so they extort, steal, and establish mafia gangs,” he opined.
Al-Nashmi further claimed the “ancient theory” – an apparent reference to the Torah, which he seems to erroneously conflate with the later Babylonian Talmud – is a product of the Jewish exile in Babylon some 2,500 years ago. Jewish adherence to this “theory” of ancient Jewish roots in present-day Iraq – Jews had lived in present-day Iraq since Babylonian times, fleeing only in the 20th century – was “reinforced following the 1897 Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland.”
The Jewish antiquities-stealing “mafia” – whose alleged existence “is why the most prominent archaeologists in the world are Jews,” he adds – is “connected to Jewish capital.”
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