N.Y. School District Pays $4.5M To Settle Anti-Semitism Suit

Pine Bush Central School District in upstate New York has agreed to pay nearly $4.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging widespread anti-Semitic harassment.

The 2012 lawsuit by five former and current students was due to go to trial next month.

In the settlement, filed in court papers on Monday, according to The New York Times, district officials also agreed to make significant curriculum and training reforms.

The suit alleged that officials in the district, located about 90 miles north of Manhattan, long had failed to respond adequately to complaints by the students and their families of pervasive anti-Semitic bullying and harassment.

The students said they were forced to endure anti-Semitic epithets and jokes about the Holocaust, including Nazi salutes, and to retrieve coins from dumpsters. They also said they were subject to physical violence.

School officials responded with “deliberate indifference,” according to the lawsuit.

ISIS in Jerusalem Threatens Christians

A flier published by in the name of the brutal Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization was put up around eastern Jerusalem on Thursday, in what is thought to be the first such announcement in the Israeli capital.

The flier threatens Christians in the area with “revenge,” and is signed by the organization “ISIS Palestine”.

The Government of Canada announces the addition of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades to the Criminal Code list of terrorist entities

The Honourable Steven Blaney, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, today announced the addition of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades to the Criminal Code list of terrorist entities, as well as administrative changes to the list.

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades is an Al Qaida affiliated terrorist organization that has claimed responsibility for several rocket attacks in northern Israel and has also repeatedly articulated its intent to carry out attacks against Western targets in the Middle East.

Canadian connection to French terror attack

The top suspect in the beheading of a businessman that French authorities are calling a terrorist attack took a “selfie” photo with the slain victim and sent the image via WhatsApp to a Canadian mobile phone number, officials said Saturday.

French investigators were working to determine the recipient’s identity, but weren’t able to immediately confirm media reports that it was an unspecified person now in Syria, where the radical Islamic State group has seized territory, the security officials said.

You know who’s responsible for gay marriage

Click the image.

Iran lawmakers pass Woody Allen bill

Parliamentarians in Iran have passed a bill to protect the rights of children which includes a clause that allows a man to marry his adopted daughter and while she is as young as 13 years.

Palestinian sports teams named after terrorists

During the month of Ramadan, Palestinian youth will be playing a football tournament in the Palestinian town Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem. Some of the participants will be playing on teams named after terrorists who have killed numerous Israeli civilians. This is Palestinian role modeling for kids.

19 US lawmakers sign letter on detained Palestinian children

Nineteen House Democrats signed a letter urging the Obama administration to make Israel’s treatment of imprisoned Palestinian minors a priority in the US-Israel relationship.

The letter, initiated by Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., cites a 2013 UNICEF report on Palestinian children in military detention and notes that Israel has addressed some of the claims in that report.

“This is a positive step and a clear acknowledgement that legitimate human rights concerns exist,” said the letter sent June 19 and made public on Monday.

“Progress to ensure Palestinian children’s rights are not abused is in the interest of the US, Israel, and the Palestinian people,” the letter said. “We urge the Department of State to elevate the human rights of Palestinian children to a priority status in our bilateral relationship with Israel.”

The letter quotes UNICEF as saying that Israel’s military courts do not guarantee the rights of children that come before its judges.

“UNICEF initiated their report in response to concerns regarding the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment of Palestinian children while in the Israeli military detention system,” the letter said.

Israel, a past member of the UNICEF board, said after the release of the initial 2013 report that it “values and respects” the organization and would work to implement the report’s recommendations.

Amnesty International, Defense for Children International-Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and two Quaker organizations, the American Friends Service Committee and the Friends Committee on National Legislation, advocated in support of the congressional letter. The groups estimate that Israel’s military detains 700 youths each year.

J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group, did not actively advocate for the letter, but signaled support for its signing when the group’s position was solicited by lawmakers.

SOURCE

How fainting couch feminism threatens freedom

Syrian news agency’s summer photo campaign backfires on Twitter

Click the image.

Landmark anti-BDS law passes final Senate legislative hurdle

Obama to sign off on bill making rejection of Israel boycott a key objective in trade talks with EU; WJC hails ‘major defeat for BDS; J Street, Peace Now opposed law.

Why Is Obama’s Human Rights Report 115 Days Late?

By law, the State Department is required to release reports on the human rights situation in every country on February 25 of each year. Those voluminous reports are often a bit late, by a few days or a few weeks. In the George W. Bush years, a delay of a few days or a week was as I recall it common.

But the reports this year are now 115 days late and counting.

French immigration to Israel surges in summer of 2015

Five months after Paris terror attack targeting Jews, 25% more French Jews moved to Israel in early 2015 than in the same period in 2014.

Lebanese-Canadian to stand trial in Cyprus on terror charges

A Lebanese-Canadian will stand trial in Cyprus on terror charges, after 8.2 tons of fertilizer that can be used for bomb making was allegedly found in his home, police said Friday, according to AFP.

Authorities believe the man, whose name is being withheld in accordance with the law, has links with the so-called “military wing” of the Hezbollah terrorist group.

Irish Jew haters

American Jewish journalists lead media’s anti-Israeli assault

Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, claims that Jewish journalists are largely responsible for American media’s anti-Israel coverage and the “double standard” it applies in its coverage of the Jewish state. Oren also writes that the antagonism towards Netanyahu shown by Jewish journalists such as Thomas Friedman and Leon Wieseltier resembles historic hatred of Jews.

Oren’s new book, “Ally” is due to be released early next week but is already garnering headlines for its harsh condemnation of President Obama and his policies towards Israel. But Obama isn’t Oren’s only target: he is also critical of American Jewish liberals and their “religion” of Tikkun Olam, and turns devastating when it comes to American journalists who are also Jews.

That’s some long Occupation

A rare inscription from the time of King David has been discovered southwest of Jerusalem. The inscription was found on a large clay jar dating to about 3,000 years ago.

For pro-Israel advocates, it’s time to be offensive

Victories aren’t usually depressing, but recent headlines about Israel include those such as: “Israel Left Off U.N. List of Parties That Kill, Injure Kids,” “Palestinians Abandon Bid to Ban Israel From FIFA,” and a couple of headlines about failed motions for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on college campuses. Surely all of these “victories” are better than the corresponding defeats. But still, we can and should do better.

The problem with these victories is that they reflect a much deeper problem in the strategy of pro-Israel advocates. We tend to play defense far more than offense. Some psychologists might enjoy explaining just why Jews, in general, might prefer this approach, but it’s something we must overcome. What’s wrong with this strategy was beautifully laid out in Ze’ev Maghen’s famous piece, “How to Fight Anti-Semitism.”

“A man calls you a pig,” he writes. “Do you walk around with a sign explaining that, in fact, you are not a pig? Do you hand out leaflets expostulating… upon the manifold differences between you and a pig?”

Of course not. For to do this is already to cede the crucial first move to your enemy. It’s to allow that your pig-hood is even a legitimate question in the first place.

Playing defense grants the possible legitimacy of the attacks on us.

It’s time for us to go on offense.

Sudan’s Bashir is the Palestinians’ and Pretoria’s favorite genocidal tyrant

The President of Sudan was allowed to leave South Africa unmolested today, despite courts in the country ordering his arrest on a genocide warrant. The International Criminal Court, pursuing a case launched by the Security Council, issued warrants for Bashir’s arrest years ago. Yet he has roamed the globe with impunity.

Nonetheless, he has thus far avoided ICC members like South Africa. As a state party to the Rome Statute, South Africa has a treaty obligation to cooperate with the enforcement efforts of The Hague-based court. The order by the South African judge to seize Bashir generated a massive wave of excitement in the ever-optimistic international law community. But as I predicted, South Africa did not detain him, instead allowing him to return to Khartoum.

The free pass given to Bashir is another in a series of major blows to the credibility of the ICC – and in this case, the Security Council. If member states like South Africa do not take the Court seriously in cases that do not even involve its own nationals, it is hard to expect non-members to do so.

While refusing treaty obligations to arrest the world’s leading genocidaire – known of course for his campaign against black Africans in Darfur – might seem unconscionable, Bashir has his defenders.

Among them is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who vocally opposes the ICC process against Bashir. “We must also take a decisive stance of solidarity alongside fraternal Sudan and President Omar al-Bashir,” Abbas has said. He has has also expressed his “solidarity” with the Sudanese despot, and categorically rejected enforcement of the ICC warrant.

The Left Rejects Painful Truths

One might say that leftism appeals to those who wish to remain innocent children. Growing up and facing the fact that life is messy, difficult, and painful is increasingly a conservative point of view.

CSIS warned this cabinet minister could be a threat. Ontario disagreed

A Globe and Mail investigation reveals Michael Chan was the focus of a briefing by security officials over fears he was under the influence of China – a case that exposes a deep divide between the spy agency and the province on the question of foreign influence.

Musical Interlude

Iran sentences Canadian filmmaker to eight years in jail

Mostafa Azizi, a Toronto-based filmmaker and television producer, has been sentenced in Iran to eight years in prison.

Azizi, a Canadian permanent resident, was arrested while on a return visit to Iran in January. Today, he was convicted of “gathering and collusion against national security,” insulting Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and “acting against national security in cyberspace,” according to his son, Arash.

Campus Maccabees

Everyone who asked American Jewish businessman and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson over the weekend the question of how the boycott campaign against Israel could be defeated received the same answer: “Cooperation.”

On Friday, Adelson and his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, convened the Campus Maccabees Summit at The Venetian hotel in Las Vegas involving around 50 different groups engaged in the fight against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which has become very active on American college campuses over the past decade.

To consolidate forces, Adelson invited a number of Jewish philanthropists to Las Vegas for the summit, including Israeli-American businessman Haim Saban, who, as the owner of Partner Communications, has felt the sting of the boycott campaign against Israel in recent days with the Orange saga, which he called “pure anti-Semitism.”

Meanwhile, the J Street kapos are squealing.

Tel Aviv Legal Group Threatens Park Slope Food Co-op With Lawsuit Over BDS Measures

A prominent Israeli activist litigation group has threatened the Park Slope Food Co-op with a lawsuit if the supermarket adopts a boycott of Israeli products, the Algemeiner has learned.

“The Park Slope Food Co-op has to understand that we will not hesitate to file a lawsuit against them the minute they implement any anti-Israel boycott,” said Tel Aviv-based Shurat HaDin Director Nitsana Darshan-Leithner in a statement.

“Boycotts are not protected speech and they are actionable in [New York] under both criminal and civil law as illegal discrimination” on the basis of race or national origin, she said.

The 1939 Soccer Game between Australia and Palestine

Those Palestinian soccer players sure do have Jewy sounding names.