Daily Briefing:WEDNESDAYS NEWS OF THE WEEK IN REVIEW (September 30,2020)

                                       WEEKLY QUOTES

“The expanding circle of peace will not make an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians less likely. It will make peace between Israelis and Palestinians more likely. Palestinian leaders will increasingly realize that they no longer have a veto over peace and progress in our region, and hopefully, those leaders will ultimately decide to make peace with the Jewish state,” – Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly in a prerecorded video.  (Times of Israel, Sept. 29, 2020

“The dirty hand that reaches the privacy of Jerusalem, where the sacred places of the three great religions coexist, is constantly increasing its audacity,” — said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan aggressively censuring Israel during his prerecorded video address to the United Nations General Assembly, a and prompting a walkout from Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan. (Times of Israel, Sept. 29, 2020)

“If Iran wants to establish itself in the north, we are ready to fight them. This is a direct lesson from the Yom Kippur War. If we had carried out a preemptive strike, the face of the battle would have been completely different,” – Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu said during a memorial ceremony honoring Israel’s fallen in the Yom Kippur War.  (WIN, Sept. 29, 2020)

“The Arabs have no option but to normalize [relations] and establish full diplomatic ties with Israel. They tried war and were defeated; they tried hostility towards Israel and gained nothing; they tried to reconcile [with Israel] on their own terms and failed. Finally, they tried peace as a way to achieve what they have failed to achieve through war,” – wrote Khalid bin Hamad Al-Malik, editor of the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah. (MEMRI, Sept. 22, 2020)

“Younger Americans — millennials like me — are becoming increasingly sympathetic to the very ideologies that forced me to seek asylum in America. According to the fourth Annual Report on U.S. Attitudes Toward Socialism, Communism and Collectivism of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, “70 percent of millennials say they are likely to vote socialist,” and communism is viewed favorably by more than 1 in 3 millennials (36 percent). I have to believe that, if all Americans knew the true human cost of living under a socialist, communist regime, they would have a different attitude,” – writes Yuri Pérez, a Cuban immigrant and now a US citizen.  He explains why he will, once again, vote for President Trump on Nov. 3.  (NBC News, Sept. 28, 2020)

“No one expected a Lincoln-Douglas debate, but did it have to be a World Wrestling Entertainment bout? Which may be unfair to the wrestlers, who are more presidential than either Donald Trump or Joe Biden sounded in their first debate Tuesday night. The event was a spectacle of insults, interruptions, endless cross-talk, exaggerations and flat-out lies even by the lying standards of current U.S. politics. Our guess is that millions of Americans turned away after 30 minutes, and we would have turned away too if we didn’t do this for a living,” – writes the Wall St. Journal editorial board as regards the first of three debates between President Donald Trump and Democratic contender former Vice President Joe Biden.  (WSJ, Sept. 30, 2020)

“The most astounding aspect of Weissmann’s book is the author’s complete un-self-consciousness and absolute conviction about his right and duty to destroy the president, not on the basis of adduced facts, but on the basis of constructing a tenuous or even fraudulent case that could be lifted over the hurdles necessary to drive him legally from office,” – writes columnist Conrad Black.  He reviewed prosecutor Andrew Weissman’s book  Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation that he claims “enables us to see what was always suspected by many to have been a fanatical determination on the part of the Mueller’s investigative team to destroy President Trump.” Andrew was the chief prosecutor on the Trump -Russia collusion investigation. (National Review, Sept. 29, 2020)

ISRAEL SURPASSES US IN DAILY COVID-19 DEATHS PER CAPITA (Jerusalem) — Israel’s daily death rate over the last week has been 3.5 per million people, while the US rate was some 2.2 per million. The death toll stood at 1,507 on Tuesday morning, as new diagnoses and seriously ill patients continued to rise, as did the percentage of tests coming back positive. (Times of Israel, Sept. 29, 2020)

TRUMP GETS THIRD 2020 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE NOMINATION (Australia) — President Trump received his third 2020 Nobel Peace Prize nomination in September, this time from a group of Australian law professors for “reducing America’s tendency to get involved in any and every war,” as representative Australian legal scholar David Flint wrote.  Flint also praised the president’s role in brokering a peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). (Fox News, Sept. 29, 2020)

TRUMP NOMINATES STAUNCH CONSERVATIVE AMY CONEY BARRETT FOR SUPREME COURT (Washington) — U.S. President Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Saturday.  Barrett, 48, a former clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, said she was “truly humbled” by the nomination and quickly aligned herself with Scalia’s conservative approach to the law, saying his “judicial philosophy is mine, too.” (CBC, Sept. 26, 2020)

US TO SHIP 150 MILLION CCP VIRUS TESTS TO REOPEN SCHOOLS, ECONOMIES (Washington) — President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 28 that the U.S. government will start distributing 150 million rapid COVID-19 tests to states this week in a bid to help governors safely reopen K–12 schools and economies. An additional 50 million tests will target the most vulnerable elderly population economies. Of the total, the administration is dedicating 100 million tests for schools and measures to help reopen in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and home health and hospice sites. (Epoch Times, Sept. 28, 2020)

ZOOM WILL NOT HOST S.F. STATE EVENT FEATURING LEILA KHALED (San Francisco) — Zoom announced that San Francisco State University will not be allowed to use its videoconferencing platform to host an event Wednesday featuring Palestinian hijacker Leila Khaled because her participation in the virtual event violates company policy. Khaled, who hijacked two planes in 1969 and 1970 as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was scheduled to speak via Zoom to students and the public on Sept. 23 as part of a conversation called “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice and Resistance,” organized by the university’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies program. YouTube and Facebook, blocked the event, as well. (The Jewish News of North California, Sept. 22, 2020)

ISRAEL RAPID COVID-19 SCREENING TEST DEVELOPED IN ISRAEL TO BE USED IN MAJOR EUROPEAN AIRPORTS (Jerusalem) — A rapid COVID-19 screening test developed in will be used to screen passengers in several European airports. The test involves gargling with a small amount of special mouthwash and spitting it into a test tube. Virusight Diagnostic, a newly formed Artificial Intelligence health care venture between Sheba Medical Center’s ARC Innovation Center and Newsight Imaging, has signed a strategic letter of intent for rapid screening of airline passengers with ICTS Europe, a security provider at major airports in 23 countries, Newsight announced in a statement on its website. (JTA, Sept. 22, 2020)

NEW PALESTINIAN CURRICULUM SHOWS NO IMPROVEMENTS, ANTISEMITISM REMAINS (Ramallah) — An analysis by the new curriculum by IMPACT-se, a research and policy institute that analyzes schoolbooks and curricula through UNESCO-derived standards on peace and tolerance, has found that educational textbooks for use in Palestinian schools throughout the West Bank remain openly antisemitic, encourage violence, and promote jihad and martyrdom. Some 82% of the books remain unchanged from last year, while 152 modifications were found within the remaining 40 books, according to IMPACT-se’s analysis. However, 88% of those adjustments either keep the problematic material intact or amplify it. (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 22, 2020)

SUSPECT IN PARIS KNIFE ATTACK CONFESSES TO STABBINGS (Paris) — A Pakistan-born teenager has admitted to stabbing two people with a meat cleaver outside the former Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine, with nine people now detained over what the government condemned as “Islamist terror”. The 18-year-old said he wanted to avenge the republication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by the satirical weekly, which in January 2015 was targeted in a massacre carried out by Islamist gunmen. The attack came three weeks into a trial in Paris of suspected accomplices in the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo, a policewoman and a Jewish supermarket that left 17 people dead. (France 24, Sept. 26, 2020)

POLICE RAID MONTREAL SYNAGOGUES DURING YOM KIPPUR PRAYERS (Montreal) — Police reportedly raided at least eight Montreal synagogues during Yom Kippur services although congregants were following all health guidelines such as wearing masks and social distancing.  Montreal resident Berel Solomon said that the police entered without a warrant and forced the congregants out into the street. “They then chased us with cop cars and forced us to leave the area,” he said. (WIN, Sept. 29, 2020)

PASSAGE OF ‘ONE-SIDED’ PRO-BDS RESOLUTION AT COLUMBIA DECRIED AS ‘DEEPLY IRRESPONSIBLE’ (NYC) — Undergraduate students at Columbia University in New York City have voted in favor of a referendum calling on their school to “divest its stocks, funds, and endowment from companies that profit from the State of Israel’s apartheid system and military occupation” in the Palestinian territories. The referendum was an initiative of the “Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD) student group — a “joint campaign launched by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia/Barnard Jewish Voice for Peace.” In response to the vote, Columbia Hillel’s Executive Director Brian Cohen said, “The process and language of this referendum was one-sided. Its reference to an inapplicable UN apartheid resolution was deeply irresponsible.” (Algemeiner, Sept. 29, 2020)

U OF ILLINOIS STUDENT GOVERNMENT PASSES PRO-BLACK LIVES MATTER RESOLUTION WITH CALL TO DIVEST FROM ISRAEL (Illinois) — The University of Illinois student government included a call for divestment from companies that do business with Israel as part of a resolution in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The university’s Office of Student Affairs condemned the nonbinding resolution, which passed last week in a 22-11 vote with seven abstentions. (JTA, Sept. 29, 2020)

GERMAN BIKER GANG STAGES VIGIL TO PROTECT MUNICH SYNAGOGUE DURING YOM KIPPUR SERVICES (Munich) — Members of a German bikers club staged a vigil outside the main synagogue in Munich on Monday pledging to protect the city’s Jewish community as it held services for Yom Kippur. About 70 people — including 20 leather and denim-clad bikers from the “Kuhle Wampe” club — gathered outside the synagogue on Jakobsplatz to mark the first anniversary of the attack by a neo-Nazi gunman on a synagogue in the city of Halle in which two people were murdered. (Algemeiner, Sept. 29, 2020)

BABI YAR MASSACRES REMEMBERED IN UKRAINIAN CAPITAL OF KYIV, 79 YEARS LATER (Kyiv) — The president of the Ukraine, ministers of his government, the country’s chief rabbi and the head of a top global Jewish organization on Tuesday marked the 79th anniversary of the slaughter of over 30,000 Jews at Babi Yar by the Nazis. In one of the earliest mass killings of the Holocaust, after occupying the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv in September 1941, a German SS unit ordered all the city’s Jews to gather at a collection point and then took them to the Babi Yar ravine. Using machine guns, SS troops and Ukrainian police murdered over 33,700 Jews and buried them in the ravine. (Algemeiner, Sept. 29, 2020)

OMAR ALLIES ACCUSED OF ILLEGAL BALLOT HARVESTING; MINNEAPOLIS POLICE INVESTIGATING (Minneapolis) — Project Veritas, an activist group, alleged that individuals tied to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) are engaged in illegal ballot harvesting in Minneapolis. The video by Project Veritas, which quickly went viral on social media, depicts a ballot harvester who reportedly said he was paid to obtain ballots. It also shows an additional alleged harvester who brags about the number of ballots he’s obtained. (WIN, Sept. 29, 2020)

KUWAIT TO FACE PRESSURE TO FORGE TIES WITH ISRAEL AFTER EMIR’S DEATH (Kuwait City) — .For decades, Kuwait has charted a neutral course in many of the Middle East’s intractable conflicts. But the death of its longtime ruler leaves his successor with a dilemma: whether or not to normalize ties with Israel without statehood for the Palestinians. Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, who died Tuesday, was a veteran diplomat who remained a steadfast supporter of the Palestinians even as Arab backing for their vision of an independent state waned. The recent U.S.-brokered normalization of ties between Israel and two Arab Gulf states—the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain—has heaped pressure on others, including Kuwait, to follow suit. (WSJ, Sept. 29, 2020)

SHALOM, ALEXA: NEW ASSOCIATION TO HELP VOICE TECH UNDERSTAND HEBREW AND ARABIC (Jerusalem) — The Israel Innovation Authority, in collaboration the Israel National Digital Ministry, has approved the establishment of the Association of Natural Language Processing (NLP) Technology Companies. The Association of Natural Language Processing (NLP) Technology Companies aims to improve the capability of computerized systems to help better understand the Hebrew and Arabic languages in voice technologies. The founding members of the association include Intel, Israel-based YNet News, Bank Hapoalim, and AudioCodes. (Algemeiner, Sept. 25, 2020)

UN SHOCKER: Netanyahu Exposes Secret Hezbollah Missile Factory in Beirut:  United With Israel, Sept. 29, 2020 — On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exposed a major weapons production facility that the Hezbollah terror group operates in Beirut. (United With Israel, Sept. 29, 2020)

Chris Wallace Faces Intense Backlash, Including From Colleagues, Over Bias During Debate:  Ryan Saavedra, Daily Wire, Sept. 29, 2020 —  Fox News host Chris Wallace, a registered Democrat, faced intense backlash on Tuesday night for what was widely deemed as bias in the debate in the favor of Democrat Joe Biden and against Republican President Donald Trump.

BREAKING: Russia Believed Clinton Was Planning Anti-Trump Collusion Campaign In 2016, And U.S. Officials Knew It: Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway, The Federalist, Sept. 29, 2020 — Not only were Russian officials aware of Hillary Clinton’s campaign plan to accuse Donald Trump of being a Russian asset, top U.S. intelligence authorities knew of Russia’s knowledge of Clinton’s plans, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe disclosed to congressional officials on Tuesday.

Was Russia Probe The Most Corrupt U.S. Investigation Ever?:  Editorial Board, I & I, Sept. 28, 2020 — The revelation that the main sub-source for the Trump Dossier paid for by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign was a Russian agent who was once designated a “national security threat” boggles the mind. It means FBI officials; the Obama White House and the Clinton campaign knowingly and fraudulently conspired to use foreign disinformation and taxpayer funds for the political purpose of destroying Donald Trump.