May 17, 2021
Turkey’s tiny Jewish community is once again in the crosshairs of the ongoing violence between Israelis and Palestinians, with its community newspaper the target of a fresh wave of anti-Semitic attacks.
Individuals who identified themselves as disciples of Necip Fazıl Kisakurek, a Turkish nationalist poet and anti-Semite revered by Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hacked the website of Salom, the sole newspaper serving Turkey’s dwindling Jewish minority. They posted, “Our actions will continue until Palestine is free and independent.” They also posted a verse from one of Kisakurek’s poems evoking Palestinians responding to Israeli missiles with stones. The perpetrators have yet to be caught. Turkey’s Jews are on edge.
May 13, 2021
“American silence on Iran’s involvement in Gaza is shocking. They are so eager to sign another nuclear agreement that that they don’t want to antagonize Iran,” said Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S. policy in the Middle East at Bar-Ilan.
By Israel Kasnett, JNS
The Biden administration has come under withering criticism in the United States and Israel for its poor handling of the current situation in the Middle East. On Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price failed to mention Hamas or Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations targeting Israeli civilians in his statement to the press.
May 14, 2021
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin condemned as “unforgivable” the “bloodthirsty Arab mob” that “injured people, damaged property and even attacked sacred Jewish spaces” this week.
By Israel Kasnett, JNS
The Israel Police instituted a blanket curfew on the central Israeli town of Lod on Wednesday night after Arab rioters destroyed cars, businesses and synagogues the day before. Arabs continued to riot into the evening in other towns with large Arab populations, including Akko, Jaffa, Bat Yam, Haifa and Tiberias.
In a video posted online on Wednesday, Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin came down hard on the Arab rioters.
“The sight of the pogrom in Lod and the disturbances across the country by an incited and bloodthirsty Arab mob, injuring people, damaging property and even attacking sacred Jewish spaces is unforgivable,” he declared.
Meir Elran at the Institute for National Security Studies says social and economic progress in the Arab community means Israeli Arabs are now “less conservative, more academic and even more well-to-do, despite the huge economic gaps between Jews and Arabs.”