As I clicked around Human Rights Watch's website after it published that report yesterday, I came across a name I recognized: @KhuloodBadawi, HRW's "Israel and East Jerusalem Consultant."
I know Badawi. Or rather, I know her background. And I played a small part in it.
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During a round of Hamas-instigated violence in 2012, a tweet by Badawi, whom I didn't know, appeared in my feed.
She'd tweeted a disturbing photo of a small girl covered in blood, writing, "Another child killed by #Israel… another father carrying his child to a grave in #Gaza."
I saw the tweet, which had been RTed hundreds of times. Something about it seemed off.
So I did a reverse image search and discovered that the photo had been distributed by Reuters six years earlier.
According to the caption, the girl's death had nothing to do with Israel.
I tweeted out the discovery and soon others around the world picked up the thread.
It didn't take long before it became clear that Badawi wasn't just any Twitter user: she was a UN "Information and Media Coordinator" based in Jerusalem.
That's when things really blew up.
Israel's then-ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, publicly demanded that Badawi be fired.
The organization launched an investigation into her conduct and, one year later, it was reported that she had been dismissed.
I hadn't heard her name again until yesterday.
How fitting that this person—whose dissemination of a falsehood to smear Israel was the subject of a UN investigation—has found a professional home in an organization dedicated to defaming Israel.
As you read the report, remember this story. These are the people behind HRW.
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Sarah Halimi was a 65-year-old retired doctor and schoolteacher and a widowed mother of three children. She lived in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris. She was also an Orthodox Jew, the only one in her building.
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On Apr 4, 2017, a Malian immigrant and neighbor named Kobili Traoré entered Halimi's apartment from the balcony, shouting "Allahu Akbar" and verses from the Quran. Witnesses heard her screaming as he beat her to death for an hour. He then tossed her body from a 3rd-floor window.
This week, a French court of appeals upheld a lower court's ruling that the murderer could not be held "criminally responsible" because he had smoked cannabis prior to the murder.
From 1948 and on, more than 850,000 Jews were forced to leave Arab countries and Iran, where they had lived for millennia. Today fewer than 15,000 remain.
These are their stories.
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More than 265,000 Jews lived in Morocco—the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world—in 1948. In June of that year, 43 were murdered in pogroms. Today only 2,000 Jews remain. One million Israelis are of Moroccan descent, 11% of Israel's total population.
Some 150,000 Jews lived in Iran in 1948. Anti-Jewish hostility drove tens of thousands to leave following Israel's establishment. Emigration increased dramatically following the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Today only 8,300 Jews remain in Iran.
The recent brouhaha surrounding @SethRogen's comments on Israel has raised questions about how American Jews—particularly young, liberal American Jews—feel about the Jewish state.
Luckily, we have @AJCGlobal to offer up some cold, hard facts.
Let's dig in, shall we?
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According to @AJCGlobal's 2018 survey of American Jewish opinion, fully 79% of Jewish Americans—roughly four out of every five—believe a thriving State of Israel is vital for the long-term future of the Jewish people (bit.ly/3idB9W0).
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.@AJCGlobal's 2019 survey of American Jews on antisemitism in America sought to understand what Jewish Americans consider antisemitic.
A whopping 84% of American Jews of all ages said the statement "Israel has no right to exist" is antisemitic (bit.ly/2EVqOzz).
This made me cry: Today at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, 92-year-old Melpomeni Dina Gianopoulou met 40 descendants of the Jewish Mordechai siblings, whom she and her two sisters hid in their home near Thessaloniki, Greece during the Holocaust. "Now I can die quietly," she said.
Melopmeni is reunited with Sarah Yanai and Yossi Mor, two of the five Mordechai siblings who lived in her family's home for two years during the war. After the hiding place was discovered, the sisters helped the Jewish family flee into the mountains and provided for them there.
Melopmeni embraces one of Mor's grandchildren, an officer in the Israel Defense Forces. This may be one of the last reunions of its kind, as the numbers of both Holocaust survivors and rescuers dwindle.
Some facts: The Palestinians did not "provide" Jews with a safe haven in Palestine. Palestinian leaders collaborated with the Nazis, did all they could to prevent Jews from escaping to Palestine, and drew up plans for the extermination of the Jews already there if the Nazis won.
As Rommel rolled across North Africa, Palestinian leader Amin al-Husseini met with Hitler and Himmler and they developed a plan to murder the Jews of Palestine. An SS unit was stationed in Athens with the express purpose of murdering Palestine's Jews.
After the anticipated conquest of Palestine by Rommel's troops, the SS unit was to have functioned like the Einsatzgruppen in eastern Europe, following the invading forces, rounding up hundreds of thousands of Jews, and killing them en masse.
An incredible 85% of European Jews say antisemitism is either a very big problem (45%) or a fairly big problem (40%) in their countries; only 15% disagree or say they don't know. #No2Antisemitism
Nine out of every ten European Jews—89%—say antisemitism has increased over the past five years; nearly two thirds (63%) say it has increased a lot. #No2Antisemitism