WHERE IS THE BDS MOVEMENT IN THE FACE OF THE TURKISH STALINIST PURGE? 59,628 professors have had their teaching licenses withdrawn. 1,577 university presidents have been forced to resign. A climate of persecution, denunciation and suspicion in university classrooms and at the Ministry of Education prevails. This is the great academic purge that Turkish President Erdogan launched after the failed coup with numbers reminiscent of the Stalinist academic purges in the USSR. In light of this dramatic assault on intellectual freedom in Turkey, one would expect that Western academic legions would be in turmoil to show solidarity with Turkish colleagues, besieged and persecuted. Yet, these Western champions of freedom who have embraced the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) against Israel did not find the time to launch any campaign against the Turkish purge, unworthy even of a raised eyebrow of scandal. In England, the National Association of Teachers in Higher Education and the Association of University Teachers, which have adopted the boycott of Israel, have been silent about Turkey. The same silence prevails from the USA Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which was signed by 500 American professors. And then there’s the silence from 300 Italian academics who promoted the Israeli boycott.

Double standards have already emerged from the words of Curtis Marez, the president of the American Studies Association who voted to boycott Israel. When he was asked why his organization was only attacking Israel and not, for example, China or Saudi Arabia or Turkey, Marez answered: “One has to start somewhere”. The president of the American Studies Association had also said that the boycott of Israel “is the best way to protect and expand academic freedom and access to education”. This does not apply to the 59,628 Turkish teachers. Only the Jewish State, the only democracy in the Middle East where BDS supporters enjoy freedom and visibility, deserves Western condemnation. (Israel National News)

PROTESTERS TORCH ISRAELI FLAG OUTSIDE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION: People in Israel are used to seeing Palestinians and Iranians burning the Israeli flag. But it was a bit of a shocker to see Americans doing the same. Especially at the national convention of the Democratic Party which so often and so adamantly asserts that it is a true friend of the Jewish state. Left-wing protesters demonstrating outside of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, 26 July 2016, torched Israeli and American flags amid chants of "Long live the Intifada,” a call of support for the Palestinian terrorist campaign plaguing Israel. A day earlier, members of the same “progressive” movement held aloft a Palestinian flag inside the convention center. USA media reported that nearly 2,000 demonstrators marched on the convention to vent their anger over recent controversies that have embroiled the Democratic party. During the convention on Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton officially secured the Democratic nomination in the 2016 White House run.

The Democratic party faced an internal crisis this week after a massive data breach on its national leadership was revealed. A hack of the Democratic National Committee and leak of over 20,000 emails has already claimed the scalp of the party’s chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, who was compelled to resign last weekend. The leak revealed bias among top DNC brass on behalf of Clinton during her primary fight against Sanders. (Fox/J.Post/ Israel Today) 

AUSTRIA SEIZING HITLER’S BIRTHPLACE TO PREVENT NAZI PILGRIMAGE SITE: Austria's government moved on 12 July 2016, to seize the house where Adolf Hitler was born to prevent it becoming a site of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis, and the country's Interior Minister said he wanted to tear it down. Hitler's family lived in the house in Braunau on the Inn for three years around his birth on April 20, 1889; but the fate of the three-story building coated in pale yellow paint has long been the subject of controversy. A spokesman for the interior ministry said the government had agreed on a law to take ownership after the building's landlord, a local woman, had refused to sell it to the state. The bill will now go before parliament. "The decision is necessary because the Republic would like to prevent this house from becoming a 'cult site' for neo-Nazis in any way, which it has been repeatedly in the past," said Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka. Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938. Debate still smoulders over whether Austrians were willing accomplices, many having cheered his return to his country of birth at the time, or the first victims of a dictatorship that ultimately reduced much of Europe to ruins and cost tens of millions of lives. (J.Post)

REPUBLICAN PLATFORM CHANGED TO BE MORE FAVORABLE TO ISRAEL: The Republican Party has amended its platform to include an altered position on Israel. The latest draft of the platform reinstates a reference to Jerusalem as Israel's "undivided" capital and removes a reference to "Palestine." In the party's 2012 platform, the word "undivided" was deleted from the platform of four years earlier and the reference to “Palestine” was added. The 2008 platform had declared, "We support Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and moving the American embassy to that undivided capital of Israel." This week’s changes to the platform reflect the positions of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, who reiterated in March 2016 that he would recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move the American embassy there if elected. Attorney Marc Zell, who chairs the Republican Party's Israel branch, praised the GOP's new party platform, hailing it as the most "pro-Israel platform" ever. Zell noted that the latest version removes all reference to Palestinian statehood and the two-state solution. "After 25 years, finally a new version has been accepted with reference to Israel, which rejects the two-states solution and embraces Israel." (INN)

TRUMP PICKS PRO-ISRAEL STALWART MIKE PENCE AS RUNNING MATE: Donald Trump picked Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a pro-Israel stalwart and conservative Christian, as his running mate. Trump had previously postponed a Friday 15 July 2016, news conference during which he had been expected to announce his running mate, out of deference to the terrorist attack in Nice, France. Pence, 57, emerged quickly as a leader on pro-Israel issues during his 12 years in Congress from 2001 to 2013. He led a number of bids to place conditions on funding for the Palestinian Authority, and in 2007 he joined then-Rep. Ron Klein, D-Fla., in convening the Congressional Anti-Semitism Task Force. Pence continued his pro-Israel advocacy as Indiana governor, earlier this year signing one of the most robust state laws targeting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Pence is known as a social conservative and Evangelical Christian. He opposes abortion rights as well as gay marriage. He signed a measure in March 2016 prohibiting abortions based on “sex, race, color, national origin, ancestry, or disability, including Down syndrome.” He has notably said he dislikes negative campaigning, which may blunt some of the sharp edge of Trump’s rhetoric. (JTA)

PA MEDIA TEACHES KIDS: ‘JEWS DO SATAN’S WORK ON EARTH’: The Palestinian Authority (PA)'s official Fatah TV broadcasted an inciting cartoon series for children in honor of Ramadan. The cartoon taught young children that Jews are the helpers of several devils or "satans" who spread evil in the world. Satans, the program explains, are scheming to destroy Muhammad so they use the Jews in order to fight their battle. While the PA continually claims that their conflict with Israel is purely territorial, their religious ideology proclaims that Jews are agents of the Satans who do evil on earth. Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Mahmoud Abbas' adviser on Religious and Islamic Affairs, recently emphasized that the PA ideology must view the struggle with Israel as a battle with Satan. "The conflict here in Palestine is between us and the criminal occupation and its criminal leaders. This is a conflict between two entities, good and evil, between two projects: Allah's project vs. Satan's project,” said Al-Habbash on official PA TV. (PMW/Arutz-7) 

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Isaiah 5:20 

The European Union’s foreign ministers met to vote in support of the French peace initiative, a decision expected to bolster Paris’s efforts to kick start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives were invited to attend the meeting, which aimed to lay the ground for a full-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year. The Palestinians have welcomed the French bid but Israel has said the initiative would go down in history as having “pushed peace further away.” The  Israeli  Foreign Ministry failed to prevent the EU foreign ministers’ motion from being passed, and that it’s now focusing efforts on getting them to soften the announcement’s language. France has reportedly pressed EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and the other 27 foreign ministers of the EU states to throw their weight behind Paris’s initiative. An Israeli Foreign Ministry official said the French managed to garner the support of their EU allies to push for an international peace conference by year’s end.  Please pray that the French plan will totally fail as all the others have done.

: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu explicitly rejected demands by the Obama administration that Israel cease all construction over the Green Line, saying that the USA position on Judea and Samaria was “not acceptable.” Speaking at a press conference in Rwanda on 6 July 2016, Netanyahu said Israel would not accept the kinds of broad restrictions on construction in Judea & Samaria demanded by the White House and ridiculed suggestions that such construction was an obstacle to peace. “The USA position is not new and it is not acceptable to us,” the Prime Minister said. “Building in Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim is, in all due respect, not distancing the peace.” It is not housing units that fuel the ongoing violence, claimed Netanyahu, but Arab anti-Semitic incitement and refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist. “What is preventing peace is, first of all, the continuous incitement against the existence of Israel on any borders, and it is time that the nations of the world recognize that simple truth. The way to peace is through negotiations, we are willing to have direct negotiations, they are not willing to. That is preventing peace, not a few houses in Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim.” (Arutz-7) 

ISIS ‘KILL LISTS’ TARGET USA SYNAGOGUES: ISIS has released a 'kill list' naming over 1,700 targets in the USA for attack, media sources reported 2 July 2016, with the choice of hits exhibiting the murderous terror group's anti-Semitic tendencies. The targets are individuals, specifically people with memberships in synagogues, according to the report. The list was first discovered by intelligence analyst group SITE, after having been released online by the "United Cyber Caliphate," ISIS's computer hacking arm. The directives accompanying the list call for ISIS sympathizers to carry out more 'lone wolf' attacks of the type seen in the nightclub shooting in Orlando, urging potential terrorists to find the people on the list and: "slay them." Law enforcement officials in the United States have begun to take these threats more seriously. Nashville news station WSMV reports that FBI agents are warning people in the area of their inclusion. According to the intelligence group, use of this tactic has been on the rise, with the number of lists-and the number of names per list-having increased over the past year. (Arutz-7) “Consider my enemies, for they are many; and they hate me with cruel hatred. Keep my soul, and deliver me; let me not be ashamed, for I put my trust in You.” Ps 25: 19-20

THE DAILY PALESTINIAN TERRORISM YOU DON’T HEAR ABOUT: Palestinian terrorism is literally a daily - and sometimes even an hourly - occurrence. Media sources don’t bother to report the overwhelming majority of incidents. According to a spokesman for Hatzalah Judea & Samaria, an emergency organization, "There is an average of 10 to 15 reported Palestinian rock and firebomb attacks throughout Judea & Samaria on a daily basis." In addition, "There are certainly other incidents in which the terrorists miss their mark, or hit a car but fail to cause damage or injure the occupants, and the motorist doesn't bother to call it in." Journalist Josh Hasten said he was nearly lynched last October 2015, when a group of Palestinian Arabs armed with rocks and slabs of concrete charged his car as he was driving south of Jerusalem. Last month, his windshield took a direct hit from a Palestinian stone-thrower near the Gush Etzion Industrial Zone. "The ongoing danger is simply being whitewashed," he said. "While statistically, the number of 'major attacks' is down, the reality on the ground is unacceptable." (J. Post)
  “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: ‘May they prosper who love you.’” Ps 122:6

MINISTER: FACEBOOK, MARK ZUCKERBERG HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS: Israel's Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan has launched a scathing attack on social media giant Facebook, saying the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have blood on their hands and bear some responsibility for last week’s shocking murder of a 13-year-old Israeli girl. Hallel-Yaffa Ariel was stabbed to death as she slept in her bed in Kiryat Arba by a 17-year-old Palestinian terrorist, who had repeatedly incited violence and told of his desire to die killing Israelis on Facebook. A video of his mother praising his actions and calling for more attacks circulated on Facebook soon after and, shockingly, still has not been taken down. Erdan said that "part of the blood of those murdered are on the hands of Facebook," lamenting Facebook's notoriously liberal approach to deleting anti-Israel incitement. "The young generation's entire discourse is happening on the social media networks, all the incitement and lies occur on that platform," he added, and suggested Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg should engage in "some introspection." (Arutz-7)