Canada/U.S.: The CJN continues its investigation into the York University mural, with columnist Michael Diamond and Osgoode Hall Law School Dean Lorne Sossin offering their respective opinions.
Two student groups (Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace) are pressuring Columbia University to join the BDS movement against Israel, anti-Israel activists (again, Jewish Voice for Peace) handed out 10,000 copies of a fake, Israel-bashing New York Times, and a Jewish-owned Seattle business was vandalized with swastikas Tuesday morning.
Israel: After three Palestinians went on a shooting spree this morning, attacking Israeli border police officers in Jerusalem, security forces shot them dead, prompting praise from Hamas, and this headline from CBS (which was eventually changed):
Following the attack, a 19-year-old border police officer, Hadar Cohen, died of her wounds. The Jerusalem Post, which just yesterday compiled the number of attacks and death toll spanning the last four months of terror, will have to update its list. As of today, 31 Israelis have been killed.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected Israeli politicians’ remarks condemning liberal and Reform Jews in the wake of his decision to establish a non-Orthodox praying section at the Western Wall.
As the movement against everything Israel continues to develop, Israeli professors say they’ve been feeling the pressures of BDS. According to Israeli-British professor Dan Rabinowitz, the movement is “highly personal and personalized.”
Chef Itzik Barak of the famous Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Jerusalem has created a “salad of biblical proportions” for an annual competition, representing the seven species mentioned in Deuteronomy 8:8, which describes ancient Israel as a land of wheat, barley, vines, figs, pomegranates, olive oil and date honey.
Gravestones some 1,700 years old have been unearthed in northern Israel, Australian psychedelic band Tame Impala has confirmed an upcoming performance in Israel this July, and Israeli researchers have learned that humans living near Tel Aviv ate tortoises 400,000 years ago. Who would have thunk it?
This video of an epic beach party in Tel Aviv is going viral:
Just a normal day on the beach in Tel Aviv 😉Watch: Absolutely INSANE Israeli beach scene!Just a normal day on the beach in Tel Aviv 😉
Posted by We Love Israel on Sunday, January 31, 2016
World: A United Nations committee has ruled that abortion is a human right (they finally got something right), while Israeli ambassador Danny Danon recently opened up about frequently encountering anti-Semitism at the UN. “My family and I represent Israel at the United Nations in New York, a strong Jewish city. We cross one street to the UN building and it is a different world,” he said.
The Dutch Foreign Ministry has denied reports that they are stopping payments to Holocaust survivors living in Israel, Iran’s nuke chief is an apparent contender for the Nobel Peace Prize, Lithuania has promised to publish the names of at least 1,000 Nazi collaborators, and former Israeli president Shimon Peres released a video this morning wishing China a happy new year and praising the country’s ties to Israel. Good to see that he’s recovering from his heart attack.
Health: An Israeli study shows that cellphones may be harmful to male fertility, with Technion researchers finding a link between cellphone use and a drop in sperm count.
Sports: Israeli website developer Wix will be making its second appearance during a Super Bowl event, with a commercial that features cameos from characters in Kung Fu Panda 3. If you’ll recall, last year’s commercial plugged the Entourage movie.
Speaking of the Super Bowl, Tablet has compiled a list of all the Jews who’ve performed during a halftime show, including Bruno Mars apparently?
Culture: Jewish actor Lena Dunham was thrilled to be mistaken for fellow Jewish actor Kat Dennings, Elizabeth Banks has been cast as Rita Repulsa in Israeli media mogul Haim Saban’s resurrection of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers franchise, and Seth Rogen has signed on for a movie where he plays an astronaut searching to pick up women in space. Right…
This video of chassidic Jews watching iconic Jewish musical Fiddler on the Roof for the first time is worth a watch:
We know that the ‘J’ in Homer J. Simpson doesn’t stand for anything, or does it? Homer Jew Simpson anyone?
Ideas for news items to include in the spiel? Please send them to [email protected].
Click here for yesterday’s edition of Your Daily Spiel
