Leaders of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) warned supporters to be vigilant against what they believe to be increasing anti-Israel positions from leaders, and the trend of encroaching tolerance for anti-Semitic rhetoric masked as anti-Zionism, during the organization’s annual gala on Sunday.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the gala was held as a webcast, highlighted by video addresses from leaders and activists in the ZOA, as well as politicians such as former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

The event was hosted by Jewish Iranian-American journalist Lisa Daftari, who personally praised the ZOA for its work in teaching about the dangers of a nuclear Iran, a cause she is intimately involved in.

Mort Klein, president of ZOA for the past 28 years, told viewers that advances which the ZOA supports often get reversed by various governments — dating back to the time Great Britain restricted immigration at the outset of World War II despite international treaties giving Jews the right to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine in 1920.

“Britain turned around and slammed shut the doors to Israel, just at the moment when millions of Jews faced annihilation in Europe,” Klein said.

Today too, according to Klein, the ZOA needs to remain vigilant against what he said was the Biden administration backtracking advances made during the Trump administration.

Klein listed the Trump administration’s pro-Israel accomplishments that the ZOA had long backed, including the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, recognizing the legality of settlements in Judea and Samaria, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, adding sanctions against Iran, defunding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), supporting Israel in the United Nations, opposing the International Criminal Court’s investigations into Israel’s alleged war crimes and cutting off funding of the Palestinian Authority over payments to the families of terrorists.

Almost all these policies have been reversed by the Biden administration, Klein noted.

“We are now facing an administration that is moving to backtrack on some of these very important advances. We’re at a critical moment when Israel and her leaders and all of us who love Israel must stand strong against what this administration is trying to do,” Klein said.

Klein read the words of then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden from 1995 in support of the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which enshrined in American law that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel and that the U.S. embassy should be moved there. At the time, Biden emphasized how despite efforts by various empires and regimes tried to sever Jewish ties to Jerusalem, “the Jewish people returned to claim what many rulers have tried to deny them for centuries, the right to peaceful existence, their own country, in their own capital.” Yet today, the Biden administration is working to open a Palestinian consulate in western Jerusalem.

“Such a consulate would undermine Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem, it violates the Jerusalem Embassy Act, will likely result in violating the Oslo Accords which prohibit the Palestinian Authority from engaging in foreign relations,” Klein said. “The consulate is a diplomatic insult and danger to Israel and the Jewish people.”

Klein said that opening the consulate would be a reward to the “fascist, terrorist dictatorship” of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who he said will continue to encourage Arabs to kill Jews.

The ZOA has placed giant banners on major buildings in Jerusalem, urging Israeli leaders and citizens to say “no” to the consulate. The organization has also urged other Jewish groups to join this effort.

“But no Jewish group has — I’m sorry to say, it pains me to say — not AIPAC, [American Jewish] Committee, not the ADL, not the Conference of Presidents and not any of the other major groups have done so,” Klein said. “We must urge them to do so to support the Israeli government.”

Klein said that the Biden administration is also undermining Israel’s right to build settlements in Judea and Samaria, which was recognized as legal by the Trump administration. Meanwhile, there are no restrictions on Palestinians building in the same areas. Klein called these actions from the Biden administration blatantly anti-Semitic.

He also pointed to Biden’s warning against the scourge of anti-Semitism during a commemoration of the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, but then asked why Biden and Democratic leaders do not condemn by name the anti-Semitic comments by progressive members of Congress.

“While Israel was being bombarded with over 4,400 Hamas rockets, President Biden shockingly, strongly praised the Jew-hater Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who opposes Israel’s very existence,” Klein said. “Shortly after Tlaib again promoted boycotting Israel and called Israel an apartheid state, Biden disgracefully said to Rashida Tlaib … ‘I admire your intellect. I admire your passion. I admire your concern for so many other people. You’re a fighter, Rashida Tlaib, and God thank you for being a fighter.’ What a disgraceful episode in Biden’s administration.”

He also raised alarm about numerous Biden administration appointees who, according to Klein, had a record of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements. This was so alarming, he said, that ZOA established a webpage to list and document the statements of 20 appointees.

‘Fighting for Truth’
“The fact that thousands of us are gathered here at this virtual gala shows that so many of us, such huge number of us, do care,” Klein concluded. “We will continue to be strong and with the help of Almighty God and with the help of the Jewish Zionists and evangelical Christians Zionists and remarkable Israeli people, we will overcome all of these serious but temporary obstacles and will ultimately re-strengthen U.S.-Israel relations and promote the truth of the Arab Islamist war against Israel and the West, and will finally implement the moral, principled, wise policies that will strengthen and benefit both Israel and America.”

The event also featured a brief address by the ZOA’s newly elected board chairman, attorney David Schoen, who served on Trump’s legal team during his Congressional impeachment hearings.

“Tonight, we celebrate an organization that is dedicated to fighting for truth, an organization that is brave and bold, and an organization that is determined to share and promote facts,” Schoen said. “As we look around the world at the end of 2021, we see increasing anti-Semitism both in the United States and abroad, including violent attacks on college campuses and synagogues across the country, and a harsh anti-Israel climate on Capitol Hill. Israel bashing has become the norm as few are willing to stand against the current in order to shut down the lies.”

ZOA presented the Mortimer Zuckerman Award for Outstanding Jewish Philanthropy to Gloria Kaylie and her late husband Harvey, as well as the Justice Louis D. Brandeis Award to activist Rubin Margules.

“Like Mort, I was born in a [displaced persons] camp in Germany — in Bamberg, Germany. My father and mother were liberated from concentration camps in which nearly all their former families were murdered. So too my wife’s family,” Margules said. “My father was consumed with pride by the emergence of the State of Israel, a haven then and now for the Jewish people and a source of pride to all of us. He taught me love of Israel and even more importantly, that we must do what it takes to ensure that never again means never again!”

Source: https://unitedwithisrael.org/biden-administration-abandoning-israel-appointing-antisemites-says-zionist-leader/

The post Biden Administration Abandoning Israel, Appointing Antisemites, Says Zionist Leader first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

São Paulo – The Arab immigration to Brazil has gone through moments of large and small influxes since the late 19^th century. But it has never stopped. Directly related to exoduses ushered in by conflicts and instabilities in the source countries, the immigration is also linked to the presence of descendants in Brazilian cities and government initiatives to welcome them.

A professor of Contemporary History at the History Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Murilo Meihy says that there Arab immigration to Brazil is not recent. “It never ends; it’s cyclic and connected to the conflicts in the Middle East. Brazil is a destination as it already has an integrated network that keeps this influx alive,” he says.

A professor of History of Asia at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) and author of the book Imigração Árabe no Brasil: história de vida de libaneses muçulmanos e cristãos [Arab Immigration to Brazil: Life Story of Muslin and Christian Lebanese], Samira Adel Osman also notes the conflicts in the region have been the major driver for immigrants.

Refugees: Conflicts lead to exoduses

“Examples can be local or regional issues, such as when Christians came in the late 19^th century due to the crackdown by the Ottoman Empire (which included Lebanon and Syria at the time) or religious conflicts among Druses and Maronites; world wars are another reason, as the poor living conditions and the presence of the European powers in the region drove other influxes. The Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) can also be mentioned as a local factor, as can the Syrian Civil War that’s been ongoing since 2011,” says Osman. Over the last years, the Arab immigration to Brazil takes on another dimension: the refugees.

According to data gathered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and made public by Brazil’s Ministry of Justice, in 2019 there was 79.5 million forcedly displaced people around the world, including 45.7 million internally displaced people; 20.4 million were refugees under a UNHCR mandate; 5.6 million under a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)’s mandate; 4.2 million asylum seekers; and 3.6 million were displaced Venezuelans living abroad.

According to Brazil’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security, the number of Syrian asylum seekers in the country – most of them are Arabs – reached 429 in 2019. In the same year, the country received 229 asylum requests from Morocco and 196 from Lebanon.

ADUS Institute refugee service coordinator Laura Lopes says the NGO has recorded a large influx of Syrian refugees from 2013 to 2014, but this influx has decreased over the years. The reason, she says, could be financial as leaving Syria for Brazil has a higher cost than seeking refugee in closer countries, such as Turkey and Jordan.

“Brazil has adopted policies to receive Syrian refugees during the peak of the crisis and presented itself as a welcoming country. But there’s no structure for integration in our society,” says Laura. In 2020, 27 Syrian refugees were registered at ADUS, while 2013 and 2014 had seen 300 refugees assisted by the institute, which offers training courses, legal advice, and Portuguese classes, among other support activities.

Statistics

The number of Arabs that have migrated to Brazil is controversial. Osman mentions figures from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showing that 1940 around 40,000 Syrian and Lebanese immigrants arrived in Brazil, a number that hasn’t stopped growing since.

Immigrants settled on the 25 de Março street: Statistics on the arrivals are controversial

“The statistics are controversial, particularly from the perspective of a historical evaluation of this migration flow. The major problem refers to the way these immigrants were registered, with no standardization. The official data may show them as Turkish, Arab Turkish, non-Arab Turkish, Syrians, Lebanese, Syrian Lebanese, Syrians and Lebanese, Arabs. We can only be sure that, from the late 19^th-century to the end of the 1^st World War they were registered as Turkish because the Ottoman Empire issued the passports. The source region (Lebanon or Syria) wasn’t always specified. Moreover, people from those places could also be Armenians or Jews,” says Osman.

Last July, the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) released a survey carried out by Ibope Inteligência and H2R Pesquisas Avançadas on the Arab Immigrants. The study showed that in 2020 11.6 million Arabs and descendants lived in Brazil – 10% of them are immigrants, and 41% are grandchildren of immigrants.

The future

As it has occurred in the last couple of years, the Arab immigration to Brazil tends to continue, alternating between higher and lower influxes.

“Some regions of Lebanon, such as the Beqaa Valley have entire families in Brazil, with branches that have formed due to the instability in the country,” says Meihy. “And since this flow is historic, it can be expected to remain. After all, there’s a heritage involved, ties between both countries.”

Altinawi (L) with his family and friends: In Brazil people help each other

Meanwhile, those that are already here try and build a life. In 2013, the 48-years-old Syrian engineer Talal Altinawi (pictured above) came to São Paulo with his wife and two kids. He was one among so many refugees that had to leave their homes during the conflict that’s ravaged the country since 2011. He went through Lebanon before arriving in São Paulo.

“The advantage of being here in Brazil is that people really help each other and are pleased to so. That doesn’t happen in every country,” he says. Since arriving in Brazil, Altinawi has sold food on demand, opened a restaurant after an online crowdfunding, and then closed the restaurant two years later.

Altinawi lived in Brás, a district located immediately to the historic downtown. Now, in Campo Belo, he sells food to order in a process he describes as building his life in Brazil. “The downside here, and not only here, is that the financial crisis hinders our growth.” With the pandemic, difficulties increased: “We were getting steady, growing even, but the pandemic got in the way. We are not yet as we’d like to be, but we’re trying,” he says.

Despite the many challenges, Altinawi settled in Brazil. Now, his older children are 18 and 15. And the youngest, who was born in São Paulo, is six. “I’m going back to Syria one day to visit the country, but not to live there. I belong in Brazil now,” he says.

*Special report by Marcos Carrieri.

Translated by Guilherme Miranda

Source: https://anba.com.br/en/influx-of-arab-immigrants-to-brazil-remains-constant/

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