LLX News

CBN News; cbn.com

U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) joined with five of their Democratic colleagues to call on the U.S. Treasury to stop giving tax-exempt status to U.S. charitable organizations with operations in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem – Jewish areas that are known biblically as Judea and Samaria. 

It’s the latest example of a global leftist strategy to Boycott, Sanction, and Divest (BDS) from any organization that helps or does business with Israel – an effort that many have deemed antisemitic.

The Algemeiner reports in a July 22 letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the Democratic lawmakers expressed their “extreme concern that U.S. charities are funding and providing direct support to Israeli organizations that are working to expand and perpetuate” Jewish settlements. They claim the charities are “supporting the dispossession and forced displacement of Palestinians.”

https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/israel/2021/august/tlaib-aoc-ramp-up-bds-effort-to-punish-us-charities-that-help-israelis-in-judea-and-samaria

i24 News; i24news.tv

Ashram ends two decades of Russian dominance of the sport and caps off a strong Olympic Games for Israel

Israel won its first medal in Olympic rhythmic gymnastics and continued a strong Tokyo Games overall as Linoy Ashram took gold in the individual all-around on Saturday.

Russian Dina Averina, three-times world champion, took the silver, while Belarus’s Alina Harnasko bagged bronze.

Ashram edged out Averina to end two decades of Russian Olympic dominance and claim her country’s third-ever Olympic gold medal.

The 22-year-old follows in the footsteps of sailor Gal Fridman and Artem Dolgopyat, who won men’s floor gold in the artistic gymnastics in Tokyo.

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/1628335464-tokyo-olympics-rhythmic-gymnast-linoy-ashram-wins-israel-s-third-ever-gold-medal

By: Mark Tooley – The Christian Post; christianpost.com

A July 23 New York Times full page ad implored: “Let Cuba Live!”

Readers may have expected the ad to offer solidarity to anti-regime protests and to call for an end to Cuba’s 62-year-old communist dictatorship with one-party rule enforced by a police state.

But no, the ad urged removal of U.S. sanctions on Cuba, which it claimed are the real cause of Cuban suffering, repeating the claims of Cuba’s dictatorship. There was no mention of human rights or the appeals of protesters.

Signers to the ad were predictable: Jane Fonda, Daniel Ellsberg, Susan Sarandon, Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone. Jeremy Corbyn. CODEPINK, and Black Lives Matters Global Network. Regarding the latter, it should be noted that black Cubans have prominently protested against the regime and suffered consequences for it.

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/churches-cuba-and-communism.html

By: Michael Gryboski – The Christian Post; christianpost.com

A grandson of the late evangelist Billy Graham has been released from the hospital after battling what is reported to be the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

Jonathan Lotz, son of Anne Graham Lotz, was admitted to the intensive care unit last month in critical condition as he battled COVID-19 and pneumonia, according to his mother.

In an announcement Sunday evening, Graham Lotz posted to Facebook that her son was discharged from the hospital and home in Raleigh, North Carolina.

“Praise God!” she declared in her update. By Monday morning, the post had around 28,000 “likes” and 25,000 “loves.”

https://www.christianpost.com/us/billy-grahams-grandson-released-from-hospital-amid-covid-battle.html

By: Laurie Kellman – AP News; apnews.com

ESHHAR, Israel (AP) — Idit Harel Segal was turning 50, and she had chosen a gift: She was going to give one of her own kidneys to a stranger.

The kindergarten teacher from northern Israel, a proud Israeli, hoped her choice would set an example of generosity in a land of perpetual conflict. She was spurred by memories of her late grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, who told her to live meaningfully, and by Jewish tradition, which holds that there’s no higher duty than saving a life.

So Segal contacted a group that links donors and recipients, launching a nine-month process to transfer her kidney to someone who needed one.

That someone turned out to be a 3-year-old Palestinian boy from the Gaza Strip.

https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-health-religion-israel-b3563e5b2fb2cdecb21b779adecd9497

By: Wendy Rhodes – The Palm Beach Post; palmbeachpost.com

The Israeli Defense Forces’ National Rescue Unit recovered 81 of the 97 victims from the Champlain Towers South condo collapse site in Surfside.

When Lt. Col. Golan Vach, commander of the Israeli Defense Forces’ National Rescue Unit, located a man’s ring while searching the debris field of the collapsed Champlain Towers South in Surfside, he knew immediately to whom it belonged.

He knew, because he had met with families of the scores of missing people. He had studied photographs of the missing, learned about their possessions — a necklace with a heart pendant, a gold watch, a blue table.

He had learned about the habits of each potential victim and even knew in which room each likely would have been during the collapse.

And, amid unimaginable tangles of rebar jutting out from a sea of concrete that was once their homes, he knew precisely where each victim would be located.

https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2021/07/26/surfside-condo-collapse-how-israeli-team-found-majority-victims/8021350002/

By: Jeannie Ortega Law – The Christian Post; christianpost.com

Grandson of the late evangelist Billy Graham Jonathan Lotz is currently in critical condition battling COVID-19, but he continues to share the good news of Jesus Christ while in the hospital. 

Anne Graham Lotz, Billy Graham’s daughter, took to social media to ask for prayer for her son over the weekend.

“Fifty years ago I could hold my son in my arms. Now I have placed him in the arms of Jesus,” her post read.

She explained that he is in the intensive care unit and communicating with her via text message. The 73-year-old mother and evangelist shared that her son was “physically exhausted yet spiritually overflowing.”

“I am continually pouring over the Psalms of Ascent (120-134) in ICU. I have had the privilege of sharing Jesus with the ER & ICU staff! What a Savior! God is so good!” Jonathan testified to his mother in his update.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/billy-grahams-grandson-sharing-gospel-in-icu-battling-covid-19.html

By: Shoshanna Solomon – Times of Israel; timesofisrael.com

PM calls on ‘like-minded’ nations to join network to detect, alert and respond to attacks in real time; Israel cybersecurity chief warns: ‘Cyber winter is here’

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Wednesday that Israel was setting up a “global network shield” within which partner-governments globally will collaborate in real time to identify cybersecurity attacks, raise the alert and work together to develop solutions.

It will be an “online, real-time global network defense,” Bennett said at the Cyber Week conference in Tel Aviv. “We invite all like-minded good countries to join forces.”

In the face of cyberthreats, the partnership will “alert, investigate, together develop a ‘vaccine’ and disperse the ‘vaccine’ to all countries in the network. United we stand, divided we fall,” he said.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-to-set-up-global-network-shield-against-growing-cyberthreat/

By: Ariel Kahana & ILH Staff – Israel Hayom; israelhayom.com

Company panned for capitulating to BDS. PM Bennett: This decision is morally wrong and I believe that it will become clear that it is also commercially wrong.

Ice cream giant Ben & Jerry’s found itself in hot water Monday after declaring it will no longer sell its products beyond Israel’s pre-1967 Green Line.

The decision, widely panned as a capitulation to the anti-Israeli boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, has seen lawmakers from across the political spectrum mobilize to have it overturned.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett slammed Ben & Jerry’s decision, saying, “There are many ice cream brands, but only one Jewish state. Ben & Jerry’s decided to brand itself as the anti-Israel ice cream. This decision is morally wrong and I believe that it will become clear that it is also commercially wrong.

“The boycott against Israel – a democracy surrounded by islands of terrorism – reflects a total loss of way. The boycott does not work and will not work, and we will fight it with full force,” he tweeted on Monday night.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/07/20/ire-swirls-as-israel-vows-to-fight-ben-jerrys-ice-cream-boycott/

By: Melanie Phillips – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

The effect of the invidious role played in helping foment murderous rage against the Jewish state and the Jewish people, while sanitizing the behavior of the Palestinians, is incalculable.

This week, Israel signed a deal for the immediate transfer to South Korea of 700,000 doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, which are due to expire at the end of this month. In exchange, South Korea will return the same amount of vaccines to Israel from a future order later this year.

This is a win-win deal. Israel has found a good use for vaccines surplus to its current requirements and which would otherwise shortly expire; South Korea is being helped to accelerate its vaccination program.

But there’s another significant feature of this arrangement. These 700,000 vaccines are part of the approximately 1 million unused doses that Israel was offering the Palestinian Authority last month. The P.A. abruptly cancelled that deal, claiming that the vaccines were too close to their expiration date at the end of June and July.

That was clearly untrue. There was plenty of time to use these doses to vaccinate thousands of Palestinians; the Israelis were using vaccines from the same batch on their own teenagers; and subsequent shipments would have had later expiry dates.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/media-malpractice-in-the-west-has-caused-permanent-harm-to-israel/