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Netflix Epic on Moses Platforms Biased Scholar Who Expressed Joy on Oct.7

Moses Breaking the Tables of the Law (1659), by Rembrandt. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

A newly-released Netflix documentary series on the Biblical story of Moses has given a platform to an Egyptian scholar who referred to the Biblical Promised Land as “Palestine” and expressed happiness during Hamas’ October 7 massacre in southern Israel, HonestReporting revealed this week.

Testament: The Story of Moses is currently riding high in the Netflix Top 10 in numerous countries, including Israel and others in the Middle East.

But the exposure of one of its interviewees — Dr. Monica Hanna from Egypt’s College of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage — casts a shadow over an otherwise enjoyable and informative documentary drama released just in time for Passover.

In the show, which depicts the saga of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, Hanna shoehorns “Palestine” into the narrative, although it did not exist at the time.

Referring to the Pharaoh at the time, Hanna says that “when he comes to power, he leads several campaigns to the area of Syria Palestine. He conquers areas even as far as Beirut in Lebanon.”

In fact, the Biblical term for the Promised Land during this period was “Canaan,” as mentioned by the series’ narrator himself.

Palestine, or officially “Provincia Syria Palaestina,” was a name invented by the Romans in 135 CE as a replacement for “Judea,” in an effort to eliminate all expressions of Jewry in the region following the defeat of Bar Kohba in the Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire.

The period of the Pharaoh in the Exodus story is believed to have been some 1,300 years before that. Put simply, the term “Palestine” did not exist at that time.

As David Levine writes: “The not-so-subtle use of the words ‘Syria’ and ‘Palestine’ is misleading and historically incorrect. She seems to be implying that ‘Palestine,’ and therefore, ‘Palestinians’ date back to at least this ancient period. As an Egyptologist and expert in cultural heritage, she should know better.”

Some may argue that academics use the term “Palestine,” even anachronistically. And some may claim that Hanna tried to use it as a more familiar term instead of “Canaan” (like she did by mentioning Beirut in Lebanon).

But why did she insert a political term into an ancient historical story that connects the Jewish people to the Land of Israel?

The answer seems to lie in Hanna’s posts on X (formerly Twitter), which reveal her underlying anti-Israeli sentiment.

On October 7, as Hamas terrorists massacred 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped some 240 more, Hanna shared posts reading in English and Arabic: “Sweet October” with a smiley face,  and “Beautiful are the gifts of the 50th anniversary,” an apparent reference to the 1973 Yom Kippur war in which Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on the Jewish State.

 

One of Hanna’s 100k+ followers on X replied in a way that shows the message has been clearly received: “October 6 is Egyptian [The Yom Kippur War] and October 7 is Palestinian,” he exclaimed with a victory mark.

Hanna also declared “Long Live Free Palestine,” in a post she shared last month, after being honored by a Palestinian Authority official for her academic work:

So when Hanna uses the term “Palestine” in a top Netflix documentary, it’s loaded.

Is this a scholar who merits such a respectable and wide-reaching platform?

And couldn’t the Netflix team, whose producers and researchers worked so hard to present a balanced array of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim experts on the show, perform minimal due diligence on their interviewees, or notice when facts have been distorted?

Sadly, it seems they chose to pass over this issue.

HonestReporting is a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post Netflix Epic on Moses Platforms Biased Scholar Who Expressed Joy on Oct.7 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Democrats, Republicans Make Final Push for Jewish Voters on Eve of US Presidential Election

US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) speaks during the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, Sept. 30, 2021. Photo: Al Drago/Pool via REUTERS

Both Democratic and Republican parties are scrambling to galvanize Jewish support on the eve of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election.

In what is projected to potentially be the closest presidential election in over 20 years, both parties believe that Jewish voters could play a major role in determining the election’s outcome. As the race for the White House enters the final hours, Democrats and Republicans have deployed some of their most vocal pro-Israel allies in a last-minute pitch to the Jewish community.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to court Jewish voters who feel alienated by Rep. Summer Lee’s (D-PA) unrelenting anti-Israel rhetoric. Torres sought to assuage fears that Vice President Kamala Harris harbors similar views on Israel as Lee.

In addition, Torres defended the Biden administration’s record on Israel, arguing that a potential Harris administration would continue to strengthen ties with the Jewish state and mitigate any threats from Iran.

“I joined the Harris campaign in showing solidarity with the Pittsburgh Jewish community, which has been profoundly shaken by both the Tree of Life mass shooting and the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism,” Torres told Jewish Insider.

“I did my best to reassure the Jewish community that the Democratic Party — despite the background noise on Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok — has been and will remain fundamentally pro-Israel and that the Vice President herself falls squarely within the pro-Israel consensus that has historically governed American politics, rejecting both the [a]nti-Zionism of the far left and the America-[F]irst isolationism of the far right,” Torres continued.

On the conservative side of the aisle, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) filmed a video with the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) in support of former President Donald Trump.

“This is the most important election cycle in our lifetime, and as we have seen on college campuses, the rot of antisemitism is real in the Democratic Party.

She accused the Biden White House of betraying Israel and the Jewish people. She lambasted the Biden administration for their failure “to combat antisemitism”

“It is Republicans who have always – and will always – stand strongly with Israel, and stand up and clearly condemn antisemitism,” Stefanik said.

While serving on the Education and the Workforce Committee, Stefanik has lambasted administrators of elite universities for their mealy-mouthed condemnations of antisemitism and tolerance of anti-Jewish violence on campus. Last December, Stefanik engaged in a fiery back-and-forth with the presidents of Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over a purported antisemitic campus atmospheres.

Early indicators suggest that Harris is expected to win a smaller share of the Jewish vote than previous Democratic candidates. Jewish voters, highly-concentrated in important areas such as the suburbs of Detroit and Philadelphia, could prove critical in Harris’s bid to win the White House.

Liberal CNN commentator Van Jones cautioned Monday that Harris has suffered an erosion of Jewish support in the Philadelphia metro.

Jones said that he’s “worried” that the “Jewish vote in the suburban areas” of Philadelphia have dramatically soured on Harris.

“Biden won the Jewish vote [in suburban Philadephia] by 70%” Jones said, referencing the 2020 election.

“Some polls show Kamala at 50-50” among Jewish voters in suburban Philadelphia, Jones lamented.

The post Democrats, Republicans Make Final Push for Jewish Voters on Eve of US Presidential Election first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Quiet antisemitism in Toronto’s Roncesvalles Village leaves a resident wondering how this area is considered ‘progressive’

In a gentrifying West Toronto neighbourhood full of signs advocating for Black lives, transgender youth and the unhoused, the clerk’s refusal to hang up a sign of my own design […]

The post Quiet antisemitism in Toronto’s Roncesvalles Village leaves a resident wondering how this area is considered ‘progressive’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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Jewish Boy Assaulted on Way to School in New York City, Assailant Remain at Large

Illustrative: An ambulance used by Hatzalah in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Orthodox Jews in New York City are again frustrated with a lack of law and order in the Five Boroughs following another attack against a member of their community, this time a child.

According to multiple accounts, an African American male on Monday morning smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The incident was the second known assault on an Orthodox Jew in the area in less than a week.

“He was riding his bike between Winthrop and Clarkson, near the hospital, when a man slapped him. He arrived at school shaken, and the school contacted his parents and Crown Heights Shomrim [a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and also serves as a neighborhood watch group],” Yaacov Behrman, a local Jewish leader, posted on X/Twitter.

Behrman — a liaison for Chabad Headquarters, the main New York base of the Hasidic movement — added that the boy was filing a police report.

A teacher of the young man, Yisrael Eliashiv, added that the assailant, who remains at large, “smacked [the boy] across the face for no reason other than hate. Thankfully, he got away before anything else happened.” The teacher then noted that his student did not initially think to notify the police because he doubted the attacker would receive any punishment.

“I’m fuming to the point I’ve got a migraine … You have kids who are 13 or 14 and have grown up with the attitude of ‘if you get assaulted in the street, just take it because nothing is gonna be done.’ Those are the symptoms not of a sick but of a dead and decaying society,” Eliashiv wrote.

Crown Heights, home to a large Orthodox Jewish population, has seen numerous antisemitic hate crimes in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face.

Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.

Monday’s assault came just days after an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking through downtown Brooklyn last week.

These latest attacks on the Orthodox Jewish community continue a trend.

According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.

Meanwhile, according to a recent Algemeiner review of New York City Police Department (NYPD) hate crimes data, 385 antisemitic hate crimes have struck the New York City Jewish community since last October, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas perpetrated its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, unleashing a wave of anti-Jewish hatred unlike any seen in the post-World War II era.

Beyond New York, anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US spiked to a record high last year, and American Jews were the most targeted of any religious group in the country, according to a report published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Jewish Boy Assaulted on Way to School in New York City, Assailant Remain at Large first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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