Despite increased exports, Iran missed its budgeted targets due to sanctions evasion costs, selling oil at discounts to countries like China, and providing oil for free to Syria.
Christopher Columbus, the 15th-century explorer who discovered the Americas, was of Sephardic Jewish descent, Spanish scientists announced Saturday. Employing cutting-edge DNA analysis, researchers have finally put to rest the enigma surrounding the origins of the man who spearheaded Spanish-funded expeditions from 1490 onward, ultimately leading to European exploration of the Americas.
Columbus’ origins have been a subject of debate for centuries. The prevailing view has been that he hailed from Genoa and that his heritage was Italian. However, other theories have been suggested, including that Columbus was Greek, British, or even a Spanish Jew.
The finding that Columbus was Jewish came as a result of a 22-year-long investigation led by forensic expert Miguel Lorente that confirmed another prevailing theory, that Spain’s Seville Cathedral is Columbus’ final resting place.
The findings were announced in a new documentary, “Columbus DNA: The True Origin,” that was aired on Spain’s national broadcaster TVE on Saturday.
Lorente examined microscopic samples from remains interred in Seville Cathedral, long designated as Columbus’s final resting place despite competing claims. These samples were compared to those of known relatives and descendants, with findings unveiled in a documentary aired on Spain’s national channel TVE.
“We have Christopher Columbus’s DNA, albeit fragmentary, but sufficient for our purposes. We also have the DNA of Hernando Colón, his son,” Lorente explained. “Both the Y chromosome (male0 and the mitochondrial DNA (transmitted by the mother) of Hernando exhibit characteristics consistent with Jewish ancestry.”
In 1492, Columbus, attempting to reach India by sailing west over the Atlantic Ocean, led a Spanish expedition that discovered the island of San Salvador Bahamas on October 12 of that year, the first recorded European contact with any landmass in the Western hemisphere. He also made the first contact with the native inhabitants of the Americas, who he called “Indians” due to his misconception that he had arrived in India. He died in 1506 never accepting that he had found a new continent (which in fact was not named after him but after Amerigo Vespussi, who led exploratory voyages to the American coast and claimed that it was actually a separate continent which he named “The New World”)
Ironically, given what has been discovered about Columbus’ Jewish heritage, 1492 was also the year that the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella expelled their country’s Jewish inhabitants who would not convert to Catholicism, ending about fifteen centuries of Jewish life in Spain. Columbus identified as a Christian and wrote of his interest in converting the natives he found during his voyages to Christianity.
Columbus’ expeditions to the Americas would lead to further European expeditions to what became known as the “new world,” including eventual settlement and colonization of North and South America.
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| Random Photo Not associated with incident |
The craziest part is that he is far worse than Sinwar who was operated by Jewish doctors!
A traveler, presumably non-Jewish, suffered a car crash and required medical attention. A local government-run ambulance service was called to the scene. As is often the case in the heavily Jewish Rockland area, the responders were Jewish, although the service they work for is not.
The patient refused to be treated by Jewish EMT’s, and apparently preferred to suffer than be assisted.
Audio below:
Amazingly, the responders, presumably Jewish, called the dispatcher to try to accommodate the patient’s antisemitic request.
Joined by Ezra Friedlander and local community leaders, Lander’s tour began at the Satmar Meat store on 13th Avenue and 44th Street, where various vendors display their Esrogim for the season. After picking up some traditional treats for his Sukkah, the Comptroller strolled along 13th Avenue, greeting community members who welcomed his visit.
“What began as a simple trip to buy a Lulav and Esrog has become an annual tradition of over a decade,” shared Ezra Friedlander, a close friend of Lander’s, who helps with the selection process. “The community appreciates his visits, and the Comptroller enjoys the lively atmosphere and connections with local vendors and shoppers preparing for the holiday.”
Hezbollah terrorists are retreating from southern Lebanon, showing minimal resistance to the IDF ground offensive, according to the Institute of the Study of War (ISW), a prominent conflict analysis organization located in Washington, DC. ISW reports that fighters have “departed the region” without engaging in “significant defensive actions.”
Makor Rishon reported last Friday that as a result of the ground operation in Lebanon, farmers are returning to the orchards in the Galilee, and roads have been opened.
The Ramallah-based leading economic website Aliqtisadi on Sunday reported an increase of between 50% and 70% in requests from Arab residents of Judea and Samaria for travel visas to Europe or the US.
Iyad Al-Kurdi, Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Shechem, who also manages a tourism company that deals with issuing visas, told Aliqtisadi the majority of the visas are tourist visas for 25-40-year-old applicants. Al-Kurdi explained that although these are tourist visas, limited to a stay of not more than three months, many PA Arabs apply for such a visa to seek work permits once they arrive, request asylum, or manage to stay illegally “to live outside of Palestine.”
Al-Kurdi noted that the increase in the submission of visa applications began approximately six months after the beginning of the war, due to the economic situation in the PA, the ban on PA Arab labor entering Israel, the consequent rise in unemployment, and the political situation in the PA.
In late January, members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, including Ministers and MKs, participated in a conference advocating for the resettlement of the Gaza Strip by Israelis and the voluntary migration of the Arab population from Judea and Samaria.
The conference titled “Victory of Israel Conference: Settlement Brings Security” was held in Jerusalem, showcasing the participation of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. The event attracted around 1,000 attendees, which included 11 cabinet ministers and 15 members of the Knesset, a significant number of whom are affiliated with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party.
Ben-Gvir said: “We must encourage voluntary migration. Let them leave. Part of correcting the mistake of the sin of the preconception that brought us to October 7 is to return home to Gush Katif and to northern Samaria. We have to return home because that is the Torah, that is morality, that is historical justice, that is logic and that is the right thing.”
Smotrich said: “I took a beating in the eighth grade when we opposed the terrible folly of the Oslo accords. We yelled until we were hoarse: ‘Don’t give them guns,’ and they didn’t listen to us.” He then continued, “I had the privilege of fighting against the expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Samaria. I paid for that with my own liberty.”
In June, Minister Ben Gvir renewed his demand for the resettlement of the Gaza Strip and the voluntary migration of Arabs from there.
“We are committed to returning to Gaza and northern Samaria. We are committed to settling there,” he said in an online post. “The matter is not limited to Gush Katif,” Ben-Gvir stated, adding, “We have to remind ourselves of one thing: It is not enough to build only settlements.”
By David Israel JP
That common sense rule needs to be applied in evaluating reports that appeared simultaneously in The New York Times and The Washington Post on Saturday, based on Hamas’s internal minutes and documents culled by the IDF from the terrorist organization’s control bunker in Khan Yunis in January.
Why?
One probable reason has to do with Israel preparing international public opinion for what is expected and is being widely hyped as a powerful strike on Iran in retaliation for its 180 ballistic missile barrage aimed at the Jewish state two weeks ago. Oddly, but rather typically, the media is already evaluating the likely Iranian response to an Israeli attack that has not even taken place yet.
How are these documents related to Iran?
The documents show that Iran knew of a general plan by Hamas to carry out a massive attack on Israel that it hoped would bring Iran and its proxy Hezbollah into the fray and lead to the collapse of the Jewish State.
Not, mind you, an evacuation of settlements, a retreat to the 1967 lines, or the establishment of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution, but rather, as the Post’s article said, the destruction of Israel.
The Times reported on the minutes of an August 2023 meeting where Khalil al-Hayya, a deputy of Hamas head Yahya Sinwar, discussed the plan a month earlier with Mohammed Said Izadi, an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander based in Lebanon, who helped oversee Tehran’s relations with Palestinian terror organizations.
Izadi, this report read, said that Hezbollah and Iran welcomed the plan in principle but that they needed time “to prepare the environment.”
That Iran knew of the plan and was asked by Hamas to send money to help realize the plan, and that when urged to join in, it said that while it supports the idea, the time is not opportune, gives even more justification for Israel to attack the Islamic Republic – as if Iran’s recent attack was not justification enough.
Israel has tarried in its response to Iran, and the reasons for this may become clearer when the expected attack does take place. But the length of time that has already elapsed between attack and response means that when the response does come, much of the international community will have forgotten the cause.
Along come these documents, and now not only is there justification for the response because of the Iranian missiles, but also because of Iran’s involvement in Hamas’s atrocity.
If George W. Bush was justified, as most Americans at the time felt he was, to go to war against Iraq after 9/11 because the country was seen as aiding and abetting al-Qaeda, then certainly Israel is no less justified in lashing out at Iran, which has aided and abetted Hamas even more.
Beyond implicating Iran in an overall project to launch a dramatic attack on Israel that would lead to its destruction, the leaked documents do something else: they challenge certain assumptions that have taken strong root since October 7.
The first assumption is that the attack was done to stymie a Saudi Arabia-Israel agreement that would pave the way to greater Israeli integration into the Middle East.
According to this assumption, Iran and its proxies feared that such a move would cement a strong US-Israel-Sunni Arab alliance in the region that would be a powerful counterforce to Iran’s hegemonic designs in the region and that it would further push the Palestinian issue off the international agenda.
Indeed, in the weeks just prior to October 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the UN of Israel and Saudi Arabia being “at the cusp” of a historic breakthrough, fundamentally altering the Middle East. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman echoed this sentiment in a Fox News interview, saying “every day we get closer” to an Israel-Saudi agreement.
Furthermore, in that same month – September 2023 – US President Joe Biden proposed an economic corridor of rail, shipping lines, pipes, and cables that would link India to Europe through the Middle East.
While such an agreement would certainly disrupt Iran’s designs for Middle East hegemony, the leaked documents indicate this wasn’t the reason for the October 7 attack. According to the leaked documents, Hamas had originally planned to carry out this attack in the fall of 2022, a year before the original date, and well before there was serious momentum on the Saudi-Israeli track.
The Times article claimed that Hamas tried to sell their project to Hezbollah as a way of keeping this normalization of ties from taking place, but that was after the die was cast for an attack and they had decided to go forward. This was a rationalization for Hezbollah to get on board, not the reason for the plan; that reason was, as the reports made clear, an extremist ideology and fanatical hatred of Israel.
The second assumption that these documents disproved is that the October 7 attack was a result of last year’s judicial overhaul upheaval and the deep internal rift inside Israel.
If Hamas originally wanted to attack in fall 2022, then that was when Yair Lapid was prime minister and several months before the new Netanyahu government set off full force on the judicial reform plan in January.
Granted, the fall of 2022 was not a shining example of Israeli unity, with the country heading towards its fifth election in 3 ½ years, yet it disproves the notion that tumultuous scenes on the Israeli streets and threats of reserve pilots and soldiers not showing up for service were what was behind the attack. These divisions proved an opportune time to strike, but, again, the plan was not hatched because of the divisions but long before.
Here too, Hamas – in arguments trying to get Hezbollah on board – cited the “internal situation” as a reason they felt compelled to move to the plan now, but it was not the prime mover behind the plan.
Finally, what is striking about these documents is that a terrorist organization hellbent on the Jewish state’s destruction was putting together a project – the “big project” – to implement their fanatical ideology and enlist fellow travelers in the project. All the while, Israel – just 78 years after the Holocaust – was asleep at the wheel.
