Your Daily Spiel is The CJN‘s daily roundup of trending stories in the Jewish world
Canada: The contest to replace Stephen Harper as leader of the Tories is officially underway (candidates will be allowed to spend up to $5 million on campaigns), “proud feminist” Justin Trudeau announced that Canada’s next series of bank notes will feature a woman – and you can decide who, a 95-year-old men’s retailer in Toronto is mulling over retirement after over 70 years in the business, and The CJN looks at the best kosher restaurants Vancouver has to offer. #nomnomnom
U.S.: Bernie Sanders stunned the world (but mostly Hillary Clinton) after winning the Michigan primary last night (Donald Trump also won in three states), the GOP has disavowed extremely controversial Israel-hating Texas leader Robert Morrow, an online letter by “scholars and academics” supporting a suspected anti-Israel professor has garnered 1,000 signatures, a talk by an Israeli-Arab diplomat at the University of California, Davis was interrupted by Palestinian protesters who chanted “Long Live the Intifadah!” and the U.S. has cancelled a visa for Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi for failing to disclose his arrest record.
Israel: In Jerusalem, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden criticized those who failed to condemn yesterday’s terror attacks across Israel (Biden’s wife and grandchildren were near the scene of the attack in Jaffa when it happened), which so far includes President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas. In fact, Fatah (Abbas’ official party) reportedly celebrated the attack in a Facebook post calling Bashar Masalha, the attacker behind the stabbing spree in Jaffa, a “martyr” and “hero.”
The victim of yesterday’s Jaffa attack was identified as 29-year-old Taylor Force, a student of Vanderbilt University visiting Israel on a school trip with his wife (also injured), and the story of the ‘Guitar Hero’ who attempted to subdue Masalha by hitting him in the head with his guitar is going viral in Israel – as is the story of the Orthodox man who, after being stabbed several times in Petach Tikvah, managed to pull the knife out of his own neck and stab his attacker to death. A GoFundMe page to pay for the guitar belonging to the former has already been set up.
WATCH: Yesterday in Petach Tikva, Yonatan Azrihav was stabbed by a Palestinian terrorist. He pulled the knife out of his…
Posted by The Israel Project on Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Following yesterday’s attacks across Israel by three Palestinian terrorists, media outlets operated under their usual “Israel is the aggressor” narrative (rather than blaming the actual perpetrators of the crime), carefully skewing the events to mislead the vast majority of Internet dwellers who only read headlines:
World: A Uruguayan Jew was killed in a suspected anti-Semitic attack (the suspect reportedly yelled out “Allahu Akbar”), Iran test-fired two missiles, media reported yesterday, one of them which reads “Israel should be wiped off the Earth” in Hebrew, Hitler’s personal copy of Mein Kampf is going up for sale at auction (Donald Trump should so buy that), a new initiative has been launched to finally discover the truth about what happened to Swedish diplomat and Righteous Gentile Raoul Wallenberg, and German lawyers have filed a complaint against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for allowing anti-Semitic content, which is illegal in Germany.
At the U.K.’s prestigious University College London, its student board voted in favour of a BDS motion, which the campaigns director for the British Union of Jewish Students said was done in a completely “undemocratic” process.
Culture: Artists erected a giant vagina on Rothschild Street in Tel Aviv on International Women’s Day yesterday in an act of political activism, jazz artist Pat Metheny has announced his upcoming performance in Israel this June, as has heavy metal legend Alice Cooper, who announced it in a YouTube video.
In the latest episode of PBS’s Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, revered Jewish actor Dustin Hoffman traced back his roots to learn of the anti-Semitic discrimination and violence his ancestors faced in the Soviet Union.
So apparently, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are officially out of ideas: their latest project will be a film based on the Where’s Waldo? franchise. They should get Paul Rust to star as the protagonist.
Ideas for news items to include in the spiel? Please send them to [email protected].