more cracks in the facade 

Poland’s foreign ministry has intervened after Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany denied that Ukrainian national leader Stepan Bandera was responsible for the mass murder of ethnic Poles and Jews, and also sought to justify his collaboration with Nazi Germany.

The episode has renewed tensions over what has long been a sensitive issue in Polish-Ukrainian relations. In response, Ukraine’s foreign ministry has distanced itself from the words of the ambassador, Andrii Melnyk, saying that they were just his “own opinion”.

The remarks came in an interview on the Jung & Naiv show in Germany. The ambassador was asked by host Tilo Jung about Stepan Bandera, leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which carried out massacres and ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews.

Jung asked Melnyk how a figure resposible for mass murder could be treated as a hero today in Ukraine. The ambassador answered by claiming that “Bandera was not a mass murderer of Jews and Poles”. He said that such claims are part of a “Russian narrative”.

Jung then quoted a propaganda leaflet signed by Bandera calling for Russians, Poles, Hungarian and Jews to be “wiped out”. Melnyk responded that he “will not distance myself from it. That’s my decision [even if] you may not understand it”.

I used to drink with a Croatian ex-Nazi and and an Israeli fascist. The Croat introduced us. "I don't like Jews much, but I love Israelis" I asked the Israeli if Jews should have equal rights in Germany. He said "No". 

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s most powerful politician has acknowledged that the country bought advanced spyware from the Israeli surveillance software maker NSO Group, but denied that it was being used to target his political opponents.

WARSAW, July 6 (Reuters) - Poland's ruling party leader on Tuesday condemned comments from Israel regarding a new law that could have an impact on the restitution of Jewish property after World War Two and said the country did not owe anything to anyone. 

Netanyahu's Son Becomes Star of German Nationalist Party After Calling EU 'Evil'

AfD lawmaker tweets poster quoting Yair Netanyahu after the prime minister's son appealed for a return to a 'free, democratic and Christian' Europe  

Benjamin Netanyahu faced media criticism this week for hosting the right-wing prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary who have been accused of being anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic. But in response, Likud MK Anat Berko epitomized Netanyahu’s politics in a single sentence: "They might be anti-Semites, but they’re on our side."

Human rights activists petition the court to cease Israeli arms exports to Ukraine since some of these weapons reach neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine’s security force.  

Ex-Mossad Agent Who Helped Capture Eichmann Backs Far-right German Party With Nazi Past as 'Great Hope'

Don't Fixate on the Freedom Party. In Austria Today, the Real anti-Semitic Threat Is From Muslims, Not Nazis.

As the first active Jewish post-war Austrian MP, I support Sebastian Kurz’s coalition with the Freedom Party which, despite its Nazi roots, has long become an anti-immigration, populist movement. These days, the protestors shouting anti-Jewish slogans in Vienna are Muslims, not the far right 

When U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in Pittsburgh last week following the single deadliest attack on Jews in American history, Pittsburgh’s mayor and elected officials refused to meet him. The only public official to greet him was the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer—an American and former Republican Party operative who became an Israeli citizen and close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Deborah Lipstadt: Is Donald Trump’s Inadvertent Anti-Semitism Worse Than the Real Thing?

Ex-defense minister says IS ‘apologized’ to Israel for November clash 

Moshe Ya’alon’s office refuses to elaborate after alluding to contact with terror group

"As always, amazing and absurd to think that Israel just did the local branch of Al-Qaeda a favor by carrying out an airstrike."

"why? Hezbollah+Iran are a much bigger threat to Israel than Al-Qaida have ever been."

Over the following 3 years, hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were killed, and many more wounded, by explosive devices hidden in baskets, on bicycles or mules, in cars or trucks. After each attack, calls to the media were placed claiming responsibility in the name of the FLLF. Palestinian and Lebanese officials repeatedly insisted that the FLLF was merely a fiction intended to hide the hand of Israel and its Christian rightist allies. Israeli officials rejected such accusations, insisting rather that the bombings were part of an internecine war amongst rival Arab factions. 

..In February 2018 Ronen Bergman, at the time the senior correspondent for military and intelligence affairs for Yedioth Ahronoth, published Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassination.

...As Rise and Kill First documents in detail, the FLLF bombings were an integral part of this Israeli strategy of provocation. 

...“By mid-September 1981,” he explains, “car bombs were exploding regularly in Palestinian neighborhoods of Beirut and other Lebanese cities.”  

"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape,...

Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists...  

The Israeli government is so concerned that America's adversaries may miscalculate U.S. intentions that it is privately urging Washington to make it clear that the U.S. would intervene in Saudi Arabia should the survival of that government be threatened.