Tuesday, June 19, 2018
How Campus Bullies Pulled Off the Anti-Israel BDS Movement
A recently published collection of essays, Anti-Zionism on Campus, examines the clout of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement at American institutions of higher learning, and its successful bullying of its opponents. Both of the volume’s editors, Doron Ben-Atar and Andrew Pessin, are professors whom BDS supporters tried to hound from their respective universities. In his review, Jonathan Marks writes:
Anti-Zionism on Campus consists of 32 essays, 25 by scholars and seven by students, which together make the case that those who speak up for Israel on campus, or merely deny that Zionism is racism, risk “verbal attack, social and professional ostracization,” and “setbacks to their careers.” As an undisguised Zionist [and college professor] who has so far avoided such consequences, I read Anti-Zionism on Campus as a skeptic. By the time I finished the book, I was convinced. . . .
At Northern Michigan State University, in 2011, Gabriel Noah Brahm complained of the lopsidedly anti-Israel character of a university-sponsored visit to Israel. He was soon “up on some kind of charges.” He was cleared, but the cloud that hung over him almost certainly contributed to his English Department colleagues’ hostility to his tenure bid. The resulting tenure denial was overturned by a unanimous vote, but Brahm had been put through the wringer. . . .
Faculty are not guiltless in these transactions. . . . When Shlomo Dubnov, a professor of music at the University of San Diego, opposed, in 2012, an anti-Israel divestment resolution, false and serious charges against him were retailed on the website of the San Diego Faculty Association with the active support of that body’s head. . . .
Sohrab Amari: The SPLC Has Its Nose Rubbed in the Dirt
The SPLC in 2016 included Nawaz, who has spent years peacefully combatting both Islamism and anti-Muslim bigotry in Britain, in its Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists, alongside a litany of genuine haters. As evidence, the SPLC cited the fact that Mr. Nawaz had once tweeted a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad “despite the fact that many Muslims see it as blasphemous.” Dissidents across the Muslim world and in too many Muslim communities in the West risk beatings, torture, and worse for daring to criticize their religion and its founder. The SPLC in effect lent its liberal, “civil-rights” imprimatur to their mistreatment at the hands of their coreligionists.Southern Poverty Law Center Lists SPLC as ‘Anti-Muslim Hate Group’ (satire)
“Given our understanding of the views of Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam,” SPLC President Richard Cohen said in a statement, “it was our opinion at the time that the Field Guide was published that their inclusion was warranted. But after getting a deeper understanding of their views and after hearing from others for whom we have great respect, we realize that we were simply wrong to have included Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam in the Field Guide in the first place.”
Damn right. But Nawaz wasn’t the only victim of SPLC smears. Another was the Somali-born author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has written for these pages. In the same Field Guide, the SPLC seemed to question Hirsi Ali’s personal story–she suffered genital mutilation in her native land–and accused her of bigotry for emphasizing the religious and ideological dimensions of Islamic terrorism. She, too, deserves a retraction and apology from the SPLC.
As for journalists who regularly rely on SPLC, the religious-liberty law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, another victim of the group’s smears, got it exactly right in its statement on the Nawaz settlement: “SPLC has become a far-left organization that brands its political opponents as ‘haters’ and ‘extremists’ and has lost all credibility as a civil-rights watchdog . . . SPLC’s sloppy mistakes have ruinous, real-world consequences for which they should not be excused.”
Blasting the group as a “bunch of Islamophobic bigots,” the Southern Poverty Law Center has officially classified itself as an anti-Muslim extremist group.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center targets Muslims like Maajid Nawaz – who are most certainly not anti-Muslim extremists– simply for their faith,” SPLC President Richard Cohen said in a recorded statement on Monday. “These folks are using their white privilege to attack innocent Muslims.”
Earlier in the day, SPLC apologized for listing Nawaz in a directory of anti-Muslim extremists and agreed to pay a $3.375 million settlement to Nawaz’s organization, Quilliam, which combats Islamophobia and Islamic extremism. But in its later statement, SPLC went a step further, demanding that its followers take to the streets to confront SPLC over its hateful actions.
“We must all fight racial and religious extremism – and in this case, that means standing up to people like me,” Cohen said. “Where is antifa on this one?”
British colonel discusses why he supports the IDF
Col. Richard Kemp has seen the tactics used by Islamic terrorists from very close range. As head of the British forces in Afghanistan in 2003, he witnessed terrorists use human shields when they confronted the armed forces of the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.Comparing US immigrant policy to Nazi acts ‘real exaggeration’
Hamas employs a very similar tactic in Gaza, he told The CJN in a telephone interview from England. During the recent unrest, Hamas did its best to provoke an Israeli response that would blacken its image in the eyes of the world. It’s a tactic that has had some success, inasmuch as it leads people to criticize the Jewish state. But many military men like himself hold the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in high regard and understand the difficulties it faces when its enemies send civilians into the line of fire, hoping that they get killed, in order to score a propaganda victory.
Kemp, who has been an outspoken supporter of Israel for years, said, “It’s the latest example of Islamic terrorists trying to force Western soldiers to kill their own people.”
Kemp will discuss the recent Gaza conflict in an event sponsored by Israel Bonds of Canada, in conjunction with the Lone Soldiers Center. The evening event, billed as “Bonding With Lone Soldiers,” is scheduled to take place on June 26 at the Shaarei Shomayim Synagogue in Toronto. Lone soldiers are volunteers from around the world who enlist in the IDF and, being foreigners, do not benefit from the family support that Israelis rely upon when they are serving.
Kemp said that, since its inception, Israel’s armed forces have relied on overseas volunteers known as Machal. Former Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion credited them not only for their military contribution to the country, but also for boosting national morale at a grave point in Israel’s history, Kemp said.
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated comparisons of U.S. border policies for illegal immigrants to Nazi policies are a “real exaggeration”.Cable News: 22 Comparisons of Immigration Policy to the Holocaust, Slavery
“In Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country,” Sessions said last night on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” adding “but this is a serious matter”.
“We need to think it through, be rational and thoughtful about it. We want to allow asylum for people who qualify for it, but people who want economic migration for their personal financial benefit and what they think is their family’s benefit is not a basis for a claim of asylum.”
Former Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden compared the Trump administration’s immigration policies to Nazi Germany in a tweet posted on Saturday. Hayden wrote: “Other governments have separated mothers and children” under a black and white photo of the front of Auschwitz as seen from the railroad tracks approaching the Nazi extermination camp.
Sessions said the children being separated from their illegal migrant parents at the border under the zero-tolerance policy are not being mistreated and are living in good conditions in immigrant detention centers.
“We are taking care of these children; they are not being abused,” Sessions said. “We’ve had a big surge of families bringing children or some adults bringing children with them.”
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, "It is estimated that the SS and police deported at least 1.3 million people to the Auschwitz complex between 1940 and 1945. Of these, the camp authorities murdered approximately 1.1 million."
The pundit class have officially snapped over the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance border enforcement policy. Since Friday, the collective breakdown has yielded a total of 22 instances in which cable news commentators compared the separation of parents and children illegally entering the country to World War II-era war crimes and human rights violations.Twitchy: Now Sen. Richard Blumenthal is comparing family separation at the border to the Holocaust
The Holocaust was invoked 12 times across CNN and MSNBC between June 15 and the 18th, generally in the form of comparisons between DHS detention centers and Nazi concentration camps. There were also six mentions of Japanese-American internment camps, as well as four comparisons to slavery.
On Friday, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough opened Morning Joe with a tasteless Holocaust reference. “Children are being marched away to showers,” he intoned, “just like the Nazis said they were taking people to the showers, and then they never came back. You’d think they would use another trick.”
Over the weekend, CNN political commentator Dave Jacobson threw a miniature tantrum over the policy. On Saturday’s CNN Newsroom during the 10 a.m. hour, he opined, “Donald Trump increasingly looks like Hitler in Nazi Germany.” The following day, he appeared again on Newsroom in the afternoon to embellish on his already hysterical take: “Increasingly, Donald Trump is turning this nation into Nazi Germany and turning these [detention centers] into concentration camps.”
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, evidently eager to join in the hyperventilating excitement, managed to last less than a minute before evoking concentration camps while hosting Hardball on Monday. Throughout the show, he repeatedly interrupted guests to draw their attention to images of crying children that flashed across the screen. (h/t Failexa)
Quite a few people in high places — such as MSNBC’s Stephanie Cutter and Michael Steele and former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden — are comparing the policy of separating families crossing the border illegally to Nazi Germany.Seth Frantzman: How ‘NGOnialism’ led to a Mediterranean migrant crisis
Add to that list Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who said the policy reminds Americans of the cattle cars of Nazi Germany.
Dem CT Sen Blumenthal: This policy of family separation reminds us of the cattle cars of Nazi Germany when children were separated from their parents and marched to supposed showers..it reminds us of all the darkest periods in American history..it should be stopped right away.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) June 18, 2018
Talk like that should go a long way toward getting bipartisan legislation passed.
The allegations that an industry is behind the growth in migration has emerged in recent years because of the growth in well-heeled NGOs operating large boats to bring migrants to Europe. An article about Minniti notes that in June of 2017 he once found that “in the space of 24 hours there had been 12,500 arrivals in 25 vessels operating across the Mediterranean.” An Italian court in 2017 even looked into allegations that smugglers were financing some of the NGOs. “Last summer we saw something we’d never seen before. At times there were 13 boats operated by NGOs working at once,” a local prosecutor said. A spokesman for the German NGO Sea-Watch said the allegation was “nonsense” and that his group was funded by small donations. SOS Mediterranee said that their donations “averaged about €170.”Politico’s Paper Thin Attack on the U.S. Ambassador to Israel
But the financing isn’t so transparent. On the website of SOS Mediterranee I could find no financial statement or explanation of who pays for the chartering of the Aquarius except the claim that it is a “non-profit association and is financed exclusively through donations. Our partner Doctors Without Borders contributes to the monthly costs for the Aquarius and staffs the medical team on board.” So I went to the financial reports section on MSF’s website. They claim ‘transparency and accountability.” But the web page links for their Form 990 don’t work. Their 2016 financial statement says they had assets of $346 million for MSF USA. That includes $44 million spent on two floors of an office building in Manhattan. The overall financial picture for 2017-2018 and who contributes what to pay for operations of the 252-foot Aquarius is unclear.
The crises in the Mediterranean is underpinned by unintended consequences of good intentions. Frederic Wehrey, author of The Burning Shores: Inside the battle for the new Libya gives insight into how migrant smuggling has changed in Libya. Years ago “the smugglers had favored wooden fishing boars.”
But once European navies and humanitarian ships showed up “the smugglers shifted to even less seaworthy craft, huge inflatable Zodiacs with outboard motors.” These were bought online from China and the smugglers knew they only had to get the migrants out past the 12 mile limits of the country’s international waters “where the rescue boats awaited.” The smugglers would even provide just enough fuel to get the inflatable out here, or go “out to retrieve the motor, letting the migrants drift.” In short, the more NGOs showed up, the more the smugglers could make in a short amount of time using more deadly means. This helped become a pull for migrants and an incentive for the smuggling industry in Libya. A CNN investigation in 2017 found migrants sold as slaves. Good intentions might have helped fuel a new slave trade.
Another piece of the suffering puzzle is international law and the Libyan coast guard. The BBC provides a helpful primer on the various laws of the sea, including the 1974 Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea and 1979 International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue. None of these conventions foresaw a time when smugglers would be purposely pushing rafts of people into international waters where modern NGO ships awaited to scoop them up.
A June 16, 2018 Politico article, “Trump Ambassador blocks scrutiny of Israel,” is littered with omissions. The dispatch, by reporter Nahal Toosi, leaves out key details and context in an attempt to attack the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.PSC Bankrupt?
Citing unnamed U.S. State Department officials, Politico claimed that in an October 2017 email, Amb. Friedman “dismissed the possibility” that the U.S. Embassy in Israel should scrutinize American military assistance to the Jewish state.
Friedman, Politico noted, stated: “Israel is a democracy whose army does not engaged in gross violations of human rights.” Further, the country “has a robust system of investigation and prosecution where real misconduct occurs.” The Ambassador’s comments—leaked to Politico—were in response to a State Department initiative to “carefully examine military assistance to governments” in the Middle East, making sure that “the department wasn’t violating a law barring U.S. security aid to foreign military units that commit serious human rights abuses.”
Of course, Israel is a democracy and, unlike every other country in the region, the rare violations of human rights that do occur often are investigated and, if need be, prosecuted—as recent high profile cases attest. But it soon becomes clear that this isn’t the narrative that Toosi wants.
Instead, Politico implies that the Israeli military is guilty of human rights violations. At the beginning of their report, the outlet asserts that, “several months” after Friedman’s email response “Israeli forces are under harsh international scrutiny for killing scores of Palestinians during border protests in the Gaza Strip. Friedman has rejected charges that Israel used excessive force; Israeli officials insist they acted with restraint against violent provocations.” Only towards the very bottom of her article—nearly 2,000-words later—does Toosi acknowledge, “Hamas has also said that many of those killed were its members.”
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) lose to government in court of appeal, now face “substantial additional legal costs”.CAIR Has No Place in Synagogues
On June 12th the court of appeal overturned a ruling enabling local councils to discriminate against Israeli companies on so-called “ethical grounds” regarding the investment of pension funds under their control.
A year ago the Palestine Solidarity Campaign took aim at local councils to prevent them from investing pension funds under their control in certain Israeli companies on the basis that they were “companies that support Israel’s illegal occupation”.
The British government stepped in and issued guidance to local councils to prevent this kind of discrimination but were taken to court by the PSC and beaten.
The government then took their case to the court of appeal and won!
PSC emailed their members in outrage and put it up on their website.
Two weeks ago, Manhattan’s Temple Emanu-El had scheduled Albert Fox Cahn, a congregant who works as a lawyer for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), to speak at its Friday-night services, but rescinded the invitation abruptly after considering his links to this dangerous organization, which has longstanding ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Cahn has predictably labeled the disinvitation a failure of tolerance. The Muslim activist Shireen Qudosi, however, applauds the synagogue’s decision:Anti-Israel group which planned to infiltrate Jewish summer camps not welcome at Camp Ramah
Synagogues should never be bullied into hosting organizations that promote divisiveness and demonization—especially groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which slurs [Muslim] reformists as “Uncle Toms” and seeks to impose its intolerant views on the American Muslim community. That intolerance often takes the form of harassing reformers who advocate for liberalism within Islam, while only recognizing as legitimate representatives of Islam those Muslims who represent Islamic orthodoxy. . . .
[Furthermore], CAIR has contributed dangerously to the politicization of Islam. . . . It doesn’t hide its behavior, either, often [working] as a self-appointed heresy hunter against Muslims who want to have an open conversation on Islamic extremism.
The Islamic faith has no organized leadership, and the caliphate of Islamic empires died long ago. Muslim organizations . . . such as CAIR, [trying to fill this vacuum], have positioned themselves as representatives of Muslims in America. . . .
In a section of his chapter for Andrew Pessin and Doron S. Ben-Atar’s important new book about the pernicious effects of anti-Zionism and BDS on college campuses, professor of music and computer science Shlomo Dubnov relates how IfNotNow’s co-founder Simone Zimmerman, the short-lived Jewish outreach coordinator for presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, “left her Zionist upbringing and American Israel Public Affairs (AIPAC) youth activism” to start siding against Israel during her undergraduate years at the University of California at Berkeley:
what is troubling is not merely that Zimmerman switched sides but how quickly it happened and how far she went. In roughly her first year at Berkeley, she went from pro-Israel enthusiast to slanderer of Israel…on to whole-hearted endorsement of the true goal of the BDS movement…ending Israel as a Jewish state the way we know it today.”
Dubnov traces the conditions at UC Berkeley that produced Zimmerman’s transformation, including her “repeated exposure to Israel-bashing” on the campus and especially her encounters with a campus Hillel subgroup that was allowed to “present programs demonizing Israel and the IDF” and which collaborated frequently with the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
Dubnov correctly notes that “listening to Palestinians complain for hours about Israel” during campus BDS campaigns isn’t guaranteed to convert every long-established Israel-supporting Jewish student (he presents the examples of his own two children who attended UC Berkeley at roughly the same time as Zimmerman and who didn’t get sucked into BDS and “did not switch sides”).
But he’s right that the repeated exposure will have “an effect on some or many”—in particular when the virulently anti-Israel messaging comes from Hillel, from the “home within a home” and the Jewish community on campus itself.
In this regard, it’s worth noting that Aviva Schwartz, the INN activist and former Ramah camper and counselor who has reportedly been instrumental in the group’s campaign to move Jewish summer camp curriculum away from support for Israel and to distance Jewish campers from the Jewish state, is employed as the director for Jewish Student Life at the University of Washington’s Hillel:
Bottom line: IfNotNow is mostly comprised of young American Jews whose support for Israel, built-up at Jewish day schools and summer camps, has been (perhaps irreparably) undermined largely by the poisoned anti-Israel atmosphere that they’ve encountered years later on their universities and college campuses. The U.S. Conservative movement of Judaism’s camping arm has made the right decision to formally reject any partnership with this organization.
I stand corrected; In a previous tweet I said that 93% of Palestinians, asked by @pewresearch about homosexuality, said it’s unacceptable morally.
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) June 18, 2018
The percentage is 94% of Palestinians believe being gay is immoral.
1% thinks it’s acceptable. #LGBTQ #LGBT #PRIDE #PRIDEMONTH pic.twitter.com/Xj66sABEPp
IsraellyCool: Roger Waters Doubles Down on Efforts to Refute He is a Antisemite
This was seen at his recent Amsterdam showBBC’s Jerusalem backgrounder for young people breaches style guide
Nice try, Roger, but we are not buying it.
As we see, the BBC’s audiences around the world – including in Middle Eastern countries – are not given any information concerning either the status of Jerusalem before 1948, the 19-year Jordanian occupation of parts of the city or the circumstances that caused Jordan to enter the Six Day War and loose its hold on that territory.UKMW prompts Evening Standard correction to claim over Israeli bill ‘banning the filming of soldiers’
Worse still, BBC audiences are presented by Hadya Al-alawi with a partisan portrayal of the two-state solution which promotes and amplifies the PLO’s interpretation of it as meaning a Palestinian state on all of the territory occupied by Jordan and Egypt between 1948 and 1967.
Moreover, Al-alawi promotes the inaccurate notion that the 1949 armistice lines are “internationally recognised borders” when in fact the armistice agreement that created them specifically states that they are not borders – as does the BBC’s ‘style guide’.
Yesterday, we tweeted this to a journalist at the Evening Standard who wrote a article titled “Ministers approve bill outlawing filming of Israeli troops”.The Independent Distorts Amnesty Report on African Migrants
As we argued in a subsequent email to editors, Haaretz, Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post reported – a day prior to the Evening Standard article – that the bill had already been amended due to concerns it wouldn’t withstand scrutiny by the Attorney General and Supreme Court. The current version is much more narrow in its scope, only banning filming which has the effect of preventing the military from carrying out its duties, acts which are already illegal regarding the impeding of police activity.
Following our complaint, editors agreed to amend the article.
Additionally, the text was amended, and additional clarifying paragraphs were added (which we’ve highlighted in bold):
A controversial bill which proposed a filming ban on Israeli soldiers has been amended after the Attorney-General’s Office ruled it illegal.
The initial bill proposed by the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, made filming or publishing footage “with intent to harm the morale of Israel‘s soldiers or its inhabitants” punishable by up to five years in prison.
It was approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday under the provision that a number of changes were made to its wording before it is presented to parliament on Wednesday.
The amended bill will call for the banning of interfering with Israeli soldiers while they are on duty prohibiting them from doing their job and will not totally prohibit filming as previously stated.
Strangely, however, there is no hyperlink anywhere in the story to the full Amnesty report. Otherwise, Independent readers might take a look at the report for themselves.Norwegian rapper curses Jews at concert celebrating diversity
Were they to do so, they might realize that, while The Independent’s headline claims that Amnesty labeled Israel’s policies as ‘cruel and unlawful,’ the Amnesty report itself never refers to these policies using the word ‘cruel.’ This is The Independent’s description, not Amnesty’s.
Reader might also notice some of the important information and context that has been left out of The Independent’s story.
The Independent claims that the Amnesty study “says the African migrants are being sent to Rwanda and Uganda.”
Except they aren’t currently being sent to either country.
A Norwegian rapper hired by the City of Oslo to sing at an event intended to celebrate diversity cursed the “f***ing Jews” during his performance.Israel medical device that helps with patient triage wins counterterror contest
In response to the profane statement Friday by Kaveh Kholardi, the leader of the country’s Jewish community has threatened to take legal action against the 23-year-old performer.
Kholardi wished Muslims “Eid Mubarak,” a greeting in Arabic for the Eid al-Fitr holiday that on Friday marked the end of Ramadan, Dagen reported. He went on to ask if there were Christians present, smiling upon hearing cheers. Then he asked if there were any Jews, adding “f***ing Jews … Just kidding.”
Christine Thune, a spokeswoman for the Oslo municipality, told the Verdens Gang daily that the organizers had complained to Kholardi. Anne Christine Kroepelin said the whole “point of the event was diversity and inclusion,” and that Kholardi’s apparent expression of anti-Semitism was “exactly the opposite of what the organizers wanted to promote.”
On June 10, five days before the concert, Kholardi wrote on Twitter: “f***ing Jews are so corrupt.”
Israeli startup CardioScale Ltd. has won a competition aimed at identifying cutting-edge technologies to help combat terror, beating out 210 entries from around the world.a-ha: We come here to play to people
CardioScale, based in Ganei Tikva, has developed a medical device that allows first responders to accidents or terror scenes to prioritize which patients are in the urgent most need of medical care.
The “2018 Combating Terrorism Technology Startup Challenge” (CTTSC3) competition was held by the US Department of Defense’s Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO), together with Israel’s Defense Ministry, Defense Research and Development Directorate (MAFAT), and the MIT Enterprise Forum of Israel. The contest was part of events held during Cyber Week, an annual international cybersecurity happening hosted at Tel Aviv University and attended by some 8,000 participants from more than 60 countries.
After a terror attack, the dilemma facing first responders is huge, explained Maoz Ben-ari, the CEO and the co-founder of the startup, as he presented his technology to the audience ahead of his win. “Some of them are going to die, so we need to save those who can be saved. But who do you treat first? Who will end up dead, if you don’t save them? Mis-prioritization causes death.”
a-ha – the Norwegian ‘80s band best known for the song ‘Take On Me’ – said Tuesday that they came to Israel to perform for their fans and not get involved with politics.South African Model Says She Received Death Threats After Denouncing Hamas, Defending Israel
Ahead of their show at the Ra’anana Park Amphitheater on Thursday, the trio gathered to answer questions at a press conference at the Sheraton Hotel in Tel Aviv.
Keyboardist Magne Furuholmen and vocalist Morten Harket (the band’s third member, guitarist Paul Waaktaar-Savoy made a brief appearance but didn’t speak) both said that coming to Israel was an easy decision for the band, and that they weren’t swayed by any voices calling on them to avoid Israel.
“Fundamentally, we believe that music is a bridge builder and we believe that you go and play to an audience, you don’t ask them their political views,” Furuholmen said.
“Anywhere in the world you go, you go to play to people who [have] a relationship with our music and it’s the same here for us.”
A South African media personality said she received 10 death threats amid fierce online backlash to her comments calling the Gaza Strip “a sh*thole of immense proportions.”
Shashi Naidoo first drew controversy on Saturday after getting into a debate with an Instagram follower who criticized a photo she uploaded with Black Coffee, a South African DJ who drew the ire of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign by performing in Israel in April.
According to screenshots of her now-deleted comments, the model rejected accusations that Israel was an “Apartheid state” and argued that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas was responsible for poor living conditions in Gaza.
“Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, which even Taz agrees is a terrorist organisation, refuses to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and is hell bent on its destruction,” she noted during the exchange. “[T]his has been clearly articulated inter alia in its manifesto, on air by its leaders and by virtue of the fact that they indoctrinate their children to hate Jews, have monetary incentive programmes to kill Jews and celebrate [the] death of innocent Israeli men, women and children.”
“Taz makes reference to Gaza being a ‘toxic waste dump’,” Naidoo continued. “No question Gaza is a sh*thole of immense proportions. Why? Because instead of using the millions of USD it gets in foreign aid to provide food housing, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure to help its citizens, it uses it to build terror tunnels and rockets to pursue its ambition of annihilating Israel.”
Naidoo is not the first public figure to draw outrage in South Africa for her views on Israel. In May, radio host Gareth Cliff came under fire from social media commentator for denouncing Hamas-led riots by the Israel-Gaza barrier on May 14. More than 60 Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops that day, the majority of whom were claimed by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.(h/t jzaik)
Gal Gadot wins best fight at MTV Movie Awards
Gal Gadot picked up a win on Monday night at the MTV Movie and TV Awards when she was awarded the prize for "best fight" for taking on German soldiers in last year's Wonder Woman.
Gadot, who is busy filming the sequel to Wonder Woman on the East Coast, didn't show up in person to accept her award. But in a pre-taped video, she thanked her director, Patty Jenkins, and all her fans.
"Thank you guys for being the best fans in the world," she said. "Thank you for the love and support - wishing you all the best."
Wonder Woman was also nominated for best movie, but it lost out to Black Panther. Gadot was nominated for best hero but that prize also went to Black Panther and its lead, Chadwick Boseman.
