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Wednesday, May 26, 2021

05/26 Links Pt1: Why western mobs are now sticking it to the Jews; Hamas Does Not Build Bomb Shelters Because It Needs Dead Children To Keep Its Cause Alive

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Why western mobs are now sticking it to the Jews
It is not the case, as head teacher Roper suggested, that some antisemites have hijacked the Palestinian cause for their own ends. Palestinianism is in itself innately and inescapably anti-Jew. Writing the Jews out of their own history and denying them the right to self-determination in their own historic land — a presence within that land that is intrinsic to Judaism — is profoundly anti-Judaism and anti-Jew. The Palestinians’ insignia and maps which excise the whole of Israel and replace it by “Palestine” are profoundly anti-Judaism and anti-Jew. Their educational materials which teach their children to hate Jews and steal Israel from them, their hysterical incitement against Jews as a conspiracy against the world and their Nazi-style antisemitic blood libels which pour out of their preachers and media are profoundly anti-Judaism and anti-Jew.

Which is why anyone who supports Palestinianism is supporting a cause that is profoundly anti-Judaism and anti-Jew.

Those of us who point out such things are routinely called “Islamophobes” or “racists” and dismissed. Instead the falsehoods, distortions and libels of Palestinianism are accepted as axiomatically true. So anyone who makes any criticism of the Palestinians — or who even merely vouchsafe, like the hapless Roper, that some people abuse that cause for other ends altogether — are damned as racist, Islamophobic, Nazi and so on.

This closely parallels the Black Lives Matter movement. Its odious mantra of “white privilege,” that white society is innately racist and colonialist, is nothing other than racial bigotry against white people. But to point this out, or indeed to question any part of that racially bigoted narrative, is to find yourself labelled as a racist instead.

It’s no surprise that Black Lives Matter activists and other anti-white bigots are now busily equating BLM with Palestinianism. This is intersectionality in action — the presentation of racial and even murderous bigotry and falsehoods as axiomatically and undeniably true, and the damning of those who call out this vileness for what it is or even dare question any part of it as racists and colonialists.

Palestinianism and Black Lives Matter have not been hijacked by anti-Jewish and anti-white bigots. They are intrinsically anti-Jew and anti-white movements. Until and unless this is acknowledged, the horrendous madness through which we are now living will continue to worsen.


NRO Editors: Time for Democrats to Address Their Anti-Semitism Problem
There is little political upside for Democrats to call out the Squad. Polls show a party that has lurched leftward and become increasingly antagonistic towards the Jewish State. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently noted, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict feeds into many of the progressive left’s ideological biases: “the narrative of the oppressor versus the oppressed, of the coloniser versus the colonised, of the genocide perpetrator and system of supremacy.”

Those few Democrats who unapologetically defend Israel, such as Ritchie Torres, a freshman congressman representing New York’s 15th district, find themselves ostracized. “The moment I sent out a statement denouncing the terrorism of Hamas, I was swiftly demonized by extremists as a white supremacist, as a supporter of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, genocide,” Torres told an audience at a recent United Jewish Appeal–sponsored event.

Surely, condemning those who instigate anti-Jewish violence should not undermine the cause of Palestinian statehood. And if it does, then there is something wrong with that cause.

After Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene recently made an ignorant and intellectually lazy historical analogy, comparing the campaign for vaccination passports to the Nazis’ forcing of Jews to wear gold stars, reporters began chasing down Republicans to get their reactions. Minority leader Kevin McCarthy and other members of the House leadership eventually issued statements condemning the Georgia congresswoman.

When it comes to Ilhan Omar and Co., where is Nancy Pelosi? Where is Chuck Schumer or Dick Durbin? To this point, nowhere to be found. It is, of course, true that neither Left nor Right has a monopoly on anti-Semitism. These days, however, one party is increasingly under the sway of a noxious, all-encompassing hostility to the Jewish State.
Remembering George Washington’s Letter To The Hebrew Congregation Of Newport As Jews Find Themselves Surrounded By Those Who Want To Make Them Afraid
It was doubtlessly intentional of Washington to reference Hebrew scripture while speaking with a Jewish congregation on the subject of religious freedom from persecution and discrimination. The unprecedented embrace of Jewish religious freedom at a time when Jews were widely despised across the world simply cannot be missed or under-appreciated.

While those words were unbelievably meaningful when they were first written, their significance grows as the Left aims to destroy the very foundation of the country. After all, it is no mistake that while the Left attempts to redefine every element of American life, they are simultaneously erasing those whose unmatched moral genius built the unparalleled system of freedom we enjoy today.

Jews — both secular and religious — have thrived in the United States because of the ideology promoted by the Founding Fathers. Washington’s desire — that Jews live free and unafraid — became a reality solely because of this ideology. However, because others have forgotten their words, this reality is under threat.

This is why it is not enough for Jews alone to value and protect the sentiment expressed in Washington’s letter. Non-Jews who also respect and love the United States must acknowledge and understand that if Washington were to witness the violence being committed against Jews in the streets of today’s America, he would correctly conclude that Jews cannot sit safely beneath their own vines or fig trees, and there are those who stand to make them afraid, and that this represents a pivotal change in the nation’s moral trajectory.

We simply cannot allow Washington’s words to be erased by the hungry claws of a radical Left in their bid to redefine what it means to be an American. The very notion of true religious freedom exemplified by the words, “Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid” is at stake, and God forbid we ever discover what will befall Jewish Americans if we fail.


Us and Them
The challenge for the other side is in whether it will shift to accommodate the refugees from the “right” of Reform and Conservative Judaism, people seeking both Jewishness and modernity who want spiritual and religious depth without bigotry or exclusion. If they’re dim, the leaders of team B will treat these newcomers with suspicion, subjecting them to all manner of impossible and undignified purity tests. If they’re smart, they’ll welcome them with open arms, realizing the immense potential for Jewish revival at hand. If you’re wondering what that might look like, just listen to Rabbi Ari Lamm’s podcast, Good Faith Effort: To hear the grandson of the late, great Rabbi Norman Lamm, one of American Orthodoxy’s leading lights and the legendary longtime president of Yeshiva University, enthusiastically chat with Nellie Bowles, a gay Jew-by-choice, is to understand just how generative and alluring team B’s side could be if it expands the walls of its tent.

I’ve made my choice—reluctantly and mournfully at first, but I’m starting to feel some measure of hope and excitement, even in a grim month like this one. If you join my side, know that you may find coworkers, friends, and maybe even family members going the other way. The fear and pain you feel—about having to choose at all, about the loss of nuance, about the corrosion of so many institutions you once loved and trusted, about the betrayal of so many who once felt like your friends, about the violence all around you, about how depressing it all feels right now—is real. There’s no easy way, perhaps no way at all to avoid any of this, which is a terrifying realization.

It’s also a very Jewish one: We survived—thrived—as a people precisely because we were a tiny minority that took advantage of being excluded, left out, looked down upon by the fancy folks. Money-lending was considered too filthy for polite society, which is why it was one of the only professions open to Jews; we ran with it and basically imagined modern banking—the engine of so much growth. Mass entertainment was seen as too down-market for anyone truly respectable, so a bunch of garmento Jews jumped in and ... created Hollywood. This is kind of our thing. We’re at our finest when we’re just a few outsiders scorned and told that we don’t belong with the smarties and the swells. So I’m OK with the idea that, as the world divides into Zionists and anti-Zionists, there will be more people on the opposite side of mine. Moses and Rabbi Akiva and Joey Ramone and every Jew I ever admired were always in the very small group that was loathed until it triumphed, and it triumphed by keeping true to its beliefs, and by sticking to other people, even just one or two or three, who felt precisely the same way.

Some people dream of politics as the immanent perfection of all of mankind. Others, when they dare to dream, imagine something that at first may seem smaller but is in fact ultimately much, much bigger: the survival of their own family, their own people. Think about your grandchildren’s grandchildren. If you can imagine that the choices you are making will determine the shape of their lives—if you want to imagine that—then you are a Zionist. Come sit with the rest of us when you’re ready.

Am Yisrael Chai.
The Jews Lied to Me at Summer Camp!
From whence should I unlearn? 1917? ‘48? ‘67? The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem? I am meant to pretend that the history of Israel began with the erection of the separation wall? Or the creation of J Street? Are there at-home lobotomy kits to assist in my unlearning? Or should I just rely on the infographics?

And I won’t pretend I don’t notice that looking for a lie is way easier than confronting a difficult truth: that being Jewish is both a birthright and a choice.

Looking back to the Jewish institutions that supposedly brainwashed me: Camp Ramah in Canada, Temples Sinai, Beth Shalom, and Tree of Life, NFTY, Chabad, The Friendship Circle, Community Day School, Hillel, The David Project, TAMID Group, Kivunim, dozens of JCCs and my parents’ own dining room table, I can confidently say that I never felt as though I couldn’t raise my hand. Or that I couldn’t push back, or, God forbid, that I was being fed Zionist propaganda, foie gras-style. I was taught history and I was taught ideas and I was taught, thank God, to come to my own conclusions.

I don’t feel bad for the kids living with the painful knowledge that in eighth grade they hopped on a flight and probably had fun in a country that is now verboten in the art school circles they wish to inhabit. And neither should you. I also won’t call these Jews self-hating—if we can learn anything from their self-righteous Insta stories, it’s that they certainly don’t hate themselves!—because I don’t want to give even a fingernail to the idea that any belief that any Jew may hold disqualifies them from being Jewish. It doesn’t.

I don’t agree with my peers who seek to distance themselves from Zionism, or who attempt to cleave their religion from the State of Israel because they hope to be accepted or because they see this conflict as purely an exercise in political theory. But they are entitled to their views.

That said, I won’t be told that I was lied to when I wasn’t. And I won’t pretend I don’t notice that looking for a lie is way easier than confronting a difficult truth: that being Jewish is both a birthright and a choice. And that on the streets of Los Angeles and New York, in Vienna and London, we are seeing the history that we were taught not to repeat playing out once more.
Dennis Prager: The Middle East Dispute Is About Religion, Not Land
If you’ve seen videos of recent attacks on Jews in New York City, Los Angeles, London, and elsewhere, you may have missed a very revealing aspect of those attacks. They were almost always—as they have been for decades—accompanied by curses such as, “F— the Jews.”

Now, given that the perpetrators are almost always Muslims—whether immigrants or children of immigrants from an Arab or another Muslim country—two questions present themselves:

Why attack American or French or British Jews? And why curse “the Jews”? In other words, given that the recent wars have been between Hamas and Israel, why aren’t these attacks outside of Israel on Israelis and Israeli institutions? And why level curses at “the Jews”?

The answer is this: The Muslims who seek Israel’s destruction do so because Israel is Jewish, not because Israel occupies the West Bank or Gaza.

First, the Muslim world sought Israel’s destruction from the day Israel was established in May 1948, before it occupied a centimeter of the West Bank or Gaza.

Second, Israel does not occupy Gaza. Israel withdrew completely from Gaza 16 years ago.

Third, the Palestinians rejected a state of their own five times:
Netanyahu: 'Anti-Zionism is the New Antisemitism'

MEMRI: German-Egyptian Intellectual Dr. Hamed Abdel-Samad: Hamas Does Not Build Bomb Shelters Because It Needs Dead Children To Keep Its Cause Alive; Fatah And Hamas Have Not Invested In Education, Left The Palestinians With A Choice Of Becoming Beggars or Martyrs
German-Egyptian Intellectual Dr. Hamed Abdel-Samad said that Hamas does not build bomb shelters for its civilian population in Gaza, because it needs dead children to keep its cause alive. He made these remarks in an interview that was posted on Ayman Agamy on YouTube on 16, 2021. Dr. Abdel-Samad said that if it were only Hamas leaders that died, Hamas would garner no world sympathy. He continued to say that Palestinians no longer have any say about their cause, adding that it has become a "regional cause." Dr. Abdel-Samad explained that today, it is Hamas, Iran, Hizbullah, and "sometimes" Qatar who call the shots regarding the Palestinian cause.

On May 12, 2021, he said on the same YouTube channel that "Hamas has turned the Palestinians into beggars." Dr. Abdel-Samad asked where the aid money to Palestinians went. He further said that Fatah leaders live in villas and palaces, they stole from their people, and did not invest in their freedom and education. He added that they have left their people with the choice between martyrdom or begging. Dr. Abdel-Samad said that if the tables were turned and the Arabs had been victorious, Israel would not have existed, it would have vanished. He continued to give the example of Germany's defeat in World War II. He said that no one tried to justify Nazism or fascism after the war, and the Germans recognized that Nazism was a "disease that harmed Germany" and decided to cooperate with the occupiers.

"Hamas Has Turned The Palestinians Into Beggars... They Stole From Their People And Did Not Invest In Their Freedom [Or] Education"

Hamed Abdel-Samad: "Hamas has turned the Palestinians into beggars. Where did all the money go? I would like Fatah and Hamas to explain to the Palestinians where all this money went? [Imagine] what could have been done with it.

"Why wasn't it invested in good education, instead of making children TV shows that teach them martyrdom and suicide? Why do all the leaders of Fatah have villas, palaces, and a lot of money? They stole from their people and did not invest in their freedom, in their educations, and in their self confidence. They left their people only with the choice between martyrdom or begging for money.
Noah Rothman: A Thoroughly Bizarre Bout of Projection on Anti-Semitism
Maybe so, but that is all an implicit admission that Elana Schor’s ponderous spin job is hopelessly blinkered. The premise she exploited to make a point only exists because Democrats cowered in the face of its members’ nakedly anti-Semitic diatribes.

None of the Democrats Schor praised for their high-minded vigilance mentioned any of the offenders within their ranks by name, in part, because doing so has already been proven to be a risky game. In 2019, when they were confronted with a third episode in which Rep. Ilhan Omar had made an anti-Semitic remark—this time, refusing to apologize for it—Democrats geared up to punish her. They prepared a resolution condemning anti-Semitism and were set to vote in its favor when the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus intervened.

Democrats caved. Instead of a resolution condemning anti-Semitism, they produced a watered-down document generically condemning “hateful expressions of intolerance”—a criticism so vague and insipid it might as well have condoned the actions that precipitated the debate over this resolution in the first place. They could not be seen condemning one of their own by name, so they simply didn’t.

It takes a special brazenness to praise Democrats for struggling through the consequences of their own actions. This party is confronted with at least a couple of anti-Semitic controversies per year only because they refused to impose any consequences on their members who so regularly put them in that unenviable position. They know exactly what they’re doing, too. As we were lectured for years on end amid the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, generic expressions of antipathy toward hate in all its forms all but condones the specific expressions of bigotry and discrimination that movement was formed to combat.

We can recognize political cowardice for what it is. Republicans are quite familiar with the discomfiting choice between moral righteousness and offending a political base of support. And reporters like Schor don’t seem to have any difficulty recognizing such gutless timidity when it is evident on the right. The cravenness we’re witnessing from the other side of the aisle is no better.

The press’s effort to change the terms of the debate reveals the precarious position in which the Squad has put the Democratic Party. But so long as there are reporters willing to polish this apple, Democrats won’t find a way out of their predicament and the not-so-generic “hate” will continue to spew.
Democrat Rep. David Cicilline: ‘I See No Evidence Whatsoever’ In ‘Democratic Party Of Anti-Semitism’
Rep. David Ciclline (D-RI) told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night that he saw “no evidence whatsoever” of anti-Semitism inside the Democratic Party.

Cicilline’s remarks came during a segment about controversial remarks made by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). After discussing Greene, Cooper asked Cicilline if he was “concerned” about Democrats such as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) over her history of anti-Semitism.

Cicilline responded by claiming that Omar had immediately apologized for her anti-Semitic remarks.

“I see no evidence whatsoever in the Democratic Caucus or in the Democratic Party of anti-Semitism at all,” Cicilline said. “In fact, the strongest voices that have condemned acts of anti-Semitism and this rise in anti-Semitic violence have been members of the Democratic Caucus, but everyone should be condemning it.”


Arguing Anti-Semitic Attacks On Jews ‘Are A Gift To The Right,’ NYT Columnist Proves That Fighting Conservatives Comes Before All Else
Again, the issue is not the existence of criticism, but the validity of criticism. Goldberg presumably knows this, and yet spins this absurd propaganda to promote the Left’s entire narrative that China’s “genocide of the Uighurs” is synonymous with Israel’s targeted defense against a terrorist group.

Goldberg then assumed the accuracy of the Human Rights Watch’s declaration that Israel was an apartheid state, noting that “It’s awful irony, but anti-Semitic violence helps shore up this system by strengthening the taboo against calling it what it is.”

“I get the sense that some people on the left find talking about violence by Palestinian sympathizers embarrassing; it certainly doesn’t receive the same sort of attention as white nationalist attacks,” Goldberg continued, before concluding that “It would be a disaster if [Jews hiding their faith out of fear in Europe] were to happen here, and not just for Jews.”

However, Goldberg is actively enabling the system under which religious Jews are finding it necessary to hide their faith. She is effectively explaining away — perhaps even excusing — the violence against Jews by validating the “rage” against Israel, and implying the existence of a political justification for such bigotry to cease, beyond the fact that anti-Semitism is wrong in all forms.

Like so many other Leftist Jews, Goldberg’s reasoning is clear. When it comes to fighting anti-Semitism or fighting conservatism, anti-Semitism will always take a back seat.


D.C. Rabbi Apologizes for Accusing Israel of “Ethnic Cleansing”
The Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, DC has come under criticism for statements made by their Senior Rabbi Shira Stutman during its Shabbat service on May 14. Speaking from the bima, Stutman accused Israel of being a country in which the government, representing “the will of the people…categorically dismisses, discriminates, ethnically cleanses, and at its most base cares little for the basic human rights of millions of people that live under its administration.”

The sermon, which was streamed live on the synagogue’s Facebook page, immediately drew the ire of some in its virtual audience, who accused the rabbi of disseminating “the most despicable untruth” that would “provoke anti-Semites” and “gives them ammunition against Jews, not just in Washington DC, but everywhere.”

Simone Friedman, Head of Philanthropy and Impact Investment at EJF Philanthropies, resigned her position on the synagogue’s Board of Directors after the organization refused to condemn Stutman’s allegations. “I value bringing people together. I don’t support speech that inflames and exacerbates tensions within and outside of the Jewish community. My decision to leave Sixth & I’s Board is congruent with my values given their refusal to condemn inflammatory speech from their pulpit which could incite hatred and violence against Jews,” Friedman told the Jewish Journal.

The synagogue, which has a national platform and an audience that includes federal policy makers, responded directly on Facebook in the comments on the sermon video: “As a nonpartisan center for arts, entertainment, and ideas and a synagogue that reimagines how religion and community can enhance people’s everyday lives, Sixth & I is dedicated to offering a forum for a wide range of views on a diversity of topics across our programs. We are also committed to promoting freedom of speech, intellectual discourse, and rigorous debate through our programming.
The West’s Diplomatic Song-and-Dance about Palestinian Arab Violence
For more than 70 years the West with some few exceptions has mischaracterized and mishandled the Arab world’s aggression against Israel. The latest barrage of riots and rockets is drawing the same old diplomatic song-and-dance routine that camouflages the Western nations’ despicable moral equivalence of aggressor and victim, and its callous concern for their own interests even if it means empowering terrorist murderers and endangering the only liberal-democratic state in the Middle East.

The latest example of Hamas’ indiscriminate terrorist violence, and Israel’s robust defense of its territory and citizens has elicited an encore of the same old song that the previous three conflicts started by Hamas did. A riot on the Temple Mount over specious claims of Israeli attacks on the al Aqsa Mosque, and a property dispute over Arab squatters on land owned by Jews since 1875 provided Hamas with the pretext for launching nearly 4000 rockets and missiles at Israeli civilians. Meanwhile Iran, smelling the stench of appeasement emanating from the White House, is egging on its clients whom it has supplied with weapons and technological know-how.

This sequence of reactions is familiar: the usual calls on Israel to make concessions for a cease-fire (one took effect May 21); the anti-Semitic slander from U.S. Congressmen, pundits, academics, entertainers, and Leftist outfits; the UN’s hypocritical condemnations from thug-states sitting on the Human Rights Council; and the craven bullying by some Arab states that don’t dare say a word about China’s concentration camps filled with a million Muslim Uighurs who are being deprogrammed from their Islamic faith. And of course, we hear the whole Orwellian vocabulary of “apartheid,” “racist,” “occupiers,” “settlements,” “disproportionate response,” “war crimes,” “cycle of violence,” “two-state solution,” and “peace process.”

The commentary, when it’s not writing what the “woke” call “dog-whistles” for post-Holocaust anti-Semitism, recycles all the assumptions of the “New World Order,” to use George H.W. Bush’s name for the “rules-based international order”: one “where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind––peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law.”

Two delusions underlie this idea: one, that multinational global institutions can keep the peace and maintain order, thus making possible the eventual evolution of diverse peoples into liberal-democratic, free-market, tolerant nations joined together by a “harmony of interests” such as peace, freedom, and prosperity. The century-long conflict between Israel and Palestinian Arabs with its record of failure just one of many examples from history that challenge such assumptions of a “common cause” and “universal aspirations.”


Jews are under attack across the world
While Israelis hunkered down in bomb shelters to avoid Hamas's missiles, Diaspora Jews encountered an antisemitic storm. The sort of antisemitic chants, threats, and attacks Jews have become accustomed to seeing in Europe went global.

Anti-Zionist fueled antisemitism has very clearly migrated to the New World. At a Toronto rally, "pro-Palestinian protestors beat a Jewish elderly man and assaulted a young Jewish woman." Montreal saw "rocks being launched against peaceful pro Israel demonstrators and #antisemitic slurs being yelled at them."

Things aren't much rosier in the United States.

Someone "smashed a window" at a Skokie, Illinois, synagogue and "left a flag and a pro-Palestine sign outside." Radio host Jason Rantz reported that he was not the only Jew assaulted at a Seattle protest. A van flying a Palestinian flag and marked "Hitler was right" on its side "kept circling" a pro-Israel rally in Boca Raton, Florida. In Bal Harbour, Florida, people screamed at a Jewish family, "F*** you Jew, 'Die Jew...' and even threatened to rape the women in the group."

The New York Police Department had to accompany a bloodied Jewish man to a nearby store after he was chased by pro-Palestinian protesters in Manhattan. They had to assist again when two Hebrew-speaking men faced dozens of hostile pro-Palestinian protesters. "'Pro-Palestine' rioters then storm[ed] NYC’s Diamond District—one of its most visible Jewish landmarks—scream[ed] ‘F*** Zionists,’ rough[ed] up Jews, and hurl[ed] a large firework at a Jewish shop."

In Los Angeles, an Orthodox Jew was filmed being chased by two cars with Palestinian flags. A pro-Palestinian caravan drove through a Jewish neighborhood, yelling, "F*** the Jews" and "dirty Jews," with approximately 30 men asking who was Jewish, before attacking a handful of Persian Jews. In a third incident, "a pro-Palestinian convoy stopp[ed] and harass[ed] homes with Mezuzahs in Beverly Hills."

The above list is lengthy, and yet, it’s not exhaustive.

Ellie Cohanim, the former deputy special envoy to combat antisemitism, told me that "while these pro-Palestinian supporters may have issues with what’s happening in Israel and the Middle East, they are engaging in classic antisemitism by venting their anger at individual Jews and Jewish institutions."

There’s no small amount of anger being vented. But why is it spilling out so brutally against innocent people?
Memorial to Victim of 2015 Massacre at Kosher Market in Paris Vandalized, Police Allegedly ‘Didn’t Move’ After Being Told
A monument to one of the four Jewish victims of the Islamist terror attack against a kosher market in eastern Paris in January 2015 has been vandalized.

The wrecked memorial stone dedicated to Yohan Cohen, a 20-year-old worker at the market who was shot dead by gunman Amedy Coulibaly at the beginning of a day-long siege, was discovered on Wednesday morning.

Francois Pupponi — who represents the district that includes Sarcelles, the location of the memorial, in the French parliament — strongly condemned the “desecration.”

“I want the vandals arrested and punished to the maximum for their despicable acts,” Pupponi declared on Twitter.

He pledged to work closely with local law enforcement “to do everything possible to identify and arrest the culprits as quickly as possible.”

However, a statement from the BNVCA — a Paris-based Jewish organization that assists victims of antisemitic attacks — claimed that local police had failed to react despite being alerted to the vandalism by the head of the local Jewish community.
Elderly Jewish man attacked outside of Brooklyn synagogue
A 67-year-old man was punched in the face by a 20-year-old man named Hersham Ghonim in Brooklyn on Tuesday, who yelled at him, "F***ing Jews! I'm going to f*** you up," the New York Post reported.

Ghonim attacked the elderly man as he was about to enter the Congregation Kerem Shlomo synagogue in Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay neighborhood, the Post added.

Police arrested Ghonim, charging him with "assault, hate crime, aggravated harassment, resisting arrest, criminal mischief and menacing," according to the report.

The attack comes on the heels of a massive increase – 80% – in antisemitic attacks across the US and Europe in recent weeks due to the rising tensions between Israel and Hamas.

Last week, Joseph Borgen, a 29-year-old Upper East Side resident wearing a kippah, was assaulted near 48th Street in Manhattan on Friday minutes after stepping off the subway on his way to a pro-Israel rally. The 23-year-old pro-Palestinian suspect, Waseem Awawdeh, allegedly punched, kicked and pepper-sprayed Borgen while yelling antisemitic slurs. Borgen was hospitalized.
South Florida Police Arrest Man Who Left Bag of Waste at Chabad House
Police in Hallandale Beach, Fla., arrested a suspect on Monday who harassed Jews and left a bag of human waste last week outside the Chabad House in South Broward in Hallandale, Fla.

The arrest of Jeffrey Fleming came the day before a planned meeting on Tuesday between the police, city officials and local Chabad leadership about growing antisemitism.

As was reported in local media, Fleming drove by the Chabad twice on May 21. The first time he reportedly yelled at a rabbi there and the second time, which was around dismissal time for the preschool, he left the bag of waste. A mother who caught him in the act tried to follow him, but he apparently yelled and threatened her.

He was reported as being dressed in white and riding an electric bicycle.

According to Rabbi Raphael Tennenhaus, director of Chabad of South Broward, this is not the first time the congregation experienced anti-Jewish sentiment and more. “You have people yell ‘Heil, Hitler’ or ‘dirty Jew.’ When you are walking in religious garb, you get that periodically,” said the rabbi. “In the Orthodox community, you get that much more because you are visibly Jewish on the outside. As of late, we’ve just had a lot of episodes.”


Ben Shapiro REACTS To Shocking Anti-Semitic Protestor Chant



BBC News continues to ignore antisemitism at UK ‘pro-Palestinian’ rallies
In the wake of the UK Labour party antisemitism scandals from 2015 onwards, one might perhaps have expected that the BBC’s ear would be by now better tuned and that it would try to provide domestic (and foreign) audiences with a more accurate and impartial account of events on its own home turf.

Let’s begin outside the BBC offices in the Welsh capital, Cardiff.

On May 22nd a report headlined “Hundreds demand ‘free Palestine’ at Cardiff protest” was published on the BBC News website’s ‘Wales’ page and placed in the ‘updates’ section of the same website’s ‘Middle East’ page.

“About 400 protesters gathered in Cardiff calling for a “free Palestine” as rallies were also held in Manchester and London. […]

The protest was held outside BBC Cymru Wales’ offices.

It was organised by the Cardiff Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

“This has to stop,” said Mohammed Hadia, one of the organisers, who said more than 60 children were among the fatalities in Gaza.

“The West and the international community has to stand up and say this is enough.””

That promoted link leads readers to a BBC report which fails to clarify that one of the children it features was actually killed – along with other members of his family – by a rocket fired by a Palestinian terror group.

As we see, the BBC does not provide any information concerning the Cardiff branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, its parent organisation (including its long record of antisemitism) or the Swansea university employee whose talking points it chose to promote.

Neither does the BBC bother to inform its audiences about the pernicious and defamatory lies promoted by participants in that event.
Top imam who helps police to spot extremists labelled Israel a 'terrorist state': Priti Patel orders inquiry into speech by prominent Muslim cleric
Priti Patel has ordered an inquiry into a prominent Muslim cleric paid by the Government to combat extremism after he told an angry crowd that Israel is a 'terrorist state'.

The Home Secretary was responding to a Mail investigation into Imam Irfan Chishti MBE, who has played a leading role in the country's Prevent programme designed to combat radicalisation since 2013.

His company, Me and You Education, gives training to the police, the NHS and in schools on how to spot extremists and neutralise radicalisation. On its website, Mr Chishti says that his goal is to heal divisions between communities.

But this newspaper has obtained a video of him addressing a crowd of hundreds at a rally in Rochdale eight days ago to support Palestinians.

The audience responded with cheers and chants as Mr Chishti described non-Muslims at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem as 'vile human beings' who were 'desecrating' it.
Ex-CAIR Director Hassan Shibly Posts Video Telling Israelis to ‘Go Back to Europe’
This past January, following his wife’s accusation of domestic violence against her, Hassan Shibly resigned his leadership position within CAIR, a Hamas-linked group founded in June 1994. Shibly was Executive Director of CAIR’s Florida Chapter. Today, Shibly describes himself as a self-employed attorney, but his embrace of Hamas groups continues. This month, as a new Mid East conflict erupted, Shibly has promoted Hamas-related charities and cranked up his own extreme rhetoric. He has even gone so far as to post an anti-Semitic video calling for the Jews in Israel to go back to Europe. CAIR or no CAIR, Shibly is out and about spreading terror.

On December 20th, Imane Sadrati created a GoFundMe page to advertise her claim that she had suffered physical and mental abuse at the hands of her then-husband Hassan Shibly, beginning when she was pregnant with her first child. It was a huge scandal for Shibly, separating him from his beloved job at CAIR and tarnishing the star he had become in Islamist circles. It was just over a year prior that he had successfully fought the US government in the courts on the constitutionality of its terror watch list, a list that Shibly himself had his name on. Unlike his alleged domestic violence, though, he could blame the watch list on “Islamophobia.”

While much of this exposes the true face of Shibly, it is his extreme hatred for Israel that really defines him. In November 2006, he labeled Hezbollah “basically a resistance movement” and “absolutely not a terrorist organization.” In August 2014, he tweeted, “Israel and its supporters are enemies of God…” In April 2017, he used Facebook to laud Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti as a “hero.” And in May 2019, he used CAIR’s Tampa office to meet with convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) operative, Hatem Fariz. According to the indictment against him, Fariz “was a PIJ member” who conspired “to commit offenses against the United States…”


Academics Use Propaganda, Not Expertise, to Bash Israel
Men wearing Palestinian keffiyas have been running around beating up Jews in the streets of America and Europe. Israel was envisioned as the safe haven for persecuted Jews living in exile, and now Jews living in the Diaspora are being attacked because Israel not only exists, but dares to defend itself against Islamist terrorist aggression.

In addition, interfaith do-gooders, feminist academics, and scholars in general are issuing statements of support for “Palestine,” but not for Israel, which has been under the most profound siege.

A group calling itself the Palestinian Feminist Collective launched “A Love Letter to our People in Palestine,” which states that “once again, Palestinians from the far north to the far south of our homeland are defying settler colonialism’s attempts to partition the land and the people….” Buzz words such as “settler violence” and “ethnic cleansing,” are employed and understood as “part of the ongoing Nakba [catastrophe] that has spanned Palestinian time and space since 1948.”

The Collective’s feminism is one in which “gendered violence is core to settler colonial practice. We stand with you (as you) resist this masculinized and militarized colonization.”

Its language is communist revolutionary, and is a throwback to the West’s romance with Che Guevara, Mao, Stalin, and the American Black Panthers.

Subsequently, academic feminists issued a statement, “In Solidarity With Palestinian Feminist Collective,” which links to non-scholarly boilerplate propaganda, none of which is concerned with the Islamic gender apartheid that afflicts Arab Palestinian women in Gaza and the West Bank. They focus on “evictions in East Jerusalem” without understanding the history, legality, or nature of this dispute.

The statement itself is problematic, but worse, it lists entire departments at dozens of universities. This was done without the knowledge or approval of some, if not many, of the faculty members who work in them.
Rallying in Support of Terror - and Denouncing Israel on Woke Campuses
As Israel and Hamas crafted a cease-fire to end two weeks of military activity in which both Gazans and Israelis have died, student governments and faculty members at many universities have issued statements of support. Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, this support was not for the region’s only thriving democracy and American ally, Israel, but for Hamas, the designated terror group which rules over Gaza and speaks for the Palestinians and whose lethal use of more than 3000 rockets raining into southern Israeli towns with the object of killing Jewish civilians actually instigated the current escalation of conflict.

Tellingly silent as rockets were launched indiscriminately by Hamas into southern Israeli towns with the express purpose of murdering Jews (each of which rocket, incidentally, representing a war crime), these virtue-signaling students and faculty only became indignant at the violence and body counts once Israel was forced to protect its citizenry by defensive action to suppress Hamas’s lethal aggression.

At the University of Michigan, as one troubling example, the university’s Central Student Government published a statement in which Israel, not Hamas, was accused of “inhumane, international war crimes,” an ongoing process of “ethnic cleansing and apartheid” by Israel that is “a continuation of the displacement of indigenous Palestinians since the Nakba [the Arab’s term, “catastrophe” for the creation of Israel].”

In language the echoes the sentiment of Israel-haters everywhere, the Michigan statement apparently suggests that Israel is not a legitimate country at all. While anti-Israel individuals regularly refer to the existence of a country called Palestine—while no such country ever existed and does not exist now—they still consider Israel to be illegitimate, a colonial enterprise constructed on the stolen lands of an indigenous people. So the current conflict between Hamas and Israel, in their minds is immoral and unlawful. “This is not a ‘conflict,’” the statement reads, “but emblematic of Israeli settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid” so if the Jewish state is illegal, Israel’s efforts at self-defense are therefore not justifiable.
Hundreds protest New York’s Museum of Modern Art board’s Israel ties
Nearly 300 people have signed a protest letter against the Museum of Modern Art’s board in New York because some of its members have ties to Israel, with a rally outside the museum last week drawing several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters.

The letter was published against the backdrop of 11 days of fighting between Israel and the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip that saw Palestinian terrorists rain over 4,000 rockets on the Jewish state. Israel responded with intensive airstrikes against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in the Palestinian enclave.

The letter, published Friday, the same day that a ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas began, says it “aims to build decolonial solidarity across borders by drawing attention to MoMA’s entanglement with the mutually reinforcing projects of settler-colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism in Palestine, the US, and around the world.”

It was organized by a pro-Palestinian group called Strike MoMA, a coalition of activists who for some ten weeks protested against the museum board. The activists, calling themselves the International Imagination of Anti-National Anti-Imperialist Feelings, are protesting board members’ links to countries involved in a range of conflicts and human rights issues.

Among those who signed the letter are activist Angela Davis and artist Michael Rakowitz as well as Korakrit Arunandchai, Chloe Bass, Meriem Bennani, and scholars Ariella Azoulay, Claire Bishop, and Fred Moten.

The letter names MoMA trustees Leon Black, Paula Crown, Ronald Lauder, Daniel Och, and Steven Tananbaum, accusing them of being “directly involved with support for Israel’s apartheid rule, artwashing not only the occupation of Palestine but also broader processes of dispossession and war around the world.”


SFUSD teachers’ union endorses Israel boycott movement
In a historic endorsement, the teachers’ union for the San Francisco Unified School District passed a resolution on May 19 in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.

The United Educators of San Francisco, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the country, is the first American K-12 union of public school teachers to officially support BDS, although other education and trade unions have done so. The resolution was passed right before Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire on May 20 after 11 days of fighting.

The measure, which was submitted to the UESF’s assembly by 10 union members from several K-12 schools in San Francisco, including June Jordan and Washington high schools, Francisco Middle School and Clarendon Elementary, is titled “Resolution in Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”

A call to support BDS comes at the very end of the resolution in a single sentence. The resolution also calls on the Biden administration to end aid to Israel. The 388-word document also denounces Israel’s “forced displacement and home demolitions” of Palestinians in Jerusalem and “a regime of legalized racial discrimination.”

“Whereas, as public school educators in the United States of America, we have a special responsibility to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people because of the 3.8 billion dollars annually that the US government gives to Israel, thus directly using our tax dollars to fund apartheid and war crimes,” the resolution reads.
BDS Advocates Claim Major Victory After Federal Judge Overrules Georgia Anti-Boycott Law
US advocates of the campaign to isolate Israel within the international community as a first step towards its elimination as a Jewish state were celebrating a legal victory on Tuesday, following last week’s decision by a federal judge to strike down Georgia’s 2016 law prohibiting state contracts with businesses and organizations who endorse the so-called “boycott, divestment and sanctions” (BDS) movement.

In a ruling issued Friday, District Court Judge Mark Cohen rejected state officials’ efforts to dismiss a lawsuit from left-wing activist Abby Martin — a former correspondent for state-run channels owned by the Russian and Venezuelan regimes who now works as a media propagandist for the Palestinian cause.

Martin sued Georgia Southern University last year after officials asked her to sign paperwork agreeing not to support a boycott of Israel. She had been due to deliver a speech at a conference on its Savannah campus for a $1,000 honorarium, but pulled out in protest at the anti-BDS requirement.

University officials said her signature was necessary under the anti-BDS law passed by both houses of Georgia’s state legislature in March 2016. The bill prohibits the state, “including all of its subdivisions and instrumentalities,” from entering into contracts or agreements with companies involved with the BDS movement. It was signed into law by Gov. Nathan Deal in April 2016.

However, Judge Cohen ruled that the law “prohibits inherently expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment.” He asserted that that the requirement on Martin to sign paperwork confirming that she was not a participant in the BDS movement was “no different than requiring a person to espouse certain political beliefs or to engage in certain political associations.”

Among those celebrating Cohen’s ruling was Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who tweeted: “Big win for the BDS movement. Let’s go!”







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