Pages

▼

Thursday, October 12, 2023

10/12 Links Pt2: Publish the Names of Students and Professors Who Support Hamas Lynching and Rapes; University Donors, Close Your Checkbooks

From Ian:

Alan M. Dershowitz: Publish the Names of Students and Professors Who Support Hamas Lynching and Rapes
Student groups at many elite universities -- including Harvard, Yale and Columbia, CUNY -- have come out in support of Hamas at a time when its terrorists have raped, murdered and kidnapped women, toddlers, the elderly and other civilians, and have reportedly beheaded babies.

The students who anonymously vote to support Hamas' recent attacks need not be fearful of anything but disdain and criticism. They should be willing to subject themselves to the marketplace of ideas. They should not resort to cowardly hiding behind the names of prominent organizations such as "Amnesty International at Harvard" -- one of the groups that said they "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all" the massacres and rapes.

Fellow students, future employers, and others should be able to judge their friends and potential employees by the views they have expressed.

Some students who belong to these organizations argue that they do not personally support Hamas' recent barbarities. They are free to say so and to dissociate themselves from the groups they voluntarily joined. Silence in this context is acquiescence. So is hiding behind anonymity.

Today, too many students are judged by their "identity." Identity politics has replaced meritocracy.

Let the student newspapers, many of which are rabidly anti-Israel, publish the names of all students and faculty members who belong to groups that support and oppose Hamas. Hypothetically, if a club were formed at any of these universities that advocated rape or the lynching of African Americans, the newspapers would most assuredly publish the names of everyone associated with such a despicable group. Why is this different? Rape has become a weapon of war for Hamas, along with lynching, mutilation, mass murder and kidnapping. Expressing support for these acts, while constitutionally protected, is wrong. The answer to wrong speech isn't censorship; it is right speech, and transparency.
John Ware: Jeremy’s friends: Hamas and its cheerleaders
The Israel-Palestine crisis is following a familiar pattern. When Israel suffers a terrorist attack, it typically gets a grace period, which almost immediately fades with the graphic reports of spiraling deaths from Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

This time, Israel’s grace period will last a little longer because of Hamas’s house-to-house butchering of Jews — over 1200 and counting — including the slaughter of young Israelis at a music festival and reports of babies being beheaded and burned. Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been killed on one day, says Israel’s President Hertzog. It may not, however, be long before these atrocities are overtaken by the collateral consequences of Israel’s vow to destroy Hamas and its “capabilities”.

Of course, for the many thousands of Hamas supporters demonstrating around the world, there was no grace period. “Gas the Jews” shouted Palestinian supporters in Sydney. In Britain there was jubilation in cities up and down the country.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Glasgow were told by an impassioned middle aged non-Palestinian: “Resistance is not a crime.”

In Coventry, banners proclaimed “Victory to the resistance.”

In Hackney, London, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was so taken with the T-shirt of a smiling demonstrator that they posted it on their website. “Beautiful resistance” said her T-shirt.

“Victory to the Intifada” they shouted in Newcastle.

In Manchester, the crowd was told that Hamas had “inspired the world.”

To cheers of “Free Free Palestine” two men replaced the Israeli flag atop Sheffield Town Hall with a Palestinian flag. The Israeli flag had been briefly hoisted at the suggestion to local authorities from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to “show solidarity with the innocent people in that country who faced appalling acts of terror”.

In London a wannabe “fighter”, aping his Hamas heroes with a head mask, smiled when asked how he felt about the murders of Israelis. A keffiyeh-clad teacher said that the dead were not “innocent” because they were “settlers, colonialists”.

In Brighton, Palestine Solidarity Campaign supporters were told “we need to celebrate these acts of resistance” because Hamas’s genocidal rampage was “a success”. Revolutionary violence “initiated by Palestinians” was “not terrorism”, said the speaker who declared herself a Palestinian: “It’s self-defence.” What happened was a “human rights issue”.

It has taken this most bestial chapter of the Israel-Palestine conflict so far to expose beyond any doubt the Orwellian sloganeering of these activists, who have convinced themselves of their commitment to human rights and anti-racism.
I Was You, “Defender of the Palestinians,” and Now I Want to Puke
No struggle so generously slaked our need to summon virtuous victims as that of the Palestinians. Outraged dignity was the only possible response to anyone who dared suggest our vitriolic fixation on Zionism might be related to antisemitism. How dare you! was the thunderous reply. It was our side, the Red Army, that smashed Hitler’s Third Reich. Thus reassured of our unimpeachable virtue, we sallied forth to cheer (however “critically”) forces that draw inspiration directly from the builders of the gas chambers.

I took leave of my party some years ago, but today I encounter their spirit in Rivkah Brown, commissioning editor and reporter at Novara Media. On October 7 she exulted on Twitter: “Today should be a day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human rights worldwide, as Gazans break out of their open-air prison and Hamas fighters cross into their colonizers’ territory. The struggle for freedom is rarely bloodless and we shouldn’t apologize for it.” Confronted with objections that Hamas’s actions had been singularly terroristic, she explained that “obviously” she doesn’t condone rape and other atrocities. “I’m celebrating Palestinian armed resistance,” she tweeted. Except Hamas’s “armed resistance” is the atrocities it is now carrying out. Its only program (beyond misogyny, murderous anti-gay bigotry, corruption and all-purpose reaction) is genocidal antisemitism. “The Palestinian armed resistance” is a fantasy, conjured by Western leftists to cover for the purest evil.

My former comrades, members of my parents’ generation, sometimes lamented about the 1967 war. The Jews used to be some of the left’s most loyal supporters, they recalled, but 1967 turned them all into ardent Zionists. It never occurred to my ex-comrades that Jews responded as they did because the threat to the Jewish state had shattered their belief that Jewish survival after the Holocaust was assured, and because they were horrified by the sheer hatred the left directed at Israel for defending itself.

This is my 1967. I became a Zionist several years ago, but it was a decision of the mind: an extension of the tenet that was impressed upon me by the party, that if all people have the right to self-determination this includes the Jews. I then spent a period immersed in studying antisemitism until it dawned on me that I knew little about the Jewish people, themselves—only as victims. And that this victimhood is the uneasy legacy of my own family background: my Jewish mother’s murdered relatives, her childhood flight from her Dutch homeland during World War II. So I began exploring my dormant Jewish identity, but that too felt like an intellectual pursuit, not really drawing in my heart. The Jewish people have been astoundingly welcoming and forgiving of me, more than I often feel I deserve. Yet I’ve found it hard to entirely believe I belong.

Now it feels personal. I am a Jew and a Zionist, and I intend to use whatever insight I have from my ignominious past to fight for my people. About the only thing that is certain about the coming weeks and months is that there will be another deluge of hatred against the Jews for continuing to exist and even struggling for it. Count me in, heart and soul.


Why Are All of You Silent?
Two years ago, as conflict flared up between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Jews across America logged onto Instagram to watch as everyone they knew posted a “Free Palestine” graphic. Within days, Dua Lipa, Bella Hadid, classmates, professors, and friends all became geopolitical experts with axes to grind against Israel, Zionism, and their Jewish peers.

Fast forward to this weekend, when Hamas terrorists launched a barbaric attack against Israel, murdering over 900 people, injuring nearly 3,000, taking 150 hostages, committing rapes and attacking innocents in violation of every international humanitarian standard. Surely, in the face of terrorism and war crimes, you’d expect the people who had so much to say in 2021 to denounce these evils. But you’d be wrong, because these noble defenders of human rights are now radio silent.

In the face of this weekend’s barbaric tragedy, the internet response has been very helpful for working out who is who—and what they stand for. Social media has divided into three groups: Jews, “activists,” and people observing in silence. Let’s break these cohorts down:
Group One: The Jews
In the past two days, Jews in the diaspora have experienced the horrors of a 1940s-style pogrom through our phones. We have been frantically refreshing Twitter and Israeli news, worrying that the next victim will be our sister or friend or grandmother or nephew—because it could be. We all know someone in Israel.

In the wake of the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, many of us have taken to Instagram stories to mourn, to inform each other, to help people find their missing friends. Even Jews who usually avoid discussing Israel have spoken up. Younger American Jews have now joined the ranks of prior Jewish generations who knew what they didn’t: that Jews are not safe anywhere, not in Israel, where our people are being massacred, and not in New York City, where proud antisemites are marching in the streets in support of rape and torture.

Yet the graphic images of murdered women and emotional pleas from beloved celebrities still haven’t moved non-Jews to say a word. Wipe the Jews from Instagram and you can pretend the slaughter simply didn’t happen.

Group Two: The ‘Activists,’ or, the Insensitive People You Should Remove From Your World
These are the people who already hated Israel and took this attack as an excuse to double down, posting about decolonization as Hamas terrorists assaulted innocent girls. These are the people who watched the videos of elderly women being carted away by gun-toting barbarians and thought to themselves, “Hm, this seems like a good time to post about how Israel incites violence.” These are the Harvard students who released a statement while entire families were being executed in their homes reading, “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” These are the people who laughed and cheered when a speaker at a Democratic Socialists of America rally in Manhattan described how some “hipsters” were partying in the desert until Hamas showed up and murdered them.

These people inhabit an entirely different realm animated by an entirely different set of facts, morals, and convictions. Their antisemitism is either overt or so ingrained in their consciousness they don’t even see how it affects the world around them. They have a marked inability to acknowledge the suffering of others. Or maybe just of Jews.

Be prepared to lose them as this war continues. In truth, they’re already lost
The Shame of Academe
Campus anti-Zionism and leftwing anti-Semitism are not new. The organizations behind the rallies and letters and social media posts have been around for a while. Democratic Socialists of America, Black Lives Matter, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the United Kingdom have spent years preparing for this moment. What they have set in motion is stunning, nonetheless.

The behavior of university administrations is just as shocking. They have either been mealy-mouthed or morally imbecilic. They have done everything they could to avoid the reality of Hamas’s barbarism. They are silent as their students celebrate terrorism; they are outraged if called to account for their moral corruption. They have built an environment where dissidents are heckled and harassed and even assaulted; where intellectual freedom is stifled; where racial separatism, political correctness, and gender ideology run rampant; where due process is violated; and where violence, so long as it is "revolutionary," is glorified.

Writing in the Free Press, investor Marc Rowan, who sits on the board of the Wharton School, wants donors to close their checkbooks. That is a start. The larger goal is to bust up the higher education cartel and apply lessons learned in the K-12 education reform movement to the universities.

At the same time, alumni, donors, trustees, and elected officials must push for better leadership on campus. A great school has a strong leader who is willing to say no to the jackals. Ben Sasse of the University of Florida, for example. "Our educational mission here begins with the recognition and explicit acknowledgment of human dignity—the same human dignity that Hamas’s terrorists openly scorn," Sasse wrote in a remarkable Oct. 11 statement. "Every single human life matters. We are committed to that truth. We will tell that truth."

Too many of Sasse’s colleagues are dedicated to truth’s opposite. The past two years have seen the world tumble back into the 1930s. America retreated from Afghanistan. Russia launched the largest ground war in Europe since World War II. Hamas, and its Iranian masters, invaded Israel and sparked another war in the Greater Middle East. World order is collapsing, and the consequence is death and misery.

Nor is it only geopolitics that resembles the interwar period. The intellectual climate does, too. As Allan Bloom observed in his 1987 classic The Closing of the American Mind, German universities in the 1920s and 1930s were seedbeds of fascism. The most prominent German philosopher of the age, Martin Heidegger, belonged to the Nazi Party. He never apologized for his affiliation or behavior. Heidegger’s abstruse thought laid the foundations for the postmodern "critical theory" that has dominated the academy since the early 1990s. The result: Two generations of students cannot tell right from wrong, good from evil, justice from terror.

Also, they are functionally illiterate. The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Virginia wrote on Instagram that it "unequivocally supports Palestinian liberation and the right of colonized people everywhere to resist the occupation of their land by whatever means they deem necessary." Whatever means? Does that include rape and baby-killing? Is that what they teach to international relations majors in Charlottesville? Suffice it to say that none of these young adults have ever read a book on the laws of war. They are too busy mainlining Islamo-fascist propaganda on Tik-Tok.

Faced with a great test of moral seriousness, our educational establishment has skipped class. It has joined the delinquents. Not only is it unable to recognize virtue. It aids viciousness. The future may be unknown and forbidding, but one thing is clear. The academy will never live down this shame.
The Commentary Magazine Podcast: The Cotton-Eyed View
Sen. Tom Cotton joins the podcast today to discuss Israel’s path going forward, the potential inconstancy of the Biden administration in supporting Israel’s prosecution of the war, the president’s fecklessness toward Iran, and other cheerful items. Give a listen.
Call Me Back #146: The world unites against Hamas… for now – with Yaakov Katz
For analysis of the Israeli Government’s formation of a (Netanyahu/Gantz) unity government and war cabinet, preparations for the invasion of Gaza, and anticipating the Hezbollah threat from the northern border, we are joined by Yaakov Katz. Yaakov is a columnist for the Jerusalem Post and senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute.

Previously, Yaakov served as editor-in-chief at the Jerusalem Post, before which he was the paper’s military reporter and defense analyst. He is the author of “Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power” and co-author of two books: “Weapon Wizards – How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower” and “Israel vs. Iran – The Shadow War”. He is currently working on a new book.

Yaakov’s most recent piece: “How Israel Got Ambushed” — https://www.thefp.com/p/how-israel-got-ambushed
The Libertarian #744: Moral Clarity on Hamas, Israel, and Terrorism | Libertarian: Richard Epstein | Hoover Institution
Richard Epstein reacts to the terrorist acts committed by Hamas in Israel and the disappointing responses from many university student groups.


Israeli Student Assaulted on Columbia University Campus: Report
Amid heightened tensions over the Israel-Hamas war, an Israeli student at Columbia University was beaten with a stick on the school campus by another student, according to the New York Police Department (NYPD).

The victim, a 24-year-old student in Columbia’s School of General Studies, was hit with a stick around 6:10 pm on Wednesday, by a 19-year-old female Columbia student, police said.

The NYPD confirmed to The Algemeiner in a statement that the suspect, Maxwell Friedman, of Brooklyn, was arrested and charged with one count of assault.

The Columbia Spectator, a university newspaper, first reported the incident. The victim spoke to The Spectator on the condition that he be only identified by his initials IA, citing fears for his safety.

“This is because [of] me being an Israeli these days,” he said.

IA said he was outside the university library with four other friends and noticed the suspect with a bandana covering her face, ripping off flyers they had put up earlier with names and photos of Israelis that Hamas has reportedly taken as hostages.

When the group approached her, IA said the suspect screamed obscenities toward the students and hit the victim with a stick. IA said he defended himself when the suspect allegedly tried to punch him in the face. After the incident, the victim said that one hand was bruised and his ring finger on the other hand was broken.

The group of students went to Columbia Public Safety, who contacted the NYPD, IA said.

IA told The Spectator that he is not planning to return to campus due to fears of physical safety.
The 'pro-Palestinian' rallies that explicitly celebrated mass-murder
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Canadians awoke to the news that the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust had inspired sustained celebrations in its major cities. Although media reports largely framed these rallies as mere demonstrations for peace or Palestinians rights, their official literature — and the recorded statements of speakers and demonstrators — say something entirely different.

These were gatherings explicitly marshalled to celebrate Hamas-orchestrated terrorist attacks as an act of “resistance,” to cheer on the “martyrs” who perpetrated them, and to call for attacks of this scale to continue until the State of Israel is eradicated by force.

“Last night, the resistance in Gaza led a heroic attack against the occupation…. Victory is ours,” reads the text of the social media post that prompted dozens of people carrying Palestinian flags to gather in downtown Ottawa on Sunday.

A Monday rally in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square was similarly pitched by organizers as a gathering to celebrate the “heroic resistance in Gaza.” House-to-house massacres and the execution of entire families was cheered as the “fall of settlements.” The mass kidnapping of Israeli and even Canadian civilians — which Hamas is now threatening to execute in livestreamed videos — was touted as the taking of “Zionist hostages.”

“The resistance’s offensive attack has shaped a new precedent for our national liberation struggle and we remain steadfast in our right to resist by any means necessary,” it added.

The All Out for Palestine rally held at the Vancouver Public Library invited demonstrators to “celebrate the steps towards liberation.” “Gaza’s resistance against the occupation has (been) taken to new heights,” announced the rally’s official call-out.

Rallies also occurred in Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary and others, and they were largely organized by a single group known as the Palestinian Youth Movement.

Rallies also received local support from a who’s who of far-left and anti-Israel groups.

Vancouver’s All Out for Palestine rally would be heavily promoted by Samidoun Vancouver, a group with strong ties to Khaled Barakat, a Vancouver man whom Israeli authorities have long identified as an active member of the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Samidoun itself is also considered a terrorist group by Israel, although as noted in previous reporting by National Post columnist Terry Glavin, Canada has given it non-profit status.

In Montreal, rally organizers told CTV they were from the Mouvement Québécois pour la Paix (Quebec Movement for Peace). Rallies in Vancouver and Ottawa would feature flag-carrying members of the Communist Party of Canada.

All of the events were organized when the basic outlines of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks against Israel were already well-known: Civilian hostages triumphantly paraded into Gaza, entire families murdered in their homes and videos of the slaughter uploaded to their Facebook profiles, nearly 300 young people massacred at a peace-themed music festival by Hamas gunmen who air-dropped onto the event via parasails.

Nevertheless, the rallies themselves did not deviate from their core theme of celebrating the recent events as a victory for Palestinian resistance, and calling for Israel’s eventual destruction.
An Open Letter to the President of Kingsborough Community College, CUNY
The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed during a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Dear President Schrader,
Here are some of the beautiful, gut-wrenching words you so admirably wrote to the campus in the aftermath of the brutal murder of George Floyd:
I didn’t realize I was holding my breath for almost a year until I exhaled yesterday after hearing the verdict in George Floyd’s murder case. My momentary relief was short-lived and immediately replaced by overwhelming exhaustion, sadness, anger and guarded anticipation of what comes next — not with regards to sentencing, but with regards to the need for systemic change– not just in policing, but in how we educate our children and what we teach them through our actions and messages about whose lives matter.

George Floyd is gone. His family is fatherless, sonless, and brotherless. There is no celebration for me, just the overwhelming understanding about how much work has to be done within ourselves and with each other because that’s where it starts.

Here are some of the similarly beautiful and gut-wrenching words you shared with the college community after the brutal and murderous attacks against Asian-Americans:
I am sure you are all aware of the horrific events that occurred in Atlanta yesterday. Eight people, 6 of them Asian, were shot and killed by a gunman who is now in police custody. Even while my thoughts and prayers go out to the loved ones of all the victims, there is an anger and sadness with the news of yet another senseless loss of life. My thoughts are with the millions of Asian and Pacific Islanders who call this country and Kingsborough their home. The racism, bias, discrimination and hate that our brothers and sisters have been subjected to is intolerable and I am sure you stand with me in not only denouncing this hate, but standing up for and with them. Times like this not only call for us to be allies, but to be staunch advocates for an anti-racist and inclusive community, where we respect, embrace and celebrate the differences among us.

You have expressed similar deeply-pained, meaningful sentiments in defense of viciously attacked LGBTQ+ individuals, on behalf of the mass shooting of children and teachers in Texas, on behalf of Tyre Nichols, and more.

Your words have been powerful, genuine, and have meant a lot to me — and surely, to the members of any and all of these suffering communities. I have always proudly stood with you and these statements. They exemplified true, genuine, and compassionate leadership.

Over this past Jewish holiday weekend and Shabbat, a massive, coordinated attack was organized by Hamas terrorists against Israelis and Jewish civilians in Israel. More than 20 Americans were murdered, and more have been kidnapped. Nearly all have been Jews. More than 1,000 Israelis have been murdered — the single greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust (where my four grandparents were tortured, caged, lost their parents, and all but one member of their entire families).


Thanedar denounces Tlaib and renounces DSA membership
Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) lambasted his Michigan Democratic colleague, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, for characterizing Hamas’ attack on Israel as “resistance,” in an interview with Jewish Insider on Wednesday — minutes after publicly renouncing his lifetime membership in the Democratic Socialists of America over the group’s stance on the Hamas attack.

“Everyone needs to unite, denouncing terrorism, as opposed to trying to glorify it,” Thanedar told JI. “Calling this resistance is dehumanizing. Calling this resistance is denying the suffering of ordinary people, innocent people that had nothing to do with any of this.”

“At a time like this, for a member of Congress to call them militants, and resistance, as a result of whatever Israel may have done in the past is totally insensitive,” he continued — without specifically mentioning Tlaib by name, “and we don’t need such hate and bigotry and antisemitism in the halls of Congress.”

The first-term lawmaker — who at one point in his Michigan Statehouse career aligned with critics of Israel — has evolved into a committed pro-Israel progressive since coming to Congress.

“There are no two sides to it when babies have been beheaded and people have been murdered — civilians been murdered, kidnapped,” Thanedar said.

He said he had not spoken to Tlaib yet about her comments, but that if he did, he would convey a similar message in person. Thanedar did not respond to an initial inquiry from JI about Tlaib’s statement the day after the attack.


NICOLE LAMPERT: I've never felt so frightened being Jewish in Britain... This is Israel's 9/11, but so many of my 'good' Left-wing friends say nothing or, worse, that the Israelis deserve it
The WhatsApp came from my teenage son just as I was leaving for the vigil for the Israeli dead on Monday night outside Downing Street.

'Don't go to the vigil tonight. Please just don't. I'm worrying.'

We'd already had this discussion the night before. He begged me and my husband not to go. I wasn't worried about my safety, but he was. In the end we agreed that I would attend alone. The thinking was that if something did happen, he and his younger brother would still have a parent.

As I headed there — having attempted to reassure him again — friends began to message me that they weren't coming because of security concerns and it made me stop and think about what I was doing.

It may seem hysterically fearful to be worried about attending a vigil outside one of the most secure places in the country, but these are the things you have to think about if you are a British Jew.

When I was there with thousands of others, crying and singing and hugging as we thought about the pain our families and our friends were in, I saw — out of the corner of my eye — several Palestinian flags moving in our direction. Thankfully, the police headed their carriers off but it was an important reminder that perhaps my son was right. Danger was literally lurking down the road.

Sometimes, in my bravado as a journalist and as someone who fights against anti-Semitism, I forget that a large crowd of Jews is always a security risk even if we are mourning a massacre.

I forget that it isn't normal to have a huge security fence, cameras and several highly trained guards outside your place of worship, your school, your nursery, as Jewish people do in this country.

It isn't normal to have to keep the venue of events — even the vigil — secret until a day before because of the danger of someone coming to bomb you. It isn't normal for school kids to get drills in what happens if there is a terrorist attack, as happens in every Jewish school in the UK.

It isn't normal to be too scared to wear a necklace showing your faith or to have to have lessons in how to cope with the racism you will almost certainly encounter when you go to university. Yet these are the things we have to live with from a very young age.


'Deport the protesters': Calls for 'gas the Jews' demonstrators at the Sydney Opera House to be kicked out of Australia
Peter Dutton is calling on the government to track down the protesters who made vile anti-Semitic comments at a rally at the Sydney Opera House.

The Opposition Leader says if any of those protesters - some of whom chanted 'gas the Jews' and 'f*** the Jews' - are found to be in Australia on a visa, they should be instantly deported.

Speaking to 2GB's Ray Hadley, Mr Dutton said the actions of protesters on Monday evening will 'go down in our country's history'.

'If there were people there who were on visas, they should be identified and have their visas cancelled. They should be deported,' he said.

'I don't want people anywhere in the world to think those scenes represent who we are as a people.'

Mr Dutton said Australia politicians, and the general public, cannot 'underestimate how significantly they've been interpreted overseas'.

Rallies have been taking place around the globe since terrorist group Hamas, a pro-Palestinian extremist organisation, launched an attack on unsuspecting Israelis who were at a music festival.


NSW Police Minister under fire for comments about Jews and misleading parliament

‘Absolute hypocrites’: Mark Speakman slams the Greens for supporting pro-Palestine rallies

Thousands gather at Sydney vigil to support Jewish community
Thousands turned out at Sydney’s east on Wednesday night for a vigil to support the Jewish community and mourn those killed at the hands of Hamas militants in Israel.

Many held the Israeli national flag, with some holding up pictures of friends and family who were caught up in the conflict.

A heavy police presence stretched multiple blocks at the vigil.

This follows the launch of the NSW Police’s Operation Shelter – its response to the conflict in the Middle East.

Operation Shelter includes monitoring public sentiments, monitoring and managing protest activity related to the conflict and patrolling key Jewish sites.




Muslim tradie covers his face after 'threatening to kill' four teens flying an Israeli flag - as judge BANS him from Jewish suburbs and calls grow to deport pro-Palestine protesters
A construction worker who allegedly threatened to kill four Jewish teenagers if they did not hide their Israeli flag has been charged with stalking and intimidation - as his identity can be unmasked for the first time.

Abdullah Al-Taay, 23, was charged with stalking or intimidating after he allegedly threatened to kill four Jewish teenagers who had been flying an Israeli flag in the exclusive Sydney suburb of Bellevue Hill on Monday around 6.30pm.

He was granted bail on Thursday on the condition he does not enter Sydney's eastern suburbs, where many Jewish Australians live.

Footage of the confronting incident allegedly shows Al-Taay - who is wearing an orange high-vis vest and a black cap - marching up to four teenage boys who were about to tie an Israeli flag to their car.

He points a finger at them and repeatedly tells them to 'put it back in your car'.

'I swear if I f***ing see youse with that flag I'll f**king kill youse all. I'm telling youse right now - all of youse,' he says.

Al-Taay appeared in Sydney Downing Court on Thursday morning after he was held in custody overnight.

He was arrested at Liverpool Police Station on Wednesday afternoon where he was later charged. He then spent the night at Amber Laurel Correctional Centre in western Sydney.

Al-Taay was granted bail with the conditions that he does not enter almost all areas of the Eastern Suburbs where many Jewish communities live.

'You are not to enter any of these suburbs unless for work purposes: Bellevue Hill, Double Bay, Woollahra, Queens Park, Bondi Beach, Bondi Junction, Tamarama, Dover Heights, Rose Bay, Vaucluse, Watsons Bay or Randwick,' Magistrate Julie Huber told him.

She added: 'You are not to attend any rally or protest.'
Underbelly star slams Australians backing Israel
Underbelly star Firass Dirani has slammed Australians backing Israel, claiming they are 'supporting apartheid'.

The Australian actor shared a video on social media expressing his support for Hamas after the Palestinian militant group unleashed a horrific attack on the Jewish homeland on Saturday.

Dirani complained that Hamas - which is considered a terrorist group by the Australian government - is being 'propagated against as if they’re a terrorist militant group'.

He also compared the plight of Ukraine - which was invaded by Russia in February 2022 - with the Hamas' cause, suggesting the recent attacks which have killed hundreds of civilians was 'Palestinians resisting the oppressors'.

The now-deleted clip, obtained by The Australian, sparked outrage with viewers slamming Dirani's comments as 'demonic' and calling him out for blocking followers who challenged his stance.


University Donors, Close Your Checkbooks
While Hamas terrorists were slaughtering Israeli Jews, university administrators were figuring out how to spin it. Do not just take my word for it; read their statements. Across academia, administrators issued statements on behalf of their institutions expressing a repulsive moral equivalence between victims of terror and the perpetrators of that terror. The antisemitic rot in academia is unmistakable.

At the University of Pennsylvania, where I sit on the Wharton School’s Board of Overseers, leaders have for too long allowed this kind of anti-Jewish hate, which sanitizes Hamas’s atrocities, to infect their campuses. There must be consequences.

I call on all UPenn alumni and supporters who believe we are heading in the wrong direction to close their checkbooks until President Liz Magill and Chairman Scott Bok resign.

It took less than two weeks to go from the Palestine Writes Literary Festival at the University of Pennsylvania to the barbaric slaughter of innocent civilians in Israel. Foreshadowing Hamas’s massacre, speakers at the gathering—hosted by various university departments and affiliates—advocated ethnic cleansing of Jews, referred to them as “European settlers,” and repeated various blood libels.

UPenn President Elizabeth Magill and Board Chair Scott Bok permitted UPenn to sponsor this conference and failed to condemn its hate-filled calls for violence. This is not a matter of free speech, but University-sponsored hate speech.

Words and ideas matter. They mattered in the motivation of Hamas terrorists slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent civilians and kidnapping more than a hundred in their goal to annihilate Jews. In our viral, online world it is especially dangerous when once-fringe ideologies receive a stamp of legitimacy—especially from our elite academic institutions, which hold a special place in our society. By sponsoring the spread of the violent ideologies expressed in the Palestine Writes conference, they normalize and give their imprimatur to what would otherwise be considered morally reprehensible.


‘Irresponsible, abhorrent’ to justify Hamas’s murder, Lipstadt says of CAIR statement
In June, Deborah Lipstadt, U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, told The Jerusalem Post that the Council on American-Islamic Relations should be judged going forward, and not on its “problematic” past after the White House included it as an adviser to the national strategy to combat antisemitism.

JNS sought comment from Lipstadt after CAIR was a signatory to a statement that blamed Israel for Hamas attacks against it, which Israeli President Isaac Herzog has called the bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

CAIR is part of the United States Council of Muslim Organizations, which issued a statement condemning Israel, but not Hamas, and called on Washington to “exert pressure on the occupation regime” and encouraged Arab countries that had normalized relations with Israel under the 2020 Abraham Accords to reconsider their ties.

JNS asked Lipstadt’s office and the U.S. State Department press office how this jibed with the envoy’s decision to judge CAIR going forward in June, rather than on its troubling past. Or did she have in mind that CAIR ought to be judged on the future, starting now?

On Tuesday evening, Lipstadt told JNS exclusively that “it is irresponsible and abhorrent to try in any way to justify Hamas’s murder of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians including through indiscriminate attacks.”

“The United States stands resolutely in solidarity with the government and people of Israel, as they consider steps to mitigate this vicious, lethal terrorist threat,” she said.

She did not say anything further about CAIR. After JNS sought comment from Lipstadt, CAIR issued its own press release, calling on the United States to address “the root causes of violence” and to terminate “Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories” and end “the Israeli government’s apartheid policies.”


A dozen CEOs back Bill Ackman’s call to not hire Harvard students who blamed Israel for Hamas attack
At least a dozen business executives have endorsed Bill Ackman’s call to refuse to hire members of student groups at Harvard that signed on to a letter blaming Israel for Hamas’ deadly attack on Saturday that killed more than 1,200 people, including at least 22 Americans.

Jonathan Newman, CEO of salad chain Sweetgreen, was among a group of business honchos who seconded Ackman in urging that the signatories of the letter circulated by a coalition of 34 Harvard student groups that “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” be blocked.

“I would like to know so I know never to hire these people,” Newman wrote in response to Ackman’s post on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday.

“Same,” David Duel, CEO of health care services firm EasyHealth, wrote in response to Newman.

The backlash and possible blacklisting has led to a flurry of backpedaling by four of the initial student organizations attached to the inflammatory statement — while board members of other groups have quit in an effort to distance themselves.

Late Tuesday, 17 other Harvard groups joined around 500 faculty and staff and 3,000 others in signing a counter-statement attacking the other groups’ letter as “completely wrong and deeply offensive,” according to the campus paper, the Harvard Crimson.

A third letter from nearly 160 faculty members also ripped Harvard’s response to the scandal, writing that it “can be seen as nothing less than condoning the mass murder of civilians based only on their nationality.”


Firing a Nazi publicly cheering on the genocide of Jews is not cancel culture
Over at Reason, my friend Robby Soave wondered if Playboy's termination of porn star Mia Khalifa constitutes cancel culture. For those thankfully unfamiliar with the matter, the raunchy print magazine and lifestyle brand terminated the Lebanese American Khalifa for cheering on the Hamas terrorists' illegal invasion and war on Israel.

"If you can look at the situation in Palestine and not be on the side of the Palestinians, then you are on the wrong side of apartheid and history will show that in Time," said Khalifa, who also called a photo of Hamas terrorists a "Renaissance painting" and called for the "freedom fighters in Palestine to flip their phones and film horizontal."

Soave has championed a righteous crusade challenging cancel culture, but Khalifa's case simply doesn't fit the bill. For starters, cancel culture usually refers to content often "resurfaced" from the very far past, views held in private, or views well within the Overton window of common decency. Not one of these categories fits Khalifa's dayslong diatribe. Under her public name and with her full affiliation with Playboy, Khalifa decided publicly to support the terrorists actively engaged in the worst genocide of the Jews since Hitler enacted the Holocaust. From Sudan to Tigray, plenty of civil clashes and territorial disputes are complicated. An invading army beheading babies and raping women in their own sovereign territory is not complicated.

Soave also points out that Playboy knew what it was purchasing when it hired Khalifa, who has gone viral for bragging that her Vichy France-bottled wine was "older than your apartheid 'state,'" referring to Israel. But I would like to believe that there is a difference between supporting terrorists in the abstract and continuing to support them as the burned remains of corpses and child hostages spill into full view of our X feeds. Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine there were moronic antisemites during World War II who sympathized with the Nazis when still subject to propaganda but snapped out their hatred and delusion as the full scope of the Holocaust came into public knowledge.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

at