Sunday, October 15, 2023

10/15 Links Pt2: Once, I Was a Peace Advocate. Now, I Have No Idealism Left; The cruelty of the Left; Our cities and streets are full of haters

From Ian:

Ilan Benjamin: Once, I Was a Peace Advocate. Now, I Have No Idealism Left.
After terrorists killed my cousin Daniel Pearl, my family called for peace. But after the worldwide celebration of our people’s slaughter, my hope for peace is dead.

I watched the news in horror as terrorists massacred over 100 people at Kibbutz Be’eri. Women. Children. I frantically messaged my host family and heard nothing back. Like my cousin Danny years ago, my family was being held hostage. The good news: unlike Danny, my host family at Kibbutz Be’eri was saved. They are physically okay. But how can they really be okay, after watching their friends and neighbors being slaughtered?

There was a time when these types of events couldn’t shake my ideals. I used to argue relentlessly for a two-state solution. I fought bitterly with Israeli friends about the decency of the Palestinian people. Even though radical Islamists had murdered my cousin, even though civilians had been blown up in buses daily during the Second Intifada, I refused to give in to nihilism.

In 2012, I returned to the States to study film at University of Southern California, and published a book about my military service that criticized the Israeli government. This didn’t win me many friends, but I continued to advocate for nuance regardless. I proudly supported Black Lives Matter, LGBTQIA+, and feminist causes. I called myself a progressive Jew.

But over the years, I noticed a disturbing trend: With all the atrocities in the world, why did my social justice warrior friends hate Israel so disproportionately? Why did it feel like intersectionality excluded Jews? Why did the left—who supposedly stood up for human rights—put child-murdering Hamas terrorists on a pedestal?

At first, I thought it must be miseducation.

“Ah, they think Palestinians are the indigenous people. I’ll show that Jewish history, and the archaeology to prove it, dates back millennia.”

“Ah, they think we’re white colonizers. I’ll show how many Jews are people of color, including those who are Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Ethiopian.”

“Ah, they’ll get it once I show them that there are fifty Muslim countries, and only one Jewish state.”

But my friends weren’t interested in correcting their misunderstandings.

I agreed that the settlements were unlawful, that Gaza was a humanitarian crisis, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyuahu was a dictator. I assumed—if I cared enough, if I mourned for the Palestinian dead, if I put nuance above all else—our neighbors and their allies would give us the same decency.

How wrong I was. This past week, as over 1,300 Jews were slaughtered, the most murderous attack on Jews since the Holocaust, I saw the true face of Palestinians and their allies. All around the world, they celebrate. They gloat. They mock our tears. They do not protest against Hamas. They embrace pure evil.

And so, to the terrorists I now say:

When you killed my family, I forgave you. When you killed my people, I forgave you. But when you killed my idealism, I had no forgiveness left.

To non-Jewish friends who have reached out, thank you. It is simply the human thing to do. To friends who dare justify what has happened, you are not friends. You are nothing but Nazi supporters dressed up in leftist intellectual language. To the Palestinians: you have lost all moral authority to claim victimhood. I will never advocate for you again. To my family, friends in Israel, and Jews around the world hurting right now, I love you. Stay safe.

In Berlin, where I live today with my German-Ukrainian Jewish wife, Germans love to say “Never Again.” Right now, Never Again is happening again in real time, livestreamed for the whole world to see. I find myself looking up my military number in case the IDF reserves call for me. Unlike our enemy, I feel no joy at the prospect of going to war. But if our people’s existence is at stake, I will do what I must. I will be the world’s favorite villain: the Jew who has the audacity to defend his people.
The cruelty of the Left
On Oct. 7, Israel suffered its worst terrorist attack in the post-World War II era. The death toll, which includes infants, women, and the elderly, stands at about 1,300. An estimated 27 U.S. citizens were murdered. Hamas also took more than 100 hostages, many of them innocent civilians.

Yet, the immediate response in so many colleges and universities was not to condemn the killings, the torture, the humiliations, or the kidnappings. The response was to praise Hamas while criticizing the victim of the slaughter. Equally disturbing is the fact that these rallies were not confined to institutions of higher learning. Large pro-Hamas rallies have taken place in major U.S. cities this week, the streets echoing the bloodlust articulated in the halls of academia.

The student groups and the unassociated rallies are not right-wing. They are not right-of-center. They aren’t even moderate. They are left-wing, espousing what has become a mainstream position on the Left - that Palestine is the righteous actor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that its resistance "by any means" is both justified and moral, including even ethnic cleansing. This isn’t a fringe opinion anymore. So widespread does this position appear, in fact, that even those on the left-leaning side of things have expressed alarm.

"In nearly 50 years of [Harvard] affiliation," former Clinton and Obama Treasury official Larry Summers said in reference to the pro-Hamas Harvard letter, "I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today." Summers also previously served as the president of Harvard.

"Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me," said Puck's Washington correspondent Julia Ioffe. “I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR. But now I see that's not it.”

Yes, some liberals are eager to celebrate Hamas’s war crimes. But surely, claiming the Left delights in cruelty is going a bit too far.

Is it?
David Collier: Our cities and streets are full of haters
Academia
While the media is still held back by certain standards, academia is the land of freedom. Islamists and the hard left can do what they like there. For decades they have been drip-feeding destructive pseudo-science into wider society. The ‘decolonisation’ agenda is everywhere from the museum space and education to the NHS. The tsunami originated in academia, alongside other poisons such as gender studies and critical race theory.

But what does ‘decolonisation mean’? Well it seems we all found out on Saturday morning, when as over 1300 Jews were slaughtered, academics reminded us that ‘decolonisation is not a metaphor’.

The author of that sickening tweet is Dr Yara Hawari, who was a product of Illan Pappe’s conveyor belt at the University of Exeter (I first ran into her at a conference in Exeter in 2015). This vile message about decolonisation was repeated throughout the academic sector- with various tweets on the subject going viral.

These horrific retweets were from Dr Sara Camacho Felix. She is an Assistant Professor (Education) and Programme Lead at the LSE. She appears to support Palestinian resistance in ‘all its forms’. Which on that Saturday morning including raping young girls and butchering babies.

Dr Sara Salem is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the LSE. She deactivated her twitter account, but not before I had archived this tweet. In her eyes, no matter how bad the actions against them – Israelis can ‘never be the victims’:

How can academia be so lost, that 1300 Jews are slaughtered and these people still side with the murderers?

Students
With academics such as those above – what can we expect our students to turn out like?
- Hanin Barghouti, Women Students’ Officer at the University of Sussex students’ union spoke out at an anti-Israel demonstration in Brighton calling the Hamas attacks ‘inspiring’ and ‘beautiful’.
- The Student Welfare Officer at Cambridge University liked a run of outrageous tweets, including one that suggest the terrorist attack was a cause for a day of celebration – and the actions needed no apology.
- At a public demonstration, Dana Abuqamar, the Diversity Officer at the University of Manchester, spoke of her ‘pride and joy‘ in the Hamas ‘resistance’.

All students serving as part of their student unions. They all have roles dealing with the welfare of other students. All willing to applaud the slaughter of innocent Jews. On the streets

With academia and the media poisoned from within, the nation’s moral defences have crumbled. Within hours of Jews being slaughtered – masses of people went out to support Palestinian ‘resistance’. Images from London and Manchester:

London and Manchester
It is not just the Islamists. The hard -left put out their posters calling for victory to the Palestinians – an event about why it is right to ‘resist’.

Why it is right to resist
And then there are the open calls for violence. On 8th October, Richard Barnard (the co-founder of Palestine Action, the group that continually vandalises factories in the UK) – spoke at a pro-Palestine event about the current violence. He used the Hamas attack as inspiration – telling people listening that ‘this was just the start for them’ – and they need to turn the ‘Al Aqsa Flood’ (the name of Hamas operation) into ‘a tsunami over the whole world’.

In the clip he is supporting a proscribed terrorist group and inciting violence against British Jews. At the time of writing, he has still NOT BEEN ARRESTED.


Algemeiner: A Message from the Publisher
There are moments in life that change everything. October 7, 2023 – Simchat Torah 5784 – is such a moment. This day, the most joyous day in the Jewish calendar – when Hamas unleashed a brutal and merciless attack killing over 1200 innocent men, women and children – will never be forgotten.

For The Algemeiner this too is a defining moment. Founded 52 years ago by my father, Gershon, the Algemeiner mission is to serve as a courageous voice on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people; to wage war in the world of information, the battle over public opinion. Our fight today is both with our physical enemies and with our enemies called ignorance, misinformation, propaganda and outright deception. This battle is being fought on campuses, in the media, in our schools and governments – an epic struggle for control of our minds.

As such, I am proud to inform you that The Algemeiner has enlisted itself in today’s game-changing war. Side by side with the military offensives necessary to protect the security of the Jews in Israel, we at The Algemeiner have mobilized our editors and journalists and launched an aggressive and vigilant information war to accurately report on the events taking place, the issues at stake, including the atrocities and war crimes, while also exposing the disinformation and distortions being propagated by the enemy.

I firmly believe that The Algemeiner was created to fearlessly speak out in times like this. We are firmly dedicated to rise to the occasion and take the lead in demonstrating journalism at its finest – standing up boldly for the truth; for moral clarity; for the cherished values that define us as humans. What more important role does the media play than waging war against those that attack Jews simply because they are Jewish, against those that attack our very humanity? And if not now, when?
The Rudest Awakening
The sad truth is, Jewish blood is cheap. It doesn’t matter what you believe, the way you live your life or how sympathetic you are to the plight of Gazans. Hamas targeted peace-loving, left-leaning, Palestinian-sympathizing, defenseless young people at a music festival and ravaged uber-progressive kibbutzniks and their children in their homes. They didn’t brutalize, rape and murder them because of their political stance–they did it for one reason and one reason only, because they were Jews. And it is because they were Jews that people are rallying in the streets in support of their murderers.

So today, I am in mourning–not just for the devastating loss of life but for the fact that we live in a world where images of toddlers in cages, beheaded babies, women being dragged by their hair as they bleed from their genitals and entire families being burned alive aren’t enough to elicit empathy for us Jews. A world full of people defending this brutality, academic institutions cheering on terrorists and celebrities with massive followings, who never miss an opportunity to stand on their soap boxes, remaining eerily silent.

A Jewish friend said to me the other day, “it’s like they don’t want us to exist” and I almost had to laugh. If the Inquisition, countless pogroms and the Holocaust didn’t make it clear enough — this might’ve just done it. From this point forward, we must be vocal, visible and vigilant in looking out for one another because, as has been made crystal clear, we cannot count on anyone else to do that for us.

So, if there is a single silver lining to be gleaned in the wake of this carnage, perhaps it will be that we Jews finally open our eyes to the way that the world actually sees us. Only then can we begin to process our pain and truly have a shot at repairing this broken world. The final stage of grief is acceptance, after all.
Barns and farms abandoned, cows dead: Hamas war endangers Israel's food security
The war in the south has hit the agriculture sector hard. This includes managers and people working in various sectors who have been either killed or wounded, dairy facilities that have been abandoned, cows that have died and many more that will likely die without appropriate care, and land that’s not being farmed due to the security situation.

Dairy farming has suffered a very harsh blow. “We’ve abandoned dairies in kibbutzim that the army won’t give us access to.," according to Lior Simcha, CEO of the Milk Producers Association. "We have dairies trying to rehabilitate. We’re trying to send in help to care for the cows in kibbutzim like Mefalsim but the army won’t let us anywhere near them. The dairies at Nahal Oz, Alumim and Be’eri are finished. We’re talking about thousands of cows. Some have died and others will. It’s a disaster.”

In the kibbutzim of Nahal Oz, Kisufim, Alumim, Ein Hashlosha and Nir Yitzhak, there are five dairies – all of which send milk to the Tnuva food manufacturer. No milk collections have been made.

CEO of Tnuva’s milk division, Anat Gross-Shon, says that the dairies have been abandoned and there is no one milking the cows.

“If no one gets there today or tomorrow to feed and milk the cows, there’ll be no dairy farm. The Israel Cattle Breeders Association is now trying to find a solution to save the cows. We managed to collect milk from the kibbutzim the army allowed us to access - Yad Mordechai, Urim, Tze’elim and Gevim. At this time, Tnuva has no milk shortage. In the worst case, we’ll use milk powder for yogurts and puddings, freeing up fresh milk for drinking milk.

The Israel Dairy Council said Wednesday that, following several days of no milking in the communities surrounding Gaza due to heavy fighting, the dairy farmers have managed to return to some of the dairy farms and assess the damage. The damage is enormous: Animals have been injured, dairy facilities smashed up and riddled with bullets, buildings and equipment have been thrown around, looted or set on fire.

At present, 11 out of 16 milk-producing communities around Gaza that were attacked are producing some amount of milk. In a further five communities, the damage caused to the infrastructure and the cows does not allow for milk production. Further steps are currently being examined, while considering the security situation and in coordination with the Agriculture Ministry's operations room and military officials. (h/t Yerushalimey)
Chilling moment pro-Palestine U.Mass students surround reporter, demand to know her ETHNICITY and threaten her with lawyers for covering their protest
Pro-Palestine college activists harassed a journalist covering their protest and allegedly demanded to know her ethnicity as tensions on US campuses continue to escalate in the wake of the Middle East conflict.

Kassy Dillon, a video journalist with Fox News, said she was targeted after leaving an anti-Israel protest at the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus.

'As I was leaving, two guys kept asking me my ethnicity,' she tweeted on Thursday. 'When I got into my car, I was approached by a group of the protesters demanding to know my address and phone number.'

The aggressive exchange comes as pro-Palestine groups across America sparked outrage at their support for Hamas' brutal attack that killed 1,300 Israelis, with tempers flaring from the other side as Israel launches retaliatory sieges on the Gaza Strip.

Dillon shared footage of the aftermath of the alleged confrontation, where the college activists are seen demanding to have her number.

'You can not have my number,' Dillon fires back.

One of the protestors asks her she can contact the reporter for 'legal reasons', to which Dillon responds: 'There are no legal reasons to do it... I gave you my name, you can go look it up.'

Another activist, who also appeared to record the hostile interaction, then joins in demands for the reporter to repeat her name.

'I'll have my lawyers contact you that way, okay?' the protestor adds. 'Have a terrible night.'


Chaos erupts at pro-Palestine rallies as thousands descend on Sydney and Melbourne to condemn Israel with protesters lighting flares and waving a 'blood-soaked' baby doll
Pro-Palestine supporters defied NSW Premier Chris Minns to attend a rally in central Sydney as protests in Melbourne got more heated with flares set off and a blood-soaked baby doll held above the crowd.

A huge police presence in Sydney's CBD, where 6,000 protesters demanded an end to the 'Israeli apartheid' and a 'cease-fire' in Gaza, prevented a repeat of the ugly scenes last week at the Opera House by limiting it to a static event.

But in Melbourne 10,000 protesters marched, initially following the lead of retiring Greens senator Janet Rice, who fired up the rally with chants of 'Free, Free Palestine!'

The protesters heard fiery speeches at the State Library before setting off for the Victorian State Parliament carrying provocative signs and props.

The most confronting was a life-like doll of a child smeared in red and covered with band-aids.

In a show of force, more than 1,000 cops were on standby to deal with demonstrators after tense scenes erupted at a similar rally on Monday night as the Sydney Opera House was lit up in blue and white in a show of support for Israel.

Shocking footage from Monday's event showed attendees chanting anti-Semitic slogans including 'gas the Jews' and 'f*** Israel', with some even throwing flares at police.

NSW Police revealed they did not use special powers given to them to crack down on demonstrators a week later.

NSW Police this week announced beefed-up security measures and 'extraordinary powers' after Premier Minns vowed to clamp down on protest activity.

The powers, which allow police to search protesters without a reason and to arrest people who refuse to identify themselves, were introduced after the 2005 Cronulla riots.
NSW Police brace for trouble at Pro-Palestine rally in Sydney
NSW Police and the state government are expecting potential trouble this afternoon at an illegal protest by people sympathetic to the Palestinian cause at Hyde Park in the CBD.

At least a thousand people are expected and there are fears that some of the elements that turned up to the Sydney Opera House and caused trouble on Monday night could reappear.

Around Hyde Park, police will be stopping people, checking IDs and searching them.

If the protest spills onto the streets, there is predicted to be swift action and could potentially be hundreds of arrests.

Police and the state government will be keen to be seen to not be standing still after they failed to allow Israeli people to see the Opera House the other night.




Horror as woman draped in Palestine flag tells Israelis to 'remember where Jews were in 1940' while two other women brazenly tape pictures of paragliding Hamas terrorists onto their backs as thousands take to the streets across Britain
Pro-Palestine protests across the country took a dark turn today as demonstrators were seen with offensive placards, stamping on flags, and making apparent references to Hamas' atrocities and the Holocaust.

Footage emerged earlier today of protesters with paragliders stuck to their backs chanting 'England is a terrorist state' on the streets of London amid mass protests over the Israeli army's actions in Gaza.

The video, shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, shows crowds walking down the streets of London shouting: 'Israel is a terrorist state, the UK is a terrorist state, France is a terrorist state, Italy is a terrorist state'.

Met Police have arrested 15 protesters at the time of writing including for public order offences and criminal damage.

In Glasgow, one protestor was seen appearing to goad Jewish people about the Holocaust, telling them: 'Don't forget where the Jews were in 1940.' The clip, which appears to have been filmed in Glasgow's Buchanan Street, shows a woman wearing a Palestinian flag as a cape and a black and white keffiyeh - a scarf that has become a symbol of support for Palestinian people.

She gestures and swears at an unseen person off-screen, before making reference to Nazi concentration camps and the Holocaust, which killed approximately six million Jewish people.

Other signs on display today included slogans such as ‘free us from the shackles of the Zionist state’, ‘wake up and smell the Zionist propaganda’ and 'stop the Zionist massacres and persecution in Gaza'. Across the UK, popular placard slogans included 'Exist, resist, return' and 'Palestine will be free from the rivers to the sea.'


Pro-Palestine activists plot wave of sledgehammer attacks on British defence contractors 'who have links to Israel' after claiming responsibility for defacing BBC HQ with red paint



Thousands gather for pro-Palestine demonstration in London
Thousands of people have gathered in London for pro-Palestine demonstrations as supporters call for the end of Israel’s siege of Gaza.

Before the march, British police warned anyone showing support for terrorist groups could be arrested.

“Palestinians have been screaming for decades about this and no one was listening – and in our silence, they experience violence on a daily basis,” says protestor Katy Colley.

Calls were made for the UK government to intervene in the conflict.

Palestinians Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot thanked protesters for their support.




Left-wing civil servants resist Downing Street's call to fly the Israeli flag in solidarity with the victims of last weekend's terrorist attacks



Israel War: Left-wing and Islamic groups converge on New York City for pro-Palestinian protest

Harvard student groups attempt to justify Hamas terrorist attack

Assailant in stick attack of Israeli Columbia University student charged with hate crime

Joe Biden is INTERRUPTED by pro-Palestinian activist screaming 'Let Gaza live, ceasefire now' during speech at LGBT rights dinner

Israel war: The fundamental incoherence of ‘Queers for Palestine’



John Cusack Whitewashes Hamas Terror Attack as Self-Defense



STEPHEN GLOVER: Like it or not the BBC helps shape the soul of the nation... So why won't it give a name to PURE EVIL?
As the Middle East stands on the edge of disaster, and a human catastrophe is unfolding in Gaza, the BBC's refusal to describe the mass murderers of Hamas as 'terrorists' may seem a relatively small matter.

But I believe that the Corporation's decision is deeply shaming, and casts doubt not only on its impartiality but also on its sense of moral decency. Once again, it is displaying some very questionable values.

This is not a quibble about the use of a word.

The BBC is by far the most powerful media organisation in Britain. It is no exaggeration to say that it helps shape the soul of the nation. And yet our national broadcaster won't give a name to evil.

Dictionaries define terrorism along the lines of the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

The indiscriminate slaughter last weekend of hundreds of Israeli civilians, as well as rape, hostage-taking and the beheading of babies, clearly falls within this definition. This was terrorism on a grand scale, an outrage that has barely been surpassed in modern times.

King Charles has rightly described the butchers of Hamas as terrorists. So have Rishi Sunak and the Government. Even the often equivocal Sir Keir Starmer has decried the actions of Hamas as 'terrorism' and says Israel has the 'right to defend herself'.

Four of Britain's most eminent lawyers have written to the media regulator Ofcom calling for an investigation. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has joined the criticism of Auntie's misguided stand. Danny Cohen, a former director of television at the BBC, has expressed disbelief at his former employer's reluctance to label Hamas a terror group.

Yet the BBC still stubbornly refuses to listen. Veteran foreign correspondent John Simpson has stepped forward to provide what is by any standards a shoddy defence.
Does the BBC really want to be known as ‘objective’ about the mass slaughter of Israelis?
Contrary to Simpson’s claim, the term terrorism is not a label of disapproval but a description of methods and actions. The term describes the use violence as a means – rather than end aims of which one may approve or disapprove – as explained by the philosopher William Vallicella in 2009:
“So there are two reasons to avoid ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.’ The first is that it rests on a confusion of means and ends. Describing a combatant as a terrorist, I describe his means not his end; describing a combatant as a freedom fighter, I describe his end not his means. A second reason to avoid the saying is because the saying suggests falsely that there is no fact of the matter as to whether or not a person is a terrorist. There is: a combatant is a terrorist if and only if he employs terror as a tactic in the furtherance of his political goals. It doesn’t matter what his goal or end is. It might be the noble one of freedom from oppression. Or it might be base one of domination and exploitation. What makes him a terrorist is the means he employs.”

Interestingly, following a number of terror attacks in Europe in 2016, the BBC did manage to find a “working definition” of terrorism for its own use:
“Terrorist attacks are acts of violence by non-state actors to achieve a political, social, economic or religious goal through fear, coercion or intimidation.”

Simpson’s claim that “It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn – who are the good guys and who are the bad guys” is of course particularly ridiculous given that, according to his argument, the corporation has repeatedly done precisely that on numerous occasions over the years. Among the many examples documented in our archives are the following:
Slitting babies’ throats is not terrorism, claims smirking ex-BBC correspondent
In an interview with GB News, former BBC Chief Political Correspondent John Sergeant defended the BBC’s decision to not label Hamas a terrorist organization and smirked at calls to do so.

The interview was carried out in light of growing complaints that the BBC is not providing fair and unbiased reporting on the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Sergeant was interviewed in a debate with the National Jewish Assembly Chairman Gary Mond.

Is the BBC right to not call a terrorist organization terrorists?

The host of the debate began by asking Sergeant “Is the BBC right to not call a terrorist organization terrorists?”

Sergeant said, "Of course people have found it difficult to follow this, lots of people do…They think ‘it’s obvious, the US government calls them terrorists, we have heard all these other people call them terrorists…’ They don’t seem to understand that the BBC operation, news operation, is not like a government. It is not meant to be like a government, it is not meant to have a policy on the Middle East…

"I don’t know why people can’t follow this but if you are deeply involved in the struggle and you feel passionately about it, you can’t understand; to you it is common sense. Here are these people who are acting outrageously, they must be terrorists.”


'Disgusting' reporting scrutinised following Hamas attack on Israel
Sky News host Rowan Dean looks at the reporting of the Hamas attack on Israel last week.

“I was contacted by a left-wing acquaintance of mine the other morning who said, ‘Rowan, I have never agreed with your stance on the ABC until now, they must be defunded',” Mr Dean said.

“He went on: ‘While every international news service we looked at last weekend reported it for what it was, a murderous terrorist attack with indiscriminate and deliberate killing of civilians, the ABC reported it as a military operation by Hamas’."

Mr Dean pointed to an ABC report saying, "Palestinian militants launch surprise assault, Israel strikes targets in Gaza" at 6pm on Saturday October 7.

He condemned the “disgusting reporting” in the ABC article that said, “renewed violence has broken out along Israel's volatile border with Gaza”.

“'Palestinian militants launched a surprise attack against Israel, prompting Israel's military to begin striking targets in the Gaza Strip' – what an abomination."

Warning: This video contains content which may be distressing to viewers.


NYC DOE offers schools ‘anti-Israel’ materials to address Mideast war
The city Department of Education has sent teachers a lengthy list of websites with information for class discussion on the Israel-Hamas war — including some slammed as strongly biased against the Jewish state, The Post has learned.

The guide includes 35 links to news, education sites, and organizations in alphabetical order, with No. 2 being the Arab-run Al Jazeera, which is heavily slanted against Israel, and categorizes the war as a Hamas “operation” or “offensive” by “Palestinian fighters” against the “Israeli military.”

The third link goes to the website of Amnesty International, which declares “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Decades of Oppression and Domination.”

It also includes an article by Haaretz, an Israeli news site known for left-wing stances, and pieces by TeachMideast, from the Arab-founded Middle East Policy Council, which argue, for instance: “Israel has neither the moral legitimacy nor the national interest to refuse to negotiate with Palestinian organizations that have employed terrorism, particularly Hamas.”

While the list includes balanced sites like Facing History and Ourselves and the Institute for Curriculum Resources, some fear others give justification for the savage Oct. 7 terror attack by Hamas, which prompted Israel to retaliate.

The DOE offered resources for teachers on the Israel-Hamas war with some material called biased against the Jewish state.Twitter @MoMisteries

After the brutal ambush on Israel, parents waited for days for any acknowledgment of the atrocities from their kids’ schools, or got a bland message that did not denounce the terrorism, but offered counseling for kids if needed, and a few links to educational sites.

The DOE’s legal department was screening messages that principals sent to staff or families about the war — vetoing some and watering down others, several sources said.

“I’m infuriated by the light, non-response,” SoHo mom Maud Maron told The Post.


Pro-Hamas Supporter Charged After Snatching Israeli Flag From CUNY Hunter College Student

Insidious antisemitism in K-12 schools
As the saying goes, a fish rots from the head — and in the education context, programmatic decisions like these are made by elected officials serving on school boards. One such example is Fairfax County Public Schools board member Abrar Omeish, who called for jihad in a graduation speech a month after posting on Facebook, "[h]urts my heart to celebrate while Israel kills Palestinians & desecrates the Holy Land right now. Apartheid & colonization were wrong yesterday and will be today, here and there."

And finally, given recent national attention about the impact of foreign funding on the American education system, it's worth pointing out that significant donations have flowed to K-12 schools across the country from Qatar, a nation not historically known for its love of Israel. Six years ago, the Wall Street Journal noted that "[t]he Qatar Foundation gave $30.6 million over the past eight years to several dozen schools from New York to Oregon and supporting initiatives to create or encourage the growth of Arabic programs, including paying for teacher training, materials and salaries." Far too little is known about the scope and impact of these gifts.

Over the past several years, districts have rushed to release public statements condemning violence in Ukraine, court decisions in the Breonna Taylor murder, and even the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. Yet today, there is deafening silence from nearly all of America’s 13,500 school districts on the largest one-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Many non-Jews have stayed silent, too, perhaps believing that this is not their fight. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Look no further than districts implementing "land acknowledgment" statements — in districts from Washington, D.C. , to North Dakota and Maine . If the term "stolen land" sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same rhetoric used by Hamas to justify its murderous rampage. Logic puzzle time: If Israel is stolen land, so an attack on Israel is justified, then what happens if America is also stolen land? That’s right: attacks on the U.S. would be just as justified.

On Sept. 12, 2001, the world stood with America against terrorists. This week — now more than ever — is the time to demand that our schools take steps to eradicate anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias from classrooms.


Jerusalem Cardinal Says Now Is Not The Time To Ask Israel To Make Peace Deal

Egypt’s Sissi says Israeli Gaza campaign has gone ‘beyond right to self-defense’





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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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