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Friday, October 20, 2023

10/20 Links Pt2: Why a Nice Girl Vandalizes Israeli Hostage Rescue Posters; Inside Black Lives Matter's Long History With Hamas-Friendly Activists

From Ian:

Why a Nice Girl Vandalizes Israeli Hostage Rescue Posters
Yazmeen Deyhimi, who the organization Stop Antisemitism identified as one of two New York University students caught on video tearing down flyers depicting the faces of people Hamas kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, began volunteering for the Anti-Defamation League when she was just a freshman in high school. While still a young teen, she “took part in the ADL Peer Training Program,” according to a short biography of Deyhimi included in the ADL of New York and New Jersey’s announcement of its 2019 high school summer intern class. “She quickly joined the No Place for Hate Committee and has been committed to help facilitate events such as Unity and Equality Days,” the blurb continued.

The then-high school junior was a Girl Scout, as well as a tennis instructor for the underprivileged. “She is,” we learn, “extremely passionate about fighting racial profiling and championing gender equality.”

The ADL could not have been expected to know that a bright and socially conscious high school student from the extremist hotbed of Port Washington, New York, would proudly announce a sociopathic lack of sympathy for Jews in terrorist captivity four years later. At the same time, Deyhimi’s story is a look into how little sticking power the ADL’s brand of consensus-seeking, center-left politics might have in the long run, even with people who volunteered with the group through most of high school. “We fully condemn her actions and hope that the apology she issued is the first step towards working to repair the harm and deep hurt her actions caused,” an ADL spokesman told Tablet by email when asked about Deyhimi.

“As a matter of policy, ADL does not comment on personnel matters,” the ADL spokesman wrote. “However, we will say that ADL and our staff are steadfast in our support of Israel, that our body of work speaks for itself, and that we are grateful for the tireless efforts of the entire ADL team in the wake of the largest mass murder of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

Deyhimi’s apology, which came after she was widely identified by name on social media, opened with the acknowledgement that “My actions that were caught on camera are a poor representation of what I believe: all innocent lives—Israeli and Palestinian—should be spared and all terrorist organizations should be condemned and punished.” The sentiment is blameless, of course. Who could argue otherwise?

In her apology, the NYU junior proved herself to be a fluent writer of officialese, proof her education at a hyperselective American college did not go to waste. What do young high-achievers learn at expensive universities these days—aside from, perhaps, the necessity of supporting terror attacks against Israeli families, children, and old people, of course—if not the language of virtuous self-presentation, a survival skill in a world in which one might flip from being a victim to victimizer in a hot minute? Handling these kinds of passages is a delicate art, worthy of the courtiers of Versailles.

As the NYU junior continued, “I have found it increasingly difficult to take my place as a biracial brown woman, especially during these highly volatile times. I find myself more and more frustrated about the time we currently find ourselves in.”

The honesty is laudable, and it is hard not to identify with it, whatever your beliefs about the war: Everyone is at least a little frustrated right now. People want to repair a horrific breach in reality, wherever they are and however they can, even if their real motive isn’t to improve much of anything in the external world but to quiet their own inner turmoil. All the better if one’s emotional pain-relief racks up the maximum number of points on the great peer group-social, media-victimhood scoreboard.

While tearing down flyers of kidnapped Jews isn’t most people’s idea of helping the situation, or seems a strange way of assuaging an individual sense of helplessness, the thought process Deyhimi describes in her apology is chillingly legible, common to people of good and ill intent on both sides of this awful conflict. We all want to do something, don’t we? But do what? Hard to say, now that “reality” is an increasingly vague chaos in which our own ever-multiplying “identities” can seem like the last pillars of certainty.

People want to repair a horrific breach in reality, wherever they are and however they can, even if their real motive isn’t to improve much of anything in the external world but to quiet their own inner turmoil.

Deyhimi’s trajectory tracks with that of a generation of rising elites for whom staid, establishment institutions have served as a pipeline to a much edgier, more militant set of values, which themselves are admission tickets to prestige institutions. Thirty student groups at Harvard, including, initially, the university’s Amnesty International chapter, signed on to a statement endorsing Hamas’ slaughter of 1,400 Israelis—many of them believing, no doubt, that a public display of fealty to a terror group wouldn’t hurt them in the elite job market.
Daniel Greenfield: 1 in 10 College Students Support Hamas Atrocities
Some people are describing this poll as good news. It only seems that way because we’ve lowered the bar so drastically that anything short of a majority committing to bombing the Empire State Building seems good.

It’s not good news.
The poll finds 86% of college students saying they’re aware of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. And of that share, 67% describe the attack as an act of terrorism by Hamas, versus 12% who see it as a justified act of resistance by Hamas. Another 21% describe it as something else other than an act of terrorism or resistance.

1 in 10 college students support the murder, rape and kidnapping of Israeli civilians. Only 2 out of 3 can even bring themselves to call it terrorism. 1 in 5 are not even sure how to define it, but don’t want to call it terrorism.

These are catastrophic numbers for what should have been the lowest of low bars, horrifying atrocities against civilians caught on video and recorded in photos, widely discussed and made available, and not even 70% will call it terrorism.

The numbers predictably get worse with party and race breakdowns.
By party, 73% of Republicans, 50% of Democrats and 50% of independents say they blame Hamas for the attack on Israel.

And by race, 58% of white college students, 47% of Latinos and 36% of Black college students believe Hamas deserves blame for the attack.


50% among non-Republicans. Not even a majority among non-whites. A third among black people.

Generation Lab doesn’t make its polls public so I can’t dig into the data any further, but there’s little here that inspires optimism and plenty that shows where the hate on campus is coming from.
Kassy Dillon: Father of IDF reservists compares those denying Hamas’ brutality to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels
An American frustrated by activists downplaying Hamas' brutal attack detailed the horrific massacres his family in the Israel Defense Forces have seen.

"Anybody who claims that this didn't happen is just denying the truth and is part of the problem and should be lumped together with the people of Hamas," Marc Tobin, who lives in Israel, told Fox News.

Some activists around the U.S. protesting the Hamas-Israel war have downplayed Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers and resulted in nearly 200 hostages. Anti-Israel demonstrators have called Hamas' massacres "resistance," accused Israel of genocide for carrying out retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza and been filmed ripping down posters of Israeli hostages.

In response, Tobin, who has three sons and 13 nephews serving in the IDF, relayed his families' experiences. The IDF sent his middle son to the Gaza border last Monday to find terrorists still in Israel and to ensure survivors were accounted for in the nearby villages. He and his fellow soldiers went door-to-door in Kfar Aza.

"Unfortunately, they saw the massacre," Tobin said. "A lot of the bodies had been put into — already — body bags so they saw all the different sizes of bodies, the adults, the children and unfortunately, the infants."

Tobin said his son fortunately didn't see the bodies before they were put in bags, "but there were enough in his unit that did see that people were butchered." body bags israeli soldiers

Israeli soldiers remove bodies of civilians who were killed days earlier during Hamas terrorists' attack in Kfar Aza, Israel. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office last week released photos of babies that it says Hamas terrorists "murdered and burned" in Kfar Aza during the attack. More than 70 of the kibbutz's 765 residents were killed, according to the Times of Israel.

IDF troops found about 200 dead, including babies, some of whom they said were decapitated, Israeli media reported.

"I think Hamas is just like the Nazis were," Tobin said.

Tobin said protesters and activists ignoring Hamas' atrocities are taking a page out of Adolf Hitler’s chief propagandist's playbook to create and spread disinformation.

"[Joseph] Goebbels had a strategy of if you say it enough, then people believe it," he said.
‘You Are a Coward’: Israeli Columbia University Professor Calls Out President for Silence on Pro-Hamas Protests
Columbia University professor Shai Davidai this week gave a thunderous speech before a crowd of students and others gathered on campus, calling the school’s president a “coward” for refusing to condemn Hamas apologists and anti-Israel demonstrations on campus.

“I’m talking to you as a dad, and I want you to know we cannot protect your children from pro-terror student organizations, because the president of Columbia University will not speak out,” said Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School in New York City. “Citizens of the US are right now kidnapped in Gaza, and yet the president of the university is allowing — is giving — her support to pro-terror student organizations.”

Davidai, who is Israeli, added that he is disturbed that activists in the US denouncing Israel and defending Hamas seem to believe that murdering children — as Hamas did during its invasion of Israel on Oct. 7 — is an acceptable form of political action, explaining that based on their beliefs, his own young children are seen as targets.

“I’ll name it now,” he continued. “Minouche Shafik, president of Columbia University, you are a coward. Because, if President Biden can come up and say, ‘No this is unacceptable, this is inhumane,’ and if Eric Adams, mayor of New York City, is able to say, ‘This is not OK,’ then where are you, President Shafik of Columbia University? We are waiting for you to eradicate all pro-terror student organizations from campus.”

Davidai asked everyone in the crowd around him to take out their phones and film him so the parents of Columbia students can learn about where they sent their children.

In two public statements issued since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist onslaught in which over 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, were murdered, Shafik said she was “devastated by the horrific attack” but declined to weigh in on a contentious campus dispute between pro-Israel supporters and pro-Palestinian activists. She only said that “some are using this moment to spread antisemitism, Islamophobia, bigotry against Palestinians and Israelis, and various forms of hate.”

Left-wing students have attacked Shafik as well. In a recent op-ed in Columbia’s student newspaper, the school’s Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters accused her of “failing … Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Black, Brown, and Jewish student activists.” The groups wanted Shafik to say there “is an escalation of ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.”
An Open Letter to Every Parent in America
Please help me share this video as widely as possible.

I am begging you - Please help me protect your children.

I am begging you - send this video to 5 parents that you know right now.

Parents need to know. Parents DESERVE to know.


Inside Black Lives Matter's Long History With Hamas-Friendly Activists
Black Lives Matter chapters across the country made waves last week when they excused and explained away Hamas’s attack on Israel.

A coalition of 26 local chapters called the attacks a "desperate act of self-defense." The Chicago chapter shared an image glorifying Hamas gunmen on paragliders, before walking it back amid blowback. And the movement’s Phoenix branch praised Hamas "freedom fighters" for their acts of "resistance."

Echoing this rhetoric are two Hamas-friendly groups—American Muslims for Palestine and the Council for American-Islamic Relations—that have for nearly a decade worked arm-in-arm with the Black Lives Matter organization to plan rallies and lobby lawmakers.

The groups are united by an "oppressed-oppressor narrative that helps them destroy society," according to the Heritage Foundation's Mike Gonzalez.

"They see Israel as a kind of mini-me of the West and America," Gonzalez told the Washington Free Beacon. "They hate the West. Jerusalem is one of the founding blocks of Western thought, so if they're going to hate the West they have to hate Israel."

American Muslims for Palestine, whose board includes a man, Salah Sarsour, who helped raise funds for a Hamas front group in the late 1990s, declared itself "firmly in solidarity with Black Americans" and demanded "Justice for George Floyd" in 2020. It organized Black Lives Matter rallies in Dallas in 2020 and the following year cosponsored a rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial to demand the Biden administration to sanction Israel.

Speaking at the American Muslims for Palestine event in 2021, one Black Lives Matter leader articulated the groups’ shared commitment to destroying Israel.

"Black people know when Zionists try to twist the words of black brothers across the world," Black Lives Matter DC organizer Anthony Lorenzo Green said "I’m not just an ally, I’m your comrade. I’m in this struggle with you. Our struggles our connected. That’s why Palestinian flags were flying at Black Lives Matter protests last year and years before that."

"That’s why we can speak clearly that Israel is an apartheid state," Green declared, adding "From D.C. to Palestine, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." "From the river to the sea" is a slogan used by Hamas and other anti-Semitic groups to call for the destruction of the Jewish state.


Intel pulls out of Web Summit after founder accused Israel of war crimes

Over 3,000 British Artists, Including Tilda Swinton, Demand Israeli Ceasefire in a Letter Now Being Slammed for Omitting Any Reference to Hamas



United Federation of Teachers Subsidiary Will Rally With Pro-Hamas Socialist Groups



Fired Miami dentist DEFENDS ripping down posters of Israeli kids kidnapped by Hamas - claiming it was 'to promote peace' and 'de-escalate' tensions between communities



NSW government media advisor Farah Abdurahman under investigation for appearing to defend Hamas terror attacks in lengthy LinkedIn post: 'Justice will be had'



Hollywood Agent to Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise Apologizes for Calling Israel’s Response to Hamas ‘Genocide’

“Pretty Unsettling” | Hundreds Of Pro-Palestinians Gathered In Front Of No 10 To Pray The King has said there is a “vital” need for mutual understanding among religions in times of “international turmoil and heartbreaking loss of life” as the violent conflict in Israel continues.

Charles’s comments on religious tolerance came in a state of the nation address, where he praised everything from the positive contribution of immigrants to national values like the British sense of humour.

Isabel Oakeshott says: “As he was making speech, there were hundreds of Palestinian supporters gathering on Withe Hall… to pray, I find that pretty unsettling”



MTV axes Europe Music Awards 2023 in Paris amid Israel-Gaza crisis
MTV has cancelled its Europe Music Awards 2023 due to the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Organisers are adamant the award ceremony will go ahead in 2024.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the event said, "Given the volatility of world events, we have decided not to move forward with the 2023 MTV EMAs”.

“Out of an abundance of caution for the thousands of employees, crew members, artists, fans, and partners who travel from all corners of the world,” MTV spokesperson said.

"To bring the show to life. The MTV EMAs are an annual celebration of global music.

“As we watch the devastating events in Israel and Gaza continue to unfold, this does not feel like a moment for a global celebration."




Amazon Labor Union President Celebrates Hamas Attacks

Trans professor apologizes after calling Israelis 'irredeemable excrement'

Boston City Councilor Sparks Outrage by Describing Hamas Terror Attack on Israel as a ‘Military Operation’



'Why should I condemn anything?' – SJP President Refuses to Condemn Hamas
Campus Reform Correspondent Austin Browne recently spoke with Tala Alsharif, President of Students for Justice in Palestine at Youngstown State University in Ohio, who repeatedly declined to condemn Hamas.








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