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Friday, October 20, 2023

10/20 Links Pt3: 2 Israeli-Americans hostages released; A ceasefire would normalise the pogrom; Courage in an age of moral degeneracy; A new generation of hate rises in America

From Ian:

Cary Nelson: A ceasefire would normalise the pogrom
Two to three thousand members of highly organised murder squads cross an international border and set about murdering civilians in as gruesome and indiscriminate a manner imaginable. In fact, the wanton indulgence in blood lust exceeds anything that had been foreseen or imagined. With that barbaric mission completed in a day, some in the international community immediately begin calling for a ceasefire. The critical point to make is that a ceasefire keeps Hamas in power. The consequences of that must be faced.

Those urging a ceasefire stand behind what appears to be the most basic humanitarian motive: prevent further loss of life; end the massacre of innocent civilians. And then the coup de grace is delivered in hypocritical feel good rhetoric: everyone should respect international humanitarian law. Except that Hamas never has and never will honour international humanitarian law.

Meanwhile, no reprisals for murdering men, women, and children are to follow. No sanctions. No punishments. No accountability. The barbaric intimacy of so many of the killings is to be met with stability, frozen in time. We are all to accept what happened and move on.

Fools, hypocrites, dreamers, and antisemites alike stand in solidarity. Except that if the crimes are allowed to stand unanswered they will be repeated or more likely horrifically reinvented within a few years at most. A new standard for monstrous assault on Israelis will be in place.

Keep in mind that many in the international community have advocated the normalising of repeated rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel. Since Iron Dome protects most Israelis, destroying the rockets in midair, that should suffice. Intercepting Hamas rockets constitutes the moral limit of Israel’s right to defend itself.

Israel has but this one chance to demonstrate that organised, wanton, antisemitic murder sprees will not be tolerated. If it fails to do so, these new forms of Hamas butchery will become Israel’s new normal. Eliminating the invading killers will be the limit of Israel’s internationally acceptable response. If Israel wants to draw a line and establish that what Hamas did is absolutely unacceptable, it must respond in a way that is different in kind, not just degree. Simply increasing the number of air strikes will not suffice. The Hamas pogrom presents Israel with what really is this time an existential threat. It has to be treated that way.
Douglas Murray: A new generation of hate rises in America
Sure there have been pro-Israel protests. And people like Mayor Adams should be applauded for their strong stance in defense of the state which was actually attacked here.

But underneath that top-level things are very rotten indeed.

Look at the professor at Cornell who the Post exposed for calling Hamas’s massacre of over a thousand Israelis “exhilarating” and “energizing.”

Or NYC Councilman Charles Barron telling an anti-Israel rally in NY that Israelis were “European converts to Judaism” who had “stolen” Palestinian land. He went on to say “We can’t be kowtowed and afraid of the Israeli lobby.”

Or what about the member of the faculty at the Art Institute of Chicago, Mika Tosca, who this week called Israelis “pigs,” “savages” and “irredeemable excrement.”

Tosca calls herself a “radically optimistic transsexual climate scientist.” But I wonder if her dehumanizing, anti-Semitic language reminds anyone of anything?

Across this country there has been an outburst of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate.

And it isn’t from gnarled old bigots of the type Hollywood would paint.

It is from youngest people in the country. From the youngest members of Congress. From the youngest people on campus. And from people like Mika who think they’re radically progressive while saying the most regressive things imaginable.

One instructor at Stanford was suspended this week after singling out Jewish students from their classmates and referring to “Only 6 million” Jews being murdered in the Holocaust.

That clearly wasn’t enough for him. And it’s clearly not enough for many of the other psychopaths who have decided that the murder of Jews is a good moment to call for more of the same.

The top floors of the American apartment building may be OK. But down below it’s not. No other minority would put up with being murdered and then taunted for being murdered. I don’t know why Jews should either.

I’m relieved that they are being supported from the top. But where is the support on the streets? And what has happened to the rest of the damn building?
Melanie Phillips: Courage in an age of moral degeneracy
It’s very important, therefore, to acknowledge that this is itself a distorted picture of public opinion. There are millions of decent people who are horrified by what happened in Israel, who are aghast at the jubilant Jew-hatred now rampant on the streets and university campuses of Britain, America and elsewhere, and who understand that this evil that’s been unleashed threatens them too.

And there are also some individuals who are bravely and publicly telling the unambiguous truth, and confronting head-on the nauseating hypocrisy and cowardice of the so-called liberals who are dominant in political and cultural life and whose accommodation with evil has brought western civilisation to this terrifying inflexion point in its existence.

Here are some who have caught my eye over the past few days.
This is Mohammad Kabiya, an Israeli Arab Muslim reservist in the Israel Defence Forces, telling the unvarnished truth about Hamas and Israel’s need to defend itself — while the BBC Arabic station’s anchor vainly tries to “put the other side”, ie defend Hamas, in the BBC style to which we have become accustomed.

This is Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, packing a terrific emotional punch at a “New York Stands With Israel” rally.

“You marched with us with Dr. King. You stood with us with all the fights we have. And I’m saying we’re going to stand with you and stand united together. And we don’t have to be all right. We should be angry at what we saw. Thank you, Israel.”
The British commentator and author Douglas Murray, interviewed on Talk TV by Julia Hartley-Brewer, took apart the “deep perversion” of Britain’s callow and idiotic requirement for Israel alone to make a “proportionate response” to genocidal attack. To watch, click here.

This is British politics professor Matthew Goodwin on BBC TV’s Politics Live, letting fly at the BBC’s coverage of Israel and Hamas.

“I can’t remember a time in my life when I’ve felt more ashamed by our national debate”. Read Matt’s Substack blog here.
This is US Senator Ted Cruz, at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee confirmation hearing for the prospective US ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew, absolutely ripping into both Lew and the Biden administration over their responsibility for the Hamas pogrom by having systematically appeased and empowered Iran. Epic.

Finally for now, Shai Davidai, an Israeli-American Assistant Professor of Management at Columbia Business School, New York, called out university presidents by name for allowing incitement against Jews by pro-terror organisations on campus.

“To the pro-terror organisations on campus…my two year-old daughter is a legitimate target of resistance; that’s what they’re saying, you’re allowed to murder and kidnap my two year-old daughter in the name of resistance; and none of the presidents of universities all around the country are willing to take a stand”.


2 Israeli-Americans released from Hamas captivity after Qatari mediation
Hamas terrorists on Friday freed two Americans – a mother and her teenage daughter named Judith Tai and Natalie Raanan – who had been held hostage in Gaza since terrorists rampaged through Israel two weeks ago.

The two, who are from the Chicago area, had arrived to visit another relative in Nahal Oz, their mother and grandmother respectively, when the Oct. 7 onslaught began. While some of their relatives were murdered by Hamas, the two women were taken by force to Gaza. The two were released around 8 p.m. Friday, through Egypt, and then flown to an IDF base in Israel. It was unclear if Israel was part of the deal, although it is likely that the Israeli decision to let in humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, at the request of the US, played a role in securing the two's release.

The pair were the first hostages to be released, and more than 200 are still being held. Hamas said it was releasing them in an agreement with the Qatari government for humanitarian reasons.

Relatives of other captives welcomed the release and appealed for others to be freed.

"We call on world leaders and the international community to exert their full power in order to act for the release of all the hostages and missing,'' the statement said.


A Time for War
The earth is still running with rivers of blood from our brothers and sisters who were raped and slaughtered and burned alive. Their blood cries out from the ground calling for the elimination of the evil that caused their deaths and to avenge them. What happened on Oct. 7 in the Jewish communities along the Gaza border was genocide, a shocking proof of what these savages would do to us all, given half a chance.

U.S. President Joe Biden has demonstrated his deep commitment to the State of Israel. Thank you, Mr. President. We will always remember that you stood by us during this dark period. Nevertheless, Biden still holds that "Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people," another case of Western wishful thinking. Gazans elected Hamas. Every poll shows that Hamas would win new elections.

The savages who slaughtered and raped and looted and beheaded were a mix of trained terrorists and "ordinary" Gazans who came to participate in the butchery and looting. In the streets of Gaza, too, the mob cheered the "heroism" of the martyrs and praised the rape of our daughters and the murderers of our children. Where did tens of thousands of Hamas terrorists come from? From the Gazan public.
Anti-Israel Demonstrators Rejoiced Not Despite the Brutality, but Because of It
Of course, Western activists who claim to be agitated about the parlous state of Gazans will not be protesting at the Egyptian or Jordanian embassies. But there have been demonstrations in the U.S., and in several European cities, that can only be described as pro-Hamas. And these began not as a reaction to Israel’s military response to the assault on its population, but as a reaction to Hamas’s assault itself. Just yesterday, a video circulated on social media that appeared to show students marching through the halls of a California high school chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” Theodore Dalrymple reflects on the situation in Britain:

The sight of thousands of young people in London celebrating the massacres that Hamas committed in Israel unsurprisingly made many people’s blood run cold. The demonstrators rejoiced not despite the brutality of what was done but because of it.

What must the celebrants have believed to celebrate in this fashion? It was impossible that they were uninformed as to some of the details of what Hamas had done; nor did they deny the reality of these atrocities. If Hamas had merely sent rockets into Israel that destroyed some, or even many, buildings, there would not have been the same rejoicing. It was the brutality and sadism—the beheaded or burnt babies—that made the difference and was the cause of so much pleasure and joy.

There has long been a tendency in some intellectual circles to believe that the justice of a cause must be proportional to the lengths that people are willing to go to promote it. Only very desperate people, the argument goes, would do such things; therefore, since they do such things, they must be desperate. The truth is otherwise.
Bari Weiss: The Stories—and Stakes—of War in Israel
Internationally, some of the most educated people—including students, professors, and administrators at the most elite universities in the world—have either equivocated or remained silent in the face of mass atrocities. Others, by the tens of thousands, have taken to the streets to rejoice in the terrorist attack, screaming “resistance is justified” and “glory to the martyrs.”

That is why this story matters. Because this is not just a war in a faraway land; it’s a battle for civilization itself. As my friend Sam Harris recently said, “There are not many bright lines that divide good and evil in our world, but this is one of them.”

This war should matter to everyone—not just Jews—who care about the future of civilization. Because if there is one lesson from history, it’s that what starts with the Jews never ends with them. And societies in which the Jewish people are persecuted are societies in which no one is safe.

That is why we will continue to report on this war with such urgency.

On today’s episode, you’ll hear just nine of the stories from the more than three dozen Israelis we have spoken to since the attacks on October 7. We talk to a woman, Shaked, who tells us that eleven of her family members—including her three- and eight-year-old niece and nephew—were taken hostage by Hamas. We talk to survivors of the Nova music festival, like Amit and Chen, who miraculously escaped. We talk to a father whose son, Hersh, was kidnapped from the music festival, and to a mother whose daughter, Oriya, was killed there. We talk to a grandmother who hid in the safe room of her home for hours with her 10-day-old grandson as terrorists shot at them from the other side of the door.

These stories are difficult to hear. But we will keep reporting them, and hope that you will take the time to listen them, and to share.
Israel war: Why Jews are terrified
No, what terrifies Jews like me is not necessarily the knowledge that radical Islamic groups in the Middle East would delight in the mass murder of Jews.

Instead, it is the widespread, unapologetic, and bloodthirsty celebration of antisemitic genocide on Western streets. People in Sydney chanting, “gas the Jews.” People in London marched in favor of a 21st-century Holocaust. New York City — home to more Jews than any other place on Earth outside of Israel — grinding to a halt as Americans, draped in Palestinian flags, cheer on the rape, burning, mutilation, decapitation, torture, and murder of men, women, children, and babies simply because they’re Jewish.

And all while the fires of rage are fueled by figures such as Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who proudly spreads the now-debunked claim that Israel destroyed a Gaza hospital. Such propaganda amounts to nothing short of a blood libel.

The vile rhetoric we have seen explode across the supposedly civilized and tolerant Western world is indistinguishable from the propaganda of Nazi Germany. If anything, the actions and language of Hamas are worse, not in scale but in attitude. After all, Nazi Germany covered up its unspeakable crimes. Hamas boasts of them.

And while public support was almost universally in favor of Israel in the immediate aftermath of the attack, Jews will notice a familiar pattern: The world is far more comfortable with Jews as silent and willing victims. The moment Jews dare to do what they have been unable to do for thousands of years of persecution — fight back, the world becomes immediately uncomfortable. Suddenly, phrases such as “de-escalation,” “proportionality,” and “cycle of violence” creep back into the conversation in a way that they wouldn’t have had any other group been attacked.

So why are Jews terrified? Because we are witnessing the rebirth of modern-day Nazism in the form of Medieval radical Islamic barbarism, and it’s a rebirth that has not only been willingly imported by the countries that defeated Nazism in the 20th century but is rapidly taking control, reminding Jews (yet again) that nowhere is safe.
The least grateful generation
Students in masks — is that meant to signal moral virtue or vice? I can’t tell anymore — at George Washington University held an event called “ Vigil for the Martyrs of Palestine ” that mourned the death of Hamas terrorists who had just finished raping, torturing, and murdering 1,400 Israelis. On campuses across the country, flyers that featured the hang-gliders used by the terrorists were distributed for events such as these.

It has long been clear that we’ve failed these children, but to see it laid bare like this is terrible and painful. We inherited a level of prosperity unknown to the kings and queens of history, but we taught our children to despise the very ground upon which it was built; to despise not only their enemies, real and supposed, but the whole of existence including themselves.

They, like the suicidal psychopaths of Hamas, see humanity as a blight.

Sit in an environmental studies lecture for five minutes, and you’ll see they are not interested in saving the world for the sake of humanity but in saving the world from humanity. When the next wave of Jihadi terror reaches our shores — and it will — it breaks my heart to consider whether or not they will mourn or celebrate with their professors because I’m sure the latter is true.

At root is a profound ingratitude for the unfathomable gift of life — in this age or any. May God have mercy on us.


On Israel, Progressive Jews Feel Abandoned by Their Left-Wing Allies
Progressive Jews who have spent years supporting racial equity, gay and transgender rights, abortion rights and other causes on the American left — including opposing Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank — are suddenly feeling abandoned by those who they long thought of as allies. This wartime shift represents a fundamental break within a liberal coalition that has long powered the Democratic Party.

In Los Angeles, Rabbi Sharon Brous, a well-known progressive activist who regularly criticizes the Israeli government, described from the pulpit her horror and feelings of “existential loneliness,” her voice breaking. “The clear message from many in the world, especially from our world — those who claim to care the most about justice and human dignity — is that these Israeli victims somehow deserved this terrible fate.”

In Atlanta, a Jewish mother involved in local politics wrote an open letter lamenting that her child’s progressive private school had not addressed the attacks in Israel with the same kind of empathy it showed after local killings of Asian Americans. “Our people are butchered, and no one speaks to it?” she wrote. “I don’t know if I’m seething or just sad.”

And as the Hamas attacks in Israel were still underway, leaders of the New Israel Fund, which supports progressive Israeli and Palestinian groups, fielded calls from a former American ally on the left demanding that the organization label Israel an “apartheid state” — even as they waited to learn if colleagues in another organization, hiding in Israeli bomb shelters, had been killed.

Many of the most inflammatory comments came on social media, from progressive groups that responded to the immediate aftermath of the massacre of Israeli civilians by skipping even a moment of mourning and instead moving immediately to try to justify the attack.

“When a people have been subject to decades of apartheid and unimaginable violence, their resistance must not be condemned, but understood as a desperate act of self-defense,” Black Lives Matter Los Angeles posted on Facebook, in its first response to the attack. A reproductive-rights group sharply criticized the “Zionist occupation,” saying that the Israeli government denied “Palestinians control over their bodies” and that “there can be no justice, peace or reproductive freedom underneath colonial occupation.” A number of socialist organizations across the country did not directly condemn the killings by Hamas.


Gerald Steinberg, Founder of NGO Monitor, Speaks on the Human Rights Crisis in the Israel-Hamas War
During this briefing, we discussed the disparate media coverage of Israelis and Palestinian lives impacted by the violence of the Israel-Hamas War.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments and don’t forget to subscribe for more content about the global fight against antisemitism!




The Libertarian PodCast: Word Salads and Rockets: Fighting Hamas On Campus and In Israel
Hosted by Richard Epstein & Tom Church
Richard Epstein discusses the pro-Hamas attitudes on college campuses and weighs in on Israel’s end goal for Hamas
Call Me Back - with Dan Senor: The Laws of War — with Matt Waxman
In President Biden’s address from the Oval Office, we continue to hear calls for Israel to respect the laws of war. In recent days, we have also heard others call for “proportionality” in Israel’s response. What does that actually mean? According to what definition of proportionality? And according to whose rules? Is Israel subjected to different rules of war than other countries? Is Hamas a different kind of enemy? These are some of the issues we get into with Matt Waxman, who is Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where he chairs the National Security Law Program.

He is also Adjunct Senior Fellow for Law & Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, and he is affiliated with the Lieber Institute for Law & Warfare at West Point.

Among his many areas of expertise, Matt is a scholar of the laws of war, including their history and their application to new technologies of warfare.

During the Bush administration, Matt served in senior positions at the U.S. State Department, Defense Department, and National Security Council.

Earlier in his career, he was a defense analyst at RAND, where among other things he worked on the law and strategy of urban warfare.
Jews of the Left
I was waking up to the apathy of the same left which claims to care about marginalized groups and claims to “uplift” their voices; validate their truths; dismantle the systems that oppress them. And now we are waking up to an even starker truth: that millions of people love dead Jews and can’t stand living ones. That many of the sympathetic check-ins we received after the 2018 Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh came not because innocent Jews had been murdered, but because they were murdered by the wrong kind of person, and for the wrong reasons.

If people will shrug off beatings and swastikas, they’ll shrug off stabbings and shootings.

That’s when I realized: Jews are in an abusive relationship with our progressive friends. It’s terrifying to realize this. You’ll cry. You’ll tremble. Your mind will race. And you’ll react in one of several ways:

Go silent. You avoid discussing the situation at all. You pretend the massacre and the mob praising it will spare you if you play spiritually dead.

Rationalize. You blame your own people for the massacre. You loudly condemn Israel, hoping the forces of hatred will claim only Jews with the audacity to declare their right to live.

Minimize. You tell yourself that the friends justifying the slaughter of your 1,400 cousins are motivated by misplaced principles, that they just don’t understand, that they just need to learn a bit more history.

These are all understandable responses. They’re survival strategies that many of us have tried to use for centuries. Ultimately, they never work.

But there’s one other option: confronting the abuse directly. Refusing to be gaslit into thinking that an organization openly founded on the principle of killing Jews somehow doesn’t really hate Jews, or that their apologists—some of whom you go to school or work with—aren’t tragically complicit in that hatred.

The idea of speaking out may terrify you. Your body and soul will contract, anticipating not only the jeering of your peers but also the shattering of your self-image. I’m not like my ultra-Zionist uncle. I’m not a Republican. I’m a peace-lover, a secularist, a progressive liberal.

The one thing you indisputably are, though, is a Jew. It’s not up to you. You can reject your Jewishness and it won’t matter. Even after Spain forcibly converted many Jews in 1391, it established an Inquisition to torment the converts (or “conversos”) it suspected of practicing Judaism secretly.
Why they kill Jews
There are several reasons why Israel has come to symbolise what many regard as the world’s evils. One main reason dates back to the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel defeated the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and other Arab nations. This had two effects. It humiliated the Arab regimes involved – so, rather than acknowledge their own failures, they claimed that Israel had immense power. And second, the defeat of these radical pan-Arabist regimes boosted their Islamist opponents in the region.

Another reason for the demonisation of Israel is that its victory in the Six-Day War also humiliated sections of the Western left. They were already critical of Israel, but after 1967 they doubled down. In doing so, they were able to draw on the tradition of Stalinist Zionology. In the Soviet Union, old-school anti-Semitic language had been generally frowned upon. So Stalinists simply used Zionism as a proxy for Jews. This made it relatively straightforward for them to reframe anti-Semitism as a principled objection to colonialism and imperialism. This Stalinist tactic has been adopted by many on today’s left.

There is another major reason why so many on the left single Israel and the Jews out as uniquely evil today, and that is the rise of identity politics. From identitarians’ perspective, Jews symbolise a great evil, because they are the supposed beneficiaries of white privilege. Jews’ relative success in American society has purportedly come about at the expense of people of colour. According to this pernicious view, Jews play a key role in America’s systemic oppression of black people.

As demonstrated above, modern anti-Semitism takes several different forms. But there is considerable overlap between them. Islamism can comfortably incorporate key elements of European anti-Semitism. And woke anti-Semitism can easily involve an obsessive hatred of Israel.

What the variants of modern anti-Semitism all share is their conception of Jews as symbolising a great evil. This evil can take the form of modernity or capitalism, colonialism or imperialism, racism or white privilege. In each case, the Jew is viewed as the personification of wickedness.

From this perspective, in which Jews represent evil, it is all too easy to draw the conclusion that purging the world of Jews is a righteous crusade. The conviction that Jews are evil motivated the Hamas terrorists when they crossed from Gaza to southern Israel on 7 October to slaughter Israelis. And it seemingly motivates many others around the world right now in their increasingly vicious crusade against Israel.

These are dangerous times indeed.
How the educated elites became Hamas apologists
There is a case to be made for Palestinian rights, of course. But what American students have indulged in over these past few weeks was not it.

In fact, the reaction from woke students to the Hamas attacks has been so extreme in places that it has finally managed to perturb the great and the good, who up until now have been nodding along as American ‘progressives’ became more and more deranged.

Larry Summers, former US treasury secretary and current Harvard president, called the letter from Harvard students ‘unfathomable’. I hate to break it to you, Larry, but you helped to create this mess – along with every other university administrator and member of the ultra-wealthy educational elite. For years, universities have patted these mini-tyrants on the head and indulged their LARPing as freedom fighters. You made this bed, and now it’s full of Hamas sympathisers. It’s a bit late to act surprised.

Of course, it’s not only American students who have behaved reprehensibly in the aftermath of the attack on Israel. Thousands of British and European artists penned an open letter accusing Israel of ‘unprecedented cruelty’ for its siege on Gaza, while saying nothing about Hamas’s murderous pogrom of Israelis. In Sydney, Australia, protesters chanted ‘Gas the Jews’. This is not just an American problem – it infuses all of the Western left.

The actions of the anti-Israel left are far more significant than mere culture-war fodder. They are dead canaries in a coal mine. They are a telling sign that rich nations are eating themselves alive. And that the supposedly most enlightened, peace-loving, diversity-celebrating generation in history has adopted values that are totally hostile to reason and tolerance.

We are far more lost as a society than any of us could have imagined.
Hamas is the enemy of the Palestinians
Hamas is clearly corrupt, brutal and nasty. Yet we rarely hear much about just how vicious a regime Hamas runs, because Hamas also arrests, tortures and detains journalists. It is eager for the local and international press to carry stories and images of Gazans’ deaths at the hands of an Israeli missile. But less keen for the media to carry stories and images of its own treatment of Gazans.

That Hamas can treat Gazans so callously and brutally should not surprise us. Formed by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987, Hamas does not share the interests of the Palestinian people. It is not concerned with establishing some form of Palestinian statehood, or securing rights and freedoms. No, its goals are near-enough apocalyptic – and genocidal.

Like the larger Islamist movement of which it is part, Hamas wants to wage war – perhaps the final war – against the Jews. It wants to destroy Israel, to cleanse the land of Jews ‘From the river to the sea’, as the slogan goes. ‘Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious’, reads one of the opening lines of Hamas’s 1988 founding charter. Hamas, it says, ‘is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy [Israel] is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised’.

This genocidal anti-Semitism doesn’t just pose a danger to Jews in Israel – it also makes any sort of political resolution of the Palestinian question near impossible. After all, how can Israelis be expected to make accommodations with a group that openly calls for their extinction? Meanwhile, the lives of the Palestinians are treated as mere fodder in this obscene, racist campaign.

And yet there are still many Western leftists proudly celebrating Hamas right now. There are many ‘radical’ academics cheering on Hamas’s pogrom of Jewish civilians as an act of resistance. And there are many poseurs flooding social media with Hamas-style anti-Zionism. These are not friends of the Gazans. They are friends of Hamas. And that makes them the enemies of the Palestinian people.
Ofcom cannot be trusted to regulate our speech
Ofcom is expanding. On top of regulating all radio and TV licensed for broadcast in the UK, it’s now set to receive yet more powers. Under the Online Safety Bill (currently awaiting royal assent) and the draft Media Bill, Ofcom can look forward to getting oversight over social-media giants like Facebook and X, as well as streaming services like Netflix.

Ofcom may have jumped the gun slightly by going on a hiring spree. On Monday, a new online-safety director, Fadzai Madzingira, had to be suspended. Why? It suddenly surfaced that she had liked an Instagram post accusing Israel of ‘the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians’. She even apparently posted a lengthy rant on her own Instagram calling Israel an ‘apartheid state’.

This has been a particularly embarrassing episode for Ofcom. Madzingira was appointed with great fanfare just four months ago. She was billed as a star recruit from Zimbabwe. She had a Rhodes scholarship, two master’s degrees from Oxford University and had worked at Meta (the owner of Facebook) and software giant Salesforce.

One bad apple, you might say. Possibly. But this should still worry us. Ofcom is the body tasked with deciding what large swathes of our media are allowed to tell us. In other words, it is the outfit responsible for deciding how much free speech we are permitted to hear. And soon, it will have those powers enormously augmented.
Where is the solidarity with Britain’s Jews?
A second vigil was held to mark the attacks on Sunday, this time in Parliament Square. While the first vigil focussed on the horror of murdered festival-goers, with politicians and speeches and loud youngsters singing and chanting their anger and sorrow, this second vigil was much more reflective. The focus was on those who were kidnapped and taken hostage by Hamas, some of whom have British relatives.

Speeches from rabbis and community leaders representing the families of the captive encouraged hope, compassion and solidarity. We were told that even as we supported Jews and Israelis at this time, in the midst of their suffering and fear, we ‘should not close our hearts to Palestinian grief’. The common thread through all the speeches was our shared humanity. Yet despairingly, as with the first vigil, and despite being still in the shadow of the pogrom, non-Jews were few.

A speaker suggested that non-Jews could help with sympathetic words to Jewish friends and neighbours. Perhaps even by giving them a hug. That so little is being asked of us is surely because so little is expected. And yet it has been an article of faith for decades, among liberal-minded people, that had they lived during the dark days of Nazi anti-Semitism, they would have placed themselves on the ‘right side of history’ by standing up to it.

Those would have been dangerous times for anyone who tried to stand in solidarity with Jewish people. To try to prevent or to condemn a pogrom in 1930s Munich or Berlin would have taken enormous courage. Today, we need only stand in the sunshine in Parliament Square or Whitehall on a bright October afternoon, and to tell our fellow citizens that we are with them unconditionally.

Sadly, as Hadley Freeman reminds us, our Jewish friends and neighbours are used to expecting less. But our shared humanity means they deserve so much more.
Daniel Greenfield: Obama, Iran and the Road to Gaza
Obama had corrupted both America and Israel into adopting the worldview that Islamic terrorism could not be defeated, only managed by making deals with even the worst possible terrorists. Hamas was treated as a rational actor which could be co-existed with as long as it had something tangible to gain from avoiding conflict. This same philosophy underlay the massive aid programs to rebuild Gaza after every war which provided Hamas with weapons and money.

It was and still is the philosophy behind the Iran Deal and in every attempt to reach an accommodation with Islamic terrorists. Foreign policy appeasers claimed to be realists and argued at every turn that the jihadists were reasonable and could be dealt with.

“We may disagree with them, but they have their own rationality, that’s the one thing to understand. These are not—none of them are crazies,” Rob Malley spoke of Hamas. “If you want to take Hamas at its word, its long-term objective is the destruction of Israel. But that’s not a practical or realistic goal, even for them,” Brent Scowcroft said dismissively.

The negotiations and agreements with Hamas and Iran, not to mention the Taliban, advocated by the realists fell apart badly. A political and military leadership, and diplomatic corps which had absorbed the nonsensical propositions of the realists was unable to see it coming. Its members refused to evacuate the embassy from Kabul until the very last minute because they were convinced that the Taliban were going to join a unity government. They are still trying to cut an interim nuclear deal with Iran. And they didn’t see a Hamas attack coming.

All the calculations of co-existence were wrong. The ideas that the Obama administration had passed off as reasonable, sensible and credible were actually delusions unmoored from reality.

“Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock,” Will Rogers had quipped.

That is still how our enemies practice diplomacy, but we keep saying ‘nice doggie’ without ever looking for a rock or realizing that we even need one. Saying ‘nice doggie’ has become a magical incantation that continues to be invoked no matter how often it fails.

Defeating Hamas and neutralizing Iran are more than military problems, they require the unlearning of the foolishly dangerous ideas injected into the establishment under Obama.

Barack Obama opened the road to Gaza with his outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iran Deal. Closing the door on Hamas will require also closing the door on Obama’s legacy.
Daniel Greenfield: It’s Islam, Stupid
Beslan. Mumbai. Paris. Manchester. New York City. Nairobi. Luxor. Sulu. Kibbutz Be’eri.

186 children murdered in a school in Beslan. Dozens of children taken hostage from a Catholic school in the Philippines. Two teachers were beheaded, but not the girls. “We do not kill women. We will just enslave them,” the Jihadists promised. 8-year-olds gunned down in the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. The terrorists asked their victims to name Mohammed’s mother to tell apart the non-Muslims from the Muslims. In Luxor, Egypt, the terrorists danced, sang and killed and mutilated the foreign tourists. They “took all the young women, the girls, and disappeared with them. I don’t know where they went with the women, but they hurt them. We could hear screams of pain.” Among the dead was Shaunnah Turner, a 5-year-old British girl.

Pregnant women and children murdered in Israel baffle the world. They seem implausible because each time they happen, we forget. A few days of horror pass and we move on.

When a Muslim terrorist set off a bomb in Manchester at a concert full of children and teens, there was shock and outrage. Nails were pulled out of children’s faces.

“This attack stands out for its appalling, sickening cowardice, deliberately targeting innocent, defenceless children and young people,” then Prime Minister Theresa May fumed.

That was 6 years ago. It might have been an eternity.

Our governments, talking heads and thought leaders find excuses for the killers. The Manchester Arena bomber was angry about the Syrian Civil War so he killed some British kids. Abu Sayyaf, ‘Bearers of the Sword’, keeps attacking Christian schools in the Philippines because it isn’t allowed to form its own state. The Jihadis who murdered children in Beslan were furious about Chechnya, in Nairobi, they were upset about Somalia, and in Luxor about the ban on the Muslim Brotherhood. In Israel, Hamas murdered children because the border wall makes their terror entity into an “open air prison” which prevents them from killing Israeli children.

We’re told not to look at the pattern. It’s Islamophobic. Instead we must take each attack not as a manifestation of Islam, but of local issues or a response to oppression. When Muslims gang raped and sawed in half a Hindu schoolteacher in Kashmir, it was about India’s treatment of Muslims. And when they rampaged through the Bataclan theater in Paris, killing everyone within reach, they were protesting France’s treatment of ISIS. And when they rape a woman at a concert in Israel by the bodies of her murdered friends, they’re protesting for Gaza.
Top US Lawmaker Calls on State Department to Declare Hamas Massacre a Genocide
US Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the chairman of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee, has called on the State Department to declare Hamas’ massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7 an act of genocide.

In a letter sent on Thursday to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack, McCaul described the legal requirements for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. He also listed evidence from Hamas itself to argue that the Palestinian terrorist group’s slaughter of more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, during its invasion of Israel met those requirements.

“Documents recovered from the Hamas death squads demonstrate that the assault was meticulously planned to devastate kibbutzim, schools, and youth centers, and to ‘kill as many people as possible,'” the letter says. “Hamas thus plainly intended to destroy ‘a substantial part’ of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Under such circumstances, the requisite intent for these atrocity crimes ‘is the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question.'”

McCaul said that Hamas’ atrocities, which resulted in the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, could rightly be compared to the “Einsatzgruppen” death squads of Nazi Germany, several of whose leaders were tried and executed after World War II.

“Following its deployment of mobile death squads to Israel, the name of Hamas will echo with Einsatzgruppen through the ages, as the essence of evil,” McCaul writes. “And like [Einsatzgruppe D commander] Otto Ohlendorf at Nuremberg, Hamas and its members must similarly be held accountable for these atrocities. At such times, the United States should answer the ‘plea of humanity to law.’ A formal determination by the State Department is a crucial reply toward that end.”

Under the 2018 Elie Wiesel Act, the executive branch of the US government is required to report to Congress about efforts to prevent atrocity crimes, including genocide. However, there is no formal US government process for determining whether an act of genocide has occurred.
‘If We Can Deport Hamas Supporters, We Should,’ German Interior Minister Declares
Germany’s Interior Minister said on Friday that she supported the deportation of Hamas supporters from the country, following several days of angry pro-Palestinian demonstrations along with an astronomical rise in the number of antisemitic incidents compared with the same period last year.

“If we can deport Hamas supporters, we have to do that,” Nancy Faeser told reporters at a press conference on Friday.

She added that the German “security authorities have currently placed an even stronger focus on the Islamist scene,” citing last Monday’s attack by an Islamist gunman in Brussels in which two Swedish citizens were murdered as a key reason for the growing concern.

Addressing the precipitous rise in antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel, with more than 1,100 recorded, Faeser said that while peaceful demonstrations were permitted, there would be “no tolerance for antisemitic and anti-Israel incitement and no tolerance for violence.”

Data published by the Federal Association of Antisemitism Research and Information Centers (RIAS), a government funded body, on Thursday showed a 240 percent increase in antisemitic incidents during the week that followed the pogrom. The vast majority — 91 percent — were motivated by hatred of the State of Israel.

The RIAS report’s release coincided with serious rioting by pro-Hamas agitators in Berlin’s heavily Muslim Neukölln district on Wednesday night, which resulted in injuries to 65 police officers and 174 arrests.

An attempted arson attack on Wednesday morning at a synagogue in Berlin failed to cause damage after the Molotov cocktails lobbed by the assailants missed their target and exploded on the sidewalk.


DHS must 'immediately' fire Hamas-allied official put on leave: Josh Hawley



Pentagon CFO’s Chief of Staff Has Family Ties to Islamic Terrorism



Newsom Publicly Backs Israel. His Private Fundraising Tells a Different Story.
California governor Gavin Newsom (D.) has publicly backed Israel since Hamas’s terror attack earlier this month, even announcing a surprise pit-stop in Israel to offer his state’s support. But privately, he has raised funds for the primary backer of a group that organized anti-Semitic and anti-Israel protests at California high schools.

More than 1,700 California Bay Area teens walked out of class on Wednesday, calling for the eradication of Israel with chants like, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." The protests were planned by the San Francisco-based Arab Resources and Organizing Center (AROC), a fiscally sponsored project of the progressive Tides Center, for which Newsom has raised more than $1 million from his donors.

Newsom on Oct. 7 condemned the terrorist attacks on Israel and declared that "California stands with Israel" as anti-Semitic protests erupted around the state. Yet the fiscal ties between this left-wing funding operation supported by California’s governor and AROC highlight how deeply anti-Israel activism has pervaded progressive institutions. AROC stated after the Hamas attacks that it holds Israel "entirely responsible for all unfolding violence."

The Tides Center is part of a vast Democratic financial network that includes the Tides Foundation and receives generous support from George Soros. Headquartered in San Francisco, Tides backs progressive causes and candidates through grant-making, fiscal sponsorships, and political advocacy. AROC is "incubated" at the Tides Center, which manages legal and financial red-tape for its sponsored projects so their leaders can focus on their mission.
Pro-Israel Dem’s Foundation Gave $1 Million to Group With Palestinian Terror Links
Pro-Israel Democratic representative Daniel Goldman’s (N.Y.) charitable foundation gave over $1 million to a group that bankrolled a progressive organization linked to Palestinian terrorism.

The Richard W. Goldman Family Foundation, a family foundation where Goldman served on the board until at least last year, has donated $1.2 million to the New Venture Fund (NVF), a major left-leaning, dark-money group, according to Fox News.

The NVF donated $38,000 to the Alliance for Global Justice for "environmental programs" in 2021 and $210,000 in 2020, according to the Washington Examiner. The alliance was recently dropped from Paypal, Stripe, and other fundraising platforms due to its sponsorship of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an Israel-designated terrorist group.

Goldman, who was visiting family in Tel Aviv during the terrorist attacks, has a pro-Israel record and decried the "death and destruction and savagery and massacre that the terrorists exacted on Israel." But the funding link between his family foundation, the New Venture Fund, and the Alliance for Global Justice is the latest example of how anti-Israel activism has become deeply intertwined with many progressive organizations.

BLM Chicago recently threw its support behind Hamas, posting an image on Twitter celebrating the terrorist group’s use of paragliders to breach the Israeli border and commit mass terror attacks. Left-wing groups at Harvard University, including the school’s Amnesty International chapter, released a statement blaming Israel for the atrocities committed by Hamas.

The Alliance for Global Justice, which manages and sponsors numerous progressive organizations, came under scrutiny for its "fiscal sponsorship" of Samidoun last year, prompting Paypal, Stripe, and Salsa Labs to block the alliance from using their funding platforms.
FLASHBACK: Congressional Dems Defend UN’s Anti-Semitic Palestinian Relief Agency
The widespread push from congressional Democrats to reinstate UNRWA aid—and largely ignore the agency's terror ties—reflects the left's alignment with top anti-Israel groups and actors. In addition to UNRWA, dozens of Democratic congressional members in 2019 privately issued letters of support to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an anti-Israel advocacy group that is now blaming the Jewish state for the Hamas terror attacks that killed more than 1,400 Israelis, including women and children. That attack, the council said, stemmed from the "Israeli government's apartheid policies" and other "root causes of Mideast violence."

Markey, Murphy, Brown, Jayapal, Lieu, and Pocan did not return requests for comment. In total, 102 House Democrats and 34 Senate Democrats signed letters urging the Trump administration to reinstate UNRWA aid in 2018. Those letters argued that withholding funds could "worsen the humanitarian crisis" and "spark an uprising." One letter, led by Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.), specifically cited UNRWA-funded schools, saying the lack of funds would be "devastating" for those schools and their attendees.

Congressional Democrats eventually got their wish in 2021, when the Biden administration approved a $150 million payment to the UNRWA, with hundreds of millions of dollars to follow in 2022 and 2023. While the agency, which did not return a request for comment, pledged to remove anti-Semitism from its textbooks, a 2022 report found that those books still contained incitement to violence against Israel. The agency last year moved to hide educational materials from its online portal.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, has expressed concern that its resumption of aid in Gaza could help terror groups such as Hamas. A March 2021 internal State Department memo, which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon earlier this year, cited a "high risk" that Hamas and other terror groups "could potentially derive indirect, unintentional benefit from U.S. assistance to Gaza."

"Notwithstanding this risk, State believes it is in our national security interest to provide assistance in the West Bank and Gaza to support the foreign policy objectives," the memo said.


Rebel News: How the Hamas surprise attack has completely changed Israel's approach to security
On last night's episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra was joined by Rebel News' Avi Yemini, who is currently in Israel reporting on the Israel-Hamas war. Avi was in Jerusalem to interview a contact who told him that since the war broke out with a surprise attack by Hamas on October 7, the entire country's attitude towards security has changed.


Unpacked: Who is Hamas?
Oct '23 Hamas-Israel War:
• Hamas-Israel War Has Changed Everything


On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israeli civilians in southern towns and communities bordering the Gaza Strip, in what was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Israel quickly declared war against the Gaza-based terrorist organization. With wars between Hamas and Israel breaking out every few years, one has to wonder...what is Hamas and how did it arise as the sole power governing Gaza today?




PreOccupiedTerritory: Fearing Détente With Israel, Leftist Group Prepares To Call Iran ‘Repressive,’ ‘Brutal7’ (satire)
An association of advocates for more accommodating American policy toward Teheran has begun to develop and assemble materials in case of a positive shift in Teheran attitudes toward the Jewish State, following the increasingly-likely downfall of the Ayatollah regime – materials that will, for the association’s first time, criticize the country for human rights abuses, sources within the group disclosed Thursday.

The Qatar-backed Middle East Policy Forum has consistently pushed for outcomes congruent with Iranian hegemonic ambitions and has downplayed Teheran’s violent repression of demonstrations for decades. However, aides to several senior MEPF figures told reporters that the possibility of Iranian reconciliation with Israel – with or without the collapse of the Islamic Revolution regime – will necessitate a new rhetorical line that, consistent with the group’s reaction to ongoing Israel-Arab normalization, will suddenly give robust attention to Iran’s mistreatment of its citizens and its malign activities throughout the region.

“There’s a growing chance that the Khamenei administration won’t last,” acknowledged a MEPF staffer who declined to give his name. “For one thing, he’s just plain old, and there are all sorts of rumors regarding his health. There’s no guarantee of a smooth transition to a successor, if he even designates one. So right there is one point of instability. We have to be ready to react to a different faction in Iranian society emerging as dominant, which means a shift on Israel, in which case human rights in Iran suddenly matter.”

“Then there’s the decreasing odds of an overthrow,” the staffer continued. “Demonstrations against Khamenei haven’t dwindled. More than a year into the current wave, they’ve only gained steam. This despite violent crackdowns and continued enforcement of unpopular hijab laws. The people of Iran are a lot more pro-Israel than the regime would ever admit, and regardless of how repressive the Shah was, that was a long time ago and the current leadership’s unpopularity means popular agreement with anything the leadership opposes – such as the Shah’s close ties to Israel.”
The Deadly Nature of Psychological Warfare
The international media again fell victim to the manipulative use of civilian deaths and unwittingly became a pawn in the hands of terrorists, as shown by the recent false reports of Israeli responsibility for a missile strike on a Gaza hospital. Psychological warfare fans the flames of incitement and reinforces the murderous plans of terrorists, who are given a pass by the media.

The rush to judgment after the self-inflicted attack by Gazan terrorists on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital is but another example of how the rules of reporting are no less important than the much-touted rules of war. Basic journalistic integrity includes verification, and that is precisely what the media outlets involved did not do.

While some media sources "protected" themselves by adding "Palestinians claim" or "according to Palestinian sources" after describing the attack, many did not. The first impression provided by the premature reports not only placed blame on Israel, but also contributed to inflaming the darkest passions of those who could easily turn to violence against innocents.

In this psychological war, the hostages are journalists. Let's all hope they free themselves sooner rather than later.
The US supports Israel because of ‘Jewish wealth’, claims BBC presenter
The BBC’s Spanish-language service released a program claiming that “Jewish wealth and influence” in the United States is the reason behind the United States’ ongoing support for Israel, according to a translation produced by Jewish News on October 20.

The show, Six Keys, featured BBC News Mundo presenter Gonzalo Cañada who claimed that Israel “is seen as an American enclave in the Middle East.”

In the program, Cañada claimed that Jews are a “powerful minority” in the United States.

Canada later said that“President Biden’s stance and his quick decision to support Israel militarily are not new in American politics. Therefore, we ask ourselves. Where does this unconditional support for Israel come from?

The BBC’s Spanish-language service has aired a program claiming “Jewish wealth and influence” in the United States motivates its support for Israel.

Fronting a show entitled ‘Six Keys which explain the US’s unconditional support for Israel’, BBC News Mundo presenter Gonzalo Cañada states that Israel “is seen as an American enclave in the Middle East” and speculates about the perceived influence of American Jews. “Currently, estimates indicate that Israel has around seven million Jews, while the United States has a community of around seven-and-a-half million Jews. Although Jews are a minority in the American population, they are a powerful minority.”


New York Times Rehires Hitler-Praising Hamas Propagandist for Gaza Hospital Coverage



Philadelphia Inquirer Retracts Anti-Semitic Cartoon Under Pressure From GOP Senate Candidate Dave McCormick



Rebel News: Meta CENSORS Rebel News' coverage of Hamas brutality
Avi Yemini details how Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is censoring footage detailing the horrific atrocities carried out by Hamas.


CBS’ Margaret Brennan Gives New Meaning To the Word ‘Anti-Semitic’



PragerU: Zionism: Why All the Controversy?
What is Zionism? And why does it generate so much controversy, even hatred? CJ Pearson explains the history and philosophy of this ancient promise.




College students organize ‘Day of Lovingkindness’ in solidarity with Israel
The Hamas terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip held an anti-Israel “Day of Jihad” on Oct. 13 putting Jewish organizations worldwide on high alert for antisemitic violence. Jewish college students are opting to fight fire with water with a “global day of lovingkindness” on Oct. 22.

“It’s difficult to see the degree of disrespect and antagonism that exists towards supporters of Israel,” said Uriel Sussman, a junior studying philosophy at Yeshiva University in New York City.

“I think the desire for positivity to combat the hatred that people are feeling has been one of the drivers of the global ‘Day of Lovingkindness’ campaign,” Sussman told JNS.

Yeshiva’s campus in Manhattan, where the undergraduate student body is virtually entirely Jewish and largely Orthodox, has been “particularly somber,” Sussman said. He said he hears “frightening and shocking” reports from friends on other campuses.

“If the supporters of Hamas are perpetuating violence and evil on a ‘Day of Jihad,’ then the supporters of Israel will call upon our values by spreading ahavah (‘love’) and building up the world with acts of compassion and righteousness on a ‘Day of Lovingkindness’ (chesed),” per the event’s website.

Sussman told JNS that after he conceived of the idea, he discussed it with Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, who told him: “Make it happen.”

“At the time, I had no idea what that meant,” Sussman said. “If I learned one thing from this campaign, it is that with a lot of hard work and a dedicated team, you can really make a difference in the world.”
Bedouin bus driver saves 30 people from the Negev rave massacre
Every day at 4 p.m., Youssef Ziadna receives a phone call from a psychologist. Every evening, he sits on his balcony drinking coffee, smoking, and replaying in his mind the worst things he has ever seen.

The daily routine would have been unimaginable for Ziadna, a 47-year-old Bedouin Israeli resident of Rahat, just two weeks ago. A minibus driver, he filled his days ferrying passengers around Israel’s southern region.

But on Oct. 7, he was called to pick up one of his regular customers and raced headlong in Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel. He ended up rescuing 30 people, all Jewish Israelis, from the massacre at the outdoor party near Israel’s southern border, dodging bullets and veering off-road to bring them to safety.

“I would never wish on anyone to see what I saw,” Ziadna told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “This is trauma for my whole life. When I sit alone and recollect, I can’t help the tears.”

Ziadna has joined an emerging pantheon of heroes who were able to carry out daring feats of rescue during a chaotic, dangerous and bloody attack in which thousands of Israelis were killed, wounded or taken captive. One of the people he saved posted about him on social media shortly afterwards.

Ziadna is “a larger-than-life man to whom we will forever be indebted,” Amit Hadar wrote in Hebrew in a post that was shared widely starting on Oct. 7. “When, with God’s help, we reach better days, save the number for the next time you need a ride — if anyone deserves it, this person does.”

Yet at the same time, Ziadna is grieving a cousin who was murdered during the attack and worrying about four other family members who remain missing. He also received a threat from someone who claimed to be affiliated with Hamas, vowing retaliation for Ziadna’s efforts to save Jews after they were recounted in a local newspaper. And he is concerned that his fellow Bedouins, a minority that remains marginalized in many ways within Israeli society, are at risk given the lack of bomb shelters in Rahat.

The stress of it all has already sent him to the emergency room with chest pains — but he is determined to press on.

“When I think about it, I ask how did we get out of there,” Ziadna recalled Monday, 10 days after the massacre. “I guess it’s fate that we’re meant to live longer in this world.”
Thousands rally in Times Square to demand release of Hamas hostages

‘The Saddest Shabbat Table in the World’: Italian Jews Highlight Plight of Israelis Held Captive by Hamas
The chair of the Jewish community in Rome, Victor Fadlun, on Friday presided over what he called the “saddest Shabbat table in the world,” as he attempted to drive home to the Italian public the plight of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas terrorists in the “hellish bunkers” of Gaza.

A long table set with challah, bottles of wine, and 203 empty chairs — one for each of the Israelis seized following the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7 — was laid out along the via Catalana, in the heart of the Italian capital’s Jewish quarter, as the community prepared to mark the Friday onset of Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. A post on Instagram from the community noted that “hundreds of Israelis are waiting for their relatives and friends; our Shabbat dinner table will not be complete until each of them returns home.”

Behind each chair was the name and the photograph of a hostage, many of whom are infants and young children as well as elderly people. Several hostages are also reported to have sustained physical injuries during the onslaught prior to being seized and taken to Gaza.

“Over 200 people who are locked down and imprisoned in Gaza,” Fadlun told the la Repubblica news outlet. “Among them there are children as young as a few months old and the elderly. Our hope is that this table will soon be full and that everyone will return home healthy.”

Fadlun then spoke of “an invisible table that’s even bigger” for the “over 1,300 barbarically murdered” during the Hamas onslaught.




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