Saturday, October 21, 2023

10/21 Links: Douglas Murray: The aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel has exposed the West’s moral collapse; Antisemitic NGOs justify terror in three stages

From Ian:

Josh Frydenberg: Terror, trauma, but still there is hope
I am anguished and anxious about the future.

When fears over safety see Jewish students afraid to attend lectures on campus, Jewish parents feel the need to keep their children home from school and Jewish schools advise students not to wear their uniforms that make them identifiable outside school grounds, we know we have a problem.

And when demonstrators in Sydney chant “f--- the Jews” and “gas the Jews”, we know just how dangerous and serious that problem really is.

What happened last week outside the Sydney Opera House was nothing short of an abomination. A national disgrace that has become an international embarrassment.

Just think for a moment what just happened in our own country. Instead of being able to show solidarity with Israel as our national icon was lit up in blue and white, sympathetic Australian Jews and non Jews were told to stay away for their own safety as a rampaging mob was given centre stage.

No such behaviour was tolerated near the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate or Number 10 Downing Street when they were lit up in blue and white. To the contrary, thousands rallied outside these landmarks, singing the Israeli national anthem, the Hatikvah, and showing their spontaneous support.

If that was not bad enough, it’s been reported that it was said to the leadership of the NSW Jewish community that “maybe it’ll just be easier if we don’t light up the Opera House to protect you people”.

“You people”: what a disgraceful term for a community of proud Australians that has never seen a conflict between their faith and their nationality. Loading

A community that has produced our greatest citizen-soldier Sir John Monash, governors’ general, governors, chief Justices, chief scientists, Nobel Prize winners, leading business figures, philanthropists, medical professionals, among so many others ...

I can dwell on the death, despair and darkness that is dominating debate, or I can share some of the lessons of history and what they tell us about how the light will shine again.

For more than 2000 years, the enemies of Israel have been seeking its destruction. The Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Nazis, to name just a few. But history tells us that the enemies of the past are no more. The Jewish people survived and Israel prospered.

So now, despite the huge challenges ahead, I see the light returning.

This is an excerpt of a speech given in Melbourne on Thursday night to support victims of terrorism.
Josh Frydenberg is the former treasurer of Australia.
Boris Johnson and Bernard-Henri Lévy: Our Support for Israel Is as Important as That for Ukraine
There can be no binary, zero-sum choice here—between helping the Ukrainians to fight Putin, and helping Israel to fight off the terrorists of Hamas. When we look at Putin’s thugs in Adviika, or jihadi thugs in Gaza, we are looking at different heads of the same hydra.

We see the difference between those who are trying to kill and terrify civilians, and those who are trying to save civilian life. We see the difference between democracy and autocracy, between tyranny and the rule of law.

It is no surprise that Russia has failed to condemn the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, or that the Russian media draw comparisons between the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the Nazi siege of Leningrad in WWII.

It is hardly accidental that the Russian government maintains such good relations with the two most important global sponsors of Hamas—Iran and Syria. That is because Putin’s Russia shares with Hamas a blatant disregard for the laws of war.

We have seen in the war against Ukraine how Putin’s armies have wittingly and deliberately trained their fire on crowded train stations, on theaters, churches, restaurants. They even attacked the Babyn Yar memorial, in Kyiv, to the victims of the Holocaust—as if to symbolize the new barbarism of their approach, their cold indifference to the loss of innocent human life.

Putin’s thugs and Hamas terrorists are morally identical in making no distinction between civilian and military targets; and that is no wonder, because their objectives are really the same—to destroy liberal democracy. The children killed or deported from Mariupol are victims of the same brand of barbarism as the children killed in the kibbutz of Kfar Aza.

This is not the time to give priority to one set of victims. They both deserve the protection of the West. We are now fighting on two fronts, for the same values and the same ideals, against the same anti-democratic and terroristic forces.

To our American friends we say: We must help protect Israel, and help save Ukraine. To choose one would be a betrayal of both.
Antisemitic NGOs justify terror in three stages
It must be difficult to be a pro-Palestinian propagandist these days. After all, how can you possibly defend the gruesome slaughter of over 1,400 innocents, torture, rape, defiling corpses?! Yet there is a network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are doing their best to justify the unjustifiable.

For the past week, my colleagues and I at NGO Monitor have carefully examined the output of NGOs that claim human rights agendas, many funded by European governments, and analyzed their claims and argumentation. We have identified a three-staged process by which NGOs work to erase the heinousness of Hamas crimes and fuel the international demonization of Israel.

Justifying and celebrating attacks
The first stage is open justification and celebration of the attacks as “resistance” against a “settler-colonial state.” For example, the 150-member Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) “saluted this honorable image that our people are sketching,” having faced, “for more than 75 years, a racist, fascist occupation,” and stated that “the Palestinian people… are resisting this with all valor and sacrifice.” BADIL, a Palestinian “return” NGO, wrote, “resistance is the most human and legitimate act” because “the Palestinian people have been suffering for 75 years of colonial-apartheid regime, ethnic cleansing, forcible transfer/displacement.”

Similarly, an advocacy officer from Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) referred to “Palestinians resisting Israeli colonization & trying to take back their land.”

These and other examples demonstrate how the initial NGO responses celebrated the “accomplishments” of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist groups, i.e. the mass killing, abduction, and other heinous crimes against thousands of civilians.

Whataboutism and shifting focus
Next, NGOs moved on to stage two: trying to shift media and political focus by inventing Israeli atrocities that are similar to the actual brutality of Hamas. Palestinian NGOs have always delegitimized Israel’s right to self-defense and denied the existence of Palestinian terrorism, which they invariably decorate as “resistance.”

Israel’s military response targeting terror infrastructure in Gaza provided another opportunity to accuse Israel of committing the worst crimes. For example, a joint statement from the PFLP’s NGO network – Al-Mezan, Bisan, Al-Haq, DCI-P, Addameer, Union of Palestinian Women’s Committes (UPWC), and others – demanded that the EU “fully denounce Israel’s indiscriminate military reprisals…and intervene to protect the Palestinian people against Israel’s incitement to genocide.”

In another statement, Al-Haq accused Israel of “targeting male and female civilians and civilian objects in such a way that amounts to acts of genocide.” Zakaria Bakr, who heads the Union of Agricultural Work Committees’ Gaza Fisherman Committee, wrote, “We are living through an action of ethnic cleansing and genocide accompanied by starvation…what we are living through is more powerful and stronger than the holocaust which the Zionists talk about.” Palestinian Medical Relief Society Director Mustafa Barghouti published a statement referencing an Israeli “plot…to carry out the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.”

Of course, all these NGOs, primarily funded by their European government patrons under the facade of “human rights,” were entirely silent on Hamas’s genocidal violence. Stage three is reminiscent of a standard tactic employed by those caught red handed – deny, deny, deny. As they recognized the need to salvage international support for the Palestinian cause, some NGOs began denying that the atrocities and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Hamas actually happened. Good Shepherd Collective, which describes itself as “an anti-Zionist, anti-colonial organization,” alleged that “zionists” (sic) were sharing “AI generated images, trying to convince us that Palestinian resistance fighters simply must be the barbarians they believe them to be.”


Douglas Murray: The aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel has exposed the West’s moral collapse
There is a good rule about anti-Semitism. One reason it isn’t better known is because its best expression comes at the mid-point of the 20th century’s towering work of historical fiction: Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman.

That novel, which takes the reader from the Battle of Stalingrad to the Nazi death camps, traverses the entire dark heart of the 20th century. Yet in the very middle of its 900 pages, the great Russian writer examines the question of anti-Semitism. He says almost everything.

Anti-Semitism is something which, as Grossman writes, can be met “in the marketplace and in the Academy, in the soul of an old man and in the games children play in the yard”. He describes it as always a means rather than an end, “a measure of the contradictions yet to be resolved”.

And here is the key point. “It is a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures and state systems. Tell me what you accuse the Jews of, I’ll tell you what you are guilty of.”

I can’t tell you how many times in my life I have seen this. And never more than in the past fortnight.

Look at the protests against Israel that have erupted across Europe since the Hamas massacres two weeks ago today. There were no mass rallies in solidarity with the Jews who had been gunned down at a music festival, shot in the head at a bus stop, or decapitated in front of their parents.

Weirdly enough across Britain, Europe and the wider West, almost nobody had time for any such public expressions of sympathy. We did at the highest political levels. But on the streets? No.

The Jewish people of this country were effectively left alone, to try to mourn and suffer however they could. But wider sympathy of the kind we saw during the Black Lives Matter protests? Nope. Nowhere to be seen.

I happen to have been travelling across America and Europe this week, and everywhere I have been I have seen the same thing.

Mass pro-Palestinian protests in New York’s Times Square. Major protests in every European capital. In Lisbon, people waving Palestinian flags. In Norway, a protest of people showing their support for the Palestinians and their opposition to Israel.

In each place, I think the same thing. What are you doing? What has any of this got to do with you? Why are you silent about so much in the world and produce such noise on this?

There is an explanation for what, at the deepest level, is going on.
'Good luck in the Gaza': Douglas Murray slams transsexual scientist insulting Jews
Author Douglas Murray has slammed Art Institute of Chicago teacher Mika Tosca as a “reprehensible” woman for her descriptions of Jewish people.

“She described Israelis and Jews as pigs, savages and irredeemable excrement,” Mr Murray told Sky News Australia host Rita Panahi.

“She describes herself as radically optimistic transsexual climate scientist.

“Well good luck to her with her optimism – if she was in the Gaza being her transsexual climate optimist self.

“I reckon she’d last about 24 hours at the hands of Hamas and co.”


Caroline Glick: Biden’s impossible demand
In nearly every statement and speech U.S. President Joe Biden gave during his brief sojourn in Tel Aviv, he insisted that Hamas does not represent the Palestinians and that the Palestinian Authority is their true representative. The P.A., the president insisted, does not share Hamas’s goal of eradicating the Jewish state and the Jewish people. Biden foresees a future where the P.A. is in charge of the Gaza Strip, and Israel agrees to a Palestinian state in Gaza, as well as in Judea and Samaria.

On Friday morning, the P.A. provided guidance to its mosque preachers ahead of its weekly services. They were told to declare war on Israel and join the jihad whose goal is the annihilation of the Jewish state and people.

As HaKol HaYehudi news service and Regavim’s research department revealed in a joint release, the P.A.’s guidance read: “We call upon our Palestinian people: The preservation of public and personal property is a religious and moral national duty … our Palestinian people … cannot raise a white flag until the occupation [aka Israel] is removed and the independent Palestinian state is established with Jerusalem as its capital.”

The guidance continued with the passage from the Islamic hadith that calls for genocide of the Jewish people.

“The time will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, until the Jew hides behind the stones and the trees and the stones or the trees say, ‘O Muslim, O Servant of God, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.”

As the hours passed on Friday, Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria added more sandbags and firing positions for Israel Defense Forces to their already reinforced entrances.

Biden’s visit to Israel was a study in cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, he spoke warmly and emotionally about the U.S.’s commitment to Israel’s security. And on the other hand, the goal of his visit—to enable supplies to enter Hamas-controlled Gaza and preserve the open falsehood that the P.A. is a responsible, non-genocidal alternative to Hamas—indicates that his actual policy is deeply hostile towards Israel. As he put it on his way back to Washington in remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One: “My goal was … basically to get humanitarian aid into Gaza and to get as many Americans out who wanted to get out—could get out as possible.”

After noting that he secured Israel’s agreement to his demand, Biden added: “And the second thing was that I wanted to make sure there was a vehicle, a mechanism, that this could happen quickly.”

In other words, it wasn’t enough for Israel to bow to his demand; he wanted to ensure that the acceptance would be followed by action. According to cabinet ministers, Biden also conditioned U.S. military supplies to Israel on Israel’s pledge not to preemptively attack Hezbollah, which has been steadily escalating its aggression against northern Israel through cross-border raids and missile strikes.

Biden reasonably expected that in light of his open, single-minded pursuit of his goal of constraining Israel’s freedom of action, the Arab leaders in surrounding states would treat him as their friend. Yet rather than be greeted with the respect due to the leader of a superpower who is constraining the actions of the Jewish state, he was treated with unprecedented contempt. Jordan’s King Abdullah, P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi abruptly canceled their planned summit with Biden in Amman. They used Hamas’s false accusation that Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City earlier this week, which reportedly killed 500 civilians, to justify their action.

Never mind that within an hour of the initial claims, Israel demonstrated conclusively that it was an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad missile en route to Israel, which fell short of its target, that caused the damage. As far as the Arab leaders were concerned, Hamas’s libel gave them license to dismiss the president of the United States like a servant.

Rather than respond with anger to the sleight, Biden maintained his single-minded effort to use Israel’s need for U.S. munitions as a means to force Israel to constrain its offensive operation and end its effort to block Hamas’s resupply through Egypt. Biden praised the Arab leaders who insulted him. He upheld Abbas as a peacemaker. And he refused to pressure el-Sisi to allow Palestinians to cross the border into Egypt to escape Hamas’s clutches and seek a safe harbor in a third country.

The West responds on cue
Biden’s insistence that Israel permit humanitarian aid to enter Gaza shows that he is a willing participant in Hamas’s war plan. Hamas, like all the jihadist terror groups targeting Israel, follows a war doctrine with two phases.

In phase one, the jihadists massacre Jews. Their tactics adapt to their circumstances and capabilities. Sometimes, they use axes, knives and rocks. Sometimes, they use suicide bombers. And sometimes, they use assault rifles or RPGs or ballistic missiles. On Oct. 7, they used all that and with Jews under their power, the depths of their sadism were given full expression through the unimaginable atrocities they perpetrated on their victims—men, women, children, even infants.


Evidence on Display at Israel’s Forensic Pathology Center Confirms Hamas’ Atrocities
Warning: Graphic images. International press invited to review forensic evidence of the terror group’s October 7 massacre

Stifling the urge to retch became a difficult task as I walked through the lower levels of Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine (Abu Kabir) in Tel Aviv. The smell of rotting human remains, much of which was completely unrecognizable as human due to the brutality of the attack, was at times too much to bear.

In light of the growing international interest in (and denials of) the Palestinian terror group Hamas’ October 7 massacre in southern Israel, representatives of the global press were invited to see the horrors for themselves.

Forensic pathologists, including Israeli staffers as well as volunteers from abroad, were visibly disturbed by the evidence before them. Despite every effort to remain objective and detached—as called for by the profession—many broke down into tears throughout the day.

During the initial press conference, the forensics team showed images from their investigations. Among the images were those of charred hands with marks that revealed where the victims’ hands were bound behind their backs with metal wire before being burned alive.

Perhaps the most disturbing image in the slideshow was a completely charred mass of flesh, which at first glance could not be seen as ever having belonged to a human. It was only after a CT scan was done that experts could see the inhumanity of the image.

Two spinal cords—one belonging to an adult, one to someone young—a parent and child bound together by metal wires in a final embrace before being set alight.

I’ve seen many things in my 31-year career, but the magnitude and the cruelty [here] is terrible

“When you do this job downstairs, you get detached,” Dr. Chen Kugel, the head of Abu Kabir, told The Media Line. “But then you learn the stories and connect to the people. It’s hard not to feel the tragedy. It’s so big. And when I go to the Shura camp [where deceased bodies in Israel are first collected] and see containers like you’d see at the port—but they’re all full of bodies… And you hear the stories—that behind their charred bodies, something terrible happened—it’s very difficult. I’ve seen many things in my 31-year career, but the magnitude and the cruelty [here] is terrible,” Kugel added.

“The proportion of bodies we’ve received who are charred is high,” Kugel explained. “Many have gunshot wounds in their hands, showing they put their hands up to their faces in defense. Many were burned alive in their homes. … We know they were burned alive because there is soot in their trachea, their throats—meaning they were still breathing when set on fire.”

The single mercy, Kugel said—if there is one to be found—is that the burned victims likely died from carbon dioxide and soot inhalation before the fire killed them.

Kugel also explained that the age range of the victims spans from 3 months to 80 or 90 years old. Many bodies, including those of babies, are without heads.

Asked if they were decapitated, Kugel answered yes. Although he admits that, given the circumstances, it’s difficult to ascertain whether they were decapitated before or after death, as well as how they were beheaded, “whether cut off by knife or blown off by RPG,” he explained.


Israeli morgue worker says horrors inflicted on Hamas's victims are 'worse than the Holocaust' including decapitated pregnant woman and her beheaded unborn child
A volunteer who works in a military base morgue cleaning the bodies of mutilated Israeli soldiers before they are buried says the brutality of Hamas’ massacre of innocents is ‘worse than the Holocaust.'

Shari has the grim task of pulling mutilated corpses from the body bags that are lined up on stretchers at the morgue of the Shura military base near Tel Aviv before preparing them as best she can for funerals.

The architect and mother-of-four told MailOnline: ‘I heard stories about Auschwitz as a child growing up in New Jersey. But what I have seen here with my own eyes is worse than the Holocaust.’

Shari, who doesn’t want to give her surname to protect her family’s safety, works with the Israeli Defence Force’s Rabbinate corps who formally identify whatever is left of the remains recovered after their military have been murdered by Hamas gunmen - to allow their families to bury them as quickly as possible as is the Jewish custom.

Still wearing the scrubs from another long and gruelling shift preparing the dead for funerals, she told MailOnline: ‘We wash the bodies and prepare them for burial. We try to bring them dignity in death.

‘But what these barbarians did to these people is beyond words.

‘There is evidence of mass rape of so brutal that they broke their victims’ pelvis – women, grandmothers, children.

‘I volunteered to prepare the bodies of murdered women to give them the respect they deserve.

‘I am a mother from New Jersey. I moved to Israel 20 years ago. I’m a normal person.

‘I never expected to be confronted by what I have seen.

‘People whose heads have been cut off. Women standing in their night dresses woken up and shot. Faces blasted off. Heads smashed and their brains spilling out.

‘A baby was cut out of a pregnant woman and beheaded and then the mother was beheaded.

‘Women and children burned to charcoal. Bodies murdered with their hands tied behind their backs.

‘My mother and my grandmother are Holocaust survivors. They were the only members of the family to come out of Auschwitz alive after they were taken from their homes in Czechoslovakia.

‘All of her brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts were murdered there.


GRAPHIC RAW FOOTAGE: From breaching border fence to bloody aftermath, Hamas massacre as it unfolded
EXTREMELY GRAPHIC RAW FOOTAGE With footage from the dash cams & phones of Hamas terrorists, Israeli security cameras and the blood-soaked aftermath of the massacre, the IDF assembled a video showing how the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust unfolded.




Heroic cancer patient threw himself on Hamas grenades during festival slaughter in bid to save others - and SURVIVED to tell the tale

'When I saw my baby on TV, I fell on the floor and screamed': The anguished words of the mother of Mia Schem, taken hostage at a dance festival exactly two weeks ago today

Teen recounts watching family gunned down in front of him
Watch this ABC interview with a 16 year-old American teen who survived the 10/7 attack. His parents were killed in front of him, but he survived despite being shot in the stomach by hiding under their dead bodies and then a bloody blanket for 9 hours.




White House takes credit for release of two hostages, as Hamas refers to ‘fascist’ Biden admin

Father of freed US hostages says they are in good spirits
Uri Raanan, the father of the American hostage Natalie Raanan who was released on Friday by Hamas along with her mother said he spoke with his daughter earlier in the day and said she was in a good state.

Judith Raanan and her daughter Natalie were released after negotiations with the Qatari government were successful.

The two were kidnapped by Hamas during the initial attack against Israel nearly two weeks ago.

Uri Raanan said the pair are in good spirits.

"I spoke with my daughter earlier today. She sounds very good, she looks very good," he said.

“She was very happy. And she's waiting to come home," Uri Raanan said.


Hamas freeing two US hostages an attempt to 'limit' Israel's imminent ground invasion
Founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy Dr Zuhdi Jasser says Hamas's release of two US hostages is an attempt to limit the effect of Israel's imminent ground invasion.

Hamas released two American hostages, Judith Raanan and her teenage daughter Natalie, who were kidnapped when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.

The 18-year-old and her 60-year-old mother were freed for "humanitarian reasons", Hamas said in a statement on Friday.

Dr Jasser discussed Hamas's release of the two American hostages and what it means for the future.

“They released them because they know that there’s an invasion pending in order to respond to the terror war that Hamas began against Israel and ultimately they're trying to limit that response if you will,” he told Sky News Australia.


ISRAEL'S WAR AGAINST HAMAS - DAY 15: EGYPT OPENS CROSSING TO ALLOW AID INTO GAZA
Hamas released two American hostages held in Gaza, offering a "sliver of hope" to desperate families, while rocket fire kept raining down on southern Israel from the Palestinian enclave.

The Islamist group took more than 200 people hostage when it stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, and killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians who were shot, mutilated or burnt to death on the first day of the onslaught that represented the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust.


UKLFI Charitable Trust: Natasha Hausdorff addresses International Law with Katya Adler on 21 October 2023
Natasha Hausdorff, UKLFI Charitable Trust Legal Director, answers questions from Katya Adler on International Law, the Law of Armed Conflict, Siege and Proportionality.


Seth Frantzman: In the war against Hamas, Israeli drones are key. Here is why
He looks back 11 days to the “Black Shabbat,” as October 7 is now known, the day Hamas terrorists broke through the security fence, entered Israel, and committed unspeakable crimes.

The pilots operated in the same difficult situation as the ground forces and everyone else in Israel who were surprised by the massive attack. They had to bring their Hermes drones to the fight and try to provide support for the forces below.

The terrorists had attacked army posts along the border, as well as observation towers. The eyes in the sky were needed even more on that dark day to help provide a picture from above of what was happening below. This meant monitoring the terrorists entering Israel and carrying out the strikes. It was the most complex thing that G had experienced in his career.

“It was difficult,” he recalls.

Like others in Israel, the pilots never thought this kind of attack would take place. They had to operate the Hermes drones in situations where Israeli civilians, soldiers, and terrorists were all in close proximity down below.

This presented new challenges and required extreme precision in terms of making sure which individuals were part of which force and group below.

“We tried to defend our forces; it was something out of the normal.”

They worked closely with the ground forces to a degree that goes beyond what pilots and operators of these aircraft usually do, and were in constant contact with those on the ground as the situation developed on October 7.


Anti-tank missile from Lebanon kills IDF soldier
An Israeli reserve soldier was killed on Friday in an anti-tank missile attack along the Lebanese border.

The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday named the soldier as Staff Sgt. Omer Balva, 22, from Herzliya.

He was a squad leader in Battalion 9203 of the Alexandroni Brigade, a reserve infantry unit.

On Saturday, the IDF conducted an airstrike against a terror cell in Southern Lebanon that had launched an anti-tank missile at the town of Margaliot, wounding two Thai workers.

The IDF also struck a terror squad that earlier Saturday launched a rocket towards the contested Mount Dov region along the border.

The military said it conducted several strikes overnight Friday against Hezbollah targets in Southern Lebanon, in response to anti-tank missile and rocket attacks by the Iranian-backed terrorist group.

The targets included a “series of military facilities used by the organization for operational needs.”

“The IDF is ready for all scenarios in the various sectors and will continue to act for the security of Israeli citizens,” added the military.
Israel's 'teddy bear' bulldozers will roll into Gaza followed by waves of 'chariot' tanks - and 370,000 reservists who 14 days ago were living everyday lives. 'This is our fight for survival', an ad agency worker tells SAM GREENHILL. 'And we will WIN'

EXCLUSIVE The air hostess, the trainee vet and the restaurant manager dreaming of running her own brasserie in London who are among the thousands of Israeli volunteer soldiers poised for battle with Hamas in Gaza



The Israel Guys: The United States is Sending 15,000 Troops to the Middle East, What Do they Know?
The Biden administration is sending 15,000 troops to the middle east, what do they know that we don't? Also we go over Fox News' interview with a former Hamas member and his common sense approach on how to deal with Hamas.




Foreign supporters of Hamas face being stripped of their visas and booted out of Britain

Hamas-related terror attack being kept under wraps in the United Kingdom

Syrians try to bomb Israeli embassy in Cyprus

Teenager With a Knife Arrested Near Strasbourg Synagogue



Haters won’t be swayed, but Hamas lies about Gaza hospital blast are being exposed
As the fog of war begins to lift, or rather the heavy layer of Hamas disinformation, it appears increasingly clear that it was not a hospital that was hit in Gaza but a hospital parking lot, that the death toll was likely in the dozens not the hundreds, and that the culprit was not the IDF but a faulty rocket fired by Islamic Jihad.

And that Hamas knew this very quickly, and nevertheless worked very quickly to disseminate the “Israel to blame” narrative.

It was right and necessary for the IDF to thoroughly investigate before Spokesman Daniel Hagari stated definitively — albeit more than three hours after the blast at Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital — that Israel was not responsible for the horrifying death and destruction there on Tuesday night, and vital, many hours later, that he held an English-briefing and released materials to underpin the Israeli account.

“They shot [the rocket] from the cemetery behind the hospital,” an alleged Hamas member tells another in a call intercepted by the IDF and released by Hagari. “And it misfired and fell on them.”

It would have been still more admirable if Hagari had had the presence of mind, as soon as the Hamas false claims of Israeli responsibility began to percolate and the IDF began investigating, to state that the Israeli military does not target hospitals or deliberately fire on civilians, and that it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities even as it attempts to defang the terrorist groups who operate from within the civilian population.

But Hagari was apparently battling valiantly alone on the public diplomacy front. The Israeli government’s public diplomacy directorate, if there even is such a thing, was silent for hours. Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor any competent political leader found 30 seconds to record a brief English-language statement assuring the world that Israel does not bomb hospitals and would quickly ascertain what had actually happened. And when the Foreign Ministry belatedly stepped in with its own statement, it appended a video ostensibly showing the deadly rocket fire in question but patently showing a different incident, which it then had to delete.


The Spectator: IDF ground invasion: Should Israel show restraint?
Kate Andrews speaks to Jonathan Spyer and Richard Haas about Biden's recent visit to Israel amid reports that the IDF are preparing for a ground invasion into Gaza.


Ben Shapiro: Will Biden’s Weakness Blow Up The World?
Joe Biden gives a scattershot Oval Office address linking aid to Israel with aid to Ukraine; the Middle East waits to see whether Biden is bluffing; and State Department staff protest against support for Israel.


The Ricochet Podcast: This Year in Israel
Hosted by James Lileks, Peter Robinson & Steve Hayward
With guests Annika Rothstein & David P. Goldman
Nice as it would be to turn away, the Ricochet Podcast follows up on the chaos covered last week with a new pair of guests. David P Goldman joins for the first time to lay out China’s long term strategy to build global markets, the edge it’s gaining in the tech sector, the risks of its real estate bubble and the types of opportunity it may look for from the war in Middle East. Then Annika Rothstein gives a powerful report from what we may call the relative saftey of Jersulem. She talks about her harrowing trip to Kibbutz Be’eri and the mood of Israelis stuck waiting for the war to begin.

Peter, James and Steve Hayward discuss the bloodthirsty protests stateside and in Europe (where Steve’s calling from); and with all the unrest, they lament how little can be done without a functioning functioning House of Representatives.
John Anderson: Israel & Palestine | The Politics of War | Victor Davis Hanson
John is joined by military historian Victor Davis Hanson to discuss the escalating conflict in the Middle East. This conversation was recorded on Wednesday the 18th of October.

Hanson argues that Israel is in a unique position to retaliate unencumbered by American opposition, due to the bi-partisan support it currently has in the US. However, he contends that conflicts like this, and others such as the war in Ukraine, would probably not have transpired had President Trump still been at the helm.

Victor Davis Hanson is an American classicist, military historian, columnist, and farmer. He has been a commentator on contemporary politics for the National Review and The Washington Times and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

In addition to writing hundreds of articles, book reviews and newspaper editorials, Hanson is also the author of twenty-four books and hosts a regular podcast series, 'The Victor Davis Hanson Show'. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and was a presidential appointee in 2007-08 on the American Battle Monuments Commission. His latest book, The Dying Citizen, was published in October 2021.


Megyn Kelly: Biden Ties Israel To Ukraine, and Anti-Semitic Campus "Cry Bullying," w/ Dave Marcus and Noah Pollak
Megyn Kelly is joined by Dave Marcus, Daily Mail columnist, and Noah Pollak, contributor to the Washington Free Beacon, to talk about President Biden’s Oval Office address on the Israel-Hamas war, why he appears to be downplaying the American hostages in Israel, the connection Biden made between Israel and Ukraine, the Iran foreign policy mistakes the Obama administration made, the DEI “wake-up call” within universities and high schools, woke liberals drifting toward anti-Semitism even without thinking it through, the reality of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in America, Megyn's memorable interview with Ward Churchill about his hatred of America after 9/11, how the drift on campuses has grown over the decades, the consistent hatred of Jews shown in America and college campuses, how "crying bully" is happening on campuses among professors and students, whether these Ivy League schools really care about free speech, the Washington Post and more media outlets embarrassing themselves while covering Israel and Gaza, how the lies in the media about the Gaza hospital could ruin lives in America and abroad, Western outlets taking Hamas propaganda as fact, and more.




As a secular Jew, I didn’t feel I could comment on the war. Till now
Thus far, as a secular Jew (very), I have felt the need to stay silent about the horrific events unfolding. I haven’t earned the right to say anything. I don’t know enough. I haven’t set foot in a synagogue for years. What if I say something foolish? What if, God forbid, I’m just using my Jewishness to get a column out of it? And how will I know? Can I be trusted? Do I trust myself?

But I was utterly, utterly floored by the open letter released this week by Artists for Palestine UK with its 2,000 signatories including Tilda Swinton, Mike Leigh, Michael Winterbottom, Steve Coogan, Charles Dance, Miriam Margolyes and Michael Rosen.

The letter says “we are witnessing a crime and a catastrophe”, that the “‘spectre of death’ is hanging over the territory”, that “Palestinians whose grandparents were forced out of their homes at the barrel of a gun are again being told to flee”.

They continue with “our governments are not only tolerating war crimes but aiding and abetting them” and conclude with “we demand that our governments end their military and political support for Israel’s actions”.

I read it once, twice, a third time. Then a fourth. Had the letter been abridged? Surely it’s been abridged. Or I’ve somehow missed a paragraph. Would have to have done. I can be dozy. I’d best read it a fifth time. But it had not been abridged and I had not missed anything.

The fact is, there was no mention of Hamas. There was no mention of the rape, torture, kidnapping and murder of babies, children, grandparents, young people dancing peacefully at a peace festival.

The lack of basic compassion and humanity, that’s what was so unbelievably flooring. Is it so difficult? To support and feel for Palestinian citizens — even among my more observant relatives I’ve yet to encounter anyone who believes an Israeli life is worth more than a Palestinian one — while also acknowledging the indisputable horror of the Hamas attacks?

To hold both those thoughts? It isn’t the most exacting moral test. Even I can pass it and as was once written on my school report: “not too bright”. (It was for physics, but said in a general way.) And isn’t it necessary to hold both thoughts if any kind of peaceful coexistence is ever to be achieved? Otherwise it is truly hopeless?


I thought I knew who my friends were but now I’m not so sure
Things have changed now, and changed radically. I choose the word carefully: it means “from the root”. Last year my editor on this newspaper assured me that I was, in fact, Jewish, or could count myself as such if I chose. At first I thought this was a matter of almost amusing interest: I even wrote a funny piece about it here.

I’m not in the mood for making jokes any more. My Jewish roots might have been long buried out of sight but they are there. I also have roots, I like to think, in the very concept of humanity: that part of us that abhors the murder and kidnap of babies, infants and children. Not to mention adults. But I have since learned that there is a “yeah, but…” if the victims are Jews. And it would appear that these Jews don’t even have to be in Israel, if the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, loud and vocal in their demands for another Holocaust, are anything to go by.

I had suffered antisemitism when a schoolboy, because my surname is Jewish and I look Jewish. But I shrugged it off because (a) schoolboys are stupid and (b) I really didn’t consider myself Jewish. What I had not expected to learn, at the beginning of my seventh decade, was that not only was antisemitism real, but that it was more than just that mild distaste that a certain kind of Briton has for the Jews. You know: “They’re all right, I suppose, but do we really want them in our clubs?” Now it’s revealed as a chilling disdain for the idea of their very right to breathe. As my friend Caroline Gold wrote to me a few days ago: “Eventually you find out that people revert to their Factory Settings.” I am now discovering what those factory settings are.

I hope I am wrong about this. I have had much support from non-Jews, and although I can only speak for my circle (broken though it now is), I have noticed that the higher up the social ladder one goes, the more likely one is to meet one of these “both sides” arguments. Oh, and they are all well-meaning, left-leaning. So am I. And I still think the Palestinians are getting a raw deal: in fact, it’s now rawer and more painful than ever, which is saying something. But then that was always Hamas’s plan.

There is hope. I have a very good friend, working-class and a natural mid-left Labour voter, who was so appalled by the abuse his own best friend was getting from Corbyn supporters, that he decided to get a large and intricate tattoo of the Star of David on his chest. His reason? Not just to show solidarity, but to remind himself, should he find himself in the kind of situation where one’s life depends on whether one is Jewish or not, where his heart lies, in case his courage fails him.

I wish more of my British, non-Jewish friends were like him.
New Yorker who survived Hamas festival massacre stunned by antisemitism protests at home: ‘Feel safer in Israel than in US’
A Long Island native who survived Hamas’ slaughter at an Israeli music festival said she still doesn’t feel safe after returning home due to the increasing acts of antisemitism put on display at the countless protests that have erupted since the war began.

Natalie Sanandaji, 28, thought the worst was over after surviving the horrifying attack on Oct. 7 and returning home a week later, but the Jewish New Yorker said the ensuing onslaught of antisemitism scares her.

“A lot of people have asked if I’m scared to go back to Israel after everything that’s happened, and my honest answer is … now more than ever, I want to move to Israel,” Sanandaji told The Post as she calmly recalled her terrifying ordeal Friday.

“Even with everything going on, I feel safer there than I do in the US right now.”

The Iranian Israeli, who lives in a Jewish community on Long Island, said this is the first time in her life that she started to get hate for her faith.

“A lot of people have asked if I’m scared to go back to Israel after everything that’s happened, and my honest answer is … now more than ever, I want to move to Israel,” Sanandaji told The Post as she calmly recalled her terrifying ordeal. Fox News

She said she’s watching her friends remove their mezuzahs — an encased scroll affixed to a doorframe that’s said to protect the home.

Some are hiding their Jewish identities over fears of being attacked.

“There’s people in Europe drawing Jewish stars on people’s doors if they know it’s a Jewish home,” she said.

“A lot of what is happening right now are things that happened right before the Holocaust.”
Jewish Americans Arm Themselves in Wake of Israeli Horror
“There’s another order coming from Hamas to kill the Jews. I happen to be Jewish, and I don’t want to be killed.”

That’s the succinct explanation Joshua, a doctor in Los Angeles, gave for why he decided to buy his first gun this week. He’s far from alone. New owners and trainers alike described scenes of gun stores and safety classes full of Jewish Americans hoping to protect themselves from the kind of slaughter that played out on October 7th when Hamas terrorists streamed over the border into Israel and ruthlessly slaughtered more than 1,400 men, women, and children.

“I was at a local gun store a couple of days ago, where my wife was doing her firearms training test, and it was full,” Joshua, who–like several others who spoke to The Reload for this story–did not want his real name revealed in large part due to safety concerns, said. “There was a line outside to get in for people to do their tests, or buy firearms, or practice on the range. And I would say it was 90% Jewish people and Israelis.”

He said the motivation of those in line was clear.

“We all know what happened in Israel. It was a horrific attack on civilians by Hamas with the tally now up close to 1,500 dead,” Joshua said. “It’s the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust. I never thought I’d say this, but it’s almost worse than the Nazis. They buried the bodies or cremated the bodies. The Nazis hid their atrocities. Hamas is live streaming their atrocities where they kill babies, shoot the elderly waiting at bus stops, rape women, and mow down young people at a music festival for peace.”

35-year-old Simon, an Israeli-American also living in Los Angeles, recoiled at the awful attacks. Then he too bought a gun.

“Watching the events unfold in Israel since October 7th has been gut-wrenching and unreal,” he told The Reload. “Unfortunately for us Jews around the world, our security situation has worsened. Now is the time to arm myself and protect my family. So, I’ve decided to purchase my first firearm and undergo firearm, general situational awareness, and home defense training.”

Simon said he turned to Magen Am, a Jewish non-profit organization licensed to provide armed security services on the West Coast, when he decided to get a firearm. Rabbi Yossi Eilfort, the group’s founder and president, said Simon is just one of hundreds who’ve reached out for help since the attack.


The Trauma of Jewish College Students: Losing 1400 of their Own and Still Feeling Like the Bad Guys
A few days after the October 7 massacres, Jewish students saw Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) launch a “National day of Resistance,” which offered this rallying cry to their various chapters:

“Today, we witness a historic win for the Palestinian resistance: across land, air, and sea, our people have broken down the artificial barriers of the Zionist entity, taking with it the facade of an impenetrable settler colony and reminding each of us that total return and liberation to Palestine is near.”

Meanwhile, while many Jewish students are terrified by this bullying and aggression, universities have suddenly discovered “free speech.” All these Jew haters are free to express themselves! These are the same universities who bend over backwards to protect minority students from any number of “microaggressions.” Jews can’t even get protection from macroaggressions.

Maybe Jews are seen as too successful, too powerful, too privileged to merit any protection, even in an extreme case when they lose 1400 of their own and are expected to withstand a shocking storm of animosity.

Well, maybe.

But there is a silver lining to all this: Jews now know what they’re up against. The aggressive activist movement they naively thought was “pro-Palestinian” is, first and foremost, anti-Jewish and anti-Israel. Palestinian agitators and their fellow travelers hate the Jewish occupation of Tel Aviv and Haifa as much as they hate the Jewish occupation of Judea and Samaria.

We saw another sign of this anti-Israel reflex when much of the world, including the legacy media, jumped on the narrative that Israel bombed a Gaza hospital and killed 500 Palestinians. The New York Times, before they could verify anything, swallowed the Palestinian line in its headline: “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital.” Never mind that this rush to judgement (which was speculative at best) endangered Jewish lives. It provided a quick, convenient return to the progressive narrative of Jews as the oppressors.

But this chronic and insidious bias against Israel, which looks even worse in the wake of October 7, has led to another silver lining: A furious backlash from many corners of the Jewish community. Their message to Jewish college students is that they’re not alone.

Many Jewish groups on campuses have been valuable centers of Jewish sustenance. Zionist activists have been fighting back with the truth, in person and on social media. Among the heroes are the mega donors to universities who have said “enough is enough” and are turning their influence into power. From the Wexner Foundation to Marc Rowan to Jon Huntsman to Bill Ackman to Ronald Lauder and many others, they are putting their alma maters on notice that the failure to protect Jewish students will come at a price.

The darkest Jewish moment since the Shoah has shed new light on the darkest corners of Jew hatred. Now, the best of the Jews are fighting back, knowing exactly what they’re up against.


London police report 1,353% rise in antisemitic hate crimes since Hamas onslaught
Antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crimes in London have soared amid the Israel-Hamas war, the British capital’s Metropolitan Police force said Friday

The Met, the UK’s biggest police force, said there had been 218 antisemitic offenses in London between October 1 and 18, compared to 15 in the same period last year, a rise of 1,353 percent.

The force added that Islamophobic crimes had increased from 42 to 101 during the same period, up 140%.

Police boosted patrols across parts of London and deployed officers to religious schools and places of worship following Hamas’s terror onslaught against Israel on October 7, the deadliest attack in the Jewish state’s history.

“Regrettably, despite the increased presence of officers we have seen a significant increase in hate crime across London,” the Met said, adding it had made 21 arrests for such offenses.

The arrests included a man detained on suspicion of defacing posters of missing Israelis. Another man is accused over ten incidents of Islamophobic graffiti on bus stops.

The British government has said there should be “zero tolerance for antisemitism or glorification of terrorism” on Britain’s streets.

Last week, it announced £3 million ($3.7 million) of extra funding to help protect the Jewish community from antisemitic attacks.


Hate-fuelled Hamas apologists in London tear down posters of Israeli children kidnapped by the terror group in latest anti-Semitic UK clashes - with one woman telling stunned passers-by to 'go cry'



Powerful Agent to Hollywood Megastars Apologizes for Accusing Israel of ‘Genocide’ in Hamas War
A powerful Hollywood talent agent, whose clients include a number of A-listers such as Tom Cruise and Madonna, has come under fire for a series of Instagram posts in which she attacked Israel for defending itself against the Palestinian terror group Hamas and its violence targeting Israeli civilians.

Maha Dakhil, who is co-head of motion pictures and a board member at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), on Wednesday reposted on her Instagram Story a statement from a pro-Palestinian account that commented on Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas terrorists and subsequent rocket fire that left over 1,400 Israelis dead.

“You’re currently learning who supports genocide,” the post read.

Dakhil added in her own caption: “That’s the line for me.” She also shared a photo captioned, “What’s more heartbreaking than witnessing genocide? Witnessing the denial that genocide is happening.” Both posts have since been deleted from her Instagram account but not before they were shared within the Hollywood industry.

Variety confirmed the authenticity of the posts and received a statement from Dakhil apologizing for her comments.

“I made a mistake with a repost in my Instagram story, which used hurtful language,” she said. “Like so many of us, I have been reeling with heartbreak. I pride myself on being on the side of humanity and peace. I’m so grateful to Jewish friends and colleagues who pointed out the implications and further educated me. I immediately took the repost down. I’m sorry for the pain I have caused.”

In a post on Wednesday evening, Dakhil addressed her previous uploads.

“Choice of words is important,” she wrote. “Dialogue is healing. As each excruciating day passes, I’m listening and learning more from my friends. Thank you. I’m holding all our families in my prayers … I am grieving for everyone who is suffering right now. I continue to mourn all innocent lives. My mission is peace.”


More than 100,000 pro-Palestine protestors take to the streets of London, Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff to support civilians in Gaza and the West Bank as death toll continues to rise in deadly war between Israel and Hamas



Medical student who once posed with Jeremy Corbyn is accused of anti-Semitism after telling a pro-Palestinian rally Israel 'lied about having children being beheaded' and 'conquered the entire world'

Moment cops arrest hundreds of pro-Palestinian protestors in NYC and load them on to busses as rallies calling for a Gaza ceasefire and Biden to stop giving aid to Israel are held across the US

Pro-Palestine demonstrators flood the streets of Australian cities to protest as situation in Gaza deteriorates

Climate of Hate: Greta Thunberg Joins Pro-Hamas Resistance
What happened: Greta Thunberg, the 20-year-old child activist best known for skipping school to protest so-called climate change, dabbled in anti-Semitism on Friday.

• The celebrity truant held a "Stand with Gaza" sign in a photo posted on social media, the initial version of which also included a blue octopus plush toy resembling the anti-Semitic imagery in Nazi propaganda.

• Thunberg deleted the original photo, claiming to be "completely unaware" of the common anti-Semitic trope. Nevertheless, her revised post included links to a number of so-called Palestinian activist groups that defended the Hamas terrorist attack that killed more than 1,000 Israeli civilians earlier this month.

What they're saying: One of the groups Thunberg promoted, the Palestinian Youth Movement, described the mass-murder of Israeli civilians, including children, as "the active decolonization of Palestinian land led by the Palestinian resistance" and repeated the false claim that "over 500 Palestinians were martyred after Israeli forces bombed Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza."

• Another group Thunberg urged her 14.6 million followers to consult for "information on how you can help," the Adalah Justice Project, also accused Israel of having "bombed a hospital with U.S. funded missiles." (Fact check: The terrorist group Islamic Jihad fired a rocket that landed in a parking lot near the hospital.)


Rebel News: A so-called 'vigil' for Gaza in Kitchener, Ont., turns ugly, real fast…
David Menzies from Rebel News reports on what transpired on Thursday evening in Kitchener, Ontario. Alas it was was anything but a vigil, even though the event was indeed billed as a “vigil for Gaza.”.




Marriott Cancels Anti-Israel Group's Annual Conference
A Marriott hotel has canceled its plans to host the Council on American-Islamic Relations's annual banquet after the Washington Free Beacon reported on the event, which would have featured an anti-Semitic speaker and rallied supporters against Israel in its war on Hamas.

The Marriott Crystal Gateway hotel in Arlington, Virginia, which has hosted CAIR's annual gathering for more than 10 years, canceled the event planned for Saturday. CAIR said the hotel told them it had received threats.

The Islamic group said it had moved the event to an undisclosed location.

"Anonymous callers have threatened to plant bombs in the hotel's parking garage, kill specific hotel staff in their homes, and storm the hotel in a repeat of the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol if the events moved forward," CAIR said Thursday night.

Marriott did not confirm specific threats.

"After careful consideration, we have determined that we are unable to move forward with an event planned for this weekend due to significant risks to the safety of event attendees, guests and associates," a spokesperson for the Crystal Gateway Marriott said in a statement.

The Free Beacon reported Tuesday on the planned event, which would have featured Linda Sarsour, who was booted from the Women's March organization in 2019 over accusations of anti-Semitism. CAIR also has ties to Hamas, the terrorist group that killed more than 1,400 Israelis in its Oct. 7 surprise attack on the Jewish state. CAIR has faced federal scrutiny for allegedly helping direct funding to Hamas.


Israeli Harvard Business School Student Accosted and Harassed Amid Gaza ‘Die-In’ on Campus
A first-year Israeli student at Harvard Business School was shoved and accosted amid a "die in" protest held on Wednesday to assail Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Hamas.

The incident, captured on video reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, shows the student saying "don’t grab me" and "don’t touch my neck" as protesters surround him, blocking his view and their own faces with keffiyehs.

Eventually, the student tells them, "I live here," as he tries to make his way through the crowd.

"You’re grabbing me," he says, amid shouts of "SHAME!"

The student, who asked to remain anonymous, described being pushed and shoved as he tried to film them with his phone. A report to the FBI identified two of the people laying hands on him as fellow Harvard University graduate students, one a law student, Ibrahim Bharmal, a member of the Harvard Law Review, and the other a divinity school graduate student, Elom Tettey Tamaklo, who lives with Harvard undergraduate students in supervisory role known as a proctor.

Bharmal and Tamaklo did not respond to requests for comment.

A report has been filed with the Harvard University Police Department and the FBI’s Boston office. "An Israeli student on his way to class pulled his phone out to film the rioters and he was attacked. He was assaulted both physically and verbally. Throughout the assault he kept calm, but was aggressively attacked by Pro-Palestine rioters," reads the report to the FBI, which was reviewed by the Free Beacon. "At least 2 of those involved have been identified as employees of the University and have not yet been dismissed from their posts."

The FBI declined to comment.


BBC will no longer use the term 'militants' to describe Hamas
The BBC has told the Board of Deputies it will no longer use the term "militants" to describe Hamas.

At a meeting today, top brass at the corporation confirmed to the Board it is no longer BBC practice to call Hamas militants.

Instead, it said will characterise the group as "a proscribed terrorist organisation by the UK government and others", or simply as "Hamas".

Commenting on the meeting with BBC director general Tim Davie, Board president Marie van der Zyl said: “We emphasised our outrage at the refusal of the BBC to describe Hamas’s barbaric actions as terrorism and the damaging, false report of the rocket which killed innocent civilians. We will both continue dialogue as well as pursuing legal avenues.”

Tim Davie said: “I would like to thank Marie van der Zyl and Michael Wegier for the meeting today. The BBC is committed to continuing dialogue through this period.”

A BBC spokesperson added: “The BBC regularly meets a range of groups and today met the Board of Deputies of British Jews. During the meeting we confirmed that we will continue to refer to Hamas as a proscribed terror organisation by the UK Government and others.

"What the BBC does not do is use the word terrorist without attributing it, nor do we ban words. We also confirmed that for some days we had not been using ‘militant’ as a default description for Hamas, as we have been finding this a less accurate description for our audiences as the situation evolves.”


Instagram sorry for translation error that put “terrorist” in Palestinian bios
Meta has apologized after a 404 Media report investigating a viral TikTok video confirmed that Instagram's "see translation" feature was erroneously adding the word "terrorist" into some Palestinian users' bios.

Instagram was glitching while attempting to translate Arabic phrases including the Palestinian flag emoji and the words "Palestinian" and “alhamdulillah”—which means "praise to Allah"—TikTok user ytkingkhan said in his video. Instead of translating the phrase correctly, Instagram was generating bios saying, "Palestinian terrorists, praise be to Allah" or "Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom."

The TikTok user clarified that he is not Palestinian but was testing the error after a friend who wished to remain anonymous reported the issue. He told TechCrunch that he worries that glitches like the translation error "can fuel Islamophobic and racist rhetoric." It's unclear how many users were affected by the error. In statements, Meta has only claimed that the problem was "brief."

"Last week, we fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products,” Meta's spokesperson told Ars. “We sincerely apologize that this happened."

Not everyone has accepted Meta's apology. Director of Amnesty Tech—a branch of Amnesty International that advocates for tech companies to put human rights first—Rasha Abdul-Rahim, said on X that Meta apologizing is "not good enough."

Abdul-Rahim said that the fact that “Palestinian," the Palestinian flag emoji, and "alhamdulillah” were translated as "Palestinian terrorist" is "not a bug," but "a feature" of Meta's systems. Abdul-Rahim told Ars that the translation error is part of a larger systemic issue with Meta platforms, which for years have allegedly continually censored and misclassified Palestinian content.


Biden's 'TikTok Army' Uses Hamas-Affiliated Propaganda Outlet To Accuse Israel of 'Genocide'
The leader of a group once known as TikTok for Biden is signal boosting a report from a Hamas-affiliated Palestinian propaganda outlet to accuse Israel of "genocide" and call for a "Palestinian liberation."

Elise Joshi, who serves as executive director of the group now known as Gen-Z for Change—which has been dubbed the left's "TikTok army"—cited casualty figures from Palestinian rag Quds News Network to argue that Israel is committing "genocide." Those figures, Joshi argued, stress the need for young activists to "push the Biden administration … to stand for Palestinian liberation."

The Biden campaign during the 2020 election reached out to Joshi's group to form a partnership, which continued after President Joe Biden's inauguration. The Biden administration went on to tap Gen-Z for Change to host a YouTube town hall on the coronavirus vaccine alongside Anthony Fauci. Last year, meanwhile, Biden employed Gen-Z for Change to organize briefings between senior officials and social media "influencers" on the war in Ukraine and Biden's economic policies. Joshi, who has vowed to push "any progressive change, by any means," includes on her Instagram feed photos from the White House with Vice President Kamala Harris's husband, Doug Emhoff, and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D., Texas).

"I'm feeling hopeless, but we must do everything we can to push the Biden administration," Joshi said last week. "Call. Write. March. Our tax dollars are funding genocide. We have an obligation to stand for Palestinian liberation."

The link between the young TikTok influencer and the Biden administration reflects the octogenarian president's attempts to shore up support with young activists. While those attempts helped Biden defeat former president Donald Trump in 2020, they have also prompted political headaches as young progressives work to push Biden to the left. In addition to her amplification of Quds News Network—a Hamas-affiliated propaganda outlet that was removed from Facebook over its coverage of the terror group's assault on Israel—Joshi in July used her White House access to confront press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre over Biden's decision to approve an oil project in Alaska.

Neither the White House nor Gen-Z for Change returned requests for comment.

In addition to her use of Quds News Network stats to rally support for a "Palestinian liberation," Joshi has called Israel a "widely recognized apartheid state," expressed her support for "Palestine and all anti-colonial movements," and labeled Gaza an "open air prison." Joshi on Tuesday, meanwhile, shared a post from Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) that falsely claimed Israel bombed a Gaza hospital, killing "doctors" and "children." That post is no longer active on Joshi's account.
Israeli forces raid Samaria home of Hamas’s second-in-command
Israeli troops raided on Saturday the Samaria home of top Hamas terrorist Saleh al-Arouri and detained several of his relatives, according to reports.

Al-Arouri, who is currently based in Lebanon and Hamas’s top commander in Judea and Samaria, is Ismail Haniyeh’s deputy.

Israeli soldiers entered al-Arouri’s home in the village of Arura, located north of Ramallah, at dawn on Saturday and arrested more than 20 people, including one of his brothers and nine of his nephews, according to AFP.

Israeli forces reportedly thereafter raised a banner over the home showing al-Arouri on the backdrop of an Israeli flag and captioned: “This was the house of Saleh al-Arouri and has become the headquarters of Abu al-Nimer—Israeli intelligence.”

Abu al-Nimer is reportedly an alias for the Israeli intelligence officer responsible for the area.

Al-Arouri is credited with orchestrating a deep relationship between Hamas and Iran and played a key role in re-establishing the Palestinian terrorist group’s ties with Damascus, which were severed in 2012 during the Syrian Civil War.

He was recruited into Hamas in 1985 while studying Sharia law at Hebron University and was imprisoned in Israel for 18 years over several stints before being deported to Syria in 2010.

Overnight Friday, the IDF arrested a total of 89 Palestinians, including 68 Hamas terrorists, during raids across Judea and Samaria.




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