Friday, October 27, 2023

10/27 Links Pt2: An open letter to the UN secretary-general; The west’s monster within; Sharansky: We Should Not Take the Existence of Israel for Granted

From Ian:

An open letter to the UN secretary-general
To United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres,

I heard your speech on Tuesday in which you expressed understanding for the perpetration of crimes against humanity against innocent Israeli civilians because the Palestinians are under Israeli occupation.

I was horrified by what you said.

There is never justification for murder, rape, burning, beheading, and the killing of a baby in its mother’s stomach. Terrorism can never be rationalized, or put into “context,” and anyone who attempts to do so indirectly supports it.

The events of Saturday, October 7 exposed the brutal truth about Hamas. Gaza is not controlled by Israel, as the UN tries to portray it, but by a murderous terrorist organization, Hamas.

It is true, unfortunately, that over the years, because of the failure to reach a permanent agreement with the Palestinian Authority, which opposed generous offers from previous Israeli governments, Israel has mistakenly nurtured the reality in which Gaza has been ruled independently by a murderous terror organization.

The enlightened world – you – chose to continue calling for a two-state solution even when it was clear that there is no real feasibility for this to happen as long as Hamas is in control of Gaza.

With Gaza independent, unconnected, and hostile to the PA, Hamas has consistently used it as a launching pad for terrorist activities, including the indiscriminate firing of rockets toward Israeli civilian populations, against international law. Blurring the lines to violate the rules of war

Hamas chose to blur the lines between civilians and its fighters. The laws of war establish the principle of distinction between combatants and civilians. After years of controlling the local population, Hamas has succeeded in blurring the distinction both internally and externally, encouraging civilians to support and even take part in terrorist activity.

All of these, you have chosen to ignore. Instead, you continue to preach to Israel, blindly and unilaterally, about using legally its right to self-defense.
UNGA calls for Gaza ceasefire, fails to condemn Hamas

Erdan shows UNGA video of Hamas decapitation at ceasefire debate

Melanie Phillips: The West’s monster within
Islamic radicalism, they all claimed, was confined to a tiny fringe element. Ludicrously, they maintained that it had nothing to do with Islam. Clearly, many Western Muslims are genuinely signed up to Western values. But a frighteningly large proportion are not.

This has been ignored, downplayed and denied. Mass immigration of Muslims has continued, as has liberal pressure to admit thousands of people from Muslim countries claiming refugee status.

Anyone who objects is denounced as racist and Islamophobic. Under threat of terrorist attack, the media have routinely censored pictures of Muhammad and any proper discussion of Islam’s theology of holy war.

In both Britain and America, Iran has been steadily disseminating its ideology and increasing its influence in Shia mosques. Nine U.S. House representatives recently sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warning about Iran’s influence in at least four American mosques and Islamic centers.

Over the past two years, the police and intelligence service in Britain have foiled 15 plots masterminded by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The Jewish Chronicle has revealed widespread IRGC infiltration of British institutions and universities. Yet successive British governments have refused to ban the IRGC or the Muslim Brotherhood.

In a recent lecture, Robin Simcox, the British government’s independent adviser on extremism, said there had been a “normalization” of both anti-Israel extremism and antisemitism, which he blamed on a “failed policy of mass migration and multiculturalism.”

Multiculturalism remains an untouchable shibboleth, while Muslim antisemitism has been totally ignored. In Britain, the Jewish community leadership has not only been silent on Muslim antisemitism but has denounced as Islamophobic anyone who raises the issue.

Through interfaith initiatives, rabbis have been bending over backwards to reach out to Muslim clerics. Now that those clerics have been attacking Israel rather than Hamas, these naive rabbis feel betrayed.

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has surprised many by his robust support of Israel’s right to defend itself and his forthright condemnation of the morally debauched reaction to the Hamas pogrom. Many, though, think it is now too late. There are simply too many in the U.K. whose minds have been poisoned.

The terrible paradox of a liberal society is that it refuses to take the illiberal measures that may become unavoidable in defense of liberal values. As a result, liberal society contains the seeds of its own destruction. That is what now stands revealed to a horrified West.
Why My Generation Hates Jews
I am 21 years old and Jewish. Apparently, 48 percent of my peers want people like me dead.

As of October 23, 64 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds think what happened on October 7 was a terrorist attack. Seventy-seven percent of us think “it’s true that Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 Israeli civilians by shooting them, raping and beheading people including whole families, kids and babies.” But when asked, “in this conflict do you side more with Israel or Hamas?”

Forty-eight percent said Hamas.

I am not surprised.

In high school, my homeroom had an exercise where we made a T-chart dividing various ethnicities, religions, and other identities into the categories of “oppressor” and “oppressed.” Women: oppressed. Straight people: oppressor. Black people: oppressed. Then we reached the “Jew” category. And we paused. This being a high school in Los Angeles, many of my classmates were Jewish. I recall we skipped it altogether. But the T-chart stayed on the whiteboard.

If there were fewer Jews in that room, I’m confident that “Jews” would’ve gone squarely in the “oppressor” column.

Social justice theory became part of everything. My senior English class was not about great literature, but about readings in critical theory, mostly about race and gender. I had a nonacademic weekly homeroom class in which we learned that every white person is racist, and all men are evil. It took me a long time to shake off a hatred of men. It wasn’t socially acceptable to disagree, and no one really tried.

My high school got a dean of gender studies and feminism. At the time, one of her roles was to help seniors write their college applications. In answer to the question “What is the most significant challenge that society faces today?” I wrote it was identity politics. She gave me a note saying that meant I was rejecting the advances of the civil rights movement. I changed it.

I see the biggest part of growing up to be the acceptance of gray areas. But Gen Z worships these identity categories and the distinction of oppressor/oppressed. I know that’s true—I am submerged in it every day. The oppressor is always wrong, and the oppressed are always right. Since high school, we’ve been trained to identify and slot people based on their identities alone.

That’s intersectionality for you.

The cheering of Hamas among people my age on college campuses in the U.S. might seem shocking to older people. But it doesn’t shock me. For most of my peers, social issues are unanimous. At my college campus, the tiny group of people who publicly celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade were mocked mercilessly.

And so, even a terrorist group’s mass murder of innocent Jews—babies, grandmothers, entire families—cannot defeat my generation’s Manichean belief system. Jews are the worst, and October 7 is about justifiable revenge.
Michael Oren: A War Against the Jews
It wasn't the chants of "gas the Jews." Nor was it the glorification of Hamas paragliders by the Chicago branch of Black Lives Matter or, in New York and London, the tearing down of posters with the faces of Israeli children held hostage by Hamas. Not even the off-the-charts uptick in antisemitic incidents in Germany (240%), the U.S. (400%), and London (1,353%) convinced me. It was, rather, one of those realizations that so many generations of Jews before me have experienced. This war is not simply between Hamas terrorists and Israelis. It is a war against the Jews.

It wasn't the press' insistence on calling mass murderers "militants" or citing Hamas and its "Health Ministry" as a reliable source. I've long known that the terrorists are "militants" solely because their victims are Jews, and only in a conflict with Israel are terrorists considered credible.

Instead, it was the media's predictable switch from an Israel-empathetic to an Israel-demonizing narrative as the image of Palestinian suffering supplanted that of Israelis beheaded, dismembered, and burnt. It was the gnawing awareness that dead Jews buy us only so much sympathy. 1,400 butchered Jews bought us a little less than two weeks' worth of positive coverage.

Hamas opposed the Oslo process and every subsequent peace initiative. Hamas assassinated not only Jews but also Palestinians who supported the two-state solution. The reason most Israelis now oppose that solution is because they know that Hamas would take over the nascent Palestinian state in a day. I tell this to journalists but they are seldom, if ever, convinced. Much of the press, I've learned, has internalized the ultimate antisemitic myth: that Jews just have it coming.

Incontestably now, anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Hatred of the Jewish nation-state cannot be distinguished from hatred of the Jewish people. The war between Hamas and Israel, involving the largest and cruelest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, is a war against Jews everywhere.


Jonathan Tobin: Palestinians demand sympathy while spreading hate
Since the atrocities of Oct. 7 and the launching of a war begun by Hamas against Israel, the voices of Palestinian Arabs have never been so loud. We hear them in videos and interviews conducted in the Gaza Strip, on the streets of American and European cities, and at college campuses throughout the United States. And, of course, their plight is all over the pages of the most prestigious newspapers, like The New York Times, where they are seconded by anti-Zionist Jews who join in the laments about their cruel fate in Gaza. It is a narrative from which they never stray; the Palestinians continue to be oppressed and murdered by heartless Israelis, and ignored and dismissed by equally heartless Americans, who mindlessly support the Zionist state that has done them so much harm.

A culture of grievance
These Palestinian voices have a lot to tell us. Though their argument is principally focused on a sense of grievance about Israel, Zionism and the Jews—and a burning resentment about what is expected of them—it is also about a sense of entitlement. They believe they are entitled to our sympathy and can never quite comprehend why they don’t get more of it. At the heart of every Palestinian manifesto or cri de coeur published in or broadcast by liberal corporate media outlets is a sense of astonishment that anyone would question their intrinsic status as victims. The same goes for the idea that anyone demand that they disavow those who, with good reason, claim to speak for them while committing unspeakable crimes and rejecting peace.

It is that toxic mixture of grievance and entitlement that is behind the videos of those who tear down posters with the faces of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas. It is equally responsible for others on social media who illustrate the sense of glee and release that so many Palestinians and their supporters felt upon hearing the news of the Oct. 7 attacks, coupled with the toll of Jewish dead and suffering exacted during the pogroms those terrorists carried out.

It is also present in those videos depicting real suffering in Gaza as the Israel Defense Forces strike back at Hamas targets inside the area they have ruled as an independent Palestinian state in all but name, and from which they have launched rocket and missile attacks aimed at killing Israeli civilians and terrorist infiltrations like that of Oct. 7. They cannot seem to understand why the entire world isn’t more outraged about their plight. More to the point, they take it as an intolerable insult when questioners ask them to disavow crimes committed in their name or about the choices they’ve made, or whether their leaders or the cause they’ve embraced bears even a tiny fraction of the responsibility for the position they’re now in.

What is truly astonishing about all the befuddlement Palestinians are experiencing is their inability to acknowledge that they are the darlings of international diplomacy, the press, academia and elite opinion.
Andrew Pessin: Decolonization and Murder
Any ideology that endorses the mass slaughter of a specific people should have no place on any university campus, particularly those allegedly dedicated to anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Unfortunately, the October 7 massacre by Hamas of 1400 mostly Jewish civilians exposes the disturbing fact that exactly such ideology pervades many campuses.

It was about “decolonization,” they are saying, a treasured value in today’s academy and an essential part of a package of related ideologies. As one representative professor, Marc Lamont Hill of CUNY, put it, “So many university academics who insist upon doing performative, virtue signaling ‘land acknowledgements’ at every public event are eerily silent as real liberation struggles are happening. Guess decolonization really is a metaphor for some folk…” He clearly derides those who are all talk and no action, so for him, at least, decolonization apparently justifies the slaughter.

Nor is he alone. This remark came after ten days of massive campus rallies openly celebrating the “resistance,” their sanitized word for the mass torture and slaughter of Jews. Students for Justice in Palestine, the leading national campus group with some 200 chapters, celebrated and defended the massacre by openly proclaiming that “decolonization is a call to … actions that go beyond … rhetoric,” including “resistance … in all forms,” including “armed struggle,” and illustrated their social media with images of the homicidal hang gliders in case we missed the point. Most tellingly, they declared that they “are PART of this movement, not [merely] in solidarity”—the movement, that is, that guns down unarmed dancing teenagers.

So all that slaughter is apparently fine for these so many people if it’s for “decolonization.”

But now, speaking of land acknowledgments, consider this.

In the lobby of a central building on my campus (like many other campuses) there is an enormous posterboard proclaiming that “You are on Pequot and Mohegan homeland,” noting that the college “celebrates Indigenous People’s Day.”

By the decolonization rationale above, our local Native Americans would be within their rights to invade our campus and mercilessly slaughter every single one of us. Indeed those who support indigenous rights and decolonization ought to be the first to offer their throats to avoid that vapid virtue signaling that Lamont Hill derides and actually live (and die) by what they believe.

Do these people really support the Mohegans’ right to come in and gouge our eyes out, cut off our hands and feet, tie us up and burn us alive, and rape us while they are at it?

Or do they only support such when the alleged colonizers are Jews?
Victor Rosenthal: The American Front
What is the conseptzia? It is a collection of wrong ideas, a constellation of misunderstandings about who the Palestinians are, what motivates them, and what they want. It involves the mistaken projection of a set of values common in the West on a people that have different values, a stubborn refusal to listen to them, and a consistent underestimation of their intelligence, their tenacity, and the exceptionally strong emotion of hatred that infuses their culture.

Right now someone is asking how I can generalize. There are several million Palestinians, and multiple political and religious factions. How can I say they are all the same? Hold that thought – I will come back to it.

Here are a few false propositions that are part of the conseptzia:

1. Like most present-day Americans and Western Europeans, Palestinians are primarily motivated by economic considerations and only secondarily by religion and ideology.
2. The violent terrorism of the Palestinians comes from their frustration that they do not have an independent state.
3. Palestinians are essentially corrupt and will give up their ideological goals if paid enough.
4. The Palestinian Authority (dominated by the Fatah movement) is more moderate than Hamas, and would accept a Jewish state somewhere between the river and the sea if enough of their demands were met.

The reasons none of these are true come from the nature of Palestinian culture.

Palestinian culture is very different from that of liberal Americans or Europeans. That is not surprising, since it developed in an entirely different place from different antecedents. The starting point is traditional nomadic Arab culture, with its emphasis on maintaining personal and family honor and avoiding shame. The Arabs of Eretz Yisrael, who came from various parts of the region, did not consider themselves Palestinians in the beginning of the 20th century (with the exception of a small movement made up of educated Christian Arabs). Their identity was as part of their clans, and as part of the Muslim Ummah. As far as they were concerned, Eretz Yisrael was southern Syria.
Victor Rosenthal: We Forgot
For Jews, the wolf of Amalek is always at the door. This is certainly true in Eretz Yisrael, where Amalek has been battering at us for at least the last 100 years. But since 1967, many Israeli Jews have lost the existential anxiety that gripped the generation of 1948. The Yom Kippur War was a reminder of it, but the fact that we recovered from the initial defeat and won a clear-cut military victory (though it was taken from us diplomatically) and that our enemies didn’t penetrate our home front, soon erased the fear of the first days of the war. There were other warnings, but the desire to live as though we were one of the large Western democracies made us suppress the precarious reality of the Middle East in which we live.

So we reduced the size of our ground army, and relaxed many of the procedures that were, it turns out, essential to protecting our people. We have become dependent: on America, on technology, on our Air Force. Officers assumed that we were so strong that nobody would challenge us, so it was safe for them to fudge a little on their reports to higher-ups. What could happen? Our General Staff decided that technology could replace boots on the ground; they advocated for a “digital battlefield” on which every soldier would be tied into to sophisticated information systems that would provide real-time intelligence and command, blah blah blah. Their reports all said that goals were achieved. A whole paper structure was built that did not reflect reality. The map was not the territory. “We’ve never been stronger,” said the top generals, until Hamas revealed their nakedness on October 7.

Our leaders should have known the intentions of our enemies. All they had to do was listen to what the spokespeople of Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, and Iran said in public. But perhaps because they themselves were so easily bought, they held our enemies in contempt. They assumed that quiet could be purchased with American dollars to the PLO and Qatari cash for Hamas. But it turns out, as anyone who has studied the Middle East even a little knows, that money was only a means to an end. They were happy to take it and build fancy villas for themselves, but they also dug tunnels and manufactured rockets. And they never lost their aspiration to once and for all kill and drive out the Jews from what they claim as their land.

The generals and the politicians forgot that we are not a large western democracy, but rather a small country in the Middle East. They forgot that our enemies are not stupid. They forgot that honor and deterrence go together. They forgot that the more complicated a system, the more weak points it has, and that technology can fail. They forgot that Maginot Lines never work. They forgot that only ground forces can hold territory.

Most importantly, they forgot how much our enemies hate us and how this motivates them. They forgot Amalek.
Americans must join the battle against the demonization of Israel
Israel and the Jewish people have been in a state of war since October 7, when the Hamas terrorist army launched a barbarous assault on two dozen communities in southern Israel. The terrorists, who murdered 1,400 Israelis, most of them civilians, demonstrated a violence and cruelty whose parallels in Jewish history are the Inquisition, the Pogroms, and the Holocaust.

Committing rape, torture, murder, and mutilation while abducting more than 200 hostages, Hamas declared itself once and forevermore outside the realm of the civilized. This massacre will long haunt the Jewish people.Israel and the Jewish people are not alone in the war. The United States of America, under President Joe Biden, has continued a long and proud heritage of standing with the Jewish state. President Biden has pledged and demonstrated his deep solidarity with Israel, giving two impassioned speeches on the terror attack, visiting Israel to show his support, and proposing a blockbuster $14 billion in funding to help the country eliminate Hamas.

Jewish organizations, the Conference of Presidents among them, deserve some of the credit for helping the administration understand the situation and formulate a response. In the past few weeks, we have been in constant contact with officials both in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

Once again, we see the need for the Jewish people to have effective institutions to represent our interests in the halls of power. The Conference was founded exactly for this reason, born in 1956 in response to the Suez Crisis, when President Eisenhower wanted to take the pulse of American Jewish opinion. Drawing more than 50 Jewish organizations under our umbrella, we have managed to communicate the vital needs of our community to local, state, and federal authorities – from securing funds to protect communal institutions from antisemitic hate crimes to bolstering support for the Jewish state’s right to exist and defend itself.

Having just last week convened the national leadership of the American Jewish community to a Washington fly-in to demonstrate our resolute and ironclad commitment to Israel and her security, we heard from all the top leaders of both houses of Congress and from both parties. We shared our belief that at this moment of unparalleled crisis for Israel, demonstrating the cohesion between the American Jewish community and the country’s political leaders is of vital consequence. All speakers expressed a strong moral stance in support of Israel’s right to defend itself and our government’s ongoing commitment to Israel’s security.
Yisrael Medad: Tired souls, Jewish souls
Pro-Palestine activists have infiltrated Jewish student bodies. I was part of an effort several years ago to awaken establishment apparatchiks to the dangers but to no avail. True, we have witnessed in the past Jewish students siding with the Palestinian struggle—the 1967 SNCC statement, Breira and others over the years. But what appears to be ominous, besides the mindlessness in their slogans, is that they are not just in a position of disagreement with their fellow Jews or even that they have adopted the positions of Israel’s enemies. What is harrowing is that they are expressing themselves with animosity, callousness and even hate. Jewish students are deemed as requiring armed protection.

Those Jews who are leading and pushing and those justifying this anti-Zionism took their cue from an Israeli prime minister who was tired, and too many of today’s young Jewish generation find themselves battered and unsupported. School curricula are subverted to favor anti-Zionism in the high schools, and even in the lower grades in accordance with the ethnic-studies framework and critical race theory. And, more importantly, without the education and the belief in the justness of Zionism.

They are the fruits of those who were tired over the past quarter of a century. Zombie-like, they follow professors and rabbis who have lost direction and who seek favor with colleagues. And the more they display weakness and fear, the bolder the enemies of Israel in the progressive woke camp become. They parrot such terms as “apartheid,” “genocide” and other vacuous catchphrases.

And they are more than just tired souls. They possess empty and immoral souls. On a recent MSNBC panel, on Oct. 10, far-left journalist Peter Beinart nonchalantly declared (at 7:10) that Palestinian organizations “do terrible things, too, because brutalized people do brutal things sometimes.” Israel left Gaza in 2005, some 18 years ago. Hamas won the 2006 elections and mobilized a subjugated population to produce 1,500 shock troops that slaughtered, mutilated, raped and burned hundreds of Jews on Simchat Torah.

That wasn’t brutality. It was a fiendish, animalistic and satanic act of barbarism—an inhuman onslaught. Incredibly, in part, Beinart whitewashed it by portraying Israel through the prism of his warped anti-Zionism. Perhaps he sees himself as a new “Abraham,” but unlike the biblical figure, he is willing to sacrifice his Isaac and for all the wrong reasons.

A new voice must arise—a voice that boldly, even proudly, declares that Jews are not tired. That they are resilient and will re-establish Jewish pride, Jewish identity and the promise of a Jewish future. A voice of the true Jewish soul.
Natan Sharansky: ‘We Forgot That We Should Not Take the Existence of the State of Israel for Granted’
Natan Sharansky, the famed refusenik and international campaigner against antisemitism, on Wednesday said that the Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct. 7 was a wakeup call for Israelis about threats to the Jewish state.

“We forgot that we should not take the existence of the State of Israel for granted,” Sharansky said. “We believed that antisemitism is something Jews of the diaspora keep suffering — of course we have to help them — but it’s not something about Israel. And definitely pogroms, it’s not part of our history. So we had to learn, and now we are learning how to live again. It’s not the end of history … we have to go through our wars and our battles again.”

Speaking at The Algemeiner‘s annual J100 gala in New York, Sharansky said that the Hamas massacre of more than 1,400 people had unified Israel in an unprecedented way.

“We have no choice. We have to fight,” Sharansky said. “Israel changed in one day from the most polarized society to the most united society. For the first time that I have been in Israel, there is no left and right. There is no hatred towards the ultra-Orthodox and no hatred towards the anti-religious. Everybody feels we are one family. In two days, it was the quickest mobilization in the history of Israel. 300,000 people were called up to the army; 360,000 people came to the army.”


The West has a problem with “muscular” Jews
How Israel is supposed to defend itself is a question that is never answered

It has become a maxim among Israelis and Jews who support Israel worldwide that the Western world exalts murdered Jews, but Jews who fight back, not so much. The reaction to the recent events in southern Israel and Gaza supports this idea to a T.

When the gruesome details of the Hamas attack that left 1,400 Israelis dead, thousands more injured and more than 200 taken hostage emerged, Jewish optimists believed that Israel’s stated aim of destroying Hamas with a forceful response would be understood, even welcomed.

That didn’t happen. Instead, Israel has been subjected to the same old rinse and repeat as in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021, all the times Hamas sent thousands of rockets indiscriminately into Israel. In response to those attacks, which resulted in relatively few deaths due to Israel’s Iron Dome and the poor quality of the mostly home-made rockets (which were almost as likely to explode in Gaza as in Israel), Israel had just a few days to bomb suspected Hamas targets. After that, the calls for humanitarian intervention and accusations of war crimes were such that even staunch allies like the United States felt pressured to restrain Israel from continuing to do what ought to have been done.

But the events of Oct. 7 were supposed to be a watershed. At last, the eyes of doubters would be opened. After the worst attack on Jews since the holocaust, and the barbaric nature of the attacks, Israel’s right to self-defence would no longer be subject to qualifications, such as “Israel has the right to defend itself, but…….” – the buts including references to “restraint,” “proportionality,” “international law,” “innocent Palestinians” and “war crimes/crimes against humanity.” Hamas would be exposed for the death cult it is. The world, or the Western world at least, would finally see it has been coddling, if not supporting outright, a nihilistic death cult, not a resistance movement.


David Brooks: Reassessing the Two-State Paradigm
According to critical race theory, as it applies to the Middle East, international conflicts can be seen through a prism of American identity categories like race. In any situation there are evil people who are colonizer/oppressors and good people who are colonized/oppressed. It's not necessary to know about the particular facts about any global conflict, because of intersectionality: All struggles are part of the same struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed.

This paradigm shapes how many on campus saw the Hamas terror attacks and were thus pushed into a series of ridiculous postures. A group of highly educated American progressives cheered on Hamas as anti-colonialist freedom fighters even though Hamas is a theocratic, genocidal terrorist force that oppresses LGBTQ people and revels in the massacres of innocents. These campus activists showed little compassion for Israeli men and women who were murdered at a music festival because they were perceived as "settlers" and hence worthy of extermination.

Many progressives called for an immediate cease-fire, denying Israel the right to defend itself, which is enshrined in international law - as if Nigeria should have declared a cease-fire the day after Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls in 2014.

The two-state paradigm is based on the notion that this conflict will end when there are two states with two peoples living side-by-side. After this month's events, several assumptions underlying this worldview seem shaky: that most people on each side will eventually come to accept the legitimacy of the other's existence; that Palestinian leaders would rather devote their budgets to economic development than perpetual genocidal holy war; that the cause of peace is advanced when Israel withdraws from Palestinian territories; that Hamas can be contained until a negotiated settlement is achieved.

Those of us who see the conflict through this two-state framing may be relying on lenses that distort our vision, so we see the sort of Middle East that existed two decades ago, not the one that exists today.

I'm hoping the Biden administration will do two things that will keep the faint hopes of peace and basic decency alive. The first is to help Israel re-establish deterrence. In the Middle East, peace happens when Israel is perceived as strong and permanent and the U.S. has its back. Second, I'm hoping the U.S. encourages Arab nations to work with the Palestinians to build a government that can rule Gaza after Hamas is dismantled.
Obama's Middle East policies failed and he should butt out
The purpose of Obama's latest missive is to undercut Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas. The former president said Americans must acknowledge “that Palestinians have also lived in disputed territories for generations; that many of them were not only displaced when Israel was formed but continue to be forcibly displaced by a settler movement that too often has received tacit or explicit support from the Israeli government.”

This echoes the Hamas explanation for why it is justifiable to kill fathers, behead babies, and rape women. “We have to redefine what it means to be a civilian,” a Hamas spokesman told Sky News, explaining that he did not consider any settler a civilian.

There is a lot of necessary talk about the importance of norms in a democratic society. One of our republic’s established norms is that ex-presidents leave Washington, D.C., and mostly stay silent about what their successors are doing, especially on foreign policy.

Obama mostly did so when former President Donald Trump was in office, even as Trump leads the league in violating norms. But Obama clearly feels entitled to comment now that President Joe Biden is in office. This is especially troubling because of their established relationship. Biden was Obama's deputy for eight years, and this has stamped Obama indelibly as the senior partner who tells his sidekick what to do. It has long been suspected that Obama, from his house in Washington's Kalorama district, pulls strings in the Biden White House. And now here he is, interfering and apparently trying to steer the course that he thinks the federal government should take on one of the biggest policy and strategic issues in years.

He does this because he is still the arrogant, overweeningly self-admiring man he always was, but also because he thinks he can get away with it because most voters see Biden as not up for the job and in need of competent help. Biden’s weakness invites Obama to speak up, but he should decline the invitation. But Obama's record shows plainly that he should have no sway over Middle Eastern policy and the security of Israel.

The massacre of civilians by Iran’s client organization Hamas has exposed the folly of Obama’s decision to empower it. The Middle East is now a far more dangerous place thanks to the billions of dollars that Obama and now Biden have given Iran, funding terrorism throughout the region. It would be best for everyone if Obama thought more about why his Iran strategy failed and wrote less about how Israel should protect itself.
Douglas Murray: Isolationist Republicans are wrong — we need to stand up for Israel and Ukraine
Countries like Latvia and Lithuania have no doubt that had Vladimir Putin not been stalled in his effort to take over Ukraine, countries like these would have been next.

It may be the case that Americans don’t want to lose any American lives in Ukraine. But we’re not.

The fighting and the dying are all being done by the Ukrainians.

All they are asking from the outside world is support.

It is the same with Israel. As demonstrations across this country and indeed this city should have reminded us, we have a serious problem of radicals in this country.

Both Islamic radicals and idiot leftist radicals.

All of whom think that the rape, mutilation and killing of innocent civilians is in some way justified if the victims are Jews.

But as the Israelis know, the Jews are just the first victims in the line of fire of these radicals.

Everyone else is next. So it should be easy to support Israel in its fight against Hamas.

After all, it isn’t as though Israel is asking for Americans to come over and fight its upcoming war.
Douglas Murray slams ‘psychotically evil’ woman praising Hamas for terror attacks
Author Douglas Murray has slammed a Muslim woman who recorded herself praising Hamas for its terror attacks on October 7, calling her “psychotically evil”.

On October 7, Israel declared war on Hamas after the Palestinian terrorist group fired thousands of rockets as far north as Tel Aviv.

“It’s evil on an unimaginable magnitude that anyone could react to the deliberate slaughter of civilians of any kind, anywhere in the world like that,” he told Sky News host Rita Panahi.

“If this was to be anybody else who said that about the murder of any other minority or any other nationality, they would be nowhere near surviving in society, in fact, they’d be ostracised, probably chased out.

“But this woman was actually invited by ITV onto one of the main channels and yeah she talked about how tough it is to be Muslim in Britain.”


Editor's Notes: Moral idiocy on campus
When faculty members themselves encourage and even participate in efforts to extol a recognized terrorist group and condemn a democracy for defending its citizens, is it any surprise that their students are doing the same?

Happily, some of the universities’ most prominent supporters are starting to fight back.

As we at the Post highlighted in our editorial on Tuesday of this week, Jewish donors are informing administrators that they will be halting their contributions so long as anti-Israel and antisemitic campus activity goes unaddressed.“The reality in which a Jewish donor may give heavily to an institution in which his or her grandchild might feel uncomfortable due to his or her Jewish identity or connection to Israel is one that has vexed many in the Jewish community for years,” we wrote. “Now, it appears, the tide may finally be turning.”

Among the growing list of individuals who have informed their alma maters and the beneficiaries of their longtime support that they are stopping their giving are Leslie and Abigail Wexner, Marc Rowan, and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. (who isn’t Jewish).

“For many Jews, it seems, this is a watershed moment,” we at the Post wrote. “For far too long, universities have enjoyed the beneficence of Jewish donors while doing little to ensure that Jewish students experience academic environments free of hate and intimidation.”

“Directly or indirectly, Jewish donors have been paying the salaries of professors who bully Jewish students, funding student groups that engage in anti-Zionist antisemitism, and subsidizing events in which the Jewish state and its supporters are demonized. Not anymore.”

This is an important step in the right direction, but it isn’t enough.

It shouldn’t take threats from donors for university leaders to do what they must to ensure their campuses are safe for Jewish students – and free of support for terrorism.

A moral and an education failure
On an immediate, practical level, administrators should work with authorities to ensure students, faculty, and anyone else expressing support for a recognized terrorist group and engaging in incitement to violence is identified and held accountable. Just take a look at TikTok – they aren’t shy about broadcasting their noxious views and ugly activities.

But university leaders should also pause for a moment and look inward. Universities don’t exist merely to impart knowledge, but also to engage in moral instruction. To be sure, college students are bombarded with information from an unprecedentedly large array of sources, but so long as they are on campus, universities should take seriously their responsibility to ensure that they graduate not only better-educated but better people. A student who views Israel and Hamas as being on equal moral footing – or who supports or justifies acts of unspeakable violence against innocent men, women, and children – represents both a moral and an educational failure.

As they observe the events unfolding on campus and review the polling data, it is time for university administrators to consider where they went wrong – and adjust accordingly
Five lies US young adults tell themselves about Israel
Do people alter facts at will to align with their agenda or perspective?

This phenomenon appears more prevalent than expected, as evidenced by the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll.

This poll, which asked about American voters’ perceptions of the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, indicated that the majority (84%) of Americans supported Israel’s struggle against Hamas. However, a closer look at the poll data, particularly when broken down by age, shows a significant and striking lack of factual understanding among young adults aged 18 to 24 in the United States.

Here are five misconceptions held by these young adults that the survey revealed and the necessary information to set the record straight. Five misconceptions young Americans believe about Israel, and the real facts behind them

No. 1: One-third (32%) of young adults 18-24 do not believe Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 Israeli civilians by shooting, stabbing, and beheading people.

Fact: Hamas launched an incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023, with the explicit intention of causing maximum harm to Israeli civilians through brutal and barbaric means. This week, the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces shared unfiltered audio and video footage captured from body cameras and phones of Hamas terrorists as they carried out ruthless attacks on communities along Israel’s border with Gaza. Reporters who viewed these clips described the contents as containing highly graphic images, including the murder of children, burning of bodies, deliberate targeting of civilians, and various other horrifying atrocities.
Hamas Murdered Israeli Arabs on Oct. 7
A silver Volkswagen minibus sits in a sandy lot on the edge of Sderot in Israel. Its seats were stained with dried blood and covered in smashed glass. Bullet holes pocked its sides.

A blue Israeli ID gave a clue to its owner: Sami Gergawi, 51, from Wadi al-Na'am, a Bedouin village.

Dozens of the victims of Hamas' brutal attack on Oct. 7 were Arab citizens of Israel, among them at least 18 Bedouins, descendants of traditional nomadic communities.

Gergawi was gunned down as militants took up sniping positions at Sderot intersections and caused havoc on city streets in their mission to kill and kidnap.

A father of 30 children with three different mothers, his presence leaves a gaping hole, the family said.

Gergawi was ferrying Gazan workers who have permits to work in Israel from their accommodations to farms near the border.

On the back seat next to a bloodied buckle lay another identity card for a temporary worker from Beit Lahia in Gaza.
"They're not real Muslims": Honoring Arab-Israelis murdered in Hamas attack
Awad Darawashe, a 20-year-old Arab-Israeli paramedic working at the Nova festival, was murdered by Hamas while trying to help other victims.

Kazim Khlilih pays tribute to his heroic cousin, and says of Hamas "They're not Muslims" as the terrorists targeted anyone and everyone they saw.


Robert Satloff: Regime Change, Israeli-Style
Israel has defined its war aims as the destruction of Hamas - of Hamas' political leadership, its military capability, its administrative capacity, its control of Gaza; everything. The war triggered by Hamas' barbaric attacks on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 will be the first zero-sum conflict in the Arab-Israeli arena since 1948. What lies ahead will be different than every conflict in the memory of current policymakers. This would be "regime change," Israeli-style.

In the past 15 years, since Hamas took control of Gaza in a violent, bloody coup - not, as some have mistakenly written, in elections - there have been a series of violent rounds between them and Israel. Thousands of Hamas rockets have landed inside Israeli cities, towns and villages, terrorizing millions. But Israel's goal was never to destroy Hamas, just to periodically "mow the grass," as Israeli defense officials often said.

All that changed on Oct. 7. The enormity, the audacity, and the depravity of what Hamas did - butchering more than 1,300 civilians in a way not experienced by Jews since the darkest days of the Holocaust - changed the rules of the game. It was the rudest of awakenings, opening eyes to the almost incomprehensible realization that while they were engaged in what they thought was a conflict defined by clear rules and boundaries, the enemy was readying itself for a diabolical, bloodthirsty massacre.

For Israelis, whose national pastime is to avoid being taken for a sucker, the old rules of "limited war" are gone. In their place is Israel's adoption since of "regime change" as a goal of war. One should not discount the overpowering sense of national mission that flows from Oct. 7, leaving Israel apparently undeterred by the inevitability of battlefield losses, setbacks and failures, as it pursues the fight to finish off Hamas for good.
Mark Regev: Israel acts completely within international law
In the first episode of the JC's new podcast: Israel War Briefing, Jake Wallis Simons is joined by special advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Israeli ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev.

00:23 - Media coverage of Israel
05:56 - Why is this conflict different to all others?
09:39 - Israel's policy towards Hamas
14:15 - War with Hezbollah
17:59 - Rules of engagement in Gaza
20:51 - War with Iran
23:08 - Israeli unity




Why Fuel Is a Key Issue for Hamas
What primarily hinders Hamas in Gaza right now is the issue of fuel. UNRWA still has an adequate amount of fuel to keep the main hospitals fully functional, but Hamas lacks the fuel needed to operate the generators that supply clean air to its tunnels, bunkers and command posts located deep underground. The electricity provided by the generators is also used to power warning systems, cameras, military equipment, and remote launch pads of rockets and mortars, as well as their production factories. Without fuel, a significant part of the command and a large part of Hamas' combat capabilities become non-functional.

Israel needs to continue taking action to prevent the supply of fuel to Gaza that may reach Hamas. There is no humanitarian consideration that would justify, even from the perspective of international law, aiding the operation of Hamas' rocket launching, command and control systems.

This war is about our ability to live and feel secure anywhere in the country without needing to go to war every few years to protect or, God forbid, avenge our children. Without establishing a new and robust deterrence doctrine, we won't be able to maintain a normal way of life in this country.




Hen Mazzig: No, Israel Isn't a Country of Privileged and Powerful White Europeans
Along with resurgent identity politics in the U.S., there is a growing inclination to frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of race.

According to this narrative, Israel was established as a refuge for oppressed white European Jews who in turn became oppressors of people of color, the Palestinians.

As an Israeli and the son of an Iraqi Jewish mother and a Tunisian Jewish father, this is gut-wrenching to witness.

The majority of Jews in Israel today are of Middle Eastern and North African descent (Mizrachi). Only about 30% of Israeli Jews are descendants of European Jews (Ashkenazi).

I am baffled as to why mainstream media and politicians around the world ignore or misrepresent these facts. I believe the misrepresentations of pro-Palestinian activists are part of a strategic campaign to taint Israel as an extension of privileged and powerful white Europe, thereby justifying any and all attacks on it.

This way of thinking signals a dangerous trend that positions Israel as a colonialist aggressor rather than a haven for those fleeing oppression. Worse, it all but erases the story of my family.

One of Judaism's central themes is a story of national liberation in the face of imperial powers.

Israel is a place where an indigenous people have reclaimed their land and revived their ancient language, despite being surrounded by hostile neighbors and hounded by radicalized Arab nationalists who cannot tolerate any political entity in the region other than their own.
Heritage Foundation president: ‘Antisemitism is not even human. It’s evil’

Stephen Pollard: Shame on you, Sadiq Khan



Far-left House Democrats chafe at Biden Israel support after Hamas terror attacks

Tlaib is the very threat to democracy Democrats warned about



Holocaust denier Queen Rania could donate to Gaza from her Swiss bank accounts



Qatar sentences 8 Indians to death, reportedly on charges of spying for Israel



IDF Kills 5 Senior Hamas Commanders
The Israel Defense Forces said its airstrikes in Gaza killed five senior Hamas commanders on Thursday.

They included the deputy head of Hamas' intelligence directorate, Shadi Barud, who planned the Oct. 7 massacre along with Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar.

Another strike killed the head of Hamas' North Khan Younis rocket array, Hassan al-Abdullah.

Also killed were three senior commanders in Hamas' Daraj-Tuffah Battalion: battalion commander Rifaat Abbas, deputy commander Ibrahim Jadba, and combat support commander Tarek Maarouf.

Thursday saw multiple salvos of Palestinian rockets aimed at central Israel, including the cities of Tel Aviv, Rishon Lezion, Bat Yam, Givatayim, Ramat Gan, and Holon, as well as barrages targeting Ashdod, Ashkelon and Netivot, as well as the largely evacuated Gaza border communities.


MEMRI: Senior Saudi Journalist Tariq Al-Homayed In Message To Yahyah Sinwar: 'Would You Leave Gaza To Prevent Further Bloodshed[?]'



Putting the Hamas Massacre, and Hamas Denials, in Context



"Name an important Palestinian in history" (Palestinian nationality, invented in 1964 by Arafat)



MEMRI: Qatari Press Attacks U.S., West For Their Support Of Israel: They Are Complicit In Its Crimes And Pose A Threat To Democracy And Morality; The U.S. Itself Won Its Independence By Means Of Terror



Biden Admin Under Fire For Allowing Iranian Foreign Minister to Enter US



Brazen support for Hamas spreading across Britain since terror attack

115 Groups Demand UC Reject Ethnic Studies Faculty Supporting Hamas Terrorism

Irish Wix employee fired for inflammatory posts about Israel-Hamas war



The PACC is filled with lies and hate
Yet, today, at least one such community center in New Jersey is not designed to help members fit in to American society. It was built to perpetuate and teach hate of the Jews and by implication, the State of Israel.

OPENED IN 2014, Clifton’s Palestinian American Community Center, or PACC, was built, per its website, with a mission for members “to sustain and strengthen ties to their Palestinian heritage.” On its home page, members subscribe to such noble attributes as “integrity, empowerment, service, people cooperation, and respect. These core values represent what we believe in, what we stand for, and how we approach everything we do.”

The lies being told
Yet, with such a powerful statement prominently displayed, I find it disturbing that the PACC released a video regarding the Israel-Hamas war. Straight and to the point, the video is called Lies currently been told about Palestine.

The video’s moderator states that there are three lies being circulated regarding the war:

“Number one: 40 babies were beheaded. This is completely false. No evidence has been provided for this.”

“Number two: people were raped. Also, false. There is no evidence for this whatsoever.”

“Number three: 250 people were killed at a concert. False. The only videos we have seen are people running away from the concert. There isn’t a single video or photo suggesting that 250 people were killed at a concert or that a mass shooting took place.”

“What we do have, however, are interviews of Israelis claiming that the Palestinian resistance fighters were actually kind to them, merciful to them.”

And while the moderator is speaking, there is a video playing in the background with a woman speaking. Although her voice is not audible, the subtitles printed on the screen say, “Look around, one says in English, we will not hurt you. Don’t worry, I’m a Muslim.”

The moderator asks, “So why are they lying, it is called, atrocity propaganda. They lie about atrocities!”


ADL, Brandeis Center send letter to university presidents calling on them to investigate SJP’s terrorism ties



Richard Littlejohn: London Calling, London Calling... Here is the BBC News read by Lord Haw-Haw
The BBC and other Left-wing media outlets pump out Hamas propaganda. The Met refuses to arrest demonstrators calling for 'jihad' on the streets of London. Labour MPs side with terrorists.

All this got me thinking how we could ever have won World War II if the Beeb's editorial guidelines and Scotland Yard's woke police procedures had been in force back then...

London Calling, London Calling. This is the BBC Home Service. Here is the news, read by Lord Haw-Haw.

German militants have categorically denied bombing the East End of London overnight. They have produced evidence that the firestorm which claimed hundreds of civilian lives in the densely populated docklands was caused by an RAF Lancaster which crash-landed in Wapping on its way to inflict mass casualties in the Rhine Valley.

A spokesman for the National Socialist Party in Berlin accused the Allies of committing genocide against the German master race. This claim was supported by the Secretary General of the League of Nations, who insisted Germany had the right to defend itself against Allied aggression and colonialism.

He called for an immediate ceasefire and a halt to the planned D-Day invasion, which has already been postponed twice because of inclement weather in the English Channel caused by man-made climate change. The Health and Safety Executive has also said the invasion would be illegal because no proper risk-assessment has been carried out.
Reporters repeatedly ask State Department, White House if Israel abiding by laws of war

TIME MISLEADS READERS ABOUT CAUSE OF AL AHLI HOSPITAL BLAST

Global News Reporter Tells Viewers Israel Is Killing Palestinian Civilians “By the Thousands”

Global News Gives Uncritical Platform To Hamas Terrorist Who Denies Its Aim To Kill Israeli Civilians



UPDATE: Journalist Who Said Israel “Cannot Exist” No Longer With CTV News Atlantic



Antisemitic graffiti on the anniversary of the Tree of Life massacre



Stars of the Israeli electronic scene aim to raise funds for war victims

Hollywood Veteran Resigns From Writers Guild of America Over Its ‘Utter and Complete Silence’ on Hamas

‘It’s Humanity Versus Evil:’ Actor Dean Cain Expresses Solidarity With Israel in War Against Hamas

‘What Happened to Humanity?’ Gal Gadot Holds Back Tears While Discussing Israeli Hostages Taken by Hamas

Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor Discusses ‘Unity in Times of Crisis’ as Musicians Perform for Israeli Victims of Hamas



Gaza hostages take center stage in NYC with empty Shabbat table
The Israeli-American Council (IAC) erected a monument on Friday afternoon in Times Square, New York featuring a table laid out in traditional Shabbat meal style with 224 empty seats, one for every hostage being held by Hamas in Gaza, the organization said in a press release.

The installation was an attempt to raise awareness among the US population of the efforts to secure the release of the hostages and hopes to increase global pressure on Hamas and their supporters.

This followed a separate rally that was held by the IAC a week prior which was attended by thousands of pro-Israel supporters who protested in front of 15 large billboards featuring faces of the hostages.

The monument has since been viewed by thousands of people.

299 individuals are still being held hostage inside Gaza according to the latest data reported by The Jerusalem Post.


‘Lights of Hope’ illuminate Jerusalem sky
The “Lights of Hope” exhibit on Thursday night in Jerusalem served as a symbol of solidarity with the hostages being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, aimed at raising international awareness of their plight.

Representatives of the captives’ families took part in the inauguration event, which was sponsored by the Jerusalem Municipality, via the Ariel Company, at Pais Arena Square (formerly the Jerusalem Arena).

The display consists of 224 light bulbs, corresponding to the number of captives held by Hamas, and covers an area of about 1,000 square meters. The floodlights illuminate the sky in different colors for 224 seconds and will continue to do so multiple times each evening. Next to each bulb is an image and name of each captive.

The number of light bulbs and duration of their illumination will be adjusted according to the number of captives who have been returned.

Uri Menachem, CEO of Ariel Company, said “the ‘Lights of Hope’ exhibition from Jerusalem conveys a message to the world to unite around the effort to bring all the captives back home in peace. The people of Israel do not forget, even for a moment, the 224 beacons of light held captive in Gaza.”

Added Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion: “We pray and hope for their swift return home.”




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

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