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Saturday, October 28, 2023

10/28 Links: 'Never again is now' says Netanyahu as war on Hamas escalates; Why is the West confused about backing Israel?; I See the Hostages in My Children’s Faces

From Ian:

Why is the West confused about backing Israel?
There is a bitter irony to all of this. The progressive left claims to be fighting colonialism. And yet it is so uninterested in the reality of non-western countries that it winds up blindly imposing conceptual categories that were forged in the context of American history and society on the rest of the world. The identity synthesis may be dressed up in postcolonial clothes; but it is itself a neo-colonial enterprise.

There is one final factor in how these moral errors could come to be so influential: the concept of intersectionality. Ori`ginally coined by the academic and campaigner Kimberlรฉ Crenshaw, the idea of “intersectionality” says that various forms of disadvantage can reinforce each other: that, for instance, the discrimination suffered by black women can, in some contexts, be more than the arithmetic sum of the discrimination suffered by white women on the one hand, and black men on the other.

That is true so far as it goes. But Crenshaw’s theory quickly took on a life of its own. If people can face disadvantage based on belonging to more than one identity group, activists claimed, then the only way to liberate them would be to fight against all those forms of disadvantage at the same time. These activists came to see every type of oppression as linked — and to demand that anyone who cares about one kind of injustice must simultaneously fight against all other kinds.

Many people have, in the past weeks, been surprised by how many protests held banners like “Queers for Palestine.” After all, Israel has an excellent record at respecting gay rights, while the authorities in Gaza heavily penalize homosexuality. But the logic of intersectionality helps to explain why, at a sufficiently high level of abstraction, these causes can appear to be at one with each other. Since they see both sexual minorities and Palestinians as oppressed, intersectional activists posit that the fates of both groups must be inextricably linked.

As a broader and bloodier conflict looms on the horizon in the Middle East, it is time for a simple willingness to recognize the messiness of the real world. The idea that all supposed victims of oppression do, or should, see each other as allies is fanciful. Neither Israelis or Palestinians have a monopoly on moral virtue. It is not possible to press them into a simple schema of white or black, colonizer or colonized, good or evil. The murder of 1,400 innocents in Israel has already provoked a broader conflict in which a lot more innocents are likely to perish.

It is not possible, either, to expect any state to tolerate the cold-blooded murder of so many citizens without doing what it takes to re-establish its security. Nor would any other state accept talk of a ceasefire while hundreds of its people remain in the clutches of a brutal terrorist group. But that does not mean that it would be wise for Israel to stumble into a wider regional war — nor does it absolve the country from its moral responsibility to do what it can to protect the lives of civilians on the “other” side. How to balance these imperatives without abandoning any of them is a fiendishly difficult task. While the future of the conflict remains unclear, its first weeks do already offer one clear lesson. Nobody, neither Israeli or Palestinian, forfeits their humanity by virtue of the group into which they are born. And an ideology that is incapable of recognizing that basic fact loses any claim to moral superiority.
PodCast: The IDF Approach to Protecting Civilians in Urban Warfare - Modern War Institute
Almost immediately after Hamas launched its brutal set of terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, it became clear that the Israel Defense Forces would respond militarily. Initially that response came in the form of airstrikes, but it appears likely that a ground campaign will follow. In either case, however, the heavily urban terrain poses major challenges for the Israel Defense Forces. In such areas, compliance with the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law is paramount.

To understand both those challenges and the specific measures Israeli forces have adopted to ensure their operations maximize protection of civilian populations, John Spencer is joined on this episode of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast by Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus. A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, he describes these measures—including steps unique to the Israeli military—and the broader effort to minimize incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian property in urban warfare.
Niall Ferguson: What irony! The deranged defence of Hamas on campuses across the West is fuelling a counter-revolution that could finally loosen the stranglehold of wokeism
If that strikes you as outrageous, you have clearly missed the fact that such thinking is rife throughout the Anglosphere academy.

'Wokeism' covers a multitude of sins. The academic Left is a much more complex coalition nowadays than it was back in the 1930s, when Cambridge had its covert cadre of card-carrying Communists, or the 1980s, when Oxford snubbed Margaret Thatcher by refusing her an honorary degree.

Although Marxist socialism is still part of the package, class warfare and anti-imperialism co-exist (at times uneasily) with a variety of other ideologies based on alternative forms of identity, such as race ('critical race theory' or 'anti-racism') and gender (the ever-growing abbreviation LGBTQIA+ now stands for 'lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and others').

'Woke' originated as African-American slang, but is now defined in the dictionaries as 'aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)'.

Like all cults and sects, the woke have their own idiosyncratic language and rituals. These include stating one's 'preferred pronouns' at every opportunity and acknowledging whenever possible that one is meeting on land expropriated from indigenous peoples.

In marked contrast to conventional scientific understanding, race is an essential, unalterable attribute (you're either BIPOC — black, indigenous, and other people of colour — or you're incurably white), but gender is almost infinitely fluid. In each case, there is a hierarchy, determined mainly by the extent to which your assigned minority were 'victimised' and 'marginalised' by the white, cisgender colonisers.

This 'intersectionality' produces some very strange bedfellows. 'Free Palestine is a Feminist Issue', according to a meme I saw last week; 'it's a Reprodutive [sic] Rights Issue, it's an Indigenous Rights Issue, it's a Climate Justice Issue, it's a Queer Rights Issue, it's an Abolitionist issue'. Quite how queer rights activists would fare if they travelled to Gaza to join in the fight for freedom is unclear, given Hamas's implacable commitment to sharia law.

But the woke have never worried much about the difficulty of aligning themselves with Islamists. After all, words and silence can both be violence in their world, but terrorism is just 'what oppressed fighting the oppressor looks like' — and the constraints of logic must be just another manifestation of white supremacy.

There are four reasons this confused ideology has established itself in so many universities.

First, an older generation of soggy liberal professors could not resist appointing and promoting younger radicals, naively equating their illiberal outlook with their own youthful idealism.

Second, various policies of affirmative action — designed to increase the proportion of female and non-white students and teachers in universities — had the unintended consequence of reducing intellectual diversity.

Third, as universities institutionalised policies such as the promotion of equity, diversity and inclusion and the decolonisation of this or that curriculum, bureaucracies sprang up that were swiftly staffed by woke believers.

Finally, a coalition formed between woke students, professors and administrators, who discovered there were almost no limits on the methods they could use to attack the surviving conservatives in their institutions.

Anonymous letters of denunciation, cancellation campaigns on social media, the bearing of false witness, public mobbings, and extra-legal investigations — I have seen all of these used against professors who dared to resist the woke cultural revolution.
Simon Sebag Montefiore: The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False
Hamas is a diabolical killing sect that hides among civilians, whom it sacrifices on the altar of resistance—as moderate Arab voices have openly stated in recent days, and much more harshly than Hamas’s apologists in the West. “I categorically condemn Hamas’s targeting of civilians,” the Saudi veteran statesman Prince Turki bin Faisal movingly declared last week. “I also condemn Hamas for giving the higher moral ground to an Israeli government that is universally shunned even by half of the Israeli public … I condemn Hamas for sabotaging the attempt of Saudi Arabia to reach a peaceful resolution to the plight of the Palestinian people.” In an interview with Khaled Meshaal, a member of the Hamas politburo, the Arab journalist Rasha Nabil highlighted Hamas’s sacrifice of its own people for its political interests. Meshaal argued that this was just the cost of resistance: “Thirty million Russians died to defeat Germany,” he said.

Nabil stands as an example to Western journalists who scarcely dare challenge Hamas and its massacres. Nothing is more patronizing and even Orientalist than the romanticization of Hamas’s butchers, whom many Arabs despise. The denial of their atrocities by so many in the West is an attempt to fashion acceptable heroes out of an organization that dismembers babies and defiles the bodies of murdered girls. This is an attempt to save Hamas from itself. Perhaps the West’s Hamas apologists should listen to moderate Arab voices instead of a fundamentalist terror sect.

Hamas’s atrocities place it, like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, as an abomination beyond tolerance. Israel, like any state, has the right to defend itself, but it must do so with great care and minimal civilian loss, and it will be hard even with a full military incursion to destroy Hamas. Meanwhile, Israel must curb its injustices in the West Bank—or risk destroying itself—because ultimately it must negotiate with moderate Palestinians.

So the war unfolds tragically. As I write this, the pounding of Gaza is killing Palestinian children every day, and that is unbearable. As Israel still grieves its losses and buries its children, we deplore the killing of Israeli civilians just as we deplore the killing of Palestinian civilians. We reject Hamas, evil and unfit to govern, but we do not mistake Hamas for the Palestinian people, whose losses we mourn as we mourn the death of all innocents.

In the wider span of history, sometimes terrible events can shake fortified positions: Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin made peace after the Yom Kippur War; Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat made peace after the Intifada. The diabolical crimes of October 7 will never be forgotten, but perhaps, in the years to come, after the scattering of Hamas, after Netanyahuism is just a catastrophic memory, Israelis and Palestinians will draw the borders of their states, tempered by 75 years of killing and stunned by one weekend’s Hamas butchery, into mutual recognition. There is no other way.
The dangers of ‘decolonisation’
The roots of decolonisation as a theory lie in the tumultuous world of French philosophy during the 1960s and 1970s. The work of philosopher Michel Foucault was particularly influential on what would become decolonisation theory, complete with its perverse romanticisation of an anti-modern, reactionary politics. Although openly homosexual, Foucault eulogised the less than gay-friendly Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. He saw it as a radical challenge to Western forms of rationality and modernity. Even the Ayatollah Khomeini’s systematic liquidation of the revolution’s former left-wing allies did not stop Foucault from penning articles in support of Iran’s theocratic regime. He saw the Islamic Republic of Iran as an attempt to liberate humanity from the grip of materialism and capitalism.

Frantz Fanon also played a central role in the development of decolonisation theory. The Wretched of the Earth, first published in 1961, was one of the first significant works to draw out the intersection between an anti-colonial politics antithetical to the West and an emergent identity politics. For Fanon, the Third World anti-colonial movements of the postwar era were challenging both imperialism and racism. He presented violence against Europeans as the self-realisation of the nations of the global South. To ‘shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone’, wrote Jean Paul-Sartre in his foreword to The Wretched of the Earth. It makes it possible to ‘destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses simultaneously: there remain a dead man and a free man’.

In their very different ways, both Foucault and Fanon romanticised the anti-colonial movements of the mid-to-late 20th century, projecting their anti-Western, anti-modern visions on to the likes of Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution. In the decades since, purportedly liberal institutions across the Anglophone world have become increasingly sympathetic to Fanon and Foucault’s anti-Western, anti-capitalist worldview. Indeed, many have given this worldview, expressed in the caricatured form of decolonisation theory, their seal of approval. Nowhere has this been more apparent than within British universities, especially since the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. As part of a post-BLM ‘liberatory agenda’, decolonisation has become a new orthodoxy.

On campus, decolonisation has largely been pursued culturally. Its advocates have sought to ‘free’ their higher-education institutions from the putative effects of ‘colonisation’, usually by purging reading lists of too many dead white Europeans. In doing so, decolonisation activists, like good Foucault scholars, have tended to reject notions of reason, civilisation and modernity as Western impositions.
I See the Hostages in My Children’s Faces
In the morning, my children appear in the kitchen, one by one by one, wiping sleep from their eyes. I embrace them, my beloved children, my Jewish children, my children of Israel, and wonder if they feel the prickling fear emanating from the pores in my skin, the seething, hot rage coursing through my blood, the sorrow radiating from my very being. What would you like, I ask them, and I pour cereal from a box, stir water into flavored oatmeal, slice fruit.

I make my children breakfast.

On the school playground where my daughters gather by grade before their classes begin, I am desperate. All around me, parents chat. The weather. Parent-teacher conferences. The debacle in the House. I cannot join them. If I open my mouth, I will weep. If they ask me about my plans for the upcoming long weekend I will reach for them, cling to them, plead to them through my wild, sleep-deprived, red-rimmed eyes, for help. Did you know that they tied parents to their children? I will ask. That they tortured them like that, bound together by wire? Did you know? But their minds are elsewhere, focused on everyday distractions. I long for that ease, for that safety.

At some dark hour my youngest, awakened from a nightmare, rushes to me and finds my face alight in a screen, which used to be banned in my bedroom at night but isn’t, now. There were sharks, she tells me, at a party on a beach and there was no one to protect us. I pull her body to mine, curl around her delicate limbs and imagine Kfir, the roundness of his beautiful infant flesh. Where does he sleep at night? You are safe, I whisper in my daughter’s ear over and over and over because I just want to believe it, have to believe it, don’t believe it.

I boil water and the electric ring under the pot glares red and I imagine the flames, the heat, the smoke. I pray they were not conscious, those who were huddled, trapped in their safe rooms together as death wended its way into them, through their nostrils and into their lungs, and then finally consumed them. I stir in the rice I will serve my family for dinner.

I shower and imagine Maayan’s father, who is still Maayan’s father even though Maayan was executed in front of him. Has her blood been cleaned from his clothing by his captives in Gaza? Did he or someone else wipe it away? Did he want to keep it there, on his skin, because it was all he had left of his girl?


VIRAL SPEECH: The Day the Delusions Died by Konstantin Kisin
A lot of people woke up on October 7 as progressives and went to bed that night feeling like conservatives. What changed? From his article
The Day the Delusions Died by Konstantin Kisin


The Day the Delusions Died by Konstantin Kisin

Jon Gabriel: Here we go again, shrugging off the warning signs of antisemitism and what comes next
Few conflicts bear the moral clarity of World War II. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Japanese Empire were the obvious bad guys. America, the UK and their allies were the good guys.

This doesn’t mean every citizen of the enemy nations were evil or deserved punishment. But their countries were run by evil monsters who had to be dealt with.

It also doesn’t mean the Allies were flawless. America was still enforcing Jim Crow laws while the British Parliament harbored plenty of racists. But we remained the moral superiors in that war.

Israel’s current conflict is much the same. Terrorists murdered and kidnapped everyday citizens in the most gruesome fashion. And now, Israel will eliminate those responsible for the massacre.

None of this blames the conscientious Palestinians or wishes ill on innocent Gazans. Much like the Nazis, Hamas leaders are evil monsters who must be dealt with.

Hamas has rejected peaceful solutions for decades. Their founding charter states, “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”

Why college kids support Hamas
It’s no surprise college kids are the most prominent group of Hamas supporters.

Bereft of life experience and accumulated wisdom, the Hitler-jugend often proved the most passionate supporters of the Third Reich. Their doting parents, many of whom never supported Dear Leader, often kept their silence, hoping it was just a phase that would pass.

But now we know how this story ends. Parents need their Hamas-jugend to wise up, and fast. Never again.

That phrase was a promise to future generations of Jews, but it was also a promise to their enemies. When they said those two words, they meant it.

The Jewish people will not allow another Holocaust, whether at the hands of Aryans or jihadis. They also won’t commit genocide on those who hate them. If they had wanted to eliminate Palestinians, they would have done it decades ago.

Instead, they will enforce those two words, eliminating Gaza’s terror-loving leaders just as the allies destroyed Hitler’s terror-loving crew. It’s time for all people of good conscience to support them in this righteous effort.

We must say, “never again,” again.
Boris Johnson: The October 7 massacre is among the most depraved events in the history of human cruelty. So it's incredible that so many in Britain seem to have lost all moral clarity

Steve Israel: The roots of Hamas’ terror attack can be found in Gaza’s schools

'Never again is now' says Netanyahu as war on Hamas escalates Israel-Hamas war: 'We will fight and we will win', says Benjamin Netanyah



IDF ground forces stay in north Gaza as incursion expands



How the IDF is turning guerilla warfare against Hamas in Gaza



Former Israeli UN rep says Israel needs to 'finish the job' and eliminate Hamas
Avi Yemini hears from Israel's former Permanent Representative to the UN, Danny Danon, who says that follow Hamas' attack on Oct. 7, it's time to "finish the job" and eliminate the terror organization.


‘People were slaughtered’: The horrific aftermath of the Be'eri Israel music festival massacre Avi Yemini visited Be'eri in southern Israel, where the terrible massacre occurred at a music festival attended by thousands of people during a holiday weekend. The devastation from the horrific attack is still visible even two weeks later.



Rebel News visits distribution centre for victims and families in Netivot, Israel
Avi Yemini visits a pop-up distribution centre initially established to aid the victims of the terror attack.


Sen. Lindsey Graham tears into 'tone deaf' United Nations after it called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas when 'the bodies are not even buried' yet



Hamas ‘is hoarding fuel supplies sent to help the Palestinians’... with terror group thought to be using it to power its underground tunnel network



Israel slams Elon Musk’s Starlink plan for Gaza connectivity



The Ricochet Podcast: Under The Influence
Hosted by James Lileks, Peter Robinson & Rob Long With guest Yuval Levin
Even a pessimist would have reason experience surprise and consternation by the extent of our institutional crises. It’s revealed that American students know nothing of the history of the Holocaust and the story of the Jewish people in its aftermath. We’ve seen our government progressively possessed by the whims of influencer representatives. Even today’s guest Yuval Levin, who’s painstakingly documented this descent, is a bit bewildered. He joins Rob, James and Peter as they cover everything from Jewish students being forced to hide in a library, to priorities for Israel and of course on to the People’s House and the hopes we may yet hold out for it.
Call Me Back: The Ground Operation Begins/End of hostage negotiations? — with Avi Issacharoff
Avi Issacharoff returns for an urgent update on overnight developments and their implications. Avi has been an analyst and journalist for The Times of Israel, Walla, and Haaretz. In these roles, he reported extensively on the inner workings and leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Gaza and the West Bank — Avi has extensive networks in the Israeli security services and the Palestinian Territories. He is also the co-creator and writer of the Netflix original series “Fauda”, and other television series for Netflix and Showtime. A fluent Arabic speaker, Avi was also the Middle East Affairs correspondent for Israeli Public Radio, covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Iraq, and the Arab world between the years 2003-2006. In 2004, together with Haaretz’s Amos Harel, he authored the book “The Seventh War – How we won and why we lost the war with the Palestinians.” In 2008, they co-wrote “34 Days – The Story of the Second Lebanon War”. Born in Jerusalem, he graduated cum laude from Ben Gurion University with a B.A. in Middle Eastern studies. He then earned his M.A. from Tel Aviv University on the same subject, also cum laude.
Ben Shapiro: No, I Won’t Give Up My AR-15
In the aftermath of another horrifying mass shooting in Maine, the usual partisan battle lines are drawn over so-called “assault weapons”; The Biden administration responds to Iranian strikes against American targets; and Rashida Tlaib gets hit with a potential censure resolution.




Megyn Kelly: Bratty College Students Displaying Ignorant Anti-Jewish Sentiment Grows, with Jesse Kelly Megyn Kelly is joined by Jesse Kelly, host of TheFirst TV's "I'm Right,” to discuss college students increasingly prevalent anti-Jewish displays across the country, whether the college students even understand what they're saying, BLM and pro-Hamas sentiment aligned now, and more.

The Israel Guys: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib Might Have Actual Ties to Hamas Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib might have actual ties to Hamas, we’re going to break that down, and also Israel takes the first steps in the ground invasion of Gaza.



Police seek four protesters over possible support for Hamas



Iran 'hijacking Pro-Palestinian protests in the UK': Police warn agents are stoking unrest with more than 100,000 set to descend on London today - after police said they will 'intervene' if protesters shout 'jihad'



Senior Hamas operative branded 'serious national security risk' by MPs is behind pro-Palestine charity and is now 'living in London' - while a second has bought a council flat in city

London's day of protest: Dramatic moment police arrest man 'for attack that left officer in hospital' at Pro-Palestinian march in London - as hundreds of demonstrators stage sit-in at Waterloo



Pro-Palestinian protests rage from Turkey to Indonesia calling for an end to bombardment of Gaza - as vigils are also held for victims



Hundreds of Pro-Palestine and Jewish protestors are ARRESTED in NYC after storming Grand Central to demand a ceasefire - as Israel pummels Gaza with 'unprecedented' airstrikes



Karol Markowicz: Campus antisemites are vile but administrators who protect them are just as complicit

Man behind Ivy League ‘doxxing trucks’ has home searched by gun-toting SWAT team

Prominent NYC synagogue vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti, stickers: cops

Furious NYC construction workers confront shameful Queens man caught tearing down posters of Israeli hostages being held captive by Hamas

Anti-Israel NYC teacher keeps up ‘genocide’ rants despite probe

Beverly Hills police are investigating a hate crime after anti-Semitic messages were spray-painted around the city - including on a Holocaust survivor's apartment building - in wake of terror attack on Israel



BILLBOARD TRUCK: We're taking our message to Deport Hamas to the streets of major cities!
David Menzies from Rebel News reports on non-citizens, including foreigners on student visas, who are abusing the privilege of being our guests by supporting Hamas hate rallies!




While universities refuse to fire anti-Semites, the private sector holds them accountable



UPenn Leadership Fights To Keep Jobs After Donor Backlash Over Weak Hamas Statement



Did the Entire Media Industry Misquote a Hamas Spokesperson?

BBC official told staff to accuse Israel of 'ethnic cleansing' - leaked email



Open Source News Is the Future of Journalism



Turkey's Erdogan: Israel is an occupier, Hamas not a terrorist organization

Israel reassessing Turkey ties over ErdoฤŸan’s pro-Hamas stance

Republican lawmakers slam pro-Palestine ‘squad’ members over ‘insane’ comments blaming Israel for violence with Gaza - as Jewish voters gather in Vegas just weeks after Hamas’ attack

Tim Scott Calls For Expelling Anti-Israel Lawmakers In Fiery Speech

Ramaswamy Defends Opposition to Israel Aid in Speech to Jewish Republicans



Biden Admin Paid Hamas-Linked Mosque $340K to Promote COVID Vaccines





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