Friday, November 17, 2023

11/17 Links Pt2: Douglas Murray: Britain is the new capital of anti-Israel hate; Israeli group slams int’l journalists body for acting as Hamas propagandists

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Britain is the new capital of anti-Israel hate
I have spent recent weeks in Israel, and goodness knows this is a country that has plenty of challenges. But one question I have been asked a lot by an alarmingly wide array of Israelis is: “What happened to Britain?”

Generally, I get protective after this question, and reassure people that Britain is still Britain and that our core of decency remains as it always was. But the response is always the same: “But these marches?” Now perhaps they will say “... and the vote?”

It amazes most Israelis – as it amazes me – that Britain has seen some of the worst scenes of all the anti-Israel marches across the world. And I say “anti-Israel” for a reason. The first protests in London happened before Israel had even begun its military response to October 7. Rallies were held within hours of the massacres. To most Israelis this is nearly unfeasible.

What other country would see 1,400 of its citizens slaughtered, 240 kidnapped and countless more wounded for life, and not be allowed even a day to mourn? What other country, having suffered a set of atrocities hardly superseded in the whole history of violence wouldn’t get even one day of sympathy?

Only the Jewish state. And everybody in Israel knows as much. Pakistan is currently in the process of forcibly deporting two million Afghans. Nobody cares. Bashar al-Assad is in his twelfth year of killing Muslims in Syria and the world’s cameras turned away long ago. Only Israel, when involved in any military action, or even when it is simply on the receiving end of extreme violence, cannot rely even on the world’s understanding.

And it is in this light that Israel notices the British politicians calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The ignorance of a large number of figures in British political life, from Humza Yousaf to Jess Phillips, can hardly be exaggerated. As it happens, a ceasefire of a kind existed in Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally, and very painfully, in 2005 – removing every Jew from the strip. They handed over the land and got rockets in return.
Melanie Phillips: Is Britain going wobbly on Israel?
Cameron, who is due to visit Israel next week, is taking pains to stress that Britain’s foreign policy positions remain unchanged. Yet there is alarm that his appointment signifies a hardening of attitude towards Israel.

On a visit to Turkey in 2010, for example, Cameron notoriously remarked: “Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.”

Even before his return, there were signs that the government was increasing pressure on Israel and weaponizing Hamas propaganda. In a speech on Monday, Sunak stated that “too many civilians” had died in Gaza and that Israel “must take all possible measures to protect innocent civilians, including at hospitals.”

But there is no way of knowing how many Gazan civilians have died since Hamas makes the incredible claim that the numbers it says have been killed were all civilians with no acknowledgment of any terrorists among them.

More ominously still, Cameron’s second-in-command Andrew Mitchell, who is now the Foreign Office spokesman in the Commons, has a history of hostility towards Israel.

On Tuesday, he lurched into one-sided sympathy for Gaza and sniping at Israel. Making no mention of the evidence that Hamas has been blocking fuel and other essential supplies to Gaza’s hospitals, he said, “Hospitals should be places of safety. … It is impossible to comprehend the pain and loss that innocent Palestinians are enduring.”

Worse, Mitchell quoted Robert Mardini, the director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, saying that Gaza hospitals cannot be targeted under any circumstances. The ICRC, said Mitchell, was the guardian of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions.

But Mardini’s strictures misrepresent Israel’s position and ignore the misuse by Hamas of Gaza’s hospitals. International law stipulates that if hospitals are used as weapons or rocket bases from which attacks are planned and delivered, as Hamas uses them, they lose all protections and are considered a legitimate military target provided they’re given advance warnings. Israel has followed these legal conditions to the letter.

More ominously still, Mitchell—who is also from the liberal establishment wing of the Tory party—indicated that the British government is no longer supporting Israel over the attempt by the Palestinian Authority to arraign it for “war crimes” before the International Criminal Court.

When Boris Johnson was prime minister, he said the ICC had no jurisdiction in Israel, that Palestine was not a sovereign state and that such an inquiry was a prejudicial attack on a friend and ally of the United Kingdom.

This week, however, Mitchell said: “It is not for ministers to seek to state where the ICC has jurisdiction; that is for the chief prosecutor,” who has said his office has “jurisdiction over all crimes committed within the territory of the state of Palestine by either party, including events currently taking place in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Sunak’s support for Israel and the Jewish people is doubtless genuine; but without a proper understanding of what that involves, such support can only be shallow.

He has been outmaneuvered, it would seem, by the poisonously anti-Israel Foreign Office with its deep connections to that very same liberal establishment that Sunak hopes will deliver him political victory—and which, it is now feared, will once again hang Israel out to dry.

Sunak may not have just delivered the final blow to the Tories’ electoral prospects. He may also have shown, at this seismic moment, that he doesn’t have what it takes to defend civilization against barbarism.
Josh Hammer: After Hamas Pogrom, Qatar Must Finally Pay For Its Sponsor of Terrorism
In a now-infamous recent podcast recording on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, former President Barack Obama lectured: "You have to admit that nobody's hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree."

Ironically for such a narcissist, Obama is painfully lacking in self-awareness. It is Obama himself who doggedly pursued a grand strategic "realignment" in the Middle East, away from Israel and America's traditional Sunni Arab allies and toward the terrorist Iranian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood (for which Hamas is the Palestinian-Arab offshoot). The Biden administration, reliably acting as a third Obama term, has stayed the course—evinced by a brand-new alleged U.S. sanctions waiver that would enrich the Tehran mullahcracy to the tune of $10 billion.

The Iranian regime is the "head of the snake," as Israeli intelligence is known to refer to it, when it comes to state-funded Islamism and jihadism across the Middle East. But often absent from the discussion is Iran's chief Sunni ally, a fabulously wealthy tiny emirate that funds and houses Hamas and disseminates Muslim Brotherhood-style Islamism throughout the region via its state-owned network, Al Jazeera: Qatar.

In the aftermath of the single largest slaughter of Jews since the defeat of Nazi Germany, as well as the single biggest American hostage crisis since Tehran in 1979, Qatar cannot be allowed to get away with its duplicity any longer.

Along with Iran, Qatar is one of the primary state bankrollers of Hamas. It is also the physical home of Hamas' organizational leaders, who live lavishly in five-star luxury hotels in Doha, far removed from the mayhem in Gaza. The Qatari regime has provided material aid and comfort to myriad other Islamist outfits, once even offering banking services for the branch of ISIS responsible for the brutal on-camera beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff in 2014.

Qatar, via both diplomatic support and Al Jazeera's fanning of the flames of Islamism, was also the tip of the spear of the tumultuous Arab Spring uprisings a decade ago. Today, Qatar's state-sponsored Islamism makes it a convenient ally of Iran—although the emirate's non-Islamist Gulf Cooperation Council neighbors, such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, view it with skepticism if not outright disdain.

Qatar manages to evade Western scrutiny for its sundry malign activities via a multifaceted strategy, centered around Al Udeid Air Base, strategic Western investments, and a sprawling, deeply sophisticated information operation.


Detroit cops offer $15,000 reward to find synagogue leader Samantha Woll's killer after suspect was arrested but then RELEASED when they failed to file warrant
Crime Stoppers of Michigan are offering a $15,000 reward for information that leads to arrest in the murder case of Samantha Woll, a Detroit synagogue leader.

Thursday's announcement comes just days after police released a suspect from custody without filing charges.

Woll, 40, was fatally stabbed at her Lafayette Park home on October 21 as she returned from a wedding.

Authorities believe Woll was attacked inside her home before stumbling outside. She was found at around 6.30am and pronounced dead at the scene.

She had been stabbed several times, and a trail of blood led to her home.

In the weeks following Woll’s death, police interviewed several persons of interest.

An unidentified man was arrested in the Kalamazoo area on November 8. However, he was released the following weekend without charges.

At the time, the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office said the man was released due to a lack of police paperwork including a warrant request.

However, unnamed sources told Local 4 that the suspect made ambiguous statements to detectives that were not enough to warrant murder charges.

The suspect reportedly stopped talking to police by the time he was taken to the Detroit area and hired an attorney.

Under Michigan law, suspects cannot be held without being charged for more than three days.
Only a Preventative Attack on Hamas Could Have Averted the Current Crisis
Any prospects for peace will have to follow on an Israel military victory, which in turn involves learning from the mistakes that made Hamas’s initial, blood-soaked success possible. In his general evaluation of the war thus far, Yaakov Amidror urges the Jewish state to rediscover its commitment to preemption:

Over the years the defense establishment and the political leadership let go of the concept of a “preemptive strike,” let alone the notion of launching such a war.

No longer. The mood of the country has been transformed and so should the support for Israel abroad. Israel’s future leaders must restore to the tool kit of national security the understanding that wars of choice are legitimate. Israel must seriously weigh preventive action to push away the buildup of military capabilities which threaten it—not only in terms of the nuclear threat in all its manifestations, but also the removal of acute conventional threats. The “Begin Doctrine” (of preemptive strikes against nuclear targets, first in Iraq in 1981, then in Syria in 2007 and beyond) should be applied also to organizations such as Hizballah when they attempt to acquire tiebreaker technologies.

A small country such as Israel, surrounded by many threats but possessing high technology, must occasionally embark on a preventive war. This was the one measure that could have prevented the catastrophe of October 7.
The Commentary Magazine Podcast: Tunnels and Anti-Semites
The full podcast crew is back today to discuss the weird moment when people started to crow about how the Israelis weren’t finding the Hamas tunnels at the hospital—only to fall silent when they were found. And the anti-Semitism explosion just gets worse, with Elon Musk, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, and Tucker Carlson playing along.
Hamas Cheerleaders Are All Over Instagram

Israeli influencer Hen Mazzig says 'world will never understand our pain' over October 7

‘Shame on you’: Sacha Baron Cohen accuses TikTok of ‘creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis’

China Justifies Hamas’ Terror Attack on Israel

North Carolina Democrats reject Jewish caucus, face bipartisan rebuke

Department of Education investigating seven schools over antisemitism and Islamophobia allegations

Israeli Actress Seeks FBI Probe on Palestinian Funds 100 Harvard Profs Criticize University President for Statement Opposing Campus Anti-Semitism

Colleges banned groups over antisemitism. Then new ones formed.

Why is antisemitism so rife in UK academic settings? I have never found student life more difficult

Israeli group slams int’l journalists body for acting as Hamas propagandists

CNN Stealth Edits Headline That Said Jewish Homicide Victim 'Fell and Hit His Head'

CAMERA’S NEW BILLBOARD DEPLORES BIASED NEW YORK TIMES DEPICTION OF HOSTAGE POSTER VANDALISM

Mural in Balaclava to be removed following community backlash
City of Port Phillip Councillor Marcus Pearl has confirmed the mural above shop fronts in Balaclava is being removed after receiving community backlash.

The mural funded by the state government received backlash from the Jewish community saying the painting reflected anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish men.

“I am deeply sorry for the offence this has caused,” Mr Pearl told Sky News host Peta Credlin.

“I’ve received many, many phone calls and complaints from locals.

“I can confirm that the City of Port Phillip has commenced the process of removing the mural."






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