Wednesday, November 29, 2023

11/29 Links Pt2: Brendan O'Neill: We mustn’t let the left erase the truth of 7 October; Hostages held in homes of UNRWA employees; What Yale Has in Common With Hamas

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Israel Is Reevaluating
A 32 year-old Israeli who had been pursuing agriculture went into the reserves here after October 7 and in the weeks that immediately followed came to realize his true calling was in serving the nation’s security and the security of others—felt a sense of purpose and belonging vitally important to him—and believes he will be changing his career path once this war is over. A young religious man who has been studying in yeshiva for a very long time and believed he would continue to do so is instead planning on joining the military to join in the fight.

Everywhere you turn here in Israel, people are reevaluating. They are reevaluating everything.

They are reevaluating their political stances. Leftists are expressing regret for what they now see as a kind of foolish utopianism in their view of Gaza and the Palestinians. Rightists who believed the Left could not be trusted with the nation’s security speak of their sense of betrayal and dismay, because the parties and leaders they voted for and worked to elect—parties and leaders who promised they were the only ones in the country who could deal with Israel’s safety from a position of strength—failed utterly to fulfill this first and most significant promise.

They are reevaluating their cultural stances. Anti-Zionist or non-Zionist haredim (the ne plus ultra of the ultra-Orthodox) are abandoning the separation from the state that has been their guiding political philosophy for seven decades and signing up by the thousands to join the military—which they need not do, as they have been exempted from service since the beginning.
Germany is in danger of betraying Israel
Time and again, German chancellor Olaf Scholz has appeared incapable of sticking up for his support for Israel. Indeed, he often seems more concerned with appeasing Israel’s critics.

This became painfully apparent earlier this month during Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s trip to Berlin for a meeting with Scholz. In their joint press conference, Erdoğan claimed that Germany was stuck in a ‘psychology of guilt’ when it comes to Israel. With Scholz standing stoney-faced next to him, Erdoğan said that, because Turkey did not share Germany’s Holocaust history, it had no debt to Israel.

This should have been a chance for Scholz to reject the pernicious idea that Germany only supports Israel because of a deep-seated feeling of historical guilt. Yet Scholz failed to rise to the challenge. He merely said Germany and Turkey had ‘very different perspectives on the conflict’.

It was a profound mistake for Scholz to duck this challenge. After all, it’s not just Erdoğan who thinks that Germany’s support for Israel is born of historical guilt. This view is increasingly widespread among Islamists and the Islamist-adjacent in Germany itself. ‘Free Palestine from German guilt’ was heard at the controversial, borderline anti-Semitic Documenta Fifteen art exhibition in Kassel last year, and it’s now a popular slogan at the many pro-Palestine demonstrations.

Scholz had an opportunity to challenge this mistaken perception of Germany’s relationship with Israel. He had a chance to point out that standing with the Jewish State against the barbarism of the 7 October attacks has nothing to do with historical guilt. It is simply the right thing to do.


Brendan O'Neill: We mustn’t let the left erase the truth of 7 October
There is a video doing the rounds related to Hamas’s barbaric pogrom of 7 October that is difficult to watch. It is making viewers wince and recoil. It shows the madness that can flourish when people retreat from reason. I am speaking, of course, about Owen Jones’s reaction vid to the footage of Hamas’s atrocities; that arch Guardianista’s 25-minute YouTube musing over what he saw Hamas do. It is a disturbing watch. It provides the starkest proof yet of the collapse of moral reason and plain decency that has occurred on the middle-class left these past seven weeks.

The IDF has put together a graphic 43-minute video of the savagery Hamas filmed itself committing against the Jews of Southern Israel on 7 October. The morally deracinated cynics of the liberal Western media say the video is an IDF ruse to whip up support for its war in Gaza. In truth, Israel felt compelled to put out this gross footage of anti-Semitic mass murder because there has been so much 7 October doubt in influential circles in the West. It was the atrocity denialism of unhinged Israelophobes that forced Israel to say: ‘Okay, here are the atrocities.’ They showed the film in London last week and Mr Jones was in attendance.

To be clear, Jones does not deny that Hamas committed ‘grave war crimes’ on 7 October. He is not an October denialist as some on the viscerally anti-Israel left are. And yet his reaction to the footage is chilling nonetheless. He casts doubt on many of the claims about 7 October. He sows seeds of suspicion. It is a masterclass in moral obfuscation. Yes, Hamas did wicked things, he says, but where’s the evidence for the really wicked things it is said to have done? The beheaded babies. Raped women. Children killed ‘intentionally’. There’s no ‘conclusive evidence’ for that, he says. I am trying my best to understand the mind that can see images of the corpses of Jewish children and wonder, ‘But were they killed intentionally?’. But I cannot. It is beyond my moral bandwidth to understand this.

Even in this era of virtual narcissism, even with the fashion for filming oneself saying and doing all sorts of self-abasing things, Jones’s video stands out for its creepiness. He speaks in clipped, detached tones about the worst act of racist terrorism of modern times. He pores over the largest act of anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust like the rest of us might ask a waiter, ‘Are you sure this dish has no parsley?’. He looks straight to camera and says the wildest things, like: yes we see a young woman’s burnt corpse with no underwear on, but can we be certain she was raped? This is possibly the maddest thing I have heard a journalist say.




Hostages held in homes of Hamas-sympathetic UNRWA employees
One of the recently released hostages was held for 50 days in the attic of an UNRWA teacher, Channel 13 News correspondent Almog Boker reported.

"Uninvolved," they say, right? Well, read this story carefully. One of the abductees, held for nearly 50 days in an attic, reveals he was held by a UNRA teacher – a father of ten children. This teacher locked the victim away, barely provided food, and neglected medical needs," Boker wrote on X (Formerly Twitter).

"But wait, there's more! Another abductee was held captive by a Gazan doctor who, simultaneously, cared for children. These are not isolated incidents; these civilians are terrorists. Present at the Saturday massacre, they're now revealed as integral to holding hundreds captive, including women and children," he added.

UNRWA, the United Nations agency dedicated to the descendants of the Arab refugees from Israel's War of Independence, has frequently been criticized for its connections to the Hamas terrorist organization and the extreme antisemitism of many of its employees, including teachers. Its curricula and summer camps teach children to want to kill Israelis.

The report comes as new details continue to emerge of the inhumane treatment the Israeli hostages received in Gaza.

Devora Cohen, the aunt of Eitan Yahalomi, a 12-year-old boy who was freed on Monday night, revealed that Eitan was beaten by Gazan civilians when he was brought into the coastal enclave as a hostage and that hostage children who cried were threatened with rifles by their captors.

Eitan was also forced to watch videos taken by Hamas terrorists from the day of the horrific massacre of over 1,200 people in southern Israel, videos that were restricted in Israel and that many of those adults who did watch them could not bear to sit through.


Thai hostages: ‘Jewish hostages beaten with electric cables, held in worse conditions than us’
Jewish hostages were held in tougher conditions than Thai hostages and were beaten with electric cables, according to a report on N12 on Wednesday evening. According to the report, Thai hostages released by Hamas in recent days told Israeli security personnel: “Occasionally, we were put in captivity with the Israelis, they were constantly guarded. [Hamas] had a tougher attitude towards the Jews, they were beaten with electric cables.”

One of them added, according to the report, “We ate one pita a day, and a can of tuna was divided among four people.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Thai Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara welcomed on Wednesday the release of two more Thai hostages who had been held by Hamas in Gaza, the latest to be freed under a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas.

“Happy to personally welcome two additional Thai hostages who have just released and arrived at the hospital in Tel Aviv,” Parnpree, who is also deputy prime minister, posted on social media platform X.

“A totally warm feeling to see how the former 17 were lining up to welcome and give moral support to the two newcomers,” he said.

Nineteen Thai hostages have so far been released, while the foreign ministry says 13 more remain in captivity. There were 39 Thai nationals killed in the October 7 massacre by Hamas.
Bret Stephens: Israel's Critics Are Siding with Some of the Worst People on Earth
One Palestinian narrative dates "the occupation" to 1948, when Israel came into being as a sovereign state. By this argument, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Eilat, and western Jerusalem are occupied by Israel. Those who hold this view have become the axis of resistance: Hamas, Hizbullah, the Houthis, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Assad regime in Syria, and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. On Oct. 7, the axis of resistance became the face of the Palestinian movement. On Oct. 8, demonstrators around the world chose to embrace that axis.

Such embraces have consequences. They put a growing fraction of progressives objectively on the side of some of the worst people on earth - and in radical contradiction with their professed values. They also reinforce the deepest fears of Israelis: that Palestinians have never reconciled themselves to the existence of Israel in any borders, that every Israeli territorial or diplomatic concession is seen by Palestinians as evidence of weakness, and that a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank would only serve as a launchpad for an intensified assault on Israel.
What Yale Has in Common With Hamas
The Qatari government’s American partners have pursued a range of damage control tactics since Oct. 7, when Hamas, a Qatar-sponsored terrorist group whose senior political leadership is based in the Gulf emirate, murdered over 1,200 people, killing over 30 U.S. citizens and kidnapping a dozen more. Qatari money has spread far across American life, but leading institutions do not often brag about partnering with governments that openly facilitate the work of a genocidally minded terrorist organization that records videos of its atrocities. Such relationships risk becoming a source of public shame, and raise the specter of long-term damage to an organization’s reputation and brand. Then again, what the public doesn’t know can’t hurt it.

Higher education, one of the last remaining industries in which the U.S. is still the unquestioned global leader, has proven particularly expert in shielding its favorite deep-pocketed investor from public scrutiny. In a new series of reports, a research consortium organized by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy found that some $2.7 billion in Qatari funding made it to American colleges and universities between 2014 and 2019 without public acknowledgement from the institutions themselves. The universities only divulged these contributions, which also included some $1.2 billion from China and $1.06 billion from Saudi Arabia, through a Department of Education online portal set up in 2019 to track previously unreported foreign funding.

Universities in the United States that receive funding from the federal government are legally obligated to disclose direct support or contracts they receive from foreign sources if they are valued at $250,000 or more over the course of a calendar year. But there are ways for these states to fund activities at American universities without the money actually reaching the U.S. or being directly traceable to a government source. The Qatar Foundation, the Qatar National Research Fund, the Qatar Fund for Development, and the Qatar Investment Authority are all classified as nongovernment entities under Qatari law, even if their money comes entirely from the crown. While Qatar has made large and highly publicized gifts to American institutions, including $760 million to Georgetown, and $1.8 billion to Cornell, Qatari state-financed entities often fund individual scholars or programs in the United States without official disclosure, thus avoiding public scrutiny.

An upcoming report, which ISGAP shared with Tablet, used the example of Yale University to show the diverse paths through which Qatar supports the work of U.S. universities. As the study notes, the New Haven-based institution disclosed only $284,668 in funding from Qatar between 2010 and 2022.

ISGAP’s researchers found that this amount reflected only a small fraction of the money and services the university and its scholars had in fact received from the Qatari government over that period.
Alan Dershowitz: Anti-Israel Protestors on Campus are like Hitler Youth
Where is the explosion of antisemitism coming from and how can we defeat it? What will be the effect on terrorism worldwide if Israel doesn't defeat Hamas?

In this week’s episode of Top Story, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin is joined by legal expert and author Alan Dershowitz, who has written a new book about the current conflict, War Against the Jews: How to End Hamas Barbarism.
They discuss
- how anti-Israel professors and DEI programs have contributed to the rise of antisemitism
- how the recent Hamas/Israel hostage deal threatens to have terrible repercussions across the globe
- the future of the democratic party and how some "moderate" Democrats are more dangerous than those to the far-left.


The wrong kind of victims
The double standards at work in the response are staggering. Feminists have spent decades reiterating the message that when it comes to domestic violence or rape there is no such thing as a ‘perfect victim’. They rightly point out that every woman will respond differently. When attacked or sexually assaulted, some women might freeze. Others might seek to appease their attacker. This behaviour, we’re told, can be understood as a terrified, instinctual response or a desperate bid for leniency. ‘Behaviour that might appear paradoxical’, notes one feminist, ‘is not only unexceptional – it’s typical for a vast majority of victims’.

Yet Israeli women and children kidnapped during an unimaginably brutal massacre are afforded no such understanding. Smartphone critics judge their facial expressions upon release and suggest they’re not really victims. A smile is no longer taken as an attempt to appease or an indication of relief at being released. Instead, it’s used to twist the knife. It’s presented as proof of the kindliness of their abductors. As evidence of the humanity of Hamas.

There is a rationale behind this attempt to dismiss or even erase the suffering of the hostages. Ever since 7 October, the hostages have posed a problem for Hamas’s supporters in the West. Their very existence threatens the reality-inverting narrative that seeks to present the Palestinians as the real victims. Being confronted by images of kidnapped toddlers makes it harder for placard-waving, keffiyeh-wearing Westerners to argue that Hamas is made up of noble freedom-fighters. Fly-posted photos of the abducted undermine the simplistic idea that to be pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli is to side with good over evil.

That is why Western activists and sympathisers have gone to such great lengths to avoid confronting the truth. It’s why protesters have repeatedly torn down posters showing kidnapped children. It’s why Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar referred to little Emily Hand as simply ‘lost’. And it’s why the BBC discusses Israeli hostages and Palestinian ‘detainees’, innocent Israeli children and Palestinians convicted of acts of violence, as if the two groups are morally equivalent.

The willingness of ‘pro-Palestine’ sympathisers to downplay the victimhood of the Israeli hostages, and find in favour of their Hamas captors, betrays their inhumanity. They should be ashamed. But they won’t be.
I Believed Diverse Coalitions Would Benefit Jewish Women. Now I Fear We Are All Alone.
I am the executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance and a lifelong feminist. Before joining JOFA, I spent 20 years working with faith groups, women's advocates, and other social justice organizations toward social change. I once found it meaningful when people set aside differences to build bridges towards positive change.

These days I'm so sad. Sad for the tremendous losses all around. And on a personal level, I'm also sad that I devoted so many years of my life to groups that don't seem to care about me or my pain. After partnering for years, I expected my sister feminist groups to share their outrage about Hamas' war crimes against Israelis on Oct. 7. It is clear that kidnapping civilians of all ages, and brutally attacking women, men, children, babies and the elderly, all the while viciously raping women, is abhorrent.

I'm shocked and horrified by too many national and global women's and children's advocacy groups - none worse than UN Women. After remaining virtually silent since the Oct. 7 atrocities, it published an Instagram post saying they "remain alarmed by the reports of gender-based violence on October 7 and call for rigorous investigation." An investigation? What happened to "believe women?" There is video footage and survivors' testimonies. When did it become OK for women's groups to become rape apologists?

I can't continue to work with those who don't see me as someone deserving of respect, no matter how they feel about Israel. My attempts to engage former colleagues have been hurtful and fruitless. Their silence will neither erase me nor deter me. We can and will recreate a community of coalitions that will not deny our humanity and our Jewish and Zionist identities.
Genocidal Hatred of Jews and the West
Many Muslims living in the West remain under the influence of Islamist movements and the hatred of Israel and Jews that permeates their countries of origin. Hatred of Jews and Israel is therefore markedly present in Muslim communities in the West.

In the 1960s, when the Soviet Union wanted to gain more influence in the Arab Muslim world, its leaders decided to support what was at the time a sacred cause for Arab leaders: the attempt to destroy Israel. They... chose to invent a "national liberation struggle".... The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964 with the task of "liberating Palestine," and the borders of "Palestine" on the maps used by the PLO showed that the goal was to erase Israel from the face of the earth.

Western leftists started vocally to express hatred of "imperialist Israel" and, ironically, the hard-won democratic freedoms they were at that moment enjoying to the fullest: freedom of speech, assembly, education, sexuality, and supposedly equal justice under the law.

The Oslo Accords only made everything worse. By signing them, Israel's then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin recognized... that a terrorist organization was somehow the legitimate representative of a people invented fewer than three decades earlier, and that this invented "people" had "rights" and deserved to have territory and self-government.

In reality, it was Israel that decolonized the land from the grip of the British, who governed it from 1917 until Israel's war of independence in 1948.

The recent pro-Hamas demonstrations in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia show that hatred of Jews and Israel among Muslims living in the West has reached a degree where many of them openly support genocidal atrocities not only against Jews in Israel but against Jews anywhere.... These demonstrations also show that support for the "Palestinian cause" sometimes also leads Westerners to support genocidal atrocities so long as they are committed against Jews.

[I]f nothing is done to respond to the forces seeking to overturn Western civilization, all in the name of "democracy" of course – and Western values such as equal justice under law, equality of opportunity rather than of result, education from facts rather than from propaganda, a media that actually challenges authority rather than allowing itself to be suborned by it, freedom of speech with which one disagrees, the sovereignty of the individual rather than of groups -- the worst is bound to come.
Intensity of protests, repeated reporting “errors” betray explicit anti-Israel bias

Fake babies, real horror: Deepfakes from the Gaza war increase fears about AI’s power to mislead

The West is Done for - Douglas Murray's Warning
Tune in as we take a laid-back yet deep dive into a conversation that covers everything from the

Intensity of the Gaza conflict to fresh perspectives on Feminism and the endless pursuit of happiness. Ever wonder about the historical curiosity surrounding Jewish culture and the state of Israel? We've got you covered! Join me, Dr. Roi Yozevitch, for a casual chat with Douglas Murray, one of the most influential conservative thinkers reshaping our generation's dialogue. It's a podcast episode you won't want to miss—full of insights and those big questions that keep us up at night. Hit play and join the discussion!


Call Me Back: Douglass Murray debunks 5 lies about Israel
Hosted by Dan Senor
Douglas Murray, a British writer and commentator, has been on the ground in Israel for about a month, covering the war as a reporter and analyst. He writes for the New York Post, the Sun, and Spectator. He is an international bestselling author of numerous books, including “The War on the West”, which can be found here:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-war-on-the-west-douglas-murray/1140022863
“Journalists Actually Falling For The Hamas Line!” Douglas Murray Blasts “Frivolous” Media
Eleven Israelis were freed by Hamas and 33 Palestinians released from prison as the fragile truce in Gaza was extended by two days.

Their release came just hours before the deadline for the original four-day ceasefire was set to end. The Israelis were all either women or children and arrived back in Israel just before midnight local time.

TalkTV’s Julia Hartley-Brewer is joined by author and journalist Douglas Murray who reports from Tel Aviv, Israel.


Douglas Murray HITS OUT At 'Far-Left' Journalists Questioning Israel's Statements
TalkTV’s Julia Hartley-Brewer is joined by author and journalist Douglas Murray, who is reporting from Tel Aviv, Israel during the continued conflict with Hamas.

Eleven Israelis were freed by Hamas and 33 Palestinians released from prison as the fragile truce in Gaza was extended by two days.

Their release came just hours before the deadline for the original four-day ceasefire was set to end. The Israelis were all either women or children and arrived back in Israel just before midnight local time.

Douglas says: "Are they saying they made it up? You don't need to review it like you're reviewing the latest Marvel movie".


Ayaan Hirsi Ali: 'Queers for Palestine' shows how stupid our society is

Antisemitic Ireland needs to shake off the imbecility
Prime Minister Varadkar’s meretricious messaging concerning the freeing of a kidnapped child is only one example of the Irish government’s perverse reaction to Hamas’s assault on Israel. Varadkar has accused the IDF of pursuing “something approaching revenge” in Gaza, and compared the Israeli war effort to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His parliament, meanwhile, came close to expelling the Israeli ambassador. Terry Glavin writes:

In a recent interview, . . . the retired Irish diplomat Niall Holohan put it this way: “We feel we have been victimized over the centuries. It’s part of our psyche—underneath it all we side with the underdog.” But there’s something else in the Irish psyche that’s impolite to mention in the comfy Dublin pubs and bistros. . . . Not a few of Ireland’s gallant and celebrated champions of the underdog, its heroes of Irish freedom, were vulgar anti-Semites and Nazi collaborators.

And in recent years, Irish Jews are commonly baited, harassed, and badgered every time there is some eruption in Israel involving Palestinian “resistance.”

The republican pamphleteer Arthur Griffith approved [of anti-Jewish agitation in Limerick in 1904], calling Jews “usurers and parasites.” Griffiths was one of the founders of Sinn Féin, in 1905, and he served as Sinn Féin’s president in 1911.

There was always a deep division in the Irish nationalist movement between Irish republicans who felt an affinity with the Jews owing to a shared history of dispossession and exile, and Catholic extremists who ranted and raved about Jews. Those Catholic shouters are still abroad, apparently unaware that for half a century, Catholic doctrine has established that anti-Semitism is a mortal sin.
COMEDIAN ILIZA SHLESINGER BLASTS ‘NEO-LIBERAL WET DREAM’ OF SUPPORTING HAMAS

Meet the Professors Arrested for Blocking San Francisco's Bay Bridge in Anti-Israel Demonstration

Honest Journalism, Under Anti-Semitic Barrage, Is Being Killed at Historic Pace

Antisemitism in the schools spreads beyond the Ivy League

Dean of Columbia Law School Resigns Amid Anti-Semitism Scandals

Northwestern Jew-Haters Protest a Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism

UCL investigates one of its senior academics after she claimed Israel's bombardment of Gaza was 'worse than Auschwitz' at pro-Palestine rally

Jewish teachers slam NYC schools chief's handling of antisemitic unrest at 'radicalized' school

Jewish students will feel ‘threatened’ by Palestinian scarfs in classroom: Sharri Markson
Sky News host Sharri Markson warns Jewish students will feel threatened if they see teachers bringing Palestinian pins and scarfs into classrooms.

Ms Markson revealed on Tuesday night that the NSW Teachers Federation is supporting a move for school teachers to wear the Palestinian Keffiyeh into public school classrooms in a show of support with Palestinians.

The Teachers and School Staff for Palestine Group wrote just three days ago: “From today, teachers can proudly and safely wear Keffiyeh to work with backing of the NSW Teachers Federation. Our week of action has been extended for a week, please take photos at work teachers wearing Keffiyeh or with signs calling to end the siege and bombing of Gaza and send to us. If any principal tries to stop you, get the NSWTF to speak to your principal.”

The post also talks about amendments to a motion that was passed at the Teachers Federation State Council.

Since breaking the story, Ms Markson said she has been contacted by upset parents and teachers about the issue.

“Fort Street Public School, which is a selective school in NSW, has a huge issue with Palestinian posters being plastered around the school,” she said.

“I've learned that the Education Department sent a representative to speak to teachers there yesterday, urging them to abide by the code of conduct.

“But the teachers then went and had a meeting with the teachers federation after that.”




PreOccupiedTerritory: It’s So Cute That You Think Evidence Will Change My Already-Decided Anti-Israel Mind (satire)

Sky News cuts part of interview with Jerusalem deputy mayor

JEREMY BOWEN’S RADIO 4 HOSTAGE DEAL CLAIMS DO NOT HOLD WATER

TIMES JOURNO ERASES PALESTINIAN SUPPORT FOR OCT. 7TH MASSACRE

‘LA Times’ defends using 44% lower crowd numbers than ‘March for Israel’

Hamas ‘no better than ISIS’: The Guardian Australia slammed for anti-Israel letter
The Guardian Australia’s Editor-in-Chief Lenore Taylor has raised concerns about the signing of an anti-Israel letter by 24 of her publication’s journalists and staff.

The letter is part of a media campaign urging people to treat information from the Israeli government with as much scepticism as information put forth by the terror group Hamas.

Herald Sun columnist Steve Price told Sky News host Sharri Markson, “If you consume what the Guardian produces then you’re getting one side of the story”.

“To compare Hamas with the Democratically-elected government of Israel is disgraceful,” he said.

“Hamas is a terrorist organisation no better than ISIS before it, or Al-Qaeda.”




Meet the Senior CIA Official Who Posted Pro-Palestinian Images to Social Media

Stark images of Oct. 7 murder and torture in Israel leave US senators distraught
If there’s a trait that unites the 100 members of the US Senate, it is volubility: These folks, who invented the filibuster, know how to talk.

It was remarkable to see them then exiting a screening room on Tuesday in the bowels of the Capitol building, barely able to shape their mouths into a single word.

The unusual silence came after two senators, Jacky Rosen, a Jewish Nevada Democrat, and Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, screened for their fellow senators 43 minutes of harrowing footage of the carnage Hamas terrorists committed on October 7 when gunmen massacred 1,200 people, mostly civilians, with stunning brutality, and took 240 more hostage in the Gaza Strip, among them many women, children, and the elderly.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, said as she walked away, her eyes filled with tears.

Israel’s government, which produced the film to combat denial about the horrors the unfolded during the attack, has made the video available for private screenings, on strict condition that its images are not shared. It has been shown in statehouses and Hollywood, and New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the Democratic minority in the US House of Representatives, has screened the video for House members.

The latest viewing comes at a pivotal time for support in Washington for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. A short ceasefire is now underway as Israel trades Palestinian prisoners for some of the hostages Hamas terrorists abducted on October 7. Israel wants to resume the war soon to maintain its momentum. But even as US President Joe Biden staunchly supports Israel’s aims — to return the hostages and dismantle Hamas — the Biden administration is pressing Israel for assurances that it will protect Gazan civilians when it resumes its campaign. And skepticism of how Israel has waged war in Gaza has increased among Democrats, with 49 members of Congress now supporting some sort of extended ceasefire, a dynamic that Punchbowl News reported has Israelis so concerned that they dispatched a senior military figure to speak to congressional Democrats on Monday.
Seth Mandel: Chuck Schumer’s Moment of Truth
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gave a fine speech on anti-Semitism today, expanding on a New York Times op-ed calling attention to the “normalization and intensifying of this rise in hate.” Many of the Americans calling for the destruction of the Jewish state “aren’t neo-Nazis or card-carrying Klan members or Islamist extremists,” Schumer said on the Senate floor this morning. “They’re in many cases people that most liberal Jewish Americans felt previously were their ideological fellow travelers.”

Schumer’s speech contained the very important point that “from the river to the sea” is the most famous eliminationist slogan from Hamas’s charter. That can and should be seen as a rebuttal to Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who has echoed this call for genocide and then tried to lie about its meaning. Schumer also talked about the way anti-Semites call attention to Jewish success in society and then use that very success to turn others against the Jews. He did not shy away from Holocaust comparisons.

He told a meaningful story about taking a radio with him to class in 1967 so he could listen to news updates during the Six-Day War, a time when he didn’t know if Israel would survive. And he correctly stated that holding Israel to a double standard is one definition of anti-Semitism—and that the world’s condemnation of the IDF for civilian casualties that are actually caused by Hamas is one such manifestation of that double standard.

The words are powerful, and Schumer should be congratulated for them. But there are words and then there’s action. On the action front, a few of Schumer’s fellow Democratic senators are talking about taking demonstrable steps—against Israel. And therein lies a problem that has been brewing for years, long before Hamas was planning its Oct. 7 slaughter. Schumer is calling on his fellow Americans to stop attacking Jews. But he has members of his own caucus calling on the rest of Congress to join them in tying one of Israel’s hands behind its back.
Top US Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer warns against surge of antisemitism

U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLUTION "THE SYRIAN GOLAN," ADOPTED WITH 91 IN FAVOR, 8 AGAINST, 62 ABSTENTIONS.




JPost Editorial: Marking the anniversary of UN Partition Plan

Israel to mark 76th anniversary of UN partition plan

Radical Palestinian Groups Accused of Funding U.N. Envoy’s Israel-Bashing Trip to Australia

Soros group cut $250,000 check to anti-Israel charity accused of Hamas terror ties

'Squad' firebrand Rashida Tlaib's astonishing links to shady Hamas group held liable for DEATH of an American Jew: Charity boss co-hosted her Congress campaign event… and more of her backers have clear ties to murderous terrorists

Dem Sen. Bennet: Hamas Uses Human Shields, But I Can’t Say if We Should Condition Israel Aid

Dem Sen. Warner: Israel Should Have ‘Constraints’ and Should Release Some Money to Palestinian Authority

Israeli forces kill commander of Islamic Jihad’s Jenin Battalion

FDD: 10 Things to Know About Hamas and Turkey

How Hamas is showcasing Islamic Jihad’s Gaza role - analysis

Support for Hamas Surges in the West Bank

Between Iran and the Bomb

Iran Created the Monster That Is Hamas
Yesterday, Hamas released an additional twelve hostages (ten Israeli citizens and two Thai) in exchange for an additional day of the ceasefire, and the same arrangement is expected to persist today. These deals are the product of constant negotiations in Qatar involving Washington, Jerusalem, Cairo, and Hamas. What remains unclear is Iran’s involvement in these negotiations, over which it certainly has some influence. It’s also worth noting that attacks by Iran-backed militias on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria have ceased since the ceasefire took effect.

As background to making sense of all this, we have Matthew Levitt’s overview of the relationship between Iran and Hamas, which dates back to the latter’s founding in 1987, when the Islamic Republic began providing it with ample funds:

Hamas was reluctant in its early years to accept too much money from Iran for fear of being bound to the expectations and instructions of Tehran. But the increase in Iranian funding for Hamas in May 2004 came just weeks after the assassination of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi.

Iran’s provision of support to Hamas has continued to grow over time, especially after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip by force from fellow Palestinians in 2007. According to a 2010 U.S. Department of Defense report on Iran’s military power, Iran provided Hizballah and several Palestinian terrorist groups—including Hamas—“with funding, weapons, and training to oppose Israel.” . . . Today, U.S. and Israeli officials estimate that Iran provides Hamas at least $70 million to $100 million a year.

For decades, Iran, a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terrorism, has provided a wide range of material support to Hamas, without which Hamas could never have become the capable and deadly terrorist organization it is today. . . . Tehran played a critical role in creating the monster that is Hamas, which is why Iran shares the blame and responsibility for the brutal attack.
Hamas Has Only Used 10 Percent of Its Arsenal, Iran Says

Iranian Officials Put The Best Spin Possible On Gaza War

The Virulent Antisemite Who Influenced Henry Ford and Woodrow Wilson, and Brought the Worst Anti-Jewish Document to the US

Antisemitic Discrimination Is a Painful Daily Reality for Jews in France, Newspaper Investigation Reveals

Italian rabbi attacked with screwdriver in antisemitic attack

UFC must 'fight' its own dangerous antisemitism

Austin synagogue arsonist sentenced to 10 years in prison

Israel’s values based on the ‘great Western civilization’
Menzies Research Centre Senior Fellow Nick Cater says Israel’s values are based on the “great Western civilization”.

Mr Cater said Israel “builds things, it doesn’t destroy things”.

“A country that treats all its citizens with respect,” he told Sky News host Peta Credlin.

“It doesn’t put kids in the firing line, for instance.

“So, you’ve got that versus Hamas.”




Haifa University scientists in Antarctica raise awareness for Israeli hostages

Jewish Actor Jon Lovitz Tells Those Who Hate It When Jews Defend Themselves: ‘Tough S—t’



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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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