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Sunday, December 10, 2023

12/10 Links: The tomb of Palestinian liberation; Israel’s survival clashes with America’s Lebanon delusions; The problem is bigger than three college presidents

From Ian:

Recognizing the truth about Israel and Jewish connections to the land
Zionism was the opposite of a colonial movement. Jews are the true indigenous people of the land of Israel. While many ancient and far gone nations have lived and ruled the land, there are no people around today that have an older claim on the land of Israel than the Jewish people.

The Jews have lived in Israel for over 3,000 years. No one sent the Zionists to colonize the land of Israel, the Zionists came to liberate the land from non-native people who had no rights or connections to the land.

Lastly, the Israelis have made it a priority to treat all people under their rule in accordance with international law and grant all people their human rights. They’ve dramatically improved the lives of all peoples, Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, and Circassians that live in Israel.

Israelis have made sure to give equal rights to all citizens irrespective of their religion or nationality. While it won’t grant citizen rights to non-citizens, like Palestinians, it does make sure to grant them full human rights. This doesn’t stop Israel’s opponents from slandering Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, but their accusations never match reality.

As Israeli soldiers fight on behalf of their nation to secure it against foreign enemies in Gaza, Israel’s advocates speak on its behalf on social and mainstream media. The two can’t be compared in the importance of their mission, but the latter group ensures that the truth about Israel is spread throughout the world.

Israel deserves to rule its historic homeland, it seeks peace, is the indigenous people of its land, and treats its citizens and residents properly. In challenging times the truth will eventually rise and become the final world.
Ben Judah: The tomb of Palestinian liberation
And yet, there is a strand of continuity in the politics of Abbas, stretching back to the heady days of the PLO in Lebanon. From the mid-Seventies, Palestinian politics were divided between rationalists, who saw the future involving some kind of accommodation with Israel, and radicals, who would accept none. Arafat flitted and played with the two. But Abbas was squarely rationalist.

This remains true to this day. Rationally, he knows he never had the power to lead a successful intifada against Israel. Rationally, he knows he has never had the legitimacy to sign a peace accord, whose compromises vast swathes of the nation would see as a betrayal. And rationally, ever since he lost Gaza to Hamas in 2007, he has decided that the best course of action is to simply hold on.

This logic has turned the Mukataa from what was once a symbol of revolution into a symbol of an authoritarian Arab regime in miniature: a system tied together by corruption, where no elections have been held since 2005. Fatah, in turn, is now widely derided as an empty card-carrying shell — like the Ba’ath party in Syria or the old Eastern bloc. Across the West Bank, the system is largely outright despised.

Abbas, in his twilight, has never been weaker but also never more central. At night in Ramallah, there are protests, but things are still quiet. At night in Gaza, there is the thunder of bombs. Never in Palestinian history has the contrast between violence and negotiation been so stark. No longer between Abbas and Arafat, the contrast is between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. This appears hard to see from a distance, but October 7 was the start of a new war for Jerusalem, launched “in defence of the Al-Aqsa mosque”. Named “Operation Al Aqsa Floods”, Hamas’s massacre was only the latest offensive in what they see as an unending one, to stop the Jews “erecting their alleged temple on the ruins of the shrine of our Prophet Mohammed”.

Hamas sought, on October 7, not only to start a war with Israel but to detonate the West Bank. Their leaders dreamed that with mass hostage-taking they could bring Israeli society to its knees and force the release of all Palestinian prisoners — grabbing in one jubilant swoop the ownership of the Palestinian cause from the PLO. Opinion is divided among Palestinian analysts over their successes. All agree Hamas’s popularity is soaring in the West Bank, with crowds chanting its slogans even in the heart of Ramallah. But opinions differ over whether or not tensions in the West Bank actually threaten the Mukataa.

Abbas’s response has mostly been silent. Rationally, he believes the best strategy is to avoid tempting a possible intifada or Israeli action against him. But behind this muted response to the bloodshed, the Mukataa believe that Hamas has led the Palestinian people — with the destruction of Gaza City and now Khan Younis — into the greatest disaster of their history since 1948. Massacres are not new to the land, but never before has a city been levelled in the entire conflict. “Hamas entered a battle and the result was the complete destruction of Gaza. To blindly follow slogans to satisfy an illusion and the result is the destruction of the Palestinian people.” These were the words of Abbas a decade ago, but they could have been said yesterday. “I am responsible for the people and I will not allow their destruction to happen again.”

This is the crux of Palestinian politics. Hamas believes only violence can force the liberation of Al-Aqsa. Abbas believes only negotiations and the international community can. Hamas sees him as a corrupt collaborator. Abbas sees himself as protecting his people from what Gazans call the Israeli “monster” and guarding the mechanism that will eventually deliver a Palestinian state. Meanwhile, Western and Arab diplomats have come to see him as an intransigent obstacle to any progress towards a “two-state solution”. The tragedy, however, is that with the Palestinian people now so divided, the only man who could have made peace on behalf of all of them is buried in the Mukataa.
Caroline Glick: Israel’s survival clashes with America’s Lebanon delusions
This brings us to President Joe Biden. Biden reinstated and expanded Obama’s policies. He decided that the best way to “stabilize” Lebanon—that is, empower Hezbollah—is by providing it with steady income. So last year, Hochstein exploited Israel’s political instability to achieve that end. He compelled Israel’s interim government led by Yair Lapid to accept a deal to delineate Israel’s maritime border with Lebanon that was based entirely on Hezbollah’s legally unsupported claims to sovereign Israeli territorial waters and Israeli economic waters.

Which brings us to Hochstein’s plan for demarcating Israel’s land border with Hezbollah. When Israel withdrew from its security zone in south Lebanon in 2000, the United Nations determined that Israel had fully withdrawn to its border. Hezbollah, keen to maintain a casus belli, rejected the U.N. determination and presented claims to 14 points within sovereign Israeli territory. Hochstein’s offer means that the U.S. position is that Israel’s sovereign territory can be negotiated away, and indeed, the U.S. supports Israel being denied its sovereign territory.

As Lebanon’s Al Akhbar reported last week, Hochstein’s offer includes Israel “vacating all contested points in Lebanon’s favor, including withdrawal from the northern part of Ghajar and key posts in the occupied Shebaa Farms, on condition that the matter be implemented in two stages: declaring the Lebanese identity of these territories and agreeing that the UN oversee them militarily and security and social-wise until the emergence of another political situation.”

“Shebaa Farms” are the Lebanese term for Mount Dov, a strategic location along Israel’s border with Syria in the Golan Heights. The United States recognized Israeli sovereignty over Mount Dov in 2020.

In exchange for transferring its sovereign lands to Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hochstein’s plan would involve Hezbollah proclaiming that it is abiding by UNSC Resolution 1701, which it of course will never abide by.

Israel is not eager to open a front with Lebanon, at least not until it has largely defeated Hamas throughout the Gaza Strip. Such a war will require the bulk of IDF forces to be moved from the south to the north, reversing the current balance in forces between the two fronts. But it is obvious that Israel cannot end the war without doing so. This places U.S.-Israel relations on a collision course that can only be averted if the United States abandons its delusions about Lebanon.


Anti-Zionism’s Soviet Roots
Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority since 2005, completed his graduate studies at the Patrice Lumumba University in 1982. His dissertation, later published as the book The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and Zionism, was directed by Yevgeny Primakov, a master of Soviet political warfare. Its thesis is that Zionists collaborated with Nazis to perpetrate the Holocaust — which, according to Abbas, killed far fewer than 6 million European Jews — in order to win public support for a Jewish state. This supposed history, Abbas wrote, explains “the origins” of Israel’s “aggressive and racist policy vis-à-vis Palestinians and the Arabs in other countries.” Invoking Nazi Germany, Abbas described Zionists as “the storm troopers of world imperialist reaction” and claimed that the “aggressive essence of international Zionism and, first and foremost, its crucial component — Israel’s ruling Zionist regime — appear today in its most crude, expansionist, and racist form.”

It was not only Abbas who was influenced by Soviet attempts to link Zionism and Nazism. Tabarovsky writes that “foreign-directed Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda gradually built in for its audiences associations between Israel and such familiar Nazi German–specific terms as genocide, concentration camps, deportations, and Lebensraum.”

Soviet likenings of Zionism to Nazism reached a climax in 1975, with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3379 — the “Zionism is racism” resolution that the USSR marshaled through. (It would be rescinded in 1991 under pressure from the U.S.) The resolution linked Zionism with “colonialism and neo-colonialism, foreign occupation, . . . apartheid, and racial discrimination.” Petrovsky-Shtern tells NR that this was once again a strategic play by the Soviets, who were “interested in killing two birds with one stone.” First, they wanted to discourage emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. Second, they wished to curry more favor with Arab states and further degrade Western influence in the third world: If the West’s outpost in the Middle East was racist and oppressive, then the West itself must be illegitimate.

Through publications such as Sputnik, a monthly available in English, the USSR also spread its propaganda directly to Westerners who were sympathetic to narratives of anti-imperialism. Petrovsky-Shtern says the USSR’s casting of itself as a champion of the downtrodden was tailor-made for left-wing American ears: “The message of the peace-loving Soviet Union is sent to the West, and people swallow it hook, line, and sinker because it is contagious. These leftists heard the Soviet Union say that it supported the humiliated and oppressed, which was wonderful for them, because that was their ideological position.”

Today, the idea that Zionism equals Nazism is common in Western academia and culture. The narrative of decolonization, national liberation, and Israel as imperialist aggressor is well represented in course curricula. Bard College offers a class on Israeli “apartheid.” Princeton offers a class called “The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South.” Included among the readings is a book that claims Israelis harvest Palestinian organs. Myriad ethnic-studies departments — and not only those having to do with Arabs — have issued statements supporting Hamas’s October 7 attack and rejecting the characterization of Hamas as a terrorist organization. And left-wing activist groups such as Black Lives Matter claim the Palestinian cause is similar to their own.

It may be that none of these groups or individuals has read Mahmoud Abbas’s dissertation at the Patrice Lumumba University. But they demonstrate that the antisemitic propaganda of the Soviet Union has outlived the Soviet state, to baleful effect.
George Soros funneled more than $50M to Iran-sympathizer groups linked to Robert Malley
Far-left billionaire George Soros has funneled more than $50 million to a network of Iran-sympathizer groups whose members have gained significant sway within the Biden White House — pushing to defang US sanctions on Tehran while advocating for a renewed nuclear deal.

A Post examination of Soros’ Open Society Foundations records shows the progressive kingmaker has given a staggering $46.7 million since 2016 to the International Crisis Group, a lefty think tank tied to an alleged Iranian plot to manipulate US policy.

Robert Malley, the former US special envoy to Iran now under FBI investigation for his alleged mishandling of classified material, was the ICG’s president until he joined the Biden administration in 2021.

“Soros has continually funded organizations that act as apologists for the Iranian regime – downplaying their severe human rights abuses while working to advance Iranian propaganda,” Gabriel Noronha of the Polaris National Security think tank told The Post.

Soros cash funded the ICG’s formation in 1994, and the billionaire was a trustee for years before handing the seat to his son and ideological heir Alexander Soros, 38, in 2018.

Three of Malley’s proteges were part of the Iran Experts Initiative, a covert network of Iranian-American academics established by Iran’s Foreign Ministry in 2014, according to Semafor.

Over the last decade, IEI participants have worked their way into Washington’s foreign policy establishment — while subtly persuading US policymakers to ease sanctions on Tehran and accede to its nuclear ambitions.

“If you were a regime running a game plan of how to subvert the United States’ political system from within, this would be it to a tee,” Noronha said.
Alan Dershowitz: Israel is not morally required to sacrifice its people to save Gazan civilians
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently issued the following warning to Israel:

“You know, I learned a thing or two about urban warfare from my time fighting in Iraq and leading the campaign to defeat ISIS. Like Hamas, ISIS was deeply embedded in urban areas.”

“And the international coalition against ISIS worked hard to protect civilians and create humanitarian corridors, even during the toughest battles.”

“So the lesson is not that you can win in an urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians.”

“You see, in this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”

That ill-advised admonition reflects a basic misunderstanding of the relationship between Hamas and most Gazans. Recent polls show overwhelming support by Gazans not only for Hamas but also for its barbarities of Oct. 7.

The sad reality is that the civilian population of Gaza is already in the “arms of the enemy.”

It is part of the problem, not the solution.

The only way to get these “civilians” out of the arms of Hamas is to show them that atrocities committed by Hamas will hurt the civilians of Gaza as well as the terrorists of Hamas.

This message is obviously not intended for infants and young children, who are completely innocent.

But it does include most adults, men and women alike, many of whom not only cheer for Hamas but are complicit in their terrorism by allowing themselves to be used as human shields and their homes and mosques to be used as hiding places for weapons and commanders.

When the Allies killed hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians during World War II, this did not drive the surviving civilians into the arms of the enemy.

To the contrary, the show of strength and the total victory of the Allies, drove most of them into the arms of the victors who promised them a better life— and delivered through the Marshall Plan in Germany and the rebuilding of Japan.

Not even the bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo and Dresden drove the civilians into the arms of the military evil-doers who provoked the allied response.

The lesson of the total war and unconditional surrender that ended World War II is far more relevant to Gaza than the experiences in Iraq.
Jazz Shaw: Is Israel Losing the War?
It’s worth noting up front that the authors are definitely approaching this topic from an “anti-zionist” perspective. They repeatedly refer to Gaza as “the world’s largest open-air prison.” They speak of the “occupation” and use many of the terms we hear from the anti-Israel left these days. But even with that said, I’m hesitant to entirely dismiss their analysis or some of the potential future scenarios they suggest.

Their comparison of October 7 to the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam is not entirely off base. The Vietnamese were hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned when they struck roughly 100 different targets simultaneously. They lost an ungodly number of soldiers in the process. But they also killed a lot of our people and “shattered the illusion of victory” that the Johnson administration had been promoting. The already shaky support for the war back in America collapsed and we eventually withdrew, ending with the disastrous and deadly fall of Saigon.

The Vietnamese weren’t fighting a single military battle hoping to gain territory and kill a greater number of enemy soldiers. They were fighting a political battle. The authors remind us of of an apt quote from Henry Kissinger at the time:
“We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process, we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.”

That’s a chilling observation in the context of the current conflict in Gaza. The authors argue that whatever remains of Hamas is still fighting a political war. If they have goaded Israel into enough of a destructive attack on Gaza, Israel’s allies will eventually abandon her. Residents of Gaza – even those who might otherwise wish for peace – will increasingly side with Hamas and blame Israel for the wasteland they now inhabit. If they can convince enough Palestinians in the West Bank that the Palestinian Authority is little more than a puppet for the Israeli government, the people will abandon the PA as well. That would leave Hamas as the only game in town.

This is a significant concern and it could drag out the trouble in the region for a long time to come. But I will point out one key difference between the situation in Gaza and the Tet Offensive. Even after support for the war collapsed, the Americans still had a home to go back to. Israel does not. That is their home. If they cannot fully defeat Hamas and their allies abandon them, Israel will eventually fall to the Arab world and the Jewish state will be gone. And perhaps that’s been the plan of Hamas and Iran all along. We can’t let that happen, but I will repeat what I said above. This analysis is not entirely off the mark.
Israeli forces push deeper into Khan Yunis; 250 Hamas targets hit

IAF struck over 22,000 terror targets in Gaza since Oct. 7

Blinken: Jerusalem will decide when to end the war
Israel will decide when to end its war against the Hamas terrorist group, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during an interview with Jake Tapper of CNN on Sunday.

“We have these discussions with Israel, including about the duration as well as how it’s prosecuting this campaign against Hamas. These are decisions for Israel to make,” Blinken said.

The current high-intensity phase of Israel’s war against Hamas will continue for at least two more months, Hebrew media reported on Sunday.

At the end of that period, the IDF will transition to targeted operations in Gaza, according to the reports.

During those two months, there will be additional attempts to make deals for the remaining estimated 135 hostages held by Hamas, according to sources cited by the report.

The sources added that at some point during the next two months, Israel will allow some residents of the Gaza Strip to return to their homes. This is due to an American demand as well as IDF operational needs, according to the report.

American news site Politico reported on Friday that President Joe Biden has given Israel until the end of the year to wrap up operations. However, the report was quickly walked back, with a U.S. National Security Council spokesperson responding: “These are Israeli military operations and the Israelis will decide their course. We will continue to support Israel’s efforts to defend itself from Hamas terrorists.”


Palestinian Authority PM: Eliminating Hamas is unacceptable
Hamas is an “essential part of the Palestinian political mosaic,” Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told world leaders gathered in Qatar on Sunday, adding that Israel’s goal of eliminating the Islamist terror group is “unacceptable” to Ramallah.

“We want a situation in which Palestinians are united. … I think it is time that Hamas call the Palestinian president [Mahmoud Abbas] and tell him we’re all united behind you, and you are the legitimate authority of the Palestinian people and we are ready to engage,” Shtayyeh stated at the Doha Forum, an annual event sponsored by the state of Qatar.

Shtayyeh also called to impose sanctions on the Jewish state “and not allow it to continue violating international law, international humanitarian law and Security Council resolutions,” according to the P.A.’s official Wafa news agency.

The P.A. official flew to Qatar in a bid to convince the emirate to switch its financial support for Hamas terrorism over to the Palestinian Authority, Shtayyeh told Bloomberg on Friday.

Bloomberg quoted Shtayyeh as saying that Ramallah’s preferred outcome of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza would be for the terrorist organization to join a P.A.-led governing body as a junior partner.

“Hamas before Oct. 7 is one thing, and after is another. … What is needed really is a situation in which Palestinian unity should be allowed to function on very clear bonds and agenda,” Shtayyeh told the outlet.
IDF: 600 wounded soldiers evacuated since start of Gaza op
The Israel Defense Forces has conducted 300 evacuations for a total of 600 wounded soldiers since the start of ground operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 27, the army said on Sunday.

Daily updates on the wounded in Gaza will be included on the IDF website starting on Sunday, the military also said.

These rescue missions are carried out quickly due to the dangerous conditions in the combat zone, the IDF explained. They involve the coordination of helicopter crews; doctors from the Special Tactics Rescue Unit 669, the air force’s heliborne Combat Search and Rescue extraction unit; and paramedics on the ground.

The rescue operations are led by aid officers of the Air Force Cooperation Unit, who are responsible for the connection between the ground and air forces.

In just the past week, about 60 evacuations of wounded soldiers were carried out from the combat area. The IDF provided video documentation of an evacuation from Dec. 4.

Ninety-eight soldiers have been killed in action in Gaza since the start of the ground operation; 425 Israeli soldiers have died since the war began on Oct. 7.
Hamas terrorists lose contact with Gaza leaders, surrender to IDF
Dozens of Hamas terrorists lost contact with the terror group's leadership, leaving them with no option but to lay down their weapons and surrender to Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, Army Radio reported on Sunday morning.

After images of stripped terrorists in Jabalya and Khan Yunis circulated on social media, reports emerged that the IDF is "identifying changes in Hamas leadership's conduct."

A security source told Army Radio that Hamas's senior leaders, thought to have fled to Khan Yunis in Gaza's south, "prefer their personal survival over the survival of Hamas's command and control operations."

Hamas battalions 'capitulated' in Gaza fighting, US-based institute says


Earlier on Sunday, the US-based Institute for the Study of War assessed in an X thread that at least seven Hamas battalions have already capitulated in fighting with the IDF.

In addition, six battalions are "close to collapse," the Institute continued. According to the Insitute, the collapse of Hamas's Gaza City and northern brigades could signal the fall of the northern Strip to Israeli forces.

On Friday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told IDF soldiers that he "sees the signs indicating a breakdown is beginning inside Gaza."


Israel: We Can No Longer Accept Hizbullah's Radwan Force Sitting on Our Northern Border
Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said Saturday night that in the wake of the slaughter of 1,200 people in Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, Hizbullah's Radwan force could attempt a similar murderous invasion from the north, targeting Israeli civilians in communities near the border "within minutes."

He said Israel was tackling Hamas "17 years too late," and "we can no longer accept the Radwan force sitting on the border. We can no longer accept Resolution 1701 not being implemented," referring to a UN Security Council resolution from 2006, at the end of the Second Lebanon War, that barred any Hizbullah presence within 30 km. of the border with Israel.

Some 60,000 residents of border communities have been evacuated from the north since Oct. 7, amid relentless clashes across the border between Hizbullah and Israel. "Residents will not return if we don't do the same thing" in the north against Hizbullah as is being done in the south against Hamas, Hanegbi told Israel's Channel 12.

"The situation in the north must be changed. And it will change. If Hizbullah agrees to change things via diplomacy, very good. But I don't believe it will." Therefore, "when the day comes," Israel will have to act to ensure that residents of the north are no longer "displaced in their land, and to guarantee for them that the situation in the north has changed."

Israel does not want to fight simultaneously on two fronts and has been "making clear to the Americans that we are not interested in war [in the north], but that we will have no alternative but to impose a new reality" if Hizbullah remains a threat. Hanegbi said that at least 7,000 terrorists have been killed during the war so far.
IAF conducts ‘extensive’ strikes in Lebanon after Hezbollah drone injures troops

Son of Hezbollah commander behind establishment of Iraqi militias reported killed in Israeli airstrike

Fury aimed at ‘antisemitic’ UN committee probing Hamas’ sexual atrocities against Israeli women
The U.N.’s controversial Commission of Inquiry (COI) tasked with investigating Hamas’ crimes of rape and sexual abuse of Israelis has been deemed an "antisemitic" group by the Jewish State’s ambassador to the U.N. that is incapable of conducting a fair probe.

"The antisemitic Commission of Inquiry, established by the morally distorted Human Rights Council, which recently appointed Iran as chair of the council’s Social Forum, is biased against Israel in every way," Israel’s Ambassador Gilad Erdan told Fox News Digital.

"Therefore, Israel has zero trust in its findings and its illegitimate activities. Its ‘investigation’ into the terror organization’s sexual crimes against Israeli women on Oct. 7 is akin to Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, investigating its crimes."

Erdan is a fierce critic of the U.N.’s longstanding alleged bias against the Jewish state.

Israel's United Nations Ambassador Gilad Erdan addresses the United Nations over its Commission of Inquiry into Israel. (Israeli Mission to the UN)

"The commissioners’ pre-existing prejudice against Israel is abundantly clear," he added. "They have denied Israel's right to be a member of the U.N., they have undermined the accepted working definition of antisemitism, and they support the boycott of Israel."

Anne Bayefsky, director of the New York-based Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News Digital, "There is no possibility whatsoever that the COI will investigate anything about Israel in a fair manner. This isn't speculation, it's fact."

The origin of the COI is grounded in a 2021 resolution from the controversial U.N. Human Rights Council, which has also been embroiled in scandal over its alleged bias against Israel.

The Human Rights Council established "an ongoing, independent, international commission of inquiry to investigate, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and abuses of international human rights law leading up and since 13 April 2021."

Bayefsky, also president of Human Rights Voices, has written extensively about the COI, and she took the chairwoman of the COI, Navi Pillay, and her fellow committee members to task for stoking antisemitism.

"The three individuals on this so-called ‘inquiry,’ starting with Pillay herself, are utterly biased," Bayefsky said. "That's precisely why they were selected in the first place. Their personal records demonstrate rank antisemitism.

"They are running an antisemitic inquisition, not an investigation. And the only reason they have a sudden interest in the horrifying reality of Palestinian Arab rape of Jewish women and girls is because their faux legal charade is at risk of even greater delegitimization."


Dr. Phil slams Ivy Leagues: Are universities becoming 'woke hotbeds?'
One of the most well-known and trusted Christian TV personalities has once again condemned American universities, this time for becoming "liberal, woke hotbeds, fostering intellectual rather than critical thinking."

Dr. Phil McGraw condemned the testimonies of the leaders of Harvard University, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania before Congress last week in which they exuded "sickening smugness" and "an arrogance and dismissiveness seldom seen in that forum" while telling Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York that calling for the genocide of Jews only violates their policies of bullying and harassment if said in the "proper context."

"To be 100% clear, using the dictionary definition of genocide, the question becomes, does calling for the deliberate killing of a large number of Jews with the aim of destroying the Jewish ethnic group and the nation of Israel violate your policy against bullying and harassment?" McGraw explained.

Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Sally Kornbluth of MIT "evaded" the question. Magill resigned over the weekend.

McGraw is best known for his top-rated program, Dr. Phil, which ran for 21 years until May 2023. He is also a mental health professional. He filmed his video at the new Trinity Broadcasting Network studio in Dallas.

Dr. Phil: calls for genocide don't need context to violate school policies
"How much context would be required if the student organizations were demonstrating in support of genocide of all Asians, Catholics, blacks or gays?" McGraw asks after reviewing clips from the leaders' testimonies. "'I'll tell you how much: none.

"And you know what? There should be none. All of these groups deserve protection and the right to attend school without fear, and so do the Jewish students."


‘No other option’ for Israel but to take down Hamas in Gaza
Israeli News Anchor Lital Shemesh says the world must understand there is “no other option” for Israel but to take down Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Ms Shemesh pointed out the Palestinian terrorist group is continuing to fire rockets toward Israel.

“So whatever the world is taking about, calling for a ceasefire – I’m asking what about calling Hamas to release the hostages,” she told Sky News Australia.

“Calling Hamas to stop firing rockets towards our cities and our towns.

“That should be like the first thing that needs to be asked for.”




Pro-Palestinian protesters ‘beyond despicable’ if they fail to condemn Hamas
Sky News host Rowan Dean says anyone who “mouths pro-Palestinian platitudes” without totally condemning the Hamas attack on October 7 is “culpable and beyond despicable” after US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s address at the UN.

Hundreds gathered at the United Nations last Monday for a special session to raise awareness of the sexual crimes committed against women during the October 7 Hamas attacks, amid growing anger over the international community’s perceived silence on the issue.

“It’s important that we are giving a voice to the women raped and murdered on October 7, and it is important that we are speaking truth to power in this place at this time,” Ms Gillibrand said at the special session.

“When I saw the list of women’s organizations that said nothing, I nearly choked.

"Where is the solidarity for women in this country and in this world, to stand up for our mothers, our sisters and our daughters?

“The horrific acts committed on October 7 by Hamas are truly indescribable, I’ve seen much of the raw footage. It takes your breath away at the sheer level of evil it depicts.”




In pictures: Jewish activist captures hate at London pro-Palestinian march
A Jewish activist who goes by Yonatan or @_Jacker_ on X, captured images of antisemitic hate at a London pro-Palestinian march that took place on December 9. The images have quickly spread online. Suella Braverman, former UK Home Secretary, had described the weekly demonstrations as "hate marches."

London’s Metropolitan Police, who confirmed that they had made 13 arrests at the pro-Palestinian rally, are now searching for many of the individuals photographed by the Yonatan. The activist also confirmed to the Jerusalem Post that he had seen at least three signs being taken away from people for violating the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

The sign reads "This isn't 2001 nobody believes you" which is a reference to the September 11 attacks. As the Post recently reported, a letter by Osama Bin Laden recirculated online with many TikTok users expressing their agreement with the terrorist, who blamed Israel for the attacks. Several antisemitic conspiracies have also suggested that the Jews had been the ones to attack the US, not Al Qaeda.

The rest of the placards draw comparisons between the Jewish state of Israel and the Holocaust, which breaches the IHRA definition of antisemitism under the clause of "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis."

The police later issued a statement on X: "We understand why people are angry and disappointed that this man wasn’t arrested yesterday, during the protest. We share those frustrations and obviously we wish he had been.

"The reality is with a protest involving 40,000 people where officers are focusing not just on placards but on crowd safety, potential disorder and other offences there will always be some that are missed."
Prominent mosque chairman who praised Hamas founder invited to dinner with London’s Met police: Report
Prominent mosque chairman Mohammed Kozbar, who had praised the founder of the Palestinian militant group Hamas was invited to a dinner hosted by the London Met commissioner, reported the Sunday Telegraph, on Saturday (Dec 9).

The event was hosted months after Kozbar’s remarks about the Hamas founder, raising questions about Met’s links to the activist amid criticism over its response to the pro-Palestinian protests in London.

The British capital city like many major cities across the world has witnessed pro-Palestinian protests and pro-Israel rallies since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. In the UK several people at pro-Palestinian rallies have been detained for raising antisemitic slogans. trending now

About the event at Scotland Yard
According to the Telegraph, Kozbar attended an evening event alongside senior Met officers in July, five months after he praised Hamas’ founder as “the master of the martyrs of the resistance” and was cited in the official counter-extremism review.

When asked by the British media about Kozbar’s presence at Scotland Yard, Met police’s headquarters, the London police force told the Telegraph, “We can confirm that Mr Mohammed Kozbar is a member of the London Muslim Communities Forum.”

The event was reportedly organised by the London Muslim Communities Forum or LMCF, a Met “strategic advisory body” and was also addressed by Attiq Malik, a hard-left activist who led the LMCF until November.

The Sunday Telegraph also revealed that he had been filmed chanting “from the river to the sea” and railing against “global censorship by the Zionists”.


Two teenagers girls arrested after Jewish woman is ‘kicked unconscious’
Two teenage girls have been arrested after a young Jewish woman was violently assaulted and robbed in Stamford Hill, Scotland Yard has said.

The 20-year-old was assualted and robbed on Rostrevor Avenue by two people who ran off towards the A10 on Thursday afternoon. The woman, who is from the orthodox Jewish community, was left bruised.

Footage of the incident was circulated online after it was tweeted by neighbourhood watch group Shomrim.

They said on X/Twitter: “The brutal attack ended after the two female offenders kept on kicking the unconscious victim in the head before laughing over her body and, according to witness reports, saying joyfully she's ‘dead’!

“She was left collapsed and unresponsive in a puddle and appeared unconscious for a few minutes.

“Volunteers have spent all night recovering CCTV, searching for witnesses and supporting the victim and her family.


Pro-Palestinian Protesters Target Synagogues, Vandalize Church in Los Angeles
Pro-Palestinian protesters vandalized buildings near synagogues, as well as a nearby church, with anti-Israel graffiti on Friday night after demonstrating against President Joe Biden at a nearby fundraiser on Friday night.

As Breitbart News reported, the protesters gathered outside a fundraiser near Beverly Hills, waving signs that included “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a call for Israel to be destroyed.

Some demonstrators also conducted Islamic prayers.

From there, some of the protesters went to Westwood, near the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and marched down Wilshire Boulevard toward an area where there are several synagogues, notably Sinai Temple. Some of them attacked police. The Los Angeles Times reported:
Police declared an “unlawful assembly” at about 5:45 p.m, but [Holmby Park] wasn’t abandoned for another hour, when protesters spilled onto adjacent streets — marching near entrances to the Los Angeles Country Club on Comstock Avenue near Wilshire Boulevard.

While some officers said they were hit with eggs and water by demonstrators, there were no reported injuries or arrests as of 7:45 p.m. Some walls along Wilshire were tagged with graffiti, and protesters blocked and delayed traffic at various points along the thoroughfare.

The Times did not report that the “walls” that were vandalized were opposite synagogues.

Walls opposite Sinai Temple and Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel were vandalized with anti-Israel slogans. A public bus shelter opposite Sinai Temple was also vandalized with the slogan “Free Gaza”; it had not been cleaned up as of Saturday afternoon.

In addition, nearby Westwood United Methodist Church was vandalized.


California Coffee Shop Apologizes for Anti-Israel Employees Blocking Jewish Woman From Bathroom With Antisemitic Graffiti

Jonathan Tobin: The problem is bigger than three college presidents
The reason is that the now-dominant ideologies of critical race theory and intersectionality, which falsely analogizes the war on Israel to the struggle for civil rights in the United States, grants a permission slip for antisemitism. Their advocates, who now largely run most universities through DEI offices whose woke commissars have free reign on campuses, have adopted these big lies and treat those who disagree with disdain or worse. They have spread throughout the academic departments that administer the humanities and rule both admissions and issues of discipline.

The people who run these institutions act as if the main problem with the reactions to Oct. 7 is the opprobrium that decent people are heaping on those who are either openly supporting Hamas or are merely calling for a ceasefire that would allow the terrorists to get away with mass murder.

Mainstreaming antisemitism
This point of view was best summed up by New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, an opponent of Israel’s existence, whose piece about the issue, published on the day of the university presidents’ testimony, sounded the alarm about the alleged threat to free speech posed by the backlash against campus Jew-hatred. Goldberg is upset about the way that support for Hamas is proving that anti-Zionism is synonymous with antisemitism. In a subsequent column, she lamented the way the university presidents “stepped into a trap” that would suppress “pro-Palestinian” speech.

That Goldberg’s views are treated as mainstream by the Times, rather than the rantings of extremist hatemongers that should be confined to the fever swamps of the far-left and the far-right, demonstrates how the same woke mindset now controls the corporate mainstream media. But the reaction to Stefanik’s cross-examining of those university presidents also shows most Americans don’t share Goldberg’s hateful opinions.

What she, her editors and left-wing academics around the nation want to do is to redefine antisemitism to make it kosher to call for Israel’s destruction and the genocide of its people.

But you don’t have to hold a degree from Harvard, Penn or MIT to know that if individuals wish to deprive the Jewish people of rights no one would think of denying to any other people or group—such as the right to freedom and sovereignty in their ancient homeland, as well as the right of self-defense—you are practicing discrimination.

Those who reacted to the viral video by calling for the three presidents to resign aren’t wrong. And alumni and other donors who are now threatening to stop giving to the three schools in order to force the resignations of all three are well-meaning. Still, the problem is not the figureheads running these schools but the governing ideologies and woke bureaucracies that they represent.

What must change is not the persons at the head of these schools but the way they are run. It is DEI departments, coupled with the teaching of critical race theory and toxic intersectional myths that promote not just antisemitism but hatred of America and permanent racial division, that must go, not just Gay, Magill or Kornbluth. And if that doesn’t happen (and there is little evidence that the leftist establishment is ready to give up their control of academia or other segments of society that they have captured), then the response must be to strip the institutions of their federal funds. American families must also stop sending their children to these schools only to be indoctrinated by them. If regular citizens want to do something about antisemitism on campus, they can’t stop at firing a few token administrators who are the products of a corrupt system. They must work towards the overthrow of an establishment that is fueling hatred against Jews.
JFNA's Julie Platt to serve as Penn interim chair amid antisemitism probe
Julie Platt, the Chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, will serve as the interim chair of the University of Pennsylvania Board, following the resignation of the previous chair, Scott Bok.

The announcement came amid a broader context of rising concerns about antisemitism on college campuses. University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill had resigned after facing criticism over her handling of antisemitism issues, particularly following the Israel-Hamas war in October.

Platt, a prominent and respectable Jewish leader, who had been serving as the Vice Chair of the university's board, emphasized her commitment to her role at the Jewish Federations and her ongoing efforts against antisemitism.

"Following the resignation of University of Pennsylvania Board Chair Scott Bok, the board asked me to serve as interim chair. I made clear that my priority is my role as chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, and therefore, agreed to do so and lead the process of selecting a new chair by the start of the next semester, which begins in January 2024," Platt stated.


Iran regime attacks ‘Zionist lobby’ in US over campus disputes
Iran’s authoritarian rulers have released a new statement attacking what it calls a “Zionist lobby” in the US, targeting voices in America who condemn antisemitism on college campuses. Iran’s regime has put out statements via its Foreign Ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanani.

This appears to be in response to Congress focusing on antisemitism at major US universities, with University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigning on Saturday after a controversial congressional hearing on antisemitism last week.

Why is Iran interested in this controversy?
It appears Iran’s regime is seeking to use anti-Israel protests in the US to bolster Iran’s lobbying attempts. Tehran has sought to influence US campuses and policy for decades, eventually culminating to some extent in the push for the Iran deal in 2015. The Islamic Republic and its supporters in the West sought to influence conversations at the highest levels and in media, portraying Iran as “moderate.

As part of this agenda, Tehran also pushed anti-Israel messages. The goal here was to portray US policy in the Middle East as tied to support for Israel. In the Iran regime’s view, if the US public and college campuses educating the next generation of policymakers could be influenced against Israel, then they might drive a pro-Iran policy.

This appears to be the context of why Iran is focused now on college campus protests and also the hearings in Congress. The Iranian pro-regime media Fars News and Tasnim News both focused on this issue yesterday.

Fars News reported that “the Zionist lobby in the US Congress cannot bear this issue.” The issue is antisemitism, but Iran alleges that anti-Israel protests are being labeled antisemitic. “In this regard, in recent weeks, the Zionist lobby called for the removal of the presidents of universities where anti-Israel protests have been held,” Iran’s regime media claimed. Iran’s regime appears very concerned about the pressure put on US universities to prevent antisemitism.

Iran’s government has long dabbled in antisemitic tropes to further its cause, once putting out messaging blaming Israel for conflicts in the Middle East or alleging that US policy in the region is driven by the Jewish state, and therefore US-Iran tensions are driven by Israel.


Dershowitz: Harvard’s President ‘Has to Leave’ ‘By Her Own Standards’ She Used Against a Dean in the Past SNL slammed for mocking US antisemitism hearing in viral sketch

'The most esteemed colleges have raised a bunch of f****** idiots!' Bill Maher rips into Harvard, UPenn and MIT over plague of anti-Semitism on campus and presidents' shameful Congress testimony

American Universities Swimming in Middle East cash
Leftists & Islamists are funding American college anti-Israel instruction and protests. So, who is buying the most influence?




Unraveling the Hamas narrative one fact at a time
On October 19, The Michigan Daily, the University of Michigan’s student newspaper, published an op-ed by a group of Jewish graduate students led by Amir Fleischmann that sympathizes with Hamas and proclaims Zionism as incompatible with Judaism.

Not only did the Daily publish Fleischmann’s misinformation-infested piece, but – instead of fostering an open dialogue – they refused to publish our response on the grounds that our “stance has been thoroughly covered in recent opinion articles,” despite the Daily’s publishing 30 articles with anti-Israel biases, compared to only 10 neutral, and six with a pro-Israel bias.

This is our response
According to Pew Research Center data released in 2021, eight-in-10 US Jews say caring about Israel is an essential part of their Judaism. Amir Fleischmann’s October 19th op-ed claims the opposite, radically misrepresenting the deep connection to Israel in University of Michigan Ann Arbor’s Jewish community and in Jewish communities around the world.

Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack resulted in the catastrophic premeditated massacre of innocent, unsuspecting, unarmed civilians from 41 countries. Their savagery included the murder of entire families, the beheading of live babies, and the horrifying desecration of dead bodies. Hamas was fully aware that their actions would provoke retaliation from Israel and spur a brutal war that would hurt Palestinian and Israeli civilians alike.

Yet Fleischmann refers to Hamas’s terrorist massacre as “resistance.” Can you, in good faith, call the rape, mutilation, and murder of over 360 civilians at a peace festival resistance?

Hamas’s clearly stated mission eerily resembles Nazi Germany, with Article 7 of their founding charter calling for “Muslims [to] fight Jews and kill them.” If Fleischmann claims to represent the Jewish people, why is he standing with those attempting to eradicate us, rather than those protecting us?

“As Jews… We emphatically oppose Zionism,” wrote Fleischmann. “This opposition means full support for Palestinians’ right to self-determination and resistance, the belief in the legitimacy of Palestinians’ claim to their land and unequivocal rejection of Israel’s illegitimate ‘right to defend itself.’”
West Coast, Messed Coast™ a Stunning Thing Happened After Hamas Supporters Took Over UW

U of A law student says request to display menorah was met with removal of Christmas trees

TikTok partners with the ADL to launch campaign against hate

Gaza in chaos as Palestinian anger against Hamas grows
The second phase of the Israeli war in Gaza has further exacerbated the humanitarian crisis. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people who fled from the North now seek shelter in the already overcrowded southern part of the Gaza Strip. Many move from Khan Yunis, the current epicenter of IDF-Hamas fighting, to the southern end of the strip, Rafah, near the Egyptian border. All the while, signs point to Hamas's rule weakening and the barrier of fear against the terrorist group breaking.

A Gaza resident, who bravely expressed his opinions on the radio, voiced his message to Yahya Sinwar and his accomplices. The interviewee, journalist Muhammad Mansour, boldly stated, "May Allah curse you, Hamas leadership. Sinwar, you are the offspring of a despicable creature. Allah will avenge the destruction you have inflicted upon us."

Mansour called on Hamas to release the remaining Israeli abductees held captive after the collapse of a previous deal, which resulted in the resumption of fighting. Frustrated, he exclaimed, "We were deported from Gaza to Khan Yunis, and from Khan Yunis to Rafah. Our children, women, and families were torn apart from us. Release these hostages immediately! Sinwar, [Mohammed] Deif, and their wicked companions hide underground. We don't even have access to water."

Why are Gazan Palestinians angry at Hamas?
While the Hamas leaders remain hidden in tunnels, above-ground residents face significant destruction and a lack of basic necessities, including food and water. These supplies are stored in UNRWA warehouses but fail to reach the people. Photos circulating show enraged residents looting one of the warehouses in Khan Yunis. One resident wrote in a local Telegram group, "What corruption! We are a family of four with refugees among us, struggling to find or buy food.

"A UNRWA representative denied us aid. The police informed the representative that distributing aid was prohibited." Another resident expressed, "UNRWA is ruining our lives just like the Jews."


Netanyahu tells Putin: Your cooperation with Iran is dangerous
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Moscow’s “dangerous cooperation” with Iran and pushed back at its harsh criticism of the Gaza war during a prolonged conversation with the country’s President Vladimir Putin on Sunday.

The two leaders held a 50-minute conversation on Sunday amid growing tension between the two countries as Moscow tightens its military cooperation with Tehran, as the Iranian-backed Houthis kept up its threat against global shipping routes in the Red Sea in response to the Gaza war.

A Houthi military spokesperson said all ships sailing to Israeli ports are banned from the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea until Gaza receives all the food and medicine it needs.

The US has said that Iran is responsible for those attacks.

Netanyahu's phone call with Putin
Netanyahu in his talk with Putin expressed his “displeasure” with Russia’s support of the United Nations Security Council for a ceasefire resolution that did not involve a condemnation of Hamas’ October 7 attack against southern Israel. Hamas killed over 1,200 people and seized some 250 hostages on that day.

The United States blocked the UNSC ceasefire call and the United Kingdom abstained while Russia, China, and France supported the ceasefire call. All five countries are permanent UNSC members and they all have veto power, but the US was the only one who used it.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Doha Forum virtually that while his country “strongly condemned” the October 7 attack, “we do not believe it’s not acceptable to use this event for collective punishment of millions of Palestinian people with indiscriminate shelling of the civilian quarters.”
Report: 2 Iranian agents planning attacks on Jews arrested in Cyprus
In the last month, the Cypriot police arrested two Iranian citizens, who were suspected of working for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and of planning an attack against Israelis and Jews on the island, the Cypriot newspaper Kathimerini Cyprus reported.

According to the report, the suspicion is that the two were in the initial stages of gathering intelligence on potential Israeli targets, with the aim of carrying out an attack.

It was also reported that the arrest was made thanks to cooperation between the local intelligence services and "Western intelligence organizations."

This is the third time in the last two years that an Iranian terrorist attack on Jewish and Israeli targets in Cyprus has been thwarted. About six months ago, the state reported that the island's intelligence services, in cooperation with their colleagues from Israel and the United States, foiled an attack planned by the Iranians against Israeli targets.

The Cypriot intelligence services followed a terrorist cell for months and arrested its members during the final stages of the planning of an attack. This wa a network of terrorists that operated on the Turkish side of Cyprus in the north of the country and sent terrorists from there to the Greek side of the island.

In addition, two years ago, a man with a Russian passport was arrested in the country who was suspected of acting to harm Jews and Israelis in the country on behalf of the Revolutionary Guards.
National Geographic lists Israel's Roman swords as top find of 2023
Four ancient but well-preserved swords -- found serendipitously by an Ariel University archaeologist who slipped his hand into a hole in a hidden chamber of a Judean Desert Cave -- have been named the “Number-One Find for 2023” of National Geographic Magazine.

The cache of Roman weaponry, protected from the elements for some 1,900 years by the dry heat, included four long and straight (spatha) swords and a javelin head.

Found in the cave at Israel’s Ein Gedi Nature Reserve, they were presented to journalists under a heavily protected glass case on September 6 by Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) scholars. “To find one sword like this is rare, so four? It’s a dream come true,” the researchers noted. “We couldn’t believe our eyes.”

The weapons cache was most likely hidden by Jewish rebels some 1,900 years ago, the authority said, after being seized from Roman forces. One of the IAA staff said it was possible that in their continuing examinations of the weapons, they might detect DNA on them that would provide even more incredible details. 'It's a dream' find

An expedition into the cave led by Ariel University’s Asaf Gayer and geologist Boaz Langford, initially planned to take multispectral footage of ink-written Hebrew inscriptions found on a stalactite, stumbled upon the hidden chamber where they also found pieces of process wood and leather straps, later discovered to be used as part of the swords’ scabbards.

Dr. Eitan Klein, one of the directors of the Judean Desert Survey Project, said, “Obviously, the rebels didn’t want to be caught by the Roman authorities carrying these weapons. We are just beginning the research on the cave and the weapon cache discovered in it, aiming to try to find out who owned the swords and where, when, and by whom they were manufactured. We will try to pinpoint the historical event that led to the caching of these weapons in the cave and determine whether it was at the time of the Bar Kochba Revolt in 132-135 CE.”
Fearing attacks, Jews in Egypt cancel public Hanukkah celebrations
The small Jewish community in Cairo has decided not to hold celebrations of the Hanukkah festival in one of the city’s synagogues, amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

The decision came due to the prevalent anti-Israeli sentiment in the Egyptian capital, according to a source from the community quoted by the Kan public broadcaster.

“No one is preventing us from celebrating. The point is that the mood in Cairo is very bad, because of the war,” the source said.

Cairo’s native Jewish community is believed to number no more than five living members, all of them women. A handful of Jews are also believed to remain in Egypt’s second largest city, Alexandria.

Up until the 1950s, about 80,000 Jews were estimated to be living in Egypt. Today, the community resorts to inviting Jewish expats and diplomats to attend religious services and festivals, in order to gather the ten men required for Orthodox prayer.

The Cairo community, led by its leader Magda Haroun, held a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony last year in one of its synagogues.


‘We can start trying to heal our family’ - Aunt of Released Hostage Avigail Idan





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