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Monday, January 08, 2024

01/08 Links Pt2: Israel’s Righteous Response to the ‘Genocide’ Charge; Trust Me, You'd Rather Live in a Pro-Israel America; Fauda star Idan Amedi seriously wounded in Gaza

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Israel’s Righteous Response to the ‘Genocide’ Charge
Still, the decision to send Barak to the ICJ as Israel’s judge was remarkably popular. Barak’s selection was proposed by Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, the very embodiment of the country’s powerful legal elite. It was immediately approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the legal elite’s favorite target.

Netanyahu’s primary political rival and a current member of the unity war council, Benny Gantz, hailed the decision as “correct, right, and proper.” Ultra-Orthodox Interior Minister Moshe Arbel practically sang that Barak’s selection represented “another lesson to us all that in the moment of truth, what unifies is greater than what divides.”

Why would a controversial figure be such a consensus choice? The answer is that the UN court isn’t the Federalist Society. The UN could not possibly care less about constitutional balancing or limiting principles or theories of textual interpretation or the judiciary’s role in legislating. All it sees is a colleague who made sure Israeli law was explicitly, not just implicitly, organized toward maximizing minority rights.

Justice Kagan, and other judges and lawyers on the Western left, admire Barak for the results, not the process. (Kagan admitted during her confirmation hearing that “Justice Barak’s philosophy is so different from anything that we would use or would want to use in the United States.”)

In other words, it is precisely Barak’s status as a foil to the Israeli right wing that gives him unimpeachable legitimacy. For left-leaning judges, Barak is their living, breathing ideal. He is the Israel they want, and he is the Israel that they will see up on that bench.

For the right, this means that although Barak will not be arguing Israel’s case as its attorney, his participation as an Israeli delegate silences all questions about the government’s motives and intentions in the case.

There are two other things about Barak personally that must be said here. First, he is regarded by friend and foe alike as a patriot. The despicable allegation that Israel is committing genocide is not a partisan football. Israel is not a country of self-hating elites, and even his political opponents trust Barak to faithfully represent his country on the world stage.

Second, Aharon Barak lived in a Lithuanian ghetto under Nazi occupation. Anyone shameless enough to accuse Israel of genocide should have to look a Holocaust survivor in the eye while doing so, and now they will. Meanwhile, Aharon Barak’s last act will likely be his least controversial one.
The genocide libel against Israel
Nothing of the sort is happening in Gaza. Israel’s campaign is intended to destroy Hamas, not the Palestinian people. Unlike Hamas, which set out deliberately to kill civilians on Oct. 7, Israel tries to avoid killing civilians (as it attacks an enemy that hides itself among them). You can argue that it isn’t trying hard enough, that its campaign has been indiscriminate, reckless or, if you like, even brutal. The result – thousands of innocents killed – is unquestionably heartbreaking.

But intentions are everything when it comes to making moral judgments. With good reason, we judge premeditated killing much more harshly than the accidental kind. There is a world of difference between a democratic state defending itself against terrorism and a movement that storms a music festival and guns down throngs of people at close range.

Language matters, especially when it comes to the law. Genocide is one of those words that is thrown around so loosely now that it has lost much of its meaning. It has become a slogan, a term of propaganda, a weapon in the bitter cultural and ideological wars that are raging all around us.

What is worse, it is a weapon that is used selectively. Many of those who now accuse Israel of genocide stood on the sidelines when Syria’s dictatorship smashed Aleppo to rubble and yawned when Myanmar’s generals mowed down pro-democracy demonstrators or razed Rohingya villages. The same South African government that is so incensed at the purported genocidal behaviour of Israel’s army remains on cozy terms with Vladimir Putin’s Russia even as it sends rockets crashing into Ukrainian cities.

It is this double standard that rankles. Israel rightly complains that it is singled out for special scrutiny at bodies such as the United Nations, which has passed innumerable resolutions condemning its treatment of the Palestinians.

Canada has usually taken its side, standing apart from Israel-bashing at the UN. It should do so again in this case, saying with all the force it can muster that the charge of genocide is false.
Int’l Jewish lawyers group: ‘If everything is genocide, nothing is genocide’
Contrary to South Africa’s claims, the IJL notes that official Israeli and IDF spokespeople have declared “time and time again that the military effort is directed against Hamas and not against the people of Gaza.”

Next, IJL asserted that “This is clearly reflected in the actual conduct of the IDF…giving advance warnings to civilians of impending airstrikes and other military operations; urging the evacuation of civilians from pending combat zones; designation of a humanitarian zone within Gaza; and,” facilitating the transfer of humanitarian aid.

“South Africa further purports to prove ‘genocidal intent’ by presenting heated quotes from various Israeli politicians and other figures (made soon after the massacre of October 7th), none of which constitute official Israeli government statements or policy nor reflect the policies and practices of the IDF, said IJL.

More broadly, “by labeling Israel’s defensive war against Hamas an act of genocide, South Africa is effectively stripping the term of its meaning. If this is genocide, then many instances of the use of force in response to an armed attack could easily meet that definition.”

Coming full circle, the IJL noted that “the driving force behind the Genocide Convention was a Polish Jew, Raphael Lemkin, whose work to codify the crime of genocide was motivated by his personal experience of an actual genocide - the efforts of the Nazis and their collaborators to exterminate the Jewish people.”

It added, “The attempt to harness the Genocide Convention to target the very people whose murder led to the Convention reflects a growing phenomenon of undermining the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own.”Concluding, the IJL called on “governments, international institutions, and the international legal community to denounce and reject the cynical and dangerous misuse of the Genocide Convention.”
ICJ Gaza genocide case: South Africa set to discover law of unintended consequences
What does this have to do with sparrows in China?

The answer is “unintended consequences.” The reality is that Israel has long struggled to be heard. The overwhelming support of Western media for the Palestinian cause and of academics and so-called progressives who align with the “oppressed,” has created a world of confusion. The repetition of “genocide,” of “apartheid,” of “ethnic cleansing” has worked to silence alternative voices, so indicated by the nebulous response to the rape of Israelis, to the taking of hostages, and to the relentless attack on Israeli cities.

By taking Israel to the ICJ, South Africa will finally provide Israel with a platform and an opportunity to be heard.

Algorithms that until recently would have ensured that haters of Israel are sheltered from a counter view, media who might have avoided presenting alternative facts, and academics who have been tripped up in an Orwellian world of their own making will hear it from Israel.

It will not all go Israel’s way. There will be sound bites too, that will reflect poorly on some Israeli ministers. There will be incidents of war that are ugly. And there will be the exposure of terrible Palestinian suffering.

And yet, by the conclusion and presentation of the facts, South Africa would have provided a platform that Israel has long sought. In doing so, the ANC will not only assist Israel but will expose itself as being the self-serving and hypocritical organization that many know it to be.

In essence, by taking Israel to the ICJ, the ANC will be killing two birds with one stone.


Just Security: Selective Use of Facts and the Gaza Genocide Debate
What’s more, the reference to potentially genocidal statements is highly selective, The application omits any allusion to other statements issued by senior officials, including sometimes the same officials who have allegedly made potentially illegal statements but retracted them or clarified their meaning. For example, Prime Minister Netanyahu has stated in response to Minister Amichai’s Atomic bomb statement that such statements “are not based in reality. Israel and the IDF are operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents”; Defence Minister Gallant has stated that “our war against Hamas, the Hamas terrorist organization, is a war — it’s not a war against the people of Gaza”; and the IDF Chief Spokesperson has similarly communicated that “[o]ur war is against Hamas—not the people of Gaza. We are taking extensive measures to mitigate harm to the civilians that Hamas uses as shields.” In the same vein, in the same press conference in which President Herzog made the regrettable statement regarding the collective responsibility of the residents of Gaza, which is mentioned in the South African application, he also clarified (a fact which is unfortunately omitted from the same application) that he did not imply that civilians are legitimate targets, and actually walked back the collective responsibility claim in response to a question (“Of course there are many, many innocent Palestinians who don’t agree to [terrorism]”).

The upshot of this analysis is that any assertion that Israeli officials and public opinion influencers have been calling for genocide, at a minimum, has to grapple with the voluminous evidence that suggests the opposite – that is, that the official position of the government and the IDF is to clearly distinguish between Hamas and the civilian population in Gaza and to direct the military operation only against the former. As indicated above, key aspects of the military operation, like advance warnings and opening of a new border crossing, are consistent with this official position. This competing narrative to the Israeli policy allows us to regard most of the alleged genocidal statements as outliers, and – at times, as forms of criticism of the IDF policies which are deemed by those making the statements as “too humane.” When viewed from these contexts, the wild – and possibly illegal – statements issued by individuals situated outside decision making circles, actually reinforce the position that the official policy of the state of Israel and the IDF is not genocidal in nature.

Concluding Remarks
The Israel-Hamas war raises several questions regarding compliance with international law. To our minds, the legality of IDF practices regarding target selection, proportionality analysis and access to humanitarian provisions deserve close scrutiny. Still, such scrutiny must be fact-sensitive and be based on all available information. The raising of even more serious charges – such as the commission of genocide, the “crime of crimes” – requires an even higher commitment to factual analysis, which should include all relevant facts, including those “inconvenient” to whoever is making such claims. Many of the allegations made in this regard, including those found in the recent South African application to the ICJ appear to fall short of this standard. Still, we do consider the South African application as potentially useful in drawing more attention to the positive obligations of the State of Israel to suppress incitement to genocide and to address potentially genocidal statements made in public by Israeli influencers and politicians.

On another level, the use of selective application of law to facts by South Africa could also be considered against the possibility that its reference to the ICJ was “tailored” to focus on the Genocide Convention simply because Israel, as a party to the treaty, is subject to the Court’s jurisdiction in relation to this specific international law norm, but not with respect to other relevant norms. Such motivations may make sense from the point of view of those opposing Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip as a means for criticizing these policies and attempting to stop them through judicial avenues. Yet, making problematic legal claims in order to meet jurisdictional conditions does not serve the interest of promoting international law’s effectiveness and credibility in the long run, especially when those claims would nowhere near suffice if the Court ever addresses the merits. We fear that if terms such as genocide were to be used loosely in order to achieve immediate political or tactical legal goals, overall respect to international law as a credible system of norms will diminish.
As allies fume, Netanyahu defends tapping right-wing bogeyman Barak for ICJ case
Long reviled by the political right, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak’s appointment by Israel as its judge in a genocide hearing at The Hague has raised eyebrows, and, in some cases, ire, within the ruling coalition, putting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the defensive over the choice on Monday.

Barak was named Sunday as Israel’s appointee to a 15-judge panel at the International Court of Justice, which is set this week to hear a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. The choice came as somewhat of a surprise, given the government’s efforts to roll back powers assumed by Israel’s highest court which have been widely attributed to Barak’s tenure — and the retired justice’s vocal criticism of the overhaul and its champions.

A number of coalition politicians expressed opposition to Barak’s appointment following the announcement, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who distanced himself from the decision Monday.

“Putting the keys in the hands of Aharon Barak, who is an honorable man, is a mistake,” Smotrich told reporters ahead of his Religious Zionism party’s faction meeting in the Knesset. “This is a decision made by the prime minister without consulting us.”

Netanyahu told his own Likud faction Monday that Israel did not have much time to make the decision and defended the appointment of Barak as “proper,” the Kan public broadcaster reported.

“He’s a Holocaust survivor with international standing,” he said, according to the report.

Netanyahu also told his party’s lawmakers that he had looked into the possibility of nominating an American judge, the Ynet news site reported, without naming the jurist. Former Supreme Court chief justice Aharon Barak speaks at a conference at the then-Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, on January 2, 2018. (Flash90)

Barak’s name had been suggested by the International Department of the State Attorney’s Office, backed by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and was personally approved by Netanyahu, Channel 12 news reported.

Other candidates were considered for the position, but Barak was picked due to his international standing, an unnamed source with knowledge of the deliberations told the Walla news site.

Barak, who served on the Supreme Court from 1978 to 2006, including the last 11 years as president, has long been reviled by many on the hard right for what critics say was an overly activist approach, including overseeing an expansion of the court’s powers to review Knesset laws and government decisions.
MK: Expel lawmaker who supports genocide charges against Israel
An Israeli parliamentarian is calling for the expulsion of a far-left lawmaker from the Knesset for publicly endorsing the charges of genocide that South Africa has lodged against Israel in the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

MK Oded Forer from Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu Party began the process to oust MK Ofer Cassif of the Arab-Jewish Communist Hadash Party from the parliament in accordance with Basic Law: The Knesset, which allows lawmakers to remove a colleague who expresses “support for an armed struggle by an enemy state, or a terrorist organization against the State of Israel.”

Cassif, who is Jewish, signed a petition in support of the South African case against Israel and on Sunday said that members of the government were calling for ethnic cleansing and even actual genocide.

Forer is working to collect signatures from 70 members of parliament to expel Cassif, a process that would then require approval from a Knesset committee and finally 90 votes out of 120 in the plenum to pass.

“MK Cassif’s treasonous words can no longer be heard while the blood of our soldiers and citizens screams from the ground,” Forer said.

Responding to Forer’s calls to expel Cassif, Hadash-Ta’al leader MK Ahmad Tibi said that “the prosecution in The Hague is based on the words of [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich, of [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir and [Heritage Minster Amihai] Eliyahu, and not on the words of Cassif.

“The finance minister said that there are two million Nazis in Gaza. This is how you legitimize genocide,” Tibi said, referring to Smotrich‘s response to polls showing that most Palestinians residing in the territory support Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

Three months ago, Cassif was suspended from the Knesset for 45 days for anti-Israel comments he made in the wake of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
Phyllis Chesler: Israeli soldiers don’t have the luxury of grief
In Israel, our soldiers are fighting heroically, but they are also being killed in combat.

In Israel, so I’ve been told, one soldier who had been allowed to return home for 24 hours left her family and went to the basement to sleep in their safe room. What she’d seen in the south and Gaza, what she now knew, compelled her to do so.

Young Israelis today understand more about Jewish history than they ever had to before. They are living a replay of it on steroids. Some former “peaceniks” no longer believe that they can trust, live with, live near or employ Arab Gazan civilians. One wonders what this means in terms of the pro-Hamas Arabs in Judea and Samaria. This question is a very serious one.

In 1980, when I was interviewed for the front page of Yediot Aharonot about the return of antisemitism, most Israelis with whom I spoke rejected the information. They gently but firmly explained to me that this was simply business as usual between one nation and another. But I had just returned from a U.N. conference in Copenhagen—the precursor to the notoriously antisemitic 2000 Durban conference—and sadly, I knew they were wrong.

Now their children and grandchildren have no choice but to grapple with the fact that we have not escaped Jewish history; although this time around, we have a blessed and powerful army to fight for us (may God protect its soldiers). Our young are called upon to sacrifice their lives for us, as they’ve done in war after war.

Earlier this century, the same took place in Jenin, the terrorist hotbed from which numerous suicide bombers left to blow up Israeli civilians in buses, cafes and at Passover seders:

As we all now know, the “Jenin Massacre” was a lie. It never happened.
KKL-JNF honors 20 Israeli women for their bravery on Oct. 7
Dozens of people gathered in Ofakim northeast of Beersheva on Sunday to celebrate 20 Israeli women who put their lives at risk to save others during Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

As part of the ceremony, emceed by Miss World 1998, Linor Abargil, the KKL-JNF inaugurated the “Path of Heroines,” planting trees at the entrance of Ofakim Park in honor of the women before awarding them with certificates of valor.

“This war differentiates itself from others through the important role played by Israeli women, whose courage and creativity helped save countless lives,” KKL-JNF chairwoman Yifat Ovadia-Lusky told JNS at the ceremony.

“The ‘Path of Heroines’ is meant to inspire many more women to show similar initiative, to tell their stories and remember them as part of the legacy of the Jewish people,” she added.

Ofakim Mayor Yitzhak Danino paid tribute to the women, delivering a message of hope.

KKL-JNF leaders and Ofakim Mayor Yitzhak Danino (front row, third from right) attend a ceremony in Ofakim honoring 20 Israeli women for their bravery during Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on the Jewish state. Credit: Kolomoisky Alexander for KKL-JNF.

“On Oct. 7, civilians and security officers left their houses on Simchat Torah to battle Hamas terrorists. Dozens of residents were killed in Ofakim during this massacre, but these men and women’s courage prevented us from experiencing greater losses,” he said. “I am committed to ensuring that these stories live on together with the memory of those who perished.”

The municipality of Ofakim has earmarked 10 million shekels ($2.7 million) to rebuilding parts of the city destroyed by Hamas terrorists.

“Wherever they sought to bring death, we will create the foundation for a better life,” added Danino, who also called for the release of Matan Tzagauker, a resident of Ofakim who has been held captive by Hamas in Gaza for more than 90 days.
Fauda star Idan Amedi seriously wounded in Gaza
Israeli singer and actor Idan Amedi was seriously injured in combat in the Gaza Strip today (Monday). He is hospitalized in a serious condition at the Sheba Tel Hashomer Medical Center under sedation and assisted breathing.

Amedi, a reservist in a combat engineering unit, was taken to the hospital by helicopter suffering from shrapnel wounds. He was operated on and is now out of danger. The public has been asked to pray for the recovery of Idan Ben Tova.

Amedi was interviewed by Channel 12 News about an hour before being injured and said: "The people of Israel live, we are working hard here for everyone's safety. I love you all back home."

Ramat Gan Mayor Carmel Shama Hacohen wrote: "Idan Amedi was seriously injured today in Gaza on one of the most difficult days for the IDF during which several forces suffered serious injuries. Idan Amedi appeared with us before the Black Shabbar and the war and gave the thousands at the amphitheater an amazing experience and a wonderful show. Idan is a successful multi-talented star who is also a charming and humble person."

"We will pray for a speedy recovery for dear Idan and everyone who has been injured. A war has been imposed on us, there is no choice for our existence and we have no other choice at all but to be together, fight, and win and that's how it will be," he said.

Channel 12 News correspondent Amit Segal tweeted that Amedi's service in Gaza despite his status as a celebrity is "a symbol of a nation that is fighting for its life. May we be worthy of their sacrifice."
Christians reacted to October 7 with muddled thinking
In an unprecedented emergency for Israel, this truth bears stressing: “The simple fact is that all schemes for political appeasement and economic cooperation must fail unless there is an unequivocal voice from us that we will not allow the state to be annihilated and that we will not judge its desperate efforts to gain some strategic security… as an illegitimate use of force.”

These words were written not in recent weeks but in 1957, in the US magazine The New Republic, by Reinhold Niebuhr, among the foremost Protestant theologians of the last century. He was addressing his fellow liberals in politics and his fellow Christians.

With Israel under assault, and Jews worldwide facing a perverse consequent increase rather than diminution in antisemitism, the need for allies is acute. Niebuhr’s sophisticated reasoning offers a benchmark, on both sides, for how Christian-Jewish relations can be profitably conducted in dark times.

It is reasonable to expect the churches to acknowledge both the integrity of Jewishness in its own terms, and the moral urgency of a Jewish state in a hostile international order. Too often, even with benign intentions, these principles are overlooked across Christian denominations.

The ferocity of the pogrom on October 7 shifted the perceptions of Western governments. The Biden administration, the European Union, the British government and the Labour opposition all grasped that Hamas is not some pragmatic, if repressive, actor with whom governments can negotiate but a brutal and atavistic terrorist threat.

The moral philosopher Michael Walzer wrote last month for the online magazine Quillette: “Israel’s military response to the atrocities of October 7 is a just and necessary war. But that judgment leaves open the further judgments we need to make about the conduct of the war.”

That first sentence is, I believe, what the Christian churches should have said immediately, as Western governments did. And the second is a prompt for a vital debate, encompassing a range of legitimate responses. It hasn’t been quite like that.
Chaos as Biden's speech is derailed by pro-Palestinian protesters chanting 'ceasefire now': President, 81, tells them he is working to get Israel 'OUT' of Gaza from pulpit of South Carolina black church
President Joe Biden was interrupted by protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza during his pilgrimage to a church in Charleston, S.C., to appeal to black voters as part of his campaign against Donald Trump.

Calling 'ceasefire now,' the group interrupted the president as he was speaking on Monday about his ties to the Mother Emanuel AME Church, the historically Black church in Charleston where nine people were killed after a gunman opened fire on a Bible study group in 2015.

'If you really care about the lives lost here you should honor the lives lost and call for a ceasefire in Palestine,' one protester yelled, setting off a repeated chant of 'ceasefire now.'

The crowd in the church yelled back 'four more years' in an attempt to overshadow the protest, which lasted about 45 seconds. The protest came as fears grow about a wider war in the Middle East that could engulf U.S. troops. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in region to try and bring down the tone.

Biden addressed the matter after the crowd calmed down, offering reassurances he was working to get hostages out of Gaza.

'Look folks I undertsand their passion. I've been quietly working...I've been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza. I'm using all that I can to do that. But I understand the passion,' he said.


Hamas Has Palestinians Caught in Victimhood Mentality
In 1947, India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain and 15 million people began the largest population transfer the world had ever seen. They included 2 million Hindus displaced from Sindh in southwest Pakistan. They were forced to flee their land with not much more than the clothes on their backs. But in only one or two generations, they have shed the title of refugee and are entrepreneurs and community leaders across the globe.

Some Palestinians have chosen a path similar to the Sindhis, overcoming a perpetual victimhood mindset. I have Palestinian friends in America who fit this description. But the exemplars are the Arab Israelis, full citizens of Israel who are members of the Israeli Parliament, sit on the Israeli Supreme Court, hold chairs at major Israeli universities and hospitals and are active in all aspects of Israeli civil society.

It is no wonder that a majority of Arab Israelis identify more with Israel than with a possible Palestinian state when polled. They chose to reject the victimhood mentality and have built prosperous lives. Unfortunately, the Palestinian majority have been blinded by morally and financially corrupt leaders, most prominently Hamas, for whom the victimhood mindset is dogma.

Why else do so many Palestinians annually mourn the day of Israel's establishment as the Nakba ("catastrophe")? Why else do Palestinians have cities in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon which are still called "refugee camps"? Hamas literally says, "We are a nation of martyrs." What is a martyr if not the ultimate victim? For the last 16 years, Hamas has educated an entire generation of victims.

Hamas must be removed from power so a new Palestinian leadership can emerge that works to create opportunity for a prosperous Palestinian future alongside its neighbors - a leadership that does not trumpet the label of victim, but one that glorifies growth and agency.
J Street postpones annual conference, leaving vacuum for Israel advocacy groups in 2024
In previous presidential election years, large gatherings focused on Israel were a reliable campaign stop for major candidates.

That won’t be the case for Democrats this year.

The progressive Israel advocacy organization J Street announced last week that it is postponing its planned April convention to 2025, citing “the state of the ongoing conflict” between Israel and Hamas. The move comes after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee scrapped its annual policy conference in 2021, first citing pandemic risks and then sticking with the move after the group made a major policy shift toward fundraising and away from grassroots advocacy.

In the past, these Washington conferences served as a way for political candidates and elected officials to connect with potential voters and donors, and to articulate their positions on key foreign policy issues. They also allowed powerful officials to build bridges and repair ties in moments of conflict — such as in 2015, when National Security Advisor Susan Rice attended the AIPAC gathering just days after sharply criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on the Iran nuclear deal before a joint session Congress, which was hailed by AIPAC.

“I do really feel a loss, and I know I’m not alone in this,” said former White House communications director Ann Lewis, who spoke regularly at AIPAC’s policy conference, which in its final years hosted more than 15,000 people. “The range of panels — it was like a great buffet … you could hear from people who until then had just been faces or names, but now you got to see them for real, and hear them take questions. That’s a loss, because there’s no alternative, really.” J Street’s annual conference was much smaller, with roughly 3,000 people.

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump spoke at the AIPAC conference in 2016, and in 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden sent a video. J Street’s fall 2019 conference featured speeches or videos from a host of Democratic primary candidates, including Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Pete Buttigieg.

AIPAC’s gathering was always bipartisan, while J Street hosted only Democrats. Meanwhile, several of the leading Republican presidential candidates gave major speeches on Israel last July at the Washington conference of Christians United for Israel, an annual conservative event that didn’t draw Democratic officials.
Gil Troy: Trust Me, You'd Rather Live in a Pro-Israel America
Anti-Israel Americans harassed holiday revelers from coast-to-coast, in shopping malls, at the Rockefeller Center tree lighting ceremony, when the ball dropped in Times Square, or when they were trying to reach JFK airport or LAX airport during Christmas week. These "activists" placed bloody handprints on the White House gates and smeared red paint on the Lincoln Memorial's plaza. They think it's legitimate to disrupt business in the Capitol Rotunda and at the Democratic National Committee.

The anti-Israel Americans' notion of national security includes having the U.S. absorb more than 100 rocket attacks from Iranian proxies without counterattacking the launching pads or the source of the evil, the Iranian mullahs. And as for international shipping, they'd let the Houthis reign. Pro-Israel Americans understand that this harassment from third-rate militias must end, immediately.

Anti-Israeli Americans find terrorism "exhilarating." They cheer Hamas' mass rapists, maimers, kidnappers, killers, who torture the old, the young, the vulnerable. Their America is one where thugs on the streets and on campuses harass fellow Americans who disagree with them or don't join their cause. Anti-Israel America is an America lost, adrift, with no moral compass, unwilling to stand up for democratic principles, American patriotism, or national pride.

Transcending partisanship, the Israel question is about right and wrong. President Joe Biden represents the Democrats' traditional pro-Israel majority and has worked with Republicans, who overwhelmingly support Israel. In short, bipartisan support for Israel continues - defying the headlines.

The same Harvard/CAPS/Harris poll that said 50% of young Americans support Hamas also reported that 84% of Americans recognize Oct. 7 as a "terrorist attack." 81% support Israel over Hamas, and 69% recognize that "Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties" in Gaza - despite the daily media exaggerations caricaturing Israel's self-defense campaign as unprecedentedly brutal.
Douglas Murray urges America-haters to 'go live somewhere else'
Fox News contributor Douglas Murray joins 'Life, Liberty & Levin' to discuss hate-filled rhetoric against the West.


Israel Has Woken Up to Islamist Terror, while the West Remains Asleep
A month or so ago I visited Kibbutz Kfar Aza in Israel, a few miles from Gaza, and one of the dozens of locations where Hamas went door-to-door executing families and young people. It is an eerie scene, frozen on Saturday, 7 October. There are bikes unlocked on terraces; wind chimes, barbecues, sun loungers, flowers - gathering dust and dirt as time passes and the residents don't return, in many cases because they're dead.

"We are dealing with the sons of the devil himself. We were asleep. Now we are awake," said the soft-spoken husband of a woman whose two younger brothers are still held hostage, dead or alive, in Gaza. "But you in the West, you are still blind, still asleep. When will you wake up? Your October 7 could be any day - it will be any day. You need to act now." As an Israeli old friend put it, "Once they're finished with us, what then? They'll come for you."

We must get real, and fast - and Israelis are clear about how. We must stop indulging Iran and begin frightening it. We must cut all aid money to Gaza. We need to get real about aid organizations which seem to have been too soft on Hamas. And above all, we must allow Israel to continue its military operations.

The vast majority of Israelis regret all harm to civilians. They also see that to get their loved ones back and, after that, to remake an Israel that its citizens feel safe in, there is only one proper outcome. "Hamas must be on its knees and beg us to stop. I don't see any other way to get them back," said a cousin of Shiri Bibas, whose two red-headed sons, including her baby who should turn one this month, are still somewhere in Gaza.

Israelis do not like or want war; thousands of their children and siblings and parents have to put their lives on the line every time Israel goes into combat. But they know there is a large amount of dangerous, courageous and uncompromising work to be done before platitudes about living in peace can mean anything ever again.
Unpacking Norman Finkelstein’s Critique
In the intricate web of opinions surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the emergence of influential Jewish figures, such as Norman Finkelstein, as vocal critics of Israel, particularly in the context of the October 7th massacre, is intriguing.

Shortly after the massacre took place and the scale of the event became known and shocked the world, Finkelstein published the following response:

“We honored the heroic resistance of Gaza… The stars above in heaven are looking kindly down. Glory, glory hallelujah”.

An in-depth examination of Finkelstein’s perspective is necessary to comprehend this dissent.

Norman Finkelstein’s criticism of Israel aims to portray itself as if it stems from a deep commitment to justice, human rights, and a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

However, scrutinizing his published remarks on the day of the October 7th massacre reveals a selective interpretation of “justice” and “human rights.”

Praising, with almost ecstatic enthusiasm, the slaughtering of 1200 people, burning families alive, beheadings, raping young girls, abusing corpses, and kidnapping 240 civilians, including children, toddlers, and babies, raises serious concerns about his integrity.

Adding to the complexity, Finkelstein strategically uses his Jewish identity and the fact that he is the son of Holocaust survivors as a promotional tool for his agendas. This occurs even as he praises the kidnapping and slaughtering of Holocaust survivors during the massacre, presenting a perplexing contradiction.
NYC Lawyer Kathleen Peratis’ Romance with Hamas
We live in truly mind-boggling times. Terror supporters in the U.S. are not hiding. As Hamas filmed their October 7th attacks in Israel for all to see, so too in the streets and boardrooms of the United States many people are brazen and clear and open about their Jew-hatred.

Take the successful, New York City-based lawyer Kathleen Peratis of the firm Outten Golden, who has visited the Hamas deadly terror tunnels multiple times, praised Hamas leaders, openly opposes a Jewish state, and supports the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) movement.

This individual is a leader of numerous organizations, including serving as a trustee emerita of Human Rights Watch, as the founding Chair of its Women’s Rights Division, and as co-chair of the Advisory Committee of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Division. She is a board member of the New Israel Fund.

While she is a leader on rape and sexual harassment, Ms. Peratis and her firm Outten Golden have been silent on Hamas’ mass rape of Israeli women and on the issue of calling for the release of the terror group’s Israeli hostages.

In an op-ed describing her tours of the Hamas terror tunnels, Ms. Peratis describes her Gaza visit (of which there are many) as “a fun-filled joy fest spent with friends.” She quotes one Hamas leader in the terror tunnel as saying: “Please tell your friends that Hamas people are ordinary people. We are not barbarians.”
Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger: The Virus of Antisemitism
Shai Davidai is a professor at the Columbia business school. Recently, he has been writing about the explosion of antisemitism on his campus—an explosion that is nationwide and nearly worldwide. Davidai has never experienced anything like this before; neither have many. He and Jay talk over some of the crucial issues.
The toxic tribalism of the pro-Palestine marches
This kind of haughty arrogance and smug disregard for ordinary people should not surprise us. The pro-Palestine marches have become more about displaying one’s allegiance to a certain selected tribe than they are about changing the world. They also bring to mind the anti-Iraq War protests in 2003, in which participants bore placards with the legend ‘Not in my name’. Then, as now, protests are as much about projecting the self, and positioning one’s extended self in the multitude, as the actual cause itself.

As Columbia professor Mark Lilla wrote in an influential essay for the New York Times in 2016, entitled ‘The End of Identity Liberalism’, identity politics today has become ‘expressive not persuasive’. It’s no longer about changing minds, but declaring who one is. You could add that politics in real life now resembles politics as performed on social media: its main purpose is to express and confirm allegiance to the others in one’s own echo-chamber, rather than to engage in debate. This is identity politics at its most narcissistic and insular.

That’s why it has been no surprise to see videos in recent months of pro-Palestine protesters around the world struggling to name what ‘river’ and what ‘sea’ they are chanting about. Ignorance is no barrier to self-righteous self-pity. This toxic combination permits an unlimited amount of arrogant posturing and bluster, especially against the evil, honorary ‘white’ – code for ‘bad’ – Jews.

These protesters believe they are on the side of good, and they want us to know it. As is always the case, people who place themselves on the side of good and righteousness will behave exactly how they please, with no regard to others.
The Protesters Don’t Want to Be Popular
If, however, we allow ourselves to be open to the conclusion that the protesters cherish their movement’s exclusivity more than its efficacy, their tactics make perfect sense. A mass movement is a movement that is willing to make concessions. It does not make the perfect the enemy of the good. It organizes itself around one principle and seeks a handful of achievable objectives, all of which can only be durably secured through incremental progress. Does that sound at all like these anti-Israel demonstrators? Indeed, does that describe any of today’s most visible protest movements?

There is satisfaction in making yourself into a recalcitrant, maximalist proponent of revolutionary social change — if only for the romance of it. These movements attract figures who reject compromise, which imposes a ceiling on their numbers. The larger the group, the more heterogenous its membership. Moderating its tactics to attract a broader but less committed membership would be to sacrifice its ideological homogeneity, yes. But perhaps more importantly, it would undermine the intoxicating group belief in its own uniqueness. That is especially true for movements organized around the notion that all of polite society is arrayed corruptly against you. If it is possible to make inroads with a broader, skeptical public, the movement’s central conceit is a lie.

The behavior that has typified the most aggressive anti-Israel protests doesn’t make much sense unless it is seen as an effort not to convince the uncommitted but to repel them. In that way, the movement can avoid the compromises associated with the conduct of politics, properly understood, and arrest its drift into a business and, eventually, a racket. By preserving its exclusivity, it can remain pure. Of course, that says a lot more about the protesters than their cause.
To My College Peers Calling for Intifada
Dear "social justice warriors" who are so quick to condemn Israel. Your demonic defense of terror has clarified any confusion.

Murder, rape, beheading and kidnapping are evil, you say - unless it's done to Jews. Then it's "acceptable in the proper context."

As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, I knew evil existed but I never understood who could tolerate it. I now know Nazi sympathy did not die, it is very much alive in you.

Make no mistake, the Jewish people and their allies know how this will end. The Jews have survived Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Germany. Hamas will be no different.

It is my fervent wish that this revelation of complete moral bankruptcy on college campuses will awaken the nation.
Basketball coach fired at NY school where players shouted slurs at Jewish opponents
A US public high school in New York has fired its varsity girl’s basketball coach after players on its team uttered antisemitic slurs during a game against a Jewish day school.

A student has also been dismissed from the team at Roosevelt High School in Yonkers following the incident during a game against the Leffell School, a Jewish school in nearby Hartsdale, on Thursday.

Yonkers Public Schools and the city’s mayor, Mike Spano, announced the penalties in a statement Sunday in which they said they “sincerely apologize” and called the antisemitic epithets “painful and offensive.” They said an investigation is underway, noting that additional players may be disciplined and that the district would embark on counseling and training in response to the incident.

“Collectively, we do not and will not tolerate hate speech of any kind from our students and community,” the statement said. “The antisemitic rhetoric reportedly made against the student athletes of the Leffell School are abhorrent, inappropriate, and not in line with the values we set forth for our young people.”

The incident comes as Jewish high schoolers in the New York area and beyond have grappled with reports of rising antisemitism since Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Berlin Introduces Commitment to Fighting Antisemitism as Condition for Artists’ Funding
Germany’s Jewish community on Monday applauded a new measure introduced by the local authorities in Berlin that requires artists to commit to the fight against antisemitism as a condition of receiving funding and support.

“Berlin lives up to its exemplary character as the most important German art and culture location through the anti-discrimination clause,” Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said in a statement.

The clause — which is based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — was introduced by Berlin’s Senator for Culture, Joe Chialo. The son of Tanzanian parents, Chialo has been a vocal opponent of initiatives within the artistic community to boycott the State of Israel, leading protests last year against a concert tour by Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman who has been widely accused of antisemitism.

More than 4,000 artists signed an open letter protesting the clause, arguing that its effect will be to chill free speech.

“Withdrawal of financial support and public platforms is currently used as a means of pressure to exclude critical positions on the policies of the Israeli government and the war in Gaza from public discourse,” the letter stated. “The planned clause makes it easier for administration and politicians to use this leverage and to narrow the space for necessary discourses.”

The letter highlighted an alternative definition of antisemitism known as the “Jerusalem Declaration,” which does not class as antisemitic the several examples of anti-Zionism contained within the IHRA definition. It also declared opposition to what it described as a “hierarchy of forms of discrimination,” insisting that the struggles against racism and Islamophobia warrant as much attention as antisemitism.
Reaping What We Have Taught
Let’s go back to how Harvard’s current crisis began: charges of antisemitism.

Why antisemitism seems to be a problem at Harvard and other universities is one of the still-unanswered questions that precipitated the University’s downward spiral.

But, it surely is not Claudine Gay’s fault. It is not because Harvard admits antisemitic students or hires antisemitic faculty. No one is suggesting there are comparable antisemitism problems in other kinds of institutions — such as hospitals or libraries — so there must be something that uniquely happens in universities.

That something must be the source of our woes.

Unapologetic antisemitism — whether the incidents are few or numerous — is a college phenomenon because of what we teach, and how our teachings are exploited by malign actors.

The Harvard online course catalog has a search box. Type in “decolonize.” That word — though surely not the only lens through which to view the current relationship between Europe and the rest of the world — is in the titles of seven courses and the descriptions of 18 more.

Try “oppression” and “liberation.” Each is in the descriptions of more than 80 courses. “Social justice” is in over 100. “White supremacy” and “Enlightenment” are neck and neck, both ahead of “scientific revolution” but behind “intersectionality.”

Though word frequency is an imperfect measure and the precise counts are muddied by duplicate numberings and courses at MIT, this experiment supports the suspicion that the Harvard curriculum has become heavily slanted toward recent fashions of the progressive left.
Who Would have Thunk? US Jews Feel Safer in Catholic Universities than Ivy League Schools
On January 1, The Wall Street Journal published a letter by Matthew Grad, who wrote: “We are an observant Jewish family who chose the Catholic, Jesuit Saint Louis University for our daughter, and she has been delighted. She decided she’d rather be in an environment where strong faith mattered, and people walked the walk, rather than one where piety and morality are unimportant, mocked or even scorned.”

Grad was responding to a Dec. 21 WJS op-ed by Greg Weiner, the president of Assumption University, who suggested that the crucial inquiry shouldn’t be merely about the reactions of academic administrators to antisemitism but rather delve into why the educational environments they cultivate appear to nurture such animosity.

“For American Jews, the question cuts deeper: Given our traditional love of learning, do we care about the quality of education or only the prestige of the institutions providing it?” wrote Weiner.

“Universities that take seriously their duty to teach will turn out students ready to grapple with difficult moral and political questions that can’t be reduced to slogans. That our elite institutions are producing students who think otherwise is a more acute embarrassment than the failure of college leaders to condemn the predictable result,” Weiner added, and advised American Jews to “re-evaluate whether elite institutions—whose obsession with selectivity perversely grounds their prestige in the proportion of students they refuse to teach rather than how they actually educate—truly reflect our belief in the importance of learning.”

“These institutions have largely abandoned their responsibility to form morally circumspect and intellectually curious citizens by engaging the permanent questions of the human condition,” Weiner wrote.

It reminded me of the joke about a European Jew and an American Jew who argue whose continent is better, and the European Jew brags, “We have the best museums, the best restaurants, the best environmental protection, what do you have?” And the American Jew answers: “We have the best goyim.”
“Diversity” Advocate Denies Antisemitic Violence
A prominent spokesman for greater “diversity” and “inclusion” of minorities in American businesses and institutions seems to have something of a blind spot when it comes to one particular minority group. Guess which one.

Alvin Tillery, Jr. is director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University and a leading advocate of the Diversity-Equity-Inclusion (DEI) campaign. On his LinkedIn page, he says, “I call myself a DEI evangelist because I see my work in the DEI space as my life’s mission.” For somebody so dedicated to his work, you would think Tillery would pay a little more attention to the facts about issues such as antisemitism before making public statements about them.

Tillery was asked by the New York Times on January 6 about the problem of antisemitism on American college campuses. He replied, “No Jewish students have really been subjected to violence on most of these campuses,” with the exception of the assault of a Jewish student at Columbia University and a bomb threat against Jews at Cornell.

It seems Mr. Tillery has not been paying careful attention as Jewish students have been assaulted on many campuses around the country in recent weeks.

Pro-Hamas students shoved and accosted a Jewish student outside the Harvard Business School (Oct. 18). They assaulted three Jewish students near the Tulane University campus (Oct. 26). They attacked a “Bring Them Home” information table at the City College of New York, seizing its literature and destroying its posters (Nov.2). They punched two Jewish students at Ohio State University, while calling them “kike Zionists” (Nov. 10).
Globe & Mail Article Whitewashes Dangerous Anti-Israel Activism On Campuses
As violent anti-Israel demonstrators block access to airports in the United States, harass Christmas shoppers in Canadian shopping malls and glorify Hamas terrorism on streets across the Western world, a recent Globe and Mail article shed sympathetic light on pro-Palestinian activists who have spread hatred.

In a December 28 article in The Globe & Mail entitled: “Israel-Hamas war roils campuses, workplaces as online campaigns target ideological opponents,” International Correspondent Nathan Vanderklippe presented a compassionate portrait of Dalida Alhaddad, a 24-year-old student living in Ottawa, writing that she “feels so strongly about Palestinian issues” because she was born in the Gaza Strip and witnessed the impact of war first-hand.

In the article, Vanderklippe wrote that Alhaddad has been profiled by Canary Mission, a website aimed at exposing anti-Israel students and academics, and says her actions, according to the website, include recommending “a book written by a terrorist” and that she “advocated to free a Palestinian man who has spent long periods in Israeli prison isolation after chasing a man through the streets of an Israeli settlement with a knife as a teenager.”

As Vanderklippe wrote near the end of the article, Alhaddad “does not deny making the comments the website attributes to her.”

In reality, Alhaddad’s anti-Israel venom stretches far beyond those statements, though Vanderklippe’s descriptions downplay their significance.

The “book written by a terrorist” is Men in the Sun, a novel written by Ghassan Kanafani, a senior leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a banned terrorist organization in Canada.

On September 10, 2021, Alhaddad posted on her Instagram page a video of Palestinian prisoners who had escaped an Israeli prison being re-arrested, alongside the caption: “This is the moment when Isr*eli (sic) army arrested two of the six heroes who freed themselves from the Gilboa prisons. This is the moment when we all became prisoners again.”


Texas A&M President responds to national security and Qatar campus rumors

“The IDF is Worse Than Hamas”: Jessica Burbank’s Anti-Israel Disinformation Campaign Online & in the Media
Rising is a popular online news program produced by The Hill, which features hosts and commentators from across the political spectrum discussing current events at home and around the world.

Since Hamas’ brutal invasion of Israel on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli war against the Gaza-based terrorist organization, the Middle East has been a consistent topic of discussion on Rising, with some defending the Jewish State and others opposing its military activities.

One of the most vocal anti-Israel commentators on Rising over the past few months has been Jessica Burbank, one of the program’s co-hosts.

In various segments, Burbank has spread a litany of falsehoods and misrepresentations of Israel, the IDF, and Hamas that are based on unfounded statistics, misleading statements, and absurd analyses.

Jessica Burbank’s False Statistics, Moral Relativism & Misleading Analysis
In a recent Rising piece on a New York Times article that chronicled the use of sexual violence by Hamas during the October 7 attack, Jessica Burbank quipped that the report “feels like intentional propaganda” as The Times amplifies these claims against Hamas but doesn’t do the same for “very well-documented accounts of sexual abuse and violence by Israelis on Palestinians.”

According to Burbank, “1 in 10 women in Gaza have experienced some kind of abuse from Israeli soldiers. And it’s even higher in younger age women, where it’s as high as 23 percent [who] have experienced sexual abuse from Israeli soldiers in the occupied territory.”

While Burbank presents these statistics as established fact, a Google search for the source of these numbers was unable to turn up any reference to these specific claims at all.

What did turn up were several articles on the rarity of sexual violence between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian women.

This is not the only time that Jessica Burbank has represented unfounded statistics as fact.
Guardian cites role of 'Jewish donors' in Harvard president's resignation
On Jan. 2, Claudine Gay resigned as president of Harvard University amidst mounting evidence that she committed plagiarism throughout her academic career, and in the aftermath of her damaging testimony to Congress last month, where she refused to say whether calling for the genocide of the Jewish people would violate the school’s code of conduct. Gay, the first Black person to lead Harvard, will continue to work as a professor at the university.

The Congressional hearing in question, which also included the testimony of University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill, a white woman, who also wouldn’t say if calling for Jewish genocide violated university rules, and who resigned shortly thereafter, was held in response to a surge in antisemitism at these campuses following the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre. The discrimination against Jews at Harvard made national headlines, and prompted an official investigation by the US Department of Education.

Within twenty-four hours of Gay’s announcement, the Guardian found the culprit responsible for her resignation: not her reported plagiarism or the antisemitism on her campus, but, rather, wealthy Jewish donors.

The op-ed, (“Powerful donors managed to push out Harvard’s Claudine Gay. But at what cost?”, Jan. 3), was written by frequent Guardian contributor Robert Reich, a former US Labour Secretary and currently a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

After claiming that he’s not in a position to comment on the dozens of plagiarism allegations, Reich gets to the heart of his argument, writing that the particularly troubling aspect of Gay and McGill’s resignation concerns the clout of wealthy alumni, who were angry with both presidents for “not coming out more clearly against Hamas and in defense of Israel”. He then proceeds to list a few such alumni and donors who, he claims, called for their resignation. Three of those he named, including Bill Ackman (an alumni and former donor, but not a Board member), are Jewish.
MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan announces he's leaving liberal network after his show was canceled following his criticism of Israel's war on Hamas

BBC North West amends report with significant historical omission
As other social media users pointed out, in 2015 the BBC produced a report about Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines in which she was described as “one of 669 mostly Jewish children who escaped on a train in 1939 before arriving in London”. In 2009 the BBC had described her as “one of 669 Jewish children living in Czechoslovakia who escaped from the Nazis in 1939”. A 2015 BBC report concerning the death of Sir Nicholas Winton noted that “Sir Nicholas, then a stockbroker, arranged for trains to carry Jewish children out of occupied Prague”.

In other words, all the writers of this report had to do in order to avoid the omission of crucial historical fact regarding the identity of the “young refugees from German-occupied Czechoslovakia” was to take a quick look at previous BBC reporting.
Israeli Media Criticized For ‘Not Showing Enough Palestinian Suffering’… While Palestinian Media Celebrate Oct. 7 Slaughter
The Guardian‘s sister weekly newspaper, The Observer, recently published a feature that took aim at Israeli journalists.

Headlined, “‘Journalists see their role as helping to win’: how Israeli TV is covering Gaza war,” the piece by Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum describes how the Israeli media have worked to present a “uniformly patriotic vision of reality” since Hamas attacked Israel:
A ‘united we will win’ slogan sits on the screen for most TV news and talk shows. Politicians face heavy criticism, but interrogations of the military, its strategies, its generals and ordinary troops are muted.

The suffering of Gazan civilians barely features, veteran journalists say, three months into an Israeli offensive that has killed more than 22,000 people, displaced nearly 2 million, and left nearly half the population on the brink of famine and stalked by disease.”

The message to Israeli journalists, Graham-Harrison and Kierszenbaum contend, is clear: “If you don’t have something unifying to say, just shut your mouth.”

It is bizarre criticism to fling at Israel’s media; echoing a similarly distasteful analysis by the BBC’s security correspondent Jeremy Bowen, who criticized Israeli news channels for focusing too much on the country’s trauma following the October 7 attacks and not enough on Palestinian suffering.

Like Bowen, the point that Graham-Harrison and Kierszenbaum have missed in this latest condemnation of the Israeli press is that it is not unusual for any country, including its media, to rally together at a time of war, especially when it is facing an existential battle for survival.

As we previously noted, when the war is finished and the nation has mourned its fallen soldiers, the Israeli media will analyze how the war was conducted, which will include examining military tactics and whether Palestinian (as well as Israeli) casualties could have been avoided.

The piece goes on to acknowledge what has been described as the “disconnection” that Israelis feel over their pain and trauma at the October 7 atrocities being ignored:
Former national security adviser Eyal Hulata has described a ‘dome of disconnection’ created by the trauma of 7 October, with Israelis isolated inside, separated from a world that does not understand their pain, and their fear that Hamas might return.

The disconnection goes both ways though, critics say. Israelis feel that their agony in the wake of mass murder and kidnapping is ignored, but Israeli media presents its audience with a reality in which Palestinian suffering barely exists.”

But again, what critics of Israel have utterly failed to grasp is that this disconnection doesn’t go both ways at all.
CAMERA UK prompts BBC Mavi Marmara correction once again
Previously we documented an inaccurate claim made in a BBC News website backgrounder titled ‘What is behind Turkey’s staunch support for Hamas in Gaza?’ which currently appears in the ‘Middle East’ page’s ‘features’ section.

Written by Ece Goksedef, that backgrounder told readers that in 2010 the Mavi Marmara “sailed from Istanbul to Gaza with volunteers and humanitarian aid”. As noted, on at least three occasions in the past decade the BBC has had to correct the inaccurate claim that the Mavi Marmara was carrying “humanitarian aid”.
In Full-Page Ottawa Citizen Ad, HRC Continues To Unmask The True Face Of Hamas




Arab shop owners in eastern Jerusalem strike over al-Arouri killing

Fatah official wants right of return: Jews must leave and Palestinians will take their place
Secretary of Fatah and the PLO Factions in Beirut Samir Abu Afash: “In 2028 the number of our people in the Palestinian Interior (i.e., Israel and the PA areas) will be equal to the number of [Jewish] settlers or colonialists who have come from outside. We are in favor of the right of return for them and for us. They will return to the lands from which they came and whose citizenship they carry, and we will return [to Palestine].

[Official PA TV, Jan. 2, 2024]




PMW: PA goal: Unity with Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror organizations

Boy from Gaza wants to “die as a Martyr”
“The Palestinian Center for Information,” which is affiliated with Hamas, posted a video on its X (Twitter) account of a young boy from the Gaza Strip

Boy: “We are the generation of the future. We’ll wave the flags of Jihad in Palestine and liberate it. We stand firm on our land and remain in the Bureij refugee camp despite the Israeli occupation’s threats (i.e., Israeli warnings to evacuate combat zones in Gaza). We’ll not leave our land, we’re remaining in our homes… We stand firm on our land, and if the occupation (i.e., Israel) approaches us, we’ll resist. We want to resist, even if they shoot us. We want to die as Martyrs. I’m not afraid, I want to die as a Martyr, that’s fine. We salute the resistance in Palestine.”
[“The Palestinian Center for Information” (Hamas), X (Twitter) account, Dec. 26, 2023]


Israel burned Palestinians in ovens in the Holocaust, says Palestinian Authority TV



MEMRI: Syrian Oppositionists Welcome Assassination Of Senior IRGC Commander Reza Mousavi In Damascus: He Was A Terrorist Who Massacred The Syrian People

Israeli Defense Minister: "Iran Is Building Up Military Power around Israel in Order to Use It"
Israel's defense minister, Yoav Gallant, says the scale and severity of the Oct. 7 assault on Israel by the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas profoundly altered the way Israelis view the world around them. The gravity of the threat, Gallant says, underlies the ferocity of Israel's response and its determination not only to destroy Iran-backed Hamas, but to act with enough force to deter other potential adversaries allied with Tehran, including Hizbullah in neighboring Lebanon.

"My basic view: We are fighting an axis, not a single enemy," Gallant said. "Iran is building up military power around Israel in order to use it." He cautioned that the next chapter in the conflict "will last for a longer time" and stressed that Israel wouldn't abandon its goals of destroying Hamas as a fighting force, ending its control of Gaza, and freeing the remaining hostages. "Should Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran be allowed to decide how we live our lives here in Israel? This is something we don't accept."
Only a Muscular American Response Will Deter Iran
On Thursday, Iran-backed Houthi rebels carried out further attacks in the Red Sea, sending a message that they are not deterred by the U.S.-led alliance to keep the maritime corridor open. Thanks to the Suez Canal, the Red Sea links the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, and some 15 percent of global shipping normally passes through it. The Houthis’ repeated acts of piracy have led to rising insurance costs and the rerouting of vessels, resulting, as Matthew Kroenig and Jeffrey Cimmino write, in “shipping delays, disrupted supply chains, and higher costs to deliver goods.”

Kroenig and Cimmino argue that the U.S. must respond much more firmly to improve the situation:
The United States has played defense, putting together an international Red Sea Task Force to escort commercial ships, employing air and missile defenses to shoot down incoming drone and missile strikes, and sinking Houthi boats in self-defense from an attempted hijacking. The United States has also engaged in a small number of pinprick attacks directly against Iranian-backed proxy groups in Iraq and Syria.

The Biden administration has reportedly stepped cautiously because it fears “escalation.” . . . If America’s foremost priority is to avoid escalation, then it essentially hands the initiative to its more ruthless adversaries—those who are willing to escalate militarily in order to achieve their goals.

Deterrence works by convincing an adversary that the costs of attacking the United States and its allies and interests greatly outweighs any conceivable benefits. . . . This means the United States should hit Iran hard. It could retaliate directly against the Houthis’ military infrastructure. It could roll up Iranian proxy networks in the region. It could sink the Iranian navy. It could strike Iranian naval bases, or even seize this opportunity to degrade Iran’s nuclear and missile program. These are all steps the president can take on his own initiative consistent with the 1973 War Powers Act. U.S. actions of this magnitude would convey to Iran that it miscalculated and that attacking the United States was a foolish decision that should not be repeated.

The United States is still a military superpower. It should act like it. Iran—not the United States—should be cowering in fear of escalation.

Yesterday, reports appeared on social media of Iranian government ships exploding in Iranian coastal waters. Who, if anyone, is responsible, or if these reports are accurate, remains to be seen.
How Biden Can Immediately End Iranian-backed Attacks in the Red Sea
The Biden administration needs to understand that, when it comes to dealing with autocratic states like Russia and Iran, brute force is the only language they understand, whereas the slightest hint of weakness will be gleefully exploited to their benefit.

It would be preferable to have Iran concerned about US action, whether military or addressing the regime's hold on power.

Rather than worrying about the response US-led military action might provoke from Iran, the US and its allies need to demonstrate that they will decisively confront the terror tactics adopted by Iran and its proxies, and authorise the uncompromising military action that will end the Houthis' attacks on key shipping routes once and for all.
MEMRI: IRGC Commander Salami: 'We Are Proud To Be Fighting On Several Fronts; We Are Fighting America, Zionism, And All Those Who Are Targeting The Greatness And Honor Of Iran's Islamic Revolution... We Are On The Verge Of Conquering Great Heights'

Australia bans Nazi salute and public display of terror group symbols
Laws banning the Nazi salute and the display or sale of symbols associated with terror groups came into effect in Australia on Monday as the government responds to a rise in antisemitic incidents following the Israel-Gaza war.

The law makes it an offense punishable by up to 12 months in prison to publicly perform the Nazi salute or display the Nazi swastika or the double-sig rune associated with the Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary group.

The sale and trade of these symbols is similarly prohibited.

Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said in a statement the legislation sent a clear message there was no place in Australia for those who glorify the Holocaust or terrorist acts.

"This is the first legislation of its kind and will ensure no one in Australia will be allowed to glorify or profit from acts and symbols that celebrate the Nazis and their evil ideology."

Surge of antisemitic incidents
Introduced in June and passed in December, the law has taken on new significance amid a surge in antisemitism and Islamophobia following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, where some 1,200 were killed and 240 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.

Unverified footage showing a small group of men outside the iconic Opera house shouting "Gas the Jews" during a pro-Palestinian protest in October triggered outrage around the world and a police investigation.

Separately, police arrested three men in October for performing the Nazi salute outside the Jewish Museum of Australia. There were more anti-Jewish incidents in October and November last year than the twelve months prior, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
Israelis attacked in Berlin's Potsdamer Platz after speaking Hebrew
An Israeli couple was violently attacked in Berlin's Potsdamer Platz on Saturday after they were heard speaking Hebrew. The attack was reported to the Israeli embassy.

The Arabic speaking assailant approached the couple, both in their 20s who were sitting in a fast-food restaurant and began shouting abuses at them. When they asked him to stop, he threw a bottle of bear at the young woman and then attacked her with a chair.

She was able to push the bottle hurled at her away with her hand and when her partner rose up to defend her he was punched by the attacker who then fled the scene with another man, who was also speaking in Arabic.

Although both Israelis were hurt, they turned down medical attention and lodged a complaint with the Berlin police, which began an investigation of an attack that caused dangerous bodily harm.


Yisrael Medad: Rudyard Kipling Visits Mandate Palestine 1929
If Kipling was anti-semitic, then he reflected the view of the majority of his generation (consider that paragon, George Cottar, who, on hearing that a girl named Miriam is to visit, wonders, in a disparaging way, if she is of Jewish extraction). But in his Lodge in India, he had met, on an equal footing, a Jew along with others of all the faiths. However, if there were conflict between Muslim and Jew, perhaps he would have supported the Muslims, whom he admired (because he knew them) rather than the Jews (whom he knew much less well).

It was not until I had written all the above that I read the text of Professor Craig Raine’s lecture at the Kim conference in 2002 (KJ 303, Sept 2002, as noted by John Walker). He makes many of the same points that I have, if more elegantly. And he cites some of Kipling’s more positive (if, perhaps, not totally approving) remarks about the Jews, as well as other negative remarks. And he identifies where the piece is to be found, in the Roosevelt Library at the Roosevelt home, Hyde Park: it would be interesting to know precisely when it was written.

There are many more points to be made, e.g.: Jews in South Africa – did RK comment on them? – if not, why not? He must have met them on the boats going out to the Cape and coming home again. In the verse (stanza 14), one might suggest that he has chosen as his exemplars only the caricature Jew.

Some may consider it significant that the metre is undoubtedly that of the bawdy song “The Harlot of Jerusalem” – observations to this effect have appeared in the KJ in the not too distant past. The words of that song vary, and the date is uncertain, but it almost certainly dates from World War I, and possibly originated with the troops of Allenby’s army which drove the Turks out of Sinai, Palestine and Syria. (Certainly some versions date from that period, since there is a reference in one to the Lewis Gun.) I have not seen the connection made elsewhere (but haven’t particularly looked for it) but it may be suggested that there is a parallel with the “Whore of Rome” – a 17th century (I think) and later reference to the Roman Catholic Church, much used by the more extreme Protestants.

If that is accepted, then it might be suggested that the Harlot of Jerusalem is, indeed, Judaism.

And if that, in turn is accepted, then the whole poem can be interpreted as a rant (or is that too strong?) against Judaism.

Kipling was a man of his time: he held most of the prejudices of a British member of the middle class of that time. He did so, perhaps with better reason, because he had had so wide an experience of life, both personally and vicariously because of his own “’satiable curtiosity”. We, with our post holocaust knowledge, should be wary of ascribing views to him which represent only one side of his head.

Oh, and finally, just consider what he said about Americans from time to time.
Yisrael Medad: "Disproving", Well, Everything Jewish
Historian and researcher Issam Sakhnin (1938-2019) has had a third edition of his book, “Jerusalem: Hijacked History and Forged Antiquities” published by Al-A’idoun Publishing and Distribution House in Amman. His biography includes that Sakhnini contributed to the establishing of the “Palestinian Research Center” in Beirut in 1965, and served as Deputy Director General of the Center between 1971 and 1978.

The biography relates he "sought to collect documents related to the Arab-Zionist conflict, prepare field studies and research on the Palestinian issue, and spread knowledge of the Israeli enemy in Palestinian and Arab circles.

One of his books, “The Holy Crime: Genocide from the Ideology of the Hebrew Book to the Zionist Project” (2012), presents a reading of the Zionist project, based on an analysis of its genocidal structure, whether in its origins, purpose, process, or outcomes. The Zionist project is a colonial/settler project based on the doctrine of genocide. Moreover, "the roots of the Jewish faith [are] represented by the blood-soaked God Yahweh, who commands his disciples to shed blood and annihilate other humans and animals as well. He also addresses the Zionist genocide discourse, which borrows the provisions of Jewish law to justify the genocide that it committed, and continues to commit, against the Palestinian Arabs. Ethnic cleansing is an essential feature of the Zionist discourse".

In “Jerusalem has a hijacked history and forged antiquities” Al-Sakhnini "refutes Zionism’s claims". The book, which was published as part of the publications of the Royal Commission for Jerusalem Affairs, Dr. Sakhnin "reveals the distortions, falsifications, and falsifications that befell the history of Jerusalem, beginning with the stories of the Hebrew Bible and continuing with the myths founding the foundation of contemporary Zionist thought."


Luai Ahmed: 'I'm a Muslim and I support Israel'
Columnist for the Bulletin and Presenter, Builder of the Middle East, Luai Ahmed breaks down the Israel-Hamas war and how Israel is seen in the Arab world.


The Quad: "I am an Arab Zionist"
This week, the Quad interviews Rawan Osman - peace activist and the founder of Arabs Ask - a new forum that seeks to debunk antisemitic anti-Israel stereotypes prevalent in the Arab world. Osman details her journey from a Hezbollah admirer who hated Jews to an Arab Zionist who loves the Jewish State.

In addition, the Quad delves into the perseverance and resilience that the Israeli people have demonstrated since Oct. 7th. From farmers in the South to the soldiers in the North; from the women who are making do without their husbands to the hostage families that hold on hope for the deliverance of their family members, Israel's society has shown incredible strength.




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