Thursday, January 11, 2024

01/11 Links Pt2: Chilling winds towards Israel from Britain and America; ‘Decolonization’ and the Danger of Folktale Anti-Semitism; NYC School Wipes Israel from the Map

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: ‘Decolonization’ and the Danger of Folktale Anti-Semitism
The world-historical idiocy required to assert that Israel is nothing more than a colonial power is, in fact, one reason for how quickly it spread in the sealed containers of Ivy League classrooms. No one expected to have to argue against the historical equivalent of “the earth is flat,” and it was hard to believe something so daft would catch on so quickly and spread so widely.

But catch on it did, so here we are. Harry Lewis is right that “When complex social and political histories are oversimplified in our teachings as Manichaean struggles—between oppressed people and their oppressors, the powerless and the powerful, the just and the wicked—a veneer of academic respectability is applied to the ugly old stereotype of Jews as evil but deviously successful people.”

And he is right that it might help students if there were a system of committee-led curriculum diversification that would enable some Harvard students to be exposed to facts without prohibiting the classes that teach decolonization.

Such changes would be a race against the clock. The decolonization blood libel moves fast. It’s likely that the authors random college students like to read, musicians they listen to, actors they follow, and essayists they think they’re supposed to admire have signed on to some open letter accusing the Jews of systematic ritual child murder. Maybe it’s too much to assume that they’ve read Chaucer or Joyce but they’ve probably read Sally Rooney, or at least watched the equally excruciating tv adaptations of the books she refuses to have translated into Hebrew. They might’ve been inspired not by Roger Waters’s Nazi cosplay but by Lana Del Rey’s courageous decision not to inflict her aggressive mediocrity on her Israeli fans. Perhaps they pretend to know who Melissa Barrera is so they can stand with her, or they read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s name on one of the most morally repugnant documents of our time and remembered that whatever it is he says, they’re supposed to agree with.

Anyway, they know you can’t trust anyone who hasn’t added a watermelon icon to their social-media feed. Which probably means Professor Lewis’s advice will fall on deaf ears.
Melanie Phillips: Chilling winds towards Israel from Britain and America
Neither the British government nor the Biden administration acknowledges that the onslaught against Israel is part of a broader Iranian war against America, Britain and the West.

Instead, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was again bizarrely insisting this week that the “only” way to peace was “a pathway to a Palestinian state” and that “Israel must stop taking steps that undercut Palestinians’ ability to govern themselves effectively.” This from an administration that continues to fund the Palestinian Authority even while the P.A. rewards terrorists and their families.

Although both Blinken and Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, have condemned the preposterous charge of genocide being brought by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice, Cameron proceeded to lob at the beleaguered Jewish state a defamatory missile of his own.

He was “worried,” he told a parliamentary committee, that Israel has “taken action in Gaza that might be in breach of international law” and that “on lots of occasions” its compliance was “under question.”

Since Cameron offered no evidence of any such breaches, his remarks served merely to smear Israel when it is fighting for its life and being demonized and thus undermined by a torrent of such false accusations from around the world.

With allies like these, who needs enemies?
Don't Worry About the "Arab Street"
Surely there was an “Obama bounce,” right? Not at all. A 2010 University of Maryland/Zogby International poll found that 62 percent of Arabs polled had a negative view of the then-president, 63 percent were discouraged by his approach to the Middle East, and a combined 85 percent of people across the countries polled had either a somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable view of the United States. When the Arab Center in Washington DC (an outpost of the Doha-based and Qatari-funded Arab Center) asked people in eight Arab countries how they viewed the United States after President Donald Trump’s first months in office, almost two-thirds had a negative or somewhat negative view of the United States. Only seven percent of people had a “very positive” view of the country.

It would be one thing if Arab public opinion had declined 40 or even 10 or 20 percent as a result of U.S. support for Israel in Gaza, but is there a significant difference between the 13 percent of Egyptians who had a favorable view of the United States 2003 and the nine percent who do in 2023? Does the two percent decline in U.S. favorability among Jordanians (from six to four percent) matter? It does not. The one outlier seems to be Tunisia, where the Arab Barometer research network found that support for the United States fell 30 percent as a result of President Biden’s approach to the war. That’s significant and deserves further investigation. The excellent scholars who run Arab Barometer believe Tunisia is a bellwether, but the declines in the favorability of the United States in other Arab countries were not as steep as in Tunisia—if only because they did not have very far to fall.

Would it be better if Middle Easterners held more favorable views of the United States? Absolutely. There’s the risk of being so closely associated with Israel’s withering military response to Hamas attack that any number of Islamist extremists will target Americans in response, but this has long been a risk to the United States for its support for Israel and other policies.

Still, the issue at hand remains whether support for the United States has cratered because of U.S. policies in the current conflict. If polling over recent decades is accurate, it has not for the very simple reason that Washington was profoundly and persistently unpopular well before the first IDF soldier crossed into Gaza. And despite Washington’s deep unpopularity, it has historically achieved its strategic goals in the region—the free flow of energy resources, helping ensure Israeli security, and making sure the United States remains predominant in the region so it can achieve its other two goals.

If the United States wanted to improve its standing in the region, one of the policies it could pursue toward that end would be to change its support for Israel. That is essentially what many progressives now demand: a ceasefire with no conditions that Hamas lay down its arms or release its hostages. Of course, previous support for Israeli security has placed the United States in awkward and uncomfortable diplomatic and political positions—but it has never actually resulted in a strategic setback. The one time Arab governments used the oil weapon in 1973, the embargo only lasted a few months. But the resulting recession in the United States blew back on them as Americans blamed oil producers and embargoing Arab governments for their economic pain—not Israel.
Kevin D. Williamson: Hamas Is Winning the Propaganda War
Israel’s enemies are winning the propaganda war. And here I thought the only kind of operation they were any good at was blowing up children in pizza shops.

It is remarkable—shameful, too, but really remarkable—how effective the opponents of the Jewish state have been in arm-twisting something close to the entirety of the Western intelligentsia into accepting Hamas’ framing of the war, now habitually described in nearly every journalistic venue as “Israel’s war in Gaza,” as though the Israelis simply woke up one Sunday morning and decided to wage a war in Gaza with no precipitating event. On practically every front page, the war is discussed as though the overriding issue were civilian casualties in Gaza (as though Israel’s actual military objects were an afterthought) and as though these civilian casualties were being caused by Israeli callousness rather than by Hamas’ intentional strategy of sheltering its military assets among the civilian population, in schools and in hospitals and in residential areas, for the express purpose of maximizing civilian casualties.

Nothing new here.

From the beginning, the Arab forces looking to eliminate the Jewish state (or proto-state) have exhibited two characteristics that have defined almost every engagement in the conflict. The first—and, ultimately, the more important—is cowardice; the second is an inclination toward moral blackmail, using the fact that the civilized world is civilized to hamper the response of the people who do not go around sawing the heads off of children in their fight against the people who do. October 7 was the most recent in a long, dreadfully monotonous series: The day before Israel declared independence in 1948, 20 Jewish women hiding in a basement in Kfar Etzion as their husbands and sons were massacred above them were themselves massacred by Arab fighters who threw hand grenades into the basement. In 2014, Palestinians attacked synagogue worshippers with guns, knives, and axes, killing, among others, three Americans. In 2019, they blew up a teenage girl with an IED. In 2001, they bombed a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, killing, among others, seven children and a pregnant woman. The Battle of the Pizza Shop might be considered the apex of Palestinian valor—but if you put actual soldiers on the other side of the line, the Palestinian men at arms will cower in hospitals, schools, and mosques, and then howl when the Israeli military turns its fire on those hospitals, schools, and mosques. That is the story, over and over again.

The Israelis would be perfectly happy to meet Hamas and the other Palestinian champions on what used to be called a battlefield. It would be very convenient for the Israelis, because while the Palestinians are very apt when it comes to massacring unarmed mothers and burning children to death, they are, and generally have been for decades, feckless and unreliable fighters against armed men. And so they hide behind their mothers’ skirts.


Israel’s Man in Black
The death of a soldier dissolves some of the informality of Israeli life. Gal Eisenkot, the 25-year-old son of Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff and an observer in the war cabinet, died on a Thursday afternoon. He had to be buried on Friday morning, as soon as possible and before the early start of a winter Shabbat. There had to be infrastructure in place for family, friends, the wartime leadership of the country, and multitudes who had never known Eisenkot in life. A tent-shaded gravesite with rows of chairs and bags of earth had materialized according to a strict halachic timeline in the old cemetery in Herzliya, where cigarette-smoking policemen with the seal of the State of Israel on their black yarmulkes stalked through a network of metal crowd barriers.

At the cemetery gates, volunteers representing no organization—Israelis who had acted on an impulse to help—handed out packets of tissues as thousands of mourners filed into the spaces between the graves surrounding the tent, which rose from the cemetery’s military section.

An announcement rang out: In the event of a red alert, God forbid, we were to stand in place with our hands on top of our heads for protection. Aren’t we supposed to lie down during a rocket attack? I mused to a nearby mourner, an American-born man with a wild gray beard, wearing an IDF uniform from a distant era. Where would you lie down? he replied, pointing to the grave in front of us, resting place of Moshe Halpern, a veteran of the pre-statehood Haganah. With him?

Gal Eisenkot had been alive less than 24 hours earlier, when an urban land mine planted under the asphalt—a “tunnel bomb”—detonated during an operation to rescue two hostages in Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip. These hostages did not leave Gaza alive. A photograph the IDF released later that week showed their flag-draped bodies departing a ruined street in the middle of the night on the back of a mud-green Humvee, in the company of fully kitted special forces whose faces were blurred out.

The beginning of the funeral commanded an awesome silence from a vast crowd, a national cross section made of sturdy aging men wearing caps with the insignia of a dozen IDF units and middle-aged parents with their teenage children, dressed in jeans and cargo shorts and black sunglasses. Between the bird cries and the whoosh of circling helicopters, under the glare of an unseasonably hot morning, the father, sister, and close friends of the dead man gasped to steady themselves as they struggled through brief and disbelieving eulogies, every voice a pain-stricken battle against the unimaginable fact of even being there.

The only exception was the heroically steady Benny Gantz, the former IDF chief of staff. “When we approved plans we knew their meaning,” Gantz said in his remarks. “We knew that the arrows on the maps could become arrows to the heart of good and dear families.” Sending the children of your friends and colleagues to their deaths was part of the holy and awful work of Israel’s survival: “Blessed is the land whose sons are like Gal.” After Gantz spoke, a bone-thin old man in a loose-fitting olive uniform put on an orange pair of gardening gloves and untied the bags of earth.

Within the anguished graveside blur of family and battle comrades and cabinet ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu became distinguishable only when he was called to lay a black memorial wreath. He looked ashen, defeated, long lines streaking his face, mouth in a half-scowl, eyes retreating into his head. The prime minister and a small security detail rapidly snaked its way to the back of the tent.

Towering amid the graveside crowd was Yoav Gallant, the defense minister. Since Oct. 7, the only outfit Gallant has worn is a Uniqlo-style double-breasted black shirt with black buttons, open enough at the top to reveal a black undershirt, as well as black pants held up with a military nylon black belt and black dress shoes as featureless as wooden clogs. The voidlike uniform communicates mournfulness, gravity, and perhaps a note of penance from the retired general and 30-year IDF veteran, who was Israel’s top civilian security official on the deadliest day in its history. That he continues wearing black means the goals of the war haven’t been achieved yet, which means there are still a quarter-million internally displaced, 350,000 soldiers mobilized, and 130 people in Hamas captivity. It means there are still Israelis dying in Gaza nearly every day.

When it was his turn to lay a wreath, Gallant, whose wife is a retired lieutenant colonel and whose children have served in special forces units, knelt at the grave, rose, spent an endless second staring down at the blank vessel that encased the son of a close colleague who had died on their watch, and then executed a sharp 90-degree military turn before merging back into the crowd.

Eisenkot, Gantz, Gallant and Netanyahu have been at the highest levels of their country’s leadership for much of the past 15 years. The funeral in Herzliya was only the latest and starkest confrontation with the reality they’d made. The sons of Israel’s founding generation had squandered a national patrimony that it might be too late to recover—a feeling and a reality of optimism, an ability to see the world clearly and to meet its challenges no matter what that required, ownership of a national destiny that Jews had no choice but to control themselves. Now they can only regain it all through months or even years of violence, and at the expense of their own children’s lives.

But these days, the war cabinet barely functions. Most everyone believes that the only three people who really matter are Netanyahu and Gallant, both of the Likud Party, and Gantz, who joined an emergency unity government the week after the Oct. 7 massacre (the final two members, observers Eisenkot and Ron Dermer, are backers of Gantz and Netanyahu, respectively). These people do not work well together and don’t seem to like each other. Netanyahu reportedly barred Gallant from attending a late December meeting with the country’s intelligence chiefs, and the two Likudniks have repeatedly declined to appear before the press together. When Israel’s plans for postwar Gaza, as well as a possible commission of inquiry into the army’s Oct. 7 failings, were raised before the full security cabinet in early January, the session plunged into a shouting match between IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and far-right cabinet ministers. Gantz and Gallant leapt to Halevi’s defense; Netanyahu stood by as his coalition partners assailed the wartime leader of Israel’s military.

The war cabinet holds regular, highly tense meetings with families of the over 130 hostages still in Gaza. Within this high-stakes emotional maelstrom, “Gantz is somebody who people like to identify with,” one insider who has been present at these meetings said—a sharp contrast with Netanyahu, who often comes across as distant, badgering, or self-concerned. “[Gantz] speaks and he looks like Rabin.” Israel’s always unreliable polls show him as an early favorite for postwar prime minister. But as a key theorist of the failed multi-billion-dollar defensive barrier that Hamas breached on Oct. 7, it is hard to see Gantz transcending his image as an unexciting centrist mainstay, especially at a moment when the establishment he represents has sunk to all-time lows in credibility.

Gallant “is perceived to be very trustworthy, if not as cuddly as Gantz,” the source said of the hostage families’ reactions to the defense minister. “The way he speaks, and as a persona—he’s less lovable. But when he speaks his messages are respected. People don’t start shouting at him. He’s not polarizing. He comes across as someone who’s very professional. It doesn’t go beyond this. People don’t say, ‘oh, we love you.’”

Those familiar with Gallant’s thinking do not believe he wants Netanyahu’s job, though in the unknowable chaos of post-Oct. 7 Israeli politics he might wind up with it anyway. In a post-Netanyahu scenario, Gallant would be one figure capable of holding together a simultaneously chastened and energized secular right. If the war ends with Yahia Sinwar dead and Hezbollah pushed beyond the Litani, more credit would go to Gallant than to Netanyahu or Gantz.

It is possible to see the glimmer of Gallant’s future appeal. If there is anyone in Israeli wartime leadership who evokes a lost era of national power and confidence, it is Gallant, who issues dire predictions to the enemy in the short, grave, punctuated sentences of someone who really means it. “If Hezbollah wants to go up one level, we will go up five,” Gallant declared during a visit to the Lebanese border on Dec. 17, two weeks before an Israeli airstrike killed Hamas political chief Saleh al-Arouri in the Hezbollah stronghold of South Beirut, an attack reportedly carried out without prior warning to the U.S. Hamas fighters who are counting the days until the IDF withdraws from Gaza, Gallant said on Jan. 4, “need to change the count until the end of their lives.”

In these moments, Gallant is a Jewish war chief beamed in from the late ’70s, or maybe from the mid-’50s, or maybe from the time of the Shoftim themselves. Whether that is what Gallant really is relates to the question of what Israel now is—whether Oct. 7 has reawakened an ancient knowledge of the national condition, or exposed everything the country has lost.
How miserably South Africa’s arguments fail laws of war
South Africa never really had a chance in its genocide claims against Israel if applying the laws of war, being that the entire “show” before the International Court of Justice is a political stunt designed to blacken Israel’s name, using legal-sounding language to launder an anti-Israel agenda.

But many of the arguments that its lawyers made on Thursday were so specious that they removed any veil of seriousness that they might have held onto.

From the start, South Africa really had two arguments to go on that had any remote legal significance – and forget about having any chance to actually prove genocide.

They were that top Israeli officials had made horrible statements (many of them should not have been said and were very morally problematic even if legally insignificant) that could allegedly be used to infer genocidal intent, and that the IDF had allegedly killed 23,000 Palestinians, likely 60% to 70% of them being civilians.

If South Africa had stuck to these arguments, any serious lawyer or judge still would have tossed them out of court because: None of the statements they have provided from public officials were official policy or legal statements; many were by officials without real influence over the war; those by key officials could easily be read in context as metaphorical; Israel has publicly produced vast amounts of evidence that it has expended enormous resources to avoid killing Palestinian civilians; and it acknowledged and explained errors, which happen in all wars, where errors have occurred.

But South Africa could not help itself. It went down a road of a series of arguments that exposed an anti-Israel world view, which has no connection to the laws of war, let alone the Genocide Convention, and further undermined the foundations of any case it might have tried to make.

It also ignored some critical threshold facts that anyone trying to prove a single war crime, let alone the even higher threshold for the penultimate war crime of systematic genocide, would need to confront.
The Gaza War as Seen from Southeast Asia
Since the beginning of the century, Israel has been working with notable success to expand its diplomatic relations beyond Europe, the U.S., and its few Middle Eastern partners. These efforts have included important inroads to Southeast Asia. Colin Rubenstein and Michael Shannon examine how the countries of this region have responded to the war with Hamas. In short: only the Philippines and Singapore have come out strongly in support of the Jewish state. Thailand—which, like the Philippines, has a sizeable expatriate population in Israel and had several of its citizens among the victims—initially responded with expressions of support, and then backtracked. (The reversal might have been an attempt to appease the country’s Muslim minority, or to improve its position in hostage negotiations.) Vietnam, which has fairly good relations with Jerusalem, has remained neutral, while Malaysia, a Muslim country, has stayed true to its longstanding sympathy for Hamas.

The most interesting case is that of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country:
In Indonesia, numerous leaders expressed support and admiration for the Hamas terror attacks in the immediate wake of October 7. Hopes in Israel for improved ties with Indonesia look likely to be sidelined for some time.

This forthright support for Hamas surprised long-time Indonesia watchers. Unlike Malaysia, Indonesia has always referred to a two-state solution when backing the Palestinian cause. Though Israel and Indonesia lack formal diplomatic relations, Indonesian tourists visit Israel and Israelis have in the past done business with and visited Indonesia.

President Joko Widodo’s response to October 7 was to urge an end to the bloodshed, adding, “The root cause of the conflict, which is the occupation of Palestinian land by Israel, must be resolved immediately.” . . . Meanwhile, Indonesia’s former vice-president Jusuf Kalla described the Hamas attacks as an “extraordinary act carried out in the name of freedom and independence.”


Chief Rabbi: We must defend Israel in interfaith dialogue
Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis has called for Jews to be “brave” and challenge Muslims over Israel following “deeply disappointing” criticism of the Jewish state since October 7.

Advocating a seismic shift in the community’s approach to interfaith work of the kind not seen since the Holocaust, Rabbi Mirvis told a JC event at JW3 on Tuesday that Jewish-Muslim engagement now needed to take place on fresh terms, whereby Israel was no longer the “elephant in the room”.

Urging Jews to “have it out” with Muslims over Israel rather than “cancelling” them, Rabbi Mirvis said in a discussion with JC Editor Jake Wallis Simons: “Israel is not just the geopolitical centre of Jewish peoplehood, it is the heart of our religion… We need to be brave enough, let’s discuss Israel!

“Our engagement with Muslims is a closer one than any other religion,” he said, adding: “Matters pertaining to Israel divide us.”

Mirvis said that “Jews have a blessed future here [in the UK] alongside Israel” but said that since October 7 “there has been a lot of disappointment; the silence of some has been so sad… the outspoken criticism of Israel by others has been deeply disappointing.”

He said that although Jews were ill-prepared to discuss Israel with Muslims, it was critical people engaged in “constructive debate”.

For this to happen, he said, interfaith work post-October 7 “needed a new shift” – in the same way that the Council of Christians and Jews was founded in 1942 as a response to the Holocaust.

Mirvis spoke of his regret that he had not always prioritised Israel in interfaith dialogue, which mostly “focused on what unites us”.
Eylon Levy: Your kids can learn to defend Israel like me
One of Israel’s most recognisable and indefatigable public defenders is encouraging Jewish parents to get their children involved in debating and believes Israel will emerge “stronger than ever” from its current trauma.

Eylon Levy, 32, grew up in Finchley and attended University College School before studying at Cambridge and Oxford, where he became a campus reporter for the JC.

He is in London next week and will appear at the Stand With Israel rally in the city centre on Sunday 14 January at 2:30pm (for details, visit 710humanchain.com/Israel).

Possessing an “argumentative spirit” and a keen interest in international affairs and politics, Levy says it “only made sense” that he would come to the Jewish State’s defence after it came under attack.

After making aliyah at the age of 23 and serving in the IDF on the West Bank, he became a television news anchor in the country for five years and later an international media adviser to President Isaac Herzog.

On the day of the October 7 massacre, Levy says he was not employed by the government and simply a “private, albeit passionate citizen”.

He said: “As the massacre unfolded, Israeli society did something extraordinary. Everyone dropped everything to help the war effort. People who had nothing more than a car volunteered to drive food down to soldiers, or cook for displaced families, and what I knew how to do is to give interviews and to speak for Israel, so that’s what I did.”
Older American Jews feel less safe post-Hamas attack compared to younger counterparts
80% of American Jews over 30 felt at least a little less safe compared to 67% of those under 30, according to a new survey by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which was published on Thursday.

The survey has revealed a significant age-related disparity in the sense of safety among American Jews, with those over the age of 30 feeling more vulnerable following the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023.

This release of data comes as the world prepares to mark 100 days since the October 7 Hamas massacre on January 14, 2024, and coincides with the second anniversary of the Colleyville, Texas, synagogue hostage situation.

The AJC survey, conducted last fall, indicated that a significant majority of American Jews felt their safety as Jewish individuals in the United States was compromised following the attacks. "It is a very scary time to be a Jew anywhere in the world, but specifically in the US," one survey participant reflected.

This sentiment was echoed by 78% of respondents who reported feeling a great deal, a fair amount, or a little less safe after hearing about the attacks.
NYC Public School Wipes Israel from the Map
A New York City public school is being accused of “Jewish erasure” after a map from one of its classrooms surfaced showing all the countries of the Middle East except Israel, which is labeled “Palestine.”

The Free Press was shown a photo of the map of the “Arab world,” hanging in the art classroom at PS 261, a public elementary school in Brooklyn. Rita Lahoud uses the classroom to give lessons to pre-K and elementary students in the “Arab Culture Arts” program, which is funded by Qatar Foundation International (QFI). QFI is the American wing of the Qatar Foundation, a nonprofit owned by the ruling family of the wealthy Arab state, which harbors leaders of the terrorist group Hamas.

Tova Plaut, a New York City public school instructional coordinator for pre-K through fifth grade classrooms, said she found the map “concerning.”

“It’s not just that we’re experiencing Jewish hate in NYC public schools, we’re actually experiencing Jewish erasure,” Plaut said. “And here is proof of that.”

Rita Lahoud did not respond to an email seeking comment. The principal of PS 261 deferred comment to the Department of Education.


After The Free Press emailed the Department of Education to ask if the map remains in the classroom after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, a spokesperson wrote back: “Why would it not be?”

Nathaniel Styer, the DOE spokesperson, added in his reply that “this is a map of countries that speak Arabic.”
Lori Lowenthal Marcus: Woke Antisemitism Is Happening in K-12 Schools!
Since Oct. 7th, antisemitism has exploded on US college campuses with Jews and Israel being accused of being white oppressors and committing genocide. But is the problem worse than we think? Have the roots of antisemitic thinking and anti-Israel bias seeped into other parts of the American educational system?

In this week’s episode of Top Story, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin is joined by Deborah Project Legal Director Lori Lowenthal Marcus. Together they discuss the fact propaganda masquerading as educational material about the Middle East is being incorporated into instruction throughout the K-12 schools by teachers who have themselves been indoctrinated by critical race theory and intersectionality to believe that Israel and the Jews are “white oppressors.”


Antisemitic history of the MS St. Louis is echoing in Toronto
Ursula Schneider was a 16-year-old Jewish girl when she boarded the MS St. Louis in 1939, sailing out of Hamburg. The Voyage of the Damned, as it became known. With 936 passengers, most of them Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, the liner crossed the Atlantic, docking first in Havana, where Ursula’s father was waiting. Only 28 who had valid entry documents were allowed to get off. Ursula wasn’t one of them. The ship sailed on to the Florida coast but the St. Louis was turned away by the United States. Refugees turned pleading eyes to Canada, a country distinguished by its immigration welcome mat. But the government of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, cleaving to a “none is too many’’ policy — those Jews — denied permission for the St. Louis to disembark in Halifax. The ship was forced to return to Europe, where the United Kingdom, Belgium, France and the Netherlands agreed to take the passengers in. More than 250 of those men, women and children were killed in the Holocaust, according to war records.

Ursula was among the fortunate refugees. The teenager, her mother and brother found sanctuary in England. Schneider later married and immigrated to Canada. She passed away at age 94.

Just over a week ago, her granddaughter Laura, born and raised in Toronto, was driving home when she came upon the pro-Palestinian demonstration that had occupied the overpass at Highway 401 and Avenue Road. She was infuriated. And she was scared. "I’ve lived here all my life and this is the first time I’ve actually felt fearful," Laura tells the Star. (Asked that we not use her surname out of anxiety that she, too, would face antisemitic wrath.)

Angry enough, and thinking of the grandmother she adored, Laura wrote a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In it she reminded Trudeau of the formal apology he made five years ago to the St. Louis passengers, their families and the broader Jewish community for Canada’s failure eight decades earlier. In the House of Commons, Trudeau said: "It is my sincere hope that we can shine a light on this painful chapter of our history and ensure that its lessons are never forgotten. Antisemitism, xenophobia and hatred have no place in this country, or anywhere else in this world."

Laura accuses Trudeau of forgetting.
Spiked PodCast: The whitewashing of Hamas
Jake Wallis Simons – editor of the Jewish Chronicle – returns for this episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show. Jake and Brendan discuss the denial of Hamas’s crimes, the double standards of the ‘anti-Zionists’, and why Israelophobia is just anti-Semitism rebranded.


Andrew Pessin: How to Be Pro-Palestinian on Campus Without Being An Antisemite
[This was originally published in 2017, but its main points remain relevant today.]

The times may be a changing, in the campus wars over Israel: the idea that the anti-Israel movement is fundamentally antisemitic appears to be gaining traction. The evidence? In recent weeks several U.K. universities cancelled “Israeli Apartheid Week” events, at least one of which—the University of Lancashire—was explicitly motivated by the U.K.’s December adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. On that definition, certain forms of anti-Israelism are deemed antisemitic, and “Israeli Apartheid Weeks,” scheduled to occur on many campuses in Europe and North America this spring, often include events that appear to fulfill those conditions. Similar winds are blowing in the United States, where the U. S. State Department definition of antisemitism is able to do the same work, famously classifying as “antisemitic” actions that “delegitimize, demonize, or apply double standards to” the State of Israel. Already pro-Israel activists at schools such as Columbia University lobbied hard to cancel “Apartheid Week” events scheduled there starting three weeks ago, invoking the State Department definition and citing the Lancashire precedent. That effort failed, but what is significant is that the effort was made in the first place.

Some campus anti-Israelists are perhaps motivated by antisemitism. But many, perhaps the large majority, sincerely deny they are, and so there is much ongoing and tortuous debate over precisely when anti-Israel activism becomes antisemitism. Can you attack the legitimacy of the Jewish State without being an antisemite? (What if you sincerely believe, on the basis of your historical research, that it was founded illegitimately?) Is it antisemitic to accuse Israel of demonic behavior, if you sincerely believe, on the basis of evidence, that it is guilty of such? (The media is filled with such reports, is it not?) And anyway, what precisely constitute “delegitimization” and “demonization”? Israel’s supporters regularly accuse anti-Israelists of antisemitism; anti-Israelists claim Israel-supporters use that label only to silence their legitimate criticism of Israel. And the debate goes on.

“We are not antisemites,” campus activists proclaim, “we are merely fighting for the welfare and rights of the Palestinian people.” Being “pro-Palestinian” is wonderful, of course; but campus activism sometimes looks more “anti-Israel” than “pro-Palestinian,” and that’s where the trouble begins. On the surface, at least, being “anti-Israel” (or “anti-Zionist”) is not very wonderful: opposing the nation state of the Jewish people, or denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland—which often involves denying Jewish history and even peoplehood—surely looks and sounds like antisemitism, even if it is honorably motivated by pro-Palestinian intentions.
Eliminate the ‘Diaspora mentality’
There is much talk these days of a paradigm shift in Israel’s approach to its conflict with the Palestinians. It is held that after the current war is over, we will see “a new Middle East.” This may be true, but something else may ultimately shape the future of the Jewish state.

It is the crippling neurosis, common to Israeli and Diaspora Jews, known as “the Diaspora mentality.”

It is characterized by obsequiousness to and dependence on non-Jews for our safety and welfare, as well as a desperate longing for non-Jewish approval. It constantly causes us to ask: “What will the gentiles think?” It prompts a craving to be “normal.” It is the attitude of a people that acts out of fear.

David Ben Gurion once said, “Exile is one with utter dependence in material things, in politics and culture, in ethics and intellect.” He and many other Zionists saw a Jewish state as a potential cure for this through shlilat ha’golah—the negation of the Diaspora.

It stood to reason that the establishment of the State of Israel would terminate the “Diaspora mentality” by empowering the Jewish people and gaining them equal status in the community of nations. As the Israeli Declaration of Independence said, it was the “natural right for the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate.”

Today, Israel is certainly powerful, with an army that has defended its citizens successfully since its inception. We respond with strength and power to those who threaten our independence.

Nonetheless, the Diaspora mentality has not been liquidated. The purpose of a sovereign and independent state is to protect the welfare of its citizens. This means formulating and implementing policies dedicated to security and territorial integrity that prevent and preempt devastating violations of its sovereignty.
Sara Carter Podcast: Israel Three Months Later: From Hate-Filled Horror to Hope for a Bright Future
Hosted by Sara Carter
Israel was blindsided by a Hamas terrorist attack just three months ago. Shock, disbelief, and anger have now morphed into a steely resolve to protect the people and a determination for life to go on throughout the nation.

This is a response many of us can identify with. For those old enough to remember the 9/11 attacks, we were numb for days and even weeks. But we knew what had to happen. The enemy had to suffer and the nation must pick up the pieces and move forward.

Today, Sara welcomes Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum to discuss what she’s experienced over the past three months and how life in Jerusalem is far from what used to be normal but that it looks a little more normal every day.

Sara and Hassan-Nahoum also dig into the explosion of brazen anti-Semitism around the world and how the epicenter of that hate is far too close for comfort.
UCLA professor’s ‘wake-up call’ to anti-Israel hostility on campus
When Sharon Nazarian started teaching a new class on Oct. 4 at the University of California Los Angeles, designed to look at antisemitism from a global lens, she couldn’t have known just how timely the topic was about to become. Three days after the class began, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel and launched a massive terror attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis. In the wake of the war that followed, rates of antisemitism skyrocketed on college campuses around the U.S.

“I have to admit that when I designed the class, ‘The Globalization of Antisemitism: A Survey of Transnational Trends,’ largely based on my Anti-Defamation League experience, I had no idea what Oct. 7 would bring,” Nazarian, the former senior vice president of international affairs and current board member of the ADL, told Jewish Insider.

“Everything that you have read about in terms of the challenges on U.S. campuses showed up directly in my class and with my students,” she said, calling the class, made up of 25 students from diverse backgrounds (an estimated 30% of whom are Jewish), a “wake-up call” about today’s students.

The class ran in the global studies department – which Nazarian, a former adjunct professor at UCLA from 2005-2017, said provided a more diverse group of students than doing so through the Jewish or Israel studies departments would have.

“Students are unwilling to hear theses that challenge their own worldview. Students today have far less knowledge of history and analytical thinking skills than previous generations, and this becomes a huge challenge when teaching critical issues such as antisemitism,” Nazarian said, noting that social media — TikTok in particular — has contributed to “the relativism trap.”

“I asked students which figure personified pure evil to their generation as Osama bin Laden did to ours; they mentioned President Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan,” Nazarian said. “I listed Hitler, Stalin, Mao. You get the point.”

When Israel responded to Hamas’ attack by launching a ground invasion of Gaza, “the tone of students in class shifted – they questioned my perspective,” Nazarian said, adding that after Oct. 7, students wanted “to hear me constantly speak to Israel’s killing of innocent Palestinians and complained to administrators that I did not offer a safe space for them to do so.”

“The idea of Jewish victimhood is one [students] are not willing to accept. They are so entrenched in the narrative of Palestinian victimhood that there is no space for the concept of Jews as victims,” Nazarian added.
Kassy Dillon: Harvard To Host Summer Program At Palestinian University Dominated By Hamas
Harvard University will host a summer program where students will be briefed on “settler colonialism” at a Palestinian university that called for “glory to martyrs” after the October 7 terrorist massacre in Israel and has a student body that overwhelmingly elected a Hamas-affiliated bloc to run its student government.

The embattled Ivy League institution’s “Palestine Social Medicine Course” will send Harvard students to Birzeit University in the West Bank, according to the program’s website. It explains that the “three-week intensive summer course is designed to introduce students to the social, structural, political, and historical aspects that determine Palestinian health beyond the biological basis of disease.”

Harvard faces mounting criticism for its response to blatant anti-Semitism on its campus since the Hamas terrorist attack. Several Harvard students told The Daily Wire they were concerned about their school’s relationship with Birzeit University, given its history and alignment with terrorist groups.

The curriculum content will include hearing from health practitioners, academics, and activists about various topics including “Settler colonialism and its manifestations in Palestine” and “Health and racism,” the website adds.

A spokeswoman for Harvard defended its program in a statement to The Daily Wire, stating that Birzeit “is a public institution governed by an autonomous Board of Trustees with no political, religious, or sectarian affiliation,” and that the program was co-developed by the World Health Organization.


Ban on public bodies boycotting Israel clears the Commons
Plans to prevent public bodies from implementing their own boycotts against Israeli goods have cleared the Commons.

Councils and other public bodies will be unable to boycott goods or services from any country, except those exempted by ministers, under the proposed changes.

Ministers will not be able to exempt Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories or the Golan Heights from the remit of the Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill.

The focus on ensuring Israel cannot be targeted is aimed at combatting the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which opponents have claimed is divisive and antisemitic.

The Bill cleared the Commons on Wednesday and will now head to the House of Lords for further scrutiny.

Communities Secretary Michael Gove said the Bill was “a targeted and proportionate approach to dealing with a unique evil” and would prevent public bodies “taking decisions which conflict with UK Government foreign policy”.

He added: “There is a clear intention in this Bill which is to deal specifically with the BDS campaign, and the BDS’s campaign attempt to use local government and other intermediate institutions and their legitimacy to undermine the UK Government’s foreign policy.

“The UK Government – whichever colour of government it is – must speak with one voice on behalf of the whole United Kingdom when it comes to foreign policy matters.”


Sick Kids Hospital Interfaith Chaplain, Imam Ayman Al Taher, Praises Hamas Founder, Claiming Allah Gave Him ‘Honourable Martyrdom”
According to MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) on December 18, 2023, Sick Kids Hospital Interfaith Chaplain Ayman Al Taher, spoke at Palestine House in Toronto. In a video posted to his YouTube page (41:09) Imam Ayman Al Taher encouraged the audience (and their children) to listen to a 1998 interview from the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in which Ahmed Yassin predicted that “by 2027 Israel will not exist”.

Along with this outrageous suggestion of listening to the original leader of a terrorist organization, Ayman Al Taher went further claiming that Allah gave Sheikh Ahmed Yassin an “Honourable Martyrdom”, saying “And as we know how Allah has honoured him…Four rockets – I’m not sure how many millions each rocket cost – to give him an honourable martyrdom”.

At the end of the video, Ayman Al Taher said: “I know I am going to get myself in trouble now for speaking on social media. Who cares, because if (we) do not get ourselves into trouble, we will not be getting victory”.

Just as HonestReporting Canada (HRC) exposed Dr. Christian Zaarour from Sick Kids for his, in our view, hateful words, we believe that these repugnant statements by Ayman Al Taher also breach Sick Kids Code of Conduct.


Saira Rao, Jew-Hating Lunatic
Have you heard of any American medical personnel who are “Zionists” (i.e. Jews) being accused by anyone other than Saira Rao of providing substandard treatment to their “Arab, Muslim, South Asian and Black patients”? Of course not. In fact, the people who are most knowledgeable about the matter, Israeli Arabs, are quite content with the treatment they receive in Israeli hospitals by Israeli — both Jewish and Arab — doctors and nurses.

Furthermore, every single Palestinian leader who has needed advanced medical care has sought out such care from Israeli Jewish doctors. Mahmoud Abbas was treated for cardiac trouble by a Jewish doctor who made house calls to him in Ramallah. Abbas has also made sure that his wife, his brother, and his brother-in-law were all treated by Israeli doctors. It’s particularly striking that his brother Abu Louai, who suffers from cancer, was brought to Israel for treatment, because he lives in Qatar and had access to the most advanced medical care, in brand-new hospitals in Doha; on which no expense was spared. Nonetheless, Abbas insisted he be treated in Israel. Abbas’ brother-in-law also underwent heart surgery in an Israeli hospital — surgery that saved his life. And his wife, too, was operated on by an Israeli surgeon.

Nor is Abbas the only Palestinian leader to seek “Zionist” medical care. When Saeb Erekat, the PA’s senior propagandist and negotiator, came down with COVID-19, instead of being treated in a Palestinian hospital, he insisted on being admitted to Hadassah University Hospital Ein Kerem. Even Yahya Sinwar, one of the leaders of Hamas, received life-saving treatment from Israeli doctors. While imprisoned for the murders of several Israelis, in 2008 Sinwar was operated on for a brain tumor by Israeli doctors who managed to save his life. In 2014 Ismail Haniyeh, the undisputed leader of Hamas, insisted that his daughter be provided emergency treatment at Ichilov Hospital by Israeli doctors, after she experienced complications following a routine procedure by doctors in Gaza. Haniyah’s sister was also treated in an Israeli hospital several years ago following an emergency. And his granddaughter was once airlifted by helicopter from Gaza to the same Israeli hospital for emergency treatment. Of course, the Palestinian leaders keep all this secret from their own people and from the wider public; these treatments by Israeli doctors don’t jibe with the constant attacks on Israel for its “genocide”; furthermore, ordinary Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank would be angry to learn that their leaders have been getting special treatment in Israeli hospitals that is only rarely available to them.

In sum: Saira Rao needs to know that Mahmoud Abbas, along with his wife, brother, and brother-in-law, the P.A.’s chief propagandist Saeb Erekat, the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and overall head of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh’s sister, daughter, and grand-daughter were all treated – at their desperate request, by the “Zionist” doctors who so alarm Saira Rao.


NY’s Siena College under fire for inviting California professor who claimed Zionist doctors are threat to US medicine: ‘Unmistakably antisemitic’

Julianna Margulies, David Schwimmer and Over 260 More Implore Academy to Include Jews in Inclusion Standards
Julianna Margulies, David Schwimmer and Debra Messing are among over 260 actors and other industry figures to sign an open letter demanding the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences include Jews in its representation and inclusion standards.

The letter, published Tuesday by the JITC Hollywood Bureau for Jewish Representation and shared exclusively by TheWrap, said that “an inclusion effort that excludes Jews is steeped in antisemitism and misunderstands it.”

“Jewish people being excluded from the Motion Picture Academy’s Representation and Inclusion Standards is discriminating against a protected class by invalidating their historic and genetic identity,” the letter read. “This must be addressed immediately by including Jews in these standards.”

Other notable signees on the letter’s growing list of supporters are Ginnifer Goodwin, Tiffany Haddish, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Brett Gelman, Michael Rapaport, Iliza Schlesinger, Nancy Spielberg and “Friends” cocreator Marta Kauffman and producer Kevin Bright.

In 2020, the Academy voted to add inclusion standards for films to be eligible for the Best Picture Oscar. Starting this year, films have to meet inclusion and diversity standards in two out of four areas: On-Screen Representation, Themes and Narratives; Creative Leadership and Project Team; Industry Access and Opportunities; and Audience Development.


CNN Producers Covering Israel-Hamas War Spread Blood Libels; Denounce ‘Zionist Entity’ in Vile Social Media Posts
Two journalists working for CNN and covering the current Israel-Hamas war posted a string of disturbing antisemitic and anti-Israel comments on their social media accounts, HonestReporting can reveal.

Richard Harlow, a British cameraman who is based in Beirut, has posted to his social media accounts several vile pieces of content relating to the current conflict, including one that falsely accuses the Jewish state of murdering Palestinians and stealing their organs in what has been described as a modern-day blood libel.

In other comments online, Harlow denied Hamas has any presence in the West Bank but accused the IDF of “killing” people there anyway.

Hamas not only operates numerous cells across the West Bank but also commands widespread support among Palestinians in the territory.

In another post, Harlow complained that “people are still talking about decapitated babies but no one’s talking about the Palestinian babies that HAVE been murdered BY the Israelis.”

Harlow recently told friends online that he had been tasked with editing images and footage taken by a local Gazan stringer to be used by CNN. At a time when images and footage from Gaza should be under greater scrutiny, Harlow is in a position where he is responsible for potentially sensitive content that is seen by millions.

In addition, Harlow’s byline has appeared on several other pieces relating to Israel.
Lawfare Blog Won’t Correct Garlasco’s Gaza Errors
First, it’s unclear why he refers to the Gaza Strip as “one city” when it obviously is not. If he meant to convey that it’s a relatively small territory, he could have certainly said that instead of misrepresenting the geography of the war. And while the paragraph compares Israeli strikes in Gaza to American strikes in Iraq, and also compares Israel’s use of guided bombs to unguided bombs, Garlasco fails to compare American use of unguided bombs to Israeli use of unguided bombs. In the 2003 campaign, 30 percent of the American bombs were unguided. In Gaza, an estimated 40-45 percent of the bombs have been unguided. This is hardly a “shocking” discrepancy.

But Garlasco’s reference to the duration of the two campaigns is even more misleading. Note the word choice at the center of his comparison: “six weeks” on one side of the ledger; “the entire Iraq war in 2003” on the other.

The language signals that Israel’s strikes were faster, more furious, than the US-led campaign. But the opposite is true, and had Garlasco compared weeks to weeks instead of opting for asymmetrical language, this would have been clear: Israel dropped its 29,000 bombs in six weeks; the US dropped its 29,199 in four and a half weeks.

Garlasco errs further when stating:
Additionally, most bombs dropped are among the largest in regular use—2,000 pound bombs.

But the document he links to doesn’t state that “most” of the bombs were 2,000 pounds. And other analyses suggest this is false. An AI investigation by the New York Times found 208 bomb craters out of perhaps 1,600 to match what would be formed by 2,000-pound bombs. A CNN analysis suggested that roughly 500 of the strikes were 2,000 pound bombs. Either way, that’s a long way from “most.”

Although Lawfare’s Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes and Managing Editor Tyler McBrien were informed of the errors and distortions, they remain uncorrected.

These aren’t Garlasco’s first egregious misrepresentations about the Gaza fighting. Earlier in the fighting, he claimed that “Israel is dropping in less than a week what the U.S. was dropping in Afghanistan in a year,” arguing that the US dropped only 7,423 munitions in the worst year of fighting there. In fact, the US had dropped 17,500 munitions on Afghanistan in just 76 days of bombing in 2001. The Washington Post, where this error appeared, eventually corrected Garlasco’s misstatement. Apparently Lawfare cares less for its readers.
GUARDIAN OMITS HAMAS AFFILIATION OF SLAIN PALESTINIAN

BBC JERUSALEM BUREAU FRAMING OF PALESTINIAN OCTOBER 7 DENIAL

Misinformation rages on social media platforms, as Antisemitism rises globally

Media Ignore Evidence Showing Slain Gaza “Journalists” Were Terrorists

Toronto Star Commentators Accuse Israel Of Targeting Palestinian Journalists

Guest On Episode Of CBC ‘Front Burner’ Podcast Accuses Israel Of Deliberately Targeting Ambulances, Downplays Hamas Presence In Gaza

‘Revolution eating its own’: ABC presenter fired for anti-Israel comments alleges 'racism'
Sky News host Andrew Bolt says complaints of “racism” at the ABC is a case of the “revolution eating its own”.

Antionette Lattouf, a Lebanese-Australian who was dumped as a fill-in radio host over Christmas for her anti-Israel posts on social media, alleges she was sacked because of her ethnicity.

‘This is why it is disheartening to not only witness the horrendous treatment of people of colour by the ABC over the years, but now to personally — and so publicly — feel its wrath,’ she said.

“The ABC – which campaigns so hard on race issues, sees racists everywhere – is itself racist. Our national broadcaster is shockingly racist if their own journalists and presenters are to be believed,” Mr Bolt said.

“I’ve never heard so many staff complaints at other organisations, or is the ABC being gamed?

“This is a case of the revolution eating its own.

“There have been so many complaints from staff about ABC racism that the ABC, in 2022, publicly apologised for this racism in its newsroom.”


Writing In Local Arabic Newspaper, Montreal Real Estate Broker Calls Hamas’ October 7 Attack A “Great Victory” – HRC Files Complaint With Quebec’s Real Estate Regulatory Body

'Israel has every right to defend itself against Hamas,' affirms German Vice Chancellor Habeck
"Israel has every right to defend itself against Hamas," declared German Vice Chancellor Dr. Robert Habeck in a statement during a joint press conference with Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat (Likud) in Jerusalem.

Minister Barkat criticized the International Court of Justice in The Hague for its perceived bias against Israel.

He expressed concern over the court's actions, stating, "Anti-Israel sentiment has become the new form of antisemitism," highlighting the challenges Israel faces on the international stage.

Germany provides unwavering support for Israel
Echoing Barkat's sentiments, Vice Chancellor Habeck emphasized Germany's unwavering support for Israel's right to self-defense, remarking on the importance of ensuring Israel's security in the face of threats.

"Israel has every right to defend itself against Hamas. We must ensure the atrocities of October 7th never recur. On behalf of all Germans, we stand in solidarity with Israel. Israel's right to safeguard its citizens' lives is paramount, and in this, we stand united," he said.
U.S. ambassador to Lebanon acknowledged Israeli sovereignty over Golan
U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Lisa Johnson affirmed during her confirmation proceedings last month that the Biden administration recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and its importance for Israeli security.

The administration has been reluctant to publicly and firmly state that it stands behind the Trump administration’s decision in 2019 to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, stating when questioned publicly that there had been no change in U.S. policy, without clearly specifying what that policy entails.

“The Trump administration recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in a March 25, 2019 Proclamation,” Johnson said in written responses to questions submitted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) prior to her confirmation. “The Biden Administration has not changed that policy.”

In the written response, which was obtained by Jewish Insider, Johnson went on to quote from a 2021 response by Secretary of State Tony Blinken highlighting the Golan’s importance to Israeli security, describing Blinken’s comments as “all the more true following Hamas’ horrific October 7 terrorist attacks and subsequent Hizballah and other terrorist operations targeting Israel.”

“Israel must protect itself from Hizballah and other terrorist and regional threats,” Johnson continued. “In this regard, the Golan Heights, including Shebaa Farms, remains critically important to Israel’s security.”

Cruz’s questions had referenced the U.S.’ vote in favor of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2695, which included language describing “the occupied Shab’a Farms,” referring to a territory inside the Golan Heights between Lebanon and Syria.


Israel to sue int'l hockey league over ousting of Israeli team from championship
The Israeli Ice Hockey Association (IIHA), with the support of the Israeli Olympic Committee, is filing a claim with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) over Israel's expulsion from the ice hockey world championships, which was announced on Wednesday night.

The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) decided to oust the Israeli team from all competitions due to concerns over "safety and security," the organization announced Wednesday night.

"In accordance with IIHF’s duty of care to protect all participants at IIHF Competitions and its obligation to create corresponding health and safety policies, the IIHF Council, within its power found in IIHF Statute has decided to restrict the Israeli National Team from participating in IIHF Championships until the safety and well-being of all participants (including Israeli participants) can be assured," the announcement stated."The IIHF Council took this decision after careful consideration and based on a risk assessment, discussions with the participating countries and discussions with the Hosts."

The IIHF, according to inside sources, speaking with the Israeli Olympic Committee, made the decision after its chairman, Luc Tardif, succumbed to external political pressures, including Russian voices.

As a result, Knesset Sports Committee chair Simon Davidson (Yesh Atid) said that "it is the exclusion of a country as a whole, which, according to the International Olympic Committee, is illegal," calling the IIHF decision "arbitrary."
United Hatzalah finds its equipment in a Palestinian ambulance

Israel Looking To Replace All Palestinian Labor With Foreign Workforce

MEMRI: Algerian Writer: Arab Intellectuals Who Support Hamas Are Hypocrites – They Ignore Its Atrocities On October 7 And The Tragedy It Has Brought Upon The Gazans

PreOccupiedTerritory: Zionists So Sinister They Fooled Hamas Into Filming Own Participation In Fake Rapes, Massacres (satire)
Leaders and spokesmen for the Islamic militant movement that officially governs much of this coastal territory acknowledged again today that they had previously failed to appreciate just how manipulative and underhanded their enemy could be, with specific attention to the fact that thousands of the organization’s personnel had shared first-person footage and images on and after October 7 of themselves engaging in atrocities and bragging about it, without realizing at the time that the entire episode never happened, and that the group had no hand in the 1200 Israeli deaths that occurred during that day’s invasion of Israel.

Several senior figures in Hamas voiced their continued chagrin at having been hoodwinked by Israel into participating in atrocities that never happened and filming it and sharing those nonexistent escapades on various Telegram channels to boast of their domination over, and degradation of, the hated Jews.

“This shows just how nefarious the enemy is,” stated Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida. “We still threaten the Zionists with more October sevenths, but some of us remain unsure whether that threat includes the sexual violence, the brutality against children, and the disregard for human dignity in which we gloried at the time, sharing it all on social media and pointing to as demonstrations of our supremacy over the cursed dhimmi Jews, the offspring of apes and pigs – or whether, because images and talk of such exploits generates sympathy from the international community and gives the Jews a pretext to hurt us, none of that actually happened, the Jews faked it, and all the stuff we took pride in back then was actually a hoax, which would be sort of embarrassing, but we know even if we blatantly contradict ourselves, the mainstream, anti-Israel media and activist institutions will ignore the earlier stuff and run with the narrative of the moment.”
Iran Seizes Oil Tanker Involved in US-Iran Dispute in Gulf of Oman

US court rules Madrid museum can keep Pissarro painting looted by the Nazis

Missouri state rep, accused of Jew-hatred, running for governor

Man arrested in Australia after death threat on Instagram

CA man arrested for vandalism of three Jewish business

Canadian biker who spits, spews antisemitism, arrested within hours

The Counterfeit Countess Who Saved 10,000 People from the Nazis
Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg took on the fraudulent title of “countess” to rescue thousands from the death grip of the S.S.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. The Polish people tried to defend themselves, but within only three weeks, the Nazis had successfully taken over.

They started systematically killing thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish Poles. The Nazis put some of the Jews in ghettos – including the Warsaw ghetto, which housed half a million Jews – and sent others, along with non-Jewish Poles, to concentration camps. Hitler believed that both populations were inferior to the German people, and he sought to eradicate them.

But in the face of evil, some brave souls stood up and fought for what was right. One of these people was Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg, who took on a new identity and saved 10,000 people from the Nazis.

Who Was Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg?
Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg was born into a Jewish family on May 1, 1915 in Galicia, Poland. Galicia had a large Jewish community; by 1910, there were 872,000 Jews, and they made up 10.9% of the total population of the region.

Josephine, who went by the name Janina Mehlberg, received a doctorate in 1938. She married a fellow student at the university and settled in Lwow, which was later change to Lvov, and became an accomplished mathematician.

When the Nazis invaded Poland, Janina and her husband had to think quickly. After they miraculously evaded several death camp roundups, they escaped to Lublin, where their family friend, Count Andrzej Skrzynski, bestowed new identities upon them: Count and Countess Suchodolska. With forged paperwork, they became Catholic aristocrats. Saving Thousands in the War

Even with their false identities, the “count” and “countess” couldn’t avoid the Nazis for long. The German SS soon took over Lublin, and Skrzynski recruited Janina to provide welfare services like food and medicine to those who were imprisoned at the Majdanek concentration camp, established in October of 1941. It was the headquarters of Aktion Reinhard, the SS operation that murdered over 1.7 million.

Jewish forced laborers helped to construct Majdanek, and in December of 1941, the Nazis rounded up more than 300 Jews in the streets of Lublin. Then, 150 of them were sent to the camp, where they became the first Jewish prisoners there. All in all, at least 63,000 Jews were murdered in Majdanek’s shooting pits and gas chambers.


Cyclists worldwide join global solidarity ride calling for release of hostages
The Israeli professional cycling team Israel – Premier Tech joined with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum and the Israeli Cycling Federation in organizing a mass solidarity ride on January 14.

The ride will mark the 100th day since the October 7 Hamas attacks and advocate for the return of more than 100 hostages still held in Gaza.

With encouragement from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, tens of thousands of cyclists are signed up for the ride and related events to be held simultaneously at the Velodrome in Tel Aviv and in several major cities across the globe.

In addition to cycling events planned for Barcelona, Paris, London, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Brussels and elsewhere, cyclists everywhere are being encouraged to go for a ride on January 14 with yellow ribbons tied to their bikes, and to upload photos of their rides to social media with the hashtag #RideToBringThemHomeNow.

At the Velodrome in Tel Aviv, 133 family members of the hostages and cyclists from the Israeli cycling community, representing each of the hostages, will encircle the cycling stadium.

Four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome has joined the campaign, calling on his millions of fans and the entire global cycling community to tie a yellow ribbon to their bikes on the 100th day of the kidnapping, and to dedicate their ride to calling for the release of the hostages.

“As a human being, as a father myself – I cannot stand idly by,” said Froome, who competes for Israel – Premier Tech.
The surprising resilence of a divided Israel amid the war in Gaza
Saul Singer Co-author of “The Genius of Israel” and “Start-Up Nation” discusses the resilience of a divided Israel amid the war in Gaza.


Their brother was murdered on October 7: They still showed up to reserve duty
The next report tells the story of Itay Nachmias, an IDF soldier, who despite not being a member of his local village's security team, insisted on throwing himself into combat to help protect his community on the morning of October 7th. This is also a story about Itay's father, who after hearing his son was killed, risked his own life to protect Itay's body from abduction. And lastly, this is a story about Itay's two older brothers, who volunteered for reserve duty right after the "Shiva" mourning period had ended, and now they tell the family's story of courage.




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