Thursday, January 18, 2024

01/18 Links Pt2: Progressive Judaism ‘without Israel’ is a tool for antisemites; JNF: War Proves Again Israel Must Rely Only on Itself; The 'Palestinianization' of international law

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Progressive Judaism ‘without Israel’ is a tool for antisemites
The conceit of the piece is similar to other articles published in the Times that seek to generate support for left-wing groups that are harshly critical of Israel, like J Street, or to legitimize anti-Zionist organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, which openly traffic in antisemitism as well as seek the elimination of the Jewish state.

To so-called “progressives,” like those who edit and report at the Times, the aftermath of the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust—an event that also set in motion a surge of antisemitism around the world, and especially, in the United States—is the perfect time to lend credence to the tiny minority of Jews who sympathize more with the perpetrators of those crimes than the victims. As former White House speechwriter David Frum, who is now among the most bitter opponents of former President Donald Trump and pro-Israel Republicans, aptly put it, “On Day 100, the NYT features a closely reported profile of the Wicked Son from the Passover Seder. “What does all this mean to you?”

Anti-Zionists quoted in the piece are searching for a way to express their discontent not merely with Israel but with the entire concept of Jews possessing the power to defend themselves. Most prominent among them is Shaul Magid, a professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, who touts himself as a champion of “diasporism.”

According to the Times, diasporism is a belief “that Jews must embrace marginality and a certain estrangement from Israel the country, and perhaps even Israel the place.” And it argues that this is a worldview that has deep roots in Jewish history.

There have been movements that specifically rejected Zionism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the Socialists of the Bundist movement and the authors of Reform Judaism’s 1885 Pittsburgh Platform. But the attempt to link Magid’s thoughts—and those of the clique of anti-Zionists who write for the extremist left-wing publication Jewish Currents cited in the article that put forward a Marxist argument against Israel’s existence—to either of those movements is both deeply dishonest and drenched in hatred for Israel and its Jews.

Today’s “diasporists” share Magid’s belief in Jewish “marginality.”

They are appalled by the reality of Jews living fully Jewish lives, whether religious or secular, Ashkenazi or Mizrachi, right-wing or left-wing in a Jewish state where its citizens speak Hebrew and live by the Jewish calendar in their people’s ancient homeland. To them, Jewish powerlessness—the root cause of millennia of persecution and martyrdom that culminated in the Holocaust—is a good thing since it relieves Jews of the responsibility to govern or protect themselves. In this way, they can bask in the faux righteousness of victimhood, absolved of any guilt that comes from the difficult and complicated task of survival in a hostile world.

This is deeply wrong on several levels.

Those who claim that support for Jewish life and sovereignty in the land of Israel is marginal to Judaism—and those who do make that argument are usually antisemitic non-Jews—are betraying their abysmal ignorance. Israel is integral to Jewish observance, prayer and its most profound beliefs, as well as to the history of the Jews. For two millennia, Jews prayed every day for their lost homeland, for the rains to come in season there, and for the complete rebuilding of Jewish life and worship there. Nor was there ever any time in history since the Roman expulsion when Jews were completely absent from it despite the hardships, humiliations and persecutions exacted by various foreign conquerors, of whom the Arabs were only relative latecomers.
Top JNF Official: War Proves Again Israel Must Rely Only on Itself
The war against Hamas in Gaza and the subsequent wave of antisemitism around the world has demonstrated “very clearly” that Israel must rely only on itself and that Diaspora Jews must start a serious debate about the future of their communities, Samuel Hayek, the Israeli-born British chairman of JNF-UK, told The Algemeiner during a visit to Israel.

Hayek, who was visiting some of the southern Israeli communities that were massacred on October 7, said that the existence of Jewish life in the diaspora was of “tremendous strategic importance” to Israel.

But pointing to the UK in particular, Hayek said the Jewish community must begin addressing “hard questions” about its future.

“The most important thing is to create a forum that debates different aspects on Jewish life in the UK,” he said. “We need to ask ourselves, do we want to continue to live in fear?”

“Do we want to live in a place where we need to hide Jewish symbols? Do we want to where people drive through neighborhoods shouting for the destruction of Israel and calling for the rape and murder of Jews with megaphone?” he said, referencing a 2021 antisemitic incident.

Antisemitism in the UK has soared since the Oct. 7 atrocities. Protests occurring most weekends in London have drawn vast crowds, sometimes numbering in the hundreds of thousands, where people have been arrested for either chanting or displaying antisemitic slogans, or for expressing support for Hamas, proscribed as a terrorist organization in the UK.

“I urge everyone to consider the consequences of what we’ve seen in the streets of London, the magnitude of which took nearly everyone by surprise,” he said.

“If we don’t want to live this kind of life, and we don’t see prospects getting better, we need to make a decision about what kind of steps to take,” Hayek went on. He underscored that his views were expressed not in his capacity as the leader of JNF-UK, but rather as a “very worried Jew.”
Time for Honesty
Time to be brutally honest. The Jewish people are going through the most heartrending, horrific time in modern history. We were attacked unimaginably, followed by millions across the world cheering on our attackers before we had time to catch our breath and bury our dead. At the same time, we are privileged to be part of a Jewish awakening the likes of which we’ve never seen.

The Jewish nation has been inextricably linked to the Land of Israel for thousands of years. Our ancestors prayed the same words every day that Jews all over the world say today, and that prayer is filled with yearning to return to Israel and live as Jews where our forefathers walked and breathed. As a teenager, when I visited Israel for the first time, I felt the strongest pull I’ve ever felt in my life. Everything I learned, everything I prayed for came to life when I stepped off the plane at Ben Gurion Airport and felt the ground, the air, and looked at the cloudless and stunning blue sky. During that short two-week trip, I drank in every moment of being in Israel and even tried to convince my parents to lose my passport and let me stay (I was 14. They said no.)

From the moment I returned to the US after that trip, my heart had a huge, Israel-shaped hole in it. I prayed as I’d never prayed in my life that I would merit to return to Israel as soon as possible and join my nation in our incredible Land. During the three long remaining years of my childhood in the US, not a day went by when I didn’t think about, talk about, and learn about Israel. I have a slightly obsessive personality, as long-time readers may have noticed, and my full attention was turned towards Israel.

I could not understand the mindset of Jews in the US who had no intention of moving to Israel. It simply didn’t make sense to me. G-d had performed an open miracle in 1948, when He softened the hearts of the members of the UN who voted for the Jews to be given the right to officially govern our own Land, a Land that had never been devoid of Jews no matter who was in charge in previous eras. To me, it seemed like a slap in the face of G-d to reject this incredible gift and say “no thanks, I’d rather stay abroad”.

With endless thanks to G-d and my parents, we all made Aliyah (moved to Israel) once I finished high school. I woke up every day to a stunning view of Jerusalem that first year, and it was an actual dream that had come true.


Seth Mandel: Salvaging ‘Holocaust Education’
Dayan then said something interesting. Disputing the idea that museums such as Yad Vashem have an obligation to speak out on world affairs, Dayan insisted that the “six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust are entitled to an institution that deals with them and only them.”

In this, Dayan is right—and he enters an ongoing debate within the Jewish community about the failure of Holocaust education, specifically the way it has contributed to universalizing the Holocaust at the expense of the actual victims of the historical crime.

This has been a growing concern since Oct. 7, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust itself. As I noted in November, Holocaust museums around the country have shown no hesitation in throwing their names and institutions behind public “awareness” campaigns about the death of George Floyd or the plight of migrants at the southern border, but they were silent (or nearly so) about Oct. 7. It was an example of a worldview that modern Holocaust museums and education centers have fallen prey to: Everything is the Holocaust except for the Holocaust.

Then in December, New Yorker writer Masha Gessen took aim at the city of Berlin’s refusal to universalize Jewish suffering and turn its Holocaust centers’ attention to the Palestinians. Equal parts grotesque and illiterate, Gessen’s piece nonetheless fit within the trendy mainstream copycat culture of intentionally minimizing Jewish pain and tragedy in order to inflate the perception of Jewish criminality.

Where that path leads is directly to The Hague, where the UN court of justice (sic) currently has Israel on trial for genocide.

But how much of that path was paved by the mistaken assumptions of Holocaust museums? That is a difficult question to answer precisely, but it is not difficult to assess that these centers are responsible for some of it, and some is too much. The universalizing of the Holocaust by Holocaust education centers was pursued in the name of maintaining relevance, but it has only resulted in diluting the relevance of the Holocaust by commonizing it and disentangling it from its connection to its actual victims.

Is there a path back from here? Perhaps Dani Dayan’s approach is the way. Although his criticism of Erdan veered into the unfair—Jews should be able to talk about the Holocaust when their enemies explicitly aim to carry out its sequel—a course correction toward particularism might be the only chance we have to salvage what is known as “Holocaust education.”
House Republicans demand testimony from head of UNRWA over Hamas aid allegations
House Republicans are demanding testimony from the head of a United Nations agency that allegedly aids Hamas with “food, fuel and supplies” meant for humanitarian relief amid the terror group’s war against Israel.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Commissioner-General on Monday asking about “concerning reports” that his agency is funneling “hundreds of millions of dollars” to Hamas and other foreign terrorist organizations.

“Our constituents are horrified that their taxpayer dollars may have, through UNRWA failures, supported Hamas terrorists,” the panel’s chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), and members Brian Mast (R-Fla.), Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) wrote.

“Therefore, we request that you appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to answer our questions and address the concerns of the American people. We ask that you indicate your willingness and availability to appear before the Committee by no later than January 24th, 2024.”

As the single-largest donor to the humanitarian agency, the Biden administration has faced serious questions about the use of the funds after Hamas’ invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, when 1,200 people — including 33 US citizens — were killed.

The State Department contributed roughly $344 million to UNRWA in 2022 under President Biden after the Trump administration cut off its funding in 2018, referring to it as “irredeemably flawed.”

In total, his administration has provided more than $730 million in US taxpayer money to the organization since January 2021, which provides assistance in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Biden, 81, also announced another tranche of $100 million in aid to UNRWA last October.

“The days of UNWRA underwriting Palestinian grievance and abetting the diversion of humanitarian aid to terrorist support are over,” Issa told The Post in a statement Tuesday.

“We now know that UNWRA is riddled with terrorist sympathizers, their facilities have stored rockets to use against civilians and their schools have relentlessly taught hatred of the Israeli people.”


UN: No indication Hamas was building elaborate tunnel system
Despite the presence of a Hamas terror tunnel system in the Gaza Strip now thought to be larger in scale than the London Underground, the United Nations insists it had no idea the tunnels were being built.

Asked on Wednesday whether, given the United Nations’ sizable presence in Gaza via a variety of agencies, there had been any indication to the global body that tunnels were being constructed underground, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, “No is clearly the answer for that.”

Spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that “it seems to me that all this infrastructure was built in a highly secretive way.”

However, officials from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) sounded the alarm on the presence of tunnels under U.N. facilities twice in 2017, and again in 2021 and 2022.

UNRWA alone has 13,000 employees in more than 300 facilities across Gaza. At least a dozen other U.N. agencies operate in Gaza. It has been well-documented that many U.N. employees in Gaza have professional and personal ties to Hamas.

Still, Dujarric insisted that the United Nations was unaware of the sophisticated labyrinth of tunnels being dug and fortified throughout Gaza.

“I mean, just to see it as an observer, to think that the U.N. had any understanding of what was … any information about those operations, I think, is: No is clearly the answer for that,” he said.


The 'Palestinianization' of international law
Numerous principles of International Humanitarian Law – the Laws of Armed Conflict – have been twisted, to cast Israel as a war criminal. From the principle of distinction to necessary precautions in attacks, to proportionality, to the means and methods of war – the standards are raised when it comes to Israel. Furthermore, even basic notions of international law, such as the definition of a “state,” have been reformulated to fit into the Palestinized paradigm.

But the allegation of genocide is the final nail in the coffin.

The attribution of “the crime of all crimes” to Israel, which as its counsel rightly argued before the ICJ – was the victim of genocidal acts on October 7 and certainly not the perpetrator, completes the metamorphosis of international law. With the diminution of the primacy of genocide, the escalation has reached a climax: the emergence of a new, Palestinized international law.

Some may think this is solely Israel’s problem. That the double standard will stop there. I disagree.

Even if the ICJ rules in Israel’s favor, nothing is sacred anymore. A growing list of countries have announced their support for South Africa’s argument. In the balance between politics and principles, politics prevails. Rest assured, some ICJ judges – even if in the minority – will rework the concept of genocide to “accommodate” at least some of Israel’s actions. Other countries will soon need to meet these new criteria.

With the vulgarization of the crime of genocide, the blunt disrespect to what it really represents, an entire framework of laws (and crimes) built on the ashes of Auschwitz will lose its integrity, its internal hierarchy, and its relevance. It took almost 80 years for the humanitarian achievements that followed the atrocities of World War II to descend to petty politics, to be “Palestinized” and trivialized.

The case before the ICJ is not about genocide, it’s about the future of international law.
Law, Politics, and Antisemitism
In his address to the ICJ, Dr. Tal Becker, the Israeli Foreign Ministry Legal Advisor and my colleague at the Hartman Institute, noted that “we live at a time when words are cheap.” He went on to observe that “in an age of social media and identity politics, the temptation to reach for the most outrageous term, to vilify and demonize, has become, for many, irresistible. But if there is a place where words should still matter, where truth should still matter, it is surely a court of law.”

The term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer who fled to the US after Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. Lemkin used the term to refer to the heinous campaign by Nazi Germany to exterminate Jews in the Holocaust. After World War II, Lemkin committed his life to campaigning for legislation enshrining the Genocide Convention in order to prevent the rise of “future Hitlers.”

To be clear, Israel is not without its flaws. Like every country involved in armed conflicts, it has undoubtedly committed crimes in its decades-long conflict with the Palestinians. And in this war the loss of innocent Palestinian lives is truly heartbreaking. But the claim that Israel is committing genocide is not only factually incorrect but also dangerous. The weaponization of Jews’ historic legal remedy – the Genocide Convention – against the Jewish State is a reminder of dark days in the world’s history: days in which Jews would be blamed for society’s worst crimes when they were in fact its victims.

In a court of law truth should matter, and from a legal perspective Israel’s case is ironclad. However, this legal case is also clad with politics and tinged by antisemitism. Unlike most of the world’s democracies, South Africa has refrained from identifying Hamas as a terrorist organization. The US, Canada, England, and France have stated their outrage at South Africa’s complaint, and in a historic move, Germany declared that it will intervene with the legal procedures as a third party in support of Israel. But with the politicization of today’s international institutions, it is unclear whether Israel will receive a just trial.

On October 7th, Hamas engaged in the systematic rape, torture, and slaughter of Jews, making it the single deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. But in a remarkable act of blaming the victim, the international institutions of justice are now busy – not trying the offender, but standing in judgment of justifiable steps Israel has taken in self-defense.
Clifford D. May: South Africa and other antisemitic genocidaires accuse Israel of genocide
In multiple wars, the Israel Defense Forces have done more to avoid civilian casualties than any other army in the world ever has. In Gaza, the IDF has warned Palestinian civilians where it plans to fight, sending 7.2 million leaflets, 13.7 million texts, and making 15 million phone calls so far to help noncombatants avoid being used by Hamas as human shields.

So, to accuse the Israelis of genocide is a lie and a blood libel.

By contrast, Hamas is proudly genocidal. The Hamas charter declares that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

Hamas instructs Muslims to “fight Jews and kill them.”

Yet South Africa isn’t asking the International Court of Justice to order Hamas to release the more than 130 hostages it is now torturing in its tunnels and lay down its weapons.

No, South Africa — joined by other anti-Israeli and antisemitic governments — wants the court to order Israelis to cease defending themselves so Hamas can deliver on its promise to repeat the atrocities of Oct. 7 — the worst assault on Jews since the Holocaust — “again and again.”

This is hardly the first time Israel’s enemies have combined lawfare with warfare.

Twenty years ago next month, the Palestinian Authority demanded that the court condemn Israel’s construction of security barriers — the accusers called them “apartheid walls” and “Holocaust walls” — to prevent terrorists from infiltrating Israel from the West Bank.

Hamas is, of course, a client of Iran, whose rulers have been threatening and inciting genocide against Israel for 45 years.

Under the Genocide Convention, doing so is “a crime in and of itself,” as often noted by Irwin Cotler, the renowned Canadian human rights attorney. But Tehran hasn’t had to defend itself in The Hague.

Another of Iran’s proxies, Lebanon-based Hezbollah, has fired 2,000 missiles since Oct. 8 at Israel’s northern communities, killing Israeli civilians and forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes.

“If all the Jews gathered in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide,” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has said. “It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth.”

Can genocidal intent be clearer than that?
Behind-the-scenes: How Israel prepared for the ICJ Gaza genocide hearing
Even the logistics were challenging, deciding who would work on the different issues in Israel, the shorter list of who would fly to The Hague to attend the hearings in person, and finally, who would speak about which issue, the Post has learned.

In all, dozens of officials – legal, diplomatic, and from the political echelon – worked on the issue, including the Justice Ministry, Foreign Ministry, IDF International Law Division, Defense Ministry, National Security Council, and key cabinet ministers.

Arranging to transport all of the physical documents and multimedia files on very short notice was an additional challenge.

Only afterward did the team realize that all four major news channels broadcast all the proceedings, and the views were there to match.

No one expected that level of attention, especially for proceedings in English during the one day off that Israelis get – Friday. They were happy with the turnout. Many of their friends, even distant contacts, encouraged them to keep their heads up during this challenging time.

The team had a hard time reading the judges’ facial expressions for any hints about how they might rule.

Unlike Israeli and American judges who ask aggressive questions that often hint at which direction they are leaning to, the ICJ judges said little and kept mostly poker faces.

On a positive note, the team believed that the judges appeared very attentive. This was especially true when Israel listed the many facts that the judges had not previously known – as opposed to arguments about jurisdiction, which they already were more familiar with.
MEMRI: South Africa's Diplomatic Campaign Against Israel – In Service Of Hamas And In Cooperation With Hamas' Patron, Qatar
On December 29, 2023, South Africa instituted proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alleging that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. In addition, South Africa, along with Bangladesh, Bolivia, the Comoro Islands and Djibouti, filed a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza.

These measures by South Africa are in line with the fact that it maintains close relations with Hamas, despite the latter's recognition as a terrorist organization by many countries, and also cooperates with Hamas' patron, the state of Qatar. South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party not only refrained from condemning Hamas' October 7 attack but even issued a statement calling the attack an "unsurprising" response to "the brutality of the settler Israeli apartheid regime."

Furthermore, in the three months since the attack, South Africa has maintained ongoing contacts with Hamas and its patron Qatar. A Hamas delegation recently visited South Africa and hailed this country's "role in supporting the Palestinian struggle."[1] Moreover, in November 2023 South African President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa made his first state visit to Qatar and met with the Qatari Emir, Tamim bin Hamad Aal Thani. The two discussed the Gaza Strip and the economic cooperation between their two countries.

This report reviews South Africa's ties with Hamas and the recent strengthening of its diplomatic relations with Qatar.

South Africa's diplomatic campaign against Israel reflects the political alliance between its ruling ANC party and Hamas, an alliance that was formed several years ago is occasionally accompanied by a deliberate undermining of the Palestinian Authority's status. Since founding its political bureau in 1991, Hamas has made a point of developing its relations with South Africa, while presenting its fight against Israel as a struggle against racism and apartheid, which South Africa shares. The former head of Hamas' political bureau, Moussa Abu Marzouq, states in his biography[2] that the movement's efforts to strengthen its relations with South Africa began in 1995, when it formed a special committee for this issue in Sudan. The committee worked to form ties with South African diplomats in the Middle East, and also established organizations affiliated with Hamas in South Africa, such as the Islamic Al-Aqsa organization[3] and the Middle East Studies Center,[4] in order to develop relations with Muslims in this country.

The relations grew stronger following an October 2010 meeting in Damascus between Khaled Mash'al, then head of Hamas' political bureau, and South Africa's deputy president at the time, Kgalema Motlanthe. Abu Marzouq states that this meeting paved the way to forming official relations with South Africa's ruling party, the ANC.[5]

The relations between Hamas and South Africa reached their peak in October 2015, when a Hamas delegation headed by Mash'al made an official visit to the country at the invitation of the ANC. The head of the party at the time, then-President Jacob Zuma, adopted a policy of openness towards Hamas despite the position of numerous countries that regard it as a terror organization.[6] The three-day visit included a series of meetings with President Zuma, government officials and ANC members, and the party also signed a memorandum of understandings with Hamas pledging to "support its struggle for the liberation of Palestine." Addressing ANC members, Mash'al stressed that the intifada and the resistance would continue until freedom was achieved and the land belonged to Palestine and its people.[7]


Lahav Harkov: The Jewish World Must Reject DEI
Jewish organizations and institutions, Israeli government bodies and civil society groups, and all opponents of antisemitism must reject DEI. There are a number of concrete steps that can be taken towards dismantling DEI.

- You can’t beat DEI with DEI: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” This quote from black, lesbian, and feminist writer Audre Lorde about overthrowing a “racist patriarch” is closely associated with DEI ideology — but it is a helpful idea to remember for those who oppose it.
Inserting the consideration of antisemitism into an essentialist, illiberal ideology is doomed to fail because Jews do not fit into its simplistic boxes. Such an effort continues to legitimize the very ideas through which antisemitism has been cultivated on many quarters of the Left. Caution must be taken not to use the language of DEI and the ideology undergirding it.
It is fine to fight antisemitism by pointing out the truth, that Jews are not “white” by the American or European idea of the word, and are indigenous to Israel. It is fine to take pride in diversity and the success of members of minority groups in Israeli society. And it is great for Jews of different backgrounds to be proud of where their families came from and to educate others about it. However, to speak about Ethiopian or Mizrahi Jews as though they are somehow more legitimate than their Ashkenazi counterparts ultimately lends credence to false narratives and does more damage than good.

- Focus on instilling pride in Jewish identity on its own terms: Jews are not only a nation and not only a religion and not only white or only “people of color.” Jews are Jews, and Jews are one People. The unique nature of Jewish identity should be a source of pride. Jewish institutions and organizations do not have to contort themselves into new shapes to fit the boxes promoted by ideologies like DEI. When fighting antisemitism, this message and approach must be made a priority.

- Disengage and divest from DEI: Beyond the messages and words used, organizations, officials, activists, donors and others should not associate themselves with DEI and institutions that use it, just as any fair-minded person would not intentionally associate him or herself with racism.
When Jewish organizations look for partners and when the government looks for service providers, they should be clear that DEI principles cannot in any way be part of the process.
Jewish philanthropists and foundations should divest from organizations that promote DEI or put it into effect – venture capitalist Bill Ackman has been a prominent example of this policy.

- Rejecting DEI must not mean an end to Black-Jewish engagement: Finally, attempts to engage positively with the African-American community should continue, and Jewish communal organizations who pride themselves on fighting racism should continue to do so.
The American Jewish community has a history of partnering with African-Americans to fight racism. The principled belief that discrimination against one group is an opening for injustice against all, which has long animated Jewish-Black cooperation, is also a good reason to dump DEI.
What should be clear is that this activism and cooperation are meant to advance what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “a nation where [children] will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” There are plenty of African-American organizations, activists, writers and thinkers who believe this, including ones who provide alternatives to the usual DEI training.
First Plagiarism, Now Lying: What’s Happening to America’s Universities?
Here’s another good reason not to plunk down $126,584 (that’s the total for four years of tuition unless it goes up between now and 2027) to send your kid to Rutgers. Long considered to be one of America’s premier universities, the beloved alma mater of Mr. Magoo is now a sinkhole of woke indoctrination, with academic standards sinking lower than Old Joe Biden’s ethics. A professor at Rutgers Law School has lied openly in an academic paper and has refused to back down, knowing that she will face no consequences from an administration that is as corrupt and compromised as she is.

In this, of course, Rutgers is like virtually every other university in America today. First, there was the remarkable public self-immolation of the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania during a congressional hearing; then Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, was forced to resign after her repeated plagiarism was revealed, although she claimed that her resignation was due to “personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” and many in the academic establishment and elsewhere bought her nonsense.

These incidents, however, were just the latest and highest-profile manifestations of an intellectual and spiritual rot that is everywhere. One small example of it came in a recent pseudo-scholarly study from Rutgers University Law School’s Center for Security, Race, and Rights, entitled “Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes In the Palestine–Israel Discourse.”

This “study” is 65 pages of Marxist agitprop, woke psychobabble, and pure fantasy, all thrown together in a thick propaganda stew that’s designed to show “how race and racism infect foreign policy and the treatment of minority communities who espouse unpopular views or dissent from the political orthodoxy, including the defense of human rights for all.” If the authors of this twaddle, Mitchell Plitnick, President of ReThinking Foreign Policy, and Sahar Aziz, Distinguished Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers Law School, were remotely honest, they would say that “race and racism” affect the treatment of minority communities by getting them coddled, treated with kid gloves, and accorded all manner of special perks.
Extremism experts think Joe Rogan is more dangerous than Hamas
The influence of this funding from the Gulf, both old and new, is now deeply rooted in Western academia. Its crowning achievement has been to take ideas formed in Islamist circles and push them into the mainstream, via universities.

In 1998, I attended a three-day meeting organised by students associated with the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS). One of the sessions focussed on how British Muslims could increase their influence in British politics, by using and popularising the idea of ‘Islamophobia’. Fast forward to today, and there is an entire industry, much of it in and around academia, promoting the idea that Muslims are uniquely victimised in Western society – a key component of the Islamist victimhood narrative.

Far too little attention has been paid to academics’ embrace of such narratives, especially within the very departments tasked with impartially analysing Islamism. One of the chief effects of Islamist influence activities is a tendency to only see the most extreme examples of violent Islamism as a problem, rather than the ideology which fuels them.

Furthermore, those who do explore and criticise ‘non-violent’ Islamism are often labelled as ‘Islamophobes’ for doing so. Take Georgetown University’s ‘Bridge’ initiative, an ultimately Saudi-funded research project on Islamophobia. On its website, Bridge features an ever-expanding list of ‘fact sheets’ profiling ‘Islamophobes’. Among them are Muslim critics of Islamism, like the journalist Asra Nomani, ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, highly respected academic analysts of Islamism like Lorenzo Vidino and former Democrats like Tulsi Gabbard. These figures are placed alongside neo-Nazi groups and individuals like Stormfront Downunder, David Lane and James Mason. Bridge has effectively put together a blacklist of critics of ‘non-violent’ Islamism, and demonised them by association with actual neo-Nazis.

This is where we are now. A combination of the identitarianism of left-leaning academics and funding from the Gulf has served to whitewash Islamism and smear its critics. It means that a right-wing journalist with a provocative turn of phrase, or a podcaster-comic with a perennially open mind, can be deemed a threat in need of suppression. Meanwhile, the murderous anti-Semites of Hamas can be regarded as freedom fighters. It seems that too many in academia have completely lost the plot.
Let the Haters Hate
Israel itself is a utopia personified. Political Zionism came to life a few decades after the publication of Marx’s Communist Manifesto. But if Soviet socialism failed spectacularly, Zionism flourishes. Israel is a rare example of a successful liberationist post-colonial enterprise — and of the triumph of an idea over the circumstance.

The Soviet Union, the nation that fathered political antizionism at the height of the Cold War, was deeply hostile to religion. In the Soviet eyes, faith in paradise was an opiate for the masses. Even if the USSR was ideologically committed to building heaven on Earth, it no longer described it in quasi-religious language. It makes sense that to them, Zion, a focal point of the Jewish religion, had negative connotations.

The Western communists may feel the same, but why would devout Muslims, who constitute the core of the world’s antizionist movement, object to eternal life in the heavens? The same goes for the right-wing religious antisemites.

Antisemite is a cerebral term for Jew-hate adopted in late 19th century Germany to give it a scientific luster — in racist eyes, Jews were believed to be inferior to the Aryans. It superseded the fragile medieval rhetoric of hate, and decades later, the Nazis proudly embraced the label.

If to be an antisemite means merely to hate God’s people, to be an antizionist implies the hate of Zion or God himself in his resting place. The word antizionist, although not for the lack of trying, might not have the same bloody history as antisemite, but it is objectively more shrill.

Antizionist self-identification is not an improvement on antisemite. We don’t need to prove that antizionism is antisemitism to convince the world that today’s Jew-hating coalition has barbaric ambitions — the fact that our enemies are cry-bullying racial supremacy freaks attempting ethnic cleansing speaks for itself.

Let the fragile little darlings have the dignity of choosing the name for their movement — Antizionism. It’s an awful name. Let’s use it — and use it frequently.

I am one of the writers who now spells antizionism without the hyphen, just like antisemitism because the word doesn’t confer reasoned opposition to Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land, but an unhealthy obsession.
New York Galleries Pasted with Posters Urging Their Owners to ‘Stop Working with Zionists’
Last week, as many New York galleries opened their first exhibitions of the season, multiple commercial art spaces in Chinatown were pasted with anti-Zionist messages.

Among them were two galleries, Maxwell Graham and 56 Henry, that are both well-regarded in New York. The former had just inaugurated its first show of 2024 on Friday. Images of the posters were posted to Instagram on Sunday by Writers Against the War on Gaza, which said it did not paste the messages.

The posters pasted to both galleries’ windows seemed to refer to both “gentrifying Chinatown” and “colonizing Palestine,” and seemed to accuse these businesses of being “complicit in genocide.” “STOP SELLING TO ZIONISTS,” read one on Maxwell Graham’s windows, a sentiment that was reiterated in another pasted to the entrance to 56 Henry.

A representative for Maxwell Graham did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for 56 Henry declined to comment.

These galleries were not the only ones targeted this month. Lévy Gorvy Dayan, which was previously pasted with a different set of messages in December, also appears to be the subject of a new campaign, with posters denouncing its owners appearing on the buildings of art spaces in Chelsea and in at least on Manhattan subway station.

In October, that Upper East Side gallery’s founders—Dominique Lévy, Brett Gorvy, and Amalia Dayan—publicly spoke out against a pro-Palestine open letter that ran in Artforum and was signed by thousands of artists. In a response statement also published by Artforum, they condemned the initial letter for “its one-sided view” while denouncing “all forms of violence in Israel and Gaza.” Days after their statement was published, Artforum editor David Velasco was fired. (Artforum’s parent company is Penske Media Corporation, which also owns ARTnews and Art in America.)
Anti-Semitism Disguised As Defending Palestinians
Just as my Arab classmates rallied behind Saddam Hussein in the face of his transgressions, we are witnessing a similar phenomenon on a global scale. Protesters, driven by their convictions or misled, are prioritizing their cause above all else, even at the expense of perpetuating hatred against an entire community. This parallels the selective amnesia displayed by my classmates, who chose to ignore Saddam's actions in favor of his defiance against the United States.

It is essential to call out and condemn these actions unequivocally. Combating anti-Semitism should be a collective effort, irrespective of one's stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We must recognize that anti-Semitism, like any form of hatred, erodes the moral fabric of society, leading to violence, discrimination, and division.

Education and dialogue are crucial to addressing this issue effectively. People should be encouraged to engage in respectful conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, acknowledging its complexities and seeking peaceful solutions. It is essential to recognize that specific Quranic verses, such as those related to the Battle of Khaybar, contain elements of "hate speech." Muslims must embrace the imperative of letting go of grievances that have persisted for centuries, particularly those stemming from historical conflicts involving Prophet Mohammad and Jewish tribes.

Indeed, it is disconcerting that certain individuals find it acceptable to chant "from the river to the sea." Millions of dollars in Qatari aid flew into Gaza to enhance its inhabitants' lives. Regrettably, these funds were misappropriated by Hamas, who diverted resources toward tunnel construction, acts of aggression against Israel, and the abduction of innocent civilians. This support for terrorist entities must be brought to an end, fostering an environment conducive to peace and stability.

It is disheartening to see the legacy of hatred and tribal loyalty repeating itself in today's world, with anti-Semitic protests cloaked as support for Gaza. It is incumbent upon all of us to denounce anti-Semitism and ensure that the pursuit of justice for any group does not come at the expense of fostering hatred towards another.
How the Media Reported on Two Terrorists Who Worked as Journalists
But once the IDF provided its documentary evidence of the terrorist roles of Hamza Al-Hamdouh and Mustaf Thuraya, both the Times and the Post ought to have corrected their previous stories in light of this new information. Instead of doing so, they chose to blame the IDF for not “immediately responding” to requests for comment, as if that somehow meant that the IDF had lost its right to be heard later, after it had conducted its usual thorough investigation, based on the documents that the soldiers found, of the terror links of both “journalists.” This is, of course, unconscionable nonsense.

Indeed, after the IDF announced that the son had been an Islamic Jihad terrorist, the writers could have discovered that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, albeit in a different sense: Before he became a journalist, the father had been imprisoned in Israel for terrorist activity. According to an Israeli security source, he was affiliated with Islamic Jihad.

But the Washington Post story, and that of The New York Times, were not updated.

The same applies to CNN, ABC News, BBC, and many others. They echoed the tragic human angle or Al-Jazeera’s claims but failed to update their stories or publish new ones when the new information came to light….

In other words, all of those major sources of news — the giants of journalism — stuck with their original misleading story about innocent “journalists” being killed, and refused to publish a correction, based on documents made public by the IDF, that identified Thuraya as a member of Hamas and Dahdouh as a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The two main news agencies AP and Reuters, the major broadcasters BBC, CNN, and ABC News, and the two most important American newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, all failed to correct their initial accounts about the deaths of the “journalists” Thuraya and Hamdouh. None of them reported on the documentary evidence provided by the IDF about these two terrorists who, incidentally, were also working as freelance journalists.

The question is why? Alas, we all know the answer to that.
Stella Escobedo: Mainstream Media Thinks Israeli and Jewish Lives Don't Matter
Escobedo, who immigrated to the United States as a Jewish child refugee from the former Soviet Union, says DEI has been destroying journalism, and the often-distorted coverage of the attacks on Israel and the war against Hamas is only making this the more apparent. The complete disregard for the truth is, she says, fueled by ignorance of the goals of Islamist terrorists. This applies not just to what is happening in the Middle East but also to the antisemitic demonstrations in which people are chanting for Israel’s destruction and genocide of Jews. Unprepared journalists are, she says, not asking the right questions because they remain as ignorant as the protesters.

“DEI considers Israel the white oppressors and the Palestinians as the brown and black people,” says Escobedo. “I mean, have you been to Israel? Do you know? Have you seen Ethiopian Jews? It’s mind-boggling. And then you have all of these celebrities now jumping on board who all of a sudden look at Israel as the white oppressor. It’s dangerous and it’s very scary, and the media plays a big role in shaping the way we think.”


How Israelis Lost Empathy for Palestinians
The Oct. 7 massacre and the war that followed undermined many basic assumptions that prevailed in Israel: it became clear that those who were not considered an existential threat to the state caused one of the most serious atrocities. Until Oct. 7, there was a perception among some Israelis that the majority of Palestinians in Gaza are different from Hamas, which controls them through fear and oppression, and that they share a universal human longing for a good life. This led to the assumption that by improving their situation it would be possible to ensure security stability.

The horrors of Oct. 7 shattered these perceptions. Thousands of the Gazan public took an active part in the massacres, kidnappings, rape and looting, and participated in the victory celebrations that included abuse of the kidnapped and the bodies of Israelis. The testimonies of survivors and hostages describe teenagers who participated in the war crimes, women who had held hostages, and bargaining by civilians with Hamas members for the sale of Israeli captives.

In addition, the reality revealed by the IDF in Gaza showed the presence of weapons, tunnel shafts and rocket launchers in many homes, embodying the merger of the civilian and military realms into a single entity whose focus is jihad against Israel. Israelis understand that the broad Gazan public sympathizes with Hamas. It is therefore not surprising that the long-standing distinction made by Israelis between the Gazan public and Hamas, let alone the empathy expressed for their suffering in the past, have greatly diminished.

Israelis are required to recognize that there is a profound cultural difference between the two communities when it comes to morality, truth, acceptance of the "other" and the value of human life. For change to occur, it would only come from within Palestinian society. In the meantime, Israel must establish a buffer between the two communities in a way that will not compromise its security.


The Gazans Want to Take Our Place
Tomer Tzaban is a former undercover officer who fought in the Shimshon unit in Gaza in the 1990s. He described how on one of his missions, "I saw the terrorists interrogating a collaborator, and in the end stabbing and killing him. What changed my understanding of them was what happened next: they mutilated him and they cut off his legs, hands, and genitals. They took a sadistic pleasure that I couldn't understand. This was the first time I realized that they were not like us in any way. I realized that we had failed to understand something very fundamental about them, so what we saw and heard on Oct. 7, unfortunately, didn't surprise me."

"Many people are willing to ignore the truth; they fall for the illusion that there is a future for us with these people. We insist on finding something, which in my experience doesn't exist....There is a people here that wants to take our place. We have to understand that."

"The most important thing is the images coming out of Gaza. The Middle East understands the language of power and the destruction in Gaza resonates in the Arab world. Even those countries that want to make peace with us - the Saudis, the Emiratis - want to know that they are forming a defense alliance with a strong country. So what happens in Gaza is clearly heard and seen in Lebanon." Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah "doesn't want Lebanon to be left in ruins, and that gives us leverage over him."
The Abraham Accords Are Not Dead
Beyond summitry, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also deftly channeled pro-Palestinian sentiment into relief efforts and prayers. And, “in private,” reported The Economist Middle East correspondent Gregg Carlstrom, the UAE leadership is “enthusiastic about the idea of toppling Hamas.” Hamas is, after all, partnered with their main geopolitical foe (Iran) and an offshoot of their main ideological foe (the Muslim Brotherhood).

All that reflects the alignment of interests that stands at the heart of the Abraham Accords. The Israelis and the conservative monarchies share three fears. First, they fear Iran and its network of proxies and partners around the region. Second, they fear Islamist agitation in the region—not only violent jihadism, but also brands of Islamism that give jihadism running room or that threaten to change the regional order. Third, they fear that the United States will abandon them or drift toward neutrality in their rivalry with Iran. The Abraham Accords, for them, respond to all three challenges by deepening ties in a US-backed, anti-Islamist, anti-Iranian partnership.

On the American side, there are several reasons why the Accords are worth pursuing. The deals are a clear moral win—they move to heal a division among nations that need not be divided. Some have argued that the deals are a chance to contain Chinese influence in the region, although it is far from clear that this will be impactful. (The Cold War is rich with stories of states playing the superpowers off one another.) But, the most important strategic implication of the Accords is the cementing of a local anti-Iranian bloc, further enabling drawdowns of American forces in the Gulf. The Biden administration’s overtures to Saudi Arabia had not been compatible with reducing American troop commitments, however, since they were offering the Kingdom a permanent defense guarantee. Biden would be wise to use this pause in Abraham Accords diplomacy to shift toward something more flexible. Come peace, diplomacy is back on.

By no means should any of this be read to imply that Palestine is not a serious obstacle for the Abraham Accords. The Saudis may be moving toward participation in a post-Hamas Gazan order in return for a genuine pathway to a two-state solution, but this can only happen under a different Israeli governing coalition. And a post-Abraham Accords Saudi Arabia would still care deeply about the Palestinian cause. Even with a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine would have serious frictions and popular Arab and Muslim sympathies would still be with the Palestinians.

That sympathy appears to be behind, for instance, the rapid Saudi, Emirati, and Bahraini condemnations of the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital explosion as an Israeli attack. Their quick reaction put them on the wrong side of evidence that soon suggested the explosion was not an Israeli strike but a squib Palestinian rocket. Had they been treating Israel and Palestine with equal charity or even merely waiting prudently for more information in the fog of war, they would not have spoken so swiftly or so certainly. Some combination of a skewed perspective and a fear of their own people impelled them. Peace on paper does not mean peace in men’s hearts.

Indeed, Abraham and his descendants had plenty of frictions with their neighbors; the oath at Beersheba didn’t end the need for caution, diplomacy, and strength. Yet Abraham and his neighbors benefited from the accords they made. That same hope remains for today’s Abraham Accords. Once the tide of war recedes and the anger at Palestinian suffering fades, it will be time to renew efforts to ink an Arab-Israeli pact.
UN head: Netanyahu won’t answer my phone calls
António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday from Davos, Switzerland, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declined to take his phone calls since Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

Guterres told the Doha, Qatar-based broadcaster that he has “asked to speak to Prime Minister Netanyahu and until now, that phone call has not been received.”

The secretary-general added that he has “been talking to other people, and I can tell you we are working with Israel based on the interest of the Israeli people and the interest of the Palestinian people, and nothing will make us move away from that principle.”

Guterres drew the ire of Israeli officials on Oct. 24 when he told the U.N. Security Council, “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.” He added that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”

“Mr. Secretary-General, in what world do you live?” Eli Cohen, the Israeli foreign minister, told the Security Council in a rebuttal. “Definitely, this is not our world.”
Israeli official confirms US working on grand regional bargain to end Gaza war
An Israeli source confirmed Thursday that the Biden administration was currently working on a regional grand bargain that comprises several tenets aimed at long-term stability as part of a post-war reality.

Apart from ending the current hostilities in Gaza it also envisions, normalization between Israel and the Arab world, the release of captives, and a new regime in Gaza.

The plan appears to be part of what Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred to when he said in Davos this week that Israel needed to make tough decisions. The plan is still in a very preliminary stage and it is unclear how much of it has been formulated into actual text or formulas that could see the war end and a political process replace it.

Earlier Thursday the Financial Times reported that Arab countries are working on an initiative to secure a ceasefire and release of captives from Gaza as part of a broader normalization plan between Saudi Arabia and Israel if Israel agreed to "irreversible" steps towards establishing a Palestinian state.

The Saudi Al-Hadath network reported from its sources that recently there was a meeting between senior Israelis, senior Americans, and senior Palestinians. According to the report, the discussions aimed at determining who would govern the Gaza Strip after the war, and transferring the management of its affairs to the Palestinian Authority.

The Financial Times also reported on the initiative, claiming it is part of a broader plan, which may offer Israel normalization in exchange for steps to establish a Palestinian state. A senior Arab official said they hope to present the plan, which would include establishing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia within a few weeks, to end the war against Hamas and prevent the conflict from expanding in the Middle East.
The Jew-Hating ‘Two-State’ Fantasy
The history of the Jews is one of chronic expulsions, of being forced to uproot themselves, and here the TSS calls for doing that to another half-million, expelling them from the real estate that is also at the heart of their history and culture. As such, it is an aggression against not only Jewish independence but also the Jewish religion, which makes sense since Muslim hostility to Jews is rooted in the jihad against the world. Palestinian Nationalism has always been a smokescreen.

The TSS is a contemporary mutation of timeless antisemitic thinking by dehumanizing Jews, this time by demanding they do what no other people in their situation would do: retreat from the high ground and allow Hamas fanatics to come within mortar range of the few runways at Israel’s principal international airport. Lobbing one or two small mortar shells onto even an empty runway would cause all the underwriters of the international airlines to jack up their premiums to impossible rates for flights to Tel-Aviv since Israel would be designated a perpetual war zone.

Blinken also made clear that the U.S. administration will not tolerate the resettlement of the “Palestinians” in Gaza out of Gaza; all must be allowed by Israel to return to their pre-war homes. And never mind so many of these homes are now rubble because Hamas used them and were accordingly demolished by the IDF.

Blinken also said of the “Palestinians” – and never mind there is nothing Palestinian about these people – they must receive more humanitarian assistance from Israel, but not a word about the 250,000 Israelis in the north likewise driven from their homes by Hezballah, Lebanon’s Party of Islam’s blood-thirsty God, a tentacle of Iran. About these Jewish homeless, and the homes of thousands of Jews in the southern communities wrecked by the barbarians on 10/7, also now homeless, not a word.

Blinken said “normalization” cannot be a “substitute for the expense of a political horizon for the Palestinians and ultimately a Palestinian state.” In effect, this is the United States in this administration siding with a community of homicidal, suicidal, sexually perverted antisemitic torturers and butchers against America’s most reliable and dependable ally.

This should not surprise. Judging by what the media has revealed of Hunter Biden’s laptop, his “always-wrong-about-foreign-policy” father has been on the payroll of the Communist Chinese and as such is a traitor, with Antony Blinken his careerist errand boy, likewise betraying the Israeli victims of these sadistic, Muslim maniacs likely still torturing the 136 Israelis they still hold, now decaying physically and psychologically in those fetid Muslim Brotherhood tunnels.

The TSS calls for the destruction of the homes of a half-million and ultimately the destruction of the world’s only tiny Jewish state which could not survive its implementation.

And the sky would not fall if Israel’s prime minister spoke in these terms about it.
After the War: Why Palestine Would Be a Lawless and Militarized State
In a sermon presented on PA Television on December 12, 2014, and in the presence of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Mahmoud al-Habbash, the Supreme Sharia Judge and Abbas’s advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs, said: “All of this land will return to us, all our occupied land, all our rights in Palestine – our state, our peoples’ heritage, our ancestors’ legacy — all of it will return to us, even if it takes time.”

Earlier, on October 22, 2014, Al-Habbash reaffirmed that any acceptance of Israel’s physical existence is forever forbidden under Islamic law: “The entire land of Palestine (i.e., territory that includes all of Israel) is waqf (an inalienable religious endowment under Islamic law) and is a blessed land. It is prohibited to sell, bestow ownership, or facilitate the occupation of even a millimeter of it.”

But back to basics. A presumptively sovereign Palestinian state could lawfully abrogate its pre-independence commitments to demilitarize. The Palestinian Authority has been guilty of multiple material breaches of Oslo and of “grave breaches” of the law of war. Both the PA and Hamas remain unwilling to rescind their genocidal calls for Israel’s annihilation.

When he accepted the idea of a Palestinian state that had formally agreed to its own demilitarization, Benjamin Netanyahu believed he had taken a reasonable step towards reconciliation. But the Palestinian leadership and their allies in Iran will never accept or even consider any Israel-proposed idea of “limited” Palestinian statehood, particularly a state that would lack the core prerogatives of national self-defense. Whether Jerusalem likes it or not, this means that if Israel ever accepts a Palestinian state, it will be accepting an intransigent enemy endowed with all the normally unhindered military rights of sovereignty.

This does not mean Israel will have no choice but to surrender to a future “Palestine,” but that Jerusalem should fashion its post-Gaza War security policies with fact-based expectations. Among other things, this means Israel’s leaders will need to assess the existential threat of Palestinian statehood as part of a larger strategic whole; that is, in tandem with the rapidly expanding perils of catastrophic conventional or unconventional war. More precisely, this means a comprehensive analytic focus on plausible synergies between Hamas/Iranian aggressions and Israel’s problematic nuclear doctrine. To do anything else would be to seek justification for the immutably discredited promises of Palestinian “demilitarization.“

International law is not a suicide pact. Rather than pass from one untenable position to another, Israel must understand that a two-state solution can quickly become a final solution. Israel has no moral or legal obligation to carve an irredentist enemy state out of its own still-living body.
Netanyahu rejected Palestinian state as pathway to Saudi normalization
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a Saudi offer to normalize relations in exchange for a Palestinian state, NBC News reported on Wednesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered the proposal to Netanyahu during his visit to the Jewish state last week, senior Biden administration officials said. However, the Israeli leader said he was not prepared for a deal that paves the way for Palestinian statehood.

Blinken had visited several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, before visiting Israel, and officials said that he secured a commitment from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and four other Arab leaders to help rebuild Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war. The Arab leaders also agreed to support “a new, reformed Palestinian government to secure Gaza.” MBS also agreed to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Gaza reconstruction agreement, but only if a path to Palestinian statehood is provided.

Biden administration officials have been pushing Palestinian statehood as part of a key requirement for regional peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors after the war in Gaza ends, with Blinken and U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan hammering this point this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

It appears to mark a shift in the administration’s position on the importance of a Palestinian state to a diplomatic deal between Jerusalem and Riyadh.

Prior to Hamas’s bloody Oct. 7, 2023 assault on southern Israel, the Biden administration was working on brokering a deal for Riyadh to join the Abraham Accords.

The Trump administration-brokered accords normalized relations between Israel and four Arab nations without the requirement of a Palestinian state: The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
The Arab plan to end Israel's war in Gaza, create Palestinian state
Arab states are collectively working to secure a ceasefire in the IDF's war on Gaza, which would see the release of Israeli hostages, further normalization of ties with Israel, and the creation of a Palestinian state, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

An Arab official told the source that the plans could entail Saudi Arabia normalizing ties with Israel, which has been a goal of both the United States and Israel for some time.

“Given the Israeli body politics today, normalization is maybe what can bring Israelis off the cliff,” the official said.

A condition of the deal would be that the US and European governments would formally agree to recognize a Palestinian state. The state would then be allowed full membership in the United Nations.

“The real issue is you need hope for Palestinians, it can’t just be economic benefits or removal of symbols of occupation,” the senior official told the Times.
Americans split on military aid to Israel and humanitarian aid to Gaza
A poll this month found that Americans are almost evenly divided on how to help Israel or Palestinians in Gaza.

The Economist/YouGov poll found that 25% of respondents were in favor of more foreign aid for Palestinians, another 25% were for less aid, another 25% were for the same amount of aid, and the final 24% were not sure. Republican respondents were least likely to be for more aid at 9% and most likely to be for less aid at 41%. Democratic respondents were most likely to be in favor of more aid at 44%, and only 10% were in favor of less.

Regarding military aid to Israel in its fight against Hamas, 20% called for more aid, 26% called for less aid, 34% called to maintain the same amount of aid, and 21% were unsure. Considering party affiliations, survey respondents were split, with 34% of Democratic respondents and 38% of Republican respondents in favor of maintaining aid. Thirty-four percent of Republican respondents and 15% of Democratic respondents favored more aid, leaving 16% of Republicans and 32% of Democrats in favor of decreasing aid. Overall, 60% of respondents found it was at least somewhat important for the U.S. to support Israel, while only 18% found it not important.

About one-fourth of respondents said they were equally sympathetic with Israelis and Palestinians. Another 37% reported their sympathies were more with Israelis, and 14% were more with Palestinians.

Congress has not passed a bill to aid Israel in either chamber since the House elected Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaker. Instead, the State Department bypassed congressional approval twice to use its emergency powers to sell ammunition to Israel.
Bassam Tawil: Biden Administration's 'Pathway' to a Palestinian Terror State
By continuing to obsessively stick to the creation of a Palestinian state, the Biden administration is actually sending a message to Iran and its terror proxies that terrorism pays - that if they inflict more pain and casualties on Israel, the Americans will reward them with a state of their own next to Israel to facilitate their mission of continuing their Jihadist murder spree against Jews and finally obliterate Israel.

The poll further showed that if presidential elections were held today, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would receive 78% of the vote, as opposed to only 16% for Abbas.

The poll found that 64% of the Palestinians oppose the idea of a two-state solution, while 53% support a return to the "armed struggle" against Israel.

All polls conducted by the same center have consistently shown that a majority of the Palestinians believe that Hamas is more deserving of representing them than the PA. This means that if and when a Palestinian state is established, as the Biden administration is hoping, it will be ruled by Hamas and its masters in Iran... overlooking the few miles from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport.

The idea that creating another Arab state alongside Israel would "isolate" or "marginalize" Iran and its proxies is as wrong as it is dangerous. In reality, the establishment of a Palestinian state on any part of the West Bank or Gaza Strip would incentivize Iran and its clients to escalate their Jihad against Israel: it would send them the message that the more Jews you murder, the more land you get.

[T]his conflict is not about a settlement or a checkpoint or Jerusalem, but about Israel's right to exist in any form in the Middle East. What Blinken and the Biden administration seem unable to grasp is that there are still too many people among the Palestinians, and many other Arabs and Muslims, who have yet to come to terms with the right of a nation that is not Islamic to remain in its home in the Middle East.

Blinken is suggesting not a pathway to peace, but a prize to Hamas and the Palestinians for committing genocide.


Jewish leaders call out Qataris and ‘disappointing’ allies at Davos antisemitism panel
Speaking to a crowd of foreign officials and corporate executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a group of prominent Jewish leaders called out those at the exclusive Swiss gathering who had not done enough to confront antisemitism after the Oct. 7 terror attacks — and those who had purposely fanned the flames of anti-Jewish hate.

“Why did the violence go up on October the 7th? Because antisemitism is a foreign policy plank of certain governments, i.e. Iran,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said at a Thursday panel about antisemitism. “It’s great the foreign minister of Iran was here, but he needs to be called out. It’s great that the Qataris are here, and they need to be called out for using antisemitism as a tool, as a weapon, because all of us suffer as a result.”

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff described feeling “unmoored” after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel, particularly after he had worked to incorporate Judaism into his and Vice President Kamala Harris’ life in Washington and to “normalize” it, to show Americans “this is what a Jew looks like.”

“As American Jews I think the feeling is one of aloneness and being hated and being unmoored and all of these things. We maybe fooled ourselves into thinking that, ‘This wasn’t so bad, we’re not really experiencing antisemitism, it’s never going to be this horrible.’ It happened,” Emhoff said. “We kind of saw who our friends were and who our friends weren’t, and there were too many in the ‘weren’t’ category.”

He called on Davos attendees to speak out more forcefully against antisemitism.

“We say silence is complicity. You’ve got to speak up and speak out if you’re in a position of leadership, and this is a room full of leaders,” Emhoff said.
Biden judicial appointee draws scrutiny over ties to controversial 9/11 memorial event
A prominent Jewish rights organization said it has “serious concerns” over President Biden’s nomination to a US court of appeals — over his ties to a controversial pro-Palestinian advocacy group at Rutgers University.

The non-profit watchdog StopAntisemitism said Adeel Mangi’s association with Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights (CSRR) will affect his ability to remain impartial as a judge.

The New Jersey-based lawyer, who is Muslim, was picked by President Biden to serve as a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Third District in November.

The nomination quickly frew fiery scrutiny from conservatives over his ties to the CSRR, where he served as a member on its advisory board from 2019 to 2023.

The advocacy group raised eyebrows when it hosted a panel on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in 2021 — during Mangi’s tenure — which featured Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor who pleaded guilty in 2006 to aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group.
House Dem Shares Stage With Anti-Semites and Holocaust Deniers at 'March for Gaza' Rally
Rep. André Carson (D., Ind.) spoke at an anti-Israel rally alongside one activist who said he was "happy" about Hamas's terrorist attack on the Jewish state, one who has claimed that "Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews," and another who has attended Holocaust denial events with former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Carson, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, appeared Saturday at the "March for Gaza" rally in Washington, D.C. Carson took thinly veiled shots at his fellow Democrats for supporting Israel but ignored Hamas's Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

"It can be frustrating when some of our friends seem to be going on with life as usual, and as though the atrocities in Gaza aren't even happening," said Carson, who spoke at a podium with an "End Genocide Now" sign plastered across it.

Speakers before and after Carson excoriated President Joe Biden—whom many dubbed "Genocide Joe"—while others toed the line in support of Hamas and other terrorist groups.

Nihad Awad, the president of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), took the stage 12 minutes after Carson. Awad, who asserted that Biden "serve[s] the American people, not the State of Israel," made headlines last month after he said he was "happy to see" Hamas fighters invade Israel on Oct. 7. He also claimed Israel "does not have that right to self-defense."

Anti-Zionist activist Yisroel Dovid Weiss spoke at the Gaza rally via satellite. He has attended Holocaust denial events with Ahmadinejad and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Weiss gave a gift to the head of the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah at a 2018 event in Beirut.

Yasir Qadhi, an Islamic activist who once claimed that "Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews," invoked the Holocaust at the Gaza rally. "Are we going to sit by idly as we watch another genocide? Seventy-five years, 75 years ago, we heard the slogan 'never again.' We now have the opportunity to stand up again and say, 'Yes indeed, never again,'" said Qadhi, who has also referred to the Holocaust as a "hoax."
San Francisco must not let antisemitism win - opinion
On January 8, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted in favor of passing a resolution that would demand a ceasefire by Israel that would leave its civilians permanently hostage to the terror group Hamas. After the atrocities of October 7 and the information that has since emerged about the ongoing abuse of the hostages, Israel abandoning them would be unthinkable. Worse, the resolution was passed in a climate of intimidation and the bigoted public harassment of Jews in the meeting room itself. San Francisco owes its citizens better.

Israel and Hamas had a long-term ceasefire in place on October 6. The next morning, Hamas forces stormed across the Israeli border and massacred over 1,200 innocents, raping women, mutilating genital organs, and burning people alive. Moreover, Hamas took 240 living captives, and while some miraculously have been released and rescued, over a hundred remain under Hamas control, where releasees have described rape and excruciating psychological abuse.

Israel is not fighting the Palestinian people; it is fighting the terrorist group Hamas. If Hamas turned over the captives, there would be a ceasefire tomorrow. What nation on Earth could allow its people to be violated, murdered, and kidnapped without attempting to rescue the survivors? Yet the resolution passed by the Board did not make its call for a ceasefire contingent on freeing these captives, which would extend their nightmare indefinitely.

Dr. Einat Kalisch-Rotem, mayor of San Francisco’s sister city of Haifa, who is still mourning the loss of two family members murdered on October 7 and another held hostage in Gaza, expressed her disappointment in a resolution “that critically targets Israel but glaringly condemns to message the sexual violence against women by Hamas on October 7, and the continuing violence against hostages held for almost 100 days by Hamas.” The resolution, as passed, did not even mention the horrors perpetrated by Hamas through sexual assault on women and girls, as well as on men. How can San Francisco claim to stand up for women’s dignity and not have anything to say about this violent atrocity?
‘He’s My Captain:’ Hundreds of Protestors Declare Support for South African Jewish Cricketer David Teeger Amid Ongoing Antisemitism Scandal
Brandishing signs declaring “He’s My Captain,” “Stop Racism in Sport” and “No Place for Antisemitism,” hundreds of demonstrators converged on the Johannesburg headquarters of Cricket South Africa (CSA) on Thursday to demand the reinstatement of David Teeger as captain of the national U-19 team, one week after he was stripped of the post amid accusations of antisemitism.

An observant Jew who made his professional cricket debut in 2023, Teeger was removed from the captain’s position by the CSA Board on the eve of the Cricket World Cup, which is being hosted by South Africa and begins on Friday. Explaining its decision, CSA cited “security concerns” around Teeger’s very presence, insisting that removing him from the captaincy — but not the team — allayed the risk of violent pro-Hamas demonstrations at World Cup matches that might potentially endanger the team, spectators and Teeger himself.

However, this reasoning was dismissed as a “ruse” by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) following its meeting with CSA earlier this week, charging that the body, which governs cricket operations across the country, had displayed “pure antisemitism” in removing Teeger as captain.

“They tried to get David to step down voluntarily, saying ‘it’ll be hard for you.’ He refused and that’s when they stripped him,” Zev Krengel — the SAJBD’s vice-president — stated at an online press conference on Tuesday. Krengel also emphasized that Teeger had been cleared of the charge of bringing CSA into disrepute by an independent investigation following a speech he gave at a Jewish communal awards ceremony in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel, in which he lauded “the State of Israel and every single soldier fighting so that we can live and thrive in the diaspora.”
German Culture Minister Bemoans ‘Silence of the Majority’ in Wake of Hamas Atrocities in Israel
Germany’s Culture Minister has spoken of her anxiety in the face of the silence of many of her fellow citizens following the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel.

In a speech on Tuesday to the Central Council of German Jews, Claudia Roth — a Green Party politician who was appointed as Culture Minister in 2021 — addressed “the silence of the majority of our country, including many in the German cultural scene” in the wake of the Hamas atrocities.

“Whatever reasons we put forward for this silence on Hamas’ terror, I cannot find an explanation for it,” Roth declared to warm applause.

“We must not remain silent, we must take a stand, clearly and unambiguously, we must show solidarity with Israel and protect and strengthen Jewish life in our country,” Roth added.

Roth went on to advocate “uniform guidelines” for arts funding across Germany’s federal system in order to prevent public money from being spent on art that promotes antisemitic tropes. Memories are still fresh in Germany of the Documenta art festival in 2022, one of the most prestigious events in the arts world, that was mired in a succession of scandals involving antisemitism, much of it framed as hostility to Israel.

Roth’s proposal would build on a new measure recently introduced in Berlin by Joe Chialo, the German capital’s Culture Senator. Last week, Chialo announced a new condition for funding that requires artists to commit to the fight against antisemitism in order to receive financial support.
‘Who’s Excited to Destroy the Zionists?’ Daughter of Far Left French MPs Arrested for Antisemitic Social Media Posts
The daughter of two far left French parliamentarians has been arrested in Paris for allegedly posting antisemitic content on social media that amounts to “apologizing for terrorism” and “provocation to commit intentional attacks,” according to the police charge sheet.

22-year-old Inès Corbière was arrested on Tuesday for posts made in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were murdered and over 200 kidnapped amid atrocities that included rape, bodily mutilation and decapitation.

Corbière is the daughter of Raquel Garrido and Alexis Corbière, two MPs who sit in the French National Assembly on behalf of “La France Insoumise” (LFI — “France Rising”), a far left grouping that has frequently attacked Israel’s military response to the Hamas atrocities.

Corbière is understood to have operated a now suspended account on the X/Twitter platform using the handle “Babynesou.”

One comment on the feed spoke disparagingly of the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

“Maybe I don’t have a soul, but they don’t bother me at all, I even find them rather annoying, especially the kids,” the post read.

On the eve of a pro-Hamas march in Paris, another post asked provocatively: “Who’s excited to go and destroy the Zionists there?”


Goldman Sachs is funding Iran solidarity visits and BDS, not just pro-Hamas rallies
Lenin called people who work against their people’s own best interests in support of their enemies "useful idiots," and Goldman Sachs appears to be facilitaing the funding of pro-Hamas activities, thereby working against the West, against America, against Israel and against civilization. These are unique times. Unique enough that Goldman Sachs, one of the largest businesses in the world, is signing millions of dollars of checks annually that fund Pro-Hamas, Pro-BDS activities devoted to destroying the State of Israel.

In a January 17th op-ed we revealed that the NYC Pro-Hamas rallies, including harassment of cancer patients at a NYC hospital, is being funded by the Goldman Sachs philanthropy fund. Further review of philanthropic tax returns shows that Codepink is also funded by Goldman Sachs.

Codepink, which is pro-BDS, has made solidarity visits to Iran, and according to The Daily Mail is under congressional scrutiny over ties to the Chinese Communist Party and has a record of links to Iran, Hamas and antisemitism. According to the National Review, at least $710, 000 from the Goldman Sachs philanthropic fund went to this organization which describes October 7th as an “act of resistance.”

Codepink hasn’t said a word about the mass rape of Israeli women on October 7th, is devoted to fully eliminating US Military aid to Israel and a full "right of return" for Palestinian Arabs. As Influence Watch notes, the organization supports communist Cuba, and as The Daily Mail notes, Hamas has praised Code Pink as a 'grassroots peace group'.

Goldman Sachs chooses to write checks and approve funding to radical extremist organizations devoted to destroying Israel. It is not easy to write against one of the largest businesses in the world. But we are facing a Holocaust. We have hostages held, our people were butchered raped and murdered. In the Diaspora, we see record high-antisemitism and we are in danger.
The Yale Law School Dean Who Presided Over the 'Trap House' Scandal Is Now Under Consideration To Be the University’s Next President
The dean of Yale Law School, Heather Gerken, who has been battered by numerous free speech and anti-Semitism scandals since assuming the post in 2018, is under consideration to be the next president of Yale University, according to five people familiar with the matter.

Gerken made headlines in 2021 when law school administrators threatened a second-year student for using the term "trap house" in an email, suggesting he would face professional consequences if he refused to issue a public apology they drafted on his behalf. The blowback was so intense that Gerken, the law school’s first female dean, was reportedly in danger of losing her job.

Gerken is nonetheless on the radar of Yale’s presidential search committee, which was formed over the summer after Yale president Peter Salovey announced his plans to step down later this year. It is not clear how many other candidates are under consideration or where Gerken ranks, but one law student described her as a "frontrunner," citing conversations with faculty members close to the process. Sources said Yale’s dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Tamar Szabó Gendler, is also under consideration.

Neither Gerken nor the search committee responded to requests for comment.

Gerken’s ascension to the presidency would mark the elevation of a controversial campus leader whose administration has targeted conservative students and worked to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs into every facet of the law school. In 2021, for example, the law school retained Ericka Hart—a diversity trainer who has argued that the FBI intentionally inflates the number of anti-Semitic hate crimes—to conduct a mandatory "antiracism workshop" for incoming first-year students. It also pressed faculty to "embed anti-racist materials into their courses," according to a 2021 report on the law school’s diversity efforts, and required all senior staff to "receive anti-racist training."
StandWithUS: Ohio State ‘grossly failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students’
In a letter from StandWithUs to Walter Carter Jr., president of The Ohio State University (OSU), the activist group called for a more proactive approach to defending Jewish students.

“Since October 7th, antisemitism on and around OSU’s campus has run the gamut from antisemitic verbal taunts and threats directed at individual OSU Jewish students; antisemitic and threatening graffiti in classrooms and other university facilities; removal of posters and photos of kidnapped Israelis; and in some cases, outright physical assault of Jewish students,” wrote SWU CEO Roz Rothstein, legal department director Yael Lerman and Carly Gammill, who directs the group’s Center for Combating Antisemitism.

The 16-page letter includes a four-page appendix presenting visual evidence of antisemitic protests and displays at OSU. One photo shows “from the river to the sea” graffitied on a wall; another act of vandalism writes “ZOG is committing genocide,” utilizing the neo-Nazi acronym for “Zionist-occupied government.”

An online ad features a Star of David made out of chains and photos of a protest showing students lying in fake blood amid signs accusing Israel of murdering children. Images also show “murdered by Israel” posters done with dripping blood, parodying the style of posters of Hamas kidnap victims.


PreOccupiedTerritory: J-Street To Offer Conversion So Antisemites Can Libel Israel ‘As A Jew…’ (satire)
An American organization that labels itself “pro-Israel, pro-Peace” but uniformly endorses candidates and policies who seek Israel’s weakening or outright dissolution as a Jewish state announced today that it will launch a program for non-Jews who hate the nation-state of the Jews to undergo the process necessary to become Jews, to lend “insider” credibility to their slander of that Jewish state.

J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami stated in a press release Thursday that his organization, which was founded to counter the mainstream, bipartisan-consensus group the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), plans a conversion-to-Judaism training regimen for anyone interested in cushioning themselves against antisemitism accusations that stem from their vociferous opposition to Jewish nationhood and self-determination.

“Critics of the destructive policies of the Netanyahu government and any other government of Israel face unfair characterization of their remarks and attitudes as antisemitic,” lamented Ben-Ami. “The knee-jerk labeling as ‘antisemitic’ whenever anyone calls Israeli self-defense genocide; gives legitimacy to violence against Jewish ‘settlers,’ conveniently including all Israelis in the category; holds Israel to standards that they do to no other country; or ignore far worse human rights situations to focus on real or imagined Israeli crimes – that is what our program will counter.”

The one-year curriculum will carry the name Forging Identity for Goyim to Legitimize Explicit Antisemitic Fulminations (FIGLEAF), according to documents linked to in the press release. Applicants will be asked to demonstrate their antisemitic bona fides, and explain, in essays and interviews, their vision for leveraging their own newfound Jewish identity to undermine Jews as a people, Jewish institutions, or Jewish communal and individual identity.
Norman Finkelstein’s Anti-Israel Rhetoric Given Center Stage in Biased Gaza Report
In both a televised segment and online report on the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, Boston 25 News interviewed controversial academic Norman Finkelstein, presenting him as a “noted expert on Gaza.”

According to Finkelstein himself, this was the first time that he had ever appeared on American television.

There’s a good reason for that.

While Boston 25 News presented Norman Finkelstein as a dispassionate scholar capable of giving an objective analysis of the current war as well as South Africa’s allegation of genocide against the Jewish state at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), this is far from the truth.

Who is Norman Finkelstein?
In the almost half-century of his career as both an academic and a public persona, Norman Finkelstein has made a name for himself by engaging in the trivialization of both the Holocaust and modern-day antisemitism, the whitewashing of terrorism, and the vilification of the Jewish state.

In his controversial 2000 book “The Holocaust Industry,” Finkelstein asserted that the Holocaust is exploited by Jewish organizations and Israel in order to shield the latter from criticism.

In more recent years, he has made the same argument about allegations of a resurgence in antisemitism, claiming that there is no “new antisemitism” and that it is merely a cynical ploy used to defame critics of Israel.

In the past, Finkelstein has also invoked classic antisemitic stereotypes, claiming that “Jews are over-represented in the media” and “Jews are tapped into the networks of power and privilege” in the United States.

In 2020, Finkelstein even went so far as to assert that Holocaust deniers should not be considered antisemites and praised renowned Holocaust denier David Irving as “a very good historian” who “produced works that are substantive.”

When it comes to internationally recognized terror organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, Finkelstein has gone on record as justifying their actions against Israel.

In a 2011 interview, Finkelstein said that “it is impossible to justify terrorism” but, one sentence later, stated, “I do believe that Hezbollah has the right to target Israeli civilians…until Israel ceases its terrorist acts.”

In the same interview, he denied that Hamas uses human shields.

In response to Hamas’ brutal invasion on October 7, Finkelstein’s initial response was to say that the attack “warms every fiber of my soul"


How Media Legitimized Turkey’s Actions Against Israeli Soccer Player Who Supported Gaza Hostages

The BBC’s Highest Paid Star Publicly Hates ‘Genocidal’ Israel… Why Does The Corporation Protect Him?

Financial Times ignores evidence in order to reach anti-Israel conclusion
Omitted is the fact that, during that fundraiser, Biden also said this his administration would continue “to emphasize to our friends in Israel the need to protect [Palestinian] civilian life”, that “we have to work toward bringing Israel together in a way that provides for the beginning of option — an option of a two-state solution”. Moreover, at Davos just yesterday, Biden’s Secretary of State said that Israel cannot achieve “genuine security” without a pathway to a Palestinian state – a message the administration has been pushing consistently since the attacks on Oct. 7.

Further, Israel’s decision to transition to a more surgical phase of its war against Hamas has been widely reported as the consequence of US pressure – with the goal of the partial drawdown being to reduce the threat to Palestinian civilians.

Luce ends his piece repeating his concern that Biden’s pro-Israel stance will hurt his chances to defeat the Republicans in November. However, in addition to the fact that Israel remains popular amongst most of the US electorate, with an overwhelming majority blaming Hamas for the war, the fact is that foreign policy (post Cold-War) rarely plays a decisive factor in US presidential elections. ‘Bread and butter’ economic concerns (and other domestic issues, such as immigration) weigh far more heavily in the minds of most voters.

In fact, a recent Associated Press article reported polling which reflected that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is an extremely minor issue for most Americans, with only 5% listing it as an area of concern.

Luce may be the FT’s US correspondent, but his analysis suggests a profound failure to understand the political landscape in America, and, in particular, the depth of public support for the Jewish state.
BBC News reporting on the Ra’anana terror attack
Some three hours after a terror attack had taken place in Ra’anana on January 15th, the BBC News website published a report by Raffi Berg headlined ‘Israel: Woman killed, 17 hurt in suspected Palestinian car-ramming attack’.

The attack was in fact a combined car-ramming and stabbing attack and as we see, the BBC used the superfluous word “suspected” in its headline even though the two perpetrators had been arrested at the scene. The report opens:
“A 70-year-old woman has been killed and 17 other people injured in what police say was a terrorist attack in Israel.”

The woman murdered in the attack – Edna Bluestein – was in fact 79 years old. Not only did the “police say” that the incident was a terror attack: as reported by the Times of Israel, one of the terrorists confirmed that assessment:
“One of them reportedly told the Shin Bet that “when the war in Gaza started,” they “decided to carry out an attack and become martyrs… Initially, we intended to stab Jews, but then we decided to run over as many Jews as possible.””

Berg’s report does not inform BBC audiences that several of the “other people injured” are children before going on: [emphasis added]


MEMRI: While Palestinian Authority Says Israel Murders Palestinian 'Children' Without Provocation, Fatah Military Wing Praises These 'Children' As Martyrs For Their Attempted Terror Attacks In West Bank During Which They Were Killed By Israel

David Albright: Iran Can Produce Uranium for a Nuke in a Week
Iranian action to expand its output of 60%-enriched uranium is a hair's breadth from 90%-enriched, weapon-grade uranium.

The reality is that Iran already knows how to build nuclear weapons, although there are some unfinished tasks related to their actual construction.

Today, Iran would need only a week to produce enough weapon-grade uranium for its first nuclear weapon. It could have enough for six weapons in one month, and after five months it could have enough for twelve.

Iran also has nuclear-capable missiles for delivery.

Weaponization of the uranium still needs more work. An accelerated program to accomplish this could take six months and involve smaller, disguisable facilities, leaving little time for the international community to react.

While this would enable production of a crude nuclear weapon, producing warheads for ballistic missiles could take significantly longer than six months.

Western intelligence agencies may not detect the start of Iran's nuclear weaponization effort. Given short warning times, the U.S. and its allies have little choice other than focusing on a strategy to deter Iran from building nuclear weapons in the first place.

Iran needs to be made fully aware via concrete demonstrations that building nuclear weapons will trigger quick, drastic actions by the international community, including military strikes.

U.S. military cooperation with Israel aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear capabilities should be bolstered, ensuring Israel can decisively strike Iran's nuclear sites on short notice if there are signs that Iran is moving to build nuclear weapons.
Col Kemp: Britain is now at war with Iran. We should act like it
We might have seen the beginnings of a new resolve this week. A US drone strike in Baghdad killed the Iranian-affiliated terrorist leader Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi, the man behind attacks on US forces in Iraq. It may be that these actions are enough to induce Tehran to back down.

But the odds of that happening are slim and I doubt Ayatollah Khamenei, given Biden’s track record, is taking him seriously even now. In his statement explaining the strikes, not once did the US president mention Iran’s involvement, without which the Houthis could never have launched their attacks.

We must be ready to see a defiant Iran after the US-UK attacks. Khamenei may not be foolish enough to directly take on the Americans, but he is as likely as ever to seek revenge by proxy. The Houthis could again be sent into action against Saudi oilfields, despite the supposed rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran. Attacks might be stepped up against shipping in the Red Sea, and against US troops in Iraq and Syria. Hezbollah might be instructed to unleash even greater violence against Israel using its vast array of missiles.

And we should not forget that Iran’s reach is not confined to the region: the IRGC has terrorist cells and proxies across the West. They are intended to be activated if there is an attack on Iran itself, but could still be used in the current situation.

If Iran does choose to fight back, we must be ready to reply with overwhelming force. Biden should not attempt to restrain Israel from dealing decisively with Hezbollah. In the worst case, the US may need to confront Iranian regional aggression head on. It will need to do so before Tehran achieves nuclear weapons capability, which is not far off.


Antisemitic incidents more than doubled in 2023, highest annual surge - report
The Secure Community Network has reported a record-breaking 112% increase in antisemitic incidents in North America for the year 2023, marking the highest surge in such incidents ever recorded by the organization on Thursday.

2023 witnessed a dramatic escalation in antisemitic activities, with the SCN documenting 5,404 incidents. This figure more than doubles the incidents reported in 2022, indicating a significant and concerning upward trend in hate crimes against the Jewish community.

A record-high month
The report reveals that December 2023 was a particularly alarming period, with the highest number of monthly incidents recorded in SCN's history. This surge in incidents included a wave of swatting and false bomb threats targeting Jewish institutions.

In response to these growing threats, SCN has intensified its collaboration with law enforcement agencies, leading to a substantial increase in referrals of individuals to authorities.
Elon Musk to visit Auschwitz, lead panel on antisemitism and Holocaust
Tesla and X owner Elon Musk is expected to participate in a conference next week in Poland, focusing on combating antisemitism as well as honoring the remembrance of the Holocaust. Musk is expected to speak on stage with conservative American Journalist Ben Shapiro.

Musk will be the guest speaker at the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, organized by the EJA, the Association of Jewish Organizations in Europe, during its annual delegation of European leaders to Auschwitz on January 22-23.

Among the prominent figures who have confirmed their participation this year are UN representative Miguel Moratinos, ministers and parliamentarians from the European Union, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Ireland, Greece, Austria, and others.

Other key speakers on the panel
The conference will also feature Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, Yad Vashem Dani Dayan Chairman, and others. During the conference, an announcement will be made regarding establishing a Leaders' Forum to Combat Antisemitism, led by the tenth President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin. Joining him in this announcement at the conference will be former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and others.

During the symposium, European leaders will discuss more effective ways to combat rising antisemitism in light of the war in Gaza.
Setting the Record Straight about Vichy France and the Jews
In 1918, Philippe Pétain was the most admired man in France—having beaten the Germans at Verdun and played a critical role in leading French forces to victory. In the next world war, when France was collapsing before the German onslaught, Pétain was made prime minister and promptly negotiated a surrender, presiding over the Vichy regime until the Allies liberated the country. He was then tried and convicted of treason, although many decades would go by before serious attention was paid to the part he played in the extermination of his country’s Jews.

Today, many in France—including, the rightwing Jewish television commentator and former presidential candidate Eric Zemmour—continue to believe Pétain’s self-serving claims about his wartime activities. Robert Philpot examines a new book by Julian Jackson that puts paid to this version of events:

Pétain’s defense—elements of which have continued to be propagated by his apologists in the subsequent decades—principally rested on the notion that he had acted as a “shield” against the worst excesses of Nazi rule. . . . And, according to the defense, Pétain’s “shield” had also been thrown over France’s Jews. “I always vehemently defended the Jews; I had Jewish friends,” Pétain argued in pre-trial questioning.

Jackson is dismissive of the idea that Vichy should be credited with protecting Jews. Its “home-grown” anti-Semitism, he believes, aimed to “exclude Jews from the national community” rather than murder them, as the Nazis set out to do. But, he says, the Germans would not have been able to deport and murder Jews in such numbers without Vichy’s assistance.
Trash thrown at Holocaust memorial in Philadelphia just days after swastika vandalism
A homeless man was caught on camera dumping mounds of trash at the foot of the nation’s oldest Holocaust memorial in Philadelphia — just days after a huge swastika was discovered spray-painted on a wall next to the site.

The most recent instance of vandalism targeting the Horowitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza in the heart of Philadelphia occurred around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, when a surveillance video captured a bearded man wearing a black beanie and carrying a backpack tossing piles of refuse from a garbage bin and a black trash bag on the snow-covered ground surrounding the memorial.

“It’s very upsetting to see another tide of hate,” Eszter Kutas, executive director of the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, which manages the memorial, told NBC Philadelphia.

Kutas said the culprit behind the latest incident appears to be a homeless repeat offender.

“We may have seen this person before causing similar incidents at the Holocaust Memorial Plaza,” she said.


Amid Israel-Hamas war, Israel's Eurovision performance
Israeli contestants have performed at Eurovision a number of times while rockets fell in recent years, and while we all hope that the war will be over by the time the Eurovision final rolls around in May, the reality is that this may be the case again. But the important point to remember is that despite calls for Israel to be banned, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the body that runs Eurovision, has voiced clear support for Israel’s participation.

While there have been calls to ban Israel in past years, these voices have gotten stronger since the Hamas massacre on October 7 and the subsequent outbreak of war. Earlier this month, Finnish and Icelandic artists, as well as protesters in Norway, called for a ban.

Over 1,400 Finnish artists joined Icelandic music industry professionals in a petition, which read, in part, “It is not in accordance with our values that a country that commits war crimes and continues a military occupation is given a public stage to polish its image in the name of music.”

Among these artists was Axel Ehnström, who represented Finland at Eurovision in 2011. The signatories said that if Israel is allowed to take part, the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) should decline to participate.

But the EBU already released a statement in 2023 saying, “The Eurovision Song Contest is a competition for public broadcasters from all over Europe and the Middle East. It is a contest for broadcasters – not for governments – and the Israeli public broadcaster has been participating in the contest for 50 years.” It has not wavered from this stance.

Despite the controversy, Israel is still placing high in the preliminary betting charts, a widely watched measure of likely success in the competition. As of December 24, according to World.com’s betting grid, Israel was likely to come in first. Israel has since dropped to fifth place out of 37 in the World.com averages, not as good but still respectable.
‘Here we are’_ Zionist teens stand with Israel at Club Z’s annual conference
Their faces painted with blue and white Stars of David, a group of Jewish students gathered on the bridge over the 405 freeway in Los Angeles on Sunday, holding Israeli and American flags, posters of the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 and signs reading “Honk for Israel.” The teens were standing up for Israel as participants in the Club Z 2024 National Conference, embodying the conference’s theme: “Hinenu” — “Here we are.”

Club Z, an organization that aims to strengthen Zionist identity in high schoolers, took over much of the ground floor of the Luxe Hotel on Sunset Boulevard over Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend, for their conference; meeting rooms and patios were designated as breakout workshop rooms, with many areas doubling as social spaces.

Keeping with the Israel-centered purpose of the gathering, the areas had been renamed — Lt. Col. Habaka, Sgt. Shkoty, Staff Sgt. Levi, Lt. Col. Greenberg and others — in memory of soldiers who had been killed in the Israel-Hamas war. The conference was dedicated in memory of Rose Ida Lubin, an Atlanta-raised Israeli Border Police officer who was killed in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem on Nov. 6.

During keynote speeches, the entire group — the 165 participants, from ninth graders to college students from over 25 cities nationwide — gathered in the ballroom at the Luxe to hear speakers such as retired British Army officer Col. Richard Kemp, an outspoken critic of the international community’s position on Israel; Dor Shachar, who had been born in Gaza but who fled to Israel and converted to Judaism; and comedian Joel Chasnoff, an American who moved to Israel and served in the Israeli army as a lone soldier, writing a book about his experiences, The 188th Crybaby Brigade.

During a candid “Ask Me Anything, War Edition” session, Kemp fielded hardball questions. In response to a query about trading terrorists for hostages, Kemp said the issue of whether to prioritize the return of the hostages or the destruction of Hamas is “the only real division in Israel.” Asked about which presidential candidate he thought would be better for Israel, the colonel said that President Joe Biden is not his favorite leader, but has been more supportive of Israel than he expected. Still, Kemp said, former President Donald Trump was “better suited to the position,” and the teens cheered.


The standup comedian standing up for Israel
Whip smart, charismatic, creative and hilariously funny are benchmarks of great standup.

Remove the last attribute and this kind of talent seems it could easily be put to good use in Israel’s social media war abroad.

Matan Peretz, the popular Israeli standupist, already realized this a while back.

In 2021, during the 11-day Gaza-Israel conflict, he posted a number of observations on social media and in a later video called out Kanye West’s rabid antisemitism. All in fluent, American-accented English.

What the 35-year-old comedian certainly didn’t expect was the sheer spike in hatred for Israel and antisemitism worldwide following October 7 and the need to combat the vitriol with hard-hitting TikTok and Instagram posts in language and style young people abroad can relate to.

Peretz says he is sure his ongoing anti-woke messages are being heard loud and clear, not only from the growth of his followers (145K on Instagram) but ironically from the tens of threatening messages he receives daily.

“If I only existed in an echo chamber, I know I wouldn’t be getting so many death threats,” he shares with ISRAEL21c.

Here to stay
The handsome, dark-bearded funnyman, well-known on the standup comedy circuit in Israel and a regular in English at Tel Aviv’s Stand Up Factory, doesn’t make any jokes during our conversation. He comes across just as sardonic and direct as he does in his video clips.

This is the attitude that drew the attention of JewsOfNY. The online community with 157K followers asked Peretz to participate in the “Would You Hide Me” campaign.
Meir Y. Soloveichik: The 23rd Song
Recently, in the Gaza Strip, a Jewish song was composed and sung. Its unlikely origin and subsequent story embody Judaism itself.

Colonel Golan Vach of the IDF had been silently stationed in Gaza with his fellow soldiers, in the bleakness of night, when a voice, humming a song, suddenly intruded on the darkness. It came from a comrade, Yossi Hershkovitz. Vach, as Arutz Sheva reports, was intrigued and inquired as to the origin of the tune:
I called out, “Yoss?” and he replied, “Yes.” I asked him what he was humming and he said it was a song that he used to sing to himself. I asked him if he had written the tune and he said yes. I asked him when and he replied, “When we started walking.”

The song, in other words, had been composed in the midst of war. Vach told Yossi Hershkovitz that he would like to hear it again. “I asked him to sing it.”

That the two would be so interested in music, even in the midst of battle, was not a surprise. Yossi Hershkovitz, a celebrated educator and principal of the Pelech High School for boys in Jerusalem, was a gifted violinist who often played on behalf of the sick in Israel’s hospitals. Golan Vach was from a musically famous family in Israel that had released a number of albums. Vach later described how he asked his comrade to teach him the tune: “This was a very special moment when we were sitting there. It was total darkness, and he was sitting next to me and singing me a song.” The tune Hershkovitz sang was newly composed, but the age-old Hebrew words were first written by a man who was himself a singer and soldier: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.

Thus did Hershkovitz teach Golan Vach a new way to sing the 23rd Psalm, a psalm that truly describes Vach’s life. Vach leads Israel’s National Rescue Unit, which is activated in case of disaster; he has overseen responses to catastrophes not only in Israel, but in humanitarian missions around the world. His entire career has been spent in the valley of the shadow of death, and yet faith has sustained him throughout, especially when he entered the greatest scene of suffering he had ever experienced.




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