Thursday, February 08, 2024

02/08 Links Pt2: Israel’s American frenemy; The Fraudulent Case Against ‘Violent Settlers’; Argentina’s president calls Hamas ‘21st-century Nazism’

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Israel’s American frenemy
Some Bidenites clearly subscribe to the liberal fantasy that all conflict can be ended by negotiated compromise based on a universal drive for self-interest. Other members of the administration are viscerally hostile to Israel. Far worse, some of these have had links to Iran.

Last September, the news platform Semafor and the London-based émigré opposition outlet Iran International reported from thousands of leaked emails that Iran had infiltrated the Obama administration.

Three people in an Iranian network were aides to U.S. envoy Robert Malley, who was the point man on Iran under both the Obama and Biden administrations until he was removed last June following a still unexplained “mishandling of classified material.”

The leak also revealed that more than ten Iranian analysts in Western think tanks, including Ali Vaez and Dina Esfandiary—two employees of the powerful International Crisis Group—were part of an influence network called the Iran Experts Initiative formed and guided by Tehran.

Last week, Iran International and Semafor further reported that, during the Obama administration, the Crisis Group formed a secret alliance with Iran which used it to lobby the U.S. government throughout the negotiations leading up to the 2015 nuclear deal.

In 2002, Malley founded and directed the Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa Program. After being appointed in February 2014 to the National Security Council’s staff under the Obama administration, he left the group but continued to use Vaez to send messages to Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammed Zarif, and sent Vaez to Vienna to meet Iranian officials. In January 2018, Malley became the Crisis Group’s president and CEO.

The leaked materials showed that within a month of his return to government in 2021, Malley helped infiltrate Ariane Tabatabai, who was associated with the Iranian network as an agent of influence, into the U.S. State Department to assist him in his negotiations with Iran.

Tabatabai then moved to the Pentagon, where even today she still serves as chief of staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Christopher Maier—what’s more, in an office that oversees hostage recovery.

Anti-Israel protests against Biden have given the impression that his administration is on Israel’s side. America’s Jewish leaders need to start telling the American people that “Genocide Joe” is putting the United States and the West at ever greater risk and is actually helping those who intend the genocide of the Jews.
The Fraudulent Case Against ‘Violent Settlers’
U.S. officials are using pro-Palestinian NGO sources to back a controversial effort aimed at punishing the Jewish state. In November, a month after Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped hundreds more, Israel's ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog attended a meeting on Capitol Hill. Instead of focusing on Hamas or Hizbullah, the lawmakers, including senior-ranking senators from both parties, wanted to focus on the risks posed by roving bands of allegedly violent settlers in the West Bank.

Much of the information they were citing came from a single, ostensibly impartial source: Lt.-Gen. Michael R. Fenzel, who currently serves as the U.S. security coordinator to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC). The USSC is well-known for its regular briefings and reports about "extremist settlers," which it provides to members of Congress. According to sources in and out of the U.S. government familiar with Fenzel's reports, nearly every claim presented as fact seems to have been lifted directly, sometimes verbatim, from the websites of highly partisan pro-Palestinian organizations.

In the past 12 months, 13 Israelis were murdered by Palestinians in Jerusalem and 17 in the West Bank - not counting those slaughtered on Oct. 7, 2023 - while doing nothing more provocative than driving home or stopping for gas. The number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed by Israelis under such conditions over the same time period is zero. But the story the administration has been telling anyone who will listen is very different.

By scrubbing any mention of the daily violence directed by Palestinian terror operatives against Jewish civilians living in the West Bank from his reports, Fenzel has eliminated the clear retaliatory motive for the vast majority of attacks by Israelis against West Bank Palestinians. Thinly laundered reports from expressly anti-Israel organizations, designed to support an illusion of innocent Palestinians being violently attacked by bloodthirsty Israelis, paint a picture of an Israeli equivalent to the Palestinian atrocities of Oct. 7, lending itself an easy "both-sides" posture.

The Biden administration wants to isolate so-called "extremist settlers" as a major threat to regional stability. Biden's new executive order says they constitute "a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region...[and are] threatening United States personnel and interests." Palestinian terrorism regularly attacking Israelis in Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem, and elsewhere went unmentioned.
A Proportionate Response
In the summer of 1982, Israel was strategically bombarding a besieged Beirut to uproot the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had long terrorized the Jewish state from its northern border. During the siege, Shlomo Goren, Israel's chief rabbi and a supporter of the war, declared that Jewish law required Israel to allow combatants and noncombatants to flee Beirut.

The great medieval scholar Maimonides had codified a Talmudic opinion that the "fourth side" of a besieged city must remain open as an evacuation corridor. Doing so gives combatants an incentive to flee; otherwise, they might fight to the finish, at great cost to both sides. The Israeli army agreed and left open two major escape routes from Beirut. The IDF had no interest in the PLO terrorists fighting to the last man. Goren would deem this gesture a prime example of how Judaism can teach the world how to fight wars ethically.

Since Hamas' brutal Oct. 7 attack, Israelis are united in believing that the country must remove the threat of Hamas from its border. Yet they have not opposed their government's attempts to forewarn Gazan civilians of impending attacks, or to create evacuation corridors from neighborhoods in which Hamas embeds its fighters. Israelis want to minimize noncombatant casualties. The Jewish state's enemies target its citizens, but Israel will not respond in kind.


Preeminent Holocaust Scholar: October 7th Is a Turning Point in American Antisemitism | Top Story
After Oct. 7th, antisemitism has skyrocketed around the world - in the streets, media and in public discourse. After decades of multi-million dollar campaigns and efforts by Jewish groups to educate people about the Holocaust and antisemitism, nothing seems to have helped. Why have they not succeeded and is there anything that can be done? Where is this antisemitism coming from?

To answer these questions and more, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with Indiana University’s Alvin Rosenfeld, one of the nation’s most eminent scholars of the study of antisemitism and the Holocaust.


Daroff to ‘Post’: Be proud, don’t hide Jewish identity, but use caution
In a time of an alarming rate of antisemitic incidents, American Jews may need to take caution with signifiers of Jewish identity – it is not worth it to be stabbed for wearing a kippah, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations CEO William Daroff cautioned in a Wednesday conversation with The Jerusalem Post, a conversation on the impact of the war on US Jews, regional peace, and Jewish unity. CoP is a forum that advocates Jewish interests while serving as an umbrella organization for around 50 Jewish organizations.

US Jews “shouldn’t hide their Jewish identity, but they should stay safe,” said Daroff, noting that the specter of a violent pogrom was a real danger for an identifiable Jewish citizen walking through the streets of New York during a pro-Hamas protest.

According to Daroff, the American Jewish community took two gut punches on October 7 – the first, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust; the second, the fact that people who they thought were their allies didn’t stand with them. Feminist, Black, and LGBTQ+ groups that Jewish communities had stood with for years, “didn’t stand with us” in return, as a wave of antisemitism engulfed communities across the world.

Extremist intersectionality was one of the ideological forces driving the increase in anti-Jewish hatred, another being anti-Zionism, the CoP CEO explained.

“The connection between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is clearer than ever,” said Daroff.

He recalled how anti-Israel activists vandalized synagogues with swastikas and harassed worshipers attending Shabbat services. Campuses have become a locus of such manifestations of antisemitism, with pro-Hamas rallies on campus calling to “globalize the intifada.”
The Shameful Behavior of Academic Women’s Associations
On Dec. 1, after the mainstream media started catching up to the story, UN Women finally issued a statement demanding accountability for victims of sexual torture on Oct. 7. The previously mentioned investigation by The New York Times published on Dec. 28 verified what we already knew: “that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.” And in January of this year, even UN experts have demanded accountability for victims of sexual torture during the Oct. 7 attacks.

Given that the horrific mass sexual violence toward women in Israel has now been verified in excruciating detail, one would hope that the NWSA would finally issue a statement condemning this violence. Their continued silence lays bare not just their hypocrisy but also the organization’s true concern, which has everything to do with pushing the narratives that support their political leanings. One would expect that a women’s organization would be especially sensitive to the nature of the attacks against women in Israel, and yet it appears that the opposite is true. One can’t help but ask: How hard would it have been to condemn sexual violence against Israeli women? It would not have been necessary to express support for the Israeli government. It also would not have been necessary to forgo support of Palestinian women as Gaza comes under military siege by Israel. Both groups of women deserve support by organizations claiming to fight for the rights and protection of women, but consistently only one group of women is ignored by women’s organizations: Jewish and Israeli women.

The question is whether now, after the sexual violence against women in Israel has been confirmed over and over again, the NWSA—the nation’s largest network of feminist scholars, educators, and activists—will demonstrate moral awareness and address their shameful ignoring of Israeli and Jewish women.

Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt, chair of ZRC, founding Rabbi of Congregation B’nai Tzedek and prominent thought leader, said that ZRC is “the first rabbinic group to come out in a strong statement condemning the women’s studies group for their lack of response … and for their hypocrisy, their moral bankruptcy, and their blindness” when it comes to women in Israel. Weinblatt feels that it is “incumbent upon us to do that.” That NWSA refused to take a stand against Hamas’s violence toward women in Israel is, according to Weinblatt, part of a larger problem, which is “the lack of ability to recognize what is done when it’s done against Israel or against Jews.”

In a recent sermon, Weinblatt recalls the biblical story of the rape of Dinah and wonders which element of the story is most disturbing: “Is it that she was taken and raped by Shechem? Is it the silence of her father Jacob in the face of his daughter being violated? Is it the complicity of the townspeople? Is it the actions of Dinah’s brothers, Simon and Levi, who proceed to deceive and then inflict collective punishment on the entire city as retribution for their sister being taken against her will?” One could ask some of these same questions with regard to the rape, sexual torture, and mutilation of women in Israel. By what are we most disturbed? The acts themselves, the fact that some Palestinian people were complicit with Hamas, or the silence of women’s and human rights organizations in the face of such horrors?

I asked Rabbi Weinblatt what the ZRC hopes to accomplish with the publication of their open letter. He hopes that the result will be reflection on the part of the NWSA, that there will be a reassessment and that they will develop greater sensitivity when it comes to violence against Jewish and Israeli women rather than turning a blind eye.

With that reflection and reassessment I hope they will add seeking forgiveness.
Richard Goldberg and Jonathan Schanzer: The UN agency that’s supposed to aid Palestinian refugees has only made things worse
And while UNRWA’s message may be celebrated by advocates of Palestinian nationalism, the agency’s policies undermine the case for Palestinian statehood. Indeed, with 870,000 registered refugees in the West Bank and another 1.7 million in Gaza, roughly half the population of the state would right now be considered wards of the international community — with basic government services provided by UNRWA, not the Palestinian Authority, which has no influence in Gaza right now and can barely provide services in the West Bank.

The White House and the State Department have recently declared their support for a Palestinian state. But they have not clarified whether recognition of a Palestinian state would require UNRWA’s dissolution. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s claim last week that UNRWA is “indispensable” suggests there is no plan to transition UNRWA’s responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority. This means that the government in Ramallah would not be servicing the entire population. In other words, it would lack legitimacy.

Those who continue to carry water for UNRWA, even after the damning reports that UNRWA employees took part in the Oct. 7 attack, claim that the agency is the only one that cares for Palestinians as the war drags on in Gaza. They argue that pulling funding from UNRWA would be a calamity for Palestinian human rights — leaving people without food, medicine, or shelter. They say that no alternative to UNRWA exists.

This is false. An alphabet soup of international organizations continuously respond to international crises on a moment’s notice around the globe. And they receive significant financial support from the United States and its allies. For example, the World Food Program specializes in food distribution. The High Commissioner for Refugees specializes in caring for internally displaced persons — much of Gaza’s population qualifies. Even the compromised World Health Organization, which parroted Chinese talking points relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, could play a role in Gaza’s health care. The list goes on.

Of course, these and other UN agencies are also deeply flawed. They are also in desperate need of reform. None of them recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization, but to their relative credit, none of them have had 1,200 of their employees linked to Hamas. None of them have kept Palestinians in economic depression with limited political rights. None of them have maintained a permanent fiction of refugee status for millions of people who do not qualify as such.

Palestinians don’t have to live like refugees. By ending support for UNRWA, Washington can finally unlock the political and economic potential of one of the Arab world’s most educated populations.
What the Hell Is Going On PodCast: WTH is Wrong with UNRWA? Jonathan Schanzer Explains
Hosted by Danielle Pletka & Marc Thiessen
Media outlets have just begun to report on the rot of the United Nations Relief Works Agency – but the issue goes much farther back than October 7th, and the consequences will extend long past today. The top lines are that the Western-funded UN agency taught antisemitic propaganda in Palestinian territories for years; funded Hamas endeavors leading up to and including October 7; and has actually perpetuated the victimhood of Palestinians. To address the future of Israel-Palestine, one thing is clear: external “aid” cannot be funding and teaching extremism and terrorism.

P.S.: For more UNRWA background, listen to our episode on the topic with Brett Schaefer.

Dr. Jonathan Schanzer is the senior vice president for research at FDD. He previously worked as a terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he followed and froze the funding of Hamas and Al-Qaeda. Jonathan has held previous think tank research positions at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Middle East Forum. He has written hundreds of articles on the Middle East and U.S. national security. His most recent book is Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War (FDD Press 2021).


Gottheimer guides bipartisan group in call for resignation of UN officials

Israeli finance minister cancels UNRWA tax breaks

White House Courts Biden-Hating Anti-Israel Activist in Desperate Bid for Muslim Votes
Top White House officials will meet Thursday with an Arab-American activist who has praised Hamas and refers to the president as "Genocide Joe," part of the administration's latest gambit to shore up President Joe Biden's waning support with Arab and Muslim voters.

At least seven Biden administration officials will meet with Arab American News publisher Osama Siblani in Dearborn, Mich., one of the country's largest Arab communities, according to the Associated Press. The group includes Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer and U.S. Agency for International Development chief Samantha Power.

They'll be meeting with one of Michigan's most influential Arab-American leaders, one with an extensive history of praising terrorist groups. Siblani in 2022 urged Arabs to fight Israel with "stones" and "guns" and praised the fedayeen, or Islamic militants. He has referred to Hamas and Hezbollah as "freedom fighters" and cheered Iran-backed Houthi terrorists for declaring war against Israel in October. Siblani has bragged that during a conference call with White House officials in 2021, he refused "to apologize for Hamas firing rockets at Israel."

Siblani has criticized Biden's handling of the Gaza war, calling the president "Genocide Joe" and stating, "No vote for you Mr. Warmonger."

The meeting is the strongest indicator yet of how dire Team Biden sees his waning support among Michigan's Arab and Muslim voters. With the state's 300,000 Arab and Muslim residents, a boycott of the Biden ticket, which Siblani and his allies have urged, could prove disastrous for the president. Former president Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, won Michigan in 2016. Biden won by just 3 percentage points in 2020.

Biden's desperation is even more apparent given his team has already met with Siblani, with disastrous results. Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez visited Siblani at his newspaper's offices last week to rally support from the Arab-American community. Shortly after the meeting, Siblani called Biden a "war criminal" and said he will never support the president.


MEMRI: Miami Imam Dr. Fadi Kablawi: We Are Not Here To Kill Anyone; If We Can Take Your Country And Implement Shari'a Law, We Will Do It, But Only According To Your Laws, By Becoming The Majority; I Am Here To Convert America; Zionism Is The Problem Of The World

Jamaal Bowman Defends Decision To Feature Prominent Anti-Semite, Cop Killers on Middle School ‘Wall of Honor’

Revealed: Labour’s Rochdale by-election candidate has helped raise millions for extremist mosque

Jeff Jacoby: At Columbia Law, a club formed to combat antisemitism gets shot down
The callousness of what she was seeing scandalized Legrand. She knew students at Columbia who had lost friends or relatives in the Oct. 7 pogrom, she told me, but “there was not one ounce of sympathy or compassion extended to my Jewish and Israeli friends.” She reached out on social media. “You are not alone,” she posted. “I unequivocally support and stand with you.”

She decided to offer more than comfort. Over the next few months, Legrand assembled a group of students, Jews and non-Jews alike, to create a new campus club, Law Students Against Antisemitism. They drafted a charter laying out their objectives: to raise awareness of historical and contemporary antisemitism, to foster dialogue, and to provide support for students targeted by antisemitism.

Student groups are ubiquitous at Columbia — the university boasts that there are more than 500 clubs and organizations, at least 85 in the law school alone. Given the surge of venomous anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bigotry, especially among young Americans and in academia, the need for groups like Law Students Against Antisemitism is self-evident.

On Jan. 23, Legrand and the group’s other officers appeared before the law school student senate to request official recognition for their club. Such recognition, which is needed to reserve space on campus and be assigned a Columbia email address, is normally a routine formality. Eight other clubs requested approval last month; all eight were rubber-stamped in a few minutes.

But not Law Students Against Antisemitism.

Before the vote was held, a delegation of progressive students showed up to demand that Legrand’s group be rejected on the grounds that it would “silence pro-Palestine activists on campus and brand their political speech as antisemitic.” It would do so, they claimed, by adopting the standard definition of antisemitism drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The accusation was ridiculous on multiple grounds. First and most obviously, no voluntary student group has the power to silence anyone, on campus or off. Second, as recent months have made plain, there has been no shortage of pro-Palestine expression on Columbia’s campus.

Above all, it is beyond surreal to denounce an organization opposed to antisemitism for adopting the most widely used definition of the term. The IHRA formulation has been accepted by 42 countries — including the United States — and by well over 1,000 states, provinces, cities, nongovernmental organizations, and corporations. In fact, it is the definition relied on by the federal government in its enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

In the end, the absurdity of the attack made no difference. For an hour, Legrand and her colleagues were grilled by the student senate. Then, by an anonymous vote, Law Students Against Antisemitism was rejected.

Legrand knows only too well how tenacious antisemitism can be. She said she was “heartbroken” by the student senate vote and by the moral perversity of those who would mobilize to kill an organization like hers. But she is not giving up. She hasn’t forgotten the view from her childhood bedroom window. And she knows that in the fight against antisemitism, surrender is dangerous.
Academics at Top Berlin University Issue Open Letter Highlighting Rising Antisemitism
Dozens of faculty members at the Berlin University for the Arts (UDK) — Germany’s leading academic body for study of art, music and culture — have attached their signatures to an open letter condemning the rise of antisemitism on campus and in society more widely, two months after students at the institution staged a pro-Hamas protest that drew angry accusations of antisemitism.

“With this letter, we, the undersigned teachers and employees of the Berlin University of the Arts, would like to position ourselves clearly and emphatically against antisemitism at our university and in our society,” the letter, published on the university’s website, stated.

The university is still reeling from a protest organized by pro-Hamas students in November that alluded to the brutal murder of two Israeli reservists in the West Bank nearly 25 years ago.

Carrying banners declaring “Stop Genocide,” “End Colonialism,” and “Free Palestine,” the students sat around a table with their palms facing outwards painted in red ink to symbolize blood. While the gesture was apparently intended to condemn the German government’s support for Israel’s defensive military operation in Gaza, several observers noted a striking similarity with the notorious lynching of two IDF reservists, Vadim Nurzhitz and Yosef Avrahami, in the West Bank city of Ramallah in Oct. 2000. In an outburst of intense violence reminiscent of the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel, Nurzhitz and Avrahami were brutally murdered and their bodies mutilated by a Palestinian mob while both were in the custody of Palestinian Authority (PA) police officers.

“We are shaken by the violent antisemitic protests and actions at our university,” the faculty letter declared. “We condemn the performance of Nov. 13. 2023, in which an iconic intifada sign was presented, which refers to the lynching of two Israelis; the call for strikes on Nov. 29 2023, in which Hamas terror was put into perspective; as well as all other protests in which anti-Semitic content was shared and disseminated in the name of solidarity with Palestine. Antisemitism is not an opinion, but a form of discrimination that, like other inhumane narratives, does not fall under freedom of speech or art.”
Morningstar aims to eliminate anti-Israel bias from ESG ratings with new report
Financial services firm Morningstar released a report delivering recommendations directed at eliminating anti-Israel bias from its Sustainalytics ESG company risk ratings.

The Jan. 31 report is being celebrated by organizations linked to Israel, as Israeli firms have received lower company ratings for operating in or doing business with Israel.

“You can perceive an underlying political bias, whether the people doing it are doing so intentionally or not,” Rachel Lerman, general counsel for the Brandeis Center, said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.

The report describes seven recommendations which, if implemented, should result in a more objective ESG company rating from Morningstar’s Sustainalytics. The following are some of the specific directives experts Michael Newton and former Ambassador Alex Wolff decided on in their report.

Eliminating the “occupied territories/disputed regions” incident type to prevent geographic assumptions from biasing the ratings process.
Examining facts on the ground in evaluating human rights violations rather than relying solely on uncorroborated media accounts.
Ensuring international legal standards are applied in their full scope.
Preventing third parties from manipulating ratings through generation of unfavorable media.
Incorporating additional legal expertise, including considering appointing a designated expert under the company’s chief legal officer, to evaluate human rights law-related issues.
Requiring analysts to clearly define what specific human rights a business is alleged to be violating.
Report: Unnecessary for Morningstar to refer to ‘occupied territory’ to assess companies
Critics previously noted that Sustainalytics issued negative ratings to business operations on the sole basis of their operating in “occupied” territories rather than violation of international law.

Rachel Lerman, general counsel at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, has been involved with the coalition seeking changes at Morningstar. “You can treat a disease by treating the symptoms or by treating the body, and I think they’ve elected to treat the body,” she told JNS.

Rather than focusing on one business or another, the recommendations are structural and could be applied at other ESG rating agencies, according to Lerner. “What they recommend would make the product a lot better,” she said.

Lerner is “cautiously optimistic” that Morningstar will adopt the recommendations. The experts who compiled the report are due to issue a follow-up report on the implementation of their guidance.

“All of us had a tendency to be very skeptical, including myself. So, I feel like this report was a real shot in the arm,” Lerner said. “If they don’t do anything with this, then of course, it’ll be for naught. But if they do, and if we can convince other companies to do the same, I think there’s hope.”

Rich Goldberg, senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a harsh critic of Morningstar’s practices, told JNS that the true test is whether the handful of companies remaining on Morningstar’s controversies list doing business in Judea and Samaria are removed.

“The bottom line question is whether the recommendations translate to actions,” he said. “If the remaining BDS controversies come off Israeli companies after this, we can finally say that Morningstar is BDS-free.”


B’nai Brith Canada Urges Universities to Cancel Speaker Who Praised Oct. 7 Attacks
B’nai Brith has written to several universities across Canada to urge them to cancel events featuring a speaker who publicly endorsed Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel.

Sami Hamdi, a British political commentator, was invited by the Canadian Muslim Political Affairs Council (CMPAC) to be the keynote speaker for the organization’s “Palestine Solidarity and Advocacy” campus tour across the country. Hamdi is scheduled to speak this week at Western University, Carleton University, the University of Toronto Mississauga Campus, and McGill University.

Hamdi is not an accredited academic, and in remarks at a London, U.K., mosque on Oct. 18, 2023, the pundit openly celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. Among other things, he urged listeners to “celebrate the victory” of the mass slaughter during which terrorists killed about 1,200 innocent persons, raped women and girls, and abducted hundreds of civilians to Gaza. He also spoke of feeling a sense of “euphoria” after learning about the attacks.

“Anyone who celebrates and is elated by the idea of terrorists butchering civilians and raping women and girls should not be permitted to influence our students,” said Richard Robertson, B’nai Brith Canada’s Director of Research and Advocacy. “We cannot imagine his appearances producing anything of academic value, and based on his past statements, there is the danger that his remarks will contribute to the incitement of hatred against Jewish students.

“Such views cannot be condoned in the name of academic freedom. In the interest of student safety and wellbeing, we are urging these universities to intervene and cancel his appearance.”


York University students disappointed, but ‘kind of used to’ Jew-hatred on campus
In an already-tense campus atmosphere, a union that represents part-time and contract faculty and staff at York University in Toronto distributed a 19-page, anti-Israel “Toolkit on Teaching Palestine” to teaching assistants.

The toolkit “reflects on our collective, moral and professional responsibility to speak, write and teach on Palestine in spite of the culture of fear that has dominated much of Western academic institutions,” per the education committee of a Palestine solidarity working group of Canadian Union of Public Employees 3903.

The union, which represents contract faculty, teaching and graduate assistants, and part-time librarians and archivists at York, distributed the materials to encourage its members to join a ceasefire “global strike week” from Jan. 21 to Jan. 28, called for by the Palestinian activist and filmmaker Bisan Owda. CUPE 3903 asked members to refuse “to abide by York University’s culture of repressive normalcy. Instead, let us collectively divert this week’s tutorials to teaching on Palestinian liberation.”

Not only is York repressive, but the union charged that the university is “complicit” in Israel’s occupation of Palestine and “genocidal violence.” It also singled out York’s “economic and academic relationships with various Zionist cultural institutions (e.g. Hillel) and Israeli universities (e.g. Hebrew University of Jerusalem), some of which are on U.N.-recognized illegally occupied Palestinian lands.”

As of August 2022, Arab students make up 17% of Hebrew University’s student body, some three percentage points below their representation in Israel’s citizenry.

In an X post that remains live, Fred Hahn, president of CUPE Ontario, wrote the day after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack that on Thanksgiving, “I know I’m thankful for the power of workers, the power of resistance around the globe. Because resistance is fruitful and no matter what some might say, resistance brings progress.”
How Muslim identity politics colonised education
British schools are being turned into political battlegrounds. A militant Muslim identity politics is mounting an ever-stronger challenge to their educational authority. Over the past few weeks alone, the Michaela Community School in north-west London has appeared at the High Court, having been sued for discrimination by a Muslim pupil over its decision to ban prayer rituals. And a few miles away in east London, Barclay Primary School has been under attack from Islamists and a few parents after it told children not to wear clothing or badges displaying some form of ‘political allegiance’ in school – a move interpreted as a clampdown on pro-Palestine symbols.

In both cases, activists’ response to the school’s decisions has been marked by menace. Following Michaela’s decision to ban prayer rituals last spring, bomb threats were made to teachers, the school was vandalised and a brick was thrown through a classroom window. And in response to Barclay Primary’s change to its uniform code, arson and bomb threats were sent both to the school and individual staff. Masked men climbed the school’s fence at night to hang Palestinian flags around its perimeter.

There is a tendency to frame cases like this as part of an age-old conflict between religion and modernity. Between the demands of faith and the demands of public life in secular societies. But it’s a misleading characterisation. The aggressive imposition of Muslim cultural practices on to education has very little to do with Islam and everything to do with decades of multicultural policymaking. That is what we’re seeing right now in the cases of Michaela and Barclay. Not quiet displays of faith, but loud, all-too-visible assertions of Muslim identitarianism.

The rise of Muslim identity politics
Not so long ago, the very idea of waging any sort of public political campaign around being a Muslim would have been nonsensical. In the 1970s, those living in, say, the large Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities of Birmingham or Bradford, still waged political struggles of course, especially against racism and discrimination. But their struggles, often coalescing with broader working-class politics, focussed mainly on issues of material and political equality. On employment. On housing. They wanted to be treated as equal citizens, not as different identity groups. If activists thought of themselves in terms of any ‘identity’, they did so in terms of ethnicity, as Pakistanis or Bangladeshis, not as members of some transnational, monolithic Muslim community, or Ummah.


Guardian covers for antisemitic academic
The Guardian also neglects to mention that, after his sacking, he joined Iranian PressTV and began unleashing even more unhinged and hateful rhetoric about Jews – accusations about Jewish power and malevolence that CST’s Dave Rich argued evoked Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style antisemitism.

Also, see this post which shows Miller on PressTV claiming there’s a “Zionist stranglehold at the top of industries and governmental organisations which people don’t really know enough about“, and this post where he says “We have to dismantle every single Zionist organisation that there is”. In this post, Miller laments the “penetration of the British establishment by the Zionist movement” and their attempts to “penetrate British elite culture and indeed the British intelligence services”.

Finally, this isn’t the first time that the Guardian has covered for the antisemitic professor. In 2021, when Bristol was still investigating him, we posted about an article at the outlet which highlighted a sensationalist accusation against Miller and his university coming from one Conservative MP, whilst ignoring well-founded criticism by groups such as the CST, Board of Deputies, Holocaust Educational Trust, and Union of Jewish Students (UJS).

The current piece by Sherwood is just another example of the media outlet’s institutional failure to take anti-Jewish racism seriously when the racists are on the left – particularly when those, like Miller, risibly claim that they’re merely anti-Zionist.
The Guardian Publishes Claim Terror-Loving Palestinian-American Woman Was ‘Kidnapped’ By IDF

BBC Verify tells a context-free tale of damage and destruction

Why the West Can't Deter Iran
The single dominant idea within Western commentary on the subject of the proper response to Iran's continuing attacks is the danger of escalation and the consequent need to avoid it. The practical implication of this nonsensical approach is that any aggressor, not just Iran, can attack the West, and then be shielded from effective countermeasures by the perceived necessity to avoid a so-called escalatory cycle. In substance, concerns about escalation have become a ready excuse for either complete inaction or insufficient action, in the face of attack on Western interests.

The West's de-escalation obsession is part of a larger problem, a desire for a diplomatic solution to resolve security crises as if by magic. Michael Oren has diagnosed the consequences, that "by showing fear, rather than backbone, in the face of Iranian aggression, the U.S. is only inviting defeat."

Israel's actions show how Iran can be dealt with. Multiple air strikes in Syria which have killed its military personnel have led Iran to withdraw senior officers from the country, and demonstrate its aversion to being sucked directly into a conflict. To put this more clearly, Iranians do not like to have their officers killed and are afraid that Israel will kill many more if Iran were to attack Israel directly.

It is most unfortunate that American policy is currently incapable of following such a course of sustained military pressure, reflecting the West's continuing unwillingness to attack its enemies with sufficient strength and intensity. The futility of the limited strikes so far carried out against Yemen is brought into sharp relief by the fact that since the first strikes on January 11, sailings through the Red Sea have continued to decline.

The situation cannot continue as it is. Either the course of Western policy will change, or Iran and others will assume that the West has become completely incapable of defending itself effectively, and all Western and pro-Western forces in the Middle East will come under continuously growing pressure.
Document reveals Iranian pressure on Britain not to ban the terrorist IRGC
Iran “bullied” British diplomats not to blacklist the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps after an analyst at a leading British think tank with government connections told them the move was imminent, a leaked document reveals.

The Iranian document, which was leaked on Telegram and translated by the JC, includes a record of a meeting in Tehran between Dr Baqeri, the deputy director of the Iranian foreign ministry, and British ambassador to Iran Simon Shercliff in January 2023.

The document discloses that Shercliff had been summoned by Dr Baqeri for a dressing-down following newspaper reports that Britain was poised to proscribe the IRGC as a terror group.

The document states that the UK-based think tank analyst, whom the JC is not naming, had given information to an Iranian diplomat about a meeting in London regarding banning the IRGC.

The document says that it had been suggested at the meeting that the Foreign Office was in favour of the move. This was greeted with fury in Tehran.

“It was said [at the London meeting] that the Foreign Office supports this proposal and will announce it within two or three weeks,” the document says. “It also came up there that France opposes this plan, but Germany has no objection to it.”

It adds that “having a British embassy in Tehran and maintaining relations between the countries are important assets” to Britain, according to a UK “roadmap” published in 2021, and therefore concludes: “Perhaps the best way to dissuade Britain from acting against the Revolutionary Guards is a threat to sever diplomatic relations.”

When he met Shercliff, Dr Baqeri warned that proscription “would not be in the best interests of your country”.


‘Primal Fear’: Debra Messing To Executive Produce Documentary About The Explosion Of Antisemitism In The U.S. Since October 7
Actress, producer, and activist, Debra Messing, has signed on to executive produce the feature documentary, Primal Fear about the explosion of antisemitism on college campuses, on social media, and in the streets since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel. Wendy Sachs, the co-director and producer of SURGE, is directing the film and will also serve as an executive producer.

The documentary begins on October 7th when Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 240 people including babies, children, and the elderly. While the film opens with the horrors of the Nova Music Festival and the massacre that took place in 22 Israeli communities, the documentary is largely about the aftermath of a day that has become the modern Kristallnacht. Primal Fear unpacks antisemitism to explain how it has shape-shifted over the millennia.

The film will dig into the tsunami of antisemitism on American college campuses that has led to Congressional hearings and the resignation of university presidents from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. The film will also examine the world’s silence, dismissal, and even denial of the sexual violence Hamas perpetrated on Israeli girls and women. This silence led to Sheryl Sandberg calling for a hearing at the United Nations in December to address the atrocities and the hashtag #MeTOO Unless You’re a Jew took hold.

The film examines the alarming influence of social media, particularly TikTok in spreading misinformation and propaganda and fueling hate. We look at the latest poll numbers on Gen Z that find the majority of 18–24-year-olds sympathize with Hamas, a US-designated terrorist organization, funded by Iran. And finally, the film underscores what’s at stake. As history shows, an increase in antisemitism signals a decline in society’s strength. This isn’t just about the Jews. It’s about Western civilization, where truth, democracy, and a free society are all under attack.
ACLU Calls on DOE to Reject IHRA’s Definition of Antisemitism
The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday called on Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to refuse the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism. In a letter to the Secretary, they asserted that adopting this definition could stifle the free speech of pro-Hamas students on American college campuses.

“If the Department of Education were to adopt this definition, and investigate universities for Title VI complaints based on it, college and university administrators would likely silence a range of protected speech including criticism of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, analogies likening Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany, or sharing differing beliefs about the right to a Jewish state,” the group complained.

Usually, the objection to the IHRA list of definitions of antisemitism relates to attacks on Israel and pro-Israel Jews. But the ACLU is looking to quash the whole kit and caboodle:

“The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), one of the nation’s foremost defenders of free speech, urges you to reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of “antisemitism” (and similar definitions) in any proposed rule your office may formulate in response to Executive Order 13899, or in any other policy or practice to enforce civil rights law. This definition of antisemitism conflates protected political speech with unprotected discrimination, and enshrining it into regulation will chill the exercise of First Amendment rights and risk undermining the agency’s legitimate and important efforts to combat discrimination,” the group’s letter opens.

Executive Order 13899–Combating Anti-Semitism was signed into law by then-President Donald J. Trump on December 11, 2019.

The order’s most important aspect was its note that while Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not cover discrimination based on religion, discrimination against Jews may give rise to a Title VI violation when the discrimination is based on an individual’s race, color, or national origin.
Las Vegas City Council Adopts IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism
The Las Vegas City Council approved a resolution on Wednesday to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism and use it as an educational tool for municipal agencies, including law enforcement.

Resolution R-5-2024 was initiated by Councilwoman Victoria Seaman, who was a keynote speaker at the 2023 North American Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism organized by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, last November.

It adopts the “non-legally binding IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, including the eleven contemporary examples” and says the City Council will “ensure that the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism is available as an educational resource for the law enforcement agencies serving the City and for other City agencies that may be responsible for or capable of addressing antisemitism and other forms of discrimination.”

The Las Vegas City Council is the 91st US municipal body to adopt the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.

“Today, the Las Vegas City Council passed my resolution recognizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism as a powerful statement against hatred, showing solidarity with the Jewish community and a commitment to fighting antisemitism,” Councilwoman Seaman tweeted on Wednesday. “The timing on the four-month anniversary of the Oct. 7th attack on Israel adds significance to this important act and makes it clear that we will not tolerate bigotry in our city.”
NYPD arrest man who berated, beat Jewish man with umbrella
The man who allegedly assaulted a Jewish New Yorker with an umbrella in November was arrested on Wednesday, the Crown Heights Shomrim announced.

The Jewish neighborhood watch organization said that videos and tips that it collected and provided to the New York Police Department aided in the investigation and eventual arrest of the suspect.

"Great work and collaboration," the Shomrim wrote on social media.

Wave of antisemitic attacks in NYC
Crown Heights Info reported that on November 8 a Jewish man riding his bicycle on Montgomery street was approached by a man who began cursing him in reference to his Jewish identity.

When the victim attempted to move away, the alleged assailant struck him on the back with an umbrella. The victim called the police and Shomrim and followed the attacker back to a project building.
Vermont ski resort fires workers over Nazi armbands at costume party
Four employees of a Vermont ski resort were fired after photographs of them wearing Nazi armbands and performing the Roman salute at a costume party were discovered on social media on Tuesday, the Jay Peak Resort told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

The resort said that its security team had alerted management about the pictures of the international workers, and after a brief investigation and interview, they were fired almost two hours later.

Response from the president of the resort
"There is simply no space, here, for this garbage, frankly, and we will continue to be vigilant against this sort of insensitivity and, frankly, ignorance," said Jay Peak President Steven Wright.

The employees reportedly said that the costumes were worn in jest, but Wright said, "This isn’t something we jest about here."

The employees had only been with the resort for five weeks, according to Wright.
REPORT: Participants In German Youth Organization Event Allegedly Called For The Ghettoization Of Jews
Participants at a Junge Alternative (JA), a youth group that claims ties to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, event allegedly made antisemitic and anti-immigrant statements, RTL reported Wednesday.

A JA participant was quoted as allegedly saying Jews and immigrants should be interned in a ghetto and then should be put to work to get food, the outlet wrote in German. (RELATED: Green Party Realizes Germany May Need Fossil Fuels After All As Economic Crisis Drags On)

“I would just intern them first, put them in a ghetto. They have a duty to go to work. You could set up workshops like this, for example. Of course, they have to perform to ensure they get food and a warm roof over their heads,” the participant allegedly said, according to a translation of the RTL interview by GB News.

The reporters asked how they envisioned this coming about, according to the outlet. “There needs to be a certain willingness to use violence among the German people… As a state, I would look for volunteers who are prepared to shoot women and children if necessary,” the group allegedly responded with, the outlet reported.


British Airways resume flights to Israel
British Airways will restart flights to Tel Aviv with a reduced service from 1 April 2024. The carrier will operate a single short-haul flight four days a week between London Heathrow and Ben Gurion, Tel Aviv.

The service will stop en route to Israel at Larnaca in Cyprus for a crew change, but passengers will remain onboard during the 45-minute layover. The return flight to London will operate nonstop.

This pit stop in Cyprus will provide BA with an alternative if landing in Tel Aviv is deemed too risky, according to The Independent.

A BA spokesperson said: “We’ve taken the commercial decision to move Tel Aviv to our short-haul network when we restart our flights on 1 April. This aligns these flights with other similar length flights we operate, and we’ll keep this decision under review.”

Unlike the business class beds offered in their previous long-haul offer, BA's short-haul flight will have the same configuration as European flights, with the premium option comprising of the middle seat being folded away.

The airline suspended flights to Israel on October 11 after turning back one of its planes because rockets were flying around the skies of Tel Aviv. Before Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7, the national carrier offered two long-haul Boeing 787s every day between the UK and Israel.

Israel’s national airline, El Al, has continued to operate its London-Tel Aviv route mostly uninterrupted, with its long-haul configured Boeing 787 from Heathrow and a low-cost Boeing 737 from Luton.
Argentina’s president calls Hamas ‘21st-century Nazism’
Argentine President Javier Milei toured a hard-hit kibbutz near the border with Gaza on Thursday and described the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre as “21st-century Nazism.”

The unequivocal remarks by the Argentine leader during a visit to Kibbutz Nir Oz with President Isaac Herzog were the latest signal of a major shift in Argentina’s foreign policy towards the United States and Israel after decades of backing Arab countries.

“It was the indifference of the free world that made the Nazi Holocaust possible,” Milei said. “And as President Herzog said, the free world can’t remain indifferent in this case, as we see clear examples of terrorism and antisemitism and what I would describe as 21st-century Nazism.”

The agricultural community, which includes many immigrants from Argentina and their families, saw a quarter of its residents killed or kidnapped by Hamas during the Oct. 7 massacre.

“We shall rebuild this place,” said Herzog. “We shall bring back the community. And we shall protect Israelis and we hopefully will create a different future for us and for our neighbors.”

The two leaders visited several houses on the kibbutz, including that of Ofelia Roitman, an Argentine immigrant who was released from Hamas captivity in November and who accompanied the group. It was the first time she had been back in her home since Oct. 7.


Begin Center: Allies: The Israeli-American Fight Against Terror and Antisemitism
For this special event, held live at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, we were joined via Zoom by two great friends of Israel from the United States, former Deputy National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams; and long-time diplomat and advisor in both the State Department and the White House, Dennis Ross. They were interviewed by former radio talk show host and long-time pro-Israel activist, Barbara Diamond.

There was also a specially recorded video message from comedian Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher”, in response to the Begin Center’s honoring him for his principled defense of Israel as a liberal democratic ally of the United States.

The event begins with opening addresses from Begin Center CEO Herzl Makov, and Begin Center Senior Fellow Paul Gross.


'I have a dream' speechwriter Clarence Jones to be face of Kraft's anti-antisemitism campaign
When New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft told "I Have a Dream" speechwriter Dr. Clarence B. Jones that he would be the face of Kraft's Foundation To Combat Antisemitism Super Bowl ad campaign, Jones began to cry, in a video released on February 2.

In the video, Kraft tells Jones "We're gonna run your ad during the Super Bowl."

"Ah, you know what, you know how to make a 93-year-old man cry," Jones says as his voice cracks up.

"Martin would have loved you so much," Jones tells Kraft barely able to contain his emotions.

Who is Dr. Clarence B. Jones?
Dr. Clarence B. Jones, 93, is a veteran civil rights and anti-racism campaigner who worked as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s draft speechwriter from 1960 until the latter's assassination in 1968.

Dr. Jones would continue to maintain a large public profile being involved in many public campaigns from arts to sports, helping to negotiate the famous "Rumble in the Jungle" in 1974 between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman in Kinshasa, Congo.

He is currently serving as the Chairman of the Spill the Honey Foundation, an organization dedicated to advancing Black- Jewish relations.

Robert Kraft is the owner of the New England Patriots NFL team, he created his Foundation To Combat Antisemitism in 2022 to counter antisemitism after antisemitic comments made by several American celebrities including Kanye West and Kyrie Irving. They ran an ad in last year's Super Bowl called "Stand Up to Jewish Hate."


Singing For His People
Matisyahu sat on a white plastic chair, underneath a set of string lights, his feet planted on the dirt below him. Wrapped in an Israeli flag on a cold night in Israel, he sang with a guitarist accompanying him.

Sometimes I lay under the moon
And thank God I’m breathin’
Then I pray, “Don’t take me soon
‘Cause I am here for a reason”

The Golani Brigade soldiers sang along with Matisyahu at the army base; they’d just come back from fighting, and he was there to uplift their spirits.

“I felt so humbled to perform for them,” Matisyahu said. “It was a real privilege and a beautiful experience for me.”

The Jewish singer had come to Israel on a trip put together by the Maccabee Task Force, an organization that fights antisemitism and anti-Zionism on college campuses. It had been five years since Matisyahu was in Israel, but it was time to go back and bear witness to the destruction, offering hope during a seemingly hopeless time. His son Laivy Miller, who is 18 years old and studying in yeshiva, put the idea into his head.

“He told me that after Oct. 7, when he came back to the United States for a little bit, he felt alone in the world,” Matisyahu said. “Being in Israel, he felt connected. That’s the gist of what everyone else was telling me and what I was seeing on social media. I decided to go.”

Reconnecting With His People
Matisyahu, born Matthew Paul Miller, burst onto the music scene in 2005 with the Top 40 hit “King Without a Crown.” Appearing on stage with a black, long beard and tzitzit, he called himself a Hasidic reggae singer. He prayed daily, attended synagogue, and wouldn’t perform on Shabbat. He was a star in the mainstream, as well as among Orthodox Jews, who appreciated the singer spreading a positive view of Orthodox Jews in popular culture.

Then, in 2011, Matisyahu announced that he’d shaved his beard and left Orthodox Judaism, writing, “At a certain point I felt the need to submit to a higher level of religiosity … to move away from my intuition and to accept an ultimate truth. I felt that in order to become a good person I needed rules — lots of them — or else I would somehow fall apart. I am reclaiming myself. Trusting my goodness and my divine mission.”

For over a decade, Matisyahu, a Grammy-nominated artist, focused on looking inward, on making music that was self-reflective. Though he’d taken a step back from religious Judaism, he kept the Jewish people close to his heart.
Eden Golan chosen to represent Israel in Eurovision
In an emotional finale of the talent competition, The Next Star (HaKochav HaBa), which was broadcast on Keshet 12 on Tuesday night, Eden Golan was selected to represent Israel at Eurovision in Malmo, Sweden in May.

Eden Golan, whose family moved from Israel to Russia when she was six and moved back here two years ago, already has a professional career abroad and her polished initial audition drew an unprecedented 100% from the judges and audience. In her last performance on Tuesday, she sang Aerosmith’s “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” As she reprised the song after her win, she dedicated it to the hostages held by Hamas and their families.

Mika Moshe came in third and Or Cohen was second. The jurors were singers Keren Peles, Assaf Amdursky, Itay Levy, Shiri Maimon, Ran Danker, and Eden Hasson and audience votes were also counted when choosing the winner.

It was a season of lyrical expressions of sadness and rousing anthems of resilience. The tragedy of the war hit home for the participants on the show when Shauli Greenglick, a combat officer in the Nahal Brigade, who competed in uniform when he was home from the front, was killed in battle in the north of the Gaza Strip in December. Greenglick performed Hanan Ben Ari’s “Blind Bat,” for his audition and impressed the judges, guaranteeing him a spot in further rounds. In an emotional tribute, part of Greenglick’s audition was replayed his family was brought onstage to sing along to a recording that was found of him singing, “In the End, Everything Passes” by Omer Adam, that he was planning to perform in the next round. Several members of the jury and hosts Rotem Sela and Assi Azar teared up during this performance.
Rachel Bloom, Tiffany Haddish, Jeff Ross Headline Israel Fundraiser at Laugh Factory
Even though the torrential rains caused a Flash Flood Warning in Los Angeles, over 300 people still braved the weather to attend a sold out benefitfor Israel at the Laugh Factory. It was a testament to the determination of people half a world away willing to show support for Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7th terror attacks.

The show, titled “Comedy Hug,” was a fundraiser for Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest hospital and for The Koby Mandell Foundation. The Foundation provides “emotional support services for the thousands of bereaved Israelis who have lost an immediate family member to terror or tragedy via multifaceted therapeutic programs.” It was founded by Rabbi Seth and Sherri Mandell in 2001 after their 13 year-old son Koby and his friend Yosef Ishran were murdered by terrorists in Israel.

Los Angeles-based comedian Avi Liberman founded “Comedy for Koby,” a bi-annual comedy tour in the U.S. and Israel dedicated to raising funds and awareness for the Koby Mandell Foundation. Liberman not only performed at and co-produced “Comedy Hug,” he also co-hosted it after host Kevin Nealon unexpectedly left during the latter half of the evening.

Still, Nealon set the tone for the “Comedy Hug,” especially as a non-Jew showing solidarity for the cause. His star power as a former “Saturday Night Live” performer and head writer was an added draw to sell tickets to see the stacked lineup.

Comedian and actress Tiffany Haddish made a brief unannounced appearance. She brought three young children on stage, all appearing to be under 10-years-old,, including Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada’s daughter. Haddish quipped that the children paid for the privilege of doing a few jokes for the crowd. In reality, the three separate $1,800 checks that Haddish brandished were donations. Each child’s two-line jokes had the crowd roaring.

Emmy Award-winning actress Rachel Bloom shouted Hebrew vulgarities during her set — and quickly clarified that she doesn’t know any much other Hebrew. After the Israelis’ laughter subsided, she explained the translation for the non-Hebrew speakers in the audience.
2 years ago it was BLM, now it's Palestine : Chaya Raichik | Visegrad24 Podcast
Visegrad24 presents an in-depth series covering the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. This comprehensive series features on-the-ground interviews, bringing firsthand insights from a diverse range of voices, including politicians, professors, journalists, experts and influencers.

Our guest today: Chaya Raichik, the creator of Libs of TikTok.

00:00 - Introduction
0:29 - Starting the account
02:26 - Political Islamism
04:00 - Oppressed and oppressor
07:01 - Critical theory
09:20 - TikTok brainwashing
12:46 - Turning the tide
14:48 - X and independent journalism
16:01 - Hamas crime denialism


Jews have a weapon of hilarious destruction: Shawn Eni | Visegrad24 Podcast
Visegrad24 presents an in-depth series covering the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. This comprehensive series features on-the-ground interviews, bringing firsthand insights from a diverse range of voices, including politicians, professors, journalists, experts and influencers.

Our guest today: Shawn Eni, the man behind the @TheMossadIL account on X.

00:00 - Introduction
0:46 - Starting the account
4:15 - Mossad and the Gaza Ministry of Health
7:23 - Jewish humor
09:36 - Change after Oct. 7th
14:42 - Next steps for Mossad
17:18 Serious Mossad




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