Monday, February 12, 2024

02/12 Links Pt2: Pres. Herzog: The Case Against Israel Rests on Lies; Western appeasement of anti-Israel fanatics threatens to hand victory to axis of evil

From Ian:

Jake Wallis Simons: Western appeasement of anti-Israel fanatics threatens to hand victory to axis of evil
Almost five decades ago, following a seminal visit to Israel in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, the American novelist Saul Bellow wondered whether there wasn’t one Israel but two.

The first Israel, he wrote, was next to “insignificant”. Accounting for less than a quarter of a per cent of the Middle East, with a population of three million in a region that was home to 75 times that number, it was both territorially and demographically negligible.

While the Vietnam War, from which the United States withdrew that same year, had claimed millions of lives, the total deaths on both sides in all of Israel’s wars amounted to about 67,000. This blip on the world stage was the Israel of reality.

The second Israel, he wrote, was a phantasm of the imagination. As the umbilical cord of Western civilisation and the foundation stone of Christendom, Israel, alongside classical Greece, formed the wellspring of our morality and the template for our sensibilities and cultural richness.

It also functioned as catnip for anti-Semites, who have always both fetishised Jews as the string-pulling chosen people and despised them as the lowly killers of Christ, a dynamic that persists to this day with smears like “Zionist lobby” and “genocide”.

As Bellow inimitably put it: “The mental Israel is immense, a country inestimably important, playing a major role in the world, as broad as all history and perhaps as deep as sleep.”

Since he wrote those words, the Jewish state has undergone an economic miracle, added a further six million people to its population and become a regional military superpower. But its reality remains relatively small. Until October last year, for example, its total combat deaths over 75 years had risen to 86,000; still far fewer than, say, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in three years when we joined the invasion of Iraq.

Yet the deep sleep remains. The West’s passions about the Jewish state are out of all proportion to reality and shot through with hypocrisy. When the RAF, American Air Force and Iraqi and Kurdish forces destroyed Islamic State in Mosul in 2016-17, at least 9,000 Muslim civilians were killed.

Those deaths, partly funded by the British taxpayer, were no less gruesome than the ones in Gaza magnified on our televisions. Add our other battles against Islamic State and the death toll was far higher. Who took to the streets of London then? Where were the flares and placards? Where was the concern?
Bassam Tawil: 'Why Doesn't Hamas Go to Hell and Hide There?': Other Voices from Gaza
One can understand why Al-Jazeera and Arab media journalists are so anti-Israel that they do not want to provide a platform to any Palestinian to criticize Hamas. Yet, one cannot understand why the foreign media is turning a blind eye to the critical voices coming out from the Gaza Strip and Palestinians and Arabs living outside the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.

Why? These journalists are busy searching for stories that reflect badly only on Israel.

"Anyone who questioned Hamas's motives or objectives has been painted as a cowardly collaborator. To demand better living conditions or more political liberties was akin to treason.... Others are reluctant to speak out against Hamas for fear of seeming disloyal or pro-Israel. If people outside of Gaza find it difficult to question the forced conformity, imagine how much more challenging it is for many inside the coastal enclave." — Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib, X (Twitter), January 6, 2024.

"You're either going to govern and develop the place, or you're going to be a resistance group, but you can't do both at the same time.... Hamas could have made different choices that would have opened new political pathways for Palestinian unity and the development of Gaza. Instead, they chose to hold their people hostage and divert materials and resources into a futile armed resistance project that has set Palestinians back by decades." — Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib, X, February 4, 2024.

"Those who don't have to live with the consequences of Hamas's "resistance" are understandably the group's most fervent supporters and excusers (weirdly especially in London). Leave it to lousy beneficiaries of Western privilege to defend a terror group that oppresses its own people and uses them as cannon fodder in its suicidal adventures... Never forget that over 30,000 Gazans would still be alive today if Hamas kept its fighters at home on October 7. The pro-Palestine movement deserves better 'allies' and 'supporters' than overt & covert Hamas enthusiasts." — Ahmed Fouad Al-Khatib, X, February 2, 2024.

"Anti-Hamas = Zionist. Call for coexistence = Zionist. Condemn Hamas = Zionist. Both sides' lives matter = Zionist. Sympathize with Israeli hostages = Zionist. How many definitions are there for Zionist? .... I forgot the most important one: Peace supporter = Zionist." — Hamza, X, February 5, 2024.

[Palestinian writer Majdi Abd Al-Wahhab] called on the international community and the Arab world to act to eliminate all the Palestinian organizations and stop their military and civilian activity, "so that the Palestinians will be rid of them and their harm and can start blazing a new, straight path for themselves, far from destruction, killing and devastation."

"The destruction caused by Hamas to Gaza will not end even if Israel's war on Gaza does stop. The destruction will continue, as is evident from the 'glorious' history of our [Palestinian] organizations." — Majdi Abd Al-Wahhab, Elaph, January 9, 2024.
How Oct. 7 Has Changed Hearts and Minds in Israel
The unprecedented magnitude of the Gaza war has generated a profound change in hearts and minds. It has become an existential battle.

The strong, violent urges exhibited by Palestinians against Israelis as a whole on Oct. 7, and the lack of criticism and all-around disregard for the brutal massacres, going as far as to argue that they had never taken place, have led many Israelis to wonder whether this is a burning animosity rooted deep within the Palestinian collective mindset.

They are not only "sobering up" from the possibility of making peace but are also realizing that there is an enormous gap between the two communities with regard to moral values, truth, human life, and the ability to be empathetic toward others. The war has cast aside concepts such as coexistence and a political arrangement, creating instead an unprecedented blood score.

This development evokes dark thoughts about the Palestinian national movement and its relations with Israel. The ongoing war is the strongest blow ever to be delivered by the Palestinians to Israel. The Palestinians are priding themselves in the fact that they have now returned to center stage, while proving their ability to destabilize the entire world: from Lebanon, through the Red Sea, to within Western countries.

Not a single person in the Palestinian system has been heard wondering what prospects lay beyond these momentary accomplishments, when Gaza lies in ruins, the Israeli peace camp is going extinct, the concept of the two-state vision has become synonymous with a dangerous hallucination, and deep distrust toward Palestinians has seeped into Israeli society.

In the hearts and minds of the Israeli collective, the war has led to the assumption that Palestinian independence poses an existential threat to Israel since it has now been proven that the extensive freedom enjoyed by Gazans following the Israeli disengagement in 2005 was primarily utilized to accelerate a violent struggle.

Israel may be forced to determine - unilaterally - the physical borders separating it from the Palestinians while ensuring long-lasting control over the gates between this entity and the world - the border area between Gaza and Egypt. This vision may not be very appealing, but in the Middle East, it is sometimes more important to be realistic than optimistic.


President of Israel Isaac Herzog: The Case Against Israel Rests on Lies
The international legal system has begun to ignore reality and truth. Justice is unrecognizable, and noble ideals are perverted by terrorists and cynics. These feelings were brought in focus as the International Court of Justice at The Hague in January considered South Africa's accusation that Israel was guilty of genocide.

Amid the many demonstrable misrepresentations that emerged from the accusation against Israel, one caught my attention - a quote attributed to me. On Oct. 12, five days after Hamas terrorists butchered 1,200 people in southern Israel and kidnapped hundreds more, a line that there was "an entire nation out there that is responsible," referring to the Palestinians, was presented as if it justified the killing of civilians.

At that news conference, not one journalist asked me about the pain in Israel or about the global implications of this act of catastrophic terror. They were instead preoccupied with the effect this would have on Palestinians in Gaza - the territory that had produced and then celebrated the perpetrators of the attack. The fact is that many Palestinian civilians entered Israel on Oct. 7 and participated in murder, rape and looting, much of it documented on film. Palestinians were filmed cheering the massacre and jeering and attacking the hostages as they were led into captivity.

I pointed out that Hamas operates from within the heart of its civilian population and enjoys broad support. I then stated, in no uncertain terms, that there are many innocent Palestinians, and that the State of Israel and our security forces don't view innocent civilians as targets in any way. I made it clear that Israel acts in keeping with international law. These words were purposely distorted when presented to the court.

The South African case, brought in support of Hamas, is a blood libel against the nation-state of the Jewish people - a shameful low for an international system that emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust. This abandonment of moral clarity, the desertion of the vision of international justice and its replacement by cynical politics and outright falsehoods, will have repercussions far beyond Israel.
ICC Prosecutor threatens Israel with war crimes scrutiny if it invades Rafah
International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan on Monday threatened Israel with harsher war crimes scrutiny if it invades Rafah.

In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, he wrote, "I am deeply concerned by the reported bombardment and potential ground incursion by Israeli forces in Rafah."

The IDF's position is that it killed only or almost entirely Hamas terrorists during its operation early Monday morning to rescue two hostages, but Khan implied, like many global media reports have, that the IDF may have killed large numbers of Palestinian civilians. No official evidence has been presented to support such claims, but videos have surfaced on social media of children allegedly killed by Israeli airstrikes.

"My Office has an ongoing and active investigation into the situation in the State of Palestine. This is being taken forward as a matter of the utmost urgency, with a view to bringing to justice those responsible for Rome Statute crimes," Khan added.

The rules of war
Further, he stated, "All wars have rules and the laws applicable to armed conflict cannot be interpreted so as to render them hollow or devoid of meaning. This has been my consistent message, including from Ramallah last year. Since that time, I have not seen any discernible change in conduct by Israel."

Though the US has complemented the IDF for changing its tactics at points to reduce collateral civilian harm, Us President Joe Biden has also criticized Israel for not doing enough in that area, and Khan clearly argued that the IDF has not adjusted enough since his warnings during his late November-early December visit to Israel and the West Bank.

"As I have repeatedly emphasized, those who do not comply with the law should not complain later when my Office takes action pursuant to its mandate. To all those involved: my Office is actively investigating any crimes allegedly committed. Those who are in breach of the law will be held accountable," he said in a not-so-veiled threat to both the IDF and Hamas.


Only Palestinians can convince Israel to accept two states
THE FIRST step toward restoring Israeli acceptance of a Palestinian state would be a joint declaration by the Palestinian leadership, in conjunction with the Arab League, that they accept the Jewish state and acknowledge the Jews’ right to live in peace. A repudiation of Hamas and its atrocities would add credibility to the declaration. The US and European countries can serve as guarantors for both sides.

The US should add a corollary that if the Palestinians do not turn decisively to nonviolent nationalism, they do not deserve their own state. People forfeit their right to self-rule if they base their cause on the destruction of another nation.

Secondly, the Palestinians should undertake to build their state in three areas: democratizing, strengthening the economy, and peacemaking.

Why should democratization be a requirement for Palestinian statehood? Because a dictatorship (as presently exists) will be corrupt and incompetent. Unable to meet the needs of its citizens, it will predictably blame Israel and divert its citizens’ anger towards an external enemy.

What if the Palestinians had accepted the offer of statehood in 2000 or 2009? With a corrupt and incompetent PA, a few years later (as in the 2006 election,) a majority of Palestinians would have voted for Hamas.

In fact, the PA suppressed the 2006 election, fearing that outcome, and has refused to allow another election until this day. The US has supported this suppression because everyone believes that the Palestinians would elect Hamas.

Had Hamas controlled Palestine, it would have launched its October 7 massacre and atrocities within 5 km. of Jerusalem. It could have killed not 1,200 but 12,000 or 120,000 while destroying the capital city’s institutions such as the Knesset and the Supreme Court.

No sane Israeli will allow a dictatorial Palestine to come into being because, as we saw on October 7, a state that could quickly be turned over to a genocidal antisemitic leadership is a mortal threat to all Israelis.

Democratization means allowing for free media and press to grow and allowing new candidates and parties pledged to democracy to join the electoral process.

A neutral international institution (like Freedom House which rates democracy worldwide) can be selected to monitor performance, degree of improvement, etc. When predetermined levels of democratization are reached, then a specific percentage of areas B and C can be transferred to PA rule as reward/incentive to continue the process.
FLASH POINT: Two-State Solution | JNS TV
As the Hamas-Israel war rages on, the US and the International community are continuously pushing for a two-state solution. But is this what either the Israelis or the Palestinians want? Is it even possible right now and does it send the right message to the region? Is the Biden administration out of step with the Middle East reality?


travelingisrael.com: A Two-State Solution is NOT the solution (So what is?) #palestine #israel

The American People Know the Real Hamas
For American consumption, Hamas emphasizes not their non-negotiable commitment to wiping out the Jews, but their own suffering. With crumbling control, they somehow manage to keep precise tabs on casualties, who seem to be all civilians, and almost entirely women and children. Their fellow-travelers in the American mainstream media do their best to transmit the Hamas message, that is, the English-language version of it. How cruel it is to keep fighting the murderers that have made an entire civilian population its human shield. How immoral it is to let the ones who have never felt bound by any law enforce observance of law on those they slaughtered and raped.

The Administration would like to run with this Hamas line and believe enough Americans will accept it if they airbrush it just right while simultaneously turning up the slander of Netanyahu.

Curious to see how thorough the whitewashing of Hamas has become. I did a Google search for Ali Baraka, to see how much the legacy media covered his damning statements. MEMRI was listed, and so was the Jerusalem Post. But on that the entire long first page of Google hits, only NBC popped up, way at the bottom — but its quote from Baraka was only his denial that Iran had anything to do with October 7. Nothing to spoil the airbrushed image that the government is pushing through its media allies.

This is not new. The New York Times of the ’30s and ’40s pooh-poohed Stalin’s starvation of Ukraine as merest fantasy and buried the emerging reports of the Nazi’s organized extermination of European Jewry ten pages deep. Others followed suit.

The story doesn’t suit them today either. The line from the Bidenaughts and Obamaniks who are fashioning our foreign policy and are crafting the Democrat platform is that Hamas is not all that dangerous, and it can be contained if only we give it and its allies more power. Let’s say — an independent state. And free all the murderers convicted in open court of executions of Israeli civilians. And, of course, freeing all those captured in the October 7 orgy of sexualized terror. That will surely result in peace, won’t it? Who could object to that?
Yisrael Medad: Biden, Blinken, and a nod to ‘Palestine’: US relations with Israel
ACTUALLY, THE order made accusations that there are “high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction [which] has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of... the broader Middle East region.”

As has been made abundantly clear by many, including myself in a January 15 column on these pages, the issue of “settler violence” is a manipulative device lacking factual basis and, to repeat a favorite State Department term, the accusations are “disproportionate” when examining the reality. For example, most of the “settler violence” recorded is actually Jews entering the Temple Mount and circumventing the esplanade in accordance with Halachic restrictions.

Moreover, if the administration is treating the thwarting of its policy goal as a crime to be punished, that is not quite the framework of American justice I was educated to accept, in which actions are investigated by police and based on evidence referred to courts approved by the State Prosecutor’s office.

In fact, the framework of that executive order could be adopted by Israel. Theoretically, borrowing from that action, an Israeli government could sanction BDS activists, antisemites, and banks acting on their financial interests. Is that the type of relationship America wants?

And what happened when, at a press conference, Biden claimed that Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi “did not want to open the gate to humanitarian material to get in” and that he had to convince Sisi to open the crossing? The response was quick in coming.

As Al-Ahram reported the next day, “Egypt’s Presidency has rejected the remarks made by US President Joe Biden.” It added, “From the very beginning, Egypt has opened the Rafah crossing from its side without restrictions or conditions.”

However, now Biden has taken another step to placate the far-Left progressive wing of his Democratic Party.

His new directive authorizes a swift cutoff of military aid to countries that violate international protections of civilians. It allows Secretary of State Blinken 45 days to obtain “credible and reliable written assurances” from foreign recipients of US military aid that are in active conflicts, including Israel, that they are using US military assistance in compliance with international humanitarian law, international humanitarian rights law, and other standards.

Beyond its threatening and negative nature, Israel is forced, seemingly, not only to confront American quasi-legalities but also the realm of international law, which is notorious for bending to international trends.

THIS COMES on top of The New York Times report – based on an authenticated recording – that Jon Finer, the deputy National Security adviser to President Biden, spoke privately to Muslim-American leaders in Dearborn, Michigan saying “We are very well aware that we have missteps in the course of responding to this crisis since October 7” and adding, “I do not have any confidence in this current government of Israel.”

However, according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the memorandum does not mean that the administration is “imposing new standards for military aid.” She said its aim was merely to improve transparency.

Israel, it appears, in expecting continued American assistance needs to deal with quite transparent new American diplomatic and financial moves that promote a Palestinian state.

Our government must awake from its dream-like stupor vis-a-vis this current administration seeking to get reelected.
UK sanctions four Israeli ‘settlers’ it accuses of violence
London followed Washington’s lead on Monday by announcing sanctions on “Israeli settlers who have violently attacked Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.”

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron decided to impose “financial and travel restrictions” on four Israelis, according to the Foreign Office.

One of the four accused Israelis, Yinon Levi from Meitarim Farm in the South Hebron Hills region of Judea, was already targeted by the Biden administration earlier this month along with three others for “extremist settler violence.” The executive order signed by Biden led to two out of the four having their bank accounts frozen, with Bank Hapoalim indicating it would suspend the other two accounts.

The other three named by the White House are David Chai Chasdai from Givat Ronen; Einan Tanjil from Kiryat Ekron; and Shalom Zicherman from Mitzpe Yair.

The other three targeted by the U.K. are Moshe Sharvit, Zvi Bar Yosef and Ely Federman. Levi and Sharvit are accused of having used “physical aggression, threatened families at gunpoint, and destroyed property as part of a targeted and calculated effort to displace Palestinian communities.”

Bar Yosef is accused of threatening families on a picnic at gunpoint and Federman of threatening shepherds south of Hebron. Federman was reportedly wounded in Gaza and has since returned to combat in Khan Yunis.

“Today’s sanctions place restrictions on those involved in some of the most egregious abuses of human rights,” Cameron said. “We should be clear about what is happening here. Extremist Israeli settlers are threatening Palestinians, often at gunpoint, and forcing them off land that is rightfully theirs. This behavior is illegal and unacceptable.”
Senior Biden Admin Official Refused To Meet With Israeli Ambassador During 2021 Hamas Conflict, Internal Emails Show
A senior Biden administration official refused to meet with Israel's ambassador in 2021, during the last conflict with Hamas, until the Jewish state reached a ceasefire with the Iran-backed terror group, according to internal government emails reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

Samantha Power, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), was asked to meet with then-Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan in May 2021, when Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups were attacking Israel with missiles in protest of a court ruling that evicted six Palestinian families from an East Jerusalem neighborhood.

Power declined the meeting, internal government emails show, saying that Israel must first reach a ceasefire with the Palestinian terror groups before being granted a sit-down. The behind-the-scenes diplomatic drama reveals how the United States used back channels to pressure Israel into stopping its siege on Hamas militants—tactics that once again may be in play as the Biden administration pushes Israel into ending its current war on the terror group.

"The Administrator [Power] would like to take the meeting with the Ambassador [Erdan] but wants to hold until there is a ceasefire or resolution to the currently [sic] escalation of the conflict," a scheduler in Power's office wrote in a May 18 email to USAID colleagues working in the region, according to a cache of internal documents first obtained by the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA), a government watchdog group.

In recent weeks, the Biden administration has begun to walk back its robust support for Israel's war against Hamas, with Biden saying on Thursday that the Jewish state's response to the worst terror attack in its history is "over the top." The administration has also reportedly considered slowing down arms sales to Israel to pressure the Israeli government into reaching a ceasefire with Hamas.

Power's 2021 decision to punt on a meeting with a top Israeli official is being seen as evidence that the Biden administration's longstanding policy is to pressure the Jewish state when conflict with Palestinian militants breaks out.

"It's disturbing that the first instinct of the Biden administration when faced with engaging an embattled ally was to defer a meeting until their efforts to defend their homeland were placed on ice," CASA director James Fitzpatrick said in a statement. "Unfortunately, we saw many high-ranking Biden officials who sympathized with the Hamas 'cause' echo this game plan again in 2023 by demanding U.S. support or involvement be contingent on an Israeli ceasefire."
State Dept. official who quit over Gaza pivots to anti-Israel NGO
Josh Paul, a former director in the State Department Bureau of Political-Military Affairs who resigned in protest over military aid to Israel amid a flurry of media attention and applause, has joined Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an advocacy organization headed by an anti-Israel activist that calls for a boycott of Israel.

Paul presented his decision as a moral stance in a resignation letter he posted online 10 days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack killed over 1,200 Israelis and the terror group took 249 hostages. Playing a role in the Biden administration’s support for Israel was one “moral compromise” too many after 11 years of involvement in U.S. weapons transfers. U.S. support for the war against Hamas, he wrote, is “built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy and bureaucratic inertia,” as well as “blind support for one side.”

The letter and a subsequent New York Times op-ed railed against the idea of “security for peace — the notion that the more secure Israel feels, the more concessions it will be able to make to the Palestinians.” The letter accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid,” and draws an equivalence between “the kidnapping of children…whether taken at gunpoint from their kibbutz or taken at gunpoint from their village,” an apparent reference to Palestinian minors arrested for suspected involvement in terrorism.

Following his resignation, Paul was feted in the media, with a lengthy interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and appearances on other networks, along with a nearly 3,000-word profile in The New Yorker.

The New Yorker’s Ben Wallis-Wells described Paul as concluding that Israeli security was an obstacle to peace over a decade ago when he was a Ramallah-based consultant advising the U.S. security coordinator to the Palestinian Authority. The reporter described Paul as struggling to hide his ideological bias when discussing the war: “He had a tight line to walk — to sound not like he was making an a-priori ideological case for peace, as an activist might, but like his skepticism of supplying the Israeli military reflected the hard-won experience of the national-security state.”

Now, Paul has come down on one side of that tightrope, joining DAWN as a non-resident fellow. The press release about Paul joining DAWN states that he is expected to contribute his expertise on Israel and the Palestinians, with a focus on weapons transfers and arms deals.


Blinken’s statement about Oct. 7 demonstrates a misunderstanding
Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared, “Israelis were dehumanized in the most horrific way on October 7.”

Blinken’s statement demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what happened on October 7 and calls into question whether he can be an effective mediator of a solution since he doesn’t understand the problem. Palestinians did not dehumanize Israelis on October 7.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has been dehumanizing Jews and Israelis since the launching of the Oslo process. What happened on October 7 was the Palestinian population, led by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah, implementing what they believe Jews and Israelis deserve after 28 years of their leaders dehumanizing Jews. Hatred that led up to the October 7 massacre

Just three months before the October 7 atrocities, the most important Palestinian religious figure, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Mahmoud Abbas’s adviser on religious affairs and the PA’s top Sharia judge, warned Palestinians about the danger of Jews.

He described Jews as people who “have left the path of humanity and followed Satanity. Satanity is an exit from humanity… Satan does not have to be in the form of a demon, hidden, he can also be in your form, but he is Satan. In the form of man, but he is Satan.” (Official PA TV, July 7, 2023). Satan in Islam is the source of all evil in the world. Fighting and killing the Satanic Jew is not only an act of self-defense for Palestinians but also makes the world a safer place.

In an earlier sermon, Al-Habbash said Jews on the Temple Mount are “grazing herds of humanoids, people, or creatures that Allah created in the form of humans… those whom Allah has cursed and with whom He became angry and made of them apes and pigs.” (Quran 5:60). He therefore urged Muslims to visit al-Aqsa Mosque so that it does not remain “the prey of humanoids.” (Official PA TV, September 30, 2022).

THREE TIMES in the first half of 2023, official PA TV broadcast the opinions of Palestinian researcher Muhammad Al-Yahya, who explained: “Jews are by nature arrogant, do not accept the other… The Europeans hated them and wanted to get rid of them, so the European countries... had the idea of establishing a Jewish state for the Jews... .
What Is the U.S. Government Doing to Enforce the Taylor Force Act?
The bi-partisan U.S. Taylor Force Act (TFA), adopted in 2018, declared that "The Palestinian Authority's practice of paying salaries to terrorists serving in Israeli prisons, as well as to the families of deceased terrorists, is an incentive to commit acts of terror." As long as the PA continues to incentivize terror and reward the murder of Jews, there is no chance whatsoever to promote any constructive dialogue toward Israeli-Palestinian peace.

In addition to conditioning most of U.S. aid on the PA abolishing its "Pay-for-Slay" terror reward policy, as a long-term diplomatic goal, the Act urged "the Department of State to use its bilateral and multilateral engagements with all governments and organizations committed to the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians to highlight the issue of Palestinian Authority payments for acts of terrorism and to urge such governments and organizations to join the United States in calling on the Palestinian Authority to cease such payments immediately."

Very little has been done to achieve the diplomatic goal of ending the terror payments. It is apparent that the PA not only intends to continue paying its terror rewards but will pay rewards to the terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre as well.

In 2018, following the adoption of the Taylor Force Act, Israel also adopted legislation that punishes the PA for its "Play-for-Slay" policy by deducting the sum the PA pays to terrorists from the tax revenues it collects for the PA.

To date, the PA has lost over 3 billion shekels ($820 million), a sum equivalent to the PA payments to terrorists from 2018 through 2022. When Abbas urges Washington to release the "Palestinian clearance funds," he is referring to the sums withheld by Israel from the taxes as a direct result of the PA's "Play-for-Slay" policy.

Moral clarity requires that Secretary Blinken unequivocally demand an immediate end to the PA's "Play-for-Slay" policy as a non-negotiable precondition to establishing any form of revitalized Palestinian entity.
Jonathan Tobin: Biden can’t have it both ways on the Gaza war
Finer was dispatched to Dearborn because the administration needed to do something to convince not just Arab-Americans but so-called “progressives” throughout the country, who are virulently anti-Israel, that the president is listening to them. Previously, Biden had sent Julie Chavez Rodriguez, his national campaign manager, to Dearborn on a similar mission, when she met not only with Arab-American Democrats but also Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the openly antisemitic Congress member and “Squad” member, to assure them that the administration understood their concerns.

But Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud refused to meet with her. He reportedly said that he would settle for nothing less than a meeting with actual policymakers rather than campaign officials. It was then that the White House dispatched a delegation to Michigan headed by Finer, who is himself Jewish and a veteran of the Obama administration, and now the No. 2 person at the National Security Council.

Once there, Finer appears to have gotten a hostile reception but spared no efforts to ingratiate himself with figures who act as if the Oct. 7 atrocities never happened and who are offended by any suggestion that they should condemn Hamas, demand that it give up the hostages it holds or spare the Palestinian population further suffering by surrendering. His hosts were still unhappy that he stopped short of direct promises of a change in policy towards Israel. Still, he went a long way towards satisfying their demands by issuing some blistering condemnations of the Israeli government and by explicitly apologizing for the White House statement issued on the 100th day after Oct. 7 that focused entirely on the plight of the hostages and Hamas. He seemed to promise that future communications would pose a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians.

Perhaps the White House thinks that Finer’s mission and the press coverage it orchestrated will calm down the torrent of criticism from the left. That includes chants directed at the president routinely calling him “genocide Joe” by not only those who push that false charge but by the growing chorus of those who support a ceasefire that will grant victory to Hamas. Kowtowing to antisemites like Tlaib and allowing local politicians like Hammoud to bully an NSC official will only increase the pressure on Biden’s campaign, not lessen it. The visit merely created an expectation on the left that the administration would punish Israel if the fighting went on.

Stopping the push to Rafah
And yet, continue it will, as the IDF not only persists with its methodical and efficient campaign to eliminate the terrorists throughout the Strip but as it begins a push to wipe out Hamas’s last organized military formations in Rafah.

That is the context for the flurry of diplomatic activity now as Biden seeks to make it harder for the IDF to attack Rafah. The plight of the Palestinians who fled there when the fighting was primarily in the northern part of the coastal enclave is a genuine problem. Those people should be allowed by their Hamas overlords to flee into areas of Gaza that are not urban and where facilities can be created to care for them. But right now, the administration seems to be speaking as if Hamas’s cynical use of them as human shields should render any Israeli military effort as wrongful.

Finer’s apology hasn’t just raised expectations on the left about Biden’s willingness to confront Israel. It seems to mean that, at a minimum, the administration now believes that even if getting rid of Hamas would be a good idea in theory, any rate of civilian casualties—no matter how few relative to the situation, what the terrorists did to increase them or what conceivable precautions Israel might take to avoid them—are enough of a reason to end the war.

Biden has allowed his fears of losing not just Michigan but the enthusiastic support of his party base to paint himself into a corner about Gaza. If he doesn’t prevent the continuation of the war, then he will have given the antisemitic progressives like Tlaib and other progressives a reason to further distance themselves from his political fate. That would seem to be counter-intuitive for Democrats, who regard a victory for former President Donald Trump as the end of the world. Still, some are so committed to delegitimizing Israel and thwarting efforts to destroy Hamas that they seem to think that a Trump victory might be worth it if it means that never again would a Democratic president stand with Israel.

At a time when the destruction of Hamas is, if not imminent, at least a real possibility after several months more of hard fighting, Biden’s apology to his left-wing critics may offer the terrorists a lifeline. That would not only enable them to claim victory in a war they started with atrocities. It would also encourage rather than seek to put an end to the surge in left-wing antisemitism and render any hope of convincing the Palestinians to abandon an ideology of hatred and a ceaseless war against Jews even more unlikely.
‘Jihad Capital’ Claim Brings on a Torrent of Selective Outrage
Democrats and journalists are upset at the Wall Street Journal.

They can’t explain why, exactly. They only know the paper did a terrible thing.

“27,000 people dead in Gaza,” Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief Louisa Loveluck, currently reporting on the war in Gaza, wrote last week on social media, “most of them civilians, as the world’s most powerful newspapers publish stories likening Arabs to insects, aid operations to terrorist outfits, and an entire Muslim community in Michigan to jihadists. The world is upside down.”

The part regarding jihadists in Michigan is a reference to a February 2 Wall Street Journal opinion article titled “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital.”

Like Loveluck’s peers and the Democrats who are worried that the White House’s support for Israel may complicate the president’s reelection chances in Michigan, the Washington Post journalist is disgusted by the Wall Street Journal opinion article. She is disgusted that its author, Steven Stalinsky, the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, would say such a thing.

And like others who’ve condemned the piece, Loveluck has neglected to outline what, exactly, the author got wrong.

The Wall Street Journal piece is chockablock with factual examples of radical, anti-American, and outright antisemitic rhetoric drawn directly from the denizens of the Detroit suburb that is home to the largest Muslim population per capita in the United States. Stalinsky also references certain residents’ ties to actual Islamic terrorism.
Howard Jacobson: Sefton Goldberg and the New Hate Marchers
The nursery language of folk tale fulfils a double purpose. It empties history of time and empties motive of complexity. Menacing in their anonymity and blind cupidity, “a people” might as well have come from an evil planet. With the simplifications of myth on his side, Gideon Levy feels empowered to speak like an apprentice prophet. “Those who wanted the Jewish state and Zionism—it’s too late, friends. If you want the Jewish state, you should have pulled out of the occupied territories a long time ago. You didn’t do it. Too bad for you.”

Here they are at last, then—the last days of Zion.

And here he is, another satisfied, disaster-seeking Jew.

Is it exhilarating, if you are a Jewish anti-Zionist, to imagine that the thing you’ve been anticipating with perverse glee is getting closer every hour?

Amos Oz, the Israeli novelist and founding member of Peace Now, also felt his country should have pulled out of the occupied territories, though his analysis of how the occupation came about and the difficulties of extrication was more subtle than Gideon Levy’s. Until the colonialist-settler paradigm became the one and only model for reading events, leaving Israel high and dry as the last exponent of its evils and every Zionist a collaborator, Oz enjoyed great favor with the literary left. Both sides were in the right, and then both sides were in the wrong, he reasoned, which felt like an acceptance of some responsibility at least.

But, looked at a second time, it wasn’t enough. Both sides equally at fault sounded too much like tragedy, and tragedy eschews blame. And, without being able to apportion blame to one party only, anti-Zionism is toothless. No account of Israel that doesn’t concede turpitude from the moment the first of those “people” from nowhere arrived to steal and plunder will suffice. Oz’s exquisite descriptions of his family’s life in pre-War of Independence Jerusalem in A Tale of Love and Darkness are routinely dismissed as sentimental falsifications by anti-Zionists who cannot bear a story, let alone one in which the face of Zionism was once benign. Whatever moves or changes threatens the fixity of the only truth they want to hear. And whatever evokes lives lived in ambivalence denies the absolutism of discourse.

“The answer to racism is to denounce it,” wrote Jacqueline Rose in The Last Resistance, “not to flee behind a defensive, self-isolating barrier of being—and being only—a Jew.”

If you want to know why a novel will always surpass a treatise as a guide to living, here’s the evidence. Imagine telling the Jews of Kishinev not to flee but to stay and denounce the racism of the rioters crying “Kill the Jews!”

“Gentlemen,” I hear the rabbi remonstrating with the advancing mob ... But after that I hear nothing.

Does Jacqueline Rose really consider death by lynch mob preferable to flight, or the dash for safety to be an act of narcissism? Perhaps she has an essay somewhere among her papers teaching Jews the right way of accepting martyrdom or, if they must run away, how to do so nondefensively.

So here’s a question. Does not Pappé’s ambition to “delegitimize” an entire nation of Israeli Jews, taken alongside Gideon Levy’s designation of those same Jews as a faceless, once-and-for-all predatory people and Jacqueline Rose’s unwillingness to conceive a living Jew in a situation of mortal peril, allow of a plausible presumption of genocide?

What an innocent my Sefton Goldberg appears now, thinking the threat to his existence would come from embittered gentiles. But I forgive him. This was 1983. He couldn’t have known that, only 40 years later, those hell-bent on tearing down the Temple would be Jews.
A Marriage Made in Hell
In short, why are radical leftists and Islamic fundamentalists, whose values seem so diametrically opposed to each other – at least in terms of sexual license and gender expression – apparently such staunch allies?

This is a counterintuitive mystery that continues to perplex and amuse many in the West who don’t understand that these movements have more in common than it seems on the surface.

The short explanation is that today’s Progressivism and Islamic fundamentalism have a common enemy in Western civilization, most specifically America and Israel – or, as the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini referred to them during the Islamic revolution of 1979, the Great Satan and the Little Satan. America and Israel are despised because they pose the greatest obstacles to the leftist and Islamist lust for power and to their differing utopian visions for all mankind.

Both radical leftism and Islamic fundamentalism are totalitarian movements driven to “fundamentally transform” the world, as former President Barack Obama would put it. The left dreams of engineering a global, collectivist society in which the inequitable Western freedoms provided by capitalism and individualism have been eradicated in order to liberate the oppressed and to establish “social justice.” In reality, this dream is nothing more than the nightmare of communism, but marketed more slickly today as environmentally-conscious, personal freedom (“You will own nothing – and you’ll be happy,” goes the slogan from the globalist elites at the World Economic Forum.)

For Muslim fundamentalists, the world is divided between Dar al-Islam – or the House of Islam, the parts of the world where sharia law rules, such as Afghanistan and certain boroughs of London – and Dar al-harb – the House of War – the lands ruled by infidels. The Islamists’ conviction is that they are obligated to wage perpetual jihad until all of Dar al harb submits to Allah and is subsumed into Dar al-Islam, and the whole world is justly ordered in a Muslim political-religious state called a caliphate, ruled by a successor of the Muslim prophet Muhammad known as a caliph. This is the same imperialist dream that inspired seventh-century Muslims to conquer, within a mere one hundred years after the death of Muhammad, an empire larger than the Roman Empire had ever been.

To political conservatives, who recognize that our flawed humanity cannot shape heaven on earth without resorting to totalitarian coercion, these dangerous visions seem like unrealizable fantasies, but to the visionaries themselves they are not only realizable but already underway and gaining momentum throughout the West…
The Soviet Pathos of Antizionism
Antizionism is a performative ideology—think of the obviously staged Pallywood videos, like the one of an alleged Israeli massacres that show a crowd of Palestinians running but no Israeli soldiers in sight. Or Quds News posting a picture of a never fired bullet with the caption “Displaced citizens sheltering in Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis shared a photo of Israeli snipers’ bullets fired at the hospital.”

It’s not that it’s hilariously wrong but that the post reveals something about antizionist relationships with the truth. Quds News have to know that the bullet wasn’t fired. Could it be that what they are telling us is not “this bullet was fired by the IDF at a hospital to murder civilians” but “Imagine the sons of pigs and monkeys committing genocide! Now go avenge the babies!” The second statement constitutes emotional truth and can’t be reasoned with.

The Palestinian movement enjoyed relative success with the rhetoric gifted to it by the USSR. It continues to revel in all of the Late Socialist glory of comfortable predictions of the final and total victory of the “Intifada revolution” and “free-free-free Palestine.”

Contemporary conventions of intersectionality dictate that the Palestinian movement has to be Palestinian-led. Along with Communist liberationism which some Westerners find relatable, the pro-Palestinian movement now utilizes slogans like “Yemen-Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around” that smack of tribal dynamics of wounded pride and revenge as they block airports and Holocaust museums to flex their muscle. They are not winning hearts and minds, but the ability to get away with crimes like blocking major throughways speaks to their power and their high ranking on the intersectional totem poll. It’s largely coincidental, but there is a Soviet-like immovability to their tactics.

The Soviet Union didn’t vanish under the weight of antizionism. It broke up once the people saw that a discourse that references the real world was possible. In the West, antizionism fits neatly into intersectional wokeness. Here, to fight antizionism means to fight wokeness, the shifty ideological fixations that created the environment in which lies and performative Jew-hate thrive.
Colorado House speaker apologizes after revoking invitation to hostage families
When a delegation of Israeli hostage families came to the Colorado Statehouse last week, they were expecting to be welcomed by both sides of the legislature. But the families received a warm welcome only on the Senate side. Now, the House speaker is dealing with the fallout for revoking an invitation — at the last minute — for the hostage families to appear on the House floor, which has been a hotbed of anti-Israel sentiment since Oct. 7.

Speaker Julie McCluskie, in an exclusive statement to Jewish Insider, apologized for pulling back the invitation, as first reported by Colorado Politics, though some members of the House did attend the Senate ceremony. “While I believe we accomplished the goal of our joint ceremony (ensure a respectful and meaningful recognition that honors the message and experience these families came to share) I acknowledge I made mistakes in my communication about the visit, and I am sorry for the hurt that caused,” McCluskie said.

Rep. Yaron Weinberg, a first-term Republican from Loveland whose family resides in Metula, Israel, told JI that McCluskie, a Democrat, had responded positively and agreed to a recognition ceremony on the House floor for the visiting Israelis when first approached two weeks prior to their visit.

“Twenty minutes before they were due to arrive at the Capitol, the speaker called me and said she’s deeply sorry but things have happened to the point where she was concerned about the safety of the family members and didn’t want them embarrassed,” Weinberg said.

“I told her, I trust and understand her guidance as I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, and I didn’t want the families to hear anything about this.”

McCluskie perhaps had reason for caution. In November, during a special session of the Colorado legislature, business on the House floor was disrupted when freshman Rep. Elisabeth Epps, a Democrat, joined pro-Palestinian protesters in demonstrations in the House gallery. The break with House decorum made headlines in Denver media outlets.
Asked why U.S. continues to back Israel, Tucker Carlson says U.S. spreading ‘destruction for its own sake’
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host and right-wing media personality, suggested on Monday that the U.S. had lost its “moral authority” because it has refused to call for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas.

“If you see a nation with awesome power abetting war for its own sake, you have a leadership that has no moral authority, that is illegitimate,” Carlson said at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he was participating in a discussion on the future of “storytelling.”

The answer came in response to a question asking him to assess why the U.S. had vetoed a U.N. resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.

“It’s something that I try to express, and I’m often called a traitor for saying that. It’s the opposite,” Carlson added to applause. “I say that because I believe in the United States. I think it has been a morally superior country, and if we allow our leaders to use our power to spread destruction for its own sake, that is shameful.”

Carlson used a family-related analogy to illustrate his point. “The United States is for this moment the most powerful country in the history of the world,” he told the crowd, “so if you were to frame this in terms we’re all familiar with, which are the most basic terms, the terms of the family, the United States would be Dad, it would be the father, and the father’s sacred obligation is to protect his family and to restore peace within his walls.”

“If I come home and two of my kids are fighting, what’s the first thing I do, even before I assess why they’re fighting, before I gather the facts and know what’s happening? ‘Stop the fighting,’” he continued. “So if I come home and I have two kids fighting and I say ‘Go, go, beat the crap out of him!,’ I’m evil, because I’ve violated the most basic duty of fatherhood, which is to bring peace.”
Dallas Jewish Councilwoman’s Home Defaced by Antisemitic Hamas Fans
I’m a Jewish elected official in Dallas and yesterday my home was defaced with hateful language and red triangles representing Palestine,” tweeted Dallas City Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn on Sunday.

Mendelsohn, an Independent, has represented Dallas City Council District 12 since June 17, 2019. Her current term ends in 2025. Her district is 47% White, 20% Hispanic, 19% African American, 10% Asian, 4% Multiracial, and under 1% Other.

“It included a disgusting pile of rocks and bricks and fake dead babies,” Mendelsohn described the damage, adding, “It’s unimaginable to me how our country has changed in the last 40 years. Folks, you’re going to need to stop sitting on the sidelines thinking everything will be ok. Things are not ok. Thank you to my very supportive friends, family, and community, Dallas Police Department, FBI, code compliance, and streets department for working to address this crime, and others including protests, threats, and harassment targeting me and my family.”

The red triangle was a Nazi concentration camp badge worn upright by prisoners of war, and worn inverted by political prisoners. According to Al Jazeera, pro-Hamas activists in the West have borrowed the Nazi symbol which they share as an emoji to indicate their support for the ant-Jewish atrocities of October 7, 2023.
Dutch court halts export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel
An appeals court in the Netherlands on Monday ordered the government to suspend all exports of spare parts for F-35 fighter jets to Israel over allegations they could be used to commit “serious violations of international humanitarian law” during the war against Hamas.

The Hague Court of Appeal overturned a December 2023 ruling that concluded that the Dutch government did not have to reconsider its export permit for U.S.-owned parts stored in the south of the country.

Under a 2019 U.S. Department of Defense contract, Dutch consortium OneLogistics stores and ships spare parts for the more than 500 F-35s in use by European militaries and the Israel Defense Forces.

The court ordered the state to halt exports to Israel within seven days and dismissed a request to suspend the order pending an appeal to the Supreme Court, which was announced just hours later.

“The State is lodging an appeal in cassation against the judgment of The Hague Court of Appeal on the distribution of American F-35 parts to Israel. In the government’s view, it is up to the State to determine its foreign policy,” Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Geoffrey van Leeuwen tweeted on Monday afternoon.

“We have agreements with other F-35 countries on the distribution, and the Netherlands must remain a reliable partner. And Israel needs the F-35 aircraft to defend itself against threats emanating from the region, separate from Gaza,” he added.


PreOccupiedTerritory: False Prophets Of Oslo, Gaza Disengagement, Appeasement, Denounce Settler ‘Messianism’ (satire)
Followers and proponents of failed, deadly scheme after failed, deadly scheme to sacrifice strategic Israeli assets and security on the altar of hoping that maybe this time the genocidal terrorists leading the Palestinians will deign not to keep trying to kill as many Jews as possible if given the capacity to do so leveled a familiar charge again today at Jews who insist that Jews may also live beyond the 1949 armistice lines represent a dangerous, destructive phenomenon that threatens the integrity of the Jewish State.

Supporters and advocates of the Oslo peace process and its land-for-peace formula with the Palestinians; of unprecedented concessions beyond the original Oslo agreement; and of the forced removal of all Israelis from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and handing over control of the whole territory to radicalized Palestinians – each of which brought more Palestinian terrorism and carnage to Israel than had preceded them, and which the advocates insisted would incentivize Palestinian conciliation in return, despite warnings from opponents against such naivety – issued further warnings today that the insistence by certain Jews on Israeli rule and habitation in areas that Israel captured in defensive wars jeopardizes Israeli security and international standing.

“Have we even been wrong?” they challenged. “Our understanding of regional dynamics, of the surrounding culture, and – need we even say it – our superior moral and intellectual stature compels everyone to listen to us. Stop the settlements. They’re bad for Israel. Just look at our track record about these things.”


Gun of Houston megachurch shooter read 'Free Palestine'
The female gunman who opened fire into the Texas megachurch on Sunday afternoon had 'Free Palestine' written on her AR-15, according to media reports from the last 24 hours.

The shooter had also claimed, in a statement that was later proven to be false, that she had a bomb. The Houston police chief confirmed that no explosives had been found during the search of the woman's backpack and car.

Fox News identified the shooter as a Transgender woman known as Genesse Ivonne Moreno. Born in El Salvador, the source claimed Moreno had a lengthy criminal history.

It was also reported by CNN that the woman had sprayed an unknown substance onto the ground before being shot.

“Right now, I can safely say that we have not found anything that is of concern to our community or to this location, but we’re going to take our time to ensure that we look at every aspect,” the fire chief stressed in a press conference.


Lockdown outside Downing Street as crowd of pro-Palestine protesters gather on Whitehall forcing the Met to shut the road
The Metropolitan Police have cleared a pro-Palestinian protest tonight and arrested one campaigner.

Crowds of protestors gathered on Whitehall, opposite to Downing Street waving Palestinian flags and holding posters.

Officers attended the area as a safety measure and closed roads nearby due to the high number of protestors.

The mass of people eventually cleared this evening and officers 'stood down,' the Met shared in a post on X/Twitter.

One person was arrested during the protest, however, 'on suspicion of inciting racial hatred over a placard'.

Once the crowd had reduced in size, Whitehall - which was previously closed - was reopened.

Officers had 'imposed conditions' on remaining protesters that required them to move away from the area.

The Metropolitan Police said on Twitter/X: 'The crowd has reduced in size.

'We have imposed conditions on those who remain requiring them to move out of the road and continue their protest on the pavement.

'Those who don’t comply with these conditions can be arrested. Whitehall has now been reopened for traffic.

Later on, in an additional post, the Metropolitan Police said on Twitter/X: 'All remaining protesters have now left the area and officers are standing down.
Antisemitic protest block Dublin library, home to ‘Book of Kells’
Anti-Israel protesters outside the Library of Trinity College Dublin, home to one of the most important manuscripts in the world, temporarily closed down the building as they called for the Irish university to boycott the Jewish state.

“Israel institutions are complicit in Palestinian genocide,” the group wrote on Instagram ahead of the protest. “Trinity will not cut ties. Demand better.”

The college, which is also called the University of Dublin, was created by a royal charter in 1592. It has about 20,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Trinity’s Old Library, Ireland’s largest, houses the Book of Kells, a Latin translation of the Gospels with ornate decorations that likely dates to around the year 800 and has been described as “the chief treasure of the Western world.”

The anti-Israel protesters temporarily blocked access to the library—a major tourist attraction—last week, the university’s student newspaper reported. A leader of the student group Trinity BDS told the Trinity News that the group has “been asking Trinity College Dublin for so long to at least make a statement condemning what is going on in Gaza. They haven’t done so.”

Protesters also chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “Trinity College Dublin, shame on you,” the paper reported.


Department of Education antisemitism settlement is ‘cautionary tale’ as hate rages
The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has received more than 60 complaints about incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia at colleges and K-12 schools nationwide in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel. The Office of Civil Rights is now investigating whether these incidents violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects people from discrimination based on race, color, and national origin while taking part in programs that receive federal funds.

While working through its new caseload, the Office of Civil Rights reached a settlement from a June 2023 complaint about repeated antisemitic harassment of a Jewish student at Red Clay Consolidated School District in Wilmington, Delaware.

On one occasion, the complainant was hit by a paper covered in racist language, the phrase “Blood of the Jews,” multiple swastikas, and bloody imagery. Just 10 minutes later, three students directed a “Heil Hitler” salute at the complainant.

Swastikas were later found on two desks the complainant used. In another incident, a classmate told the complainant to “shut the [expletive] up” after she asked students to stop discussing Kanye West during class. After class ended, two classmates informed the complainant, “I support Kanye West, Hitler was right.” The rapper, whose legal name is Ye, made headlines in late 2022 for his antisemitic tirades. After tweeting that he would “go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” Ye lost business deals and was suspended from X, formerly known as Twitter, for inciting violence.
UNC Professors Are Indoctrinating Students with Anti-Israel Rhetoric and Coursework
Nadia Yaqub, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), emailed campus leadership and colleagues on Oct. 14 to inform them that the Oct. 7 atrocities Hamas committed were “provoked” by Israel, in her view.

Yaqub also chastised then-UNC Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz for issuing a campus statement the day before in which he wrote, “The senseless acts of terror in Israel by Hamas are horrifying. I condemn this terrible violence.”

Yaqub told the Chancellor that she was “disappointed and discouraged by what you wrote.” Yaqub continued, saying she had “warned” the Chancellor a week before about issuing such a statement.

On Nov. 28, I attended an event at UNC titled “No Peace Without Justice: A Round-Table Talk about Social Justice in Palestine.” A speaker — Rania Masri — boasted that Oct. 7 was a “beautiful day.” In January, Yaqub spoke at a UNC Faculty Council meeting to oppose a resolution, titled “Condemning Antisemitism on Campus,” that sought to rebuke Masri’s remarks. To the dismay of the Jewish community and many UNC faculty, the resolution did not pass.

Yaqub told Inside Higher Ed that she did not believe that Masri’s comments were “objectively antisemitic,” and that “what actually happened on that day [Oct. 7], and who actually committed what, is still very unclear.”

A source sent me the first page of what appears to be Yaqub’s current syllabus for ARAB 151 — Arabic Literature Through the Ages. The syllabus states, “In light of the extraordinary violence being brought to bear against Palestinians living under Israeli occupation since October 7 and the shockingly callous position the United States government has taken vis-à-vis that violence, it is incumbent on us to educate ourselves about all aspects of the Palestinian condition.”


To appease Muslims, Europe's universities stop teaching the Holocaust
Israel National NewsOpedsTo appease Muslims, Europe's universities stop teaching the Holocaust

I was in Utrecht way back in 2009 for a journalistic investigation into the Islamization of Holland and already then I understood that we were living in an obscene moment of cultural chaos. Op-ed.

“Europe will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz,” writes the Dutch novelist Leon de Winter. Paradoxical? Not that much. And perhaps in the minds of many Europeans, Islam is the tool to put an end to this psychological paradox.

Just think that on 7 October, Hamas displaced 1,894 survivors of the Shoah and in Europe the streets were inflamed by Islamists.

The University of Utrecht, the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, has canceled (then resumed) a series of conferences on the Holocaust, because "the safety of the speakers, students, teachers and visitors cannot be guaranteed". The university capitulated to pro-Palestinian threats. “The reason is that we want to facilitate a diverse and balanced dialogue on this issue,” says the rector in Wokkese. “We need more time to place the events of October 7 and beyond in a broader perspective, with room for different opinions and beliefs ".

Fantastic, right? Now, to appease Muslims, European universities are canceling courses on the Shoah. And the courses on the crusades? And colonialism? And the history of religions?

Who knows what Naftali Fürst thinks about it, one of the prisoners portrayed by the American photographer Harry Miller in the Buchenwald camp where many Utrecht Jews died in one of the symbolic images of the Shoah (below him, Elie Wiesel).

On the morning of October 7, Naftali's nephew miraculously saved himself in the Kfar Aza kibbutz, where Hamas killed 62 of the 900 inhabitants.

Frits Bolkestein in the Wall Street Journal recalled that at Utrecht University, Professor Van der Horst wanted to talk about Islamic anti-Semitism in his lecture before retirement and the university prevented him.
Berlin Film Festival Caught Up in Conflicts over Gaza War
The Berlinale, Europe’s premier film festival, is facing challenges amid ongoing conflicts and political tensions. The war in Gaza adds a layer of geopolitical tension, potentially impacting the participation of filmmakers and the screening of relevant films that address the Israel-Hamas war or its aftermath. Similarly, cultural repression in Iran may lead to the suppression of artistic expression and limit the presence of Iranian filmmakers at the festival.

The festival announced on February 8 that five members of the right-wing Alternative for Germany Party would not be attending.

The Berlin International Film Festival, a.k.a. the Berlinale is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europe’s Big Three film festivals alongside Italy’s Venice Film Festival, and France’s Cannes Film Festival.

The festival regularly draws tens of thousands of visitors each year. About 400 films are shown at multiple venues across Berlin. They are screened in nine sections across cinematic genres, with around twenty films competing for the festival’s top awards in the Competition section. The major awards, the Golden Bear and Silver Bears, are decided on by an international jury, chaired by A-list film celebrities.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, confrontations over the war in Gaza will involve not only pro-Hamas and pro-Israel protesters but also filmmakers and the German government, which foots the bill for the Berlinale.

In their pre-Festival statement, Berlinale co-directors Mariette Rissenbeek (outgoing), and Carlo Chatrian addressed the humanitarian crises in the Middle East and elsewhere, saying that they are sympathizing with them.

Furthermore, they expressed concern about the rise of antisemitism, anti-Muslim resentment, and hate speech in Germany and around the world, and stressed that as a cultural institution, they support intercultural understanding and oppose all forms of discrimination.

Good to know.


U.N.aware? Media Defend UNRWA as Agency Plays Dumb About Hamas Tunnels Under HQ
The Associated Press appeared to suggest Israel had only “unveiled” the tunnels as a way of attacking UNRWA in a piece that stated: “The unveiling of the tunnels marked the latest chapter in Israel’s campaign against the embattled agency, which it accuses of collaborating with Hamas.”

CNN, meanwhile, relegated the story to a short post included in its live updates feed. Casting doubt on the existence of the tunnels at all, CNN turned the story into mere “claims” made by Israel against the UN agency, describing the tunnel as an “alleged finding.”

It couched the finding as occurring against a backdrop in which “Israel has longstanding issues with UNRWA,” suggesting the evidence is part of some nefarious campaign against an organization tasked with caring for Palestinians.

Judging from the lack of a dedicated story, it appears nobody from CNN was represented on the IDF’s press tour of the UNRWA tunnel. But the simple fact that multiple journalists from other top-tier publications were able to verify the findings for themselves makes one wonder why CNN didn’t see the stories from those media that had been on the tour.

At least that’s what The Washington Post did when it stated: “The military showed journalists from the Associated Press and other outlets what it said was an electrical supply hub powering tunnel infrastructure in the area.”

Sadly, the tunnel story was buried 12 paragraphs in at the end of The Post’s war coverage and framed as Israel having “taken aim” at UNRWA.

In summary, the international media were presented with further damning evidence of UNRWA’s infiltration by Hamas terrorists in the form of its HQ directly above a Hamas base.

So why did they have such trouble believing the evidence or treating it in a way that isn’t portrayed as an Israeli assault on UNRWA?
Does Nesrine Malik doubt Hamas's rape of Israeli women
First, note how Malik is incensed that people in the West who argue that proscribed Palestinian terror groups are signicantly responsible for the suffering in Gaza – representing another example of what Shany Mor argues are the two nearly theological precepts of the anti-Zionist crowd: “that Israel is evil, and that no Palestinian action is ever connected to any Palestinian outcome”.

But, more relevant is the second sentence we highlighted, which links to one article in the Intercept about anti-Israel staffers at the NY Times who were critical of the outlet’s detailed and (WARNING) extremely graphic in-depth article (based on over 150 interviews) titled “Screams without words: How Hamas weaponized sexual violence on Oct. 7“. The Intercept reports that the objections of some pro-Palestinian staffers resulted in a NY Times podcast based on the article being nixed.

Malik, by approvingly noting that the political consensus about Palestinian terrorist malevolence and destructiveness is being “challenged” by some within the NY Times newsroom, who viewed their Hamas rape story too “credulous”, appears to be among those who view the charges of misogynistic brutality against Israeli women as either unproven or, worse, an example of Israeli propaganda.

As with the NY Times article, we want to warn you that the information presented in these links are graphic and extraordinarily disturbing. But, to get a sense of the level of animosity towards Israel that the Guardian columnist appears to possess, it’s important to understand the strength of the evidence demonstrating Hamas’s sexual barbarism which some of her fellow journalists are “challenging”.

Malik’s soft Oct. 7 rape denial is another example how, in the aftermath of the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust, the anti-Zionist left has responded by turning the massacre into “non-event”, not only avoiding any serious self-reflection about their movement, but doubling down on their first principles concerning Israel’s ‘intrinsic villainy’.
What were BBC audiences told about the Hamas facility under UNRWA’s HQ?

The State of Palestinians AP Errs on Oslo Accords, Strips Palestinians Of Agency
Notwithstanding the facts, Frankel’s article about the economic hardships of West Bank Palestinians in face of the Israeli decision to ban entry to Palestinian workers following Hamas’ barbaric Oct. 7 bloodbath relentlessly advances the faulty narrative that the still stateless Palestinians are free of any responsibility for their current hardships. The tendentious headline — “The economy of this Palestinian village depended on Israel. Then the checkpoint closed” — sets the stage featuring singular Israeli culpability and the lack of Palestinian agency.

“They’ve been here centuries, far before the Palestinian family’s livelihood came to depend on the whims of Israeli occupation,” Frankel asserts in the opening paragraph, linking Palestinian welfare solely to the whims of Israeli occupation, and not the whims of Palestinians who carry out mass atrocities prompting Israeli measures to safeguard Israeli life.

Two paragraphs later, Frankel gives a perfunctory nod to the Hamas attacks which prompted the Israeli closure:
But the [parking] lot [from which the Massoud family had made a living] has been empty since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants attacked Israel from the Gaza Strip, and Israel, fearing more attacks, barred Palestinian workers from the West Bank from entering Israel.

But then she quickly redirects to the real culprit:
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians, unleashed an unimaginable humanitarian crisis and decimated the strip’s economy. But Israel’s near-complete severance of economic ties with the West Bank also has had serious repercussions for Palestinians there.

Quashing any potential doubt about who’s at fault for the economic hardship in Nilin and other West Bank villages, Frankel wrote: “The fallout from Israel’s decision is felt keenly in Nilin.”

The fallout from Israel’s decision. Not the fallout from Hamas’ decision to send thousands of terrorists into southern Israel, exploiting detailed information gathered by Palestinian workers so as to slaughter the coexistence minded Israeli employers and their entire families.

The economy of this Palestinian village depended on Israel. But then Hamas carried out horrific mass atrocities — murdering, torturing, wounds, kidnapping and traumatizing. That’s the real story. It’s just not AP’s.
Daily Mail columnist revives antisemitic trope

CBC Vancouver Radio Program Features Guest Who Conflates Criticism Of Palestinian Propaganda As “Anti-Palestinian Racism”

Another BBC Verify report adds to its record of imbalance
Apparently BBC Verify did not ask Dr Mark Ellis about “the rules” concerning the use of very similar footage and images by the BBC News website itself – including BBC Verify – in content with worldwide reach that would create far broader “public curiosity” than any personal social media account.

Neither, it would appear, was Dr Ellis asked about the legal status of the multiple videos put out by the terrorist organisation Hamas showing some of the Israeli hostages kidnapped on October 7th.

BBC Verify solicited a similar opinion from another “legal expert”:
“Human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield said the footage should be assessed by a UN court.

“There is a very severe restriction on on [sic] how you deal with people who are detained who are prisoners of war in a time of war or conflict, which this plainly is, and that provision is really one in which you are intended to treat prisoners with respect,” he said.”

However, BBC Verify failed to comply with BBC editorial guidelines concerning ‘contributors’ affiliations’ by informing readers of Mansfield’s long-standing anti-Israel activism and collaboration with lawfare campaigns against Israel. Readers may recall Mansfield’s 2010 portrayal of the participants in the IHH Mavi Marmara flotilla as “a collective of courageous individuals”.
In Toronto Star Column, Staffer At National Council Of Canadian Muslims Ignores Hamas & Downplays Pro-Hamas Elements Of Anti-Israel Movement

Meta considering censorship of word 'Zionist'
Facebook's parent company Meta is considering applying its censorship policies to the word 'Zionist' when it is used in the context of hate speech to refer to Jews.

Social media expert and founder of Pink Chili Agency, Gili Fleekop breaks this down.




Comedian ‘told Israeli to get the f*** out of his show’ as crowd chanted ‘free Palestine’
A comedian reportedly shouted at an Israeli audience member to “get the f*** out” of his show and incited the crowd to chant “Free Palestine” in what another Jewish witness described as an “antisemitic rally”.

Audience members reported that in the middle of Paul Currie’s one-hour Shtoom show at the Soho Theatre, the comedian pulled out Ukrainian and Palestinian flags from his props box on stage.

At the end of the show, there was a standing ovation. The JC understands that just afterwards, Currie made eye contact with a young man sitting in the second row and said: “You didn’t stand, why? Didn’t you enjoy my show?”

The man – reportedly an Israeli – replied: “I enjoyed your show until you brought out the Palestinian flag.”

The comedian allegedly replied: “get out of my show!” The JC understands that the anonymous audience member said they heard Currie “repeatedly shouting ‘Leave my f***ing show now! Get out now’.” He also allegedly said: “I’m from Northern Ireland, we know all about ceasefire, get the f*** out of my show.”

Several audience members left the show. The anonymous individual said that they were one of a group of four in their mid-60s, and they walked out “as we did not want to be part of an antisemitic rant, as well as feeling unsafe.

“By the time we exited, what felt like the entire audience were up on their feet shouting “free Palestine” and “get out”.

“Shaken and feeling threatened by the growing antagonism, we exited and tried to complain/ get some support from the front-of-house team at the theatre who did give us an email address to make a complaint.”

They said someone they knew messaged them saying that after they left the situation became even more inflamed.

“What had been intended to be an evening of comedy turned out to be what felt like an antisemitic rally,” they said.


Labour still has much to do if it is to eradicate anti-Semitism as veteran extremist George Galloway and mad conspiracy theorist Azhar Ali face each other in by-election
Pity the people of Rochdale who face a choice at the by-election later this month between veteran extremist George Galloway and the mad conspiracy theorist Azhar Ali who is standing for Labour.

Talk about a choice between the lesser of two evils.

I'm reminded of Henry Kissinger's response when asked about the war between Iran and Iraq: 'It's a pity they can't both lose.'

Yet Rochdale will have to go to the polls and, realistically, the only two people who can win are the appalling Galloway and the disgraceful Ali.

Galloway was kicked out of the Labour Party by Tony Blair for calling on British troops to 'refuse to obey illegal orders' during the war in Iraq. He praised Arab dictators and called the collapse of the Soviet Union 'the biggest catastrophe of my life'.

Labour candidate Azhar Ali has been recorded by The Mail on Sunday claiming Israel deliberately allowed at least 1,200 of its citizens to be massacred on October 7 to give it the 'green light' to invade Gaza.

He told a Lancashire Labour Party meeting that the Israelis had been warned but 'deliberately took the security off, they allowed... that massacre that gives them the green light to do whatever they bloody want.'

This is the sort of nonsense you hear from mad obsessives or find in the dark corners of the internet. They are the ramblings of a lunatic conspiracy theorist, not the leader of a major county council and someone standing for Parliament.

He is obviously completely unfit to be a Labour MP, but the problem is that the nominations for the election have closed and he can't be replaced.
Labour WITHDRAWS support for Rochdale by-election candidate Azhar Ali after criticism of remarks about Israel
Labour has withdrawn its support for Rochdale by-election candidate Azhar Ali after criticism of remarks about Israel, a party spokesperson said.

Party leader Keir Starmer was facing mounting political pressure to distance Labour from the candidate after he was revealed to be a Gaza conspiracy theorist.

Mr Ali was secretly recorded by The Mail on Sunday saying Israel effectively sanctioned the Hamas atrocity against its own people to get the 'green light' to invade Gaza.

Having initially remained supportive of Mr Ali, the Labour party has now withdrawn its support, saying new information about further comments had changed the party position.

It appears Labour will no longer have anyone standing in February 29's by-election, as nominations have now closed, while Mr Ali looks set to now run as an independent candidate.

A Labour Party spokesperson said: 'Following new information about further comments made by Azhar Ali coming to light today, the Labour party has withdrawn its support for Azhar Ali as our candidate in the Rochdale by-election.

'Keir Starmer has changed Labour so that it is unrecognisible from the party of 2019.

'We understand that these are highly unusual circumstances but it is vital that any candidate put forward by Labour fully represents its aims and values.

'Given that nominations have now closed Azhar Ali cannot be replaced as the candidate.'

Mr Ali, who was defending a Labour majority of more than 9,000 in Rochdale on February 29, also claimed that Sir Keir Starmer had 'lost the confidence' of his MPs over his stance on the conflict.

Mr Ali yesterday admitted his comments were 'inexcusable' and apologised earlier today.


South Africa-Palestine football match promoted by Hamas proxies, affiliates
A football match between the Palestinian national team and South African Western Cape XI team was held yesterday, following much promotion and involvement of Hamas-affiliated organizations, such as the Al-Quds Foundation and one of its tributaries, Youth for Al-Quds.

The promotions also featured a wide array of tributes to the terrorist group that slaughtered, murdered, raped and kidnapped thousands of Israeli citizens last October. A second match is scheduled for next Sunday, February 18.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was also present at the match, held at Cape Town’s Athlone Stadium, where he delivered a speech calling for “Free Palestine” and commending the late arch-terrorist “comrade Yasser Arafat.”

Before the Palestinian anthem, shouts of “Allahu Akbar” could be heard from the stands.

Hamas supporters as far as the eyes could see
The match was attended by hundreds of viewers, many of whom wore T-shirts featuring the logos of Hamas and its terrorist militia, the Al-Qassam Brigades, as well as the message “Hamas – the resistance.” Other participants wore Al-Qassam head scarves.

One large sign read “South Africa supports Hamas,” featuring pictures of Hamas and Al-Qassam founders and leading figures, such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Ismail Haniyeh, Khaled Meshaal, Abu Obeida, and others.
PMW: PA pushing for unity with Hamas
While Israel and much of the international community are still horrified by Hamas’ atrocities committed on Oct. 7, the Palestinian Authority which refused to condemn the atrocities, continues to promote its goal of unity with Hamas.

A regular columnist for the official PA daily, told PA TV yesterday:
"I hope that Hamas...will examine itself again and turn in the direction of the PLO, because the organization has never closed its door, neither to Hamas nor to the [Islamic] Jihad nor to any national power. I hope they will come to the right path and become partners within the PLO."

[Official PA TV, Feb. 11, 2024]

One man appointed by Mahmoud Abbas to promote this unity is Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub. Speaking in the name of Abbas, Rajoub said:
“We say to our brothers in Hamas: We stand before a great turning point… I call on them, on behalf of the Palestinian leadership, Mahmoud Abbas, and the PLO Executive Committee – we say to them[Hamas]: Come build a political rapprochement regarding the international project, and build rapprochement regarding the struggle… We say to our brothers in Hamas and the Islamic Jihad Movement– the ball is in your court”

[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, Dec. 17, 2023]
PA Daily: Hamas Shouldn’t Release 130+ Israeli Hostages Without Release of All 9,000 Terrorist Prisoners
The official Palestinian Authority (PA) daily is calling on Hamas not to release the more than 130 kidnapped Israeli hostages unless Israel releases all the 9,000 imprisoned Palestinian terrorists.

The PA daily editorial is demanding Hamas insist on the release of all the mass murderers, which includes terrorists like Abdallah Barghouti, the Hamas bomb builder responsible for the murder of 67 people, and Abbas Al-Sayid, who is serving 35 life sentences for planning the suicide bombing at the Passover Seder in Netanya in 2002, and others who together have killed thousands of Israelis.

According to the PA daily, to release the more than 130 Israeli hostages without the release of all these terrorist murderers, whom the PA calls “prisoners of freedom,” would be a crime.

All members of the Israeli government and all Israeli negotiators have ruled this option out. Many of the 1,027 terrorists released by Israel in exchange for Israeli soldier hostage Gilad Shalit in 2011 went on to murder again, and others became the leaders of Hamas who planned and executed years of terror including the October 7 atrocities. The Israeli army is fighting to destroy the Hamas leadership in Gaza. It will all have been for nothing if Israel releases the imprisoned Hamas terrorist murderers who will become the new leaders and will rebuild the terror organization.

Unfortunately, the greater the public pressure from Palestinians on Hamas to insist on the release of 9,000 terrorists from prison, the harder it will be for Hamas to compromise and release the Israeli hostages for a smaller number of terrorists.

The PA daily may be pressuring Hamas to demand what Israel cannot agree to, in order to undermine negotiations. Any successful exchange that releases a significant number of Palestinian prisoners will raise Hamas’ popularity. It is possible that the PA daily is warning Hamas that it will be a “crime” not to have 9,000 terrorist prisoners released for the hostages, because it knows that this demand is not achievable.
Abbas visits Qatar amid talk of Hamas joining PA

Al Jazeera journalist outed as Hamas commander

Iran plotted to assassinate a Swedish Jewish woman — this is her story
Saskia Pantell was living in Israel and traveling to celebrate the Rosh Hashanah holiday when she was informed that she was the target of an assassination plot.

At first she thought it was a joke — as a Swedish Zionist activist, she had received her fair share of troll phone calls. A man with a generic Swedish name called her saying that the Swedish Security Service (SAPO) wanted to speak to her. They asked her to come to the embassy in Israel to use a secure line, but the embassy was closed for the holidays, deepening her suspicions.

She continued to believe that it was one big prank when she was told that the SAPO was conducting a high-security investigation into the targeting of her and two other Swedish Jews in a high-level terrorist operation. It was only when one of the other targets confirmed that the story was true that she believed it.

“They wanted me to come to Sweden to interview me face-to-face,” Pantell recalled to The Jerusalem Post. “You want me to come to Sweden where I’m supposedly in danger?”

Swedish authorities, she was told, had arrested two people that April, but had only told her in September that people were seeking to murder her. Few details were shared with her about the threats against her. Further information was revealed when she spoke to investigative journalists Daniel Öhman and Emelie Rosen about their research and reporting into Iranian covert actions in Sweden.


Swiss ski shop in hot water over sign refusing rentals to Jews
Switzerland’s main Jewish organization on Monday denounced an antisemitic sign put up at a local ski shop near Davos, barring Jews from renting equipment from the store. Regional police opened an investigation.

The sign on Pischa Mountain above Davos, a town known for hosting the annual World Economic Forum meeting of global elites each January, said the shop would no longer rent gear such as sleds, skis, and snowshoes to “our Jewish brothers” after a series of “very annoying incidents” — including the theft of a sled.

The message, written in Hebrew, appeared to be directed at Israeli Jews who have been traveling to Davos in growing numbers in recent years — both for summertime and wintertime holiday getaways.

Police in the eastern Graubünden canton, or region, said in an email that they have opened an investigation for possible criminal violation of Swiss law banning discrimination and incitement to hatred.

The owners of the store could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Davos tourism agency declined to immediately comment when contacted by The Associated Press, but said a response would be forthcoming by email.

“After a series of annoying incidents, including the theft of a sled, we are no longer renting out sporting equipment to our Jewish brothers,” said the sign, put on a window at a counter with helmets sitting on a shelf in the back.
MEMRI: French-Tunisian Imam Hassen Chalghoumi: 'We Will Stand Alongside Our Jewish Brethren To Show Brotherhood'; 'In Terms Of Consequences, October 7 Is Worse Than September 11'
One month after the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre in southern Israel, French-Tunisian Imam Hassen Chalgoumi publicly announced that he would participate in a march against antisemitism held in Paris.

France has experienced an explosion of antisemitic speech in the wake of October 7, and Chalghoumi made a point of showing the world that Muslims should stand with their "Jewish brothers in humanity."

Following are excerpts of two interviews Chalghoumi gave to the French press, before and after a demonstration against antisemitism held November 12 in Paris at the call of parliament and senate members.

Hassen Chalghoumi is the imam of the Drancy mosque, located near Paris, a city with a history of collaboration with the Nazi regime. Chalghoumi once recounted that this history, and the Drancy Memorial which he walked by every day on his way to the mosque, increased his awareness of the Holocaust. Born in Tunis, he became a French citizen in 2005. In 2009, he founded the "Conference of Imams," an organization whose aim is to promote peace and understanding between religions and peoples, and to develop an Islamic trend compatible with the values and laws of the French Republic.

Chalghoumi has always been outspoken about the need to stop Islamists and antisemites and prevent them from taking action. He has shown solidarity towards the Jews in the face of antisemitic assaults in France, and as a consequence has received many death threats from Islamist elements, been assaulted himself and forced to spend some time abroad, for his security and that of his family.[1]

Imam Hassen Chalghoumi: "We Will Stand Alongside Our Jewish Brethren To Show Brotherhood"

On November 8, Chalghoumi announced that he would participate in the "March for the Republic and against antisemitism" at the call of French senator Gérard Larcher and president of the French Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet. Prior to the demonstration, Chalghoumi declared: "On [demonstration day] Sunday, we will all be Jews.[2] We will stand alongside our Jewish brethren to show brotherhood and fight racism. For me, this march is crucial and important in this period of unrest, in this period where unfortunately our Jewish compatriots are threatened, attacked. Together, we will show unity and brotherhood, regardless of our religion or political colors, to say loud and clear that hatred and antisemitism have no place in France […] In France, there are a lot of antisemitic acts. Jews have no choice but to hide and take off their yarmulkes," he noted.
Bedouins who fought Hamas on Oct. 7 honored for bravery and heroism
Current and former politicians who in previous roles have lived alongside or worked with Bedouin communities, know the Bedouin to be courageous, loyal, excellent soldiers and first-class trackers.

All these qualities have not sufficiently aided their integration into Israeli society, and many are under threat of losing their homes, because their houses or tents are located on what is deemed to be State Land. This is because the land was never registered to a private individual, even though that individual’s family may have lived there for generations.

But after October 7, attitudes toward the Bedouin have changed and the authorities look at them with a less jaundiced eye.

Although military service for members of the Bedouin tribes is not mandatory, more than 1,500 are presently serving in the Israel Defense Forces. Some have been killed while fighting Hamas in Gaza, and some are among the kidnapped hostages languishing in Gaza in the most inhuman conditions.

In other words, the terrorists do not distinguish between Muslim and Jewish Israelis. There should be no distinction, according to Reuven Rivlin, the immediate past president of the State of Israel, who as speaker of the Knesset and as president of the state advocated full integration of all of Israel’s minority communities.

Rivlin was among several public figures who came on Monday to the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem to join in tributes to 13 civilian Bedouin who, without thinking of the risk to their own lives, saved men, women, youths, and small children while being fired at by genocidal Hamas killers. Other public figures included Avi Dichter, minister for Agriculture and Rural Development and former head of the Israel Security Agency; Yossi Peled, a former politician and former head of Northern Command; Alon Schuster, a former minister and former long-time mayor of the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council, and Yuval Turgeman, who is the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs civil administrator in the Negev.

The tribute event was the brainchild of Canadian social activist and philanthropist Avi Ben Lulu, chairman of the Abraham Global Peace Initiative who organized it together with former MK Ruth Wasserman Lande and Daniel Voicek, the executive manager of FOZ.
Yemeni-Swedish journalist defies death threats, champions Jewish-gay rights
“De-radicalization is a rough process, and I’m extremely pleased that I cleansed myself of the antisemitism I grew up with,” Yemeni-born content creator and journalist Luai Ahmed says.

“I’ve been writing ever since I was 13. I always wanted to write in the Jerusalem Post, actually,” says Ahmed.

His father was the owner of a newspaper who was murdered in 1998 for his political activism and writing, which was critical of the regime. He describes his mother as a feminist and human rights activist who decided against all norms to take off her hijab and end her first marriage.

He also has one brother, “though he excommunicated me over the Israel issue,” he adds gloomily. “It’s what saddens me most.” Inspired to become an activist

Seeing his mother violate all the norms inspired him to go into political activism himself. At the age of 16, during the so-called Arab Spring, he found himself taking to the streets holding signs for human rights and feminism.

Ultimately his activism was made public, and he was invited to Sweden to speak about the situation in Yemen.

Ahmed says that he was always drawn to Western culture. “I read many Western books, listened to Madonna and Michael Jackson and even Britney Spears.” He also adds that already as a child, he had noticed that in Western culture, people could dress however they want, but in Yemen, his mother got called 'a prostitute,’ received death threats, and had her home vandalized for the mere act of walking around without a hijab (head covering) or niqab (veil).

On top of all that, Ahmed also discovered that his sexual orientation was different from his environment. “I had known it for a while but never gave it much thought. Except maybe when my Islam studies teacher said that homosexuality leads to hell,” he adds dryly.

One day, his mother advised him to think of seeking permanent asylum in Sweden. The mother had gotten a direct threat from Al-Qaeda, and she urged him to leave, promising that she and his brother would also attempt to follow him. “At first, I refused, but later I decided that this would be a chance to live somewhere where I can finally be true to myself.”


Silence - Super Bowl LVIII Full Video
All hate thrives on silence. The people who will change the nation are those who speak out against injustice and refuse to be bystanders. When we stand up to all injustice, we stand up to all hate. #StandUpToJewishHate #StandUpToAllHate

This ad, which debuted in Super Bowl LVIII, features Dr. Clarence Jones who was a draft speechwriter for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hear his inspirational words.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 



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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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