Tuesday, February 13, 2024

02/13 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: A malign inversionNazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East; Footage of Sinwar in Gaza tunnel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: A malign inversion
It is a strategy of war, used by Islamists in the psychological warfare they deploy against their victims. And now it is being used by the Biden administration and the British government against Israel.

This week, the British government imposed financial and travel restrictions against four Israeli residents of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, claimed that they were “extremist settlers” who were involved in “some of the most egregious abuses of human rights,” having carried out violent attacks on Palestinians in the “West Bank” by threatening them “often at gunpoint” and “forcing them off land that is rightfully theirs”.

The Foreign Office said that Israel’s “failure to act” had led to “an environment of near total impunity for settler extremists”, with violence in the West Bank reaching record levels in 2023.

The British are marching in lockstep with the Biden administration, which earlier this month also sanctioned four Israeli residents of these territories — one of whom is on the UK’s list — claiming that “extremist settler violence” had reached “intolerable levels”.

This is all an extraordinary and malign distortion and loss of proportion. As I wrote here, there is indeed a problem with violent Israeli “hilltop youth,” mainly aged between 14 and 19, but who are estimated to number only a few hundred among more than half a million Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria.

All such attacks are wrong and the Israelis should deal with these “hilltop youth” firmly — which they do, when they are indeed guilty of aggressive acts. But what Cameron and the Biden administration conspicuously fail to acknowledge is that in many of these violent encounters, the Israelis are responding to violence against them by the Palestinian Arabs.

Indeed, it is utterly astonishing that Cameron and the Americans defame the Israeli residents of the territories — the vast majority of whom live entirely peaceful and law-abiding lives — while making no mention whatsoever of the multiple attacks perpetrated by the Palestinian Arabs against these Israelis every day, vastly out-numbering attacks by the Israelis.

Cameron and the Americans say “settler” attacks last year reached record numbers. But there have been around 300 terrorist attacks against Israelis since October 7 alone.

Cameron and the Americans make no mention of the Arab attacks on Israeli “settlers,” involving shootings, rock-throwing and car ramming, which go on every day. They make no mention of the “settlers” Lucy Dee and her two daughters, Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, who were murdered last April by Palestinian terrorists who shot them in their car at point-blank range. They make no mention of the “settlers” Hallel Yaniv, 21, and his brother Yagel, 19, who were murdered by Palestinian terrorists a year ago when they were stuck in a traffic jam. They make no mention of the “settlers” Asher Menachem Paley, 8, and Yaakov Israel Paley, 6, who were standing at a bus stop with their father when a Palestinian terrorist rammed his car into them, killing them along with 20-year-old rabbinical student Alter Shlomo Lederman who had been married for two months.

Israelis are being regularly attacked and murdered by terrorists from a Palestinian population in the “West Bank” of whom more than 80 per cent support the Hamas atrocities. Yet Cameron and his chums in the US State Department have ignored all that. Instead, they have presented the Israelis as committing “egregious human rights abuses” against the Palestinians — thus deploying the Palestinian tactic of inverting victims and aggressors.

This is not surprising given the information upon which the Americans and British have been drawing — the twisted claims made by the UN, “human rights” NGOs and the entire “humanitarian” hate industry, which is deployed to destroy Israel’s reputation through distortion and defamation but which the US and UK foreign policy establishments invest with the sanctity of disinterested conscience. As a result, Cameron and his chums have been played for suckers.

In an important piece in Tablet, Liel Leibowitz writes about Lieutenant General Michael R. Fenzel, a three-star general who currently serves as the US security coordinator to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC). The USSC, says Liebowitz, is well-known for its regular, sometimes daily briefings and reports about “extremist settlers,” which it provides to members of Congress, policy hands and Israel-related advocacy groups, as well as to foreign countries’ forces in Israel.
Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East
To most Westerners, there are two default explanations for the Israeli-Arab conflict: either it is a response to Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, or it is the product of ancient hatreds that stretch back to a time before memory. Neither explanation gets close to the truth, which Matthias Küntzel’s recent book Nazis, Islamic Anti-Semitism, and the Middle East seeks to expose by examining how so many Arabs came to hate Jews. Daniel Ben-Ami writes in his review:
It was the Nazis, Küntzel argues, who played the key role in bringing genocidal anti-Semitism to the region. Küntzel identifies several channels through which the Nazis exerted their influence. From 1937 onwards they gave financial backing and other forms of support to Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem. . . . The Nazis distributed large numbers of Husseini’s pamphlet, Judaism and Islam, first published in Cairo in 1937. For Küntzel, it was a seminal document, the first to link the Jew hatred of classical Islamic texts with the conspiratorial anti-Semitism that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century.

Finally, even when it was clear that the Nazis were losing the Second World War they still provided support for a forthcoming Arab war against Israel. This included an attempt to provide a large store of light arms for Muslims to use to fight the nascent Jewish state.

Yet, Ben-Ami observes, some of the seeds were sown even before Husseini and Hitler came on the scene:
Earlier developments had already prepared the ground for the Nazis’ ideological intervention in the region. Christian missionaries had already begun to export traditional European conceptions of Jews into the region in the 19th century. For example, the idea of the blood libel—that Jews drank the blood of non-Jewish children—was an import from Europe.
Who Should Run Gaza After the War?
It’s been clear since October 7 that no sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians is possible as long as Hamas has power in Gaza. And so, the question is: Who should lead in Gaza once Hamas is destroyed?

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has backed the idea of giving control to the Palestinian Authority that runs the West Bank. The PA, notoriously corrupt, has been run since 2005 by Mahmoud Abbas, who is now 88.

Is there a way to encourage newer and better Palestinian leadership? Douglas J. Feith, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the George W. Bush administration, thinks so. Here’s his proposal:

The Gaza war is a chance for Palestinians, with outside help, to make a quantum-leap improvement in their politics and society. And that starts with leadership.

Western countries and perhaps Arab states will inevitably send large sums of reconstruction aid to Gaza after the conflict.

They should use that money to empower a new elite in the territory.

The United States can help arrange to channel the aid through some kind of body whose governors would include Palestinians committed to conditions set by the donors. The main conditions should be radical but hard to argue against:
(1) don’t steal the funds,
(2) fund only civilian projects, and
(3) don’t promote hatred of Israel or the donor countries.

There could also be more specific guidance; for example, construct permanent housing rather than rebuild “refugee camps,” and require schools to promote nonviolent resolution of disputes rather than extremism. This would be the opposite of the approach taken for 75 years by the UN agency for Palestinian relief (UNRWA), which has dedicated itself to perpetuating the war against Israel.

Palestinians agreeing to administer the reconstruction would need security for themselves and their families, who might have to be removed to safe places abroad, as the current Palestinian leaders would see them as enemies.

The Gaza war is a major historical event, and donors can set goals accordingly. They need not be content to aim for minor reforms of current institutions. What is needed is serious improvement in the political culture. There is no harm in trying to move substantially beyond the status quo.

It would be wasteful (at best) to put reconstruction aid into the hands of the PA or UNRWA, let alone Hamas. The existing political institutions are the problem, not the solution. A random set of Palestinian businesspeople would do a better job than the leaders now in power.
Seth Mandel: What Price Is Too High?
The conundrum Israel faced and faces—that its enemies may need to be confronted in a way that the society simply cannot stomach, given the dangers posed to the young men and women who serve as its chief line of protection—was something Ahmed Jibril exploited brilliantly. In May 1985, he got Israel to agree to an unprecedented trade: Jibril would return the three IDF soldiers held by his group, and in return Israel would free 1,150 prisoners from its jails, some of whom would be chosen by Jibril himself. Yitzhak Rabin, then the defense minister, explained the deal before the Knesset: “I see this as a supreme moral responsibility which a government, a defense minister, the state of Israel, owes each of them. This is our humane, moral obligation to the fate of an Israeli, and certainly to the fate of an IDF soldier sent into battle at our command.”

But the cost was steep. Among those released were Kozo Okamoto, the Japanese Red Army terrorist who had led a massacre of 26 people at Ben-Gurion airport (known as Lod at the time) in 1972. More consequential was Ahmed Yassin, who would found and lead Hamas at the outset of the first intifada two years later. Also freed was Ziad Nakhaleh, the current leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the group’s military-wing commander during the first intifada. Jibril himself was credited with one of the attacks that triggered that intifada, in which—in another historical echo—fighters under his command killed several Israeli soldiers after crossing from Lebanon on hang gliders. (Hamas used the vehicle’s more technologically advanced progeny, the motorized paraglider, during its October 7 attacks.)

A 2004 swap saw Israel bring home one live captive, the businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum, who had been taken by Hezbollah in 2001, in return for 435 prisoners. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan said that one of those released in that deal, Luay Saadi, went on to set up a terror cell that killed 30 Israelis.

In general, Dagan said, recidivism by freed terrorists was high—probably 45 percent. According to an organization that advocates for victims of terror, 80 percent of terrorists released since the Jibril deal went back to their old ways. (Not all, it has to be said, gained their liberty in hostage swaps.)

Dagan left office in January 2011. That October, Israel would complete its deal for Gilad Shalit. In June 2006, Shalit’s tank crew was ambushed by Hamas terrorists on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza. Shalit was taken back to the Strip. Two subsequent Israeli rescue operations in Gaza failed. In 2011, Netanyahu agreed to release 1,027 prisoners in Israeli jails for Shalit. Four years later, the Times of Israel reported that between April 2014 and July 2015, six Israelis had been murdered by prisoners released in the Shalit deal. And then came October 7, 2023.

On January 30, 2024, Netanyahu spoke at a pre-military academy and said, “We will not remove the IDF from the Gaza Strip and we will not release thousands of terrorists. None of this will happen. What will happen? Absolute victory!” Meanwhile, press reports indicated that Israel and Hamas were creeping closer to a hostage deal—and if there is one, there will surely be Palestinian terrorists freed because of it.

In a 1986 essay written just at the beginning of his meteoric political rise, Netanyahu—who had made his name in part as the head of an organization called the Jonathan Institute, dedicated to the study of international terrorism—asserted that terrorist hostage-taking can be stopped with a policy of “refusal to yield and a readiness to apply force.” To the terrorist, this proposes “a simple exchange: your life for the lives of the hostages.” He acknowledged that a rescue operation isn’t always possible. Nevertheless, “governments must persist in refusing to capitulate. This is both a moral obligation to other potential hostages and, in the long view, the only pragmatic posture.”

What Netanyahu said may have been true then, and it may be true now—but it turns out that a democratic society that cherishes its children is unable to make its calculations on safety and risk with pragmatism as its guide. It’s easier to write such an essay when you’re not in power.

The ultimate dilemma for Israel is this: It is religiously and morally obliged to do everything it can to rescue Jews held hostage. At the same time, it is religiously and morally and politically obliged to defend the Jewish state as a whole. This is an irreconcilable dilemma, because its enemies are there to take advantage of the contradiction every time.


IDF airs footage of Hamas leader Sinwar in Gaza tunnel: ‘The hunt will not stop’
The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday released footage of what it said was Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar walking through a Gaza tunnel with several of his family members

If confirmed, it would be the first time Sinwar has been spotted since he went into hiding ahead of Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught. IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari released the footage, as unnamed security officials again leaked to Hebrew media claims that the IDF was closing in on the terror chief. The release of the footage also came as top Israeli, US, Qatari and Egyptian officials were gathered in Cairo for negotiations aimed at reaching an extended truce and hostage deal.

The one-minute-long clip, filmed on October 10, features Sinwar in a tunnel underneath the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, walking behind what appears to be his wife along with three of his children, who are led by Sinwar’s brother Ibrahim, according to the IDF.

Sinwar appears healthy, in one piece, carrying a bag and wearing Adidas flipflops. One of his daughters is seen holding a doll.

The video was taken from Hamas surveillance footage from the tunnels that was recently retrieved by IDF troops operating in the area.

While Sinwar’s back is facing the camera, the IDF was able to identify him by the larger size of the figure’s ears and by using artificial intelligence, Channel 12 reported. Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas in Gaza, greets his supporters upon his arrival at a meeting in a hall on the seaside of Gaza City, on April 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)

An Israeli official told Channel 12 that the authorities are in possession of additional footage of Siwnar, including clips that were filmed more recently.

“Every resident of Gaza [can now] see how Hamas leaders live underground and how they don’t think about anything other than themselves, their families and their money,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari told the Al Arabiya network ahead of the airing of the footage.

“One video or another is not what really matters. What is important is the intelligence that will allow us to reach senior Hamas officials and the hostages. The hunt for Sinwar will not stop until we catch him, dead or alive,” Hagari said in a press conference upon releasing the footage.


70 years since the Atlantic report on Israel - what has changed?
"Atlantic Report on the World Today" was the name of an article published in the 1954 summer issue of the Atlantic Monthly magazine, dealing with the geo-strategic situation of the then young state of Israel, established in 1948.

The 6-year-old State of Israel was then in the midst of establishing, building and strengthening itself, while investing many resources in absorbing and settling hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants and refugees not only from Europe but from all Arab states, after its War of Independence.

From its beginning, and even more so in the first years after the establishment of the State of Israel, the Jewish settlement suffered from the harassment of the Arabs within it and those surrounding it. The situation got even worse when Arab terrorist militias, called Fedayeen, penetrated the borders, in the absence of an obstacle or means of protecting or warning, and under the auspices of Egypt and Jordan, there to carry out acts of terrorism, sabotage and theft.

The security situation at the borders
From the dawn of time, the Arabs would disseminate alleged conspiracies about the State of Israel and the conduct of the IDF in such a way that it was difficult for the "enlightened and moral West" to sift facts from fiction.

The ability of the Arabs and the media to inflate every detail and piece of information beyond all proportion, turned the "One Thousand and One Nights tales" from a fairy tale into an apparent reality, as part of the propaganda enterprise that has continued to develop since then until now. For example, each raid carried out by a four to six commando fighters' team of Israel's 101 squad, which consisted no more than 50 men from the simplest soldier to the highest commander, turned into an action by tens and hundreds of fighters across enemy lines when told by the Arabs. "Operation Shoshana", which was carried out as a retaliatory action by about 130 paratroopers against the Arab village of Kibia, from which in October 1953 the murderers of the four Kanyas family members came, became a "mass murder". An alleged massacre of the supposedly innocent villagers by about 700 Israeli soldiers wasn’t enough, so ithey were also accused of acting in an allegedly immoral manner, which turned out to be nothing but a lie.

The article quoted the words of Henry Bayrod, the US Assistant Secretary of State for near East Affairs, who advised in two of his speeches to take a moderate approach to the conflict in the arena and to calm down both sides, each of which has pretentious ambitions at the expense of the other side apparently. According to Bayrod:"There is no hope of a quick peace between Jews and Arabs; their ideological positions are too far apart. Peace, however, must be our ultimate object, if only to prevent the entire area, with its people and its oil, from falling prey to Soviet imperialism."

The reactions to his words were immediate and intense on both sides of the truce line: Israeli officials claimed that Israel was being abandoned to its fate by the oil-hungry Republicans, while the Arab editors assured their readers that their country would not agree to peace under any conditions.


Israel Gets the Dershowitz Defense
In his latest work, War Against the Jews: How to End Hamas Barbarism, Alan Dershowitz, a distinguished legal scholar and New York Times bestselling author, delves into the profound impact of the deadly October 7 attack by Hamas, Israel's consequential battle for its own survival, the "victory of humanity over barbarity," and what we can learn from the wider response of politicians, academics, and private citizens alike.

Published just two months after the largest pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust, the book explores how so much changed in so little time at the hands of a "ragtag band of murderous terrorists" and asks why so much of the world has "been so morally bankrupt" in the face of the bloodthirsty slaughter of Jews.

In a similar manner to his previous works, such as The Case for Israel, Dershowitz repeatedly debunks the anti-Semitic double standards and outright propaganda that form the foundation for much of the anti-Israel platform, such as the unapologetic statement of fact that "Israel takes greater precautions than any country in the history of the world in trying to minimize civilian deaths among Palestinians."

But what sets this particular book apart is that, in response to October 7, the gloves are off, and no one escapes Dershowitz's trademark controlled contempt for those who despise Jews. Dershowitz speaks both pragmatically and passionately, with a relentless dedication to defending not only Israel and Jews, but the truth. No culpable figure or organization escapes his thoughtful and targeted scorn.

Norman Finkelstein is condemned as a "despicable bigot and Holocaust minimizer," whose soul was apparently warmed by the murder and rape of Jews at the hands of "Hamas butchers." The National Lawyers Guild is obliterated following their statement "in support of the mass murderers" almost immediately after October 7. Meanwhile, an entire chapter is dedicated to an open letter to any law firms considering hiring Hamas supporters.

Given the explosion of anti-Semitism on college campuses, Dershowitz declares that "the time has come for a new reckoning" by American academic institutions regarding "their own tolerance and even encouragement of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism." Even Harvard's now-former president Claudine Gay fails to escape, with Dershowitz boldly asking whether her infamous response to rampant anti-Semitism on Harvard's campus would be the same if other minority groups were targeted.

The United Nations is slammed as "feckless," oxymoronic progressive groups such as "Gays for Gaza" are exposed, and organizations such as Voice for Peace, Human Rights Watch, and the American Civil Liberties Union are held to account for their obsessive anti-Israel stance.
Pompeo in Israel: Most Americans are with you in war
The vast majority of Americans stand with Israel in the war against Hamas, and the military response against the Islamist terrorist group has been both “perfectly appropriate” and necessary, former U.S. Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday.

Pompeo spoke during a solidarity visit to communities along Israel’s border with Gaza, days after U.S. President Joe Biden said that the military response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion was “over the top.”

The former secretary of state, who served in the Trump administration, said that the current U.S. president should take care in choosing his words so as not to encourage both Hamas and its Iranian backers to “hang in there.

“Israel has a duty and responsibility no matter what the rest of the world says to do its level best to ensure that something like this [the Oct. massacres] never happens again,” he said.

Flanked by his wife, Susan, as he toured the site of the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im that saw the worst carnage on Oct. 7 and has since been turned into a makeshift memorial, Pompeo said that the attack was a vivid reminder that “evil remains” in the world, and that Israel must do what it needs to ensure its civilians are safe.


Israelis Refuse to Be Erased
We are faced with a wave of catastrophic antisemitism, worse than any since the 1930s, a complete collapse of a society supposedly dedicated to human rights.

In Italy, where I was born and am visiting, antisemitism is becoming a flood. According to the Fondazione CDEC-Observatory on Antisemitism, Italy saw 454 antisemitic incidents in 2023, compared to 241 in 2022.

To the media, the war that has been forced upon Israel by 13,000 missiles, the slaughter of 1,200 people, the rape and mutilation of women and children, the kidnapping of over 200, and all the other atrocities of Oct. 7, does not exist.

The Israelis displaced from their kibbutzim, the families deprived of their loved ones, they do not exist either. They are Jews, so they are erased.

There is nothing else in the news, in politics, and on the screens but the blood libel - pure antisemitism everywhere.
What fuels antisemitism? Sheer envy
We have to show we’re better than them and win.”

And win the Israeli women’s basketball team did. After their Irish rivals refused to shake hands with them at the European Championship qualifier last week, the Israelis went on to smash them 87-57.

It was the sweetest of victories. In the lead-up to the game, the Emerald Isle’s anti-Israel mob had called for the team to boycott their fixtures against the Jewish state for, you know, having the audacity to wage a defensive war against Hamas in Gaza instead of just sucking up October 7.

Basketball Ireland did not, let’s say, exactly discourage the protesters and, equally disappointing, some of the sportswomen capitulated to the boycotters’ pressure by announcing they wouldn’t take part in the match. All of which prompted one Israeli player to say of the Irish team: “They are quite antisemitic. We talk about it amongst ourselves. We know they don’t love us.”

Having been beaten by the Jews, and spectacularly humiliated for their unsporting conduct, I imagine the Irish team now love Israelis even less than they did.

Would they feel less antipathy towards the Jewish state, a country I’ll bet you my last Tayto crisp they have never visited, had Ireland won last week’s match in Riga? Possibly. For there is no doubt that envy is a key plank of antisemitism, and also no doubt that over the past 2,000 years we have inspired rather a lot of it. In 1983, the author Roald Dahl said in an interview with the New Statesman: “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t pick on them for no reason

He accused us of a lack of generosity, but what Dahl was actually doing was expressing an inferiority complex that I wager he wouldn’t have been aware of in any part of his antisemitic brain. People pick on us because they can’t stomach Jewish success.

They simply can’t stomach that a minnow people of some 15 million, comprising around 0.2 per cent of the world’s population, is so insanely overrepresented in science, mathematics, art, music, literature, chess, law, economics, business, entertainment, journalism and almost any other intellectual pursuit or area of public life you care to list. (I was going to add except sport, but last week’s basketball win rather shows that we can excel on the pitch too).
Amid the Gaza War, Israeli Athletes Face Discrimination, But Triumph Overseas
Since October 7, sports have been put on the backburner in Israel. But as Israel fights to defeat Hamas in Gaza, some of the country’s athletes are returning to competition, especially as qualification tournaments get underway for the Paris Olympics. In 2021, Israel had its best ever Olympic Games, winning a record four medals — two of which were gold — in Tokyo.

In recent days, the 2024 Israeli team has grown, with IQFoilers (windsurfers) Sharon Kantor and Tom Reuveney securing their Olympics spots at the recent World Championships; Kantor won the women’s event, and Reuveney finished eighth. This is a very special event in Israel’s sporting history, as three of its 13 Olympic medals (including its first ever gold) came in this event.

Elsewhere, the Israeli swimming team is currently in Qatar at the World Championships. The highlight, thus far, was Anastasia Gorbenko’s fourth place in the 200m Individual Medley. At this stage, Israel has qualified swimmers in nine different events at Paris, as well as the team-based artistic swimming duet.

In 2024, Israel will send its first soccer team to the Olympics since 1976. Time will tell if Israeli athletes will qualify in sports such as archery, skateboarding, climbing, surfing, and fencing.

Israel hasn’t sent a fencer to the Olympics since 2008, but that could change after Yuval Freilich won gold at the Epee Grand Prix event in Qatar. What a surreal thrill to hear Hatikvah played in Qatar during these times.

The current situation in Israel has caused turmoil for many of our athletes overseas. There was quite a ruckus about our women’s basketball team playing against Ireland, where the Irish team refused to shake hands with their Jewish competitors.
The root cause of Arab Palestinism is killing Jews
When you examine the rhetoric of pro-Palestinians, when you cut through the fraud and lies of their narrative, one thing is clear. They all hate Jews. The Palestinian Arabs themselves, however, take it one stage further. They slaughter Jews.

They may dress it up in a supposedly "righteous" cause but, at the end of the day, all they have is this obsession with murdering Jews. Always have, even before they adopted a "Palestine" cause to cloak their anti-Semitism in a garb of nationalism.

Arabs were murdering Jews in the Middle East before there was a Palestinian Arab cause. They did it out of greed and envy of Jews who built and succeeded when they failed. Instead of learning from them, they killed and plundered.

Echoes of Gaza and the PA? No matter how many billions you give them they waste it on ways to murder Jews.

An early example was the murder of Jews who collectively farmed their land at Tel Hai in the northern Galilee in pre-state Palestine, then a barren district of a failing Ottoman Empire. Marauding Arab gangs repeatedly attacked the fortress in which the Jewish farmers lived until returning in greater force to kill and steal whatever they could find.

In the ensuing battle, eight Jews, including two women and the one-armed Jewish hero, Joseph Trumpeldor, who had fought with the British to liberate Palestine from the Turks and the Germans in 1917, were killed before the Arabs took off with whatever they could find. This losing battle became a symbolic landmark in Jewish folklore. Nothing to do with "Palestine" or statehood. Just violent lawless theft.
Jake Wallis Simons: I’m proud to ‘conflate’ Jews with Israel, let’s not deny our roots
It wasn’t about fascination with exiticism. It was something much deeper. Middle Eastern domes were a fixture of diaspora synagogue architecture across Europe and the United States in the 19th century. Examples include the Beth El and Shaarai Tephila synagogues in New York, built in 1891 and 1869 respectively; the Great Synagogue in Jelgava, Latvia, which was constructed in 1860 and tragically burned down during the Shoah, with the rabbi and some congregants still believed to be inside; and, of course, the magnificent Neue Synagogue on Oranienburger Straße in Berlin, with its gleaming, ribbed onion domes, consecrated in 1866. All of these speak of one truth. For all our attempts to locate our traditions alongside Christianity as patriotic citizens of Germany, or Latvia, or Scotland — some rabbis in Britain wore dog collars until fairly recently — Israel has always been at the very root of our culture and identity, even for those of us who died without setting foot on its soil. This is our oddity. However integrated we become and however many corners we manage to smooth, we remain at heart a Middle Eastern race.

This puts a fresh complexion on the bad-faith argument, often made by the Left, that to “conflate” Jews and Israel is a species of antisemitism. This has always struck me as largely disingenuous. It is simply undeniable that Israel and Jewishness are inextricably interwoven, and have been since we were exiled to Babylon around 598 BCE. For millennia, Jews in the diaspora have prayed facing towards the Holy City, exclaimed “next year in Jerusalem” at Passover, mourned the destruction of the Temple by breaking glasses at weddings, left a corner of our homes undecorated, bowed our foreheads to the Kotel, longed to be buried on the Mount of Olives, and visited on pilgrimage. Many throughout history have taken the step of uprooting their families and returning to our homeland. All these traditions, of course, continue to this day.

Denying all this takes some effort. What is wrong with Israel? Why should we wish to disassociate from it, in spite of millennia of culture? Why should we not defend it? Attempting to renounce the very root of our culture is what happens when Jews absorb the mendacious arguments of those who wish us harm. It represents a great victory for our enemies. As Howard Jacobson put it in a recent JC column: “Insist your innocence of someone else’s heinous misdeeds and all you do is concede the heinousness.”

Obviously it is stupid to criticise a Jew as a proxy for the Israeli government, just as it would be stupid to criticise a British citizen for a cockup by the Foreign Office. But just as Britons of all faiths are entitled to hold this green and pleasant land in our hearts, Jews should have no shame about holding our ancestral homeland, domes and all, alongside it.
Brendan O'Neill: The commodification of Palestinian pain
Clearly, the activist class gets something out of its fetishisation of Palestinian suffering. However, it is not clear at all that ordinary Palestinians benefit from having their trauma turned into viral matter for bored voyeurs. Indeed, just a few years ago the Palestinian psychiatrist, Samah Jabr, warned against sharing ‘shocking content’ showing ‘shattered people’ in the Palestinian territories, on the basis that such ‘pictures of pain’ violate ‘the privacy and dignity of the subjects’ and can ‘create terror’ among Palestinians who might fear suffering the same fate. These images might ‘provide thrills’ on social media, and give rise to ‘more likes and shares’, but they can devastate ‘public morale’ among actual Palestinians, Jabr wrote. Today there seems to be no concern whatsoever for the impact that commodified Palestinian suffering might have on Palestinians. The sharing of their trauma is now utterly unrestrained. The ‘thrills’ of clicktivists take precedence over the ‘dignity’ of Palestinians.

The material interests of ordinary Palestinians have been subordinated to the emotional interests of the West’s activist class. Palestinian privacy and dignity be damned – we have virtue we need to signal on the back of your broken bodies. Witness activists’ attachment of hyper-emotional comments to every grim image and snuff film they share – about how ‘distressed’ they are, how racked with ‘guilt and anxiety’, how ‘apoplectic with rage’. This is not anti-war, it’s pro-self. It’s not solidarity, it’s vanity. It’s a kind of emotional colonialism, where the virtue of the Palestinians lies less in their own dignity or capacity for statehood than in their role as fluffers of the moral self-regard of privileged Westerners. Radicals damn Israel for subjugating the Palestinians even as they subjugate them to the lost cause of their own search for meaning.

Even a left-wing critic of Israel has spoken out against the ‘trauma porn’ in Western activism. ‘Masses of well-intentioned people’, says Joshua P Hill, are ‘sharing traumatic content one day after another’ because they are ‘seized with an inability to act effectively’. There is something in this. It speaks, I think, to a broader crisis of public life. It is more than 50 years since Guy Debord published his book, The Society of the Spectacle, in which he posited that people increasingly engage with society through ‘images detached from every aspect of life’. In the ‘empire of modern passivity’, he wrote, the ‘spectacle’ is one of the few things that can make us feel connected and alive. We can see a version of this in the ‘spectacle of violence’ activists have fashioned out of the war in Gaza – a collection of detached images that they hope will jolt a passive generation into feeling something. Self-important, at least.

Ordinary Palestinians might get nothing from the moral voyeurism of their self-styled champions in the West, but it is possible Hamas does. When images of Palestinian suffering become valuable political currency, keenly sought and shared by influencers, we should not be surprised that Hamas seems determined to create more such images, more such suffering. ‘We are proud to sacrifice martyrs’, said a Hamas leader shortly after the pogrom of 7 October. Why wouldn’t they be? They know how well ‘Palestinian martyrs’ play in the West. They know their unpaid propagandists in the influencer set will marshal every ‘martyr’ to the cause of delegitimising Israel in the eyes of the world. It seems to me that there is a grotesque symbiosis between the Western lust for images of Palestinian suffering and Hamas’s willingness to prolong and promote that suffering by refusing to surrender to Israel.

The most urgent form of liberation the people of Gaza require is liberation from the vain and demented ideologues of Hamas who are dragging out a war they can’t win, and liberation from the phoney solidarity of privileged Westerners who treat Palestinians as little more than tragic bit-part players in their own moral psychodramas. Free Gaza, yes – from you.
Bill Ackman: Journalism Dies in Darkness: Bill Ackman Responds to The Washington Post
I am sure all of us have had the experience of reading a story about a subject you know well and finding it replete with inaccuracies and falsehoods. One then turns the page and reads an article about a subject one knows less well and makes the mistake of believing that this other story is accurate. I am guilty of this sin.

I am sadly repeatedly reminded to mistrust what I read in the media, and I am not alone. Destruction of confidence in our media is contributing to societal breakdown, and that is a very unfortunate state of affairs.

During the past few weeks, I spent several hours cooperating with a Washington Post story. I spent time with the reporter in an effort to increase the probability that the story would be accurate as the issues she was writing about were important, nuanced, and at risk of being misunderstood.

I really like the reporter, believe that her intentions were good, and I also believe that her goal was to write a story that was accurate. Unfortunately, unconscious or other bias of hers and/or her editor led to bad journalism.

The story was published this morning. Despite my hopes, my optimism was misplaced as the public has been again misled, important issues are not addressed fairly or accurately, and false impressions have therefore been created in the minds of readers about important issues.

The story can be found here: https://washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/10/bill-ackman-end-dei-industry/…

The subheading of the story is:
“Bill Ackman used Wall Street tactics to oust Harvard’s first Black president. He’s part of a wave of business leaders attacking diversity initiatives spurred by George Floyd’s death.”

To translate for the Washington Post audience, a rich, racist jerk (or worse) used ‘Wall Street’ (read by the WaPo audience as “crooked”) tactics to fire Harvard’s first Black president. He is part of a group of other rich people (i.e., business leaders) who are opposed to diversity and who are indifferent or worse to George Floyd’s murder.

In other words, the subheading explains that Bill Ackman is an anti-environment, anti-social justice, elitist warrior working to reverse recent social and environmental progress in the world.

I also made the mistake of agreeing to be photographed. The subheading is followed by a portrait where half of my face is in shadow. This is a well-known media tactic to create the impression that the subject of the story is two-faced and evil.
Ask a Jew: Black Shabbos Goy - With Coleman Hughes
Writer, musician, rapper, author and podcaster Coleman Hughes joins us this week to discuss his new book which you should buy and read, "The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America."

We cover Neoracism, Israel, wokeness, writing and more. Also, who called Coleman a "black shabbos goy"? Listen to find out.

Sure, Coleman has done a few interviews lately, but only ours bestowed upon him a porn name and you’ll have to listen to learn what it is. Ok, it's too good not to share. We'll tell you. It's Poleman Huge.
‘We believe in peace and justice, not just peace,’ pro-Israel activist says
As a young girl growing up in Montreal, Ysabella Hazan connected to the Chanukah story of the Maccabees and the Jewish Temple. “I always felt like it was a part of me,” she told JNS.

Hazan is something of a present-day Hasmonean underdog taking on a plethora of anti-Israel foes on social media as vast as the Seleucid Empire.

The former associate director of Honest Reporting Canada, who earned a J.D. last April at the University of Ottawa, has a combined following of 85,000 accounts across Instagram, X and TikTok. But she does just as much talking in real life as she does on social media.

The 23-year-old told JNS that she has delivered speeches and served as a panelist and moderator “several hundred times” in the past four years, including at Harvard University and other U.S. and Canadian schools, at the Canadian Parliament and outside the White House, Knesset and the Israeli president’s home.

She has worked with the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee, Hillel, the Israeli humanitarian organization Save a Child’s Heart and the Jewish National Fund, and in 2020, she was a political and public affairs strategist at the Consulate General of Israel in Montreal.

A digital marketing firm ranked her as No. 40 and a “rising star” on its list of the top 50 pro-Israel influencers worldwide in 2021.

In her advocacy for Israel and Jews, Hazan believes that a holistic approach must be about more than just Jew-hatred in the past.

“Holocaust education is critical and more important than ever,” she told JNS. “However, there’s a misconception in the Jewish community that Holocaust education combats present-day Jew-hatred. Educate on the Holocaust and educate on Jewish identity in order to effectively combat Jew-hatred.”
Insulting Israel is old news at the State Dept.
The claim by Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel is “dehumanizing” the residents of Gaza is false and insulting. But it’s par for the course at Foggy Bottom.

It may not be much consolation to the Israelis, but U.S. secretaries of state have been leveling unfair accusations against Israel, and sometimes against the Jewish people, for more than 75 years, regardless of whether Israel’s government leaned left or right.

In 1948, Secretary of State George Marshall vigorously opposed the creation of Israel, implemented the U.S. embargo on weapons to the Jewish forces, and urged President Harry Truman not to recognize the new state. Marshall also promoted a plan to drastically reduce the then even tinier size of Israel by tearing away the Negev.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, testified to a Senate committee in 1953 that Israel should stop seeking arms and start putting its trust “in the United Nations.” He also criticized the Israelis for striking at Arab terrorists in Gaza.

At another point in his testimony, Secretary Dulles claimed that Israel’s fears of being destroyed were baseless. When asked if America’s strategic plans for the Mideast were adequate to prevent Israel’s annihilation, he replied that the U.S. could not “underwrite” such a promise. Dulles reiterated that the U.S. would not sell weapons to Israel, while defending the administration’s decision to send 18 tanks to Saudi Arabia. He also justified the U.S. surrender to the Saudi leaders’ demand that no Jewish soldiers be permitted to serve on American bases in Saudi Arabia.

In a Mideast policy speech later that year, Secretary Dulles declared that Jerusalem should be ruled by “the world religious community,” instead of serving as Israel’s capital. He also challenged Israel’s identity, asserting that Israel “should become a part of the Near East community and cease to look upon itself…as alien to this community.”


Howard Dean_ Biden 'Moving' to Israel Position 'More to the Liking of Arab Americans'
On Monday’s broadcast of “CNN NewsNight,” former DNC chair and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean stated that while he admires President Joe Biden approaching foreign policy based on what’s best for the country, “I do think, however, that he is moving towards a position” that is “probably more to the liking of Arab Americans.”

Dean said, “I think Netanyahu has always tried to push things his way. I think relationships with the United States, particularly with the Democrats, started to slide downhill when Netanyahu addressed the Congress at the invitation of the Republicans without bothering to consult with President Obama, and there’s been bad blood ever since. Netanyahu is, in my view, sort of Trump with brains, very clever, very cunning, always interested in Netanyahu, and I think he’s pursuing these measures principally because he’s worried about his ratings, which have gone into the toilet. But he’s a less and less reliable, ally, I think.”

Host Abby Phillip then asked, “When it comes to President Biden, though, this is a critical moment for him politically. There is a lot of discontent in the Democratic base about how he’s handling this war in particular. Arab American voters are frustrated, they’re being urged to reject Biden. Do you worry that this issue could cost him the election?”

Dean responded, “Look, you have to worry about everything you do politically. One of the things I very much like about Joe Biden is he’s going to do what’s right for the United States of America. That is not a universal trait among presidents, particularly those who blow in the wind, such as the former President, Trump. So, it’s better to have somebody steady who knows foreign policy than it is [to have someone] who’s catering to whatever people are upset with. I do think, however, that he is moving towards a position which is more — probably more to the liking of Arab Americans. It’s — this is such a complicated matter. American Jews over 50 are universally very pro-Israel. Under 35, I’m a bit shocked, because I consider myself pro-Israel, but under 35, there are a lot of people, young American Jews, who are fed up with this and think that Israel is in the wrong.”
Pressure mounts over Biden judicial pick’s role at anti-Israel group propping up terrorism
One could say Adeel Mangi has baggage.

A 46-year-old partner at the Manhattan-based white shoe law firm Patterson Belknap, Mangi was appointed late last year by President Joe Biden to sit on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees district courts in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. But the Muslim American litigator’s nomination has been anything but smooth sailing: Mangi’s recent advisory board role for Rutgers Law School’s Center for Security, Race and Rights, an anti-Israel research office that has platformed a convicted terrorist fundraiser, has become a flashpoint in the Senate Judiciary Committee and prompted at least one GOP-led investigation.

Now, outside groups are exerting pressure on Democratic lawmakers, with the intention of highlighting Mangi’s ties to anti-Israel activists the Biden administration has faced heightened scrutiny for courting on the heels of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack last year on Israel. The Rutgers center, which after the massacre equated condemnation of Hamas to attempts to “ignore over 75 years of colonial violence and the horrific consequences born out of these decades of oppression and attempted erasure,” counted Mangi on its advisory board from 2019 to 2023.

The kicker to Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans: Mangi personally donated $6,500 between 2018 and 2021 to the Rutgers University Foundation to support the anti-Israel center, which in recent years also received $13,000 from Patterson Belknap, Mangi testified to the panel. Senate Democrats have dubbed his judicial nomination “historic.”


Jamaal Bowman Condemns Israeli Hostage Rescue Mission
Bowman, who did not respond to a request for comment, has done little to repair his reputation with his district's Jewish community since then. During a Jan. 14 panel discussion titled, "Palestine Oct. 7 and After," for example, Bowman heaped praise on Norman Finkelstein, an anti-Israel author who celebrated Hamas's attack as a "heroic resistance" that "warm[ed] every fiber" of his soul.

"I'm also a bit starstruck, because I watch them all the time on YouTube," Bowman said of Finkelstein. "You have given me the knowledge on YouTube before even coming here." After the remark prompted criticism, Bowman downplayed his affinity for the author, saying, "I had seen a few interviews but was unaware of Norman Finkelstein's completely reprehensible comments before this event."

Roughly one month later, in early February, a HuffPost report revealed that Bowman as a middle school principal curated a 2014 "Wall of Honor" that featured former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. The Georgia Democrat is a prominent anti-Semite—in 2009, she attended a Holocaust denial gathering in London, where she praised anti-Semitic leaders and writers. McKinney has also blamed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on "Zionists," and her father similarly blamed Jews when McKinney lost her congressional seat in 2002.

"Jews have bought everybody," he said. "Jews. J-E-W-S."

McKinney's history of anti-Semitism did not stop Bowman from defending the former congresswoman's inclusion on the wall, with a campaign spokeswoman arguing that McKinney and other "leaders in the Black liberation movement" have "complicated biographies."

"It is completely baseless, and a rhetorical tool of the far right, to insinuate educating students on major figures of Black American history is serving to promote hateful or divisive rhetoric or actions," said the spokeswoman, Sarah Iddrissu. "Suppressing the education of black history only serves to enable violence against Black people."


Mike Freer: ‘My husband and family did not sign up for this abuse’
Freer says that when he’s challenged the Met, they’ve assured him that the offender would be arrested later, and it would be announced on X/ Twitter. “Most of my community, the more Orthodox people, aren’t necessarily on Twitter. We need to see people arrested there and then. People can see the marches, they see the banners, they hear the chants on television, and nothing happens in their eyes and then it becomes legitimate. There’s no visible deterrent.”

It was after moving to Finchley in 1988, and being elected to Barnet Council in 1990 for the St Paul’s ward, that he first “embraced the community and the community embraced” him. “It’s just felt like this massive, great big hug for 30 odd years. It’s genuinely a community that has been wonderfully warm and welcoming.”

But his interest in Judaism goes back to childhood. Raised in Manchester, he would visit his aunt in Cheetham where he observed the Orthodox community and asked questions about the men in black hats and long coats. He later took A Level religious studies.

“I’ve always been really interested. And I think I used to drive some of the local Rabbonim mad with my questions. Rabbi Mirvis, when he was at Kinloss, was a great Talmudic source.”

Freer liked Rabbi Miriam Berger’s comment that he was so frequently at FRS that members assumed he was Jewish and from another shul. “People just assume I’m Jewish, which I take as a compliment. But obviously, other people have different views. Quite a lot of my Jewish friends used to say I spent more time at shul than they did.”

He also admires the community’s resilience and how it stands together, not just in dealing with antisemitism, but in its values of education, charity, and helping others. “Amazing tenets that underpin the religion. That is really quite phenomenal.”

Recognising the unknown of whether he would have been reelected, Freer says he leaves the job that he loves with “mixed emotions”. “Stepping down from a community I live at the heart of, that I’m part of, but will no longer be representing in Parliament, is a huge wrench.”

But the community should not feel abandoned. “I’m not going away,” he says. “I live in Finchley and I am not deserting the community or my support for Israel - I’m just going to have to find a different platform to be able to continue my support.”
ROCHDALE LABOUR COUNCIL CANDIDATE SAYS KEIR STARMER IS A WAR CRIMINAL

NEW RECORDING: ALI BOASTED AT MEETING HE HAD AND WOULD STATE CONSPIRACY THEORY PUBLICLY

TORIES WRITE TO LABOUR, ASK “WHO ELSE WAS IN ALI MEETING?” STARMER COMMITS TO INVESTIGATE OTHER ATTENDEES AT ALI MEETING

LABOUR PPC GRAHAM JONES RECORDED RANTING “F**KING ISRAEL” WANTS BRITISH JEWS FIGHTING FOR ISRAEL “LOCKED UP”



MEMRI: Saudi Writer: Peace With Israel And Trade Relations With It Will Turn Our Commercial Leverage Into A Weapon More Effective Than Further Rounds Of Fighting

At White House, King Abdullah attacks '70 years of Israeli occupation'
Jordan’s King Abdullah warned against the danger of “seven decades of occupation” as he called for a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during a press conference with US President Joe Biden at the White House.

“Seven decades of occupation, death, and destruction have proven beyond any doubt that there can be no peace without a political horizon,” said the monarch.

Abdullah has been a strong proponent of a two-state solution at the pre-1967 lines, with east Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian one.

Those who support that position often speak of their opposition to the more than five decades of Israeli “occupation” of the territories of the West Bank, Gaza, and east Jerusalem.

At issue for ’67-line supporters is Israel’s annexation of east Jerusalem in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War and its military rule of the West Bank, both territories which had been “occupied by Jordan” since 1948 and until that war.

They are also opposed to IDF control of Gaza, which had been under Egyptian “occupation” during that same 1948-1967 period. The IDF withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and, in light of the October 7 attack, is now waging a war to regain military control of that enclave from Hamas.

The term “seven decades of occupation” is most often used by those who question the very existence of Israel, even within its sovereign 1948 borders, recognized by the United Nations.


America’s young people may be ‘educated’ but TikTok has made them incredibly ignorant
Academic pedigree is no longer a reliable indicator of intelligence.

Millennials today are the most educated generation in American history, with around 40% holding a bachelor’s degree or higher. Yet they are also among the most ignorant and misinformed. And the Israel-Hamas war, and the global antisemitism surge that followed, has been a disturbing case in point.

One reason behind this phenomenon is the generational disparity when it comes to news consumption. While older generations still rely heavily on traditional news sources for current events, 32% of 18-29-year-olds are getting their news from alternative news sources on platforms like TikTok, oftentimes from influencers or self-proclaimed citizen journalists on the ground, who are not bound by fact-checking or ethical reporting standards observed in newsrooms.

It’s no coincidence that today one in five young Americans believe the Holocaust is a myth, with an additional 30% of respondents polled aged 18-29 unsure if the Holocaust took place.

Harvard protesters
Supporters of Palestine gather at Harvard University to show their support for Palestinians in Gaza at a rally in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 2023, just seven days after the horrible Hamas attack on Israel. (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)

I had never used TikTok before, in large part because of its reputation for perfecting a hypnotic algorithm that continuously feeds users content they want to imbibe, sapping hours of their lives before they realize how much time they’ve spent on the platform.

But this week I downloaded the app for the first time to see how long it would take – and with as few prompts as possible – before the app would start sending me down an antisemitic rabbit hole.

The same toxic rabbit hole that compelled Jewish social media influencers to issue a scathing open letter about how TikTok "lacks critical safety features to protect Jewish content creators and the broader Jewish community, leaving us in digital and physical danger."

The same toxic rabbit hole that forced Barak Herscowitz, TikTok’s top government relations official in Israel, to step down from his role late last month. And the very same Jew-hating abyss that forced TikTok executives to fly to Israel this week to meet with the country’s president amid mounting concerns that the platform – and its 40,000 moderators – are unable to control the virulent spread of antisemitic content online.
Kassy Dillon: Embattled UN Official Doubles Down At Harvard, Says Israel Has No Right To Self Defense
The United Nations official who was welcomed to speak at Harvard University on the same day she was banned from Israel for anti-Semitism doubled down at the Ivy League event, stating that Hamas isn’t motivated by hatred of Jews and that Israel has no right to defend itself.

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, stood by her position on Hamas’s motivation for its attack during the discussion with Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy on Monday afternoon. Albanese found herself in hot water and officially barred from entering Israel after she contended that French President Emanuel Macron was wrong for labeling the October 7 terrorist attack the “greatest anti-Semitic massacre of our century.”

“Saying that the motivation was anti-Semitism is wrong and dangerous,” Albanese said in the Harvard discussion. “I’m not saying that people in Hamas are absolutely not anti-Semitic. This was not the argument, but the argument is that this attack was launched as a way to break the occupation against the apartheid.”

Harvard’s decision to host Albanese on Monday came as anti-Israel protests flare back up on campus. Harvard has dealt with severe backlash for its failure to combat anti-Semitism on campus, but has continued to invite anti-Israel speakers to speak at university events. Just last week it an event was announced with a Palestinian professor who said the terrorist attack was Israel’s fault.

Albanese at the Monday afternoon event accused Israel of falsely claiming anti-Semitism to make it appear that there is an “existential threat” against Jews.

“I understand why Israel is using this argument of antisemitism because by saying ‘we were attacked, because we are Jews,’ it’s bringing the existential threat that many Jews fear,” she added. “The real threat is the apartheid that Israel imposes on the Palestinians, which is a threat to both Palestinians and Israeli Jews.”


Harvard Law Student Behind Infamous Oct. 7 Statement Speaks Out, Refuses To Condemn Hamas
The Harvard Law School student behind the infamous statement that held Israel "entirely responsible" for Hamas's Oct. 7 attack is speaking out, saying in an interview that she stands by the statement and will not condemn the Iran-backed terror group.

Israa Alzamli, a third-year student who served as a research assistant at Harvard's Islamic Law program, was one of the main authors of the statement signed by dozens of Harvard student groups in the wake of the attack, she revealed in an interview with the Boston Globe. While many of those student groups rushed to disassociate themselves from the statement, Alzamli is standing by it—and crediting the anti-Israel "community" at Harvard for supporting her.

"I feel really lucky that there's a community here of people that have been really supporting me," Alzamli told the Globe. She also refused to condemn Hamas, saying she is "not there to decide what means of resistance are acceptable."

Alzamli's interview sheds light on the origins of the statement that started a firestorm at Harvard.

That statement, issued on Oct. 8, held "the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence" and said the "apartheid regime is the only one to blame." The rhetoric brought condemnation from federal lawmakers and prominent donors, many of whom slashed their donations in response. Then-Harvard president Claudine Gay went on to face questions over the statement during her disastrous congressional testimony, which fueled calls for her resignation. Members of Harvard student groups that signed the statement also saw job offers rescinded.

For Alzamli, those reactions were "maddening." The statement, Alzamli told the Globe, merely meant to explore "the circumstances that led people to do certain things that are horrific." Alzamli's reaction to the attack, however, tells a different story. The Harvard student celebrated Hamas's assault on the Jewish state in a text she sent to her fiancé on the morning of Oct. 7, saying, "Gaza literally broke out of prison."

Alzamli, who did not return a request for comment, is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the anti-Israel activist group that released the Oct. 8 statement. Born in Saudi Arabia to Gazan parents, she grew up in the Chicago area, where she emerged as a self-described "Palestinian liberation" activist at an early age.


Get a grip Britain, you don’t need to copy America’s campus hate
The horrific antisemitism on Leeds and Birmingham university campuses raise many questions, starting with “WTF??” and ending with “Is this 2024 or 1934?” I have a further question, relevant to my very specific interests, which is this: “Bloody hell, UK. Do you always have to copy America?”

I moved to this country from the US in 1990 and, WOW, it was a weird culture shock. For one thing, I was the only Jewish girl in my class at school. Out of 20 girls! For a New York kid, this was inexplicable, like being the only girl in school who could read. I actually had to explain to my classmates that “bat mitzvah” was not some crazy American spelling for “birthday” when I sent out my invitations.

Even more annoying than that was the weird time lag it took for things to come from the US to the UK. Movies and TV shows specifically. Man, the wait for Beverly Hills 90210 was painful, although not as bad as the one for Green Card, the 90s rom com starring — of all people — Gerard Depardieu and Andie Macdowell, which fully lived up to the promises of the trailer. “Hurry up, UK!” I’d think. “Get that American stuff quicker!”

Well, we all make mistakes when we’re young. I started to regret my wish in the early 2000s when Tony Blair — my once clever and cool PM, became, seemingly overnight, a war-mongering Christian, in the vein of the very unclever and cool President George W Bush. Argh, go away American influence! Then in 2016, Britain was apparently so keen to catch up with America that it beat its brother to the stupid punch that year, voting in Brexit four months *before* America voted in Trump. But we quickly returned to the status quo when, three years after America got a liar and charlatan with stupid blonde hair as a leader, Britain got exactly the same. ‘Enough with catching America’s cold, Britain,’ I thought. But little did I know that a bout of pneumonia was coming our way.

The stories from Leeds and Birmingham are genuinely shocking: at Leeds, there was “Free Palestine” graffiti on the university’s Hillel House and the Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch has had to go into hiding after returning from serving in the IDF because of threats against him and his family.
Johns Hopkins University facing civil rights probe over anti-Semitism: EXCLUSIVE

House committee to investigate Columbia’s ‘inadequate response’ to campus antisemitism

Instagram removes accounts for leading NYC pro-Palestinian activist group 'Within Our Lifetime'
Within Our Lifetime, perhaps the most visible pro-Palestinian activist group in New York City, said on Friday that Instagram had permanently disabled its accounts, depriving it of a major platform for organizing protests.

"Within Our Lifetime’s main account and a backup page, each of which had tens of thousands of followers, both appeared to be inactive, as did two pages belonging to founder Nerdeen Kiswani. Within Our Lifetime shared a screenshot on X, formerly Twitter, saying that the accounts had been disabled due to violations of community guidelines.

A Facebook page belonging to the group, which has not been active in months, is still online.

A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, told the New York Jewish Week that the accounts had been removed because they violated the platform’s community guidelines, including its “Dangerous Organizations & Individuals policy.”

Shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the tech giant clarified that it did not allow “content containing praise for Hamas, which is designated by Meta as a Dangerous Organization,” a designation that preceded the attack.

In recent months, Within Our Lifetime and Kiswani used Instagram to endorse the Oct. 7 attack as “whatever means necessary it takes” to achieve Palestinian liberation and voice support for Hamas. It has also urged followers to target Jewish and Israel-linked institutions in New York City. The group’s post on X blamed the suspension on “Zionist forces.”

“As Zionist forces continue their crackdown on Palestine online and in the streets, @instagram has permanently deleted both WOL & WOL chair @NerdeenKiswani’s main and backup accounts, with no option to appeal or request a review to restore them,” the post said. “But the more they try to silence us, the louder we will be.”


BBC NEWS PROMOTES UNEVIDENCED PRCS ALLEGATIONS

CBS FALSELY REPORTS U.S. WARNED ISRAEL NOT TO ATTACK RAFAH

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

The Guardian Publishes Claim That Terror-Loving Palestinian-American Woman Was ‘Kidnapped’ By IDF

PMW: PA Libel: Killing a terrorist in the act is “summary execution” T
he Palestinian Authority disseminates numerous libels and lies about Israel and Jews to demonize Israelis and make Palestinians believe that killing Jews/Israelis in terror attacks is justified. One of the most important libels is that Israel intentionally targets and murders Palestinians and especially Palestinian children. Often when a Palestinian terrorist is killed during terror attack the Palestinian Authority calls it an “extrajudicial killing,” “summary execution” or murder.

Last week Palestinian Media Watch documented another example. Below is the video of the terror attack by a 14-year-old. It is clearly seen that the terrorist takes out a knife and attempts to stab the soldier and then is shot. Yet the PA condemned this as a “summary executions - an additional aspect of the genocide.” They added the libel that “the series of summary executions reflects a fascist racist colonialist mentality, which negates the life of the Palestinian.”

The following is the libel as expressed by the PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the official PA daily:


Headline: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs: The summary executions are an additional aspect of the genocide”

“The [PA] Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates condemned the despicable crime of execution that the occupation’s (i.e., Israel’s) forces committed yesterday in broad daylight against child Martyr Wadi’ Awisat, 14, from Jabel Mukaber [in Jerusalem] at a military checkpoint next to the entrance to the town of Al-Eizariya in occupied East Jerusalem. It said that ‘summary executions are an additional element of the genocide.

The ministry noted that the crime of executing child Awisat ‘brings to mind similar crimes of execution against Palestinian civilians, who were murdered before the eyes and ears of the international community, and foremost among them the execution of Martyr Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sharif (i.e., terrorist, stabbed and wounded Israelis together with an accomplice) in Hebron.’

The ministry said: ‘The continuation of the series of summary executions reflects a fascist racist colonialist mentality, which negates the life of the Palestinian and absolutely violates it. This also reflects the easements that the political and military echelon in the occupation state is providing the army and settlers on everything concerning opening fire on Palestinians, and this is in order to kill and according to the whims of the soldier or settler.’”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 7, 2024]


Gaza’s Arab Comedian ‘General Moshe’ is Laughing No More
A Gaza comedian who mocked Israel Defense Forces on October 7, dressing up as a senior IDF officer and begging, “We need protection. Protect us,” is laughing no more.

Ala’a Qadouha, who performed as “General Moshe,” is not even weeping. He is dead, courtesy of the Israel Defense Forces he so often mocked.

The comedian was killed together four family members Monday night in an attack on their home in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, according to Arab media quoted by the Abu Ali Express news outlet.



“Qadouha, together with his friend, the house comedian of Hamas, Ali Nasman, who was killed at the beginning of the war, often posed as Jews/soldiers and promoted Hamas agendas on social networks,” Abu Ali Express reported.

Qadouha often succeeded in convincing his Arab audience that he was, indeed, an Arabic-speaking senior Israeli military officer, using his skills to present positions appeared to be coming from the IDF itself and which weakened Israel’s military stance.

The comedian was close friends with Ali Nasman, the Hamas house comedian, who also often posted as an Israeli or IDF soldier while promoting Hamas agendas on social networks.

Ali Nasman was killed by the IDF at the beginning of the war.
Iran's FM Holds Talks With Palestinian Militant Groups, Assad, In Damascus

Iran sentences Mahsa Amini’s uncle to five-year prison sentence

PreOccupiedTerritory: Biden Admin Considering Forming Committee To Ponder Options For Thinking About Concept Of Task Force To Mull Response To Iran Attacks (satire)
The White House announced today it will make a decisive move to address Teheran’s belligerent actions in the Middle East that have killed Americans: it will soon weigh looking into the possibility of convening a group to explore what might, hypothetically, constitute an as-yet-undetermined answer to the Islamic Republic’s disruptive aggression and empowerment of violent proxies.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters this morning that President Biden has determined that the way to combat Iran’s malign activities in the region that threaten American allies and global shipping will begin with an eventual committee to investigate implications of forming a task force to examine what, under certain circumstances, deterring Iran might look like.

“The president has decided to act with boldness and decisiveness, as usual,” stated Kirby, in response to a correspondent’s question. “He has instructed his staff to meet to discuss the purview and composition of a committee that will report on the feasibility of consideration of forming a task force to advise on the possible thinking about responses to Iran.”

Iran has armed, trained, and funded dozens of militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and the Palestinian Territories, groups that have launched missile, drone, bomb, piracy, kidnaping, and other attacks on American and other targets, including an invasion of southern Israel on October 7 that killed 1200, abducted hundreds more and featured mass rape, torture, mutilation, and numerous other atrocities. The attacks have also included drone and missile salvos against US military personnel and facilities throughout the region, at least of them causing US troop fatalities.
The Man Who Inspired American Jews to Embrace Zionism and Americans to Fight Hitler
In her elegant essay on Abraham Cahan, Ruth R. Wisse writes that “[a]s editor of the world’s largest-circulation Jewish newspaper, his was almost certainly the most influential Jewish voice in America of the interwar years [1919–1939]; it mattered enormously that he came to choose Zionism over Communism and American democracy over Soviet dictatorship.”

Cahan’s opposition to Communism and Soviet dictatorship is illustrated by a speech he gave in 1940, and his views on American democracy and Zionism are reflected in an exchange of letters with Vladimir Jabotinsky that year. It’s worth looking closely at both the speech and the correspondence.

On May 5, 1940, the Workmen’s Circle—the mutual-aid society founded in 1900 by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe—held a rally at Madison Square Garden to celebrate its 40th anniversary. The principal speaker was Fiorello La Guardia, then in his eighth year as the mayor of New York, followed by Abraham Cahan.

The rally attracted an overflow crowd that—in the words of the report on page six of the New York Times the next day—was “one of the largest crowds ever to jam its way into the Garden.” “Every one of the Garden’s 19,000 seats was filled,” the Times wrote, “long before the scheduled starting hour of 2 pm.” Police estimated that 24,000 people had crowded inside and that another 15,000 had been turned away outside.

When he arrived, Mayor La Guardia received a standing ovation, lasting more than a minute. He began by praising the Workmen’s Circle for establishing health insurance and care for the chronically ill that predated by more than a quarter-century the programs of the Roosevelt administration. What caused the Times to report the event so prominently, however, was undoubtedly the part of La Guardia’s speech reflected in the article’s title: “KEEP OUT OF WAR, IS MAYOR’S ADVICE.”
78 Percent of US Jews Feel ‘Less Safe’ in Wake of Hamas Pogrom, New Survey Finds

Poll_ Roughly half of U.S. Jews changing behavior because of antisemitism

Top EU human rights court upholds bans on halal, kosher slaughter in Belgium

London theater apologizes after comedian allegedly clashes with Israeli over Palestinian flag

Neo-Nazi brags about bombs, homemade guns to oppose ‘Jew government’

Shooter at Joel Osteen’s mega-church with ‘Palestine’ on rifle had mental health issues, antisemitic writings: officials

Daniel Greenfield: Everyone Still Trying to Figure Out Motive of Shooter in Hijab Who Wrote “Palestine” on Rifle

Christian activist leads fight against antisemitism across Australia
A pro-Israel Christian activist is spearheading efforts to address the alarming surge of antisemitism in Australia.

In a powerful interview, Freya Leach highlighted the profound threat that antisemitism poses to Australia's core values of tolerance, peace, and cohesion.

Freya stressed that antisemitism is not just a Jewish issue but a fundamental challenge to the fabric of Australian society. She underscored the importance of defending Judeo-Christian values and standing in solidarity with the Jewish community against hate and racism.

She is leading the 'Never Again is Now,' initiative, dedicated to countering antisemitism and promoting peace. She is passionately advocating for Christians to take a stand against injustice, citing their indebtedness to the Jewish people and the imperative of upholding biblical values.






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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 over 19 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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