Tuesday, March 12, 2024

03/12 Links Pt2: The WWII ‘lessons’ that wouldn’t have saved a single Jew; Hollywood Jews are like turkeys for Christmas; The Holiday from History Is Over

From Ian:

The WWII ‘lessons’ that wouldn’t have saved a single Jew
Antisemites like Ken Roth, ‘as-a-Jews’ like Jonathan Glazer, and even non-antisemites like US President Joe Biden are lecturing Israel on the lessons Israel should learn from the Holocaust and the Second World War, but their ‘lessons’ would have prolonged the war, left Hitler in power, and led to more Jews being murdered in gas chambers.

There’s a lot that can be learned from the Holocaust and World War II as a whole. There are lessons in the bravery of some and the cowardice of others. There is so much to be learned from how Hitler was allowed to start another World War and commit a crime so great a new word had to be developed to describe it, "genocide", as well in how he was finally defeated.

People seem to love to try to apply these lessons to Jews and the Jewish State, Israel, especially in the aftermath of the Hamas massacre of October 7, the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. But the lessons they want Israel to learn would not have stopped World War II or saved a single one of the six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.

On Sunday, during the Academy Awards, Writer/director Jonathan Glazer used his acceptance speech for best international picture to attack Israel using the supposed “lessons” of the Holocaust and even “renounced” his Jewishness.

“Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst,” Glazer said. “Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel, or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims, this humanization, how do we resist?”

How fitting that the film for which Glazer won his award, “Zone of Interest,” is a Holocaust film in which the actual victims of the Holocaust, the Jews, never appear. He has joined the ranks of the ‘as-a-Jews,’ those supposedly Jewish people for whom Judaism is nothing more than a means to attack or erase the 99% of the Jewish people who don’t think Jews should let themselves be slaughtered.

Former Human Rights Watch Director Ken Roth, the man who almost single-handedly transformed that NGO from a respected defender of human rights into an antisemitic cesspool obsessed with denying Israel’s right to not let its civilians be murdered, invoked the Holocaust on Sunday while criticizing Israel’s left-wing president.

“The Holocaust teaches no one's rights are secure unless everyone's are, but Israeli Pres. Herzog faces protests today for spreading the opposite message by saying there are no "uninvolved civilians" in Gaza, suggesting Palestinian rights are dispensable,” Roth wrote on X.

It is no secret that Roth believes that Israeli and Jewish lives are dispensable, just as so many did before and during World War II.
Hollywood Jews are like turkeys for Christmas
One cannot help but compare Glazer to Marius von Mayenburg, whose play Nachtland is having a short run in London. Nachtland tells the story of Nicola and Philipp, German siblings who find a painting by A. Hitler in their father’s attic. In an effort to find a Nazi provenance for the painting so that they can sell it for a fortune, the family’s past associations with Martin Bormann are revealed. It is up to Philipp’s Jewish wife Judith to make the moral case for why the family should not be making money from the blood of dead Jews.

Nicola brings up the Palestinians in order to tell Judith to ‘learn from the lessons of history’.

‘Isn’t it surprising that the Jews of all people should know better than to ‘erect camps, build walls and kill innocents’, she declares.

Judith retorts: ‘If you think you can talk about Israel and point fingers as if it has nothing whatsover to do with Germany, then (…) I’m not going to do your homework for you, and I can’t give you absolution …with your vain perpetrator cult…look it up yourself, al-Husseini, Arafat, Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas charter.”

Interestingly enough, these words, written before the 7 October Hamas massacre, were cut out of the script on the night I saw Nachtland. The director clearly thought that, spoken against the background of the current Israel-Hamas war, they would prove too controversial for some in the audience. But they are in the playtext.

Marius von Mayenburg knows what Jonathan Glazer could not be bothered to find out: that there there is a direct link between the Holocaust, the Palestinian Nazi collaborator Haj Amin al Husseini and the Nazi-inspired Muslim Brotherhood, whose Gaza branch – Hamas – was founded in 1987 by Ahmed Yassin.

Like turkeys voting for Christmas, the Hollywood glitterati who sport their Free Palestine pins and abjure their Jewishness have no idea that they are actually supporting a form of antisemitism that would murder them – as Jews – if it could.

It takes a non-Jewish German to have the moral clarity that Glazer and Co so clearly lack.


Bari Weiss: The Holiday from History Is Over
This is a special kind of story. Inside my column you’re going to see three mini-documentaries from our recent trip to Israel. The first two cover the massacres at the Nova Music Festival and Kibbutz Kfar Aza and the aftermath of those tragedies. In the third, we travel to the West Bank to talk to ordinary Palestinians about October 7, the war, and their futures. To watch the other interviews I did on that trip, and to make sure you never miss a Free Press video, subscribe to our YouTube channel. —BW

On a recent Tuesday morning I found myself two kilometers from Gaza. Every few minutes we could hear the boom of a 155 mm howitzer sending fire across the border, but I was trying to focus on the historian Michael Oren, who was talking to me not about the war raging around us but about Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a Roman general who walked the world 500 years before Jesus was born, some 200 kilometers from the spot we were standing.

“Cincinnatus was a farmer. All he wanted was to be at his plow,” Oren told me as the winter rain poured down. “But every time he went back to his farm the Roman Republic came to him and said, ‘We need you to come back. We need you to lead an army.’ ”

“The Cincinnatus myth was the foundational myth for the American Revolution, specifically for Washington himself,” Oren said. “It is also the most foundational Israeli myth. It is David Ben-Gurion. It is Moshe Dayan. It is Ariel Sharon. These people just wanted to farm. But they were called to pick up arms and defend their country. Israel is the Cincinnatus nation.”

Many have never heard the name Cincinnatus in Israel, where the Romans are remembered more as the empire that destroyed the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70, slaughtered and sold its inhabitants, and renamed the land Syria Palestina. But the Jewish people—who long outlived that empire and reconstituted the Jewish national home in the land the Romans had once conquered—are also democratic heirs to Cincinnatus.

On the morning of October 7, ordinary Israelis left their offices, closed their laptops, and abandoned their fields to pick up weapons, in many cases without waiting for instructions from the state or its army.

On that black morning, and in the weeks and months since, these men and women have displayed the kind of heroism most thought belonged to the mythic past, or the generation of 1948, when the armies of five invading Arab nations turned every kibbutz and moshav, and every town and village, into a battlefield.

For twenty-first-century inhabitants of the Middle East’s start-up nation, such individual and collective courage had become something to be studied in the past—not enacted in the present. Not inside the land of Israel. Not in the twenty-first century. And certainly not by them.

But I met successors to Cincinnatus everywhere I went.

They are ordinary Israelis like Inbar Lieberman. Lieberman is a 25-year-old woman who is the security coordinator of Kibbutz Nir Am. She killed five terrorists by herself on October 7. The rest of her team repelled an additional 20 over the course of four hours. “I’m not a hero,” she says. “I wasn’t there by myself.”
Bari Weiss Visits Kibbutz Kfar Aza | FP in Israel
Earlier this year, Bari Weiss and a team of Free Press journalists visited Israel. The result was a series of films, podcasts and written articles called “FP in Israel.”

Bari visited Kfar Aza, a kibbutz two kilometers from the Gaza border, which bore the full force of the October 7, 2023, attack.

Months after the massacre, the trees and the birds have returned, but the residents have not.

Sixty-three residents were murdered, eighteen were kidnapped, and six were severely injured.

This is part one of our three-part video series: The Kibbutz.

The film includes graphic content.


Massacre at a Music Festival: Bari Weiss Meets Supernova Survivors | FP in Israel
Earlier this year, Bari Weiss and a team of Free Press journalists visited Israel. The result was a series of films, podcasts, and written articles called “The FP in Israel.”

Bari and the team visited the site of the “Supernova” festival—a desert rave that was attacked by Hamas terrorists in the early hours of October 7, 2023. More than 360 people were killed. Many were raped and tortured. At least 40 more were taken hostage.

Mazal and Michal survived the attack. They recounted how the hours of terror unfolded and retold their story of survival.

The film includes graphic content, including exclusive footage shot on cell phones during the attack.


Bari Weiss meets Palestinians | FP in Israel
Earlier this year, Bari Weiss and a team of Free Press journalists visited Israel. The result was a series of films, podcasts, and written articles called “FP in Israel.”

Since October 7, poll after poll has found that most ordinary Palestinians support Hamas.

With the war in Gaza raging, and life becoming more miserable for the people, Bari and her team wanted to speak directly with Palestinians about the situation on the ground.

So they visited Ramallah, de facto capital of the West Bank, and to the Qalandia checkpoint, through which thousands of Palestinians cross each day into Jerusalem. They asked Palestinians about October 7, the war, and the future.


JPost Editorial: Celebrities continue their silence on the hostages at the Oscars
What Glazer does here, and what many do, is equate the October 7 attack – and Israel’s military offensive in response – under the umbrella of “dehumanization.” One of the worst acts of dehumanization the modern world has witnessed in recent history is precisely the calculated act of genocide carried out against the Jewish people during the Holocaust.

The difference is that during the Holocaust, the Jews, who were specifically targeted, had no fighting army, no tunnels, no ideology of a destruction of another people, and no way to prevent the attempted genocide carried out against them. October the 7th was intended to be a second such genocidal attack against Jews. A tragic and costly war is what followed – one that can end if Hamas frees the hostages, but nobody called for that at the Oscars.

Another thing Glazer did was identify the root cause of the suffering in this war as being the “occupation,” dumbing down a complicated regional conflict to a word thrown around way too easily and irresponsibly.

What this speech in particular, and the night in general lacked, was nuance. There was not a single hostage pin present at the Oscars, but there were plenty of red ones, symbolizing “Artists4Ceasefire.” Ramy Yousef, a writer, actor and producer, said that the pins called for “an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Palestine” to ensure safety.

While well-intentioned, this is lacking the nuance and knowledge necessary to carry this discussion. The fighting needs to end, but calling for a unilateral ceasefire helps nobody – except Hamas and other haters of Israel and the Jews. It leaves the hostages in Gaza in the hands of the genocidal terrorist group, as well as the rest of Palestinian society there, under a dictatorship that has been there for the last 16 years since it violently took over the Strip from the PA.

You can and should argue about Israel’s methods, about the power dynamic, about all of it, but you can’t argue that what was is what should continue to be.

It is not about convincing the world that Israel is right. There is room for debate on that, there are questionable acts carried out by individual soldiers, there are accounts – we can’t and shouldn’t ignore that.

But equating the Israel’s actions with those of Hamas is factually wrong, morally bankrupt, and empty apologetics.
Antisemitism within the entertainment community showcased at the 2024 Oscars
Ari Ingel, Executive Director of Creative Community for Peace speaks with i24NEWS on the rise of Antisemitism in the world, and in the entertainment community.


Jewish orgs: Glazer assisting in the 'dehumanization of the fight for Jewish survival'
Combat Antisemitism Movement CEO Sacha Roytman Dratwa said that Glazer was appropriating his religious and ethnic identity to attack Israel while it was defending itself against genocidal actors.

"It is Glazer himself who has hijacked his important portrayal of the Holocaust to assist in the dehumanization of the fight for Jewish survival, while not saying a word about the tsunami of antisemitism facing Jews globally," said Roytman Dratwa.

CAM invited Glazer to talk about why it was important to address antisemitism, and why Jews were currently fearful to outwardly identify as Jews.

Creative Community for Peace Executive Director Ari Ingel said that Glazer's statements reek of "internalized antisemitism, where he believes that by rejecting his own Jewishness, and then deploying it as a weapon, he will be deemed a good Jew, in contrast to the vast majority of us bad Jews. Jewish history is full of sellouts like this, but in the end, the world will see him as just a Jew no matter his betrayal."

"It is also disgusting to see a director of a Holocaust movie win an Oscar and then use his great platform not to talk about the Holocaust and rising antisemitism, but to denounce his own Jewishness and then co-opt the tragedy of the Holocaust for his own political cause," said Ingel. "At a time when Holocaust denial is rampant, it is incredibly dangerous to dilute the memory of Holocaust and compare it to this current war in Gaza."
'Vile' and 'auto-antisemitic': Israeli minister slams Oscar-winning Jewish Holocaust film director
Jonathan Glazer, the director of the Best International Feature academy award winning Holocaust film, "The Zone of Interest," was "vile" and "auto-antisemitic" for saying during his award speech that belonged to those who "refute their Jewishness and [refute] the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation," Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli (Likud) said to the Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Glazer was the "next useful idiot who stuck a knife in the back of his people and in the backs of women who were raped and then shot in the head afterwards, in children who were slaughtered in their beds, in entire families who were burned alive," Chikli said.

"There is no forgiving such vile types – auto-antisemitic Jews, from Judith Butler until last night's idiot, but there is no reason to get excited over the phenomenon, it has accompanied us for generations," Chikli said.

Chickli alludes to the history of Jews
Chikli continued, "As one of Israel's greatest leaders, Yigal Alon, said, 'Amongst the Jews there are always groups of people whose past weighs on them, and they are the first to conduct plastic surgeries to their spiritual-national physiognomy, in order to adapt it to the latest cosmopolitical fashion. Granted, it is true that Jews had multiple reasons to tire from 'bearing the burden', but they [also] had and have all of the reasons to treat with respect their past and themselves, to be as they are in the annals of culture. Because only he who has courage to be himself, contributed the largest contribution to universal culture."

Hadash-Ta'al MK Ahmad Tibi later on Monday commended Glazer, saying in a press conference ahead of his party's weekly meeting on Monday that they he was "brave" and had exhibited "high morals" in mentioning the "dehumanization" amidst the "images of atrocities" coming out of the Gaza Strip.
Holocaust survivor attacks Zone of Interest director over 'indefensible' Oscars speech
A 94-year-old Holocaust survivor has penned an open letter denouncing the “factually inaccurate and morally indefensible” comments made by The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer during his Oscar acceptance speech on Sunday.

Written by Holocaust Survivor’s Foundation (HSF) president David Schaecter and signed by 18 members of the organisation’s US executive committee, the letter attacks Glazer’s use of his platform “to equate Hamas’s maniacal brutality against innocent Israelis with Israel’s difficult but necessary self-defence in the face of Hamas’s ongoing barbarity”.

Schaecter refers to the moment when Glazer said he and Jewish colleagues were accepting the award for best international feature film “as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.”

In response, Schaecter writes: “The ‘occupation’ of which you speak has nothing to do with the Holocaust. The Jewish people’s existence and right to live in the land of Israel predates the Holocaust by hundreds of years.”


Can Bad Ideas Be Killed?
Israel's attempt to "destroy" Hamas is often derided that "you can't kill an idea." But this proposition is false. In the abstract, no idea ever dies, but as a practical matter it can fall into the dustbin of history. The Hamas strategy was to "overthrow" the geopolitical tendency of Arab governments' growing acceptance of Israel. Many Arab governments no longer rejected Israel's existence as a state. In fact, they want Israel as an economic partner and as a geopolitical ally against Iran.

What is the goal of the Palestinian "resistance"? To destroy the State of Israel and empty Israel of its Jews. To establish a new Palestinian state on territory "from the river to the sea." Even if Hamas is destroyed, new groups will arise to fight against accepting Israel. Fair enough, in the abstract.

The reality is, on the other hand, that an idea can be killed as a practical matter if it is rendered irrelevant by reducing the number of people - leaders, fighters - who believe in it and act on it into a scattering of disconnected people, by killing some, changing the minds of others, and by destroying the organizational framework that holds the believers together.

A recent, obvious comparison is the rise and fall of the Islamic State and its idea of recreating a universal Muslim caliphate. This idea still exists in the abstract but no longer has political relevance in the real world. Tiny militant groups exist calling themselves Islamic State, but the great Islamic State of the last decade is gone.
The ‘settler colonialists’ of Palestine
Among the litany of accusations that have been aimed lately at the State of Israel, an increasingly frequent one has been that of “settler colonialism.” This term is usually defined as the displacement of a country’s native or indigenous population by a colonial state, usually by military means. If true, then Israel would thereby join many distinguished fellow countries, including the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others.

In the case of these other countries, there is actually some historical basis for this finger-pointing. What can be done practically to remedy the situation today is, of course, less clear. But only Israel is expected to reverse its supposed status as a settler colonialist state basically by disappearing.

Clearly, the negative impact of settler colonialism on indigenous native populations can be real, but in the case of Israel, this is a gross misdiagnosis. An honest analysis of the history of Israel/Palestine actually points to the conclusion that it is the Jews who are the true native indigenous population of the region and who have been forcibly exiled for more than 2,000 years.

An unbiased analysis of history will indeed accept the description of genuine settler colonialism in the Middle East but with a serious misidentification of the true victim of this injustice. The Jewish People have the longest consistent history as the legitimate native indigenous nation in the territory under question. The Jews began their romance with this land several hundred years BCE, even before they built the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Since then Jews have, on numerous occasions, been subject to military assault, eviction and banishment from their homeland.

One may start with the Assyrian invasion in 722 BCE, followed by the Babylonian invasion in the sixth century BCE. But these stubborn Jewish natives returned only 70 years later to repopulate the land and rebuild their temple, speaking their original language, celebrating their holidays as before and trying again.
Police: Dozens of false complaints filed against ‘settlers’
Far-left Israeli groups are increasingly spreading false accusations against Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, causing severe harm to the Jewish state’s international standing, a representative of the Israel Police told lawmakers at the Knesset in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

“Since the beginning of the war, there has been an upsurge in complaints from Palestinians and anarchists,” Ch. Supt. Avishay Mualem, the commander responsible for police activity in Judea and Samaria, told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

According to Mualem, most reports come from organizations on the “extreme left, anarchists, who are generally in Tel Aviv and call the 100 police emergency hotline to report violence by right-wing activists in the South Hebron Hills.”

The Israel Police only has one patrol in the area; an investigation showed that some 50% of the complaints filed by left-wing groups in recent months have been false, Mualem said.
Hebrew U suspends professor who accused Israel of genocide
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem suspended a professor on Tuesday who the previous day accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, among other inflammatory remarks.

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, holder of the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the main Mount Scopus campus, also called into question rapes and other atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, speaking during an interview with Channel 14.

In another video interview published a few days ago by the Makdisi Street podcast, the Haifa-born Arab called the “Zionist entity,” i.e. Israel, “criminal” and a “killing machine” and again said that Israel lied about rapes and babies being killed on Oct. 7.
Bassam Tawil: Palestinians: 'Revitalized' Means Unity with Hamas Terrorists
For [Palestinian] leaders, revamping the Palestinian Authority means forging an alliance with Hamas by inviting the terror group to be part of a new governing body that would rule the Gaza Strip in the post-war era.

From Biden's perspective, it is as though Netanyahu and the Israelis are responsible for the devastation in the Middle East since Hamas's October 7 carnage, and not Iran, and Hamas's main sponsor, Qatar, whose "protection money" evidently came "without protection." As such, it would be no surprise if the Biden administration were to welcome a "Palestinian unity" agreement between Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas – a deal that would be no doubt presented to the world as the US-made revitalization plan; in reality, just a tee-up for the next war.

Would the Biden administration like to stop the war this week?

All the US would have to do is to inform Qatar that it was cancelling the agreement the Biden administration signed in January — in return for nothing -– to extend for another ten years America's use of Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the forward headquarters of CENTCOM, and move it to a Middle Eastern country that does not, as Qatar does, have record of supporting Islamic State (ISIS/Da'esh), Hezbollah, al Shabab, the Taliban in Afghanistan and al Qaeda as well as Hamas.

In addition, the United States could simply tell Qatar that, regrettably, the US has no choice but officially to change Qatar's designation from "major non-NATO ally," which it is not, to State Sponsor of Terrorism, which it is. The US could have the war over and all the hostages -- not just the Americans -- released in a minute.

The Biden administration -- or simply concerned citizens -- could also demonstrate with placards advertising Qatar's support for terrorism, a public relations campaign it might not relish.

By stationing its forces at Al Udeid Air Base, the US is doing Qatar a monumental favor, not the other way around. Without the US airbase, Qatar is just a rich, extremely vulnerable sandbar, as its rulers are undoubtedly aware.
US religious freedom commission leaves Saudi Arabia after rabbi co-chair is told to remove his kippah
A U.S. government delegation tasked with monitoring religious freedom around the world cut a visit to Saudi Arabia short after Saudi officials demanded that a prominent rabbi on the trip remove his kippah.

Saudi officials told Rabbi Abraham Cooper, co-chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, to remove his kippah while in public, the commission said in a statement on Monday.

Cooper, an Orthodox rabbi and the director of global social action for the Simon Wiesenthal Center advocacy group, “politely” refused the request with the backing of U.S. embassy staff, the statement said.

Saudi officials then escorted the government delegation from the premises of Diriyah, a UNESCO World Heritage site on the outskirts of the Saudi capital, Riyadh. The delegation decided to end its visit to Saudi Arabia prematurely following the incident.

The delegation arrived in Saudi Arabia on March 3 and was invited to visit Diriyah, the original home of the Saudi royal family, two days later. The commission said the visit had been delayed several times and it wasn’t clear on which day the incident occurred. Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had approved the visit.

Saudi officials demanded Cooper remove his kippah while at Diriyah and “any time he was to be in public,” the commission said.

“No one should be denied access to a heritage site, especially one intended to highlight unity and progress, simply for existing as a Jew,” Cooper said in a statement. “Especially in a time of raging antisemitism, being asked to remove my kippah made it impossible for us from USCIRF to continue our visit.”
Qatari media’s glorification of terrorism and incitement against the ‘Zionist occupier’ — survey
A series of scathing reports into Qatar’s political leadership and media found shocking trends in media coverage of Israel and expressions of support for Hamas terrorism.

The U.S.-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) issued bombshell revelations about the pro-Hamas writings of Majed Al-Ansari, the Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman, and incitement against Israel in Qatari media at large, including the centerpiece Al Jazeera network.

The disclosure about Al-Ansari, who is also an advisor to the Qatari Prime Minister, was released just before the U.S. rolled out the red carpet for a Qatari delegation that arrived at the start of March for the sixth annual U.S.-Qatar Strategic Dialogue in Washington. Al-Ansari himself was welcomed by the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Global Public Affairs, Bill Russo.

The MEMRI report reveals a column written by Al-Ansari in May 2021 for the state-owned newspaper Al-Sharq, where he previously worked. At the time, Israel was engaged in Operation ‘Guardian of the Walls,’ an aerial campaign targeting Hamas in Gaza when it launched thousands of rockets across Israel, including toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

In the column, Al-Ansari wrote: "The victory celebration in this latest battle is a celebration of continued progress toward victory in the struggle, since there is a great difference between resistance with stones and bare chests and resistance in which 3,000 missiles are launched into the entity's cities in 10 days.“

Rich Goldberg, a leading U.S. expert on Qatar who served on the National Security Council during the Trump administration, told i24NEWS:
“This is yet one more indicator that Qatar is a loyal ally and supporter of Hamas, not just some Switzerland of the Middle East."

Goldberg added, "Al Ansari reflects the views and ideologies of the House of [Emir] Al Thani. There’s zero accountability for Al Jazeera when its Gaza staff are exposed to be terrorists. Why would anyone expect accountability for Al Ansari? This is the real Qatar.” The Al Thani family rules over the small oil-rich Gulf state.
When a magazine makes a ‘fulsome’ apology for doing a Zionism: Phoebe Maltz Bovy on a craven literary retraction
What is the objection to this essay, exactly? That Chen does not live in Israel and say, Please, Hamas, come for me next, I apologize for existing, you’re right, I’m wrong, please take the land, from the river to the sea, and who cares what comes of me, a colonizing entity who shouldn’t be here or for that matter anywhere else? Would that have been OK for Guernica?

Or was the problem the non-boycotting of Israel to begin with, such that even if she’d written an essay about her desire for Israel to be wiped off the planet asap, had she done so from Israel, or from another location but while having Israeli nationality, she’d have been interchangeable with the Israeli government, and therefore a Zionist entity to be avoided at all costs?

Is the problem quite simply that here is a Jewish writer who has some feelings about Jews being massacred where she lives?

If this essay is too rabidly Zionistic for the charmers at Guernica, where would that leave, oh, just about any other Jewish writer out there?

Thankfully, their decision is getting some pushback. Retracting the essay was, if nothing else, a foolish thing to do.

But let’s say you conclude—and I for one do conclude this—that the retraction isn’t just wrongheaded but antisemitic, given that it makes Jewish contributions to Guernica borderline impossible. Does this matter, one might ask, in light of, well, war?

I don’t like the idea of being a columnist who says the same thing every week, but until I have some reason to think the message has gotten across, I will be tempted to insert some version of this thought into each instalment: a general atmosphere of anti-Jewish nastiness, like the retraction of a personal essay, is not as bad as war, and there’s nothing inherently antisemitic about pointing that out.

But if your aim is to make the world less on Israel’s side (insofar as it is on that side to begin with), you just might want to refrain from acting in ways that remind time and time again of why Israel exists in the first place. I mean does no one else see this?

‘How could you care about people yelling at Jews on a college campus, or at internal grumblings at some volunteer-run literary magazine, with all that’s happening in Gaza?’ By all means frame your thoughts along those lines (not you-you, intentional readers of The Canadian Jewish News, but this is a website and anyone might read what they find on it). But maybe, before preaching to your choir, consider what it accomplishes in the world at large.
House Ed, Workforce Committee subpoenas anti-Israel union
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, subpoenaed the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325, a union, on Monday, after it failed to turn over documents to the committee.

The committee sought information about the union’s “contentious vote and subsequent adoption of the Resolution Calling for a Ceasefire in Gaza, an End to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, and Support for Workers’ Political Speech despite several union members’ objections,” per the House committee.

“On Jan. 29, 2024, the committee sent Local 2325 a letter on the vote and adoption of the resolution,” Foxx wrote. “The committee noted how several of Local 2325’s members were forced to be associated with a union that had taken a critical position affecting their faith, the State of Israel and Israel’s sovereignty.”

The House committee sought to afford the union “fair accommodations and with the opportunity to communicate with the committee about such accommodations,” and the union had “several opportunities to apprise the committee of any issues with its production,” Foxx wrote.

“However, Local 2325’s legal representative communicated only minimally and stated Local 2325 would not respond on the day the scheduled production was due,” she added. “This is unacceptable, and as a result, the committee must now resort to compulsory process.”
Daniel Greenfield: Meet the Foreign Student Protester Supporting Terrorists at Cornell
After Oct 7, the various anti-Israel campus protest groups made it abundantly clear that they supported the Hamas atrocities. A few campus organizations were temporarily suspended and then everything went back to normal.

And no matter how open they are about their support for the murder of Jews, there are no consequences.

About 70 demonstrators gathered outside of Day Hall on Friday afternoon to protest the Student Assembly’s 16-4 rejection of Resolution 51, which called on Cornell to end partnerships with and suspected investments in arms companies — such as Boeing and Raytheon — that provide weapons to Israel.

“We don’t take our cue from some bullsh*t Student Assembly at Cornell,” said Momodou Taal, grad, who led chants throughout the event. “We take our cue from the armed resistance in Palestine. We are in solidarity with the armed resistance in Palestine from the river to the sea,” he continued, garnering some cheers from the crowd.

Taal’s statement was not the only apparent praise of militant groups at the event. At one point, the crowd chanted, “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud. Turn another ship around.” Yemen’s Houthi rebels, a group the Biden administration recently labeled a terrorist organization, have fired at Red Sea ships, including commercial vessels and a U.S. warship.

Momodou Taal, as Heritage’s Jason Bedrick noted, is a foreign national.

8 USC 1227: Deportable aliens states pretty clearly that the category includes those named in INA §§ 212(a)(3)(B) which includes an alien who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.”
CUNY removes IHRA definition from bias reporting portal
On Oct. 11, four days after Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, the City University of New York’s portal for reporting discrimination and retaliation included both the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of antisemitism and the Jerusalem Declaration of Antisemitism in a list of external resources.

By Nov. 10, archived versions of the website show, CUNY excised both the IHRA and the Jerusalem definitions.

Forty-three countries have adopted the IHRA definition, which comes with 11 contemporary examples of Jew-hatred that include “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” per its website.

The Jerusalem definition, which has not been adopted as widely, says that the IHRA definition “caused confusion and generated controversy, hence weakening the fight against antisemitism.” It also says that “evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state,” calling Israel “apartheid” and the boycott Israel movement are not antisemitic.

CUNY leaders had pushed the portal to report discrimination and retaliation as an important part of its efforts to combat rising hatred of Jews and Israel on its campus, but it faced criticism of adopting an “all-lives-matter” for initially linking the IHRA and more fringe Jerusalem definitions.
University of Pennsylvania Faculty Anti-Zionist Group Files Lawsuit to Stop Antisemitism Investigation
The fate of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s investigation into antisemitism at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) could be decided in federal court, as members of the school’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapter have sued its administrators in an attempt to stop them from sharing key documents requested by lawmakers.

Accusing Congress of engaging in a “new form of McCarthyism” — a historical reference to the excessive efforts of lawmakers to purge Communist Party members from important public institutions in the 1950s — and violating constitutional protections of speech and privacy, Penn faculty members are asking a US District Court to grant a preliminary and permanent injunction to end the university’s cooperation with the investigation.

According to court documents first shared by The Daily Pennsylvanian, the principal plaintiff in the suit, associate professor Huda Fakhreddine, engaged in actions that played an outsized role in prompting Congress to investigate Penn. Last fall, Fakhreddine organized the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, which invited to campus several anti-Zionists who have spread blood libels as well as conspiracies of Jewish control.

The event also touched off a burst of antisemitic incidents at Penn. In the days leading up to it, swastikas were graffitied on campus and a student infiltrated the campus Hillel building, where he proceeded to vandalize the place while screaming antisemitic epithets.

The House Education and Workforce Committee “first sent a letter to Penn demanding the production of many categories of information, including private [Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act]-protected student files and documents pertaining to an annual scholarly event produced by plaintiff focusing on Palestinian literature,” the complaint says. “Penn would have been within its rights to protect its community by refusing compliance. Instead, Penn, its trustees off balance and frightened by the accusations of anti-Semitism [sic], announced it would comply with the committee’s letter, and, on information and belief, has begun producing documents.”
Harvard Grad Student Who Accosted Israeli Classmate and Supervised Undergraduate Students Glorified Convicted Palestinian Terrorist
Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, the Harvard University graduate student who was filmed accosting an Israeli classmate at a campus protest, penned an essay last year glorifying a Palestinian terrorist who was imprisoned for her role in attempting to bomb a movie theater in Jerusalem in 1967.

"When I started learning about Palestine, I was always struck by the women who featured prominently in the movement's work," Tettey-Tamaklo wrote in a March 2023 article published in the Institute for Palestine Studies. "However, one woman's story struck me and has stayed with me ever since: Fatima Bernawi."

Regarded as the first female Palestinian terrorist, Bernawi attempted to bomb the Zion Cinema in downtown Jerusalem in 1967 by leaving an explosive in her handbag. An American tourist spotted the bag and alerted an usher, foiling the plot. Bernawi was nonetheless sentenced to life in prison and said subsequently that her attempted terrorist attack was not a "failure" given that it "generated fear throughout the world."

"Every woman who carries a bag needs to be checked before she enters the supermarket, any place, cinemas and pharmacies," Bernawi said in a 2015 interview. "All my life I had dreamed about it," she said.

Tettey-Tamaklo's essay refers to the attack approvingly. He writes that Bernawi "nearly carried out an attack on an Israeli establishment frequented by Occupation Forces (IOF)" and subsequently made "history as the first woman to be arrested by the IOF."

He concludes that "a true appreciation and celebration of underrepresented histories of Palestinian women like Bernawi—among others—cannot be relegated to the dusty corridors of history."

At the time the essay was published, Tettey-Tamaklo, a second-year student at the Harvard Divinity School, served as a proctor, a supervisory role in which graduate students live among freshmen and support their "adjustment to Harvard."
Columbia President Will Testify Before Congress on Response to Campus Anti-Semitism
The president and board co-chairs of Columbia University will appear before Congress next month to discuss their response to rising campus anti-Semitism, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced.

"Some of the worst cases of antisemitic assaults, harassment, and vandalism on campus have occurred at Columbia University," the committee's chairwoman, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), said in a Monday statement.

"Due to the severe and pervasive nature of these cases, and the Columbia administration’s failure to enforce its own policies to protect Jewish students, the Committee must hear from Columbia’s leadership in person to learn how the school is addressing antisemitism on its campus."

The announcement comes roughly one month after Foxx sent a letter to Columbia president Minouche Shafik and board co-chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman requesting documents on the school's "failure to protect Jewish students, faculty, and staff." All three officials will testify before the committee on April 17.

A similar hearing in December contributed to the ouster of two former Ivy League university presidents, Harvard University's Claudine Gay and the University of Pennsylvania's Liz Magill.

During that hearing, Gay and Magill said calls for "intifada" against Jews may not violate their schools' rules. Both institutions faced intense criticism from prominent alumni and donors as a result, with one Penn donor withdrawing a $100 million gift from the school.


MIT Faculty Member Goes on Anti-Semitic Tirade After House Ed Committee Requests Documents From School
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty member went on an anti-Semitic tirade after the House Committee on Education and the Workforce pressed the school to provide internal documents about its response to the outbreak of anti-Semitism on campus.

A postdoctoral associate working in MIT's Tonegawa neuroscience lab, Afif Aqrabawi, derided the committee chairwoman, Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), as "a treasonous Zionist tool, a genocide enabler, and a disgusting shit stain of a human," and described other members of the House as "Israeli bootlickers."

Aqrabawi also referred to American politicians as "loyal prostitutes of Netanyahu," lamented the influence of Jewish political groups, and referred to Israelis as "parasites."

"I make it clear your representatives are eager cucks for defense contractors and AIPAC," he wrote. "My words are dangerous because they may alert a distracted American public to the parasites using their country as a host species."

Aqrabawi’s tirade came in the wake of a letter from Foxx to MIT president Sally Kornbluth that panned Kornbluth’s response to several anti-Semitic incidents on campus and pressed the school to provide internal documents shedding light on its policies and code of conduct.

The committee’s letter cited several tweets Aqrabawi sent, including one in which he said Israel "has no future in this world." In other posts highlighted by the committee, the MIT faculty member accused Israelis of "harvesting" the organs of dead Palestinians and called Zionists "Jewish fundamentalists who want to enslave the world in a global Apartheid system."


Lost in Translation? That Might Be on Purpose
If you’ve ever read a translation from Hamas that seemed a little off, it’s not just you.

Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime know that Westerners who fail to understand the native tongue of their message, the narrative behind their message, or the cultural implications in their message will be easily fooled into believing the words that they’re (actually not) saying.

Eve Barlow is an LA-based music and pop culture journalist. Barlow currently publishes a newsletter on Substack called Blacklisted. She previously served as Deputy Editor of the New Musical Express (NME) and currently contributes to New York Magazine, The Guardian, Billboard, LA Times, Pitchfork, and GQ, among other publications. Barlow is also an outspoken voice on Jewish identity, Zionism, and fighting antisemitism on social media, and has also shared her views in publications such as Tablet. Barlow was also named one of The Algemeiner’s Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life.


When will the impunity end?
Besides its hysterical derangement, one of the most remarkable things about the pro-Hamas fifth column in the West is the extraordinary impunity it enjoys.

A quite remarkable example of this came last week, when real estate mogul Mohamed Hadid—father of the notoriously antisemitic models Gigi and Bella Hadid—said of the current Israel-Hamas war, “This is Biden’s war on the Palestinian people. He will be in court with the rest of the Zionist criminals. We will hunt them down like they did the Nazis.”

Hadid also referred to President Joe Biden with what the fifth column considers the worst of all possible slurs, calling him the “head of the Zionist project.”

Hadid’s hostility towards anyone who even vaguely supports Israel is not a surprise. For example, he has told Israel’s Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine.” In comparison to such openly genocidal sentiments, his slap at Biden seems, at first glance, to be almost innocuous.

Hostility towards Biden is now the fifth column’s official policy. This hostility is of such intensity that the fifth column has pledged to become a political suicide bomber. It openly threatens to sabotage Biden’s presidential bid if he does not end his support for Israel—even if it puts the dreaded Donald Trump in the White House.

Hadid’s remarks are also at least somewhat comical. That is to say, they are self-evidently psychopathic. He is not a well man. This makes him slightly ludicrous, given his rarefied social standing. Nonetheless, the implications are quite serious.
Guardian publishes propaganda by official of group who defended Oct. 7 massacre

Reuters Report on Killing of Journalist in Lebanon Tells Only Half the Story

War Crimes, Millions Starving & Ethnic Cleansing… Where Is the Media Outrage?

Ramadan Violence at Al-Aqsa Mosque: Palestinian Riots & the Israeli Response

A New Terror Threat Is Emerging in Europe Linked to Iran, Gaza War
In a previously unreported investigation last December, police in Austria and Bosnia arrested two separate groups of Afghan and Syrian refugees who carried arms and ammunition, including Kalashnikov assault rifles and pistols. Investigators found pictures of Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe on some of their mobile phones.

Investigators said Europe's terror threat is coming from new sources, including Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, including Hizbullah and Hamas. In December, German police launched raids across the country targeting Hamas and its affiliates.

German and Dutch investigators also arrested four people for receiving the order from Hamas to open a secret cache of weapons and attack Jewish targets in Berlin and elsewhere in Western Europe. German prosecutors said Hamas had buried the weapons underground in Europe years ago but that the suspects, all longstanding Hamas members involved in the group's overseas operations, wouldn't reveal where.

Both Hamas and Hizbullah have so far used Europe as a fundraising hub and a safe house for operatives. But the recent raids on Hamas suggest those groups are now pivoting to plotting assassinations and sabotage in Europe, directed mainly at Jewish and Israeli targets.


GOP candidate in Virginia swing district says he opposes additional aid to Israel, then backpedals
Cameron Hamilton, a Republican candidate in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District — a key swing seat between Washington, D.C. and Richmond — said in a media interview last week that he didn’t support providing additional aid to Israel, but backpedaled when pressed by Jewish Insider.

“I’m a big supporter of Israel. I don’t know that their economy needs it right now,” Hamilton said last week in an interview on Real America’s Voice, a far-right streaming TV channel, when asked if he supports additional funding for Israel. “I believe that we should renegotiate any of those trade alliances.”

“I’ll always defend Israel,” he continued. “But again, I don’t know that we should be sending more and more money overseas right now when we are operating at a hundred-billion-dollar-a-month deficit.”

In response to a followup question by JI, Hamilton appeared to walk those comments back, saying he wouldn’t support the Senate’s joint Israel/Ukraine/Taiwan package but would support a standalone Israel bill.

“In the last seconds of a rapid fire interview segment I responded to multiple topics at once and my longstanding and public stance on support for Israel was not properly reflected. I stand with Israel 100%, I believe Hamas needs to be eradicated, and that as our greatest ally in the region Israel should get all the American support that they need to ensure their safety,” Hamilton told JI.
He wrote his Liberal MP about synagogue vandalism. She responded lamenting 'atrocities' in Gaza
When a member of a Fredericton synagogue that had been vandalized wrote to local Liberal MP Jenica Atwin to admonish her for not speaking out about it, she responded weeks later with a long letter about “the atrocities in Palestine” and how dedicated she was to helping Gaza.

“Fredericton’s synagogue was vandalized today.. on holocaust remembrance day!! And you couldn’t be bothered to make a statement. Shame on you,” wrote the constituent on January 27th, the day the Sgoolai Israel Synagogue in Fredericton had been vandalized. In the subject line of the email, the constituent wrote . “I guess you and Justin only represent certain Canadians.” National Post has seen the email exchange and has confirmed its authenticity.

Atwin’s reply came more than a month later, on March 4, and was a 1,500-word email that called for controls on exports to Israel to ensure against “Canadian materials being indirectly used in the slaughter of innocent people.” and for restoring funding to the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has been implicated in terrorism against Israel.

“I want to thank you for your dedication and advocacy for this important issue that speaks to our humanity and in many ways the soul of our nation,” Atwin wrote in her letter, which claims her office has received “upwards of 10,000 emails, phone calls and direct messages” from Canadians supporting Palestinians. “The Government of Canada must do more to end the siege, protect human life and uphold international law,” the MP in the Liberal government wrote.

Atwin’s letter also speaks of “tough conversations” she’s had with colleagues within the Liberal government, her personal appeals to both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly on Gaza, and her support of a pending NDP motion recognizing Palestinian statehood.
Law enforcement in Teaneck wrangles pro-Palestinians who mobbed real estate event
The police department in Teaneck, N.J., led multiple law-enforcement agencies in responding to a planned protest at an Israeli real estate fair on Sunday afternoon at a synagogue in Teaneck. More than 750 anti-Israel protesters were seen waving Palestinian flags as they marched west on New Bridge Road towards Congregation Keter Torah, chanting “Free Palestine” and slogans such as “There is only one solution,” “Intifada revolution” and “Long live the intifada!” The entire neighborhood around the synagogue was locked down for upwards of five hours, with many residents having to show identification to return to their homes.

A man who did not file a police report was assaulted and had an Israeli flag taken away from him and defaced. Eyewitnesses reported protesters spitting in his face as he stood on the sidewalk near his home and was surrounded by protesters. Police responded by going into the crowd and bringing the man back to safety. The Israeli flag was ripped, pounded on and placed in the middle of the street, where a convoy of about 25 cars adorned with “Free Palestine” flags ran over it, as antisemitic epithets were screamed and repeated. Hours later, a member of the Teaneck Town Council, Hillary Goldberg, retrieved the flag.

“I was there to witness them calling me—calling you, calling all Jews—murderers, Nazis, fascists, rapists, pedophiles, baby killers, genocidal maniacs, [expletive deleted] pigs,” said resident Avi Berliner.

“I heard the chants of ‘Say it loud and say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here,’ ‘Go back home,’ ‘We are coming for you,’ and the dog whistle ‘From the river to the sea’ that hopes for an Israel devoid of Jews and has turned into the antisemitic slogan of our day,” Berliner said.

“I saw the signs calling for a return to the ‘1947 borders.’ I saw the water bottles thrown at cars, had spit hurled at me and saw an unidentified red liquid sprayed at citizens. I am aware of the reports of damage to homes displaying Israeli flags, balls of red paint thrown and weapons displayed by passing cars at peaceful lawful protesters,” he added.
US Ambassador to Brazil's Silence on Anti-Semitism Under Congressional Ire
The U.S. ambassador to Brazil's silence on a series of anti-Semitic comments by far-left Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has led to mounting concerns on Capitol Hill about the Biden administration's failure to confront a wave of anti-Semitism in Latin America.

Elizabeth Bagley, the top U.S. diplomat in Brazil who once decried the pernicious "influence of the Jewish lobby" in politics, has spent weeks avoiding public comment on Lula's comments, in which the Brazilian president accused Israel of behaving like Nazis and conducting a genocide in the Gaza Strip. The Washington Free Beacon reported last week that Bagley would not condemn the rhetoric or make herself available for an interview about them.

The Free Beacon's reporting drove bipartisan concerns late last week during a House hearing on anti-Semitism in the Western Hemisphere, where far-left leaders like Lula are building relations with the Jewish state's top enemies, including Iran. Rep. Bill Huizenga (R., Mich.) expressed concern about Bagley's silence, saying the diplomat must more forcefully condemn anti-Semitism in Brazil, particularly in light of her own past comments about the "Jewish factor" in politics and its "money."

"I'm concerned about our own ambassador to Brazil, Elizabeth Bagley," Huizenga said during a Thursday House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing with Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department's anti-Semitism envoy. "She has had some documented, very hateful comments she's made about Jews, and my understanding from my Senate friends [is] it nearly derailed her Senate confirmation. Does her track record of those types of comments—has that somehow affected her ability or the U.S. ability to forcefully condemn da Silva's comparison of Gaza to the Holocaust?"

"What I've seen from our post is that Post Brazil, Embassy Brazil, takes this issue very seriously," Lipstadt said, declining to comment on Bagley's past remarks on Jews and money in politics.

While Secretary of State Antony Blinken and State Department spokesmen have condemned Lula's comparison of Israel to the Nazis, Bagley has not issued any public statement on the matter, even after the Free Beacon's report and Thursday's public hearing.
Biden judicial nominee apologizes to Senate for not disclosing role at event with anti-Israel activists
A federal judicial nominee issued an apology over the weekend to senators for failing to disclose his participation at a conference with anti-Israel activists that was first reported on by the Washington Examiner.

Adeel Mangi, who is President Joe Biden‘s pick for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote in a letter on Saturday to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he “inadvertently omitted one responsive item” from his questionnaire in November 2023. The letter was addressed to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) and the panel’s ranking member, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Mangi, a New Jersey lawyer, has come under intensified scrutiny from GOP senators for previously sitting on an advisory board at Rutgers Law School’s Center for Security, Race and Rights, an office that hosted a 2021 event featuring a convicted terrorist fundraiser. In 2022, Mangi moderated a panel at the annual conference for the National Association of Muslim Lawyers, the Washington Examiner reported last week. His law firm, Patterson Belknap, helped sponsor the event, along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which federal prosecutors named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” of Hamas in a 2009 terrorism financing case.

“In 2022, I moderated a 50-minute panel discussion at an annual conference of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers,” Mangi told the senators in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Examiner. “The title of the panel was ‘Islamophobia in America: Losing Steam or Gaining Momentum?’ To the best of my recollection, I facilitated a discussion of the state of Islamophobia in the United States.”

In the letter, Mangi wrote that the association asked him to moderate it and he “did not recall this event when preparing” his questionnaire responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee, “despite diligent efforts to search my records for all potentially responsive items.”


NGOs sue Denmark to end arms export to Israel
A group of NGOs on Tuesday said they will sue the Danish state to end the Nordic country's arms exports to Israel, citing concerns that its weapons were being used to commit serious crimes against civilians during the war in Gaza.

A Dutch court in February ordered the Netherlands to block all exports of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel over concerns they were being used to violate international law in Gaza.

Amnesty International Denmark, Oxfam Denmark, MS Action Aid and Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq in a joint statement said they will sue the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Police, which approves Danish sales of weapons and military equipment. They said they would file the lawsuit to a yet unspecified court within the next three weeks.

The Danish Foreign Ministry and the National Police did not have an immediate comment.

"For five months we have been talking about a potential genocide in Gaza, but we have not seen politicians take action," Tim Whyte, Secretary General of MS Action, said in a statement.


MEMRI: Poem Published In Qatari Daily In Response To American Initiative For Gaza Aid Port Calls On Palestinians To Perpetrate 'April 7 Attack In Tel Aviv'

West Bank city names street after self-immolating US soldier Aaron Bushnell
The West Bank city of Jericho announced on Facebook on Monday that they had named a street after Aaron Bushnell, the US Air Force serviceman who set himself on fire as a reported act of protest for "Palestine."

"The American pilot Aaron Boshnail, who set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington in solidarity with Palestine and in rejection of his country's support for Israel, had a street in Jericho named after him," the municipality wrote on Facebook in Arabic.

“We didn’t know him, and he didn’t know us. There were no social, economic or political ties between us. What we share is a love for freedom and a desire to stand against these attacks [on Gaza]...[Bushnell] wanted to light a strong spark, to reignite our cause,” Mayor Abdul Karim Sidr told a small crowd gathered at the opening, according to the Guardian.
Report: Palestinian curricula glorify female terrorism, promote gender inequality
On International Women’s Day on March 8, a report found that textbooks used in the Palestinian education system label it an “injustice” to teach gender equality.

The March 2024 report, published by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), examined 13 textbooks and teacher guides that are currently in use and available publicly on online curriculum portals of the Palestinian Authority’s education ministry.

The IMPACT-se findings suggest that despite donor-demanded reforms, textbooks contain elements that violate United Nations principles of gender equality in education. That appears to be the case even as the P.A. signed onto half a dozen international conventions promoting gender equality.

The textbook content also violates UNESCO guidelines for curriculum development, according to IMPACT-se, and a 2023 U.N. Security Council resolution that urges the protection of women and denounces gender discrimination as a contributor to conflict.

“The characterization of women as inferior in Palestinian Authority textbooks reflects a broader and worrying narrative of bigotry in the curriculum, which is continuing to shape the outlook of millions of Palestinian children,” stated Marcus Sheff, IMPACT-se CEO.

“It contradicts international treaties on gender equality that the P.A. itself has ratified,” Sheff added. “In particular, the emphasis on women’s participation in resistance activities as a warped form of gender equality sets a disturbing precedent.”

A 10th-grade teacher guide, for example, includes a video titled “equality between women and men is a biological lie.” A 12th-grade Islamic systems textbook instructs that women are not fit to lead nations, and God placed men “in charge” of women.


Biden Admin Poised To Grant Iran Billions in Sanctions Relief, Lawmakers Warn
The Biden administration is poised to issue a fresh sanctions waiver for Iran that will grant the country access to upward of $10 billion in frozen assets, providing Tehran with "a financial lifeline" as it foments terrorism across the Middle East, according to a group of GOP lawmakers.

In November, shortly after Hamas's attack on Israel, the State Department signed off on a sanctions waiver that permits Iraq to transfer multibillion-dollar electricity payments to Iran. The waiver, which grants Tehran access to around $10 billion in frozen funds, is set to expire this month unless the Biden administration renews it.

A group of Republican lawmakers is concerned that the sanctions waiver will be approved, according to a letter sent late Monday to the Treasury and State Departments and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The lawmakers ask the Biden administration to provide information on how much cash Iran has been able to access in the months since sanctions were lifted.

The sanctions waiver decision comes as Iran and its regional terror proxies—which include Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen—foment chaos across the Middle East, including a series of missile attacks that killed 3 American military members and wounded more than 40. Critics of the sanctions waiver say it will enable Iran to continue funding its terrorist allies amid the worst spate of violence in the Middle East in years.

"Given the Biden Administration's posture on the last waiver we presume that the Biden Administration will renew the waiver again to continue to allow for the transfer of funds from Iraq to Oman," four Republican lawmakers, led by Rep. Bill Huizenga (Mich.), wrote in the letter. "By waiving the application of sanctions, the Administration is maintaining a financial lifeline for the Iranian regime, even as it continues to support terrorist organizations around the world."
U.S. Strikes Have Stopped Iran Proxies in Iraq, Syria, but Not Houthi Attacks on Ships
U.S. Central Command head Gen. Michael Kurilla told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that U.S. strikes in February on Iranian proxy militant groups in Iraq and Syria have deterred them from firing at American troops for more than a month.

Kurilla said the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 "permanently changed" the region. "It created the conditions for malign actors to sow instability throughout the region and beyond. Iran exploited what they saw as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the Middle East to their advantage." Blaming Iran for the uptick in violence throughout the region, Kurilla said that country should face more consequences for its actions.

However, repeated U.S. strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen have not deterred the group from its attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Near-daily strikes against the Houthis have been defensive in nature - taking out drones or missiles before they can be launched or once they are on the way toward a target. The Houthis' weapons come from Iran, Kurilla said.
Michael Coren: I interviewed Roald Dahl about his anti-Semitism... And opened the doors on some deep, dark hatred
Far from withdrawing his remarks, the author of blockbusters such as James And The Giant Peach and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory doubled down, giving me quotes so incendiary that — 40 years later — they will feature in a new play to be staged at London's Royal Court Theatre in the autumn.

In the play, called Giant, Dahl and his family meet with his Jewish publisher to navigate the fallout from his appalling review in the Literary Review.

When I phoned him that day, I had no idea, of course, that our exchange would still be being talked about decades later.

If I had expected him to apologise for some of what he'd written, or at least qualify the harshness and inaccurate generalisations, I was soon to be disappointed. The opposite happened.

In his review of a book called God Cried, an account of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, for The Literary Review magazine, Dahl wrote of 'a race of people' who had 'switched so rapidly from victims to barbarous murderers'.

He also wrote that the U.S. was 'so utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions' that 'they dare not defy' Israel.

When I raised the tenor of these observations with the author, he was polite — not unfriendly — and spoke slowly and deliberately.

But it was as if I'd opened the doors on some dark, deep hatred that had been waiting for years to be expressed.

'There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity. Maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews,' he said, adding: 'I mean, there's always a reason why 'anti-anything' crops up anywhere. Even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.'

When he spoke about the 'trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity,' I wasn't even sure I'd heard him correctly. I stopped him and asked if he'd meant what he'd said. Could I have possibly misheard him?

No, he said, I'd got it right. No remorse, no embarrassment.

Even though I was sure that a man of his intelligence and worldliness would have known that 'Coren' might be a Jewish name, I told him that three of my grandparents were Jewish.

I've never forgotten his reaction — because there wasn't one.

He paused, clearly having heard what I had said, and then calmly continued with his racist filth as if nothing had happened.

He told me that he'd fought in the Second World War and that he and his friends never saw any Jewish soldiers.

I countered again. I told him that my own grandfather had spent four years on the front lines in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, been frequently promoted and won numerous medals.

I added that hundreds of thousands of Jewish men had been in the British, U.S., Soviet and other Allied armies and, if anything, were over-represented in combat roles and heroic deeds.

This time I could hear him mumbling something, either to himself or someone else who was in the room. He replied to me as though half-way through a sentence and all I heard was 'sticking together'.

I asked him if there was anything else that he wanted to say. Once again, he was disarmingly courteous. 'No thank you, I think I've made myself very clear. Goodbye.' And that was it.
‘Neo-Nazi’ upset he did not get to kill solicitor in terror plot, court told
An alleged neo-Nazi said he was “upset” he did not get to “finish the job” of killing a solicitor in a terror plot, a court has heard.

Cavan Medlock is alleged to have arrived at the Duncan Lewis law firm in Harrow on September 7 2020, armed with a combat knife and handcuffs, while carrying large Confederate and Nazi flags.

The 31-year-old threatened a receptionist with the knife before threatening to kill solicitor Toufique Hossain and abusing two other members of staff because of their racial or religious background, the court heard.

Medlock, of Harrow, north-west London, denies charges of making a threat to kill Mr Hossain and the preparation of terrorist acts.

Sheroy Zaq, who was working as a solicitor in Duncan Lewis’s public law and immigration departments at the time of the incident, told Kingston Crown Court on Tuesday that the racial abuse from Medlock was “relentless”.

Mr Zaq said that, when asked by staff why he was at the law office, Medlock replied: “I’m here to kill Toufique Hossain.”

Prosecutor Timothy Cray KC asked Mr Zaq: “Did he say anything else about the killing?”

The solicitor replied: “He just said he was upset with himself that he didn’t get to finish the job.”

Mr Zaq added that the incident was “not something you expect to see in the reception of a law firm”.
Governor’s veto is needed to prevent an antisemitic debacle in Indiana
An Indiana woman crashed her car this past November into what she thought was a Jewish school “on purpose.” The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights is investigating a Title VI Complaint against Indiana University for failing to protect its Jewish students on campus. Antisemitic fliers were placed in the downtown Indianapolis lending library. Antisemitism has spiked 400% in the past five months, and Jewish students and communities are reeling from the resuscitation of this ancient hatred.

To address the surge in antisemitism, the Indiana House passed House Bill 1002 two months ago after listing it among their five priorities for the 2024 session.

The Senate passed an amended version of HB 1002, which outrageously removed any reference to the consensus-driven International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.

This would render the legislation ineffective and harmful to the interests of Jewish victims of antisemitic crime and discrimination. A big community campaign was launched to fix the bill.

On Friday, March 8, the Indiana House and Senate met in conference to develop a bill that was acceptable to both Republican-led chambers. The result was a piece of legislation that utterly fails to meet its intended purpose and globally harms efforts to increase understanding of antisemitism. Adding insult to injury, antisemitic groups like Jewish Voices for Peace and another affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) are now expressing their approval of what Indiana’s bad bill has done to boost their interests.

Legislators and doctors are both meant to follow a cardinal rule in their work: “First do no harm.” In 2018, I led the way as a legislator in helping South Carolina become the first state in the country to adopt a uniform definition of antisemitism for regulatory purposes. The purpose of adopting the IHRA definition is to help clarify what antisemitism is at a critical moment when this ancient hatred is once again spiking. Because antisemitism changes the way it manifests itself over time—sometimes religious, sometimes economic, sometimes racial, sometimes nationalistic—there is often confusion when trying to identify it. Just as developing a vaccine for the first manifestation of COVID-19 won’t work on newer strains, looking at antisemitism only as it appeared in 1942 will not help guide us to identify more contemporary mutations, i.e. those that target the Jewish collective, Israel, rather than the individual Jew.

The IHRA definition taken without its examples component, as many definitions, is vague. The examples component is integral because it helps clarify what might be considered antisemitism today. Yet it is precisely a reference to those examples that was red-lined from the bill language, leaving us with:
Antisemitism ad that runs during Oscars draws criticism
An ad purchased by the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism that ran during the Academy Awards on Sunday is drawing criticism for depicting a bar mitzvah celebrated in a church.

“I’m sure they had decent intentions but this ad sends a poor message,” wrote Dovid Bashevkin, director of education for NCSY. “We are grateful to our non-Jewish neighbors, but we don’t take kindly to seeing a bar mitzvah in a church.”

“Our history of forced conversion and assimilation makes such imagery honestly too painful to bear,” he added.

Rabbi Shlomo Litvin, a Chabad rabbi in Kentucky called the ad “absolutely moronic.”

“A bar mitzvah takes place in the middle of the night and gets a bomb threat, so they go next door to a church to finish the ceremony,” he wrote. “What in the ignorant savior foolishness motivated the script? Maybe stop Jew-hatred by meeting a Jew.”
The amazing story of a looted artifact from Algeria
At an exhibition held in Paris on the Jews of Algeria in 2013 Milena Kartowski-Aïach spotted a singular object: a tefillin bag given to her great-grandfather and looted by the Nazis during WWII. The bag, on which it was customary to embroider the Barmitzvah boy’s name, has since been restituted to her. But she is donating it not to France, but to Israel, where she has begun a new life. She tells the bag’s extraordinary story in Distinctions magazine (Winter 2024):

The small artifact, our family heirloom, is a tefillin bag dating from 1888 and found in a shed in Germany after the war by the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization, whose aim was to recover property that the Nazis looted. This bar mitzvah bag, which was used in a celebration in Algiers, belonged to Élie Léon Lévi-Valensin, my great-grandfather, who died destitute in Algiers in 1945. It is a looted object that has remained in the collections of the Museum of Art and History of Judaism in Paris (mahJ) since 1951, one among the 100 looted objects it holds, and the only one from North Africa.

In many ways, this bag is making history. It is the first liturgical object ever to be returned to its owners. It is the first object to be returned from Islamic lands. It is the first object to be returned that has no monetary value. It is a proof of the Holocaust in North Africa. Its words, embroidered with gold thread, contain a hint of Ladino, a trace of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

And a name, the name of a man, is finally pronounced and recognized here: Élie Léon Lévi-Valensin.

An Algerian Jew, of French nationality, an opera singer and the artistic director of the Kursaal of Algiers (the capital’s comic opera house) whose grave remains in the Saint-Eugène cemetery of Algiers in the same vault as his parents. Under French colonial rule in the 1920s, he was the first to program a concert of classical Algerian Arabo-Andalusian music in a public theater in Algiers, with an orchestra made up of Jewish and Muslim musicians. This was a seminal political act that paved the way for Algerian theater in Arabic, led by Mahieddine Bachtarzi and his troupe, which also was made up of Jewish and Muslim actors.
After being canceled in the US, Jewish singer Matisyahu will return to Israel
American Jewish singer Matisyahu, who has been thrust into the headlines recently over backlash in the US for his support of Israel, will be returning to the country for two shows – on April 2 at Zappa Jerusalem and April 3 at Zappa Ganei Yehoshua.

Last month, two Matisyahu shows were canceled – in Tucson, Arizona, and Santa Fe, New Mexico – after the venues said they couldn’t guarantee security due to anti-Israel protests that were planned to be held outside the concerts.

According to the singer/songwriter, the issue was actually staff who were unwilling to work at the show. Even when he offered to supplement these staff shortages, he was refused, Matisyahu posted on social media at the time.Another show, in Chicago, was canceled last week.

“While my fans and I are deeply hurt by this, please know we will not cower to these bullies and the pressure they exert,” Matisyahu wrote on Instagram.

“While the true details surrounding this decision remain opaque, and while the responsible parties all point fingers at one another over the decision, I can assure you there have been no threats of violence received by our security team, who have been vigilant in knowing what is happening in each city,” the singer wrote Friday on his Instagram account about the Chicago show.

Matisyahu said the venue had paid him for the cancellation and that he would donate the proceeds to the Hostage and Missing Families Forum “to help the families of the hostages, and in honor of International Women’s Day to acknowledge the women and girls still held captive by Hamas,” as well as to the emergency medical service United Hatzalah.


Former boxing champion Floyd Mayweather receives award in Israel
Floyd Mayweather Jr., an undefeated former professional boxer widely regarded as one of the best in the sport, visited Aish HaTorah and the United Hatzalah headquarters in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

“Mayweather was one of the first to support and mobilize his resources in solidarity with the State of Israel,” United Hatzalah stated. “After first sending his private plane to deliver medical equipment to the country to help those injured, Mayweather embarked yesterday on a visit to see and support Israel from up close.” Floyd Mayweather, Jr.Floyd Mayweather Jr. at the Western Wall on March 2, 2024. Credit: Ezra Amsallem/Aish HaTorah.

The boxer, who wore a large Star of David necklace, was “visibly moved” when he met Hatzalah volunteers alongside Eli Beer and Eli Pollak, Hatzalah’s president and founder and its CEO respectively, the organization stated.

“United Hatzalah’s activity is astonishing, and I hope that the entire world adopts the model of providing medical treatment within 90 seconds, United Hatzalah volunteers are world champions of lifesaving,” Mayweather said at the end of the visit, per a Hatzalah release.

During a visit to Aish HaTorah, Mayweather received the organization’s Champion for Israel Award, “a special honor reserved for those who continue to advocate against hate and antisemitism and stand up for Israel,” during a ceremony on Aish’s roof, overlooking the Kotel.
Floyd Mayweather, Jr. visits United Hatzalah





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