Sunday, March 17, 2024

03/17 Links: Netanyahu: Israel will not cave to demands Hamas survive; More Antisemitic Sh#t from London Review of Books; The Hateful Candace Owens

From Ian:

Dore Gold: Defeating Hamas requires a joint effort from the Western world
Ed Husain is a Muslim professor teaching at Georgetown University in Washington. Last week, he made a startling observation in the London Times. Husain noted, ironically, that the Muslim Brotherhood may be banned in Mecca but actually, it thrives in London.

Prof. Husain bravely called for shutting the various arms of the Muslim Brotherhood operating in the United Kingdom, observing that presented danger to British security and British democracy. He observed that Hamas, which is waging a war against Israel in the Gaza Strip, is the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. Moreover, Hamas has vowed to act against Israel again until it succeeds.

True, Hamas has been designated as an international terrorist organization by the European Union (EU), among others, but there has been a disturbing trend in the West to underestimate, to misjudge, and even to misrepresent Hamas and its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood.

They have not disavowed their charter or their stated aims. The motto of the Muslim Brotherhood was cosmetically modified after 9-11, now reads: “Jihad is our path; Martyrdom is our aspiration.”

Hamas’s vile assaults on captured Israeli women during and following the October 2023 attacks were not condemned by the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed many Brotherhood-tied groups shouted their support for what Hamas did. There is no reason to doubt that similar reactions would greet similar atrocities in the future.

The Muslim Brotherhood has global goals
The goals of the Muslim Brotherhood are still global, as the organization reaches out to wider audiences many of whom (Christians, Jews) are themselves targets of the Brotherhood.

But right now the urgent challenge for Israel and the West is Hamas (Arabic: Harakat al-Muqawwima al-Islamiyya – The Islamic Resistance Movement).

Foreign Policy published an analysis in December 2023 of the October attacks on Israel titled “Could Hamas Become a Global Threat?” and the conclusion was yes.
Danny Danon: All Rafah terrorists must be purged
Any call from the world’s representatives for Israel to forgo the operation in Rafah amounts to calling for Israel to surrender to Hamas. Leaving operational Hamas terror cells in Rafah guarantees the regrouping of Hamas and its continuation of its brutal, genocidal path. This unquestionably jeopardizes Israel’s security and paves the path to a recurrence of the atrocities witnessed on October 7, as Hamas’s leaders have promised time and again.

This is unthinkable. For Israel, surrendering is not an option. We will never allow our security to be threatened again.

Israel has no choice. Our people have no choice. To decisively win the war and ensure lasting peace, and also to ensure a better life for the people of Gaza, Hamas must be completely demilitarized, and Rafah strongholds must be eradicated to prevent the re-emergence of terrorism and smuggling through Hamas’s elaborate tunnel system under the Philadelphi Corridor. Following this, the entirety of Gaza must be demilitarized completely. Only once this has been achieved can we begin to discuss the day after in Gaza.

We cannot win the war decisively with Hamas remaining operational in any part of Gaza. Rafah is not up for debate, and we will not rest until the full defeat of Hamas.
Melanie Phillips: The Palestinian Terrorist Authority
For western liberals, the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is the only answer to the Palestinian-Israel conflict.

The Biden administration wants post-war Gaza to be ruled by the Palestinian Authority (PA). This is being resisted by Israel, one of its disagreements with the US over the conduct of the war for which the Biden administration is increasingly punishing it.

The US is impervious to the argument that the PA, no less than Hamas, would turn Gaza once again into a terror state. The Bidenites close their eyes to the copious evidence of PA incitement and rejectionism. They dismiss the huge salaries the PA pays to terrorists incarcerated in Israeli prisons and to the families of terrorists who have been killed.

They ignore the survey published 100 days after the outbreak of the Gaza war which revealed that around 82 per cent of Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria support the October 7 pogrom, and that support for Hamas among the Arabs in Judea and Samaria rose from 12 per cent in September 2023 to 44 per cent in November-December 2023.

Now a startling and important report by the Israeli group Regavim, which works to protect Israel’s land and resources in order to uphold its integrity as a Jewish state, illustrates the insanity of assuming that the PA is a route to peace and security in the region.

Under the 1995 Oslo Agreement, a broad Palestinian security apparatus was established consisting of the Palestinian Police and other security officials who are supposed to combat terrorism and collaborate with Israel on security matters. But the Regavim report, “Officers by Day, Terrorists by Night”, has identified at least 78 members of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF), many of them officers, who since 2020 have carried out terrorist attacks against Jews.

Since Regavim gathered its information from official PA statements and announcements, this figure is likely to be a significant underestimate.


Netanyahu: Israel will not cave to demands Hamas survive
Israel will continue to fight until the Hamas terrorist group is defeated in the Gaza Strip, despite efforts to force Jerusalem to end the war immediately, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed at the start of Sunday’s Cabinet meeting.

“It is no secret that international pressure against us is increasing. There are those trying to stop the war now, before all of its goals are achieved,” began the premier. “They do this by making false accusations against the IDF, against the Israeli government and against the prime minister of Israel. They do this by trying to bring about elections in the midst of the war.

“So, let’s be clear,” continued Netanyahu, “if we stop the fighting now it means that Israel has lost the war, and we will not allow that. That is why we must not give in to these pressures, and we will not do so.”

The comments come amid growing tensions with the Biden administration and after Israeli officials across the political spectrum hit out at U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who implied that Netanyahu was the main obstacle to a “healthy and open decision-making process” concerning the future of the Jewish state.
PM Netanyahu's remarks at the start of the Government meeting
Following are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks [translated from Hebrew], today (Sunday, 17 March 2024), at the start of the Government meeting:

"Since the start of the war, we have been fighting on two fronts – military and diplomatic.

On the diplomatic front, until now we have succeeded in allowing our forces to fight in an unprecedented manner for five full months. However, it is no secret that the international pressure is increasing.

In the international community, there are those who are trying to stop the war now, before all of its goals have been achieved. They are doing so by hurling false accusations at the IDF, the Government of Israel and the Prime Minister of Israel.

They are doing so by means of an effort to bring about elections now, at the height of the war. They are doing this because they know that elections now will halt the war and paralyze the country for at least six months.

Then let it be clear: If we stop the war now, before all of its goals are achieved, this means that Israel will have lost the war, and this we will not allow. Therefore, we cannot, and will not, succumb to this pressure.

On the contrary, this simple truth only strengthens our determination to continue rejecting the pressure, and fighting to the end – to total victory. No international pressure will stop us from realizing all of the goals of the war: Eliminating Hamas, freeing all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel.

In order to do this, we will operate in Rafah. This is the only way to eliminate Hamas's murderous brigades, and this is the only way to use the military pressure necessary to free all of our hostages.

To this end, we have approved the operational plans for action in Rafah, including advancing the steps to evacuate the civilian population from the combat zones. This is an essential stage ahead of the military action.

Those who say that the action in Rafah will not occur are those who also said that we would not enter Gaza, or act in Shifa or in Khan Yunis, and that we would not resume the fighting after the lull.

Therefore, I reiterate: We will operate in Rafah. This will take several weeks, and it will happen.

To our friends in the international community, I say: Are your memories that short? Have you so quickly forgotten October 7, the most horrific massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? Are you so quick to deny Israel the right to defend itself against the Hamas monsters? Have you so quickly lost your moral consciences?

Instead of pressuring Israel, which is fighting a war, the justice of which is unparalleled, against an enemy of unparalleled brutality, apply your pressure to Hamas and its patron – Iran. It is they who constitute a danger to the region and to the entire world.

In any case, we will withstand any pressure and with G-d's help, we will continue to fight together until total victory."


Faith leaders solidarity mission: ‘Pressuring Israel into a two-state solution is outrageous’
A delegation of leading American faith leaders visited the Jewish state this week to stand with Israel’s leadership against White House calls for a Palestinian state.

“What our administration is doing in pressuring Israel into a unilateral two-state solution…is absolutely outrageous,” Mario Bramnick, head of the Latino Coalition For Israel and leader of the delegation, told JNS.

A Palestinian state would be a “reward for genocide,” he said.

The solidarity mission was joined by by Southern Baptist pastor and U.S. politician Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Ellie Cohanim, who served as deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism during the Trump administration.

The group met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and separately with former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who would likely occupy a key diplomatic position if his former boss Donald Trump returns to office. The faith leaders also received a security briefing and toured key strategic areas, including the Gaza envelope, Israel’s north and Judea and Samaria.

“Israel needs to make its own decisions without external pressures, and we expressed that to the prime minister, who is representing the will of the people as evidenced by the Knesset resolution opposing any imposition of a unilateral two-state solution at this stage of the game,” Bramnick told JNS.

Bramnick referred to the 99-11 Knesset vote to back the Israeli government’s decision to reject any unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood.
US envoy: Americans ‘equally’ support Israeli self-defense, Gazan rights, two-state solution
Echoing remarks marking the month of Ramadan from U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Amy Gutmann, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, stated that the Muslim holy month comes “at a time of conflict and pain for many Muslim communities.”

Biden’s statement only singled Gaza out, but Gutmann, using the exact words that Blinken did, referred to the “Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Rohingya in Burma and Bangladesh and Palestinians in Gaza.”

“The heart-wrenching news every day out of Gaza makes the message of Ramadan especially powerful,” the U.S. envoy in Berlin stated.

“President Biden, I and the American people stand equally strong for three important moral positions. And I stress the word ‘equally,'” she said. “These are Israel’s right to defend itself, the rights of the people in Gaza, the overwhelming majority of whom had nothing to do with the Oct. 7 attacks, and the need for a two-state solution.”

“We strongly believe these three priorities are essential and compatible,” she added.

Recent polling suggests there are vast differences in the ways that Americans view the three “moral positions” on which the ambassador stated that Americans “stand equally strong.”

Americans support an independent Palestinian state by just a “slim majority” of 53%, with 34% opposed, according to Gallup’s Feb. 1-20 World Affairs survey. Those numbers are “essentially unchanged” from 2023 and “generally similar” to Gallup’s results since 2019, it stated.

“Before that, Americans were more likely to favor than oppose an independent Palestinian state, but support was generally below the majority level, with higher percentages not expressing an opinion either way,” it added.

There are also “vast” political differences, with 74% of Democrats, 55% of independents and 26% of Republicans favoring an independent state, and most Republicans (59%) oppose such a state, per Gallup.

The Gallup survey suggested that many more Americans support Israelis more than Palestinians (51%), while 27% support Palestinians more. The rest don’t favor either more (10%), don’t have a view on the matter (8%) or side equally with both (4%).
Biden admin reportedly delaying arms shipments to Israel
The Biden administration has begun slow-walking some military aid to Israel as the IDF offensive against Hamas enters a crucial stage, according to a senior official in Jerusalem cited by ABC News over the weekend.

According to the Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, military aid shipments at the beginning of the war were coming “very fast,” but Jerusalem is “now finding that it’s very slow.”

The official said he was not sure what the cause was, but that Jerusalem was aware of President Joe Biden’s frustration with the conflict and his demand that Israel do more to provide humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip.

When asked about the allegations by ABC, U.S. officials claimed there was no change in official policy or any deliberate delay in delivering previously promised aid or weapons to the Israel Defense Forces.

But Politico reported last week that Biden is considering conditioning military aid to Israel if it decides to move forward with its conquest of the last Hamas stronghold of Rafah in the southern Strip.
Israeli officials blast Biden admin sanctions over ‘settler violence’
For the second time in as many months, the U.S. State Department, in coordination with the U.S. Treasury, is again issuing financial sanctions against Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria.

According to an official State Department spokesperson “fact sheet,” three Israeli males are “being accused of undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank, which undermine the national security and foreign policy objectives of the United States, including the viability of a two-state solution, ensuring Israelis and Palestinians can attain equal measures of security, prosperity, and freedom, and reducing the risk of regional destabilization.”

The sanctions are in pursuant to U.S. President Joe Biden’s Feb. 1 Executive Order 14115, outlined by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, which states that financial sanctions would be applied to individuals in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), who are seen as “undermining stability” and the “prospects of peace.”

The latest announcement states: “All property and interests in property of the designated persons that are in the United States or in possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported to the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).”

The new sanctions also apply to the actual farms owned by two of the three sanctioned men, as the State Department claims the properties are serving as bases from which the accused are perpetrating “violence against Palestinians.”

Washington has yet to levy sanctions on any Palestinian Authority Arabs who have carried out acts of violence, despite the EO’s wording, which supposedly can apply to both Israelis and Arabs alike.
PM: Schumer opposes not just me, but the majority of Israelis
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday slammed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s demand for early elections in the Jewish state as “totally inappropriate,” telling CNN that the legislator is not just opposing his leadership, but also the will of the Israeli people.

“The majority of Israelis support the policies of my government. … It represents the policies supported by the majority of the people. If Senator Schumer opposes these policies, he’s not opposing me—he’s opposing the people of Israel,” Netanyahu told Dana Bash of CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

In a speech on the Senate floor Thursday that Schumer described as a “major address” on a possible two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, the Democrat labeled some of Netanyahu’s senior Cabinet members and “bigots” and “extremists” and called for an early election.

Schumer claimed that he was speaking on behalf of “mainstream Jewish Americans” to represent their views on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He suggested that Washington should condition or cut off military aid to Jerusalem unless a new government is formed.

Netanyahu reiterated on Sunday that Israelis should decide when an election should be held, denouncing Schumer’s demand as “ridiculous.”

“It’s like after 9/11, you’re in the midst of fighting the war against Al-Qaeda, and an Israeli would say: ‘You know, what we need now is either new elections in the U.S., or if your system doesn’t allow it, then President Bush should resign and we should have an alternative leader. … You don’t do that to a sister democracy, an ally,” the premier charged.
Daniel Greenfield: Schumer’s ‘rabbi’ is an anti-Israel activist
The media decided to defend Sen. Schumer’s attack on Israel and call to spare Hamas and create a terrorist state by rushing out his “rabbi,” Rachel Timoner, to claim that “he said what most of us think” and “what the overwhelming majority of American Jews are saying to each other.”

The first part of that is probably true.

Rachel Timoner is an activist with such anti-Israel groups as J Street and T’ruah and co-founded the New York Jewish Agenda leftist organization alongside Sharon Kleinbaum, who faced an exodus from her “temple” after saying Kaddish for Hamas terrorists, with a mission of fighting the city’s Orthodox Jews.

The latter isn’t because these anti-Israel extremists don’t represent Jews. They represent only the Jew-hating far left.

Bringing out Timoner, the clergywoman of the leftist congregation Schumer attends, doesn’t help him. It reveals how bad he really is.

Let’s take a look at what Rachel Timoner has been up to.

Timoner took part in a recent anti-Israel “ceasefire” rally while whining that “continued war and Israeli occupation of Gaza will be an unmitigated disaster.”

She signed on to a letter by the T’ruah anti-Israel hate group which claimed that “there is no military solution” and demanded that Biden “ensure that Israel does not invade Rafah” and finish off Hamas.

In the past, Timoner had signed on to a T’ruah/J Street letter defending BDS.

Timoner, the author of op-eds such as “Fellow Dykes: We Must Be Both Pro-Israel And Pro-Palestine,” tries to have it both ways, but she picked her side.

The side of those who murder Jews.
Jake Wallis Simons: This could be the devastating proof that Hamas is faking its death figures
In February, Hamas admitted to losing 6,000 of its fighters, representing more than 20 per cent of the total casualties reported. Given its claims that 70 per cent of the dead were women and children, there were two possible conclusions: either almost no male civilians had died, or almost all the men in Gaza were fighting for Hamas. Both were obviously absurd.

Therefore, the number of women and children killed was likely grossly exaggerated. If that is the case – if, as Prof Wyner suggests, “the casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters” – where does that leave western outrage? Has the West fallen victim to a monstrous con?

The true ratio of civilian casualties to combatants is likely to be exceptionally low, “at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1”. This, Prof Wyner says, is a “successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians”.

By rights, if the central pillar of the anti-Israel edifice has been discredited, the whole structure should come tumbling down. But don’t hold your breath. The reason why Hamas’s dodgy data is so easily believed is confirmation bias. The drip-drip of Israelophobic propaganda over the years has created a powerful tendency to view the Jewish state, Britain’s democratic ally, as a colonialist aggressor and the Palestinians – even as they butcher children – as the “freedom fighters”. Regardless of the evidence, to many people this has become second nature.

It speaks of millennia of inherited anti-Semitism. A 2012 study by economists Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth found that Germans from towns where Jews were blamed for the Black Death and burnt alive in the 14th century were significantly more likely to vote for the Nazis 600 years later. In his 1945 essay, Orwell recalls a “young intellectual, communist or near-communist” remarking: “No, I do not like Jews. I’ve never made any secret of that. I can’t stick them. Mind you, I’m not anti-Semitic, of course.” Depressingly little has changed.

That is the advantage enjoyed by the jihadis of Gaza. They didn’t even need to keep their strategy a secret. Everyone knows they try to get civilians killed for propaganda gains, aiming to curtail Israeli operations with international outrage. Everyone knows that their censors keep dead terrorists away from the cameras, giving the world the impression that Israel is only attacking civilians (look up former AP reporter Matti Friedman’s seminal 2014 essay, “What the media gets wrong about Israel”, for a sense of how long such games have been played). A gang that murdered and mutilated babies may also, on occasion, be tempted to lie. So much should be obvious. But all this is smoothly eclipsed when a greater narrative is at work.

It’s not that there is a lack of journalistic curiosity in large parts of the media. It’s just that, when it comes to Israel, facts are subordinated to assumptions. In February, BBC Verify quoted a World Health Organisation official: The [Hamas] ministry has “‘good capacity in data collection’ and its previous reporting has been credible and ‘well developed’”. This was the same WHO that had singled out Israel for condemnation at an international assembly largely devoted to Covid. And this was the same BBC Verify that had partly based a story on an eyewitness who had reportedly worked for an Iranian state news outlet and celebrated the deaths of Jews on social media.

It is time for us to say: J’Accuse. Just as Emile Zola laid the charge of anti-Semitism at the feet of the French establishment during the Dreyfus Affair in 1898, we must do so to the international establishment today.


Melanie Phillips: Eyeless in Question Time
I appeared on last Thursday’s edition of BBC TV’s Question Time which came from Liverpool. On the panel with me were the Labour MP Jonathan Reynolds, the Conservative MP and housing minister Lee Rowley, the leader of the Scottish National Party in the House of Commons Stephen Flynn MP, and Ayesha Hazarika, a broadcaster and former Labour Party adviser.

We discussed extremism, prisons — and the war in Gaza. The segment about the war was a shocking if unsurprising experience — up-front and close — of the Orwellian ignorance that constitutes much public discourse about Israel. The Gaza segment starts at around 28 minutes into the show, which you can watch by clicking below.
What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur PodCast: Hamas starves Gazans as a war tactic
As Gazan gunmen raid aid trucks and abscond with necessary supplies, what is Israel's legal obligation to protect the conveys?

This week, as humanitarian aid is being brought into the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, we ask Haviv Rettig Gur, what matters now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves.


‘Hamas gambled with our lives’: Gazans are now daring to speak out
All those interviewed stressed that Hamas left the Gaza public “in the dark” about its plans even after Israel’s counterattack began. Added to the lack of communication was a seeming lack of concern for civilians as Hamas forces retreated to their tunnels.

“Hamas followed the same old war plan and left the people to the mercy of Israelis,” says Walid, the aid worker.

“We gave in to Hamas for a long time, and we thought Hamas as a party would be prepared for the war after Oct. 7 as they claimed. But they were only ready to protect themselves,” says Rana Alsayed, a mother and feminist activist from Gaza City who was displaced four times by Israel’s offensives.

“This war is beyond Hamas’ capabilities,” says Ahmed, a Gaza photojournalist who blames intense targeting by Israel’s military for the movement’s inability to govern or protect its citizens. “It cannot help itself, let alone the people.”

For some Palestinians in Gaza, the war has cemented the idea of Hamas as a militant faction looking out only for itself rather than for the people it has governed since first being elected by a plurality in 2006. It has ruled unopposed since 2007, when it drove out its rival Fatah and seized the strip.

“They see their role is to fight Israelis and not to care for the people. But since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, they implicitly agreed to care for its people,” says Walid, who, like many, sees Hamas as “evading that responsibility.”

“At least provide enough food for the people to not die of hunger. Build shelters and safe places for the people to go to. Establish a form of civic protection and law enforcement to keep people in check,” the aid worker says.

“The Oct. 7 operation was nothing but a continuation of the series of political and military gambles that the movement has made since its inception, an operation that brought nothing but destruction, killing, displacement, and deportation of the residents of the Gaza Strip,” says Mr. Mohammad, the civil engineer.

He likens the movement to “a group of mercenaries and militias that do not rise to the level of a Palestinian movement” and don’t “care about Palestinian blood.”

He, and others, point to statements by Hamas’ leadership abroad at the onset of the war that it was the responsibility of the United Nations and the international community, not Hamas, to protect Gaza civilians.

Anger over aid, profiteering
With a breakdown of law and order, organized crime is increasing and aid is looted and sold on the secondary market before many can get it. And there is a growing belief that not only does Hamas bear responsibility for the looting and profiteering through its absence, but it also may be complicit or participating in it.

“We have to buy food that was sent to Gaza as aid. We hear lots of rumors that this aid was stolen under the eyes of Hamas, sometimes in complicity with people from the government,” says Walid.

Mohammed, an accountant and former government employee now in Rafah, says the links between Hamas and aid theft across Gaza are “clear.”

“We cannot provide definitive proof, but who has the guns? Who has the monopoly on force in Gaza? It’s Hamas. The work of organized criminal groups wouldn’t happen without their consent,” Mohammed says via WhatsApp messaging. “They are profiting politically and economically from our death and misery.”


Arabs and Jews: The Holocaust and its Aftermath
Efforts to guide much of the Arab world away from antisemitism has been hindered by the utter absence of denazification and education about the Jewish people, alongside ideological and politically-motivated hatred. The Palestinian viewpoint claims that the establishment of the state of Israel was enabled by Western nations motivated by their guilt over the Holocaust; that the Nakba, the expulsion and displacement of 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, is tantamount to the systematic extermination of six million Jews during the Holocaust; and that the Holocaust is a purely Western and Christian crime unrelated to them or other Arabs. Former Knesset Member, Dr. Einat Wilf, further categorised these arguments as (i) ‘Holocaust denial, Holocaust minimization (‘6 million is an exaggerated number’); (ii) Holocaust equalisation (‘there were other genocides and ethnic cleansings, the Holocaust was no different’); (iii) Holocaust reversal (‘what the Nazis did to the Jews is what the Jews are doing to others’); (iv) Holocaust marginalisation (‘other people were also killed in the War’); and (v) Holocaust by association (‘the Palestinians are the secondary victims of the Holocaust’).

While weaponizing the Holocaust in casting Israel as the ultimate evil, Arab anti-Zionism demonstrates a concern ‘not with what Israel does but what Israel is,’ as Dr. Wilf suggests. Dor Shachar, a former Gazan who converted to Judaism after fleeing to Israel, describes how his education was ‘focused on martyrdom, not life skills,’ having been raised to believe that ‘Jews have three legs’ and that he ‘needed to kill Jews.’ Loay Al-Shareef from Saudi Arabia whom I personally met last summer, Hussain Abukar Mansour from Egypt, Lebanese-Iraqi Hussain-Abdul-Hussain, and Muhajeed Kobbe from the United Arab Emirates, all shared similar stories from their childhoods. Countering misinformation with factual and earnest conversation about Israel—its people, culture, history, and language—plays a pivotal role in disrupting the cycle of hatred between Arabs and Israelis.

The burdensome impact of Palestinian intransigence has led to a significant waning of anti-Zionist sentiment in some parts of the Arab world, particularly among Gulf-area nations. This weariness along with the geopolitical interests of some Arab countries laid the groundwork for The Abraham Accords, leading to the normalisation of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.

Bridging the gap between Jewish and Arab worlds requires an Arab acknowledgement and comprehension of the Jews’ most deep-seated trauma, the Holocaust, and the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa during the mid-late 20th century. Signatory countries to the Abraham Accords have made remarkable strides in this regard, including visits to Jerusalem’s World Holocaust Centre, Yad Vashem. The UAE, most notably, has taken a step further, becoming the first Arab nation to impart Holocaust education in schools and purging antisemitic material from its literature.

Abrahamic success and similar breakthroughs can only succeed via the cultivation of people-to-people relationships through education. Yet, the persistence of antisemitic teachings, notably in UN Refugee Works Agency programs, hinders the possibility of peaceful Israeli-Palestinian relations. Moreover, the celebratory parades in Palestinian cities following acts of terrorism, exemplified by the reactions to Hamas’ attack on October 7th, resonate deeply with many Israelis, evoking sombre memories of the Holocaust, as well as massacres in the Arab and Muslim world. Indeed, recent polling revealed that three in four Palestinians believe the attacks of October 7th were correct.
Pankaj Mishra on Israel, Gaza and the Holocaust
That’s why it is no coincidence that in almost 8,000 words Mishra doesn’t mention October 7 or the hostages, doesn’t mention Iran at all, and mentions Hamas only twice. Of course, Israel can seem like the perpetrator, if you never mention those who want to slaughter its people. Israel is not perpetrating genocide. Given the chance, Hamas and Iran certainly would.

Similarly, Mishra makes no reference to any of the pogroms before 1948, any of the invasions of Israel in 1948 and since, or the expulsions of Jews from every single Muslim country in North Africa and the Middle East. All of this is airbrushed from history. For Mishra it simply never happened. None of it.

Instead, he writes about “the targeted killings of Palestinians, checkpoints, home demolitions, land thefts, arbitrary and indefinite detentions, and widespread torture in prisons seemed to proclaim a pitiless national ethos: that humankind is divided into those who are strong and those who are weak, and so those who have been or expect to be victims should pre-emptively crush their perceived enemies.”

And then, of course, we come to Gaza and “the victims of Israeli barbarity [sic] in Gaza today”. Mishra goes on to distort the history of the current conflict with Hamas (who are virtually invisible in his account). “Worse,” he writes, “the liquidation of Gaza” [sic] “is daily obfuscated, if not denied, by the instruments of the West’s military and cultural hegemony: from the US President claiming that Palestinians are liars and European politicians intoning that Israel has a right to defend itself, to the prestigious news outlets deploying the passive voice while relating the massacres carried out in Gaza.”

There is not a single reference to the support of the UN, UNWRA and a number of NGOs for Palestinians and their constant use of data taken from the Palestinian Health Ministry (better known as Hamas), the worldwide support for Palestinians in Gaza and the biased pro-Palestinian coverage on the major British and American news networks. All of this is simply ignored.

Then we come to the familiar rhetoric of post-colonial self-pity, or what he calls “a long-simmering racial bitterness”. “In 2024,” he writes, “many more people can see that, when compared with the Jewish victims of Nazism, the countless millions consumed by slavery, the numerous late Victorian holocausts in Asia and Africa, and the nuclear assaults on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are barely remembered.”

Really? Have we really all forgotten about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or about slavery? It’s more likely that some of us have forgotten or never knew about the terrible crimes committed by non-whites: the rape of Nanking, the millions of victims of Indian Partition, the slaughter of countless Muslims by tyrants like Assad and Saddam Hussein, the role in slavery of Africans and Arabs, the homophobia and misogyny of countless Muslim regimes, the ongoing persecution of Christians in many parts of Africa and the Middle East and the desperate plight of girls and women in Iran and Afghanistan. Again, no reference to any of this history, past or present.

Mishra’s essay is also full of omissions and distortions. He writes, “When I look at my own writings about the anti-Muslim admirers of Hitler and their malign influence over India today, I am struck by how often I have cited the Jewish experience of prejudice to warn against the barbarism that becomes possible when certain taboos are broken.” Curiously, he forgets to mention the Muslim admirers of Hitler — in particular, the Palestinian admirers of Hitler such the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin Al-Husseini.

Then we come, inevitably, to the unique perfidy of Israel. “Israel today,” he writes, “is dynamiting the edifice of global norms built after 1945, which has been tottering since the catastrophic and still unpunished war on terror and Vladimir Putin’s revanchist war in Ukraine. The profound rupture we feel today between the past and the present is a rupture in the moral history of the world since the ground zero of 1945.”

This isn’t just hyperbole. It is bad history. Where were these “global norms built after 1945” when there was genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, the terrible wars between Iran and Iraq, the mass slaughter in Cambodia, civil wars in Nigeria and Syria, all with fatalities which dwarf what has happened so far in Gaza?

On every page, there are errors, omissions, distortions and hyperbole. Of course, because this presumably fits the world view of the editors and many of the readers of the LRB. This hatred of Israel, the anti-colonialist rants and the silences about Hamas, Muslim support for the Nazis, and Muslim antisemitism in Africa and the Middle East, are all part of the new progressivist ideology in our universities, our mainstream TV news networks and newspapers like The Guardian. He is preaching to the converted. It is the orthodoxy of our age.

That’s why it’s important to condemn Mishra’s polemic in some detail and to ask why the authorities at a Cambridge college think he is an appropriate person to give a lecture in memory of VS Naipaul, of all people, who was one of the great truth-tellers about the tyrants and slaughterhouses of the post-colonial world. Naipaul would have relished the irony, but he would also have condemned Selwyn College for betraying his memory.
More Antisemitic Shit from London Review of Books
The London Review of Books has a long history of Israel demonisation which crosses the line into antisemitism. The latest example is a 7437 word piece of trash by Pankaj Mishra. Unbelievably it has been endorsed on X/Twitter by Louis Theroux who has 2.2m followers. Also unbelievably a Church in London (St James’s Church, Clerkenwell) hosted Mishra for the ‘lecture’ on which the article is based. The Barbican Centre had refused to host the talk.

(In an earlier LRB piece in January Mishra wrote this: ‘Israel: an ethnonational state that violates international legal, diplomatic and ethical protocols with its language of ethnic homogeneity, unwavering policy of territorial expansion, extrajudicial killings and demolitions‘).

His antisemitic theme is simple and one beloved of antisemites for years: that Israel references the Holocaust to justify Nazi-equivalent crimes against the Palestinians. It’s not just ‘Holocaust Inversion’, it’s Double Holocaust Inversion. He even refers to ‘Jewish supremacism’. ‘Jewish’ not ‘Zionist’, note …. (he did the same in his January LRB piece, op cit).

Like Thomas Suarez, Mishra sprays pseudo-academic references – the problem being that they are either to antisemites or they are misleadingly selective quotes. An example is his reference to the the Austrian writer Jean Améry, whom he cites extensively at both ends of his piece of shit. What he DOESN’T tell you is that Améry published several essays on the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. ‘Anti-Zionism contains antisemitism like a cloud contains a storm’, he wrote in the German newspaper Die Zeit in 2005.

Another clue to the pseudo-academic nature of Mishra’s piece of drek is his failure to reference most of the citations! (Incredibly he has been Visiting Fellow at UCL in London….)


Liel Leibovitz 2019: Pankaj Mishra’s Moral Mishmash

Israel can refuse UNRWA access to Gaza, says ex-agency legal adviser
Israel can prevent UNRWA from operating in the Gaza Strip, and should be using this time of international spotlight on the U.N. aid organization due to its terror ties to plan for its closure, a former legal adviser to the agency said on Sunday.

James G. Lindsay’s unequivocal remarks made at a Knesset session discussing alternatives to UNRWA came as Australia joined Canada, Sweden and the E.U. in lifting funding freezes on the main Palestinian aid agency even before the U.N.’s own investigation of the organization is completed.

“This current time of maximum pressure on UNRWA should be used by both donor nations and host nations to demand reforms of UNRWA and prepare plans for its eventual dissolution,” Lindsay, a former legal adviser and general counsel to UNRWA, told a special session of the bipartisan Knesset Caucus: UNRWA: The Day After.

He said that while the agency “will not disappear overnight,” the chances of seeing that happen are greater now than at any time in the past, and need to be seized upon.

“The window of opportunity is beginning to close, cautioned Knesset member Sharren Haskel. “More and more countries will resume their funding to UNRWA if the Israeli government does not act.”

Haskel has been a leading parliamentary voice in calling for UNRWA’s dissolution and chairs the caucus, which hosted a variety of international aid experts to discuss alternatives to the organization.


Telegram Warfare: The New Frontier of Psychological Warfare in the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Following the 7 October attacks, Palestinian militant groups persistently employed psychological warfare tactics against Israel. They circulated videos of captives held by various groups and disseminated numerous unsourced claims, and out-of-context photos and videos to further diminish Israels attempts at controlling the narrative in the aftermath of October 7th. In response, Israeli journalists and government representatives rushed to gather documentation of the attack, leading to the publication of several high-profile claims. However, some of these claims, such as the infamous ‘40 beheaded babies’ story, were later retracted due to misquoting or the inability to verify them by third parties. This undermined Israel’s credibility as it struggled to keep pace with the combative psychological warfare tactics employed by these groups, hindering efforts to garner international support and fostering greater distrust within Israeli society. This also impacted the IDF, prompting a rush to release numerous graphics claiming evidence of Palestinian militant activity near or in civilian areas. However, much of this evidence couldn’t be verified by any independent third party, undermining its effect on public opinion.

Furthermore, it came to light that while officially utilising Telegram for activity updates akin to its social media platforms, an unofficial IDF channel surfaced, uncovered by Haaretz,. This channel, overseen by an IDF psychological warfare unit, disseminated graphic images and videos of injured or deceased Palestinian militants and civilians, alongside captions that dehumanised them. According to Maj. Gen. Oded Basyuk’s internal investigation, this unit operated without authorisation, and the initiation of the page was done without approval or authority from leadership (the channel is still active). Whether directed to emulate the methods of Palestinian militant groups or acting independently, it underscored the alarming effectiveness of this tactic against Israeli society, compelling imitation.

Simultaneously, the pressure on the State of Israel to legitimise itself and garner support intensified with the deployment of numerous strikes on Gaza targets. The IDF’s objective was clear: to ‘Remove Hamas and its capabilities from power.’ This escalation resulted in civilian casualties and prompted constant scrutiny and mutual blame between Palestinian telegram channels and IDF officials. The explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital courtyard on the 17 of October, 2023, further fuelled this blame game. Initial reports claimed around 500 people were killed in an alleged IDF airstrike, but the IDF promptly denied involvement, presenting evidence to shift blame onto Palestinian militants. Conflicting narratives and a high reported death toll prompted extensive scrutiny from analysts and media outlets.

Despite thorough investigation efforts by major news sources and analysts, including my own comprehensive analysis of the event, definitive conclusions remained elusive. Most investigations conducted have concluded that the probable source of the blast was a misfired rocket by a Palestinian militant group. Additionally, there was a notable absence of third-party investigators who could verify claims on the ground. The proliferation of false testimonies, photos, and videos further compounded the challenge of independently verifying claims online. These factors highlight the difficulties faced by individuals caught between the information warfare of Palestinian militant groups and Israel. Even those seeking impartiality were not immune to the spread of misinformation, underscoring the complexities of the conflict.

As the conflict between IDF forces and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza persists, the psychological warfare waged by these groups against the Israeli public inevitably affects onlookers as well. It is essential for other governments to recognise the significance of this aspect of warfare, as it is likely to become a central tactic for these militant groups and even individual actors in the near future. The ability to undermine the morale of a society should be a national security concern and not be taken lightly. back
Sinwar's hideout: IDF commander describes operation to control Hamas compound
For IDF Lt.-Col. Elichan, searching senior Hamas leadership’s hideaway apartment, was “another day at the office.” The 36-year-old battalion commander described the mission in which they discovered the apartment and its trap door to the Hamas tunnel system.

“We kept advancing, scanning houses,” described Elichan. “We knew that there were houses with terror infrastructure and terrorists,” he said, adding that the houses in the neighborhood that Elichan describes as “luxury” were nice and full of nice furniture, as well as stocked with ammunition, weaponry, or Hamas uniforms.

“There isn’t a house you would go into that didn’t have grenades or ammunition, or Hamas uniforms, or something about Hamas,” he said.

Elichan was part of the IDF push to take control of the Hamas leadership command center. The compound included a network of tunnels that connected hideaway apartments and offices of senior Hamas officials, the military said.

But “one tunnel was different than the others,” Elichan said, explaining how they knew they had found an apartment used by senior Hamas officials such as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. “The tunnel was in the basement, covered in ceramics. When we pushed on it, a trap door opened, and there was an elevator that came out of the ground and went down 20 meters to tunnels below,” he said. IDF sits where Sinwar and Deif planned October 7 massacre

“The division commander came to see the tunnel, and I told him we should sit in a nearby apartment that was in better shape,” said Elichan. “He said, ‘This is where Sinwar and [Mohammed] Deif sat and planned the massacre,’ and that there is where he wanted to sit.

“It was a statement of values,” explained Elichan. “I want to sit here even though it is in bad condition because this is where they sat.”

Elichan’s battalion and Special Forces explored the tunnel thoroughly while they were in that area, he said. When they left, they destroyed the tunnel and its entrances.
Israel-Hamas war: IDF eliminates 15 terrorists in 24 hours, amid Hamas aid attack

Hamas confirms Marwan Issa killed, buried under rubble - report
Hamas stated behind closed doors that Marwan Issa, deputy to Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, who was targeted in an Israeli strike last week, has been killed, according to a Sunday Kan News report, citing Palestinian sources.

According to the sources, the number three in Hamas’s high command was killed in the IDF strike in Nusirat, in central Gaza, while he was hiding in one of Hamas's terror tunnels.

Hamas number three still buried under terror tunnel


The sources further told Kan that his body was still buried underneath the rubble.

According to the report, Razi Abu Tomeh, Commander of a Hamas Brigade, was also killed in the strike.

Last week, the IDF announced it had targeted Issa during a strike on the Strip. However, the military could not confirm Issa had been killed, and Hamas remained silent on the subject.

The military confirmed, however, that no hostages had been in the vicinity of the attack.

According to a report published by the Guardian on Sunday, following the attack, Hamas's communications went silent for 72 hours.


IDF destroys longest Hamas terror tunnel in northern Gaza
Israeli forces last week destroyed the longest Hamas terror tunnel discovered in the northern Gaza Strip, the IDF said on Sunday afternoon.

Stretching 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles), the route passed Hamas battalions and brigades and connected the northern and southern Strip, according to the IDF.

The tunnel was destroyed by engineering forces from the IDF’s 162nd Division and the Combat Engineering Corps’ elite Yahalom unit working together.

“We are at the end of destroying part of a network of tunnels,” said Lt. Col. Ran, the 162nd Division’s engineering officer. “About 12 kilometers of outdoor tunnels. From there we will continue to more tunnels.”

IDF ground units continue to operate in the center of the Gaza Strip, killing 18 terrorists over the past day with sniper fire and shelling and in cooperation with the Israeli Air Force.

The army is also continuing activities in the Khan Yunis area in the southern Gaza Strip, killing terrorists and confiscating weapons.


PreOccupiedTerritory: Gazans Panic As US Airdrops Watermelons (satire)
Palestinians hoping to bypass Hamas’s tight control of aid distribution in this embattled coastal territory by getting to the parachuted packages of food by American Air Force, discovered to their horror today that the latest payload, in a misguided attempt to show solidarity with Palestinians with a new symbol of their struggle, contained mostly watermelons. Six Palestinians were killed and a dozen injured. The Air Force has promised an investigation. Gaza officials, who give the official Hamas line, will include the casualties in the count of innocents killed by Israel.

Aid distribution inside the Gaza Strip has proved a tough logistical nut to crack, experts noted, given the monopoly that the Islamist terrorist group maintains through its control of the major aid organizations operating there. Israel allows in hundreds of trucks per day, but those vehicles sit idle on the Gaza side of the border while Hamas hoards the supplies, distributing it only to cronies who then sell the goods to those in need. Deadly clashes and stampedes have occurred as a result, with Gazans attempting to reach the aid before Hamas thugs can seize it. American and Jordanian air drops of supplies have tried to address the situation, with limited success.

Last week, a State Department employee passed a suggestion to a colleague in the Pentagon that the US military demonstrate its support for the people of Palestine by showering them with watermelons. The watermelon became a symbol of Palestinian resistance to Israel in the wake of the October 7 massacre last year that saw Hamas invade southern Israel and slaughter 1200 people, among other atrocities. The fruit evokes the green, black, white, and red Palestinian flag, and celebrates the “cutting open” of Israeli security on that day. The watermelon features in social media handles and has become a new shorthand for support for Palestinian violence against Israel.


Honestly with Bari Weiss: The Free Press in Israel Part 1: Running Toward Fire
What happens when a country has to ask its citizens the unthinkable: What are you willing to die for?

It’s a question that feels so outside the current American experience. When was the last time you asked yourself, What would I do if I had to fight for my home, my family, my nation?

When the citizens of Israel were confronted with the worst disaster imaginable, what emerged was a level of civic obligation, duty, and sacrifice that they themselves didn’t think they were capa
Honestly with Bari Weiss: The Free Press in Israel Part 2: Shattered Illusions
When we went to Israel, we tried tirelessly to get into Gaza but Israel’s counteroffensive made it impossible for us to go to the strip during those days. Instead, we spent time in and around the West Bank. First, we went to the Qalandia checkpoint, one of the biggest in Israel, where tens of thousands of Palestinians cross from the West Bank into East Jerusalem daily. Then, we went to the key Palestinian political and cultural center of Ramallah.

We wanted to hear the unfiltered voices of ordinary Palestinians and ask them what they think about October 7, about the ongoing war, and about the prospect of two states between the river and the sea. If you grew up attached to the idea of a two-state solution, what you'll hear is surprising. Over and over, people told us they supported the events of October 7.

At the same time, our week in Israel revealed something else surprising about this place, and that’s how cohesive Israeli society has become, even and including among Israel's 20 percent Arab minority.

In this episode, you’ll hear from both Palestinians in the West Bank as well as one extraordinary Muslim Israeli Arab woman, who sits on the fence between these two very different worlds—and from that unique vantage point, offers a hopeful vision for the future.
Knesset to establish committee for victims of sexual violence in Iron Swords War
The Knesset approved a proposal to establish a committee for victims of sexual crimes, which will focus on victims who suffered these crimes as a result of Operations Swords of Iron on Sunday.

The responsibilities of the committee will include the treatment of victims of sexual crimes, setting policies to support victims, and increasing victims' awareness of their rights and the services to which they are entitled.
Israel to mark Hamas massacre with annual commemorative day
The Israeli Cabinet voted on Sunday to mark Hamas’s massacre of some 1,200 people with an annual commemoration on the 24th day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei.

The event will be marked separately from the Remembrance Day (Yom Hazikaron) for the Fallen of Israel’s Wars and Victims of Terrorism, which is held on the 4th of Iyar, a day before Independence Day.

In 2024, a one-time commemorative ceremony will also be held on Oct. 7, and because the 24th of Tishrei this year coincides with Shabbat (on Oct. 26), the ceremonies will take place on Sunday, Oct. 27.

Two state ceremonies will be held every Tishrei Remembrance Day, one at 11 a.m. in honor of those killed in action in the war against Hamas, and another at 1 p.m. in memory of the civilians murdered during the terrorist group’s invasion of the northwestern Negev.


BBC plunged into new bias row after journalists behind damning report accusing Israeli soldiers of beating and humiliating medics 'like' videos celebrating Hamas terror attacks
BBC journalists behind a damning report which accused Israeli soldiers of beating and humiliating medics at a Gaza hospital have 'liked' videos celebrating Hamas terror attacks and anti-Israel posts online.

The story last week led to worldwide condemnation of Israel, and was called 'very disturbing' by Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron who called for 'answers'.

Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal concerns about the views of two BBC Arabic reporters, Soha Ibrahim and Marie-Jose Al Azzi, who were credited with working on the story.

Earlier this month Ms Ibrahim liked a video on X of Palestine Action activists slashing an oil painting of former British prime minister Arthur Balfour, who helped pave the way for the creation of Israel. On the day of the Hamas attacks on October 7, she 'liked' videos of people in Lebanon and Tunisia chanting, dancing and waving Palestinian flags in the street in apparent celebration.

London-based Ms Ibrahim, who has worked for the BBC for 12 years, also liked another post on X on October 7 which celebrated 'the first of the martyrs of the operation'. The tweet featured a picture of an Egyptian man who was killed after shooting dead three Israeli soldiers last June.

Ms Ibrahim also liked a video of Egyptian football fans chanting 'we sacrifice our souls, our blood for Palestine' following the attacks.

Meanwhile Ms Al Azzi, who has worked at the BBC since 2019 and is based in Lebanon, described Israel as a 'terrorist apartheid state' in a post from 2018 that has since been deleted, according to anti-Semitism researchers.

Last week's BBC report also credited a freelance photo journalist Muath Al Khatib, based in Jerusalem, who works part-time for WAFA, the Palestinian state news agency.

He previously made an anti-Jewish post on Facebook while on holiday in Thailand in 2016. 'I'm fleeing from the city to the Far East, and I find more Jews than locals on the island on Ko Pha Ngan,' he wrote.

Jewish Tory MP Andrew Percy called the BBC 'institutionally Israel-phobic', saying: 'The fact they are using reporters who appear to be openly hostile to Israel and potentially openly hostile to Jews, again demonstrates the issues the BBC has here on reporting this conflict fairly.'


Post-Oct. 7 antisemitism upends an Australian Jewish community with Holocaust history
In the past few months, while active on Twitter, Vorchheimer has received death threats for openly supporting Israel. Despite filing formal police reports months ago, he has yet to receive any response from law enforcement.

“Both at a Federal and State level [within Australia] they have tools available to them, but they are not adopting a zero-tolerance approach,” he said.

Delayed and slow responses from law enforcement are becoming increasingly evident in various sectors across Australia. Tammie, a 45-year-old pro-Israel advocate and philanthropist in Melbourne, requested that her last name be withheld due to online threats she received because of her pro-Israel work.

“I was unprepared and dismayed by the absolute explosion of blatant Jew-hatred following October 7 in this country,” she said. “More worryingly was observing how unprepared and indecisive our government and police have been combating this scourge in our society,” she said.

Tammie’s family history is also rooted in the aftermath of the Holocaust, making her vigilant against antisemitism. Born in Vienna post-Holocaust, her mother came to Australia at 6 months old, while her father, born in Israel to Holocaust survivor parents, moved to Australia at the age of 6. Both families chose Australia as a welcoming haven for rebuilding their lives.

For now, Tammie is monitoring the situation closely.

“There is no question that if the [Australian] government of the day became too antisemitic, I would leave. My grandparents made the mistake of staying too long in Europe in the 40s and it cost them dearly,” she reflected.

Amid the challenging and uneasy time for Australian Jews, Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, finds a glimmer of hope. While recognizing the increasing antisemitism in Australia, he also observes support from unexpected quarters, indicating that the unabated hatred has inadvertently sparked a counter-response.

“This hate has backfired in two ways. Firstly, rather than being intimidated into isolation, the antisemitism has actually strengthened the Australian Jewish community’s identity and connection to Israel,” said Leibler.

“Secondly, I have been inundated by messages from non-Jewish Australians who tell me they’d never really seen antisemitism before, but now they understand what Jews are facing… if this terrible situation has a plus side, it’s that the usually hidden hatred of the antisemites has been exposed to those willing to see it,” he said.
‘Vile hypocrisy’: Sky News host slams ‘disgraceful’ Oscars speech on Israel-Hamas war
Sky News host Rowan Dean has slammed a “disgraceful” speech by British film director Jonathan Glazer which ignored the “ongoing horrors” of Hamas’ hostage-taking campaign.

Speaking at the award ceremony, Glazer said they stand there as men who “refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people”.

Mr Dean criticised the director for living in a “Hollywood bubble”.

“Glazer was of course applauded by the luvvies, the left-wing cultural elites of Hollywood,” Mr Dean said.

“I reiterate, this is the leftist mindset, the modern left – making Holocaust movies and winning awards for showing empathy for the dead Jews of the past but at the same time ignoring similar horrors being perpetrated against Jews in the present.”


‘I was too controversial’: Jewish singer speaks out after ABC cancels her
Singer Deborah Conway has spoken out on the ABC cancelling her appearance on its radio program in Melbourne last week.

“On the morning of the ... interview, I was contacted by the publicist and told that the producer had just arrived back from overseas and had suddenly caught up with the controversy that I was surrounded by,” she told Sky News Australia.

“And decided that I was too hot, too controversial to have on their live evening entertainment show.

“So, I was summarily dismissed, and I’m like, ‘wait a minute, I’m not there to talk about the Middle East’, I had no interest in talking about politics.

“But it was not to be, so I decided we should go to the press.”


Lord Balfour defaced: 'Cambridge have been fanning the flames'
Charles Moore, former editor of the Spectator writes for the magazine this week about why he wasn't surprised that an activist at defaced a portrait of Lord Balfour Trinity College Cambridge and what violent protests like this


The Hateful Candace Owens
What is sinister is Owens’s “just asking questions” approach as a means of encouraging anti-Semitism, a posture she’s doubled down on since the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7. She has emerged as a loud and ill-informed critic of the State of Israel, one whose views would be far more at home on the progressive left than among most Republicans and conservatives, who support Israel.

On X, Owens wrote of Israel, “No government anywhere has a right to commit a genocide, ever. There is no justification for a genocide.” She also called the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem a “ghetto” and remarked, “If you think it’s antisemitism to notice that innocent Christians were killed in an IDF bombing, then you need to log off.”

Owens is the one who needs to spend more time offline. A typical tweet, (from October 24, 2023) about the state of Florida removing Students for Justice in Palestine groups from two Florida college campuses after they violated the state’s anti-Semitism laws, featured Owens proclaiming: “I’ll ask the obvious question here. Do people believe that in the future moves like this will increase or decrease feelings of anti-semitism? Do you think these students are going to shut down and think ‘well—guess we have to support Israel now’? This is a serious question.”

This is not a serious question, but it is representative of her approach. First, she prefaces any statement about the Jews or anti-Semitism by noting that she’s just stating the “obvious question.” Then, while pretending to show concern for anti-Semitism, she dishonestly reframes the question and implies that it is Jews who are responsible for anti-Semitism.

Her disingenuousness was on frank display during a feud she had with Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, an outspoken supporter of Israel and an observant Jew. When he correctly described Owens’s behavior as “disgraceful,” she took the feud public on social media, posting Bible verses, including Matthew 5:9, which states, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Shapiro responded, “Candace, if you feel that taking money from The Daily Wire somehow comes between you and God, by all means quit.”

Owens misrepresented Shapiro’s response while simultaneously casting herself as a Christian martyr: “You are utterly out of line for suggesting that I cannot quote biblical scripture. The Bible is not about you. Christ is king.” For this, she received praise from Tucker Carlson, who compared her to Galileo.


Teen Vogue quietly tweaks article on US airman’s self-immolation after ‘glorifying suicide’
Teen Vogue has quietly made changes to a controversial story it published about a US airman who lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington last month — days after critics slammed the article for “glorifying suicide” and promoting “propaganda”.

The Condé Nast-owned magazine published a March 5 article about Aaron Bushnell — the 25-year-old US airman who self-immolated on Feb. 25 while screaming, “Free Palestine!” — and the glossy publication got blasted for minimizing Bushnell’s potential mental health issues while portraying him as a martyr fighting an alleged “genocide.”

In one passage that riled critics, author Lex McMenamin wrote: “Some attempted to attribute [Bushnell’s] choice to a matter of “mental health”; others suggested that to report on Bushnell’s self-immolation was akin to promoting it or would cause others to copy him, an implication that independent journalist Talia Jane called ‘plainly absurd.’”

The article sparked an immediate backlash, with many raising concerns about the takeaway among Teen Vogue’s “impressionable” teenage readers.

“Glorifying suicide puts vulnerable people at risk.

Might want to rethink this on a page for young people,” seethed one critic on the magazine’s Instagram page, adding, “Next you’ll be glorifying suicide bombers.”

A Teen Vogue spokesperson told The Post in a statement, “At Teen Vogue we take seriously the responsibility of providing fact-based reporting on news and current events for our readers. We stand by our reporting.”

Nevertheless, the magazine has quietly edited the inflammatory passage — deleting independent journalist Talia Jane’s claim that concerns about promoting suicide were “plainly absurd”.
London cinema to scrub Eurovision screening if Israel in final
A London movie theater threatened this week to cancel the screening of the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final on May 11 if Israel remains in the competition, according to Deadline.

The Rio Cinema in East London, known for previously broadcasting the Grand Final and its ties with Eurovision Party London, declared its decision via social media, and added that it will continue to support Palestinian charities.

This stance isn’t isolated, with recent calls from Belgian ministers for Israel’s exclusion from the contest due to its anti-terrorism operation against Hamas.

Controversy has also surrounded Britain’s entry, Olly Alexander, for signing a petition critical of Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip. Conversely, notable figures including actress Helen Mirren have advocated for Israel’s inclusion in the event.

The Israeli entry has faced challenges in balancing Eurovision’s apolitical mandate with national sentiment, leading to alterations in both the lyrics and title of Eden Golan‘s song from “October Rain” to “Hurricane” to comply with the European Broadcasting Union’s guidelines.

Organizers of the Eurovision Song Contest on Feb. 15 reaffirmed that Israel will be allowed to compete amid the war against Hamas, rejecting parallels drawn by pro-Palestinian activists with Russia’s exclusion from the competition over its invasion of Ukraine.

“Comparisons between war and conflict are complex and difficult and, as an apolitical media organization, it is not our place to make them,” Noel Curran, director-general of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the annual musical extravaganza, told AFP.

A review by the EBU’s governing bodies found “that the Israeli public broadcaster Kan met all the competition rules for this year and can participate, as it has for the past 50 years,” Curran noted.


Does UC Berkeley have an antisemitism problem? Chancellor Carol Christ weighs in
The Anti-Defamation League and others are calling on the university to take measures against students, after, I suppose, the criminal investigation is complete. To take some kind of disciplinary action, either against students or against Bears for Palestine, the campus group that organized the protest.

CC: The organizations are not under criminal investigation.

That investigation and deliberation about the organizations, and whether any sanction is called for against them, is going on right now.

Sorry, you said that an investigation about whether any sanctions on the organization are called for is going on?

CC: Yeah, that’s right. Yes.

We’re in this moment where questions about free speech — people are asking themselves when does it cross the line? I’m actually just curious, broadly speaking, does hate speech violate campus policy in any way?

CC: It’s actually a complicated question. I’m going to sound like those ladies in front of Congress.

So hate speech in an abstract context is protected by free speech. I could say something like, you know, in the context of a dinner party at my house, I could say, ‘I hate the Chinese.’ And that would be protected if there weren’t individual Chinese people there that were threatened by that speech.

If my speech creates a harmful atmosphere that detracts from the educational benefits that a student might receive — if I said that very same thing, ‘I hate the Chinese,’ in a classroom in which they were Chinese students — that would not be protected. And I would be subject to discipline.

The thing that determines what is not protected is if it is understood as a threat to the people hearing the speech.

So it would have to be understood as a threat? Let’s say for example, someone posts on Snapchat, you know, something overtly Islamophobic. Calling Muslim people terrorists, and 300 people see it. Would that violate campus policy?

CC: No, it would be protected free speech. We’ve actually had instances of that. And the only thing we can do is if a person makes a comment like that, on a website, for example, that attaches itself to the University of California, they can’t do that. But if they’re using some sort of vehicle in the marketplace like Snapchat, they can say an alarming range of really abhorrent things that is protected speech.

Well, let me ask you, and this is not a hypothetical. There were groups of protesters at the Feb. 26 [protest] chanting, “intifada, intifada,” essentially at Jewish students who were attending the event. Would that violate school policy?

CC: I don’t think so.
Anti-imperialist adult content creator exposes her support for Hamas
An adult content creator and vocal “anti-imperialist” has been exposed as a strident defender of terror group Hamas.

American Sally Buxbaum Hunt, who has described herself as a “work-from-home Service Coordinator helping people with developmental disabilities”, has also cast doubt on the atrocities of October 7.

Buxbaum Hunt’s inflammatory social media posts have been exposed by digital investigator GnasherJew.

In January, Buxbaum Hunt tweeted: “Zionists are lying about what happened on October 7. 'Israel' killed a large number of their own citizens, and they intentionally told the music festival to be extended because they knew of Hamas's plan.”

In November, she tweeted: “Israel has always held all power over Gaza, not Hamas. Hamas is an armed resistance group, and I, too, would take up arms if colonisers were stealing my family’s land and killing my family members & my entire community. Israel treats the native people like shit. #FreePalestine.”

Buxbaum Hunt, who is Jewish and uses the name “Sally Hates Capitalism…but loves [Palestine emoji]” on Twitter / X, uses quotation marks to refer to Israel.

In several posts she referred to Israel as “Nazi”. In one post she wrote: “'Israel' is a racist, Jewish supremacist, hyper-nationalist ethnostate. It's exactly like what the Nazis were trying to create”.

In a vast stream of videos uploaded to her YouTube channel, Buxbaum Hunt called the IDF a “genocidal cult” and said of 9/11: “That sh*t is actually not really that shocking when you think about the horrible sh*t that the United States has been doing all over the world”.


Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Japanese Abraham
There’s a bestselling book by the psychologist Robert Cialdini titled Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade. In one point in this largely non-Jewish book, we are shown a photograph from 1941 of two rabbis from Eastern Europe who found themselves in front of the Japanese foreign ministry in Tokyo. They were two of the leaders from a group of thousands of yeshiva students who had been given transit visas by the Japanese consul in Kovno, Lithuania. His name was Chiune Sugihara. The visas allowed the students to flee across Europe and Asia and land in Kobe, Japan. Two of them were my maternal grandparents, Rabbi Shmuel Dovid and Nachama Warshavchik.

Germany was, of course, then allied with Japan. Cialdini writes, “The Nazis had sent Josef Meisinger, a colonel in the Gestapo known as ‘the Butcher of Warsaw’ for ordering the execution of 16,000 Poles, to Tokyo. Upon his arrival in April 1941, Meisinger began pressing for a policy of brutality toward the Jews under Japan’s rule—a policy he stated he would gladly help design and enact. Uncertain at first of how to respond and wanting to hear all sides, high-ranking members of Japan’s military government called upon the Jewish refugee community to send two leaders to a meeting that would influence their future significantly.”

Two rabbis came down from Kobe to Tokyo, and, in what must have seemed a surreal moment, met with the Japanese generals. The rabbis received an utterly unanswerable question: Tell us, why do the Nazis hate you so much? One of the rabbis was frozen, terrified, but the second, Shimon Kalisch, known as the Amshinover Rebbe, remained calm. Cialdini writes:

Rabbi Kalisch’s knowledge of human nature had equipped him to deliver the most impressive persuasive communication I have encountered in over thirty years of studying the process: “Because,” he said calmly, “we are Asian, like you.”

The older rabbi’s response had a powerful effect on the Japanese officers. After a silence, they conferred among themselves and announced a recess. When they returned, the most senior military official rose and granted the reassurance the rabbis had hoped to bring home to their community: “Go back to your people. Tell them we will provide for their safety and peace. You have nothing to fear while in Japanese territory.” And so it was.

The photograph featured in Cialdini’s book is (at least in my Kindle version) incomplete, cut off; in the original, there is a Japanese gentleman standing to one side of Rabbi Kalisch. This man’s name is Setsuzo Kotsuji, and his tale is told in his extraordinary 1962 autobiography, From Tokyo To Jerusalem, which is entirely out of print. Kotsuji’s obscurity is an enormous shame, because the book is much more than a memoir. It is, in a certain sense, a religious classic, the story of a man raised in the religion of his ancestors who turned to the Jewish faith while still retaining a deep respect for his own Japanese past. These elements merged together to form one of the great heroic personalities of the 20th century.

Kotsuji was truly an Asian Jew: From Tokyo to Jerusalem is not published under the name Setsuzo Kotsuji, but rather Abraham Kotsuji, the name he would ultimately adopt in converting to Judaism. This is apt, as one of the mesmerizing themes of the book is how his own life mirrors that of Abraham, and how his heroism allows for the Abrahamic journeys of so many others to come to fruition. Discovering Kotsuji’s story has given me a better understanding of my own Abrahamic familial identity.
New book highlights America’s ‘Family Unfriendly’ culture — in contrast with Israel
While Tim Carney was working on his new book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be, he joined a Catholic pilgrimage to Israel and found himself in the country with the highest fertility rate of the world’s wealthiest nations.

Israel has a birthrate of three children per woman, according to the most recent data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. That’s almost twice the OECD average of 1.58 and significantly more than second-place country Saudi Arabia at 2.43 or the U.S., in 18th place with a birth rate of 1.66.

Carney, an American Enterprise Institute fellow and Washington Examiner columnist — but perhaps most importantly to his latest project, a father of six — extended his visit to Israel, seeking to find out Israel’s secret, and how it can be replicated. He spoke with secular parents at a public playground in Tel Aviv and Orthodox parents on the streets of Jerusalem about why they had kids and how they’re raising them.

As anyone sitting next to a parent on an El Al flight may have observed, it is perfectly natural for an Israeli to hand his or her baby to a stranger so he or she can use the restroom. It’s also quite common in Israel for a fourth grader to walk home from school without an adult and pick up a younger sibling from preschool on the way.

It’s phenomena like these that helped Carney reach his conclusion that culture, rather than policy or even religion, is behind Israel’s exceptional fecundity, and Carney decided to dedicate a chapter of his book to the Jewish state.

He spoke with Jewish Insider this month about his new book and his findings.
I ran the Jerusalem Marathon: Here's 4 reasons Israel will thrive
Everyone ran for somebody
Israel and its people are in pain. We’ve realized over the past five months that we’re like a big family. Even if we weren’t directly affected by the events in southern Israel on Oct. 7, or if we didn’t have to leave our homes in the North, or if our sons and daughters aren’t serving in the IDF, we’re all part of this conflict.

At the Jerusalem marathon, you could see this manifestation come to life. Everyone ran for someone, whether it was for the release of the hostages, for the soldiers who lost their lives protecting us, for the individuals who were brutally slaughtered by Hamas, or for the emergency responders who risked everything to save us.

The race was in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem belongs to us
The Jerusalem Winner Marathon is a breathtaking race through the streets of the world’s most significant city. It takes us from our ancient past to our present, running on the slippery ancient stones of the Old City and past the President’s Residence.

Each stride serves as a reminder that this land is deeply tied to the Jewish people; it’s a gift from God.

Following in the footsteps of our ancestors is a fantastic way to remember our identity, values, and purpose. It also reminds us of the importance of safeguarding Jerusalem, which we’re lucky to have as a united city today. We must cherish it, protect it, and make it our own – because it could be lost at any time.

JERUSALEM IS a city of hills. As someone who lives at the top of some of our city’s steepest and longest hills, I’m reminded each day that even if you conquer them today, they’ll be there to challenge you anew tomorrow.

Last Friday, I tackled the uphills one by one during the race and allowed the downhills to carry me.

I won. Not a specific place in the race, and not my best time. But I did PR (personal record): I successfully reaffirmed my and my country’s strengths. Our power is believing that tomorrow will be better. 




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

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