Tuesday, March 26, 2024

03/26 Links Pt2: UN Human Rights Council ‘promotes Jew-hatred, Hamas, atrocity denial’; Hostage Uriel Baruch murdered by Hamas

From Ian:

Lies of Hamas and antisemites bear fruit at UN
Like a house of cards, the artifice of lies built by Hamas and its supporters has begun to crumble.

A few weeks ago, statistician Abraham Wyner published a report in Tablet Magazine conclusively proving that Hamas is lying about the casualty figures in Gaza. The deaths reported by the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry rose in a ridiculously linear fashion on a day-by-day basis that is virtually impossible in a real war. In addition, given Hamas’s acknowledgment that at least 6,000 of its fighters have been killed, its claim that 70% of the casualties in Gaza have been women and children is impossible unless male civilians are being miraculously spared. The extent of this lie is apparent when the true casualty numbers for terrorists and combatants killed in Gaza are taken into account, over 13,000.

Yesterday, former Al Jazeera director Yasser Abu Hilala admitted that the accusations that IDF soldiers raped women during the recent operation at the al-Shifa Hospital were fabricated.

"It was revealed through Hamas investigations that the story of the rape of women in Shifa Hospital was fabricated," Hilala wrote, adding that "The woman who spoke about rape justified her exaggeration and incorrect talk by saying that the goal was to arouse the nation’s fervor and brotherhood!"

Anti-Israel forces have made up rape allegations against Israel whole-cloth in order to distract from and excuse the well-documented mass rapes committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7 and the reports that the hostages still held in Gaza face constant sexual assaults and abuse from their captors.

However, the same day that the rape allegations against Israel collapsed, the constant stream of lies against Israel bore fruit as the Biden Administration caved to the pressure from those who spread these lies and refused to use its veto power against a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire during the month of Ramadan.

This resolution is merely declarative and creates no legal obligations, but it will still make everything worse. Hamas will be further convinced that its strategy of intentionally causing the deaths of its own people and constantly lying to inflate the number of civilian deaths is working and should continue, and it will be encouraged to dig in its heels and refuse any deal to see the hostages released in exchange for a temporary ceasefire. It will be seen as further evidence of Israel’s wrongdoing by those around the world who support Hamas’s genocidal goals, giving a tailwind to the antisemites making life more dangerous for Jews everywhere.

Ironically, hours after this shameful betrayal at the UN, the American government stated that it knows the accusations of Israeli war crimes are lies. Addressing Israel’s compliance with an executive order signed by President Biden last month mandating that recipients of US military aid demonstrate that they are complying with international law, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that “We have not found them (the Israelis) to be in violation, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or the provision of humanitarian assistance.”
Western Guilt
The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz,” runs a bizarre quip ascribed to the Israeli psychiatrist Zvi Rex. To deconstruct it, consult Dr. Freud. “A convenient way to dispatch guilt,” he might expound, “is to project it onto your victim” — like a schoolyard bully who huffs that the fight started when the other guy hit back.

Guilt-swapping is precisely what Hamas’s cheerleaders around the world did even before Israel struck back after October 7. Hamas had tortured, raped, and murdered 1,200 Israelis. Instead of condolences, Israel reaped a global orgy of antisemitism, be it masked or overt, that also engulfed Jews everywhere, especially university students (demonstrating that higher education is no antidote for frenzy). It was a perfect reversal of cause and effect.

To plumb the Freudian mechanism, go back to postwar Germany, whose Nazi precursor had committed the crime of all crimes. After total defeat and “reeducation,” antisemitism was out. Democracy established strong roots, and philosemitism became the creed of the land. The government paid billions in restitution to the survivors of the Holocaust and the young state of Israel. At Yad Vashem, German officials from the president down would bow their head to the 6 million dead. The arms trade flourished; German-made U-boats are now one leg of Israel’s nuclear triad.

Yet the moral burden stuck, and so Schuldabwehr — “repelling guilt” — crept into contrition and atonement. By the first intifada, in 1987, Germans were telling themselves: “Israel is doing to the Palestinians what we did to the Jews.” “They are conducting a Vernichtungskrieg” — Nazispeak for a war of annihilation. “Gaza is like the Warsaw Ghetto.” “Haven’t the Jews learned from the past?” Auschwitz, then, was a kind of reform school.

Freud might muse: “Such parallels betray projection. Culpability continued to chafe, and, eventually, Germans sought relief by shifting it onto the victims.” Steeped in the Torah, Freud would add: “Three thousand years before I set up my couch, the Jews invented the scapegoat in Leviticus who ‘shall bear all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.’” But he would explain: “Such displacement, as I call it, spelled vast moral progress — no more human sacrifice to appease the Gods.”

There is no such advance in our days as we run through the third iteration of Jew-hatred.

The first chapter was written by Christianity. Jews were charged with killing God’s son, desecrating the Host, and committing ritual murder. A bitter Jewish joke makes the point. When a little girl was killed just before Passover, the shtetl’s Jews cowered in the shul awaiting an imminent massacre. Suddenly, the rabbi barges in, jubilating, “I have wonderful news. The girl was not Christian, but Jewish.”

The second chapter was authored by Hitler, who went from faith to race, fingering Jews as cosmic enemies of Germany and the world. Once, Jews poisoned the wells; now it is the bloodstream of the Aryans. They had to be quashed like super-deadly bugs.

Chapter 3 unfolds as we speak. “From the river to the sea,” a classic Palestinian refrain, sounds like a geographic reference, but its thrust is ethnic cleansing and extinction. Chanting this mantra, the crowds on Western campuses and squares haven’t read the 1988 charter of its leading exponent, Hamas, which in the name of Allah orders Muslims to kill Jews wherever they hide. Nor do the infuriated know the venom continually oozing from the language of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Tehran. “Israel remains a foreign body,” thundered Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah years ago, as if cribbing from Mein Kampf. Before the International Criminal Court, Israel stands accused of Nazi-like “genocide.” Hamas official Ghazi Hamad: “We must remove that country, because it constitutes a . . . catastrophe for the Arab and Islamic nation.” As for the October 7 massacre, we will do it “again and again.” And “everything is justified.”
Far Right and Far Left Converge — Against the Jews
An extremist distributes a flier about “Zionists infiltrating the media.” A political activist tweets, “Nothing is creepier than Zionism.” A pundit writes about “the dirty tactics of Zionist censorship.”

Can you tell which of these haters is coming from the political right, and which from the political left? The world of antisemitism has become so muddled that it’s almost impossible to tell one from the other.

Consider: One of these three haters was recently arrested for painting the slogan “White Power” on synagogues. One co-chaired the Women’s March on Washington. One is a former New York Times correspondent and speechwriter for Ralph Nader. Can you tell which one is which?

One of the three is a Presbyterian minister. One is a devout Muslim. One owns a Ku Klux Klan robe. Still can’t tell who’s who?

Although these three bigots come from very different places on the political and religious spectrums, they have managed to find something in common: hatred of Jews, thinly disguised as hatred of “Zionists.”

Among the most troubling phenomena of our time is the extent to which antisemitism has become interchangeable among individuals who hold starkly differing views on other issues, from abortion to immigration to civil rights. Yet they all hate Jews.

There is no simple explanation for this because there is no simple explanation for antisemitism. Some bigots hate Jews for religious reasons, some for political reasons. Some focus their ire on Jewish philanthropists, some focus on Jews in the media, some focus on the Jewish state.

And sometimes they focus their hate on each other. In the 1930s, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both violently persecuted their Jewish citizens, even as the two regimes went back and forth between being enemies and being allies. The Germans oppressed Jews and Judaism in the name of Aryan racial purity, the Soviets oppressed them in the name of working-class solidarity. Even when Hitler and Stalin hated each other, they never stopped hating Jews.

Leafing through the American Communist press in the 1930s is a ride on an intellectual roller-coaster. U.S. Communists dutifully followed the Soviet line, regularly and passionately denouncing Nazi Germany—until the Soviets signed a nonaggression pact with the Nazis in August 1939, at which point the American far left suddenly declared that the British, the French, and “the capitalist press” were the real enemy, to cite an editorial which appeared in that month’s issue of Young Communist Review. Two years later, Hitler tore up the pact and America’s Communists returned to being anti-Nazi. All the while, Jews and Judaism remained in the crosshairs of both Marxism and Nazism.


Caroline Glick: US gaslights Israel at the United Nations
The US fails to veto a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, then denies that anything has changed, and Donald Trump gives a less than comforting warning to the Jewish State.


UN report claims Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, call for arms embargo
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese delivered a report to the body’s Human Rights Council on Tuesday, claiming that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since Oct. 7 amounts to genocide and calling on countries to impose sanctions and an arms embargo immediately.

“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met,” she told the UN rights body in Geneva.

Israel, which did not attend the session, rejected her findings.

“Instead of seeking the truth, this Special Rapporteur tries to fit weak arguments to her distorted and obscene inversion of reality,” Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said, adding that its war was against Hamas and not Palestinian civilians.

An earlier draft of the report, available online, presents the supposed genocide as “driven by a genocidal logic integral to [Israel’s] settler-colonial project in Palestine,” comparing Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians to the US’s relationship with Native Americans and drawing on a highly controversial interpretation of Israeli history.

In the report, the UN special rapporteur says that genocide has always been “an inevitable part of the forming of Israel,” claiming that “practices leading to the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s non-Jewish population occurred in 1947–1949,” as well as in 1967. The report does not mention either of the wars fought during those respective periods.

The report addresses Israel’s evacuation notices and the creation of safe zones and humanitarian corridors in Gaza, alleging that “the sheer scale of evacuations amidst an intense bombing campaign and the haphazardly communicated safe zones system, along with extended communications blackouts, increased levels of panic, forced displacement, and mass killings.”

Albanese goes on to suggest that these measures were disguised instruments to corral Palestinian civilians, who were then targeted. “Simply put,” the report says, “‘safe areas’ were deliberately turned into areas of mass killing.” It is reasonable to infer, Albanese concludes, “that evacuation orders and safe zones have been used as genocidal tools to achieve ethnic cleansing.”


UN Human Rights Council ‘promotes Jew-hatred, Hamas, atrocity denial’
The Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) began two days of deliberations on Israel on Tuesday in what will almost certainly culminate in a series of condemnatory, albeit non-binding, resolutions.

“The world is upside down,” said Anne Herzberg, legal adviser at the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor organization, who addressed the council on Tuesday. “Israel just experienced its most horrific massacre and instead of being provided with comfort and support for the victims, we are experiencing an explosion of antisemitism and support for Hamas.

“The U.N. Human Rights Council is promoting antisemitism, pro-Hamas propaganda and engaging in atrocity denial,” Herzberg added.

The council convenes three times a year, in March, June and September, with each session organized around 10 agenda items, all but one phrased in general terms.

The perennial Agenda Item 7, titled the “Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories,” is the only country-specific item. It mandates discussion of Israel at every session and has turned these meetings into displays of anti-Israel bias.

This week, the Human Rights Council will discuss four reports on Israel issued by the U.N. and draft three to five resolutions that should pass next week.

The issues to be discussed include Israel’s activity in the Golan Heights as well as its civilian presence in Judea and Samaria. The council will also address a report submitted by Francesca Albanese, the U.N. “special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories,” and another general report submitted by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Albanese‘s report claims that she identified “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of …acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has been met.”

Herzberg said the council’s resolutions could have serious implications.

“In 2016, the HRC passed Resolution 31/36 which led to the creation in 2020 of the settlement blacklist,” she said, referring to a U.N. blacklist sanctioning companies suspected of operating in areas over the 1949 Armistice lines.
Special rapporteur report ‘brings shame’ to UN Human Rights
The Israeli mission to the United Nations in Geneva lambasted a U.N. official over the report “Anatomy of a Genocide,” which accuses Israel of carrying out crimes against humanity in its war against Hamas in Gaza.

“The very attempt to level the charge of genocide against Israel is an outrageous distortion of the Genocide Convention,” the Israeli mission stated.

“It is an attempt to empty the word ‘genocide’ of its unique force and special meaning and turn the convention itself into a tool of terrorists, who have total disdain for life and for the law, against those trying to defend against them,” it added.

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the Palestinian-controlled territories, has a checkered history, including antisemitic statements. She regularly lays blame at Israel’s feet for problems in the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Albanese presented her report, which accuses Israel of committing genocide as an “inherent part” of its founding and continued existence, to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday.

The special rapporteur’s report “brings shame to the Human Rights Council,” the Israeli mission stated. “It is clear by her previous statements, before and after the OCt. 7 massacre that, under the guise of the U.N., the special rapporteur continues her campaign of delegitimizing the very creation and existence of the state of Israel.”

The report focuses mainly on Israel’s counterterror operation against Hamas after the latter’s Oct. 7 massacre.

“Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a longstanding settler-colonial process of erasure,” Albanese wrote in the report.

“The ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all,” Albanese added. She used the word for “catastrophe” that Palestinians use for the events leading up to the creation of the modern-day State of Israel in 1948.

The report “began with the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide, and then tried to prove her distorted and politically-driven views with weak arguments and justifications,” the Israeli mission in Geneva stated.
UN attempts to silence the truth about "expert" Francesca Albanese & antisemitism
UN Human Rights Council meeting, Agenda Item 7, March 26, 2024

Professor Anne Bayefsky, Director of Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, and President of Human Rights Voices Ambassador Omar Zniber (Morocco), President of the the Human Rights Council Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on "the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory"


‘Politically Driven’: Controversial Top UN Official Claims Israel Committing ‘Genocide,’ Receives Backlash
The United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories has released a new report accusing Israel of carrying out “genocide” in Gaza, continuing a pattern of the UN official singling out the Jewish state for particularly harsh condemnation.

“By analyzing the patterns of violence and Israel’s policies in its onslaught on Gaza,” one can conclude “that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met,” reads Francesca Albanese’s 25-page report, titled “Anatomy of a Genocide.”

She cites Hamas statistics that claim 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, of which 70 percent are civilians.

However, independent analyses have concluded those statistics systematically undercount the number of men and Hamas terrorists killed. Israel claims it has killed more than 13,000 Hamas fighters.

The UN report argues Israel’s leaders have expressed genocidal intent toward the Palestinians. It quotes Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant describing Hamas terrorists as “human animals,” for example, but falsely claims he was talking about all Palestinians.

It also claims that genocide is inherent to “settler colonialism” and that it is the “peak” of a process that began at least in 1948, when the modern state of Israel was established, and was continued by Israel in 1967 — but does not mention the wars, instigated by Arab countries, in either of those years.
Denouncing anti-Israel views ‘at the highest level’ would risk our jobs, Jewish UN staffers say
Some 18 days before thousands of Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “demanded” that António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, “change the attitude of the organization’s institutions toward the State of Israel.”

Meeting with Guterres on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, Netanyahu added “that it was untenable that while major changes for the better were taking place in the entire world and in the Middle East, that the U.N. was unaffected and remained steadfast in its hostility to Israel,” per an Israeli readout.

Despite the global body’s long, documented history of antisemitism, Jewish U.N. employees who spoke anonymously to JNS said that their religious identities were not an issue before Oct. 7. Since Hamas’s terror attack, the current U.N. employees said, the United Nations has become a very uncomfortable place for Jews to work.

A longtime U.N. staffer, who works in development and does not have a last name that would typically be considered Jewish, told JNS that “you forget your nationality” when you join the world body. “If my name was, I don’t know, Goldstein or Rosenberg, they would maybe be different,” the employee said.

“You work as civil servants, which means that you are not here to defend the interests of your country,” the staffer said. “It’s the same for religion. When you join, they will never ask you which religion you are. It’s completely, completely secular.”

The employee, whose close network at work is aware of the person’s Jewish faith and familial connections to Israel, estimates that 10 other Jews also work in that particular U.N. agency.

After the Hamas attacks, the United Nations issued “a lot of reminders” telling employees to avoid taking sides or making statements on social media amid conflict, “particularly the conflict in Gaza,” the staffer said. “We are supposed to follow the values of the U.N.”

The staffer subsequently noticed colleagues posting about the plight of Gazans on social media, including on X and LinkedIn, with nary a word about the Israeli victims.
UN head, a Catholic, accused of artifice for fasting in Gazan solidarity
António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general who is Catholic, fasted during the Muslim month of Ramadan during a recent visit to Egypt in solidarity with Gazans.

“Ramadan is a time for spreading the values of compassion, community and peace,” Guterres said during a press conference at the Rafah border crossing on Saturday. “It is monstrous that after so much suffering over so many months, Palestinians in Gaza are marking Ramadan with Israeli bombs still falling, bullets still flying, artillery still pounding and humanitarian assistance still facing obstacle upon obstacle.”

“Fasting with you on Ramadan, I am deeply troubled to know so many people in Gaza will not be able to have a proper Iftar,” the U.N. head said. “I want Palestinians in Gaza to know: You are not alone.”

The Istanbul-based Türkiye newspaper noted that Guterres is “known for his deep respect for Muslim traditions.”

Guterres has been described as a “committed Catholic.” In December 2021, he received the Catholic Church’s Lamp of Peace award. “As a person of faith with a deep appreciation and respect for the mission of St. Francis, this award and ceremony are especially meaningful,” he said at the time.

On May 24, 2022, he delivered the commencement address at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J. “This is a Catholic university, and as a Catholic, I have always been guided by the parable of the talents,” he said in the address.


Hostage Uriel Baruch murdered by Hamas, his body held in Gaza, family confirms
The Tikva Forum for Families of Hostages announces the death of Uriel Baruch, who was taken hostage from the Supernova music festival on October 7.

His body is being held in Gaza, the Forum says.

He is survived by his wife Rachel and their two sons.

“Uriel was a happy and loved man, he was loved by everyone around him,” his family says in a statement released via the Tikva Forum.

His death brings the number of confirmed deaths of hostages in Gaza to 34.


The future of Israel-U.S. relations
Professor Emeritus at Harvard Law Alan Dershowitz speaks to i24NEWS on the state of the relationship with Israel and the United States, during day 172 of Israel's war with Hamas.


Intelligence Expert analyzes U.S. decision on UNSC Gaza ceasefire resolution
Intelligence and defense commentator Yossi Melman joins Laura Cellier to dissect the American decision not to veto the UNSC resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza


Trump to Israel Hayom: Only a fool would have not acted like Israel on Oct. 7
Israel, Iran, Biden, Harris, and the Jewish vote. In a no-holds-barred interview, former US President Donald Trump told Israel Hayom that he supports Israel's defensive war against Hamas and said he would have responded to the October 7 attack in a very similar way. He added that "what I saw October 7 was one of the saddest things I've ever seen," but says Israel should draw the fighting to a close. "You have to finish up your war. To finish it up. You gotta get it done. And, I am sure you will do that. And we gotta get to peace, we can't have this going on. And I will say, Israel has to be very careful, because you're losing a lot of the world, you're losing a lot of support, you have to finish up, you have to get the job done. And you have to get on to peace, to get on to a normal life for Israel, and for everybody else."

He noted that the dragging on of the war could hurt Israel because of the footage coming out of Gaza.

The exclusive and special interview with Israel Hayom took place over the past weekend at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida. It focused primarily on the war, President Joe Biden's handling of it, and the next steps that Trump believes should be taken.

Q: I want to present you with a question I think every world leader has to answer. How would you react if your children or grandchildren were kidnapped by Hamas and underwent the same atrocities many Israelis have experienced since Oct. 7?

"I would say I would act very much the same way as you did. You would have to be crazy not to. Only a fool would not do that. That was a horrible attack."

Q: We have seen a major rise in antisemitic attacks since Oct. 7. What are you going to do about it?

"Well, that's because you fought back. And I think Israel made a very big mistake. I wanted to call [Israel] and say don't do it. These photos and shots. I mean, moving shots of bombs being dropped into buildings in Gaza. And I said, Oh, that's a terrible portrait. It's a very bad picture for the world. The world is seeing this…every night, I would watch buildings pour down on people. It would say it was given by the Defense Ministry, and said whoever's providing that that's a bad image."

Q: But terrorists are hiding in those buildings.

"Go and do what you have to do. But you don't do that. And I think that's one of the reasons that there has been a lot of kickback. If people didn't see that, every single night I'd watch and every single one of those... And I think Israel wanted to show that it's tough, but sometimes you shouldn't be doing that. "

Q: Senator Chuck Schumer, just two weeks ago, called Israelis to go to the polls and change the government. And on top of that, we see, I would say daily interference by the administration. What do you think about what Schumer said about Biden's support, or lack thereof, for Israel?

"I think it's a terrible thing to do, because it takes all of your momentum away, because they watch, and they watch the government, they watch the people what's going on. And it shows great division in the United States, you have to have support. And you don't have the support you used to have. Some 15 years ago, Israel had the strongest lobby. If you were a politician, you couldn't say anything bad about Israel, that would be like the end of your political career. Today, it's almost the opposite. I've never seen, you have AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) plus three, these lunatics, frankly. But you have AOC plus three plus plenty of others. And all they do is talk badly about Israel, and they hate Israel, and they hate the Jewish people. And they are open about it. Take a look at some of these, Rashida Tlaib, what she says the way she talks, and they truly hate the Jewish people. And 15 years ago, that would have been unthinkable to be doing that. So Israel has to get, Israel has to get better with the promotional and with the public relations, because right now they're really, they're being hurt very badly. I think in a public relations sense."
Trump interview with Israel Hayom reverberates around the world
Media outlets around the world quoted former President Donald Trump's interview with Israel Hayom on Monday, noting that he called on Israel to end the war in the Gaza Strip.

"The New York Times" ran an above-the-fold article on its homepage with the headline "Trump Urges Israel to 'Finish Up Your War."

ABC News referred to Trump's statements and claimed that Trump appears to blame Israel for antisemitism, says Israel 'made a very big mistake' and is 'losing a lot of support.'

The remarks refer to the former president's statement that the wave of antisemitism experienced in the wake of the Oct. 7 war because "you (Israel) are fighting back."

The Iranian media also covered the former president's statements surrounding the fighting in the Gaza Strip. The Iranian news agency "Nournews", affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, published a reference to the remarks in which it was written: "The former President of the United States, the greatest supporter of Israeli crimes, acknowledges that the Zionist regime is losing its international support for the war of extermination it is waging in the Gaza Strip."
Piers Morgan vs Ben Shapiro | On Israel-Hamas, Candace Owens And More
Piers Morgan Uncensored is joined by Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro for further discussion on the Israel-Hamas conflict, his thoughts on Rabbi Shmuley, what he thinks of Donald Trump, Joe Biden and the US elections, America's Fentanyl problem and more.

Plus, Piers Morgan asks Ben the real reason Candace Owens left the Daily Wire and whether her comments are perceived there as antisemitic.

Divided States of Biden is on Daily Wire +

00:00 - Introduction
00:50 - Trump’s comments on Israel
02:34 - Does Ben feel comfortable with a full assault on Rafah?
03:50 - The Biden administration pulling back on support for Israel
09:00 - Candace Owens’ departure from Daily Wire
11:00 - Rabbi Shmuley's 'untethered behaviour'
13:30 - The Moscow terror attack
15:00 - Conspiracy theorists and the internet
17:00 - Don Lemon’s interview with Elon Musk
17:50 - Baltimore Bridge incident
19:30 - America’s fentanyl problem and the border
22:58 - "Why do you not feel as strongly about people being killed by guns?"
24:55 - “The election is a referendum on Joe Biden”


Brendan O'Neill: Candace Owens and the batsh*t right
We need to talk about the batshit right. We all know woke leftists have lost the plot but some of their ‘conservative’ haters are apparently determined to outdo them. Owens isn’t only fever-dreaming about gangs of Jews – she also recently staked her ‘entire professional reputation’ on the crackpot theory that Emmanuel Macron’s wife, Brigitte, is secretly a fella. The kind of people who used to go to Bedlam now just go online. On one side we have a pink-haired army telling us men can literally become women, and on the other side alt-right fruitcakes telling us a woman is literally a man. Nurse!

Indeed, it is striking how, for all her years of posturing against woke, Ms Owens has imbibed woke’s worst traits. The conspiracism. The honking great oppression complex. (Owens’ neurotic insistence that ‘powerful forces’ are out to get her is reminiscent of Meghan Markle’s wailing about ‘The Firm’ trying to ruin her life.) And, most tellingly, the wariness of You Know Who. Owens seems to agree with her ostensible arch-enemies in right-on Gen Z that Jews are a ‘class of oppressors’. How grimly fascinating that two movements that spent the past decade staging irritating shouting matches have now all but joined forces to say: ‘How about those Jews, though.’

That’s the thing about Owens’ dabbling in anti-Jewish conspiracy theory. It won’t only win approval from freaks on the right, like fascist midget Nick Fuentes and suspect Israel-hater Jackson Hinkle. No, some on the ‘pro-Palestine’ left will be privately nodding along, too. Though I’m sure they would prefer it if she used the word ‘Zionist’ rather than ‘Jew’. That’s what they do. Where the cranky right bemoans the stranglehold of the Jews over the media, the woke left says it’s Zionists who have an outsized influence on our public life. Where Owens cries over the ‘DC Jew[s]’ trying to silence her, the fashionably Israelophobic accuse the ‘Zionist Lobby’ of doing the same to them. We all know what ‘Zionist’ means, though. I guess that’s one plus for Owens’ brand of post-7 October lunacy – it’s more honest than the left’s. It says the thing the left is still a little too clever to say: Jew.

This is the horseshoe of the new cultural neurosis. The woke left and cranky right arriving at the same point of madness. A temporary cessation in their narcissism of small differences as both sides agree there’s a new oppressor class and its name begins with J. Or Z. One or the other. A shared politics of paranoia, victimhood and racial thinking led them here, to the cesspit of anti-Semitic thinking. It is a timely, ugly reminder that the conspiratorial imagination always ends up indicting – let’s say it – the Jews.
JCPA: The Psychology of Palestinian Distortions and Deceptions: Why Israel Is Losing International Sympathy
Global opinion has moved from outrage at Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, to criticism of Israel just months later. How? A Palestinian strategy manipulates perception to distort and present an alternate reality.

While the Hamas of Oct. 7 was a vicious terror organization, the passage of time has shifted perception to "innocent Palestinians" who are "victims," consistent with the ongoing Palestinian chronicle of victimization used as a central motif in their national narrative.

Facts and accurate information will not always effectively counter misinformation based on previous perceptions created by Palestinian sources. The "primacy effect," where first impressions persist, plays a psychological role.

Palestinians distort reality by providing material for perceptions that feed a cognitive set that promotes favoring perceived victims who are presented as suffering, with images of casualties, poor housing conditions, lack of food, and emotional distress.

Western thinking that elicits sympathy for victims and absolves them of responsibility feeds into the deception strategy of Palestinian terror.

While contextual reality is the basis for accurate information, Palestinians distort this by using civilians as psychological human shields in a cognitive war.

Countering with the "truth" is likely ineffective unless the "truth" is framed in a context that appeals to the same cognitive framework of "fairness" and victim appeal that Palestinians have been using.

While sterile "counter-narratives" are ineffective, research suggests that adding emotive imagery and personalization can help change perceptions and reality.
The black, the blue and the Jews
Not long after King’s assassination, African-Americans came to resent the perceived sanctimony of Jewish paternalism; Jews who had placed their bodies on the line sensed ingratitude.

Eventually, Black Power led to Jewish exclusion. Malcolm X shattered the moral foundations of King’s passive nonviolent resistance with high-octane militancy. A once peaceful movement morphed into urban riots.

Over the ensuing decades, Jewish economic success robbed Jews of their underdog, underclass status. African-Americans made great progress, too, but powerful forces found it politically expedient to remain stuck in the grievances of 1960s.

Meanwhile, Israel and the memory of the Holocaust became ethnic priorities for Jews that didn’t align with an African-American agenda. Palestinians were anointed as successors to the civil rights struggle, even though their methods, which depended on terrorism, had nothing in common with the marches and sit-ins perfected by King. And the Holocaust seemed like special pleading for a people who were doing just fine.

These tensions reached a crescendo with the death of George Floyd, the rise of Black Lives Matter and Israel’s war in Gaza. Suddenly, it became fashionably convenient to forget the Jewish contribution to civil rights—if it was remembered at all. Allegations of apartheid and genocide, inveighed against Israel, went unrebutted. African-Americans were color-blind to the Instagram postings of Ethiopian Israelis fighting for the Israel Defense Forces, or a black former Miss Israel calling for the return of the hostages.

Nothing was allowed to exonerate the Jewish state.

That’s why so many within the Congressional Black Caucus and the Squad are in lockstep when it comes to condemning Israel. And it’s what makes African-American leaders who support Israel, like Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Richie Torres (D-N.Y.), exceptional outliers.

With rising incitement against Jews globally, American Jews are feeling betrayed by former allies—those who are outspokenly antisemitic and those who remain silent. Polarization of this magnitude has caused Jews to remain silent, too.

That’s understandable. The acronyms BLM, BDS, DEI and CRT are unassailable in this political culture. Faced with such a winning combination of race cards, Jews are likely to fold.
Can movies about the Holocaust act as a deterrent to antisemitism
As any serious student of Jewish history knows, the Holocaust was the culmination of a centuries-old vilification of the Jewish people. It was a systematically planned, sustained campaign of mass murder, in no way comparable to Israel’s war against Hamas. The stated intention of Hamas, a murderous death cult, is the destruction of Israel and the very genocide of which Israel, bizarrely, now stands accused. Glazer’s conclusion that Israel has ‘hijacked’ the Holocaust, announced during his moment in the limelight, has simply exposed a flaw in his judgment.

I have not seen “The Zone of Interest”, nor do I intend to. Watching it is apparently a deeply disturbing experience. Although the audience is spared direct exposure to barbaric acts, hinted at only by background effects such as smoke from the crematoria and screams emanating from the gas chambers, the overall effect of juxtapositioning the Commandant’s family life alongside the horrors of life and death in the extermination camp is said to be gut-wrenching. The movie is acclaimed as a magnificent artistic achievement, yet in my book the person who created it has now proved that artistic talent and moral judgment run on separate tracks through the mind and that there is no correlation between them.

It is human nature to dwell morbidly on horrific experiences. Movies about the Holocaust capitalise on this foible. They educate, after a fashion, those who prefer to acquire their historical knowledge the easy way, without recourse to reading, but as a medium for deepening understanding, they fail miserably. An undesirable side effect of the genre is that it strengthens the ‘Never Again’ mindset, without signposting how this might be achieved. It is sheer entertainment, designed to horrify without enlightening.

Those who file soberly out of the cinemas after seeing a Holocaust movie are likely to have had their pre-existing assumptions reinforced. Most viewers will have been appalled by yet another example of man’s inhumanity to man, which was presumably the short-sighted intention of the maker of “The Zone of Interest”. The perception of Jews as eternal victims will have been underlined, while prejudice against Israel will continue to exist unabated.
Steven Spielberg: 'Machinery of extremism' is used on campuses
Steven Spielberg warned that “the machinery of extremism is being used on college campuses” and lamented those killed in Israel and Gaza while being honored for his Holocaust remembrance work at the University of Southern California.

The renowned Jewish filmmaker spoke at a ceremony Monday afternoon in which USC bestowed its prestigious University Medallion on the 56,000 Holocaust survivors who have provided testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation, which Spielberg founded three decades ago. Thirty of the survivors were present at the ceremony. The award’s text also says the school is “immensely grateful” to Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw.

In his speech, Spielberg lamented polling showing high rates of antisemitism on college campuses. He also condemned other forms of hatred, including anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Sikh discrimination.

“We see every day how the machinery of extremism is being used on college campuses,“ Spielberg said. Moments later, he said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And I am increasingly alarmed that we may be condemned to repeat history, to once again have to fight for the very right to be Jewish.”

He added, “The creation of the other, and the dehumanization of any group based on their differences, is the foundation of fascism.”
A Conservative Thought Experiment on a Liberal College Campus
A few days after the attack, Hersh arrives to class visibly disheveled. Most people in his community are in shock at the scale of violence and death perpetrated against Israeli civilians. Hersh says he hasn’t slept and didn’t shave. He keeps his hat on throughout the entire class because he forgets he’s wearing it.

Continuing our exploration of rights and rules, today he wants to talk about an email sent by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) celebrating the Hamas attack for its “creativity” in its attempt to “take back stolen land,” while mourning the loss of hundreds of Palestinian martyrs “fighting to liberate themselves and their land.”

Hersh tells the class, “We have a campus organization embracing and celebrating jihadi violence, murder, and rape against civilians, and I wanted to give space in case there was a member of SJP who’s here and wants to share some thoughts about whether we are okay with this campus organization, whether this amounts to hate speech, whether this amounts to our community norms.”

The same Black student in the front row who raised a hand the other day does so again. “For 75 years, Israel has been doing the same thing and nobody cared. So why do we care now? Did we suddenly care about women and children being raped and killed? I didn’t realize we had.” He begins to clap to emphasize each word: “It’s only when white people are raped and killed, but we don’t care when people of color are raped and killed.”

“Sorry,” Hersh says, “who are the white people in this story? Most Jews are not white in Israel.”

The student pauses, confused. “But they’re associated with whiteness,” he finally says. “They’re considered white in the United States.”

“Are you talking about skin tone here?” Hersh asks him. “Is an Ethiopian Jew in Israel or America, is that person white? Or a refugee from Yemen or Morocco?”

“Race is really complicated because of the history of America,” the student falters, “but it’s more of a class that kind of signifies superiority. As long as you are viewed as superior to another group of people, in a sense, you are being viewed as white.”

Hersh redirects: “I’m trying to understand what the acceptable boundaries are for the community. Are we okay having jihad supporters, ISIS, KKK, on campus? If they threaten me and all of the Jewish students on campus, what should we do?”

He points out that many of the students in class were not comfortable restricting the speech of the pro-choice protesters on campus—now he wants to know if these students would restrict the expression of a far-left “group on campus wishing death to civilians.”

One student says he would. “[SJP] should have unilaterally and without question condemned what happened, and they didn’t,” the student says. “And for that reason, SJP should lose its club status because they’re supporting a terrorist group.”

That sends the student in the front row into a rage. He expresses his view that by oppressing the Palestinians, Israel forced Hamas to use violence and that righting systemic wrongs, in this case, justifies that violence. His voice is shaking and raw. “Soldiers in Jewish society have been raping and killing Palestinian children and women,” he says, adding that he believes no one has been held responsible. Now that the roles are reversed, we’re supposed to care?

Most students in the room are stunned into silence. Hersh suggests that the student come to office hours with credible documentation that supports his statement about Israeli soldiers. The student never follows up.
‘London most antisemitic city in Western Europe’
Last month, Chikli he slammed British Foreign Minister David Cameron, comparing his suggestion that the UK could recognise a Palestinian state to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler prior to the outbreak of WWII.

The phenomenon of anti-Semitism in the UK began even before the war in Gaza, the minister noted.

A report from the ministry shows that in 2023, 4,103 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the UK, a 147% increase compared to 2022. – A dramatic increase in London, with 2,140 incidents (52% of the total).
– 66% of incidents were recorded after October 7, with a 589% increase compared to the previous year.
– 45% of the incidents in 2023 occurred in the US and 39% in Europe, with a 33% increase in violent incidents.
– 16% of the violent incidents were recorded in the UK, many following the ‘Iron Swords’ war.
– Social media platforms continue to spread antisemitic content, with a 1,200% increase in hostile posts.
– The UK is among the top 10 countries for online antisemitic discourse.
– Nearly half of British Jews are considering leaving the country due to the documented antisemitism.
– 60% of British Jews experienced or know someone who experienced an antisemitic incident since the war started.
– Large pro-Palestinian protests were recorded in the UK, with hostile calls against Jews and Israelis.
Kremlin says ‘Zelensky is a peculiar kind of Jew that supports ISIS
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a “peculiar kind of Jew,” the Kremlin said on Tuesday, attempting to explain its assertion that he could be linked to Friday's Islamist attack in Moscow.

“Well, there is a peculiar kind of Jew over there,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to AFP.

“A Jew who in many ways shows sympathy and inclination to the nationalist spirit that has permeated the leadership of the Kyiv regime,” he added.

It's not the first antisemitic comment regarding Zelenskyy to come out of Russia, which has painted Ukraine as a "Nazi" regime.

In Sept. 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Russian television that “Western masters...put a person at the head of modern Ukraine, an ethnic Jew, with Jewish roots, with Jewish origins” in order to cover up “the anti-human essence that is the foundation...of the modern Ukrainian state” and “the glorification of Nazism.”

In April 2023, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukrainian leaders of having “introduced Nazi practice and theory without any concealment. Openly, they organized in the center of Kyiv and other cities exuberant torch-bearing marches with SS division banners upheld.”

There was no evidence supporting such claims, reported German broadcaster Deutsche Welle at the time.
Dem Rep. Jahana Hayes Stands by Letter She Wrote Praising Hamas-Friendly Group CAIR
Connecticut congresswoman Jahana Hayes (D.) is defending a letter she wrote praising the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic advocacy group whose leader said he was "happy to see" Hamas kill Jews on Oct. 7. The group does valuable work "to educate the community about anti-Muslim hate," Hayes said.

On Sunday, Hayes touted an endorsement she received from the Jewish Democratic Council of America, saying, "My work on behalf of my Jewish constituents speaks for itself." When a strategist for her Republican opponent responded by noting Hayes's praise for CAIR, the congresswoman called the criticism a "lie" and stood by a letter she wrote to the group in 2019. In her letter, Hayes said she "deeply appreciate[s] the support of this distinguished organization."

"My letter to CT CAIR was in recognition of their work to educate the community about anti-Muslim hate," Hayes wrote in a Sunday social media post. "It is literally my job to meet with my constituents…even my Muslim constituents. Not letting you lie about me this time around." v Hayes's defense of CAIR puts her at odds with her party's leader, President Joe Biden. In November, CAIR executive director Nihad Awad said he was "happy to see" Gazans "break the siege" on Oct. 7. The Biden White House disavowed CAIR in response, with a spokesman saying Biden "condemn[s] these shocking, antisemitic statements in the strongest terms."

Neither Hayes nor CAIR responded to requests for comment.
Jamaal Bowman Called Reports of Hamas Rapes 'Propaganda'
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.) in November dismissed reports of Hamas terrorists raping Israelis during the Oct. 7 attacks as "propaganda," according to a video uncovered by Politico. He backtracked from the remarks after the outlet reached out for comment on Thursday.

"There was propaganda used in the beginning of the siege. There’s still no evidence of beheaded babies or raped women. But they still keep using that lie [for] propaganda," Bowman said at a Nov. 17 pro-Palestinian rally, according to Politico reporter Daniel Lippman on Tuesday, who found a TikTok video showing the rally.

Bowman in a Thursday statement walked back his dismissal of Israel’s rape allegations against Hamas. "The U.N. confirmed that Hamas committed rape and sexual violence, a reprehensible fact that I condemn entirely," Bowman said, referring to a United Nations report on March 4 confirming Hamas’s sexual violence. The New York Democrat had earlier on Thursday declined to address his November remarks when asked by Politico in person.

In the U.N. report, Pramila Patten, the organization’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, wrote, "There are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped."

The U.N. team also reported evidence of similar sexual crimes against Israeli hostages after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, noting there is "clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment has been committed against hostages."


Bowman reverses after calling reports of Oct. 7 sexual assaults in Israel ‘propaganda’
Asked about those remarks on Thursday outside the House floor, Bowman declined to talk about them on the record.

“I’m focused on my votes and other things. I’m not talking,” he said. When asked if he still doubted those claims, he added: “I’m not talking about that now. My team will get back to you.”

In a statement after his brief interview with POLITICO, Bowman contradicted his previous remarks. He and his team did not deny that he made them. The “propaganda” comment was one of several comments he’s had to walk back on in recent months, including raising conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“As I said at this rally, what Hamas did on October 7th is a war crime and they must release all the hostages,” he said. “The UN confirmed that Hamas committed rape and sexual violence, a reprehensible fact that I condemn entirely. I also voted yes on Resolution 966, which officially condemns the rape and sexual violence committed by Hamas. So let me be clear, and ensure my words are not twisted: I always stand against sexual violence in all forms and stand for peace for all.”


Guardian's deploys Tony Kushner to, 'as-a-Jew', vilify Israel
A Guardian article by Catherine Shoard (“‘Unimpeachable, irrefutable’: US playwright Tony Kushner praises Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars speech”, March 21) is another illustration of the outlet’s preference for ‘As-A-Jews‘, those who cite their ethnic identity on order to demonise Israel and slander their own people.

“AsAJews get their name”, wrote Eli Lake in a recent piece in Commentary, “because they are addicted to that very phrase. We’ve heard it for years. As a Jew, I don’t think AIPAC should dominate American foreign policy. As a Jew, I stand against the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.”.

Shoard focuses on public reaction to a speech at the Oscars by director Jonathan Glazer, who’s Jewish, which he gave after receiving the award for best foreign language film, The Zone of Interest. He said he hoped his movie, which depicts the domestic lives of Rudolph and Hedwig Höss just outside of Auschwitz, where he was camp commandant, “shows where dehumanisation leads, at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present.”

Glazer’s acceptance speech continued:
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 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanisation – how do we resist?”

Glazer speech – denounced by over 1,000 Hollywood actors, producers, writers and directors – cynically used his Holocaust film to demonise the Jewish state, rather than Hamas, the group whose barbarous antisemitic rampage on Oct. 7 was clearly most redolent of the evil perpetrated by the Nazis. In complaining that his “Jewishness and the Holocaust” have been “hijacked by an [Israeli] occupation which has led to conflict”, he not only erased Israel’s 2005 Gaza withdrawal, but seemed to suggest that the (non-existent) ‘occupation’ of Gaza triggered the Oct. 7 massacre. It also elided the Palestinian terror and antisemitism at the root cause of the conflict.

While the Guardian article does mention the Hollywood letter criticizing Glazer, it mainly focuses on renowned Jewish playwright Tony Kushner. and comments he made about the Glazer speech in a Haaretz podcast interview:
Simon Fraser University Student Newspaper Article Lazily Repeats Anti-Israel Talking Points
On March 19, The Peak, a student newspaper at Simon Fraser University, published an article entitled: “Israelism documents shifting tides of Jews against Israel’s nightmarish occupation”. It discusses the film, “Israelism” that reports about how “two American Jews raised to ‘unconditionally love Israel’ flipped its façade to lay bare the horrors of the occupation.”

The article, written by Petra Chase, the newspaper’s arts & culture editor, reported on a recent panel discussion at SFU discussing the film, which featured three anti-Israel Jews: author Naomi Klein, activist Simone ZImmerman, and physician Gabor Maté.

Chase’s article repeated the trio’s accusations of Palestinian genocide, confining Palestinians to the largest open air prison and wrote that “Israel’s sadistic war crimes like bombing hospitals and preventing life-sustaining aid from entering Gaza reveal the sheer level of destruction that continues to be treated as permissible when inflicted by a western-backed entity.”

Chase’s article, rather than covering an event which took place on campus, is a mindless regurgitation of the talking point produced by the speakers.


Damage Done: How Al Jazeera’s Fake News Harmed Israel’s Reputation In Less Than 24 Hours
The allegation of rape by IDF soldiers in Al-Shifa Hospital is not the first lie about Israel and the IDF to be spread since Hamas’ October 7 terror attack and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza.

However, in this case, it was not spread by a lone social media activist or a fringe news source but by a news organization that enjoys a veneer of respectability among both news consumers and media outlets around the world.

Despite it serving as an official mouthpiece of the authoritarian Qatari regime and accused of echoing Hamas talking points, Al Jazeera is viewed as a trusted source of information about Israel and the Palestinians during the current conflict as well as over the past several years.

In 2022, HonestReporting uncovered that Al Jazeera had been cited by 16 “top-tier news outlets” 116 times in Israel-related news stories, with most never mentioning the Qatari media organization’s inherent bias.

Also, if not for Hamas deciding that the libel about rapes in Al-Shifa Hospital was not in its best interest and issuing a denial of the allegations, it is highly likely that Al Jazeera would have continued to run with this fabrication as a trusted news story.

In this age of the 24-hour news cycle and instant access to news from around the world, Al Jazeera is serving as a valuable tool in Hamas’ propaganda war, spreading misinformation and sullying Israel’s image around the world at record speeds.

Al Jazeera’s malign influence on the views of social media users is concerning. For mainstream media outlets to rely on it as a source for Israel-related stories is downright journalistic malpractice.


PMW: Americans are turning against Jews because they are hurting the US economy, says PA TV commentator
One of the fundamental messages of Palestinian Authority Antisemitism is that Jews are justifiably hated around the world because of the danger they pose to all societies in which they have lived. Last year, Mahmoud Abbas said that the Europeans and even:
“Hitler… fought the Jews because they worked based on usury and money. In other words, they caused ruin in his opinion, and therefore he hated them.”

[Official PA TV, Aug. 24, 2023]

The PA is now also promoting the message that Americans are beginning to hate American Jews because of the damage they are doing to the economy:
Palestinian political commentator Kamal Zakarneh: “The more serious question being posed to the American administration by the American people is: Why do the Jews control the American economy and money in the US? Why do they receive preferential treatment, are allowed things forbidden to others, and control all the routes of economy in the US? There is a popular American awakening against the Jews’ influence in America and against the transfer of the [American] tax money to the occupation (i.e., Israel), which doesn’t even need it and uses it in ways that are illegitimate from their perspective.”

[Official PA TV, March 4, 2024]

The PA has been disseminating this classic antisemitic trope for years and now is extending it to the American setting.

This is not the first time that PMW has exposed Zakarneh’s viciously antisemitic comments and how he presents Jews as a danger to the West. He recently explained Western support of Israel as a self-preservation action by the West to prevent the Jews, whom he defined as "human waste," from moving to Europe and America:


New Study Highlights How Hamas Destroyed Gaza’s Economy
The economy of the Gaza Strip has been ravaged by the Hamas terror group, whose years-long rule over the Palestinian enclave has devastated the lives of the local population independent of Israeli military operations, according to a new study.

The Kohelet Policy Forum, an Israeli think tank, released a new report showing the detrimental impact that Hamas has had on the livelihoods of Palestinians in Gaza. According to the study — titled “The Palestinian Economy and Palestinian Workers on the Eve of the Iron Swords War” — gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in Gaza was roughly the same as that in the West Bank in 2005 at $17,700, right before Israel fully withdrew all its soldiers and civilian settlers from Gaza. Once the withdrawal occurred, however, GDP per capita dropped drastically, falling to $5,500, or only about 30 percent of GDP in the West Bank.

The numbers since then have only gotten worse in Gaza, where the unemployment rate has skyrocketed, reaching well above even the high rate in the West Bank.

For the 25-34 age range, for example, the unemployment rate for Palestinians in the West Bank is 10 percent. In Gaza, the figure stands at 46 percent.

In the 35-44 and 45-54 age ranges, according to the study, Palestinians in the West Bank have an unemployment rate at around 6 percent, while in Gaza it is more than 20 percent.

For women in Gaza, unemployment across age groups sits around 25 percent on average.
UNRWA textbooks were pivotal in radicalizing generations of Gazans — watchdog
A map of the Middle East in a geography book makes no mention of the State of Israel, showing “Palestine” in its place; a history book narrates a 1968 battle between the Israeli army, the Jordanians and Palestinian fedayeen, extolling the latter’s courage in wearing explosive belts, and praising the “image of a burnt Zionist soldier”; a chemistry book asks students to analyze the type of chemicals contained in phosphorous bombs allegedly dropped by Israel; an Islamic studies book describes the goals of jihad as “terrorizing the enemy” and “achieving martyrdom.”

These are examples from textbooks used in schools in Gaza run by the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency UNRWA), as highlighted in a recent report compiled by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se). The organization, based in the UK and Israel, has since the late 1990s monitored school curricula around the world, with a particular focus on the Middle East.

For years, IMPACT-se has been sounding the alarm over what it says is anti-Israel incitement contained in Palestinian textbooks, including the systematic erasure of Israel’s existence and the glorification of violent jihad and martyrdom.

“The cooperation between UNRWA and Hamas is absolutely undeniable,” said Marcus Sheff, CEO of IMPACT-se, “both in educating the terrorists that perpetrated the October 7 atrocities, and in being part, as we discovered afterwards, of the terror infrastructure in its schools and in its hospitals.”

Israel has said it has evidence that at least 12 UNRWA employees took “active part” in the October 7 massacres, that at least 30 more “assisted,” and that around 1,500 of the agency’s employees in Gaza (some 10 percent) have active ties to terror groups.

“The end result of that radicalization is that among the thousands who went over the border on October 7 and committed acts of murder, rape and abduction, it is statistically probable that the majority went to UNRWA’s schools,” Sheff said. “The UNRWA curriculum is what they were brought up on, and it teaches about jihad and martyrdom being the most important meanings of life, and that Jews are liars and frauds.”


PreOccupiedTerritory: Group Violently Destabilizes Host Countries, Region, Wonders Why No One Wants Them (satire)
Members of a population notorious for sowing chaos and civil strife wherever its national movement plants its headquarters voiced bewilderment again today that amid the current war, other nations in the area refuse to accept them even as temporary refugees.

Palestinians expressed their wonder on Tuesday that despite the saturation of media with the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, none of the neighboring Arab countries have offered to take in Palestinians fleeing the carnage, despite the only drawback to having large numbers of Palestinians within one’s borders, history indicates, being the destabilizing effect it produces, resulting in civil war, terrorism, and sectarian clashes.

“Black September was fifty years ago,” complained a displaced resident of the northern Gaza Strip, now in Rafah, referring to an attempted coup d’état in Jordan by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which took up residence in Lebanon, feeding tensions there that soon erupted in a civil war from which the country has never recovered.

“That was such a long time ago – can’t they just let go?” he continued, pondering why those host countries would remain suspicious after all this time of a movement based entirely on generations-old grudges and addressing those grievances through violence.

The one Arab country that borders the Gaza Strip, Egypt, has maintained steadfast refusal to accept Gazans fleeing the Hamas-Israel war, even beefing up its border defenses since October 7. The Sisi regime argues that accepting refugees would amount to facilitating ethnic cleansing, a rationale that has never applied to any conflict not involving Israel.


12 IRGC members killed in ‘unknown aerial bombardment’ in Syria
At least 12 Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members, including a top commander, were killed in a strike on Syria overnight Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Tuesday.

The U.K.-based war monitor said that the “unknown aerial bombardment” had targeted IRGC-affiliated militia sites in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate of eastern Syria.

Local Syrian media reported that the commander of IRGC-affiliated forces in eastern Syria, known as “al-Haj Askar,” was seriously wounded in one of the strikes, while other reports indicated he was killed. A Hezbollah commander, called “Haj Hassan,” was moderately wounded, according to the Deir Ezzor 24 Network, which attributed the attacks to “American warplanes.”

The local Sham FM radio stated that a “U.S. aggression” had targeted several points in the cities of Deir ez-Zor, al-Mayadeen and al-Bukamal.

According to SOHR, 12 non-Syrian IRGC members were killed, along with one Syrian national. In addition, 36 were wounded, including 26 belonging to Iran-backed militias.


South African delegation on solidarity visit in Israel
Mari Sukers, African Christian Democratic party member of the South African Parliament and Bafana Modise, South African radio personality speak to i24NEWS about their solidarity visit in Israel.




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