Wednesday, April 10, 2024

04/10 Links Pt2: Will the world admit it was wrong?; From Stalin to Hamas: The Return of the Left that Doesn’t Learn?

From Ian:

Phyllis Chesler: Will the world admit it was wrong?
The dense fog of war will clear after Israel has finally destroyed every last Hamas tunnel loaded with weaponry and the fact-based truth about Hamas and Iran’s war against Israel becomes transparent. When that happens, I wonder about those people who believe that Israel deserved Oct. 7 because they have swallowed the lie that Israel is not only an “oppressor, apartheid entity” but a nation that thirsted for “revenge” and allegedly went on to deliberately target women and children, cause famine and commit a “genocide”? Will they finally admit they were wrong?

I doubt it. They are unlikely to accept that the crimes attributed to Israel are Hamas and Iran’s crimes. Nor that diabolic paranoids and indoctrinated haters are essentially confessing their own crimes when they project them onto their victims.

People may always refuse to understand that accidents happen in war and most other countries—Muslim armies, American armies, British armies, Russian and Chinese armies—have caused far more civilian deaths in a single war than Israel has caused over 80 years of war.

In Hitler’s era, it was only the Nazis, the preexisting Jew-haters in Europe and Muslim lands, who brayed for the death of the Jews or minimized and denied what was happening to the Jews.

Now almost the entire world has spewed that bloodthirsty cry. Mobs are in the streets everywhere, cheering Hamas’s barbarism. Never has Israel been in such danger before.

What will the world say, if it says anything, when its allegations have been proven completely false? Will they still insist that they did not know, that no one told them?

Many, of course, will claim that they were right all along. Like Holocaust deniers, they will assert that whatever facts Israel presents are lies and disinformation.

Once again, Israel stands almost alone, accused of crimes it never committed. At this point, no matter how much Israel tries to do the right thing, it will never be credited for it. Thus, Israel must do whatever it takes to survive against the most fiendish odds.
Seth Mandel: The New Rednecks
Also in 2021, academics John Bitzan and Clay Routledge surveyed a thousand students at more than 70 U.S. colleges and found that a third had a positive view of socialism while only a quarter said the same about capitalism. But don’t worry—the students apparently don’t know what socialism is. So it’s not that they’re evil gulag goons, it’s that they are idiots who will blindly follow the crowd to save themselves the trouble of having to think. Reminder: That’s the good news.

All that should put the eruption of anti-Semitism on campuses in context. After Hamas’s Oct. 7 rampage started the current war, college students were polled on how to characterize the attacks. More than ten percent said they were justified resistance. But I don’t know if that’s better or worse than the one in five who “describe it as something else other than an act of terrorism or resistance.” Perhaps they see it as interpretive dance?

My personal favorite was what happened when Berkeley political-science professor Ron Hassner hired a firm to survey U.S. college students on the genocidal slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Most of those polled said they supported the slogan, but fewer than half could name the river and the sea referenced in the line. “Some of the alternative answers were the Nile and the Euphrates, the Caribbean, the Dead Sea (which is a lake) and the Atlantic,” Hassner reported.

That’s not all these sparkling young minds didn’t know. About 10 percent of those who supported the chant thought Yasser Arafat was the first president of Israel. A quarter of them denied the existence of the Oslo Accords, one of the most thoroughly documented signing ceremonies in modern times, the photos and videos of which are harder to avoid than they are to find.

Of course, these students are young. They’ll have their whole lives after college to get an education. Meantime, once you’ve seen a third billboard for the Ivies, might be time to turn around and go home.
From Stalin to Hamas: The Return of the Left that Doesn’t Learn?
An Interview with Mitchell Cohen
Mitchell Cohen is co-editor emeritus of Dissent in New York and professor emeritus of political science at Bernard Baruch College of the City University of New York. His books include Zion and State: Nation, Class, and the Shaping of Modern Israel and The Politics of Opera. He was interviewed in late February. A version of this interview is to appear in Spanish.

The Western Left, the Israeli Right and the Delegitimisation of the Jewish State
Question: Efforts to delegitimise the Jewish state are at full and loud throttle since Israel’s response to the October 7 massacres. This is taking place both the diplomatic and the intellectual worlds. In 2007 you seem to have perceived an earlier phase of this phenomenon in “Anti-Semitism and the Left that Doesn’t Learn,” your widely discussed article in Dissent. In it you pointed to a particular problem coming from the “liberal and left intelligentsia in the United States and Europe.” Are we now seeing the same thing in 2024? Are there new dimensions to it?

Mitchell Cohen: The attack on Israel’s legitimacy has intensified but it is part of a larger story. Opposition to Zionism within the left goes back to the founding of Zionism, although there has been real sympathy too. The current situation has long and short-term contexts. I wrote that article a few years after the UN’s Durban conference of 2001, which unleashed a wave of attacks on Israel for racism. But the problem also descends from decades of political developments, one of which was the assassination of Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin by a rightwing Jewish zealot in 1995.

That murder also targeted the Oslo Accords, the best chance since 1949 for an Israeli-Palestinian peace and the signing of which put anti-Zionism on the defensive. Oslo’s foes gained mounting strength in the later 1990s. One was the Israeli right-wing led by Netanyahu, which always sought to blur reckless, ultra-nationalist goals with real security questions. The other was Hamas, whose bombing campaign in the spring after Rabin‘s murder played an essential role in electing Netanyahu. Hamas has always opposed compromise and its ultimate purposes have been to displace secular Palestinian nationalists with Islamists and to replace Israel with a Muslim state including the West Bank, Gaza and what is now Israel proper. In 2000, at Camp David, Ehud Barak offered a far-reaching compromise to Palestinians but Arafat did not accept it and the Second Intifada began. In this context an anti-Zionist campaign in the intellectual world was ushered along from Durban.

Israeli foreign policy has been dominated for almost three decades – with some interludes – by Netanyahu. One, and it is only one, staggering bungle was to allow Hamas to be strengthened in Gaza in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority and thereby to thwart Israeli-Palestinian compromise. It played, finally, into Hamas’s already blood-stained hands, as 7 October showed. This wasn’t just shortsightedness but fits into a long-standing pattern in the history of the Zionist rightwing, which I explored in my book Zion and State (Columbia University Press). That pattern consists in very consequential errors of political judgement based on a resentment-filled, misbegotten ideological orientation. It contrasts sharply to the social democrats of Mapai (Israel Workers’ Party) which, led by David Ben Gurion, dominated the struggle for Israeli statehood. Crucial decisions made by Ben-Gurion and Mapai were almost always measured and perceptive. Nowadays anti-Zionists seek to rewrite Israel’s history, demonising the Jewish state as a creation of Western imperialism – this is an historically spurious charge – by excising the role of the left in creating Israel. At the same time they dance around or excuse the fact that Palestinian nationalists allied themselves to Hitler and Mussolini.

To answer your question more fully, we must take into account what has happened within a highly visible part of the intelligentsia in recent decades. There has been in the university and intellectual worlds a rise in what is called ‘post-modernism’ and the like, which made it a point of turning many things upside down through selective use of history and ideological language games. Ironically, this even includes part of this intelligentsia’s own history. Edward Said complained that he could not convince Jean-Paul Sartre, who was not a post-modernist but an intellectual hero of the left and Michel Foucault, who was a seminal post-modern influence, of his position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They understood something he didn’t – or didn’t want to understand.

Anti-Zionism is part of a larger intellectual crack-up on the left with distant roots. There is now a kind of meeting point between simplistic post-modernism and simplistic anti-imperialism. This conjuncture can be called ‘the anti-imperialism of fools,’ a phrase that echoes the famous criticism of antisemitism on the left in the late 19th century by socialist August Bebel. When some on the left tried to blame ‘Jewish capitalists’ for Europe’s woes, he called it ‘the antisemitism of fools.’ Formulations of both the antisemitism of fools and anti-imperialism of fools depend on intellectual twisting and turning until somehow, no matter what, blame is ascribed to, respectively, Jews and Zionists. Ominously, that ascription is often there before the twisting and turning.
Matti Friedman: Why I Got a Gun
The decision to expand private gun ownership is certain to have unintended consequences, and not just because the number of guns will mean more accidents, homicides, and armed extremists. At the shooting range where I got my license, it was clear that some of the new owners were hardly competent to use a weapon in the sterile condition of the range, let alone in an actual attack where we would have to make life-or-death decisions in a matter of seconds while beset by adrenaline and fear. Those with combat training have a chance, though no guarantee of success. When I came home with my new license and a Glock 43X, I told my kids that if they’re ever near a shooting attack they need to lie down flat and wait until it’s over—the main danger being less the terrorist than other Israelis who will open fire and hit something other than their target.

One incident in particular has become a case in point. On November 30, two Palestinians from Sur Baher, a Jerusalem neighborhood near mine, began shooting Jews waiting at a bus stop, murdering three of them before a lawyer named Yuval Castelman, who happened to be passing by, jumped out of his car with his handgun. He engaged the terrorists with admirable bravery—only to be mistaken for a terrorist himself and killed by an army reservist exercising something between bad judgment and criminal negligence. Guns solve some problems and create many others. It’s hard to say how we’ll remember all of this in a decade or two.

But even in the weeks of my work on this essay, an Israeli with a handgun managed to kill a terrorist, another Palestinian from Jerusalem, who was shooting innocent people on a road in southern Israel, two of whom died. That was on February 16. On March 14, a noncommissioned officer waiting in line at an Aroma café didn’t notice the Palestinian kid in a black sweatshirt who lunged at his neck with a knife—but did manage to draw his handgun and shoot the assailant, preventing more fatalities, before he bled to death.

A friend from America told me recently that every Jewish person he knows has a contingency plan, sometimes secret or scarcely admitted even to themselves, for where to hide or escape if things get really bad in the diaspora—the kind of thought borne of a good education in Jewish history mixed with a close read of current events, like aggressive protests outside synagogues, shots fired at Jewish schools, and the growing fever about “Zionists.”

Mulling this, I asked friends here in Israel if they had a similar plan. No one did. Zionism has clearly failed to change everything in the Jewish condition, but it seems to have changed that, for what it’s worth. I don’t know anyone preparing a hideout. But I do know a remarkable number of people with a new Glock.


Anti-Zionism emerged because Israel's dropped socialism for a capitalist economy
Anti-Zionism emerged and expanded because of the remarkable transformation of Israeli society since its creation in 1948. The founders, East European socialists, formed the Mapai party, the Workers Party of the Land of Israel, a dominant force in Israeli politics and economy until the 1970s. To the founders, socialism was the dream, an ideal on which to build a paradise: Workers had to join a labor union, the Histadrut, which co-shared ownership of industrial enterprises, banks, transportation, and agriculture with the government. Hired labor was declared an anathema in the kibbutz collective agriculture. Mapai’s progressive reforms set a welfare state with mandatory guaranteed income, housing subsidies, free education, and the like.

When Israel was living in a hand-to-mouth economy, it was welcomed by multiple progressive organizations. In 1951 a triumphant admission to the Socialist International (SI) took place. The SI affirmed the right of Israel to exist and called “for negotiations between the Arabs and Israelis to find a permanent solution to the existing problems on the basis of their independence and sovereignty.”

Israel did not stay in the socialist column for long. Despite huge bureaucracy, multiple ministries, and the wasteful Histadrut, education and hard work let the nation create a free-market economy and significantly elevated its ranking in the World Prosperity Index. Experts indicate that Israel’s modern infrastructure has rivaled many Western countries and its hi-tech sector is competitive with Silicon Valley. Many left-wing American Jews became confused and uneasy: Is the only Jewish state socialist or has it become capitalistic?

Judaism is a complicated religion and Jewish scholars often answer “Yes and no,” when confronted with complex philosophical questions. For example, Yehuda Levi, professor of electro-optic at the Jerusalem College of Technology (JCT) states: “Judaism is capitalism with a socialist spirit.” Apparently, the “spirit” alone is not enough for the progressive world. The affronted SI responded by joining the BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions) movement in 2018 and approved a resolution condemning Israel (a member state), forcing the latter to drop out of the organization.

The BDS resolution was echoed by many other progressive, governmental, and student organizations. The extent of the harsh reaction could be understood, considering that the betrayal on the part of Israel happened in the Middle East, a part of the world which they thought to be united in its struggle against imperialism.

To explain why Marx’s prediction of an imminent collapse of capitalism failed, the leader of the Soviet revolution, Lenin, created a theory of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. The theory explains that workers in developed countries do not revolt because capitalists there are able to bribe them, due to super-profits extracted from the exploitation of colonies. Hence, Israel is considered an “exploiter” in an erroneous location. The issue of the “erroneous location” emerged on the very first day of the existence of Israel as a modern state. Yet there has been no territorial expansion in Israel since the 1967 Six Day War, so this issue cannot be a reason for the current explosion of anti-Zionist demonstrations all around the globe.

One of Israel's implicit crimes is that it turned its back on socialism and set a bad example for developing countries. As a verdict, those who chant “From the river to the sea” specify where they want the Jews to end up.
Center for American Progress head calls for one-state solution
Patrick Gaspard, a former U.S. ambassador to South Africa and current president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, told Politico that he no longer believes in a two-state solution.

“This is difficult, but we need to talk about whether the two-state solution continues to be the sole pathway to peace,” he the publication’s West Wing Playbook.

“I think that you ultimately get to peace and a ceasefire that is enduring if you have a state that integrates the fulsome rights of Palestinians and Israelis living side-by-side,” he added.

Israel must exist as a state, Gaspard said. “But I also believe Palestinians—if we are going to solve this problem—need to exist in an Israel that is inclusive of their full rights.”

The “pushback has always been that if you have a single state, you can’t have a Jewish majority state that is democratic in Israel,” Politico noted.

“I think that taking out the possibility of coexistence is, in itself, really cynical and tragic,” Gaspard said.

The Center for American Progress is a left-wing think tank. It is “the most influential Democratic-allied think tank in politics, one that has historically been supportive of both Democratic administrations and the state of Israel,” according to Politico.

“People keep telling me that the situation in Gaza is ‘complicated.’ There’s nothing complicated about being able to say killing innocent people is wrong and needs to stop,” Gaspard wrote on Oct. 27. “We said it when it was Hamas. We can say it now that it’s Israel. This is wrong. This needs to stop.”

He has also accused Israel of “using starvation as a weapon,” which he called a “war crime.”


Yisrael Medad: Israel needs to fight its legal battles in the multi-front war
While my legal training is limited, it quickly became obvious that Dunkelberg’s knowledge of history was central to his interpretation of law. Moreover, that knowledge was one of a rigid ideological approach and a misrepresentation of history, while his background is Latin America. He had armed his view with illegal ammunition.

To deny Shalev’s assertion that Zionism is not a “colonial endeavor,” Dunkelberg points to the 1899 established “Zionist Colonial Trust” and to Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s writing in 1923 about Zionism’s “colonizing aims.” That, of course, is etymological claptrap. The term “colonization” there and then used was simply a synonym for “settlement.” Kibbutzim were “colonies.”

Zionists engaged in resettling Jews on their national land, planting it and rebuilding it. Moreover, they were required to do so through buying the land back from Arabs and others who had themselves occupied it, centuries earlier.

In another section, he argues on behalf of “Arab Palestinians” and their rights as if they existed as a distinct people. Yet, at the time, those Arabs themselves denied Palestine’s independence. Orientalist Philip Khoury Hitti was active in 1918 in an anti-Zionist Arab-American movement. The group lobbied for the establishment of a Greater Syria and at the 1919 peace conference, they asked that Palestine not be independent and not detached from Syria.

The First Palestinian Congress of January-February 1919 resolved: “We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria... we desire that our district Southern Syria or Palestine should be not separated from the Independent Arab Syrian Government.” The King-Crane Commission was also so informed.

The Emir Feisal, the most senior Arab diplomat, meeting with Israeli president Chaim Weizmann in January 1919, accepted that there would be an Arab state and a “Palestine” for the “Jewish people.” Article VII of their agreement recognized a “Zionist Organization.”

In arguing that Israel was created “in Palestine” but itself is not “Palestine” nor did “Palestine” disappear, Dunkelberg conveniently ignores the existence of Jordan in Palestine territory in a colonial maneuver by Great Britain.

In addition, in his logic, the Ottoman Empire somehow wasn’t a colonial empire, occupying Judea, the Jewish national homeland but rather possessed sovereign rights that should only be transferred to Arabs, not Jews.

Dunkelberg suggests the territory cannot have a Jewish national identity, despite never existing as a separate, distinct state entity with an Arab character in any form.

Ignoring that a Palestinian nationality was specifically legislated in 1925 so that Jews could obtain naturalization status, Dunkelberg traipses through a purposeful misreading of history to the downgrading and disadvantage of the legal rights of the Jewish people.

His method is shared by many other denigrators of Zionism and is but a form of a totalitarian newspeak. As George Orwell wrote in his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” And as he added, “debased language... is in some ways very convenient.”

Israel needs better-trained warriors on its third-front battles.


UN’s international court targets Israel again
The International Court of Justice held yet another hearing on Tuesday focused on Israel’s self-defense in Gaza, this time brought by Nicaragua against Germany. Nicaragua is asking the international court to order Germany to stop supplying Israel with weapons, as yet another “provisional measure” targeting the Jewish state under the Genocide Convention.

The world court has already twice ordered provisional measures against Israel, most recently on March 28, on the absurd pretense that it is plausible Israel is committing genocide. Perhaps the shocking perversion of international law should not be surprising given the international court is the “court” of the United Nations, for which Zionism still equals racism, its 1991 revocation notwithstanding.

The world court’s lawfare harms the international law principles and humanitarian objectives it claims to champion by encouraging the Hamas strategy of using human shields, abusing hospitals and ambulances for combat, and taking humanitarian aid for itself in order to increase Gazan civilian harms and enlisting foreign pressure against Israel. This perfidy makes accidents such as the bombing of aid workers last week inevitable.

Aharon Barak, Israel’s ad hoc judge on the panel, revealed the decision’s complete lawlessness by identifying two fundamental flaws in the international court’s measures.

First, the world court may only impose provisional measures if it is “plausible” that Israel intends to commit genocide. This is completely preposterous. Israel is not the perpetrator of genocide, but defending itself from a genocidal campaign waged by Iran and its Hamas and Hezbollah allies.

Second, the humanitarian aid ordered by the international court is not covered by the Genocide Convention, which is the court’s sole basis for jurisdiction over Israel. Israel’s signature to the Geneva Convention includes granting jurisdiction to the world court, but only for issues covered by the Convention. Other international law addresses humanitarian aid, but does not give the court jurisdiction.

Barak joined the world court’s measure ordering Israel to increase aid to Gaza, despite conceding he had no legal grounds for doing so, citing his feelings about Gazan suffering. Barak claimed Israel has this obligation under Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, while also admitting the court has no jurisdiction.

But Article 23 only requires Israel to allow “free passage of all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases.” And even this limited aid is only required in cases in which ”there are no serious reasons for fearing that the consignments may be diverted from their destination” or would help the enemy. Given Hamas is taking much of the aid, as Barak stated, Israel has no obligation to supply Gaza.


Egypt Won’t Condemn Hamas, but It Continues to Help Israel
In a joint press conference yesterday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his British counterpart David Cameron commented on the possibility of an Israeli offensive into the city of Rafah, which lies on the Gaza-Egypt border. Cameron notably seemed to say that, in the event that hostage negotiations fail, an attack on Rafah is inevitable. Both an IDF incursion on Hamas’s last stronghold, and the hostage negotiations themselves, rely heavily on the cooperation of Egypt, which both serves as an important intermediary and controls one of the roads leading in and out of Rafah.

Haisam Hassanein and Ofir Winter discuss Egypt’s involvement thus far, and how the war has affected its relations with Israel:

The war . . . has exposed the rifts within various circles in the Egyptian government, between those few who see Israel as a useful neighbor and those in the mainstream, who continue to espouse populist and hostile positions that have a Nasserist and even Islamist nature. . . . The discourse of the Egyptian state-run media does not ameliorate the situation. Military commentators tend to refer to Hamas as a legitimate resistance movement.

Al-Azhar University, the leading religious institution in the Sunni world, has adopted an anti-Israel rhetoric reminiscent of that of the Muslim Brotherhood. On the day of the massacre, even before the IDF had launched its response, al-Azhar praised Hamas’s terrorist operation and has been conducting a systematic smear campaign against Israel ever since.

Furthermore, few Egyptian media personalities or intellectuals have dared to condemn Hamas’s brutal attack harshly and unequivocally on October 7. In fact, the official Egyptian media has not even reported on most of the atrocities that Hamas perpetrated.

But, as often has been the case in the 45 years since the two countries made peace, public vituperation is matched with behind-the-scenes cooperation: Notwithstanding the evident tensions between the two countries since October 7, the intimate military coordination that has developed over the past decade—primarily focused on border security and the war on terror—has served its purpose well even during the current crisis. . . . It seems that as Israel advances in its campaign against Hamas and reassures Egypt’s concerns about the transfer of Gazan refugees to Egyptian territory, these steps will have a positive effect on the discourse in Egypt—even if only slightly.

In fact, Hassanein and Winter believe there is potential for relations between the two countries to improve, since the war has given Egypt a chance to demonstrate to both Israel and the world that it is a more helpful partner than Qatar, its rival.
Is Biden losing his voice against rising antisemitism?
Some conversations between executives at Jewish organizations and high-level White House officials are taking place, but the meetings are not publicized, in contrast to a steady stream of press releases and public statements issued by the White House late last year touting similar discussions. As Israel’s war against Hamas has continued for six months and Biden’s approach to the conflict has shifted, some distance has arisen between the administration and Jewish organizations over Israel policy.

In late March, top leaders from the Jewish Federations of North America met with senior National Security Council staff. The JFNA leaders expressed concern that Biden’s increasingly critical rhetoric around Israel’s war in Gaza could lead to antisemitism in the U.S, The Wall Street Journal reported. (A JFNA spokesperson told JI the meeting was “confidential” and declined to share additional details.)

White House officials also plan to meet this week with the leadership of Agudath Israel, which represents the Haredi Jewish community in the U.S., according to a source familiar with the plans.

Emhoff made a handful of public appearances at Jewish events early this year, including a speech to the Jewish War Veterans and a meeting in February with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who also funds the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism.

Beyond Emhoff’s events and some recent Jewish community listening sessions at the Department of Education, there is “not much more,” said an executive at one major Jewish organization. Those close to the White House argue that Biden has revealed his care for the Jewish community since Oct. 7, and now community members should trust that his heart is in the right place.

“I was in the room on Oct. 11 at the White House with the president, when he had his first meeting with the Jewish community, and it was very clear then and it is still very clear how deeply personal this is to him,” Spitalnick said. “I think it’s important for us not to lose that perspective, even as the war continues, and the inevitable public conversations around it shift to whatever the current crisis.”

For the president, who is now taking on more campaign travel and gearing up for a busy election year — and the many constituencies he must try to woo to win reelection — his attention has shifted elsewhere. For many American Jews, their focus on the antisemitism crisis remains.
Outgoing British MP Mike Freer on the Gaza war, antisemitism and his Jewish constituents
When Mike Freer announced last month he would leave Britain’s House of Commons at the next general election, it added to the grim domestic fallout surrounding Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group.

The justice minister, who represents Finchley and Golders Green, home to the UK’s biggest Jewish community, is a staunchly pro-Israel voice who has faced a string of threats since entering parliament in 2010.

Three years ago, he narrowly avoided death at the hands of an Islamist terrorist.

Many — although, he stresses, not all — of these threats are related to his stance on the Middle East.

Interviewed by The Times of Israel, Freer speaks in measured tones, choosing his words carefully as he describes his decision to step aside when Britons go to the polls in an election expected later this year.

An arson attack at his constituency office last December — which appears to have been the work of a local criminal and not politically motivated — was simply “the last straw,” he says.

“While MPs, to a degree, sign up for robust debate and a certain level of abuse, none of us sign up to having our lives put at risk,” Freer says.

“I’ve actually got to put my family first,” he adds, noting his husband Angelo’s fears about his safety.
Court orders US cinema to show Israeli film after it bowed to boycotts
A local court just outside of Philadelphia ordered a local movie theater to show an Israeli film after the theater announced it was canceling the screening of a movie that was to be screened as part of the annual Israeli Film Festival of Greater Philadelphia.

The lawsuit came just a day after the theater announced it would not be showing The Child Within Me, a film about Israeli musician Yehuda Poliker, which was to be shown at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute as part of the annual Israel Film Festival. But, on April 8, just a day before the screening, the theater sent out a notice saying it was cancelled so as not to appear as endorsing Israel.

The decision was condemned by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and the local Anti-Defamation League.

Michael Balaban, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, said: “The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia strongly condemns the recent cancellation of the screening of ‘The Child Within Me’ at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute ….In today’s climate of rising antisemitism, building bridges of cultural appreciation and dialogue are critical to combating hate.

“Instead, the BMFI has played into a dangerous trend of erasing Jewish voices and experiences,” he continued. “We stand united with our fellow Philadelphia Jewish community members in demanding the BMFI to reinstate the screening.”

According to an email that was obtained and shared on X by the watchdog organisation StopAntisemitism, Samuel Scott, executive director of the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, wrote that while the theatre “strived to be apolitical … public sentiment lately has escalated to the point that continuing with the IFF screening is being widely taken among individuals and institutions in our community as an endorsement of Israel’s recent and ongoing actions.”


S. African politician: Close 'devil' Jewish school, Zionists kill with GMO products
The Western Cape premiership candidate of a small South African political party has made his fight against Zionism a central aspect of his campaign, rallying against a local Jewish school and blaming Zionists for local issues.

Turkish-born Mehmet Vefa Dag, a Land Party member, has sworn a vendetta against the Cape Town United Herzlia Schools. The Jewish schools teach Hebrew and foster a connection to Jewish tradition, religion, and Israel.

“As Premier first thing I will do is shut down this Zionist diaspora,” Vefa Dag said on X on Monday. “Zionist killers are groomed in Cape Town South Africa. Shut down this killers school in South Africa, this is a killer diaspora.”

Vefa Dag also described the Jewish school as a “devil school” in a March 27 TikTok video.

Last Tuesday Vefa Dag claimed that Zionists were attempting to kill South Africans with genetically modified organism (GMO) products, sharing a picture of the 2023 African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) forum in Johannesburg.

“Zionists are killing us with GMO production,” Vefa Dag said on Instagram. “They chose South Africa as their home base. My dear citizen, let us know the companies engaged in GMO production, we will take care of all of them. Everyone has the right to live.”
BDS threats to cancel cycling team an ‘obtuse moral inversion’
Threats to disrupt the two biggest cycling races in the world over Israeli participation are an “obtuse moral inversion” by haters of the Jewish state, the Israel–Premier Tech team’s co-owner said on Wednesday.

Canadian-Israeli entrepreneur Sylvan Adams spoke out after the BDS movement called for significant protests during the upcoming Tour de France and Giro d’Italia races because the Israeli team is participating.

“These haters have it precisely backward: On Oct. 7, it was Hamas that began a genocidal campaign of murder, torture, rape, butchering, burning and desecration on an unimaginable scale and with heartless cruelty,” he told JNS.

“Hamas intended to commit genocide. In response, we fight to defend the homeland, morally, with one arm tied behind our backs, as we go to great lengths, including additional losses of our brave young soldiers. in order to minimize civilian casualties,” Adams said.

The BDS statement called to “block the roads to genocide.” It singled out Adams for his attempt to “sanitize” Israel’s military actions in the six-month-old war, which was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, through sports.
Calls to ban Palestinian video games 'inciting terrorism'
There are calls for Australia to ban anti-Israel video games featuring Palestinian terrorists as heroes.

One of the games Toofan AlAqusa is described on popular gaming service Steam as a shooter game about protecting Palestine.

“Kill the enemies faster finish all levels and free Palestine” it reads.

Both video games set the Palestinian gunmen as heroic characters.

Anti-Defamation Commission Advocacy Chair Dvir Abramovich has accused the games of “inciting violence and terrorism”.

“This is radicalisation, incitement to violence and recruitment of terrorism by stealth,” Mr Abramovich said.

“Anybody else who’s allowed this game to be sold, to be downloaded or to be played in this country will have blood on their hands,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Australian Classification Board said the new games had not been classified here meaning they must not be made available to Australian players.

WARNING: some viewers may find these images distressing.


Amazon Labor Union Bleeds Money as Workers Turn on Founder Who Praised Hamas
The Amazon Labor Union burst onto the scene in 2021 with support from leading progressives and an endorsement from President Joe Biden. But the group could soon lose that prime placement as it grapples with financial troubles and controversy surrounding its founder.

The union had just $28,354 cash on hand at the end of last year, down from $95,437 in 2022, according to its latest filing with the Department of Labor. The union began 2023 with $118,463 in net assets, but ended up deeply in debt, with negative $48,006 in net assets. It has $43,581 in bills more than three months past due, including $12,098 owed to its landlord.

The financial hemorrhaging comes as union founder Christian Smalls faces blowback for his pro-Hamas rhetoric and criticism from union workers who sued Smalls last year over his alleged "scheme to suppress democratic dissent" by blocking votes for union leadership.

It's a dramatic fall for an organization that, according to the New York Times, had accomplished "one of the biggest victories for organized labor in a generation" when it organized workers at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island in March 2022. Early union rallies featured appearances from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), with Sanders inviting Smalls to testify at a hearing for the Senate Banking Committee. In 2022, Biden embraced Smalls during a White House visit, saying the labor leader was "my kind of trouble."

But the union has failed to build on its early success, losing votes to organize two other Amazon warehouses. The union has reportedly been hobbled by infighting, with union organizers frustrated by Smalls's leadership style, inexperience at organizing workers, and penchant for self-promotion.
Google employees quit, are fired amid opposition to deal with Israel
Several employees at Google have resigned or been fired amid an internal campaign against the company’s contract work for Israel, amid allegations that the IDF is committing war crimes in Gaza and that the tech giant is complicit in lending its AI technology to the state.

The video that circulated on social media last month showed two young Google employees disrupting a New York City conference on the Israeli tech industry, shouting, “No tech for apartheid!” as security escorted them out of the room.

A report in TIME this week identified one of the protesters as Eddie Hatfield, a 23-year old software engineer, and confirmed that Google had fired Hatfield over the stunt shortly thereafter.

Hatfield is part of a group called No Tech for Apartheid, which claims about 200 members from within Google’s ranks and accuses both Google and Amazon of “fueling the genocidal assault on Gaza.” The group is demanding the tech companies terminate their contracts for Project Nimbus, an undertaking announced in 2022 to set up regional data centers in Israel.

The deal, which was signed by the Finance Ministry, “is for workloads running on [Google’s] commercial platform by Israeli government ministries such as finance, healthcare, transportation, and education,” according to a Google spokesperson quoted in the TIME article. “Our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”
Time Magazine Becomes Confused Mouthpiece for Pro-BDS Google Employees
The problems start with the headline that implies there is a mass or majority of disgruntled Google workers who are united against their employer in their hatred of Israel.

Of course, the piece makes no mention of the fact that Google has 200,000 employees globally (including 2,000 in Israel), while the campaign consists of “around 40 Google employees closely involved in organizing,” according to the article.

We must also assume that, rather than gaining traction and winning over the minds of their colleagues during the past two years, No Tech For Apartheid has actually lost members, considering that their numbers appear to have dropped by around 20 since the time they announced the campaign in The Guardian.

Time glosses over this salient detail, however, to instead describe the campaign as a “growing movement inside Google” while quoting ex-software engineer Eddie Hatfield, who was fired from his job after he interrupted a conference organized by his employer to scream at attendees.

Uncritically detailing Hatfield’s absurd claim that he was fired because company bosses “saw how much traction this movement within Google is gaining,” Time suggests Hatfield’s sentiments reflect a “wider climate of growing international indignation at the collateral damage of Israel’s war in Gaza…”

Yet, the primary problem with the piece is its failure to challenge the activist group’s risible claim that their campaign is solely focused on Project Nimbus.

Although Time admits there is “no evidence that Google or Amazon’s technology has been used in killings of civilians,” it is content to quote at length individuals such as Vidana Abdel Khalek, a Google worker who resigned from her job, who claims that Project Nimbus is knowingly being used to “harm innocent civilians” by a government that is “committing genocide.”

Time also states that No Tech For Apartheid’s protest is “as much about what the public doesn’t know about Project Nimbus as what it does.”

There’s a good reason for the campaign’s focus on something as vague as the public’s lack of knowledge about the technology: No Tech For Apartheid can’t explain how the tech supposedly “powers genocide,” as Hatfield yelled out during his conference stunt.

And that is the point that Time has obscured: the No Tech For Apartheid campaign may like to pretend that its efforts are about an expensive piece of cloud computing, but they are not. Rather, it is about demonizing and ostracizing Israel.

That is what lies at the heart of BDS—an international campaign that seeks to isolate and eventually dismantle the world’s only Jewish state.
Summit focuses on rising Jew-hatred in K-12 schools
Some 200 people, including educators, students and parents, participated in a Lappin Foundation virtual summit about the national strategy to counter antisemitism in K-12 schools on Tuesday.

Josh Kraft, president of the New England Patriots Foundation and co-chair of the Hate Crimes Task Force for Massachusetts, told attendees that it is “so essential” for elementary, middle and high schools to be “armed and equipped with the tools needed to combat antisemitism.”

There was a 140% increase in antisemitic attacks against Jewish children in primary and secondary schools in the three months after Oct. 7, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

“The K-12 schools are always the first line of defense for any and every issue, as the teachers are with kids from seven in the morning until late in the afternoon,” said Kraft, whose father is New England Patriots owner and Jewish philanthropist Robert Kraft. “Whatever happens in our society, in our community, infiltrates into our schools.”

Much of the discussion during the hour-long summit addressed the national action plan to combat antisemitism, which the Biden administration unveiled last year, with a course of recommended actions.

The event came just weeks after the Massachusetts Teachers Association held a webinar titled “The struggle against anti-Palestinian racism,” which critics said spread antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda. (The Lappin Foundation is based in Massachusetts.)
Antisemitic bullying at Dallas high school alleged in federal civil rights complaint
A Dallas teenager faced antisemitic bullying at Hillcrest High School and district officials failed to adequately respond, a federal civil rights complaint alleges.

The student was taunted with names like “dirty Jew;” heard other teens praise Hitler; and was told to “Go bathe in Auschwitz where you belong,” according to the complaint. He reported swastika drawings to the administration, including one in a bathroom stall alongside the words: “Burn the Jews.”

The 17-page complaint detailed how the teenager, who is not named, kept a log of antisemitic incidents dating back to 2021. The filing was submitted Tuesday to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights by the student and StandWithUs, a nonprofit that works to combat antisemitism and support Israel.

“Despite the fact that all of these incidents took place in DISD classrooms, and though [the student] is aware that at least some of these horrific comments were heard by faculty members present at the time, there is no evidence of any appropriate response consistent with DISD policy or federal regulation and guidance,” the complaint states.

Dallas schools spokeswoman Robyn Harris said district officials will not comment on issues related to student privacy and has not formally received the complaint.

“Dallas ISD prides itself on fostering a diverse and inclusive environment that celebrates all ethnicities, religions, cultures, and backgrounds,” she said in a statement. “Any attempt to undermine this belief is taken very seriously, as we have zero tolerance for such behavior.”

While the issues alleged in the complaint date back to 2021, its filing comes at a time when American campuses increasingly are grappling with reverberations of the Israel-Hamas war.

After the war broke out, Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde released a statement stressing that “antisemitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Asian, racism, or discrimination of any kind has no place in Dallas ISD.”

The family’s complaint lays out steps they want Dallas ISD compelled to do, including: the appointment of an investigator to examine campus climate; a task force on how to improve Jewish life in the district; and age-appropriate programming on addressing antisemitic harassment.
Not the college dream: The harsh reality of Jewish student-led activism
Despite the challenges, my core remains unchanged. I am still that girl with big dreams and bigger plans, who finds joy in the simple pleasures of life, like cooking for friends and cherishing the early morning stillness. Yet, I am also someone who has learned the value of standing up for what I believe in, even when the cost is steep. This graduation dilemma, then, is not just about the conflict between what was expected and what transpired, but about the deeper journey of self-discovery, resilience, and the enduring quest for justice.

In the eye of a storm I didn’t see coming, I found a purpose I didn’t know I needed.

Dubbed the “infamous Berkeley Zionist,” a title I never sought, I’ve become a beacon for incoming Jewish students and their anxious parents, all seeking guidance in a sea of uncertainty. As questions flood my inbox, they echo the internal debate I’ve grappled with: Given the chance, would I choose the same tumultuous journey? The simplicity of the answer belies its depth – I wouldn’t change a single moment. This resolve is what I impart to every worried parent and prospective student. I urge them towards the institutions that challenge us, that thrust us into the national spotlight, not despite but because of the adversity they present.

Imagine a world where fear silences us, where the easy path becomes the only path because we dare not embrace our full Jewish identities. That is a future too grim to contemplate.

So, I say: Let us choose the challenging roads, the Berkeleys, the Columbias, the UPenns, and the Harvards of the world. It’s not about seeking the “best years of your life” but rather, engaging in the most formative.

As I stand on the precipice of a new beginning, the memories of battles fought and lessons learned are my most treasured possessions. These years may not have unfolded as I dreamed, but they have forged me in ways I could never have anticipated.

This journey through college has not just been about academic pursuit; it has been a crucible of identity, belief, and resilience. The graduation dilemma, in all its complexity, signifies a passage not just of time, but of growth and self-discovery.

It is a testament to the idea that the most profound journeys are often those we would never have chosen for ourselves, yet they shape us into individuals capable of shaping the world.
Ohio State University Accused of Ignoring Antisemitism, Strongly Denies Claims
Three major nonprofit organizations have joined forces as co-litigants in a civil rights complaint alleging that Ohio State University (OSU) has grossly foundered in responding to numerous incidents of antisemitic harassment and discrimination since Oct. 7, thus violating Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act.

The university’s alleged neglect began just weeks after the Hamas terror group’s massacre of Israeli civilians, according to the complaint — which was filed by StandWithUs (SWU), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

In November, five Jewish students on their way to an off-campus event were brutally assaulted by two men who had detained and interrogated them to determine if they were Jewish, the complaint said. Finding their answer, the two men allegedly shouted “Free Palestine!” and slugged one Jewish student each, breaking one’s jaw and the other’s nose and leaving one of them bleeding effusively. The complaint added that OSU Medical Center employees cut deeper wounds into their psyches by denying one of the injured students more than one visitor and prohibiting the other a seat in the waiting room, forcing them to stand “outside in the freezing cold for over five hours.” No one, the complaint added, has explained why the Jewish students were treated so callously.

“Since Oct. 7, Jewish students on campuses nationwide have faced unprecedented antisemitic harassment and discrimination,” StandWithUs chief executive officer Roz Rothstein said in a press release announcing the action. “Ohio State University is no exception. Antisemitism is expressed openly; blatant verbal and physical threats and attacks on Jewish students often go unaddressed by the administration. By filing this Title VI federal complaint, we aim to hold the administration accountable.”

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in programs and activities that receive federal funding.


Group of Jewish students sues Cooper Union for uptick in antisemitism
A group of 10 Jewish students have taken legal action against Cooper Union in New York City, claiming administrators have tolerated the proliferation of hate and intimidation against Jews, particularly after the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7.

The Lawfare Project filed a lawsuit on Wednesday on behalf of the students, working with the firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP.

While the suit noted numerous incidents, an Oct. 25 demonstration took center stage. That protest featured students demanding the destruction of Israel, resulting in Jewish students locking themselves in the school library as anti-Israel activists pounded on the windows yelling racist slurs.

When police arrived on the scene, Cooper Union’s president Laura Sparks told them to stand down, leaving the Jewish students trapped.

Ziporah Reich, director of Litigation at the Lawfare Project, told JNS that this incident, “which captured global attention through television and social media, served as a stark illustration of the escalation of antisemitism on college campuses.”

Reich said the act of intimidation “vividly highlighted that, if left unchecked, antisemitic speech will rapidly turn into a direct threat to the safety of Jewish students.”

The Lawfare Project said the president’s actions failing to protect the students who found safety in the library “is but one of many examples in which the school has ignored the safety and security of its Jewish student community.”

The lawsuit seeks changes in the school’s policies and monetary damages for the students.
Columbia Student Suspended Over 'Resistance 101' Event Refuses To Leave Campus, Calls for 'Intifada'
A Columbia University graduate student who was suspended over his involvement in the now-infamous "Palestinian Resistance 101" event is refusing to leave campus and pledging to "resist institutional repression just as the Palestinians have resisted occupation."

Aidan Parisi, a graduate student in Columbia's School of Social Work, received an "interim" suspension over his involvement in the event, which featured a number of terror-tied speakers who advocated for violence against Jews. While the suspension requires Parisi to leave campus and bars him from returning without prior approval, he is refusing to leave, he announced in a string of social media posts.

"Over the weekend I have been unable to leave my home in fear of an illegal lockout by my landlord, Columbia University," Parisi, who lives in an on-campus apartment, wrote in a Monday tweet. In a follow-up on Tuesday, he wrote, "Update on my illegal eviction by Columbia: I am still in my home. Columbia has tried to intimidate me into leaving, but has yet to follow the legal procedures."

Parisi also pledged to "resist" what he called "institutional repression" at Columbia and praised the "intifada."

"We will resist institutional repression just as the Palestinians have resisted occupation," he wrote on Instagram. "Que viva la intifada. … Inshallah, we will rise victorious." Parisi has a long history of anti-American and anti-Israel activism, having posted a photo of the two nations' flags burning on July 4, 2020. "No love for any colonizer flag," he wrote in his caption.

Parisi's noncompliance comes as Columbia's president, Minouche Shafik, prepares for an April 17 congressional hearing on campus anti-Semitism. In the build-up to the hearing, Shafik has suspended four students involved in the "Resistance 101" event and launched an investigation into others.

Students who refuse to participate in the investigation will be disciplined, as will those who attended another unsanctioned anti-Israel event held Thursday, Columbia administrators said last week. It's unclear how and whether the university will follow through on those threats and enforce its suspension of Parisi. A Columbia spokeswoman said the school "continues to work through the disciplinary process."


Yale Administrators Stand By as Students Unveil 'Free Palestine' Banner During Official Class Photograph
Yale University officials stood by silently as students unveiled a large "Free Palestine" banner during an official class photograph for the School of the Environment. The move came after university officials said they had warned students not to display "political messages," according to internal emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Students in the school's 2024 class met Tuesday morning for a class photo. Those photographs are displayed at Yale's Forest School. The photo shoot was derailed, however, when students unfurled a large banner that displayed a message that included the words "Free Palestine," according to an email from School of the Environment dean Indy Burke reviewed by the Free Beacon.

While Burke advised students in a message sent ahead of the photo shoot to avoid "displaying political messages as they may not represent all students," Yale officials "did nothing" and "still took the photo" after the banner was displayed, according to a Jewish member of the class.

"I was incredibly disappointed that there were over 5 school officials there that did nothing," the student said in an email to Rabbi Shmully Hecht of Shabtai, the Jewish society at Yale. "I felt that the Jewish students were targeted by this poster because there was no protest occurring at the time that was relevant to this banner. It was just about denouncing Israel for all memory and stating that it should not exist."

Burke acknowledged the ordeal in a follow-up email sent to Yale professors, administrators, and students. "The staff members present were in a tough position," Burke wrote in an email following the event, which included Yale University professors and other members of the media, adding that the sign "definitely broke the rules." She pledged to "destroy" the photo in question.

She did not indicate whether the students who displayed the banner would face disciplinary action. A spokeswoman for Yale University did not respond to a request for comment.


Anti-Israel Agitators Derail Dinner at Home of UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky
Anti-Israel hecklers crashed a Tuesday dinner that U.C. Berkeley’s Jewish law school dean hosted for graduating students, days after activists circulated a blood libel cartoon targeting the dean and referencing the planned dinner.

Malak Afaneh, the head of Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine, stood in the midst of the backyard dinner hosted by law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife while roughly 60 law students were eating. Wearing a keffiyeh and hijab, she delivered an anti-Israel speech through a microphone, according to a Wednesday statement from Chemerinsky and an Instagram video from the Bay Area Palestinian Youth Movement that depicted the disruption.

"Please leave our house, you are guests in our house," Chemerinsky can be heard saying, as his wife put her arm around Afaneh. Afaneh refused to budge, stating with her eyes half-closed that "we have attorneys" and that the disruption at the private home was their "First Amendment right." Ultimately Afaneh left with about 10 other students who had accompanied her.

The disruption came a week after the law school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted a cartoon on Instagram showing Chemerinsky holding a fork and knife dripping with blood over the dinner, captioned with "No Dinner With Zionist Chem While Gaza Starves." This post was deleted soon after it was posted last Monday, then shared again without blood on the utensils. Posters with the image were also distributed on bulletin boards around the law school.

Activists distributed these graphics after Chemerinsky announced three consecutive nights of dinners—starting Tuesday—for graduating law students who, because they had entered Berkeley during the COVID-19 lockdowns, had missed out on his usual tradition of inviting all first-year law students into his home.

Chemerinsky referenced the blood libel cartoon in his statement, noting that students had complained.


Liars and Marionettes: Media Ignore Exposure of How Terror Groups Manipulate Gaza News
When Pinocchio lied, his nose grew longer. His falsehoods were just too obvious to be ignored.

But media outlets barely raised an eyebrow after a Big Lie was exposed this week, perhaps because it also exposed them as nothing more than wooden marionettes.

On Monday, April 8, it was revealed that Gaza terror organizations have been deliberately spreading false narratives on the Israel-Hamas war, and that international media outlets have been playing an unwitting or even willing role in enabling this mass manipulation.

Unsurprisingly, the foreign press ignored the exposure, even though everyone received the announcement distributed by the IDF — it showed the interrogation of Islamic Jihad spokesperson, Tariq Salami Otha Abu Shlouf, who had been captured during the IDF’s recent raid on Gaza’s Shifa hospital.

During his conversation with the interrogator, which amounts to an incriminating account concerning news coverage of Gaza, Abu Shlouf reveals how the well-oiled media manipulation machine of Islamic Jihad and Hamas operates:
1. Top figures in the group decide on a beneficial narrative, such as focusing on the humanitarian angle rather than the military one.
2. The message is being circulated to news outlets.
3. Reporters uncritically echo what the terror group says, to avoid harming ties with sources.
“Doonesbury” vs. Hamas
One of America’s most beloved newspaper comic strips has dared to poke fun at Hamas. Get ready for controversy!

In the latest Sunday installment of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Doonesbury strip, a fictional anti-terrorist fighter—known as “the Red Rascal”—bursts into the bedroom of an actual Hamas leader, Ismail Haniye, who is living in Qatar.

The cartoon shows Haniyeh enjoying luxurious accommodations, and identifies him as “one of three Hamas leaders worth billions, who enriched themselves with donor money intended for impoverished Gazans!”


Garry Trudeau, the writer and artist of Doonesbury, has dared to acknowledge a fact about the Hamas leadership that most of the mainstream news media prefer to ignore.

For years, leaders of the terrorist group have been stealing funds that the United States and other countries have generously donated for the needs of Gaza’s citizens. According to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Haniyeh is worth about $4-billion, making Hamas one of the richest terrorist groups in the world. He and other Hamas leaders “have been photographed flying in private jets, enjoying fine dining, and attending international sporting events,” the FDD noted.

There also have been numerous reports of Hamas terrorists in Gaza stealing food, medicine and other supplies that the international community has been sending to the territory.

What makes this Doonesbury strip even more interesting is that Trudeau has been strongly critical of Israel in the past. His view of Hamas is not motivated by any kind of built-in pro-Israel bias.


After Charging That Israel Launched War, Reuters ‘Adds Context’ of Hamas’ Oct. 7 Invasion
After Reuters published a Facebook post this week which cited “the war Israel launched against Hamas,” as if Israel and not Hamas started the war, CAMERA prompted the news agency to acknowledge the terror organization’s massive Oct. 7 invasion, a brutal onslaught of murder, rape, kidnapping, mutilation, torture and looting.

The April 8 post had stated:
Drone footage filmed over a year shows parts of Gaza City and southern Gaza before and after damage and destruction in the war Israel launched against Hamas.

The post links to a Reuters article which correctly reports (“Drone footage shows a lively Gaza turned to wasteland since war began“): “The conflict began when Hamas, which runs Gaza, burst into Israel on Oct. 7, killed 1,200 people and dragged more than 200 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.”

In response to communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, Reuters amended the Facebook post to state:
CORRECTED TO ADD CONTEXT: Drone footage filmed for over a year shows parts of Gaza City and southern Gaza prior to and following the damage and destruction from the war Israel launched against Hamas, after the terrorist group burst into Israel on Oct. 7, killed 1,200 people and dragged more than 200 hostages back to Gaza.

While the addition of Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities is certainly a significant improvement, it should be noted that Israel didn’t “launch” a war, Hamas did. Israel declared war in response to Hamas’ genocidal attack.
Unparalleled Intelligence UPI Claims To Know More Than U.S. on Damascus Strike
It’s astonishing that while U.S. intelligence has yet to determine whether or not the attacked Damascus building is indeed a diplomatic facility, Adam Schrader has gotten to the bottom of the matter.

“Israel launched an attack Monday that destroyed Iran’s consulate in Damascus, the capital of Syria,” he unequivocally reported in his April 7 article (“Iran’s top commander warns Israel it committed suicide with Damascus attack“).

If U.S. intelligence, with all of its vast resources, has not yet determined whether the building that was hit was a consular facility, how exactly has the UPI reporter with a troubled relationship with facts managed to do so?

Going even beyond Iran’s claim, Schrader deemed the building “Iran’s consulate in Damascus.” Thus, he falsely reported that the whole consulate was destroyed, as opposed to a specific building which the Iranians say belong to its consular mission.

Meanwhile, Schrader further harms UPI’s standing as “a credible source for the most important stories of the day” while bolstering Iranian and Hamas messaging. Veering sharply from the attack on the building in Damascus to uncritically parroting highly dubious propaganda accusing Israeli troops of carrying out sexual violence against Palestinians, he wrote:
CBC Kids News Gives Unfettered Platform For Anti-Israel Accusations
In an April 4 article for CBC Kids News, Program Assistant Taylor Katzel penned an article entitled: “How Ramadan feels different this year for these Canadian teens,” which presented a viewpoint which parroted Hamas talking points.

Katzel wrote that “this year, however, Ramadan has a different tone for Noor and many Muslims around Canada due to the war and food shortages in Gaza. Indeed, a UN report published earlier this month said that famine is imminent and likely to occur by May in northern Gaza and could spread across the enclave by July.”

While Katzel accurately mentioned that the war started with Hamas’ invasion of Israel on October 7, but the author continued by telling readers that “since then, Israel has launched rocket attacks and a ground assault in Gaza, killing more than 30,000 people, according to Gaza health officials. Very little aid is being allowed past the borders between Israel and Gaza.”

On the back of these supposed facts, Katzel quoted two Muslim teens who explained how their Ramadan has been sadly subdued due to the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza. They, too, mention the “famine” in Gaza and Katzel did not provide context.

Had he done so, he could have mentioned that Israel vociferously disputes the UN famine prediction, citing many flaws, including that the United Nations report he cites relies on Hamas disinformation as the basis for its claims.

The United Nations in Gaza, via UNRWA, the disgraced agency with ties to Hamas, is hardly a reputable source, either. UNRWA members have participated in the October 7 massacres, their school textbooks contain overt incitement against Israel and praise for terrorism, and a Hamas data centre was found directly underneath UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza.
Why does Palestinian flag emoji appear when searching ‘Jerusalem’?
Fury has erupted after users discovered that an emoji of the Palestinian flag appears when some type Jerusalem into their emoji search.

Users of Google’s Android devices and Apple's iPhones reported the issue, which came to light this week after the iPhone’s latest software update, iOS 17.4.1.

The predictive text function allows users to select emojis that match the word they have typed. Most other capital cities do not prompt the keyboard to display national flags. The Palestinian flag appears in the English UK version of the latest keyboard update when Jerusalem is typed but allegedly is not visible on several other keyboards, including English US.

Countdown presenter Rachel Riley directed her concerns to Apple and its CEO Tim Cook in a post on X/Twitter on Wednesday morning that pointed out how national flags do not appear for a list of other capital cities.

"I’ve just upgraded my software to version iOS 17.4.1, and now, when I type the capital of Israel, Jerusalem, I’m offered the Palestinian flag emoji. This didn’t occur on my phone immediately before this update.

“Below is a (non-exhaustive) list of capital cities that do not offer their nation’s flags, let alone the wrong one.”

Riley went on, “Double standards with respect to Israel is a form of antisemitism, which is itself a form of racism against Jewish people.”

She asked Apple to explain “whether this is an intentional act by your company, or whether you have no control over rogue programmers.”


Labour Candidate Swaps Union Flag for Palestine in Election Branding
Labour has had to insist that it is “proud” to have the Union flag on their branding after many of their MPs complained that it may “alienate ethnic minority voters“. It looks like Shadow Social Care Minister Andrew Gwynne might have chosen his side…

Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council and Labour councillor in Longsight, Luthfur Rahman launched his re-election campaign this week and chose to drop the Union flag for some more famously Mancunian branding – the Palestinian flag. Gwynne and other Labour MPs like Azfal Khan showed up to pledge their support. Not all Labour candidates object to flag waving…


Morocco sentences Islamist to five years for criticizing ties with Israel
A Moroccan who criticized the country’s decision to normalize relations with Israel was sentenced to five years in prison and fined 50,000 Moroccan dirhams ($5,000) on Monday.

The court found Abdul Rahman Zankad guilty of insulting a constitutional institution and incitement, AP reported. Zankad was arrested in March after posting on Facebook about the Gaza war and Morocco’s 2020 decision to establish diplomatic ties with Israel.

“Zankad is a member of Morocco’s Al Adl Wal Ihsane, a banned but tolerated Islamist association that has been a driving force behind many of the country’s protests since the war began,” AP said.

Tens of thousands of Moroccan protesters across the political spectrum have protested in the streets against Israel and in favor of the terror group Hamas, the news outlet reported. They have also criticized the United States and demanded that the government “overturn normalization.”

Morocco generally tolerates free expression, but it’s illegal to criticize the monarchy, and under the country’s constitution, foreign affairs are the prerogative of King Mohammed VI.

Last summer, another Moroccan man, Said Boukioud, 48, was sentenced to five years in prison for criticizing the king on Facebook over the country’s normalization of ties with Israel. He was jailed on Aug. 1, for posts denouncing the Abraham Accords “in a way that could be interpreted as criticism of the king,” the defendant’s lawyer said.

In 2020, Morocco became the fourth Arab country to recognize the Jewish state in the framework of the Abraham Accords after the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.


MEMRI: Lebanese Journalist Critical Of Hizbullah Investigated For Collaboration With Israel
The debate continues in Lebanon over Hizbullah's involvement in the war between Israel and Hamas, which broke out in the aftermath of Hamas October 7 terror attack in southern Israel.

On March 17, 2024, Lebanese philosopher and journalist Makram Rabah was summoned for questioning by Lebanon's General Security Directorate for his criticism of Hizbullah. The summons was issued by Judge Fadi Aqiqi, the Lebanese government commissioner to the military court. Rabah was released after several hours of questioning, but the investigation against him is ongoing. According to him, the interrogators accused him of collaboration with Israel, of disclosing information about Hizbullah military positions and of harming this organization.

In an article he published after his release, Rabah, who is known as a harsh critic of Hizbullah, attributed his summons to statements he had made in an interview with a Lebanese news channel several days earlier, in which he slammed the organization and its decision to join the war against Israel after October 7. In the interview Rabah stated: "On October 8 [Hizbullah Secretary-General] Hassan Nasrallah said: 'We opened up this front,' and thereby rendered Israel's retaliation [against Lebanon] legitimate according to international law… As for the claim that Israel has ambitions [to expand] into our territory, I actually wish it would come and take the Litani River. That would be better than [seeing it] turn into sewage. The claim that Lebanon is Israel's only target is not accurate [either]. Israel would have been happy to see Hizbullah become the guardian of its northern border, but when Iran ordered Hizbullah to open up the [Lebanese] front so as to preserve [Iran's and Hizbullah's] reputation in the eyes of the Arab and Islamic public, it complied [with this request] … We can regain the disputed Lebanese territories through diplomacy, as we did with U.S. Envoy Amos Hochstein in the agreement for delineating the [maritime] border. In the eyes of Hizbullah we are all traitors…"[1]

Rabah's summons for questioning was widely condemned by Lebanese politicians and journalists that oppose Hizbullah, who called it an attempt to intimidate him and silence his criticism of the organization. Journalist Vera Bou Monsef noted that Judge Aqiqi "is considered very close to Hizbullah."[2]

The launch of an investigation against Rabah for his criticism of Hizbullah reflects the extent of this organization's control of the Lebanese state and its security apparatuses, but also the organization's anxiety about and sensitivity to criticism of its conduct in Lebanon, which is growing as the war with Israel continues and escalates.[3]


Who Are the Houthis? | Explained
The Houthis aren’t your ordinary rebels; they’re fueled by a mix of anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment, Jew-hatred, and Islamic fundamentalism, and, surprisingly, they’ve captured the attention and fascination of an audience ranging from TikTok influencers to college students with their viral videos of synchronized dancing and singing.

By understanding the history of Yemen, a nation marred by instability and foreign intervention, the roots of the Houthi movement as a response to Saudi influence and domestic corruption, become clearer.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:34 Yemen geopolitical background
00:52 Saudi Arabia interference in domestic affairs
01:30 Houthi tribe's response to Saudi interference
01:51 Ansar Allah (The Houthi movement)
02:15 Houthi extremism
02:48 Houthis clash with Yemeni government
03:37 Houthi nationalism attracts support of Iranian
03:58 Humanitarian crisis
04:51 Houthi involvement in the Gaza War
05:21 Houthi ideology
06:41 Viral Houthi music video and reactions
07:10 Houthi attacks on merchant ships
08:01 Far- left American support of the Houthis
08:30 Timhouthi Chalamet
08:49 What's next for the Houthis?


IRGC spies posed as Israelis to hack me, reveals stabbed Iran dissident
Zeraati said he and his colleagues had been receiving frequent threats since mass protests against the regime began in Iran in the autumn of 2022. In his case, they were not only made online, but on London’s streets, where family members had been confronted and told the regime “knew where we lived”. The JC has agreed not to divulge full details of these incidents at Zeraati’s request.

Zeraati said he vehemently criticised the anti-Israel marches held in Britain since October 7 on his show, and since then, “the level of threats we faced got even worse”. He had reported every one of them to his designated police liaison officer.

He also believed that Iran had tried to hack the computers and other devices used by himself and his colleagues. In his case, he had received a message from someone using a phone with an Israeli +972 code, purporting to be a journalist from the Jerusalem Post who wanted to interview him.

But when the “reporter” tried to set up an online meeting and sent a link, he became suspicious and reported it. Others at the channel had received similar approaches, from bogus “journalists” supposedly working for Reuters and other outlets. Eventually, Zeraati said, cyber security experts had told them the source was a known cyber warfare unit of the IRGC.

Zeraati said that he often asked guests whether they believed Britain should proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation – including Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview last year. Netanyahu replied that he believed it should, because “the IRGC is the foremost terrorist organisation in the world”, adding that if the British government needed intelligence to justify this move, “I have a lot of it”.

In his own view, Zeraati said, putting the IRGC on the official terrorist list “would help dissidents and human rights activists opposed to the regime who live outside Iran, by putting pressure on it”. Carrying placards venerating Soleimani – as seen at last week’s Quds Day parade in London – would become a criminal offence.


New report warns of antisemitism surge in the Netherlands
A leading organization in the Netherlands dedicated to combating antisemitism has documented a 245% rise in antisemitic incidents in 2023 compared to the previous year, according to a report published on Tuesday.

The Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI) reported 379 instances of Jew-hatred over the calendar year, up from 155 in 2022. “This means a rise in incidents by 2.5 times compared to 2002,” the report stated.

According to the CIDI, while there was a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents following Oct. 7, the total number of incidents in the Netherlands before the Hamas attacks was already nearing the 2022 total.

“Jews in the Netherlands and the Jewish religion were often associated with the policies of the government in Israel which caused Jews to become the target of antisemitic assaults,” the report states.

The sharp rise was an anomaly and nothing like it had been seen in the past decade, according to the CIDI. The area in which the report saw the sharpest rise was in written online attacks against people or institutions.

CIDI concluded the report by recommending that several steps be taken by the Dutch government, including instituting mandatory Holocaust and Jewish history classes; combating online antisemitism; improving the police and legal response to antisemitic incidents; and working with sports associations to root out antisemitism from athletic events, with a strong emphasis on soccer matches.


‘This is Zionism’ campaign seeks to ‘instill confidence’ in students
A new effort from a watchdog group aims to strengthen and motivate student activists combating antisemitism on the front lines of American academia.

CAMERA on Campus announced its new “This is Zionism” initiative on April 9.

“Our campaign seeks to instill confidence in Zionist students worldwide during a period of rampant campus antisemitism. Empowering students through education is the cornerstone of our campaign,” emphasized Douglas Sandoval, managing director for CAMERA on Campus, to JNS.

“Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace have fueled antisemitic attacks against Zionist students through their doubling down on the false and ludicrous equation of Zionism to something harmful and nefarious,” said Sasha Chernyak, content and campaigns manager for CAMERA on Campus.

She said the new website (www.zionism.me) would provide students “with the facts about Zionism and Israel, enabling them to tackle head-on the most common attacks we see on Zionism.”

Chernyak noted that following Oct. 7, “students are facing an uphill battle with hate groups like SJP and JVP attempting to vilify and intimidate Zionist students like never before.”

The campaign “strengthens Zionist students worldwide with a simple, yet important message: you are not alone and the facts are on your side,” Sandoval told JNS.


Beersheba researchers use AI to read illegible words in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic
More ancient texts are discovered throughout the Near East every year in both the Hebrew and Aramaic languages. Analyzing these texts is extremely important for researchers studying the culture and history of the region.

Since many of these inscriptions are damaged over time due to earthquakes, fires, political conflicts, and other natural and human-related causes Epigraphists – experts who are responsible for reconstructing, translating, and dating inscriptions and finding any relevant circumstance, leaving it to historians to determine and interpret the recorded events – have until now used time-consuming manual procedures to estimate the missing content. This has been a major challenge in reconstructing the missing parts of these valuable writings.

Now, students in the software and information systems engineering department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beersheba have approached this challenge as an extended masked language modeling task where the damaged content can comprise single characters, character n-grams (partial words), single complete words, and multi-word n-grams.

This study is the first attempt to apply the masked language modeling approach to corrupted inscriptions in Hebrew and Aramaic languages, both using the Hebrew alphabet consisting mostly of consonant symbols.

In their final project under the supervision of Prof. Mark Last; and fourth-year undergraduate students Niv Fono, Harel Moshayof, Eldar Karol, and Itay Asraf applied the masked language modeling approach to corrupted inscriptions in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Their model, called “Embible,” was highlighted at the latest meeting of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics last month. They published their findings in the journal ACL Anthology under the title “Embible: Reconstruction of Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic Texts Using Transformers.”




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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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